Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure 1066-1166

CONQUERED ENGL AND

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Conquered England Kingship, Succession, and Tenure, 1066–1166 GEORGE GARNET T

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © George Garnett 2007 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–820793–1 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Jim Holt and Walter Ullmann

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Preface This book has been a long time in the making. With that dauntless intellectual ambition which was one of his many strengths, Walter Ullmann originally set me to work on a comparative history of medieval coronation ordines. I realized quite quickly that they could only be understood as one aspect of the varying processes of royal succession. This realization entailed a narrowing of my chronological and geographical focus. In concentrating on England, I came to grasp that in the particular circumstances of the Norman Conquest, the coronation ordo, like other rituals, might remain unchanged in form, while its meaning was transformed by its continued use in novel circumstances. I then began to understand that those novel circumstances were to a large extent shaped by the premises of Duke William’s claim to the throne of England, which complied with Norman, not English, tradition. The whole kingdom was deemed to be King Edward’s bequest to William, as if it were a piece of land or a chattel; rightfully, it was William’s alone. But William eventually received his bequest only when he had put an end to Harold’s usurpation and been anointed as king. The wealth of the documentation produced by the new regime enabled me to trace how this justification of the Conquest played a large part in determining not only the practice of royal accession in conquered England, but also its tenurial structure. Legitimate royal authority ceased to be created by recognition (or ‘election’), as it had been previously in England, and began to be created by consecration. But the remorseless application of the king’s claim to the implementation of the Conquest entailed far more profound changes in tenure. If England was William’s alone, by force of Edward’s bequest, then any landholder, whether co-conqueror or surviving Englishman, had to acknowledge that he held by William’s favour. The kingdom was therefore William’s in a way in which it had never been Edward’s, and it was so because of, not despite, the elaborate show of seamless continuity with the Old English past. The truth or otherwise of the claim was irrelevant to its transforming influence. It provided the chronological framework of Domesday Book; every tenant’s right to the land which he held either directly or intermediately of the king was defined by reference to the king’s right. This meant that its influence extended far beyond William’s death. Paradoxically, it was the clarity of the Conqueror’s claim to be the legitimate, direct successor of Edward the Confessor which helped to ensure that royal succession in early twelfth-century England would remain so chaotic. The chaos was a function of the inability of William and his successors to treat the kingdom as conceptually different from any other landed estate, and of the system of precarious dependent tenure which the claim had engendered. In turn it greatly exacerbated that precariousness, as the aggrieved seized the opportunity presented

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by a king’s death to recover what they saw as rightfully theirs. Even when the peculiar circumstances of Stephen’s reign eventually produced a solution of a sort to the instability of royal succession, it was itself framed in terms originally set by the Conqueror’s claim; and it left untouched the tenurial system which had been shaped by the implications of the claim. That tenurial system began to be undermined only by the legal innovations of Henry II’s reign; but these, too, were devised by reference to Henry’s professed title to the throne, and therefore, ultimately, to the template of William the Conqueror’s claim. The legal argument which justified William’s succession thereby remained intrinsic to the genesis, a century later, of what would become known as English common law. In other words, embedded within the new legal procedures, it continued to influence the development of the tenurial system which had been created in its image, even as that system was slowly transformed by the new procedures. The pretence at continuity with the Old English past which was the fundamental premise of William’s claim turned out to have consequences far more profound than the continued use, for an indeterminable period, of the existing ‘second’ English coronation ordo, which was one, relatively superficial, manifestation of that pretence.¹ That the traditional ordo, and its eventual replacement, were used to make kings, in stark contrast with practice in Anglo-Saxon England, turned out to be far more significant a factor in English history than the particular ordo used at any given royal consecration. A fortiori, this is true of the abstruse flights of theological fancy which the Old English ordo inspired in the Norman Anonymous, probably writing in Normandy rather than England, at the beginning of the twelfth century.² He wrote with an academic detachment from the brutal practicalities of the Conquest. His analysis had little to do with the particularities and therefore the practicalities of post-Conquest kingship. These, I conclude, were shaped by a quite different set of ideas, grounded in the justification of William’s Conquest. This account of the book’s genesis may help to explain why, together with various diversions, intellectual and otherwise, it has been a slow process. I began to conceive of the argument as a Research Fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge. I am very grateful to its Master and Fellows for allowing me the unpressured time needed to sketch out a first draft, and to the Electors to the Prince Consort Prize at 1 For the continued use of the ‘second’ ordo, see G. S. Garnett, ‘The Second Recension of the English Coronation ordo: The Manuscripts’, HSJ xi (1998), 43–71, esp. 67–71. The earliest surviving copy of the ‘third’ English coronation ordo is found in a pontifical which was probably made for Anselm in his first years at Canterbury. It has been shown that the copying of the ordo was almost certainly interrupted in 1097. If this is correct, it establishes only a terminus ante quem for the composition of the ordo, and does not establish when it was first used: M. Gullick and R. W. Pfaff, ‘The Dublin Pontifical (TCD 98 [B. 3. 6]): St Anselm’s?’, Scriptorium, lx (2001), 284–94, esp. 289–90. 2 That the copy of the ‘second’ ordo which the Anonymous used was almost certainly at Rouen is one of the many clues linking him to Normandy: G. H. Williams, The Norman Anonymous of 1100 A.D.: Towards the Identification and Evaluation of the So-Called Anonymous of York, Harvard Theological Studies, xvii (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), 36–46.

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Cambridge University for awarding the Prize for 1988 to that draft. Being a member of the same fellowship as Peter Linehan, who was then investigating the creation of official history in medieval Spain, and Toby Milsom, whose influence on what follows will be plain, was especially important to the development of the argument. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge the support of the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge, who elected me to a teaching Fellowship at a time when such positions were sparse. Since I left Cambridge, the book has benefited from the stimulation provided by my duties as a Fellow and Tutor at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, a College Lecturer at Lady Margaret Hall, and, most particularly, from running the Modern History Faculty’s Special Subject on the Norman Conquest. Many passages have been enriched by exchanges in the class with other tutors—notably Patrick Wormald and James Campbell—and with successive generations of undergraduates in relentless pursuit of elusive nuances in gobbets. Some of their comments have been arrestingly perceptive, as they must have realized when I occasionally interrupted proceedings to jot them down. Great as my debt to my pupils and colleagues in Oxford has become, that to those who taught me is still greater. At school, David Griffiths and David Grossel inspired me to want to be an historian; as an undergraduate, Jonathan RileySmith turned me into a medievalist, and Quentin Skinner, like Walter Ullmann, taught me never to baulk at conceptual challenges. None of these has ever read any of what follows, and some of them may have qualms about being lumped together in this fashion, but, in different ways, their influence on it has been profound. The supervisor who has been directly involved, and whose many publications on eleventh- and twelfth-century England provide much of the intellectual foundation for the book, is Jim Holt. Having taught me as an undergraduate, he stepped into the breach after Walter Ullmann’s death. He has always been ready with a blunt, sceptical criticism or a timely suggestion, and has nurtured the book with a superhuman, if characteristically brisk and vigorous, patience. Others must judge whether he has succeeded in preventing it from becoming too Mahlerian. The book is for him and Walter Ullmann, in eventual fulfilment of promises made to each of them. They, too, might have some reservations about being paired in this fashion. If so, such reservations would, in my view, be unjustified. They have both, in very different ways, engaged in the same sort of enterprise. I have tried to follow their lead. The dedication recognizes my deepest intellectual debts, but there are many others. John Hudson has read successive drafts more often and more intensively than anyone else, without appearing to hold it against me. Recently, however, I have begun to notice odd clumps of what looks like his hair between the leaves of the typescripts he has returned to me. Magnus Ryan has put me on my mettle ever since his undergraduate days, and has offered a pellucid critique of most of what follows. Jinty Nelson worked through the unrefined thesis, and has always been as encouraging as she was when, as a new research student, I ventured to disagree

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with her about William the Conqueror’s coronation. Stephen Baxter and James Bickford-Smith have commented copiously on Part I. John Robertson, my early modern colleague at St Hugh’s, read a first draft of the concluding Afterthoughts, and persuaded me to make them less gnomic. I should also like to express my gratitude to him in more general terms for the support he has given me during my time at St Hugh’s. However unpredictable the demands I have occasionally had to make on him, he has always been ready to help. The same has been true of Colin and Sue Matthew. Senia Paseta and a number of other colleagues at St Hugh’s and Lady Margaret Hall have filled in for me while I have taken sabbatical and other leave. In the wider Faculty of Modern History, it may not be invidious to single out Ian Archer, Rees Davies, Jane Garnett, Gervase Rosser, and Bryan Ward-Perkins for the different types of assistance they have rendered. From Cambridge, Peter Linehan has continued to offer ruminative counsel. The staff of the Bodleian Library, of Cambridge University Library, and the librarians of my various colleges have remained tolerant despite many minor provocations. In addition to the support of successive colleges, I must gratefully acknowledge that of the British Academy, for funding an extra term of sabbatical leave in 1995, and the Modern History Faculty at Oxford, for doing so in 2005. The Royal Historical Society has given me permission to reuse material from an essay published in the Society’s Transactions. The faith shown by my successive publishers, Tony Morris, Ruth Parr, Anne Gelling, Zoe Washford, and Rupert Cousens has been unwaning. The greatest debts of all are to my children, Elinor, Edmund, and Gregory, and to Alex Gooden. They have humoured me, not least on many visits to the physical, rather than the abstract, remains of the Conquest. St Hugh’s College, Oxford 25 December 2005

Contents Abbreviations I. The Justification of the Conquest Making a king: from recognition to consecration The Norman claim The invention of ‘the time of King Edward’ Official history in Domesday Book The Domesday antecessor and beyond Canon Law and the justification of the Conquest The implications of official history II. The King as an Anomaly Eadmer and the king’s ‘nod’ Ecclesiastical vacancy in conquered England Homage and the precariousness of lay tenure Lay subtenants Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ The lands of the archbishop of Canterbury Interregnum, vacancy, and tenure

xiii 1 1 4 9 18 24 33 40 45 45 52 64 97 105 120 125

III. The Problem of Interregnum The problem outlined The Norman background Normandy and the Conquest of England The motives for disorder Securing succession: 1100–1135 Matilda’s title The force of fidelitas The force of coronation The bid for legitimacy Justification by antecession: 1141–1153

136 136 142 152 185 201 213 231 238 245 254

IV. The Problem Solved The settlement of 1153: the diplomatic evidence The settlement of 1153: the chronicles The settlement of 1153 in practice

262 262 281 290

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Contents The accession of Henry II ‘To renew grandfatherly times’ Henry II’s early legal innovations The early history of the breve de recto The prehistory of novel disseisin

294 299 326 331 338

V. Afterthoughts

353

Bibliography Index

360 379

Abbreviations AN Ann. Mon. ANS ASC ASE (BI)HR Bishop and Chaplais, Facsimiles BL Book of Seals BN BR

BSAN CAE CBA CE Constitutio

CRR CSHR CTB C&S

Annales de Normandie Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, 5 vols., RS (London, 1864–9) Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies Two of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer and J. Earle, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1892–9) Anglo-Saxon England (Bulletin of the Institute of ) Historical Research T. A. M. Bishop and P. Chaplais (eds.), Facsimiles of Royal Writs to A.D. 1100 Presented to V. H. Galbraith (Oxford, 1957) British Library Sir Christopher Hatton’s Book of Seals, ed. L. C. Loyd and D. M. Stenton (Oxford, 1950) Bibliotheque Nationale Brevis Relatio de Guillelmo nobilissimo comite Normannorum, written by a monk of Battle Abbey, ed. E. M. C. van Houts, in Chronology, Conquest and Conflict in Medieval England, Camden Miscellany, xxxiv, Camden Soc., 5th ser., x (1997), 1–48 Bulletin de la société des antiquaires de Normandie Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. J. Sayers and L. Watkiss, OMT (Oxford, 2003) The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. E. Searle, OMT (Oxford, 1980) J. C. Holt, Colonial England, 1066–1215 (London, 1997) Constitutio Domus Regis, in Dialogus de Scaccario and Constitutio Domus Regis, ed. C. Johnson, F. E. L. Carter, and D. E.Greenway, OMT (Oxford, 1983) Curia Regis Rolls, HMSO (1922– ) Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols., RS (London, 1884–9) The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury 1162–1170, ed. A. J. Duggan, 2 vols., OMT (Oxford, 2000) Councils and Synods with other Documents Relating to the English Church, I, pts. i, ii, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 1981)

xiv DB Dialogus DIV

Douglas, Feudal Documents Dudo

EcHR EEA EHR EYC Exon. Fauroux, Recueil Freeman, Norman Conquest GC Gesetze GFL GG Glanvill GND

GP

Abbreviations Domesday Book seu Liber Censualis Wilhelmi Primi Regis Angliae, ed. A. Farley and H. Ellis, 4 vols. (London, 1783–1816) Dialogus de Scaccario and Constitutio Domus Regis, ed. C. Johnson, rev. F. E. L. Carter and D. E. Greenway, OMT (Oxford, 1983) De iniusta vexacione Willelmi episcopi primi per Willelmum regem filium Willelmi magni regis, ed. H. S. Offler, rev. A. J. Piper and A. I. Doyle, in Chronology, Conquest and Conflict in Medieval England, Camden Miscellany, xxxiv, Camden Soc., 5th ser., x (1997), 49–104 D. C. Douglas (ed.), Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, British Academy Records in Social and Economic History (London, 1932) Dudo of St-Quentin, De Moribus et Actis Primorum Normanniae Ducum, ed. J. Lair, Mémoires de la société des antiquaires de Normandie, xxiii (Caen, 1865) Economic History Review English Episcopal Acta English Historical Review Early Yorkshire Charters, i–iii, ed. W. Farrer (Edinburgh, 1914–16); iv–xii, ed. C. T. Clay, Yorkshire Archaeological Soc. (1935–65) Liber Exoniensis, in DB iii Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie, ed. M. Fauroux, Mémoires de la société des antiquaires de Normandie, xxvi (Caen, 1961) E. A. Freeman, The Norman Conquest of England, 6 vols., i, ii, 2nd edn., iii, iv, v, vi, 1st edn. (Oxford, 1869–79) Gervase of Canterbury, Opera Historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., RS (London, 1879–80) Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann, 3 vols. (Halle, 1903–16) The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, ed. A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke (Cambridge, 1967) William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, ed. R. H. C. Davis and M. M. Chibnall, OMT (Oxford, 1998) Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Anglie qui Glanvilla vocatur, ed. G. D. G. Hall, NMT (Edinburgh, 1965) The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumiéges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigny, ed. E. M. C. van Houts, 2 vols. OMT (Oxford, 1992–5) William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum, libri quinque, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, RS (London, 1870)

Abbreviations GR

GS HEA

HC

HH HMC HMSO HN HNa HP HR HSJ Hudson, LLL

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William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols. OMT (Oxford, 1998–9) Gesta Stephani, ed. K. R. Potter, rev. R. H. C. Davis, OMT (Oxford, 1976) Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis, ed. J. G. H. Hudson, 2 vols. OMT (Oxford, 2002– ); or Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols., RS (London, 1858) Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York 1066–1127, ed. C. Johnson, rev. M. Brett, C. N. L. Brooke, and M. Winterbottom, OMT (Oxford, 1990) Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. D. Greenway, OMT (Oxford, 1996) Reports and Calendars Issued by the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts Her Majesty’s Stationery Office Eadmer, Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. M. Rule, RS (1884) William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, 2nd edn., ed. E. King, trans. K. R. Potter, OMT (Oxford, 1998) John of Salisbury, Historia Pontificalis, ed. M. M. Chibnall, OMT (Oxford, 1986) See (BI)HR Haskins Society Journal J. G. H. Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford, 1994)

JEH JMH JTS JW

Journal of Ecclesiastical History Journal of Medieval History Journal of Theological Studies The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, OMT (Oxford, 1995), vols. ii, iii

Law and Government

G. S. Garnett and J. G. H. Hudson (eds.), Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge, 1994) English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I, ed. R. C. Van Caenegem, 2 vols., Selden Soc., cvi, cvii (1990–1) Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., xcii (1962) The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. H. Clover and M. Gibson, OMT (Oxford, 1979) Leges Henrici Primi, ed. L. J. Downer (Oxford, 1972)

Lawsuits LE Letters of Lanfranc LHP

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Abbreviations

MGH MTB

Monumenta Germaniae Historica Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. J. C. Robertson, 7 vols., RS (London, 1875–85)

NMT

Nelson’s Medieval Texts

ODNB

H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) Oxford Medieval Texts The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. M. M. Chibnall, 6 vols., OMT (Oxford, 1969–80)

OMT Orderic PBA PKJ PL P&M

PP PR PRS RBE RCR

Reg. RHDFE RHF Round, G. de M. RRAN

RS RT

Proceedings of the British Academy Pleas before the King or his Justices, 1198–1212, ed. D. M. Stenton, 4 vols., Selden Soc. lxvii, lxviii, lxxxiii, lxxxiv (1948–67) Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I., 2 vols., 2nd edn. reissued with a new introduction and select bibliography by S. F. C. Milsom (Cambridge, 1968) Past & Present Pipe Roll Pipe Roll Society The Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. H. Hall, 3 vols., RS (London, 1896) Rotuli Curiae Regis: Rolls and Records of the Court Held Before the King’s Justiciars or Justices, ed. F. Palgrave, Record Commisssion (London, 1835) Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I, 1066–1087, ed. D. Bates (Oxford, 1998) Revue historique du droit français et étranger Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. M. Bouquet et al., 24 vols. (Paris, 1738–1904) J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville: A Study of the Anarchy (London, 1892) Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 4 vols., ed. H. W. C. Davis and R. J. Whitwell (vol. i); C. Johnson and H. A. Cronne (vol. ii); H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davis (vols. iii, iv) (Oxford, 1913–69) Rolls Series Robert of Torigni

Abbreviations S.

s.a. SD

xvii

P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, Royal Historical Society, Guides and Handbooks, viii (1968) sub anno Symeon of Durham, Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols., RS (London, 1882–5)

TRHS

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

UAG

Ungedruckte anglo-normannische Geschichtsquellen, ed. F. Liebermann (Strasbourg, 1879)

van Caenegem, Royal Writs VCH VW

Royal Writs from the Conquest to Glanvill, ed. R. C. van Caenegem, Selden Soc., lxxvii (1959) Victoria County History Vita Wulfstani, in William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, OMT (Oxford, 2002).

WM WN

William of Malmesbury William of Newburgh

Writs, ed. Harmer

Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. F. E. Harmer (Manchester, 1956)

. . . I have set down for one of the causes of the Dissolutions of Common-wealths, their Imperfect Generation, consisting in the want of an Absolute and Arbitrary Legislative Power; for want whereof, the Civill Soveraign is fain to handle the Sword of Justice unconstantly, and as if it were too hot for him to hold: One reason whereof . . . is this, That they will all of them justifie the War, by which their Power was at first gotten, and whereon (as they think) their Right dependeth, and not on the Possession. As if, for example, the Right of the Kings of England did depend on the goodnesse of the cause of William the Conquerour, and upon their lineall, and directest Descent from him; by which means, there would perhaps be no tie of the Subjects obedience to their Soveraign at this day in all the world: wherein whilest they needlessly think to justifie themselves, they justifie all the successefull Rebellions that Ambition shall at any time after raise against them, and their Successors. Therefore I put down for one of the most effectuall seeds of the Death of any State, that the Conquerors require not onely a Submission of mens actions to them for the future, but also an Approbation of all their actions past; when there is scarce a Common-wealth in the world, whose beginnings can in conscience be justified. (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ‘A Review, and Conclusion’)

I The Justification of the Conquest The louder just law was talked about, the more unlawful things were done. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E) s.a. 1086 When iniquity reigns, it most often veils its greed under the pretext of avenging crime, condemning the innocent man to punishment in order to confiscate his possessions. William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi¹

MAKING A KING: FROM RECOGNITION TO CONSECRATION The author of the D manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was almost certainly a member of Archbishop Ealdred of York’s household.² He was, therefore, probably at the centre of events during 1066, and his testimony deserves to be weighed very seriously. In the annal for that year he describes the submissions of many of the most important surviving members of the English nobility, beginning with Archbishop Ealdred, to Duke William of Normandy at Berkhamsted. These submissions, he reports, followed widespread ravaging by the invading army in the wake of the English defeat at Hastings, and the subsequent, doomed attempt, in which Archbishop Ealdred also appears to have taken a leading role, to make Eadgar ætheling, Edward the Confessor’s nephew, king. The chronicler laments their having taken so long to bow to the inevitable: ‘they submitted out of necessity, after most of the damage had been done—and it was a great folly that they had not done so earlier, since God would not make things better, because of our sins.’ Thereby he seems to imply that the devastation of the countryside could have been ended much sooner if only the English had submitted to the new ruler inflicted as a punishment by God. He continued: ‘they gave hostages and swore oaths to him, and he promised them that he would be a faithful lord (hold hlaford) to them; and yet in the meantime they harried all that they overran.’³ The ¹ GG 158. ² P. Wormald, How Do We Know So Much About Anglo-Saxon Deerhurst?, Deerhurst Lecture (1991). ³ Cf. JW ii. 606, which draws on a text very close to that of D. For a less emotive assessment, see F. Baring, ‘The Conqueror’s Footprints in Domesday’, EHR xiii (1898), 17–25.

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chronicler was clearly shocked by this behaviour on the part of William and his army, which only seemed to end, in his account, with William’s consecration by Ealdred ‘on Christmas Day . . . at Westminster’. Well he might have been, for when the dates of coronation of earlier English kings can be firmly established, they usually occur some considerable time after the king had become king. Thus, for instance, Edward the Elder,⁴ Æthelstan,⁵ Æthelred,⁶ and Edward the Confessor⁷ were all crowned and anointed in the year after each of them had become king. To assert that these delays were simply due to disturbances consequent on the deaths of the previous kings is unconvincing.⁸ Royal succession seems to have become a relatively well-ordered affair in late Anglo-Saxon England (relative, that is, to what happened after the Norman Conquest). Alfred’s will reveals a series of elaborate provisions for the descent of several categories of estate held by the king;⁹ and the attestation of Æthelred II’s charters by his sons—or aethelings—was strictly in order of birth.¹⁰ Neither piece of evidence says anything directly about the practice of royal succession, but both imply a great deal. The turmoil which was characteristic of post-Conquest interregna appears not to have delayed coronation, but to have rendered it much more urgent. Claimants struggled to be consecrated at the earliest possible juncture. It is true that the chaos of the first eleventh-century conquest of England, by the Danes, disrupted the existing system of royal succession. It is possible to detect a new note of urgency in the haste with which Edward the Confessor was ‘elected’ in London in June 1042, restoring the line of Cerdic after twenty-six years of Danish rule. An Anglo-Saxon chronicler felt moved to comment that this ceremony happened even before Harthacnut’s funeral, as if this were exceptional.¹¹ But there was no hurry where consecration was concerned: Edward was not anointed by Eadsige, archbishop of Canterbury, until Easter Day 1043, and there is one extant, ⁴ For the probable date of coronation—Pentecost 900—see The Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. A. Campbell, NMT (Edinburgh, 1962), 51; for the date of Alfred’s death—26 October 899—see W. H. Stevenson, ‘The Date of King Alfred’s Death’, EHR xiii (1898), 71–7; M. L. R. Beaven, ‘The Regnal Dates of Alfred, Edward the Elder, and Athelstan’, EHR xxxii (1917), 517–31, at 526–31. ⁵ For proof of the date of coronation—4 September 925—see Beaven, ‘Regnal Dates’, 522–5; also S. 394. Beaven incorrectly attributed Edward’s death to 925; the true date is 17 July 924: J. A. Robinson, The Times of St Dunstan (Oxford, 1923), 25–36. ⁶ Edward the Martyr was assassinated on 18 March 978. ASC (D) (E) s.a. 979 deceptively states that Æthelred’s coronation was performed ‘very swiftly’; in fact it did not happen until 4 May 979: S. D. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016 (Cambridge, 1980), 174, 233, n. 7. ⁷ Harthacnut died on 8 June 1042 and Edward was ‘elected’ before his funeral: ASC (E) s.a. 1041 (recte 1042). Edward was anointed on 3 April 1043: ASC (C)(D) s.a. 1043, (E) s.a. 1042 (recte 1043). ⁸ C&S i. 183, n. 3; J. L. Nelson, ‘Inauguration Rituals’, in P. H. Sawyer and I. N. Wood (eds.), Early Medieval Kingship (Leeds, 1977), 50–71, at 66. ⁹ Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. F. E. Harmer, (Cambridge, 1914), no. 11; cf. Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, 1904), 14–15. ¹⁰ Keynes, Diplomas, Table I. ¹¹ Above, n. 7. This was not the only unusual aspect of Edward’s accession: see J. R. Maddicott, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Return to England in 1041’, EHR cxix (2004), 650–66. Keynes, Diplomas, 174, argues that Æthelred’s coronation may have been delayed until the body of his murdered

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genuine, firmly dated charter issued in the interim in which he is entitled quite straightforwardly: ‘Ego Eadward rex, regali fretus dignitate’.¹² The only possible exception to this traditional pattern is the accession of Harold II, who was ‘elected’ and anointed as king on the day after Edward the Confessor’s death.¹³ But in his case the witan were already assembled for the Christmas court and the consecration of the new abbey church at Westminster, and the whole king-making process was telescoped. Herman, a monk of Bury St Edmunds, provides us with the nearest we are likely to get to an eyewitness English account of Harold’s accession, for his abbot, Baldwin, was Edward the Confessor’s doctor. He says that Harold had usurped the kingdom ‘by adroit use of force’, making the mass of Edward’s funeral day double up as his own consecration mass: ‘at once, at the introit to the mass, Harold, son of Earl Godwine, was enthroned on the seat of the kingdom . . .’ By implication, the sacrilegious manner of Harold’s consecration was unprecedented. An allusion to his parentage hints that this may not have been unconnected with the dubious nature of his claim.¹⁴ The breach with tradition in Harold’s case therefore serves to confirm that consecration was not constitutive in Old English tradition; and even in his case there is no indication that this was what was thought to have made him king. So it is hardly surprising that the well-connected author of the D manuscript was shocked when Duke William appeared entirely to ignore the ceremony of submission and mutual pledging of oaths—which is what Anglo-Saxon royal ‘election’ or recognition seems to have amounted to¹⁵—including his own promise to be ‘hold hlaford’, and continued to inflict whatever damage could still be done. William of Poitiers reveals that the Normans had, or chose to present, a quite different perception of the English custom of royal accession. The duke would not begin to rule as king¹⁶ until he had undergone a ceremony of consecration, ‘setting aside the title of duke’.¹⁷ When he describes the submission of London to the conquering William, he says, shifting dramatically into the historic present, that the English pleaded that the duke should be crowned: ‘the bishops and the half-brother had been found and buried with great ceremony at Shaftesbury. In 1016 the English did not start the process of ‘electing’ a new king until Æthelred had been buried: Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. A. Campbell, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., lxxii (1949), 22. ¹² S. 998 ⫽ Anglo-Saxon Charters, iii, Charters of Sherborne, ed. M. A. O’Donovan (Oxford, 1988), no. 21 (8 June 1042). ¹³ ASC (E) s.a. 1066. ¹⁴ Herman, Miracula Sancti Eadmundi, in UAG 245–6 (for the events of 6 January 1066); ‘Annales Sancti Edmundi’, 129 (for Baldwin’s role as Edward the Confessor’s doctor). For English resistance to Harold’s accession, see William of Malmesbury, VW 56. ¹⁵ H. M. Chadwick, Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge, 1905), 355–66; for some idea of the form which the ceremony may have taken, see Gesetze, i. 396 (which concerns any lord, not just royal lords); and S. 397 (describing the ‘election’ of Edward the Martyr). ¹⁶ GG 148. ¹⁷ GG 150, cf. 132; also William of Jumièges, GND ii. 170; Fauroux, Recueil, no. 224: ‘Postquam vero consul, Deo adjuvante, de consule Rex Anglie est factus . . .’ The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens, ed. F. Barlow, OMT (Oxford, 1999), ll. 595–6, locates this change in title at the end of the battle of Hastings, rather than the coronation. Despite the ingenious hypothesis advanced by K. U. Jäschke, Wilhelm der Eroberer: sein doppelter Herrschaftsantritt im Jahre 1066

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rest of the great men beg him to take the crown, saying that they are used to serving a king, and that they wished to have a king as lord.’¹⁸ The point is stressed in Orderic Vitalis’ description of the same event, itself derived from William of Poitiers.¹⁹ It was this request which, according to William of Poitiers, prompted discussion in the invading army about whether the duke should become king by taking the crown.²⁰ Now it is true that the English were used to having their royal lords as kings, but their kings were already such long before they were crowned and consecrated. The Normans applied a French interpretation of the constitutive significance of the consecration ceremony to England, for Capetian royal successors took the title of king at an associative consecration during their fathers’ lifetimes, and regnal years were calculated either from that point or from the date of the father’s death.²¹ As Fulbert of Chartres put it, bishops were the ‘causa effectiva’ of kings.²² But in England after as before the Conquest there were no associations,²³ and a claimant became king at the consecration which followed the death of his predecessor. In the first case in which a Capetian king had not been consecrated during his father’s lifetime—that of Louis VI—Ivo of Chartres justified his immediate consecration as king in order to pre-empt interregnal disturbance in language which would have been familiar to Norman kings in England.²⁴

THE NORMAN CL AIM William of Poitiers, in an uncharacteristic moment of candour, revealed why the duke’s followers had a particularly strong vested interest in urging the consecration which, in their view, would make him king. He said that they would never have wanted his elevation as monarch unless he had been ‘outstandingly suitable (idoneus)’; but added as a rider, ‘although desiring the increase of their own profits and honours (commoda et honores) by his exaltation’.²⁵ If, writing around 1180, the Battle chronicler was right to characterize the Conquest as a joint enterprise²⁶—he makes Richard de Lucy say that ‘by the Conquest at Battle we were all enfeoffed’²⁷—then the claims of the duke’s co-conquerors to a share in (Sigmaringen, 1977), this further strengthens the case that the Carmen is neither trustworthy as a source nor contemporary with the Conquest. ¹⁸ GG 148. ¹⁹ Orderic ii. 182. ²⁰ GG 148. ²¹ For Capetian regnal dating, see A. W. Lewis, Royal Succession in Capetian France (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 257, n. 158. For Norman adoption of these diplomatic conventions with regard to French kings, see Fauroux, Recueil, p. 64 and n. 333. Duke Richard II witnessed a charter issued by King Robert the Pious at the associative coronation of his son Hugh in 1017: ibid., no. 22. ²² Tractatus contra Judaeos, in PL 141. 308. ²³ I attempt to show why associations were impossible after the Conquest below, pp. 185–6. In peculiar circumstances an attempt was made by Stephen to have his son Eustace anointed during his own lifetime, but it was unsuccessful: below, pp. 264–5. The first association in post-Conquest England was that of Henry II’s son Henry in 1170: see F. Barlow, Thomas Becket (London, 1986), 202–7. ²⁴ RHF xv. 144–6. ²⁵ GG 148. ²⁶ CBA 182. ²⁷ CBA 310.

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the spoils were ultimately dependent on the duke’s claim to the kingdom. As William of Poitiers’ book demonstrates in more detail than any other source, the principal tenet of that claim was that Edward the Confessor had bequeathed the kingdom to the duke as if it were a chattel or a parcel of land.²⁸ It had thereby become the duke’s, and his alone, by ‘hereditary right’,²⁹ for he had been appointed heir to it, as his haereditas.³⁰ But the duke would only secure what was his by hereditary right on becoming king; and the title was finally conferred upon him by Archbishop Ealdred of York’s anointing, on Christmas Day 1066. It was from that point, when he had formally entered into his inheritance, that his followers could begin to claim the rewards for their support; they had no other entitlement. As William of Malmesbury made William Rufus say to Roger de Montgommery while they were out riding together in the early stages of the 1088 revolt, the major tenants-in-chief should not call into question the judgement of his father in designating him as king, for ‘the same man had made him king as had made them magnates (duces)’.³¹ Their title to their lands in England was as dependent on the Conqueror’s grant as Rufus’s claim to consecration by Archbishop Lanfranc had been. It seems that Roger was persuaded.³² When William of Poitiers described the initial distribution of honores during the royal progress which followed the consecration in 1066, he stated that ‘nothing was given to a Gaul which had been unjustly taken from any Englishman’.³³ For the Normans such confiscations and subsequent grants of land were only just if William were justly king. A great deal of effort went into establishing the justice of his claim. But the placing of such strong and novel emphasis on the constitutive significance of consecration in 1066 necessitated correspondingly more precise assessment of the significance of the period of time prior to the ceremony. It was then, according to William of Poitiers, that the duke ‘decreed that he would avenge the injury with arms, and demand his inheritance with arms’³⁴ in pursuit of his justa causa.³⁵ The Penitential Ordinance of Ermenfrid of Sion permits some insight into the nature of the period prior to the Conqueror’s consecration.³⁶ It records penances imposed by Norman bishops soon after the Conquest for sins committed by members of the invading army. It was confirmed, perhaps somewhat later, by papal authority.³⁷ It appears to distinguish three periods: the battle of Hastings itself, ‘in the great battle’ (cap. 1); ‘after this battle and before the king’s consecration’ ²⁸ For this type of bequest in 11th-century Normandy, see E. Z. Tabuteau, Transfers of Property in Eleventh-Century Norman Law (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988), 24–7. ²⁹ GG 20, 68, 76, 118, 120; cf. William of Jumièges, GND ii. 158: ‘statuens heredem.’ ³⁰ GG 100. ³¹ GR i. 546. ³² R. Sharpe, ‘1088—William II and the Rebels’, ANS xxvi (2003), 139–58, at 144. ³³ GG 164. ³⁴ GG 100. ³⁵ GG 108. ³⁶ C&S ii. 581–4. ³⁷ C&S ii. 582; H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘The Anglo-Norman laudes regiae’, Viator, xii (1981), 37–78 at 59, n. 68. According to William of Jumièges, GND ii. 178, the English conspired to slay the Norman troops in a surprise attack during Lent 1068, ‘while the soldiers according to the custom of penance in Christian religion, incautiously and barefooted hastened to church’.

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(cap. 7); and ‘after the king’s consecration’ (cap. 9). In fact the penances for the first two periods, which are imposed according to the motives of the sinner as well as the nature of the sin, are exactly the same. Those who had killed enemies whilst fighting ‘out of duty’ on the duke’s orders, and who had been his vassals prior to the issuing of the orders, would have to do a penance of one year for each man they knew they had killed.³⁸ Those whose motives had been more dubious—who, for instance, were fighting out of greed—ought (debere) to have done penance as for a normal homicide. But because they had been so motivated to kill during a period of ‘public war (publicum bellum)’—a label which covered both the battle and the period up to the consecration—a penance of intermediate severity was imposed ‘pro misericordia’ (cap. 5). Those who had killed Englishmen who had resisted foraging parties during this period were to do one year’s penance for each man killed because, it was implied, they had acted on legitimate orders and had not been motivated by greed (cap. 7). Those who had killed while foraging ‘not out of necessity for food, but on account of plunder’ still benefited from the merciful dispensation for those whose killings were prompted by desire for gain during the battle, regardless of whether the English had been resisting or not (cap. 8). This state of publicum bellum had ended with the king’s consecration. Thenceforth all homicides incurred the full penance for those committed ‘wilfully’. But there was one significant exception: if any Englishman ‘who had hitherto resisted the king’ had been killed, the penance for the killer should be the same as in the period of publicum bellum (cap. 9). Thus full penance for killing unresisting Englishmen would only be imposed after the consecration; those who continued to resist were exempted from any new security which this might imply for William’s other English subjects. They had remained in a state of ‘public war’ with the new king.³⁹ The necessary inference would seem to be that before the consecration the English were resisting the duke who was not yet their constituted king. Such an inference would fit one aspect of the designation of (by implication) 1051–2, as described by William of Poitiers. King Edward sought the ‘assent’ of his nobles to his decision, prior to notifying Duke William of it.⁴⁰ According to a speech attributed to the duke immediately prior to the battle of Hastings, the most important of those nobles had confirmed by oath ‘taken with their hands that after the death of King Edward they would receive me as lord, and that during his lifetime they would not seek in any way to occupy the country against me by ³⁸ C&S ii. 583 (preamble). In the earliest extant provisions for the truce of God in Normandy, only the ruler was permitted to wage war: ‘during this peace no one except the king or the count of this country (comes huius patriae) may engage in mounted patrols or hostilities’, Concilia Rotomagensis Provinciae, ed. G. Bessin (Rouen, 1717), 39. According to M. de Bouard, ‘Sur les origines de la trêve de Dieu en Normandie’, Annales de Normandie, ix (1959), 169–89 at 186, this was the case nowhere else in France. ³⁹ Orderic Vitalis often refers to rebels as ‘publici hostes’: iv. 46, 84; vi. 20, 344, etc. For another regulation about penance for homicide committed ‘in publico bello’, see LHP 68. 12. ⁴⁰ GG 20.

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any hindrance’.⁴¹ Those who had sworn are named in the speech: ‘Archbishop’⁴² Stigand, and Earls Godwine, Leofric, and Siward. Harold’s unexplained absence (although he was already earl of East Anglia in 1051)⁴³ is advanced by the duke as the reason for his being sent by Edward to Normandy in 1064 or 1065 to swear a similar oath to William. Whereas the original oath-takers had necessarily sworn in the duke’s absence, Harold did so in his presence.⁴⁴ William of Poitiers elsewhere states that Edward had dispatched Harold as a precaution, reckoning that the earl was sufficiently powerful to restrain the ‘English race’ if they should later display towards Duke William the ‘perfidious fickleness’ for which they were already, according to this Frenchman, notorious.⁴⁵ In the event, of course, Harold himself proved to be perfidious. William of Poitiers remains revealingly unclear about the reason why the English shared in their new king’s guilt. In his desire to show that bloodshed was unavoidable at Hastings, and to be blamed on Harold, he makes the duke propose single combat to Harold’s envoy, because ‘I do not consider it just that my men or his should fall in battle, for they are not at fault in our dispute’.⁴⁶ The apparent implication is that the English were not yet guilty at this stage; once battle had been joined, however, they were.⁴⁷ But William of Poitiers’ definition of the point at which the English became guilty is not quite as straightforward as this may suggest. Apostrophizing Harold, he tells the earl that he had subjected his gens along with himself to Duke William, ‘solemnly swearing with your tongue and hand’.⁴⁸ If gens here means the English people, the precise force of their vicarious subjection is never spelt out. William of Poitiers could simply mean that their subjection to Duke William was the ultimate consequence of Harold’s action; but he might mean that they had been bound in some way by Harold’s oath. Moreover, he never considers whether the English as a people had already been bound by those oaths reportedly taken in 1051–2 by men who (with the exception of Stigand) were long since dead in 1066, and perhaps by the other unnamed magnates who are said to have assented. Edward’s ‘hereditary delegation’ to William had been ‘confirmed by the oaths of the English’.⁴⁹ If the English had been bound either by Harold’s oaths or those of 1051–2, or both, then, as we shall see, their infidelity was indistinguishable from that of Harold. William of Poitiers’ imprecision about the obligations (if any) of the English people as a whole to Duke William prior to the battle of Hastings mirrors the ⁴¹ GG 120. ⁴² F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (London, 1970), 107, n. 2 suggests that Stigand was not yet archbishop of Canterbury in 1051; but William of Poitiers may be implying that the ceremony took place after Stigand’s appointment in 1052. ⁴³ Ibid. 108. ⁴⁴ GG 120. ⁴⁵ GG 68. ⁴⁶ GG 120. William of Jumièges, GND ii. 160, states that Harold not only perjured himself, ‘but even unfaithfully turned all the race of the English against [William]’; later, p. 170, the slaughter of the English at Hastings is said to be divine retribution for ‘their unjust murder of Alfred, brother of King Edward’, in 1036; cf. GG 4–6. ⁴⁷ GG 132, 36; William does not attribute this guilt to their subsequent election of Eadgar ætheling as king: 146, 162. ⁴⁸ GG 76. ⁴⁹ GG 150.

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practical silence of the Penitential Ordinance on the subject. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that William of Poitiers thought what the Penitential Ordinance implies: that the English were in rebellion against the Conqueror long before he became king. Indeed, the argument in favour of hasty consecration which is shown to have weighed most heavily with the duke was that ‘when he had begun to reign he would find it easier to put down anyone who dared to rebel against him’⁵⁰—implying that he was already dealing with a rebellion, although he was not yet reigning. It is revealing that the only occasion on which William of Poitiers refers to the duke as king prior to his consecration is in his description of William himself leading a charge during the battle of Hastings: ‘he laid low the people [gens] opposed to him, which, rebelling against him, its king, deserved death.’⁵¹ Later he is plain dux again.⁵² William of Poitiers reveals the same ambivalent attitude to rebellion against a supposedly designated successor in his account of the resistance of the Manceaux against Duke William, before they received him as their count,⁵³ even though no one other than the previous count is said to have already bound himself to the duke.⁵⁴ Indeed, William of Poitiers explicitly draws a parallel between the two cases.⁵⁵ In the case of England, his ambivalence may be explained thus: although William had not begun to rule as king, he had already received England as a grant from Edward the Confessor. He is made to say as much when trying, in the aftermath of Harold’s usurpation, to persuade the Normans to participate in his projected Conquest: ‘we are seeking what we have received as a gift and have obtained as benefices (nos quae dono accepimus, beneficiis comparavimus, requirimus).’⁵⁶ In 1051–2, according to William of Poitiers, Edward had ‘decreed that by a lawful donation he had made him heir of the crown’,⁵⁷ that he ‘would be the heir of the English kingdom’.⁵⁸ Stigand and the earls had confirmed on oath that ‘after the death of King Edward’ they would receive Duke William ‘as lord’.⁵⁹ William of Poitiers’ model was the post obitum grant of land or chattels.⁶⁰ In eleventh-century Normandy it was a device for transferring land and goods to churches;⁶¹ but there is some evidence that designation of a successor as duke was conceived in similar terms.⁶² It was a gift the effects of which were intentionally ⁵⁰ GG 148; note, however, the contrary argument just above—contrasting the duke’s modesty with Harold’s ambition—that it would be better to delay the coronation until the country had been pacified. ⁵¹ GG 130. ⁵² GG 136, 138, 142, 144, etc. ⁵³ GG 60–2. ⁵⁴ GG 58. ⁵⁵ GG 58. ⁵⁶ GG 108. His use of the word beneficium is curious. It cannot in this context mean a tenure granted in return for service by the donee: Tabuteau, Transfers, 23. Nor can there be any implicit contrast with alodium, in the sense of land held iure hereditario: ibid. 96–7, 102–106. The word seems not yet to have acquired an invariable meaning: J. C. Holt, ‘Politics and Property in Early Medieval England’, repr. in id., CE, 113–59, at 116, n. 26. ⁵⁷ GG 20. ⁵⁸ GG 118. ⁵⁹ GG 120. ⁶⁰ J. S. Beckerman, ‘Succession in Normandy, 1087, and in England, 1066: The Rôle of Testamentary Custom’, Speculum, xlvii (1972), 258–60; E. Z. Tabuteau, ‘The Rôle of Law in the Succession to Normandy and England, 1087’, HSJ iii (1991), 141–69 at 153–4. ⁶¹ Tabuteau, Transfers, 24–7. ⁶² Fauroux, Recueil, no. 158 (29 June 1063), recording that William and Mathilda had chosen (‘elegerant’) Robert Curthose ‘ad gubernandum regnum post suum obitum’.

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delayed until the death of the donor, at which point the donee got the land or goods. In the case of England, the death of the donor on 5 January 1066 meant that, according to this model, the kingdom became the duke’s at that point. But on the following day he had been prevented from taking control of it by Harold, who had countered with a claim to a deathbed designation from Edward.⁶³ William of Poitiers’ contention was that the deathbed bequest was invalid, principally because Harold had debarred himself from accepting it by the terms of the oath he had taken to the duke;⁶⁴ and that therefore the original post obitum gift remained in force. Hence Duke William’s assertion, when the Conquest was little more than a glint in his eye, that he had already received the kingdom as a gift.⁶⁵ William of Poitiers’ use of the same legal model in his presentation of Duke William’s claim to Maine explains his ambivalence about the resistance of the Manceaux following Count Herbert II’s death.⁶⁶ Yet in that case the post obitum nature of the bequest had not explicitly been confirmed in oaths taken by leading nobles, binding themselves to accept him as lord after the donor’s death. In this respect, amongst others, the whole story of Edward the Confessor’s designation as advanced by William of Poitiers is uncannily reminiscent of ducal designation ceremonies in Normandy.⁶⁷ The purpose of those ceremonies, as expounded by Dudo of St-Quentin, who gave the first detailed accounts of them, was to create an indissoluble bond of faith between individual magnates and the designated successor, thereby ensuring that interregnal disturbances should not break out on the death of the ruling duke.⁶⁸ In William of Poitiers’ view, this was the bond which Harold, and (arguably) by association the rest of the English race, had severed with Duke William on 6 January 1066.

THE INVENTION OF ‘ THE TIME OF KING EDWARD’ Contemporary canonical discussion of publicum bellum defined it as violence in a just cause at the order of a legitimate ruler against a tyrant seeking to subvert Christian peace.⁶⁹ Although the initial provisions of the Penitential Ordinance referred to William’s commands as those of a (legitimate) duke, the justice of his cause implied the legitimacy of his claim to be king against that of the tyrant Harold. While the Ordinance dealt only with the period following William’s arrival in England, because there was no need to impose penances on the invaders before then, the tyrannical usurpation of Harold (and perhaps, by association, the ⁶³ GG 118, 140–2. ⁶⁴ GG 70, summarizes the provisions of the oath. For its role in barring Harold, see Tabuteau, ‘Role’, 153–4. ⁶⁵ Above, n. 56. ⁶⁶ GG 60–2. ⁶⁷ G. S. Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession in Early Normandy’, in Law and Government, 80–110. ⁶⁸ Dudo, 182, 220–2, discussed by Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 89–90. ⁶⁹ H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Bishop Ermenfrid of Sion and the Penitential Ordinance following the Battle of Hastings’, JEH xx (1969), 225–42, esp. 236–40. See the analysis in Burchard of Worms’ Decretum, in PL 140. 770–1.

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English) necessarily dated from Harold’s accession. Given the stress laid on the constitutive force of royal consecration by the Normans, a major problem for those arguing William’s case was that Harold had been anointed. William of Poitiers went to considerable lengths to invalidate the ‘election’, stating that few nobles were present, which must be untrue in view of the Christmas court and the consecration of the new abbey church at Westminster. And he stressed that Archbishop Stigand, the one surviving oath-taker of 1051–2, had been deprived of his ‘priestly ministry’ by papal anathema, rendering his alleged anointing of Harold worthless: ‘he was ordained with an impious consecration (non sancta consecratione).’⁷⁰ Perhaps as a consequence, Harold’s head was not protected by ‘aequitas’.⁷¹ Nevertheless, even writing c.1077,⁷² he still occasionally referred to Harold as ‘rex’, albeit a perjured one.⁷³ The Bayeux Tapestry also gave Harold this title.⁷⁴ But if the Penitential Ordinance may be securely dated to c.1067,⁷⁵ it is clear from the canonical principles on which it is based that the major elements in William’s claim must have been in place very soon after the Conquest—as, indeed, the papal backing for William’s cause would lead us to expect.⁷⁶ Norman attitudes to Harold did not become ambiguous in the 1070s; they were so from the start. Indeed, the ambiguities were gradually resolved as the implications of William’s claim were worked out in the course of his reign. Many years ago J. H. Round drew attention to an early writ of William the Conqueror which, he claimed, opened ‘a new chapter in the history of the Norman Conquest’.⁷⁷ With the notable exception of V. H. Galbraith, it has been largely ignored ever since.⁷⁸ In it King William granted lands to ‘Regenbald my ⁷⁰ GG 100; JW ii. 600 records that Harold was consecrated by Archbishop Ealdred, as William was to be. ⁷¹ GG 122. ⁷² R. H. C. Davis, ‘William of Poitiers and his History of William the Conqueror’, repr. in id., From Alfred the Great to Stephen (London, 1991), 101–30 at 104. ⁷³ Initially, no title is attributed to Harold, and he is referred to as rex only when English messages to the duke are quoted: GG 116. Later he is called rex: 122, 138. William of Jumièges, GND ii. 168, refers to Harold as king on one occasion only, when describing the emotions of the English on learning of Harold’s death. ⁷⁴ The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. D. M. Wilson (London, 1985), pls. 31 (‘REX: ANGLORUM’), 53–4, 56, 64–5, 71. ⁷⁵ Above, n. 37. ⁷⁶ R. H. C. Davis, ‘The Carmen de Hastingae proelio’, repr. in id. From Alfred the Great to Stephen, 79–100 at 85, n. 4, shows that the case against papal involvement in the Conquest put by C. Morton, ‘Pope Alexander II and the Norman Conquest’, Latomus, xxxiv (1975), 362–82 at 372–3, rests ultimately on an unconvincing interpretation of Gregory VII’s letter to King William of 24 April 1080: Gregorii VII Registrum, ed. E. Caspar, MGH: Epistolae Selectae, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1920), vii, no. 23. For Alexander II’s warm relations with William in the immediate aftermath of the Conquest, see his letter to John of Avranches and his privilege for St-Étienne: epp. 55, 56, in PL 146. 1339–41, both cited by Cowdrey, ‘Laudes’, 59, n. 67; see also the undated fragment of a letter written to the new king in Die Kanonessamlung des Kardinals Deusdedit, ed. W. von Glanvell (Paderborn, 1905), 378 (JL 4757). ⁷⁷ J. H. Round, Feudal England: Historical Studies of the XIth and XIIth Centuries (London, 1909), 422. ⁷⁸ See the inspirational discussion in V. H. Galbraith, Domesday Book: Its Place in Administrative History (Oxford, 1974), 175–83 at 176.

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priest . . . with sake and soke as fully and freely as they were held most firmly in the hands of King Harold (Harald kinge) . . . ’.⁷⁹ It is addressed, amongst others, to ‘Eustace eorl’—that is, to Eustace, count of Boulogne—and must therefore pre-date the confiscation of his estates in 1067, probably in the autumn, consequent upon his mysterious rebellion.⁸⁰ Indeed, it probably pre-dates the Conqueror’s triumphal return to Normandy at the beginning of April 1067. Another early vernacular writ in which Count Eustace is also an addressee grants manors in Battersea and Pyrford to St Peter’s, Westminster, ‘as fully and freely as Harold held it in all things on the day that he was alive and dead (cwicu and dead )’. Harold is not given the title of king here, but the lands are granted as he had held them on the day of his death, that is, on 14 October 1066.⁸¹ The latter writ must be associated with another vernacular document in favour of Westminster, which recorded the grant of two estates at Feering and Ockendon to St Peter’s in exchange for a Westminster estate at Windsor;⁸² for although there is no mention of Windsor in the Battersea writ, the corresponding Domesday entry says of Battersea: ‘King William gave this manor to St Peter in exchange for Windsor.’⁸³ According to Domesday Book, Feering and Ockendon,⁸⁴ like Battersea and Pyrford, had been held by Harold in Edward the Confessor’s time. But instead of defining them in this writ in terms similar to those used in the Battersea writ— that is, as Harold had held on the day of his death—William the Conqueror commanded that they be held by the abbey as fully and freely as he himself had granted them. So those who drafted these early writs attempted to define precisely what the king was granting or confirming in terms of the situation at a variety of fixed points in the past. There was as yet no consensus; the writs share no common point of reference in the definition of legitimate tenure. Yet a later Latin version of the Feering writ records that the estates were granted ‘with everything which belonged there on that day when Edward the Confessor was alive and dead; and ⁷⁹ Reg. no. 223 (1066 ⫻ 67); further S. D. Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS x (1987), 185–222 at 211, n. 152; he plausibly suggests at p. 220, n. 216 that the reference to Harold as king may betray an English scribe. Reg. no. 286 (May 1068) refers to Harold as rex, while condemning him for stealing Banwell from the bishop of Wells. It is regarded as an ‘unexceptionable’ charter in the Anglo-Saxon form by Keynes, pp. 219–20. It may be no coincidence that the only official documents from William’s reign to refer to Harold as king were both issued in favour of sometime priests in Edward the Confessor’s writing office. Reg. no. 224 (1066 ⫻ 67) confirms to Regenbald all the lands and privileges he had held in the time of King Edward. Bates regards it as a ‘companion’ of no. 223, but in view of the different term of reference it seems likely that this is a corrected confirmation. ⁸⁰ GND ii. 176–8; GG 182–4; Orderic ii. 204–6; for the suggested date, see D. C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (London, 1964), 212, n. 3; further H. Tanner, ‘The Expansion of the Power and Influence of the Counts of Boulogne under Eustace II’, ANS xiv (1991), 251–86 at 272–4. The other secular addressees of the writ are surviving English officials, who seem to have been replaced soon after the Conquest: Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, 211, n. 152. ⁸¹ Reg. no. 291 (1066 ⫻ 70, almost certainly 1066 ⫻ 67); for a careless reference to the same date, see DB i. 180a. ⁸² Reg. no. 299 (1066 ⫻ 70). ⁸³ DB i. 32b. ⁸⁴ DB ii. 14b, 15a.

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let [the abbey] have it as well and as fully and as freely as Earl Harold (Haroldus comes) held at that time . . .’.⁸⁵ The same shift in, and standardization of, the terminus is apparent in three twelfth-century ‘improvements’ on these original grants.⁸⁶ But there is no need to go as far as the twelfth century for evidence of this change; it is already manifest in the corresponding entries in Domesday Book. These either state explicitly that ‘Harold held in the time of King Edward’ (tempore regis Eadwardi, conventionally contracted to t.r.e. or, still more formulaically, T.R.E.), or do so implicitly by recording the fact of his previous tenure and the resources of the manor T.R.E.⁸⁷ T.R.E. is normally (but not always)⁸⁸ an abbreviation for ‘die in qua rex. E[adwardus]. fuit vivus et mortuus’,⁸⁹ or ‘die obitus regis E.’,⁹⁰ or ‘die qua mortuus fuit’.⁹¹ In his London writ, issued soon after his consecration,⁹² King William declared to the bishop, portreeve, and burgesses of London that he wished them to be entitled to all the laws (laga) which they had enjoyed in King Edward’s day.⁹³ Reference to a previous king’s ‘day’ was fairly common in Anglo-Saxon documents, and was often associated with a confirmation of the good law which had been in force at that time.⁹⁴ It may be that Edward the Confessor had been persuaded to take an oath to maintain ‘the laws of Cnut and his sons’ shortly before his own accession,⁹⁵ in much the same way that Cnut had agreed to observe Edgar’s law at Oxford in 1018.⁹⁶ The only surviving writ of King Harold declares that Bishop Giso of Wells should have sake and soke, toll and team, and infangentheof, ‘as fully and freely as ever he held in King Edward’s day in all things’.⁹⁷ As both Harold and William stressed that they were the designated successors of Edward the Confessor, it is hardly surprising that they appeared to attribute prescriptive force to the status quo in Edward’s reign. The laws of Cnut, which Edward had in 1041 possibly pledged should ‘continue in his time with unshaken firmness’,⁹⁸ and which he had certainly been forced to renew in 1065 as the price of settling the Northumbrian revolt,⁹⁹ seem to have been transformed by Edward’s death into Edward’s laws, ⁸⁵ Reg. no. 300 (1066 ⫻ 75). ⁸⁶ Reg. nos. 317, 320, 322. ⁸⁷ DB ii. 14b, 15a (‘t.r.e.’); i. 32b (‘T.R.E.’). ⁸⁸ DB i. 5d, 32c. ⁸⁹ DB i. 135d; see R. W. Finn, Domesday Studies: The Liber Exoniensis (London, 1964), 76. ⁹⁰ DB i. 175b. ⁹¹ DB i. 32a (‘Rex.E.tenebat die qua mortuus fuit’), 32d (mors R.E.). ⁹² GG 158. ⁹³ Reg. no. 180; Bishop and Chaplais, Facsimiles, pl. XIV. Note that it also prescribes that every child shall be his father’s heir after his father’s ‘day’. ⁹⁴ Writs, ed. Harmer, no. 51, for Edward the Confessor’s concession to the cnihtengild of London; cf. nos. 31, 44. For similar phrasing in an early vernacular writ of William, see Reg. no. 98 (1066 ⫻ 84, probably 1066 ⫻ c.1070): ‘on Eaduuardes dayhe kinges.’ Cf. IV Edgar 2a, in Gesetze, i. 208. Domesday Book preserves occasional references to what had obtained in the times of earlier kings: DB i. 65c, 252c, 263a, 264b (‘tempore Cnut regis’ and the like); 253c (‘Tempore Adelredi patris.E.regis’). ⁹⁵ ‘Argumentum’ to Quadripartitus, caps. 1, 9, in Gesetze, i. 532–3; R. Sharpe, ‘The Prefaces of Quadripartitus’, in Law and Government, 148–72, at 162, 164; cf. LHP 20. 3. Maddicott, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Return’, passim, makes the plausible case for taking this account seriously. ⁹⁶ ASC (D) s.a. 1018; cf. Cnut’s letter of 1020, cap. 13, in Gesetze, i. 274. ⁹⁷ Writs, ed. Harmer, no. 71. ⁹⁸ Sharpe, ‘Prefaces’, 164. ⁹⁹ ASC (D) (E) s.a. 1065.

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proclaimed by his legitimate successor, William.¹⁰⁰ But the phrase ‘die in qua rex Eadwardus fuit vivus et mortuus’ is clearly more precise than a general reference to the reign of an earlier king. Although Anglo-Saxon wills frequently allude to the testator’s ‘last day (næghestan dæge)’,¹⁰¹ on which the gift-contract came into force,¹⁰² the expression ‘cwicu and dead’ or ‘vivus et mortuus’ does not occur in any extant pre-Conquest document. Probably the first instance is in the definition of rights appurtenant to the manors granted in the Battersea writ as they had been on the day when Harold ‘was alive and dead’.¹⁰³ Like the phrase ‘French and English’, apparently coined by whoever drafted the London writ, it can probably be attributed to the ingenuity of a surviving member of Edward the Confessor’s chancery. The very early date and importance of the London writ make it tempting to credit the formula ‘French and English’ to Regenbald, who is likely to have been the Conqueror’s first chancellor as he had been the Confessor’s last¹⁰⁴ (and, by inference, King Harold’s too). Perhaps he also coined ‘alive and dead’, for the Battersea writ was almost certainly drafted before his retirement in 1067,¹⁰⁵ recorded in one of the two extant official documents of the Conqueror’s reign to refer to Harold as king. Whether or not he was the author of the neologism, it soon came to be applied to Edward the Confessor rather than Harold. The initial indecision about where to fix the legal baseline was rapidly resolved, being defined by the interplay between claims in the land disputes which litter the Conqueror’s reign. It became the last date of legitimate tenure of the English throne prior to the king’s own arrival in England. Thereby it demonstrated the prescriptive role of the king’s own claim in defining legitimate tenure. The earliest evidence is provided by the pleas in which several churches became embroiled in the 1070s, as they sought to recover lands of which their bishops and abbots claimed they had been despoiled. Many of these claims were concerned with lands which had been lost in the aftermath of the Conquest. But some of them reached back behind it into the reign of Edward (and occasionally even further),¹⁰⁶ thereby demonstrating that the legal baseline of Edward the Confessor’s death was not the limit of legal memory. In 1070 Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester successfully recovered lands from Thomas, archbishop of York, which Archbishop Ealdred, ¹⁰⁰ This equation was certainly made later: ‘Argumentum’ to Quadripartitus, cap. 1, Sharpe, ‘Prefaces’, 162: ‘The laws that go by King Edward’s name, derived from the institutes of Cnut in the first place . . .’ ¹⁰¹ e.g. Alfred’s will, above, n. 9. ¹⁰² H. D. Hazeltine, preface to Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. D. Whitelock (Cambridge, 1930), pp. xi, xxii. ¹⁰³ Reg., no. 291, cited above, n. 81; see also Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1956), app. I, no. 4, a record of dues pertaining to Taunton. Simon Keynes assures me that he knows of no other instances in Old English. The phrase does not appear in R. L. Venezky and A. di P. Healey, Microfiche Concordance to Old English (Toronto, 1980). ‘Alive or dead’ is found in Old English legal sources: Gesetze, ii. 44; cf. Vita Ædwardi Regis, ed. F. Barlow, 2nd edn., OMT (Oxford, 1992), 36. ‘Alive and dead’ was interpolated into an Old English source when it was adapted to meet post-Conquest circumstances, in LHP 70. 18: Gesetze, i. 589. ¹⁰⁴ Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, 208–11. ¹⁰⁵ Reg., no. 223. Note that Count Eustace is an addressee in both documents. ¹⁰⁶ Below, pp. 14–15.

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who had preceded them both—briefly keeping the see of Worcester in plurality after his elevation to York in 1060—had retained on being forced by the pope to relinquish Worcester in 1062.¹⁰⁷ Probably in 1072 at Penenden Heath, Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, initiated¹⁰⁸ the recovery of lands for Christ Church, Canterbury, primarily from Odo of Bayeux, earl of Kent. Most of the lands had been lost not to Odo, but to Earl Godwine and his family during Edward’s reign, and perhaps even earlier.¹⁰⁹ Odo had simply succeeded to these encroachments, and the conflict between archbishop and earl was to a large extent a reprise of that between Robert of Jumièges and Godwine in 1051–2.¹¹⁰ So it is hardly surprising that in these cases invocations of Anglo-Saxon precedent did not specifically mention the reign of Edward the Confessor, when the disputes they were intended to settle had already been festering; let alone the date of his death, when almost all the disputed lands had not been in the hands of the plaintiffs. Wulfstan and Lanfranc were appealing against the Edwardian status quo, not seeking its restoration. In the case of Worcester’s dispute with York, the church’s claims were grounded in a more distant English past, in its endowment by earlier kings.¹¹¹ In that of Canterbury, the earliest accounts¹¹² of Penenden Heath record that ‘the Frenchborn and especially the English were assembled, who were expert in the ancient laws and customs’;¹¹³ in other words they agree in not being chronologically precise about which Old English laws and customs were deemed relevant.¹¹⁴ The imprecision is the more striking because these early accounts present the losses exclusively as the (post-Conquest) work of Odo, and if Odo had been responsible, a restoration of the situation in Edward’s reign would have been Lanfranc’s obvious objective. Although the surviving records of Penenden Heath, like those relating to Worcester’s dispute with York, were compiled long after the events, they can be shown to be based on earlier sources, now lost. That they include no reference to King Edward, of a type which had become formulaic by ¹⁰⁷ VW 46, 60–4; JW iii. 12, 16. ¹⁰⁸ D. R. Bates, ‘The Land Pleas of William I’s Reign: Penenden Heath Re-visited’, BIHR li (1978), 1–19, esp. 10–13, shows that the extant documents roll up the results of a series of pleas which almost certainly began in 1072. Most of the documents are conveniently printed in Lawsuits no. 5; some are edited by J. Le Patourel, ‘The Reports of the Trial on Penenden Heath’, in R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin, and R. W. Southern (eds.), Studies in Medieval History Presented to F. M. Powicke (Oxford, 1948), 21–6. ¹⁰⁹ Bates, ‘Penenden Heath’, 16; N. P. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984), 300–1. ¹¹⁰ Bates, ‘Penenden Heath’, 14–17; Vita Ædwardi, 32. ¹¹¹ JW iii. 16. ¹¹² Bates, ‘Penenden Heath’, 10–11, establishes that the documents he and Le Patourel label A (⫽ Lawsuits no. 5B), B (not printed in Lawsuits), and D (⫽ Lawsuits no. 5A) preserve the earliest accounts; for a recent discussion of the interrelationship, see A. Cooper, ‘Extraordinary Privilege: The Trial of Penenden Heath and the Domesday Inquest’, EHR cxvi (2001), 1167–92, esp. 1172–8. ¹¹³ Texts A, B, D: Le Patourel, ‘Reports’, 22. ¹¹⁴ Cf. Baldwin of Bury St Edmunds’ attempt to defend his abbey’s liberty against Bishop Herfast of East Anglia, in a joint meeting of the courts of nine shires described in Herman’s Miracula Sancti Edmundi, UAG, 254 (⫽ Lawsuits no. 9): ‘Abbot Ælfwine of Ramsey, then in the fullness of his days and an old man, whose testimony went back to the time of King Cnut, was backed up by the voice of the nine shires: the aforesaid abbey thrived at that time on the attested liberty.’

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the time they were written, strengthens the likelihood that they preserve some of the original terms of the pleading from those lost sources.¹¹⁵ However, where early land pleas were concerned with depredations which had really happened since the Conquest, rather than adjudicating disputes stretching back into Edward’s reign and beyond, they do, from the start, refer to ‘the time of King Edward’. One of the first examples is a series of pleas in which the abbot of Ely sought to recover lands for his church. A record of 1071–5 concludes with the judgement that whatever had been in the abbey’s demesne in ‘the time of King Edward’ should be returned.¹¹⁶ That ‘the time of King Edward’ meant, or rapidly came to mean, his dying day is indicated by a number of documents relating to later pleas concerned with Ely’s land and rights, many of which use the phrase ‘the day on which King Edward was alive and dead’.¹¹⁷ The same phenomenon is evident in the records of other early pleas.¹¹⁸ This can only be a result of King William’s claim determining the baseline for the definition of all tenurial and other rights, as he and his judicial agents attempted to adjudicate conflicting claims to land which had arisen since Edward the Confessor’s death. The developed procedure is well illustrated by a writ, probably dating from 1082, summoning yet another joint court of several shires to settle the continuing disputes about Ely’s lands. When the court had been assembled, William commanded that ‘many of those Englishmen should be chosen who know how the lands of the aforesaid church lay on the day when King Edward died, and let them confirm what they say by oath. When this has been done, let the lands of the church be restored which were in its demesne on the day of Edward’s death, except for those which men claim that I have given them . . .’¹¹⁹ Inquest procedure was used to provide English testimony as to the status quo at the defining point; but even in the case of a church—a landholder which had survived the Conquest—this testimony would not necessarily result in a blanket restoration. If men presently holding lands which were established to have been ¹¹⁵ For instance, texts A and B begin (Le Patourel, ‘Reports’, 21): ‘Tempore magni regis Willelmi qui anglicum regnum armis conquisivit. & suis ditionibus subiugavit.’ Such candour would have been almost unthinkable by the time the texts were being written, in the late 11th or early 12th century: Bates, ‘Penenden Heath’, 10. Cooper, ‘Extraordinary Privilege’, 1170, ignores the candour, but considers that the reference to William’s time makes it likely that this account was written after his death. ¹¹⁶ Reg. no. 117 (1071 ⫻ 75); discussed by Round, Feudal England, 459–61; E. Miller, ‘The Ely Land Pleas in the Reign of William I’, EHR lxii (1947), 438–56 at 441–2; LE 203, n. a. ¹¹⁷ Reg. no. 122 (⫽ Lawsuits no. 18C) (1075/6 ⫻ 87, possibly 1080 ⫻ 81/2 or ⫻ 87), discussed by Blake, LE 199, n. 3, 426–7; Reg. no. 119 (⫽ Lawsuits no. 18D), (1081/2 ⫻ 83) discussed by Blake, LE 204, n. 1, 428, 431: ‘die quo rex AEDWARDUS fuit mortuus’; Reg. no. 120 (⫽ Lawsuits no. 18E) (1081/2 ⫻ 83 (before 18 July) ), discussed by Blake, LE 203, n. 1, 428–9, 431: ‘die rex AEDWARDUS obiit’; Reg. no. 121 (⫽ Lawsuits no. 18F) (1081/2 ⫻ 86, but perhaps 1070 ⫻ 86), discussed by Blake, LE 204, n. 3, 431; Reg. no. 123 (⫽ Lawsuits no. 18G) (1081/2 ⫻ 87, and perhaps 1081/2⫻83), discussed by Blake, LE 206, n. 1, 429: ‘tempore regis Edwardi, scilicet qua die ipse rex mortuus est’. I have followed Blake’s putative arrangement, rather than Miller’s. Either way, the point holds. ¹¹⁸ Reg. no. 134 (⫽ Lawsuits no. 10C) (1078 ⫻ 82/3, and possibly 1078 ⫻ 81/2), issued in favour of Abbot Walter of Evesham. ¹¹⁹ Reg. no. 120.

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demesne lands of the church at the time of King Edward’s death claimed to do so by King William’s gift, then the king required simply to be informed of the alleged facts in writing. By implication, he reserved a final decision about their future to himself. In a writ probably issued shortly before this one, the king suggested that he might ‘give an exchange or do something else’ for someone who held by his gift land which had formerly been in the abbey’s demesne.¹²⁰ But he did not regard himself as bound by the situation which had obtained at the time of Edward’s death. An associated writ commands that the abbot should be ‘reseised’ with lands held by named individuals, if he could demonstrate that the lands were of the abbey’s demesne, and if those individuals could not show that they held them by the king’s gift. By inference, those who could establish that they held lands which were not of the abbey’s demesne and/or held by the king’s gift would not necessarily have to restore the lands in question to the abbey.¹²¹ It would all depend on what the king himself decided, after hearing how the present tenant claimed to hold by his gift, and how large the tenancy was.¹²² In other words, it was William’s grant or confirmation which determined who held, not what was established by English testimony to have been the situation on 5 January 1066. What was shown in court to have been the status quo at that point determined what rights the present tenant should have. But even in the case of land which was deemed then to have been in a church’s demesne—as opposed to land which had already been leased to lay tenants by that point, or over which the church had then had no more than soke rights¹²³—it was William who decided who the present tenant should be. The successful recovery of lands which had not been held at that point by the churches of Worcester¹²⁴ and Canterbury¹²⁵ likewise happened by command of the king. This makes sense: the day of Edward the Confessor’s death had come to have such significance only because of its importance in William’s claim to the kingdom. As we shall see, the fact that the decision lay with the king transformed the rights held, so that they came to bear little resemblance to what had actually been held during the reign of Edward the Confessor. Orderic Vitalis’ picture of the new king struggling to learn Old English so that he could follow the pleading in court is a deeply satisfying one;¹²⁶ but it is so because it inverts the true nature of the relationship between the king and the English past. He was not subservient to it; he used it for his own purposes. In order to do so, he needed access to it. As he sought to maintain control over the massive redistribution of lands to his co-conquerors, he was hardly likely to disregard the administrative machine which Edward the Confessor (and Harold) had left almost intact. It has been shown, for instance, that fiscal documents recording the Edwardian tenurial situation may well lie behind Domesday ¹²⁰ Reg. no. 119. ¹²¹ Reg. no. 121. ¹²² Reg. no. 119. ¹²³ For some examples of lay tenants successfully contesting the attempts of churches to recover lands which had been leased out prior to the Conquest, despite the expiry of the terms of the lease, see A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), 142–3. ¹²⁴ VW 64. ¹²⁵ Le Patourel, ‘Reports’, 24, texts A and B. ¹²⁶ Orderic, ii. 256.

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Book;¹²⁷ and the whole process of redistribution was channelled through the traditional fora of the shire or hundred courts.¹²⁸ But William had no need to mug up Old English himself in order to use the existing administrative and legal framework. Nor in all probability did his troubleshooting foreign judges. These included Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, who presided over Penenden Heath, the pleas concerning Worcester and Ely, and became a Domesday commissioner; and Archbishop Lanfranc, who intervened in the Worcester dispute, was a plaintiff at Penenden Heath, and was an addressee of the writs of 1082 relating to the Ely pleas.¹²⁹ They did not have to do so because the new regime was ably served by quislings well versed in the terminology and technicalities of English law and administration. The circumstances of Earl Waltheof ’s death tend to obscure the fact that he was one of the commissioners who presided in the first stage of the Ely land pleas.¹³⁰ Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham, like the (supposedly) saintly Wulfstan, survived the otherwise comprehensive purging of the upper echelons of the English church; both were noted for their legal acumen, Hemming snidely remarking of Æthelwig that he studied nothing other than secular law.¹³¹ They could advise on the maintenance of the forms of Old English law, while helping to preside over a transformation in the consequences of its application. They could, for instance, interpret the testimony of their compatriots as to what had obtained T.R.E., a terminus of a sort which they would have known had no precedent in Old English law. The treatment of one witness, Æthelric, the aged bishop of Selsey, on whose testimony as to ‘the ancient customs of the laws’ the plea at Penenden Heath seems to have turned, forced the theory and practice of the Conquest into richly ironic juxtaposition, thereby demonstrating the reality behind the professed reverence for traditional English law and what rapidly became ‘the time of King Edward’. So hoary and decrepit was Æthelric that he had to be brought to the trial, at the king’s command, in a cart, ‘in order to discuss and expound the ancient laws and customs’.¹³² Yet at precisely this time Pope Alexander II—who had officially sanctioned the Conquest—was reproaching the ¹²⁷ S. P. J. Harvey, ‘Domesday Book and its Predecessors’, EHR lxxvi (1971), 753–73, esp. 758–60, 763; id., ‘Domesday Book and Anglo-Norman Governance’, TRHS, 5th ser., xxv (1975), 175–93 at 183–4. ¹²⁸ P. Wormald, ‘Domesday Lawsuits: A Provisional List and Preliminary Comment’, in C. Hicks (ed.), England in the Eleventh Century (Stamford, 1992), 61–102, at 64–5 points out that whether the shire or the hundred is recorded as testifying in Domesday seems to depend on the conventions of particular circuits. R. Fleming, Domesday Book and the Law (Cambridge, 1998), 41, states that the men of the hundred rather than the men of the shire were more likely to have witnessed land transactions, but fails to note the differing practices of the circuits. In any case, the men of a particular hundred could surely witness transactions relevant to their hundred in the shire court. ¹²⁹ Letters of Lanfranc no. 1, for his (initial) ignorance of Old English. ¹³⁰ Reg. no. 117. ¹³¹ Wulfstan: HN 45–6; VW 62 (attributing his skill as an advocate to divine inspiration); Æthelwig: CAE 89; Hemingi Chartularium Ecclesiae Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1723), i. 269–71, discussed by R. R. Darlington, ‘Æthelwig, Abbot of Evesham’, EHR xlviii (1933), 1–22, 177–98 at 11–18. According to Hemming, i. 270, even the French were intimidated by Æthelwig’s legal acumen. ¹³² Le Patourel, ‘Reports’, 23, texts A and B (⫽ Lawsuits, no. 5B).

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king for the injustice of his deposition of Æthelric¹³³ during one of the drastic purges of English clerics which marked the early years of the reign.¹³⁴

OFFICIAL HISTORY IN DOMESDAY BOOK The result of this legal subjugation of the English past, following on from the subjugation of England itself, is apparent in Domesday Book. The systematic recording of the situation T.R.E. is laid down in its very terms of reference, preserved in the Inquisitio Eliensis.¹³⁵ Domesday Book almost succeeds in giving the impression that England had not been subjugated at all. Apart from the occasional mistake, as when a scribe slipped up in his proof-reading, allowing jurors’ statements like ‘Harold took it when he usurped the kingdom’ or even ‘when he was reigning’¹³⁶ to stand, any reference to the period between Edward’s death and William’s arrival in England is studiously avoided. The ambiguity of the tempus Haroldi was carefully sustained.¹³⁷ When some lands had been acquired by Harold as king, and were still in William’s hands in 1086, Domesday Book described Harold’s transaction thus: ‘These five lands were taken by Earl Harold (Heraldus comes) after the death of King Edward.’¹³⁸ The same sort of manipulation is to be seen in the entry which corresponds to the early writ which referred to Harold as king: ‘Two held for two manors in the time of King Edward; Earl Harold (Heraldus comes) joined them into one.’¹³⁹ The day of Edward the Confessor’s death had become a terminus. But following it there lay an unacknowledged gap¹⁴⁰ which only ended ‘after the arrival of King William (post adventum regis W.)’,¹⁴¹ or ‘after he crossed the sea’,¹⁴² or—another uncorrected mistake—‘after King William conquered England (postquam rex W. conquisivit Angliam)’.¹⁴³ In view of the use of distinct circuits to compile the information on which the Book is based, the importance of transcribing (and therefore translating) spoken English (and other) testimony in that process of compilation,¹⁴⁴ and ¹³³ Letters of Lanfranc no. 7. ¹³⁴ JW iii. 10–14. ¹³⁵ Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis and Inquistio Eliensis, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton (London, 1876), 97; V. H. Galbraith, The Making of Domesday Book (Oxford, 1961), 60. ¹³⁶ DB i. 38b. ¹³⁷ At DB ii. 5b, ‘in tempore haroldi’ appears to refer to ‘t.r.e.’, whereas at i. 80d it clearly refers to a time after Edward’s death. ¹³⁸ DB i. 162d; cf. 43b ‘post mortem regis.E. . . . antequam rex.W.venisset’; 132c, 134c. ¹³⁹ DB i. 68b; cf. Reg. no. 223, discussed above, n. 79. ¹⁴⁰ For rare exceptions see DB i. 43b, 177d; ii. 15a. ¹⁴¹ DB i. 1a, 143d, 153a, 208d; ii. 31a, 46a, 46b, 47b, 87a, 110a, 212b; cf. ‘postquam rex.W.venit in Anglia’ or the like: i. 164c, 215c, 215d, 216c, 218b; ii. 5, 6a, 13a, 15a, 16b, 30a, 31b, 91a, etc.; ‘quando rex mare transivit’: i. 154d. ¹⁴² DB i. 48d, 154d; ii. 10b, 15a. ¹⁴³ DB ii. 124b; cf. Le Patourel, ‘Reports’, 21 (texts A and B): ‘Tempore magni regis Willelmi qui anglicum regnum armis conquisivit . . . ’ ¹⁴⁴ For instance, accounts A, B, and D of Penenden Heath, cited above, n. 112; Reg. no. 120, cited above, n. 117. For English expressions in Domesday, see P. Chaplais, ‘William of St-Calais and the Domesday Survey’, in J. C. Holt (ed.), Domesday Studies (Woodbridge, 1987), 65–77 at 70. For the testimony of Reginald, abbot of Abingdon in the shire court of Berkshire, see DB i. 59b: it is unlikely

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the speed with which the enterprise was completed,¹⁴⁵ it is a credit to the efficiency of the various sets of commissioners that there are so few slips. The premises that (1) William was Edward’s legitimately designated successor, having been granted the kingdom by him as a post obitum gift, and (2) that Harold was a tyrannical usurper who had never held legitimate power, had been pushed to their logical conclusions during the land pleas of the reign. Harold was no longer a perjured king, he had never been a king. His reign was subject to a legal damnatio memoriae. It had never happened. When he is given any title at all in Domesday,¹⁴⁶ in entries referring to the periods before or (very occasionally) after 5 January 1066, the word comes is, on second thoughts, grudgingly interlineated above his name, in order to distinguish him from eponymous Englishmen. As far as Domesday Book is concerned, the ‘time of King William’, denoted by the acronym T.R.W., appeared to follow on directly from T.R.E.¹⁴⁷ The word ‘postea’ (afterwards) is frequently used in Domesday to refer to any event which had happened after the death of Edward, whether prior to William’s ‘arrival’ or subsequently. Thus, for instance, the entry for Poringland, Norfolk, records that ‘King Edward had sake and soke over all those free men; and afterwards Gyrth acquired it by force, but King William granted with the manor the sake and soke of all Gyrth’s free men just as he [Gyrth] held’.¹⁴⁸ Gyrth was Harold’s brother, who died at Hastings, so ‘postea’ here permits an oblique reference to events which had happened in Harold’s reign. But the word was also used to refer to the Conqueror’s reign: thus land had been sold to the church of St Mary of Stowe ‘in the time of King Edward; and there it lay on the day when the same king died; and afterwards Bishop Remigius was seised of it’.¹⁴⁹ Remigius became bishop of Dorchester in 1067. This ambiguity in the use of ‘postea’ reflects the assumption which is implicit in the Penitential Ordinance and explicit in William of Poitiers: that the English were resisting William even before he had become their consecrated king.¹⁵⁰ But in Domesday Book it had been transformed into an that Reginald, formerly a monk of Jumièges, spoke in English. The same is true of the commissioners, whose reference to themselves in the first-person plural is preserved at ii. 2b, 94b. For what may have been the distinct testimonies of English and French jurors in their respective vernaculars, preserved in a later document recording an inquest which may be associated with Domesday, see F. Liebermann and M. H. Peacock, ‘An English Document of About 1080’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, xviii (1905), 412–16; D. M. Palliser, Domesday York, Borthwich Papers, lxxviii (York, 1990), 6–8. ¹⁴⁵ J. C. Holt, ‘1086’, repr. in id., CE 31–57 at 34–7. ¹⁴⁶ For scores of examples, see J. McN. Dodgson and J. J. N. Palmer (eds.), Domesday Book: Index of Persons (Chichester, 1992), sub nomine. DB ii. 106a is a rare example of Harold’s comital title not being interlineated. Often he is given no title at all: see DB i. 177d, quoted below, n. 148; cf. ii. 15a. ¹⁴⁷ DB ii. 12b, 94b, and throughout the Survey; cf. Reg. no. 31 (1066 ⫻ Sept. 1069). ¹⁴⁸ DB ii. 210a; cf. i. 177d: ‘Afterwards [the uncle of Abbot Æthelwig of Evesham] died in Harold’s battle against the Northmen [i.e. Stamford Bridge, 25 Sept. 1066], and the church recovered its land before King William arrived in England.’ ¹⁴⁹ DB i. 376a; cf. ii. 3b, where the queen referred to as holding Shalford is almost certainly Matilda. For similar usage in a Westminster writ which appears to be a copy of an authentic document see Reg. no. 307 (1076 ⫻ 82/3); cf. no. 317, in its surviving form a fabrication of the mid-12th century, which may nevertheless be based on an authentic writ of William I. ¹⁵⁰ Above, p. 8.

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explicit fact: William was king ‘on his very first arrival in England’¹⁵¹—indeed even before he touched shore, for one Ailric ‘joined in a naval battle against King William’, dying in England shortly after his return, and therefore almost certainly before William’s consecration.¹⁵² Domesday Book’s fact was not invented in the course of the Domesday Inquest. It provided the justification for confiscations like those recorded in an early writ in which William ordered the abbot of Bury St Edmunds to ‘give into my hand all the land which those men held who stood against me in battle and were slain there, who belonged to St Edmund’s soke’.¹⁵³ Military tenants at Abingdon were endowed with lands which had been held by those Anglo-Saxons ‘who are called thegns, and had died in the battle of Hastings’; allegedly the abbey had lost land previously held of it by one Thorkell because he had died at Hastings.¹⁵⁴ Very occasionally, Domesday records the deaths of T.R.E. tenants at Hastings.¹⁵⁵ But as implied by the Penitential Ordinance, no distinction appears to have been drawn between opposition before and after the king’s consecration. Both might lead to dispossession and outlawry, as in the cases of Alric Bolest who ‘held in the time of King Edward, and this is said by him who now holds: that he was deprived through King William’s arrival (per adventum.R. W. fuit forisfacta)’;¹⁵⁶ or Eadric, the ‘helmsman of King Edward’s ship’: ‘after King William came to England this Eadric was an outlaw in Denmark and Bishop Æthelmær annexed the land;’¹⁵⁷ or Beohrtsige, who had held Foulton, Essex, T.R.E.: ‘when the king came to this land he was outlawed, and Robert [fitzWimarc] received his land.’¹⁵⁸ Most Englishmen of any standing must have fitted into this category, for they would have felt themselves bound to serve the man they viewed as their lord and king at Hastings, just as they had done at Stamford Bridge. Yet dispossession by the Conqueror was by no means automatic or immediate in every case,¹⁵⁹ although by the late twelfth century it was thought to have been so.¹⁶⁰ The king did not require Abbot Baldwin of Bury St Edmunds to surrender the lands of those who had fought at Hastings and survived; and the abbey of Ramsey recovered, at least temporarily, the land held of it by a tenant who had died at Hastings.¹⁶¹ Some ¹⁵¹ DB i. 1a. ¹⁵² DB ii. 14b; for what may well be this naval battle, see ASC (E) s.a. 1066; cf. GG p. 160. According to Domesday, Ailric gave Kelvedon to Westminster; but the monks forged writs of Edward and William confirming Ailric’s grant to the Abbey, perhaps because an unconfirmed grant from a known opponent of William, who had died after Edward’s death and (probably) before William’s arrival, was considered to be insecure: Writs, ed. Harmer, no. 74, and pp. 302–3, 494. ¹⁵³ Reg. no. 37 (1066 ⫻ Apr. 1070). ¹⁵⁴ HEA ii. 6; ed. Stevenson, i. 484. ¹⁵⁵ DB i. 50a, 208a; ii. 275b, 409b, 449a. ¹⁵⁶ DB i. 153b. ¹⁵⁷ DB ii. 200a; cf. 48a: ‘Hanc terram tenuit iste libere, et quando rex venit in hanc terram utlagavit et.R.accepit terram suam . . . ’; further, F. M. Stenton, ‘St Benet of Holme and the Norman Conquest’, EHR xxxvii (1922), 225–35 at 227, 233; Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 19. ¹⁵⁸ DB ii. 48a. ¹⁵⁹ See e.g. the case of Harold’s huscarl Scalpi, who contined to hold lands T.R.W. for a short time: DB ii. 59a, discussed by A. Williams, ‘Land and Power in the Eleventh Century: The Estates of Harold Godwineson’, ANS iii (1980), 171–87 at 178–9. ¹⁶⁰ Dialogus, 53–4. ¹⁶¹ DB i. 208a.

