Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066 - 1216 0521760992, 9780521760997

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FLANDERS AND THE ANGLO-NORM AN WORLD, 1066–1216 The union of Normandy and England in 1066 recast the political map of western Europe and marked the beginning of a new era in the region’s international history. This book is a groundbreaking investigation of the relations and exchanges between the county of Flanders and the Anglo-Norman realm. Among other important themes, it examines Anglo-Flemish diplomatic treaties and fiefs, international aristocratic culture, the growth of overseas commerce, immigration to England and the construction of new social and national identities. The century and a half between the conquest of England by the duke of Normandy and the conquest of Normandy by the king of France witnessed major revolutions in European society, politics and culture. This study explores the history of England, northern France and the southern Low Countries in relation to each other during this period, giving fresh perspectives on the historical development of north-western Europe in the Central Middle Ages. eljas oksanen is Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of History, King’s College London.

Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth Series General Editor rosamond mckitterick Professor of Medieval History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College

Advisory Editors: christine carpenter Professor of Medieval English History, University of Cambridge

jonathan shepard

The series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought was inaugurated by G. G. Coulton in 1921; Professor Rosamond McKitterick now acts as General Editor of the Fourth Series, with Professor Christine Carpenter and Dr Jonathan Shepard as Advisory Editors. The series brings together outstanding work by medieval scholars over a wide range of human endeavour extending from political economy to the history of ideas. A list of titles in the series can be found at: www.cambridge.org/medievallifeandthought

FLANDERS AND THE ANGLO-NORM AN WORLD, 1066–1216 ELJAS OKSANEN

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S˜ao Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521760997  C Eljas Oksanen 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Oksanen, Eljas. Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world, 1066–1216 / Eljas Oksanen. pages cm. – (Cambridge studies in medieval life and thought. Fourth series) Includes bibliographical references. isbn 978-0-521-76099-7 1. Flanders – History – To 1500. 2. Great Britain – History – Norman period, 1066–1154. 3. Flanders – Relations – England. 4. England – Relations – Flanders. 5. Europe – History – 476-1492. I. Title. dh801.f465o47 2012 949.3 101 – dc23 2012013650 isbn 978-0-521-76099-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For my Family

CONTENTS

List of figures, maps and tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

page ix x xii

introduction 1 power and politics in flanders and the anglo-norman regnum Early political formation The Flemish context of 1066 The aftermath of the Conquest Alliances in the late eleventh century Accession and ascendancy of Henry I William Clito and the Flemish civil war of 1127–1128 Count Thierry, King Stephen and Empress Matilda The accession of King Henry II International diplomacy and the affair of Thomas Becket The Angevin civil war of 1173–1174 Conflict and co-operation 1174–1183 Richard I and John, and the ascendancy of Philip II of France The path to Bouvines and Runnymede

2 military treaties and diplomatic culture The 1101 and 1110 treaties The treaty of 1163 Homage, ambiguity and alliance

3 anglo-flemish diplomacy: context and mechanisms Diplomatic society Baronial money fiefs The Flemish treaty fief during the reign of King Henry II The management of the treaty fiefs

vii

1 7 7 11 15 18 20 26 29 32 35 39 41 45 50 54 59 68 72 82 83 92 97 106

Contents 4 tournament in anglo-flemish society Leadership and politics Networking and recruitment

5 the politics of cross-channel commerce Urbanisation and trade Travel and shipping Cross-Channel finances Trade, society and politics

6 flemish immigration to england The Norman Conquest Flemish estates in Domesday Book Opportunities and networks Emigration pressures within Flanders Flemish communities in Wales

7 social identity and the image of flemings in england Mid-twelfth-century perceptions of Flemish soldiers William of Ypres and the mutability of mercenary identity English identity, and Flemings in the Chronicle of Jordan Fantosme Flemings in English Historical Narratives of the later twelfth century

conclusion Appendix I: Timeline Appendix II: Treaty between King Henry II and Count Thierry, and heirs, Dover, 19 March 1163 Bibliography Index

viii

114 122 133 145 146 156 162 169 178 180 185 197 208 213 219 220 225 231 241 251 257 264 270 297

F I G U RE S , M A P S A N D T A BL E S

Figure 1 Pipe Roll payments in the reign of Henry II Map 1 Map 2 Map 3 Map 4 Map 5

page 101

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world Flanders in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries North-western Europe Domesday tenants The Artesian group

xv xvi xvii 189 201

Table 1 Joint genealogical tree of England, Normandy and Flanders Table 2 The Flemish fief in 1158 Table 3 Manors held as tenant-in-chief in 1086

xiv 100 190–1

ix

A C K N OW L E D G E M E N T S

Over the course of writing this book I have relied on the goodwill and the generous help of many friends, loved ones, colleagues and acquaintances. Though it is impossible to repay many of the debts incurred, it is my pleasure to recognise them and to publicly offer my thanks for the help I have been given during this project. This book originated in a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Cambridge. My academic skills developed there under the superb guidance of Liesbeth van Houts, to whom I owe great thanks for her excellent teaching, for her indefatigable encouragement and for originally suggesting this topic of research. I likewise owe a debt to the scholarly communities at the Faculty of History and at Jesus College for nourishing my intellectual formation. This book gestated and was redrafted, rewritten and revised during my stay first at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto in 2008, and then at the Department of History at King’s College London in 2009–11. I would like to thank especially Paul Readman, the head of Department of History at King’s, for his support and interest in my work. I owe these learned institutions a great debt of gratitude for providing me with access to their facilities and resources, and with membership in their communities of academics. I have likewise had the privilege to draw upon the deep reservoir of knowledge at the Institute of Historical Research in London. I would also like to thank Suomen Kulttuurirahasto for awarding the research grant that allowed me to embark on this project. This book would not have been possible without these advantages. My research and writing have benefited enormously from the insightful critique and wisdom of many generous commentators, to the point where it is not possible to give full justice to all my scholarly influences. People who have offered advice and corrections on substantial portions of my book include David Carpenter, Anne Duggan, Steven Vanderputten, Ren´ee Nip, Steven Baxter, David Crouch, John Gillingham, Jenny Benham, Helen Keeble, David Nicholas and Chris Lewis. Sara Berman read through my entire manuscript and suggested many useful corrections to x

Acknowledgements the argument and innumerable improvements to the language. I am likewise grateful to my PhD examiners John France and Judith Everard for their valuable feedback and for the encouragement they gave me in turning my dissertation into a monograph. And I would like to thank John for suggesting the title of this book. I am especially indebted to Master David Martin for likewise reading through the entire manuscript, both as it was being produced and in its penultimate version, and for the many comments and observations – causing me to re-examine and improve upon my arguments and providing much encouragement through the final stages of writing and revision. All mistakes, naturally, remain my own. I am very grateful to the staff and scholars at Cambridge University Press for their professional input and advice: I would like to thank my commissioning editors Liz Friend-Smith and Michael Watson and my series editor Christine Carpenter for their feedback and help, as well as the two anonymous reviewers who critiqued the original monograph proposal and parts of the manuscript and whose commentary helped me to focus and order the structure of this book. And, finally, my greatest debt is to my family, who have been a constant and loving source of support through this entire project and to whom this book is dedicated.

xi

A B B REV I A T I O N S

Actes, 1071–1128 ANS ASC

DP

EHR GDB HSJ LDB MGH Norman PR

ODNB OMT Oorkonden, 1128–1191

Actes des comtes de Flandre, 1071–1128, ed. F. Vercauteren (Chroniques Belges In´edites, Brussels, 1938) Anglo-Norman Studies The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation, ed. and trans. D. Whitelock et al. (London, 1961). Chronicle version given in brackets, followed by the year of entry K. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166, vol. 1, Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1999) English Historical Review Great Domesday Book Haskins Society Journal Little Domesday Book Monumenta Germaniae Historica Pipe Rolls of the Exchequer of Normandy for the Reign of Henry II, 1180 and 1184, ed. V. Moss (Loughborough, 2004). Administrative year (30 September–29 September) given in brackets Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com Oxford Medieval Texts De oorkonden der graven van Vlaanderen (juli 1128–september 1191), ed. T. de Hemptinne, L. de Mey and A. Verhulst (Recueil des actes des princes belges, 3 vols., Brussels, 1988–2009) xii

List of abbreviations Oorkonden, 1191–1206

De oorkonden der graven van Vlaanderen (1191–aanvang 1206), ed. W. Prevenier (Recueil des actes des princes belges, 3 vols., Brussels, 1964–71) OV Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, 6 vols. (OMT, Oxford, 1969–80) PR The Great Rolls of the Pipe, ed. Pipe Roll Society (London, 1884–ongoing). Regnal year number, name of monarch, and administrative year (30 September– 29 September) indicated RAH II Recueil des actes de Henry II: Roi de l’Angleterre et duc de Normandie, ed. L. Delisle, 3 vols. (Paris, 1916–28) RHGF Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. M. Bouquet, 24 vols. (repr., Farnborough, 1968) RRAN, vol. 2, 1100–1135 Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum 1066–1154, vol. 2, Regesta Henrici Primi 1100–1135, ed. C. Johnson and H. Cronne (Oxford, 1966) RRAN, vol. 3, 1135–1154 Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum 1066–1154, vol. 3, Regesta Stephani ac Matildis Imperatricis ac Gaufridi et Henrici Ducum Normannorum 1135–1154, ed. H. Cronne and R. Davis (Oxford, 1968) RS Rolls Series, or The Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, 99 vols. (London, 1858–96) TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

xiii

Eustace

Young King Henry

Mary of Blois (X)

HENRY I

k. of England and d. of Normandy (1189-99)

ROBERT I

Geoffrey, d. of Brittany

BALDWIN VI

Philip of Loo

THIERRY

BALDWIN VIII

ct of Flanders (1191-3) also Baldwin V, ct of Hainaut

cts of Flanders and Hainaut (1244-78) m. William of Dampierre m. Buchard of Avesnes

MARGARET

ct of Flanders (1193-1206) also Baldwin VI, ct of Hainaut, m. Marie of Champagne

BALDWIN IX

Margaret

ct of Flanders (1128-68)

k. of England and Matilda d. of Normandy Ida, cts of Boulogne (1173-1216), (1199-1216) m. Gerard of Guelders, JOAN m. Berthold of Zähringen, cts of Flanders and m. Renaud of Dammartin Hainaut (1206-44) m. Ferdinand of Portugal m. Thomas of Savoy

Matthew, ct of Boulogne (1160-73), m. Mary of Blois (X)

Baldwin II, ct of Hainaut m. Ida of Louvain

Gertrude, m. Thierry d. of Lorraine

ct of Flanders (1070-1)

ARNULF III

ct of Flanders (1067-70) m. Richilde of Hainaut

William of Ypres CHARLES ct of Flanders (1119-27)

Adele m. Cnut IV, k. of Denmark

ct of Flanders (1168-91) m. Elizabeth of Vermandois m. Matilda of Portugal

JOHN

BALDWIN V

ct of Flanders (1035-67) m. Adela of France

Sybil of Anjou

PHILIP

Geoffrey V, ct of Anjou

ct of Flanders (1111-19)

BALDWIN VII

ct of Flanders (1093-1111) m. Clemence of Burgundy

ROBERT II

ct of Flanders (1071-93) m. Gertrude of Holland

k. of England and d. of Normandy (1154-89) m. Eleanor of Aquitaine

HENRY II

Empress Matilda

k. of England and d. of Normandy (1100-35) m. Edith Matilda (S) of Scotland

Matilda

RICHARD I

William Aetheling

ct of Flanders (1127-8)

WILLIAM CLITO

STEPHEN, ct of Boulogne (1125-54) k. of England (1135-54)

William, ct of Boulogne (1154-9)

Maud of Boulogne

WILLIAM I, d. of Normandy (1035-87), k. of England (1066-87)

Adele Robert Curthose, WILLIAM RUFUS k. of England m. Stephen-Henry, d. of Normandy (1087-1100) ct of Blois (1087-1106) m. Sybil of Converso

Eustace III, ct of Boulogne (1089-1125) m. Mary of Scotland (S)

(S) = sisters (X) = same person

Table 1. Joint genealogical tree of England, Normandy and Flanders

0

50

0

25

100 50

150 km 75

100 miles

NORTHUMBERLAND

Hartlepool

Durham

YORKSHIRE

Stamford York Beverley HOLDERNESS

E N G L A N D

T

Kirton LINCOLNLincoln h as SHIRE W Boston he

Dunham

Chester

S

Lynn Norwich Stamford NNORFOLK TO IRE H Ely St Ives S Northampton CEREDIGION Wahull Exning Eye Dunwich Fornham Worcester Cambridge SUFFOLK BEDFORD- Walden Bury St Edmunds Daugleddau SHIRE Carmarthen Tewkesbury Haverfordwest PEMBROKESHIRE

Bampton London Runnymede Rochester Sandwich Bruges Canterbury Devizes Nieuwpoort KENT Dover Hythe SOMERSET Ghent Winchester MERCK New Romney Gravelines Calais Hastings Ypres Southampton Pevensey Wissant GUINESSt Omer Lille Boulogne Aire Portsmouth Bouvines BOULOGNE FLANDERS Lens ST P ARTOIS Douai HAINAUT HESDIN Arras CAMBRAI PONTHIEU Eu Y VERMANDOIS RD Arques CA Aumale PI Laon RessonsHarfleur Gournay Rouen

Exeter

BRABAN T

WIL TS HI R

Bristol

E

O

L

XI VE

Caen

VALOIS

Rheims

N

N O R M A N D Y

Paris

Tinchebray Mortain

I S

B R I T TA N Y

MAINE

ANJOU

Map 1.

CHAMPAGNE Lagny

ÎLE-DEFRANCE

B L O

RHOS

W

A

L

NO RT HA M P

E

Leicester

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world

Comital guarantors in 1101, 1110 and 1163 Flemish Domesday tenants-in-chief The southern limit of the bulk of the comital demesne

Bruges

FLANDERS Ghent Gravelines

MERCK (BOULOGNE)

Wissant

Bergues Bourbourg

Alst Ypres

ARDRES

GUINES Boulogne

Courtrai

Cassel St Omer

BRABANT

Arques Thérouanne

Lille

Béthune Chocques LENS

BOULOGNE Brimeux

ST POL Hesdin

Tournai Raimbeaucourt

Beuviere

Lens

Mons

Douai

HAINAUT

HESDIN Arras

CAMBRAI

PONTHIEU

Cambrai

VERMANDOIS 0 0

Map 2.

25 10

50 20

30

75 km 40

Flanders in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries

50 miles

SCOTLAND

AL

ES

IRELAND

W

ENGLAND FRISIA

ND

MERCK

F LA

GUINES BOULOGNE ST POL HESDIN PONTHIEU

S ER

HAINAUT CAMBRAI

OI AND VERM

FRENCH VEXIN

CHAMPAGNE

ÎLEDEFRANCE

BL

MAINE

S

VALOIS

NORMANDY

BRITTANY

BRABANT

OI

S

NE AI UR TO

ANJOU

BURGUNDY

POITOU AQUITAINE

GASCONY

0 0

100 50

200 100

TOULOUSE

300 km 150

200 miles

Map 3.

North-western Europe

I N T RO D U C T I O N

In the teaching, study and dissemination of history, a strong and perhaps inescapable tendency to organisation along national lines prevails. This propensity is witnessed by any number of undergraduate curricula, catalogues of research libraries and shelves of high-street bookshops. The role assigned to medieval historiography, in particular, has been to chart the early emergence and development of modern states and their institutions.1 This study examines a relationship that does not fit the approved pattern. It concerns a regional princedom that is today no sovereign state – which does not even fully lie within the bounds of any one contemporary state – and a transmarine accumulation of territories that many have been inclined to view as destined to be pulled apart by the centrifugal forces that shaped modern England and France. A study should strive to reflect the character of its era. Over the course of the late ninth and the tenth centuries in the western third of the former Carolingian Empire, in what was to become France, political authority devolved to a great extent to local institutions, castellans and lords. Simultaneously and subsequently the region was to be gradually consolidated by the more successful members of its higher nobility. Among these local princes were the dukes of Normandy and the counts of Flanders, who came to assume regalian rights formerly the province of Carolingian kings, and who ill tolerated the interventions of the royal dynasty in Paris. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries there had evolved in both Normandy and Flanders a strong sense of local affiliation, supplemented by identification with regional dynastic history. While these local identities coexisted with other, more widely shared classifications – linguistic, religious, political and so forth – they did help to set the various territorial principalities apart from each other, as well as from the ‘French’ France around Paris. Up until the end of the twelfth 1

The scholarship on nationalism is considerable, but for introductions to this point see P. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, NJ, 2002); P. Heather, Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe (London, 2009), pp. 1–35.

1

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 century, the French king was merely first among equals in the small handful of regional rulers who governed the kingdom and, in terms of real power, often not even that. When the dukes of Normandy also became kings of England, he was utterly overshadowed. Rather than reinforce historical narratives centred on the modern concept of ‘state’, I therefore hope to provide an international and interregional point of view with which to consider the history of north-western Europe. The focus of this book is on the interactions and exchanges between the county of Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world, from the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 to the political upheavals of King John’s reign (1199–1216). Defining the precise boundaries of an enquiry within this general frame is to a degree a matter of judgement. I use the phrase ‘the Anglo-Norman world’ to highlight a particular context. The term ‘Anglo-Norman’ itself was coined in the eighteenth century, and, other than possibly the term Normanangli, used exclusively by the Warenne chronicler in the 1150s, has no medieval counterpart.2 In my usage, the Anglo-Norman world refers to a sphere of political, social, cultural and economic exchanges that was created by the union of England with Normandy in 1066, and which endured in various guises through to the early thirteenth century. These ties made the AngloNorman union something that we might call realm, a regnum, but it must also be appreciated that they did not imbue it with an inherent, overreaching political and social unity or identity of the kind we might imagine characterising a modern polity; the monarch of England did not rule over the duchy because he was its king, but because he was its duke.3 In choosing this focus I do not wish to sideline from this discussion the broader Angevin lands of Anjou, Aquitaine and Brittany, or the other territories governed over or claimed by the Norman-descended rulers of England through this period. But when Flanders reached 2 3

Oxford English Dictionary, ed. J. Simpson and E. Weiner, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 466–7. On Normanangli, see pp. 233–4 below. This matter has been subject to debate and reinterpretation. J. Le Patourel, most famously, in his landmark The Norman Empire (Oxford, 1976), argued for the existence of a ‘complex but coherent political structure which the Normans build up in northern France and Britain during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries’ (p. v). Along these same lines, see also C. Hollister, who promoted a ‘tightly integrated Anglo-Norman state’ in his ‘Normandy, France and the Anglo-Norman regnum’, Speculum 51 (1976), 202–42, at 241. This view has since been powerfully criticised, however, by scholars who have pointed out that England and Normandy did not possess a unified body of justice or such administrative institutions as the exchequer, and that below the level of the greatest magnates the elite was largely divided by the geography. See especially D. Bates, ‘Normandy and England after 1066’, EHR 104 (1989), 851–80; D. Crouch, ‘Normans and Anglo-Normans: A Divided Aristocracy?’, in D. Bates and A. Curry, eds., England and Normandy in the Middle Ages (London, 1994), pp. 51–67; J. Green, ‘Unity and Disunity in the Anglo-Norman State’, Historical Research 62 (1989), 115–34.

2

Introduction westwards it was usually to England and Normandy, the county’s closest neighbours. At its simplest level, then, the selection of this topic is justified by the lie of the land. First, the southern Low Countries have occupied a substantial piece of first-class geopolitical real estate for a thousand years. The region of medieval Flanders was sandwiched between three major centres of European political gravity – England, France and Germany – and has remained in a pivotal position into modern times. The deadliest battlegrounds of the Western Front were situated near the medieval Flemish cloth-manufacturing centre of Ypres. A generation later, the German westward advance in the Battle of France began with a sweep through the Netherlands and Belgium before swinging south. And today the administrative centre of the European Union dwells in Brussels. Second, the southern Low Countries form the part of continental Europe closest to the British Isles. At its widest, from the port of Bruges to the Thames estuary, the distance between England and the Flemish coast is some 140 kilometres, a day’s journey for a swift ship driven by favourable winds. At the westernmost corner of the southern Low Countries, where the domains of the counts of Boulogne lay and the continental landmass sharply juts out towards the Kentish coast, the English Channel narrows down to a strait only thirty-five kilometres wide. Here the nearness becomes a visible fact: on a clear day a visitor to the ancient seaport of Wissant will be able to spy the cliffs of Dover rising above the horizon. These south-western coasts have been an important nexus of travel to the British Isles since Roman times.4 In 1067 the raiding party of Count Eustace II of Boulogne sped across the Channel in the early morning hours to catch the Norman garrison in Dover by surprise; today the Channel Tunnel takes the traveller from Calais to Dover in just thirty minutes.5 The most important factor in cross-Channel relations is the physical geography of north-western Europe. The British (especially the English) have traditionally understood their location in terms of self-containment. The Isles lie at the very edge of the continent, close enough almost to touch, yet above all defined in the popular imagination by their separation from it. This isolation was as much an illusion in the Middle Ages as it is today: for a century and a half after the Battle of Hastings at no point did the English body politic turn their eyes away from the Continent. 4 5

P. Grierson, ‘The Relations between England and Flanders before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS 4th series, 23 (1941), 72–6. William of Poitiers, The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and trans. R. Davis and M. Chibnall (OMT, Oxford, 1998), pp. 182–4.

3

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 During this period the English Channel must not be conceptualised as a peripheral boundary marking a border, but as a central conduit that could carry a traveller from one half of the realm to the other. The proximity of Flanders to England and the English Channel thus meant that the county was situated very close to the heart of the Anglo-Norman world. This centrality was enhanced by the county’s closeness to territories belonging to the kings of France and Germany. Historically, Flanders represented the northernmost tip of Carolingian West Francia, a relatively short journey away from the royal seat in Paris. The counts of Flanders, as the rulers of a powerful principality not far from the core royal lands, were heavyweight players whom the Carolingian kings, and from the tenth century their Capetian successors, were forced to treat with caution and respect. The degree of fealty that the counts expressed to the kings of France fluctuated over the course of the centuries, and at all times they effectively acted at their own discretion. Independence did not, however, ensure political untouchability, and military and diplomatic engagements with the Capetian dynasty in Paris played an integral part in the shaping of Flemish relations with England. The location of the county at the north-eastern border of France also opened the territories to the east of Flanders to Flemish political designs. From the late eleventh century the counts laid claim to territories across the German border, making them vassals not only to the French kings but also to the German imperial crown. While the French connection was indispensable, the German marches also represented a significant avenue of expansion. The counts’ territorial ambitions in the east resulted both in numerous wars and in alliances with their neighbours in Hainaut and Brabant.6 The Flemish chronicler Galbert of Bruges even claimed that Count Charles (1119–27) had been a favoured candidate in the 1125 German royal election. In truth it is impropable that Charles would have been considered a serious contender, but his very involvement is proof of his position among the great eastern magnates.7 Flanders was a border region politically, culturally and linguistically. The bulk of the comital demesne, and the traditional base of the 6

7

D. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London and New York, 1992), pp. 46, 49–52; F.-L. Ganshof, ‘La Flandre’, Histoire des institutions franc¸aises au Moyen Age (Paris, 1957), 208, 351; J. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180 (Oxford, 1985), p. 209; T. de Hemptinne, ‘Vlaanderen en Henegouwen onder de erfgenamen van de Boudewijns 1070–1214’, Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 2nd series, 2 (Haarlem, 1982), 372. Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, Traditione, et Occasione Gloriosi Karoli Comitis Flandriarum, ed. J. Rider, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 131 (Turnhout, 1994), pp. 11–13; Galbert of Bruges, The Murder of Charles the Good, trans. J. Ross (repr. Toronto, 1998), p. 90, n. 2.

4

Introduction Flemish counts’ power, lay in the north; their treasury and much of their administrative apparatus was located in the town of Bruges by the north-western coast. Southern Flanders, roughly corresponding to Artois and part of the greater region of Picardy, fell within the counts’ sphere of political influence, but exhibited a greater degree of local autonomy. This internal division was reflected in the history of the county’s exchanges with its neighbours, and the ambitions of southern magnates sometimes directly clashed with those of the comital house in the north. During the reign of King Philip II of France (1180–1223) Flemish Artois was finally lost to the French crown. The political fault line roughly corresponded to the western edge of the frontier between Romance and Germanic language areas. During Carolingian times it had gradually emerged at the south-western corner of the Low Countries, along the rivers Authie and Canche; thence it had curved north along the river Lys, up to the level of Lille. By the twelfth century the western frontier of the linguistic region had shifted. Probably as a result of land reclamation and resettlement, the French language area pushed north, rendering the region between the rivers Canche and Aa linguistically heterogeneous. The process was influenced by the strong attraction to French literary and chivalric culture in the local and comital courts. In northern ‘Flemish’ Flanders, the aristocratic and ecclesiastical elites, and most probably its far-ranging merchants as well, were functionally bilingual.8 Mastery of French was essential for any Fleming in dealings with the Anglo-Norman secular upper class, but considerable advantage was also derived from the closeness of Old English (less so Middle English) to medieval Dutch. The position of Flanders among the powers and polities of northwestern Europe combined centrality with liminality. The Straits of Dover were crucial to international travel, not only connecting the southern Low Countries to England, but also serving as the route from Scandinavia to France, Spain and finally the Mediterranean. Where Viking raiders had once sailed down the Atlantic coast, in the twelfth century Scandinavian crusaders like King Sigurd of Norway (1103–30) passed through the Channel on the way to the Holy Land.9 In the same period the great seasonal fairs of Flanders became the hubs of a burgeoning international commerce, linking England to continental trade routes that 8

9

L. Milis, ‘The French Low Countries: Cradle of Dutch Culture?’, in Milis, Religion, Culture, and Mentalities in the Medieval Low Countries (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 340–9; Milis, ‘The Linguistic Boundary in the County of Guines’, in ibid., pp. 353–68; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 89–90. Snorri Sturluson, ‘Sigurd the Crusader and his Brothers Eystein and Olav’, Heimskringla, or The Lives of the Norse Kings, trans. A. Smith (New York, 1990), p. 607.

5

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 extended through Germany to eastern Europe, and through France to the Mediterranean.10 As a stepping stone between England and the Continent, Flanders was unquestionably of great strategic importance, a gap in Anglo-Norman control over the coastal perimeter surrounding England. In the north, the Scandinavian royal houses had maintained claims to England throughout the Viking Age, manifesting themselves as late as 1066 in the Norse invasion by Harald Hardrada and the Battle of Stamford Bridge.11 But, though Scandinavian designs on England lingered after Hardrada’s defeat, they had faded by the beginning of the twelfth century.12 In the south, the kings of England ruled over Normandy as its hereditary lords, and, during the second half of the twelfth century, over Brittany, Anjou and Aquitaine as well.13 While this control was not absolute – the threat of baronial rebellion plagued the English monarchs throughout the Central Middle Ages, and at various times rival branches of the royal dynasty held Normandy – it nevertheless allowed for significant strategic control over the waterways to England. Flanders represented a permanent chink in this armour, a gateway through which an enemy power might strike at England and drive a wedge between the continental and the insular possessions of the AngloNorman kings. This precarious position demanded a kind of political balancing act from the counts of Flanders. All the county’s great neighbours commanded resources superior in scale, be they diplomatic, economic or military. Yet the position of Flanders did not doom it to be torn apart in a three-way tug of war. In conflict lay also opportunity. 10 12

13

11 ASC (C, D, E) 1066. See discussion at pp. 148–9 below. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. Mynors, R. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (OMT, Oxford, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 478–80; ASC (E) 1085. For Norman relations with Scandinavia, see L. Abrams, ‘England, Normandy and Scandinavia’, in C. Harper-Bill and E. van Houts, eds., A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 43–62. See J. Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, 2nd edn (London, 2001).

6

Chapter 1

POWE R A N D P O L I T I C S I N F L A N D E R S A N D THE ANGLO-NOR MAN REGNUM

EARLY POLITICAL FORM ATION The origin of the medieval county of Flanders, with her wilfully independent rulers, is to be found amid the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire in the mid-ninth century. Charlemagne’s great realm was divided between his grandsons in the treaty of Verdun of 843. The westernmost portion, assigned to Charles the Bald (king of West Francia 840–77), would eventually coalesce into the kingdom of France. But in the ninth and tenth centuries its integrity was challenged externally by Viking and Saracen raids, and internally by dynastic rivalries and by the ambitions of regional magnates. At this time the southern Low Countries were divided into administrative units called pagi. These were held for the king by local leaders called, by the Merovingian period, comites or ‘counts’. The progenitor of what became the Flemish comital dynasty, Baldwin ‘Iron Arm’ (before 863–79), was one of these local counts in the region of Ghent. Little is known about the family before the 860s but Baldwin entered the pages of history amid one of the great international scandals of his time.1 Around Christmas 861 he eloped with Judith (d. 870), the oldest daughter of Charles the Bald. Baldwin may well have abducted Judith rather than wooed her. But it is also possible that Judith, recently widowed for the second time and placed by her father in the monastery of Senlis, considered this match her last chance for an independent life. Perhaps their romance was even a genuine one.

1

Ganshof, ‘La Flandre’, pp. 11–16; A. Koch, ‘Het graafschap Vlaanderen van de eeuw tot 1070’, Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 2nd series, 1 (Harlem, 1981), pp. 355–60; R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians (London and New York, 1983), pp. 248–54; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 13–14, 16–17. For overviews of France in this period, see D. Bates, ‘West Frankia: The Northern Principalities’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 3, c.900–1024, ed. T. Reuter (Cambridge, 1999) pp. 398–417; E. Hallam and J. Everard, Capetian France 987–1328, 2nd edn (Harlow, 2001), pp. 1–32; J. Dunbabin, France in the Making 843–1180, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2000), pp. 1–16.

7

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Mindful of Charles’s ire the pair fled to Rome. There, through the intervention of Pope Nicholas I, Charles was eventually persuaded to pardon his errant daughter and her suitor and the couple finally celebrated their wedding in 863. As part of the marriage settlement Baldwin was awarded the pagus Flandriensis – the district around Bruges – and later Ternois and the Land of Waas. These territories in northern Flanders were the kernel of Baldwin’s dynasty, and the base from which his successors consolidated their overlordship over their neighbours to the south and east. The name ‘Flanders’, to designate the territory of the counts, was adopted from the pagus in the late ninth century. The early Flemish counts were kin not only to the Frankish kings, but also to the kings of Wessex in Anglo-Saxon England. Countess Judith had been the widow of both the West Saxon rulers Aethelwulf (reigned 839–56, d. 858) and Aethelbald (856–60).2 Wessex comprised much of southern England, including Kent, which made the southern Low Countries the closest continental neighbour of the kingdom. An alliance to unify the coastal areas on both sides of the Channel against Scandinavian raiding parties was a natural development. The establishment of transmarine ties had probably motivated Judith’s English marriages.3 The external pressure created by the Viking assaults pushed the political formation both in England and Flanders along similar lines. The destruction the Scandinavians wrought upon lands situated closer to their travel routes ultimately benefited the West Saxon and the Iron Arm’s dynasties. In the southern Low Countries, the Viking raids opened an opportunity for Baldwin’s successors to extend and consolidate their influence in the maritime provinces.4 In England, the Scandinavian ‘great armies’ of the late 860s and the 870s did not engage merely in pillaging along coasts and rivers, but also conquered, reduced and settled the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria. Only Wessex, the southernmost of the English kingdoms – ruled by Alfred ‘the Great’ (871– 99), Countess Judith’s stepson – managed to weather the onslaught. As in Flanders, in England the Viking ravages opened long-term opportunities. Alfred’s tenth-century successors, rebranding his dynasty as rulers of 2

3

4

On Judith’s career, see J. Nelson, ‘Æthelwulf ’, ODNB; H. Sproemberg, ‘Judith, K¨onigin von England, Gr¨afin von Flandern’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 15 (1936), 397–428, 915–50. P. Stafford, ‘Charles the Bald, Judith and England’, in Charles the Bald, Court and Kingdom, ed. M. Gibson and J. Nelson (British Archaeological Reports, International Series 101, Oxford, 1981), pp. 137–44. Koch, ‘Het graafschap Vlaanderen’, pp. 361–5; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 17–20.

8

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum all the English, conquered and annexed their former neighbours, uniting Anglo-Saxon England under a single crown.5 Early Anglo-Flemish ties were reaffirmed by the marriage of Alfred’s daughter Aethelfryth to the Iron Arm’s son, Count Baldwin II (879– 918).6 From its very inception the lords of Flanders could thus boast a prestigious lineage that descended from two western European royal houses, and served to set the count apart from and above the other territorial lords in the region. This distinction was reinforced by a series of similarly high-profile marriages in the centuries that followed, through which Baldwin’s dynasty maintained its status as one of the great princely houses of Europe, positioned but one step below the royal families themselves.7 During the long reign of Baldwin Iron Arm’s grandson, Count Arnulf I ‘the Great’ (918–65), the territory controlled by the count of Flanders expanded greatly southwards, beginning to assume the shape it would take in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This southward drive eventually collided with the similar ambitions of the dukes of Normandy, themselves descendants of the the Viking leader Rollo: the two dynasties competed over influence in Ponthieu, Artois and Picardy.8 The clash of interests was dramatically illustrated by Arnulf I’s assassination of Duke William ‘Longsword’ during a peace conference in 942.9 The dynasty’s land grab in the south added an additional layer of complexity to the tapestry of relations between Flanders and its neighbours. Arnulf’s father, Baldwin II, had split his domains by creating his younger son Adalolf count of Boulogne (918–33), a territory covering much of south-western maritime Flanders. After Adalolf’s death in 933 Arnulf I denied his nephews their inheritance, but his control over Boulogne started to slip after the death of his son and designated heir Baldwin III in 962. A brief uprising and the sponsorship of King Lothar of France (954–86) restored Adalolf’s son Arnulf (Count Arnulf I of Boulogne, 962– c.988) to his patrimony. What hope remained of restoring Boulogne to the main branch of the Flemish comital dynasty was lost in the civil crisis following the elder Arnulf’s death three years later and the succession 5

6 7 8 9

The literature on this topic extensive, but a broad-ranging introduction is provided by P. Wormald, ‘The Ninth Century’, and E. John, ‘The Age of Edgar’, both in The Anglo-Saxons, ed. J. Campbell (London, 1991), pp. 132–91. Grierson, ‘Relations’, 85–7. A celebration of this high lineage was written in the late eleventh century by the Norman chronicler William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, p. 30. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 39–40; J. Dhondt, Les origines de Flandre et de l’Artois (Arras, 1944), pp. 40–5. OV, vol. 3, pp. 80, 307; Rodulfus Glaber, ‘The Five Books of the Histories’, ed. and trans. J. France, in Rodulfus Glaber Opera (OMT, Oxford, 1989), pp. 162–5.

9

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 of his four-year-old grandson Arnulf II (965–88) in Flanders. Around this period the counts of Boulogne also acquired the county of Lens located within Flemish Artois.10 Boulogne itself eventually fragmented into smaller territories. By 988 the coastal county of Guines had broken off.11 A few decades later the Boulonnais region of Ternois was likewise detached and split between Flanders proper and the newly formed county of St Pol.12 By 1065 the county of Hesdin, bordering Ponthieu to the south, became independent of St Pol.13 Yet more local fragmentation took place. A little later, under Arnold I ‘the Advocate’ (d. 1094), for instance, the small lordship of Ardres gained effective independence from the county of Guines.14 The political legacy of Arnulf II’s reign thus included the formation of lesser principalities within the geographical territory commonly regarded as part of Flanders. In the historiography of the southern Low Countries these principalities have long been regarded as properly part of the greater Flemish dominion, and their rulers as vassals of the Flemish counts either in fact or in principle. Recent work by Heather Tanner has demonstrated, however, not only that the south-western magnates operated independently of their supposed Flemish overlords, but that they do not appear to have done homage to the counts of Flanders at all. The counts of Boulogne, for instance, were established as direct vassals of the French monarchy. Their ambitions and those of other potentates varied accordingly, and were often at odds with or entirely hostile to the efforts of their supposed Flemish overlords.15 These quasi-Flemish regions played an important role in the political history of the region. This is true in particular for the county of Boulogne, which was both the most powerful of the smaller counties and geographically the closest to England. The political balancing act that the Flemish counts conducted with their greater neighbours was often mirrored by the alliances that the lesser territorial princes cultivated in England. Anglo-Flemish political relations during the Middle Ages cannot be satisfactorily examined without taking into account the tangled skein of local dynastic ties, ambitions, mutual interests and rivalries that wound around the whole of north-western Europe. 10 11 12 14 15

H. Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies: Boulogne and Politics in Northern France and England c.879– 1160 (Leiden and Boston, 2004), pp. 29, 33–4, 39–40, 61–2. Dhondt, Les origines, p. 53; J.-F. Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal entre Flandre et France: Saint-Pol, 1000–1300 (Brussels, 2005), pp. 37–9. 13 Ibid., pp. 65–70. Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal, pp. 43–7. Lambert of Ardres, The History of the Counts of Guines and the Lords of Ardres, trans. L. Shopkow (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 28–9. Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, pp. 4–6, 58–63. See also Tanner, ‘The Expansion of the Power and Influence of the Counts of Boulogne under Eustace II’, ANS 14 (1991), 251–86, 261–79.

10

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum THE FLEM ISH CONTEXT OF 1066 The furthest-reaching political event in eleventh-century England was its conquest by Duke William of Normandy (1035–87) in 1066. Though so often pared down to a struggle between Anglo-Saxons and Normans (with perhaps a brief appearance by Scandinavians), the invasion did not take place in isolation from the broader affairs of north-western Europe. Flanders under Count Baldwin V (1035–67) had long been a highly interested spectator of the struggles between political dynasties in England. Though there had been no direct confrontations between the two realms, their political relations were not warm. Baldwin had repeatedly given refuge to Scandinavian and English exiles and pretenders, and did not shy away from providing direct support by lending them men and ships, or by permitting the recruitment of Flemish soldiers.16 Among the highest-profile expatriates in Flanders was the dowager queen Emma, who sheltered in the county between 1036 and 1040, and her sons Alfred and Harthacnut.17 Baldwin may have calculated that by meddling in English affairs he would help to keep the kingdom politically fragmented and, consequently, safely focused on internal matters. In particular, he must have been suspicious of King Edward the Confessor’s (1042–66) political connections to Normandy. When the family of the powerful anti-Norman Earl Godwine of Wessex, Edward’s chief political antagonist, was banished in 1051–2, Baldwin made Flanders available to them as a staging ground for launching their return.18 For his part, Edward the Confessor interfered in Baldwin V’s war against the German emperor Henry III (1028–56) in 1049. Though he did not enter the conflict directly, Edward, by positioning his fleet to threaten the Flemish coast, strongarmed the count into hastily suing for peace.19 Baldwin emerged only a little the worse for wear from the confrontation. At the time of King Edward’s death in January 1066 the count was also nearing the end of his thirty-year reign. Baldwin’s political achievements had reached their pinnacle when he became the guardian of the eight-year-old Philip I of France (1060–1108) on the death of King 16 17 18 19

Grierson, ‘Relations’, 95–102; E. van Houts, ‘Hereward and Flanders’, Anglo-Saxon England 28 (1999), 209–13. Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. and trans. A. Campbell, rev. S. Keynes, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 43, 46–50; ASC (C, D) 1039–40. ASC (C, D, E) 1051–2; The Life of King Edward, ed. and trans. F. Barlow, 2nd edn (OMT, Oxford, 1992), pp. 36–40; F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 2nd edn (London, 1997), pp. 109–24. ASC (C, D, E) 1049; John of Worcester, The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, trans. J. Bray and P. McGurk (OMT, Oxford, 1995), vol. 2, p. 548; Sigebert of Gembloux et al., ‘Sigeberti Gemblacensis Chronica cum Continuationibus’, ed. L. Bethmann, MGH Scriptores 6 (Hannover, 1844), p. 359.

11

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Henry I. He was one of the grand old men of western Europe, a powerful prince whose prestige had only increased with his family’s string of high-profile marriages. His half-sister Judith had married Earl Tostig, Earl Godwine’s third son. Baldwin himself was married to the daughter of Robert II of France (996–1031), Adele (countess of Flanders 1036–67, d. 1079). Arguably Baldwin’s greatest coup, in terms of its immediate political impact, was the marriage of his oldest son and heir, the future Count Baldwin VI (1067–70), to Hainaut’s widowed Countess Richilde in 1051. Despite violent opposition from the Emperor Henry III of Germany, Baldwin V successfully defended the Flemish claim to Hainaut and formally joined the two counties in the settlement of 1056. The younger son of the family, Robert, wooed the widowed Countess Gertrude of Frisia and so ensured a friendly frontier to the north. Finally, Baldwin’s daughter Matilda (d. 1083) married Duke William of Normandy, establishing an important kinship tie with the Norman house that was to influence political relations and dynastic development for several generations.20 By contrast, the fortunes of Edward the Confessor, beset by the Godwines, were at their lowest ebb. His death in 1066 left no clear successor. Edward’s brother-in-law Earl Harold Godwineson was quickly crowned, but his claim was contested on two fronts. To the south, the supporters of Duke William of Normandy held that the childless king had designated the Norman as his heir. To the north, King Harald Hardrada of Norway (1046–66), in alliance with Harold Godwineson’s younger brother Tostig, put forward a claim of his own. The matter was settled by the fortunes of war. Godwineson defeated and killed Hardrada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September, but was in turn overcome by Duke William in the Battle of Hastings on 14 October. Following his victory William proceeded to secure London, where he was crowned king.21 The conflict over succession was not an uncomplicated matter of Scandinavians versus Anglo-Saxons versus Normans. Hardrada was supported by Tostig, who brought Flemish soldiers with him to Stamford. The ranks of men who fought at Duke William’s side at Hastings were likewise swelled by mercenaries and allies hailing from throughout northwestern Europe. There were important contingents from Brittany, Blois and south-western France.22 The highest-ranking of William’s foreign 20

21 22

‘Flandria Generosa’, MGH Scriptores 9, ed. L. Bethmann (Hannover, 1851), pp. 318–20; Koch, ‘Graafschap Vlaanderen’, pp. 376–80; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 49–51; E. van Houts, ‘Matilda of Flanders’, ODNB. D. Douglas, William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact upon England (London, 1977), pp. 181–207; D. Bates, William the Conqueror (London, 1989), pp. 71–94. Guy of Amiens, The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens, ed. F. Barlow (OMT, Oxford, 1999), p. 10; William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, pp. 102, 130; J. Dunbabin, ‘Geoffrey

12

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum allies was Count Eustace II of Boulogne (1046–87). He is mentioned in both Gesta Guillelmi, written c.1073–4 by the Norman chronicler William of Poitiers, and in Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, probably composed by Bishop Guy of Amiens in 1067. The latter credits him as one of the three men who, along with William, killed Harold, a role also suggested for him by the Bayeux Tapestry.23 Eustace’s motivations for participating in this risky endeavour probably represented a mixture of factors. Politically it is likely that he greatly desired to regain standing and to revitalise his sagging alliance network. Through the early 1050s Eustace’s relations with Count Baldwin V of Flanders had been gradually eclipsed by the marriage alliances that the latter had arranged through his children. Friendship with the duke of Normandy – even more the king of England – was a powerful counterbalance to Flanders. More prosaically, but no less importantly, Eustace would have expected to receive land and property in England as a reward for his service. He may even have had particular estates in mind: those he had formerly held through his first wife Goda, a sister of Edward the Confessor.24 Very little by way of direct testimony concerning the involvement of Count Baldwin V in the events of 1066 exists, though there has been much speculation on the matter. In his seminal article on the Flemish contribution to the Conquest, Robert George suggested that Baldwin adopted a posture of ‘beneficial neutrality’ towards his son-inlaw, and that his tacit political support was essential for the success of the campaign.25 Several tenants-in-chief of apparently Flemish origin are listed in the Domesday inquest of 1086, and it has been generally assumed that these men either fought for William in 1066 or helped him to put down the lingering Anglo-Saxon resistance in the years that followed.26 This was the position taken in the twelfth century by the influential Anglo-Norman historian William of Malmesbury, who wrote that ‘the elder Baldwin . . . had given energetic help to William on his

23

24 25 26

of Chaumont, Thibaud of Blois and William the Conqueror’, ANS 16 (1994), 110–12; K. KeatsRohan, ‘William I and the Breton Contingent in the Non-Norman Conquest 1060–1087’, ANS 13 (1991), 157–72; J. Martindale, ‘Aimeri of Thouars and the Poitevin Connection’, ANS 7 (1985), 224–45. William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillemi, pp. 132, 138; Guy of Amiens, Carmen, pp. 30–2; D. Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1985), p. 68; S. Brown, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry: Why Eustace, Odo and William?’, ANS 12 (1990), 7–28. R. Nip, ‘The Political Relations between England and Flanders (1066–1128)’, ANS 21 (1998), 147–51; Tanner, ‘Expansion’, 263–73. R. George, ‘The Contribution of Flanders to the Conquest of England’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 5 (1926), 82–4. Ibid., pp. 81–99; J. Verberckmoes, ‘Flemish Tenants-in-Chief in Domesday England’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 66 (1988), 725–56.

13

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 expedition into England, with wise counsel in which he abounded and with reinforcement of knights.’27 Contemporary Flemish chroniclers, however, mention no such involvement, and moreover unambiguously condemn the campaign as an act of aggression.28 Malmesbury’s account, the only source to suggest Count Baldwin’s direct involvement, was penned roughly sixty years after Hastings and cannot by itself be considered reliable. Neither William of Poitiers nor the Carmen lists Flemings among those allied nationalities who fought at Hastings under William, despite the fact that Bretons, Aquitanians and the men of Maine are considered worthy of mention.29 Conceivably the Flemish could have been rolled into the more general category of ‘Frenchmen’ (galli), but this seems unlikely given Baldwin’s prestige, his close familial tie with William and the independence and distinctiveness of his county. Furthermore, Katherine Keats-Rohan’s prosopographical study of Domesday Book shows that the great majority of the identifiable tenants denoted with the appellation Fleming (flandriensis) came from Boulogne, Artois and other regions in the south-western Low Countries.30 It appears that there was no significant contingent of fighters hailing from Flemish-speaking Flanders at Hastings. Most probably any participation of Flemish allies in the Conquest was either negotiated individually by the soldiers or conducted under the command of Count Eustace II. The political involvement of Baldwin V with the Norman war effort cannot be demonstrated to have been more than minimal. This stand-offishness cannot have been due to lack of attention: Baldwin’s keen interest in the conflict was guaranteed by his position as William’s father-in-law, as a neighbour to both Normandy and England and as the guardian of the king of France. Given Baldwin’s demonstrable political acumen, he could not under any circumstances have wished for the union of two powerful neighbours under one crown. The most probable explanation is that Baldwin’s ability to act was constrained by his circumstances. He had no alliance with King Harold, whereas Duke William and Earl Tostig were his kin by marriage. Furthermore, William had acquired papal sanction for his expedition to claim the English throne.31 This served to strengthen the legitimacy of his cause, 27 28 29 30 31

‘Balduinus senior . . . Willelmum in Anglia venientem arguto, quo pollebat, consilio et militum additamento vivaciter iuverat.’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 728. E. van Houts, ‘The Norman Conquest through European Eyes’, EHR 110, 2 (1995), 844–5. Guy of Amiens, Carmen, p. 10; William of Poitiers, Gesta, pp. 130, 160. K. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166, vol. 1, Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 32, 38–40. William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, p. 104.

14

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum and probably also discouraged his continental neighbours from taking hostile action against him. The sole way in which Baldwin may have attempted to shape the outcome of the succession struggle was through his brother-in-law Earl Tostig Godwineson, King Harold’s brother. On Tostig’s exile from England in late 1065, Baldwin V welcomed and established him in St Omer, a town by the Straits of Dover.32 When news broke in January that King Edward had died, Tostig jumped at the chance to get back in the game. He mustered a Flemish fleet to harry the English coast, some of whom remained with him to fight at Stamford Bridge.33 Baldwin may have placed his brother-in-law in an excellent position to make a comeback but, if so, he backed the wrong horse: Tostig was repulsed, most of his Flemings returned home and the earl’s alliance with Harald Hardrada ended with the death of both. In the end, Baldwin remained peripheral to the events so crucial for the region’s political history for the rest of the Central Middle Ages. The flow of events was slipping through his fingers. On the eve of the Conquest, Baldwin’s attitude is far more likely to have been one of increasing concern than of any feeling of fatherly benevolence towards its eventual winner. THE AFTERM ATH OF THE CONQUEST Such misgivings were fully justified. Harold’s defeat at Hastings by William set into motion a slow tectonic shift in the political landscape of the region. As England’s closest neighbour, Flanders could not remain unaffected. The dukes of Normandy had been at various times both allies and enemies of the Flemish counts, but the two Frankish principalities had operated roughly at the same level. Moreover, neither the AngloSaxon kings of England nor the Danish dynasty that briefly supplanted them in the early eleventh century had harboured territorial and political ambitions southwards towards the continent. A united Normandy and England, however, completely recast the geopolitical map. Room for Flemish political manoeuvring was much reduced, since two of Flanders’s most powerful neighbours had now been united under one crown.34 The ruling elites of the principalities adjoining Flanders to the south shared these concerns, and as a result the next several decades would see the drawing and redrawing of alliance networks throughout the region. 32 33 34

Life of King Edward, p. 82. ASC (C) 1066; Geoffrey Gaimar, Lestoire des Engles/History of the English, ed. and trans. I. Short (OMT, Oxford, 2009), p. 280; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, pp. 364, 420. G. Dept, Les influences anglaises et franc¸aises dans le comt´e de Flandre au d´ebut du XIIIe si`ecle (Ghent and Paris, 1928), pp. 15–16; Nip, ‘Political Relations’, 151.

15

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 In 1066, however, there was little indication of immediate erosion in the political relations between Flanders and the newly ascendant Normans. Perhaps Baldwin V calculated that there was nothing to be gained from hostility ex post facto towards his son-in-law. A money fief mentioned by William of Malmesbury of 300 marks (£200) – an annual pension disbursed in silver or cash – was awarded by William to Baldwin after the Battle of Hastings, probably in return for future military aid. Forces of fighters under the leadership of Flemish noblemen did indeed operate in England in the years following the Conquest. Insofar as the continuance of the money fief payments can be taken as evidence, the old count’s death on 1 September 1067 and the succession of his son Count Baldwin VI (1067–70) did not substantially alter this amicable arrangement.35 In any case, William was occupied with Anglo-Saxon rebellions in England, while Baldwin VI was too busy consolidating his position in Flanders to become actively involved with turbulent affairs abroad. The last obstruction from the path to smoother relations between the realms was removed by a violent falling-out between William and Count Eustace II of Boulogne in 1067.36 The political axis shifted suddenly on the death of Count Baldwin VI in 1070. Baldwin was succeeded by his young son Count Arnulf III (1070–1) but the succession was contested by Robert ‘the Frisian’, the regent of Holland, who was Baldwin VI’s younger brother. Robert raised support in the north and recruited soldiers in the traditional powerbase of the Flemish counts. Arnulf and his mother Richilde of Hainaut led the opposition in the south. It is notable that Arnulf drew his followers from the region with the closest historical and geographical links with England: among his men were soldiers from Boulogne, Ardres, Guines, Hesdin, St Omer, B´ethune, Chocques and Arras. King William supported Arnulf, to the extent of sending his close confidant Earl William fitz Osbern of Hereford to lead Norman fighters on Arnulf’s behalf. The matter was settled on 20/21 February 1071 at the Battle of Cassel, in which Arnulf and fitz Osbern were ambushed by Robert’s troops and slain. Resistance to Robert subsequently collapsed and, while Hainaut was split off from Flanders in the peace settlement with Arnulf’s younger brother, now 35 36

William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 728. This will be discussed in greater detail below, pp. 196–7. William of Poitiers writes that in 1067 Eustace raided Dover: Gesta Guillelmi, pp. 182–4. Heather Tanner has suggested that Eustace II either wished opportunistically to conquer a foothold on the shore facing his continental possessions, or was frustrated by William’s denial of the lands that the count’s former wife Goda had held in England before the Conquest. Tanner, ‘Expansion’, 272–4. It is also possible that the attack was launched to support an Anglo-Saxon grandson of his. Barlow, Edward, pp. 307–8.

16

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum Count Baldwin II of Hainaut (1071–98), Robert went unchallenged in Flanders proper.37 Count Robert I (1071–93) and William I were never reconciled; perhaps the two lacked the political flexibility, or perhaps it was, as Orderic Vitalis suggests, that William simply never forgave Robert for fitz Osbern’s death.38 New webs of alliance were spun along either side of this divide. On one side was England and Normandy, joined by some of Flanders’s local rivals. William, while mostly occupied in suppressing rebels and enemies in England and on the Continent, supplied aid to Baldwin II of Hainaut in the latter’s intermittent wars against his uncle.39 It is unclear at exactly what point Eustace II of Boulogne became reconciled with William, but Orderic Vitalis concludes his description of Eustace’s 1067 raid with the note that relations had normalised non multo post the initial rupture.40 Given that Eustace supported Arnulf III in 1070–1, Robert the Frisian’s coup or its aftermath would have been the likely time for this to take place. Robert the Frisian, for his part, pursued a more aggressive strategy of alliance-building. Though Eustace of Boulogne remained aligned against him, Robert secured the friendship of their mutual neighbour Count Baldwin I of Guines (before 1065–91).41 His most wished-for alliance was with his nominal liege lord in Paris; the union of England and Normandy was, after all, as troubling to the French king as it was to the Flemish count. In 1070–1 Philip I of France had been among Count Arnulf’s supporters against his uncle but on Robert’s decisive victory Philip made peace with the new count. Robert did homage to Philip – something neither Baldwin V nor Baldwin VI had done – and the alliance was sealed with Philip’s marriage to Robert’s stepdaughter, Bertha of Holland.42 Among others concerned by the Anglo-Norman union were 37

38 40 41

42

ASC (D, E) 1070; Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, pp. 120–2; ‘Flandria Generosa’, pp. 321–2; Gilbert of Mons, La chronique de Gislebert de Mons, ed. L. Vanderkindere (Brussels, 1904), pp. 5–8; OV, vol. 2, pp. 280–4; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 474; C. Verlinden, Robert Ier le Frison: Comte de Flandre (Paris, 1935), pp. 46–72; K. Nicholas, ‘Countesses as Rulers in Flanders’, in Aristocratic Women in Medieval France, ed. T. Evergates (Philadelphia, 1999), pp. 111–37, 115–17; Nip, ‘Political Relations’, 153–5. 39 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, pp. 474–6. OV, vol. 3, p. 284. OV, vol. 2, pp. 204–6. The specifics are unknown, but while Flandria Generosa places Guines on the side of Arnulf and Richilde, shortly after the end of the war Robert became the godfather of Baldwin’s son: ‘Flandria Generosa’, pp. 321–2; William of Ardres, ‘Willelmi Chronica Andrensis’, ed. J. Heller, MGH Scriptores 24 (Hannover, 1879), p. 693; Tanner, ‘Expansion’, 274–5. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 474; Monumenta Gregoriana, ed. P. Jaffe (Berlin, 1865), no. 40, pp. 567–8; F. Lot, Fid`eles ou vassaux? Essai sur la nature jurisdique du lien qui unissait les grandes vassaux a´ la royaut´e depuis le milieu du XIe jusqu’ a` la fin du XIIe si`ecle (Paris, 1904), pp. 12–13; Verlinden, Robert Ier, pp. 70–2.

17

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 the counts of Anjou, Normandy’s traditional rivals, from whose allies William reconquered Maine in 1073.43 A loose continental alliance bloc against Normandy and England thus formed to the south and the east. Rapprochement further north was taking place around the same time. A Danish expedition fleet to England, repulsed by William, harboured in Flemish coastal towns before heading home in 1075.44 Robert’s matchmaking continued with the marriage of his daughter Adela to King Cnut IV of Denmark (1080–6).45 Cnut IV had resurrected the Danish claim to the English throne and Robert exploited the opportunity. In 1085–6 the two plotted to launch another Danish invasion of England and the count reportedly pledged an enormous fleet of 600 ships to be put at Cnut’s disposal. Records of war preparations in England show that King William took the news very seriously; the Domesday survey was but one product of the resulting political climate.46 Cnut’s murder in 1086, however, terminated the invasion plans.47 In the English context these events represented the closing act of the Viking Age and were followed by the withering of Scandinavian dynastic interest in England.48 At the same time the centre of gravity of the Flemish continental alliances permanently shifted southwards, to the other French territorial principalities and the royal court in Paris. ALLIANCES IN THE LATE ELEVENTH CENTURY Hostile relations between Robert and William helped shape the political landscape of north-western Europe. Their opposition to each other, however, was ultimately conducted through allies and the provision of indirect support for each other’s enemies. Robert had readily adopted his father’s policy of providing safe haven to William’s opponents. Edgar Aetheling, claimant to the throne of England through his grandfather Edmund Ironside (son of King Aethelred II, and briefly king of England in 1016), sheltered in Flanders before leaving for Scotland in 1074 to 43 44 45 46

47 48

ASC (D, E) 1073; Douglas, William the Conqueror, pp. 298–9. ASC (E) 1075; Douglas, William the Conqueror, pp. 228–33. ASC (E) 1085; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 474; Douglas, William the Conqueror, pp. 347–8. ASC (E) 1085; Douglas, William the Conqueror, pp. 346–8. For an overview and synopsis of the creation of Domesday Book, see S. Baxter, ‘The Making of Domesday Book and the Languages of Lordship in Conquered England’, in Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c.800–c.1250, ed. E. Tyler (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 271–310. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, pp. 478–80; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 400. A final unsuccessful invasion was launched by King Magnus II ‘Barelegs’ of Norway (1093–1103) in 1098. The then count of Flanders, Robert II, was at the time away on the First Crusade. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 570.

18

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum gather support for his cause.49 In turn at least one regional enemy of Count Robert, Hugh of Cambrai, sought refuge in England.50 Direct military confrontation on a large scale was relatively rare in this period, especially if no claim to territory or sovereignty had been made. Kinship and dynastic links shaped the conflicts. While Robert was at odds with King William, he did not extend that hostility to other members of the Norman royal family – who were, after all, his blood relatives by his sister Queen Matilda. Robert provided asylum to William’s estranged oldest son Robert Curthose after the latter’s failed rebellion in 1078. It is also possible that the Norman prince stayed for a while in Flanders during the wandering years after the second and equally disastrous attempt at revolt in 1083.51 The antagonism between England and Flanders endured only as long as the reigns of their rulers. King William died in 1087 while campaigning in the Vexin. He was succeeded in England by his younger son, William Rufus (1087–1100), and in Normandy by his elder son, Duke Robert Curthose (1087–1106).52 The brothers were certainly more rivals than allies and, with the backing of several Norman magnates, Curthose launched an unsuccessful assault against Rufus in England the very next year.53 It is possible, though the evidence is not conclusive, that Count Robert now chose to ally himself with Rufus.54 In any case, while the count had sided with Curthose during the latter’s unsuccessful rebellions against his father, the severing of England and Normandy must have pleased him, especially as the alliance of Count Eustace III (1087–1125) with Curthose cut Boulogne’s ties with England.55 Count Robert died in October 1093 and was succeeded by his son Robert II (1093–1111). The passing of the old guard, together with the repudiation in 1092 by King Philip of France of his wife Bertha in favour of a new marriage to Bertrada of Montfort (the former wife of Fulk IV of Anjou), opened an opportunity for another realignment of the political 49 50 51 52 53 54

55

ASC (D) 1074. ‘Gesta Episcoporum Cameracensium. Contiuatio. Gesta Lieitberti et Gerardi’, ed. L. Bethmann, MGH Scriptores 7 (Hannover, 1846), p. 499. ASC (D) 1079; OV, vol. 3, p. 102; C. David, Robert Curthose: Duke of Normandy (Cambridge, 1920), pp. 36–9. F. Barlow, William Rufus (London, 1983), pp. 40–52; Douglas, William the Conqueror, pp. 357–8. ASC (E) 1087; Barlow, William Rufus, pp. 74–98. As suggested by Richard Southern in his forthcoming edition of Henry I’s acta, in light of a 1088 grant by Rufus to the abbey of St Peter’s of Ghent, witnessed by Count Robert’s younger son Philip. While the surviving document is a forgery, it may, along with its witness list, be based on a genuine original. Anglo-Norman Royal Acta, ed. R. Sharpe et al. (forthcoming), no. 323. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 546; and John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 2, p. 50, refer to Eustace ‘the Younger’ of Boulogne. Barlow, William Rufus, pp. 70–91.

19

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 triangle of England, Flanders and Paris.56 Normandy and England no longer constituted a threatening unity. Philip had slighted the Flemish comital family and, moreover, now backed Curthose.57 Robert II and William Rufus shared a close kinship through Queen Matilda, but not their fathers’ long history of personal antagonism. Either Robert the father or Robert the son – probably the son, who was already associated with comital governance – met with Rufus in Dover as early as the summer of 1093, a few months before the elder Robert died.58 A year later Rufus went to war against his brother, Duke Robert Curthose, in Normandy. A charter by Robert II dated between 1094 and 1102 refers to military aid he was providing ‘to the king of England against the Normans’, and the money fief granted to Baldwin V was renewed by Rufus to Robert II.59 The fief and accompanying military services were probably arranged at the Dover meeting, further negotiations perhaps taking place with Count Eustace III of Boulogne during the first four days after the Christmas of 1094, which Rufus spent in Wissant.60 The security of the Channel coast was an important consideration for Rufus, as was the manpower that could be drawn from Flanders. Flemish mercenaries are encountered in Rufus’s army during his 1098 campaign to Maine against Count Fulk IV of Anjou (1068–1109).61 They could not have been personally sent by Robert II, who at the time was on the First Crusade to the Holy Land together with Robert Curthose and Eustace III of Boulogne. But this does not rule out the possibility of a pre-existing arrangement or that of the involvement of Robert’s most capable wife and regent, Clemence of Burgundy.62 Flemish rulers responded rapidly to developments in the Anglo-Norman world. For the century or so that followed the Norman Conquest they were always most comfortable when the Anglo-Norman agglomeration was rent apart. ACCESSION AND ASCENDANCY OF HENRY I The first decades of the twelfth century were to present the counts of Flanders with a challenge. It came from an opponent whose entry into 56 57 58 59 60

61

William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 474. Hallam and Everard, Capetian France, p. 100. Eadmer, Historia Novorum in Anglia et Opuscula Duo De Vita Sancti Anselmi et Quibusdam Miraculis Ejus, ed. M. Rule (RS 81, London, 1884), p. 39; Barlow, William Rufus, p. 352. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, pp. 474, 728. The charter reads: ‘me contra Normaninos Anglico regi ferentem auxilium’, Actes, 1071–1128, p. 59. ´ ASC (E), 1094; L. Vercauteren-Desmet, ‘Etude sur les rapports politiques de l’Angleterre et de ´ la Flandre sous le r`egne du comte Robert II (1093–1111)’, Etudes d’histoire d´edi´ees a` la m´emoire de Henri Pirenne, ed. E. Ciaceri (Brussels, 1937), pp. 413–18. 62 Nicholas, ‘Countesses’, pp. 117–20. OV, vol. 5, p. 240.

20

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum the political arena was sudden. On 2 August 1100, while hunting in the New Forest in Hampshire, King William Rufus of England was shot with an arrow, probably by accident, and killed.63 Duke Robert Curthose was still on his way back from the Holy Land, but the family’s youngest brother, Henry, had been present with Rufus at the hunt. Now he moved swiftly. Henry did not tarry to attend his brother’s funeral, but hurried to Winchester to seize the royal treasury and, having secured a following of Norman barons, dashed to Westminster to be crowned on 5 August as King Henry I (1100–35).64 Rufus’s sudden death, Henry’s own rushed coronation and Duke Robert’s return and repossession of Normandy a month or so later furnished the regime with a shaky start.65 Many Anglo-Norman barons were inclined to support the elder brother for the kingship of England; the possibility of a civil war loomed. Henry I, a more devious politician than either of his older brothers, now engaged in a political campaign aimed at consolidating his influence both domestically and abroad.66 Count Robert II had returned to Flanders from the First Crusade around the same time as Robert Curthose.67 A few months later, on 10 March 1101, Henry I and Robert II met at Dover to witness the first surviving Anglo-Flemish treaty, in which the king promised the count an annual income of £500 in exchange for the military service of 1,000 mounted knights in England, or 500 knights in Normandy or Maine. Duke Robert is not named but the provisions of the treaty anticipate the invasion of England by an external enemy and the threat of a baronial rebellion, as well as dealing with the possibility of an English expedition to the Continent.68 Curthose did indeed invade England but, when the armies of the two brothers confronted each other in late July, it was the elder sibling who blinked first. In the so-called Treaty of Alton (actually concluded at Winchester on 2 August 1101) Curthose agreed to recognise his younger brother’s claim to the throne against an annual retainer of 3,000 marks (£2,000) and most of Henry’s continental holdings.69 The treaty represented a decisive shift of political momentum in Henry’s favour, and 63 64 65 66 68

69

ASC (E) 1100; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, pp. 572–6; John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, p. 92; Barlow, William Rufus, pp. 420–32. ASC (E) 1100; C. Hollister, Henry I (New Haven and London, 2001), pp. 103–7. ASC (E) 1100; OV, vol. 5, p. 300; John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, p. 96. 67 ASC (E) 1100. David, Robert Curthose, pp. 121–9; Hollister, Henry I, pp. 115–35. Diplomatic Documents Preserved in the Public Records Office, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1964), no. 1, pp. 1–4. This treaty, and the other Anglo-Flemish diplomatic treaties in the twelfth century, will be discussed at length in the next chapter. ASC (E) 1101; David, Robert Curthose, pp. 130–7; Hollister, Henry I, pp. 137–42. Also see N. Strevett, ‘The Anglo-Norman Civil War of 1101 Reconsidered’, ANS 26 (2003), 159–75.

21

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 he took the opportunity to lure some of his brother’s supporters to his own side. One of these was Count Eustace III of Boulogne, who was reinstated in his father’s lands in England.70 Count Robert II’s involvement in these events is uncertain. There is no evidence that he was present in England. But, even if he did not come in person, Robert may have sent soldiers to fight for Henry I since, in anticipation of a war, Henry would have wanted to bring over mercenaries from the Continent. We do know that in the following year robbers from Auvergne, France and Flanders broke into the monastery of Peterborough and stole a considerable amount of gold and silver.71 This disparate group of bandits was most likely the remnants of mercenary forces (whether Henry’s or Curthose’s) disbanded after the events of the previous year. Some degree of Flemish military participation can thus be inferred. Having successfully defended his claim in England, Henry I had gained the upper hand in his contest with his brother. The Dover treaty succeeded in securing Count Robert’s aid, or at least his neutrality, during Henry’s successful campaign against Normandy in 1105–6. After Henry took Caen in April 1105, Curthose organised a meeting in Rouen with King Philip and Robert, imploring them for an alliance – but in vain.72 Henry’s campaign culminated in the Battle of Tinchebray on 28 September 1106, after which Robert Curthose was condemned to lifelong imprisonment in England and his duchy annexed to Henry’s realm.73 Henry’s triumph, with its reunification of Normandy and England, would not necessarily have pleased Count Robert, despite his neutrality during the conflict. Relations between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman realm began to go sour soon afterwards. A source of particular trouble was the web of continental alliances that Henry, a consummate diplomat and politician, began to weave. The Anglo-Flemish treaty of 1101 and the alliance with Eustace III after Alton represented only the opening moves in the king’s strategic game. In 1102 Henry drew Eustace deeper into his circle by arranging the count’s marriage to his sister-in-law, Mary of Scotland.74 Boulogne, traditional rival to Flanders, was to remain firmly in the Anglo-Norman camp for the next half-century. Henry’s alliance-building picked up speed after Tinchebray. He arranged the 70 71 72 73 74

ASC (E) 1101; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, pp. 145–6. ASC (E) 1102. This event is confirmed by Hugh Candidus, The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus: A Monk of Peterborough, ed. W. Mellows (Oxford, 1949), p. 87. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 706. OV, vol. 6, pp. 86–92; David, Robert Curthose, chapters 6–7; Hollister, Henry I, pp. 184–201. John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, p. 102.

22

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum marriage of Count Manasses II of Guines (c.1090–1137) to Emma of Tancarville some time between 1106 and 1110,75 and he betrothed his young daughter Matilda to King Henry V of Germany (crowned king in 1099, emperor 1111–25) in 1109.76 Through this German connection, Henry also forged links with Duke Godfrey VI of Lower Lorraine, also landgrave of Brabant and count of Louvain (1095–1135), and Count Baldwin III of Hainaut. Robert’s attempt to bolster his own alliance network by marrying his son Baldwin to Agnes, daughter of Count Alan IV Fergant of Brittany (1082–1112), was blocked by King Henry’s successful appeal to the pope to annul the marriage on the grounds of consanguinity.77 Such direct measures indicate that the Anglo-Flemish relationship had cooled to freezing point. There were black clouds on the horizon as early as 1103; Eadmer writes that in that year Henry travelled to Dover expecting to meet Robert (quite possibly to renew the 1101 treaty), but that the count failed to show up.78 By the end of the first decade of the twelfth century Count Robert II found himself in an uncomfortable position, hemmed in by neighbours and rivals closely allied with the king of England. His reaction was to strengthen his relationship with the newly aggressive French monarchy, now in the hands of Philip I’s son King Louis VI (1108–37). In 1109 Robert, together with several French peers, sided with Louis when the French king confronted Henry I in the Vexin.79 The gathering of French magnates that Louis rallied to himself seems to have given Henry a check. During the two years of truce that followed he made an effort to win Robert back. A slightly modified version of the Anglo-Flemish treaty was concluded at Dover on 17 May 1110.80 But the Anglo-FrancoFlemish political triangle remained in a state of flux. The following year Robert joined Louis in an unsuccessful attack against Henry’s ally Count Theobald IV of Blois (1102–52, also Count Theobald II of Champagne 1125–52) and died in the rout that followed.81 There is little to suggest

75

76 77 78 79 80

Lambert of Ardres, ‘Lamberti Ardensis Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, ed. J. Heller, MGH Scriptores 24 (Hannover, 1879), p. 579; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, p. 149. Through her mother, Emma was the granddaughter of William Malet, lord of the great honour of Eye that was located principally in East Anglia. C. Hart, ‘William Malet and His Family’, ANS 10 (1996), 123–66. ASC (E) 1109; M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English (Oxford, 1991), pp. 15–17. ‘Flandria Generosa’, p. 323; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, p. 149. Eadmer, Historia Novorum, p. 146. Suger, Vie de Louis le Gros, ed. H. Waquet (Paris, 1964), pp. 108–10. 81 OV, vol. 6, pp. 160–2. Diplomatic Documents, no. 2, pp. 5–8.

23

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 that either the Anglo-Flemish treaty, or money fief, were maintained after Robert’s death and the succession of his son Count Baldwin VII (1111–19), whose anti-English sentiments were lent a more personal edge by Henry’s involvement in his failed betrothal to Agnes. The situation on the Continent in the early 1110s remained tense. Forces in opposition to King Henry coalesced around the person of William Clito (b. 1102, d. 1128), the son of Robert Curthose, whose claim to Normandy made him a very convenient figurehead. After his victory at Tinchebray and the imprisonment of Curthose, Henry had let the child go free, but as things heated up on the Continent he decided to play it safe, and in 1111 attempted to seize his nephew. Clito escaped with the aid of his guardian, Helias of Saint-Sa¨ens, and entered a life of exile in the French courts. In 1113 Clito was welcomed to Flanders, and in 1116–17 he was knighted by Count Baldwin. Soon afterwards the count, in concert with the young man’s other supporters, set the wheels of conspiracy in motion.82 The continental coalition backing Clito closely resembled the one that had formed against William the Conqueror half a century earlier. Its three leaders were Count Baldwin VII of Flanders, King Louis VI of France and Count Fulk V of Anjou (1106–29) – in other words, the king of France in alliance with the two most powerful neighbours and traditional enemies of the dukes of Normandy. Ultimately their effort was unsuccessful. The alliance attacked Henry’s lands in Normandy repeatedly between 1117 and 1119 but failed to make lasting gains. The death of Baldwin in June 1119, from an illness brought about by wounds suffered a year earlier during a pre-battle joust in Normandy, led to its disintegration.83 Baldwin VII had no legitimate children and on his deathbed he bequeathed the county to his maternal cousin Charles of Denmark (also known as Charles the Good, 1119–27).84 While he had been raised at the Flemish court, Charles, the son of the murdered King Cnut IV of Denmark, appears to have remained something of an outsider to the core of the comital family. His succession was opposed by the powerful dowager countess Clemence, Baldwin’s mother, who staged a revolt in favour 82

83

84

Herman of Tournai, ‘Liber de Restauratione Ecclesie Sancti Martini Torniacensis’, ed. G. Waitz, MGH Scriptores 14 (Hannover, 1883), p. 284; OV, vol. 6, pp. 162–6; S. Hicks, ‘The Impact of William Clito upon the Continental Policies of Henry I of England’, Viator 10 (1979), 3–5. ASC (E) 1117–19; Herman of Tournai, ‘Liber’, pp. 284–5; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, pp. 460–6; John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, pp. 142–4; OV, vol. 6, p. 190; Hicks, ‘William Clito’, 5–6; Hollister, Henry I, pp. 244–51. Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, pp. 5–7; Herman of Tournai, ‘Liber’, pp. 284–5; OV, vol. 6, p. 190.

24

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum of Charles’s cousin William of Ypres.85 The rebellion was unsuccessful, but the domestic troubles led Charles to reconsider his participation in the alliance against Henry. Charles opted for a peaceful exit from the war effort and concluded a treaty with Henry soon after his accession.86 King Louis VI and Fulk of Anjou continued, however, to wage campaigns in Clito’s name in the early 1120s. While Henry won the first round against his nephew’s supporters, Clito’s claim and political position had been strengthened by the death of William Aetheling, Henry’s sole son and heir, in the White Ship disaster of 25 November 1120.87 Count Charles maintained his neutrality throughout the period, despite the alliances with which Henry I continued to encircle Flanders. Henry’s ties to Boulogne were strengthened in 1125 when his nephew Stephen of Blois married Maud, the heiress of Count Eustace III, and then succeeded to the county.88 Through Boulogne Henry also acquired influence in the county of St Pol, whose count Hugh III (1112/15– 1144/45) enjoyed good relations with Stephen of Blois and supported Henry’s candidates in the Flemish civil war of 1127–8.89 In 1121 Henry reinvigorated his relations with the eastern neighbours of Flanders by marrying Adeliza (c.1103–51), daughter of Duke Godfrey VI of Lower Lorraine.90 In what was the only clear sign of his discontent, Charles in 1122 denied Empress Matilda the right of passage through Flanders. His refusal probably represents both a protest against Henry’s German alliance and a favour to Louis VI of France.91 Charles also joined the coalition army that Louis raised against Emperor Henry V of Germany.92 But the fief in England provided by the count’s treaty with Henry must have helped to mollify him. By 1124 Charles stood high enough in Henry’s favour to attend a tribunal in Rouen and plead clemency on behalf of 85

86

87 88

89 90

91 92

Walter of Therouanne, ‘Vita Karoli Comitis Flandriae’, ed. R. K¨opke, MGH Scriptores 22 (Hannover, 1856), pp. 541–2; T. de Hemptinne, ‘Clementia van Bourgondie, gravin van Vlaanderen’, Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek 9, ed. E. Dhanes (Brussels, 1981), pp. 149–50; Nicholas, ‘Countesses’, p. 119. ASC (E), 1120; Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 169; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 730; ‘Chronicon Monasterii de Hyda iuxta Wintoniam’, Liber Monesterii de Hyda, ed. E. Edwards (RS 45, London, 1866), p. 320. OV, vol. 6, pp. 294–306; Hicks, ‘William Clito’, 8–11; Hollister, Henry I, pp. 276–9, 290–7. OV, vol. 6, p. 42; William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. E. King, trans. R. Potter (OMT, Oxford, 1998), p. 98–100; E. King, ‘Stephen of Blois, Count of Mortain and Boulogne’, EHR 115 (2000), 279–83; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, pp. 176–81. Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal, pp. 78–80. Eadmer, Historia Novorum, p. 290; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, pp. 466–8; John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, p. 148; Hollister, Henry I, pp. 280–1; L. Wertheimer, ‘Adeliza of Louvain and Anglo-Norman queenship’, HSJ 7 (1995), 101–15. ‘Annales Monastici de Waverleia’, ed. H. Luard, Annales Monastici, vol. 2 (RS 36, London, 1865), p. 218; Chibnall, Empress Matilda, pp. 38–9. Suger, Louis Le Gros, p. 224.

25

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Norman baronial rebels who had supported William Clito, though he was not influential enough to do so successfully.93

WILLIAM CLITO AND THE FLEM ISH CIVIL WAR OF 1127–1128 Matters internal to Flanders continued to challenge Charles. One of these was his conflict with the Erembalds, a powerful family who had risen to the height of political prominence in the county over the previous generation. Using the unfree status of the family’s founder as a legal pretext (the original Erembald was said to have been a bondsman who had entered the Flemish nobility through a high-profile marriage), the count threatened to strip the clan of its privileges and possessions. The beleaguered Erembalds responded by assassinating Charles on 2 March 1127. Their coup failed and the family was eradicated by their vindictive peers but the events turned Flanders into another battlefield in the Anglo-Norman drama.94 Like Baldwin VII, Charles produced no direct heir but, unlike his predecessor, he had had no long twilight in which to select and endorse a successor. The appearance of several claimants opened an opportunity for the encircling powers to meddle in Flemish affairs. The most successful contender was William Clito, whose claim lay through his grandmother Matilda, William the Conqueror’s wife and Count Baldwin V’s daughter. Louis VI’s backing was crucial to Clito and through the French king’s direct intervention he secured sufficient support among the Flemish nobility to be declared count.95 The prospect of Clito reigning as count of Flanders was intolerable to Henry I. Clito would certainly continue to pursue his inheritance in Normandy, now not as the disinherited prot´eg´e of the king of France but as a powerful prince in his own right. Or so it seemed: the first cracks in Clito’s power base manifested themselves deep within Flanders. The Flemish towns were at the centre of his troubles. This was a period in which economic growth increasingly empowered the political ambitions of the mercantile and patrician 93 94

95

OV, vol. 6, pp. 352–4. Galbert of Bruges, De Multro. Galbert was an eye-witness to several of the key events and wrote his chronicle contemporaneously. His is by far the most comprehensive account of these events, but see also ‘Flandria Generosa’, p. 324; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, pp. 476–82; Herman of Tournai, ‘Liber’, pp. 285–9; OV, vol. 6, pp. 370–9; Walter of Therouanne, ‘Vita Karoli’, pp. 537–61. For summation and commentary, also see Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 62–70; but above all Galbert of Bruges, Murder of Charles the Good, pp. 3–75. Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, pp. 101–2.

26

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum classes of the urban centres. Urban development was especially precocious and intense in Flanders, which over the course of the twelfth century would emerge as the most urbanised and industrialised region in suralpine Europe.96 Clito’s career as the count of Flanders famously illustrates the difficulties of mediating between the demands posed by the old established powers and the new ones that were arising during this period of rapid social and economic development. The townsfolk’s interests now took centre stage. Though Clito had granted concessions and made promises to lift taxes on English commerce should he ever make peace with his uncle, few burghers could long tolerate the loss in trade that the political tension exacted.97 Clito was unable to defuse the mounting tensions. An uprising took place in Lille on 1 August 1127 after Clito violated market peace by attempting to seize one of his serfs on the market grounds, a symbolically and politically important infringement of the rights and freedoms of the urban population. In early 1128 the floodgates burst open and several large Flemish cities rose in revolt.98 Ironically, conflict was made yet more inevitable by the very commitments that Clito had made to the townspeople, as the promised abolition of local tolls and taxes threatened to infringe the traditional financial privileges of the barons.99 The intervention of King Louis had enabled Clito to become count, but this too was turned against the latter. It had been exceptional in the context of Flemish political history: it was the first time that a French king had asserted his sovereignty over Flanders in such a direct manner since the Carolingian era, and the turn of events sat uneasily with the independently minded Flemish factions. In April 1128 the burghers of Bruges, allied with a faction of the Flemish baronage and Clito’s rival Thierry of Alsace, rejected the new count, accused Louis of having committed perjury in accepting a cash relief from Clito despite his oath not to do so, and asserted that only the peers and the citizens of the land (terrae compares et cives) had the right to elect a new count.100 The complexities of Flemish domestic political and economic interests presented a challenge that Clito had failed to surmount, and this opened an opportunity for Henry I to act against his nephew. While the revolt of the towns may have provided the spark for the war, the rebels were quickly joined by several of Clito’s old rivals for the comital title. Through his nephew Count Stephen of Boulogne, 96 97 98

See discussion in Chapter 5, pp. 146–7. See Clito’s charter of liberties to the town of St Omer in 1127: Actes, 1071–1128, no. 127, p. 296, §7; and the merchants’ lament for their lost business: Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 143. 99 Ibid., p. 138. 100 Ibid., pp. 150–2. Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, pp. 141–5.

27

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Henry channelled funds and aid to Clito’s opponents, including his old ally Count Baldwin IV of Hainaut (1120–71). Henry himself did not bring a military force to bear, as Louis VI had earlier in the year, but by threatening the ˆIle-de-France from Normandy he was able to keep Louis occupied. Clito was far from beaten, however, and over the course of late 1127 and 1128 he led a successful counter-attack, defeating his rivals one by one. Henry’s schemes seemed to lie in ruins, but for a trick of fate: Clito suffered a wound at the siege of Aalst on 27 July 1128 and died of the resulting infection soon after.101 The death of Clito cleared the field and left Thierry of Alsace, the last of the count’s rivals to have continued fighting, as the default winner of the succession dispute. Thierry, having enjoyed Henry’s support against Clito, was quick to normalise relations with England. Galbert of Bruges concludes his account of the events with the words: Therefore Thierry, marquis of Flanders, reigned from the time of William’s death and . . . he finally went to the kings of France and England to receive from them fiefs and royal gifts. For our Count Thierry was acceptable to the kings of France and England, and they freely granted him investiture with the fiefs and benefices which the most holy and pious Count Charles had held from them.102

The emphasis Galbert places on the joint approval of the kings of both England and France is telling and is mirrored by opinions in England.103 The outcome of the Flemish civil war had resulted in Henry drawing Flanders deeper into his sphere of influence. Clito’s death marked the end of an era: from the decade-long period of turmoil Henry I had emerged as the final victor. He had also consolidated his position outside the southern Low Countries. In May 1127, when Clito had just become the count of Flanders, Henry had arranged the betrothal of his now-widowed daughter Matilda (Emperor Henry V having died in 1125) to Geoffrey V ‘the Fair’ (Count of Anjou, 1129– 51, son of Fulk V). They were married a year later. This alliance was doubly significant, for Henry, to the dismay of some of his nobles, had in 101

102

103

Ibid., pp. 165–6; Herman of Tournai, ‘Liber’, pp. 289; Walter of Therouanne, ‘Vita Karoli’, p. 557; Hicks, ‘William Clito’, 18–21; Hollister, Henry I, pp. 320–6; King, ‘Stephen of Blois’, 283–5; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, pp. 185–7. ‘Igitur Theodericus Flandriarum marchio ab illo mortis Willelmi tempore regnavit, et . . . tandem ad reges Franciae et Angliae ascendit suscepturus ab ipsis feoda et donaria regalia, complacuitque ergo sibi utriusque regni scilicet rex Franciae et rex Angliae super comite nostro Theoderico, et investituras feodorum et beneficiorum, quae ab ipsis sanctissimus et piissimus Karolus obtinuerat, gratanter dederunt.’ Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 169; Galbert of Bruges, Murder of Charles the Good, p. 312. Also ‘Flandria Generosa’, p. 324. Simeon of Durham, Historia Regum: Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, vol. 2, ed. T. Arnold (RS 75, London, 1885), pp. 282–3.

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Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum December 1126 declared Matilda, his sole surviving legitimate child, his heir.104 With Thierry as the count of Flanders, both powerful princedoms were distanced from the French monarchy. COUNT THIERRY, KING STEPHEN AND EM PRESS M ATILDA Over the next generation reasonably friendly relations were maintained between England and Flanders, a vast improvement over the often hostile and at best coolly neutral exchanges of the previous decades. Charter material is sparse, but the 1130 Pipe Roll, the only one surviving from Henry I’s reign, mentions a sum of thirty-five marks owed to Thierry in Norfolk, demonstrating that the count had financial dealings in England.105 In 1134 Henry brokered the marriage between Thierry and Sybil of Anjou, the sister of Count Geoffrey.106 Thierry’s marriage was clearly intended to secure their alliance more firmly, cement the kinship network and decisively usurp France’s position in the powerful alliance triangle with Anjou and Flanders. Yet Thierry’s English ties did not create enduring hostility with King Louis VI, or with his son and successor Louis VII ‘the Pious’ (1137–80). While Thierry was not Louis VI’s preferred candidate, the French king nevertheless accepted both the fait accompli and Thierry’s homage for Flanders after the dust had settled.107 The forty years of Thierry’s reign were largely peaceful and witnessed considerable advances in comital administration, which were continued by his successor Count Philip. The only major military challenge that arose was the invasion of Baldwin IV of Hainaut in 1148 while Thierry was abroad on crusade but the matter was successfully dealt with.108 While Flanders enjoyed peace, events took a dramatically different turn in the Anglo-Norman regnum. In the years following the Flemish civil war Henry I was at the peak of his power and influence, but much of what he had so painstakingly wrought came undone on his death on 1 December 1135. The absence of an heir who enjoyed universal support presented the chief political difficulty. Matilda was Henry’s successor of choice but she remained unpopular among many of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, not least because of her marriage into the comital house of Anjou, their old 104 105 107 108

ASC (E) 1127; John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, pp. 166; OV, vol. 6, p. 444; Chibnall, Empress Matilda, pp. 50–7; Hollister, Henry I, pp. 313–18, 322–5; Gillingham, Angevin Empire, pp. 8–12. 106 OV, vol. 6, p. 378. PR 31 Henry I (1129–30), p. 93. Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 169. De Hemptinne, ‘Vlaanderen en Henegouwen’, pp. 380–5; de Hemptinne, ‘Diederik’, pp. 224– 42; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 70–1, 119–23.

