Henry I and the Anglo-Norman World: Studies in Memory of C. Warren Hollister 1843832933, 9781843832935

Citation preview

Henry I and the

Anglo-Norman World STUDIES IN MEMORY OF

C. WARREN HOLLISTER Edited by Donald F. Fleming and Janet M. Pope

. 17 . HASKINS SOCIETY JOURNAL

THE HASKINS SOCIETY JOURNAL STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY

HENRY I  AND THE ANGLO-NORMAN WORLD

STUDIES IN MEMORY OF C.WARREN HOLLISTER

The Charles Homer Haskins Society Officers and Councillors for 2005

Officers President: Paul Hyams, Cornell University North American Vice-President: Bruce O’Brien, Mary Washington College European Vice-President: Graham Loud, University of Leeds Japanese Vice-President: Hirokazu Tsurushima Executive Secretary: Scott Jessee, Appalachian State University Treasurer: Fred Suppe, Ball State University Conference Director: Jennifer Paxton, Georgetown University Journal Editor: Stephen Morillo, Wabash College Newsletter and Website Editor: Steven Isaac, Longwood University Councillors Robin Fleming, Boston College (immediate past president) Emily Albu, University of California, Davis C. P. Lewis, University of Liverpool Assistant Journal Editor: Diane Korngiebel

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Frontispiece:  C. Warren Hollister.

HENRY I  AND THE ANGLO-NORMAN WORLD STUDIES IN MEMORY OF C. WARREN HOLLISTER

EDITED BY DONALD F. FLEMING JANET M. POPE

The Haskins Society Journal Special Volume 17 2006

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2007 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2007 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN  978 1 84383 293 5 ISSN 0963–4959

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Contents



Editor’s Note Preface Abbreviations Bibliography of C. Warren Hollister’s Publications

1 C. Warren Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I Lois L. Huneycut 2 From the Thames to Tinchebray: The Role of Normandy in the Early Career of Henry I Kathleen Thompson 3 Henry I and the English Ann Williams 4 The Irish Sea Province and the Accession of Henry I Robert S. Babcock 5 Henry I, Count Helias of Maine, and the Battle of Tinchebray Richard E. Barton 6 Robert of Beaumont, Count of Meulan and Leicester: His Lands, his Acts, and his Self-Image David Crouch 7 The Double Display of Saint Romanus of Rouen in 1124 David S. Spear 8 Henry I and the English Church: The Archbishops and the King Sally N. Vaughn 9 The Fiscal Management of England under Henry I Stephanie Mooers Christelow 10 Henry I’s Administrative Legacy: The Significance of Place-Date Distribution in the Acta of King Stephen Heather J. Tanner 11 The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope: The Marital Fortunes of Agnes of Essex RáGena C. DeAragon

viii ix xv xix

1

16 27 39 63

91 117 133 158

183

200

Editor’s Note

A full introduction and explanation of this volume’s contents is provided in the Preface by this volume’s editors. This volume of the Haskins Society Journal is a special volume devoted to Henry I and Warren Hollister’s work on his reign. Its publication, between regular volumes for 2005 and 2006, brings the number of volumes up to match the number of subscription years; the volume is owed to those who were Haskins Society members in both 2000 and 2003. This coming year’s regular volume and all subsequent volumes will then be matched with subscription years in order. This volume is the result of hard and dedicated work by its editors, Donald F. Fleming and Janet M. Pope. The Journal Editor would like to thank them for taking on a task that contributes significantly to the Society’s memory of one of our founders, Warren Hollister, and contributes to the Society’s scholarly record by continuing Warren’s work, as well as helping the Journal deal with the last administrative issues arising from a previous backlog of volumes, now entirely dealt with. The Haskins Society Journal is an international refereed journal, and its contents are not limited to papers read at the Society’s own conference or at the sessions which it sponsors elsewhere. Papers on the history of England and its neighbors in the Central Middle Ages are welcome from anyone. Authors intending to submit are asked to write for guidelines and style sheets: contact Dr. Stephen Morillo, Department of History, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN 47933, USA; email: [email protected]. Information is also available at the Haskins Society website at www.haskins.cornell.edu. Stephen Morillo, Editor

Preface Janet M. Pope and Donald F. Fleming

This collection of essays is both a tribute to and a reflection of the career of C. Warren Hollister. The idea for this volume began with a series of four sessions on ‘Henry I and the Anglo-Norman World’ held in honor of the longawaited, and sadly posthumous, publication of Hollister’s biography of the king; the sessions were part of the Thirty-Eighth International Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University in early May, 2003. After the conference, the Haskins Society very kindly expressed interest in publishing papers from the sessions, augmented by other contributions, as a special volume of its Journal. A fine collection of essays in Hollister’s honor, The Normans and their Adversaries at War, had already appeared. As its title indicates, however, that work focuses on one of Hollister’s scholarly interests, military history, and the essays in it were written before Henry I was published. This collection in a sense supplements it, concentrating on other fields where Hollister labored in the work that culminated in Henry I: royal biography, of course, but also political history more generally (including Church-State relations), ­administrative history, and prosopography. Although this volume grew out of the sessions at Kalamazoo in 2003, it does not simply print the papers presented there. Only two of the essays, those by Lois Huneycutt and Robert Babcock, are revised versions of papers from that conference. Three other participants in those sessions, Richard Barton, David Crouch, and Stephanie Christelow, chose to substitute essays that they thought more fitting for this collection. Papers by Kathleen Thompson and Ann Williams stem from another meeting, the Haskins Society Day-Conference on ‘Henry I of England’ held at the Institute of Historical Research in London in September of 2002. In addition, several former students of Hollister who had not presented papers at Kalamazoo generously contributed essays: David Spear, Sally Vaughn, Heather Tanner, and RáGena DeAragon. Regardless of their varied origins, all the essays represent work that is in some way dependent on Hollister’s ground-breaking scholarship in Anglo-Norman studies, especially his magnum opus, Henry I.  

Richard P. Abels and Bernard S. Bachrach, eds., The Normans and their Adversaries at War: Essays in Memory of C. Warren Hollister, Warfare in History (Woodbridge, 2001).



Preface

Lois Huneycutt’s personal and professional tribute to our mentor opens the volume. Huneycutt lays out the turbulent history of Hollister’s biography of Henry I and explains, at least in part, why the monograph was so long in the making: Hollister wanted to answer every question as fully as possible before publishing his definitive work. He therefore carefully framed a series of discrete queries, marshaled the evidence, and drew the logical conclusions, each question and its solution forming a scholarly article. He thus reworked, revised, rethought his interpretation of the reign of Henry I, and the biography was the culmination of the many questions answered. Huneycutt also discusses the relationship between Hollister’s scholarship and that of many of his graduate students, especially those who worked on the Anglo-Norman realm. As she notes, he often suggested to students topics related to his own current research and guided them in their explorations; their findings in turn influenced his own thinking. In this way, Hollister created a community of scholars probing the intricacies of the Anglo-Norman world. The remainder of the contributions investigate that world, beginning with Kathleen Thompson’s study of Henry I’s early life. Thompson surveys Henry’s career up to the battle of Tinchebray with an eye to the lessons he learned in western Normandy that served him well as both king and duke. Hollister likewise placed considerable emphasis on this early stage of the king’s life, devoting a lengthy chapter of the biography to Henry’s ‘Childhood and Youth’. Thompson’s focus is rather tighter; she is mainly concerned with explicating Henry’s keen ability to wrest Normandy from Robert Curthose and thereby recreate their father’s cross-Channel regnum. Delving into this formative period in Henry’s life, Thompson recounts the events that taught Henry ‘political realism’, the lack of ‘gratitude among princes’, and which nobles he should employ and which he should destroy. Her picture of Henry strongly resembles Hollister’s in many respects; this is the shrewd, intelligent, and capable political realist, skilled at managing men and situations. Thompson is, however, cognizant of a darker side to Henry’s character, noting his ruthless ability to exploit opportunities and ending with the observation that he proved ‘brutally capable of making others bend to his will’. Unlike Thompson’s, Ann Williams’ article pays very little attention to Henry himself; instead she looks at the three Ediths in Henry’s life, two mistresses and his queen, Edith/Matilda. While Henry’s private life was by all accounts fuller than most, this is not the point of Williams’ article; instead she uses the three ‘English’ women and their families as a lens to examine the concept of ‘Englishness’ and ‘ethnicity’ in the Anglo-Norman world. She argues that at least part of Henry’s interest in Matilda stemmed from her descent from both the West Saxon and Scottish royal lines; through Matilda, Henry’s progeny would have an even stronger claim to the English throne. Within this context, Williams also discusses Henry’s concern with English law under Edward the Confessor. The marriage to Matilda plus the espousal of traditional law helped to put the stamp of propriety on Henry’s reign. Williams also points out that the ‘English’ like the ‘Normans’ were actually ethnically diverse and ‘did not



Preface

xi

confuse ethnicity ... with nationality’. Thus, through investigation of one aspect of Henry I’s private life Williams draws broader conclusions about the realm. Like Williams, Robert Babcock looks at a topic on the periphery of Hollister’s work on Henry I, exploring the role of the Irish Sea province in the events of Henry’s reign. Drawing on evidence from Welsh chronicles and other sources, Babcock demonstrates that the Irish were a threat to Henry I because they were the allies of Henry’s neighbors but were not under Henry’s hegemony. As such, the Welsh, Scots, Manx, and others could use the Irish against the AngloNorman king, and Henry, like his grandson, had reason to be concerned by these rogue political players. Therefore, Henry needed to shift his neighbors’ attention away from Ireland and toward himself. Through this perspective Babcock broadens Hollister’s interpretation of the Welsh campaign of 1114 and concludes that while Henry’s campaign was indeed in part an attempt to pacify Wales and assert the Anglo-Norman king’s overlordship, it also severed the bonds between the Welsh princes and the Irish and replaced those bonds with ties to England. Though Henry I devotes little space to Ireland, Babcock’s interpretation nevertheless complements and extends Hollister’s. Similarly, Richard Barton’s essay approaches the reign of Henry I from a different geographic perspective than Hollister used. Barton concentrates on Helias count of Maine’s relationship with Henry I, but from a Manceau point of view. Barton’s careful treatment of the links between Helias and Henry reflects Hollister’s interest in personal relationships as political forces, but Barton’s conclusions challenge his mentor’s interpretation of Helias’ decision to withdraw from the Norman campaign of 1105. Barton maintains that Helias’ actions were not based on piety, as Hollister thought, but were instead the result of ‘a combination of personal feeling, including his own pride and ambition as well as his close relationship with Henry I’. To substantiate this conclusion, Barton presents a detailed sketch of Helias’ career and analyzes the shared experiences, friendships, and enmities of Helias and Henry within the framework of the contemporary concept of amicitia. Ultimately, Barton suggests, the most significant elements in Helias’ relationship with Henry were horizontal, affective bonds rather than vertical ties of lordship, or even pragmatic considerations of self-interest. Barton’s work combines new perspectives on the nature of medieval social bonds and emotions with the sort of detailed investigation of noble politics associated with Hollister. David Crouch’s contribution also highlights the impact of an individual on Anglo-Norman society. Crouch surveys the acts of Robert of Meulan as a reflection of changing aristocratic lifestyles and the development of a class of nobles who aspired to differentiate themselves from those beneath them by conscious imitation of royal symbols and administrative tools; Robert, for example, possessed a double-sided seal and his own exchequer, both of which were very obviously modeled on royal exempla. To place this study of Robert of Meulan within its proper frame, Crouch explores the count’s political ­connections through prosopographical analysis and a brief examination of

xii

Preface

Robert’s landholdings. While Crouch’s study deals only tangentially with Henry I, it deepens our understanding of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, a topic of great interest to Hollister. The heart of Crouch’s contribution is an edition of thirty-two texts or notices of Robert of Meulan’s acts, including twenty-two which have not previously been printed; Hollister would have been delighted with this resource. Similarly, David Spear’s essay includes two notices which are here printed for the first time; both relate to a dual display of the relics of St. Romanus of Rouen in 1124. In a style reminiscent of microhistory, Spear’s close reading and careful contextualization of these documents illuminates both local ecclesiastical struggles and wider political events. Revising earlier interpretations, he argues that the unusual bi-translatio was a highly successful move in the cathedral chapter’s rivalry with the monastery of Saint-Ouen. As the documents reveal that Henry I and the papal legate John of Crema were present together in Rouen in late August of 1124, Spear suggests that the two men were negotiating the possibility of holding a legatine council in England in exchange for the annulment of William Clito’s marriage to Sybil of Anjou. He also ties the bi-translatio to the protracted process which led to the resolution of the Canterbury–York dispute. Through his careful prosopographical investigation of the parties involved, Spear concludes that the bishops who attended the second showing were in the same mold as Romanus had been, ‘loyal servants of the crown’. Sally Vaughn also addresses Henry I’s episcopal relationships, but her paper focuses on three archbishops of Canterbury, Anselm, Ralph d’Escures, and William of Corbeil. Vaughn argues that the king was a shrewd manager of his bishops, especially the less-than-competent Ralph, but that in Anselm, Henry had met his match. She investigates Anselm’s political philosophy and contends that Henry eventually came to acquiesce in Anselm’s ideals. While her account of ‘Henry’s complete capitulation to Anselm’ might seem different from Hollister’s view of a supremely competent king, Vaughn notes that the result of Henry’s close cooperation with the saint was a more stable English Church, which benefited both king and realm. Moreover, Vaughn observes that Henry played a considerable role in shaping the English Church. His influence is displayed in the negotiations involving William, Thurstan archbishop of York, and Pope Honorius, which resulted in two papal rulings that would have pleased any king of England, as Canterbury regained its legatine status and York gained nominal control of the Scottish Church. In sum, Vaughn’s interpretation of Henry’s varied relationships with his various bishops presents a king who employed the right management style for every occasion. While Vaughn concludes that Henry managed his archbishops as skillfully as he did his bureaucracy, Stephanie Christelow’s essay underlines the relative independence of one key group of officials, the barons of the Exchequer. Drawing on charter evidence and a painstaking analysis of the sole surviving Pipe Roll of Henry’s reign, Christelow reconstructs the membership and functioning of this body. In her view, the barons, who typically did their work



Preface

xiii

without the king’s direct supervision, were far more than representatives of royal interests. Instead, they used their positions, and particularly their control over fiscal exemptions and the collection of fines, to extend patronage to clients, to promote cooperative relations among the host of royal servants, and (to a limited degree) for personal gain. Based on her careful study of patterns in the Pipe Roll, Christelow argues that the barons sometimes manipulated their own exemptions as a way to force accounts to balance, in effect writing off debts to the king and concealing administrative inefficiency or malfeasance. Her essay thus challenges Hollister’s emphasis on the development of central institutions in Henry I’s reign as an expression of royal power, shifting attention from the king himself to his officials and their own agendas. Although similarly concerned with administrative history, Heather Tanner’s paper addresses a different institution, the royal Chancery, and a later reign, that of Stephen. Tanner employs statistical analysis of royal acta, a method which Hollister pioneered, to dispute the idea that England’s central adminstrative machinery broke down during Stephen’s rule. Other scholars have contended that Stephen’s Chancery produced relatively few documents, compared with the outpouring under his predecessor, and those that were issued came disproportionately from the early years of the reign. Tanner maintains that the contrast is more apparent than real. When allowance is made for factors such as the significantly smaller territory under Stephen’s control and the lesser length of his reign (which tends to inflate the percentage of acta from his first years), his Chancery’s output is comparable to that under Henry I. Nor, Tanner argues, was there any diminution in the skill of royal scribes or the sophistication of their products. The major contrast that Tanner discerns between Stephen’s and Henry’s acta lies in their place of issuance. Largely because of his loss of Normandy, Stephen seems to have favored the region around London over Windsor and Winchester; Tanner notes that this prefigures patterns that would re-emerge under Edward I. The last essay in the volume, by RáGena DeAragon, scrutinizes the troubled marital history of Agnes of Essex, third wife of the first earl of Oxford, Aubrey de Vere. This is a fascinating tale, replete with elements that would not be out of place in a Gothic novel: a child betrothed in infancy who rejects her intended in favor of his titled uncle, allegations of treason and trial-by-combat, and a distressed wife’s imprisonment in a castle tower while her husband sought to dissolve their marriage. As DeAragon demonstrates, however, this is much more than a picturesque story; it reveals the changing contours of noble marriage in the mid-twelfth century, as lay views of unions as pragmatic family alliances based on property and political interests clashed with a clerical drive towards marriage as a sacrament based on individual consent. DeAragon’s reconstruction of the case, which is fuller than any previously published, calls attention to Agnes’ own active role in the story, and more broadly, the possibilities for women’s agency. While it deals with events a generation or more after Henry I’s death, DeAragon’s paper builds on Hollister’s prosopgraphical methods and reflects his interest in noble families.

xiv

Preface

In his lifetime, C. Warren Hollister was one of the foremost medieval h­ istorians in America. His legacy, through the scholarship that he produced and the younger historians (his own students and others) whom he encouraged and aided, is incalculable. It is a testament to his influence that the reign of Henry I, something of a historiographic backwater before his time, has become a vibrant field of inquiry – so active, in fact, that while this volume was in preparation, a new biography of the king by Judith Green appeared. As former students of Hollister, the editors of this volume owe more to him than we can express in a few words. Fortunately, we do not need to do so, for Lois Huneycutt’s essay ably testifies to the debt all his students feel.

Abbreviations

AHR ANS

American Historical Review Anglo-Norman Studies (formerly Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies) ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; normally cited from Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Charles Plummer (2 vols., Oxford, 1892–9), with year and MS. ASE Anglo-Saxon England Bk. of Fees Liber feodorum: the Book of Fees, commonly called Testa de Nevill (3 vols., London, 1920–31) BL British Library, London Bracton Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, ed. and trans. Samuel E. Thorne (4 vols., Cambridge, MA, 1968–77) Bracton’s Note Book Bracton’s Note Book: a Collection of Cases decided in the King’s Courts during the Reign of Henry the Third, ed. F. W. Maitland (3 vols., London, 1887) Cal. Chart. R. Calendar of the Charter Rolls, 1226–1516 (6 vols., London, 1903–27) Cal. Docs. France, Calendar of Documents preserved in France illused. Round trative of the History of Great Britain and Ireland, I: A.D. 918–1206, ed. J. H. Round (London, 1899) Cal. Lib. R. Calendar of the Liberate Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office (6 vols., HMSO, 1917–64) Cal. Pat. Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office (London, 1891 and in progress) Camb. Hist. Jnl. Cambridge Historical Journal Close R. Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III preserved in the Public Record Office (14 vols., London, 1902–38) Complete Peerage G. E. C[okayne], The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, and Dormant, new ed. by V. Gibbs and others (12 vols. in 13, London, 1910–59)

xvi Cur. Reg. R.

Abbreviations

Curia Regis Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office (17 vols., in progress, London, 1922–91) DB Domesday Book, seu liber censualis Wilhelmi primi regis Angliae, [ed. Abraham Farley] (2 vols., London, 1783) DNB Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen and Stephen Lee EcHR Economic History Review EHD English Historical Documents, I: c. 500–1042, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (2nd ed., London, 1979); II: 1042– 1189, ed. David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway (2nd ed., London, 1981); III: 1189–1327, ed. Harry Rothwell (London, 1975) EHR English Historical Review EME Early Medieval Europe EYC Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. W. Farrer and C. T. Clay (13 vols.: vols. i–iii, Edinburgh, 1914–16; index to vols. i–iii, and vols. iv–xii, Yorkshire Archaeological Soc. Record Ser. Extra Ser. 1–10 [1935–65]) Gesta Stephani Gesta Stephani, ed. K. R. Potter and revised R. H. C. Davis (Oxford, 1976) Glanvill The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England commonly called Glanvill, ed. and trans. G. D. G. Hall (London, 1965) GND, ed. van Houts The Gesta Normannum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. Elisabeth M. C. van Houts (2 vols., Oxford, 1992–5) Henry of Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: Huntingdon, the History of the English People, ed. and trans. Diana Historia Greenway (Oxford, 1996) Hist. Res. Historical Research (formerly Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research) HSJ Haskins Society Journal JMH Journal of Medieval History Jnl. Eccl. Hist. Journal of Ecclesiastical History John of Worcester, The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. J. R. H. Weaver Chronicle (Oxford, 1908) MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica MS./MSS. Manuscript/Manuscripts OV The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (6 vols., Oxford, 1969–80)

P&P PBA Pipe R.

Abbreviations

xvii

Past and Present Proceedings of the British Academy The Great Roll of the Pipe (Pipe Roll Society), with regnal year PL Patrologia latina cursus completus, ed. J.-P. Migne (221 vols., Paris, 1844–64) PRO Public Record Office, Kew, London Rec. Com. Record Commissioners Recueil, ed. Fauroux Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, ed. M. Fauroux (Caen, 1961) Regesta Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1154, ed. H. W. C. Davis and others (4 vols., Oxford, 1913–69) Rot. de Lib. Rotuli de liberate ac de misis et praestitis, regnante Johanne, ed. T. D. Hardy (Rec. Com., 1844) Rot. Hund. Rotuli hundredorum temp. Hen. III & Edw. I, ed. W. Illingworth and J. Caley (2 vols., London, 1812–18) Rot. Litt. Claus. Rotuli litterarum clausarum in turri Londinensi asservati, 1204–27, ed. T. D. Hardy (2 vols., Rec. Com., 1833–44) Rot. Litt. Pat. Rotuli litterarum patentium in Turri Londinensi asservati (1201–16), ed. T. D. Hardy (Rec. Com., 1835) RS Rolls Series Sawyer, Charters P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968), with charter number s.a. sub anno/anni [under the year/-s] ser. series Settimane Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo Soc. Society Stubbs, Charters Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward the First, ed. William Stubbs (9th ed., revised H. W. C. Davis, Oxford, 1913) s.v. sub verbo Symeon, Opera Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ed. Thomas Arnold, RS 75 (2 vols., London, 1882–5) TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Univ. University unpub. unpublished

xviii VCH William of Malmes­bury, GP William of Malmesbury, GR William of Malmesbury, HN

Abbreviations The Victoria History of the Counties of England (in progress), with name of county Willelmi Malmesbiriensis monachi de gestis pontificum Anglorum libri quinque, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, RS 52 (London, 1870) William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998) William of Malmesbury, Historia novella, ed. K. R. Potter (London, 1955)

Bibliography: C. Warren Hollister’s Publications 

Books Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions on the Eve of the Norman Conquest. Oxford, 1962. The Military Organization of Norman England. Oxford, 1965. Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World. London, 1986 (new introduction and reprints of seventeen articles). Hereafter cited as MMI. Editor, Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Proceedings of the Borchard Conference on Anglo-Norman History, 1995. Woodbridge, 1997. Henry I. Ed. Amanda Clark Frost. New Haven, 2001.

Articles, book chapters, and published lectures ‘Giordano Bruno and the Infinite Universe’. Griffith Observer 19 (1955), 138 ff. ‘Appearance and Reality in the History of Science’. Griffith Observer 22 (1958), 17–22. Reprinted Volume XXXVI (1972), 2–8. ‘The Idea of a Moving Earth’. Griffith Observer 22 (1958), 94–105. ‘The Annual Term of Military Service in Medieval England’. Medievalia et Humanistica 13 (1960), 40–47. ‘The Significance of Scutage Rates in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century England’. EHR 75 (1960), 577–588. ‘The Five-Hide Unit and the Old English Military Obligation’. Speculum 36 (1961), 61–74. ‘Greek Astronomy and Modern Science: The Universe as Illusion’. History 4 (1961), 53–61. ‘King John and the Historians’. Journal of British Studies 1:1 (1961), 1–19. ‘The Norman Conquest and the Genesis of English Feudalism’. AHR 66 (1961),   Compiled by Lois L. Huneycutt and Janet M. Pope based on C. Warren Hollister’s Curriculum vitae, University of California, Santa Barbara, last revised 23 November 1993, the Hollister bibliography created by Robert Helmerichs for the Haskins Society website, and other research. Book reviews are not included. N.B. The bibliography in Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions is faulty and has led scholars astray in the past.

xx

C. Warren Hollister’s Publications

641–663. Reprinted in the Bobbs-Merrill Reprint Series in European History, 1967. ‘The Knights of Peterborough and the Anglo-Norman Fyrd’. EHR 77 (1962), 417–436. ‘The Irony of English Feudalism’. Journal of British Studies 2:2 (1963), 1–26. ‘The Irony of the Iron Age’. Journal of British Studies 2:2 (1963), 31–32. with J. C. Holt, ‘Two Comments on the Problem of Continuity in Anglo-Norman Feudalism’. EcHR, 2nd series, 16 (1963), 104–118. ‘Reflections on the Unicorn’s Head’. Journal of British Studies 5:1 (1965), 15–18. ‘1066: “The Feudal Revolution”’. AHR 73 (1968), 708–723. Reprinted in MMI. ‘Military Obligation in Late Saxon and Norman England’. In Ordinamenti militari in Occidente nell’alto Medioevo, Settimane 15 (1968), 169–186. ‘The Anglo-Norman Civil War: 1101’. EHR 88 (1973), 315–334. Reprinted in MMI. ‘Henry I and Robert Malet’. Viator 4 (1973), 115–122. Reprinted in MMI. ‘The Misfortunes of the Mandevilles’. History 58 (1973), 18–28. Reprinted in MMI. ‘The Strange Death of William Rufus’. Speculum 48 (1973), 637–653. Reprinted in MMI. with Thomas K. Keefe, ‘The Making of the Angevin Empire’. Journal of British Studies 12:2 (1973), 1–25. Reprinted in MMI. ‘Stephen’s Anarchy’. Albion 6 (1974), 233–239. ‘The Anglo-Norman Succession Debate of 1126: Prelude to Stephen’s Anarchy’. JMH 1 (1975), 19–41. Reprinted in MMI. ‘Normandy, France and the Anglo-Norman Regnum’. Speculum 51 (1976), 202–242. Reprinted in MMI. ‘The Taming of a Turbulent Earl: Henry I and William of Warenne’. Réflexions historiques 3:1 (1976), 83–91. Reprinted in MMI. ‘Magnates and “Curiales” in Early Norman England’. Viator 8 (1977), 63–81. Reprinted in MMI. ‘The Origins of the English Treasury’. EHR 93 (1978), 262–275. Reprinted in MMI. ‘Royal Acts of Mutilation: The Case against Henry I’. Albion 10 (1978), 330– 340. Reprinted in MMI. with John W. Baldwin, ‘The Rise of Administrative Kingship: Henry I and Philip Augustus’. AHR 83 (1978), 867–905. Hollister’s section reprinted in MMI. ‘Henry I and the Anglo-Norman Magnates’. ANS 2 (1979), 93–107, 184–88. Reprinted in MMI. ‘London’s First Charter of Liberties: Is it Genuine?’ JMH 6 (1980), 289–306. Reprinted in MMI. ‘Magna Carta in its Time’, in Magna Carta. Ed. William S. Livingston. Austin, TX, 1980.



C. Warren Hollister’s Publications

xxi

‘Elite Prosopography in Saxon and Norman England’. Medieval Prosopography 2:2 (1981), 11–20. ‘Recent Trends in Anglo-Norman Scholarship: The New Political History’. Albion 14 (1982), 254–257. ‘Magna Carta’. Lyndon Baines Johnson Distinguished Lecture, 4, San Marcos, TX, 1983. ‘War and Diplomacy in the Anglo-Norman World: The Reign of Henry I’. ANS 6 (1984), 72–88. Reprinted in MMI. ‘Henry I and the Invisible Transformation of Medieval England’. In Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. Henry Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore, 119–131. London, 1985. Reprinted in MMI. ‘The Greater Domesday Tenants-in-Chief’. In Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt, 219–248. Woodbridge, 1987. ‘St. Anselm on Lay Investiture’. ANS 10 (1987), 145–158. ‘William Rufus, Henry I, and the Anglo-Norman Church: Difference in Style or Change in Substance?’ Peritia 6/7 (1987–88), 119–140. ‘Courtly Culture and Courtly Style in the Anglo-Norman World’. Albion 20 (1988), 1–17. ‘The Campaign of 1102 against Robert of Bellême’. In Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill, Christopher J. Holdsworth, and Janet L. Nelson, 193–202. Woodbridge, 1989. ‘The Viceregal Court of Henry I’. In Law, Custom, and the Social Fabric in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of Bryce Lyon, ed. Bernard S. Bachrach and David Nicholas, 131–144. Kalamazoo, MI, 1990. ‘The Phases of European History and the Non-Existence of the Middle Ages’. Pacific Historical Review 61 (1992), 1–22. with Marylou Ruud, ‘Methodological Innovations in Anglo-Saxon and AngloNorman Biography’. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Congress on Historical Sciences, Madrid, 1992. ‘The Magnates of Stephen’s Reign: Reluctant Anarchists’. HSJ 5 (1993), 77–87. ‘William II, Henry I and the Church’. In The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Commemoration of Denis L. T. Bethell, ed. Marc A. Meyer, 183–206. London, 1993. ‘The Aristocracy’. In The Anarchy of Stephen’s Reign, ed. Edmund King, 37– 66. Oxford, 1994. ‘The Rouen Riot and Conan’s Leap’. Peritia 10 (1996), 341–350. ‘Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’. In Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 1–16. Woodbridge, 1997. Reprinted in Politics and Religion in Ancient and Medieval Europe and China, ed. Frederick Hok-ming Cheung and Ming-chiu Lai, 127–146. Hong Kong, 1999.

xxii

C. Warren Hollister’s Publications

Textbooks and textbook chapters Medieval Europe: A Short History. New York, 1964. Second edition, 1968. Swedish edition, 1972. Third edition, 1974. Fourth edition, 1978. Fifth edition, 1982. Chinese edition, 1986. Second Chinese edition, 1988. Sixth edition, 1990. Seventh edition, 1994. Eighth edition, 1998. ‘The Seat of Authority in a Christian Society: The Investiture Controversy, 1059–1122’. In Major Crises in Western Civilization, ed. Lewis W. Spitz and Richard W. Lyman, 73–107. New York, 1965. The Making of England, 55 B.C.–A.D. 1399. Lexington, MA, 1966. Volume I of A History of England, ed. Lacey Baldwin Smith. Second edition, 1971. Third edition, 1976. Fourth edition, 1983. Fifth edition, 1988. Sixth edition, 1992. Seventh edition, 1996. Roots of the Western Tradition: A Short History of the Ancient World. New York, 1966. Second edition, 1972. Third edition, 1977. Thai edition, 1980. Fourth edition, 1982. Chinese edition, 1990. Fifth edition, 1991. Sixth edition, 1996. ‘Twilight in the West’. In The Transformation of the Roman World, ed. Lynn White, Jr., 179–205. Berkeley, 1966. Second edition, 1973. Editor, Landmarks of the Western Heritage. Two volumes. New York, 1967. Second edition, 1973. with John L. Stipp and Alan W. Dirrim, The Rise and Development of Western Civilization. Two volumes. New York, 1967. One-volume edition, 1969. Second edition, two-volume version, 1972. Editor, The Impact of the Norman Conquest. New York, 1969. Republished Malabar, FL, 1982. Editor, The Twelfth-Century Renaissance. New York, 1969. ‘The Ancient Greeks’, ‘The Roman World’, ‘The Middle East and Europe to c. A. D. 1000’, ‘The European Middle Ages, 1000–1300’, ‘European Middle Ages, 1300–1500’. In A History of World Civilizations, ed. Edward R. Tannenbaum. New York, 1973. Odysseus to Columbus: A Synopsis of Classical and Medieval History. New York, 1974. Editor and author, ‘Prologue: The Legacy of the Ancient Near East’, ‘The Legacy of Greece’, ‘The Legacy of Rome’, ‘The Early Middle Ages’, ‘The High Middle Ages’. In River through Time. New York, 1975. Editor with Joe W. Leedom, Marc A. Meyer, and David S. Spear, Medieval Europe: A Short Sourcebook. New York, 1982. Second edition, 1992. Third edition, 1997. with J. Sears McGee and Gale Stokes, The West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization. Fort Worth, TX, 2000.



C. Warren Hollister’s Publications

xxiii

Dictionary and encyclopedia articles ‘Henry I of England’. In Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th edition. ‘Knights and Knight Service’. In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer, New York (1986), VII:276–279. ‘Domesday Book’. In World Encyclopedia (1988), 5:303. ‘Jutes’. In World Book Encyclopedia (1989 edition), 202. Articles on King Henry I, Walter de Clare, Geoffrey de Mandeville, Walter Tirel, and William II de Warenne. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. G. C. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford, 2004.

Fiction with Judith Pike, The Moons of Meer. New York, 1969.

Professional service articles and reports ‘Report of the Vice-President: Teaching Division: December 1975’. American Historical Association Reports of the President and Vice-Presidents of the Professional, Research, and Teaching Divisions, Section 4, 1–5. ‘Pulling History out of the Doldrums’. Change Magazine, Report on Teaching 1, 8:2 (1976), 24–25. ‘Report of the Vice-President: Teaching Division: December, 1976’. American Historical Association, Reports of the Vice-Presidents, 1976, 9–12. ‘History Teaching and the 1976 Annual Meeting’. American Historical Association Newsletter 14 (1976), 1. ‘The Library Crisis’. Old Oregon 58:1 (1978), 10–11.

1 C. Warren Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I  Lois L. Huneycutt

That the book Henry I has had a long and complicated history is no secret. As C. Warren Hollister’s friend and colleague Jeffrey Burton Russell explained in his preface to the book, it was over forty years ago that Hollister first contracted to write the volume for what was then the University of California’s English Monarchs series. Hollister was, before 1965, occupied with writing a series of three books and five articles expanding upon the subject of his 1960 dissertation, ‘The Military Organization of England under the First Three Norman Kings’. Always intending to return to the great project, he was diverted in the mid-1960s into writing the first edition of Medieval Europe: A Short History, which, when it appeared, launched his reputation as a textbook writer. Hollister participated in the writing or editing of eleven separate textbooks, sourcebooks, and readers between the first edition of Medieval Europe in 1964 and the posthumous appearance in 2000 of The West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, which he cowrote with Gale Stokes and J. Sears McGee. Hollister’s  

My thanks are due first of all to Robert Babcock, Donald Fleming, and Robert Helmerichs for organizing the sessions at the International Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University in tribute to the work of our common mentor, Professor C. Warren Hollister. It is only with the passing of time that I have come to realize just how special the atmosphere was among the ‘court circle’ during the time Warren was directing our graduate training at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and it is only with the final appearance of Henry I that I have begun to appreciate the more subtle lessons Warren learned from his hero in terms of creating, maintaining, rewarding, and punishing the members of the circle to which I will always consider myself extraordinarily privileged to have been admitted. I should also like to recognize the work of Hollister students whose work will not be cited here, most notably those whose work focused on the Anglo-Saxon period. Hollister’s scope was extraordinary.   Jeffrey Burton Russell, ‘Foreword’, to C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, ed. Amanda Clark Frost (New Haven, 2001), ix–xii. David C. Douglas first approached Hollister about doing a biography of the king in 1962.   Hollister’s dissertation was completed in 1960 at the University of California, Los Angeles.   The textbooks include Medieval Europe: A Short History (New York, 1964); The Making of England, 55 B.C.–A.D. 1399 (Lexington, 1966); Roots of the Western Tradition: A Short History of the Ancient World (New York, 1966). His first western civilization textbook, The Rise and Development of Western Civilization (New York, 1967), was cowritten with John L. Stipp and Allen



Lois L. Huneycutt

graduate students knew the textbooks both as a recruiting tool and a source of Warren’s unique brand of ‘royal patronage’. A number of them first became interested in studying with Hollister after reading Medieval Europe or The Making of England, deciding that they wanted to study with someone who might be able to teach them to write in such a clear and lively style. I am not the only student who survived for a summer from the proceeds of a graduate research assistantship spent indexing an updated edition of one of Hollister’s books. But, lucrative textbook projects aside, it is clear from Hollister’s article production over the years that Henry I and the career-capping monograph were never far from his mind. In addition to the distraction of the academic projects he took on, Hollister’s progress on the Henry I project was twice halted by personal tragedies that influenced his ability to work at all. The first was the sudden death of his oldest son, Charles Warren Hollister III, who was killed in a 1973 car crash following his first semester at Princeton University. The obvious resonances of the sudden loss of Charlie with Henry I’s sudden loss of William Adelin were never lost on Hollister. He broached the subject with me just once, at the 1992 meeting of the Haskins Society. I had just presented a paper on audience and patronage of the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St. Brendan. I speculated that the poem, which features a number of near-drownings and water-related disasters, could not date from the early years of Queen Adeliza of Louvain in part because it would not have been suitable for presentation at court during the years immediately following the White Ship disaster. Afterward, Hollister agreed with my assessment that the court was in a state of grief for several years following the loss of the White Ship and volunteered that it had taken him four or five years before he could even think about succession issues and the second half of Henry’s reign with any sense of balance after Charlie’s accidental death. The second misfortune was the devastating forest fire of 1990 that swept through Santa Barbara, destroying Hollister’s personal library, whatever he had completed of his manuscript, and his careful notes, including the awesome handwritten card catalog of the Anglo-Norman baronage that he had worked on for close to forty years. In one sense, though, the fire was ultimately liberating, for it freed Hollister from the pressure of having to produce a ‘perfect’ book. After he recovered from the shock of the fire, and after the rebuilding W. Dirrim. Within a two-year period, Hollister edited three readers for John Wiley and Sons: Landmarks of the Western Heritage (New York, 1967); The Impact of the Norman Conquest (New York, 1969), and The Twelfth-Century Renaissance (New York, 1969). Afterward he published Odysseus to Columbus: A Synopsis of Classical and Medieval History. (New York, 1974) and River through Time: The Course of Western Civilization (New York, 1975). Hollister’s tendency in the 1980s and beyond to write in collaboration with his graduate students is reflected in Medieval Europe: A Short Sourcebook, edited by C. W. Hollister, J. W. Leedom, M. A. Meyer, and D. S. Spear (New York, 1982). Finally, at the time of his death Hollister was working on The West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization (Fort Worth, TX, 2000) along with Sears McGee and Gale Stokes.   If I may be permitted another personal note, just after my doctoral exams in December 1989, Hollister gave me a piece of advice I’ve never forgotten. As I lamented the slow progress of my



Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I



of the house on the hill, Hollister went to work on the book with new vigor. By the summer of 1997, as Amanda Frost notes, Hollister was predicting that he would be finished with the new, ‘imperfect’ version of Henry I by Christmas of that year – and of course, Hollister died in September, leaving two chapters unwritten, few of his final revisions on completed chapters done, and deathbed instructions as to how he wished the book to be finished. The book, whose completion was entrusted to Russell and Hollister’s student Amanda Clark Frost, finally appeared in 2001. This study examines the range of Hollister’s articles and explores the process by which he framed his thoughts over several decades on what would finally become chapters of the book. I believe that Hollister was at his best when framing discrete questions and following them to their logical conclusions, a set of talents that made him a master of the scholarly article. In some ways, he seems to have thought of the writing of Henry I as a series of problems to be solved, and he approached these problems systematically throughout the course of his scholarly career. Warren Hollister was also a historian who preferred not to work in isolation. He sought out and created groups of talented individuals whose thoughts, ideas, and criticism strengthened his own work. The Haskins Society and his participation in the Battle Conference on AngloNorman Studies are testaments to his abilities and methods. I will also look at how Hollister’s teaching and research intersected by referring to the range of topics covered in some related work by his graduate students, work which I think Hollister suggested to his students as he was perfecting his own thinking on certain topics. And finally, I will speculate about the direction that Hollister was heading prior to his death in 1997 – toward a deeper understanding of Henry the person and Henry’s private dreams and demons than I think appears in the finished work. It might seem both unfilial and unfair to complain about what is left out of a book that stretches to over five hundred pages, but I believe the book would have been both longer and richer had Hollister lived another few months. Hollister’s first work was, of course, centered on the long-familiar military and feudal questions that were traditional to historians of medieval England in the middle of the twentieth century. It was with his first books and articles that he made his reputation as a brilliant new scholar, but by about 1968, Hollister’s interest in things military had certainly begun to wane, only to be revived when military questions touched upon Henry I and his reign. By the 1970s, Hollister had moved into fields familiar to all his readers: family history, dissertation writing, and the prospect of ever getting it into print, he warned me never to be afraid to publish an imperfect book. As time goes on, he explained, people’s expectations will just get higher and higher, and one can reach the point of being paralyzed by expectation. I didn’t have the courage then to press the obvious parallel with the Henry I project.   Amanda Clark Frost, ‘Editor’s Preface’, in Hollister, Henry I, xiii.   While compiling the bibliography that appears in this volume, I discovered that Hollister’s first published work was actually on medieval science. He never referred to these articles, and I do not know what led him away from his early interests.



Lois L. Huneycutt

administrative and diplomatic history, and ecclesiastical issues. Hollister, like Sidney Painter earlier in the century, saw the connection between family history, often dismissed as mere antiquarianism, and the history of the medieval administrative state. Some of Hollister’s best articles are detailed studies of Henry I’s relationship with various magnates and baronial families. His account of the Mandeville family (1973), the relationship between Henry and Robert Malet (1973), and between the king and William of Warenne (1976) culminated in a general study of ‘Magnates and “Curiales” in Early Norman England’ (1977). Warren’s first Ph.D. student, Barbara Walker, produced her 1968 dissertation on the Grandmesnil family of Normandy, and other students such as RáGena DeAragon (1982), Penelope Adair (1993), and Heather Tanner (1993) contributed valuable works on the relationship between family and state formation. Hollister was also instrumental in the decision to devote the Haskins Society Conference of 1988, some of whose papers appeared in the first volume of the Haskins Society Journal, to the work of Sidney Painter. Led by Hollister, the society showed a deep appreciation for Painter’s ‘cameos of individual baronial families’, his understanding of the ‘factor of family in the feudal system’, and his descriptions of ‘barons as landlords and feudal entrepreneurs’.10 Hollister’s interest in the development of medieval administration did not stop at the level of the family. In the late 1970s, Hollister was engaged in his own work on institutions such as the English treasury. During this period he developed his pioneering and sometimes controversial use of charter witness lists to unravel the prosopographical complexities of the Anglo-Norman court.11 His work in this period culminated, perhaps, with his 1978 American Historical Review article ‘The Rise of Administrative Kingship: Henry I and Philip   C. Warren Hollister, ‘The Misfortunes of the Mandevilles’, History 58 (1973), 18–28; ‘Henry I and Robert Malet’, Viator 4 (1973), 115–122; ‘The Taming of a Turbulent Earl: Henry I and William of Warenne’, Réflexions historiques 3:1 (1976), 83–91; ‘Magnates and “Curiales” in Early Norman England’, Viator 8 (1977), 63–81.   Barbara Walker, ‘The Grandmesnils: A Study in Norman Baronial Enterprise’, unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara (hereafter UCSB), 1968; RáGena DeAragon, ‘Studies in Anglo-Norman Family History’, unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, UCSB, 1982; Heather J. Tanner, ‘Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Political Role of the Comital Family of Boulogne in Northern France and England (879–1159)’, unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, UCSB, 1993; Penelope Ann Adair, ‘“Ego et Uxor Mea ...”: Countess Clemence and Her Role in the Comital Family and in Flanders (1092–1133)’, unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, UCSB, 1993. Tanner published a revised version of her dissertation as Families, Friends, and Allies: Boulogne and Politics in Northern France and England, c. 879–1160 (Leiden, 2004). 10  Robert B. Patterson, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, HSJ 1 (1989), x–xl. 11  David Bates raised doubts about the method in ‘The Prosopographical Study of Anglo-Norman Royal Charters’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics: The Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (Woodbridge, 1997), 89–102. See also Emma Mason’s review of Hollister’s Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World in Medieval Prosopography 9 (1988), 105–13. For counter-arguments, see Thomas K. Keefe, ‘Counting Those Who Count: A Computer-Assisted Analysis of Charter Witness Lists in the First Year of the Reign of Richard I’, HSJ 1 (1989), 135–45 and Hollister, Henry I, appendix, 499–506.



Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I



Augustus’ coauthored with John Baldwin.12 As early as 1972, Jonathan Kaplan produced a study of the Pipe Roll of 1130.13 At about the same time, Hollister students such as Thomas K. Keefe (1978) and Stephanie Mooers Christelow (1983) and Robin Fleming (1984) were at work on administrative and institutional questions of their own.14 Fleming’s graduate work concentrated on the late Anglo-Saxon period into the eleventh century and the production of Domesday Book, while Keefe’s dissertation, and later his book, explored how Henry II and his sons employed feudal assessments as a political and fiscal tool. Both students bridged Hollister’s early interest in feudal and military institutions and his later expertise in rulership.15 The same might be said of the thrust of the work of Frederick Hok-Ming Cheung, who completed his dissertation in 1983, and whose first seminar paper in 1977–78 dealt with Henry I’s local justiciars.16 Hollister’s work on Henry’s patronage, up to and including the Henry I biography, was heavily indebted to the groundwork laid by Christelow in her 1983 dissertation, ‘Patronage and Justice in the Pipe Roll of 1130’. Indeed, the fruitful interaction between the work of his doctoral students and his own writing came to characterize what Hollister was proudly beginning to refer to as the ‘Santa Barbara School’ during the later 1970s and beyond.17 12 

C. Warren Hollister and John W. Baldwin, ‘The Rise of Administrative Kingship: Henry I and Philip Augustus’, AHR 83 (1978), 867–905. 13  Jonathan Kaplan, ‘The Pipe Roll of 1130: An English Translation and Statistical Analysis’, unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, UCSB, 1972. 14  Thomas K. Keefe, ‘Feudal Surveys and the Assessment of Knight Service under Henry II and His Sons: A Study in Taxation and Royal-Baronial Relations, 1156–1216’, unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, UCSB, 1978. Keefe reworked his dissertation into a book, Feudal Assessments and the Political Community under Henry II and His Sons (Berkeley, 1984). He was the first of Hollister’s students to have his dissertation published as a monograph. Stephanie Mooers Christelow’s dissertation, ‘Patronage and Justice in the Pipe Roll of 1130’, UCSB, 1983, inspired several articles, including Stephanie L. Mooers, ‘A Reevaluation of Royal Justice under Henry I of England’, AHR 93 (1988), 340–58. Robin Fleming’s first two articles, ‘The Domesday Estates of the King and the Godwines: A Study in Late Saxon Politics’, Speculum, 58 (1983), 987–1007, and ‘Monastic Lands and England’s Defence in the Viking Age’, EHR 100 (1985), 247–265 reflected work undertaken during her dissertation studies. Her dissertation itself, ‘Royal and Aristocratic Landholding and Alliance, 871–1087’, UCSB, 1984, was later expanded into her first book, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991); her second book, Domesday Book and the Law: Society and Legal Custom in Early Medieval England (Cambridge, 1998), drew on her expertise on Domesday cultivated in graduate school. 15  I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers of this article for his/her perceptive comments on Keefe’s work as a bridge linking Hollister’s fields of interest and expertise. Since I could not improve on the comment, I have included it almost verbatim here. 16  Cheung’s dissertation was entitled ‘From Military Aristocracy to Royal Bureaucracy: Patterns of Consolidation in Two Medieval Empires’, UCSB, 1983. Cheung later expanded his seminar paper, whose topic Hollister suggested, into several articles on the Anglo-Norman judicial system (personal e-mail communication, Cheung to Huneycutt, 18 September 2004). 17  Stephanie Mooers Christelow, ‘All the King’s Men: Prosopography and the Santa Barbara School’, Medieval Prosopography 11:1 (1990), 1–15. Christelow’s article supplied many of the exact titles and dates necessary for this article. Professor Jeffrey Burton Russell provided invaluable assistance in securing documentation for events in Hollister’s personal life, such as the date of Charles Hollister’s death. Professor Harold A. Drake kindly provided me with a video copy of



Lois L. Huneycutt

At just about the same time that his articles on family issues were appearing, Warren was extending his considerable expertise well beyond the borders of the Anglo-Norman realm. He published his ‘Normandy, France and the AngloNorman Regnum’ in Speculum in 1976, and by the mid-1980s, Hollister was an acknowledged master of the diplomatic history of England and France during the first half of the twelfth century.18 His articles from about 1984 to the end of his life reflect his mature thought on the subject. This period of publication was preceded by a series of studies by his graduate students, beginning as early as 1974 with Sandy Burton Hicks’ foray into the diplomatic history of Henry’s reign from Tinchebray until the achievement of lasting peace in Normandy in 1128.19 The previous year, one of the first of Hollister’s articles on Henry I’s diplomacy was coauthored with Thomas Keefe.20 Some of Hollister’s later students also went beyond the borders of England and produced studies of bordering regions whose leaders found themselves confronting the ambitions or the legacy of Henry I. Robert Babcock (1992) investigated Wales, and the following year Penelope Adair produced her dissertation on Flanders, while Heather Tanner’s dissertation focused on the county of Boulogne.21 Among Hollister’s last graduate students, Richard Barton in 1997 produced a study of ‘Power and Lordship in Maine’ in the years leading up to the twelfth century, and Deborah Gerish looked at the creation of royal power and authority in Jerusalem. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem may seem far removed from the borders of the Anglo-Norman empire, but Hollister was keenly aware of the succession issues following the death of Baldwin II and the accession of his daughter Melisende and her husband, Fulk of Anjou, father-in-law of Henry I’s own daughter, the Empress Maud. Gerish’s work also reflects the questions of ritual and authority that occupied Hollister during the writing of one of his best pieces, ‘Henry I and the Invisible Transformation of Medieval England’.22 the memorial service for Hollister at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My research was also greatly facilitated by the list of Hollister’s publications and of his Ph.D. students available by following the links on the homepage of the Haskins Society website, http://www.haskins.cornell. edu/index.html. Hollister’s introduction to his collected essays, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London, 1986), ix–xix, contains some of his reflections on the interaction of his work and that of his colleagues and students to that date. 18  C. Warren Hollister, ‘Normandy, France and the Anglo-Norman Regnum’, Speculum 51 (1976), 202–42. 19  Sandy Burton Hicks, ‘From Tinchebrai to Alost: A Study of the Diplomacy and Warfare between King Henry I and His Continental Rivals for Control of Normandy, 1106–1128’, unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, UCSB, 1974. 20  C. Warren Hollister and Thomas K. Keefe, ‘The Making of the Angevin Empire’, Journal of British Studies 12:2 (1973), 1–25. 21  Robert S. Babcock, ‘Rule and Society in South-West Wales, 1079–1197’, unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, UCSB, 1992. For Adair’s and Tanner’s dissertations, see above n. 9. 22  Richard E. Barton, ‘Power and Lordship in Maine, c. 890–1110’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, UCSB, 1997, which formed the basis of his Lordship in the County of Maine, c. 890–1160 (Woodbridge, 2004). Gerish’s dissertation, ‘Shaping the Crown of Gold: Constructions of Royal Identity in the First Kingdom of Jerusalem’, UCSB, was actually finished in 1999 under the direction of Professor Sharon A. Farmer. C. Warren Hollister, ‘Henry I and the Invisible



Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I



Although Hollister published on the Investiture Controversy as early as 1965 and directed graduate theses on Church history topics from the early 1970s, it was not until the mid-1980s that he began publishing some of his more original and provocative work on the Anglo-Norman Church. Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, he was developing his views on Henry I and the AngloNorman Church, and directing theses on episcopal figures in England and Normandy.23 During that period he often encouraged his students to be bolder in their challenges to traditional interpretations than he himself was. This tendency is most evident in the case of Sally N. Vaughn, whose thesis on Anselm of Canterbury as a political figure brought her into direct conflict with the interpretations of Sir Richard Southern and Martin Brett.24 Although it was clear to all observers that Hollister agreed with every word that Vaughn wrote both before and during the public debate with Southern, and often commented on her work in advance of publication, he himself chose not to enter the fray until the 1987 Battle Conference, after Vaughn’s book had gone to press, when he delivered his paper on the topic of ‘St Anselm on Lay Investiture’.25 Other revisionary work in ecclesiastical history was carried out in Hollister seminars by Marylou Ruud and Lauren Helm Jared, students of Hollister’s colleagues in medieval history at UCSB. Ruud, whose dissertation was directed by Jeffrey Burton Russell, worked on the role of the worldly monk and put Anselm into a Canterbury tradition in several Hollister seminar papers that were published as articles.26 Jared’s seminar work produced an article which used Transformation of Medieval England’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. Henry Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (London, 1985), 119–131. 23  See especially the dissertations of Mary Amanda Clark (Frost), ‘Ralph d’Escures: AngloNorman Abbot and Archbishop’, UCSB, 1975; David Spear, ‘The Norman Episcopate under Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy (1106–1135)’, UCSB, 1982; Pamela S. Morgan, ‘Archbishop and Primate: Thomas Becket and the Making of the Canterbury Tradition’, UCSB, 1985; as well as Vaughn’s dissertation discussed below. Dissertations by Cassandra Potts, ‘The Revival of Monasticism in Normandy, 911–1066’, UCSB, 1991 and Janet Pope, ‘Aristocratic Patronage of the English Monastic Reform, 946–1016’, UCSB, 1994, investigated monasticism in pre-Conquest Normandy and England; Potts published a revised version of her dissertation as Monastic Revival and Regional Identity in Early Normandy (Woodbridge, 1997). 24  Vaughn’s dissertation, ‘Regnum and Sacerdotium: The Art of Politics in the Anglo-Norman State as Reflected in the Careers of St. Anselm of Canterbury and Robert of Meulan’ (1978), was revised and published as Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom of the Serpent (Berkeley, 1987). Vaughn argued in favor of Anselm as a politically wary figure, an interpretation that Southern rejected outright. Their debate went public in 1988, when Albion published Richard W. Southern, ‘Sally Vaughn’s Anselm: An Examination of the Foundations’, Albion 20 (1988), 181–91 and Vaughn’s rebuttal, ‘Anselm: Saint and Statesman’, Albion 20 (1988), 205–20. Southern maintained his objections to Vaughn in his second monograph on Anselm, St. Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990). See also Martin Brett, The English Church under Henry I (Oxford, 1975). 25  C. Warren Hollister, ‘St Anselm on Lay Investiture’, ANS 10 (1987), 145–58. 26  Ruud’s articles include ‘Episcopal Reluctance: Lanfranc’s Resignation Reconsidered’, Albion 19 (1987), 163–75; ‘Monks in the World: The Case of Gundulf of Rochester’, ANS 11 (1988), 245–60; and ‘The Rhetoric of Reluctance at Canterbury, 1070–1170’, Journal of Religious History 22 (1998), 1–13. Her dissertation, ‘Episcopal Reluctance, Resignation, and Reform in the Anglo-



Lois L. Huneycutt

careful analysis to challenge the arguments of Frank Barlow, Emma Mason, and others who saw William Rufus as essentially no more abusive of Church liberties and ecclesiastical vacancies than Henry I.27 By the time of Henry I’s publication, Hollister could be uncharacteristically blunt about his evaluation of this line of thinking: ‘This hypothesis – that Henry pursued essentially the same policies toward the Church that Rufus did, but disguised them with soothing words and slick public relations – is simply not true.’ And perhaps only Hollister could deliver that firm critique within a few pages of characterizing Barlow’s overall work on Rufus as important, thoughtful, sensible, honest, and erudite.28 Ruud and Jared’s work was an important stimulus for articles that Hollister published between 1987 and 1993 comparing the treatment of the Church in England and Normandy during the reigns of Henry and William Rufus. The collaboration among Hollister and his students was crucial here, with Hollister often suggesting areas of inquiry to students whose answers often bore out his instincts and hypotheses about the Anglo-Norman Church under Henry I. Another instance of Hollister’s thought developing in reaction to another scholar and in conjunction with his students’ work can be seen in his treatment of ‘viceregal’ arrangements in Henry’s reign. Hollister’s ideas of the developing administrative capacities of Henry I’s reign were reinforced with the 1972 publication of Edward J. Kealey’s study of Roger of Salisbury.29 But in 1981, David Bates produced an article on the origins of the English justiciarship that seemed to undermine some of Hollister’s basic assumptions about the workings of the court of Henry I. Bates rejected ‘a narrowly administrative approach’ to the question of the delegation of royal authority along with the view that ‘the developments of Henry I’s reign were necessarily of crucial importance for the justiciarship’. Rather than using professional administrators in viceregal positions, Bates argued that the Conqueror depended primarily on relatives and churchmen and that Henry I continued the practice with his dependence upon his queen Matilda, up until her death in 1118, and after that his adolescent son Norman World’, UCSB, 1989, was completed under the direction of Jeffrey B. Russell. Jared worked mainly under the direction of Professor Sharon A. Farmer, who joined the history faculty at UCSB in 1987. 27  Lauren Helm Jared, ‘English Ecclesiastical Vacancies during the Reigns of William II and Henry I’, Jnl. Eccl. Hist. 42 (1991), 362–93. Hollister expanded somewhat on Jared’s findings in his ‘William Rufus, Henry I, and the Anglo-Norman Church: Difference in Style, or Change in Substance?’, Peritia 6/7 (1987–88), 119–40, republished with minor changes in The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Commemoration of Denis L. T. Bethell, ed. Marc A. Meyer (London, 1993), 183–206. For the older arguments, see Frank Barlow, The English Church: 1066–1154 (London, 1979) and his William Rufus (Berkeley, 1983), especially 81–82 and 434–35; also Emma Mason, ‘William Rufus: Myth and Reality’, Medieval History 1 (1991), 6–22 and her ‘William Rufus and the Historians’, JMH 3 (1977), 1–20. 28  Hollister, Henry I, 374. Hollister characterizes Barlow’s work on the English Church as ‘important’ and praises his ability to describe the national character of the English Church ‘sensibly and thoughtfully, in honest, graphic strokes’ (370) and praises the biography of William Rufus as ‘erudite’ (373). 29  Edward J. Kealey, Roger of Salisbury: Viceroy of England (Berkeley, 1972).



Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I



William Adelin.30 Hollister’s reaction to this article was characteristic – he challenged several of his doctoral students to follow up on questions raised by Bates’ article. Robert Babcock and I were among those who took the challenge. Babcock’s first seminar paper looked into viceregal arrangements under the Conqueror. Although I knew I wanted to work on twelfth-century women’s history when I entered the doctoral program, I had no specific topics in mind, and Hollister suggested that I do my first seminar paper on the role of Matilda of Scotland in Henry I’s government. This stretched into a dissertation topic, several articles, and finally a book; over the course of writing the dissertation, I was privileged to explore some questions about Henry and Matilda’s private life with Professor Hollister.31 The other student whose work most obviously complemented these final topics was Laura Wertheimer, whose first investigations into Adeliza of Louvain produced a conference paper that was later published in the Haskins Society Journal. Wertheimer went on to look at the always intriguing question of Henry I’s bastard children in her doctoral career.32 In the case of the role of family members in Henry’s administration, both Robert Babcock and I found a more personal, family-based, and traditional element to both William I’s and Henry’s administration than Hollister had previously posited. If we were nervous when our findings did not parallel Hollister’s, the feeling was unfounded, for he never revealed any irritation at being nudged further toward the Bates position than he initially thought likely. Indeed, he was truly delighted at the scope of our work and perhaps a bit disappointed when Wertheimer’s close scrutiny of Queen Adeliza did not reveal her to be as active as the other Anglo-Norman queens. The closest Hollister came to investigating any of these questions in article form came with his 1990 article in the Bryce Lyon festschrift, in which he added David of Scotland to his earlier list of viceregal figures and talked about the long-standing ties of affection between Henry and David. Reading between the lines of that article, one could see that Hollister had found a way to assimilate Bates’ thesis about viceregal relations and Babcock’s and my work on the use of the Archbishop of Canterbury and family members as regents with his own reading of, and continued insistence

30 

David Bates, ‘The Origins of the Justiciarship’, ANS 4 (1981), 1–12. The articles include Lois L. Huneycutt, ‘Images of Queenship in the High Middle Ages’, HSJ 1 (1989), 61–71; ‘The Idea of the Perfect Princess: The Life of St Margaret in the Reign of Matilda II (1100–1118)’, ANS 12 (1989), 81–97; ‘“To Proclaim her Dignity Abroad”: The Literary and Artistic Network of Matilda of Scotland, Queen of England 1100–1118’, in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCash (Athens, GA, 1996), 155–174. The dissertation, ‘Another Esther in Our Own Times: Matilda II and the Creation of a Queenly Ideal in AngloNorman England’, UCSB, 1992, was revised and published as Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship (Woodbridge, 2003). 32  Laura Wertheimer, ‘Adeliza of Louvain and Anglo-Norman Queenship’, HSJ 7 (1995), 101– 115. Her dissertation, ‘The Ecclesiastical Construction of Illegitimacy in the Middle Ages’, UCSB, 2000, was completed under the direction of Professor Sharon A. Farmer. 31 

10

Lois L. Huneycutt

upon, Henry’s significance in the administrative history of England.33 In the book, Hollister acknowledged but did not explore the ‘altogether traditional arrangements’ of having either Queen Matilda or Archbishop Anselm as viceregal figures during the first half of the reign, supplemented by ‘a clearly identifiable body of viceregal administrators’ with a ‘relatively stable and expert membership’.34 It was this clearly identifiable body of professional viceregal administrators that Hollister continued to find the more interesting feature of Henry I’s reign. A final question that always troubled Hollister was why modern historians seemed to find Henry I personally repugnant. He was genuinely puzzled by Southern’s conclusion that Henry I was a man from whose memory the world recoils. Southern’s characterization of Henry’s reign as an ‘unlovable’ one that set an ‘unlovable stamp upon English history’ was something that Hollister could (and often did) quote from memory; he seemed to grow more irritated at every recital.35 He early on set out to dismantle what he considered to be the myths of Henry’s excessive cruelty and oversensitivity to ridicule and personal insults.36 Rejecting early and entirely the notion that Henry had anything at all to do with the death of William Rufus, Hollister also set about to explain the context for the ‘royal acts of mutilation’ that have so troubled modern commentators.37 One of his last articles, ‘The Rouen Riot and Conan’s Leap’, returned to this theme as he investigated Henry’s ‘defenestration of Conan’ in 1090. In so doing, he gave us a greater understanding of medieval ideas of justice and sovereignty and developed his own mature understanding of Henry as a rex pacificus of nearly Biblical proportions. In our later conversations, Hollister also seemed intrigued by questions that can only be described as issues of personality and personal inclination. Although Hollister remained extremely suspicious of any form of psychohistory, he knew enough about modern ideas of child development and Henry I’s troubled childhood to question whether some of the treatment Henry received from his brothers early on might have continued to affect him in adulthood. He specu33  C. Warren Hollister, ‘The Viceregal Court of Henry I’, in Law, Custom, and the Social Fabric in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of Bryce Lyon, ed. Bernard S. Bachrach and David Nicholas (Kalamazoo, MI, 1990), 131–44. 34  Hollister, Henry I, 365. 35  R. W. Southern, ‘Henry I’, in Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), 206–233. This essay was a reworked version of Southern’s 1962 Raleigh lecture published as ‘The Place of Henry I in English History’, PBA 48 (1962), 127–69. 36  As late as 1975, Christopher Brooke and Gillian Keir characterized Henry as a ‘savage, ruthless man’ in their London, 800–1216: The Shaping of A City (Berkeley, 1975), 317. Two years later, Emma Mason accused Henry of using ‘calculated terror’ as a governing method; see Mason, ‘William Rufus: Myth and Reality’, 15. 37  C. Warren Hollister, ‘The Strange Death of William Rufus’, Speculum 48 (1973), 637–53. The title of this article was a tribute to the work of a fellow Santa Barbara resident, George Dangerfield, whose book The Strange Death of Liberal England (New York, 1936) Hollister particularly admired. See also Hollister’s articles ‘Royal Acts of Mutilation: The Case against Henry I’, Albion 10 (1978), 330–40 and ‘The Rouen Riot and Conan’s Leap’, Peritia 10 (1996), 341–50.



Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I

11

lated about Henry’s ‘bonds’ as a child. But he left these questions virtually unexplored in print, although Hollister had been quite excited about Charlotte Newman’s discussion of these issues. In particular, Hollister agreed with her speculation that Henry’s attachment to Adela as his closest sibling continued into adulthood and that their long-standing trust and affection for each other was important in the settlement of the English Investiture Contest. But in the book, all one gets is the repeated but unexplored assertion that Adela was Henry’s favorite sister.38 Always cognizant of medieval realities, Hollister still wondered about what it must have been like for Henry not to receive his expected inheritance and to have to go to war against his older brothers to keep what little he did receive. If Southern was troubled by Henry’s ability to leave his brother ‘to languish in prison for a quarter of a century’, Hollister saw it as both a political necessity and almost a benevolent form of protective custody, keeping the feckless Curthose from damaging the realm and/or himself.39 This question, too, is virtually unexplored in the book. One question of personal significance that Hollister did speculate on in the book concerned Henry’s ‘profound disappointment’ in the treason committed by Waleran of Meulan and Hugh of Montfort in 1123–24, a treason that Hollister believed stung especially because both had been ‘reared and cared for at his court ‘ and Henry apparently viewed them ‘almost as adopted children’.40 Richard Southern raised the point that Henry I had a ‘morbid dislike of ridicule’, and that Henry, in later years, was troubled by guilt over his sins and his methods of governance. Others have seen his elaborate precautions against assassination attempts as evidence of a paranoid personality. Hollister glossed over Henry’s dislike of ridicule, never mentioning some of the colorful incidents described by gossipy chroniclers and seeing Henry’s reactions to others as proper responses to slander against the king’s person.41 He believed the king’s habits of changing beds frequently during the course of a night, sleeping with a sword and shield close by, and keeping an armed guard around his person to have been sensible responses to real threats. Hollister pointed out that Henry had survived a number of betrayals by previously loyal magnates as well as three close brushes with death within a single year.42 If there was a paranoid side to Henry, it was a justifiable and eminently rational form of paranoia. When discussing the famous nightmare scene detailed by John of Worcester, Hollister did not discount the possibility that Henry might have had a few dreams that grew more vivid in the retelling. But he denied outright that Henry 38 

Charlotte A. Newman, The Anglo-Norman Nobility in the Reign of Henry I: The Second Generation (Philadelphia, 1988), 52–59. For the references to Adela as Henry’s favorite sister in Hollister, Henry I, see 195, 272, 420. 39  Southern, ‘Henry I’, 231. Hollister, Henry I, 43–44, 48–52, 204–206, 488. 40  Hollister, Henry I, 301. Hollister’s treatment of this episode bears evidence of a close reading of David Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1986). 41  Hollister, Henry I, 301, 340. 42  Hollister, Henry I, 256–57.

12

Lois L. Huneycutt

was either mentally imbalanced or even feeling particularly guilty about his treatment of the realm on the night of the three bad dreams and, in the book, sticks to the interpretation that the nightmares are merely a literary device that John of Worcester used to great effect.43 Because I was working on a biography of Henry’s queen, I had the privilege of having several long conversations with Hollister during which he speculated about Henry’s marriages and his sexual proclivities. In my dissertation, I had discussed the reasons for the marriage to Matilda of Scotland in close detail. After discussing the diplomatic and genealogical advantages to the proposed wedding, I had also chosen to take seriously the reports of contemporary chroniclers that Henry and Matilda had a long-standing acquaintance and may even have been personally fond of each other. Hollister, though delighted that I thought at least one person had found Henry likeable, was unsure about the wisdom of using terms like ‘love’ in relation to a twelfth-century marriage, but he overcame his objections in the book, allowing that ‘there is evidence that the royal couple may have been fond of one another’, and that ‘Eadmer had gone so far as to describe them as being in love’.44 I had, in a manuscript that Hollister read about 1995, discussed the potential effect of Henry’s apparent infidelity on his wives; Hollister was happy to hear that I thought that Henry had deliberately carried out his illicit unions after his marriage quite circumspectly, especially in comparison with those of more notorious adulterers such as his grandson Henry II or later, Edward III – but he chose not to address this question in the biography. Although he did cite Orderic Vitalis’ comment that Henry was enslaved by lust his entire life, Hollister continued to believe that most of Henry’s children were sired during his long period as a juvenis and not during either of his marriages.45 When pressed, he did admit the possibility that Henry may have had a discreet affair or two during his marriage to Matilda. This infidelity (if it occurred), he believed, was mostly Matilda’s fault. First, William of Malmesbury reports that Henry and Matilda deliberately limited the number of their children.46 Hollister believed that the Malmesbury monk was probably correct, thinking it reasonable that the royal couple would take measures to prevent William Adelin from the kind of mistreatment from siblings that Henry had endured. He also believed that their method of birth control must have been abstinence or near abstinence. The only evidence for such an interpretation is negative: Herman of Tournai condemned Clemence of Burgundy for using feminine arts to limit her family. After all three of her sons died before her, the chronicler opined that this was an act of divine retribution. Because Herman failed to make the same leap of logic in the case of Henry 43 

Hollister, Henry I, 468–69. Hollister, Henry I, 127. 45  Hollister, Henry I, 41. Hollister notes that Orderic’s comment about Henry’s lifelong lusts was ‘buried in the midst of a long passage devoted primarily to the celebration of Henry’s merits’ and cites Orderic as an example of the chroniclers who mentioned Henry’s lusts ‘usually rather offhandedly’. 46  William of Malmesbury, GR, 755–77. 44 



Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I

13

and Matilda failing to produce a male heir who survived the king, Hollister argued that the chronicler did not believe that Matilda used artificial means of birth control.47 Hollister also argued that Henry and Matilda may have quit having children because Henry really was disgusted by Matilda’s habit of kissing the putrid sores of lepers, as Aelred of Rievaulx suggested. If so, according to Hollister, Henry could hardly be blamed for seeking solace elsewhere.48 Hollister was also fascinated with William of Malmesbury’s spin on Henry’s many illegitimate children and delighted that Eleanor Searle was willing to take William seriously. The discussion of the passage in the book is a wonderful example of Hollister at his interpretive best.49 After these conversations, I was particularly curious to see how Hollister handled the relationships among Henry and his family members. I was somewhat surprised to find that in the book, Hollister ignored most of the questions one could raise about the working relationships between Henry and his queens and Henry and his children. I do not know why Hollister neglected to discuss the childhood and upbringing of the king’s children, Maud and William Adelin. Hollister was aware that Ralph Turner and I had published articles dealing with those very questions; in fact it was Hollister who first brought one of Turner’s articles to my attention. Since none of the articles appear in the bibliography, it is possible that these are just simply questions that Hollister had not had time to write upon before his death.50 Given that Hollister had been reading about Henry’s private life, thinking about Henry’s private life, and urging his students to investigate Henry’s private life, it is unlikely that Hollister intended to ignore Henry’s private life in his final version of Henry I. He had broached the subject of a possible court school where noble boys were raised alongside William several times, particularly in his 1988 Albion article, ‘Courtly Culture and Courtly Style in the Anglo-Norman World’, where he argued that Geoffrey Gaimar’s discussion of Henry’s court should be taken seriously, particularly when one considers the presence of the adolescent boys that must have been

47 

Herman of Tournai, The Restoration of the Monastery of Saint Martin of Tournai, trans. Lynn H. Nelson (Washington DC, 1996), 35–36. Of course Herman had another interpretation for William Adelin’s premature death – Anselm’s reluctance to perform the marriage of Henry I and Matilda in the first place, because of rumors that Matilda had once been a nun. See ibid., 31–3 and Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland, 29–30. 48  Aelred of Rievaulx, ‘Genealogia regum anglorum’, in PL 195, 711–58, at column 736. Hollister and I also discussed the issue of Adeliza of Louvain’s childlessness during her marriage to Henry. Because she later bore five children during her second marriage, I suggested that perhaps Henry’s legendary potency had begun to wane in middle age. Hollister did not receive my suggestion well. 49  Hollister, Henry I, 41–45. See also Eleanor Searle, ‘Women and the Legitimization of Succession at the Norman Conquest’, ANS 3 (1980), 159–70. 50  Ralph V. Turner, ‘The Children of Anglo-Norman Royalty and Their Upbringing’, Medieval Prosopography 11:2 (1990), 17–44 and ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine and Her Children: An Inquiry into Medieval Family Attachment’, JMH 14 (1988), 321–336. See also Lois L. Huneycutt, ‘Public Lives, Private Ties: Royal Mothers in England and Scotland, 1070–1204’, in Medieval Mothering, ed. John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler (New York, 1996), 295–313.

14

Lois L. Huneycutt

attached to William Adelin during his adolescent years.51 One reason for the omission may have been that this article failed to persuade John Gilllingham that Gaimar’s claim was anything but an ironic parody of the true nature of Henry’s ‘unloveable reign’.52 Hollister’s treatment of Henry I’s private life was characteristic of his overall approach to his subject. Throughout his career, when he found himself at odds with a scholar whose work he admired, such as Richard Southern, Frank Barlow, or David Bates, his first instinct was to break down the disagreement into a series of discrete questions to be handled one by one in article form – sometimes by Hollister himself, sometimes by one of students. I was the lucky recipient of the suggestion that Queen Matilda was worthy of study, and Laura Wertheimer worked on Queen Adeliza and the royal bastards. Similarly, Hollister steered Deborah Calbreath McBride towards the question of ‘courtliness’ in the Anglo-Norman world; her first seminar paper was on that very issue.53 Hollister preferred to work to create a scholarly consensus, as he believed that he had done on many tendentious issues surrounding the person and reign of Henry I. In the few areas where he remained at odds with another scholar, such with Barlow over Rufus’ and Henry’s respective treatments of the Anglo-Norman Church, with Southern over Anselm, or with Bates over the legitimacy of his method of using charter attestations to reconstruct the entourage of AngloNorman kings, Hollister worked deliberately, systematically, and with the help of allies to create and defend those positions. Henry I, according to Southern, ‘never lost a battle because he had first won the struggle for allies and the battle of wits before the fight’.54 I am not sure how Hollister would have framed Henry I’s private dreams and demons if he had lived another few years. I am sure that his case would have been argued cogently and civilly, that several students would have benefited over the course of the investigation, and that Warren Hollister would have remained an admirer of both Geoffrey Gaimar and John Gillingham. In 1962, Richard W. Southern gave his lecture on Henry I in which he pointed out that ‘no English king in a reign of comparable length has left so faint an imprint on the popular imagination or even on the minds of students of history as Henry I’.55 In the same year, C. Warren Hollister accepted a commission to write a biography of the neglected king. Over the course of the nearly forty 51 

C. Warren Hollister, ‘Courtly Culture and Courtly Style in the Anglo-Norman World’, Albion 20 (1988), 1–17. 52  John Gillingham, ‘Kingship, Chivalry and Love: Political and Cultural Values in the Earliest History Written in French: Geoffrey Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis’, in Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, ed. C. Warren Hollister (Woodbridge, 1997), 33–58. See especially the appendix, 57–8. 53  Later, under the direction of Sharon A. Farmer and Jeffrey B. Russell, she focused on letterwriting and the relationships between churchmen and nobles for her dissertation: Deborah C. McBride, ‘Benevolent Letters: Ecclesiastical Epistles to Nobles in the Early Twelfth Century’, UCSB, 1998. 54  Southern, ‘Henry I’, 231. 55  Southern, ‘Henry I’, 206.



Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I

15

years between Hollister’s acceptance of the commission and the appearance of the book, Hollister managed to change the face of medieval history studies in the United States and beyond. Whether Hollister learned his methods of patronage and the creation of consensus from his study of Henry I, or whether he was drawn to Henry I because his own inclinations and methods were already developing along similar lines, I cannot say. Whatever the case, the study of the twelfth century, the Anglo-Norman world, and medieval history in general is immensely richer because of the long incubation of Henry I.

2 From the Thames to Tinchebray: The Role of Normandy in the Early Career of Henry I Kathleen Thompson

By the spring of 1107 Henry I, the youngest of the Conqueror’s four sons, had emerged as his father’s sole heir. He had reconstituted the Conqueror’s crossChannel realm, having ruled England for more than six years, secured Normandy at the battle of Tinchebray and consigned his elder brother to a lifetime as a political prisoner. Apart from a few loose ends, such as Robert of Bellême, with whom he would deal later, his political settlement in Normandy in the aftermath of the battle was remarkably sure-footed and would enable him to maintain this position for the rest of his life. So, how was Henry, who was, after all, born and brought up in England, able to take over his brother’s duchy and with immediate insight put into place arrangements that would permit him to be so successful? What contribution had Normandy made to the formation of the man Frank Barlow describes as the ‘hardest, least scrupulous and most devious’  of the Conqueror’s sons, and how did this most opportunist of kings exploit what the duchy had offered him as a young man?  Henry had been born in England during his mother’s visit for her coronation, and the Brevis relatio says that he was brought up here, ‘nutritum in Anglia’. Orderic Vitalis tells us that he was put to the study of letters as a child, and as the fourth son, he was, perhaps, like his eldest sister, Cecilia, intended for the Church. He is known to have been at Rouen in May 1074 when he attested his father’s confirmation for Saint-Wandrille, and he was, of course, at L’Aigle in 1077/78 when his eldest brother took off in his first rebellion after a family squabble. While he may have visited Normandy as a child, however, all the  

Frank Barlow, William Rufus (London, 1983), 45. For the most stimulating analysis of this problem, John Le Patourel, The Norman Empire (Oxford, 1976), 341ff.   Matilda’s second son Richard had accompanied her, David Bates, ed., Regesta Regum AngloNormannorum: The Acta of William I, 1066–1087 (Oxford, 1998), no. 181 (11 May 1068 at Westminster), no. 254 (13 April 1069 Winchester), no. 286 (May 1068). ‘Brevis relatio de Guillelmo nobilissimo comite Normannorum’, ed. E. M. C. van Houts, in Chronology, Conquest and Conflict in Medieval England, Camden, 5th ser., 10 (London, 1997), 37.   OV iv, 120.   Bates, ed., Regesta, no. 261; OV ii, 356–8.  