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English laymen who continued to hold land after the Conquest, rather than forfeiting, can be shown to have done so by the new king’s favour;¹⁶² and what can be demonstrated in a few cases is likely to be true of at least some of the rest.¹⁶³ The only extant royal writs of confirmation are for ecclesiastical beneficiaries. The issue of such writs in favour of churches by each new king may have been conventional in late Anglo-Saxon England; moreover, at Bury St Edmunds (and quite possibly elsewhere) writs of confirmation seem also to have been issued at the accession of each abbot.¹⁶⁴ So there was nothing strikingly novel about William’s issuing confirmatory writs. In any case, it might be thought that wholesale forfeiture by churches was inconceivable. While the land pleas reveal that some churches did lose manors in the aftermath of the Conquest, usually because some of their lay tenants had died or been dispossessed,¹⁶⁵ no church was in danger of forfeiting all its estates on account of its rector’s failure to support William.¹⁶⁶ In the unusual case of Winchcombe, where the new king’s deposition and imprisonment of Abbot Godric seems to have been immediate, there is no indication that the church itself suffered, other than by being briefly entrusted to the custody of Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham.¹⁶⁷ Nevertheless, although confirmation by a new king may already have been traditional English practice, the terms on which it was given in one celebrated case clearly reflected the Conqueror’s displeasure with the abbot. Abbot Leofric of Peterborough, who, like many other English prelates, had fought at Hastings, died within a fortnight, on 1 November. According to the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written at Peterborough in the early twelfth century, what offended the Conqueror was not Leofric’s armed resistance, but the fact that his successor, Brand, had sought the assent of Eadgar ætheling to his election. He had done so because at the time, in the immediate aftermath of Hastings, it was expected that Eadgar ‘would be king’.¹⁶⁸ As a consequence, Abbot Brand soon had to pay very ¹⁶² DB i. 211d: ‘Hanc terram tenuit Avigi. et potuit dare cui voluit. T.R.E. Hanc ei postea .W. rex concessit. et per suum brevem Radulfo tallebosc commendavit. ut eum servaret quamdiu viveret’; cf. i. 66a, for what is possibly another example. ¹⁶³ It is difficult to know what to read into the record that an unnamed thegn who, T.R.E., could go to any lord he wished, had ‘voluntarily (sponte)’ turned to Arnulf of Hesdin T.R.W.: DB i. 70b. In most cases it is not clear who had instigated the commendation of a sitting Anglo-Saxon tenant: i. 58b. ¹⁶⁴ Writs, ed. Harmer, nos. 8, 26, 54, 56, 58, 109; for confirmations on the accession of a new abbot of Bury, see nos. 11, 12, 23; cf. no. 115, for Worcester: R. Sharpe, ‘The Use of Writs in the Eleventh Century’, ASE xxxii (2003), 247–91, esp. 283–9. ¹⁶⁵ e.g. Eadric the Wild, who is likely to have been the helmsman of the bishop of Worcester’s ship: DB i. 173c; Hemingi Chartularium, i. 80–3 (⫽ Worcester H, no. 2, Domesday Book 16: Worcestershire, ed. F. and C. Thorn, (Chichester, 1982), App. V); further, A. Williams, ‘The Spoliation of Worcester’, ANS xix (1996), 383–408 at 392; E. Mason, St Wulfstan of Worcester c.1008–1095 (Oxford, 1990), 145–7. ¹⁶⁶ For early writs of confirmation, see Reg. nos. 216 (1066 ⫻ 67), 34 (1066 ⫻ 87, and probably soon after 1066), 80 (1066 ⫻ 87, and probably 1066 ⫻ c.1070), 98 (1066 ⫻ 84, and probably 1066 ⫻ c.1070), 297 (1066 ⫻ c.1070, and possibly late 1067), 296 (1066 ⫻ 70, and possibly late 1067). ¹⁶⁷ CAE 164. ¹⁶⁸ ASC (E) s.a. 1066; E. King, Peterborough Abbey, 1086–1310 (Cambridge, 1973), 9–10. ASC (E) s.a. 1052 records Edward the Confessor’s assent to Leofric’s election; at the time of his death he held Coventry, Burton on Trent, Crowland, and Thorney in plurality.

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heavily to secure confirmation of the abbey’s lands from William.¹⁶⁹ These included manors in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, given to the abbey by Brand’s brothers and kinsmen after Edward the Confessor’s death and prior to William’s consecration,¹⁷⁰ so William was quite prepared to fudge if the price was right. The charter simply and tendentiously records that they had held these lands ‘sub rege Eaduuardo’. It is now impossible to establish whether the circumstances of the abbatial elections, during Harold’s reign, of Ealdred at Abingdon and Thurstan at Ely affected the conditions on which the lands of these abbeys were subsequently confirmed by William.¹⁷¹ Whatever the terms of confirmation, both men had good cause to feel forebodings about their own futures under the new regime, although neither was deposed immediately.¹⁷² The Evesham History, which reproduces a late eleventh-century life of that Vicar of Bray, Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham, is at pains to stress that Æthelwig had been consecrated as abbot at King Edward’s behest during the lifetime of his incapacitated predecessor, Mannig, not after Mannig died ‘in the same night and hour’ as Edward.¹⁷³ Thus, it implies, if Æthelwig could ‘get anything he demanded from Harold’ after Harold had taken the kingdom,¹⁷⁴ this did not include his abbatial office. His reported desire not to assume the position of abbot during Mannig’s lifetime was nothing more than an expression of his humility. In Æthelwig’s case and those of many other surviving pre-Conquest prelates there is no reason to consider that royal confirmation was other than straightforward. Nevertheless, it is clear for other reasons that surviving prelates were deemed to hold the lands of their churches on a new basis as a result of becoming William’s men.¹⁷⁵ Henceforth they were held of the king. In a handful of cases Domesday records the existence of writs restoring lands to English laymen.¹⁷⁶ None of these can now be securely dated,¹⁷⁷ but a likely context is the immediate aftermath of the Conquest when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘people paid taxes to [William], and gave him hostages and afterwards bought their lands (& syddan heora land bohtan)’.¹⁷⁸ William of Poitiers reports that ¹⁶⁹ Reg. no. 216. Bates suggests that the charter may be beneficiary-drafted. ¹⁷⁰ The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, ed. W. T. Mellows (Oxford, 1949), 71–2, 40–2, 67; The Lincolnshire Domesday and the Lindsey Survey, ed. C. W. Foster and T. Longley, intro. F. M. Stenton, Lincoln Record Soc., xix, (1924), p. xli; VCH: Notts. i. 222–3. DB i. 376c records the testimony of the shire court of Lincs. that Brand’s brother Asketil held four of these manors ‘ea die qua rex.E.fuit vivus et mortuus et post’. ¹⁷¹ HEA, ed. Stevenson, i. 482; also 484, 490 for difficulty in persuading the king to restore to the abbey lands which had been held of it by a rebel, whose lands had forfeited to the king; LE 169. ¹⁷² HEA, ed. Stevenson, i. 486, 493–4, ii. 283; LE 195; JW iii. 307. ¹⁷³ CAE 170; Darlington, ‘Æthelwig’, 2–4. ¹⁷⁴ CAE 162. ¹⁷⁵ G. S. Garnett, ‘The Origins of the Crown’, PBA lxxxix (1995), 271–314, at 176–8; further below, pp. 57–60. ¹⁷⁶ DB i. 62b: ‘Rex.W.apud Windesores ei reddidit et breve suum inde ei dedit’; 211d, quoted above, n. 162; 218b: ‘Hanc terram tenuit pater huius hominis et vendere potuit T.R.E. Hanc rex.W.in elemosina eidem concessit. unde et brevem regis habuit et testimonium de hundret’; ‘Hanc terram pater ejusdem hominis tenuit. et rex.W. ei per brevem suum reddidit’. ¹⁷⁷ Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 8–9. ¹⁷⁸ ASC (E) s.a. 1066.

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the Conqueror ‘restored their possessions (reddidit eis cuncta quae possederant)’ to those who swore oaths to him, though, perhaps unsurprisingly, he fails to link this with the modest tax burdens which he says the new king imposed.¹⁷⁹ The Brevis Relatio, written in the early twelfth century at Battle Abbey, where the precise nature of the Conqueror’s early disposition of lands was bound to be of particularly acute interest, reports that the restoration was selective, even to that greater part of the English whose fidelitas he had accepted.¹⁸⁰ Little Domesday records that the abbot of Bury St Edmunds held Stoneham, Suffolk, in pledge for a loan of two gold marks, by concession of Ingelric, a royal priest acting on the king’s behalf ‘when the English bought back their lands’.¹⁸¹ William fitzOsbern played a similar role in Hampshire.¹⁸² With some exaggeration, Freeman thought that these Domesday passages provided the key ‘to the whole later history of England, above all to the history of the law of England’.¹⁸³ The English seem to have paid dearly for the redemption of their lands;¹⁸⁴ and most survivors found themselves in sadly reduced circumstances, as subtenants of Norman tenants-in-chief, sometimes at the king’s instigation.¹⁸⁵ English infidelity at Hastings was, therefore, much more than a justification for forfeiture of the lands of particular individuals who were known to have fought and died there. Infidelity, or perjury, on the part of Harold and, by association, all the English, living and dead, could bring in its train penalties of dispossession, disinheritance, outlawry, and soon excommunication.¹⁸⁶ But the imposition of ¹⁷⁹ GG 162, 160. ¹⁸⁰ BR 33. ¹⁸¹ DB ii. 360b; also 367b for Ingelric’s official role, in conjunction with William, bishop of London, and Ralph the Staller (a transaction characterized as a redemption in Abbot Baldwin’s Feudal Book: Douglas, Feudal Documents, p. 8); further Freeman, Norman Conquest, iv. 24–6, 725–7; Feudal Documents, pp. xcvii–xcix; R. W. Finn, The Domesday Inquest and the Making of Domesday Book (London, 1961), 8–10; Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 9–10. ¹⁸² DB i. 50a. ¹⁸³ E. A. Freeman, Methods of Historical Study (London, 1886), 186–7. ¹⁸⁴ For one possible mechanism, prescribed in II Cnut 79, see M. K. Lawson, ‘The Collection of the Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Aethelred II and Cnut’, EHR xciv (1984), 721–38, at 723–6; Anglo-Saxon Charters, iii, no. 20 (⫽ S. no. 969), cf. Review by P. Wormald, EHR cvii (1992), 431; Wormald, ‘Domesday Lawsuits’, 75. But this pre-Conquest mechanism involves securing the land of someone who could not or would not pay the geld due on it by offering to pay oneself. It is not, therefore, a sufficient explanation for the process by which the English redeemed their lands. For someone who had bought land from the king which had been held by another T.R.E., see DB i. 49d; for a sheriff taking land into the king’s hand for failure to pay the geld allegedly due, see i. 141a. I am indebted to Stephen Baxter for further possible Domesday instances, and for his advice: see DB i. 133c, 137a, 216c. ¹⁸⁵ For details of some survivors, see R. H. Davies, ‘The Lands and Rights of Harold, Son of Godwine, and their redistribution by William I’, University of Wales MA dissertation (1967), 157; R. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991), 117–19, 132, 193; B. Golding, Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066–1100, 2nd edn. (London, 2001), 68–9; DB i. 36a, 36b, 211d (quoted above, n. 162). ¹⁸⁶ Reg. no. 27 (1074): ‘Nunc vero quoniam ipse [Grimoult] perfidus, pro reatu infidelitatis sue et crimine insidiarum suarum quibus adversum me [King William] periuraverat, ea, iure iusticie, sibi et heredibus suis perdidit, do illa sancte supradicte ecclesie [Bayeux] . . . ’ Unfortunately, William of Poitiers, GG 64, does not record the usual penalties for those who had transgressed the lex transfugarum. Orderic, ii. 318 reports that in 1075 Roger of Hereford was sentenced, in accordance with the leges Normannorum, to forfeiture of all his haereditas and perpetual imprisonment. Cap. 9, Council of

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such penalties lay at the king’s discretion. For a consideration, he appears to have been prepared to relent in many cases, at least for the time being. This meant that surviving Englishmen, clerics as well as lay, recognized that henceforth tenure was a royal favour, much as it was for the Frenchmen who received ‘rich benefices’¹⁸⁷ from him. Perhaps this is what the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle means when it records that, on his return from Normandy in December 1067, the king ‘gave away every man’s land’. In other words, the penalties for English perjury served to underline the king’s claim that he, and he alone, was Edward the Confessor’s heir to the whole kingdom, and therefore that he was the source of all tenure in it. Hence the importance of the assumption which underlies (with minor variations) the Penitential Ordinance, William of Poitiers, and Domesday Book: that the English had already been in rebellion against Duke William long before he was crowned as king, and possibly from the moment of Harold’s accession.¹⁸⁸ Submissions, consecration, and homage and fealty to William made little difference to the penalties meted out to those deemed to be opponents. For as far as Domesday Book was concerned, William was already their king prior to any of these ceremonies.

THE DOMESDAY ANTECESSOR AND BEYOND The emphasis laid on the last day of Edward the Confessor’s life meant that in Domesday Book all tenures were defined by reference to the situation at that last legitimate point. A Norman landholder was deemed to have stepped into the place of one or more English antecessor(es) in respect to rights of all kinds. In Domesday terms an antecessor was the individual who had held at that point, regardless of what might have happened to him subsequently—he might, for instance, have been killed at Hastings.¹⁸⁹ Conversely, the abbot of Tavistock was dispossessed of Werrington because the English jurors established that his ‘antecessor’ as abbot had not held it on the crucial day: here the distinction between the traditional canonical meaning of antecessor—a predecessor in ecclesiastical office—and the Domesday antecessor is sharply delineated.¹⁹⁰ In its canonical sense, the word appears frequently in King William’s writs and charters, both English and Norman.¹⁹¹ In charters for Windsor, Whitsun 1070; cap. 9, Council of Winchester, Easter 1072; ordinance on ecclesiastical courts: C&S ii. 581, 606, 624. ¹⁸⁷ GG 162. ¹⁸⁸ Above, p. 7. ¹⁸⁹ DB i. 208a. ¹⁹⁰ DB iv. 165a, discussed by Galbraith, Making of Domesday, 76. Cf. Henry de Ferrers’ claim that an estate in Berks. had belonged to his antecessor Godric; the hundredal jury testified that Godric had ‘appropriated it in King William’s despite after the battle of Hastings, and that he had never held it in the time of King Edward’. So by definition, he was not an antecessor with respect to this estate: DB i. 60c. ¹⁹¹ Reg. nos. 45 (1066 ⫻ 77), 48 (1079 ⫻ 82, and possibly 1080 ⫻ 82; alternatively 1079 ⫻ 87), 49 (1081 ⫻ 82, but perhaps 1081 ⫻ 87), 54 (1081 ⫻ 87), 57 (late 11th century, possibly 1079 ⫻ 83), 67 (8 Apr. 1072 ⫻ 27 May 1072), 68 (27 May 1072), 69, version I (25 Mar. ⫻ 28 Aug.

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Norman beneficiaries, it is also used of lay ancestors.¹⁹² Some English instances are ambiguous, where reference is made to a previous Edwardian incumbent;¹⁹³ but the word is found in William’s English writs and charters prior to the Domesday Inquest in what is incontrovertibly its Domesday sense.¹⁹⁴ Occasionally this meaning is juxtaposed with more conventional ones within the same document.¹⁹⁵ Although in Domesday Book too the word is very occasionally used in a non-technical sense,¹⁹⁶ in the overwhelming majority of cases an antecessor was not simply one’s predecessor. Thus two writs of William Rufus confirm the customs of the abbey of Ramsey to two successive abbots as their common antecessor had held them in the time of King Edward.¹⁹⁷ And in Domesday secular landholders had antecessores in the same way as ecclesiastical ones. The difference between them lay in the fact that although, as we have seen, the landed endowment of major churches might have suffered depletion in the tenurial upheaval which followed the Conquest, nevertheless as landholding institutions the churches survived the Conquest relatively unscathed. By and large the successor to an Edwardian bishop or abbot held the same parcel of lands and rights as his antecessor—albeit he now held them of the king—for in an important sense they were those of the church rather than its rector.¹⁹⁸ In the case of lay tenures, however, there was no undying, abstract entity like a church, to act as a continuous bearer of rights over the Conquest. In its absence, the king had a much freer hand in the rearrangement and restructuring of secular tenure. But that does not mean that the definition of rights according to those of antecessores was any less important in that process of rearrangement and restructuring. In some cases it can be shown that a secular Norman successor held what were deemed to have been all the lands and rights of an antecessor, in one shire or more,¹⁹⁹ often together with those of the antecessor’s commended men. But it would be very unusual for the successor not also to hold lands and rights held 1072, or perhaps 29 Aug. 1072 ⫻ 25 Mar. 1073), 73 (1070 ⫻ 82/3), 88 (1070 ⫻ 87), 133 (1070 ⫻ 78)[on the assumption that Æthelwig was deemed to have been abbot since 1058, and had not succeeded to Abbot Mannig when Mannig finally expired on 5 January 1066: see above, p. 22], 235 (12 Apr. 1080), 245 (1074), etc. ¹⁹² Reg. nos. 9 (1085), 92 (1066 ⫻ 83), 161 (1080 ⫻ 83), 164 (1079 ⫻ late 11th century (c.1087?) ), 236 (1080), 237 (1070, or possibly 1068 ⫻ 70, or less possibly 1068 ⫻ 83), 246 (1080), 247 (1080), 257 (1080), etc. ¹⁹³ Reg. nos. 133, 134 (1078 ⫻ 82/3, possibly 1078 ⫻ 80/1). ¹⁹⁴ Reg. nos. 119 (1081/2 ⫻ 83), 121 (1081/2 ⫻ 86, but perhaps 1070 ⫻ 86), 123 (1081/2 ⫻ 87, and perhaps 1081/2 ⫻ 83), 124 (1081/2 ⫻ 87, possibly 1081/2 ⫻ 83), 126 (1081/2 ⫻ 87), 222 (1080 ⫻ 87, probably 1080 ⫻ 81). ¹⁹⁵ Reg. nos. 126 (1081/2 ⫻ 87, and perhaps 1085 ⫻ 87), 286 (May 1068). ¹⁹⁶ For instance, Count Brian of Brittany, a post-Conquest figure, is named as Robert of Mortain’s antecessor (DB ii. 291a) because he had held the land in question prior to Robert. But it is soon revealed (291b) that Brian had an antecessor named Wulfnoth, who held T.R.E. For other examples, see DB i. 211d; R. W. Finn, Domesday Studies: The Eastern Counties (London, 1967), 16–17, 209–10; DB ii. 172b. ¹⁹⁷ RRAN i. nos. 295, 296. ¹⁹⁸ Garnett, ‘Crown’, 192–5. ¹⁹⁹ For succession to all of an antecessor’s land within a shire, see the explicit Leics. examples of Robert de Beaumont, count of Meulan, Earl Aubrey, Robert de Vessey, and Geoffrey de Alselin (DB

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T.R.E. by others, who, by definition, would also be either antecessores of his (although not necessarily named as such), or men of such antecessores.²⁰⁰ Unusual, but not unprecedented, for in Surrey the illegitimacy of Geoffrey de Mandeville’s tenure of a few manors was asserted on the basis of the fact that one of his important antecessores in other shires, Ansgar the Staller, had not held them.²⁰¹ In the rare cases where the widespread absence of toponyms in Anglo-Saxon England does not render impossible the identification of a single Englishman as having held in several shires, it was common for him to have at least one different successor in each shire.²⁰² Even within one shire, the lands of an individual Englishman and, much more commonly, those of men who had been commended to him, might be dispersed between different tenancies-in-chief, particularly when the king created territorially compact fees.²⁰³ In other words, several Normans might share the same individual as antecessor within a single shire. These cases demonstrate that the antecessor was a means of defining precisely the rights of a new tenant in a particular parcel of land, which might well constitute only a part of his estate. There was no necessary one-to-one correspondence between antecessor and successor—no wholesale grant of all the lands and rights of a T.R.E. tenant, and nothing more—of the sort that the Canon Law origin of the term i. 231c–d, 234a, 235c, 237b), all cited by Fleming, Kings and Lords, 111; for succession to an antecessor’s lands across the kingdom, see Ralph Paynel’s to Maerlesvein the Sheriff in Yorks., (325d–326a, 374a (but note 313a, where possibly the same Maerlesvein—the name is unusual—is someone else’s antecessor)), Lincs. (336a, 362d–363a, 377a (see also 376d, for its being established that land currently held by Ralph had not been held T.R.E. by Maerlesvein)), Som. (96d) (Maerlesvein had also held one manor—86b—now in the terra regis, and three manors—95b—in the honour of Walter of Douai), Devon (113d), and Gloucs. (168b). In Cornwall, a Maerlesvein had held several manors, all of which were, of necessity, part of Robert of Mortain’s fee: 121c–d, 122a, 122c, 122d, 124c, 124d. It is unclear whether this is the same man; Ralph Pagnell held nothing in the shire. On this case, see Fleming, Kings and Lords, 166–7. ²⁰⁰ For instance, Hugh de Beauchamp’s fee in Beds. may be divided into three elements: (1) the holdings of Eskil of Ware and his men; (2) the lands of many thegns commended to other lords T.R.E.; and (3) those of large numbers of sokemen; see Fleming, King and Lords, 118–20. In addition, he held a manor in Herts. which had been held by one of Edward the Confessor’s housecarls T.R.E. (DB i. 138d), and another, said to be of his fee, had been held T.R.E. by Leofwine, a man of Earl Harold (142d). In Bucks. he held three manors, all of which had been held by different tenants T.R.E. (150c–d). In Herts., Eskil was an antecessor of Hugh of Grandmesnil (138c–d) and Eudo the Steward (139a); the lands of his men ended up in several other honours. In Surrey, Roger de Montgommery held his antecessor Osmund’s lands and nothing else: 34b–c; William de Briouze also held only his antecessor Godtovi’s land: 35d. ²⁰¹ DB i. 36b; Finn, Domesday Inquest, 107. For Geoffrey’s succession in other shires to many of the lands of Ansgar the Staller and those of men commended to Ansgar, see Fleming, Kings and Lords, 113–15, 171, 193. ²⁰² For instance, in Notts. William Peverel had succeeded to two estates held by Stapolwine (DB i. 287b–c) and Roger de Bully held all the manors held T.R.E. by Spearheafoc (286c), Othenkarl, (284c, 286a–c), and Karski (285a–b). But in Derby. Stapolwine’s and Karski’s estates were in the king’s hand (273a), and Othenkarl’s lands in both Derby. (277d) and Lincs. (355c) went in part to Gilbert de Ghent, but one of his Lincs. manors—343b—ended up in the honour of Odo of Bayeux; and another—365d—in that of Odo the Crossbowman: further, Fleming, Kings and Lords, 151. ²⁰³ For instance, in Bucks. Robert d’Oilly and Miles Crispin had a common antecessor in Brihtric, a thegn of Queen Edith: DB i. 149b–c, 150a–c; in Cambs. the lands of Eadric pur, a minor king’s

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might be thought to imply. An early case in point is William Malet, whose lands reverted to the king when he was captured by the Danes in September 1069. Exceptionally, many of his antecessores in Yorkshire are recorded in the clamores appended to the survey of the shire precisely because disputes arose about those lands in 1086.²⁰⁴ Whereas it was common for a Norman to have several antecessores, he did not have to have succeeded to all the lands and rights of each of them, still less so to all those of all their men. Thus the secular tenurial patterns of Edwardian England were shredded as lands and rights were granted out according to what were established by English testimony to have been the rights of Edwardian tenants. Fixing the baseline in terms of which antecessorial rights were defined was a precondition for the imposition of some sort of regularity in the redistribution of land. But, as the shredding of Edwardian tenurial patterns demonstrates, that very regularity was at least in one respect a systematic misrepresentation of the English past. To take it as an index of continuity over the Conquest is to accept Domesday’s legal fiction at face value.²⁰⁵ Moreover, although it provided a rough-and-ready means of defining what a grantee should get, in certain circumstances it compounded the confusion, and therefore the conflicting claims, which might arise. An obvious example is that of several post-Conquest tenants sharing the same individual as antecessor: a successor in respect to one tenancy might assert a claim to succeed to all his antecessor’s rights.²⁰⁶ Another which will already be apparent is the commendation of man to lord. Paradoxically, Domesday Book is the richest source thegn, were split between the fees of Robert Gernon and Guy de Raimbeaucourt: i. 197a, 200a; in Suffolk, the lands of Brictmer had been divided into three and given to Ingelric, Ranulf, brother of Ilger, and Ralph Pinel: ii. 424a. For the distribution of the lands in Herts. and Bucks. of Ansgar the Staller’s men to tenants-in-chief other than Geoffrey de Mandeville, see Fleming, Kings and Lords, 115; Fleming, ch. 4, passim, adduces a host of other examples. Roger de Bully and William Peverel were granted blocks of land within Notts. This involved Roger receiving two estates which had been held by Grimkell T.R.E. (i. 285b, 286d) in the north of the shire, but William getting Grimkell’s other manors centred on Broxstowe wapentake (i. 287d, 288b): further Fleming, 148 and ch. 5, passim. ²⁰⁴ P. R. Newman, ‘The Yorkshire Domesday clamores and the “Lost Fee” of William Malet’, ANS xxii (1999), 261–77, at 265–70. ²⁰⁵ The starting point of Fleming, Kings and Lords, is a refutation of the case for continuity advanced by P. H. Sawyer, ‘Domesday Book: A Tenurial Revolution?’, in P. H. Sawyer (ed.), Domesday Book: A Reassessment (London, 1985), 71–85. Unfortunately, she allows the terms of her argument to be shaped by Sawyer’s, sharing his unquestioning acceptance of the commissioners’ attempts to demonstrate continuity. ²⁰⁶ For instance, in Lincs. Geoffrey de la Guerche held everything in Epworth wapentake not held by the king or a church (DB i. 369b–c), including land in Amcotts held T.R.E. by Siward Barn, and land and soke in Belton which had belonged to Ulf Fenisc (DB i. 376c). But Ulf was Gilbert de Ghent’s main antecessor elsewhere in Lincs. (DB i. 336a, 354c–356a; though note that some of Ulf ’s land had gone elsewhere: 364c–d), and throughout England (Cambs.: DB i. 197b–c; Hunts.: DB i. 203a; Derby.: DB i. 277d (note that the jurors testified that one manor had not belonged to Ulf Fenisc T.R.E.) ), and Siward was Henry de Ferrers’ antecessor (Berk.: DB i. 60c–d; Gloucs.: 169a; War.: 242b; Lincs.: 353c; though note that in Norfolk some of his land was in the terra regis and some in the fee of William d’Écouis: DB ii. 128b, 223b.) Accordingly Gilbert and Henry claimed these lands in Lincs. against Geoffrey: 376c; further Fleming, Kings and Lords, 161, with other examples.

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on Old English commendation, often revealing—presumably in the words of English jurors—that a relationship between lord and man had been solely personal, not tenurial.²⁰⁷ Such is the apparent meaning of the Domesday term ‘mere commendation’, the jurors testifying that a particular tenant ‘could go with his land where he would’, irrespective of his lord.²⁰⁸ Yet a Norman who held some land as successor to an antecessor might have his right contested by the successor of that antecessor’s lord;²⁰⁹ indeed, a surviving antecessor might have his tenure contested in this way.²¹⁰ For although the antecessor might not have held his land of his lord, the Domesday commissioners found it difficult to conceive of lordship which was not tenurial, and tenure which was not dependent. They did so because their terms of reference were shaped by the king’s claim that the kingdom was his, and his alone, by hereditary right. They therefore repeatedly imposed on the Old English past a pattern of dependent tenurial lordship which Domesday Book itself reveals was foreign to it.²¹¹ On circuit I, for instance, the imported term alodium, which is not found in Anglo-Saxon charters²¹²—or indeed in genuine English charters and writs of the Conqueror²¹³—seems to be used to describe Anglo-Saxon bookland; it is assumed that those whom the jurors attested had held ²⁰⁷ C. Stephenson, ‘Commendation and Related Problems in Domesday Book’, EHR lix (1944), 289–310. F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England (Cambridge, 1897), 66–79, esp. 69–72, is rather more equivocal; cf. B. Dodwell, ‘East Anglian Commendation’, EHR lxiii (1948), 289–306. ²⁰⁸ e.g. DB i. 238c, a case discussed by Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 75, 143–4; further Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 68–70, and in much more detail, S. Baxter, ‘The Leofwinesons: Power, Property, and Patronage in the Early English Kingdom’, Oxford University D. Phil. thesis (2002), ch. 5. ²⁰⁹ DB i. 211d: in Beds. one of William de Warenne’s antecessores was Augi, but William’s title to one virgate held by Augi T.R.E. was contested by Hugh de Beauchamp because one of Hugh’s antecessores, Eskil of Ware, had been Augi’s lord. Augi had had free disposition of the land, but Eskil had retained the soke. For this reason the men of the shire testified that this particular virgate should not belong to William. ²¹⁰ For instance, in Norfolk the manors of Ingham and Stalham formed part of the honour of Count Alan of Richmond. Edric, a man of Edric of Laxfield, had held three carucates in Ingham T.R.E., and still held in 1086, presumably as a vassal of Count Alan (see DB ii. 150a for an explicit statement that he was a man of Count Alan). In Stalham Edric had also held, and still held in 1086, the commendation of three freemen, again presumably as a vassal of Count Alan. But Robert Malet is recorded as claiming both manors, because his antecessor, Edric of Laxfield (153b–156b), had held ‘the commendation only’ of those who held there T.R.E.: 148b. ²¹¹ For examples of Norman tenants-in-chief holding some or all of the lands and men who had been commended to their antecessores, see Fleming, Kings and Lords, 113; Sawyer, ‘Tenurial Revolution?’, 78. ²¹² I am grateful to Simon Keynes and Sean Miller for establishing that alodium or the like appears in only three surviving Anglo-Saxon documents: S. 112 (alodem), 989 (alodiarii), 1091 (alodiarii, translating ‘thegns’ in the original Old English version). None of these is authentic, although Harmer, Writs, p. 197, plausibly argues that S. 1091 is a post-Conquest translation of an authentic original. The case is strengthened by a writ of the Conqueror in favour of St Augustine’s—Reg. no. 80 (1066 ⫻ 87, probably 1066 ⫻ 70)—the Latin version of which translates thegns in this way. The alodiarius of Domesday Book cannot straightforwardly be defined as the holder of alodium: P. Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century (Oxford, 1908), 411–13. ²¹³ Numerous documents in Reg. in favour of Norman beneficiaries use the term, but the only English ones to do so—nos. 301, 331—are 12th-century Westminster forgeries.

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bookland in Edwardian England had held of the king.²¹⁴ Yet although a king’s issue of a charter, or ‘boc’, had privileged land in Anglo-Saxon England, it is clear that such land had not thenceforth been held of the king. Moreover, there is a wealth of examples where the lands of the men of one antecessor were dispersed among many different honours, showing that the patterns of lordship in Edwardian England were shredded along with those of tenure.²¹⁵ In some cases it was confirmed that the man of an antecessor had held land, perhaps on a lease from a church, which had nothing to do with his lord; the antecessor’s successor was therefore judged to have no right, for the land belonged to the church (or other lessor).²¹⁶ As we have seen, many of the land pleas earlier in the Conqueror’s reign were concerned with precisely this sort of dispute. The Norman commissioners had reconstructed the time of King Edward in their own image. But that distorted reconstruction remained in a state of necessarily unresolved tension with much of the English testimony on which it was based. The Canon Law origin of the term antecessor—a predecessor in ecclesiastical office—inserted another distorting lens into the apparatus through which the commissioners viewed Edwardian England, for by definition it took no account of the tenurial context in which different individuals might (or might not) have different rights over the same piece of land. The potential for misperception was even richer in the case of soke rights, which, unsurprisingly, baffled the commissioners. Those who worked on circuits III and VII made some attempts to grapple with the problem; but ultimately, like those responsible for the other circuits, they found it almost incomprehensible, from their simple, dependent perspective, that tenurial, lordly, and jurisdictional rights, often held by different individuals, could overlap. Yet most disputes about rights derived from antecessores lay precisely in the confusing overlap between these three often distinct relationships, which Normans sought to categorize as aspects of the single relationship between lord and vassal. The territorial nature of sokes²¹⁷ meant that an antecessor’s soke right might be deemed to justify his successor’s claim to hold all the lands within it, although this would be a travesty of the jurisdictional rights that the ²¹⁴ DB i. 38a, c, 39a–40a, 43c, 44c–d, 45c–46d; 57b–c, 59b, d, 60a, c, 61a–b, d, 62a–d, 63a–d, etc. ‘Bochelandis’ is found once in Exon. 135a4, but has been deleted from the corresponding entry in DB i. 102b. It is clear that the term libera terra, used extensively on other circuits and occasionally on this one, is not simply a synonym for alodium. (But Stephen Baxter kindly points out to me that Hemming, Chartularium, i. 262–3, records that Beorhtwine, ‘quidem predives’, held land at Hadzor ‘freely, having the power to give or sell it to whomever he wished, as a paternal inheritance, and doing no service from it to anyone other than the king’.) For the meaning of alodium in Normandy, see Tabuteau, Transfers, 102–5. Alodium is said to be the Latin translation of bocland in Instituta Cnuti, cap. 11, Gesetze, i. 295. For some discussion, see Vinogradoff, English Society, 236–8; for a rather different view, Stephenson, ‘Commendation’, 295–6. ²¹⁵ Fleming, Kings and Lords, 120–2, 125–6, for Countess Judith’s fee in Beds., made up of thirtysix holdings patched together from the lands of eighty-four men: DB i. 217a–d. ²¹⁶ Fleming, Kings and Lords, 128–30, who also gives secular examples. Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 75, 143–4, explores a particularly revealing dispute over Alvestone, Warwicks: DB i. 238b. ²¹⁷ Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 87; Writs, ed. Harmer, pp. 74–5, 413–14.

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antecessor had actually enjoyed, and might on occasion be corrected by English jurors separating out rights over soke from rights over land.²¹⁸ So the very regularity imposed upon the process of redistribution, which by and large prevented anarchic land-grabbing, created, by its manifold misundertandings of the Old English past, the potential for conflicting claims. Nevertheless, the attempts to resolve these in land pleas prior to and during the Domesday Inquest demonstrate William the Conqueror’s success in imposing that regularity, for the terms of the pleading were set by his rules. And those rules were in turn determined by his claim to the kingdom. It has recently been argued that the importance of the antecessor has been greatly exaggerated: only just over one hundred ‘significant’ secular antecessores are, allegedly, identified in Domesday Book, accounting for a little more than 10 per cent of secular land transference.²¹⁹ But this assertion is misleading in several respects. Antecessores are often mentioned without giving their names,²²⁰ probably because there was usually no need to record their identities; and the names of those men (and women) who had held T.R.E. are recorded far more frequently than they are explicitly labelled as antecessores. The crucial term ‘significant’ is defined to exclude anyone recorded as holding less than £25 worth of land, and any antecessor who did not have a ‘clear’ successor, meaning someone who succeeded to ‘the bulk’ of his lands.²²¹ It is not clear why the status of antecessor should be subject to a property qualification;²²² indeed, Domesday Book demonstrates over and over again that it was not. And to assert that an antecessor may only be so termed if most or all of his lands went to one post-Conquest tenant is to disregard the definition of the constituent portions of new, conglomerate holdings in terms of the rights of those who had held them T.R.E.²²³ That each of those constituent portions might not have been the whole, or even ‘the bulk’, of the lands of its Edwardian tenant does not mean that his alleged rights were irrelevant to the construction of a new tenancy: an obvious example is the territorially compact fee.²²⁴ The dismembering of Edwardian tenurial patterns does not imply that the antecessor was unimportant, for the antecessor had little to do with continuity in tenurial patterns over the Conquest. And the fact that ²¹⁸ Fleming, Kings and Lords, 133–5. ²¹⁹ Fleming, Kings and Lords, 112; for antecessores identified by name, see J. D. Foy (ed.), Domesday Book: Index of Subjects (Chichester, 1992), s.v. ‘predecessor’. ²²⁰ Finn, Eastern Counties, 16–17. ²²¹ Fleming, Kings and Lords, 110, n. 8. ²²² Fleming, Kings and Lords, 211–12, suggests that if it were widened to ‘£10 or £15 a year’, ‘antecessorial inheritance’ would account for one-fifth of secular land transference. She does not explain why the pale of antecessorial status should be broadened thus far and no further. ²²³ See the examples of William Peverel and Roger de Bully in Notts., discussed above, n. 202, which were together made up of the holdings of over 100 antecessores: further, Fleming, Kings and Lords, 162–3. ²²⁴ J. F. A. Mason, William the First and the Sussex Rapes, Historical Association, Hastings and Bexhill Branch, revised edn. (London, 1972); J. F. A. Mason, ‘Roger de Montgomery and his Sons (1067–1102)’, TRHS, 5th ser., xiii (1963), 1–28, esp. 7–8; Fleming, Kings and Lords, esp. ch. 5.

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antecessores are identified in only a small minority of cases does not mean that antecessores were otherwise of no importance. Unsurprisingly, they tend to be identified most commonly when there was a dispute. The appendices of unresolved land pleas—headed clamores (in three of the shires covered by circuit VI) or invasiones (in the return for the East Anglian circuit, now known as Little Domesday) or Terrae Occupatae (in the provincial draft covering several western shires, known as the Liber Exoniensis)—account for many of the recorded instances; those lawsuits preserved in the body of the text for many more. We know about the lands which William Malet held in Yorkshire, and about his antecessores, only because of the clamores appended to the survey of Yorkshire.²²⁵ This does not mean that antecessores were irrelevant in other cases, only that they did not always need to be identified as such: the ‘man behind the Survey’ was trying to condense the material into the tersest possible form. There was no space to spare for unnecessary elaboration. It is no accident that the greatest concentration of explicit references to antecessores is in Little Domesday, which has not gone through the final stage of redaction. Every reference to T.R.E., in almost every entry in Domesday Book, is implicitly a reference to the supposed rights of an antecessor. Most of the cases in which Domesday explicitly records that the king had granted a tenure also appear in the clamores and invasiones, and the other accounts of lawsuits: but no one would seek to argue, on this basis, that when the fact of the king’s grant is not spelt out, the king could not have given the land. That King William, as Edward’s heir to the kingdom, was the source of all tenure is intrinsic to the very structure of Domesday; and so was the antecessor. Indeed the two principles were intimately connected, the latter depending on the former. As we have seen, there was no precedent in Old English history for the definition of all rights in land according to the status quo at the death of a previous king. It was a post-Conquest innovation, a consequence of working out, in the resolution of disputed claims to land, the implications of William’s claim. Every landholder’s rights were defined by reference to what were established to have been the rights of those who had held at the last moment when the throne had been legitimately held, immediately prior to the failure of Harold (and arguably the English) to honour King Edward’s post obitum gift to William. In other words, the definition of the Domesday antecessor reads back into the Old English past a dependency on the king—at least in terms of legitimacy—which was quite foreign to it. It assumes that the strictly dependent system of tenurial lordship, depending ultimately on the king, which Domesday shows had been imposed upon England by 1086, had already been part of the order of things in 1066. Yet much of the English testimony preserved in Domesday Book confirms what is clear from other sources: that in Anglo-Saxon England personal and tenurial lordship had not necessarily been congruent, and that therefore the king could not have been the source of all tenure. Domesday’s misinterpretation of bookland is a ²²⁵ Newman, ‘“Lost Fee” ’, 264.

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striking case in point.²²⁶ So the form in which the Domesday commissioners attempted to establish continuity with the English past—the time of King Edward, and the definition of all tenurial rights according to the supposed status quo at the point—paradoxically pinpointed how all continuity had been severed. In other words, the break with the English past was far more radical than a shredding of patterns of tenure and lordship: the content of tenure had been transformed by the nature of the king’s lordship, defined in terms of his claim to succeed Edward the Confessor. It is therefore unsurprising that William’s claim provided the template for what, for the sake of convenience, may be termed the antecessor scheme. In Domesday Book the claim of any Norman tenant appeared to be defined by terms of reference uncannily similar to the king’s own. Any Norman ‘successor’²²⁷ held ‘per hereditatem sui antecessoris’.²²⁸ As such, he might even be deemed to have received his antecessor’s leasehold only for the remainder of the lease.²²⁹ It is never explicitly stated in Domesday Book that Edward was William’s antecessor, or William his successor. But this is probably because they are both always referred to by title and (except when William was simply rex) name. Reference is made to ‘King Edward and all the kings his antecessores’.²³⁰ When Archbishop Lanfranc wrote on William’s behalf to Pope Gregory VII, denying that kings of the English had ever done fealty to popes, he stated that ‘I neither promised on my own behalf, nor can I discover that my antecessores ever promised it to your antecessores’.²³¹ The Conqueror’s writs and charters refer to Edward as his antecessor or praedecessor on several occasions.²³² Whereas in Canon Law the term meant a predecessor in office, in the secular sphere it could be used to refer to an ancestor: in an early Norman charter Duke Richard II used it to refer to his predecessors, who were also, of course, his ancestors.²³³ It is, as we have seen, with these conventional meanings that the term is used in William’s Norman documents, and sometimes in his English ones.²³⁴ In the case of William’s relationship to Edward the Confessor, this ambiguity could be exploited. In an early charter drafted in traditional English form, William claimed to be ‘by the disposition of God and the inheritance of consanguinity emperor (basileus) of the English’.²³⁵ In early vernacular writs he was Edward’s mæg (kinsman); the terms consanguineus and cognatus are also found in some Latin documents.²³⁶ But he was not ²²⁶ Above, pp. 28–9. ²²⁷ DB ii. 138b, 139b, 240a. ²²⁸ DB i. 44d. ²²⁹ DB i. 46d, 175b. ²³⁰ DB i. 142a; cf. 137c; cf. below, n. 237. ²³¹ Letters of Lanfranc no. 39. ²³² Reg. nos. 133 (cf. above, nn. 170 a ⫹ c),141 (c.1070 ⫻ 77/8), 176 (1081 ⫻ 86), 181 (11 May 1068), 254 (13 Apr. 1069), 263 (1066 ⫻ 78), 286 (May 1068), 290 (1067; a 12th-century forgery), 294 (1067 ⫻ 68; probably a 12th-century forgery). ²³³ Fauroux, Receuil no. 15 (21 Sep. 1014); cf. Reg. nos. 251 (Apr. 1067), 280 (1068), 281 version III (early 12th century). ²³⁴ Above, p. 24. ²³⁵ Reg. no. 181. ²³⁶ Mæg and the like: Reg. nos. 1 (1066 ⫻ 78, but probably 1066 ⫻ c.1070), 34 (1066 ⫻ 87, probably early), 36 (1066 ⫻ 70), 38 (1066 ⫻ 70), 66 (1070 ⫻ 87, probably c.1070), 80 (probably 1066 ⫻ c.1070), 224 (1066 ⫻ 67), 292 (1066 ⫻ 68), 351 (1066 ⫻ 69); consanguineus: 2 (1066 ⫻ 78), 80; cognatus: 133 (1070 ⫻ 78), 139 (1075 ⫻ 76), 181 (May 1068), 301 (1066 ⫻ 75).

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a paternal kinsman, and he had no English royal blood: to the English addressees of these writs the term mæg may have rung hollow; perhaps it also highlighted the fact that William had not been an ætheling. Shifting the focus onto the last reigning member of the House of Cerdic as the new king’s antecessor—a term for which there appears to have been no Old English equivalent²³⁷—was a less blatantly tendentious way of establishing a legitimate connection with the English past. (The fact of athelinus Eadgar’s ‘frivolous’ election, still acknowledged by William of Poitiers,²³⁸ was obliterated by the strength of the link.) In one of those dissident flashes which spice his narrative, Orderic Vitalis made William state on his deathbed: ‘I assumed a royal diadem, which none of my antecessores had worn; it came to me solely by divine grace, not by hereditary right.’²³⁹ Yet, as we have seen, it was because William claimed to be Edward’s designated, direct successor as king that Edward was identified as his antecessor. Harold’s usurpation made no difference to that. The logic of the Norman claim to the English throne as eventually expressed in the framework of assumptions underlying the Domesday Inquest led inexorably to such a conclusion. But how did it come to be expressed in this form?

CANON L AW AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE CONQUEST The memorandum on the primacy of the archbishop of Canterbury, which was drawn up some time between 1073 and 1075, records that following the removal of Stigand by the papal legates at the Easter Council at Winchester in 1070 and the subsequent election and consecration of Lanfranc: ‘Not many days later Lanfranc required and received professions of obedience from all those bishops of the English kingdom who in the time of Stigand had been consecrated at various times and at various places by other archbishops or by the pope.’²⁴⁰ The implication—made explicit in the texts of the surviving professions—is that the English bishops had recognized long before that Stigand’s position as archbishop had been illegitimate, and that Lanfranc was now simply reasserting the archbishop’s lapsed rights. But this was only partially true. In his use of history, the author of the memorandum betrays an embarrassed and deceptive degree of discretion of a type we have already noticed amongst the Domesday commissioners. Of the three professions which have survived, one reveals that Bishop Remigius of Dorchester, a post-Conquest Norman appointment, had gone to Others are all later forgeries. Cf. DB i. 180c for Siward, a ‘thegn and kinsman (cognatus) of King Edward’. ²³⁷ Reg. no. 80 (1066 ⫻ 87, but probably 1066 ⫻ c.1070), which exists in both a Latin and an Old English version, has no phrase in Old English corresponding to the Latin ‘Ædwardus meus consanguineus et sui antecessores reges’; but cf. no. 39 (31 May 1081), the Old English version of which has ‘2ara kynga gyfa 2e aetforan us waeron’ for antecessores nostri reges Anglorum. ²³⁸ GG 146. ²³⁹ Orderic iv. 90. ²⁴⁰ Letters of Lanfranc no. 3.

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Stigand for consecration in 1067, had made his profession to him, and had received his cura episcopalis from him.²⁴¹ Wulfstan of Worcester denied in his profession to Lanfranc that he had previously professed obedience to anyone, and explained that he had gone to Ealdred, archbishop of York, for consecration in 1062 in order to avoid Stigand.²⁴² But John of Worcester, whose annal for 1062 is probably based on the lost vernacular life of Wulfstan written between 1095 and 1113 by Coleman, a monk of Worcester, states that Wulfstan, although consecrated by Ealdred, had professed canonical obedience to Stigand.²⁴³ William of Malmesbury’s life is professedly based on Coleman’s; perhaps tellingly, he records in passing that Wulfstan always carried a little knife in order to erase ink blots, and to keep his fingernails clean.²⁴⁴ His clean fingers mean that it is very difficult indeed to detect traces of his tampering with documents.²⁴⁵ The truth about Stigand’s position in the English church prior to 1070 is probably now irrecoverable, and is in any case largely irrelevant in the present context. But the three extant professions display striking verbal parallels, and clearly reproduce a draft document which may well have provided a basis for the actions of the papal legates at the Easter Council.²⁴⁶ The similarities with the treatment of Harold in official sources are uncanny. Stigand had been a ‘praesumptor’ of the church of Canterbury: ‘he expelled Archbishop Robert [of Jumièges] partly by force and partly by intrigue, invaded the metropolitan see, and did not hesitate to usurp the pallium, which [Robert] himself had brought back from the apostolic see, and which he had filched along with the other things.’²⁴⁷ It seems unlikely that Stigand did usurp Robert’s pallium; he waited until he had received his own pallium from the antipope Benedict X in 1058²⁴⁸ before beginning to exercise metropolitan functions, for it was in that year that he consecrated his first bishops.²⁴⁹ But, as ²⁴¹ Canterbury Professions, ed. M. Richter, Canterbury and York Soc., lxvii (1973), no. 32. ²⁴² Ibid., no. 31. ²⁴³ JW ii. 592. The case for this annal’s being largely based on Coleman is put by R. R. Darlington (ed.), The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., xl (1928), pp. xi–xiv. Nevertheless he argues (p. xv) that because the account of Wulfstan’s profession to Stigand is absent from William of Malmesbury’s Vita, also based on Coleman, and contradicted by Wulfstan’s profession of 1070, it neither happened nor was it recorded by Coleman. We cannot now establish what Coleman wrote, but it is difficult to see why John should have invented a profession to Stigand, and easy to see why Wulfstan, if he had made one, might have wanted to cover it up in 1070. Of course this does not mean that John was right, but his account cannot be dismissed out of hand. In 1094, in an intriguing slip, Wulfstan referred to Stigand as Archbishop Anselm’s antecessor: S. Anselmi Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1938–61), iv. epp. 170–1; HN 46. ²⁴⁴ VW 58. I am grateful to Stephen Baxter for drawing my attention to this reference. ²⁴⁵ S. Baxter, ‘The Representation of Lordship and Land Tenure in Domesday Book’, in E. Hallam and D. Bates (eds.), Domesday Book (Stroud, 2001), 81–92. ²⁴⁶ See also Professions, no. 33, of Herfast of Elmham, who had been consecrated after Stigand’s deposition. The suggestion about a draft document is made by F. Barlow, The English Church, 1000–1066, 2nd edn. (London, 1979), 303. ²⁴⁷ Professions no. 32. ²⁴⁸ ASC (D)(E) s.a. 1058; JW ii. 584. ²⁴⁹ Selsey and Rochester: ASC (D)(E) s.a.1058; Wulfwig of Dorchester and Leofwine of Lichfield were said to have gone abroad in 1053 because ‘there was no archbishop in the land’, Stigand holding

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should already be clear, the Normans were not averse to some massaging of the facts where the time of King Edward was concerned. The charge was inserted into all three professions, and is cited as the occasion for Stigand’s condemnation by successive popes. It was therefore almost certainly found in the document on which they must all be based. Barlow suggests that it was designed to underline the fact that Stigand had truly usurped the archbishopric.²⁵⁰ It meant that there had been a de iure vacancy, during which the archiepiscopal office had not been legitimately filled. As a consequence, Remigius stated to Lanfranc, citing the authority of Pope Alexander II, ‘[Stigand] was neither your antecessor nor are you his successor’.²⁵¹ Stigand had held Canterbury in plurality with Winchester, to which he had been appointed in 1047. His time as bishop of Winchester was also, it seems, to be wiped from the record: King William confirmed to Walkelin, who became bishop on Stigand’s deposition, all the rights which Bishop Ælfwine, Stigand’s predecessor, had held ‘in King Edward’s day’.²⁵² It has been suggested that Remigius’s profession in particular smacks of Lanfranc’s lawyerly guidance.²⁵³ Some possible Canon Law references relating to usurpation are cited in a letter of Lanfranc to Bishop Herfast of Thetford. They have been matched up with marginal marks in Lanfranc’s own copy of his Canon Law collection, conventionally known as the Collectio Lanfranci—an abbreviated version of the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals—which was imported by Lanfranc from Bec to Canterbury, and is now in Trinity College, Cambridge.²⁵⁴ It was a common canonical principle that a new bishop could not legitimately be created whilst the bishop of a particular see was living. Although I have found no text in Lanfranc’s manuscript which states this in so many words, it clearly underlies several passages, and was the basis for the charge against Stigand.²⁵⁵ Perhaps Eadmer, probably writing between 1089 and 1093,²⁵⁶ in Canterbury, had this case in mind Canterbury and Kynsige of York not having yet received his pallium: ASC (C) s.a. 1053. By 1061 Stigand’s position seems again to have been questionable, because Giso of Wells and Walter of Hereford travelled to Rome: JW ii. 586–8. ²⁵⁰ Barlow, English Church, 304; cf. JW ii. 606: ‘Stigand, the primate of all England, was accused by the apostolic pope of not having received the pallium canonically . . .’ ²⁵¹ Professions no. 32. ²⁵² Reg. no. 339. ²⁵³ Professions, p. lxi. ²⁵⁴ Letters of Lanfranc no. 24. For the discovery that Cambridge, Trinity College MS. B. 16.44 was Lanfranc’s personal copy, and that it was almost certainly used in the drafting of some of his letters, see Z. N. Brooke, The English Church and the Papacy from the Conquest to the Reign of King John (Cambridge, 1931), 57–83, with this letter discussed at pp. 68–9; cf. no. 47, also to Herfast. On the manuscript, see M. Gullick, ‘The English-owned Manuscripts of the Collectio Lanfranci (s.xi/xii)’, in L. Dennison (ed.), The Legacy of M. R. James: Papers from the 1995 Cambridge Symposium (Donington, 2001), 99–117, at 100–2. ²⁵⁵ See Epistola Evaristi secunda, cap. 4, in Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, p. 24 (⫽ Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni, ed. P. Hinschius (Leipzig, 1863), 90); Epistola Calixti secunda, cap. 3, in Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, p. 38 (⫽ cap. 14, Decretales, 139). I am indebted to Mark Philpott for these references; neither is flagged in the margin of the manuscript. Cf. Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, Bk. V. 302, in PL 161. 416. John of Worcester asserts, in language very similar to the professions, that Stigand had been forbidden to exercise episcopal office by the pope, ‘quia, Rodberto archiepiscopo vivente, archiepiscopatum suscipere presumpsit . . .’: JW ii. 592. ²⁵⁶ R. W. Southern, St Anselm: A Portrait in Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), 408.

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when, in his Vita Sancti Wilfridi, he described how ‘Chad’ had in 669 acknowledged that his consecration as ‘bishop’ of York had been contrary to Canon Law, because it had taken place during the lifetime of the previous bishop, Wilfrid. ‘Reflecting on the fact that he had not obtained the see of another bishop justly, and being drawn to penitence, Chad chose to go without such an honour rather than to be in charge of another’s church unjustly any longer.’²⁵⁷ If only Stigand had done likewise. Eadmer was familiar with the Collectio, which Lanfranc had deposited in Christ Church library. On two separate occasions he copied letters of (anti-)Pope Clement III to Lanfranc, presumably on Lanfranc’s instructions, into the end of the manuscript.²⁵⁸ There is a marginal note in Lanfranc’s manuscript beside the section of canon 75 of the Fourth Council of Toledo which anathematizes any future kings who should usurp power contrary to the laws. This canon deals with the constituting of a ‘successor regni’ by ‘the nobles of the whole race (primatus totius gentis) in common council with the bishops’, following the death of a king (princeps). It condemns any disruption of this process, and ordains that: anyone who with tyrannical presumption has usurped the pediment of the kingdom should be anathema in the sight of God the Father and the angels, and should be excommunicated from the catholic church which he has profaned by perjury, and excluded from all union of Christians together with all his associates in impiety. For it is fitting that there should be a single penalty for all those who are found to be implicated in the same crime.²⁵⁹

In view of Lanfranc’s probable interest in this canon, evidenced by the marginal ‘a’,²⁶⁰ it is doubly ironic that it was formulated by Spanish bishops who had just condoned Sisenand’s usurpation of the throne in 631.²⁶¹ Tyranny in Visigothic legislation was defined in terms of usurpation.²⁶² As the procedures laid down for royal accession in canon 75 suggest, usurpation did not necessarily mean acceding during the lifetime of the previous ruler. Canons 17 and 18 of the Sixth Council ²⁵⁷ Vita Sancti Wilfridi auctore Edmero, ed. B. J. Muir and A. J. Turner (Exeter, 1998), 46. ²⁵⁸ M. Gullick, ‘The Scribal Work of Eadmer of Canterbury to 1109’, Archaeologia Cantiana, cxviii (1998), 173–89, at 181. ²⁵⁹ Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, pp. 327–9 at 328 (⫽ Decretales, 372–4). The denunciation is reiterated twice again, with respect to Christ and His apostles, and to the Holy Ghost and martyrs of Christ. ²⁶⁰ M. Philpott, ‘Archbishop Lanfranc and Canon Law’, Oxford University D.Phil. thesis (1994), ch. 3, demonstrates that some of the Canon Law texts quoted in Lanfranc’s letters are not marked with an ‘a’ in the margin of Trinity College MS. B. 16.44; and that many texts thus distinguished are not found in Lanfranc’s letters or elsewhere in his surviving writings. He also establishes (p. 97) that, where Canon Law was concerned, Lanfranc preferred allusion to quotation or citation. Nevertheless, he does not deny the close link between Lanfranc and the manuscript established by Brooke. ²⁶¹ P. A. Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford, 1993), 40. ²⁶² P. D. King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge, 1972), 45, n. 5; R. Collins, ‘Julian of Toledo and Royal Succession in Late Seventh-Century Spain’, in Sawyer and Wood (eds.), Early Medieval Kingship, 30–49, esp. 35, 45. For this meaning of tyranny in an Anglo-Norman context, see M. M. Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford, 1984), 192.

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of Toledo, for instance, attack usurpation both before and after the death of a king. They reiterate the condemnation to perpetual anathema of any would-be usurper. They were extremely influential, being found not only in Lanfranc’s manuscript (although not flagged in the margin),²⁶³ but also in Ivo of Chartres’ Decretum,²⁶⁴ and in that of Burchard of Worms.²⁶⁵ The relevance of this to the case against Harold is obvious. When William of Poitiers apostrophizes the tyrant’s corpse, claiming that the result of trial by battle at Hastings had shown ‘how rightly you were elevated by Edward’s gift at his end’, he says ‘you will be abominable to future generations, English as well as Normans’.²⁶⁶ William went further, and commended tyrannicide on three occasions, echoing with selfconsciously learned approval Cicero’s dictum that of all glorious deeds it was the finest.²⁶⁷ No passage in Lanfranc’s collection offers explicit support for such action.²⁶⁸ In view of the Norman characterization of Harold as a tyrannical usurper, it seems likely that the irony of VI Toledo 18’s concluding provision that the whole Gothic people would be dishonoured if they failed to avenge a regicide as they would avenge the murder of their own father was lost on Lanfranc. Another marginal mark appears in Lanfranc’s manuscript beside that section of canon 1 of the Seventh Council of Toledo which states that anyone speaking or conspiring against the king should be liable to excommunication.²⁶⁹ The influence of this is clear in, for instance, canon 9 of the Easter council at Winchester in 1072.²⁷⁰ It indicates that, in addition to outlawry and confiscation, ecclesiastical sanctions for infidelity towards and perjury against the king were the same as those for tyrannical usurpation. According to the Norman story, Harold was guilty of just these offences against William. It was what his usurpation had consisted in. His crime was the model for that of all traitors;²⁷¹ indeed, as we have seen, in some moods William of Poitiers seems to have thought that, by association, it had made all the English traitors.²⁷² IV Toledo 75’s provision that all the associates of a tyrant should suffer the same penalty with him might serve to justify such a view. Canon 14 of the Sixth Council of Toledo sought to protect King Chintila’s fideles from dispossession by his successors after his death. The only exception countenanced was in a case of infidelitas to a successor, when the new king might confiscate the land and ‘distribute it to fideles’.²⁷³ If Lanfranc read this provision at all reflectively, ²⁶³ Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, pp. 334–5 (⫽ Decretales, 379–80). ²⁶⁴ Bk. XVI. 26, PL 161. 908. ²⁶⁵ Bk. XV. 25, PL 140. 901. It is likely that Lanfranc knew Burchard’s collection: Brooke, English Church, 57–8. A canon derived from it is tipped into Lanfranc’s manuscript facing p. 83; although it appears to be written in a contemporary hand, it is impossible to know when it was inserted: Philpott, ‘Lanfranc and Canon Law’, 42. An 11th-century manuscript of Burchard’s collection—London, BL Cotton MS. Claudius C vi—was certainly at Canterbury by the 12th century: Philpott, 115. ²⁶⁶ GG 140. ²⁶⁷ GG 26, 138, 156. ²⁶⁸ The Toledan councils do not countenance resistance: King, Law and Society, 47–8. ²⁶⁹ Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, p. 336 (⫽ Decretales, 381). ²⁷⁰ C&S ii. 606. ²⁷¹ Reg. no. 27, quoted above, n. 186. ²⁷² Above, p. 7. ²⁷³ Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, p. 334 (⫽ Decretales, 379); cf. V Toledo 6, p. 330 (⫽ Decretales, 375); neither passage is marked in the margin. Both are discussed by King, Law and Society, 60–1.

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mentally substituting Edward the Confessor for Chintila, it must have appeared programmatic as far as the process of land redistribution after the Conquest was concerned. In IV Toledo 75 offences against the king were defined in terms of breaching a sacramentum fidei taken by all his subjects; an offender was deemed a sacrilegious perjurer.²⁷⁴ A letter of Lanfranc indicates that relaxation of the prescribed penalties for perjury, when they had been imposed for this reason, was left to the king’s discretion;²⁷⁵ this was a principle he might well have derived from other Toledan councils included in his collection.²⁷⁶ IV Toledo 75 reinforced the king’s inviolability by stressing the effects of anointing, citing Ps. 105: 15 and 1 Sam. 26: 9; indeed it has been argued that this canon is linked to the introduction of royal anointing in Visigothic Spain.²⁷⁷ Perhaps Lanfranc misunderstood the term primatus totius gentis, which was said to act together with the bishops in constituting a king, to mean something akin to the primacy he claimed as archbishop of Canterbury. He may have attributed to the bishop of Toledo the archbishop of Canterbury’s role in what the Normans saw as constitutive royal anointing.²⁷⁸ It was principally in terms of the right to ordain, and by implication to consecrate, all bishops that the primacy of Toledo was understood to consist in Visigothic Spain; and Lanfranc paid particular attention to the Toledan model. Moreover, the canon which was deemed to have established this right avowedly did so in order to forestall the dangers which ensued if episcopal vacancies were prolonged. Lanfranc must have found this focus on the gap between the death of an incumbent and the constituting of a successor peculiarly pertinent to his current concerns.²⁷⁹ By straightforward inference, this analysis of the primate’s function with respect to bishops might be extended to the consecration of kings. Perhaps Lanfranc read this further function into canon 10 of the Eighth Council.²⁸⁰ As he seems to have recognized, the conjunction in IV Toledo 75 of royal anointing with individual oaths of fidelity to the king was particularly apposite to the definition of William the Conqueror’s ²⁷⁴ Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, p. 327 (⫽ cap. 74, Decretales, 372–3). ²⁷⁵ Letters of Lanfranc nos. 33A, 33B. ²⁷⁶ X Toledo 2, XII Toledo 4 (recte 3): Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, pp. 355, 371 (⫽ Decretales, 401, 414–15). Neither text is flagged in the margin. ²⁷⁷ King, Law and Society, 48–9, n. 5. ²⁷⁸ For use of the term primatus in the sense of primate in Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, see pp. 6, 22, 32, 67, 74, 75, etc. (⫽ Decretales, 39, 82, 121, 468–9, 485, 487); cf. C&S ii. 612 (Council of London, 1075), Letters of Lanfranc nos. 3, 47, etc. ²⁷⁹ XII Toledo 7 (recte 6) is flagged in the margin of Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, p. 373 (⫽ Decretales, 416); discussed by Richter, Professions, pp. lxvii–lxviii. Further, Council of Nicaea, cap. 6; Second Council of Arles, caps. 5, 6; Capitula Martini Episc. Bracar., caps. 2, 3, in Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, pp. 221, 276, 386 (⫽ Decretales, 258–9, 322, 428). Of these texts, only the Council of Arles is flagged in the margin. Cf. XI Toledo 4 (recte 3), Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, p. 363 (⫽ Decretales, 408), quoted in Letters of Lanfranc no. 47, to Herfast, bishop of Thetford, subordinating a bishop to the authority of the metropolitan who had consecrated him. This passage is flagged in the margin. ²⁸⁰ Trinity College MS. B. 16.44, p. 347 (where the rubricator has misnumbered it ‘XII’)(⫽ Decretales, 390–1). The canon stipulates that henceforth kings are to be elected either where the previous ruler had died or at Toledo (the urbs regia).

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kingship. It is, then, hardly surprising that Lanfranc’s ownership inscription on the penultimate folio of the Collectio, which carefully records its provenance, concludes with a threat: ‘If anyone shall remove it from the possession of this church [Christ Church, Canterbury], let him be anathema.’²⁸¹ For between its covers were to be found most of the canonical authorities which justified and therefore to a considerable degree shaped the implementation of the Conquest. Lanfranc put one or more exemplars of the imported Collectio into circulation. Copies were made in most, perhaps all, English cathedral scriptoria, as well as those of some other major monasteries.²⁸² The book, it appears, was considered indispensable. Of course, the primary aim was to bring England into canonical conformity with the rest of Western Christendom, not to justify the Conquest. Nevertheless, what was intended to become the standard handbook of Canon Law in England, available in perhaps every cathedral library and many others besides, had embedded in it the canonical authorities which justified the Conquest. In that sense the copying of the Collectio is as emphatic a statement of the imposition of the Conquest as the systematic rebuilding of the cathedral and abbey churches in the immediate vicinity of which the copies were made. If any of the scribes raised his eyes from the page he was copying to glance out of the scriptorium window, he is more likely than not to have seen a building site. William of Poitiers stated that the relationship between Lanfranc as abbot of St-Étienne, Caen, and Duke William prior to the Conquest reminded him of ‘the sweet memory . . . of the Emperor Theodosius who, when he was about to go into battle against tyrants, was inspired by the prophesies and responses of the monk John . . .’;²⁸³ he went on to show that William had intended to make him archbishop of Canterbury from the start.²⁸⁴ Whilst I can find no source in Lanfranc’s manuscript or in contemporary Canon Law which explicitly makes the obvious point that a usurper would not count as an antecessor, the strictures on tyranny and the penalties for it—marked out for special attention in his personal copy of his own Canon Law collection—taken together with the case against Stigand underlying the extant professions of 1070, clearly imply as much. They indicate that Lanfranc may have done much more than give ‘prophecies and responses’ in preparing Duke William for his battle against the tyrant Harold. Although it was Gilbert of Lisieux who went to Rome to appeal for papal support,²⁸⁵ Lanfranc, who was, according to Eadmer, ‘most expert in both divine and human law’,²⁸⁶ is the obvious candidate for the authorship of the case against Harold or Stigand or both which was presented there. The anonymous monk of Battle who wrote the Brevis Relatio commended him not only for his probity in the affairs of God, but ²⁸¹ The hand of this inscription has been identified in other Canterbury manuscripts of the 1070s: C. N. L. Brooke, ‘Archbishop Lanfranc, the English Bishops and the Council of London of 1075’, Studia Gratiana, xii (1967), 39–59, at 56–8. ²⁸² There are eleven surviving manuscripts, including Lanfranc’s own: Gullick, ‘Manuscripts of the Collectio Lanfranci’, 114–15. ²⁸³ GG 86. ²⁸⁴ GG 160. ²⁸⁵ Orderic, ii. 142. ²⁸⁶ HN 24.

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also for his prudence and adroitness in secular matters.²⁸⁷ According to William of Poitiers, Duke William had made Lanfranc abbot of St-Étienne ‘by a certain pious violence’;²⁸⁸ Lanfranc seems to have returned the favour in kind by showing how the violence of the Conquest could be defined in Canon Law as an act of piety.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF OFFICIAL HISTORY It was appropriate for William of Poitiers to compare the Normans at Hastings to orators in a judicial plea,²⁸⁹ for his book is not really a res gesta of William the Conqueror at all, but the exposition of a legal case. As a piece of advocacy, the handling of certain facts can still arouse suspicion, despite the care with which the argument is developed, and the lack of other evidence against which to evaluate some of his claims.²⁹⁰ William’s boast that he never takes ‘a single step beyond the bounds of truth’ is in itself enough to strain a reader’s credulity.²⁹¹ So is his highminded proclamation that it is his duty as an historian to ensure that ‘inhuman crime’ is not ‘buried in silence’ by being ‘removed from the written page’.²⁹² More importantly in the present context, there are internal inconsistencies in the selfproclaimed truth-teller’s treatment of important details which indicate that, writing c.1077, he was almost certainly drawing on a number of not entirely congruent sources concerned with the king’s claim.²⁹³ It is clear that only a small portion of the materials which circulated in the first decade after the Conquest now survives.²⁹⁴ It is possible that Lanfranc may have written one of these lost sources;²⁹⁵ and it is ²⁸⁷ BR 34. ²⁸⁸ GG 84. ²⁸⁹ GG 128. ²⁹⁰ For instance, the claim that it was Duke William who, as a minor, forced the English to make Edward king. This contradicts all the English sources, and is highly improbable given the insecurity of William’s position at that time: GG, 18. Edward’s supposed designation of William in 1051–2 accords with Norman, not English, succession practices, and is not mentioned in any English source: GG 20, 68, 120, discussed by G. S. Garnett, ‘Conquered England’, in N. Saul (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England (Oxford, 1997), 61–101, at 65. William of Poitiers and William of Jumièges made plenty of other improbable claims, particularly with regard to England. ²⁹¹ GG 28. ²⁹² GG 6. ²⁹³ For some examples, see Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 108, 221–5; further, when William gives detailed accounts of Harold’s alleged oath to the duke, GG 70, 120, he fails to mention the marriage agreement which plays such a large part in other accounts. But later (p. 156) he refers to it in passing as if its significance would be readily appreciated. He was clearly using a different source at this point, and forgot that he had said nothing about the matter in his earlier treatments of Harold’s oath. Elsewhere, he repeats a passage verbatim, in a quite different context, a phenomenon perhaps best explained by his having forgotten that he had already lifted it once from his unidentified source: pp. 102–4, 180. For his use of his known sources, see Davis, ‘William of Poitiers’, 109–10. ²⁹⁴ For instance, the significance of the sexual harassment of ‘Ælfgyva’ depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry must have been immediately familiar to any contemporary, like the portrayals of other events in the Norman story: Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 17. Otherwise the Tapestry’s designer would not have included it. Yet no extant source explains this mysterious incident. ²⁹⁵ Sigebert of Gembloux believed that Lanfranc had written ‘res gestas Guillelmi Northmannorum comitis’: Liber de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis, in PL 160. 583; further F. Barlow,

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difficult not to believe that he had been involved in framing the arguments on which they seem, from the surviving evidence, to have been based. His treatment of Stigand uncannily pre-empted the final expression of the appeal to T.R.E. in Domesday Book: that Harold was not an antecessor of William the Conqueror, that the time of his usurpation was irrelevant to legal claims, that it had never happened. One usurper had consecrated another. The case against both was, in its essentials, the same. If such a case had been sketched in a chronicle it would have appeared absurd, even by the standard of propagandistic manipulation achieved by William of Poitiers. But it was not the outline of such a case; it was the logical conclusion of the repeated adjudication, throughout William the Conqueror’s reign, of competing claims to land by reference to terms set by the king’s own claim to the kingdom. Only as the process advanced did the necessary position of each line in the picture become sharply defined. The continuing stress on the legitimacy of William’s claim to succeed Edward thus completed the process of rewriting history which was well advanced when William of Poitiers finished his book c.1077, and was already under way when the Conquest seems to have forced William of Jumièges into a pretty crude scissors-and-paste exercise at the end of the 1060s.²⁹⁶ Lanfranc is perhaps the most plausible candidate for the originator of this process, the Cheshire cat of the Norman Conquest.²⁹⁷ No wonder the author of the early twelfth-century Brevis Relatio, writing at the Conqueror’s penitential foundation of Battle, explained the etymology of Lanfranc’s name in terms of his having ‘a large heart’.²⁹⁸ The author of Lanfranc’s epitaph—probably St Anselm—eulogized, amongst many other virtues, his cultivation of ‘true, not false, justice; he was a pious and totally unbending avenger of wickedness’.²⁹⁹ It seems likely that this quality expressed itself in a fashion peculiar to certain types of lawyer. It is, therefore, even more wrong to accept Domesday Book at face value, as an objective record of fact, than it would be to treat any of the Norman narratives of the Conquest in this way. Maitland was uncharacteristically naive to rely upon the impartiality of the Domesday scribes in their records of Harold’s so-called depredations.³⁰⁰ In most transactions in which Harold, and often those associated with him, were involved, their legality of title is described in language formed by the (usually unspoken) assessment of the legitimacy of his title to the throne. This ‘The Carmen de Hastingae proelio’, in K. Bourne and D. C. Watt (eds.), Studies in International History: Essays presented to W. N. Medlicott (London, 1967), 35–67 at 36. Davis, ‘William of Poitiers’, 109, suggests that where there are verbal similarities between William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers, they were using a lost, common source; further GND i. pp. xlvii–xlviii. ²⁹⁶ Elisabeth van Houts argues, GND i. pp. xxxii–xxxv, xlvii–l, liii–liv, that William of Jumièges had written most of his history prior to 1060, and that he later appended an account of the Conquest, bk. vii, caps. 13–21, completing it in about 1070. She takes the view, pp. xlv–xlvii, that the digressions on English affairs with which the earlier books are sprinkled were already in the original versions of those books, and were not, as other historians have interpreted them, retrospective postConquest insertions. The evidence is insufficient to prove either interpretation. ²⁹⁷ I owe this aphorism, coined in a Special Subject class, to James Campbell. ²⁹⁸ BR 34. ²⁹⁹ PL 158. 1049–50. ³⁰⁰ Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 168.

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is demonstrated by the one slip in which he is said to have ‘usurped the kingdom’.³⁰¹ In Kent we hear of an exchange: ‘Through Harold’s violence Alnoth Cild stole from St Martin [of Dover] Merclesham and Hawkhurst, for which he granted the canons an unequal exchange.’³⁰² Even when there had been a compensating exchange, of the type we have seen William arranging for Windsor,³⁰³ it had to be denounced if it had had anything to do with Harold. Yet William felt no compunction about keeping many of Harold’s supposed annexations in the terra regis.³⁰⁴ Attention has recently been drawn to the difference in tone between Domesday’s treatment of land transactions involving Harold, and its more dispassionate recording of those involving members of other English noble families, even when other sources reveal that they had been annexing ecclesiastical lands.³⁰⁵ Apart from eloquent silences and rumblings of discontent in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the Vita Ædwardi’s treatment of the Conquest as divine retribution for the sins of the English in terms very similar to those applied to the Danish invasions of the early eleventh century,³⁰⁶ the official interpretation of the Conquest was a profoundly successful argument. We have to move into the twelfth century, to Eadmer, or Orderic, or William of Malmesbury, for any hint of a dissident interpretation of the Conquest.³⁰⁷ In the eleventh century the official line appears to have been successfully imposed in England, although it was accorded little credibility elsewhere in Europe.³⁰⁸ How far did this fully worked-out analysis of the period between Edward the Confessor’s death and William’s consecration in 1066 shape that of later interrregna? I have sought to show that the necessity for arguing that Harold and the English were in rebellion against William before he had been crowned led to his being given the title of king in some records at the time of his first arrival in the country.³⁰⁹ There was none other that he could be given. His claim to be mæg of Edward distinguished him from Harold, for he and Edward had a common ancestor in Richard I of Normandy, William’s paternal great-grandfather and Edward’s maternal grandfather; but it was unimpressive beside that of the ætheling Eadgar, whom, after Hastings, Archbishop Ealdred and the citizens of London wished to have as king ‘as was his right by birth (eall swa him wel gecynde ³⁰¹ DB i. 38b. ³⁰² DB i. 2b. ³⁰³ Above, p. 11. ³⁰⁴ e.g. DB i. 38a, 64b, 87a. The last reference is to Congresbury, which Harold had supposedly seized together with Banwell from Bishop Giso of Wells. That this is a post-Conquest gloss on a much more complicated situation is demonstrated by J. R. Green, ‘Earl Harold and Bishop Giso’, Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society Proceedings, xii (1863–4), 148–57; Freeman, Norman Conquest, ii. app. QQ; Writs, ed. Harmer, pp. 275–6; S. Keynes, ‘Giso, bishop of Wells (1061–88)’, ANS xix (1996), 203–71, esp. 236–43. ³⁰⁵ Williams, ‘Estates of Harold Godwineson’, 182, contrasts Hemming’s cartulary’s treatment of the activities of the family of the earls of Mercia with respect to the Worcester manor of Salwarpe with the whitewash in DB i. 176a. ³⁰⁶ Vita Ædwardi, pp. 8, 80, 116–18; cf. S. 911 (1005), quoted by Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 3. ³⁰⁷ HN 9–10; Orderic, ii. pp. xxxviii–xxxix, 202, 270–8, 312–14; GR i. 736. ³⁰⁸ E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The Norman Conquest Through European Eyes’, EHR cx (1995), 832–53. ³⁰⁹ Above, p. 20.

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wæs).’³¹⁰ The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E) s.a. 1086 stated that Normandy was William’s ‘gecynde’, contrasting his authority there with his rule over Maine, which is described in the same terms as that over England. He could not be called ætheling because it was a birthright to which he was not entitled.³¹¹ No other Norman claimant was ever given the title of king prior to consecration, and regnal dates were calculated from that point—as, indeed, they were for William the Conqueror.³¹² The necessary ambiguity of his position prior to Christmas Day 1066 formed no precedent for later interregna, precisely because the sharp delimitation of the gap between antecessor and successor did. With the application of this template to each succession went its corollary: definition of tenurial rights by reference to the status quo on the day of an antecessor’s death. This became a commonplace in the writs of the period, occasionally supplemented or replaced by a reference to the date of the king’s coronation.³¹³ There were precedents in the Conqueror’s writs,³¹⁴ but there were also references to his arrival in England, reflecting Domesday usage.³¹⁵ There are, however, no references in the documents of William Rufus³¹⁶ or Stephen to the time when they had first entered the kingdom prior to coronation, nor any equivalent invocation of the period between 2 and 5 August 1100 by Henry I. After William the Conqueror there was no compelling need to be ambiguous about the significance of the king’s coronation, and its interpretation became more straightforward. But the language of ecclesiastical office-holding, of antecessores and successores, was a constant reminder of how the Conquest had been justified, and how the nature of that justification, framed to demonstrate continuity with the Old English past, had in fact destroyed that past and shaped a new tenurial structure. It encapsulated the king’s position as lord of all the land in the kingdom, and the consequent dependence of all landholders, immediately or mediately, upon him. It is to the implications for royal succession of this nexus between lord king and landholder, particularly his tenants-in-chief, that I shall now turn. And I shall begin where the early evidence is most plentiful, with the clerical tenants-in-chief. The most perceptive analyst of their position was Eadmer. He was well informed, because he wrote at Christ Church, Canterbury, was already active in ³¹⁰ ASC (D) s.a. 1066; the same word is used to describe Edward the Confessor at the time of his accession, in order to stress the restoration of the line of Cerdic: ASC (C) s.a. 1042. ³¹¹ D. N. Dumville, ‘The ætheling: A Study in Anglo-Saxon Constitutional History’, ASE viii (1979), 1–33. ³¹² Reg. nos. 181 (11 May 1068), 280 (1068, possibly 1 Nov. ⫻ 25 Dec.); cf. 254 (13 Apr. 1069). ³¹³ RRAN i. nos. 423 (1094 ⫻ 99), 468 (1093 ⫻ 1100). ³¹⁴ Reg. no. 221 (1080 ⫻ 82/3, probably 1080 ⫻ 81). ³¹⁵ Reg. nos. 310 (1076 ⫻ 85, probably 1078 ⫻ 85; also perhaps c.1077); cf. 226 (1077 ⫻ 82/3, probably 1077 ⫻ 80), which defines a manor being granted as Harold had held it at that point. Nos. 42, 43 (1066 ⫻ 87, and possibly c.1077) seem to refer to a recent Channel crossing, rather than to William’s original arrival in England. ³¹⁶ The ‘novissime’ of RRAN i. no. 291 (⫽ Douglas, Feudal Documents, no. 12) does not mean, pace Davis and Sharpe, ‘Use of Writs’, 276–7, that the writ must be dated to 1087. The usage implies

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the scriptorium there in Lanfranc’s time,³¹⁷ and became the keeper of Archbishop Anselm’s chapel and his constant companion, certainly by February 1094, and probably from the beginning of his pontificate.³¹⁸ According to William of Malmesbury, Anselm would not even turn over in bed without being told to do so by Eadmer.³¹⁹ Eadmer’s English descent, his pride in the traditions of his house, and the raw immediacy of his experience of the Conquest’s aftermath mean that he presents a much more critical view of it than any of his eleventh-century Norman predecessors.³²⁰ His is also a more pessimistically nuanced interpretation than that of any of the great twelfth-century historians of England who followed him. His scepticism about the official line on the Conquest is for the most part oblique and understated, but all the more subversive for that. Occasionally, however, he proved incapable of biting his lip as a writer. Soon after 1120 he wrote a letter to the monks of Glastonbury, ridiculing their claim that their predecessors had stolen the body of St Dunstan from Canterbury. He professed amazement at the brazen implausibility of the story: especially because it is said that these tales were made up by Englishmen. Alas, why did you not consult someone from overseas (aliquem hominem transmarinum), where they have more experience, more learning, and know better how to make up such stories? You could even have paid someone to make up a plausible lie for you on a matter of such importance.³²¹

That uncharacteristic outburst of indignation³²² reveals how credible and reliable Eadmer thought overseas—for which read Norman—historians were, and how easily their pens might be hired. His generally controlled indignation, and his nostalgia for an English past which he recognized was already irrevocably lost (except, crucially, in the form of memories preserved by historians), helped to sharpen his perception of how the Conquest had altered the relationship between bishops and abbots and the king. In turning to this issue, I therefore turn first to him. a reference to one of Rufus’s subsequent crossings. Sharpe comments that it is not found in any other act of Rufus, but does appear in two of Henry I: RRAN ii. nos. 1189, 1614. ³¹⁷ Gullick, ‘Scribal work of Eadmer’, 175–81; at 176, pl. I, his hand at this time is characterized as one of ‘controlled deliberation, rhythmic, but not exuberant’. ³¹⁸ HN 52; Southern, Portrait, 242–3. ³¹⁹ GP 122. ³²⁰ R. W. Southern, St Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge, 1963), 231–2, 311–12. ³²¹ Memorials of St Dunstan, ed. W. Stubbs, RS (London, 1874), 412–22, at 415; R. Sharpe, ‘Eadmer’s Letter to the Monks of Glastonbury Concerning St Dunstan’s Disputed Remains’, in L. Abrams and J. P. Carley (eds.), The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey: Essays in Honour of the Ninetieth Birthday of C. A. Ralegh Radford (Woodbridge, 1991), 205–15, at 210. ³²² For another instance, prompted by Henry I’s discrimination against the English, see HN 224.

II The King as an Anomaly Dominus rex nullum potest habere parem multo minus superiorem. Glanvill, vii. 10 I call the establishment of Tenures an extraordinary Alteration, not only because it was such in many of its Consequences, but likewise because it originally and immediately defeated all Supposition or Possibility of Propriety in any other Person than the King. Martin Wright, An Introduction to the Law of Tenures¹

EADMER AND THE KING’S ‘NOD’ In its obituary of William Rufus, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E) s.a. 1100 castigates the king’s memory: . . . for in his days all justice was in abeyance, and all injustice arose both in ecclesiastical and in secular matters. He kept down God’s church, and all the bishoprics and abbacies whose incumbents died in his days he sold for money, or held in his own hand, or let out for rent, because he intended to be the heir (yrfe numa) of everyone, both ordained and lay.

The chronicler considered that bishoprics and abbacies were subject to royal exploitation in the same way as were the tenures of those laymen who held directly of the king: on the death of an incumbent, Rufus claimed to be yrfe numa. Eadmer might assert of Rufus that ‘he was the first to impose this lamentable oppression of the churches of God; in no way was it passed down to him by his father’.² But in fact he realized that the practice could not simply be attributed to Rufus’s sacrilegious greed,³ even if its ruthless exploitation could be. Rather, he recognized that it was a consequence of the nature of William the Conqueror’s settlement in England. Despite the fiction enshrined in Domesday Book that post-Conquest tenants held as successors to Edwardian antecessores, tenures were, as has already been stressed, derived either directly or through an intermediate lord from a royal grant.⁴ Although the king’s own ¹ M. Wright, An Introduction to the Law of Tenures, 1st edn. (London, 1730), 58. ² HN 27. ³ Eadmer attributes it to all three Norman kings, at least by implication. In 1102 Henry I stated to Anselm: ‘Usus antecessorum nolo perdere, nec in regno meo qui meus non sit quenquam sustinere’(HN 131). ⁴ Above, pp. 15–16, 30–1.