29

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 regional rival.109 It did not help that the old king, unwilling to relinquish a shred of power, had failed to provide his daughter and son-in-law with an Anglo-Norman power base of estates, castles and other properties that would have secured their succession. There was undoubtedly tension in the air: Henry and Count Geoffrey had quarrelled bitterly some months before the king’s death, an event which greatly inflamed the relations between factions in Henry’s court.110 The order that Henry had forged was by no means stable. The aristocracy in Henry’s realm was not only split between Angevin and Anglo-Norman factions but included many contending groups delineated by kin relations, political alliances and personal enmities. There were long-standing rivalries among the Norman families and some of these were carried across the Channel to England. Bretons constituted an important regional power in the southwest and in Lincolnshire, while Count Stephen’s position as the lord of Boulogne connected his circle to the southern Low Countries.111 When Henry had breathed his last, it was not Matilda but the old king’s nephew, Count Stephen of Boulogne, who succeeded to the kingdom. Luck and geography played a large part in the unfolding of events: as the news of Henry’s death in Normandy spread, Matilda was in Anjou while Stephen sat in Boulogne, within sight of England. Stephen wasted no time in dashing across the Channel to present his case, and on 22 December he was crowned king.112 Matilda did not abandon her claim, however, and the uncertainty that opened Stephen’s reign evolved into a long and drawn-out civil war between the king and supporters of the empress. Intermittent warfare persisted for the better part of the next two decades. By 1144 Count Geoffrey had conquered all of Normandy, and Matilda’s supporters controlled significant portions of western England, but Stephen remained king and neither side was able to attain a decisive victory.113 Numerous Flemish soldiers served under the warring magnates, such as Stephen’s famous general William of Ypres, the former comital 109 110 111 112

113

Chibnall, Empress Matilda, pp. 57–63; K. Leyser, ‘The Anglo-Norman Succession 1120–25’, ANS 13 (1991), 225–41; D. Matthew, King Stephen (Hambledon and London, 2002), pp. 53–7. OV, vol. 6, p. 444; Gillingham, Angevin Empire, p. 12. K. Keats-Rohan, ‘The Bretons and Normans of England 1066–1154: the Family, the Fief and the Feudal Monarchy’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 36 (1992), 59–78. Gesta Stephani, ed. K. Potter and R. Davis (Oxford, 1976), pp. 2–6; William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, pp. 26–8; D. Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen (Harlow, 2000), pp. 30–5; E. King, King Stephen (New Haven and London, 2010), pp. 42–8; Matthew, King Stephen, pp. 59–67. The best and most modern analyses of Stephen’s career are Crouch, Reign of King Stephen; and King, King Stephen. Though older, see also R. H. C. Davis, King Stephen 1135−1154, 3rd edn (London, 1990); and, from the perspective of Matilda’s family, Gillingham, Angevin Empire, pp. 12–21.

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Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum contender.114 No sources indicate, however, that Count Thierry himself was involved in sending Flemish mercenaries to England. It is possible that the evidence simply does not survive. Yet the complete absence of any references to the count in sources, either Anglo-Norman or Flemish, that discuss these soldiers suggests that Thierry considered it wise to keep his distance from the conflict. His personal connections perhaps impeded an active role. On the one hand, he was kin to the Angevin faction through his formidable wife Sybil, Empress Matilda’s sister-in-law.115 On the other, he had a practical interest in maintaining a friendship with the beleaguered monarch. Stephen’s position in south-eastern England was not seriously challenged, and he also remained Thierry’s continental neighbour in Boulogne and Lens. According to Orderic Vitalis, just before leaving for the crusade of 1138 Thierry gave one of his daughters to a son of Stephen.116 The event must have been a betrothal, rather than a marriage, since neither of the children involved can have been more than ten years old. Such matches were often voided as the political situation changed; in this case the outbreak of the Anglo-Norman civil war a year later probably provided the excuse. Though this potential alliance fell through, it seems that Thierry’s relationship with Stephen was not adversarial. He, for instance, co-operated in the grant of Stephen’s wife Queen Maud to the abbey of St Nicholas of Arrouaise in Calais.117 As the grant was made in 1141, a year that Stephen spent in temporary captivity, it may even constitute a tacit endorsement of the king’s family. The sole instance in which we see Thierry clearly taking sides is during Count Geoffrey of Anjou’s conquest of Normandy in 1144, when he entered the fray on the side of the French. But by the time Thierry appeared on the battlefield Geoffrey’s victory was virtually inevitable, and the Flemish count accompanied his sovereign Louis VII, rather than fighting under his own command.118 Thierry’s position appears to be one of well-judged neutrality. To have a preoccupied and non-hostile neighbour to the west was all to the good. The count’s ambitions lay elsewhere. Thierry directed his political efforts towards his southern and eastern neighbours, and was highly involved with crusading: he was away on a crusade in 1138–9, and

114 115 117 118

The Flemings’ overall participation was noted by William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, p. 32. For more, see below, pp. 221–31. 116 OV, vol. 6, p. 514. Nicholas, ‘Countesses’, pp. 121–23. Oorkonden, 1128–1191, vol. 1, no. 57, pp. 98–9. Robert of Torigni, The Chronicle of Robert of Torigni: Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, vol. 4, ed. R. Howlett (RS 82, London, 1889), pp. 148–9; Crouch, Reign of King Stephen, p. 196–7, King, King Stephen, p. 200.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 again in 1147–9.119 From the perspective of comital policy-making, the extended, intermittent Anglo-Norman civil strife was fortunate, since it relieved comital initiatives of pressure and allowed energies to be safely diverted elsewhere. THE ACCESSION OF KING HENRY II The Anglo-Norman civil war ground to a slow halt in late 1153, and the twenty-odd years that followed witnessed closer co-operation between the king of England and the count of Flanders than at any time previously. Various circumstances appear to have brought this situation about: the close kinship tie through Countess Sybil, the successful deployment of English money fiefs in Flanders, a changing of the guard that left the Flemish comital dynasty open to fresh overtures, and the unusually intense climate of international politics brought about by the exile of Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury (1162–70). But probably the most important factor was that Flemish and Angevin territorial ambitions were mutually compatible and, moreover, could be achieved at the expense of a common rival – the king of France. On 6 November 1153 King Stephen, having wearied both himself and his supporters in the drawn-out conflict, concluded a peace agreement with Henry of Anjou (soon to be Henry II of England, 1154–89), Matilda’s son and, since the death of his father Geoffrey in 1151, the leader of the Angevin camp.120 Thierry had been weighing the odds – he had supported Louis VII’s failed expedition to Normandy earlier in the year121 – but now his reluctance ended: he met with King Stephen and Count Henry at Dover in February 1154, and again with Stephen at Dover in October. Stephen died not long after, and Thierry was again present at Henry’s coronation in December.122 Sybil, Henry’s paternal aunt, was probably the architect of political bridge-building, and in 1156 she and Thierry met the king in Rouen.123 The English Pipe Rolls record assignment of several hundred pounds to the count from 119 120 121 122

123

OV, vol. 6, p. 514; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, pp. 152, 193. RRAN, vol. 3, 1135–1154, no. 272, pp. 97–9; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 177; Crouch, Reign of King Stephen, pp. 270–8; W. Warren, Henry II (London, 1977), pp. 42–53. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, pp. 174–5. Gervase of Canterbury, ‘Gesta Regum’, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, vol. 2, ed. W. Stubbs (RS 73, London, 1880), pp. 158–9; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 774; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 182. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 186; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, The Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, ed. W. Stubbs (RS 68, London, 1876), vol. 1, p. 301. On Sybil’s role in contemporary Anglo-Flemish treaties, see pp. 69–71.

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Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum c.1155 onwards.124 It is very probable that these records reflect the reestablishment of the Anglo-Flemish money fief, backed by a military treaty similar to those of 1101 and 1110. Diplomatically, these agreements formalised relations between Henry II and Thierry. The count of Flanders was an important backer of the young king in his foreign relations, and proved his support in dealings with the French monarchy by witnessing a treaty between Henry II and Louis VII in May 1160.125 Diplomatic contacts also provided useful channels for the recruitment of soldiers. Henry II was a king of England, but of French, Angevin extraction. Throughout his reign his favoured fields of operation were not insular but predominantly continental.126 Flemish mercenaries served in the king’s armies during his campaign in Toulouse in 1159, and they may already have been present in Henry’s campaign of 1158 in Brittany.127 Beyond foreign expeditions, which were unlikely to have been among his immediate concerns on accession, Henry II must have looked for Thierry’s assistance in dealing with the Flemings already in England. Soon after his coronation Henry expelled many Flemish mercenaries who had come to England during his predecessor’s reign.128 The king’s friendship with the regime on the Continent placed him in a firmer position to take this measure. A pressing aim for Henry must have been to wrest control of Flemish mercenary recruitment from the lower rungs of the AngloNorman aristocracy back into the hands of the ruler, consolidating royal power and diminishing the threat of a potentially dangerous accumulation of military might among his vassals. A brief crisis erupted in 1160 on the marriage of Thierry’s second son Matthew (count of Boulogne, 1160–73) to Mary, King Stephen’s daughter. Mary was, after the passing of her brothers Eustace (d. 1153) and William (d. 1159), the heiress to Boulogne and Lens. Controversially, 124

125 126

127

128

The Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. H. Hall (RS 99, London, 1896), vol. 2, p. 656; PR 2 Henry II (1155–6), pp. 24, 36, 38; PR 3 Henry II (1156–7), pp. 82–3, 89; PR 4 Henry II (1157–8), pp. 125, 136, 149, 152; PR 5 Henry II (1158–9), pp. 34, 51, 64. RAH II, vol. 1, no. 100b, pp. 251–3. For a synopsis of Henry’s continental activities, see Gillingham, Angevin Empire, in particular chapters 3 and 4. For an overview of the powerful links between England and the continent during the Angevin period, see also D. Matthew, Britain and the Continent 1000–1300: The Impact of the Norman Conquest (London, 2005), pp. 88–128. PR 9 Henry II (1162–3), p. 9; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, pp. 196–8, 201–5; E. Amt, The Accession of Henry II in England: Royal Government Restored 1149–1159 (Woodbridge, 1993), pp. 184–5. ‘Flandria Generosa’, p. 325; Gervase of Canterbury, The Chronicle of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, of Gervase, the Monk of Canterbury. The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, vol. 1, ed. W. Stubbs (RS 73, London, 1879), pp. 105, 161; Gervase of Canterbury, ‘Gesta Regum’, pp. 73, 77; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, p. 297; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 183; William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, ed. R. Howlett (RS 82, London, 1885), p. 101; Amt, Accession, pp. 84–93.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Henry took Mary from the nunnery of Romsey, where she was the abbess. The king’s motivation in arranging the marriage may have been to obligate young Matthew to him and thus maintain Boulogne as a buffer zone between England and Flanders but he overplayed his hand. It appears that Thierry had not been consulted; at any rate he was deeply displeased. He may have been planning to profit from the absence of an heir himself, perhaps by laying a personal claim to the county, and immediately launched an invasion of Boulogne. Father and son were reconciled in March 1161 by the bishop of Cambrai, however, and though Matthew had to forfeit the county of Lens to Thierry he thenceforth remained a loyal member of the family.129 After the fiscal year 1159–60 the size of the English fief paid to Thierry was greatly reduced, however, so we can assume that the affair did lead to a cooling of relations with Henry.130 It would not be long, however, before circumstances compelled reconciliation. During the early 1160s the relations between Henry II and Louis VII, having already suffered as a result of the Toulouse campaign and Henry’s pursuit of other territorial interests on the Continent, approached breaking point.131 A build-up of alliances ensued on both sides and, like his grandfather sixty years earlier, Henry reached out to attach Flanders to his side. Thierry’s regional position had been strengthened by the favourable outcome of the Boulogne affair. At the same time his interests in the county of Vermandois, the southern neighbour of Flanders, distanced him from the French crown. In 1159 Thierry had married his oldest son Philip ‘of Alsace’ (count of Flanders 1168–91) to the county’s future heiress, Elizabeth of Vermandois.132 The Alsatians’ goal was to add Vermandois to their domains and they pursued an active policy of marital alliances to that end. Between 1159 and 1172 no fewer than four marriages bound the two dynasties together. The count’s ambitions would not go unchallenged: Vermandois was located strategically between Flanders and the ˆIle-de-France and subject to long-standing Capetian influence.133 The competition over Vermandois sowed seeds of 129

130 131

132 133

Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, p. 303; Lambert of Waterlos, ‘Annales Cameracenses’, ed. G. Pertz, MGH Scriptores 16 (Hannover, 1859), p. 533; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 207; Sigebert of Gembloux, ‘Sigeberti Gemblacensis Chronica cum Continuationibus’, p. 397; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, pp. 202–3. The evidence from the Pipe Rolls will be discussed at pp. 100–1. Hallam and Everard, Capetian France, pp. 161–2; J. Martindale, ‘“An Unfinished Business”: Angevin Politics and the Siege of Toulouse, 1159’, ANS 23 (2000), 115–54; Warren, Henry II, pp. 91–108. Oorkonden, 1128–1191, vol. 1, no. 182, pp. 286–7. Hallam and Everard, Capetian France, pp. 52–3; L. Napran, ‘Marriage Contracts in the Southern Low Countries and the North of France in the Twelfth Century’ (PhD dissertation, University

34

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum future conflict and over the next half-century these would flower and bear bitter fruit. But for the moment the marital alliances achieved their aim. Thierry and Henry II met again in Dover on 19 March 1163 to renew the Anglo-Flemish treaty formally. The document was virtually identical to the 1101 agreement, confirming the payment of a money fief of 500 marks (£333) against the service of 1,000 mounted soldiers. Count Thierry’s heir Philip was a co-signatory to the treaty, as was King Henry’s oldest son and heir Henry.134 The treaty thus bridged the gap between political generations, and anticipated the transference of Flemish political power from Thierry to Philip in the mid- to late 1160s and the emergence of the latter as a heavyweight in the political arena. Thierry had associated Philip with the comital title as early as 1155, when the boy was twelve years old. From 1157 Philip began to issue charters in his own right as a count of Flanders.135 Given Thierry’s departure on a crusade in 1157 with his wife and co-ruler Sybil,136 this early association with the comital administration must have been intended to secure Philip’s succession, should something untoward happen to his parents. Thierry left on a final crusade in 1164–6, and thenceforth Philip effectively acted as the plenipotentiary count of Flanders.137 Almost all references by medieval chroniclers to ‘the count of Flanders’ between 1164 and 1168 concern Philip, not his father. When the old count died in 1168, Philip’s succession was unproblematic.138 INTERNATIONAL DIPLOM ACY AND THE AFFAIR OF THOM AS BECKET Philip was soon presented with a chance to test his political acumen. The most controversial political event of the 1160s in the Angevin domains was the falling-out between his cousin Henry II and Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury.139 The raw political importance of the Becket affair before the archbishop’s brutal murder and martyrdom on

134 135 136 137 138 139

of Cambridge, 2001), pp. 89–92. On Picardy, see R. Fossier, La terre et les hommes en Picardie jusqu’`a la fin du XIIIe si`ecle, 2 vols. (reprint, Amiens, 1968), especially vol. 2, chapter 2. Diplomatic Documents, no. 3, pp. 8–12. Oorkonden, 1128–1191, vol. 1, no. 146, pp. 233–5, no. 174, pp. 276–7. There is a charter dating from 1152 issued by ‘Count Philip’, but it is almost certainly a forgery: no. 134, pp. 217–18. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 193. Ibid., pp. 220, 234. John of Ypres, ‘Chronica Monasterii Sancti Bertini’, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH Scriptores 25 (Hannover, 1880), p. 805. For Philip’s career, see de Hemptinne, ‘Vlaanderen en Henegouwen’, pp. 382–8; H. Pirenne, ‘Philippe d’Alsace’, Biographie Nationale 17 (Brussels, 1903), pp. 163–76. For discussions of the Becket affair, see F. Barlow, Thomas Becket (London, 1986); Warren, Henry II, pp. 447–517; but especially A. Duggan, Thomas Becket (London, 2004).

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 29 December 1170 in Canterbury Cathedral has often been overstated. Anglo-Norman kings had exiled their archbishops in the past, and, in terms of realpolitik, Henry’s contention with Louis VII of France was the leading theme in the region’s political drama. But the Becket affair was nevertheless an extraordinarily high-profile case which entangled the elites of western Europe. When Becket fled England in October 1164 his first port of call, like that of so many other English exiles over the centuries, was St Omer in Flanders.140 Becket did not yet trust Count Philip enough to meet him and continued quickly to France, but by summer 1165 he was persuaded to accept Philip’s aid.141 The count quickly became engaged in the international diplomacy surrounding the crisis. Philip met Henry II several times from 1165 onwards and, acting as Henry’s emissary, he brought Becket in person to a planned conference in 1168 at La Fert´e Bernard. John of Salisbury noted that these meetings took place at the request of Queen Eleanor of England (1154–89, d. 1204) and Henry’s mother Empress Matilda, underscoring Philip’s kinship with his cousin’s family.142 Henry did not turn up for that meeting, but the following year Philip was present at the conference between the two at St Denis.143 Correspondence concerning the affair reveals that Count Philip was considered Becket’s protector and one of the chief mediators involved in the matter.144 Philip hoped to raise his international profile through his involvement, forge ties with the grandees concerned, and profit from any political opportunities that might arise. He had been keenly interested in the matter even before Becket fled England. When John of Salisbury passed through the county early in 1164, Philip promised him that ships and 140

141 142

143 144

For accounts of Becket’s flight, see William of Canterbury, Vita S. Thomae Auctore Willelm Monacho Cantuariensi, Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, vol. 1, ed. J. Robertson (RS 67, London, 1875), pp. 42–3; Herbert of Bosham, ‘Vita Sancti Thomae’, Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, vol. 3, ed. J. Robertson (RS 67, London, 1877), pp. 323–32; Roger of Pontigny (attr.), ‘Vita Sancti Thomae, Canturiensis Archiepiscopo et Martyris’, Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, vol. 4, ed. J. Robertson (RS 67, London, 1979), pp. 55–8; Elias of Evesham et al., ‘Incipit Vita Beati Thomae Martyris ae Archiepsicopo Canturiensis (Quadrilogus)’, Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, vol. 4, ed. J. Robertson (RS 67, London, 1879), pp. 332–41; Barlow, Thomas Becket, pp. 117–20; Duggan, Thomas Becket, pp. 84–100. The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury 1162–1170, ed. and trans. A. Duggan (OMT, Oxford, 2000), vol. 1, no. 48, p. 208. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 224; Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, no. 55, p. 226; The Letters of John of Salisbury, vol. 2, The Later Letters (1168–1180), ed. W. Millor and C. Brooke (OMT, Oxford, 1979), no. 279, p. 603; Barlow, Thomas Becket, p. 177. Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, no. 172, p. 790, no. 174, p. 798. Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, no. 66, p. 259, no. 103, pp. 486–8, no. 127, p. 614, no. 170, p. 776, no. 288, pp. 1228–30; Letters of John of Salisbury, no. 276, pp. 586–8.

36

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum succour would be made available to the archbishop should the latter be forced into exile.145 The count must also have desired to cultivate relations with Pope Alexander III (1159–81).146 Becket indeed requested favours from the Pope on Philip’s behalf, citing the help that the latter had provided. The archbishop traded favours by, for instance, securing the lucrative nomination of Philip’s chancellor and right-hand man Robert of Aire as a prebendary of the church of St Martin in Tours.147 But, much more importantly, Becket successfully lobbied for the reconfirmation of Philip’s marriage to Elizabeth, heiress to the county of Vermandois.148 For Philip, the Becket affair represented another opening to pursue his dynastic ambitions. Philip also had talks with Henry II, which presented him with political opportunities of similarly immediate relevance. In 1166 Philip and Henry met to negotiate a money fief of £1,000 per annum for Matthew of Boulogne.149 The meeting signalled the close co-operation among the Alsatians. Matthew remained Philip’s strongest ally until his death in 1173 and the union of Flanders with Boulogne both strengthened Philip’s position on the Continent and magnified the importance of Flanders vis-`a-vis England. The 1166 negotiations, however, must have fallen through. The following year Matthew levied a fleet to threaten the English coast and, together with Philip, joined King Louis VII’s attack on Henry in the Vexin. But Philip subsequently mediated peace between the two kings and reaped rewards for his diplomatic efforts.150 Robert of Torigni reported that in 1168 Henry promised Matthew a large sum of money in exchange for abandoning his claim to the county of 145 146 147

148

149 150

Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, no. 24, p. 66. Their correspondence: Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. J. Robertson (RS 67, London, 1881), vol. 5, no. 137, p. 246, no. 139, 248–9. Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 2, no. 288, pp. 1228–30; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 71, 79. For an assessment of the personal relationship between Robert and Becket, see H. van Werveke, Thomas Becket Filips van de Elzas en Robrecht van Aire (Mededelingen Koninklike Vlaamse Akademie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en schone Kunsten van Belgi¨e 32, 1, Brussels, 1970), pp. 1–22. Robert had a reputation as a schemer among contemporary Anglo-Norman commentators: Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, p. 393; Peter of Blois, Petri Blesensis Bathoniensis in Anglia Archidiaconi: Opera Omnia, ed. J. Migne (Patrologia Latina 207, Paris, 1853), no. 42, cols. 122–4. Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, no. 103, pp. 486–8, no. 106, p. 492; for the Pope’s confirmation letter dated 25 August 1166, see Alexandri III Romani Pontificius, Opera Omnia, ed. J.-P. Migne (Patrologia Latina 200, Paris, 1855), cols. 421–2. Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, no. 112, pp. 542–6, no. 113, p. 550. History of William Marshal, ed. A. Holden and D. Crouch, trans. S. Gregory (London, 2002), vol. 1, pp. 43–57; Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 203; Letters of John of Salisbury, no. 272, pp. 562–4; Stephen of Rouen, ‘Draco Normannicus’, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, vol. 2, ed. R. Howlett (RS 82, London, 1885), p. 688; J. Round, Studies in Peerage and Family History (Westminster, 1901), pp. 171–6; Warren, Henry II, pp. 105–8.

37

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Mortain, which Matthew claimed as a part of his wife’s inheritance, and that Matthew, accepting the deal, levied a force in support of Henry’s war against Louis VII.151 In 1168 the English Pipe Rolls indeed record annual rents from royal domain lands worth £60 being assigned to Philip, and £341 assigned to Matthew, presumably in a partial payment of the promised money fief.152 Matthew’s and Philip’s estates were the same properties as those from which Count Thierry had drawn his English income in the late 1150s and early 1160s, underlining the continuity in their relations with England through two generations of the Alsatian dynasty. The 1160s were a period of expansion for the dynasties of England and Flanders, with marriage alliances their key political tool. In addition to the acquisition of Boulogne, through Mary of Blois, the Alsatians claimed the counties of Vermandois and Valois in 1167 on the death of Count Raoul II (1160–7). Raoul’s sister Elizabeth, Philip’s wife, was his heir and, armed with a papal reaffirmation of the marriage, Philip assumed control over that county as well. The acquisition of these territories, whose southernmost extent was only a dozen kilometres from the Capetian seat at Paris, doubled the size of the region under Philip’s control, removing any doubt that he was the most powerful territorial prince in north-eastern France. Furthermore, several of Thierry’s daughters married into noble families in the German marches, consolidating the Alsatians’ alliances in the east. The most important of these unions was the marriage in 1169 of Margaret of Flanders to Baldwin, heir-prospective of the county of Hainaut, that perennial thorn in the Flemish flank.153 Even more successfully acquisitive, Henry II extended his influence over Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and to varying degrees subjugated them all.154 On the Continent he was similarly triumphant. In 1152 King Louis VII had scandalously repudiated his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, the heiress of Aquitaine, Gascony and Poitou. As the most marriageable woman in all of western Europe (almost immediately after the divorce proceedings were concluded, she was subjected to several attempts at kidnapping and forced marriage), Eleanor appreciated the necessity of remarrying quickly if she was to wed a groom of her own choosing. Henry, young and powerful, fitted the bill, and within weeks the two celebrated their nuptials.155 In 1166 Henry II unseated Count Conan IV of Brittany 151 153 154 155

152 PR 14 Henry II (1167–8), pp. 14, 60, 95, 205. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 238. ‘Flandria Generosa’, pp. 326–7; Napran, ‘Marriage Contracts’, pp. 78–80, 89–92, 259. D. Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066–1284 (London, 2003), pp. 191–244. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, pp. 164–5; D. Owen, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of England (Oxford, 1993), pp. 28–32; Warren, Henry II, pp. 42–4, 101–3.

38

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum (1156–71) and, by betrothing his third son Geoffrey to Conan’s daughter Constance, consolidated his power over the county.156 Henry was now the lord of Normandy, Anjou, Brittany and Aquitaine; as has often been noted, this constituted far more land in France than King Louis VII himself could claim. THE ANGEVIN CIVIL WAR OF 1173–1174 In the late 1160s and early 1170s both the comital house of Flanders and the Angevin dynasty of England stood at the very height of their powers. But, as was so often the case in the Middle Ages, a political crisis was provoked by a question of inheritance. No English succession had been uncontested or without bloodshed since the tenth century and Henry II’s was not to be the exception. In 1170 Henry II had co-crowned his oldest son ‘Young King’ Henry at the age of fifteen. In the mind of the father this indubitably was a prudent move to cement the future succession but for the younger Henry it represented a major shift in his social and political identity. He was a king but without a kingdom, since his father held on tightly to his lands and powers. A rift had developed between the two Henrys by 1173, and Louis VII, the younger Henry’s father-in-law, was eager to exploit the breach.157 Louis quickly cast about for more allies. These included King William ‘the Lion’ of Scotland and Count Theobald V of Blois, but it is clear that Louis must have considered Flemish, and by association Boulonnaise, support essential. In 1173 Count Philip had just returned from a crusade to the Holy Land. He and Matthew were invited to attend a council hosted by Louis in Paris and were persuaded to support the Young King’s rebellion. The brothers’ reasons for severing their presumably still-cordial relationship with Henry II undoubtedly had to do with worries over the latter’s vast power on the Continent. Along with Louis, they must have seen the rebellion as an opportunity to weaken the Angevin realm. But it is also clear that Louis offered a better deal than Henry II. Henry had refused to grant Stephen’s full inheritance, including the county of Mortain and the rich honour of Eye, to Mary of Blois and her husband. The money fief that had been agreed in 1167–8 could not make up for them and these properties were now promised to Matthew at the 156 157

Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 228; Warren, Henry II, pp. 100–1; J. Everard, Brittany and the Angevins: Province and Empire 1158–1203 (Cambridge, 2000), especially chapter 2. Warren, Henry II, pp. 117–23. For a description of the Young King’s career from 1170 to his death in 1183, see O. Moore, The Young King Henry Plantagenet, 1155–1183, in History, Literature, and Tradition (Columbus, 1925), pp. 1–28; D. Crouch, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire (London and New York, 1990), pp. 37–52.

39

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 council in Paris.158 Philip too seized the chance to establish a profitable relationship with the eighteen-year-old Henry, a much more malleable monarch than his father. In return for his aid the Young King promised Philip not only a money fief of £1,000 but the county of Kent, including Dover and Rochester Castles.159 The notion of bargaining away an entire county (or fiscal rights over it, or a truly substantial collection of estates located there), especially one as rich and central as Kent, may be met today with some incredulity. But such a reaction is rooted in our modern conceptions of European nation states as inviolable and properly separate, and does not translate well into the Angevin age. Young King Henry would not have regarded his domains in such a manner. He would not even have considered himself an ‘Englishman’, but a francophone heir to a pan-European empire. Kent was only one relatively small segment of this realm, and yielding a large measure of control over it to a close kinsman was a viable strategy. Count Philip was a powerful ally whose contribution would be central to the success of the alliance, and young Henry was hardly as dedicated a negotiator as his father. Moreover, this concession was firmly rooted in the historic ties between south-eastern England and the Low Countries. Until King Stephen’s death, the counts of Boulogne had owned such a large concentration of estates in Essex that they could have been considered the earls of that county in practice, if not in name.160 And through proximity, trade and travel Flanders had enjoyed a longstanding connection with Kent. According to the shiplist of William the Conqueror, the duke had promised Kent to his Flemish wife Matilda before the Battle of Hastings (afterwards, presumably, the realities of the post-Conquest political situation forced him to reconsider). Kent had also been the stronghold of the Flemish magnate William of Ypres during King Stephen’s reign.161 The rebellion underlined Philip’s crucial role in the region’s politics. Along with the king of France, he was presented by contemporary commentators as a leader of the war. Philip invaded Normandy with Matthew in 1173 and Flemish soldiers were sent to fight in England under rebel 158

159 160 161

Roger of Howden, Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedicti Abbatis, ed. W. Stubbs (RS 49, London, 1867), vol. 1, p. 44; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs (RS 51, London, 1869), vol. 2, p. 46; Warren, Henry II, pp. 121–2. For the best exposition of Stephen’s inheritance, see Round, Studies in Peerage, pp. 167–76. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 44; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 1, pp. 46–7. See Map 4; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, pp. 335–42 for the appurtenances of the honour of Boulogne. E. van Houts, ‘The Ship List of William the Conqueror’, ANS 10 (1987), 172–4; E. Warlop, ‘Willem van Ieper, een Vlaams condottiere (v´oo´ r 1104–1164)’, De Leiegouw 7 (1965), 197–218, 201.

40

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum barons.162 Most significantly, during the upcoming conflict Philip was strongly associated with the younger Henry. The two planned to invade England together from Gravelines in 1174, although this changed to a march into Normandy.163 Philip’s role was to provide Henry with a home base: though supported by rebel barons, young Henry lacked a permanent power base of his own. The count must have calculated that solidifying his strong personal relationship with the future king of England would pay large dividends. It was not to be, however: Henry II’s success in defending his territories and a series of setbacks, including the death of Count Matthew during the 1173 campaign in Normandy, forced his opponents to sue for peace in 1174.164 In the peace negotiations of 1175 Count Philip formally released the Young King from his commitments. CONFLICT AND CO-OPERATION 1174–1183 It is a testament to Philip’s political skills that the revolt’s outcome did not leave him high and dry. In return for his co-operation in the peace settlement, Henry II returned to the count his family’s English possessions and furthermore promised him a money fief of 1,000 marks (£666).165 If anything, the events of 1173–4 reminded Henry harshly of the necessity of keeping the count of Flanders close. The political relationship between Flanders and England emerged from the revolt more or less unscathed. Philip’s position was even bolstered by his stewardship of Boulogne, as Matthew had left two unmarried daughters – Ida and Matilda – and no sons. There was diplomatic manoeuvring over their marital fate, with Philip using his nieces as levers to extract monetary concessions from Henry before he departed on a crusade in 1177.166 The 1173–4 war was an indication of the scope of Count Philip’s ambitions. Half a decade later he made a second play for power in France. During the final illness of King Louis VII, the king’s fourteen-year-old 162

163 164

165 166

PR 20 Henry II (1173–4), p. 39; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, pp. 373, 381; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, pp. 257–8; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 47, 49, 67, 73; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 48–9, 55, 64; ‘Winchombe Annals’, ed. R. Darlington, Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton (Pipe Roll Society 74, London, 1962), pp. 134–5. Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, pp. 386–7; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 73–5; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 57–64. Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, p. 373; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 265; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 47–9; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 48–9, 55; Warren, Henry II, pp. 125–36. Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, pp. 398–9; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 83; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 72; RAH II, vol. 1, no. 326, pp. 38–40. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 130, 133, 136, 159; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 119, 131–2.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 son, Philip II ‘Augustus’ (1180–1223), succeeded to the throne. The count had just returned from his crusade to Palestine and quickly started jockeying for position. He reinserted himself in French state affairs by accompanying the ailing Louis on his visit to Archbishop Becket’s tomb in England.167 Then, in a replay of his relationship with the Young King almost a decade earlier, Count Philip seized the opportunity to attach himself to the adolescent Philip II. He assumed a position of honour at Philip’s co-coronation ceremony on 1 November 1179, and by Christmas had succeeded in convincing the latter to discard his father’s old councillors. The all-important dynastic tie was created early the following year, when the young king married Count Philip’s niece Isabella, the daughter of Count Baldwin V of Hainaut (1171–95) and Count Philip’s sister Margaret.168 The influence that Count Philip now exerted over the young French monarch had become so alarming that his political rivals turned to Henry II for help. Henry, wary of the count’s growing power, responded by levying an army. In a conference held on 28 June 1180 he reconciled the various factions with a combination of political savvy and military threats. The restoration of relations between Henry and Count Philip took a familiar form. The count did homage to Henry in an agreement reminiscent of the earlier Anglo-Flemish treaties; Philip would be prepared to dispatch 500 knights to fight under the king against 1,000 silver marks per annum.169 Despite the rift in 1180, relations between Count Philip and Henry II appear to have reverted to relative cordiality for the rest of their respective reigns. While Henry sided with King Philip against the Flemish count again in 1181, the money fief was renewed during the peace negotiations of the following year.170 In 1183 Henry arranged a marriage between Count Philip and Matilda, the daughter of King Alfonso I of Portugal (Countess Elizabeth having died in 1182).171 Conveyed by Henry’s own

167 168

169

170

171

Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 241; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 192. The dignitaries’ expenses were paid from the royal treasury: PR 25 Henry II (1178–9), p. 120. Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, p. 438; Rigord, Histoire de Philippe Auguste, ed. and trans. E. Carpentier, G. Pon and Y. Chauvin (Sources d’histoire m´edi´evale 33, Paris, 2006), pp. 138–40; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 242–6; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 194, 196–7. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 246–7; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 196–7; J. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 3–17. For a discussion of the 1182 treaty, see A. Cartellieri, Philip II August K¨onig von Frankreich (Leipzig and Paris, 1899), vol. 1, pp. 120–7. Also Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 2, pp. 8–11; RAH II, vol. 2, no. 439, pp. 230–1; Warren, Henry II, pp. 147–8. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 309; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, 310; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 283; William of Ardres, ‘Willelmi Chronica Andrensis’, p. 716.

42

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum royal ship, the bride travelled to Flanders via England, and the king hosted a royal reception for the pair, spending some £300 on the occasion.172 Events in the German marches served to consolidate the alliance. In August 1184 warfare broke out between Baldwin V of Hainaut and Duke Godfrey VIII of Lower Lorraine (also duke of Brabant and count of Louvain, 1142–90). There were long-standing tensions between the two, and a truce had been brokered during the previous year with the involvement of Count Philip and Archbishop Philip of Cologne (1167– 91). Now Baldwin demanded that Count Philip, his brother-in-law, should support him. But their relations had become strained after the events in 1180. King Philip II, perhaps more aware of Count Philip’s opportunism, and no doubt influenced by the count’s enemies in the royal court, had turned against him. The French king was now engaged in machinations to drive a wedge between Count Philip and Baldwin, his father-in-law. In 1184, without prior consultation, the king named Baldwin as a guarantor in a royal peace treaty, thereby intimating that the count of Hainaut had allied with him. By August his intrigues had taken root: Count Philip, having grown suspicious about Baldwin’s loyalties, refused the latter’s appeal, and even sent a force of 200 knights to support Godfrey. This was the moment of final rupture between Baldwin and Count Philip. Setting aside his brother-in-law in favour of his son-inlaw, Baldwin travelled in September 1184 to Paris to conclude an alliance with the French king.173 These developments were also a concern to Archbishop Philip of Cologne. Count Philip held land from him in fief and was his ally, and moreover the expansion of French influence through an alliance with Hainaut had the potential to threaten the archbishop’s own interests in Lower Lotharingia and Cologne. In September the archbishop travelled with Count Philip to England for consultation with Henry II. Having secured Henry’s political and military support, the two Philips, in concert with Duke Godfrey, mounted an attack on Count Baldwin in November.174 Matters did not proceed well for Flanders. The following year King Philip II raised an enormous army and, despite mediation by Henry II at the request of Count Philip, forced the latter into a 172 173

174

PR 30 Henry II (1183–4), pp. 80, 87, 136, 145. Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, pp. 153–4, 165–9; Baldwin, Government, p. 18; R. Fawtier, The Capetian Kings of France, trans. L. Butler and R. Adam (Toronto and New York, 1960), pp. 111–13. Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, pp. 170–4; Norman PR (1183–4), p. 80; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 2, pp. 21–2; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, pp. 311–13; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 318, 322; J. Huffman, The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy: Anglo-German Relations (1066–1307) (Ann Abor, 2000), pp. 111–20.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 disadvantageous peace treaty.175 Count Philip’s estrangement from both the French ruler and his Hainautian brother-in-law had stranded him in a precarious position. The need to keep on Henry’s good side operated to consolidate cordial relations between England and Flanders for the rest of the decade. It has been suggested that, in favouring King Philip II, Count Philip had irrevocably damaged the friendship he had spent several years cultivating with Young King Henry of England.176 Certainly their relations were not as warm as they had once been, and Count Philip was forced to call short his invasion of the county of Clermont in December 1181, when he found an army levied by the Young King standing in opposition.177 The intimate details of Philip’s personal relationships are now beyond us, but it would seem that in 1180 he had overplayed his hand. Philip suffered no immediate major political setback, but neither did the count’s aggressive and opportunistic tactics endear him to his neighbours. His failed alliance with King Philip II would return to plague him in his later years. As a part of Isabella’s dowry Count Philip had promised Philip II a large portion of Artois, including the great mercantile town of St Omer. The generosity of the count’s dowry is puzzling, as is the political risk involved in making such an important concession. It is possible that he was seeking to secure royal assent to his own succession in Vermandois.178 But the dowry opened a French claim to southern Flanders that provided Philip II with powerful political leverage for decades. The two Philips were to quarrel continually over Artois, as well as over several smaller principalities bordering southern Flanders. In 1182 Count Philip’s control over Vermandois was powerfully undermined, though not overturned, on the death of his childless and estranged wife Elizabeth, through whom he had laid claim to the county.179 King Philip II wasted no time in challenging Count Philip’s right to Vermandois, though the latter succeeded in maintaining it within his domains. Henry 175

176 178 179

‘Flandria Generosa’, pp. 327–8; Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 331; Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, pp. 180–5; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 2, p. 38; Rigord, Histoire, pp. 170–6; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 334–5; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 288; William of Ardres, ‘Willelmi Chronica Andrensis’, p. 718; William the Breton, ‘Chronique de Guillaume le Breton’, Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton: Historiens de Philippe-Auguste, vol. 1, ed. H. Delaborde (Paris, 1882), pp. 182–3. For this conflict, also see Cartellieri, Philip II, vol. 1, pp. 129–72. 177 Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 284. Warren, Henry II, p. 582. G. Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley, 1993), p. 33. The marriage had not ended well. In 1175 Philip discovered that Elizabeth was having an affair, and very cruelly executed her lover Gautier of Fontaine. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 285; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 82–3, 266; Nicholas, ‘Countesses’, pp. 124–5.

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Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum II intervened in the disputes. While he did not always take Count Philip’s side, he did serve as a mediator between the king of France and the count of Flanders on several occasions.180 These questions of inheritance continued to trouble foreign policy for the rest of Count Philip’s reign and influenced the course of history for the next generation. The Flemish dower of Artois was a major milestone in the sequence of events that reached their culmination in the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, in the Capetian ascendancy in France over the Angevin kings of England and the Frankish territorial princes, and in the English civil war of King John’s reign and the creation of Magna Carta in 1215. But such outcomes were yet far distant.

RICHARD I AND JOHN, AND THE ASCENDANCY OF PHILIP II OF FRANCE North-western Europe remained in a state of agitated political flux as Henry II’s reign slowly drew to a close. In 1183 Young King Henry initiated another rebellion but died shortly thereafter, leaving Henry II’s second son Richard the presumptive heir.181 Many of the same disagreements that Henry II had had with his eldest son poisoned his relations with Richard, and in 1187 the latter entered into an alliance with King Philip II against his father. Civil war again broke out. Though Gervase of Canterbury, writing out of strong anti-Flemish sentiment, has Count Philip acting as Philip II’s agent in subverting Richard to the French king’s side, there is no real reason to suspect that the count – who had little love for his king – would have been a French pawn. Earlier that year Count Philip had even sent a contingent of soldiers to serve Henry in Normandy.182 He is known to have repeatedly supported other French magnates in insisting that the warring parties conclude a peace.183 Henry II’s long reign came to an inglorious end in 1189 amid the insurrection. Beaten, gravely ill, forced into a humiliating peace settlement, the old monarch retired to the castle of Chinon to die. Richard 180

181 182 183

On Henry II’s interventions, see Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, pp. 309 (1184), 326 (1185); Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 2, pp. 38 (1185), 40 (1186); Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 277 (1181), 285 (1182), 312 (1184); Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 260 (1181), 267 (1182), 285 (1184); Baldwin, Government, pp. 17–19. On the intricacies of the Vermandois question, see Spiegel, Romancing the Past, pp. 31–44. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, 294–301; Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 274–9; Warren, Henry II, pp. 591–3. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, pp. 347, 370–1. On Gervase as a historian, see pp. 243, 248. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 2, p. 47, 69; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 345, 364.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 I (1189–99) was now king.184 Having settled affairs in England following his coronation on 3 September 1189, Richard’s first task on the Continent was to deal with the count of Flanders. On 11 December he crossed from Dover to Calais in Merck (a viscounty of Boulogne), where he met Count Philip, presumably to reaffirm their relations and the continuance of the Flemish money fief.185 As decided in their earlier agreement, Richard and Philip II left for the Holy Land on the Third Crusade in 1190. In 1191 Count Philip joined them, and found himself playing the part of a mediator between the bickering kings. He died at the siege of Acre in June 1191. The count left no heir: he had never had a child, and both of his younger brothers had died without leaving male issue. Philip II now claimed most of Vermandois and Flemish Artois for himself, with the bulk of Flanders passing by way of Margaret of Flanders to Philip’s brother-in-law Baldwin V of Hainaut (now Count Baldwin VIII of Flanders, 1191–4).186 Richard I passed most of Count Baldwin’s reign first on crusade in the eastern Mediterranean and then in captivity in Germany. Baldwin’s political allegiance to his son-in-law Philip II remained firm. He backed the schemes of King Philip and Richard’s brother John to depose the Lionheart, notably participating in Philip II’s siege of Rouen in the spring of 1193.187 Baldwin may also have been the organising force behind the Flemish mercenaries who gathered at Wissant in preparation for an invasion across the Channel.188 In any case, it all came to nothing: Richard returned to his realm in 1194 and the planned coup d’´etat rapidly collapsed.189 In November of the same year Countess Margaret died, and Flanders was inherited by Baldwin VIII’s son, Count Baldwin IX (1194–1206); a year later his father also died, and the younger Baldwin inherited Hainaut in full.190 Baldwin IX had done homage to Richard when the king passed through Germany in February 1194, and Richard may have 184 185 186

187 188

189 190

J. Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven and London, 1999), pp. 82–100; Warren, Henry II, pp. 616–26. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 2, p. 101; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 3, pp. 28; PR 1 Richard I (1189–90), pp. 105, 155. ‘Flandria Generosa’, p. 329; Richard of Devizes, The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes, ed. and trans. J. Appleby (London, 1963), p. 26; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 2, pp. 149, 168; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 3, pp. 95, 98–9, 111, 114. Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, p. 285; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 3, p. 207. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 514. Although this is not certain since Boulogne had now passed to Count Renaud (1190–1214, d. 1227), who owed his fealty solely to the French king. Gillingham, Richard, pp. 249–53. Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, pp. 262, 298–9, 307–8, 330–1.

46

Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum wished to reinstate the tradition of the Anglo-Flemish money fief.191 The count, however, ultimately preferred to maintain the family’s alliance with Philip II. He had a dynastic link with the Capetians through his departed sister Queen Isabella (d. 1190). Baldwin may also have agreed with his liege, as had Count Robert II before the Battle of Planchy in 1109 and Count Philip in 1173, that the power of the Angevin king needed to be curbed. But Richard succeeded in turning the tables. Diplomatic overtures backed by threats to Anglo-Flemish commerce (Richard instituted a trade embargo on Flanders in 1196) drew Baldwin IX back to the negotiating table. In 1197 an agreement that neither party would make peace with the king of France without the other’s consent was concluded.192 The count was now Richard’s ally in his wars against Philip II, and prosecuted his own claim to territories in southern Flanders that had been lost in 1191. By the end of 1198 Baldwin IX had taken back the towns of Douai, St Omer and Aire. Baldwin also demonstrated his wider allegiance to Richard by endorsing Richard’s candidate Otto IV of Brunswick (king from 1198, emperor 1208–15) for the German throne.193 After Richard’s sudden death in 1199 – like William Rufus, he died of an arrow wound, this one inflicted during a castle siege in central Aquitaine – his brother, King John (1199–1216), was quick to re-establish relations with the count with a renewal of the 1197 treaty.194 But the Anglo-Flemish alliance soon fell through. Baldwin’s brother Philip of Namur was captured by French forces, and pressure was brought to bear on the count: at the treaty of P´eronne in January 1200 Baldwin agreed to abandon his alliance with John. In return, much of northern Artois was formally returned to Flanders, undoing a great deal of the damage that Count Philip’s dower grant had caused.195 This agreement was reinforced by the treaty of Le Goulet, concluded between John and Philip II in May, 191

192 193 194

195

Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 3, p. 234; de Hemptinne, ‘Vlaanderen en Henegouwen’, pp. 393–5; A. Poole, ‘Richard the First’s Alliances with the German Princes in 1194’, Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, ed. R. Hunt et al. (Oxford, 1948), pp. 95–6. Diplomatic Documents, no. 7, pp. 18–20; Rigord, Histoire, pp. 344–6; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 4, p. 20; Dept, Les influences, pp. 23–4. ‘Flandria Generosa’, pp. 329–30; Rigord, Histoire, p. 356; Cartellieri, Philip II, vol. 3, pp. 192–3. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 573; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 4, p. 54–5, 61, 93; Oorkonden, 1191–1206, vol. 2, no. 115, pp. 258–62 . In 1197 John, as the prospective heir, had also issued a document confirming the treaty. Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, Illustrative of the History of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 1. A.D. 918–1206, ed. J. Round (London, 1899), no. 1361, p. 49. Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste, ed. H.-F. Delaborde et al. (Paris, 1943), vol. 2, no. 621, pp. 167–8; Oorkonden, 1191–1206, vol. 2, no. 128, pp. 282–8; Cartellieri, Philip II, vol. 4, pp. 34–6; Dept, Les influences, p. 35.

47

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 which reiterated that Baldwin and Count Renaud of Boulogne (1190– 1214) held their lands from the king of France. John promised not to support either count in the event of a possible rebellion.196 The treaty provided breathing room for the competing powers of north-western Europe, but the peace proved transitory. The first decade of the thirteenth century was a time of tremendous political upheaval in France. This had a great effect on Flanders, which was soon to be denied effective leadership, diminishing its rulers’ prospects to be numbered among the region’s major players. In 1202 Count Baldwin of Flanders joined the Fourth Crusade. He was crowned Emperor Baldwin I in the aftermath of the sack of Constantinople in 1204, but captured by Bulgars the following year and subsequently killed. In the absence of male heirs, Flanders–Hainaut passed to his six-year-old daughter Joan (1206–44).197 Joan’s regency council was headed by her uncle, the strongly pro-Capetian Philip of Namur. This state of affairs suited Philip II, who pursued a policy of issuing large numbers of baronial money fiefs to the Flemish and Hainautian aristocracy in order to draw them into Paris’s sphere.198 The half-decade leading up to Baldwin’s death was disastrous for John. It had started so well: John had been reconciled with several of his rivals and peers, including King Philip II, and consolidated his hold over fractious central Aquitaine through his marriage to Isabella of Angoulˆeme. But it seems that, for John, success led to high-handedness. Hugh le Brun, the head of the powerful Lusignan family in Poitou, had been engaged to Isabella before John. John spectacularly failed to make compensation for breaking the engagement: the Lusignans revolted and appealed to Philip II. The French king, using John’s refusal to make an appearance in his royal court as pretext, had a council of French barons declare John’s fiefs in Anjou, Aquitaine and Poitou forfeit. The new phase of the Angevin– Capetian conflict was to be fought under the guise of reclamation, not invasion.199 John was neither the warrior nor the leader that his older brother and father had been and his setbacks came quick and hard. In 1203 he lost effective control over Anjou and Maine with the defection of the great Angevin magnate William des Roches. The death of John’s young nephew Arthur, the duke of Brittany, and a potential rival for the crown of England, under suspicious circumstances while in John’s captivity 196 198 199

197 Nicholas, ‘Countesses’, pp. 129–33. Diplomatic Documents, no. 9, pp. 20–3. Dept, Les influences, pp. 47–9, 66–8, 75–86. Baldwin, Government, pp. 94–8; Gillingham, Angevin Empire, pp. 89–92; W. Warren, King John, 2nd edn (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 64–76.

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Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum led to revolt in Brittany. In 1204 John’s mother, the influential queen mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, died. Politically the loss of her support was a tremendous blow to John, as it must have been on a personal level. To make matters worse, parts of Gascony were invaded and overrun by King Alfonso VIII of Castile, who now claimed them as his due inheritance by virtue of his wife, Eleanor, John’s sister. The most telling blow, however, was the success of Philip II’s campaign in Normandy that began in 1203. John failed to mount an effective resistance and in December retreated over the Channel to regroup. The king’s desertion of the duchy was demoralising and Philip’s advance increasingly inexorable: on 24 June 1204 Philip took Rouen. In a matter of a few years the Angevin empire had been dismantled and the political geography of France utterly changed.200 If the situation looked grim for John, he was still far from being out of the game. During the decade after 1204 he recovered Gascony and parts of Poitou, and enjoyed a considerable amount of success in consolidating his influence over Wales, Scotland and Ireland.201 Perhaps his greatest challenge was economic and institutional. Thanks to the acquisition of new territories (especially Normandy) and reforms in royal administration, King Philip II commanded far greater revenues than any of his Capetian predecessors. Given the wide lacunae of the record evidence, it is hard to pin down the exact sizes of the Angevin and Capetian yearto-year resource bases, but it appears that for the first time since 1066 the French king could prosecute war against his English counterpart on an equal footing. John’s response to the Capetian triumphs was to intensify his exploitation of the English economy. This provided him with a financial foundation for pursuing his reconquest – but the tremendously acquisitive royal policies also aroused much discontent among his English subjects.202

200 201 202

Baldwin, Government, pp. 191–6; Gillingham, Angevin Empire, pp. 92–4; Warren, King John, pp. 76–99. Carpenter, Struggle, pp. 277–84; Warren, King John, pp. 116–20, 191–9. Regarding the balance of John’s and Philip II’s economic resources, J. C. Holt (and others) have argued that by John’s reign Capetian revenues dwarfed the Angevin income, but this has been powerfully challenged by John Gillingham’s and Nick Barratt’s more recent work. For the debate, see N. Barratt, ‘The Revenue of King John’, EHR 111 (1996), 835–55; Barratt, ‘The Revenues of John and Philip Augustus Revisited’, in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S. Church (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 75–99; Barratt, ‘The English Revenue of Richard I’, EHR 116 (2001), 635–56; Gillingham, Angevin Empire, pp. 95–100; J. Holt, ‘The Loss of Normandy and Royal Finance’, in War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. O. Prestwich, ed. J. Gillingham and J. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), pp. 92–105; Holt, ‘The End of the AngloNorman Realm’, in Holt, Magna Carta and Medieval Government (London, 1985), pp. 23–65, 34–9. The concise analysis of John’s income is in Barratt, ‘The Revenue of King John’. The

49

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 THE PATH TO BOUVINES AND RUNNYM EDE As the contention between John and Philip II moved into its final phase, the southern Low Countries emerged as the key battlefield in the Angevin–Capetian war: the territory was strategically located, a gateway to both England and the ˆIle-de-France, and a key ally from which crucial military strength might be drawn to tip the balance of power. Philip II’s influence over Flanders after the death of Baldwin IX had been by no means uncontested. While the French king energetically manoeuvred to capture the allegiance of the Flemish nobility, the importance of commercial links across the Channel for the Flemish towns manifested itself powerfully. In 1208 the burghers of Bruges, Douai, Ghent, Lille, St Omer and Ypres revolted and swore allegiance to King John.203 Despite Philip II’s good relationship with the regent, Philip of Namur, factions within Flanders–Hainaut retained strong ties across the Straits of Dover. In 1212 Philip II sought to consolidate his hold over the county, but his grasp proved too tight. He arranged the marriage of the twelve-yearold Joan to Ferrand, the much older son of King Sancho I of Portugal. On their way back to Flanders the couple were kidnapped by Crown Prince Louis of France, and Ferrand was forced to concede the towns of Aire and St Omer, undoing the 1200 treaty of P´eronne. Perhaps Philip II had taken Count Ferrand for a weak-willed cat’s paw but, if so, he was to be profoundly disappointed. The next year Ferrand refused Philip’s call for an invasion of England, and moreover threatened to renounce his allegiance to Paris should St Omer fail to be returned. Francophile nobles were exiled from Flanders and Anglo-Flemish negotiations opened. The timing was fortunate: John was pulling together a coalition to defeat Philip. In 1212 he had dispatched his ally Count Renaud of Boulogne as his agent to Flanders and stolen the lead from Philip II by flooding the Flemish nobility with money fiefs. At the same time John brought German emperor Otto of Brunswick into the anti-Capetian alliance. On 10 July 1213 Ferrand and John formally allied, with the burghers of the great Flemish towns of Bruges, Ghent and Ypres acting as guarantors.204 Much of the warfare of 1213–14 focused on the southern Low Countries. A French fleet poised to invade England was destroyed at the harbour of Damme, near Bruges, but French forces devastated Flanders,

203 204

classic introduction to John’s financial policies and their political impact is J. Holt, Magna Carta, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1992). Rotuli Chartarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati, ed. T. Hardy (London, 1837), p. 182; Dept, Les influences, pp. 54–73. Rotuli Chartarum, p. 197; Baldwin, Government, pp. 207–212; Cartellieri, Philip II, vol. 4, p. 380; Dept, Les influences, pp. 107–23.

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Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum driving Count Ferrand to seek temporary refuge in Zeeland.205 The final confrontation came in the summer of 1214. On 27 July a coalition force captained by Count Ferrand, Emperor Otto, Earl William of Salisbury and Count Renaud of Boulogne clashed with Philip II’s invading army at Bouvines, between Lille and Tournai. The French victory was crushing.206 The opposition was utterly defeated and many of its leaders and a multitude of the participating aristocrats (including a large number of pro-English Flemish nobility) were taken into captivity. Philip took full advantage of the battle’s outcome. The treaty that followed in October stipulated that major Flemish fortresses in the south were to be destroyed and pro-Capetian Flemish nobles repatriated. Philip carefully negotiated the release of captured Flemish aristocrats over the next few years but Count Ferrand himself was not released until 1226. Count Renaud of Boulogne was not set free and his lands and titles were handed over to Philip Hurepel, King Philip II’s second son.207 Flanders was now firmly under Capetian control. Bouvines secured Philip II’s position as the ascendant power in France, sinking the ambitions of Frankish territorial princes and undermining Philip’s peers in Germany and England. During the same summer, John had embarked on an expedition to southern France, with the aim of opening a second front to threaten the Capetians through Poitou. But that too had ended in failure and John returned to England with his plans in tatters.208 He did not receive a warm welcome. John’s policies, chiefly his financial exploitation of the baronage, had incensed the English nobility. A faction of the barons sought to bind the king with conditions; the failed negotiations gave way to civil war and, in June 1215 at the meadow of Runnymede in Berkshire, to the drawing up of that charter of rights and privileges that was later named Magna Carta. At the time of its creation, however, the charter was a temporary measure at best. The conflict between the king and his barons (who had upped the ante by inviting Prince Louis of France to England as their candidate for the English throne) went on until John’s death from dysentery on the night of 17–18 December 1216. 205

206

207 208

Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, ed. F. Michel (Paris, 1840), pp. 126– 45; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, ed. H. Howlett (RS 84, London, 1887), vol. 2, pp. 78–80; Dept, Les influences, pp. 124–3. An eyewitness account of the battle was composed by William the Breton, ‘Chronique de Guillaume le Breton’, pp. 265–95. A good analysis of the battle can be found in J. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages: From the Eighth Century to 1340, 2nd edn (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 239–60. An excellent collection of sources related to the battle and translated into English can be found in Duby, Bouvines, 192–225. The treaty: Duby, Bouvines, pp. 218–19. Dept, Les influences, pp. 137–40; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, 153–4. Gillingham, Angevin Empire, pp. 103–6; Warren, King John, pp. 217–22.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Louis’s support collapsed and, after negotiating a settlement, he withdrew, returning to France. John was succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry III (1216–72) under the regency of the senior English magnate William Marshal.209 The early years of the thirteenth century constitute one of the great political watersheds of western European history. Here too was the close of an epoch in the relations between Flanders and England. The fallout from the Battle of Bouvines, John’s death and the minority of Henry III combined to erode ties between the English and Flemish political elites. A sign of times to come was apparent almost immediately after Bouvines: within a month, English authorities began to treat Flemish merchants as French and to take appropriate reprisals. Though commercial relations were soon repaired (with Magna Carta containing provisions for the safe conduct of foreign merchants), the position of Flemish traders in England remained more precarious than it had been before.210 John had leaned on his Flemish connections during the civil war and notably had staffed his household army with several hundred Flemish stipendiary knights.211 But his death brought an end to the Flemish mercenary presence in England and the numerous money fiefs that John had seeded among the Flemish nobility petered out over the course of the first decade of his son’s reign.212 Though considerations of commerce continued to encourage proEnglish sentiment among the Flemish mercantile classes, the political link with the Flemish nobility frayed. The change was slow and generational, but the priorities of the English elites became increasingly insular. Though the English crown was to retain Gascony until the Hundred Years War, the Anglo-Norman age of the cosmopolitan cross-Channel regnum was over. And so was the era of the aggressively independent princely counts of Flanders. Commercially, Anglo-Flemish exchanges remained strong, but politically the position of the Flemish ruler as a lynchpin of European affairs was compromised. Baldwin IX’s brief, brutal career as 209

210 211

212

D. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (London 1990), pp. 5–49; Carpenter, Struggle, pp. 286– 99; Warren, King John, 224–56. J. C. Holt’s work on the civil war and the Magna Carta is seminal: see Holt, Magna Carta; and Holt, The Northeners: A Study in the Reign of King John (Oxford, 1961), in its entirety but especially chapter 4, pp. 143–74. T. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 14–15; J. Holt, Magna Carta, §41, pp. 460–2. The record evidence for these knights is examined in S. Church, ‘The Earliest English Muster Roll, 18/19 December 1215’, Historical Research 67 (1994), 1–17, and the English career of one of their leaders, Baldwin of B´ethune, is discussed by J. Gillingham, ‘The Anonymous of B´ethune, King John and Magna Carta’, Magna Carta and the England of King John, ed. J. Loengard (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 27–44. Dept, Les influences, pp. 156–65.

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Power and politics in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum emperor in the East has poignancy both as the loftiest position claimed by any Flemish count and as the prelude to his dynasty’s long twilight. The heights of power and prestige enjoyed by Baldwin and his predecessors – so often just one short step below the monarchs of Europe – were now a thing of the past. The century and half of Anglo-Norman union had a stabilising, even agglutinating, effect on the political relationships among the French territorial princes. The Anglo-Norman regnum was a gas giant in the solar system of medieval western Europe and its gravitational force influenced the grouping of other bodies. Whereas, before the mid-eleventh century, the resources of the great dukes and counts of western Francia had often been matched by at least one of their rivals, after 1066 none could rival those of the Anglo-Norman king. Challenging him was inevitably a team effort: it bred alliances, marriage contracts and flurries of diplomatic activity. The kings of England responded in kind. Under the more successful holders of that title – Henry I, Henry II, Richard I – the foundations of a stupendous realm were laid down and reinforced. There came a time when William the Conqueror’s heirs could claim lordship from Scotland to the Pyrenees. But crucial to the coherence and security of this agglomeration was strategic control over the coasts that connected England to the Continent. Here the county of Flanders always represented a potential chink in the realm’s armour. Flanders, rich, powerful and located by the Anglo-Norman maritime heartland, held the potential to safeguard the status quo, or to tip the balance of power in western Europe.

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Chapter 2

M I L I T A R Y T RE A T I E S A N D D I P L O M A T I C C U L T U RE

A sequence of treaties lies at the heart of political relations between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world throughout this period. They bear witness to the indivisibility of the Anglo-Norman kings’ political interests in England and in their continental domains, and to their need for the support of the Flemish counts to secure the great cross-Channel realm. Records of formal diplomatic agreements between the kings of England and the counts of Flanders date from immediately after the Norman Conquest. Our earliest informant for such arrangements is the English historian William of Malmesbury, who mentions an annual money fief of 300 marks paid by William the Conqueror c.1066–71 to the counts Baldwin V and Baldwin VI of Flanders.1 Other chronicle evidence does suggest that large forces under the command of Flemish noblemen did indeed operate in England soon after 1066, possibly as a result of these agreements.2 We have more supporting evidence for Malmesbury’s claim that King William Rufus dispensed a similar money fief to Count Robert II.3 Yet, apart from Malmesbury’s testimony, little is known of these exchanges. Detailed analysis must await the dawn of the twelfth century and its more generous number of sources. The most important of these sources are the three surviving twelfthcentury Anglo-Flemish treaties: the treaties of 1101 and 1110 between King Henry I and Count Robert II and the treaty of 1163 between King Henry II and Count Thierry.4 The treaties were chirographs, of which 1

2 3 4

‘William had made frequent and generous acknowledgement of these services, paying 300 hundred marks of silver every year (so it is said) to his father-in-law in recognition of his loyalty and kinship.’ ‘His ille illustres crebro retributiones refuderat, omnibus, ut ferunt, annis trecentas argenti marcas pro fide et affinitate socero annumerans.’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 728. For discussion on Flemings in England in the late 1060s, see pp. 196–7 below. Actes, 1071–1128, p. 59; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, pp. 728–30. As discussed above, pp. 19–20. Diplomatic Documents, vol. 1, nos. 1–3, pp. 1–12; and the translation of the 1101 treaty by E. van Houts, ‘The Anglo-Flemish Treaty of 1101’, ANS 21 (1999), 169–174. For the sake of clarity I will use the article division established for the 1101 treaty by F. Vercauteren in Actes, 1071–1128, no. 30, pp. 88–95, and followed by Van Houts. For other editions, see the following. 1101: Foedera,

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture half was given to each prince, as is explicitly stated in the 1110 version. The English copies survive, though these are partially damaged and have been reconstructed only with the aid of early thirteenth-century copies in the Liber Niger Scaccarii.5 The documents are almost identical in their contents and were all sealed in the port town of Dover; the choice of the ‘sea-march’ of Dover as venue probably reflected the convention that agreements between independent rulers were concluded on a common border, though the selection of an English rather than a Flemish coastal town emphasises the primacy of the king.6 The treaties are military contracts dealing with the provision of an on-demand Flemish army in exchange for an annual money fief from the king. They appear at a time when the use of paid soldiers – mercenaries, muscle for hire, aristocratic allies bought with silver – was taken to a new level in northwestern Europe.7 The documents are among the earliest surviving pieces of record evidence for these developments (and indeed the first international treaties from England or Flanders that survive in the original),8 and they shed light both on the development of diplomatic practice and on medieval warfare, logistics and military recruitment at an international level. As military agreements, the Anglo-Flemish treaties are solidly located in the culture of political exchange in north-western Europe. Foreign troops had been hired by English rulers in times past: examples from

5 6

7

8

ed. T. Rymer (reprint, Farnborough, 1967); 1110: Actes, 1071–1128, no. 41, pp. 109–116; Foedera, pp. 2–3; 1163: Foedera, pp. 8–9; RAH II, vol. 1, no. 234, p. 375–6; Oorkonden, 1128–1191, vol. 1, no. 208, pp. 321–5. Public Records Office, Exchequer, Treasury of the Receipt, Diplomatic Documents, nos. 1–3 (E 30); Liber Niger Scaccarii, ed. T. Hearne (London, 1774), vol. 1, pp. 7–34. P. Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice in the Middle Ages (Hambledon and London, 2002), p. 53. See also J. Benham, ‘Anglo-French Peace Conferences in the Twelfth Century’, ANS 27 (2004), 52–67; P. Dalton, ‘Sites and Occasions of Peace Making in England and Normandy, c.900–c.1150’, HSJ 16 (2006), 12–18; J. Gillingham, ‘The Meetings of the Kings of France and England 1066–1204’, in Normandy and Its Neighbours, 900–1250, ed. D. Crouch and K. Thompson (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 17–42. More broadly on diplomatic meetings between rulers, J. Benham, Peacemaking in the Middle Ages: Principle and Practice (Manchester 2011), pp. 21–62, with reference to the Anglo-Flemish meetings pp. 60–1. See the classic article on the use of paid troops in early Anglo-Norman England by J. Prestwich, ‘War and Finance in the Anglo-Norman State’, TRHS 5th series, 4 (1954), 19–43; and for a continental perspective, S. Brown, ‘Military Service and Monetary Reward in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Medieval Warfare 1000–1300, ed. J. France (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 33–51. For an analytical overview of English treaties, see P. Chaplais, ‘English Diplomatic Documents to the end of Edwards III’s Reign’, in The Study of Medieval Records: Essays in Honour of Kathleen Major, ed. D. Bullough and R. Storey (Oxford, 1971), pp. 22–56. Fragments of a document outlining a treaty between King Aethelred II of England and Duke Richard I of Normandy in the early 990s survive, but it probably represents a record of the agreement rather than a formally witnessed treaty document akin to those from the twelfth century. Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice, pp. 36–41.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 the late Anglo-Saxon period include the ill-fated treaties between King Aethelred II (978–1016) and the Viking armies that were concluded in 994, 1002 and 1012, in which the king attempted to purchase friendship from an enemy.9 It is possible that the Anglo-Flemish treaty series itself originally began with the meeting at Dover in 1093 between Robert II and William Rufus and may even have started with an agreement during the reign of William the Conqueror. Contractual obligations to provide military assistance similar to those in the Anglo-Flemish treaty were laid out in a treaty of 1152 between Frederick I Barbarossa (king of Germany 1152, emperor 1155–90) and Duke Berthold IV of Z¨ahringen (1152– 86).10 Robert II’s father, Count Robert I of Flanders, had concluded an agreement with Emperor Alexios I Komnenos some ten years before the first surviving Dover treaty. During a meeting with the Byzantine emperor on his way back from Palestine, the count promised to provide Alexios with 500 mounted soldiers. These, together with their mounts, had arrived in Byzantium by 1091; the emperor’s daughter Anna Komnene reported that they served Alexios in Anatolia.11 Clearly the practice of organising military service abroad on such a scale was not foreign to the counts of Flanders. Two domestic treaties concluded between Anglo-Norman earls during King Stephen’s reign (William of Gloucester and Roger of Hereford, sometime between 1147 and 1150, and Ranulf of Chester and Robert of Leicester, sometime between 1143 and 1153) appear to be patterned on the Anglo-Flemish treaties.12 Their similarities suggest that they were informed by the remembered model of the earlier treaties, and intriguingly hint at the existence of a wider body of Anglo-Norman and Frankish diplomatic material that is now lost. We know that the Dover format was repeated in a number of other treaties that today survive only in summary form in narrative sources, administrative records and diplomatic correspondence. The military alliance of 1173 between Count Philip of Flanders and Henry II’s son, 9

10 11 12

ASC (C, D, E, F) 994, 1002, 1012. The text of the 994 treaty survives. See S. Keynes, ‘The Historical Context of the Battle of Maldon’, in The Battle of Maldon A.D. 991, ed. D. Scragg (Cambridge, MA, 1991), pp. 81–113, 91–3, 103–7. MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum, ed. L. Weiland (Hannover, 1893), vol. 1, no. 141, p. 199. Anna Komnene, Alexiad, trans. E. Sewter (Harmondsworth, 1969), pp. 229, 232–3, 252; F.-L. Ganshof, ‘Robert le Frison et Alexis Comn`ene’, Byzantion 31 (1961), 58–64, 71–74. R. Davis, ‘Treaty between William Earl of Gloucester and Roger Earl of Hereford’, in A Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton, ed. P. Barnes and C. Slade (Pipe Rolls Society 34, London, 1962), pp. 139–46, pl. xi; J. Round, Geoffrey of Mandeville: A Study of the Anarchy (London, 1892), pp. 379–83; F. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism 1066–1166, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1961), pp. 250–3, 285–8.

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture the Young King Henry, explicitly included the payment of an annual money fief to the count.13 It is clear that a formal document was drawn up; Count Philip was requested to surrender his copy in the 1175 peace settlement. At this conference the payment of the Anglo-Flemish money fief was also transferred from the Young King back to Henry II.14 The treaty was reaffirmed in 1180 and very probably once more in 1182; again, the 1180 agreement resembles the Dover treaties in that it specifies an annual money fief against the military services of 500 men.15 A handful of other, more ambiguous, diplomatic events can be pieced together from a variety of twelfth-century sources. Galbert of Bruges refers to a fief that Count Charles the Good received from Henry I in 1120 and remarks that it was re-granted to Count Thierry on his accession in 1128.16 The series of visits that Thierry paid to Henry II in 1154–6 coincides with the Flemish count’s annual revenues of £300 to £400 per annum recorded in the Pipe Rolls in the second half of the 1150s, and it is probable that a new treaty was drawn up at this time.17 In 1166 Count Philip began to negotiate a money fief with Henry II for his brother Count Matthew of Boulogne, who two years later provided Henry with military assistance and also began to enjoy revenues from English estates.18 Political and diplomatic exchanges were naturally necessary to ratify these arrangements and it is probable that some or all of them involved written treaties similar to those of the Dover series. In the Anglo-Flemish context, the cash-for-soldiers treaty formula came to an end with the reigns of Henry II and Count Philip. It was not renewed in the Anglo-Flemish treaty of 1197 between King Richard I and Count Baldwin IX against King Philip II of France, or in the confirmation of the agreement between the same Baldwin and the newly acceded King John in 1199.19 These describe a straightforward military 13 14 15 16

17

18 19

Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 44; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 1, pp. 46–7; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, p. 373. Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, pp. 398–9; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 83; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 72; RAH II, vol. 1, no. 326, pp. 38–40. Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines’, vol. 2, p. 11; RAH II, vol. 1, no. 439, pp. 230–1; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 246–7, 285–6; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 196–7, 267. Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 169. The earlier arrangement is also alluded to in ASC (E), 1120; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 730; ‘Chronicon Monasterii de Hyda’, p. 320. PR 2 Henry II (1155–6), pp. 24, 36, 38; PR 3 Henry II (1156–7), pp. 82–3, 89; PR 4 Henry II (1157–8), pp. 125, 136, 149, 152; PR 5 Henry II (1158–9), pp. 34, 51, 64. See discussion at p. 71 below for a treaty in 1156. Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, no. 112, pp. 542–6, no. 113, p. 550; PR 14 Henry II (1167–8), pp. 14, 60, 205; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 238. The English chirograph original of the 1197 treaty survives, as does the Flemish original for the 1199 treaty: Public Records Office, Exchequer, Treasury of the Receipt, Diplomatic Documents,

57

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 alliance against a common enemy and do not include the detailed clauses and obligations of the previous set of treaties. Only two points of policy are discussed: assurances of mutual assistance against Philip II, and the prohibition of each partner from concluding peace with the king of France without the consent of the other. Though the documents themselves do not mention it, however, Roger of Howden adds that the 1197 treaty featured a one-time payment of 5,000 silver marks by Richard and the reinstatement of a money fief.20 Cash transfers to Flanders are indeed recorded in contemporary Pipe Rolls.21 From a textual perspective it is striking how the detailed formulae of the 1101, 1110 and 1163 treaties, and presumably those of c.1156, c.1168, 1175, 1180 and 1182, are entirely bypassed in later agreements. Unlike the earlier treaties, which established detailed Flemish military obligations towards England, these later ones were constructed as more straightforward agreements between equals. In their brevity, the 1197 and 1199 documents clearly represent a new diplomatic direction. The treaty of 1213 between King John and Count Ferrand was a similarly perfunctory affair.22 The reason for the abandonment of the old formula is not clear, especially since a money fief remained as a binding agent in the political relationship. It could be that the military and financial details were hammered out in separate documents that no longer survive, or that the old treaty format simply came to be regarded as impractical and outdated. The formula had been born out of the military needs of the first decade of the twelfth century and then resurrected in circumstances specific to the early part of Henry II’s reign, as a deliberate harking back to the legacy of his grandfather. Richard and the new Hainautian dynasty may not have felt any need to return to it. In 1197 King Philip II had expanded his lordship into northern France, and his territorial ambitions in the Artois–Picardy region came directly into conflict with those of Count Baldwin; in these circumstances of heightened military tension, neither Baldwin nor Richard may have wished to limit the scope of their alliance to particular regions. While, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in the spirit of exploring new forms of service, it might have been desirable to establish an agreed scenario for Flemish military mobilisation to England and northern France, that imperative may have been weaker

20 21 22

no. 5 (E 30); Rijksarchief Bergen, Tr´esorerie, Box I (1176–1249), no. 10. For modern editions, see De oorkonden der graven van Vlaanderen (1191 – aanvang 1206), ed. W. Prevenier (Recueil des actes des princes belges, Brussels, 1964–71), vol. 1, nos. 66, 115, pp. 144–51, 258–62; Diplomatic Documents, no. 7, pp. 18–20. Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 4, p. 20. PR 8 Richard I (1196–7), pp. 62, 164; PR 9 Richard I (1197–8), p. 172. Rotuli Chartarum, p. 197; Cartellieri, Philip II August, vol. 4, pp. 380, 398.

58

Military treaties and diplomatic culture a hundred years later. By this time, generations of paid soldiers from the southern Low Countries had already made their contribution to AngloNorman wars. The once-fresh patterns and structures of military service and recruitment that the Dover treaties reflect had passed into common practice. THE 1101 AND 1110 TREATIES Standing right at the beginning of the English money fief tradition, the Dover series opens a unique window on the mechanics of late eleventhcentury and early twelfth-century warfare. The political context of their drafting is well known, and has been explored by successive generations of scholars, but the organisational features of the treaties have not elicited a great deal of commentary. Rather, their main function has been viewed as the denial of Flemish support to the king’s political enemies.23 AngloNorman and Angevin money fief agreements in the twelfth century certainly were important in diplomatic alliance-building,24 but it is by no means obvious that the Dover treaties’ military component was secondary or superfluous. Sources do suggest a Flemish intervention in AngloNorman affairs during this period. A charter of Count Robert II dated to 1094–1102 refers to military aid the count was giving ‘to the king of England against the Normans’; also in 1102 a band of what must have been remnants of continental mercenary troops, Flemings named among them, robbed the monastery of Peterborough.25 Insofar as the broader context of English international money fiefs in the Middle Ages may be taken as a guideline, the procurement of military assistance was always their primary purpose.26 The Anglo-Flemish treaties serve as evidence for the organisation and conduct of medieval warfare in an international context. Paid foreign soldiers, as men reliant on their employer for their livelihood, often proved more reliable than the ruler’s own noblemen during an internal dispute. In 1101, at the beginning of our textual tradition, the king of England 23 24 25 26

´ Nip, ‘Political Relations’, 166; Vercauteren-Desmet, ‘Etude sur les rapports politiques’, pp. 418– 23. As will be discussed more in detail in the next chapter. Actes, 1071–1128, p. 59; ASC (E) 1102; Hugh Candidus, Chronicle, p. 87. As demonstrated by B. Lyon, ‘The Money Fief under the English Kings, 1066–1485’, EHR 66 (1951), 161–93, and see also E. Oksanen, ‘The Anglo-Flemish Treaties and Flemish Soldiers in England 1101–1163’, in Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. J. France (Boston and Leiden, 2008), pp. 261–73. On similar Anglo-Frankish agreements during this period, see also M. Chibnall, ‘Anglo-French Relations in the Works of Orderic Vitalis’, in Documenting the Past: Essays in Medieval History Presented to George Peddy Cuttino, ed. J. Hamilton and P. Bradley (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 5–19, 17.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 had found himself in a precarious position. He had come to the throne suddenly and had reason to be concerned about the Anglo-Norman aristocracy’s reaction should conflict break out between the Conqueror’s heirs.27 In a strategy followed by beleaguered potentates throughout history, Henry I looked abroad for an additional source of fighting men. The Dover treaty must be seen as a key element of Henry’s foreign policy at the most crucial juncture of his reign. The cultural context, political practicalities and administrative traditions of the times informed the reception of the Anglo-Flemish treaties but the texts themselves were primarily structured to serve a practical military purpose. The Dover treaties are composed of some twenty terms and conditions detailing the military obligations of the count of Flanders, along with a number of political considerations. To use as reference the oldest exemplar, the treaty concluded on 10 March 1101 between King Henry I and Count Robert II: in exchange for his £500 per annum, Count Robert II was required to supply, within forty days of a summons, 1,000 knights or mounted soldiers (milites, equites) to England or Normandy, or 500 mounted soldiers to Maine (§§2, 10, 14).28 Each of these soldiers was to be equipped with three horses, and the count was to lead them in person in the service of the king. The count would be excused from appearing in person only due to illness, loss of land or his pre-existing obligations to the kings of France and Germany; in such a case, the men would be led by the Flemish guarantors named in the document (§§4, 17). The king had the right to demand the services of the Flemish force in the event of a rebellion by English barons, if an enemy invaded England, or to support an expedition to Normandy or Maine (§§4, 5, 10). Practical details of troop transport and provision are discussed: specific port towns in Flanders at which the soldiers were to assemble are named, the responsibilities for arranging their shipping are set out, and it is established that once the Flemish soldiers were in England the king was to bear the burden of providing for them (§§2, 8). For his part, the count was to allow free passage through his lands to all men intending to enter the king’s service, as well as to refrain from offering refuge to the latter’s enemies (§§7, 9).29 27 28

29

Strevett, ‘The Anglo-Norman Civil War’, 161–3. A sense of relative scale is useful here. A medieval pound (£) was an accounting unit consisted of 20 shillings (s) or 240 pennies (d), with the silver penny the only form of physical currency. As a rough-and-ready guide of the relative value of the money, in the twelfth century the daily wage of English agricultural labourer, servant, minor ecclesiastical official, or foot soldier was about 1–2d. P. Latimer, ‘Wages in Late Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-Century England’, HSJ 9 (1997), 188–99. Diplomatic Documents, no. 1, pp. 1–4.

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture The 1110 treaty remains substantially the same. Significant changes consist of the reduction of the fief and the terms of service to 400 marks (£266) and 500 men (1110: §§2, 20); the insertion of Count Eustace III of Boulogne as a mediator; the inclusion of Countess Clemence of Flanders as a co-ratifier of the treaty in return for a portion of the fief (1110: §§17, 18, 20); and the removal of specific leadership duties from the guarantors, although the guarantors are still named and requested to uphold the agreement.30 The new treaty fulfils the same functions as its predecessor of 1101, although the adjustments to its clauses make one wonder if it represents a further refinement of the deal: the total sum owed is lower and less onerous as a recurring expense, but the pay per head is higher and perhaps more realistic, and the involvement of Eustace and Clemence must have been intended to secure the agreement’s implementation. From a practical perspective it is immediately apparent that the English money fief could not possibly have corresponded to the full value of an army of mounted and armoured soldiers. Sources contemporaneous to the first Dover treaties from the southern Low Countries and northern France do not exist, but more information on military expenses becomes available from the mid- and late twelfth century. Their general order of magnitude can be assumed to hold also for the earlier period. The bottom line is that outfitting a heavy cavalryman in the twelfth century was a capital-heavy investment, armour and warhorses being some of the most expensive goods on the market. The central item of knightly equipment was the mail-coat, a protective vestment made of interlinked rings woven into a tunic, covering the body from the head to the knees. By the late twelfth century it cost two pounds. Henry II’s Assize of Arms of 1181 added that everyone holding a knight’s fee should also own a helmet, a shield and a lance.31 Horses, of which the treaty required a set of three per miles, were even more expensive, their market value ranging from a couple of pounds to several dozen, based no doubt on the animal’s quality; a horse good enough for the march was less expensive than a destrier fully trained for battlefield use.32 It is clear that the money fief that the count of Flanders received, be it 400 marks or £500, would not have begun to cover the costs of fully equipping hundreds of cavalry 30 31

32

Diplomatic Documents, no. 2, pp. 5–8. Rotuli Curiae Regis, ed. F. Palgrave (London, 1835), vol. 1, p. 51; Select Charters, ed. W. Stubbs, revised H. Davis, 9th edn, revised (Oxford, 1921), p. 183; R. Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 252–4. History of William Marshal, vol. 1, p. 216; PR 31 Henry I (1129–30), p. 100; R. Davis, ‘Warhorses of the Normans’, ANS 10 (1987), 77–8; Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare, pp. 25–7. More generally on medieval warhorses, see R. Davis, The Medieval Warhorse (London, 1989).

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 soldiers, let alone those incurred in maintaining them for the duration of a lengthy war. The Anglo-Flemish money fiefs do correspond, however, to the contemporary wartime wages of paid soldiers for a standard period of service. The median campaign indemnity for soldiers in England c.1100 was roughly 6d per day per head, or the same as the rate of scutage (the commutation of military service in return for cash payments), rising to 8d over the course of Henry I’s reign.33 The fief in the 1101 treaty works out to 10s (120d) per soldier sent to England or Normandy, or one pound (240d) to Maine. The treaty focuses on the count’s responsibilities for muster within a set period of time (forty days). If the period of forty days, which was also a common term of annual military service,34 is taken as the length of time during which the count of Flanders would be personally responsible for the soldiers’ expenses, the daily rate per head in England and in Normandy/Maine works out to 3d/6d. The numbers were reduced in the renewal of the treaty in 1110 to 500 soldiers in England and Normandy, and 250 soldiers in Maine, with the money fief corresponding to 400 silver marks annually.35 It is unknown why the count’s obligations for an expedition to Maine were less substantial; perhaps because Maine was further away, or simply as the outcome of haggling during the initial negotiations. Probably reflecting the rising costs of warfare, the rate of pay per soldier thus would be a slightly improved 10s 8d (128d) per soldier to England and Normandy, and £1 1s 4d (256d) to Maine. The financial logic of the treaties is thus in line with the costs of assembling and covering the initial wages of a pre-existing and preequipped Flemish force. The treaties clearly do not stipulate the wholesale creation or long-term maintenance of an army, but rather outsource the recruitment and initial management of an army to the count of Flanders. The agreements specify that, when summoned to England or to Maine, the Flemish force would become part of Henry’s household (familia) and thereafter be provided for by the king (§§8, 14). When the force was summoned to Normandy, the count would be required to maintain his men, but only for the first eight days of the campaign, after which they would stay at the king’s expense (§11). The variance in the financial 33

34 35

P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. M. Jones (Oxford, 1984), pp. 79, 94. Charter evidence from later in Henry I’s reign speaks for the rate of 8d: RRAN, vol. 2, 1100–1135, no. 685. C. Hollister, The Military Organisation of Norman England (Oxford, 1965), pp. 208–9, 285–6, argues for 6d as the prior rate. Hollister, Military Organization, pp. 89–100; C. Hollister, ‘The Annual Term of Military Service in England’, Medievalia et Humanistica 13 (1960), 40–7. Diplomatic Documents, no. 2, pp. 5–8.

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture burden may have reflected Henry’s expectations – which turned out to be correct – about where military action was likely to take place. The Anglo-Flemish treaties also provide insights into the size of armies and the organisation of military service in the twelfth century. Even without taking into account the animal handlers, servants and other followers who would accompany the soldiers, the total number of armed and armoured men outlined in the treaties is very large. The 1101 and 1163 treaties mention 1,000 milites; the 1110 and 1180 treaties specify 500. These represent considerable fighting forces for the period. An initial comparison to, say, Duke William’s invasion force in 1066, an estimated 14,000 men, might make the Flemish obligation appear inconsequential. William, however, brought only between 7,000 and 8,000 men to Hastings – the rest were attached to the naval force, or left behind to man the beachhead at Pevensey – and, of these, just 2,000 to 3,000 were mounted soldiers. Many were allies and mercenaries from outside Normandy itself, including a significant number from the southern Low Countries.36 The total servitium debitum of England in the Cartae Baronum of 1166, an inquest commissioned by Henry II, was calculated to be 5,000 to 6,000 knights, but this is only a theoretical figure and in practice it is unlikely that Henry would want to (or even could) summon such a number at once. In 1157 he called up 2,000 knights for his expedition to Wales, and in 1159 he allowed services owed to him to be commuted through scutage.37 Thus 500 to 1,000 Flemish milites would have been a considerable addition to even the largest of armies. Was this force too considerable for a county the size of Flanders to raise? As a social and military class the Flemish knighthood in the early twelfth century amounted to some 1,500 men; despite overall population growth, the number seems to have remained static into the thirteenth century.38 Army sizes of around 500 or 1,000 knights are often encountered in twelfth-century Flanders. In Herman of Tournai’s account of the Flemish invasion of Normandy in 1117, Count Baldwin VII is stated 36

37

38

B. Bachrach, ‘Some Observations on the Military Administration of the Norman Conquest’, ANS 8 (1985), 2–5; E. Wheeler, ‘The Battle of Hastings: Math, Myth and Melee’, Military Affairs 52 (1988), 131–4. The Cartae Baronum is in The Red Book of the Exchequer, vol. 1, pp. 186–445; for interpretation and discussion, see J. Holt, ‘The Introduction of Knight Service in England’, ANS 6 (1984), 89–106. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, pp. 193, 202. J. Beeler, Warfare in England 1066–1189 (New York, 1966), pp. 265–7; Contamine, War, pp. 52, 78–80; J. France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (London, 1999), pp. 128–9. On the financial side of the Anglo-Norman war machine, see also Prestwich, ‘War and Finance’, 19–43. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 158–9; E. Warlop, The Flemish Nobility before 1300, 4 vols. (Kortrijk, 1975–6), vol. 1, p. 100.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 to have brought with him a force of 500 knights.39 Robert of Torigni, the abbot of Mont St Michel in Normandy, wrote that in 1144 Thierry brought 1,400 horsemen to assist Count Geoffrey in the final phase of his conquest of the duchy.40 Count Philip’s military capacity seems to have remained roughly of the same order of magnitude as that of his predecessors; according to Gilbert of Mons, he typically levied cavalry forces of between 300 and 1,000 milites.41 In a letter dated to 1167, John of Salisbury notes that the count of Flanders (either Thierry or his son Philip) had raised 1,000 knights to subdue a burgher rebellion in Rheims. The rebellion occurred around the time of the unification of Flanders with Vermandois on Count Philip’s succession to the county through his wife, Elizabeth of Vermandois. Raising an unusually large army may have served the purpose of stamping Philip’s authority on knights and nobles from the new territories.42 The army that Philip sent to Henry II in 1187, which, according to Gervase of Canterbury, was several hundred men strong, probably corresponds to the 500 milites Philip had promised in the 1180 treaty.43 While these examples cannot be taken for exact figures, the known sizes of mounted field forces from both England and the territorial principalities of northern France in this period generally range in the low to mid-hundreds.44 King John’s muster roll of c.1215 provides very specific information on royal forces of the same order of magnitude. In addition to the king’s household knights it lists the names of some 375 individual knights, the majority of whom hailed from Flanders.45 A levy of several hundred knights was clearly within the county’s capacity. In sum, in terms both of per capita wages and of the sizes of the armed forces suggested, the figures in the treaties are representative of the military and financial realities of armed service in the twelfth century. Some questions, however, remain on the logistics and organisation 39 40 41

42 43 44

45

Herman of Tournai, ‘Liber de Restauratione’, p. 284. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 148. Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, pp. 134, 171, 181. Gilbert was the chancellor of Hainaut and a confidant of Count Baldwin V (later to become Count Baldwin VIII of Flanders), and was in a position to be well informed about contemporary military matters. L. Napran, Chronicle of Hainaut (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. xxxiii–xxxvii. Letters of John of Salisbury, vol. 2, no. 223, p. 384. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 347. J. Prestwich, ‘The Military Household of the Norman Kings’, EHR 96 (1981), 1–35, 11. For examples see OV, vol. 5, p. 246, vol. 6, pp. 194, 200, 236, 482. The sizes of accompanying infantry forces and of non-knightly cavalry have merited even vaguer mentions from chroniclers, though infantry forces remained an important component of eleventh- and twelfth-century armies: J. Gillingham, ‘Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages’, in Medieval Warfare 1000–1300, ed. J. France (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 299–312, 312. But this need not concern us here, since the Anglo-Flemish treaties explicitly deal only with the provision of mounted knights. Church, ‘The Earliest English Muster Roll’, 1–17.