From the Thames to Tinchebray

17

evidence indicates that Henry’s adolescence was spent in England. The charters he attests are given in England, and his visit to the abbey of Abingdon at Easter 1084 is particularly recorded in the abbey’s chronicle. Professor Crouch has recently suggested that this was the beginning of a lifelong association in Henry’s mind between the Thames valley and recreational activity. It was at Westminster that he was knighted by his father on Whit Sunday 1086, and he probably accompanied William back to Normandy, since he was with him when he died in September 1087. Henry, alone of the Conqueror’s sons, was present at the burial in Saint-Étienne of Caen, for his brothers were busy securing their realms. Henry had apparently had expectations of his mother’s lands, but the Conqueror had still not released them at the time of his death.10 Before he had reached twenty years of age, therefore, Henry found himself in the autumn of 1087 fatherless, landless, but possessed of £5000.11 He then chose to remain in Normandy and attests the three Curthose acts that can be firmly dated to the next twelve months.12 Why did he take this option, when his upbringing had linked him to England? Professor Hollister points out the difficulties of transporting the 1.2 million silver pennies of his inheritance, for which he had to acquire a treasure house (gazofilacium).13 He may have responded to the opportunities offered by his elder brother, Robert, who began his tenure of the duchy with an outburst of indiscriminate generosity, or he may have felt confident in the promise of his mother’s English lands and keen to obtain a foothold in the ancestral duchy. Alternatively, as a young man in his late teens, he may simply have welcomed the free-and-easy ways of Robert’s court, where, according to a contemporary, the duke ‘exercised no discipline over either himself or his men. He was prodigal in distributing his bounty and lavish in his promises.’ 14 We are indebted, for this description, and for most of our information on the early years of Henry’s life, to Orderic Vitalis, the author of the Ecclesiastical History, who was writing well into the twelfth century. Although he was himself living in Normandy by the late 1080s, he was even younger than Henry, and he was later to be an admirer of Henry’s rule, so his version of events may   Bates, ed., Regesta, nos. 193, 253, 60, 146, 176, 167; Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Joseph Stevenson, RS 2, 2 vols. (London, 1858), ii, 12.   David Crouch, ‘Robert of Gloucester’s Mother and Sexual Politics in Norman Oxfordshire’, Hist. Res. 72 (1999), 323–33.   OV iv, 120.   Robert of Torigny, ‘Interpolations’, in GND, ed. van Houts, ii, 194. 10  OV ii, 214. 11  The evidence for Henry’s date of birth is reviewed in C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, ed. Amanda Clark Frost (New Haven, 2001), 30–32. For the £5000: OV iv, 94. Robert of Torigny, ‘Interpolations’, ii, 204. 12  Charles Homer Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, MA, 1918), appendix E, nos. 1 (1087/8), 6 (30 March 1088), 4 (7 July 1088). 13  Hollister, Henry I, 48; OV iv, 96. 14  OV iv, 114.

18

Kathleen Thompson

have been influenced by King Henry, who is known to have visited Saint-Evroul in 1113.15 With the benefit of hindsight, therefore, Orderic may have been inclined to belittle Duke Robert, for the picture he presents of the duke’s court is a object lesson in how not to rule: ‘[the duke] was too weak and pliable to pass judgement on wrongdoers; unable to pursue any plan consistently, he was far too affable and obliging in all his relationships ... He diminished his ­inheritance daily by his foolish prodigality.’ 16 Robert’s situation on his accession to the duchy has been rather more sympathetically assessed recently,17 but it remains clear that the new duke’s expenses and the payment of Henry’s legacy soon exhausted the ducal treasury. Robert lacked the resources for his proposed invasion of England, so there was an opening for Henry. It was an opportunity that the young Henry may not have foreseen when he opted to remain in Normandy, but he was well able to exploit it. He declined to lend his brother the money and chose instead to turn his legacy into land, buying from Curthose large tracts of lower Normandy for £3000.18 Henry was by no means the first son of the ducal house to cut his political teeth in lower Normandy. The Conqueror’s father, Robert, had been packed off to the Hiémois in 1027 with consequences disastrous for his older brother, Richard III.19 Viking traditions had lingered longer in the west, and it had been the scene of a rebellion overcome by Duke William at the battle of Val-ès-Dunes in 1047. In response to these factors William had deployed his most trusted lieutenants in lower Normandy, his half-brothers, Count Robert at Mortain and Bishop Odo at Bayeux. In 1088 Curthose may have sought to emulate his father’s action. Given the competing demands on ducal patronage, the duke may have felt he had made a good bargain by placing a tricky tract of territory and its castles in a safe pair of family hands, while receiving a significant sum in return.20 The arrangement had the effect of keeping Henry busy and on Robert’s side at a point when Robert was planning to attack their brother, William Rufus, and it is possible that the birth of Henry’s eldest illegitimate son, Robert, to whom his elder brother’s name was given, should be dated to this rare period of harmony between the two.21 15 

M. Chibnall, ‘Introduction (ii) Date and sources’, in OV iv, xix–xxv. OV iv, 114. 17  Judith Green, ‘Robert Curthose Reassessed’, ANS 22 (1999), 95–116, especially 104–5. 18  OV iv, 118: ‘whole of the Cotentin, which is a third part of Normandy – in this way he first acquired Avranches, Coutances and Mont Saint-Michel and the whole fee which Hugh earl of Chester held in Normandy’. 19  GND, ed. van Houts, ii, 40. An act in favour of Saint-Martin du Bois, preserved in the original, is attested by William the Conqueror’s second son as Richard of Avranches; Recueil, ed. Fauroux, no. 218. When William the Conqueror set up canons at Cherbourg Richard was a witness (Recueil, ed. Fauroux, no. 224), as he is to a grant to Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, concerning the church of Saint-James-de-Beuvron (Bates, ed., Regesta, no. 251). 20  OV iv, 220; on the problems of ducal castles, Green, ‘Robert Curthose Reassessed’, 104–5. 21  For a review of the evidence for Robert earl of Gloucester’s background, see Kathleen Thompson, ‘Affairs of State: The Illegitimate Children of Henry I’, JMH 29 (2003), 129–51, appendix 1. 16 



From the Thames to Tinchebray

19

The nature of Henry’s authority is difficult to pin down. It seems to have been a delegation of ducal powers that stretched over the area covered by the dioceses of Coutances and Avranches, and he had control of ducal castles such as Avranches, Cherbourg, Coutances and Gavray. In three acts, which he attests for his brother, Henry is called Count Henry, but Orderic describes Henry at this period as clito.22 He is sparing in his use of this word, which was used in Anglo-Saxon sources from the tenth century to describe the sons of kings and may be related to the word inclitus (renowned or famous). He uses it of the sons of Ethelred II and Emma of Normandy, Alfred and Edward, later to be King Edward the Confessor, who were exiled to Normandy, and of course, most memorably, of William, son of Robert Curthose.23 Alfred and Edward were dispossessed English princes, and Orderic, writing after the death of William Clito, may have been comparing Henry’s position in the late 1080s with that of William Clito, who was to have a similar ambiguous status as not-quite-heir apparent from whom an inheritance was withheld. Henry’s power probably did not extend to the areas where his uncles, Count Robert and Bishop Odo, were influential, but there were other big fish, not to say sharks, in Henry’s test tank. In the Cotentin the vicomte, Odo, was the descendant of a powerful local dynasty whose support had been critical for the maintenance of ducal rule in western Normandy, while the bishop had been a major player in the Conqueror’s English adventure.24 The mighty Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances was, it seems, reluctant to acknowledge the young Henry and claimed to recognize no lord but the archbishop of Rouen.25 In the Avranchin, Bishop Michael was more accommodating, but the area was dominated by the secular power, the vicomte Hugh. Like the vicomte of the Cotentin, Hugh’s power was hereditary, and his grandfather, Thurstan Goz, had challenged ducal power in the 1040s. Like the bishop of Coutances, vicomte Hugh had done well from the conquest of England, and he was also earl of Chester.26 How would Henry cope? Hollister suggests he coped very well, and Henry does appear to have been a vigorous ruler. Orderic says that he ruled the Cotentin energetically, strenue, his power demonstrated in the complaints of the nuns of Holy Trinity of Caen,

22 

OV iv, 148, 220. OV iii, 86 for Alfred and Edward. OV iv, 76 for another Anglo-Saxon prince, Edwy, son of Ethelred II and brother of King Edmund Ironside. OV vi, 240 brings together William Adelin, son of Henry I, and his cousin, William Clito, in the same sentence. 24  L. Delisle, Histoire du château et des sires de Saint-Sauveur-le-Victomte (Valognes, 1867). J. Le Patourel, ‘Geoffrey of Montbray, Bishop of Coutances, 1049–1093’, EHR 59 (1944), 129–61. 25  Le Patourel, Norman Empire, 343. ‘De statu constantiensis ecclesie’, in Gallia christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, ed. Sainte-Marthe et al., 16 vols. (Paris 1870–99), xi, instrum. col. 221. B. Jacqueline, ‘Institutions et état économico-social du diocèse de Coutances de 836 à 1093 d’après les “Gesta Gaufridi” du Livre noir du chapitre Coutançais’, Revue historique du droit français et étranger, 4th ser., 58 (1980), 227–39. 26  L. Musset, ‘Les origines et le patrimoine de l’abbaye de Saint-Sever’, in La Normandie bénédictine au temps de Guillaume le Conquérant (XIe siècle) (Lille, 1967), 357–67. 23 

20

Kathleen Thompson

whose lands were subjected to his taxes.27 Henry had two illegitimate children whose names link them to this area and this phase of his life: Robert of Caen and William de Tracy.28 Most famously, as J. H. Round first pointed out in 1901, he forged links with the local families that were to stand him in good stead for the rest of his life. John Le Patourel enlarged on this in his Norman Empire, pointing out that that most loyal of Henry’s servants, Roger of Salisbury, was a priest of Avranches.29 In examining Henry’s political apprenticeship, however, it is appropriate to ask whether Henry did all that straightaway, and the answer is unlikely to be in the affirmative. For, no sooner had Henry obtained these lands from his eldest brother than he was off to England to seek some more. In the summer of 1088 Henry went to England to ask his other brother, William Rufus, for their mother’s land. Orderic Vitalis says that William granted his request, but later contradicts himself when he notes that the lands had been granted to Robert fitz Hamon.30 Worse was to follow, however, for on his return to Normandy, Henry and his travelling companion, Robert of Bellême, were seized by Curthose’s troops and spent the next six months in Odo of Bayeux’s custody. The price for Henry’s excursion to England had been high, and the lesson he learned was not to be greedy. Professor Hollister comments that ‘neither through conquest nor through marriages did Henry I endeavor to expand the boundaries of the Anglo-Norman state’,31 and that circumspection was, I suggest, learned in the autumn of 1088. In 1100, at the most critical point of his career, he would be content with England, and he held his hand when offered the county of Maine.32 The political realism that subsequently tempers all Henry’s ambitions owes a great deal to this early lesson. It is however the events of the winter of 1090/1 that perhaps made the greatest contribution to Henry’s later success in ruling Normandy. His release from his uncle’s custody in the first half of 1089 followed Robert Curthose’s triumphant chevauchée through northern Maine, but Robert’s success was shortlived. In the autumn of 1090 the ducal capital of Rouen, made restive through the encouragement of William Rufus, rose in rebellion, and Henry moved in to support his brother. It was not his military skills nor family solidarity that were to create the impression, but his treatment of the rebels, for during these events Henry was able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the short, sharp shock. With his own hand he caused the rebel leader, Conan, to be thrown to his death from the walls of the ducal tower, and he made a statement about 27 

Charters and Custumals of the Abbey of Holy Trinity Caen, ed. Marjorie Chibnall and John Walmsley, Records of Social and Economic History, new ser., 5, 22, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1982–94), ii, 127. 28  For some deductions on Henry’s domestic arrangements, Thompson, ‘Affairs of State’. 29  Le Patourel, Norman Empire, 341ff., especially 346. 30  OV iv, 148, 220. William Rufus received Henry courteously as the charter to Rochester suggests; Regesta, i, no. 301 (1088). 31  C. Warren Hollister and Thomas K. Keefe, ‘The Making of the Angevin Empire’, in Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London, 1986), 252. 32  For Henry’s refusal of Maine, OV v, 304.



From the Thames to Tinchebray

21

himself that few in Normandy would forget. Henry was a man whom it was unwise to cross, as his own granddaughters and the English moneyers would later acknowledge.33 It was the first of his graphic demonstrations of power, and the Normans would receive another in the burning of Bayeux in 1105. Henry had placed an important marker for the future, but he had another lesson to learn – there is no such thing as gratitude among princes. Robert Curthose and William Rufus came to terms in February 1091 and turned against Henry, whom they besieged in Mont-Saint-Michel. The combined resources of the duke and the king were too much for Henry, and he was driven from his lands. This restoration of Robert Curthose’s power in the Cotentin is illustrated by his writ to vicomte Odo, first recognised by Jean-Michel Bouvris.34 Nothing for certain is known of Henry’s doings for something over twelve months until he suddenly appears in Domfront, and the implications of Henry’s seizure of this town are momentous, for it set Henry and Robert of Bellême on a course of mutual hostility that would end in repeated conflict until Henry consigned Robert to life imprisonment in 1112. For the landless and temporarily luckless Henry Domfront in 1092 was a fresh start, and he forged an association with the people of Domfront that he never broke. Professor Hollister points out that Henry apparently invested heavily in the small border town, for there was much money spent on the castle and local churches in the period that coincided with Henry’s lordship.35 It is unlikely, however, that this could have taken place in the years before 1106, since for at least four of those years Henry was effectively a robber baron, and he was to learn from that experience the usefulness of the rotten apple. His seizure of Domfront led to much conflict and destabilized the southern marches. It was a principle Henry would apply to some effect in the early 1100s when he made his own alliance with his son-in-law, Eustace of Breteuil, which helped to destabilize Curthose’s rule in central Normandy. Henry’s connection with Domfront brought him into contact with the local clergy, and it is striking how those connected with the diocese of Sées, in which Henry now settled, were to prosper under his kingship. Mathieu Arnoux has recently suggested how Henry was to use them in his restoration of ducal authority on the southern Norman border.36 Bishop Serlo of Sées, who was newly appointed in 1092, would later play an important part in legitimizing Henry’s seizure of Normandy. Ralph d’Escures who was abbot of Saint-Martin 33  OV vi, 212 for the grandaughters. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia, 474, cf. ASC, s.a. 1125 on the moneyers. Henry’s action is considered among other examples in Stephen D. White, ‘The Politics of Anger’, in Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Ithaca, 1998), 127–52 at 141. 34  J.-M. Bouvris, ‘Un bref inédit de Robert Coute-Heuse, duc de Normandie, relatif à l’abbaye de Montebourg, au diocèse de Coutances’, in Questions d’histoire et de dialectologie normande, Actes du 105e congrès national des sociétés savantes, Caen, 1980 (Paris, 1984), 125–150. 35  Hollister, Henry I, 90–3. 36  M. Arnoux, Des clercs au service de la réforme: études et documents sur les chanoines réguliers de la province de Rouen, Bibliotheca Victorina, 11 (Turnhout, 2000), 43–44.

22

Kathleen Thompson

of Sées from 1089, would, like Serlo, flee to England in the early 1100s and become successively bishop of Rochester and archbishop of Canterbury. Ralph’s brother, Seffrid, was to be abbot of Glastonbury and bishop of Chichester.37 John, bishop of Lisieux, later a mainstay of Henry’s rule in Normandy, was brought up at Sées, where his father was dean, and he himself served as archdeacon.38 John’s nephews, John and Arnulf, were later to become bishops of Sées and Lisieux respectively.39 It may also be significant, as Frank Barlow reminds us, that the new bishop of Coutances, Ralph, was in Rufus’s entourage as he waited at Hastings for a passage to Normandy in 1094, and shortly afterwards the king sent ships to fetch Henry.40 William Rufus recognized Henry’s usefulness against Curthose and may have used the bishop to convey messages to his brother. Henry arrived in England in late October and, after spending the latter part of the Christmas festival at Rufus’ court, returned to the fray at Domfront, reprovisioned by his brother. Next to nothing is known of Henry’s career for the next six years. In 1096 when the king took over Normandy as security for Curthose’s crusading expenses, Henry was given the counties of Coutances and Bayeux, except for the cities of Bayeux and Caen, so William Rufus must have shared Curthose’s view that it was wise to leave Henry to deal with western Normandy.41 We know that Henry fought in the Vexin with Rufus, but he can have learned little from these events that he did not know already. He probably divided his time between England and Normandy; he was at his brother’s court in 1099, and there are illegitimate children on both sides of the Channel. Le Patourel in a conference paper given in Rouen in 1974 suggested that the duchy was effectively partitioned between Rufus and his younger brother, and it is clear that the second half of the 1090s was, above all, Henry’s opportunity to evaluate those whom he would later use in England: the Reviers family from the Cotentin, later earls of Devon; the Hayes of Haye-du-Puits, who received the honour of Halnaker in Sussex; the Aubignys, who were promoted in Norfolk; the Saint-Jeans from Saint-Jean-le-Thomas near Avranches.42 It probably also 37  John le Neve, Fasti ecclesiae anglicanae, 1066–1300, ed. Diane E. Greenway et al., 10 vols. (London, 1968–2005), v (Chichester), 2. 38  OV vi, 142. 39  Frank Barlow, ‘Introduction’, in The Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, ed. F. Barlow, Camden, 3rd ser., 61 (London, 1939), xi–xii. John II became bishop of Sées in 1124, and Arnulf was archdeacon of Sées before becoming bishop of Lisieux in 1141. Henry’s knowledge of the clergy was not confined to Sées, for he appointed Herluin, a monk of Saint-Etienne of Caen to be abbot of Glastonbury immediately after he became king, OV v, 298. 40  Barlow, William Rufus, 328, 334; ASC, s.a. 1094: King William sent for his brother Henry, who was in the castle at Domfront, but since he could not pass through Normandy in safety, he sent ships for him and Hugh, earl of Chester. 41  Robert of Torigny, ‘Interpolations’, ii, 210–12. 42  J. Le Patourel, ‘Henri Beauclerc, comte du Cotentin 1088’, Revue historique du droit français et étranger, 4th ser., 53 (1975), 167–8: ‘En realité le duché se trouva presque partagé entre lui et son frère Guillaume le Roux de 1096 à 1100’.



From the Thames to Tinchebray

23

marked the development of an unlikely friendship between Henry and the man who had received his mother’s lands, Robert fitz Hamon, for it is apparent that in the early 1100s Henry valued fitz Hamon and that he had put aside that potential cause for resentment between them.43 Most significant of all the alliances of Henry’s youth, however, was that with Hugh of Avranches, earl of Chester. Hugh was an experienced warrior, who had secured the difficult English marcher lordship, while maintaining his hereditary position as vicomte of Avranches. Although perhaps as much as twenty years older than Henry, he must have recognised the younger man’s potential. At the time when Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances was hostile, Henry found an ally in Hugh, a man who, like himself, would acknowledge an impressive number of illegitimate children.44 Although he lost his nerve in 1091 when both Curthose and Rufus moved against Henry, Hugh had returned to Henry’s side fairly promptly for, when Rufus’s ships arrived to take Henry to England in 1094, Henry was accompanied by Hugh. Henry sealed the relationship before 1100 by granting Hugh Saint-James-le-Beuvron in the extreme west of Normandy,45 and Hugh is specifically mentioned among the new king’s councillors in 1100.46 His death in July 1101 must have been a blow to Henry, but the strength of their alliance is demonstrated in the favour that Henry continued to show to Hugh’s young son, Richard, who was later given a bride from Henry’s own family.47 While Henry’s political skills were developed by his years in lower Normandy, as he approached his thirtieth year he was also well-placed to observe and be influenced by the new religious fervour that was sweeping western France. Vital of Savigny, formerly a canon and chaplain to Count Robert of Mortain, was active in the late 1090s. Orderic Vitalis recounts the power of his oratory: He spared neither rich nor poor in his public sermons. He raised his voice like the trumpet of Isaiah’s prophecies, showing the Christian people their transgressions and the house of Jacob their sins. Because of this kings and dukes held him in great reverence. Many multitudes journeyed to hear his words ... every rank was mortified by his true allegations, every crowd trembled before him at his reproaches.48

43 

In 1105, Henry invaded Normandy to rescue Robert fitz Hamon, OV vi, 60. For Hugh’s bastards: Robert, a monk, OV v, 298; Geva, wife of Geoffrey Ridel, John Le Patourel, Normandy and England 1066–1144 (Reading, 1971), 31; Othuer fitz earl, C. Warren Hollister, ‘The Misfortunes of the Mandevilles’, in Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions, 122–3. 45  Robert of Torigny, ‘Interpolations’, 208. 46  OV v, 298. 47  OV v, 314. Richard married Henry’s niece, Matilda of Blois. His illegitimate half-brother, Robert, a monk of Saint-Evroul, had already received preferment, becoming abbot of Glastonbury in 1100; OV v, 298. 48  OV iv, 332. 44 

24

Kathleen Thompson

Henry may have enjoyed the benefit of Vital’s preaching in these years. He could hardly have been unaware of his activities, and Vital was to try to mediate between Henry and his brother in 1106.49 Bernard of Tiron, in a period of sabbatical leave from his position as prior of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe in Poitou, also resided under Henry’s rule when he retired to the Isles of Chausey, which lie off the coast opposite Granville, in the late 1090s.50 Although the chronology of Bernard’s vita leaves much to be desired, it is clear that Bernard preached in Coutances, and he must have been well known to the local lords. In these years Bernard probably forged the relationships that led to the rapid spread of the order of Tiron in the 1100s, for both Robert fitz Martin and Adam of Port, who gave him land in England, originated from lower Normandy, and Henry himself would later give 15 silver marks from the treasury at Winchester to provide shoes for the monks of Tiron.51 It is likely too that at some stage in the 1090s Henry made the acquaintance of the most formidable of all his political allies, his future wife, the Scottish princess, Matilda. There is a remarkable unanimity of the sources in describing the affection between Henry and his new wife, which may have been forged some time before their marriage.52 Lois Huneycutt suggests that, if Henry were brought up at Salisbury under the care of Bishop Osmund, as Professor Hollister surmised, then his special relationship with the bishop may have brought Matilda to Henry’s attention.53 Wilton, where the princess spent a part, if not all, of the 1090s is, after all, only three miles from the site of the bishop’s see at Old Sarum. While all the above is informed speculation, it is certain that Henry was with his brother in the New Forest on 2 August 1100. His political intuition over the next few months was infallible. He did all the right things: he knew the importance of the treasury, learned from his impecunious brother in Normandy; he rushed to London for coronation, learned from his brother William’s dash in 1087; and he did not overreach himself, unlike 1088. Above all he knew his brother. He knew that Robert was unlikely to take decisive action on his return to Normandy, far too much energy would have been required, and over the next few years he gave Robert the proverbial sufficiency of rope. Henry had observed the value of Curthose’s son-in-law, Helias of SaintSaens, to the duke and began his own diplomacy of matrimony early in his reign. Unable to make it work with William of Warenne, who declined both 49 

OV vi, 86. Geoffrey Grossus, ‘Vita beati Bernardi Tironiensis’, PL, clxxii, cols. 1367–446, para. 26ff. 51  Cal. Docs. France, ed. Round, nos. 995–8, 1005; Port of Mapledurwell from Port en Bessin (Calvados, cant. Ryes), Lewis C. Loyd, Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families, ed. C. T. Clay and D. C. Douglas, Harleian Soc., 103 (Leeds, 1951), 79. 52  Hollister, Henry I, 127 n. 76. 53  Lois L. Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship (Woodbridge, 2003), 27; Hollister, Henry I, 37. 50 



From the Thames to Tinchebray

25

an illegitimate daughter and the royal sister-in-law, Henry soon found the right man in Eustace of Breteuil to whom he gave his illegitimate daughter, Juliana. From then on, there was no looking back. When Rotrou of Mortagne came to meet Henry at Domfront in 1104, he may have hoped to persuade the king to give him Domfront as the price for his support. Rotrou’s family had a claim to it, as Orderic explains in his account of the fighting between Rotrou’s father and the previous possessor of Domfront, Robert of Bellême.54 Henry knew how useful or dangerous Rotrou’s territories might be to the ruler of Normandy, for he had seen how his father needed to campaign there in the late 1070s, but he was not prepared to surrender Domfront. It still provided a convenient outpost in his brother’s lands. Rather than sending Rotrou away empty-handed however, he gave him another illegitimate daughter, Matilda, and two substantial manors in Wiltshire. Henceforward, Rotrou was committed to opposition to Curthose, and Henry was to go on to play the marital alliance card again and again.55 Meanwhile, in the words of Professor Hollister, Henry weeded out the ‘incorrigible troublemakers’ from England.56 As the likes of William of Mortain and Robert of Bellême departed it was Henry’s friends from the west who profited. The wife of Baldwin de Reviers received a dower from the lands of William of Mortain, and Robert de la Haye received the honour of Halnaker in the former Montgomery lands in Sussex.57 Other names might be added such as Savaric fitz Cana, ancestor of the Bohuns of Midhurst, whose links with the Cotentin are less immediately apparent. Savaric first encountered Henry before 1090 when he and Henry both witnessed Duke Robert’s charter to Holy Trinity, Caen.58 He may have entered Henry’s entourage in the Domfront years, as his family originated from Beaumont-sur-Sarthe, some seventy kilometres to the south of Domfront. By 1100 he was making a successful career in western Normandy, for, although the youngest son of his father, he was able to take a wife, Muriel, the daughter of Richard of Meré, one of the sons of Humphrey de Bohon, the elder.59 When Robert of Bellême was expelled from England, it was Savaric and his family that Henry, himself the most successful of youngest sons, settled at Forde in Sussex on lands formerly associated with the Montgomery nunnery of Almenêches.60 It is clear that Henry’s tenure of western Normandy was an invaluable preparation for his seizure of Normandy, and there seems to have been residual support for Henry among its lords in the early years of the twelfth century. 54 

OV iv, 160. Kathleen Thompson, Power and Border Lordship in Medieval France: The County of the Perche, 1000–1226 (Woodbridge, 2002), 55–6. For the marriages of Henry’s illegitimate daughters, Thompson, ‘Affairs of state’, 147–51. 56  Hollister, Henry I, 154. 57  Charters of the Redvers Family and the Earldom of Devon, 1090–1217, ed. R. Bearman, Devon and Cornwall Record Soc., new ser., 37 (Exeter, 1994), 24–25; Cal. Docs. France, ed. Round, nos. 921, 922. 58  Regesta, i, no. 324. 59  Cal. Docs. France, ed. Round, nos. 669, 1211–17. 60  OV vi, 32. 55 

26

Kathleen Thompson

Certainly in 1105 Henry was able to land an army unopposed and proceed to what C. W. David describes as the ‘amazing piece of acting’ at Carentan on Easter Day, in which Henry’s old friend Bishop Serlo of Sées was to legitimate the king’s enterprise.61 Henry had cut his political teeth in Normandy. He had persuaded entrenched local lords such as vicomte Odo to work with him, and he had won the confidence of difficult men like Hugh of Avranches. He took the measure of his contemporaries, and he bore no grudges, as his treatment of Robert fitz Hamon suggests, but above all he exploited his opportunities ruthlessly. He may have once enjoyed friendly relations with Robert of Bellême, but that did not prevent him from seizing Robert’s possession of Domfront, if it suited. He developed his links with the clergy and was made aware of the new spirituality, but perhaps most significant of all he gave a demonstration of his own abilities that contrasted dramatically with those of his oldest brother. Henry was not only able, as were all the Conqueror’s sons, he was also brutally capable of making others bend to his will.62

61 

Charles W. David, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy (Cambridge, MA, 1920), 161. I am grateful to Professor Edmund King of the University of Sheffield for his thoughts on an earlier draft of this paper. 62 

3 Henry I and the English Ann Williams

It is a great honour to have been asked to contribute to this tribute to Warren Hollister, whom I knew from his many visits to the Battle Conferences, always enriched by his presence. We did not share the same field of studies, but given that he was the founding father of the Haskins Society, it is appropriate that this paper was delivered to the first meeting of the ‘British Haskins’, on the occasion of the Annual Day-Conference held on 12 September 2002 at the Institute of Historical Research in London. The paper is presented here more or less as it was read. My intention was rather to entertain than to inform the distinguished audience who attended, all of whom knew more about the subject than I, and I hope that Warren, now feasting in the halls of heaven with the other great historians who have gone before us, will also enjoy it. It might be possible, after long and detailed research, to produce a study of those families of pre-Conquest English origin who managed to survive the Norman settlement, and even to attain, in the early twelfth century, a modest degree of prosperity. I have not attempted this task, which in any event would have little to say of Henry I. As a pre-Conquest historian, I know little of Henry, so when I was asked to speak on his relations with the English, I turned to the works of better-informed scholars. It was rather daunting to discover from Judith Green that ‘Henry was not an Anglophile and did not seek to promote Englishmen’, but I took comfort from G. H. White, who concluded that ‘Henry was evidently devoid of racial prejudice in his choice of mistresses’. Though my assigned topic might preclude any chance of adding to the high intellectual tone of the occasion, at least I should be able to lower it with scandalous gossip and suggestive innuendo. Two of Henry I’s many liaisons were with women called Edith, a name of insular rather than continental associations, which suggests that they were English. Of the first Edith, we know only that she held land in Devon and bore the king a daughter, Matilda, who married Rotrou count of Perche in 1106 and was drowned in the wreck of the White Ship in 1120; William of Malmesbury relates that it was in trying to save her that the king’s only legitimate son,   Judith Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), 155; Complete Peerage, xi, 121 (appendix D).

28

Ann Williams

William Adelin, lost his life. I will return to the second Edith in a moment; first, however, I want to say something of yet another Edith, more commonly known as Matilda, who was no mere concubine, but Henry’s first wife and his crowned queen. Henry and Matilda were married soon after his coronation in 1100, and it is the background to this union that provides my first piece of gossip. As Eadmer relates in the Historia novorum, there were some who believed that Henry should not have been marrying Matilda at all, because ‘she had been dedicated by her parents to God’s service’, and ‘had been seen walking abroad wearing the veil like the nuns with whom she was living’. When, therefore, ‘long after she had discarded the veil, the king fell in love with her’, this ‘set the tongues of very many wagging’. It was not Henry but Matilda who took the initiative in this difficult situation. Eadmer describes how she went to Archbishop Anselm and denied that she had ever been, or intended to be, a professed nun. As a girl she had indeed worn a veil but only at the insistence of her aunt Christina, so that she might be preserved against ‘the lust of the Normans which was rampant and at that time ready to assault any woman’s honour’; if the testimony attributed to her aunt is to be believed, the perceived threat was William Rufus himself. Matilda herself rebelled furiously against this imposition, and when her father found it out his rage was so great that he ripped the offending garment off her head. William of Malmesbury, however, claims that Matilda wore the veil to avoid ‘the unworthy offers of marriage which her father laid before her’. Anselm convened a council to discuss the problem and sent messengers to Wilton to collect evidence. When they reported that, having ‘made most careful enquiries of the sisters’, they had discovered nothing ‘inconsistent with the account given’, Anselm charged the members of the council to debate the matter while he himself withdrew. Though Eadmer omits to say so, Anselm was in a very difficult position, for in 1094 he had dispatched a letter to Osmund, bishop of Salisbury, in whose diocese Wilton lay, urging him to exert himself in getting Matilda back into the cloister which she had recently deserted. It must have   Pipe R. 31 H. I, 155, where the lands of ‘Edith, mother of the countess of Perche’ are at farm for £6 7s. 4d.; Complete Peerage, xi, 112 n. b; William of Malmesbury, GR, 760–1.   OV iv, 272–3; Lois L. Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship (Woodbridge, 2003), 10, n. 4.   Eadmer, Historia novorum in Anglia, ed. Martin Rule, RS 81 (London, 1884), 121; translated by Geoffrey Bosanquet, Eadmer’s History of Recent Events in England (London, 1964), 127.   For Eadmer’s account, see Historia novorum, 122–25; Eadmer’s History, trans. Bosanquet, 127–31.   As reported by Baldwin, once head of Anselm’s household, to Herman of Tournai; see Frank Barlow, William Rufus (London, 1983), 310–12, 315; R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge, 1963), 184–5.   William of Malmesbury, GR, 754–5; see also Orderic’s opinion that ‘she was destined by heaven for a more illustrious marriage’ (OV iv, 272–3).   For the identification of the religious house, see Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland, 17–18.   Southern, Saint Anselm, 183.



Henry I and the English

29

been a relief to him when the council, having duly debated, reported that, although they could advance reasons for their opinion that Matilda was free to marry, there was no need to do so, since the principle had already been decided; Lanfranc, faced with a similar problem of women who had retreated to convents and worn the veil to protect themselves from the ‘shameful licentiousness’ of Duke William’s men at the time of the Conquest, had declared that they need not continue in the religious life if such was not their wish.10 Matilda was then called and volunteered to take an oath that her account was true, but this was not required of her, ‘as the truth had been proved and established by the consensus of opinion of so many persons of position’. Since so much contention surrounded his choice of bride, one might ask why Henry was so determined to marry this particular woman. For some historians, medieval and modern, the answer lies in her ancestry; she was the daughter of Malcolm III Canmore, king of Scotland, by his second wife, Margaret, herself, as Eadmer says, ‘descended from the old kings of the English’, being the daughter of Edward ‘the Aetheling’, son of Edmund II, son of Ethelred, son of ‘that glorious king, Edgar’.11 Just as William the Conqueror had successfully presented himself as the legal heir of Margaret’s great-uncle Edward the Confessor, so, by marrying Margaret’s daughter, Henry would (in Warren Hollister’s words) be ‘joining Edward’s lineage to his own’ and ensuring that his own children would ‘become members of the Anglo-Saxon royal line’.12 This is more or less the opinion among contemporary commentators. The author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle declared roundly that Matilda came of þan rihtan Engla landes kynekynne (‘of the true royal family of England’), while Orderic Vitalis noted that her mother ‘was descended from the stock of King Alfred, son (sic, recte grandson) of King Ecgberht, the line which first ruled all England after the Danish wars’; his emphasis on the kingship of all the English may be significant.13 Elsewhere Orderic alleges that during his exile Margaret’s father Edward, the Confessor’s nephew, ‘married the daughter of Solomon, king of the Magyars, receiving the kingdom with her’, a statement which although wrong in every particular (Edward was never king of the Magyars, Solomon did not become king until 1057, the year Edward died, and Agatha was neither Solomon’s daughter nor the daughter of his father Andrew) at least carries the idea of a kingdom acquired by marriage with the true heiress.14 William of Malmesbury does not go so far, but he does relate the birth of Matilda’s son to King Edward’s prophecy of the Green Tree, which, though cut down and carried three furlongs from its stock, would rejoin itself and begin ‘to push leaves and bear fruit from the old love of its uniting sap’; with the birth of 10 

For Lanfranc’s decision, see The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson (Oxford, 1979), 166–7. 11  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 121; Eadmer’s History, trans. Bosanquet, 126. 12  C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, ed. Amanda Clark Frost (New Haven, 2001), 126–7. 13  ASC, s.a. 1110; OV v, 298–9. 14  OV iv, 272–3. For Edward ‘the Aetheling’ in Hungary, see Gabriel Ronay, The Lost King of England (Woodbridge, 1989), 78–88.

30

Ann Williams

William Adelin ‘it was supposed King Edward’s prophecy was to be fulfilled: the hope of England, it was thought, once cut down like a tree, was in the person of that young prince again to blossom and bear fruit’.15 Not all have agreed that Matilda’s English ancestry was a factor in Henry’s choice of her as his bride; Sir Richard Southern was of the opinion that ‘an alliance with a princess of the old stock would not in itself have appealed to him’.16 It has been been argued that effusions like those quoted above represent only an ‘English’ view of things; Eadmer and (presumably) the Chronicler were Englishmen, Orderic and William were of mixed blood, French and English in the case of the former, Norman and English in the latter. The ‘English’ ancestry of Matilda does, however, seem to have mattered to Normans as well as Englishmen, though in a negative rather than a positive sense; William of Malmesbury says that the supporters of Robert Curthose’s claims to the English kingship jeered at Henry and his new wife by calling them ‘Godric and Godgifu’.17 Henry’s own opinion may be reflected in William of Malmesbury’s assertion that the descent of his daughter the Empress from the Old English kings formed part of his campaign to get her accepted as his heir.18 William of Malmesbury also provides some insight into Matilda’s views. In a letter to Matilda’s daughter the Empress, prefaced to the Gesta regum, William recalls a conversation between the queen and the monks of Malmesbury on the subject of St. Aldhelm, to whom she believed herself to be related (whether this was in fact the case is doubtful).19 On hearing that their kinship ran through the genealogy of the West Saxon kings, Matilda asked for a ‘short essay’ (brevis libellus) on the matter, and the implication is that it was William who undertook to provide this. When presented with a ‘brief list (exigua schedula) of the English kings’, the queen was sufficiently interested to request ‘a somewhat fuller narrative’ on the subject of her royal ancestors, ‘one that would (as she put it) make them better known’.20 This enterprize eventually became the Gesta regum, whose completion she did not live to see. It seems then that Matilda’s interest in her West Saxon forebears was hagiographical in origin, and further that it was not so much the fact that they were English which mattered to her as that they were kings. This emphasis on their kingship is found in all three letters which appear prefaced to the Gesta regum, each of which presents the work as a ‘mirror for princes’. Even in addressing 15 

The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, ed. Frank Barlow (London, 1962), 76, 89–90; William of Malmesbury, GR, 758–9. 16  Southern, Saint Anselm, 188. 17  William of Malmesbury, GR, 716–17. 18  William of Malmesbury, HN, 3–4. See Hollister, Henry I, 309: ‘Henry himself took the idea of the joined royal lines very seriously, in part because it provided further justification for the succession of his own children.’ I owe this reference to Dr. Hugh Thomas. 19  William of Malmesbury, GP, 332; Rodney M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 1987), 34–5 and n. 128. 20  William of Malmesbury, GR, 8–9; see also the letter to Queen Matilda’s brother, King David (GR, 1–2).



Henry I and the English

31

Robert of Gloucester, who had no biological connection with Old English royalty, William recommends to him ‘a work in which you can see yourself as in a mirror (speculum), for you will understand and will agree that you were imitating the actions of the greatest princes before you even heard their names’.21 William was of course intent on rehabilitating the history of the English nation, but the idea of an exemplar may also have been in Queen Matilda’s mind; a similar motive has been discerned in her commissioning of a vita of her mother Queen Margaret.22 It seems unlikely that Henry would have been disposed to accept the West Saxon kings as models for his own conduct. There was, however, one aspect of West Saxon kingship with which Henry did wish, quite explicitly, to be associated. In his coronation charter, he famously promised to restore ‘the law of King Edward, together with such emendation to it as my father made with the counsel of his barons’.23 That there was no ‘law of King Edward’ (who issued no law codes) presented some difficulties, solved by the production of compendia of Old English law, notably Quadripartitus and the Leges Henrici Primi, which make the reign of Henry I ‘the most important period in the history of Old English law from 1066 itself to the reign of Elizabeth’.24 There is no need to take literally the anonymous Latin poet who claims that it was Matilda’s influence which persuaded Henry to improve the laws of England, but she did act as her husband’s deputy in legal and administrative matters during his absences from the country, and it may be significant that one manuscript of Quadripartitus is dedicated to her.25 More generally, the emphasis placed in at least some sources on Matilda’s relationship to King Edward – the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls her ‘King Edward’s kinswoman’, Orderic describes her grandfather as ‘the son of Edmund Ironside, brother of Edward’, and William of Malmesbury observes that she was ‘the great-great-niece of King Edward’ – might reflect a connection between Henry’s promotion of the notional ‘law of King Edward’ and his marriage with one of that king’s surviving kinswomen.26 And why should Henry promote ‘King Edward’s law’? The answer is given in the Leges Henrici Primi’s reference to ‘the formidable authority of the royal majesty, which we stress as worthy of attention for its continual and beneficial preeminence over the laws’. It was this ‘formidable authority’, built up by successive West Saxon kings, which

21 

William of Malmesbury, GR, 10–13. Lois L. Huneycutt, ‘The Idea of a Perfect Princess: The Life of St Margaret in the Reign of Matilda II’, ANS 12 (1989), 81–97. 23  The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, ed. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1925), 282–3; EHD, ii, no. 19. 24  Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1999), 228. 25  Huneycutt, ‘Perfect Princess’, 90; Richard Sharpe, ‘The Prefaces to Quadripartitus’, in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy, ed. George Garnett and John Hudson (Cambridge, 1994), 172. 26  ASC, s.a. 1100, OV iv, 272–3, William of Malmesbury, GR, 716–17. 22 

32

Ann Williams

underlay Henry’s increasingly effective government.27 He may not have had much time for Englishmen, either individually or collectively, but this was one inheritance from the English past that he had no intention of discarding; it has been observed that the attempt of Quadripartitus ‘to realise the “Laws of King Edward” reflected the new regime’s own claim to be founded on respect for the English kingdom’s ancient values and procedures’.28 Another aspect of Henry’s first marriage which is worth considering is Matilda’s paternal ancestry. The death of Malcolm III in 1093 had taken some of the heat off the English kings; William Rufus, and subsequently Henry himself, were able (for a time at least) to turn Malcolm’s children into clients dependent upon English arms to maintain themselves. Seen in this light, Henry’s marriage to Malcolm’s daughter is merely one in a sequence, including the union of Matilda’s brother Alexander I and Henry’s illegitimate daughter Sibyl, and the marriage of their sibling David with the king’s kinswoman Matilda, widow of Simon of Senlis and daughter of Henry’s cousin Judith (her father, of course, was Waltheof, last of the Old English earls). These alliances are not unconnected with the question of ‘Englishness’, for if the marriage of Henry and Malcolm’s daughter in 1100 made its offspring members of the AngloSaxon royal line, the same is true of all Malcolm’s children by his marriage to Margaret; indeed, William of Malmesbury’s prefatory letter to King David tells the king that ‘here you will learn how illustrious are the forebears whom you follow as their not unworthy grandson’.29 In the early twelfth century, Norman and Anglo-Norman historians presented the relations between England and Scotland not only from an English but from a southern English viewpoint, yet the struggle between Scots and English for control of the north of England was by no means a foregone conclusion, nor was it close to being resolved. Bill Aird has argued that the late eleventh and the early twelfth century saw: a fundamental redefinition of what constituted the north of England. Essentially, two emerging monarchies, those of the Scots and the Anglo-Norman realms, contested the overlordship of Cumbria in the west and ‘English Northumbria’, or the region which lies between the rivers Tweed and Tees. It was by no means certain which of these two powers would be successful in asserting its claims in these areas.30

It was a contest already a century and more old and still very active. Malcolm Canmore’s marriage to Margaret had taken place in 1070, just after an ­unsuccessful attempt to place her brother, Edgar ‘the Aetheling’, on the English throne.31 Edgar is usually regarded as a complete non-starter by modern 27  Leges Henrici Primi, ed. and trans. L. J. Downer (Oxford, 1972), 96–7; Wormald, Making of English Law, 475. 28  Patrick Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy, ed. George Garnett and John Hudson (Cambridge, 1994), 146. 29  William of Malmesbury, GR, 4–5. 30  William M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: The Church of Durham, 1071–1153 (Woodbridge, 1998), 227. 31  Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), 32–3.



Henry I and the English

33

h­ istorians, but he was a close friend of Robert Curthose, on whose side he was to fight at the battle of Tinchebray, and Robert in turn was to become Matilda’s godfather.32 Fears that the Scottish kings would make good their ambitions in the north were still being expressed in Henry’s own time: the York historian, Hugh the Chanter, writing in 1127, considered that the primacy of Canterbury over York, which he bitterly opposed, was defended because it was thought possible that an independent archbishop of York might crown ‘some one of the Danes, Norwegians or Scots who used to sail up to York in their attacks on the realm’.33 At about the same time, Orderic was retailing the monk Guitmund’s reproach to William I that ‘Edgar atheling and several others of the royal line are ... nearer heirs to the English crown’.34 Who, at such a date, are these ‘others’ if not the children of Margaret and Malcolm, including David king of Scotland? It is in this context that I should wish to place Henry’s liaison with his third Englishwoman, Edith daughter of Forne Sigulf’s son. Farrer, who traced the genealogy of Forne’s descendants, the lords of Greystoke in Cumbria, thought Sigulf might have been ‘an unnamed socheman of the East Riding’ of Yorks, about the time of Domesday.35 Forne himself, however, appears in the Yorkshire folios of Domesday Book among the taini regis of the East Riding, holding a manor at Nunburnholme, later found in possession of the Greystoke family; it was assessed at eleven carucates, which suggests a fairly large estate, but no value is recorded either for 1086 or the time of King Edward, when it was in other hands (not Sigulf’s).36 By the 1120s, Forne was one of the king’s officers in Yorkshire and Northumberland and is so addressed in a number of royal instruments.37 Another sign of his status in the north is his appearance at the gathering in 1121 of the ‘chief men’ (principales vires) who heard the claim of the community of St. Cuthbert to Tynemouth Priory; Forne is listed alongside Robert de Brus, Alan de Percy, and Walter Espec (who precede him) and Robert de ‘Witevila’ and Odard sheriff of the Northumbrians (vicecomes Northymbrensium), who follow him, with the unnamed maiores of the shire and ‘many others’.38 His name is also included among the witnesses to a charter for Scone Abbey of c. 1120, but its authenticity is doubtful.39 It might be concluded that Forne was one of Henry’s ‘men raised from the dust’, and further that his elevation had something to do with the king’s affair with his daughter. But, as Hollister has observed, ‘the mother of a recognized 32 

OV v, 270–3; ASC, s.a. 1106; William of Malmesbury, GR, 704–5; Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland, 10. 33  Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, 1066–1127, ed. Charles Johnson (London, 1961), 3 (my italics). 34  OV ii, xv, 276–7 (my italics). 35  EYC, ii, 505. 36  DB i, fol. 330v; EYC, ii, 509. 37  Regesta, ii, nos. 1264, 1279 (both dated to 1121), 1541, 1547 (both dated 1125). Forne also attests Regesta, ii, nos. 1326 (dated 1122) and 1494 (1123–27). 38  Symeon, Opera, ii, 261. 39  Sir Archibald Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters prior to A.D. 1153 (Edinburgh, 1905), 30.

34

Ann Williams

bastard [and Edith’s son, as we shall see, was recognized] would usually have been a woman of at least minimal social status’.40 Charles Phythian-Adams has recently suggested that his father was the Sigulf (the name, incidentally, is not common) named as a tenant of land in Cumbria in a writ issued by Gospatric of Allerdale, which Phythian-Adams further argues should be dated 1067–69, rather than the previously accepted dating of 1041–64.41 Forne’s earliest appearance outside the folios of Domesday Book is among the witnesses to a notification, which must be dated 1106–12, in which Ranulf le Meschin, lord of Carlisle, announces his foundation of Wetheral Priory.42 Four of the six witnesses bear insular names: Waltheof, son of Earl Gospatric, Forne himself, Ketel Eldred’s son, and Eilaf of Penrith. Waltheof’s father was the last English earl of Bamburgh, to whom Malcolm III had given what was to become the earldom of Dunbar; he is probably identical with Gospatric of Allerdale, issuer of the writ mentioned above.43 At the time of Ranulf le Meschin’s notification, Waltheof was holding Allerdale, while Ketel Eldred’s son had either received or was about to receive from Henry I the lordship of Kendal, previously held by his maternal grandfather, Ivo Taillebois (died 1093).44 By analogy, Forne himself may already have been in possession of the lordship of neighbouring Greystoke, perhaps even as an inheritance from his father Sigulf.45 It is likely, then, that Forne was rather more than a sokeman’s son or even a minor thegn. He seems in fact to have been one of the local magnates of Cumbria, ‘whose title to their land’ (as Professor Barrow has observed) ‘went back well before the Norman annexation’.46 Not all of them need have been ‘English’ in the narrow sense; Hervey fitz Morin, lord of Dalston, another of the witnesses to Ranulf le Meschin’s notification, looks like an incomer (the name is common in Brittany), but a Moryn, perhaps Hervey’s father, is named as a former holder of land in Dalston in Gospatric’s writ, which, even accepting the later date of 1067–69, is well before the region came into Norman hands 40 

Hollister, Henry I, 44. Florence E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), no. 121; Charles Phythian-Adams, Land of the Cumbrians: A Study in British Provincial Origins, A.D. 400–1120 (Aldershot, 1996), 141–2, 174–80. 42  Monasticon anglicanum, ed. W. Dugdale et al., rev. edn., 6 vols. in 8 (London, 1817–30), ii, 583. 43  Phythian-Adams, Land of the Cumbrians, 136–7; D. P. Kirby, ‘Strathclyde and Cumbria: A Survey of Historical Developments to 1092’, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Soc. Transactions, new ser., 62 (1962), 93. For a contrary view, see Harmer, AngloSaxon Writs, 420. 44  Bk. of Fees, i, 198; VCH Cumberland, i, 421; I. J. Sanders, English Baronies: A Study of their Origin and Descent, 1086–1327 (Oxford, 1960), 56–7 (Kendal), 134–5 (Papcastle = Allerdale). For Ketel Eldred’s son, see K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents, 1066–1166, II. Pipe Rolls to Cartae Baronum (Woodbridge, 2002), 42, 881. 45  Phythian-Adams, Land of the Cumbrians, 30, 179–80. 46  G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century (London, 1973), 148; see also Judith A. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 1997), 101. 41 



Henry I and the English

35

in 1092.47 It was by securing the cooperation of such native lords in Cumbria that the Norman kings fixed their authority upon the region. There is nothing surprising in this; the indications are that a similar policy was the original intention of the Conqueror himself in the early years of his reign, before the English revolt of 1068–70 changed his mind. No such revolt followed the Norman expansion into the north-west, and indigenous magnates who were prepared to cooperate with the Norman kings survived alongside the incoming Norman aristocracy. When did Forne himself come to the notice of Henry I? His name is found in the witness list of a charter which must date from the years 1108–14, but this is not regarded as authentic, and his genuine attestations belong to the period 1122–27.48 The likelihood is that his meeting with the king took place during Henry’s only known visit to the north in the autumn of 1122, when he went both to York and to Carlisle.49 Forne, as we have seen, had connections both with Cumbria and Yorkshire. Since he is addressed in a royal writ of 1121, he must already have held some office in Yorkshire and Northumberland and would therefore have been present to greet the king on his arrival in the north. In a notification which can be dated no more closely than 1115–22, the king announces that he has given Forne Sigulf’s son the land of Thornton-le-Moor (Yorkshire), of the fief of Robert Malet, for the same rent of 20s. per annum which Alfred son of Ilving had formerly paid.50 The connection between Henry and Forne might have been Adelulf, founder and first prior of Nostell, in Yorkshire, who became the king’s confessor in the 1120s. Adelulf had at one time been lord of Pocklington, the manor to which the soke of one carucate of Forne’s manor of Nunburnholme had been appurtenant in 1086; at the same time Forne also held land at Millington, a berewick of Pocklington, and another of its berewicks, at Bielby, is later found in the possession of the Greystoke family.51 Forne died in or soon before 1130, when the king allowed Ivo fitz Forne all the lands which his father had held in chief in Yorkshire and Northumberland.52 Another indication of the date of Henry’s liaison with Edith Forne’s daughter is the age of their son, Robert. Robert of Torigny, writing in about 1142, describes him as still young and unmarried, but he was old enough to have supported his half-sister the Empress at the siege of Winchester in 1141.53 It is likely, therefore, that Robert fitz Edith (as John of Hexham calls him) was born

47 

Phythian-Adams, Land of the Cumbrians, 180; Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, 147 and n. 22; ASC, s.a. 1092. 48  Regesta, ii, no. 1083; for Forne’s genuine attestations, see note 37 above. 49  Symeon, Opera, ii, 267. 50  Regesta, ii, no. 1357; iii, 505. 51  W. E. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and its Transformation, 1000– 1135 (London, 1979), 201 and n. 49; DB i, fols. 299v, 330v; EYC, ii, 505, 509. 52  Regesta, ii, no. 1639; Pipe R. 31 H. I, 25; Sanders, English Baronies, 50 and n. 2. 53  Complete Peerage, xi, 108 (appendix D).

36

Ann Williams

in 1122 or (at the latest) 1123.54 He is first mentioned in the Pipe Roll for 1130–31, when his lands, which lay in Devonshire, were being administered by guardians (vigiles).55 Whether he attested any of his father’s charters is uncertain; it would in any case be difficult to distinguish him from his older half-brother, Robert of Gloucester.56 He does attest several charters issued by the Empress between 1141 and 1144–47, usually in company with Robert of Gloucester and another half-brother, Reginald of Dunstanville; in all of them he appears as Robert filius Regis, and in her confirmation charter to Oseney Abbey, the Empress is made to call him Robertus filius regis frater meum.57 He married Matilda, widow of William of Courcy (died c. 1162), heiress of Okehampton in Devon, and it is presumably for this fee that Robert owed knight-service in the reign of Henry II. He died in 1172.58 In his relations with Edith Forne’s daughter, Henry was clearly playing away, though the aggrieved party was not Queen Matilda but her successor Adeliza of Louvain. Whether he took Edith south with him in the winter of 1122 we do not know, but he subsequently arranged her marriage with Robert of Oilli II, lord of Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, providing her with dower land at Claydon in the same county, which she subsequently gave to Oseney Abbey.59 The choice of husband is interesting, for Robert’s uncle and namesake had also married an Englishwoman, Ealdgyth daughter of Wigod of Wallingford, and it is possible that Henry, as a young and landless prince, had attended the marriage feast of their daughter Matilda and Milo Crispin.60 Edith and Robert had two sons, Henry and Gilbert, and two daughters, Edith and Alice; the elder son and heir, Henry, was still a minor when his father was killed in the service of the Empress in 1142.61 He attained his majority in 1154 and by 1156 had acquired some of the lands of his maternal uncle, Ivo fitz Forne; he died in 1163.62 In tracing the outlines of Henry’s relationships with two women of English descent, I have probably been saying nothing that is new. I should like to end this rather inconclusive survey with a few general remarks on the subject of nationality itself. It seems to me that the current focus on ethnicity, while important and interesting in itself, has blurred the distinction between ethnic origin and national status and is in danger of distorting our views of what constituted ‘nation’ (populus) and ‘people’ (gens) in the early Middle Ages. 54 

Symeon, Opera, ii, 310. Pipe R. 31 H. I, 152. 56  He attests Regesta, ii, nos. 1553, 1811, but both are of dubious authenticity. 57  Regesta, ii, nos. 43, 274, 275, 277, 393, 400, 618, 634, 699, all dated between 1141 and 1144– 47. The Empress’s charter to Oseney is Regesta, ii, no. 632, dated 1142–48. 58  Sanders, English Baronies, 69 and n. 8; J. H. Round, Feudal England (London, 1895), 253. 59  David Postles, ‘The Foundation of Oseney Abbey’, Hist. Res. 53 (1980), 243 and n. 11. 60  Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Joseph Stevenson, RS 2, 2 vols. (London, 1858), ii, 12; see Williams, The English, 102. 61  Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants, 620, 621. 62  Sanders, English Baronies, 50 (Greystoke), 54 (Hook Norton); Pipe R. 2 H. II, 27. See also David Postles, ‘Patronus et Advocatus Noster: Oseney Abbey and the d’Oilly Family’, Hist. Res. 60 (1987), 100–2. 55 



Henry I and the English

37

Brian Golding, for example, has said of Robert count of Mortain, the Conqueror’s half-brother, that ‘he may have been among the greatest magnates in England, but he was a Norman and not an Anglo-Norman’, and Judith Green has rejected with some force Freeman’s contention that ‘Normans born on English ground grew up as Englishmen’; ‘there is’, she says, ‘no evidence to prove it or that they saw their interests in any way differently from those born and brought up in Normandy’.63 One may sympathize with both views and yet feel that this is not the whole picture. The evidence is not quite as lacking as has been implied; it has been said of the author of Quadripartitus and Leges Henrici Primi that he ‘regarded England as his mother-country though his mother-tongue was not English’ and that ‘he is among the earliest evidence there is for the “anglicization” of the new Francophone ascendancy’.64 There is a wider dimension to be considered. The Normans themselves were, as their propagandists well knew, a composite people.65 In her study of the continental families recorded in Domesday Book, Katharine Keats-Rohan has argued that the Normans of the late eleventh century remembered their diverse origins in their naming customs. Bynames like pictavensis or burgundiensis did not necessarily relate to the immediate place of origin of the people to whom they were applied but rather served as incipient surnames commemorating sometimes distant ancestors, while recurrent use within families of ancestral personal names, especially if typical of regions other than Normandy, represented the same sort of memorial tradition. Both usages reflected the assimilation of recent and not so recent immigrants into a society which by the late eleventh century was both self-consciously Norman and multinational in character.66 The same, of course, is true of eleventh-century English society. In the late tenth century, King Edgar legislated for ‘all the nation (eallum leodscyþe), whether English or Danes or Britons, in every part of my dominion’ (on ælcum ende mines anwealdes).67 It is in the reign of his son Ethelred that the word ‘England’ first appears in the surviving sources, and it may be significant that one of the first contexts in which it is used is in the treaty between the English king and the Viking army of Olaf Tryggvasson, whereby Ethelred took into his service some of the marauders who had been looting his kingdom, but only after all had agreed that ‘every land which affords protection to any of those who harry Ænglaland shall be treated as an enemy by us and by all the [Viking] fleet’.68 What Keats-Rohan has said of the naming customs of Normandy could 63  Brian Golding, ‘Robert of Mortain’, ANS 13 (1990), 144; Green, Government of Henry I, 154. 64  Wormald, Making of English Law, 473, 475; see also Williams, The English, 4–5, 209–10. 65  Cassandra Potts, ‘Atque Unum ex Diversis Gentibus Populum Effecit: Historical Tradition and the Norman Identity’, ANS 18 (1995), 15–75. 66  K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents, 1066–1166, I. Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1999), 30–43. 67  Robertson, Laws of the Kings of England, 32–3; EHD, i, no. 41. 68  Robertson, Laws of the Kings of England, 56–7; EHD, i, no. 42. See also Patrick Wormald, ‘Engla lond: The Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology 7 (1994), 1–24.

38

Ann Williams

equally well apply to England. Neither the use of Scandinavian personal names nor the byname danus necessarily implies that the bearers were immigrants from the north; they might have had some more or less remote Scandinavian ancestry, but this did not preclude them from being English.69 It is important to remember that, in virtue of their allegiance to King Henry and their obedience to the ‘law of King Edward’, all the inhabitants of the kingdom were ‘English’, regardless of their ethnicity. They might also be – indeed might feel themselves primarily to be – West Saxons, Mercians, Kentishmen, East Anglians, Northumbrians, Danes, Britons, Normans, Flemings, Bretons, or any other of the diverse gentes which had come to make up the populus of England. The cases of Queen Matilda and Edith Forne’s daughter go some way towards illustrating this assertion. Both ladies are commonly described as ‘English’, but Matilda’s father was a Scot, and her mother was the daughter of an Englishman who had spent his entire life since babyhood abroad and a mother who was probably German.70 As for Edith Forne’s daughter, we do not know who her mother was, but her father and grandfather bear names which mark them out as of ultimately Scandinavian ancestry. Neither lady was ‘ethnically English’ in the modern definition of the term. But to their contemporaries, of course, they were indeed English by virtue of belonging to Angelcynn, the English nation, which inhabited Engla lond and owed allegiance to the king of the English (rex Anglorum). And the rex Anglorum, of course, was Henry, by birth half Norman half Flemish, who would undoubtedly have described himself as Norman, but who was equally certain, as his titles (rex Anglorum, dux Normannorum) demonstrate, that he was king not of the Normans, but of the English. What evidence there is suggests that in the early twelfth century, people did not confuse ethnicity, which was a matter of birth, family, and descent, with nationality, which was a matter of law, land, and allegiance; and neither, I think, should we.

69  Ann Williams, ‘Cockles amongst the Wheat: Danes and English in the West Midlands in the First Half of the Eleventh Century’, Midland History 11 (1985), 12–15. 70  For the identity of St. Margaret’s mother Agatha, see Ronay, Lost King of England, 115–21.

4 The Irish Sea Province and the Accession of Henry I  Robert S. Babcock

In chapter 409 of his Gesta regum Anglorum, William of Malmesbury writes: ‘Muirchetach, king of the Irish, and his successors, whose names are not reported, were so devoted to our King Henry that they wrote nothing except what would please him and did nothing except what he told them to do.’  The passage seems easy to dismiss as hyperbole, much as Sir Frank Stenton dismissed similar references to William the Conqueror and Ireland in the AngloSaxon Chronicle, an effort by Malmesbury to indicate something of the scope and grandeur of Henry’s power or to show the awe in which Henry was held even by peoples he had not yet encountered. Henry I was not, after all, the Henry who invaded Ireland. In Warren Hollister’s recently published biography of the king, there is no mention of Ireland or things Irish. It is that other Henry whom historians are concerned with in Ireland. Richard fitz Gilbert of Clare’s conquest in Leinster, and Henry II’s subsequent arrival there, are seen as such turning points in the history of Ireland – the beginning of ‘medieval Ireland’ if one follows Cosgrove’s New History of Ireland – that until recently they have dominated the way scholars think about Irish history and about Irish relations with the English crown. But in a volume in which we celebrate the publication of a book that argues, at least implicitly, that much of what historians credit Henry II with can be anticipated by – if it did not actually happen in – the reign of Henry I, it is perhaps appropriate to look at some of the ways in which Anglo-Irish relations  

The author wants to make special mention of the generous assistance he received from the librarians and staff of Perkins Library at Hastings College, the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, the Livingston Lord Library at Minnesota State University-Moorhead, and the Library at Queen’s University Belfast. He thanks as well the anonymous reviewer of the piece for his/her important suggestions.   William of Malmesbury, GR, 738–739.   Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1947), 613. Benjamin Hudson, ‘William the Conqueror and Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies 29 (1994), 145.   Art Cosgrove, ed., A New History of Ireland, II: Medieval Ireland 1169–1534 (Oxford, 1987; 1993). The first volume of the series, which deals with Irish history before the coming of Henry II, is subtitled ‘Prehistoric and Early Ireland’.

40

Robert S. Babcock

in the reign of the first Henry anticipated the actions of his more famous namesake. Further, as historians look for post-Hollister ways of understanding Henry I and his actions, we might be well-served to look beyond the person and the personal – beyond places Henry actually went, in this case – and try to understand power and influence in less immediate and, again, less personal terms. Henry I did not go to Ireland, he did not conquer all or even many of the lands along the Irish Sea, but through his actions and ambitions, the orientation of power in these lands had begun to change. By mid-reign, the influence of the English king there was on the rise, and that of Irish kings on the decline. This examination of Henry I and Ireland draws on the (now no longer) ‘new British history’, history that proposes enquiry and analysis beyond the traditional national histories of the ethnicities that populate the British Isles, history instead ‘of the interlocking peoples and cultures’ of these places. The English whom Henry came to rule in 1100 had already long and complex relationships with the Celtic and Scandinavian peoples beyond their new king’s realm. The appearance of a new, ambitious, and successful king of the English was bound to affect those relationships, just as the ambitions and assertions of dynasts and warlords in what a generation of Irish historians has come to call ‘the Irish Sea province’ would affect decisions and policies Henry would make. In the end, committed most to stability and profit in England and to the restoration and protection of his power in Normandy, Henry seems to have settled for submission from those peoples adjacent to his lands and stability from those across the Irish Sea. But, clearly, Henry I concerned himself with these places along the Sea, though with the exception of Wales they were places he never visited and never claimed to rule. Even before the unexpected death of William Rufus, when Henry looked to be living his life out merely as the brother of the duke of Normandy, he would have been familiar with Ireland and things Irish. The Scandinavian seafarers who by plying their trade created the Irish Sea province included Rouen among   J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Conclusion: Contingency, Identity, Sovereignty’, in Uniting the Kingdom?: The Making of British History, ed. Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer (New York, 1995), 292.   D. Moore, ed., The Irish Sea Province in Archaeology and History (Cardiff, 1970). Following Benjamin Hudson, ‘The Changing Economy of the Irish Sea Province’, in Britain and Ireland 900–1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change, ed. Brendan Smith (Cambridge, 1999), 40, the Irish Sea Province includes not only Ireland, Wales, and the Isle of Man – landforms within the Irish Sea proper – but also the southern Hebrides, the North Channel between Ireland and Galloway, and the St. George’s Channel between Bristol and Waterford. This paper will not deal with Galloway and Scotland, partly because of the (lack of) expertise of the author, partly because several important scholars have already covered Henry I’s affairs with Scotland, where first his father-in-law and then his brother-in-law were already overseeing an orientation of the northern kingdom to the south and east. See in particular G. W. S. Barrow, David I of Scotland (1124–1153): The Balance of Old and New (Reading, 1985), A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), and Judith Green, ‘David I and Henry I’, Scottish Historical Review 75 (1996), 1–19.



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

41

their ports of call. The city may even have held the near monopoly on Irish trade that it later held when Henry was king. By then, according to a charter issued by Henry II and later inspected by Henry VI, ‘no ship shall go to Ireland from anywhere in Normandy but Rouen except one only, which may go once a year from Cherbourg’. Further, ‘every ship coming from Ireland shall, after passing the head of Guernsey, come to Rouen’. The income derived from the Irish trade was lucrative: from each Irish ship the duke collected a tymbrium of marten skins or £10 if the merchants were not trading in skins; the vicomte of Rouen collected 20s. from each ship; and the chamberlain took a hawk or 16s. per ship. If Irish trade was important to the duchy in which Henry grew up, it may have been crucial to the kingdom which his father conquered. Irish trade with the English certainly predated the tenth century, but from that period on, when Scandinavian settlers had found permanent homes on both Great Britain and Ireland, and when from time to time Scandinavian lords ruled parts of both, trade across the Irish Sea expanded dramatically. On the Irish side, its focus was on the Viking towns of Dublin, Wexford, and Waterford. Its focus in England was the port of Chester. Scandinavians had colonized the Wirral peninsula, the Isle of Man, the Lancashire coast, and had set up fortified staging posts in Anglesey and North Wales, ‘all of which facilitated an Anglo-Hibernian trade focused on Chester’. That trade has echoes of the Irish trade in Rouen; Domesday Book reports that the king’s reeve in Chester may order those ships calling at the port with marten pelts to allow him to make the first purchase of any skins. The city flourished as a mint, and it is telling of the source of the commerce that required its coinage that in the tenth century one of the moneyers of Chester was called Irfara, ‘the Ireland-journeyer’.10 It is equally telling of how important the Irish Sea trade was to Chester that the moneyers of the city continued to strike coins in the Hiberno-Scandinavian manner – presumably for trade with Ireland, Man, and the Norse of Scotland – even after King Edgar’s recoinage of 973.11 By the eleventh century, Chester had been joined, or perhaps supplanted, by Bristol as a port in the Irish trade. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes ships departing for Ireland and the Continent, and it is clear that slaves are a primary

  Regesta, iii, 268; Cal. Docs. France, ed. Round, 32–4. Henry II issued a reconfirmation of the charter in 1174 or 1175; Cal. Docs. France, ed. Round, 34–5.   VCH Cheshire, i, 261. See also Hudson, ‘Economy of the Irish Sea Province’, 43–4. For Scandinavian harbors in Anglesey, see Hudson and H. R. Loyn, The Vikings in Wales (London, 1976), 10.   VCH Cheshire, i, 342–3. 10  VCH Cheshire, i, 257. Further, at least one fifth of the moneyers known in Chester between 910 and 1066 bore Scandinavian names. 11  VCH Cheshire, i, 261. The Chester coins, identified as type II coins, are found only in hoards from Ireland, Man, and Scotland; R. H. M. Dolley, ‘The “Lost” Hoard of Tenth-Century AngloSaxon Silver Coins from Dalkey’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 91 (1961), 1–18.

42

Robert S. Babcock

commodity being shipped from across the Irish Sea from the Severn port.12 Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, went to Bristol to preach against the slave trade carried on there with the Irish.13 Harold Godwineson knew that there would be regular traffic to Ireland from Bristol, and it is to that port that he fled in 1051.14 Other ports, too, benefited from the Irish Sea trade. Orderic Vitalis reports that ships left Exeter for Ireland, William of Malmesbury that Irish ships called at York.15 There were Irish merchants plying their trade in Cambridge, and there may have been a colony of Irish merchants outside the walls of London.16 The prospects for royal profit from this trade were lost on neither the late Saxon monarchs nor on Henry’s father William, who, after all, claimed to rule as the legitimate successor to those monarchs. Law codes attributed to Edward the Elder and to Aethelstan attempt to limit overseas commerce to designated port areas and to the supervision of a royal official, the port-reeve.17 As Benjamin Hudson notes, ‘royal profit from trade was tied to some extent to coins’, and Henry’s father seems to have taken careful note of the coinage used in the Irish Sea trade.18 The weight ratio between coins minted in Dublin and coins minted in the Conqueror’s England was an almost constant 3:2. Hudson interprets this to mean that ‘trade between Ireland and England was being encouraged deliberately by William and Toirdelbach [king of Munster], so much so that the maintenance of a fixed rate of exchange was worthwhile’.19 Henry seems to have learned well from his father; regarding the Chester trade, a charter of Henry II confirms the rights of Chester burgesses to buy and sell in Dublin as they had in the time of Henry I.20 Ideas accompanied the men and money that crossed the Irish Sea. Henry might also have been familiar with Ireland because of the ecclesiastical contacts that were being made by churchmen in England and Normandy during his father’s reign. Religious interaction between Great Britain and Ireland has a long history, said to begin famously, if erroneously, with St. Patrick himself, a 12  ASC, s.a. 1051 (175–6). Swein Godwinsson had a ship ready and provisioned at the port for Harold, who sailed to Ireland. Godwine sailed from Bristol to Bruges ‘in one ship with as much treasure as they could stow away there for each man’. For a full study of the relationship between Bristol and Ireland, see Aubrey Gwynn, ‘Medieval Bristol and Dublin’, Irish Historical Studies 5 (1947): 275–86. 13  Vita Wulfstani, ed. A. Campbell, Camden, 3rd ser., 40 (London, 1928), 42–4. 14  Benjamin T. Hudson, ‘The Family of Harold Godwinsson and the Irish Sea Province’, Journal of Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 109 (1979), 92–100. 15  It is from Exeter that Harold’s mother fled in 1066; OV ii, 225. 16  Hudson, ‘William the Conqueror and Ireland’, 154. C. N. L. Brooke and Gillian Keir, London, 800–1216: The Shaping of the City (Berkeley, 1975), 139–40. Beyond the western wall of the medieval city is a church dedicated to St. Bride, the Irish St. Brigit, and the suggestion is that this was a church established for Irish merchants before 1066. 17  Hudson, ‘Changing Economy of the Irish Sea Province’, 40–1. 18  Hudson, ‘Changing Economy of the Irish Sea Province’, 48. 19  Hudson, ‘William the Conqueror and Ireland’, 153–4, building on R. M. H. Dolley, The HibernoNorse Coins in the British Museum (London, 1966). 20  J. H. Round, Feudal England: Historical Studies on the XIth and XIIth Centuries (London, 1895), 465–7.



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

43

Briton captured by Irish slavers. The first bishop of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, founded by King Sitric, may have been consecrated by Aethelnoth, archbishop of Canterbury.21 Certainly in 1074, upon the death of their bishop, the citizens and king of Dublin wrote to Archbishop Lanfranc asking for the consecration of the new bishop Gilla Patraic. That the bishop-designate was an Irish monk at the English house of Worcester suggests considerable traffic in churchmen across the Irish Sea below the lofty level of bishop or archbishop. It is at that level, however, that most of the documentation survives. Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, ever concerned with primacy and with reform, seems to have recognized the opportunity that the request from Dublin provided, and he replied not only to the Norse king Gudrodr but in a separate letter to Toirdelbach Ua Briain, king of Munster as well. Toirdelbach, of the line of Brian Boru, was the power on the rise in late eleventh-century Ireland; an ally of Diarmait mac Máil na mBó, king of Leinster and claimant to the high kingship, Toirdelbach had built on Diarmait’s gains after the latter’s death in 1072. He held both Munster and Leinster, and most importantly, asserted his authority over Dublin and its lucrative trade, installing his son Muirchertach there in 1075, and was engaged in struggles with Ulster- and especially Connaught-men to be recognized as high king of Ireland. Toirdelbach was also interested in the ecclesiastical reform and may have engaged in correspondence with Pope Gregory prior to his correspondence with Lanfranc.22 That Lanfranc might have known enough of this to take the advantage that he did is testimony to just how frequent the contacts were between eleventhcentury Ireland and England. And he certainly took advantage of it, pressing not only reform but also the primacy of Canterbury on Toirdelbach and the bishops of his kingdom. In Gilla Patraic’s oath, Lanfranc is ‘primate of the Britains’.23 By 1081 the archbishop is receiving queries about doctrine from another bishop in Toirdelbach’s kingdom, Domnall Ua hEnna. When Gilla Patraic drowned in the Irish Sea in 1084, itself further if tragic evidence of inter-island contact, Lanfranc consecrated the successor petitioned for by Toirdelbach, Donatus.24 Donatus was another Irish monk resident in England, having been sent by Gilla Patraic to train at Canterbury.25 Lanfranc’s successor Anselm, for whom the issue of primacy was even greater, would build on the episcopal relationship between Canterbury and the bishops of the Ua Briain realms. As primus totius Britanniae he consecrated 21  Aubrey Gwynn, The Twelfth Century Reform, A History of Irish Catholicism 2:1 (Dublin, 1968), 3. 22  Marie-Therese Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers and Angevin Kingship (Oxford, 1989), 17–18. Aubrey Gwynn, ‘Pope Gregory VII and the Irish Church’, Irish Ecclesiastical Review 58 (1941), 97–109, argues for a later date of the correspondence, probably after the consecration of Gilla Patraic. 23  Gwynn, Twelfth-Century Reform, 5. 24  Though at this consecration Lanfranc is merely ‘archbishop of Canterbury’; Gwynn, Twelfth Century Reform, 6; Hudson, ‘William the Conqueror and Ireland’, 151. 25  Stuart Kinsella, ‘From Hiberno-Norse to Anglo-Norman 1030–1300’, in Christ Church Cathedral: A History, ed. Kenneth Milne (Dublin, 2000), 38.