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claim to be Edward the Confessor’s direct successor came to provide the template for the terms of reference by which all other tenures were defined, the apparent initial absence of the language of inheritance in post-Conquest England, in every case except that of the king, was emphatic if implicit testimony to the dependent nature of all tenure.⁵ Everything was ultimately an acquisition held of him, whether the tenant was one of the king’s co-conquerors or an English survivor.⁶ Eadmer described the initial establishment of Norman power in England thus: Wishing to avail himself in England of the usages and laws which he and his forefathers had been accustomed to have in Normandy, he instituted throughout the whole land as bishops, abbots, and other nobles (principes) persons of a type who would have been deemed unworthy if they had not obeyed his laws (leges) in every respect, subordinating to this every other consideration, or if any one of them had dared to raise his head against him for the power of any earthly honour. For everyone knew whence they came, who they were, and to what they had been elevated.⁷

He encapsulated his point in a classical commonplace: ‘Everything, divine and human alike, waited on his nod (nutus).’⁸ But Eadmer was mistaken in attributing this total dependence on the ruler’s will to early Normandy. In Normandy there appear to have been two main categories of land in the early eleventh century: beneficium and alodium. What distinguished them was not the service due from the former, for some service seems from the earliest times to have been due from the latter too. Rather, it was the precarious nature of the former and the heritable nature of the latter. Lands of Duke Richard II’s ius were already held of him as beneficia—or precaria—in the early eleventh century.⁹ His brothers-in-law also claimed to hold their ‘fundum id est alodum’ of him.¹⁰ Alodia—in common parlance hereditates¹¹—seem originally to have been of the tenant’s, not the lord’s, ius;¹² but from the middle of the century at the latest it is clear that ducal authority—or ‘superiority’¹³—was spreading over the alodia of his vassals. It did so largely as a result of those vassals seeking ducal confirmations for their grants to churches, because confirmation by the duke to whom service was due made the grants more secure.¹⁴ As a consequence, alodia began to look more ⁵ J. C. Holt, ‘Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England, II: Notions of Patrimony’, CE 197–221, at 215–17. Hudson, LLL 78, instances one document of William I (Reg. no. 341) and one of William Rufus (RRAN i. no. 466) which use ‘inheritance language’. ⁶ Above, pp. 21–4. ⁷ HN 9; cf. 32. ⁸ For tenure of land ad nutum of the king, see PR 31 Henry I, 30, 33, 36, 43, 87, 94, 110, 123. ⁹ Fauroux, Recueil no. 34; cf. nos. 36, 53. J. C. Holt, ‘Politics and Property in Early Medieval England’, CE 113–59, at 116, n. 26; ‘Patrimony’, 209–10; Tabuteau, Transfers, 298, n. 53. ¹⁰ Fauroux, Recueil no. 46 bis. ¹¹ Ibid., no. 93; cf. J. J. Vernier (ed.), Chartes de l’abbaye de Jumièges (v. 825 à 1204) conservées aux archives de la Seine-Inférieure, 2 vols. (Rouen-Paris, 1916), i. no. 17, cited by Holt, ‘Patrimony’, 202; Tabuteau, Transfers, 98 and n. 24. ¹² Fauroux, Recueil nos. 34, 36. ¹³ Holt, ‘Patrimony’, 202. ¹⁴ Holt, ‘Patrimony’, esp. pp. 202, 210–12; D. R. Bates, Normandy Before 1066 (London, 1982), 122–4; Tabuteau, Transfers, 108–10; L. Musset, ‘Réflexions sur alodium et sa signification dans les textes normands’, RHDFE, 4ème série, xlvii (1969), 606.

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like dependent beneficia. At the same time, beneficia were becoming less precarious and beginning to acquire some of the heritable characteristics of alodia.¹⁵ But despite the gradual if partial convergence, and despite the increasingly territorial nature of contemporary definitions of ducal power,¹⁶ the developing authority of the duke over the alodia of his vassals does not mean that all land in Normandy was held ultimately of the duke. The brutal simplicity and neatness of the English system were not a Norman import, but a consequence of the Conquest. Only in its aftermath is there evidence of the (Norman) beneficium and alodium meeting in the feodum,¹⁷ for that fusion resulted from the lordly powers over all tenure which King William derived from conquest. As Orderic Vitalis later saw, the king had offered enormous rewards to his followers in the early days of the Conquest,¹⁸ but these honores (as he termed them) had to be distinguished from paternal hereditates held in Normandy:¹⁹ they depended on what Eadmer called the king’s ‘nod’. Eadmer continued his description of the new Norman regime with a list of the ‘new usages’ imported by William the Conqueror. Indeed, as he states in his Vita of Archbishop Anselm, it was these ‘strange changes’ and ‘developments which were quite unknown in former days’²⁰ which had led him to write what might, in English translation, be entitled ‘A History of the Novelties’. He considered a knowledge of these novelties ‘to be necessary to an understanding of those matters which are the principal reason (causa) for our having undertaken the burden of writing this book’.²¹ All of these novel usages are concerned with claims to control which King William and his sons enforced over clerics and churches in England. But Eadmer adds that although he has omitted whatever William might have promulgated in secular matters, because it was none of his business, as an ecclesiastical historian, to discuss them, nevertheless, ‘from what he ordained in divine matters . . . their character may be inferred’. The germen of his causa is set out in his preface: From the time that William, comes of Normandy, subdued this land to himself by warfare, no one, prior to Anselm, was made a bishop or abbot in it who had not first been made the king’s man (homo), and had received investiture of [his] bishopric or abbacy from the king’s hand through the tradition of a pastoral staff (excepting only Arnost and Gundulf, bishops of Rochester).²²

In the Vita Anselmi, he praised Anselm for uncovering ‘the origin and, so to speak, the very seeds and roots and process of growth of all the virtues and vices’.²³ He was not the first or the last historian to project onto his subject his own qualities, ¹⁵ One of two copies of a charter issued by Abbot Ansfrid of St-Pierre de Préaux (c.1040–72) which records the grant of a beneficium is headed ‘tenendum in perpetuum’. But this may be the interpretation of the 13th-century cartulary scribe: Arch. Eure H 711 fol. 112r, no. 334, quoted by Tabuteau, Transfers, 63, n. 146; further p. 99. ¹⁶ Fauroux, Recueil no. 137; further Bates, Normandy, 57–8. ¹⁷ P&M i. 72; M. M. Chibnall, ‘Military Service in Normandy Before 1066’, ANS v (1982), 65–76, at 66–7, 74. ¹⁸ ii. 220. ¹⁹ iv. 122. ²⁰ VA 1. ²¹ HN 9–10. ²² HN 2. ²³ VA 13.

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for in the Historia Novorum he set about unearthing the origin of the mature viciousness against which Anselm struggled. He found it in the fact of conquest, and the powers, novel to England, which he considered the Conqueror had exercised there. These he detected in their most heinous form in the practice whereby each new bishop (with the exception of the first two post-Conquest appointments at Rochester) and abbot had first become the king’s man—had done what Eadmer himself would later describe as homage to him—and had been invested by him with a pastoral staff. It has been suggested that the preface of the Historia Novorum, like most prefaces, was probably written after the completion of the first version of the work, comprising the first four books, around 1114.²⁴ By that time, these issues of clerical homage and lay investiture had become the nub of the dispute between Anselm and William Rufus, and, more particularly, Henry I. But Eadmer’s failure to add a third name, Ralph d’Escures, to the list of bishops of Rochester, when Ralph’s appointment in 1108, as described in the midst of Book IV, clearly followed that procedure which made the bishops of Rochester exceptional,²⁵ may indicate that Eadmer had already written the preface—and therefore reached the conclusion embodied in it—before he had finished drafting that book. Whether or not this is so, the Historia Novorum cannot simply be discounted as anachronistic distortion, from the perspective of 1114²⁶ or even later,²⁷ of the position of bishops and abbots in England during the late eleventh century. We know that Eadmer must have written extremely detailed notes, perhaps worked up into some sort of preliminary draft, prior to the outbreak of the investiture contest in England,²⁸ which was occasioned by Anselm’s attendance (accompanied by Eadmer) at the Easter Council at St Peter’s in Rome in 1099, where they both heard for the first time the papal prohibitions against clerical homage and lay investiture.²⁹ For Eadmer states in the course of his narrative that Anselm, on his accession to the archbishopric of Canterbury in 1093, had become Rufus’s man ‘pro usu terrae’.³⁰ It might casuistically be true that, as Eadmer asserted in his preface, Anselm had not received investiture at the king’s hand, Rufus being so ill at the time that the clerics assembled around his sickbed had had to act in his stead.³¹ As for becoming the king’s man, however, Eadmer himself gives the lie to the claim he makes in his preface that Anselm had acted quite differently from earlier post-Conquest ²⁴ Southern, Biographer, 299, 309–10; Portrait, 415. Eadmer says that it originally comprised four books: HN 217. ²⁵ HN 196–7. ²⁶ Southern, Biographer, 300; Portrait, 416. ²⁷ No manuscript survives which does not include the additions made by Eadmer in 1119–22, and it is impossible to prove that the pre-existing text was not in some way amended at that time. The single leaf of what has been shown to be an earlier version, written in Eadmer’s hand, and preserved in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 341, is of no assistance, because it comes from the fifth book: M. Brett, ‘A Note on the Historia Novorum of Eadmer’, Scriptorium, xxxiii (1979), 56–8. It does, however, establish that Eadmer subsequently revised this book. Southern shows that Books V and VI are very different in character from what precedes them: Biographer, 304–9; Portrait, 418. ²⁸ Southern, Biographer, 300; Portrait, 423–6. ²⁹ HN 112–14; cf. VA 115. ³⁰ HN 41. ³¹ HN 35; Osbern of Canterbury to Anselm, Opera Omnia, iv. ep. 149.

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bishops and abbots. On the contrary, Eadmer records Anselm acting in 1093 in the same way as any new bishop- (with the exception of Rochester) or many abbots-elect after the Conquest, and specifically as Lanfranc himself had done on his elevation to the see of Canterbury in 1070. It seems highly unlikely that Eadmer would have written this afresh in the years immediately before 1114. It seems much more likely that he was reproducing at this point materials or a draft which he had written prior to 1099.³² This striking discrepancy between preface and text suggests that the Historia Novorum had not been through the same process of careful, repeated rewriting as the Vita Anselmi.³³ Together with the absence of Ralph d’Escures, this might indicate that Eadmer wrote the preface some time between 1099 and 1108. Just as Eadmer was wrong in general terms to characterize tenurial dependence on the king’s ‘nod’ as a Norman import, so he was wrong in his specific assertion that doing homage to the ruler was an essential prerequisite for becoming a bishop or abbot in the duchy. The issue of what came to be termed lay investiture is not quite as clear-cut. True, we have Orderic’s word for it that prior to 1066 it was customary for the duke to invest a new abbot with his pastoral staff:³⁴ that such a practice would have been canonically illegal by Orderic’s time makes it likely that he is simply reproducing what he found in the archives at St-Évroult. But in mid eleventh-century Normandy the tradition of a pastoral staff could have other meanings. A lay benefactor might ceremonially place his or her foundation under ducal protection by handing a pastoral staff to the duke,³⁵ perhaps implying that originally the duke was not the only source of lay investiture. And tradition of a staff might have no conceivable connection with lay investiture: sometime prior to 1080 Abbot Robert of St-Martin de Sées gave two laymen, who were brothers, the beneficium and societas of the monastery by handing his pastoral staff to them. The laymen then returned the staff to Robert, together with the grant of a tithe.³⁶ Orderic presented Duke William’s 1059 investiture of the abbot-elect of St-Évroult, Robert de Grandmesnil, as symbolizing the conveyance only of the ‘exterior’ elements of abbatial power. But he may have been interpreting the ceremony in terms of the canonical distinctions of his own day, rather than accurately copying what he found in his source and thereby providing evidence ³² Southern, Biographer, 310; id., Portrait, 267, 416. ³³ VA, pp. xi–xxiv; Southern, Biographer, 317–20; that Book V, at least, was revised by Eadmer is demonstrated by Brett, ‘Note’, 56–8. ³⁴ ii. 18; cf. J. Yver, ‘Autour de l’absence de l’avouerie en Normandie. Notes sur le double thème du développement du pouvoir ducale et de l’application de la réforme gregorienne en Normandie’, BSAN lvii (1963–4), 189–283, at 271–9; H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Lanfranc, the Papacy and the See of Canterbury’, in G. d’Onofrio (ed.), Lanfranco di Pavia e l’Europa del secolo xi, Italia Sacra, li, (Rome, 1993), 439–500, at 497–500. For early ducal control of an abbatial appointment, see Fauroux, Recueil no. 12 (1009); but there is no specific mention of the ceremony of lay investiture. ³⁵ Fauroux, Recueil no. 142 (1059), discussed by Tabuteau, Transfers, 122; Gallia Christiana xi, De provincia Rotomagensi (Paris, 1759), ‘Instrumenta’ cols. 153–6 (?early 12th-century, but describing a foundation ceremony in 1046), discussed by Yver, ‘Avouerie’, 203; Tabuteau, Transfers, 175. ³⁶ Livre Blanc of St-Martin de Sées, fols. 28r–29r, discussed by Tabuteau, Transfers, 121–2.

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for the spread of reform influence in Normandy in the 1050s.³⁷ According to Orderic, Duke Robert Curthose was still investing in 1091, ‘as was customary at that time’.³⁸ By 1122, however, ducal investiture appears to have ceased. Although Henry I ‘conceded the election’ of Warin de Les Essarts, ‘gave him the abbey [of St-Évroult]’, and ‘conceded to him all the monastic properties and privileges and dignities which his predecessors had held up to that time’, he is not said to have invested Warin.³⁹ Evidence of the practice is not peculiar to Orderic’s accounts of St-Évroult: according to a Bec source—the Noticia de libertate Beccensis monasterii circa professionem episcopis ab abbatibus faciendam, dated to 1137—William the Conqueror had invested Anselm himself with a staff ‘as was the custom of that region’, when Anselm, then prior, was appointed abbot in 1078.⁴⁰ Although Anselm might have received his staff from William the Conqueror, he returned it, after his election at Canterbury, to the abbey, not to William’s successor as duke, Robert Curthose.⁴¹ By contrast, when he was being pushed into exile from England, it was suggested that his archiepiscopal ring and staff should be returned to the king, by force if necessary.⁴² The Noticia’s descriptions of other abbatial elections at Bec may imply that, as with Orderic’s understanding of what had happened at St-Évroult, the ceremony was considered to convey only the ‘exterior’ or temporal elements of abbatial power;⁴³ but the wording is more ambiguous, and in any case post-dates Orderic. Whether or not the distinction between ‘exterior’ and ‘interior’ is contemporary, the Noticia and Orderic make it clear that in Normandy lay investiture did not constitute an abbot-elect in office; subsequent episcopal benediction did so.⁴⁴ Indeed, when Gilbert, bishop of Lisieux, refused to bless Roger of Le Sap as abbot of St-Évroult, Roger felt unable to carry the pastoral staff which Robert Curthose had given to him in 1091,⁴⁵ indicating that even in the 1090s the distinction between spiritual and temporal may not have been quite as clear-cut as Orderic later made it out to be. There is no parallel record of the ducal investiture of bishops, and the fact that Orderic sometimes specifies that the ducal investiture of abbots was accomplished ³⁷ Orderic ii. 74, cf. 144–6; the phrasing at ii. 92 is vaguer, but may be compatible; cf. Yver, ‘Avouerie’, 274–5. O. Guillot, ‘A Reform of Investiture Before the Investiture Struggle in Anjou, Normandy, and England’, HSJ iii (1991), 81–100, esp. 91–4, argues the opposite: that the appearance of the distinction here and apparently in Angevin sources is not simply evidence of Orderic’s anachronistic embarrassment, but reveals the spread of early reforming influence. Guillot does not take account of the Norman charter evidence. ³⁸ Orderic iv. 254. This was the last lay investiture of an abbot of St-Évroult: Yver, ‘Avouerie’, 277. ³⁹ Orderic vi. 324. ⁴⁰ Noticia de libertate Beccensis monasterii circa professionem episcopis ab abbatibus faciendam, in RHF xiv. 270–7; for its date, see A. Saltman, Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1956), 4–5. ⁴¹ VA 66; Vita Abbatis Willelmi, in PL 150. 716. ⁴² HN 59, 62; cf. 145, where Bishop Reinelm of Hereford returns his ring and staff to the king. ⁴³ Noticia, 273; Guillot, ‘Investiture’, 97–8. ⁴⁴ Noticia, 272, 273; cf. possibly Orderic, ii. 74. ⁴⁵ Orderic, v. 262.

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with an onlooking bishop’s staff⁴⁶ perhaps suggests that bishops-elect were unlikely to have been treated in the same way. That the duke seems on occasion to have controlled episcopal appointments,⁴⁷ much as the king did in Anglo-Saxon England,⁴⁸ does not mean that bishops were ceremonially invested with their pastoral staffs by him. Indeed, there is evidence that metropolitans elected suffragan bishops and committed their bishoprics to them, as well, of course, as consecrating them.⁴⁹ And there is no evidence of the lay investiture of bishops in Anglo-Saxon England either. Eadmer, who was far better informed about English than Norman customs, denies that it had been English practice prior to 1066. What is entirely absent in the cases of both Normandy and England prior to 1066 is any suggestion that a bishop- or abbot-elect might become the king’s man ‘pro usu terrae’. Indeed, there is no evidence that this was the procedure in episcopal or abbatial appointments in Normandy after 1066 either.⁵⁰ If ducal investiture conveyed an abbot’s abbatia to him,⁵¹ then for him such a ceremony might in any case have been otiose. In Eadmer’s view, what distinguished the king’s ‘nod’ from English tradition and, contrary to his view, what distinguished it from Norman tradition, was the fact that no one became a bishop or abbot without first becoming the king’s man. This was the germen which William’s conquest had planted. And Eadmer invites his reader to infer from the impact of that ‘nod’ on bishops and abbots how it would have affected ‘other principes’.⁵² His analysis of the claims of the king on the death of a bishop or abbot, and the comparative abundance of evidence for the exercise of those claims during the early years after the Conquest, permits, as he suggests, a great deal to be inferred about the nature of lay tenure during that thinly documented period. I have already tried to show that the legal framework of the claims of the king’s followers to their holdings in England was shaped by the king’s claim to England itself. I have also tried to show that this template—the antecessor scheme—was adapted from the Canon Law of ecclesiastical vacancy.⁵³ It follows that any gleanings about the consequences of the deaths of tenants-in-chief, whether clerical or (taking Eadmer’s hint) lay, may illuminate contemporary attempts to deal with the situation when the king himself died. I shall argue that the legal precision arising from the claim in 1066 continued to mould the way in which interregna were conceived. It could not do otherwise, for it was the foundation of the postConquest system of tenure. What did the author of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E) mean, then, when he asserted that William Rufus claimed to be ‘heir’ of everyone? ⁴⁶ Ibid. ii. 74, 92. ⁴⁷ William of Jumièges, GND ii. 130; William of Poitiers, GG 132. ⁴⁸ Cowdrey, ‘Lanfranc’, 499–500. ⁴⁹ Orderic iv. 252. ⁵⁰ This might explain the wording of one of the decrees of the Synod of Rouen in 1096, summoned to disseminate the proceedings of the Council of Clermont within the province. It begins: ‘Nullus presbiter efficiatur homo laici . . .’ It has sometimes been taken to imply a tacit acceptance of episcopal homage, but it might imply that this was simply not an issue in Normandy: Orderic, v. 22 and nn. 4, 5; C&S ii. p. 648. ⁵¹ Noticia, 271, 273. ⁵² Above, n. 7. ⁵³ Above, pp. 33–6.

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The implication of the chronicler’s comments about the king selling or renting bishoprics and abbacies is that they must already be in the king’s hand first. Eadmer’s attack on Rufus for his seizure of the church of Canterbury following Lanfranc’s death seems to be directed at the way in which the king exploited the situation, rather than the fact that the king secured control of ‘everything which was of the church’s right’ on the death of the prelate. Rufus sent in his agents to make a written survey of the church’s wealth, and after estimating what was needed for the subsistence of the monks—thereby recognizing the institutional continuity of the church even while it was in his hand—he ordered ‘the rest to be rented out and collected into his own lordship (reliqua sub censum atque in suum dominium redigi iussit). So he turned the church of Christ into a commodity, granting the right of lordship (ius dominandi) in it in preference to anyone who, to the church’s detriment, triumphed over his rival in the price he offered.’⁵⁴ The ius dominandi was clearly in the king’s hand if he could auction it. The Abingdon History describes in indignant detail how Rufus did precisely that with the estates of the abbey during the vacancy which followed the death of Abbot Reginald in 1097.⁵⁵ In a writ which Rufus issued soon after the death of William of St-Calais, bishop of Durham, he commanded that the custodian of the vacant see, a certain ‘G. Dunelmensis’, should hold everything which ‘he now holds of me (modo de me tenet) just as well as Bishop William ever held it best and most peacefully during his lifetime’.⁵⁶ Even when, as in this case, the custodian was a monk of the house or a member of the chapter, he was still a royal agent, holding on the king’s behalf.⁵⁷ The point is made even more explicitly in the Abingdon case: Modbert, a monk of Abingdon, was given charge of the abbey, ‘not for the profits of the church, but for payments into the royal purse’.⁵⁸ Yet Eadmer uses the loaded verb invadere—to usurp—to describe the manner in which the king took control of the church of Canterbury. His target was not simply Rufus’s abuse of the reversion of church possessions during a vacancy, but the institution itself.⁵⁹ Rufus himself is made to admit the sinfulness of the practice. When lying on what he thought would be his deathbed in 1093 he pleaded with Anselm to accept appointment to ⁵⁴ HN 26; William of Malmesbury, GR i. 558, describes the procedure of sending in royal surveyors on the death of a prelate. ⁵⁵ HEA ii. 60. ⁵⁶ Bishop and Chaplais, Facsimiles, pl. x (1096–7); ‘G.’ has been plausibly identified with the monk Geoffrey, who seems to have been the bishop’s administrative deputy: DIV 97, n. 98. ⁵⁷ Godfrey, a monk of Ely, acted as procurator after the death of Abbot Theodwin in 1075, but ‘regis precepto et fratrum obtentu’ (my italics): LE 197. For some examples of royal officials, rather than members of the chapter or monks of the house, see M. Howell, Regalian Right in Medieval England (London, 1962), 7. ⁵⁸ HEA ii. 60–2. ⁵⁹ Unlike William of Malmesbury, GR i. 558, who contrasted Rufus’s abuse of his powers with the Conqueror’s virtuous administration of vacant churches.

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the archbishopric: ‘I am certain that I shall die if I end my life holding the archbishopric in my dominium. Help me then, help me, lord father, and undertake the archbishopric for the retention of which I am utterly confounded, and fear lest I should be further confounded for all eternity.’⁶⁰ In Eadmer’s view, this ‘retention’ of the possessions of the church of Canterbury in the king’s dominium seems to have amounted to the king in some sense taking Lanfranc’s place: Rufus ‘did not wish to substitute anyone else except himself so long as he could extract from [vacant churches] anything which could raise any price’.⁶¹ Rufus was struck down with a mortal illness when, and by inference because, he said as much. He considered Anselm to be bent on securing Canterbury for himself. Perhaps his suspicions had been aroused by Anselm’s composing a prayer that a new archbishop be appointed, for use in churches throughout England.⁶² In his view, this was just the sort of pious deviousness which he grew to abominate: ‘as to his blessings and prayers, I do utterly abominate them and spew them from me.’⁶³ He eventually lost patience with those around him, who were lauding Anselm’s virtues. He exploded with his customary oath, and the statement that ‘at the present time neither he nor anyone else will be archbishop, except me’.⁶⁴ That the king might claim in some sense to hold the place of a dead incumbent by virtue of holding his honour does not rely solely on Eadmer’s testimony: it is also evidenced by a famous writ, issued after the death of Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, exacting ‘relief ’ (relevamen) from the tenants of the bishopric. The writ, which survives in Hemming’s Cartulary, reads: W., king of the English, to all the French and English who hold free lands of the bishopric of Worcester (qui Francas terras tenent de episcopatu de Wirceastra), greeting. Know that, on the death of the bishop, the honour returned into my hand (honor in manum meam rediit). Now I wish that you should give me such a relief from your lands as I shall dispose through my officials (barones meos) . . .⁶⁵

There follows a list of sums due from each named tenant, and a final threat that the lands and money of anyone refusing to pay will be seized by the king’s agents into the king’s hand. Round interpreted this as a means of extorting in advance from the under-tenants the relief which a new bishop could not pay on being seised of his episcopal honor, because he might then be accused of simony.⁶⁶ But Rufus had no compunction about trying to extract massive sums in advance from Herbert Losinga,⁶⁷ and, in the cold light of his miraculous recovery in the wake of their appointments, from Anselm⁶⁸ and Robert Bloet.⁶⁹ So this interpretation ⁶⁰ HN 34. ⁶¹ HN 27. ⁶² HN 29. ⁶³ HN 52. ⁶⁴ HN 30. ⁶⁵ RRAN i. no. 387; most conveniently printed in Round, Feudal England, 309; also Hemingi Chartularium Ecclesiae Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1723), i. 79–80 (fol. 37r). ⁶⁶ Feudal England, 310. ⁶⁷ JW iii. 68–70; William of Malmesbury, GP 151; Orderic, v. 202–4. ⁶⁸ Eadmer, HN 43–5; VA 67. The incident is discussed by Southern, Biographer, 157–8; Portrait, 272. ⁶⁹ HH 418.

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assumes a sensitivity to canonical niceties for which the king is not otherwise noted. As Howell pointed out, the word ‘now’ implies a close connection between the honor coming into the king’s hand on Wulfstan’s death in January 1095 and the exaction of ‘relief ’.⁷⁰ The implication is strengthened by the fact that the writ cannot have been issued later than June 1095, when Robert, bishop of Hereford, from whom £10 was demanded, died.⁷¹ This suggests a more plausible interpretation: that the king was exploiting the fact that the honor had ‘returned’ to him by acting like the immediate dominus of the tenants of the bishopric.⁷² There is no firm English evidence for a regular practice of paying relief mutatione domini.⁷³ But there is later evidence for new lords, on their entry, levying payments later described as ‘aids’ from sitting tenants, to help them in turn to pay the relief which they had agreed to give to their own new lords,⁷⁴ or for confirmation of those tenants’ tenures.⁷⁵ In 1128 Henry del Angeli, the new abbot of Peterborough, is said to have received ‘homagium et pecuniam de militibus et de tota abbacia’.⁷⁶ In 1182, according to Jocelin of Brakelond, Samson, the new abbot of Bury St Edmunds, took homage and demanded an aid from all those holding by knight service on the abbey’s lands; he then sought from every single tenant ‘auxilium et recognicionem’. Jocelin thought this practice to be ‘secundum consuetudinem regni’.⁷⁷ Rufus’s levy in 1095 does not constitute the first instance of such a custom in the kingdom of England, for ‘relief ’ was paid to him. There is no evidence that it was paid in 1096 to Samson, the next bishop, or to any other new bishop of Worcester. Nevertheless, the very fact that the parallel with later practice is inexact underlines that Rufus appears to have been acting as if he were himself the successor of Bishop Wulfstan. The Worcester ‘relief ’ thus bears out Eadmer’s shocking charge. ⁷⁰ Howell, Regalian Right, 17. ⁷¹ Round, Feudal England, 308. ⁷² P&M i. 317–18; I. Atkins, ‘The Church of Worcester from the Eighth to the Twelfth Century, part ii’, Antiquaries Journal, xx (1940), 1–38, 203–29, at 209; Howell, Regalian Right, 17–18. ⁷³ Round, Feudal England, 310, n. 278. The grant by Walter Bolbec to Abbot Walter of Ramsey and his successors, dated 1133–60, is not an example. It provided that, on Abbot Walter’s death, the monks of Ramsey would pay 10 marks to Walter of Bolbec or his heir. If they did, the next abbot would not have to pay relief; if they declined to pay, then the next abbot would have to do so: ‘. . . hoc pacto, quod si abbas Walterus moriatur, vel vitam suam mutet, monachi relevabant terram eandem, et tenebunt, et facient servitium erga Walterum de Bolebech vel heredem suum, donec alius abbas veniat, donando decem marcas argenti, et abbas, qui venerit, eodem relevamine eandem terram tenebit, et servitium faciet. Et si monachi noluerint eam relevare, Walterus de Bolebech vel haeres suus tenebit illud donec alius abbas veniat, qui relevet et teneat eandem per easdem decem marcas argenti, quas monachi daturi erant si vellent . . .’: Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, ed. W. H. Hart and P. A. Lyons, 3 vols., RS (London, 1884–9), i. 153–5. For a more likely instance, see H. M. Colvin, ‘Holme Lacy: An Episcopal Manor and its Tenants in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in V. Ruffer and A. J. Taylor (eds.), Medieval Studies Presented to Rose Graham (Oxford, 1950), 15–40, at 21, n. 1. ⁷⁴ Glanvill, ix. 8, p. 112. ⁷⁵ F. M. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1961), 161–3; J. C. Holt, ‘Politics and Property in Early Medieval England: A Rejoinder’, PP lxv (1974), 127–35, at 134. ⁷⁶ The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, ed. W. T. Mellows (Oxford, 1949), 101. ⁷⁷ The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, ed. H. E. Butler, NMT (Edinburgh, 1949), 27, 31.

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There is some evidence for later kings extracting money from the tenants of escheated honours in ways which appear analogous. Henry I levied a payment described both as an auxilium and a donum from the knights of the vacant bishopric of Durham, probably shortly after Bishop Ranulf Flambard’s death; and a payment which may be connected with this was levied from lesser tenants in parts of the bishopric.⁷⁸ Although the term relevamen is not used in this case, it is possible that the money was extracted because the bishopric had reverted into the king’s hand. Richard I charged the tenants of the bishopric of Durham directly for part of the debts owed to him by the recently deceased bishop.⁷⁹ John sometimes levied payments, which appear in the pipe rolls as proffers, from the subtenants of recently dead lay tenants-in-chief for confirmation in their tenancies.⁸⁰ But even for John, this was unusual. Whatever the exchequer clerks diplomatically chose to call these latter payments—it may be that the term relief could by this stage be applied only to a payment made by heirs⁸¹—they amounted to reliefs payable by sitting tenants on the death of their lord in the 1095 sense of the word, or reliefs mutatione domini. Small wonder that death seemed more attractive than life to tenants on the estates of vacant churches under William Rufus.⁸² In 1095 the terminology of feudal incidents had not yet become fixed, so use of the term relevamen then was probably not in itself tactless. Relevium, relevamen, relevatio, and relevare could mean many things. According to Eadmer, Anselm sought the relevatio of the church from Rufus’s and Henry I’s oppressions.⁸³ In Normandy it might sometimes have meant rent⁸⁴ or—a usage found in England too—a render of land (in one case a mill), rather than money, to a lord.⁸⁵ One Norman charter ordains that an heir should relieve—almost certainly in the sense of paying a relief in order to succeed to his ancestor’s beneficium—‘sicuti est mos terre’.⁸⁶ If Normandy was the terra in question, it is by no means clear that land was always transferred by the lord in return for relief,⁸⁷ or that it was always paid by the heir,⁸⁸ or, indeed, as in this last instance, that the payment was always ⁷⁸ PR 31 Henry I, 128, 132; Howell, Regalian Right, 26–9. ⁷⁹ The Chancellor’s Roll for the Eighth Year of the Reign of Richard I, 1196, ed. D. M. Stenton, PRS, NS vii (1930), 253–4, discussed by J. C. Holt, ‘Ricardus rex Anglorum et dux Normannorum’, repr. in id., Magna Carta and Medieval Government (London, 1985), 66–83, at 77–8. ⁸⁰ J. C. Holt, The Northerners, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1992), 179. ⁸¹ Dialogus, 96, 121. ⁸² ‘Annales monasterii de Wintonia’, Ann. Mon. ii. 37, cf. 39. ⁸³ VA 69, 134. ⁸⁴ L. Musset, ‘Actes inedits du XI siècle. VI. L’Abbaye de St.-Ouen de Rouen et la ville de Caen’, BSAN lviii (1965–6), 119–26, at 125–6 (1089); cf. Fauroux, Recueil, no. 191 (c.1050–66). ⁸⁵ Les Actes de Guillaume le Conquérant et de la reine Mathilde pour les abbayes caennaises, ed. L. Musset (Caen, 1967), no. 14 (c.1080–83); F. Lot, Études critiques sur l’abbaye de St.-Wandrille (Paris, 1913), no. 46 (1092); HEA ii. 28 (1087–1100) (I am indebted to John Hudson for this final reference). ⁸⁶ A. Le Prévost, Mémoires et notes pour servir a l’histoire du département de l’Eure, ed. L. V. Deslisle and L. Passy, 3 vols. (Évreux, 1862–9), i. 536–7 (1078–96), discussed by Holt, ‘Patrimony’, 203, n. 39; Tabuteau, Transfers, 59–60 and n. 114. For some other instances see Bates, Normandy, 145, n. 142. ⁸⁷ Lot, Eure, no. 46, discussed by Tabuteau, Transfers, 60, n. 115. ⁸⁸ Arch. Seine-Maritime, 14 H 255 (St.-Ouen, 1006–33), discussed by Tabuteau, Transfers, 61, n. 117.

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termed relief.⁸⁹ Logically, the later, classic meaning of the term only became possible within a strictly dependent system of tenure, of the type which rapidly came into being in conquered England, but which could not be imposed in the same way in Normandy. Yet in Domesday Book relevatio, relevium, and relevamen are still simply Latin synonyms for the traditional English death duty of heriot; they are never used in the sense of the feudal incident, which is not mentioned.⁹⁰ Even in 1130, in Henry I’s surviving pipe roll, the official terminology was not yet formulaic.⁹¹ Robert, bishop of Hereford, from whom, as a tenant of the bishopric of Worcester, the king demanded relief of £10 in 1095, knew what a relief was. He had exacted one from Roger de Lacy ten years before, when Roger had sought to persuade the bishop to allow him to succeed his father in a tenancy of the church of Hereford. But it is not so termed in the original document recording the regrant of the tenancy for which Roger had proffered money.⁹² The incident existed in England before a Norman term came to be used invariably to denote it. As late as the 1180s, Richard fitzNeal glossed relevium as the ‘vulgar’ name for a particular type of finis.⁹³ Rufus’s writ of 1095 to the tenants of the bishopric of Worcester represents the first English use of the word in what later became its classic sense. The tenants of the bishopric had to ‘relieve’—to discharge or (perhaps) to secure the restoration of—lands to themselves which they had previously held of the dead bishop. They did so by paying a sum (unrelated to the size of their tenures),⁹⁴ arbitrarily stipulated by the new lord, to that new lord. And that new lord was the king, into whose hand the honor had reverted on the bishop’s death. Anyone who failed to stump up would find both land and money seized into the king’s hand by the king’s agents, implying that the subtenancies which were part of the honor had not automatically returned into the king’s hand in the same way as the honor itself had done. Hence, perhaps, the writ’s unusual description of the tenants as holding de episcopatu rather than de episcopo.⁹⁵ Yet in what sense could the honor have ‘returned’ into Rufus’s hand? He had never held it. Indeed, Wulfstan, the most famous of the English survivors, had ⁸⁹ AD Calvados, Cartulaire de St.-Étienne de Caen, entrée 1996–135 (côte provisoire), fos. 32v–33r (1079–1101), discussed by Tabuteau, Transfers, 61, n. 118. E. Deville, Notices sur quelques manuscrits normands conservés à la Bibliothèque Ste.-Geneviève, vol. iv, Analyse d’un ancien cartulaire de l’abbaye de St.-Étienne de Caen (Évreux, 1905), prints an inferior epitome of the cartulary, with the passage in question at pp. 24–5; in this instance the texts are identical. I should like to thank David Bates for supplying me with a transcript of this document from the cartulary. ⁹⁰ DB i. 1b, 30c, 56c, 179a, 189a (harieta), 252a, 269d, 280c, 298d, 336d (herieta), 376b (herieta); ii. 119a (herigeta), 445b (herretum). ⁹¹ PR 31 Henry I, 9, 54, 55, 78, 98, 99, 100, 106, 110, 136, etc.; J. A. Green, The Government of England Under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), 84, n. 132; I. J. Sanders, Feudal Military Service in England (Oxford, 1956), 98. This continued to be the case under Henry II: J. H. Round, ‘ “ Barons” and “Knights” in the Great Charter’, in H. E. Malden (ed.), Magna Carta Commemoration Essays (London, 1917), 46–77, at 60–2. ⁹² V. H. Galbraith, ‘An Episcopal Land-grant of 1085’, EHR xliv (1929), 353–72, at 372. ⁹³ Dialogus, 120. ⁹⁴ Conveniently set out in Round, Feudal England, 312. ⁹⁵ Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson B 445, fo. 49r–v and London, BL Cotton MS. Tiberius A xiii, fo. 37r both read ‘episcopatu’.

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been bishop of Worcester since 1062. It is, therefore, not immediately apparent how the honor could be said to have ‘returned’ into the king’s hand, even if Rufus is simply assumed to have succeeded to all his father’s rights and obligations by virtue of being king. For in what sense could the church of Worcester be thought ever to have been in the Conqueror’s hand either? There had been no vacancy during his reign. If pressed, Rufus—or more likely Ranulf Flambard, who began his notable career in royal administration as a custodian of vacant sees and abbacies,⁹⁶ and who was the first witness of the writ levying the Worcester ‘relief ’—might have said that Wulfstan had held the see of Edward the Confessor, to whom the Conqueror and Rufus were consecutive successors. But that would be to read back into the Confessor’s reign the tenurial dependence of ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief on the king. And such evidence as there is strongly suggests that nothing of the kind existed in Anglo-Saxon England. Prior to the Conquest, custody of vacant bishoprics and abbacies seems to have fallen to clerics, and to have had little, if anything, to do with kings.⁹⁷ No Old English king is ever said to hold one in his hand;⁹⁸ indeed the only reference in Old English to a king doing so is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s obituary of William Rufus. Orderic describes how English custom before the Conquest required the bishop in whose diocese a vacant abbey was situated to take charge until a new abbot had been canonically elected, and how an archbishop did the same on the death of a bishop. He thereby provides late but independent corroboration for Eadmer’s testimony.⁹⁹ So to attribute custody of vacant sees and abbacies to Edward the Confessor would be to distort the Old English past in the same way as the antecessor scheme does, and for the same reason: it would retrospectively impose dependent tenure upon that past. No source does so explicitly; but after the death in 1078 of Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham, another surviving pre-Conquest prelate, the ‘church of Evesham’ was ‘sub manu regis’ for a while, until a new abbot succeeded.¹⁰⁰ The church of ⁹⁶ JW iii. 94; R. W. Southern, ‘Ranulf Flambard’, repr. in id., Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), 183–205, esp. 190–2. ⁹⁷ Orderic, iv. 174; also the description of a vacancy at Ely shortly before the Conquest in LE, 168, where Archbishop Stigand is said to have held the abbey ‘gratia utriusque domini sui, Aedwardi scilicet et Haroldi regum’. It is impossible to know what weight should be attributed to this royal ‘grace’; but the implication of the passage is that he acted on his own initiative, rather than as a royal agent. It is likely that priors, rather than bishops, tended to administer monastic property during vacancies: D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1963), 612–13. ⁹⁸ In Anglo-Saxon charters land is said to fall into the king’s hand only in the case of forfeitures: S. 886 (955), 1457 (late 10th century), 1377 (963–75), 886 (995), 1229 (1042–52). I am indebted to Simon Keynes for supplying me with these references. ⁹⁹ Orderic, iv. 174; he had read the Vita Anselmi, but not the Historia Novorum: Southern, Biographer, 144, n. 3; Orderic, i. 61–2. ¹⁰⁰ A record of manors removed from the church by Odo of Bayeux, now termed Evesham N, copied into the Evesham Chartulary: London, BL Harleian MS. 3763 fols. 60v–61r. It is probably to be dated c.1100, although in its present form it cannot be earlier than 1122: Darlington, ‘Æthelwig’, 188–90, with the date discussed at 19–29, 186; F and C. Thorn (eds.), Domesday Book, vol. xvi, Worcestershire (Chichester, 1982), app. IV.

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Evesham had reverted to the king, as that of Worcester would do to his son in 1095. In 1071 Lanfranc wrote to Pope Alexander II that the disgraced Leofwine, bishop of Lichfield since 1053, had ‘returned his bishopric to the king’.¹⁰¹ In this respect no distinction was drawn between surviving Edwardian prelates and postConquest appointments: the Worcester possessions which Ealdred retained after his translation to York in 1060 came into the regia potestas on his death in 1069; and Domesday Book records in passing that the abbey of Ely had been at one time in the king’s hand, presumably during the seven-year-long vacancy which followed the brief abbacy of Theodwin (1073–5).¹⁰² In other words, Eadmer was wrong to imply that only new bishops and abbots depended upon the king after the Conquest. Edwardian survivors did so too, although we know that he was right to imply that they had not done so in the time of King Edward. The only explanation for this must be that the Conquest had transformed the king’s relations with all bishops (except, perhaps, new bishops of Rochester) and many abbots; that it had made them tenants-in-chief. This is suggested by the famous writ in which Æthelwig was said to owe five knights ‘de abb[at]ia tua’ to the king by 1073 at the latest.¹⁰³ In the twelfth century the servitium debitum of Evesham Abbey was, at least initially, five.¹⁰⁴ Since servitia debita are a post-Conquest phenomenon,¹⁰⁵ this indicates that it had been imposed very quickly on Evesham, and by inference probably on all bishoprics (with, as we shall see,¹⁰⁶ the exception of Rochester) and many abbeys, regardless of whether the prelates were Edwardian survivors, like Æthelwig, or new appointments. In the thirteenth century Matthew Paris thought that the Conqueror had done so at a stroke in 1070.¹⁰⁷ But in the absence of any other evidence to this effect, a more plausible context is when prelates had ritually acknowledged William’s lordship— by, in Eadmer’s phrase, becoming his men—and secured formal confirmation of the lands of their churches from him. Both submissions to and confirmations by a new king seem to have been traditional,¹⁰⁸ but their meaning had been transformed by ¹⁰¹ Letters of Lanfranc, no. 2. ¹⁰² JW iii. 12; DB ii. 381b; D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke, and V. C. M. London (eds.), The Heads of Religious Houses, England and Wales, 940–1216, i, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 2001), 45. ¹⁰³ Reg. no. 131; the case for its authenticity is made, contra Bates, in Garnett, ‘Crown’, 178, n. 29. ¹⁰⁴ Prior to 1166 the abbey was charged in the pipe rolls for a servitium debitum of 5; thereafter the quota was reduced to 4½, in accordance with a purported writ of Henry I: Calendar of the Charter Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 6 vols. (London, 1903–27), i. 257–8; RRAN ii. no. 831 (1107); H. M. Chew, The English Ecclesiastical Tenants-in-Chief and Knight Service, Especially in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1932), 9, 19. ¹⁰⁵ J. C. Holt, ‘The Introduction of Knight-service in England’, repr. in CE, 81–101. ¹⁰⁶ See below, p. 59. ¹⁰⁷ Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, ed. F. Madden, 3 vols., RS (London, 1866–9), i. 13; cf. HEA ii. 6: ‘it was noted in the annales by royal edict how many milites could be taken for public protection (ad publicam rem tuendam) from the bishoprics and how many from abbeys.’ But John Hudson has suggested to me that the chronicler may simply have been attributing to the Conqueror’s reign procedures similar to those of the inquest of 1166. ¹⁰⁸ Above, p. 21; Sharpe, ‘Use of Writs’, 247–91; S. D. Keynes, ‘Giso, Bishop of Wells’, ANS xix (1996), 203–71, at 240, n. 199 lists all the extant writs.

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the fact of conquest and the nature of the king’s claim to the kingdom. They marked the establishment of the system which Eadmer decried, the redemption of land from the king in its ecclesiastical aspect. This may be the implication of occasional references in the Liber Exoniensis to the value of certain manors which Edwardian survivors like Giso of Wells had already held on the day of Edward the Confessor’s death, ‘when he received [it] (quando recepit)’.¹⁰⁹ In some sense they received anew from King William what they already had. Existing bishops and abbots (and, in the cases of Shaftesbury and Wilton, abbesses,¹¹⁰ although they can hardly have become the king’s men) are likely to have struck individual deals with the new king. The imposition of a servitium debitum was not the defining characteristic of an ecclesiastical tenancy-in-chief: a number of pre-Conquest houses escaped, even though they are recorded as holding in chief in Domesday Book;¹¹¹ and so did all the postConquest foundations. Nevertheless, the rapid creation of a new system of military service, with the obligation falling on the individual tenant-in-chief rather than bearing any relation to the territorial extent of the tenancy, was a further acknowledgement that, in most cases, the lands of bishoprics and abbeys would henceforth be held by bishops and abbots on the king’s ‘nod’. That this was Eadmer’s view is strongly implied by his scrupulous exception of the bishops of Rochester: as he pointed out, a bishop-elect of Rochester did homage and swore fealty to the archbishop of Canterbury, not to the king, and the archbishop ‘invested’ him with his episcopatus.¹¹² Uniquely in the case of Rochester, a bishop’s episcopal staff was returned to Canterbury on his death, because he had been invested by the archbishop, not the king.¹¹³ And a bishop of Rochester owed knight service to the archbishop, not to the king.¹¹⁴ In other words, the bishop of Rochester held his episcopatus of the archbishop, just as the archbishop held his of the king, and in each case his servitium debitum was a mark of immediate tenurial dependence on his lord.¹¹⁵ The Domesday commissioners were still puzzled by the anomalous status of the church of Rochester, presenting the bishop as if he were a tenant-in-chief.¹¹⁶ But soon afterwards the Domesday Monachorum surveyed the lands of the see along with those of Canterbury, and its dependent status is explicitly recognized in a writ of William Rufus.¹¹⁷ ¹⁰⁹ Exon. 156b, 159b–160a; cf. 185a, 187a, concerning the abbot of St Peter’s, Bath, although this case is less straightforward because of uncertainty, reflected in Exon., about who was the abbot on the day of Edward the Confessor’s death. ¹¹⁰ Chew, Ecclesiastical Tenants-in-Chief, 6. ¹¹¹ Ibid. 8. ¹¹² HN 196–7; curiously, homage is not specifically mentioned in his account of the appointment of Bishop Ernulf in 1114, although the oath is described in detail: p. 225. ¹¹³ HN 192; cf. 59, 145. ¹¹⁴ The Domesday Monachorum of Christ Church Canterbury, ed. D. C. Douglas (London, 1944), 70, 105. Jim Holt points out to me that this cannot have been imposed by Stigand or Anselm, and must therefore be the work of Lanfranc. ¹¹⁵ Domesday Monachorum, 70, 105, 106–7; Round, Feudal England, 250. ¹¹⁶ DB i. 5c–d. ¹¹⁷ Domesday Monachorum, 95–7; RRAN i. no. 341; further, M. Brett, ‘The Church of Rochester, 604–1185’, in N. Yates and P. Welsby (eds.), Faith and Fabric: A History of Rochester Cathedral (Woodbridge, 1996), 1–27, at 21–2.

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In Eadmer’s opinion, only post-Conquest appointments to the see of Rochester had been anomalous in this particular way: although he says that Arnost and Gundulf were ‘invested’ by Lanfranc in the chapter of Canterbury ‘according to custom’,¹¹⁸ the inference must be that Bishop Siward (who survived until his death in 1075, despite having been consecrated by Stigand in 1058) had not ‘become the man’ of any archbishop of Canterbury, either before or after the Conquest.¹¹⁹ In Eadmer’s view, it was only with Arnost’s appointment in 1076 that the relationship between the bishops of Rochester and the archbishops had been transformed, following the pattern very recently established between all other bishops (and many abbots) and the king. In this sense there was some justification for Eadmer’s Rufus to regard himself as archbishop after Lanfranc’s death.¹²⁰ It might, even in his own view, merit the damnation of his soul, but there was a sacrilegious legal logic to it. We have seen the way in which tenure and commendation had been amalgamated by force of absolute dependence on the king’s grant;¹²¹ Eadmer perceived that ecclesiastical office and the tenure of ecclesiastical lands came to be elided in similar fashion, for the same reason. It is easy to see how an extreme interpretation of the precariousness of ecclesiastical tenure might seem, to a perverted mind like that of Eadmer’s Rufus, to carry ecclesiastical office with it too. The lands of the see had come into the king’s hand by a process which Eadmer characterizes as usurpation;¹²² so, in a crucial sense, had the king ‘usurped’ the office of archbishop. As Rufus is reported to have asked Anselm when the archbishop had infuriated him on another occasion: ‘Aren’t the abbatia mine? You do what you like with your vills; shall I not do as I like with my abbatia?’¹²³ The word abbatia, like episcopatus, meant both the possessions held by a prelate in respect of his office, and that office. It is even impossible to tell whether the word meant both inseparably, or might be applied to either. The distinction between lands and office was one of those simple distinctions which are only arrived at slowly and painfully. Had it already been clear to Pope Urban II, he would have felt no need at the Easter Council of 1099 to excommunicate those who ‘for ecclesiastical honours became the homines of laymen’ along with those who had accepted lay investiture.¹²⁴ ¹¹⁸ HN 2. ¹¹⁹ ASC (D, E) s.a. 1058; for Eadmer’s understanding of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon archbishops of Canterbury and bishops of Rochester, see his Vita S. Dunstani, in Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, ed. B. J. Muir and A. J. Turner, OMT (Oxford, 2006), 114; William of Malmesbury, Vita Dunstani, in William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, OMT (Oxford, 2002), 244. ¹²⁰ Above, p. 53. ¹²¹ Above, pp. 28–9. ¹²² HN 26. ¹²³ HN 49–50. ¹²⁴ HN 114. At the Council of Clermont in 1095 Urban seems to have supplemented the familiar prohibition of lay investiture with one of clerics placing their hands between those of a layman: The Councils of Urban II, ed. R. Somerville, i, Decreta Claromontensia, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, supplementum, I (Amsterdam, 1972), 78, 112, for various formulations. Note that there is no clause strictly corresponding to this in the so-called ‘Anglo-Norman’ recension, preserved by William of Malmesbury, GR i. 594–8, Orderic, v. 10–15, and a number of Canon Law manuscripts. The closest analogy is cap. 2, Somerville, 90: ‘Episcopi, vel abbates, aut aliquis de clero, aliquam ecclesiasticam dignitatem de manu principum, vel quorum libet laicorum, non accipiant.’

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It was the ambiguity apparent in the words attributed by Eadmer to the enraged king which William of St-Calais, bishop of Durham, attempted to exploit in 1088, when the new king tried to put him on trial for treason. Bishop William argued that being disseised by the king’s agents even of some of the lands of his see meant being disseised of his episcopatus. He did not go quite so far as to suggest that by being stripped of the lands of his see he had been deposed, but, in accordance with the canonical principle of exceptio spolii, he demanded the restoration of his episcopatus before he would stand trial.¹²⁵ By presenting his episcopatus as an indivisible entity, he sought to establish that he was justiciable as its holder only by other prelates, according to Canon Law.¹²⁶ Thereby he wrongfooted Lanfranc, his ageing adversary, who was forced to respond that the bishopric and the lands held by the bishop were in some undefined sense distinct, and that the king proposed to try him before a court of lay and ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief solely with respect to the latter.¹²⁷ If Eadmer’s analysis of ecclesiastical tenure in chief in post-Conquest England is accurate, it is hardly surprising that Lanfranc’s swan song as an advocate was a failure. But William of St-Calais’s case was scarcely less tendentious: he repeatedly conceded that he was a homo and fidelis of the king,¹²⁸ of whom he held his lands;¹²⁹ yet he sought to deny that his episcopatus was a fief.¹³⁰ Both sides desperately avoided addressing the point which Eadmer had formulated in his preface to the Historia Novorum: that following the Conquest, no one was made a bishop or abbot in England (Rochester excepted) without first becoming the king’s man, and receiving investiture of the bishopric or abbacy from the king’s hand by the tradition of a pastoral staff. In other words, bishoprics and abbacies were held as a function of fides which bishops and abbots owed the king, arising from the homage which they had done to him. Perhaps for this reason, no direct reference is made to the ceremony of homage in De Iniusta Vexacione, despite the numerous allusions to its implications. Investitura and its cognate forms are used in the general sense of granting possession, not the specific, canonical sense often adopted by Eadmer.¹³¹ It seems likely that this was what the Winchester annalist had in mind when he gave Odo, abbot of Chertsey’s reason for resigning his abbatia in 1092: ‘he did not wish to hold it of the king more saecularium.’¹³² The point is exemplified by Eadmer’s detailed—probably eyewitness¹³³— account of the appointment which he claimed in his preface had broken this practice: Anselm’s elevation to Canterbury. The process began on 6 March 1093 with the bishops around Rufus’s sickbed forcibly investing a reluctant Anselm with an episcopal staff, because the king was too weak to do so himself. According ¹²⁵ DIV, ll. 81–2; further Garnett, ‘Crown’, 178–9. ¹²⁶ DIV, ll. 78–9, 83, 85. ¹²⁷ DIV, ll. 81, 85, 87. ¹²⁸ DIV, ll. 75, 76, 78. ¹²⁹ DIV 78. ¹³⁰ DIV 85, 87. ¹³¹ DIV 83–5. ¹³² ‘Annales monasterii de Wintonia’, Ann. Mon. ii. 37; discussed by E. A. Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1882), i. 350. ¹³³ Southern, Portrait, 189.

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to Eadmer, this and the subsequent acclamation made Anselm ‘pontiff-elect’, despite Anselm’s protest that these and other customary rituals conducted in a nearby church were ‘a nullity’. Certainly neither investiture nor what passed for election made him archbishop.¹³⁴ Eadmer then reports that the king commanded that Anselm should ‘without delay be invested (investiretur) with all things which belong to the archbishopric, within and without’. It is not clear from his account whether the king issued this order in extremis, on the same day, and later, after his surprise recovery, had second thoughts; or whether it was implemented soon afterwards, when Anselm was lodged on ‘vills belonging to the archbishopric, by command of the king’.¹³⁵ In the light of other evidence, the former seems more likely.¹³⁶ Whichever was the case, it is clear that the archbishop-elect was not granted the lands of the archbishopric, for Anselm and the convalescent Rufus continued to negotiate about the terms on which this might happen.¹³⁷ John of Worcester is very precise about the interim arrangements: Anselm was not allowed to ‘receive anything from the archbishopric, except what the king had ordered should be assigned to him, until the annual tribute, which William had received since the death of Lanfranc, had been paid’.¹³⁸ Both the Historia Novorum and the Vita Anselmi¹³⁹ record that Gundulf, bishop of Rochester, was charged with ensuring that Anselm was provided with the wherewithal for his maintenance from these vills, so Anselm evidently did not control them himself. Gundulf acted like a royal procurator, which is precisely the term Eadmer uses to describe his role.¹⁴⁰ It was as if the king were now using a former subtenant, temporarily holding immediately of him, as a curator,¹⁴¹ one of those ‘nefandissimi homines’ whose presence in the vacant Christ Church Eadmer had previously lamented.¹⁴² What transformed the archbishop-elect into archbishop of Canterbury early in September 1093, in Winchester, was his becoming the king’s man: ‘He was inducted after the fashion (mos) and manner of his predecessor, becoming the king’s man (homo) for the use of the land, and, just as Lanfranc had been in his time, he was ordered to be seised (saisisi iussus) of the whole archiepiscopatus.’¹⁴³ ¹³⁴ HN 35; epp. nos 148, 149, 156; for the dubious character of the election, see Southern, Portrait, 191. ¹³⁵ HN 37. The phrase ‘intus et extra’ may indicate that the concession related only to the city of Canterbury, which Lanfranc is said to have held ‘in beneficio a rege’, and which Rufus now gave ‘in alodium ecclesiae Christi cantuariensis . . . perpetuo iure’. ¹³⁶ See below, p. 64. ¹³⁷ HN 37–41. ¹³⁸ JW iii. 64. ¹³⁹ VA 66. ¹⁴⁰ HN 37. The Vita Gundulfi records that, on the orders of the king, Gundulf had administered the see in spiritualibus since Lanfranc’s death: The Life of Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, ed. R. Thomson (Toronto, 1977), 52. ¹⁴¹ For the duties of a bishop of Rochester during a Canterbury vacancy, see Textus Roffensis, ed. P. H. Sawyer, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, vii, ix, (Copenhagen, 1957–62), ix. fol. 220r, printed in Textus Roffensis, ed. T. Hearne, (Oxford, 1720), 227–8; for a vacant Rochester being in the king’s hand only when Canterbury itself was vacant, see PR 31 Henry II, 239–40: further, Brett, ‘Church of Rochester’, 21–2. ¹⁴² HN 26. ¹⁴³ HN 41; RRAN i. nos. 336, 337 (dated ‘die crastina qua Anselmus archiepiscopus meus ligius homo factus est’). JW iii. 14 records that the Conqueror ‘made [Lanfranc] archbishop of the church of Canterbury’ on 15 August 1070; Eadmer’s Vita S. Dunstani claims that he was first received at

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Anselm himself recognized that the period of indecision had lasted for six months, from March to September;¹⁴⁴ his last hope of escaping from the burdens of the archbishopric appears to have lain in the possibility that the king would refuse to accept him as his man.¹⁴⁵ Neither enthronement in Canterbury on 25 September,¹⁴⁶ nor consecration there on 4 December (prior to which he is already described as ‘in pontificatu’)¹⁴⁷ was constitutive. Being accepted as the king’s man was. And this view may not have been restricted to the Historia Novorum: a letter apparently sent to Anselm shortly before 25 September addresses him as Anglorum archiepiscopus, perhaps indicating that it was written after he had done homage earlier in the month.¹⁴⁸ Yet curiously this was not a view which Eadmer voiced in the Vita Anselmi, where he scrupulously avoided ever mentioning the ceremony which he seemed to see, in the Historia Novorum, as the seed from which all subsequent evils had grown. He did so despite referring, in the Vita, to Anselm’s homines and the fides which bound them to their lord.¹⁴⁹ Homage, by that or any other name, is even omitted from the Vita’s account of the Roman Easter Council of 1099.¹⁵⁰ Eadmer’s avoidance of it cannot be an attempt to draw a veil over what had subsequently become an embarrassment, because in his preface he refers the reader to the Historia Novorum, saying that Anselm’s actions cannot be fully understood without reading both works.¹⁵¹ Nor can its omission simply be attributed to the fact that the Vita was professedly concerned with Anselm’s private life, as opposed to the Historia Novorum’s focus on his public relations with kings.¹⁵² The distinction is not scrupulously observed, and both books address the closely related issue of lay investiture.¹⁵³ Rather, the most plausible explanation is that Eadmer must have seen homage as a lay ceremony newly demanded of English prelates by Norman kings, and therefore as irrelevant to the purpose of the Vita, whereas investiture was a clerical ceremony appropriated by kings, and therefore of some relevance to Anselm’s spiritual life. It was precisely the lay nature of homage which made its apparently constitutive role in the conferring of ecclesiastical land and therefore office so sacrilegious. William Rufus had ceased to be—in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle—yrfe numa of Archbishop Lanfranc, by taking Anselm’s homage and seising him. To what extent, then, does the evidence entitle us to take Eadmer’s hint, and infer from his analysis of clerical tenure the novel aspects of lay tenure in England in the first forty years or so after the Conquest? Canterbury on that date ‘more electi antistitis’: Eadmer, Miracula S. Dunstani, in his Lives and Miracles, 176. ¹⁴⁴ Ep. 176 (Opera Omnia, iv. 57–60), discussed below, pp. 121–3. ¹⁴⁵ HN 40–1. ¹⁴⁶ HN 41. ¹⁴⁷ HN 42; VA 66. ¹⁴⁸ Ep. 152 (Opera Omnia, iv. 13–14); The Letters of St Anselm of Canterbury, ed. and trans. W. Fr/hlich, 3 vols. (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1990–4), ii. p. 23 n. 1. ¹⁴⁹ VA 81–3. ¹⁵⁰ VA 115. ¹⁵¹ VA 2; cf. 127. ¹⁵² Southern, Biographer, 314, 332. ¹⁵³ VA 115, 127, 140.

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Eadmer’s terminology indicates that there was as yet no clear-cut distinction between lay and clerical tenure. For instance, by investitura and the like he generally means lay investiture with pastoral staff and ring.¹⁵⁴ But, as we have seen, he also records that, immediately after Anselm’s own investiture and quasi-election in March 1093, William Rufus ordered from his sickbed that Anselm should ‘without delay be invested (investiretur) with all things which belong to the archbishopric’.¹⁵⁵ In the Abingdon History’s account of the abbacy of Faritius (1100–17), written in the 1160s but very possibly drawing on contemporary notes, Faritius is said to have received ‘investituram, id est saisitionem’ of an estate from Picot, the dapifer of Alberic de Ver.¹⁵⁶ Investitura is used in this sense elsewhere in the History.¹⁵⁷ If the chronicler’s gloss is a late twelfth-century attempt to explain an archaic usage in his source,¹⁵⁸ then it may lend weight to the suggestion that as soon as Rufus began to feel better, he repented of his rashly remorseful command to invest—that is to say, to seise—Anselm, and revoked it for the time being. For Eadmer goes on to make it clear that Anselm was not ‘ordered to be seised’ with the lands of the archbishopric until much later, after he had ‘become the king’s man’ for their use in September.¹⁵⁹ Certainly Eadmer uses the verb revestire¹⁶⁰ as if it effected a resaisitio¹⁶¹ by undoing the ‘reversion’ (redigere) or ‘transcription’ (transcribere) of the archbishopric into the king’s dominium.¹⁶² He did not use it as an antonym of investiture with ring and staff. Moreover, it is exclusively in these noncanonical senses that investitura, investire, and revestire are used in the De Iniusta Vexacione.¹⁶³ They do not appear at all in the Collectio Lanfranci. In late eleventh-century England, therefore, investitura and investire had not yet been pinned down exclusively to the canonical meaning they bear in the papal letters which Eadmer quotes; they came to be so only in the course of the papacy’s campaign against lay investiture. Previously investitura appears to be used in eleventh-century Norman documents¹⁶⁴ to describe the act of seising a recipient ¹⁵⁴ HN 2, 32, 137, 141, 150, 186; VA 115, 140. ¹⁵⁵ HN 37, discussed above, p. 62. ¹⁵⁶ HEA ii. 88; this passage appears in both manuscripts of the chronicle: London, BL Cotton MS. Claudius C.ix (late 12th century); BL Cotton MS. Claudius B.vi (13th century). For the dating, see J. G. H. Hudson, ‘The Abbey of Abingdon, its Chronicle and the Norman Conquest’, ANS xix (1996), 181–202, at 183–4. I should like to thank John Hudson for his advice. ¹⁵⁷ HEA, ed. Stevenson, i. 484 (repeated 491), ed. Hudson, ii. 10. Both these passages are found in both manuscripts. ¹⁵⁸ The device is used elsewhere: ii. 48. John Hudson points out to me that an alternative interpretation is that the chronicler is reproducing vernacular usage. ¹⁵⁹ HN 41. ¹⁶⁰ HN 96, 111, 166; VA 134. ¹⁶¹ HN 164. ¹⁶² HN 80, 88, 111; VA 100, 132. ¹⁶³ DIV, pp. 276–7, 293, 303, 324; revestire: 324; cf. 329 (resaisire). In view of the canonical learning which underpins the DIV, this is a further indication that it is based on a contemporary record of the events it describes. ¹⁶⁴ Fauroux, Recueil nos. 25 (1023), 72 (1027–35), 234 (1082–7); Reg. no. 262 (1074) (vestitura); Orderic iii. 176 (1076); Paris, BN MS. lat. 12878 fo. 277r (revestire)(late 11th century), quoted and

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with land. It is not found in pre-Conquest English writs and charters. The distinction between the two terms lay in the Frankish vernacular root of saisire, not, as the author of the Abingdon History later showed, in the original sense. Although the nature of the surviving records means that most of the known beneficiaries are clerical, there was nothing inherently ecclesiastical about the process denoted by these terms. What, precisely, was that process? Eadmer does not say; but, with the solitary exception of the aborted investiture of Anselm with the Canterbury lands in March 1093, he always, in the Historia Novorum, uses the verb saisire to describe it.¹⁶⁵ It is not surprising that an accomplished scribe¹⁶⁶ should have such an acute ear for the tenurial changes consequent on the Conquest. For saisire is not found in any plausible extant document from the Anglo-Saxon period,¹⁶⁷ but occurs scores of times in Domesday Book (in which investire and cognate terms do not appear). In rare instances it means that someone has taken—or seized—land or men for himself, often, in cases other than those of kings, without having any authority for doing so.¹⁶⁸ But it is more generally used to describe the conveyance of land or men to a recipient, or, in the passive, the condition of such a recipient consequent on the conveyance. Although the word is clearly a Norman import, the noun forms found in some eleventh-century Norman charters do not reappear in Domesday Book. There saisire is always a transitive verb, describing either, in a few cases, what someone does with land or men for himself, or more often what is done to someone with land or men, and the consequent condition of the grantee. Thus, for instance, Ilbert, sheriff of Hertfordshire, is said to have been ‘seised’ of two manors ‘by the king’s writ, for as long as he was sheriff’.¹⁶⁹ discussed by Tabuteau, Transfers, 123; Chartes de l’abbaye de Jumièges, i. no. 34 (1086) (vestitura), discussed by Tabuteau, p. 128; Paris, BN MS. lat. 5441, vol. ii. 161–2 (1094–1133, but closer to 1094), cited by Tabuteau, p. 339, n. 48; Le Prévost, Eure iii. 46 (1099), discussed by Tabuteau, p. 141. In Chartes de l’abbaye de Jumièges, no. 34, vestitura and saisura are apparently synonyms. See also Fauroux, Recueil nos. 10 (996–1007)(saisio), 227 (1049–66, probably 1066) (saisire); C. H. Haskins, Norman Institutions (New York, 1918), no. 6 (1088) [⫽ Chartes de Jumièges, i. no. 37] (saisitio); Chartes de St.-Julien de Tours, 1002–1227, ed. L.-J. Denis, Société des archives historiques du Maine: Archives historiques du Maine, xii. fasc. 1 (Le Mans, 1912), no. 19, pp. 29–30 (11th century)(saisire in the sense of to grab for oneself; desaisire for what is thereby done to the person from whom the land is taken; and resaisire for the eventual restoration) [⫽ Tabuteau, doc. no. 52]; J.-M. Bouvris, ‘Un bref inédit de Robert Courte-heuse duc de Normandie, relatif à l’abbaye de Montebourg, au diocèse de Coutances’, Actes du 105 congrès national des sociétés savantes, Caen 1980, (Paris, 1984), Philologie et Histoire, vol ii. 125–50, at 150 (1092) (saisire) [⫽ Tabuteau, doc. no. 26a]. ¹⁶⁵ HN 40, 41, 65; saisire, like homagium or hominium, is not found in VA. ¹⁶⁶ Below, p. 105. ¹⁶⁷ ‘[S]eisonis’ appears in S. 82, which purports to be the foundation charter of Crowland Abbey, issued by Æthelbald of Mercia in 716: it is a forgery, probably dating from the 12th century. I am very grateful to Sean Miller for this information. ¹⁶⁸ DB i. 32a, 377c; ii. 97b, 133a, 310b–311a (Edward the Confessor ‘saisivit’ all the land of Edric of Laxfield, an outlaw; he also ‘saisivit in sua manu’ one of Edric’s men), 389b (‘Postquam autem R.W. advenit, saisivit eam in manu sua’), 412a. ¹⁶⁹ DB i. 132d; cf. Hemming, Chartularium i. 268 (fo. 125v), describing Wulfstan’s course of action when the reversion to the church of Worcester of land which had been leased out for a term of lives was contested by certain ‘Francigeni, qui hereditates Anglorum invaserunt’: he went to the king, gave him a very valuable gold cup, ‘et accepto brevi ejus sigillato super hac re, rediit, eamque suscepit et possedit’.

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Norman, sheriff of Suffolk, ‘said that the king sent him a writ that he should seise Ralph of Savigny of all the free men of whom Hubert de Port had seised the bishop [Odo of Bayeux], and therefore he had seised Ralph’.¹⁷⁰ Surviving writs of the Conqueror’s reign attest the new usage: Queen Mathilda ordered William de Moyon, sheriff of Somerset, to seise the bishop of Wells of a church conceded to him by the bishop of Exeter;¹⁷¹ and the king notified Hugh de Port, probably sheriff of Nottinghamshire, of his grant of the tithe of Rutland to St Peter of Westminster, and ordered Hugh to ‘seise him thereto’.¹⁷² In these cases where a person, rather than land, was seised, it appears that the sheriff was what is elsewhere described as a king’s liberator or, uniquely and synonymously in Huntingdonshire, saisitor.¹⁷³ The beneficiary of his action on the king’s behalf could be clerical as well as lay: Durand, sheriff of Gloucestershire, had ‘seised’ St Mary’s of Pershore with three hides of land ‘jussu regis’;¹⁷⁴ the canons of St Paul’s, London, had in their possession a writ of the king ‘in which it was recorded that he himself had given this manor to St Paul’s church’,¹⁷⁵ indicating that the beneficiary might get the writ after its instructions had been implemented (although in this case it is not recorded by whom).¹⁷⁶ And the beneficiaries were not restricted to lay and clerical tenants-in-chief. There is evidence that the king intervened either in person or through a liberator to ensure that certain subtenants were seised with particular holdings. Picot, sheriff of Cambridgeshire, held Harston of the abbot of Ely ‘jussu regis’.¹⁷⁷ Hardwin de Scalers is variously recorded as holding one hide de dominico victu monachorum of Ely either ‘of the king’ or (more expansively) ‘under the abbot through a certain deferment of that abbot, until he speaks with the king about it’.¹⁷⁸ In an entry which is famous for other reasons, Wulfweard and Alweard held two additions to the manor of Taunton ¹⁷⁰ DB ii. 377a; cf. i. 298a. ¹⁷¹ Reg. no. 289 (1072 ⫻ 83). ¹⁷² Reg. no. 334 (1086 ⫻ 87), an original, written by the only identifiable chancery scribe of William the Conqueror in ‘minuscule of continental type’ (Bishop and Chaplais, Facsimiles, pl. IX). ¹⁷³ DB i. 208b. Note 208a, where liberator and saisitor are mentioned in the same sentence; in the absence of any other distinct references to them, it seems likely that this is a scribal blunder. ¹⁷⁴ DB i. 167b. ¹⁷⁵ DB i. 211a. ¹⁷⁶ Some scholars have taken the view that royal writs were drafted by the beneficiary and only sealed by the king: Bishop and Chaplais, Facsimiles, pp. xii–xiii; P. Chaplais, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chancery: From Diploma to Writ’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, iii (1966), 160–76, at 175–6. Against this, see Writs, ed. Harmer, 57–61, 101–5; Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, 214–16. On the recovery by the beneficiary of writs announcing grants in favour of Bury St Edmunds and Westminster, see Keynes, Diplomas, 144, and (in the former case) Sharpe, ‘Use of writs’, 248, 253, 284. For a layman having the writ of King William which granted him a tenure in alms, see DB i. 218b. ¹⁷⁷ DB i. 191b, 200b; Inquisitio Eliensis, 106: ‘In herlestona tenet Picotus vicecomes unus hidus et dimidium sub abbate de ely iussu regis’; cf. 121: ‘In eadem comitatu habent picotus vicecomes & harduinus de escalariis & Wido de raimbecurt & alii homines de Thainlandis ecclesie ely de quibus serviunt abbati concessione regis’, 122, 123, 124: ‘Harduinus predictus in Grantebrigscyra habet de Thainlandis ely quibus concordatus est cum abbate concessione regis . . . Et de hoc servit harduinus abbati iussu regis.’ ¹⁷⁸ DB i. 199b, 191a; cf. Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis, 43, Inquisitio Eliensis, 106. It is not entirely clear whether it is envisaged that the abbot or Hardwin should speak to the king, but the entry is suggestive about the nature of the king’s involvement in such cases.

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of the bishop of Winchester ‘per concessionem regis W.’.¹⁷⁹ Quintin, a tenant of William d’Écouis in Norfolk, vouched Robert Blunt, the sheriff, as liberator.¹⁸⁰ The fact that the sheriff was liberator confirms that he was acting for the king.¹⁸¹ Even where subtenants are concerned, liberatores always acted on behalf of the king, not of the beneficiary’s lord. The king ‘commanded through Robert d’Oilly that Hugh [de Bernières] should hold . . . three manors of Geoffrey de Mandeville, if Geoffrey himself could prove them to belong to his fee (posset ea deratiocinari ad suum feudum)’.¹⁸² Also within Geoffrey’s fee, one Walter ‘claimed the king as warrantor (ad uuarant)’ of a manor he held of Geoffrey.¹⁸³ When an English survivor had ‘commended himself ’ to—that is to say, become a subtenant of—a lord, he could have been given to that lord ‘by writ or liberator’ of the king.¹⁸⁴ This evidence of royal intervention in the creation of subtenancies is corroborated in other sources. On the death of a surviving English layman, King William gave his lands to St Edmund for Abbot Baldwin to give in turn to his francigeni. Some of these manors Baldwin is said to have given ‘regis ipsius iussu’ to his brother Frodo;¹⁸⁵ but because Domesday Book is silent on the subject, we do not know whether the abbot or anyone else was considered to have acted as liberator in this instance.¹⁸⁶ The editors of the final text would tend to excise such detail as superfluous, unless it were relevant to an ongoing dispute. Thus Domesday simply records that one William Scudet holds three hides at Alton Priors of the bishop of Winchester, but a writ of the king reveals that the bishop had, ‘meo precatu’, given a life tenancy to ‘William Escudet, my cook’.¹⁸⁷ Yet if there were an unresolved dispute, and a hundredal jury testified of one party, whether lay or clerical, tenant-in-chief or subtenant, that they had not seen—or in one case heard¹⁸⁸—the king’s writ or seal ‘or liberator who seised him ¹⁷⁹ DB i. 87c; note that this information is not found in the corresponding entry in Exon. 174b4. On these entries, see Chaplais, ‘William of St-Calais’, 75–6. ¹⁸⁰ DB ii. 223b. ¹⁸¹ Terse Domesday entries often do not state that the liberator acts on the king’s behalf: i. 376c. Nevertheless, if the interpretation presented here be valid, liberatores were always agents of the king, although other lords might ‘deliver’ land: i. 35b. ¹⁸² DB ii. 60b. ¹⁸³ DB ii. 59b; cf. 221b, where the Wulfwig who vouches the king as tutor is a surviving ‘man’ of the T.R.E. tenant. ¹⁸⁴ DB ii. 181b. ¹⁸⁵ Feudal Documents, p. 4; cf. DB ii. 359a, 359b (‘and King William gave this land to St Edmund with soke, commendation, and every custom’), 363b. The king’s role in ordering these grants to Frodo is not mentioned in Domesday. For general discussion, see Feudal Documents, pp. xcv–c; also no. 168, which records that Peter, a miles of the king, had become a feodalis homo of St Edmund and Abbot Baldwin ‘regis licentia’, discussed below, pp. 93–4. In the bishop of Salisbury’s manor of Potterne, an Englishman who is described as the previous bishop’s ‘nephew’ was ‘miles jussu regis’: DB i. 60a; ‘King William the elder’ gave one-and-a-half hides of land already held of Thorold, abbot of Peterborough, by a certain Ansketil, to Eudo, the king’s dapifer, ‘and from Normandy he sent orders to England by his writs, to the bishop of Coutances and Robert d’Oilli, that they should give him (Ansketil) whatever he should wish of equivalent value in the three neighbouring shires; but the abbot did not wish it’: Chronicon Petroburgense, ed. T. Stapleton, Camden Soc., 1st ser., xlvii (1849), 168. ¹⁸⁶ Abbot Wulfwold of Chertsey had ‘delivered’ 6 hides of land to Richard fitzGilbert ‘in compensation’ for Watton, ‘so Richard’s men say; but the men of the hundred say that they have never seen a king’s writ or liberator who seised him of it’: DB i. 35b. ¹⁸⁷ DB i. 65c; Reg. no. 341 (probably 1080 ⫻ 83). ¹⁸⁸ DB i. 208a.

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with it’,¹⁸⁹ then that party’s prospects looked bleak. Thus Azor, who had been Edward the Confessor’s dispensator, now held of Robert d’Oilly one hide which he had held T.R.E., ‘but the men of the hundred testify that he ought to hold of the king what the king restored to him (ei reddidit) at Windsor and concerning which he gave him his writ. Robert therefore holds it unjustly, for none of them has seen a king’s writ or a man (homo) who seised him of it on [the king’s] behalf.’¹⁹⁰ A writ ordering a conveyance seems, therefore, to have been sent to a liberator,¹⁹¹ although in one case the king himself was vouched as liberator by the grantee.¹⁹² The liberator was probably one of those named in the address clause, most often the relevant sheriff, who perhaps himself read the writ out in either the shire or the hundred court.¹⁹³ The issue of the writ did not itself effect a conveyance; it was an executive instrument, the public reading of which was evidentiary. In one entry Domesday Book seems implicitly to recognize that whereas a traditional Anglo-Saxon charter could be used to ‘deliver’ land (by the physical handing over of the charter), a writ could not;¹⁹⁴ it could only announce ¹⁸⁹ DB i. 35b, 36a, 50a, 211d; ii. 14b (given to Westminster Abbey after the death of Ailric following a naval battle in 1066; in this case a writ was forged to remedy the deficiency: Writs, ed. Harmer, 303), 172b, 195a, 276b, 336a, 409b, 427a; cf. ii. 87b, 424a, where the hundred do not know whether or not someone had been seised ‘ex parte regis’. ¹⁹⁰ DB i. 62b; cf. 211d. ¹⁹¹ At DB i. 1a, dator is interlineated as a synonym; for other apparent synonyms, see i. 62b (homo; but note that in this case the writ is said to have been given to the recipient by the king); i. 50a, 262b, 276b, 375b, ii. 7a (legatus; but note that the same term is used for commissioner); i. 36a (nuncius); ii. 14b (famulus). Some of these terms suggest that, on occasion, the king’s agent might have been sent to the locality by the king, rather than being already on the spot. For pre-Conquest evidence of such emissaries, see S. D. Keynes, ‘Royal Government and the Written Word in late Anglo-Saxon England’, in R. McKitterick (ed.), The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990), 226–57, at 244–7. ¹⁹² DB ii. 249b; elsewhere it is envisaged that the king might be asked to testify to the actions of his legatus: i. 50a. ¹⁹³ Reg. no. 299 refers in passing to the time when ‘this writ is read’. At HEA ii. 2–4, the later manuscript of the Abingdon History (Cotton Claudius B. vi) inserts the text of Reg. no. 4 (1071 ⫻ 83, probably soon after 1071), which confirms the customs of all the abbey’s lands, and then, with the heading ‘De recitatione cartarum in comitatu’, resumes the narrative: ‘Quarum recitatio literarum in Berkescire comitatu prolata plurimum et ipsi abbati et ecclesie commodi attulit.’ The earlier manuscript (Cotton Claudius C. ix) inserts Reg. no. 6 (1071 ⫻ 83, or perhaps 1087 ⫻ 1100), which exempts anything bought for the monks’ supplies from all tolls and customs, between Reg. no. 4 and the heading and account of the pleading in the shire court. In the later manuscript, Reg. no. 6 follows this account. The arrangement in Claudius C. ix would have to be accepted, and the account of the reading aloud would have to be judged to apply to Reg. no. 6 alone, for it to be concluded that the writ confirming Abingdon’s lands was not read to the shire court. This would be at odds with much Domesday evidence. Cf. Writs, ed. Harmer, no. 80, judged to be an authentic element in a spurious writ of Edward the Confessor (p. 317). J. Campbell, ‘Some Agents and Agencies of the Anglo-Saxon State’, in Holt (ed.), Domesday Studies, 201–18, at 214, implies that writs in favour of minor grantees would have been considered at a hundredal level, and would not have involved liberatores. But liberatores are mentioned in connection with grants to apparently minor subtenants. In any case, DB ii. 7a envisages that even if the king were granting land to himself, a writ or legatus would be expected to come ‘ex parte regis in hundredo’. ¹⁹⁴ DB i. 375a; Keynes, Diplomas, 142, n. 208, and, for the relationship between charter and writ, pp. 140–5. For reference to a ‘writ or charter’ as evidence of a grant of customs to Abingdon Abbey by Edward the Confessor, see Reg. no. 4. Note the suggestion, Keynes, Diplomas, 144, that Edward the Confessor endowed Westminster Abbey with some estates simply by announcing the fact in a writ

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a grant which had already taken place or instruct a liberator to effect the ‘delivery’. As Domesday Book itself suggests, with its many references to seising and delivery at the king’s behest through the king’s agents, this largely novel language of conveyance was not first coined by the Domesday commissioners or the stenographers who took down oral testimony during the Inquest.¹⁹⁵ It was already current in post-Conquest Latin writs. Richard fitzNeal later drew attention to this quality, when he instructed his pupil that the descriptio had been ‘set down in common words and drawn up into a book’.¹⁹⁶ A writ in favour of Bury St Edmunds, plausibly dated to 1077, instructs Richard fitzGilbert and R. the sheriff, amongst other things, to ‘reseise’ Frodo, Abbot Baldwin’s brother, of all the ‘men’ of whom he had been ‘disseised’ by Eustace of Boulogne’s ‘men’.¹⁹⁷ Precisely what a liberator did to ‘seise’ a prescribed recipient with land or men, other than reading out the king’s writ in the appropriate forum, is unclear (as is the Old English term, translated by the continental Latin saisire, which must have been used in the Old English version of the writ which was read out). In view of the terse nature of the instructions in extant writs—there are, of course, no boundary clauses—he must have had other means of defining precisely with what he was to seise the grantee. Evidence of what these were emerges but rarely. The antecessor scheme is the most obvious, but its function tends to be revealed, as we have seen, only in the case of some unresolved dispute. Domesday Book also records that honours were sometimes conceived in terms of numbers of manors, and manors are occasionally said to have been ‘made up’ by the delivery of land or men.¹⁹⁸ addressed to the relevant shire; but the writ cited—Writs, ed. Harmer, no. 99—is addressed generally rather than to a specific agent, and this highlights an apparent distinction between pre-Conquest writs, which announce that a conveyance has been authorized by the king, and the writs which lie behind Domesday entries, which seem to have authorized a named agent to effect the conveyance. For the ceremonial use of charters in the transfer of land, see also Keynes, Diplomas, 33–4. ¹⁹⁵ The nationality of the stenographers is a moot point which deserves attention. There is now a consensus that many of the scribes associated with the Domesday Survey, including the main scribe of Great Domesday, were English: Chaplais, ‘William of St.-Calais’, 69–70, 72–4; A. R. Rumble, ‘The Domesday Manuscripts: Scribes and Scriptoria’, in Holt (ed.), Domesday Studies, 79–99, at 84, 97; A. R. Rumble, ‘The Palaeography of the Domesday Manuscripts’, in Sawyer (ed.), Reassessment, 28–49, at 41–9. And it has been shown that little can be concluded from the spelling of place- and personal names, which may or may not have been the work of the scribes who wrote out the extant fair copies, and which simply represent attempts to bring English names within the conventions of Latin orthography: C. Clark, ‘Domesday Book—A Great Red Herring: Thoughts on Some Late Eleventh-century Orthographies’, in Hicks (ed.), England in the Eleventh Century, 317–31. But little thought has been given to the stenographers who took down testimony during the hearings in the shire courts, translating from Old English and French into Latin. A number of continental neologisms, like ‘saisire’ (above, p. 64), and misunderstandings, like the use of alodium as a translation for bookland (above, p. 28), suggest that at least some of them were French. ¹⁹⁶ Dialogus, 63. ¹⁹⁷ Reg. no. 43; cf. no. 119, which orders Geoffrey of Coutances and Robert of Mortain to ensure that the church of Ely ‘have’ certain lands; that Abbot Simon of Ely ‘have’ certain customs; and that the abbot also ‘be seised (saisitus sit)’ of certain thegnlands, all as they had belonged to the abbey on the day of Edward the Confessor’s death; cf. no. 334, cited above, n. 66. ¹⁹⁸ DB ii. 100a; Maitland, Domesday Book Beyond, 127–8, which cites numerous examples; Finn, Introduction to Domesday, 25; J. F. A. Mason, ‘The Rapes of Sussex and the Norman Conquest’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, cii (1964), 68–93, at 80.