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture of Flemish recruitment. It is noteworthy that in the 1110 treaty all the figures from the previous treaty were halved. Perhaps the renegotiation of Flemish obligations down to 500 knights better represented Robert’s military capacity at that point. The contractual obligations of the AngloFlemish treaties most closely fit the practice of raising a host, or a large body of soldiers levied by the Flemish count for a foreign expedition.46 The numbers specified seem to have corresponded to the upper limit of the comital host, even straining its capacity. The medieval host was not, however, the only important source of fighting power: throughout the ages, mercenaries and other paid recruits provided a substantial supplement to levies.47 The advantages of such soldiers were numerous. Hiring mercenaries to fill the ranks of an army that was to be moved abroad and sworn into another prince’s service allowed for greater flexibility, and it is hard to imagine that the counts would have been complaisant at the prospect of their knights discharging all their military service in England instead of to the counts themselves. The use of paid fighters would not tax the county’s reserves of service or remove landed nobility from their estates, problems of conflicting obligations that might arise if English fiefs or property were granted to the Flemish combatants were bypassed, and hired mercenaries were easier to replace than home-grown vassals who had died in battle. The count most probably recruited mercenaries directly or otherwise encouraged them to enter into Anglo-Norman service as a matter of standard military practice. In all three extant treaties this is implied by article 7, which specifically states that the count of Flanders was to allow free passage through his lands and harbours to anyone wishing to serve under the king of England. It was also made explicit that the count of Flanders would not be held directly responsible for any offence his soldiers might cause to the king: he was merely ‘not to have faith’ in those who misbehaved (§9). This clause distanced the soldiers from the count; they would enter into Henry I’s service as stipendiarii rather than as vassals on loan.48 It is of central importance that, by extending the 46 47

48

J. Verbruggen, ‘Military Service in the County of Flanders’, trans. K. DeVries, Journal of Military History 2 (2004), 17–37, especially 18–23. No comprehensive work on mercenaries and paid men currently exists for this period; see, however, Brown, ‘Military Service’, pp. 31–55, for a more general look at paid military service. In the English context, see Hollister, Military Organisation, pp. 167–86; Holt, ‘The Introduction of Knight Service’, 89–106; M. Prestwich, ‘Money and Mercenaries in English Medieval Armies’, in England and Germany in the High Middle Ages, ed. A. Haverkamp and H. Vollrath (Oxford, 1996), pp. 129–50. ‘Et is aliquis homo comitis Rotberti regi Henrico vel hominibus suis forisfecerit et rectitudinum pro comite Rotberto regi Henrico vel hominibus eius facere noluerit, in comite vel hominibus eius fiduciam non habebit nisi concensu regis’. Diplomatic Documents, no. 1, p. 2. As noted by Brown, ‘Military Service’, pp. 44–5.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 scope of the treaty beyond the personal service of the count of Flanders, the treaties became a tool with which the Anglo-Norman king could tap into the military potential of the entire Low Countries region. The Flemish comital administration, one of the most sophisticated in western Europe, was well equipped to meet the challenges posed by the obligations set forth in the agreements.49 The treaties themselves suggest that a sturdy framework of military administration must have existed in Flanders for organising recruitment and transport of soldiers within the period of forty days. The 1101 treaty named from each side twelve guarantors, uniformly high-ranking nobles and royal or comital officials (§17). Their role was to serve as witnesses and, in the case of a dispute, to mediate between the two rulers. Should the mediations fail and either ruler renege on the agreement, the guarantors were each to give 100 silver marks to the wronged party, or else place themselves into his captivity. In addition, Robert’s guarantors were to lead the knights that the Flemish count had promised to provide to the king. In the 1101 treaty roughly half of the Flemish guarantors were castellans, or comital officials in charge of the military, governmental and judicial rights of the Flemish castellanies. The rest were otherwise associated with comital administration or were powerful local lords in their own right.50 The role of the Flemish guarantors was linked to two aspects of the agreement: its enforcement and the management of the Flemish military obligations. The former issue is more problematic and illustrates how enforcement is a perennially thorny issue in all political agreements, especially ones that straddle political boundaries. The king of England lacked the direct capacity to compel the count to meet his obligations, and there were few direct incentives for the guarantors to make good on their obligations in the case of dispute. One rare twelfth-century example of how treaty enforcement might be managed is recorded by Roger of Howden: after Philip II of France broke the treaty of Louviers of 1196, Richard I seized the English properties of the abbots of Cluny, St Denis, Marmoutier and La Charit´e, who had acted as sureties for the agreement. At other times aristocratic Anglo-Frankish sureties were chosen because of their connections to key cross-border kinship groups in northern France.51 But the Flemish sureties do not seem to have been 49 50 51

Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 77–89. R. Monier, Les institutions centrales du comt´e de Flandre de la fin du IXe si`ecle a` 1384 (Paris, 1944), pp. 45–53; van Houts, ‘The Anglo-Flemish Treaty of 1101’, 172–3. Diplomatic Documents, no. 6, pp. 16–18; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 4, pp. 4–5. Note, however, that the treaty text itself does not name the abbots as sureties, and if Howden is correct they must have been established separately. On the use of sureties, see also Benham, Peacemaking, pp. 165–70; D. Power, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge,

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture specifically picked for their Anglo-Norman ties, and none of the Flemish guarantor barons (save for Robert of B´ethune in 1163) is known to have held estates in England that might be held for ransom. It is interesting that no Flemish institution known to have held estates in England, such as the abbey of St Peter’s of Ghent, which was closely connected with the comital family, was associated with the treaties. Viewed narrowly from the perspective of treaty enforcement, the inclusion of the baronial guarantors has an artificial feel to it. The Flemish guarantors are more directly linked, however, with the organisational aspects of the agreement.52 Their places of origin reveal a significant geographical concentration in the central parts of the county. While the historical core of the comital territories lay in the northeastern third of Flanders, the regions in the far south and south-west of the southern Low Countries, especially Flemish Artois and the minor counties of Boulogne, Guines and St Pol, were areas over which the count had much less direct control.53 Through the late eleventh and twelfth centuries they were an important source of fighting men in AngloNorman service: Flemish tenants-in-chief encountered in Domesday Book, for instance, predominantly originated from this region.54 In the central and coastal areas of the county, where these zones overlapped, local authority competed with comital administration. The guarantors featured in the Anglo-Flemish treaties were often based in castellan towns, which in themselves represented a point of mediation between comital and local power. They were in an excellent position to organise and channel mercenary activity. Moreover, these towns were centres of trade and travel. Troops could have been raised not only from Flanders, but also from the neighbouring regions of Germany, Picardy and Ponthieu. The guarantors, as either magnates of the first rank or comital military officers, would all have been men with access to a pool of potential recruits from which to provide fighting men. Such men had the capacity to raise levies in the count’s name, or even in their own, as well as to organise the large-scale recruitment of mercenary soldiers. A similar pattern of geographical origin is visible among the captains of the over 300 Flemish household knights who served King John during the civil war

52 53

54

2004), pp. 250–62; A. Kosto, Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order and the Written Word, 1000–1200 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 121–57, especially 124–33. Hitherto discussed in Oksanen, ‘Anglo-Flemish Treaties’, pp. 264–5. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 16–20, 80–5. For political studies of the southern principalities, see Lambert of Ardres, The History, pp. 25–33; Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies. DP, pp. 38–41. For more discussion, see pp. 138–40, 186–7 below.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 in 1215, suggesting that these considerations still held a hundred years later.55 The outlines of the earliest Dover treaties (and, one may presume, of several other agreements of which only the barest outlines survive to the present day) were informed by a multitude of practical military and political considerations. Their elaborate clauses sought to foster a legal and political climate in which military obligations were more likely to be met. The stipulation of guarantors tackled the problem of enforcement by involving members of the Flemish nobility beyond the count himself. Perhaps the treaties even anticipated the possibility of an independently minded guarantor sending a force to meet his obligations, should the count renege on his duties. The early twelfth-century Anglo-Flemish treaties were straightforward military agreements, much concerned with the logistical challenges posed by a large war effort. But there is, of course, considerable danger involved in taking a purely reductionist approach to any treaty document. Diplomacy feeds on convenience, precedent, flexibility and symbolism. There is something about the Anglo-Flemish agreements, often concluded in the same locale and adhering to, or referencing, previous encounters, that reminds one of modern-day political photo-ops, staged encounters more concerned with creating a polished image of general goodwill than with precise minutiae. As the twelfth century progressed, such ceremonial occasions were to become even more important features of cross-Channel relations. THE TREATY OF 1163 Despite appearing nearly identical to its predecessors, the document prepared for King Henry II and Count Thierry on 19 March 1163 belongs to a different species of diplomatic contract. Textually the new treaty is a very close copy of the 1101 agreement, even more so than that of 1110, with the majority of the clauses either unchanged or expanded in only very minor way. A single clause (1163: §19) was added, noting the fidelity owed by the count and countess of Flanders to the king of England. Faint echoes of formulae belonging to the new tradition of Roman law that was beginning to trickle up to north-western Europe during this period can be detected in the inserted language, but on the whole the treaty overwhelmingly takes after its textual forebears.56 55 56

Church, ‘The Earliest English Muster Roll’, 7–17. Notably the following standard formula: ‘Et si regi vel Henrico filio suo placuerit, comitissa Flandrensis assecurabit regi vel Henrico filio suo fide sua pro feodo suo predicto quod ad omne posse suum consilio suo et precibus suis faciet comitem omnes predictas conventiones integer

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture If the political situation in 1110 still resembled that of 1101, the same case cannot be made for the 1163 treaty. The original treaty’s clauses on military service in France seem out of place. Normandy and Maine are mentioned, as before, but not Anjou, Poitou or Aquitaine. Between 1163 and 1166 Henry focused on settling matters in Britain, not on the Continent.57 Count Thierry left on crusade to the Holy Land in 1164, about a year after the treaty was concluded.58 Preparations for a crusade could be revised or delayed, and we do not know what kind of timetable Thierry had in mind in 1163, but such an expedition was nevertheless a major undertaking. Henry would have been well aware that Thierry would not be available to personally honour his obligations in the years immediately ahead. The money fief in the 1163 treaty, 500 marks for 1,000 milites, is much lower than its predecessors and does not reflect in like manner the contemporary costs of military action. It contracted Thierry to provide an army to Henry at a daily wage of only 2d per head for a campaign to England or Normandy, or only a quarter of the average daily pay for knights.59 The most curious aspect of the treaty is the inclusion of Countess Sybil of Flanders, King Henry II’s paternal aunt. She was assigned a fifth of the money fief (100 marks), did homage for it, and promised that ‘to the utmost extent of her power she will by her counsel and prayers cause the count to keep fully all the aforementioned agreements and faithfully perform the services in good faith without any treachery or ill intent’ (1163: §§17, 19). As King Henry’s close paternal relative, Sybil was well suited to act as a mediator between the two ruling houses. During Thierry’s absences from Flanders on crusade she had acted as regent, and could be expected to serve as a competent partner in a diplomatic and military contract.60 But in 1163 this could no longer be the case; Sybil had entered the monastery of St Lazarus in Bethania during her and Thierry’s joint pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1157–9.61 It is impossible that she could have been directly involved with military matters in Flanders or in England, much less able to do personal homage for her fief. The old formula seems altogether impractical and curiously out-dated.

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tenere et servitia fideliter facere per bonam fidem sine omni dolo et malo ingenio’ (my emphasis). Diplomatic Documents, no. 3, pp. 11–12. This treaty has been previously discussed in summary form in Oksanen, ‘Anglo-Flemish Treaties’, pp. 268–9. On the influence of Roman law upon English legal formulae during this period, see A. Duggan, ‘Roman, Canon and Common Law in Twelfth-Century England: The Council of Northampton (1164) Re-examined’, Historical Research 83 (2010), 379–408. 58 Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, pp. 193, 205, 220. Warren, Henry II, pp. 96–101. 60 Nicholas, ‘Countesses’, pp. 121–3. Latimer, ‘Wages’, 202. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, pp. 193, 205; N. Huyghebaert, ‘Une comtesse de Flandre a` B´ethanie’, Les cahiers de Saint-Andr´e 21, 2 (1964), 5–15.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Despite the seemingly illogical contents of the agreement, the stipulations set out in it and in the earlier Dover treaties seem to have provided a general blueprint for Anglo-Flemish military organisation that retained its importance throughout the twelfth century. Perhaps the most striking clause in the treaties is the one dealing with a possible conflict between the kings of England and France: ‘And if during that time King Louis invades Normandy against the king or Henry his son, Count Thierry or Count Philip shall go to Louis king of France with only twenty soldiers and all the other [980] aforesaid soldiers shall remain with the king or Henry his son in his service and fealty (§12).’62 Something like this took place in 1187, when Count Philip sent an army to Normandy to serve Henry II, but a little later in the same year appeared himself in the entourage of King Philip II. Whatever the practicalities of military service as established in 1163, the reiteration of this clause establishes the principle of Flemish military support as belonging to Henry, not Louis VII. This was a powerful statement. A new idea is always harder to sell than the reintroduction of an old one. It is likely that diplomatic dissimulation, the desire to create the illusion that nothing had really changed on the diplomatic front from the early years of the century – perhaps for the benefit of Louis, perhaps for that of the Anglo-Norman and Flemish barons – accounts in part for the document’s anachronistic adherence to its predecessors. Read literally, the treaty’s contents seem remarkably fictitious, but the fiction served an important purpose. The primary significance of the 1163 treaty, moreover, seems not to have lain in its military– financial details. The feature that most stands out is its status as a crossgenerational document, which confirms the past relationship between the senior rulers and predicts a future in which their heirs would inherit and maintain their fathers’ alliance. At every instance the treaty includes not only Thierry and Henry II, but also their heirs Philip and the Young King Henry. Moreover, it refers to the homage that Count Thierry had done to the current king’s grandfather King Henry I, presumably c.1128, and records that, in continuance of this tradition, his son Philip likewise had now done homage to Henry II (1163: §18). In 1163 Count Thierry was an ageing man, probably in his early sixties. The timing of the treaty makes sense: the planning of yet another, perhaps final, crusade to the Holy Land would have been conducted in the shadow 62

‘Et si illo tempore rex Philippus super regem Henricum in Normanniam intraverit, Robertus comes ad Philippum regem ibit cum xx militibus tantum et alii predicti milites remanebunt cum rege Henrico in servitio et fidelitate sua.’ Diplomatic Documents, no. 1, p. 3. In the 1110 treaty this was changed, according to the halving of all the set figures, to a retinue of ten soldiers and an army of 490 soldiers. Ibid., no. 2, p. 6.

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture of Thierry’s possible death. Both he and Henry must have considered it prudent to ensure that cordial relations be maintained after the old count’s departure. Moreover, the 1163 treaty represented a reaffirmation of the Anglo-Flemish relationship after the diplomatic crisis that followed the marriage of Matthew, Thierry’s younger son, to Mary of Boulogne – an arrangement which had been engineered by Henry, which provoked Thierry to invade Boulogne and which, judging from the Pipe Roll evidence, had led to the loss of the Flemish treaty fief c.1160.63 The treaty of 1163 was a new beginning, introducing a younger generation of English and Flemish rulers into the cross-Channel relationship. The document at once anticipated the future and stood as an act of commemoration, appealing to the past to reinforce the alliance between the two realms. Political treaties are by nature pragmatic things, reflecting the needs of their creators. There would be little reason faithfully to re-create an ancient document unless the very act of re-creation held significance. In the early years of his reign Henry II was striving to associate his government administratively and politically with that of his grandfather, Henry I.64 The Anglo-Flemish treaty fits into that programme. It was very probably a nearly exact copy of an agreement made earlier, between Henry II’s accession in 1154 and Thierry’s departure with Sybil to the Holy Land in 1157; that document in turn was modelled after the 1101 pact. Its most probable date is 1156, when Thierry and Sybil visited Henry in Rouen. The treaty would have coincided with Pipe Roll payments made to Thierry at a time when Countess Sybil was still actively involved in governing Flanders.65 Retaining the clauses concerning Sybil in the 1163 treaty – though she was no longer in a position personally to fulfil her obligations as mediator – still served to reinforce the bonds of close kinship between the two dynasties. If the 1163 agreement was a general alliance, rather than a specific military contract, why was it necessary to redraft and reseal an old text? The answer must lie in the recognised legal and symbolic identity possessed by the physical documents themselves. The 1110 treaty is already referred to in a clause dealing with possible conflict over meeting the agreed obligations: the reconciliation process begins with one side taking its chirograph copy to the designated mediator (1110: §17).66 Later, 63

64 65 66

Lambert of Waterlos, ‘Annales Cameracenses’, p. 533; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, p. 303; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 207; Sigebert of Gembloux, ‘Sigeberti Gemblacensis Chronica cum Continuationibus’, p. 397. For discussion of the Pipe Rolls, see pp. 100–1 below. G. White, Restoration and Reform, 1153–65 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 127–8. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 186; PR 2 Henry I (1155–6), pp. 16, 37, 39, 40, 65; The Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 659. Diplomatic Documents, no. 2, p. 7.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 during the peace process in 1175, Count Philip was required to surrender to Henry II his copy of the earlier treaty with Young King Henry.67 Naturally, documents such as these constitute proof of a political event. But the fact that a supplanted treaty needed to be destroyed suggests that they were more than that. Its creation, reception and surrender were significant acts. One must not become too concerned with only the documentary evidence of the transaction: the ceremony that surrounded the treaty, and the reaffirmation of friendship it represented, were just as important.68 It was not simply a text, but an object encapsulating the Anglo-Flemish relationship on a symbolic, totemic level, and granting it the form and depth the alliance would otherwise lack. In 1163 the old Dover treaty, by now a venerable, emblematic institution, had become a vehicle for re-enacting the historical partnership between England and Flanders. HOM AGE, AM BIGUITY AND ALLIANCE The most direct evidence for how the Anglo-Flemish political relationship was conceived at various times comes from the treaty documents themselves, as well as – with some limitations – the narrative sources that mention diplomatic exchanges. The evolution of the language in this corpus offers us a lens for examining the relationships and expectations that were prevalent at different times. Its earliest phase is obscure. Since no first-hand evidence of the eleventh-century Anglo-Flemish agreements remains, we must content ourselves with William of Malmesbury’s short remark that they contained a gift or a fief (munus) of 300 marks ‘in recognition of . . . faithfulness and loyalty’ (fides et affinitas).69 From the beginning of the twelfth century, however, the textual evidence can be organised around three themes: the role of fidelity in the treaties, the 67 68

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Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 83; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 72. For an introduction to medieval demonstrative ritual, see G. Althoff, ‘The Variability of Rituals in the Middle Ages’, in Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. G. Althoff, J. Fried and P. Geary (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 71–87; Althoff, Family, Friends and Followers: Political and Social Bonds in Early Medieval Europe, trans. C. Carroll (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 136–9; and see also J. Le Goff, ‘The Symbolic Ritual of Vassalage’, Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chigaco, 1980), pp. 237–87, although this work must be read in the light of the subsequent rejection of the outdated ‘feudal’ framework of medieval sociopolitical relations. For the relationship between text and symbolism, and for the use of objects as symbolic representations of events or relationships, see M. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edn (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1993), especially pp. 254–60; E. van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Basingstoke, 1999), pp. 93–120. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, pp. 728–30. Affinitas may also be read as ‘kinship’, and Malmesbury was clearly alluding to the family relationship between William the Conqueror and Count Baldwin V.

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture friendship alliance that the English and Flemish dynasties shared, and the not fully equal nature of their relationship. First, in the 1101 document (called conventio) the soldiers that Count Robert sends to serve King Henry must pledge themselves to Henry’s service (fiducia facient) and owe him their fidelity (fidelitas) (§3, §12). Robert’s personal fidelity is pledged to King Philip I of France alone, from whom Robert holds the pre-existing fief of Flanders (§1). In contrast, Robert’s help to Henry is just faithfully, as a friend (per fidem juvabit sicut suum amicum) (§10). Second, in addition to the periods of service stipulated in the treaty, Robert may do additional military service out of amicitia, a type of ritualised friendship alliance (§16).70 Friendship is also how the relationship between Henry and Countess Clemence, who is included as a participant in the 1110 treaty, is described (1110: §18). William of Malmesbury, writing only a few years after the events he described, likewise called the rapprochement of 1120 between Henry I and Count Charles a renewal of friendship (amicitia) bound by a treaty (federe).71 And third, the count of Flanders, receiving a fief from the Anglo-Norman king, was placed in a subordinate position. In 1101 and 1110 Robert II pledged himself to Henry I with faith, oath and the penalty of the loss of his life and limbs, whereas Henry’s return pledge included assurances only as to the loss of his life and limbs should he break his pledge (§§1, 18). Since the formula was otherwise repeated intact, the omission of fide et sacramenta emphasises that the relationship was not entirely horizontal. It was business as usual: kings rarely swore oaths, except to their peers.72 Overall, the terminology of the treaty had been common parlance for generations. The use of amicitia alliances between a king and an independent foreign magnate dated back to the tenth century and the language of fidelity and faith had been used since the Carolingian era.73

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See G. Althoff, ‘Friendship and Political Order’, in Friendship in Medieval Europe, ed. J. Haseldine (Stroud, 1999), pp. 91–105; Althoff, ‘Amicitia [friendship] as Relationships between States and People’, in Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. L. Little and B. Rosenwein (Oxford, 1998), pp. 191–210; R. Slitt, ‘Acting Out Friendship: Signs and Gestures of Aristocratic Male Friendship in the Twelfth Century’, HSJ 21 (2009), 147–64. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 730. F.-L. Ganshof, The Middle Ages: A History of International Relations, trans. R. Hall (New York, 1971), p. 139. For a discussion of amicitia in the earlier Middle Ages, see Althoff, Family, pp. 67–90. On the language of fidelity, see in particular the short treatise written by Bishop Fulbert of Chartres to Count William V of Aquitaine, c.1020. The Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, ed. and trans. F. Behrends (Oxford, 1976), no. 51, pp. 90–2. For an up-to-date overview of different treaty types during this period, and of the terminology associated with them, see Benham, Peacemaking, pp. 190–5.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 The first generation of Dover treaties established a set of contractual arrangements, created a friendship alliance and noted a list of specific obligations. The non-horizontal relationship implied by the 1101 treaty emphasises the direction of the agreement – faithful service provided against a payment – but does not bind the count of Flanders, or through him the county of Flanders, as a subject, to the king of England. The 1101 and 1110 Dover treaties, along with other early Anglo-Flemish agreements, present themselves as military contracts arranging the services of a mercenary force; this was a form of service distinct from that based on a grant of land. Being a paid soldier was not solely the domain of individual fighters, for even established magnates could form such financial ties with their peers and betters; the long-held view that stipendiary service per se was despised by the secular elite has been discredited.74 International diplomacy is responsive to the specific needs and circumstances of its day. The Anglo-Flemish political relationship did not become fossilised into a single form; rather, later developments would alter its structure and make it more personal and more flexible, encompassing a broader variety of interactions. While in the early twelfth century the Anglo-Flemish treaty had been a carefully stipulated stipendiary contract in which the count sold his services, the accession of Count Thierry in 1128 introduced a new element. This was the performance of personal homage to the king of England done during Thierry’s reign, as the 1163 treaty testifies: ‘And for this fief on account of these forementioned agreements and because Count Thierry had done homage to King Henry the grandfather of this King Henry, Count Philip has done homage to this King Henry’ (1163: §18).75 Most probably the homage was done soon after Thierry’s accession in 1128, at the time he received ‘fiefs and benefices’ from Henry I.76 Homage (hominium, homagium) in international diplomacy is a concept both intriguing and ambiguous. The act of doing homage was demonstrative and ritualistic. The Flemish chronicler Galbert of Bruges described homage done in 1127 to the newly ascended Count William Clito of Flanders as follows: ‘First they did homage this way. The count asked each man if he wished to become wholly his man, and the latter replied “I wish,” and, with his hands clasped and enclosed by those of

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The key text is Brown, ‘Military Service’, pp. 33–51. For further discussion of mercenaries and mercenary identity, see pp. 126–8 and 225–31 below. ‘Et pro hoc feodo et propter istas conventiones predictas et quia comes Thedoricus hominium fecerat regi Henrico avo istius regis Henrici, comes Philippus fecit hominium isti regi Henrico.’ Diplomatic Documents, no. 3, p. 11. Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 169.

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture the count, they were bound together by a kiss.’77 Doing homage clearly establishes a personal link between the two participants. Its performance, the act of becoming the ‘man’ (homo) of another, exhibits submission and dependency, and has been traditionally linked by historians to the establishment or reinforcement of bonds between a lord and a vassal. For example, Franc¸ois-Louis Ganshof, in his seminal 1958 analysis of the 1101 Anglo-Flemish treaty, written with Raoul van Caenegem and Adrian Verhulst, saw the creation of the Anglo-Flemish money fief as necessarily taking place in the mould of a ‘feodo-vassalitic convention’, and therefore simply assumed that ‘it is not to be doubted that Robert II performed homage to the king’.78 But this assumption sits uneasily with the fact that, as even the authors noted, the text steered well clear of language that would establish direct Flemish submission to the AngloNorman ruler. There is no allusion to homage in the treaty text, and it is unlikely that such an omission would be accidental. Not all forms of submission, alliance or agreement were the same; in England homage was regarded in the twelfth century as a category of formal relationship very distinct from the swearing of fidelity, to say nothing of friendship, or from the terms that are set out in the 1101 document.79 The early treaties are better read as reaffirming a friendship and purchasing a service, not as instituting political submission. But in 1128 the new count had come to his inheritance from outside Flanders, and indeed from outside the kingdom of France. He had won his position in battle, and to do so had relied on Henry I’s support. Simeon of Durham, writing in northern England just a year or two later, even believed that Henry I had personally committed the county of Flanders to Thierry.80 This, in fact, would not have been within Henry’s powers – Flanders was autonomous, and in any case always recognised as belonging to the realm of the king of France – but Simeon’s view underlines the contemporary perception of how important Henry’s acknowledgement of Thierry was. The relationship between Henry and Thierry seems 77

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‘Primum hominia fecerunt ita: comes requisivit si integre vellet homo suus fieri et ille respondit: “Volo,” et junctis manibus, amplexatus a manibus comitis, osculo confederati sunt.’ Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 106; Galbert of Bruges, Murder of Charles the Good, pp. 206–7. F.-L. Ganshof, with R. van Caenegem and A. Verhulst, ‘Note sur le premier trait´e AngloFlamand de Douvres’, Revue de nord 40 (1958), 250–1. On similar interpretations, see also M. Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L. Manyon (London, 1965), pp. 145–7. For homage in England, see G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford, 2007), especially pp. 64–96. Though it is a later source, from the 1180s, the difference between these relationships is discussed in The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill, ed. and trans. G. Hall (OMT, Oxford, 1993), pp. 103–111, especially p. 103. Simeon of Durham, Historia Regum, pp. 282–3.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 to have been a conveniently oblique arrangement, with patronage and recognition flowing from Henry to the new count as if down an eastward slope. In such a context there were few political objections to the count of Flanders offering homage on receiving English fiefs, or to the king of England accepting the count’s personal submission. Did homage become a recurring feature in Anglo-Flemish diplomacy because there now existed a certain formal relationship that required its performance? Homage is a contentious subject during this period, partly because there is no tight definition of its practical and legal role. Especially in international and cross-regional relations, the precise meaning of doing homage is obscure. Recent research has shown that it was flexible enough to contain a broad variety of nuance and possible interpretation depending on who performed it, the political context of the time and the specific features of the agreement.81 Its role in the Frankish and Anglo-Norman context, for example, evolved throughout the period. The practice of doing homage, which had been largely abandoned by the dukes of Normandy by the eleventh century, was resurrected in the first half of the twelfth century as an act performed by the Anglo-Norman royal heir to the king of France in order to secure his continental inheritance.82 Its goal was not to establish dependency on Paris, but rather to affirm the heir’s status against other claimants. Ruling monarchs generally preferred to avoid it: when homage was done, as in 1183 when Henry II did homage to Philip II, it was only because unfavourable political circumstances had forced it.83 The history of Flemish homage to the king of England reflects the Anglo-Frankish tradition. There is no evidence that homage was performed by a Flemish count to the king of England prior to 1128, and no particular reason to believe that the late eleventh- or early twelfth-century rulers of Flanders would have seen any particular virtue in it. It entered 81 82

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Benham, Peacemaking, pp. 90–106. J.-F. Lemarignier, Reserches sur l’hommage en marche et les fronti`eres f´eodales (Lille, 1945), pp. 73–125; Lot, Fid`eles ou vassaux?, pp. 177–235. William Aetheling in 1120: ‘Chronicon Monasterii de Hyda’, p. 309; Eustace in 1137: Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 708; Duke Henry in 1151: Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 255. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 306; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 284; K. van Eickels, ‘Homagium and amicitia: Rituals of Peace and Their Significance in the AngloFrench Negotiations of the Twelfth Century’, Francia 24 (1997), 133–40; substantially updated and corrected by J. Gillingham, ‘Doing Homage to the King of France’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 63–84. See also Chibnall, ‘Anglo-French Relations’, pp. 5–19; and K. van Eickels, Vom inszenierten Konsens zum systematisierten Konflikt (Stuttgart, 2002), pp. 16–19. On the use and evolution of homage in England, see Garnett, Conquered England, especially pp. 64–96; and B. Weiler, ‘Knighting, Homage and the Meaning of Ritual: The Kings of England and Their Neighbours in the Thirteenth Century’, Viator 37 (2006), 275–99.

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture into the Anglo-Flemish relationship only in conjunction with Thierry’s assumption of the comital title, carrying an echo of the Anglo-Norman heirs’ homage to the king of France. While Thierry did not hold Flanders from Henry, homage and the tie it implied to so powerful a ruler secured additional legitimacy that was important after the civil war. Both English and Flemish chroniclers placed importance on Henry’s recognition of the new count. Once homage had been done, it acquired historicity. In 1163 it was Philip, Thierry’s heir, who did homage, reconnecting the Anglo-Flemish relationship for a new generation. It subsequently continued to be invoked during agreements between England and Flanders: Philip did homage in 1173 to Young King Henry, and in 1180 again to Henry II.84 The performance of homage reflects the intensification of the AngloFlemish political relationship. Through it the potential for the Angevin king’s interference and aid broadened and acquired variety. Roger of Howden, the royal clerk, saw Henry II as Philip’s lord (dominus).85 This status may also be detected in Henry II’s capacity to compel Philip to promise neither to arrange the marriages for his nieces (who were heirs to Count Matthew of Boulogne) nor to leave for a crusade without the king’s permission.86 A somewhat similar relationship is alluded to earlier by Orderic Vitalis. Writing contemporaneously, he notes that before Thierry departed for a crusade in 1138 he left Flanders in the hands of King Stephen in his absence.87 According to Robert of Torigni, on leaving on crusade again in 1157, Thierry entrusted ‘his son Philip and all his lands in the hands of King Henry of England’.88 Sure enough, the Pipe Rolls record that ‘the son of the count of Flanders and his men’ spent time in London at Henry II’s expense in 1157–8.89 Though the temptation to generalise from specific cases is a familiar one to historians, it is not possible to identify from these examples a single continuous set of legal obligations that Anglo-Flemish homage established during this period. When Ganshof and his co-authors asserted that Robert II must have performed homage to Henry I in 1101, their argument was mandated by a particular theoretical interpretation of sociopolitical relationships. Ganshof championed the notion of ‘feudalism’, in his view a narrow legal arrangement existing within the military nobility 84 85 86 87 89

Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 44, 246–7; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 46, 197. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 269. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 130, 133, 136, 159; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 119, 131–2. 88 Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 193. OV, vol. 6, p. 514. PR 4 Henry II (1157–8), pp. 113–14.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 and chiefly associated with the relationship between a liege lord and a vassal holding from him property in fief (feodum). Various legal practices and rituals, including homage, formed an intrinsic part of this system.90 The argument that Count Robert II must have done homage therefore had the effect of neatly fitting the document and the occasion of its ratification into his broader framework of medieval political theory, in effect explaining away the possibility of ambiguity and reaffirming the clarity of perceived practice. The theory of feudalism has since come under attack on many fronts, however, and the idea that there was a single, uniform and relatively narrowly defined set of legal practices that could be bundled under that sobriquet and applied through the Central Middle Ages is no longer accepted by most historians. The legal and sociopolitical meanings of such terms as ‘fidelity’, ‘friendship’ and ‘homage’ – the building blocks of feudal theory – were subtly different in different places and at different times, and, moreover, differing terminologies and systems co-existed in the deeply fragmented political landscape of western Europe. As has often been pointed out, the term ‘feudalism’ (Fr. f´eodalit´e) – a word as iconic for the Middle Ages as ‘castles’ and ‘knights’ – was not even a medieval one, but rather a neologism invented in the seventeenth century.91 When homage did become standard practice between kings of England and counts of Flanders, it was not because the structures of the relationship between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman regnum had now become set in stone; rather, homage was a response to the need for this political relationship to maintain room for growth and change. The latitude for negotiation and interpretation that homage allowed for made of it a powerful tool for rulers seeking to create flexible ties of a political and personal nature. The kings of England surely regarded homage paid to them as a means of distancing the counts of Flanders from their Capetian 90 91

See his 1961 book. F.-L. Ganshof, Feudalism, trans. P. Grierson, 3rd edn (Toronto, 1996), pp. 72–5, on homage. The debate on feudalism is extensive and complicated, but the seminal starting point is E. Brown, ‘Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians in Medieval Europe’, American Historical Review 79 (1974), 1063–88. Though controversial in its theoretical approach, Susan Reynolds’s influential monograph is a useful review of both the sources and the then-current historiography: S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994), see especially pp. 260–6, 353–61 on contemporary usage of the terminology in France and England. See also the follow-up in S. Reynolds, ‘Afterthoughts on Fiefs and Vassals’, HSJ 9 (1997), 1–15. Two articles in Feud, Violence and Practice, ed. B. Tuten and T. Billado (Farnham, 2010), provide an update and a summary of the deep historiographical background: E. Brown, ‘Reflections on Feudalism: Thomas Madox and the Origins of the Feudal System in England’, pp. 135–55; F. Cheyette, ‘“Feudalism”: A Memoir and an Assessment’, pp. 119–33.

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture kings, and drawing them closer into Anglo-Norman orbit. A similar sentiment may have motivated Thierry in 1128 and in 1163, together with Philip on the latter occasion. Doing homage to the king of England did not significantly inconvenience the Flemish counts. To go back to the earlier example, though in 1180 Count Philip was perhaps forced to perform homage because of the unhappy outcome of his schemes towards King Philip II, he quickly broke his promise not to marry off his nieces and took the opportunity to press for the crusading stipend Henry II had promised.92 It is hard to believe that Count Thierry ceded any authority over Flanders to his English neighbours in 1138 and 1157; what actually happened is that he invoked the relationship to request diplomatic protection and to pre-empt the Anglo-Normans from abusing his absence. Given the enormous rewards (a large money fief, significant estates, and above all lordship in Kent) that the Alsatians negotiated from the Young King Henry in 1173, Philip’s homage to the eighteen year-old monarch seems almost predatory – a courtesy performed by a more experienced player about to rob his opponent blind. For the Flemish counts, performing homage was sometimes an opportunistic action, one that gave them a means to manage the Norman and Angevin kings. Political relationships are dynamic, subject to evolution as the broader political context changes. The broader usefulness of the Dover treaties lay in their capacity to create a relationship that in practice bypassed other political relationships, hierarchies and models of vassalage. The 1101 and 1110 Dover treaties on the one hand, and the 1163 treaty on the other, represent two very different usages for the Anglo-Flemish accord, illustrating the flexibility inherent even in superficially identical diplomatic encounters. Flexibility – deliberate ambiguity, even – emerges as their theme throughout the twelfth century. The purpose of the treaty was to offer alternatives, create grey areas and open up loopholes. There is a sense in which the function of the early Dover treaties was to explore a military and sociopolitical relationship based on stipendiary contract against specific services, and which was separate (if adjacent) from relationships where, for instance, homage was the defining feature. The crowning achievement of the treaty text is surely clause 12, which allowed the count of Flanders simultaneously to meet his military obligations to the kings of both England and France. The first Anglo-Flemish treaties built on past practice rather than rejecting it; it was revisionism with one foot still firmly fixed on familiar 92

Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 133, 269; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 131.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 ground. Likewise, within the performance of Anglo-Flemish homage lay a fertile paradox: while it mattered, while it was taken very seriously by contemporaries, there were at this time no hard and fast rules for what it meant. In western European diplomatic practice, acts, peace treaties, occasions of homage, fidelity and friendship cannot be viewed as solely and slavishly governed by the particular ceremony or ritual form that was invoked at the time of their creation. These did not provide a ready-made relationship, but rather supplied a familiar foundation, a framework of varying degrees of looseness that could be interpreted to suit the particular occasion. In the Anglo-Flemish diplomatic exchanges ambiguity and flexibility joined hands with pragmatism and political practicality. Surveying the twelfth-century Anglo-Flemish diplomatic tradition as a whole, one has the sense that it was composed of contradictions of convenience. The platform that the Anglo-Flemish money fief provided was inherently flexible, responding to the needs of each successive generation. Clearly, when the Anglo-Flemish treaties were first conceived a great deal of thought was put into their organisational minutiae. The treaties are inherently practical, reflecting the economic, political and military realities of their time. As the agreement between Count Robert I and Emperor Alexios tantalisingly suggests, it may even be that the early twelfth-century documents were only the latest incarnations of what was, by that time, a well-tested Flemish tradition of providing mercenary armies to foreign rulers. Though the evidence is sparse, this does raise the possibility that such agreements were neither uncommon in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, nor limited to dealings with the king of England. Yet, with the passage of time the agreements also provided the opportunity for a powerful symbolic statement. As a military and financial contract the Dover treaty of 1163 is suspect, but this did not make the diplomatic event that took place irrelevant in itself. The treaty now stood as a ritualistic celebration of alliance, homage and kinship between two neighbours. Under the Alsatian dynasty the political relationship between England and Flanders had become closer, yet simultaneously less specific in its terms. The general trend in twelfth-century diplomatic history was a progression from general obligations of fidelity to more specific commitments that relied on an increasingly sophisticated framework of textual convention and practice.93 The progression of the

93

J. Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought 300–1450 (London and New York, 1996), pp. 59–61; Althoff, Family, p. 90.

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Military treaties and diplomatic culture Anglo-Flemish agreements goes against this grain. Homage and unspecified money fiefs gradually superseded the old convention. Superseded or, perhaps, complemented: even if the detailed formulae of the original Dover agreements were no longer required to buttress the relationship legally, they still offered guidelines for military service and stood as a powerful symbol of the relationship’s historicity.

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Chapter 3

ANGLO-FLEMISH DIPLOMACY Context and mechanisms

The Anglo-Flemish treaties of the twelfth century represent the end results, the formal outcomes, of a series of diplomatic processes. The latter are nearly always more obscure than the former; often we must rely only on casual references, such as the Warenne chronicler’s mention of ‘messengers running to and fro’ bearing ‘many gifts’ when peace temporarily broke out in 1120 between Henry I and his continental enemies.1 Royal records indicate that hunting hawks, live deer and precious objects were the standard currency of English diplomatic overtures to the southern Low Countries – though sometimes showiness might trump practical value, as in the case of a bear given by King William Rufus to Arnold ‘the Old’, lord of Ardres in maritime Flanders.2 But the mere exchange of gifts is revealing only of a desire for cordial relations, and the far more interesting questions revolve around not the object, but its bearer. Until recently, the historian’s response to a scarcity of direct evidence has been to concentrate on teasing out the shape and definition of medieval diplomatic institutions. This focus, however, has left areas still to be uncovered. As Joseph Huffman notes, ‘one reads more about the office of the ambassador than about the movement of an ambassador within an actual sociopolitical network that linked regions and kingdoms’.3 To understand how Anglo-Flemish agreements were reached and alliances formed, it is necessary to look closely at how the Anglo-Flemish political and diplomatic world operated. A great deal of the activity of this world was recorded because it took place within the framework of 1 2

3

‘Chronicon Monasterii de Hyda’, p. 319. For an overview of the role of gift exchange in medieval diplomacy, see Benham, Peacemaking, pp. 72–82. PR 11 Henry II (1164–5), p. 32; PR 12 Henry II (1165–6), p. 131; PR 15 Henry II (1170–1), pp. 32, 43, 99, 147; PR 20 Henry II (1173–4), p. 38; PR 21 Henry II (1174–5), pp. 15, 78; PR 25 Henry II (1178–9), p. 124; PR 33 Henry II (1186–7), p. 129; PR 2 Richard I (1190–1), p. 141; Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, p. 524. Huffman, Social Politics, p. 9.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy international cash fiefs and land tenure. These fiefs, along with their practical management and organisation, provided the institutionalised foundation and mechanics for conducting and maintaining AngloFlemish relations at the highest levels. By following the money, it is possible to deduce principles and practices that governed the role of the broader elite in the context of cross-Channel exchanges.

DIPLOM ATIC SOCIETY The Dover treaties are unique not only in their survival as a singular series of diplomatic documents from twelfth-century north-western Europe, but also in supplying us with virtually the only diplomatic Anglo-Flemish material for this period. Pierre Chaplais, in his recent analysis of English diplomatic practice in the Middle Ages, has pointed out how secondary the role of written documentation was in comparison with the human element of envoys and go-betweens, and how important personal relations were to the business of conducting politics. During the period covered by this study, diplomatic practice was essentially of an oral and personal character. Written communication, when it existed, tended to play a supplementary role, serving as a memory aid or establishing the parameters of an envoy’s diplomatic competence.4 In the Early Middle Ages an envoy (nuncius, legatus) was considered to be merely the carrier of his master’s message, without the capacity to negotiate or enter into contracts. The twelfth century, however, saw the emergence of the plenipotentiary emissary, a diplomat in the proper sense of the word.5 In the settlement of 1184 Count Philip and King Philip II of France never met; the negotiating was handled entirely through intermediaries.6 Letters of credence, created to establish the legitimacy of envoys, seem to have been common. A rare exception to the general dearth of AngloFlemish diplomatic material consists of a letter of reference written by Michael of Boulaers, the constable of Flanders, to King Richard I.7 A brief document, its function was simply to introduce its bearer, a person on official diplomatic business, to the monarch. The survival of the letter to the present day is a matter of considerable luck. Such notes were one-off tokens of diplomatic legitimacy and hardly a priority for 4 5 6 7

Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice, pp. 12–20, 30–1, 45–50. D. Queller, The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1967), pp. 8–10, 26–8. On envoys, see also Benham, Peacemaking, pp. 117–37; Ganshof, The Middle Ages, pp. 129–36. ‘Flandria Generosa’, p. 328. Diplomatic Documents, no. 8, p. 20.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 archival preservation; indeed, in order to prevent future misuse it may have been considered prudent to destroy them once their purpose had been fulfilled. We must assume that the vast body of Anglo-Flemish diplomatic exchanges is inaccessible to us, not because it has been lost, but because it was never written down. Though narrative and documentary sources might showcase the end result of a negotiation, they tell us little of the process itself; it becomes the historian’s task to imagine and narrate what a diplomatic exchange might have been. A bit of diplomatic drama thus can be read into William of Malmesbury’s account of the preliminaries to the signing of the 1101 Dover treaty: When Robert returned from Jerusalem, and asked for his 300 marks of silver [referring to the money fief established under King William Rufus] almost in a tone of command, he was informed that the kings of England do not normally pay tax to Flemings, and the present king was not prepared to blot the record of his forebears’ independence by any cowardice of his own. If it were left to his discretion, he would gladly give what circumstances might indicate, as to a friend and kinsman; but if he felt it necessary to persist in his demands, the answer was an uncompromising no. Thus disappointed, the count was for a long time resentful against the king; but, when quarrelling did little or no good, he made up his mind to be milder, finding that the king could be moved by appeals but not by imperious insolence.8

The way the exchange is structured reveals how an agreement could be enacted between two rulers. Count Robert II, an old ally of King William Rufus and a crusading companion to King Henry I’s brother and rival, Duke Robert Curthose, was perfectly aware of the conflicts in his cousins’ family and the difficult position that Henry found himself in. His first instinct was to make a play for profit through diplomatic extortion. The historical detail of the exchange is overwhelmed by the voice and flair of the author, but it is interesting how Malmesbury interprets the historical event’s deliberate political theatre. Robert’s imperious declamation opens the matter, Henry’s measured response brushes off such bullying but, in the end, leaves the door open to negotiation. Once the opportunistic grandstanding Malmesbury describes was out of the way, the months 8

‘Rotberto ab Ierosolima reverso, et quasi pro imperio trecentas argenti marcas exigenti, in hanc respondit sententiam; non solitos reges Angliae Flandritis vectigal pendere, nec se velle libertatem maiorum macula suae timiditatis fuscare. Quapropter, si suo comittat arbitrio, libenter se quod oportunitas siverit ut cognate et amico dare; si vero in exactione permanendum putaverit, omnino negare. Hac ille ratione deiectus animum multo tempore in regem tumuit; sed parum aut nichil simultatibus adiutus, mansuetudini mentem accommodavit, expertus regem posse flecti precario, non fastu tirannico.’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 730.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy between Robert’s return from the First Crusade and the meeting of the two rulers in Dover must have been occupied by negotiations by proxy.9 Since responses were delivered impersonally, through envoys, the element of threat was distanced and both sides allowed the expedient of time for finding common ground. In imagining a high diplomatic event in the Middle Ages, it is crucial to understand that the final form of the prospective agreement had often been hammered out before the grandees themselves met. The Dover treaties are the fossilised remainder of the social and political activity that surrounded them. Their witness lists are filled with the names of preeminent magnates; the events were gatherings of pomp and circumstance. The purpose of the occasion was not negotiation but the enactment of a ritual to mark the consummation of a political relationship. Especially during peacetime, when the absence of imminent hostilities allowed for latitude, magnates preferred to convene over matters of political significance only after preliminary steps had been taken to ascertain that the outcome would be, above all, predictable.10 Just as today, though rarely attested to in the sources, a proportionally considerable amount of legwork preceded significant political accords in the Middle Ages. In the twelfth century diplomatic envoys were people of substance, whose position enabled them to lead missions rather than the other way around.11 English and Flemish grandees are often encountered performing diplomatic duties. When Aernulf, the chancellor of Flanders, visited England in 1185–6, the matter he came to discuss must have concerned the peace treaty between Count Philip and King Philip II of France, which the former had invited Henry II to mediate.12 And when Ranulf Glanville, the head of the English exchequer, was received in Flanders in 1183, his visit surely was related to the upcoming marriage between Count Philip and Princess Matilda of Portugal, 9 10

11

12

Chaplais, Diplomatic Practice, pp. 44–5. Althoff, Family, pp. 139–45. Though this is a good general rule, Gillingham, ‘The Meetings’, pp. 22–31, notes that the multiplication of high-level Angevin diplomatic encounters in the second half of the twelfth century may have on occasion led to the adoption of a more relaxed, ad hoc approach. Certainly the popularity of tournament culture during this same period, discussed in the next chapter, allowed princely magnates to meet regularly in less formal settings. D. Queller, ‘Diplomatic Personnel Employed by the Counts of Flanders in the Thirteenth Century’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 34 (1956), 68–98, 385–422, charts the evolution of diplomatic personnel from ad hoc appointees to a professional corps, with special reference to Flanders. PR 32 Henry II (1185–6), p. 193; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 334–5; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 2, pp. 38–40.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 which Henry II had negotiated, sponsored and spent a lavish amount of money arranging.13 A return visit to Dover, concerning either this same matter or the escalation of hostilities with Hainaut, was made by Walter of Locres, the steward of Flanders, in late 1183 or 1184.14 As the surviving administrative records grow more numerous from the late twelfth century onwards, we find many more examples of emissaries and envoys flitting back and forth across the Channel.15 Someone whose career demonstrates the many competences of the Anglo-Flemish envoy particularly well – political, familial, economic and military – is William of Mandeville (earl of Essex 1166–89), one of Henry II’s most influential counsellors. The Mandeville family emerged after the Conquest as one of the chief Norman landholders in England. Though the family suffered an eclipse of royal favour during the reign of Henry I, Geoffrey II of Mandeville (d. 1144) succeeded in regaining a prominent position under King Stephen and was created earl of Essex c.1140. Geoffrey embarked on a series of projects to consolidate his position in eastern England, many of them involving the development of his power base in the castle town of Walden (modern Saffron Walden). In 1141 the earl petitioned to be allowed to re-establish the local market there.16 Being a successful magnate during the turmoil of King Stephen’s reign required the maintenance of a military force, which in turn necessitated a regular source of income. Walden was located at a key juncture of the major trading routes from western East Anglia to London, and so was in a prime position to benefit from overseas commerce to the Low Countries. His economic and military interests, combined with Walden’s geographical connections to Flanders, appear to have led Geoffrey to establish relations with the latter, and, like many other magnates during the civil war, he retained Flemish soldiers.17 The family’s ambitions were international in character. Geoffrey ‘the Younger’ (1144–66), the old earl’s eldest son and immediate successor, married Eustacia of the Blois-Champagne comital family. This high-profile marriage linked the family with the highest aristocratic kin groups of

13 14 16

17

Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 309; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 310; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 308, 310; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 283. 15 Dept, Les influences, pp. 61–6. PR 30 Henry II (1183–4), p. 144. Round, Geoffrey of Mandeville, is a dated, but still interesting, study. It has been corrected and updated by R. Davis, ‘Geoffrey de Mandeville Reconsidered’, EHR 79 (1964), 299–307; and C. Hollister, ‘The Misfortunes of the Mandevilles’, History 58 (1973), 18–28. See also The Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, ed. and trans. D. Greenway and L. Watkiss (OMT, Oxford, 1999), pp. xii–xix. The Waltham Chronicle, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall and L. Watkiss (OMT, Oxford, 1994), pp. 80–3.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy north-western Europe, including both the Anglo-Norman and the Flemish dynasties.18 It was William of Mandeville, the old earl’s younger son, who made the most of his connections with the southern Low Countries.19 As a child William had been sent to Flanders, possibly for safekeeping when King Stephen imprisoned his father in 1143. He was raised in the Flemish court and knighted in person by Count Philip. The two had been boyhood companions, and Philip provided William with a letter of recommendation on his return to England in 1166.20 Flemish as well as French was spoken at the comital court, so William probably grew up bilingual; such language skills would be an additional asset for an emissary.21 The earl eventually became one of Henry II’s most trusted ambassadors to the continental courts.22 In this capacity his Flemish connections remained strong. The Dover entry in the Pipe Rolls for 1177 reimbursed Count Philip for travel expenses incurred by Earl William, Archbishop Richard of Canterbury and Bishop Geoffrey of Ely.23 The embassy must have been concerned with the outcome of the Young King’s rebellion and with hammering out the consequences of the peace accord signed during the previous year. That agreement included the re-establishment of the Flemish money fief, the marriages of Count Philip’s nieces (daughters of his deceased brother, Count Matthew of Boulogne), and the aid that Henry II had promised to the count for his crusade.24 When Count Philip left for the Holy Land in 1177, Mandeville accompanied him, along with several other Anglo-Norman knights and nobles. It appears that the journey provided an opportunity for the two to strengthen their friendship, and the Walden chronicle informs us that William received precious gifts from the count during this pilgrimage.25 The two men even used identical iconography in their seals; Mandeville must have copied his from Philip.26 18

19 21 22 24 25 26

Eustacia’s second marriage was to Count Anselm of St Pol, a regional magnate whose domains lay at the edge of southern Flanders. It was brokered by King Henry II, who had very much inherited his grandfather’s interest in meddling with the dynastic alliances of this region. Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal, pp. 142, 145. 20 Walden Monastery, pp. xx–xxi, 44–5, 80. T. Keefe, ‘Mandeville, William de’, ODNB. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 89–90, 94. William may have been even trilingual, if he also spoke English, though among the upper Anglo-Norman aristocracy this was by no means given. 23 PR 23 Henry II (1176–7), pp. 207–8. Walden Monastery, p. xxvi. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 83, 116, 133; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, pp. 398–9. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 159; Walden Monastery, pp. 52, 58. T. Heslop, ‘Seals as Evidence for Metal Working in the Later Twelfth Century’, in Art and Patronage in the English Romanesque, ed. S. Macready and F. Thompson (Society of Antiquaries of London Occasional Papers, New Series, 8, 1986), pp. 50–60, 56–7 and pls. xxva, xxvb; Keefe, ‘Mandeville, William de’, p. 408.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 As the last decade of Henry II’s reign began, Earl William’s position as the key contact with the Flemish count emerged ever more strongly. It cannot have been a coincidence that Henry at least twice chose Aumale, which belonged to Mandeville, as a site for negotiations with Count Philip.27 Through the 1180s Mandeville was involved with money fief payments to Count Philip. In 1180 he was entrusted with overseeing the expenses of Flemish servientes in Rouen, probably during the diplomatic negotiations that took place between Henry II, Count Philip and King Philip II of France.28 Norman administrative records relating to military payments from 1184 indicate that Mandeville was involved with Count Philip’s war effort against Baldwin V of Hainaut, and was probably also engaged in the peace negotiations that Henry II arbitrated during the same year.29 In 1189 Mandeville was instructed to conduct confidential negotiations on behalf of the recently crowned King Richard: Aware of [Earl William’s] great wisdom, [Richard] shared with him secret negotiations to be conducted with the count of Flanders. Indeed, the earl was well known to the count and, in fact, was his friend for he had associated with him in that country from his earliest times and had even received the arms of knighthood from him.30

This was the earl’s last diplomatic endeavour: he died in Normandy in November 1189. But when Richard crossed to Calais to meet Philip in December, the groundwork had been prepared and the negotiations were successful.31 Who indeed could have better assumed responsibility for re-establishing relations with Flanders than the count’s old ally, fellow crusader, business partner and friend? The Mandevilles’ Flemish counterparts were, in many ways, the scions of the B´ethune dynasty based in south-central Flanders. Robert V, advocate of B´ethune c.1145–91, first appears in the English administrative record as a landowner in Gloucestershire in 1160–3 and again in 1166–7, though the family’s presence in England dates back at least to the time 27 28

29 30

31

Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 2, p. 38; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 2, pp. 4–5; Keefe, ‘Mandeville, William de’, p. 408. Norman PR (1179–80), p. 51. Servientes is a word often encountered in the Pipe Rolls, and can be variously translated as ‘servants’, ‘vassals’ or ‘officials’. It seems to have been employed as a category term describing envoys on official business. Norman PR (1183–4), p. 80; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 321–2; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 285. ‘Videns autem rex tante viri tantam prudentiam negotiorum suorum illi communicavit secreta comiti Flandrensi perferenda. Erat autem vir ille comiti satis notus et familiaris quippe qui ab ineunte etate cum eo in partibus illis conversatus fuerat, a quo etiam arma militaria susceperat.’ Walden Monastery, pp. 80–1. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 2, p. 101; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 3, p. 28.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy of King Stephen, from whom Robert had received a grant.32 Robert’s English connections are documented in the Anglo-Flemish treaty of 1163 between Count Thierry and King Henry II, which lists him as one of Thierry’s guarantors. He was among the Flemings who affixed their seals to the adjoining charter, presumably as one of the recipients of the baronial money fief awarded by Henry.33 In 1177 Robert served as co-leader of a Flemish diplomatic mission to Henry II, and in 1179 he, along with Count Philip and William of Mandeville, accompanied King Louis VII on a pilgrimage to Becket’s tomb in Canterbury.34 Robert’s family also forged a strong connection with the Angevins. His sons, William (d. 1213) and Baldwin (d. 1212) of B´ethune, maintained estates in England. The latter in particular became a prominent member of King Richard’s inner circle and served as one of the king’s emissaries to the German imperial election in 1197.35 During King John’s reign William’s son, Robert VII of B´ethune (d. 1248), acted as a leading spokesman of the pro-English Flemish nobility in their struggle against King Philip II of France. Following his faction’s decisive defeat at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, Robert served as a constable in John’s army in England.36 The B´ethune family’s status as a fixture of the Angevin court was sealed by the marriage of Baldwin of B´ethune to William of Mandeville’s widow Hawisa (d. 1213/14), the heiress of Aˆumale.37 It is unfortunate that our information on the activity of women in the Anglo-Flemish diplomatic community, even ones as closely connected to its leading male agents as Hawisa, is sparse. Yet Hawisa of Aˆumale, Ida of Lorraine (wife of Count Eustace II of Boulogne),38 Emma of Tancarville (Anglo-Noman wife of Count Manasses II of Guines),39 Mary of Boulogne (daughter of King Stephen), and Turfrida (wife of Hereward the Wake and probably the commissioner of his Life)40 are but a few of the women – heiresses, 32 33 34 35 36

37 38

39 40

PR 8 Henry II (1161–2), p. 60; PR 9 Henry II (1162–3), p. 9; PR 13 Henry II (1166–7), p. 121; The Red Book of the Exchequer, vol. 1, p. 24; vol. 2, pp. 569, 697. Diplomatic Documents, no. 4, pp. 12–13. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 133, 241; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 119, 192. Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 4, p. 37; Dept, Les influences, p. 55. Queller, ‘Diplomatic Personnel’, 71–2. More recently J. Gillingham, ‘The Anonymous of B´ethune, King John and Magna Carta’, in Magna Carta and the England of King John, ed. J. Loengard (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 27–44, examines the politics and alliances of the B´ethune family during this period. See especially pp. 34–7 for Robert VII and King John. B. English, ‘Hawisa’, ODNB; Gillingham, Richard I, pp. 293–4. In Domesday Book, Ida held estates directly from the king, and is known to have actively participated in contemporary international diplomacy. GDB, ff. Surrey: 34r; Dorset: 85r, Somerset: 91v; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, passim. I am grateful to Ren´ee Nip for allowing me to consult a draft of her forthcoming article, ‘Ida of Lorraine, Countess of Boulogne (ca. 1040–1113)’. Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, pp. 579, 580, 582–3, 586–7, 595. Van Houts, ‘Hereward and Flanders’, 220–3.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 landowners, matriarchs, patrons and guardians of the family memory – in mixed Anglo-Norman and Flemish marriages that we encounter in the sources.41 Women – as nodal, connecting elements among political dynasties – were in a position to influence the network of kinship relations that spanned aristocratic society. The marriage of the Fleming Matilda, daughter of Count Baldwin V, to the future king William the Conqueror recast the web of alliances in north-western Europe in William’s favour and created a politically favourable background to the undertaking of 1066. It is probable that Matilda played a key role in reaffirming Anglo-Norman and Flemish relations after the political shock of the Conquest. William’s kinship with the comital house must also have been a key factor in his intervention in the Flemish civil war in 1070–1. We do not know what part Matilda played in these events but, as not only a wife but a principal adviser, confidante, regent and trusted friend to her husband, her influence and opinion must have weighed heavily. Her grief at the alienation of the Flemish half of her family after Robert the Frisian’s successful coup was surely as intense as Orderic Vitalis would have it.42 Two generations later, in 1134, King Henry I negotiated the marriage of Sybil of Anjou to Count Thierry with the aim of adding Flanders to his Norman–Angevin alliance. The political union bore rich fruit after the accession of Henry II, Sybil’s nephew, in 1154. As her inclusion in the 1163 Dover treaty shows, Sybil took on an active role in Anglo-Flemish negotiations in the mid-1150s, and she established the context of kinship in which the intense political relations between the Angevins and the Alsatians took place in the second half of the twelfth century.43 The spouses of kings, counts and barons were women of the very highest nobility but, though singularly privileged, they surely stand as testimony to a far larger body of involvement in Anglo-Flemish exchanges at all levels of the society than is visible in the sources. The Mandevilles and the B´ethunes exemplify the international elite that formed the matrix of Anglo-Flemish diplomatic exchanges. Robin Frame’s formulation of an ‘aristocratic nexus’, a confluence of interconnected political interests, family relations and trans-regional landholding among the elite that pierced the borders of the kingdoms and lordships of the medieval British Isles, provides a useful model for thinking about 41 42 43

More broadly on this topic, see S. Johns, Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power in the Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman Realm (Manchester, 2003). OV, vol. 2, p. 284. Diplomatic Documents, no. 3, p. 11. Sybil also participated in the 1156 meeting with Henry II in Rouen. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 186.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy cross-Channel relations.44 Well-placed Anglo-Flemings were used by the rulers as contacts and facilitators, as in the case of Baldwin of Wissant, the former constable of the honour of Boulogne and son-in-law of Count Manasses of Guines, who shared a payment of £4 with Count Thierry in Kent in 1155–6.45 Another example is the moneylender William Cade, from St Omer in coastal Flanders, who was the pre-eminent financier at King Henry II’s court until his death c.1166. His duties were not limited to financial dealings, and in 1163 Cade was awarded £100 to lead a group of Flemish servientes, a development undoubtedly related to the Dover treaty concluded between Henry II and Count Thierry that same year. It is likely that Cade, a man of considerable influence in the Angevin court, played an important role in arranging the negotiations.46 William Cade had probably made his initial fortune in the brisk crossChannel commerce. Anglo-Flemish trade will be discussed at length in a later chapter; its impact on diplomatic exchange should not be underestimated. A case in point is the Cistercian abbey of Dunes, located on the Flemish coast near the port town of Nieuwpoort: Dunes was the most important Cistercian house in twelfth-century Flanders, and its abbot Elias played an important role in the negotiations that preceded the release of Richard I from captivity in Germany in 1194. The English Cistercian abbots who negotiated Richard’s release had turned to their Flemish colleague for safe conduct and for aid in organising contacts in Germany. The order was, of course, an international community, and Flemish Cistercian abbots met regularly with their English counterparts at the General Chapter of the order at Cˆıteaux. But more immediately, Dunes itself had business interests in England at least by 1165, when Henry II had granted it an exemption from tolls. The king later gave Dunes the right to construct and repair ships in his realm. Elias’s interest in Angevin affairs was not only political or spiritual, but also commercial, and the possibility of advancing Dunes’s business interests surely influenced his participation. The abbot’s efforts indeed paid off, and Richard, duly grateful, awarded the abbey a grant and a confirmation of its mercantile freedoms. The king also ratified the rights of the abbey’s daughter house Ter Doest, also on the coast near Bruges, and 44 45

46

R. Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles 1100−1400 (Oxford, 1990), especially pp. 50−71. PR 2 Henry II (1155–6), p. 65; K. Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166, vol. 2, Pipe Rolls to Cartae Baronum (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 792. PR 9 Henry II (1162–3), p. 71. He did not, however, witness the treaty. William Cade’s career is discussed at pp. 164–6 below.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 took it under his protection.47 One would imagine the fact that English Cistercian monasteries were the kingdom’s most important producers of wool – a major Flemish import – also played a part in Elias’s intercession. Politics operated, in the Dunes case, just as in the family histories of the Anglo-Flemish secular elite, through networks of association and lobbying by private people and local institutions connected by a maze of political, commercial and property interests. BARONIAL M ONEY FIEFS Associations and relationships always grow organically between two regions closely connected by geography, politics and economy. But, as the Dover treaties demonstrate, by the first half of the twelfth century, the king of England was pursuing an agenda to develop institutionalised political influence in Flanders. The treaty fief was a money fief – that is to say, a fief from which the recipient enjoys the monetary proceeds of a source of revenue (such as a landed estate or a toll), but does not have control over the source itself.48 The ease with which such fiefs could be both dispensed and withdrawn made them malleable instruments. In the previous chapter I discussed the arrangements the rulers of England and Normandy had with their neighbours in the southern Low Countries in the context of formal diplomatic relations, and as expressed in diplomatic documents; here they will be investigated from the perspective of financial transactions. Money fiefs became the principal diplomatic mechanism by which the kings of England attempted to consolidate their influence in the southern Low Countries, among the comital rulers and baronial aristocracy alike. It is necessary to establish some context here. The system that evolved over the course of the twelfth century relied heavily on English financial institutions. These had the sophistication to enable the significant exploitation of the kingdom’s wealth for political purposes. The 47

48

Later also confirmed by King John. Chronique de l’abbaye de Ter Doest, ed. F. van de Putte and C. Carton (Bruges, 1845), nos. 5, 9, 11–12, pp. 38, 40–2; Cronica et Cartularium Monasterii de Dunis, ed. F. van de Putte (Bruges, 1864), vol. 1, p. 8, 35, no. 45, p. 228, no. 58, pp. 255, no. 59, pp. 176–8, no. 88, pp. 197, nos. 327–31, pp. 421–5; RAH II, vol. 2, no. 663, p. 279; C. van Nerom, ‘The Grant of Eastchurch to the Abbey of Dunes by Richard I’, Archaelogia Cantiana 101 (1984), 23–39. From a terminological point of view, I have found Dirk Heirbaut’s updated overview of the fief-rente in Flanders to be most useful: D. Heirbaut, ‘The fief-rente: a New Evaluation, Based on Flemish Sources (1000–1305)’, Legal History Review 67 (1999), especially 2–6. The broad term used to describe such fiefs is fief-rente, but this term also covers payments in kind. Given that the international treaty fiefs discussed here were expressed in terms of currency transactions, in this context it is more consistent to use the term ‘money fief’.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy Anglo-Saxon heregelds (army taxes) and gafols (tribute payments) of the Viking era had already demonstrated both the wealth of the kingdom and the royal administration’s ability to organise its collection. The amounts raised during the reigns of Aethelred II (978–1016) and Cnut the Great (1016–35) are subject to considerable debate, but even conservative estimates put the largest tribute payments at around £20,000.49 The Battle of Hastings changed little in this respect, and money payments to Flanders are found in the context of Anglo-Norman diplomatic strategies throughout the twelfth century. In 1089 William Rufus dispensed cash bribes to Philip I of France to discourage him from supporting Robert Curthose. Evidently Rufus found this a convenient strategy, and it was repeated in 1091 and 1094.50 Cash gifts were likewise an important diplomatic weapon in the arsenal of Rufus’s brother Henry I; Henry’s ability to raise large levies is certainly demonstrated by the 10,000 marks collected c.1108 as dowry for his daughter Matilda.51 It was through donations and gifts of cash that Henry smoothed over relations with continental princes, including Count Charles of Flanders, in the late 1110s. The Warenne chronicler disdainfully notes, ‘What more? “What mortal breasts you do not compel, sacred hunger of gold does”’, and later concludes, ‘at last King Henry restored peace with his energy and money’.52 In 1120 Henry ‘came to an agreement with the king of France, and he [Henry] decided to give a designated tax from the revenues of England annually to this same king’.53 In early 1127 a rumour made the rounds in Flanders that Henry I had provided 300 mercenaries and enormous amounts of money in support of the Flemish comital claimant William of Ypres.54 Though 49

50 51 52

53

54

For a robust back-and-forth on the topic, see M. Lawson, ‘The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Aethelred II and Cnut’, EHR 99 (1984), 721–38; Lawson, ‘“Those Stories Look True”: Levels of Taxation in the Reigns of Aethelred II and Cnut’, EHR 104 (1989), 385–406; Lawson, ‘Danegeld and Heregeld Once More’, EHR 105 (1990), 951–61; and J. Gillingham, ‘“The Most Precious Jewel in the English Crown”: Levels of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Early Eleventh Century’, EHR 104 (1989), 373–84; Gillingham, ‘Chronicles and Coins as Evidence for the Levels of Tribute and Taxation in Late Tenth- and Early EleventhCentury England’, EHR 105 (1990), 939–50. For Aethelred’s treaties with the Vikings, see p. 56 above. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 548; G. Cuttino, English Medieval Diplomacy (Bloomington, 1985), p. 35. OV, vol. 5, p. 200. ‘Quid multa! “Quid non mortalia pectoral cogis, auri sancta fames!” . . . rex denique ubi industria et pecunia restituit.’ ‘Chronicon Monasterii de Hyda’, pp. 320–1, trans. van Houts in the forthcoming edition of the chronicle: The Warenne Chronicle (formerly known as the Hyde chronicle), ed. and trans. E. van Houts and R. Love (OMT, forthcoming). ‘Cum rege quoque Francorum in se concordiauit censum statutum ex redditibus Anglie eidem singulis annis dare instituit.’ ‘Chronicon Monasterii de Hyda’, p. 319. No other sources record such payments, and the fief may have been quickly abandoned. Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 99.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 this later turned out to be false, it had clearly sounded plausible to those who were knowledgeable about Henry’s diplomatic modus operandi. Medieval scholarship, from the definitive works written on the medieval money fiefs by Bryce Lyon onwards, has tended to view money fiefs as primarily military institutions, whose chief function was to procure fighting men.55 As I have argued, the Dover treaties in the early twelfth century were established on such considerations. But it is also important to acknowledge the ramifications of money fief arrangements as a broader system of political and financial exchanges. Money payments were – and still are, whether they take the form of handouts, development aid, structure funds, business contracts, the cancellation of past debts, or any one of a myriad other financial arrangements – a tremendously flexible tool for conducting any kind of international diplomacy. Cash payments and fiefs must be assessed as part of an array of political and social relationships. The Flemish money fiefs are the earliest international Anglo-Norman cash fiefs on record. The system of money payments operated on two levels of the political hierarchy: baronial and comital. The seeds of the former were planted in the comital treaty of 1101, which involved the participation of twelve English barons as guarantors, and twelve Flemish barons as both guarantors and potential leaders of the Flemish army, against a surety of 100 marks each (§17).56 Further evidence of such direct arrangements involving the Flemish baronial elites is absent from the first half of the twelfth century. In this, as in so many areas in the realm of royal policy, it was Henry II who built and improved on his predecessor’s methods. Anglo-Flemish baronial money fiefs emerge fully formed in the charter that accompanied the main Dover treaty of 1163 between Henry II and Count Thierry. In exchange for receiving from Henry thirty marks in silver, each, in fief, Flemish barons were required to perform military service with ten knights. Eighteen Flemish barons attached their seals to the charter. Most are traceable in Flemish sources; as castellans, advocates, peers or high-ranking comital court officials, many of them belonged to the upper ranks of the Flemish aristocracy.57 Thirty marks (£20) per annum would have been a handsome reward even to an established aristocrat. Assuming a period of forty days’ service per annum, the daily per capita payment was 12d per knight, a generous rate.58 The military outcome of the agreement was the potential service of a sizeable 55

56 58

B. Lyon, From Fief to Indenture: The Transition from Feudal to Non-feudal Contract in Western Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1954), p. 272; Lyon, ‘The Money Fief’, 178. The modern revision of the usage of fief-rente within Flanders by Heirbaut agrees: ‘The fief-rente’, 7. 57 Diplomatic Documents, no. 4, pp. 12–14. Discussed more at length at pp. 66–7. Latimer, ‘Wages’, 202.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy contingent of Flemish knights, amounting to at least 180 men, provided that fiefs were granted to all witnessing barons.59 Politically, the charter was a powerful demonstration of allegiance and alliance. The 1163 treaty and the accompanying barons’ charter began a new leitmotif in the dealings of the Angevin kings with their neighbours. In 1166 Henry II negotiated, in addition to the annual money payment to Count Matthew of Boulogne, a similar agreement with Count Theobald V of Blois (1151–91).60 Henry must have been satisfied with the method, for he continued to explore such strategies. As Gilbert of Mons writes, On the feast of Pentecost in that same year [1172], Count Baldwin of Hainaut [Baldwin V] met Henry, lord king of England, who was also duke of Normandy and Aquitaine and count of Anjou, and did homage to him in return for 100 marks sterling in great weight annually. Just as his father [Baldwin IV] had been enfeoffed by that king and by his uncle King Henry of England,61 his fiefs to his men in Hainaut were acknowledged and reassigned by that king, namely: Eustace of Roeulx fifteen marks, Walter of Ligne ten marks, Amand of Prouvy ten marks, Henry of Braine ten marks, Robert of Carni`eres ten marks.62

Gilbert then continues, ‘Jacques of Avesnes was enfeoffed there by that king for thirty marks, through the intercession of the count of Hainaut.’ Avesnes, an Artesian nobleman with a base in southern Flanders, stood in a line stretching back to the barons of 1163. It must have been such men that Henry had in mind in 1182 when he demanded that Flemish barons who had received fiefs from him should not shirk their obligations of military service.63 Following their father’s example, Richard and John were canny enough not to concentrate their diplomatic efforts solely on winning over Count Baldwin IX, but also liberally dispensed estates and money fiefs to important Flemish and Hainautian nobles. Of the 300 recorded fief-rentes that King John awarded during his reign, 40 per cent were granted in Flanders, 59 60 61 62

63

On Flemish guarantor nobles performing similar military service, see pp. 66–7 above. Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, no. 112, pp. 542–6, no. 113, p. 550. Matthew’s fief was discussed above at pp. 37–8. King Henry I, who was the grandfather, not the uncle, of Henry II. ‘In festo pentecostes, eodem anno, Balduinus comes Hanonie dominum regem Anglorum Henricum, qui eciam dux Normanorum et Aquitanie et comes Andegavensis erat, adiit, et ei super 100 marchis sterlingorum magno pondo annuatim habendis hominum fecit, et sicus eius pater ab ipso rege at ab eius avunculo Henrico rege Anglie infeodatus fuerat, hominibusque suis Hanoniensibus quibusdam sua ab ipso rege feoda fuerunt recognita et reassignata, Eustacio scilicet de Ruez 15 marche, Waltero de Linea 10 marche, Amando de Provi 10 marche, Henrico de Brania 10 marche, Roberto de Carneriis 10 marche.’ Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, p. 109, trans. Napran, Chronicle of Hainaut, p. 63. This interesting, if solitary, testimony to a money fief to Hainaut during the reign of Henry I may refer to financial aid given during Baldwin IV’s bid to become the count of Flanders in 1127–8. RAH II, vol. 2, no. 439, pp. 230–1.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 as Angevin–Capetian tensions came to a boil between 1212 and 1214. The strategy was copied by the dynasty’s deadly rival, King Philip II, who likewise dispensed enormous numbers of money fiefs: 49 per cent of the money fiefs he granted throughout his reign were to Flanders. The competition for influential noblemen was direct: in 1185 Philip II offered a fief worth £100 to the same Jacques of Avesnes whom Henry II had wooed in 1172, in exchange for political support at the treaty of Boves. And in 1212 John temporarily secured his hold on the Flemish nobility by seducing key aristocrats from Philip II’s payroll to his own.64 The earliest documented international money fiefs were awarded to the southern Low Countries. Such payments, in the guise of domestic fiefs, were already familiar to the Flemish: the oldest domestic Flemish money fief on record, issued by the abbot of St Bertin, dates to 1087.65 Perhaps it was Queen Matilda who introduced the idea of a money fief into the exchanges between her husband William and her father Baldwin V. Whatever the source of the idea, it is not surprising that these stipends were quickly adopted by the Anglo-Norman kings. Baronial and comital money fiefs could be used to gain both prestige and practical political results. A medieval king’s ability to widen his circle of influence beyond his immediate subjects, to draw the allies and vassals of others into his princely sphere, had great implications. The capacity to compel the service of foreign nobles added to the standing of the ruler. The mid-twelfth-century Anglo-Norman poet Geoffrey Gaimar treated the military power and prestige of King William Rufus not primarily in terms of the Norman armies, but in light of his capacity to call on highranking allies from neighbouring realms.66 Lordship over several peoples was regarded as a sign of political maturity and a matter of considerable prestige.67 And the practical advantages were many. When Flemish fief-holders had vested interests, but no direct influence or military power in England to safeguard them, the count of Flanders became susceptible to pro-English pressure from his nobles – especially if these were powerful castellans and comital officials. Awarding fiefs on the other side of the Channel was a gesture of goodwill on the part of the English ruler, but also a leash with which to keep their holders in check. Land and money fiefs, once granted, could, after all, also be taken away. 64 65 66 67

Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, pp. 184–5; Baldwin, Philip Augustus, pp. 272–7; Dept, Les influences, pp. 56–68; Lyon, ‘The Money Fief’, 176–7. Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Bertin, ed. B. Gu´erard (Paris, 1840), no. 28, pp. 202–3; Heirbaut, ‘The fief-rente’, 2–6, 11–13. Geoffrey Gaimar, Lestoire des Engles, p. 340. As pointed out in the broader context of medieval European politics by R. Davies, ‘The Peoples of Britain and Ireland 1100–1400, I. Identities’, TRHS, 6th Series (1994), 1–20, 11.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy It was in the best interests of the Flemings so concerned to maintain peaceful and gainful relations between England and Flanders, lest they be forced into a position where their property was threatened on one side of the Channel or the other. The chequered history of war and peace between Flanders and the Angevin Empire in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries demonstrates that money fiefs at this level did not govern cross-Channel relations. But what the baronial money fiefs were about was creating a favourable context and securing an advantage. A money fief of thirty marks might not motivate any one Flemish baron to rebel against the count, but their extensive deployment could serve to deter a break-up, or to fragment the county’s internal political cohesion after a break-up took place. THE FLEM ISH TREATY FIEF DURING THE REIGN OF KING HENRY II A political friendship lacks substance if it does not contain an element of recurring gain. The money fief was the twelfth century’s solution to that old political problem: how to make an alliance stick. Certainly, an oath of homage or a declaration of amicitia are powerful events at the moment they are made actual, and the importance of the personal relations, kinship ties and individual personalities of two rulers concluding an agreement cannot be disregarded.68 But diplomacy necessitates the creation of incentives. The fact that the king of England bought the goodwill of the count of Flanders was a key principle underpinning the AngloFlemish entente cordiale. This is an interpretation advanced by modern and medieval historians alike. William of Malmesbury never failed to note financial payments as a feature of cross-Channel friendship.69 For Galbert of Bruges, the return of peace to the land on Count Thierry’s accession in 1128 was made concrete by the restoration of those English and French fiefs that had once belonged to Charles the Good.70 Political friendship with Flanders was inevitably accompanied by a shower of gifts and fiefs. The fief of the Flemish counts merits separate discussion, both because of its greater political importance and because more extensive detail on it is available in narrative and diplomatic sources from the second half of the twelfth century. Unfortunately, little information about the 68

69

Benham, Peacemaking, pp. 90–106, on the psychology and religious implications of homage and amicitia; for an example of personal diplomacy in the Anglo-Frankish context, see Gillingham, ‘The Meetings’, pp. 17–42. 70 Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 169. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 728.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 fief’s practical management survives from the eleventh century or from the first half of the twelfth. There is extant one complete Pipe Roll from the thirtieth year of Henry I’s reign and a fragment from his twenty-fifth, as well as fragmentary records from Stephen’s reign, but none of these contain records of payments by the king to the count of Flanders.71 More documents survive from the period after the accession of Henry II in 1154. His reign marked a particularly intense period of political relations with Flanders, in which treaties and money fiefs occupied a central role. It is very likely that Henry II and Thierry concluded a treaty c.1156 based on the 1101 model.72 This treaty was renewed between Henry and Thierry in 1163, along with the promise of a money fief worth 500 marks, of which 100 marks was to be paid to Countess Sybil.73 We have reports that Count Philip was in the process of negotiating a money fief of 1,000 marks for his brother Matthew in 1166, and Robert of Torigni records that Henry had indeed awarded a large cash fief to Matthew in 1168.74 In 1173, Henry II’s son, Young King Henry, promised Philip and Matthew numerous rewards as a payment for supporting his rebellion – these included rent of 1,000 marks to Philip.75 Obviously the younger Henry was in no position to make good on his promises at the time but, when Henry II concluded peace with Philip in 1175, he also awarded Philip a rent payment of 1,000 marks to be disbursed from the English exchequer.76 This fief was reaffirmed in 1180, and very probably again in 1182.77 The Flemish fief was the financial fuel that empowered the AngloFlemish agreements. But how was it managed and organised? Though in comparison to continental sources of the time the English administrative records are precociously detailed, there is no continuous run of records during Henry II’s reign of payments made out of the chamber (or the royal household finances), or of exchequer payments made by writs of liberate. Since these latter recorded pensions and salaries, it is especially unfortunate that the earliest collection of writs of liberate dates from 1200. Even these provide only incomplete information on the Flemish fief: a payment of 100 marks to Baldwin IX is recorded, and seems to 71 72 74 75 76 77

PR 31 Henry I (1129–30); M. Hagger, ‘A Pipe Roll for 25 Henry I’, EHR 122 (2007), 133–40; K. Yoshitake, ‘The Exchequer in the Reign of Stephen’, EHR 103 (1988), 950–9. 73 Diplomatic Documents, no. 2, pp. 8–12. See p. 71 above. Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, no. 112, pp. 542–6; Letters of John of Salisbury, vol. 2, no. 272, pp. 562–4; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 238. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 44; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 46. See also pp. 39–40 above. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 83. Ibid., pp. 346–7; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 197; RAH, vol. 2, no. 439, pp. 230–1.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy have been briefly transferred to the count’s brother, Philip of Namur, on Baldwin’s departure for the Fourth Crusade in 1202.78 But that is all. While the totality of the Flemish fief referred to in narrative and diplomatic material cannot be reconstructed from the administrative material, it is possible to gain a closer understanding of the fief by examining the annual rents assigned to the counts of Flanders and Boulogne in the Pipe Rolls of King Henry II – the annual financial accounts of the English exchequer, which exist as an unbroken record from the second year of Henry II onwards (1155–6). While the Pipe Rolls rarely recorded all the payments assigned to the counts, they do indicate how the bulk of this large international cash fief was managed. The first large English property we find assigned to the count of Flanders is the annual rent of £200 in 1155 from the wealthy manor of Kirton in Lindsey.79 Additional rents were assigned the following year; the grand total paid by the king came to £341. All these manors were listed as terre date, or royal gift land, which is to say that they were estates granted away from the royal domain but still notionally existing within the sphere of royal ownership. Together with a spate of miscellaneous payments made in 1156 to the count of Flanders the total sum recorded in 1156 adds up to £423 13s 13d.80 As far as the records show, the miscellaneous payments of 1156 were a one-off arrangement, but in 1158 the manor of Exning was added to the count’s roster, and this set the sum total for several years at a flat £406.81 To illustrate the fief’s breakdown, the manors assigned to Count Thierry in the 1157–8 Roll are listed in Table 2 below. Not all money was of equal value. The exchequer had two means of establishing the real value of the silver coinage paid in rent. First, in blancum payments, such as those made from Bampton and Kirton (total £276), the purity of the rent money was determined by combustion, or melting the silver to test its purity. In numero payments, made from Dunham and Exning (£125), the rent money was subject to ‘nominal 78

79

80 81

Rotuli de Liberate ac de Misis et Praestitis, ed. T. Hardy (London, 1844), pp. 3, 15, 21, 87. It was undoubtedly connected to the annual fief he was awarded by Richard in 1197. Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 4, p. 20. The Red Book of the Exchequer, vol. 2, p. 656. The administrative year of the Pipe Rolls ran from 30 September. We do not know exactly when the Flemish fief was paid during most of Henry II’s reign, but the 1110 and 1163 treaties stipulated that the agreed sum should be handed over at Christmas. There is thus a good chance that transactions recorded in, for example, the administrative year 1156 in fact refer to a payment intended to cover the January-to-December calendar year of 1155. PR 2 Henry I (1155–6), pp. 16, 37, 39–40, 65; The Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 659. PR 4 Henry II (1157–8), pp. 125, 136, 149, 152.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Table 2. The Flemish fief in 1158 Manor Bampton and Weald Dunham Exning Kirton

County Oxfordshire Nottinghamshire Suffolk Lincolnshire

Total

Assigned revenue £76 £5 £60 £65 £200 £406

combustion’, in which the cash was merely counted and one shilling added to every twenty (1 over 20) to make up for the currency’s possible shortcomings.82 The Dunham and Exning money – £6 added to £119 – is almost exactly this rate, so the precise rent assigned to Thierry in the rolls was just a few pennies over the equivalent of £400 blancum. These are very round figures. Assigning these estates to Thierry most probably constituted a payment made towards meeting a pre-agreed sum of £400, mirroring the amount of 400 marks assigned to Thierry in the 1163 treaty (with a further 100 marks assigned to Sybil). It is also reminiscent of the sum of 400 marks in the 1110 treaty. It is highly likely that this sum was the result of a formal treaty concluded by Henry with Thierry and Sybil in the mid-1150s. The sum total due to Flanders in the 1156–7 Roll remains £341, but this could easily have been an administrative oversight, or, possibly, the remainder was arranged as a writ of liberate, or by other direct payment from the royal finances. It was money well spent. The early establishment of a strong relationship with Count Thierry proved immeasurably beneficial to young Henry II. A political alliance with the king’s close neighbour and kinsman would bring highly desirable stability to regional politics. Fallout from the political and dynastic divisions of King Stephen’s reign, however, would continue to trouble Henry’s plans, and relations with Flanders fell victim to his attempts to control the inheritance of the previous king’s properties. In 1160 Henry arranged the marriage of Thierry’s younger son Matthew to King Stephen’s heir Mary of Blois. Thierry must have objected to the arrangement, for he levied 82

Richard fitz Nigel, Dialogus de Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer, ed. and trans. E. Amt (OMT, Oxford, 2007), pp. 14–18, 54–60, 128, 188, lays out the theory behind this practice. See also the Pipe Roll Society, Introduction to the Study of the Pipe Rolls (Pipe Roll Society 3, London, 1884), pp. 74–5, 87.

100

Anglo-Flemish diplomacy 450 400 350 300 250 Manors of Flanders Miscellaneous Payments Manors of Boulogne

200 150 100 50

11

55 11 57 11 59 11 61 11 63 11 65 11 67 11 69 11 71 11 73 11 75 11 77 11 79 11 81 11 83 11 85 11 87 11 89 11 91

0

Figure 1.

Pipe Roll payments in the reign of Henry II

an army against his son.83 During the same year the Flemish rents disappeared from the Rolls, and it seems very probable that Henry withdrew the fief. In 1161 only the manor of Dunham was still assigned to Count Thierry. Bampton, Exning and Kirton had been repossessed or reallocated.84 The Rolls record that the manors of Bampton and Weald were returned to the count in 1162, perhaps reflecting the reconciliation of Thierry and Matthew in 1161.85 But, since they were again listed as crown property the following year, along with Dunham and all the other manors, it is possible that the 1162 Bampton attribution, and possibly also that of Dunham in 1161, was a scribal error, due to direct copying of entries from previous years. As we shall see, such errors were not uncommon. The Pipe Roll evidence clearly suggests a breakdown in political relations until rapprochement was effected in the form of the Anglo-Flemish treaty of 1163. There are no records in the Pipe Rolls of 83

84

85

Lambert of Waterlos, ‘Annales Cameracenses’, p. 533; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 207; Sigebert of Gembloux et al., ‘Sigeberti Gemblacensis Chronica’, p. 397; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, pp. 202–3. PR 7 Henry II (1160–1), p. 7, 30. Kirton and Bampton do not appear in the Roll, and had been subsumed back into the county farm. Exning was leased by the king to Hugh the Deacon. The situation of Dunham is unclear, as the ‘men of the manor’ give account for it to the king, while the manor is assigned to Count Thierry. PR 8 Henry II (1161–2), p. 26.