44

Robert S. Babcock

bishops of Waterford and Dublin in 1096, and the Dublin bishop, Samuel, was Donatus’ nephew and educated at St. Albans. The decades of friendly relations between Canterbury and Dublin seem to have involved considerable exchange of both goods and people, as sometime around 1100, Anselm found the need to rebuke Samuel for the expulsion of Canterbury monks from Christ Church and for giving away books, vestments, and ornaments given to the church by Canterbury.26 If Anselm’s relations with Dublin became strained, they would remain warm with another diocese well into the reign of Henry I. Gilbert, bishop of Limerick had met Anselm in Rouen, perhaps in 1106, and Gilbert wrote to congratulate Anselm on his triumph over Henry on the issue of lay investiture.27 While the commercial and ecclesiastical contacts between Ireland and England would have been known to Henry before he became king, it is no doubt the military situation which would have been of immediate concern to him when he took the throne in 1100. It had certainly concerned his father. Scandinavian fleets from Ireland had menaced the late Anglo-Saxon kings. They had found willing allies – or been willing allies of – Welsh raiders into England or English exiles fighting to return. Magnus Haraldsson, son of Harald Hardrada, and his Dublin fleet had been joined by Gruffudd ap Llywelyn and Aelfgar of Mercia.28 Troops from Ireland had fought for Harald at Stamford Bridge in 1066. The victor at Stamford Bridge, Harold Godwineson, also had Irish connections; Diarmait mac Máil na mBó had welcomed him in 1051 when he had been banished from England and had given him troops to aid in his return.29 It is small wonder, then, that when Harold perished at Hastings, his surviving family members and supporters fled to Ireland.30 From there, they tried to retake the kingdom they had lost. In 1068 Harold’s sons in Diarmait’s ships attacked Bristol, and the following year, perhaps in conjunction with a Danish fleet, they attacked the southwest coast. As Hudson has shown, William recognized and feared the threat from Ireland. Indeed, he speaks of the need for men to fight contra Danos et Hibernenses.31 Hudson even suggests that the famous creation of marcher shires centered on Hereford and Chester and perhaps even that centered on Shrewsbury may have been to 26 

Kinsella, ‘Hiberno-Norse to Anglo-Norman’, 38–9. Aubrey Gwynn and Dermot Gleeson, A History of the Diocese of Killaloe (Dublin, 1962), 120. Gilbert may have been a student at Bec. See Sally Vaughn, ‘Lanfranc, Anselm and the School of Bec: In Search of Students of Bec’, in The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Commemoration of Denis L. T. Bethell, ed. Marc Meyer (London, 1993), 178. 28  Hudson, ‘William the Conqueror and Ireland’, 145. See also his ‘The Destruction of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn’, Welsh History Review 15 (1991), 331–50. 29  Hudson, ‘Family of Harold Godwinsson’, 94. 30  Hudson, ‘Family of Harold Godwinsson’, 93–4; ‘William the Conqueror and Ireland’, 146; OV ii, 225. Harold’s mother fled to Exeter knowing that ships from Ireland called at port there; William of Malmesbury, GR, 470–1, reports that some of the English ‘had fled to Denmark and Ireland’. 31  Men that he alleges Odo of Bayeux tried to remove from England; OV iv, 42; Hudson, ‘William the Conqueror and Ireland’, 147. Hudson also documents the damage from the 1069 raid recorded in Domesday Book. 27 



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

45

defend against Irish raids rather than Welsh ones, as has traditionally been assumed.32 Threats from the Dublin fleet may also be why William seems to have allied himself with Lanfranc’s correspondent and his fellow reforming monarch, Toirdelbach Ua Briain, who by 1075 controlled Leinster well enough to install his son Muirchertach as king of Dublin. Henry may have also been familiar with Ireland because of his father’s experiences in Wales. Saxon princes were not the only exiles welcomed at the court of Diarmait mac Mail na mBo. Wales was very much a part of the Irish Sea province, with long-established ties to Ireland of both commercial and ecclesiastical nature, and as such it became a site of refuge and a fertile recruiting ground for the losers in the long and complicated wars of the Welsh princes. The rise of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn had produced numerous exiles, and his fall restarted the wars that gave them hope of return. Hywel ap Edwin of Deheubarth lost out to Gruffudd in 1044 and fled to Ireland, where he raised a fleet ‘of the folk of Ireland’ and returned, only to lose again, fatally, to Gruffudd at the mouth of the Tywy.33 More importantly for the English realm, after Gruffudd ap Llywelyn defeated Hywel and, in 1056, defeated his remaining rival Gruffudd ap Rhydderch: Gruffudd ap Llywelyn moved a host against the Saxons [English], and he arrayed forces at Hereford. And against him rose up the Saxons and a mighty host with them, and Reinwlf as leader over them. And they came up against him and arrayed forced and prepared to fight. And Gruffudd without delay attacked them with well-ordered forces. And after a bitter-keen struggle the Saxons, unable to withstand the assault of the Britons, turned to fight and fell with great slaughter. And Gruffudd pursued them to the fortress; and he entered therein and he pillaged the fortress and destroyed it and burned the town. And thereupon, with vast spoil and booty, he returned to his land happily victorious.34

This successful campaign by Gruffudd ap Llywelyn awakened the English to the danger of unified power in Wales.35 That danger was met by Harold Godwineson, who combined attacks from the sea with a land force under his brother Tostig to defeat Gruffudd in Anglesey. Harold’s victory over Gruffudd cemented an Anglo-Saxon claim to overlordship of Wales, a claim inherited by the Normans in 1066. It may have given Harold direct lordship over southeast Wales, lordship that could then be 32 

Hudson, ‘William the Conqueror and Ireland’, 147–9. Brut y Tywysogyon or the Chronicle of the Princes: Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. and trans. Thomas Jones (Cardiff, 1955), s.a. 1044: a llyges o genedyl Iwerdon. The use of genedyl, ‘gentiles’, may suggest the Scandinavian origin of the Irish forces, or it may be an attempt to render into Welsh the Latin gens. See Jones’ note on 281, and in Brut y Tywysogyon or the Chronicle of the Princes: Peniarth MS 20 Version, trans. Thomas Jones (Cardiff, 1952), 150. The Red Book version of the chronicle reports ‘a huge slaughter of Hywel’s host and of the Irish’ at the battle; the Peniarth 20 version ‘many of the host of the foreigners and many of his [Hywel’s] own host were slain’. 34  Brut RBH, s.a. 1056 (25). 35  For Gruffudd’s achievement, see R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), 26. 33 

46

Robert S. Babcock

claimed by Harold’s conqueror William.36 If these claims were not enough to pique the Conqueror’s interest in Wales, certainly the devastation that remained from Gruffudd’s campaigns in the Marches would have done so.37 Moreover, it may have also been the lesson of Gruffudd’s consolidation of Wales – and the consequent threat to England – that spurred William’s march through Wales after the battle of Mynydd Carn in 1081. It was a battle that, again, would have made the Conqueror, his men, and perhaps his children whom his men advised aware of the importance of Ireland to his new realm. The participants in the battle were petty Welsh dynasts squabbling in the vacuum left in the aftermath of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn’s death. Caradog ap Gruffudd of Gwent, Meilir ap Rhiwallon, and, especially, Trahaearn ap Caradog faced off against Rhys ap Tewdwr, claimant to Deheubarth, and Gruffudd ap Cynan, claimant to Gwynedd.38 The victors, Rhys ap Tewdwr and Gruffudd ap Cynan, both had Irish connections. Indeed, in 1080 Rhys was in flight in southwest Wales, perhaps planning to flee to Ireland as he would later, when Gruffudd and a fleet of ‘Danes and Irish’ sailed into the harbor. Gruffudd was born in Ireland, of the line of Rhodri Mawr on his father’s side but of the Scandinavian rulers of Ireland on his mother’s.39 The pair made a hasty alliance, faced their enemies, and proved victorious. Gruffudd was a true child of the Irish Sea province, the grandson of a ruler of North Wales, born in Ireland to a Hiberno-Scandinavian mother; his vernacular vita makes special reference to ‘the men of Denmark with their two-edged axes’ and ‘the Irish with their lances and sharp-edged iron balls’ in its account of Mynydd Carn.40 William the Conqueror appeared in south Wales not long after the battle, which had established Rhys as king of Deheubarth and Gruffudd as king of Gwynedd. The Welsh chronicle reports that he came to the shrine of St. David’s in Dyfed, but surely his mission was no pilgrimage. Perhaps he was drawn to the region by the association of Norman troops with Caradog ap Gruffudd, one of the losers of the battle.41 Perhaps he was asserting whatever lordship he 36 

Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, 27; for the perceptions that Edward the Confessor had claims to Wales, perceptions mostly spread after his death, see Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor (Los Angeles, 1984), 204–12. 37  As reflected in Domesday Book. The earl of Hereford faced who failed to stop Gruffudd was a Norman in the service of Edward the Confessor, Ralph of the Vexin. 38  For Mynydd Carn, see K. L. Maund, Ireland, Wales and England in the Eleventh Century (Woodbridge, 1991), 34–6. For Trahaearn, her ‘Trahaearn ap Caradog: Legitimate Usurper?’ Welsh History Review 13 (1986/7), 468–76. For Rhys ap Tewdwr, Robert S. Babcock, ‘Rhys ap Tewdwr, King of Deheubarth’, ANS 16 (1993), 21–36. 39  For Gruffudd, see the articles in K. L. Maund, ed., Gruffudd ap Cynan: A Collective Biography (Woodbridge, 1996). For his Hiberno-Scandinavian ancestry, see especially David Moore, ‘Gruffudd ap Cynan and the Medieval Welsh Polity’, 2–5, and David E. Thornton, ‘The Genealogy of Gruffudd ap Cynan’, 96–102. 40  D. Simon Evans, ed., A Medieval Prince of Wales: The Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan (Llandysul, 1990), 67–8 for the translation, 36–7 for the original Welsh. 41  Though there is no evidence of Norman troops at Mynydd Carn, Caradog had enlisted their aid in his campaigns in Gwent; Paul Courtney, ‘The Norman Invasion of Gwent: A Reassessment’, JMH 12 (1986), 305.



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

47

believed he held, as king of England, over south Wales. Perhaps, learning the lesson of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, he feared that the fallout from Mynydd Carn would be a more unified Welsh threat to England. Certainly the latter possibilities would account for what seems to have been the overwhelming force of his entourage.42 And whether it was his intent or not, overlordship would seem to be what he received; William left Deheubarth, the Normans made no further advances into Rhys’ kingdom, and Domesday Book records that Resus owed £40 per annum to William for what is identified as ‘South Wales’.43 Whether as Rhys’ nominal overlords or would-be conquerors – Norman attacks on Deheubarth renewed after the Conqueror’s death in 1087 – Henry’s brother William Rufus and his administrators would certainly have been more concerned with the situation on the Dyfed coast of the Irish Sea. It might have been known that Rhys had fled to Ireland in 1088 in the face of an attack by Trahaearn ap Caradog’s cousins Madog, Cadwgan, and Rhiddid ap Bleddyn. It might have been known that Rhys regained his kingdom, like Gruffudd ap Cynan had in the North, by raising a force of Scots and Irish and returning to fight with them against his enemies.44 The relationship between Rhys and William, whatever its particulars, certainly left William’s heirs with the assumption that they were lords of these eastern shores of the Irish Sea province. Henry I, then, became king of a land that had long interacted with the men of the Irish Sea, and, in determining to rule all that his father had, assumed that he was in fact overlord of a good portion of it. The ascension of so forceful and successful a king in England was bound to affect the ‘interlocking peoples and cultures’ of England, Ireland, Wales, and the Isles, as aspirations of Celtic and Scandinavian dynasts – Magnus Barelegs, Gruffudd ap Rhys, Muirchertach Ua Briain, and Olaf Godredson of Man – would affect or alter Henry’s situation. That is not, of course, the story that the continental or English-based chroniclers tell, chroniclers who make up the primary (in both senses of the word) narrative sources for Hollister’s own narrative of Henry I. That narrative will be familiar to Anglo-Norman historians. In August 1100, Henry raced to secure the throne he claimed from his deceased brother. The threat to that throne came from Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, crusader, Henry’s eldest brother, and from the Anglo-Norman barons who had already sworn allegiance to Robert. Robert had been passed over for the kingdom of England by William the Conqueror. But he and William Rufus had made some sort of agreement in 1091 that each was to be the other’s heir. By 1101, Robert 42 

There is evidence of neither combat nor other resistance to William on his march deep into Welsh territory; Babcock, ‘Rhys ap Tewdwr’, 26. Hudson, ‘William the Conqueror and Ireland’, 155, notes a raid on Wales in 1080 by Diarmait Ua Briain, son of Toirdelbach Ua Briain, and wonders whether that might have been coordinated with the Conqueror’s advance into south Wales, given the possibility of cordial relations between Toirdelbach and William. Hudson dates the battle of Mynydd Carn to 1080 rather than 1081. 43  DB i, 179b [Herefordshire]. 44  Brut RBH, s.a. 1088; Brut Pen. 20, s.a. 1088.

48

Robert S. Babcock

had returned from crusading and regained the duchy he had pawned to Rufus. He: clearly had every intention of challenging Henry’s rule in England, and he could count on the support of not only of Robert of Bellême and William of Warenne but most of the other Anglo-Norman magnates as well. All were homage-bound to Curthose, and most of them would have preferred the loose, happy-go-lucky governance of the Conqueror’s eldest son to the keenly intelligent, centralizing policies of Henry I and the Beaumonts.45

By late July, Curthose’s Norman force was in England, landing at Portsmouth instead of Pevensey, where Henry had massed his forces. Robert of Bellême, earl of Shrewsbury, joined Curthose there, as did William of Warenne, ‘distinguished and wealthy men who had formed a conspiracy’.46 According to William of Malmesbury, ‘almost all the nobility of the country violated the fealty they had sworn to the king’.47 The brothers and their armies met at Alton, where negotiations rather than fighting broke out. Under the terms of what is traditionally called the ‘treaty of Alton’, but which Hollister renames as the ‘treaty of Winchester’, Robert renounced his claim to the throne of England, recognized Henry as king, and released Henry from the homage the younger brother had made to the duke for lands in Normandy. Henry, in time, promised Robert an annual payment and the surrender of lands in western Normandy and France. The brothers further agreed that if either died without a male heir, the other would inherit the deceased’s lands. Finally, under the terms of the treaty, magnates who had been disseised for supporting one side or the other were to have their lands restored.48 Orderic Vitalis reports that Henry and Robert also swore to punish ‘sowers of discord’ in the future and to help one another recover their father’s lands lost in Britain and on the Continent.49 With Robert relinquishing his claim to England, Henry then moved to secure the title he had won. This required him to take action against the great magnates who had supported Robert, Orderic’s distinguished and wealthy conspirators, though he needed to find reasons for disseising beyond their support for his brother. Men such as William of Warenne and Ivo of Grandmesnil were charged with stealing from the Church or waging private war, for instance.50 Most famous in Henry’s campaign to consolidate his power in England – what Hollister calls the reshuffling of his aristocracy 51 – was his struggle against Robert of Bellême and his brothers.

45  46  47  48  49  50  51 

C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, ed. Amanda Clark Frost (New Haven, 2001), 132. OV v, 314. William of Malmesbury, GR, 471. Hollister, Henry I, 142. OV v, 320. Hollister, Henry I, 154. Hollister, Henry I, 172.



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

49

Robert of Bellême and Henry may not have liked each other personally – their quarrel over Domfront in Normandy had broken out into armed conflict on numerous occasions, and of course Robert’s support of Curthose’s bid for the English crown was a personal betrayal to the king to whom he had performed homage – but he and his brothers formed perhaps the most powerful family in England. Robert, count of Bellême by marriage, had further inherited the earldom of Shrewsbury on the death of his brother Hugh in 1098, joining that valuable and consolidated earldom to the vast estates he had inherited from their father, Roger of Montgomery. Hollister styled him as ‘the wealthiest and most powerful magnate in the Anglo-Norman world’.52 Robert was able to pay a relief for the earldom of Shrewsbury and the rape of Arundel of £3000, money he possessed before the inheritance of Hugh’s lands. Even before the ­inheritance, Robert reputedly held some thirty-four castles.53 Robert’s brother Roger the Poitevin, count of La Marche, held lands in six English counties worth more than £300 a year, and his other surviving brother Arnulf of Montgomery was earl of Pembroke in Dyfed, having inherited lands their father had conquered in south Wales. In addition, Arnulf held the Yorkshire honor of Holderness. ‘All three Montgomery brothers thus bore comital titles, and together constituted a dangerously potent and refractory force in AngloNorman and French politics.’ 54 Henry moved against this force in England in the spring of 1102. Orderic tells us that Robert of Bellême was charged with forty-five offenses against the king, and Arnulf of Montgomery was also charged.55 Outlawed, the brothers may have raided into Staffordshire. Henry responded with a series of campaigns against Robert’s castles in Sussex, Yorkshire, and Shropshire. The campaigns culminated with the surrender of Bridgnorth and Shrewsbury to Henry in midsummer.56 The king confiscated all the Montgomery brothers’ lands in England and banished Robert of Bellême to Normandy. In defeating the Montgomeries and Robert Curthose before them, Henry had successfully fought off what would be the two great challenges to his accession as king of England, and he could now commence with the ordering of his new realm. That, at least, is the story as told by English and Norman chroniclers, the story familiar to Anglo-Norman historians, the story told in Warren Hollister’s new biography of Henry I. Its protagonists are English, Norman, and the occasional Welshman. The story and the actors differ somewhat if we pull back, however, if we look at narratives from beyond the Anglo-Norman world. There, important elements of the story of Henry’s accession develop as consequences of other rulers’ aspirations across the Irish Sea province.

52 

Hollister, Henry I, 155. Hollister, Henry I, 154–5. 54  Hollister, Henry I, 156. 55  OV vi, 20–2. 56  See Hollister, Henry I, 158–63, on the chronology of Henry’s campaign and the difficulties in assembling it from various chronicle sources. 53 

50

Robert S. Babcock

At various times in its history, the province had been part of a larger cultural zone linked by waterways, a zone that included not only Ireland but also Scotland, the Orkneys, Norway, and Denmark. It was Norse and Danes traversing this larger zone who had formed the various Scandinavian cities and dynasties of the Irish Sea province, and in our period, the kingdom of Man and the Isles was still claimed by the kings of Norway. In the late eleventh century, the Norwegian king Magnus Olafsson tried to transform that claim into a new reality. Magnus had had to share the Norse kingdom with his cousin Hakon Magnusson and on Hakon’s death in 1094 had faced considerable opposition within the realm. Perhaps to unite a divided land, upon the defeat of that opposition and ‘retribution on the men who had been found guilty of treason against him’, Magnus turned the warriors of Norway outward, new Vikings to explode into the Irish Sea province.57 King Magnus prepared an expedition abroad, taking with him a force both large and well-equipped and a fine fleet. With this force he sailed west across the sea, first to the Orkneys. He made the earls [of Orkney] captive and sent them both east to Norway, setting his son Sigurth as chieftain over the islands, and giving him a body of counsellors. Then King Magnus sailed to the Hebrides, and at once upon arrival there began to harry and burn the countryside, killing the men and despoiling them wherever the troops came. The inhabitants of the land fled and scattered in all directions. Some fled south into the Scottish firths, some south to Saltire [Kintyre] or west to Ireland.58

Magnus, who would become known as Magnus Barelegs for his wearing of the Gaelic kilt, thus not only occupied lands in the Irish Sea province but scattered refugees to its various shores. He continued southward, sparing Iona but pillaging and burning Islay and then ‘harrying on both sides in Ireland and Scotland’, before coming to the Isle of Man.59 After success on Man, Magnus and his Vikings moved south again. Magnus saga Berfoetts continues: And when he arrived at the Sound of Anglesey [Menai Strait] a fleet approached from Bretland [Wales], headed by the two earls, Hugh the Proud and Hugh the Stout, and at once gave battle. It was a hard fight. King Magnus shot with his bow, but Hugh the Proud was clad in mail from head to foot, so that no spot was bare except the eyes. Both King Magnus and a man from Halogaland who stood near the king aimed their arrows at him, and both shot at the same time. One arrow struck the visor of Hugh’s helmet, and was deflected to the side, but the other hit the earl’s eye and penetrated his head; and that shot was attributed to the king. Earl Hugh fell dead, and the Welsh fled after losing many men.60 57 

Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway, trans. Lee M. Hollander (Austin, TX, 1964), 668–74. Just after Hakon’s death, we find Magnus harrying Halland, in southern Sweden, 670. Knute Helle, ‘The Norwegian Kingdoms: Succession Disputes and Consolidation’, in The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, ed. Knute Helle (Cambridge, 2003), 372, finds that Magnus used an ‘expansionist policy’ to vent the ‘warlike inclinations of the aristocracy’. 58  Sturluson, Heimskringla, 675. 59  Sturluson, Heimskringla, 675. 60  Sturluson, Heimskringla, 676–7.



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

51

The ‘Hugh the Proud’ who perished on Anglesey at the hands of Magnus Barelegs was, of course, Hugh of Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, brother of Robert of Bellême. Interestingly, his presence there involved an Irish – probably Hiberno-Scandinavian – fleet as well. The Brut y Tywysogyon reports that after the two earls had encamped on the north Welsh shore across from Anglesey, the Welsh called in a fleet from Ireland to assist them. ‘But the men who had been called in [the Irish], taking their gifts and their rewards from the French [the Normans], brought the French to Anglesey.’ 61 The ‘Welsh’ whom the saga identifies as fighting and fleeing Magnus were not Welsh at all but AngloNormans in the service of Hugh and of Hugh of Avranches, earl of Chester, who were fighting against the Welsh when Magnus’ fleet appeared. Were it not for the ambitions of Magnus in the Irish Sea province, Robert of Bellême would not have had a Bridgnorth at which to build an illegal castle, would not have possessed a borderland earldom to which to flee and from which to menace King Henry in 1102. Magnus’ ambitions were to secure the Kingdom of the Isles for his young son Sigurth and to establish Norse authority over that kingdom. The Magnus saga tells us that after defeating the Norman earls on Anglesey, Magnus negotiated with the king of Scotland – incorrectly identified as Malcolm but actually his son Edgar – that ‘King Magnus was to have possession of all of the islands west of Scotland separated from the mainland by water so that a ship with fixed rudder could pass between them’.62 Having obtained that concession on one coast of the Irish Sea, Magnus proceeded to the other. He arranged for Sigurth to marry the daughter of Muirchertach Ua Briain of Munster, ruler of Dublin and much of Leinster, apparently poised to capture Ulster and become high king of Ireland. In the Mac Lochlainn kings of Ulster, whose province jutted northeast into the Irish Sea towards Man, Magnus and Muirchertach found common enemies. Muirchertach was another Irish Sea dynast whose ambitions and actions would affect the early reign of Henry I. Indeed, in those ambitions – in Muirchertach’s attempts to consolidate and expand his powers – Anthony Candon finds parallels with Henry himself. The Irish king, Candon writes, was ‘an ambitious, modernizing and outward-looking king whose goal was to make himself king of Ireland much as William Rufus and Henry I were kings of England’.63 Muirchertach would have known something of his models, too, if indeed William and Henry were models. His bishop in Dublin was Donatus, the monk educated at Canterbury; in Limerick, Gilbert, an acquaintance of Anselm. In 1086, after dispatching his brother and coheir, Muirchertach lay claim to the largest and most powerful province in Ireland, Munster. From the outset, 61 

Brut RBH, s.a. 1098 (37). Sturluson, Heimskringla, 677. 63  Anthony Candon, ‘Muirchertach ua Briain, Politics and Naval Activity in the Irish Sea, 1075 to 1119’, in Gearoid Mac Niocaill and Patrick F. Wallace, eds., Keimelia: Studies in Medieval Archaeology and History in Memory of Tom Delaney (Galway, 1988), 398. 62 

52

Robert S. Babcock

he made it clear that he desired more, launching a failed attempt on the kingdom of Connaught as early as 1088. In this attack he made use of an inland river fleet, probably based at his new capital, Scandinavian Limerick. Limerick suffered retaliation for its role when the combined forces of Connaught and Ulster attacked it. By 1092, however, the Ua Conchobair kings of Connaught were in disarray and Muirchertach was able to impose his will on both the Ua Conchobair and Ua Flaithbertaig factions of the western province. He would have similar success in Leinster. His father Toirdelbach had imposed Muirchertach as governor over the Scandinavians of Dublin, but with the death of his father he had lost control of the city. He spent the early part of his reign wresting that control back from the Leinster kings, exploiting the internal divisions within the province much as he had been able to do in Connaught. By at least 1100, he was in full control of Dublin, for it is in that year that the Dubliners provided Muirchertach’s fleet for his campaign against Domnall Mac Lochlainn, king of Cenel nEogain in Ulster. Muirchertach had made major attempts to invade Ulster, the last province of Ireland which he did not control indirectly or directly, in 1097 and 1099 in addition to the 1100 attack, and he would make unsuccessful attempts again in 1101, 1102, 1103, 1107, 1109, and 1113. Faced with such an obstacle to his ambitions, Muirchertach looked for allies. Magnus Barelegs, newly powerful in Man northeast of Ulster, was certainly a logical choice. Irish involvement, both Gaelic and Scandinavian, in Manx affairs has a long history, and there is some evidence that Muirchertach had sought an alliance through marriage with the dynasty in Man that Magnus displaced. While the Norse king’s appearance may have initially been seen as a threat to Muirchertach’s ambitions, the two seem to have made a wary peace grounded by common antagonisms.64 After the marriage of their children, Magnus returned to Norway to fight the Swedes, but by the winter of 1102 he was back with Muirchertach in Dublin. Magnus was killed in Ulster not long after Muirchertach’s disastrous defeat at Mag Coba, near Newry, in 1103. Muirchertach looked for allies not only north but also east across the Irish Sea, and it is here that his would-be imperium overlapped with developments in that of Henry I. Muirchertach would have been familiar enough with developments in Wales; contact between Ireland and Wales had run deep in the Middle Ages, part of Daibhi O Croinin’s ‘channels of conversion’ that had brought Christianity to Ireland and then back again to Britain.65 There had been a dynasty of kings ruling in Dyfed from perhaps the third century who traced their ancestry proudly to an Irish ancestor until at least the sixth century.66 In Muirchertach’s own lifetime contacts between Munster and Wales feature prominently. Diarmait mac Mail na mBo, his father’s overlord and mentor, had 64 

Candon, ‘Muirchertach ua Briain’, 403–5, for Muirchertach and Man. Daibhi O Croinin, Early Medieval Ireland, 400–1200 (New York, 1995), 18ff. 66  Kari Maund, The Welsh Kings: The Medieval Rulers of Wales (Stroud, 2000), 24. By the tenth century, the family had largely forgotten its Irish origins. For Irish settlement in Dyfed, see Wendy Davies, Wales in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester, 1982), 87ff. 65 



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

53

such extensive interaction with the Welsh that the Brut y Tywysogyon gives him an eulogy longer than many Welsh kings, and the Annals of Tigernach styles him incorrectly but significantly, as ‘king of Wales’.67 The Irish fleet that supported Rhys ap Tewdwr at Mynydd Carn was probably led by Muirchertach’s brother Diarmait Ua Briain, perhaps governor of Waterford. It is likely to Munster that Rhys ap Tewdwr fled in 1088, and it is certainly at Muirchertach’s court that Rhys’ son Gruffudd spent his youth.68 Muirchertach, then, would have known something of the sea-change in power that was taking place in Wales in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The death of Rhys ap Tewdwr had seen Norman marcher lords swarming into Deheubarth, and by 1102, Pembroke was in the hands of a Norman earl, Arnulf of Montgomery. It is a key aspect of the MontgomeryBellême problem for Henry I that, in both Normandy and England, the family were frontier lords, holders of territories on the periphery of royal or ducal control. They were able to use their locations to elude that control whenever possible (it may have been in an attempt to assert some control that Henry created for Arnulf the title ‘earl of Pembroke’, a title, at least, for which he depended upon the king). In England Robert of Bellême had inherited the frontier earldom of Shrewsbury, and with that marcher conquests in mid- and south Wales. In his search for allies and refuge, initially for his support of Robert Curthose and then for his own rebellion against the king, Robert of Bellême naturally sought alliances in unconquered Wales. Arnulf went even farther afield – to the court of Muirchertach Ua Briain of Munster, who was also searching for allies. The Brut y Tywysogyon reports that Arnulf: sought to make peace with the Irish and to obtain help from them. And he sent messengers to Ireland, that is Gerald the steward and many others, to ask for the daughter of King Muirchertach as his wife. And that he easily obtained and the messengers came joyfully to their land. And Muirchertach sent his daughter and many armed ships along with her to his aid.69

It was not aid enough. The Montgomery-Bellêmes were defeated, banished from England and Wales, and Arnulf of Montgomery seems to have fled to Ireland rather than the continent. Orderic Vitalis places him with Muirchertach in 1103. It was no doubt Muirchertach’s support of the Bellême uprising and his sheltering of Arnulf to which William of Malmesbury refers in the passage following the one quoted in this paper’s introduction. Although it is said that Muirchertach for some unknown reason once for a short time took a high line with the English; but finding communications by sea cut off, and all

67 

Brut RBH, s.a. 1078. Candon, ‘Muirchertach ua Briain’, 410, n. 51. Brut RBH, s.a. 1115, states that ‘in his youth he [Gruffudd] had gone with certain of his kinsmen to Ireland; and there he stayed until he was a grown man’. 69  Brut RBH, s.a. 1102 (43). 68 

54

Robert S. Babcock

sea-born trade, he soon piped down. What would Ireland be without the goods that come in by sea from England? 70

Arnulf’s presence in Ireland is the result of the intersection of Muirchertach Ua Briain’s alliance-building ambitions and Henry I’s more successful ambitions for his new realm. Orderic Vitalis places not only Arnulf in Ireland but other Normans as well, perhaps other exiles from the Bellême failure. They appear assisting ‘the Irish’ against Magnus Barelegs: When the Irish had tasted blood by killing King Magnus and his companions they grew more unruly and suddenly turned to kill the Normans. Their king took his daughter away from Arnulf and gave the wanton girl in unlawful marriage to one of his cousins. He resolved to murder Arnulf himself as a reward for his alliance, but the latter, learning of the execrable plots of this barbarous race, fled to his own people and lived for twenty years afterwards with no fixed abode.71

Orderic is mistaken in many details of the story – certainly in which Irish killed Magnus Barelegs, who died at the hands of Ulstermen in 1103, and probably in the way that Muirchertach and Arnulf parted ways. Muirchertach wrote to Anselm of Canterbury sometime after the fall of the MontgomeryBellêmes thanking the archbishop ‘because thou has intervened on behalf of my son-in-law Arnulf’, implying not only continued good relations between Muirchertach and Arnulf but that Muirchertach was actively seeking to have Arnulf restored to the good graces of the king.72 The story from Orderic, however, does raise the possibility, perhaps confirmed by vague references to foreign mercenaries in Norse and Irish sagas, that Norman warriors were fighting in Ireland for Irish kings during the reign of Henry I. Henry seems to have been less concerned with Normans leaving for Ireland than he was with Welsh princes doing the same. Henry’s involvement in Wales has, of course, been better examined than his interest in Ireland, but it has always been done so in one of two national historical traditions: it is either a continuation of the success of the Anglo-Norman monarchy and conquest, perhaps brought about by Welsh princes themselves who allied with Robert of Bellême against the king, or it is the beginning of English domination and exploitation of its Celtic neighbor.73 For Hollister, it is clearly the former. ‘Henry’s goal was neither genocide nor conquest, but simply the assurance that Welsh princes would submit to his 70 

William of Malmesbury, GR, 738–9. OV vi, 49–51. Earlier, Orderic identified some of the Normans as Arnulf’s ‘retainers’, 49. 72  Quoted in E. Curtis, ‘Murchertach O’Brien, High King of Ireland and his Norman Son-in-Law Arnulf de Montgomery, circa 1100’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 51 (1921), 118–19, n. 6. 73  For example, see A. D. Carr, Medieval Wales (New York, 1995), 36. In a chapter entitled ‘The Norman Challenge’, Carr writes that ‘by the end of Henry I’s reign in 1135 practically the whole of south Wales was under Norman rule; this was the greatest threat that the Welsh had yet to face’. Or Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, 40: ‘In the background of the advance stalks the figure of Henry I himself. He towers in the history of the subjugation of Wales and the making of the Welsh March as no other monarch before the reign of Edward I.’ 71 



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

55

overlordship, which was based on the claims of Anglo-Saxon kings to hegemony over all Britain but which Henry intended to exercise with far greater effectiveness than before.’ 74 Further, Henry’s actions in Wales demonstrate the intellect and administrative sophistication of the king as well as his goal of a just and peaceful realm, all important Hollister themes: ‘The intelligent planning and preparation that Henry and his counselors devoted to the exercise of his suzerainty in Wales and to his Welsh campaigns (1114 and 1121) resulted in “an era of peace which was unparalleled in the history of the region”.’ 75 Indeed, peace among the Welsh, whom Henry considered his subjects, is why Hollister would have the king begin his encroachment into Wales. ‘Henry launched his campaign of 1114 to restore peace between several Welsh princes and to heighten their respect for his kingly authority.’ The principal target of the 1114 campaign, Owain ap Cadwgan of Powys, ‘had been especially troublesome, having recently avenged himself on a rival Welsh prince by gouging out his eyes’.76 Henry led a contingent from England, probably from the old Montgomery lands in Shrewsbury, and was joined by a force from Dyfed under Gilbert fitz Richard of Clare and one from Chester led by Richard, earl of Chester and Alexander, king of the Scots. ‘The princes of Powys and Gwynedd ... evidently overawed, submitted to Henry and became his vassals and fideles.’ 77 Owain ap Cadwgan submitted, joined Henry’s court, and was even knighted by the king and accompanied him to Normandy. Henry’s interest in Wales was, to be sure, about his claims to hegemony and overlordship, but the particular nature of that interest also has much to do with the revolt of Robert of Bellême and perhaps the larger Irish Sea province as well. When Robert of Bellême inherited the earldom of Shrewsbury, he made peace with the Welsh across his western border. The Powys brothers Cadwgan, Iorwerth, and Maredudd ap Bleddyn were to be key allies in Robert’s struggles against the king, holding territory and resources as they did beyond Henry’s effective control. Cadwgan had already figured in an important incident in the rise of Robert, the campaign in Anglesey that had led to the death of Hugh of Shrewsbury. After Hugh and Hugh of Chester had occupied Anglesey with the aid of a bribed Hiberno-Scandinavian fleet, Cadwgan and his father-in-law Gruffudd ap Cynan of Gwynedd ‘fled to Ireland for fear of the treachery of their own men’.78 They returned the following year, 1099, ‘made peace with the French’, and Gruffudd regained Anglesey while Cadwgan ‘took Ceredigion 74 

Hollister, Henry I, 236. Hollister, Henry I, 237, quoting R. R. Davies, ‘Henry I and Wales’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. Henry Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (London, 1985), 133. The 1114 campaign also gives Hollister the opportunity to emphasize another consistent theme of the biography, the contrast between Henry and his predecessor. It ‘stood in sharp contrast to the previous royal offensive against Wales, by William Rufus in 1097, which was effectively resisted and accomplished little or nothing’ (237); ‘Henry’s campaign of 1114, unlike Rufus’ unsuccessful efforts in 1097, was both bloodless and overwhelmingly successful’ (237–8). 76  Hollister, Henry I, 237. 77  Hollister, Henry I, 238. 78  Brut RBH, s.a. 1098 (37). 75 

56

Robert S. Babcock

and a portion of Powys’.79 The ‘French’ with whom the Welsh chronicle reports Cadwgan made peace were clearly the frontier earls, especially Robert of Bellême, for during his revolt against Henry, Robert and Arnulf ‘called to them the Britons [Welsh] who were subject to them and in their power, together with their chiefs, to wit, Cadwgan, Iorwerth and Maredudd, sons of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, to come to their aid’.80 As part of his campaign against Robert of Bellême, then, Henry had to deal with the Welsh princes. The chronicle reports that he did so on the eve of his attack on Bridgnorth. He sent messengers ‘in particular to Iorwerth ap Bleddyn ... to invite him and his host into his presence and to promise him more than he would obtain from the earl’. These promises included gifts of land, identified by the native chronicler as ‘Powys, Ceredigion and half of Dyfed ... And Gower and Cydweli’.81 Once Robert of Bellême had been removed from the Welsh marches, however, Henry no longer needed Iorwerth, defaulted on his promises, and indeed imprisoned Iorwerth until 1110. Of his promised lands Iorwerth received only Powys; Cadwgan ap Bleddyn received Ceredigion, and the Dyfed lands were divided among Welshmen and Normans beholden to Henry.82 If they displeased the king, as Iorwerth had, lands given could be taken away; Henry took Ceredigion, once given to Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, from the Powys family and bestowed it upon the Norman Gilbert fitz Richard. Henry’s dealings with the princes of Powys, initially in response to their support for Robert of Bellême, were the beginning of what Rees Davies has described as a masterful set of royal policies towards the Welsh princes, ‘exercising his power as suzerain to the full and exploiting the opportunities which Welsh dynastic politics frequently extended to him’.83 Such policies related to the Irish Sea province in ways that neither AngloNorman historians nor Welsh historians have tended to recognize. In an important but speculative article published after Hollister’s death, Sean Duffy sees ‘transmarine’ implications in Henry’s actions.84 Both Gruffudd and Cadwgan had probably fled to the court of Muirchertach Ua Briain, the same Irish dynast who had married his daughter to Arnulf of Montgomery and who had offered aid to the Bellêmes in their revolt against the king. Cadwgan’s son Owain, the primary object of Henry’s 1114 campaign, certainly did. We first hear of Owain and Ireland in the context of his famous rape of Nest, mistress of the Norman king as well as wife of the steward of Pembroke castle. Pursued in 1109 by Gerald the Steward and by Welsh princelings in the service of Henry, Owain fled to Cardigan where he found a merchant ship unloading 79 

Brut RBH, s.a. 1099 (39). Brut RBH, s.a. 1102 (43). 81  Brut RBH, s.a. 1102 (45). 82  Brut RBH, s.a. 1102–1103 (47–9); David Walker, Medieval Wales (Cambridge, 1990), 37. 83  Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, 42. 84  Sean Duffy, ‘The 1169 Invasion as a Turning Point in Irish-Welsh Relations’, in Britain and Ireland, 900–1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change, ed. Brendan Smith (Cambridge, 1999), 98–113. 80 



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

57

goods from Ireland. He sailed back on it, ‘and he was kindly received by Muircertach [sic], the supreme king in Ireland’. It was apparently part of a long pattern of family voyages to Ireland. The Brut continues: ‘For he had formerly been with him and had been nurtured along with him during the war in which Anglesey was ravaged by the two earls, and he had been sent by his brother with gifts for Muircertach.’ 85 Owain and his men returned from Ireland to harass the Normans and their Welsh clients in the following years. Late in 1109 ‘some of the men who had gone with Owain to Ireland returned, and they lurked in hiding without doing aught openly’.86 Madog ap Rhiddid ap Bleddyn, Owain’s nephew and one of the numerous squabbling princelings of Powys, joined Owain and ‘they committed much mischief in the land of the French and in England’.87 In this, they seemed to count on support from or safety in Munster; based in Ceredigion, Owain’s men ‘went to Dyfed and they plundered the land and seized the men and took them bound to the ships that had come with Owain from Ireland’.88 When Henry took his vengeance out on Cadwgan, depriving him of Ceredigion and its possibilities of retreat, Owain and Madog ‘made for Ireland’.89 Madog would return and challenge Iorwerth for control of Powys, but Owain remained in Ireland. When Henry or his advisers found Madog the more troubling of the Welsh princelings, they sought to reach an accord with Owain. On the death of Iorwerth at Madog’s hands, Henry bestowed Powys on Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, whom he had so recently deprived of Ceredigion, and ‘bade Cadwgan send messengers after Owain to Ireland’.90 Henry thus made peace with what he must have judged to be the lesser of Welsh evils. In the narrative of Anglo-Welsh relations, this was a continuing part of Henry’s policy of ‘exploiting the fissures and tensions of Welsh “political” life, taking advantage of family divisions to his own ends’,91 as well as increasing and reinforcing the sense of territorial dependence the princelings might feel on the Norman king. Cadwgan had received, lost, and then received again territory on the will of his overlord, Henry I; Owain had been outlawed, then forgiven, by the king as well. In pura Wallia, however, the violent family divisions continued, and in 1113 Owain ap Cadwgan did, in fact, have his onetime ally Madog ap Rhiddid blinded, which Hollister cites as an especially egregious example of the need ‘to restore peace between several Welsh princes’ that sparked the 1114 campaign.92 85 

Brut RBH, s.a. 1109 (59–61). Brut RBH, s.a. 1109 (63). 87  Brut RBH, s.a. 1110 (65). 88  Brut RBH, s.a. 1110 (69). 89  Brut RBH, s.a. 1110 (71). 90  Brut RBH, s.a. 1111 (73–5). 91  R. R. Davies, ‘Henry I and Wales’, 139. 92  Hollister, Henry I, 237. Madog had made peace with the king in late 1111; Brut RBH, s.a. 1111 (77). The act could have been merely part of the internecine violence among the ruling families of Powys – a blind Madog would not elicit much support among the free warriors of the territory – but it may have been direct revenge for the betrayal and slaying of Cadwgan at Madog’s 86 

58

Robert S. Babcock

Duffy points out, however, that not only was the campaign pointed against the two Welsh princes who had made strongest use of the long connections between Wales and Ireland but that Henry undertook it in precisely the year of the demise of Muirchertach Ua Briain. ‘Henry I was aware of the dangers of having recalcitrant Welshmen receive a sympathetic hearing across the Irish Sea’, Duffy speculates. Further: Muirchertach fell from power in 1114, and it may be worth mentioning that it was in that same year that King Henry chose to make his massive expedition to Wales in an effort to subdue it. It is just possible that he did so confident in the knowledge that the Welsh were without their long-standing prop across the Irish Sea.93

The 1114 campaign, then, may have been about more than restoring peace in Wales, about more than cleaning up the aftermath of the Bellêmes’ Welsh allies, about more even than the expression of royal overlordship in pura Wallia. It may have also been about severing the ties of Welsh princes with Ireland, an Ireland with which Henry would have been familiar, and reorienting those ties to England. Owain ap Cadwgan’s reorientation was explicit and personal. Not only did he not flee to Ireland in 1114, but after submitting to Henry he went not only to England but to Normandy with the king, ultimately becoming a knight at Henry’s hands.94 Such reorientation was clearly an important part of Henry’s Welsh policy, as Rees Davies has demonstrated. In addition to ‘an increasing measure of territorial dependence, ... hostages were demanded and held as securities for compliant behavior; princelings were detained in honourable custody or required to accompany the king on foreign expeditions; massive tributes and gifts could be exacted’.95 All fostered the dependence and overlordship which Henry sought, all forced the Welsh princes to look to the English court, but such dependence could not be realized if Irish courts could beckon as an alternative beyond Henry’s reach. How well such reorientation of political gravity worked may be demonstrated by the fate of a Welsh prince who had remained in the Irish orbit. Gruffudd ap Rhys ap Tewdwr, exiled and educated in Ireland, probably at the Ua Briain court, returned to Dyfed in 1115. Though initially residing with Anglo-Norman relatives in Pembroke, he became an attractive symbol for Welshmen who resented the power of Henry I in Dyfed. When he was accused of fomenting rebellion, the Welsh chronicle reports that he sought protection from Gruffudd ap Cynan, ruler of Gwynedd and another Welsh prince with long and strong Irish connections. When Henry was notified of this, he ordered hands, Brut RBH, s.a. 1111 (75). That slaying seems to have been done at the behest or with the complicity of Richard bishop of London, who managed Shrewsbury for the king and to whom Madog went immediately after Cadwgan’s death (75). 93  Duffy, ‘The 1169 Invasion’, 102. Muirchertach became ill in 1114 and was removed from the kingship by his own men. He regained the throne two years later and would hold it until his death in 1119 but by then ‘was clearly a spent force’; O Croinin, Early Medieval Ireland, 280. 94  Brut RBH, s.a. 1114 (83). 95  Davies, ‘Henry I and Wales’, 140–1.



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

59

the Gwynedd Gruffudd to attend him, ‘and Gruffudd was obedient in going to him’.96 Gruffudd ap Cynan, then, despite his Hiberno-Scandinavian roots, despite his years of turning to Ireland for refuge and support, had become an agent of the Anglo-Norman king, and it is his duplicitous actions that began the revolt of Gruffudd ap Rhys.97 The revolt ended with Gruffudd ap Rhys being put in his place as his fellow princes had been, becoming a dependent of the king, receiving land that could become forfeit should his behavior become unpliant again.98 One of the columns in Henry’s 1114 campaign was of Norman forces from Dyfed, led by Richard fitz Gilbert of Clare. It is probably in this part of Wales that events of Henry’s reign are believed to have had their greatest effect on the Irish Sea province, though such belief is with the considerable assistance of hindsight. When Arnulf of Montgomery fled Henry’s wrath to the court of Muirchertach, he forfeited his nascent earldom of Pembroke. As he had in Shropshire and the other Montgomery holdings, Henry sought to place more dependent underlings on smaller holdings, avoiding the possibility of almost princely power that Robert of Bellême and his brothers had managed to accumulate while also integrating those holdings into his ‘kingdomwide administrative system’.99 The less wealthy with their smaller holdings and their large ambitions were not only easier to punish within that administrative system, but they were also easier to manipulate on the complex chessboard that Henry had made of Wales. Henry retained Pembroke as a shire, administered by a royal sheriff, but Arnulf and his father Roger had also established a precedent for Norman – and therefore, in Henry’s mind, royal – control over Ceredigion, even building a fragile castle at what would become Cardigan.100 The forfeiture of Arnulf’s lands also forfeited this conquest, which Henry awarded to the pliant Cadwgan ap Bleddyn in 1109 and then seized as punishment for the behavior of Owain ap Cadwgan.101 Henry then bestowed this land on Gilbert fitz Richard, head of the important and large cross-Channel family of Clare. The Welsh chronicler makes much of their ambition; ‘thou were always’, he imagines King Henry to have said to Gilbert, ‘seeking of me a portion of the territory of the Britons [Welsh]. I will now give thee Cadwgan’s territory. Go and take possession of it.’ 102 The Clares 96 

Brut RBH, s.a. 1115 (85). Henry also enlisted Owain ap Cadwgan in the fight against Gruffudd, Brut RBH, s.a. 1116 (97). Robert S. Babcock, ‘Imbeciles and Normans: The Ynfydion of Gruffudd ap Rhys Reconsidered’, HSJ 4 (1992), 1–9. 98  As happened in 1127, Brut RBH, s.a. 1127 (111). 99  Hollister, Henry I, 236. For Shropshire, Davies, ‘Henry I and Wales’, 143. 100  Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, 39. 101  See note 90, above. Interestingly, the Montgomery-Bellêmes seem to have also granted Ceredigion to Cadwgan, perhaps as part of a similar strategy. In the run-up to the Bellême revolt, the Welsh chronicler reports that Cadwgan returned (with Gruffudd ap Cynan) from Ireland in 1099, ‘made peace with the French’ and ‘took Ceredigion and a portion of Powys’, Brut RBH, s.a. 1099 (39). 102  Brut RBH, s.a. 1110 (71). 97 

60

Robert S. Babcock

were a family Henry needed to win over – they had ‘sat on the fence’, in Hollister’s words, when Robert Curthose had invaded in 1101, and one of their number by marriage, Walter II Giffard, had gone over to Curthose – and Henry used grants in Wales to do so.103 He could also use the grantees, ambitious and aggressive Norman warriors, to make good the rule over land Henry claimed but had not occupied. Gilbert fitz Richard invaded Ceredigion with a host of retainers and built castles near present-day Aberystwyth and Cardigan, the latter on the spot where Roger and Arnulf had built their earlier fort.104 As Henry had done in Pembrokeshire, Gilbert brought foreign settlers, Saxons the native chronicler calls them, to settle and exploit the land, and it is no doubt through Ceredigion that Gilbert brought his column of ‘the Britons of the South and the French and Saxons from Dyfed and all the South’ in the 1114 campaign.105 The Clares, their retainers, and their foreign settlers all lived their lives on lands of the Irish Sea province, lands which had a long and complex history of economic and other interaction with Ireland. Irish ships continued to leave from and arrive at ports in Dyfed and Ceredigion even when the owners of those ports had become Norman rather than Welsh. When Irish dynasts like Diarmait Mac Murchada would seek refuge or aid across the sea, they would find the Clares and their retainers. When those Clares and their men lost the lands that Henry had given them in the reign of Stephen, when they would seek other adventures to embark upon, they would find them in Ireland. The introduction of the family of Gilbert fitz Richard of Clare to the Irish Sea province is probably Henry I’s best known legacy in Irish history. That legacy should perhaps be greater, for at the mid-point of Henry’s reign the political orientation of the Irish Sea province had shifted dramatically towards England. By 1115–1116, Henry seems to have solved most of the problems he imagined might exist on his Irish Sea frontier – or to have had them solved for him. Changes in Ireland had reduced its appeal for disaffected enemies of the king, whether Norman or Celtic, and those Norman enemies had been all but eliminated. The Scottish king was an ally by marriage and intent, and the Scottish court was already orienting itself more toward Westminster than Ireland. That orientation would accelerate within a decade when Henry’s brother-in-law David would become king. The rulers of the Welsh kingdoms were conquered or cowed, and they, too, were demonstrating an orientation toward England rather than Ireland. This political reorientation of the Irish Sea province perhaps may be illustrated, by way of conclusion, with the example of Man. 103 

Hollister, Henry I, 341–2. Henry also granted Walter fitz Richard of Clare lands in Gwent; Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, 41. Davies notes that for the Clares and others, especially the lesser ‘new men’ of the familia regis, ‘Henry I used the March ... as a pool of rewards, which could be tapped without upsetting the intricate and sensitive pattern of English feudal estates’. 104  Brut RBH, s.a. 1110 (73). 105  ‘Saxons’; Brut RBH, s.a. 1116 (93). Gilbert’s column; Brut RBH, s.a. 1114 (79).



The Irish Sea Province and Henry’s Accession

61

The Isle of Man was the heart of the Irish Sea province, and it had figured prominently in the ambitions of Celtic and Scandinavian dynasts in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. It had been the goal and then the base of Magnus Barelegs in the Viking campaign that saw both the death of Hugh of Montgomery on Anglesey and the alliance with Muirchertach Ua Briain of Munster. That alliance, of course, designed to outflank Muirchertach’s recalcitrant foes in Ulster, paralleled Muirchertach’s alliance with the Bellêmes in England and Wales. Man’s dynastic history shows that its rulers have always gravitated in their political and cultural orientation between Norse or Germanic Britain and Celtic Ireland. In 1066, the Scandinavian Godred Crovan, probably of Islay in the Hebrides, had fought for the Norwegians under Harald at Stamford Bridge. Upon Harald’s defeat, Godred fled to Man. Through warfare and intimidation, Godred welded the Isles and Man into the single kingdom that Magnus Barelegs came to conquer in 1098, a kingdom that had been embroiled in internal conflict since Godred’s death in 1095.106 Absent effective rule from Godred’s elder sons, the nobles of the Isles had asked Muirchertach Ua Briain for ‘some worthy man of royal stock to act as regent’, but Muirchertach’s choice had been driven from Man by 1095.107 After the death of Magnus in Ireland, the Chronicle of the Kings of Mann and the Isles reports that ‘the chieftains of the Isles sent for Olaf, Godred Crovan’s son ... who was at that time living at the court of Henry, King of England and son of William’.108 Olaf had apparently escaped the turmoil of late eleventh-century Man for the safety of the court of Henry I, where much like the future David I of Scotland he became acculturated to Anglo-Norman ways. He would maintain contacts with Ireland necessary for any king of Man, and indeed would be murdered by nephews from Dublin in 1153. In important ways, however, Olaf looked south and west; when he founded an important new monastery on the island at Rushen, he looked not to Ireland, despite its long history of monasticism, nor to Scandinavia, but instead to the Cistercian abbey of Furness on the demesne of the English king. The Chronicle reports that ‘King Olaf granted to Ivo, Abbot of Furness, part of his land in Mann to establish an abbey at a place called Rushen’.109 Rushen’s founding took place in 1134, somewhat after the time period of this article and just a year before the death of Henry I, but it may serve as something of a metaphor for the changes in the compass needle of power that took place in the Irish Sea province during the first half of Henry’s reign. The dynast ruling Man, in the center of the Irish Sea, whose family had so recently looked west to Ireland or north to Scandinavia for its inspiration and ambition, now looked south and west – to a French abbot of a Cistercian 106  R. H. Kinvig, The Isle of Man: A Social, Cultural, and Political History, 3rd ed. (Liverpool, 1975), 60–1. 107  Chronicle of the Kings of Mann and the Isles, ed. and trans. George Broderick (Edinburgh, 1973), 25. 108  Chronicle of the Kings of Mann, 12. 109  Chronicle of the Kings of Mann, 12.

62

Robert S. Babcock

house on the lands of the Anglo-Norman king of England. Henry I never went to Man, just as he never went to Ireland or to most of Wales, but in the years following his accession, those who wielded power in each of these places along the Irish Sea looked more and more to him in subservience, in fear, and in imitation.

5 Henry I, Count Helias of Maine, and the Battle of Tinchebray Richard E. Barton

On 28 September 1106, King Henry I of England defeated his older brother, Duke Robert Curthose of Normandy, in battle near Tinchebray in southern Normandy. For all that this battle allowed Henry to reunite the two parts of his father’s regnum under one ruler, the coup de grace at Tinchebray was delivered not by Henry himself, nor by his familia. Instead, Henry’s allies, the troops of Maine and Anjou under the command of Count Helias of Maine, led the charge that broke Curthose’s line and delivered Normandy to Henry. Tinchebray has been ably studied by several recent historians, including Warren Hollister, and this paper has no intention of further considering the tactics or consequences of Henry’s great victory. What has not been as carefully considered as the battle itself, however, is the significance of the presence of Count Helias in Henry’s army. Aside from some comments by Hollister, themselves partly indebted to an earlier version of this paper, the presence of Helias in the Norman host (as well as that of Geoffrey Martel, count-inwaiting of Anjou) has been taken for granted. Yet the Manceaux in general and Count Helias in particular could hardly have been expected to love William the Conqueror or his sons. Ever since the first Norman conquest – of Maine, in  

This essay was originally presented in 1996 at the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, MI, as part of a series of papers read in honor of Warren Hollister. It owes much to the comments of those present at that conference, and, in particular, to Warren himself. For obvious reasons Warren was interested in the conclusions that I presented in a preliminary fashion in 1996, and, indeed, he honored some of them with inclusion in his posthumous biography of Henry I. If I have modified my argument in some places, I am sure Warren would have welcomed the opportunity to reopen debate on one of his favorite subjects. I must also add thanks to Donald Fleming for his editorial patience and to the anonymous reader for Boydell who made several judicious suggestions concerning the shape of this essay.   On Tinchebray, see Stephen Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1994), 169–70; Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 (Cambridge, 1996), 140–1; Jim Bradbury, ‘Battles in England and Normandy, 1066–1144’, ANS 6 (1983), 1–12; C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, ed. Amanda Clark Frost (New Haven, 2001), 198–203.   Hollister, Henry I, 185–91, and especially 190 n. 155.

64

Richard E. Barton

1063 – the Manceaux had chafed at the Norman yoke, rebelling twice against the Conqueror and in turn being thrice subjected to the full weight of William’s military might. The resistance of the Manceaux to Norman rule became such a trope in western France in the late eleventh century that Orderic Vitalis was famously led to gloss the Latin word for Maine as ‘canine madness’ and, by consequence, to essentialize the impudent and rebellious nature of its inhabitants. The death of the Conqueror changed little in this regard, for the Manceaux continued to revolt against his sons, rising against Robert Curthose in 1088–89 and against William Rufus in 1098–1100. During this period, one of the chief opponents of Norman rule was Helias, son of the castellan-lord of La Flèche and eventual count of Maine. Given this pattern of Manceau hostility to Norman rule, and Helias’ prominent role in it, it seems not a little bit strange that Helias, count of Maine, was the one who provided the crucial military assistance that allowed Henry, the youngest son of the Conqueror, to make himself master of Normandy. Clearly Helias’ relationship with some members of the ducal family of Normandy had changed in the years after 1100. Abandoning his earlier role as the implacable enemy of Robert Curthose and William Rufus, Helias’ active military and diplomatic support of Henry I in 1105 and 1106  demonstrated that he had become at least the ally, and possibly the friend, of Henry I. If the precise nature of that relationship between Helias and Henry is difficult to determine with finality, consideration of a range of possible explanations for it nonetheless proves revelatory. The personal bond established between Helias and Henry between 1100 and 1106 (and, perhaps, earlier) could have taken a variety of forms. One possible form is that of vertical lordship, in which it might be supposed that Helias was merely serving Henry as a man ought to serve his lord. In this model, the relationship between the two men may not have been affective in the least; it would simply have been a matter of Helias fulfilling his responsibilities towards his lord. Although this position has been argued by various authors, we shall see that it is neither particularly likely nor particularly persuasive. The alternative to a vertical bond of lordship linking the two men is, naturally, a horizontal one, by which it is supposed that two relative equals were joined by one of several possible non-institutional reasons.   OV ii, 300: ‘The city of Le Mans [Cenomannis] was named of old from canine madness and its people as neighbors are impudent and bloodthirsty, and always disobedient to their master and desirous of rebellion.’ See also OV iv, 46, 182, 192.   For surveys of these tumultuous years in Maine, see Robert Latouche, Histoire du comté du Maine pendant le Xe et le XIe siècle (Paris, 1910), 31–53; Bruno Lemesle, La société aristocratique dans le Haut-Maine (XIe–XIIe siècle) (Rennes, 1999), 32–47.   For the 1105 campaign, see OV vi, 78–81; Hollister, Henry I, 188–90; Serlo, ‘Versus de capta Bajocensium civitate’, in Anglo-Norman Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century, ed. Thomas Wright, 2 vols. (London, 1892), ii, 241–51. For the 1106 campaign, see OV vi, 84–91; ‘The Battle of Tinchebrai: A Correction’, EHR 25 (1910), 295–6; Hollister, Henry I, 198–201.   John Meddings notes that sociopolitical bonds need not have been exclusively vertical or horizontal; bonds of affect, in particular, could coexist within seigneurial bonds; see his ‘Friendship among the Aristocracy in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS 22 (1999), 189.



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

65

One set of these reasons for a horizontal bond might be termed pragmatic, as when two princes join forces to defeat a common enemy, or when lords assist each other so as to gain clearly articulated material benefits. Another set of reasons for the existence of a horizontal bond, however, might not entail any pragmatic considerations at all. Indeed, it is entirely plausible that a prince or lord might serve in a neighbor’s host for purely personal reasons, either to demonstrate his own honor or chivalry, or to support a deeper, more affective relationship such as kinship or friendship. This paper will consider all of these possible explanations of Helias’ relationship with Henry. While no definitive answer may be reached for perhaps obvious reasons, I will nevertheless suggest that horizontal bonds were more significant than vertical ones in shaping the relationship between the two men and, moreover, that affect seems likely to have been more important than pragmatism. In attempting to account for Helias’ actions in 1105 and 1106, then, I lean towards a tentative explanation based on a combination of affective factors, including Helias’ high sense of pride and honor, his military and chivalric ambition, and the strong possibility that Helias shared a mutual and longstanding friendship with Henry. Helias was the son of John, castellan of La Flèche, and John’s wife, Paula.10 Although some confusion still exists concerning the precise means by which John was connected to the comital dynasty of Maine, the best hypothesis suggests that Paula was a daughter of Count Herbert I Wake-Dog.11 John and Paula had numerous children, including seven sons by Orderic Vitalis’ count and at least four who are confirmed by charter evidence.12 Of these sons, Helias was not the oldest; rather, his brother Gosbert was explicitly termed the ‘older  

Gerd Althoff, Family, Friends and Followers: Political and Social Bonds in Early Medieval Europe, trans. C. Carroll (Cambridge, 2004), 65, calls such bonds ‘co-operative’.   The best sketches of Helias’ career are those of Latouche, Histoire du comté, 45–53, Lemesle, La société aristocratique, 38–45. I am preparing a full study of Helias’ career. 10  Helias’ descent from John of La Flèche is confirmed by all sources; Latouche, Histoire du comté, 113–15. Only Orderic Vitalis provides the name of his mother, Paula; OV v, 228. The work of Ch. de Montzey, Histoire de La Flèche et de ses seigneurs, 2 vols. (Paris, 1877–78) is not reliable. 11  Much confusion has stemmed from Orderic Vitalis’s inconsistency in describing the comital dynasty of Maine; although he believed that John of La Flèche had married a granddaughter of Count Herbert I, he offered radically different genealogies in different books of his chronicle; OV ii, 304 and iv, 196. Latouche’s hypothesis that Paula was not the granddaughter but the daughter of Count Herbert I (Histoire du comté, 113–14) has been accepted by most scholars, including Marjorie Chibnall (see OV iv, 196, n. 3) and Bruno Lemesle (La société aristocratique, 38). Still, Olivier Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou et son entourage au XIe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1972), i, 121, persists in calling Helias the ‘arrière petit-fils’ of Herbert Wake-Dog. 12  OV v, 228, lists seven sons: Gosbert, Enoch, Helias, Geoffrey, Lancelin, Miles, and William. Of these, only the first four are attested by charter evidence. For Gosbert, see Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Aubin d’Angers, ed. A. Bertrand de Broussillon, 3 vols. (Paris, 1903), no. 750 (1095 – 29 July 1096), and an unpublished act cited in Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou, i, 120, n. 542. For Geoffrey, see Cartulaire de Saint-Aubin, no. 168 (1082–1106). For Enoch, see Cartulaire des abbayes de Saint-Pierre de la Couture et de Saint-Pierre de Solesmes, ed. les Bénédictins de Solesmes (Le Mans, 1881), no. 26 (1091 – 29 July 1096; cf. a variant version in BN, Collection Baluze, v. 47, fol. 320v).

66

Richard E. Barton

son of John of La Flèche by birth’.13 Although we have no evidence for the date of Helias’ birth, it is likely to have come at some point in the 1050s or early 1060s.14 As a cadet son, Helias had no real expectation to inherit his father’s estate.15 Indeed, despite the fact that Helias is customarily described as ‘of La Flèche’, he cannot be found in possession of La Flèche before the death of his father in 1095–96 and the disappearance of his older brother Gosbert from the political world at about the same time.16 As a result, Helias must have known in the 1080s and early 1090s that his adult fortunes would be based not on an easy succession to the lordship of La Flèche, but rather on his own ability to secure a reputation and a lordship, probably through marriage or through decisive action. To be sure, he possessed some advantages, chief among them being his important lineage. Still, his place in the competitive world of Manceau politics would depend on his deeds and accomplishments, and on his ability to secure a favorable marriage. His lineage was clearly one of his most important assets; he was the grandson of one famous count of Maine (Count Herbert I Wake-Dog) and was the nephew or first cousin of two others. As with many younger sons – including Henry I himself – he could only hope that events outside his control would allow him to make use of the prestige that his lineage brought. Such an opportunity emerged in 1062, when Count Herbert II of Maine died without progeny. This death marked the end of the patrilineal line of the Manceau comital dynasty – and therefore offered a golden opportunity for Helias and others who might hope to use their more distant kinship with the comital line to advance their claims. Paradoxically, Norman control of Maine between 1063 and 1087 probably meant that Helias would remain a contender for the comital title in Maine; Norman presence ensured that no other, more established, claimant 13  Cartulaire de Saint-Aubin, no. 750 (‘filius Johannis de Fissa major natu’). Orderic Vitalis, too, knew that Gosbert and Enoch were older than Helias; OV v, 228. 14  These dates are hypotheses. Helias first appears in the charter evidence in an act dated between March 1075 and 6 January 1084; Cartulaire noir de la cathédrale d’Angers, ed. Charles Urseau (Angers, 1908), no. 121 (dated by Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou, ii, C343). Despite the adumbrated nature of this text, Helias (named ‘Helias filius Johannis de Fissa’) seems to be acting on his own without his father; if this is so, it suggests that at this date he was of mature age (at least fifteen to twenty years old). As a result, we might reasonably assign his date of birth to the period 1055–1064. 15  Lemesle, La société aristocratique, 38, is the first to have stressed Helias’ cadet status. 16  John of La Flèche died between 1095 and 29 July 1096. Gosbert was still alive at this time, but his status is uncertain; at the death of his father he was ‘dwelling in Le Mans’. Gosbert appeared once with his father at an indeterminate date (Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou, i, 120 n. 542), but issued no known acts as lord of La Flèche. Since Orderic thought he had become a monk (OV v, 228), it is possible that in 1095–6 Gosbert had already entered the monastic life in Le Mans. It is significant that Helias, and not Gosbert, was present at John’s deathbed. The evidence for John’s death and Helias’ succession is found in a pancarte for Saint-Aubin of Angers: Cartulaire de Saint-Aubin, nos. 746–54; with dating by Latouche, Histoire du comté, 150 n. 3. W. Scott Jessee, Robert the Burgundian and the Counts of Anjou, ca. 1025–1098 (Washington, D.C., 2000), 48, dates John’s death to ‘around 1097’; this should be modified to between 1095 and 29 July 1096.



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

67

could claim the countship. Despite or perhaps because of the strong Norman military presence in Maine, the years between 1063 and 1087 appear as a waiting period, in which a variety of claimants – including Helias – bided their time and waited for the death of William the Conqueror.17 Indeed, the fact that Helias (and others) immediately took action between 1087 and 1092 speaks to his awareness of the value of his lineage and of the opportunity that William’s conquest and death had presented to him. Orderic Vitalis, too, recognized the importance of Helias’ lineage in a speech he attributed to Helias during the complex negotiations concerning the Manceau countship in 1092.18 Addressing his rival and cousin, Hugh of Este, Helias recites his lineage (incorrectly) before stating ‘I have explained this to you so that you may recognize that I, no less than you, am sprung from the stock of Count Herbert. So take whatever we may agree upon from my possessions and restore the count’s rights to me by right of kinship.’ 19 It is perhaps more significant that the Manceau author of the Actus pontificum Cenomannis also explained Helias’ formal challenge to the county as deriving from his kinship with the counts of Maine.20 If Helias’ impressive lineage provided the basis of his political career, and indeed of his claim to the countship, lineage alone would not bring him reputation, wealth, and power. His position was thus immeasurably enhanced by his marriage to Matilda, daughter and heiress of Gervais of Château-duLoir.21 This was an extremely rich match for Helias, since it brought him one of the most powerful and wealthy castellan lordships in Maine. Orderic noted that it added four new castles – Château-du-Loir, Mayet, Le Grand-Lucé, and Outillé – to his own (eventual) inheritance of La Flèche.22 The date at which this marriage occurred is, unfortunately, difficult to determine with precision. Gervais of Château-du-Loir was still alive, and thus in control of his lordship, well after Helias had seized the countship in 1091–92, and he may still have been alive as late as 1097–99.23 Matilda herself died some days before 27 March 1099, on which date Count Helias offered a gift of the chapel at Château-du17 

In the 1060s Duke William defeated at least two claimants to the Manceau comital title – Walter of Mantes and Azzo of Este – who were more mature and, therefore, more likely candidates than Helias; Latouche, Histoire du comté, 34, and 115–16. The efforts of the Normans to have Robert Curthose accepted as the legitimate count of Maine also met resounding failure. 18  Hugh of Este (called Hugh V by modern historians) was the son of Marquis Azzo of Este and of Gersendis, daughter of Count Herbert I of Maine. Azzo momentarily claimed lordship over Maine in 1069–71, while his son, Hugh, did the same in 1090–92. On these events see Lemesle, La société aristocratique, 37–8; Latouche, Histoire du comté, 36, 41–2, 115 n. 8. 19  OV v, 196. 20  Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium, ed. Gustave Busson and Ambroise Ledru (Le Mans, 1902), 385. 21  Cartulaire Manceau de Marmoutier, ed. Ernest Laurain, 2 vols. (Laval, 1911–45), i, 128; OV v, 228. 22  OV v, 228. 23  Cartulaire Manceau de Marmoutier, i, 126–7. This fragment of a notice lists deathbed gifts made by Gervais’ wife Eremburga, gifts made by Gervais himself for his dying mother, and the confirmation of Count Helias, Gervais’ son-in-law. If all three acts were coterminous, then they must have occurred after Helias assumed the comital title, hence by 11 November 1091 (below,

68

Richard E. Barton

Loir for her soul.24 From this limited evidence, and from the fact that Helias does not appear at Château-du-Loir before the middle 1090s, it seems likely that Helias married Matilda some time after 1091 but before late summer 1098,25 and that Helias took possession of Château-du-Loir at some point during this same period. Coupled with the knowledge that Helias did not gain control of La Flèche until after his father’s death in 1096, this evidence suggests that Helias’ marriage was a product of his successful efforts to seize the countship of Maine in 1091–92, not one of its causes. When he laid his challenge for the countship in 1087–91, then, Helias was still an unmarried and landless younger son; he acquired his paternal inheritance only after 1095, and came into possession of Château-du-Loir only after he was recognized as count. Clearly, then, Helias’ inherited and marital prospects do not by themselves account for his rapid rise in status and power in the years after 1087. Instead, this meteoric rise must be seen as a product of Helias’ own ambition, tenacity, military competence, and good fortune. A brief discussion of the events leading to Helias’ assumption of the comital title between 1089 and 1092 should make this clear. Amid the general rebellion in Maine that followed the death of William the Conqueror in 1087 and Robert Curthose’s military expedition to Maine in August 1088,26 Helias first appeared as a prominent leader of the Manceaux. He captured the castle of Ballon from its Norman garrison in 1089 or 1090, attempted to force the citizens of Le Mans to bow to his lordship, and even imprisoned Bishop Hoel of Le Mans for several months when Hoel proved loyal to Robert Curthose.27 These actions are difficult to interpret, since at the same time several other powerful Manceaux barons were negotiating with the Italian, Hugh of Este, with the aim of making Hugh count of Maine.28 Because Hugh of Este had won the support of several of the most powerful castellan lords of Maine – Geoffrey of Mayenne and, perhaps, Gervais of Château-duLoir – most scholars (and Orderic, too) have read Helias’ actions in this period as evidence of his conscious support for Hugh; by this reasoning, the Manceaux were unanimous in their choice of Hugh, and Helias’ vigorous military efforts were merely his contribution to the collective efforts to bring the countship to

n. 38). At the very latest they occurred by 27 March 1099 (below, n. 24), at which date Helias’ wife Matilda had recently died. 24  Cartulaire Manceau de Marmoutier, i, 127–8. Helias’ alienation of goods from the lordship of Château-du-Loir confirms his possession of that lordship. 25  Matilda and Helias had already betrothed their only child, Eremburga, to Geoffrey Martel of Anjou in May 1098; Louis Halphen, Le comté d’Anjou au XIe siècle (Paris, 1906), 188 n. 2 and 190; Actus, 400). Although circumstantial, the evidence suggests that Eremburga was very young, and probably only an infant, at the time of this betrothal. Thus, in order to account for Eremburga’s existence by May 1098, Helias and Matilda had to have been married by August 1097 at the latest (but probably not very much earlier than that date). 26  Latouche, Histoire du comté, 40 and n. 2. Chibnall (OV iv, 154, n. 1) accepts this date. 27  Actus, 385; OV iv, 194. 28  OV iv, 192–4; Actus, 386–7.



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

69

Hugh.29 If this is a possible interpretation of Helias’ actions, it seems highly unlikely that Helias was acting out of benevolence for his cousin and rival. Indeed, the Actus is quite clear in ascribing Helias’ actions in 1089–90 to his own desire to claim the county. For the author of the Actus, then, Helias was clearly acting in his own interest, even if, at the same time, other Manceaux were seeking to promote the interests of Hugh of Este.30 It is important to lend this interpretation some credence, since the author of the Actus was most likely a direct observer of these events.31 Indeed, it is not hard to imagine that the evidence of Robert Curthose’s lax lordship might have caused a variety of Manceaux lords to consider how best they might profit from Norman indiffer­ence. Geoffrey of Mayenne clearly had an agenda, one that was rooted, moreover, in self-interest; Geoffrey had a long and intimate relationship with the family of Este that extended back twenty years.32 Just as clearly, Helias, son of John of La Flèche, had an ambitious agenda designed to promote his own status.33 Further evidence of this competition for the countship of Maine may be glimpsed in several charters issued in 1091. The first was given at Tours on Easter day, 1091 (13 April).34 In this act, Hugh, son of Marquis Azzo, quitclaimed various rights to the canons of St. Martin of Tours. Since he is not called count in the act, Latouche concluded that Hugh was on his way to Le Mans to assume the countship. This allowed Latouche to date the dramatic events surrounding Hugh’s failed lordship in Maine to the period between April 1091 and June 1092;35 Latouche concluded, furthermore, that Helias could 29  Orderic Vitalis (OV iv, 192–4) insists on this point. Latouche, Histoire du comté, 40–4, in his synthetic reconstruction of these events, follows this general interpretation. Both Orderic (OV iv, 194) and the Actus (386) clearly identify Geoffrey of Mayenne as the principal supporter of Hugh of Este. The only surviving charter of Hugh of Este as count of Maine named his principal advisor as ‘Gervais’; it is likely that this was Gervais of Château-du-Loir. See Chartularium insignis ecclesiae Cenomannensis quod dicitur Liber albus capituli, ed. René Lottin (Le Mans, 1869), no. 178. 30  Actus, 385–7: Helias ‘surrexit ... et cepit calumpniari ipsum comitatum’. To prosecute this claim, Helias seized Ballon and then imprisoned Bishop Hoel. In the Actus, the summoning and arrival of Hugh of Este is subsequent to Helias’ initial, unsuccessful, efforts to seize Le Mans. 31  The relevant chapter of the Actus, the Gesta Hoelli, was written c. 1133 by an author who had known Bishop Hoel and who had supported Hoel’s policies. See Lemesle, La société aristocratique, 38. 32  Geoffrey had supported Hugh’s father Azzo in the Manceau rebellion of 1069–70 and, moreover, had been the lover of Hugh’s mother Gersendis at the same time; see Actus, 377–9. 33  Jessee’s account of these events (Robert the Burgundian, 135–44) is nuanced and valuable, particularly in his emphasis on the role of Robert the Burgundian in the political maneuvering in Maine between 1087 and 1092. Still, his account accords too little significance to the independence of the Manceaux lords, preferring to see them primarily as fideles of Count Fulk of Anjou. He was also unaware of the charters discussed in the next paragraph. 34  BN, Collection Housseau, iii, no. 927, fol. 120r–v. The act is calendared by Émile Mabille, La pancarte noire de Saint Martin de Tours (Paris, 1866), no. 194; and mentioned by Latouche, Histoire du comté, 41 n. 10. 35  Actus, 385–94. These events include two periods of exile for Bishop Hoel, a rebellion by Hoel’s own clergy, and Hugh’s unsuccessful efforts to impose lordship over Le Mans.

70

Richard E. Barton

only have become count of Maine after he purchased Hugh’s rights to the county in July 1092.36 Another pair of charters, however, of which Latouche was ignorant, suggests that Helias had laid claim to the comital title some six months before June 1092.37 These notices (two variants of the same act) are clearly dated 11 November 1091 and concern gifts made by Aubri II of La Milesse to Saint-Julien of Tours. Both contain the confirmations of Bishop Hoel and ‘Helias, count of our land’.38 This evidence suggests that Helias had already assumed the comital title before buying out Hugh of Este; it also tends to confirm the Actus’ perception that Helias had intended from the start to make himself count. Too much weight cannot be placed on these acts, to be sure. It is possible that the confirmations of Helias and Bishop Hoel were made after the initial donation and were later interpolated into the record of the event; it is also possible that the scribe erred in his dating clause.39 Still, the only compelling reason to adopt either of these positions is the presupposition that Helias could not have been count in November 1091. If, however, one accepts that at least two factions were competing for the countship, then there is no reason to doubt the evidence that Helias was styling himself count by November 1091. In any event, the period of Hugh of Este’s lordship was troubled and unsuccessful, and by the summer of 1092 he had sold his claims to the countship to Helias for 10,000 shillings.40 Regardless of the exact date at which he had begun to style himself count, Helias was, by July of 1092, the undisputed local claimant to the comital title of Maine.41 The second set of evidence that cemented Helias’ reputation as a vigorous, ambitious, and chivalric knight is found in the wars he fought against William 36  Latouche, Histoire du comté, 41–4. Count Hugh became reconciled with Bishop Hoel on 29 June 1092; the first act (known to Latouche) in which Helias was called count is dated 27 July 1092 (BN, Collection Housseau, iii, no. 937, fol. 127r–v; dated by Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou, ii, C370). Thus for Latouche, Helias became count between 29 June and 27 July 1092. This chronology is worth rethinking. Frank Barlow, William Rufus (Berkeley, 1983), 270 n. 30, has cast doubt on it, and I will revisit it in my future study of Count Helias. 37  Chartes de Saint-Julien de Tours (1002–1227), ed. L-J. Denis (Le Mans, 1912), nos. 43–4. These notices survive only in late copies. 38  Chartes de Saint-Julien de Tours, no. 43: ‘Et hoc donum concedit domnus Cenomannensis episcopus, Hoellus, ... et hoc concedunt uxor mea Adelis et Albericus, filius meus, et comes terre nostre, Helias.’ No. 44: ‘Et hoc donum concedit domnus Cenomanensis episcopus Hoellus’ and ‘Testes sunt: Helias, comes terrae’. 39  Convinced by Latouche’s chronology, Lemesle, La société aristocratique, 255, assumes a scribal error in the dating clause and re-dates the acts to ‘11 November 1092’. David Bates, ‘The Prosopographical Study of Anglo-Norman Royal Charters’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics: The Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (Woodbridge, 1997), 89–102, offers important methodological reservations about interpreting charter witness lists. 40  OV iv, 196–8; Actus, 393; Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Vincent du Mans (ordre de SaintBenoit), premier cartulaire 572–1188, ed. R. Charles and S. Menjot d’Elbenne (Le Mans, 1886–1913), no. 117. 41  Although it is clear that Helias had extremely close ties with the Angevins, it is unnecessary to see these events as the culmination of the long-term efforts of an ‘Angevin party’ to secure Angevin dominance in Maine (cf. Jessee, Robert the Burgundian, 143–4).



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

71

Rufus between 1096 and 1100. As Barlow has given the scattered evidence a clear and nuanced reading, it is not necessary for the purposes of this paper to revisit these episodes in detail.42 Suffice it to note that Helias sought peace from both Robert Curthose and William Rufus in September 1096 so that he might join the first crusade. When Rufus refused, Helias, perhaps at the instigation of Bishop Hildebert of Le Mans, opted to fight his crusade at home.43 Helias fortified the comital castles and waged petty warfare against Rufus’ Norman vassals (especially Robert of Bellême) between 1096 and 1098. In early spring 1098, Rufus led an impressive but inconclusive expedition to Maine. In the subsequent skirmishing, Helias was captured by Robert of Bellême and was remanded to Rufus’ prison in Rouen; the king returned to Maine with an army and successfully subjugated Le Mans.44 Among the terms of the peace was the release of Helias. In an interview recorded in stirring detail by Orderic and William of Malmesbury, Helias sought upon his release service in Rufus’ household until the king should decide to restore Maine to him; Rufus refused, and contemptuously told Helias to prepare for another Norman attack.45 Helias returned to Maine and fortified his castles and, inevitably, Rufus again attacked Maine in 1099. This time he drove Helias from Le Mans. Upon Rufus’ death in August 1100, Helias immediately invested the Norman garrison in Le Mans and, after a three month siege, resumed his lordship over the city.46 This complex set of wars, spanning almost five years between 1096 and 1100, defined Helias’ career. They won him an enviable reputation for martial ability, chivalry, tenacity and loyalty and, moreover, ensured that he would retain the countship of Maine until his death in 1110. Indeed, upon regaining control of Le Mans in 1100, Helias honed that reputation for the next six years through almost constant warfare, albeit in campaigns waged outside of Maine. Thus Helias aided his daughter’s fiancé (and the count-in-waiting of Anjou), Geoffrey Martel, at the sieges of Marçon and Briollay in 1103. Helias and Geoffrey also fought in Henry I’s Norman campaigns in both 1105 and 1106. And in 1106, Helias joined Geoffrey Martel in the latter’s siege of the Angevin castle of Candé.47 If Helias’ military career seems to have waned after 1106, he was nevertheless in this period considered a valuable statesman. Indeed, by 1106, Helias was so tightly entwined in the affective and political affairs of 42 

Barlow, William Rufus, 367–8, 381–8, 390–2, 402–6. Orderic (OV v, 228–32) is the only author to recount the crusading story. The Actus connects Rufus’ hostility to the election of Hildebert of Lavardin. Contrary to Orderic (OV v, 234–6), who thought that Hildebert and Helias were initially enemies, Lemesle, La société aristocratique, 39– 40, shows that Helias probably supported Hildebert against the Norman candidate (Geoffrey Brito); this brought William Rufus’ wrath down on both Helias and Hildebert. 44  For these events, see OV v, 230–8; Actus, 400; Barlow, William Rufus, 381–5. 45  OV v, 238–50; William of Malmesbury, GR, 564–6. 46  Barlow, William Rufus, 402–5; Actus, 404; OV v, 302–6. 47  ‘Annales de Saint-Aubin’, 43; Latouche, Histoire du comté, pièce justificative, no. 4; ‘Annales dites de Renaud’, in Recueil d’annales angevines et vendômoises, ed. Louis Halphen (Paris, 1903), 90. For Helias and Geoffrey accompanying Henry I in Normandy in 1105–6, see above, n. 6. 43 

72

Richard E. Barton

the Angevin comital dynasty that he at one point governed Anjou in place of the senile Fulk IV and the still-minor (or captive) Fulk V.48 He served as a judge in Anjou at the same time (1106–9), and was asked by a papal legate to use his secular influence to end a thorny tenurial dispute (also 1106).49 In the last decade of his life Helias strengthened his position in Maine by cementing an alliance with the counts of Anjou that had begun to form in the early 1090s.50 Certainly this alliance was in place by 1098, when Helias affianced his only daughter to Geoffrey Martel, son of Count Fulk IV of Anjou, and received important military support from Geoffrey and Fulk during his wars against William Rufus.51 Even Geoffrey’s untimely death did not cancel this alliance, for after his demise Helias married Eremburga to Fulk’s second son, Fulk Junior (later Fulk V).52 This betrothal was consummated at some point between 1106 and 1109, and meant that after Helias’ death Fulk V would combine the counties of Maine and Anjou into one powerful lordship. By July 1110, when Helias died, his fortunes were at their peak. He had managed to acquire and retain the countship of Maine, the lordship of Château-du-Loir, and his own father’s estates at La Flèche. He had fought off a series of Norman aggressors, and in so doing won a reputation as a tenacious, talented, and chivalrous soldier. And he had managed to secure his position and the future of his daughter through an impressive marital alliance with the counts of Anjou. The cadet son had certainly made something of himself. This discussion of Helias’ career suggests several important conclusions about the Manceau count. The first is that he was an energetic and talented soldier. Because he could have expected to inherit nothing, Helias had to carve out status and landed wealth by dint of arms and personality; indeed, his career 48  See BN, Collection Housseau, iii, no. 963, fol. 146r–v; also iv, no. 1183, fol. 43r–v: ‘comes Cenomannorum Helias sub cujus manu tunc temporis pagus Andegavensis habebatur’. Jacques Flach printed an abridged version of this act in his Les origines de l’ancienne France, 4 vols. (Paris, 1886–1917), i, 276 n. 1. It has been dated by Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou, ii, C442. It is possible that Helias’ wardship of Anjou came while Fulk Junior languished in the prison of Count William of Poitou (c. 1106–7); see Louis Halphen, Le comté, 178. 49  For the former, see BN, Collection Housseau, iii, no. 963, fol. 146r–v; for the latter, see Cartulaire Manceau de Marmoutier, i, 128–31. 50  Helias reversed his father’s pro-Norman and anti-Angevin position by linking himself from an early age with the Angevin counts; for his appearances with Count Fulk IV, see Cartulaire de Saint-Maurice, no. 121 (1075–84); Cartulaire de Saint-Aubin, no. 8 (21 December 1087); Chartularium, no. 118 (17 October 1093). For John of La Flèche’s animosity towards Fulk, see OV ii, 308–10; David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact upon England (Berkeley, 1964), 401–7; Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou, i, 120; and Lemesle, La société aristocratique, 39. 51  For Angevin support of Helias in 1098, see Barlow, William Rufus, 385–7; Actus, 400–1; OV v, 242–4; and ‘Annales de Saint-Aubin’, in Recueil d’annales angevines et vendômoises, ed. Louis Halphen (Paris, 1903), 42. For Helias’ decision to betroth Eremburga to Geoffrey Martel before 1098, see Actus, 400; and ‘Gesta consulum Andegavorum’, in Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise, ed. Louis Halphen and René Poupardin (Paris, 1913), 66. Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou, i, 122–3 and n. 563, noted the growing connection between Helias and the ‘house’ of Anjou. 52  OV v, 228–9, 306–7; ‘Gesta consulum Andegavorum’, 67.