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In these cases oral testimony seems unlikely always to have been sufficient: the existence of underlying documentation of one kind or another is implied. Whatever the means of definition, there must also have been some formal act of conveyance. Even though it does not use saisire, the famous charter recording the king’s gift of Harmondsworth to the abbey of La-Trinité-du-Mont, Rouen, might be thought suggestive, for the original meaning of the word must be ‘to grasp’: ‘This gift was effected by means of a knife (Haec donatio facta est per unum cultellum), which the aforesaid king jocularly gave to the abbot, as if threatening to stab him through his outstretched palm: “That’s how land ought to be given”, he said.’¹⁹⁹ There was nothing distinctively ecclesiastical about a donee grasping a symbolic object of this type, handed over by the donor, unlike the placing of such an object on the altar of a church. We can infer from other instances that Domesday Book tends to be opaque about the occurrence of such ceremonies.²⁰⁰ An original writ proclaiming the transfer of the see of Dorchester-on-Thames to Lincoln records as an afterthought that King William had ‘once conceded the manor of Woodburn to [Bishop Remigius] with [his] episcopal staff ’; yet Domesday Book simply states that it was in 1086 held by a tenant of the bishop, and gives its value ‘when [the bishop] received it’.²⁰¹ It is impossible to tell how many such ceremonies for grantees, whether clerical or lay, lie hidden behind Domesday’s terse formulae. There was no point in wasting space describing ceremonial forms of conveyance, particularly if there was no dispute about the resulting tenure. In every detectable Domesday instance, it is the donor in person—the king— who effects such a symbolic gift, not his agent. When Domesday records that a sheriff guarded ‘this [land] in the king’s hand’,²⁰² the ‘hand’ is clearly a metaphorical rather than a real one; there is no implication that the king’s agent performed ceremonial actions in the king’s absence which the king would himself have performed, if present. Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, a Domesday commissioner, might ‘disseise’ one tenant and ‘deliver (liberare)’ the land thereby recovered to ¹⁹⁹ Reg. no. 232 (1069, probably c.12 April). This is not an original, and some possible interpolations suggest that it may have been tampered with at a later stage; but not much later, because it survives in a late 11th-century cartulary copy. ²⁰⁰ DB ii. 210a records that King William ‘gave’ a manor ‘to St Edmunds when he first came to St Edmunds’; Feudal Documents, 13, amplifies: ‘Hoc manerium . . . dedit sepe memoratus rex Guillelmus Sancto Ædmundo prima vice qua eius requisivit suffragium. Cum que fecisset donum humili capite et prono cordo cultellum complicatum paululum coram ex suis melioribus plurimis posuit super altare Sancti. Insuper litteras suas cum sigillo dedit que adhuc habentur in quibus ita pleniter concessit Sancto.’ The practice was traditional in both England and Normandy. DB i. 177d records a donor placing a donum on the altar of Evesham Abbey during the fifth year of Edward the Confessor’s reign; at some time which is not specified the abbot had donated a manor he had bought to the abbey by placing a textum (which could be either a sacred book or a charter) on the altar; see further Writs, ed. Harmer, 170–1; P&M ii. 88; Hudson, LLL 161–4; for Normandy, see Tabuteau, Transfers, 129, n. 107. ²⁰¹ Reg. no. 177 (c.1072, or 1072–87); DB i. 144a. John Hudson points out to me that it is unclear from the writ whether the grant of the episcopal staff was in any sense instrumental. ²⁰² DB ii. 290a; cf. 94b, 418b.

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someone else;²⁰³ but we do not know whether Bishop Geoffrey effected the conveyance in ceremonial form, as might have happened had the king acted in person rather than through his agent. Neither pre-Conquest England nor Normandy afford any clues; and it is impossible to tell how, if at all, William fitzOsbern’s pre-1071 grant in the Welsh marches of ‘50 carucates of land’ to Ralph of Limesy ‘as is done in Normandy (sicut fit in Normannia)’ might have differed from more normal practice in post-Conquest England. Yet ‘Hugh and the other liberatores testified that he conceded it to Ralph in this way’.²⁰⁴ The verb liberare, unlike its Domesday synonym saisire, was current in preConquest charters. It and its cognate forms appear over 600 times in the extant corpus. But in almost all cases it appears to mean that the land concerned is being freed from various obligations.²⁰⁵ In a very few instances it could mean either this, or simply, perhaps by extension, the granting of land in what would later become the Domesday sense.²⁰⁶ The two examples when it unambiguously means the latter are clearly later, probably post-Conquest, fabrications.²⁰⁷ Moreover, the king’s agent who ‘delivers’, the liberator, does not appear in any Old English source, under that or (apparently) any other name.²⁰⁸ This seems to be implicitly recognized in Domesday Book, which often refers to grants by Edward the Confessor, and invokes the existence of his writs as proof of title,²⁰⁹ but which never mentions liberatores in this connection.²¹⁰ And liberator, unlike saisire, seems also to be absent from ²⁰³ DB i. 151d. ²⁰⁴ DB i. 162b. C. P. Lewis, ‘English and Norman Government and Lordship in the Welsh Borders, 1039–1087’, Oxford University D.Phil. (1985), 304 and n. 2, suggests that ‘fit’ is an error for ‘sint’, and that the passage is to be explained in terms of use of the Norman carucate to assess land in this unhidated border area. But there is no need to amend the reading of the manuscript, or to interpret the entry in this way. H. C. Darby is more hesitant in H. C. Darby and I. B. Terret (eds.), The Domesday Geography of Midland England (Cambridge, 1954), 54. I should like to thank Rees Davies for his advice. ²⁰⁵ e.g. S. 185 (798 ⫻ 821, probably 814), 186 (822), 331 (862), 929 (1012), etc., etc. I should like to thank Sean Miller for providing me with a computer printout of every instance. ²⁰⁶ S. 137, an 11th-century copy of a Mercian record of 794; S. 192, an 11th-century copy of a Mercian charter of 840; S. 286, a 13th-century copy of a Kentish charter of 838; S. 478, a 15thcentury copy of a West Saxon charter of 941; S. 731, the ‘Altitonantis’ charter of King Edgar, which purports to have been issued in 964. The earliest surviving copy is 12th-century, and the charter was almost certainly either forged or heavily interpolated then. ²⁰⁷ S. 67, a 10th- or 11th-century copy of what purports to be a Mercian charter of 624 (?for 674), which all authorities regard as spurious; S. 452, a 17th-century copy of a lost 13th-century copy of a charter of King Æthelstan (924 ⫻ 39), which all authorities regard as spurious. ²⁰⁸ Keynes, ‘Written Word’, 246, gives examples of bishops and others commissioned by the king to hear land disputes. ²⁰⁹ In one case the Conqueror ‘fecit resaisiri’ Shaftesbury Abbey of two manors allegedly taken from it by Harold ‘because a writ with a seal of King Edward was found in that church ordering that they be restored to the church together with Melcombe’; but William was clearly selective in his implementation of Edward’s orders, for the entry records that he had kept Melcombe: DB i. 78d. For this and every other reference in Domesday to the writ and/or seal of Edward, see Writs, ed. Harmer, 543–5. ²¹⁰ Note, however, DB ii. 290b, where Count Alan of Brittany claimed a church and ‘vouched Ivo Taillebois as liberator’, but was opposed by Thorkell and Edric who ‘vouched Roger the Sheriff as warrantor (adgarant), saying that they had the church through him, and that Roger was such a

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Norman sources.²¹¹ Like saisire and investire, it is not derived from the Collectio Lanfranci. It is a novelty which Eadmer, unusually, cannot help to explain (perhaps because, although churches or their incumbents are sometimes said to have been seised with parcels of land by royal agents in Domesday Book, those agents are never termed liberatores). Liberator is most commonly used, in contexts other than Domesday, to signify Christ as redeemer or deliverer, so the new meaning may have been suggested by the fact that all land in conquered England which was not held by the king himself was, in a sense, redeemed from—or freed by—the king.²¹² According to Anselm, Christ had secured the redemptio of fallen man by, as it were, performing a service so pleasing to the king that the king conceded that all his other sinful subjects might henceforth share in Christ’s grace by acceding to the pactum which Christ had established with the king.²¹³ Anselm says nothing explicit about the tenure of land, but the implications of this similitudo are clear, and suggestive of the associations prompted by the new term liberator. Surviving English laymen and conquering Normans alike seem to be ‘seised’ at the king’s behest by his liberatores; both terms emphasized the novelty of the arrangement. warrantor (Gaurant) as any sheriff would justly have been t.r.e.’. Ivo, sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1086, had never been sheriff of Suffolk; but he was involved in the Kentford inquiry into Ely lands: LE 199–200; Inquisitio Comitatuo Cantabrigiensis, p. xviii; and he acted as a liberator elsewhere in East Anglia: ii. 149a. Thorkell and Edric’s recorded testimony that sheriff Roger’s role as warrantor was in accordance with Old English practice might be taken to imply that sheriffs did act as liberatores T.R.E. But this is doubtful: they are not said to have used the term, and the possible synonym is French in origin. At ii. 229b Eudo, antecessor of Ralph Beaufour, is said to have held his land ‘by livery’; but at ii. 235b, where he is also said to have held by livery, it is recorded that he had died after 1066. If the suggestion here be correct, he would only have held by livery after the Conquest. In a comparable case at i. 50a the men of the hundred testified that ‘they had never seen the king’s seal or legatus who seised Alwin the Rat, antecessor of the present holder . . . and unless the king testify, he has nothing there’. If King William himself were to testify, he must have been the author of the writ or legatus. But there is one entry to the effect that a hundred had seen ‘neque breve aliquid neque legatus R.E.’: i. 197b. In Exon. 217a there are a few references to manors which were ‘liberate in die qua rex.E.f.v.&.m.’. Unless this means Edward’s reign, rather than what it says, it is almost inconceivable that these manors would have all been ‘liberate’ on 5 January 1066. It is therefore likely that the word is being used in its conventional Old English sense (see above, n. 205). In any case it has been excised from the corresponding entries in DB i. 104d. ²¹¹ Fauroux, Recueil no. 224 (1063–6) records that the duke conceded to the newly instituted canons of Notre-Dame, Cherbourg, certain tithes ‘per liberationem forestariorum’; and further promised them the same liberatio as his chaplains each time he visited Cherbourg. Whatever liberatio means here, it is not being used in its Domesday sense. ²¹² The libera terra which is especially common in Suffolk throws no light on the term liberator, for there it is used to describe glebe land of parish churches which was specially privileged in some way: R. V. Lennard, Rural England, 1086–1135: A Study of Social and Agrarian Conditions (Oxford, 1959), 323–4; Finn, Eastern Counties, 76–7. At DB ii. 450a Hubert de Port is said to ‘proved land [to be] free’—meaning not held by any tenant—before he ‘seised the bishop [of Bayeux] with this land’. ²¹³ Cur Deus homo II c. 16 (Opera Omnia, ii. 118). Note that S. 452 (above n. 207), the ?13thcentury forged charter of Æthelstan, juxtaposes liberare in both senses: ‘In sancto nomine nostri servatoris Christi, qui nos creavit, quando nosmet ipsi non eramus, et nos redemit cum sua propria vita, quando perditi fuimus ex Diabolici doctrina, et penitus damnati in aeternum sulphur. sed eius magna clementia nos liberavit ab eo. Nunc ego Æthelstanus Rex super Anglicam gentem, notum facio meis sapientibus, et in hoc scripto verbis confirmo; quod liberabo omnem terram ad S. Pauli Monasterium . . .’

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The absence of liberatores from Domesday records of grants to churches, and from Eadmer, may reflect a distinction between clerical and lay tenants-in-chief which tends to remain unacknowledged in both sources: that the landed endowment was in some sense the church’s, rather than that of the incumbent who is, on the whole, recorded as its tenant in Domesday; and that the church had continued to exist over the Conquest. Although the sitting incumbent had to recognize, in the wake of 1066, that he held his church’s lands on a new basis, they were still his church’s lands. The Conqueror might regard the lands of thegns within St Edmund’s soke who had died fighting him at Hastings as forfeit; but otherwise he confirmed the abbey’s possessions to its existing abbot.²¹⁴ This meant that although bishops (including, in Domesday Book, the bishop of Rochester)²¹⁵ and many abbots had become precarious, immediate tenants of the king, their churches could not have done so; as abstract, undying bearers of tenurial rights, the churches had survived the Conquest. As Eadmer recognized, this remained true even during a vacancy, when the lands which reverted into the king’s hand were nonetheless deemed still to be in some sense the church’s.²¹⁶ In this crucial respect, clerical tenants-in-chief were from the beginning quite distinct from laymen, even those English lay survivors (and Frenchmen already settled in England under Edward the Confessor) who were initially allowed to redeem their lands from the king. For with lay survivors there were no analogous undying entities of which they were incumbents; and it may be this which made liberator—the king’s ‘freer’ or ‘redeemer’—seem appropriate as a term for the agent who seised laymen on the king’s behalf, but inappropriate in relation to confirmations and even new grants to churches. In the case of existing episcopal and abbatial churches, tenancies-in-chief were not constructed from scratch, shredding the Edwardian tenurial pattern in reality while stridently proclaiming succession to the alleged rights of Edwardian antecessores. The territorial extent of the rights of these antecessores, and up to 1070 most of the antecessores themselves, survived almost unscathed. The exception which proves the point is Battle Abbey, the landed endowment of which had to be created from the lands of a large number of (lay) antecessores at its foundation in 1070.²¹⁷ Yet as an abbot of Battle was later said to have reminded the monks, whereas he would die, the church could not.²¹⁸ In this respect Battle and the other post-Conquest foundations were no different from existing Anglo-Saxon ones; their possessions (with the notable, royally privileged exception of Henry I’s Reading) reverted to kings during vacancies, while nevertheless remaining theirs.²¹⁹ ²¹⁴ Reg. no. 37. ²¹⁵ Above, p. 59. ²¹⁶ Above, p. 60. ²¹⁷ DB i. 11d, 17d, 34a, 59d–60a, 157a; ii. 20b. ²¹⁸ CBA 172. ²¹⁹ Reading Abbey Cartularies, ed. B. R. Kemp, 2 vols., Camden Soc., 4th ser., xxxi, xxxii (1986, 1987), i. nos. 1, 18, 20, and p. 18; CBA 108–18 for the vacancy of 1102–7. The see of Carlisle, founded by Henry I in 1133, nevertheless reverted into the king’s hand during a vacancy: Howell, Regalian Right, 39.

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In the case of churches there was, therefore, an unacknowledged tension between the post-Conquest stress on tenure as a function of a personal relationship between individuals, and the undying abstraction of the church as a bearer of tenurial rights. In the folios of Domesday Book that tension was at its most acute in the case of those churches whose abstract sempiternity was most clearly articulated in Canon Law: namely the episcopal and abbatial ones whose incumbents had come to depend directly on the king for the tenure of their churches’ lands.²²⁰ The tension may be the reason for Domesday’s failure to record that confirmations or grants to churches were effected by the king’s liberatores; it is certainly apparent in Domesday’s tendency to record bishops and abbots, rather than their churches, as tenants. It was precisely in the case of tenancy-in-chief that the structuring of post-Conquest tenure on the basis of personal relationships between individuals was most apparent, for the manner of the king’s grants to those who held of him in chief became a template for other tenurial relationships. According to Eadmer, that relationship was created when each bishop-elect (with the exception of bishops-elect of Rochester) and abbot-elect was ‘made the king’s man for the use of the land’.²²¹ By explaining the purpose of the ceremony in this way, he showed that, in his view, the king’s subsequent order to seise the bishop or abbot with the land was a consequence of that constitutive ceremony. For Eadmer, tenure was an aspect of the personal bond of lordship created by the ceremony. This was the Conqueror’s principal innovation, the seed from which the peculiar evils of the post-Conquest system grew; as we have seen, Eadmer strongly hinted that those evils flourished in the secular sphere too. Was he right to present homage in conquered England in this way? If Eadmer viewed this novelty in England as another Norman import, he again thereby revealed his ignorance of Norman practice. We have already seen that there is no evidence for Norman bishops or abbots doing homage to dukes, and none for their dependence on dukes for the tenure of the lands of their churches.²²² Over the course of the eleventh century Norman laymen increasingly sought ducal confirmation of their grants to churches. This had made the alodia out of which those grants came look more like dependent beneficia. But the alodia were not therefore deemed to be held of the duke, in return for homage to him.²²³ In the absence of a system of strict tenurial dependence on the duke, for clerics or laymen, it is clear that homage could not have had the significance in Normandy which Eadmer attributed to it in conquered England. There are, however, a few examples from the late eleventh century of laymen doing homage and receiving tenures from lords other than the duke;²²⁴ and in two cases homage is said straightforwardly to ²²⁰ Garnett, ‘Crown’, 192–5, for fuller discussion. ²²¹ HN 41; cf 2, 120. ²²² Above, p. 51. ²²³ Above, p. 47. ²²⁴ Livre blanc of St.-Martin of Sées, fos. 16v–17r (1089), quoted by Tabuteau, Transfers [⫽ doc no. 593] 325, n. 391: ‘domno Radulfo abbati hominagium fecit, et ab eodem quandam mansuram terre ad domum faciendam accepit’; fo. 45r–v (1073–89), quoted by Tabuteau [⫽ doc. no. 631] 325–6, n. 392: ‘Deinde ipse Adelardus pro eadem terra sex libras predicto abbati dedit et insuper manibus suis homo illius devenit . . .’

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have been done for land.²²⁵ In none of these cases was (or could) the land be described as alodium; in one of them the tenant is said to be obliged to serve ‘as if for his feodum’.²²⁶ When doing homage to the abbot of Préaux, Richard de SainteMaire-Église specifically renounced his rights to compensation from the abbot should anyone else vindicate a claim to the land which he himself had claimed by gift of a previous abbot, and which the present abbot was said to restore (reddere) to him. This indicates that, by the end of the eleventh century, homage might be done in Normandy at the time of a regrant as well as of a grant, and that by then taking homage involved a duty on the part of the lord to warrant.²²⁷ The suggestion that, by the late eleventh century, there was an apparent Norman connection, in certain circumstances, between homage and (subsequent) grant or regrant may be strengthened by the most detailed description of lay practice: William of Poitiers’ account of Harold’s supposed submission to Duke William. The duke had ‘received [Harold] as his follower (satellitus) through [his] hands’. He then ‘gave [Harold] all his lands and powers at his request’, before Harold finally swore fidelitas to him.²²⁸ It is not clear in what sense William of Poitiers thought that the duke could, during Edward the Confessor’s lifetime, make a gift to Harold of everything which Harold already held in England— perhaps in the same sense that Herbert, count of Maine, had already ‘come as a suppliant . . . given himself to [Duke William] with his hands, and received back from [the duke] everything of his, like a knight (miles) from a lord’.²²⁹ Nor is it clear to what extent William of Poitiers may have been influenced by developments in post-Conquest England. Dudo of St-Quentin was cancellarius in the duchy in the second decade of the eleventh century,²³⁰ and so must have known a thing or two about the conveyance of land in Normandy at that time. But he apparently saw no link between Rollo’s having placed his hands in those of Charles the Simple at St-Clair-sur-Epte and the king’s grant of territory to Rollo.²³¹ If William of Poitiers’ accounts can be accepted as representative of late eleventhcentury Norman lay practice, then the possibility of a connection between placing one’s hands between those of a lord and being granted some sort of tenure by that lord must have developed in Normandy during the first three-quarters of the ²²⁵ Reg. no. 170 (1081 ⫻ 82) records that, on the king’s orders, the dean of St-Pierre-de-la-Cour, Le Mans, had given a feudum to Richard ‘et proinde fecit ei Richardus hominagium, tali scilicet conditione, ut predictus Richardus et heredes sui istud facerent hommagium . . .’. If genuine, this would be the earliest Norman appearance of the substantive; but it should be noted that it survives only in two 18thcentury copies of a lost 13th-century cartulary. AD Calvados, Cartulaire de St.-Étienne de Caen, entrée 1996–135 (côte provisoire) fo. 69, Bibliothèque de l’université de Caen, Cartulary of St.-Étienne, pp. 79–80, no. CCVI, quoted by Tabuteau, Transfers [⫽ doc. no. 882] 339, n. 55: ‘fecit ei homagium de terra de Condeto.’ Note that Deville, Notices sur quelques manuscrits normands iv. 48, does not repeat the crucial words. ²²⁶ Livre Blanc of St.-Martin of Sées, fo. 45r–v, quoted above, n. 224. ²²⁷ Le Prévost, Eure iii. 209 (1101 ⫻ 06), quoted and discussed by Tabuteau, Transfers, 199 and n. 23 [⫽ doc. no. 371]. ²²⁸ GG 70. ²²⁹ GG 58. ²³⁰ Fauroux, Receuil nos. 13, 18. ²³¹ Dudo, p. 169; further Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 89–90.

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eleventh century, between Dudo and William. But even William, writing in the 1070s, appears as yet unaware of any substantive to denote the ceremony.²³² It seems that a term only came to be used for it in Normandy after the conquest of England, and variants of that term are found only in a handful of Norman documents. According to the charter evidence, in Normandy the ceremony appears to have assumed some significance in the grant only of certain types of land to laymen. The only suggestion that it may have done so when the duke was the grantor is found in William of Poitiers’ problematic descriptions of Herbert of Maine and Harold of Wessex placing their hands between those of Duke William. In both cases, William of Poitiers is quite emphatic that the grants related to all the lands which each of them already held. There is no implication that tenure in eleventh-century Normandy was the invariable consequence of the ceremony of giving oneself to the duke or to any other lord with one’s hands, as, in Eadmer’s view, came to be the case in England for clerical and lay tenants-in-chief alike. Given that Eadmer was wrong to think that existing Norman practice had simply been imposed by royal fiat on newly conquered England, what evidence is there that he was right about the significance of homage for bishops and abbots in England, and by inference for lay principes too? We have already seen that his implication that only newly appointed bishops and abbots had become King William’s men is misleading.²³³ There is almost no direct evidence; but insofar as it is possible to infer a transformation in the tenurial relationship between bishops and abbots and the king from the imposition of knight-service quotas, it looks as if William of Poitiers’ statement that Archbishop Stigand ‘gave himself with his hands to [Duke William], and confirmed [his] fides with an oath’²³⁴ can be extrapolated to cover the other existing bishops (and probably abbots too). Together with other ‘great men’, they are said to have begged the duke to take the crown. William of Poitiers draws no explicit connection between giving oneself with one’s hands and tenure here. But in his account of the submission (obsequium) of Edwin, Morcar, and other wealthy nobles after the coronation he states that they ‘surrendered themselves and all their possessions (tradunt se cunctaque sua)’ to King William, and that the king, as they had requested, freely accepted their oaths (sacramenta), and ‘restored to them (reddidit eis) all that they had possessed’.²³⁵ The nobles are not explicitly said to have placed their hands between those of the king when surrendering themselves and their possessions, but in every other respect—most notably that of the grant or restoration of land—this description reproduces and may have influenced those of the alleged submissions of Herbert ²³² For variants, see Fauroux, Receuil, no. 229 (commandatio militum); Cartulaire de l’abbaye de St.-Wandrille, AD Seine Maritime 16 H, non classé fos. 320r, 324r, cited by Bates, Normandy Before 1066, 145, n. 142; cf. L. Musset, ‘L’Aristocratie normande au xie siècle’, in P. Contamine (ed.), La Noblesse au moyen âge, xi e–xv e siècles (Paris, 1976), 71–96, at 90, n. 7. ²³³ Above, pp. 58–9. ²³⁴ GG 146. ²³⁵ GG 162; note that ASC (D) s.a. 1066 places their submission at Berkhamsted prior to the coronation (above, p. 1). For reasons for preferring William of Poitiers’ account, see Freeman, Norman Conquest, iii. 767.

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of Maine and Earl Harold to the duke. As we saw in Part I, in the Gesta Guillelmi Harold was, in terms of the obligations arising from placing his hands between those of the duke and swearing fealty to him, the prototype for all Englishmen.²³⁶ Although William of Poitiers and Eadmer may not have much in common, they do seem to share an understanding of the close link, in conquered England, between tenure and what Eadmer learnt to label homage. They differ in that William of Poitiers makes no allusion to the king’s co-conquerors placing their hands between his when they received beneficia in England from him,²³⁷ only to English survivors doing so. Eadmer, by contrast, states that newly appointed bishops and abbots—specifically Lanfranc, in 1070²³⁸—and, by inference, those ‘other [lay] principes’ whom the king ‘instituted throughout the land’, all became the king’s men.²³⁹ Conversely, he forbears to say anything about the treatment of those English principes ‘who managed to survive the great slaughter’. It may be that the difference is merely one of emphasis. William of Poitiers concentrates on the crucial role of the ceremony in the process of redemption of land by the English from their magnanimous conqueror,²⁴⁰ whereas Eadmer is above all concerned to record how new prelates, and by inference new lay tenants-in-chief too, had to become the king’s men for the use of land granted to them, and thereby to demonstrate the tyrannical, Norman nature of the king’s ‘nod’. Eadmer does not deny that Englishmen became the king’s men as well, and simply never addresses the issue of what happened to those English prelates who, for the most part briefly, survived the Conquest. By the time when Eadmer was compiling the materials on the basis of which he eventually drafted the first four books of the Historia Novorum,²⁴¹ the imposition of dependency in England seems to have sharpened the definition of homage in the same way as we have seen it doing with that of relief.²⁴² In both cases an imported neologism, which in Normandy might be used to signify a variety of things, perhaps according to varied tenurial context, became fixed in a context of invariable dependency. It is striking, for instance, that in his first two books Eadmer refers to ‘becoming the king’s man’, and shifts to using the substantive hominium only at the beginning of Book III.²⁴³ Accepting someone as one’s man was another of those antique ²³⁶ Above, p. 37. ²³⁷ GG 162–4. ²³⁸ HN 41. ²³⁹ HN 9. ²⁴⁰ Freeman, Norman Conquest, iv. 20–2. ²⁴¹ Above, p. 48. ²⁴² Above, p. 56. ²⁴³ HN 120. That Eadmer’s preface (p. 2) refers to ‘becoming the king’s man’ is a further indication that it was drafted before the first four books were completed, cf. above, p. 48. When he reproduced (p. 135) Paschal II’s letter of 15 April 1102 (ep. 222; Opera Omnia, iv. 126–9), restating the prohibitions of lay investiture and clerical homage (hominium) to laymen, he omitted any reference to the latter. This was the first occasion on which Paschal had used the phrase hominium facere rather than homo fieri: F.-L. Ganshof, ‘Notes sur l’apparition du nom de l’hommage, particulièment en France’, in J. Engel and H. M. Klinkenberg (eds.), Aus Mittelater und Neuzeit: Festschrift G. Kallen (Bonn, 1957), 19–41, at 33; P. Classen, ‘Das Wormser Konkordat in der deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte’, in J. Fleckenstein (ed.), Investiturstreit und Reichsverfassung, Vortrage und Forschungen, xvii (1973), 411–60, at 418. As Ganshof points out, the substantive hominium (and its variants) was a very recent invention. It has been suggested that the pope might already have been

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formulas which the author of the Abingdon History, writing in the 1160s, felt it necessary to gloss for his readers.²⁴⁴ Was Eadmer right to suggest that—using William of Poitiers’ description of the ceremony—the king’s receiving a clerical or lay suppliant in his hands was, as a result of the Conquest, a precondition for transferring ‘use of land’ out of the king’s hands and into those of the new vassal or homo—that is to say, for seising the vassal with land? For despite Eadmer’s assertions, neither Norman prelates nor laymen would have been accustomed to the ceremony of putting their hands between those of the duke bearing this significance. In the case of clerical tenants-in-chief, Eadmer is, as we have already seen, almost certainly right, although there is no direct contemporary evidence to corroborate him, only suggestive references in a number of sources, including Domesday Book, to the lands of churches reverting into the king’s hand on the death of a tenant.²⁴⁵ Whether he was right to extrapolate this practice to cover lay tenants-in-chief too is another matter. In the absence of direct evidence, much may depend on the possible tenurial implications of post-Conquest changes in the use of the metaphor of the king’s hand. In Anglo-Saxon England only bookland held by laymen who committed certain categories of crime was deemed to be forfeited into the king’s hand.²⁴⁶ opening up the possibility of withdrawing the prohibition of homage while maintaining that of lay investiture—the eventual compromise—and that Eadmer omitted the phrase because it was absent from the copy of the letter in front of him: Southern, Portrait, 295, n. 17; cf. id., Biographer, 170, n. 1. In the letter which the pope wrote on the same day to Henry I (ep. 224: Opera Omnia, iv. 129–30), which Eadmer accurately copied out immediately before ep. 222 (HN 134–5), only investiture is mentioned. During 1102 the debate concerned whether or not Paschal might relent, in the particular case of Henry I, over the issue of investiture (HN 137–41; epp. 281, 282 (12 Dec. 1102): Opera Omnia, iv. 196–9), it was Anselm who obstinately continued to allude (although not by name) to homage (ep. 280 (Sept. or Oct. 1102): Opera Omnia, iv. 193–5), in accordance with the decree he had heard at the Easter Council of 1099, while Paschal quietly dropped it (Southern, Portrait, 295–6). The wide publication of ep. 222, described by Eadmer, HN 137, might have increased the chances of textual corruption. Or Eadmer might have altered the letter silently in the light of the eventual compromise. If the expression was in Eadmer’s copy of ep. 222, this may have been the first occasion on which he had seen it. On the same busy day in April Paschal replied, in question and answer form, to a number of queries put to him on Anselm’s behalf by Anselm’s messengers: ep. 223 (Opera Omnia, iv. 126–9). It is striking that Paschal reproduces one of Anselm’s questions thus: ‘Si nullus clericus debet fieri homo laici et aliqua beneficia aut possessiones non ecclesiasticas debet tenere de laico, nec laicus vult ei dare, nisi fiat suus homo?’; and replies that it is wrong for a cleric ‘pro terrenis lucris hominium laico faciat’. But Anselm had already used the term in ep. 192 (Opera Omnia, iv. 78–81) of June–July 1095, in which he attempted to refute the charge that he had accepted investitura from a schismatic king ‘et illi fidelitatem et hominium fecisse . . .’. The fact that Anselm was concerned solely with the question of schism, and did not see receiving investiture from and doing homage to a king as wrong, indicates that this letter was not tampered with at a later date. Other than this, the substantive is found only in four of Anselm’s letters: epp. 308 (1104)(iv. 230–1), 314 (1104)(v. 241–2): homagium; 322 (1194–5) (v. 251–2), 389 (v. 333–4): hominium. ²⁴⁴ HEA ii. 48: ‘abbas . . . Picotum in hominem, id est homagium, suscepit . . .’ (1087–1100). I should like to thank John Hudson for supplying me with this reference. ²⁴⁵ DB ii. 381b; Darlington, ‘Æthelwig’, 189; JW iii. 12. ²⁴⁶ II Cnut 13, 1; 77, 1; cf. S. 886 (995).

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After the Conquest, reversion into the king’s hand of all the land held by a lay tenant-in-chief—not simply bookland, if it survived for any length of time as a distinct tenurial category²⁴⁷—was a matter of course on the death of the tenant, just as it was for a clerical one. But the death of the tenant was not the only occasion for reversion. Just as the king might instruct that someone should be seised with certain lands, so, if there were doubt about who was the rightful tenant, he could issue a writ to the effect that land should be ‘reseised in the king’s hand’ from the present tenant,²⁴⁸ and perhaps subsequently given to someone else.²⁴⁹ A sheriff might also take a manor into the king’s hand for alleged failure to pay geld.²⁵⁰ Any subtenant of the bishopric of Worcester who refused to pay his prescribed ‘relief ’ to the king while the vacant bishopric was in Rufus’s hand, would have his land ‘seized’ into the king’s hand in a way in which it was not already.²⁵¹ Presumably he would be ejected. In the celebrated case of Roger the Poitevin, it is not clear whether Roger was being disseised of all his lands during the course of the Domesday Inquest, and subsequently recovered them from William Rufus, or whether some of his estates had recently been taken back by the king as part of a complicated process of tenurial rearrangement or ‘exchange’, of a kind which has left many traces elsewhere in Domesday.²⁵² Whichever was the case, many of the lands which had been held by Roger are recorded in Domesday as having recently returned into the king’s hand.²⁵³ Yet although the lands must have come from the king in the first place if they could revert to him in this way, it seems in practical terms highly unlikely that they had all come into Roger’s hands by dint of the king, on a single occasion, taking those hands in his. In this crucial respect, lay tenancies-in-chief must, for the most part, have differed from ecclesiastical ones, despite Eadmer’s hint that they might be equated. Little Domesday Book preserves evidence that some of the lands which had been Roger the Poitevin’s, and others which apparently still were, had previously been granted by the king to a number of Norman tenants—two of whom were definitely still living in 1086—who had been moved subsequently to make way for Roger, or had been subjected to him.²⁵⁴ In one of these cases the hundred testified that the land had ‘first been delivered’ to one of the Normans ‘de prima liberatione’, and that he had subsequently been replaced by another of them.²⁵⁵ Roger is even recorded as successor to one of them, who is cryptically said to have ²⁴⁷ Above, p. 28, on alodium ²⁴⁸ DB ii. 270b; cf. ii. 25b, 54b, 99b, 418b. ²⁴⁹ DB ii. 176b–177a. ²⁵⁰ DB i. 141a. ²⁵¹ Above, pp. 53–4. ²⁵² Galbraith, Making of Domesday, 187–8; J. F. A. Mason, ‘Roger de Montgomery and his Sons’, TRHS, 5th ser., xiii (1963), 14–15; M. Gullick, ‘The Great and Little Domesday Manuscripts’, in A. Williams (ed.), Domesday Book Studies (London, 1987), 93–112, at 106; C. Thorn, ‘Marginal Notes and Signs in Domesday Book’, in ibid. 113–35, at 132; The Lancashire Domesday, ed. C. P. Lewis and F. R. Thorn (London, 1991), 37–8, 44, n. 6. ²⁵³ DB i. 273c; cf i. 262d, 269c, 301d, ii. 243a–244b, 349b. ²⁵⁴ DB ii. 348b, 349b, 350a–b. They are Norman fitzTancred, Raymond Gerald, and Roger de Rames; Raymond is recorded seised, but in turn held by Roger the Poitevin, at ii. 352a, and Roger de Rames as current tenant at 421b. For other evidence of Roger’s apparently replacing Raymond, see ii. 5a, 66a. ²⁵⁵ DB ii. 352a.

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‘departed’.²⁵⁶ The evidence is not confined to Little Domesday. In Yorkshire, various lands held by Roger are recorded as having been held previously by William de Percy, Berengar de Tosny, and Erneis.²⁵⁷ Unlike the earlier English tenants mentioned, none of these can be categorized as (Edwardian) antecessores, because they are Norman invaders. That all these earlier tenants could have been shifted or subordinated simultaneously, and that all Roger’s lands, including these, might have been given to him in one tranche, seems highly improbable. It seems even more so in the light of clear evidence to the effect that the holdings of other lay tenants-in-chief were also constructed piecemeal, over time, often in part from lands which had previously been granted by the king to other recent French arrivals. It has, for instance, been shown that Henry de Ferrers’ holding was built up in at least five different tranches, one of which, given to Henry c.1071, consisted of land previously held by another conqueror, Hugh d’Avranches.²⁵⁸ Another example is what the king gave William Malet in Yorkshire from 1068. After his capture by the Danes in September 1069 and subsequent death, these were redistributed among a considerable number of tenants-in-chief, none of whom was his son, Robert Malet, who succeeded him in the honour of Eye.²⁵⁹ Although Domesday Book is silent on the subject, it is possible that when the king made grants in person to lay recipients, as he apparently did to Geoffrey de Mandeville in London, perhaps in the immediate aftermath of his coronation,²⁶⁰ he took their homage. But this is by no means certain. When, for instance, at the siege of Ste-Suzanne some time between 1083 and 1086, he gave Ludwell, Oxfordshire, to Robert d’Oilly,²⁶¹ did Robert renew homage already done to the king? Doubtless writs were sent to the appropriate forum as each tranche of a lay tenancy-in-chief was given: the fact that the hundredal jury had no recollection of one granting Azor’s land to Robert d’Oilly told against Robert.²⁶² But that the grantee might have to receive each fresh gift in person from the king in return for a new act of homage seems impractical and unlikely, not least because homage required the presence of both king and grantee. While, as we have seen, in disputed cases Domesday Book often records jurors’ testimony as to the reading of such writs and the actions of the king’s liberatores, none of its three explicit references to homage by that name arises in the context of granting land.²⁶³ The postConquest transformation in the significance of Anglo-Saxon commendation has to be inferred.²⁶⁴ As with symbolic gifts being deposited on the altar of a church, the jurors of a hundred were unlikely to have witnessed the ceremony,²⁶⁵ so its absence from Domesday cannot in itself be used to undermine Eadmer’s case. ²⁵⁶ DB ii. 139b. ²⁵⁷ DB i. 332a. ²⁵⁸ Orderic, ii. 264; P. E. Golob, ‘The Ferrers Earls of Derby: A Study of the Honour of Tutbury, 1066–1279’, 2 vols., Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis (1985), i. 55; Holt, ‘1086’, CE 49. ²⁵⁹ P. R. Newman, ‘The Yorkshire Domesday clamores and the “Lost Fee” of William Malet’, ANS xxii (1999), 261–77, at 274–7. ²⁶⁰ DB ii. 59b. ²⁶¹ DB i. 158c. ²⁶² DB i. 62b, discussed above, ²⁶³ DB i. 225d (hominatio); ii. 116a, 172a (homagium), p. 68. ²⁶⁴ Above, p. 28. ²⁶⁵ Above, p. 70.

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Yet although the evidence for English survivors doing homage to the king and ‘redeeming’ their lands is strong, there is none to support Eadmer’s implication that the Conqueror’s lay followers did homage to him when initially granted lands in England, like new bishops and abbots. Most, if not all, of them would already have given themselves to him with their hands in Normandy, and, at his behest, to his son Robert, although there this form of submission to the duke or his designated son apparently bore no tenurial significance.²⁶⁶ No Norman source suggests that, in the case of the duke, it was done in return for anything. While Eadmer is probably right to state that new bishops and abbots in England became the king’s men ‘pro usu terrae’,²⁶⁷ as tenants-in-chief they were exceptional in two ways. First, the lands they held were not gradually spatchcocked together over the course of several years, but were from the beginning clearly defined entities (with the exception of the king’s fresh gifts). For these the previous incumbents had apparently already done homage to the king. Indeed, Lanfranc would be a case in point, if William of Poitiers’ account of Stigand’s submission be accepted. It was precisely because the estates of episcopal and abbatial churches were exceptional in this way that they were granted to incumbents by and large in a single act, with the homage done at that point rapidly coming to bear the significance which Eadmer attributes to it. Secondly, as Norman clerics they would not previously have done homage to the duke. In both respects it is more likely that the king would require homage from them, and that that homage would come to bear a tenurial significance, than from his lay followers. Other than surviving Englishmen (and Frenchmen already resident in England T.R.E.), therefore, it seems improbable that each and every lay tenant-in-chief had done homage to the king once, let alone many times, when and as lands were granted to him in England. It is more likely that the successors of lay tenantsin-chief did so, as they succeeded to acquisitions which thereby became patrimonies; but even this cannot be proved in cases where it has been inferred, like that of Roger de Lacy. Moreover, if homage had to be done for a patrimony, that marks a significant departure from Norman practice.²⁶⁸ Yet according to the author of Glanvill, writing towards the end of the twelfth century, ‘homages are only done for lands and free tenements, for services, and for returns precisely fixed in money or kind’. The Historia Novorum indicates that the first part of this statement had become generally true in England, at least in the case of tenants-in-chief, by the beginning of the twelfth century, long before Glanvill was written. Glanvill ’s immediate qualification of this statement may provide distorted corroboration for Eadmer’s assertion that its becoming true should be pushed back still further, into the late eleventh century: ‘But for mere lordship no homages are due to anyone, except the king (excepto ²⁶⁶ Orderic ii. 356, iii. 306, iv. 84, 88, 92, v. 290, 314, 318; cf. iii. 184, iv. 88 (Ralph, count of Amiens), vi. 352; Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 93–4. Contrast Orderic v. 298. ²⁶⁷ HN 41. ²⁶⁸ Holt, ‘1086’, CE 50 cites the case of Roger de Lacy, who succeeded his father Walter in 1085.

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principe).’²⁶⁹ There are possible parallels with this qualification in Leges Henrici Primi 55, 3, one of the clauses in the Leges for which there is no known AngloSaxon precedent, and which, it has been suggested, may share with Glanvill a common source in a homage formula: ‘Every man (homo) owes faith (fides) to his lord for life and limb and earthly honour and the keeping of his counsel in matters which are right and expedient (honestum et utile), saving the faith owed to God and the prince of the land (fide Dei et terre principis salva).’²⁷⁰ The reference to homage here is implicit and there is none to tenure; but that would hardly be surprising if this clause were indeed derived from a homage formula. The Leges were composed c.1114–18, just after Eadmer completed the first four books of the Historia Novorum. This clause therefore shows that Glanvill ’s substitution, in the particular case of what was due to the king, of classical vocabulary for his otherwise professedly ‘vulgar style’, was not a late twelfth-century affectation.²⁷¹ It was already current in Eadmer’s day. The parallels suggest that when Glanvill wrote about the homage done to the king ‘for mere lordship’, he too had in mind those who were also ‘men’, and therefore tenants, of other lords. While the classical terminology is shared between the Leges and Glanvill—perhaps because they both borrowed it from the homage formula—their respective assessments of what was due to the princeps are not identical. The author of the Leges seems to be reproducing the saving clause in an oath sworn by a man to his lord which reserved an overriding faith (or fealty) to God and the princeps terrae. Glanvill considers that the princeps, uniquely, received homages as a mark of ‘mere lordship’, not for anything else. Yet although different, these statements are not incompatible. It may be that the overriding nature of faith to the princeps in the Leges was based on homage to him. And Glanvill appears to agree with the author of the Leges that homage was done to other lords ‘saving the faith due to the lord king and his heirs’.²⁷² Glanvill ’s unprecedentedly systematic attempt to discuss homage, albeit in ‘a religious whisper’,²⁷³ is therefore compatible with what can be inferred from the earlier Leges Henrici Primi. The emphasis on the fact that homage, when done to a lord other than the king, was usually done for a tenement²⁷⁴ fits Eadmer’s assessment of the tenurial significance of the ceremony. But even if much of Glanvill ’s analysis can be projected back to the beginning of the twelfth century, and earlier, it is almost certain that homage was not done to the king in late eleventh-century England simply as a ceremonial recognition of ‘mere lordship’, whatever Glanvill’s ²⁶⁹ Glanvill, ix. 2, pp. 116–17. ²⁷⁰ Glanvill, p. xxxiv, n. 3. Although the term ‘homage’ is not used, it is clearly assumed to be the bond between homo and dominus. Note that princeps rather than rex is also found in LHP 11. 16a; 82. 2c; 83. 2; Glanvill, ii. 7, 19, pp. 28, 36; ix. 1, p. 104. ²⁷¹ Glanvill, pro., p. 3. ²⁷² Ibid. ix. 1, p. 104; cf. Dialogus, 83, RRAN ii. 1280 (10 Apr.–29 May 1121): ‘Et volo et precipio quod omnes tenentes de predicto Maritagio faciant ei hominagium ligium in mea salva fidelitate sicut domino suo.’ ²⁷³ P&M i. 297. ²⁷⁴ Glanvill, ix. 1, p. 104: ‘Fieri autem debet homagium sub hac forma: scilicet ut is qui homagium suum facere debet ita fiat homo domini sui quod fidem ei portet de illo tenemento unde homagium suum prestat, et quod eius in omnibus terrenum honorem servet, salva fide debita domino regi et heredibus suis.’

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phrase could have meant in that context.²⁷⁵ No equivalent appears in Leges Henrici Primi. At the time when Eadmer and the author of the Leges were writing, the only examples of homages divorced from tenurial dependency would have been Norman, most obviously those repeatedly done to Robert Curthose at his father’s behest by the magnates of the duchy in order to secure him as designated successor (and shortly to be done to William Adelin in England).²⁷⁶ Yet in England homages had been done and fealty sworn to King William in grand style at Salisbury on 1 August 1086 by ‘all landholding men of any account throughout England, whosesoever men they were (ealle 2a land sittende men. 2e ahtes wæron ofer eall Engle land. wæron 2æs mannes men 2e hi wæron)’.²⁷⁷ The Chronicle is quite explicit that ‘they bowed to him and became his men and swore oaths of fealty (hold a 1as) to him that they would remain faithful to him against all other men’. Henry of Huntingdon later understood this to mean that King William had received homage and oaths of fealty from ‘all the landholders of England, of whomsoever’s fee they were’.²⁷⁸ It is not entirely clear whether those who bowed and swore included the bishops and abbots who would already have become the men of King William.²⁷⁹ But the prophetic novelty of the ceremony at Salisbury ²⁷⁵ On mere commendation, see above, p. 28. ²⁷⁶ In his fifth book, probably written between 1119 and 1122 (Southern, Biographer, 307), Eadmer describes how the ‘bishops, abbots, and principes of the whole realm’ were summoned to Salisbury on 19 March 1116. There, at Henry I’s command, all the principes did homage to William Adelin as haeres regni, and the bishops and abbots swore fealty to him: HN 237. This marked the importation in practice of Norman designatory arrangements into England. It appears that, for the first time in England, homage did not make the principes dependent tenants. This had always been the case in Normandy, see above pp. 74–5. ²⁷⁷ ASC (E) s.a. 1085 (recte 1086); Holt, ‘1086’, CE, passim. ²⁷⁸ HH 402. ²⁷⁹ JW iii. 44 reports that the king ordered ‘archiepiscopi, episcopi, abbates, comites, barones, vicecomites, cum suis militibus’ to come to Salisbury. But he goes on to say that the milites alone were forced to swear fidelitas to the king against all men, and he makes no mention of homage. J. O. Prestwich, ‘Mistranslations and Misinterpretations in Medieval English History’, Peritia, x (1996), 322–40, at 333–6, constructs an ingenious case for this being an accurate account of the ceremony. He points to a number of occasions when a general oath of fealty to the king was exacted during the 11th and 12th centuries, but fails to identify any instance when one was taken from milites—presumably meaning subtenants—alone. There was an imperfect recent precedent, which may have been in John of Worcester’s mind: in the summer of 1101, in the face of an invasion by Robert Curthose, Henry I had sent writs to each shire court, informing the officials that he wished ‘ut assecuretis michi sacramento terram meam Anglie, ad tenendum & defendendum contra omnes homines & nominatim contra Rotbertum comitem Normannie fratrem meum usque natale domini’; ordering them to take ‘the same security’ from his ‘demesne men’; and that his barons should give to the officials ‘this same security’ from their men which they had themselves already conceded to the king: W. H. Stevenson, ‘An Inedited Charter of King Henry I, June–July 1101’, EHR xxi (1906), 505–9 (⫽ RRAN ii. no. 531). But in this case minor tenants on the king’s estates swore to the king’s officials in each shire, and the ‘men’ of the king’s barons did so through their lords, who in some way transmitted the ‘security’ to those officials. Even if the ‘security’ confirmed by oath is taken to be an instance of fealty (cf. Eadmer, HN 127), therefore, the precedent for John’s description of the ‘oath’ of Salisbury is imperfect, because no direct, personal bond was created between subtenant and king, and because the king’s barons and officials had sworn too. A further problem with Prestwich’s suggestion that the milites alone had sworn in 1086 is that it discounts the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the nearest thing to a contemporary description. As Maitland says, ‘we are hardly in a position to contradict the Peterborough chronicler’ (P&M i. 299 n. 5).

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lay in its establishment of the direct bond between king and subtenants which the saving clauses in Leges Henrici Primi 55, 3 and Glanvill, in their different ways, reflected. This bond was not—at least not at this stage—one of ‘mere lordship’; hence the distorted quality of Glanvill ’s reminiscence of the unique significance of homage to the king by subtenants. One of the immediate effects of establishing this bond seems to be described with characteristic shrewdness by William of St-Calais, bishop of Durham, in the De Iniusta Vexacione. After he had been deprived of his bishopric by William Rufus, the tenants (casati) of the church, ‘who had been my liege men (homines ligii) and held what they held of the fee of the church (de casamento ecclesie), at the king’s command have made war on me, and holding their lands peacefully of the king, I see them here with the king, ranged against me.’²⁸⁰ William of St-Calais was not the only tenant-in-chief in 1088 to be confronted with the stark fact that his tenants’ faith to the king did indeed take precedence over their loyalty to him. The persistence of this effect was still evident in Glanvill ’s day, for he added two important qualifications to his statement that no vassal could attack his lord without breaking the faith of his homage: ‘except perhaps in self-defence, or unless he serves in an army against his lord at the command of the princeps.’²⁸¹ The significance of the conjunction between the general homage and fealty to the king at Salisbury and the presentation to him of the ‘writings’²⁸² produced by the Domesday Survey has been vigorously explored by Sir James Holt.²⁸³ According to his interpretation, homage was done to the king there by tenants-in-chief and subtenants alike for the tenures recorded in the Survey. That interpretation seems to be borne out by William of St-Calais’s reported words, but is no longer made explicit by Glanvill. As in all probability ‘the man behind the Survey’,²⁸⁴ William of St-Calais should have known what he was talking about. The recorded possible precedents for such homage to the king are few, and non-existant where lay subtenants are concerned. But it may be no accident that Salisbury was selected as the venue. Not only was it a major administrative centre; in early 1070 it was there, according to Orderic, drawing on the lost ending of William of Poitiers, that the Conqueror had ‘distributed lavish rewards’ to those who had helped him to suppress the recent rebellions which had threatened his rule.²⁸⁵ Orderic does not, however, record that homage was done, or even clarify whether the ‘rewards’ included land. When William the Conqueror restored one hide to Azor, King Edward’s dispensator, at Windsor, perhaps he did so in person, by taking Azor’s homage, although Domesday Book does not say so, and does not even indicate whether Azor was present.²⁸⁶ Yet Azor was, after all, an Edwardian survivor, apparently ²⁸⁰ DIV, ll. 245–8, p. 82. ²⁸¹ Glanvill, ix. 1. ²⁸² ASC (E) s.a. 1085. ²⁸³ GR i. 476, does likewise, but mentions only fealty. ²⁸⁴ Chaplais, ‘William of St-Calais’, passim; the epithet was coined by Galbraith, Domesday Book: Its Place in Administrative History, 50. ²⁸⁵ Orderic, ii. 236; Freeman, Norman Conquest, iv. 318–19. ²⁸⁶ DB i. 62b; discussed above, p. 68.

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redeeming from the king land he had held T.R.E., and holding it, at least until Robert d’Oilly’s intervention, in chief. It is, as we have seen, unlikely that every French tenant-in-chief had done homage to the king for his lands, whether on a single occasion or repeatedly as each tranche was given. It is almost inconceivable that in those rare recorded instances when the king intervened to arrange the grant of land to a subtenant, he took homage himself from that subtenant; it is more likely that the lord thus instructed by the king did so, although even this is not certain.²⁸⁷ While travelling on the king’s service, Hermer, a stipendiary miles of Abingdon Abbey, had had his hands chopped off by pirates in the English Channel. Fobbed off by the abbot, he sought assistance in person from the king, who ‘ordered’ the abbot to ‘provide’ him with a life tenancy on the estates of the abbey.²⁸⁸ Domesday Book remains characteristically inscrutable about this incident, recording only the bare fact of Hermer’s tenure.²⁸⁹ The detailed account in the Abingdon History also says nothing about Hermer doing homage to Abbot Adelelm, but it is impossible to tell whether this silence is significant. A royal order to seise an individual was not, therefore, necessarily preceded by the king accepting his homage, even if that individual were to be a tenant-in-chief; and those who were to become subtenants at the king’s instigation, if they did homage at all, did so to their immediate lords, not to the king. But in 1086 at Salisbury all those ‘of any account’ who held land did homage and swore fealty to King William. Being ‘of any account’ cannot be English shorthand for holding sufficient land to have been ‘worthy’ of attending shire or hundred courts in King Edward’s time,²⁹⁰ for the majority of the Domesday hundredal jurors who can be identified from the Inquisitio Eliensis and Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis were so insignificant as tenants that they are not recorded at all, even anonymously, in Domesday Book.²⁹¹ If Holt is right to infer the purpose of the Survey from the final form of the Book²⁹²—and it is difficult to see how else that purpose might be reconstructed—then the king was not concerned with men of this type, even though, paradoxically, the Survey was built on their testimony (and that of ‘men of the shire’, if they constituted a distinct category). The Book’s concern is principally and self-evidently with tenants-in-chief, whose holdings within each shire provide the chief internal divisions; and to a lesser extent with major subtenants, whose holdings are not grouped tenurially, and therefore do not mark subdivisions. Only in the exceptional cases of Cheshire and Shropshire does it pay any systematic attention to tenants of more modest means.²⁹³ That tenants-in-chief ²⁸⁷ The case of Anselm’s treatment, on his accession as archbishop of Canterbury, of those to whom William Rufus had granted Canterbury lands, might suggest that this was so: below, pp. 121–3; cf. DB i. 66a. ²⁸⁸ HEA ii. 8. ²⁸⁹ DB i. 59a. ²⁹⁰ Douglas, Feudal Documents, no. 16 (1087–98) (⫽ RRAN i. no. 393). ²⁹¹ C. P. Lewis, ‘The Domesday Jurors’, HSJ v (1993), 17–44, esp. 24–34; cf. the Textus Roffensis, which records the descendants of free men who are not mentioned in the Domesday survey of Kent: Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 85. ²⁹² Holt, ‘1086’, CE 37–8, 40–6. ²⁹³ Holt, ‘1086’, CE 52.

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and major subtenants are the two categories covered by the phrase ‘all landholding men of any account’²⁹⁴ is strongly suggested not only by the final form of Domesday Book, but also by the fact that they are said to have been the king’s men and to have sworn fealty to him regardless of who their lords might be. The chronicler thereby emphasized that, in his view, they included at least some subtenants as well as tenants-in-chief. The stress on the role of subtenants is virtually the only aspect of the ceremony at Salisbury on which John of Worcester agrees with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, usually his principal source. Even at this stage, these categories were by no means discrete: there is plenty of evidence, in Domesday Book and elsewhere, that many tenants-in-chief were also tenants of other tenantsin-chief.²⁹⁵ If lay tenants-in-chief had not already done homage to the king for their honours in England, they did so now. Except in cases like that of Azor, where someone initially holding in chief had been reduced to the status of a subtenant, or like that of Roger de Lacy, who had probably done homage to the king when he succeeded his father and also held of the bishop of Hereford, subtenants could not have done homage to the king previously. Both twelfth-century attempts to remedy the lack of a contemporary Latin description of the ceremony at Salisbury stress the role of subtenants, John of Worcester to the virtual exclusion of the tenants-in-chief.²⁹⁶ By the time when Glanvill was being written, in the 1180s, homage done to the king by subtenants who were not also tenants-in-chief might have become no more than a mark of ‘mere lordship’.²⁹⁷ If so, it differed from the ²⁹⁴ Stenton, First Century, 113–14, suggested that the phrase in 1086 included both tenantsin-chief and ‘honorial barons’ or ‘leading mesne tenants’. The argument advanced here would support him; see also Lewis, ‘Domesday Jurors’, 32. The description in ASC C, D, E, s.a. 992, of King Æthelred summoning ‘all the ships that were of any account’ to London does not help to define the meaning of ahtes in 1086. ²⁹⁵ William Rufus’s writ ordering the ‘Worcester relief ’ shows that the tenants of the bishopric of Worcester included the following tenants-in-chief: Hugh de Lacy, Gilbert fitzTurold, Walter [fitzRoger, sheriff ] of Gloucester, Roger fitzDurand, Drogo fitzPoyntz, Robert, bishop of Hereford, and the abbot of Evesham. The Holme Lacy chirograph, discussed in detail below, pp. 94–5, 97–8, shows that Roger de Lacy was a tenant of the bishop of Hereford; one of his witnesses, Herman de Dreux, was both a tenant of Roger and a tenant-in-chief: DB i. 176c, 187a. In the Domesday Monachorum the archbishop of Canterbury’s tenants included the following Domesday tenants-inchief: Richard fitzGilbert (87, 88, 93–6), Hugh (II) de Montfort (80, 91–3, 103, 104), Anschetil de Ros (85, 86, 101, 105), William de Briouze (105), and Hugh de Port (99, 101, 103). Geoffrey de Alselin, a tenant-in-chief in Derbyshire, held Thulston of Henry de Ferrers, DB i. 275c; Gospatric held as a tenant of several lords in Yorkshire, and in chief: i. 330a–b; Roger the Poitevin had given the whole of Blackburn hundred to Roger de Bully and Albert Greslet (i. 270a): Greslet was also a subtenant of Roger in Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, but Bully held of another lord (i. 237a) and in chief (i. 113a, 163c, 234c–d, 278b, 280a, 284c–287a, 319a–320b, 336a, 337a, 352d). ²⁹⁶ JW iii. 44; Henry of Huntingdon’s attempt at a Latin translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 402. Cf. William of Malmesbury, GR i. 476–8. Stenton, First Century, 112, lamented the lack of a contemporary account in Latin. ²⁹⁷ Red Book i. 412 shows that the reason why Henry II demanded from tenants-in-chief the names of their enfeoffed knights in the Cartae Baronum of 1166 was in order to ensure that they ‘did’ ligantia to him; see Stenton, First Century, 137–8 n. 5. Glanvill, ix. 1 explains that ligeancia—by implication, a special oath—should accompany homage to that lord of whom one held one’s chief

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homage which made his tenants-in-chief. But Glanvill ’s implicit recognition that homage was due to the king from men other than those who held directly of him derives from a tradition inaugurated, in ceremonial terms, at Salisbury on 1 August 1086.²⁹⁸ Then it seems that homage was done to the king by tenantsin-chief and subtenants alike for, in Glanvill ’s words, ‘lands and free tenements’, not for ‘mere lordship’. Although Eadmer’s implication that the king’s co-conquerors had, from the Conquest, done homage to the king for the lands he gave direct to them is probably inaccurate or at least exaggerated where laymen are concerned, his perception of the novel tenurial significance of homage in conquered England is underscored by the ceremony at Salisbury. What had been true from the beginning for bishops and abbots, and possibly for English survivors too (including Frenchmen already resident in England T.R.E.), had become so for all landholders of sufficient substance to merit systematic coverage in the Survey. And the reason why leapt from every folio of the fair copy of the ‘writings’ which may have been presented to the Conqueror on that occasion:²⁹⁹ all tenure depended ultimately upon him. Prior to Salisbury, the role of homage in constituting dependent tenurial relationships in the case of tenants-in-chief is directly, if retrospectively, attested by Eadmer alone.³⁰⁰ But as those tenants-in-chief made fresh grants in turn from, or sanctioned existing tenurial arrangements on, the lands granted or confirmed to them by the king, a number of sources indicate that homage was coming to play precisely this role for subtenants. The most striking example is provided by Æthelwig’s successor as abbot of Evesham, a well-connected Norman called Walter.³⁰¹ As we have seen, according to a list now known as Evesham N, found in one of the Evesham cartularies, the abbey had been ‘under the king’s hand’ during the vacancy following Æthelwig’s death.³⁰² The Evesham History reports that, on his accession, Walter ‘took up the whole abbey, just as his antecessor had it. tenement, or one’s liege lord. What Stubbs termed ‘a supplementary article’ of the Inquest of Sheriffs in 1170 commanded that inquiries be made in each county about who owed homage to the king and had not yet done it to him or his son: Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward I, ed. W. Stubbs, 9th edn., rev. H. W. C. Davis (Oxford, 1913), 177; W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1874–8), i. 534. It seems unlikely that this applied to tenants-in-chief, who would have been constituted as such by the king’s acceptance of their homage, or who would have done homage to him in accordance with the ‘Treaty’ of Winchester in 1153, below, p. 272. In 1176 cap. 6 of the Assize of Northampton ordained that royal justices should take fidelitates to the king from earls, barons, knights, free tenants, and rustici; furthermore, they were to order all those who had not done ‘homagium et ligantiam’ to the king ‘sicut ligio domino’ to do so at the appointed time: Stubbs, Charters, 180. ²⁹⁸ ASC (E) s.a. 1085. ²⁹⁹ Holt, ‘1086’, CE 34. ³⁰⁰ Orderic’s description, v. 298, of the hominium done by the magnates to the newly consecrated Henry I is the only point at which he appears to link the ceremony with tenure. ³⁰¹ CAE 176, which records that he had been a chaplain of Lanfranc. ³⁰² Darlington, ‘Æthelwig’, 189, discussed above, p. 57 and n. 100. For Æthelwig’s death on 16 February 1078, see H. B. Clarke, ‘The Early Surveys of Evesham Abbey: An Investigation into the Problem of Continuity in Anglo-Norman England’, University of Birmingham Ph.D thesis (1977), 32–3; HAE 176, n. 1, dates his death to 1077.

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But . . . he did not want to take homage (homagium) from many good men whom his predecessor had had, because he decided to take away the lands of all of them, if he could.’³⁰³ He must, in the words of the preface to the Historia Novorum, have ‘become the king’s man’, but he refused to accept Æthelwig’s homines as his own. The History’s account of Æthelwig’s abbacy has been shown to date from the eleventh century,³⁰⁴ and it is probable that the following brief section on Walter’s had been written by 1129.³⁰⁵ The likelihood that the account of Walter’s abbacy is early is strengthened by its compatability both with Evesham N—based on an original probably written shortly before 1100—and with Domesday Book, although it is derived from neither.³⁰⁶ This suggests that it is based on early sources which are trustworthy. The slur that Walter wanted to recoup the lands of Æthelwig’s homines not out of abbatial duty, but in order to endow his relatives, might be contemporary or later. Nepotism on ecclesiastical estates in the wake of the Conquest is a common theme in monastic chronicles written up during the late twelfth century.³⁰⁷ In Walter’s case it is doubtless deliberately juxtaposed, by Thomas of Marlborough, the thirteenth-century compiler of the History,³⁰⁸ or perhaps by some earlier anonymous author, with Æthelwig’s supposed attempts to take land from his relatives in order to endow the church.³⁰⁹ But it is also corroborated by early sources which record Walter’s kinsmen holding some abbey lands.³¹⁰ This strengthens the likelihood that the History’s assessment of the significance of the new abbot’s unwillingness to accept the homagium of his predecessor’s homines is authentic, not a twelfth- or thirteenth-century invention. By refusing, he appears to have denied them warranty in the lands they had come to hold of his predecessor. The attempts of post-Conquest clerics to call in Anglo-Saxon leases for terms of one or several lives gave rise to many land disputes during the Conqueror’s reign; but in this case it was not the leaseholder who had expired, and the term of his lease along with him, but the lord. Walter’s actions cannot therefore be categorized with, for instance, Lanfranc’s attempts to recover control of Canterbury lands ³⁰³ CAE 176. ³⁰⁴ Darlington, ‘Æthelwig’, 1–10; CAE; ed. Sayers and Watkiss, p. xxxii, suggests that it was completed between 1104 and 1110. ³⁰⁵ CAE, p. xxxii. Darlington, ‘Æthelwig’, 18, thought there was no reason to date it earlier than the early 13th century, when the History was compiled. He shows (p. 2, n. 4) that a brief passage from a source other than the life has been tacked on to the account of Æthelwig’s abbacy. ³⁰⁶ Darlington, ‘Æthelwig’, 19–21; Clarke, ‘Early Surveys’, 285, dates it shortly after Odo’s death in 1097; Domesday Book, xvi, Worcestershire, ed. F and C. Thorn, app. IV. ³⁰⁷ For other evidence of nepotism on ecclesiastical estates in the wake of the Conquest, see The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, 84–5; HEA ii. 50–8, 318; RRAN ii. 1131 (Tavistock); RBE i. 413 (York); Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 3 vols., RS (London, 1867–9), i. 64 (St Albans); further, Round, Feudal England, 301–3. ³⁰⁸ On him see CAE, pp. xv-xxvii; G. G. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1923–50), ii. 348–9, 359. He was trained in Canon and Roman Law, at Bologna and Oxford. ³⁰⁹ CAE 174. ³¹⁰ Darlington, ‘Æthelwig’, 18, n. 3, 191–8; cf. CAE 178–9 and n. 4: ‘Firstly from amongst his own relatives he appointed a clerk, a dean, and a seneschal iure hereditario, having removed the first seneschal.’

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leased to laymen during Edward the Confessor’s reign.³¹¹ In Walter’s view, if not that of the sitting Evesham tenants who had been Æthelwig’s homines, with Æthelwig had died the personal bond between lord and man which was created by homage, and therefore the tenure which had been given or confirmed as a function of that bond. It could only be re-created by Æthelwig’s successor accepting homage anew, thereby confirming tenure. Æthelwig’s bereft men turned in desperation to Odo of Bayeux, in his capacity as regent. They denounced the dead abbot for having ‘acquired’ the lands ‘by force, non recto iure’.³¹² But the History is, unsurprisingly, clear that they were wrong to do so: Æthelwig had, on the contrary, ‘acquired’ those estates recto iure by allowing the men holding them to commend themselves to him. From Æthelwig’s perspective, these commended men might perhaps have been equated with the ‘good homines’ to whom he had ‘given’ certain lands which he had ‘acquired in his own time . . . and they faithfully served God and him for them for as long as he lived’.³¹³ By contrast, according to the panegyric incorporated in the History, he had granted none of the lands ‘which his antecessores had acquired, but held them honourably in his hand until his death, for the needs of the brothers’. Whether he had himself acquired lands by receiving the commendation of those who held them already,³¹⁴ or had seised men for the first time with lands he had acquired in other ways—probably both—the lands had been transformed into subtenancies of the abbey. There is no indication that the abbey’s brief reversion into the king’s hand in 1078 made the position of those who held them more precarious,³¹⁵ the threat which was made against any Worcester subtenant who failed to pay up to the king during the vacancy in 1095.³¹⁶ It was Walter’s unwillingness to renew Æthelwig’s relationship with them which seems to have precipitated a more general inquiry, at the king’s behest, into lands disputed between the abbey and others, primarily the church of Worcester. Over this celebrated hearing or ‘counsels of the malignant’ at Gildenebeorge³¹⁷— otherwise known as Ildeberga³¹⁸—Odo presided ‘like a ravening wolf ’. One of the consequences was that he secured control, at least temporarily, of many disputed Evesham lands, including one estate previously held of Æthelwig by Urse d’Abetot, sheriff of Worcestershire, which is recorded in Domesday as held by Urse of Odo, perhaps as a result of Odo’s accepting Urse’s homage.³¹⁹ This was ³¹¹ Above, p. 14. ³¹² CAE 176. ³¹³ CAE 174; cf. pp. 172–4, 176–8, for the thirty-six estates which Æthelwig ‘had acquired with the abbey’s good money’. ³¹⁴ Hemming, Chartularium, i. 271 (fo. 126v); also p. 269 (fo. 126r) for Ærngrim. ³¹⁵ Contrary to the assertion in DB: Worcestershire, nn. 10, 11–12, Hemming’s Chartularium, i. 273, does not suggest that Odo sought and got the lands from the king immediately after Æthelwig’s death. Such a suggestion would anyway be incompatible with the clear statement in Evesham N that Odo took various Evesham lands ‘tempore Walteri abbatis’. ³¹⁶ Above, p. 53. ³¹⁷ CAE 176. ³¹⁸ DB i. 175d. ³¹⁹ CAE 178 and n. 1; Evesham N, in Darlington, ‘Æthelwig’, 188–90; Evesham D [⫽ London, BL Cotton MS. Vespasian B xxiv fols. 10v–11r], printed by Darlington, 190–1; Hemming, Chartularium, i. 273. Urse held Acton Beauchamp of the bishop of Bayeux. ‘It was of the church of

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symptomatic of the ‘grave detriment’ sustained by the abbey as a result of Abbot Walter’s naive refusal to accept the homage of Æthelwig’s subtenants. However likely it may be that this passage in the Evesham History is based on a late eleventh-century source, this interpretation places a lot of weight on the use of a single word in a chronicle which, in its extant form, dates from the early thirteenth century. But it is corroborated by sources which are indisputably earlier. According to the Red Book of Thorney, when Robert succeeded Gunter as abbot of Thorney in 1113, he refused to accept the homage (homagium) of Gunter’s nephew, who had been given ‘lands and tenements’ of the abbey by Gunter ‘contrary to the will and prohibition of the general chapter’. The new abbot ordered the nephew ‘through monks and men of this honour to deliver up (deliberare)’ the lands in question— Sibson and Yaxley—immediately, and when the nephew refused, ‘disseised’ him.³²⁰ Refusal to accept the nephew’s homage and disseising him were not, however, enough to ensure that the abbot’s tenure of the lands could never be contested by the nephew. So the abbot sought a writ from the king, ordering that he himself be ‘reseised’ of them by the king’s justices if the nephew were unable to prove his claim. It is clear that the nephew also got a writ, instructing the sheriff of Huntingdonshire to hear the case in the shire court.³²¹ As in the earlier and much more complex Evesham case, a definitive settlement proved possible only in a royal forum. And in this instance the sheriff sanctioned a compromise: the nephew formally restored Sibson to the abbot, and ‘became the man of [the abbot] and swore fealty to him . . . as Hervey Lemayne best knew how to set it out’, keeping Yaxley after all. One aspect of the final settlement between Walter of Evesham and Wulfstan of Worcester had been that Walter henceforth should hold the four disputed hides at Bengeworth and Hampton of the bishop; but there is no record of whether he did homage to the bishop for them, unless that is implicit in the condition that the abbot should do ‘as honorable recognition and service as is required of him by the same bishop and for as long as he requires it’.³²² A dispute recounted in the Abingdon History between Simon, Henry I’s dispensator, and Vincent, who had become abbot in 1121, was settled in the king’s court when Vincent conceded Garsington in fee and Tadmarton in fee farm to Simon and his heirs, and Simon did ‘homagium cum fidelitate’ to the abbot and church ‘[p]ro praedictis itaque feudis sibi concessis’.³²³ With the possible exception of Walter of Evesham and Wulfstan of Worcester, in each case a settlement arrived at in the king’s court involved one party St Mary of Evesham T.R.E., and afterwards Urse received it from the abbot in exchange for other land. Now he holds of the bishop of Bayeux’s feudum’: DB i. 176a. The Chastleton included in Odo of Bayeux’s fee in Oxon., and held in 1086 by Urse, had probably been an Evesham estate: DB i. 156c; Darlington, ‘Æthelwig’, 9, n. 4, and, for further details, 20–1. ³²⁰ D. M. Stenton, English Justice Between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter 1066–1215, (Philadelphia, 1964), 24–5, 140–6, at 140 (Red Book of Thorney, Cambridge, University Library Add. MS. 3021, fo. 417r); discussed by Hudson, LLL 244–5. ³²¹ Stenton, English Justice, 142 (fo. 417v); RRAN ii. no. 1457. ³²² Hemming, Chartularium, i. 75–6 (fos. 35v–36r); conveniently reprinted in DB, xvi, Worcestershire, app. v, H no. 5. ³²³ HEA ii. 234–8; Hudson, LLL 137–8.

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becoming the man and therefore the subtenant of the other for some of the land in question. With characteristic legal precision, the Abingdon chronicler recognizes that homage came to bear this meaning only after the Conquest: shortly before it, Thorkell—one of the few named casualties of the battle of Hastings—with Earl Harold bearing witness, ‘did homage to the church of Abingdon and Abbot Ordric for himself with his land which is called Kingston [Bagpuize]’.³²⁴ Domesday Book confirms that he was indeed one of those Anglo-Saxons who could commend himself to whomever he would.³²⁵ The History adds that it ‘was licit at that time for any free man to act in this way’, implicitly recognizing that commendation—here termed homagium—had since changed its meaning. No longer could a free man commend himself with his land to whomever he would; now it was a lord’s acceptance of someone ‘in hominem, id est homagium’ which established between them the bond on the basis of which the man held land of the lord in return for service.³²⁶ Commendation had ceased to be simply personal: it had become also tenurial. In two instances the Abingdon History records that subtenants refused to do homage to Abbot Faritius on his accession in 1100.³²⁷ Whereas the Evesham History and the Red Book of Thorney present those whose homage a new abbot refused to take on his accession as turning to the king in desperation, the Abingdon History shows William the king’s chamberlain and Nigel d’Oilly withholding homage and service from Abbot Faritius in apparent attempts to sever the links between the lands they had held of the previous abbot and the abbey. Whether it was a new lord or the man of a new lord’s predecessor who was refusing to renew the personal bond, both recognized that homage created it. The distinction between the two types of case lay in who thought he could end up holding the land; and that must have depended on other factors, not recorded in the chronicles. Abbot Walter of Evesham miscalculated, and was later reproached for his naivety by the Evesham History;³²⁸ and both William the chamberlain and Nigel d’Oilly were eventually compelled to do homage to Abbot Faritius of Abingdon, perhaps by force of the king’s intervention.³²⁹ The first version of the Abingdon History was compiled by 1170 at the latest,³³⁰ by someone who probably remembered the abbacy of Faritius (1100–17).³³¹ ³²⁴ HEA, ed. Stevenson, i. 484, 490–1; the passage is printed twice because it is found in both manuscripts. ³²⁵ DB i. 61a: the statement that he held of King Edward perhaps records Thorkell’s position prior to his commending himself to the abbot, for the Domesday commissioners would assume that he must then have held of someone; cf. 60c, where the Stankill who is recorded as holding T.R.E. is possibly a mistake for Thorkell. ³²⁶ HEA ii. 48, discussed above, p. 78; ii. 236. ³²⁷ HEA ii. 186–8, 194; Hudson, LLL 21, 45. ³²⁸ CAE 176. ³²⁹ For another possible case, which is less explicit about a tenant’s refusal to do homage to Faritius, see HEA ii. 194–6, discussed by Hudson, LLL 46; cf. Lawsuits no. 316 (c.1147). ³³⁰ HEA ii. p. xvi n. 1; Hudson, ‘Abbey of Abingdon’, 185. ³³¹ F. M. Stenton, The Early History of the Abbey of Abingdon (Reading, 1913), 4, on the basis of HEA ii. 72.

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Like many twelfth-century monastic histories, it is constructed as a sort of narrative cartulary, embodying large numbers of documents.³³² As we have seen, there is good reason for thinking that these earlier documents were not confined to writs and charters, but also included earlier narratives. In the case of the Evesham History it has been demonstrated that this is so with the lengthy account of Æthelwig’s abbacy, and I have suggested that the same may be true of the briefer one of Walter’s. As for the Abingdon History, there is simply too much reassuring detail in, for instance, its account of events following the accession of Abbot Faritius,³³³ for it to be the product of a late twelfth-century compiler’s imagination. Yet to a far greater extent than with charters and writs, the difficulty with assessing the authenticity of evidence such as this lies in the degree to which the compiler may have recast the material in front of him in the process of writing the narrative sections, rephrasing it in terms of the preconceptions of his own day. An apparent exception is the Scriptura which Henry of Blois allegedly had written up during his time as abbot of Glastonbury, and which, in the late 1240s, was spliced into the beginning of the History of the abbey later attributed to Adam of Damerham.³³⁴ This gives a detailed account, probably in chronological order,³³⁵ of his attempts to recover the abbey’s estates. It is of course possible that Henry’s memoir had been reworked, as an earlier example of this rare genre, Giso of Wells’ autobiography, demonstrably was.³³⁶ But Henry’s Scriptura betrays none of the anachronistic characteristics of Giso’s; and in so far as the details can be checked, they strengthen the case for its authenticity, and suggest that it was written up c.1140.³³⁷ What it shows more clearly than any of the earlier evidence we have examined is how an incoming prelate, on his adventus,³³⁸ would review all existing tenancies,³³⁹ and the role of homage in their (selective) renewal. Thus Odo Beaucens, steward of the abbey, whose marriage into the family of the previous abbot, Seffrid, had led to his acquisition of three of the abbey’s demesne manors, came to Henry asking that the new abbot should take his homage (hominium) and grant him everything he had.³⁴⁰ But there were no flies on Henry, at least by his own account. He demanded to see the chirograph which Abbot ³³² On the genre, see Hudson, ‘Abbey of Abingdon’, 186. ³³³ HEA ii. 186–8, 192–4. ³³⁴ It is entitled ‘Scriptura Henrici episcopi Wintoniensis et abbatis Glastoniensis’, and is printed in Adam of Domerham, Historia de Rebus Gestis Glastoniensibus, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1727), ii. 305–15, and EEA viii. 205–13. Henry ‘brevis libellus edocet, quem ipse suo tempore scribi fecit’: EEA viii. 205. The earliest copy of the Historia—included in Cambridge, Trinity College MS. R. 5. 33—was probably written in the late 1240s: J. Crick, ‘The Marshalling of Antiquity: Glastonbury’s Historical Dossier’, in L. Abrams and J. P. Carley (eds.), The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey: Essays in Honour of the Ninetieth Birthday of C. A. Ralegh Radford (Woodbridge, 1991), 217–43, at 236–7. ³³⁵ EEA viii. 212. ³³⁶ Keynes, ‘Giso’, 226–7. ³³⁷ EEA viii. 212; N. E. Stacy, ‘Henry of Blois and the Lordship of Glastonbury’, EHR cxiv (1999), 1–33, at 2. ³³⁸ EEA viii. 208. ³³⁹ EEA viii. 209, for the investigation conducted by Henry on his accession to the abbacy; 206, for his first tour of the abbey’s estates. ³⁴⁰ EEA viii. 205; this sentence is mistranslated in Lawsuits, i. no. 257.

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Seffrid had issued ‘against the will of the brothers’. Odo instead produced a different document which, ‘according to many witnesses, had been fraudulently tampered with’. Thus exposed, he ‘lost all he had held’, and though he persuaded the king to intervene ‘by slyly whispering in his ear’, it did him no good in the end.³⁴¹ Roger de Mara had likewise been given lands by the profligate Seffrid, ‘by concession of the king, but without the consent of the brothers’. Henry refused to renew this grant, but nevertheless, ‘lest a bruised reed be broken’, had accepted Roger’s homage and granted him land worth one-tenth of what he had previously held.³⁴² Ansketil of Cossington, brother of Abbot Thurstan, had to surrender two-and-a-half hides of Glastonbury land ‘which he had usurped a long time ago from the demesne of the abbey’ as the price for ‘making a fine towards me for the fief which he held of the abbey by military right’.³⁴³ Henry’s accounts of other cases strongly suggest that ‘making a fine’ involved doing homage to him.³⁴⁴ He was not able to exploit his discretion over whether to renew a tenure in every instance: Abbot Seffrid had transferred the manor of Camerton to Roger, bishop of Salisbury, and Henry thought it prudent ‘to give way out of reverence for Bishop Roger, and to hold back in this particular case’. He reasserted Glastonbury’s rights only after Roger of Salisbury’s death.³⁴⁵ Nevertheless, it is clear that the need for existing tenants to have their homage accepted by the new abbot could be used to lever them out of abbey lands. This remarkable account, written in the first person, confirms that, in the 1130s, homage bore the tenurial significance I have attributed to it for subtenants. It strengthens the likelihood that the Abingdon and Evesham histories preserved authentic accounts from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, and were not anachronistic reinterpretations from a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century perspective. It confirms the evidence of the Red Book of Thorney, which clearly transcribes documents produced in the course of the dispute of 1113–27, and suggests that the Historia Novorum’s assessment of homage’s significance is accurate. But it may be possible to adduce still earlier material. The notification or memorandum of the acceptance of the Conqueror’s miles Peter as feodalis homo of St Edmund and Abbot Baldwin is celebrated chiefly for the difficulties of interpretation which it raises.³⁴⁶ The earliest surviving copy dates from the late thirteenth century, and the garbled drafting to which Stenton drew attention could be interpreted as evidence of an authentic naivety, or of corruption in the text, or probably of both. That it must be based on an authentic document has been demonstrated by identifying in Domesday Book a number of those who are recorded as former holders of the lands in question.³⁴⁷ ³⁴¹ Stacy, ‘Henry of Blois’, 6. ³⁴² EEA viii. 206, quoting Isa. 42: 3; Stacy, ‘Henry of Blois’, 7. ³⁴³ EEA viii. 207. ³⁴⁴ Stacy, ‘Henry of Blois’, 5. ³⁴⁵ EEA viii. 209; Stacy, ‘Henry of Blois’, 8. ³⁴⁶ Douglas, Feudal Documents no. 168; D. C. Douglas, ‘A Charter of Enfeoffment under William the Conqueror’, EHR xlii (1927), 245–7; discussed by Stenton, First Century, 154; Holt, ‘Patrimony’, CE 201, 220–1. ³⁴⁷ Douglas, Feudal Documents, pp. lxxxix–xcii.

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The description of how Peter became Abbot Baldwin’s ‘feudal man’ is likely to have appeared in the hypothetical eleventh-century original, even if the adjective ‘feodalis’ is a later interpolation; for Peter is said to have done so ‘manibus iunctis’. A twelfth- or thirteenth-century scribe would have been likely to use the substantive hominium or homagium; this phrase recalls the descriptions of homage found in William of Poitiers, before a term had been coined to denote the ceremony.³⁴⁸ If this interpretation is plausible, it suggests that already before the Domesday Survey a layman became the ‘man’ of a lord, and might receive from that lord the land from which he would render service to his lord, by dint of the lord’s taking the man’s hands in his. This document therefore appears to provide preDomesday corroboration for the significance which is attributed to homage in the Red Book of Thorney and in the chronicles of Abingdon and Evesham. As such, it is unique. There are two comparable documents from the Conqueror’s reign concerned with granting subtenancies. Neither mentions homage. A record in the form of a charter of Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster’s grant of 1083 to William Baynard of a life tenure of Tothill survives, like the Bury St Edmunds memorandum, only in a late, corrupted copy.³⁴⁹ Its charter form may or may not explain its failure to mention homage. Ceremonies, of whatever type, are very rarely described or even mentioned in charters, their function being to record what had been granted, and on what conditions.³⁵⁰ The other document is the Holme Lacy chirograph, an original from 1085, recording Robert Losinga, bishop of Hereford’s grants to Roger de Lacy of ‘Hamme’ (later known as Holme Lacy), which Roger’s recently deceased father, Walter, had held of the bishop.³⁵¹ Like Gilbert Crispin’s grant to William Baynard, and unlike Baldwin’s grant to Peter, the chirograph is at pains to stress that this grant—like the supplementary one of Onibury, recorded at the end of the document—is limited to the term of the grantee’s life. Indeed, this may explain why it was thought necessary to draw up a document in the first place, in order to strengthen the hand of whoever happened to be bishop at the time of Roger’s death (or if and when he decided to ³⁴⁸ Above, p. 76. ³⁴⁹ J. A. Robinson, Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster (Cambridge, 1911), 38; B. F. Harvey, Westminster Abbey and its Estates in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1977), 73. ³⁵⁰ F. M. Stenton, Transcriptions of Charters Relating to Gilbertine Houses, Lincoln Record Soc., xviii (1922), p. xxx; for Normandy, see Chartes de l’abbaye de Jumièges, i. p. lxxxviii. Where descriptions of ceremonies do occur, they are usually appended to the document: in one instance (ibid., i. no. 34 (31 May 1086)), the blank end of a document was used to record a transaction which apparently had nothing to do with the settlement recorded in the main body of the document. Money taken from the altar at Jumièges was used to buy drinks for the abbot’s men ‘in order to record what had been done’. Presumably they were meant to suffer memorably bad hangovers; further, Tabuteau, Transfers, 128–9. ³⁵¹ Galbraith, ‘Land-grant’, 371–2. T. S. Purser, ‘The Origins of English Feudalism? An Episcopal Land-grant Revisited’, HR lxxiii (2000), 80–92, does not succeed in undermining Galbraith’s analysis. The (continental) scribe also wrote one of the two Hereford copies of the Collectio Lanfranci, Hereford Cathedral, MS. O. viii. 8: Gullick, ‘English-owned Manuscripts’, 104.

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become a monk, which amounted to a secular death).³⁵² Roger is said to have sought (requisivere) the grant of ‘Hamme’ from the bishop, to whom it had evidently reverted on Walter’s death, ‘per amicos & per pecuniam’. After taking ‘counsel’ from his men, and presumably after listening to Roger’s friends and pocketing his money, the bishop had ‘conceded’ Hamme to Roger by a conventio which specified the service which Roger would render to him, and other conditions. Here is clear evidence of reversion to the lord on the death of a subtenant, and of the offer by the subtenant’s heir, when seeking renewal of the grant, of what would later be termed relief. But the chirograph does not indicate whether the conventio which specified the terms on which the land was granted was based upon a relationship created by the bishop taking Roger’s hands between his, in the way that Walter of Evesham had, according to the Evesham History, declined to do with his predecessor’s men. Like Gilbert Crispin’s charter, and unlike the informal Bury St Edmunds memorandum, any direct allusion to or description of the ceremony might have seemed out of place in an evidentiary document of this sort. Roger is termed miles, which may or may not mean that he was the bishop’s homo.³⁵³ Herman de Dreux, himself a tenant-in-chief in Herefordshire, was included in the list of Roger’s lay homines who witnessed the document. There was apparently no bar to a tenant-in-chief who also happened to be a subtenant being described as the homo of the lord of whom he held a subtenancy.³⁵⁴ And as Eadmer and the author of the Abingdon History demonstrate, to become someone’s homo was synonymous with doing homage to him. Arguing by analogy from Herman de Dreux’s appearance in the witness list is a tenuous reason for assuming that Roger had himself done homage to Bishop Robert Losinga. But it is stronger than any for the—doubtless correct—assumption that Roger had done so to the king for his father’s tenancy-in-chief.³⁵⁵ A comparable case, dated sometime between 1094 and 1113, further strengthens the possibility that homage was involved. According to a transcript of an unusually detailed document in the cartulary of Burton Abbey, which takes the form of a memorandum rather than a charter, Abbot Nigel had given Acovere, ‘in our chapter and together with all my brothers’, to someone called Orme, ‘hac conventione: that each year he should pay us 20 oras, and accordingly he has become our man (factus est homo noster), and has sworn on the four gospels that he will serve us with fidelitas . . .’.³⁵⁶ The parallels with the grant of Onibury to Roger de Lacy for an annual payment of 20 solidi are clear. Certain features of the grants recorded in the Holme Lacy chirograph may be exceptional. Nevertheless, it clearly provides incontrovertibly authentic evidence ³⁵² Galbraith, ‘Land-grant’, 362–3; Lennard, Rural England, 109. ³⁵³ Note JW iii. 44 where the milites alone—not the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and sheriffs whose knights they were—are said to have sworn fealty to King William at Salisbury. ³⁵⁴ Galbraith, ‘Land-grant’, 361. ³⁵⁵ Holt, ‘1086’, CE 50. ³⁵⁶ The Burton Chartulary, ed. G. Wrottesley, William Salt Soc., v, pt. 1 (1884), 30.