101

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Flemish rents to accompany the treaty. The military and financial aspects of the 1163 treaty were not its primary purpose, but even so it is hard to believe that Thierry – who was preparing for a crusade, always an expensive undertaking – would have agreed to forgo a payment. More probably the fief, which at 500 marks was noticeably smaller than any other recorded treaty fief, was paid directly from the chamber, rather than through the reassignment of specific manorial rents. The fief’s evolution in the 1160s demonstrates the tightly knit internal co-operation that allowed the Alsatian dynasty to dominate the southern Low Countries. The manorial rents once assigned to Thierry were reestablished as Alsatian property after the negotiations conducted in 1166 and 1168 by Count Thierry’s oldest son and principal heir Count Philip of Flanders. These talks were held during the controversy that followed Archbishop Becket’s exile, amid the mounting hostilities between Henry II and Louis VII of France; the reinvigoration of the Anglo-Flemish relationship owed much to the heightened level of international diplomatic activity, with Count Philip in particular seeking to intervene in the Becket affair on numerous occasions. The count was no doubt seeking to build an international reputation and to profit politically by his mediations. The main beneficiary of the manorial rents was, however, not Philip himself, but his younger brother Count Matthew of Boulogne. The Pipe Rolls show that Matthew was assigned rents worth a total of £326 from Kirton, Exning and Bampton. This money was presumably a payment towards his new fief of 1,000 marks, which had been discussed between Henry II and the Alsatian brothers in 1166.86 Rents from the manor of Dunham were granted to Philip in 1168. But in the Pipe Roll of 1170 a scribe marked the attribution ‘the count of Flanders’ for deletion and corrected the ownership of the Dunham manor to ‘the count of Boulogne’.87 A similar correction was also made in the matter of Flemish (or rather Boulonnaise) servientes in the 1171 Roll.88 It is possible that Philip’s earlier ownership of Dunham was an uncorrected misattribution, and that Matthew already held the rents between 1168 and 1169. It is even possible that Philip enjoyed no money fief, or only a much smaller fief than his brother, during this period. He certainly would have lost any previous fief in 1167, even if temporarily, when he and Matthew rattled

86

87

Correspondence of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, no. 112, pp. 542–6, no. 113, p. 550; PR 14 Henry II (1167–8), pp. 14, 60, 205. The fief was as before, except that Bampton and Weald had been reduced from a total of £81 to £61. Weald, not usually recorded separately, was still a part of the Bampton manor, as in PR 34 Henry II (1187–8), p. 7. See discussion in Chapter 1 above, pp. 37–8. 88 PR 17 Henry II (1170–1), p. 99. PR 16 Henry II (1169–70), p. 140.

102

Anglo-Flemish diplomacy sabres with Henry. When Henry II called for military aid in 1168, it was only Matthew, and not Philip, who sent soldiers.89 The two brothers were clearly very closely associated with each other in the eyes of the English royal administration and, as events would go on to show, the counties of Flanders and Boulogne effectively constituted a single political bloc. The crux of the issue in 1167 had been the inheritance of Matthew’s wife, Mary of Boulogne. Henry II had withheld the greater part of the property that Mary was due from her father, King Stephen, and Matthew laid a claim in particular to the county of Mortain in south-western Normandy; Robert of Torigni relates that renouncing it was a condition for the awarding of ‘a large annual sum of money’ by Henry to Matthew.90 As Matthew by all accounts had a good working relationship with his elder brother and his county was a buffer zone between the Channel and Flanders, Henry may have calculated that granting such a fief to Boulogne would generate sufficient support and security in the southern Low Countries. But if so, he would soon have cause to regret his miserliness. In the end the arrangement failed to satisfy the Alsatian brothers. When Young King Henry, Henry II’s troubled heir, rebelled in 1173 with the support of King Louis VII of France, Philip and Matthew sided with him in the hope of gaining Stephen’s inheritance, and other great rewards.91 The results of the rebellion were inconclusive. When the war broke out Henry withdrew the manors, but he was quick to re-grant Philip ‘his rents’ of 1,000 marks from the English exchequer in the peace negotiations of 1175.92 Matthew had perished during the invasion of Normandy in 1173; a new money fief was established for Philip, and in the Pipe Rolls he was assigned rents from Bampton, Dunham and Kirton.93 The problem of Mary’s inheritance was entirely sidelined. No doubt it helped to smooth matters over that she had returned to religious life in a convent, and Matthew had remarried.94 This open-handedness on the part of Henry II may seem surprising. But it simply demonstrates Henry’s pragmatism and the reality of the geopolitical situation: above all, the king wished to prevent his rivals from regaining Flanders as an 89 90 91 92

93 94

History of William Marshal, vol. 1, pp. 43–57; Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 203; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 238. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 238. For the full context of the events, see pp. 39–41 above. Revenues were assigned to the king for a part of the year in 1173 and were subsumed into the county farm in 1174. PR 19 Henry II (1172–3), pp. 133, 168, 173; PR 20 Henry II (1173–4), pp. 56–7, 59, 77–8. PR 21 Henry II (1174–5), pp. 11, 29, 144. Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, p. 596; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 246.

103

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 ally in the future. If nothing else, the revolt reaffirmed the position of the money fief as a central, permanent feature of the Anglo-Flemish political relationship. Rent payments remained stable into the late 1170s,95 and were only upset by Count Philip’s disastrous attempt to impose himself politically on the young King Philip II of France in 1179–80.96 Henry II initially opposed the count’s ambitions and, while open hostilities did not break out between England and Flanders, the Pipe Roll manors were placed in the custody of Earl William of Mandeville from 1181 to 1183.97 This calls into question whether Philip actually received the fief of 1,000 marks promised to him by Henry at the conference in June 1180,98 but it seems more probable that Henry gave Mandeville oversight of the estate rents only in order to involve a royal representative who had a close personal relationship with the count. This is what seems to have happened later, in 1185–8, and the records of the exchequer in Normandy for 1180 do show that Mandeville was involved in the ransoming of Philip’s men in Rouen.99 But, if relations were strained, King Philip II’s all-too-apparent ambitions in Vermandois and the death of Countess Elizabeth of Flanders in March 1182 created a chance to restore them. Henry spent the lavish sum of £247 19s 11d on expenses related to the procession of Count Philip’s new wife, Matilda of Portugal, to Flanders via England, and the Pipe Roll rents were restored to the count in the 1184 roll.100 The conditional nature of the fief, however, was now emphasised by appending the Flemish revenues listed in the Pipe Rolls with the phrase ‘for as long as it pleases the king’ (quamdiu Regi placuerit). The fief remained a political expedient, not a securely alienated set of estates. After Henry II’s death in late 1189 and shortly before his own, Earl William of Mandeville negotiated the extension of the agreement between King Richard and Count Philip.101 Business seems initially to have continued as usual, but Richard’s departure on a crusade, soon 95

96 97 98 99 100

101

PR 22 Henry II (1175–6), pp. 28, 77, 90; PR 23 Henry II (1176–7), pp. 11, 57, 106; PR 24 Henry II (1177–8), pp. 2, 86, 117; PR 25 Henry II (1178–9), pp. 43, 80, 94; PR 26 Henry II (1179–80), pp. 25, 48, 136. In 1176–7 only half a year’s rent (£100) was paid from Kirton. It may be that the remainder was channelled from other sources, since Philip was also paid a corrody of £45 4s 6d (p. 202). See pp. 41–2 above. PR 27 Henry II (1180–1), pp. 10, 51, 64; PR 28 Henry II (1181–2), pp. 14, 50, 60–1, 123; PR 29 Henry II (1182–3), pp. 62, 71, 86, 100. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 246–7; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 197. Norman PR (1179–80), p. 51. PR 30 Henry II (1183–4), estates pp. 14, 69, 95; expenses pp. 80, 87. Philip was, however, granted only half of the annual fief from Bampton and Kirton in 1184–5. It is possible that Henry II held back the cash to cover the previous year’s expenses. PR 31 Henry II (1184–5), pp. 81, 105. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 2, p. 101; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 3, p. 28.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy followed by that of Count Philip, eroded the number of Flemish estates. Dunham and Kirton were repossessed by the crown the following year. Bampton remained assigned to Count Philip until his death in 1191, after which it too was repossessed. Though Richard and, later, John renewed alliances with Flanders, these manors were never returned to Flemish hands. Richard concluded a treaty accompanied by a money fief with Count Baldwin IX of Flanders in 1197, and the agreement was ratified by King John in 1199. But the surviving record shows that mandated money payments were assigned directly to envoys and English officials from the royal treasury, rather than associated with particular manors.102 The Flemish fief disappeared entirely from the English financial records in 1203. In 1202 Count Baldwin IX had left for the Fourth Crusade. He died in 1206, and the political situation after his death prevented the permanent re-establishment of the agreement. It was not renewed in 1213 when King John concluded a treaty with Count Ferrand of Flanders to oppose Philip II of France.103 One might imagine that John judged no additional financial inducements were necessary to cement an alliance against an enemy who had annexed much of southern Flanders. How important was this money fief in comparative terms, as political payment and bribe? The Anglo-Norman realm generated a great deal of wealth. The oldest extant royal Pipe Roll, that of 1130, records an annual revenue of approximately £23,000 for King Henry I from England. At the outset of his reign in the late 1150s, King Henry II’s English Pipe Roll revenues were approximately £13,000, but he was soon able to increase his income. By the last decade of his reign they again averaged approximately £23,000.104 After the turbulence of the first half of his reign, the revenues of Richard I recorded in the English Pipe Rolls stabilised at the same annual sum of £23,000. John’s income did not reach this level until after 1204, after which he intermittently raised much larger sums, although significant inflation complicates comparisons between revenue levels in real terms.105 To all these figures were added revenues from the wider Angevin empire, notably from Normandy. A rare surviving Pipe Roll from the Norman exchequer dated to 1180 102

103 104

105

PR 8 Richard I (1196–7), p. 62, 164; PR 9 Richard I (1197–8), p. 172; PR 3 John (1201–2), p. 289; PR 4 John (1202–3), p. 9; De oorkonden (1191 – aanvang 1206), vol. 1, nos. 66, 115, pp. 144–51, 258–62; Diplomatic Documents, no. 7, pp. 18–20. Rotuli Chartarum, p. 197. J. Green, ‘“Praeclarum et magnificum antiquitatis monumentum”: the Earliest Surviving Pipe Roll’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 55 (1982), 14–17, figures updated in J. Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 54–5; J. Ramsey, A History of the Revenues of the Kings of England, 1066–1399 (Oxford, 1925), vol. 1, pp. 190–1. Barratt, ‘The Revenue of King John’, 853–55; Barratt, ‘The English Revenue of Richard I’, 635–56.

105

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 lists the duchy’s revenues for that year as at least £6,720.106 Large nonregular payments could be exacted through confiscations and loans, as was famously demonstrated when the ransom of Richard I was set at 150,000 marks (£100,000), most of which was successfully raised.107 These are enormous numbers. By way of comparison, Orderic Vitalis’s estimate of the income of William II of Warenne (d. 1138) from his earldom of Surrey seems paltry at £1,000 per annum, yet William was one of the kingdom’s leading nobles. The yearly revenues of the archbishop of Canterbury between 1086 and 1180 fluctuated between £1,200 and £1,600.108 The income of the count of Flanders would have been larger, but not by an order of magnitude, perhaps roughly equal to that collected by the Norman exchequer.109 The Flemish money fief was well within the king’s capacity to pay, but as a single recurring expense it was still a very considerable sum, and a tribute highly desirable to a Frankish prince. The armies of several hundred men that Matthew and Philip sent to serve Henry in 1168 and 1187 suggest that the money fief succeeded in its job of securing not only a political friendship, but also the military alliance between the Alsatian dynasty and the Angevin king.110 THE M ANAGEM ENT OF THE TREATY FIEFS The basic structure of the Flemish and Boulonnaise comital fief was as follows. The terre date estates in the Pipe Rolls constituted the fief’s core component. These formed a solid financial foundation to which further cash payments, raised from a variety of other sources, were added as needed. Cash payments were probably collected by a representative of the count from the treasuries in London in England and in Rouen in Normandy, on his presenting a charter or other proof of his right to receive them; such arrangements were not 106

107 108 109

110

V. Moss, ‘Normandy and England in 1180: The Pipe Roll Evidence’, in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Bates and A. Curry (London, 1994), pp. 185–95, 188. The roll is incomplete, however, and as much as 30 per cent of it may be missing. Norman figures are converted from livres angevins to pounds sterling at a 1:4 ratio; see P. Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange (London, 1986), p. 206. For more discussion on the size of the Norman revenue, see note at p. 49 above. Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 2, p. 110; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 3, pp. 231–3, 303–4. Gillingham, Richard I, pp. 247–8. OV, vol. 6, p. 12; R. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society 1000–1500 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 39. The 1187 Gros Brief, or the Flemish count’s general account, survives, but some 10 per cent of it is missing and cannot be reconstructed, and not all types of comital income were recorded in it. Le Compte G´en´eral de 1187, connu sous le nom de ‘Gros Brief’, et les institutions financi`eres du comt´e de Flandre au XIIe si`ecle, ed. A. Verhulst and M. Gysseling (Brussels, 1962). Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 347; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 238.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy unknown.111 This was a high-profile task, and a Flemish official involved in the matter during Richard’s reign was the castellan of Ghent.112 The annual regularity of a money fief payment forged a link between the parties that should not be underestimated. Medieval politics were deeply personal, so a visit by a foreign magnate to a stronghold of the royal administration was an occasion of significance. The collection of the lesser baronial money fiefs, possibly by their chief recipients themselves, also made for political occasions that deepened links between the two parties and enabled further parleying. The precise arrangements concerning the revenue and management of the terre date manors remain more opaque. The static values recorded in the Pipe Rolls do not represent the real annual output of the estates but rather the royal administration’s assessment of what their annual rent ought to be. These were agricultural units: actual output of produce and labour (which could then be used to acquire currency) must have been higher and would naturally vary from year to year based on the numerous variables governing agriculture and market conditions. The stability of the account value of the properties through the thirty-five years of Henry’s reign, through multiple repossessions by and reassignments to royal agents who had the capacity to commission an inquest, does, however, indicate that the estates’ real output did not fall substantially.113 In 1187–8 and 1194–5 the royal agents’ annual payments from the manors to the treasury were off the rent valuation by only a few pounds, once grants, concessions and expenses had been accounted for.114 Most closely involved with the Flemish fief in the 1180s was Earl William of Mandeville, whom we have already encountered as King Henry II’s go-to man in Flemish affairs. As noted, he appears in the Pipe Roll records of 1181 as accounting for the farms of Kirton and Bampton, as well as for half the income of Dunham and Norton.115 Henry responded to Count Philip’s challenge to the political balance of north-western Europe by assuming tighter control over the manorial rents. Mandeville relinquished his custody over the estates in 1183, but his active participation was of crucial importance to the maintenance of 111 113

114 115

112 PR 8 Richard I (1196–7), pp. 62, 164. Heirbaut, ‘The fief-rente’, pp. 34–5. R. Hoyt, The Royal Demesne in English Constitutional History: 1066–1272 (Ithaca and New York, 1950), pp. 100–1. The only exception was Bampton, which had been downgraded from £76 to £61 when the estate was reassigned from the county farm to Count Matthew of Boulogne in 1168. It could be, of course, that part of the manor had been granted to a third party. PR 14 Henry II (1167–8), p. 205. PR 34 Henry II (1187–8), pp. 6–7; PR 6 Richard I (1194–5), pp. 28–9. PR 27 Henry II (1180–1), p. 64. The Roll accounts are somewhat inconsistent, as elsewhere Mandeville is held responsible for the entirety of Dunham’s value, which may have been assigned to Philip.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Anglo-Flemish relations through the 1180s. The count’s English possessions are grouped in the 1186–8 Rolls under separate entries labelled ‘the lands of the count of Flanders that Earl William of Mandeville holds in custody’, with Mandeville giving account of their rent to the treasury.116 Yet it is recorded elsewhere in the same Roll, under the county headings, that the farm fiefs were assigned to Philip as usual.117 It seems that business continued to be conducted as before, though with greater involvement on the part of the royal government. Mandeville’s task was to oversee the management of estates, and perhaps to convey the fief to Flanders. The closing years of Henry II’s reign were his darkest. The alliance that developed between Philip II of France and Henry’s heir Richard ultimately brought the old king down. It cannot be that Henry denied Count Philip his rich fief at this crucial time, for the latter was a voice friendly to him at King Philip’s court, and is known to have put an army of several hundred men at Henry’s disposal.118 But it would have been not at all unlike Henry to place his appointed fiefs under stricter scrutiny, with all the subtle admonishment about the penalties of disloyalty that this might imply. Henry died on 6 July 1189 and, since it was King Richard’s policy to offer friendship to the count of Flanders, one must assume that the estates were not denied to Philip. Thus, when Mandeville was made the steward responsible (debet respondere) for Kirton in 1188–9, it was to facilitate the continuation of the Flemish fief through the regime change.119 Earl Mandeville was called in (like the medieval equivalent of a highpowered consultant) at times of potential crisis, but below such highstatus officials there were managers responsible for collecting the rents in cash or, less probably at this time, in kind, from the farmers of the individual estates that made up the manors.120 In the usual run of affairs, rents, once collected – and, if need be, converted from kind to cash – were brought to the exchequer in London, where the royal officials drew up their accounts.121 The managers of the manors, and the people who lived on them, remain mostly anonymous, but every now and then we are given a glimpse of who they might have been. The 1161 entry for Dunham refers to ‘the men of the town’, identified in a succeeding entry 116

117 118 120 121

PR 33 Henry II (1186–7), pp. 66–7; PR 34 Henry II (1187–8), p. 7. The entry is made already in PR 32 Henry II (1185–6), p. 81, but left blank, so Mandeville had probably only just assumed control over the estates when the 1186 roll was closed. PR 32 Henry II (1185–6), pp. 70, 102, 111; PR 33 Henry II (1186–7), pp. 45, 165; PR 34 Henry II (1187–8), pp. 149, 193. 119 PR 1 Richard I (1188–9), p. 55. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 347. For a contemporary perspective on cash rents, see Richard fitz Nigel, Dialogus de Scaccario, pp. 62–9. On the operation of the exchequer, see the Pipe Roll Society, Introduction.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy as Hugo and Ulfgiet, who accounted for the estate’s value.122 In the same year we see a certain Henry of Chemesel ‘and his company’ draw an income from Exning. This group of Flemings continued to hold the manor even after it was dissociated from the comital fief in 1173.123 Roger of Howden’s note that in 1175 and 1180 the Flemish rents were to be collected from the exchequer indicates that this was a pure form of money fief: the count, as its holder, acquired an income stream without acquiring the ownership of its source.124 The presence of Chemesel and his group in Exning indicates, however, that the counts exercised some form of control over the estates. By 1181 the significant income of £20 per annum from Kirton had been awarded to Radulf of Lens, a man whose involvement with the Alsatians goes back at least to 1173, when he witnessed a grant by Count Matthew of the monastery of St Josse in Boulogne. Some time before 1187, a stipend of 12s was awarded from Bampton to an English order of canons in Osney near Oxford.125 The evidence is sparse, but the presence of Flemings in Exning, and the capacity of the counts to award income from the manors, suggests that they were able to manage and even to reassign significant parts of the properties. These estates were assigned, on and off, to the Alsatian family for three and a half decades – a whole generation. Even after the fief was lost to the Flemish counts the manors remained a single unit, often associated with the counts of Boulogne, and awarded as a group to various magnates far into the reign of John.126 The fief manors should not be regarded simply as an anonymous source of rent payments, but as specific properties that were identified with ownership exercised from the southern Low Countries. When the Dover treaty of 1163 and English narrative sources refer to the Flemish treaty fief of the second half of the twelfth century as being paid in silver marks, it is nevertheless arguable whether or not it can, strictly speaking, be seen as a money fief. As is often the case, the practical challenges inherent in medieval administration, especially medieval administration involving international property ownership, defy neat categories. The Flemish fief was indeed at all times a money fief in that the recipient count would see its produce in the form of bullion or 122 123 124 125

126

PR 7 Henry II (1160–1), p. 30. PR 7 Henry II (1160–1), p. 7; PR 19 Henry II (1172–3), p. 116. The group was identified as specifically Flemish in PR 8 Richard 1 (1196–7), p. 239. As in Heirbaut, ‘The fief-rente’, 2–6. PR 28 Henry II (1181–2), p. 60; PR 33 Henry II (1186–7), p. 67; PR 34 Henry II (1187–8), p. 7; E. Baluze, Histoire g´en´ealogique de la maison d’Auvergne (Paris, 1708), vol. 2, p. 97. Lens was an inland county in Flemish Artois. Round, Studies in Peerage, pp. 177–80.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 currency. But it was not always a money fief, in that the counts manifestly did have considerable involvement with the manors themselves. And, lest we be too satisfied with this simple qualification, we should note that the fief’s oversight may have oscillated through its history, notably through the involvement of William of Mandeville. We do not know how the Flemish fief was structured before 1155; during its brief resurgence in the records around 1200 it was met by cash payments unattached to any particular properties.127 In all likelihood Henry II connected his Flemish stipend to certain manors for simple practical considerations. On Henry’s accession the royal administration was in disarray, and it took several years before the king began to receive all the revenues he was due from crown lands.128 In such circumstances a conventional money fief would not have been the most efficient means of arranging a large foreign stipend. Rather, it would have been simpler and more cost-effective to agree on a block of estates that were set aside from the county farms to meet the fief, with the count of Flanders perhaps himself taking part in organising the management of the manors. Handson involvement by Thierry is suggested by the spate of miscellaneous payments from the exchequer during the administrative year 1155–6. These include a number of corrodies (or allowances for maintenance) paid in Kent, as well as a payment from Oxfordshire and a number of payments from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. We know that Thierry and Sybil met to confer with Henry in Rouen in February 1156.129 Afterwards Henry departed south to deal with his brother Geoffrey’s rebellion, but financial records indicate that Thierry then crossed the Channel to inspect personally the manors of Dunham and Bampton – added to Thierry’s fief that very year – before passing through Kent on his way back to Flanders.130 Finally, there is a sense that political propriety influenced the arrangement. Cash payment, or service against a monetary reward, were not seen as categorically dishonourable forms of exchange by the twelfthcentury aristocracy. But this does not entirely exclude the possibility that the ease with which the social divide between a warrior aristocrat and a commoner was bridged by a cash retainer – a treaty fief or a mercenary’s stipend – aroused disquiet.131 Manorial estates grounded the Flemish 127 128 129 130 131

PR 8 Richard I (1196–7), p. 62, 164; PR 9 Richard I (1197–8), p. 172; PR 3 John (1201–2), p. 289; PR 4 John (1202–3), p. 9; Rotuli de Liberate, pp. 3, 15, 21, 87. Hoyt, Royal Demesne, pp. 91–2. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 186; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, p. 301. PR 2 Henry I (1155–6), pp. 16, 37, 39–40, 65; The Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 659. L. Napran, ‘Mercenaries and Paid Men in Gilbert of Mons’, in Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. J. France (Boston and Leiden, 2008), pp. 287–99,

110

Anglo-Flemish diplomacy arrangement firmly in the world of the landed aristocracy and provided a sense of long-term stability undoubtedly desirable for everyone. The fief’s management stands as a salubrious reminder of the practical challenges and solutions inherent in a major international transaction of this kind. The conduct of Anglo-Flemish diplomatic and political relations rested on a broad foundation composed of many layers of formal and informal ties and interconnected interests binding together the Anglo-Norman and Flemish elites. The tenurial history of the manor of Exning, Suffolk, which was withdrawn from the comital fief as a result of the war of 1173–4, serves as an intriguing microcosm of such associations. Already in 1161, Henry of Chemesel ‘and his company’ were associated with the manor, and recorded as communally drawing an income of £8.132 They reappear in 1173, the year of Young King Henry’s rebellion, when Chemesel, Derekin of Acra and ‘other knights of the count of Boulogne’ are assigned £63 pounds from Exning ‘by the writ of the king for as long as it pleases the king’.133 In later rolls the men were labelled as Flemish, and listed as including Thierry and Gilbert of Dienze, a town in Flanders near Ghent.134 It seems that these men and their followers were Anglo-Flemish knights, who in 1173 simply made the judicious decision to jump ship. Overall, they chose well, for Exning was never returned to the counts of Flanders or Boulogne. With the exception of a few brief intervals, the two knights, their associates and their eventual successors continued to be associated with the manor into the reign of Henry III; in 1227 one Henry ‘de Kemsing’, probably a grandson of the original Henry of Chemesel, was involved in a local lawsuit.135 Chemesel may refer to Kemsing in Kent, and Acra to Castle Acre in Norfolk. Given their English surnames, Henry and Derekin, the leaders of the group, may have come from established Anglo-Flemish knightly families, rather than being first-generation immigrants themselves. Such men, knowledgeable about local affairs in south-eastern England, would have been good choices to run a treaty manor, but their background also helps to explain their defection to Henry II when the 1173–4 war broke out. Even after the war, some association between the manor and the southern Low Countries remained. In 1180 the township was fined for illegal

132 134 135

294, discusses this with specific reference to the southern Low Countries in the late twelfth century. 133 PR 19 Henry II (1172–3), p. 116. PR 7 Henry II (1160–1), p. 7. PR 29 Henry II (1182–3), p. 13; PR 8 Richard I (1196–7), p. 239. Fine Roll 5 Henry III, C 60/15 (1220–21), membrane 6, accessed through www.finerollshenry3. org.uk on 9 July 2011.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 concealment of property to the tune of fifteen marks, which was duly conveyed to Count Philip in Flanders.136 Perhaps Chemesel, Derekin and their compatriots continued to owe some form of rent to Philip after they gained control of the manor. Certainly, suspicions of divided loyalty were later to haunt the group. In the administrative year 1196–7, at the time when Richard decreed an embargo on Flanders and his officials imprisoned several Flemish merchants in England, the men of the manor were regarded as too compromised to be left in peace, and their lands were recorded as having been escheated for one year to the crown.137 Serving two masters is not easy, but it was not an uncommon experience. The existence of potentially contradictory interests and ties was a feature of international aristocratic society, and continually shaped the conduct of cross-Channel relations. Examples multiply over time. On King Richard’s accession in 1189 the Flemings lost the custody of Exning manor for a number of years, and it passed to one John Marshal, brother of William Marshal. The latter was a property owner in St Omer, had been a member of Count Philip’s household, and was some years later involved in the payment of the Flemish stipend agreed in the treaty of 1197 between King Richard and Count Baldwin IX.138 John’s successor for a few years was Henry of Vere, who can be identified as the brother of Aubrey IV of Vere, the earl of Oxford. His sister Alice of Vere, the widow of Henry of Chemesel’s successor Arnulf, drew a pension from the farm. Their father, Aubrey III of Vere, had been briefly, through his marriage to Beatrice, the count of Guines (1137–c.1142) in coastal Flanders.139 The Veres were also related to the Clare family through the elder Aubrey’s mother Alice. The Chemesels had perhaps exploited this family connection, for Henry of Chemesel enjoyed an income worth £20 jointly with Richard of Clare at the manor of Fordham in Cambridgeshire between 1174 and 1192.140 After relinquishing his income from Exning, Henry of Vere acquired a joint income at the Norfolk manor of Foulsham, which he held with the Anglo-Flemish grandees Baldwin of B´ethune and Earl Hamelin of Warenne – the latter was also the Anglo-Norman advocate 136 138 139

140

137 PR 8 Richard I (1196–7), p. 239. PR 26 Henry II (1179–80), p. 22. PR 4 Richard I (1192–3), p. 14, discusses the debt John had incurred during his leaseholdership; PR 9 Richard I (1197–8), p. 172; Crouch, William Marshal, pp. 47–8 and n. 13. PR 1 Richard I (1189–90), pp. 7, 91–2; PR 2 Richard I (1190–1), pp. 33–4; Facsimiles of Royal & Other Charters in the British Museum, ed. by G. Warner and H. Ellis (London, 1903), vol. 1, no. 18; Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, pp. 582–3, 584–8, 591; G. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage (London, 1945), vol. 10, p. 193–210; D. Crouch, ‘Vere, Aubrey (III) de’, ODNB. The marriage, which had been arranged by Beatrice of Guines’s Norman grandmother Emma of Tancarville, was dissolved c.1142. Henry and Alice were the issue of Aubrey’s later marriage to Lucia of Essex. Starting in PR20 Henry II (1173–4), p. 63.

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Anglo-Flemish diplomacy at St Bertin by St Omer.141 Though Henry of Vere disappeared from the entry after one year, Baldwin and Hamelin continued to enjoy the income jointly. Their alliance lasted into the next generation, and about a decade later Baldwin and Hamelin’s son and successor, William IV of Warenne, was assigned the rents of the former Flemish–Boulonnaise manors of Bampton, Dunham and Kirton.142 When Derekin of Acra and the other Flemings regained custody of Exning in 1193, they were joined in its ownership by Geoffrey of Say, who can be identified as William of Mandeville’s cousin and heir, and by Geoffrey fitz Peter, husband to Geoffrey of Say’s niece.143 This slice of late twelfth-century high society represents a group of people who had connections in the southern Low Countries, or who were related to people who had them. It is unlikely that they were connected to Exning by deliberate design; rather, what Exning’s manorial history illustrates is how tightly linked the Angevin elite could be to Anglo-Flemish interests. In comparison with the total population, the landholding elite was small. The portion of this elite that was politically successful and internationally oriented was smaller yet. And the section of that elite which also had dealings and connections with Flanders was tiny, its circles of association and patronage overlapping at numerous junctures. Relations between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world were embedded within sociopolitical networks of this kind. It was within them, and through the connections they provided, that cross-Channel diplomacy and politics were conducted. The structures of international political and diplomatic relations were layered; the particulars of the Flemish treaty fief take us straight back into the affairs of the AngloFlemish political community, and reveal a familiar world of dynastic relations, ecclesiastical interests and tenurial concerns among the aristocracy. A network of contacts had grown up through which information and political intelligence wound its way back and forth across the Channel. Its precise extent and close detail is invisible to us but, as one moves down from the high diplomatic events codified in the AngloFlemish treaties, the scope for intertwining interactions and interests continually broadens and deepens. As will be shortly discussed, the social environment of interpersonal relations constantly shaped the conduct of politics and diplomacy. 141 142 143

PR4 Richard I (1192–3), p. 14. On B´ethune and Warenne, see pp. 88–9 above and 206 below. PR 4 John (1202–3), pp. 105, 116, 189. They shared the rents with Geoffrey of Luterel, one of King John’s favourites. PR 4 Richard I (1192–3), p. 14.

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Chapter 4

TO U R N A M E N T I N A N G L O - F L E M I S H SOCIETY

In his account of the knighting of Geoffrey, duke of Brittany and third son of King Henry II, in 1178, the usually reserved English bureaucrat and chronicler Roger of Howden was moved to unusual heights of rhetorical flourish: [Geoffrey] immediately upon receiving the rank of a knight travelled from England to Normandy, and in the confines of Normandy and France gave his attention to military exercises, taking pleasure in matching himself against knights of reputation in arms . . . Nor indeed can the athlete bring high spirits to the contest, who has never been trained to practise it. It is the man who has first seen his own blood, whose teeth have rattled beneath another’s fists, who when tripped up has striven against his adversary with his entire body and though thrown has not lost his mettle, and who, as oft as he fell, has risen more determined, more bold, who goes forth with ardent hopes to the combat!1

The military exercises that so fired both the prince and the chronicler were tournaments, that most gripping of the medieval warrior aristocracy’s pastimes. Previous chapters have concentrated on the political and diplomatic institutions that determined Anglo-Flemish exchanges, but an examination of the tournament provides an opportunity to study its social context. The tournament emerges in the historical records of the southern Low Countries at the beginning of the twelfth century and subsequently rose to a spectacular level of popularity among the secular elites of western Europe. Tournaments were eagerly adopted by knightly society in all 1

‘[Gaufridum] statim post susceptionem militaris officii transfretavit de Anglia in Normanniam, et in confinibus Franciae et Normanniae militaribus exercitiis operam praestans, gaudebat se bonis militibus aequiparari . . . Nec “potest athleta magnos spiritus ad certamen afferre, qui nunquam sugillatus est. Ille qui sanguinem suum vidit; cujus dentes crepuerunt sub pugno: ille qui supplantatus adversium toto tulit corpore, nec projecit animum projectus; qui quotiens cecidit, contumacior surrexit, cum magna spe descendit ad pugnam.”’ Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 1, pp. 166–7; after the translation of H. Riley, The Annals of Roger de Hoveden, reprint, 4 vols. (Felinfach, 1997), vol. 1.2, pp. 489–90. Howden himself borrowed from Seneca, Epistle 13. For Howden’s more contemporary and less decorated account of Geoffrey’s knighting, see his Gesta, vol. 1, p. 207.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society regions reached by Frankish military culture. This secular culture, with its burgeoning notions of chivalry, made a deep and lasting impact on European values and modes of thinking. With justification, the tournament has been called its central ritual.2 But even this grandiose description, or indeed any single raison d’ˆetre that the tournament might be assigned, belies its essence. It was many things at the same time: a competitive sport, a form of mass entertainment, an exercise of horsemanship and martial ability, an assembly of social power, an economic and professional opportunity, an engine of princely politics, and an excellent excuse to show off and have a good time. The great tournaments of the twelfth century were major international events, gathering together knights and soldiers from many countries and regions. They served as points of diffusion of secular aristocratic mores on an international scale.3 The tournament is an important example of the culture that unified the secular nobility of north-western Europe. An event that was conducted in such a highly charged environment could never be a mere sporting pastime, but necessarily acquired the trappings of power and prestige. Here, the tournament provides a broader context for understanding the conduct of social and political exchanges among the Flemish and Anglo-Norman military classes. What constituted a medieval tournament? During the twelfth century a peacetime tournament was played out by a large gathering of mounted soldiers, sometimes numbering in their hundreds or even thousands, organised in teams and accompanied by their retinues, and attended by a body of spectators, as well as merchants, craftsmen and other commercial service providers.4 On the Continent these events tended to be held in the countryside, near domain borders, though during times of war jousts and other tournament entertainments sometimes took place during sieges as minor, formal skirmishes between the besieged and the besiegers.5 The main event was a one-day affair, though additional jousts (encounters between individual mounted warriors), pageantries and feasts could be staged for a few days before and after. During the twelfth century, the 2 3 4 5

R. Barber, The Knight and Chivalry, rev. edn (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 155. M. Keen, Chivalry (New Haven and London, 1984), p. 100. For a detailed account of the proceedings of a twelfth-century tournament event, see the current textbook on the subject, Crouch, Tournament, especially chapters 4–7. An early reference to joust-like skirmishing during a siege comes from the quill of Geoffrey of Malaterra, writing before 1101, about an event that had taken place during a siege at Tilli`eres, on the border of Normandy. Geoffrey of Malaterra, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae comitis et Roberti Guiscardi ducis fratris eius, ed. E. Pontier (Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Raccolta degli Storici Italiani dal cinquecento al millecinquencento, vol. 5.1, Bologna, 1927), pp. 24–5. A similar series of jousts reportedly took place at the siege of Winchester in 1141: History of William Marshal, vol. 1, p. 10, lines 167–82.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 tournament’s undisputed centrepiece was the grand mˆel´ee: a mock battle which could, and often did, spill over into the surrounding countryside. The goal of the knights involved in the tournament was to capture, rather than kill, enemy knights. But, since the medieval courtly ethos came to disdain the deliberate murder of fellow aristocrats even during real hostilities, and since there were always considerable financial incentives to capture enemy noblemen and hold them for ransom, the distinction between tournament and outright war was at times a fine one indeed.6 The word ‘tournament’ (torneamentum, and variants) itself derives from a Latin neologism based on the verb ‘to turn’, or ‘to wheel’ around (tornare). It evokes images of mounted soldiers armed with lances jousting on a field, weapons clashing in passing, forcing their horses around sharply for another attack.7 From the earliest times the flavour of the tournament was that of a mounted event, an occasion with strong overtones of elite entertainment. King Richard I’s tournament charter in 1194 sets the licence fees for tournaments in England according to the participant’s status: the lowest rank listed was that of landless knight.8 By implication persons of lesser status participated only as members of their betters’ retinues. It is unclear whether such distinctions had been observed in earlier times and other places but the economics of the tournament field did establish high barriers for entry. Trained warhorses and the accompanying equipment were worth more money than, say, a peasant labourer might be able to set aside over a decade and lay far beyond the means of common soldiers; obtaining the training necessary to use them properly likewise required uncommon leisure and wealth.9 The historical and geographical origins of the tournament are elusive, with little certainty other than that it evolved from an older culture of military displays, games and exercises prevalent in the area once covered by the Carolingian Empire. With varying degrees of scepticism, scholars have long referred to an anonymous gloss in the early thirteenth-century Chronicon Turonense Magnum that attributed the invention of the 6

7 8 9

J. Gillingham, ‘Conquering the Barbarians: War and Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Britain’, HSJ 4 (1992), 74–81; Gillingham, ‘Holding to the Rules of War (bellica iura tenentes): Right Conduct before, during and after Battle in North-Western Europe in the Eleventh Century’, ANS 29 (2006), 1–15; Gillingham, ‘Fontenoy and After: Pursuing Enemies to Death in France between the Ninth and the Eleventh Centuries’, in Frankland: The Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Dame Jinty Nelson, ed. P. Fouracre and D. Gantz (Manchester, 2008), pp. 242–65; Strickland, War and Chivalry, pp. 183–203. M. Parisse, ‘Le Tournoi en France, des origines a` la fin du XIIIe si`ecle’, in Das Ritterliche Turnier im Mittelalter, ed. J. Fleckenstein (G¨ottingen, 1985), pp. 175–211, 182. Foedera, vol. 1, p. 65. The fees were 20 marks for an earl, 10 marks for a baron, 4 marks for a landed knight and 2 marks for a landless knight. A top-quality warhorse alone might cost upwards of £30, whereas an English labourer’s or servant’s daily wage was on average one or two pennies. See above, p. 60.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society tournament to a mid-eleventh-century Angevin aristocrat, Geoffrey of Preuilly (d. 1060s). As was already noted by the text’s early editor Dom Martin Bouquet (1685–1754), however, the attribution was an insertion not in the chronicler’s own hand.10 The claim is unsupported by any other evidence, and it seems very likely that the gloss’s Angevin author was inspired less by historical data than by a simple desire to assign credit for the knightly sport to a native son. It is improbable that there was a single ‘inventor’ of the tournament. Rather, it evolved to the form we finally encounter in the sources over time, shaped by the involvement and enthusiasm of many participants. Dominique Barth´elemy has recently portrayed the tournament as a specialised outgrowth of the older traditional of military exercises, now geared specifically towards the public display of individual valour, with the goal of bolstering the standing of the knightly aristocracy.11 But, despite his salutary reminder of the role of the mores and priorities of the warrior elite in this phenomenon, it may be possible to establish a more specific context for its early development. The tournament’s emergence as an event with a distinctive identity suggests the existence of some shaping influence, which may provide a clue to its origins. David Crouch has recently argued that the tournament proper arose in northern France and the southern Low Countries out of attempts by local princes to exert a modicum of control over endemic violence in the region.12 The oldest appearance of the term torneamentum is in a Peace of God charter issued by Count Baldwin III of Hainaut (1098–1120) to the town of Valenciennes in 1114. In it he forbade the pursuit of private vendettas and regulated the right of officials of the Peace to leave town for tournaments and similar military exercises.13 10

11 12 13

‘Chronicon Turonense Magnum’, Recueil de Chroniques de Touraine, ed. A. Salmon (Tours, 1854), p. 125; ‘Ex Chronico Turonensi’, RHGF 12, ed. M. Bouquet, reprint (Farnborough, 1968), p. 462 and note. For scholarship, see G. Duby, The Legend of Bouvines: War, Religion, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. C. Tihany (Berkeley, 1990), p. 84; Parisse, ‘Le Tournoi’, pp. 176, 180–2; Keen, Chivalry, p. 82; J. Flori, ‘Knightly Society’, The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4.2, c.1024–c.1198, ed. D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (Cambridge, 2004), p. 174; D. Crouch, Tournament (Hambledon and London, 2005), p. 8. D. Barth´elemy, ‘The Chivalric Transformation and the Origins of Tournament as Seen through Norman Chroniclers’, HSJ 20 (2008), 141–60. Crouch, Tournament, pp. 2–12. ‘Si in posterum contigat, quod viri pacis villam exeant ad faciendum hastiludia, torneamenta aut consimilia, aut in suis negociis aut mercimoniis processerint, nullus tenetur se conservare de inimico suo mortali et non plus extra quam intra villam. Et caveat sibi, quincunque percusserit aut vulneraverit aut occiderit inimicum suum mortalem extra villam, reus erit violate pacis aesi in villa comisisset; et hoc intelligendum de hominibus pacis.’ ‘Charta Pacis Valenciennes’, ed. G. Pertz, MGH Scriptores 21 (Hannover, 1869), p. 608. For more on the subject of violence, see Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 59–61; G. Koziol, ‘Monks, Feuds and the Making of Peace in Eleventh-Century Flanders’, Historical Reflections 14 (1987), 531–49; H. Platelle, ‘La violence et ses rem`edes en Flandre au XIe si`ecle’, Sacris Erudiri 20 (1971), 101–73.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Certainly the southern Low Countries featured a concentrated population base, a high degree of militarisation and, especially in the south, a weak regional government that lacked the strength directly to interfere with local military activity – all factors that might provide fertile soil for the development of military sports. The same military traditions that supplied the counts and barons of the land with armed forces during times of war fostered feuds and created unreasonable social stress in times of peace. In the eleventh century the regional princes were stepping up their efforts to consolidate power and to clamp down on local violence. The tournament, as a combat simulation that emphasised display and training over fatalities, fitted into this programme by appropriating, regulating and socially whitewashing outbursts of local conflict. References to tournaments outside Hainaut are encountered a short time later and by the 1120s the tournament appears to have acquired powerful patrons in a broad, politically fragmented but populous area that reached from northern France through Flanders to western Germany. The best-known tourneyer of the time was none other than Count Charles the Good of Flanders (1119–27). According to the Flemish chronicler Galbert of Bruges, the count often undertook chivalric exploits for the honour of his land and the training of his knights in the lands of the counts or princes of Normandy or France, sometimes even beyond the kingdom of France; and there with 200 knights on horseback he engaged in tourneys, in this way enhancing his own fame and the power and glory of his county.14

In Galbert’s passage the existence of an international society of tournament-goers is implicit. The event had been claimed by the upper aristocracy. One Anglo-Norman source specifies that the fatal wound of Count Baldwin VII of Flanders in 1118 was dealt not in a battlefield skirmish, but during a military game (militaris ludus) against Norman troops outside the castle of Eu.15 Count Henry III of Louvain (1078–95) was another high-profile casualty, having been accidentally slain in a demonstration joust – either a tournament or one of its close predecessors – hosted by the castellan of Tournai in 1095.16 14

15 16

Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 13: ‘sed certamina militiae secularis pro honore terrae suae et pro exercitio militum suorum apud aliquem comitum vel principum Normanniae vel Franciae, aliquando vero ultra regnum Franciae, arripuit, illicque cum ducentis equitibus tornationes exercuit. Qua in re famam suam et comitatus sui potentiam ac gloriam sublimavit.’ See also Galbert of Bruges, Murder of Charles the Good, p. 92. ‘Chronicon Monasterii de Hyda’, p. 315. Herman of Tournai, ‘Liber de Restauratione’, p. 282.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society The tournament soon arrived in England. The word turniamentum first occurs in an English source in a charter issued between 1124 and 1139 by Osbert of Arden, a nobleman of Anglo-Saxon descent: He [Thurkill Fundu] will hold it for this service, namely, that when I [Osbert of Arden] request it in due form he will carry my painted lances on my horses and at my expense, from London or Northampton to my house at Kingsbury. When I wish to go overseas to the tournaments, I will take him and bring him back completely at my own expense.

At least some of the English aristocracy were participating in continental tournaments within just a decade or two of their appearance in the sources. The tournament must therefore have been introduced to England by this time: the charter’s reference to Northampton and London surely indicates tournament sites.17 The close social links between the Low Countries and the Anglo-Norman aristocracies following the Conquest enabled this speedy adoption. It is plausible that England was one of the very first areas outside the core Low Countries region in which the tournament gained enthusiasts. A revealing measure of the tournament’s popularity is the ecclesiastical opposition it elicited. A few years after the death of Count Charles of Flanders, at the second Council of Clermont in 1130, Pope Innocent II promulgated an edict to ban ‘those abominable jousts and fairs in which knights come together by agreement and rashly engage in showing off their physical prowess and daring, and which often result in human deaths and danger to souls’.18 This was no passing concern, and the edict was reissued several times over the next hundred years.19 The Church’s stern stance did not stem only from disapproval of the violence inherent in the event. In the background lurked a desire to channel the military energies of the secular aristocracy into causes in line with the clerical establishment’s own interests, such as crusading or service under 17

18

19

‘Turchillo Fundu [ . . . ] Pro hoc nominatim servico quod lanceas meas tinctas a Londoniis vel Norhamtona in equis meis et omnibus costamentis meis usque ad domum meam de Kinesberi ad legittimam summonitionem meam asportabit et cum ultra mare ad turniamenta ire voluero cum omni costamento meo eum ducam et reducam.’ Facsimiles of Royal & Other Charters, vol. 1, no. 12. Translation and discussion in Crouch, Tournament, pp. 20, 40–1, 163, 212, n. 39. ‘Detestabiles autem illas nundias vel ferias, in quibus milites ex condicto convenire solent et ad ostentationem virium suarum et audiciae temerarie congrediuntur, unde mortes hominum et animarum pericula saepe proveniunt, omnino fieri interdicimus.’ Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, ed. J. Mansi et al. (Venice, 1776), p. 439, §9. Ibid., Rheims (1131), pp. 460–1, §12, Rheims (1148), p. 716–17, §12; Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. N. Tanner (Georgetown, 1990), vol. 1: Lateran II (1139), p. 200, §14, Lateran III (1179), p. 221, §20, Lateran IV (1215), p. 270, §71.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 ecclesiastical direction.20 The sermon given in 1139 by the prince-bishop of Li`ege, Alberon of Chiny (1135–45), for example, exhorted knights to abandon their tournaments in favour of ‘real’ warfare – which is to say, he harangued them to join the bishop’s own siege of Bouillon.21 The papacy’s attempt at a total ban was ineffectual but the attention these gatherings attracted from the most universal authority in western Europe is surely an indication of how significant they had become.22 It is notable that it was not until powerful princes of the status of Count Charles had included the tournament in their martial and social repertoire that it became a matter of concern to the papacy. Clashes between local knights were regrettable but contests sponsored by Christendom’s leaders were a matter of greater concern. A rough chronology of cultural dissemination can be deduced from the evidence. The tournament, as a distinct military event, emerged around or soon after the year 1100 in the Frankish marches, at the intersection of local military culture and the encroaching power of the magnates. It was quickly embraced by the princes and lords of north-eastern France and north-western Germany, including the counts of Flanders. By the second and third decades of the twelfth century, the nobles, to the enduring regret of the Church, had made it into an aristocratic pastime of international renown. Princely sponsorship took the event to a whole new level of visibility and hastened its spread throughout the surrounding regions. By the end of the century tourneying had become a major activity for the aristocratic and military classes over a vast area from the British Isles to northern Spain and from Brittany to the Polish marches.23 As a popular event, the tournament was continually evolving to reflect the requirements and tastes of its enthusiasts. Over the course of the thirteenth century emphasis shifted from the anarchic mˆel´ee battle to formal jousts. Concurrently ‘round table tournaments’, or festive pageants accompanied by processions, singing, dancing and dramatic performances, became widespread, further distancing the event from its military origins. Whereas, during the twelfth century, the ruling kings of England had rarely, if ever, participated in the tournament, King Edward I (1272–1307) and his grandson Edward III (1327–77) now found a way to capitalise on the event by transforming it into Arthurian 20 21 22

R. Barber and J. Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 139–49. ‘Triumphus Sancti Lamberti de Castro Bullonio’, MGH Scriptores 20, ed. G. Pertz (Hannover, 1868), pp. 503–4. 23 Crouch, Tournament, pp. 9–12. Keen, Chivalry, p. 84.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society theatre. The pageantries they sponsored sometimes resembled live-action role-play with guest appearances by figures of folklore and myth. Investing the presiding monarch with the idealised virtue of chivalric kingship, these events acquired considerable political and propaganda value.24 Such courtly dramas were a far cry from their twelfth-century forerunners, and their social and political context was very different. The golden age of the grand mˆel´ee was a time when the tournament ministered to the needs of the warrior-aristocratic community, rather than the political priorities of the king. Almost from its inception the tournament’s legitimacy came under fire from ecclesiastical commentators, and their attitudes have carried through to the present day. In its original form, as an expression of medieval militancy, the tournament is still seen a suspect thing, in need of thorough grooming before its entrance into civilised society. In a typical example, Richard Barber, in his analysis of knightly society, contends that it was ‘only towards the end of the twelfth century that the tournament acquired a degree of respectability, through the new chivalric romances’.25 The role of courtly romances in popularising the chivalric ethos in general and the tournament in particular cannot be ignored but the tournament had in fact been established as a legitimate aristocratic and knightly pastime from its emergence in the early decades of the twelfth century onwards. The tournament carved out a political, social, economic and military space that was recognised as highly useful by the western European warrior aristocracy. Two broad (and necessarily overlapping) perspectives illuminate this space. First, there was the tournament’s utility as a platform for leadership and for social and political display before an international audience. Second, it served as a venue for networking and military recruitment among an international pool of participants. The competitions played a key role in Anglo-Flemish relations. Northern France, including the region in and around Flanders and Normandy, was the heartland of the tournament circuit, a popular, self-organising and self-perpetuating series of military competitions and entertainments.26 The tournament too presents a useful counterpoint to discussions of fiefs and lord–vassal relationships. Here the mechanics of 24

25

J. Barker and M. Keen, ‘The Medieval English Kings and the Tournament’, in Das Ritterliche Turnier im Mittelalter, ed. J. Fleckenstein (G¨ottingen, 1985), pp. 212–28, 216–17, 223–7; J. Barker, The Tournament in England 1100–1400 (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 65–9; Crouch, Tournament, pp. 116–21; N. Denholm-Young, ‘The Tournament in the Thirteenth Century’, in Studies in Medieval History: Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, ed. R. Hunt et al. (Oxford, 1948), pp. 240–68; Keen, Chivalry, pp. 92–4; Parisse, ‘Le tournoi’, p. 211. 26 Crouch, Tournament, pp. 10–11. Barber, Knight and Chivalry, p. 159.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 international exchange were not primarily top-down, but multi-layered and horizontal. LEADERSHIP AND POLITICS Warfare is inseparable from politics. The tournament was an expression of both, and therein lay a great deal of its appeal. The competitions provided an opportunity for magnates and their soldiers to practise warfare in a limited and relatively safe manner. Tournaments were gatherings of secular pomp and circumstance and, as the twelfth century progressed (or at any rate as the sources detailing tournament proceedings become more numerous), a great deal of political activity can be seen to have coalesced around them. The great tournament gatherings of northern France, especially, brought together large swathes of western European nobility. The tournament had become a social and diplomatic occasion at which key political encounters, including those between Anglo-Normans and Flemings, took place. Intriguingly for such a grand event, personal participation was outside the remit of both Anglo-Norman and Capetian kings, with the notable exception of Young King Henry, to whom we shall return later. Writing around 1198, William of Newburgh claimed that tournaments had been forbidden in England by royal decree during the reigns of Henry I and Henry II.27 Newburgh overlooked tournaments held in England during the reign of the former Henry,28 but his perception underlines the sociopolitical dynamic at play in the tournament world: the event was an expression of the power of the nobility, not that of the ruling monarch.29 In the first place, the tournament provided an effective battlefield simulation. A good tournament performance demanded a high level of skill from both the individual warriors and from their leader. The tournament mˆel´ee was an incomparable opportunity to train men together as a unit, especially with a view to co-ordinating and executing difficult manoeuvres such as the cavalry charge – a terrifying, demoralising sight to behold – and to foster discipline and the esprit de corps so vital for an effective military force.30 Emphasis on the tactical role of the charge, formerly 27 28

29

30

William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, vol. 2, pp. 422–3. See the references to probable tournament sites in Osbert of Arden’s charter, above at p. 119, and also reference to a tournament in Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. 6.1, ed. W. Dugdale (London, 1830), p. 349. On royal attitudes towards tournaments, see Barker, Tournament in England, pp. 7–9, 46–69, 188–90; Barker and Keen, ‘Medieval English Kings’, p. 219; Barber and Barker, Tournaments, pp. 19–20; Bartlett, England, pp. 241–4; Keen, Chivalry, pp. 96–7. Barker and Keen, ‘Medieval English Kings’, p. 222; France, Western Warfare, pp. 157–65. In her account of the reign of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081–1118), the Byzantine princess Anna

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society considered the decisive centrepiece of medieval warfare in the West, has been downgraded over the last generation of historians in favour of more varied considerations of the types of troops and strategies employed.31 But this need not stop us from acknowledging that cavalry and cavalry tactics were quintessentially linked to the military role of the secular aristocracy. The Middle Ages comprised an era in which political and military capacity were inseparable from the personal reputation of the leader. As the earlier quote from Roger of Howden shows, hands-on experience was regarded as indispensable for any member of the knightly aristocracy.32 An important source for aristocratic life is History of William Marshal, a singular work of secular, vernacular biographical writing that charts its eponymous hero’s knightly career in the courts and households of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Often peppered with colourful factoids – it was based on the recollections of Marshal’s associates and friends after his death in 1219, as well as the documents in the Marshal family’s archive – the work presents a valuable view of the expectations and experiences of the high medieval warrior aristocracy. The author relates, for instance, an anecdote illustrating how the tournament could provide an education in basic battlefield tactics. The household of Young King Henry (1155–1183), the son and heir of King Henry II of England, earned nothing but a string of humiliating defeats on their entrance into the continental tournament world in the mid1170s. Looking for solutions, Marshal, then Henry’s head of household, obseved the practice of Count Philip of Flanders of joining the mˆel´ee only after it had formally started, in order to charge the already exhausted and disarrayed participants opportunistically in the flank with full force. In terms of sportsmanship Philip’s tactic was rather dubious, but it provided a simple model of how to win a battle by taking control of the moment and of the direction from which to join the conflict, and by using the advantage of superior discipline and concentrated application of force to deal a decisive blow to the opposition. The Young King’s household adopted the tactic and, according to the tale, his first taste of real tournament success was achieved, not inappropriately, by trouncing Philip himself. As Marshal’s biographer smugly noted, ‘High valour

31 32

Komnena graphically describes the mounted ‘Kelt’ (i.e. a Frank) as irresistible, powerful enough to bore through the very walls of Babylon: Anna Komnena, Alexiad, p. 416. The excitement of the moment when two charging lines violently clash is captured in the History of William Marshal, p. 46, lines 892–905. This historiographical development has been traced in J. France, ‘Recent Writing on Medieval Warfare: from the Fall of Rome to c.1300’, Journal of Military History 65 (2001), 445–9. Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 166–7.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 needs to be allied to good sense’.33 The twelfth-century tournament in its brutality was the dress rehearsal for war. Tournament entourages could parallel armies in size and appearance. Galbert of Bruges’s account of the tournament exploits of Count Charles of Flanders in the 1120s bears a striking resemblance to the nearcontemporary military agreements between England and Flanders. In both, the count gathers a mounted army, hundreds strong, and leads it from the county to do battle. Likewise, Count Baldwin V of Hainaut (1171–95, ruled also as Count Baldwin VIII of Flanders 1191–5) travelled in the late 1160s and 1170s back and forth across northern France with a permanent tournament retinue of some hundred knights.34 Sometimes, rarely, these expeditions would degenerate into open warfare. This happened in 1170 when Baldwin clashed with his local rival Duke Godfrey VIII of Lower Lorraine. Each man harboured suspicions of the other and had added thousands of infantry soldiers to his retinue as insurance; when the enemies fell upon each other near Carni`eres the confrontation turned into a massacre.35 Actual warfare was an accidental, not deliberate, result of the tournament. Rather, one of the tournament’s functions was to create an opportunity for secular magnates to demonstrate personal leadership over a large body of soldiers, knights and nobles outside an actual conflict situation. During the twelfth century the tournament in northern France grew into an event that assembled members of the knightly classes throughout north-western Europe. Princely tournament entourages were deliberate exhibitions of wealth and military strength, two pillars on which a magnate’s power and prestige rested. Fifty years after Charles the Good’s murder, Count Philip of Flanders, a celebrated enthusiast, was often seen taking his men on tournament expeditions through Vermandois. A site in the southernmost part of the county, between Ressons and Gournay, on the border between the territories of Count Philip and Count Raoul of Clermont (1162–91), seems to have been a particularly favourite venue, though Philip also visited tournament sites in adjoining

33

34 35

History of William Marshal, p. 130, lines 2563–2576, pp. 138–140, lines 2713–2772. On the composition of the History, see D. Crouch, ‘Writing a Biography in the Thirteenth Century: The Construction and Composition of the “History of William Marshal”’, in Writing Medieval Biography: Essays in Honour of Frank Barlow, ed. D. Bates, J. Crick and S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 221–35; Bates, Crick and Hamilton, ‘Biography as Propaganda in the “History of William Marshal”’, in Convaincre et persuader: communication et propagande aux XIIe et XIIIe si`ecles, ed. M. Aurell (Poitiers, 2007), pp. 503–12. Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, pp. 95–7, 107–8. These were not unusual figures for the time. Crouch, Tournament, pp. 76–7. Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, pp. 101–2.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society Champagne and Normandy.36 Ressons-Gournay delineates the features of a popular French tournament site: it was easy to travel to thanks to a major road from Flanders through France; supplies, services and lodging could be sought from the nearby towns and castles; it was at a domain border; and there was, of course, plenty of empty land for hundreds or even thousands of soldiers to joust and battle.37 Philip’s participation in tournaments there may have had a very particular political motive as well. Vermandois, a county equalling Flanders in size, had been a recent addition to Philip’s domains through his marriage to Elizabeth, the sister and heiress of Count Raoul II of Vermandois (1160–7).38 It was far away from the core comital territories in northern Flanders, and Philip sorely needed a means to project his presence and power there directly. Tournament visits provided a socially and politically convenient means to do so. Few strategies could quell the rebellious ambitions of local barons as effectively as that of their overlord passing through with an entourage of several hundred knights. These mass events attracted a who’s who of western European aristocracy and presented perfect occasions for acquiring political benefits. A tournament held in Vermandois around 1182, as just one example, was a celebratory gathering of barons and knights from England, Flanders, Normandy, Burgundy and other regions of France.39 Another, held at Eu in Normandy some years earlier, was recalled by old warriors decades later: No man of high rank stayed behind, and there was no young knight wishing to gain a prize for feats of arms who, providing he heard word of it, was not at that gathering. It could not be concealed from those who had undertaken to enhance their reputation through combat.40

Aggrandisement, definitely, but aggrandisement rooted in contemporary perceptions. The tournament event was an international opportunity for the members of the greater nobility to demonstrate to their peers their status as military powers and as leaders of men, and for warriors of lesser rank to earn reputation and patronage. 36

37 38 39 40

Ibid., p. 97; History of William Marshal, p. 126, lines 2472–3, p. 146, line 2879, p. 148, lines 2911–12, p. 162, lines 3183–4, p. 164, line 3243, p. 280, lines 5492–3, p. 284, line 5999, p. 304, line 5976, p. 312, line 6148. Crouch, Tournament, pp. 50–1. ‘Flandria Generosa’, pp. 326–7; Napran, ‘Marriage Contracts’, pp. 89–92, 259. On the political situation of Vermandois, see pp. 34, 38, 44–5 above. History of William Marshal, pp. 280–4, lines 5492–5597. ‘N’a nul haut home qui remaigne / ne bachelier, sel puet saver / qui velt nul pris d’armes aveir / qui ne seit a cele asemblee / mais el ne puet pas estre emblee / a cels qui aveient enpris / par armes a monter en pris.’ History of William Marshal, p. 162, lines 3190–3196.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 A major reason for the tournament’s popularity was its dramatic representation of the self-image of the knightly elite. Over the course of the twelfth century the western European warrior aristocracy came under pressure simultaneously from the increasingly widespread use of lowerclass paid soldiers and from the emergence of new secular (notably urban and administrative) elites. The final decades of the century were the watershed generation for the consolidation of new social norms for the aristocratic elite. Put briefly, the old nobility defended its social status against the challengers through a process that, on the one hand, amalgamated the knightly class of professional soldiers with the elite and, on the other, redefined the essential identification of the new upper class with a chivalric culture and ethos. To be a true noble required nobilitas, the possession of noble birth, upbringing and behaviour. Others might aspire to this status, but largely in vain.41 This was accompanied by the hardening of divisions within the military classes. In the Dover treaties of 1101 and 1110 the defining feature of a ‘knight’ was simply that he was a mounted warrior, with the words miles and equites being used interchangeably. But by the end of twelfth century, a distinction between a knight and a mere mounted man-at-arms had emerged.42 In England the differentiation is made explicit in the administrative payroll records drawn up during the 1173–4 civil war.43 Knights and mounted sergeants were both soldiers with superficially similar battlefield roles, but to be included in the former category required membership of the aristocratic elite and implied participation in its chivalric culture.44 41 42

43

44

D. Crouch, ‘William Marshal and the Mercenariat’, in Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. J. France (Boston and Leiden, 2008), pp. 15–32, 28. Diplomatic Documents, no. 1, pp. 1–3; B. Bachrach, ‘The Milites and the Millennium’, HSJ 6 (1994), 85–95; J. France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 31–3; France, Western Warfare, pp. 25, 53–63. PR 19 Henry II (1172–3), pp. 97, 101–2; PR 20 Henry II (1173–4), pp. 34, 94, 139; PR 21 Henry II (1174–5), pp. 127–8; Latimer, ‘Wages’, 200; Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare, p. 24. On the Continent, Gilbert of Mons, writing a little after 1200 on the life of Count Baldwin of Hainaut and Flanders (1150–95), is the best source for these soldiers that made up an important part of the cavalry armies of the Low Countries. Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, pp. 111, 131, 172, 178. D. Crouch, The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France 900–1300 (Harlow, 2005), as a whole and especially pp. 29–86, 207–48. The body of literature on the culture of the military aristocracy is considerable. For a select commentary, see D. Barth´elemy, ‘La chevalerie en perspective historique’, Revue des langues romanes 110, 1 (2006), 1–16; Barth´elemy, La chevalerie: De la Germanie antique a` la France du XIIe si`ecle (Paris, 2007); C. Bouchard, Strong of Body, Brave and Noble: Chivalric Society in Medieval France (Ithaca and London, 1998), pp. 23–7; G. Duby, ‘The Transformation of the Aristocracy: France at the Beginnings of the Thirteenth Century’, in Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. C. Postan (London, 1977), pp. 178–85; Flori, ‘Knightly Society’, pp. 148–64; J. France, ‘Property, Warfare, and the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century’, HSJ 11 (1998), 73–84, especially 77–9; Keen, Chivalry, pp. 90–2, 100 and the entire volume for a broader perspective on chivalric culture; M. Strickland, War and Chivalry in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 291–329.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society Reflecting this self-protecting elitism, the most profound disdain in narratives of both secular and ecclesiastical sources was reserved for routier mercenaries – companies of often non-professional soldiers, usually infantry, and always low-class. At the Third Lateran Council in 1179 the clerical establishment reacted to the looting and disturbances to peace caused by their widespread use in France with a ban, and the threat of casting out their employers from communion with the Christian society.45 The secular aristocracy reserved particular animosity for routier captains. These were men who, by virtue of their military office and function, competed with knightly aristocrats for lordly patronage, and whose background made them obvious targets for social exclusion. The author of History of William Marshal spills a considerable amount of ink in denigrating the mercenary captains of three successive Angevin kings: Young King Henry’s Sancho of Savannac, Richard I’s Mercadier and John’s Lupescarl. Such men were not to be trusted, for they were dishonest, incompetent, only interested in money and, most damningly of all, fundamentally disloyal. They were always outside (so the biographer would have it) the ties that bound the true elite together. Of course, the poet represents only one point of view, and was liable to blur the complex set of interactions between professional identities, class ethos and economic and military priorities; one must not allow oneself to be seduced into the dream worlds of the courtly raconteurs. Though William Marshal and Lupescarl were rivals for position in King John’s court, they jointly organised at least one military campaign.46 No matter how grudgingly, the elite recognised the military value of their social inferiors. Roger of Howden’s wry observation on Henry II’s fortunes during the 1173–4 civil war, at a time when the king had been abandoned by his family and by a great many of his noble allies and vassals, sums it up: ‘Still, [Henry II] made all the resistance against [his rebellious son’s allies] that he possibly could: for he had with him 20,000 Brabanters, who served him faithfully, but not without the large pay which he gave them’.47 This was a vexing paradox: the ready availability of mercenaries destabilised

45 46 47

Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, p. 223–5, §27. Crouch, ‘William Marshal and the Mercenariat’, pp. 15–32. ‘Habent enim secum viginti millia Brabancenorum, qui fideliter servierunt illi, et non sine magna mercede, quam eis dedit.’ Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 47. The figure of 20,000 is a clear exaggeration, but Henry’s forces must have numbered in the several thousands. On Henry’s use of mercenaries, see the classic article by J. Boussard, ‘Henri II Plantagenˆet et les origines de ´ l’arm´ee de m´etier’, Biblioth`eque de l’Ecole des Chartes 106 (1945–6), 189–224; and also J. Hosler, ‘Revisiting Mercenaries under Henry Fitz Empress, 1167–1188’, in Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. J. France (Boston and Leiden, 2008), pp. 33–42; France, Henry II: A Medieval Soldier at War (Leiden, 2007), pp. 119–23.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 the identity of the military elite, and yet the elite could not possibly ignore their military–political importance. The tournament was a feature of this social discourse, a mechanism for bolstering noble identity. It was a robust statement of the secular elite’s cultural ethos, a social space created by the military aristocracy, for the military aristocracy. Wealthy magnates and noble ladies sponsored tournament gatherings; employed heralds to get the word out about time and place; and organised entertainments, receptions and feasts around the main tournament event.48 Participation in proper lordly fashion was expensive. Particularly conspicuous consumption manifested itself in Young King Henry’s retinue during a great tournament held at Lagny, near Paris, in 1179: David Crouch has calculated the daily costs to be over £200, a sum of nearly the same order of magnitude as the annual Flemish money fief!49 The emergence of the tournament coincided chronologically and geographically with the early development of aristocratic heraldry. One of the forces driving heraldic symbols towards ever-greater sophistication may indeed have been the conditions of the tournament field, where it was necessary to identify magnates and groups of soldiers quickly and reliably.50 A grand tournament was not merely a rousing warrior pastime, but a sociopolitical pageant presented for an international audience. It was a grand public event, a visual experience, a thing to see and to be seen at. Spectating was undoubtedly an important feature of any large tournament, and even during the twelfth century the grander tournaments bear more than a passing resemblance to high-society sporting events of our time. One of the earliest sources to equate military games with social display in a courtly setting was Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, a hugely popular Arthurian pseudo-history of England written c.1137–8. The narrative contains an episode in which King Arthur’s knights engage in various sports at a feast, while their womenfolk encourage them to greater heights of knightly prowess: thus shall ‘no maiden permit herself to be the beloved of anyone, unless he has shown himself triumphant in war’.51 The active participation of women, 48 49 50 51

There are good accounts of the hubbub surrounding the event in Crouch, Tournament, pp. 29–33, 35–8, 46–70, 105–9. Crouch, Tournament, pp. 24–5; based on History of William Marshal, pp. 242–4, lines 4750–4785. History of William Marshal, pp. 242–4, lines 4750–4785; Crouch, Tournament, pp. 8, 24–5, 29–30, 35–8, 75–6. ‘Nulla puella tamen alicui se reddit amicam / Qui ter non fuerit bello superasse probatus.’ Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. N. Wright (Woodbridge, 1985), p. 198. For ideals of military culture, see M. Bennett, ‘Military Masculinity in England and Northern France, c.1050–c.1225’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. Hadley (London and New York, 1999), pp. 71–88.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society who played an important audience role by witnessing, commenting, judging and sponsoring the tournament, underlined its function as a social encounter.52 The day’s most significant events did not necessarily take place during the clash of arms but might come after the dust had settled on the field. Social hierarchies and personal relations were affirmed during celebratory feasts and through the awarding of ritualistic prizes. The History of William Marshal contains one of the most vivid narratives of a twelfth-century tournament, set in Champagne in the 1170s. The account includes a post-tournament episode in which the assembled grandees ponder the fate of a prize item, a pike that has been offered by a spectating noblewoman as a gift to the most worthy participant. The pike is passed around by the counts and dukes, all of whom make a show of their humility by claiming to be unworthy of the honour and handing it to the next in line with a shower of compliments. On the initiative of Count Philip of Flanders, it is finally decided that the pike should be awarded (of course) to the hero of the tale. Before that resolution, the protagonist’s betters, men and women, had had the opportunity to participate in a courtly exchange, reaffirm their positions as the leaders of society, show their polite appreciation of each other and, in conclusion, demonstrate a united front by granting the honour to a B-list participant who had made a good showing.53 As a unique political venue, the tournament was taken very seriously by the aristocratic leaders of the age. One of the first tournaments in which the future Count Baldwin V of Hainaut participated after his dubbing in 1168 was a clash between Flemings led by Count Philip and a force of Frenchmen. According to tradition, ‘it was custom in named tournaments for knights of Hainaut to be on the side with Flemings and the men of Vermandois’. But Baldwin, who held a personal grudge against Philip, joined ranks with the French. Baldwin’s breach of tournament etiquette so ‘inflamed with tremendous anger’ Count Philip that he immediately attacked ‘with his men, both mounted and on foot, most violently as if for the purpose of battle’.54 Philip’s reaction is at first glance rather extreme, but becomes more understandable if Baldwin’s taking sides was seen not as a mere courtly snub, but as a direct political challenge. The custom that the chronicler refers to has overtones of regional loyalty. Moreover, Philip’s father Thierry had poured a great deal of energy into securing his eastern frontier, and Hainaut constituted 52 53 54

Crouch, Tournament, pp. 156–9. History of William Marshal, pp. 154–6, lines 3041–3088. ‘Comes autem Flandrie, nimia accensus ira, cum suis hominibus tam equitibus quam peditibus quasi ab bellum ordinatis gravius Francis et Hanoniensibus occurrere cepit.’ Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, p. 97; trans. Napran, Chronicle of Hainaut, p. 57.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 a key component in the Alsatian dynasty’s attempt to impose a Flemish hegemony on the Franco-German marches.55 Baldwin’s choice of sides was not just a personal insult but crudely suggested a redrawing of the regional political map. As a political arena, the tournament provides context for the fraught relationship between Henry II of England and his oldest son, Young King Henry. The younger Henry was crowned junior co-monarch by his father in 1170, at the age of fifteen. But with the title and prestige went little by way of landed wealth. This ambiguous status left the Young King without effective regal power, and prompted him to leave on a tour of the continental courts. The period is described in the History of William Marshal: At the time there was no war, so the Marshal took him [Young King Henry, whose head of household he was] through many a region, as a man who knew well how to steer him in the direction of places where tournaments were to be held. The young King knew about the use of arms, as much as any young nobleman could be expected to know. The life of combat pleased him well, which was very pleasing to his tutor. He travelled far and wide, he spent lavishly, for he was aiming at those heights which a king, and son of a king, should rise to, if he wishes to attain such high eminence.56

The Young King pursued royal eminence through tournaments and through public acts of largesse – or liberality, a governing chivalric virtue – for which they provided such suitable occasions.57 But the strategy provided an incomplete solace, as his failed rebellion in 1173–4 proves. Royal power and royal domain were inextricably linked; young Henry’s lack of lands over which to exercise his sovereignty made for constant tension with his father, a tension further inflamed when his younger brother Richard was made the duke of Aquitaine in 1172. The flashpoint came the next year when Henry II announced his intention to award his youngest son John the castles of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau – fortresses controlling a strategically central protrusion of Angevin domains deep into Poitou.58 The conflict between the reigning monarch 55 56

57

58

On the political context, see p. 38 above. ‘Ilores n’esteit point de guerre; cil le mena par meinte terre, qui bien le saveir aveier la ou l’en deveit torn¨ıer. Les armes conut, e en sout tant con vaislet saveir en pout; molt li plout des armes li estres, e ce fu molt bel a sis mestres. Molt esra e molt despendi, quer a si grant chose tendi come rei filz de rei deit fere qui velt tendre a si halt afeire.’ History of William Marshal, p. 100, lines 1963–1970. Largesse was declared his greatest virtue in the fond reminiscence of History of William Marshal, p. 365, lines 7175–7184. For largesse in aristocratic culture, see Crouch, Birth of Nobility, pp. 68–71. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 41; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 45–6; France, ‘Property’, pp. 74–6; E. Hallam, ‘Henry the Young King’, ODNB; Warren, Henry II, pp. 110–11, 117–18.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society and the heir-prospective waiting in the wings was not unique to Henry II and the Young King. Their difficult relationship closely mirrored the one between William the Conqueror and his eldest son, Robert Curthose – the older king resenting the younger as a potential rival, the younger his father for obstructing his ambitions – in a parallel that did not escape the notice of contemporaries.59 Deprived of the traditional sources of royal prestige – land, military control, control over offices – by a father who held on to his power tightly, Young King Henry sought out alternative means of building up respect and public reputation. In the face of his father’s adamant refusal to share power, and his ultimate failure to wrest the kingdom away by force of arms, the tournament circuit remained the younger Henry’s chief means of promoting himself among the European high aristocracy. After King Henry II agreed to allow the Young King and his household to depart from England in 1176, the prince promptly threw himself back onto the continental tournament circuit with renewed vigour, and was to spend the bulk of his time on it until his death in 1183.60 Within the tournament community, acts of patronage and largesse were not random demonstrations of chivalric virtue; rather they created bonds with real value. In 1176 Henry II, perhaps not as open-handedly forgiving as his son had hoped, had neglected to provide the young man’s household troop with arms and horses. Fortunately a solution was quick to present itself and, having landed in Wissant, Young King Henry made a beeline for Arras where he sought out Count Philip of Flanders. Philip had been very closely allied with the Young King during the 1173–4 war and now Philip promptly proceeded to ‘splendidly equip’ the Young King and his household, and to sponsor their participation in a major tournament at Ressons-Gournay in Picardy.61 Given that destriers and knightly armour worthy of a prince and his entourage were extremely expensive, Philip’s act could not have been merely a gesture of courtly generosity to a close relative. The market value of the equipment, especially the horses, must have been hundreds of pounds. To put the matter in perspective, the value of the Pipe Roll estates assigned to Count Philip by Henry II, the cornerstone of the Anglo-Flemish alliance, was recorded that year to be £321.62 Philip’s act of generosity 59

60 61 62

As William Aird points out: Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, p. 365; W. Aird, ‘Frustrated Masculinity: The Relationship between William the Conqueror and His Eldest Son’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. Hadley (London and New York, 1999), pp. 39–55, 55. L. Ashe, ‘William Marshal, Lancelot, and Arthur: Chivalry and Kingship’, ANS 30 (2008), 26–31; Crouch, Tournament, pp. 21–7. History of William Marshal, pp. 124–6, lines 2443–2485. PR 22 Henry II (1175–6), pp. 28, 77, 90.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 was not an incidental gesture, but a considered and expensive political outlay. Henry II, when he heard of it, could have gained no pleasure from the rediscovered friendship between his wayward son and erstwhile enemy. Count Philip understood the politics of prestige and aristocratic largesse very well, and was more than able to manipulate them to cater to the needs of his peers. It is likely that Count Philip’s youth had included a period of errantry similar to that of the Young King, Count Baldwin V of Hainaut and other contemporary regional princes.63 In Philip’s case, he began issuing charters as the co-count of Flanders with his father Thierry in 1155, and in his own right in 1157, but full inheritance did not come until his father died in 1168, when Philip was twenty-five years old.64 In between lay several years of co-rulership. Thierry was less stingy over sharing power than Henry II, and was during this period twice absent on crusades to the Holy Land. One imagines that the period of co-rulership prepared the young count for his responsibilities and for a smooth handover of power, but also afforded him the leisure and the means to seek out alternative avenues for acquiring martial skills and building up his reputation as a future ruler of Flanders. The shared experiences of the tournament circuit enabled princely aristocrats to build up personal rapport among their peers and their vassals. In later life Philip’s glory as a master of the tournament was internationally recognised. It is no wonder that young Henry chose his cousin as his mentor and patron, no doubt hoping that some of the glory would rub off on him. Along with his fame as patron of chivalric literature, and his prestige as the lord of one of the richest and most powerful princedoms in western Europe, Philip’s prowess earned him a reputation that was nearly peerless.65 An episode in Philip of Remy’s fictional poem, La Manekine, composed in the 1230s, bears a striking resemblance to Count Philip’s encounter with the Young King in 1176: the king of Scotland lands in Bruges, seeking tournaments; on the invitation of Count Philip, the two parade through Flanders and Vermandois to participate in a grand

63 64 65

See Georgy Duby’s classic article ‘Au XIIe si`ecle: les “Jeunes” dans la soci´et´e aristocratique’, Annales: Economies, Soci´et´es, Civilisations 19, 2 (1964), 835–46. Oorkonden, 1128–1191, vol. 1, no. 146, pp. 233–5, no. 174, pp. 276–7. For contemporary recognition, see Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, pp. 112–13; Jordan Fantosme, Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, ed. and trans. R. Johnston (Oxford, 1981), p. 32, lines 437–8; Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. and trans. M. James et al. (OMT, Oxford, 1983), p. 278. Philip sponsored, among other things, the great Arthurian poet Chr´etien de Troyes, who opened his last romance Perceval (between 1181 and 1191) by singing the count’s praises. Chr´etien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou Conte du Graal, ed. W. Roach (Geneva and Lille, 1956), pp. 1–3.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society tournament at Ressons-Gournay.66 The tale is interesting first in its perception of the tournament as an arena for high-profile celebration and political exchange, and second as memorialising Count Philip’s tournament patronage, even naming one of his favourite sites, two generations after his death. The high cost of participating regularly in grand tournaments demanded a corresponding payoff. The social matrix in which the tournament operated was politics writ large; the currency generated by these occasions, prestige and influence. NETWORKING AND RECRUITM ENT Directly adjacent to the political opportunities that large gatherings of soldiers and knightly nobility at the tournament presented were the possibilities for gainful networking and patronage. During the twelfth century the secular elites of north-western Europe shared a common culture and, in French, a language. Given the opportunity, mobility (at least socially horizontal movement) within its circles was relatively painless. Peacetime tournaments also opened employment opportunities for knights or soldiers of a lower social class. The lords and princes of north-western Europe whose tournament exploits are detailed in the sources represent only a fraction of the actual participant roster. Beneath them in the social hierarchy were masses of more ordinary participants, from members of the lower aristocracy down to knights, and even men-at-arms and common foot soldiers. The tournament provided these lesser-ranking actors with an entr´ee to a wider world of employment and travel. Employment opportunities fell into two intermixed categories – the potentially long-term employment of individual soldiers of knightly background in aristocratic household groups, and the short-term mass recruitment of entire baronial and knightly households for military purposes during times of war. After his dubbing in 1168, ‘Baldwin [future count of Hainaut and Flanders] the new knight sought tournaments everywhere and attached himself to whatever virtuous knights and companions and household knights of great name that he could’.67 Aristocratic households occupied a central position in secular power structures. The household of an established magnate might be expected to contain a multitude of 66 67

Philip of Remy, La Manekine, ed. H. Suchier (Paris, 1884), lines 2615–931; translation and discussion in Crouch, Tournament, pp. 182–7. ‘Ipse autem Balduinus miles novus tornamenta ubique perquirens, quoscumque poterat milites probos magnique nominis sibi socios et commilitones adiungebat.’ Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, p. 97; trans. Napran, Chronicle of Hainaut, p. 57.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 members engaged in many different tasks, from scribes and administrators to constables and knights. Organisationally such an establishment was divided into a clerical household that administered to spiritual and bureaucratic needs, and the mesnie, consisting of the magnate’s lay household knights and companions; our concern is with this latter.68 The household was also a social entity. More than an administrative convenience, it was bound by ties of personal loyalty and friendship, but it was also more than a gathering of companions in arms, since it was through the household that a lord, whether a king or a count (or queen or countess), disseminated and deployed power.69 Some members were family or childhood friends; some were assigned by, or inherited from, older relatives and previous regimes; some gradually rose in rank from lesser positions; and some presented themselves through the variety of social, administrative, military and political activities in which the medieval nobility engaged. As Baldwin’s exploits indicate, for a nobleman a particularly active period of mesnie recruitment might be when the young magnate was establishing a name and political identity for himself. The possibility of achieving membership in a grand household was an attractive prospect, opening as it would a door into patronage and employment networks on an international scale. The career of William Marshal, the Anglo-Norman superstar of the late twelfth-century tournament world – or so his posthumous biography would have it – is a case in point.70 A young knight of little means, Marshal supposedly caught the eye of Queen Eleanor of England (1154–89, d. 1204) through his martial prowess; it was this that gave him entrance into the circles of the royal family, where he was eventually assigned in 1170 by King Henry II to be the leader of Young King Henry’s burgeoning mesnie.71 After falling out with his liege lord in 1182, Marshal took to travelling the French tournament circuit together with Roger of Jouy, a Fleming. The pair captured over a hundred knights.72 Ransom monies on such a 68 69

70 71 72

Crouch, William Marshal, pp. 41–2; G. Duby, The Three Orders, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago, 1980), pp. 257–8. On households, see E. Bournazel, ‘La familia regis Francorum’, A l’ombre du pouvoir: Les entourages princiers au Moyen Age, ed. A. Marchandisse and J.-L. Kupper (Liege, 2003), pp. 115–33; M. Chibnall, ‘Mercenaries and the Familia Regis under Henry I’, in Anglo-Norman Warfare, ed. M. Strickland (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 84–92; S. Church, The Household Knights of King John (Cambridge, 1999); R. Heiser, ‘The Households of the Justiciars of Richard I: An Inquiry into the Second Level of Medieval English Government’, HSJ 2 (1990), 223–35. See Ashe, ‘William Marshal’, 19–40, for an analysis locating Marshal’s biography within the world of contemporary courtly culture. Crouch, William Marshal, see especially pp. 26–52 on the early part of his career. History of William Marshal, p. 175, lines 3409–3424. William’s biographer seems to have drawn his information from tournament tallies that survived in the family records: Crouch, William Marshal, p. 175.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society scale constituted a magnificent income for an unattached knight. Neither was Marshal (it was said) short of employment offers. After a particularly spectacular tournament performance, in which he twice rescued his then sponsor, Count Hugh IV of St Pol (1174–1205), from capture, the Flemish, French and Hainautian lords that had gathered for the event virtually fell over themselves in offering him positions.73 While Marshal initially demurred, a land transaction from later in his life suggests that he finally accepted the offer of Count Philip of Flanders and received valuable rents in St Omer as his fief.74 As a celebrity recognised throughout the Frankish tournament world, he was a fine ornament to Philip’s court. Marshal’s position (not to speak of his PR) was extraordinary by virtue of being Young King Henry’s former head of household. His rags-to-riches story stands out in the heights of power he scaled – Marshal finally rose to be the regent of England in 1216–19 – but the tournament world was undoubtedly regarded everywhere as presenting seductive possibilities for social advancement and financial gain to participating milites. Young King Henry’s itinerant household enjoyed a highly visible presence in northern France during the 1170s and early 1180s. Henry’s social identity was by all accounts Frankish (his language was French, his father was Angevin and his mother was from Aquitaine), rather than English, and his aspirations were certainly continental. His troupe was likewise an example of a cosmopolitan household. The core of the mesnie was Norman and Breton, but it counted several other northern French knights, Flemings among them, as its members. Count Arnold II of Guines’s mentor and instructor in arms in the early 1180s, an anonymous nephew of Arnold of Cayeux, was a man who had previously served under Henry.75 Probably the highest-ranking member of the mesnie from Flanders was Baldwin of B´ethune, son of Robert V of B´ethune who had witnessed the 1163 Dover treaty and barons’ charter.76 When the household was touring France, it must have swelled enormously as dozens or even hundreds of knights would temporarily join the Young King’s itinerant court. The History of William Marshal eulogises the household’s heyday: 73 74

75 76

History of William Marshal, pp. 312–14, lines 6150–6170. Between Marshal and Count Baldwin II of Guines (1169–1206): Rotuli Chartarum, p. 46. See S. Painter, William Marshal: Knight-Errant, Baron and Regent of England (Baltimore, 1933), p. 49; Crouch, William Marshal, p. 47–8 and n. 13. Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, p. 604. History of William Marshal, pp. 298–300, lines 5879–5922, pp. 316–20, lines 6202–6298. Baldwin later became the count of Aˆumale through marriage and remained influential in the courts of Richard I and John, marrying his daughter Alice to Marshal’s oldest son. Crouch, William Marshal, p. 121; Gillingham, Richard I, p. 102.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 He [Young King Henry] gathered so many worthy men around him that no emperor, king, or count ever had such an experienced company, nor would such have been found at any time, for there is no doubt that he had the pick of the bravest young knights in France, Flanders, and Champagne. He did not haggle with them, but he acted in such a way that all the worthy men came and joined him.77

These are fond reminiscences, no doubt, concealing a situation that was more prosaic and financially complicated. But the Young King’s relationship with his household goes a long way towards explaining the dilemma in which he found himself in 1173, on the eve of his first rebellion. The History claims that the Young King’s break with his father was not simply due to jealousy over his lack of domains, but happened because Henry II had cut off his son’s stipend.78 The account is suspiciously partisan in assigning the blame to the father’s meanness but it is plausible that a dispute over expenses may have been, if not the final, then the penultimate, straw. The younger Henry was certainly a big spender. He had reason to be. What was at stake was not just young Henry’s lavish lifestyle, but the practical problem of how to attract and support a royal company. It would be a mistake to see the Young King’s behaviour in the French courts and tournament fields as merely an exercise in social vanity. A familia regis was absolutely indispensable to a would-be king.79 But retinues were expensive. And young Henry’s was all the more so, since he could not tie his followers to his person through grants of estates, titles or positions in the administration – he had little of these for himself – and the only currency he could peddle was his personal reputation, the promise of future rewards and a pleasantly luxurious lifestyle. In 1183 Young King Henry had another violent disagreement with his father and his brother Richard, which led to both sides calling up troops. Flemish soldiers, again, featured in the armies. These were mounted troops, which raises some questions about how significant numbers of foreign cavalrymen could be recruited quickly.80 Those of Henry II may well have been acquired through an Anglo-Flemish treaty (Count Philip 77

78 79 80

‘Tant asembla o sei des buens / Qu’emperere ne rei ne quens / N’en out de tant si esprovez, / N’el nul tens ne fusent trovez, / Quer a eslire, sanz dotance, / Out les buens bachilers de France / E de Flandres e de Champaigne. / Ne faisent pas a els bargaigne, Mais tant feiset que tuit li buen / Faiseient tant qu’il erent suen.’ History of William Marshal, p. 182, lines 3583–3592. I am grateful to David Crouch for his advice on the composition of the Young King’s mesnie. History of William Marshal, pp. 100–2, lines 1963–2016. His former household knights remember Young King Henry’s household in History of William Marshal, pp. 134–6, lines 2637–66, p. 182, lines 3583–92. Ibid., p. 324, lines 6372–6392.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society received a corrody of £132 7s in 1183–4),81 but the Young King no longer had such an arrangement; his relationship with the count seems to have gone sour after Philip II acceded to the throne of France in 1180. Nor did the Young King have a solid domain base from which to draw resources. Part of the answer must lie in the younger Henry’s status as heir to the kingdom, as well as his reputation for largesse. But there may have been something more at play. The Young King’s familia regis contained men of different nationalities whom he had recruited over his career in and around the French courts and tournament circuits. Over the previous decade of near-constant travel he had built a network of contacts, both personally and through his followers. It is possible that he was now able to convert this into active military strength. The tournament circuit could also be a source for short-term, but large-scale, recruitment during periods of conflict. As the Anglo-Flemish treaties suggest, the logistics of warfare during the twelfth century grew increasingly to favour the employment of paid soldiers. The broader context for the economic developments empowering the rise of the paid soldier – be he mercenary routier, or knight on a stipend – will be discussed in the following chapter.82 Suffice it here to note that the increasing monetisation of the economy made the acquisition and deployment of short-term paid troops an attractive and efficient strategy. The mass gathering of armed men at twelfth-century tournaments thus presented a directly practical opportunity. During a disagreement with Duke Godfrey VIII of Lower Lorraine in 1182, Count Baldwin V of Hainaut ‘went without arms to a tournament between Braine and Soissons, and on each side attracted as many knights as he could to his aid by pleas and promises’.83 Baldwin used hired soldiers enthusiastically over the next few years: in 1184, when confronted by the powerful alliance of Count Philip of Flanders, Duke Henry I of Brabant and Archbishop Philip of Cologne, he was served by 300 stipendiary knights and 3,000 other paid soldiers, both mounted and on foot.84 The strategy seems to have