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

73

reads as a series of prolonged military engagements, first for control of Le Mans in 1089–92, then against Robert of Bellême in 1092–98, then against William Rufus in 1098–1100, and finally in the internal wars of Anjou and Normandy between 1100 and 1106. This baptism through fire clearly produced in Helias a competent warrior and leader of men, and, as a result, it is in some ways unsurprising that Henry I should have sought his aid in the campaigns of 1105 and 1106. The second conclusion is that Helias seems also to have had a winning personality; he was competent, trustworthy, honorable, and dependable. Orderic Vitalis certainly thought this to have been true, and represents Helias accordingly in his chronicle.53 It is also the image presented by the later vernacular historians of this period, Wace and Gaimar.54 While it is clear that Orderic (and after him Wace and Gaimar) used the story of Helias to construct an idealized image of pious and chivalric comital lordship, that image seems to have had some basis in reality. The proof is to be found in the unanimity of positive opinion concerning Helias and in the anecdotal evidence of Helias’ ability to win and keep important friends: Gervais of Château-duLoir, Bishop Hildebert of Le Mans, Count Fulk of Anjou, Geoffrey Martel, and Henry I himself were all among those who can be found actively supporting Helias (and vice versa).55 This sketch of Helias’ career, then, suggests that the Manceau count was both a highly experienced and desirable military ally and precisely the sort of upstanding, honorable aristocrat with whom other important lords wished to associate. These points go a long ways towards helping to answer the riddle posed by Helias’ presence at Tinchebray in 1106. Still, it is necessary to consider each of the possible answers to that riddle and to explore the origins and nature of the possible affective relationship that Helias established with Henry I. We may turn first to the explanation which supposes the existence of a vertical bond of lordship between Helias and Henry. Some evidence does exist to suggest such a relationship. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for instance, notes in its entry for the year 1110 that Count Helias ‘held Maine from king Henry and did acknowledgement for it’.56 Those sources which derive from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for this period, notably Henry of Huntingdon and Robert of Torigni, consequently repeat this assertion.57 Hollister, not surprisingly, made much of this 53 

OV iv, 198; v, 228–36, 302–6; vi, 94–8. Wace, The Roman de Rou, ed. Anthony Holden, trans. Glyn Burgess (Jersey, 2002), lines 9755–68, 9951–10006. Gaimar’s account of Rufus’ campaigns in Maine is less forthcoming about Helias but still presents the count as a brave, bold, and honorable opponent; Lestorie des Engles, ed. T. D. Hardy and C. T. Martin, RS 91, 2 vols. (London, 1888–9), lines 5927–64. 55  To this list might be added the counts of Aquitaine, for Helias’ second wife Agnes (whom he married in 1109) was the sister of Count William VII of Poitou (and the repudiated wife of King Peter of Aragon). The analysis of Latouche, Histoire du comté, 114–15, on this marriage is incorrect; Chibnall (OV v, 306 n. 5) offers the best modern account. 56  ASC, s.a. 1110. The Chronicle also notes that in 1111 the count of Anjou began to ‘hold Maine against the king’, implying that prior to this Maine had not been held ‘against’ him. 57  Drawing entirely from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Henry of Huntingdon wrote ‘Helias vero consul Cenomannie, qui eam sub Henrico rege tenebat, vita privatus est’; Historia, 456. Robert 54 

74

Richard E. Barton

statement, arguing that Henry I held sovereignty over Maine from 1100.58 Indeed, the Normans had a long history of involvement in Maine dating back to at least the 1050s; not only had William the Conqueror subjugated Maine in 1063 and held it (uneasily) for 25 years, but Robert Curthose even styled himself count or princeps of Maine for a period in the late 1080s.59 Moreover, the status of Maine became a hotly contested issue during the political ­maneuvering and warfare that pitted Count Fulk V against Henry I in the period 1110–19; since sovereignty over Maine was at issue at this point, it might seem logical to conclude that Henry had always possessed such overlordship and, consequently, that Helias was, in Hollister’s phrase, ‘Henry’s friend and fidelis’.60 Yet if it is possible to take the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and justify them through an examination of previous and subsequent Norman relationships with Maine, it is also easy to argue against this passage of the Chronicle. After all, the Peterborough chronicler was not particularly interested in or familiar with affairs in Maine. His entries as a rule do not concern themselves with matters Manceaux (or, for that matter, with matters Norman), and whenever Maine appears in his text it is the object of Anglo-Norman aggression.61 Never does the chronicler attempt to explain the local politics or personalities of Maine. It might be argued, however, that precisely because the Peterborough chronicler was so removed from Maine, any shred of information on Maine which he chooses to pass on should be treated with confidence; for such a detail to reach his pen, the argument might go, that information must have been important or well-known. Again, this is certainly possible. Yet the absence of supporting evidence for Helias’ submission to Henry I, and the positive evidence of Helias’ far more substantive relationship with the counts of Anjou, tends to work against such a hypothesis. First of all, nowhere does Orderic Vitalis, the Manceau Actus, the Angevin Gesta consulum, the English William of Malmesbury, or any other reliable contemporary author claim a seigneurial relationship between Helias and Henry. of Torigny repeated this sentence verbatim; Chronique, ed. Léopold Delisle, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1872), i, 138. 58  Hollister, Henry I, 7, 224; C. Warren Hollister and Thomas K. Keefe, ‘The Making of the Angevin Empire’, in Hollister, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London, 1986), 253–4, 254 n. 28; C. Warren Hollister, ‘Normandy, France and the Anglo-Norman Regnum’, in Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions, 39–41. 59  Charles Homer Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, MA, 1918), 66–70. For two examples, see Cartulaire de Saint-Vincent, no. 532; Regesta, i, no. 324. 60  Orderic reports that in 1113 Fulk V, count of Anjou and count of Maine, swore fealty to Henry and agreed to hold Maine from the king (OV vi, 180–1). For Henry’s struggles with the Angevins concerning Maine, see Hollister, Henry I, 228–9, 261. For Helias as the fidelis of Henry I, see C. Warren Hollister, ‘War and Diplomacy in the Anglo-Norman World: The Reign of Henry I’, in Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions, 281. 61  The laconic entry for 1099 is indicative of this trend: ‘And soon after this, he [William Rufus] went over the sea and drove Earl Elias out of Maine, which he subjugated to his power’ (ASC, s.a. 1099).



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

75

Second, the only times in the previous half-century that Manceaux had served the Normans or made homage to them were when forced to do so by military conquest and subjugation; Henry I, however, never ventured into Maine. Thus, in contrast to the case of William Rufus, there was no obvious occasion on which Helias might have promised the sort of fidelity that would require his presence in the royal army.62 One also cannot imagine Helias volunteering such service from a distance without compulsion, unless of course the count feared that Henry might follow Rufus’ example and invade Maine; but before 1106 Henry was hardly in a position to invade Maine. In other words, Henry simply didn’t have enough direct power over Helias before 1106 to compel his actions.63 Third, more numerous and more persuasive evidence exists to suggest that the count of Anjou, not the duke of Normandy, enjoyed some degree of lordship over Maine and its counts. Indeed, from the beginning of the eleventh century there had been extremely close ties between many of the Manceaux castellans and the counts of Anjou, and the latter could be said to have exercised direct, non-coercive influence in Maine from at least the reign of Fulk Nerra (987– 1040).64 Indeed, Orderic Vitalis knew of this tradition of Angevin influence in Maine, as he described Count Fulk IV of Anjou as the ‘chief lord’ of both Maine and of Count Helias.65 The marriage alliance between Helias and the Angevin dynasty, coupled with the active military assistance lent by Geoffrey Martel to Helias in the period 1096–1100, suggests, too, that Helias looked to Anjou rather than Normandy.66 Thus, given the sparsity of Norman evidence for a feudal bond linking Helias to Henry, as well as the strong evidence of a

62 

Orderic believed that Helias had offered Rufus service and homage upon his release from Rufus’ prison in 1098 (OV v, 246–8). Rufus rejected Helias’ offer, and, as a result, Helias never technically performed service to the Norman king. It is also true that Helias had submitted to Robert Curthose in 1088, and he and other Manceaux barons were said to have answered Robert’s summons, ‘ready for the duke’s service’ (OV iv, 156). 63  Power is not always coercive and Weberian. Still, given the Manceau experience with Norman military might, which worked in very Weberian ways through the 1090s, there seems good reason to use this definition of power here. For a variety of definitions and experiences of power, see Steven Lukes, ed., Power (New York, 1986). 64  Most historians have assumed the existence of a direct seigneurial bond between Maine and Anjou since at least the time of Fulk Nerra (d. 1040). While I hope to challenge this assumption in a forthcoming article, it is nevertheless clear that the Angevin counts presented a far more immediate, and benevolent, lordship to the decentralized castellan lords of Maine than did any of the Norman dukes. For Angevin interests in Maine, see Latouche, Histoire du comté, 22–42; Guillot, i, Le comte d’Anjou, 456–65; Bernard Bachrach, ‘The Angevin Strategy of Castle Building in the Reign of Fulk Nerra, 987–1040’, AHR 88 (1983), 533–60, and Fulk Nerra, the Neo-Roman Consul, 987–1040 (Berkeley, 1993). 65  OV v, 243: ‘Fulco cognomento Richinus Andegavorum comes ut Heliam captum audivit, Cenomannis quia capitalis dominus erat actutum advenit.’ See also OV v, 302; upon the death of Rufus, Helias ‘sent for his lord [dominum suum] Fulk, count of Anjou’, and with him began to besiege the citadel of Le Mans. 66  ‘Gesta consulum Andegavorum’, 66.

76

Richard E. Barton

bond linking Helias to the Angevin counts, we are probably safe in assuming that no meaningful lordship relationship existed between Helias and Henry. It is just possible, of course, that Helias had acknowledged the generic power and might of the English king, perhaps even in the flexible manner of ‘hommage en marche’ described by Lemarignier.67 Hollister was even willing to argue that Henry’s putative overlordship in Maine could coexist with, and thus did not necessarily contradict or prevent, the more immediate suzerainty which Count Fulk exercised in Maine.68 And yet, even if this arrangement was theoretically possible, it supposes a very distant and largely symbolic bond between Henry and Helias, certainly not the kind of significant vertical bond which would have compelled Helias’ presence in Henry’s host. If the presence of Helias at Tinchebray cannot be explained by the existence of vertical bonds of lordship, then, it is necessary to consider the likelihood that the two men were linked by non-vertical bonds. The first possible set of such horizontal bonds might be termed pragmatic. In this way, one might argue that Helias came to help Henry in order to serve his own interest. For example, the defeat of Robert Curthose, who for fifteen years had been a major threat to Helias’s legitimacy in and possession of Maine, might have been itself a desirable outcome, enough so that Helias would agree to ally with Henry against Curthose. There are several problems with this sort of interpretation, however. For one, it is a purely logical argument, since the sources are largely mute on this issue. Although several authors comment on Helias’ rivalry with Curthose at the time when Helias was first laying claim to Maine (i.e., in 1089–90), none of them suggests that Helias bore a grudge against Curthose and thus wished to injure him, or even that Helias feared the duke and his authority and was thus willing to ally with Curthose’s brother. The silence of the sources here is deafening, and does little to advance any pragmatic ­interpretation of Helias’ actions. In addition to this problem with the sources, different logical arguments are easily marshalled against even the hypothetical suggestion that Helias saw the defeat of Curthose to be in his interest. The main point here is that the sources are unanimous in condemning Curthose’s sloth and inertia as duke of Normandy. While Duke Robert could certainly act forcefully on occasion and had a welldeserved reputation for martial ability and chivalry earned while on crusade, he nevertheless does not appear in the sources as the sort of terrifying lord who might inspire an alliance of enemies.69 Indeed, the author of the Actus sneeringly wrote that Robert was ‘devoted beyond measure to inertia and luxury’, while Orderic famously noted that Robert ‘feared the vassals in his own duchy 67 

J.-F. Lemarignier, Recherches sur l’hommage en marche et les frontières féodales (Lille, 1945), 114–15. 68  Hollister and Keefe, ‘The Making of the Angevin Empire’, 253–4. 69  Charles W. David, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy (Cambridge, MA, 1920), 75–81; OV v, 26, 300–4; vi, 86, 96. Judith Green, ‘Robert Curthose Reassessed’, ANS 22 (1999), 95–116, offers important corrections to this image of the duke, while nevertheless ‘not disputing the chroniclers’ views about his personal failings’ (102).



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

77

more than they feared him’.70 While these comments are clearly rhetorical, they are nevertheless revelatory, and are actually supported by evidence of Robert’s inactivity in 1100. It may be recalled that upon Rufus’ death in August 1100, Helias (with the help of Count Fulk) laid immediate siege to the citadel of Le Mans in an attempt to drive out the Norman garrison and recover full control of Maine. Orderic reports that Helias, following accepted military tradition, allowed the garrison to send for reinforcements from their lord, whom they supposed to be Duke Robert.71 Curthose declined to send aid, however, and in so doing implicitly surrendered his claims to lordship in Maine.72 This willingness to abandon Maine to Helias, coupled with the chroniclers’ comments on Robert’s far from intimidating style of lordship, makes it unlikely that Helias considered Robert to be a serious threat. Indeed, it might easily be argued that it was to Helias’ benefit to have such a hands-off duke as his neighbor, rather than the much more intense and energetic William Rufus or Henry I. Pragmatism and self-interest, therefore, might lead us to suppose that Helias would have supported Robert instead of Henry. Since this was not the case, the argument for Helias making a pragmatic choice to support Henry over Robert is only partially convincing.73 The final broad category of explanation for Helias’ presence at Tinchebray revolves around other kinds of bonds – particularly bonds grounded in personality, emotion, and/or affect. Here the assumption would be that Helias’ decision to join Henry’s army in 1105 and 1106 was motivated not by external carrots or sticks such as lordship or pragmatic self-interest, but rather by internal forces such as honor, desire for glory, and, perhaps, friendship. Honor and glory seem so obvious as to be not worth discussing, but in fact they are too often ignored as motivating factors for the aristocracy of this period. Any survey of the narrative sources – whether Latin or vernacular, historical or ‘fictional’ – reveals that a competitive desire for the acquisition of honor, reputation, and status was one of the primary motivations of aristocratic behavior. To take but one example, William of Poitiers couched William the Conqueror’s campaigns in Maine against Count Geoffrey Martel of Anjou in the 1050s and 1060s in terms of honor slighted and redeemed. And thus William has Count Geoffrey claim he has ‘increased the worth of his name’ by fighting Duke William, and has Duke William boast that he will ‘wipe out the name of his rival through eternal

70 

Actus, 386; OV v, 26. OV v, 304; Actus, 404. On such offers of ‘conditional respite’, see Strickland, War and Chivalry, 208–18. 72  Orderic’s invented speech in this context has Robert specifically state that ‘the duchy of Normandy is sufficient for me’ (OV v, 304). The same might be said of Henry I, who also declined to get involved in Maine when he was approached by the garrison. 73  To be sure, there are other ways to view Helias’ decision as a pragmatic choice. Henry might have promised Helias money, land, recognition, or future considerations for the count’s support. Henry might even have been willing to drop any residual claims to suzerainty in Maine in return for that support (Latouche, Histoire du comté, 51). Although possible, none of these theories is supported by the extant evidence. 71 

78

Richard E. Barton

dishonor’.74 Such sentiments are also rife in the chansons de geste. Thus an appeal to honor and shame provides one of the major explanations for Roland’s decision not to summon Charlemagne to his aid. Roland refuses to blow the oliphant, saying he has no desire to stain his own reputation or that of his kinsmen: ‘I’d rather die than be disgraced’, he exclaims.75 Since Benton, Kaueper and others have shown that these notions of honor and reputation were integral parts to medieval military behavior and to the broader cultural framework within which the aristocracy operated, it is not hard to imagine Helias being motivated by similar feelings.76 Here, of course, the problem lies again with the sources. The relative paucity of explanatory material concerning Helias makes it difficult to prove conclusively that he shared these values. Still, there are some shreds of evidence that suggests that such an interpretation is worth considering. For one, several authors state that Helias was the embodiment of aristocratic pride, violence, and concern for his status. The Actus’ version of Helias’ actions of the year or so after the death of William the Conqueror, although devoid of adjectival descriptions of motivation, makes this point clear. As we have seen, Helias immediately laid a claim to the countship and, to press this claim, seized the comital castle of Ballon and began to devastate the region around Le Mans.77 These were the typical means used by aristocrats to pursue their personal ambitions and to gain honor and status in the eyes of other aristocrats. What is more, the author of this passage all but accuses Helias of superbia (and impiety) when he recounts how Helias, perceiving that Bishop Hoel was blocking his candidacy, seized the bishop and hauled him off to the dungeon of his castle.78 William of Malmesbury echoes this sense in his brief description of Helias’ encounter with William Rufus. Responding to Rufus’ words upon his capture, William noted that Helias ‘had a lofty spirit, of the kind that does not know how, even in a moment of such peril, to think or speak humbly. “You have taken me by pure chance”, he retorted, “and if only I could get away, I know what I would do”’.79 For Wace, Helias was filled with ‘great arrogance’.80 Even Orderic Vitalis, who offers a 74 

William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, ed. R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), 22,

26. 75  The Song of Roland: An Analytical Edition, ed. Gerard J. Brault, 2 vols. (University Park, PA, 1978), lines 1049–92. 76  John F. Benton, ‘“Nostre Franceis n’unt talent de fuïr”: The Song of Roland and the Enculturation of a Warrior Class’, in Benton, Culture, Power and Personality in Medieval France, ed. Thomas Bisson (London, 1991), 147–65. For the connection between warfare and aristocratic honor, see Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999), 121–88; Strickland, War and Chivalry, 98–182. 77  Actus, 385. 78  Actus, 385. Orderic, too, knew of Helias’ seizure of Bishop Hoel; OV iv, 194. Orderic dismissed this episode as one of youthful folly, one which was, moreover, remedied later by proper respect for the Church (OV iv, 198). 79  William of Malmesbury, GR, 566. 80  Wace, Roman de Rou, lines 9707 (‘grant orgoil’). Gaimar, too, implies a certain arrogance to Helias’ boast that he will defy Rufus; Lestorie des Engles, lines 5927–46.



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

79

far less hard-edged and more pious picture of Helias, described Helias as distinguished, upright, honorable, and ‘beloved of many for his virtues’; he was also physically strong, tall and slender, voluble and orally persuasive, gentle to the meek, harsh to the rebellious, strict in justice, and eager to perform good works for God.81 Ambition, pride, willingness to use violence and warfare to attain goals and make reputations – these are the fundamental features of an honorbased aristocracy. While it is true that nowhere do the sources claim that Helias came to support Henry for honor, glory, or reputation, since it seems clear that Helias shared these values with the other aristocrats of his day, it is not hard to imagine that these values may have helped motivate his decision to join Henry. The second category of personal or affective bond that may also have motivated Helias – emotional friendship – is clearly the most difficult to analyze historically. If it can be shown that Helias and Henry shared similar interests, a certain degree of geographic proximity and, especially, familiarity, then it may be possible to suggest that they were, in fact, friends.82 Certain words, too, can be read as signals of affective bonds of friendship; amor, amicitia, and familiaritas may, sometimes, refer to emotionally charged relationships. It is also true, however, that such a definition was neither uniform nor usual; indeed, one of the most common meanings of amicitia was merely ‘good-graces’ or ‘lack of animosity’ – conditions quite devoid of positive emotion. This emotionless sense of amicitia as marking a period of peace, even between men who might actually be enemies (and, hence, not ‘friends’) is commonly found in eleventh- and twelfth-century charters, in the Angevin administrative documents, and even in narrative sources.83 In one charter, a disputant settled his dispute with Marmoutier not so much because he agreed with the monk’s case, but out of amicitia.84 In another, a disputant settled with the monks of Saint-Aubin ‘on account of the true friendship and concord which he wished to have with his lords, the monks’.85 A third describes the amicitia which was mutually held by Count Geoffrey Martel and Bishop Gervais of Le Mans, despite, of course, the fact that the two had been locked in bitter warfare for much of the 1040s.86 Orderic also used amicitia to refer to a state of nonaggression. In one, Count Helias, wishing to go on crusade, formally requested amicitia from William Rufus, who, in this case, refused.87 In another, Ivo of Grandmesnil tried repeatedly to regain the amicitia regis, but to no avail; faced 81 

OV v, 232. Meddings, ‘Friendship Among the Aristocracy’, 193–6, citing modern sociological studies of friendship, sees these as three of the constitutive elements of friendship. 83  For the classic discussion of royal friendship and animosity, see John E. A. Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 2nd ed. (London, 1963), 87–109. For an example from administrative records of amicitia used to describe political alliance, see Rot. Litt. Pat., i, part 1, 27–8. 84  Cartulaire Blésois de Marmoutier, ed. Charles Métais (Blois, 1889–91), no. 34. 85  Cartulaire de Saint-Aubin, no. 135. For similar usage, see also nos. 53, 270. Amor was also used in similar formulae; nos. 70, 325, 345, 349. 86  Cartulaire de Saint-Aubin, no. 327. 87  OV v, 228: ‘deposco amiciciam ut vester fidelis vestram’. 82 

80

Richard E. Barton

with the king’s animositas, Ivo ceded his lands to Robert of Meulan and departed for the Holy Land, where he died.88 In all of these cases amicitia is to be translated more as ‘a formal state in which the party agreeing to amicitia will not do me harm’ than as the modern conception of ‘friendship’.89 And yet, Meddings is surely right to conclude that amicitia carried affective meaning and connotations in certain contexts.90 Althoff’s categorical statement that ‘in the middle ages friendship was not the expression of a subjective feeling or emotion, but rather a type of contract carrying with it an obligation of mutual help and support’, while unpersuasive on a prima facie basis, also serves to obscure clear examples of affective relationships between aristocrats. In one charter, for instance, we are told that a certain Landry Malesherbes died at Beaugency. He had been a ‘familiaris’ and ‘amicus’ of Ralph, lord of Beaugency, who, greatly saddened by Landry’s death, carried his friend’s body to La Trinité of Vendôme, arranged for its burial, and offered gifts to the monks.91 Count Geoffrey Jordan of the Vendômois held Ulricus Bucellus, his knight, with more affection and more love than all his other knights.92 Aimery of Toureil gave some vines to La Roë so that his friend Fulk, who had raised him from infancy, could become a canon there.93 Some of the amici who so constantly support their friends in legal and disputing contexts in charters of this period were undoubtedly linked to their friends and lords as much by affect as by formal bonds of nonaggression.94 Furthermore, vernacular literature is also rife with images of affective friendship. One need only cite Roland’s lament at the death of his friend Oliver and the famous tale of the identical friends Ami and Amile to suggest that the motif of strong affective relationships ran deeply throughout twelfth-century chansons and romances.95 88  OV vi, 18. Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley, 1993), 86–7, cites another case from the Old French Turpin in which Charlemagne restored to his friendship all those whom he had previously removed from his love. 89  Meddings, ‘Friendship Among the Aristocracy’, 188–9, notes this prevalence of this use of amicitia and offers other examples of it. Althoff, Family, Friends and Followers, 67–90, discusses amicitia exclusively in terms of a contract of mutual support. 90  Meddings, ‘Friendship Among the Aristocracy’, 188. Historians of monasticism have for long recognized the potency of emotional, affective friendships; see, for instance, Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience, 350–1250 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1988). 91  Cartulaire de l’abbaye cardinale de la Trinité de Vendôme, ed. Charles Métais, 6 vols. (Paris, 1893–7), ii, no. 329. 92  Cartulaire de la Trinité, ii, no. 402: ‘fere omnibus aliis suis militibus cariorem et familiorem habuit’. 93  Archives départementales de la Mayenne, H 154, fols. 26–7: ‘Dedit etiam insimul dimidium arpentus vinee apud Riche Borc [sic], propter hoc videlicet ut Fulco amicus suus, quem ab infancia nutriverat, esset canonicus Beate Marie de Rota.’ 94  For some examples, see Cartulaire de Saint-Aubin, nos. 120, 152, 187, 195, 322, 369; Cartulaire de la Trinité, i, no. 189 and ii, nos. 530, 538, 571; Chartularium, no. 109; AD de la Mayenne, H154, fols. 20r–v, 82v. 95  Song of Roland, lines 2018–30; Ami et Amile: chanson de geste, ed. Peter Dembowski (Paris, 1969). Meddings, ‘Friendship Among the Aristocracy’, 189–204, offers many other examples from Old French literature.



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

81

It is one thing to argue that friendships were both possible and perhaps numerous in eleventh- and twelfth-century aristocratic society. It is quite another, however, to demonstrate that Helias shared such an affective bond with Henry I. The burden of proof is high, not only in demonstrating that Helias and Henry shared proximity, similarity, and familiarity, but also that the descriptive language used by chroniclers such as Orderic Vitalis connoted emotion as much as the simple absence of aggression. Still, a fair amount of evidence exists to suggest the strong likelihood that Helias had come to know Henry in the period 1092–8, that they shared common interests and enemies, and, moreover, that they genuinely liked each other. If the depth of this relationship remains hard to judge, it will nevertheless become clear that Helias was on extremely good terms with, and was perhaps emotionally close to, Henry I. Orderic Vitalis provides the clearest evidence of such a bond. Writing about Helias’ interview with the captive Robert of Bellême shortly after Tinchebray, Orderic noted that Robert tried to get Helias to abandon his alliance with King Henry; Robert hoped that Helias would switch sides and help him restore Robert Curthose to lordship in Normandy. Unpersuaded by these arguments, Helias reminded Robert that he was Henry’s ally and that he had neither cause nor reason to break that alliance.96 Rather than break this bond, Helias offered instead to reconcile Robert with the victorious king. Orderic here wrote that ‘because the closest friendship existed between Henry and Helias’, this reconciliation was accomplished.97 This passage suggests both that Helias and Henry had formed a emotionally-neutral alliance and that there was a degree of personal connection that underlay and perhaps enhanced that alliance. Beyond Orderic’s bald statement that the two were friends, there is a variety of circumstantial evidence to suggest that this may well have been an affective relationship. For one, the two men possessed similar interests and operated in close proximity to each other for most of the 1090s. The crucial fact here was Henry’s seizure of Domfront in 1092; from this base, Henry waged war against both his own brother, Duke Robert Curthose, and against local enemies, especially Robert of Bellême.98 Domfront, an important fortified town on the border of Normandy and Maine, had been controlled by the Bellême family through much of the eleventh century. The coup which delivered the town to Henry thus initiated, or perhaps reinvigorated, a cycle of warfare which engulfed both sides of the Manceau–Norman border, and pushed Henry into a military alliance with a number of Manceau lords. Orderic noted, for instance, that Henry allied himself with Geoffrey of Mayenne and Hugh of Sillé-le-Guillaume, two of the major castellans of northern Maine who had long opposed Robert of Bellême.99 Henry is also explicitly stated to have become involved at this 96 

OV vi, 94–8. Helias says he ‘est confoederatus’ with Henry. This word, of course, is emotionally neutral. 97  OV vi, 98: ‘et quia inter regem et comitem maxima familiaritas erat optinuit’. 98  OV iv, 256–8, 292; v, 26. See also Hollister, Henry I, 85–100. 99  OV iv, 292.

82

Richard E. Barton

time in the bitter feud surrounding Saint-Céneri, whose lord, Robert Giroie, was both well-known to Orderic and a bitter enemy of Robert of Bellême.100 Robert Giroie was tightly connected by kinship and proximity to the Manceaux lords of the castles located around Le Mans, including Pagan of Mondoubleau (who held Ballon at this time), Rotrou of Montfort-le-Rotrou, and Avesgaud of Connerré.101 Indeed, the two former lords were guarding Saint-Céneri for Robert Giroie when a rumor went about that Robert had died in battle; panicking, they surrendered the castle to Robert of Bellême, and Robert Giroie was forced into temporary exile (presumably either with Henry or his Manceaux friends).102 During these conflicts which raged in Normandy between 1092 and 1096, therefore, Henry I worked closely and intimately with the lords of northern Maine. If Helias does not make Orderic’s list of Manceaux lords with whom Henry allied during his lordship over Domfront, we may nevertheless suspect with reasonable confidence that the two did meet at this time, and in very similar circumstances to those which bound Henry to Geoffrey of Mayenne, Hugh of Sillé, Rotrou of Montfort, and Pagan of Mondoubleau. At about the same time that Henry seized Domfront, Helias had made himself count of Le Mans. Just as Henry spent the next four years fighting Robert of Bellême, the sources reveal that Count Helias, too, spent most of the period 1092–98 fighting against Robert of Bellême.103 It is logical to assume that the men who fought with Henry against Robert of Bellême were largely the same men who supported Helias against Robert of Bellême and, therefore, that Helias and Henry had both common opportunity and common cause to meet and join forces. The charter and chronicle sources confirm this assumption, despite never specifically linking Helias and Henry. Thus Geoffrey of Mayenne was an important ally of both. He is said to have aided Henry and Robert Giroie in 1092, and he is likely to have been one of the major players in Helias’ accession to the countship in 1092. It will be recalled that Geoffrey of Mayenne had played the count-maker in 1090 by sending to Italy for Hugh of Este, who nevertheless proved to be incapable of the demanding role. Hugh’s decision to sell his comital rights to Helias and return home to Italy would thus almost 100 

OV iv, 292; Robert Giroie went raiding with Henry’s household troops. On the Giroie family, see J. M. Maillefer, ‘Une famille aristocratique aux confins de la Normandie: les Géré au Xie siècle’, in Autour du pouvoir ducal normand, Xe–XIIe siècle, Cahiers des annales de Normandie, 17 (Caen, 1985), 175–206; Gérard Louise, La seigneurie de Bellême, Xe–XIIe siècles, in Le PaysBas Normand, 2 vols. (Flers, 1990–1), i, nos. 199–202, pp. 316–17. 101  Saint-Céneri is located directly on the border of modern Maine and Normandy and is in close proximity to Robert of Bellême’s stronghold of Alençon and the Manceaux castles of Fresnay, Beaumont, Sillé, and Ballon. Montfort-le-Rotrou and Connerré are on the Huisne River, closer to Le Mans. For Robert Giroie’s alliance with Pagan and Rotrou, see OV iv, 292. For his marriage alliance with Avesgaud, see OV iv, 296 and n. 1. 102  OV iv, 292–4. 103  OV iv, 300; v, 226–34. Latouche, Histoire du comté, 46 n. 4, dates this warfare rather narrowly, to the period 1096–98. But Orderic’s several passages on Robert of Bellême clearly imply that warfare occupied the Norman border for most of the period 1092–98 (see OV v, 226).



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

83

certainly have been approved by Geoffrey of Mayenne, who by the 1090s was one of the most experienced soldiers and statesmen in Maine. Rotrou of Montfort and Pagan of Mondoubleau, who fought with Henry and Robert Giroie, also frequently appear as comrades of Helias in his first few years as count. Pagan, for instance, had held Ballon against Curthose in 1088 and would do so again against Rufus in 1098; when Helias is said to have seized Ballon in 1089 and tried to make himself count, we can again be nearly certain that Pagan was thereby offering assistance to Helias.104 Both Rotrou and Pagan appeared as judges or important attestors in Count Helias’ court between 1092 and 1096.105 Indeed, both Ballon and Montfort lay in the region of Maine where comital authority remained strong, and thus there is every reason to believe that the lords of these castles were important members of Helias’ entourage and, perhaps, familia.106 Finally, Orderic reveals that the standard-bearer of Count Helias’ military household was none other than Herveus of Montfort, most likely one of Rotrou’s relatives.107 All of this circumstantial evidence suggests that the same men who were aiding Henry I in his struggles with Curthose and Robert of Bellême were close companions and supporters of Helias in the years after he became count of Maine. Since, moreover, Helias and Henry are independently reported to have been fighting the same common enemy in the same region, and since they shared companions in that struggle, it seems hard to believe that Helias and Henry did not also come to know each other during these conflicts. After all, they shared both similarities (enmity towards Robert of Bêlleme, and lordship and/or friendship with the same men) and proximity (a common field of operations between Domfront, Alençon, and Le Mans). The final bit of evidence necessary to prove an affective relationship between Henry and Helias concerns the two men’s aptitude for friendship. Here, it may only be necessary to recall that Orderic specifically noted the ‘great friendship’ which bound them together. Still, other, more circumstantial, evidence suggests that Orderic was not merely engaging in rhetorical exercises. For one, Helias was also considered to be the ‘friend’ of Geoffrey Martel, eldest son and heir presumptive to Count Fulk IV of Anjou. Here again the evidence is difficult to 104  For Pagan’s activities in 1088 and 1098, see OV iv, 154 and v, 242. For Helias’ seizure of Ballon, see Actus, 385. In the context of the 1088 campaign, Orderic states that ‘Pagan of Mondoubleau held the castle of Ballon with other rebels’. Despite Orderic’s comment that Helias had submitted to Curthose, it is not difficult to reconcile his account with that of the Actus and therefore see Helias as one of Pagan’s fellow rebels. 105  For Rotrou as judge, see Cartulaire de Saint-Vincent, no. 564. For Pagan as an important witnesses in Count Helias’ charters, see Cartulaire de la Couture, no. 24; Cartulaire du chapitre royal du Saint-Pierre-de-la-Cour, du Mans, ed. S. Menjot d’Elbenne and L.-J. Denis (Le Mans, 1903–7), nos. 10, 12. 106  Richard E. Barton, Lordship in the County of Maine, c. 890–1160 (Woodbridge, 2004), chapter 3. 107  OV v, 238. The count’s signifer is probably also the Herveus of Montfort who appears in Cartulaire Manceau de Marmoutier, ii, 169 (1104–24) and in Cartulaire de Saint-Vincent, no. 553.

84

Richard E. Barton

parse, and the distinctions between emotional and neutral friendship even harder to unpack. The association between Helias and Geoffrey Martel also began during the 1090s, when the Angevins lent Helias frequent military assistance against first Robert Curthose and then William Rufus.108 One source tells us, in fact, that Geoffrey Martel fought many times against Rufus during the period when Rufus ruled Normandy (1096–1100),109 and it was undoubtedly during these campaigns that Helias and Geoffrey came to know each other. Their common experience as juvenes – young aristocrats either not yet entrusted with authority or in positions where they had to fight to acquire what they felt were their birthrights – probably helped cement a friendship.110 Where Helias had inherited nothing, had been forced to fight for Le Mans, and had even been dispossessed of Maine by William Rufus,111 Geoffrey Martel also had been temporarily disinherited by his own father.112 Here there are clear parallels with the case of Henry I, for Henry too faced in the 1090s a career of limited opportunity in the face of his brothers’ power and wealth. Given their respective positions, it is significant that in 1103, after Helias was secure in Maine, he chose to support Geoffrey’s campaign to regain his status as heir to Anjou. It is true that by this time Geoffrey had already been betrothed to Helias’ daughter,113 and that Helias thus may well have aided him out of obligation; still, it is also not necessary to divorce obligation from potential affection. And, as matters turned out after Geoffrey’s death in 1106, Helias was perfectly capable of selecting another member of the Angevin comital family as the future husband of his daughter. This suggests, then, that Helias’ support for Geoffrey may well have been motivated by personal affection. And so, when an Angevin annalist reports that Geoffrey had ‘taken up friendship with Count Helias’,114 it seems just as likely that this friendship included affective elements as it was predicated on ‘co108  For the chronology of these conflicts, see Latouche, Histoire du comté, 40–53, and the relevant passages of OV v, 227–61. 109  ‘Gesta consulum Andegavorum’, 66. 110  On this culture of restless noble youths, see Georges Duby, ‘Youth in Aristocratic Society: Northwestern France in the Twelfth Century’, in Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (Berkeley, 1977), 112–22. Meddings, ‘Friendship among the Aristocracy’, 199, also cites Duby’s model as a potential breeding ground for affective relationships. 111  The famous story of the ‘white bachelor’ reinforces Helias’ liminal status, even as late as 1100. Orderic reported that Rufus’ garrison in Le Mans used to joke about Helias’ longings for the countship, calling him the ‘white bachelor’ after the tunic he wore to parley with them (OV v, 302–6). As Marjorie Chibnall has noted (OV v, 304 n. 1), the joke here lay in the fact that the word bacularis carried the connotation of ‘aspirant to knighthood or office’; by using the term, the garrison, despite the outward chivalry of the peace negotiations, was thus pointedly reminding Helias of his still unrequited aspiration to the countship. Only after no reinforcements proved forthcoming did the garrison officially recognize his claim and proclaim him count. 112  In 1103 Fulk Rechin tried to disinherit Geoffrey in favor of his younger son, Fulk Junior; ‘Annales de Saint-Aubin’, 43–4. 113  ‘Gesta consulum Andegavorum’, 66. This betrothal dates to at least 1098; above, n. 51. 114  ‘Gesta consulum Andegavorum’, 43: ‘Praedictus Gaufridus cognomento Martellus voluntatem patris sui praesentiens, sumpta amicitia cum Helia comite Cenomannensi, contra eum arma



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

85

operative’ negotiations. Certainly Helias proved remarkably loyal to Geoffrey Martel, choosing to support Geoffrey in the sieges of Marçon and Briollay in 1103 and that of Candé in 1106.115 And it should not be forgotten that Helias brought Geoffrey Martel with him when he joined Henry I’s Norman campaign of 1105.116 Thus, just as Helias had made himself the indispensable friend of Henry I, so had he become the friend of Geoffrey Martel, heir presumptive to the county of Anjou. Helias’ relationship with Geoffrey suggests, then, that Helias’ personality was conducive to long-term, affective relationships. Indeed, all of the sources offer a uniformly positive picture of the Manceau count’s character and actions. The evidence for his personality is, of course, simultaneously the most convincing and the most uncertain of the evidence for his aptitude for friendship – convincing because of the type of person portrayed by the narrative sources and uncertain simply because of the difficulty of evaluating the historicity of these sources’ prose. Orderic’s picture of Helias is vivid. Once he had shaken off the excesses of youth, Helias was for Orderic both the perfect knight and the perfect Christian ruler.117 Noteworthy both for his great respect for Christian religion and for his governance according to Christian principles, Helias was gentle to peace-lovers and stern to rebels. Best of all, he fasted every Friday out of respect for Christ’s passion, he protected churches and the poor, and he prayed so often and with such devotion that his ‘cheeks were wet with tears’. Helias was also distinguished, upright, honorable, and ‘beloved of many for his virtues’; he was physically strong, tall and slender, voluble and orally persuasive, and strict in justice.118 Throughout Orderic’s narrative Helias acts with probity, never out of pride;119 he exhibits proper attitudes of deference, respect, and fraternal chivalry. In his relationships with other aristocrats he scrupulously held himself to a code of honest service and loyalty; blunt and fair in his dealings, he contrasted favorably with the indolent Robert Curthose and the irascible and inconstant William Rufus. Other sources, if less forthcoming, echo this image. Wace, who admittedly was dependent on Orderic and other earlier sources, nonetheless believed that Helias engendered strong feelings among his men (presumably men like Pagan, Rotrou, and Geoffrey of Mayenne): ‘They thought very highly of him, loved corripuit ac mox Mazonem castellum super patrem suum obsedit primoque impetu cepit et incendit.’ 115  ‘Annales de Saint-Aubin’, 43; Latouche, Histoire du comté, pièce justificative no. 4; ‘Annales dites de Renaud’, 90. 116  For Geoffrey’s presence on this campaign, see ‘Annales de Saint-Aubin’, 44; OV vi, 68. 117  Referring to the episode in which Helias kidnapped the bishop of Le Mans in 1090, Orderic wrote: ‘Once established in power Helias showed a great improvement in his way of life, and was outstanding for his many virtues. He deserves praise for the honour that he showed the clergy and the church of God, and for his daily, devout attendance at Mass and other divine offices; he showed justice to his subjects and gave peace to the poor as far as he was able’ (OV iv, 194–8). 118  OV v, 232. 119  As has been shown above, however, other authors commented on Helias’ pride in ways designed to underscore his standard aristocratic code of behavior. See above, nn. 76–81.

86

Richard E. Barton

him and wanted him to be their lord, as is the custom with many people who desire new lords.’ 120 Moreover, Wace wrote that ‘Helias was a good knight, handome, noble and very robust’.121 The author of the Actus, and the author who may have known Helias personally, was characteristically circumspect in his description of secular figures; still he was willing to describe Helias as ‘noble’, ‘virile’, and ‘generous’.122 Orderic’s contrasting images of Helias, the paragon of chivalric and religious virtue, and the two elder sons of the Conqueror must also be seen, however, as something of a rhetorical device. The literary Helias serves as the ideal against which both Curthose and Rufus are to be held; Helias is a created figure, made perfect and virtuous by the necessities of Orderic’s narrative. Yet if we cannot fully trust Orderic’s image of Helias, Latouche was surely correct to state that without a basic framework of truth, Orderic’s literary picture of the count would simply not work; it would not have been believed by his contemporaries, nor would it had have been echoed by other writers.123 Thus, just as we can be certain that Robert of Bellême did merit at least part of his negative image, so too can we be certain that a kernel of truth existed at the center of Orderic’s picture of Helias. Given the evidence of Helias’ actions, this kernel of truth would seem to depict a man driven by notions of fairness, loyalty, and honesty – dare we say it, a likable and trustworthy man. This is not to argue that Helias was without ambition, pride, even a bit of righteous arrogance – for he certainly was.124 But in the aristocratic world, pride, arrogance, and ambition were positive attributes. Moreover, if even half of the virtue attributed to Helias by Orderic was merited, it does not seem at all farfetched to suppose that Helias was the type of person who could make and retain strong affective relationships. If the preceding evidence seems to suggest that Helias had the opportunity, motivation, and personality to enter affective relationships with Henry and Geoffrey Martel, it is still necessary to account for Helias’ puzzling decision to abandon Henry’s army in the midst of its 1105 Norman campaign. After all, despite impressive victories at Bayeux and Caen, where Helias is said to have earned much honor, Orderic describes the failure of the campaign before Falaise and, moreover, attributes this failure to Helias. If, as has been argued above, Helias’ honor, ambition, and personal inclination brought him to support Henry in the first place, one might well ask why the count should have abandoned his friend in the middle of the campaign. Orderic states, quite simply, ‘Then the king went on to Falaise but did not storm it because Count Helias withdrew 120 

Wace, Roman de Rou, lines 9755–68. Wace, Roman de Rou, lines 9987–92: ‘Helies fu boen chevaliers, bels fu e genz e bien pleniers; a cels qui garder le deveient/ e qui es boies le meteient/ ne fist mie malvais semblant/ ne ne s’ala humiliant.’ 122  Helias is a ‘nobilis adolescens’ (Actus, 385); he and his men act ‘viriliter’ (402); and he is called a ‘liberalis comes’ (403). 123  Latouche, Histoire du comté, 45. 124  See above pp. XX–YY. 121 



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

87

at the request of the Normans.’ 125 Other sources simply note that Henry subdued the greater portion of Normandy before returning to England, perhaps to raise money to continue his campaign.126 This problem was particularly vexing for Hollister,127 who rejected the notion that Helias would abandon a friend or that Henry would not have raised sufficient money to complete the conquest of Normandy. As a result, Hollister suggested that the failure of the 1105 expedition was linked to the movements of Archbishop Anselm, who was moving towards Normandy and was threatening to excommunicate Henry. Hollister speculates that Helias, whom he sees as a man ‘of outstanding piety’, proved unwilling to associate himself with a potential excommunicate (Henry). A letter from Anselm to Helias and the links existing between Anselm, Bishop Hildebert of Le Mans, and Helias, provide Hollister with a reasonable explanation for why Helias left:128 the count cared more for his soul than his friendships. As the only serious explanation offered for Helias’ departure before Falaise, this hypothesis deserves serious consideration. Indeed, it is certainly possible. Yet, as has been demonstrated above, Helias’ piety was only one facet of his personality. Indeed, it might well be argued that his piety was the most conventional and idealized of the personality traits imposed on him by Orderic; certainly his willingness to risk excommunication in seizing and imprisoning Bishop Hoel in 1089 suggests that Helias had not always placed piety before political opportunity.129 Thus, while Hollister’s theory is certainly possible, it is not, perhaps, the only reasonable explanation for Helias’ behavior. Other, more self-centered, motivations were equally likely to have weighed on Helias’ mind. For instance, Eadmer reveals that the force behind Anselm’s journey towards Normandy (and potential excommunication) was, in fact, Adela, countess of Blois and Henry I’s sister. Anselm met her at Blois, where she convinced him to accompany her to Chartres so as to help persuade Henry to drop his antagonism towards Anselm. Eventually Adela, Anselm, and Henry met at Laigle on 21 July 1105 to hammer out an end to the Investiture Controversy.130 Count Helias may well have been alarmed by reports of the movements of the Countess of Blois–Chartes as she, and presumably her familia, approached the borders of Maine.

125 

OV vi, 78–80. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia, 720–2; John of Worcester, The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1995–  ), iii, 106–8. 127  Hollister, 189–90: ‘It strains belief that ... Count Helias, an old and close friend of Henry I’s who had a reputation for chivalry and honor, would desert the army of his lord and amicus at the height of a castle siege.’ 128  Hollister, Henry I, 190–1. The relevant sources are Eadmer, Historia novorum in Anglia, ed. Martin Rule, RS 81 (London, 1884), 166; Sancti Anselmi cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1946–61), iv, epistles 239–41, v, epistle 466. Hollister concluded that ‘there seems to be no other reasonable explanation of Helias’ behavior’ (191). 129  Actus, 385. As has been noted above, Orderic explained away this episode by noting that Helias’ morals and piety improved as he aged. 130  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 164–6; with commentary by Hollister, Henry I, 191–6. 126 

88

Richard E. Barton

It is also very possible that affairs in Anjou drew both Helias and Geoffrey Martel away from Henry’s army. Although the chronology of events in Anjou is much harder to piece together in the absence of detailed narrative sources, two points might be worth remembering here. First, the status of the succession to the comital title seems to have been an open question during the period 1103–6. Although the eldest son, Geoffrey Martel’s status as heir was challenged by his father’s new wife, Bertrade, and by her desire to promote her own children at Geoffrey’s expense. Thus, in 1103, Count Fulk had attempted to disinherit Geoffrey in favor of his younger son, Fulk Junior.131 Again in 1106, somewhat cryptic comments in the Gesta consulum Andegavorum suggest that Fulk and his wife were again attempting to supplant Geoffrey.132 Given the intrigues that were then current in Angevin politics, it is not inconceivable that Geoffrey, and his future father-in-law Helias, might have been called away to protect Geoffrey’s rights in Anjou. Second, this period in Angevin history is marked by a constant series of baronial feuds and rebellions, many of which can be dated only generally to the period before 1109.133 Geoffrey Martel and Helias are explicitly mentioned in sieges of baronial castles in 1103, 1104, and 1106.134 It is also not impossible that Geoffrey and Helias, who seem to have been acting in concert during these years, were drawn from Henry’s army to deal with Angevin baronial rebellions. It is also possible to rethink Orderic’s cryptic comment that Helias ‘withdrew at the request of the Normans’ in ways that shed new light on Helias’ behavior. Hollister dismissed Orderic’s comment with his usual wit, noting that ‘the majority of men on both sides were Normans’.135 Yet this may have been precisely what Orderic intended to say; that is, that both sides asked Helias to leave, probably because they had already come to a peace arrangement. Indeed, the sources tell us that Henry and Curthose had conducted at least two peace conferences in the spring of 1105, one in England and the other during the week of Pentecost at Cintheaux between Caen and Falaise.136 If neither of these attested conferences succeeded, it is nevertheless certain that peace, or at least a truce, was reached at the latest by mid summer 1105; the fact that Henry met with his sister Adela and with Anselm at Laigle on 27 July indicates that peace had already been attained.137 It seems very likely that when Henry’s campaign

131 

‘Annales de Saint-Aubin’, 43. ‘Gesta consulum Andegavorum’, 66: ‘Sequente anno Martellus insidiis suorum et noverce, patre ut ferunt consentiente, Cande castro occisus est.’ ‘Annales dites de Renaud’, 90, offer a different version, in which Helias is present. 133  Halphen, Le comté, 202–3. 134  Halphen, Le comté, 174, lists sieges of Marçon, Briollay, La Chartre, Thouars, and Candé. 135  Hollister, Henry I, 190. 136  For the conference in England, see ASC, s.a. 1106; William of Malmesbury, GR, 722. For the conference at Cintheaux held between 28 May and 3 June 1105, see OV vi, 80. 137  In order to travel from Falaise to Laigle (which is located on the southeastern border of Normandy), Henry would have to have made peace with Curthose and with Robert of Bellême. 132 



Henry I, Count Helias and Tinchebray

89

began to grind to a halt in front of Falaise in May or June 1105,138 and when Adela’s pleas for suspension of hostilities reached Henry’s ears, Henry decided that a truce was needed. The truce, which was necessary to allow him to journey to Laigle to meet with Anselm, would consequently have required Henry to dismiss his allies, counts Helias and Geoffrey Martel. Thus Helias would have left Falaise precisely because Henry had a more important agenda: making peace with Anselm. Having been asked by the Normans – that is, by Henry, Adela, and, perhaps, by Curthose – Helias retired to Maine or Anjou while Henry put his ecclesiastical house in order. This hypothesis makes as much sense as the piety scenario suggested by Hollister. Moreover, it allows an interpretation which does not call into question Helias’ relationship with Henry I. Rather than abandoning Henry in his hour of need, Helias may well have retired at the collective request of the Normans who, for other reasons, needed a respite from the fighting. All of this evidence suggests only the possibility that Helias of Maine established a meaningful affective relationship – and perhaps a friendship – with Henry I. There is of course no way to know for sure the feelings which Helias and Henry may have had – or may not have had – for each other. Indeed, it is possible to view the amicitia which existed between the two as merely ‘cooperative’ or even as the simple absence of malice. And yet in the case of Henry and Helias, there was no bad blood that needed to be soothed over. Their amicitia was clearly not designed to end a state of animositas. Rather, it seems predicated on existing feelings of intimacy, trust, and loyalty. The evidence marshaled here – although circumstantial, to be sure – suggests, then, that Orderic’s statement about the ‘greatest friendship’ which existed between Helias and Henry ought to be understood as something more intimate, more personal, and more emotional than the rational sort of amicitia associated with treaties or the end of disputes. Thus it seems possible to suggest that between 1092 and 1106 Count Helias of Maine probably established intimate friendships with Geoffrey Martel and Henry I based upon their common experiences as young aristocrats fighting for prestige, power, and survival in the border wars that wracked southern Normandy and northern Maine. These friendships carried important political implications, especially given the long history of animosity that existed between Helias and previous dukes of Normandy. Henry I, by accepting and cultivating the friendship of Helias of Maine – a friendship that his brother Rufus had pointedly rejected, was able to achieve what forty years of military effort on the part of his father and brother could not: peace on his southern border.

138  Hollister (Henry I, 189) concluded that Henry’s campaign had come to a halt (and, consequently, that Helias had left) before Pentecost of 1105. Yet Orderic’s chronology does not permit this strict a dating. Indeed, Orderic states that after the peace conference at Cintheaux failed, the two sides ‘set about waging war with all their forces’. Presumably this still meant combat around Falaise. There is thus no reason to believe that Helias had left Henry’s army before June 1105; he may well have stayed on with the king until he was ‘asked by the Normans’ to leave.

90

Richard E. Barton

The likely existence of these friendships also suggests that personality and horizontal bonds mattered a great deal in medieval politics. The case of Helias and Henry suggests that those intangibles that are so difficult to discern from our sources mattered most – decades of war in Maine were ended, after all, by the establishment of a personal relationship based upon friendship and common experience, not by vertical bonds of lordship, not by marriage alliances, not even (or at least not primarily) by pragmatic self-interest. In this way, it is the intangible qualities of interpersonal relationships – qualities shaped by ambition, pride, perceptions of honor, bonds of neighborhood and community, and even affection – and not the more commonly studied material or institutional bonds, which shaped and determined events. Helias of Maine helped deliver Normandy to Henry I not because he owed lordship to Henry, nor because it was in his clear interest to defeat Robert Curthose. Instead, Helias acted out of a combination of personal feelings, including his own pride and ambition as well as his close relationship with Henry I. The fact that such horizontal personal bonds could make such a difference in politics should not, perhaps, be very surprising to students of the Anglo-Norman and Angevin world. It is well known how the individual personalities of Anglo-Norman rulers shaped the outcomes of their reigns. The same is true for Henry I and Helias of Maine. The construction of their friendship depended as much on the personality of the king as on that of Helias. The explication of that personality has already been effected by Warren Hollister, who knew it better than I ever will, but it is perhaps worth closing by recalling the famous words of William of Malmesbury, that Henry I ‘preferred to contend by the council than by the sword’.139 I interpret this to mean, at least in part, ‘by constructing personal relationships’, a policy which is clearly evident in Maine. For not only did Henry pursue the neutrality and possibly friendship of Helias, he also purchased the amicitia of many of the castellans of northern Maine with treasure, land grants, and/or bastard daughters.140 Yet it is interesting to note that none of these new ‘friends’ in Maine came to help Henry at Alençon in 1118 when Fulk V of Anjou attacked Henry there.141 Their amicitia, after all, was simply that of passive, emotionless neutrality. It was nothing like the familiaritas that existed between Henry and Helias, a familiaritas that reflected affection developed during their common experience in the turbulent 1090s.

139 

William of Malmesbury, GR, 744. OV vi, 142–3, echoed this sentiment: ‘The wise king, who always preferred peace to war from which loss and damage are usually bred ...’. 140  I have examined Henry I’s policy towards Maine in an unpublished paper entitled ‘Lordship and Pacification: The Norman Dukes in Maine, c.1060–1135’. Among the Manceaux lords Henry attempted to win to his side were the barons of Mayenne, Laval, Beaumont, and Sourches. Even Angevin chroniclers noted Henry’s efforts to buy the support of Angevin and Manceaux barons; see ‘Gesta consulum Andegavorum’, 68. 141  For the battle of Alençon, see ‘Gesta consulum Andegavorum’, 155–61. Josèphe Chartrou, L’Anjou de 1109 à 1151 (Paris, 1929), 10–13, accepts this account with reservation. For a more critical reading, see Richard E. Barton, ‘Writing Warfare, Lordship and History: The Gesta Consulum Andegavorum’s Treatment of the Battle of Alençon’, ANS 27 (2004), 32–51.

6 Robert of Beaumont, Count of Meulan and Leicester: His Lands, his Acts, and his Self-Image David Crouch

Robert of Beaumont, lord of Beaumont-le-Roger and Pont Audemer, count of Meulan and Leicester, died in 1118. He belonged to a generation of the AngloNorman aristocracy which experienced critical changes in what it meant to be an aristocrat, and which enjoyed the enormous opportunities presented by the conquest of England by the Norman dynasty. Unfortunately, his generation was the one which immediately preceded the expansion in the production of written acts by lay people so suggestively explored by Michael Clanchy. The collection of Robert’s acts does not therefore result in much of a harvest, quite unlike the hundreds of acts which survive for his sons. In the case of Count Robert, only thirteen full Latin texts survive, although there are notices of over twice that many. But such as survive are important. Few though they are, they reveal how the Anglo-Norman aristocracy was already changing its attitude to the written act, and how pre-Conquest English influences were having an impact on the aristocracy as much as the royal household. Robert’s career provides a frame for what we can learn from his written acts. He was a member of the first generation of the Anglo-Norman nobility. He fought on the field of Hastings as a young knight in Duke William’s army, and lived to lead a wing of Henry I’s army at Tinchebray forty years later. In between those two defining events, he was a loyal servant of the Conqueror, raised himself to great power at the court of William Rufus, and was there when Rufus’s reign ended abruptly and unexpectedly in a clearing in the New Forest. It was Robert who was principally responsible for raising Rufus’s brother, Henry, to the throne, and Robert was well known thereafter as the king’s friend, his chief supporter. But Robert’s story is not simply that of a successful courtier. He was at the heart of the rise of a new aristocracy and a new order in northern France. He took advantage of his opportunities, and he adapted and aggrandized himself to a level of power and wealth beyond the imagination of his predecessors. The biographical material for Robert’s life is not overwhelming. However we can say that he was born into one of the greater lineages of the duchy of Normandy a year or two before 1050. He was the son of Roger fitz Humphrey,

92

David Crouch

or Roger of Beaumont, one of the principal elder counsellors of Duke William, and he was probably named after his uncle, his father’s younger brother, Robert fitz Humphrey. His paternal lineage can be traced back to the Norman aristocracy that emerged during the reign of Duke Richard I (942–996) and his grandfather, Humphrey de Vieilles, was a great man at the court of Duke Richard II (996– 1026). Humphrey possessed, and had probably inherited, a great estate in the lower valley of the little river Risle, basing himself at the emerging port of Pont Audemer near the mouth of the Risle. Humphrey’s patrimony was added to by his son Roger, who extended his estates by acquiring by ducal favour a block of estates further upriver, south of the ducal fortress of Brionne, where the family erected a castle at Beaumont, from which Roger proudly took his name. These great Norman estates were the foundation of Robert’s power, but what made him exceptional was the marriage which his father entered into with Adeline, sister and eventual heiress of Count Hugh of Meulan. On Hugh’s childless death in late in 1080, Robert acquired by right of his mother the county of Meulan, which may not have been particularly extensive, but which made up for it by being a strategic object of desire for both Normans and Capetians. Meulan, with its bridge and island fortress in the Seine between Mantes and Poissy, and its sprawling hillside town on the right bank of the great river, was an independent power which in 1080 had already proved itself dangerous to the Capetians. Duke Richard II had drawn its first known count, Waleran, into a Norman orbit, perhaps as a result of Waleran’s alliance with Dreux, count of the Vexin, the duke’s friend. It was not therefore surprising that Count Hugh, son of Waleran, should have chosen to marry his sister into the Norman aristocracy. Robert’s acquisition of Meulan happened long before his father’s death, and it made him an independent force at the court of William the Conqueror. Meulan was a most important place to the Conqueror. The last count of the Vexin, a close associate of the Conqueror, had retired from the world in 1077, leaving King Philip of France to gain a considerable degree of power there by his  

For the early Beaumont family, David Bates, Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982), 100–2. Some elements of this paper were given at the conference ‘Records, Bureaucracy and Power in the Anglo-Norman Realm, 1066–1204’, at the National Archives, Kew, Saturday 27 March 2004.   For Adeline his mother, see OV iii, 240; see also no. 8, and Count Hugh’s reference to Henry de Beaumont as his nepos, Cartulary of Préaux, Archives départmentales de l’Eure, H 711, fol. 132v.   For the date of Robert’s succession to Meulan, G. H. White, ‘Robert de Beaumont and the Comté of Meulan’, Genealogist, new ser., 36 (1920), 173–8, whose dating was narrowed by S. N. Vaughn, ‘Robert of Meulan and Raison d’État in the Anglo-Norman State, 1093–1118’, Albion 10 (1978), 355 and n. The new edition of the Conqueror’s acts make it clear that Robert did not succeed till after July 1080, David Bates, ed., Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I, 1066–87 (Oxford, 1998), nos. 175, 235. On the extent and significance of the county of Meulan, David Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1986), 71–4.



Robert of Beaumont

93

acquisition of the count’s former towns of Pontoise and Mantes. The region had been further destabilized by the war between Curthose and his father which had taken place in the Norman Vexin. Robert of Beaumont’s succession to Meulan in 1080 was a godsend to King William, allowing him to claw back some influence in the only region where Norman and Capetian armies confronted each other head to head and at a time when Norman power was in decline. The Conqueror’s death in due course added considerably to Count Robert’s domains. Robert and his younger brother, Henry, had plainly grown close to William Rufus throughout the 1080s. They could expect to benefit from his accession, and Henry was indeed one of the first major beneficiaries of Rufus’s generosity. Before the end of 1088 an earldom had been constructed for Henry based on Warwick. Rufus has to have made his arrangements for Henry of Beaumont in consultation with his father and his brother, for it involved the assignment to him of most of the family’s English lands, which were largely noted as belonging to Robert of Meulan in the Domesday Survey. This unusual family arrangement was made while Henry’s father was still alive and active, and involved the transfer of a major landed estate away from his elder brother. It is tempting to suggest that the royal assets which Robert of Meulan had acquired in England before 1100 in Norfolk, Berkshire and Dorset may have been compensation for what he had lost when the earldom of Warwick was created. Robert and Henry also seem to have had some ambitions to benefit from the generosity of Robert Curthose, the new duke of Normandy. Robert of Meulan in particular appears as a prominent satellite of the ducal court in 1089, after the fuss over Rufus’s succession had died down. Considering the location of his lands, it was imperative for Count Robert to be in Normandy and the Île de France. But the instability of Duke Robert’s court made it a dangerous place to pursue political advantage. The year 1090 was difficult for Count Robert. As Orderic Vitalis tells the story, his father had been offered the castle and lordship of Brionne on the Risle in central Normandy as an exchange for the castle of Ivry on the Norman frontier. Roger had been given the keeping of Ivry by the Conqueror, and it would have formed a useful outpost for a Norman magnate with interests in the Vexin. On the other hand Brionne was a good exchange, as it lay between the family’s two honors of Pont Audemer and Beaumont. But in 1090, the patrimony was still in his aged father’s hands. So Count Robert contested the exchange vigorously. The result was that the count was arrested, Brionne was confiscated, and he could only be liberated after heavy bribes and delicate negotiations by his father. The duke got his way,

  For the Vexin in the reign of William I, David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact upon England (Berkeley, 1964), 72–3; David Bates, William the Conqueror (London, 1989), 178–9.   For the construction of the honor of Warwick, David Crouch, ‘The Local Influence of the Earls of Warwick, 1088–1242: A Study in Decline and Resourcefulness’, Midland History 21 (1996), 3–5.

94

David Crouch

and Ivry was surrendered for Brionne, but not until after a siege dislodged its reluctant garrison. The result of this difficulty was to align the Beaumonts firmly with Duke Robert’s brothers and enemies. Count Robert and Earl Henry were consistent supporters of William Rufus and Henry I until the forced reunion of England and Normandy in 1106. The culmination of this for Count Robert was the award to him of the earldom of Leicester, constructed on the foundation of the lands of Ivo of Grandmesnil, which he had taken as pledge when Ivo was forced out of England in 1101. In 1107 Count Robert of Meulan was undoubtedly the greatest subject in the Anglo-Norman realm, a man of allegedly incomparable wealth and influence. Around 1100 he had made a proper match for such a man as he was, and married Isabel, daughter of Count Hugh the Great of Vermandois. Isabel was the niece of King Philip I of France, and the granddaughter of Herbert, the last Carolingian count of the Vermandois. But she did not just bring royal and imperial blood into the Beaumont family, she brought also the honor of Elbeuf on the Seine, which had once been the possession of the counts of the Vexin and had apparently come to the counts of Vermandois by marriage. With Isabel, Count Robert had three sons, the twins Waleran and Robert, born in 1104, and another son, Hugh Poer (‘the Young’) born at some time between 1107 and 1110. There were also four daughters, Adelina, Alberada, Elizabeth and Mathilda, some of them deployed by their eldest brother in strategic marriages in the 1120s. By 1107, Count Robert controlled a remarkable complex of lands which spanned three realms. His possessions ran from the south bank of the Trent in Nottinghamshire to the Seine at La Grève in Paris, where the counts of Meulan had acquired a large part of the right bank from the bishops of Paris at some time in the eleventh century. What I want to spend the rest of this paper doing is explaining how they lived a princely life in three realms in the late eleventh and twelfth century. Key evidence for this is in their charters: the way they were constructed; the purposes for which they were constructed; and the concepts they contain. We can see Robert helping to form and propagate a new and more sophisticated way of being aristocratic. He was not alone in this: other great nobles of the Anglo-French cultural world were doing it too. But the counts of Meulan, being the greatest among their fellow counts, time and again were clearly at the cutting edge of the process of class formation.

  For the significance of the grant of Ivry, Vaughn, ‘Robert of Meulan’, 356. For the attempted exchange, OV iv, 204–8. An early twelfth-century source from the abbey of Bec implies that Count Robert fell foul of a court faction during the negotiations over Brionne, and its members animated the duke against him, see ‘On the Liberty of the Abbey of Bec’, in Sally N. Vaughn, The Abbey of Bec and the Anglo-Norman State, 1034–1136 (Woodbridge, 1981), 135–6.   For the construction of the earldom of Leicester, Levi Fox, ‘The Honour and Earldom of Leicester’, EHR 54 (1939), 385–93.   For Count Robert’s marriage, children and the honor of Elbeuf, Crouch, Beaumont Twins, 10–12, 15–16. No. 29 reveals he was not married in May 1099.



Robert of Beaumont

95

The first area Count Robert explored was that of image. The university library of Keele possesses the one and only original charter of Count Robert I of Meulan. It is particularly interesting for us, because it retains a large fragment of its seal. There is an antiquary’s drawing of the seal of around 1795, which is pretty accurate, and gives some fragments of the inscription around the seal’s rim, nowadays almost entirely worn away. The first point to note about it is that the seal is double-sided. At the date that this seal was commissioned in 1107, this was a thoroughly unusual thing for a count to aspire to. The doublesided seal had been in the eleventh century the prerogative of popes, emperors and kings. Edward the Confessor had one, and so did William the Conqueror after 1066. The Confessor’s, copied from the example of the German emperor, had shown him as a king enthroned on both sides of his seal, bearing different items of regalia on each. The Conqueror’s was different: it had a ‘majesty’ side showing William as king, but the reverse showed William as duke, armed, and carrying the gonfanon that was a symbol of his authority. The inscriptions around the rim point this out; on one side we are asked to observe the king, and on the other the ‘patronus’, the lord and father of the Normans. The prestige and expense of a two-sided seal became an object of conspicuous consumption for those few aristocrats with sufficient pride and money. It took money, because to impress such a seal, a special machine with a sophisticated screw press had to be constructed so that both of the silver seal dies could be applied to the soft wax cakes at once; an example of one of these medieval machines of c.1232 survives at Canterbury Cathedral.10 The first man in the Anglo-Norman realm that we know had the nerve to commission one was Odo, bishop of Bayeux, the Conqueror’s half-brother, that man of great wealth and even greater pretensions. From 1067, Odo was both bishop and earl of Kent. A drawing of his now-lost seal in the Book of Seals of Sir Christopher Hatton (c.1640) shows him on one side in the vestments of a bishop, and on the other in the military equipment of a Norman baron, just as he had featured on the Bayeux Tapestry.11 The seal is an obvious echo of his brother’s. Each face demonstrates the attributes of his different offices, rather oddly to our postGregorian eyes. Count Robert’s double-sided seal is not therefore unique nor is it the first of its sort, but it is in the same tradition of self-conscious aggrandizement through imagery as Bishop Odo’s. The faces on it are distinct. One side, the obverse, shows the count armed as knight and proclaims him as count of Meulan. The unusual pose shows him brandishing a spear: by the twelfth century this was an archaic mode of depicting a knight. The reverse side proclaims him as earl of Leicester, his second style. It shows him in civilian dress, but bearing (point down) the symbolic sign of his comital authority, his   For the document, see no. 4. For the drawing, J. Nichols, The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicestershire, 4 vols. in 8 (London, 1795–1815), i, part 1, appendix, 48. 10  Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England, 1200–1400, ed. J. Alexander and P. Binski (London, 1987), 399. 11  See English Romanesque Art, 1066–1200, ed. G. Zarnecki et al. (London, 1984), 79.

96

David Crouch

sword. This was clearly an attempt to parallel the ‘majesty’ side of a royal seal using the somewhat scanty repertoire of insignia alloted at that time to counts and earls. It is not unique as an image of comital authority. The effigy placed at some time in the twelfth century on the tomb of Count Fulk Nerra of Anjou at the abbey of Loches was apparently in an identical pose, according to the antiquary Gaignieres, who was a reliable witness to these things. More to the point, the image of Count Robert on his tomb effigy in the chapter house of Saint-Pierre of Préaux shows him in just such a pose, and it is possible that the sculptor of the effigy (which belongs to the years around 1170) copied the design from Robert’s seal.12 Robert’s successors as count of Meulan after 1118 maintained this tradition of obverse and reverse faces on their seals, while his successors as earls of Leicester did not. Robert II of Leicester in fact re-used the antique equestrian image of his father’s seal as count of Meulan, for whatever reason. Whether through filial piety or through a desire to maintain a dynastic link with Meulan and Normandy, the archaic brandishing knight adorned his acts as earl of Leicester and chief justiciar of England until he died in 1168. Although Earl Robert adopted in the 1140s the fashion of using classical intaglio gems as a personal counterseal applied on a ring to the back of his seal, neither he, nor his son or grandson adopted the double-faced seal.13 If we turn from the seal representations to the charters themselves, we find that Count Robert found ways of emphasizing his dignity through his style, or title. Count Hugh, the predecessor of Robert I, has not left many written acts, but one that does survive betrays his belief that it was not just an accident of birth which made him count of Meulan. In the opening arenga of a diploma he issued to the Norman abbey of Jumièges, Count Hugh praised and blessed God for, as he put it, ‘placing me in my father’s county’, and he made his grant in part, he said, because he wanted God to continue maintaining him as count of Meulan.14 This was not just the deterministic outlook of an Augustinian mind. Count Hugh belonged to a group of men who believed that their authority owed as much if not more to God than to the king or duke who was above them. On occasion – admittedly not frequently – Hugh’s contemporaries as counts of Anjou and counts of Vermandois declared they too were counts ‘by God’s grace’.15 In doing this they were carrying on a practice which counts of all sorts had indulged in since the tenth century: placing themselves on a level with bishops who had received anointing with holy oil.

12 

J. Mabillon, Annales ordinis sancti Benedicti occidentalium monachorum patriarchae, 6 vols. (Paris, 1703–39), v, 329. 13  English Romanesque Art, 1066–1200, 317. 14  Chartes de l’abbaye de Jumièges, ed. J-J. Vernier, Société des historiens de la Normandie, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1916), i, 76–8. 15  For some recent observations on this practice, Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, 1992), 258–67; David Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London, 1992), 13–14, 67–8.



Robert of Beaumont

97

You might wonder at the presumption of such counts, but they did have some rationale for their presumption. We find it as early as the mid-tenth century, when a clerk of the collegiate church of Compiègne wrote a paean of praise to the dignity of Count Arnulf of Flanders. Arnulf, he said, was worthy of the respect of all men and the mercy of God because he came to the aid of widows and orphans, and was the protector of the Church. The Church had developed a job description for a righteous ruler. In fact its history can be traced back as early as the seventh century when an Irish writer known as the Pseudo-Cyprian developed this ethic in a tract called the ‘Twelve Abuses Current in the World’. Later writers on kingship and aristocracy routinely quote it when justifying the virtue of a particular ruler, or the conduct ideally expected of one. So when an anonymous cleric composed a lament for William Longsword, count of Rouen – murdered in 942, incidentally, by the pious and merciful Count Arnulf – he bewailed a man who was: ‘maker and lover of peace; comforter and defender of the poor; maintainer of widows and orphans’.16 This for a man who had been born overseas as the son of a pagan Viking jarl. The invocation of this ethic speaks generally of God’s view of the legitimate and rightful use of power, which was why its phrases featured in the rituals for blessing swords, royal or princely. When William of Poitiers was looking for ways to eulogize the rule of Normandy by Duke William II in the 1050s he could do no better than to say that: ‘He listened to the cause of widows, orphans and the poor, acting with mercy and judging most justly. Since his fairmindedness restrained other people’s greed, no one, however powerful or close to him, dared to move the boundary of a weaker neighbour’s field or take anything from him.’ 17 This ethic lay behind the assumption of divine grace in solemn acts or diplomas of the counts of Meulan. Each successive count of Meulan declared at some time or other that he was count ‘by God’s grace’ (see act 31 below). When they did so they were declaring that their dignity and power was independent of the kings to whom they were nominally subject. They needed this belief to justify the power over life and death they possessed, and the rebellious moves they sometimes made against the king who was anointed by God to rule over peoples. In a poem addressed to the monks of Waleran’s abbey of Saint-Pierre of Préaux, Stephen of Rouen, monk of Bec, commented significantly on the recently dead Count Waleran II of Meulan, who had entered Préaux as a monk in his last months. Stephen noted the many counts and kings who were Waleran’s relatives, and said he had been a better man than them all in war, in conduct and in the council chamber. But he also said that Waleran’s 16 

For Arnulf, ‘Genealogiae comitum Flandriae’, ed. L. C. Bethmann, in MGH Scriptores, 9 (Hanover, 1851), 303: ‘ecclesiarum dei perfectissimus reparator, viduarum orfanorum ac pupillorum piisimus consolator, omnibus in necessitate auxilium ab eo petentibus clementissimus dispensator’. For the Pseudo-Cyprian, ‘De duodecim abusionibus saeculi’, in PL, iv, cols. 156–7. For William Longsword, J. Lair, Étude sur la vie et la mort de Guillaume Longue-épée duc de Normandie (Paris, 1893), 61–70 (verse 3). 17  William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, ed. and trans. R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), 80.

98

David Crouch

ambitions were uncontrolled and his lack of judgement led him to place himself above the duke of Normandy in the order of things.18 Royal power in France and England was a major fact of political life for the count of Meulan. It might be an obstacle for his ambitions, or it might be a means of opportunity. It might also give him ideas. The great spread of the estates of the counts of Meulan were as much an administrative problem in its way as the multiple domains of the Anglo-Norman king-dukes was for them. Count Robert I was closely involved in the government of William Rufus and Henry I. It is not surprising that he learned some lessons there. As long ago as 1888, John Horace Round noticed a significant clause in the constitution of the collegiate church of St. Mary de Castro in Leicester, whose first foundation had been by Count Robert in 1107. The constitution notes that the church enjoyed a grant of twenty shillings a year from the time of Count Robert I, to fund lamps in the church and to pay for rushes to lay in it in summer and straw in winter. The point is that the grant was to be paid out of the count’s exchequer. Similarly, as Stenton pointed out, there is a note of another and larger annual grant of £8 6s. made by the count, this time to his nuns of Préaux, again payable from his exchequer.19 On one level, we should not make too much of these references. The exchequer of the count of Meulan in England cannot have been anything near as formidable an institution as the royal Exchequer on which it was modelled. It can only have dealt with a relatively small amount of revenue. But it was so useful an institution that it was continued by Robert’s successors as earls of Leicester. Later evidence tells us that the officers of the earldom of Leicester had to meet at it in Leicester castle and present accounts for their areas of responsibility. On another level, however, the references are most important. They show the response of a great nobleman to an unprecedented problem of administration for a man of his class. He had to find ways of exerting control over distant officers he would not see for years at a time, so he promptly borrowed the model of bureaucratic centralization that he saw developing under his own nose at the court of Henry I. He did so for utilitarian reasons. We can suspect that he did so also because, like the double-sided seal, the exchequer gave Robert an avatar of dignity that he could borrow to bolster his own, because it belonged to a superior condition. The count’s charters demonstrate another such borrowing, which in its way is just as revealing. The pre-Conquest English monarchy developed a neat little written instrument called the writ: abrupt, direct, geared to administration and originally written in the vernacular. As is well known the writ form was adopted by the Normans and had a second Latinized lease of life first in England, and later in Normandy. The defining forms of the writ are its opening address to 18  Stephen of Rouen, ‘Carmen elegiacum de Waleranno comite Mellenti’, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, RS 82, 4 vols. (London, 1884–89), ii, 766–7. 19  Crouch, Beaumont Twins, 163–6.