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for several features of the dependent tenurial system described at the level of tenants-in-chief by Eadmer and at the level of subtenants by some monastic chronicles which, in their extant versions, date from the late twelfth century. It confirms that this system was already in place before Domesday; indeed long before, for it specifies that Roger should owe the same military service to the bishop as his father, Walter, had done. But as a formal evidentiary document it does so without any mention of homage, and these narrative sources, like Glanvill, appear to regard homage as the core of the tenurial relationship between lord and vassal, whether the tenant’s immediate lord was the king or not. It is striking that references to homage in the monastic chronicles occur in their narrative sections, not in the charters and writs which those sections link up. Where the kingdom as a whole is concerned, the nearest equivalent to a twelfth-century monastic chronicle is the Historia Novorum. Eadmer shares the overriding concern of that genre with the landed endowment of churches, in his case chiefly, but not exclusively, Canterbury.³⁵⁷ It was this concern with land which led him, unlike any of the other great historians writing in early twelfthcentury England, to identify the tenurial function which homage came to have as the principal innovation of the Conquest, and the seed from which all the subsequent evils had grown. By focusing on the novel quality of the king’s relations with bishops (other than the bishops of Rochester) and many abbots, Eadmer had penetrated behind the superficial and officially proclaimed continuity with the English past, and isolated what he saw as the nexus of novelty. Commendation was a ceremony with which Englishmen were very familiar, but its meaning had been transformed while its form—so far as we can tell—had remained unchanged. Eadmer’s acuity lay in grasping the significance of this transformation, and the reason for it: precarious tenurial dependence on the king. As William of Malmesbury—no indulgent critic—wrote: ‘He expounds it all so clearly that in some sense it seems to happen before our very eyes.’³⁵⁸ Yet the very clarity of Eadmer’s vision, which arose from focusing on clerical tenantsin-chief, meant that his analysis of the role of homage could not be straightforwardly extrapolated to lay tenants-in-chief and subtenants, despite his heavy hints to his readers. Clerical tenants-in-chief were, as we have seen, exceptional, because they were incumbents of undying entities. The exiguous evidence for lay tenants at whatever level in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries indicates that reality in their case was probably less clear-cut, at least where homage was concerned. By examining the contemporary evidence for tenurial relations between lay and clerical tenants-in-chief and their (lay) subtenants further, it may be possible to establish whether Eadmer’s understanding of dependency in general was also oversimplified by his concentration on the relations between bishops and abbots and the king. ³⁵⁷ Of course, the documents he increasingly inserts tend to be letters between kings, popes, and Anselm, rather than charters and writs. For his attention to the detail of diplomatic form see e.g. HN 31, 119, 149, 176, 204, 210, 297. ³⁵⁸ GP 74.

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L AY SUBTENANTS Whether or not homage by Roger de Lacy to Robert Losinga, bishop of Hereford, underpinned the arrangements recorded in the Holme Lacy chirograph, the document explicitly envisaged the possibility of Roger’s subtenancies persisting beyond the life of the present lord, precisely because they were delimited solely by the life of the tenant. In other words, Roger’s life tenures of Hamme and Onibury clearly rested on more than the personal bond between himself and the Bishop Robert, however that bond had been constituted, for they could survive Bishop Robert. Even if it was assumed that a future bishop would take Roger’s homage for his subtenancies, he would have been bound by his predecessor to go through what had been rendered a formality by the arrangement entered into by that predecessor. On Roger’s death or entry into a monastery, it was stipulated that no relative of his should ‘insert’ him- or herself (se intromittere) concerning Hamme, but that ‘whoever shall then be bishop’ should ‘receive (recipere) whatsoever shall then be beneficial to Holy Church and himself without any contradiction’. An almost identical condition applied to Onibury.³⁵⁹ It is impossible to establish in precisely what ways, if any, these arrangements were exceptional, other than that a written record of them happens to survive. It is likely that the explicit limitation of the grants in writing to a single life expressed clerical discomfort with the possibility that the heirs of a lay grantee might have some claim to the church lands held by their ancestors, and that therefore those lands might be deemed to have been alienated from the church.³⁶⁰ This discomfort was not a novel post-Conquest phenomenon. There is plenty of pre-Conquest evidence for grants of church lands being limited to one or (more commonly) a number of lives;³⁶¹ indeed Galbraith suggested that life leases had already become the rule before the Conquest for lands which had been de victu monachorum, or abbatis, or episcopi.³⁶² Viewed in this light, the chirograph may be interpreted as a continuation of a type of arrangement which long survived the ³⁵⁹ Colvin, ‘Holme Lacy’, passim. Galbraith, ‘Land-grant’, 372: ‘Predictus rogerus tenet adhuc aliam terram de victu proprio episcopi scilicet onieberie tali conditione. Quamdiu vixerit unoquoque anno in festivitate sancti Martini .xx. solidos dabit. & post obitum suum vel etiam si monachus efficiatur. qualiscunque tunc terra illa fuerit. ad episcopum absque ulla contradictione redibit.’ ³⁶⁰ Colvin, ‘Holme Lacy’, 19–20. ³⁶¹ Lennard, Rural England, 159–70. ³⁶² Galbraith, ‘Land-grant’, 354, 363–8; J. G. H. Hudson, ‘Life-grants of Land and the Development of Inheritance in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS xii (1989), 67–80, at 72–3; cf. the Evesham History’s distinction between what Æthelwig’s antecessores had held and what he himself had acquired, discussed above, p. 89; DB i. 66a, where Bishop Herman of Ramsbury is recorded as having granted a lease for one life only, with a provision that thereafter the land should return to the bishop’s farm because it ‘was of the bishop’s dominium’; Hemming, i. 287–8: ‘Et he predicte ccc hide fuerunt de ipsius dominio ecclesie, et quocunque modo prestite fuissent, et cuicumque prestite fuissent, ad serviendum inde episcopo, ille, qui eam prestitam terram tenebat, nullam omnino consuetudinem sibimet retinere poterat, nisi per episcopum; neque terram retinere, nisi usque ad impletum tempus, quod ipsi inter se constituerunt, et nusquam cum hac se vertere poterat, nec jure hereditario eam

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Conquest, as well as a precursor of subinfeudation for knight service. We have seen that arrangements comparable to those at Hamme were made in the case of Tothill, granted in 1083 to William Baynard for his life only by Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster; and other examples can be adduced.³⁶³ In the case of Hamme the limitation is the more striking, because it had been held of the bishop by Roger’s father before him, and had reverted to the bishop on the father’s death, in exactly the way in which it was envisaged that both tenancies would revert to whomever was bishop at Roger’s death. After Roger’s death, there was nothing to prevent an heir of Roger’s seeking a regrant to himself in the same way as Roger had done with Hamme; and the fact that Hamme ultimately became known as Holme Lacy demonstrates that this was precisely what happened.³⁶⁴ In the event Tothill likewise descended to William Baynard’s successors, the fitzWalters.³⁶⁵ Such an arrangement was not only explicitly envisaged, but even ordained in Abbot Nigel of Burton’s memorandum of 1094–1113: when the abbot’s ‘man’ Orme died and had been buried in the abbey, ‘let his son come into our chapter to give as much money for relief (relevatio) of that land as a noble man (nobilis homo) ought to give, swearing for that land in the same way as his father had sworn, giving as his father had given, holding as his father had held’.³⁶⁶ Orme’s putative son—and for whatever reason, it was envisaged that only one would succeed him—would hold on exactly the same terms as his father, just as Roger de Lacy did at Hamme. But he would only do so after he had fulfilled all the conditions precedent to being granted the land anew, just as Roger de Lacy appears to have done with respect to Hamme.³⁶⁷ The chirograph’s provision that both grants should revert to the bishop on the death of the tenant is not surprising, for this had happened before in the case of Hamme, and it fits both the tradition of Anglo-Saxon leases and the template which we have seen being established by the king’s grants to his lay and clerical tenants-in-chief. What is perhaps surprising is that already, by 1085, it had become clear that tenure could not always depend solely on a personal relationship between a lord and his man. This may be viewed simply as a continuation in a new context of the Old English practice of leasing church lands to laymen for one or a number of lives. Or it might be taken to show that when, after the Conquest, a lord happened to be the incumbent of a church, it was from the usurpando retinere, aut feudam suam eam clamare poterat, nisi secundum voluntatem episcopi, et secundum conventionem, quam cum illo fecerat.’ ³⁶³ Robinson, Gilbert Crispin, 38–9, discussed above, p. 94; cf. Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 138–9; Lennard, Rural England, 170–2; Hudson, ‘Life-grants’, 67–8, for a Ramsey case. ³⁶⁴ Colvin, ‘Holme Lacy’, esp. 15–17. ³⁶⁵ Robinson, Gilbert Crispin, 38–9. ³⁶⁶ Burton Chartulary, 30. ³⁶⁷ Note that, although Orme is said to have become Abbot Nigel’s man, no homage is explicitly ordained in the case of his son and successor. This could be because homage was understood to be encompassed within the oath to be taken by the son. Perhaps Abbot Nigel’s stress on the role of the chapter, rather than the abbot, deflected the scribe from mentioning a ceremony which, by definition, would have to be done with an abbot in person. It seems unlikely that it was envisaged that the son would not do homage.

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beginning impossible to conceive of a tenurial relationship with him in purely personal terms, despite the example which (according to Eadmer) the king himself attempted to set in his dealings with bishops (other than the bishop of Rochester) and many abbots. Or perhaps it should be viewed as both, for, as Holt has epigrammatically observed, post-Conquest innovations are so difficult to isolate precisely because they grew like parasites within the hosts provided by existing English institutions and practices, excoriating them.³⁶⁸ The view that in post-Conquest England a grant of land by a lord to his man had originally lasted for as long as the personal tie of homage between them,³⁶⁹ and that therefore the land reverted to the lord on the death of his man, and the man’s subtenancy ceased to be warranted on the death of the lord of whom he held, has come in for a good deal of criticism in recent years.³⁷⁰ Most of it has focused on the consequences of the death of a man, rather than of his lord. It has been shown that, by and large, someone described as the heir of the man would succeed to the man’s subtenancy. Only rarely do lords appear to have exercised any discretion they might have had to deny the claim of an heir to succeed. But in rare, exceptional cases they did, and continued to do so.³⁷¹ As we have already seen, it was the Conqueror’s unwillingness to allow William Malet’s son Robert to have his father’s lands in Yorkshire which occasioned the clamores with respect to them recorded in Yorkshire Domesday.³⁷² In charters recording regrants to heirs or (in the case of a new lord) confirmations to sitting tenants who had held of the previous lord, lords used phrases such as reddere or reddere et concedere, rather than dare et concedere.³⁷³ This language recognized that lords were restoring land or giving it back, not making an entirely new grant; in other words, the very phrasing of the charters seems to indicate that lords had accepted the existence of an expectation that the grant would be renewed. Yet as charters of this sort also indicate, the succession of heirs happened only as a result of some sort of formal lordly concession, whether that concession happened to be described as a grant or a restoration. Formalities, even mere formalities, were still essential. The charters are almost exclusively a twelfth-century phenomenon in England, as, indeed, is the very language of inheritance.³⁷⁴ As Bracton laconically observes, ‘it ³⁶⁸ Holt, CE 5. ³⁶⁹ S. E. Thorne, ‘English Feudalism and Estates in Land’, repr. in id. Essays in English Legal History (London, 1985), 13–29, esp. 16–17; S. F. C. Milsom, The Legal Framework of English Feudalism (Cambridge, 1976), esp. ch. 2. ³⁷⁰ J. G. H. Hudson, ‘Milsom’s Legal Structure: Interpreting Twelfth-Century Law’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis/Revue d’histoire du droit, lix (1991), 47–66; Hudson, LLL 8–9, 66–8, 97–8. ³⁷¹ Henry I gave the barony of Marshwood to a younger son because ‘he was a better knight’, but this was done ‘per voluntatem regis’. In 1208 the decision was reversed, in favour of the descendant of the elder line: HMC. Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, i. (HMSO, 1907), pp. 527–8; PR 10 John, 113; Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 124–5; Stenton, First Century, 38; Hudson, LLL 125–6. For another 12th-century case of an elder son being passed over in favour of his younger brother, with the grandson of the elder son making a claim in the king’s court decades later, see RCR i. 360, discussed by S. F. C. Milsom, A Natural History of the Common Law (New York, 2003), 63, 66. ³⁷² Newman, ‘ “Lost fee” of William Malet’, 276; cf. above, p. 80. ³⁷³ Hudson, LLL, esp. 66–9, 72–7. ³⁷⁴ Holt, ‘Patrimony’, CE 216; Hudson, LLL 78.

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rarely happens that charters are produced from the Conquest of England’.³⁷⁵ In this respect conquered England contrasts sharply with eleventh-century Normandy. But even when in England the existence of heirs had come to be recognized in documents, an heir as such had no more than an expectation of being permitted to succeed to the tenancy of his ancestor. He could only petition— requisivere, in the language of the Holme Lacy chirograph—the lord for the renewal of the tenancy to him.³⁷⁶ ‘This was a realistic world in which you could not take the land with you and there was no abstract entity which could pass from one generation to the next.’³⁷⁷ The increasing recognition of heirs is testimony to the resilience of notions of inheritance which Normans brought over in their heads, and which must have informed the advice given by a lord’s men when they were consulted about whether to accede to such a petition. Doubtless this was what was in the minds of Robert Losinga’s men (or at least the Normans amongst them) when he sought their counsel on whether to accede to Roger de Lacy’s bid to be regranted the land which Roger’s father had held,³⁷⁸ although Roger is not described as his father’s heir in the chirograph. But in post-Conquest England the tenurial powers of lords sliced through Norman understanding of hereditary right. The intersection between post-Conquest dependency and Norman conventions of inheritance is graphically illustrated in Nigel d’Aubigny’s celebrated letter of 1109–14 to his brother and nominated heir William.³⁷⁹ Lying on what he thought would be his deathbed, Nigel attempted to make recompense for some of his sins. Like William Rufus in 1093, he had watched hell’s gates opening wide to receive him,³⁸⁰ as one who had exploited the peculiar rights over tenure which lords enjoyed in conquered England. Like the king, and unlike Robert, count of Meulan, when he lay on his deathbed,³⁸¹ Nigel wanted to save his soul. Placing more trust in office than personal merit, by a supreme irony he sought the intercessory prayers of Ranulf Flambard, then bishop of Durham, for Durham was one of the churches to which he restored lands.³⁸² In his account of William Rufus’s remorse, Eadmer naturally concentrates on the king’s treatment of vacant churches; but he also indicates that Rufus sought to make amends to his lay victims.³⁸³ Nigel’s letter is much more detailed in its catalogue of the wrongs which he had done to his lay vassals as well as to churches. Clearly, he did not envisage that God would pardon sins simply because the victims had been ³⁷⁵ Bracton, fo. 382, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Anglie, ed. and trans. S. E. Thorne, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1968–77), iv. 195; cf. Galbraith, Making of Domesday Book, 46. ³⁷⁶ For other uses of the verb in this sense, see DB i. 83b; Orderic, v. 224; Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, 1107–1191, ed. D. E. Greenway, British Academy Records of Social and Economic ³⁷⁷ Milsom, Natural History, 62. History, NS i (1972), no. 3. ³⁷⁸ Some of them—perhaps all those he consulted—are listed as witnesses in the chirograph: Galbraith, ‘Land-grant’, 360–1, 372. ³⁷⁹ Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, no. 3. ³⁸⁰ Eadmer, HN 30–1, 34; Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, no. 3, p. 7: ‘Ecce frater karissime peccata mea maxima et inquitates Dei misericordia diutius tolerare non valens; flagella iusticie sue carni mee miserrime misericorditer admovit ne per peccatricem insolentiam anima mea eternam mereretur gehennam’; cf. nos. 2, 4, 5, 9. ³⁸¹ HH 462, 598–600. ³⁸² Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, no. 4. ³⁸³ HN 31–2.

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laymen. Like Rufus, grave illness prompted Nigel to restore lands he had taken from churches, although in his case he had not been exercising that lordly power over vacant churches which William of Malmesbury was soon to categorize as regalian.³⁸⁴ He had also returned lands to many of his lay homines ‘whom I have disinherited’. In desperation he instructed his brother to make recompense to others whose injuries he thought he would not now have time to put right himself. Nigel had first been given land by Henry I c.1107, and what would later be known as the honour of Mowbray was thereafter gradually created for him by the king.³⁸⁵ His description of those whom he had ‘disinherited’ as his homines suggests that his taking homage from existing tenants on the estates granted to him had not in practice always warranted all their subtenancies. For by definition his homines can only have become such by doing him homage. To one of them, called Wence, he had now, in panic-stricken atonement, ‘returned his land . . . as I found him seised’³⁸⁶—implying either that he had disseised Wence after taking his homage, or that he had, like Henry of Blois on his accession as abbot of Glastonbury,³⁸⁷ refused to allow the unfortunate Wence to keep certain lands. Whereas Rufus’s short-lived remorse seems, according to Eadmer, to have been occasioned chiefly by his exploitation of his powers on the death of a dependent (clerical) tenant, Nigel d’Aubigny had acted arbitrarily towards lay homines of his who were very much alive. He now made anguished recompense by restoring to them—or to their heirs—lands which he described as theirs. His letter therefore juxtaposes in striking fashion the conventionally Norman nature of Nigel’s conscience with the post-Conquest reality of his arbitrary exercise of his lordly powers in England. Yet, ironically, undoing the wrongs he had done was possible only by further exploitation of those extraordinary (in Norman terms) powers. In the present regard, the crucial implication of the letter is that even if the surviving tenant of a former lord were accepted as man of a new lord—as Æthelwig’s tenants had not been by Abbot Walter of Evesham³⁸⁸—he was not thereby absolutely secure from arbitrary forfeiture of his lands to that new lord, if the new lord turned out to be sufficiently hard-nosed.³⁸⁹ Homage had apparently not given some of Nigel d’Aubigny’s homines a warranty which was worth having. When brought back to his Norman senses by the imminent prospect of damnation, Nigel felt obliged to compensate—or provide ‘exchanges (escambia)’ for—those of his ‘men’ to whom he had given lands taken from those he had ‘disinherited’, which lands he now felt compelled to take back and restore to the ‘disinherited men’. In Nigel’s apparent predicament, there was no point in righting a wrong if that entailed a further wrong. His grant of the new tenements which these men had so fleetingly held of him had not secured them in those tenements. ³⁸⁴ GR v. 417, p. 754. ³⁸⁵ Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, pp. xix–xxv. ³⁸⁶ No. 3, p. 9: ‘Wence suam terram reddidi. sicut eum saisitum inveni.’ ³⁸⁷ Above, pp. 22–3. ³⁸⁸ Above, p. 88. ³⁸⁹ Hudson, LLL 62, n. 207, for the suggestion that Nigel may have ‘disinherited’ by refusing to honour the previous lord’s grants.

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But as far as his conscience was now concerned, it appears to have amounted to warranty of a sort: Nigel states that he has ‘restored (reddidi)’ the escambia with which he compensated them for their losses, just as he had ‘restored’ lands to the disinherited and to churches. But of course the new grantees would never have held those escambia prior to their being ‘restored’; the escambia were ‘restored’ in the sense that they replaced his previous grants, which he now, in his remorse, felt obliged to revoke. The strong implication is that these ‘men’ had some sort of claim on him by virtue of having received those earlier grants from him.³⁹⁰ As in the numerous cases of escambium at the behest of the king and of other lords of which there are traces in Domesday Book, escambia do not indicate the weakness of the lord in the face of the claims of an indignant tenant. Rather, they suggest the lord’s inclination on occasion to temper by Norman convention the rearrangement at his own convenience of tenancies held of him. When, probably sometime between 1101 and 1106, Richard de Ste-Maire-Église did homage (homagium) to the abbot of St-Pierre de Préaux for the restoration of land which he claimed by gift of a previous abbot, he specifically renounced any claim to concambium, and undertook to maintain his homage to the abbot should anyone else in the future successfully assert a claim to the land in question.³⁹¹ This document strongly suggests that in Normandy a lord was normally bound to provide compensation if a third party successfully asserted a better claim than the grantee to the tenement, or if for that or any other reason the lord rescinded the grant;³⁹² and perhaps in particular if the lord were the original grantor and the grantee had done him homage. In other words, escambium was a consequence of warranty.³⁹³ For reasons which are concealed from us, the abbot of St-Pierre de Préaux was concerned to deny this to Richard; in modern legal parlance, he ensured that he took Richard’s homage without prejudice. But of course in Normandy, where many estates were categorized as alodia, it seems to have been by no means universal, and was probably exceptional, for a lord to make a grant to a layman for homage in this way. In conquered England, by contrast, it was the norm.³⁹⁴ The Domesday references to escambia imply that the lord is the source of the tenurial arrangement which he has now—often, it seems, unilaterally—rescinded, and for this he has offered compensation to his sometime tenant.³⁹⁵ In other words, ³⁹⁰ Cf. Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, no. 7. ³⁹¹ Le Prévost, Eure, iii. 209, quoted by Tabuteau, Transfers, 199, cf. 136, and discussed above, p. 75. It is unclear whether Richard or his father Ralph had first received the land from the previous abbot. ³⁹² Robert Curthose gave Roger Beaumont the castle of Ivry in exchange for the castle of Brionne, an exchange which Roger’s son Robert of Meulan was unwilling to accept, even during his father’s lifetime: Orderic, iv. 204; J. Yver, ‘Les Châteaux forts en Normandie j’usqu’au milieu du xiie siècle. Contribution à l’étude du pouvoir ducale’, BSAN liii (1955–6), 28–115, 604–9, at 67–8. Cf. Ascelin’s celebrated interruption of William the Conqueror’s funeral, discussed below, pp. 189–90. ³⁹³ Hudson, LLL 55–7, doubts whether the link was as tight at this stage. But the exceptions made in some charters could be interpreted as implying the opposite. ³⁹⁴ Above, pp. 64–96. ³⁹⁵ Finn, Domesday Inquest, 20–1; Finn, Eastern Counties, 31–2; id., Liber Exoniensis, 71; Mason, ‘Rapes of Sussex and the Norman Conquest’, esp. 78–87; Mason, Sussex Rapes, 15–16; Holt, ‘1086’, CE 50.

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escambia were, and were seen to be, a function of the intimacy of the personal bond between lord and man, or of precarious dependency. They do not indicate lordly pusillanimity in the face of importunate vassals. Nigel d’Aubigny’s letter, like the Holme Lacy chirograph and Abbot Nigel of Burton’s memorandum on the succession arrangements for Orme’s subtenancy, assumes this dependency. Nigel d’Aubigny sought to make amends for his previous exploitation of it by exploiting it further. Bishop Robert Losinga attempted to bind his successor to honour the life grants he had made to Roger de Lacy, should he predecease Roger, thereby making them less precarious than they might otherwise have been. Abbot Nigel seemed untroubled by the possibility that he might predecease Orme. He stipulated only that a son of Orme should, after his father’s burial in the abbey, come to ‘our chapter’ to renew the relationship which his father had enjoyed. Nigel d’Aubigny straightforwardly rescinded some of his grants in order to compensate for his acts of disinheritance, but in other cases he tried to reconcile the conflicting urgings of his conscience towards those whom he had disinherited and those to whom he had subsequently granted their lands, by stipulating that the former should henceforth hold their restored lands of the latter.³⁹⁶ Bishop Robert had exploited the reversion on Walter de Lacy’s death of Walter’s subtenancy at Hamme to extract from Walter’s son Roger good terms for the renewal of the subtenancy—apparently adding some new conditions to the military service Walter had owed³⁹⁷—and for the creation of a new one, in both cases strictly limited to the term of Roger’s life. Abbot Nigel of Burton envisaged Orme’s son holding on exactly the same terms as his father, provided that he offered the appropriate sum of money ‘for the relief of that land’ from the church. Nigel d’Aubigny’s letter suggests that a lord might not even be bound to warrant the dependent tenancy of a man whose homage he had taken, let alone that of someone seeking to succeed to such a tenancy, unless he felt obliged to follow the dictates of his Norman conscience. It is likely, but not certain, that homage underlies the tenurial relationship which the chirograph records; it had been done by Orme to Abbot Nigel of Burton, if we may thus interpret the statement that he was the abbot’s ‘man’. Abbot Nigel probably envisaged that Orme’s son would, in due course, repeat it, along with the oath of fidelitas which Orme had sworn, before the grant would be renewed. In other words, the Holme Lacy chirograph may or may not be compatible with the view that homage constituted the tenurial bond between lord and man, ³⁹⁶ Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, no. 3: Robert de Cambos, one of the disinherited, and his heirs were to hold the lands restored to them of Robert de Wyville; either Anseis or his sons had been disinherited by Nigel, who now restored their father’s land to the sons on condition that they hold it of Hugh de Rampon, to whom Nigel had given two carucates ‘in escambio’. See J. C. Holt, ‘Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England, I: The Revolution of 1066’, repr. in id. CE 161–78, at 177–8. ³⁹⁷ Galbraith, ‘Land-grant’, 372: ‘Episcopus vero consilio suorum concessit illi eandem terram. ea conventione ut duobus militibus serviet sibi sicuti pater eius fecit ubicunque necesse fuerit. necnon & ea conventione. ut homines episcopi de hamtuna . . .’ (my italics).

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although in its case the bond was more than a purely personal one. By implication, so perhaps was that between Abbot Nigel of Burton and his ‘man’ Orme, who by definition had done homage to the abbot. Like Bishop Robert, Abbot Nigel seems to have been able to contemplate with a churchman’s equanimity the possibility of predeceasing his grantee. But unlike Bishop Robert, he says nothing about a putative successor to himself, focusing instead on the (undying) chapter as the forum in which Orme’s son would have to do what he must do in order to have his father’s subtenancy renewed to him. Unlike the chirograph, the Burton memorandum set conditions—including the swearing of fealty and probably by implication the doing of homage—for the future renewal of the subtenancy. Nigel d’Aubigny’s letter may suggest that a new lay lord could clear out existing tenants whom he did not want, just as we have seen new clerical lords like Walter of Evesham and Henry of Blois doing. Or it may suggest that the tenurial bond established by homage was precarious, for the lord could set it aside, apparently on a whim. Like the chirograph, the letter indicates that a lord’s freedom of action could override other considerations, in this case possibly including his acceptance of homage. In all three cases, it appears that the lord tended to stipulate the terms, and an heir or a dispossessed tenant could like it or lump it. This characteristic cannot be attributed to the fact that these documents happen to have been drawn up at the lord’s behest, and therefore present the relationship solely from his perspective. In two of the three cases this is clearly not so: identical copies of the chirograph would have been kept by both parties,³⁹⁸ so Roger de Lacy, who was more than a cut above the average subtenant, must have agreed to its terms; and even the extraordinary circumstances in which Nigel d’Aubigny (presumably) dictated the letter addressed to his brother do not appear to have inclined him to play down the grievousness of his sins by offering lordly excuses. These documents therefore suggest that Eadmer’s interpretation of the novel tenurial significance of homage as a personal bond between lord and man may be over-schematic, as he himself implicitly recognized in his unquestioning acceptance of the institutional continuity of episcopal and abbatial churches during vacancies.³⁹⁹ As I have argued, the early evidence for lay tenants-in-chief, thin as it is, reveals that it is not possible to extrapolate Eadmer’s analysis to them without qualification, despite Eadmer’s hint that lay principes were created in the same way as bishops and abbots.⁴⁰⁰ Nevertheless, the evidence for both lay tenants-in-chief and subtenants in the first fifty years after the Conquest indicates that his more general point about the role of the king’s nod in conquered England was true not only of the dominus rex—a term he may have coined⁴⁰¹—but to a ³⁹⁸ The extant copy is Bishop Robert’s. According to an apparently contemporary endorsement, Roger’s was kept at St Peter’s, Gloucester: Galbraith, ‘Land-grant’, 358, 372. ³⁹⁹ Above, p. 73. ⁴⁰⁰ HN 9, discussed above, pp. 76–7. ⁴⁰¹ When Eadmer uses dominus rex in conjunction with a possessive adjective, he is reflecting a usage already found in the writs and charters of the Conqueror: HN 48, 54, 57, 58, 66, 70 etc.; cf.

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lesser extent of other, lesser domini too, in their treatment of their tenants. The king’s nod became the model for that of every tenant-in-chief, whether clerical or lay, precisely because the king had, at the Conquest, become the ultimate source of all tenure. Hence precarious dependency, and the novel role that homage came to play within it; or to quote Maitland, and therefore to put the point more epigrammatically, escheat came to form ‘as it were a basis for all [the lord’s] other rights’.⁴⁰² Eadmer was the first historian of the Norman Conquest to grasp this.

HENRY I’S CORONATION ‘EDICT ’ There is no extant copy of the ‘edictum closed with a royal seal’⁴⁰³ which Eadmer says William Rufus issued from his sickbed in 1093. So the first documentary evidence of a king addressing, rather than exploiting, the contradiction between the expectations of his French vassals, clerical and lay, and the powers over tenure which he enjoyed as a consequence of the Conquest, was the ‘monimentum of letters afforced by the witness of his seal’⁴⁰⁴—termed an edictum by William of Malmesbury⁴⁰⁵—which Henry I ordered to be published throughout the kingdom on the day of his coronation. The technical precision of Eadmer’s descriptions of both documents deserves to be taken seriously, because he was an accomplished scribe.⁴⁰⁶ He and William of Malmesbury were right to use terms other than charter to describe this document (and most subsequent historians have therefore been wrong), because it is not a charter. It does not record a grant by a donor to a donee, for whom the charter would be evidence of title, but is simply a proclamation of good intentions on the part of the new king, of which a separate copy appears to have been addressed to each shire court. As Holt has pointed out, in one of the earliest surviving copies it is given the title Institutiones Henrici regis.⁴⁰⁷ It fits into the tradition of legislation in writ form which the Norman kings had done much to develop.⁴⁰⁸ Cap. 13 promised to restore the Reg. nos. 71, 74, 101, 246, 282 etc. This is also the case with Norman charters prior to 1066: Fauroux, Recueil nos. 107, 135, 167, 169, 191, 211, 223, 225. I am grateful to Pierre Chaplais for pointing out to me that Eadmer also uses the term unqualified by any possessive, and this seems to be a novelty: HN 35, 55, 56, 58, 59, etc; VA 130, cf. 92 (Anselm on Rufus): ‘Dominus est; quod vult dicit.’ It became common, and is found in the Dialogus, 16, 17, 18, 20, 33, 51, 70. Perhaps the neologism was suggested to Eadmer by the phrase dominus papa: see e.g. HN 10. ⁴⁰² P&M i. 351. ⁴⁰³ Eadmer, HN 31; cf. JW iii. 64. GR i. 546 describes how, in 1088, Rufus sent ‘written invitations’ to the English, repenting his wrongs, and promising ‘good laws, lighter imposts, and freer hunting’; cf. JW iii. 50, HH 414. ⁴⁰⁴ HN 119. ⁴⁰⁵ GR i. 714. ⁴⁰⁶ He wrote EEA xxviii. no. 15; cf. p. lxiii; Gullick, ‘Scribal Work of Eadmer’, 185; cf. p. 180, where three professions to Lanfranc by the bishops of Elmham and Chester in 1086, and of Wells in 1088, are identified as Eadmer’s work. ⁴⁰⁷ Textus Roffensis, ed. Sawyer, ix, fols. 96r–97v; Holt, CE 17–18. ⁴⁰⁸ P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, i (Oxford, 1999), 398–402.

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laga regis Edwardi, ‘with those emendations which my father made to it with the counsel of his barons’, thereby explicitly linking the law of King Edward with the Conqueror, as the Conqueror had intended.⁴⁰⁹ It glossed over the fact that the laga regis Edwardi seems to have been an invention of the Conqueror’s reign,⁴¹⁰ for Edward had left no body of legislation himself, but had, as we have seen, repeatedly confirmed Cnut’s.⁴¹¹ Laga is not translated into Latin, but is Latinized by being put into the accusative.⁴¹² Doubtless it also appeared in the Old English version of the ‘edict’, which persished in the Cotton fire in 1731.⁴¹³ It remained untranslated even in the Anglo-Norman version which was prepared, in the early thirteenth century, to inform lay discussions preliminary to Magna Carta.⁴¹⁴ Its appearance in the original ‘edict’ seems to have been a deliberate echo of William the Conqueror’s confirmation, soon after his coronation, to the bishop and portreeve of London of ‘all the laga which you had in King Edward’s day’, the first extant reference to King Edward’s law (another innovation which can probably be attributed to Regenbald, who is likely to have drafted the London writ).⁴¹⁵ The clause is even addressed to an (unspecified) ‘you’, like a writ. Other than the address clause, this is the only use of the second person in the ‘edict’, and the address clause does not have the personal pronoun. The ‘edict’ was a desperate bid for support on the day on which Henry became king, when his hold on the kingdom appears to have been at its most precarious; it therefore attempted to strike all the right notes. Why his position should have been so precarious at that point is an issue to which I shall return.⁴¹⁶ But the ways in which Henry attempted to woo his audience provide the best evidence for the grievances felt towards the king by the new continental aristocracy which his father had imposed upon England. The document was very carefully calculated. Wace’s account of William II de Warenne mocking Henry, long before his accession, for having studied hunting with such pedantic precision that he could determine the number of a stag’s antlers from its tracks, rings true. So does the suggestion that Henry brooded on his resentment at the gibe until he became king.⁴¹⁷ As Orderic, ⁴⁰⁹ Cap. 13; cf. Willelmi Articuli, cap. 7, in Gesetze, i. 488; Quadripartitus, ‘Argumentum’, in Gesetze, i. 535, Sharpe, ‘Prefaces of Quadripartitus’, 167. For a similar point with respect to the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, see Wormald, Making of English Law, i. 410. ⁴¹⁰ As Jim Holt has pointed out to me, this is the clear implication of Wormald, Making of English Law, i. 128 and Maddicott, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Return’, 652, although neither of them says so explicitly. ⁴¹¹ Above, p. 12. ⁴¹² Cf. cap. 9, which undertakes that henceforth murdrum fines shall be levied ‘secundum lagam regis Edwardi’; contrast Willelmi Articuli, cap. 7, which commands that everyone should ‘have and hold legem Eadwardi regis in lands and in all matters . . .’: Gesetze, i. 488. For other uses of laga, see RRAN ii. nos. 590 (1102), 642 (1103); LHP 54. 3. ⁴¹³ J. C. Holt, ‘The Origins of the English Constitutional Tradition’, in his Magna Carta and Medieval Government, 1–22, at 15, n. 40. ⁴¹⁴ London, BL Harleian MS. 458; photograph in J. C. Holt, Magna Carta, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1992), pl. 5. ⁴¹⁵ Reg. no. 180, discussed above, p. 13, where other innovations are credited to Regenbald; the word is repeated in Quadripartitus, ‘Argumentum’, Gesetze, i. 535. ⁴¹⁶ Below, pp. 138, 141. ⁴¹⁷ Wace, Le Roman de Rou, ed. A. J. Holden, 3 vols., Société des anciens textes français, ii. 275–6.

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one of his greatest admirers, wrote: ‘A diligent investigator, he inquired into everything; and retained all he heard in his tenacious memory.’⁴¹⁸ The size of the audience at whom the precisely calibrated ‘edict’ was primarily aimed, and their intimacy with the king, is evoked by the provision that any of Henry’s barons or other homines who wished to marry off a female relative should first ‘speak with me about it’.⁴¹⁹ But its repeated strictures about how they should in turn treat their men reveal a royal concern with the interests of subtenants which, as we have seen, reaches back at least as far as the homage done to William the Conqueror at Salisbury on 1 August 1086. The importance which Henry attributed to the ‘edict’ is probably reflected in the fact that William Giffard, Rufus’s chancellor (and Henry’s, for the first eight months of the reign),⁴²⁰ attested it (and charters issued on the day)⁴²¹ as ‘bishop-elect of Winchester’, a title he had acquired in the brief, fraught interim following Rufus’s death.⁴²² It seems that Henry had placed the job in the most competent hands. This does not mean that William Giffard drafted the document alone. The curious ordering of the clauses⁴²³—for instance, the proclamation of the king’s peace in cap. 12—and internal inconsistencies about where the dividing-line lay between good and bad custom,⁴²⁴ suggest that it was a hotly debated, composite effort. It seems inconceivable, for instance, that Robert of Meulan, who, according to Orderic, alone rode with Henry from Winchester to London,⁴²⁵ and who was reputed to be ‘the wisest man in secular affairs living between here and Jerusalem’,⁴²⁶ was not involved. According to William of Malmesbury, he not only encouraged the king to maintain the severity of the laws, ‘but proposed new ones’.⁴²⁷ The likely austerity of his advice may, perhaps, be inferred from the fact that he established a new custom ‘in the courts of the nobility’ of dining only once a day.⁴²⁸ And Maurice, bishop of London, the former chancellor who anointed Henry in Westminster Abbey,⁴²⁹ was of course on hand on the day of the coronation. It is possible that he was an expert—or what by this point passed for an expert—in Old English law.⁴³⁰ But William Giffard was the obvious person to put in overall charge, and for the role of draftsman. He probably also commissioned the goldsmith who made the ⁴¹⁸ Orderic vi. 100. ⁴¹⁹ Cap. 3. Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 521–3, cf. F. Liebermann, ‘The Text of Henry I’s Coronation Charter’, TRHS, NS. viii (1894), 21–48. I am grateful to Martin Brett for allowing me to use his largely unpublished edition, ‘Coronation Charter of Henry I’, which supersedes that of Liebermann; and to Richard Sharpe for giving me a preview of the edition from Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of Henry I, 1100–1135, ed. R. Sharpe et al. (Oxford, forthcoming). ⁴²⁰ T. A. M. Bishop, Scriptores Regis (Oxford, 1961), 25. ⁴²¹ RRAN ii. nos. 490, 491. ⁴²² EEA viii. p. xxxiii. ⁴²³ I owe this point to Jim Holt. ⁴²⁴ Below, p. 126. ⁴²⁵ Orderic v. 594. ⁴²⁶ HH 462, 596–8. ⁴²⁷ GR i. 736. ⁴²⁸ GR i. 736. ⁴²⁹ ASC (E) s.a. 1100, Orderic v. 294, HH 448; but cf. JW iii. 94, who erroneously records that he was crowned by Thomas of York, despite being consecrated by Maurice. ⁴³⁰ Wormald, Making of English Law, 236, 479. J. A. Green, ‘ “A lasting memorial”: The Charter of Liberties of Henry I’, in M. T. Flanagan and J. A. Green (eds.), Charters and Charter Scholarship in Britain and Ireland (Basingstoke, 2005), 53–69, at 63, suggests that Maurice may have been reponsible for some of the clauses.

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matrices of the new king’s seal, without which the copies of the ‘edict’ could not be authenticated or, therefore, distributed.⁴³¹ Like Eadmer, the ‘edict’ casts Henry’s brother William in a thoroughly bad light, both explicitly and by implication. The kingdom had ‘been oppressed by unjust exactions’⁴³² and ‘evil customs’. All of these Henry undertook to ‘remove’ and ‘in part’ to ‘set down’.⁴³³ For instance: ‘If any of my barons, earls, or others who hold of me shall die, his heir should not ransom (redimet) his land as he did in the time of my brother, but shall relieve (relevabit) it with a legitimate and just relief.’⁴³⁴ The implication is that, under Rufus, heirs of those who had held in chief had faced extortionate demands to ‘ransom’ from the king the land which, on the deaths of their ancestors, had escheated to him. Henceforth Henry undertook that such heirs would have to pay only a ‘legitimate and just relief ’ to him in order to secure the regrant of the land. For the first time in a royal document in post-Conquest England, the fact that a tenant could have an heir is explictly recognized.⁴³⁵ While Henry envisaged that escheat would remain a reality during his reign, by specifying that reliefs would henceforth be ‘just and lawful’ he gave the impression that they would no longer be arbitrary exactions, and that heirs would therefore have some sort of security of succession. The impression was subliminally reinforced by use of the possessive adjective ‘his’ with respect to the land which had reverted into the king’s hand. This cannot be a sloppy allusion to the deceased tenant-in-chief, but must refer to the heir seeking to be allowed to succeed as tenant-in-chief. For King Henry immediately added: ‘Similarly, the men of my barons shall relieve their lands of their lords with a just and lawful relief.’⁴³⁶ As will become clear, and as we might expect given William Giffard’s putative role in the production of Henry’s ‘edict’, it was drafted with great precision, although under pressure. Strictly interpreted, this supplementary clause would suggest that the heirs of subtenants (if we are to take the explicit analogy seriously, and interpret ‘men of my barons’ thus) would already have done homage to ‘their lords’, whose ‘men’ they therefore already were, prior to relieving ‘their lands’. Perhaps whoever drafted this clause thereby implied or reflected a distinction in this respect between them and the heirs of tenants-in-chief. For the ⁴³¹ R. Sharpe, ‘Address and Delivery in Anglo-Norman Royal Charters’, in Flanagan and Green (eds.), Charters and Charter Scholarship, 33–52, at 35. ⁴³² Cap. 1. 1. Brett’s edition of this clause (and cap. 7) is published in C&S ii. 652–5. ⁴³³ Cap. 1. 2. ⁴³⁴ Cap. 2. ⁴³⁵ Heres appears only in continental documents, or with reference to the king himself, and/or in palpable forgeries: see Reg., index, s.v. The only arguable exception is the Conqueror’s London writ, Reg. no. 180, in which the Old English yrfenuma is found; see above, p. 12. Domesday Book preserves three references to heirs, but these seem to relate to existing three-life leases to laymen from churches (i. 46d, 175b), or to Old English custom (280c) or practice (376b). A few documents, usually in the form of Old English diplomas, record the tenure or grant to churches of land or rights ‘hereditario iure’ or the like: Reg. nos. 117 (1071 ⫻ 75), 138 (1069), 151 (1080 ⫻ 83, perhaps 1082 ⫻ 83), 193 (Feb. 1081), 216 (1066 ⫻ 67), 287 (1066 ⫻ 80/1). Hudson, LLL 78, cites Reg. no. 341 and RRAN i. no. 466 in which ‘inheritance language’ is used to forestall prospective claims by laymen to succeed by hereditary right. ⁴³⁶ Cap. 2. 1.

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supplementary clause suggests not only that the new king did not wish his tenantsin-chief henceforth to treat the heirs of their men as Robert Losinga had treated Roger de Lacy in 1085 (or as William Rufus had allegedly treated the heirs of his tenants-in-chief ), but also that he expected his barons to take homage from those heirs as a matter of course before allowing them formally to relieve ‘their lands’. This was not something which Henry undertook to do for the heirs of his barons, even in this desperate document. Whether or not such a distinction was intended, the land is already described as the subtenant’s heir’s before he has ‘relieved’ it from someone who is already termed his lord. The inference that King Henry recognized that land which had escheated into the king’s hand was already in some sense that of the heir of the dead tenantin-chief prior to the king seising the heir with it, is confirmed by the next clause. This undertakes that the filia heres (daughter-heir) of a dead baron or other ‘man’ of the king’s would be given in marriage ‘cum terra sua’ to someone who could do homage to the king for the land, only with the counsel of the king’s barons.⁴³⁷ The land is already recognized as in some sense hers while still in the king’s hand, before homage could have been done to the king for it by her future husband. This can only be because she is heir. In the case of both tenant-in-chief and subtenant the land is described as the heir’s (or in the case of the heir of a subtenant, the baron’s man’s) prior to his (or, where appropriate, presumably her husband’s) relieving it. The ‘edict’ thereby demonstrated both the extent to which Normans were accustomed to heirs inheriting, and the fact that post-Conquest dependency sliced through those Norman conventions. For the heir’s land could not be held by the heir (or the heir’s husband) until the lord had decided to allow him (or her husband) to have it.⁴³⁸ The provision that if a dead baron left no adult heir, but a widow and children, then the widow—‘or another of the close relatives, who ought more justly to be such’—should be custos of the land and the children, is a further concession by the new king to those conventions.⁴³⁹ But as Holt has pointed out in the context of ⁴³⁷ Cap. 3. 2; Holt, ‘Patrimony’, CE 219–20; S. F. C. Milsom, ‘Inheritance by Women in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries’, in M. S. Arnold et al. (eds.), On the Laws and Customs of England (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), 60–89, esp. 62–5. ⁴³⁸ For a criticism of this reading of the possessive adjectives in caps. 2 and 3, see S. F. C. Milsom, ‘ “Pollock and Maitland”: A Lawyer’s Retrospect’, in J. G. H. Hudson (ed.), The History of English Law: Centenary Essays on ‘Pollock and Maitland’ (Oxford, 1996), 243–59, at 249–50. Suffice to say that I do not see the adjectives as a recognition of ‘ownership’, but as evidence of the conflict between two sets of conventions. ⁴³⁹ Cap. 4. 1. For 11th-century Norman instances of a mother having wardship of her infant son, see L. Musset, ‘Actes inedits du xi siècle. V. Autour des origines de St.-Étienne de Fontenay’, BSAN lvi (1961–2), 11–41, no. II, annexe, pp. 40–1 (before 1079, perhaps c.1070); (possibly) Lot, St.-Wandrille, no. 46, discussed by Tabuteau, Transfers, 61, 59, and cited above, n. 85. If the St-Wandrille case is indeed an instance, then the wardship had been granted by the abbot, in his capacity as lord, to the mother, in return for a payment termed ‘relief ’. For a widow, brother, and nephews apparently sharing the wardship of the minor son of a dead vassal of Odo of Bayeux, see Paris, BN MS. lat. 19986 (Troarn), fols. 158v–159r (1088–97), discussed by Tabuteau, p. 61. Wardship in Normandy appears subsequently to have become the right of the lord: Coutumiers de

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the post-1087 division between England and Normandy, which was to be re-established at precisely this point, such a concession was bound to be a dead letter.⁴⁴⁰ As in the case of relief, the concession on wardship is supplemented by an order that his barons should ‘treat the sons and daughters or wives of their men likewise’.⁴⁴¹ Again the new king considered that, even in these parlous circumstances, he should make a voluntary undertaking about his exercise of his own lordly powers in turn binding on his barons in their exercise of their lordly powers. These provisions constitute a recognition in advance of the claim(s) of infant(s) to the tenancy of their father. The very term custos, also used of those charged by the king with the administration of vacant churches, implies an expectation that the tenancy would be preserved as an entity, and regranted to an heir. Further, they may have amounted to a renunciation by the lord king of his lordly control of land and heir during a minority,⁴⁴² with an order that his barons should follow his example. But this interpretation assumes that the custos was exclusively a representative of the infant heir(s), whereas both the lay custos of Domesday Book⁴⁴³ and the custodes of vacant churches suggest that the custos here might be seen, from the king’s perspective, as his representative agent, although also a relative of the heir. Kings had previously, after all, appointed custodes,⁴⁴⁴ and in the case of ecclesiastical vacancy, they often chose a monk of the house.⁴⁴⁵ Here King Henry conceded that a lay custos would henceforth be a member of the family, in apparent accordance with Norman convention, rather than, say, a sheriff. It therefore seems unlikely that this clause envisaged ‘actual delivery’⁴⁴⁶ by the lord to the custos, or to the custos with the heir, both because it does not say so, and because ‘delivery’ by this time would almost certainly have involved homage. Women did not at this time do homage,⁴⁴⁷ and other evidence strongly suggests that infant heirs of tenants-in-chief could not do it.⁴⁴⁸ Nevertheless, cap. 4 of the ‘edict’ is of a piece with caps. 2 and 3 in revealing King Henry, in desperation, nodding in the Normandie, i, Le Trés ancien coutumier de Normandie; ii, La Summa de legibus Normannie in curia laicali, ed. E.-J. Tardif, Société de l’histoire de Normandie (Rouen-Paris, 1881, 1896), vol. ii, xxxi. 12, p. 194; see also Holt, ‘Patronage and Politics’, CE 236–7. In other parts of France wardship continued to be a family affair: J. Yver, ‘Les Caractères originaux du groupe de coutumes de l’ouest de France’, RHDFE, 4e série, xxx (1952), 18–79, at 40–1. For developments in England, see P&M i. 325–9. Although the custodia of relatives is still recognized in LHP 70. 18, the following clause makes an exception in the case of a relative (or a stranger) who is a claimant to the inheritance. ⁴⁴⁰ Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 128. ⁴⁴¹ Cap. 4. 2. ⁴⁴² S. F. C. Milsom, ‘The Origin of Prerogative Wardship’, in Law and Government, 223–44, at 234–7. ⁴⁴³ ‘A certain custos domus regis’ held a mill in the New Forest (DB i. 51d); the custos hundret is synonymous with the prepositus hundredi (ii. 66a, 99a); the custodes silvae are recorded as existing T.R.E.; cf. Exon. 109a: custos parci. ⁴⁴⁴ In 1067 the Conqueror appointed Odo of Bayeux and William fitzOsbern as ‘Anglie custodes’: JW iii. 4. ⁴⁴⁵ Above, p. 52, for ‘G. Dunelmensis’; on the death of Reginald, abbot of Abingdon, ‘honor ecclesiasticus fisco deputaretur regio . . . In quo spatio Motbertus, ecclesiae huius monachus, curam rerum infra extrave ministrabat, non ecclesiae provectibus, sed regii marsupii mercibus’: HEA ii. 60. ⁴⁴⁶ Milsom, ‘Prerogative Wardship’, 237. ⁴⁴⁷ Glanvill, ix. 1, p. 103. ⁴⁴⁸ Dialogus, 96, 121; Milsom, Legal Framework, 163–4.

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direction of Norman expectations, albeit within a system which remained remorselessly dependent. Cap. 6, which deals with payments for hereditates, confirms that the application of possessive adjectives to the future tenancies of future tenants while those tenancies were still in the lord’s hand was not simply evidence of sloppy drafting. (In the case of cap. 3, it is certain that relief could not have been proferred nor homage done.)⁴⁴⁹ It reads: I remit (condono) all pleas and all debts which were owed to my brother, except for my right farms and except for those which had been agreed for the inheritances of others or for those things (pro eis rebus) which more justly belonged to others. 6. 1: And if anyone has agreed anything for his inheritance, that I remit, and all reliefs (relevationes) which have been agreed for right inheritances (pro rectis hereditatibus).

It does not contradict cap. 2, because it covered only those agreements already struck with William Rufus (which here, unlike cap. 2, are explicitly said to have included ‘reliefs’, at least those for ‘right inheritances’). As in cap. 9, which uses the same language, the clause is concerned only with the remission of past debts.⁴⁵⁰ Even in the midst of a plethora of concessions which many (correctly) feared would be rescinded as soon as he felt secure, Henry did not feel compelled to remit debts arising from deals done with his brother for the ‘inheritances of others or for those things which more justly belonged to others’, although he was prepared to waive all other pleas and debts contracted with Rufus, excepting only his ‘right farms’. What were, according to Norman convention, the ‘inheritances of others’ might be understood to belong ‘more justly’ to those others, just like the res of others. But those ‘others’ had either not been allowed by Rufus to succeed to them, or had perhaps forfeited them to the king, and Henry’s accession would make no difference to the arrangements already agreed with his dead brother. Instead, the hereditates and the res would remain in the hands of those who had successfully bribed Rufus to exercise his discretion over tenure in their favour, against those with more just claims; and the financial terms agreed with Rufus were in no way to be altered. It looks as if the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s obituary of William the Conqueror might just as fittingly be read as a prophecy about the reigns of his two sons in England: The king sold his land on very hard terms—as hard as he could get. Then came somebody else, and offered more than the other had given, and the king let it go to the man who had offered him more. Then came a third, and offered still more, and the king gave it into the hands of the man who offered him most of all . . .⁴⁵¹ ⁴⁴⁹ S. E. Thorne, ‘Henry I’s Coronation Charter, ch. 6’, repr. in id., Essays in English Legal History, 1, argues that the extant text is corrupt, and that payments agreed with Rufus for ‘the heirs [not the inheritances] of others’ were to be exempt from Henry’s remission of debts, together with ‘all rightful reliefs agreed upon for inheritances. If anyone has promised more than is right for his inheritance, that I remit.’ Reconstructing the clause thus involves a dramatic rearrangement of the text for which there is no manuscript warrant. The manuscripts may be late, but they are numerous and (in this respect) consistent. ⁴⁵⁰ ‘Murdra etiam retro ab illa die qua in regem coronatus fui omnia condono . . .’ ⁴⁵¹ ASC (E) s.a. 1086 (recte 1087); cf. above, p. 23 n. 184.

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Yet such terms are not described as reliefs in the ‘edict’. An individual might have agreed a payment of this type with Rufus pro hereditate sua. Reliefs might have been agreed pro rectis hereditatibus. Henry now remitted both types of payment. He professed himself unwilling to continue to pocket the former type unless it had been agreed for something other than the payer’s own ‘inheritance’. Reliefs agreed with Rufus for ‘right inheritances’—which must, by analogy with Henry’s farms, mean those which were due to heirs—were presumably no longer acceptable because they were deemed illegitimate and unjust in the sense implied in cap. 2. In the language of cap. 2, reliefs pledged in such circumstances ransomed rather than relieved land. If one’s own inheritance and a right—or due— inheritance were synonyms, then the implication of this supplementary clause is that Rufus had extracted both types of payment from those to whom, by Norman convention, inheritances were due. Since cap. 2 shows that Henry did not renounce the levying of reliefs per se, those contracted with Rufus must have seemed illegitimate and unjust in terms of their scale. The provisions of cap. 6 therefore mesh with those of cap. 2; they reveal the new king waiving certain debts contracted with his brother, when those debts arose from Rufus’s exploitation of the precariousness of lay tenancy-in-chief. But Henry did not himself renounce such exploitation. Indeed, where it involved the king’s capacity to restructure and reassign tenancies regardless of (Norman) expectations of inheritance, in effect auctioning lands to the highest bidder, he affirmed, even in this conciliatory document, that debts contracted with Rufus would stand. And although he proclaimed in a general way that he would, unlike his brother, exploit his position with moderation, no one could have defined what his one apparently specific undertaking—to levy ‘lawful and just relief ’— meant. This is hardly surprising because, as we have seen, the first extant use of the term relief in this sense in England seems to be the writ of Rufus extracting relief from the subtenants of the vacant see of Worcester, five years before.⁴⁵² A new vocabulary, adapted from Normandy, was having to be coined to describe tenurial realities as the second generation of Norman conquerors succeeded the first. In the apparent absence of any Norman precedents for a scale of reliefs, an attempt was made soon afterwards, in the Leges Henrici Primi, to establish one in terms of the quite inappropriate model of Anglo-Saxon heriots, as laid down in the laws of Cnut.⁴⁵³ As usual, an Old English precedent was sought for a new ⁴⁵² Above, pp. 53–4. ⁴⁵³ LHP 14-14. 6 simply attempts to translate the heriots prescribed in II Cn. 71. The same model was used for Leis Willelme 20-20, 4; but, as a mid-12th-century composition (Wormald, Making of English Law, i. 408–9), it adds (at 20. 2a) that the relief of a ‘vavassur’ who had neither a horse nor arms might be discharged by a payment of 100 shillings, which by the Dialogus de Scaccario had become the standard relief for a single knight’s fee. For Domesday usage, see above p. 56. Abbot Nigel of Burton’s memorandum on his agreement with Orme may indicate that already, at the beginning of the 12th century, certain levels of relief were considered appropriate, for it specifies that Orme’s son should come to the chapter ‘daturus pro relevatione ipsius terrae tantum pecuniae quantum nobilis homo dare debet pro tali terra’: Burton Chartulary, 30. But it would also be possible to read this as another recollection of Anglo-Saxon custom.

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institution;⁴⁵⁴ but the gap between Old English reality and the novel incident with which it was equated served only to emphasize how much had changed as a consequence of the Conquest. For if no fixed scale of reliefs could be devised— and there is no clear evidence for the use of one at this stage⁴⁵⁵—then reliefs were not, like heriots, death-duties enshrined in the written law of persons and determined by legal status. Rather, they were payments offered to a lord in order to persuade him to renew a grant to a claimant who was, according to Norman convention, heir. In other words, they were bribes, and to characterize them, even in prospect, as ‘lawful and just’ is oxymoronic. For who, other than the lord in question, could stipulate the appropriate level for a bribe? The same applies a fortiori to the other types of payment referred to in Henry’s ‘edict’, for which no label had yet been devised. Despite all the spin about ‘heirs’ and ‘inheritances’—in this case terminology which was novel in post-Conquest England, but reassuringly traditional to Norman ears—Henry gave little away, even in terms of professions of good intent to which he could not be bound. As land passed from the conquering generation to their heirs, and acquisitions were ipso facto transformed into inheritances, they did not, as a result, cease to escheat to the lord.⁴⁵⁶ ‘Inheritance’ could not mean, as it did in Normandy, an alodium held independently of a lord, over which he might gradually extend a ‘superiority’.⁴⁵⁷ Relief, and sometimes other payments, had to be proferred whether an heir was succeeding to the acquisition of an ancestor, or being granted a newly constructed tenancy—in other words, an acquisition. It was, after all, the fundamental principle of the post-Conquest settlement that each new tenant had succeeded to an Edwardian antecessor or antecessores in the lands he had newly acquired of the king. The ‘edict’ reveals with a stark honesty born of urgency how kings—and other lords—had exploited the intersection between their own powers over tenure in England and Norman hereditary conventions. They were not, on the whole, looking to deny the claims of heirs, provided that the price was right. Amongst other considerations, they had a vested interest in maintaining continuity of service.⁴⁵⁸ Henry I’s proclamation shows that still in 1100, while there was death, there was, as far as all lords including the king were concerned, certainty of escheat, and therefore hope of profit. It also shows that Henry envisaged that this would remain the case. Any attempt by the new king to abolish this lordly right, rather than simply promising to exercise it with more moderation than his immediate predecessor, and ⁴⁵⁴ Another example is the murdrum fine: see G. S. Garnett, ‘Franci et Angli: The Legal Distinctions Between Peoples After the Conquest’, ANS viii (1985), 109–37. ⁴⁵⁵ S. Painter, Studies in the History of the English Feudal Barony (Baltimore, 1943), 58; Green, Government of England, 83–5, who identifies only one instance in Henry’s surviving pipe roll—PR 31 Henry I, 54—which appears to anticipate the later standard figure of £100 for a barony. But it is exceptional, because it involves the two halves of a divided barony being charged at £50 each. However, see the Burton memorandum quoted above, n. 453. ⁴⁵⁶ Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE, passim. ⁴⁵⁷ Above, p. 46. ⁴⁵⁸ P&M ii. 262–8; Thorne, ‘English Feudalism’, 17–18.

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enjoining his barons to do likewise, would have been inconceivable. For such abolition would deny the lord king’s role as the ultimate source of all tenure in post-Conquest England, which would entail a total transformation in the tenurial structure established in the wake of the Conquest. In turn, it would involve the abolition of this right for all other lords, for as the ‘edict’ repeatedly emphasizes, royal lordship was not an entirely distinct category. On the contrary, those whom the lord king had made lords exercised rights over their men which appeared to be modelled on those which the king exercised over them. As in the case of the antecessor scheme discussed in Part I—which, as we have seen, itself embodied the assumption of dependent tenurial lordship⁴⁵⁹—lordly rights, and therefore lordly interests, were shared. But just as was evident in the case of the antecessor scheme, those shared rights and interests served to underline the necessarily anomalous character of the king’s position as lord. The analogy between the king and other lords was clear to all. It was, however, what differentiated the king’s lordship which occasioned those who drafted the ‘edict’ most difficulty. The implications of its anomalous character were not confined to the discrepancy between the king’s being able to enjoin his tenants-in-chief to do as he said, while not being in any way so bound himself. They were far more wide-ranging. Royal lordship was bound to be anomalous because it was analogous. The dilemma in this regard was at its most acute when the ‘edict’ addressed in the case of the king the issue which absorbed so much of its attention with respect to other lords: the consequences of death. In the circumstances, Henry and those around him could not have been more alert to those consequences. The ‘edict’ includes the first extant attempt to analyse the situation following the death of a king since the development of the analysis underpinning Domesday Book of the nullity of Harold II’s reign and the gap between Edward the Confessor’s death and William’s arrival in England. The urgency of the situation on 5 August 1100, as the text was finalized a mere three days after Rufus’s accidental death, left no time for leisured, metaphysical speculation about the nature of royal power. If William Giffard was in overall charge of drafting the ‘edict’, he seems, as we might expect, to have been of a much more practical cast of mind than the likes of the Norman Anonymous.⁴⁶⁰ His brief was to address immediate problems which could scarcely have been more pressing. The ‘edict’s’ attempt to do so reveals that those problems were so pressing precisely because of the anomalous nature of royal lordship. In the final clause the new king commanded: ‘If anyone has taken anything of mine (aliquid de meo) or of anyone else’s since the death of King William, my brother, let the whole be swiftly returned without emendation. And if anyone shall still retain any of it, he on whom it shall be found shall make grave emendation to me.’ With this heavy ‘emendation’ must be linked the ‘firma pax’ which, in cap. 12, ⁴⁵⁹ Above, pp. 31–3. ⁴⁶⁰ Die Texte des Normannischen Anonymus, ed. K. Pellens, 3 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1966); for a putative link between them, see P. Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, in Law and Government, 111–47, at 142.

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Henry instituted and commanded to be kept ‘henceforth throughout my kingdom’. The ‘edict’ thereby precisely delineated the gap between Rufus’s death and Henry’s accession at his coronation three days later. The threat of ‘emendation’ used to enforce the restoration of anything taken during the interregnum was an attempt at a Latin translation of the Old English penalty of wite, to the reintroduction of which Henry had pledged himself in cap. 8, in place of the newfangled and clearly offensive misericordia which is said to have characterized the reigns of his father and brother.⁴⁶¹ But the sort of royal power over tenure which underlies cap. 14 clearly has nothing to do with Old English wite. Rather, a more plausible precedent may be found in the final canon of Ermenfrid of Sion’s Penitential Ordinance, which ordered the restoration of any ecclesiastical res stolen before the Conqueror’s coronation had ended the period of publicum bellum and established a new security.⁴⁶² As we have seen, the roots of this lay in the amalgamation of the duke’s peace with the truce of God in pre-Conquest Normandy,⁴⁶³ and had nothing to do with the traditional powers of an Old English king. In the earliest, pre-Conquest records of the truce in Normandy, anyone who ‘during that peace’ had taken something belonging to another would be excommunicated until ‘he came to emendation. And if he wished to come to emendation, first he should return what he has snatched, or the price of what he has taken.’⁴⁶⁴ God’s truce, already subject to precise chronological limits in Normandy, had in England been transformed into the king’s peace: it was instituted at the point at which he acceded to the position of king and it expired with his death. And in England it encompassed an ultimate sanction over tenure—Eadmer’s king’s ‘nod’—which no duke had exercised in Normandy. As the Battle monk who wrote the Brevis Relatio expressed it later in Henry’s reign: ‘Whatever happened in other kingdoms,’ anyone who infringed ‘the peace which [William the Conqueror] established in his land’ would have ‘no redemption’ other than exile.⁴⁶⁵ In cap. 12 of the ‘edict’ the Norman emphasis, attested by the Penitential Ordinance, on coronation establishing a period of peace was expressed in terms of the special hand gri1 which the Old English kings had been able to extend over specific individuals.⁴⁶⁶ But here it was to be universal throughout ‘my kingdom’, and the Leges Henrici Primi suggest that its breach placed the culprit in the king’s mercy,⁴⁶⁷ despite cap. 8 and the apparent attempt in cap. 14 to equate the sanction with the traditional penalty of wite. It may be that this is the origin of the general ⁴⁶¹ P&M ii. 514. ⁴⁶² C&S ii. p. 584. ⁴⁶³ Above, p. 6. At the council of Lillebonne it was declared that Duke William had introduced the ‘Pax Dei quae vulgo trevia dicitur’ into Normandy, and that a bishop’s jurisdiction could be supplemented by recourse to the offender’s lord, and, ultimately, to the king’s vicecomes: Orderic iii. 26. ⁴⁶⁴ Concilia Rotomagensis Provinciae, 39. ⁴⁶⁵ BR 35. ⁴⁶⁶ Writs, ed. Harmer, 80; N. D. Hurnard, ‘The Anglo-Norman Franchises’, EHR lxiv (1949), 289–323, 433–60, at 303–4. ⁴⁶⁷ LHP 10. 1 states that it is a ‘singular’ royal plea; 13. 1 that its breach placed the culprit ‘in misericordia regis’. Ordinary gri 1brece was a ‘shared’ plea, and was not extended by the king in this fashion; the penalty was 100 shillings: 12. 2.

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king’s peace which came to play such an important part in English common law. On the basis of his ‘firm peace’, King Henry appears to have had the retrospective power to order that those who had been disseised during the interregnum be reseised, regardless of the fact that they had been disseised at a time when his peace did not yet exist. The terms of cap. 14 indicate that the ‘edict’ confronted the consequences of Rufus’s death by drawing a partial analogy with the death of an ecclesiastical tenant-in-chief. They are foreshadowed in a writ of Rufus, dating from 1096–7, ordering that the monks of St Cuthbert be reseised of anything of which they had been disseised since the day on which the previous bishop of Durham, William of St-Calais, had been alive and dead: and if since the death of that bishop they have been disseised, I command that they should be reseised without delay. And if anyone shall disseise them or do them any injury henceforth, I want you to know that he will infringe my peace which covers them. And he shall make emendation to me for the infringement of my peace.⁴⁶⁸

Rufus extended his peace before the new bishop had entered: he may have been implying that he was in some sense the successor of the previous bishop, as we have seen him doing a year earlier in the case of Worcester.⁴⁶⁹ In another writ he also confirmed the custodian of the see, ‘G. Dunelmensis’, as holding of him what the deceased bishop had held on the day of his death.⁴⁷⁰ It seems that it was the extension of the king’s special peace which formed the basis of the retrospective order to restore immediately anything taken during the vacancy, and which provided the sanction against disseisins perpetrated thenceforth. In 1100, in caps. 12 and 14 of Henry’s ‘edict’, when the king was himself successor, an attempt was made to apply this type of measure to the whole kingdom, although in this instance future disseisins were not mentioned. In the first clause of the document Henry had given an undertaking that, henceforth, the status quo on the death of a previous bishop or abbot would hold not just for the church’s dominium, but also for the possessions of its homines.⁴⁷¹ Exactly the same was true of the king in the final clause. Henry extended his firm peace over his whole kingdom, and confirmed the possessions not only of those who were understood to become his barons at that point, but (apparently) of everyone else, including subtenants. As we have seen, concern for the lot of subtenants was a constant refrain of the ‘edict’. It shows the enduring influence of the homage done to William the Conqueror at Salisbury in 1086.⁴⁷² More importantly in the present regard, the use of the day of the previous king’s death as a terminus in the definition of legitimate tenure, itself derived from the Canon Law model of antecessor and successor, was fundamental to ⁴⁶⁸ RRAN i. no. 396 (⫽ van Caenegem, Royal Writs no. 67); cf. ii. no. 767, which reproduces it almost verbatim; also i. no. 481. ⁴⁶⁹ Above, p. 54. ⁴⁷⁰ RRAN i. no. 412 (1096–7) (⫽ Bishop and Chaplais, Facsimiles, pl. X). ⁴⁷¹ Cf. Anselm’s concern about Rufus’s filling of Canterbury subtenancies during the vacancy following Lanfranc’s death, evidenced in ep. 176, discussed below, pp. 121–3. ⁴⁷² Above, pp. 83–6.

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the structure of tenure in post-Conquest England, and suggested some sort of analogy between bishopric or abbacy and kingdom. What were the implications of that partial analogy for the interregnum itself? Henry’s very first undertaking was to: ‘make the holy church of God free, in such a way that I shall not sell it, nor place it at farm, nor, on the death of an archbishop, bishop, or abbot, shall I accept anything from the dominium of a church or from its homines, until a successor has entered into it (in eam ingrediatur).’⁴⁷³ In renouncing the sort of ‘unjust exactions’ decried by Eadmer and by Rufus’s obituarist in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Henry appeared to be much more specific than in his parallel undertaking about how he would exercise his lordly powers on the death of a lay tenant-in-chief (and about how they should act likewise with respect to their ‘men’.) The king said nothing about how he would use the lands and men of a dead lay tenant-in-chief while they were in his hand. Yet the precision of the apparent concessions in the case of ‘the holy church of God’ was deceptive, for Henry continued to ‘accept’ the issues of vacant sees and abbacies—indeed, in many cases he simply took over a vacancy from Rufus.⁴⁷⁴ He cannot simply have been disclaiming exactions from the homines of vacant churches, such as the Worcester relief, because he undertook to ‘accept’ nothing from such a church’s dominium either.⁴⁷⁵ It is more likely that this was one of those empty pledges—like the renunciation of seigneurial wardship⁴⁷⁶—which became a dead letter almost as soon as it had been proclaimed in the shire courts. Whatever Henry was promising, the reference to the entry of a successor at the end of the vacancy shows that making ‘the church of God free’ did not amount to renouncing the custody of vacant churches; it meant that he would not exploit vacant churches as his brother had done. He did not renounce escheat of secular tenancies-in-chief either.⁴⁷⁷ But the parallel between the two types of escheat was in other respects inexact, for the ‘edict’ recognized—as Eadmer did—that a church continued to have dominium and homines while it was in the king’s hand following the death of its bishop or abbot. The king, temporarily, was immediate lord, but they remained in some sense the church’s. This was impossible in the case of a secular tenancyin-chief, where, as we have seen, there was no undying abstraction corresponding to the church, just a conventional understanding that the land was already in ⁴⁷³ Cap. 1. 1. ⁴⁷⁴ Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, 170: ‘Willelmus Rufus habuit vacacionem abbacie per duos annos et Henricus rex per unum annum et amplius.’ Of the two sees (other than the arguable case of Canterbury) vacant on Rufus’s death, Henry filled Winchester on the day of his coronation, but kept Salisbury in his own hand until 1102. Of the eleven vacant abbeys, two (Ely and Bury St Edmunds) were filled on the same day, but the others (Abingdon, St Augustine’s, Canterbury, Cerne, Chertsey, Glastonbury, Milton, Muchelney, Peterborough, New Minster, Winchester) remained in the king’s hand: for details of the arrangements made on 5 August 1100, see Southern, Biographer, 168; id., Portrait, 292. For evidence of Henry’s continuing exploitation of vacant churches, despite his promises, see Howell, Regalian Right, 24–9; J. A. Green, ‘ “Praeclarum et magnificum antiquitatis monumentum”: The Earliest Surviving Pipe Roll’, HR lv (1982), 1–17, at 6–7. ⁴⁷⁵ Howell, Regalian Right, 23–4. ⁴⁷⁶ Cap. 4. ⁴⁷⁷ Cap. 2.

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some sense the heir’s.⁴⁷⁸ This necessary incongruity between the treatment of escheat in ecclesiastical and secular tenancy-in-chief points to the way in which the analogy between the ‘edict’s’ treatment of the death of an ecclesiastical tenantin-chief and the death of a king could only be partial. It is so in two linked respects. First, by definition the kingdom could not escheat to any lord, as the churches held by bishops or abbots did to the king on the deaths of their incumbents (and as the lands held by a lay tenant-in-chief did). For the king had no lord. There was, therefore, no question of any lord ‘accepting’ anything from a dead king’s dominium or homines during an interregnum, in the way that Henry voluntarily undertook not to do henceforth following the deaths of clerical tenants-inchief.⁴⁷⁹ On the contrary, anyone who during the interregnum had ‘taken’ (capere) anything of the king’s or anyone else’s—not just the tenants-in-chief—would ipso facto have been acting wrongfully, unlike the lord king who might voluntarily remit during a vacancy what he was nevertheless entitled to ‘accept’.⁴⁸⁰ Moreover, whoever drafted the ‘edict’ struggled—and failed—to conceive of how pleas, debts, right farms, payments offered for the inheritances of others or for things which more justly belonged to others, and payments and reliefs offered for ‘right inheritances’, all of which had been due to Rufus,⁴⁸¹ had not lapsed with Rufus’s death, but had somehow bridged the gap, and started to be due to Henry at his coronation. For it could only be on such a basis that Henry could remit some of them, and reserve others. The same must be true of the murdrum fines which he remitted ‘prior to that day on which I was crowned king’.⁴⁸² And in this instance the fact that they had somehow remained due during the interregnum is made quite explicit. Second, the opening announcement of the ‘edict’ underscores that in the case of the king there could be nothing analogous to an undying church. It states: ‘Know that by the mercy of God and the common counsel of the barons of the kingdom of England, I have been crowned king of the said kingdom.’ The ‘edict’ is full of references to Henry’s barones and homines.⁴⁸³ They are assumed to be his from the moment at which he became king, long before many of them could have done homage to him. It seems that homage, like pleas, debts, right farms, reliefs and other payments, and murdrum fines, was understood to have somehow carried over the interregnum. But at the precise point in time covered in this clause, those who devised the ‘edict’ clearly did not feel that barons, who, like a conventional honorial court, are presented as offering their ‘common counsel’ that Henry should be crowned, could be described as Henry’s, for Henry was not ⁴⁷⁸ Above, p. 109. ⁴⁷⁹ That accipere implied a legitimate expectation on the king’s part, which he voluntarily renounced, is suggested by cap. 3, where Henry undertook not to ‘accept’ anything from a baron in return for his licentia for that baron to marry off a female relative. ⁴⁸⁰ Caps. 1. 1; 3. 1. ⁴⁸¹ Cap. 6. ⁴⁸² Cap. 9. ⁴⁸³ Caps. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10; and for the Conqueror’s barons, cap. 13.

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yet king. Since barons were tenants-in-chief,⁴⁸⁴ a status which depended on a personal relationship with a king, they could not be described as Rufus’s either, because Rufus was dead. And since the king had no lord, they could not have temporarily become such a lord’s immediate tenants. If Henry’s succession was to be presented as having been prompted by the counsel of a conventional honorial court—which was how many of the provisions of the ‘edict’ were presented⁴⁸⁵— then some other solution had to be found. In desperation, whoever drafted this clause coined the neologism barones regni Anglie, perhaps drawing an analogy with his attribution of homines to vacant churches in the following clause.⁴⁸⁶ But he was well aware that the regnum could not have barons in the same way as a vacant church retained its homines or dominium, precisely because the kingdom was not an undying abstraction, the continuous life of which was clearly defined in Canon—or any other—Law. So he dropped the neologism as soon as Henry was crowned: henceforth the barons are ‘my barons’.⁴⁸⁷ The regnum could not act as a bearer of rights and duties previously exercised by William Rufus, in the interim before Henry acceded to it and began to exercise them anew. In the absence of a lord for the king, coronation was the equivalent of the ingressum of an ecclesiastical successor, which, as Eadmer shows, was effected by the king’s acceptance of the prelate-elect’s homage.⁴⁸⁸ But Henry did not ‘enter into’ the kingdom as a prelateelect ‘entered into’ his church. In this respect, there was perhaps a closer analogy between interregnum and the escheat of a secular tenancy-in-chief (a process which the ‘edict’ failed to analyse). As we have seen, cap. 14 refers to ‘aliquid de meo’ which might have been taken during the interregnum. If this was, or included, land, it could only have been Henry’s in the sense in which land in escheat to a lord might be described as the dead tenant’s heir’s.⁴⁸⁹ But of course the kingdom could not escheat into the hand of a lord, and it began to be described as meum only with Henry’s coronation.⁴⁹⁰ So the analogy is again imperfect. The conceptual framework in terms of which those who drafted the ‘edict’ attempted to make sense of the void of interregnum could not fit it, because the king was an anomaly. He was the necessary contradiction of the terms of the system which depended, immediately and ultimately, on him, because he was the only dominus ⁴⁸⁴ This is clearly the meaning of baro in this document, although it may originally have been used to render the Old English thegn. ⁴⁸⁵ Caps. 3, 10, 13. ⁴⁸⁶ For the phrase barones regni, see Eadmer, HN 83; CBA 142. (I am indebted to John Prestwich for the latter reference.) In both these cases it is used in a loose sense, not the precise one which I attribute to the draftsman on the strength of his dropping it as soon as Henry was crowned. A writ of Henry I, issued perhaps at Christmas 1100, is addressed ‘omnibus primatibus suis ac fidelibus tocius regni Anglie’: RRAN ii. no. 507; a charter of Henry I, no. 1629 (1109 ⫻ 29), refers in passing to the ‘barons of the honour of Ramsey’. ⁴⁸⁷ Note that in the London version Henry is said to be crowned ‘communi consilio baronum meorum regni Anglie’: Manchester, John Rylands Library MS. lat. 155, fols. 75v–77r; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 70, fols. 76v–77r; London, BL Cotton MS. Claudius D ii, fo. 47r–v. ⁴⁸⁸ Eadmer, VA 93, makes Anselm describe his accession as archbishop as introitus meus; ingressum is used of a lay tenant-in-chief in Dialogus, 121. ⁴⁸⁹ Above, p. 109. ⁴⁹⁰ Caps. 11, 12.

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who was not in turn someone else’s homo, holding by dependent tenure. The logical problem was as simple as it was insoluble. It was more than an academic point. The circumstances in which the document was drawn up indicate that interregnum was understood to be the most pressing of practical problems. The speed with which a final text was produced—probably with an accompanying Old English translation for the benefit of Anglophones attending the shire courts⁴⁹¹—is a forceful reminder of the fact that all this effort was devoted, in a crisis, to trying to make sense of a period which lasted for a mere three days. Far from being glossed over in the rush of events—which included riding twenty-two miles from the scene of Rufus’s death to Winchester, and a seventy-five mile dash from Winchester to Westminster⁴⁹²—it was the principal focus of concern, precisely because of its practical implications. The need and failed attempt to make sense of it in terms of escheat serve to emphasize the intimate but necessarily incongruent relationship in post-Conquest England between the king’s lordship and that of his ‘men’. The nature of that relationship is further illuminated by some of the exceptionally detailed evidence for the case with which this Part began: namely, Anselm’s elevation to the see of Canterbury.

THE L ANDS OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY Eadmer is unique among the great historians of the early twelfth century in that his direct speech does not take the form of pseudo-classical rhetoric, on the model of the historians of antiquity. It gives every indication of verisimilitude, as if he took notes, as Anselm’s amanuensis, of what he heard said.⁴⁹³ We know from his own account that he took great pains to reconstruct precisely what Anselm had said on a particular occasion, rather than eliding it in his memory with similar statements made on other occasions.⁴⁹⁴ He was very concerned that he might have failed to record Anselm’s words accurately. His punctiliousness was more than just scholarly: ‘It is a shocking thing for anyone knowingly to write what is false in sacred histories, for the soul of the writer is slain every time they are read or listened to.’⁴⁹⁵ In the Historia Novorum he reports that in August 1093 Anselm, as archbishop-elect, made one of his misconceived appeals to William Rufus’s better ⁴⁹¹ Prior to the fire of 1731, the Cotton Library included a version of Henry’s ‘edict’ Latine et Saxonice: Holt, ‘Constitutional Tradition’, 15–16. ⁴⁹² C. W. Hollister, ‘The Strange Death of William Rufus’, in his Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London, 1986), 59–75, at 64. ⁴⁹³ Southern, Portrait, 247, 424–6. Southern (Biographer, 198) points out, however, that Eadmer did not act as Anselm’s secretary. ⁴⁹⁴ Memorials of St Anselm, ed. R. W. Southern and F. S. Schmitt OSB, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, i (Oxford, 1969), 31, 273. Eadmer had been asked to reconstruct a sermon which Anselm had delivered at Cluny. ⁴⁹⁵ VA 149.

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nature. Anselm confessed to the king that he was still uncertain about whether he should ‘take up (suscipere)’ the archbishopric: But if reason should lead me to take it up, I wish, in short, that you should know beforehand what I want you to do to me. I want you to restore to the church of Canterbury, without any plea or argument, all the lands which that church—to the rule of which I have been elected—held in the time of Archbishop Lanfranc of blessed memory; and with regard to other lands which the same church had prior to his time, but which have been lost and which it has not yet recovered, I want you to grant me right and judgement.⁴⁹⁶

Anselm was attempting to set preconditions for his acceptance of the archbishopric: that he should hold the Canterbury lands exactly as his predecessor had held them, and that there should be some sort of review of lands lost prior to Lanfranc’s archiepiscopate which had not been recovered in the interim—at Penenden Heath, for instance.⁴⁹⁷ The king took advice, and agreed that all those lands ‘with which the church had been seised in Lanfranc’s time I restore to you now as they were then; but as to those which the church did not have under him, I do not make any agreement with you at present’.⁴⁹⁸ He appeared thereby to have acceded to Anselm’s requests. But a few days later, at Windsor, he attempted to qualify this concession: he pressed Anselm to ‘give up for love of him’ certain lands of the church which, ‘after the death of Lanfranc, he had given to men of his to be held for fixed service by hereditary right’. Anselm refused. Eadmer and William of Malmesbury suggest that by remaining steadfast he hoped, at the eleventh hour, to avoid becoming archbishop after all.⁴⁹⁹ Although neither chronicler records any resolution of the dispute, Eadmer strongly implies that the king again relented, for Anselm became ‘homo regis for use of the land’ and the king ordered that he ‘be seised of the whole archbishopric, as Lanfranc had been in his time’.⁵⁰⁰ That is certainly what Anselm understood to have been the case, according to the letter he wrote on the subject in January 1095 to Hugh, archbishop of Lyons.⁵⁰¹ Yet Rufus had subsequently raised again the issue of the lands which Lanfranc had held ‘until the day of his death, during [Rufus’s] father’s and his own time’, but which he, Rufus, had ‘in part given and in part planned to give to his knights’ while the church of Canterbury was in his hand. A letter of early 1098 to Pope Urban II states that not only had Rufus not ‘returned’ to Anselm lands which Lanfranc had held, and which he, Rufus, had given to his knights while the ⁴⁹⁶ HN 39–40. ⁴⁹⁷ Above, pp. 14–15. Eadmer, HN 12, records that Lanfranc so brought his tact to bear on the Conqueror that the king had restored to the church of Canterbury ‘almost all the lands which were of the right of that church which Normans had usurped when they first seized the country, and even certain others which had been lost for various reasons prior to their arrival’. This could constitute only a partial precedent for Anselm’s demand, because the peculiar status of Stigand meant that Lanfranc’s immediate antecessor was Robert of Jumièges, not Stigand. The status quo at Stigand’s deposition could not, therefore, constitute a terminus. ⁴⁹⁸ HN 40. Note that in this instance the church of Canterbury, rather than Lanfranc, is said to have been seised. On this necessary ambiguity, see Garnett, ‘Crown’, 194–5. ⁴⁹⁹ HN 41; GP 83–4. ⁵⁰⁰ HN 41. ⁵⁰¹ Ep. 176.

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archbishopric was in his hands, but also that he had continued to give others, contrary to Anselm’s wishes, at his own whim.⁵⁰² There is no indication of precisely when the king had made these additional grants, but it is strongly suggested that they happened after Anselm had acquired an interest in the archbishopric, and almost certainly during the four years between his becoming archbishop and the date of the letter. In his letter to Hugh of Lyons, Anselm preserves evidence that Rufus had not simply acted according to his own whim: ‘Before the Normans invaded England, English knights are said to have held from the archbishop of Canterbury and had died without heirs’; the king ‘therefore asserted that he could constitute heirs to them’. The king’s justification seems, therefore, not to have been that he might do anything he liked with the demesne of the church during a vacancy, but that the manors in question had not been part of the demesne prior to the Conquest. In cases where Edwardian lay tenants of the archbishop had died without heirs, the king was in his view entitled, while the church was in his hand, to grant those manors to new military tenants. If Anselm’s account of the king’s reasoning may be trusted, Rufus had shown considerable forensic ingenuity in exploiting a loophole which Anselm had unwittingly opened by requesting a review of Canterbury lands which had been lost prior to Lanfranc’s time. In other words, the king was countering Anselm’s claim to everything Lanfranc had held on the day of his death with an invocation of the status quo T.R.E. Rufus’s argument seems to have been too subtle by half for Anselm, despite the fact that Anselm’s letter is the only source for it, for he characterizes the king’s actions with the oxymoron voluntaria iusticia.⁵⁰³ Yet it is his own account which indicates that the king had not acted arbitrarily, but had simply invoked a different terminus. In Anselm’s view, the matter was quite straightforward:‘The king gave me the archbishopric as Archbishop Lanfranc had held it until the end of his life; and now he is taking away from the church and from me what it and that archbishop had held peacefully for so long, and which he himself gave to me.’ He was not, like Abbot Walter of Evesham in 1078, refusing to confirm grants which his predecessor had made out of church lands,⁵⁰⁴ but such grants made by the king since the death of his predecessor—and it should be noted that the king seems to have regarded such confirmation by the new archbishop as essential. As Lanfranc’s successor, Anselm felt duty bound to ensure that the possessions of the church of Canterbury should at the very least be exactly as they had been on the day of Lanfranc’s death. Anselm’s graphic description of that clerical duty in more general terms is reproduced by Eadmer in the Vita Anselmi: ‘that he should protect and preserve the res æcclesiae manfully and justly against all men, and yet try to bring nothing from another under the dominium of the church by injustice.’⁵⁰⁵ If Anselm failed in this ⁵⁰² Ep. 206 (Opera Omnia, iv. 99–101), quoted in full in HN 91–3. ⁵⁰³ Ep. 176; cf. VA 81: Anselm was distracted ‘propter terras aecclesiae quas quidam maligni iniuria rege non prohibente invadebant’. ⁵⁰⁴ Above, pp. 87–9. ⁵⁰⁵ VA 76.