81

82

83

84

Norman PR (1183–4), p. 83. It is worth noting that at this time Henry II was sponsoring Count Philip’s marriage to Matilda of Portugal, and the next year the count regained direct control over his money fief estates. But see also S. Percy, Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations (Oxford, 2007) for a discussion locating the mercenary in international history from the Middle Ages to the present day, and especially chapter 3 for the medieval and early modern context. ‘Interim eciam dominus comes ad tornamentum inter Brainam et Suessionem sine armis transivit et in utraque parte quotcumque poterat milites ad auxilium suum precibus et promissis convertit.’ Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, p. 144; trans. Napran, Chronicle of Hainaut, p. 81. Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, p. 174.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 worked, if at a cost: Baldwin’s use of paid troops had saddled him by 1186 with a gigantic debt of 41,000 Valenciennes pounds.85 Here the tournament comes together with other icons of the age, which we have already briefly met: the paid soldier, the mercenary routier, the stipendiary knight. Among paid soldiers the two most commonly identified types in north-western Europe during this period, and especially in the Anglo-Norman world, are Brabanters and Flemings.86 The term ‘Brabanters’ (Brabanciones, Brebantiones, etc.) is unhelpfully vague: it derives from the duchy of Brabant, located north-east of Flanders, but eventually became a general byword for low-class mercenaries from all areas. ‘Fleming’ is a geographically more precise designation, though it too is not unproblematic. Unlike the term ‘Brabanters’, which carries the connotation of lowclass origin, Flemish soldiers spanned the spectrum of class and professional identity, ranging from foot soldiers of peasant and urban origin to aristocratic knights. They are encountered in English sources from the eleventh century to the thirteenth. Domesday Book of 1086 lists twenty-one Flemish tenants-in-chief. The exact circumstances of their arrival are by and large unknown, and probably best determined case by case. But it must be assumed that they came to England to join in the efforts of William the Conqueror to establish Norman rule in the kingdom, and that they expected recompense for their pains.87 In the twelfth century, Flemings are often associated with periods of civil war in England. Stephen and his warring magnates famously employed large numbers of foreign troops from the Continent. According to William of Malmesbury, most of these knights and men-at-arms had arrived from Brittany and Flanders; several later sources note that after the accession of Henry II in 1154 a large number of the Flemings were targeted for expulsion from England.88 It is quite likely that the presence of these 85

86

87 88

Ibid., pp. 193–4. The exchange rate is uncertain, but the sum may be as much as 20,000 in pounds sterling, or equal to the annual English income of King Henry II. For Baldwin’s use of paid troops, see Napran, ‘Mercenaries and Paid Men in Gilbert of Mons’, pp. 290–6. On paid troops in the later twelfth century, see Bartlett, England, pp. 266–9; J. Boussard, ‘Henri II Plantagenˆet’, pp. 189–224; Brown, ‘Military Service’, pp. 33–51; France, Western Warfare, pp. 70–6; Contamine, War, pp. 243–7; H. G´eraud, ‘Les routiers au XIIe si`ecle’, Biblioth`eque de ´ l’Ecole des Chartes 3 (1841–2), 125–47; H. Grundmann, ‘Rotten und Brabanzonen: S¨oldnerHeere im 12. Jahrhundert’, Deutsches Archiv f¨ur Geschichte des Mittelalters 5 (1941–2), 419–92; Hosler, ‘Revisiting Mercenaries’, pp. 33–42; Hosler, Henry II: A Medieval Soldier at War (Leiden, 2007), pp. 119–23; Prestwich, ‘Money and Mercenaries’, pp. 129–50. The tenants are discussed at length at pp. 185–97 below. ‘Flandria Generosa’, p. 325; Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, pp. 105, 161; Gervase of Canterbury, ‘Gesta Regum’, pp. 73, 77; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, p. 297; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 183; William of Newburgh, Historia, vol. 1, pp. 101–2; William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, p. 32.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society fighters contributed to the assimilation of the English into the military culture of the Low Countries and to the popularisation of the tournament among the Anglo-Normans. Two armies of Flemings operated on the side of the rebels in East Anglia during the civil war in 1173.89 A third landed in Hartlepool but disbanded without engagement, and in 1174 a Flemish regiment served in the invading army of King William I the Lion of Scotland (1165–1214).90 Treasury payments made for the shipping of Flemings show that King Henry II also used them alongside Brabanters during the conflict.91 During the factional struggles in 1191 William of Longchamp, the royal chancellor, sent a force that included Brabanters and Flemish mercenaries to arrest Archbishop Geoffrey of York in Dover.92 And over 300 Flemish knights were in King John’s household in 1215, comprising almost half of his army during his war with the barons.93 As the confusion between Boulogne and Flanders in the Pipe Rolls demonstrates, English sources often employed a rather loose definition of what flandriensis was. Excepting only Gilbert of Ghent and the abbey of St Peter’s of Ghent, the Domesday tenants-in-chief came from deep within the southern Artois region. Several were not Flemings at all, but hailed from the small adjoining counties of Hesdin, St Pol and Lens.94 Indeed, though the exact origins of Flemish mercenaries are almost always obscure, whenever the veil is lifted there is a remarkable consistency in the mention of Artois. It seems that recruitment to fulfil the Dover treaties took place around or at the borders of that region. The Flemish Caldret brothers Henry and Ralph, who were active in Gloucestershire in the mid-1140s, presumably hailed from the town of Caudry (Calderiarum) in south-eastern Artois.95 King Stephen was also the count of Lens in central Artois, which gave him a direct channel to acquire fighters from the surrounding area. And the rallying cry of King William of Scotland’s Flemish mercenaries in 1174 was ‘Arras!’.96 All this suggests that the central recruiting ground of Low Countries soldiers-for-hire 89

90 91 92 93 94 95 96

Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 58, line 789, p. 70, line 945; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 61–2, 73; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 55, 64; William of Canterbury, Vita S. Thomae, pp. 485–7. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 30, lines 417–20, p. 46, lines 603–4, passim; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 64. PR 20 Henry II (1173–4), p. 135. Gerald of Wales, ‘V. Galfridi Archiepiscopi Eboracensis’, Giraldi Cambriensis Opera, vol. 4, ed. J. Brewer (RS 21, London, 1873), p. 391. Church, ‘The Earliest English Muster Roll’, 2–3. See Map 2; DP, pp. 38–40; K. Keats-Rohan, ‘The Portrait of a People: Norman Barons Revisited’, in Domesday Book, ed. E. Hallam and D. Bates (Stroud, 2001), pp. 121–40, 137–40. Gesta Stephani, p. 188, n. 1. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 90, line 1215, p. 134, line 1800.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 was located not in northern Flanders, at the seat of the Flemish comital authority, but further south. Braine and Soissons, where Count Baldwin V’s recruitment drive took place, were in Picardy, just south of Artois and in the heart of the northern French tournament circuit. Overall, the Franco-German marches appear as a kind of reservoir of military forces, both high- and low-class, mounted and infantry, that the rulers of the surrounding principalities and kingdoms could tap. When King John charged Simon of Havr´e with the recruitment of knights in 1202, for example, the orders were to direct the efforts towards Flanders, Hainaut and Brabant.97 Both Picardy and southern Flanders were populous and centrally located regions with strong military traditions, but politically peripheral and not yet organised or tamed by cross-regional power structures.98 Geographically they were in the immediate periphery of Germany, England and the various hubs of princely power in northern France, a location that made them ideal for the recruitment and transport of paid troops. A distinction must be drawn here between infantry soldiers and mounted knights, but, as the above example of Baldwin V indicates, the peacetime tournaments popular in this region were a first-rate opportunity to recruit large numbers of the latter quickly and efficiently. First, the centrepiece of the tournament, the grand mˆel´ee, favoured team organisation. Large, grandiose retinues like those discussed above had an obvious advantage in the battle, but smaller teams also participated. Companies of a dozen, or at most a few dozen, knights were a common form of military organisation among mounted soldiers; larger groups were unwieldy as tactical units.99 The Flemish knights in the 1215 Muster Roll of King John, for instance, were organised into constabularies of up to several dozen men according to their region of origin, and captained by a local lord.100 Moreover, the tradition of dividing participants into two sides according to their home regions meant that even unattached knights could participate in the mˆel´ee.101 Individual knights could be

97 98

99 100 101

Foedera, vol. 1, p. 41; Rotuli Litterarum Patentium in Turri Londinensi Asservati, ed. T. Hardy (London, 1835), vol. 1, p. 12. On Picardy, see Fossier, La terre et les hommes, p. 732. A. Koch has suggested that the reason for Count Philip’s curiously overgenerous grant of Artois as his niece’s dowry to King Philip II of France in 1180 was his inability to integrate the region into the structures of the comital administration. A. Koch, De rechterlijke Organisatie van het graafschap Vlandeeren tot in de 13e eeuw (Antwerp and Amsterdam, 1951), pp. 32–7. Crouch, Tournament, pp. 76–7; Verbruggen, Art of Warfare, pp. 73–7. Church, ‘The Earliest English Muster Roll’, 2–3. This tradition is referred to in Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, p. 97.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society easily recruited but it was the small ready-made military units that made for the best soldiers-for-hire. Second, it is important to consider just how large the tournament gatherings could be. The great tournaments, at which the French territorial princes gathered en masse, very probably brought together hundreds of knights, as well as uncountable numbers of squires, foot soldiers, servants, animal handlers and the like. Even larger numbers were possible. The event at Lagny in 1179, the most important tournament described by William Marshal’s biographer (who based his description on an older tournament record), brought together over 3,000 knights.102 In an era when a good-sized town might contain only 5,000 to 10,000 permanent inhabitants, these mass assemblies dominated the surrounding countryside.103 Their economic impact was great. In the brief period between assembly and dispersal, a tournament injected an enormous amount of cash into the locality. Not every tournament was of such importance, of course, and the vast majority may well have been small affairs that left no record. But grand tournaments were regular enough to make the circuit an enduring feature of the northern French economic landscape. The herald Sarrazin claimed that King Philip III of France’s (1270–85) prohibition of grand tournaments in 1278 led to a significant loss of livelihood among local merchants and service providers.104 Large, regular tournament events opened up many opportunities for recruitment and alliance-building. Third, mˆel´ee tournaments generally took place at domain borders.105 Part of the reason for this may have been to limit the trouble that large groups of armed men cause; the arrival of large numbers of foreign soldiers might certainly make for unease among the locals.106 But geopolitical liminality was also in keeping with the international and interregional nature of the events. The sites where tournaments flourished were located at intersections of power, and near popular travel routes. A key feature of the tournament circuit was that it encouraged the territorial prince 102 103

104 105

106

History of William Marshal, p. 226, lines 4457–60, p. 244, lines 4782–4; Crouch, Tournaments, pp. 46–9, 76–8; Crouch, ‘Writing a Biography’, pp. 229. P. Bairoch et al., La population des villes europ´eennes: Banque de donn´ees et analyse sommaire des r´esultants, 800–1850. The Population of European Cities: Data Bank and Short Summary of Results (Geneva, 1988), pp. 23–35. Sarrazin, ‘Le Roman de Ham’, in Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, ed. F. Michel (Paris, 1840), pp. 213–384, 216–19. Duby, Bouvines, pp. 86–7; Crouch, Tournament, pp. 49–55. I do not, however, agree with Duby’s suggestion that this demonstrated the tournament world’s marginality and undesirability, not least since its participant roster included many of the greatest princes of western Europe. Crouch, Tournament, pp. 42–6.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 to leave his domains and to travel in person to a political periphery rich with potential military recruits. Once there, he would have the opportunity to forge connections with the regional lesser nobility – the local middle management – who together with their retinues made for excellent hired troops. Flemings of such status are encountered in English service in Domesday Book and King John’s 1215 muster roll alike. Moreover, local contacts and local knowledge acquired through tournament gatherings undoubtedly proved useful for recruiting non-knightly, nonmounted soldiers akin to the so-called Brabanters. Fourth, and finally, the principle that underlay the recruitment of both mesnie knights and mercenary troops is that the basis of medieval military power was social. Warrior communities continued to play a key role as a source of armed might, and military organisation was fundamentally based on class rather than on the state. Since the costs of training, equipping and arming a soldier were in most cases required to be borne privately, a military ethos and identity which encouraged such an investment was to be encouraged. The tournament, by providing a venue in which knights and nobles from many regions could mix, served the interests of both potential employer and employee.107 The regularity and popularity of tournament events, especially in the northern French tournament circuit, served to disseminate recruitment calls, establish contacts within military communities and bring together large numbers of trained and equipped soldiers. We have seen how the Anglo-Flemish money fief agreements, and the diplomatic tradition that surrounded them, constituted a deliberate effort by the kings of England to harness the military potential of the southern Low Countries region. Their strategy was to employ the pre-eminent local prince, the count of Flanders, to lay the organisational groundwork for them. But the goal could be achieved more directly and less formally. The northern French tournament event, popular but lacking an administrative structure, was the other side of the coin to the treaties. It offered an important avenue by which Flemish soldiers, like fighters from other principalities, could seek opportunities in Anglo-Norman service. The available narrative sources yield an impression of the northern French tournament scene as essentially constructed by a coterie of princely sponsors, such as Count Philip of Flanders and Young King Henry.108 But it is useful to take a step back from the association of the events with 107 108

Keen, Chivalry, pp. 226–7; S. Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 10–11, 19–21. Recently Barber, Knight and Chivalry, pp. 159–60; Crouch, Tournament, pp. 19–21.

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Tournament in Anglo-Flemish society their high-profile participants. Tournaments developed from a base of older military traditions which were co-opted and promoted by princes, but were neither created by nor dependent on them. Rather than being a carefully pre-planned event, the twelfth-century tournament mˆel´ee bears many of the characteristics of a modern rave. One of their principal organisational features was spontaneity. The time and location of the next meeting on the tournament circuit was often floated only at the previous gathering. Though word of the major events may have been circulated well in advance, a couple of weeks seems to have been the usual period of warning for most tournaments.109 Certainly, the princes helped to keep the scene active and, certainly, the greatest tournament occasions took place under their aegis. Still, a certain core of anarchy was the tournament’s strength and the source of its endurance; its existence was dependent only on the willingness of a sufficient number of participants. The tournament world was vital in creating social networks, which may have revolved around its greatest sponsors, but also incorporated knights and soldiers much further down the hierarchy. Twelfth-century social and political relations still operated very much on the level of personal contact. The tournament event provided a forum in which socialising and politicking, from mock warfare to alliance-building, could be conducted. Though the main region of tournament activity was in the counties of northern France, its appeal spread everywhere in the Frankish world. The kings of England long maintained an ambiguous attitude towards tournaments, but this cannot be because they were fundamentally opposed to a popular manifestation of their own aristocracy’s culture. It is high time to abandon the idea that the tournament was a disreputable sport opposed by the forces of law and order in the form of the monarchies and the Church. The teleological notion that an increasingly strong central monarchy – or at least central administration – was as inevitable as it was unambiguously positive has fed on a wellspring of nationalistic discourse that still occasionally bubbles up. The premise is that any developments which subverted or ran contrary to the policies of the Capetian or Angevin dynasties must have been undesirable, regrettable or disreputable. But it was not so. In a world of princely magnates, itinerant barons and soldiers-for-hire, tournaments occupied an important space between court diplomacy and actual warfare, borrowing from both and combining them into an original whole. The tournament was a matter taken very seriously; it was as important a feature of Anglo-Flemish relations 109

Crouch, Tournament, pp. 32–3.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 as the treaties. These events came into existence not as a random byproduct of aristocratic violence, but because there was a need for such an environment among the Flemish lords, English knights, magnates, mercenaries and opportunists from all the regions touched by a shared western European military culture.

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Chapter 5

T H E P O L I T I C S O F C RO S S - C H A N N E L C O M M E RC E

Money was vital to Anglo-Flemish relations. English silver was the cornerstone of the Dover treaties; it was dispensed in money fiefs to the Flemish aristocracy and it secured the vital resource of soldiers. The key role cash played in these political agreements is a reflection of the increasing commercialisation of European society in the Central Middle Ages.1 In fact, the history of Anglo-Flemish exchanges and the emergence of ever more important commercial structures on both sides of the Channel are inexorably linked. The relationship between England and Flanders was in many ways unique. Michael Postan enthusiastically described Flemish commercial development in this period as ‘one of the wonder-stories of medieval economic history; indeed the earliest case-book example of economic development as now discussed in relation to the so-called underdeveloped countries’.2 This ‘Flemish miracle’ would never have been possible without the influx of raw materials from England and the close economic ties they entailed; these ties in turn stimulated major transformations in the English economy. The way historians understand the Anglo-Flemish commercial relationship owes a great deal to the work of Gaston Dept, a Belgian historian who laid the foundations for modern scholarship on the English, Flemish and French trade connections in the 1920s. Dept argued that the early growth of Flemish urban centres made for political and economic vulnerability, since the increasing prominence of towns allowed English monarchs to exploit the Anglo-Flemish trade relationship for diplomatic leverage.3 Dept had been the student of the Belgian medievalist Henri 1 2 3

For an introduction, see D. Keene, ‘Towns and the Growth of Trade’, The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4.1, c.1024–c.1198, ed. D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 47–85. M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain in the Middle Ages (London, 1972), p. 190. In particular in G. Dept, ‘Les marchands flamands et le roi d’Angleterre (1154–1216)’, Revue du Nord 12 (1926), 303–24; and taken up in Dept, Les influences (published in 1928). For traces of Dept in modern scholarship, see J. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy, 1150–1500 (London and Melbourne, 1980), p. 174; Lloyd, The English Wool Trade, pp. 6–9; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, p. 116.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Pirenne (to whom he dedicated Les influences anglaises et franc¸aises dans le comt´e de Flandre au d´ebut du XIIIe si`ecle), and was powerfully influenced by Pirenne’s monograph on economic and urban history published the previous year. In his famous – though now largely debunked – thesis on European economic history, Pirenne argued that the roots of capitalism and modern democracy had been laid down during the Central Middle Ages by the new patrician classes of the developing urban centres, who established a political order separate from and in competition with the surrounding ‘feudal’ hierarchies.4 Dept applied this model to Flemish history, and his significant contribution to Anglo-Flemish historiography was to emphasise the importance of cross-Channel trade and the Flemish towns. Dept’s narrative leitmotif of inevitable historical momentum leading to the subordination of Flemish commercial interests to the economic policies of the kings of England, however, can be questioned in its specifics. There is no doubt that some kings of England did interfere aggressively with cross-Channel merchants when it suited their purposes, but it is debatable just how deliberate or sustained such policies were. The increasing importance of economic growth to Anglo-Flemish exchanges was wide and varied, and cannot be satisfactorily understood merely, or primarily, in terms of royal or comital policies. In order to investigate the broader scope of these exchanges, this chapter will first review the development and overall shape of Anglo-Flemish trade, and then examine how its growth influenced Anglo-Norman and Flemish political and social history in three linked areas: travel and shipping, cross-Channel finances, and urban political history. URBANISATION AND TRADE Medieval Anglo-Flemish trade was above all shaped by the growth of urban centres. Over the course of the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, the towns of the southern Low Countries emerged next to castles and trading sites, or expanded from older urban nuclei and ecclesiastical centres. Flanders benefited from the efforts of the counts, who actively encouraged urban development. Two of their most successful foundations grew into the great commercial centres of Ypres and Lille.5 The 4

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H. Pirenne, Les villes du moyen aˆ ge, essai d’histoire e´conomique et sociale (Brussels, 1927); trans. F. Halsey as Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (Princeton, 1969). Pirenne’s subsequent critics are legion, but the following are the most useful introductions to the debate: A. Hibbert, ‘The Origins of the Medieval Town Patriciate’, in Towns and Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology, ed. P. Abrams and E. Wrigley (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 91–104; A. Verhulst, ‘The Origin of Towns in the Low Countries and the Pirenne Thesis’, Past and Present 122 (1989), 3–35. D. Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City: From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century (London, 1997), p. 112; A. Verhulst, The Rise of Cities in North-Western Europe (Cambridge, 1999),

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce county was undoubtedly the most urbanised area of Europe north of the Alps. Estimating population figures for the Middle Ages is, of course, often little more than educated guesswork but, while it is unlikely that any Flemish towns in the year 1100 would have contained more than 5,000 inhabitants, by the end of the century the seven largest cities of Arras, Bruges, Douai, Ghent, Lille, St Omer and Ypres probably had at least 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants each, some probably boasting populations considerably higher.6 Even in comparison with Italy, the density of Flemish urban population was spectacular; the entire county with all its competing urban centres could have fitted inside a single Italian contado.7 In 1100 London maintained a population of some 20,000, which doubled to 40,000 over the next hundred years. London’s size was unique, however, and the second tier of English towns – Norwich, Winchester and York – had populations of no more than 10,000. Rouen, the largest town in Normandy, had in the year 1200 an estimated 15,000 inhabitants.8 The initial impetus to the economic growth of Flemish towns in the Central Middle Ages was supplied by interregional trade in foodstuffs. Most of the great towns were located by trade routes – usually waterways – at the junction of two agricultural zones. The vast majority of European trade was in bulk goods and raw materials: basic foodstuffs, wool, cloth, timber and so forth. The wealth created by interregional traffic in grain and other produce, along with the capital created by urban landownership,9 provided the Flemish merchant elites with a financial base. The bulk movement of goods encouraged a geographical distribution of labour, enabled the development of a high degree of local specialisation, and empowered urbanisation and industrialisation.10

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pp. 68–118, contains a very detailed guide to the growth of towns in the southern Low Countries. See also J. Dhondt, ‘D´eveloppement urbain et initiative comtale en Flandre au XIe si`ecle’, Revue de nord 30 (1948), 133–56. Bairoch et al., La Population, pp. 11–12, 23, 25, 27, 30; D. Nicholas, ‘Of Poverty and Primacy: Demand, Liquidity and the Flemish Economic Miracle, 1050–1200’, American Historical Review 98 (1991), 17–41, 18. As noted by G. Sivery, ‘Histoire e´ conomique et sociale’, Histoire de Lille, vol. 1, ed. G. Fourquin (Lille, 1970), pp. 111–270, 164–5. Bairoch, La Population, p. 29; D. Keene, ‘Medieval London and Its Region’, London Journal 14 (1989), 99–100, 107; Keene, ‘Towns and the Growth of Trade’, p. 53. The abolition of property rents to aristocratic landowners was an important concession made to the burghers of Bruges by Count William Clito in 1127. See Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 104; Galbert of Bruges, Murder of Charles the Good, p. 203, n. 8. A. Derville, ‘Le grenier des Pays-Bas m´edi´evaux’, Revue du Nord 69 (1987), 267–90; D. Nicholas, ‘Settlement Patterns, Urban Functions, and Capital Formation in Medieval Flanders’, in Nicholas, Trade, Urbanisation and the Family (Aldershot, 1996), IV, pp. 1–30; M. Postan, ‘The Trade of Medieval Europe: the North’, The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 2, Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Postan and E. Miller, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 168–70; Verhulst, Rise of Cities, pp. 116–17, 122. See also B. van Bavel, Manors and Markets:

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Bruges and Ghent in northern Flanders were already described as port towns in mid- to late tenth-century sources, and the so-called Billingsgate Toll issued by King Aethelred II of England (978–1016) mentions Flemish merchants trading in London.11 The Anglo-Saxon royal biography Encomium Emmae Reginae (written 1041–2) describes Bruges as a town enjoying ‘very great fame for the number of its merchants and for its affluence in all things upon which mankind places the greatest value’.12 Over the course of the late eleventh and the twelfth centuries, Flanders increasingly assumed a position of centrality in the pattern of regional trade. At the time of the murder of Count Charles in 1127, Galbert of Bruges wrote that ‘merchants from all the kingdoms around Flanders had come together in Ypres, on the feast of Saint Peter’s Chair’. Even Italian merchants were present.13 Over in England, a permanent, organised Flemish mercantile settlement probably grew up in tandem with the increase in Anglo-Flemish trade, though the earliest recorded evidence is a charter issued in 1155–8 to the burghers of St Omer by Henry II. This document confirms the burghers’ commercial privileges and right to trade in England, and notes that they own a hospicia (lodgings, perhaps a commercial headquarters) in London.14 By this point, however, the presence in London of Flemish merchants may have been of several generations’ standing, with the new king merely affirming his royal protection over them after the turmoil of his predecessor’s reign. The occasion described by Galbert of Bruges at Ypres in 1127 was a fair, one of the central features of medieval economic life. The major annual fairs of Ypres, Lille, Mesen, Torhout, St Omer, Ghent and Bruges were established between the eleventh century and the early thirteenth. Each lasted up to thirty days and was held in a consecutive cycle from the end of February to the beginning of November. These fairs were the engines of Flemish commerce and served as a trade nexus for the whole of north-western Europe, linking the county with trade routes

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Economy and Society in the Low Countries, 500–1600 (Oxford, 2010), pp. 101–10, and passim for Flemish economic history in the Middle Ages. Elenchus Fontium Historiae Urbanae, vol. 1, ed. B. Diestelkamp et al. (Leiden, 1967), pp. 290–1, no. 2; p. 292, no. 3; The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, ed. and trans. A. Robertson (Cambridge, 1925), p. 72. ‘[Q]uod tum frequentia negotiatorum tum affluentia omnium quae prima mortales ducunt famosissimum habetur’. Encomium, p. 46. ‘Quo tempore negotiatores omnium circa Flandriam regnorum ad Ipram confluxerant in cathedra sancti Petri, ubi forum et nundiae universales feriabantur, qui sub pace et tutela piissimi comitis securi negitiabantur. Eodem tempore ex Longobardorum regno mercatores descendant ad idem forum.’ Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 41; Galbert of Bruges, Murder of Charles the Good, pp. 123–4. RAH II, no. 71, pp. 173–4.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce that wound from the east through Germany and from the south through France. Though international fairs were established in other regions, including England, during this period, only the great fairs of Champagne (established in north-eastern France by the counts of Champagne during the twelfth century) attained a similar level of importance as nodal points of international commerce.15 By virtue of their location, the Flemish fairs provided a connection between the English economy and the more distant mainland markets. England was, of course, also embedded in important maritime trade networks stretching from the coasts of France to Scandinavia. The commercial interests that spanned the Angevin empire in the second half of the twelfth century surely contributed to the rulers’ ability to hold it together; significant quantities of salt, pottery, woad and wine were transported along the Atlantic seaboard.16 But the gravitational pull exerted by the Flemish economic zone on England made for an important easterly tilt. The location of the fastest-growing port towns in the eleventh century on the east coast of England strongly suggests that Flanders was at that time the kingdom’s chief trading partner. Although during the twelfth century English commercial connections with France intensified, the Anglo-Flemish link remained strong. In 1125 William of Malmesbury described London as ‘crammed with wares and traders from every land, especially from Germany’.17 Such flows of commerce provided the Flemings with many opportunities for initiative. Indeed, a trade dispute, in which both Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and King Henry II became embroiled, was fought in 1173–6 when Flemish merchants 15

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H. Jansen, ‘Handel en Nijverheid 1000–1300’, Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 2nd Series (Utrecht, 1982), 156–61; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 111–17; D. Nicholas, ‘Commercial Credit and Central Place Function in Thirteenth-Century Ypres’, in Money, Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of John H. A. Munro, ed. L. Armstrong, I. Elbl and M. Elbl (Leiden, 2007), pp. 310–48; Verhulst, The Rise of Cities, p. 133; O. Verlinden, ‘Markets and Fairs’, The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 3, Economic Organization and Policies in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Postan, E. Reich and E. Miller (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 126–37; M. Yamada, ‘Le mouvement des foires en Flandre avant 1200’, in Villes et campagnes au Moyen ˆ M´elanges Georges Despy, ed. J.-M. Duvosquel and A. Dierkens (Li`ege, 1991), pp. 773–89. Age: For Anglo-German trade, see in particular J. Huffman, Family, Commerce and Religion in London and Cologne: Anglo-German Immigrants, c.1000–c.1300 (Cambridge, 1998). E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The English Cloth Industry in the Late Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, 2nd edn (London, 1967), pp. 211–38, 223; CarusWilson, ‘The Effects of the Acquisition and of the Loss of Gascony on the English Wine Trade’, in ibid., pp. 265–70; Gillingham, Angevin Empire, pp. 61–6; H. Pirenne, ‘Un grand commerce d’exportation au moyen aˆ ge: les vins de France’, Annales; e´conomies, soci´et´es, civilisations 5 (1933), 231–5. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom (OMT, Oxford, 2007), p. 222; M. Gardiner, ‘Shipping and Trade between England and the Continent during the Eleventh Century’, ANS 22 (1999), 71–93, 73, 92–3.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 nearly wrested the control of the Anglo-German wine trade away from the merchants of Cologne.18 A cartulary from Bruges in 1200 lists wool, hides, rock coal and cheese as common English wares traded by Flemish merchants. Perhaps some exports had achieved ‘brand recognition’: in a list of goods in the Nieuwpoort charter, granted by Count Thierry in 1163, English cheese and spun wool from England are the only foreign commodities identified by their place of origin. Other imported foodstuffs are mentioned, including wines, bacon and vegetables.19 The Flemish urban diet was apparently international in character, establishing a day-to-day connection between Flemish burghers and their maritime neighbours. As patterns of trade grew and strengthened, the exchange of goods and coin spun subtle strands of dependencies, interests and obligations across the English Channel. The most important foreign food export to Flanders was grain. Due to the lack of evidence it is unfortunately very difficult to estimate the state and size of the Flemish agricultural economy before the thirteenth century. It has been suggested, however, that over the course of the twelfth century the needs of the great Flemish towns had outgrown their agricultural hinterlands, and early interregional trade was soon complemented by international commerce in foodstuffs.20 The role of the Flemish towns as food depots and centres of reconsignment had by this time long been integral to their economic make-up and, especially in times of shortage, served to reverse the traditional town–countryside relationship of consumer and producer. Galbert of Bruges illustrated this reversal in his poignant account of the famine of 1124–5. People from the countryside flocked to towns to buy bread, many perishing on the way, and Count Charles was forced to regulate the international wine trade ‘so that the merchants would stop hoarding and buying up wine and would exchange their wares, in view of the urgency of the famine, for foodstuffs which they could acquire more quickly and which could be used more

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Huffman, Social Politics, pp. 172–3. Cartulaire de l’ancienne estaple de Bruges: Recueil de documents concernant le commerce int´erieur et maritime, les relations internationales et l’histoire e´conomique de cette ville, ed. L. Gilliodts-van Severen (Bruges, 1904), vol. 1, p. 19; Oorkonden, 1128–1191, vol. 1, p. 346. Set out in Nicholas, ‘Settlement Patterns’, pp. 4–7, 28–30. The poor state of Flemish agriculture has been debated, however, in A. Verhulst, ‘The Alleged Poverty of the Flemish Rural Economy as Reflected in the Oldest Account of the Comital Domain Known as “Gros Brief”’ (a.d. 1187)’, Studia historica œconomica: Liber amicorum Herman van der Wee (Louvain, 1993), pp. 369–82, which argues that it was fairly well developed already in the twelfth century.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce easily to nourish the poor’.21 Galbert’s account indicates that the towns at this time were already engaged in long-distance trade in foodstuffs and enjoyed a strong position in the Flemish foodstuff market.22 A similar phenomenon had been observed just a few years before Galbert by William of Malmesbury in England: ‘As a result [of trade], when food is expensive everywhere else in England because the crops have failed, in London the necessities of life are bought and sold cheaper than elsewhere: buyers spend less and sellers make lower profits’.23 In Flanders, in the long run, the effects of this dominance would be deleterious. In the Later Middle Ages the foreign grain trade to Flanders intensified, with the ultimate result that a small mercantile elite was able to establish a stranglehold on the market. By controlling the market with cheap foreign grain, urban merchants in Flanders depressed their local competition – and, alongside it, the economic potential of the Flemish agricultural hinterland.24 The roots of this trend extended to the twelfth century, at which time grain was brought into the southern and eastern regions of Flanders from France, up the rivers Leie and Scheldt.25 The evidence for grain imports from England in this period is sparse, but very suggestive. As in parts of northern and western France, market demand and farming practices in southern England had produced a surplus of grain and other produce in excess of mere subsistence, even among peasant farmers.26 English grain was an export commodity: the Tewkesbury and Bristol borough charters from the second half of the twelfth century name corn, along with hides and wool, as one of the chief goods traded to foreign merchants.27 By the end of the century grain exports to Flanders were certainly important to English merchants. The significance of this export trade is best illustrated in the long lists of fines for violating the king’s 21

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‘Vini quartam pro sex nummis vendi praecepit et non carius ideo ut cessarent negociatores ab abundantia et emptione vini et merces suas commutarent pro necessitate famis pro victiabulis aliis, quibus levius adundarent et facilius pauperes sustentarent.’ Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, pp. 9, 11, quote from p. 11; Galbert of Bruges, Murder of Charles the Good, pp. 88–9. Nicholas, ‘Of Poverty and Primacy’, 31–3. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, p. 222. Nicholas, ‘Settlement Patterns’, pp. 20–1. Ibid. In the thirteenth century, Germany was also a significant source of grain, though it is unknown how far back that particular trade connection goes; see N. Hybel, ‘The Grain Trade in Northern Europe before 1350’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series 55 (2002), 222–4. B. Harvey, Westminster Abbey and Its Estates in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1977), p. 6; J. Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England 1150–1350 (New York, 1997), pp. 47–54; Postan, ‘The Trade of Medieval Europe’, p. 215. British Borough Charters 1042–1216, ed. A. Ballard (Cambridge, 1913), p. 212.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 ban on the grain trade to Flanders during conflicts in 1173–4 and 1196 that were levied on individual merchants and townships in eastern and south-eastern England. Some of the amercements reached hundreds of pounds.28 In addition to foodstuffs, cross-Channel traders were heavily involved with the manufacturing sector. The Flemish cloth industry was one of the great economic success stories of the Central Middle Ages, and the backbone of the urban wealth of the county. Cloth production had a long history in Flanders, having been practised there at least since Roman times.29 The industry entered a period of substantial growth in the early eleventh century, multiplying the demand for raw wool. Coastal land reclamation was a partial response to this need. The marshy maritime fields newly created in the coastal regions were originally best suited to sheep pasture. They were too salty in the years following drainage to grow grain, and ill-suited to supporting heavier livestock, such as cows. Local wool continued to be used in the Flemish textile industry throughout the Middle Ages, especially for the production of lowerquality textiles. But, from the middle of the eleventh century onwards, population pressure necessitated the conversion of former maritime sheep pastures to arable fields.30 Along with the maturation and expansion of the cloth manufacturing industry, this change in land use led to a situation in which demand for wool outgrew domestic capacity to produce it. No doubt some trade in wool had taken place across the Channel long before the Norman Conquest, but there are no precise records to demonstrate when English wool began to be shipped to Flanders in large quantities. In his classic article on the economy of eleventhcentury England, Peter Sawyer, for instance, argued that wool trade to Flanders had already been an important source of wealth in AngloSaxon times; his evidence, however, is heavily based on conjectures drawn from much later developments.31 Certainly the contribution that 28 29

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Pipe Roll 23 Henry II (1176–7), pp. 183–4; PR 9 Richard I (1197–8), pp. 92–3, 137–8, 209; F. Maitland, Township and Borough (Cambridge, 1898), p. 171. G. Espinas, La draperie dans la Flandre franc¸aise au Moyen Age, vol. 1 (2 vols, Paris, 1923), pp. 25–30. For a comprehensive overview of the medieval woollen cloth industry, see J. Munro, ‘Medieval Woollens: Textiles, Textile Technology and Industrial Organisation, c.800–1500’, The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, vol. 1, ed. D. Jenkins (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 181–227. Nicholas, ‘Of Poverty and Primacy’, 34–6; A. Verhulst, ‘La laine indig`ene dans les Pays-Bas entre le XIIe et le XVIIe si`ecle: Mise en œuvre industrielle production et commerce’, Revue historique 248 (1972), 281–322, especially pp. 281–97. P. Sawyer, ‘The Wealth of England in the Eleventh Century’, TRHS, 5th Series 15 (1965), 145–64, 160–3. For a chronologically longer look at the wealth of England, as well as for a reminder not to equate Anglo-Norman or Angevin figures with those of the Anglo-Saxon era, see J. Bolton, ‘What Is Money? What Is a Money Economy? When Did a Money Economy

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce native Flemish wool continued to make to the textile industry cannot be ignored, and remained important well past this period.32 But the scholarly consensus that has formed in the last half-century accepts, though not without dissenting voices, that the English wool trade attained significant volume at some point during the decades around the year 1100, and then continued to expand throughout the following century.33 Its proportional role in English and Flemish foreign trade must remain a mystery, but on balance it does seem probable that by the end of the twelfth century a commercially important volume of wool was being shipped across the Channel, though the Flemish textile industry probably had not become entirely dependent on English exports at this point. Most probably English wool was particularly desirable for its high-quality varieties, and considered ideal for the production of profitable highclass textiles.34 From an English perspective, foreign trade was important for the kingdom’s economy.35 Wool’s importance as a principal export was recognised by Henry of Huntingdon, who honoured it with the appellation lana pretiosissima (‘costly wool’), and considered it one of the kingdom’s chief sources of revenue.36 A reminder that the wealth of medieval England rested on wool is still to be found in the House of Lords. Like his predecessors for over six centuries, the Lord Speaker sits (before 2006, when the office was split, the Lord Chancellor sat) on the Woolsack, a large square seat stuffed with wool – though in its latest incarnation the seat is filled with wool not only from England, but from the nations of the Commonwealth.

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Emerge in Medieval England?’, in Medieval Money Matters, ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 2004), pp. 1–15. A. Derville, ‘Les draperies flamandes et art´esiennes vers 1250–1350’, Revue du Nord 54 (1972), 356–7; Verhulst, ‘La laine’, 296–7; A. Verhulst, ‘Sheep-breeding and Wool Production in Prethirteenth Century Flanders and Their Contribution to the Rise of Ypres, Ghent and Bruges as Centres of the Textile Industry’, in Ypres and the Medieval Cloth Industry in Flanders: Archaeological and Historical Contributions. Good Yarn! Archaeological and Historical Research into the Medieval Cloth Industry of Flanders – Ypres, November 29–30, 1996, ed. M. Dewilde et al. (Zellik, 1998), pp. 33–42. Dept, ‘Les marchands flamands’, 311–13; Lloyd, English Wool Trade, pp. 1–6; Nicholas, ‘Of Poverty and Primacy’, 35. For discussions in broader works, see Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 112–15; E. Miller and J. Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts 1086–1346 (London and New York, 1995), pp. 190–2. On medieval sheep rearing and wool production in England, see M. Ryder, Sheep & Man (Duckworth, 1983), pp. 445–77, especially pp. 458–65, 76. For a brief overview of medieval sheep breeds, see also E. Power, The Wool Trade in English Medieval History (Oxford, 1941), pp. 15–17. G. Snooks, ‘The Dynamic Role of the Market in the Anglo-Norman Economy and Beyond, 1086–1300’, in A Commercialising Economy: England 1086 to c.1300, ed. R. Britnell and B. Campbell (Manchester, 1995), pp. 27–54, 37–8, suggests that in the late eleventh century as much as a quarter of England’s GDP came from foreign trade, though such figures are controversial and can only ever be taken for rough estimates. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 10.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Once in Flanders, English wool was fed into the maw of the insatiable textile industry and transformed into a commodity exported in large quantities. Eastbound routes took textiles through the German Empire, where in 1173 Frederick Barbarossa issued safe-conducts to Flemish traders and created markets for them in Aachen and Duisburg.37 Already in the early twelfth century, Flemish cloth was found as far away as Novgorod.38 In the south, textiles were taken to the Champagne fairs in France and to Italy, where they might be sent on to destinations around the Mediterranean. It is difficult to overstate the ubiquitousness of the product. The range of Flemish textiles was wide, from high-end dyed cloths to low-cost and low-quality fabrics, and they enjoyed significant market presence at nearly all levels of European society.39 That by the end of the twelfth century the Italians identified Flemish cloths with their towns of origin suggests that (like English cheese in Flanders) its different varieties had achieved name recognition.40 The evidence for the international cloth trade dates mostly from the second half of the twelfth century onwards but, as the presence of Italian merchants at the fair of Ypres in 1127 attests, it had sent down roots decades earlier. The wool and textile trade formed the basis of the position of Flanders in the overall commercial structure of western Europe and accounted for its status as the network hub that connected England to the trade routes of the Continent.41 Specific source mentions of Flemish imports to England are sparse, but there is evidence that wine, woad and silk were among the goods brought in by Flemish merchants.42 Some Flemish cloth must also have been destined for England. The bales or bundles of goods (trusselli) that appear in Henry II’s charter of 1155–8 to the burghers of St Omer in 37 38 39 40 41

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MGH Diplomata Regum et Imperatorum Germaniae, vol. 10, part 3, ed. H. Appelt (Hannover, 1985), no. 602, pp. 86–7. H. Pirenne, ‘Draps d’Ypres a` Novgorod au commencement du XIIe si`ecle’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 9 (1930), 563–6. P. Chorley, ‘The Cloth Exports of Flanders and Northern France during the Thirteenth Century: A Luxury Trade?’, Economic History Review 40 (1987), 349–79. H. Krueger, ‘The Genoese Exportation of Northern Cloths to Mediterranean Ports, Twelfth Century’, Revue Belge de philologie et d’histoire 65 (1987), 722–50. Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 41. Trade in miscellaneous goods had taken place between northern Italy and the southern Low Countries from at least the tenth century. J. Lestocquoy, ´ ‘The Tenth Century’, Etudes d’histoire urbaine: villes et abbayes: Arras au Moyen Age (Arras, 1966), pp. 43–4. See also J. Munro, ‘Medieval Woollens: The West European Woollen Industries and their Struggles for International Markets, c.1000–1500’, in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, vol. 1, ed. D. Jenkins (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 228–324; and on economic network systems, see P. Hohenberg and L. Lees, The Making of Urban Europe, 1000–1950 (Cambridge, MA, 1985), pp. 62–6. PR 19 Henry II (1172–3), pp. 29, 165; PR 1 John (1198–9), p. 182; Carus-Wilson, ‘The English Cloth Industry’, p. 223; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, p. 194.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce London probably refer to textiles, and there are records of royal purchase of Flemish textile goods in the Pipe Rolls.43 It has been argued that, in contrast to exports to the Continent, the majority of Flemish cloths sold in England were medium- to high-quality items, the principal buyers of which were the English crown, the aristocracy and the wealthy urban elites.44 The native English textile industry of the time appears not to have produced much in the way of such upscale products. Replying to Pope Alexander III’s request to send him a carpet, Bishop Gilbert Foliot of London mentioned that he had been forced to import the item from abroad (from Flanders, in all likelihood), as such items were not manufactured locally.45 Was it the case that Flemish cloth imports to England were restricted to luxury items? Unfortunately little is known about the state of the English cloth industry until the end of the twelfth century. It was only after this point that it entered a period of substantial growth.46 Source bias may play a role in evaluations of overseas textile imports. The crown’s agents, concerned with providing suitable materials for fitting out the royal court, would have been less interested in buying low-end cloths and may have left an entire sector of the market undocumented. The ‘Laws of the Men of Lorraine’, an eleventh-century code regulating the businesses of merchants in London, as well as late twelfth-century borough charters mention textile goods, but specifically forbid foreigners to sell cloth at retail.47 These prohibitions must have been designed to protect a local small-scale textile industry by preventing foreign traders from undercutting English merchants in the general market; they suggest that foreigners had previously engaged in the retail cloth trade. It is possible that the native English cloth industry took a longer time to grow, and even experienced decline in the late twelfth century, because of competition from imported products.48 The economic maturation of cloth-producing regions on both sides of the Channel was inevitably influenced by the commerce across it. 43 44 45 46

47 48

RAH II, no. 71, pp. 173–4; PR 22 Henry II (1186–7), p. 19; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, pp. 193–4. E. Moore, The Fairs of Medieval England: An Introductory Story (Toronto, 1985), pp. 46–7. The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, ed. Z. Brooke, D. Morey and C. Brooke (Cambridge, 1967), no. 247, p. 319, dated 1163–81. Carus-Wilson, ‘The English Cloth Industry’, pp. 211–15. For improvements in weaving technology at this time, see Carus-Wilson, ‘An Industrial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century’, in Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 183–210. British Borough Charters, pp. 212–14; ‘A London Municipal Collection of the Reign of John’, ed. and trans. M. Bateson, EHR 17 (1902), 495–502, 498, §9. P. Harvey, ‘The English Trade in Wool and Cloth, 1150–1250: Some Problems and Suggestions’, Prodizione, commercio e consumo dei panni di lana nei secoli XII–XVII, ed. M. Spallanzani (Florence, 1976), pp. 369–75.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 TRAVEL AND SHIPPING The defining feature of Anglo-Flemish trade was, naturally, its maritime character, the English Channel acting not as a foggy barrier, but as its most essential asset. Although overland transport was improved by road building and by the invention of horse collars and the four-wheeled carriage, it was shipping that remained during this period the cheapest, speediest and most efficient means of transporting large amounts of bulk goods.49 Modern classifications of medieval ships in this region and period divide them into three categories, based on their shape and methods of construction: the keel, the cog and the hulk.50 The high medieval keels closely resembled Viking longships, from which they were descended; the panels of the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the preparations of the Norman invasion force show men constructing keels. Keels had both sail and oars and therefore combined speed with manoeuvrability. But, while they made for efficient people-carriers in times of war, their cargo capacity was limited. The workhorse of maritime international commerce was the cog. Cogs had higher decks and rode lower in the water than keels; instead of featuring the gently curving sides of a keel, the cog was a box-like structure, its sides dropping down almost vertically and meeting a flat bottom nearly at a right angle. Though slower than keels, cogs were excellently suited to move large volumes of goods, such as grain and wool, along sea and coastal routes. By the middle of the thirteenth century, the cargo capacity of a typical cog was at least five times that of a keel built at the turn of the millennium. The development and prominence of these vessels was central to the sharp increase in volume of the seaborne goods that fed the commercialisation of north-western Europe.51 The third main type of ship in the Channel region was the hulk, identifiable by its crescent-shaped hull. Some of the earliest depictions of hulks have been identified from sources in the southern Low Countries, and it may be there that this ship design originated. Like the keel, but unlike the deeply built cog, the hulk was capable of navigating sea routes and larger inland waterways alike while carrying a substantial cargo. This flexibility may have made it particularly appealing to Flemish merchants. 49

50 51

Postan, ‘The Trade of Medieval Europe’, pp. 196–204. On horses, see J. Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation: The Use of Draught Animals in English Farming from 1066–1500 (Cambridge, 2002). This classification system dates back to the work dealing with ship depictions on seals by Bernhard Hagedorn, Die Entwicklung der wichtigsten Schiffstypen bis in 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1914). G. Hutchinson, Medieval Ships and Shipping (London, 1994), pp. 5–10, 15–20; C. Tipping, ‘Cargo Handling and the Medieval Cog’, Mariner’s Mirror 80 (1994), 3–15; R. Unger, The Ship in the Medieval Economy 600–1600 (London, 1980), pp. 133–9.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce The southern Low Countries are riddled with river systems, which enabled the interregional trade in bulk goods that provided the early impetus for urban growth. Likewise, the major English international fairs flourished by waterways in the eastern and south-eastern regions of the kingdom. These river routes, all flowing into the English Channel or the North Sea, constituted a shared network of travel. Under favourable conditions a merchant’s wares from Douai, deep in south-eastern Flanders by the River Scarpe, could be estimated to reach the fair of St Ives, by the River Ouse in Cambridgeshire, in a week. Hulks must have been of particular advantage to Anglo-Flemish traders in allowing bulk cargoes both to cross the Channel and to navigate the larger Flemish and English river systems in a single vessel. A testament to this maritime connection is borne by a marble font in the medieval cathedral at Winchester, the site of one of these great international fairs: carved in c.1180 from Tournai marble quarried near the River Scheldt, it depicts a group of travellers in a hulk.52 English merchants, such as St Godric, whose travels took him to Denmark, Scotland and Flanders in the early twelfth century, plied their trade on the seas. Some settled permanently on the Continent: Joseph Huffman has identified several English or English-descended merchant families in twelfth- and especially thirteenth-century Cologne, the commercial heavyweight of western Germany. But during this period the greater part of cross-Channel traffic was controlled by continental merchants. Ships from the Low Countries handled transport across the Straits of Dover, and even down the coasts towards France.53 Flemings were engaged in the French wine trade to England by the early thirteenth century.54 The distances travelled by foreign merchants were not necessarily very long; medieval trade and communication, although international in character, was often local in scope.55 By preference, merchants did not engage in long sea voyages if they could avoid it, and most Channel crossings were made to the nearest port on the other side. The advantage of a quick 52

53

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B. Greenhill, ‘The Mysterious Hulk’, Mariner’s Mirror 86 (2000), 3–18; Hutchinson, Medieval Ships and Shipping, pp. 10–15; Moore, Fairs, pp. 11–12; Unger, The Ship in the Medieval Economy, pp. 58–60, 144. Reginald of Durham, Goderici Heremitae de Fincale Auctore Reginaldo Monacho Dunelmensi, ed. J. Raine (London, 1847), pp. 29–30; Bolton, Medieval English Economy, pp. 173–9; J. Craeybeck, Un grand commerce d’importation: Les vins de France aux anciens Pays-Bas (XIIIe–XVIe si`ecle) (Paris, 1958), pp. 94–8; A. Derville, ‘De Godric de Finchale a` Guillaume Cade, l’espace d’une r´evolution’ Actes de congr`es de la Soci´et´e des historiens de l’enseignement sup´erieur public. 19e congr`es (Rheims, 1988), pp. 35–7; Huffman, Family, Commerce and Religion, especially pp. 82–127; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, pp. 187–97; Power, The Wool Trade, pp. 34–6. Pirenne, ‘Un grand commerce d’exportation’, 234. As noted by Gardiner, ‘Shipping’, p. 79.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 crossing that Flemish shippers, in particular those from south-western Flanders, enjoyed over their neighbours down the coast was considerable. The distance from one port to another across the Straits of Dover is only some forty kilometres, or less than a quarter of the distance between Portsmouth, on the southern coast of England, and Normandy. Each of the leading Flemish coastal towns ran its own trade, with Bruges and its out-port Damme developing into particularly important trading harbours for northern Flanders.56 Further south, the coasts around Boulogne had served as the chief thoroughfare from the Continent to England since Roman times; during the eleventh and twelfth centuries the trinity of Gravelines, Wissant and St Omer constituted the central axis for Anglo-Flemish travel.57 In 1068 Wissant was already described as a busy port filled with merchants waiting to cross to England.58 There are numerous examples of famous Flemings and Englishmen travelling along this route. Harold Godwineson passed through St Omer during his trip to the Continent in 1056,59 as did the exiled archbishops Anselm (1093–1109), Theobald (1139–61) and Thomas Becket (1162– 70).60 Three Anglo-Flemish treaties were signed in Dover. And, in the last half-decade of Henry II’s reign, Dover to Wissant and back was among the king’s favoured Channel crossings.61 This stretch of the coast was not only a stepping stone for merchants and peaceful travellers, but the gateway for armies seeking passage to England. It is worth reiterating that, in the century and a half following the original crossing of Duke William, almost as many armies were moved or intended to be moved into England from Wissant or Gravelines as from Normandy. Tostig gathered a fleet in St Omer in 1066,62 Matthew of Boulogne levied a force of ships along his coast to threaten England in 1167,63 his brother Philip likewise camped at Gravelines for a crossing in 1174,64 and mercenaries in the service of King Richard’s ambitious

56 57 58 59 60

61

62 64

F. Koller, ‘Bruges and the Medieval English–Flemish Trade in Geographic Perspective’, Ymer 94 (1974), 97–105. For pre-Conquest routes, see Grierson, ‘Relations’, 73–81. Hariulf, Chronique de l’Abbaye de Saint-Riquier, ed. F. Lot (Paris, 1894), p. 241. P. Grierson, ‘A Visit of Earl Harold to Flanders in 1056’, EHR 51 (1936), 90–7. Anselm: Eadmer, Historia Novorum, pp. 88–9, 149; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, p. 148; Theobald: Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 135; Becket: Herbert of Bosham, ‘Vita Sancti Thomae’, Materials for the Study of Becket, vol. 3, ed. J. Robertson (RS 67, London, 1877), p. 325. R. Eyton, Court, Household, and Itinerary of King Henry II: Instancing Also the Chief Agents and Adversaries of the King in His Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy (London, 1878), pp. 256, 263, 277–8. 63 Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 203. ASC (C) 1066; Life of King Edward, p. 82. Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 71; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 57, 60.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce brother John gathered at Wissant for a Channel crossing in 1194.65 It was from the Flemish coast that King Philip II of France and his son, the future Louis VIII, first failed in 1213, and then succeeded in 1216, in bringing a French army into England.66 During Stephen’s reign his county of Boulogne must have been the jumping-off point to England for continental mercenaries, especially after Normandy was lost to Count Geoffrey of Anjou in 1144, and the Bretons generally came to side with Empress Matilda. Wissant and Gravelines were also named in the AngloFlemish treaty of 1101 as the ports from which King Henry I was to arrange for the crossing of 1,000 soldiers and 3,000 horses.67 The transportation of 1,000 men and three times as many horses is a considerable undertaking. Though subject to variables – were the combatants to be ferried across in a single crossing, or many? – such a possibility poses an interesting question about the naval capacities of the regions bordering the Channel and their effect on military logistics. Some comparisons may be drawn from other navies operating during this period. Wace, whose father witnessed Duke William’s invasion fleet in 1066, records 696 vessels, including boats and skiffs used for ferrying equipment.68 The ‘Ship List of William the Conqueror’ of 1067–72 records a fleet of 776 ships.69 Figures concerning contemporary Scandinavian fleet sizes are noted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle variants ‘D’ and ‘E’. They assign to Harald Hardrada’s invasion force in 1066 a fleet of 300 ships,70 that of King Swein II of Denmark (1047–76) in 1069 a fleet of 240 or 300,71 and that of Earl Hakon and Swein’s son Cnut of Denmark in 1075 a fleet of 200.72 Similar figures are encountered from the twelfth century.73 A few hundred ships would probably have sufficed to carry the treaty soldiers of 1101 from the Flemish coast even in a single crossing – in 1142 Robert of Gloucester brought over 300 knights from Normandy in 52 ships74 – and there is no reason to believe that in 1101 either English or Flemish naval capacity would have been substantially lower than that.75 In 1085 Count Robert I of Flanders 65 66

67 68 69 70 73 75

Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 514. ‘Flandria Generosa’, p. 331; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, vol. 2, pp. 78–80; William the Breton, ‘Chronique’, pp. 249–53, 309–10; Cartellieri, Philip II August, vol. 4, pp. 363–74, 530. Diplomatic Documents, no. 1, p. 1; Van Houts, ‘Anglo-Flemish Treaty’, §2, 170. Wace, Le Roman de Rou, ed. A. Holden (Paris, 1971), vol. 2, p. 123, line 6425. Van Houts, ‘The Ship List’, 159–83. Her edition and breakdown of the ‘List’: pp. 176, 179. 71 ASC (D, E) 1069. 72 ASC (D, E) 1075. ASC (D, E) 1066. 74 William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, p. 128. Bartlett, England, pp. 258–9. A study by John Pryor of naval logistics and the transportation of cavalry armies in the Mediterranean demonstrates that such undertakings were not unknown in Europe in the Central Middle Ages, at least elsewhere: ‘Transportation of Horses by Sea during the Era of the Crusades: Eighth

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 allegedly promised a fleet of 600 ships to aid his son-in-law King Cnut of Denmark in a planned expedition to England.76 Some of these figures may represent standing military fleets but during the twelfth century such navies were increasingly supplemented with civilian vessels. Though there was still demand for specialised warships, often oared for speed and manoeuvrability, many ships used in military operations during this period were requisitioned merchant vessels. Cogs in particular were inherently defensible because their high freeboard made hostile action difficult. They could easily be modified for war by installing a ‘castle’ (wooden platform) on the deck, which provided further cover as well as height for the use of projectile weapons. Moreover, their carrying capacity enabled them to transport large numbers of men.77 With the growth of cross-Channel commerce during the twelfth century, the number of vessels – and thus potential military assets – operating in these waters swelled. Regional powers able to commandeer their services acquired an obvious advantage. In 1066 Duke William had to expend a considerable amount of time and effort on constructing and expanding his fleet for the Channel crossing. A century later Count Matthew of Boulogne, a lesser prince by far but allied with the count of Flanders, was able to threaten the English coast with a fleet of 600 ships, seemingly on a whim.78 The shipbuilding industry and associated naval infrastructure developed in tandem. Angevin kings took steps to maintain a permanent naval capacity for the Channel: Henry II established the Confederacy of the Cinque Ports (from east to west: Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, New Romney and Hastings), and imposed an annual ship service on it.79 Richard and John built and maintained a substantial fleet to operate on the seas around England.80 But rulers also availed themselves of the services of foreign operators if the situation so required, as in 1210 when King John hired five cogs from Frisia for his expedition to Ireland.81 The

76 77

78 79 80 81

Century to 1285 a.d.’, in Medieval Warfare 1000–1300, ed. J. France (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 523–68. Some rough projections suggesting that William the Conqueror used ships that could transport between half a dozen and one dozen knights with their mounts have been made by Wheeler, ‘Battle of Hastings’, 130–1. ASC (E) 1085. N. Hooper, ‘Some Observations of the Navy in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. Holdsworth and J. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 203–213, 205–8; Hutchinson, Medieval Ships, pp. 146–50; Unger, The Ship in the Medieval Economy, pp. 139–40, 150–1. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 203. F. Brooks, ‘The Cinque Ports’, Mariner’s Mirror 15 (1929), 149–50. More broadly on navy history, see also Hosler, Henry II, pp. 157–62. Bartlett, England, pp. 259–61. F. Brooks, ‘The King’s Ships and Galleys Mainly under John and Henry III’, Mariner’s Mirror 15 (1929), 15–48, 29.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce great fleet of 600 ships that brought Crown Prince Louis to England in 1216 was also supplemented by eighty merchant cogs.82 The growth of international trade, and the accompanying revolution in shipping, transformed the logistics of maritime travel. This transformation had a number of results. Maritime commerce redrew the demographic map of the region. Whereas, in the eleventh century, towns such as Lille and Ypres were established in the interior, in the late twelfth century out-ports were founded along the coast to serve the needs of the old cities: Nieuwpoort for Ypres in 1163, Damme for Bruges in 1180, and Biervliet for Ghent in 1183.83 On the other side of the Channel, the impact of the increase in trade was pronounced in ports on the eastern seaboard of England, such as Boston and King’s Lynn, which were associated with large seasonal fairs. Between the late twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, these ports grew faster and generated more wealth in proportion to their size than even London. In the snapshot of the size of English commerce provided by King John’s tax on movable goods in 1204, London paid 16.9 per cent of the total tax of £4,943 7s 3d, but was closely trailed by Boston (15.8), Lincoln (13.3) and King’s Lynn (13.2), with only Southampton (14.4) on the south coast reaching the same order of magnitude.84 Likewise, it was between 1180 and 1220 that the great international fairs of England, mostly located in the eastern regions, through which a significant portion of the country’s foreign trade was effected, reached their peak.85 Growing symbiotically, the English and Flemish economies built on and nourished each other. Politically, the availability of merchant vessels that could be pressed into or hired for troop transport facilitated the projection of power, as men and resources might be moved quickly and in larger quantities from one shore to another. Therein lay danger. As the use of the Flemish coast as a staging ground for invasions proves, a sea border was a porous boundary. The increase in shipping surely enhanced the immediacy of foreign threats to England and consequently the need to secure a Flemish alliance. It was also a tremendous asset. The Anglo-Norman realm was a maritime polity and this was even truer of the Angevin empire of the second half of the twelfth century. It was vital to its rulers to control the shores on both sides of the Channel. The disparate regions of the realm may have been politically bound together in the person of the ruler, but 82 84

85

83 Nicholas, Growth, pp. 106–7. Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, vol. 2, p. 160. P. Nightingale, ‘The Growth of London in the Medieval English Economy’, in Progress and Problems in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller, ed. R. Britnell and J. Hatcher (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 89–106, 90–1. For the 1204 tax returns, see N. Gras, The Early English Customs System (Cambridge, MA, 1918). Moore, Fairs, pp. 22–3.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 it was the constant movement of people and goods – stimulated by the powerful economic developments in north-western Europe – that was its very lifeblood. CROSS-CHANNEL FINANCES The transfer of goods and the movement of people were accompanied by the exchange of very significant amounts of cash. Silver was the preferred medium of international transactions in western Europe during this period. It was a reflection of England’s commercial influence, and of the consistently high silver content of its currency, that its monetary weight standard was imitated and adopted on the Continent from the early eleventh century on.86 The only coin type in use in this region was the silver penny (denarius). Larger units of currency were also used but they existed only for accounting purposes, not as coins; this currency reckoning method (twelve pence to a shilling, and twenty shillings, or 240 pence, to a pound) was used throughout the economic bloc that extended from the British Isles and Frisia to northern Italy and northeastern Spain.87 The growth of the economy in north-western Europe and the consequent increase of money in circulation had a number of social, administrative and political results, which will be explored presently. They led to the development of new financial systems and mercantile practices, often with the keen involvement of Anglo-Flemish merchants and plutocrats. The penetration of cash into all levels of society was a central feature of the twelfth-century economy in north-western Europe. The Dover treaties are particularly illustrative of this economic change: among the driving forces behind monetisation were the demands posed by warfare. The expenses incurred in hiring mercenaries and supplying armies put pressure on royal fiscal reserves. By the reign of Henry I the practice of scutage had become common in England. As the last of the royal demesne farms had been converted from produce or food rents to cash payments, it also became increasingly necessary for tenants to secure liquidity. With these changes trickling down the social hierarchy, even peasants began to sell a considerable portion of their produce on the market.88 This 86

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P. Nightingale, ‘The Evolution of Weight-Standards and the Creation of New Monetary and Commercial Links in Northern Europe from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series 38 (1985), 198–201, 206–7. Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange, pp. xx–xxvi, and see map at p. xxii. The English also used the mark, which was measured at two-thirds of a pound, or 160 pennies. Richard fitz Nigel, Dialogus de Scaccario, pp. 62–4; Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, pp. 39–42.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce is not to say that cash dominated the local economies. The rigidity of the medieval coinage system and the high value of individual coins discouraged the use of cash in day-to-day purchases and hindered the development of small-time trade.89 But this would have been less of an issue for international trade in bulk goods where the units purchased were larger. As the English economy became increasingly monetised and market-driven over the course of the Central Middle Ages, it became ever more attractive to overseas traders whose buying power was based on cash and credit. The history of trade between the south-eastern shores of Britain and the adjoining Continent no doubt extends far back into prehistory. But while there are scattered mentions of Flemish merchants visiting England for commercial purposes in Anglo-Saxon times, the oldest narrative account exemplifying the kind of economic exchanges we regard as common during the Central Middle Ages is found in ‘The Miracles of St Mary of Laon’, an account of a fundraising expedition by a group of northern French canons in 1113. As the author tells: near the beginning of their journey, while crossing to England from Wissant, the canons were joined by a group of Flemish merchants who carried 300 marks’ (£200) worth of silver for buying wool. Upon embarkation the travellers were beset by pirates. Desperate, the merchants prayed to St Mary, promising to donate their riches in exchange for deliverance. The pirate attack failed, but the traders did not honour their promise. Instead, they reverted to their original plan, travelling the English market circuit and purchasing a considerable quantity of wool to take back to Flanders. The judgement of Heaven (the chronicler notes with a certain air of satisfaction) did, however, have the final word; when the group reassembled in Dover for the return trip, a fire destroyed the merchants’ storage house and all the precious wool it held.90 The account was probably based on real events and offers a rare, humanising glimpse of how the Anglo-Flemish wool trade, presumed to be a major component of all cross-Channel commerce, was conducted in practice. Particularly notable is the very large quantity of silver that the Flemish merchants carry. Three hundred marks was an enormous amount of money, the equivalent of a multi-million-pound investment today. It 89

90

On the use of money during the Central Middle Ages, see Bolton, ‘What Is Money?’, pp. 1–15; R. Britnell, ‘Uses of Money in Medieval England’, in Medieval Money Matters, ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 2004), pp. 16–30; N. Mayhew, ‘Coinage and Money in England, 1086– c.1500’, in ibid., pp. 72–86. Herman the Monk, ‘De Miraculis S. Mariae Laudunensis’, ed. J. Migne, Patrologia Latina 156 (Paris, 1853), cols. 975–7. See also J. Tatlock, ‘The English Journey of the Laon Canons’, Speculum 8 (1933), 454–65, although he is more concerned with the Arthurian legends linked to the tale.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 would not have been easy to put together. Just as today, owning property and assets worth a certain amount was one thing, possessing equivalent liquidity much rarer. The sum in the story would have represented the pooled capital investment of a whole group of allied merchants, probably brought together through loans and sureties in the hope of future profits. The loss of the trade goods would have been a ruinous blow. If the merchants of our tale were not self-funded, then the loss would not only have been theirs, but also their creditors’ and backers’. Real estate and trade in foodstuffs had provided the capital for sophisticated industrial enterprises, but by the end of the twelfth century many patrician families among the Flemish urban elites were graduating to that most profitable of all businesses – the commerce of money itself.91 The most famous twelfth-century Flemish businessman in England was not a mere merchant. He was William Cade of St Omer, moneylender and chief financier to Henry II. Until his death c.1166 Cade was engaged in significant yearly transactions with the court, as well with individual parties. The Pipe Rolls record that in his last decade Cade received almost £6,000 from Henry II, presumably as repayments of loans extended to the king. At his death, the total debts owed to him (which the crown confiscated) were valued at £5,000, a sum equivalent to roughly a quarter of the king’s annual English income.92 Later, and until their expulsion in 1290, Jewish financiers were to do the bulk of the moneylending. But, during Henry II’s reign, Christian lenders were not unknown in England, and the profession did not yet suffer from significant social stigma.93 Cade was a prominent member of a larger financial establishment, the intricacies of which are only hinted at by the sources; a later commentator wrote that he became so wealthy because he lent his money to other usurers.94 91

92

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ˆ Les dynasties bourgeoises d’Arras du XIe au XVe si`ecle (Arras, J. Lestocquoy, Patriciens du Moyen-Age. ´ 1945), pp. 31–5; Lestocquoy, ‘Les usuriers du d´ebut de Moyen Age’, Etudes d’histoire urbaine: villes et abbayes: Arras au Moyen Age (Arras, 1966), pp. 155–62. For William Cade and the financial community at the beginning of the reign of Henry II, see Amt, Accession, pp. 94–8; C. Brooke and G. Keir, London 800–1216: The Shaping of a City (London, 1975), pp. 227–30; E. King, ‘Cade, William’, ODNB. Though older, see also C. Haskins, ‘William Cade’, EHR 28 (1913), 730–1, H. Jenkinson, ‘William Cade, a Financier of the Twelfth Century’, EHR 28 (1913), 209–27; Jenkinson, ‘A Money-Lender’s Bonds of the Twelfth Century’, in Essays in History Presented to Reginald Lane Poole, ed. H. Davis (Oxford, 1927), pp. 190–210; J. Round, ‘The Debtors of William Cade’, EHR 28 (1913), 522–7. Amt, Accession, pp. 94–103; R. Stacey, ‘Jewish Lending and the Medieval Economy’, in A Commercialising Economy: England 1086 to c. 1300, ed. R. Britnell and B. Campbell (Manchester, 1995), pp. 88–97. In Flanders itself there is no evidence of foreign or Jewish creditors or usurers until late in the thirteenth century. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, p. 170. Robert of Courc¸on, Le trait´e ‘De usura’ de Robert de Courc¸on, ed. and trans. G. Lef`evre (Lille, 1902), p. 71.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce A few decades after Cade’s death we find another Fleming, Florent ‘the Rich’, also of St Omer, lending money to Henry’s sons Richard I and John, including the considerable loan of £500 that Richard partially paid back in 1197–8. Florent’s mercantile career in England was long, and evidently enormously profitable. In 1217, when the regent William Marshall needed to raise cash quickly to pay off Prince Louis of France, Florent contributed £4,000.95 The professional origins of Cade and Florent are unknown, though Cade probably accumulated his starting capital in the wool trade during King Stephen’s reign.96 Florent seems to have been heavily involved in cross-Channel trade and was not shy about using his commercial clout to wangle trade privileges from the king. In 1207 he had his business partner John of Gray, bishop of the see whose capital was the great trading town of Norwich and also the archbishop-elect of Canterbury, intervene on his behalf at the royal court. Florent sought and received special permission to transport 1,000 mark-weights’ worth of hides and wool he had bought from the bishop; he was probably trying to circumvent the royal customs duty that King John had recently instituted and to take advantage of the hindrance to other traders of the transport limitations that the customs rules imposed.97 Another exceptionally rich twelfth-century trader was Hugo Oysel of Ypres, who paid a sum of 400 marks to obtain exemption from Richard I’s trade embargo in 1196.98 This was a truly extravagant bribe, almost as large as the Flemish money fiefs of a few decades earlier, and it can only have been justified by the expectation of even more extravagant profits. As ever, money was the seed of money, and taxes something that the powerful might evade. Financiers and the commercial structures they represented were valuable assets. The role of a political aide in Anglo-Flemish exchanges was not limited to knights or nobles. The Flemish financial community had survived the purges at the beginning of Henry II’s reign, and in the late twelfth century and the early thirteenth had served as a political bridge across the English Channel. In 1163 William Cade received a stipend of £100 in London for bringing over Flemish servientes, undoubtedly in connection with the Anglo-Flemish treaty concluded in March of that year at Dover.99 A year later, Cade was paid the substantial sum of £606 8s in connection with numerous payments to milites and servientes; he was 95 96 97 98

PR 9 Richard I (1197–8), p. 172; Patent Rolls of Henry III (London, 1901), vol. 1, p. 115. On Florent’s career, see Dept, ‘Les marchands flamands’, 319–22. H. Cronne, The Reign of Stephen, 1135–54: Anarchy in England (London, 1970), pp. 234–6. Rotuli Litterarum Patentium, p. 65b; S. Mitchell, Studies in Taxation under John and Henry II (New Haven and London, 1914), pp. 84–92. 99 PR 8 Henry II (1162–3), p. 71. PR 7 Richard I (1195–6), p. 296.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 probably bankrolling the recruitment of mercenary forces.100 What made Cade particularly useful was that his financial interests were largely based in England, and the nature of his business established him as a permanent fixture in the English court. He was ideally situated to be an effective mediator and go-between. Flemish financing extended beyond AngloFlemish trade, and played a significant part in the English economy and politics. Cade and Florent hailed from St Omer, a town with an old mercantile community that had long been oriented towards England. The burghers of St Omer had become formally organised at an early date. The statutes of the town’s merchant guild are the oldest in Flanders, dating from before 1083.101 The community maintained a presence in London from, at the latest, the mid-twelfth century, as is demonstrated by the charter of privileges granted by Henry II in 1155–8. Recruitment of continental mercenaries during King Stephen’s reign, followed by Henry II’s continental expeditions in the late 1150s with their accompanying expenses, surely provided the impetus for the development of a Flemish organisational framework that supported a variety of financial transactions. The ‘Hanse of London’, an umbrella organisation of Flemish merchants from several towns, led by Bruges and oriented towards controlling AngloFlemish trade, was in existence by 1241 and may have had its roots in the late twelfth century.102 It would seem that Flemish mercantile capital and expertise were instrumental not only in organising England’s international trade, but in lubricating the realm’s political and administrative machinery during the economically significant period from the middle of the twelfth century to the early thirteenth. As a general economic principle the institution of credit is a hugely beneficial development, vastly speeding up the distribution of cash. In medieval Europe, it reduced the necessity of physically transporting silver across long distances, always a potentially hazardous undertaking, as the alleged experience of the Flemish merchants in 1113 demonstrates. It seems plausible that some form of credit system was operating across the English Channel as early as the reign of Henry II, though it may have consisted principally of the personal operations of a small cadre of Anglo-Flemish financiers and merchants. Similar systems were developing contemporaneously, or just a little later, elsewhere in Europe, notably between Italy and the northern cloth towns.103 Written credit documents 100 101 102 103

PR 9 Henry II (1163–4), p. 46; Amt, Accession, p. 97. ‘Les Coutumes de la Gilde Marchande de Saint-Omer’, ed. G. Espinas and H. Pirenne, Le Moyen Age, 2nd Series 5 (1901), 189–96. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 166–8. Krueger, ‘Genoese Exportation of Northern Cloths’, 748–50.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce recording international trade do not appear in a systematic manner in this region until the mid- to late thirteenth century, when ‘fair letters’, or promissory payment notes, are first found.104 But individual cases demonstrate that at the very least the principles of credit were known and in use. Around 1167 the payment of Peter’s Pence from England to Rome was arranged through the intermediary of Flemish merchants. In anticipation of the tithe, the merchants lent Pope Alexander III 300 marks in Rome, with the understanding that repayment was to be arranged by Bishop Gilbert Foliot of London on their return to the Angevin lands.105 At other times the transmission of the Pence was arranged through the abbot of St Bertin.106 Because of the abbey’s position and its connections with the merchant town of St Omer, which no doubt included a number of commercial relationships of the abbot’s own, it was a natural choice as financial intermediary between England, the Continent and, finally, Rome. Credit arranged through the auspices of travelling merchants was probably the abbot’s method for effecting the transfer as well. New mercantile techniques were required to meet the challenges that the growth of international trade presented. Plentiful documentary evidence of financially sophisticated exchanges between Flemish merchants and English wool producers survives only from the thirteenth century onwards, but procedural precedents for the conduct of trade stretch back to the twelfth. English wool trade from the twelfth century to the early fourteenth was characterised by large-scale demesne production, with the wool sold through wholesale contracts; among England’s most significant wool producers were Cistercian monasteries, which bypassed the system of local markets and sold their wool in bulk directly from central depots on their estates. These monasteries and other large producers turned extra profits by buying up wool for resale from smaller producers in the countryside. The regularity of the wool trade and the longevity of the institutions engaging in it gave rise to new commercial practices. By the late twelfth century it was common for merchants to buy Cistercian 104

105 106

G. Des Marez, La lettre de foire a` Ypres de XIII si`ecle: Contribution a` l’´etude des papiers de credit (Brussels, 1900); Nicholas, ‘Commercial Credit’, especially pp. 328–9 on English trade; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 171–2. For an overview of European merchants and trade mechanisms from the thirteenth century onwards, see P. Spufford, Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (London, 2002). Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, nos. 178–9, pp. 251–2. Letters of John of Salisbury, vol. 1, no. 11, p. 18; Materials, vol. 5, no. 106, p. 202. The development of Peter’s Pence is traced in W. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327 (Cambridge, MA, 1939), pp. 3–84. He does not, however, examine its transmission to Rome. More broadly on the relations between St Bertin and the English ecclesiastical establishment, see Grierson, ‘Relations’, 84–7, 89–91 and passim; S. Vanderputten, ‘Canterbury and Flanders in the Late Tenth Century’ Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2006), 219–44, 228–34.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 wool in advance, sometimes years in advance, of its shearing.107 The purchase of these ‘wool futures’ necessitated either a certain adventurous mindset not dissimilar to that possessed by venture capitalists today, or else well-established connections and a high degree of trust. Either way, it speaks of a flourishing network of trade that bound together industries and markets across the sea. Though Flanders was located at the centre of a complex pattern of international commerce, it has been suggested, intriguingly, that money did not tend to pool in the county. Flanders was densely urban and industrialised, and so forced to import a great deal of raw materials and consumables. Cash was quickly reinvested, and the considerable wealth of Flanders was held not primarily in silver, but in goods, infrastructure and industry. Comparatively few coins dating from before 1150 have been found in the region, which suggests that money tended to flow out as easily as it flowed in.108 By contrast, England was a significant net exporter and a monetary beneficiary of this economic pattern. The advantage the kingdom enjoyed was elaborated on by Henry of Huntingdon around 1130: ‘Silver is brought from the nearest part of Germany, along the Rhine, in exchange for a wonderful abundance of fish and meat, of costly wool and milk, and cattle without number, so that the wealth of silver [in Britain] seems greater than in Germany’.109 Though the matter remains a subject of considerable controversy among economic historians, there is a long-standing argument for significant inflation in England from the late twelfth century onwards. This inflation, it is argued, was created by the influx of silver supplies from the Continent, in particular silver mined in Germany and brought to England through the Flemish wool trade.110 Whatever the precise cause and degree of the inflation, it is 107

108

109

110

Canons were issued to restrict or prohibit the practice in 1157 and 1181, but they appear to have had little success in England. Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, ed. E. Martene and U. Durand (reprint, Farnborough, 1969), vol. 4, p. 1247, §4, p. 1253, §10; J. Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain, 1000–1300 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 257–60; Lloyd, English Wool Trade, pp. 288–91; Power, The Wool Trade, pp. 26–8. D. Metcalf, ‘Coinage and the Rise of the Flemish Towns’, in Coinage in the Low Countries (880–1500): The Third Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, ed. J. Mayhew (British Archaeological Reports, International Series 54, Oxford, 1979), pp. 1–23, 12–15; Nicholas, ‘Of Poverty and Primacy’, 18, 40–1. ‘Aduehitur autem argentum a proxima parte Germanie per Renum pro mira fertilitate piscium et carnium, lana pretioisissima et lactis, armentorumque absque numero, ut maior ibi videtur copia argenti quam in Germania.’ Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 10. The topic of inflation during this period is a contentious one among economic historians, but it is sufficent to note here that prices for many commodities and services roughly tripled between the late twelfth century and the middle of the thirteenth. D. Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, in Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, ed. H. Finberg and J. Thirsk (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 716–817, 716–19, 747–8, 757, 778, 787–9; P. Harvey, ‘The English Inflation of 1180–1220’, Past and Present 61 (1973), 3–30; Latimer, ‘Wages’, 204; Postan, ‘The Trade of Medieval Europe’,

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce clear that Flanders was the trade nexus through which the precious metal was transmitted to England. This inflow in turn empowered the cashheavy political strategies of the Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings. Cash permeated and connected the different spheres of political and economic exchange between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world; it might be said that the money fiefs of the Flemish counts were paid in Flemish silver. TRADE, SOCIETY AND POLITICS Numerous groups and individual peoples had vested interests in AngloFlemish commerce. These included not only itinerant merchants, but also urban industrial workers and members of the secular and ecclesiastical elites with foreign business interests; the businessman’s perspective on Anglo-Flemish relations yields a set of priorities that complements our understanding of the political exchanges across the Channel. To begin with, the urban merchants and burghers involved in international commerce naturally had their own political priorities and sought ways to pursue them. William Cade and his ilk, the billionaires of the medieval period, represented, like the tip of an iceberg that suggests a vast mass beneath the waves, only the uppermost pinnacle of a new order. Over the course of the Central Middle Ages, professional urban merchants emerged as a new elite in the burgeoning towns of western Europe. This was despite the fact that, as King Henry III’s alleged put-down of the ‘sickeningly rich peasant barons’ of booming bourgeois London indicates, the older aristocratic upper class was hardly ready to embrace them as equals.111 Some of the most precocious urban organisations of this period emerged in Flanders. By the beginning of the twelfth century, Flemish cities were characterised by the growing number and importance of sworn associations, charities and guilds that had developed from earlier religious and social associations.112 Social organisation engendered a new

111 112

pp. 214–16. For more recent analysis refining the numbers and the chronology, see J. Bolton, ‘English Economy in the Early Thirteenth Century’, in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S. Church (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 27–40; and P. Latimer, ‘Early Thirteenth-Century Prices’, in ibid., pp. 41–73. Germany was an important source of European silver in the Middle Ages. On the development of silver mining, see P. Spufford, Money and Its Uses in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 74–8, 109–11. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. Luard (Rolls Series, London, 1880), vol. 5, p. 22; Postan, ‘The Trade of Medieval Europe’, pp. 217–20. ´ E. Coornaert, ‘Les ghildes m´edi´evales (Ve–XVIe si`ecles). D´efinition – Evolution’, Revue historique 199 (1948), 208–43. On urban elites, see also A. Derville, ‘Les e´ lites urbaines en Flandre et en Artois’, in Les e´lites urbaines au Moyen Age (S´erie histoire ancienne et m´edi´evale 46, Paris, 1997), pp. 119–35.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 form of urban identity, one which not merely enabled, but demanded, the exertion of political influence. The clearest manifestation of the burghers’ political clout was the uprising that followed the assassination of Count Charles the Good in 1127. Several Flemish towns banded together in an impressive show of force and managed to wrest from Charles’s successor, William Clito, a series of legal and economic concessions, some of which are incorporated in the town charter of St Omer. Unsurprisingly, given St Omer’s westward orientation, Clito abolished tolls at the ports of Gravelines and Dixmude, guaranteed the right of passage for merchants shipping goods from Nieuwerleeden to St Omer, and promised to abolish tolls in England and in Boulogne (including the port of Wissant), should he conclude peace with Henry I and the king’s nephew Count Stephen.113 Yet, despite these concessions, Clito was ultimately unable to win over the political support of the Flemish towns. Concern about the disruption to commerce caused by the count’s continuing discord with Henry I is nowhere better illustrated than in the lament ascribed by Galbert of Bruges to a delegation of burghers: See how the merchants and traders of the whole land are hemmed in on account of that count [William Clito] whom you have set up in the place of the most worthy father, Charles! And remember how we have been consuming our wealth throughout the whole year! And, moreover, whatever we earned in other times that count has taken from us or we have used up within this land since we are shut in and besieged by his enemies.114

The power of the Flemish burgher associations in the twelfth century should not, however, be overemphasised. Both Count Thierry and his son Philip increased their comital power over the course of long and stable reigns.115 When, in 1128, Thierry reissued his predecessor’s charter to St Omer, he removed some of the concessions. One of these was Clito’s promise to abolish the English tolls; Thierry had been peacefully recognised by Henry I on his accession, but it seems he did not feel 113

114

115

Actes, 1071–1128, pp. 295–7 and §5, §7, §15, §16; J. Dhondt, ‘Les “Solidarit´es” m´edi´evales. Une ´ soci´et´e en transition: La Flandre en 1127–1128’, Annales: Economies, soci´et´es, civilisations 12 (1957), 529–60. ‘Ecce! patet quomodo mercatores et universae terrae Flandriae negotiatores obsessi sunt causa comitis istius quem vos in comitatum dignissimi patris Karoli subrogastis, et jam per annum istum consumpsimus substantias nostras, et insuper quidquid in tempore alio sumus lucrati aut iste comes abstulit aut nos. infra terram istam clausi et obsessi ab inimicis ejus consumpsimus.’ Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, p. 143; Galbert of Bruges, Murder of Charles the Good, pp. 270–1. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 119–23.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce obliged to prevail on his royal friend to obtain economic privileges for the burghers.116 The economic prerogatives of the urban merchants were certainly a factor in Anglo-Flemish relations but their influence did not grow progressively. Rather, though they peaked in the late eleventh century and the early twelfth, urban interests were restricted and remained in a dialogue with the apparatus of comital power. Entrepreneurs needed to contend not only with comital policies but also with those of the Anglo-Norman and Angevin rulers. The political unity of England worked to the benefit of Flemish merchants. In the more politically fragmented parts of continental Europe, such as Germany along the Rhine and most of France, toll stations posed a significant impediment to the free flow of trade, but English trade was subject to fewer disparate payments.117 While they were in England, foreign merchants fell under the protection of the king. In a society based on kinship and lordship, an alien merchant, whose only tie to the community was financial, was vulnerable. He was seen as a potentially disruptive agent and his behaviour had naturally to be controlled.118 The AngloSaxon solution had been to establish specific localities devoted to foreign trade. In Anglo-Norman times movement was also restricted but, as ‘The Miracles of St Mary of Laon’ suggests, foreigners were able to range more freely.119 The safety of foreigners, with special reference to merchants, was protected by legislation and treaties, such as the treaty of 1180 between Henry II and King Philip II of France, as well in Magna Carta in 1215.120 Upon the founding of the fair at St Ives, one of the oldest of the large English fairs, foreign merchants were accorded explicit protection under the king’s peace by Henry I.121 The charter of 1155–8 given by Henry II granted the burghers of St Omer the same privilege in the whole of England.122 In 1200 King John declared that all foreign merchants could enter and leave England freely, and took Flemish merchants under his special protection.123 Presumably those privileges 116

117 118 119

120 121 122

Oorkonden, 1128–1191, vol. 1, no. 2, p. 14–17. For a comparison of the two charters, see A. Giry, ´ Histoire de la ville de Saint-Omer et de ses institutions jusqu’au XIVe si`ecle (Biblioth`eque de l’Ecole des hautes e´ tudes 27, Paris, 1876), pp. 376–8. Postan, ‘The Trade of Medieval Europe’, pp. 182–6. T. Lloyd, Alien Merchants in England in the Middle Ages (New York, 1982), p. 3. P. Sawyer and I. Wood, Early Medieval Kingship (Leeds, 1977), pp. 150–7. For commercial policies in the Early Middle Ages, see in particular N. Middleton, ‘Early Medieval Port Customs, Tolls and Controls on Foreign Trade’, Early Medieval Europe 13, 4 (2005), 313–58. Foedera, pp. 16–17; Holt, Magna Carta, §41, pp. 460–2. Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, ed. W. Hart and P. Lyons (RS 79, London, 1884), vol. 1, p. 240. 123 Rotuli Chartarum, pp. 60, 64. RAH II, no. 71, pp. 173–4.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 were enforced, as is demonstrated in the murder fine for killing a Fleming levied in Blackheath Hundred, Kent, in the late 1160s.124 By the second half of the twelfth century, England’s growing economic organisation began to manifest itself as commercial protectionism. The right to royal protection co-existed with legislation that limited the freedom of foreign merchants to sell or buy prescribed goods in the English towns.125 It had always been in the financial interest of rulers to exploit the economic potential of merchants through tolls, taxes and the right to purchase first, but when hostilities flared up on the Continent the crown’s attitude turned wholly predatory. In 1173–4 Henry II responded to Count Philip’s alliance with his rebel son Young King Henry by confiscating the goods of Flemish merchants operating in England. Well over a hundred pounds’ worth of items were recorded in the Pipe Rolls as sold for profit.126 Upon Count Baldwin IX’s alliance in 1196 with King Richard’s bitter enemy, Philip II of France, a general embargo was again issued, and heavy fines later levied against those who had broken the ban and ‘sent corn to the king’s enemies in Flanders’.127 Flemish merchants attending the fair of King’s Lynn were imprisoned,128 and Richard executed English sailors whom he caught shipping corn and other foodstuffs abroad.129 Forty-five sacks of wool, valued at a hefty £150, were likewise seized at the north-eastern seaport of Hull.130 Such policies were matters of grave concern to the Flemish burghers. A blatant show of force comparable to the events of 1127–8 would not, however, take place until 1208, when Bruges, Douai, Ghent, Lille, St Omer and Ypres swore allegiance to King John of England in defiance of Philip II of France and the Francophile Flemish court. Their action was probably prompted by John’s decree, a measure occasioned by his war with Philip II, that brought an end to all commercial shipping – and thus trade – between the realms. The towns that defected were rewarded with 124

125 126 127

128 129

130

PR 13 Henry II (1166–7), p. 200; PR 14 Henry II (1167–8), p. 212; PR 15 Henry II (1168–9), p. 163; PR 16 Henry II (1169–70), p. 158. A murder fine was a fine levied against the whole community in the event of an unsolved killing. For their general history, see B. O’Brien, ‘From Morðor to Murdrum: The Preconquest Origin and Norman Revival of the Murder Fine’, Speculum 71 (1996), 321–57. British Borough Charters, pp. 211–14; Dept, ‘Les marchands flamands’, 307–9. PR 19 Henry II (1172–3), pp. 13, 29, 50, 130, 171, 196; PR 20 Henry II (1173–4), pp. 14, 54, 131. PR 9 Richard I (1197–8), pp. 14–15, 92–3, 137–8, 209; The Chancellor’s Rolls for the Eighth Year of the Reign of King Richard the First: Michaelmas 1196, ed. D. Stenton (Pipe Roll Society 42, London, 1930), pp. 93, 165, 237. PR 8 Richard I (1196–7), p. 226. Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 4, p. 19; William of Newburgh, ‘The Historia Rerum Anglorum, Liber V’, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, vol. 2, ed. R. Howlett (RS 82, London, 1885), p. 492. PR 9 Richard I (1197–8), p. 182.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce commercial privileges.131 But, though by the early thirteenth century the urban elite of Flanders were obviously capable of organising themselves towards a political goal, their capacity to dictate policy to the county’s rulers was limited. It is impossible to say exactly what caused Count Baldwin IX to switch allegiance from Philip II to Richard in 1197, but his defection is at least as likely to have been the result of a reassessment of the political situation and of Richard’s skilful diplomacy (empowered by the king’s lobbying of the Flemish and Hainautian aristocracy with money fiefs) as of the threat of a trade embargo. When Flanders finally joined the Angevin-led alliance against Philip II in 1213, it was under the leadership of Count Ferrand, whose immediate goal was not economic, but the recovery of territories lost to the Capetians the previous year. The towns were not, however, brushed aside. Flemish burghers were involved in the negotiations, with the towns of Bruges, Ghent and Ypres acting as guarantors to the treaty and receiving charters of royal protection.132 The mercantile organisations of the Flemish cities had an obvious stake in cross-Channel commerce; members of the English aristocratic and ecclesiastical elite were also heavily invested in the Anglo-Flemish trade. Much of English export and import trade was conducted at a small number of international fairs established between the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth. Like the great fairs of Flanders, they followed one another throughout the year. The southernmost fair was located at St Giles at Winchester, by the River Itchen and a short distance away from the coast. The youngest of the major fairs, that of Westminster, was created in 1245 and held by the Thames, near London. The greatest concentration of English fairs during the Anglo-Norman period, however, was in East Anglia and in the east Midlands, close to major wool-producing regions. The fairs of Boston, Stamford, Northampton, St Ives, Bury St Edmunds and King’s Lynn were all located within an equilateral triangle measuring roughly a hundred kilometres a side, and were served by parallel river systems that flowed into the Wash. International customers, chief among them Flemish wool merchants, played a crucial role in their early development.133 The most successful fairs were invariably attached to manors or to important secular or ecclesiastical centres and were controlled by powerful landlords. The fair of Stamford, for instance, was by 1206 the property of the earl of Warenne, whose family held the position of the advocate of the monastery of St Bertin at 131 132 133

Rotuli Chartarum, p. 182; Dept, Les influences, pp. 68–73; Lloyd, English Wool Trade, pp. 9–13. Rotuli Chartarum, p. 197; Diplomatic Documents, nos. 12–14, pp. 25–6. Lloyd, Alien Merchants, p. 12; Moore, Fairs, p. 8, for a map.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 St Omer.134 Unlike in Flanders, where the counts had been closely involved in founding the annual fair cycle, the English ruler’s right to license new fairs and markets was not generally recognised until the thirteenth century. The English fairs had no common owner or administrator, and were run by local grandees. Powerful lords like the Warennes took an interest in commerce as a means of increasing their wealth, and the profitable foreign trade was no exception; a good fair owner would therefore keep one eye on the Continent. The fair of St Ives in eastern England was held (one would imagine deliberately) during Easter week, soon after the Lenten fair of Ypres, a major venue for Flemish textile exports. Perhaps because of this, St Ives was particularly profitable: in 1212 the fair earned its owners the substantial income of £180.135 On the other hand, English commercial interests inevitably took a hit from any disturbance in cross-Channel trade. Income from the Boston fair had been £67 1s 6d in 1172 but, because of Young King Henry’s revolt, collapsed by two-thirds to £22 2s 5d in 1173, and then halved again to £10 6s 1d in 1174.136 The great international fairs were few in number but Anglo-Norman magnates – such the Mandeville family in Essex – also owned local markets or were otherwise involved in commerce. The family of William Malet (d. 1071), for example, lords of the great honour of Eye since the Norman Conquest, directly tapped domestic and maritime trade networks within and leading out of eastern England, and may have played a significant role in their late eleventh-century development. The family maintained substantial properties by the seaports of Dunwich in Suffolk and Harfleur in Normandy, as well as connections to Wissant in the southern Low Countries.137 The marriage of William’s granddaughter Emma to Count Manasses of Guines in coastal Flanders sometime between 1106 and 1110 created a prestigious link to the high aristocracy across the Channel but no doubt was also calculated to establish a commercial advantage.138 The landowning classes had a traditional interest in the wool trade, having engaged in sheep rearing long before the Norman Conquest. Domesday Book provides little information on the raising of sheep for most of England, but the more detailed documentation contained in the 134 135 136

137 138

For the Warenne family’s wider relations with Flanders, see p. 206 below. Cartularium Monasterii de Ramesia, vol. 3, p. 216; RRAN, vol. 2, 1100–1135, no. 1916, p. 292; Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, pp. 8–21; Moore, Fairs, pp. 8–23. PR 18 Henry II (1171–2), p. 5; PR 20 Henry II (1173–4), p. 49. It should be noted that during this time the fair was in the hands of King Henry II, since its owner, Constance of Brittany, was a minor. The fall in profits, however, must have paralleled those of other fairs and markets. As suggested by Cyril Hart, ‘William Malet and His Family’, 146–7. Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, p. 579. For the Malet family tree, see Hart, ‘William Malet and His Family’, 162.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce Little Domesday for Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, and in the Domesday satellite documents for Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, lists just under 300,000 sheep belonging to large demesne farms. Ely Abbey alone possessed flocks totalling 13,400 sheep.139 The snapshot of estate management provided in 1185 by Rotuli de Dominabus et Pueris et Puellis (a list of aristocratic properties in the king’s custody through his wardship of widows and minors) reveals that large numbers of sheep were reared at lay manors. Flocks hundreds strong are encountered in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries.140 Noblemen and monasteries alike made their fortunes from Anglo-Flemish trade and any loss suffered by their Flemish partners was theirs as well. The heftiest fine levied against a single individual for contraband trafficking in 1196 was that of £300 against Joscelin of Walpol, a bailiff to the royal justice Stephen of Turnham; it seems the bailiff had indulged in racketeering during the embargo.141 Joscelin’s commercial interests would have been shared by his peers and betters. No English nobleman is known to have rebelled because of a trade embargo, but, as noted, one of the baronial demands in Magna Carta was for the security of foreign merchants even in times of war.142 Beyond the immediate economic concerns of the great demesne farmers that are documented in administrative sources, the vicissitudes of foreign trade had widespread second- and third-hand effects on society at large. The profits of the major export industries trickled far down into English society. A class of professional middlemen that connected smallscale wool producers to foreign merchants, for instance, emerged at this time to play its part in the commercial history of the kingdom.143 In an example of the broader effects of the cross-Channel trade on urban society, E. M. Carus-Wilson has argued that in England dyers (or at least the dyer masters who ran the workshops), achieved a higher social and political position relative to other burghers of industrial backgrounds by virtue of their association with foreign merchants. As the population expanded and diversified over the course of the Central Middle Ages, urban centres became increasingly stratified. Political organisation, naturally, did not advance at an even pace at all levels of society. In Flanders, craft associations were not officially recognised until the thirteenth century, though organisations of merchants had existed since the eleventh. Competition from the mercantile elites was in large part responsible for the slow 139 140 141 143

See table of Domesday livestock in H. Darby, Domesday England (Cambridge, 1977), p. 164. Rotuli de Dominabus et Pueris et Puellis, ed. J. Round (Pipe Roll Society 35, London, 1913), pp. xxxiii, 1, passim; Lloyd, English Wool Trade, p. 298. 142 Holt, Magna Carta, §41, p. 460–2. PR 9 Richard I (1197–8), p. 92. Power, The Wool Trade, pp. 28–31.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 emergence of the former.144 Likewise, in England merchants were aggressive in promoting legislation that discriminated against craftspeople.145 Dyers stood out since they, unlike other English craftsmen associated with the textile industry, had been allowed to join local merchants’ guilds and thereby gain entrance to elite circles. A dyer was not merely a craftsman, but an entrepreneur and a business leader; dyeing required not only considerable technical expertise, but also connections abroad. In contrast to the weaver or the fuller, whose materials were domestic products, the dyer was compelled to import most of his raw materials. This necessitated the forging of trade links with overseas merchants. During the war of 1173–4, for instance, the crown confiscated a debt of £12 that the dyers of Worcester owed to Flemish dealers.146 The trade in dyers’ materials was significant: in 1213 the customs duty alone on imports of woad, used to colour cloth blue and also as a foundation for other colours, amounted to almost £600. In the profit-driven environment of the English towns, overseas trade represented wealth and consequently brought status.147 Anglo-Flemish trade connections from the late eleventh century to the early thirteenth were vast and multilateral, permeating to some degree nearly every level of society. They fed urban growth, underlay the rise of the mercantile classes, and supported the development of shipping and naval technology. Flemish trade played a major role in stimulating English commercialisation and in pushing English economic culture into one of increasingly sophisticated transactions.148 The economic transformation that resulted secured vast amounts of money, sums that could be used by the crown to hire mercenaries or buy off opponents. The capacity to wield their financial power to achieve political goals became one of the great strengths of the kings of England. The English and Flemish economies were very strongly shaped by each other. The resulting political advantage may have belonged, as Gaston Dept claimed, to the kings of England. But it is difficult to argue that Anglo-Norman and Angevin monarchs engaged in premeditated and sustained – as opposed to opportunistic and occasional – policies of economic pressure. Their ability to turn commerce to political advantage is better regarded as the serendipitous bonus of relative size: they presided over a far larger economic system than the Flemish counts. 144 145 146 147 148

Verhulst, Rise of Cities, p. 131. R. Holt, ‘Society and Population 600–1300’, in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 1, 60–1540, ed. D. Palliser (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 89–92. PR 19 Henry II (1172–3), p. 165. Carus-Wilson, ‘The English Cloth Industry’, pp. 216–17, 221–38. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, in particular Parts 1 and 2 for this period.