Robert of Beaumont

99

named officers, its brevity, its authorising witnesses and its form of sealing on a tag cut from the base of the parchment strip. It is a striking thing that of the acts of Robert I of Meulan whose full texts survive (thirteen of them) the proportion which are drafted on the lines of the English writ or writ-charter is quite large. There are five. All relate (unsurprisingly) to England and three of them preserve addresses to named officers: Ralph the butler, Walter de Beaumais and Fromund of Sturminster. Like the count’s exchequer, the adoption of the writ by the count’s clerks was a response to his peculiar situation. Writs were a time-hallowed English way to maintain communication with distant officers. An interesting fact is that the one original charter in writ form that Robert issued which survives, was, from the evidence of the witness list, issued not in England but in Meulan. It was directed to his officers and men, English and French, and although they were writing in France, his clerks used a form adapted for English purposes. When they did so they may have been responding as well to the model of dignity and power represented by the English royal writ in the early twelfth century. They did not quite understand it. They misinterpreted the way that the seal was attached to the royal writ, and instead of cutting it from right to left, they cut it vertically from the middle, so the writ looks like a peculiar letter ‘T’. Robert I of Meulan was an aristocrat living in times of great change for aristocrats. Within his own lifetime new measures of what it was to be aristocratic were being developed by magnates keen to differentiate themselves from a rising lesser nobility. Robert, it seems, was the first of his line to effect a household boasting officers carrying the full range of titles found in the royal household: stewards, butlers, chamberlains, marshals, constables, chaplains and clerks. He founded collegiate churches within his castles which could provide his clerks with posts and himself with a handsome and princely scale of liturgy suitable for the minor prince that he was. He exhibited an image of himself on his seal which deliberately echoed the vocabulary of power found on royal seals. To deal with the problems his great spread of lands caused, he copied procedures found in the English royal Chancery and Exchequer. From all this it is clear that Count Robert was a man who was determined to differentiate himself from his inferiors, and did so by copying a princely image of power from that of the royal court.

The acts of Count Robert of Meulan There are texts and notices of a surprising number of Count Robert’s acts, considering that he was a man who had fought at Hastings. An earlier calendar of twenty of his acts was published by Émile Houth.20 Although he surveyed 20 

Émile Houth, ‘Robert Preud’homme, comte de Meulan et de Leicester (8 avril 1081 – 5 juin 1118)’, in Bulletin philologique et historique du comité des travaux historique 2 (1966 for 1963), 824–9.

100

David Crouch

French sources industriously, Houth had limited access to English archives and misidentified several acts of Count Robert II (1166–1205) as those of his grandfather. Houth also picked up several ghost acts in inaccurate early publications. Of the thirty-two acts noticed here, only one original survives (4). But this is a remarkable survival as it still has the count’s seal appended. The seal is double-sided containing a ‘majesty’ and ‘equestrian’ face on respectively the reverse and obverse, in obvious echo of the seals of William the Conqueror and William Rufus. The double-sided seal must have been devised in 1107 on Robert’s acquisition of the earldom of Leicester, as the reverse face carried that title in sketches made of it in the eighteenth century. The obverse (Meulan) face of the seal was probably the count’s original pre-1107 seal, and it has an additional significance in that it can be identified as the model for the seal of the count’s younger son, Earl Robert II of Leicester (1118–68). The acts whose full texts survive (thirteen of them) have a certain diplomatic interest. The proportion which are drafted on the lines of the English writ or writ-charter is quite large (4, 5, 14, 17, 21) and three of them preserve addresses to named officers: Ralph the butler, Walter de Beaumais and Fromund of Sturminster. Taken together they represent evidence of the early penetration of writ forms into Anglo-Norman clerical households. That the count’s writs were produced by his clerks is very likely. He is known to have retained a large clerical household. In 1118 he had three chaplains: Osbert, Richard of Leicester and Gilbert, who went on to serve his second son. Osbert and Richard were canons of St. Mary de Castro in Leicester, the count’s great collegiate foundation. The count’s collegiate church in his Norman castle of Beaumontle-Roger provided support for the count’s known clerk, Richard de Beaumont, who seems to have become dean of the foundation before its regularization in 1142.21 Other acts were very likely written by the beneficiaries. This is certainly true of those for Bec, two of which preserve Bec’s characteristic house-style of an opening date of the year of incarnation (6, 9). The narrative opening to the Abingdon act (1) again shows every sign of being a monastic production and the same is likely to be true of the least altered Préaux texts. Other acts show traits more characteristic of northern French household drafting. Two feature the notificatory address (notum sit ...) characteristic of eleventh-century Capetian clerks (7, 31); one is a Norman and the other a Meulan act.

No. 1. Abingdon, abbey of St. Mary Asked by William Guizenboded and advised by his men, the count confirms a hide of land in Dumbleton, Glos, which William had granted to the abbey in his presence. [5 August 1107 x 4 August 1108]

21 

Crouch, Beaumont Twins, 148–9, 153, 154..



Robert of Beaumont

101

B = Cartulary of Abingdon Abbey, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius B vi, fol. 144r. s. xiii. C = Cartulary of Abingdon Abbey, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Lyell 15, fol. 87r. s. xiv (partial). Pd., Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. J. Stevenson, RS 2, 2 vols. (London, 1858), ii, 102–3 (from B); Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis: The History of the Church of Abingdon, ed. J. Hudson, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2002–  ), ii, 150 (from B). Calendared, Two Cartularies of Abingdon Abbey, ed. C. F. Slade and G. Lambrick, Oxford Historical Soc., new ser., 32–3, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1990–2), i, 169 (from C).

BC Ego Robertus comes de Mellent rogatus fui a Willelmo Guizenboeht et ab amicis suis et baronibus meis ut concederem deo et sancte Marie in Abbendonensi ecclesia quandam hidam terre, que est in uilla Dumeltunaa in hundredo de Gretestan quam idem Willelmus ante me et meos barones dederat in helemosinab perpetuo habendam supradicte ecclesie. Quod libenter annui et uoluntarie concessi, quia de feudo meo erat. pro remissione peccatorum meorum et anime mee salute. Hoc denique feci coram subscriptis testibus et me rogantibus, scilicet eodem Willelmo et [R]icardo capell[ano]c et Goisfredo medico. et Nigello de Oileio et Roberto filio Ansketilli. et Goisfredo Ridello et Radulfo uicecomite et Roberto filio Ercenbaldi et Roberto filio Rogeri et Rodulfo de Furcis et Oggero filio Rodulfi nepote Nigelli. Luuello de Peri et Willelmo nigro. homine eiusdem W. Guizenboeth et Rogero Frangelupum et aliis multis, et Warino homine abbatis et Rainaldo et Lamberto.c Hec omnia acta sunt coram me et per me scilicet comitem de Mellent[o], et ante omnes suprascriptos fecit Willelmus Goizenboethd donum istud pro se et filio et uxore et omnibus heredibus suis, et promisit auctoritatem omnium se esse facturum. a

Dumbelton’ C 

b

elemosina C 

c-c

omitted in C 

d

Guizenboeth C.

The date of this act is fixed by the text of William’s grant, which is dated between 5 August 1107 and 4 August 1108, see Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis, ii, 150. William appears in 1086 as the tenant-in-chief of a substantial estate in Gloucestershire, and so it seems that his estate must have been subordinated to the new earldom of Leicester in 1107 (DB i, fol. 167r).

No. 2. Beaumont-le-Roger, collegiate church of Holy Trinity Record of the grant by the count to the college of the manor of Eddington, Berks, and the church of Bradford near Shapwick, Dorset, as granted by Countess Isabel, along with twenty shillings annually from the tolls of Beaumont-le-Roger to support the lighting of the church. [1100 x 1118] B = Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection du Vexin, iv, pp. 173–86 (from a spurious pancarte of family grants supposedly issued by Waleran II and entered in a lost cartulary of Bec). s. xvii. C = Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection du Vexin, iv, pp. 602–7. s. xvii. D = Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection du Vexin, xii, fol. 139v. s. xviii.

102

David Crouch

B Regnante Henrico Anglorum rege Robertus comes Mellenti pater meus de terris et honoribus quas in Anglia acquisierat dedit ecclesiae sanctae Trinitatis de Bellomonte manerium quoddam iuxta Hungreford sitam nomine Edenctonam, ita quietum et liberum sicut habebat ipse in dominio suo de rege Angliae Henrico. Et preter hoc ecclesiam de Benefort de donationis uxoris suae Isabellae comitissae de Mellento. Et hoc fecit concedente et per chartam suam corroborante domino suo Henrico rege Anglorum. Eodem fere tempore praedicta Elisabeth comitissa mater mea dedit praefatae ecclesiae sanctae Trinitatis ad luminandum videlicet ecclesiae viginti solidos in thelonio de Bellomonte, concessu Roberti comitis Mellenti patris mei. The grants can only be dated between the accession of Henry I and the count’s death. Eddington was ten hides of royal demesne in 1086 (DB i, fol. 57r) and might have come to the count by grant of William Rufus or Henry I. ‘Benefort’ can be identified with the deserted settlement of Bradford Farm near Shapwick, where Robert II of Leicester made a grant of rents to Amesbury Abbey, and which was reckoned in 1275/6 to have been part of the earldom of Leicester (Monasticon anglicanum, ii, 337; Rot. Hund., i, 97). The grants feature in a pancarte probably manufactured for the new priory of Beaumont soon after its incorporation into the order of Bec. The act may be a compilation, but the grant in Eddington was certainly genuine. The canons of Beaumont received a pardon for 10s. of danegeld owed in Berkshire in 1130, and 10s. would be the amount owed for an estate of ten hides, such as Eddington was in 1086, see Pipe R. 31 H. I, 124.

No. 3. Bec-Hellouin, abbey of St. Mary Record of the count’s grant of his collegiate church of Saint-Nicaise of Meulan, with the consent of its canons, to Abbot William and the monks of Bec, the church to be converted to a priory of regular monks. This act was formally concluded before the bishop. [1093 x 1115] A = Versailles, Archives départmentales des Yvelines, 24 H 9 no. 13. Notice in an original act of confirmation by Bishop Ivo of Chartres.

... Erat autem hec ecclesia sancti Nigasii a secularibus clericis per manum laici comitis uidelicet Mellentensis intrantibus inhabitat et possessa, donec placuit domno Rotberto comiti Mellentensi cum beneplacito clericorum in predicta ecclesia intitulatorum. ipsam ecclesiam in meliores usus commutare. et in ibi deo regulariter seruiretur elaborare. Tradidit itaque ipse comes Rotbertus cum consensu et beneplacito predictorum clericorum illam ecclesiam sancte Marie Beccensis monasterii ut ab ipso monasterio secundum quod oportunum sit monachi in predicta ecclesia sancti Nigasii ordinentur. deoque regulariter famulentur. Hanc autem traditionem a prefato Rotberto comite factam frater Guillelmus Beccensis abbas cum quibusdam sui monasterii fratribus ad presentiam nostram detulerunt. humiliter deprecantes ut noster assensus predictam donationem corroborare. The date of the act must be after the election of Abbot William to succeed Anselm in 1093. The only other firm limit is the death of Bishop Ivo in 1115.



Robert of Beaumont

103

No. 4. Bec-Hellouin, abbey of St. Mary Grant of the manor of Little Milborne (Milborne Stileham), Dorset, with an exemption from all attendance on his courts, and the chapel of Compton-inEnford, Wilts. [1107 x 1118] A = University of Keele, Robert Richards Collection 72/46/1(1). Endorsed: Meleburne de capella de Contone. s. xiii. 276 x 45mm. approx. Seal on eccentrically cut tag (as on the upright of a ‘T’), large central fragment, double-sided, white wax, no legend visible. Pd., J. Nichols, The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicestershire, 4 vols. in 8 (London, 1795–1815), i, part 1, appendix, p. 48, noted as then in the College of Arms.

A .R. com[es] Merlenti omnibus hominibus suis Franc[is] et Angl[is] salutem. Sciatis me dedisse et concessisse in puram et perpetuam elemosinam deo et sancte Marie Becci et monachis quodam manerium in Angl[ia] cum pertinentiis que vocatur Parua Meleburn’. Et volo quod monachos et tenentes sui sint quieti inperpetuum de omnibus sectis et rebus aliis qui mihi vel heredibus meis pertinent vel pertinere possunt. Preterea dedi eis capellam meam de Cunton’ cum omnibus pertinentiis que est in Wiltessir’. Hiis t[estibus]. Rob[ert]o. Waleranno. Hug[one] filiis meis. Galfrido de Esmaleuill’. Odone dap[ifero]. Will[elmo] de Merlen[to] et pluribus aliis. The identification of the manor of ‘Parva Meleburn’ is not easy, but by a process of elimination it would appear to have been the small estate of two carucates at Milborne Stileham which was held by Swein, a king’s thegn, in 1086 (DB i, fol. 84v). The other estates of that name were church land. Milborne was in the vicinity of another Bec estate at Bovington, Dorset. The large estate at Compton-in-Enford, Wilts, was noted as part of the honor of Leicester in 1242 (Bk. of Fees, ii, 746). The date of this act has to have been after the creation of the earldom of Leicester in 1107, as the seal used to have the title of Leicester on one of its faces, as shown by an eighteenth-century antiquarian drawing.

No. 5. Bec-Hellouin, abbey of St. Mary Concession of the church and tithe of Compton-in-Enford as granted to the abbey by Geoffrey de B’ron (?Brionne). [1107 x 1118] B = Cartulary of Ogbourne Priory, Windsor Dean and Chapter muniments, xi G 11, m. 3. s. xiii. Pd., Select Documents of the English Lands of the Abbey of Bec, ed. M. Chibnall, Camden, 3rd ser., 73 (London, 1951), 11.

B R[obertus] com[es] de Mell[ento] cunctis hominibus suis et amicis Anglis et Francis salutem. Concedo sancte Marie de Becco ecclesiam et decimam de Contona quam Gaufridus de B’ron illi dedit. Teste scilicet Rob[erto] fil[io] Anchitill[i] et Nigello de Albineio. Will[elm]o fil[io] Roberti.

104

David Crouch

For the identity of Compton see no. 4. The relationship of this confirmation of the church of Compton and its tithes to the count’s previous grant of the chapel of Compton is unclear. It is possible that the same church is intended in both, and that in no. 4 the count is arrogating to himself the right of patron as the overlord of the manor. There is no doubt however that in c. 1230 Compton was a chapel of the church of Enford (Chibnall, Select Documents, 57).

No. 6. Bec-Hellouin, abbey of St. Mary Notice of the grant of the manor of East Chisenbury, Wilts, on the river Avon for the purposes of the abbey’s kitchen, with the confirmation of King Henry I. 1112 [25 March 1112 x 24 March 1113] B = Cartulary of Ogbourne Priory, Windsor Dean and Chapter muniments, xi G 11, m. 3. s. xiii. C = Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. latin 13905, p. 42. s. xvii. Pd., (from B), Select Documents of the English Lands of the Abbey of Bec, ed. Chibnall, 9.

B Anno ab incarnatione domini Mo.CCo.XIIo inspirante diuina gratia Robertus comes Mellenti dedit ecclesie sancte Marie Becci concedente Henrico rege quodam manerium in Anglia super Auram fluuium quod dictur Chisingueberia. nominatim ad coquinam monachorum et dedit illud solidum et quietum sicut ipse illud catenus habuerat. ut scilicet quicquid in eodem manerio in suo habuerat dominio erit iuris ecclesie sancte Marie Becci. Porro hanc donationem fecit pro salute anime Willelmi patris regis. patris prefati Henrici regis et Mathildis regine matris sue. et pro remissione peccatorum suorum et coniugis sue Elisabeth et filiorum suorum et pro salute fratris sui comitis Henrici et coniugis sue Margarite et filiorum suorum. Ego Henricus rex Anglorum gratia dei. concedo et signo. et sigillo meo confirmo hanc elemosinam. This notification is a common form of Bec record, commencing with the date of incarnation and then giving a record of the grant (see also 9). It is doubtless a conflation of two acts, and the interpolated royal confirmation is probably a quotation from Henry I’s charter. The manor of Chisenbury on the Avon mentioned here is probably not the one mentioned in the Domesday Survey, but part of a large multiple estate to the east and south of Chisenbury which was probably based on the settlement of Compton, whose chapel was granted in no. 4.

No. 7. Bec-Hellouin, abbey of St. Mary Confirmation of the grant by the count’s father, Roger of Beaumont, of exemption from the tolls and charges for wine presses and mills at Pont Audemer (Eure), and all other charges on food, clothing, and foot passage, and all charges relating to his lordship over the town. As the count had already extended this concession to Bonneville-Aptot (Eure) so he now extends it to the abbey in all his other Norman lands. [1107 x 1118] B = Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection du Vexin xii, fol. 28v. s. xviii.



Robert of Beaumont

105

Pd., G-A. de la Roque, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Harcourt, 4 vols. (Paris, 1663), iv, 1619, add. 4.

B Notum sit omnibus duci Normanniae et archiepiscopo Rothomagensi episcopis et baronibus terrae meae quod ego Robertus comes Mellenti et Elizabeth uxor mea et filiii nostri Valerannus, Robertus atque Hugo, concedimus donum et quietudinem quam fecit Rogerius de Bellomonte pater meus et deo et ecclesiae sanctae Mariae Becc[i] in villa quae dicitur Pontis Audomari, de theloneo et presagio et moltura et de omni consuetudine quae pertinet ad victum et vestitum ad calceaturam et ad omnes dominicas res praedictae ecclesiae Becci et omnium monachorum ejusdem ecclesiae Becci. Hoc idem ego Robertus comes Mellenti et Elisabeth uxor mea et praedicti filii nostri Valerannus Robertus et Hugo concedimus praefatae ecclesiae Becci in villa quae dicitur Villebonum, hoc ipsum etiam concedimus supramemoratae ecclesiae Becci et omnibus monachis ejusdem ecclesiae in omni terra mea in Normannia. + Signum Roberti comitis de Mellento. + Signum comitissae Elisabeth. + Sig[num] Valeranni filii comitis. + Sig[num] Roberti filii comitis. + Sig[num] Willelmi constabularii. + Sig[num] Morini de Pinu. + S[ignum] Willelmi de Stutevilla. + S[ignum] Roberti de Valle. + S[ignum] Herluini. + S[ignum] Fulconis medeci [sic]. + S[ignum] Gaufridi de Berroy. + S[ignum] Gaufridi de Turvilla. The date of this act has to lie after 1107 when Count Robert made his testament, at which time his younger son Hugh had not apparently been born. The identity of ‘Villebonum’ as Bonneville-Aptot is suggested as it was a Beaumont manor not more than 4 km. north of the abbey, a place where the monks would value a quittance of toll and passage, especially as it lay on the road from the abbey to Rouen.

No. 8. Bec-Hellouin, abbey of St. Mary Confirmation to the abbey of Bois du Chênay which it had of the grant of Hugh son of Waleran. [1104 x 1118] C = Copy from text in a lost cartulary of the priory of La Roche-Guyon, L. A. Gatin, Un village: Saint-Martin-la-Garenne (Paris, 1900), 238–9.

C Je Robert comte de Meulan concède à l’église de Notre Dame du Bec pour le salut de l’âme de mon père Roger et de l’âme de ma mère Adeline et pour mon salut et celui d’Elizabeth ma femme et de mes enfants, le don que fit Hugues fils de Galeran, du Bois Ganet à la susdite église de Notre Dame dit Bec à savoir tout ce qu’il tenait de moi dans le susdit Bois Ganet. ‘Bois Ganet’ is identified here as the Bois du Chênay, on the hills overlooking Saint-Martinla-Garenne to the east. The commemoration of the count’s children would indicate a date after 1104 and the birth of his twin sons.

106

David Crouch

No. 9. Bec-Hellouin, abbey of St. Mary and the priory of St-Martin de la Garenne Concession to the abbey of the church and tithe of Saint-Martin-la-Garenne (Yvelines) for the support of the cell of Bec monks living there. 1095 [25 March 1095 x 24 March 1096] C = Noted as two copies of the same act in a lost cartulary of the priory of La Roche-Guyon, Gatin, Saint-Martin-la-Garenne, 233–4, 243.

C L’an d’incarnation 1095 Robert comte de Meulan du fief duquel était l’église et la dîme de Saint-Martin de la Garenne, a concédé la susdite dîme et l’église avec tout ce qui s’y rattachait, à l’église du Bec et aux moines demeurant à Saint-Martin de la Garenne. L’an d’incarnation 1095 Robert comte de Meulan du fief duquel était l’église et la dîme de Saint-Martin de la Garenne, a concédé la dîme et la susdite église avec toutes ses appartenances. Témoins du côté de Robert comte de Meulan, Gauthier vicomte de Meulan et Cheribardus son frère, Hugues fils de Galeran, Roger de Tibeville, Robert Pipar, Godefroi fils de Gilbert, Hugues fils d’Audoard. There is a point of comparison here with no. 6 in the opening dating clause. Saint-Martin-laGarenne was a fee of the viscount of Mantes, who was a dependent of the count of Meulan and who owned most of the land on the right bank of the Seine opposite Mantes and Rosny. The count is confirming here the grant to Bec made originally by Viscount Hilduin of Mantes and his family before 1081 for the foundation of a priory (Gatin, Saint-Martin-la-Garenne, 233, 234–5).

No. 10. Canterbury, cathedral priory of Christ Church Record of the count’s grant of exemptions on tolls on the Seine at Meulan and throughout his lands on wine and goods bought for the monks’ own use. [1080 x 1118] A1 = Canterbury D & C, Carta Antiqua F 139. Notice in an original confirmation of Waleran II of Meulan. A2 Original duplicate ‘penes Thomas Astle’, now lost. B = Cartulary of Canterbury, Canterbury D & C, Register A, fol. 341v. s. xiv. (from A1). C = Cartulary of Canterbury, Canterbury D & C, Register E, fol. 36v. s. xv. (from A1). D = BL, MS. Stowe 666, fol. 69r. s. xviii. (from A2).

A1 ... apud Mell[en]t transitum uini quietum quod ducent ad proprium usum suum. Et preter hec consuetudinem in tota terra mea de omnibus que emerint ad usus ipsorum que poterunt iuste facere assecurari sua propria esse. sicut pater meus eis prius concessit, et sua carta confirmauit. No other date can be offered than the count’s tenure of Meulan.



Robert of Beaumont

107

No. 11. Grestain, abbey of St. Mary Notice of the grant to the abbey by Roger of Beaumont and his son of the tithe of a ploughland at Vatteville, and of a farmstead at Martainville (Eure). [c.1050 x 1082] B = Notice in a pancarte, Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection du Vexin iv, pp. 141–5. s. xvii. Pd., David Bates, ed., Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I, 1066–87 (Oxford, 1998), 521.

Apud Watlevillam decimam unius carrucae, apud Martinivillam decimam unius medietarii concessu Rogerii de Bellomonte et Roberti eius filii. The likely dates for this grant are dictated by the foundation of the abbey of Grestain (c. 1050) and the issue of the pancarte (1080 x 82).

No. 12. Leicester, collegiate church of St. Mary de Castro Notice of the act founding or refounding the chapter of the college in Leicester castle and the allotting of prebends. Grant of all the churches of the town of Leicester, except that of St. Margaret, with five ploughlands to the north of the town and other possessions, and with the churches of the sokes of Shepshed, Leics, and Halse, Northants. [1107 x 1108] C = Register of Leicester Abbey, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud misc 625, fol. 89r. s. xv. Pd., Monasticon anglicanum, ed. W. Dugdale et al., rev. ed., 6 vols. in 8 (London, 1817–30), vi, part 1, 466 (from C).

C Ad perpetuam memoriam notandum est quod Robertus comes Mellenti ueniens in Angliam cum Willelmo duce Normannie adeptus consulatum Leyc[estrie] ex dono ducis et conquestoris Anglie. destructa prius ciuitate Leycestrie. cum castello et ecclesia infra castellum tempore predicti conquestoris reedificauit ipsam ecclesiam sancte Marie infra castellum. statuens ibidem duodecim canonicos seculares et unum decanum conferens eisdem et approprians omnes ecclesias Leyc[estrie]. preter ecclesiam sancte Margarete que non erat sue dicionis. eo quod fuit et est prebenda ecclesie Linc[olnensis]. cum quinque carucatis terre ex parte boriali ciuitatis et aliis possessionibus in ipsa ciuitate. et cum omnibus ecclesiis de soca de Schepisheyd et Halso et pluribus aliis redditibus et possessionibus. This record was abstracted c. 1477 by William Charyte, prior of Leicester, from a copy of the original in a fourteenth-century abbey rental called ‘Geryn’. That there was a genuine act behind it (despite the erroneous account of the Conqueror’s grant of Leicester to the count) can be found by Prior Charyte’s reference elsewhere to the church of Clifton in Warwickshire, with its chapels of Over and Rugby, having formed one of the prebends ‘of the castle of Leicester’ in a digest of a charter of Arnold III du Bois, the founder’s seneschal (Register of Leicester, fol. 43v).

108

David Crouch

No. 13. Leicester, collegiate church of St. Mary de Castro Notice of a grant made to the college of twenty shillings drawn from his exchequer for lighting the church and for paying for rushes to lay on its floors in summer and straw in the winter. [1107 x 1118] C = Mentioned in the constitution of Abbot Richard of Leicester for the refounded college, printed in Ancient Charters Prior to 1200, ed. J. H. Round, Pipe Roll Soc., 10 (London, 1888), 60.

C ... cum .xx.ti solidis de scacc[ario] predicti comitis. quos pater eius donauit de prouidenda ecclesie luminaria. de sepo omni nocte anni. et sternendam ecclesiam. estate, junco hieme, stramine. The grant cannot be dated in any other way than by the count’s possession of the earldom.

No. 14. Leicester, borough of Confirmation to the merchants of Leicester of their gild, with the same customs as they had in the reigns of William I and William II and as they hold now in the reign of King Henry. [1107 x 1118] B = Cartulary of the borough of Leicester (Vellum Book), Leicestershire Record Office, II/3/2, fol. 35v. s. xiv. Pd., Records of the Borough of Leicester, ed. M. Bateson et al., 4 vols. (London, 1899–1923), i, 3.

B Robertus comes de Mellent[o] Radulfo pinc[erna] atque omnibus baronibus suis Francigenis atque Anglicis totius sue terre Anglie. salutem. Sciatis me concessisse mercatoribus meis Leycestrie gildam eorum mercatorum cum omnibus consuetudinibus quibus tenuerunt in tempore Willelmi et regis Willelmi filii eius et modo in tempore Henrici regis. Teste. R[oberto] filio Ascitilli. Datable only to the count’s possession of Leicester.

No. 15. Leicester, borough of Notice of a grant to the merchants of Leicester of exemption from pleas touching their property outside their own court of jurats in return for the grant of ‘gavelpence’ of 3d. per house gable looking on to the high way. [1107 x 1118] B = Noticed in Leicestershire Record Office, I/1/13/1–3. Inquisition dated 1253. Pd., Records of the Borough of Leicester, ed. Bateson, i, 41–2. Datable only to the count’s possession of Leicester.



Robert of Beaumont

109

No. 16. Lenton, priory of St. Mary Notice of the grant of the church of Wigston, Leics, to the abbey of Cluny and its priory of Lenton. [1107 x 1118] B = Noticed in an inspeximus of a charter of Henry I, C53/141 (Charter Rolls, 30 Edward III) m. 22. copy of 1356. Calendared, Cal. Chart. R., v, 317.

... de dono etiam Roberti comitis de Mellent ecclesiam de Wichingest[ona] cum pertinentiis suis. The act of Henry I is dated to 1109 x 1122, but the grant it records can only be attributed to the tenure by Count Robert of the honor of Leicester.

No. 17. Lincoln, cathedral church of St. Mary Writ to Walter de Beaumais and the count’s men of Empingham, Rutland, instructing them to pay the tithe owed to the bishop’s church in the village as fully as was done in the days when Gilbert de Gant held it. [1094 x 1118] B = Lincolnshire Archives Office, Lincoln Dean & Chapter MS. A.1.5 (Registrum Antiquissimum), fol. 36r. s. xiii. Pd., The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, ed. C. W. Foster and Kathleen Major, Lincoln Record Soc., 10 vols. (Hereford, etc., 1931–73), ii, 10–11, no. 320.

B Robertus comes de Mellent[o] Waltero de Belmes. et hominibus de Epingeham salutem. Precipio uobis ut faciatis habere Roberto episcopo Linc[olniensi] decimam que pertinet ecclesie sue de eadem uilla. ita plenarie sicut plenius data fuit tempore Gileberti de Gant. Et uidete ne inde audiam clamorem. Valete. It must date after the consecration of Bishop Robert Bloet in February 1194 and before the count’s death.

No. 18. Meulan, priory of St. Mary and St. Nicaise Notice of a grant to the priory of an annual rent of forty shillings in the manor of Hungerford, Berks. [1088 x 1118] B = Notice in a confirmation of Robert II of Leicester, Cartulary of St. Neots, BL, MS. Cotton Faustina A iv, fol. 88r–v. s. xiii.  ... quadraginta solidis quos dederat pater meus eidem ecclesia sancti Nigasii in manerio de Hungerfort ... It probably dates to a time after the accession of William Rufus, for Hungerford (probably then included with Kintbury) was royal demesne in 1086 (DB i, fol. 57r; VCH Berkshire, iv, 187).

110

David Crouch

No. 19. Meulan, priory of St. Mary and St. Nicaise Notice of a grant of the tithe of the count’s fishponds at Montjoie (Yvelines, cant. Meulan, comm. Tessancourt-sur-Aubette). [1080 x 1118] B = Notice in a confirmation of Waleran II of Meulan, Cartulary of St Nicaise, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. latin 13888, fol. 23r. s. xiii.

... concedens eidem ecclesie decimam piscium stanni [de Gaudimont] quod pater meus fecit apud Mellentum. ipsa decima iampridem a patre meo supradicte ecclesie data. It can only be dated within the count’s tenure of Meulan, as the grant may have been made before the conversion of the church to a regular priory.

No. 20. Meulan, priory of St. Mary and St. Nicaise Grant to the priory of the collegiate church of Saint-Nicholas within the new castle of Meulan. [1109 x 1118] B = Notice in a confirmation of Waleran II of Meulan, Cartulary of St. Nicaise, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. latin 13888, fol. 20v. s. xiii.

... Concedo nichilominus ego Galerannus comes Mellenti et sigilli mei munitione confirmo deo et ecclesie deo et ecclesie beati Nigasii martyris ecclesiam sancti Nicholai in nouo castro extra insula Mellenti constitutam, sicut ex dono patris mei prius acceperat in perpetuum possidendam. The church of Saint-Nicholas, a small collegiate institution, was built within the new castle of Meulan, erected after the sack of the town in 1109 (see no. 31, below).

No. 21. Montacute, priory of St. Peter Writ to Fromund of Sturminster and his other officers informing them that he has exempted the monks from paying toll at Wareham, Dorset. [1088 x 1118] B = Cartulary of Montacute Priory, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Trinity College MS. 85, fol. 70v. s. xiii. Calendared, Two Cartularies of the Augustinian Priory of Bruton and the Cluniac Priory of Montacute in the County of Somerset, ed. H. C. Maxwell Lyte et al., Somerset Record Soc., 8 (Taunton, 1894), 166.

B R[obertus]. comes de Mell[ento]. F. de Sturmenistre. et omnibus ministris suis. salutem. Sciatis quod ego condonaui sancto Petro de Monte acuto theloneum omnium que comparauerint apud Waram. Valete. For date see no. 18 above. Wareham was under royal control in 1086 (DB i, fol. 75r).



Robert of Beaumont

111

No. 22. Montacute, priory of St. Peter Notice of the grant of the houses of Herluin the painter at Wareham, Dorset. [1088 x 1118] B = Notice in confirmation of Robert II of Leicester, Cartulary of Montacute Priory, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Trinity College MS. 85, fol. 70v. s. xiii. Calendared, Two Cartularies of Bruton and Montacute, ed. Maxwell Lyte, 166.

... sicut pater meus concessit et dedit sancto Petro de Monte acuto. domos Herlewini pictoris. apud Waram.

No. 23. Osmund Archer Notice of the grant of an estate at ‘Torp’. [1080 x 1118] C = Notice in confirmation of Robert II of Leicester, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Dugdale 17, p. 60. s. xvii.

... [sicut] pater meus illi dederat illam terram [de Torp]

No. 24. Préaux, abbey of St. Mary and St. Leodegar Notice of the grant of £8 6s. payable at his exchequer. [1107 x 1118] C = Notice in a confirmation of Robert II of Leicester, in, A. du Monstier, Neustria Pia (Rouen, 1663), 524, from a lost pancarte of the abbey.

... et ad scaccarium meum octo libras et sex solidos per annum sicut pater meus ei dedit et concessit.

No. 25. Préaux, abbey of St. Peter Concedes to the monks capital jurisdiction in their lands over homicides and thieves. The count’s officers who apprehend robbers will hand them over to the abbot’s provost or take pledges on the abbot’s behalf. The abbot will take the same penalties in his land as the count in his own. Pledges taken for a tenant of the abbot’s land arrested for an offence in the count’s lands will go to the abbot. The count concedes the abbey’s banlieu in his town of Pont Audemer (Eure) with bounds from Saint-Germain to the leper hospital, from there to Girold’s bridge and along the ‘Foetelcie’. 1106. [25 December 1105 x 24 March 1107] B = Cartulary of St. Peter of Préaux, archives départementales de l’Eure, H 711, fol. 115r–v. s. xiii.

112

David Crouch

Pd., Le Cartulaire de l’abbaye Bénédictine de Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux (1034– 1227), ed. D. Rouet (Collection de Documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, Paris, 2005), 69–70.

B Anno incarnationis dominice .Mo.Co.sexto. Robertus comes de Mellent sedens in capitulo beati Petri de Pratello. presente abbate Ricardo Baiocensi conuentu quoque monachorum circonsedente, concessit abbatie sue libertatem terrenarum possessionum. atque consuetudines iudiciarie potestatis saluo ordine monachorum, sicut habet in sua terra ipse comes. Hoc est. memoratus quidem abbas forisfacturas suas habebit. qui secundum humanas leges ab homicidis et furibus ceteris quoque capitali sententia convictis, more patrio exiguntur. Quod si latronem quemlibet famulus comitis in terra abbatis forte repperent. statim capiet eum, et cuipiam procuratori abbatis commendabit. vel datis obsidibus in eadem terra retinebit. donec res ad aures perveniat abbatis. Denique quicquid habet in suo latrone taliter capto, habiturus est idem abbas in suo. Preterea si fur aliquis de terra abbatis in terra abbatis in terra comitis captus fuerit. dabit abbas obsides pro eo si illim habere voluerit, et post modum in curia comitis causa ventilabitur. Quod si convictus fuerit, in comitis potestate remanebit. et totum quod super terram sancti Petri repertum fuerit, ad abbatis ditionem transibit. Item condonauit abbatie sue banleuiam. et ullac. et hainfariam. et incendium. Terminus autem banleuie hic est. A sancto Germano usque ad domum lazarorum et usque ad pontem Giroldi. et usque ala foetelcie. Testes autem istius donationis, isti sunt. Rogerius Efflanc. Herluinus Toroville. Willelmus de Campiniaco. Radulfus de Hispania. Rainowardus. Goscelinus presbiter Tustiniville. Herluinus aurifex. Hunfridus filius Roberti. Saffridus de Putafossa. Rualdus Brito Salernie. Saffridus cemintarius et Osbernus frater eius. Gislebertus filius Rainaldi filii Martini. Ascelinus filius Oliveri de Monte Rotart. The dates suggested are those that cover the fullest extent of what might be said to be the year of the incarnation 1106.

No. 26. Préaux, abbey of St. Peter and collegiate church of Holy Trinity of Beaumont-le-Roger Agreement to the settlement between his churches of Préaux and Beaumont by which the monks conceded to the canons the land they had in ‘Mesnil Imbert’ (unidentified) in return for what the dean and canons had in Saint-Pierre-deSalerne (Eure). Since the monks had more land in ‘Mesnil Isembert’ than the canons possessed in Salerne, the canons made over to the monks all their rights at Salerne, excepting the tithe of garbs and the mill there. The canons were to retain a barn in the enclosure of Saint-Pierre to house their tithes. [1108 x 1118] B = Cartulary of St Peter of Préaux, archives départementales de l’Eure, H 711, fol. 127v. s. xiii.



Robert of Beaumont

113

Pd., Le Cartulaire de l’abbaye Bénédictine de Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux (1034– 1227), ed. D. Rouet (Collection de Documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, Paris, 2005), 113–14.

B Ricardus abbas monachique sancti Petri de Pratello concesserunt ecclesie sancte Trinitatis canonicisque de Bellomonte totam terram quam tenebant in Maisnillo Isemberti. Wazo vero decanus et canonici concesserunt monachis totam terram quam ecclesia eorum possidebat in villa quae dicitur Salerna. Et quia monachi plus possidebant terram in Maisnillo Isemberti quam canonici in Salerna, iccirco canonici dimiserunt monachis quicquid habebant in Salerna in terra videlicet et ceteris rebus, preter solum modo decimam garbarum tocius ville. et nominatim ipsius terre quam cambierunt, necnon et decimam molendini prefate ville. Grancia vero canonicorum erit sita in curia sancti Petri apud Salernam. in qua decima supradicte ville reponetur, ex qua monachi totam farraginem et alia habebunt. Canonici vero tantummodo grana ut autem omnis controversia evitetur. evidenter annotamus, quod siquis de decima predicte ville canonicis. iniuriam fecerit monachi inde iustitiam quasi de suo dominio conquirent. Hec vero mutatio facta est concedente domino utriusque ecclesie. Roberto scilicet Mellentino comite. uxoreque eius Elizabeth. filiisque ipius Gualeranno videlicet atque Roberto et Hugone paupere. For date see no. 7, above.

No. 27. Préaux, abbey of St. Peter Notice of the grant of the tithe of Le Bosgouet (Eure) both woodland and other land, and also its church with thirty acres of land, with notice also of the consent of Duke Robert II. [1087 x 1105] B = Cartulary of St Peter of Préaux, archives départementales de l’Eure, H 711, fol. 136r–v. s. xiii. Pd., Le Cartulaire de l’abbaye Bénédictine de Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux (1034– 1227), ed. D. Rouet (Collection de Documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, Paris, 2005), 145–6.

B Regnante Roberto Willelmi regis filio advenit comes Robertus de Mellent Pratellum et dedit donationem decime illius terre vel silve que vulgo dicitur Boscus goieth. et ecclesiam cum triginta agris terre ita ut nemo eorum qui de eo habebant aut habituri erant decimas suas retinere vel alias quam Pratello mittere possit. Fecit autem hoc concessu eiusdem Roberti Normannie principis. It must date within the period of the reign of Robert Curthose, and before 1105 when Count Robert was actively engaged in his overthrow.

114

David Crouch

No. 28. Préaux, abbey of St. Peter Notice of the grant of the tithes of Charlton Marshall and Spettisbury, Dorset, with their churches and the land which belonged to them, and to this he added the grant of a village and church called ‘Sopeland’. [1087 x 1100] B = Cartulary of St. Peter of Préaux, archives départementales de l’Eure, H 711, fol. 146r. s. xiii. Pd., Le Cartulaire de l’abbaye Bénédictine de Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux (1034– 1227), ed. D. Rouet (Collection de Documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, Paris, 2005), 179.

B Regnante secundo Willelmo Anglorum rege magni regis Willelmi filio qui Anglos bellando adquisivit. Robertus comes de Mellent dedit sancto Petro Pratelli in Anglica regione duas decimas. videlicet de Cerlentone et de Poststeberia cum ecclesiis duabus earumdem villarum. et cum terra pertinente ad easdem ecclesias. Addidit etiam in alio loco unam villam cum dedicaretur ecclesia nomina Sopelande. et hoc fecit concedente domino suo rege Willelmo. The dates are those of the reign of William Rufus. Charlton was royal demesne in 1086 (DB i, fol. 75r). The lands of the abbey in Dorset, amounting to ten hides, are mentioned in 1130 (Pipe R. 31 H. I, 15).

No. 29. Préaux, abbey of St. Peter Record of the grant of the manor of Toft Monks, Norfolk, and the tithes of Charlton and Spettisbury, Dorset, for the souls of King William the Conqueror and Queen Matilda, and for the prosperity of their son, William Rufus; for the souls also of his father Roger of Beaumont, his mother Adeline, and for himself and his brother Henry and all their forbears. c. 27 May 1099. Westminster. B = Cartulary of St. Peter of Préaux, archives départementales de l’Eure, H 711, fol. 146r. s. xiii. Pd., Le Cartulaire de l’abbaye Bénédictine de Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux (1034– 1227), ed. D. Rouet (Collection de Documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, Paris, 2005), 180.

B Robertus comes de Mellent dedit sancto Petro Pratelli et abbati et monachis manerium de Toftes et decimam de Cerlentone et de Postesberies cum ecclesiis duabus earundem villarum. et cum terra pertinente ad easdem ecclesias pro anima regis scilicet Willelmi et regine Mathildis et pro salute et prosperitate filii sui Willelmi regis Anglorum et pro remedio animarum suorum parentum Rogerii videlicet de Bellomonte et Adeline sue coniugis et prosemet ipso et pro fratre suo Henrico et pro omnibus suis predecessoribus. Harum itaque omnium rerum predictarum donationem concessit et confirmavit. Willelmus rex



Robert of Beaumont

115

Anglorum diebus Pentecostes quando primum suam curiam tenuit in sua nova aula que est apud Westmonasterium. Pentecost was on 27 May in 1099, when the new great hall of Westminster was dedicated amongst festivities that became legendary.

No. 30. Préaux, abbey of St. Peter Later version of the grant of the manor of Toft Monks, Norfolk, which the count himself had of the grant of King William Rufus. [1104 x 1118] B = Cartulary of St Peter of Préaux, archives départementales de l’Eure, H 711, fol. 146r–v. s. xiii. Pd., Le Cartulaire de l’abbaye Bénédictine de Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux (1034– 1227), ed. D. Rouet (Collection de Documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, Paris, 2005), 181–2.

B Quisquis suimet curam gerens interioris hominis aure Salomonem conceperit dicentem redemptio anime viri proprie divitie potest econverso notare. quod siquis eas in moderate cumulando largitori earundem omnium videlicet creatori non reddit. multorum vitiorum maximeque avaritie turpissime immo demoniace captivitate sese spontaneus tradit. Hec Robertus comes de Mellent perpendens. totaque sollicitudine huiusmodi pestis contagia vitans, ex iis que illi deus ad sibi serviendum multa contulerat dedit sancto Petro de Pratellis manerium Toftes nomine cum suis appenditiis. adiungens sacam et socam. tol et team. similiter et infagenumtheofe. exclusa penitus exactione vel angaria cunctarum consuetudinum. Que quidem prefatus comes liberaliter possederat sicut Willelmus rex iunior eadem tenuerat. Dedit inquam hec omnia iam memorato monasterio pro anima Willelmi regis et Mathildis regine. et Willemi filii eiusdem secundi regis. Item pro anima patris sui Rogerii et matris eius Adeline omnium quoque predecessorum suorum. pro salute regis Henrici et uxoris ieusdem suorum quoque liberorum. pro semet ipso et sua coniuge et liberis suis. This more complete transcript of the grant of Toft Monks dates to a time in the reign of Henry I when the count had several children: a time after his twin sons’ birth in 1104 is suggested. Toft Monks was indeed royal demesne in 1086 (DB ii, fol. 141r).

No. 31. Rouen, see of Notification that he has rebuilt the castle of Meulan in a place called Locenes within the diocese of Rouen, to which the archbishop had rights, and that he has built a new church within the castle, which he declares to be subject to Rouen as to a mother church. [1109 x 1110] B = Cartulary of see of Rouen, Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, Y 44, fol. 47v. s. xiii. C = Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection du Vexin, viii, p. 291. s. xviii. (from B).

116

David Crouch

B Notum sit omnibus quod ego Rob[ertus] dei gratia comes de Mellent[o] construxi castellum in archiepiscopatu Roth[omagensis] in parrochia uidelicet de Locenes que erat subiacta et consuetudinaria Roth[omagensi] ecclesie et antequam castellum ibi fieret et in eodem castello edificaui nouam ecclesiam et concedo ut illa ecclesia subiecta sit Roth[omagensi] ecclesie et redolens iustos redditus sicut mater ecclesia. The major rebuilding at Meulan after the devastating raid on the county by Louis VI in 1109 involved the building of a new castle on the right bank of the Seine above its old site on a river island. Within the castle was built a new collegiate church of Saint-Nicholas to take the place of the old church of Saint-Nicaise, within the former comital residence. For an associated grant see above, no 20.

No. 32. Wareham, collegiate church of St. Mary Notice of a lost charter of the count granting thirty-five shillings in tithes from a fourth part of the town of Wareham, Dorset, to the canons of the minster of the town. [1087 x 1118] B = Register of Sheen Priory, BL, MS. Cotton Otho, B xiv, fol. 37r. s. xv.

Item. una antiqua scriptura R[oberti] comitis Damell’ faciens mentionem de . xxxv. s[olidis] de decime ferdingi soluendis clericis sancte Marie de Wareham. The grant of Wareham by the king to the count may have happened at any time after the accession of William Rufus, see above no. 21.

7 The Double Display of Saint Romanus of Rouen in 1124  David S. Spear

This paper brings together several stories that cross in Rouen in the summer of 1124. The point of intersection was the double viewing of the relics of St. Romanus at Rouen Cathedral, our knowledge of which derives from a hitherto neglected document – Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime G 3666 (hereafter simply G 3666). It is appropriate that G 3666 in particular should engender this article in honor of C. Warren Hollister, for it was he who first called it to my attention in his research seminar in 1977. And it is symptomatic of the degree to which G 3666 has been overlooked that Hollister himself mentioned the document only in a single footnote in his biography of Henry I. (The oversight can be explained in part by the Santa Barbara, California, fire of 1990 which destroyed all of Hollister’s research notes.) But it was not only Hollister who overlooked the document. As far as I know, only two modern studies cite G 3666. A brief statement about the document itself is in order. G 3666 is actually a liasse or folder with several papers relating to the Rouennais saint, Romanus. The part which concerns us is a five-page procès-verbal, or official report, drawn up by Magister Léonard Dupuys the prêtre secrétaire of the Rouen Cathedral chapter on April 28, 1777 when the surviving relics of St. Romanus were moved from one reliquary to another. Most of St. Romanus’s bones had been brullés in July 1562 by the Huguenots. This loss may have made Magister Dupuys more attentive to those few relics that remained, as well as  

The author would like to thank Jim Guth, David Morgan, François Neveux, and Thomas Waldman, each of whom commented on a draft of this paper.   C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, ed. Amanda Clark Frost (New Haven, 2001), 25 n. 103.   To note here but one other omission, the definitive account of Henry I’s itinerary does not mention his presence in Rouen just after August 24, 1124; Stephanie Mooers Christelow, ‘A Moveable Feast? Itineration and the Centralization of Government under Henry I’, Albion 28 (1996), 187–228.   Judith A. Green, ‘The Piety and Patronage of Henry I’, HSJ 10 (2001), 1–16, at 2 n. 13; David S. Spear, ‘Geoffrey Brito, Archbishop of Rouen (1111–28)’, HSJ 2 (1990), 123–37.   This assertion by Dupuys is corroborated in an account of the sacking of the cathedral in 1562; La cathédrale de Rouen: seize siècles d’histoire, ed. J.-P. Chaline (Rouen, 1996), 118–20.

118

David S. Spear

to the three medieval accounts of four separate translationes  of St. Romanus – in 1036, the double viewing in 1124, and in 1179. It is only the 1124 bitranslatio that we will deal with here. The document no longer survives in an original which was possibly jettisoned by Magister Dupuys after he copied it, or more likely destroyed during the French Revolution. Romanus was hardly the obscure saint he is today; he was doubtless one of the many despised vestiges of medieval prerogatives which lingered anachronistically into the modern era, for the Privilege of St. Romanus, also known as the Privilège de la Fierte, allowed for the Rouen Cathedral chapter to release a prisoner annually on Ascension Day, which privilege was annulled by Revolutionaries in 1791. Here, then, is a translation of the 1124 displays of St. Romanus. (An edition of the text appears as Appendix A to this article.) In the year of our Lord’s Incarnation 1124, in the second indiction, at the time of Lord Geoffrey archbishop, on the fifth kalends of July (i.e., June 27), on Saturday, the day before Sunday the feast day of the Apostles Peter and Paul, solemnly sought out and discovered in this reliquary (urna) was the entire body with the head of most blessed Romanus, in the presence of Lord John of Crema, cardinal of the Roman church, holding the title of St. Chrysogonus, who with his own hands uncovered it and then covered it again to be put back in the reliquary, in the presence of the above-mentioned G(eoffrey) archbishop, and Boso abbot of Bec, and Geoffrey the dean, and Roger the treasurer (secretarius), and Fulbert the archdeacon, with the canons of the holy church of Rouen, William of St Andrea, Roger de Pirers, W. Rotberto de Saint-Nicholas, Conan, Richard de Gonsceville, Hugh de Lodensval, priests; Ralph and Osmund and Hugh son of Turald, and Walter of Saint-Lô, deacons; Jeremy, Walter son of Adelem, Ralph son of Ursel, John son of Benedict, Robert of Le Mans, William Denecen and Romanus lay brethren; Gardinus the smith, Ranulf the goldsmith, with the servants of the church Turfridus, Stephan, Giraldus, Walterus, (and) Odo. Afterward, in that same year, after the feast day of Blessed Bartholomew the Apostle and of St Ouen the Confessor (i.e., August 24), the same body was shown to the most glorious Henry king of England and Adeliza the queen, and the populace, in the presence of holy persons Cardinal John above-mentioned, and Thurstan archbishop of York, and William bishop of Winchester, and Audoin bishop of Evreux, and Bernard bishop of St. David’s, and the bishop of Exeter, and the abbot of Reading, and the abbot of Bec, and many others; and the body was venerably restored to the reliquary.

There are some small anomalies, but most of these are easily explained by assuming that the eighteenth-century scribe – Master Dupuys – has simply   I am using the term translatio in its broadest sense – the carrying of a saint’s relics with all due pomp and circumstance, cf. The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1907) xii, 738 – interchangeably with ostensio (a showing or display).   Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1898–1901), ii, 1060–2; Butler’s Lives of the Saints, ed. H. Thurstan and D. Attwater, 4 vols. (New York, 1968), iv, 184–5; Pierre Bouet, ‘Bibliographie: sources relatives aux saints normands’, in Les saints dans la Normandie médiévale, ed. P. Bouet and F. Neveux (Caen, 2000), 319.   Felice Lifshitz, ‘The Privilege of St. Romanus: Provincial Independence and Hagiographical Legends at Rouen’, Analecta Bollandiana 107 (1989), 161–70.



The Double Display of St. Romanus of Rouen

119

misunderstood some of the twelfth-century abbreviations and scribal conventions. For example, the copyist has miscopied ‘Exon~’ as ‘Oxen~. Other anomalies are mentioned in Appendix A. In general, everything appears sound, and the names are consistent with what is known from other sources. To summarize, we are dealing with a meticulous eighteenth-century copy of four now-lost medieval accounts of the display of the body of St. Romanus. It would be useful at this point to state what we know about Romanus himself. He was the subject of several interrelated vitae and miracula, the earliest of which is the Life recently discovered by Professor Lifshitz. These texts relate that Romanus was born in Francia c. 540, flourishing in the reign of Clovis’s son Clothar I. Romanus was the son of Benedict – of royal blood – and his wife Felicity – of noble birth herself. Benedict served at the royal court and was indeed called ‘father of the country under the king’.10 After numerous appeals and vigils to bring the couple a child (the text allows for the interpretation that Benedict had daughters but no son and heir while Felicity was barren) their prayers were answered. A son, Romanus, was born. As a young man he served at the court of King Clothar and then was elected to the bishopric (later Rouen became an archbishopric), which position was conferred upon him by the king. Romanus’s career as bishop was spent shutting down pagan temples, such as the house of Venus, chasing back flood waters, reassembling a shattered liturgical vessel, levitating, and defeating the advances of a sex-crazed devil-woman. As best can be determined, he was bishop of Rouen from 626 until his death on October 23, 641. The first story I wish to highlight is that of a rivalry between Rouen Cathedral and Rouen’s abbey of Saint-Ouen. A version of this story has been told by Felice Lifshitz in her ‘Dossier of Romanus’ and several subsequent articles. When she wrote her ‘Dossier’, she did not know about G 3666 directly, but only through secondary references from the Rouen cartulary (edited below in Appendix B) and from the Bollandists. She, therefore, dismissed the document out of hand: ‘There is no chance that it was authentic.’ 11 Subsequently she learned of G 3666 but still expressed reluctance to accept the implications of the document, writing, ‘Geoffrey Brito, for instance, “displayed” the body of Romanus, but was unable to make anything of his show of power.’ 12 Or more broadly, ‘Nevertheless the archbishops were out of their depth and never mastered the fine art of cultic orchestration at which monastic ateliers so excelled.’ 13  

BN MS. lat. 13,090. Felice Lifshitz, ‘The Dossier of Romanus of Rouen: The Political Uses of Hagiographical Texts’, unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia Univ., 1988. Romanus’s vita and miracula are both published in Felice Lifshitz, The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics, 684–1090 (Toronto, 1995), 234–81. 10  Lifshitz, Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria, 239: ‘sub rege pater patriae nominaretur’. 11  Lifshitz, ‘Dossier of Romanus’, 108. 12  Felice Lifshitz, ‘Eight Men In: Rouennais Traditions of Archiepiscopal Sanctity’, HSJ 2 (1990), 72, n. 39. 13  Lifshitz, ‘Eight Men In’, 71.

120

David S. Spear

In Lifshitz’s account the abbey and cathedral formed essentially a single community until c. 1000 when, under Hildebert, the monastery’s first regular abbot, the abbey’s and the cathedral’s identities began to diverge. This trend culminated with Abbot Nicholas (1042–92) who decided to make Saint-Ouen a pilgrim center by procuring numerous saintly relics.14 Almost overnight, Nicholas, ‘the single greatest collector of relics and master of matters cultic in all of eleventh-century Normandy’, turned Saint-Ouen ‘into the single most privileged and well-endowed ecclesiastical entity in pre-1066 Normandy’.15 One of these relics was the head of St. Romanus which had been sent to Soissons in the mid-ninth century during the period of Viking unrest. Meanwhile Romanus’s body remained in Rouen, first in the suburban church of SaintGodard, and then in the second half of the ninth century, in one of the towers of the city wall of Rouen. Lifshitz ends her narrative with Abbot Nicholas welcoming the return of St. Romanus’s head to the abbey of Saint-Ouen on April 28, 1090 from the abbey of Saint-Medard of Soissons. ‘The Abbey of Saint-Ouen procured a relic of Romanus, and attempted to start up a cult to rival his cathedral-based devotions.’ 16 Lifshitz proposes that the abbey lost control of the cult of St. Romanus to the cathedral – in spite of having obtained his head – because the vitae now being composed at Saint-Ouen portrayed him a saint manqué. ‘As (the newly minted) pastoral-minded thaumaturge, Romanus never did capture the imagination of anyone; it just wasn’t him.’ 17 But to conclude the narrative in 1090, as Lifshitz does, is somewhat misleading. What G 3666 strongly suggests is that the reason the cathedral triumphed over the abbey for control of the cult of Romanus is that the cathedral in fact had both the body and the head of the saint. The cathedral chapter and archbishop had made visible their control as early as 1036 with a showing of St. Romanus’s body witnessed by members of the Rouen chapter, but with no mention of any monks or abbot from Saint-Ouen,18 which ownership was further emphasized by the translation of St. Romanus to the cathedral of Rouen.19 This very public translation, reinforced by indulgences, special 14 

Lifshitz, Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria, 197. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria, quotations from 197 and 194 respectively. 16  Lifshitz, Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria, 205. 17  Lifshitz, Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria, 205. 18  ‘Anno ab incarnatione Domini MXXXVI, Indictione IV, Rodberti Praesulis tempore, vii Kal. Junii, Vigilia Dominicae Ascensionis sollicite quaesitum et in hac ipsa urna vere totum est Corpus gloriosi Praesulis Sanctissimi Romani inventum, teste Gradulfo Fontinellae Abbate cum quatuor Monachis, praesente Domino Hugone Archidiacono et Herluino Thesaurario cum aliis nonnullis Canonicis et Laicis testibus idoneis, hicque iterum reconditum devotioni futurorum.’ Jacques Le Maho notes that the abbot and four monks of Saint-Wandrille were present for this ostensio and suggests that the reason is that the church of Saint-Lawrence (a holding of Saint-Wandrille) was situated very near the church of Saint-Godard which at that time housed the relics of St. Romanus. J. Le Maho, ‘Recherches sur les origines de quelques églises de Rouen (VI–XI siècles)’, Bulletin de la commission départementale des antiquités de la Seine-Maritime 43 (1995), 153. I thank Véronique Gazeau for calling this article to my attention. 19  Le Maho draws attention to other documents which further link the cult of St. Romanus with the cathedral, as for example in 1028 x 1033 when the saint was invoked to help restore the 15 



The Double Display of St. Romanus of Rouen

121

blessings for the participants, and a new reliquary for Romanus’s body, was carried out by Archbishop William Bonne-Âme (1079–1110), presumably before 1090.20 But now Abbot Nicholas had obviously purchased a rival – from the cathedral’s perspective a fake – head in 1090. Therefore in the summer of 1124, to make the point as emphatically as possible, the archbishop and chapter of Rouen twice organized public displays of Romanus’s head and body. The papal legate John of Crema was enlisted to preside over the ceremonies in order, if one will forgive the pun, to decapitate the claims of Saint-Ouen. It can hardly have been coincidence that the date chosen for the second viewing was just after the feast day of St. Ouen the Confessor. And there is actually a corroborating document, a counterpart issued by the papal legate John of Crema himself,21 that states that John saw with his own eyes and handled with his own hands the body and the head of St. Romanus. (This testimonial is edited in Appendix B.) Thus, we have in fact two separate, corroborative documents referring to the 1124 ostensiones. It seems to me that the bi-translatio of 1124 was orchestrated by the Rouen Cathedral chapter and archbishop working in tandem. There is certainly a high degree of self-conscious corporate identity in the document. We are provided with a list of the canons who were in attendance – dignitaries, non-dignitary canons, and even the chapter’s servants – which listing was quite rare for this period.22 The first canons appear at Rouen beginning in c. 1000 and then gradually increase in number throughout the remainder of the ducal period. The document G 3666 is our first snapshot of the cathedral chapter acting as a corporate entity. In the 1036 translatio we read only of Herluin the treasurer while the other canons remain unnamed. In 1124 three dignitaries are named (although Gilbert the chanter and Gislebert the chancellor – both known from other sources – were absent), as are six canon-priests, four canon-deacons, and seven lay brethren (laicis religiosis), along with five servants of the church. Of those named, Geoffrey the dean, Roger the treasurer, Fulbert the archdeacon, Roger de Pirers, Conan, Hugh son of Turald, and Jeremy are all known from other documents, which increases our confidence in G 3666. Some of the Rouen names are interesting. Fulbert the archdeacon has the same name as the author of the Vita Sancti Romani. (Lifshitz, it should be noted, dismisses him as the author of the vita without explanation, although he has traditionally been so regarded.) Moreover, Fulbert is a name strongly associated with the Rouen chapter; indeed, only one other example of a Fulbert from the entire ducal period is found at a Norman cathedral other than Rouen cathedral’s alienated lands (Recueil, ed. Fauroux, no. 67), or in 1069 when his reliquary was employed for a Palm Sunday procession into the cathedral church (Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime G 3659). Le Maho, ‘Recherches sur les origines de quelques églises de Rouen’, 151–8, 197–201. 20  OV iii, 22–4. 21  Lifshitz, ‘Dossier of Romanus’, 118. 22  The information drawn on for this paragraph and the next comes from David S. Spear, The Personnel of the Norman Cathedrals during the Ducal Period, 911–1204 (London, 2006).

122

David S. Spear

(Fulbert the probable canon at Coutances in 1183 x 1202). That one of the canons should be named Romanus is striking because only one other canon in all of Normandy during the entire ducal period bears that name (Romanus canon of Lisieux in 1147 x 1161). Similarly, the name John son of Benedict is also suggestive for Benedict is another name closely associated with Rouen Cathedral, the most relevant being Benedict the archdeacon (c. 1060–1106) who, incidentally, appears often in tandem with archdeacon Fulbert II. Again, only one other canon outside Rouen in all of Normandy for the entire ducal period is named Benedict (a canon of Sées in 1188 x 1201). Benedict, we should recall, is the name of St. Romanus’s father. Ralph son of Ursel is intriguing because Ursel was the name of an archdeacon at Rouen (1088–1106). The repetition of canons’ names suggests a strong sense of corporate community and continuity. Communities are often defined in opposition to someone or something else.23 Here, for example, the cathedral versus the abbey of Saint-Ouen. June 1124 provides a moment when the archbishop and canons, pulling together it would seem, hosted a great ceremonial occasion that called attention to their early bishop Romanus. At the same time the cathedral clergy were in the process of the tidying up the episcopal fasti at Rouen – favoring St. Mellon over St. Nicaise as the first bishop of the city,24 while Ouen, Romanus’s episcopal successor was minimized – as well as displaying a new interest in the history of Rouen’s archbishops.25 Although the tension between monastery and cathedral can be overdrawn, for Fulbert the archdeacon retired to SaintOuen in c. 1123 while Archbishop Geoffrey dedicated the new church of Saint-Ouen in 1126,26 it seems clear that Romanus was to be regarded as a new cultic hero for the cathedral at the expense of the pretensions of the abbey.27 For whatever miracles may have taken place or whatever liturgical 23  The role of St. Martin in defining communities at Tours makes an interesting comparison with the situation at Rouen, for while three institutions fought for control of St. Martin there were only two main rivals for St. Romanus. At Tours the cathedral church lost control of their saint; at Rouen the abbey lost. See Sharon Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Ithaca, 1991). 24  Louis Violette, ‘Le thème des origines de l’église de Rouen d’après une oeuvre de ses chanoines: les Annales de Rouen’, in Chapitres et cathédrales en Normandie, ed. S. Lemagnen and P. Manneville (Caen, 1997), 287–94. 25  Louis Violette, ‘Une entreprise historiographique au temps de la Réforme Grégorienne: les Actes des archevêques de Rouen’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France 83 (1997), 343–65, and ‘Le problème de l’attribution d’un texte rouennias du XI siècle: les Acta archiepiscoporum Rothomagensium’, Analecta Bollandiana 115 (1997), 113–29; Olivier Diard and Véronique Gazeau, ‘Histoire et chant liturgique en Normandie au XI siècle: les offices propres particuliers des diocèses d’Evreux et de Rouen’, Annales de Normandie 53 (2003), 195–223, esp. 210–18. 26  OV iv, 308, 310; vi, 366. 27  It is doubtless owing to factors much broader than the cathedral’s appropriation of St. Romanus’s cult that at this very moment Saint-Ouen’s manuscript production begins to decline. L’abbaye de Saint-Ouen de Rouen, exhibition catalogue, Bibliothèque municipale de Rouen (Rouen, 1979), 27; François Avril, Manuscrits normands: XI–XII siècles, exhibition catalogue, Musée des Beaux-Arts (Rouen, 1975), 73–4.



The Double Display of St. Romanus of Rouen

123

splendor may have accompanied the event, both of the 1124 accounts are concerned primarily with assuring the reader that Romanus’s relics were present and in the possession of the cathedral church. One wonders, too, if the cultic center being established at the cathedral was in some way connected with the tower of St. Romanus, today the earliest surviving part of the predominantly gothic structure. Jacques Le Maho has called attention to liturgical events relating to St. Romanus which were enacted at the west portal of the cathedral where two priests held aloft the chasse of St. Romanus, offering protection thereby to all those who passed underneath.28 The dating of the tower can be no more precise than the mid-twelfth century. It is interesting that Le Maho has mustered a series of texts which he has ingeniously related to the excavations of Rouen Cathedral and to its existing fabric. But one text which is missing is G 3666, and it is tempting to suggest that the displays of St. Romanus in the summer of 1124 were somehow connected to the construction of the tower of St. Romanus, perhaps the start of its foundation, or even the completion of the first story. It should be noted that Romanus had previously ‘resided’ in one of the towers of the wall of Rouen, thence to a new site in the cathedral under Archbishop William BonneÂme, perhaps then in 1124 to his own new tower at the cathedral. Originally the tower of St. Romanus was free standing, adjacent to the cathedral but not contiguous, until the gothic building campaigns incorporated the tower of SaintRomain as the northern tower of the west portal. If the chapter leads us to a burgeoning sense of corporate community in Rouen, perhaps embodied in the construction of a new tower at the cathedral, Archbishop Geoffrey, for his part, leads us to a new Norman acceptance of the reform papacy. Geoffrey’s predecessor, William Bonne-Âme, seems to have held the papacy at arm’s length. By contrast, Geoffrey moved comfortably in papal circles.29 He may well have met Pope Urban II in 1096 when Geoffrey was dean of Le Mans;30 he certainly met Pope Calixtus in 1119. And in 1118 he received the papal legate Cuno in Rouen. Indeed, Geoffrey himself had served as papal judge-delegate on at least one occasion in 1119–20. But Geoffrey’s relatively close contact with the papacy should not blind us to the fact that papal legates were generally not welcome in ducal Normandy, and were discouraged to an even greater degree in Norman England.31 The 28 

Jacques Le Maho, ‘Nouvelles hypothèses sur l’église Notre-Dame de Rouen au Xe siècle’, in Chapitres et cathédrales en Normandie, 295–306, and ‘Grand travaux à la cathédrale de Rouen (avant 996)’, in La Normandie vers l’an mil, ed. François de Beaurepaire and J.-P. Chaline (Rouen, 2000), 150–8. See also Maurice Allinne and A. Loisel, La cathédrale de Rouen avant l’incendie de 1200: la tour Saint-Romain (Rouen, 1904). 29  Spear, ‘Geoffrey Brito’, 123–37. 30  Gallia christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, ed. Sainte-Marthe et al., 16 vols. (Paris, 1870–99), xiv, col. 420; René Crozet, ‘Le voyage d’Urbain II et ses négotiations avec le clergé de France (1095–1096)’, Revue historique 179 (1937), 297. 31  Theodor Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich vom Vertrage von Meersen (870) bis zum Schisma von 1130 (Berlin, 1935), 194–5, 214–26; Rudolf Hiestand, ‘Les légats pontificaux en France du milieu du XI à la fin du XII siècle’, in L’Eglise de France et la papauté (X–XIII

124

David S. Spear

presence, therefore, of John of Crema, cardinal priest of St. Chrysogonus and papal legate, demands comment. There can be no question that during the summer of 1124 serious negotiations were taking place.32 The quid pro quo has been lucidly set out by Sandy Hicks: the papacy would annul the marriage of William Clito to Sibyl of Anjou in return for permission to hold a legatine council in England. Clito, the exiled nephew of King Henry, was the rallying point for the king’s enemies. Since Henry’s own son had died in the wreck of the White Ship in 1120, he was now without a male heir. Clito’s claim to the throne was strong; coupled with the power of Fulk of Anjou as his new fatherin-law his base of operations was likewise strengthened. Those who opposed Henry for whatever reason began to rally around the cause of William Clito. Henry, for his part, was desperate to weaken Clito’s position. He argued strongly that Clito and Sybil were too closely related, seeking support from the papacy for his viewpoint. If supported by Rome, he would even allow a papal legate into England. Hicks has painted a convincing account of the papal-royal bargaining. But on one point he remains vague: ‘If John [of Crema] or any other papal official approached Henry in Normandy concerning a bargain before the pope’s annulment decree, such information is unknown.’ 33 The presence of John of Crema in Rouen in June and with the king in late August 1124, assured by G 3666, allows us to see that John indeed was hard at work in these negotiations. One other point worth noting is that John of Crema’s presiding over the ostensiones of St. Romanus may represent the first time a papal legate performed such a liturgical duty in all of France.34 It seems likely, too, that at the same time John of Crema was bargaining with King Henry over a legatine council, he was brokering a peace between the archbishops of York and Canterbury. The York–Canterbury dispute had festered since the days of Lanfranc. The archbishops of Canterbury demanded a profession of obedience from the archbishops of York, which of course York refused to swear. As events stood in 1124, William of Corbeil had quite recently been elected archbishop of Canterbury yet was already at odds with Thurstan of York.35 In Rome in spring 1123, ‘Pope Calixtus settled the matter, for then, siècle), ed. R. Grosse (Bonn, 1993), 54–80; Martin Brett, The English Church under Henry I (Oxford, 1975), 34–62; Hollister, Henry I, 304–8, 444–8; Councils and Synods with Other Documents relating to the English Church, Vol. I (871–1204), Part II (1066–1204), ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 1981), 723–41. 32  Sandy Burton Hicks, ‘The Anglo-Papal Bargain of 1125: The Legatine Mission of John of Crema’, Albion 8 (1976), 301–10. 33  Hicks, ‘Anglo-Papal Bargain’, 308. 34  The first translation of relics noted by Hiestand is that of Gerard of Angoulême at Saint-Aubin in Angers in 1128: Hiestand, ‘Les légats pontificaux’, 75. Denis Bethell posits an interest in relics on the part of John of Crema in ‘The Making of a Twelfth-Century Relic Collection’, in Popular Belief and Practice, ed. G. Cuming and D. Baker, Studies in Church History, 8 (Cambridge, 1972), 70. 35  Denis Bethell, ‘William of Corbeil and the Canterbury–York Dispute’, Jnl. Eccl. Hist. 19 (1968), 145–59; Donald Nicholl, Thurstan Archbishop of York, 1114–1140 (York, 1964), chapter IV.



The Double Display of St. Romanus of Rouen

125

by resolving to have the issue adjudicated and settled once and for all by a papal legate presiding at a council in England.’ 36 This was realized, of course, as John of Crema’s legatine council held in London in September 1125. The compromise scheme that John negotiated allowed for Canterbury to cede the bishoprics of Chester, Bangor, and St. Asaph’s to York ‘in return for a spoken – but not written – profession of obedience’.37 Although this is not the solution that was finally reached in Rome in early 1126, it is nevertheless easy to envision the debate that took place in Rouen in the summer of 1124 as John of Crema weighed arguments and suggestions from Thurstan himself, from Archbishop Geoffrey who had tried to resolve the issue as papal judge-delegate back in 1119–20, from Bernard bishop of St. David’s who had been in Rome in spring 1123, from William Warelwast, bishop of Exeter, who was knowledge­able in the ways of the papal curia having undertaken at least eight missions to Rome, and from Jeremy canon of Rouen who was a veteran in the dispute.38 It is indeed interesting to note that each of the bishops present in late August 1124 has his own story. Bishop Audoin (also known as Ouen) of Evreux was the brother of Archbishop Thurstan. Their two lives paralleled each other to a remarkable degree:39 both men were born in Normandy, were canons of St. Paul’s in London, were royal chaplains, were Anglo-Norman bishops, and were avid supporters of the Augustinian canons. In spite of the distance between their two sees, they were often found together – at York, at various locations across England ranging as far west as Exeter, at Evreux and other sites in Normandy, and even outside the Anglo-Norman regnum at Reims and Fontevrault. So it is not surprising that the two brothers would be together in Rouen in August 1124. Nor did the two separate, for they continued on in the company of John of Crema to Rome where the following year a papal solution to the York–Canterbury controversy was effected. Audoin was bound to King Henry in a compelling way.40 In the summer of 1119 Amaury de Montfort, the count of Evreux, led a rebellion against Henry. The king’s only chance of catching and defeating Amaury was to surround Evreux and burn it down, including the cathedral there. Audoin gave Henry his permission, as long as Henry promised to rebuild the cathedral. Henry and Audoin were denounced at the Council of Reims later in the year for having burned the church, but they were defended by Archbishops Geoffrey and Thurstan. Henry’s promise to rebuild was later fulfilled. Now, in 1123 and on Nicholl is unaware that Thurstan was in Rouen in late August 1124. Cf. his itinerary for Thurstan on viii. 36  Hollister, Henry I, 289. 37  Hollister, Henry I, 308; Denis Bethell, ‘William of Corbeil’, 156. 38  Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, 1066–1127, ed. C. Johnson, rev. by M. Brett, C. N. L. Brooke, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1990), 188, 192, 200. 39  David S. Spear, ‘Une famille ecclésiastique anglo-normande: l’evêque Ouen d’Evreux et l’archevêque Thurstan d’York’, Etudes normandes 35:3 (1986), 21–7. 40  On the events in this paragraph, see Hollister, Henry I, 290–306.

126

David S. Spear

into the spring of 1124 Amaury de Montfort had rebelled against Henry once again, sending the loyal Audoin scurrying to Henry’s court. The rebellion was effectively over by mid-May 1124 when Henry’s forces successfully besieged Brionne castle. Audoin and Henry were therefore doubtless breathing a sigh of relief at Rouen in June for the calming of disturbances in Evreux and that this time the cathedral and town had not had to have been put to the torch. William Giffard, bishop of Winchester (1107–29), former chaplain of William the Conqueror and chancellor of William Rufus, was now back in Rouen. He had been dean of Rouen Cathedral nearly forty-five years earlier.41 In spite of Frank Barlow’s assessment that Giffard ‘seems to have played no great part in public affairs but applied himself primarily to his diocese and city’,42 he had consecrated William of Corbeil as the new archbishop of Canterbury in 1123 and now was with King Henry in Rouen. Giffard was knowledgeable in the traditions of Rouen Cathedral; his opinion had once been sought on matters related to the singing of the Laudes regiae there.43 Indeed, the Laudes regiae surprisingly bring us back to St. Romanus, for a late twelfthcentury Norman manuscript – a monastic production from either Saint-Ouen or from Lyre Abbey in the diocese of Evreux – evokes his name among the litany of saints called upon for intercession. Cowdrey notes that the occasion memorialized in this Norman version could be considerably older than the manuscript itself, that it could be from the time of Henry I, that it was probably associated with the cathedral, and that it could commemorate a military victory. Might we be allowed at least to speculate that the victory may have been that over Amaury de Montfort at Brionne in mid-May 1124, and that this particular chanting of the Laudes may have coincided in some way with the bi-translatio of St. Romanus? 44 The final two bishops in attendance at Romanus’s August ostensio were both loyal servants of King Henry and skilled diplomats, experienced in dealing with the intricacies of the papal curia. And both were knowledgeable in the recent twists and turns of the York-Canterbury dispute. Bernard bishop of St. David’s (1115–48) had been Queen Adeliza’s chancellor as well as King Henry’s messenger and ambassador.45 He had met the papal legate Peter Pierleoni in 1121 and at Rome in 1123 had brought Canterbury’s claims against York before the pope and cardinals. William Warelwast, bishop of Exeter (1107–37),

41  David S. Spear, ‘Les doyens du chapitre cathédral de Rouen durant la période ducale’, Annales de Normandie 33 (1983), 97. 42  Frank Barlow, The English Church 1066–1154: A History of the Anglo-Norman Church (London, 1979), 79. 43  Lucien Valin, Le duc de Normandie et sa cour (912–1204) (Paris, 1910), 258, citing the Rouen cathedral cartulary, Bibliothèque minicipale Rouen MS. Y44 (1193), fol. 49. 44  On the Laudes see Ernst Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship (Berkeley, 1958); H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘The Anglo-Norman Laudes Regiae’, Viator 12 (1981), 37–78, esp. 42–3, 76–8. 45  Barlow, The English Church, 83–4; Brett, The English Church, 41, 83; Hollister, Henry I, 242.



The Double Display of St. Romanus of Rouen

127

although blind, had been to Rome at least eight times.46 Warelwast’s biographer, D. W. Blake, carefully traces the bishop of Exeter’s importance as a royal diplomat; knowledge of William’s presence in Rouen in 1124 in the company of both the king and a papal legate would have added yet another example to that illustrious role. And each of the abbots has a story. Boso abbot of Bec (1124–36) was consecrated less than a month before the June translatio.47 There had been at first serious tensions between Boso and King Henry, for Boso initially refused to swear an oath of homage to the king. The author of the De libertate Beccensis implies a correlation between Henry’s success at the 1124 siege of Brionne (which is quite near Bec) and his willingness to allow Boso to become a ‘nonjuring’ abbot. Boso was consecrated at Rouen on June 1 with Henry’s blessing, without an oath of homage, and without swearing an oath of obedience to Archbishop Geoffrey. Geoffrey, for his part, was flexible on the matter once he understood Henry’s kindly attitude towards Boso. Interestingly, the De libertate also claims a role for John of Crema who was at the abbot’s blessing, asking Geoffrey to refrain from demanding an oath of obedience from Boso – another corroboration of John of Crema’s presence in Rouen in June 1124 and of Boso’s presence as well. Indeed, the translationes represent Boso’s first official known public appearances for he does not figure often into the charter and chronicle accounts of the period. As for Hugh abbot of Reading’s appearance in Rouen, it was fraught with significance.48 Although Hugh had been appointed abbot as recently as 15 April 1123, here he was in the entourage of King Henry. Perhaps Hugh’s hopes to aggrandize his abbey’s relic collections were encouraged by the translatio of St. Romanus. Certainly one of the main endowments of Reading Abbey was its relic collection. One would like to think of Hugh appreciating the ceremonial and liturgical aspects of the translatio, but also the powers associated with Romanus himself (as for example his acts of hospitality, which virtue came to be especially cultivated at Reading).49 Hugh and Henry both must have been 46 

D. W. Blake, ‘Bishop William Warelwast’, Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association 104 (1972), 15–33. Blake suspects that William was in Rouen in 1124, but he does not know the bishop was with a papal legate there. 47  For the Life of Boso and the De libertate Beccensis see conveniently the translations in Sally N. Vaughn, The Abbey of Bec and the Anglo-Norman State, 1034–1136 (Woodbridge, 1981), 126– 43, esp. 130–1, 142–3. 48  Thomas Waldman is less sanguine than I am that the Abbate de Radicat is the abbot of Reading. He suggests as alternative readings perhaps Richard of Mont-Saint-Michel or Gilbert abbot of Sées both of whom attest Regesta, ii, no. 1427 and therefore may have been at the display of St. Romanus in August 1124. See note 50 below for fuller references. 49  Bethell, ‘The Making of a Twelfth-Century Relic Collection’, 61–72; Pauline Stafford, ‘Cherchez la Femme. Queens, Queens’ Lands and Nunneries: Missing Links in the Foundation of Reading Abbey’, History 85 (2000), 4–27. I confess to disappointment at not finding a piece of St. Romanus himself in the abbey’s list of some 242 relics found in the Reading Abbey cartulary, BL Egerton MS. 3031, fols. 6v–8r, although when Hugh became archbishop of Rouen he gave a bone of St. Romanus to Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis (Le Maho, ‘Nouvelles hypothèses’, 301, citing Suger’s De rebus administratione sua gestis, c. xxvi).