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particular instance, then the losses to the church of Canterbury would become permanent: I am certain that this archbishopric will not be given to anyone after me other than as I shall hold it on the day of my death; and if another king should come during my lifetime, he will concede to me what he finds me holding. If, therefore, I shall hold the archbishopric diminished up to the day of my death, in that way the church will lose through me.⁵⁰⁶

Although Anselm appears not to have grasped the significance of Rufus’s appeal to the status quo T.R.E., he expected that the terms on which the king had given the archbishopric to him—a statement which would in itself have grated with a reformer like his correspondent, Hugh of Lyons⁵⁰⁷—should be definitive. Nothing in his Norman experience would have led him to form such an expectation, so he must have mastered at least some of the idiosyncracies of post-Conquest English tenure with alacrity. He had realized that unless he secured a reversal of the king’s attempt at a unilateral revision of those terms, then the possessions of the church of Canterbury might in future be redefined either as what a new king, on his accession, found Anselm holding and confirmed to him, or as what Anselm held on the day of his own death.⁵⁰⁸ Other than the evidence for the redemption of land in the aftermath of the Conquest, this is the first explicit acknowledgement of the fact that a new king might be expected formally to ‘concede’, or confirm, existing tenants-in-chief, presumably lay as well as clerical, in their tenures on his accession.⁵⁰⁹ Henceforth the tenancy, even if it were clerical, might consist only of what the new king ‘conceded’. Anselm’s letter thus raises the question of the relationship between the date of an antecessor’s death and what might, for want of a more appropriate description, be termed tenure of the position of king. It is not clear whether there was a need in this case to come up with an answer. The list of Canterbury knights in the Domesday Monachorum suggests either that the king relented on the issue of the subinfeudations he had made during the vacancy of 1089–93, or that Anselm was exaggerating; both Eadmer and Anselm himself state that Rufus remained obdurate.⁵¹⁰ In any event the need turned out ⁵⁰⁶ Ep. 176; cf. 210. ⁵⁰⁷ A point made by Southern, Portrait, 250. ⁵⁰⁸ For the latter possibility, see RRAN ii. no. 1417 (?Oct., 1123) which proclaimed that Henry I had conceded that William, archbishop of Canterbury and Anselm’s successor-but-one, could ‘seise in his demesne all the lands which belonged to his archbishopric, whoever held them, as they were in demesne on the day when Archbishop Anselm was alive and dead, unless exempted by the archbishop’; cf. no. 885 (24 May 1108), both cited by Hudson, LLL 242–3. ⁵⁰⁹ For the practice, see William Rufus’s early writ in favour of Baldwin, long-lived abbot of Bury St Edmunds, which ‘concedes’ Baldwin his abbacy ‘as King Edward and after him King William my father conceded to him’; cf. a complementary writ conceding ‘St Edmund all those lands and all those men with their lands that he had in the time of King Edward and in the time of King William my father’: RRAN i. nos. 293, 294 [⫽ Douglas, Feudal Documents, nos. 13, 15], discussed by Sharpe, ‘Use of Writs’, 275–6. For the practice under the Angevin kings, see J. C. Holt, ‘Magna Carta 1215–1217: The Legal and Social Context’, repr. in CE 291–306, at 300. ⁵¹⁰ Domesday Monachorum, 64; however, in ep. 206 Anselm denies that Rufus had returned to him as Lanfranc had held them the lands which he, Rufus, had granted during the vacancy, and says

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not to be pressing. But the possibility envisaged by Anselm of a new king ‘coming’ during his lifetime did eventually arise. Eadmer’s description of events subsequent to Henry I’s coronation indicates why the date of a new king’s accession might assume so much importance in the definition of tenure-in-chief, even clerical tenure-in-chief. Anselm received letters from the new king pleading for him to return to England, and saying that ‘all the business of the kingdom hung on his nod’.⁵¹¹ But of course the coronation was one item of business which could not be allowed to wait on the archbishop’s nod. On Anselm’s return, almost seven weeks later, Eadmer reports that Henry I repeated his fulsome excuses for pressing ahead with an immediate consecration in the archbishop’s absence—reasons which Anselm seems fully to have appreciated, despite his otherwise zealous defence of the traditional privileges of Canterbury—but added a request that Anselm should do him homage ‘according to the custom of his antecessores . . . and receive the archbishopric from his hand’.⁵¹² Anselm, accompanied by Eadmer, had of course been present at the Easter Council in St Peter’s in 1099. Invoking Urban II’s decree on clerical homage and lay investiture, which they had both heard at the council, Anselm refused. Henry’s demand that Anselm should do homage and receive the archbishopric anew from his hand could have meant one of two things. Either the new king was implicitly sanctioning the escheat in 1097 of the church of Canterbury into Rufus’s dominium (and Rufus’s subsequent annulment of all Anselm’s actions ‘from when he had first come into the archbishopric’) consequent on Anselm’s retreat into exile.⁵¹³ Or Henry regarded homage to and confirmatory regrant by a new king as essential, even in the case of clerical tenants-in-chief, as explicitly suggested with respect to confirmation by Anselm himself in his letter of 1095 to Hugh of Lyons. If the latter were the case, and the relationship of which lay and clerical tenure in chief was an aspect had to be re-created with each new king, then the ‘edict’ which Henry issued on his coronation day shows that such renewal could already be presumed in most instances. For, as we have already seen, Henry’s homines were assumed to exist from the moment of his coronation,⁵¹⁴ even though most of them could not have become his homines, in a formal, ceremonial sense, until later. Furthermore, Anselm’s letter suggests that even if renewal had nothing about the return of the other lands which the king had granted (presumably subsequently) without Anselm’s consent. HN 93 confirms ep. 206. ⁵¹¹ VA 127. ⁵¹² HN 120; for his original apology see ep. 212. ⁵¹³ VA 100; HN 88–9, 111. That the period of Anselm’s exile was regarded as a quasi-vacancy is shown by Anselm’s prophecy, following his investiture, that the church of Canterbury would again fall into widowhood during his lifetime (p. 37); cf. ep. 210: ‘he [Rufus] usurped the entire archbishopric and turned it to his own use’; he should be made to ‘restore to me the church lands and whatever he took from the archbishopric’ before the new pope, Paschal II, should contemplate ordering Anselm to return to England. But Eadmer was quite clear that although the archbishopric was in the king’s hands, Anselm remained archbishop: the pope told Anselm that even if the king were to prevent him from returning to England ‘iure tamen Christianitatis semper illius archiepiscopus esto, potestatem ligandi atque solvendi super eam [scil. England] dum vixeris obtinens, et insignibus pontificalibus more summi pontificis ubicunque fueris utens’. ⁵¹⁴ Above, p. 114.

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become a formality, the new king as lord had some latitude in setting the precise terms on which it was made, even in the case of an ecclesiastical honour. That other lords shared that discretion to some degree is indicated by Rufus’s concern that Anselm, on becoming archbishop, should sanction the subtenancies which he, Rufus, had created on Canterbury lands during the vacancy. He was anxious that Anselm should not act as Walter, the new abbot of Evesham, had done in 1078. It seems likely that the king envisaged that Anselm would exercise his lordly latitude and sanction the new subtenancies by receiving the homage of his grantees. The king’s grant during the vacancy does not appear in itself to have been sufficient, perhaps suggesting that he did not himself take homage from his knights in such circumstances. According to the Vita Anselmi, which, as we have seen, is coy about mentioning homage, wicked men had unjustly ‘usurped lands of the church with the king not objecting’. According to the Historia Novorum, the king had given lands of the church ‘to his [men], to be held by them by hereditary right for fixed service’.⁵¹⁵ If Rufus had not taken homage in the case of these men, then it seems unlikely that he would have done so from sitting subtenants during a vacancy, like the Worcester tenants of 1095. A later king ordered such tenants to do fidelitas and servitia to the custodian he appointed, but not, apparently, homage.⁵¹⁶ The tension between the practical necessity for some form of continuity in the position of king, precision about the points at which tenure of that position ceased and began, and the manner in which both these factors meshed with similarly precise definition of the span of other (dependent) tenures, can be probed in more depth.

INTERREGNUM, VACANCY, AND TENURE As we have seen, on his succession to Rufus, King Henry laid down as a makeshift guideline that all men—not just tenants-in-chief—should be seised as they had been on the day of his brother’s death. But this was an ad hoc measure to enforce the restoration of anything taken during the interregnum; it was not an attempt to establish a new terminus by reference to which all tenures would henceforth be redefined. In other words, although the influence of Domesday Book’s T.R.E. is evident, the day of Rufus’s death was not intended to bear a comparable significance. With regard to matters other than land and possibly other possessions snatched during the interregnum, Henry’s ‘edict’ frequently denounces rather ⁵¹⁵ VA 81; HN 40; cf. 93. ⁵¹⁶ Holt, ‘1086’, CE 51–2, asks whether the king would have received homage from sitting subtenants when their mesne lords forfeited, and implies that the balance of probability lies against it. But fresh grants by Rufus on an escheated tenancy-in-chief were another matter, although presenting them as successions to Edwardian antecessores might have made them seem similar. For Henry II ordering subtenants of the abbey of Abingdon to do fidelitas to his custodian during a vacancy, see HEA ii. 354 (I am indebted to John Hudson for this reference).

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than prescribes what had obtained in Rufus’s time.⁵¹⁷ It sometimes pledges a restoration of the status quo under William the Conqueror⁵¹⁸ and/or Edward the Confessor and earlier antecessores,⁵¹⁹ and sometimes its abolition.⁵²⁰ The point at which exactiones started to be ‘unjust’ and consuetudines ‘evil’⁵²¹ varied from exaction to exaction and custom to custom, perhaps because the ‘edict’ was the product of brisk discussion among Henry’s inner circle. Evidently there was no agreement on a single, definitive date for the expiry of justice and goodness. His urgent pragmatism in this regard was far removed from the sycophancy of the author of the Quadripartitus, who, a few years later, and deliberately echoing the terms of the ‘edict’, failed to make any reference at all to William Rufus, but lauded Henry for restoring the law of King Edward, ‘strengthened as it was by the emendationes introduced by his blessed father . . . And we may see all the streams of probity separated hither and thither into dry rivulets here come together into one channel of goodness’.⁵²² When bureaucrats are not wrestling with an urgent political crisis, as had been the case between 2 and 5 August 1100, they can easily slip into oleaginous vacuity.⁵²³ In the case of tenure, it is clear that the power to define it by reference to the status quo at specific points in time lay ultimately with the king. For instance, on 24 May 1108 Henry informed Anselm ‘and all of England’ that he had granted the archbishopric of York to his chaplain Thomas, to hold: as any antecessor of his . . . had held in the time of King Edward and of my father, and as Archbishop Thomas [his antecessor] had it on the day when he was alive and dead. And whatever lands the aforesaid archbishop held in his dominium on the day when he was alive and dead, I will and command that this Thomas should have and hold all of them in his dominium. And if anything has been added to the dominium of the archbishopric since the death of Archbishop Thomas, I will and command that this Archbishop Thomas should have and hold it similarly.⁵²⁴

Anything which might have been added since the death of the chosen antecessor, either during the intervening pontificate of Gerard or while the vacant church was in the king’s hands, was to be held as if the antecessor had held it on the day of his death. In catch-all fashion, the king here lumped together several standard termini for the definition of an ecclesiastical tenancy-in-chief when it was regranted to a new tenant, including the most conventional one of the antecessor’s death. But he exempted the new archbishop from their strict application because, unusually, the demesne of the church of York had been augmented, rather than depleted, in the interim.⁵²⁵ ⁵¹⁷ Caps. 2, 6, 8, and, by implication, most of the rest of the document. ⁵¹⁸ Caps. 10, 13. ⁵¹⁹ Caps. 8, 9, 13. ⁵²⁰ Caps. 8 (William the Conqueror), 5 (Edward the Confessor). ⁵²¹ Cap. 1. ⁵²² Gesetze, i. 535; Sharpe, ‘Prefaces of Quadripartitus’, 167–8. ⁵²³ For what can be divined about the author, who also compiled the LHP (pp. 12–28), see Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, 138–45. ⁵²⁴ RRAN ii. no. 885. ⁵²⁵ Cf. ibid., no. 1417, discussed above, p. 123; also nos. 650 (24 May 1103) (Abbot Bernard of Ramsey is to hold as well as any abbot before him, and is specifically authorized to recover demesne

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Elsewhere he forbade that a bishop of Norwich be impleaded for any land of which his antecessor had been seised on the day when he, the antecessor, had been alive and dead, ‘unless I have ordered it by my own mouth’. Furthermore, the king ordered that the bishop should immediately be reseised of any such land of which he had been disseised.⁵²⁶ Estates which the last abbot of Tavistock had unjustly given to his brother should be restored to the abbey; no one was to hold them except those to whom the last abbot’s predecessor had granted them for military service.⁵²⁷ The monks of Tavistock should take back into the church’s demesne any lands granted away since the death of William I.⁵²⁸ As Anselm recognized in his letter to Hugh of Lyons, if the king wished to define tenure, for whatever reason, by reference to the status quo on the death of his own antecessor, rather than that on the death of his new tenant’s antecessor, or from the time of his own accession, then as the source of all tenure, the precise limits of his tenure could cut across the dependent claims of the tenant as defined in the most recent—or any other—regrant. It was precisely because the king was not seised by anyone, that the points at which his antecessor had died or at which he himself might be deemed to have ‘entered’ could assume a greater significance than the deaths or successions of any of his tenants. Their tenures would be defined by the king, as lord, in new or renewed grants; and the same would be true of lesser lords’ grants to subtenants. The king’s tenure could not be so defined, because he held of no one. And yet, of course, the template for all such definition of tenure had been set by William the Conqueror’s claim to have succeeded to what Edward the Confessor had left on the day of his death, the prescriptive implications of which had been fully worked out by the time of the Domesday Survey. The king himself was both model for and necessary exception to the terms of the tenurial system which depended ultimately upon him. Henry I confirmed tenures according to the terms of reference adopted in cap. 14 of the ‘edict’ issued on the day of his coronation,⁵²⁹ or by invocation of the status quo on the day of his father’s, rather than his brother’s, death.⁵³⁰ Entitlement to rights might also be fixed as at the death of Edward the Confessor.⁵³¹ Many of these definitive royal rulings must have been determined by earlier documents, often now lost, which were being used as the basis for given away or exchanged by his antecessor); 1101 (Nov.–Dec. 1115) (Geoffrey, the new bishop of Hereford, is authorized to recover whatever had been lost since the time of Bishop Robert Losinga (d. 1095), whether in prebenda or otherwise). ⁵²⁶ RRAN ii. no. 1610 (c.1129). ⁵²⁷ Ibid., no. 1131 (2 Apr. 1116). ⁵²⁸ Ibid., ii. no. 1663 (1129 ⫻ 30). ⁵²⁹ Ibid., nos. 522 (?21 Apr. 1101); 541 (Aug. 1101); 564 (8 Feb. 1102); 747 (?Mar. 1106). ⁵³⁰ Ibid., no. 1374 (1115–22); Essex Record Office, Chelmsford, D/DBy Q19 no. 9, fo. 20v (not calendared in RRAN ii), cited and discussed by C. P. Lewis, ‘The King and Eye: A Study in AngloNorman Politics’, EHR civ (1989), 569–89, at 580, n. 5; cf. RRAN ii. no. 1406 (c.1113 ⫻ 23), confirming certain possessions to the monks of Eye ‘just as fully as they held on the day when my father was alive and dead and on the day when Robert Malet was alive and dead’. ⁵³¹ RRAN ii. no. 1420 (?1124).

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regrant or confirmation.⁵³² A terminus might be selected because the king wished to render invalid developments subsequent to it—this happened when the monks of St Cuthbert were granted certain lands in 1100 as they had been held at the death of Bishop William of St-Calais, thereby excising any reference to the period when the now imprisoned Ranulf Flambard had been bishop.⁵³³ Here the status quo on the day of Rufus’s death was dropped, despite the reference to the ‘time’ of William Rufus, because another terminus suited Henry’s purpose better. Rufus confirmed the lands, men, and customs held by Saint Edmund, and the abbey and monks of Bury, as these had been defined in the writs of Edward the Confessor, his father, and himself; ordered that neither the abbot nor any of his men should be impleaded for anything of which the saint had been ‘seised on the day when my father was alive and dead’; and that the ‘men of the saint’ should be forced to attend the shire and hundred courts only if they held sufficient land to have been ‘worthy’ of this according to the practice of Edward the Confessor’s time.⁵³⁴ The extent of the king’s discretion in laying down termini for the definition of tenurial and other rights, often by reference to the king’s own accession or to the death of his immediate or more distant antecessor, or to the death of a tenant’s immediate or more distant antecessor, served to stress the anomalous, quasi-tenurial character of the king’s own position. Use of the partial analogy of ecclesiastical office, as suggested by caps. 14 and 1 of Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’, could not render less bewildering the brief period ⁵³² e.g. ibid., no. 522 (1100 ⫻ 01), in which Henry I ordered William Malet to restore to the canons of St Paul’s whatever he had taken from Barling (Essex), refers to the writs of Edward the Confessor, William I, and William II. The writ of Rufus is The Early Charters of the Cathedral Church of St Paul, London, ed. M. Gibbs, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., lviii (1939), no. 20 (1099 ⫻ 1100), but no writ of the Confessor or the Conqueror concerned with Barling survives. DB ii. 13b–14a confirms that ‘St Paul has always held Barling’, but adds that the canons had ‘occupied the land after the king came to England.’ So the writ of Edward the Confessor, if it existed and if it was genuine, would presumably not have specified the canons as beneficiary. An original writ of Henry I, RRAN ii. no. 666 (1103 ⫻ 04), written by an identifiable chancery scribe, confirms certain privileges to St Paul’s ‘sicut brevia patris et fratris mei precipiunt’: these writs are Rufus’s RRAN i. no. 415 (5 June 1099 ⫻ 1100), the Conqueror’s Reg. no. 188 (1080 ⫻ 87), and Reg. no. 187, which could be attributed to either. A third writ of Henry I in favour of St Paul’s (RRAN ii. no. 506), written in Old English and dated to Christmas 1100, refers to writs of his father and brother: Rufus’s does not survive, but Henry’s writ closely reproduces the phrasing of the Conqueror’s Reg. no. 185 (1072 ⫻ 78, or 1070 ⫻ 78). In RRAN iii. no. 524 (1135 ⫻ 39), Stephen confirmed to the canons of St-Martin’s-leGrand their land and stalls in Cripplegate, ‘as I have returned and conceded these to them by my charter and as their church best held in the time of King William and as his charter and the charter of King Henry testify’. It may be that the ‘land and stalls’ were understood to be included within the more general confirmations of lands and privileges at and outside Cripplegate announced by Henry I (RRAN ii. no. 556, 1100 ⫻ 01) and the Conqueror (Reg. no. 182, 1075 ⫻ 85), and originally made in Reg. no. 181 (11 May 1068). In the case of RRAN iii. no. 261 (June 1139–Spring 1140), a general confirmation of the lands and privileges of the church of Ely, this reproduces the phrasing of Henry I’s ii. no. 1048 (1114), which in turn reproduces that of the Conqueror’s writ confirming the result of the land plea held at Kentford (Reg. no. 122, 1075/6 ⫻ 87, possibly 1080 ⫻ 81/2 or ⫻ 87), cited above, p. 15. ⁵³³ RRAN ii. no. 504 (25 Dec. ?1100). ⁵³⁴ RRAN i. no. 393 [⫽ Douglas, Feudal Documents, no. 16], discussed above, p. 85; further Sharpe, ‘Use of Writs’, 277–8.

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following the king’s death when the arbitrary power on which the whole system depended was no longer there. Often writs would refer to the situation at the death of the king’s predecessor and to the present king’s reign ‘postea’.⁵³⁵ I showed in Part I that the same word is used in Domesday Book to relate T.R.W. to T.R.E.⁵³⁶ From the unequivocal evidence of the ‘edict’, it is clear that its use in later documents also served to gloss over the gap between one king and his successor.⁵³⁷ Yet the Bury St Edmunds writ just discussed shows why the model of ecclesiastical vacancy could not straightforwardly be applied to analysis of this problem. The church or the saint to whom the church was dedicated might be recorded as holding, rather than the current incumbent. Although, as we have seen, bishops and abbots, rather than their churches, were often said to hold land, they were in that respect the exception where ecclesiastical tenure was concerned, rather than the rule. For in the case of lesser churches, not held by tenants-inchief, the saint or church was unequivocally the recipient of grants of land, and therefore the subject of rights. According to Glanvill, their incumbents did not do homage; this had almost certainly always been the case.⁵³⁸ Because the grants were made to undying recipients, they were perpetual. For this reason they were not understood to revert to the grantor on the death of an incumbent. As Eadmer recognized, it was precisely in the case of clerical tenants-in-chief that this could not be true, and that clerical tenure most closely approximated to the personal model of precarious lay tenure. It did so because of the peculiar nature of tenurial dependence on the king which Eadmer had identified as the principal innovation in conquered England. But this approximation could never be more than that, because such a church, like all churches, was an undying abstraction; indeed, such a church was more obviously an undying abstraction than any other, for the nature of its continuous corporate life was exhaustively articulated in Canon Law, unlike the unalloyed mysticism of a parish church’s saint. We have seen that the draftsman of Henry’s ‘edict’ recognized this in the first clause, when he accepted that, after the death of its bishop or abbot, the dominium and the homines were still those of the vacant church, even though they were (temporarily) in the king’s hand.⁵³⁹ Yet after a king’s death there was no analogous undying abstraction to act as a subject of tenurial or other rights. Such is the lesson of the neologism barones ⁵³⁵ Reg. no. 317, a 12th-century ‘forgery’ which improved on earlier documents (nos. 299, 300) relating to the grant of Feering to the monks of Westminster: ‘teneant . . . tam bene et tam plene sicut Haroldus comes melius et liberius tenuerat die qua rex Edwardus fuit vivus et mortuus, et sicut egomet postea regalius possedi’ (discussed above, p. 12). RRAN i. 351, a writ of Rufus, uses the same device to relate his own reign to the day on which his father had been alive and dead; cf. ii. no. 1551 (1121 ⫻ 35), in which Henry I ordered that Anselm, abbot of Bury St Edmunds, should take into the demesne of the church Wrabness, which Richard, son of Walchelin held, ‘si manerium illud fuit de dominio ecclesie sue anno et die quo pater meus fuit vivus et mortuus et tempore fratris mei et meo postea et sicut fuit in dominio ecclesie die qua Anselmus venit in abbaciam’. ⁵³⁶ Above, p. 19. ⁵³⁷ RRAN iii. no. 525 (June–Dec. 1139). ⁵³⁸ Glanvill, ix. 2 p. 106; B. Thompson, ‘Free Alms Tenure in the Twelfth Century’, ANS xvi (1993), 221–44, at 228–9. ⁵³⁹ Above, p. 117.

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regni Anglie found in the ‘edict’s’ opening clause, and of the impossibility of defining in what ways many of the powers of the king were in abeyance during the interregnum. Regnum could not at this stage function as a bearer of rights, by analogy with ecclesia; nor could it mean both the office of the king and the lands held by him, by analogy with abbatia and episcopatus. For the king acceded to no office, with rights and duties defined and delimited in a body of written—or any other—law. A claimant became king at his consecration and ceased to be such at his death. During that period a distinction between person and office was inconceivable, just as there was no question of his having a public as distinct from a private capacity, holding land which was not part of his regnum (as a bishop might hold land which was not part of his episcopatus).⁵⁴⁰ Articulated thus, the inconceivability of such distinctions is manifest. Regnum meum⁵⁴¹ is simply terra mea Anglie,⁵⁴² the terra regis⁵⁴³ within it being what he had not granted out to his tenants-in-chief, lay and ecclesiastical. The king’s position was as inarticulate and mysterious as that. It could not be otherwise, because he was an anomaly. The king’s anomalous character was reflected in Eadmer’s use of the term corona in something other than a physical sense. The usage may already have been current: it is found in the record of Bishop William of St-Calais’ trial of 1088, the De Iniusta Vexacione, with which the Historia Novorum has a number of striking parallels.⁵⁴⁴ We have already seen that Eadmer had a quick ear for new technical vocabulary, as one might expect of someone used to taking dictation. He first uses the word in his account of Anselm’s confrontation with William Rufus at Gillingham early in 1095.⁵⁴⁵ Rufus, like his father before him, had still not recognized either Urban II or Clement III as pope, but Anselm, in his previous capacity ⁵⁴⁰ P&M i. 505–6, citing DB i. 135a: ‘Terra Roberti Episcopi de Cestre. Episcopus de Cestre tenet Mimmine . . . Hoc manerium non est de episcopatu, sed fuit Raynerii patris Roberti episcopi.’ For a pre-Conquest example, see Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Whitelock, no. I, p. 4. Compare the distinction between ‘Terra Episcopi Tedfordensis ad episcopatum pertinens t.r.e. Terra Willelmi episcopi . . .’ (DB ii. 191a) and the post-Conquest acquisitions: ‘Terra Ejusdem de Feudo’ (DB ii. 193b), discussed by B. Dodwell, ‘The Honour of the Bishop of Thetford/Norwich in the Late Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries’, Norfolk Archaeology, xxiii pt. 2 (1963), 185–99, at 186–7; Holt, ‘Knight Service’, CE 97. ⁵⁴¹ Coronation ‘edict’ caps. 11, 12. ⁵⁴² RRAN ii. no. 531 (1101), (Stevenson, ‘Inedited Charter’, 505–9); cf. LHP 10. 1: ‘Hec sunt iura quod rex Anglie solus et super omnes homines habet in terra sua . . .’ ⁵⁴³ For a full discussion of Domesday Book’s terra regis, see Garnett, ‘Crown’, 184–9. ⁵⁴⁴ DIV 84; for similarities other than the use of corona, see H. S. Offler, ‘The Tractate De Iniusta Vexacione Willelmi Episcopi Primi’, EHR lxvi (1951), 321–41, 328, n. 1, 340, n. 2. Offler suggests that they indicate that the author borrowed from Eadmer, and therefore uses them to support his contention that the tractate is a later forgery. But even he conceded the author must have used material compiled in 1088 (‘Tractate’, 341; DIV 62), and the scholarly consensus that it is a contemporary composition has recently been reinforced: M. Philpott, ‘The De Iniusta Vexacione Willelmi Episcopi Primi and Canon Law in Anglo-Norman Durham’, in D. Rollason, M. Harvey, and M. Prestwich (eds.), Anglo-Norman Durham (Woodbridge, 1995), 125–37. DIV 88 records Rufus using his favourite oath, as Eadmer does: HN 30, 39, 101, 110. But assuming that Rufus really did swear in this way, the link between the two works lies not so much in their both attributing the same oath to him, as in the fact that they both appear to reproduce authentic dialogue, rather than the more common pseudo-classical speeches. ⁵⁴⁵ HN 53.

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as abbot of Bec, had recognized Urban long ago.⁵⁴⁶ He now sought the king’s permission to petition Urban for his pallium. Eadmer reports Rufus’s outraged response: the king saw recognition of a pope ‘in the kingdom of England other than by the king’s licentia and electio’ as tantamount to ‘trying to remove his corona from him’. This had, he asserted, been the custom in England in his father’s day too. Eadmer bears out the king’s claim, for this consuetudo is included in the list of ‘new usages’ which, according to Eadmer, William the Conqueror had introduced into England.⁵⁴⁷ The report which Anselm later gave at the council of Rockingham of the king’s words explains more clearly what attempting to remove his corona might mean: ‘If in my kingdom you recognize this Urban or anyone else as pope without my electio and authority, or having recognized him, you hold to him, then you act contrary to the fides which you owe me, and in doing so you offend me no less than if you attempted to remove my crown.’⁵⁴⁸ Breaking faith due to the king was tantamount to trying to remove his crown, and recognition of a pope without royal approval, or refusal to renounce a recognition already given long before the pledging of fides to the king, would in conquered England amount to such a breach. The point is elaborated in a reprimand from the bishops, accompanied by a few of the principes, to the awkward archbishop: You should know that the whole kingdom is alleging against you that you are trying to remove from our common lord the crown and ornament of his rule. Whoever takes from him the customs of the royal dignity takes from him at the same instant the crown and the kingdom. For we are convinced that one cannot be held properly without the other.⁵⁴⁹

The bishops’ words are an almost exact echo of the charge levelled against William of St-Calais in 1088: obstinate refusal to renounce allegiance to a pope and rebellion are both characterized as trying simultaneously to snatch the king’s crown and his kingdom. If we may rely on the accuracy of Eadmer’s notes on the proceedings,⁵⁵⁰ in the view of the bishops, and that of the king himself, the crown and kingdom could not be held decenter without customs introduced, according to Eadmer, by William the Conqueror. For Eadmer, possibly echoing current usage, corona had come to encapsulate the innovations in royal power introduced at the Conquest, and as we have seen, the principal innovation, in Eadmer’s view, was that no one was made a bishop or abbot who had not first become the king’s ‘man’. This was what determined the nature of all the other innovations. Anselm’s insistence on maintaining his previous allegiance to Urban II meant that his links with the ‘lord pope’⁵⁵¹ were not subject to royal sanction; that they did not wait on the king’s nod. As such, it was a breach of the fides which Anselm owed the king as a function ⁵⁴⁶ Ep. 125. ⁵⁴⁷ HN 9–10. ⁵⁴⁸ HN 54. ⁵⁴⁹ HN 58. ⁵⁵⁰ Southern, Portrait, 423–6. ⁵⁵¹ HN 70, 170, 177, 178, 230; epp. 192, 307, 311, 364, 368, 411.

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of being his ‘man’.⁵⁵² As Anselm put it to the bishops at Rockingham: ‘To me it is a terrible thing to deny with disrespect the vicar of the blessed Peter, a terrible thing too to break the faith which, under God, I have promised to maintain to the king; most terrible of all to be told that it will be impossible for me to keep it with one of them without breaking it with the other.’⁵⁵³ Yet this was precisely his predicament. Rufus did ‘not consider himself to be possessed of his royal dignity intact so long as anyone anywhere throughout his whole land had or could be said to have anything other than through him, even if it were according to the will of God’.⁵⁵⁴ Eadmer’s tactile language shows why even something as apparently untenurial as recognition, without royal sanction, of the lord pope was deemed to be an affront to the king’s position. According to the Vita Anselmi, the other bishops at Rockingham (with the unsurprising exception of the bishop of Rochester) made the same point to Anselm: he was blaspheming against the king, ‘simply because in his kingdom and without his concession [Anselm] had dared to ascribe anything even to God’.⁵⁵⁵ Although the term corona, like homage, is not found in the Vita Anselmi, Eadmer is here making the same point which he makes in more technical language in the Historia Novorum. Eadmer depicts William of St-Calais adapting against Anselm the Canon Law of exceptio spolii, whereby a cleric—usually a bishop—had to be in control of, or, if already dispossessed, restored to his church and its appurtenances, before proceedings involving him could take place. Bishop William told Anselm that he would have to restore to Rufus the debita imperii sui dignitas⁵⁵⁶—what Eadmer elsewhere terms his corona⁵⁵⁷—of which he had deprived the king through his obstinacy, before the adjournment in proceedings which Anselm sought could be granted. And no one in England was better versed in the intricacies of this argument than Bishop William, because he had used it to telling effect against the same king in 1088, when he had demanded restitution of his bishopric before he would stand trial.⁵⁵⁸ But of course, as we have seen, in the case of the king there was no obvious equivalent to a bishopric; hence, in order to be able to adapt the canonical argument, William of St-Calais’ formulation of the royal dignitas, termed corona by Eadmer, as the subject of dispute in 1095. What for Eadmer had started as an incorporeal metonym for the royal ‘nod’—the king’s rights derived from the Conquest—seems to have begun, in the mind of a canon lawyer, to shade into an abstraction which was in some sense distinguishable from the person of the king, for it could be taken away from him (not unlike a bishop’s episcopatus). But precisely because the king held no office, it was doomed to remain an indistinct abstraction, as is suggested by the conceptually incoherent attempts of Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ to address this very problem. Bishop William accused Anselm ⁵⁵² Ep. 192, to Walter, bishop of Albano (June–July 1095): ‘You say that some of them [the English bishops] told you that . . . I accepted investiture from a schismatic king and swore him fealty and homage . . .’ ⁵⁵³ HN 56; cf. 104. ⁵⁵⁴ HN 60. ⁵⁵⁵ VA 86. ⁵⁵⁶ HN 60. ⁵⁵⁷ HN 53, 54, 58. ⁵⁵⁸ DIV 74–6, 81–4, 86; for further details see Garnett, ‘Crown’, 190–1.

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of trying to take from Rufus, contrary to his fides, ‘what your lord and ours holds of chief importance in all his dominion, and in which it is certain that he excels all other kings’⁵⁵⁹—in other words, his corona.⁵⁶⁰ So for once the author of the Quadripartitus was not just being unctuous when he attributed the ‘unique majesty’ of the king’s lordship over his kingdom to ‘the fealty of his subjects due by right’, as well as to King Henry’s celebrated ‘goodness’.⁵⁶¹ Although a sycophant, as the author of the Leges Henrici Primi too⁵⁶² he was well qualified to comment on the peculiar nature of royal power in conquered England. But if William of St-Calais has rightly been identified as ‘the man behind the [Domesday] Survey’,⁵⁶³ then he must have had an unparalleled grasp of the uniqueness of Norman kingship in England. For Domesday Book recorded in exhaustive detail the consequences of what Eadmer identified as its defining characteristic: tenurial dependence on the king. So Eadmer reports that Henry I later said, with a cavalier disregard for the undertakings he had given in his coronation ‘edict’: ‘I am not willing to lose any of the usages of my antecessores, nor will I tolerate anyone in my kingdom who is not mine.’⁵⁶⁴ Someone acceded to this anomalous position of liege lord of what thereby became his whole land when he received the ‘regnum et regni corona’ which, according to Eadmer, William Adelin was designated to receive after his father’s death.⁵⁶⁵ This is why so many of the ‘new usages’ attributed to the Conqueror by Eadmer assert apparently novel controls over prelates and emphasize the territorial definition of royal lordship which so clearly lies behind the accusations directed against Anselm. Rufus ‘did not think that the apostle of the world should have any right at all in his kingdom, except by his permission’.⁵⁶⁶ It is why ecclesiastical councils in England after 1072, unlike those in Normandy, make no reference to contemporary papal authority;⁵⁶⁷ it may be why a papal legate who had been received in Normandy could be excluded from England.⁵⁶⁸ According to the author of the Quadripartitus, England was ‘enclosed by the neighbouring sea, so that neither coming nor going are possible without the gracious licentia of its rulers’.⁵⁶⁹ As William of St-Calais also recognized, the king’s powers there were unique. For Eadmer they were a tyrannical consequence of Duke William’s conquest, and they were symbolized by the corona which constituted each new ‘tyrant’.⁵⁷⁰ ⁵⁵⁹ HN 60–1. ⁵⁶⁰ Above, n. 544. ⁵⁶¹ Gesetze, i. 542; Sharpe, ‘Prefaces of Quadripartitus’, 169. ⁵⁶² Downer, LHP 12–28; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, 135–9. ⁵⁶³ Above, n. 284. ⁵⁶⁴ HN 131. ⁵⁶⁵ HN 237. ⁵⁶⁶ HN 116. ⁵⁶⁷ A point made by Cowdrey, ‘Lanfranc, the Papacy and the See of Canterbury’, 478. He, however, attributes the difference to the influence of Lanfranc. ⁵⁶⁸ In 1116 the legate Anselm of St Saba was received in Normandy by Henry I, but he was not allowed to exercise his legateship in England: C. R. Cheney, ‘The Deaths of Popes and the Expiry of Papal Legations in Twelfth-Century England’, Revue de droit canonique, xxviii (1978), 84–96, at 87. ⁵⁶⁹ Gesetze, i. 542; Sharpe, ‘Prefaces of Quadripartitus’, 169; cf. DIV 88, 91, 95; for the impossibility of recognizing anyone as pope in the kingdom of England without the king’s licentia aut electio, see Eadmer, HN 53. ⁵⁷⁰ HN 61, 118, 130; cf. 103, 126.

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Thus corona could not be equated with an ecclesia during a vacancy. Nowhere is it linked with the carrying over of debts and homage which is assumed in some of the clauses of Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’. The ‘edict’s’ inarticulate understanding of the carrying over of royal rights and duties seems to be attributable to the profound and enduring influence of the antecessor scheme in the analysis of royal succession, while Eadmer’s corona is a metonym for the unique concept of royal lordship which necessitated the precise definition of interregnum. It was certainly not a development of the inconsistent use of regnum in cap. 1 of the ‘edict’. During an interregnum the corona was by definition in abeyance. Eadmer recognized this just as clearly as other chroniclers. His description of the death and funeral of William the Conqueror stresses the traditional theme of the transitory nature of terrestrial greatness: while the king lived, ‘no one dared to raise a hand against him; but no sooner was he laid on the ground on the point of giving up the ghost, than he was, so we have heard, deserted by every man (ab omni homine), with the single exception of one servant . . .’.⁵⁷¹ Eadmer recognized the need for speed in filling the position of king in both 1087 and 1100.⁵⁷² He describes with foreboding the sort of chaos which might ensue on a king’s death in his account of the reproaches directed at Anselm for his initial refusal to accept the archbishopric in 1093. If Anselm failed to fill the vacancy, the ailing king would die. Those who, according to Eadmer, had already gathered in expectation of Rufus’s death,⁵⁷³ said to Anselm: ‘Now . . . you should realise that all the disorders, all the oppressions, and all the crimes which henceforth will afflict England, will be blamed on you, if you do not today avert them by undertaking this pastoral care.’⁵⁷⁴ Because Anselm relented, Rufus did not die; but the period of his illness was treated very much as if a vacancy in the position of king had occurred. As we have seen, Rufus used the bishops as sureties between God and himself, and pledged his faith through his representatives on the altar of a nearby church (presumably St Peter’s, Gloucester) to renounce what were seen as his previous abuses of his lordship, particularly the exploitation of ecclesiastical vacancies. He then issued an ‘edictum’ specifying his concessions, which included the remission of all debita and the laying down of a terminus: ‘all offences previously committed were freely remitted and consigned to perpetual oblivion.’⁵⁷⁵ This is, of course, an amnesty for all crimes committed prior to a certain point, rather than the sort of terminus at which we have been looking. Nevertheless, although this ‘edictum’ does not survive, a writ of Rufus also suggests that the legal significance of the period of the king’s illness could be analysed in accordance with the scheme which we have been examining, and that it was considered relevant to disputes about tenure. The king ordered the sheriff of Lincoln to reseise the canons of St Mary of Lincoln ‘of their lands of which they were disseised after I fell ill and have restored ⁵⁷¹ HN 24. ⁵⁷² HN 25: Rufus is described as being frightened, ‘ne dilatio suae consecrationis inferret ei dispendium cupiti honoris’; pp. 119–20 for the same point in 1100. ⁵⁷³ HN 30. ⁵⁷⁴ HN 34. ⁵⁷⁵ HN 31–2.

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to them whatever has been taken away there ever since. And take good pledges from those who disseised them and took their things after the aforesaid terminus.’⁵⁷⁶ The only difference between this and cap. 14 of Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ is that the disseisors are not explicitly said to have been excused from the due penalties by restoration, although the reference to taking pledges may imply that they had benefited from the 1093 amnesty recorded by Eadmer. In 1093 the terminus had been fixed at the de facto lapsing of royal power;⁵⁷⁷ the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that the king’s death had been publicly proclaimed.⁵⁷⁸ Eadmer’s perception of the legal consequences of the king’s illness is thus confirmed in an official document; and the similarities with cap. 14 of Henry’s coronation ‘edict’ strongly suggest that there must have been a provision of this type in the lost ‘edict closed with the royal seal’⁵⁷⁹ which Rufus issued in 1093. Part II has concentrated on using the Historia Novorum to elucidate the implications for interregnum of the dependent nature of post-Conquest tenure, both lay and clerical, and of the way in which succession to such tenures happened. Complementary evidence can be gathered from other narrative sources—particularly Orderic Vitalis—and I shall draw on these when seeking to show why the hiatus in the position of king produced so great a degree of disorder, and what attempts were made to remedy the problem. But Eadmer’s testimony deserves special emphasis, both because it is earlier than any other full treatment, and, more importantly, because his focus on the nature of clerical tenure of land as the most important innovation consequent on the Conquest gave him a uniquely perceptive insight into this very problem. He understood that the difficulties arose from the way in which the powers of post-Conquest kings had been defined, as he demonstrated when he wrought his notion of an incorporeal corona. That definition was a consequence of the way in which the Conquest had been justified and implemented. Paradoxically, in view of the efforts which had gone into justifying William the Conqueror’s succession to Edward the Confessor, royal ‘heirs’ remained for some time the least predetermined of all. It is to the implications of this aspect of post-Conquest kingship that I now turn. ⁵⁷⁶ RRAN i. no. 407 (⫽ van Caenegem, Royal Writs no. 68)(1093–8). ⁵⁷⁷ Cf. RRAN iii. no. 276, Stephen’s second charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville, issued at Christmas 1141, which treats the period of the king’s imprisonment in that year in a similar way; discussed below, pp. 250–1. ⁵⁷⁸ ASC (E) s.a. 1093. ⁵⁷⁹ HN 31.

III The Problem of Interregnum [England] is exalted with such pleasures of enjoyment—as the miserable state of mortals is, that is inclined towards evil and liable to fall—: it forever growls with domestic dissensions and blind plotting of revolution. Quadripartitus, third preface, cap. 4¹ By our Lord’s death! William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum.²

THE PROBLEM OUTLINED In the book which Robert of Torigni composed in 1138–9 to append to his interpolated version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, he reported that Robert Curthose had assumed the duchy of Normandy ‘without any contradiction’ after the death of William the Conqueror.³ But he added that when the new duke was urged by his fideles ‘to restore to himself by arms as quickly as possible the kingdom of England which his brother had snatched from him’, he was said to have replied: ‘By the angels of God, if I had been in Alexandria, the English would have waited for me. They would not have dared to make him king prior to my arrival. Even my brother William, whom you say has dared to aspire to it, would scarcely have striven for it at the risk of his head, without my permission.’ The chronicler observed that Robert had spoken with ‘his usual simplemindedness and, if I may express it so, almost total unworldliness’. This was understatement; putting such words into Robert’s mouth was tantamount to ¹ Sharpe, ‘Prefaces of Quadripartitus’, in Law and Government, 169; Stubbs comments (Lectures on Early English History, ed. A. Hassal (London, 1906), 146): ‘How true; almost a forecast of the clôture.’ ² GR i. 728. This was, allegedly, Henry I’s habitual oath in moments of crisis. The obvious sense is a sacrilegious curse. But on this particular occasion William reports that Henry uttered it immediately after an unsuccessful assassination attempt on him. This underlines the point that Henry had especially forceful reasons for reflecting frequently on the consequences of the death of an earthly royal lord. ³ GND ii. 204; Curthose had not learnt his lesson by 1100: ii. 218. For the date, see GND i. p. lxxix. Robert of Torigni is likely to have taken his inspiration from BR 37: see p. 23.

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proclaiming his crass stupidity, as a glance at post-Conquest royal accessions indicates. One of the reasons adduced by William of Poitiers for the Conqueror’s delayed consecration was the desire not to be seen to snatch the throne with unseemly haste as Harold had done.⁴ Yet some twelfth-century writers seem to have been surprised that Duke William postponed the ceremony for so long.⁵ They were so, even taking into account those practicalities of military conquest which William of Poitiers had felt obliged to acknowledge, despite his claim that the duke met so little opposition that he might easily have spent the period, ‘had he wished, in hunting and falconry’.⁶ In 1087, 1100, and 1135 the chroniclers repeatedly stressed the need for swift, pre-emptive action on the part of potential successors. According to William of Malmesbury, William Rufus was already on his way to England when the Conqueror died, ‘thinking it more useful to keep his own interests in view, than to be present at the burial of his father’s corpse’.⁷ According to Orderic, it was not so much Rufus as the dying king who understood what the situation required: he had ordered his son to leave his bedside immediately and set out for England.⁸ We have already seen the urgency with which in 1100, two days after his brother’s death, Henry had sought ‘election’ in Winchester from ‘the witan who were at hand’, and consecration at Westminster the following day.⁹ Hugh the Chanter reports that Thomas, archbishop of York, was soon persuaded to be as understanding as Anselm uncharacteristically proved to be about the realities of royal accession in post-Conquest England.¹⁰ In the uniquely pressing case of the coronation, both allegedly recognized, as Anselm’s revered mentor Lanfranc said in his Monastic Constitutions of liturgical requirements in general, that an officiating cleric might on occasion have to improvise, ‘because necessity is not bound by law’.¹¹ It is impossible to establish whether Eadmer reflected on this statement, when he made the earliest surviving copy of the work, sometime between 1091 and 1096,¹² in the aftermath of Rufus’s accession. The Gesta Stephani records that when, in 1135, the archbishop of Canterbury was asked to consecrate Stephen by his supporters, he replied that it ought not to ⁴ GG 142, 148; cf. 100. ⁵ Eadmer, HN 9; BR 33. ⁶ GG 148. ⁷ GR i. 512; cf. 542. Perhaps Rufus salved his filial conscience by later attending to the erection of a monument over his father’s tomb; cf. Orderic iv. 110; GND ii. 188. ⁸ Orderic iv. 96; cf. Eadmer, HN 25; BR 35. ⁹ ASC (E) s.a. 1100; GR i. 714; BR 37; cf. above, p. 120. ¹⁰ HC 18; Eadmer, HN 119–20. Hugh the Chanter’s view that time had not allowed for Thomas’s participation is contradicted by the report in GP 258 that, whereas Bishop Maurice of London had consecrated Henry, Thomas had crowned him. This is the likely source for the marginal interpolation to this effect, probably by John of Worcester himself, found in the chief manuscript of the Worcester Chronicle: JW iii. 94. ¹¹ The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D. Knowles, NMT (Edinburgh, 1951), 121; Cambridge, Trinity College MS B. 16.44, p. 181 (⫽ Decretales, 700). The passage is marked with a marginal ‘a’. ¹² Gullick, ‘Scribal Work of Eadmer’, 183, discussing Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS. B. IV. 24.

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be done ‘lightly or suddenly’.¹³ But this was a literary device to allow the author to present arguments in favour of Stephen and against Matilda, and to demonstrate that Matilda’s claims had been fully considered at the time. He had already described how Stephen had rushed to the Norman coast as soon as news reached him of King Henry’s death; and how the Londoners had recognized the advantages of constituting a king ‘as soon as possible’.¹⁴ Other chroniclers echo the familiar refrain.¹⁵ In a speech which William of Malmesbury attributed to Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, at a council held in 1141, the legate said that when Henry I died without a ‘male heir, . . . because it seemed tedious to wait for the lady, who made delays in coming to England, since her residence was in Normandy, provision was made for the peace of the country and my brother was allowed to reign’.¹⁶ Similarly in 1100, Orderic reveals that the presence of a claimant was decisive. In the immediate aftermath of Rufus’s death, when Henry rushed to Winchester to seize control of the royal treasury, William of Breteuil tried to prevent him and spoke up for the claims of the absent Robert Curthose. But a crowd gathered in support of Henry, ‘and the strength of the heir who was on the spot claiming his right (suum ius) increased’.¹⁷ Orderic might term Henry ‘genuinus haeres’;¹⁸ but the casuistic attempts he later made to circumvent Robert’s ius reveal that, even in his view, it was the stronger.¹⁹ Yet the crowd were not in the least impressed by what William of Breteuil argued ought to be done ‘legaliter’. Henry’s answer to William’s principled stand was equally sophisticated. He drew his sword: he would not, ‘through frivolous procrastination’, allow ‘some stranger (extraneus) to snatch his father’s sceptre first’. In these circumstances, decisive action drowned out reasoned argument. The Gesta Stephani’s report of the archbishop of Canterbury’s comment on the timing of Stephen’s consecration is, therefore, just as inappropriate as a characterization of the other elements in the process of royal accession in Norman England. They may not have been done ‘lightly’; they certainly took place ‘suddenly’—possibly even more so than a cursory examination of the date of the death of one king and the consecration of his successor might indicate. We have seen that just three days were allowed to elapse between the death of William Rufus and Henry’s coronation at Westminster.²⁰ But Henry was unique amongst claimants in being present in England on his predecessor’s death. According to Orderic, Rufus had recently arrived at Wissant on the Norman coast when news reached him of his father’s death at Rouen on 9 September.²¹ It has ¹³ GS 10. ¹⁴ GS 4–6. ¹⁵ Orderic vi. 454; HH 700–2; RT, GND ii. 274; RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 127. ¹⁶ HNa 92, cf. 26. ¹⁷ Orderic, v. 290. ¹⁸ For his use of this term in other contexts, see Holt, ‘Notions of Patrimony’, CE 217, n. 123. ¹⁹ Below, p. 190 n. 459. ²⁰ Above, p. 120. ²¹ Orderic iv. 96. The date is given in ASC (E) s.a. 1086 (recte 1087); JW iii. 46; Orderic iv. 100, and in the epitaph composed by Thomas, archbishop of York and engraved at Rufus’s behest on a monument erected over the Conqueror’s tomb, which is correctly preserved by Orderic, iv. 110–12.

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been calculated that Wissant was two days’ hard ride from Rouen;²² so if this report is accurate—and Orderic contradicts himself elsewhere about Rufus’s port of embarkation, stating that he sailed from Touques²³—then Rufus was probably still in Normandy on 11 September. In view of the urgency of his own departure from Rouen prior to the Conqueror’s death, this suggests that he may have been delayed on the coast, perhaps by bad weather. It has been suggested that the reports of Rufus securing Winchester, as Henry would do in 1100, before moving on to Westminster make Touques, on balance, more likely than Wissant.²⁴ By this route the journey would have taken at least four or five days; via Wissant considerably longer, even ‘in favourable conditions’.²⁵ In view of the possible delay at Wissant, there is no certainty that conditions were favourable. The only firm date is that of the coronation at Westminster on Sunday, 26 September, seventeen days after the Conqueror’s death.²⁶ There is none for Rufus’s Channel crossing. The Gesta Stephani reports that when Stephen formed ‘a mighty design in the manner of the famous Saul’ and hastened to the Channel coast, he was able to take advantage of a following wind.²⁷ But the author clearly presents this as a providential mark of divine favour for Stephen’s enterprise. No other chronicler mentions the favourable wind, although William of Malmesbury commented on Stephen’s hurry to reach England, and the prophetically awful weather which prevailed on the day when he landed.²⁸ Henry I’s funeral cortège cannot have arrived in Caen until some time later, but it was held up there for four weeks, ‘until winter, which was then raging fiercely, should grow a little milder and bring gentle breezes’.²⁹ William Rufus famously considered that kings were immune from shipwreck, and we have William of Malmesbury’s word for it that the king was far too down-to-earth a character to have drawn his inspiration from a reading of Lucan.³⁰ It is unclear whether Rufus and Stephen had to run the risk not as kings, For the epitaph, see L. J. Engels, ‘De obitu Willelmi ducis Normannorum regisque Anglorum: Texte, modèles, valeur et origine’, Mélanges Christine Mohrmann: Noveau recueil par ses anciens élèves (Utrecht-Antwerp, 1973), 209–55, at 248–9 and n. 54; for the dates given in other sources, see 242, 248–9. ²² F. Barlow, William Rufus (London, 1983), 54; and for riding speeds, F. M. Stenton, ‘The Road System of Medieval England’, EcHR vii (1936), 1–21, at 16–17. ²³ Orderic, v. 202, where Touques is mentioned only in passing when he describes how Robert Bloet was given the see of Lincoln in 1093 as a reward for accompanying Rufus and bearing the Conqueror’s letter instructing Lanfranc to ‘crown’ his son. Robert of Torigni also gives Touques, a detail not found in his apparent source: GND ii. 202, cf. BR 35. ²⁴ Barlow, William Rufus, 55, discussing GR i. 542; JW iii. 46; cf. GR i. 512. ASC (E) s.a. 1086 (recte 1087) mentions a visit to Winchester only after the coronation; but William of Malmesbury and John of Worcester agree that there was also a prior visit. ²⁵ Barlow, William Rufus, 54. ²⁶ ASC (E) s.a. 1086 (recte 1087); JW iii. 46; DIV 74. GR i. 542 gives 27 September. ²⁷ GS 4; the allusion is to Saul’s anointing, 1 Sam. 9: 10–17. That king’s later deposition ‘in oculis domini’, because he had ‘risen up’ against the priests of the Lord, was an important element in the author’s analysis of the events of 1141: p. 76, discussed below, p. 242. ²⁸ HNa 28. ²⁹ HNa 26; Orderic vi. 450 gives the length of the wait. ³⁰ GR i. 564–6; HH 446; RT, GND ii. 212; cf. Eadmer, HN 116–17. Freeman, William Rufus, ii. 646–8 identifies a number of possible classical models; see esp. Lucan, Pharsalia, v. 493–4, 577–93.

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but in order to become kings, and thereby to secure for themselves protection against perils of a different sort. Storms in the Channel were not the only possible natural obstacle. While Rufus could on occasion be too impetuous to wait for a favourable wind,³¹ a contrary one probably would have made it impossible to cross to England, for it is unlikely that contemporary vessels could sail into the wind.³² In 1094 Rufus was held up in Hastings for over a month for this very reason.³³ It cannot be assumed that Rufus in 1087 and Stephen in 1135 were able to embark immediately.³⁴ Both may have spent less time in England securing control of the royal coffers (and the royal records) at Winchester, ‘election’, and consecration, than is usually assumed. In the case of Stephen, too, the only firm dates are his predecessor’s death, on 1 December,³⁵ and his own coronation, on 22 December.³⁶ He was somewhere ‘in his county of Boulogne’ when he heard that Henry was dead,³⁷ and crossed the Channel by way of Wissant.³⁸ But he was refused admission to Dover and Canterbury³⁹ which Henry I had entrusted to Robert of Gloucester with, presumably, just such a contingency in mind.⁴⁰ He then appears to have gone direct to London, and after the events there described in the Gesta Stephani,⁴¹ headed for Winchester as Rufus and Henry had done,⁴² before returning to London for his coronation. In view of the uncertainty about the precise dates on which Rufus and Stephen crossed the Channel, the seventeen-⁴³ and twenty-one-day periods of interregnum respectively do not reveal much less of a sense of urgency than the three-day one in 1100. Why was speed so necessary, when it had not been for William the Conqueror in 1066? Following the Conqueror’s death, Rufus was, according to Eadmer, intent upon ‘snatching the pinnacle of the kingdom before his brother Robert’, and was ³¹ Orderic v. 256. ³² J. Le Patourel, The Norman Empire (Oxford, 1976), 168, 177–8, considers that oars alone would not have enabled them to do so. ³³ Eadmer, HN 47; ASC(E) s.a. 1094. ³⁴ LHP 41. 2b prescribed that anyone who was ‘ultra mare’ when summoned in respect of any plea was allowed six weeks and one day for the sea passage, ‘unless the business of the king’s service or his own illness or storms or some other adequate reason requires longer’. This is not derived from any known source, and therefore probably applies to contemporary conditions. ³⁵ Orderic vi. 448, 452; HNa 22; HH 490. But Orderic vi. 42 and many other sources give 2 December. The discrepancy is probably to be explained by the fact that, according to liturgical usage, the day began at sunset, and William of Malmesbury records that the king died at nightfall: see The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. G. Constable, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), ii. 104–5. ASC (E) s.a. 1135 gives 30 November. ³⁶ HNa 28; JW iii. 214 (a correction in the main text); GC i. 94. Orderic, vi. 454 gives 15 December, ASC (E) s.a. 1135 19 December, and John of Hexham, SD ii. 286, 1 January 1136. ³⁷ RT, GND ii. 274. ³⁸ HNa 26. ³⁹ GC i. 94. ⁴⁰ Orderic vi. 516–18. The suggestion was first made by Round, G. de M., 2. ⁴¹ GS, pp. 4–6 which, like other contemporary sources, does not mention the events at Canterbury and Dover. ⁴² GS, p. 8; HNa 28. The difference in 1135 lies in the fact that, according to the GS, Stephen went to London before Winchester. ⁴³ If Orderic’s account of Rufus crossing from Wissant is correct, then fourteen days at most were spent in England.

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frightened lest ‘any delay in his consecration might result in his losing the desired honour’.⁴⁴ This was why he was willing to give Lanfranc sweeping undertakings about how he would behave ‘if he were king’, in order to persuade Lanfranc to make him king by anointing him. According to Orderic, it was the same fear which provoked Henry, in 1100, into drawing his sword when confronted by William of Breteuil’s futile high-mindedness.⁴⁵ ‘Frivolous procrastination’ would give that extraneus, his surviving elder brother, more of a chance of seizing their father’s sceptre first.⁴⁶ William of Malmesbury comments on the speed with which Henry was crowned: ‘These measures were taken with all speed, for fear that the nobles might repent of his election, shaken by the rumour that Robert, duke of Normandy, was on his way from Apulia and would at any moment be upon them.’⁴⁷ Coronation seems to have made it very difficult for barons to change their minds about their initial pledges of support: ‘for the rest of the winter [Rufus] enjoyed peace and popularity.’⁴⁸ But it did not render second thoughts impossible, as this comment implicitly predicts for 1088, and as became clear when Robert Curthose landed in England in 1101.⁴⁹ A major reason for the urgency with which consecration was sought was the need for a potential successor to pre-empt his own relatives. Or, to be more precise, it was the claim of Robert Curthose, for which William of Breteuil spoke up in 1100, which rendered the process of royal accession in England akin to a coup d’état in 1087 and, even more strikingly, in 1100. In 1135 a younger son of one of the deceased king’s sisters, further disadvantaged by the existence of an elder brother who was initially offered the ducal title by a meeting of magnates of the duchy,⁵⁰ was able to snatch England and, apparently as a consequence, Normandy too. He could do so because Matilda, although in some senses designated as her father’s successor and ‘heir’, was unable to move rapidly enough to secure what was hers ‘iure’,⁵¹ and had little support either in Normandy⁵² or in England. Thus in 1100 and 1135 candidates with what appeared to be poorer claims were able to ⁴⁴ HN 25. ⁴⁵ Orderic v. 290, discussed above, p. 138. ⁴⁶ That Orderic meant Curthose rather than William of Breteuil is clear from iv. 126, where the English are made to describe Curthose as hostes extraneus. ⁴⁷ GR i. 714. ⁴⁸ GR i. 544. ⁴⁹ GR i. 544; Eadmer, HN 128–9. ⁵⁰ Orderic vi. 454 places the meeting at Neubourg, and states that when the Norman barons heard that the English wished to make Count Theobald of Blois’ younger brother Stephen king, they ‘immediately determined, with Theobald’s agreement, to fight under one lord on account of the honors which they possessed in both regions’. Orderic adds, with a characteristic primogenitary emphasis, that Theobald was indignant at being dropped, despite his alleged agreement, ‘as he was the elder’. RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 129, gives a similar but independent account of the Norman optimates, gathered at Lisieux, offering the duchy to Theobald, and then rescinding the offer when a messenger arrived from England to say that his brother Stephen ‘iam esse regem’. Robert states that the messenger arrived on 20 December; if so, it is not strictly true that Stephen was already king. Orderic does not quite say that he was, but misdates the coronation to 15 December. ⁵¹ e.g. GFL, no. 26. For this and other evidence of Matilda’s claim, see below, pp. 213, 217, 232–5. ⁵² M. M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother, and Lady of the English (Oxford, 1991), 66–7 gives details of the Norman castles which she and her husband were able to secure.

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secure the throne by means of coronation; and in 1087 Rufus had hardly seemed secure in his claim to succeed his father until he was crowned. How had the coronation ceremony come to acquire this pre-emptive role in conquered England? An answer begins to emerge not from an examination of royal succession in preConquest England, but of ducal succession in early Normandy.⁵³ Revealingly, the royal succession practices of Old England seem quite irrelevant to royal succession in post-Conquest England, despite the Conqueror’s claim to be Edward the Confessor’s chosen successor.

THE NORMAN BACKGROUND Indivisibility was, according to F. W. Maitland, the ‘splendid peculiarity of the Norman duchy’.⁵⁴ In general the pattern of succession described in early Norman charters as happening iure hereditario allowed for a wide variety of practices involving sharing or partition between sons and other relatives.⁵⁵ But this appears never to have been true of the position of the ruler who, from the early eleventh century, began to be called duke.⁵⁶ That is the view of those eleventh-century writers—Dudo, and reworking him, William of Jumièges—who are the only detailed sources for the practice of succession in the tenth century. Indeed, it is intrinsic to the very structure of their books, for Dudo was a literary innovator in the sense that he adapted the form of serial biography from ecclesiastical historians: one duke succeeded another, just as one bishop or abbot succeeded another. William of Jumièges followed suit.⁵⁷ Both authors devote some attention to the ceremonies in which successive dukes, as they termed them, formalized arrangements for the succession. Dudo’s descriptions are much fuller. The model seems to have been the ceremony by which, according to Dudo, Rollo had originally been vested with Normandy by King Charles the Simple at St-Clair-sur-Epte, and which Rollo’s successors continued to enact with successive kings (or, for part of the tenth century, the dux Francorum).⁵⁸ Rollo ‘gave [the king] his hands in subjection as a token of fidelitas’;⁵⁹ and Dudo understood the oath taken on this occasion by Charles the Simple, Robert, the dux Francorum, and the Frankish nobles to Rollo to have established the hereditary nature of the duke’s tenure: ‘in so far as he should hold and possess the aforesaid land, he should pass it on to his heirs, and over the course ⁵³ What follows briefly summarizes Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, in Law and Government, 80–110. ⁵⁴ P&M ii. 265. ⁵⁵ Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 81–6. ⁵⁶ K. F. Werner, ‘Quelques observations au sujet des débuts du “duché” de Normandie’, in Droit privé et institutions régionales: études historiques offerts à Jean Yver (Paris, 1976), 691–709, at 701–2. ⁵⁷ E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The Gesta Normannorum Ducum: A History without an End’, ANS iii (1980), 106–18 and 215–20, at 107. ⁵⁸ J. Yver, ‘Les Premières institutions du duché de Normandie’, Settimane di centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, xvi (Spoleto, 1969), 299–366, at 313, n. 34. ⁵⁹ Dudo, 167, cf. 169.

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of years should have and cultivate it by succession of his descendants (nepotes) from generation to generation.’⁶⁰ It becomes clear from Dudo’s subsequent account that he considered that Charles the Simple had meant successive, single not parallel, joint heirs. And each successive heir was created in a similar ceremony. According to Dudo, when Rollo felt that age was creeping up on him he summoned an assembly of the nobles and presented to them his only son of whom we know, William Longsword, as ‘the heir of our possession’. Rollo then asked that they should ‘give their hands into this man’s hands for the sake of faithful service, and, I pray you, make the oath of faith to us into faith of continuing and indissoluble service and military support for him’.⁶¹ Accordingly, all the principes submitted themselves ‘unanimously and voluntarily’ to William: ‘they bound themselves by an oath of sacred faith to him, and gave their hands into his hands in token of their hearts’. The faith which bound Rollo to the rex Francorum, and which in turn bound all his men to him, now also bound them to his chosen heir. In the case of Rollo’s public designation of William Longsword, one intended consequence, in Dudo’s view, was that there should be no break in fides following Rollo’s death. The Norman principes would already be bound to his son by a ‘continuing and indissoluble’ bond. When in turn William Longsword came to constitute his infant son Richard as ‘heir and successor to me in our ducal power’, he explained to his nobles that he did so because ‘every kingdom lacking a hereditary lord is desolated and divided, and much sedition, unheard-of conflicts, and implacable quarrels proliferate’. He entreated them ‘by the faith which we believe in to become [Richard’s] fideles, and to give this infant security for the kingdom, because we know not what uncertainty future times may bring’.⁶² They were to do so by placing their hands in those of his son, ‘and the fidelitas you pledge should be zealously confirmed by your swearing on the true faith’.⁶³ Following the assassination of William, Dudo reports a spontaneous cry at the sight of the child: ‘Behold him whom we are to serve, behold him for whom we are to fight, behold him to whom we pledged fides in the presence of his father’. But although the point of the fides pledged to the young Richard was that it should continue after his father’s death, the nobles nevertheless felt the need to make a senior for themselves, by placing Richard in his father’s seat. They did so by repeating the ceremony which had originally taken place at William Longsword’s request: ‘they gave their hands to Richard and freely submitted themselves to him, as they had once promised while his father was alive.’ Relics were produced, and ‘they pledged to him the ⁶⁰ Dudo, 169. William of Jumièges, GND i. 64, abbreviates the description, simply saying that Rollo ‘swore fidelitas to the king with oaths’. RT GND i. 66, restores Dudo’s account. ⁶¹ Dudo, 182. William of Jumièges, GND i. 72, is again briefer and more formulaic, saying that Rollo compelled the proceres to ‘swear an oath of fides to his son’. ⁶² Dudo, 220–1. Dudo echoes Matt. 12: 25 and Luke 11: 17, but inserts the phrase ‘lacking a hereditary lord’. William of Jumièges simply says that the principes ‘willingly confirmed fidelitas to [Richard] with oaths’. ⁶³ Dudo, 222.

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tenor of the most complete fidelitas and military service, in the manner of a Christian oath’.⁶⁴ The need to repeat the ceremony means that, in Dudo’s view, the heir-designate was not an associate-duke. Just as division of the duchy was rendered impossible by the alleged terms of Charles the Simple’s grant, so was any form of shared rulership. His view is borne out by the limited early eleventhcentury documentation, which disproves, rather than supports, the supposed association of Richard III by Richard II.⁶⁵ That Dudo should be right is hardly surprising: he subscribed one ducal charter as ‘cancellarius’,⁶⁶ and should have known what he was talking about. The successions of Richard II to Richard I in 996 and of Richard III to Richard II in 1026 reveal the role of the ceremony in suppressing that aspect of contemporary ius hereditarium which was incompatible with succession to the principatus of the monarchia regni Normannorum:⁶⁷ either joint succession or partition between brothers, and possibly other relatives. Both Richard I and Richard II had several sons. The descriptions of their respective designations of a particular son—in each case, apparently, the eldest—show that they went to considerable lengths to satisfy the claims which their other sons might legitimately put according to the customary tenets of inheritance. Dudo describes how, when Richard I’s health was obviously failing, he summoned, as Rollo had done, an assembly of the nobles. In response to a question from his uterine half-brother Rodulf, he nominated his eldest son Richard as ‘heir of my inheritance’. Rodulf ’s next question hit the nub of the issue: ‘What about the others, lord?’ For any claims Richard’s other sons might have to the principatus would be neutered when the nobles placed their hands between those of the chosen heir, and swore faith to him. ‘Duke’ Richard had a solution: ‘When they have become fideles of my son Richard, and have placed their hands, in token of their hearts, in his hands, let him give them the land which I have described to you, where they may live honourably.’⁶⁸ The father would allocate estates for his younger sons, and they would commend themselves to his chosen heir who would himself grant these estates to his brothers. All the younger brothers would thereby be bound to the heir in an even more intimate sense than the rest of the Norman nobility, for they would be explicitly beholden to him for these estates. Dudo’s account is likely to be reliable, because he was already in Normandy by the time and may have attended Richard I’s funeral.⁶⁹ It is borne out by William of Jumièges, whose descriptions of succession arrangements become more detailed from this point.⁷⁰ In the case of Richard I, William complements rather ⁶⁴ Dudo, p. 223; cf. William of Jumièges, GND i. 94. ⁶⁵ Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 91–3. ⁶⁶ Fauroux, Recueil no. 18. ⁶⁷ Ibid., no. 74, discussed by Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 80–1. ⁶⁸ Dudo, 297. ⁶⁹ Dudo, 298–9; H. Prentout, Étude critique sur Dudo de Saint-Quentin (Caen, 1915), 13–14, 413–14. ⁷⁰ Never one to waste words, William continued to use the formula quem sibi dominum militieque sue principem preficiunt : GND i. 52, 72; ii. 80.

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than rephrases Dudo, even though he claimed to have access to the recollections of Rodulf through Dudo.⁷¹ He states that Richard initially discussed the matter of ‘the disposition of the patria’ with Rodulf in private, and that Rodulf stressed that the decision lay entirely with Richard. Richard then summoned his optimates and asked them to ‘choose this my son in my place, and be fideles to him as you have always been to me’. The son he selected was the eldest, also named Richard. The optimates then ‘established fidelitas with him, and calmly acclaimed him as princeps’.⁷² William of Jumièges says nothing here about the mechanism which Dudo thinks Richard I devised to secure fraternal loyalty to his chosen heir, and which he allegedly outlined to his half-brother Rodulf. But elsewhere William of Jumièges records that a paternal half-brother of Richard II, named William, received the comitatus of the Hiémois from his brother, perhaps soon after Richard II’s accession: ‘For [William] received the county of the Hiémois as a burden from [Richard II] out of fraternal comradeship (contubernium), in order that he should render to [Richard] the established military service from it.’⁷³ The new ‘duke’s’ half-brother was bound not only by fidelitas, but also by the requirement to render some form of military service, much as, according to Dudo, the Norman nobles bound themselves to serve each ‘duke’ at his designation ceremony.⁷⁴ When Richard II in turn designated his eldest son, the future Richard III, he also established his son Robert ‘in the comitatus of the Hiémois, in order that he should render to [his brother] the service due from it’.⁷⁵ In this instance the father actually made the grant, rather than (according to Dudo) specifying it to his designated elder son, but the purpose was again to bind a younger brother to the succession arrangement. In neither case was that purpose achieved. William of Jumièges describes how William, half-brother of Richard II, spurned his brother’s dominium and ‘withdrew from him the obedience of fidelitas’, even though Richard had granted him lands in the Hiémois for which he owed military service.⁷⁶ In 1026 Richard III’s brother Robert revolted against the new duke ‘in contempt of his dominium’, despite their father’s elaborate precautions.⁷⁷ In both cases William of Jumièges attributes these rebellions to the influence of ‘malevolent men’: they had, allegedly, made William ‘a puffed-up rebel’ and had incited Robert ‘to rebel’. As an explanation, this is inadequate. Rebellion was endemic in the ducal kin. It was so ⁷¹ GND i. 134; cf. 4–6. Dudo, 119, 125, also claimed to have used Rodulf as a source, but he does not cite him explicitly in his account of this event. It is possible that Rodulf ’s son John, bishop of Avranches and later archbishop of Rouen, was one of William’s informants: GND i. pp. xliv–xlv. ⁷² GND i. 134. ⁷³ GND ii. 8. There is no evidence that William was ever comes of the Hiémois. D. C. Douglas, ‘The Earliest Norman Counts’, EHR lxi (1946), 129–56, at 135–7, argues that William of Jumièges was probably using comitatus as a synonym for pagus. ⁷⁴ Dudo, 182, 223; cf. 167 for the servitium which Rollo undertook to render to Charles the Simple. ⁷⁵ GND ii. 40. Again there is no evidence that he was given the title of comes; William of Jumièges may be using comitatus in the same sense: Douglas, ‘Norman Counts’, 145–6. ⁷⁶ GND ii. 8. ⁷⁷ GND ii. 44.

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because the duke’s male relatives had claims which were legitimate according to the customary conventions of inheritance, but which were denied by the practice of maintaining the principatus, and therefore the duchy, undivided. The devices for neutralizing the claims of the brothers and half-brothers of dukes, whether by granting estates to them in a system of proto-parage or by the wide dissemination of the title of comes through the duke’s kin,⁷⁸ provided inadequate compensation. Richard III’s brother Robert, like Richard II’s brother William, clearly felt that the lands granted to him were not sufficient, in the words attributed to Richard I, to enable him ‘to live honourably’.⁷⁹ It was the ‘splendid peculiarity’⁸⁰ of the duchy which engendered its dynastic strife.⁸¹ The rebellion of Robert, brother of Richard III, after his brother became duke, therefore, followed what was already a familiar pattern. But his own accession as duke did not. His was the only case in early Norman history when a father was not succeeded by a son. An original charter of Roger (I) de Montgommery, confirmed by Duke Robert, describes how, when Richard III died, ‘he left [the principatus] to his brother Robert iure hereditario’.⁸² This charter concerns a restitution to the abbey of Jumièges, and it is clear that William of Jumièges used it as a source.⁸³ But in his account of Robert the Magnificent’s accession he chose not to borrow or echo its wording. He says that after the two brothers had been reconciled, Richard III died ‘of poison, as many said, leaving his brother Robert as heir to his duchy’.⁸⁴ This is deliberately ambiguous. Whereas the charter implies that there had been a conventional designation by the ruling duke, using terminology which was repeatedly used in Jumièges charters,⁸⁵ William of Jumièges hints heavily at foul play and describes no designation ceremony. His only account of commendation to Robert takes place after Richard’s death, and is clearly based on the Jumièges charter.⁸⁶ The omission is all the more striking because Dudo and, following him, William agree that the assassinated William Longsword, the other ‘duke’ the imminence of whose death could not have been predicted, had formally designated his son Richard shortly beforehand.⁸⁷ In that case the designation was explained away by a story that William Longsword had been planning to become a monk.⁸⁸ ⁷⁸ Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 98–101. ⁷⁹ Dudo, 297, quoted above, p. 144. ⁸⁰ Above, n. 54. ⁸¹ For a number of case studies, see Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 102–5. ⁸² Fauroux, Recueil no. 74. ⁸³ GND i. pp. xl–xii. ⁸⁴ GND i. 46. There is independent, earlier evidence that Richard III was poisoned in Adémar de Chabannes, Chronique, ed. J. Chavanon (Paris, 1897), 189; according to the ‘Chronica de gestis consulum Andegavorum’, in Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise, ed. L. Halphen and M. Poupardin (Paris, 1913), 50, Robert poisoned his brother; cf. GR i. 308. ⁸⁵ GND i. p. xl, n. 98, citing Vernier, Jumièges, i. nos. 8 (1020 ⫻ 30), 14 (1030), 17 (c. 1030), 29 (1067). ⁸⁶ Dudo omits to mention such a ceremony in his account of Richard II’s succession in 996, and William of Jumièges does so in his accounts of the successions of 996 and 1026. ⁸⁷ Above, p. 143. ⁸⁸ Dudo, 200–1; GND i. 86–8.

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Moreover, although Nicholas, son of Richard III, is not mentioned in William of Jumièges’s original account, a passage on him was interpolated into the text, probably at St-Ouen, shortly after his death there in 1092. He had become abbot there following a short time as a monk at Fécamp.⁸⁹ It is almost certain that William knew of Nicholas’s existence, because Robert Champart, who was abbot of Jumièges from 1037 to 1042, and who fled back to the abbey from England in 1052 and died there in 1055, had become prior of St-Ouen in 1035,⁹⁰ a year after Nicholas became abbot.⁹¹ William, who had probably become a monk at Jumièges in the first quarter of the eleventh century,⁹² is likely to have sought information from Robert Champart on Norman as well as English high politics. Perhaps William decided that Richard III’s son was too sensitive an issue to be raised, even some forty years after Robert the Magnificent’s accession, in a book dedicated to Robert the Magnificent’s son and successor.⁹³ Orderic Vitalis was more forthright, as one might expect of such a staunch proponent of primogeniture, writing at a safer distance from the event. In his version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum he preserved William’s allusion to the widespread rumour that Richard III had been poisoned, but excised the clause in which Richard was said to have left his brother as heir to his duchy. And he inserted a passage on Nicholas different from that drafted by the interpolator at St-Ouen, in which he pointedly said that Nicholas ‘lacked an earthly inheritance’.⁹⁴ In reworking William’s text, both the St-Ouen interpolator and Orderic felt the need to read a lot into the gaps which William had so suggestively left between the lines of his account. They were right to feel that the one ducal succession which appeared to have broken all the conventions needed some explaining. That Nicholas was probably very young and, by later standards, illegitimate,⁹⁵ hardly presented insurmountable obstacles. Consider what happened after Robert the Magnificent’s death on pilgrimage in 1035, when his young, by later standards illegitimate,⁹⁶ son William succeeded despite the fact that several of his uncles were available. Provided Nicholas had been born before his father’s untimely death, the difference between ⁸⁹ GND ii. 46; i. pp. lx, cxxii; further Engels, ‘De obitu’, 250–3. ⁹⁰ GND i. p. xxv. ⁹¹ GND ii. 46, n. 1. ⁹² GND i. p. xxxi. ⁹³ GND i. 4–6. ⁹⁴ GND ii. 46; i. p. lxx. ⁹⁵ If Nicholas was born after Richard III’s only known marriage, to Adela, which may be dated to 1027, then he could not have been more than 6 years old when he was elected abbot of St-Ouen in 1034, after spending an unspecified amount of time as a monk of Fécamp. His epitaph, in a 14th-century history of St-Ouen, states that he had been abbot for fifty-eight years when he died in 1092: RHF xxiii. 385–7; further, GND ii. 46 n. 1; Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 107, n. 154. ⁹⁶ Orderic, iv. 84 describes William of Arques and his full-brother Mauger, archbishop of Rouen, exploiting the charge of illegitimacy against William; and at iii. 254 he describes the men of Talou deserting William for this reason. But there is no hint to this effect in contemporary sources. William of Jumièges’s account of the inhabitants of Alençon mocking the duke’s maternal background, during the siege of 1051–2, GND ii. 124, is enigmatic; but if William was being characteristically cautious about revealing the details later interpolated by Orderic, then the object of the mockery was Herleva’s father’s occupation, not the nature of her relationship with Robert the Magnificent. For William’s age at the time of his father’s departure, see GND ii. 81, n. 5.

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him and William lay in the fact that he does not appear to have been formally designated, whereas Robert the Magnificent, before he departed for Jerusalem, ensured that William was. He ‘summoned Archbishop Robert of Rouen with the optimates of his duchy’, and ‘in spite of the boy’s tender years, . . . they readily and unanimously acclaimed [William] as princeps and lord, and pledged him fidelitas with inviolable oaths’.⁹⁷ It was precisely this inviolable bond of fidelitas—to the purpose of which Dudo had drawn attention in his accounts of the succession arrangements made by Rollo and William Longsword⁹⁸—that Nicholas appears to have lacked; but so, of course, did Robert the Magnificent. In that respect too Robert’s succession had been unconventional. ‘At the very beginning of his reign’ Robert the Magnificent had to deal with what William of Jumièges carefully avoids calling a rebellion on the part of Robert, archbishop of Rouen since 989 (when he had been appointed by his father, Richard I).⁹⁹ The archbishop was a full-brother of the new duke’s father, Richard II; he probably held Évreux ‘in his lordship’ from some later point, and may have been its count.¹⁰⁰ Robert the Magnificent’s initial problem with his uncle might seem to be no more than a reprise of the sort of troubles which Richard III had experienced at his hands. That it may have been even more serious is suggested by the characterizations of the relationship between the duke and the archbishop in two independent sources. When Fulbert of Chartres wrote to Archbishop Robert, apparently in the middle of this crisis, he said that Duke Robert ‘owed himself and his all to your fidelitas’.¹⁰¹ This may or may not imply that Archbishop Robert had bound himself to the new duke after his accession; it certainly asserts the dependence of the duke on his uncle. According to William of Jumièges, the crisis ended with Archbishop Robert’s return from exile, and the full restoration of his ‘honor’, and with the duke, as a mark of penance, undertaking thereafter to abide by his counsel and to remain fidelis to him.¹⁰² William’s account of the eventual settlement suggests not only that the duke then replaced with his uncle those evil counsellors who are said to have been at the root of all the reign’s early troubles,¹⁰³ but also that the normal relationship between the duke ⁹⁷ GND ii. 80. A charter of c.1030, which survives only in a cartulary copy dating from the end of the 11th century, is confirmed ‘Rotberto inclito principe ac duce Normannorum et filio eius Willelmo successor ipsius’: Fauroux, Recueil, no. 60. If the dating is accurate and the text uninterpolated, William was already marked out as successor before his designation. But this would hardly be surprising, because he was Robert’s only son. A 13th-century cartulary copy of a notice of a gift made by Duke Robert in 1035 records that William joined in the gift ‘quia Willelmus adhuc puerulus eiusdem Roberti comitis filius post illum erat regnaturus’: no. 89. ⁹⁸ Above, p. 143. ⁹⁹ GND i. 132; ii. 266–8. ¹⁰⁰ GND ii. 48. The statement that Évreux was ‘in dominio suo’ depends on the St-Ouen interpolator, writing after 1092. Orderic, iii. 84, states that the archbishop held the comitatus, and Robert of Torigni, GND ii. 232, that he was comes. There is no contemporary evidence that he used the comital title: Douglas, ‘Norman Counts’, 132–3; GND ii. 48, n. 2. ¹⁰¹ The Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, ed. F. Behrends, OMT (Oxford, 1976), no. 126. ¹⁰² GND ii. 48. The honor probably means Évreux. ¹⁰³ ‘Inventio et miracula sancti Vulfranni’, ed. J. Laporte, Société de l’histoire de Normandie: Mélanges, xiv (1938), 47; Fauroux, Recueil nos. 74, 95 (1037 ⫻ c.1040).

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and one of his optimates had been inverted. Duke Robert undertook to be fidelis to the archbishop, not vice versa. The unusual nature of the settlement is evident in the charters of confirmation which duke and archbishop issued jointly in favour of the church of Rouen, probably to mark it.¹⁰⁴ Perhaps the extraordinary measures taken to placate Archbishop Robert are to be explained in terms of the unprecedented shakiness of Robert the Magnificent’s claim to the duchy. In that sense they might be thought to confirm the importance of the traditional designation ceremony. His initial alienation of the archbishop and of Hugh, bishop of Bayeux, son of Count Rodulf (and therefore a grandson of William Longsword),¹⁰⁵ may have been prompted, and was almost certainly exacerbated, by his use of ecclesiastical lands to reward those ‘evil counsellors’ who are said to have gathered around him from his earliest youth.¹⁰⁶ Doubtless they included those ‘malevolent men’ who, according to William of Jumièges, had encouraged him to rebel against his brother the duke in 1026.¹⁰⁷ At the beginning of his own reign, he must have needed any support he could get. But if the early years of Duke Robert’s reign were not easy, neither were those of his young son, despite the bond of fidelitas established with him at his father’s behest by the ‘inviolable oaths’ of Archbishop Robert and the other optimates. ‘While Mars was raging . . . the madness of certain persons belched forth’ in a series of assassinations of the young duke’s closest associates. William of Jumièges lists the victims.¹⁰⁸ According to Orderic, who interpolated this chapter with some relish, Osbern, the procurator of the ducal household, had his throat cut as he and the duke lay asleep in the duke’s chamber at Vaudreuil.¹⁰⁹ But Duke William himself remained unscathed in the carnage of which he was the vortex. He was evidently worth fighting over, but his own person seems to have been hedged about by a protective aura.¹¹⁰ Some of those later identified by Orderic as responsible—for William of Jumièges appears to have been too intimidated to name names¹¹¹—were closely related to the duke. The name of Ralph de Gacé, for instance, a son of Robert, archbishop of Rouen, was inserted at a later stage by ¹⁰⁴ Fauroux, Recueil nos. 66, 67 (1028 ⫻ 33); the suggestion is made by Douglas, ‘Norman Counts’, 132. ¹⁰⁵ GND ii. 52. Hugh held Ivry in succession to his father, and used it to defy Duke Robert. ¹⁰⁶ ‘Inventio sancti Vulfranni’, 47; GND ii. 48. In Fauroux, Recueil no. 74, Roger de Montgommery expresses regret for having followed the bad example set by Duke Robert at the start of his reign; cf. no. 95. This may be the subtext of no. 67, the joint confirmation to the church of Rouen, which seeks to pre-empt circumstances in which the church’s lands might be ‘evilly taken away or diminished because of the needs of the times or the carelessness of principes’. ¹⁰⁷ GND ii. 44. ¹⁰⁸ GND ii. 92; cf. ‘Inventio sancti Vulfranni’, 53–5. ¹⁰⁹ GND ii. 94. He identifies the murderer as William, son of Roger (I) de Montgommery. ¹¹⁰ The treatment of the assassination of William Longsword by Dudo, 208, 223, and William of Jumièges, GND i. 92–4, suggests that killing a duke was no light matter. Dudo, 225–34, reports a similar concern to control the young Richard I during his minority; cf. GND i. 100–6. ¹¹¹ GND ii. 92: ‘I should have mentioned them by name, had I not wished to avoid their burning hatred.’ It is not clear whether this applies only to those who had incited King Henry I of France to interfere in Norman affairs, or to those who were behind the spate of assassinations too.