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The politics of cross-Channel commerce The kings’ power base was less dependent on commerce and they could afford to employ the kind of short-term policies that would have been unworkable or unprofitable for their Flemish counterparts. Even John’s shipping embargo, which triggered the defection of the Flemish towns in 1208, was instituted as a general military measure by the king and not specifically as an obstacle to the Flemish trade. Moreover, given how important Anglo-Flemish trade was, especially in the eastern and coastal regions of England, it is no wonder that direct information on royal embargoes and trade bans comes to us largely in terms of their breach. That the violators of the grain trade embargo of 1196 included not only individual merchants, but ten townships in East Anglia, Sussex and Kent, and at least one nobleman, illustrates how widely commercial dealings with Flanders extended. Ultimately, the loss of foreign trade was a loss in royal revenues as well; in the long term alienating Flemish commerce was akin to throwing rocks into one’s own well.

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Chapter 6

FLEMISH IMMIGRATION TO ENGLAND

Medieval England had its share of invasions: the social upheaval caused by the Conquest was preceded by Germanic settlements in the fifth century and by Scandinavian incursions in the eighth and early eleventh centuries. In a sense the Norman newcomers of 1066 were just another people, gens, to make their mark on the land. But this time round, the new arrivals did not come alone. In c.1143 the Yorkshire chronicler Alfred of Beverley noted, There presently live in Britain five peoples . . . to these can be added in our time a sixth nation, that is the Flemish, who from their own land came to the region of Mailros in the confines of Wales at the orders of King Henry in order to settle there. Having until then gathered in the island in large numbers, no less powerful in weapons and soldiers than the indigenous population, they have made large acquisitions there for themselves as fighters under the Normans. What their frequent arrivals on the island and their living together with the Normans may bring, the next generation will see.1

Alfred touched on two important events. First, he described the postConquest migration of Flemings into England and their resettlement in Wales on the orders of King Henry I around the year 1110. Second, he remarks on the frequent arrivals of trained soldiers in his own time. It is clear that Alfred considered the Flemish settlement to be of national significance. 1

‘Britannia in praesenti quinque gentibus inhabitatur . . . Additur hiis et nostro tempore sexta nacio, id est Flandrenses, qui de patria sua venientes in regione Mailros in confinio Gualiarum jubente rege Henrico habitatcionem acceperunt. Qui hoc usque in insulam catervatim confluentes, nec minus quam indigenae armis et milicia potentes, magnam sibi in ea partem sub Normannis militantes adquisierunt. Quorum crebra in insulam confluencia et inter Normannos cohabitacio quousque procedat sequens aetas videbit.’ Alfred of Beverley, Aluredi Beverlacensis Annales, sive Historia de Gestis Regum Britanniae, ed. T. Hearne (Oxford, 1716), p. 10. The other nations were the Britons (that is, Welsh), the Picts, the Scots, the Normans and the English. Mailros is an obscure name-form but derives from Rhos in Pembrokeshire, with mail a feminine noun meaning a bowl or basin. I am grateful to Chris Lewis for his advice on this matter.

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Flemish immigration to England In England, many narrative and administrative sources throughout this period refer to the Flemish presence in the kingdom. As has been discussed, the commercial connections between Flanders and the AngloNorman world resulted in a considerable movement of people across the Channel, some of whom established themselves permanently in England. Likewise administrative and narrative sources note the existence of Flemings or of people of Flemish descent, in particular among the landowning classes, within the Anglo-Norman regnum.2 In an early thirteenth-century Cambridgeshire charter, one local aristocrat, called Ilbert of Carency, refers to his men as French, English and Flemish.3 Ilbert seems to have been of Flemish extraction, from Carency in Flemish Artois, just north of Arras, and he, or more likely a relative of his, was already active in Cambridgeshire in the early 1150s. This older Ilbert most probably arrived in England as one of the Flemish soldiers who served the warring factions during Stephen’s reign. The family had a connection to Baldwin of B´ethune, a member of the prominent and powerful Anglo-Flemish B´ethune family whose seat was only a dozen kilometres north of Carency.4 The Carencys shared several features that were common to Anglo-Flemish landholding families from the eleventh to the early thirteenth centuries: an origin in southern Flanders, military employment as the probable reason for their arrival in England, a base in the south-east or east Midlands, contacts among other Anglo-Flemish aristocratic families in the general area, and membership of a broader local immigrant Anglo-Flemish community as evidenced in the reference to Flemish dependants. By contrast, there is little direct evidence of emigration from England to Flanders. Some movement surely took place, since marriages and employment opportunities in the retinues of nobles would have brought a trickle of Normans and English to the Low Countries. Orderic Vitalis, for instance, mentions that, after Thierry’s accession in 1128, King Henry I exercised his royal authority over Count Stephen and ‘the other Normans who had land in Flanders’, implying that there were some Norman landholding interests in the county.5 Both before and after the Conquest, Flanders served as a refuge for exiled Anglo-Saxons such as Hereward the 2 3 4

5

See discussions in Chapters 3 and 5 in particular. Cartae Miscellanea 10, ed. J. Caley (Augmentation Office Miscellaneous Books 40, London, 1806), no. 5. RRAN 1135–1154, no. 814, p. 299; Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants, p. 386. Ilbert was listed in 1180 as the first witness to a charter between Baldwin and Abbot Guerric of the monastery ´ of Faversham in Kent. ‘Documents concernant l’Angleterre et l’Ecosse anciennement conserv´es a` la Chambre des Comptes de Lille (XIIe–XVe si`ecles)’, in Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1981), pp. 185–210, no. 1, p. 190. OV, vol. 6, p. 378.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Wake.6 But it seems that, for most, Flanders was only a stopping point on a journey elsewhere. The Norman Conquest gave rise to a phenomenon that is somewhat reminiscent of the establishment of Russian e´ migr´e communities in western Europe and North America after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, albeit in the reverse direction: after 1066 a number of Anglo-Saxon aristocrats relocated to eastern Europe, in particular to Byzantium. There they served as Varangians in the imperial bodyguard, and an entire Anglo-Saxon colony grew up near the southern shores of the Black Sea.7 But in Flanders we can find only the faintest of traces of these exiles. The county was populous and had a well-entrenched military nobility of its own and probably presented few opportunities for immigration on a significant scale. THE NORM AN CONQUEST Evidence for Flemish migration to England before the Norman Conquest is likewise sparse. Though we do know of regular commercial ties across the English Channel, and of people from the southern Low Countries who came to live in England, the references are often incidental. The twelfth-century English historian William of Malmesbury noted that the cosmopolitan court of King Edgar (959–75) was home to many foreigners, including a contingent of Flemings.8 Perhaps Edgar’s Flemings were churchmen; monks from St Peter’s of Ghent are known to have helped with the composition of the English monastic order Regularis Concordia (sanctioned by the council of Winchester c.973),9 and this is certainly the type of Flemish immigrant best documented in AngloSaxon times.10 Relations between the English ecclesiastical establishment 6 7

8 9 10

Van Houts, ‘Hereward and Flanders’, 201–23. K. Ciggaar, ‘L’´emigration anglaise a` Byzance apr`es 1066. Un nouveau texte en latin sur les Varangues a Constantinople’, Revue des e´tudes Byzantines 32 (1974), 301–42; J. Shepard, ‘The English in Byzantium: A Study of Their Role in the Byzantine Army in the Later Eleventh Century’, Traditio 29 (1973), 53–92; Shepard, ‘Another New England? Anglo-Saxon Settlement ´ on the Black Sea’, Byzantine Studies/Etudes Byzantines 1 (1974), 18–39. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 798. See also ASC (E) 959, on which Malmesbury clearly based his statement. Grierson, ‘Relations’, 91. On cross-Channel ecclesiastical relations in the tenth and eleventh centuries, see R. Gameson, ‘L’Angleterre et la Flandre aux Xe et XIe si`ecle: le t´emoignage des manuscrits’, in Les e´changes culturels au moyen aˆ ge: XXXIIe Congr`es de la SHMES (Publications de la Sorbonne: Histoire ancienne et m´edi´evale, Paris, 2002), pp. 165–206; Grierson, ‘Relations’, 89–95; V. Ortenberg, The English Church and the Continent in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries: Cultural, Spiritual and Artistic Exchanges (Oxford, 1992), pp. 19–40; Vanderputten, ‘Canterbury and Flanders’, 219–44. Also E. van Houts, ‘Invasion and Migration’, in A Social History of England 900–1200, ed. J. Crick and E. van Houts (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 208–34.

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Flemish immigration to England and Flemish monasteries were strong throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Flemish ecclesiastical institutions represented a reservoir of expertise in theology and literary learning that their Anglo-Saxon neighbours could and did tap into. The existing evidence is biased towards the interests of the elite, of course, but there is a sense that English courts and institutions presented opportunities to Flemings skilled in scholarly disciplines. A number of Flemish monks were invited as experts and contributed to England’s literary and ecclesiastical history: these include Grimbald of St Bertin (d. between 901 and 903), who assisted in King Alfred the Great’s translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care,11 and the Flemish biographers and hagiographers Drogo of Saint-Winnocksbergen (d. between 1084 and 1098), the anonymous author of the Encomium Emmae Reginae (d. after 1041), and the monks Folcard (d. after 1085) and Goscelin (d. c.1107), also from St Bertin. Folcard was even appointed the acting abbot of Thorney in Cambridgeshire (c.1069–85) after the Norman Conquest.12 But the information on Flemings in Anglo-Saxon England is but a fraction compared to that which becomes available after the Conquest. The political shock of the Norman invasion opened unprecedented opportunities for military and elite migration to the kingdom. Before moving on to the tenurial data provided by the Domesday survey of 1086, some light must be shed onto the preceding twenty years of landholding development. A few Flemings are known to have operated in England after the Conquest and then to have left, died or otherwise disappeared before Domesday Book was compiled. Turstin the Fleming had held land from Earl William fitz Osbern in Herefordshire before his properties were added to the lands of Ralph of Mortimer.13 Reinbert the Fleming held land in Gloucestershire.14 A particularly important Flemish family in the immediate aftermath of the Conquest were the Oosterzeles, relatives of the advocates of St Bertin in St Omer. Frederick of Oosterzele had been a major landholder until his death at the hands of the Anglo-Saxon rebel Hereward c.1070. His brother Gerbod had been the earl of Chester from c.1067 until his return to the Continent c.1071, and their sister Gundrada (d. 1085) married William I of Warenne, who had emerged from the Conquest as one of the richest Norman nobles. Though the male side of the Oosterzele family faded from English history, Gundrada’s 11 12

13

Grierson, ‘Relations’, 84–5; Grierson, ‘Grimbald of St. Bertin’s’, EHR 40 (1940), 529–61. E. van Houts, ‘The Flemish Contribution to Biographical Writing in England in the Eleventh Century’, in Writing Medieval Biography 750–1250, ed. D. Bates et al. (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 111–27. 14 Ibid., fol. 170r. GDB, fol. 183v.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 position as the Warennes’ founding matriarch created an enduring link with Flanders.15 Count Eustace II of Boulogne had been one of Duke William’s main allies in 1066 and fought at the Battle of Hastings.16 In 1086 Eustace’s substantial collection of estates was located mainly in eastern England, largely within the county of Essex.17 It has been suggested that a number of Flemings from the south-eastern Low Countries, who held land in England in 1086, had originally arrived under Eustace’s leadership.18 This is possible – the small county of Lens, located within south-central Flanders close to the regions of origin of many Domesday Flemings, belonged in the late eleventh century to the counts of Boulogne – but this history cannot be proven satisfactorily. Eustace’s only direct tie with the Flemish tenants-in-chief of post-Conquest England was his kinship with Countess Judith, Eustace’s niece and in 1086 the widow of the Anglo-Saxon Earl Waltheof. Geographically the concentration of Eustace’s estates in England was separate from those of the Flemings. The single possible instance of property connection with a Fleming occurs at the vill of Grantchester in Cambridgeshire, where Eustace and Guy of Raimbeaucourt are both recorded as being served by ‘two knights’ – a slim link indeed.19 Tensions between the counts of Boulogne and the Flemish comital dynasty make it unlikely that Eustace would have led men from northern ‘Flemish’ Flanders into battle, though dynastic rivalries may not have been felt as acutely in southern Flanders, where Artesian loyalties and priorities were less strongly connected to the policies and enmities of the northern counts. But Eustace fell out violently with King William in late 1067, at the time of his raid on Dover. His estates recorded in Domesday Book were granted by William only once they had been reconciled by their mutual opposition to Robert I ‘the Frisian’ of Flanders in the early 1070s.20 The antecessor of the majority of Eustace’s Essex estates was one Ingelric ‘the Priest’, who was still witnessing royal 15

16 17 18 19 20

On the Oosterzele family, see OV, vol. 2, p. 260; Van Houts, ‘Hereward and Flanders’, 218–20; Warenne Chronicle, Appendix 2: Frederick, ‘brother’ of William I of Warenne (forthcoming). Frederick had been already a landholder, albeit a minor one, in England during the reign of Edward the Confessor: GDB, fols. 13r, 27r, 28r. On Gundrada, see p. 206 below. William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, pp. 132, 138; Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, p. 615. LDB, fols. 26–34v, 151r–152r, 303r–303v; Tanner ‘Expansion’, 270–85. DP, p. 40; K. Keats-Rohan, ‘The Portrait of a People’, p. 137. GDB, fols. 196r, 200r. A ‘vill’ was a unit of local administration, which could contain one or more settlements. William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, pp. 182–4; Tanner, ‘Expansion’, 270–4.

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Flemish immigration to England charters in 1067–9.21 Eustace’s great barony was therefore consolidated only several years after Hastings, and he may well have been motivated to rebel because he had been insufficiently compensated for his participation in the Norman expedition. If an embryonic Anglo-Flemish community had begun to coalesce around Eustace immediately after Hastings, it lost its nodal point at this juncture, and nothing suggests that the count would have sought to re-establish a position of prominence among the Flemish tenants-in-chief after his reconciliation with the king. An important early region of Flemish settlement lay in northern England, especially in the region around and north of Durham, but unfortunately this has left only a few traces. Domesday Book does not cover the area, and the settlements’ existence is inferred primarily from the mention by John of Worcester of the resettlement of Flemish households from Northumbria into south-western Wales by Henry I c.1108. The size of the original Northumbrian settlements is unknown but, since the Flemish daughter colonies in Wales were able to maintain a distinctive identity and military presence, and continued to flourish throughout the twelfth century, they must have been substantial.22 Flemish migration to northern England probably began soon after the Battle of Hastings. A charter by William the Conqueror to Archbishop Ealdred of York dated between 1066 and 1069 guaranteed the prelate’s rights and properties and promised compensation should anyone be wronged by any person, whether ‘French or Flemish or English’.23 In 1069 Robert of Comines, from the region between Lille and Ypres, was created earl of Northumbria. He brought with him an army of several hundred men but he was killed in an uprising at Durham soon after.24 By this time Gilbert of Ghent had been made governor of York, and he too is likely to have 21

22

23 24

J. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 1997), p. 81; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, 101. The descent of Ingelric’s estates has been examined by P. Taylor, ‘Ingelric, Count Eustace and the Foundation of St Martin-le-Grand’, ANS 24 (2001), 215–33, especially 230–3. ‘Rex Anglorum Heinricus Flandrenses qui Norðymbriam incolebant, cum tota suppellictili sua, in Waloniam transulit, et terram, que Rhos nominatur, incolere precepit.’ John of Worcester, Chronicle, pp. 124–6; the Northumbrian historian Simeon of Durham considered this authentic and repeated the passage word for word in his Historia Regum, p. 245. See also G. Dept, ‘Een Vlaamsk Kolonie in Wales (1107)’, Annales de la Soci´et´e d’´emulation de Bruges 74 (1931), 24–6; and discussion on Wales at pp. 213–17 below. See also W. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and Its Transformation 1000–1135 (Chapel Hill, 1979), pp. 206–8, on the contemporary political context in northern England. Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates (Oxford, 1998), no. 351, p. 1002. ASC (D, E), 1068; Simeon of Durham, Historia Regum, pp. 186–7; Simeon of Durham, Historia Ecclesiae Dunhelmensis: Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, vol. 2, ed. T. Arnold (RS 75, London, 1882), pp. 98–99.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 boasted a Flemish retinue. During the same year Flemish craftsmen and workers were dispatched by the king to build the castle in Durham.25 In 1080 Bishop Walcher of Durham, originally from Li`ege, then in the western German lands, had a hundred-man entourage of Frenchmen and Flemings.26 Further south the town of Beverley, where Alfred of Beverley composed his pensive lines on Flemish immigrants, had a ward named ‘Flammengaria’ in the twelfth century, also called in the early thirteenth century ‘Flemingate’.27 This suggests that there was, or had been, a Flemish colony living inside the town, perhaps connected to Drogo’s nearby Holderness barony. It is tempting to link the presence of a post-Conquest Flemish population in Yorkshire with the ‘Harrying of the North’. King William’s scorched-earth policy to quell insurgents over the winter of 1069–70 laid the county waste, with thousands presumed dead from starvation as Norman soldiers slaughtered livestock and destroyed food stores throughout the countryside. The idea of medieval migration movements inevitably taking place in conjunction with instances of ethnic cleansing is a largely discredited historical topos, however, and one we should be wary of adopting uncritically. The extent of the depopulation eludes us: the twelfth-century chronicler Orderic Vitalis set the figure at 100,000 dead, but this can be only taken as a symbolic figure for a large number.28 But though the precise scale of the devastation’s human and economic cost can only be guessed at, its impact on the attitudes of the local population towards the continental newcomers must have been tremendous and deeply negative. The experience of settling in the far north of the kingdom would have been very different in the aftermath of William’s campaign, when any Flemish immigrants who arrived in Yorkshire by the initiative of the king or his supporters were surely regarded as representing Norman interests. To cluster around large, distinctive communities, as opposed to settling individually or in small groups amid a traumatised and hostile population, would have been a sensible strategy. 25 27

28

26 ASC (E), 1080. Geoffrey Gaimar, Lestoire des Engles, p. 294. Cartularium abbathiae de Rievalle: Ordinis Cisterciensis fundate anno MCXXXII, ed. J. Atkinson (Durham, 1889), no. 135, p. 84; Thomas Burton, Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, ed. E. Bond (RS 43, London, 1866), vol. 1, p. 427; G. Oliver, The History and Antiquities of the Town and Minster of Beverley in the County of York (Beverley, 1829), p. 104. On medieval Beverley and its environs, see also The Borough and Liberties of Beverley. Victoria County History York, vol. 6, East Riding, ed. K. Allison (London, 1989). It is worth noting that the Rievaux charter which refers to ‘Flammengaria’, above, was witnessed by one Boidino the Fleming. ASC (D, E) 1069; John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, p. 10; OV, vol. 2, pp. 231–3; Kapelle, The Norman Conquest, pp. 117–19 and passim. Heather, Empires and Barbarians, is a voluminous and highly accessible updating of the historiography of migrations and population movements during the first millennium.

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Flemish immigration to England FLEM ISH ESTATES IN DOM ESDAY BOOK The most valuable resource for the study of migration to England in the aftermath of the Conquest is Domesday Book, compiled in 1086 as a means of taking stock of the royal domain, as a record of the kingdom’s landed properties and of the disputes arising from their redistribution.29 The disputes had been a continuing concern throughout William’s reign, however, so it is possible that the external trigger that launched the survey was news of the planned invasion by King Cnut IV of Denmark and Count Robert I of Flanders, with the collection of the fiscal information, and the demonstration of royal authority through the conduct of the survey itself, playing a part in William’s defensive preparations.30 Domesday records the ownership of manors in both 1066 and 1086 and reveals just how thoroughly the Anglo-Saxon landed elite had been dispossessed and tenurially subjugated. Among the new elite could be found a small but noticeable number of recent arrivals from the southern Low Countries. Domesday Book gives a list of roughly 9,500 estates for 1086, with the total wealth extracted by lords from these estates recorded as some £72,000 per annum. At the time of the survey’s compilation tenants-in-chief from the southern Low Countries controlled 760 of these estates as tenants-in-chief (or estate holders who held their land directly from the king), amounting to roughly £3,200 per annum, or c.4.4 per cent of the total recorded Domesday wealth.31 Altogether, the tenants-in-chief from the southern Low Countries therefore represented a significant minority among the new landed class. Below 1,100 main landholders was the mass of some 6,000 under-tenants, who held their estates from a tenant-in-chief.32 These varied greatly in wealth, some holding only a single estate worth 29

30 32

Alecto County Edition of Great Domesday Book, ed. A. Williams, G. Martin and R. Erskine, 31 vols. (London, 1987–92); Alecto Edition of Little Domesday Book, ed. A. Williams and G. Martin, 6 vols. (London, 2001). A convenient single-volume translation of both Great and Little Domesday has been published by Penguin Classics: Domesday Book: A Complete Translation, ed. A. Williams and G. Martin (London, 2002). The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE) project has created an important scholarly online database of the Domesday survey: www.pase.ac.uk. For scholarship on Domesday Book, see in particular V. Galbraith, The Making of Domesday Book (Oxford, 1961); Domesday Studies: Papers at the Novocentenary Conference of the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of British Geographers, Winchester, 1986, ed. J. Holt (Woodbridge, 1987); and, for a synopsis, Baxter, ‘The Making of Domesday Book’. For scholarship on Flemings in Domesday, see George, ‘Contribution’, 81–99, especially pp. 89–94, 97; Verberckmoes, ‘Flemish Tenants-in-Chief’, 725–56. 31 Figures obtained from the PASE database on 9 July 2011. ASC (E) 1085. Darby, Domesday England, p. 89. It should be remembered that many tenants-in-chief also held estates as under-tenants from other tenants-in-chief, and conversely tenants-in-chief did not directly extract wealth from those estates they had awarded to under-tenants. R. Lennard, Rural England 1086–1135: A Study of Social and Agrarian Conditions (Oxford, 1959), pp. 25–9.

185

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 a few shillings while others controlled entire networks of estates under their lord. The best known of Count Eustace’s under-tenants was Arnold II ‘the Old’ of Ardres, the future lord of Ardres (1094–c.1138). With properties valued at roughly £22 he was better off than many tenantsin-chief.33 A number of under-tenants even held estates from multiple lords. The most important tenant-in-chief from the southern Low Countries was Eustace II.34 His wife Ida of Boulogne also held a handful of estates independently of her husband.35 Though Eustace was not a Fleming himself, he had several under-tenants who, like Arnold, hailed from the regions of south-western Flanders over which Eustace exerted influence.36 The high aristocracy of the Low Countries was further represented by Eustace’s niece, Countess Judith, the daughter of Count Lambert of Lens in south-central Flanders. Judith had inherited the majority of her estates from her Anglo-Saxon husband, Earl Waltheof of Northumbria, who had died in 1076. She was well connected as the niece of William I through her mother Adelaide, and her later landholding relationships in 1086 also suggest that she either retained or reforged her Flemish links.37 In the class of more ordinary hopefuls for post-Conquest spoils appears Haimerich of Arques, a town located immediately next to St Omer in south-western Flanders.38 Arnulf of Hesdin and his brother Ilbod, also listed in Domesday, came from further south in the county of Hesdin.39 33

34

35 36 37

38 39

See Tanner, ‘Expansion’, 280–6, for Count Eustace’s estates, and Arnold’s within them. Arnold’s career is narrated in Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, especially chapters 142–67. GDB, fols. Kent: 14r; Surrey: 34r; Hampshire: 44v; Somerset: 87r, 91v; Hertfordshire: 137r–137v; Oxfordshire: 157v; Cambridgeshire: 196r; Bedfordshire: 211r. LDB, fols. Essex: 5v, 6v, 25v–34v; Norfolk: 151r–152r; Suffolk: 303r. DP, pp. 196–7. Tanner, ‘Expansion’, 270–86; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, pp. 100–2. GDB, fols. Surrey: 34r; Dorset: 85r, Somerset: 91v; DP, p. 277; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, pp. 335, 338. For Arnulf of Ardres, see GDB, fols. Cambridgeshire: 196r, Bedfordshire: 211r; DP, p. 192. GDB, fols. Middlesex: 130v; Buckinghamshire: 152v; Oxfordshire: 160r; Cambridgeshire: 202r– 202v; Huntingdonshire: 203r, 206v–207r; Bedfordshire: 217r–217v; Northamptonshire: 228r– 229r, 294r; Leicestershire: 236r–236v; Rutland: 293v; Yorkshire: 320r; Lincolnshire: 336r–337r, 366v–367v, 377. LDB, fol. Essex: 92r. DP, pp. 286–7; Keats-Rohan, ‘The Portrait of a People’, pp. 136–40; C. Lewis, ‘Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria’, ODNB; F. Scott, ‘Earl Waltheof of Northumbria’, Archaeologia Aliana 4th Series 30 (1952), 149–215. GDB, fol. 117v; DP, p. 242. GDB, fols. Kent: 6r–6v, 9r; Hampshire: 46v; Berkshire: 62v; Wiltshire: 67v, 69v; Dorset: 80v; Somerset: 98r; Middlesex: 129v; Oxfordshire: 160r; Gloucestershire: 169r; Buckinghamshire: 143r; Huntingdonshire: 205v; Bedfordshire: 212r; Staffordshire: 249r. DP, pp. 192–3, 279; Holt, ‘The Introduction of Knight Service’, 95; I. Sanders, English Baronies: A Study of their Origin and Descent, 1086–1327 (Oxford, 1960), 124–5. Arnulf was the greater landowner, and Ilbod only held one estate in Oxfordshire.

186

Flemish immigration to England The origins of Rainer of Brimeux were just down the river Canche from the town of Hesdin.40 Drogo of Beuvi`ere had arrived from near the town of B´ethune in south-central Flanders.41 From the same region came Gunfrid42 and Sigar of Chocques.43 Godfrey of Cambrai had come from Hainaut just over the south-eastern border from Flanders; the county of Hainaut had been united with Flanders until the death of Count Arnulf III in 1071.44 Walter of Douai came from south-eastern Flanders,45 and Guy of Raimbeaucourt had come from the same region.46 Five names – Baldwin,47 Odo,48 Hugh,49 Winemar50 and Walter51 – are all qualified merely by the appellation ‘flandrensis’; the latter three have also been identified as hailing from Artois. Walter ‘brother of Seiher’, a Bedfordshire landholder and the post-Conquest predecessor of Walter the Fleming at the vill of Southill, was probably the latter’s paternal uncle.52 The majority of the Domesday Flemings had clearly migrated from the southern and western parts of ‘French’ Artesian Flanders. Only two Domesday landholders were verifiably connected to northern ‘Flemish’ Flanders: the Abbey of St Peter’s of Ghent, which retained its large pre-Conquest manor of Lewisham in the north-western corner of 40 41

42 43 44

45 46

47 49 50

51

52

GDB, fol. 364; DP, p. 356. GDB, fols. Northamptonshire: 228r, Leicestershire: 236r, Yorkshire: 323v–325r, Lincolnshire: 360r–360v. LDB, fols. Norfolk: 198v, 247r–247v; Suffolk: 432r. DP, pp. 179–80; Early Yorkshire Familes, ed. C. Gray and D. Greenway (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, vol. 135, Leeds, 1973), pp. 26–7; Verberckmoes, ‘Flemish Tenants-in-Chief’, 733. GDB, fols. Buckinghamshire: 152v, Bedfordshire: 216r, Northamptonshire: 227v, Leicestershire: 235v, Lincolnshire: 336v, 366v; DP, pp. 239–41. GDB, fols. Hertfordshire: 142r, Gloucestershire: 170r, Bedfordshire: 216r, Northamptonshire: 227v; DP, pp. 419–20. GDB, fols. Leicestershire: 235v; Lincolnshire: 294r, 366v. DP, p. 217. Godfrey may have had some connection with Baldwin the Fleming, below; their lands would together form part of the honour of Bourne in the twelfth century: E. King, ‘The Origins of the Wake Family: The Early History of the Honour of Bourne in Lincolnshire’, Northamptonshire Past and Present 5 (Northampton, 1975), pp. 167; Sanders, English Baronies, p. 107. GDB, fols. Surrey: 36r; Wiltshire: 72r; Devonshire: 82r, 95r–95v, 111v–112r. LDB, fol. Essex: 91r–91v; DP, pp. 450–1; Sanders, English Baronies, pp. 5, 27–8. GDB, fols. Oxfordshire: 159v; Cambridgeshire: 199v–200r; Northamptonshire: 226v–227r; Leicestershire: 235r; Lincolnshire: 336v, 363v. DP, pp. 464–5; Sanders, English Baronies, pp. 33–4. 48 GDB, fol. Somerset: 99r; DP, p. 310. GDB, fol. Lincolnshire: 370r; DP, pp. 161–2. GDB, fol. Bedfordshire: 216r; DP, p. 270; W. Farrer, Honors and Knight’s Fees, 3 vols. (Manchester, 1923), vol. 1, p. 69. GDB, fols. Buckinghamshire: 152r, Northamptonshire: 226v; DP, p. 498, Farrer, Honors, vol. 1, pp. 95–9, Sanders, English Baronies, pp. 50–1. He may have been the same Winemar who owned a house in Colchester: LDB, fol. 105. GDB, fols. Hertfordshire: 138v; Buckinghamshire: 151r, Bedfordshire: 215v, Northamptonshire: 226v; DP, p. 456. The history of the honour of Wahull (Odell), largely based on Walter the Fleming’s Domesday properties, is discussed by Farrer, Honors, vol. 1, pp. 61–102. GDB, fol. 216r; DP, p. 456. On the relationship between these Artesian Flemings, see below, pp. 200–4.

187

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Kent,53 and Gilbert of Ghent, of the family of the advocates of St Peter’s.54 There were considerable disparities in wealth among the newcomers from the southern Low Countries. The exceptionally wealthy high nobility represented by Countess Judith (total annual value of Domesday tenant-in-chief properties around £690) and Eustace and Ida of Boulogne (respectively around £940 and £30 15s) controlled together more landed wealth than the rest put together. Even among the more ‘ordinary’ tenants-in-chief the richest fifth controlled over four-fifths of the total recorded landed wealth. Gilbert of Ghent (roughly £425), Arnulf of Hesdin (roughly £330), Walter of Douai (roughly £240), Drogo of Beuvi`ere (roughly £185) and Walter the Fleming (roughly £101) all held dozens of estates from the king and were, if not among the cr`eme de la cr`eme of the Norman aristocracy, comfortably within the ‘multimillionaire’ class of England’s new nobility.55 They were followed by eight middle-ranking Flemings whose lands were valued at between £14 and £76,56 and finally by a short tail of lesser estate holders, none of whose property values reached £10 – though these ‘lesser’ men were still situated solidly in the moneyed upper class of eleventh-century society.57 The overall shape of the Flemish settlement pattern in Domesday England (leaving Eustace aside) can be described as a lopsided crescent. One end of it rests in south-western England, at the borders of Devon and Somerset. The settlement then curves north-east; the middle point 53 54

55

56

57

GDB, fol. 12v; DP, p. 500. Lewisham belonged to St Peter’s already by 1016: see S. Keynes, ‘The Æthelings in Normandy’, ANS 13 (1990), 177–81, 201. GDB, fols. Berkshire: 62r; Buckinghamshire: 149v; Oxfordshire: 159v; Cambridgeshire: 197r– 197v; Huntingdonshire: 203r, 207r; Bedfordshire: 215r; Northamptonshire: 227v; Leicestershire: 236r; Warwickshire: 243v; Derbyshire: 277v; Nottinghamshire: 290v; Rutland: 293v; Yorkshire: 326r; Lincolnshire: 336r, 354v–356r. DP, pp. 210–11; Verberckmoes, ‘Flemish Tenants-in-Chief’, 732. Still the solid guide to comparisons of wealth among the wealthier Domesday barons is W. Corbett, ‘The Development of the Duchy of Normandy and the Norman Conquest of England’, Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, ed. J. Tanner et al. (Cambridge, 1926), pp. 507– 11. It is updated and discussed in J. Palmer, ‘The Landowning Community and the Norman Conquest’, ANS 22 (2000), 279–91. As tenants-in-chief: Guy of Raimbeaucourt (£75 9s 10d), Gunfrid of Chocques (£45 19s 6d), Sigar of Chocques (£33), St Peter’s of Ghent (£30), Winemar the Fleming (£29 16s), Rainer of Brimeaux (£19), Godfrey of Cambrai (£16 14s) and Walther ‘brother of Seiher’ (£14). It should be noted that these annual value figures, while informative, do not necessarily represent the full capacity of the estates, and must ultimately be considered estimates. Sometimes an estate’s value was not even listed. Baldwin the Fleming (£7), Haimerich of Arques (£4), Hugh the Fleming (£3 10s), Ilbod of Hesdin (£4) and Odo the Fleming (£3).

188

Flemish immigration to England

Count Eustace II of Boulogne Countess Ida of Boulogne Countess Judith The Artesian Group Drogo of Beuvière

Map 4.

Gilbert of Ghent Arnulf of Hesdin Walter of Douai Other Landholders from the southern Low Countries

Domesday tenants

lies at the border of Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire, the crescent having widened to abut several surrounding counties. The upper portion of the arc passes through Lincolnshire, and the tip finally comes to rest in south-eastern Yorkshire. Let us now consider some of the major tenants-in-chief. Walter of Douai held a fairly compact lordship in the counties of Somerset and Devon and possessed a particularly dense concentration of estates just south of the port town of Bristol. It is possible he was motivated to 189

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216

Total manors per shire

68

86 [2] B

2 15 4

2

3 35 1 2

10 15 1B 2 6 2 [1] 1 [2] B

16

1 4 26 2 3

7

9B 41 B 1B 1 1 [5] [1] 1

1

1

3 7

1 1

1

1 3

2 1

1 1 2 5 3 [≥11?]

2

15

32 2

31 9 90

10 3 20 15

Notes: [manors held as under-tenant], B = property within a borough

maintain a maritime link with the Continent. Walter’s estates included large areas of meadow and pasture; there are 3,280 sheep listed on his estates, and he may have enriched himself by selling wool and hides overseas.58 Directly to the east, Arnulf of Hesdin had accumulated a considerable lordship in Wiltshire.59 Two generations later, the

58 59

Leicestershire

Gloucestershire

Dorset Essex

Devon

Derbyshire

Cambridgeshire

Buckinghamshire

4

Kent

7

Hampshire Hertfordshire Huntingdonshire

Count Eustace II of Boulogne Countess Ida of Boulogne Countess Judith Gilbert of Ghent Arnulf of Hesdin Walter of Douai Drogo of Beuvi`ere Walter the Fleming Guy of Raimbeaucourt Gunfrid of Chocques Sigar of Chocques St Peter’s of Ghent Winemar the Fleming Rainer of Brimeaux Godfrey of Cambrai Walter ‘brother of Seiher’ Baldwin the Fleming Haimerich of Arques Hugh the Fleming Ilbod of Hesdin Odo the Fleming

Berkshire

Bedfordshire

Table 3. Manors held as tenant-in-chief in 1086.

GDB, fols. 95; 111v–112r; Verberckmoes, ‘Flemish Tenants-in-Chief’, 753–4. GDB, fols. 69v–70r.

190

3

45

6

18 B 23 B

1 2

4B 2B

7 [1]

1 2 6 18 2 1 3B 3 36

1 18 [1?] B 10 B 17 B 1B

8

2

144

1 1 2

1B [1] 1

29 [1] B 2 53

1B

6 [14] B 26 1 5 [≥2?] 1 78

3 12

138

18 10

1 8 48

0

8

Total manors held as tenant-in-chief

Yorkshire

Wiltshire

Warwickshire

Suffolk Surrey

Staffordshire

Rutland Somerset

1

78 B 7

6 [1]

Oxfordshire

Nottinghamshire

Northamptonshire

Middlesex Norfolk

Lincolnshire

Flemish immigration to England

4 1

31

56

5 217 68 53 70 61 38 22 22 7 1 7 26 2 2 5 5 3 1 1 760

resident historian William of Malmesbury memorialised Arnulf as a man of high repute, generous to the poor and particularly skilled in agricultural management.60 Domesday bears evidence to this latter statement: twenty-four out of fifty-four of Arnulf’s estates increased and only six decreased in listed value between 1066 and 1086, to an overall increase of

60

William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, p. 654.

191

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 listed estate value amounting to 20 per cent.61 Together, these two lords dominated Flemish landholding in the south-west. The centre of Flemish Domesday landholding was in the region of east-central England, in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and the counties immediately surrounding them, with the exception of Warwickshire. An unusually high number of Flemish tenants-in-chief held land in Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire (eight and nine respectively). Countess Judith, Walter and Winemar the Flemings, Sigar and Gunfrid of Chocques, and Guy of Raimbeaucourt owned houses in the town of Northampton, making it something of a social nexus for the Midlands Flemings.62 This area contained well over half of all estates held by Flemish tenants-in-chief in England. Including land held by Countess Judith would only further emphasise this concentration, as nearly all of her estates are to be found in this region.63 As I will discuss at length later, Judith and other key Flemish tenants-in-chief in the east Midlands formed a local network, and were connected with each other through their under-tenants and through mutual property interests.64 The northern extremities of the Flemish arc extended to Lincolnshire and south-eastern Yorkshire. Here were situated eight Flemish tenantsin-chief and roughly ninety Flemish estates held by ordinary Flemings, almost as many as in the two next most populous counties for Flemings put together. The majority of these holdings were concentrated in the hands of three barons: Gilbert of Ghent, Rainer of Brimeaux and Drogo of Beuvi`ere. The county suffered from both outbreaks of rebellion and the threat of Scandinavian invasions, and perhaps these opened an opportunity for non-Normans to step in. In general, land grants were made by the favour of the king, and therefore often reflected William’s interests and policies. Gilbert of Ghent, for instance, had a prosperous and fairly compact lordship on the coast, and was doubtless expected to protect the coastline from Scandinavians.65 Gilbert, the best-documented Domesday Fleming, is first encountered in England in 1069 as one of the governors of York, a particularly turbulent area in the newly conquered kingdom, though his governorship probably came to an end with the 61

62 63 64

For Arnulf’s estates, see note at p. 186 above. Although Arnulf’s estates increased in value across the board, the bulk of the gains came from a pair of wealthy manors: Kempsford in Gloucestershire doubled from £30 to £66 6s 8d and Newbury in Berkshire increased from £9 to £24: GDB, fols. 62v, 169r. GDB, fol. 219r. H. Thomas, ‘The Significance and Fate of the Native English Landholders of 1086’, EHR 118 (2003), 311–12. 65 GDB, fols. 354v–356r; Green, Aristocracy, pp. 90–2. See below, pp. 200–4.

192

Flemish immigration to England town’s capture by a Danish army in that year.66 According to the Gesta Herewardi, Gilbert had owned land in the north of England even before 1066 – a plausible suggestion given the connection between Gilbert’s family and St Peter’s of Ghent and that monastery’s long-standing links with Anglo-Saxon England.67 The Norman Conquest only increased his standing in England, for Gilbert’s family was related to the Flemish comital house and so to William’s wife Queen Matilda.68 Matilda’s favour may well have been crucial in securing Gilbert his numerous estates, and he stands as a good example of the kind of nobleman most likely to make great gains in the post-Conquest reordering of the kingdom: one wellpositioned to exploit pre-existing ties to obtain land, office and royal sponsorship. Gilbert held a scattering of four small estates in the county, probably as a remnant of his time as governor of York,69 but in 1086 far more important among the Yorkshire Flemings was Drogo of Beuvi`ere, who occupied a large and compact lordship on the peninsula of Holderness at the south-eastern tip of the county. Fifty-one of Drogo’s eighty-eight English estates were located there, as was his caput, or main manor, at Skipsea.70 Eighteen more of his holdings could be found just across the Humber estuary in northern Lincolnshire. Drogo’s demesne amounted to about £105. The remaining roughly eighty pounds’ worth of estates were divided between some thirty named under-tenants and half a dozen anonymous ‘priests’ and ‘knights of Drogo’, the majority of them probably Flemings.71 Similar concentrated estate patterns were commonly found among other middle-ranking and greater barons in the north.72 Building up a strong, centralised local landed society to safeguard against enemies seems a realistic response, for the north endured a greater degree of warfare than England south of the Humber. Almost all of Drogo’s estates had suffered a dramatic drop in value between 1066 and 1086.

66

67 68

69 71 72

Simeon of Durham, Historia Regum, p. 188; M. Abbot, ‘The Gant Family in England 1066–1191’ (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1973), p. 21; Verberckmoes, ‘Flemish Tenants-inChief’, 737. See above, pp. 180, 187–8. ‘Gesta Herewardi incliti et exculis militis’, Lestoire des Engles solum la translacion maistre Geffrei Gaimar, vol. 1, ed. T. Hardy and C. Martin (RS 91, London, 1888), p. 343; Van Houts, ‘Hereward and Flanders’, 215–17. 70 Sanders, English Baronies, p. 24. GDB, fol. 326r. GDB, fols. 323v–325r; B. English, The Lords of Holderness 1086–1260: A Study in Feudal Society (Oxford, 1979), pp. 134–41. See Count Alan IV of Brittany fols. 309r–313r, Berengar of Tosny fols. 314r–314v, Ilbert of Lacy fols. 315r–318r, Roger of Bully fols. 319r–320r, Osbern of Arques fols. 329r–329v, and Roger the Poitevin, fol. 332r; R. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 2004), p. 150.

193

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 The Domesday entry for Seaton paints a grim picture of the lie of the land: In Seaton, Ulf and Svartgeirr had 6.5 carucates of land to the geld, and there could be 6 ploughs. Now Robert, Drogo’s man, has 1 plough there, and 2 villeins, and 20 acres of meadow. It is 1 league and a half broad. In the time of King Edward it was worth £9; now 10s [£0.5].

Whether due to manpower shortage, damage done to the estate properties, poor market conditions or other reasons, Drogo was able to extract but a fraction of the manor’s former wealth. The shape drawn by the Domesday data, combined with the narrative evidence, suggests a chronology for the Flemish settlement of England. Other than Eustace of Boulogne and his retinue, no Fleming can be placed in England with certainty either at the Battle of Hastings or in its immediate aftermath. Only a few Flemish holdings, none of great value, are located in the south-east, where the Normans first began the acquisition and consolidation of estates in 1066–8. Count Eustace’s great barony in eastern England does not alter this pattern, since it was not granted to him immediately after the Conquest but sometime during the 1070s. The earliest datable post-Conquest Fleming in England is Gerbod of Oosterzele, encountered as the earl of Chester around 1067. A few of Earl William of Warenne’s estates were listed in Domesday Book as formerly belonging to his brother-in-law Frederick of Oosterzele (d. c.1070), Gerbod’s brother; it is possible that a portion of William’s great barony in East Anglia in fact formerly belonged to Frederick.73 Shortly afterwards the newcomers began to settle in the north-east. Gilbert of Ghent first appears in England in 1069 as the governor of York. The marriage of Judith, the king’s Artesian niece, to Earl Waltheof before 1075 (probably soon after William I and Waltheof were reconciled in 1070 following Waltheof’s rebellion) must have been calculated to secure loyalties in the Midlands.74 Judith may have brought the first Flemish landholders to the region in her household. This chronology indicates that the bulk of the Flemish contribution to the Conquest of England took place only after the Norman elite had established itself in the 73

74

Fifteen estates, mostly in south-western Suffolk and north central Norfolk, are listed as formerly belonging to Frederick, to a total value of £39 8s 4d in 1086. It is entirely possible that many of William’s other East Anglian estates also descended from his brother-in-law. LDB, fols. 157v– 158r, 161v, 165r, 168r, 170r, 171v, 398r–399r. Scott, ‘Earl Waltheof’, 185.

194

Flemish immigration to England core regions and begun to consolidate its hold on outlying provinces in 1068–71.75 Examination of the Anglo-Saxon antecessors of the major tenants-inchief from the southern Low Countries supports this general timeframe. As a rough guideline, if important landholders in 1086 could trace their estates to a small number of wealthy antecessors they probably acquired them early, possibly within the first half-decade of William’s reign, when many important Anglo-Saxon landholders were dispossessed as punishment for rebellion or to provide rewards and patronage. Their estates were transferred in bulk to the Norman king’s supporters.76 Since, for example, Walter of Douai and Arnulf of Hesdin in south-western England both held substantial estate collections that had descended from a few rich Anglo-Saxon antecessors,77 this suggests that they first established themselves in the area after the local revolts in 1068 and 1070.78 Walter the Fleming, after Countess Judith the wealthiest Flemish tenant-in-chief in the Midlands, likewise traced the significant majority of his estates to two antecessors, Leofwine and Leofnoth. This may suggest he acquired them around the time of Judith’s marriage to Earl Waltheof around 1070, probably through Judith’s influence.79 The antecessorial pattern is particularly clear-cut among the rich Flemish landholders in the north. Drogo of Beuvi`ere’s Holderness barony was mostly acquired from the estates of the Anglo-Saxon rebel Earl Morcar, who was imprisoned in 1071.80 Similarly, Domesday Book tells us that the Lincolnshire estates of Gilbert of Ghent and Rainer of Brimeaux descended from only a very few wealthy Anglo-Saxon antecessors – respectively Tonni and Ulf, and Iolfr – rather than representing a 75 76 77

78 79

80

More broadly on the Norman expansion in England see Green, Aristocracy, pp. 53–4, and the subsequent county-specific entries pp. 54–92. Fleming, Kings and Lords, pp. 160–76. Arnulf of Hesdin’s wealthiest antecessor was called Eadric (estates worth £59 in 1086; GDB, fols. 46v, 70r, 80v, 98r, 169r), and Walter of Douai’s was called Æthelsige or Alsige (£45 16s; GDB, fols. 72r, 82r, 95r–95v, 11v–112r), Esger (£22 4s; GDB, fols. 95r, 111v–112r) and Ailwacre (£31 4s; GDB, fols. 72r, 95r–95v). It is, of course, possible that more than one person might hide behind a common Christian name, such as Eadric, although the comparatively closely grouped estate patterns of these antecessors reduces that likelihood. Æthelsige and Alsige, by contrast, are probably variant spellings of the same name, given that their estates in Devon were grouped together. ASC (D) 1068; OV, vol. 2, pp. 208–14, 228–32. GDB, fols. 139r, 215v, 226v. Given the similar elements of their names Leofwine and Leofnoth may have been kinsmen; this would also help to explain why both of their estates collections were given to the same person. S. Baxter, Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 281–97.

195

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 collection pieced together from the properties of a large number of lesser local landholders. Therefore they were probably acquired from local noblemen who were connected with rebels in the early years of William’s reign. A suggestive glimpse into the detail of early Flemish landholding in Lincolnshire is offered by Iolfr, who very probably had a connection to the powerful Anglo-Saxon sheriff Mærleswein of Lincoln. Not only do their estate patterns of 1066 geographically overlap in Lincolnshire, especially around the modern Market Rasen north-east of Lincoln, but Mærleswein also had a second important estate concentration in south-western England. There a Iolfr (the only other instance of this name in Domesday Book) also held a pair of estates in the hundred of Stratton by the western coast of Cornwall, not far from those held by Mærleswein. This is unlikely to be a coincidence: these entries must refer to the one and the same Iolfr, a person who had enjoyed close links with Mærleswein and probably had acquired estates through the latter’s patronage.81 But in 1068 Mærleswein joined the Aetheling Edgar in the northern rebellions, bringing ‘many good men’ with him.82 Iolfr may well have been one of them; at any rate his connections to the rebel faction would have been a good cause for dispossession, with his Lincolnshire estates presumably being transferred in bulk to Rainer of Brimeaux around 1070 when King William reduced the north. Though the shape of Flemish landholding was driven by political and military concerns, it was also influenced by geography. There is a noticeable smaller, eastern arc of Flemish properties (and potential Flemish properties) running around the Wash, from northern Norfolk through the east Midlands to Lincolnshire. This region enjoyed good communications with the southern Low Countries thanks to its extensive coastlines and river systems. It was here that the majority of the great English international fairs were founded in the twelfth century and geographical proximity to Flanders would have been desirable to eleventh-century immigrants as well. Finally, it is entirely possible that the Flemish contribution was not solely a matter of the participation of individual leaders or kin groups, but was also organised from above, through an agreement between the king and the count of Flanders. William of Malmesbury notes that Count Baldwin V (d. 1067) and his son Baldwin VI (1067–70) each enjoyed a pension of 300 silver marks per annum from William after he became king. The arrangement appears to have directly prefigured the later 81

GDB, fol. 125r.

82

196

ASC (D, E) 1068.

Flemish immigration to England Anglo-Flemish military treaties.83 The army of 900 men that Robert of Comines brought to Yorkshire in 1069 suggestively parallels the 1,000 men agreed on in the 1101 agreement.84 Gerbod of Oosterzele’s high position as earl of Chester from c.1067 to c.1071 must have required the capacity to deploy a considerable number of soldiers; likewise so must have that Gilbert of Ghent’s as the governor of York. It is noteworthy that, unlike the majority of Domesday tenants-in-chief, these men originated from areas more closely associated with the Flemish count’s power base than Artois was. Robert the Frisian’s successful coup in 1071 and the lasting enmity between him and the Conqueror complicated political relations between England and Flanders but by that time Flemings had already gained a foothold in the kingdom. The chronology of the Norman Conquest and of Flemish participation in it strongly indicates that King William turned to Flanders and to his wife’s family for help in securing the outlying regions of England in the late 1060s. This early arrangement provided the foundation on which later Anglo-Flemish political agreements were built. OPPORTUNITIES AND NETWORKS The Domesday survey itself conveys the sense of an era that was coming to a close, an impression that, through enumeration and cataloguing, it sought to finalise the post-Conquest redistribution of manors and to solidify the structures of the new order. Relatively few new aristocratic families succeeded in establishing themselves in England over the following century; the era of great expectations was over.85 But, though the opportunities to acquire wealth and status created by the mass transfer of properties during William the Conqueror’s reign would not recur, the demands of military service kept open avenues for Flemish travel and immigration into the realm. Frenchmen, Bretons and Flemings flocked to William Rufus in 1091 and Henry I was famous for employing foreign knights in his household.86 The Anglo-Flemish treaties as well as the broader record evidence shows that the Norman and Angevin kings had few qualms about bolstering the ranks of their armies with foreign allies and mercenaries.87 Some rose to a great prominence: an important Flemish leader in John’s army during the civil war was Robert VII of 83 84 86 87

William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 728. The treaties are discussed at length in chapter 2; for an overview see pp. 54–9. 85 Green, Aristocracy, pp. 132–40. ASC (D, E) 1068. OV, vol. 4, p. 236; Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, p. 438. Flemish paid soldiers were discussed above, pp. 138–9.

197

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 B´ethune, whose family had enjoyed stellar careers in the Angevin courts; already in 1159 Robert’s grandfather, Robert V of B´ethune, had participated in Henry II’s expedition to southern France.88 Like the B´ethunes, many Flemish military immigrants came from Artois, where the power of the Flemish comital dynasty was faintly felt. The Franco-German marches, populous and centrally located, provided an important source of mercenary soldiers. As is indicated by the popularity of mˆel´ee tournaments, these were regions with strong traditions of warfare in which members of the military classes were ready to travel. Several factors influenced the migration patterns of Flemings from the aristocratic and military classes into England. Family structures and institutions naturally influenced population movements. Flemish e´ migr´es from the region who can be identified with a greater degree of precision tended to be the younger progeny of their families. Among the Domesday Flemings, Gilbert of Ghent, the patriarch of the Gant family, was the son of Baldwin, lord of Alost and hereditary advocate of St Peter’s of Ghent. Gilbert’s older brother Ralph was to succeed their father, and another brother was appointed chamberlain to the count.89 Similar circumstances obtained among the Oosterzele siblings: Frederick and Gerbod represented the younger branch of the family, the estates of their father having been inherited by their elder brother Arnulf II of Oosterzele.90 Towards the end of the twelfth century, the chronicler Lambert of Waterlos reminisced about how two of his uncles, Baldwin and Lambert, had joined a group of friends to fight for Henry I. Once again, they were a family’s younger sons, and the aldermanry of Waterlos was inherited by their older brother Tiard.91 Lambert, one of the lucky Flemish fighters, was granted several estates in Normandy in recompense for his service; such a handsome payoff must have been the goal of many hopefuls. It has been argued that the aristocratic diasporas of the Central Middle Ages – which saw the establishment of Norman polities not only in England, but also in southern Italy and the Holy Land – resulted from structural, intergenerational stresses within the elite. In his influential article of 1964 on elite youth culture, Georges Duby argued that 88 89

90 91

In 1163 Robert V received the sum of £6 13s 4d for his assistance in the king’s departure from Toulouse: PR 9 Henry II (1162–3), p. 9. Abbot, ‘Gant Family’, pp. 19–20; R. Sherman, ‘The Continental Origins of the Ghent Family in Lincolnshire’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 21 (1977), 23–35; Van Houts, ‘Hereward and Flanders’, 215–17; Warlop, Flemish Nobility, vol. 2.1, pp. 588, 591. Warenne Chronicle, Appendix 2: Frederick, ‘brother’ of William I of Warenne (forthcoming); Van Houts, ‘Hereward and Flanders’, 219. Lambert of Waterlos, ‘Annales Cameracenses’, pp. 511–12; Warlop, Flemish Nobility, vol. 2.1, pp. 127–32.

198

Flemish immigration to England changes in the structure of kinship networks, and particularly the growing emphasis on primogeniture, led to the phenomenon of well-trained and well-equipped warrior aristocrats whose financial interests were best served not by staying at home, but by travelling abroad in search of patrons and opportunities. Endowed with the social and economic advantages that came with being a member of the elite, but burdened by tensions created by their father’s control over the family’s riches and his own ambitions, aristocratic youths, be they the senior heirs or the younger scions, might choose to pursue wealth and prestige abroad. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries many were also attracted to the tournament world; William Marshal, Young King Henry’s head of household, is an archetypical example of Duby’s juvenes.92 The model, however, has been criticised as painted with too broad a brush. Critics note that its proponents ignore in particular the fact that younger siblings were not conventionally written out of their share of the family fortunes until much later in the thirteenth century. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, families still preferred to parcel out the patrimony or otherwise to find ways to provide for all the heirs, though the size of the share could drop sharply for the younger progeny.93 Norman custom, for instance, insisted on bequeathing inherited estates to the oldest heir but allowed for flexibility in distributing property acquired during one’s lifetime; hence William the Conqueror’s decision to assign the kingdom of England to William Rufus, while the older but estranged son Robert Curthose received Normandy.94 Rather than assuming that younger sons were in effect forced to seek their fortunes elsewhere, a more balanced view would be to see the scions of a well-connected aristocratic family, as a group, as excellently positioned to embark on a career abroad. The inheritance patterns created dynamic energy that encouraged and enabled the acquisition of new property. The existence of a still-living head of the family freed them 92

93

94

Duby, ‘Au XIIe si`ecle: les “Jeunes”’, 835–46. Duby’s conclusions have been echoed by R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350 (London, 1993), pp. 43–51; D. Herlihy, Medieval Households (London, 1985), pp. 92–3; Le Patourel, The Norman Empire, p. 296. D. Crouch and C. de Trafford, ‘The Forgotten Family in Twelfth-Century England’, HSJ 13 (1999), 43–52; and an elaboration in Crouch, Birth of Nobility, pp. 99–123, sharply criticise too strict an adoption of Duby’s argument and draw attention to variation and flexibility in patterns of family construction, but do not propose to overturn the model completely. The custom is mentioned in Leges Henrici Primi, ed. L. Downer (Oxford, 1972), p. 224. More broadly, see J. Holt, ‘Politics and Property in Early Medieval England’, Past & Present 57 (1972), 3–52; and the ensuing debate in Past & Present 65 (1974): E. King, ‘Politics and Property in Early Medieval England: The Tenurial Crisis of the Early Twelfth Century’, 110–17; S. White, ‘Succession to Fiefs in Early Medieval England’, 118–27; J. Holt, ‘Politics and Property in Early Medieval England: A Rejoinder’, 127–35.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 from many duties and obligations at home, while leaving them with access to their families’ resources, both material and political, which were crucial to forging their fortune. A lone miles might gain a position in the household of a magnate or even a king, but a man who could attract and bring over a retinue of his own had considerably greater chances of winning substantial rewards. As with earlier generations, pre-existing ties were crucial for obtaining commissions and rewards: through the family matriarch Resinde, the Waterlos brothers had been kin to much of the Flemish nobility and related by them to prominent Norman families. Bearing in mind that every model breaks down if adopted too freely, it is pertinent to note that a very natural kind of military–aristocratic immigrant possessed both military capacity and the freedom to take advantage of circumstances presented by politics and war. Though some men of relatively humble origins could and did attract royal sponsorship through luck or competence, for the majority the new Norman regnum was not a land of easy opportunity. Even at the time of the Conquest, the greatest rewards went to those who had the right background, following, wealth and connections to exploit.95 Networks of pre-existing ties were a valuable tool for a would-be immigrant. The former Flemish money fief manor of Exning in Cambridgeshire was, as we have seen, a local nexus for a number of AngloFlemish interests in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.96 Did such communities play a significant role in the organising of migration from Flanders to England? The information on Flemish settlements in England of this period is too fragmentary to say, but Domesday Book offers a case study. In that survey the most important concentration of Flemish-owned estates is in the east Midlands, and it is possible not just to locate the careers of individual Flemish barons, but to trace the existence of a whole late eleventh-century Flemish e´ migr´e community in that region. This Midlands network was centred in Northamptonshire, and its main landholders were Countess Judith,97 Walter and Winemar the Flemings,98 and Gunfrid of Chocques.99 A number of tenurial links united them. Each of the four had in that county a man called Dodin as an under-tenant. That this was one and the same person is suggested by the rarity of the name, by the geographical proximity of the estates and by their size, and is reinforced by an entry for Northampton which states that one Dodin held two houses in fief, one from Judith and the other from Winemar. Moreover, Dodin held one small estate directly as tenant-in-chief at the vill of 95 98

96 See pp. 111–13 above. Green, Aristocracy, p. 10. 99 Ibid., fol. 227v. Ibid., fol. 226r.

200

97

GDB, fol. 229r.

Flemish immigration to England 0 0

10 5

20 10

30 15

20

40 km 25 miles

++ + + + +

+ + + + ++ + + + ++ + + + + + + +++ + + ++ ++ + + + ++ ++ ++ + + ++ + ++++++ + + + +++ ++ ++ + + ++ + + + + +++ ++ + ++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ++ + + + + + + +++ + + + + Northampton ++ + + + ++++ +++ + ++ +++ + + + ++++++ + ++ ++++ + +++ ++ + + ++++ +++ + + +++ + + + + + + +++ + + + +

++ + +

+ + Tenants-in-Chief

+

Countess Judith Walter the Fleming Walter ‘brother’ of Seiher Hugh the Fleming as under-tenant Guy of Raimbeaucourt

Winemar the Fleming as under-tenant Gunfrid of Chocques Sigar of Chocques Dodin (only as under-tenant)

Map 5.

++

The Artesian group

Cottesbrooke, where he also held an estate as an under-tenant of Walter the Fleming. Altogether his possessions lay within a rough circle some twenty kilometres in radius (or roughly a day’s journey) with its centre on Northampton, which suggests they may have been deliberately chosen for their proximity to the town.100 100

Ibid., fols. 219r, 226v, 227v, 229r.

201

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Winemar the Fleming was also an under-tenant to Judith, Walter and Gunfrid, holding from them a closely grouped set of estates worth £7 13s in south-eastern Northamptonshire.101 Again, Winemar’s landholdings were comparatively compact. His main manor at Hanslope in Buckinghamshire lay just across the shire boundary from Northamptonshire and he held a scattering of minor holdings across the eastern and south-eastern sides of the latter shire.102 A number of more incidental but overlapping connections reinforce the probability of landholding partnerships among these tenants-in-chief, as well as entrepreneurial activity among the under-tenants, who may have regarded connections to multiple tenantsin-chief (and thus sources of patronage and access to higher political circles) as desirable. Gunfrid and Winemar shared an under-tenant called Bondi, who held an estate from each of them within the hundred of Cleyley, likewise located in south-eastern Northamptonshire.103 Judith and Walter had an under-tenant called Fulcher ‘Mala Opa’ in common, and each owned an estate at the vill of Hanging Haughton.104 An otherwise unidentified Walter appears as an under-tenant to Judith at the estate of Lilford. He may well have been the same Fleming, since Walter is not a common name in Domesday Northamptonshire.105 Leofnoth, the Anglo-Saxon antecessor of twenty-four of Walter the Fleming’s properties, was the antecessor of both of the estates belonging to Walter ‘brother of Seiher’, which further suggests that the two Walters were related to each other.106 The group also owned a significant number of manors in neighbouring Bedfordshire. There Judith,107 Walter the Fleming108 and Walter ‘brother of Seiher’109 all had an under-tenant simply known by the name ‘Hugh’. Now Hugh is a common name (in other counties Judith was the liege to several Hughs differentiated by their surnames), but such a coincidence, and the close geographical distribution of these estates, nevertheless suggests the possibility that this is the Hugh the Fleming who also held land as a tenant-in-chief in Bedfordshire.110 The connection between Hugh and Walter the Fleming is particularly strong: in the vill of Podington, for instance, Hugh the Fleming was a tenant-in-chief, while a ‘Hugh’ is recorded as an under-tenant of Walter the Fleming.111 Two of Walter’s other estates where a ‘Hugh’ was an under-tenant – Turvey and Thurleigh – are just a few kilometres from Hugh the 101 104 106 107 110

102 Ibid., fols. 152r, 226v. 103 Ibid., fols. 226v, 227v. Ibid., fols. 226v, 227v, 229r. 105 GDB, fol. 229r. Ibid., fols. 226v, 228v; DP, p. 201. Farrer, Honors, vol. 1, p. 73; J. Round, ‘Domesday Survey’, Victoria County History of Bedfordshire, vol. 1, ed. H. Doubleday and W. Page (London, 1904), vol. 1, pp. 200, 203. 108 Ibid., fol. 217. 109 Ibid., fol. 216r. GDB, fol. 215v. 111 Ibid., fols. 215v–216r. Ibid., fol. 216r.

202

Flemish immigration to England Fleming’s tenant-in-chief properties.112 Perhaps Walter and Hugh were kinsmen. Gunfrid of Chocques and Hugh the Fleming are also listed as neighbours in the vill of Hinwick, where both owned a property (for Gunfrid, his only estate in Bedfordshire).113 This same Hugh the Fleming was probably the Hugh who held a pair of estates from Judith a few miles away across the border in Northamptonshire.114 Finally, the wealthiest three Flemings shared a substantial amount of local ground. In Northamptonshire, Judith held property in a quarter of the vills in which Gunfrid of Chocques owned manors.115 The same was true for a fifth of the properties of Walter the Fleming in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire.116 In addition to those listed above, Guy of Raimbeaucourt, whose nominal home was near Lens and who held estates in the same Midlands region, shared an under-tenant called Norgiot, or Norgiold, with Judith in the vill of Cogenhoe in Northamptonshire.117 Sigar of Chocques cannot be proven to be related to any of the above but his region of origin also was near to theirs. Walter of Douai may also have been related by blood to some of the above, although the fact that his estates were far away in Devon and Somerset indicates that he had very little to do with the others and had forged his own path in England.118 Considered as a whole, such a degree of co-operation raises the question of how it came about. Excepting perhaps Judith, who entered English landholding through marriage, it seems highly likely that these landholders came to England either together or by exploiting earlier connections with other post-Conquest landholders. Katherine Keats-Rohan has argued that this group of Flemish landholders – Countess Judith; Walter ‘brother of Seiher’; Gunfrid of Chocques; and Hugh, Walter and Winemar the Flemings – were a mixed group of kinsmen, allies, neighbours and vassals from Artois, in the environs of Lens.119 Pre-existing links among the group are difficult to demonstrate conclusively, but they would provide an explanation for the relationships revealed by Domesday Book. The aristocratic class in this part of southern Flanders was highly interconnected and the major families in Flemish Artois were all closely related. Six lineages wielded the most influence in Picardy during this period. One of these was composed of the lords of Lens, Douai, Aubigny and B´ethune – all likely regions of origin for the Midlands Flemings.120 112 115 116

117 119 120

113 Ibid., fol. 216r. 114 Ibid., fol. 217r. Ibid., fol. 215v. Cransley, Newton, Welton and Thrupp, and Wollaston. Ibid., fols. 227v, 228r–229r. In Bedfordshire: Holme, Stratton and Southill; in Northamptonshire: Hanging Houghton, Horton, Lamport and Wootton. Ibid., fols. 215v, 217r–217v, 226v, 228r–229r. Wootton was held by Winemar the Fleming as an under-tenant of both Judith and Walter. 118 DP, p. 450. GDB, fols. 226v, 229r. Ibid., pp. 39–40, 239–41, 270, 450–1, 456, 498; Keats-Rohan, ‘The Portrait of a People’, 137–40. Fossier, La terre et les hommes, vol. 1, pp. 262–6; vol. 2, pp. 542–6.

203

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Countess Judith was probably the earliest, and certainly the richest, tenant-in-chief of southern Low Countries origin to establish herself in the region. Judith had married the Anglo-Saxon Earl Waltheof some time after the Battle of Hastings, but her husband was involved in a failed conspiracy against King William I in 1075 and was executed the following year. Judith saved herself by publicly denouncing her husband but the affair left her under a cloud of shame and suspicion. After Judith’s refusal to remarry, William temporarily confiscated her estates.121 Though her position as a stupendously wealthy widow was ultimately insecure, Judith nevertheless did succeed in ruling over one of the kingdom’s greatest baronies for a decade. The concentration of Artesian Flemings in Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire may well have been the countess’s handiwork, a response to the insecurities brought on by her husband’s downfall. It is plausible that after 1076 she began seriously to cultivate her Artesian kin with grants and patronage, as a means of establishing herself more securely in the east Midlands. Certainly the example of the Midlands Flemings demonstrates that networks based on connections from the region of origin could govern local elite formation in post-Conquest England. Vying with the pull of e´ migr´e communities was the pressure to integrate with the broader society. Flemish families who established themselves in England in the late eleventh and the twelfth centuries, and who survived in the sometimes cut-throat world of Anglo-Norman politics, inevitably became part of the ruling elite’s political and social networks. The Gant family, established by Gilbert of Ghent, is probably the highest-profile example of successful integration. Gilbert’s children and grandchildren married into Norman families and achieved high office. His fourth son, Robert, became King Stephen’s chancellor from c.1140 to 1154, and was also influential in ecclesiastical politics as dean of York, first opposing the reinstatement of Archbishop William of York and later influencing the election of Archbishop Roger.122 Gilbert’s eldest son and heir, Walter, served under Stephen in his war against the Scots in 1138. After Walter’s death, his son Gilbert II sided with Stephen against Empress Matilda and was created earl of Lincoln c.1149. Gilbert II survived the handover of power after Henry II’s accession and, though after Gilbert’s death in 1156 his son Robert did not retain his office in Lincolnshire, the family remained important at the baronial level.123 The pressure to 121 122 123

OV, vol. 2, pp. 262, 320; ‘Vita et Miracula S. Waldevi’, Chroniques anglo-normandes, vol. 2, ed. F. Michel (Rouen, 1836), pp. 123–31; Keats-Rohan, ‘The Portrait of a People’, pp. 139–40. William of Newburgh, Historia, pp. 80, 83. On his career, see R. Sherman, ‘Robert de Gant (c.1085–c.1158): Dean of York and King’s Chancellor’, HSJ 13 (1999), 99–110. Abbot, ‘The Gant Family’, pp. 21–47; Sanders, English Baronies, p. 46.

204

Flemish immigration to England integrate with the majority elite must have been considerable, and all the stronger the higher one was situated on the social ladder. The foreign upper class in post-Conquest England was small and its families preferred to marry among themselves.124 Such marriage patterns must also have facilitated hasty Flemish integration with the Norman nobility throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Contributing to this assimilation were the practical difficulties of maintaining property links across the Channel over long periods of time. To retain a family fortune in post-Conquest England required a great deal of effort, commitment, competence and sheer tenacity. A division of interests across the Channel was potentially a liability. Holding properties so widely separated proved problematic for lords with domains in both England and Normandy and many families chose to designate English and Norman properties to different heirs.125 The situation was even more difficult when estates were divided between England and the principalities of the Low Countries. The decision of the great Domesday landowner Arnulf of Hesdin to donate ‘by the count’s advice’ all the properties he held in fief from Count Engelram of Hesdin to the priory of St George may have been an attempt to arrange a partition on his own terms, perhaps as part of a broader settlement or exchange.126 The political tensions that lasted through the two decades of Count Robert I the Frisian’s reign complicated the position of the Anglo-Flemish barons.127 Similar challenges faced Anglo-Flemish magnates during the various crisis points of the twelfth century. The English manors belonging to the heirs of Sigar of Chocques were repossessed by the crown in the late 1120s, probably after William Clito became count of Flanders in 1127.128 Aubrey III of Vere, the Anglo-Norman earl of Oxford from 1141, was also known as Count Albert ‘the Boar’ of Guines. Aubrey had become count of Guines in 1137 through his marriage to Beatrice of Guines, organised by Beatrice’s Norman grandmother Emma of Tancarville, but, in the context of the struggle between Stephen and Matilda, he found it impossible to manage both great offices. Unable or unwilling to return to Guines from England, threatened by rebellion and pressured by the demands of his continental vassals, he dissolved his marriage c.1142 and gave up his claim to the county.129 Faced with the practical 124

125 126 127 129

E. van Houts, ‘Intermarriage in Eleventh-Century England’, in Normandy and Its Neighbours: Essays Presented to David Bates, ed. D. Crouch and K. Thompson (Turnhout, 2011), 237–70, p. 259. Green, Aristocracy, pp. 270–1; Holt, ‘Politics and Property’ (1972), 3–52. Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, no. 1326, pp. 481–2. 128 Farrer, Honors, vol. 1, pp. 20–1. See pp. 16–19 above. Facsimiles of Royal & Other Charters, vol. 1, no. 18; Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, pp. 582–3, 584–8, 591; William of Ardres, ‘Willelmi Chronica Andrensis’,

205

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 difficulties of maintaining and managing landed property in another realm, it is no wonder that the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Flemish aristocracy often preferred money fiefs. Finally, loyalty to local e´ migr´e networks and the dynamics of integration are not, of course, irreconcilable. People are not restricted to a single identity; those of immigrants are a mix of their current and past affiliations. Integration with the Anglo-Norman aristocracy and an identity as member of an elite based in England should not be read as precluding a consciousness of Flemish origin, which might also be deployed for strategic benefit. The Warenne family, earls of Surrey, serve as an example of how even distant Anglo-Flemish connections could be a readily exploited resource. The first wife of William I of Warenne, the family’s patriarch at the time of the Norman Conquest, had been the Fleming Gundrada of Oosterzele. As the daughter of the advocate of the abbey of St Bertin, she was related to the Conqueror’s Flemish wife Queen Matilda, a kinship tie that can only have furthered William’s ambitions.130 After the deaths of Gundrada’s father and brothers, the advocacy of the monastery passed to her sons by William, but it appears that the office was lost by the Warenne family around 1096 – and recovered again in 1182, when Earl Hamelin of Warenne (1164–1202) suddenly emerged as the monastery’s advocate. Elisabeth van Houts has demonstrated that this reacquisition of the office was related to a reinvention of the Warenne family’s history in the late twelfth century, including the exhumation of a ‘Flemish connection’ dating back to Gundrada. The advocacy was obtained in the highly charged political climate that surrounded a series of diplomatic deals and negotiations between Count Philip and King Philip II of France, dealings in which King Henry II played the role of arbitrator. The dispute concerned the inheritance of Artois and Vermandois, including the town of St Omer, next to which St Bertin was located. Earl Hamelin was half-brother to Henry II, and it seems very likely that the king took advantage of the opportunity to push his sibling forward as a candidate for the advocacy.131 An ancient family history of international marriage thus surfaced as a crucial element in the Warenne family’s political identity.

130

131

p. 701; G. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage (London, 1945), vol. 10, p. 193–210; Crouch, ‘Vere, Aubrey (III) de’. Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. C. Clay (Edinburgh, 1949), vol. 8, pp. 40–6; F. Anderson, ‘“Uxor mea”: The First Wife of the First William of Warenne’, Sussex Archaeological Collection 130 (1992), 107–29. As noted above, Gundrada’s brothers Gerbod and Frederick enjoyed successful, if brief, careers in England immediately following the Conquest. Robert of Torigny, Chronicle, p. 221; E. van Houts, ‘The Warenne View of the Past 1066–1203’, ANS 26 (2003), 103–21. Lambert of Ardres notes the Warenne count’s continuing ownership of estates in the region in the 1190s: ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, p. 566.

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Flemish immigration to England The imprint left on the east Midlands by Artesian immigration was also traceable many generations after the Conquest. Countess Judith lost control over her inheritance to her son-in-law Simon of Senlis after the marriage of her oldest daughter Matilda in 1090, but the underlying pattern of tenancies was not disrupted, since Simon confirmed all her tenants in their estates.132 Seiher’s baronial dynasty, Judith’s former clients, flourished into the fourteenth century. Domesday properties that had belonged to Hugh, Winemar and Walter the Fleming, as well as those of Walter ‘brother of Seiher’, were combined into the honour of Wahull in the twelfth century, and were held by the heirs of Walter the Fleming. The memory of the dynasty’s founders was preserved in the family’s names, which included several Walters and a Seiher (or ‘Saher’).133 The descendants of Hugh the Fleming forged their own fortune in the twelfth century as members of the local elite society – one Hugh of La Lega was the co-sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in the 1160s – but also retained a tenurial link with the Wahulls.134 Gunfrid and Sigar of Chocques survived the political ice age of Robert ‘the Frisian’s’ reign and remained active in Flanders through the late eleventh century. Gunfrid can, in fact, be identified with Gunfrid the castellan of Lens, who still held his prestigious office in 1097. The English estates of Gunfrid and Sigar were subject to a complex descent, but ultimately passed on to the advocates of B´ethune in the second half of the twelfth century, reappearing in 1160 in the possession of Robert V (c.1145–91).135 Robert was probably a grandchild of Sigar through his mother.136 This connection must have helped Robert to develop close cross-Channel relations and 132

133 134 135

136

‘Vita et Miracula S. Waldevi’, pp. 124–6. Her former lands passed in the twelfth century to the royal house of Scotland, through Matilda’s second marriage in 1113 to the future King David I (1124–53), and formed the honour of Huntingdon. For its later history, see Farrer, Honors, vol. 2, pp. 294–416; K. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon 1152–1219: A Study in Anglo-Scottish History (Edingburgh, 1985), pp. 106–10. The family of at least one of Judith’s Flemish undertenants, Winemar, continued to co-operate with Simon of Senlis: one Walter son of Winemar witnessed Simon’s foundation charter of St Andrew’s Priory in Northampton, and later granted this priory the church of Little Billing. Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. 5, p. 190; J. Cox, ‘Religious Houses’, Victoria County History of Northampton, vol. 2, ed. R. Serjeantson and W. Adkins (London, 1906), p. 102; J. Round, ‘Domesday Survey’, Victoria County History of Northampton, vol. 1, ed. H. Doubleday (London, 1902), p. 290. Farrer, Honors, vol. 1, pp. 61–102; Sanders, English Baronies, pp. 68–9; Verberckmoes, ‘Flemish Tenants-in-Chief’, 735–6. ‘Lega’ or ‘La Legh’ refers to modern Thurleigh, one of Hugh the Fleming’s manors. The appellation was adopted by Hugh’s heirs. Farrer, Honors, vol. 1, pp. 69–70. DP, pp. 239–41, 419–20; Sanders, English Baronies, pp. 141–2. The manor of Gayton is listed in the possession of the advocate already in the Northamptonshire Survey, composed before 1120, though with later additions. ‘The Northamptonshire Survey’, ed. and trans. J. Round, Victoria County History of Northamptonshire, vol. 1 (London, 1902), p. 373. Calendar of documents preserved in France, no. 1359, p. 494; Farrer, Honors, vol. 1, pp. 22–9.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 he and his sons were to play a prominent role in Anglo-Flemish politics until the catastrophes of John’s reign.137 Even ancient Anglo-Flemish familial ties could remain relevant to the social and political identities of the nobility and might give rise to claims and political opportunities long after the original e´ migr´e had passed away. EM IGRATION PRESSURES WITHIN FLANDERS Men of military or aristocratic background are often the only ones who left a record in the data we possess on Flemish migration to England; the evidence for immigration of women or of people from lower down the social scale is usually much more elusive. There is a love poem in Middle Dutch from the late eleventh century that survives in the flyleaf of a Canterbury (or possibly Rochester) manuscript. It has been recently suggested that this declaration of affection was from a Flemish woman to an Englishman; perhaps it was that of a young nun to her beloved.138 In order to paint a less monochrome picture, it must be recognised that Flemish aristocratic and military migration to England took place amid large population movements from Flanders during the Central Middle Ages. Whole communities of Flemish settlers made their home in the Rhineland at this time and Scottish kings from King David I (1124–53) onwards deliberately attracted Flemish immigrants to their realm with toll and rent privileges.139 These immigrants did not comprise just soldiers and knights but, hailing from the most industrialised region in western Europe, included craftspeople, burghers, traders and merchants, and their families, all of whom had skills and resources that could benefit growing local economies. This immigration to England is not a well-studied topic. The most comprehensive scholar of this subject was the Victorian economist William Cunningham, whose thesis was that throughout the centuries alien immigrants had been vital to the development of industrial activity in England. Projecting his argument backwards in time, Cunningham estimated that a significant number of Flemish industrial workers had migrated to England from the Norman Conquest onwards. But, for the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the 137 138

139

On the B´ethunes see pp. 88–9 above. ‘All the birds have / begun their nests / except for me and you / what are you waiting for now?’ P. Dronke, ‘Latin and Vernacular Love-Lyrics; Rochester and St. Augustine’s, Canterbury’, Revue B´en´edictine 115 (2005), 400–10. These are, in fact, the oldest surviving lines of Middle Dutch. Bartlett, Making of Europe, pp. 114–15, 121–3; A. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), pp. 475–8; L. Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandriensis and the Flemish Settlement in Pembrokeshire’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 20 (1990), 99–118, 108–10.