128

David S. Spear

tying up loose ends in the formation of the non-relic endowment of Reading Abbey which was consolidated in 1125 as Henry’s foundation charter.50 B. R. Kemp asserts that ‘the text is certainly spurious as its stands’, but wisely suggests that it may well represent an ‘improved’ or ‘interpolated’ version of the original, proposing that ‘the presence of so many Norman prelates is consistent with an original charter having been given in Normandy, perhaps at Rouen’.51 I think Kemp has hit the nail on the head and that almost certainly the first Reading charter was drawn up in Rouen on or about August 24 given the high degree of overlap in the witnesses who were at the post-August 24 translatio and in the Reading foundation charter. Later events in Hugh’s career are foreshadowed here. ‘While he was still abbot of Reading, Hugh became a part of the papal curia in Rome.’ 52 Admitting that we can never know by what paths Hugh became known in Rome – Hugh’s own kinsman Matthew of Albano was a papal legate in Normandy in 1128 – certainly his contact with John of Crema did him no harm. Moreover, Hugh’s contact with the Rouen Cathedral chapter may have increased his chances of being elected archbishop of Rouen after Geoffrey died in 1128. For this was no casual passing through Rouen; given the gravity of the ceremony, we can be sure that Hugh had direct contact with the chapter. In this regard Hugh makes a nice bookend to William Giffard; this was Hugh’s first encounter with the Rouen Cathedral clergy and presumably Giffard’s last. Queen Adeliza’s story, too, crosses Rouen in August 1124. When Henry’s son and heir, William Adelin, died in the White Ship disaster of 1120,53 he immediately found a new wife. As a widower then aged fifty-two, he set out to marry a much younger woman, Adeliza of Louvain. While Henry’s first wife, Matilda, preferred to remain in residence at Westminster, Adeliza adopted the king’s peripatetic lifestyle, probably to be able to produce a new heir.54 But Adeliza’s biographer, Laura Wertheimer, unaware of G 3666 omits Rouen in August 1124 from her itinerary and omits the viewing of St. Romanus from her list of royal religious or sacral activities. St. Romanus perhaps had special significance for Adeliza, for she may have prayed for the intercession of St. Romanus who himself was born to parents miraculously cured of infertility.

50  Reading Abbey Cartularies, ed. B. R. Kemp, Camden, 4th ser., 31 and 33, 2 vols. (London, 1986–87), i, no. 1 = Regesta, ii, no. 1427. It seems likely that Regesta, ii, no. 1428 can also now be more closely linked in time, place, and circumstance to no. 1427. 51  Reading Abbey Cartularies, i, 35–6. 52  Thomas G. Waldman, ‘Hugh of Amiens, Archbishop of Rouen (1130–64), the Norman Abbots, and the Papacy: The Foundation of a “Textual Community”’, HSJ 2 (1990), 140. The most complete biography of Hugh remains P. Hébert, ‘Un archevêque de Rouen du XII siècle: Hugues III d’Amiens, 1130–1164’, Revue des questions historiques 32 (1898), 325–71. 53  Hollister, Henry I, 276–9. 54  Laura Wertheimer, ‘Adeliza of Louvain and Anglo-Norman Queenship’, HSJ 7 (1995), 101– 15; Kathleen Thompson, ‘Affairs of State: The Illegitimate Children of Henry I’, JMH 29 (2003), 137.



The Double Display of St. Romanus of Rouen

129

For King Henry, the rebellion of Amaury de Montfort had just ended in mid-April, and if the De libertate Beccensis is to be trusted, Henry was feeling momentarily relieved. Of course now his most pressing issue was to get William Clito and Sybil’s marriage annulled, which led him into direct negotiations with John of Crema. He was concerned, too, about the seemingly endless nature of the feud between York and Canterbury. He was working on an endowment for Reading Abbey, perhaps part of a personal migration towards greater piety. Thus, Henry’s understanding of the translatio may have been a mixture of both faith and politics. We know of at least one other occasion when Henry showed a personal interest in saintly artifacts; in 1118 Henry had sent an embassy to Constantinople to procure relics.55 But as the vita of St. Romanus was narrated, the part that would doubtless have resonated most strongly with Henry was the fact that Romanus had been a servant of the king, that it was the king who had made him the new bishop of Rouen, and that Romanus had continued to serve at royal court even while bishop. It was a Merovingian conception of the episcopacy that was consonant with his own ideas of Church–State relations. Different saints, different stories. If, for example, the canons of Rouen had displayed the bones of St. Augustine of Canterbury, a very different atmosphere would have prevailed, alienating Thurstan of York and his party.56 And Augustine would have added a monastic flavor to the proceedings. Or had it been a display of the piece of the Holy Lance, messages of expeditions to the Holy Land, past and future, would have been communicated, alienating perhaps King Henry who had his crusader brother, Robert Curthose, under arrest. Indeed, at this very moment at Mont-Saint-Michel, at the other end of the duchy, the cult of St. Aubert was prospering as the bodily counterpart to the etherial figure of the archangel Michael.57 But we have Romanus. The most obvious point is that he is a local saint, not well-known outside the diocese of Rouen. His main claim to fame seems to have been that he was a Rouen bishop, and a saint. He was not even Rouen’s first bishop: perhaps it was enough simply to have preceded St. Ouen in that office. But in the summer of 1124 he was made to appeal to both sexes (the presence of Adeliza) and to all segments of Norman society, from the king and queen, through the elite clergy, to the cathedral chapter, to the lay brethren (if we are reading that correctly), and finally to the populi. Of course we have no way of measuring how much Romanus was truly venerated by these different groups, but at least the displays of 1124 were consciously set out to appeal to a diverse population. It may be worth noting, too, that Romanus’s vita presents a saint who had conquered all four elements – earth (the closing down of the 55 

Bethell, ‘The Making of a Twelfth-Century Relic Collection’, 69. Augustine’s body was of course safely in Canterbury and had in fact recently been moved to a new location in the rebuilt abbey church of St. Augustine’s. Richard Sharpe, ‘The Setting of St Augustine’s Translation, 1091’, in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints and Scholars, 1066–1109, ed. R. Eales and R. Sharpe (London, 1995), 1–13. 57  Katherine Allen Smith, ‘An Angel’s Power in a Bishop’s Body: The Making of the Cult of Aubert of Avranches at Mont-Saint-Michel’, JMH 29 (2003), 347–60. 56 

130

David S. Spear

subterranean pagan temple), air (his levitation), fire (apparuit super caput eius ignis flammea speties fulgurantis), and water (quelling the flood waters of the Seine) – perhaps rendering him a more powerful figure than we appreciate today. More important, at least at an unconscious level, may have been his name: Romanus, the Roman. The bishop’s name linked Rouen to Rome, a connection certainly heightened by the key role played in both displays by John of Crema, cardinal priest of the Roman church of St. Chrysogonus and papal legate.58 I would not suggest that the translationes were anti-monastic, but it is striking how few abbots were present – only Boso of Bec was at both viewings while Hugh of Reading was present in August. If the Norman names on the Reading Foundation Charter are any indication, other abbots were in town but either were not officially invited to the August viewing or were left off the formal list of participants. Rather, the occasions had an episcopal feel to them. Geoffrey and Thurstan the archbishops, the bishops of Evreux, Winchester, Exeter, and St. David’s were all curial bishops – like Romanus himself – who could be called loyal servants of the crown. And it is interesting to note that at this exact moment, not a single bishop in the entire Anglo-Norman regnum was a monk.59 Bishops and kings. Romanus the servant of King Clothar, was made bishop by the king. And recall that Romanus was liturgically associated with kings and dukes in the Laudes regiae. It seems, therefore, that the first translatio was orchestrated by the Rouen archbishop and the cathedral chapter to assure themselves that they did indeed have St. Romanus’s body and head. John of Crema was invited to add his imprimatur to the occasion. It was a success. Certainly we can dispense with the notion that ‘the archbishops were out of their depth and never mastered the fine art of cultic orchestration’. Word traveled – perhaps about some special attribute of the relics – and a second viewing was arranged for the king and queen and their entourage. It is this royal connection, along with Romanus’s staying power at Rouen (for the reliquary was opened again in 1179 by another archiepiscopal royal servant – Rotrou – and the bones placed a new chasse) that leads me to wonder if, contra Felice Lifshitz, the germs of the Privilege of St. Romanus, the releasing of a royal prisoner each year, were not planted in the summer of 1124.60 But that is another story. 58  A marvelous reversal of this point took place in 1227 when a papal legate named Romanus conducted an official visitation of the Rouen chapter, trampling on both their privileges and treasury. The archbishop and chapter immediately appealed the legality of this intrusion directly to the pope. Richard Kay, ‘Romanus and Rouen: A Papal Legate’s Tainted Visitation in 1227’, Annales de Normandie 51 (2001), 111–19. 59  This point is developed in David S. Spear, ‘The Norman Episcopate under Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy (1106–1135)’, unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, 1982, 51. 60  Lifshitz, ‘The Privilege of St. Romanus’, 161–70, argues that the ‘Privilege of St Romanus’ was not first exercised until the decade after 1204. See also A. Floquet, Histoire du privilège de Saint Romain, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1833).



The Double Display of St. Romanus of Rouen

131

Appendix A An account of the displays of the body of St. Romanus on June 27 and shortly after August 24, 1124. The 1777 copy, a five page procès-verbal, is an inspection of three charters found in the chasse of St. Romanus in Rouen. The other two testimonials, from 1036 and 1179, are not included here. A = Original lost. B = Paper copy made in 1777 from now lost originals, Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime, G 3666.

Anno ab incarnatione Domini MCXXIV, Indictione II, tempore Domini Goisfridi Archiepiscopi, V Kal. Julii, Feria VI, futura insequenti die Dominica Apostolorum Petri et Pauli solemnitate, quaesitum et inventum in hac ipsa urna totum Corpus cum Capite Beatissimi Romani, praesente Domino Joanne Cremensi Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinali tituli Sancti Grisogoni,61 qui ipse propriis manibus revolvit inventum et involvit recondendum, praesente praedicto G. Pontifice et Bosone Beccensi Abbate, et Goisfrido Decano et Rogerio secretario et Fulberto Archidiacono, cum Canonicis Sanctae Ecclesiae Rothomagensis Willelmo de Sancto Andrea, Rogerio de Pirers, W.62 Rotberto de Sancto Nicholaho, Conanno, Ricardo de Gonscevilla, Hugone de Lodenesval, presbyteris; Radulpho et Osmundo et Hugone filio Turaldi et Walterio de Sancto Laudo, Diaconibus; Jeremia, Walterio filio Adelelmi, Radulfo filio Urselli, Johanne filio Benedicti, Rodberto Cenomanensi, Willelmo Denecen et Romano laicis religiosis,63 Gardino fabro, Ranulfo aurifice, cum servientibus Ecclesiae Turfrido, Stepheno, Giroldo, Walterio, Odone. Postea vero eodem anno post festum beati Bartholomei Apostoli et Sancti Audoeni Confessoris idem Corpus ostensum est Henrico glorioso Regi Angliae et Adeliae Reginae et populo, praesentibus religiosis personis supra dicto Johanne Cardinali et Turstino Eboracensi Archiepiscopo et Willelmo Wintonensi Episcopo et Odino Ebroicensi Episcopo, et Bernardo Episcopo de F. d.~d.64 et Episcopo Oxon.65 et Abbate de Radicat.66 et Abbate Becci, et multis aliis, et Corpus venerabiliter reconditum.

61  62  63  64  65  66 

Sic, for Crisogoni. Perhaps an abbreviation for W[illelmo] or W[alterio]. The phrase is somewhat unusual, perhaps meaning lay brethren. Sic, for S. D~d, or St. David’s. Sic, for Exonie. Sic, for Radingie or Radingensis.

132

David S. Spear

Appendix B A testimonial by Cardinal John of Crema that he has inspected the body of St. Romanus. A = Original lost. B = Copy, presumably from A, in the Rouen Cathedral cartulary. Rouen Bibliothèque municipale Y 44 (1193), no. 56, fols. 50r–v.

Johannes sanctae Romanae ecclesiae presbyter cardinalis fidelibus Christi salutem. Testis sum ego peccator quod totum corpus cum capite beati Romani inventum est, quod propriis oculis vidi, manibus evolui, tractavi, et reinvolui.67

67 

Eleven blank lines follow immediately after the text, as if additional documentation had been intended.

8 Henry I and the English Church: The Archbishops and the King Sally N. Vaughn

Orderic Vitalis says of King Henry I: ‘He inquired into everything and retained all he heard in his tenacious memory. He wished to know all the business of officials and dignitaries; and since he was an assiduous ruler, he kept an eye on all the happenings in England and Normandy.’  Clearly Orderic, and C. Warren Hollister, who quotes this passage, firmly believed that Henry had his hands on the reins of government as had no other English king before him. Hollister credits Henry with extraordinary administrative abilities, applying ‘reason, system and order’ to a new, precocious English political system. Yet Hollister’s book implies that this administration did not extend to the Church, as it does not consider directly the role of its archbishops in the governance of England. Martin Brett’s masterly study of The English Church under Henry I, Z. N. Brooke’s classic study of The English Church and the Papacy, and Christopher Harper-Bill’s more recent assessment of the Anglo-Norman Church  would seem to have covered every aspect of Henry I and the English Church. Yet none of these studies has specifically addressed Henry’s relationship with and view of his archbishops. Three archbishops served under King Henry: Anselm of Bec (1093–1109), Ralph d’Escures (1114–1122), and William of Corbeil (1123–1136). In discussions of Henry and the Church, Anselm has received by far the most attention: first, because of his enormous fame and saintliness; second, because of the drama of the English Investiture Contest; and finally, because of the massive amount of source material available, including Anselm’s large correspondence  

C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, ed. Amanda Clark Frost (New Haven, 2001), 369; OV vi, 100. Hollister, Henry I, 368.   Martin Brett, The English Church under Henry I (Oxford, 1975).   Z. N. Brooke, The English Church and the Papacy from the Conquest to the Reign of John (Cambridge, 1931; reprint 1989).   Christopher Harper-Bill, ‘The Anglo-Norman Church’, in A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Elizabeth van Houts (Woodbridge, 2003), 165–90.   Brett, English Church, does have a chapter on ‘The Archbishops’, 63–101, comparing the acta of the three archbishops. Brett does not consider the king’s relationship to them either together or separately.  

134

Sally N. Vaughn

and two biographies, labeled ‘eyewitness accounts’. Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi and Historia novorum, the final versions of which emerged in the 1120s, have shaped our interpretations of both Anselm as archbishop and Henry I as king in many ways, including the judgment of many that Historia novorum is a biography of Anselm’s archiepiscopal career, ignoring the last two books, 4 and 5, which recount the career of Archbishop Ralph d’Escures. The sources for Anselm’s two immediate successors are much sparser, and the stories of their careers are far less grand. Ralph’s and William’s roles, consequently, have paled in comparison to Anselm’s. Judith Green remarked that ‘Neither [Ralph nor William] was of a stature or independence of spirit comparable with Anselm’s, probably to the king’s satisfaction’. Martin Brett believed that ‘under Henry I, the archbishops of Canterbury suffered a diminution of influence’.10 Christopher Harper-Bill adds much to Brett’s insight: By the end of Henry I’s reign ... the king was no longer sacerdotal ... the priestly function of kingship had been demolished by the Gregorian Reform movement, and as if in compensation the Anglo-Norman monarchy had created a superb administrative machine which retained control over the temporal aspects of the church.

Henry I did not strive for the outdated tenets of the Anglo-Norman Anonymous, he continues, whose old-fashioned arguments were desperate at best.11 Thus an enormous change had occurred in Henry’s reign, involving the very nature of kingship and consequently also of archiepiscopal rule, although Harper-Bill does not make that point explicitly. Rather, he sees this watershed change during Henry’s reign as a consequence of the fact that ‘the Higher clergy ... had ... become accustomed to contact with Rome’, while continuing to believe in the role of a formidable king who had ‘abandoned the image of sacred kingship and ... the empty symbolism of investiture’, nevertheless retaining real control of the church.12 Yet Harper-Bill’s account does not make clear whether this change occurred under the king’s conscious direction, or by his conscious plan, or even by accident. Likewise Brett’s account omits consideration of this issue or its personalities. Brett himself remarked that the notable personalities of Henry’s reign ‘do not appear with much emphasis’ in his book: ‘The most notable absentee is the king himself. ... The king is an elusive character with a marked capacity for concealing his motives and emotions.’ 13 While Hollister’s biography has made Henry’s character much more accessible, apart from Anselm, the archbishops in Henry’s reign are similarly elusive.

 

R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge, 1963), 301, 315. This is clearly seen in the only current translation, Eadmer’s History of Recent Events in England, trans. Geoffrey Bosanquet (London, 1964), which omits books 4 and 5.   Judith Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), 8–9. 10  Brett, English Church, 71. 11  Harper-Bill, ‘Anglo-Norman Church’, 181–2. 12  Harper-Bill, ‘Anglo-Norman Church’, 189. 13  Brett, English Church, 3.  



Henry I and the English Church

135

Much ink has been spilled on the Canterbury–York disputes, which are part of the story. Brett saw the English Church as evolving from ‘an essentially Anglo-Saxon institution moving slowly towards a later Latin norm ... the reign of Henry saw the working out of a process which much diminished the colonial quality of the episcopate’.14 Henry’s own role in all these developments has received little attention despite Hollister’s book, and the roles of Ralph d’Escures and William of Corbeil even less, especially in the light of my analysis of Anselm’s political philosophy and his ideal vision of the archbishop of Canterbury’s role vis-à-vis the king and queen of England. A reexamination of these issues might shed some light on Henry’s role in shaping the relative power of his three archbishops as it developed – indeed one must say declined – during Henry’s reign. It is these topics that this paper will explain. Anselm, and perhaps Lanfranc before him, had an extraordinary view of the ‘right order’ of England’s ruling hierarchy.15 Eadmer reports Anselm’s stating in 1093, as the barons and people of England urged him to accept the archbishopric of Canterbury, that the English Church was like a plow drawn by two foremost oxen, the king and the archbishop of Canterbury, who thereby ruled the land, the king by justice and sovereignty, the archbishop by divine doctrine and teaching.16 Clearly they ruled as an equal, matched pair. Anselm himself presented this view explicitly to King William Rufus as he took the king aside privately and made clear to him the role he expected to play in the kingdom, should Anselm agree to William’s sickbed plea to accept the office of archbishop: ‘In case on further consideration I should be led to undertake it, I wish briefly to make known to you beforehand the treatment which I would have you accord me.’ First Anselm made clear that Rufus must restore to Canterbury any of its lands held under Lanfranc. Second, Anselm asked that the king must grant him ‘right and a judicial hearing’ concerning any lands Canterbury held before Lanfranc’s tenure that Anselm might seek to recover, and finally he requested that Rufus accept his advice before anyone else’s, and hold Anselm as his spiritual father just as Anselm held Rufus as his earthly lord.17 Thus, according to Eadmer, Anselm made quite clear to Rufus his political philosophy that king and archbishop were co-rulers before he accepted the archbishopric. 14 

Brett, English Church, 7. See Sally N. Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom of the Serpent (Berkeley, 1987), 149–54 and ‘Eadmer’s Historia Novorum: A Reinterpretation’, ANS 10 (1987), 259–89 for Eadmer’s contention that Lanfranc shared this view. 16  Eadmer, Historia novorum in Anglia, ed. Martin Rule, RS 81 (London, 1884), 36: ‘Aratrum Ecclesiam perpendite, juxta apostolum dicentem “Dei agricultura estis.” “Dei aedificatio estis.” Hoc aratrum in Anglia duo boves caeteris praexcellentes regendo trahunt et trahendo regunt, rex videlicet et archiepiscopus Cantuariensis. Iste saeculari justitia et imperio, ille divina doctrina et magisterio.’ 17  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 39–40: ‘Verum si me ad susceptionem illius ratio perduxerit, volo brevi praenoscas quid velim mihi facias. ... Ad haec, volo ut in iis quae ad Deum et Christianitatem pertinent te meo prae caeteris consilio credas, ac, sicut ego te volo terrenum habere dominum et defensorem, ita et tu me spiritualem habeas patrem et animae tuae provisorem.’ 15 

136

Sally N. Vaughn

But Anselm’s vision of England as ruled by two coequals was clearly an abomination to the king, who frequently complained bitterly that Anselm was ‘robbing me of the jewel of my sovereignty’.18 Indeed, this, Anselm’s vision of the ‘right order’ of English rule, may well have been the source of Rufus’ clear hatred of Anselm from the moment of Lanfranc’s death until the king’s own death in 1099. As early as 1094, the year after Anselm had undertaken the episcopal office, Rufus declared: ‘Yesterday I hated him with great hatred; today I hate him with still greater hatred, and he can be certain that tomorrow and thereafter I shall hate him with ever fiercer and more bitter hatred.’ The king went on to reject definitively Anselm’s political philosophy: ‘I absolutely refuse any longer to regard him as father or archbishop. As for his blessings and prayers, I utterly abominate them and spew them from me.’ 19 For it was clearly Anselm’s ideas of co-rule that could rob Rufus of ‘the jewel of his sovereignty’. While Hollister dwelt at great length on Rufus’ sins against the Church and argued persuasively that Rufus kept many bishoprics and abbacies vacant, including Canterbury, to collect their incomes for the crown,20 there can be little doubt that Canterbury’s vacancy was special in other ways. For since the conversion of Kent by St. Augustine, Canterbury had held the privilege of crowning the king by tradition.21 And Bede had inserted in his history a letter from Pope Gregory I to King Ethelbert of Kent, instructing him to ‘raise the moral standards of your subjects by your own innocence of life, encouraging, warning, persuading, correcting, and showing them an example by your good deeds’. Thus the king was to serve as a teacher and example to his people, like an abbot or bishop teaching by word and deed. Moreover, he was to hearken to the instruction of his own new English archbishop, who had converted him: ‘Listen to his advice ungrudgingly, follow it exactly and store it carefully in your memory; for ... he speaks in God’s name ... Work sincerely and wholeheartedly with him in fervent faith, and support his efforts with all [your] ... strength.’ 22 Lanfranc, immediately on his accession to the archbishopric, had cited Bede’s history as if it were a legal text to prove at the king’s court Canterbury’s privileges over York, and its primacy over all Britain and Ireland as well.23 It would not be surprising then if Lanfranc had also considered 18 

Eadmer, Historia novorum, 53, 54, 58. Eadmer, Historia novorum, 52. 20  Hollister, Henry I, 109–10, 117–18, 372, 375–6. 21  Brett, English Church, 69–70. 22  Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), bk. 1, c. 32; the translation is from the Penguin edition, trans. Leo Sherley-Price, rev. R. E. Latham and D. H. Farmer (Harmondsworth, 1990), 94–6. 23  Lanfranc, The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson (Oxford, 1979), epistle 4, 51: ‘So we brought in The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the work of Bede, ... passages were read out which proved to everyone’s satisfaction that from the time of St Augustine, the first archbishop of Canterbury, until the last years of Bede himself, ... my predecessors exercised primacy over the church of York and the whole island which men call Britain and over Ireland as well.’ 19 



Henry I and the English Church

137

himself a co-ruler with King William I, and his equal in rule, based on Bede’s quote of Gregory’s letter to Ethelbert, just as Anselm did. Virtually all modern historians regard Lanfranc and the Conqueror as effective partners in rule, and William I did not hesitate to leave Lanfranc as his vicar in England during his absence.24 This ‘right order’ is exactly that which Eadmer portrayed in his Historia novorum as perfectly exemplified in the Conqueror’s reign: ‘William heeded [Lanfranc’s] counsel not merely as one of several advisers but rather as his chief adviser. ... Lanfranc ... always took pains both to make the king a faithful servant of God and to renew religion and righteous living throughout the whole kingdom.’ 25 This passage quite effectively mirrors Gregory’s letter to Ethelbert. Moreover, Lanfranc ‘so brought his tact and perseverance to bear upon the king that the king restored to ... Canterbury almost all the lands which, rightly hers, the Normans had seized ... and even some others which ... had been lost before they came’.26 Thus Eadmer portrays Lanfranc as enacting Anselm’s theory of ‘right order’ before Anselm uttered it. Eadmer extrapolated this ideal co-rule of king and archbishop backwards to envision this relationship of rule as existing under Archbishop Dunstan and King Edgar in the tenth century reform of the English Church: ‘In the reign of ... King Edgar, as he diligently governed the entire realm with righteous laws, Dunstan prelate of Canterbury ... ordered the whole of Britain by the administration of Christian law. Under his influence and counsel King Edgar showed himself to be a devoted servant of God.’ 27 While hardly an objective and disinterested bystander, Eadmer portrays first Dunstan and Edgar, and then Lanfranc and William I, as virtually co-rulers of the realm – and England enjoying both ‘peace and felicity’ under both sets of rulers.28 William of Malmesbury, writing precisely concurrently with Eadmer (1120s), also saw these relationships of co-rule, and extrapolated them further back still, to the reign of King Æthelstan and Archbishop Oda: ‘As long as Æthelstan lived, the friendship of king and archbishop flourished unimpaired. Each helped the other, Oda speaking out on matters of God and Æthelstan, if needed, brandishing the sword.’ 29 When Æthelstan died young, Oda ruled similarly with his successors, his brothers Edmund and Eadred. William quotes a long letter in which Oda addresses, quite primatorially, all the bishops of England 24 

Vita Lanfranci reports that Lanfranc functioned as princeps et custos Angliae in William’s absence in Normandy, ‘with all the nobles subject to him and giving their help in matters concerning the defense and management or the peace of the kingdom, according to the laws of the country’; PL 150, col. 55. See Lanfranc, Letters, epistles 34, 35, 36 for examples of Lanfranc functioning in just these ways. 25  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 12. 26  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 12. 27  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 3. 28  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 3. 12: concerning Lanfranc: ‘his teaching and perseverance brought a great increase of religion throughout the land’. 29  William of Malmesbury, GP, 22; translated by David Preest as The Deeds of the Bishops of England: Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (Woodbridge, 2002), 16.

138

Sally N. Vaughn

‘in the ancient authority of my predecessors, Augustine ... and the other saints by whose efforts the Christian rule first became known from this archiepiscopal see to all the quarters of England’. Oda then stated that his purpose was ‘that ... king Edmund ... and all his people may rejoice to imitate themselves what they hear about us and what they hear from us, and that all people everywhere subject to his kingly authority may follow the lead of our unblemished life in love, delight and exultation’,30 echoing St. Gregory’s instructions to King Ethelbert that the king was to set the example for the people to follow, himself following the instruction and example of his archbishop. William then remarks that, according to Osbern, had it not been for St. Dunstan’s greatness overshadowing him, Oda ‘would have been mourned for ever by the whole English world for his sanctity and energy’.31 It is quite interesting to note that Oda, even though a Dane, especially excelled by regaining ‘lawful control of many estates belonging to his see which had been lost during the Danish invasion’,32 much as Eadmer had praised Lanfranc for recovering lands lost by Canterbury during the Norman invasion, and that Osbern, a monk of Canterbury who had written a life of the Canterbury archbishop St. Alphege, had been trained as a monk at Bec on Lanfranc’s request. Anselm personally oversaw Osbern’s instruction at Bec, writing to Lanfranc to request materials on St. Dunstan and other archbishops of Canterbury for his use.33 When Anselm extolled the virtues of St. Alphege, and validated his martyrdom and sainthood, Lanfranc accepted Alphege’s sanctity and commissioned Osbern to write Alphege’s story in both prose and verse.34 Clearly William of Malmesbury was very familiar with at least Osbern’s work, and probably with Osbern himself as well, for William may well have been quite close friends with Eadmer, Osbern, and other Canterbury monks. William clearly states that he was drawing from Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi for the details of Anselm’s life,35 and later seems to suggest that he was also drawing from the Historia novorum, stating that Eadmer had quoted in ‘his book’ many of Anselm’s letters, and William recommended that his readers peruse them, as he himself did not see fit to copy them out fully in Gesta pontificum, condensing them instead.36 William also relates a story told to him by ‘a close 30 

William of Malmesbury, GP, 23–4; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 16–17. William of Malmesbury, GP, 24–5; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 18. 32  William of Malmesbury, GP, 25; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 18. 33  Sancti Anselmi cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1946–61), iii, epistles 4, 17, and especially 39; see also iv, epistles 149, 152 for Osbern’s letters to Anselm. 34  Eadmer, The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1972), 53–4. 35  William of Malmesbury, GP, 74; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 50. 36  William of Malmesbury, GP, 121–2; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 74. It is quite interesting that William does not distinguish between Eadmer’s two books, Vita Anselmi and Historia novorum, writing as if Eadmer had written only one book telling the story of Anselm’s life. This fact raises the possibility that Eadmer originally told Anselm’s story in one book and later divided 31 



Henry I and the English Church

139

friend of mine, whom I believe implicitly,’ about Eadmer saving Anselm from the sin of eating raw herring. William further relates that Pope Urban, when Archbishop Anselm asked the pope to suggest someone whose commands he could obey, Anselm being quite uncomfortable with complete freedom of action, produced Eadmer to command the archbishop.37 This episode appears nowhere in Eadmer’s account; it suggests that Eadmer himself was the informant whom William believed implicitly. And although William professes to abbreviate Eadmer’s book, and surely does so, he does so with a precision and clarity that Eadmer often lacks, and sometimes reveals points at which Eadmer had only hinted or even obfuscated, as we shall see. Clearly the testimony of both Eadmer and William suggests that Anselm’s political ideals were not only well known in England but quite approved by some churchmen. King Henry had had to acknowledge the power of these ideals in his coronation oath, wherein he promised to ‘make free the Church of God, so that I will neither sell nor lease its property, nor will I, on the death of an archbishop or bishop or abbot, take anything from the demesne of a church or from its vassals during the period that elapses until a successor is installed’.38 Almost his first act had been to recall Anselm from exile, promising to restore to Anselm the Canterbury archbishopric with all the position and privileges Anselm had claimed under Rufus and that Rufus had denied him.39 The coronation oath addressed these very issues. On the eve of the threatened invasion by Henry’s brother Duke Robert Curthose, Henry put his hand in Anselm’s and promised to govern the kingdom with just and righteous laws in all respects as long as he lived, almost as an oath of fealty. Anselm responded by fervently and publicly supporting the king’s right to rule the English realm, even camping with the Canterbury knights in the field to confront the invading army, and exhorting the barons to support the king.40 Most importantly, Henry permitted Anselm to hold a great reforming council at Westminster in 1102, which William of Malmesbury proudly presents as Anselm’s crowning achievement.41 Rufus had denied Anselm’s intense desire for a reforming

it into two different accounts, one a saint’s life and one a political history. Eadmer himself states that the two books must be read together to obtain the full story of Anselm’s life. Indeed, William relates Anselm’s story, and later Ralph’s, much as Eadmer told it, condensing it and putting it into his own words. 37  William of Malmesbury, GP, 124; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 79. 38  Quoted in Hollister, Henry I, 109–10; see also 108–12 for further discussion of this charter. 39  Anselm, Opera, iv, epistle 212; translated by Walter Fröhlich in The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, 3 vols. (Kalamazoo, MI, 1990–94), ii, 162: ‘I ask you as a father, with all the people of England, to come as quickly as you can to give your advice to me, your son, and to that people the care of whose souls was committed to you. Indeed, I entrust myself and the people of the whole kingdom of England to your counsel and the counsel of those who ought to advise me with you.’ Eadmer, Life of Anselm, 126–7; Eadmer, Historia novorum, 118–19; William of Malmesbury GP, 104; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 69. 40  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 126. 41  William of Malmesbury, GP, 118–20; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 77–8.

140

Sally N. Vaughn

council, the issue that had forced Anselm from the kingdom in 1097.42 But now a new issue arose. For in Rome in 1098 Anselm had heard with his own ears Pope Urban’s ban of churchmen doing homage to laymen and receiving ­investiture from them, and he therefore refused giving homage to King Henry. Thus began the Investiture Contest in England.43 At first, Anselm worked together with Henry, writing numerous letters to persuade Urban to rescind these bans for England and even traveling to Rome to support the king’s case before the pope. But Urban remained unyielding, and Anselm, finally understanding that the pope would not release England from these decrees, supported him. Henry at once sent Anselm into exile. ‘So’, William of Malmesbury reports, ‘the king took possession of the archbishopric, but he did so with more careful restraint than his brother had done, and delegated the administration of ecclesiastical affairs to the archbishop’s own men rather than to outsiders’,44 being very careful not to exploit the Church blatantly as had his brother. Now Henry and Anselm entered into a massive correspondence, which amounted to a battle of propaganda to win the hearts and minds of Henry’s subjects in England and potential subjects in Normandy.45 It is in this correspondence that Henry’s personality becomes quite clear and that Anselm developed his view of ‘right order’ in an interesting new direction. As early as 1104, Henry was determined to gain control of Normandy from his brother, declaring that Robert had failed to enforce the justice and good order instituted by their father, and in particular had failed to protect the Norman Church.46 Thus Henry, with his army, approached the Norman shores posing as the protector of the Church, with his archbishop of Canterbury in exile. Anselm, alarmed that Henry might seize control of Normandy and thus win the major goal of reuniting under his rule the cross-channel realm of his father, resolved to act at once, as the restrictions of papal protocol would not allow the quick response needed. ‘Anselm understood his position clearly and at last even his heart, for all its rich stores of piety, was stirred to thoughts of revenge, and he considered excommunicating the king.’ 47 But rather than excommunicating the king at once in Lyons, Anselm announced that he would travel to Normandy to pronounce the excommunication. At this, Henry’s supporters began to desert his army, and Henry’s sister Adela of Blois, claiming illness, summoned Anselm to her side. ‘The king found out about this from a letter sent by his sister Adela, countess of Blois, 42 

John of Worcester, The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1995–), iii, 86. 43  For the following account, see Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan, chapters 6 and 7. I have very much abbreviated and summarized a quite complicated situation lasting two years; for the full account, see Vaughn, above, and as summarized also by R. W. Southern in Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), 277–307. 44  William of Malmesbury, GP, 113–14; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 74. 45  Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan, 272–305. 46  See OV vi, 60–4 for Henry’s claims to protect the church. For a much fuller account of these events, on which this discussion is based, see Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan. 47  William of Malmesbury, GP, 114; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 74.



Henry I and the English Church

141

and entreated Anselm to come with the countess to Normandy, where he himself was staying at that time.’ 48 The entire party met at Laigle, where, with their advisors, the two men hammered out a compromise: Henry would give up investiture of clerics if Pope Urban would cease forbidding clerical homage. But only the pope could make that agreement. So Anselm, portraying himself as merely a bystander, wrote to Urban suggesting that the pope enter into just this plan with King Henry.49 Meanwhile, Anselm lingered on at Bec, failing to return to England and thereby publicly to display his reconciliation with Henry, as the king wished. Malmesbury relates that By this time the king had become less hasty and more mature in all matters ... He received Anselm’s salutary counsels courteously and wrote him a gentle reply, saying that he would come to Normandy very soon and by his obedience put right any wrongs he had committed over these and other matters.50

Henry had at last admitted defeat at Anselm’s hands and granted his archbishop all that the archbishop’s political philosophy required. In June 1106 Henry joined Anselm at Bec, and there king and archbishop, in a great public ceremony attended by nearly all the prelates of Normandy,51 ratified their reconciliation: When the messengers returned from Rome, [Henry] did not ... delay, but met Anselm at Bec. And then all the controversies which up to that point had kept the pair apart were ... resolved. The churches upon which Henry’s brother William had imposed taxes were given back into Anselm’s hands free of taxes, and the king promised to receive nothing from them during periods while they were without a pastor. He so repaired the losses of priests ... that for a whole three years they were free of all taxes ... and he gave a solemn ... promise that on his return to England he would give back all the things taken from the archbishopric.52

Henry went on immediately to the battle of Tinchebray to win Normandy. While William of Malmesbury’s account above makes very clear Henry’s complete capitulation to and acceptance of Anselm’s view of ‘right order’ for king and archbishop, Henry’s own letter to Anselm after the battle of Tinchebray, strangely omitted from the Schmitt collection of Anselm’s correspondence, makes Henry’s complete capitulation to Anselm vividly clear: To you, holy father, we announce that Robert, count of Normandy, at the head of all his forces of knights and infantry ... has fought with me a bitter battle before Tinchebray ... In the end ... the victory was ours, and with few losses. In short, the divine mercy has given into our hands the count of Normandy ... and up to four hundred other knights and ten thousand infantry, together with the province of Normandy ... I 48 

William of Malmesbury, GP, 114; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 74. Anselm, Opera, v, epistles 388, 389. 50  William of Malmesbury, GP, 115; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 75. 51  William of Malmesbury, GP, 115; see Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan, 301–7 for details. 52  William of Malmesbury, GP, 115; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 75. 49 

142

Sally N. Vaughn

do not in arrogant pride claim this victory as due to my own strength, but consider it as a gift sent by God. And so, venerable father, I fall before your holy knees ... and beg you to pray to the heavenly judge, through whose will and wish I was given this glorious and beneficial triumph, that it may have been given me, not for my own loss and downfall, but for the beginning of good works and the service of God, and for maintaining and strengthening the state of God’s holy church in peace and tranquility, so that from now on it may live in freedom.53

This letter makes very clear that the king now accepted Anselm’s political philosophy unreservedly. Anselm’s reply, contained in the Schmitt collection of his correspondence, congratulated Henry that he attributed his victory not to his own strength and power but to the gift of God.54 During the massive correspondence between Anselm and Henry leading up to this settlement, and involving Henry’s queen Matilda as well, Henry’s personality and political tactics became clear. Where Rufus had been heavyhanded, Henry was shrewd and calculating, soothing his adversaries with kind words and promises – and sometimes with tricks and subterfuges.55 In his first letter to Anselm, Henry deftly shifted the responsibility for Anselm’s exile onto Anselm, greeting him with friendship and grieving that Anselm refused to be with him ‘like your predecessor Lanfranc was with my father for many years’.56 Henry repeatedly portrayed himself as a good and patient king confronted with an unreasonable archbishop.57 Anselm saw in Henry’s letters ‘a certain pretext for delay’ 58 and held firmly to his position of upholding, as he said, the law of God. Henry then deftly turned this statement into an accusation that Anselm believed that Lanfranc and the Conqueror had not upheld the law of God.59 And Anselm just as deftly suggested that the king was listening to evil counselors who had given this advice.60 And so the delicate ballet proceeded, until Anselm forced the king’s hand with his threat of excommunication. Henry and Anselm, it seems, were quite evenly matched. Henry’s queen Matilda entered into the correspondence with enthusiasm, and in Anselm’s letters to the queen he developed a new slant to his theories of ‘right order’. As I have argued more fully elsewhere, Anselm had a theory

53 

William of Malmesbury, GP, 116–17; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 76, which I have corrected here. I print this letter as it is omitted from both the Schmitt collection and from the Fröhlich translations. 54  Anselm, Opera, v, epistle 402; see also 397 and 407, and Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan, 305–9. 55  Henry’s chief advisor Robert of Meulan had advised the king in 1101 to ‘speak gently to all your knights; caress them as a father does his children; soothe them with promises; grant whatever they might request, and in this manner cleverly draw all to your favor’; OV v, 316. 56  Anselm, Opera, v, epistle 318. 57  See Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan, 273–85 for a full analysis of the correspondence. 58  Anselm, Opera, v, epistle 319. 59  Anselm, Opera, v, epistle 330. 60  Anselm, Opera, v, epistle 329.



Henry I and the English Church

143

of marriage as a relationship between men and women as equals,61 and saw the marriage between the king and queen as this relationship writ large.62 Moreover, women were the civilizers, teachers, and leaders of their husbands upon the right Christian path. As Anselm wrote to Matilda: Since it is my duty to exhort you towards desire of the heavenly kingdom, I urge, I pray, I counsel, with as much affection as I can, ... dispose those things that are subject to your power more following the counsel of God than of men ... Counsel these things, intimate them privately and publicly to ... the king, repeat them often, and, as much as it pertains to you, undertake them with zeal.63

Anselm later expressed the wish ‘that [God] may so cause your good intentions to succeed as that by your means He may turn the heart of the king from that advice of the nobles which he reprobates, and cause the king to abide by his counsel’.64 Anselm may well have modeled his theory of the ideal queen on a letter of Pope Boniface to Queen Ethelberga, wife of King Edwin, quoted in Bede: Let it ... be your constant prayer that God ... will bless and enlighten the king, so that you, who are united in one flesh, ... may after this fleeting life remain united forever in the bond of faith ... Persevere in using every effort to soften his heart by teaching him the commandments of God. ... Melt the coldness of his heart by teaching him about the Holy Spirit, ... through your constant encouragement ... remove the numbing and deadening errors of paganism. ... The unbelieving husband shall be saved through the believing wife.65

For Anselm echoed phrases from this letter in a letter to Queen Matilda: ‘When in desiring my return you strive to soften the heart of the king towards me, you do what is fitting to you and what I think to be useful to him.’ 66 In this light, the king and queen were co-rulers of the realm; the queen functioned as a teacher of her husband; she was to counsel and advise her husband as his closest advisor, and lead him to the right path, in a role analogous, interestingly, to that of the archbishop of Canterbury. Thus Anselm seems to have seen England as ruled ideally by a kind of troika of king, queen, and archbishop.67 Henry heeded this counsel, for as early as 1104 we see Henry employing Matilda as regent in his absence, and thereafter she served repeatedly in that 61 

Sally N. Vaughn, St Anselm and the Handmaidens of God: A Study of Anselm’s Correspondence with Women (Turnhout, 2002), 116–59 for a reconstruction of Anselm’s views on marriage. 62  Vaughn, Anselm and the Handmaidens, 222, 265–75 for Pope Gregory I as Anselm’s source for these views. 63  Anselm, Opera, iv, epistle 296. 64  Anselm, Opera, iv, epistle 246. 65  Bede, Ecclesiastical History, book 2, c. 11; trans. Sherley-Price, 124. 66  Anselm, Opera, v, epistle 321, my italics. 67  See Vaughn, Anselm and the Handmaidens, 116–59 for his view of the ideal marriage and 229–50 for his correspondence with Queen Matilda and his theory of queenship; see also 263–9 for a summary of these theories and their apparent sources in the correspondence of Pope Gregory I. See also Lois L. Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship (Woodbridge, 2003), 111–17 for a different interpretation of Anselm’s letters to Matilda.

144

Sally N. Vaughn

role.68 In 1107 and 1108, on Anselm’s triumphant return to England, Matilda served as co-regent or co-viceroy with Anselm.69 Thus Henry seems to have bent to Anselm’s image of ‘right order’, accepting every condition the archbishop had outlined. In the king’s absence, ‘whatever Anselm commanded should be law; what he prohibited, unlawful’.70 Henry had earlier fulfilled one of Anselm’s greatest desires, unrealized under Rufus: to hold a reforming counsel. In 1108 Henry and Anselm, together now in dual harness, and in a year in which the queen served as a co-viceroy with Anselm, held another reforming counsel in which king and archbishop filled all the vacant bishoprics and abbacies in England, so long held in abeyance while Anselm had been in exile, and some in Normandy as well.71 Never before had king and archbishop ruled so self-consciously in double harness. William of Malmesbury reports that Anselm lived for another year, and that ‘right up to the end of Anselm’s life his bodily strength and fervent piety continued unimpaired’.72 But Anselm’s final years were marred by another episode of the Canterbury–York dispute, when Archbishop-Elect Thomas II of York refused to swear obedience to Canterbury. Indeed, one of Anselm’s final letters is an anathema against Thomas and anyone who accepted him without his required obedience to Canterbury.73 In accordance with canon law, Anselm seems not to have tried to influence the choice of his own successor. This seems quite surprising, as Anselm had earlier, in 1093, worked so strenuously to assure that his successor as abbot of Bec would be his choice, William of Beaumont.74 There are hints that Anselm at least had made a suggestion, however. Henry left the archbishopric vacant for five full years, without the grand public outcry there had been on Archbishop Lanfranc’s death and the subsequent vacancy under Rufus. One reason no uproar occurred over the 1109–1114 Canterbury vacancy was that Henry shrewdly desisted from collecting the revenues of Canterbury, leaving them in the hands of the monks and even putting in charge one of their own, Ralph d’Escures, bishop of Rochester.75 Ralph, a monk of Sées who had been Anselm’s right-hand man, as the bishop of Rochester was not only the special suffragan of Canterbury but also the feudal vassal of Canterbury’s archbishop. Ralph had spent much time with Anselm: ‘Ever since his youth he had been well known to Anselm’s God-fearing household.’ 76 When Anselm’s dearest friend Gundulf bishop of Rochester died 68 

Judith Green, Government of Henry I, 39; Regesta, ii, nos. 971, 1000, 1001, 1190, 1198. Anselm, Opera, v, epistle 407; Eadmer, Historia novorum, 197. Eadmer omits the queen’s role as vice-regent. 70  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 197. 71  William of Malmesbury, GR, i, 417, 755; William of Malmesbury, GP, 117, Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 76–7. 72  William of Malmesbury, GP, 121; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 79. 73  Anselm, Opera, v, epistles 471, 472. 74  Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan, 138–47. 75  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 221. 76  William of Malmesbury, GP, 127–8; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 83. 69 



Henry I and the English Church

145

(1108), ‘Anselm chose Ralph in his place, having first received from him homage and the promise under oath that he would be faithful to the holy church of Canterbury’.77 Eadmer reports that Ralph administered the Canterbury honor during the 1109–1114 vacancy – a shrewd choice on Henry’s part. Anselm had taken care to separate the revenues of the archbishopric and those of the monks, and Henry did collect the revenues pertaining to the bishopric, as Eadmer reports, ‘following the custom of his brother King William [Rufus]’. But he left the rights of the monks alone, just as Anselm had established them ‘freely with foresight’ as separate. Some of Henry’s greedy counselors criticized the monks for spending much money beautifying the church, implying that the king ought to have such moneys, to which the king, ‘being a man of conspicuous prudent goodness’, replied, ‘What! Are the monks placing their own property in outside expenses, in secular things, or in empty works contrary to their order?’ He answered his own question by saying that the monks were spending their money on beautifying and augmenting the church to the glory of God, who had inspired this spirit in them, and gave thanks that God’s church was receiving these benefits.78 The monks, Eadmer states, were happy that the church was progressing and were pleased with the royal will. Ralph acted as ruler, holding the care of the pontifical office in his hands, defending the church in cases of disputes, dedicating churches in all the lands of Canterbury ‘inside and outside of Kent when requested without asking the bishops’ advice’, and regulating things which ‘pertained to Christianity in the same area just as he governed diligently’.79 Even more shrewdly Henry, whenever advised to fill the Canterbury vacancy, would put the matter off with the gentle reply that the archbishops sent by his father and brother to the post had been of the best, and he himself did not want to fall below the standard of the happy choices made by his forebears; therefore the decision ought to be taken only after great consideration, so that he might appoint as archbishop a man who would keep up with his predecessors on the same path of virtue.80

As the bishops, barons, and abbots seemed quite happy with the job Ralph did, and the monks were pleased to control their own revenues, there was no outcry until five years and five days had passed. Indeed, Malmesbury reports, ‘Such replies [as Henry had given] seemed completely fair and proper.’ But Eadmer reports that Henry received warnings from the pope and entreaties from the monks of Canterbury ‘and many others’.81 ‘After long and detailed discussion of the question’, Malmesbury informs us, Henry finally decided to summon a council at Windsor, intending to choose Faritius abbot of Abingdon, ‘who was

77  78  79  80  81 

William of Malmesbury, GP, 128; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 83. Eadmer, Historia novorum, 221. Eadmer, Historia novorum, 221. William of Malmesbury, GP, 125; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 82. Eadmer, Historia novorum, 222.

146

Sally N. Vaughn

very sharp and remarkably hard-working in completing tasks’.82 But Eadmer reports that Henry summoned the monks and Ralph to the council at Windsor without telling them that he had called the council to elect a new archbishop and surprised them with the nomination of Faritius, whom the Canterbury monks ‘embraced in a glad spirit, having approved the man’s industry’.83 Faritius, after all, was a monk and an abbot. The bishops, however, objected. Malmesbury reports that with ‘remarkable self-control’ Henry threw the election to an open council. The bishops wanted someone who was a priest, but it was pointed out – surely by the Canterbury monks – that from antiquity the archbishop of Canterbury had been a monk. The bishops objected to Faritius, interestingly, because he was a Lombard: ‘If a Lombard was archbishop, quarrels and lawsuits would break out. He would have no mercy on any of the English, especially as the king looked up to him just as if he had been sent down from heaven. But such things could not be said openly.’ 84 Thus the bishops argued that ‘there had been more than enough foreigners as archbishop of Canterbury’, and many Englishmen now had Lanfranc’s knowledge and Anslem’s piety and were monks as well.85 Thus there was some fear that Faritius, although Henry’s doctor, would have the same lawyerly skills Lanfranc had displayed and would be too focused on lawsuits. Ralph, on the other hand, although not an Englishman, had a scholarly reputation and ‘in humble friendliness surpassed both men of old and men of the present day’, insuring that he would not make waves. ‘He was the only one whose religious life could not be attacked by envy because it was perfectly orthodox.’ 86 He was eloquent, affable, and a Norman by lineage, even though he had been born in Le Mans. It has been argued that Ralph was the perfect compromise candidate, but it seems more likely, from Malmesbury’s account, that his greatest virtues were his affability and apparent malleability. At a time when England ‘had been swamped by a crowd of Norman abbots who brought to England the speeches they had planned and polished in their own country and who, now here, now there, destroyed our slow-moving days of peace ... being accustomed to sell their tongues and to chase after ... favour’, Ralph ‘avoided giving those causes of annoyance with as much restraint as possible’.87 In short, to the bishops he looked like a pushover; to the monks of Canterbury, he was a monk whom Anselm had chosen for Rochester and he had been doing a good job administering Canterbury for ten years; and to the king, he looked like he would not cause any trouble and would be at least competent. So Ralph was elected archbishop of Canterbury, and the Canterbury monks rejoiced that one of their

82 

William of Malmesbury, GP, 125–6; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 82. Eadmer, Historia novorum, 222. 84  William of Malmesbury, GP, 126; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 82. 85  William of Malmesbury, GP, 126; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 82. 86  William of Malmesbury, GP, 126–7; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 82. Both William and Eadmer report that there was a lot of criticism of Anselm. 87  William of Malmesbury GP, 127; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 83. 83 



Henry I and the English Church

147

own had taken Anselm’s place, and Ralph assumed control of the archiepiscopal revenues. Henry began Ralph’s pontificate by working with him as an equal, on the model of Anselm’s ‘right order’. Although preparing to go to Normandy because war with the French loomed, Henry now, ‘by the counsel of the bishops and his princes’, took care to appoint new abbots to ‘all the monasteries that now for a long time had been destitute of pastoral care’.88 Henry counseled the abbots both new and old to ‘be shepherds, not wolves’. Among the new appointees were Englishmen, showing the king’s benevolence. Henry and Ralph together chose Ernulf abbot of Peterborough to fill the vacancy as bishop of Rochester, Canterbury’s special vassal. Ernulf swore fealty to Ralph and Canterbury according to custom. Ralph then placed Albold, a Bec monk, in the abbacy of Bury St. Edmunds. So began Ralph’s pontificate with great promise.89 But during the Canterbury vacancy of 1109–1114, and even somewhat before it, a number of important changes had taken place. First, Thomas II of York had never rendered obedience to an archbishop of Canterbury, Canterbury being vacant. Second, Henry had begun to elevate his royal chancellor Roger.90 As early as 1100 Roger had joined Prince Henry’s party in Normandy as his chaplain. In April 1101, Henry made Roger his royal chancellor, and by September 1102 Henry had chosen Roger to serve as bishop of Salisbury, with Anselm’s consent at Anselm’s council. Shortly thereafter, surely at Anselm’s urging, Roger resigned as chancellor and simultaneously avoided consecration by the archbishop of York. Roger continued to witness Henry’s documents frequently, considering that Henry was in Normandy in 1104 and from 1105 to 1106. Whenever Henry returned to England during those years, Roger attested at the king’s court. Finally, after Henry returned in August 1105 to await Pope Paschal’s ratification of the king’s agreement with Anselm at Laigle, Roger attested for the first time as ‘justiciar’ on 13 May 1106.91 This correlates exactly with the role of viceroy that Henry had earlier assigned to his queen and suggests that Henry had found a very competent bureaucrat to rule England in his absence – but in the role that Anselm believed was reserved for the archbishop of Canterbury and the queen. Whether Henry placed Roger in this role and gave him this title as a means to manipulate Anselm must remain unknown, but such a tactic would have been typical of the king’s politics. Ultimately, Henry met with Anselm at Bec on 15 August 1106, for their formal reconciliation and Henry’s acceptance of all Anselm’s demands, as we have seen. But in 1108, Roger was almost continually at the king’s side. Edward Kealey believes that Roger began to act as Henry’s viceroy on about 26 July 1108, although the king had been honoring his 88 

Eadmer, Historia novorum, 224. Eadmer, Historia novorum, 224–6. 90  For the summary of Roger’s career below, see Edward J. Kealey, Roger of Salisbury: Viceroy of England (Berkeley, 1972), especially the very helpful itinerary in appendix 1. 91  Regesta, ii, nos. 754–5. 89 

148

Sally N. Vaughn

agreement with his archbishop. Roger himself, along with the other English bishops, supported Anselm’s anathema against Thomas of York. But beginning in 1110, Roger was almost constantly at the king’s side, and clearly, for the rest of Henry’s reign, Roger was, in Kealey’s words, ‘second only to the king’. So while Eadmer describes Henry as treating Ralph as if he were stepping into Anselm’s old role, in reality during the Canterbury vacancy of 1109–1114 Henry had elevated Roger to at least one place Anselm had claimed during his lifetime. Moreover, according to a very interesting study by John Hudson, Henry routinely cultivated a large number of different men and groups of men as his advisors and counselors, never exclusively listening to his archbishop of Canterbury, or indeed to any one person or even one group of persons.92 While clearly Robert of Meulan, Roger of Salisbury, and Queen Matilda emerged as major counselors, ‘The question of who gave advice is closely related to the type of advice given and to its circumstances.’ 93 Hudson makes clear that Henry had firmly in mind ‘the reciprocal obligations of lord and men, with consultation working in both directions’.94 Thus, while at the beginning of Henry’s reign, when Anselm camped with his troops in the field to support Henry’s right to the throne, Henry clearly was working hand-in-glove with his archbishop, when Anselm’s exile began in 1103, the archbishop’s special position as chief counsellor to the king began to unravel as Henry sought the advice of barons such as Robert of Meulan and bishops such as Roger of Salisbury. Although Anselm seemed reinstated in this position in 1106–1109, at least publicly, during Anselm’s exile the king had built a network of counselors on many levels and among many groups within his kingdom.95 Thus it would have been impossible for Ralph to step into Anselm’s archiepiscopal shoes, turning back the clock to 1101 and Henry’s accession to the throne when Anselm stood by his side. Moreover, a new cause of dissent had arisen between England and Rome, and that was the matter of the power of Roman legates in England. Pope Paschal would not approve the election and grant the pallium the monks requested for Ralph. Denis Bethell has found that Ralph had been in trouble with the pope for sympathizing with the emperor’s rival candidate for pope before he left England.96 Malmesbury says it is because Ralph was unfit for office, but Henry nevertheless stood up for him, sending the Roman legates packing.97 Eadmer is more fulsome, asserting that Paschal intended to use the case of the archbishop-elect to claim novel papal control over England. Anselm had won 92 

John Hudson, ‘Henry I and Counsel’, in The Medieval State: Essays Presented to James Campbell, ed. by J. R. Maddicott and D. M. Palliser (London, 2000), 109–26. 93  Hudson, ‘Henry I’, 115. 94  Hudson, ‘Henry I’, 118. 95  Hudson, ‘Henry I’, 109–26. 96  Denis Bethell, ‘William of Corbeil and the Canterbury–York Dispute’, in Jnl. Eccl. Hist. 19 (1968), 153 and n. 9. 97  William of Malmesbury, GP, 128; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 84.



Henry I and the English Church

149

from popes Urban and Paschal the right to serve as papal legate in England as part of his archiepiscopal power, and the monks of Canterbury viewed this right as a Canterbury prerogative. Paschal now sent Henry a letter in which he declared the appointments Henry and Ralph had made ‘illicit’ because they were made before papal approval of Ralph’s election. Paschal’s legate was Anselm of St. Saba, Archbishop Anselm’s nephew, whom Anselm had raised in England. Indeed Anselm the Younger had the pallium and returned to England with Henry (who had been in Normandy) to receive Ralph’s profession of fealty and obedience to Rome, whereupon he enthroned the new archbishop. In a nutshell, according to Malmesbury, Ralph and Henry at first agreed to hold a great reforming council in 1115 presided over by a papal legate but were taken aback by Paschal’s demands for virtual control over the English Church through his legates.98 Anselm had won the exclusive right to the legateship for Canterbury,99 so of course Ralph and the monks of Canterbury determined to hold that privilege for Canterbury also. Paschal wrote letters repeatedly declaring that ‘We in no way diminish any authentic privileges possessed by Canterbury’,100 and by this, Malmesbury says, the pope left the matter undecided, in midair: ‘If in this letter the pope had explicitly said “The church of Canterbury has such and such powers and I confirm it in these same powers”, he would have ... ended the controversy.’ Instead, ‘Those cunning, charming Romans knew they were using orators’ tricks and they left their wishes unclear because of the futile ambiguity.’ 101 Ralph then wasted a lot of time and money hanging around Rome fruitlessly trying to change Paschal’s mind and then hanging around the king in Normandy waiting for Paschal to die. On Paschal’s death, Ralph returned to Rome to lobby his successor Pope Gelasius. Meanwhile, Thurstan had been elected archbishop of York, refused to profess obedience to Canterbury, and was ‘vigorously stirring up the minds of the Romans in his support’. Shrewdly Thurstan lobbied Rome, and succeeded in persuading Gelasius’ successor Calixtus to ignore ‘all the ancient rules’ and consecrate the archbishop-elect of York himself.102 In short, Ralph frittered away his pontificate fighting for the rather hopeless cause of retaining the right of the archbishop of Canterbury to serve as papal legate and was outmaneuvered by the more sophisticated tactics of both Rome and York. Henry seems to have stood by his agreement with Anselm as long as he could, but when international forces spun out of his control, he accepted them. Affable Ralph was no Anselm and had been no match for Roman politics. Henry was caught in the middle. Eadmer reports that at first Henry stood up for Canterbury’s rights, even deposing Thurstan. But Thurstan then changed his mind, reclaimed the archbishopric, and followed Henry to Normandy, where 98 

Eadmer, Historia novorum, 226–37. Anselm, Opera, iv, epistle 222. 100  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 242, 243, 244, my italics. 101  William of Malmesbury, GP, 130–1; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 85. 102  William of Malmesbury, GP, 131; Deeds of the Bishops, trans. Preest, 86. 99 

150

Sally N. Vaughn

the king was involved in a very serious war with the French king, his primary concern. ‘The king did not want to get himself in the middle except by delaying the problem’, Eadmer states, so Henry suspended the matter, ‘and neither [Thurstan] nor another was substituted into the York bishopric’.103 Nevertheless Henry fought furiously against ‘this precedent [papal legates] against the customs of England’.104 But by 1119 Henry was completely occupied with the French war and unable to deliberate as he wished on the matters of York and Canterbury.105 Calixtus called a great council at Reims, and Henry directed all the bishops and abbots of Normandy, and those from England who were with him in Normandy, to attend. Thurstan also sought license to go, and Henry gave it only on Thurstan’s promise ‘that he would do nothing in the presence of the pope whence the church of Canterbury might incur the dispensation of any ancient dignity’.106 Thurstan agreed. Henry sent a messenger to Calixtus, Siefridus Pelochinus, a friend of both king and pope. Eadmer reports that Calixtus replied to Henry’s firm statement that he would rather lose his crown than Canterbury’s privileges, that he would never ‘make humble in any way the dignity of the church of Canterbury’. Calixtus then almost immediately consecrated Thurstan anyway, Thurstan ‘having defrauded in this way the faith which he had promised to his own lord [Henry] under God’. Nevertheless, Eadmer stated, Calixtus never would have consecrated Thurstan ‘if the royal will had not been turned with him [the king] consenting in it’.107 Never would Eadmer have made such a statement unless it had been true. Eadmer says this almost in passing and then turns to his diatribe against York and the papal court. Why would Henry have done such an about-face? The answer lies in the political conditions in which he was caught. As Hollister sums up the situation, Henry was engaged in the most desperate struggle of his career. The two quarrelling archbishops were rather like ‘two horseflies buzzing around the head of a gladiator fighting for his life’. As Ralph and Thurstan exchanged icy words, Henry suffered his greatest defeat at Alençon.108 Moreover, Henry’s close advisors Robert of Meulan and Queen Matilda had just died. While clearly Henry had many counselors, Robert and the queen had been among those most mentioned as most influential and helpful. Henry must have cast around for other advisors, but many of his barons were in rebellion against him, and his archbishop of Canterbury, upon whom the king might have relied in other circumstances, was consumed with his obsession to force Thurstan archbishop of York to swear obedience. Ralph was not an Anselm, who might have cut

103 

Eadmer, Historia novorum, 237–8. Eadmer, Historia novorum, 239. 105  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 254–5. 106  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 255. 107  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 256–7. 108  Hollister, Henry I, 252 and n. 74, 269; see Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, 1066–1127, ed. Charles Johnson (London, 1961), 100; OV vi, 206–8. 104 



Henry I and the English Church

151

through the cobwebs to see the more important matters of Henry’s need to win the peace. When Henry asked Thurstan just to go back to England, Thurstan replied: ‘If I stay here until you also return, I may be able to be of some use to you.’ 109 By that time Thurstan ‘enjoyed the affection’ of Louis VI 110 and also was the spiritual father of Countess Adela of Blois, King Henry’s favorite sister and ‘one of the most astute politicians of her era’.111 Hollister argues that Thurstan was instrumental in securing the peace with all of Henry’s enemies, and especially Louis VI, Thurstan ‘being the man on the Norman side in whom Louis had the most confidence’.112 At the end of Thurstan’s, Adela’s, and the papal legate Cardinal Cuno’s diplomacy, peace had been secured – and it was a peace very much favorable to Henry. It appears that Thurstan’s diplomacy had had some influence in that peace. At the grand finale of the Council of Reims of 1119, Pope Calixtus had addressed the assembly, seeking peace between Henry and Louis and promising to do all he himself could to achieve it. He commanded the French and AngloNormans ‘to observe the Truce of God “as Pope Urban of blessed memory established it at the Council of Clermont”’.113 Almost immediately after the Council of Reims, then, virtually all Henry’s adversaries, ‘one after another, were petitioning him for terms of peace’.114 Shortly thereafter, Henry met Pope Calixtus once again at a church near Henry’s own castle at Gisors, and in a great public ceremony Henry fell prostrate at Calixtus’ feet and showed him respect and reverence, acknowledging him to be ‘the shepherd of the whole Church. ... The king promised to obey the pope’s commands willingly.’ Calixtus then, according to Orderic, listened with amazement to the king’s long speech validating Henry’s right to rule Normandy as the savior of the duchy from his brother Robert Curthose’s incompetent rule and as the restorer of peace and order, who had returned the duchy to the state that it had enjoyed in his father’s time. One by one, Henry justified his own actions in warring against his enemies Robert Curthose, King Louis, Count Theobald of Blois, Curthose’s son William Clito, and others; then Calixtus, as Orderic reports, fully understanding the justice of Henry’s case, arranged a peace with all his enemies.115 It must have been as a consequence of Henry’s coming to terms with Calixtus, and not least with Calixtus’ right to consecrate Thurstan of York – and his consequent right to judge the Canterbury–York controversy, confirming papal rights in England – that Henry at last had reached this happy state. At last the most dangerous crisis of Henry’s reign was over, and the king lost little or nothing to any of the enemies who had so threatened Normandy 109  110  111  112  113  114  115 

Hugh the Chanter, Church of York, 108. Hollister, Henry I, 269. Hollister, Henry I, 272. Hugh the Chanter, Church of York, 160; Hollister, Henry I, 272. Hollister, Henry I, 267. Hollister, Henry I, 268, for a list of each and every one of them. OV vi, 283–91.

152

Sally N. Vaughn

for the past three years. Henry’s son William Adelin, however, did homage to Louis for Normandy in 1120, having been designated Henry’s heir with the title rex et dux designatus.116 According to Hollister, this event sealing the peace was ‘a dazzling diplomatic triumph, Henry I ... ensuring peace between the two monarchies for the next generation’.117 It did mean that William Adelin was now fully recognized as Henry’s heir. Whether his homage to King Louis would have caused trouble for him in a future reign we will never know, for William Adelin and many other Normans celebrating Henry’s great victory died in the disastrous sinking of the White Ship shortly thereafter. Like Henry’s battlefield settlement with Anselm in 1106 recognizing the archbishop’s primatial rights in England and allowing Henry to win Normandy, Henry’s battlefield settlement with Calixtus, and with Thurstan, recognized the new papal rights in England and allowed Henry to retain his hold on Normandy against all his enemies. ‘King Henry’, Orderic reports, ‘who had now, after tremendous toil, settled affairs admirably in Normandy, decided to cross the Channel’ and reward his brave knights who had fought so well.118 Clearly contemporaries, including churchmen like Orderic, were willing to overlook the petty disputes of England’s archbishops over what seemed to be perceived as now archaic rights, given the new prestige of the papacy. Henry’s apparent sacrifice of the claims of Archbishop Ralph to require homage from Archbishop Thurstan before consecrating him was right in line with the times. Orderic’s statement suggests that peace was more vital than prestige, at least in Normandy. Thus Canterbury’s rights both to require obedience of the archbishop of York and to serve as papal legate in England had fallen by the wayside in the heat of war. As the negotiations and diplomatic intrigues leading up to the Council of Reims in October 1119 progressed, Ralph must have been under immense pressure, tremendously stressed. On July 11 Ralph suffered an incapacitating stroke that limited his actions until he died in 1122. While Ralph had already proven himself ineffective, surely his illness must have helped clear the way for Thurstan’s subsequent success in winning over both pope and king. Very unhappy over the Reims settlement of the peace in France, Ralph had returned to England. Both Ralph and Thurstan were present at Henry’s wedding to Adeliza of Louvain in January 1121. Henry had chosen Adeliza with Ralph’s advice and consent and with that of all the princes of the realm, Eadmer reports. Henry seems to have wanted Roger of Salisbury to perform the ceremony as Ralph’s speech was impaired by his stroke. Ralph, of course, objected strenuously that Canterbury should do this duty. The controversy ended with Ralph’s proxy the bishop of Winchester performing it. This implicit royal insult to Canterbury was swiftly followed by another: Henry I, perhaps in tacit, even unconscious, 116  117  118 

Hollister, Henry I, 274–5. Hollister, Henry I, 274. OV vi, 295.



Henry I and the English Church

153

recognition that Canterbury had effectively lost its traditional claims to primacy, placed the crown on his own head before the official coronation of the king and the new queen the day after Ralph’s proxy performed the wedding ceremony. Ralph, of course, raised an uproar over Henry’s thoughtless act. When he asked the king who had placed the crown on his head, according to Eadmer, Henry replied, perhaps diplomatically, that ‘it had slipped his memory’; then humbly the king, rather indulgently, it might seem, allowed Ralph to crown him and then crown the queen.119 On the other hand, Thurstan of York, who arrived late, was ‘warmly received by Henry and his new queen and many others at court’.120 Ralph lived only another year,121 and Henry may possibly have felt that with Canterbury now weakened he could sanction an election of a new archbishop immediately, unlike his maintenance of the vacancy after Anselm’s death. On the other hand, Thurstan’s talents and new strengths may have alarmed the king. There are far fewer sources for the life of Ralph’s successor William of Corbeil than even for Ralph, but these have been masterfully correlated and compiled by Denis Bethell.122 According to Bethell, when Henry convened a great council at Gloucester in February 1123 to elect a new archbishop of Canterbury, there were only two remaining monk-bishops in England: Ernulf of Rochester and Serlo of Sées, both very aged. Indeed, there were no suitable monks to be put forward as candidates, despite the insistence of the Canterbury monks that the archbishop must be a monk. Ultimately the bishops forced the monks to choose between four candidates. We do not know the other three, but the monks chose William of Corbeil, who was at least an Augustinian canon – and perhaps more importantly had been a clerk of Archbishop Ralph, accompanying him throughout his career as archbishop. Even more importantly, William earlier had been part of Anselm’s intimate circle.123 William seems to have been so obscure that the king himself had asked Archbishop Thurstan and others who he was.124 Now, on the election of William, the monks of York claimed that Thurstan should consecrate William as archbishop. William bitterly declined, citing the issue of York’s profession to Canterbury as still unresolved, perhaps with the memory of his years of service to Ralph in mind. But, as Bethell declared, by now the Canterbury claim to York’s profession was a lost cause and had been from the moment of Thurstan’s appeal to Calixtus.125 Ultimately, William Giffard, bishop of Winchester, consecrated William, and both William and Thurstan set out for Rome, summoned to the forthcoming

119 

Eadmer, Historia novorum, 290–3. Hollister, Henry I, 281. 121  Eadmer, Historia novorum, 302, reports that Ralph died on October 20, 1122. 122  Denis Bethell, ‘English Black Monks and Episcopal Elections in the 1120s’, EHR 84 (1969), 673–98; Denis Bethell, ‘William of Corbeil’, 145–59. 123  Bethell, ‘English Black Monks’, 674–6 and ‘William of Corbeil’, 149–50. 124  Bethell, ‘English Black Monks’, 677 n. 1. 125  Bethell, ‘William of Corbeil’, 151. 120 

154

Sally N. Vaughn

Lateran council. But they traveled separately, Thurstan, predictably, with the papal legate. At Rome, the validity of William’s election was questioned, just as Ralph’s had been previously. At length William was accepted, and Bernard bishop of St. David’s brought the Canterbury claims against York before the council. The Canterbury monks were completely routed when the Canterbury forgeries were laughed out of court. According to Bethell, William ‘intended to let the matter drop until there was a new pope’.126 When Honorius II succeeded in 1124, William’s hopes rose anew, and William, bowing to the new political realities, wrote to Honorius asking that a papal legate settle the matter. Bethell believes that Henry and the cardinal-legate John of Crema concocted a scheme whereby Canterbury would cede three bishoprics, Chester, Bangor, and St. Asaph’s, to York, and Thurstan would in return give a verbal obedience to Canterbury. Tied to this plan was an attempt on the king’s part to restore Canterbury’s traditional legatine powers; ‘The king, repenting what had happened [presumably his former agreement with Calixtus], and taking care for the future not to receive another Roman legate in his kingdom ... directed the archbishop of Canterbury to [apply for] the legation’ at Rome. Finally, Henry told both archbishops that if either or both of them allowed their case before the pope ‘to go to law’, they should never return to their sees.127 After William had been persuaded not to raise the legatine issue first, the Canterbury–York agreement was presented to Honorius, but to the astonishment of all, William refused to part with St. Asaph’s. John of Crema testified that William had previously agreed to the plan, but Hugh the Chanter reports that the only solution would have been to obtain the king’s evidence, but ‘this would have meant a long delay’. In the end, worried that Henry might ban both archbishops from returning to England, the court allowed the archbishops to retire without a decision in the case, which meant that it was dropped.128 The next set of events reported by Hugh the Chanter are truly astonishing. First, Honorius granted the requested legatine status to Canterbury without a quibble, with Thurstan’s full acquiescence. Second, Honorius ruled in Thurstan’s favor that Scotland ‘was part of the realm of England, and that the king of Scots was the king’s man for Scotland’, and as such was under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of York. Canterbury, of course, objected that ‘the whole province of Britain’ belonged to Canterbury; at this, Hugh reports, ‘the pope smiled and nodded and said to one of them, “your brother must excuse you”’.129 The upshot was that Canterbury had received the legateship, York had received papal jurisdiction over Scotland, and, Hugh reports, both archbishops returned home ‘much stronger and merrier’. They stopped in Normandy to celebrate with the king. William returned to England first and welcomed Thurstan ‘with 126  127  128  129 

Bethell, ‘William of Corbeil’, 155–6; for quote, 156. Hugh the Chanter, Church of York, 122–3. Hugh the Chanter, Church of York, 123–6. Hugh the Chanter, Church of York, 126–7.



Henry I and the English Church

155

due respect’ and ‘entertained him honorably’ at Canterbury, saying that he wished to act as Thurstan advised him, as both archbishop and legate. ‘Thurstan responded by promising to advise and help’ William faithfully. He would suffer with William any unwelcome consequences of his own advice. ‘So they parted friends.’ 130 Thus it appears that, by working together, the two archbishops and the king shrewdly each had obtained at least something each had desired from Rome. Henry had succeeded in reversing his loss of England’s independence from Roman dominance, Canterbury had obtained the much-desired legateship, and York had gained papal confirmation of its dominance over Scotland. Moreover, Henry’s projected rule over Scotland had received papal approval.131 Such might have been the happy ending for Henry’s reign, had not William foolishly told the king that he would not attend the Christmas court if the king permitted Thurstan to have his cross carried before the king or to have any hand in crowning the king. ‘The king was annoyed’, as well he might have been. For Henry had at that court David king of Scots, his nephew, prepared with a compromise to subject the bishops of Scotland to the archbishop of York. Thurstan, on his way to Rome, apparently to have this agreement ratified, had with difficulty to send envoys to Rome on his and the king’s behalf to postpone the case until Lent. Subsequently Thurstan refused to talk to William at all, and refused also to attend the legatine council William called for the following May, 1127. When William complained to Henry that Thurstan had refused to obey him, the king replied: ‘It serves you right. You treated him disgracefully at my court, and me too.’ Pope Honorius chimed in with a letter admonishing William that ‘A bishop ought to use such moderation in preserving his own honour and dignity ... as not to offend against brotherly love or fail in respect.’ 132 Indeed, Thurstan went to Rome in 1138 and ‘obtained a bundle of papal letters, amongst which was one firmly forbidding any profession of obedience by York to Canterbury, and laying down that the archbishop with prior consecration (i.e. Thurstan) should have seniority’.133 Honorius also explicitly ordered that Thurstan should have his cross borne before him in England. William had foolishly overstepped his bounds, and although he had ‘played his cards skillfully’ earlier, now lost whatever advantage he had gained. But Henry had consistently played his cards skillfully throughout his reign in the management of his quarrelsome archbishops. He had worked very well with Anselm, reaching a compromise with a working relationship in which king and archbishop both sought the same ends: the best rule for England’s Church 130 

Hugh the Chanter, Church of York, 128. Bethell, ‘William of Corbeil’, 156, however, only recognizes William’s success: ‘By his conduct William had avoided having the Canterbury case condemned, avoided losing any of the bishoprics of his province, and had obtained in the legation an official position which made him Thurstan’s superior.’ He does not explain or suggest how William obtained the legateship. 132  Hugh the Chanter, Church of York, 129–30. 133  Bethell, ‘William of Corbeil’, 157. 131 

156

Sally N. Vaughn

and state that king and archbishop working together could achieve. They held the council of 1108 jointly, together appointing new shepherds to England’s churches, and king and queen continued to nurture the English Church even in the Canterbury vacancy. The five-year vacancy itself served to strengthen the king’s hand over the entire English Church, and Ralph’s affable incompetence strengthened it even more. Henry at first strove to work within Anselm’s ideal vision for Canterbury, but clearly Ralph was not the man Anselm had been. In the negotiations with Pope Calixtus II to settle the strife in France, Henry lost England’s independence from Rome, and Ralph lost Canterbury’s dominance over York. When the incompetent Ralph died, his much shrewder successor William of Corbeil, probably with the king’s help, regained the legatine appointment Anselm had had for England, but his foolish efforts to retain Canterbury’s dominance over York lost that prominence forever. In the royalpapal struggles over who would dominate in England, Henry clearly won, as the legatine authority rested with Canterbury on Henry’s death. In the YorkCanterbury struggles over who would predominate in the English Church, Henry swung back and forth as his greater political exigencies demanded, apparently favoring the most skilful and talented holders of the archbishopric but ultimately making the decisions that most benefited both the monarchy and the country, such as his decision to help York gain dominance over the Scottish Church. Henry had to deal with a strident traditionalist monastic party whom Bethell characterized as one among two groups of the black monks in England. ‘On the one side we have the ancient communities of [England], ... houses which ... looked back nostalgically to the time of Dunstan. ... On the other side we see the English Cluniacs. ... Their interest was emphatically in reform.’ 134 Henry, as Hollister and Frost show, saw this dichotomy and turned his support increasingly to the more ‘progressive’ of the black monks, the Cluniacs,135 as he turned more toward the more progressive of the papal forces. Bethell likens the two groups of English monks to the two groups of cardinals in the schism of 1130. ‘On the one side, that of the Antipope Anacletus, were the older men, the cardinals whose memories like Eadmer’s, went back to the days of Pope Paschal, old-fashioned Benedictines ... On the other side we have Pope Honorius’ creations ... all supporters of Innocent II.’ 136 The more futureoriented, reform-oriented party clustered around Honorius II had approved Henry’s archiepiscopal arrangements for England, as we have seen, and it is no accident that Henry gave so freely to the Cluniacs and that his one big foundation, Reading, was headed by a Cluniac, Hugh, whom Honorius had wished to make a cardinal. When Henry met Innocent at Rouen on May 31, 1131, Henry made great gifts to Peter the Venerable in the presence of Matthew 134 

Bethell, ‘English Black Monks’, 689–90. Hollister, Henry I, chapter 10. While Bethell could see the Cluniacs as reformers, their rivals the Cistercians, led by St. Bernard, ironically castigated them as the most regressive of traditionalists. 136  Bethell, ‘English Black Monks’, 691. 135 



Henry I and the English Church

157

of Albano, Hugh of Reading, St. Bernard, Suger of Saint-Denis, and, interestingly, Anselm’s good friend and student Boso of Bec.137 Shrewd and foreseeing, Henry had managed his Church with the same kind of political skill as he had his bureaucracy.