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Orderic himself in his autograph manuscript: Ralph was allegedly the instigator of the murder of Gilbert, count of Eu, the young duke’s guardian.¹¹² Aside from this bloodletting in the ducal household, many of the disorders of the early part of the reign can be attributed to the duke’s relatives. According to William of Poitiers, Guy of Burgundy, son of Rainald, count of Burgundy, and Adeliza, full-sister of Richard III and Robert the Magnificent, had in the mid1040s intended to seize the ‘principatus or the greater part of Normandy’ for himself.¹¹³ The overweening pride which motivated him, on which William of Jumièges also commented, arose from his ‘exceedingly celebrated origin’.¹¹⁴ And William of Poitiers recognized that exactly the same was true of William of Arques, a son of Richard II by his second wife Papia, and therefore a full-brother of Mauger, archbishop of Rouen, and half-brother of Richard III and Robert the Magnificent.¹¹⁵ Duke William had in his youth given him the county of Talou ‘as a beneficium, in order that from it he should be a fidelis to him’,¹¹⁶ much as he had given Guy the castle of Brionne ‘in order more firmly to bind him in fidelitas’.¹¹⁷ Yet according to William of Poitiers, far from Guy’s being restrained ‘by closeness of birth [to the duke] or the liberality which had bestowed so many beneficia on him’,¹¹⁸ he, like William of Arques, used his beneficia as a basis for mounting rebellion. Moreover, it was precisely because both were so acutely conscious that ‘they counted among the progeny of the dukes of Normandy’¹¹⁹ that both resented their exclusion from something more than those beneficia. Hence Guy of Burgundy’s ill-fated attempt to supplant the duke, and William of Arques’ campaign ‘for his own magnitudo and against that of his lord’.¹²⁰ Yet it was their membership of this ‘progeny’ which, according to William of Poitiers, explained why Duke William appeared to have treated them both so leniently when their rebellions collapsed.¹²¹ In William of Arques’ case, the duke is reported to have considered it ‘right to remember that he was his uncle, rather than to pursue him as an enemy’, and granted him his patria together with ducal gratia and ‘certain ample possessions with great revenues’.¹²² Unlike his father, this duke’s male relatives were also his fideles at the time of his succession; but this seems, as in the past, to have done little to restrain them. It was because they were ¹¹² GND ii. 94 and n. 2. ¹¹³ GG 8. I am grateful to Elisabeth van Houts for pointing out to me that there is a later record of this in Reg. no. 58 (1075); cf. no. 59 (1082). ¹¹⁴ GG 34; GND ii. 120. ¹¹⁵ GG 32–4. ¹¹⁶ GND ii. 102; GG, 34 says that he had sworn fidelitas and obsequium to the duke. ¹¹⁷ GND ii. 120. ¹¹⁸ GG 8. ¹¹⁹ GG 34. ¹²⁰ GG 34. Although magnitudo includes ‘lands’—the translation in the Davis and Chibnall edition—it clearly encompasses much more. ¹²¹ GG 12, 42; William of Jumièges, GND ii. 104, 122, tells a different story, as does Orderic, i. 159, iv. 84. For the diplomatic evidence, see Tabuteau, Transfers, 64, n. 158. ¹²² GG 42. It is unclear whether these included his beneficia. William of Poitiers states that Guy forfeited Brionne, but the diplomatic evidence suggests that he did not lose everything: J. C. Holt, ‘What’s In a Name? Family Nomenclature and the Norman Conquest’, repr. in CE 179–96, at 192, n. 80.

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relatives, rather than because they were his fideles, that Duke William was said to be so indulgent to them. The distinction between the ‘clemency’¹²³ which Duke William showed them in defeat and his father’s settlement with Archbishop Robert lay in the fact that all the archbishop’s land seems to have been restored,¹²⁴ and that Duke Robert had undertaken to be fidelis to the archbishop. Duke William ran into difficulties with Robert’s successor as archbishop of Rouen, perhaps as a result of William of Arques’ revolt. For Archbishop Mauger, son of Richard II and Papia, and therefore fullbrother of William of Arques, may have been involved in his brother’s rebellion.¹²⁵ William of Poitiers does not level this charge against him, but accuses him of ‘abusing’ his ecclesiastical dignity ‘like a birthright’.¹²⁶ In other words, Mauger had been behaving much as Archbishop Robert had done, though he did not have the additional resource of a comitatus. But in Mauger’s case, far from Duke William eventually undertaking to be his fidelis, the duke was able to ensure that the archbishop was deposed and sent into exile.¹²⁷ He was able to do so because Normandy was not on this occasion subjected to an interdict by an exiled archbishop;¹²⁸ rather, Mauger was arraigned before a legatine council at Lisieux in 1054.¹²⁹ In the cases of Guy of Burgundy and William of Arques, the duke’s ‘clemency’ towards his relatives was unalloyed; but because Mauger was a cleric, ‘filial affection’ had been directly contradicted by the obligations of ‘divine love’. There was never any doubt on which side Duke William, ‘whose unshakeable goodness we proclaim as a subject worthy of consideration and wonder’, would come down.¹³⁰ In William of Poitiers’ eyes, Mauger’s crime originated in his consciousness of his high birth, as his brother’s did. William juxtaposes him with Hugh, bishop of Lisieux, a grandson of Richard I and a son of Count William (I) of Eu, who ‘was never heard to boast of his ancient line’. On the contrary, Bishop Hugh understood that he had received ‘ecclesiastical regimen’ as a ‘sacred ministerium, not as a lordship or honour’.¹³¹ At the council of Lisieux, it was therefore appropriate that Hugh’s had been the ‘resounding voice of justice’ which called for Mauger’s deposition, ‘remaining resolutely in God’s party, and condemning his uncle’s son on God’s behalf ’. Bishop Hugh was at one with the duke in subordinating family feeling, where a clerical relative was concerned, to the demands of Canon Law. But the fact that Duke William found it expedient in the case of Archbishop Mauger to subscribe to some of the principles newly espoused by the papal reform movement did not mean that familial ties were any weaker in the 1050s than they had been when his father had been forced to come to terms with Archbishop Robert. The cases of Guy of Burgundy and William of Arques showed as much. The duke’s ‘clemency’ towards ¹²³ GG 42; cf. 12. ¹²⁴ GND ii. 48, probably refers to the comitatus of Évreux. It is not clear what had happened to the lands of the church of Rouen while the archbishop was in exile, but Fauroux, Recueil nos. 66, 67 provided a detailed confirmation. ¹²⁵ Orderic i. 159; iv. 142. ¹²⁶ GG 86. ¹²⁷ GG 88; GND ii. 142. ¹²⁸ GND ii. 48. ¹²⁹ GG 88. ¹³⁰ GG 86. ¹³¹ GG 92.

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his troublesome lay relatives was the obverse of the resentment at his position which had moved them to rebel in the first place. Unlike his father in 1028, it was not Duke William’s own weakness which forced him to be so magnanimous, but, as William of Poitiers stressed, a sense of familial cohesion. That cohesion expressed itself both in terms of his magnanimity towards defeated lay relatives, and in their attempts to secure for themselves a greater share of the family’s resources. For their resentment meant that all conflicts tended to be focused through the ducal kin on the person of the duke.¹³² Paradoxically, the very instability of the duchy, expressed through conflict within the ducal kin, was a powerful force binding it together. Orderic made William recall on his deathbed that, as a child, he had had to be hidden from his cognati, in order to save him from those perfidi who had sought his death: ‘My closest friends and my kinsmen (consanguinei), who ought to have defended me with all their might against all men, frequently conspired and rebelled against me, and robbed me of almost all the inheritance of my father.’¹³³ As we have seen, the evidence suggests that Orderic was wrong to think that assassination had ever been an objective in young William’s case.¹³⁴ But Guy of Burgundy’s aim,¹³⁵ and possibly that of Duke William’s father in 1026,¹³⁶ allegedly went as far as supplanting the duke, rather than just securing a greater share for themselves. If we follow William of Jumièges’s dark hints,¹³⁷ Robert’s becoming duke in 1027 after what was possibly the clandestine assassination of Richard III may have been the only successful such attempt in Norman history. In these cases the indivisibility of the principatus was implicitly recognized by those who baulked at their own consequential exclusion from anything more than a small, dependent portion. In other cases too, there is no evidence for members of the ducal kin seeking to replace the lineal succession arrangements which had apparently been imposed on the principatus from the very beginning, long before such arrangements developed at other levels of Norman society. In kicking against the implications of the duchy’s ‘splendid peculiarity’, disaffected relatives of the duke served in many ways to reinforce it. Disputes were kept very much within the family. How, then, does this analysis of Norman ‘ducal’ succession prior to 1066 bear upon successions in post-Conquest England and Normandy?

NORMANDY AND THE CONQUEST OF ENGL AND The acquisition of England seems to have transformed the duke’s relations with his kin. In part this may be ascribed to the fact that Duke William was Robert the ¹³² For a similar phenomenon, see K. J. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London, 1979), 29 and passim. ¹³³ Orderic iv. 82. ¹³⁴ Above, p. 149. ¹³⁵ GG 8, discussed above, p. 150. ¹³⁶ GND ii. 44, could be interpreted in this way. ¹³⁷ Above, p. 147.

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Magnificent’s only son.¹³⁸ He had uterine brothers, but they, by definition, did not share ducal blood.¹³⁹ And by 1066 William had long seen off his uncles. He gave his half-brothers very important roles in Normandy before,¹⁴⁰ and in England after, the Conquest.¹⁴¹ According to William of Poitiers, Odo’s promotion to Bayeux—like that of Hugh to Lisieux and of John, son of Count Rodulf (and paternal half-brother of Odo’s troublesome predecessor), to Avranches—was based exclusively on his exemplary ‘probity’. It had nothing to do with his being a close relative of the duke.¹⁴² In England Odo was ‘uniquely and most steadfastly fidelis to the king, from whom he had received great honours and hoped to get still more’.¹⁴³ These good notices may owe something to a personal connection between William and Odo, and reinforce the case for dating the Gesta Guillelmi early, before Odo’s fall.¹⁴⁴ That fall was occasioned by Odo fomenting disorder in England through overweening ambition; in other words, by his beginning to behave as other relatives of dukes had done previously in Normandy.¹⁴⁵ The king himself is said to have described him as a seditiosus and a tirannus.¹⁴⁶ But Robert of Mortain, the other half-brother, seems to have continued to serve the king faithfully.¹⁴⁷ There were Norman precedents for his good behaviour too. William the Conqueror’s greatest family problem was, however, unprecedented. From 1077 he had to deal with a series of rebellions mounted by Robert Curthose, and died in the middle of one ten years later. Orderic Vitalis is the most ¹³⁸ Explicitly stated by William of Jumièges in his account of William’s designation: GND ii. 80. William also had a uterine-sister called Adelaide: ii. 272. ¹³⁹ After her association with Duke Robert, Herleva, William’s mother, was married to Herluin, vicomte of Conteville. Orderic GND ii. 96, states that the marriage took place after Duke Robert’s death, but this may not be so: Douglas, Conqueror, 381; D. Bates, ‘Notes sur l’aristocratie normande’, AN xxiii (1973), 21–38. By Herluin she had two sons: Odo, bishop of Bayeux, and Robert, count of Mortain. ¹⁴⁰ Odo succeeded Hugh, bishop of Bayeux between October 1049 and 23 April 1050: Antiquus cartularius ecclesie Baiocensis, ed. V. Bourrienne, 2 vols., Société de l’histoire de Normandie (ParisRouen, 1902–3), i. 6–8; GG 90, 164–6; Orderic, iv. 114–16. Robert, the second son, attested ducal charters as ‘frater comitis’ (Fauroux, Recueil no. 140 (1049 ⫻ 58)) and as ‘frater eius’ (no. 146 (c.1050 ⫻ 60)), before assuming the style ‘Moritonii comes’ (no. 156 (1063)). According to Orderic, GND ii. 126, Duke William gave him the comitatus immediately after the expulsion of the previous count, William ‘Werlenc’, a grandson of Richard I. Views differ as to when this took place: Douglas, ‘Norman Counts’, 141 and L. Musset, ‘Actes inédits du xi siècle. I. Les plus anciennes chartes du prieuré de St-Gabriel (Calvados)’, BSAN lii (1952–4), 117–41, at 128, suggest in or shortly before 1056; Bates, Normandy Before 1066, 82, suggests c.1060. ¹⁴¹ For a summary of William’s treatment of Odo, Robert, their father Herluin, and Ralph, their paternal half-brother, see Orderic iv. 98. ¹⁴² GG 90; Orderic iv. 114–16 took a different view. ¹⁴³ GG 166. ¹⁴⁴ Davis, ‘William of Poitiers’, 120–3. ¹⁴⁵ Orderic iv. 40–4. Guibert of Nogent, writing c.1108, is the first to suggest that Odo was aiming to usurp the throne: Gesta Dei per Francos, Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux, ed. Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, 5 vols. (Paris, 1844–95), iv. 232–3; cf. Wace, Roman de Rou, ll. 9199–248. ¹⁴⁶ Orderic iv. 98–100. ¹⁴⁷ B. Golding, ‘Robert of Mortain’, ANS xiii (1990), 119–44; even when Robert became involved in the rebellion of 1088 against William Rufus, he is said to have done so at Odo’s instigation, to have made his peace with the king quickly, and to have been restored to favour; Orderic v. 208.

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perceptive analyst of the problem. Of course, his account has to be treated with some caution, because he was writing almost half a century after the events.¹⁴⁸ But it happens that one of Queen Matilda’s messengers named Samson the Breton, who, Orderic implies, would have known the details of her attempts to plead her eldest son’s cause with his father, had become a monk at St-Évroult when he was forced to flee the wrath of the king. There Samson survived for twenty-six years, long enough for Orderic to have talked to him.¹⁴⁹ And Orderic does seem very well informed about the queen’s involvement in the conflict between father and son. He claimed to know, for instance, the substance of a prophecy about her eldest son’s future which the concerned Matilda had elicited from a hermit in Germany.¹⁵⁰ Despite the reliability of his putative source, however, Orderic shared none of Matilda’s apparent sympathy for Curthose. He characterizes Robert Curthose in the same terms as the treacherous Odo of Bayeux.¹⁵¹ When the proceres sought the king’s pardon for Robert after he had unhorsed and wounded his father at the siege of Gerberoi in 1079, partly because their own sons and kinsmen had subsequently gone into exile with Robert, the king was loath to agree: ‘Which of my ancestors from the time of Rollo ever had to endure such hostility from a child of his as I do? Consider William, son of Rollo the Great, the three Richards, dukes of Normandy, and my lord and father Robert, and see how faithfully sons served their fathers up to their deaths.’¹⁵² There was justice in his complaint. We have seen Richard I and Richard II (unsuccessfully) seeking to ensure that their younger sons would be bound to their chosen heirs.¹⁵³ But there is no evidence for ducal fathers being troubled by disappointed sons in early Normandy. Moreover, in this instance the disaffected son fomenting disorder was not being excluded from everything except a small share of his father’s hereditas, for which he would depend on his father’s chosen heir. On the contrary, he was his father’s chosen heir. By 1079 he had been formally designated as such, in the traditional fashion, on at least two occasions.¹⁵⁴ Why, for the first time in Norman history, should the designated successor have become such a thorn in his father’s side? And why should William’s other sons, who had not been designated to anything, have remained so traditionally loyal to their father that he was said to bless them for their support in the next breath to cursing Robert?¹⁵⁵ It is possible that Robert had already been formally designated by 1063, for an original charter of Stigand of Mézidon, dated 29 June in that year, cites the consent of ‘Count William his lord and Mathilda his wife et Rodberti eorum filii, ¹⁴⁸ William’s troubles with his eldest son are, for the most part, covered in Books IV and V of the Historia, which may be dated to c.1125 (Orderic ii. p. xv) and c.1127 (Orderic iii. p. xiv) respectively. ¹⁴⁹ Orderic iii. 104. There is no evidence that Orderic had done so when he interpolated the GND between c.1095 and 1114: GND i. pp. lxviii–lxix. He excised a key passage on Robert, but not others: i. pp. lxxi, cxxv; ii. 130. ¹⁵⁰ Orderic iii. 104–8. ¹⁵¹ Ibid. 112; iv. 40. ¹⁵² Ibid. iii. 112. ¹⁵³ Above, pp. 144–6. ¹⁵⁴ R. H. C. Davis, ‘William of Jumièges, Robert Curthose and the Norman Succession’, repr. in id., Alfred the Great to Stephen, 131–40; Barlow, Rufus, 29, n. 106; GND i. 137–8. ¹⁵⁵ Orderic iii. 114.

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quem elegerant ad gubernandum regnum post suum obitum’.¹⁵⁶ The date is so close to that of Duke William’s annexation of Maine¹⁵⁷—probably undertaken on Robert’s behalf by his father on the basis of an alleged agreement betrothing Margaret, sister of the deceased and childless count of Maine, to Robert¹⁵⁸—that it is tempting to link the two.¹⁵⁹ As Robert may well have been presented at the time as Count Herbert of Maine’s ordained successor,¹⁶⁰ and is said by Orderic to have done ‘due hominium and fidelitas’ for the ‘honor’ to Geoffrey ‘le Barbu’, count of Anjou, at about this time,¹⁶¹ the issue of his potential succession to Normandy as well as Maine might have been a current concern. The charter is not, of course, a ducal one, and it does not necessarily indicate that a traditional designation ceremony, involving the pledging of fidelitas by the magnates, had occurred by 1063. It mentions only the choice of both parents, and there is no evidence that a duchess had ever before been involved in such proceedings. If the notice of a charter of Gozelinus, vicecomes of Arques, is trustworthy and accurately dated to c.1030, then William had himself been recognized as his father’s ‘successor’ long before the designation ceremony which immediately preceded Duke Robert’s departure on pilgrimage.¹⁶² In this case William was the only son, and his eventual succession might have appeared, at this time, as something of a foregone conclusion. But since every father had in practice chosen his eldest son as heir, much the same might have been true of Curthose. With the styles iuvenis comes and iunior comes his name was included in the witness lists of two original charters which may be firmly dated to 1051.¹⁶³ This means that Stigand of Mézidon’s charter cannot be taken as evidence that the formal designation of Robert prior to the Conquest of England, referred to by John of Worcester and Orderic, had already taken place by June 1063.¹⁶⁴ Whether Robert Curthose was first designated in connection with his father’s annexation of Maine or, as William of Jumièges¹⁶⁵ and Orderic¹⁶⁶ respectively relate, either shortly after or shortly before the Conquest of England, in retrospect this ceremony turned out to be different from any earlier ducal designation in one crucial respect. For in this case ¹⁵⁶ Fauroux, Recueil no. 158. ¹⁵⁷ For the details, see C. W. David, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy (Cambridge, Mass., 1920), 7–10. ¹⁵⁸ GG, 58–62; Orderic ii. 116–18. Cf. above, p. 9. ¹⁵⁹ David, Curthose, 11. ¹⁶⁰ According to GG 58, Count Herbert had made Duke William his sole heir, and William arranged the betrothal after Herbert’s death and the successful conquest of Maine (62–4). But for Orderic, ii. 116, 304, 310, the betrothal was the key element in the agreement between Count Herbert and the duke. Orderic’s account may be more accurate, because William of Poitiers completed his book c.1077 when Robert was already in rebellion, and he seems to have deliberately avoided any mention of Robert: Davis,’Norman Succession’, 135. ¹⁶¹ Orderic, ii. 304; L. Halphen, Le Comte d’Anjou au xi siècle (Paris, 1906), 180. ¹⁶² Fauroux, Recueil no. 60, quoted and discussed above, n. 97. ¹⁶³ Ibid., nos. 124, 126. Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 151, n. 50, suggests that they were drawn up by the same scribe. ¹⁶⁴ JW iii. 30; Orderic ii. 356; iii. 98; iv. 92. Here I differ from Davis’s apparent assumption: ‘Norman Succession’, 137–8. ¹⁶⁵ GND ii. 178; cf. i. pp. xxxiv–xxxv, 137–8. ¹⁶⁶ Above, n. 155.

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the father did not die soon afterwards. The ceremony may have been prompted by the risks inherent in the Conquest, which seem to have weighed on the minds of many.¹⁶⁷ Although this was not William of Jumièges’s interpretation of Duke William’s motives, Robert the Magnificent had designated his only son when his life seemed obviously at risk. But unlike his father, William the Conqueror would survive by some twenty years the ceremony in which the Norman nobility had pledged their fidelitas to his son with oaths which, in another context, William of Jumièges describes as ‘inviolable’.¹⁶⁸ At this point a clear distinction must be drawn between William of Jumièges’ interpretation of Curthose’s position and that of Orderic. (William of Poitiers is of no assistance, because he says nothing about Robert’s designation and does not even mention him by name, perhaps because, when he was completing his book c.1077, Robert was already in rebellion.)¹⁶⁹ William of Jumièges probably put the final touches to the Gesta Normannorum Ducum early in 1070,¹⁷⁰ but he had been writing it since long before the Conquest. Indeed, it is likely that he had to revise, in the light of the Conquest, what he had drafted by around 1060;¹⁷¹ for the advance notices of English affairs in the earlier portions tend to intrude into the narrative, as if they were later insertions, and they are sometimes concluded by apologies for the diversions.¹⁷² They bear the hallmarks of a scissors-and-paste job. When it comes to the Conquest itself, William’s account is pretty rudimentary,¹⁷³ certainly in comparison with that of William of Poitiers. In the final pages of the book William’s Latin begins to crumble, as if they were composed in haste. They are correspondingly vague about the details of events, and were almost certainly finished before the king’s crowning by the papal legates at the Easter Council at Winchester in 1070, which William would surely have mentioned had he known about it.¹⁷⁴ If sketchy, his book is nevertheless the earliest Norman account of the first few years after the Conquest. As he stated in his letter of dedication to the king, apparently composed when the book was complete, his principal interest remained the dukes of the Normans.¹⁷⁵ Accordingly, his epilogue makes it clear that he leaves to others the task of recording William’s subsequent reign as king of the English.¹⁷⁶ Instead, he envisaged concentrating thenceforth on Robert Curthose, ‘in whom at present we rejoice as duke and advocate’.¹⁷⁷ ¹⁶⁷ Fauroux, Recueil no. 228 (1066). Orderic iii. 112 refers to William having once granted the duchy to Robert after his death ‘when he lay sick at Bonneville’. Orderic ii. 356 indicates that this postdated the grant made by the duke before the battle of Hastings, but it is not possible to date it more precisely. ¹⁶⁸ GND ii. 80. ¹⁶⁹ Above, n. 160. ¹⁷⁰ Van Houts, GND i. pp. xxxiii–xxxiv, points out that the last datable event mentioned is the fall of York in the autumn of 1069. ¹⁷¹ Van Houts justifies this date at GND i. pp. xxxii–xxxiii. ¹⁷² GND ii. 22, 106. Van Houts, GND i. p. xlvi, suggests that these notices date from before the Conquest, but offers no firm evidence. For some indication that those sections already in draft by 1060 were revised subsequently, see i. pp. xxxiii, xxxv. ¹⁷³ GND i. pp. xlvi–xlix, liii–liv. ¹⁷⁴ GND i. p. xxxiv; Orderic ii. 236. ¹⁷⁵ GND i. p. xlix, 4–6. ¹⁷⁶ GND ii. 182–4. ¹⁷⁷ GND ii. 184.

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This statement, found only in the longer, original version of the epilogue written by William of Jumièges,¹⁷⁸ must be taken in conjunction with two other passages in the Gesta Normannorum Ducum which concern Curthose. One, found in its entirety also only in William’s original text, states that ‘Robert afterwards succeeded his father in the duchy, performing his father’s office, long may he do so (functus honore paterno, et utinam tempore longo). Concerning him, as long as life is his companion, we will write more fully at the appropriate points.’¹⁷⁹ In its full, original form this passage therefore pre-empts William’s own version of his epilogue. The other, which is found in all redactions of the Gesta, records that William ‘entrusted the dominium of the Norman duchy to his son Robert, who was blossoming in the flower of his youth’, during his triumphal return to Normandy in 1067.¹⁸⁰ The three passages are, therefore, found together only in William of Jumièges’ original text. While the third in isolation might be understood to refer to a designation ceremony of the traditional sort, the three taken together show that William considered Curthose to be in some sense duke by the time when his redaction was completed in 1070, and probably from 1067. After Duke William’s coronation, the chronicler styles him simply rex;¹⁸¹ as an historian of the Norman dukes he would henceforth concern himself only with the new duke, who he said had succeeded his father.¹⁸² A strictly contemporary Norman witness, therefore, seems to have viewed the new king as in some way handing over the duchy to his eldest son once he had acquired the English kingdom. But William of Jumièges did so without any explicit account of the sort of traditional designation ceremony which had previously been so central to the concerns of his book that he had devised a formula to describe it.¹⁸³ No earlier duke had associated his chosen heir as co-duke on the Capetian model;¹⁸⁴ nor had any earlier duke resigned the duchy in favour of his chosen heir. There is no suggestion that William of Jumièges thought otherwise.¹⁸⁵ So precisely how he conceived of Robert Curthose’s unprecedented succession to his duchy, in the unprecedented circumstance of the duke becoming a king elsewhere, must remain a mystery. But his cryptic, early testimony is at

¹⁷⁸ Davis, ‘Norman Succession’, 131–2; van Houts, GND i. p. xxxiv. The long epilogue survives in some manuscripts of Orderic’s redaction: i. pp. lxxi, cxxv. ¹⁷⁹ GND ii. 130. The later (post-1092) St-Ouen redaction, which included the passage on Abbot Nicholas (above, pp. 147–8), omits the phrase ‘functus honore paterno’. Another later redaction, known as D, ends this passage on Curthose at ‘paterno’, thereby omitting the wish that he should live for a long time, and the undertaking to give an account of his deeds. Orderic cut the whole passage. ¹⁸⁰ GND ii. 178. ¹⁸¹ GND ii. 170, 176, 178, 180, 182; previously he is dux. In the dedicatory letter and the epilogue, the Conqueror is rex. ¹⁸² GND ii. 130. ¹⁸³ Above, n. 70. ¹⁸⁴ Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 91–3, and above, p. 144. Davis, ‘Norman Succession’, 139–40, takes a different view. ¹⁸⁵ For the succession to Richard II, see GND ii. 38–40; for the succession to Robert the Magnificent, the most obvious context for a resignation, see ii. 80.

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odds with almost all the other evidence, and later troubled his interpolators so much that they tried fitfully to correct it.¹⁸⁶ As we have seen, Robert had appeared as iuvenis comes and iunior comes in the witness lists of two related and apparently original charters dated 1051, probably drafted by the same scribe.¹⁸⁷ If Robert’s name was included in both the lists in 1051, as seems likely given the unusual titles attributed to him by the scribe, then the crosses cannot have been autograph, because he was then no more than a year old.¹⁸⁸ Nothing of the sort is found in any other pre-Conquest charter.¹⁸⁹ He may occasionally have attested as comes,¹⁹⁰ something his younger brothers never did prior to 1066.¹⁹¹ Otherwise he was simply his father’s son.¹⁹² After the Conquest he sometimes appeared in witness lists as plain comes,¹⁹³ and sometimes as filius regis or the like;¹⁹⁴ but most often the two styles were combined.¹⁹⁵ In a clear ¹⁸⁶ GND i. pp. lx–lxi, cxxii (for the St-Ouen redaction), lxiii (the B redaction, based on that of St-Ouen, which incorporates the account of King William’s death known as De Obitu Willelmi), lxvi, cxxiv (the D redaction), lxxi, cxxv (Orderic’s redaction). For these and Robert of Torigni’s amendments, see the textual apparatus. ¹⁸⁷ Above, p. 155. ¹⁸⁸ Fauroux, Recueil, pp. 294, 296, considers that Robert was an original subscriber; F. Lot, Études critiques sur l’abbaye de St-Wandrille (Paris, 1913), no. 30, n. 1, thinks that Robert’s subscription is a later autograph addition, like that of his mother; cf. no. 31. Les Archives de Normandie et de la Seine inférieure, ed. P. Chevreux and J. J. Vernier (Rouen, 1911), pl. IV, suggests that Lot is correct; see also David, Curthose, 5, n. 10. ¹⁸⁹ Fauroux, Recueil no. 228, the only arguable exception, is attested by a Robertus comes and an Ilger, tutor ‘ipsius Roberti filii comitis’, whereas Curthose is referred to in the body of the text simply as comes William’s son. As Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 150, n. 46, points out, it is not certain that the Count Robert in the witness list is Curthose; he might be Robert of Mortain or Robert of Eu. But the presence of Ilger, who witnesses other charters together with members of the ducal household (nos. 204, 204 bis), suggests that he is Curthose. He may have attested in place of his father the duke because he was confirming the grant on his father’s instructions. ¹⁹⁰ Fauroux, Recueil nos. 137 (Sept. or Oct. 1055; 18th-century copy); 226 (1065 ⫻ 66; a copy in a pancarte of 1068 ⫻ 75). Robert attests the former as comes, Anglorum regis filius, so this cannot have been in the original charter; see further Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 151, n. 51. In no. 224 (1063 ⫻ 66) he is ‘comes Cenomannis’. ¹⁹¹ Fauroux, Recueil nos. 141 (c.1052 ⫻ 58), William (but Barlow, Rufus, 1, n. 1 shows that he was probably born in or shortly before 1060); 215 (1059 ⫻ 66), William; 218A (1059 ⫻ 66; an original), ‘Signum Richardii de Abrincas filii sui’; 218B, ‘Signum Ricardi filii sui’; 219 (c.1060 ⫻ 66), Richard; 224 (1063 ⫻ 66), Richard, as Robert’s brother; 227 (1049 ⫻ 66, probably 1066), Richard and William; 231 (18 June 1066), ‘⫹Signum Ricardi filii comitis. Signum Willelmi filii comitis’; 232 (1066, probably between 27 May and 16 July), William. ¹⁹² Fauroux, Recueil nos. 139 (Mar. 1057; dubious); 203 (1051 ⫻ 66); 204 (1051 ⫻ 66; probably c.1056 ⫻ 66), which is a joint grant; 204 bis, also a joint grant; 205 (1051 ⫻ 66), as a son of William and Matilda; 212 (1055 ⫻ 66); 215; 218A; 218B; 219; 227; 230 (1066), as a son of William and Matilda; 231, as filius comitis; 232. ¹⁹³ Reg. Nos. 46 (13 Sept. 1077); 64 Version II (18 July 1083); 229 (1075); 257 (1080); 282 (1079 ⫻ 82/3, and possibly summer 1080); 283 (same date). For a full discussion of the styles of Curthose and his brothers in post-Conquest charters, see Reg., pp. 93–6. ¹⁹⁴ Reg. nos. 45 (1066 ⫻ 77); 48 (1079 ⫻ 82, and possibly 1080 ⫻ 82; alternatively 1079 ⫻ 87); 49 (1081 ⫻ 82; perhaps 1081 ⫻ 87); 50 (1081 ⫻ 82); 156 (1085); 192 (1066 ⫻ 83); 199 (1068 ⫻ 77/8 or 80); 212 (1068 ⫻ 76); 235 (12 Apr. 1080); 236 (1080); 252 (9 Jan. 1084); 255 (1081, probably May); 256 (1069); 262 (1074); 279 (25 Dec. 1082 ⫻ 2 Nov. 1083). ¹⁹⁵ Reg. nos. 26 (30 Nov. 1074); 39 (31 May 1081); 52 (1079 ⫻ 83); 53 (1080/1 ⫻ 83); 54 (1081 ⫻ 87); 59 (1082); 60 (1082); 141 (c.1070 ⫻ 77/8); 154 (2 Feb. 1081); 166 (1077); 173

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departure from pre-Conquest Norman practice, he occasionally attested as comes Normannorum or the like, sometimes in conjunction with filius regis.¹⁹⁶ Twice he was comes Cenomannensis, but in this case there was a possible pre-Conquest precedent.¹⁹⁷ It has been suggested that the dates of charters in which he appears as comes Normannorum happen to be close to those of putative designation ceremonies, in 1067 or before, and at the conclusion of his revolt of 1077–9.¹⁹⁸ More striking is their paucity: there are only five surviving instances, three of which can be dated to 1082, and a further one which may have been issued in that year. Moreover, the three which can be firmly dated to 1082 confirm gifts made by Robert’s uncle, Robert, count of Mortain.¹⁹⁹ The style could, therefore, have been coined in order to give Curthose a handle distinct from that of his uncle, or as an expression of familial pride. From the Conquest, Robert’s younger brothers began to be styled plain comes,²⁰⁰ and the title comes Normannorum fell into virtual desuetude as far as the new king was concerned.²⁰¹ Henceforth the Conqueror was dux or princeps or patronus or dominus where his continental territories were concerned, with dux, patronus,²⁰² and dominus²⁰³ apparently applying exclusively to the Normans, and princeps sometimes being used in the same sense,²⁰⁴ sometimes subsuming the Manceaux too,²⁰⁵ and sometimes applying exclusively to the Manceaux.²⁰⁶ (1073 ⫻ 77); 175 (14 July 1080); 217 (1077 ⫻ 78 or 1080 ⫻ 81); 230 (Apr. 1083); 246 (1080); 253 (1082); 269 (1080 ⫻ 83); 280 (1068, possibly 1 Nov. ⫻ 25 Dec.). ¹⁹⁶ Reg. nos. 158 (Autumn 1082 (24 June 1082 ⫻ 82/3)); 204 (24 June 1082); 205 (24 June 1082)(which William attests as rex Anglorum et princeps Normannorum); 251 (Apr. 1067)(which William attests as rex Anglorum et dux Normannorum); 281 (1080 ⫻ 82). He attests no. 142 (1067 ⫻ 83) as consul. ¹⁹⁷ Reg. nos. 27 (1074); 172 (1068 or 1074 ⫻ 75). The possible pre-Conquest precedent is Fauroux, Recueil no. 224; note that no. 229 was issued by William as ‘dux Normanorum et Cenomannorum’, and that he makes the grant ‘concedente Roberto filio meo’. ¹⁹⁸ Davis, ‘Norman Succession’, 136. ¹⁹⁹ Reg. nos. 158; 204; 205; cf. p. 95. ²⁰⁰ Reg. nos. 46; 53; 54; 60; 141; 144 (1085); 246: Rufus. 266 Version III (1080 ⫻ 83): Henry. ²⁰¹ Reg. nos. 51 (1066 ⫻ 83); 254 (13 Apr. 1069), in which he is ‘comes Nortmannorum atque Cinomannensium’; 261 (May 1074), in which William is rex Anglorum et princeps Normannorum in the witness list; 262 (1074, perhaps Apr.–Sept.). No. 200 (27 Dec. 1080) records a grant ‘quod Guillelmus rex concessit, quando adhuc comes erat’. For a full discussion of the royal and ducal style, see Reg. pp. 85–92. ²⁰² Reg. nos. 141 (c.1070 ⫻ 77/8); 144 (1085). As Bates, Reg. p. 88, points out, these Fécamp documents are the only ones to use the same term as William’s seal. ²⁰³ Reg. nos. 27 (1074): ‘Normannorum dominus’; 159 (1066 ⫻ 67): ‘Normannie dominus.’ The former was probably drawn up in the Bayeux scriptorium, the latter in England. ²⁰⁴ They are used as synonyms in Reg. no. 158 (Autumn 1082 (24 June 1082 ⫻ 82/3) ). ²⁰⁵ Reg. nos. 39 (31 May 1081); 45 (1066 ⫻ 77); 46 (13 Sept. 1077); 48 (1079 ⫻ 82, and possibly 1080 ⫻ 82; alternatively 1079 ⫻ 87); 49 (1081 ⫻ 82, but perhaps 1081 ⫻ 87); 50 (1081 ⫻ 82); 51 (1066 ⫻ 83); 52 (1079 ⫻ 83); 54 (1081 ⫻ 87); 57 (late 11th century); 59 (1082); 60 (1082); 61 (1066 ⫻ 83); 64 (18 July 1083); 65 (1080/1 ⫻ 83, or more probably 1083 ⫻ 87); 253 (late 1082); 269 (1080 ⫻ 83). ²⁰⁶ Reg. nos. 50 (1081 ⫻ 82)(he is princeps Coenomannorum in the witness list, but princeps Normannorum et Cennomanorum in the opening clause); 255. No. 275 (30 Mar. 1073) was confirmed by William, king of the English, ‘qui Willermus Cenomannensis civitatis tunc principatum tenebat’.

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Once he was also styled comes Cenomannorum.²⁰⁷ As Professor Bates has shown, many of these variations are attributable to the distinctive traditions of the scriptoria where the documents were drafted; but there is nevertheless a certain consistency to the changes which followed the Conquest. Most striking, in the present regard, is the inflation in titles which seems to have made it possible for the king’s sons to be styled comites,²⁰⁸ and the king’s eldest son, who attested one charter as regis primogenitus,²⁰⁹ occasionally to be distinguished from his brothers as comes Normannorum. Three of the charters in which Curthose is so distinguished were written in non-Norman scriptoria, where scribes may have been influenced by the Capetian practice of association,²¹⁰ and the remaining two at relatively obscure Norman houses.²¹¹ This suggests that their use of this title does not have to be taken as seriously as it would if, for instance, it had been a characteristic of documents produced at the new abbeys in Caen.²¹² Use of this title cannot in itself be taken as corroboration of William of Jumièges’s view of Curthose’s position in Normandy c.1070. There is some other early evidence which might be interpreted as corroborating William of Jumièges. A record from the abbey of St-Désir, Lisieux, preserved in a pancarte which was destroyed in 1944, is dated 1068, ‘regnante Philippo in Francia, Guilielmo regum nobilissimo apud Anglos, Rotberto filio eius principante apud Normannos et Cenomannos’.²¹³ The apparent implication that Robert was in some sense ruling in both Normandy and Maine in 1068 appears to be strengthened by a clause later in the document: ‘concedente etiam Rotberto Normannorum Cenomannorumque principe et eius patre Guilielmo Anglorum rege.’ But these statements merely give an impression; they are hardly conclusive. And the addition of Robert’s confirmation, as comes filius regis, to a charter issued by his father in 1068 in favour of the abbey of Troarn cannot be taken to reinforce the case;²¹⁴ for it is found in only one of the five extant copies, a fifteenth-century vidimus, and is said by the scribe to be ‘en glose’. It therefore bears all the signs of a later addition, and cannot be dated.²¹⁵ Even if Robert did confirm this gift in 1068 or shortly afterwards, there is pre-Conquest evidence for the designated sons of dukes, including William and Robert, confirming their fathers’ grants.²¹⁶ On at least one occasion Robert was recorded as making a gift jointly with his father, perhaps even before he had been formally designated.²¹⁷ Yet there is no suggestion ²⁰⁷ Reg. nos. 171 (1066 ⫻ 87, possibly 1073 ⫻ 87). ²⁰⁸ Reg., pp. 90–1. ²⁰⁹ Reg. no. 261 (May 1074). ²¹⁰ Reg. nos. 204; 205 (Marmoutier); 251 (St-Benoît-sur-Loire). I am grateful to Elisabeth van Houts for this suggestion. ²¹¹ Reg. nos. 158 (Grestain); 281 (Troarn). ²¹² Bates, Reg., pp. 88–9, 90, suggests that the consistency evident in charters drafted in these abbeys might reflect thinking at the royal court. He points out (p. 96) that the charters of St-Étienne accord very little importance to Robert. ²¹³ Reg. no. 179, discussed by Bates, p. 95. ²¹⁴ Reg. no. 280 (1068, possibly 1 Nov. ⫻ 25 Dec.); here I differ from Bates, p. 95. ²¹⁵ Bates, Reg., p. 839, states that it was ‘an addition, perhaps as a colophon’. ²¹⁶ Fauroux, Recueil nos. 89; 228. ²¹⁷ Fauroux, Recueil nos 204, 204 bis. The former survives as an original, and cannot be more precisely dated than ‘probably c.1056 ⫻ 66’.

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that he had become duke prior to the Conquest, or that his father had done so prior to Robert the Magnificent’s death. The apparent implication of the notice concerning St-Désir—that Robert was in some sense in control in Normandy shortly after the Conquest—is not reinforced by his rare confirmations of his father’s grants.²¹⁸ The St-Désir notice can therefore offer very little support to William of Jumièges’s interpretation of Curthose’s position in Normandy. As for Maine, William of Jumièges does not even mention Robert’s putative role; the first allusion to his claim in the Gesta Normannorum Ducum is in the supplementary book which Robert of Torigni wrote.²¹⁹ But in the absence of any chronicle evidence that he was comes there during his father’s lifetime, is there any support for the parallel drawn between his authority there and in Normandy by the St-Désir notice? A confirmation by Arnold, bishop of Le Mans, of a gift to the abbey of St-Vincent, Le Mans, is dated 30 March, ‘tempore Philippi Francorum regis, eo videlicet anno quo Robertus Willelmi regis Anglorum filius comitatum Cenomannensem recuperavit’.²²⁰ It has been generally accepted that the year in question was 1073, when the Conqueror retook Maine, reversing the overthrow of Norman control in 1069.²²¹ Yet no other source ascribes Curthose any part in this reconquest. Moreover, on the same day the king, ‘qui . . . Cenomannensis civitatis tunc principatum tenebat’, confirmed to the abbey of St-Pierre, Solesmes, at the request of the abbot, a grant by Geoffrey de Sable which had originally been confirmed by Hugh (III), count of Maine.²²² In other words, not only did it state that the king now held the principatus of Le Mans, but his confirmation had been sought as if he were Count Hugh’s successor. Conversely, a donation by a canon of StVincent to the abbey is dated to 1076, ‘Philippo rege Francorum regnante, Robertoque, Willelmi regis Anglorum filio, Cenomannicam urbem gubernante’.²²³ The confusion may have arisen in these Manceaux documents because, as Orderic indicates, some thought Curthose’s claim derived from his betrothal to Margaret, sister of Count Herbert, not from his father.²²⁴ According to Orderic’s understanding, such rights as the Conqueror had in the county were derived from his son, not vice versa.²²⁵ Curthose’s two attestations as comes Cenomannensis²²⁶ might be read as confirming that he was in some sense already count of Maine, or as a mere honorific, by analogy with his occasional appearances as comes Normannorum. His father appeared in charters—though not these two—as princeps, not comes, of the Manceaux.²²⁷ Fulk of Anjou’s eventual concession to Robert of, in Orderic’s words, the ‘Cenomannense ius with the whole honour which [Robert] had received from Count Herbert when he was betrothed to Margaret’, and Robert’s then performing ²¹⁸ See Reg. no. 175 Version II (14 July 1080), for another problematic example. ²¹⁹ GND ii. 202. ²²⁰ Reg. no. 173 (1073 ⫻ 77). ²²¹ Orderic ii. 306–8; David, Curthose, 14, n. 50; Douglas, Conqueror, 228–9; Bates, Reg., p. 572. ²²² Reg. no. 275; cf. no. 274 (same date). ²²³ Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Vincent du Mans, ed. R. Charles and S. Menjot d’Elbenne (Le Mans, 1913), i. no. 589. ²²⁴ Orderic ii. 116, 304, 310; iv. 192, discussed above, p. 155. ²²⁵ Of course, William of Poitiers took a different view: GG 58, discussed above, p. 155. ²²⁶ Above, p. 159. ²²⁷ Above, p. 159.

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‘due homage’ to Fulk,²²⁸ does not mean that Robert thereby became count. After all, he had not done so in 1063 when, according to Orderic, Count Geoffrey ‘le Barbu’ had received Robert’s ‘due homage and fidelitas’.²²⁹ What is clear is that Curthose can have had no Manceaux resources on which he could draw, for he seems never to have exploited any in his quarrels with his father.²³⁰ Although his claim to Maine was understood to be different in character from his claim to Normandy²³¹— despite the St-Désir notice describing him as princeps of both—they remained no more than claims. Indeed there, for Curthose, lay the rub. A charter of Odo of Bayeux, and Curthose’s confirmation of it, both dated 24 May 1096, state that this fell in the nineteenth year of ‘principatus domni Roberti Willelmi regis Anglorum filii ducis Normannie’.²³² They thereby date his accession in Normandy to his first rebellion of 1077–9, during which he had probably become King Philip’s man,²³³ and following which his father renewed the traditional designation.²³⁴ Even if this repeated designation ceremony happened before the end of 1079, it would have been too late to mark the starting point for the calculation of Robert’s regnal years in the documents of 1096.²³⁵ And if it was then considered that Robert had become duke when he had rebelled against his father, or when he had putatively become King Philip’s man,²³⁶ there is no other evidence, with regard to Curthose or any other Norman duke, that such events transformed designated successors into dukes.²³⁷ So the 1096 charters represent ²²⁸ Orderic ii. 310. There is no consensus about when this happened. Some assume 1073, others a later date. Douglas, Conqueror, 403–5 surveys the evidence and argues for 1081 on no very firm grounds. ²²⁹ Orderic ii. 302. ²³⁰ Le Patourel, Norman Empire, 181, n. 1. ²³¹ This is very clearly stated by Robert of Torigni, GND ii. 202. ²³² Haskins, Norman Institutions, pp. 66–7, nos. 3, 4, and n. 19. ²³³ Philip established him in Gerberoi, a castle near Beauvais: ASC (D)(E) s.a. 1079; JW iii. 32; GR i. 476; Orderic iii. 108. None of these sources explicitly says that Robert became Philip’s man, although William of Malmesbury says that William was known to have been Philip’s ‘father’s man and his own’. But in later years the French king was said to be Robert’s dominus: JW iii. 70; GR i. 548; further, F. Lot, Fidèles ou vassaux? Essai sur la nature juridique du lien qui unissait les grands vassaux à la royauté depuis le milieu du ixe siècle à la fin du xiie siècle (Paris, 1904), 200–1; J.-F. Lemarignier, Hommage en marche: recherches sur l’hommage en marche et les frontières féodales (Lille, 1945), 85, n. 41. ²³⁴ Orderic iii. 112. ²³⁵ Reg. no. 235 (12 Apr. 1080), which is attested by Robert, provides the earliest firm evidence that he was back in favour. ²³⁶ Reg. no. 28 (Jan. 1079), drafted in or under the supervision of the Capetian chancery and ‘publicly enacted in the siege of the aforesaid kings—that is to say, Philip, king of the French and William, king of the English—around Gerberoi’, puts the signa of the two kings on the same level, above all the others. It does not give William any Norman title. It has been suggested that this reveals that William had agreed to the future separation of England from Normandy: A. Fliche, Le Règne de Philippe I (Paris, 1912), 280–1. Alternatively, it has been argued that this shows that William was anxious to downplay his vassal status as duke: J.-F. Lemarignier, Le Gouvernement royal aux premiers temps capétiens (Paris, 1965), 108. In either case, attributing the ducal title to Robert would have been part of a solution. But he is not mentioned in this problematic, authentic document. ²³⁷ As Orderic made William the Conqueror complain, no previous duke had been troubled by his progeny; quoted above, p. 154. Curthose’s rebellion was unprecedented. As for becoming the man of the French king, William may have done so when Henry I was said, in an almost contemporary source, to have given his ‘consent’ to his succession on Robert the Magnificent’s death in 1035: Rodulfus Glaber, Opera, ed. J. France and N. Bulst, OMT (Oxford, 1989), 204. He may have

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nothing more than a retrospective interpretation of the significance of Curthose’s first rebellion. This appears to bear no relation either to Norman tradition, or to other assessments of his status during that period. As such, like William of Jumièges’s account of Robert’s succession to his father, these charters underline that Curthose’s position was unprecedented. In no sense do they corroborate William of Jumièges’s understanding that Robert was duke by 1070 at the latest, and probably from 1067. Since William was well informed about and, so far as we can tell, accurate in his analysis of pre-Conquest designation ceremonies, his assessment of Robert’s position has to be taken seriously. It suggests that initially there was no certainty about how Normandy would be treated when the duke had become king of the English. When Matilda joined her husband in England to be consecrated as queen,²³⁸ and Robert was perhaps the only member of the immediate family left in Normandy, it might well have seemed that the duchy had been entrusted to him in some novel way.²³⁹ Certainly Robert seems to have considered that it should have been. The king had shown himself ready to experiment with William fitzOsbern and his half-brother Odo in England.²⁴⁰ Although Orderic Vitalis’ interpretation was written over half a century later, it fits the earlier sources far better than William of Jumièges’. He defines Curthose’s status in Normandy, in relation to that of his father, much more precisely; and he examines the issue of Maine, which William of Jumièges ignores. When dealing with the origins of Robert’s first quarrel with his father, Orderic reports that Duke William, ‘both before the battle of Senlac and afterwards when he was sick, had made his first-born son his heir, and ordered all the nobles to do homage and fidelitas to him’.²⁴¹ So these two ceremonies had followed the traditional pattern repeated the ceremony on the Norman frontier at Dreux when Philip succeeded his father in 1060, although William of Poitiers’ description is, perhaps deliberately, vague: ‘inter quem [Philip] et principem nostrum firma pax composita est ac serena amicitia’, GG 56. He may have been trying to make his account of the meeting not inconsistent with his earlier statement (44) that William had never been King Henry’s amicus or miles, but his hostis. William of Malmesbury, GR i. 479 records in passing that William was known to have been the ‘man’ of both Henry I and Philip. Philip was present when William designated Curthose before the Conquest, and, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, had himself given Normandy to Robert with William’s consent. It is perhaps significant that Philip’s role is recorded only in English sources: ASC (D) s.a. 1079; JW iii. 30. Neither says explicitly that Curthose had then become the man of the French king. ²³⁸ ASC (D) s.a. 1067 (recte 1068); JW iii. 6; Orderic ii. 214. ²³⁹ This may be the implication of Orderic ii. 222, which describes the king sending Matilda back to Normandy in 1069, ‘in order that she might give up her time to religious devotions in peace, away from English tumults, and together with the boy Robert could keep the condition of the province secure’. He had already stated (ii. 208) that when the king returned to England at the end of 1067, he had ‘entrusted the principatus of Neustria to his wife and his young son’; cf. GND ii. 178: ‘the king . . . entrusted the dominium of the duchy to his son Robert.’ This passage in Orderic occurs just after the extant text of William of Poitiers breaks off. It seems unlikely that Orderic derived it from his copy of William, in view of William’s tendency to avoid references to Curthose. ²⁴⁰ I owe this point to John Hudson. ²⁴¹ Orderic ii. 356; cf. iv. 92. Elsewhere (iii. 98) Robert is made to say that the duke had first ‘conceded’ Normandy to him ‘before sailing to England against Harold’. The date of the second designation is unknown, but it must have been some time between the Conquest and the beginning of the rebellion of 1077–9, which ended with a third designation, described at iii. 112, where the second ceremony is said to have happened ‘when [the king] lay sick at Bonneville’. The attempt by

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of the magnates, at the duke’s instigation, doing what Orderic termed homage and fidelitas to the eldest son; and they had been prompted by perceived threats to the duke’s life. This was a quite different context from that in which King William found himself in 1067, the most likely date for the transfer of dominium of the duchy alleged by William of Jumièges.²⁴² Orderic’s account of a pre-Conquest ceremony is corroborated by John of Worcester and, in part, by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (D).²⁴³ The re-enactment of the ceremony for a third time as part of the settlement between Curthose and his father in 1079 ⫻ 80, when the Conqueror was not in any obvious danger, underlines what its unprecedented repetition ‘when [the king] lay sick at Bonneville’²⁴⁴ had already suggested: that although its form had remained unchanged, its meaning had been transformed. How had this happened? According to Orderic, the quarrel between father and son had begun because Robert had been incited by his companions to demand from his father ‘the due honours, that is the principatus of the Manceaux and of Neustria’.²⁴⁵ According to William of Malmesbury, it was the incongruity between Robert’s self-importance and his diminutive stature which prompted the king to coin the nickname ‘Curta Ocrea’ (short trousers).²⁴⁶ Robert complained that he was being denied the resources with which to maintain a following,²⁴⁷ although soon afterwards Orderic alleges that Robert had ‘already freely given his ancestral estates to his associates’, so his father seems already to have allowed him something.²⁴⁸ In reply to this initial, impetuous demand from his son, the Conqueror persuaded him ‘to wait for a more appropriate time (tempus opportunum) to secure what he sought’.²⁴⁹ But Robert’s ambitious followers were soon goading him again: ‘Come now, rise up boldly, claim a part of the kingdom of England from your father; or at least ask again for the duchy of Normandy, which he has already conceded to you in the presence of the magnates, who are able to testify to it.’²⁵⁰ Thus, as far as Orderic was concerned, only Normandy—not England or, by implication, Maine—had been ‘conceded’ to Robert in this fashion;²⁵¹ those who had done him homage and fidelitas at his father’s command could testify to the fact.²⁵² The meaning of such a ‘concession’ is encapsulated in William’s reply to his importunate son: ‘I possess Normandy by hereditary right; as long as I live, I shall Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 150, to equate this illness with the bout from which the duke had suffered at Cherbourg some time between 1063 and 1066 (Fauroux, Recueil no. 224), is unconvincing. ²⁴² GND ii. 178, discussed above, p. 157. ²⁴³ JW iii. 30; ASC (D) s.a. 1079 does not specify a date, but does say that ‘the best men in that land had sworn oaths to him and accepted him as lord (haefdon a1as him gesworon. 7 hine to hlaforde genumen)’. ²⁴⁴ Orderic iii. 112. ²⁴⁵ Ibid. ii. 356. GR i. 700, tells the same story, without mentioning Maine. ²⁴⁶ GR i. 700. ²⁴⁷ Orderic iii. 98; for the following and their motives, see RT, GND ii. 202. ²⁴⁸ Ibid. 102. ²⁴⁹ Ibid. ii 356. ²⁵⁰ Ibid., 96. ²⁵¹ Orderic characterizes William’s designation of Robert as a concession at iii. 98, 112; iv. 92. ²⁵² Cf. William of Poitiers’ account, GG 70, of the testimony of those who allegedly witnessed Harold’s oath at Bonneville.

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not release it from my hand’.²⁵³ He exhorted Robert to show him due obedience, ‘and to rule wisely with me everywhere, like a son with a father’. Robert asked yet again to be granted control of the duchy, ‘so that just as you rule over the kingdom of England, so I, always subject to you, shall rule over the duchy of Normandy’—a proposal which seems to reproduce William of Jumièges’ understanding of Robert’s position by 1070. The king’s response was to tell him not to try to snatch from his father the dominatus ‘which you ought to receive from him at the appropriate time (oportuno tempore) with the acclamation of the people and the blessing of God, if you remain worthy of it’. So ‘concession’ to a son by his father, reinforced by homage and fealty on the part of the barons, did not result in any transfer to the son of what the father continued to possess by hereditary right. In Orderic’s view this was, by definition, untransferable during the father’s lifetime: ‘Let everyone know this for certain: while I live I shall not hand my principatus over to any man.’²⁵⁴ Orderic thereby expressed what seems to have been true of the Norman principatus from the beginning: that the designation of an heir did not involve that heir being associated in his father’s rule on the Capetian model.²⁵⁵ The principatus was not shareable and was indivisible. It follows that the tempus opportunum to which Orderic had made the Conqueror refer twice²⁵⁶ was his own death. Even at that point the ‘heir’ to whom ‘concession’ had been made would receive the dominatus from his father only if he remained ‘worthy’ of it. Orderic was implying that the father might revoke the ‘concession’ if his chosen son proved unworthy, although, as we shall see, this was disputable.²⁵⁷ He did so because, as he made the Conqueror recognize, William was to be the first Norman duke who would not be served faithfully by all his sons up to the moment of his death.²⁵⁸ Of course, Orderic’s account is a heavily embroidered imaginative reconstruction, not an accurate record of events. But that reconstruction is so consistent in its use of terminology and so precise in its analysis, that it amounts to the most coherent and detailed extant consideration of the theoretical aspects of ducal succession. Doubtless Orderic’s careful reading and rewriting of William of Jumièges had made him begin to think about the subject. He had not, however, thought long or hard enough at that stage to make his amendments to William’s assessment of Robert Curthose’s post-Conquest status systematic;²⁵⁹ but by the time he came to write the Historia Ecclesiastica he had reached a fully worked-out view. Perhaps William ²⁵³ Orderic iii. 98. ²⁵⁴ Ibid. 100. It follows that the Conqueror’s invitation to share with him the rule of his dominions ‘as a son with his father’ was devoid of any content. ²⁵⁵ Above, pp. 144, 157. ²⁵⁶ Orderic ii. 356; iii. 98. ²⁵⁷ Below, pp. 169–71. ²⁵⁸ Orderic iii. 112, quoted above, p. 154. ²⁵⁹ He excised the passage on William and Matilda’s progeny, in which Robert was said to have succeeded his father in the duchy, and to be performing his father’s honor: GND ii. 130. By the time he was interpolating the Gesta, perhaps he regarded the reference to Robert as current ‘duke and advocate’ in the original, longer version of William’s epilogue as strictly true, for he copied it out verbatim: ii. 184. But he also failed to amend the sentence in which William said that the king had handed over the dominium of the duchy to Robert in 1067: ii. 178. He was evidently much more alive to this issue by the time he wrote the Historia Ecclesiastica.

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of Poitiers provided a stimulus at least as important as his putative conversations with Samson the Breton, sometime messenger of Queen Matilda. Orderic may already have read William of Poitiers when he was working on the Gesta,²⁶⁰ but this is by no means certain. By the time when he was writing the Historia Ecclesiastica, however, William’s influence was obvious and profound.²⁶¹ And, as we have already seen, William seems to have conceived of Edward the Confessor’s alleged bequest of England to Duke William in terms of the post obitum gift of land or chattels to a church.²⁶² Indeed, this is arguably the main theme of his book. In presenting the bequest in this way, he was retrospectively imposing on pre-Conquest England the legal template for ducal succession in contemporary Normandy.²⁶³ The most detailed forensic examination of Norman ducal succession prior to Orderic’s Historia Ecclesiastica was, paradoxically, William of Poitiers’ exploration of the basis of Duke William’s claim to England. Orderic’s treatment of Edward’s designation of Duke William is so cursory that it is not possible to demonstrate any specific debt to William of Poitiers.²⁶⁴ But the parallels between the use he made of the post obitum model in his analysis of Curthose’s claim to Normandy, and William’s use of it in his treatment of the Conqueror’s claim to England, have often been remarked upon.²⁶⁵ They may have arisen not only because this was how ducal succession was understood by Normans, but also because William influenced Orderic. The case mounted on the Conqueror’s behalf, which survives in most detail in the Gesta Guillelmi, was bound to lend a new precision to Norman thinking on the subject. That it did so in England is one of the main contentions of this book. Where Curthose’s claim to the duchy of Normandy was concerned, Orderic’s analysis shared the Gesta Guillelmi’s forensic sophistication; but as an intellectual construct it was not divorced from reality. On the contrary, and unlike William of Jumièges’ analysis, it is borne out by the evidence of the charters,²⁶⁶ and by an Anglo-Saxon chronicler’s explanation of Robert’s motives for his first rebellion: ‘Robert, son of King William, deserted from his father . . . because his father would not let him rule his county in Normandy, which he himself and also King Philip with his consent had given him; and the chief men in that county had sworn oaths to him and accepted him as lord.’²⁶⁷ The unprecedented trouble created in this case by a designated son was a consequence of two factors, both of which are attributable to the Conquest of England. ‘Concession’, which appears always to have given nothing more palpable than an expectation, had for the first time occurred decades before the death of the ²⁶⁰ GND i. p. lxxiii. ²⁶¹ Chibnall, World of Orderic, pp. 183–4; Orderic ii. pp. xviii, xx; GG pp. xxxv–xxxix. ²⁶² Above, p. 8. ²⁶³ Fauroux, Recueil no. 158, quoted above, p. 8, n. 62. ²⁶⁴ Orderic ii. 134; cf. 276. ²⁶⁵ Beckerman, ‘Testamentary Custom’, 258–60; A. Williams, ‘Some Notes and Considerations on Problems Connected with the English Royal Succession, 860–1066’, ANS i (1978), 144–67, at 165–6; Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, esp. 152–4. ²⁶⁶ Above, pp. 158–63. ²⁶⁷ ASC (D) s.a. 1079.

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ruling duke. And the father had made an acquisition which was far larger than his patrimony, the duchy. In other words, the trouble arose because the Conquest had transformed the context in which the designation of Curthose had originally taken place; and the designation was repeated at least twice afterwards in a context which it no longer fitted. How did these two factors mesh with each other? That Robert’s expectation related only to Normandy (and, on a different basis, to Maine)²⁶⁸ is evidenced not only by Orderic²⁶⁹ and the passage from the AngloSaxon Chronicle quoted above, but also by De Obitu Willelmi, a supplement found in one redaction of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum.²⁷⁰ The redaction must have been made sometime after 1092, because it is one of those which incorporates the St-Ouen account of the career of Abbot Nicholas, son of Duke Richard III.²⁷¹ This tells us little about the date of De Obitu, which may or may not have been written by the redactor or by the author of the other interpolations (if they are not the same person).²⁷² The wealth of circumstantial detail it contains suggests a date not far distant from the event, and the favourable reference to Rufus and failure to mention Henry I make one prior to Rufus’s death very likely. Moreover, the only copy of the full text is found in a Durham manuscript, which has recently been shown to feature the hand of Symeon of Durham.²⁷³ Symeon was of continental origin, and probably came to Durham with William of St-Calais when the bishop returned from exile in 1091. The manuscript is mainly the work of two continental scribes, and may have been copied by them in Durham or imported from abroad. It was certainly copied under Symeon’s supervision, for he corrected it throughout.²⁷⁴ The reference to Abbot Nicholas’s death means that Symeon cannot have brought the book with him to Durham in 1091; but all these factors point to a date some time in the 1090s.²⁷⁵ Whoever wrote De Obitu, and whenever it was written, it clearly attempted to explain an unusual succession by ²⁶⁸ Above, pp. 155, 161–2. ²⁶⁹ Orderic ii. 356, describes Robert asking his father for Normandy and Maine as ‘due honours’; at ii. 358 they are defined as ‘patrium ius’. ²⁷⁰ GND ii. 184–90. It is found only in the ‘B’ redaction, which is one of the two derived from the hypothetical redaction made at St-Ouen some time after 1092: i. pp. lxiii–lxv, cxxiii–cxxiv. ²⁷¹ Above, p. 147. ²⁷² GND i. p. lxv. Van Houts asserts that the redactor was not the author, presumably for stylistic reasons. ²⁷³ London, BL Harleian MS. 491; M. Gullick, ‘The Hand of Symeon of Durham: Further Observations on the Martyrology Scribe’, in D. Rollason (ed.), Symeon of Durham, Historian of Durham and the North (Stamford, 1998), 14–31, at 18–19, 26–7, pl. 7a. I am very grateful to Elisabeth van Houts for alerting me to this discovery. ²⁷⁴ Gullick, ‘Hand of Symeon’, 27. ²⁷⁵ Ibid. 19, suggests the first decade of the 12th century because he accepts van Houts’s dating of the redaction, the terminus post quem of which depends on her dating of De Obitu. She constructs an ingenious argument, GND i. pp. lxiv–lxv, for dating it after a charter, dated 1096 ⫻ 98, which records Rufus’s redemption of his father’s regalia from St-Étienne; but for doubts, see below, p. 179. For the view that De Obitu was probably written in England after 1100, see Engels, ‘De obitu’, 253–5. The reference to the poor state of Normandy after the Conqueror’s death (ii. 186) could have been written either before or after the battle of Tinchebrai in 1106. Such claims were essential to Henry’s justification for his takeover of the duchy: see e.g. Orderic vi. 92–8.

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detailing the provisions which the Conqueror made on his deathbed. In that sense it was written in the spirit of William of Jumièges’ original Gesta, and was comparable with the explanatory passage on Nicholas, abbot of St-Ouen, also found in this redaction. De Obitu tends to be dismissed as an unreliable piece of evidence, because it has been shown to be heavily based on two ninth-century works. The main source is the account, given in the biography of the emperor Louis the Pious written by the so-called Astronomer, of the emperor’s deathbed dispositions; and passages are subsequently lifted from different chapters of Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni to construct an obituary.²⁷⁶ Yet this means that any departure from an otherwise verbatim copy of the models had an emphatic significance for the author.²⁷⁷ This is particularly true of the use he made of the Astronomer’s Vita Hludowici Imperatoris, when he was adapting an account of a single episode, rather than selecting appropriate descriptions from different parts of the work. The lines of the Vita Hludowici dealing with Louis the Pious’s bequest to his eldest son Lothar are adapted as a description of the Conqueror’s deathbed grant of regalia to his younger son William Rufus. The Conqueror is thereby made to indicate that Rufus should become king of the English.²⁷⁸ The lines relating to Louis the German, a younger son of Louis the Pious, are adapted for Robert Curthose, the Conqueror’s eldest son. The author of De Obitu inserts the adjective primogenitus at the beginning of this passage, thereby highlighting the inversion.²⁷⁹ In the Vita Hludowici the dying emperor is said to have sent Lothar, already co-emperor, regalia to be held on condition that he should keep faith with Charles, Louis’s youngest son by a different mother, ‘and that he should not dispute with [Charles] and should protect for him that portion of the whole realm which he [Lothar], together with [Louis] and in [Louis’s] presence, had [previously] bestowed upon [Charles], with God and the leading men of the palace bearing witness’.²⁸⁰ The author of De Obitu amended this passage drastically. From the point at which the Astronomer specified the condition on which Louis had sent Lothar the regalia, the author used the passage not for William Rufus, but for ²⁷⁶ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 223–30, presents the text and its models in parallel columns. He argues (pp. 231–47) that while it tends to be reliable on points of detail, it is too directly dependent on its literary models to inspire much confidence as an account of the Conqueror’s death; see also Barlow, Rufus, 46; Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 147–8. ²⁷⁷ Van Houts, GND i. p. lxiii. E. Tremp, Die Uberlieferung der Vita Hludowici imperatoris des Astronomus, MGH Studien und Texte, i (Hanover, 1991), 17–19, establishes that the author used a copy of the Vita very closely related to that in Paris, BN lat. 5354. ²⁷⁸ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 225, ll. 61–4; GND ii. 186. A comparison with Astronomus, Vita Hludowici Imperatoris, ed. E. Tremp, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, lxiv (Hanover, 1995), cap. lxiii, p. 548, shows that the De Obitu’s description of William the Conqueror handing over a sceptre along with the other regalia is not an invention of the author, but was in his model. ²⁷⁹ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 225–6, ll. 68–101; GND ii. 186–8. ²⁸⁰ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 225, ll. 61–64 g. For Louis’s division of the empire, with Lothar’s consent, between Lothar and Charles in 839, and the Astronomer’s account of his death a year later, see J. L. Nelson, Charles the Bald (London, 1992), 99–104.

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Robert Curthose. He cut it out of the text, and pasted it in at a later point, as an explanatory gloss on William the Conqueror’s statement: ‘I concede to him [Curthose] the whole duchy of Normandy.’²⁸¹ In adapting it, he excised any reference to a third brother,²⁸² and made the father, William the Conqueror, the sole designator. There was no question of another son having acted jointly with him. The Astronomer had used ante in a spatial sense, to indicate that Lothar’s bestowal, jointly with his father, of part of the realm on his brother Charles had happened in his father’s presence. The author of De Obitu used the preposition in a temporal sense, to indicate that the Conqueror had already, long beforehand, bestowed the duchy on Curthose. Thereby he confirmed that Curthose had been designated by his father on at least one previous occasion. All that survived unchanged from the Astronomer’s original was the statement that the bestowal had happened ‘with God and the leading men of the palace bearing witness’.²⁸³ The care with which the author adapted his sources therefore suggests that De Obitu can be used as evidence for the Conqueror’s deathbed dispositions, and the prior designation of Curthose. Indeed, as what is almost certainly the earliest extant detailed account, it seems very well informed about, for instance, who was present.²⁸⁴ Careful touches of detail, like the description of the king’s voice as ‘rasping’ (in Einhard’s template, Charlemagne’s voice is described as ‘clear’), suggest that the author was indeed personally acquainted with William.²⁸⁵ Those leading men who were gathered around the Conqueror’s deathbed were reportedly worried by his gift of regalia to Rufus. It raised the possibility that the king might remain ‘implacable’²⁸⁶ towards his eldest son—that is, that he might, on account of Curthose’s rebellion, attempt to deny his son the duchy which he had previously bestowed upon him. A clause in the Leges Henrici Primi, dated c.1114, appears to confirm that this might have seemed a possibility.²⁸⁷ It permitted a father (or other relative) who had been abandoned in mortal need, illness, or poverty ‘without due cause’, to make, in the presence of witnesses, anyone who came to his aid, whether kinsman or stranger, his heir and to adopt him as a son ‘with respect to the fee or any acquisition (de feodo vel alio conquisito)’. But the competing claims which resulted would have to be settled in due course, ²⁸¹ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 226, ll. 90–1. This statement is not adapted from Louis the Pious’s deathbed speech in the Vita. ²⁸² This is another straw in the wind suggesting that the author wrote before Henry I’s accession. For such an ingenious adapter, Charles the Bald would have provided too tempting a model had Henry already been king; cf. Engels, ‘De obitu’, 234. ²⁸³ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 226, ll. 91–3. Van Houts, GND ii. 187, n. 8 does not acknowledge that this passage was adapted from the Astronomer; Davis, ‘Norman Succession’, 134, misleadingly asserts that this is ‘the only statement about the Conqueror’s death which has not been lifted from the Astronomer’. ²⁸⁴ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 240–2. It is possible that some of the information was derived from a charter witness list: GND i. p. lxiv. ²⁸⁵ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 229, l. 143. ²⁸⁶ Ibid. 225, l. 69. The word is borrowed from the Astronomer. ²⁸⁷ Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 125; further Hudson, LLL 122–3.

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‘according to the circumstances’, by the judgement of ‘wise men’,²⁸⁸ who were, presumably, the father’s vassals or his peers in his lord’s court. In the mid-twelfth century Gilbert Foliot considered that both ius civile and ius gentium prohibited a father from disowning a legitimate son or daughter ‘except in certain circumstances’, which seemed to mean principally rebellion against the father.²⁸⁹ In one place even Orderic, for all his attachment to primogeniture,²⁹⁰ suggested that the Conqueror’s ‘concession’ to Curthose would be fulfilled ‘at the appropriate time’ only if Curthose showed himself to be ‘worthy’.²⁹¹ But elsewhere Orderic makes the king say on his deathbed that he had ‘conceded’ the duchy to Curthose prior to the battle of Hastings, ‘and because he is the first-born, and has already received the homage of almost all the barons of this country, the conceded honour cannot be taken away from him’.²⁹² Other fathers might be able to disown their sons for the sort of behaviour in which Curthose had indulged. But according to the Leges Henrici, such a son would have his claim to his father’s land denied only if the ‘wise men’ judged that the circumstances had justified the father in substituting another heir. The author of De Obitu suggests that the particular group of ‘wise men’ surrounding the Conqueror’s deathbed judged that the circumstances did not justify treating Curthose in this way, and dissuaded the king.²⁹³ He then ‘conceded’ the duchy to Robert, calling on them and God to act as witnesses, just as God and the ‘leading men of the palace’ had witnessed the previous designation. The author of De Obitu does not explain the nature of their objection, but Orderic does. For De Obitu’s antique epithet ‘leading men of the palace’, derived from the Astronomer, must comprise many of those ‘barons’ who, according to Orderic, had previously done homage to Curthose at his father’s behest. This was how they had borne witness to the Conqueror’s post obitum bequest of the duchy. And the point of each noble pledging fidelitas to the designated successor was precisely that it should be ‘inviolable’, like the oaths with which, according to William of Jumièges, it was pledged.²⁹⁴ All those individual pledges of fidelitas or acts of homage could not be rescinded, even by the duke at whose behest they had originally been made. That, after all, was a fundamental part of the Conqueror’s claim ²⁸⁸ LHP 88. 15. No part of this clause is found in any of the known sources of the Leges Henrici, which strengthens the possibility that it expresses Anglo-Norman custom. For some doubts about its applicability, see Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 155, n. 63. ²⁸⁹ GFL no. 26. ²⁹⁰ Orderic ii. pp. xxxvi–xxxvii; M. M. Chibnall, ‘Les Droits d’héritage selon Orderic Vital’, RHDFE, 4 série, xlviii (1970), 347. ²⁹¹ Orderic iii. 98. ²⁹² Ibid. iv. 92. ²⁹³ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 225–6. Most of this is taken almost verbatim from the Astronomer. The point is made by Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 125. ²⁹⁴ GND ii. 80, discussed above, p. 148. Orderic iv. 92 and, much more explicitly, GR i. 510, suggest that the Conqueror recognized that Curthose had to get Normandy only with reluctance; see J. Le Patourel, ‘The Norman Succession, 996–1135’, EHR lxxxvi (1971), 225–50, at 232; Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 125; Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 155. Chibnall (Orderic iv. pp. xix–xx) suggests that Orderic’s views on the irreversibility of Curthose’s designation may have been coloured by the example of the fealty sworn to Matilda at the Christmas court of 1126–7. While there can be no doubt that Orderic and William of Malmesbury wrote with hindsight, William of Jumièges indicates that fidelitas might be regarded as ‘inviolable’ in the 11th century, just as it would in the 12th.

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to the kingdom of England. According to William of Poitiers, it was Harold who argued that a post obitum gift was revocable in English custom, and that King Edward had, on his deathbed, ‘conceded’ the kingdom to him by gift, thereby revoking his earlier decision that Duke William ‘should be heir of the English kingdom’.²⁹⁵ In reply, the duke does not deny that this was English custom; nor does he make a point which would in any case be irrelevant in view of his offer to settle the dispute according to English law: that in Normandy a deathbed bequest could not supersede existing arrangements.²⁹⁶ Instead, it was the oaths ‘confirmed with their hands’ which the English nobles had allegedly taken when they consented to the original designation, to the effect that ‘after Edward’s death they would receive me as lord’, which made it wrong for them to accept the dying king’s change of mind. The same argument applied a fortiori to Harold.²⁹⁷ This took precedence over any details of English testamentary custom. In William of Poitiers’ account, the oaths of the English magnates, including Harold, should have been as ‘inviolable’ as William of Jumièges thought those taken by the Norman magnates to a duke’s designated successor. Hence the importance of what the author of De Obitu cryptically terms the ‘witness of the leading men of the palace’, spelt out by Orderic as ‘the homage of almost all the barons of the country’. The ceremonial form traditionally used to strengthen what Orderic termed ‘concession’ of the duchy made Curthose’s claim to it well-nigh ‘inviolable’. But the nature of that ‘concession’ meant that it remained only an expectation until his father’s death. In view of the Conqueror’s unprecedented post-designation longevity, it was in his interests to deny Curthose the resources with which to build up a reversionary following. According to Robert of Torigni, he was in any case accompanied into exile by ‘young men like himself, sons of Norman magnates, who seemingly followed him as their future lord, but were in reality drawn to him by their greed for new acquisitions’.²⁹⁸ Orderic gives two lists of those involved; the only name common to both is Robert de Bellême.²⁹⁹ It was little wonder that Curthose became frustrated with an irrevocable, intermittently reaffirmed expectation, particularly if William of Jumièges had expressed a view of his status which was widely held in the immediate aftermath of the Conquest. But thus far I have investigated only why the Conqueror’s eldest son was considered to be the prime focus of disorder in Normandy during his father’s lifetime. What was the role of the younger sons? ²⁹⁵ GG 118, gives the speech of Harold’s envoy to the duke. He admits that Edward had formerly decreed that Duke William should be ‘heir of the English kingdom’, and that Harold had given him surety in Normandy concerning ‘this succession’. Nevertheless, Harold knew the kingdom to be his by right, because Edward had ‘conceded’ it to him on his deathbed, and it had been English custom from St Augustine’s time that such a gift should be held valid. ²⁹⁶ GG 120. William allegedly offered Harold the choice of English or Norman law, and shortly afterwards (122) the iura gentium. For the view that this was Norman custom, see Beckerman, ‘Testamentary Custom’, 258–9; for doubts, see Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 152–3. ²⁹⁷ GG 120, 100, 122, 124, 140. ²⁹⁸ GND ii. 202. ²⁹⁹ Orderic ii. 356–8; ii. 100–2.

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As we have already seen, Orderic considered them to be models of filial loyalty.³⁰⁰ When he first raises the problem posed by Curthose to his father, he reports that ‘a fiendish dispute arose amongst the king’s sons, which gave rise to many struggles and outrages later’.³⁰¹ By that time, probably 1077, Curthose had only two surviving younger brothers.³⁰² Both William Rufus and Henry were on very good terms with their father, ‘and deeming their strength equal to that of their brother [Robert], they thought it shameful that their brother aimed to have the patrium ius alone, and, surrounded by a swarm of obsequious followers (clientes), considered himself equal to his father’.³⁰³ It was this resentment of Robert which led to the ‘fiendish dispute’: they poured what Orderic euphemistically terms water onto the heads of Robert and his followers when they were all staying together in a house in Laigle.³⁰⁴ Orderic’s twelfth-century predisposition in favour of primogeniture³⁰⁵ did not lead him to think that it was right for the eldest son to succeed to the whole patrium ius, without any share going to his younger brothers.³⁰⁶ In Orderic’s mind the patrium ius in this instance seems to have consisted of Normandy alone. It cannot have included Maine, although Curthose had just demanded them both from his father as ‘due honours’,³⁰⁷ because Orderic recognized explicitly elsewhere and implicitly here that the basis of Curthose’s claim to the county was quite different.³⁰⁸ And there is no suggestion here that England was part of the patrium ius or that Curthose was demanding any share in it as a ‘due honour’.³⁰⁹ In Orderic’s view, therefore, Rufus and Henry were manifesting the same sentiments which, in Normandy before 1066, had moved younger brothers (and other members of the ducal house) to rebel after the succession of a designated heir.³¹⁰ But in this case the resentment was apparent long before the father’s death, and therefore the prearranged succession. Orderic views the resentment with favour because, for the first time in Norman history, the designated successor was attempting to secure control of the duchy during his father’s lifetime. In these unprecedented circumstances fraternal rivalry was not the principal cause of disorder in the duchy, but a force for stability. It was on this account that Rufus and Henry, ‘who were obedient to their father earned his blessing, and for many years enjoyed the most exalted rank in the kingdom and duchy’.³¹¹ What reasons did the younger sons have for loyalty to their father, since they could not challenge Robert’s claim to be duke after William’s death? ³⁰⁰ Ibid. iii. 114, discussed above, p. 154. ³⁰¹ Ibid. ii. 356. ³⁰² Richard, the second son, had died in the New Forest some time between 1069 and 1074: Barlow, Rufus, 13, n. 37. ³⁰³ Orderic ii. 356–8. ³⁰⁴ Ibid. 358. Ivo and Aubrey de Grandmesnil allegedly told Robert that he and they were being defiled by the filth, so it seems unlikely that the water was pure. ³⁰⁵ Above, n. 290. ³⁰⁶ He took a dim view of Robert (II) de Bellême’s ‘disinheritance’ of his brothers and sole usurpation of the patrimonium: iv. 158. Gilbert de l’Aigle ‘succeeded as sole heir to the paternal honor and worth’ only because his brothers and sisters had died beforehand: iv. 50. ³⁰⁷ Orderic ii. 356. ³⁰⁸ Ibid. 116, 304, 310; iv. 192, discussed above, p. 161. ³⁰⁹ Ibid. iii. 96, quoted above, p. 164. ³¹⁰ Above, pp. 145–7. ³¹¹ Orderic iii. 114.

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William of Malmesbury supplies us with an answer, at least in the case of William Rufus: ‘To his father he was always obedient, showing off before his eyes in war, and walking by his side in peace. Thus his hopes gradually rose and he began to covet the succession, especially after the disowning (abdicatio) of his elder brother, although he also suspected the first stirrings of the younger not a little.’³¹² Whereas, according to Orderic, Curthose had been ‘conceded’ an expectation of succession to the duchy, sanctioned by the homage of the barons, Rufus knew that he was totally dependent on his father’s discretion. As we have seen, it was a point which, according to William of Malmesbury, Rufus later made with characteristically Machiavellian slyness to Roger de Montgommery, when he suspected Roger and the other guardians whom the Conqueror had appointed for him of plotting against him. They should take care that they did not call into question the Conqueror’s judgement in his, Rufus’s, case, as this might well reflect on them.³¹³ His title to the kingdom was as much dependent on the Conqueror as theirs to their estates in England. Curthose had been given some estates in Normandy prior to his father’s death; but Orderic thought he had squandered them in attempting to maintain a following.³¹⁴ It is possible, but very unlikely, that Rufus had received lands in Normandy from his father at some point.³¹⁵ Orderic’s assertion that Rufus and Henry had obtained, as a result of their father’s blessing, ‘the most exalted rank’ in both kingdom and duchy³¹⁶ was vacuous hyperbole. With one insignificant exception, neither they nor, indeed, Robert are recorded in Domesday Book as holding any land at all in England.³¹⁷ Thus while the Conqueror had made grants of some sort to his eldest son and, just possibly, to his second son in the duchy, his inheritance, the acquired kingdom of England was treated differently. Orderic contrasts Curthose’s refusal to remain a landless knight or mercennarius in his father’s pay, with the apparent willingness of Rufus and Henry to accept just such a position. The echo of the Vulgate version of the parable of the prodigal son must be deliberate. But in this case the younger sons had no cause for resentment, for when the prodigal did eventually come to terms with his father, he was restored to nothing more than his expectation.³¹⁸ Rufus

³¹² GR i. 542. William recognized that the disowning of Robert did not, in the end, amount to much: on his deathbed the king ‘delegated’ Normandy to Robert, albeit ‘unwillingly and under pressure’: i. 510–12. ³¹³ Above, p. 5. ³¹⁴ Orderic iii. 102. ³¹⁵ ASC (E) s.a. 1091, in the account of the settlement between Curthose and Rufus. The text is ambiguous, and probably refers to the possessions in the duchy formally ceded to Rufus by Curthose in 1091, details of which are given in the other sources: JW iii. 58; Orderic iv. 236; GR i. 448–50; RT, GND ii. 204–6 ³¹⁶ Orderic iii. 114. ³¹⁷ At DB i. 77a, William, ‘filius regis’, is said to have granted three virgates of land belonging to Sherborne Abbey to a certain Manasses, having previously ‘taken the land from the church without the consent of the bishop and the monks’. In 1091 Curthose’s rights in England were determined by the settlement; there is no suggestion that he had any previously. ³¹⁸ Orderic iii. 98; Barlow, Rufus, 35. On the significance of mercennarius, see M. M. Chibnall, ‘Feudal Society in Orderic Vitalis’, ANS i (1978), 35–48, at 43, citing Luke 15: 17.

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and Henry accepted this menial status because their hopes lay in the Conqueror’s enormous acquisition which, by definition, lay at his disposal.³¹⁹ Although Orderic describes Curthose on one occasion being urged by his followers to ask his father for part of the kingdom of England,³²⁰ he never suggests that England had been ‘conceded’ like the duchy. When, at the end of Curthose’s first rebellion, the Conqueror confirmed his ‘concession’ of the duchy to his son post obitum suum, England was not mentioned,³²¹ just as it had not been in any of the descriptions of previous designations. In Orderic’s account, Robert did not even put the suggested demand for part of the kingdom to his father, but Orderic nevertheless makes the Conqueror refute this hypothetical claim too. After stating that he would never relax his grip on his ‘native land of Normandy’—already ‘conceded’ to Robert—for as long as he lived, the king went on to say that he did not want to divide the kingdom of England, ‘which I won with so much effort, nor does it seem to me wise to do so while I live; for as the Lord says in the Gospel, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.” ’³²² In other words, Orderic saw that the king’s refusals to give Curthose any share in the kingdom or the duchy during his lifetime required different justifications. He made the Conqueror deny on his deathbed that the English crown had come to him by ‘hereditary right’,³²³ despite the refrain in contemporary official documents that this was precisely how he had succeeded Edward the Confessor. In doing so, he both echoed the dissident interpretations of the Conquest with which he spices his narrative,³²⁴ and distinguished clearly between inheritance and acquisition. For him the inheritance or patrium ius could not be surrendered, because holding hereditario iure meant by definition holding up to the moment of death;³²⁵ the acquisition was different. William did not choose to ‘divide’—rather than ‘release from [his] hand’—the kingdom.³²⁶ It was scriptural precept, and the fact of coronation ‘a vicariis Christi’,³²⁷ rather than ‘hereditary right’, which made it ‘improper and entirely unjust that, whilst there is breath left in my body, I ³¹⁹ For discussion of the evidence for this distinction, see Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 120–8 and passim; ‘Notions of Patrimony’, CE 215–16; Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 155–69. The distinction is formulated in LHP 70. 21; cf. 48. 10, 11; 88. 15. In arguing that the division in 1087 was determined by this distinction, I follow Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 125–6, 149–51, 158–9 and Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, passim, against Le Patourel, ‘Norman Succession’, 231–5 and Norman Empire, 181–4. ³²⁰ Orderic iii. 96, quoted above, p. 164. ³²¹ Ibid. 112. ³²² Ibid. 100, cf. 98. ³²³ Ibid iv. 90, 94. This is foreshadowed in his excision of William of Jumièges’s statement that in 1066 the Londoners recognized Duke William as their hereditarius dominus: GND ii. 170 and n. 5; cf. i. p. lxxiv. ³²⁴ Orderic ii. 202, 270–8, 212–14; iii. 214, 256; cf. iv. 192, a dissident account of the annexation of Maine. ³²⁵ Ibid. iii. 98, quoted above, p. 163. ³²⁶ Ibid. 98, 100. The possibility of dividing the duchy was, as far as Orderic was concerned, never raised. ³²⁷ This should not be taken as a reference to the Conqueror’s crowning by papal legates at the Easter Council of 1070—Orderic ii. 236—but rather to his coronation by Ealdred, archbishop of York, ‘in the presence of the bishops, abbots, and nobles of the whole realm of England’ on Christmas Day 1066: ii. 182–4. Orderic uses the term vicarius Christi of bishops and abbots in general: iii. 284; vi. 260, 554.