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Flemish immigration to England argument is unfortunately replete with assumptions that do not hold up in the light of modern scholarship. In particular, Cunningham’s claim that Flemish cloth-workers established the earliest English craft guilds is essentially unsupported by evidence, and he confused actual Flemish textile craftspeople with the Flemish stipendiary knights of Stephen’s reign, who were often disparagingly referred to as ‘weavers’ by English chroniclers writing in the late twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. The appellation of textores is of considerable interest, and I will discuss it in the next chapter, but it is poor evidence for the actual immigration of craft-workers.140 Nevertheless, the current of commerce between the Low Countries and the Anglo-Norman world undoubtedly carried Flemings to England as well. Henry II’s charter in 1155–8 to the burghers of St Omer indicates the existence of a permanent Flemish trading community in London.141 By this time, the abbey of St Peter’s of Ghent owned land and a wharf in London – with adjoining markets, shops and stalls – and a community of foreign merchants lived in the abbey’s soke.142 William Urry’s work on property records in Canterbury during the Angevin period has uncovered a handful of Flemish citizens and households in that town.143 It is likely that there were Flemish households and communities of varying sizes in many English towns, especially near the coasts and waterways. The continuity of strong social and economic connections between Flanders and northern England throughout the twelfth century is suggested by the great influence of Flemish types, in particular of those issued in St Omer, on Yorkshire coinage during King Stephen’s reign.144 Writing in the midtwelfth century, William of Malmesbury suggests that during the previous generation immigration from the Continent was relatively common and perhaps unremarkable: ‘Under King Henry [1100–35] many foreigners, displaced by troubles in their native land, sailed to England and lived in undisturbed peace under his wings’.145 140

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143 144 145

W. Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 641–55; Cunningham, Alien Migrants to England, 2nd edn (London, 1969), pp. 17–62, 263–4. RAH II, no. 56, pp. 173–4. Extract: ‘Sciatis me concessisse burgensibus de Sancto Audomaro quod habeant in civitate London[i]ensi hospicia ad voluntatem et arbitrium suum’. RRAN 1066–1087, no. 150, pp. 497–503. The charter, dated to 1081, purports to be King William I’s confirmation of the abbey’s properties and privileges. Its authenticity is controversial, however, and it may be a mid-twelfth-century re-creation or forgery (ibid., p. 499). But whether written in the late eleventh century or the mid-twelfth, the charter can be taken to reflect the mercantile reality of its time. W. Urry, Canterbury under the Angevin Kings (London, 1967), p. 171. G. Boon, Coins of the Anarchy 1135–54 (Cardiff, 1988), pp. 34–40. ‘Sub Henrico rege multi alienigenae, qui genialis humi inquietationibus exagitabantur, Angliam annavigabant, et sub eius alis quietum otium agebant.’ William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella,

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 It is difficult to pin down any single reason why Flanders was a significant ‘exporter’ of people from various backgrounds and occupations. Military employment and commercial opportunities drew knights and urban merchants abroad but Flemish emigrants also originated from less privileged backgrounds. Some agricultural workers from the Continent probably came to England in the retinues of nobles who had been granted land there. A rare instance of documented agrarian migration from the southern Low Countries can be found in a charter in the cartulary of St Trond in the duchy of Brabant, dated to 1095, where a local peasant is mentioned as having returned from England, where he had lived for a while and even taken a wife.146 There were several ‘push’ factors that contributed to the willingness of Flemings to leave the county. It has been suggested that, while total population density in Flanders was lower than in some of the surrounding regions, population was concentrated in pockets and confined to small arable regions. While agriculture intensified in the thirteenth century, in the twelfth century large parts of Flanders were still uncultivated. The process of land reclamation in maritime areas was slow and horticultural techniques were not everywhere highly developed (crop rotation, for instance, was not widely adopted until the thirteenth century).147 Demographic pressure combined with restricted food supply may have induced many to seek a better living elsewhere. The effects of demographic pressures are difficult to measure, however, and other economic and social factors were surely important in encouraging Flemish emigration. Flemish inheritance customs allowed for a great deal of freedom to alienate movable property, and favoured splitting an inheritance among multiple heirs. While these practices enhanced liquidity in the medieval Flemish economy, and were therefore conducive to the expansion of commerce, they also made it very difficult to pass undivided property to the next generation. Many heirs must have found themselves with insufficient means of support in their families’ traditional occupations.148 Finally, Flemish peasants, especially in the

146 147

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p. 72. The passage is not entirely non-contentious, since Malmesbury uses it as a contrast to the decidedly less peaceful entry of many foreign soldiers to England during Stephen’s reign, a fact he deplored. Cartulaire de Saint-Trond, ed. C. Piot (Brussels, 1870), vol. 1, no. 21, p. 28–9. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 97–98, 101–4, 107–9, 125; A. Verhulst, ‘L’intensification et la commercialisation de l’agriculture dans les Pays-Bas m´erionaux au XIIIe si`ecle’, in La Belgique rurale du moyen aˆ ge a` nos jours: M´elanges offerts a` Jean-Jacques Hoebanx (Universit´e libre de Bruxelles, Facult´e de philosophie et lettres 95, Brussels, 1985), pp. 89–100. For broader overviews see also Van Bavel, Manors and Markets, especially pp. 124–46; and A. Verhulst, Pr´ecis d’histoire rurale de la Belgique (Brussels, 1990), pp. 46–86. Nicholas, ‘Of Poverty and Primacy’, 37–40.

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Flemish immigration to England maritime regions, generally enjoyed greater freedoms, including freedom of movement, than in France, and the processes of land clearance and urban growth only accelerated their emancipation.149 The notion that ‘town air makes free’ (or that serfs who resided in a town for a year and a day were liberated from their bound status) was enshrined in the founding charter of Nieuwpoort in 1163, and in practice may have been much older.150 Such socioeconomic conditions constituted the background of Flemish emigration. Catastrophe narratives, though, make for much more interesting stories. The late thirteenth-century Welsh text Brut y Tywysogyon attributed twelfth-century Flemish immigration to devastating floods that forced segments of the county’s population to seek their livelihood abroad: That folk had come from Flanders, the land that lies near the Sea of Britain, because the sea had overwhelmed the land and its bounds and had thrown sand all over the ground, so that the whole land was unfruitful. And at last, since there was no place for them to live either on the coast, because of the sea, or in the hinterland, because of the great numbers of the people living in it, and because they could not remain all together – therefore that folk came to beg of King Henry [I] a place wherein to live and dwell.151

The story appears to have had considerable currency in late medieval England. It was picked up by the influential early modern English historian Raphael Holinshed (d. 1580), through whose writings the tale survived into nineteenth- and twentieth-century historiography.152 Though gripping, the inundation theory has been discredited by modern historians and geologists. There were no important floods in Flanders in the late eleventh century or the very beginning of the twelfth, the period when the sources would have the Flemish exile take place.153 But it would be hasty entirely to dismiss the flood story as merely evidence of the penchant of chroniclers for biblical parallels. Flooding did indeed occur in the Low Countries. Orderic Vitalis, relying on direct eyewitness 149 151 152

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150 Oorkonden, vol. 1, no. 222, p. 346, §10. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 104–6. Brut y Tywysogyon or the Chronicle of the Prince: Peniart MS. 20 Version, ed. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1952), pp. 27–8. For instance discussed by Hoare in Giraldus de Barri, Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales, A.D. MCLXXXVIII, ed. and trans. with notes by R. Hoare (London, 1806), vol. 1, pp. 196–7; and even as recently as in R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 98–9; also attributed as a factor driving Flemish immigration to Ireland by E. Varenbergh, Histoire des relations diplomatiques entre le comt´e de Flandre et l’Angleterre au Moyen Age (Brussels, 1874), p. 73. The anonymous author of ‘The Flemings in Pembrokeshire’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 2nd Series 1 (1850), 138–42, examines the theory’s historiography. The matter is excellently summed up by Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandriensis’, 106–7.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 accounts, tells of perhaps the most devastating inundation of the twelfth century: in 1134 the sea ‘poured over the land and, spreading rapidly for seven miles, overwhelmed churches and castles and cottages alike, and involved countless thousands of men and women of every order and rank in a common catastrophe’.154 The risk of flood damage was only increased by the process of land reclamation in coastal Flanders. Already in the 980s the economic losses sustained from the tendency of fields to become annually submerged are discussed in the correspondence of the monks of St Peter’s of Ghent.155 A near-contemporary hand noted in the Annales Blandiniensis that recurrent floods occurred over the winter of 1093–4.156 While not catastrophes which would have necessitated dispersal on a national scale, agricultural hardships created by periodic flooding would have been good reason for the population in maritime Flanders to look elsewhere for a place to live. The island just across the water was a natural destination; and experiences with burst levees could easily grow into tall tales of destructive floods with which first-generation settlers could regale their children and neighbours. Flemish peasant and artisan migration to England probably represented a gradual trickle of people in search of better ways to make a living, rather than a small number of mass movements forced by natural catastrophes. The following story, despite its unhappy ending, suggests some general features of small-scale community immigration. A group of thirty men and women under the leadership of a man called Gerard was apprehended in Worcester in 1165 and condemned to death for heresy by the Council of Oxford in 1166. The unfortunates had come to England in the early 1160s, probably via the port of Bristol, the maritime gateway of western England. William of Newburgh, writing thirty years later, noted that they had arrived from Germany, though it is possible that their home actually lay in German territories held by the Flemish counts, or in the Flemishspeaking parts of Flanders.157 The heretics were called weavers (textores), which points to an origin in the industrial towns of the Low Countries. They had probably hoped to flee religious persecution: Count Philip of Flanders in particular was known as a vigorous oppressor of non-Catholic 154

155 156 157

‘In Flandria mare noctu redundauit, et per vii miliaria repente diffusum basilicas et turres atque tuguria partier operuit, et innumera hominum milia utriusque sexus et ordinis et conditionis pari periculo absorbuit.’ OV, p. 440. Also mentioned by the fourteenth-century Flemish author John of Ypres, ‘Chronica Monasterii Sancti Bertini’, p. 799. Vanderputten, ‘Canterbury and Flanders’, 223–5, 237–8. ‘Annales Blandiniensis’, Les Annales de Saint-Pierre de Gand et de Saint-Amand, ed. P. Grierson (Brussels, 1937), p. 31. ´ William of Newburgh, Historia, pp. 131–4; H. Maisonneuve, Etudes sur les origines de l’inquisition (Paris, 1960), pp. 114–15.

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Flemish immigration to England sects.158 The fact that this group managed to evade hostile attention for half a decade suggests that they initially had little trouble assimilating into the local population. The region around the port of Bristol appears to have long boasted a Flemish presence: a community of Flemings lived in or near Gloucester around 1114, and brisk Anglo-Flemish trade is suggested by the shipping of six hundred sacks of grain to Flanders from estates of the archdeacon of Wells in 1208.159 In any case, the surviving records treat only the group’s religion, not their recent immigration, as noteworthy. Communities or households of such craftspeople, more orthodox in their religious beliefs and thus less conspicuous, probably settled in the vicinity of industrial and trading towns during times of flourishing Anglo-Flemish relations. FLEM ISH COM M UNITIES IN WALES The one relatively well-documented settlement of Flemish communities in the British Isles is that of Wales, where King Henry I created a number of settlements of Flemings sometime between 1107 and 1111, most probably in 1108.160 William of Malmesbury offers the fullest nearcontemporary account: The Welsh were in constant revolt, and King Henry maintained pressure on them by frequent expeditions until they surrendered; also by reliance on an admirable plan for reducing their ebullience, he removed into Wales all Flemings who were living in England. Many Flemings who had trooped over in his father’s time, relying on their kinship of his mother,161 were lying low in England, in such numbers as actually to seem a burden on the realm itself; and so he collected them all together, as though into some great midden, in the Welsh province of Rhos [in Pembrokeshire] with all their belongings and relatives, thereby simultaneously purging his kingdom and putting a brake on his headstrong and barbarous enemies.162 158

159 160

161 162

Andreas of Marchiennes, ‘Historia Succincta de Gestis et Successione Regum Francorum’, ed. G. Waitz, MGH Scriptores 26 (Hannover, 1882), p. 210; Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, nos. 157–8, pp. 207–10; Ralph of Coggeshall, Radulphi de Goggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson (RS 66, London, 1875), p. 122; Rigord, Histoire, p. 162. Historia et cartularium monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriæ, ed. W. Hart (London, 1863), vol. 1, p. 265; Rotuli Litterarum Patentium, pp. 78b–9. The matter was opened up by H. Owen, ‘Flemings in Pembrokeshire’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 5th Series 12 (1895), 96–106; and Dept, ‘Een Vlaamsk Kolonie’, 16–31. But for modern studies, see I. Rowlands, ‘The Making of the March: Aspects of the Norman Settlement in Dyfed’, ANS 3 (1980), 142–57, especially 146–8, and Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandriensis’, 99–118. Queen Matilda, the daughter of Count Baldwin V. ‘Walenses rex Henricus, semper in rebellionem surgentes, crebris expeditionibus in deditionem premebat, consilioque salubri nixus, ut eorum tumorem extenuaret, Flandrenses omnes Angliae accolas eo traduxit. Plures enim, qui tempore patris pro maternal cognatione confluxerant,

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Around the time of the resettlement, relations were cooling between the king and Count Robert II. The Flemings of Henry’s England were firstor second-generation immigrants, and may have come under suspicion of harbouring Flemish sympathies at odds with the king’s own policies. The king seemingly anticipated the open warfare that was to erupt in the 1110s, and by uprooting large chunks of the Anglo-Flemish population and by confining them in a far corner of the Welsh marches he ensured that the Flemings were in no position to cause him trouble. Henry must also have hoped that the Flemish colonies would act as a bulwark against the Welsh, as well as a check on local Norman interests.163 English and Norman immigrants settled in southern Wales as well. Henry exerted direct lordship over Pembrokeshire and in so doing created a local power base that was more directly aligned with the royal government than with the local Norman marcher lords.164 In Pembrokeshire, Flemish settlement was initially concentrated around the town of Haverfordwest.165 Several other Flemish settlements were scattered around western and southern Wales. A writ issued by Henry I in 1128–35 to the priory of St John the Baptist in Carmarthen, some fifty kilometres east of Haverfordwest in Carmarthenshire, addressed ‘omnibus fidelibus suis Francis et Anglicis Flamingis, et Walensibus de Walis’.166 Another little-known Flemish community grew up in Ceredigion, on the western coast, but the silence of later sources suggests that it was destroyed by Rhys ap Gruffudd’s invasion in 1163–4.167 Throughout the century Flemings frequently clashed with the native Welsh, either under Anglo-Norman command or as independent forces.168 The Pembrokeshire settlement proved the most durable in the face of Welsh aggression. As late as 1216 Gerald of Wales, in his Speculum Duorum, related a conversation in Flemish between his brother

163 164 165 166 167 168

occultabat Anglia, adeo ut ipsi regno pro multitudine onerosi viderentur; quapropter cum substantiis et necessitudinibus apud Ros, provintiam Walliarum, velut in sentinam congessit, ut et regnum defecaret et hostium brutam temeritatem retunderet.’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 726. For their original settlement in northern England, see above, pp. 183–4 Ibid., Gesta Regum, p. 552. A. Carr, Medieval Wales (New York, 1995), pp. 36–9; Rowlands, ‘Making of the March’, 151–3. The key study of Flemings in Wales is Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandriensis’, 99–118. Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandriensis’, 110–11. Cartularium Prioratus S. Johannis Baptiste de Caermarthen, ed. T. Phillips (Cheltenham, 1865), no. 33, p. 10. Brut y Tywysogyon, p. 63. Annales Cambriae, ed. J. Williams ab Ithel (RS 20, London, repr. 1965), pp. 34–6, 40, 51, 54, 58–60; Brut y Tywysogyon, pp. 27–8, 34, 40–5, 51–2, 54, 61, 63–4, 73–5, 97–8; Gerald of Wales, ‘Itinerarium Kambriae’, Giraldus Cambriensis Opera, vol. 6, ed. J. Dimock (RS 21, London, 1868), pp. 83, 102; John of Worcester, Chronicle, p. 228. OV, vol. 6, p. 442.

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Flemish immigration to England and a Pembrokeshire knight.169 In fact, Flemings operated in the region as a military power in their own right at least until 1220 when, in response to Flemish raids, Prince Llywelyn of Gwynedd marched into Pembrokeshire and burned Haverfordwest.170 The community survived; remarkably, Flemish was still being spoken in the area to the end of the sixteenth century.171 David Austin has recently called into question the notion of southern Pembrokeshire as a region where in the twelfth century the incoming English and their Norman lords displaced the native Welsh and replaced the area’s former structures of lordship and landholding with their own. The evidence for mass Anglo-Norman immigration into the area is indeed slight, and the conceit of a wholly Anglicanised southern Wales (as well the popular term ‘Little England beyond Wales’) owes a great deal to the political priorities of sixteenth-century Tudor historiography. It is more likely that the English replaced only the local elite, while keeping many of the local institutions and social structures intact. But even Austin admits that the one large-scale immigration movement that is documented by several independent sources – and often wheeled out to support the presumed existence of a similar English immigration – is that of the Flemings.172 What was the size of these Flemish settlements? Hard numbers elude us, but they were substantial enough to produce a military force that could protect them against the Welsh and initiate armed raids on their own. The host of Flemings that killed Owain ap Caradog in 1116 was large enough visibly to outnumber Owain’s own party of ninety men.173 At the Battle of Cardigan in 1136 the Welsh won a great victory against an army led by Anglo-Norman marcher lords, of which Flemings were said to compose a significant part. The figure of 3,000 slain on the English side is not reliable, but the battle was clearly an important confrontation.174 The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland record that a Flemish fleet bearing ‘seventy heroes, dressed in coats of mail’, sailed from Wales to participate in the Irish expedition of Richard fitz Gilbert of Clare, the earl of Pembroke, in 1170.175 If the number of Flemish soldiers – that is to say, adult men who could be pressed into 169 170 172 173 175

Gerald of Wales, Speculum Duorum or a Mirror of Two Men, ed. Y. Lef`evre and R. Huygens, trans. B. Dawson (Cardiff, 1974), pp. 36–8. 171 Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandriensis’, 112–17. Brut y Tywysogyon, p. 97. D. Austin, ‘Little England beyond Wales: Re-defining the Myth’, Landscapes 6, 2 (2005), 30–62, 37. 174 Ibid., pp. 51–2. Brut y Tywysogyon, pp. 44–5. Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, by the Four Masters, ed. J. O’Donovan, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1856), vol. 1, p. 1172. See also The Song of Dermot and the Earl: An Old French Poem, ed. G. Orpen (Oxford, 1892), pp. 193, 265.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 military service – was at a minimum in the hundreds, this would imply a total population of at least a few thousand and possibly many more. Immigration from Flanders throughout the twelfth century would have contributed to the community’s survival. Around 1112, a little after the initial establishment of the colony, a certain Wizo the Fleming arrived from Flanders to take up residence in the Pembrokeshire district of Daugleddau, where he built a castle and established himself as the local baron. A few other contemporary Flemish leaders are known: William of Brabant (d. 1110), Letard ‘the Little King’ (d. 1136/7) and Tancred, the castellan of Haverfordwest. Compared to the wealthy tenants-in-chief of the previous decades, Wizo was a petty lordling taking up a minor post in a backwater province, but he is nevertheless a rare example of a Flemish immigrant of baronial rank in the twelfth century. The fact that Wizo came directly from Flanders and may have been specifically invited to take up his post after William of Brabant’s death, either by the local Flemings or by King Henry I himself, underlines the fact that the Flemings were led by their own countrymen and affirms the likelihood of an early connection between the colony and the mother county.176 It is debatable just how representative the chroniclers’ picture was of an artificial, transplanted foreign community that was engaged almost continually in military conflict with the older Welsh population. Henry I’s initial establishment of the colony was driven by political and military considerations. The sociopolitical landscape in which the Flemings arrived bore a resemblance to that of England in the aftermath of the Conquest; indeed, the creation of the new communities probably resembled the development of the post-Conquest Flemish settlement in Northumbria. These characteristics must have remained to some degree throughout the twelfth century. Flemings engaged not only in warfare, however, but also in agriculture and commerce. It is known that the settlers reared sheep and produced cloth. In his Itinerary through Wales, Gerald described the Flemings of the region as A people brave and robust, ever hostile to the Welsh in frequent wars; a people, I say, well versed in commerce and woollen manufactories; a people anxious to seek gain by land or sea, in defiance of fatigue and danger; a hardy race, equally fitted for the plough or the sword.177 176

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The Cartulary of Worcester Cathedral Priory (Register I), ed. R. Darlington (Pipe Roll Society, New Series 38, London, 1969), no. 252, pp. 134–5, and see pp. xxxi–xxxiii for a summary of Wizo’s history. Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandriensis’, 99–104, 111–12. ‘Gens fortis et robusta, continuoque belli conflictu gens Kambrensibus inimicissima; gens, inquam lanificiis, gens mercimoniis usitatissima; quocunque labore sive periculo terra marique lucrum quaerere gens pervalida; vicissim loco et tempore nunc ad aratrum, nunc ad arma, gens

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Flemish immigration to England The author appended a rather quaint account of Flemish fortune-telling traditions that were still honoured in the community.178 The colony was clearly a society of significant size and variety, a self-perpetuating multigenerational settlement that contained not only fighting men, but women and children, craftspeople and farmers. Its vibrancy and energy are evident in the language and traditions maintained through successive generations. The society of post-Conquest England was polyglot and multiethnic; the Flemish settlement represented just one more hue in the kingdom’s demographic palette. Immigration today is conceived and discussed in terms of the penetration – whether perceived as benign or malignant – of an alien element into a society whose sense of self is well established by the structures of national identity. Though similar discourses existed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Norman Conquest and the introduction of a foreign elite had shattered the old certainties. Flemish immigration to England, and more broadly to the British Isles, took place in the context of a more cosmopolitan society than that of the Anglo-Saxon period, or of the thirteenth century to follow. Foreignness in the England of the early Norman kings was not unproblematic, but it was not exceptional or alien to the common experience. The Flemings mentioned in the thirteenth-century charter of Ilbert of Carency, referred to at the beginning of this chapter, elicited a note of surprise from the great medieval historian Frank Stenton; the formal language of the English chancery usually recognised only two gentes – the English and the French.179 But such conventions may have camouflaged an even more important Flemish presence in the kingdom than can be directly deduced from the evidence. The history of the Flemish experience in England was shaped by local circumstances and by the set of opportunities that the local social and political structures presented to the incomer. In Wales the political situation and recurring conflicts between the Welsh and other population groups undoubtedly fostered a strong consciousness among the Flemish settlers. In England, Flemish connections represented an asset that could be deployed for alliance, patronage, employment and local organisation, but there is no sense that they posed an obstacle to integration into the broader society. The gradual decline of the frequency of Flemish names

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promtissima.’ Gerald of Wales, ‘Itinerarium Kambriae’, pp. 83–4; trans. B. Roberts, Giraldus Cambriensis: Itinerary through Wales (Newtown, 1989), p. 48. See also Gerald of Wales, Speculum Duorum, p. 38, Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandriensis’, 105. 179 Stenton, The First Century, p. 29. Gerald of Wales, ‘Itinerarium Kambriae’, p. 87.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 in English sources throughout this period suggests a minority population giving up its distinctness.180 ‘Flemishness’ gradually became part of the settlers’ historical identity rather than of their present. As the twelfth century progressed, the paradigms of national and ethnic identity in England shifted and settled into new configurations. The Norman-descended elite began to develop a local identity shared with the English-speaking population. The development of this new post-Conquest English identity had a powerful impact on how Flemish immigrants and their offspring would be identified and perceived in England. 180

Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants, p. 7.

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Chapter 7

SOCIAL IDENTITY AND THE IMAGE OF FLEMINGS IN ENGLAND

In the middle of the twelfth century, during the reign of King Stephen, the Yorkshire chronicler Alfred of Beverley characterised the Flemings who had come to England and Wales as being ‘no less powerful in weapons and soldiers than the indigenous population, they have made large acquisitions there for themselves as fighters under the Normans’. Beverley’s assessment of Flemings was positive, or at least assimilative in the sense that he saw them as standing as equals with the other peoples of Britain. Yet a touch of apprehension and anxiety coloured the chronicler’s musings over what the future might hold for the co-existence of these peoples.1 Fifty years later, in the 1190s, another English historian fired off his assessment: Flemings were called to England by the king [Stephen], and they, envying the long-time inhabitants of the land, having left behind their native soil and their jobs of weaving, flocked into England in troops, and like hungry wolves proceeded energetically to reduce the fecundity of England to nothing.2

Portraying the Flemings as greedy, animal-like, a force of destruction and, remarkably, of low-class artisan origin, Gervase of Canterbury’s Gesta Regum paints the newcomers in an altogether different manner. What had changed? Gervase’s passage is reflective of a particular moment in the continuity of the social, political and cultural transformations that had taken place in English society. As will be discussed, this was the period that saw the evolution of new professional and class identities in western Europe, and the gradual emergence of a new postConquest English identity combining and uniting the Norman and the Anglo-Saxon English populations.3 By the beginning of the thirteenth 1 2

3

Alfred of Beverley, Aluredi Beverlacensis Annales, p. 10. For the full passage, see p. 178 above. ‘Vocati sunt igitur a rege Flandrenses in Angliam, qui terrae incolis ab olim invidentes, relicto natali solo relictoque texendi officio, catervatim in Angliam confluunt, et famelicorum more luporum Anglicanae terrae foecunditatem ad nihilum redigere studuerunt.’ Gervase of Canterbury, ‘Gesta Regum’, p. 73; trans. Amt, Accession, p. 87. The same sentiment is expressed in his earlier work: Chronicle, p. 111. On class identity, see also pp. 126–8 above.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 century a common culture combining aspects of the Norman French inheritance with a distinctive English identity had emerged, and has been preserved until today in poetry, historical writing, chivalric romance and other forms of literature. Against this background, there had also emerged a novel identification of Flemish soldiers with a specific set of characteristics and roles, drawing inspiration from the military and political exchanges between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world of the preceding generations. M ID-TWELFTH-CENTURY PERCEPTIONS OF FLEM ISH SOLDIERS Generalised images of Flemings as a group are rare in Norman and English sources before the late twelfth century. The scarcity of references in the contemporary accounts of the post-Conquest period suggests that Flemishness in England was experienced more at a family and kin-group level than as a broader ethnic identity that supported a sense of group unity among Flemings or people of Flemish descent as a whole. As we have seen, local networks, family history and kinship ties influenced Flemish immigration in England after the Conquest. These could be very important for the family members’ sense of self, and, as is illustrated by the twelfth-century fortunes of the Warenne family, descendants of the Flemish Gundrada of Oosterzele, could shape their political and social priorities.4 It is useful, however, to distinguish between family identity and ties within a particular group of immigrants and the more general notions of national or ethnic identity. Overall, in the first seventy years or so after the Battle of Hastings the Flemish population in England attracted little attention from the insular commentators. It was not until the civil wars of King Stephen’s reign that Flemings began to feature consistently as distinct actors in the works of Anglo-Norman chroniclers. In the Middle Ages the concepts often expressed by the Latin terms nacio (nation) or gens (people) supplied broad collective identity constructed from such building blocks as a shared sense of history, law, language, religious practice and tradition.5 Alfred of Beverley’s division of Britain into six nations c.1143 thus exhibits the interest in ethnicity and nationality that was widely shared among his contemporary authors. 4 5

See p. 206 above. Davies, ‘The Peoples of Britain and Ireland’, 1–20; D. Hadley, ‘Ethnicity and Acculturation’, in A Social History of England 900–1200, ed. J. Crick and E. van Houts (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 235–46. For discussion of the terminology, see G. Loud, ‘The Gens Normannorum – Myth or Reality’, ANS 4 (1981), 104–16.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England He was not the first English author to elaborate on the characteristics of the Flemish gens. A few decades earlier, Malmesbury had addressed Earl Robert of Gloucester, illegitimate son of Henry I: ‘From the Normans you inherit your skill in battle; from the Flemish your good looks; from the French your eminent nobility of character’.6 The historian also commented on the physical appearance and mannerism of the Flemish in his observations on the foreigners who came to England during the reign of King Edgar (959–75): ‘Their arrival had a very bad effect on [England’s] inhabitants, who learned from the Saxons unalloyed ferocity, from the Flemings a spineless physical effeminacy, and from the Danes a love of drinking’.7 Malmesbury based this passage on an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle by Archbishop Wulfstan II of York, which likewise criticised Edgar for inviting corrupting influences into the British Isles.8 Wulfstan did not elaborate on the particular vices of the newcomers, however, and Malmesbury’s passage must reflect his own prejudices. Ultimately this is only one man’s view, but it is striking how Malmesbury’s handsome, spineless Flemings stand in direct contrast with Beverley’s warriors some twenty years later, and how both of them diverge from the stereotyped image of Flemish soldiers as artisan–bandits described by Gervase of Canterbury later in the twelfth century. Gervase’s take on the Flemish as wolves and weavers looked back to the arrival of significant numbers of Flemish soldiers in England during the civil wars of King Stephen’s reign (1135–54). The behaviour of mercenaries and other soldiers was already the subject of ferocious criticism by chroniclers of the time. William of Malmesbury offers a viewpoint on the matter in his Historia Novella, composed contemporaneously with Beverley’s Annales, in the thick of the conflict period: As the king had this mass of treasure he could not lack helpers, particularly as he himself was a generous giver and, most inappropriately for a prince, a spendthrift. Knights of all kinds made a rush to him, men who served in light harness also, especially from Flanders and Brittany. They were a class of men full of greed and violence, who cared nothing for breaking into churchyards and plundering churches; moreover, they not only rode down members of religious orders, but even dragged them off to captivity; nor was it only foreign knights 6 7

8

‘Habetis ergo a Normannis bellandi peritiam, a Flandrensibus liniamentorum gratiam, a Francis generositatis eminentiam.’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 798. ‘Quorum adventus magnum provintialibus detrimentum peperit, quod a Saxonibus animorum inconditam ferocitatem, a Flandritis corporum eneruem mollitiem, a Danis potationem discerent.’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 240. ASC (E) 959. For the historical context of this passage, which concerns contacts with Scandinavia, see S. Jayakumar, ‘Some Reflections on the “Foreign Policies” of Edgar “the Peaceable”’, HSJ 10 (2001), 17–37.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 that acted in this way, but also some born in England, who hated King Henry’s peace because under it they had but a scanty livelihood.9

Malmesbury’s assignment of blame to Stephen is dictated by his partisanship to Earl Robert of Gloucester, Empress Matilda’s half-brother and chief supporter, but paid soldiers were hardly viewed more favourably by the author of Gesta Stephani (written in two phases: in 1148 and after Stephen’s death in 1154). In his work the milites stipendiarii appear uniformly as the embodiment of lawlessness and of the imposition of might over right. One unnamed robber baron ‘with a mixed body of peasants and stipendiary knights, harassing his neighbours in every direction, made himself unendurable to all, sometimes by insatiable pillage, sometimes by fire and sword’.10 Another, William of Dover, an ally of Robert of Gloucester, built a castle in Cricklade, and ‘with a large following of stipendiary knights, also bands of archers, made forays in every direction, restless and merciless; subduing the country far and wide on both banks of the river Thames, he committed the cruellest excesses on the king’s adherents’.11 These mid-twelfth-century sources do not, however, set Flemings apart as a group from other fighters. Malmesbury’s accusation that the king harboured foreign fighters is notable, but he is not supported by other chroniclers. The recruitment of paid soldiers as a readily available source of fighting power was common practice throughout the period. Stephen’s position as the count of Boulogne, and the fact that the exiled Flemish aristocrat William of Ypres was in his service, probably led to his employment of fighters from the southern Low Countries in particularly large numbers, but many leading magnates used foreign troops freely.12 Earl Robert of Gloucester himself had hired the notorious Robert fitz Hubert, and it was Earl Warenne’s Flemish soldiers who captured Earl 9

10

11

12

‘Hanc copiam gazarum habenti auxiliatores deesse non poterant, presertim cum esset ipse in dando diffusus, et, quod minime princepem decet, prodigus. Curebatur ad eum ab omnium generum militibus, et a levis armaturae hominibus, maximique ex Flandria et Britannia. Erat genus hominum rapacissimum et violentissimum, qui nichil pensi haberent vel cimiteria frangere vel aecclesias expilare, religiosi quinetiam ordinis viros non solum equis proturbare, sed et in captionem abducere; nec solum advene sed etiam indigenae milites, qui pacem regis Henrici oderant, quod sub ea tenui victu vitam transigebant.’ William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, p. 32. ‘Hic etenim cum indiscreto, tam rusticorum quam stipendiariorum militum, agmine vicinos suos circumquaque molestans, nunc depraedatione insatiabili, nunc igne et gladio omnibus se intolerabilem exhibebat.’ Gesta Stephani, p. 8. Gesta Stephani, p. 170: ‘militibusque stipendiariis, sed et sagittantium turmis secum copiose comitatis, immitis et inquietus quaquaversum rapiebatur; patriam sibi, ex utrosque Tamisii fluvii margine, latissime subiciens, in regales crudelissime efferuebat.’ M. Bennett, ‘The Impact of “Foreign” Troops in the Civil Wars of King Stephen’s Reign’, in War and Society in Medieval and Early Modern Britain, ed. D. Dunn (Liverpool, 2000), pp. 96–113.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England Robert at the Battle of Winchester.13 Geoffrey of Mandeville, who also employed Flemish soldiers, fought on both sides of the civil war.14 As Malmesbury relates, Flanders and Brittany were the chief areas of continental military recruitment during Stephen’s reign, but this geographical connection was not important in forming the opinion of contemporary chroniclers. Gervase’s point of view differed markedly from those of his literary predecessors. While they condemned the presence and the behaviour of the continental mercenaries, these writers did not firmly associate them, or their destructive traits, with any national identity. Nor did most historians of the time put particular emphasis on whom these mercenaries served; their attitude was one of distaste towards the soldiers, no matter who their patron was. The appearance of hired soldiers, foreign or native, in their writings merely exhibited the troubled nature of the times. Moreover, even the most notorious Flemings were not subjected to the same kind of invidious group characterisation as, for instance, the Welshmen serving as soldiers of the Anglo-Norman magnates: ‘Let the Welshmen he brings with him be no more than objects of scorn to you, for they prefer unarmed boldness to battle, and lacking both skill and experience in warfare, they charge like cattle towards the hunting-spears.’15 One of the more colourful characters in the mid-century drama was the Fleming Robert fitz Hubert, a knight of noble birth, whose misdeeds evidently attracted national attention. Robert’s tale is recorded at length by John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury and the author of the Gesta Stephani.16 He was a kinsman of William of Ypres and is first encountered as a stipendiarius of Earl Robert of Gloucester, for whom he captured Malmesbury Castle in September 1139. When Stephen arrived to lay siege to the fort, Robert either fled or negotiated a surrender through William’s mediation. This defeat apparently set him on a downward path, since Robert went rogue a little while later, seizing the castle of Devizes with a band of Flemish followers. His triumph did not last very long. He was captured in March 1140 while visiting his neighbour John the 13 14 15

16

John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, p. 302. For fitz Hubert, see directly below. Waltham Chronicle, pp. 80–3. ‘Walenses autem quos secum adduxit soli vobis despectui sint, qui inermem bello preferunt temeritatem, et arte et usu belli carentes quasi pecora decurrunt in venabula’, Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 734. Henry of Huntingdon attributed this comment to a speech by Baldwin fitz Gilbert of Clare, one of King Stephen’s supporters at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, though elsewhere the author himself described the Welsh contigent as, for instance, men who ‘possessed more daring than military skill’: p. 726. For English views of the Welsh, see below, pp. 237–8. Gesta Stephani, pp. 104–8; John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, pp. 284–90; William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, pp. 62, 74–6.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Marshal, father of the William Marshal who would a generation later achieve such fame on the tournament circuit. After refusing to hand over Devizes, Robert was hanged, either by John or by the vengeful earl of Gloucester. As a postscript, the Gesta Stephani notes that after Robert’s death his followers and relatives accepted a large sum of money from Stephen in payment for turning over the castle. In a nutshell, Robert fitz Hubert was a Fleming of aristocratic background, who had arrived in England at the invitation of Robert of Gloucester to lead a sizeable company of Flemish soldiers. Feeling fortune (or his patron’s favour) turn against him, Robert chanced a land grab. We do not know if he and his followers truly thought they could hold out against both main factions, or whether, more realistically, Robert estimated he could come to some sort of arrangement over his possession of Devizes post factum. The likelihood that he took the more pragmatic approach is suggested by the fact that he was trying to broker an alliance with John the Marshal, his closest neighbour, when the latter changed tack and imprisoned him. John of Worcester alludes to a complex series of negotiations between Robert fitz Hubert, John the Marshal and Earl Robert (including the very sizeable hostage payment of 500 marks from the earl), concluding that fitz Hubert was executed only after his final refusal to surrender the castle. It seems that Robert fitz Hubert was simply an adventurous nobleman who, backed by a band of loyal knights, gambled on the general breakdown of civil order to establish himself as a local strongman – a dramatis persona not so different from many others of this period. Robert’s Flemish origin was not particularly important, though militarily his outsider status was crucial: during his rebellion he was supported by relatives with whom he swore oaths of mutual loyalty and he also sent to Flanders for reinforcements. As these events took place within a year of political tensions breaking out into open conflict, no doubt there was added shock value in the realisation that order had degenerated so far as to allow an interloper boldly to seize land in the heart of England. Robert was deemed wicked (impius),17 cruel and savage (immanis et barbarus),18 but his wickedness was personal. The commentators’ concern at this stage was still with the general class of fighters, not with any specific Flemish subset. Only a few other examples of Flemish company leaders are given in the sources.19 A soldier’s or a knight’s Flemishness was descriptive, not determinative. 17 18 19

John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, p. 290. William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, p. 74. For example the Caldret brothers active in Gloucester: Gesta Stephani, p. 188.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England WILLIAM OF YPRES AND THE M UTABILITY OF M ERCENARY IDENTITY Because so many of the Flemings in England were there to perform military service, the issue of their relation to native military structures and institutions becomes an important one. Historians have perhaps too easily spoken about the foreign mercenaries of Stephen’s reign without taking into account that ‘mercenary’ itself is a modern English term laden with specific connotations of economic transaction that do not necessarily translate into the medieval context. The medieval Latin word mercenarius was certainly not a title to be bandied about in polite society, but a term of abuse, signifying an untrustworthy hireling.20 The sources typically use the word stipendiarius – a ‘stipendiary’ or ‘paid soldier’ – as the word designating a person whose term of service was temporary and who received a primarily monetary payment for it. But even this was not an uncomplicated category. The logistics of warfare – of organising, supplying and motivating a large body of armed men – meant that there was always an element of payment for military service. In purely economic terms little separated a mesnie knight attached to a royal or baronial entourage from a stipendiarius. The more important markers differentiating these categories were social and cultural, made up of class status and aspiration. The difficulty of isolating a clear-cut social identity for ‘mercenaries’ or ‘paid soldiers’ is increased first by the employment of paid soldiers by the landed elites, and second by the fact that members of all levels of society, from peasants to the highest ranks of the nobility, sold their military services even across political boundaries.21 The unavoidable similarity that paid military service established between disparate social classes could operate as a source of anxiety or alternatively as a spur to ambition. As we have seen, the twelfth century was a period of the reinvention of nobilitas, or noble culture and noble society, aggressively promoted in elite literary sources and celebrated on the French tournament circuits, which protected the exclusivity of elite identity by anchoring it in increasingly specific cultural and social descriptors. Especially from the second half of the twelfth century onwards, the increasingly class-conscious nobility sought to secure their position against the wealthy urban bourgeoisie and the developing administrative elite, and competed for patronage with military commanders of a low-class origin.22 This discourse provides 20 21 22

Brown, ‘Military Service’, p. 34. See its use in the Bible: John 10:12–13. More broadly on paid service, see Brown, ‘Military Service’, pp. 33–57; Napran, ‘Mercenaries and Paid Men in Gilbert of Mons’, p. 294; Prestwich, ‘War and Finance’, 19–43. For overviews, see Strickland, War and Chivalry; and Crouch, Birth of Nobility. For discussion, see pp. 126–8 above.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 the key to the subsequent development of the image of the Flemish soldiers in England, and frames the question whether the Flemings were insiders in English society or outsiders – ‘mercenaries’, whose only job was fighting. The career of Stephen’s Flemish right-hand man William of Ypres is (quite justly) always discussed whenever the topic of foreign paid soldiers in twelfth-century England is addressed.23 He is important first as an example of a Flemish nobleman who enjoyed a long and by-and-large successful career in twelfth-century England, and second because he became, in the eyes of late twelfth-century chroniclers, the face of the predatory Flemish mercenary soldier. Attitudes towards the man were already complex at the time. One extreme was recorded in Historia Anglorum by Henry of Huntingdon: ‘But up to now I have had to be silent on the subject of the fugitive William of Ypres. For words have not been invented which can properly describe the extent and ramifications of his treacheries, the filth and horror of his obscenities.’ Huntingdon’s statement is, however, put into a speech given by Earl Robert of Gloucester before the Battle of Lincoln in 1141. The leaders on both sides were similarly insulted in the account – Gloucester himself was mocked by Stephen’s partisan Baldwin fitz Gilbert of Clare as a man who ‘usually threatens much and does little, with the mouth of a lion and the heart of a rabbit, famous for his eloquence, notorious for his idleness’ – so the passage merely marks William as a person important enough to be the target of public denunciation.24 When he reappears just a little later in the Historia, it is just to give credit to his military expertise. Unlike the author of the Gesta Stephani, who has him fleeing the Battle of Lincoln in disgrace, Henry compliments his strategic acumen: So they all fled – all the king’s knights and William of Ypres, born in Flanders, a man who had been of consular rank and possessed of great prowess. As he was 23

24

For discussion of William’s career and his role in Stephen’s England, see Amt, Accession, pp. 87–8; Bennett, ‘The Impact of “Foreign” Troops’, pp. 102–6; J.-J. De Smet, ‘Notice sur Guillaume d’Ypres ou de Loo’, Nouveaux m´emoires de l’Acad´emie royale des sciences et belles lettres de Bruxelles 15 (Brussels, 1842), 3–30; R. Eales, ‘Local Loyalties in Norman England: Kent in King Stephen’s Reign’, ANS 8 (1986), 88–108; Eales, ‘William of Ypres’, ODNB; E. Warlop, ‘Willem van Ieper, een Vlaams condottiere (v´oo´ r 1104–1164)’, De Leiegouw 6 (1964), 167–92; Warlop, ‘Willem van Ieper’, De Leiegouw 7 (1965), 197–218. William’s career also aroused attention in Flanders. ‘Flandria Generosa’ gives him a central role in the events of Stephen’s reign: pp. 324–5. ‘At vero de Willelmo Yprensi fugitivo adhuc tacendum est. Nondum enim verba inventa sunt quibus digne dici possint excursus et amfractus proditionem eius, impuritas ete horror inmunditiarum eius.’ ‘Ipse quidem de more multum minatur, parum operatur, ore leoninus, corde leporinus, clarus eloquentia, obscurus inercia.’ Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, pp. 730, 734.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England a great expert in warfare, he saw the impossibility of assisting the king [Stephen, who was captured during the battle] and reserved his aid for better times.25

This was no sly insult; Henry records William’s key role in assisting Queen Matilda’s efforts at resistance after Lincoln.26 Born in the 1090s as the son of Count Philip of Loo and the grandson of Count Robert I of Flanders, William had a political career in Flanders that was fraught with setbacks. He had been a failed contender in the comital successions of both 1119 and 1127–8, and in the 1130s William’s ambitions finally led Count Thierry to exile him.27 William may already have been in royal service in 1136, when Stephen brought in Flemish soldiers to help deal with the rebellion of Baldwin of Redvers.28 He is first encountered as part of Stephen’s entourage in 1137, accompanying the king on a visit to Normandy, evidently at the head of a company of Flemings.29 Orderic Vitalis makes a point of contrasting William’s eagerness to engage the enemy with the treacheries of the local grandees that led to the failure of the war effort: William of Ypres was eager to engage his men in battle with the Angevins, but as the Normans were unwilling, out of envy, to give them loyal support he withdrew with his troops and, turning his back on his faithless allies, joined the king across the Seine.30

The loyalty of the Flemish contingent did not go unappreciated, but this too was a source of trouble for Stephen: He greatly esteemed William of Ypres and the other Flemings and placed exceptional reliance on them. Because of this the magnates of Normandy were much incensed, craftily withdrew their support from the king, and, out of envy for the Flemings, hatched all kinds of plots against them . . . During that campaign a serious quarrel broke out between the Normans and the Flemings and men on both sides were violently slain. As a result, the whole army was in a 25

26 27

28 30

‘Fugerunt igitur omnes equites regis et Willelmus Yprensis, a Flandria oriundus, vir exconsularis et magne probitatis. Qui, cum esset belli peritissimus, videns impossibilitatem auxiliandi regi, distulit auxilium suum in tempora meliora.’ Ibid., p. 736; Gesta Stephani, p. 112. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 738. Simon of Lobbes, ‘Simonis Gesta Abbatum S. Bertini Sithiensium’, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH Scriptores 13 (Hannover, 1881), pp. 658–9; Warlop, ‘Willem van Ieper’, De Leiegouw 6 (1964), 172–91. 29 Crouch, Reign of King Stephen, pp. 59–71. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 95. ‘Ibi Guillelmus de Ipro cum suis preliari cum Andegavensibus concupivit, sed Normannis prae invidia fideliter illos iuvare nolentibus iden cum suis recessit, atque infidos consortes derelinquens ad regem trans Sequanam accessit.’ OV, vol. 6, pp. 482–4.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 ferment and most of the leaders went off without taking leave of the king, each one followed by his own troops of dependants.31

The event was apparently a dispute concerning leadership positions in the army; it led to the final collapse of the war effort and forced Stephen to withdraw his forces.32 At this stage of his career, William, who can have been in Stephen’s service for at most a few years, was an outsider to Anglo-Norman baronial society. William’s eagerness, which so sharply contrasts with the disloyalty of the Norman barons, evinces his dependence on royal favour, and his status as a foreigner was underlined by his leadership of a company of his countrymen. William’s devotion eventually paid off and he enjoyed Stephen’s esteem for the rest of the king’s life. Emerging as one of Stephen’s trusted men, he was, together with Waleran of Beaumont, awarded the command of the second attempt to pacify Normandy in 1138.33 Such new men probably were not popular among the established aristocracy, who may have seen the foreigners’ political gains to be at their expense.34 But at the same time they provided Stephen with a group of supporters on whom he might depend. It is probably no coincidence that the last royalist stronghold in Normandy to yield to Count Geoffrey, the castle of Arques, was commanded by William the Monk, a Flemish vassal of Stephen.35 William of Ypres continued to be one of the king’s key supporters in the 1140s. He participated in the Battle of Lincoln in 1141 and later that year commanded troops at the siege of Winchester, in which Earl Robert of Gloucester was captured. Robert’s capture was a pivotal moment in the course of the conflict, and his exchange against Stephen revived 31

32

33 34

35

‘Guillelmum de Ipra aliosque Flandrenses admodum amplexatus est, et in illis precipue fisus est. Unde proceres Normannorum nimis indignati sunt, suumque regi famulatum callide subtraxerunt, eisque invidentes pluribus modis insidiati sunt . . . Tunc in illa expeditione gravissima seditio inter Normannos et Morinos orta est atque cedes hominum utriusque parties feralis facta est. Hinc totus exercitus turbatus est, et plurima pars principum insalutato rege profecta est, ductorem quoque suum unaquaeque turma clientum prosecuta est.’ Ibid., pp. 484–6. Orderic’s ‘Morinos’ refers to the Flemish contingent. This clash is also related by Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 132; John of Marmoutier, ‘Historia Gaufredi Ducis Normannorum et Comitis Andegavorum’, Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise, ed. L. Halphen and R. Poupardin (Paris, 1913), p. 225. William of Malmesbury claimed that the fracas occurred when Stephen, at the instigation of William of Ypres, planned to ambush and imprison Earl Robert of Gloucester. The other accounts do not support this version, however, and considering Malmesbury’s partisanship it may be a fabrication to justify Gloucester’s later defection to Empress Matilda. Historia Novella, p. 38. OV, vol. 6, pp. 514–16. Gervase of Canterbury later noted this sentiment, though the chronicler’s assertion that Stephen’s favouritism of foreigners was the true cause of the civil war was dictated by his political and literary agenda. Gervase of Canterbury, ‘Gesta Regum’, p. 73; and see below, pp. 241–4. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, pp. 149–50. On Stephen’s political patronage and domestic reforms, see Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, pp. 84–97.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England the royal faction. William’s central position among the king’s supporters is emphasised by the fact that the earl was in his keeping until the hostage exchange was effected.36 Subsequently, William continued to serve Stephen both as a general and as the chief administrator of Kent (he was never appointed earl of Kent but his duties and powers are understood to have been those of one).37 He appears as a witness in some fifty-five royal charters up until c.1148.38 By that time William was in his fifties, was possibly blind, and had retired from an active role in Stephen’s following. He remained locally very important, however, and held Kentish royal properties in custody until 1157, or three years after Henry II’s accession in 1154; in the 1156 Pipe Roll these were still listed as worth a lordly £444 15s 7d.39 By this time William had repaired relations with Thierry and was able to retire to his estates in Flanders, where he died in 1164.40 A sense of professional identity does appear to have existed among paid soldiers in the early twelfth century. In a well-known passage Orderic Vitalis writes that in the resolution of the siege of the castle of Bridgnorth in 1102, the stipendiary knights (milites stipendiarii) of the losing side, who had been forced into capitulating by their turncoat allies, publicly lamented their defeat and ‘called the whole army to witness the tricks of these plotters, so that their downfall might not bring contempt to other paid soldiers’.41 These stipendiarii clearly expressed a group identity, and saw a difference between themselves and the permanent garrison of the fort that had betrayed them. It is, however, useful to adopt a more nuanced analysis for those paid soldiers serving on a longer-term basis. Stephen Morillo has argued that traditional analysis of the status of mercenaries, stipendiary soldiers and other fighting men, and of the expectations associated with them, fails to take into account the variety 36 38

39 40 41

37 Davis, King Stephen, p. 143. John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 3, p. 302. RRAN, vol. 3, 1135–1154, nos. 3–6, pp. 1–2, no. 8, p. 3, no. 16, pp. 5–6, nos. 35–6, pp. 12–13, no. 85, p. 33, no. 114, p. 42, no. 163, pp. 59–60, no. 176, pp. 63–4, no. 196, p. 72, no. 202, p. 74, no. 207, p. 76, no. 261, p. 93, no. 273, p. 99, no. 276, pp. 102–3, no. 294, pp. 111–12, no. 300, pp. 113–14, no. 406, p. 155, no. 410, p. 157, no. 460, p. 173, nos. 477–8, pp. 178–9, nos. 483–4, pp. 180–1, nos. 507–9, pp. 189–90, nos. 511–12, p. 191, nos. 537–8, p. 199, no. 540–2, p. 200, no. 550, p. 203, no. 627, p. 231, no. 649, p. 241, no. 679, pp. 251–2, no. 694, p. 256, no. 740, pp. 272–3, no. 743, p. 273, no. 760, pp. 280–1, no. 842, p. 310, nos. 846–7, p. 312, no. 849, pp. 313–14, no. 851, p. 313, nos. 859–60, pp. 315–16, no. 922, p. 336, no. 961, pp. 355–6. A few are likely to be forgeries. PR2 Henry II (1155–6), p. 65; Eales, ‘Local Loyalties’, 100–1. ‘Flandria Generosa’, p. 325; Warlop, ‘Willem van Ieper’, De Leiegouw 7 (1965), p. 209. ‘Qui egredientes inter cateruas obsidentium plorabant, seseque fraudulentia castrensium et magistrorum male supplantatos palam plangebant, et coram omni exercitu ne talis eorum casus aliis opprobio esset stipendiariis complicum dolos detegebant.’ OV, vol. 6, p. 28; discussed in Chibnall, ‘Mercenaries’, p. 91.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 of circumstances under which military troops have served throughout history. Rather than concentrating on the precise contemporary usage of such terms as stipendiarius or mercenarius, our understanding of what constitutes a mercenary should be based on the fighters’ level of social embedment and on the political or economic context of their terms of service.42 If a soldier’s relation to these changed, so could his position in society and the expectations that others had of him. Over the twenty years of his career in England, having started as a foreigner and outsider, William of Ypres graduated to being as much part of the kingdom’s political and social life as any Anglo-Norman lord. Once he became established in Stephen’s circle, William’s social status began to mutate. It is possible that Willam and his Flemish company could be categorised as ‘paid soldiers’ in their early years in Stephen’s service – we do not know much about their terms of service, or their relationship with the royal household – but by the 1140s William was an Anglo-Flemish aristocrat embedded in the kingdom’s social and political life. It is not by any means certain that he even led an exclusively Flemish force in his later years, since the last time this is explicitly stated is in Orderic Vitalis’s account of the battle in Lincoln in 1141.43 William did continue to associate with Flemings. In the late 1140s, he is encountered in the company of a handful of Flemings, including one ‘Castellan Fromold’. This was his half-brother Castellan Fromold of Ypres, who supported William in the failed revolt against Count Thierry in 1130, and was subsequently deposed. Fromold was probably a member of a company of Flemish nobles and knights who joined William in his exile, and the two remained allies.44 But, having risen to the fore among Stephen’s supporters, William may have diversified and expanded his forces; his ability to hold Kent for the royalists later in 1141 shows that he was capable of managing Anglo-Normans.45 Only William’s Flemish origins distinguished him from the Anglo-Norman magnates and, given the homogeneity of francophone aristocratic culture in north-western Europe, this was a relatively insignificant barrier in day-to-day affairs. Military service abroad was a potentially very lucrative entryway into elite society. What spurred many soldiers into embarking on that path 42

43 44

45

S. Morillo, ‘Mercenaries, Mamluks and Militia: Towards a Cross-Cultural Typology of Military Service’, in Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. J. France (Leiden, 2008), pp. 243–260. OV, vol. 6, p. 542. Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Pierre de Loo de l’ordre de Saint Augustin, 1093–1794, ed. L. van Hollebecke (Brussels, 1870), no. 9, pp. 15–16; Chronique et cartulaire de l’abbaye de Bergues-SaintWinoc de l’ordre de Saint-Benoˆıt, ed. A. Pruvost (Bruges, 1875), vol. 1, p. 109; Warlop, Flemish Nobility, vol. 1.1, p. 213; Warlop, ‘Willem van Ieper’, De Leiegouw 7 (1965), 202. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 738.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England was the hope not only of monetary gain but of the acquisition of land and social advancement.46 The Flemish military leaders, like William of Ypres, who appear in contemporary sources were members of the elite and had expectations corresponding to their status. Similar concerns probably existed across the social spectrum: while it is far more difficult to trace the histories of soldiers from humbler backgrounds, long-term aspirations must have weighed in their considerations as well. What did Robert fitz Hubert’s men think of their leader’s plan to seize the castle of Devizes? Did Robert present it to them as offering a comfortable alternative to a life on the battlefield and was there much hopeful toasting to their future on the eve of their conquest? A soldier who acquired land, settled down and become part of local society entered a vastly different world from that of an itinerant stipendiarius. The ambitions that led many Flemings to serve as paid soldiers in England could be fulfilled only by abandoning the identity of a paid soldier and by becoming integrated into society. This mutability of public and personal identity was a key component of the experience of Flemings from military backgrounds in mid-twelfth-century England. But while they opened up avenues to advancement and integration, these dynamics also entailed vulnerability. An identity that was open to reinvention was also subject to rejection or hostile reimagining. ENGLISH IDENTITY, AND FLEM INGS IN THE CHRONICLE OF JORDAN FANTOSM E The twelfth century was a fertile period for the creation of new identities in England. The chronicles cited above were part of the much-celebrated Anglo-Norman literary and historical resurgence that took place some two generations after the Conquest. This generation of writers is possibly the first that can be properly called Anglo-Norman, as opposed to Anglo-Saxon or Norman, and the literary revival has been attributed to the urgent desire to reconcile the Norman and Anglo-Saxon aspects of English history. This dual heritage was exemplified in person by the chroniclers Orderic Vitalis (1075–c.1142), William of Malmesbury (c.1090–c.1142) and Henry of Huntingdon (c.1088–c.1157), all three of whom were Norman on one side of their family and Anglo-Saxon on the other. Of central importance to their historical understanding was the reassessment of the events of their parents’ lifetimes and the assimilation of the Anglo-Saxon English past into a continuous narrative with the post-Conquest present, thereby creating a synthesis explaining the 46

Brown, ‘Military Service’, pp. 38–40.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 current state of the world.47 William of Malmesbury, probably the most influential English historian of his generation, construed English history in his Gesta Regum Anglorum (written between 1118 and 1125 and revised over the following decades) as the unfolding story of a people on a journey from barbarism to civilisation. The Norman Conquest did not disrupt this historical progress, or invalidate and reset the national narrative. It was only its latest phase: though their military defeat by the Normans was politically disastrous, the English were further civilised by their newfound membership in the continental French-speaking cultural community.48 The twelfth century thus saw the reinvention of English identity.49 Pinning down the exact years during which the major shift in popular consciousness took place, however, is more contentious. John Gillingham has argued that, once the conceptual shift from hostility to co-existence between the Normans and the English began, it was over quickly, and that a unified sense of national identity was already firmly rooted in the 1140s. In his view the feeling of togetherness and common cause was exemplified in Henry of Huntingdon’s famous account of the Battle of the Standard against the Scots of 1138. There, emboldened by the rousing speech of Bishop Ralph of Orkney, gens Normannorum et Anglorum rallied as one people against a common threat.50 But, as other historians have pointed out, there is evidence, especially among the higher aristocracy, that feelings of ethnic distinctiveness lingered for a few generations 47

48

49

50

R. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 4, the Sense of the Past’, TRHS, 5th Series 23 (1973), 243–63, is seminal on this topic. See also A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550–1307 (London and New York, 1996), pp. 151–246; E. van Houts, ‘Historical Writing’, in A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World, ed. C. Harper-Bill and E. van Houts (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 103–21; A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 164–86. J. Gillingham, ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’, in Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 3–18, 5–6; Gillingham, ‘The Context and Purposes of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain’, in ibid., pp. 19–39, 28–9; Gillingham, ‘Civilizing the English? The English histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research 74 (2001), 17–43. And also see K. Fenton, Gender, Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 86–95. For overviews, see Carpenter, Struggle, pp. 1–25; M. Clanchy, England and Its Rulers, 3rd edn (Oxford, 2006), pp. 228–45; I. Short, ‘Tam Angli quam Franci: Self-Definition in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS 18 (1995), 153–75; H. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity 1066–c. 1220 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 56–82, and passim. J. Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation’, in Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 123–44. Henry of Huntindgon, Historia Anglorum, pp. 714–16; also found in Aelred of Rievaulx, ‘Relation de Standardo’, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, vol. 3, ed. R. Howlett (RS 82, London, 1889), pp. 181–99, 185–9. The importance of this account was originally highlighted by R. Davis, The Normans and Their Myth (London, 1976), pp. 66, 124.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England longer. Certainly the Angevin royal family had a very loose sense (if any at all) of their Englishness throughout the twelfth century.51 Undoubtedly the process of amalgamating ethnic identities was already under way in the 1140s and the establishment of any sense of common identity represents a substantial shift from the previous generation. But it is doubtful that all nuance and complexity had now been smoothed away. Rather than concentrating on seeking out precise moments of cultural sea change, in the context of this discussion I shall consider the twelfth century as a period of continuing conversations about collective identities, embodying not only ethnic and national identity, but also class and family identity. A term that has given historians of English identity much food for thought is Normanangli, or ‘Norman-English’, the closest medieval equivalent to our common neologism ‘Anglo-Norman’. Normanangli recurs as both noun and descriptor for rex, regina, regnum, ecclesia, principes, and primus in a twelfth-century text traditionally known as the Hyde Chronicle, though more appropriately called the Warenne Chronicle, an account of English and Norman history from the time of Duke William of Normandy to the early 1120s.52 The chronicle and the term have been varyingly seen by David Bates as evidence of the existence of a twelfth-century hybrid national identity, ‘the unification or indivisibility of England and Normandy after 1066’; sidelined by John Gillingham as the invention of an author writing in Normandy in the later years of Henry I’s reign, and therefore unimportant to the new English identity emerging across the Channel; and regarded by Ian Short as a linguistic device to identify people of Norman descent as a subgroup within the greater collective of the English people.53 Much depends, of course, on the particular circumstances of the chronicle text’s creation. Elisabeth van Houts, who is completing a new edition of the chronicle together with Rosalinda Love, has identified it as commissioned by the Warenne family, the earls of Surrey, in the 1140s or 1150s. It was most probably a part of an appeal dossier compiled by the Warenne heir Isabella and her husband, William of Blois, after Henry II’s seizure of their properties in 1157. Van Houts has convincingly argued that the chronicle, which highlights the Warenne family’s role in supporting Henry’s own ancestors, formed part of Isabella’s and William’s 51 52 53

Carpenter, Struggle, pp. 3–8; Thomas, The English and the Normans, pp. 56–69. King, queen, realm, church, and magnates. ‘Chronicon Monasterii de Hyda’, for example pp. 296, 300–3, 309, 311. Bates, ‘Normandy and England’, 877–80, quote at 880; Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’, pp. 142–4; Short, ‘Tam Angli quam Franci’, 164–5. For other comments, see also C. Hollister, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London, 1986), pp. 46–7; Le Patourel, The Norman Empire, p. 213.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 protests against the loss of their family lands, and she has also drawn attention to how the precedence of ‘Norman’ over ‘English’ emphasises the former’s primacy.54 In this context, the use of the term Normanangli acquires the specific connotation of reminding King Henry – the son of Count Geoffrey of Anjou, and a relative newcomer to the elite society that the Warennes had long been part of – of his own family’s heritage as the Norman-descended rulers of England. The very specific goal of the chronicle explains why the term is not encountered elsewhere and also demonstrates the flexibility with which such identity labels might be invented. The Warenne case thus illustrates that an individual person or a family not only could manipulate aspects of their public identity for political emphasis but also could project manipulated identities upon others. It was in the context of such continuing concerns over social identity that the prevailing image of Flemings would harden over the course of the second half of the twelfth century. A rich source of literary portrayals of Flemings in this period is preserved in the long metrical poem composed c.1174–5 by Jordan Fantosme, probably a clerk of the bishop of Winchester.55 The poem is a vivid verse account of the history of the Angevin civil war of 1173–4, one of the great crises of the twelfthcentury Anglo-Norman world, which pitted King Henry II against a rebel faction spearheaded by his son, Young King Henry, and the latter’s foreign allies.56 The work’s principal audience was aristocratic, and Fantosme’s direct address to Henry II has been taken to mean it was intended for recital at the royal court. As an author, Fantosme had a tricky balance to achieve. Henry II had prevailed in the conflict, and the defeated faction had been reconciled with the old king. Many of the aristocrats who had sided with the Young King had likewise been pardoned, including his brothers Richard and Geoffrey. The younger Henry was restored to his rights and fully expected to succeed his father. Fantosme’s work is essentially an attempt to make sense of the recent conflict and to interpret and present the events in such a manner as to encourage reconciliation between the factions involved in the hostilities.57 54 55 57

Van Houts, ‘The Warenne View of the Past’, 110–14. This will be expanded in the introduction to the forthcoming edition of the Warenne Chronicle: The Warenne Chronicle (forthcoming). 56 On the war, see pp. 39–41 above. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, pp. 11–14. Key studies of Fantosme’s Chronicle include Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, ed. R. Johnston, pp. xi–xlix; L. Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 81–120; P. Bennet, ‘La chronique de Jordan Fantosme’, Cahiers de civilisation m´edi´eval 40 (1997), 35–56; P. Damian-Grint, ‘Truth, Trust and Evidence in the Anglo-Norman Estoire’, ANS 18 (1995), 63–78; R. Johnston, ‘The Historicity of Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History 2 (1976), 159–69; A. Lodge, ‘Literature and History in the Chronicle of Jordan Fantosme’, French

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England The war was not simply a struggle between father and son and their respective Anglo-Norman allies. As we have seen, Young King Henry had been supported (and encouraged) in his rebellion by Louis VII of France, King William the Lion of Scotland, and several Frankish territorial princes, including the counts Theobald V of Blois, Philip of Flanders and Matthew of Boulogne. Yet Fantosme treats the conflict almost solely as an invasion of England by foreign powers, as opposed to a civil war reaching through the Angevin domains. Most of the action in the poem (1,356 out of 2,065 lines) takes place in Northumbria and deals with the battles against William of Scotland, and an important interlude (305 lines) takes place in East Anglia, where an army of loyalists defeated Earl Robert II of Leicester and his force of Flemish soldiers. Though important battlegrounds, historically neither of these regions could be considered the principal theatre of war. Fantosme’s geographical focus may have been influenced by his own experiences during the conflict – he claims to have witnessed King William’s capture at Alnwick in July 117458 – but this restricted handling of events also serves his narrative purpose: the presence of foreign soldiers in these theatres, and the absence of the principal Angevin leaders, allows Fantosme to dissociate the conflict from its origin as an internal struggle within the royal dynasty, and to present it as a defence of the kingdom by the English nobility against alien aggressors. He offers a powerful argument for the unity of the land and its people, transcending any inter-dynasty dispute.59 Despite its function as a panegyric to the Anglo-Norman nobility, Fantosme’s work, checked against other sources, is an essentially accurate account of the events it treats. The poem dramatises many scenes in which the motivations and deeds of the protagonists reinforce patterns familiar in aristocratic thought of the time; the work has been called ‘one of the most important sources for the study of the mentalit´e of Anglo-Norman knighthood’.60 With its historical verisimilitude flavoured with manifest ideological and political motives, the Chronicle affords us evidence to deduce the position Flanders and its inhabitants occupied in AngloNorman culture and society. Count Philip of Flanders has a prominent role in the Chronicle as a leading supporter of Young King Henry. We know from other sources that Philip was closely allied with the Young King from the start of

58 59 60

Studies 44 (1990), 257–70; M. Strickland, ‘Arms and the Men: War, Loyalty and Lordship in Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle’, Medieval Knighthood IV (1990), 187–220. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 132, lines 1768–9, p. 134, line 1804; P. Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 74–6. Ashe, Fiction and History, pp. 97–105; Strickland, ‘Arms and the Men’, pp. 196, 210–11. Strickland, ‘Arms and the Men’, pp. 187, 191–3.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 the conflict, and that he extracted significant concessions for his help, including the promise of lordship over Kent; his backing was a crucial factor in determining the course of events.61 Fantosme is eager to portray Philip as a man of great status and tremendous martial energy. As Fantosme’s Chronicle opens and the conspirators first convene, even Louis of France is overcome with dread at the thought of opposing King Henry; it is a rousing speech by Philip that persuades the assembled princes to action.62 Philip’s support and Flemish military power are crucial to William of Scotland, while the count also places men at the disposal of the younger Henry.63 Fantosme makes it clear that the count is one of the principal agents of strife. Henry II complains, ‘Harsh things are said about me because I stand up for my rights, and I am opposed often by those who rule Flanders’.64 Later, the king barks to the Scottish envoys: ‘Tell the king of Scotland that I am in no anxiety about any war my son is now waging against me, nor about the king of France and his men, nor about the count of Flanders, who is invading my lands not for the first time.’65 The threat Philip poses is not limited to his military challenge, but extends to political machinations: the loyalty of the people of London to Henry II is proved by their resistance to the promises of Flemish envoys.66 In the 1170s, Philip was at the peak of his power as count of Flanders and Vermandois, lord of a wealthy and mighty principality immediately adjacent to the Angevin regnum, and Fantosme’s depiction of Philip’s role underlines the status of Flanders as one of the great powers of north-western Europe. The Chronicle also features the Flemish troops that fought for William of Scotland in his invasion of northern England. These Flemings are presented as valiant warriors, eager in their service: The king of Scotland had his pavilions, his tents, and his marquees pitched there, and his earls and barons assembled, and he said to his noblemen: ‘My lords, what shall we do? As long as [Castle] Prudhoe stands we shall never have peace.’ Whereupon the Flemings said: ‘Then we’ll demolish it! Or you’ll do the wrong thing if you pay us our wages or find us our keep.’67 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 44–75; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 46–64. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 4, lines 31–40. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, pp. 30–4, lines 407–59 at 450–1. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 18, lines 219–20. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 26, lines 342–5. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 68, lines. 916–17. ‘La fist li reis l’Escoce tendre ses paveilluns, ses trefs et ses acubes, ses cuntes ses baruns, e dit a sun barnage: “Seignurs, kel la ferums? Tant cum Prudhomme estoise, ja mes pes n’avrums.” C ¸ o d¨ıent li Flameng: “Nus l’agraventerums! U mar nus durrez soldeies ne livreisuns.”’ Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 46, lines 599–604.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England William’s campaign through Northumbria was (like much of medieval warfare) a sequence of castle sieges, and the Flemish soldiers are often seen at the forefront of the battle. William’s Flemings were armoured serjeantes or men-at-arms, professional soldiers who often fought alongside milites in the southern Low Countries.68 Fantosme is not reluctant to show his admiration for their abilities. At the siege of the castle of Wark, he writes, By a wonderful feat of arms they [the Flemings] stormed through to the ditches . . . I have never seen a better defence in either of the two kingdoms: the Flemings were bold and full of courage and their opponents ferocious in their stronghold.69

Their bravery serves the narrator’s agenda. Flemings, presented as competent and powerful fighters who could engage with the defenders of the realm in a fair fight, served as a contrast to the vast, undisciplined mass of the Scottish army. This depiction of the Scots was a familiar one. Henry of Huntingdon’s conceptual moment of unity between the English and the Normans at the Battle of the Standard in 1138 occurred in the context of a confrontation with the same foreign power. Internal unity was thereby created through a contrast with the ‘other’, a demonised outsider; this polemical technique is encountered in many literary traditions and among many societies and cultures.70 The Scots were not only enemies but also outsiders to the Norman and English way of life: they were portrayed as a barely controlled band of murderers and pillagers, devoid of the civilised dignity of their opponents.71 William of Malmesbury’s construction of the English as a ‘civilised’ nation leaned heavily on the contrasting designation of the ‘Celtic’ peoples of Scotland, Wales and 68

69

70

71

They are so identified in Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 92, line 1236. On the division between knightly and non-knightly soldiers that emerged during this very period, see above, p. 126. Fantosme may have, of course, chosen to ignore the presence of Flemish knights in William’s army, as he did in his description of the Battle of Fornham: see below, p. 239. ‘Par merveillus hardement sunt venuz es fossez . . . Unc ne vi meillur defens dedenz ces dous regnez: Flamenc esteient hardiz e mult acuragiez, e li autre mult engr´es dedenz lur fermetez.’ Ibid., p. 90. The scholarship on the ‘other’ is large, but for an introduction see T. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (London, 1993), especially pp. 36–45, 111–13. In academic literature the concept hails back to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Ph¨anomenologie des Geistes (published in 1807), where Hegel used it in an abstract sense as describing the encounter and relationship between two separate consciousnesses. Its subsequent analytical descent is complex, but suffice here to note that in modern political and ethnographical scholarship it was widely popularised (if not invented) by Edward Said in his 1978 book Orientalism. G. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans A. Miller with analysis by J. Findlay (Oxford, 1977), pp. 111–19; E. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London, 2003), p. 1 and passim. Henry of Huntindgon, Historia Anglorum, p. 710. For a similar view see also Richard of Hexham, ‘De Gestis Regis Stephani et de Bello Standardii’, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, vol. 3, ed. R. Howlett (RS 82, London, 1886), pp. 151–3.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Ireland as barbarian peoples, gentes barbari. Even in their civilian life the Celts lacked such simple markers of civilisation as access to fine goods through urban markets.72 Fantosme’s denigration of the Scottish host is situated in a lengthy tradition of such accounts, and he refines it by juxtaposing the enemy contingents; the Flemings do the hard work of taking castles, occasionally assisted by ‘border sergeants’ and the French (or Anglo-Scottish) allies of the Scottish king, while the savage Scottish forces loot the countryside.73 By this conceit the author manages to stigmatise the main Scottish enemy as being beneath contempt as military adversaries, while still convincingly presenting William’s army as a serious threat to the kingdom. This portrait of the Flemish fighting men emerges as largely favourable: the Fleming is a competent and valorous, albeit non-knightly, warrior. The positive image is not deployed for its own sake, however, but to stress the greater ignominy of the Celtic barbarian – by the 1170s a well-established stock stereotype image in English literature. Yet another group of Flemish fighters appears in the Fantosme Chronicle, and the author’s treatment of them is completely different. Earl Robert of Leicester was a supporter of the Young King and had raised an army on the Continent – mostly Flemish, though the force also contained some Frenchmen and Frisians – and brought it over to East Anglia after the failed peace conference of October 1173. Leicester, allied with Earl Hugh Bigod of Norfolk, achieved some mixed successes in Suffolk but his campaign was soon cut short by the arrival of an army led by the chief justiciar Richard of Lucy and Henry II’s Constable Humphrey of Bohun. A battle took place on 16 October at Fornham, near the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, in which Leicester was defeated and captured. The earl’s forces were routed, many of his soldiers killed and the rest taken prisoner. The battle was important in securing England for Henry II, and it remained fixed in local memory as a milestone event: around 1203 Joscelin of Brakelond anchored his chronicle of Bury St Edmunds in history with a reference to it: ‘I begin in the year in which the Flemings were taken prisoner outside the town’.74 72

73 74

William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, pp. 78, 350, 726, 738–40; Gillingham, ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’, pp. 3–18; Gillingham, ‘The Context and Purposes of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain’, in Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 19–39, 27–8; Thomas, The English and the Normans, pp. 310–15. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 126, lines 1700–4, p. 128, lines 1723–4, p. 140, lines 1894–903; Strickland, War and Chivalry, pp. 311–12. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, pp. 58–80, lines 782–1095; Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, pp. 60–2; Jocelin of Brakelond, The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, ed. and trans. H. Butler (London, 1949), p. 1; William of Ardres, ‘Willelmi Chronica Andrensis’, p. 711.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England Fantosme’s account of the events is replete with heightened nationalistic sentiment. He presents the fight not as a clash between the forces of rival Anglo-Norman barons, but as a robust defence of England against an outside enemy. The royalist army contains ‘many a noble knight of English birth’ (maint gentil chevalier d’Engleterre n´e),75 and one of the English heroes valiantly ‘cuts down great numbers of these foreigners’ (gent estrange).76 Providence favours the English, for there is no doubt that they are an instrument of God. As the battle begins, Fantosme appeals to his imagined audience: ‘Now, my lord barons, hear of the divine vengeance that God brought down on Flemings and on the men of France.’77 And as it concludes, the vanquished are condemned to Hell: ‘crows and buzzards descend on their corpses and bear off their souls to the fire that burns to eternity . . . they would be better off hanging from a rope in Flanders’.78 In the end, the Flemings are defeated and even the common folk rise to eradicate them: ‘In all the countryside there was neither a villein nor a peasant that did not go after the Flemings with fork and flail to destroy them. The knights in armour busied themselves with nothing more than knocking them down and the villeins did the killing.’79 Fantosme’s Chronicle makes a powerful case for a single community of the kingdom, and a common cause uniting all its social classes.80 In the poem Roger Bigod declares, ‘never in my life did I want anything so much as to destroy those Flemings whom I see advancing’.81 What renders the Flemings so terrible is not just their foreignness, but their character and motivations. God has forsaken the Flemings because of their ‘vast thievery’.82 Fantosme briefly mentions that many a ‘well-born man of Flanders’ (maint gentil hum de Flandres)83 is found among Leicester’s following but the author’s imagination is far more occupied with the rank-and-file soldiers. These are motivated by no noble sentiment or sense of morality: Soon you could have heard Flemings from Flanders and French and Picards shouting aloud: ‘We have not come to this country to hang around but to 75 76 77 78 79

80 81 82

Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 62, line 831. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 76, line 1052. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 72, lines 1000–1; Ashe, Fiction and History, pp. 119–20. ‘Desur lur cors descendent corneilles e busart, ki les armes en portent el fu qui tut tens art . . . mielz lur vendreit en Flandres pendre a une hart.’ Ibid., lines 1055–6, 1058. ‘N’i aveit el pa¨ıs ne vilain ne corbel / N’alast Flamens destruire a furke e a feel. / De rien s’entremetteient li arm´e chevalier / Fors sul de l’abatr¨e e villains a tuer’ Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 78, lines 1080–3. Ashe, Fiction and History, pp. 81–120, especially pp. 87–9. ‘Jo n’oi unc en ma vie de riens si grant desir cume Flamens destruire que jo vei ci venire.’ Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 74, lines 1029–31. 83 Ibid., p. 62, line 837. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 76, lines 1059–60.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 destroy the king, Henry, the old warrior, and to get for ourselves the wool of England that we so much desire.’ My lords, the truth is that most of them were weavers, they do not know how to bear arms like knights, and why they had come was to pick up plunder and the spoils of war, for there is no more prosperous region on earth than Bury St Edmunds.84

Fantosme’s conceit is simple: these Flemings are not even a proper army but only a mass of foreign thieves who seek to rob the riches of England. In their approach to warfare, the Flemish have much in common with King William’s Scots. They are pillagers rather than soldiers and as such outside the norms of civilised aristocratic warfare that govern the AngloNorman nobility. The Flemings are specifically associated with the textile industries of the Low Countries and are greedy for wool, already recognised as a great source of English wealth.85 The resulting image that has come down to us is of a force composed of routiers, low-class mercenary fighters. In all likelihood this was not far from the case, though it bears noting that in all probability Leicester’s mercenaries did not differ significantly from the paid Brabanter soldiers led by Henry II on the Continent,86 or, for that matter, from the Flemings who served William of Scotland. The differences in Fantosme’s depictions are determined by the ideological function of his work. Fantosme’s identification of these mercenaries as ‘weavers’ (telier) introduces a new element to the image of the Flemish soldier. His chronicle is the earliest surviving example of the presentation of a Flemish army as of specifically peasant or artisan origin. The use of paid soldiers, and the growing economic ability to muster them on a large scale, posed a challenge to the aristocracy’s status as a warrior elite, and to its importance in raising and controlling military forces. Though Fantosme has the local peasants participate in the mopping-up operation, the destruction of the foreign army at Fornham is a feat performed by the nobility, a clash between knights and commoners that affirms and celebrates the position of the knightly class at the apex of the military hierarchy. Fantosme notes the presence of Flemish gentil hum but by the time the action begins they are completely removed from the scene. The image of the Flemish 84

85 86

‘Tost i purr¨ıez o¨ır e bien en halt crier entre Flamens de Flandres et Franceis e Puier: “Nus n’eimes pas en cest pa¨ıs venuz pur sujorner, mes pur lu rei destruire, Henri, le vielz guerier, e pur aver sa leine, dunt avum desirier.” Seignurs, c¸o est la verit´e: li plus furent telier, ne sevent porter armes a lei de chevalier, mes pur c¸o furent venuz, pur aver guain e guerre, kar n’ad meillur v¨ıandier de Saint Edmund en terre.’ Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 72, lines 991–9. As above, and also Chronicle, lines 1054, 1060. On wool, see Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 10; and more broadly on wool and textile commerce, pp. 152–5 above. Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 47. Fantosme mentions these Brabanters in Chronicle, p. 6, line 66, p. 14, line 167.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England soldier impressed on the audience is that of a foreign weaver, dominated and brought low by the native knight. The events in East Anglia left their legacy in English attitudes to Flemings and especially Flemish soldiers. This was in part the result of Leicester’s campaign of 1173, but as important was surely the sack of Norwich, one of the most important urban centres of England, by Earl Hugh Bigod and his Flemish army in the following year.87 Fantosme’s concerns about foreign soldiers were also echoed in the admonitory letter sent by Archbishop Richard of Canterbury to Young King Henry. The archbishop complained about the younger Henry’s use of foreign mercenaries and appealed, together with all the bishops of ‘your [Henry’s] fatherland’, for the Young King to be reconciled with his father.88 Fantosme’s two types of Flemish soldier, one in northern and the other in eastern England, both ultimately served to promote English unity by typecasting and alienating the foreigner. The poet’s close adherence to the historical sequence of events gave his work persuasive authority. Many among his audience had been directly involved in the conflict. One imagines that the author’s propensity for calling out individual men for a few lines of honourable mention would have given rise to toasting among a crowd acquainted with them personally as kinsmen or fellow knights. But his ability to embroider his tale to serve political and ideological ends serves as an example of the techniques available to historians as storytellers and propagandists, and showcases the mutability of images attributed to Flemish soldiers. Fantosme pioneered the Flemish weaver– bandit as a stock image, uncontroversial and immediately recognisable to his audience; this image would gain broader currency among his literary successors. FLEM INGS IN ENGLISH HISTORICAL NARRATIVES OF THE LATER TWELFTH CENTURY Fantosme’s oeuvre was part of a new resurgence in authorship, both of traditional historical writing and of the burgeoning genres of romance and satire. The decades immediately preceding the Angevin civil war had been a fallow period in English historical writing, but the 1170s saw the emergence of new literary movements in England. A major theme treated by historians at this time, and in the years that followed, was the 87 88

Roger of Howden, Gesta, vol. 1, p. 78; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, p. 58. Petrus Blesensis Bathoniensis in Anglia Archidiaconus, ed. J. Migne (Patrologiae Cursus Completus 208, Paris, 1904), col. 138.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 difference between the reigns of Stephen and his successor. While these writers were hardly uncritical of Henry II, not least in relation to the Becket affair, his reign was seen in their works as standing in contrast to the era of strife that had prevailed under Stephen’s rule.89 One literary topos that emerged in the later decades of the century was the expulsion of England’s Flemings at the time of Henry’s accession as a watershed moment symbolising the restoration of peace and order to the realm. The earliest depiction of the mass exile of Flemings after the accession of Henry II in 1154 was produced in 1173–4, during the Angevin civil war, in William fitz Stephen’s hagiography of Thomas Becket.90 In this work the ‘foreign Flemings’ are exiled as a part of the process of restoring the kingdom to its former dignity and peace; all the Flemings collect their tools and head for the sea; William of Ypres, the violent oppressor of Kent, departs with tears in his eyes. The association of foreign mercenaries, in particular Flemings, almost exclusively with Stephen would henceforth serve a slanted political interpretation of recent history. The sudden, comprehensive expulsion of the Flemish appealed to William of Newburgh some two decades later in his attempts to impart meaning to English history. Newburgh had a philosophical axe to grind, since a central theme in his political commentary was his theory of just kingship.91 In his Historia Regum Anglicarum (c.1198), Newburgh made it clear that the Flemings had merited Henry’s drastic measures: Finally [King Henry II] issued a decree that those foreigners who had flocked to England under King Stephen for the sake of booty and in order to fight, and especially the Flemings, of whom there was then a great multitude in England, should return to their own lands, fixing a deadline for them, beyond which they should be in danger if they remained in England. Terrified by this edict, they slipped away so quickly that they seemed to disappear in a moment, like phantoms, leaving many astonished at how swiftly they vanished.92 89

90

91

92

J. Gillingham, ‘The Cultivation of History, Legend and Courtesy at the Court of Henry II’, in Writers of the Reign of Henry II: Twelve Essays, ed. R. Kennedy and S. Meecham-Jones (New York, 2006), pp. 25–52; Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 219–22, 247–8. William fitz Stephen, ‘Vita Sancti Thomae’, pp. 18–19. A possibly earlier reference can be found in Robert of Torigny, Chronicle, p. 183. But this is a brief, businesslike mention, without the elaboration to be found in later works: ‘Rex Henri . . . expellendo de rego maxime Flandrenses’. On Newburgh as historian and author: William of Newburgh: The History of English Affairs, ed. and trans. P. Walsh and M. Kennedy (Warminster, 1988), pp. 44–50, 60, 98; J. Gillingham, ‘The Historian as a Judge: William of Newburgh and Hubert Walter’, EHR 119 (2004), 275–87; A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London, 1974), pp. 263–8. ‘Denique edicto praecepit, ut illi, qui ex gentibus exteris in Angliam sub rege Stephano praedarum gratia tanquam ad militandum confluxerant, et maxime Flandrenses, quorum magna tune Angliae incubabat multitudo, propriis regionibus redderentur, fatalem eis deim constituens, quem in Anglia sustinere certi foret discriminis. Quo edicto pavefacti, ita in brevi dilapsi sunt, ut quasi

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England Beginning his own literary career in the mid-1180s, Newburgh’s contemporary, Gervase of Canterbury, reserved special opprobrium for William of Ypres: [King Stephen] had received many knights and foot soldiers from Flanders, and especially a certain William of Ypres, who was the leader, as it were, and chief among them. The king trusting very greatly in the counsel of this man, greatly offended the nobles of England.93

And again: ‘One of these men [Flemings] was William of Ypres, to whom the king gave the custody of all Kent. Wherefore the natives, greatly stirred up, tried to expel the king from the kingdom.’94 Gervase made a great detour around the complicated morass of Anglo-Norman politics and dynastic rivalries that had led to two decades of intermittent hostilities by elevating the Flemings from mere participants in the civil war to the very casus belli. The expulsion of the Flemish foreign element is the first action performed by Henry II, thereby becoming not only a vital episode in the narrative of re-establishing order in the realm, but also a matter of historical symmetry and justice in removing the original cause of strife.95 These accounts, the earliest of which were composed two decades after the events, are far from accurate. While it is clear that many Flemish soldiers left England around 1155,96 the portrayal of this exodus – and of the Flemings themselves – reflects the narrow and biased interpretation of the chroniclers. In the first place, the banishment of foreign soldiers was only one part of Henry’s general shoring up of royal power, the more important aspects of which were the destruction of hundreds of private baronial fortifications, the king’s repossession of his royal domains, and the consolidation of royal administration through the removal from office of many of Stephen’s men.97 Second, no general mass exile of all Flemish

93

94

95 96 97

phantasmata in momento disparuisse viderentur, stupentibus plurimis quomodo repente evanuissent.’ William of Newburgh, Historia, vol. 1, pp. 101–2; trans. Amt, Accession, p. 90. ‘Asciverat autem de Flandria milites et pedites multos, et maxime quendam Willelmum de Ypre, qui quasi dux fuit et principes eorum. Huius consiliis rex maxime confidens, principes Angliae admodum offendebat.’ Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 105; trans. Amt, Accession, p. 87. ‘Vocati sunt igitur a rege Flandrenses in Angliam, qui terrae incolis ab olim invidentes, relicto natali solo relictoque texendi officio, catervatim in Angliam confluunt, et famelicorum more luporum Anglicanae terrae foecunditatem ad nihilum redigere studuerunt. Quorum unus erat Willelmus de Ipre, cui rex totam Cantiam commisit custodiendam. Unde vehementius indignae concitati ipsum regem propellere conati sunt.’ Gervase of Canterbury, ‘Gesta Regum’, p. 73; trans. Amt, Accession, p. 87. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 161. See also the Flemish source ‘Flandria Generosa’, p. 325. Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 183; Roger of Howden, Chronica, vol. 1, p. 215; Walden Monastery, p. 24.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 elements in the kingdom ever took place. Most obviously, William of Ypres, the most prominent of the Flemings and the lightning rod for Gervase’s ire, maintained his custodianship of royal demesne properties in Kent until 1157. The delay in evicting him from office is evidence of a more gradual rearrangement of the board. In 1157 Henry, now more firmly established, moved against not only him but also other politically compromised magnates. These included the powerful East Anglian nobleman Earl Hugh Bigod of Norfolk, and King Stephen’s son, William of Blois, husband of Isabella of Warenne, who at that time lost all of his castles in Normandy and England.98 What did happen to the Flemish soldiers after the war? Stephen’s position as count of Boulogne and the arrival of large numbers of Flemish soldiers had contributed to a period in which Flemings were unusually heavily involved in English affairs. The accession of Henry II cut many of these ties and took English politics in a new direction. When the young Henry of Anjou arrived in England in 1153, effectively taking over his mother’s cause from the old guard, he brought with him a new set of political alliances. Henry had a close family connection with the Flemish comital dynasty through his paternal aunt Sybil, the wife of Count Thierry, and had never evidenced any special ill will towards Flemings.99 But neither did the new king have any reason to favour them. Unlike those of his predecessors, Henry’s own roots were in western rather than northern France. Over the decades of his kingship Henry would avail himself of Flemish soldiers, but for now there was nothing to associate him with them. The victors in the civil war (and its political survivors) were quick on the uptake, and for some the process of reaping their advantage started as soon as the winds shifted. As the de facto earl of Kent, William of Ypres had had many dealings with Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury. Though he did burn the nunnery of Wherwell in Hampshire in 1141, probably on the grounds that it was being used as a military installation,100 and, in a lawsuit between Battle Abbey and the archbishop in 1139–41, argued the case on the monastery’s behalf,101 we know that William’s relationship with Canterbury was not always 98 99 100

101

Van Houts, ‘The Warenne View of the Past’, 106; Warren, Henry II, pp. 59, 66–7. Gervase of Canterbury records a rumour that a group of Flemings conspired to assassinate Henry in 1154, but no other source corroborates the tale. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 158. William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, p. 104. Stone churches were often used for military purposes at the time, and their destruction was neither uncommon nor an unreasonable response. Cronne, Reign, pp. 2–3. The Chronicle of the Battle Abbey, ed. and trans. E. Searle (OMT, Oxford, 1980), p. 144.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England antagonistic. William had founded the Cistercian abbey of Boxley,102 made numerous donations to the Church, and co-operated with the archbishop on legal and administrative matters.103 In 1148, when Theobald was exiled, William invited him to stay at St Omer and acted as advocate on his behalf with Stephen.104 But this did not prevent the archbishop from denouncing William as ‘that notorious tyrant and most severe persecutor of our Church’ in a pair of letters to Pope Adrian IV dated to c.1156–7, or the period just before or after William lost his English domains. The letters concern a property dispute arising from a donation William had made during the previous reign, which had been ratified by the archbishop’s own charter. But now Theobald, supporting the local baron, Hugh of Dover, who disputed William’s donation, backed down from his previous position: ‘If they should produce a charter drawn up in our name, we would have you know (to confess our own imperfections) that it was wrung from us by force and by fear of the tyrant aforesaid.’105 We do not know how far Theobald’s protestations were genuine, but the situation is certainly reminiscent of many a post-regime-change rewriting of recent events. The former king’s favourite made for a large, soft target. William of Ypres was vulnerable by virtue of being very closely associated with Stephen, very rich, and the holder of royal demesne lands rather than property permanently alienated to him. A generation after the events they depicted, narratives of the end of Stephen’s reign were reducing and thickening into a rich stew that nourished the new generation of political historians. During his career in England William had undergone one social metamorphosis; now he was posthumously transformed again. William had never been an uncontroversial figure, but he was not more controversial than the other leading magnates of Stephen’s reign. Cut loose from the new order, he collapsed into a simplified caricature. Other Flemings and Artesians made it through the regime change intact. Pharamus of Boulogne, kinsman of Stephen’s Boulonnaise wife Maud, even served as the castellan of the strategic port town of Dover under the new king, undoubtedly aided by his kinship to the Anglo-Norman high aristocracy through his grandmother, a daughter of 102 103

104 105

Gervase of Canterbury, ‘Gesta Regum’, p. 77. A. Saltman, Theobald Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1956), charters no. 44, 71, 162, 163 and 239, for a number of such exchanges and donations. See also ‘Gesta Abbatum S. Bertini Continuatio’, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH Scriptores 13 (Hannover, 1881), p. 665, for a Flemish perspective on William’s patronage. Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works, vol. 1, p. 135. Letters of John of Salisbury, vol. 1, nos. 23–4, pp. 37–41.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 Geoffrey I of Mandeville.106 Likewise, one Alard the Fleming, who had established himself in Sussex by 1139, was not merely a hired sword; he is first encountered witnessing a charter by William of Aubigny, earl of Lincoln and the new husband of the dowager queen Adeliza.107 Alard’s family would flourish in England well into the thirteenth century.108 Gerbod of Eschaud was another soldier of probable Flemish origin who had first appeared in Stephen’s service but continued to thrive under Henry II. In 1162 Henry granted Gerbod a large estate worth £20 16s in Nottinghamshire, and in 1172 increased the grant to £25 14s. Gerbod remained loyal to Henry through the Angevin civil war of 1173–4 and did very well for himself: he fought with a company of knights under Henry II and was awarded property in Lincolnshire worth £80.109 The original Ilbert of Carency can probably also be counted among those who arrived in England during Stephen’s reign.110 And, of course, Flemings of non-military backgrounds, such as the great financier William Cade, continued to operate as valued associates of the royal administration.111 If the expulsion of Flemish wolves was a literary motif intended to glorify the new king and to celebrate the end of the civil war, Henry’s real motivations had been more pragmatic: he wished to reduce the power of the nobility by destroying their fortifications and removing the paid soldiers who garrisoned them, and he did not want (and probably could not afford) to continue paying the stipendiary knights and sergeants who had served the former king.112 Those men and their households who had been successfully assimilated into the country, through the acquisition of English property, business ties and connections among the native-born, fell into a wholly different category. A contrast can be drawn with the Bretons, the other principal group of continental paid soldiers. They were not subjected to such harsh treatment at the hands of late twelfth-century historians. Two historical facts may explain the difference. First, the Breton bloc in England, located in the south-west, had fought on the side of Empress Matilda and the future King Henry. Their allegiance was rooted in political ties and family alliances going back several generations. A rival group of Bretons 106 107 109

110 111 112

H. Harwood, ‘Faramus of Boulogne’, The Genealogist 12 (London, 1896), pp. 145–51. 108 Farrer, Honors, vol. 3, pp. 7, 33–4. Facsimiles of Royal & Other Charters, vol. 1, no. 14. PR 9 Henry II (1162–3), p. 2; PR 18 Henry II (1171–2), p. 11; PR 21 Henry II (1173–4), pp. 14–15, 61, 96–7; PR 22 Henry II (1174–5), pp. 35–6, 144, 149; RRAN, vol. 3, 1135–1154, p. 342, no. 933; Farrer, Honors, vol. 1, pp. 234–5. Henry II employed Flemings more generally in 1173–4: PR 20 Henry II (1173–4), p. 135. Gerbod of Eschaud’s name presumably derives from the River Scheldt. See p. 179 above. Eales, ‘Local Loyalties’, 102–3; on Cade see pp. 91 and 164–6 above. Amt, Accession, p. 90; Warren, Henry II, pp. 57–60.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England had backed Stephen in the north-east, but the alliance had largely come undone with the death of its principal Breton leader, Alan of Richmond, in 1146.113 The Bretons, aligned as they were with the winning side, both clearly and remarkably consistently, did not suffer the loss of a political base as the Flemings did after 1154. Second, Brittany had been incorporated into Henry’s Angevin empire in 1158 and, though relations were often turbulent, it was part of the political system for which the historical narratives were being written.114 Flanders, by contrast, lay distinctly outside the realm. As a bilingual county, whose lords had territorial interests in Germany, Flanders possessed an identity that distinguished it not only from England but also from that of north-western France. The introduction of a class element further sharpened the stereotyped image of the Fleming. Fantosme pioneered the theme of Flemish soldiers as peasants or ‘weavers’, and this was later picked up by other English authors. It is difficult to gauge directly the impact of Fantosme’s work on later writers or on the popular imagination concerning the events he wrote about, though we know that William of Newburgh, writing in the late 1190s, drew from the text in his works.115 In broad terms Fantosme represented the contemporary Zeitgeist. The chivalric romances of a generation or two later often featured as antagonist a low-born upstart possessed of a full complement of unsavoury morals: thus the modern word ‘villain’, or French vilain, derived from villanus, meaning ‘peasant’.116 We have already encountered the image of the Flemish ‘weaver–bandit’ in the works of Gervase of Canterbury, who assigned Flemish mercenaries the ‘job of weaving’ before answering King Stephen’s call.117 His close contemporary Ralph of Diceto, who likewise began writing his Ymagines Historiarum in the late 1180s, closed the circle, and sent the Flemings on the accession of Henry II from their castles back to their ploughs, and from the battlefield tents back to their workshops.118

113

114 115

116

117 118

K. Keats-Rohan, ‘Bretons and Normans’, 42–78; and Keats-Rohan, ‘Le rˆole des Bretons dans la politique de colonization de l’Angleterre (vers 1042–1135)’, M´emoires de la Soci´et´e d’histoire et d’arch´eologie de Bretagne 74 (1996), 181–215. See Everard, Brittany, for a fine political analysis of Angevin and Breton relations. M. Strickland, ‘Securing the North: Invasion and the Strategy of Defense in Twelfth-Century Anglo-Scottish Warfare’, Anglo-Norman Warfare, ed. M. Strickland (Woodbridge, 1992), p. 226, n. 116. G. Duby, ‘The Transformation of the Aristocracy: France at the Beginning of the Thirteenth Century’, in Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. C. Postan (London, 1977), pp. 178–85, 182–3; Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 19, pp. 633–4. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 111; repeated in Gervase of Canterbury, ‘Gesta Regum’, p. 73. ‘A castris ad aratra, a tentoriis ad ergasteria Flandrensium plurimi revocabuntur.’ Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, p. 297.