137 

Bethell, ‘English Black Monks’, 692.

9 The Fiscal Management of England under Henry I  Stephanie Mooers Christelow

And the same Restold owes £239 and 15s and 2d for defaults on county payments; namely, for one year’s produce and demesne, for granges and mills, for fisheries, for villeins and borders, ploughs and ploughmen and hay. And in defaults for the land for which there was no grain.

This entry from the only Exchequer record to survive the first half of the twelfth century, along with thousands of others contained in the thirty-membrane manuscript, indicates that the complex and centralized administration of Henry I (1100–1135) was impaired by inefficiency and incompetence. It suggests as well that the obstacles facing the smooth assumption and maintenance of power by Anglo-Norman kings may have extended well beyond the pacification of a native populace and the competition from rival regimes to economic insolvency and noncompliance, for Restold, sheriff of Oxford from 1122–1127, was still in arrears three years later. This is not to disparage the achievements and precedents in record-keeping and law that pertain to Henry I’s reign, which have been recognized for over a century. But I will argue that an idealized view of well-managed Anglo-Norman government and a particularly indomitable king is a flawed one. This paper, based on my own audit of the Pipe Roll of 1130, questions received opinion epitomized in the long-awaited biography of Henry I by the late C. Warren Hollister: The reign of Henry I stands as the most creative in the Anglo-Norman era. With its long peace and stability, Henry’s regime contributed to the development of English medieval institutions: the centralizing, ever-tightening control of the curia regis over the administration of kingdom and duchy, the emergence of the exchequer with its  

I am grateful to the late Donald Sutherland for his scrutiny of a very early draft of this paper; to the members of the Haskins Society, who heard it presented in an abbreviated form; to Emma Mason, Tom Keefe and Warren Hollister; and to several anonymous readers for their thoughtful suggestions.   Pipe R. 31 H. I, 2.   Judith A. Green, English Sheriffs to 1154 (London, 1990), 70.   Edward A. Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1882); J. H. Round, Feudal England: Historical Studies on the XIth and XIIth Centuries (London, 1895); Charles Homer Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, MA, 1918).



The Fiscal Management of England

159

sophisticated accounting procedures, the proliferation of royal justices, and the concentration of authority over exchequer, judicature, and English and Norman vice-regencies in the hands of an elite group of skillful and loyal servants. Subsequent kings, despite the machine’s steady growth, had less success with the system than Henry I.

I am not the first person to question the competence of Anglo-Norman administrations; James Campbell and W. L. Warren, while recognizing the precocity of the products of government – Domesday Book and the Pipe Roll of 1130, for example – called attention to the appearance of administrative weaknesses once skilled English functionaries had died, by the late eleventh century. Theirs were sweeping reviews of different functions of government and included assessments of coinage, law and taxation over several reigns. This paper has a narrower focus – a demonstration of monetary difficulties through scrutiny of the workings of government and its personnel, as well as, less directly, the policies of Henry I. It will have much to say about the ways in which these policies, expressed in writs, charters and laws, were applied in national and regional contexts. The last twenty years have witnessed an explosion of prosopographical studies on royal servants, with Hollister’s ‘Magnates and “Curiales” in Early Norman England’ and his classic study in ‘The Rise of Administrative Kingship’, among other essays, providing a model for scholars of both Henry I and Henry II. Judith Green’s The Government of England under Henry I has elaborated on Hollister’s construction of aristocratic government and has helped to shift attention from kings, who were more concerned with peacekeeping efforts and power at home and abroad than with details of royal government, to household and curial staffs. Continental concerns meant that twelfthcentury kings were only sometimes available to direct and inspire those who administered England in their names. While kings were, in theory, ‘dispensers of justice and patronage’, it was royal officials – great and small – who were key actors in these areas of traditional royal concerns. This study, then, is a  

C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, ed. Amanda Clark Frost (New Haven, 2001), 349. James Campbell, ‘Observations on English Government from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century’, TRHS, 5th ser., 25 (1975), 39–54; W. L. Warren, ‘The Myth of Norman Administrative Efficiency’, TRHS, 5th ser., 34 (1984), 113–32; T. N. Bisson, review of Hollister, Henry I, EHR 117 (2002), 1253–4.   C. Warren Hollister, ‘Magnates and “Curiales” in Early Norman England’, Viator 8 (1977), 63–81; ‘The Greater Domesday Tenants-in-Chief’, in Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1987), 219–48; ‘The Magnates of Stephen’s Reign: Reluctant Anarchists’, HSJ 5 (1993), 77–87; ‘The Viceregal Court of Henry I’, in Law, Custom and the Social Fabric in Medieval Europe, ed. Bernard S. Bachrach and David Nicholas (Kalamazoo, MI, 1990), 131–44; C. Warren Hollister and John W. Baldwin, ‘The Rise of Administrative Kingship: Henry I and Philip Augustus’, AHR 83 (1978), 867–905.   Judith A. Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986).   R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1970), 111–12: ‘If the distribution of benefits was essential to the survival of a government, the dispensing of justice was necessary for the growth of its influence ... the punishments of the evildoer provided the rewards of the well-doer.’ See also Southern’s ‘Henry I’, in Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), 206–33.  

160

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

recasting of early twelfth-century English government within an existing mold to fashion a much broader-based structure than has been appreciated before, in my own works as well as in those to whom I am indebted. Offices of state and their personnel were designated by the king for specific roles; the Chancery, borrowing from late Saxon and early Norman practices, trained chaplains and produced chancellors, who were subsequently appointed to the princely bishoprics of Winchester, London, Durham and Ely.10 Treasury contents were audited and receipts and disbursements accounted for at biannual meetings of the Exchequer court, which Frank Barlow surmised was functioning under William Rufus.11 A Norman Exchequer was mentioned as the court before which Bernard the scribe petitioned to recover land in Calvados.12 Exchequer records, or Pipe Rolls, are alluded to in administrative records compiled mid-reign; in a precept to the sheriff of Oxford in about 1114, Henry I called for the abbot of Westminster ‘to have 10s. of the king’s alms, as it is recorded in rotulis meis’.13 The Northamptonshire Survey, compiled in or after 1124, refers to rotulos Wyncestrie.14 The wording of the Pipe Roll of 1130 indicates that Exchequer accounts presented in that year originated as many as five years earlier.15 The destruction of Winchester in 1141 may have caused the loss of many rolls; however, some compiled under Henry I did exist when the Dialogus de scaccario was composed.16 The tendency for officials to function independently of the king was established during William I’s reign, when Queen Matilda, Odo bishop of Bayeux and Geoffrey bishop of Coutances issued writs on the king’s behalf.17 That the king seems not to have confirmed them in later charters suggests that the directives of royal regents had legal authority and that regents’ writs were reflections of the trust vested in them by the king to carry out his implied or specified wishes. During Henry I’s reign, his queen, Matilda, his son, William and Roger bishop of Salisbury functioned as royal surrogates when the king was in Normandy.18 As early as 1110, the king addressed his ‘barons of the Exchequer’ 10 

Stephanie Mooers Christelow, ‘Chancellors and Curial Bishops: Ecclesiastical Promotions and Power in Anglo-Norman England, ANS 22 (1999), 49–69. 11  Frank Barlow, William Rufus (Berkeley, 1983), 223–34. 12  Regesta, ii, no. 1584, dated to 1129 by the editors. See also, Haskins, Norman Institutions, 88. 13  Regesta, ii, no. 1053. 14  ‘The Northamptonshire Survey’, trans. J. H. Round, in VCH Northamptonshire, i, 380, 383. 15  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 110. 16  Richard fitz Nigel, De necessariis observantiis scaccarii dialogus, ed. and trans. Charles Johnson (London, 1950) [hereafter, Dialogus de scaccario], 42: ‘You will often find in the old Pipe Rolls of Henry I ...’. 17  Odo issued four writs or notifications to Queen Matilda’s two and Geoffrey bishop of Coutances’ one; David Bates, ed., Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I, 1066–1087 (Oxford, 1998), nos. 71, 74, 85, 135 (for Odo), 63, 289 (for Matilda), and 350 (for Geoffrey). 18  See Regesta, ii, nos. 1000–1 (a notification in thesauro and a precept issued by Queen Matilda in 1111 from Winchester), 1190, 1198–9 (issued by her in 1106–19). Prince William issued a number of precepts and notifications for his father (nos. 1189, 1191–2 in 1116–18 and 1201–2 in



The Fiscal Management of England

161

(baronibus de scaccario, salutem), indicating that a separate court existed within a larger curia regis.19 And the use of barones scaccarii in the salutations and contents of executive writs, as well as in other record sources, reveals the autonomous, if not institutional, role of the court; it implies the formal, although possibly temporary, administrative role of its members.20 A reconstruction of the king’s itinerary indicates that even when Henry was in England he did not always attend meetings of his insular Exchequer court, if it was held fairly consistently in Winchester on the feasts of Easter and Michaelmas. At Michaelmas 1102 and 1103, he was at Westminster, for instance; on Michaelmas 1105 he was in Wycombe, Yorkshire; at Easter 1106 he was in Bath; he held his Easter court in 1107 at Windsor; on Michaelmas 1109 he stayed at Nottingham; on Easter 1110 he was at Marlborough; and at Easter 1114 Henry’s court met at Kingsthorpe. Henry spent Easter 1116 at the royal manor of Odiham, Easter 1122 in Northampton, and at Michaelmas 1122 he may have been en route to Durham. During the first three decades of his reign, Henry I was in Winchester at Easter or Michaelmas eleven times, out of sixty possible court sessions.21 Exchequer business, if conducted regularly, generally lacked the overseeing presence of the king, although we may assume that, in extreme cases, Henry intruded his own policy. When Henry I was in Normandy, he stopped at Rouen, Caen and Vaissel, where caches of the Norman treasury were kept. He held court in Rouen at Easter or Michaelmas in 1113, 1115, 1116, 1118, 1119, 1120, 1123, 1124, 1125, 1128 and 1129;22 he may have been in Rouen during the English Exchequer sessions in 1106, 1107 and 1109 as well.23 In 1119, a charter testifying to an exchange of land involving monetary compensation took place before the king in his chamber (in thalamo regis) at Rouen.24 That fiscal business transpired, and that the treasury chamberlain, William of Tancarville (d. 1129) witnessed the transaction, suggests that this just may have been an ad hoc meeting of the Exchequer court. Transactions occurring in 1123 and

1118–19). I find no evidence that Roger of Salisbury ever left England; instead he worked as regent when the king was overseas: see nos. 1417, 1472, 1614, 1989. 19  The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, ed. C. W. Foster and Kathleen Major, Lincoln Record Soc., 10 vols. (Hereford, etc., 1931–73), i, no. 32, calendared in Regesta, ii, no. 963. 20  Regesta, ii, no. 1538; dated to 1108–27 and printed and translated by R. C. Van Caenegem, Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanville (London, 1959), 418, no. 13: ‘Et nisi feceris, barones mei de scaccario faciant fueri.’ See Regesta, ii, no. 1741 addressed to ‘Roger bishop of Salisbury, the Chancellor and the barons of the Exchequer’. 21  Stephanie Mooers Christelow, ‘A Moveable Feast? Itineration and the Centralization of Government under Henry I’, Albion 28 (1996), 187–228, appendix. 22  W. Farrer, ‘An Outline Itinerary of King Henry the First’, EHR 34 (1919), 303–82, 505–79, nos. 343–4, 375, 384, 386, 401–5, 501, 505, 514–15, 572, 586; Christelow, ‘Moveable Feast’, appendix. 23  Christelow, ‘Moveable Feast’, appendix. 24  Regesta, ii, no. 1214.

162

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

1124 in Rouen and other Norman settlements allude to meetings of the Exchequer court as well.25 While Norman treasury audits occurred, a formal accounting may have taken place later, in England. The account of Vaissel’s treasury was presented at Winchester in 1130, rather than, say, at Rouen, by the treasury chamberlains, Nigel nepos episcopi (later bishop of Ely) and Osbert of Pont de l’Arche; similarly, the recording of Geoffrey of Clinton’s debt ‘for defaulting on the treasury when he was with Robert Mauduit in Normandy’, took place at Winchester’s Michaelmas 1130 meeting of the Exchequer court.26 The Norman and English Treasuries seem to have been interchangeable, as were the two treasury chamberlains, who rendered account in Winchester before the Exchequer court meeting there, but paid moneys at various locations in Normandy. The Pipe Roll of 1130, compiled at Winchester during the Michaelmas Exchequer session, reports that Nigel nepos episcopi was paid twenty silver marks from the Norman treasury.27 If there were two concurrent Exchequer audits – one in England and one in Normandy – as Haskins and Hollister supposed,28 then the English court took precedence over the Norman. In late September 1130, when our pipe roll was assembled, Henry I visited Normandy’s burgeoning towns and hunted in its dwindling forests.29 He had with him a small entourage of trusted familiares and fiscal experts 30 and had left behind a vice-regency to treat finance and justice, to administer England in his absence, and to oversee the Michaelmas 1130 meeting of the Exchequer court.31 The king would remain on the continent, conducting business in Rouen, Caen and Chartres, for nearly a year.32 His peacekeeping efforts at home and in Normandy, as well as his military strikes against Anjou and the French royal domain, depended on the efficient recording and collection of large sums of money and the careful disbursement of funds to proper channels. The Pipe Roll 25 

Regesta, ii, no. 1214. Pipe R. 31 H. I, 37. 27  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 54. 28  Haskins, Norman Institutions, 105; C. Warren Hollister, ‘The Origins of the English Treasury’, EHR 93 (1978), 273. 29  Regesta, ii, no. 1680 was issued in Rouen on September 14; Farrer, ‘Itinerary’, 557. Pipe R. 31 H. I, 18, 26, 29 confirm the king’s absence from England. 30  Regesta, ii, nos. 1680–1709. Among those who attended the king in Normandy were his son, Robert earl of Gloucester, William of Warenne, earl of Surrey, Robert earl of Leicester, Brian fitz Count, Geoffrey of Clinton and Geoffrey Rufus, the chancellor. Joining the entourage were the Normans, Robert de la Haye, John bishop of Lisieux and Rabel of Tancarville, who succeeded his father as treasury chamberlain in 1129. 31  Roger bishop of Salisbury and Geoffrey Rufus the chancellor issued a writ of pardon to the abbot of Westminster during the course of the Michaelmas 1130 Exchequer session (Pipe R. 31 H. I, 150). For the vice-regency see Hollister, ‘The Viceregal Court of Henry I’. 32  Henry returned to England after August 1, 1131; Christelow, ‘Moveable Feast’, appendix. A number of petitioners before the late September 1130 meeting of the Exchequer court chose to defer their suits ‘until the king returns to England’ (see, for example, Pipe R. 31 H. I, 18 and 26). 26 



The Fiscal Management of England

163

represents the king’s far-reaching political ambitions, but it is a judicial and financial product of the barons of the Exchequer, acting on the basis of perceived royal wishes and existing writs, as well as on prevailing conditions. All of this can be discerned in the Pipe Roll of 1130: debts were forgiven, judicial penalties imposed, payments for privileges accepted. Some £45,000 in potential revenue from tax farms or judicial fines collected was accounted for and slightly over half of it, £23,000, was paid into the treasury by sheriffs, justiciars and hundreds of their employees.33 The Pipe Roll also hints at the composition of the Exchequer court, and it discloses, upon careful reading, accounting practices very similar to those of modern governments, corporations and banks.34 The similarities in themselves suggest that the Exchequer court, while adept at finances, was also concerned to mask weaknesses in that year’s budget, as well as to hide fiscal malpractice of sheriffs from the king and to punish extreme cases, such as that of Restold of Oxford. It is difficult to know how the king or his officials responded to the £22,000 discrepancy between anticipated and actual income for 1130. But, it is likely that Henry I expected foul-ups when he was away; before one absence (between 1116 x 1119) the king had cautioned his regents: ‘And let this not be left undone because of my voyage to Normandy.’ 35 If the barons’ actions served to diminish the revenue due the king from the larger part of his trans-Channel realm, then we must speculate upon their reasons for doing so. Accounting conventions were more fluid than those described for Henry II’s Exchequer court in the Dialogus de scaccario, composed by a descendent of Roger of Salisbury.36 Considerations influencing decisions of Henry I’s court encompassed wealth and patronage, status and power, and the royal budget, as well as England’s economy – poverty was cited as a reason for pardoned debts in Wiltshire, Huntingdonshire and Staffordshire, for instance, and failure to collect taxes is a phenomenon of several counties. Accordingly, this study begins with an appraisal of the identity, roles and interests of likely Exchequer officials, and it continues with an investigation into the relations of the court with those petitioning its body, presenting accounts, and collecting money for the treasury. Audits of sheriffs’ farms, and of danegeld, murdrum and auxilium burgi accounts will clarify each aspect of early twelfth-century fiscal administration. Although this discussion focuses on the activities of the one year for which we possess a comprehensive record of the Exchequer court, and on those men whose concerns were primarily or exclusively fiscal, it may apply to the entire reign (1100–1135) and beyond. Those sitting on the court in 1130 may have been semipermanent members of the Exchequer court reporting season after 33 

Green, Government of England, 87. My experience as a teller and a management trainee at the Bank of America in La Jolla and Isla Vista, California from 1975 to 1981 has proved useful to this study. 35  Blythburgh Priory Cartulary, ed. C. Harper-Bill, Suffolk Records Soc., 2 vols. (Woodbridge, 1980–81), i, no. 8. 36  Dialogus de scaccario. 34 

164

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

season to Winchester to carry out the account of royal revenue and expenses, as well as members of the viceregal court. Overlap in personnel was a common expedient and reflects a limited number of highly talented counselors. Robert earl of Gloucester, Henry I’s capable and loyal son, was part of the viceregal circle and was one of the most constant members of his father’s suite of followers.37 His seventy-nine charter attestations were exceeded only by those of Geoffrey Rufus the chancellor, Roger bishop of Salisbury, Robert de Sigillo, keeper of the king’s seal, and Henry bishop of Winchester.38 Robert, with Brian fitz Count, audited the Winchester treasury in 1128 and the Durham treasury in 1129; he was probably an Exchequer official operating on both sides of the English Channel.39 John bishop of Lisieux, Robert de la Haye and Geoffrey de Sable (who is noted only once in such a context) are named as justiciars in a record of a suit heard at the castle of Caen between 1107 and 1129.40 William of Pont de l’Arche was a deputy of the treasury chamberlain and one of two chamberlains of the Exchequer,41 as well as a sheriff. One of the charters issued from Winchester in September 1130 42 may depict the king acting in concert with the core of the Exchequer court operating in England: the bishop of Salisbury and chief justiciar, Roger;43 Henry of Blois, the newly appointed bishop of Winchester; Geoffrey Rufus the chancellor; Nigel nepos episcopi, treasurer and protégé of his kinsman, the bishop of Salisbury;44 William of Pont de l’Arche, a treasury chamberlain;45 Warin, sheriff of Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire and reeve of Southampton; and the royal constable, Robert of Oilli. A similarly dated Winchester notification adds

37 

Hollister and Baldwin, ‘Administrative Kingship’, 878, 888; Charles Johnson, ‘Introduction’, in Dialogus de scaccario, xxxv. 38  Hollister and Baldwin, ‘Administrative Kingship’, 889. 39  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 130–1. 40  Regesta, ii, no. 1593. 41  So described by Charles Johnson in his introduction to the Dialogus de scaccario, xxv. 42  Regesta, ii, no. 1641. At least four royal charters were issued at Winchester at this time (see nos. 1641–4 and 1642 n.); if Henry did depart for Normandy by mid-September (as indicated above) and if the notification was issued while he was present, then the dating of no. 1641 needs to be revised. The king occasionally stayed in Winchester prior to visiting Normandy or upon his return; see Farrer, ‘Itinerary’, nos. 331–3, 423–9. 43  For the bishop’s life and career, see Edward J. Kealey, Roger of Salisbury: Viceroy of England (Berkeley, 1972). C. Warren Hollister, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London, 1986), 46, 70, 209–45, 310 and Green, Government of England, 5, 30, 38–50, 45–6, 203–4, 215–16, with Kealey, stressed Roger’s role as secundus a rege, or vice-regent. 44  Kealey, Roger of Salisbury, 24: Nigel, whose son was the author of the Dialogus de scaccario, probably composed the Constitutio domus regis, which was written at the close of Henry I’s reign and lists royal household officials and their tasks. It was appended to the Dialogus de scaccario. In the mid-1120s, Nigel nepos episcopi was made court treasurer, an office he was to hold until 1133 when he was given the bishopric of Ely; Kealey, Roger of Salisbury, 63. 45  For economic procedures in England and on the continent, see G. H. White, ‘Financial Administration under Henry I’, THRS, 4th ser., 8 (1925), 64–72; A. E. Verhulst, Medieval Finance: A Comparison of Financial Institutions in North-Western Europe (Providence, 1967); R. L. Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century (London, 1912); Haskins, Norman Institutions.



The Fiscal Management of England

165

Brian fitz Count and Robert of Gloucester to the group,46 although Robert would soon sail with his father to Normandy with other royal friends and functionaries. Both the contents of royal acts and their witness lists along with Pipe Roll data disclose that Exchequer officials present at 1111, 1119 and 1123 meetings of the court correspond roughly with membership posited here for 1130, allowing for the deaths of some members and their replacements.47 This suggests that service on the court was of a somewhat permanent nature, and that officials gained experience as, year after year, they weighed cases and viewed accounts. Just as Henry I was frequently absent from court sessions in England, so were men who may have served as Exchequer officials there. Robert of Gloucester, for example, was in the king’s entourage during all or part of the August 1127–July 1129 sojourn in Normandy, as were the VIPs Geoffrey Rufus the chancellor, William of Aubigny pincerna, Geoffrey of Clinton, Payn fitz John and Robert de Sigillo.48 Robert of Gloucester, John bishop of Lisieux, Audoin bishop of Evreux and Robert de la Haye were in Normandy with the king after September 14, 1130.49 They, with William count of Ponthieu and Hugh of Gournay, obscure actors in twelfth-century politics, may have been passing participants in meetings of the 1130 Norman Exchequer. It is doubtful that any members of the court returned to England two weeks later to participate in Exchequer deliberations there, although the possibility cannot be ruled out. Geoffrey of Clinton, Thurstan archbishop of York, Bernard bishop of St. David’s, Walter Giffard, earl of Buckingham, and Robert earl of Leicester, among others, subscribed charters issued at Rouen, Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives and Sées as well. If a near-simultaneous meeting took place at the treasury at Rouen, they probably participated in an audit of Norman treasuries.

46 

Regesta, ii, 1507, 1508, 1510. Robert of Oilli and Brian fitz Count were related to each other through Brian’s marriage to Robert’s cousin, Maud of Wallingford: I. J. Sanders, English Baronies: A Study of Their Origin and Descent, 1086–1327 (Oxford, 1960), 54; Monasticon anglicanum, ed. W. Dugdale et al., rev. ed., 6 vols. in 8 (London, 1817–30), vi, part 1, 248–9; Cartulary of Oseney Abbey, ed. H. E. Salter, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1929–36), i, 1, no. 1. 47  For 1111, see Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Joseph Stevenson, RS 2, 2 vols. (London, 1858), ii, 116 and Regesta, ii, 1000; for 1119, see Regesta, ii, no. 1211, which pertains to Exchequer business, and names Roger of Salisbury, Robert bishop of Lincoln, Ranulf the chancellor and Ralf Basset as justiciars of the curia regis. Geoffrey Ridel and William Bigod died in 1120; Alfred of Lincoln, sometime after 1125; and Ralph Basset, before 1130. 48  Regesta, ii, no. 1542ff. 49  Regesta, ii, no. 1214.

166

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

Table 1: Probable Exchequer officials 1111 Queen Matilda Roger bp Salisbury Robert bp Lincoln Richard bp London William of Courcy Adam of Port Thurstan the chaplain * Walter the sheriff Herbert the chamberlain William of Oilli

1119 Roger bp Salibury Robert bp Lincoln

1123/24

1130

John bp Lisieux Geoffrey bp Rouen William of Tancarville Robert de Sigillo William of Aubigny pinc. Payn fitsJohn Wm of Pont de l’Arche Thomas of St John Drew of Moncy

John bp Lisieux Roger bp Salisbury Alexander bp Lincoln Henry bp Winchester Audoin bp of Evreux

William of Aubigny brito

Geoffrey son of Herbert William of Anesy William II of Warenne Ralph Basset Ralph Basset Geoffrey of Mandeville Geoffrey of Clinton Geoffrey Ridel Walter archdeacon Oxford Ranulf the chancellor

Robert de la Haye

Nigel nepos episcopi Wm of Pont de l’Arche Warin the sheriff Brian fitz Count, constable William abp Canterbury Stephen ct of Mortain William II of Warenne Richard Basset Geoffrey of Clinton Robert e of Gloucester Robert e of Leicester Geoffrey the chancellor William ct of Ponthieu Robert de Vere Robert de la Haye Hugh Bigod Hugh of Gournay William fitz Odo John the marshall

*  Promoted to the archbishopric of York in 1114 and a main curialis of Henry I.

These individuals, as well as Robert of Gloucester, Stephen of Blois (count of Mortain, the king’s nephew and the future King Stephen), and Geoffrey of Clinton, are also contained in unique clusters within the Pipe Roll’s lists of danegeld exemptions.50 There is no apparent order in which recipients of 50 

They were found together among both Old Pleas (Easter accounts) and New Pleas (Michaelmas accounts), but only danegeld exemptions given at the latter meeting were considered here. Pipe R. 31 H. I, 16 (bishop of Winchester, William of Glastonbury, chancellor, bishop of Salisbury, earl of Gloucester, count of Mortain, William of Pont de l’Arche, Warin the sheriff), 23 (bishop of Salisbury, earl of Gloucester, bishop of Winchester, Brian fitz Count, Miles of Gloucester, Warin the sheriff), 41 (bishop of Salisbury, chancellor, Nigel nepos episcopi, earl of Gloucester, Geoffrey of Clinton, William of Pont de l’Arche), 51 (count of Mortain, earl of Gloucester, chancellor, bishop of Salisbury, William of Pont de l’Arche), 86 (earl of Gloucester, chancellor, bishop of Salisbury, William of Pont de l’Arche, Richard Basset, Aubrey de Vere, Geoffrey of Clinton), 102 (bishop of Salisbury, chancellor, William of Pont de l’Arche, earl of Gloucester, bishop of Lincoln), 126 (bishop of Salisbury, earl of Gloucester, Geoffrey of Clinton, William of Pont de l’Arche, Nigel nepos episcopi) and 152 (bishop of Salisbury, chancellor, count of Mortain, Nigel nepos episcopi) contain the clearest examples of this tendency. See also 4, 14, 15, 20, 22, 46, 48, 49, 50, 57, 62 (bis), 66, 67, 72, 79, 84, 93, 97, 99, 103, 104, 108, 134–5.



The Fiscal Management of England

167

pardons are named in the Pipe Roll – the paradigm of Domesday Book, in which successive landholders were ranked by privilege is not followed. Pipe Roll accounts vary from county to county as well – nowhere do fiscally favored individuals appear in similar patterns. Officials, royal kinsfolk, magnates, representatives of middling families, obscure and unknown individuals, were all given their exemptions in an order so random that it may merely reflect the lack of writs or, where they were offered, the unconcerned, haphazard taking of a writ of pardon from a pile, noting the award and then casually affixing it to a spindle.51 But the names of Salisbury, Winchester, Gloucester, Pont de l’ Arche, as well as men associated in other contexts with fiscal management of the kingdom, were rarely scattered among those of their fellow recipients of tax pardons. They occur together, more often than not, in the middle of a series of exemptions or at the end, as this entry for Dorset exemplifies. And the same sheriff renders account of danegeld. In the treasury, £98 2s 3d. And in pardon by the king’s writ to Walter Maltravers, 25s. To Walter of Salisbury, £4. To William Martel, £4 9s. To the monks of Bec, 17s. To Roger of Hampton, 26s 3d. To the monks of Montacute, 6s. To the abbot of Middleton, 40s. To William fitz John, 10s. To Geoffrey the Chancellor’s son, 37s. To John Belet, 53s. To William of St Clair, 19s. To Walter of Lillingston, 4s. To Robert son of Martin, 16s. To Henry son of Humphrey, 22s 9d. To the earl of Leicester, 15s 9d. To Alfred of Lincoln, £6. To Anselm the sheriff, 16s 6d. To the abbess of Préaux, 20s. To Juliana the Almoness of St Edwards, 4s. To Hugh the son of Ber the baker, 3s. To Ralph of Chesny, 35s. To Mathilda de l’Aigle, 27s. To Alan of Dinan, 20s. To Humphrey of Rochelle, 5s. To Henry of Pomerai, 16s. To Robert of Arundel, 58s. To the abbot of Caen, 71s. To the abbess of Caen, 20s. To William of Turberville, 14s. To the count of Meulan, £4. To William son of Robert, 10s. To Thierry of Bois Herbert, 20s. To Rannulf of Bayeux, 20s. To William fitz Richard, 24s. To Turchetill the butler, 2s. To the bishop of Winchester, 64s. To William of Glastonbury, 28s. To the Chancellor, [22s.]. To the bishop of Salisbury, £41 10s 6d. To the earl of Gloucester, £22 10s. To the count of Mortain, 23s. To William of Pont de l’Arche, 30s. To Warin the sheriff, 32s. To Gervaise son of Osbert, 42s. To Ralph the clerk, 8s. To the carpenters of the castle at Wareham, 2s. To Warin the forester, 2s. In sum, £130 2s 9d. And he is quit.52

Twenty-six accounts of danegeld exemptions listed under the heading of New Pleas contain conspicuous clusters of prominent officials and familiares.53 The clusters are usually bounded on one side by exemptions on royal demesne land and on the other by pardons to little-known servants who, I suspect, served 51 

But see Dialogus de scaccario, 87, which refers to an order in which writs were handed to a clerk. Writs specifying monetary action were not always required (89–91). 52  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 15–16. 53  Cheshire, Cumberland, Durham, Glamorgan, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Lancashire between the Ribble and the Mersey, Pembrokeshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Westmorland and Monmouthshire lack lists of danegeld exemptions; Northumberland’s accounts contain references only to old debts (Pipe R. 31 H. I, 35–6) and it is conceivable that a membrane containing New Pleas was lost; Devon’s New Pleas contain only fragments of danegeld exemptions on a severely mutilated membrane (157–8).

168

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

the court as scribes or ushers. It is interesting that occupational groupings occur in lists of witnesses to royal charters as well, with royal chaplains forming clearly differentiated clusters among lists of curiales.54 The composition of Pipe Roll clusters does vary, though, because tax exemptions were contingent upon landholding in a county, but is otherwise startling in its regularity. Thus, the long list of danegeld exemptions for Wiltshire contains this characteristic cluster: In the demesne of Richard Esturmit’s land, 4s. In the demesne of the king’s land at Chichester, 20s. To the bishop of Salisbury, £77 16s 9d. To the Chancellor, £4 12s. To Nigel nepos episcopi, 37s.55 To the earl of Gloucester, £12 7s 6d. To William of Pont de l’Arche, 32s. To Geoffrey of Clinton, 8s. To Osmund the steward, 30s. To Warin the sheriff, 18s. To Rannulf the cleric, 5s.6d. To Ralph the chaplain, 4s. To Edmund the cleric, 7s. To Ralph the cleric, 4s.56

The clusters are defined unambiguously in the shorter lists of danegeld exemptions found among the Old Pleas (those debts remaining from a previous audit), and their composition is helpful in detecting subgroups within larger lists. For example, Wiltshire’s account of previous danegeld and list of ­exemptions reads: And the same sheriff renders account of £73 9s 3d of previous danegeld. In pardon by the king’s writ. To the bishop of Winchester, £21 2s. To Brian fitz Count, £10 19s 9d. To the bishop of Salisbury, £29. To the earl of Gloucester, £12 7s 6d. The total is £73 9s 3d. And he is quit.57

The very high outstanding sum of £73 and the awarding of exemptions to people who were clearly involved in Exchequer proceedings points to inability or noncompliance on the part of the sheriff and the perceived necessity to clear old accounts where possible. It is possible that indebtedness and pardons indicated dilatory claims for exemptions by, say, the bishop of Salisbury or the bishop of Winchester, but none of the other seventy exempt individuals for Wiltshire are so preferred, although it is clear that they possessed pardons per breve regis, and were people of importance. This type of notation fits a pattern of accounting that was frequently, and mainly, applied when a sheriff was in arrears. What is revealed here is not so much the exceptional favor awarded to people like Roger of Salisbury, for the amounts do not correspond with the numbers of hides they are thought to possess, but that tax exemptions may be imperfect barometers of wealth and status. Such exemptions lacked a cash value, and reflected, instead, the determination by the Exchequer court to disguise administrative failure, as we will see. Although pardons themselves did require royal approval,58 the amounts of the pardons were left to the 54  55  56  57  58 

Regesta, ii, no. 544 is one example. Earlier in the same entry, Nigel received a 19s. exemption (Pipe R. 31 H. I, 23). Pipe R. 31 H. I, 23. Pipe R. 31 H. I, 21. But see Pipe R. 31 H. I, 96: ‘In pardon at the consideration of the barons of the Exchequer.’



The Fiscal Management of England

169

discretion of the court, which wielded considerable power, especially when the king was not present. Those people found in Pipe Roll clusters most frequently – Robert of Gloucester (35 times), Stephen count of Mortain (23), Roger of Salisbury (16), Geoffrey of Clinton (13), Geoffrey Rufus the Chancellor (10), William of Pont de l’Arche (8), Richard Basset (8), the bishop of Winchester (7), Brian fitz Count (7), and William of Warenne (6) – seem to form the core of the Exchequer court meeting in Winchester or at one of the Norman treasuries in 1130. Other likely Exchequer officials included William of Corbeil, archbishop of Canterbury, Nigel nepos episcopi and Geoffrey of Mandeville, who were part of such clusters four times, and Alexander bishop of Lincoln, who was listed as such three times.59 Charles Johnson, deducing their names from titles mentioned by Richard fitz Nigel in the Dialogus de scaccario posited some of the same men, with others, sitting at the Exchequer table,60 and historical texts describe their intelligence and financial expertise, as well as their ambition. Roger of Salisbury was ‘a prelate of great mind’, who ‘decided causes, regulated the expenditures, had charge of the treasury’.61 John archdeacon of Sées, royal chaplain and then bishop of Lisieux, was ‘often summoned to the king’s counsels among his close advisers’.62 Bishop-financiers, such as Roger of Salisbury, William Giffard, bishop of Winchester, and, after 1133, Geoffrey bishop of Durham, had been royal chaplains, canons, archdeacons and chancellors prior to their appointments, and service in the Chancery appears to have been a prerequisite for promotion to a bishopric with a fiscal role.63 These were giants in Henry I’s administration, not only in terms of the very great responsibility that they carried, but in terms of the influence they used privately, among relatives and friends, and of course, with the king. Their fairly regular, probably annual, service on the Exchequer court, whether English or Norman, meant that their lands could be exempt from costly exactions. That some of them were in Rouen rather than Winchester for the Michaelmas Exchequer meeting suggests that their interests were guaranteed by writ or preserved by their colleagues. The grouping of much the same individuals in entry after entry, county upon county, points to their collective importance to Exchequer scribes and indicates that they comprised a subgroup among people who merited monetary favors or who could claim exemptions on paper to offset sheriffs’ obligations.64 59 

Citing references in the Pipe Roll of 1130 and in Regesta, ii, appendix, 30–8, John Le Patourel named Henry de la Pommeraye, Robert de Courcy and Robert de la Hai as probable barons of Exchequer; Normandy and England, 1066–1144 (Reading, 1971), appendix, 31–5. 60  Johnson, ‘Introduction’, in Dialogus de scaccario, xxiv–xxxiii. 61  William of Malmesbury, GR, 500, 507. 62  OV vi, 142. The bishop of Lisieux was frequently the first or second witness on a series of notifications presented in Normandy during Henry’s 1123 and 1130 sojourns there, indicating his preeminent role in the activities underway there; Regesta, ii, nos. 1417–18, 1680, 1687–8, 1692–4, 1697. 63  Christelow, ‘Chancellors and Curial Bishops’, table A, 56. 64  Nearly two generations later, Roger of Salisbury’s descendant, Richard fitz Nigel outlined the perquisites attached to royal service by Henry II’s reign: ‘All those who sit at the Exchequer by

170

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

However, a set of Exchequer officers (like John bishop of Lisieux and Robert de la Haye) thought to be working primarily in Normandy, who are omitted from such groupings but who surely must have received tax exemptions, implies that a Norman Pipe Roll was compiled concurrently with the English one. It is interesting as well, that under Henry I, or rather, under the supervision of his court, danegeld exemptions were not limited to Exchequer officials or what are eventually described as honorial barons, but extended to the household servants, relatives, friends and lesser landlords of rich and powerful men. But Exchequer officials tended to be more splendidly favored than others, their monetary favors a combination of deserved awards and fiscal expedients. Roger bishop of Salisbury, who became the king’s vice-regent after the death of Queen Matilda, listed monetary favors of £238, second only to the £318 recorded for Robert of Gloucester. As justiciar, Roger of Salisbury represented Henry I at the Exchequer table and had the power to issue writs of pardon, such as the extraordinary 800 silver mark (£533 6s. 8d.) waiver allowed to the abbot of Westminster.65 William of Pont de l’Arche’s latitude was similarly wide. In 1130, he secured nearly unparalleled control over royal funds with two impressive purchases: the office of Exchequer chamberlain for himself and that of the court chamberlain for his brother Osbert.66 The bishop of Winchester, Nigel nepos episcopi, and Miles of Gloucester, among others, were frequent witnesses of Henry I’s charters.67 Miles’ proffer of £420 for his father’s office of sheriff was accepted by the Exchequer court with only a token payment.68 If we agree that barons of the Exchequer are delineated in Pipe Roll accounts, then we are forced to consider obvious corollaries to this point: first, fiscal policy in 1130, and perhaps in other years when Henry was out of the country, was in the hands of these men; second, their enrichment, and that of others, is not reflective so much of royal patronage but of baronial patronage; and, third, the relations among the men at court in 1130 were significant. In particular, the king’s command are free from all these [customs and penalties] so much that nothing is exacted either from their demesnes or even from the fees held of them’, Dialogus de scaccario, 48. Barons of the Exchequer (barones qui ad scaccarium resident, 46) were to be exempt from danegeld and murdrum fines as well. 65  The writ was issued jointly with Geoffrey Rufus, the chancellor (Pipe R. 31 H. I, 150). See also W. A. Morris, The Medieval English Sheriff to 1300 (Manchester, 1927), 150 n. 25; the abbot of Westminster had offered 1000 marks for the recovery of land ‘wrongly alienated’. The Pipe Roll entry must coincide with Henry I’s notice that ‘Abbot Herbert of Westminster has deraigned before my barons at the Exchequer and by their judgement’, and suggests that the dating of the entry to c. 1130 – c. 26 March 1133 in English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I, ed. and trans. R. C. Van Caenegem, Selden Soc., 106–7, 2 vols. (London, 1990–91), i, 235 is slightly late. Both the abbot of Westminster and the bishop of Winchester seem to have possessed judicial immunity on lands held in Normandy. See Haskins, Norman Institutions, appendix D, ‘The Norman Consuetudines et Justicie of William the Conqueror’, 279. 66  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 37. 67  Hollister supplied the following figures: for the bishop of Winchester, 23 with a 5.8 average/ year; for Nigel nepos episcopi, 22 with a 3.4 yearly average; and for Miles of Gloucester, 43 with a 4.8 average/year (‘Administrative Kingship’, 888). 68  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 77.



The Fiscal Management of England

171

Stephen of Blois count of Mortain’s probable inclusion on the Exchequer court provides us with reasons for the future king’s ability to keep England’s financial machinery functioning during the anarchy.69 It underscores his rivalry with Roger of Salisbury and his nephews, Nigel and Alexander, and helps to explain why Stephen felt secure in purging his court of them in 1137. The audit may have required a month or more work under fairly tight security.70 While Henry stayed at his Winchester palace,71 his officials took up residence in the city, in houses they may have kept for such occasions. Among these may have been the wardens, guards and ushers enumerated in the Pipe Roll of 1130 as receiving stipends or exemptions. William of Pont de l’Arche, Geoffrey Rufus, Robert of Gloucester and Roger of Salisbury, among numerous other royal officials and magnates, acquired property in Winchester before they were recorded as residents in 1148, and Henry of Blois was, of course, a permanent resident after his promotion in 1129.72 Among those listed as residents of Winchester in the Winchester Survey of 1110 and who figure prominently in the Pipe Roll of 1130 are Thomas of Saint-Jean (a former sheriff of Oxfordshire),73 William of Houghton (a chamberlain) and William of Aubigny pincerna.74 Bernard the scribe also had land and probably a house on Winchester’s Fleshmonger Street.75 David king of Scots had visited his brotherin-law in the spring and had spent time with him at Woodstock, Clarendon and Oxford, according to Pipe Roll accounts recording travel expenses and costs of maintenance, and it is likely that he was in Winchester for the Easter meeting of the Exchequer court.76 Notables not normally resident in Winchester came to advise the king and, after his departure, the court, on difficult judicial decisions in autumn of 1130.77 Among them, Thurstan archbishop of York,

69 

Kenji Yoshitake, ‘The Exchequer in the Reign of Stephen’, EHR 103 (1988), 950–9; Judith Green, ‘Financing Stephen’s War’, ANS 14 (1991), 91–114; Emilie Amt, The Accession of Henry II in England: Royal Government Restored 1149–1159 (Woodbridge, 1993). 70  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 140 notes that the chancellor, Geoffrey Rufus was fined for forty-three days during which he was not at the Exchequer with the other ‘barons of the king’. 71  Derek Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1985), i, 52. 72  Dialogus de scaccario, 13; Regesta, ii, no. 1662; Frank Barlow et al., Winchester in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday (Oxford, 1976), 390–1. By the reign of Henry II, Exchequer officials resided part time in Winchester (Dialogus de scaccario, 13). 73  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 38, reveals that Thomas’ work had come under scrutiny and suggests that he was falling from favor by Michaelmas 1130. 74  Barlow et al., Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, 390–1. 75  Regesta, ii, no. 1676. 76  The Pipe Roll indicates that Henry I and Queen Adeliza spent part of the spring at the royal manors of Clarendon and Woodstock (1, 7) and that the king of Scotland incurred travel expenses en route to the royal court at Oxford. See the accounts for his maintenance and travel expenses ‘when he came to the royal court in England and returned from England into Scotland’ (24, 34) and further accounts for the king’s maintenance (36). 77  Regesta, ii, no. 1654.

172

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

Eustace fitz John and Robert de Brus were key curiales or familiares,78 but they may not have been recognized as Exchequer officials; their danegeld exemptions were not frequently awarded, and their names seldom appear within clusters of tax exemptions. It appears that two related groups from among the upper crust of England’s families dominated the Exchequer court – the youthful Blois brothers, Stephen and Henry, and the family of Roger of Salisbury. The Blois controlled the counties of Boulogne and Mortain and the bishopric of Winchester along with the bishop’s lands in eleven English shires in 1130. Henry of Blois was the king’s nephew, and his city possessed nearly as much prestige as London. His dominance over Winchester Cathedral and castle gave him potential clout over other members of the court despite his very recent promotion. The bishop of Salisbury’s nephews, Nigel and Alexander, who had been promoted because of the royal love for Roger, were parvenus in 1130, the relatively inexperienced and, to Henry I, non-threatening protégés of their important uncle. Toward the end of Henry’s reign, Roger of Salisbury’s family virtually controlled the Exchequer court and appeared to be keeping knowledge of its administration to itself; it was Nigel who is believed to have written the Constitutio domus regis, which describes the servants of the royal household along with their tasks and remunerations, and whom Henry II would recruit to reestablish the Exchequer in the 1150s, and his son, Richard fitz Nigel, who would compose the Dialogus de scaccario. Their position may have been bolstered once Stephen was king and no longer a baron of the Exchequer, although presumably Robert of Gloucester, had he chosen to, might have offset this; Robert came to support Henry’s daughter and heir, Maud, and Roger had become a partisan of Stephen early on. Stephen’s 1137 attack on Roger and his family, which included torture and imprisonment, may have derived from the consolidation in one family of the dioceses of Lincoln, Ely and Salisbury. Acting on the suggestion of Robert of Beaumont, Stephen destroyed Roger’s family and took the bishoprics of Salisbury, Lincoln and Ely into his hand.79 As I maintained earlier, the loss of the Salisburies’ fiscal expertise may not have been a concern. Because their duties involved discretionary dispensing of fiscal and judicial favors as well as formal administrative decisions, the unstated power of the barons of the Exchequer was immense. Public and private responsibilities were likely to have been linked, the giving of a favor as well as its cost influenced by familial and tenurial loyalties. The decision of the court to cancel or reduce a debt or to pardon a portion of a judicial fine may, in the last analysis, have 78 

Thurstan attested over seventy charters from 1103 to 1119 (Regesta, nos. 652ff.) as royal chaplain as well as archbishop of York. Eustace fitz John began to attest charters for Henry I in c. 1116 and subscribed, by my count, thirty-six genuine, surviving acta. Robert de Brus held land of both Kings David and Henry I, and both Robert and David were among Henry’s most consistent supporters, although their visits to his court were sporadic. David affirmed thirty-six charters for Henry, most of them prior to his accession to the Scottish throne in 1123; Robert signed nineteen of Henry I’s charters. 79  ASC, s.a. 1137.



The Fiscal Management of England

173

hinged on the petitioner’s place of residence and on the identity of his lord, who may have been one of the barons of the Exchequer or known to them. We might speculate upon the degree to which the decisions of the Michaelmas 1130 Exchequer court mirrored royal policy, particularly in the realm of patronage, and wonder how closely aligned baronial and royal interests were. The barons of the Exchequer were occasionally tempted to line their own pockets, and those of their minions or kin, at royal expense. Both Roger of Salisbury’s sister-in-law and his chief steward were pardoned amounts of over £1 each.80 The chancellor’s son and namesake was given a 37s. danegeld exemption, and Aubrey of Pont de l’Arche, William’s kinsman, acquired a danegeld exemption on a Surrey estate.81 Geoffrey of Clinton’s nephew, the new bishop of Chester at Geoffrey’s instigation, won four small favors, but these may have been customary privileges due him as bishop.82 Two of the earl of Gloucester’s clients – Henry of Tringeham and Payn of Crawley – were pardoned judicial fines dependent on the royal love for the earl.83 It is evident that monetary favors given in 1130 extended beyond those normally bestowed for royal service. In addition to danegeld and murdrum exemptions, for example, Exchequer officials were excused payments of auxilium burgi and, in some cases, forest taxes and pleas. With the exception of an uncharacteristic list for Northumberland, where three powerful barons – Robert of Umfranville, Bernard of Balliol, Eustace fitz John – and Odard the sheriff are offered pardons, accounts of previous years’ danegeld note exemptions to the earl of Gloucester, the bishop of Salisbury and the count of Mortain almost exclusively. The highest individual auxilium burgi pardons, and the most frequently awarded, went to Roger of Salisbury, Robert of Gloucester, William of Pont de l’Arche, William archbishop of Canterbury and the burgesses of Oxford, while other county or borough landholders whom we would expect to find among them by virtue of their landed influence, such as the Beaumont, Chester or Clare families, were rarely accorded pardons.84 Nine of eighteen pardons for poverty were awarded to inhabitants of Wiltshire; two men of Wilton alone were excused nearly £110 on the pleas of Ralph Basset, a royal justiciar.85 One of the pardons pro paupertate was approved for a Wiltshire resident because the debtor ‘had nothing nor is he able to come up with it’; another was acceded because the man was ‘ill and has nothing’.86 Roger of Salisbury made his commanding presence felt beyond 80 

Pipe R. 31 H. I, 15, 23. Pipe R. 31 H. I, 51. 82  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 74, 151, 152. Domesday Book records a variety of exemptions and beneficial hidations on the bishop of Chester’s estates in Cheshire, Shropshire and Hertfordshire (DB i, 135, 252a, 263a–b). 83  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 102. 84  Stephanie L. Mooers, ‘Patronage in the Pipe Roll of 1130’, Speculum 59 (1984), 296. 85  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 18. Regesta, ii, no. 1275 indicates that the burgesses of Wilton had been singled out earlier for favors. According to the Pipe Roll, the bishop of Salisbury himself had the farm of Wilton (13). 86  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 18–19; see also 47, 63, 73–5 and 139 for similarly excused payments. 81 

174

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

the Salisbury plain, and approved the pardon of his Wiltshire acquaintances, just as Brian fitz Count, lord of Wallingford, Oxfordshire, may have interceded on behalf of the burgesses of Wallingford for similar pardons. It is interesting that Brian fitz Count himself rendered account of the farm of Wallingford and that it was directly under his supervision that the burgesses of Wallingford were pardoned three years’ payments of £15 each for auxilium burgi.87 The burgesses of Hertford and Tamworth, and the men of Early (Staffordshire), were allowed pardons for poverty as well.88 Exchequer officials were careful not to exceed the bounds of their authority in a noticeable way. The fact that some of their clients gained exemptions and pardons from various dues is less surprising than the fact that more tenants or friends of Exchequer officials were not favored. Roger of Salisbury is a case in point. He is known to have worked for his family’s advancement; in 1123 his nephew Alexander was made bishop of Lincoln by Henry I as a personal favor to Roger.89 In the mid-1120s, Nigel nepos episcopi was made court treasurer, an office he was to hold until 1133 when he was given the bishopric of Ely.90 Roger’s nephews and sons of the Domesday physician, Nigel of Calne, were given archdeaconries in the diocese of Salisbury.91 Even so, there are no pardons pro amore for Roger’s tenants in 1130, when such awards were clearly in his power to make. The bishop may have been disinclined to favor blatantly his clients and to excite the envy of others. He may have suspected, too, that Henry I was cognizant of acts having financial import, as the familiar observation by Orderic Vitalis suggests.92 Of course, it is possible that Roger’s dependents fared better on other pipe rolls. The Exchequer court acted, if not under the king’s explicit guidance, then with an implicit sense of his wishes.93 Composed of men whose loyalty had been tested and proved,94 it deviated cautiously and then only subtly from expected standards of behavior. By the late twelfth century, many of Henry I’s officers were remembered as shrewd and circumspect men whose policies – especially at the Exchequer table – formed a model of statesmanship. 87 

Pipe R. 31 H. I, 139. Pipe R. 31 H. I, 63, 75 and 74. 89  ASC, s.a. 1123: ‘Soon after the king went to Winchester and was there all Eastertide, and while he was there he gave the bishopric of Lincoln to a cleric called Alexander. He was the “nephew” of the bishop of Salisbury, and this he did all for the love of this bishop.’ 90  Hollister, ‘Origins of the English Treasury’, 271–3. 91  Nigel of Calne II and Everard of Calne: see John Le Neve, Fasti ecclesiae anglicanae, 1066– 1300, ed. Diane E. Greenway et al., 10 vols. (London, 1968–2005), i (St. Paul’s, London), 61–3; iv (Salisbury), 23–5, 57–9. 92  OV vi, 100: ‘A diligent investigator, he inquired into everything and retained all he heard in his tenacious memory. He wished to know all the business of officials and dignitaries; and, since he was an assiduous ruler, kept an eye on the many happenings in England and Normandy. He was thoroughly familiar with all secrets and things done surreptitiously.’ 93  Dialogus de scaccario, 13: ‘The duty and aim of all is the same, to secure the king’s advantage’; also, 33. 94  Both William of Warenne and Geoffrey of Clinton had been accused of treason but were exonerated and accepted back into royal favor. 88 



The Fiscal Management of England

175

The Exchequer court enjoyed the service of two ushers by the late twelfth century, but numerous such individuals were attached to the royal household. Four ushers were given pardons and exemptions in 1130,95 the most influential being Robert the usher, son of Giffard, part of whose payment for his office was excused.96 The barons of the Exchequer were aided not only by a corps of ushers, who escorted numerous people who came ‘to pay and be judged’,97 but also by scribes, who kept careful accounts of their debts.98 Clerics, chaplains and stewards, whose danegeld exemptions are listed after those of the Exchequer officials, probably served the court in precisely these capacities.99 Some may have been sheriffs’ clerks. Itinerant justices and foresters reported violations of forest laws, the king’s peace and criminal fines and handed over the silver they received; tax farmers enumerated revenue collected or spent from royal manors or boroughs; sheriffs detailed the profits or losses from their shires. The great number of people involved in Exchequer proceedings is suggested by the 1129 accounts for Nottinghamshire, which were rendered by two itinerant justices (Geoffrey of Clinton and Ralph Basset), two local justiciars (Ralph of Lisures and William Peverel of Nottingham) and six tax farmers, as well as others who traveled to Winchester to present pleas or to account for their debts in person.100 Accounts for Wiltshire were rendered by Warin the sheriff, four tax farmers, three collectors and two justiciars, among others.101 Small counties relied, on average, on six to eight officials who bridged local and central government, as well as scores of officials whose activities were unsupervised by the Exchequer court. But in large counties, or in areas where two counties were combined in the Pipe Roll, the number of people representing their home counties at Winchester could be enormous. In Yorkshire and Northumberland, for instance, Bertram of Bulmer, the sheriff, rendered account of the old farm of Yorkshire, which he paid in full, as well as for the new (1130/31) farm, for disbursements, for restocking royal manors, for county forfeitures and for previous auxilium burgi and pleas.102 A corps of at least forty men accounted for Yorkshire’s revenue and expenditures: four royal justiciars (Walter Espec and Eustace fitz John, who worked as a team, Ralph Basset, and Geoffrey of Clinton); two tax farmers

95 

Pipe R. 31 H. I, 22, 41, 72, 126. Pipe R. 31 H. I, 45. 97  Dialogus de scaccario, 69. 98  Whereas at least three scribes were noted in connection with Henry I’s Exchequer court (Dialogus de scaccario, 18), only two were rewarded for their services in 1130: the curialis and substantial Cornwall landholder, Bernard the scribe, and Ranulf the scribe (Pipe R. 31 H. I, 51, 159–61 and 126). 99  See, for instance, Pipe R. 31 H. I, 23. 100  Osbert the forester (Pipe R. 31 H. I, 6–7); Ivo of Heriz, Robert of Ferrers and Jordan fitz Alan (7), Gilbert of Mesnil and Ralph Barret (8), and William of Lovetot (9). 101  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 12, 14–24. 102  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 24–6. 96 

176

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

(Robert of Oilli and Searle of Aldborourgh);103 one tax collector, who rendered account of auxilium civitatis for York and for the land between the rivers Ribble and Mersey;104 and thirty-four county justices, lesser justices and county justiciars.105 Among the latter were descendants of pre-Conquest families and representatives of baronial houses of Percy, de l’Isle, Murdac, Paynel, Fossard and Mainwaring. Princes and prelates such as William of Aumale, lord of Holderness, Stephen lord of Richmond, the abbot of York and Thurstan archbishop of York functioned as local justiciars as well, presenting profits from judicial pleas before the Exchequer court. Along with reports of judicial pleas (fines collected for minor crimes) heard in the shire or hundred courts and accounts of the proceeds were pleas brought directly to the Exchequer court by litigants and defendants in legal suits. Thus the record of Exchequer activity at first inspection appears to reflect Henry I’s control of English government, as well his strengthening of royal law. But some of the barons’ acts of late 1130 may have invited the king’s disapproval, especially when viewed in light of the recent audit of the treasury and the nearly coincidental replacement of sheriffs and the assigning of their tax farms. Collection of moneys and the accounting of receipts and disbursements had fallen short of Henry I’s expectations, and the new fiscal year was to be different. Officials guilty of mismanagement were heavily fined in 1130, and these fines, although rarely collected, were almost never pardoned – a policy in marked contrast to Henry I’s acts of judicial credit.106 Five sheriffs and tax collectors were fined nearly £300 for delay of payment to the Exchequer or for defaulting on their farms.107 Geoffrey of Clinton owed £9 and William of Buckland, £29, for default of payments.108 Similarly, eight officials were fined for not making a profit or exercising good care; Peter the cleric of Wilton owed £13 ‘for the profit he ought to have made’,109 and Odo son of Godric was charged ten silver marks for his neglect of a Hampshire forest.110 Richard fitz Ralph was fined over £6 ‘for the profit that he should have and did not make’ in the city of Northampton.111 A Pipe Roll entry for Norfolk mentions an agreement between the king and Benjamin, a Jewish tax farmer who ‘guaranteed to make a profit of 500 silver marks’ (£333) 112 and reveals official concern with effective 103 

The name of Searle of Aldborough was Latinized as Serlo de Burg. He should not be confused with Searle of Burci, William I’s tenant-in-chief. 104  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 31, 34. 105  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 27–8: judicatoribus Comitatus; minutis Judicibus; juratoribus Comitatus. 106  Stephanie L. Mooers, ‘A Reevaluation of Royal Justice Under Henry I of England’, AHR 93 (1988), 340–58, especially 346ff.: ‘The most frequently committed crimes, and therefore, those engendering the greatest potential profit, occasionally received pardons or unexpectedly light penalties.’ 107  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 26, 37, 71, 91, 100, 109 122, 127, 151. 108  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 37, 127. 109  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 20. 110  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 38. 111  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 136. 112  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 91.



The Fiscal Management of England

177

management of royal lands. Defaulting on a county’s produce crop and not preventing destruction of or encroachments on the royal forest in Oxfordshire caused £275 to be levied against Restold the sheriff, one of the most severely fined of Henry I’s servants.113 Stag pleas met similarly high fines; Walter fitz William and Robert fitz Richard owed £87 between them for hunting violations in Essex.114 But in spite of threats, imposition of fines and loss of favor, the Exchequer court displayed a rather casual attitude toward the collection and accounting of royal income and expenses. Moneys from judicial pleas were rarely paid in full and huge pardons were allowed to both royal officials like Restold the sheriff and Thomas the moneyer and to individual suitors.115 In all cases, either nothing or a portion was actually collected and paid into the treasury; William of Lovetot’s payment of £140 is substantial, but even greater was his remaining balance of nearly £220.116 In twelve cases, nothing whatsoever was collected.117 In three instances, people’s payments equaled amounts outstanding – a suggestion that the Exchequer court may have attempted to impose a sort of regularity on the collection of debts: Jordan of Busli paid 41s and owed 40s against the pleas of Ralph Basset in Nottingham; Roger of Flamville paid 10 silver marks and owed 10 on Geoffrey of Clinton’s Yorkshire pleas; while the estate of Roger of Poitou paid and owed 10 silver marks toward the pleas of Stephen count of Brittany in Yorkshire.118 Revenue anticipated from county tax farms was only partially and sometimes minimally paid into the Winchester treasury. An flagrant example involved William, former sheriff of Wiltshire, who still owed at Michaelmas 1130, £975 of £1023 on the old county farm.119 The high sum alone – most county farms ranged from £300 to £500 – may explain William’s recalcitrance. He was not fined for mismanagement; instead, his debt was merely noted and, in effect, glossed over. The examples of Ivo of Heriz, who collected one half of the £220 farm and Osbert the forester, whose account was in arrears of £140, are more characteristic.120 Both officials paid off their 1128/29 debts, which suggests that as much as a year and a half was needed for tax collection. The amounts paid by a sheriff at Easter and at Michaelmas, with pardons subtracted from the total debt, should have left a balance of zero. Accounts from 1129/30 should 113 

Pipe R. 31 H. I, 2. Pipe R. 31 H. I, 55. 115  Restold owed £34 of over £35 in old pleas and danegeld for Oxford (Pipe R. 31 H. I, 3). Thomas, who owed £11 16s. 8d. on unspecified judicial pleas, was pardoned all of it but a pound (19). Hubert and Astor of Wilton were pardoned nearly £55 each of debts which were, even after this, left standing (18–19). 116  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 10. 117  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 8, etc. 118  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 9, 27. 119  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 16. The sheriff may have been William of Pont de l’Arche or William son of Edward of Salisbury; Green, English Sheriffs, 85. 120  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 7. Such examples proliferate in the Pipe Roll of 1130. Warin the sheriff paid £217 of the old farm of three counties but owed nearly £130 on the farm due at the current Exchequer session (13). 114 

178

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

have been closed, even if the sheriffs themselves were out of pocket.121 And while such men as Ivo and Osbert were possibly conscientious, their inability to pay their tax farms in the same fiscal year meant that the king was deprived of as much as fifty percent of his anticipated revenue. A proffer by four sheriffs of London – William Lelutre, Geoffrey Bucherel, Ralph fitz Herlwin and William of Balliol – to be released from their duties suggests that their jobs were difficult, unprofitable or both. The reduction in London’s annual tax farm by £200 from £500 to £300, presumably by Henry I in the last years of his reign, may have been a response to this conundrum.122 Robert Palmer has pointed out that sheriffs were naturally concerned with the efficient functioning of county courts,123 just as it was in their interest to facilitate revenue collection. Theoretically, debts outstanding from the Easter Exchequer session, listed in the Pipe Roll under the rubric, ‘Old Pleas’, were to be paid off at the Michaelmas Exchequer session, and a number of Henry I’s sheriffs were able to do this. Warin the sheriff rendered account of £217 for the old farm of three counties and offered it into the treasury; Bertram of Bulmer paid his remaining debt into the treasury as did Odard the sheriff.124 In the case of New Pleas, an account was rendered (that is, the total amount owed was stated), exemptions were allowed and a portion was paid into the treasury. The account was either paid off and the official quit of responsibility or had an outstanding balance. In 1130, as many as seventy people were allowed pardons commensurate with their landholdings in a given county, sometimes receiving more than one exemption within the context of a single entry.125 These, and cases like them, suggest that more than one manor was geld exempt and that the total number of exempt hides was not always carefully calculated, resulting in a second entry. The total was subtracted from the initial debt and the amount owing was noted in a Pipe Roll.126 But often the entire amount owed by a sheriff after his initial payment of danegeld or murdrum was suspiciously offset by exemptions, either to several people or to a few barons of the Exchequer, as I noted earlier. Many accounts showed very high amounts outstanding from previous Exchequer sessions, and it may have been desirable to clear old debts where possible. The frequency with which old pleas were erased lends an air of urgency to the 121 

Morris, Medieval English Sheriff, 104. Pipe R. 31 H. I, 149. See also 32, 34 and 53, which includes a reference to Aubrey de Vere’s fine to relinquish the shrievalties of Essex and Hertfordshire. For the charter to London, see C. N. L. Brook, G. Keir and S. Reynolds, ‘Henry I’s Charter for the City of London’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 4 (1973), 558–78; C. Warren Hollister, ‘London’s First Charter of Liberties: Is it Genuine?’, JMH 6 (1980), 289–306. 123  Robert C. Palmer, The County Courts of Medieval England, 1150–1350 (Princeton, 1982), 37. 124  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 12, 24 and 34. 125  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 6: Roger of Oilli received two danegeld exemptions (of 8s. 8d. and of 48s.) under Oxford’s new pleas; similarly, Nigel nepos episcopi acquired two danegeld exemptions (for 19s. and 37s.) under Wiltshire’s new pleas (22–3). 126  Dialogus de scaccario, 5, 6, 12. 122 



The Fiscal Management of England

179

barons’ acts. Anselm, sheriff of Wiltshire, for instance, owed over £73 of previous danegeld.127 While it is possible that the debt reflected the intent not to pay by people who believed themselves exempt, the names to which tardy pardons were applied suggest that this is not the case. The entire debt was offset by pardons to Henry bishop of Winchester, Brian fitz Count, Roger bishop of Salisbury and Robert earl of Gloucester. Anselm was quit, his failings covered up, and the favors given to the Exchequer officials simply intangible aspects of creative bookkeeping. For, although it was the king’s writ that made a pardon or exemption possible in the first place, it was the Exchequer court that ultimately decided the amount.128 Uncollected taxes were frequently forgiven by means of one or two hefty pardons awarded to Exchequer officials. The bishop of Salisbury and Brian fitz Count, for instance, gave themselves pardons of £4 16s. 6d., the precise figure owed by a sheriff for Oxford’s city aid for the previous fiscal year.129 It is interesting that the burgesses of Oxford were not pardoned pro paupertate as other towns within these lords’ domains were.130 Similarly, the bishops of Winchester and Salisbury with Robert of Gloucester and Stephen count of Mortain received in exemptions the full amount owing on previous city aid for Winchester, while other resident royal servants did not.131 The same tendency emerges with respect to danegeld. In one case, the sheriff of Nottingham rendered account of the last year’s tax. Instead of being paid, the full £32 was pardoned, exemptions given to the bishop of Salisbury, the earl of Gloucester and the count of Mortain.132 Murdrum, the penalty imposed on all landholders of a hundred in which a murder had been committed, was commonly offset by pardons to one or just a few barons; in the instance of a 37s. fine against the half-hundred of Bensington, Oxfordshire, a pardon for the whole amount was given to Brian fitz Count, who was to purchase the constabulary of Oxford.133 People may have been unwilling to pay what had become an obsolete fine, even though it was no longer as hefty as custom demanded.134 Because the recipients of the murdrum pardons represented important families and because it was useful to 127  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 21; moreover, ‘And the same sheriff renders account of 25s. concerning previous city aid. In pardon by the king’s writ to the earl of Gloucester, 25s. And he is quit.’ 128  Dialogus de scaccario, 32. 129  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 4. 130  The burgesses of Oxford were pardoned a portion of their 1129/30 Oxfordshire assessment of city aid (Pipe R. 31 H. I, 6). 131  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 41. See also 23: ‘And the same sheriff renders account of city aid. In the treasury, £14 18s. And in pardon by the king’s writ to the bishop of Salisbury, 15s, to the earl of Gloucester, 12s, to the bishop of Winchester, 2s, to Brian fitz Count, 4s, to Miles of Gloucester, 2s, to Warin the sheriff, 7s. In sum, 42s. And he is quit.’ 132  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 14. 133  For example, Pipe R. 31 H. I, 3, 14, 15. 134  The fine was normally 15 silver marks rather than the 40 silver marks stipulated in the Leges Henrici Primi, ed. and trans. L. J. Downer (Oxford, 1972), 117, 235, 385; Mooers, ‘A Reevaluation of Royal Justice’, 348.

180

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

do so, their debts were erased from the record. Payments of city aid were excused as well – the burgesses of Dorchester, Shaftesbury and other towns had exemptions for sums of up to £10 each.135 Often pardons were given because of the poverty of the townspeople, which indicates that failure to collect taxes had as much to do with the empty pockets of the debtors as with the carelessness of the collectors. Other debts were sometimes recorded without payments demanded at all; a William of Grafton owed fifteen silver marks and one gold mark for the right to his father’s land.136 The debt was contracted at or before the Easter 1130 Exchequer session, but nothing was offered against Grafton’s debt then or at Michaelmas. Generally, it appears that there was a consistent attempt by Exchequer officials to force sheriffs’ accounts to balance. Although they were expected to scrutinize sheriffs’ behavior and to punish it if necessary, they rarely did so, preferring instead to ignore and disguise malfeasance.137 Forty years later, Henry II’s Inquest of Sheriffs would result in the removal of sheriffs from their offices, indicating that mismanagement, at the very least, continued to hamper central administration.138 The absence of fiscal improprieties in some counties and its presence in others may reflect the character and ability of the sheriffs and their subordinates. If so, Bertram of Bulmer, Odard the sheriff of Northumberland, William of Pont de l’Arche and Miles of Gloucester were competent officials, while those whose accounts were manipulated by the court were apparently not. Hugh of Leicester, who was replaced by Richard Basset and Aubrey de Vere, was proven inept in his administration of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Carmarthenshire and Lincolnshire.139 So discouraging was their experience that the four joint sheriffs of London petitioned the Exchequer court to relinquish their offices and incurred significant personal fines to do so, at the same time as the citizens of London paid to elect their own sheriff.140 Yet much depended on the county in which one worked; William of Pont de l’Arche was not only sheriff of Hampshire, which seemed solvent in 1129/1130, but also of Berkshire, which required several adjustments to its accounts. It is interesting, as well, that difficulties were manifest in southern England, which may have suffered failed harvests in 1130 as the tantalizing entry quoted at the opening of this paper insinuates. Accounts from adjacent counties of Dorset, Wiltshire and Oxford disclose an unusual degree of poverty as well, and of the sixteen pardons pro paupertate given nationwide, over half (nine) were allowed to officials in Wiltshire, where the bishops of Salisbury and Winchester owned 135 

The burgesses of Colchester, Durham, Hertford, Norwich, Oxford, Tamworth and Thetford were also pardoned payment of auxilium burgi. Hertford and Tamworth received their pardons specifically because of their poverty. 136  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 21. 137  Dialogus de scaccario, 15. 138  W. L. Warren, The Governance of Norman and Angevin England, 1086–1272 (London, 1987), 111. 139  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 81. 140  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 147, 149.



The Fiscal Management of England

181

numerous estates.141 All these references allow charity, as well as self-interest, to the Exchequer court. The multiple roles of royal officials meant that in some cases, those who had spent several months as justiciars or sheriffs also sat at the Exchequer table. It means that Warin the sheriff, Geoffrey of Clinton, William of Pont de l’Arche, Brian fitz Count and Richard Basset had an interest in creating an impression of their own capability. Henry I no doubt wanted this. But he recognized, and his administrators recognized, that maintaining harmony in the Anglo-Norman state was also important. Scores of officials, no matter how diligent, could not pressure people within their jurisdictions to pay up, the more so the case if some taxes were perceived to be unfair. Burgesses sought relief from auxilium burgi, landholders from murdrum. Further, heavy-handedness was resisted at the local level. The Gesta Stephani recalled the tendency of Henry I’s officers to plunder the poor.142 Restold the sheriff, mentioned earlier in connection with his failings, was fined for ‘extorting money’ from a group of peasants and burgesses alike.143 The peasants, the barons of the Exchequer and the king obviously thought that Restold had gone too far. Clues imbedded in the Pipe Roll of 1130 allow us to identify the men functioning as barons of the Exchequer. The accounts recorded by Exchequer scribes enable us to appreciate the concerns shaping their fiscal acts. The barons of the Exchequer were pragmatic in their acknowledged responsibility to their king and to their clients. Not only did they wish to present an image of a smoothly operating fiscal administration, they apparently wanted relations with the myriad of royal servants to be cooperative. They turned a blind eye to gaffes and blunders; they condoned forced balancing of accounts. They punished very few officials for failing to make a profit for the king or even causing him loss. And, by imposing fines that they rarely collected or collected only in part, the barons placed tax farmers, collectors, and sheriffs in their debt. The barons of the Exchequer functioned more independently than has been recognized, but this is not surprising when one considers Henry I’s frequent absences from England. Their collective and individual power was impressive, for they dispensed gifts and justice to clients, colleagues and kin. These ­observations support William of Malmesbury’s suggestion that Roger of Salisbury appropriated royal funds,144 and raises questions of other officials, ecclesiastic and lay. Evidence independent of the Pipe Roll, such as the nearcontemporary testimony of William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon, argues that they abused their power in other contexts. Glastonbury Abbey’s history noted that Geoffrey Rufus the chancellor had ‘converted to his own demesne and profit five churches torn away from their mother’ during the 141 

Mooers, ‘Patronage in the Pipe Roll of 1130’, 300 and n. Gesta Stephani, 6, 8. 143  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 2. See also 1, 2, 20, 26, 37–8, 53, 55, 91, 113, 127, 136–7, 151 for examples of fines for official mismanagement. Although only £91 was actually paid into the treasury of the total £658 owed, nothing was pardoned against these particular debts. 144  William of Malmesbury, HN, c. 27. 142 

182

Stephanie Mooers Christelow

vacancy of 1126–29.145 In 1133, Geoffrey Rufus was promoted to the bishopric of Durham, as his predecessors in royal service William of Saint-Calais and Ranulf Flambard had been. John Belet, the sheriff of Berkshire who failed to collect fifty silver marks from the county in 1130,146 and who owed the previous year’s danegeld, had been noted for expropriating funds from Battle Abbey when he surveyed the abbey in 1124 on Roger of Salisbury’s behalf.147 The chroniclers’ bold notice of fiscal improprieties suggests that such behavior was not always accepted, at least among some critics.

145 

Adam of Domerham, Historia de rebus gestis Glastoniensibus, ed. Thomas Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1727), ii, 307–8. 146  Pipe R. 31 H. I, 13. 147  Kealey, Roger of Salisbury, 63, 115.

10 Henry I’s Administrative Legacy: The Significance of Place-Date Distribution in the Acta of King Stephen Heather J. Tanner

When one thinks about Stephen’s reign, anarchy and civil war, rather than administration, are the terms that come to mind. Notwithstanding the famous passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, of a time when ‘Christ and His saints slept’, and the English people ‘suffered nineteen winters for our sins’, the study of Stephen’s administration, and not just the Anarchy, has had a long and distinguished historiography. There are two main trends in the studies of Stephen’s administration. The first emphasizes the extent of the decline of administrative structures, especially the Exchequer and Chancery. For example, H. W. C. Davis characterized Stephen’s reign as one of terrible devastation and rebellion, using the evidence of the waste figures from the Pipe Rolls early in Henry II’s reign. In the early 1970s, a less catastrophic but still negative picture emerged in the work of H. A. Cronne, R. H. C. Davis, and others. In this first school of thought, the accomplishments of Henry I in administration and centralization loom large. As Warren Hollister has argued, Henry’s reign saw a spectacular increase in government records: the first Pipe Rolls, almost 1500 extant charters, and two collections of laws, Leges Henrici Primi and the Quadripartitus. Henry I’s administrative innovations were a key development in the centralization of royal power and his legacy to future English kings. ‘In the generations following Henry I’s death (after the aberration of Stephen’s reign), royal justice and administration continued to grow despite occasional episodes of regional violence.’  The second trend in the historiography of  

H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and Angevins (London, 1905), 167. H. A. Cronne, The Reign of King Stephen (London, 1970), 2–3, 12–14; R. H. C. Davis, King Stephen 1135–1154 (Berkeley, 1967), 87; T. A. M. Bishop, Scriptores Regis: Facsimiles to Identify and Illustrate the Hands of Royal Scribes in Original Charters of Henry I, Stephen, and Henry II (Oxford, 1961), 30–1. The year 1139 is seen as the major turning point in Stephen’s administration, with the seizure of the bishops of Salisbury, Lincoln, and Ely. Edward Kealey has argued this position with some force in ‘King Stephen: Government and Anarchy’, Albion 6 (1974), 201–7.   C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, ed. Amanda Clark Frost (New Haven, 2001), 25, 368.   Hollister, Henry I, 350.  

184

Heather J. Tanner

Stephen’s reign stresses the continued functioning of Henry I’s system, with the caveat that there was a measurable reduction in the efficiency of the system after 1141. The reassessment of Stephen’s reign has been wide-ranging, but within administrative history the focus has been on the functioning of the Exchequer and the role of earls and sheriffs. Kenji Yoshitake argued that the Chancery and the Exchequer functioned smoothly until the battle of Lincoln in 1141. Emilie Amt’s analysis of Henry II’s financial administration posits that the Exchequer system ‘survived’ best in the regions Stephen controlled but was not restored to its full functioning until 1160. Judith Green’s study of Stephen’s finances shares Amt’s assessment of the Exchequer but focuses more broadly on Stephen’s continued collection of danegeld, tax farms from the cities, and revenues from some of his sheriffs. R. H. C. Davis, W. L. Warren, and Graeme White have argued persuasively that Stephen consciously experimented with royal administration by giving the earls much more autonomy in military affairs and governance of the counties between 1138 and 1141, which led to a devolution in royal control over sheriffs and royal finances. David Crouch also argues for dislocations in centralized and local administration to varying degrees in The Reign of King Stephen but states that Henry I’s pattern of governance and ‘much of what Henry had achieved in the administration of royal, as opposed to communal, justice survived into the reign of Henry II.’ 10 Recently in Restoration and Reform, 1153–1165, Graeme White has argued that there was less of an administrative decline than has been previously thought. ‘In his first eight years as king, he [Henry II] did not have much time for detailed involvement in the governance of England. This does beg the question of the extent to which royal authority in the kingdom, and the administration which underpinned it, were really in need of restoration.’ 11 While I concur with much of White’s analysis and the work of those in the second school of interpretation, there is more to be said on the issue of the functioning and productivity of the Chancery under Stephen. With the exception of Yoshitake’s investigation (which White follows), the Chancery has not received the same  

See notes 6–9 for further references and David Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen (London, 2000), 320; Graeme J. White, ‘Continuity in Government’, in The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign, ed. Edmund King (Oxford, 1994), 117–43 and Restoration and Reform 1153–1165: Recovery from Civil War in England (Cambridge, 2000).   Kenji Yoshitake, ‘The Arrest of the Bishops in 1139 and its Consequences’, JMH 14 (1988), 97–114 and ‘The Exchequer in the Reign of Stephen’, EHR 103 (1988), 950–9.   Emilie Amt, The Accession of Henry II in England: Royal Government Restored, 1149–1159 (Woodbridge, 1993), 121.   Judith Green, ‘Financing Stephen’s War’, ANS 14 (1991) 91–114.   Davis, King Stephen, 32–3, 48, 129–132; W. L. Warren, The Governance of Norman and Angevin England, 1086–1272 (London, 1987), 92–4; White, ‘Continuity in Government’, 125–8; White, Restoration and Reform, 58–61. See also Keith Stringer, The Reign of Stephen (London, 1993), 52–5; Graeme White, ‘Earls and Earldoms during King Stephen’s Reign’, in War and Society in Medieval and Early Modern Britain, ed. Diana Dunne (Liverpool, 2000), 76–95. 10  Crouch, Reign of King Stephen, 320; 320–39. 11  White, Restoration and Reform, 11.



Henry I’s Administrative Legacy

185

scrutiny as other areas of Stephen’s administration, and therefore I propose to focus on this element of government which is often used as proof of the ­administrative decline under Stephen’s rule. Chaplain-clerks played a fundamental role in Anglo-Norman administration, as well as providing for the care of souls at court.12 The royal chapel (or Chancery to use the later formal title) underwent a significant elaboration under Henry I; it went from two to four regularly working scribes, now under the authority of a master of the scriptorium who traveled with the king, while the chancellor remained in England.13 The output of the royal Chancery has been used routinely as a measure of the expansion of royal power and a key indicator of effective, centralized authority. There was over a fourfold increase in royal acta between William I’s reign (353 surviving acta) and Henry I’s (1494 surviving acta).14 Thus, the fact that only 724 of Stephen’s acta have survived is seen as proof of the Anarchy or at least significant administrative decline. Was this administrative unit significantly diminished after 1141 as Yoshitake and White have argued? While the geographical range of Stephen’s power and authority was certainly more circumscribed, I would argue that the Chancery did not suffer a decline in quality or in its organization. In the regions which acknowledged his authority, Stephen governed in much the same fashion as Henry I. In the Midlands and the north, where Stephen’s authority was challenged, the earls were more powerful than they had been under Henry I.15 Nevertheless, Stephen sought to preserve royal authority in these regions by administrative means as well as through warfare. The more significant damage to royal power and centralization occurred in the region controlled by Empress Maud, who did not establish a rival administration and left governance to her earls. The civil war had one far-reaching consequence which was the increasing preeminence of London as a center of government. This trend is not seen in Henry I’s reign, but it mirrors the patterns seen in the reigns of Edward I and his successors. Historians have used a variety of means to measure the effectiveness of the Chancery. The main ones are the number of acta issued, the number of scribes, the quality of acta (standardized formulae and formats), and the innovations in administrative and judicial acta. The first of these would seem the most straightforward, but it is complicated by several matters. First, the survival rate of acta is influenced by their perceived usefulness in the future. For example, administrative writs are much more likely not to survive since they often have a finite 12 

Stephanie Mooers Christelow, ‘Chancellors and Curial Bishops: Ecclesiastical Promotions and Power in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS 22 (1999) 49–69. 13  Hollister, Henry I, 363; Judith Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), 27–30; Christelow, ‘Chancellors and Curial Bishops’, 68. 14  David Bates, ‘The Prosopographical Study of Anglo-Norman Royal Charters’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics: The Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (Woodbridge, 1997), 89. 15  Green, ‘Financing Stephen’s War’, 91–102; Crouch, Reign of King Stephen, 325–35; White, ‘Earls and Earldoms’, 76–95.

186

Heather J. Tanner

purpose and duration.16 As T. A. M. Bishop notes, the ‘Pipe Roll of 1130 has nearly 300 references to a single class of such letters: the brevia, as they are termed, which authorized expenditure ... and which, returned by those officers to support their accounts, were doubtless destroyed in the normal course of routine.’ 17 Only a tiny proportion of these writs have survived.18 Political factors also play a role in the survival of acta. Despite the provisions of the treaty of Winchester (1153), Henry II often issued confirmation charters which ignored Stephen’s acta; this habit would not have been lost upon those who sought to secure existing rights and probably led to the decision not to keep some of Stephen’s acta.19 In addition, Henry II’s conscious efforts to emphasize the continuity of his policies with those of his grandfather’s practices would in turn foster the survival of Henry I’s acta and the loss of Stephen’s acta in succeeding generations, particularly since the Angevin line continued until the later fifteenth century. Third, Anglo-Norman and Angevin royal acta did not routinely include the date of issuance until Richard I’s reign (1189–1199), which complicates the assessment of the rate of acta production over the course of the reign.20 The problem has been dealt with in a variety of ways in previous studies. Thomas Keefe used only specifically dated acta in his analyses, and Stephanie Christelow calculated a mean date for all acta (including those with a specific date); thus, a charter with a date range of 1100–1105 would be counted in 1103 (the mean date).21 Excluding a significant portion of the acta which lack a specific date, presents too conservative (or negative) a picture of the Chancery’s activity. Christelow’s methodology solves the problem of exclusion, but it too leads to distortion of the rate of activity, particularly with acta with long date ranges. By using the mean, the earliest and latest years of the reign are underestimated. Since there is an equal probability that a charter was issued in any one of the years of a date range interval, I have calculated an average for each of these interval-dated charters and then added these averages together with the figures from the specifically dated charters. Therefore, a charter dated between 1100 and 1103 would be counted as ¼ of a charter in 1100, 1101, 1102, and 1103. See table 1.22 The use of this method is ­statistically 16  James Campbell has persuasively argued this point in ‘The Anglo-Norman State in Administrative History’, in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), 179. 17  Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 32. 18  Green, Government under Henry I, 30. 19  Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 30, 31. 20  Michael Gervers, ‘The DEEDS Project and the Development of a Computerized Methodology for Dating Undated English Private Charters of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Dating Undated Medieval Charters, ed. M. Gervers (Woodbridge, 2000), 13–14. 21  Kealey, ‘King Stephen’, 204; Thomas K. Keefe, ‘Place-Date Distribution of Royal Charters and the Historical Geography of Patronage Strategies at the Court of King Henry II Plantagenet’, HSJ 2 (1990), 181 n. 8; Stephanie Mooers Christelow, ‘A Moveable Feast? Itineration and the Centralization of Government Under Henry I’, Albion 28 (1996), 193 n. 25. 22  The data in this table and subsequent tables are based upon the 703 non-spurious acta found in Regesta, iii, and twenty-one additional documents which have been published subsequently: D. C. Cox, ‘Two Unpublished Charters of King Stephen for Wenlock Priory’, Shropshire History



Henry I’s Administrative Legacy

187

sound, but it does tend to minimize bursts of activity and present a smoother picture of administrative activity than may actually have been the case; hence the name ‘smoothed average’. Edward Kealey also calculated smoothed averages in his analysis, but he included acta of the kings’ wives and children, which I Table 1: Date distribution of Stephen’s acta

Year

Smoothed avg. of Acta dated to a acta dated to multi-year range single year

1135 1136 1137 1138 1139 1140 1141 1142 1143 1144 1145 1146 1147 1148 1149 1150 1151 1152 1153 1154

4 35 20 8 11 7 4 2 2 1 1 8 0 1 3 1 1 1 3 15

Totals

128

0.0 53.9* 50.0 46.5 55.4 40.0 23.9 20.3 22.7 20.8 21.2 22.4 25.9 28.1 26.9 25.8 25.1 28.3 31.9 26.9 596.0

Total acta 4.0 88.9 70.0 54.5 66.4 47.0 27.9 22.3 24.7 21.3 22.7 30.4 25.9 29.1 29.9 26.8 26.1 29.3 34.9 41.9 724.0

Total acta for 3-year range

Percentage of total acta

217.4

30.0

141.3

19.5

68.3

9.4

79.0

10.9

85.8

11.9

90.3

12.5

724.0

100.0

* Acta with multiple year ranges that are dated from 1135 (e.g. 1135–1142) are treated as if the beginning date is January 1136, as Stephen ruled for only a short time in 1135 (December 25th–31st)

and Archaeology 66 (1989), 56–9; Davis, King Stephen, appendix VIII, 167–9; Graeme White, ‘King Stephen, Duke Henry and Ranulf de Gernons, Earl of Chester’, EHR 91 (1976), 565; Stokeby-Clare Cartulary, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Richard Mortimer, Suffolk Records Soc. (Woodbridge, 1982), nos. 3, 8; Nicholas Vincent, ‘The Charters of King Stephen with Some Reflections upon the Royal Forests during the Anarchy’, EHR 114 (1999), 919–28; Keith Stringer, ‘A Cistercian Archive: The Earliest Charters of Sawtry Abbey’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 6 (1980), 333. There are also references in later acta to nine no-longer-extant acta of Stephen, bringing the total known to 733; Vincent, ‘Charters of King Stephen’, 926–8.

188

Heather J. Tanner

have not, and presented the averages for half decades only.23 I have excluded royal family members’ charters since it is not always clear whether they were royal or private in nature. Kealey’s decision to present five year averages obscures the fluctuations in Chancery production and the means of identifying factors which influenced production of royal acta. Kealey has argued through a comparison with the average Chancery issue during Henry I’s reign that the decline during Stephen’s reign was ‘unparalleled’ and represents a ‘severe chancery breakdown.’ 24 Kealey attributes the decline in Chancery output in Stephen’s reign to the 1139 seizure of his ­knowledgeable administrators, Roger bishop of Salisbury and Roger’s relatives Roger le Poer, Alexander bishop of Lincoln, and Nigel bishop of Ely, as well as to the arrival of Empress Maud in England in the same year, which led to defections among Stephen’s household officers.25 See tables 2a and 2b. Table 2a follows Kealey’s presentation of the data in 5 year intervals; the data includes Table 2a: Five-year average issuance of acta Henry I years

Kealey *

Stephen Christelow †

years

% of avg/yr % of avg/yr (total) total acta (total) total acta

Kealey

Tanner

avg/yr % of avg/yr % of (total) total acta (total) total acta

1100– 1105 (6 yrs)

52 (312)

20.2%

50.3 (302)

20.1%

1135– 1140 ‡

69 (345)

43.7%

66.2 (330.8)

45.7%

1106– 1110

57 (285)

18.4%

41.0 (205)

13.7%

1141– 1145

25 (125)

15.8%

23.8 (118.9)

16.4%

1111– 1115

39 (195)

12.6%

42.6 (213)

14.1%

1146– 1150

30 (150)

19.0%

28.4 (142.1)

19.6%

1116– 1120

23 (115)

7.4%

27.0 (135)

8.9%

1151– 1154

34 (170)

21.5%

33.1 (132.2)

18.3%

1121– 1125

41 (205)

13.3%

42.6 (213)

14.1%

1126– 1130

47 (235)

15.2%

49.4 (247)

16.4%

1131– 1135

40 (200)

12.9%

35.8 (179)

13.0%

*  Kealey, ‘King Stephen’, 204. †  Christelow, ‘Moveable Feast’, 195. ‡  Kealey and Tanner averages for 1135–1140 include only Stephen’s acta issued between 25 and 31 December 1135. 23  24  25 

Kealey, ‘King Stephen’, 204–5, table 1 n. Kealey, ‘King Stephen’, 205. Kealey, ‘King Stephen’, 206–7.



Henry I’s Administrative Legacy

189

Table 2b: Three-year average issuance of acta 80

Henry

Stephen

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

yr 1–3

yr 4–6

yr 7–9

yr yr yr 10–12 13–15 16–18

yr yr yr yr 19–21 22–24 23–25 26–28

yr yr 29–31 32–35

the average annual issue per five year period, the total acta for each five year period and the percentage of the total acta that is represented by each five year period. Table 2b displays the three year averages and uses Christelow’s data for Henry I (which excludes acta of the royal family). While Stephen’s averages are lower than Henry’s they are not radically lower, and they show the same general pattern of production. There are a number of factors which influence the issuance of royal acta: period in the reign (particularly the early years), changes in the amount of territory under royal control, and warfare. The effect of these variables can be more clearly seen in table 2b which depict a shorter period of time. The beginning years of any king’s reign witnessed an intense burst of activity, as many people and religious houses sought confirmation of their privileges and landholdings. For Kealey and to a lesser degree Yoshitake, the percentage of charters issued in the first years of a reign in relation to the total number of charters issued is an indicator of administrative activity and vitality. Kealey argued that only twentysix percent of Henry I’s surviving charters were issued in the first seven and one-half years, compared to fifty-two percent in the first seven years of Stephen’s reign (see table 2a).26 Using Christelow’s figures for Henry I, twenty-three percent of Henry I’s charters were issued in the first seven years of his reign, compared to fifty-three percent in the first seven years of Stephen’s reign. At first glance the difference in percentages between Henry I’s and Stephen’s reign 26 

Kealey, ‘King Stephen’, 205 n. 8.

190

Heather J. Tanner

appears quite great. Part of the difference is the result of Christelow’s use of the mean methodology which underestimates activity in the early and later years of the reign. In addition, the length of the reign skews the percentage significantly downward; Henry’s reign was thirty-five years in length versus Stephen’s nineteen. If one calculates the percentage of acta issued in the first seven years in light of the production over the first nineteen years of Henry I’s reign, then Henry issued forty-three percent of his acta in the first seven years (350 of 810 acta per Christelow). Therefore, Stephen’s rate of production does not look particularly unusual. The ten percent difference is probably the result of three factors: (1) Henry faced a rebellion against his rule in England in 1101 (in support of his brother Robert Curthose duke of Normandy); (2) he did not acquire Normandy until 1106; (3) administrative innovation and expansion did not become a focus until 1108.27 Stephen’s rate of production in the early years of his reign is not radically different from that of Henry II’s. Bishop has estimated that forty percent of Henry II’s charters were issued in the first seven years of his reign, but Keefe believes that the percentage may be as high as seventy percent.28 Whichever percentage is correct, since Henry II ruled for thirty-four years, his rate of issuance is correspondingly about twice the rate of Stephen’s and thus, by the logic of argument we should say that his administration suffered a radical decline after an initial period of immense activity in comparison to Stephen’s. As this was clearly not the case, the rate of issuance in the early years of the reign is not a good litmus test of the level of administrative effectiveness. After the initial years of the reign with its flurry of confirmations and administrative writs, warfare, contested lordship, and the amount of territory under the king’s control seem to be the determining factors in the rate at which acta were produced.29 Active campaigning, particularly when the royal forces are struggling, leads to a significant drop in the number of extant acta. During his campaigns against Louis VI of France in 1112 and 1113, Henry issued only fifteen and twenty-five acta, compared to sixty-one in 1111 and sixty-eight in 1114. There was a similar drop in the 1115–1118 war and again in 1127–1128 when Henry fought against William Clito.30 In the contest for Normandy against his brother Robert Curthose in 1104, Henry issued almost thirty fewer charters than in 1103, and there were an additional ten charters issued in 1105 after Henry’s victory at Tinchebray. The succession issue also introduced fluctuations in Henry’s acta production; ninety acts were issued in 1121, compared to twenty–six in 1120, following the death of Henry’s son William Adelin. Between 27 

Hollister, Henry I, 214–16; C. Warren Hollister and John W. Baldwin, ‘The Rise of Administrative Kingship: Henry I and Philip Augustus’, AHR 83 (1978), 877. 28  Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 31; Keefe, ‘Place-Date Distribution’, 181. 29  Warren Hollister has argued that changes in territorial holdings may produce substantial variations in the number of acta issued and therefore make comparisons between the output levels deceptive; ‘Stephen’s Anarchy’, Albion 6 (1974), 234–5. 30  Between 1114 and 1121, Henry issued 68, 44, 37, 28, 25, 19, 26, and 90 acts; between 1126 and 1129, he issued 56, 71, 32, and 39 acts. Based on Christelow, ‘Moveable Feast’, 194–5.



Henry I’s Administrative Legacy

191

1124 and 1126, when Henry was working to secure his daughter’s succession, he issued twenty-two, twenty-four, and then, after Henry gained the nobles’ support, fifty-six charters respectively. A similar pattern can be seen in Stephen’s reign. There is a small decline in 1138 with the first of the three rebellions against Stephen and then a significant reduction between 1141 and 1147.31 As Yoshitake has persuasively argued, Kealey’s posited severe decline in 1139 is not born out by the production of the Chancery. However, Yoshitake’s thesis that 1141 represents the point of breakdown as the nobility sought secure lordship is only partially correct.32 The search for secure lordship was certainly a factor, but it overlooks the effect of territorial loss. The years 1141 to 1148 witnessed Stephen’s incarceration (February-November 1141) and fierce campaigning in which Stephen gradually lost control over Normandy, southwestern England, and much of northern England, while struggling to retain authority in the Midlands.33 Stephen issued twenty-five acts annually in the period between 1141 and 1153 compared to forty for Henry I between 1109 and 1130 (i.e. Stephen’s average was sixty-three percent of Henry’s). While Henry I issued about fifteen additional charters per year, he governed approximately sixty percent more territory than Stephen did. In the final year of Stephen’s reign when his authority was recognized throughout England (but not Normandy), he issued forty-two charters, which is higher than Henry’s average in his final three years. Therefore, the lesser number of acta which were issued and survived from Stephen’s reign does not appear to be a reflection of a breakdown of administration, specifically the Chancery, but rather the result of the more circumscribed area under Stephen’s administration. This conclusion is substantiated by the other indicators of the Chancery’s functioning: the number of scribes, the quality of acta they produced, and the level of innovation in the types of acta. By the end of his reign, Henry I employed four scribes and a master of the scriptorium to convey his orders and wishes to his subjects.34 Stephen retained these four scribes and added another three by 1139. Of these seven scribes only four appear to have been working simultaneously in the first three years of the reign. With the bishops’ arrest, Stephen lost his chancellor Roger le Poer and three scribes.35 Kealey argues that it was at this point that Stephen lost the administrative experience and knowledge that was necessary for the smooth functioning of royal administration and that a severe decline followed.36 As Yoshitake demonstrates, between June 1139 and February 1141, there were three or four active scribes, a new and active chancellor (Philip d’Harcourt), and a new master of the scriptorium (Baldric de Sigillo), and these men produced about forty charters in nineteen 31 

Stephen issued 70 acts in 1137, 54.5 in 1138, and 66.4 in 1139. Between 1141 and 1146, the annual productions of acta were 27.9, 22.3, 24.7, 21.3, 22.7, and 30.4. See table 1. 32  Yoshitake, ‘Arrest of the Bishops’, 104–5. 33  Davis, King Stephen, 66–98. 34  Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 30. 35  Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 30. 36  Kealey, ‘King Stephen’, 207–8.

192

Heather J. Tanner

months. Stephen’s capture at the battle of Lincoln is for Yoshitake the point whence Stephen never recovered the effective functioning of his administration.37 Yoshitake, however, does not continue a detailed examination of the Chancery personnel, or acta production and quality but briefly focuses on the issue of contested lordship as the significant weakness of Stephen’s rule. A closer look at the data indicates the Chancery continued to function well between 1141 and 1154. Even during the upheavals of 1141 and the temporary loss of London, Stephen’s queen issued acts using her own (Ralph) and Stephen’s (Richard de Boulogne) scribes. Upon Stephen’s release in November 1141, his chancellor Robert de Gant (March 1140 – October 1154), master of the scriptorium, Baldric de Sigillo, and three scribes rejoined Stephen’s Chancery, and therefore there was no loss of experienced personnel.38 Stephen’s Chancery continued to employ three scribes through 1146 and there was no change in the chancellor or master.39 While neither Robert de Gant nor Baldric de Sigillo were frequent attestors of Stephen’s acta, his queen, Matilda, who was frequently in London and Westminister, may have overseen the Chancery in Robert de Gant’s absence.40 The queen played an active role in Stephen’s administration, and her clerks were associated with St. Martin-le-Grand’s, which routinely provided scribes to the royal Chancery.41 By 1149 there was only one regularly employed royal scribe, Bishop’s scribe xxii. As Bishop has shown, the reduction in number of scribes does not indicate a corresponding decline in quality or quantity of a Chancery’s output.42 Between 1149 and 1154, scribe xxii produced an average of thirty acts annually (forty-two in 1154). Although there is a jump in the number of scribal hands which produced Henry II’s acta between 1154 and 1158, Bishop identifies only four scribes who were regularly employed throughout his reign.43 So despite the increase in output, about 3000 extant documents, the number of scribes remains relatively constant between Henry I’s, Stephen’s, and Henry II’s reigns – three to four men.

37 

Yoshitake, ‘Arrest of the Bishops’, 107. Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 30; H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davis, ‘Introduction’, in Regesta, iii, p. x; Yoshitake, ‘Arrest of the Bishops’, 105 and n. 34. ‘Even during the revolution [Stephen’s capture] his great seal and a cadre of the chancery staff (xx, xxi, and xxii) were somehow preserved against his restoration in November 1141’: Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 25. 39  Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 30. 40  Robert de Gant attested nineteen times in fifteen years: Regesta, iii, nos. 70, 85, 210, 472, 520, 570, 677, 692, 720, 736, 861, 862, 844, 114, 194, 437, 489, 460, 733. Baldric de Sigillo attested twelve times in sixteen years: nos. 199, 413, 908, 857, 873, 246, 938, 489, 770, 864, 865, and Vincent, ‘Charters of King Stephen’, no. 6. 41  Cronne and Davis, ‘Introduction’, in Regesta, iii, p. xii; Heather J. Tanner, ‘Queenship: Office, Custom or Ad Hoc? The Case of Queen Matilda III of England (1136–1152)’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons (New York, 2002), 139–43. 42  Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 31. In Henry II’s reign, between 1169 and 1174, two scribes produced forty documents annually. 43  Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 31. 38 



Henry I’s Administrative Legacy

193

Bishop’s analysis also indicates that there was no diminishment in the standards of the documents produced by Stephen’s Chancery at any point in the reign. In fact, the cursive script and the double-tagging developed in the later years of Henry I’s reign continued to be used throughout Stephen’s.44 Innovations in the writ established under Henry I – the viceregal writ, the nisi fecerit clause and, as Christelow has shown, the use of writs for judicial purposes – also continued under Stephen.45 In addition, there were new advancements which approach the forms attained under Henry II: writs of novel disseisin, right, execution of judgment, and course.46 As Yoshitake has argued these innovations were not just pursued in the late 1130s but were developed also in the later part of the reign, probably at St. Martin-le-Grand.47 Thus, growing standardization of the judicial writ, one of the more important develop­ ments in the use of the writ, occurred under Stephen and continued Henry I’s use of the writ for judicial purposes. The evidence suggests that the Chancery did not decline in experience, quality, or innovation in the period between 1141 and 1154. While there was a decrease in the number of regularly employed scribes from three to one, there was no subsequent decline in number of documents issued annually. The decline in absolute numbers of extant acta, which has long been taken as proof of the administrative decline and decentralization, is primarily a reflection of territorial losses (and secondarily a reflection of the end of Stephen’s lineage and the longevity of the Angevin line of kings). The variations in the rate of acta issuance reflect political events rather than act as a gauge of administrative functioning. In the areas that he ruled, Stephen actively governed through the circulation of acta at a level comparable to his uncle Henry I. Royal authority was checked in the Midlands, but it did not disappear. It is a different story when one examines royal authority and administration in the region under Empress Maud’s control. An analysis of the geographical distribution and dating of Empress Maud’s charters between 1139 and 1148 indicates the virtual disappearance of royal governance in southwestern England. Of the seventy surviving charters issued in England by Empress Maud between 1139 and 1148, only three were issued before Stephen’s capture at the battle of Lincoln in February 1141; fifty-four were issued between February and November 1141, and fifteen were issued between 1142 and 1148.48 Therefore, over three-quarters of her surviving acta were issued during the period of 44 

Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 13. Stephanie L. Mooers, ‘A Reevaluation of Royal Justice under Henry I’, AHR 93 (1988), 355–7. 46  R. C. Van Caenegem, Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanville (London, 1959), 160, 259–48 (especially 243 n.4), 275–57. 47  Yoshitake, ‘Arrest of the Bishops’, 105 and n. 38. 48  Regesta, iii, nos. 419, 391, 698 (1139–1141 acta); 43, 644, 368, 699, 697, 597, 393, 68, 115, 394, 651, 275, 343, 897, 400, 581, 701, 369, 645, 631, 253, 646, 648, 647, 918, 429, 959, 571, 628, 820, 821, 392, 497, 700, 529, 328, 899, 377, 629, 854, 296, 316, 274, 911, 316a, 518, 634, 791 (1141 acta); 630, 295, 190, 116, 254 (1141–1142 acta); 378, 587, 793, 792, 702, 839, 259 (1141–1148 acta); 632, 371, 370, 111, 372, 277, 703 (1142–1148 acta). 45 

194

Heather J. Tanner

Stephen’s captivity. In addition to the concentration of activity in 1141, there is an equal geographical restriction of Empress Maud’s acta. Of the charters issued before February 1141, only one has a specified location, which is Gloucester. Of the acta issued during Stephen’s captivity, twenty-six of the fifty-four originate from Oxford, two from St. Albans, three from Westminster, five from Reading, and one from Winchester. The predominance of Oxford reflects the Empress’ long stay there during 1141, after she was ousted from London by the Londoners and Queen Matilda’s forces. After Stephen’s release, Empress Maud issued only fifteen charters in seven years, all from Devizes.49 The low level of output during these years indicates that there was no rival royal administration.50 The Empress delegated local administration to her earls, but very few of their charters have survived.51 One consequence of the civil war and of the circumscribed area of Stephen’s authority after 1141 was promotion of London-Westminster as the administrative capital of the English monarchy. Christelow has argued that ‘Henry I centered his power around two insular axes – one included Westminster, London, and Windsor, and the other at Winchester – and one continental one.’ 52 Stephen issued charters from 102 known locations (see table 3). Map 1 reveals that the majority of his surviving acta were issued in the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Hertford, Oxfordshire, and Hampshire and very few in the counties of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Hereford, Worcester, Warwickshire, and all of the northwestern counties. The charters which were issued near the Welsh border, in East Anglia, and in the northeast, were issued during periods when Stephen fought in these areas, or in the case of the northeast during Stephen’s tour of 1154. This division loosely reflects the areas which Stephen and Empress Maud controlled (see map 2).53 Although the diversity of issuance sites reveals the itinerant nature of the court and Stephen’s military activities, an analysis of the locations where Stephen most frequently issued charters fosters the impression that the area around London, including Westminster, Barking, and Bermondsey, was the predominant center of administrative activity during Stephen’s reign. Of the 595 charters which have a specified location, 132 were issued from the London area. This centralization was by no means complete, as Oxford was also an active center for issuing acta. The charters issued from the London environs and Oxford account for approximately twenty-nine percent of the charters issued. This is not an overwhelming percentage, but given the extent of Stephen’s military activity and the frequency of his travel, it does suggest the importance of these areas in his administration. The dating of Stephen’s charters confirms the impression that the London area was the predominant administrative center. The greatest number of charters issued from Oxford can be dated to the first six years of the reign; from 1142 49  50  51  52  53 

Davis, King Stephen, 56–65. White, Restoration and Reform, 36–45; for a discussion of her acta and Chancery, 40–1. Davis, King Stephen, 129–32; White, Restoration and Reform, 36–45. Christelow, ‘Moveable Feast’, 198. Davis, King Stephen, 74, 90.



Henry I’s Administrative Legacy

195

Map 1.

onward there is a great decrease in activity. London, on the other hand, shows a continuous increase in the number of charters issued, especially between 1142 and 1153. Westminster was a frequent site of activity, although there was a slight decline in use in the later years of the reign. The slight decrease in London-Westminster as a site of issuance in 1154 probably reflects Stephen’s tour throughout the northern parts of the realm after the signing of the peace in November 1153. Winchester and Windsor were usually sites of frequent charter activity in previous reigns, but Stephen issued only eleven and nine

196

Heather J. Tanner

Map 2.

from Windsor and Winchester, respectively. In Henry I’s reign, Winchester was the second most frequent place to issue charters (128 of 1494) and Windsor (71 of 1494) the fourth most frequent site.54 The limited number of acta issued from Winchester is in part a reflection of Stephen’s single visit to Normandy; one of the standard routes to the port cities of Fareham, Wareham, and 54  Christelow, ‘Moveable Feast’, 199, table B. Westminster was the most frequent site (201 of 1494 acta), Woodstock third (71 acta), and London fifth (48 acta).



Henry I’s Administrative Legacy

197

Table 3: Places of issuance of Stephen’s acta: frequency 1–9 times

10–49 times

50–99 times

100+ times

Total

89 places* 87%

9 places 9%

3 places 3%

1 place 1%

102 places

229 charters 32%

Westminster 35 Colchester 11 Oxford 77 Reading 11 London 89 Windsor 11 Canterbury 12 St. Albans 12 Northampton 15 Lincoln 17 Bury St. Edmunds 20 York 35

unknown 129

144 charters 20%

129 charters 18%

222 charters 30%

724 charters 100%

*  Issued 1 act from: Andover, Bath, Bayeux, Beckenham, Benson, Berkhamstead, Beverley, Blyth, Brampton, Bridgnorth, Castle Hedingham, Castle Traditorum, Chertsey, Clare, Coggeshall, Creech, Earl’s Colne, Framlingham, Godstow, Hastings, Henley, Hertford, High Wycombe, Hittisleigh (?Devon), Laceby (Lincs.), Little Hereford, Lyminge, Lyons-la-Foret, Mepperhall, Newball (Lincs.), Newport (?Essex), Newton, Odiham, Old Ipswich, Peterborough, Portsmouth, ‘Rethesworda’, Rochester, Rockingham, Romford, Saffron Waldon, Southwell, Watford, Waverley, Whitchurch, Witham, Woodbridge, Worksop, Wycumbam; issued 2 acta from Bishop’s Stortford, Castor, Cheshunt, Clarendon, Drax, Droitwich, Falaise, Pleshy (Essex), Pont-Audemer, Shrewsbury; issued 3 acta from Barking, Barton, Cirencester, Fareham, Goldington, Lewes, Newbury, Worcester, and Writtle; issued 4 acta from Burford, Exeter, Gillingham; issued 5 acta from Bermondsey, Evreux, Eye, Hereford, Marlborough, Salisbury, and Wallingford; issued 7 acta from Durham, Guildford, Norwich, Rouen, and Stamford; 8 acta from Cambridge, Ipswich, and Nottingham; issued 9 acta from Dunstable, Winchester, and Woodstock.

Portsmouth was via Winchester. R. Allen Brown and Judith Green have shown that the treasury moved from Winchester to Westminster; the initial move occurred probably after the sack of Winchester in 1141, and after a brief revival in Henry II’s reign the treasury remained in London.55 The lack of charters from Winchester as well as from Windsor, Reading, and Marlborough also stems from the amount of military activity in these areas and the limited control Stephen and Empress Maud exercised over this region. Each faction only controlled individual castles, which were dispersed throughout this area, rather than a contiguous zone within the region. The control of these castles also changed throughout the period.

55 

Green, ‘Financing Stephen’s War’, 110–11; R. A. Brown, ‘The “Treasury” of the Later Twelfth Century’, in Studies Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. J. Conway Davies (Oxford, 1957), 35–49.

198

Heather J. Tanner

This concentration around the London area mirrors to a significant degree the pattern of activity revealed by the itineraries of Edward I and especially Edward II, who had only limited continental possessions. This pattern can be seen by a comparison of the itineraries of these kings and the distribution of Stephen’s acta.56 In contrast, there is a much broader pattern of movement in England for Henry I, Henry II, and John.57 In Edward I’s reign, there appears to be decreased activity in the Windsor and Winchester vicinity favored by Henry I, Henry II, and John and an increased focus on London. Edward II’s itinerary reveals that London and York were the two centers of his activities. In comparison, Stephen’s activities were centered on London, Oxford, and to a lesser degree York. This pattern therefore corresponds to a great extent to the itineraries of these later English kings. Stephen’s relative inactivity in the northeast corresponds to that of John and Edward II; Stephen, Edward I, and Edward II were much less active in the southwest of England, although this region was not a major area of activity for Henry I, Henry II, or John. Stephen seems to have been more active in Essex and Suffolk than any of these kings, but this probably reflects the predominance of Stephen’s and his queen’s landholdings in these counties and the control that he maintained over them.58 The focus on London and its environs and the decreased reliance upon Winchester and Windsor (traditional locations of early Norman kings) was a consequence of the civil war, especially the loss of Normandy. London continued as the administrative capital under the early Angevin kings, but its supremacy was cemented by the loss of the continental lands in the thirteenth century. The production of acta during Stephen’s reign was clearly influenced by the military activity of the civil war and by the loss of territory under his authority in England and Normandy. The reduced number of acta produced in comparison to Henry I’s reign is a reflection of these conditions rather than an undoing of the royal administration. Stephen’s Chancery maintained the typical number of regularly employed scribes, who produced documents equal in standard and form to those of the previous reign. The writs also show experimentation in their use in judicial activities, a trend started by Henry I and brought to culmin­ ation by Henry II. The geographical extent of Stephen’s royal authority was circumscribed. Stephen continued to issue charters and writs even in the regions of contested authority, although their enforcement often depended upon the local earl’s willingness to act for the king. The greatest challenge to Henry I’s administrative legacy was in the southwest where his daughter Empress Maud failed to establish a rival administration. Stephen’s surviving acta do not reveal a severe breakdown of the Chancery, either in 1139 or 1141, but rather support 56 

Brian P. Hindle, ‘The Road Network of Medieval England and Wales’, Journal of Historical Geography 2–3 (1976), 214, 216. 57  Keefe, ‘Place-Date Distribution’, 182. Keefe (179) argues that Henry spent only thirty-seven percent of his time in Britain and sixty-three percent in France (forty-three percent in Normandy, twenty percent in France outside of Normandy). 58  Davis, King Stephen, 9.



Henry I’s Administrative Legacy

199

Graeme White’s argument that Henry II inherited an administrative system that required little restoration. Not only did Stephen transmit Henry I’s administrative legacy to Henry II, but his reign also fostered the development of London as the capital of royal administration.

11 The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope: The Marital Fortunes of Agnes of Essex RáGena C. DeAragon

Over twenty years ago, at the inaugural meeting of the newly founded Haskins Society in Houston, Texas, I delivered a talk entitled ‘The Tale of the CradleRobber Baron’, a marital history of an aristocratic male, Aubrey III de Vere, first earl of Oxford (d. 1194). Two decades ago scholars generally portrayed women of the medieval aristocracy as marriage pawns – pawns of the crown as rewards or bribes for the king’s policies or pawns of their male relatives in the game of recruitment and alliance between families – and the earl’s first two wives appeared to have played the role of pawn beautifully. The story of the earl’s marriages had a dramatic conclusion, however. Yet even in that early incarnation of this paper, the earl’s third wife, Agnes, refused to fit the pawn’s role gracefully. She had a tendency to burst into the limelight and threatened to steal the show. Within months of the earl’s marriage to a very young bride originally intended for his brother, his new father-in-law was accused and convicted of treason. The earl sought an annulment, but Agnes appealed successfully to the pope, and they remained married until the earl’s death. In this telling of the tale, I feel no qualms about allowing Agnes center stage and star billing. The other principals in her drama include the earl’s younger brother Geoffrey de Vere and Agnes’s father Henry of Essex. In supporting but crucial roles are two high-ranking members of the clergy, Pope Alexander III and Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, with Vere kin making cameo appearances as a sort of dramatic chorus. Agnes of Essex, countess of Oxford (1151–1206+), has attracted the attention of a few historians since I delivered that initial version of her story in 1983. Christopher Brooke provides the fullest treatment to date, using her story to illustrate ‘the harshest edge’ of twelfth-century customs and how those customs could clash with the teachings and laws of the Church. He suggests that her case played a significant role in Pope Alexander III’s development of the canon law of matrimony in the later twelfth century, particularly in regards to the issue of consent by verba de praesenti. Cecily Clark and Elizabeth Williams  

Christopher Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford, 1989), 152–7.



The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope

201

briefly recount Agnes’s tale in Women in Anglo-Saxon England and the Impact of 1066 to support the notion that twelfth-century females may have viewed arranged marriages differently than contemporary Americans, and that most medieval women must have seen ‘marriage as a job ... essential to any tolerable way of life’. And Judith Green uses Agnes’s case as an example of an aristocratic daughter raised in a non-parental household. There is much more to Agnes’s story than has yet been told, however, and more to understand about her struggle to have her marriage declared valid and the implications of her success. As the tale unfolds we can gain greater insight into the clash of competing perspectives on marriage, the operation of the ecclesiastical courts, the assertion and consequences of female self-determination. Agnes’s case did indeed play a role in the development of the canon law of matrimony, but regarding the triumph of the requirement of the consent of the female party contracting matrimony rather than the tense of the words she used to express that consent. Agnes was born in the early months of 1151 to Henry of Essex and Alice de Montfort, his second wife, the eldest of at least two daughters in a family that also included several sons. Her father determined her marital future within a few years of her birth, reaching an agreement for Agnes to marry Geoffrey de Vere, a brother of the earl of Oxford. The match would benefit both families. Henry was one of four royal constables and accounted one of the foremost men at King Stephen’s court. The barony of Rayleigh was his paternal inheritance; he also held the honor of Haughley by right of his office of constable, office and barony having passed to him on the death of his fatherin-law Robert de Vere, another royal constable, c. 1150 (despite his surname, Robert was at most a distant relation to the earl of Oxford). Henry’s estates lay predominantly in Essex and Suffolk; indeed, his Essex holdings were more extensive than those of the Veres in that county. Geoffrey de Vere, probably in his early thirties when the agreement with Henry was reached, came from a family of royal administrators whose estates also lay principally in the eastern shires. His paternal grandfather Aubrey I may have held the office of royal chamberlain; his father Aubrey II had served as sheriff and justiciar as well as chamberlain, and Henry I had made him hereditary master chamberlain of England in 1133. Geoffrey’s eldest brother Aubrey III acquired an earldom during the civil wars of Stephen’s reign. The proposed marriage also would   Christine Fell et al., Women in Anglo-Saxon England and the Impact of 1066 (Bloomington, IN, 1984), 150.   Judith Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 1997), 358.   Complete Peerage, x, 205–7 (which misidentifies her mother as Cecily, Henry’s first wife).   I. J. Sanders, English Baronies: A Study of Their Origin and Descent, 1086–1327 (Oxford, 1960), 2, 139; Regesta, iii, xx, xxiii, and no. 318; W. L. Warren, Henry II (Berkeley, 1973), 284–5; Emilie Amt, The Accession of Henry II in England: Royal Government Restored, 1149–1159 (Woodbridge, 1993), 66; E. Amt, ‘Essex, Henry of’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004), xviii, 612.   Regesta, i, no. 199; Lewis Loyd and D. M. Stenton, eds., Sir Christopher Hatton’s Book of Seals (Oxford, 1950), no. 39; Regesta, iii, no. 634; R. DeAragon, ‘Vere, Aubrey (II) de’, in Oxford

202

RáGena C. DeAragon

recreate a Vere–Essex alliance that had been established when Geoffrey’s older sister Alice had married Henry’s widowed father Robert fitz Suene of Essex. By the 1150s the Veres, although now among the premier families of the realm, were not as well-situated at court as in previous generations, and a marital connection close to the king would be an asset. And by no means least, landpoor Geoffrey would receive a sizeable dowry when he wed his young bride. In 1154, three-year-old Agnes was given into Geoffrey’s custody, who immediately delivered her into the care of Earl Aubrey. The earl’s second wife, Countess Euphemia, probably accepted the girl into the comital household, which surely was better able to care for a small child than any household to which Geoffrey could then lay claim. Apparently at that level of society it was not uncommon for the groom’s family to raise his future bride, the rationale being that she would learn the customs, history, and policies of the family into which she would marry and thus be less of an outsider than a wife who was raised in a convent or by her parents or other foster parents.10 Despite the death of the countess soon after Agnes’s arrival, the girl remained in the earl’s household for another three or four years (1157/58). Then Geoffrey took her to his home and is said to have treated her as his future wife ‘in all things except the marriage bed’ until she was eleven or twelve (‘venerationem omnem tanquam future uxori sue tam per se qua per suos in omnibus excepta thori communione usque ad annum duodecimum iam fere completum exhibuerit’).11 Yet at some point in the months preceding Easter (24 March) 1163, she rejected Geoffrey as her husband, sending a letter to her father stating that she would not consent to the marriage agreement.12 Her resistance to the match must have been heeded eventually, for by late March she was married to Earl Aubrey, a man her senior by at least thirty-three years, while by the end of the

Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004), lvi, 278–9.   Complete Peerage, x, 193–207 and appendix J, 120; Regesta, iii, no. 739 and n.; J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville: A Study of the Anarchy (London, 1892), 388–96.   In 1154/55, Geoffrey probably held the one-half a knight’s fee he held of his brother Aubrey in 1166 – but no more; H. Hall, ed., The Red Book of the Exchequer, RS 99, 3 vols. (London, 1896), i, 352.   The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, ed. A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke (Cambridge, 1967), 215, no. 162 (hereafter cited as Foliot). 10  Green, Aristocracy of Norman England, 358. Fiona Harris Stoertz says that this practice ‘was far from inevitable’ and that it occurred most often ‘as part of peace treaties or when a girl’s family was in a weak bargaining position – for example, if the groom’s family was wealthier or more powerful or if other candidates were competing for the marriage alliance’; ‘Young Women in France and England, 1050–1300’, Journal of Women’s History 12:4 (2001), 24–5. The Veres’ social status was higher, but the wealth of the two families was roughly equivalent and the bride’s father had power and influence at court as a royal familiaris. 11  Foliot, 215. 12  Foliot, 215.



The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope

203

year Geoffrey married the widow of the royal chamberlain Warin fitz Gerold.13 Thus the familial alliance between the Veres and Henry of Essex was preserved. Agnes was not the most brilliant of matches for an earl, especially an earl with perhaps the smallest economic base among his titled peers in England. His barony consisted of roughly thirty knights’ fees, although he held almost that many again as a tenant of other lords as well as the lucrative office of master chamberlain and the third penny for Oxfordshire.14 Yet it was in keeping with the ‘distinctly local flavor of the marriage alliances’ made by many aristocratic Essex families during the twelfth century.15 The desirability of a connection with Henry of Essex had continued into the Angevin period, although Henry’s importance at court had been slightly reduced in the years immediately preceding the earl’s marriage. Initially King Henry II had employed his constable as a sheriff and baron of the Exchequer, but after 1157, while Henry of Essex retained the hereditary office of constable, the crown no longer required his additional administrative services.16 In terms of rank and wealth, the earl was a more-than-acceptable substitute for his younger brother. Earl Aubrey was no stranger to the matrimonial arena. By right of his first marriage to Beatrice, heiress to the continental county of Guines, he had gained a comital title jure uxoris in 1137, but he became so entangled in English affairs during the civil war of Stephen’s reign that he failed to provide adequately for the protection of Guines and his wife’s rights there. Beatrice (or, more probably, her father Hugh de Burgh) obtained an annulment with Aubrey’s consent sometime between 1144 and 1146. Their marriage may not have been consummated – Beatrice was sickly and suffered from ‘gravel’ and the couple was rarely in each other’s company – so the marriage may have been easily dissolved.17 But while the annulment cost Aubrey one comital title, he had already gained another in his own right. The Empress Maud, in her bid to buy support in the eastern counties in 1141, had bestowed an earldom on Aubrey III.18 By the time of the earl’s second marriage to the orphan Euphemia in the later 1140s, he had made his peace with King Stephen and gained Stephen’s recognition of his new title. Euphemia’s marriage portion was a gift of the king and queen. She died, however, perhaps due to complications in pregnancy or

13  Complete Peerage, x, 205 and appendix J, 113; Red Book of the Exchequer, i, 274–5; Nicholas Vincent, ‘Warin and Henry fitz Gerald, the King’s Chamberlains: The Origin of the FitzGeralds Revisited’, ANS 21 (Woodbridge, 1998), 233. 14  Red Book of the Exchequer, i, 352–3. 15  Amt, Accession of Henry II, 68; Red Book of the Exchequer, i, 352–3. 16  Amt, Accession of Henry II, 74; Amt, ‘Henry of Essex’. 17  Lambert of Ardres, ‘Historia comitum Ghisnensium’, ed. J. Heller, in MGH Scriptores, 24 (Hanover, 1879), 582–3 and 591, where he is called Albertus Aper; Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. B. Bray (Toronto, 1983), 271, 273, where he is called Albert the Wild Boar. Leah Shopkow, ed. and trans., The History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres (Philadelphia, 2001), calls him Albert the Boar and fails to identify him as Aubrey III de Vere (87, n. 167). 18  Regesta, iii, no. 634.

204

RáGena C. DeAragon

childbirth, before October 1154, and Earl Aubrey was left childless yet again.19 He did not rush to find a replacement, waiting eight or nine years to remarry. The delay suggests that he was little affected by the normal baronial impulse to secure his succession to an heir of his own body – a lack perhaps all the more surprising because he was the first member of his family to have secured a title. With several younger brothers, however, he may have believed the Vere succession was adequately secure. The earl had scarcely exchanged marriage vows for the third time in the weeks before Easter 1163, when the alliance between the Vere and the Essex families suddenly turned sour. At the king’s Easter court, Robert de Montfort publicly accused Henry of Essex of treason, basing his charge on the constable’s actions in an episode during King Henry II’s Welsh campaign of 1157. Henry of Essex had been part of the royal entourage, fulfilling his official duty as constable to carry the royal standard in the king’s presence, when the royal army was ambushed by the Welsh in mountainous terrain.20 In the words of Jocelin of Brakelond, one of many chroniclers who reported the story, Robert alleged that Henry ‘had falsely cast away the standard of the King in the difficult passage of Coleshill, and had cried out in a loud voice that the King was dead, thereby causing those who were coming to his defense to turn and flee’.21 As a consequence of his actions, Henry II had been hard-pressed by the enemy until Earl Roger of Clare and his men rode to the king’s rescue, raising the fallen standard and rallying the royal troops. Several barons were killed in the skirmish. Henry of Essex, while admitting that he had dropped the standard, claimed that he had truly believed the king to have been killed in the ambush and utterly denied Robert’s accusations of treason. Robert had a rival claim to Henry’s barony of Haughley, making his motives for an accusation six years after the supposed crime highly suspect.22 The king’s court determined, however, that Henry should answer the younger man’s charge in a judicial duel. This trial-by-battle was conducted before the king and a large crowd on an island in the Thames near Reading Abbey in early summer, 1163. Earl Aubrey undoubtedly attended in order to learn in person the fate of his father-in-law. On the night proceeding the duel, Robert de Montfort held a vigil to St. Drausius, patron of those about to fight; there is no record of whether Henry sought heavenly aid on his own behalf.23 (Jocelin of Brakelond, a monk at Bury 19 

Cartularium prioratus de Colne, transcribed J. L. Fisher (Colchester, 1946), 29–30, no. 56; Monasticon anglicanum, ed. W. Dugdale et al., rev ed., 6 vols. in 8 (London, 1817–30), iv, 101, no. ix. 20  The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, trans. H. E. Butler (New York, 1949), 69–70; Ralph de Diceto, Opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 68, 2 vols. (London, 1876), i, 310; Robert of Torigny, ‘Chronicle’, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, RS 82, 4 vols. (London, 1884–89), iv, 218; Ralph Niger, Chronicon secundum (London, 1851), 170. 21  Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, 69–70. 22  Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 327. 23  The Letters of John of Salisbury, ed. W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1979– 86), ii, 110, no. 168.



The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope

205

St. Edmunds, provides a second-hand account of the duel in his Chronicle. He encountered Henry of Essex at Reading Abbey many years later and recorded the old man’s version of these events as a cautionary tale and to ‘spread more widely the knowledge of the blessed king and martyr’ St. Edmund.) Henry was flagging when he reportedly saw a vision of St. Edmund in the sky, who by look and gesture indicated his displeasure with Henry. Accompanying the saint was one of Henry’s former vassals, the knight Gilbert de Cereville, which convinced Henry of his own injustice. He had allegedly had Gilbert tortured to death on his wife’s accusations of Gilbert’s persistent and unwelcome attentions toward her. St. Edmund had an additional reason to look cross; Henry had a long-running dispute with the saint’s monastery at Bury, Suffolk, over judicial and financial rights. Henry’s realizations spurred him to renewed vigor in the duel, but Robert triumphed nonetheless. The monks of Reading carried Henry’s senseless body from the island to their monastery to prepare him for burial, but he recovered and there donned the Benedictine habit.24 By reason of Henry’s defeat the king declared him guilty of treason. His estates were forfeit and his sons disinherited. Yet Robert de Montfort failed to benefit from his victory, for the king granted the office of constable to another and kept the honor of Haughley in his own hands.25 Earl Aubrey’s marriage to the daughter of a convicted traitor was now a political and social liability. Surprisingly, he took no immediate action to end it; rather, in 1164 or 1165 unnamed Vere relatives instituted annulment proceedings in the ecclesiastical courts, claiming that Agnes’s relationship with Geoffrey created an impediment that rendered her marriage to Aubrey invalid.26 They undoubtedly expected a speedy decision in his favor; after all, his first marriage had been dissolved without apparent difficulties and, more recently, the marriages of two close kin had been annulled. The earl’s sister Juliana de Vere had been divorced by Hugh Bigod, first earl of Norfolk, although she had borne him a son, Roger; the king had been instrumental in obtaining a divorce for his kinswoman, Eustachia, from the earl’s nephew, Geoffrey III of Mandeville, second earl of Essex, before 1160.27 With her birth family in disgrace and thus in no position to assist her, the young Countess Agnes seemed destined to be cast off. The Church was increasingly successful at bringing matrimony firmly under the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts during the twelfth century, but the criteria used by bishops to judge those marriage cases was still evolving for most of that period. By the time of the earl’s first marriage in the 1130s, the 24 

Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, xiii and 68. See also Robert of Torigny, ‘Chronicle’, iv, 218. 25  Amt, Accession of Henry II, 74; Warren, Henry II, 308 n. 2. 26  Foliot, 215; cf. Brooke, Medieval Idea of Marriage, 154. 27  Countess Juliana almost certainly married (2) Walchelin Maminot before the death of Richard bishop of London (d. 4 May 1162): ‘Charters of Combwell Priory, Part I’, Archaeologica Cantiana 5 (1863), 198–9, no. 2; Colne Cartulary, no. 36. For Earl Geoffrey’s annulment, see Complete Peerage, v, 117; The Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, ed. and trans. D. E. Greenway and L. Watkiss (Oxford, 1999), xxii.

206

RáGena C. DeAragon

canon law of marriage had come under the scrutiny of prominent legal theorists on the continent. The influential canonist Gratian articulated a set of criteria for marital validity (and thus possible grounds for annulment) based in part on ancient Roman law in his monumental review of canon law, the Decretum, c. 1140. In the later 1150s Peter Lombard published a somewhat different set of criteria for a valid marriage, and there was undoubtedly some confusion in the ecclesiastical courts before Pope Alexander III (1159–1181) clarified the canon law regarding matrimony through a series of judgments on marital disputes.28 The Veres properly petitioned for annulment of the earl’s marriage in the court of the bishop of London. That office was held by Gilbert Foliot, a reputed scholar and theologian who has been called ‘an ascetic of the purest morals, indeed insufferably righteous, a man with wide connections in the Western church and known in high places’.29 He had begun his ecclesiastical career as a monk at the abbey of Cluny, advancing in the English hierarchy to become abbot of Gloucester, then bishop of Hereford. Soon after the downfall of Henry of Essex in 1163, the pope had transferred Gilbert to the see of London, where he was immediately drawn into the controversies centering on Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. By early 1164 Bishop Gilbert had became one of his archiepiscopal superior’s strongest clerical detractors.30 The bishop of London, while undoubtedly preoccupied with these political issues when the Vere marriage case came to his attention, was well-qualified to render a judgment on the earl of Oxford’s third marriage and unlikely to have been intimidated by the high-ranking Veres and their powerful connections. The earl’s kin asserted that the contract for the marriage of Agnes and Geoffrey de Vere, established by oaths between her father Henry of Essex and Geoffrey and reinforced by the cohabitation of Geoffrey and Agnes, rendered the subsequent marriage of Agnes and Aubrey invalid. The court would need to rule on a number of legal points. Since Henry had promised Agnes to Geoffrey, was his promise binding on his daughter regardless of her wishes? Or, since the agreement had been made when Agnes was very young, was the betrothal invalid from its inception or until she confirmed it when she was old enough to make an informed judgment? Was Agnes’s rejection of Geoffrey as a marital partner sufficient to end a valid betrothal and thus free them both to marry others? Would a valid betrothal between Agnes and Geoffrey have precluded a later marriage to his brother? Or was the bishop dealing with a marriage rather than a betrothal, given Agnes’s cohabitation with Geoffrey? Gratian had considered these matters in his Decretum and had answers to the pertinent questions in this case, which fall under the general heading of consent. Other issues may have been relevant to an assessment of the validity of Agnes’s 28 

M. W. Baldwin, Alexander III and the Twelfth Century (New York, 1968), 142. Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (Berkeley, 1986), 35. 30  A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters (Cambridge, 1965), 99–100, 147– 87; Warren, Henry II, 471–2, 475–6. 29 



The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope

207

marriage to Aubrey (for example, Agnes’s age when she married the earl, the wording of her marriage vows), but only these points were raised directly by the Vere petition for annulment. As Bishop Gilbert later reported to Pope Alexander III, Agnes fought the annulment. In the bishop’s court she claimed that she had known nothing of the proposed marriage with Geoffrey when she had been given into his custody at the age of three, nor had she agreed to the match at any subsequent point. The bishop wrote, ‘she herself maintains that she was never Geoffrey’s wife who was never required by anyone to undergo conjugal union with him’, and that she would not have agreed to such a union with Geoffrey ‘with the consent of her soul’ if any betrothal or marriage ceremony had been performed. And, as mentioned above, after living with Geoffrey for several years Agnes had sent word to her father in writing (whether by her own hand or someone else’s), stating that she would never consent to marry Geoffrey.31 The Veres responded, asserting a father’s right to choose his daughter’s husband despite her opinion on the matter, so long as the prospective groom was neither unworthy nor shameful.32 They argued that Agnes had implicitly consented to the match by her conduct prior to her explicit rejection of Geoffrey. A true betrothal (a matrimonium initiatem), they claimed, had thus created bonds of affinity that would invalidate a subsequent marriage between Agnes and the brother of her former betrothed spouse – but not a marriage between Geoffrey and a woman unrelated to the Veres or to Agnes.33 What made the Veres’s motives in seeking an annulment so transparent to their contemporaries was their obvious knowledge of all the details of the arrangements regarding Agnes’s marriage. Claims that a marriage was invalid because of a previous betrothal or marriage were almost always made when the earlier contract was unknown to one of the parties of the subsequent match. The chronicler Gerald of Wales, a friend of the earl’s brother William, stated outright that the earl had sought a divorce because of the scandalous fate of Agnes’s father.34 If, as Brooke stated, Earl Aubrey, Geoffrey, and Henry truly had ‘all supposed that marriage in high society was a treaty made by the parents; handing over the girl [Agnes] was for them the crucial act’, then the earl would not have taken Agnes as his bride and Geoffrey would not have married first the widow fitz Gerold and then, by March 1166, the widowed

31 

Foliot, 215–16. Foliot, 216. 33  Frederik Pederson, Marriage Disputes in Medieval England (London, 2000), 3; Michael Sheehan, ‘Choice of Marriage Partner in the Middle Ages: Development and Mode of Application of a Theory of Marriage’, in Sheehan, Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies, ed. J. K. Farge (Toronto, 1996), 91–96; James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), 235–7. 34  Gerald of Wales, Opera, vol. 6, Itinerarium Kambriae et descriptio Kambriae, ed. J. Dimock, RS 21 (London, 1868), 132. 32 

208

RáGena C. DeAragon

Shropshire heiress Isabel de Say.35 Neither Bishop Gilbert nor Pope Alexander mentioned Geoffrey’s marriages, making it all the more obvious that the case under consideration was a divorce attempt in all but name. At the couple’s third meeting before Bishop Gilbert at Westminster on 9 May 1166, Agnes complained that her legal counsel was failing to uphold her position with sufficient vigor out of fear of the earl and his kin. As this put her at a disadvantage in the bishop’s court, she appealed her case to Rome and persuaded Bishop Gilbert to write a letter to accompany her petition to the pope. Agnes’s letter of appeal has not survived, but the bishop’s extant letter to Pope Alexander III details the facts of the case as he had ascertained them to that point.36 Bishop Gilbert may well have had concerns about the countess’s appeal to the pope. Under normal circumstances, appeals from a bishop’s court proceeded to the court of his archbishop. By May 1166, however, the archbishop of Canterbury had been in exile for over a year. A controversial provision of the Constitutions of Clarendon stated that royal approval was required for all ecclesiastical appeals from England to Rome. Gilbert claimed that he and all the other English bishops had initially opposed the Constitutions, until Archbishop Thomas Becket had abruptly capitulated to the king’s demands in 1164.37 Might Gilbert have seen this appeal as a subtle means to discredit Becket in the eyes of the pope? The appeal of the countess of Oxford would put this provision to the test. Although we have no record of the king’s approval, the case did go to Rome. Someone may have smoothed the way for her appeal with the king. I suspect, but cannot substantiate, the possibility that she gained the assistance of a sympathetic in-law, most likely William de Vere, her husband’s younger brother, a former canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral and a tenant of the bishop of London who had recently joined the Augustinians at St. Osyth’s Abbey, Essex. Other candidates include her Vere sisters-in-law Alice of Essex (who was also Agnes’s step-grandmother), Rohese countess of Essex or Juliana countess of Norfolk, each of whom might have persuaded their sons to speak up for the young countess of Oxford – or Bishop Gilbert himself. Yet the bishop of London should have been able to settle the case himself. He is known to have followed Gratian when making a number of decisions during the 1160s. The case hinged on the ability of a female to accept or reject a marriage contract made in her name as an child. As Gratian stated the principle: ‘a father’s oath cannot compel a girl to marry someone to whom she had never assented’, shifting the ultimate authority for contracting a marriage to the couple and specifically emphasizing the free will of a female to consent to marriage. Previous canons had not specifically privileged a daughter’s authority vis-à-vis that of her family in matters matrimonial. Gratian seems to 35 

Brooke, Medieval Idea of Marriage, 155; for Geoffrey’s marriages, Complete Peerage, x, appendix J, 113; Red Book of the Exchequer, i, 274–5. 36  Foliot, 215, 515. 37  Foliot, 233, no. 170; Stubbs, Charters, 139.



The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope

209

have been influenced in this matter by ancient Roman legal precedents as well as several late eleventh-century decretals of Pope Urban II.38 If marital arrangements made ‘on behalf of’ a child, no matter how solemnly made by parents or guardians, were tentative and provisional until ratified by the child when she was old enough to understand the gravity of her decision, then by Gratian’s criteria that marriage contract could not be considered a true betrothal (matrimonium initiatum). As Bishop Gilbert presented them to the pope, the circumstances in this case were such that Agnes could not have been considered to have expressed implicit consent to the marital arrangements made in her name through her silence or conduct. Therefore the agreement between Geoffrey and Henry had been broken when Agnes pronounced her opposition to the match in her letter to her father (and in all the subsequent conversations on this matter that surely followed in its wake). Although we do not know exactly when she wrote, she did so well after her seventh birthday – an age later recognized by the Church as the age of reason or discretion, when a child could legitimately make a betrothal or reject one contracted earlier in her name. Pope Alexander would eventually rule in other cases that a betrothal consummated when the individuals were of age to marry – twelve for a female, fourteen for a male – would be considered a valid marriage, but in this case the possibility that Agnes’s cohabitation with Geoffrey had included sexual relations was specifically denied by Agnes and not disputed by the Veres.39 Therefore the bishop should have been able to rule that no valid betrothal or marriage had existed between Agnes and Geoffrey, and thus no bonds of affinity had been created that would have precluded her marriage to Geoffrey’s brother Aubrey. Since the bishop of London made no mention in his letter to the pope of other factors that might have invalidated the marriage of Agnes and Aubrey, he must have been convinced that the couple had formally pronounced their vows in an acceptable form before witnesses, that they were not too closely related, and that their union had been blessed by a priest when Agnes was of sufficient age to wed, matters of form that would later be addressed by Pope Alexander III in his judgment of other marital cases.40 The bishop’s failure to refer to the consummation of the earl’s third marriage suggests that either he did not consider consummation essential to a valid marriage or, more likely, that the earl had bedded his young bride. Despite Brooke’s implication that the key issue in this case was that of consent by verba praesenti, neither the bishop’s letter nor the pope’s show any concern with the vows expressed by Agnes, Aubrey, or Geoffrey.41 Therefore Agnes’s marriage to Aubrey de Vere was valid by the criteria stated by Gratian. 38 

Gratian, Decretum, C.30.q.2.c.1 in Corpus iuris canonici, ed. E. Friedberg (Leipzig, 1879); Morey and Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters, 241; Sheehan, ‘Choice’, 92–6. 39  Brooke, Medieval Idea of Marriage, 169; Foliot, 215. My thanks to Paul J. Derania, J.D., for his valuable assistance in sorting the tangled legal issues of consent in this case. 40  Charles Donahue, ‘The Canon Law on the Formation of Marriage and Social Practice in the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of Family History 8 (1983), 143–6. 41  Brooke, Medieval Idea of Marriage, 152, 156, n. 91.

210

RáGena C. DeAragon

Pope Alexander may well have been frustrated by the bishop’s letter. First and foremost, the case should not have required the pope’s consideration. As I have shown, it was neither so complex nor so politically sensitive that the bishop of London could not have ruled on it himself, and Bishop Gilbert had demonstrated that he was capable of standing up to a great deal of pressure in the Becket affair.42 He would not have been intimidated by the earl or his powerful kin as Agnes alleged her counsel was; could the bishop not have handled the countess’s cowed lawyer? In addition, the bishop’s letter lacked information on potentially crucial details of the case, such as when and in what manner Agnes had been informed of the arrangement for her to marry Geoffrey, Agnes’s age when she wed Aubrey, when and in what circumstances their marriage ceremony took place, the nature of their vows, and whether they had consummated their marriage vows – details that the pope might well have considered relevant in making his judgment on the validity of their marriage. But was the bishop in fact asking the pope to rule on the validity of the marriage of the earl and countess of Oxford? Bishop Gilbert most likely had determined the justice of Agnes’s claims by May 1166. His letter to the pope strongly suggests that he had found her marriage to the earl valid. Yet if so, then why did he fail to bring the case to a close by rendering a judgment? The earl may not have intimidated the bishop, but he was an important man with powerful relatives, and Agnes lacked familial support. Should Aubrey have appealed to Rome in the event of judgment against his annulment petition in the episcopal court, the scales of justice would have tipped to his advantage. The earl would have resources not available to his young wife. The bishop may have tried to negotiate between the two sides – which would explain the necessity for three appearances in his court. When Earl Aubrey held firm in his resolve, the bishop may have privately counseled Agnes to appeal to the pope, in which case Bishop Gilbert could (and did) construct a letter which would likely prompt a papal decision in her favor. No further judicial recourse would be available to Earl Aubrey once the pope had ruled. Agnes suffered as a consequence of her appeal, as the earl confined her in one of his castles and refused to see her. She was not allowed out, even to attend mass. Perhaps Aubrey hoped to force her to retract her appeal. News of her treatment reached Bishop Gilbert, prompting him to write the earl a strong letter threatening God’s justified wrath if he continued to keep his wife under lock and key. Agnes was not to be deprived of her marital rights unless or until their marriage was declared invalid by the pope. Not only was Aubrey ordered to restore Agnes to liberty and to allow her to seek counsel, but he was also to ‘restore a husband’ to her ‘lest he fall into the hands of a judge who is not to be mocked’.43 The last was no idle threat; the earl had reached his sixth decade, an age when many of his peers who had survived violence and disease 42  43 

Morey and Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters, 99–102. Foliot, 216–17.



The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope

211

began to die of natural causes. Bishop Gilbert may have hoped that the young countess, given the opportunities provided by a shared bed and table, could overcome the earl’s aversion to the marriage. But Aubrey had a record of contempt for ecclesiastical authority. He had failed to answer three summonses to appear as a defendant in a case before the previous bishop of London.44 The evidence suggests that he failed as well to heed Bishop Gilbert’s threats regarding his treatment of Agnes. The next piece of extant evidence regarding this drama is Pope Alexander’s letter to Bishop Gilbert, sent from Frascati, Tusculum, on 30 January (year unspecified).45 A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke, the editors of the letters of Bishop Gilbert, date the letter to 1172 on the basis of Pope Alexander’s known visit to Frascati during late January in that period, but their argument against the year 1171 is not compelling. Even 1171 seems quite late, given that Agnes’s appeal must have reached the papal curia four and a half years earlier. The pope’s letter makes no mention of the legal points of the Vere case; rather, it is concerned solely with Earl Aubrey’s treatment of his wife and directs the actions which the bishop of London is to undertake. The countess is described as closely guarded in a castle tower, cut off from society ‘up to this very day’, a situation that visitors to the papal court reportedly had confirmed. Trials and tribulations with emperors and archbishops aside, it is unlikely that the pope allowed her to languish in captivity for four to five years. Pope Alexander ordered Bishop Gilbert to instruct the earl to free his wife and accord her full conjugal rights within twenty days of notification of the pope’s pronouncement. Should Aubrey fail to do this, he was to suffer excommunication and his lands would be placed under interdict.46 Other aspects of the pope’s letter from Tusculum besides its date strongly suggest that Pope Alexander had made an earlier judgment in favor of the countess which has not survived and which Earl Aubrey ignored. The text of the extant papal letter begins: ‘The noble woman A[gnes] wife of Earl Aubrey sent us a moving complaint’ about her husband’s abusive treatment of her – not marriage contracts made in her name or the validity of her marriage to the earl.47 In comparison, when speaking of a noblewoman of the diocese of Lincoln in the later 1170s who was petitioning to have her marriage annulled, the pope refers to her as ‘M. a noble lady’ without calling her a wife.48 Pope Alexander also took the bishop to task for his handling of the Vere case.49 While the papal rebuke could be taken to mean that this letter is the sole papal pronouncement on the Vere case, it is more likely that the pope was displeased that Bishop Gilbert had not followed up his warning regarding the earl’s mistreatment of Agnes with action. 44 

Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 113–14, no. 71. Foliot, 217. 46  Foliot, 217–18. 47  Foliot, 218. 48  Papal Decretals Relating to the Diocese of Lincoln in the Twelfth Century, ed. W. Holtzmann and E. W. Kemp, Lincoln Record Soc., 47 (Hereford, 1954), 44. 49  Foliot, 218. 45 

212

RáGena C. DeAragon

Scholars who assumed that the extant letter from Frascati was the only papal pronouncement on the Vere marital case and accepted the editors’ dating of the letter have drawn one of two conclusions: either Earl Aubrey did not consummate his third marriage until Pope Alexander pronounced it valid, or that he had done so in 1163 but had ceased to have sexual contact with still-childless Agnes from the time he had decided on a divorce until the pope threatened the earl with excommunication in 1172.50 Either scenario would mean that he waited at least four and half years to bed his third wife. Only the Complete Peerage has noted the suggestion of Gerald of Wales that the young countess of Oxford was pregnant with Aubrey IV some time before annulment proceedings began.51 Agnes bore the earl a son as early as the last months of 1163, certainly no later than early 1167, and could have become a mother before her thirteenth birthday if she had conceived in the weeks before her father’s disgrace. The existence of a child, however, would have had no bearing on the decision of the ecclesiastical authorities on the validity of the marriage of its parents. Agnes of Essex eventually prevailed. The highest Church authority pronounced her marriage to Earl Aubrey de Vere to be valid and ordered her husband to treat her with proper respect. It may have taken the threat of excommunication and interdict, but the earl did accept Agnes as his wife in board and bed. The earl finally had an heir of his body – and eventually several to spare. The countess bore her husband at least four sons and a daughter.52 Aubrey engaged a private tutor (magister) for his eldest son and namesake, and the boy accompanied his father on a number of public occasions.53 Around 1190, the couple seems to have cooperated in the founding of a small Benedictine nunnery next to the Vere castle at Hedingham, Essex.54 Agnes attested three of her husband’s charters – a small percentage of his extant acta – and one in the company of her husband.55 Of the later twelfth-century countesses, some were frequent attestors, witnessing primarily the acta of their immediate family and kin but also of tenants, etc., while other comital wives never appear as a witness on any surviving official document. The most we can deduce from the attestation record of the countess of Oxford, therefore, is that the earl eventually accorded Agnes some public recognition as his wife and countess. While the marital fortunes of Agnes and Aubrey illustrate the difficulties which might be encountered by the laity as the canon law of matrimony 50  Brooke, Medieval Idea of Marriage, 156 and n. 91; Foliot, 218; Green, Aristocracy of Norman England, 358. 51  Complete Peerage, x, 208; Gerald of Wales, Itinerarium, 132. 52  Complete Peerage, x, appendix J, 116–18. 53  For example, Cartae antiquae, ed. L. Landon and J. C. Davies, Pipe Roll Soc., 55 and 71, 2 vols. (London, 1939–57), ii, 158–9, no. 554; Colne Cartulary, 23, no. 39 and 26, no. 46; The Early Charters of Waltham Abbey, Essex, 1062–1230, ed. R. Ransford (Woodbridge, 1989), 73–4, no. 121. 54  Monasticon anglicanum, vi, 835. 55  Colne Cartulary, nos. 33, 46; BL, Cotton Tiberius E9, fol. 5, nos. 8, 9; Cartulary of St Mary Clerkenwell, ed. W. O. Hassall (London, 1949), no. 93.



The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope

213

developed during the mid-twelfth century, this case also provides glimpses into differing perspectives on marriage at the time. As an example, consider the reference made by the Vere kin to the marriage agreement between Henry of Essex and Geoffrey de Vere, which they claimed Agnes could not gainsay. Among many European peoples earlier in the Middle Ages, sons might be freed from parental control over their marital fate in their mid-teens, while daughters remained in a state of perpetual guardianship and could not reject their father’s choice of husband. The Church had generally championed the right of consent, and Gratian’s pronouncement on the limitations on a father’s rights over his daughter in the matter of her marriage was not entirely new, but the Vere argument shows that the custom had persisted among the laity.56 Agnes’s case demonstrates that consent or rejection could be successfully asserted by a female as well as a male, even in the face of overwhelming social and familial pressures and long-standing arrangements. Theologians through the first Christian millennium had articulated the teaching that marriage was contracted by the free and advised consent of those entering the partnership, so long as no impediments precluded their union. Peter the Lombard proposed a concept of marriage which carried this teaching to its logical conclusion: consent alone, freely expressed in words of the present tense (verba praesenti) by a couple qualified to marry each other – even if expressed in secret – created a valid marriage.57 Only Gratian championed the necessity of parental consent as a component of validity, but Pope Alexander III ultimately did not adopt that requirement.58 There was also significant debate over the issue of the dissolubility of marriage. During the course of the twelfth century, while canonists were honing the criteria for validity, grounds for and ease of annulment were necessarily changing as well, as Earl Aubrey and the Veres discovered. Most members of the upper levels of lay society appear to have viewed marriage primarily in terms of practical issues; political, social, and economic considerations dominated their arrangements, and when the factors which had prompted a specific match changed sufficiently (as when the father of the bride became a convicted and penniless traitor), they wanted the freedom to jettison or change partners.59 The Church had to struggle to enforce its teaching that a valid marriage was a sacrament, conferring divine grace and creating a lifelong partnership which was not to be broken. Since the Church had successfully claimed jurisdiction over marriage cases by the mid-twelfth century, thereafter the only legitimate option to end a match was to demonstrate that the union was invalid. This could be done by proving that an invalidating impediment, such as a prior commitment, affinity, impotence or consanguinity, should have 56  Sheehan, ‘Choice’, 93–6; G. H. Joyce, Christian Marriage: An Historical and Doctrinal Study (London, 1933), 47–9. 57  Sheehan, ‘Choice’, 97–8. 58  Sheehan, ‘Choice’, 97. 59  Georges Duby, Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France, trans. E. Forster (Baltimore, 1978), 7.

214

RáGena C. DeAragon

blocked the couple’s marriage. Theologians were developing a theology of marriage that also made something more of betrothal than a contract to wed. Hence the concern of the Veres that, even if the relationship between Agnes and Geoffrey failed to meet the criteria for a valid marriage, it might be considered a true betrothal that created bonds of affinity that would limit subsequent marital partners. It is likely that the Vere marriage case and others like it lay behind the canon announced at the ecclesiastical Council of Westminster in 1175, which stated that there was no valid marriage without the consent of both parties to the marriage. Michael Sheehan stated that ‘the principle on which the ruling of the canon was based [was]: when children have been given in marriage, nothing is effected until both, having come to discretion, gave their consent’.60 Ultimately the Church not only sided with Agnes, enforcing her claim that she was the legitimate wife of Aubrey III de Vere, but it also took action against a type of spousal abuse. Pope Alexander’s letter may not provide a definitive ruling on the legal points of the Vere case, but it did insist that the earl’s mistreatment of his wife would not be tolerated and threatened the full panoply of ecclesiastical sanctions if his behavior did not change appropriately.61 The Church could not order Aubrey to love his wife, but it could insist that he treat her with a modicum of decency and public respect. The motives of Agnes are perhaps less clear. Why would she insist on the validity of her marriage to a man so much her senior who had not only attempted to repudiate their union but had also incarcerated her? There may have been several factors in her decision. Having rejected Geoffrey against custom and familial pressure, it is unlikely that she then would have accepted Aubrey as her husband unless she found him acceptable to some degree. Once her father was found guilty of treason, however, it is unlikely that she could have made another match to her liking, although undoubtedly someone would have been willing to marry her for the sake of her dowry – which may have been an unusually large one for a non-heiress. The five knights’ fees of the honor of Haughley she held when widowed probably was her father’s grant of maritagium, but the more normal dowry for an aristocratic girl at this level of wealth was one or two knights’ fees.62 Her Vere sisters-in-law generally received one knight’s fee when they married.63 The larger dowry may have been an incentive for the earl to marry his brother’s former betrothed. If Agnes did give birth 60  Michael Sheehan, ‘Marriage Theory and Practice in the Conciliar Legislation and Diocesan Statutes of Medieval England’, in Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval England, 121. 61  Foliot, 218. 62  Red Book of the Exchequer, i, 621. 63  For Juliana’s dowry, Complete Peerage, x, appendix J, 116; J. H. Round, ed., Rotuli de dominabus et pueris et puellis de xii comitatibus, Pipe Roll Soc., 35 (London, 1913), 71 n.; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, 23 vols. (London, 1904–  ), i, no. 744. For that of Rohese, Bodleian, Dodsworth MS. 68, fol. 7. For Alice’s, Round, ed., Rotuli de dominabus, 77 n. For the size of dowries generally, see Judith Green, ‘Aristocratic Women in Early Twelfth-Century England’, in Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, ed. ­ C. W. Hollister (Woodbridge, 1997), 61–2.



The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope

215

before the annulment proceedings began, she might have resisted the annulment in order to remain with her child. Her sister-in-law Juliana may have suffered after her divorce by being separated from her son, and Agnes could have been reluctant to suffer the same fate. Having been raised by the Veres from an early age, she may have been more emotionally attached to them than to her blood relations. Her loyalties, so far as we can judge them, were with the Veres. Agnes certainly confined her known charitable contributions to religious houses and orders with Vere connections.64 Her youthful self-assertion when she rejected Geoffrey de Vere and made her appeal to the pope, rebellious as it must have appeared to her father and the Veres, was not at odds with loyalty to the family into which she had married. As a countess she would have status and wealth which might be used to mitigate somewhat the effects of her father’s disgrace on her siblings. And not the least of her reasons may have been a strong commitment to her marriage vows, once she had the opportunity to make them. The countess would have been about forty-two years of age when Earl Aubrey died in December, 1194, and she outlived her husband by at least a dozen years.65 We know little about her widowhood other than that she does not appear to have joined a monastic community – at least until c. 1206. Before Michaelmas 1198, she agreed to pay the king 100 marks so that she might not be compelled to remarry, and she paid off that fine within a year.66 On 7 November 1198, she came to an agreement in a lawsuit brought by three nieces of Payn Bardulf regarding land at Cockfield, Suffolk, which was one of her dower estates.67 Agnes was still alive and apparently unmarried in 1206 when she paid scutage for those five knights’ fees of the barony of Haughley, her father’s former barony.68 On her death she was laid to rest beside the husband she had suffered so to keep at the Benedictine priory at Earl’s Colne, Essex, founded by her husband’s paternal grandfather.69 Agnes, while highly unlikely to have enjoyed an emotionally satisfying relationship with her husband, might have found joy and fulfillment in her children and other relationships. It is commonly thought that youthful mothers married to much older men often formed closer ties with their children than with their husbands. What clues we sometimes have to assess emotional bonds within medieval families are lacking in this case. Agnes is not mentioned in her children’s surviving charters, even in the pro anima clauses with the stock phrase pro anima matris meae, the common means of expressing at least conventional respect for one’s mother in such documents. She attested none of 64 

Monasticon anglicanum, vi, 835. Her brother-in-law Gilbert de Vere entered the Knights Hospitaller in 1190, eventually becoming prior of the order in England. 65  Complete Peerage, x, 207. 66  Pipe R. 10 R. I, 138; Pipe R. 1 J., 98. 67  Feet of Fines of the Tenth Year of the Reign of King Richard I, Pipe Roll Soc., 24 (London, 1900), no. 103; Walter Rye, ed., Calendar of the Feet of Fines of Suffolk (Ipswich, 1900), 6. 68  Red Book of the Exchequer, i, 621. 69  Complete Peerage, x, 207.

216

RáGena C. DeAragon

their acta either during or after her husband’s lifetime, and our only knowledge of her life after the death of Earl Aubrey is provided by impersonal royal documents. Earl Aubrey’s harsh treatment of his young wife may have affected his children’s attitude toward their mother. If so, Agnes of Essex paid a heavy and lifelong emotional price for her successful self-assertion.

More on the Reign of Henry I Matilda of Scotland A Study in Medieval Queenship LOIS L. HUNEYCUTT An authoritative study. SPECULUM Deserves to enjoy wide readership. AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW Matilda of Scotland was the daughter of Malcolm II of Scotland and his AngloSaxon queen Margaret. Her marriage to Henry I of England in 1100 thus brought to Henry, descendant of the conquering Normans, a direct and politically desirable link to Matilda’s ancestor Alfred the Great. Matilda clearly had outstanding talents, furthering the literate court culture of the twelfth century, and controlling a substantial demesne that allowed her to exercise both lay and ecclesiastical patronage. In the matter of ruling, she was an active partner in administering Henry’s crosschannel realm, served as a member of his curia regis, and on occasion acted with what amounted to vice-regal authority in England while Henry was in Normandy.

Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings STEPHEN MORILLO Fill[s] a gap in scholarship by offering a coherent and readable study of Anglo-Norman warfare... something of a milestone in the academic study of medieval warfare. HISTORY This study of the battles waged between 1066 and 1135 by the Anglo-Norman kings of England – William the Conqueror, William Rufus and Henry I – is a major restatement of the nature of medieval warfare. Morillo illuminates the interrelationship of military organisation and social and political structures and brings many new perceptions to bear, such as the central role of the familia regis, the King’s military household. The roles of armies and castles and the normal activities of warfare are examined to show why sieges were far more common than pitched battles; siege and battle tactics are analysed in the context of social and political influences, administrative structures and campaign patterns; and a connection is proposed between government strength and infantry quality. www.boydell.co.uk www.boydellandbrewer.com BOYDELL & BREWER Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US)