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 The association of all Flemish soldiers with low-class ‘weavers’ suggests the emergence of a novel class-based stereotype of foreign fighters. Flemish rustici, much less textores, are never encountered in sources contemporary with Stephen’s reign, and this identity constitutes a later derogatory attribution. Diceto and Gervase based their passages on older works: Diceto drew from the chronicle of Robert of Torigni, and Gervase copied much of his text from the work of John of Worcester.119 Both Diceto and Gervase, however, inserted new writings of the Flemish soldiers. This is particularly noticeable in Gervase’s work, in which the preceding passages closely follow their exemplar, but Worcester does not even mention the Flemings. Gervase adopted the same technique in his description of the Battle of Fornham in 1173: in a passage otherwise based on Roger of Howden’s account, Gervase again adds a description of the defeated Flemings as weavers and wolves hungering for the wealth of England.120 It is difficult not to see Gervase as having heard, approved of and internalised Fantosme’s work. These authors unilaterally equated the Flemings with common routier rabble, the basest element of what was a more varied fighting force, and draw a sharp line between them and the native English who in turn were represented by honourable knights. It would not be surprising if ‘weaver’ was often used as a derogatory description, even a slang insult, when referring to a Flemish knight. Stereotyped images are not stable, but rather the product of continuing dynamic processes. The literary image of the Celtic barbarian fed directly into the construction of a new English identity, gained great popularity and remained the dominant depiction of the English people’s insular neighbours throughout the twelfth century. The transformation of the image of Flemings in late twelfth-century English culture describes an arc that resembles the construction of the image of the ‘Celtic barbarians’ some two generations before. There was room for nuance and complexity: class status, in particular, cut across ethnic stereotypes. While Henry of Huntingdon and Jordan Fantosme decried the savagery of the Scottish soldiers, both also held in high esteem the members of the Scottish royal house – of Anglo-Norman descent, influenced by francophone culture, and therefore worthy of the kind of respect that was awarded to all knights and nobles.121 Likewise, in Fantosme’s poem Philip of Flanders and his brother Matthew are 119 120 121

John of Worcester, Chronicle, vol. 2, p. 270; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, p. 183. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, p. 246. Henry of Huntingdon; Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 150, lines 2033–6; Strickland, ‘Arms and the Men’, pp. 206–7; Strickland, War and Chivalry, pp. 325–9.

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Social identity and the image of Flemings in England given the appellations ‘valiant knight’ (chevalier de vaillance)122 and ‘noble warrior’ (le noble guerreur).123 The solidarity of international aristocratic society could partially trump ethnic or national distinctions. But by the late twelfth century a layer of negative associations underlay English perceptions of Flanders as a whole. In the second half of the twelfth century English social and political anxieties and priorities directed the development of Flemish images and identities in English sources. The new Flemish stereotypes represent the collapse of the cultural status that the English were willing to award their eastern neighbours – a process in which military conflicts played a significant part, and which anticipated the later emergence of similarly negative images of the French.124 English attitudes to foreigners were not uniformly pejorative, but the Flemings remained objects of hostility. Fantosme called Flanders a ‘savage’ land (Flandres la salvage).125 Writing between 1192 and 1198 Richard of Devizes imagines a discussion between an aged French Jew and a young Gentile, about to undertake a journey to England. He puts in the mouth of the old man the following advice: ‘Moreover, for such qualities always look on Cornishmen as we in France consider our Flemings.’126 Though aimed at the Cornish, his analogy relies on a negative view of the character of the Flemish people as exemplars of backwardness and crudity. Later, in the mid-thirteenth century, Matthew Paris described the Flemings expelled in 1155 as despicable (detestabilis), and those who had arrived in England to fight for John in 1214 as cruel and violent, members of a corrupt nation (perversa natio).127 Whether crude or savage, these stereotypes are unrecognisable in William of Malmesbury’s beautiful, physically effeminate and spineless Flemings. The stereotyped images of the Flemish that emerged over the course of the twelfth century came together as a result of several parallel developments: the birth of English national identity, the military conflicts of the reign of King Stephen and their eventual political outcome, the impact of economic growth and monetisation on military logistics and on the use of paid soldiers, and the evolution of chivalric culture among the aristocracy. Flemings were fitted into an evolving world view, and adopted as part of a continuing discussion about the English sense of self. Parallel to the English understanding of their nationality, history and culture, there now developed categories of identity that could 122 124 126 127

123 Ibid., p. 32, line 438. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 8, line 86. 125 Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, p. 62, line 825. Carpenter, Struggle, pp. 16–25. Devizes, Chronicle, p. 67. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. 2, p. 637; Paris, Historia Minor, ed. F. Madden (RS 44, London, 1866), vol. 1, p. 300.

249

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 be deployed against foreigners settling or travelling in England. Perhaps this is the reason why we hear little of Flemish immigrants from the reign of Henry II onwards: in a kingdom gripped with a rising sense of national destiny, ethnic invisibility was for aliens a governing virtue.

250

CONCLUSION

The period that I have investigated starts with the counts of Flanders at the height of their powers as well-established and fiercely independent territorial princes, and with the union of the duchy of Normandy and the kingdom of England by William the Conqueror. It ends with King John’s catastrophic loss of the vast majority of his French domains, and the collapse of Flemish comital autonomy before the growing authority of the king in Paris. Within these political events, this span of time covers a swathe of western European history that saw major innovation and developments in political institutions, economic activity, social structures, culture and learning. The exchanges and relations between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world were shaped by these developments and they in turn had a major influence on the history of north-western Europe. I will now consider a number of general themes that cut through and unify these exchanges. All politics are local, but even domestic politics are informed by a broader international context. The most emblematic documents of Anglo-Flemish diplomatic history are the agreements concluded during this period between the counts of Flanders and the Norman and Angevin kings of England. The scope of these treaties is broad, comprising not only the details of the relationships they hoped to create, but the reflected geopolitical realities of their day. They acknowledge the identity of Flanders as a breakwater princedom between France, Germany and the Anglo-Norman regnum, and reiterate the king of England’s possession of his continental domains. At the turn of the twelfth century, Flanders was as autonomous as it ever would be during the Central Middle Ages. Nevertheless significant attention was paid to negotiating the stresses that the agreements might place on the theoretical obligations of the count to his nominal liege lord in the ˆIle-de-France and, to a lesser extent, the German king. Care was taken to detail what would happen if the responsibilities outlined in the documents conflicted with the military and political relationships between Flanders and the French crown. 251

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 This sequence of treaties reflects both the practicalities and the ambiguities of the era’s political and bureaucratic mentality. For the king of England, the treaties provided assurance that the Flemings would prefer his employment to that of the Frankish princes, with the annual money fief acting as powerful incentive. For the count of Flanders, the treaties demonstrated that he could accept claims to his services from different quarters. Rather than tying the count to a single strict set of obligations, the treaties made it possible for him to select from a set of alliances, and choose which ones to meet. The principle of this balancing act was not unique to Flanders. Small powers have often employed similar strategies to manage their greater neighbours. As alliances and political priorities shifted over time, each instance of political or military intervention could be examined on its own merits. It is tempting to view treaties and agreements as endpoints of a diplomatic process that impresses a new set of rules onto the political landscape. This is an illusion: treaties represent the aspirations and negotiating processes of their creators at a particular time, but the context could always shift, invalidating the documents, or casting the relationship of which they were part into a very different light. The Dover treaties sought to anchor Flanders to the orbit of the king of England and thereby to lock in the geopolitical balance of the region in his favour. But even the treaties evidence the instability of these arrangements, suggesting a political order in which alliances and networks of support could break up and re-form within a short span of time, and in which the surest friendship was brought about only by the serendipitous confluence of mutual ambition. It is likewise tempting to view politics in terms of hierarchies. The conduct of international exchange did not consist only of top-down relations, however, but of numerous horizontal and multilateral ties. Informal connections that have left little direct trace in the administrative or diplomatic material are essential to understanding their milieu. These can be tracked, for example, in the network of interpersonal and familial ties that united the elites on the two sides of the English Channel. The high aristocracy, especially, possessed a cosmopolitan character. When Lambert of Ardres sat down in the closing years of the twelfth century to reflect on the history of the counts of Guines and the lords of Ardres – small principalities tucked away on the marshy coast between the sea and the thriving commercial town of St Omer – he came up with a family saga entangled in cross-Channel society and its ambitions. Drawing his threads from the lives of such people as Arnold ‘the Old’ of Ardres (who fought at the Battle of Hastings), Emma of Tancarville (countess of Guines, granddaughter of William the Conqueror’s companion William Malet and daughter of the great magnate Robert Malet of eastern England), 252

Conclusion Aubrey III ‘the Boar’ of Vere (count of Guines and earl of Oxford during the civil wars of King Stephen’s reign), Count Arnold I of Guines (who passed away while inspecting his English manors) and finally Lambert’s own contemporary Count Arnold II of Guines (who in his youth tore around the same tournament fields as Young King Henry and Count Philip of Flanders), the chronicler weaves a tapestry filled with images from a long century rich in international exchanges.1 Lambert records the local story that it was Italian merchants passing through Ardres on their way to England who gave his town its name.2 The constant movement of people – sailors and scholars, peasants and artisans, pilgrims and crusaders, monks and nuns, cloth merchants and soldiers-for-hire, kings, queens and exiles – was the very lifeblood of exchanges across the Channel. Its potent result was the expansion of Anglo-Flemish trade, fed by the unprecedented economic growth of the Central Middle Ages. Here the relations between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world are less about exchanges between political units than about the ties between economic regions, the latter mapping only imprecisely onto the former. The basin of the English Channel was a vital connecting element between the coasts and river systems of the southern Low Countries and eastern England. Let us therefore consider the map of north-western Europe not in terms of its political boundaries, but in terms of demography and hydrology: great fairs and urban centres grew along these waterways, and the way of life that was established along their banks was an interdependent one. Here the history of towns and markets, mills and workshops is written with reference to the constant flow of people, goods and money moving along channels deeply worn into the economic landscape of the region. The study of the exchanges between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world raises the question of centre and periphery, and about how we invest regions and concepts with those terms. Such judgements are often informed by mental maps that order the world into discrete political and cultural spheres and gloss over the greater complexities of exchange and influence. One example of this is the emergence of chivalric culture in the twelfth century, which left such an enduring impact on European ways of life and modes of thinking. There is a tendency in current scholarship to view it as something that was brought from the Continent to civilise the British Isles: that the Normans brought a more advanced form of warfare and of organising society to Britain, and that they indeed were themselves 1 2

Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, pp. 579, 582–7, 591, 595–6, 604–5, 615; Hart, ‘William Malet and His Family’, 123–66; Crouch, ‘Vere, Aubrey (III) de’, ODNB. Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia Comitum Ghisnensium’, pp. 609–10.

253

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 continually being civilised by waves of ‘French chivalry’.3 Something of this sentiment can be detected in the words of medieval authors. William of Malmesbury regarded the French as paragons of martial valour and culture, of whose example the English should take heed.4 The author of History of William Marshal has the eponymous hero’s mentor give his charge the advice ‘not to stay long in that country [England], for it was in no way a fitting place to stay, except for the minor gentry’.5 Yet the central rite of chivalric culture, the tournament, encapsulates the historical themes of informal multilateral relations and the constant movement of people. Though tournaments took place in politically liminal regions, between towns and at the borders of domains, they grew to assume a central position in aristocratic political and social life. The tournament phenomenon exemplifies the difficulty of identifying a single centre in the case of broad historical movements. First emerging in the southern Low Countries, the tournament quickly arrived in England and its early heyday was in the circuits of northern France. There the gatherings enjoyed the patronage not of the crown but of the courts of the territorial princes scattered around this region. The phenomenon was multicentred and disseminated through a broad region, and it flourished wherever it found willing adherents. It is similarly apparent that vernacular romance literature, which popularised and so fundamentally affected all forms of aristocratic culture, had its immediate roots not in France, but in England. French vernacular court literature first developed in the polyglot and cosmopolitan AngloNorman courts in the twelfth century, pre-dating similar manifestations on the Continent by at least a generation. Geoffrey Gaimar’s L’Estoire des Engles, Wace’s Roman de Rou and Roman de Brut, and Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle are all examples of this cultural flowering.6 In the same vein, the largest concentration of the surviving manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannie, the forerunner of the Arthurian myth cycle, on the Continent can be found in the Low Countries.7 Monmouth was a forefather to the veritable boom of romance vernacular historiography that the Frankish world would see in the first decades of the thirteenth century. The reimagining of historical events in works 3 4 5 6

7

Gillingham, ‘Conquering the Barbarians’, 67–84, quote at 78; also Strickland, War and Chivalry, especially pp. 291–329. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 152. History of William Marshal, p. 78, lines 1536–8. M. Legge, ‘La pr´ecosit´e de la litt´erature anglo-normande’, Cahiers de civilisation m´edi´evale 8 (1965), 327–49; I. Short, ‘Patrons and Polyglots: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England’, ANS 14 (1991), 229–49. J. Crick, The ‘Historia Regum Britannie’ of Geoffrey of Monmouth IV: Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 210–11.

254

Conclusion in verse formed an important tactic in the higher nobility’s campaign to maintain its political and social legitimacy in the face of growing political competition from the royal court in Paris. The movement’s early patrons came exclusively from the anti-Capetian faction of the aristocracy, which also enjoyed deep connections with the Angevin regnum.8 The links that bound Flanders to the Anglo-Norman world were tightened by shared appreciation for tournaments and chivalric literature. The aristocratic culture of chivalry was not invented in one place or at one time, and to characterise it as simply a ‘French’ invention in an era when France was so deeply fragmented both politically and socially would be seriously to distort this influential development. The birthplace of the tournament was in the southern Low Countries, arguably as far removed from ‘French France’ as was Anglo-Norman England. Connections between such culturally ‘peripheral’ regions are vital to understanding how ideas travelled and developed. There are remarkable similarities in the programmes of legal reform that Count Philip and King Henry II embarked upon in the 1160s and 1170s. The administrative apparatuses of the realms possessed great similarities – at a time, moreover, when both were considerably more advanced than any in the surrounding regions.9 There must have been an exchange of ideas and methods. Politically, socially, economically and culturally, connections were strong between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world, a microcosm of a broader European network of international and interregional transfer. It would be fruitful to construct models of cultural dissemination in which the spread of innovations, ideas and habits are seen as backand-forth affairs, gradually accumulating along overlapping interregional networks rather than exploding from a single central area. There is a famous optical illusion developed in 1915 by the Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin, which consists of two silhouettes portrayed from the side, facing each other against a white background. If the viewer concentrates on the black colour of the silhouettes, the faces are immediately apparent. But, should the viewer transfer their focus to the white background, the faces suddenly form the contours of a white vase occupying the middle space of the picture. Both the vase and the faces are present in the image but they are very difficult to perceive at the same time.10 Like the white colour of this composition, 8 9

10

Spiegel, Romancing the Past, pp. 14, 53–4, 315–19. For comparative studies, see B. Lyon and A. Verhulst, Medieval Finance: A Comparison of Financial Institutions in Northwestern Europe (Bruges, 1967), especially pp. 82–97; R. van Caenegem, ‘Criminal Law in England and in Flanders under King Henry II and Count Philip of Alsace’, in Van Caenegem, Legal History: A European Perspective (London, 1991), pp. 37–60. E. Rubin, Synsoplevede Figurer (Copenhagen, 1915).

255

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 the English Channel is commonly seen as an empty area, a boundary between the British Isles and its continental neighbours whose function is to separate discrete entities from each other. But it can equally be seen as a connecting highway, bringing together disparate landmasses, polities and peoples. Our tendency in structuring an argument or a piece of research is first to pick a centre – be it a person, a region or a concept – and then construct a narrative edifice around it; that which lies outside the walls is excluded and rejected. This is a feature of efficient communication, limiting the scope of our argument to a manageable size in a way that reflects our interests and aims as authors. But drawing a line involves an explicit judgement, and that judgement is often determined by the conceits and structures of our own societies and nations. The histories of the respective regions and realms clustered around the English Channel in the Central Middle Ages cannot be satisfactorily examined without bearing in mind the many shared political, economic and social interests that linked them. My own perceptual shift in writing this book has been to move the focus away from that centre, the national history, to the spaces between polities, and to the networks that spanned them.

256

Appendix I

TIMELINE

1035 1035 1046 between 1048 and 1051 1051

1056 1060

1066 1067–70 1067 1070

1071

Accession of Count Baldwin V of Flanders (1035–67). Accession of Duke William II of Normandy (1035–87). Accession of Count Eustace II of Boulogne (1046–87). Duke William marries Matilda, daughter of Count Baldwin V. Baldwin V’s son Baldwin marries Countess Richilde of Hainaut. Duke William visits King Edward. He later claims to have been made heir to the English throne. Peace settlement between Flanders and Germany. The union of Flanders and Hainaut is acknowledged. Accession of King Philip I of France (b. 1052, r. 1060–1108) Count Baldwin V serves as the regent of France during Philip’s minority. 14 October: Battle of Hastings Duke William defeats King Harold and is crowned King William I of England (1066–87). William grants an annual money fief of 300 marks to Baldwin V and Baldwin VI. 1 September: Death of Count Baldwin V and accession of his son Count Baldwin VI (1067–70). Death of Count Baldwin VI, accession of his son Count Arnulf III (1070–1). Count Robert of Frisia leads a revolt against his nephew Arnulf III. Arnulf is supported by Philip I and William I; the latter sends Earl William fitz Osbern of Hereford to support Arnulf. 20/21 February: Battle of Cassel. Arnulf and fitz Osbern are ambushed and killed. Opposition to Robert collapses. In the peace settlement Flanders and Hainaut are split. Accession of Count Robert I ‘the Frisian’ of Flanders (1071–93). Relations remain adversarial between Robert and William.

257

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216

1086 1087

1093

1096 1100

1101

1102 1105 1106 1108 c.1108 1110 1111

1113 1116/17

Accession of Count Baldwin II of Hainaut (1071–98), Arnulf’s younger brother. Domesday Book is compiled in England, listing several tenants-in-chief from the southern Low Countries. Death of King William I. Accession of his eldest son Duke Robert Curthose of Normandy (1087–1106) and second son King William II Rufus of England (1087–1101). Death of Count Eustace II, accession of Count Eustace III of Boulogne (1087–1125). Death of Count Robert I, accession of Count Robert II of Flanders (1093–1111). Summer: William Rufus and Robert II meet at Dover. The Anglo-Flemish money fief is reinstated. The First Crusade. Duke Robert Curthose, Count Robert II and Count Eustace III are among its leaders. August: Death of William II Rufus, accession of his younger brother King Henry I of England (1100–35). Duke Robert Curthose, Count Robert II and Count Eustace III return from the First Crusade. 10 March: Treaty at Dover between King Henry I and Count Robert II. Summer: Duke Robert Curthose launches an invasion of England, but is reconciled with Henry I. Henry I arranges the marriage of Mary of Scotland, his sister-in-law and the daughter of King Malcolm III of Scotland, to Count Eustace III. Henry I invades Normandy. 28 September: Battle of Tinchebray. Henry I defeats Duke Robert Curthose and completes the conquest of Normandy. Death of King Philip I, accession of King Louis VI of France (1108–37). Henry I transplants large numbers of Anglo-Flemings to south-western Wales. 17 May: Renewal of the Anglo-Flemish treaty at Dover between Henry I and Robert II. Eustace III of Boulogne witnesses for both sides. Early autumn: King Louis VI attacks Count Theobald IV of Blois, Henry I’s nephew and ally, with the support of Count Robert II, but is defeated. Robert II is killed. Accession of Count Baldwin VII of Flanders (1111–19). Baldwin VII welcomes William Clito, the exiled son of Robert Curthose, into Flanders. William Clito knighted by Count Baldwin VII. A coalition aimed against Henry I forms, led by Baldwin VII, King Louis VI and Count Fulk V of Anjou.

258

Timeline 1117 1118 1119 1120

1125

1126

1127

1128

1134 1135 1137

1139 1141

Louis VI and Baldwin VII unsuccessfully invade Normandy. Count Baldwin VII again invades Normandy, and is severely wounded. Death of Baldwin VII from his wounds, accession of his cousin Count Charles ‘the Good’ of Flanders (1119–27). Count Charles concludes a treaty with Henry I and is granted fiefs in England. 25 November: White Ship disaster. William Aetheling, heir to Henry I, drowns. Stephen of Blois, nephew of Henry I, marries Maud of Boulogne. Death of Count Eustace III of Boulogne, accession of Count Stephen of Boulogne (1125–54). Christmas: Henry I designates his daughter, ‘Empress’ Matilda, as his heir. Louis VI officially backs William Clito’s claim to Normandy and marries him to Joan, his half-sister. 2 March: Count Charles the Good assassinated by members of the Erembald clan. 28 March: With the backing of Louis, William Clito is elected count of Flanders (1127–8). He has several rivals, including William of Ypres, Thierry of Alsace and Count Baldwin IV of Hainaut. 17 June: Empress Matilda marries Count Geoffrey V of Anjou. 27/8 July: Death of William Clito, accession of Count Thierry of Flanders (1128–68). Thierry is acknowledged by Henry I and Louis VI. Count Thierry marries Sybil of Anjou, the sister-in-law of Empress Matilda. Death of King Henry I, accession of Stephen of Blois, count of Boulogne, as king of England (1135–54). King Stephen’s expedition to Normandy. He is served by William of Ypres and Flemish soldiers. Death of Louis VI, accession of King Louis VII ‘the Pious’ of France (1137–80). Civil war breaks out in England between King Stephen and Empress Matilda. Flemish soldiers are employed by both sides. 2 February: Battle of Lincoln: Stephen is captured. William of Ypres and Queen Maud keep Kent loyal to the king. 1 November: Earl Robert of Gloucester captured at the Battle of Winchester and later exchanged for King Stephen.

259

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 1144 1152 1153

1154

1155 1155/8 1156 1157

1159 1160

1161 1163 1164

1164–70

Count Geoffrey V of Anjou completes his conquest of Normandy. Empress Matilda’s son Duke Henry of Anjou (1151–89) marries Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine, thereby acquiring the southern duchy. 6 November: Peace agreement between King Stephen and Duke Henry. Henry is acknowledged as the king’s heir. Accession of Stephen’s son Count William of Boulogne (1153–7). February: Count Thierry of Flanders meets King Stephen and Henry at Dover. 25 October: Death of Stephen. 19 December: Coronation of King Henry II of England (1154–89). Count Thierry is present. Revenues from English estates are recorded as assigned to him. Soon after his accession, Henry II consolidates his position by destroying private fortifications and forcing Flemish soldiers to leave England. Count Thierry’s son, Philip ‘of Alsace’, marries Elizabeth, the heiress of Vermandois. Henry II grants special trading privileges to the burghers of St Omer in London. Henry II meets in Rouen with Count Thierry and Countess Sybil. A money-fief treaty is concluded. Thierry and Sybil leave for Jerusalem (1157–9), possibly leaving their son Philip in Henry II’s guardianship. Philip for the first time issues charters as count of Flanders in his own right. June: Henry II undertakes a failed expedition to Toulouse. Death of Count William of Boulogne. May: Peace treaty between Louis VII and Henry II. Count Thierry serves as a witness. Henry II arranges the marriage of Mary of Blois to Thierry’s son Matthew, Count of Boulogne (1160–73). Thierry launches an attack on Boulogne and Lens. March: Thierry and Matthew are reconciled. Matthew forfeits the county of Lens to Thierry. 19 March: Anglo-Flemish treaty between Henry II and Thierry, and their heirs Henry and Philip. Thierry leaves for Palestine (1164–6). Philip rules in his stead. Falling out between Henry II and Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury. Becket flees from England to France via Flanders. Count Philip is actively involved in negotiations surrounding the Becket affair.

260

Timeline 1166 1167 1168

1169 1170 1173

1174 1175 1177 1179

1180

1181 1182

1183

Henry II forcibly deposes Duke Conan IV of Brittany, marries his son Geoffrey to Conan’s daughter and heir, and receives homage from the barons of Brittany. Thierry and Philip campaign in Normandy with Louis VII against Henry II. Death of Count Thierry, accession as sole ruler of Count Philip of Flanders (1168–91). Count Philip makes peace with Henry II, and mediates between Henry and Louis VII. Philip and his brother Matthew are granted fiefs in England. Count Philip’s sister Margaret marries the future Count Baldwin IV of Hainaut. Henry II’s oldest son Young King Henry is co-crowned. With the support of King Louis VII, Young King Henry revolts. Philip of Flanders and Matthew of Boulogne also ally with him and are actively involved in the civil war. After Easter: Philip invades Normandy, but retreats after Matthew’s death. After their unsuccessful siege of Rouen, Henry II forces his opponents to sue for peace. 22 April: Peace negotiations. Count Philip releases Young King Henry from his commitments, and is granted a money fief by Henry II. 20 April: Count Philip embarks on crusade to Palestine (1177–9), together with English knights and a subsidy of 500 silver marks from Henry II. Louis VI is incapacitated by a stroke. His young son Philip II ‘Augustus’ is co-crowned king of France (1179/80–1223). Count Philip manoeuvres to bring Philip II under his influence and convinces him to discard his other councillors. March: Count Philip arranges for his niece Isabella of Hainaut, daughter of Count Baldwin V of Hainaut, to marry Philip II. 28 June: Using his army as a threat, Henry II reconciles Philip II with the other French magnates, undermining Count Philip’s influence. Henry II reconfirms the money fief with Count Philip, who does him homage. Philip II and Count Philip quarrel over lands in northern France. 26 March: Countess Elizabeth, the wife of Count Philip and heir of Vermandois, dies childless. On her death, Philip II lays claim to Vermandois. April: Henry II mediates between Count Philip and Philip II. Count Philip is granted control over Vermandois for life. Henry II arranges Count Philip’s marriage to Matilda of Portugal.

261

Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 1184

1185 1187

1189

1190 1191

1193

1194 1194–5 c.1196 1197 1199

1200 1202 1202–4 1204 1206

Before 10 June: Henry II again mediates between Philip II and Count Philip over Vermandois. Falling-out between Count Philip and Count Baldwin V of Hainaut. Baldwin allies with Philip II. Philip II invades Flanders. Count Philip is forced to sue for peace and invites Henry II to mediate. Friction between Henry II and Philip II over Henry’s French possessions. An alliance develops between Philip II and Richard, Henry II’s oldest surviving son, against Henry II, ultimately leading to hostilities. 6 July: Death of Henry II, subsequent accession of King Richard I ‘the Lionheart’ of England (1189–99). 11 December: Richard I meets with Count Philip in Calais to conclude an accord. Richard I and Philip II leave for Palestine on crusade. Count Philip joins up with Richard and Philip II, but dies during the siege of Acre. Philip II returns to France and seizes Vermandois and Artois. Accession of Count Baldwin V of Hainaut as Count Baldwin VIII of Flanders (1191–3). Baldwin VIII allies with Philip II and Richard’s brother John, who attempts to usurp his brother’s crown. At the death of Countess Margaret of Hainaut and Flanders, her oldest son inherits Flanders as Count Baldwin IX of Flanders (1193–1206). Richard returns to England and suppresses John’s scheme. Count Baldwin IX allies with Philip II against Richard I. Richard I declares an embargo on Flanders and begins to lobby the Flemish and Hainautian nobles with money fiefs. July: Treaty concluded between Richard I and Baldwin IX against Philip II. Death of King Richard, accession of King John of England (1199–1216). August: The 1197 treaty is renewed between Baldwin IX and John. At the treaty of P´eronne Baldwin IX reacquires most of the Flemish lands lost to Philip II. Baldwin IX leaves for the Fourth Crusade. Philip II captures the majority of John’s French domains, including Normandy. Crusaders sack Constantinople. Count Baldwin IX is elected as Emperor Baldwin I. Baldwin is killed. Accession of the under-age Countess Joan (1206–44) under a pro-Capetian regency council.

262

Timeline 1208 1212

1213 1214

1215

1216

Several Flemish towns swear allegiance to John and are granted trade privileges. Countess Joan marries Ferrand of Portugal. En route to Flanders, the couple are seized by crown prince Louis of France, and forced to concede St Omer and lands in Artois. Count Ferrand allies with John. Philip II invades Flanders. 27 July: Philip II defeats the coalition army of Flemings, Englishmen and Germans at the Battle of Bouvines. Philip II is able to increase his dominance over the county. Civil war in England between King John and a coalition of barons. John employs an army of over three hundred Flemish knights to support him. Negotiations between the king and his opponents lead to the creation of Magna Carta. Death of King John, accession of the under-age King Henry III of England (1216–72) under the regency of William Marshal.

263

Appendix II

TRE A T Y B E T WE E N K I N G H E N R Y I I A N D C O U N T T H I E R R Y, A N D H E I R S , D OVE R, 1 9 M A RC H 1 1 6 3

This agreement was made and written in Dover on the 19th of March between Henry king of the English and duke of the Normans and Aquitanians and count of the Angevins, and Henry his son and heir, and Thierry count of Flanders, and Philip his son and his heir.1 §1. Thierry count of Flanders and Count Philip2 his son and his heir by faith and oath promised to King Henry and Henry his son and heir their lives and the limbs that attach to their bodies and the imprisonment of their bodies, so that the king and Henry his son should not have it to his loss, that they [Thierry and Philip] will help them to hold and defend the kingdom of England against all men living or dead, saving their fealty Louis [VII, ‘the Pious’] king of the French, in such a way that if King Louis proposes to invade the kingdom of England against King Henry or against Henry his son, Count Thierry and Count Philip shall, if they can, cause King Louis to desist, and seek in whatever way possible, by advice and prayers, in good faith and without ill intent, without the donation of money, that he should stay at home. And if King Louis should come to England and bring Count Thierry or Count Philip with him, Count Thierry or Count Philip, whichever of them comes with him [King Louis], shall bring as small a force of men as he can in such a way that he does not thereby forfeit his fief in respect of the king of France. §2. And in the face of this necessity, within forty days after Count Thierry or Count Philip has been summoned by King Henry or by Henry his son by messenger or by letters, the count same shall have 1,000 mounted soldiers in his harbours, ready to cross to England to the aid of King Henry or of Henry his son as quickly as he can. And King Henry or Henry his son shall find ships for them and send them either to Gravelines or to Wissant. And he shall send as many ships as are necessary for the number of soldiers so that each of them may have three horses with him, provided that if the king or Henry his son does not send these ships in one expedition, the soldiers left behind from the thousand shall wait at the harbour for a total of one month from the day the ships depart, unless they themselves cross within that month. And count Thierry or Count Philip shall safeguard the ships from all his own men and from all other men from whom he can secure them, in crossing, staying, and returning. 1

2

From the Latin edition of Diplomatic Documents, no. 3, pp. 8–12, and after the translation of E. van Houts, ‘The Anglo-Flemish Treaty of 1101’, with the permission of Dr van Houts, and Boydell and Brewer. Thierry’s oldest son Philip had held the comital title since 1155.

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Treaty between King Henry II and Count Thierry §3. And after the aforesaid soldiers have arrived in England they shall pledge faith to King Henry or Henry his son or to their envoys if required, to this effect: that as long as they are on expedition in England they shall be at the disposal of King Henry and Henry his son and will not seek means whereby the king or Henry his son loses land or man, but they shall help them in good faith to hold and defend the kingdom of England against all men. §4. And if any other people come to England against the king or Henry his son, if Count Thierry or Count Philip is summoned on behalf of the king or Henry his son as we have said above, within the aforementioned period and in the face of this emergency, Count Thierry or Count Philip shall themselves come to England with the 1,000 soldiers unless he remains on account of conspicuous infirmity of his body, or the loss of his land, or a summons to an expedition from King Louis of the French, or a summons to an expedition issued by the emperor of the Romans throughout all his lands, if Count Thierry himself or Count Philip is there [in Flanders] at the time none of the aforesaid summonses is found to contain treachery or ill intent to frustrate the coming of himself and the 1,000 soldiers. §5. And if any earl of England or other men of that land deceive the king or Henry his son so that the king or Henry his son shall lose the earldom or its income, Count Thierry or Count Philip shall come to England with 1,000 soldiers in support of the king or Henry his son unless he has remained in [Flanders] for any of the four lawful excuses. And if both counts have to stay [in Flanders] for such reason so that neither of them is able to come, he shall send 1,000 soldiers to England in support of the king or Henry his son as we have said above. §6. And if at the summons of the king or Henry his son he shall bring or send more than 1,000 soldiers he shall be quit in the immediately following service for the number in excess of 1,000 that he brings or sends. But if twenty or forty or up to 100 are missing from 1,000 soldiers, Count Thierry or Count Philip will not on this account have defaulted on their agreement with the king or Henry his son. But after Count Thierry or Count Philip shall have been summoned by the king or Henry his son, they shall make up the missing numbers within forty days. §7. And the men who come to the king or Henry his son, or who come from them, shall pass freely and safely through all the land and harbours of Count Thierry and Count Philip, and expressly through all the land and harbours of Boulogne,3 whoever they are and from wherever they come, nor will they be denied ships in any harbour if they wish to hire them.4 And neither Count Thierry nor Count Philip shall deny permission to men of their land who wish to enter the service of the king of England or of Henry his son. And if they come, they shall on no account lose land or fief or any agreement which they have with Count Thierry or Count Philip. §8. And if Count Thierry or Count Philip or their men come to the aid of the king or of Henry his son, as long as they are in England, they will be at the expense of the king or of Henry his son, and the king or Henry his son will make good of any losses suffered in England as is the custom to compensate the household of the king of England. And as long as the emergency lasts they shall remain with the king or with Henry his son and they shall loyally serve [him], and when the emergency is 3 4

Count Thierry’s second son Matthew was the count of Boulogne. 1101: ‘ . . . except in the land of Count Eustace [III of Boulogne].’

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 over the king or Henry his son shall allow them to return, and find ships for them, and Count Thierry or Count Philip shall return the ships with the men and their money. §9. And the enemies of the king or of Henry his son who make war against him on land or sea shall not have the trust of either count nor receive refuge in his land, or in the land of Boulogne, or in any other place that Count Thierry or Count Philip can defend against them, or take away from them without any treachery or ill intent.5 And if any man of Count Thierry or Count Philip offends the king or Henry his son or his men and is unwilling to do right to the king or Henry his son or his men on either count’s account, he shall not have the trust of Count Thierry or Count Philip or their men, unless with the consent and agreement of the king or of Henry his son.6 §10. And if the king or Henry his son wishes to have the support of Count Thierry or Count Philip in Normandy or Maine and summons him there, the count himself will go there with 1,000 soldiers7 and shall aid the king or Henry his son in good faith as a friend and a lord from whom he holds a fief, nor shall he desist until the king of France causes judgment to be made on Count Thierry or on Count Philip that he should not help his lord and friend the king of England or Henry his son, from whom he holds a fief, and this judgment should be made by his equals who have the right to judge the count of Flanders. And neither Count Thierry nor Count Philip shall in any way evade these summonses nor will those who issue the summonses suffer any harm or injury from Count Thierry or Count Philip or from any man against whom the aforesaid counts can defend them. §11. That if the king or Henry his son wishes to have Count Thierry or Count Philip in [his] military service in Normandy and summons him by his letters or messengers, the count having been summoned shall come to the king or Henry his son with 1,000 soldiers who for the first eight days in Normandy shall live at the expense of Count Thierry or Count Philip. And if the king or Henry his son wish to retain them longer in his service, they will stay with him in his service and as long as he wishes to retain them he shall give them their quarters, and make good their losses to them as the custom is to compensate his household.8 §12. And if during that time King Louis invades Normandy against the king or Henry his son, Count Thierry or Count Philip shall go to Louis king of France with only twenty soldiers and all the other [980] aforesaid soldiers shall remain with the king or Henry his son in his service and fealty. §13. But Count Thierry himself or Count Philip shall come to the king or Henry his son in Normandy, as written above, unless he is forced to stay [in Flanders] on account of manifest infirmity of body, or loss of his land, or expedition of the king of France or of the emperor of Romans, as written above. And if for this reason the count after summons has to remain, he will send, as we have said above, 1,000 soldiers into Normandy in the service of the king or of Henry his son. §14. And if the king or Henry his son wishes to have him with him in Maine, he shall go with 500 soldiers once a year, and they shall remain in Maine in the 5 7 8

6 1101: ‘ . . . except for Count Eustace.’ 1101: ‘ . . . unless in the land of Count Eustace.’ 1110: ‘with 1,000 soldiers’ is missing. In 1101 the time the Flemish troops were required to stay in English service was only one further period of eight days.

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Treaty between King Henry II and Count Thierry household of the king or of Henry his son for one whole month. If the king or Henry his son wishes to keep them that long [it shall be] at the expense of the king or of Henry his son, and with reimbursement of losses as is the custom of the king’s household. And the king and Henry his son shall do this from the moment they enter Normandy to go to Maine. §15. That if Count Thierry or Count Philip by summons of the king or of Henry his son leads or sends more than 1,000 soldiers to Normandy or more than 500 to Maine, the number led or sent above 1,000 in Normandy or 500 in Maine shall be deducted from the next service. Whichever of the two services, in Normandy or in Maine, Count Thierry or Count Philip performs to the king or Henry his son once in a year, he shall be quit of other service in the same year unless he performs it for the sake of friendship. §16. And if Count Thierry or Count Philip are on an expedition when he has this summons, he shall have respite of three full weeks after his return, and he shall have the same respite if he is summoned within the eight days after his return from an expedition. And if he is ill, he shall have respite from sending soldiers for fifteen days. §17. And for this agreement and security and for the aforesaid services King Henry and Henry his son after him gives Count Thierry and Count Philip his son after him 500 marks every year in fief, that is, 400 marks to the count and 100 marks to the countess of Flanders. And if the countess dies, all the money shall be paid to the count. §18. And for this fief on account of these forementioned agreements and because Count Thierry had done homage to King Henry the grandfather of this King Henry, Count Philip has done homage to this King Henry. And for the observance of all these agreements Count Thierry and Count Philip offer King Henry and Henry his son these guarantors: Cono, Castellan of Bruges for 100 marks Eustace of Griminis, Chamberlain for 100 marks Arnold, Count of Guines for 100 marks Guy, Castellan of Bergues for 100 marks Walter of Dendermonde for 100 marks Roger, Castellan of Courtrai for 100 marks Razo of Gavera, Butler for 100 marks Roger of Wavrin, Steward for 100 marks Baldwin of Balliol for 100 marks Robert, Advocate of B´ethune for 100 marks Thierry of Aalst for 100 marks Michael the Constable for 100 marks And six of these twelve guarantors should lead the aforesaid soldiers in the service of the king or of Henry his son, if Count Thierry and Count Philip default on account of the aforesaid lawful excuses. And if six of the guarantors are not present to lead, at least two of them shall lead, and four of the count’s barons equal in strength to the four who are absent, [shall go] to the service of the king or of Henry his son. And these aforesaid twelve guarantors are guarantors on this condition: if Count Thierry and Count Philip deviate from the aforesaid agreements, or either one of them, and

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Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 they cannot reconcile him with the king or Henry his son within three quarantines [120 days], then each of the aforesaid guarantors shall give the king or to Henry his son 100 marks of silver, and they shall do this within three quarantines or place themselves in the custody of the king or of Henry his son for the aforesaid marks. And the king or Henry his son shall not exact more than is aforesaid, and they [the guarantors] shall place themselves in custody in the Tower of London or in any place where the king or Henry his son can freely hold them to his advantage. And if any of these guarantors dies or leaves the count of Flanders’s fealty or land, the count shall replace him with someone of equal strength at the summons of the king or of Henry his son. And if while the guarantors were sending the aforesaid money to the king or Henry his son it was taken from them in England by anyone whom the king or Henry his son can bind, they shall be quit. And if they lose the money at sea they shall have respite of forty days to replace it. §19. And if it is pleasing to the king or Henry his son, for her aforementioned fief the countess of Flanders shall pledge the king and Henry his son by her faith that to the utmost extent of her power she will by her counsel and prayers cause the count to keep fully all the aforementioned agreements and faithfully perform the services in good faith without any treachery or ill intent. §20. The king pledged to Count Thierry and Count Philip that he would not harm them in their lives and the limbs that attach to their bodies and the imprisonment of their bodies,9 so that the counts should not have it to their loss as long as Count Thierry or Count Philip observe the agreements with the king or Henry his son. And on account of the aforesaid agreements and the aforesaid service the king or Henry his son shall give Count Thierry or Count Philip the aforesaid 500 marks on the day of the Lord’s birth [25 December]. And if the aforesaid money is not paid in full by the aforesaid time, the king himself will pay it within forty days after he has received the count’s summons by his envoy in England or Normandy. But if he [the king] receives a summons by envoys of the count in this matter when he is in any of his other lands, he shall pay the money within forty days of his return to England or Normandy without ill intent. §21. Guarantors on the part of the king and Henry his son for this agreement are: Richard of Humez, Constable for 100 marks Reginald of Saint-Valery for 100 marks Richard of Lucy for 100 marks Henry fitz Gerald, Chamberlain for 100 marks Bernard of Saint-Valery for 100 marks Manasser Biset, Steward for 100 marks Roger of Cailly for 100 marks Hugh, earl of Norfolk for 100 marks William, earl of Arundel for 100 marks Robert, son of the earl of Leicester for 100 marks Earl Geoffrey for 100 marks Hugo, earl of Chester for 100 marks 9

1101: inserted ‘and that he shall not be indebted to him for his whole land if he loses it, except for the land of Count Eustace’.

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Treaty between King Henry II and Count Thierry And these are guarantors under such conditions towards the counts as the guarantors of the counts are towards the king and Henry his son. And all guarantors jointly promise that they shall not avoid the summons and that the summoners will be at no risk from them and from everyone whom they [the guarantors] can prevent from injuring them [the summoners].

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B I BL I OG R A P HY

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ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

Henry III Fine Rolls Project: www.finerollshenry3.org.uk. Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE): www.pase.ac.uk.

SECONDARY LITERATURE

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296

INDEX

Aachen, 154 Adalolf, count of Boulogne, 9 Adelaide of Normandy, 186 Adele, countess of Flanders, 12 Adeliza of Louvain, queen of England, 25, 246 Adrian IV, pope, 245 Aernulf, chancellor of Flanders, 85 Aethelbald, king of Wessex, 8 Aethelfryth, countess of Flanders, 9 Aethelred II, king of England, 18, 55, 56, 93, 148 Aethelwulf, king of Wessex, 8 Agnes of Brittany, 23 Aire, 47, 50 Alan IV Fergant, count of Brittany, 23, 193 Alan, earl of Richmond, 247 Alard the Fleming, 246 Alberon of Chiny, bishop of Li`ege, 120 Alexander III, pope, 37, 155, 167 Alexios I Komnenos, emperor of Byzantium, 56 Alfonso I, king of Portugal, 42 Alfonso VIII, king of Castile, 49 Alfred Aetheling, son of Aethelred II and Emma of Normandy, 11 Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, 8, 9, 181 Alice of B´ethune, 135 Alice of Clare, 112 Alice of Vere, 112 Alton, treaty of, 21 Amand of Prouvy, 95 Anjou, 2, 6, 29, 30, 39, 48, 69, See also Fulk IV; Fulk V; Geoffrey V the Fair; Henry II Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, 158 Anselm, count of St Pol, 87 Aquitaine, 2, 6, 38, 39, 47, 48, 49, 69, 130, 135 Ardres, 10, 16, 82, 186, 252, 253 aristocracy. See knightly society Arnold I the Advocate, lord of Ardres, 10 Arnold I, count of Guines, 253 Arnold II the Old, lord of Ardres, 82, 186, 252 Arnold II, count of Guines, 135, 253

Arnold of Cayeux, 135 Arnulf I the Great, count of Flanders, 9 Arnulf I, count of Boulogne, 9 Arnulf II of Oosterzele, 198 Arnulf II, count of Flanders, 10 Arnulf III, count of Flanders, 16, 17, 17, 187 Arnulf of Chemesel, 112 Arnulf of Hesdin, 186, 188–92, 195, 205 Arras, 16, 131, 139, 147 Arthur, duke of Brittany, 48 Arthur, legendary king of Britain, 128 chivalry and, 120–1 histories of, 128, 132, 163, 254 Artois, 5, 10, 14, 45, 140, 197, See also Flanders, division between north and south contention over, 9, 44, 46, 47, 58, 140, 206, See also Vermandois people of, 67, 139–40, 179, 186–7, 194, 197–8, 203 Aubrey III the Boar of Vere, count of Guines and earl of Oxford, 112, 205, 253 Aubrey IV of Vere, earl of Oxford, 112 Baldwin of Waterlos, 198 Baldwin fitz Gilbert of Clare, 223, 226 Baldwin I Iron Arm, count of Flanders, 7–8 Baldwin I, count of Guines, 17, 17 Baldwin II, count of Flanders, 9 Baldwin II, count of Guines, 135 Baldwin II, count of Hainaut, 17 Baldwin III, count of Flanders, 9 Baldwin III, count of Hainaut, 23, 117 Baldwin IV, count of Hainaut, 28, 29, 95, 95 Baldwin V, count of Flanders, 11–12, 17, 72, 90 and the Norman Conquest of England, 13–15 Anglo-Norman treaties and fiefs, 16, 54, 96, 196 Baldwin VI, count of Flanders, 16, 17, 54, 196 Baldwin VII, count of Flanders, 23, 24, 63, 118

297

Index Baldwin VIII, count of Flanders, and count of Hainaut as Baldwin V, 38, 42, 43–4, 46, 88, 126, 138 Anglo-Norman treaties and fiefs, 95 mercenary and household recruitment, 133–4, 138 tournaments, 124, 129–30 Baldwin IX, count of Flanders, count of Hainaut as Baldwin VI, and emperor of Constantinople as Baldwin I, 46–8, 57, 58, 98, 105, 173 Baldwin of B´ethune, count of Aˆumale, 89, 112, 135, 179 Baldwin of Ghent, lord of Alost, 198 Baldwin of Redvers, 227 Baldwin of Wissant, 91 Baldwin the Fleming, 188 Bampton, 99, 101–2, 103, 105, 107, 109, 110, 113 battles, 12, 16, 22, 51, 215, 228, 232, 237, 238–9, See also Bouvines; tournaments speeches before, 223, 226, 236, 239–40 Bayeux Tapestry, 13, 156 Beatrice, countess of Guines, 112, 205 Bertha of Holland, queen of France, 17, 19 Berthold IV, duke of Z¨ahringen, 56 Bertrada of Montfort, queen of France, countess of Anjou, 19 Beverley, 184 Biervliet, 161 borders diplomatic agreements at, 55 role of cross-border groups, 66, 90–1 tournaments at, 115, 124, 141 Boston, 161 fair, 173, 174 Boulogne, 22, 37, 39, 67, 103, 109, 139, 170, 182, See also Eustace II of Boulogne, Eustace III of Boulogne; Matthew of Boulogne; Renaud of Dammartin, Stephen of Blois formation, 9–10 people of, 14, 16, 102 proximity to England, 3, 30, 158, 159 Boulogne, honour of, 40, 91 Bourne, honour of, 187 Bouvines, battle of, 45, 51, 51, 52, 89 Boves, treaty of, 96 Boxley, abbey of, 245 Brabant, 4, 138, 140, 210, 216 Braine, 140 Bristol, 151, 189, 212, 213 Brittany, 2, 33, 49, 247 and the Anglo-Norman world, 6, 12, 39, 135, 246–7

Breton presence in England, 30, 159 mercenaries, 138, 221, 223 Bruges, 3, 5, 8, 50, 132, 147, 161 commerce, 148, 150, 158, 166 fair, 148 townspeople, 27, 50, 147, 172–3 Burgundy, 125 Bury St Edmunds, 238, 240 fair, 173 Byzantium, 56, 180 Calais, 3, 31, 46, 88 Canterbury, 209 Carni`eres, 124 Caudry, 139 Champagne, 86, 136 fairs, 149, 154 tournaments, 125, 129 Charlemagne, emperor, king of the Franks, 7 Charles the Bald, king of West Francia, 7–8 Charles the Good, count of Flanders, 4, 24–6, 150, 170 English treaties and fiefs, 28, 57, 73, 93, 97 tournaments, 118, 120, 124 Chester, 181 Chinon, 130 chivalric culture, 118, 131, 247 chivalry. See knightly society Cinque Ports, 160 Cistercian order, the, 91–2, 167–8, 245 Clemence of Burgundy, countess of Flanders, 20, 24, 61, 73 Clermont, council of, 119 Cluny, abbey of, 66 Cnut IV, king of Denmark, 18, 24, 159–60, 185 Cnut the Great, king of England, Denmark and Norway, 93 Conan IV, count of Brittany, 39 conferences, 20, 22, 36, 37, 42, 57, 104, 238, See also treaties Constance, duchess of Brittany, 39, 174 crusades, 5, 20, 29, 31–2, 35, 39, 41–2, 46, 48, 69, 77, 79, 87, 119, 132 Damme, 158, 161 David I, king of Scotland, 207, 208 Denmark, 157, See also Cnut, Cnut IV, Harthacnut, Swein II English attitudes towards, 221 Derekin of Acra, 111–13 Devizes, 223 Dixmude, 170 Dodin, 200–1 Domesday Book and inquest

298

Index agriculture, 174–5 creation, 18, 185–97 tenants from the southern Low Countries, 13–14, 89, 138, 200–3, 207 Douai, 47, 50, 147, 157, 172, 203 Dover, 3, 23, 40, 139, 160, 182, 245 travel through, 3, 46, 87, 157–8, 163 treaties concluded in, 20, 21, 23, 32, 35, 54–5, 56, 86 Drogo of Beuvi`ere, 184, 187, 188, 192, 193–4, 195 Drogo of Saint-Winnocksbergen, 181 Duisburg, 154 Dunes, abbey of, 91–2 Dunham, 99–100, 101, 102–3, 105, 107, 108, 110, 113 Dunwich, 174 Durham, 183, 184 Ealdred, archbishop of York, 183 Edgar Aetheling, 18, 196 Edgar, king of England, 180, 221 Edmund Ironside, king of England, 18 Edward I, king of England, 120 Edward III, king of England, 120 Edward the Confessor, king of England, 11, 12, 13, 194 Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of England and duchess of Aquitaine, 36, 38, 49, 134 Eleanor of England, queen of Castille, 49 Elias, abbot of Dunes, 91–2 Elizabeth of Vermandois, countess of Flanders, 34, 37, 38, 42, 44, 44, 64, 104, 125 Ely Abbey, 175 Emma of Normandy, queen of England, 11 Emma of Tancarville, countess of Guines, 23, 23, 89, 112, 174, 205, 252 Engelram, count of Hesdin, 205 England, See also Henry I, Henry II, king of England; John; Stephen of Blois; Richard I Lionheart; William I the Conqueror; William II Rufus and the Anglo-Norman world, 2–3 English identity, 231–4, 254 Flemish presence, See also London, Flemish presence east, 111–13, 182–3, 196 Midlands, 192, 200–4 north, 162, 183–4, 194 north-east, 192–3 south-east, 209 south-west, 88, 139, 181, 189–92, 212, 213 west, 181, 212

wealth, 49, 92–4, 105–6, 162–3, 168–9 English Channel as a border, 3–4, 55, 90, 256 strategic importance, 6, 8, 20, 30, 158–9, 161–2, See also military forces, fleets trade and travel, 3, 5, 157–8, 161, 253, See also Dover, travel through; St Omer envoys, 83–4, 85–6, See also William of Mandeville Erembalds, the family of, 26 Eu, 125 Eustace II, count of Boulogne, 3, 13, 14, 16, 16, 17, 89, 182–3, 186, 188 Eustace III, count of Boulogne, 19, 20, 22, 25, 61 Eustace IV of Blois, count of Boulogne, 33, 76 Eustace of Roeulx, 95 Eustacia of Blois, 86 Exning, 99–100, 101–2, 109, 111–13 Eye, honour of, 23, 174 fairs, 253 English, 157, 161, 171, 172, 173–4, 196 Flemish, 5–6, 148–9 Faversham, abbey of, 179 Ferrand of Portugal, count of Flanders, 50–1, 58, 105, 173 feudalism, 75, 77–8 Flanders, See also Baldwin V, Baldwin VI, Baldwin VII, Baldwin VIII, Baldwin IX, count of Flanders; Ferrand of Portugal; Philip II of Alsace; Thierry of Alsace; William Clito demographics, 210 division between north and south, 4–5, 10, 16, 67, 140, See also Artois economic precosity, 145, 146–7, 154, 208 geopolitical centrality, 3–4, 5–6 inheritance customs, 210–11 languages, 5, 87, 208 origin of the name, 8 Florent the Rich of St Omer, 165 Folcard of St Bertin, 181 France, 4, 34, See also Philip I, Philip II Augustus, Louis VI, Louis VII and Louis VIII, king of France Angevin domains, 38–9, 48–9 commerce, 141, 149, 151, 157, 171 English attitudes towards, 221, 232, 249, 254 Flemish fealty to the king, 17, 27, 60, 70, 73, See also homage French language, 5, 133, 254 political formation, 2, 7 tournaments, 121

299

Index Frederick I Barbarossa, emperor of Germany, 56, 149, 154 Frederick of Oosterzele, 181, 194, 198 friendship, 73, 80, 97 Fromold, castellan of Ypres, 230 Fulk IV, count of Anjou, 19, 20 Fulk V, count of Anjou, 24–5 Galbert of Bruges, 26, 28, 97, 118, 150, 170 Gascony, 49, 52 Gautier of Fontaine, 44 Geoffrey fitz Empress, 110 Geoffrey fitz Peter, 113 Geoffrey Gaimar, 96, 254 Geoffrey I of Mandeville, 246 Geoffrey II of Mandeville, earl of Essex, 86, 223 Geoffrey III of Mandeville, earl of Essex, 86 Geoffrey V the Fair, count of Anjou, 28–31, 32, 64, 159, 228 Geoffrey of Luterel, 113 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 128, 254 Geoffrey of Preuilly, 117 Geoffrey of Say, 113 Geoffrey Plantagenet, duke of Brittany, 39, 114, 234 Geoffrey, archbishop of York, 139 Geoffrey, bishop of Ely, 87 Gerbod of Eschaud, 246 Gerbod of Oosterzele, earl of Chester, 181, 194, 197, 198 Germany, 56, 67, 91, 118, 120, 140, 171 commerce with, 6, 149–50, 154, 168 relations with Flanders, 4, 11, 12, 25, 38, 43–4, 47, 50–1, 60, 208 relations with the Anglo-Norman world, 23, 46, 47, 50–1, 89, 184, 212 Gertrude of Saxony, countess of Flanders and Holland, 12 Gervase of Canterbury, 219, 243, 248 Ghent, 7, 107, 147, 161 commerce, 148 fair, 148 townspeople, 50, 173 gift-giving, 28, 72, 82, 87, 129, 131–2 bribes and donations, 92–4, See also money fiefs Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, 155, 167 Gilbert II of Ghent, earl of Lincoln, 204 Gilbert of Dienze, 111 Gilbert of Ghent, 139, 183, 188, 192–3, 194, 195, 197, 198, 204 Gilbert of Mons, 64, 126 Gloucester, 213 Goda, countess of Boulogne, 13, 16

Godfrey of Cambrai, 187, 187, 188 Godfrey VI, duke of Lower Lorraine, landgrave of Brabant, count of Louvain, 23, 25, 43 Godfrey VIII, duke of Lower Lorraine, landgrave of Brabant, count of Louvain, 124, 137 Godwine, earl of Wessex, 11, 12 Goscelin of St Bertin, 181 Gournay, 124 grain trade, 147, 152, 156, 172, 213 Gravelines, 41, 158–9, 170 Grimbald of St Bertin, 181 Guerric, abbot of Faversham, 179 Guines, 10, 16, 174, 205, 252, See also Albert III of Vere; Baldwin I, count of Guines; Emma of Tancarville; Manasses II Gundrada of Oosterzele, 181–2, 206, 220 Gunfrid of Chocques, 187, 188, 192, 200–3, 207 Guy of Raimbeaucourt, 182, 187, 188, 192, 203 Guy, bishop of Amiens, 13 Haimerich of Arques, 186, 188 Hainaut, 117, 129, See also Baldwin II, Baldwin III and Baldwin IV, count of Hainaut; Baldwin VIII and Baldwin IX, count of Flanders conflict with Flanders, 17, 29, 43 relations with France, 42, 43, 48 relations with the Anglo-Norman world, 23, 28, 50, 95, 140, 187 union with Flanders, 12, 38, 46 Hamelin of Warenne, earl of Surrey, 112, 206 Harald Hardrada, king of Norway, 6, 12, 15, 159 Harfleur, 174 Harold Godwineson, king of England and earl of Wessex, 15, 158 Harthacnut, king of England and Denmark, 11 Hastings, 160 Henry Caldret, 139 Henry de Kemsing, 111 Henry I, duke of Brabant, 137 Henry I, king of England and duke of Normandy, 20–30, 170, 179 administration and policies, 71, 98, 105, 122, 171 employment of Flemings, 197, 198, 209, See also Wales, Flemish immigration military administration, 62, 162 treaties with Flanders, 21, 23, 25, 28, 54, 57, 59–68, 73–6, 84–5 other money fiefs and stipends, 93–4, 95

300

Index Henry I, king of France, 12 Henry II, king of England, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, count of Anjou, 32–45, 77, 134, 233–4, 236, 244, 246 administration and policies, 71, 99–100, 110, 122, 255 confiscation of Flemish property, 172 diplomatic arbitration, 42, 43, 44, 206 employment of Flemings, 33, 45, 64, 136, 139, 164, 198, 229, 245–6, 246 expulsion of Flemings from England, 33, 138, 165, 242–4 grants and privileges awarded to Flemings, 91, 148, 171 itinerary, 158 marriages brokered by, 33–4, 39, 42, 85–6, 87 military administration, 61, 63, 127, 160 other money fiefs and stipends, 79, 94–5, See also Matthew, count of Boulogne relations towards Germany, 43, 149 relationship with Henry, Young King, 39, 130–2, 136 treaties and agreements with the king of France, 76, 76, 171 treaties with Flanders, 33, 35, 37–8, 41, 42, 54, 57, 68–72, 74, 77, 89, 97–111, See also William of Mandeville Henry III, count of Louvain, 118 Henry III, emperor of Germany, 11, 12 Henry III, king of England, 52, 111, 169 Henry V, emperor of Germany, 23, 25, 28 Henry of Braine, 95 Henry of Chemesel, 109, 111–12 Henry of Huntingdon, 153, 168, 226–7, 231–2, 248 Henry of Vere, 112–13 Henry, Young King, 35, 39–41, 44, 45, 79 identity, 40, 135 tournaments, 123–4, 128, 130–2, 134–7 treaties with Flanders, 57, 70, 72, 77 Hereward the Wake, 89, 180, 181 Holderness, 184 homage, 10, 17, 29, 42, 46, 69, 70, 74–81, 95, 97 horses cost, 61 in Anglo-Flemish treaties, 60 tournaments, 116, 131–2 transport, 156 Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk, 238, 241, 244 Hugh III, count of St Pol, 25 Hugh IV, count of St Pol, 135 Hugh le Brun, 48

Hugh of Cambrai, 19 Hugh of Dover, 245 Hugh of La Lega, 207 Hugh the Deacon, 101 Hugh the Fleming, 187, 188, 202–3, 207 Hugo Oysel of Ypres, 165 Hull, 172 Humphrey of Bohun, 238 Huntingdon, honour of, 207 Hythe, 160 Ida of Boulogne, 41 Ida of Lorraine, countess of Boulogne, 89, 89, 186, 188 Ilbert of Carency, 179, 246 Ilbod of Hesdin, 186, 188 Ingelric the Priest, 182 Innocent II, pope, 119 Iolfr, 196 Ireland, 38, 49, 160, 211, 215 English attitudes towards, 238 Isabella of Angoulˆeme, queen of France, 48 Isabella of Hainaut, queen of France, 42, 44, 47 Isabella of Warenne, countess of Surrey, 233, 244 Italy, 148, 154, 162, 166, 167, 198, 253 Jacques of Avesnes, 95–6 Jews, 164 Joan, countess of Flanders, 48, 50 John Marshal, 112, 223–4 John of Gray, bishop of Norwich, 165 John of Salisbury, 36, 64 John of Worcester, 183, 223 John, king of England, 47, 46–52, 127, 130 economic policies, 165, 171 employment of Flemings, 64, 89, 140, 159 Flemish treaties and fiefs, 57, 58, 95–6 naval power, 160 revenues, 105, 161 Jordan Fantosme, 234 Joscelin of Walpol, 175 Judith of Flanders, countess of Northumbria, 12 Judith of Lens, 182, 186–8, 192, 194–5, 200–4, 207 Judith, countess of Flanders, 7–8 King’s Lynn, 161 fair, 172, 173 Kingsbury, 119 Kirton in Lindsey, 99, 101–2, 103, 105, 107–9, 113

301

Index knightly society chivalry and mores, 5, 110–11, 115, 116, 120–1, 126, 130, 132, 142, 225–6, 240–1, 249, 253–5, See also chivalry households, 134 identity, 128 interitance customs, 198–200 La Charit´e, abbey of, 66 Lagny, 128, 141 Lambert II, count of Lens, 186 Lambert of Ardres, 252 Lambert of Waterlos, 198 Le Goulet, treaty of, 47 Letard the Little King, 216 Lille, 27, 50, 146, 147, 161, 172 fair, 148 Llywelyn the Great, prince of Gwynedd, 215 London, 12, 119, 147, 236 administration, 106, 108 commerce, 86, 149, 151, 155, 161, 169, 173 Flemish presence, 77, 148, 165, 166, 209 Lothar, king of France, 9 Louis VI, king of France, 23, 24–8, 29, 70 Louis VII the Pious, king of France, 29 Louis VII, king of France, 31, 32–3, 34, 36, 37–9, 41–2, 70 Louis VIII, king of France, 50, 51, 159, 161, 165 Louviers, treaty of, 66 Lucia of Essex, 112 Lupescarl, 127 Mærleswein, sheriff of Lincoln, 196 Magna Carta, 45, 51–2, 171, 175 Magnus II Barelegs, king of Norway, 18 Maine, 14, 18, 20, 21, 48, 60, 62, 69 Manasses II, count of Guines, 23, 89, 91, 174 Margaret of Flanders, countess of Flanders and Hainaut, 38, 42, 46 Marmoutier, abbey of, 66 Mary of Blois, countess of Boulogne, 33–4, 38, 39, 71, 89, 103 Mary of Scotland, countess of Boulogne, 22 Matilda of Boulogne, 41 Matilda of Flanders, queen of England, 12, 19, 26, 40, 90, 96, 193, 206 Matilda of Portugal, countess of Flanders, 42, 85, 104 Matilda, countess of Huntingdon and queen of Scotland, 207 Matilda, Empress, 23, 25, 28–31, 32, 36, 93, 159, 246 Matthew Paris, 249

Matthew, count of Boulogne, 33–4, 39, 40–1, 100–3, 109, 158, 160, 248 English fiefs, 37–8, 57, 102–3 Maud, queen of England and countess of Boulogne, 25, 31, 227 Mercadier, 127 mercenaries and paid soldiers, 12, 55, 63, 74, 93, 137, 159, 176 Flemish, 20, 22, 30, 33, 45, 46, 52, 56, 59–63, 65–6, 67–8, 86, 136–7, 138–40, 178, 179, 196–7, 198, 236–48 recruitment, 67–8, 137–42, 162, 166 social status and attitudes towards, 126–8, 219, 225–6, 229–31, 238–41, See also William of Ypres Merck, viscounty of Boulogne, 46 Mesen, fair of, 148 Michael of Boulaers, constable of Flanders, 83 military forces army sizes, 63–4 fleets, 159–61 money, See also England, wealth credit and money-lending, 164, 166–8 inflation, 168 silver currency, 162, 169 use, 162–3 value, 60 money fiefs, 92, 206 as foreign policy tools, 92–7 by Anglo-Norman kings, 54–8, 97–106 collection, 99, 106–7, 108–9 economic underpinnings, 168–9 in Flanders, 96 organisation aspects, 106–11 Morcar, earl of Northumbria, 195 New Romney, 160 Nicholas I, pope, 8 Nieuwerleeden, 170 Nieuwpoort, 91, 150, 161, 211 Normanangli, 2, 233–4 Normandy, 1–2, 9 and the Anglo-Norman world, 2 attitudes towards, 221 Flemish presence, 198 in Anglo-Flemish treaties, 60, 62 Norman identity, 231–4 political effects of union with England, 15, 53 revenues, 105 tournaments, 114, 118, 125 Northampton, 119, 192, 200, 201 fair, 173 Northumbria, 183, 216, 235

302

Index Norwich, 147, 165, 241 Novgorod, 154 Odo the Fleming, 187, 188 Orderic Vitalis, 231 Osbert of Arden, 119 Osney, order of canons of, 109 Otto IV of Brunswick, emperor of Germany, 47, 50–1 Owain ap Caradog, 215 Paris, 1, 38, 39, 40, 43, 128 P´eronne, treaty of, 47 Peter’s Pence, 167 Pharamus of Boulogne, 245 Philip Hurepel, 51 Philip I, king of France, 11, 17, 19–20, 22, 73, 93 Philip II Augustus, king of France, 5, 42–51, 57–8, 66, 70, 76, 83, 85, 89, 96, 108, 140, 159, 171, 172–3 Philip III, king of France, 141 Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders and Vermandois, 34–46, 87–9, 137, 206 and Philip II Augustus, king of France, 41–5, 83, 85, See also Artois, contention over; Vermandois Anglo-Norman treaties and fiefs, 35, 37–8, 40, 41, 42, 56–7, 70–1, 72, 74, 77, 79, 98, 102–5, 107–11, 112, 136 comital administration of, 35, 140, 170, 255 military affairs, 64, 158 persecution of heretics, 212 reputation, 132–3, 235–6, 248 tournaments, 123, 124–5, 129–30, 131–3, 135 Philip of Namur, 47, 48, 50, 99 Philip, archbishop of Cologne, 43, 137 Philip, count of Loo, 19, 227 Picardy, 5, 9, 58, 67, 131, 140, 203, See also Artois, Vermandois Poitou, 38, 48–9, 51, 69, 130 Ponthieu, 9, 67 Radulf of Lens, 109 Rainer of Brimeaux, 187, 188, 192, 195–6 Ralph Caldret, 139 Ralph of Mortimer, 181 Ranulf Glanville, 85 Ranulf of Gernon, earl of Chester, 56 Raoul II, count of Vermandois, 38, 125 Raoul, count of Clermont, 124 Reinbert the Fleming, 181

Renaud of Dammartin, count of Boulogne, 46, 48, 50–1 Resinde of Waterlos, 200 Ressons, 124 Rhys ap Gruffudd, prince of Deheubarth, 214 Richard fitz Gilbert of Clare, earl of Pembroke, 215 Richard I Lionheart, king of England, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, count of Anjou, 45–7, 66, 83, 88–9, 91–2, 106, 130, 136, 165, 173, 234 Flemish treaties and fiefs, 57–8, 95, 108 naval power, 160 revenues, 105 tournament policy, 116 Richard I, duke of Normandy, 55 Richard of Clare, 112 Richard of Devizes, 249 Richard of Lucy, 238 Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, 87, 241 Richilde, countess of Flanders and Hainaut, 12, 16 rivers trade and communications, 147, 151, 156–7, 173, 196, 253 Robert I the Frisian, count of Flanders, 12, 16–20, 185, 197, 205, 227 military agreements, 18, 20, 56, 159 Robert II of Beaumont, earl of Leicester, 56 Robert II, count of Flanders, 19–24 Anglo-Norman treaties and fiefs, 20, 21, 23, 54–6, 59–61, 73, 75, 77–8, 84–5 Robert II, king of France, 12 Robert III of Beaumont, earl of Leicester, 235, 238 Robert V of B´ethune, 88–9, 135, 198, 207 Robert VII of B´ethune, 88–9, 198 Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, 19–22, 24, 93, 131, 199 Robert fitz Hubert, 222, 223–4, 231 Robert, earl of Gloucester, 159, 221, 222–4, 226, 228, 228 Robert Malet, 252 Robert of Aire, 37 Robert of B´ethune, 67 Robert of Carni`eres, 95 Robert of Comines, 183, 197 Robert of Ghent, 204 Robert of Ghent, chancellor, 204 Robert of Torigni, 248 Roger fitz Miles, earl of Hereford, 56 Roger II Bigod, earl of Norfolk, 239 Roger, archbishop of York, 204 Rollo, count of Rouen, 9 Roman law, 68

303

Index Rouen, 22, 25, 32, 46, 49, 71, 88, 90, 104, 106, 110, 147 Rubin, Edgar, 255 Sancho I, king of Portugal, 50 Sancho of Savannac, 127 Sandwich, 160 Scandinavia, 5–6, 8–9, 18, 149, 159, 192, See also Denmark Scotland, 18, 38, 49, 132, 157, 178, 207, 232, See also William I the Lion English attitudes towards, 237–8, 248 Flemish immigration, 208 scutage, 62, 63, 162 ships, 156–7, See also military forces, fleets Sigar of Chocques, 187, 188, 192, 203, 205, 207 Simon of Havr´e, 140 Simon of Senlis, earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, 207 Soissons, 140 Southampton, 161 Spain, 5, 49, 120, 162 St Andrew’s of Northampton, priory of, 207 St Bertin, abbey of, 96, 113, 167, 173, 181, 206 St Denis, abbey of, 36, 66 St George, priory of, 205 St Giles at Winchester, fair of, 173 St Godric, 157 St Ives, fair of, 157, 171, 173, 174 St John the Baptist, priory of, 214 St Josse, abbey of, 109 St Lazarus, convent of, 69 St Martin of Tours, church of, 37 St Mary of Laon, abbey of, 163 St Nicholas of Arrouaise, abbey of, 31 St Omer, 16, 44, 47, 50, 91, 154, 158, 181, 209, See also St Bertin, abbey of commerce in, 148, 164–5, 167, 170–1 English exiles, 15, 36, 158, 245 English interests, 112–13, 135, 174, 206 fair, 148 townspeople, 50, 147, 166, 172 St Peter’s of Ghent, abbey of, 19, 67, 139, 180, 193, 212 English properties, 187, 188, 209 St Pol, 10, 25, 67, 139 St Trond, abbey of, 210 Stephen of Blois, king of England and count of Boulogne, 30–2, 77, 87, 98, 204, 223–4, 228, 229, 242, 245, 247 as count of Boulogne, 25, 27, 40, 139, 170, 179, 222 Flemish soldiers during the reign, 89, 138, 159, 219, 221–4, 227, 242–4, 245–6,

247–8, See also mercenaries and paid men; William of Ypres inheritance, 33, 39, 100, 103 Stephen of Turnham, 175 Swein II, king of Denmark, 159 Sybil of Anjou, countess of Flanders, 31, 35, 244, 259, 260 diplomatic activity, 32, 69, 71, 90, 98, 100 marriage to Thierry of Alsace, 29 Tancred, castellan of Haverfordwest, 216 Ter Doest, abbey of, 91 Tewkesbury, 151 textiles, 147 English manufacturing, 155, 175–6 Flemish manufacturing, 152–5, 174, 208–9, 216, 240 Theobald IV of Blois, count of Blois and Champagne, 23 Theobald V, count of Blois, 39, 95, 235 Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, 158, 244–5 Thierry of Alsace, count of Flanders, 27–9, 31–5, 38, 91, 132, 150, 170, 179, 227, 229, 230, 244 Anglo-Norman treaties and fiefs, 28, 32, 34, 35, 38, 54, 57, 68–72, 74–6, 77, 79, 94, 97–102, 110–11 dynastic alliances, 29, 38, See also Elizabeth of Vermandois; Margaret of Flanders; Sybil of Anjou Thierry of Dienze, 111 Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, 32, 158 relations with Philip of Alsace, 35–7, 102 tomb, as pilgrimage destination, 42, 89 Thorney, abbey of, 181 Thurkill Fundu, 119 Tiard of Waterlos, 198 Torhout, fair of, 148 Tostig Godwineson, earl of Northumbria, 12, 14–15 trade goods, 150, 154, See also grain trade, wool treaties, 7, 21, 33, 43, 51, 55–6, 96, See also conferences; friendship; homage; money fiefs Anglo-Flemish, 54–9, 251–2 1101, 21, 59–68 1110, 23, 59–68 1119, 25 1156, 32, 71, 99–100 1163, 35, 68–72, 102 1166–8, 38, 102–3 1173, 40

304

Index 1175, 41, 103–4 1180, 42 1197, 47, 57–9 1199, 47 1213, 50 Anglo-French, 47, 66, 171 as rituals, 71–2, 85 Franco-Flemish, 44, 47, 51, 85 Turstin the Fleming, 181 urban communities in England, 175–6 in Flanders, 147, 166, 169–71, 172–3 Valenciennes, 117 Valois, 38 Verdun, 7 Vermandois, 129 acquisition by Philip II Augustus, 46 Flemish claim, 34–5, 38, 44, 64, 104, 206, See also Elizabeth of Vermandois, countess of Flanders and Vermandois tournaments, 124–5, 131, 132 Vexin, 19, 23, 37 Wahull, honour of, 187, 207 Walcher, bishop of Durham, 184 Waleran of Beaumont, count of Meulan and earl of Worcester, 228 Wales, 38, 49, 63, 217 English attitudes towards, 223, 223, 237 Flemish immigration, 178, 183, 211, 213–17 Walter brother of Seiher, 187, 202, 203 Walter of Douai, 187, 188–90, 195, 203 Walter of Ghent, 204 Walter of Ligne, 95 Walter of Locres, 86 Walter the Fleming, 187, 188, 192, 195, 200–3, 207 Waltheof, earl of Northumbria, 182, 186, 194, 204 Walther brother of Seiher, 188 Weald. See Bampton Wells, 213 Westminster, fair of, 173 William Aetheling, 25, 76 William Cade, 91, 164–6, 246 William Clito, count of Flanders, 24–8, 74, 147, 170 William des Roches, 48 William I of Warenne, earl of Surrey, 181, 194 William I the Conqueror, king of England and duke of Normandy, 11, 12–19, 72, 131, 183, 184, 185, 194, 199, 204, 209 expedition of 1066, 12, 63, 159, 182

Flemish connections, 12, 40, 186, 192–3 Flemish treaties and fiefs, 16, 54, 96, 196–7 William I the Lion, king of Scotland, 39, 139, 235, 236–8 William I Warenne, earl of Surrey, 206 William II of B´ethune, 89 William II of Warenne, earl of Surrey, 106 William II Rufus, king of England, 19–21, 96, 199 employment of Flemings, 20, 197 Flemish treaties and fiefs, 20, 54, 56 other stipends and gifts, 82, 93 William IV of Warenne. earl of Surrey, 113, 173 William fitz Osbern, earl of Hereford, 16, 181 William fitz Robert, earl of Gloucester, 56 William Longsword, duke of Normandy, 9 William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, 51 William Malet, 174, 252 William Marshal II, earl of Pembroke, 135 William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, 112, 165, 224 political career, 52, 127, 134–5 tournaments, 123–4, 129, 130, 134–5 William of Aubigny, earl of Lincoln, 246 William of Blois, count of Boulogne and earl of Surrey, 33, 233, 244 William of Brabant, 216 William of Dover, 222 William of Longchamp, 139 William of Malmesbury, 221–2, 228, 231–2, 254 William of Mandeville, earl of Essex, 86, 87–9, 104, 107–8, 113 William of Newburgh, 242 William of Ypres Anglo-Norman career, 30, 40, 222, 223, 226–31 comital pretensions, 25, 93 posthumous reputation, 242–5 William the Monk, 228 William, archbishop of York, 204 Winchester, 21, 147, 157, 173, 223, 228 Winemar the Fleming, 187, 188, 192, 200–2, 203, 207 Wissant, 3, 20, 46, 131, 158–9, 163, 170, 174 Wizo the Fleming, 216 wool, 147, 156 English wool trade, 92, 150, 151–4, 161, 163, 165, 167–8, 172, 173, 174, 175, 190 Flemish production, 152–3 Worcester, 176, 212 York, 147, 183 Ypres, 50, 146, 147, 161, 172, 173 fair, 148, 174

305