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should suffer anyone to be my equal or superior in rule’.³²⁸ Orderic presented the king as making an elaborate pretence on his deathbed of not constituting anyone heir to the kingdom, on account of the sins involved in the Conquest.³²⁹ But this implies that, in Orderic’s view, the dying king still had a choice with respect to the kingdom, whereas he makes the Conqueror himself recognize that he did not with respect to the duchy.³³⁰ The clear contrast drawn by Orderic between the respective status of kingdom and duchy is possibly foreshadowed in De Obitu. There the Conqueror is reported to have said, in reply to the concerns apparently prompted by his gift of regalia to Rufus, that because Curthose could not or would not come to him to apologize, ‘I shall do what I like with what is mine (ego quod meum est, ago)’.³³¹ That the king’s freedom to do so was recognized at the time of his death is suggested by the frequent use of the distinction between inheritance and acquisition to divide the possessions of barons on their deaths,³³² and confirmed by the exemplary behaviour of his younger sons. They were being kept on tenterhooks. Henry was knighted, with considerable ceremony, by his father at Whitsun 1086,³³³ and was probably 18 at the time of his father’s death.³³⁴ But conventional division between inheritance and acquisition in any case seems to have extended only to the two eldest sons,³³⁵ and Henry received no land from his father. Instead he was bequeathed a large sum of money³³⁶ and all his mother’s English lands, of which, according to Orderic, she had made him heir at his birth.³³⁷ In her lifetime she was sufficiently in control of these to be able to use the revenues to pay the wages of Curthose’s troops, when he was rebelling against his father.³³⁸ If she was the anonymous English queen who in the late 1070s approached Adalelm, abbot of La Chaise-Dieu in the Auvergne, for a cure for lethargy,³³⁹ she was not thus afflicted when it came to her sons’ interests. But Henry did not get the lands on her death. They were not allowed to pass to him until after the Conqueror’s own death, and perhaps even then not for ³²⁸ Ibid iii. 100. ³²⁹ Ibid. iv. 92–4; he also reports, iv. 96, that the king sent Rufus with a sealed letter to Lanfranc, ordering the archbishop to ‘constitute’ him as king; cf. v. 202. ³³⁰ Ibid iv. 92. ³³¹ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 226, l. 87; GND ii. 186. The phrase is taken from the Vita Hludowici. This interpretation is suggested by Davis, ‘Norman Succession’, 134, but it depends on the colon after ‘ago’ found in both editions. Van Houts translates: ‘I shall do what I think is correct.’ ³³² Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 157–67, gives an exhaustive survey. Most of the examples post-date the Conqueror’s death; for the few which possibly pre-date it, see below, n. 354. ³³³ ASC (E) s.a. 1085 (recte 1086); GR i. 710. Orderic iv. 120 reports that Lanfranc invested him with a hauberk, helmet, and belt of knighthood. ³³⁴ Orderic ii. 214 says that he was born within a—or the—year of his mother’s coronation on 11 May 1068: C. W. Hollister, Henry I (New Haven and London, 2001), 31, n. 11. GR i. 708–10 says that he was born within two years of the Conquest, and that he was 19 at the time of his knighting. ³³⁵ Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 122–3 and n. 64, 153; Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 158–60. ³³⁶ ASC (E) s.a. 1086 (recte 1087); BR 35–6 and Orderic iv. 94 say £5,000, William of Malmesbury, GR i. 710–12, 3,000 marks. ³³⁷ Orderic ii. 214, iv. 148; GR i. 512, 710; Hollister, Henry I, 40. ³³⁸ GR i. 502; cf. Orderic iii. 102. ³³⁹ E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Matilda [Matilda of Flanders]’, ODNB.

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very long.³⁴⁰ Henry may have ‘made a bold claim for the hereditarium ius’ against both his older brothers after their father’s death; but their treatment of him as a ‘stranger’ rather than a ‘brother’ conformed with the reported wishes of the Conqueror.³⁴¹ And as for Rufus, it was recognized that he had no claim to the kingdom other than his dying father’s nomination.³⁴² Neither he nor Henry was in a position to feel the filial resentment expressed by their elder brother. The convention requiring division between inheritance and acquisition, which may have been engendered and was certainly sharpened by the Conquest,³⁴³ was permissive rather than obligatory.³⁴⁴ It would have been quite straightforward for William the Conqueror to have left the kingdom too to Robert, had he so wished. Such seems to be the implication of William of Malmesbury’s enigmatic statement that because Curthose had forfeited ‘the blessing and inheritance of his father, he lacked England after his father’s death, and scarcely retained the county of Normandy.’³⁴⁵ But in the event the Conqueror had not wished to do so. Indeed, he may have expressed the desire—which even he, according to De Obitu, eventually and grudgingly acknowledged could not be fulfilled³⁴⁶—to deny Curthose the duchy too. For Rufus and Henry, and particularly for the former, the policy of keeping their noses clean where their father was concerned had paid off handsomely. The designation ceremony applied only to Normandy, as it always had. Indeed, when it was first staged for Robert Curthose, the invasion of England still lay in the (near) future. The success of the Conquest meant, however, that those Norman magnates who had, at the Conqueror’s behest, bound themselves to Curthose became tenants-in-chief in England. Many who bound themselves anew or for the first time at the unprecedented repetitions of the ceremony in Normandy also held land in England. In other words, the ceremony continued to be used in a context that it no longer fitted. Why it could no longer fit became ³⁴⁰ Orderic, iv. 148, reports that Henry came to England in 1088 and successfully asked Rufus for his mother’s land; but the king subsequently disseised him, iv. 220, and gave it to Robert fitzHamon. ³⁴¹ Orderic iv. 256; cf. iv. 148, where Rufus is said to have received him ‘in kindly fashion, as befits a brother’, when he came to request his mother’s land. BR 36, states that after the settlement of 1091 between Curthose and Rufus, ‘instead of supporting Henry as they should have done, by treating him as their brother and providing him with an honourable life befitting the son of a king, they tried to drive him from all his father’s land’. This is reproduced verbatim in RT, GND ii.206. ³⁴² Engels, ‘De obitu’, 225, ll. 61–4; Acta Lanfranci, in ASC i. 290; JW iii. 46; Orderic iv. 96; GR i. 546. ³⁴³ Holt, ‘Notions of Patrimony’, CE 215; Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 166–7, discusses whether the division of 1087 provided the template. Fauroux, Recueil no. 122 (1050), Duke William’s confirmation of the foundation of St-Évroult, records that William, the second-born son of Giroie, had succeeded to his father’s patrimony on the death of his elder brother Arnold c.1040. Robert, the third-born son had at some point received certain lands which their father had acquired: see Tabuteau, Transfers, 101–2 and nn. 41–2. Fauroux, Recueil no. 120 (c.1050) appears to make a similar distinction, but as Holt, ‘Notions of Patrimony’, CE 215, n. 110, points out, the distinction is not as crisp as that found in post-Conquest sources. ³⁴⁴ Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 122–3, 149; Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 157. ³⁴⁵ GR i. 502. ³⁴⁶ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 225, ll. 68–70; 226, ll. 78–80; cf. Orderic iv. 92.

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clear during the uprising against Rufus in 1088—when the king had reportedly made that canny point to Roger de Montgommery about his title to the kingdom being just as good as Roger’s to his English estates, because they both depended solely on the gift of the Conqueror.³⁴⁷ By questioning Rufus’s title, Roger and the other Norman barons would be undermining their own. Orderic reported that one of the main arguments for deposing (or slaying) Rufus, and for making Robert ruler of England as well as Normandy, was that the barons felt they ‘owed nothing’ to the former, whereas to the latter they had ‘already sworn fidelitas during the lifetime of the father of both men’.³⁴⁸ Why should oaths which William of Jumièges had characterized as ‘inviolable’³⁴⁹—so much so that the dying king was said to recognize that he could not rescind the homage in which they were embodied³⁵⁰—be so only within the duchy? How could the same individuals be inviolably bound to Curthose in Normandy, but free of any obligation to him on the other side of the Channel? It is hardly surprising that, according to William of Malmesbury, ‘almost all the Normans’ (in England) were united in support of Curthose, whereas the English, who by definition held on only one side of the Channel and had therefore not been involved in the repeated designations of Curthose, displayed an exemplary loyalty to Rufus.³⁵¹ It seems that the English had no problem with a king who took an effeminate pleasure in fancy hose, deeming them proper to the ‘royal majesty’.³⁵² The Anglo-Saxon chronicler went so far as to describe him as ‘our’ king, an emphasis found previously only in the problematic case of Harold II.³⁵³ The traditional Norman designation ceremony was therefore incompatible with the post-Conquest situation, if the Conqueror decided, as he eventually did, to divide his own lands along the lines he had apparently endorsed,³⁵⁴ and in at ³⁴⁷ Above, pp. 5, 173. ³⁴⁸ Orderic iv. 122–4. He also records that the fact that Curthose was the elder and that he was of a more pliable temperament weighed heavily in these deliberations. According to William of Malmesbury, GR i. 544, Odo of Bayeux placed most stress on differences of character when seeking to persuade the barons to back Curthose in England. ³⁴⁹ GND ii. 80, discussed above, p. 148. ³⁵⁰ Orderic iv. 92, quoted above, p. 163. ³⁵¹ GR i. 546; Orderic iv. 126 also emphasizes the loyalty of the English to Rufus. ASC (E) s.a. 1087 (recte 1088) says that ‘the richest Frenchmen who were in this country intended to betray their lord the king and to have as king his brother Robert, who was count of Normandy’. According to the chronicler, followed by William of Malmesbury, Rufus secured the support of the English by giving fresh undertakings that he would govern well. JW iii. 50 also records these promises; he notes (48) that a very few Norman nobles supported the king, and records in passing (52–4) that the rebel forces included English and Welsh. Elisabeth van Houts points out to me that what was true of the English must logically have been true of the non-Norman continental settlers in England, but this is not stated in any source. ³⁵² GR i. 556–8. ³⁵³ ASC (E) s.a. 1091; cf. (D) s.a. 1066. ³⁵⁴ Instances clearly datable prior to the Conqueror’s own death are few. William d’Aubigny was succeeded by his son Roger in Normandy and his son Nigel in England 1066 ⫻ 84, but it is not possible to establish their order of birth: Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 158; L. C. Loyd, ‘The Origin of the Family of Aubigny of Cainhoe’, Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, xix (1937), 101–9, at 103–5. Richard fitzGilbert had almost certainly become a monk and may have died before the king in 1087; he was succeeded by his son Roger in his Norman lands and by his son Gilbert in his English

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least one case reportedly ordained,³⁵⁵ for succession to the cross-Channel estates of his barons. He could behave in a more conventional manner than earlier dukes with respect to his own lands, because the acquisition of England meant that it was possible for him to adapt the custom of division or partition between sons,³⁵⁶ without dividing the duchy. Of course, this custom was being eroded at other levels of Norman society over the course of the eleventh century.³⁵⁷ But it had not disappeared, and the acquisition of England allowed it to be resurrected in a new form. In this respect there were two consequences of the division between Normandy and England in 1087. One was to strengthen, and arguably to establish, the convention of dividing inheritance from acquisition as a rule, as William’s co-conquerors died off and their lands were allowed to pass to their children: the division of 1087 was followed by a plethora of firmly datable divisions along similar lines.³⁵⁸ For the second time in post-Conquest history, succession at the top provided a template which was to some degree prescriptive. The other, as suggested by Orderic’s account of the rebels’ deliberations in 1088, was to compound the problems created by the incompatibility of the designation of Curthose with the situation in which it had been repeated on several occasions. Yet if the Conqueror could not, prior to his death, rescind his ‘concession’ of Normandy to Robert, after it Robert’s right to the duchy proved to be unchallengeable in theory.³⁵⁹ The same could not be said of Rufus or of Henry I in England, even after their coronations.³⁶⁰ Hence the contrast between the Conqueror’s urgency in dispatching Rufus from his deathbed, accompanied by Robert Bloet bearing the letter instructing Lanfranc to crown his son,³⁶¹ and the sending of a messenger to Curthose to inform him that he might at last return from exile to ‘receive’ the duchy.³⁶² According to Robert of Torigni, he was able to do so ‘without any resistance’.³⁶³ Orderic reports that the dying king claimed that ones: Douglas, Domesday Monachorum, 39–41; Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 158–9. Again, it is impossible to establish their order of birth; three other sons were not provided for on the family lands. William Paynel and Ralph Paynel may have been brothers who succeeded their father in his Norman and English estates respectively prior to 1087; but for the problems with the evidence, see Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 163–4, n. 101. Robert Burdet, a subtenant of Hugh de Grandmesnil, appears to have died shortly before the Domesday Inquest, and had probably been succeeded by a son also named Robert in Normandy, and by a son called Hugh in England: ibid. 163; D. Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1986), 127. But in this case there can be no assumption that the king would have been involved. For more oblique evidence that such a convention existed in Normandy prior to 1087, see Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’,167–9. For further discussion of the examples, see Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 122–3. ³⁵⁵ Orderic ii. 282–4; iii. 128: in both passages the division of William fitzOsbern’s estates after his death in battle in 1071 is attributed to the king. ³⁵⁶ For discussion of the early 11th-century evidence, see Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, 80–5. ³⁵⁷ Holt, ‘Notions of Patrimony’, CE 213–15. ³⁵⁸ Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 157–67. ³⁵⁹ Orderic iv. 178–80 could adduce no claim on Rufus’s behalf to succeed to the duchy. Instead, he sketched out his later justification for Henry I’s takeover in Normandy, which asserted that Robert was not, in any real sense, duke; see below, n. 459. ³⁶⁰ For Henry I’s insecurity in 1101, see Eadmer, HN 126–8. ³⁶¹ Orderic v. 202; cf. iv. 96. ³⁶² Orderic iii. 112. ³⁶³ RT, GND ii. 202–4.

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he did not dare ‘to convey the insignia (fasces) of this kingdom, which I obtained with so many sins, to anyone other than God’, for ‘I did not possess such a dignity by hereditary right, but wrested it from the perjured king Harold with bitter strife and terrible bloodshed’. Nevertheless, he expressed the hope that Rufus, ‘who has always been loyal to me and obeyed me in every way he could, . . . may happily bring lustre to the throne of the kingdom, if such be the divine will’.³⁶⁴ The dying king’s actions simply gave providence a helping hand. Orderic’s comment about the fasces has been interpreted as a covert allusion to the Conqueror’s bequest of a set of regalia to St-Étienne, evidenced by a charter of Rufus recording their redemption.³⁶⁵ It has even been suggested that De Obitu’s account of the Conqueror’s gift of regalia to Rufus was a very well-informed attempt to cover up this bequest.³⁶⁶ The latter suggestion depends on an assumption that the Conqueror had only one set of regalia. This is undermined by De Obitu’s mention of crowns in the plural among the regalia,³⁶⁷ and by the fact that Rufus apparently waited until 1096 ⫻ 98³⁶⁸ to redeem this set, and even then did not keep them for long.³⁶⁹ Clearly there were regalia to hand in England. Whether or not Orderic was alluding to the Conqueror’s bequest to his foundation, his account of the Conqueror leaving the kingdom of England to God and arranging for Rufus to become king is not self-contradictory, nor is it evidence of inadequate revision as he redrafted his text.³⁷⁰ Rather, Orderic was trying to demonstrate that the Conqueror had sought to avoid transmitting to Rufus responsibility for the sins of the Conquest along with its fruits. It was the Conqueror’s reiterated lack of ius hereditarium in the kingdom³⁷¹—the fact that it was an acquisition—which gave him the freedom not to constitute an heir to it. Thus one element in the dissident interpretation of the Conquest with which Orderic spices his narrative—the king’s lack of hereditary right to England—allowed him to absolve Rufus of any inherited responsibility for another: the sins committed. At a later stage, the author of the Battle Chronicle described the Conqueror’s gift to God, in the shape of his other penitential foundation, of the site of the battle in which he had won England. William is said to have done so in fulfilment of a vow, as an act of atonement for the sins involved in the Conquest.³⁷² Orderic makes the dying king express apparently ³⁶⁴ Orderic iv. 94. ³⁶⁵ Chibnall, World of Orderic, 186–7; GND i. p. lxiv; Musset, Actes pour les abbayes caennaises no. 24 (⫽ RRAN i. no. 397). For the recently rediscovered vidimus of 1424, see B. English, ‘William the Conqueror and the Anglo-Norman Succession’, HR lxiv (1991), 221–36, at 232, n. 45. Queen Matilda left precious objects, including a crown and sceptre, to her foundation of La-Trinité: Reg. no. 63 (almost certainly 1083). ³⁶⁶ GND i. pp. lxiv-lxv. ³⁶⁷ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 225, l. 24; GND ii. 186. The author is here copying the Astronomer verbatim. ³⁶⁸ Barlow, Rufus, 372, attempts to date it more precisely to Apr.–Sept. 1097. ³⁶⁹ RRAN ii. nos. 601 (1101 ⫻ 02), 1575 (1129), recording gifts by Henry I to redeem them on subsequent occasions. ³⁷⁰ H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Death-bed Testaments’, Falschungen im Mittelalter: MGH Schriften, 6 vols. (Hanover, 1988–90), iv. 703–24, at 722. ³⁷¹ Orderic iv. 90, 94. ³⁷² CBA 36, 66, 148. On his deathbed William bequeathed to Battle Abbey his royal pallium, 300 amulets, and a feretory, all of which he is said to have acquired, amongst other possessions ‘of the kings, his predecessors, when he acquired the kingdom’: 90, cf. 102–6, 128.

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similar intentions with respect to the kingdom as a whole. If he was indeed alluding to William’s bequest to St-Étienne, then the fact that the allusion remained covert meant that, in Orderic’s view, the king’s penitence amounted to nothing more than a pious platitude. He had not bequeathed the kingdom to God in the shape of any particular church; he had simply sought to free his son and chosen successor from his own guilt.³⁷³ So the platitude had a very serious point. Whether or not Orderic was able to draw on the memories of his own diocesan, Gilbert Maminot, bishop of Lisieux, who had been present at the deathbed,³⁷⁴ the other narrative sources are in agreement that it was only at this stage that the Conqueror made clear his intention that Rufus should be king after him.³⁷⁵ The manner in which he allegedly did so bears an obvious similarity to the Norman and English accounts of Edward the Confessor’s nomination of Harold as his successor,³⁷⁶ although, with the arguable exception of the Bayeux Tapestry, Harold is nowhere said to have received any regalia from the dying king.³⁷⁷ But it has nothing in common with the traditional Norman ducal designation ceremony, which provides the model for William of Poitiers’ account of King Edward’s alleged designation of Duke William,³⁷⁸ for it involved no pledging of fidelitas by the magnates. In England this happened only after the Conqueror’s death and, according to the chronicles, after Rufus’s coronation.³⁷⁹ Although it is difficult to believe that he received no submissions or oaths during the fortnight he spent in England prior to his coronation, there is no evidence to this effect. Nor is there even any reference to the traditional English ‘election’, undergone by Henry in Winchester on the day before his coronation in 1100.³⁸⁰ In contrast with Normandy, therefore, it seems that in England there was no mechanism by which fidelitas could be carried over the interregnum in 1087, just as we have seen that there was none in 1100.³⁸¹ And this was so despite the claim advanced by William of Jumièges and, in much more detail, by William of Poitiers, that this was precisely how Edward the Confessor had sought to ensure the succession of Duke William after his own death. ³⁷³ It follows that I disagree with English, ‘Anglo-Norman Succession’, 229–33, who argues that the Conqueror did indeed bequeath his kingdom to God. ³⁷⁴ Chibnall, World of Orderic, 186. ³⁷⁵ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 225 ll. 61–4; Acta Lanfranci, i. 290; JW iii. 46; GR i. 510, 542. ³⁷⁶ ASC (C(D)) s.a. 1065, (E) s.a. 1066; Vita Ædwardi, 122; JW ii. 600; GG 118, 140–2. Orderic ii. 136 appears to be attempting to explain this away when he reports that Harold, on his return from Normandy, deceived Edward into thinking that the duke had given Harold his daughter in marriage, and ‘conceded’ to him all his right in the English kingdom. The credulous king had then ‘conceded’ what the ‘tyrant’ told him. ³⁷⁷ The Tapestry’s depiction of Edward’s death and Harold’s coronation could, but need not, be interpreted in this way. The Carmen, 19, asserts that Edward had sent Harold to William with a ring and sword. But Barlow’s attempt to bolster the case for its authenticity is unconvincing. The author, whoever he was, was simply using a literary topos. ³⁷⁸ Above, p. 166. ³⁷⁹ ASC (E) s.a. 1086 (recte 1087): ‘After [the Conqueror’s] death, his son, called William like his father, succeeded to the kingdom and was consecrated king by Archbishop Lanfranc at Westminster, three days before Michaelmas day, and all the men in England submitted and swore oaths to him.’ ³⁸⁰ ASC (E) s.a. 1100. ³⁸¹ Above, pp. 118–20.

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That William the Conqueror had never envisaged—in Orderic’s terminology— the ‘concession’ of Normandy as in some sense subsuming the kingdom of England becomes evident when the relations between his sons are considered in the context of the arrangements which we have seen obtained in Normandy prior to 1066. There is no reason to assume that either Rufus or Henry had been made to pledge fidelitas or—again in Orderic’s terminology—to do homage to their elder brother at any of the ceremonies in which he had been designated. Yet that was the means by which, according to Dudo, Richard I had sought to prevent his younger sons creating difficulties for his chosen heir,³⁸² and which had subsequently been adapted, with only limited success, by successive dukes.³⁸³ The fact that Rufus and Henry almost certainly held no land in Normandy during their father’s lifetime meant that it was all the easier to exempt them.³⁸⁴ If Rufus had been bound to his elder brother in this way, the issue would certainly have been raised in 1087 or in the well-reported debates which preceded the rebellion of 1088, as Henry’s homage to Robert was in 1100 by William of Breteuil.³⁸⁵ Yet the sources are entirely silent on the subject. Henry’s homage had almost certainly been done for the comitatus of the Cotentin, which he had bought from Curthose after their father’s death, with much of the money bequeathed to him.³⁸⁶ Orderic gives him the defunct title of comes of the Cotentin,³⁸⁷ and there is diplomatic evidence that he was known by this title.³⁸⁸ Yver argued that this followed traditional Norman practice;³⁸⁹ but even when, formerly, a younger son had received a grant of territory from his designated elder brother—as William, son of Richard I, had been given the comitatus of the Hiémois by Richard II c.996³⁹⁰— the gift was said to have been made on the father’s instructions.³⁹¹ When Richard II designated his son Richard, he himself established Richard’s brother Robert in the same comitatus,³⁹² rather than instructing the future Richard III to do so. There is no evidence that the Conqueror made any such arrangement on Henry’s behalf, and further negative evidence that neither Rufus nor Henry had been made to bind themselves to Curthose during their father’s lifetime. ³⁸² Dudo, 297, discussed above, p. 144. ³⁸³ Above, p. 145–6. ³⁸⁴ Above, n. 315, for the only possible exception. ³⁸⁵ Orderic v. 290; cf. above, p. 138. ³⁸⁶ Ibid. iv. 118–20; Robert of Torigni, GND ii. 204, reports a rumour that Curthose had only mortgaged the county; ‘De Statu Constantiensis Ecclesie’, Gallia Christiana, xi, instr., cols. 221–3, indicates that the grant extended more widely, to include the pagi of Coutances and Avranches. None of these sources says that Henry did homage, but William of Malmesbury, GR i. 712, states that in 1088 he garrisoned the tower at Rouen ‘in eius [Robert’s] fidelitatem’. See Le Patourel, Norman Empire, 342–4; Hollister, Henry I, 49, 51–2, 142. ³⁸⁷ Orderic iv. 148; for the history of the title, see Hollister, Henry I, 51, n. 113. J. A. Green, ‘Robert Curthose Reassessed’, ANS xxii (1999), 95–116, at 109, n. 84, states that the Cotentin had been intended as an appanage for Robert’s younger brother Richard, because he attested Fauroux, Recueil no. 218 A (1059 ⫻ 1066), an original, as ‘count of the Cotentin’. This is not so; see further below, n. 399. ³⁸⁸ L. Delisle, Histoire du château et des sires de Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte (Paris, 1867), 27 and Preuves, 53; Haskins, Norman Institutions, 62–4, both cited by Hollister, Henry I, 52. ³⁸⁹ Yver, ‘Châteaux forts’, 77. ³⁹⁰ William of Jumièges, GND ii. 8; discussed above, p. 145. ³⁹¹ Dudo, p. 297. ³⁹² GND ii. 40.

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Duke Robert’s invasion of England in 1101 in an attempt to contest Henry’s right to the kingdom ended with the two brothers being forced to reach an agreement³⁹³ at Alton. It was solemnly ratified by the oaths of twelve men on either side a few days later at Winchester,³⁹⁴ on the first anniversary of Rufus’s death. Orderic’s account is professedly based on hearsay rather than a document; but he reports that in the first provision Curthose renounced in favour of his brother the claim he had made to the kingdom, ‘and out of respect for his royal dignity released him from the homage which he had previously done to him’.³⁹⁵ It was literally inconceivable that the king should be a vassal of his brother the duke.³⁹⁶ There is no evidence that Rufus had sought a similar concession from Curthose when they came to terms in 1091.³⁹⁷ Yet the settlement at Alton seems to have been modelled on this earlier agreement.³⁹⁸ The implication of Orderic’s accounts of both was that Curthose’s release of Henry from his homage in 1101 had no precedent in 1091. If so, Norman tradition had been broken, for the younger brothers of the designated successor to the duchy had not been bound to him. And the decision not so to bind them must have been made by Duke William, whose predecessors, as we have seen, had orchestrated submissions by and grants to younger brothers. Such a decision on his part meant that he had begun to adapt the traditional designatory mechanism to the new situation in which he also had the kingdom of England to dispose of. Perhaps from the time of his first designation of Curthose, and certainly when Rufus and Henry were old enough to participate in the repetitions, the Conqueror had instead left open the possibility of bequeathing the kingdom to another son.³⁹⁹ ³⁹³ RRAN ii. no. 564 (1102) terms it a concordia, as do BR 38, Robert of Torigni, GND ii. 220, and the annal for 1101 found in a condensed version of Symeon of Durham’s Historia Regum which, it has been suggested, may be based on the recollections of Ranulf Flambard, Curthose’s chief adviser: London, BL Cotton MS. Caligula A. viii, fo. 41r, printed and discussed by C. W. Hollister, ‘The Anglo-Norman Civil War: 1101’, reprinted in his Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the AngloNorman World (London, 1986), 77–96. The suggestion is made on p. 79. ³⁹⁴ ASC (E) s.a. 1101; Hollister, Henry I, 140–3. ³⁹⁵ Orderic v. 318. There is no similar provision in the accounts given by ASC (E) s.a. 1101; JW iii. 98; GR i. 716–18. But Orderic’s Norman context would mean that he was more alert to this issue. Le Patourel, Norman Empire, 186, n. 2, points out that according to Orderic (vi. 256) King Louis VI denounced Henry in 1119 for his imprisonment of Curthose, ‘his brother and lord’. ³⁹⁶ Above, p. 118; cf. Glanvill vii. 10, quoted above, p. 45. ³⁹⁷ ASC (E) s.a. 1091; JW iii. 58; RT, GND ii. 206; Orderic iv. 236; GR i. 548–50. On the agreement, see Hollister, Henry I, 77–9. Barlow, Rufus, 282–3, suggests that Curthose would not have required homage from Rufus for the lands he ceded to him in Normandy, if he had already received it prior to the Conqueror’s death. There is no evidence to warrant either speculation. ³⁹⁸ Freeman, Rufus ii. 414; Hollister, ‘Civil War’, 93. ³⁹⁹ The first designation of Curthose occurred shortly before the Conquest; it was certainly repeated in 1079–80, and at some intervening point: see above, pp. 163–4. Rufus was born in or just before 1060 (Barlow, Rufus, 3) and Henry in 1068 or 1069 (above, n. 175). It is impossible to establish whether or not the second brother Richard, who was born c. 1055 and died 1069 ⫻ 74 (above n. 302), had participated in the designations which took place before his death. He attests Fauroux, Recueil no. 218 (1059 ⫻ 66), an original, as Richardus de Abrincas, son of William and Matilda. The toponym is not found in the 13th-century copy. It may be that he was meant to receive Avranches, in the same way that William, half-brother of Richard II, and Robert the Magnificent, brother of

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The Conqueror seems to have wanted to give himself a free hand with respect to England. This means that it had not in any sense been settled on William Rufus. To have designated him as successor to the kingdom might have enabled him to build up just the sort of reversionary interest which both prompted and enabled Curthose to make so much trouble in Normandy.⁴⁰⁰ So William of Malmesbury’s comment that Curthose forfeited his father’s blessing and inheritance, lacking England after his father’s death and scarcely retaining Normandy,⁴⁰¹ does not mean, pace Le Patourel,⁴⁰² that Curthose, rather than Rufus, was regarded as the Conqueror’s heir in England. It is a further indication that the Conqueror had been careful to make no arrangements at all with respect to the kingdom before he disposed of it on his deathbed. We have seen how William of Poitiers used the template of Norman ducal designation in his recreation of Edward the Confessor’s supposed designation of Duke William.⁴⁰³ Yet for all the emphasis laid on the Conqueror’s resulting claim, there is no hint that he had arranged succession to the kingdom in similar fashion. William of Poitiers had been concerned to show that Edward’s deathbed bequest to Harold should not have superseded the king’s prior designation of the duke. But it was with just such a deathbed bequest that King William rewarded Rufus’s faithful service, according to Orderic.⁴⁰⁴ It did not negate the Norman-style designation of Curthose, because that applied only to the duchy. Such rights as Curthose had in England appear to have been defined by the agreement he reached with Rufus in 1091, without any reference to paternal grants.⁴⁰⁵ They were not mentioned again in any of the accounts of the agreement made with his other younger brother at Alton in 1101. Nevertheless, Curthose might well have felt that he had a better claim to the kingdom than Rufus; and a fortiori than Henry, in view of the provision in the 1091 agreement that if Rufus died without leaving a legitimate son, Curthose should be his heir.⁴⁰⁶ There were irreconcilable contradictions between William the Conqueror’s free disposal of an acquisition which he claimed to hold hereditario iure, and the repetitions of the traditional Norman ducal designation ceremony—omitting the crucial binding of the younger brothers to the designated successor—in circumstances which it no longer fitted. These were exacerbated by what William of Newburgh, with characteristic acuity, would much later characterize as the ‘preposterous’ nature of the succession to William the Conqueror in 1087.⁴⁰⁷ When describing the initial Richard III, got the comitatus of Hiémois in 996 and 1025/6 respectively. The suggestion is made by Lewis, Royal Succession, 29. But there is no other evidence that Richard had or expected to have Avranches or the Avranchin. Although the Avranchin was a Carolingian pagus, there is no evidence that it was ever a comitatus, and it is difficult to see how such a comitatus could have coexisted with that of Mortain: Douglas, ‘Norman Counts’, 144–5, 150, 152. ⁴⁰⁰ Above, p. 164. ⁴⁰¹ GR i. 502, quoted above, p. 176. ⁴⁰² Le Patourel, ‘Norman Succession’, 233; Norman Empire, 182. ⁴⁰³ Above, p. 166. ⁴⁰⁴ Orderic iv. 94; cf. GR i. 542. ⁴⁰⁵ ASC (E) s.a. 1091; JW iii. 58. ⁴⁰⁶ ASC simply says that Curthose was to be Rufus’s heir, but John of Worcester explains that the survivorship provision was reciprocal. ⁴⁰⁷ W N, CSHR i. 23.

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Norman settlement in England, Orderic commented that the Conqueror ‘conferred many great honours on other adventurers who had supported him, and elevated some of them so far that they had many vassals (clientes) in England who were richer and more powerful than their own fathers had been in Normandy’.⁴⁰⁸ This was one of the potent causes of tension between the king and those co-conquerors who depended upon him for their lands in England, which I have repeatedly touched upon. It also created strains within aristocratic families. In some instances these were addressed by the eldest son taking the English acquisition, and the second son the Norman (or other continental) inheritance.⁴⁰⁹ But in the case of the ducal family no such arrangement was even possible, if the designation of Curthose as the Conqueror’s successor in the duchy was indeed irreversible. His second son became an anointed king, his first-born only a duke. The resulting tension was compounded by the impossibility of the king and duke dealing with (in many cases) the same vassals when they were at loggerheads. This was one of the main issues which the agreements of 1091 and 1101 attempted to address.⁴¹⁰ Most of the chronicles indicate that the agreement of 1101 was instigated by those vassals who found themselves trying to reconcile their obligations to two conflicting lords.⁴¹¹ The only significant exception is Orderic,⁴¹² which is curious, because he had thought more deeply about this problem than the other chroniclers.⁴¹³ If only William of Malmesbury explicitly says the same of the agreement of 1091,⁴¹⁴ the interests of such vassals are implicit in its terms. For it was agreed that many of those who, when faced with this dilemma, had sided with Curthose ‘out of fidelitas’, and accordingly had forfeited their lands in England, were to have these restored.⁴¹⁵ As the rebellion of 1088 and its aftermath had shown, it was impossible to reconcile such conflicting obligations when the king exercised the sort of control over tenure in England of which Rufus gave Roger de Montgommery his subtly pointed reminder.⁴¹⁶ This was how, in the wake of the Conquest, instability at the very top exacerbated instability lower down the tenurial hierarchy.⁴¹⁷ It shows not only why Rufus had to move so swiftly in order to secure pre-emptive consecration from Lanfranc, ‘just as his father had arranged (constituit)’;⁴¹⁸ it also serves to explain a characteristic of ⁴⁰⁸ Orderic ii. 264. ⁴⁰⁹ Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, 124, 154; Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 160–1. I am grateful to Elisabeth van Houts for pointing out to me that the eldest son of William de Warenne and his Flemish wife Gundreda succeeded his father in both England and Normandy, and their second son succeeded to the family’s Flemish estates: Chronica Monasterii de Hida juxta Wintoniam, in Liber de Monasterii de Hyda, ed. E. Edwards, RS (London, 1866), 299. ⁴¹⁰ Hollister, ‘Civil War’, 92–3; Le Patourel, Norman Empire, 184–5, 199–200. ⁴¹¹ ASC (E) s.a. 1101; JW iii. 98; GR i. 716–18; HH, p. 450; Hollister, ‘Civil War’, 90, 96. ⁴¹² Orderic v. 318. ⁴¹³ Ibid. iv. 122–4; vi. 454; cf. iv. 270; vi. 58, 444. ⁴¹⁴ GR i. 548. According to Robert of Torigni, GND ii. 206, King Philip I of France mediated between them; but Hollister, Henry I, 77, n. 212 argues that this was not the case. ⁴¹⁵ JW iii. 58; ASC (E) s.a. 1091; for comment, Freeman, Rufus, i. 282–3; Hollister, ‘Civil War’, 93; Barlow, Rufus, 282. ⁴¹⁶ GR i. 546, quoted above, pp. 5. ⁴¹⁷ Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 125–8, 141. ⁴¹⁸ Acta Lanfranci, i. 290.

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all interregna prior to that which followed the death of King Stephen: anarchic disorder. It is to this issue that I shall now turn.

THE MOTIVES FOR DISORDER Medieval interregna were conventionally characterized as periods of anarchic disturbance. In the duchy of Normandy, Dudo presented this as the danger which public commendation to a duke’s chosen successor was designed to circumvent.⁴¹⁹ In the kingdom of France such a successor would be associated with his father as co-king from the late tenth century on.⁴²⁰ With one exception, this mechanism ensured that son succeeded father from the death of the first Capetian king, Hugh Capet, in 996, until Louis X died in 1316, leaving no son but a pregnant wife. And the exception proves the point, for Ivo of Chartres justified the immediate consecration of the one Capetian who had not been consecrated as king during his father’s lifetime—Louis VI—in terms of forestalling interregnal anarchy.⁴²¹ Yet despite Norman awareness of the French example,⁴²² there was no move to follow it either in Normandy or (later) in England, until Stephen’s unsuccessful attempt to have his eldest son Eustace anointed during his own lifetime.⁴²³ According to Orderic Vitalis, some French nobles resented the consecration by Pope Innocent II of Louis VII in 1131, during his father’s lifetime. They did so because ‘some of the laity hoped for an increase of honour after the death of the princeps, and some of the clergy coveted the right of electing and constituting the princeps of the realm’.⁴²⁴ The advantages of such a system, from the king’s point of view, were therefore obvious to a Norman commentator. There must have been powerful reasons why no English king prior to Stephen attempted to adopt it. In Normandy the ‘splendid peculiarity’ of the duchy—its indivisibility and, by extension, that of the principatus—meant that association was almost inconceivable.⁴²⁵ Orderic made the Conqueror reiterate this point frequently to Robert Curthose, with increasing exasperation.⁴²⁶ In any case, the designation ceremony obviated any need for a designated successor to be his father’s co-duke. As for ⁴¹⁹ Dudo, 220, quoted above, p. 143. ⁴²⁰ The first example in this period is the last Carolingian, Louis V, who was ‘acclaimed’ and anointed at his father’s behest on 8 June 979: Recueil des actes de Lothaire et de Louis V, ed. L. Halphen and F. Lot (Paris, 1908), no. 69; Richer, Histoire de France, ed. R. Latouche, 2 vols. (Paris, 1930–7), ii. 114–16. ⁴²¹ RHF xv. 144–6, discussed above, p. 4. ⁴²² Duke Richard II was present at the associative consecration of King Robert the Pious’s son Hugh: Fauroux, Recueil no. 22 (9 June 1017). A charter issued by King Robert in 1027, subscribed by his son Henry as king (Hugh having died in 1025) and by Duke Richard III, may have been issued on the day of Henry’s associative consecration (14 May 1027), and must be dated prior to Richard III’s death on 6 August: no. 59. Fauroux, p. 64 and n. 333, demonstrates that when regnal dates for French kings are given in Norman charters, they follow French practice in beginning a reign either at the predecessor’s death or at the earlier associative consecration. ⁴²³ Below, pp. 264–5. ⁴²⁴ Orderic vi. 422. ⁴²⁵ Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession’, esp. 91–5; above, pp. 144–6. ⁴²⁶ Above, p. 165.

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England, there was no apparent pre-Conquest precedent for association.⁴²⁷ It seems highly unlikely that Ecgfrith of Mercia, consecrated at Offa’s behest in 787, was viewed as such.⁴²⁸ The new precision in the definition of the king’s tenure which we have seen being engendered by the Conqueror’s claim⁴²⁹ doubtless reinforced the existing Norman assumption that rulership was neither shareable nor divisible. In any case, as Eadmer recognized more explicitly than anyone, dependence on one royal lord was intrinsic to the very structure of tenure in postConquest England.⁴³⁰ The king ‘dominus omnium est’.⁴³¹ It was as inconceivable for him to have an equal or associate as it was for him to have a lord. These were points which Orderic also made.⁴³² In late eleventh-century England there was no Norman-style designation ceremony, binding the magnates to a chosen successor (other than that which had allegedly bound the English to Duke William from c.1051). In England, unlike Normandy, the personal bond between man and lord, later termed homage, came to warrant free tenure. In England the king was the ultimate source of all tenure, whereas the duke was not in Normandy. In conjunction, these three factors served to explain why the death of a king in conquered England should have created difficulties of a kind which Dudo could not have envisaged when he analysed the purpose of the ducal designation ceremony in Normandy. Interregna in postConquest England were uniquely short and (reportedly) violent. I have already examined the inchoate attempts to grapple with the problem in Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’.⁴³³ There, by implication, the bond of homage was assumed somehow to come into existence between the barones regni Anglie and Henry at the moment when he became king, and they thereby became ‘his’ barons, although it had apparently not subsisted during the period between Rufus’s death and Henry’s coronation. As we shall see, the problem had ramifications further down the tenurial hierarchy, not least because most barons held land of other barons; but it was particularly acute with respect to those tenancies which they held immediately of the king. They might be considered to have some security in these once a new king had been created, but before they had been able ⁴²⁷ ASC C (D) s.a. 1041 reports that ‘there came from beyond the sea Edward, [Harthacnut’s] brother on the mother’s side, the son of King Æthelred, who had been driven from his country many years before—and yet he was sworn in as king; and he thus stayed at his brother’s court as long as he lived.’ It is not quite clear whether it was Æthelred or Edward who was ‘sworn in as king’, but the Encomium Emmae, 52, which states that Harthacnut invited Edward to ‘come and hold the kingdom with himself ’, would suggest that the chronicler meant Edward. There is, however, no other evidence as to what Edward’s status might be thought to have been prior to Harthacnut’s death in 1042. Maddicott, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Return’, 655, suggests that the process of swearing ‘may have been something like the associative consecration used by the Capetian kings of France to designate their successors’. After Harthacnut’s death, Edward was king: see above, pp. 2–3. And there are no obvious English parallels with Edward’s possible position in 1041. ⁴²⁸ It is mentioned by JW ii. 218–19 and William of Malmesbury, GR i. 136, but they simply reproduce the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. ⁴²⁹ Above, Part I. ⁴³⁰ Above, Part II. ⁴³¹ LHP 43. 1. ⁴³² Orderic iii. 100, cf. 98, discussed above, pp. 165, 174; v. 318, discussed above, p. 182. ⁴³³ Above, pp. 114–20.

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formally to renew with him the homage which they had done to his brother and predecessor. Yet during the interregnum itself the ‘edict’ assumes that they had no lord. It follows that the tenures they had held of the last king might be deemed, strictly speaking, to have lapsed, because the lord of whom they had held was dead. The anomalous character of the king’s lordship meant that the kingdom could not escheat into the hands of the lord’s lord, who might act as guarantor.⁴³⁴ Orderic does not differentiate between England and Normandy when he states that, as the Conqueror lay dying, those ‘who rejoiced in the security of peace dreaded the death of the peaceful ruler’.⁴³⁵ Interregna in Normandy were not necessarily peaceful and orderly. The bonds of fidelitas with Robert Curthose, repeatedly reaffirmed by the magnates of the duchy, could not, as we have seen, be rescinded even by the father at whose behest they had been made. Unlike in England in 1100, they did subsist during the interregnum in 1087. That was their whole point. But they did not prevent Robert de Bellême from reacting instantaneously on hearing of William the Conqueror’s death: ‘Instantly wheeling round his horse he galloped to Alençon, caught the king’s men off their guard, and ejected them from the stronghold.’ He did the same at Bellême and at all ‘his’ other castles.⁴³⁶ In a speech which Orderic later attributed to Odo of Bayeux, Robert was said thereby to have ‘disinherited’ the new duke.⁴³⁷ Other magnates reacted likewise against the Conqueror’s practice, which they clearly regarded as uncustomary, of reserving to himself ultimate control of all the important castles in the duchy, whether ducal or not.⁴³⁸ In other words, they were reacting against one of the ways in which the duke’s hand in Normandy had been strengthened by the success and the example of his conquest of England.⁴³⁹ Nevertheless, it continued to be recognized that the duke’s powers there were not commensurate with those he enjoyed in England. Such is clear from the statement of the customs ⁴³⁴ The point is highlighted by the scrupulous distinction drawn in the Dialogus, 96, 121, between the reliefs which the king demanded from the heir of a baron, and from the heir of a subtenant on a barony which was in the king’s hand. The latter were to be treated in exactly the same way as they would have been had the barony not been in escheat. ⁴³⁵ Orderic iv. 78. ⁴³⁶ Ibid. 112–14. ⁴³⁷ Ibid. 152. ⁴³⁸ Ibid. 114; Yver, ‘Châteaux forts’, 42–64, esp. 60–4; ‘Consuetudines et iusticie’, cap. 4, in Haskins, Norman Institutions, p. 282; further, Holt, ‘Politics and Property’ CE 131–2. When Henry I eventually restored to William Talvas, son of Robert de Bellême, his father’s lands and castles in Normandy, he specified that William was to hold the latter ‘except for the keeps, to which he assigned his own guardians’: Orderic vi. 224. ⁴³⁹ See e.g. the decrees of the Council of Lillebonne of 1080 for the earliest extant expression of the idea that bishops held consuetudines by ‘concession’ of the king, and sought to define them by reference to the status quo ‘in the time of Count Robert or King William’, which was to be established ‘in the king’s court’: Orderic iii. 34, discussed by Yver, ‘Premières institutions’, 348–9; cf. the earlier list in Fauroux, Recueil no. 131 (1053). That ‘Count Robert’ refers to Robert the Magnificent, not Robert Curthose, is confirmed by a version which clearly preserves the original sense, and which terms William ‘his son’: Orderic iii. 30 n. a. There are obvious echoes of the procedure underlying the Domesday Inquest, although this does not concern tenure. For the tendency towards increasing tenurial dependence on the duke, see Holt, ‘Notions of Patrimony’, CE 210–12; Bates, Normandy Before 1066, 125–8. It seems likely that this was accelerated by the Conquest, but no attempt has yet been made to examine the evidence systematically.

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and judicial rights which William the Conqueror had had in the duchy, jointly commissioned by Rufus and Curthose as part of the 1091 settlement;⁴⁴⁰ and from the relative difficulty which even Henry I later found in making permanent the confiscation of a rebel’s Norman estates.⁴⁴¹ William of Malmesbury repeatedly stressed that Normandy was the chief source of trouble during his reign: in England ‘no one dared to raise his head’.⁴⁴² The king’s unique powers over tenure in England meant that his death resulted in particularly acute sort of insecurity there, especially for those who had held of him in chief. Thus Orderic describes the instantaneous reaction to the death of William Rufus on 2 August 1100: ‘The moment the king was dead many nobles made off from the wood to their homes, and ordered their affairs against the future disturbances which they feared.’⁴⁴³ William of Malmesbury commented that they were far too busy with more pressing concerns to think of pursuing Walter Tirel: ‘. . . all had other things to think about, some fortifying their own places of refuge, some in secret carrying off what spoils they could, some looking about them every moment for a new king.’ It was left to ‘a few rustics’ to bundle the king’s corpse onto a cart and trundle it off to Winchester Cathedral, ‘with blood dripping freely the whole way’.⁴⁴⁴ So potential claimants to the throne were not alone in responding rapidly to the news of a king’s death. Orderic described how those standing around the Conqueror’s deathbed were ‘dazed with grief at what lay in store for them’.⁴⁴⁵ What frightened them was those ‘enemies of peace’ who, on hearing of the king’s illness, ‘rejoiced, foreseeing an open season for pillaging and plundering’.⁴⁴⁶ Much as the latter relished the prospect, however, it was not until the king’s death that there would be the ‘sudden and violent change in things’ which the king himself is said to have predicted.⁴⁴⁷ ⁴⁴⁰ ‘Consuetudines et iusticie’, in Haskins, Norman Institutions, 281–4. ⁴⁴¹ Robert de Bellême had already forfeited his English lands when he fought on Curthose’s side at Tinchebrai. Henry I initially allowed him to keep his father’s Norman estates, but forced him to give up whatever he had acquired from the ducal demesne: Orderic vi. 98. After his participation in the rebellion of 1110/12, he was imprisoned for life and forced to give up these lands too: Orderic vi. 178–82. Henry was subsequently persuaded to restore to William Talvas, Robert’s son, all his father’s lands in Normandy: Orderic vi. 224. See further, Chibnall, ‘Feudal Society’, 38; K. Thompson, ‘Robert of Bellême Reconsidered’, ANS xiii (1990), 263–86, at 276–9. ⁴⁴² GR i. 744; cf. (as he says) 718–24. ⁴⁴³ Orderic v. 292; cf. iv. 100–2, describing similar reactions to the Conqueror’s death. In both descriptions, the same verb—manicare—is used to describe the flight of the nobles. ⁴⁴⁴ GR i. 574; cf. Orderic v. 292, who adds that the ‘clergy and monks and poorer citizens only, with widows and beggars came out to meet him and, out of reverence for the royal dignity, quickly buried him’; Eadmer, HN 116: ‘he was immediately deserted by every man.’ In 1087 Eadmer (24) reports that the Conqueror’s corpse was deserted by everyone ‘with the exception of one serving man’; Orderic (iv. 102) that when the lesser attendants saw that their superiors had absconded, they plundered any valuables they could find, and fled ‘leaving the king’s body almost naked on the floor’. ⁴⁴⁵ Orderic iv. 94; cf. the fears of those who tried to persuade Anselm to accept the archbishopric of Canterbury in 1093, otherwise Rufus might die of his illness: Eadmer, HN 34, discussed above, p. 53. ⁴⁴⁶ Orderic iv. 78. ⁴⁴⁷ Ibid. 100.

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The author of the Gesta Stephani analysed the motives which, on the death of Henry I in 1135, led to the immediate rupturing ‘of the sacred obligations ( foedera) of hallowed friendship’:⁴⁴⁸ ‘Now they seized the opportunity for vengeance, and whatever villainy had been suggested in peacetime under the stimulus of anger, was most speedily brought to fulfilment, because hateful enmity, revealing itself to the public gaze, now brought to light and displayed openly what it had swathed in secrecy.’⁴⁴⁹ Those whom Orderic characterized as ‘enemies of peace’, or those who William of Malmesbury said hated King Henry’s peace,⁴⁵⁰ were not motivated simply by a lust for anarchic violence, although Orderic sometimes gives the impression that this was the distinguishing national characteristic of the Normans.⁴⁵¹ As indicated by the actions of Robert de Bellême and the other Norman magnates in the immediate aftermath of the Conqueror’s death, the interregnum was an opportunity to redress grievances nursed primarily against the dead ruler.⁴⁵² In 1135 Waleran de Meulan similarly seized his chance to regain Montfort-sur-Risle, which he had lost to Henry I in 1123.⁴⁵³ Waleran was one of those who, at the dying king’s behest, had sworn not to desert his body until they had escorted it in a dignified fashion to the Norman coast.⁴⁵⁴ Henry thereby sought to ensure that his corpse would not be treated in the same disgraceful way as those of the Conqueror and Rufus. But Waleran de Meulan’s compliance with these precautions did not prevent him from exploiting the interregnum in the same way as those who had deserted royal corpses in 1087 or 1100 had done. He had simply obliged himself to wait before he joined in the mayhem through which the dignified funeral procession of 20,000 men passed.⁴⁵⁵ In 1136 the mere rumour that Stephen was dead was enough to galvanize Hugh Bigod into precipitate action: ‘Hearing this . . . [he] entered Norwich castle by stealth and refused to surrender it except to the king himself when he arrived, and even then with great reluctance.’⁴⁵⁶ Clearly Hugh felt that he had not been sufficiently rewarded for the oath he had taken at the crucial juncture in 1135, to the effect that Henry I had, on his deathbed, nominated Stephen as his successor.⁴⁵⁷ Now he sought to exploit the king’s supposed demise to secure what he thought should have been his payoff. It is clear from these examples that interregna were exploited in similar fashion to redress grievances against the deceased ruler in both England and Normandy. In an incident which made a deep impression on contemporaries, Ascelin vented his grievance against what remained of the Conqueror’s person, by successfully holding up the king’s burial until he received proper compensation for his ⁴⁴⁸ GS 2. ⁴⁴⁹ GS 4. ⁴⁵⁰ HNa 32. ⁴⁵¹ Orderic iii. 98; iv. 82; v. 24; vi. 456; cf. HH 700, 706. ⁴⁵² According to Orderic iv. 114, they plundered each other’s lands too, but only after they had expelled the king’s garrisons. ⁴⁵³ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 142, cf. 105. ⁴⁵⁴ Orderic vi. 448. ⁴⁵⁵ Orderic vi. 448–52; HNa 26; Letters of Peter the Venerable, i. no. 15. ⁴⁵⁶ HH 706. ⁴⁵⁷ LE 285; John of Salisbury, HP 85.

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inheritance, on top of which William had built the abbey of St-Étienne.⁴⁵⁸ Only with the Conqueror safely dead, it seems, could his depredations be contested—in this instance, successfully. But it was more common for such grievances to be vented on those who had benefited from the dead ruler’s favour, rather than on his earthly remains. As soon as news of the death of William Rufus reached Normandy, the lands of Robert, count of Meulan, were attacked ‘in revenge for injuries that he had done to his peers for some time past by turning King Rufus against them through false allegations’. ‘Likewise many others, who had been nursing anger and hatred, but had not dared to avenge themselves openly because of the rigour of princely justice, fell upon each other without restraint, now that control was relaxed, and by their mutual slaughter and pillaging devastated the unhappy province which was without a ruler.’⁴⁵⁹ The greater control which the king had over tenure in England, his readier resort to forfeiture and regrant, meant that the resentments engendered there would be all the more intense. According to William of Malmesbury, Henry’s election on 4 August was preceded by the settling of some disputes among the nobles, ‘chiefly by the efforts of Henry, earl of Warwick . . . whose intimate friendship he had long enjoyed’.⁴⁶⁰ Some case histories will show that there was a lot for the earl and his (unnamed) assistants—who must have included his brother, Robert of Meulan⁴⁶¹—to thrash out. Robert Malet, for instance, had succeeded to his father’s honour of Eye early in the Conqueror’s reign; but he was deprived of it by William Rufus, who gave it to Roger the Poitevin.⁴⁶² Robert does not appear in any charter or writ of Rufus’s reign,⁴⁶³ but he was probably present in London on 5 August 1100 to witness Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’.⁴⁶⁴ We do not know what he had been up to during the three days since Rufus’s death, but he must already have been in England,⁴⁶⁵ presumably in Henry’s entourage. It is impossible to establish precisely when the ⁴⁵⁸ Eadmer, HN 24, William of Malmesbury, GR i. 512, Orderic iv. 106; Musset, Abbayes Caennaises, pp. 45–6. ⁴⁵⁹ Orderic v. 300. It might be objected that, strictly speaking, there was no interregnum in Normandy in 1100, because Robert Curthose was still alive, though absent on crusade, and Rufus had been acting as ruler in his brother’s stead, without ever using the ducal title, by force of the agreement reached between them in 1096: Eadmer, HN 74; JW iii. 84; Orderic v. 26, 208, 278–80; further Barlow, Rufus, 367–9. But Orderic argued that Curthose never actually ‘possessed’ the duchy, and therefore treated the period between the Conqueror’s death and Henry I’s victory at Tinchebrai, other than the four years of Rufus’s administration, as a quasi-interregnum: Orderic iv. 100, 110; v. 300; vi. 92–8. ⁴⁶⁰ GR i. 714. ⁴⁶¹ For Robert’s putative role in the negotiations which informed the coronation ‘edict’, see above, p. 107. ⁴⁶² Lewis, ‘King and Eye’, 576–8. ⁴⁶³ C. W. Hollister, ‘Henry I and Robert Malet’, repr. in id., Monarchy, Magnates, and Institutions, 129–36, at 130–1. ⁴⁶⁴ He attests only the Worcester version: Liebermann, ‘Text of Henry I.’s Coronation Charter’, 24; ‘Coronation Charter of Henry I’, ed. M. Brett. ⁴⁶⁵ Lewis, ‘King and Eye’, 582–3, speculates that he might have been summoned from Normandy by Henry. But, as shown above, p. 120, the three-day period was far too short for this to have happened.

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new king took Eye back from Roger the Poitevin and returned it to Robert,⁴⁶⁶ but this had certainly happened by 1102, when Roger forfeited in England for his part in the rebellion of his brother Robert de Bellême.⁴⁶⁷ Robert Malet had clearly been far too intimately involved in Henry’s bid for the throne to have had time to harass Roger during the interregnum; but if he read through or listened with any attention to the document he attested on 5 August, he must have hoped that cap. 14, King Henry’s command to restore anything taken since Rufus’s death, did not amount to a blanket confirmation of the tenurial status quo at that point. Henry’s subsequent restoration of the honour to him, and a confirmation in favour of the prior and monks of Eye issued by the king after Robert’s death c.1106,⁴⁶⁸ prove that, certainly in the case of the honour of Eye, it did not. Nor did it in the case of the estates which Henry quickly heaped upon Richard de Redvers, one of his long-standing vassals from the Cotentin;⁴⁶⁹ but Richard had no prior claim to any of them, and is recorded as having held only three manors in England prior to 1100.⁴⁷⁰ Churches could not be subject to conflicting claims of the sort evident in the case of Eye, which could erupt during an interregnum. But the spate of ecclesiastical appointments which took place on 5 August shows that Henry must have been extremely busy during the previous three days with matters other than the seizure of the treasury at Winchester, his election,⁴⁷¹ the wheeling and dealing over which the earl of Warwick presided, the resolution of the terms of his coronation ‘edict’, the ride to London, and the arrangements for his coronation. William Giffard, Rufus’s last chancellor, appears for the first time as bishop-elect of Winchester in the witness list of the coronation ‘edict’, and in two other documents probably issued on the same day.⁴⁷² Whether or not he had been encouraged to have ⁴⁶⁶ Ibid. 583. ⁴⁶⁷ Orderic v. 308; vi. 32. Lewis, ‘King and Eye’, 583–4, shows that he may not have lost everything in England, or that some English estates may have been restored to him at a later point. But he did not get Eye back. ⁴⁶⁸ RRAN ii. no. 1406 (c.1113 ⫻ 23): ‘sicut melius tenuerunt die quo pater meus fuit vivus et mortuus et die quo Robertus Maleth fuit vivus et mortuus.’ Another writ, also cited by Lewis, ‘King and Eye’, 580, confirmed a possession of the abbey as it was on the day when William I was alive and dead: Essex Record Office, D/Dby Q19, no. 9, fol. 20v, discussed above, p. 127. As Lewis demonstrates, the day of Rufus’s death could not be used, because Roger the Poitevin had given some of the estates away while he held the honour. ⁴⁶⁹ Charters of the Redvers Family and the Earldom of Devon, ed. R. Bearman, Devon and Cornwall Record Soc., NS xxxvii (1994), pp. 2–3, 18–22. Most of these were forfeited, but in a few cases Domesday tenants-in-chief were reduced to the status of Redvers tenants. According to Orderic v. 298, Henry rapidly summoned him to his counsels; by 1101 (v. 314) he was one of those barons who stuck by the king during the invasion crisis. Wace, Roman de Rou, ii. 235–6 describes Curthose consenting to Henry’s request that Richard should become his vassal, presumably in 1088; for Richard’s association with Henry in the early 1090s, see RT, GND ii. 208. ⁴⁷⁰ Charters of the Redvers Family, p. 17. ⁴⁷¹ RT, GND ii. 216 and the Hyde Chronicle, 304, exceptionally locate this in Westminster rather than Winchester. ⁴⁷² RRAN ii. 490, 491 (the letter to Anselm announcing that the coronation had taken place, and inviting him to return to England).

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expectations of the vacant see during Rufus’s reign, his election during the interregnum⁴⁷³ secured his allegiance, and perhaps ensured that he contributed his expertise to the drafting of the ‘edict’.⁴⁷⁴ Like Gerard, bishop of Hereford, the Conqueror’s last and Rufus’s first chancellor, who also witnessed the ‘edict’ and may also have played a part in its drafting, he bridged two reigns, continuing in office until Easter 1101.⁴⁷⁵ Bishop Gerard, who had been present at the Conqueror’s deathbed, would be promoted to York when it fell vacant on the death of Archbishop Thomas.⁴⁷⁶ The appointments of Richard, brother of Gilbert fitzRichard of Tonbridge, and therefore a member of the Clare family, as abbot of Ely, and of Robert, illegitimate son of Hugh, earl of Chester, as abbot of Bury St Edmunds, presumably helped to buy the support of these important barons, who were not themselves present at the coronation to attest the ‘edict’.⁴⁷⁷ On his formal accession as king, and perhaps even just beforehand in the case of William Giffard, Henry thus availed himself of that royal control over ecclesiastical appointments which so outraged Eadmer, and which, in the cases of Ely and Bury St Edmunds, later roused Anselm’s ire.⁴⁷⁸ Although it did not give rise to the sort of anarchic jostling for position characteristic of lay aristocratic behaviour during an interregnum, it was equally rooted in the king’s power over tenure. The best-documented, specific instance of such interregnal jostling is the murder of William Maltravers in 1135. In or about 1114, Henry I had banished Robert (I) de Lacy from England and granted his English estates—known as the honour of Pontefract—to Hugh de Laval.⁴⁷⁹ When Hugh died shortly before 1129, Maltravers bought the marriage of his widow, together with a fifteen-year lease of all his land, from the king.⁴⁸⁰ In order to pay the enormous sum demanded, Maltravers must have exploited the honour to the hilt.⁴⁸¹ Richard of Hexham reports that Henry I’s death resulted in an explosion of the sort of discontents which we have seen causing disorder in this and previous interregna: All these evils were all the more extravagant and violent after his death, in proportion to the extent to which, during his lifetime, he had, with greater power and more severe justice, ⁴⁷³ ASC (E) s.a. 1100; Ann. Mon., ii. 40–1. ⁴⁷⁴ Above, p. 107. ⁴⁷⁵ RRAN ii. p. ix. ⁴⁷⁶ GND ii. 186. ⁴⁷⁷ JW iii. 317; LE 225; UAG 131–2. The point is made by Southern, Portrait, 291–2. Hugh, earl of Chester, like Robert de Bellême, was in Normandy at the time of Rufus’s death. Both of them hurried across the Channel to do homage to the new king: Orderic v. 298. ⁴⁷⁸ Eadmer, HN 141–2, for the proceedings at the Council of Westminster of 1102: a number of Rufus’s creations were deposed for simony, and Richard of Ely and Robert of Bury St Edmunds ‘pro sua quisque causa’; cf. Anselm, epp. 251–2, 266–7, 269, 271. ⁴⁷⁹ W. E. Wightman, The Lacy Family in England and Normandy, 1066–1194 (Oxford, 1966), 66. Note that Robert was apparently allowed to keep his Norman lands. The honour was briefly entrusted to William Foliot, before being given to Hugh: RRAN ii no. 1628. ⁴⁸⁰ PR 31 Henry I, 34; Wightman, Lacy Family, 68–70. ⁴⁸¹ Maltravers paid 1,000 marks, which, as Wightman (p.70) points out, was the same sum which Robert II de Lacy paid in 1177 to have the honour and fee in heredity as his father’s successor. Robert’s relief, unlike the sum paid by Maltravers, included the Norman lands: PR 24 Henry II, 72. Moreover, Maltravers was required to pay an additional £100.

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laid low, oppressed, despoiled, disinherited, and exiled many. So when the occasion which they had ardently desired arose, individuals hurried to avenge themselves while they could commit any wrong with impunity.⁴⁸²

He goes on to instance the murder of Maltravers. Maltravers was killed by ‘a certain knight by the name of Pain, his man’—one of those tenants of the honour who might have had good cause to resent the heavy demands that Maltravers must have made. Richard goes on to report that the murder had beneficial results: ‘The same honour which King Henry had stolen from his father, Robert de Lacy, was soon recovered by his son, Ilbert de Lacy.’ He does not actually say that Pain had been put up to it, but he implies as much. The stench of conspiracy becomes overpowering when Richard’s account is considered in conjunction with a notice of an early charter of King Stephen: ‘in which he proclaims all the men of Ilbert de Lacy, French and English, quit of any crimes (forisfactura) which they had committed after the death of King Henry up to the day on which the same Stephen was crowned, and specifically of the crime of the death of William Maltravers.’⁴⁸³ Perhaps Ilbert was one of those who, according to the Gesta Stephani, greeted the news of Stephen’s adventus with such jubilation, because ‘before his accession to the kingdom they had bound themselves in friendship to him or his brothers.’⁴⁸⁴ Doubtless they now looked forward to reaping their rewards, as Ilbert certainly did when restored to the honour which had once been his father’s. Unsurprisingly, he was a notable supporter of the new king during the early years of the reign.⁴⁸⁵ He may even have become a king’s justice.⁴⁸⁶ Clearly Stephen’s accession as king was not the straightforward remedy for disorders consequent on the death of Henry I which Pope Innocent II envisaged in his letter confirming Stephen’s consecration.⁴⁸⁷ The charter which lay behind the notice acquitting Ilbert’s new vassals of crimes committed during the interregnum almost inverted the purpose of cap. 14 of Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’. Rather than the new king ordering the retrospective restoration of anything taken during the immediately preceding interregnum, and sanctioning his command with a threat of ‘grave emendation’ should any of the seizures be retained henceforth, Stephen was giving Ilbert and his men an amnesty⁴⁸⁸ for crimes they had committed during the same precisely delimited ⁴⁸² Richard of Hexham, ‘De Gestis Regis Stephani’, CSHR iii. 139–40. ⁴⁸³ RRAN iii. no. 428 (?1135); see the notes to EYC iii. no. 1440. Another of those involved in the conspiracy was probably Robert de Campeaux, who was appealed for the murder early in the reign of Henry II: no. 1455 (1155 ⫻ 77). If, as suggested by the royal pardon, Pain had become a man of Ilbert after murdering his former lord, he certainly got off lightly: see the penalties for vassals who killed their lords in LHP 75. 1, 2. ⁴⁸⁴ GS, 8. ⁴⁸⁵ He witnessed several early charters: RRAN iii. nos. 271 (Easter 1136); 46 (Easter 1136); 621, 622 (both 1136 ⫻ 39). He was captured while fighting on Stephen’s side at the battle of Lincoln: Orderic vi. 544. On his career under Stephen, see Wightman, Lacy Family, 73–4. ⁴⁸⁶ RRAN iii. nos. 621, 622. ⁴⁸⁷ Richard of Hexham, ‘De Gestis Regis Stephani’, CSHR iii. 147. ⁴⁸⁸ PR 31 Henry I, 102 records the king granting ‘pax’ in respect of a killing in return for two marks of gold. N. D. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide before A.D. 1307 (Oxford, 1969), 15–18, argues that this entry is an instance of a new type of royal pardon recorded in the Leges

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period, specifically including the murder of Maltravers. The points of reference common to both documents are often used in Stephen’s writs and charters to confirm tenure in what had become the conventional way. The day on which King Henry had been alive and dead and the day of Stephen’s coronation were frequently paired as apparent equivalents.⁴⁸⁹ The date of Henry’s death was often cited on its own, with a royal command to reseise the beneficiary of anything which had been taken postea, involving an implicit claim to a retrospective power on the king’s part of the type formulated in cap. 14 of Henry’s coronation ‘edict’.⁴⁹⁰ But the notice of the charter in favour of Ilbert de Lacy and his vassals indicates that a new king could grant exemption from at least some of the penalties for crimes committed after the death of his antecessor⁴⁹¹ and before he had become king. Penalties for such crimes became due to him with his accession, because the brief period when ‘the fount of justice was lacking’⁴⁹² was thereby brought to a close. According to the Gesta Stephani, when Stephen first arrived in London in 1135 the city was in mourning for its ‘guardian’, King Henry; but immediately ‘it revelled in exultant joy, as if it had recovered him in Stephen’. Stephen would ‘take the king’s place, and put an end to the great dangers threatening the kingdom’.⁴⁹³ Only when he had done so would the penalties for crimes Edwardi Confessoris, caps. 18–18a (Gesetze, i. 643). But both the Pipe Roll and the Leges make it clear that although the king might have granted his ‘peace’, the offender was still liable to be appealed by the victim or (in the case of homicide) by the victim’s kinsmen and/or lord. It seems highly unlikely that Ilbert de Lacy and Pain feared such action on the part of any relatives of William Maltravers. ⁴⁸⁹ RRAN iii. nos. 10 (1139 ⫻ 54), a confirmation to the abbot and monks of Abingdon of all lands, men, and possessions ‘sicut tenuerunt die qua rex Henricus fuit vivus et mortuus et die qua primum coronatus fui’; 286 (1136 ⫻ 41, possibly Aug. 1138), which ordered the reeve and burghers of Exeter to reseise the monks of St Nicholas’s Priory, if the monks were able to show ‘quod ipsi fuissent saisiti de terra que fuit Algar(I) Paiard(I) die qua H(enricus) rex fuit vivus et mortuus et prima die coronationis mee, et postea sint inde dissaisiti injust et sine judicio’; 678 (1136 ⫻ 37, probably Jan. 1136), a confirmation to the church, abbot, and monks of Reading of everything they held ‘die qua [Henry I] fuit vivus et mortuus, et die qua ego curam regni et coronam suscepi’. ⁴⁹⁰ RRAN iii. nos. 187 (1136 ⫻ 39), a confirmation to the abbot and church of Cirencester of all their lands and possessions, ‘sicut unquam melius tenuit usque ad diem qua rex Henr(icus) fuit vivus et mortuus. Et si postea de terra vel re aliqua dissaitus [sic] est, prorsus resaisiatur, ita ne quicquam inde detineatur’; 255 (Feb. 1136 or Jan.–Feb. 1138), a general protection in favour of the monks of St Cuthbert, concerning them in everything they held on the day when Bishop William (of St Calais) ‘fuit vivus et mortuus et die qua rex Henricus fuit vivus et mortuus. Et si de ulla re post mortem illorum sunt dissaisiti, precipio quod sine dilatione sint resaisiti. Et si aliquis eos dissaisierit aut aliquam iniuriam eis amodo fecerit super bre(ve) meum et super bre(ve) regis Henrici qui hoc idem precepit, volo sciatis quod pacem meam super illos infregerit et mihi fracturam pacis mee emendabit . . .’ This was, as it says, heavily based on RRAN ii. no. 767 which was in turn based on RRAN i. no. 396, discussed above, p. 116. By analogy with Domesday usage, postea might also be used to refer to Stephen’s reign as if it had begun immediately after Henry I’s death: RRAN iii. nos. 163 (Dec.1142 ⫻ Apr. 1146); 472 (1140 or 1146 ⫻ 47), ordering that St Mary’s, Lincoln, should be seised ‘sicut melius vel plenius saisita fuit die qua rex Henricus fuit vivus et mortuus et meo tempore postea’. Stephen’s ‘time’ did not begin until his coronation, so this writ implicitly excluded from consideration any event which had happened during the interregnum; cf. no. 286, discussed above, n. 489, which does so explicitly. The interregnum is encompassed by postea or post in nos. 187, 428. ⁴⁹¹ Henry is numbered amongst Stephen’s antecessores in RRAN ii. nos. 34 (1140 ⫻ 52); 45 (26 Dec. 1135). ⁴⁹² GS 6. ⁴⁹³ GS 6.

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committed during the interregnum become enforceable. Thus had the newly crowned Henry I specifically exempted from paying the ‘emendation’ which they owed him those who obeyed his command to restore whatever they had seized in the aftermath of William Rufus’s death. Stephen commuted at least those elements in the punishment of Ilbert and his men for which he, as the new king, was responsible, but without ordering any recompense. His purpose, unlike Henry’s, was not to enforce a rapid restoration of the status quo on the day of his predecessor’s death; it was, in effect, to sanction a crime perpetrated in the interests of one of his supporters. It was said that at his accession Stephen ‘restored the disinherited to their own (exheredatos in propria reducere)’.⁴⁹⁴ It might be argued that this was precisely what he had done in the case of Ilbert. Pain was clearly not numbered among those ‘plunderers he had boldly dealt with right at the beginning of his reign’.⁴⁹⁵ Implicitly, Stephen recognized that Henry I had disinherited Robert de Lacy. It was for that very reason that the penalties for a crime committed during the interregnum which facilitated the restoration of Robert’s heir were waived. The Gesta Stephani reports that Stephen managed to bring everyone under his control ‘without any violence or any extortion at all, except some especial and very intimate friends of King Henry, who, of low birth, he had taken into service’. These men were afraid to comply with Stephen’s summonses to court, ‘lest they should be overwhelmed before the king by the cries of the poor and the complaints of widows whose lands they had appropriated and should, owing to the complaints of justice, lose utterly what they unjustly possessed’.⁴⁹⁶ Had he not already been murdered, William Maltravers would undoubtedly have fallen into this category. Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ and the charter in favour of Ilbert de Lacy and his men both laid great emphasis on the coronation making a new king. We have seen some traces of what was doubtless a frenzied and much more wide-ranging process of striking deals by that point in 1100 and 1135. Presumably the same had happened in 1087, although I have been unable to uncover any evidence of individual cases of it. But the brevity of the interregna meant that it would have been impossible within their compass to settle all conflicting claims to land. In any case, as all the lay examples described above indicate, the success of one claimant necessarily involved another losing. A new king might settle conflicting claims, but they could not easily be resolved. Although the rapid dissemination of the news or rumour of a king’s death would indicate an understandably acute sensitivity on the issue,⁴⁹⁷ it is possible that Rufus and almost certain that Henry and Stephen had been crowned before many landholders in England knew that the previous kings had died. William of Malmesbury emphasized how thin was the turnout of ⁴⁹⁴ GS 22. ⁴⁹⁵ GS 6. ⁴⁹⁶ GS 22–4. ⁴⁹⁷ See the case of Hugh Bigod in 1136—HH 706—discussed above, p. 189; news of Rufus’s illness in 1093 spread rapidly: Eadmer, HN 32–7, VA 65; ASC (E) s.a. 1093, JW iii. 64; in 1100 there were supernatural premonitions of Henry I’s death: VA 122–4, GR i. 572; just before Easter 1141, Stephen fell ill and was ‘proclaimed as dead in nearly the whole of England’: HNa 122.

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great men for Stephen’s coronation.⁴⁹⁸ In these circumstances, a great deal of unfinished business must have dominated the first few months of the new reign. We have seen that this is likely to have been so in the case of Richard de Redvers, in whose favour Henry used his powers of forfeiture by 1102 at the latest. Since the claims of the various contenders for the throne were at least as irresolvable and precarious as those asserted lower down the tenurial hierarchy, it was possible for those who did not find favour with the new king to contest his title. This gave rise to the rebellions of 1088, 1101, and the civil war which characterized most of Stephen’s reign. Interregnal conditions could thereby be prolonged into a new reign, while some landholders refused to acknowledge the reality of the coronation which had taken place and continued to ‘look about themselves every moment for a new king’.⁴⁹⁹ The assumption underlying Henry’s coronation ‘edict’—that the barons had become Henry’s at the point at which he became king⁵⁰⁰—was just that, an assumption. At the beginning of Stephen’s reign at least one major tenant-in-chief declined formally to endorse such an assumption; many others subsequently reneged on their endorsement of it. When news of Stephen’s coronation spread through England, ‘almost all the chief men of the kingdom received him joyfully and respectfully, and having been given many gifts by him and likewise enlargement of their lands, they devoted themselves wholly to his service by a voluntary oath, after doing homage’.⁵⁰¹ Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing early in Stephen’s reign, described a similar process at the conclusion of King Arthur’s crown-wearing at Caerleon.⁵⁰² In the case of Miles of Gloucester, the occasion appears to have been Henry I’s funeral at Reading Abbey early in January 1136.⁵⁰³ It is possible to infer that Geoffrey de Mandeville had done homage by the time of Stephen’s Easter court at Oxford in 1136, when he witnessed several charters.⁵⁰⁴ And it seems likely that he recovered from Stephen, at an early point in the reign, some of the estates of which Henry I had deprived his father.⁵⁰⁵ But the few who, by implication, had not submitted to the new king in this way were not confined to those shady, lowborn types who, according to the Gesta Stephani, had done well out of Henry I, and were afraid to comply with Stephen’s summonses to court lest they should get their just deserts.⁵⁰⁶ The notable example is Baldwin de Redvers—‘a magnificent man in terms of dignity and birth’⁵⁰⁷—the eldest son of that Richard de Redvers to whom Henry I ⁴⁹⁸ HNa 28. ⁴⁹⁹ GR i. 574, quoted above, p. 188. ⁵⁰⁰ Above, p. 118. ⁵⁰¹ GS 12; cf. 14 (Robert of Gloucester), 24 (all the magnates of the kingdom), 28 (Robert of Bampton). ⁵⁰² Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britannie, ed. N. Wright (Cambridge, 1985), cap. 157. I owe the point to King’s introduction to HNa, p. xlvi, n. 171. ⁵⁰³ RRAN iii. nos. 386, 387, discussed by Round, G. de M., 10–14; E. King, ‘Dispute Settlement in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS xiv (1992), 115–30, at 120. I cannot understand the distinction which Professor King attempts to draw between Miles’s lands and his tenaturae. ⁵⁰⁴ RRAN iii. nos. 46, 944, 945, 947, 948. ⁵⁰⁵ The Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, ed. D. Greenway and L. Watkiss, OMT (Oxford, 1999), p. xv. ⁵⁰⁶ GS 22–4. ⁵⁰⁷ GS 30.

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had given such extensive, forfeited estates in the early years of his reign.⁵⁰⁸ At some point after Richard’s death in 1107, Baldwin was allowed to succeed to his father’s estates; in addition, he received several manors which had been part of the honour of Mortain, possibly on his marriage, and probably while that honour was in King Henry’s hands between 1106 and 1113.⁵⁰⁹ In the spring of 1136 he seized the castle of Exeter. Whereas Hugh Bigod seized Norwich castle at the end of April because he incorrectly believed that the king had died, and reluctantly backed down only when Stephen appeared in person at the gates,⁵¹⁰ Baldwin had apparently never recognized that Stephen was king. Only Richard of Hexham among the chroniclers who describe the episode gives a motive: ‘Because Baldwin de Redvers could not have a certain honour, which he had demanded from the king, he fortified his city of Exeter against the king.’⁵¹¹ As the much fuller account in the Gesta Stephani indicates, the suggestion that the city (or castle) of Exeter was in any sense Baldwin’s was hotly contested by the king.⁵¹² But the ‘certain honour’ which Stephen had refused him looks likely to have been the shrievalty of Devon. From the time of Baldwin’s father’s arrival in the county on Henry I’s coat-tails, it seems to have been an object of rivalry between the Redvers family, being held by several of their men, and the descendants of Baldwin de Meulles, whom the Conqueror had made sheriff and to whom he had entrusted Exeter castle.⁵¹³ Richard fitzBaldwin, second son of Baldwin de Meulles, was sheriff early in Stephen’s reign,⁵¹⁴ either because Henry I had already replaced the Redvers candidate near the end of his reign, or because Stephen had installed Richard at the very start of his reign. If the ‘certain honour’ which Baldwin de Redvers felt he had been denied was indeed the shrievalty, then his seizure of the castle made practical sense: the castle was the sheriff ’s seat. It also made symbolic sense, for the castle had been built at the conclusion of another celebrated attempt to refuse to acknowledge a new king, in 1068, mounted from the same city, and had then been given into the charge of Richard fitzBaldwin’s father.⁵¹⁵ Orderic Vitalis reports that one of the reasons why William Rufus was so implacable in his hostility to the rebels besieged in Rochester in 1088 was that ‘I restored all their estates to them, and did not stir them up against me by any

⁵⁰⁸ Above, p. 191. ⁵⁰⁹ Charters of the Redvers Family pp. 24–5, 175. Contrary to the assertion of R. Bearman, ‘Baldwin de Redvers: Some Aspects of a Baronial Career in the Reign of King Stephen’, ANS xviii (1995), 19–46, at 20, Baldwin would not have ‘succeeded as a minor’. Despite the undertaking given in the coronation ‘edict’ (on which see Milsom, ‘Prerogative Wardship’, 237), as the minor heir of a tenant-in-chief he would have been taken into wardship along with his father’s lands—what the Dialogus, 94 terms ‘escheat with an heir’—and allowed to succeed only when he had reached his majority and the king had accepted his homage. ⁵¹⁰ Above, p. 189. ⁵¹¹ ‘De Gestis Regis Stephani’, CSHR iii. 146–7. ⁵¹² GS 32. ⁵¹³ Reg. nos. 14, Version I (1070 ⫻ 85), 144 (1085), 193 (Feb. 1081), 194 (1081, probably Feb.); Orderic ii. 214; Bearman, ‘Baldwin de Redvers’, 22–4. ⁵¹⁴ RRAN iii. no. 500 (1135 ⫻ 36); cf. ii. no. 1493 (c.26 Aug. 1127). ⁵¹⁵ Orderic ii. 214.

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misdeed. Yet they have become my bitterest enemies.’⁵¹⁶ The implication is that if he had not treated them thus at the beginning of his reign, they would have had just cause to rebel. Baldwin de Redvers had not been treated thus by Stephen. But unlike the rebels of 1088 or the many tenants-in-chief who had attended Stephen’s court, witnessed his charters,⁵¹⁷ and, according to the Gesta Stephani, done homage to him,⁵¹⁸ Baldwin appears to have refused to do homage to the new king. This is not stated explicitly, but is implicit in the arguments reportedly used to persuade Stephen to be lenient to Baldwin’s besieged garrison in Exeter castle: the garrison ‘had not sworn to the royal majesty, and had only taken up arms in fidelitas to their lord; indeed, would only demonstrate that they were dealing directly with the king when they at last transferred what was his own right into his hands’.⁵¹⁹ Whether this applied to those men of Baldwin who also held directly of the king, like Jordan de Lestre and Hugh Peverel, it is impossible to say.⁵²⁰ If Baldwin’s men, or many of them, had not sworn allegiance to the king’s majesty— and were on the contrary ‘bound by faith and an oath never to yield to the king at all’⁵²¹—then they must have declined to do so at Baldwin’s behest. Although it is difficult to believe that this would have been the case with those of Baldwin’s men who also held in chief,⁵²² this tallies with some other evidence that vassals might do liege homage to the king only with the consent of their immediate lords.⁵²³ ⁵¹⁶ Ibid. iv. 130. At iv. 128 the rebels are said to have offered to make peace with the king provided that ‘they should receive from him the lands, estates, and everything they had previously held, and faithfully serve him as their rightful lord in the future’. In other words, they were willing to end the revolt on condition that Rufus reaffirmed the confirmation of their tenure which he had already given before it began. ⁵¹⁷ Round, G. de M., 19; R. H. C. Davis, King Stephen, 1135–1154, 3rd edn. (London, 1990), 20. ⁵¹⁸ GS 12, quoted above, p. 196. ⁵¹⁹ GS 42. HH 708 saw Stephen’s leniency on this occasion as ultimately catastrophic. For the possible identities of some of these men, see Bearman, ‘Baldwin de Redvers’, 25–34. ⁵²⁰ Bearman, ‘Baldwin de Redvers’, 28. ⁵²¹ GS 34; cf. 36, for Alfred, son of Judhael of Totnes. Bearman, ‘Baldwin de Redvers’, 24, suggests that Alfred had also been disappointed by the new king. ⁵²² Bearman, ‘Baldwin de Redvers’, 27–8, for the obligations of several of Baldwin’s men to the king. ⁵²³ It is difficult to see how such a principle would be compatible with the ceremony at Salisbury on 1 August 1086, and the best-documented instance is admittedly continental. Orderic vi. 352 describes the judgements passed in 1124 on the rebels who had supported Amaury de Montfort and Waleran de Meulan. Henry I had Geoffrey de Tourville and Odard du Pin blinded ‘for the crime of perjury’. Charles, count of Flanders, remonstrated with the king: he said that the mutilation of knights captured fighting in the service of their lords was ‘unprecedented in our customs’. The king responded that, on the contrary, what he had done was just, because Geoffrey and Odard ‘with their lords’ consent became my liege men (legitimi homines), and they broke faith with me when they deliberately committed perjury; therefore they deserve punishment by death or mutilation’. They ought to have sacrificed everything they had to preserve the fidelitas they had sworn to the king, rather than supporting any man—even their lords—who was doing something against ius, and to have broken their covenant with their liege lord by foully betraying their faith. Whether or not Geoffrey and Odard had done liege homage to the king in order to become his liege men, their bond with him was deemed to take precedence over that with their immediate lords. But they had become the king’s liege men only by the concession of those lords. See Chibnall, ‘Feudal Society’, 42. The document of 1101 printed by Stevenson, ‘Inedited Charter’ (⫽ RRAN ii. no. 531), is concerned with securing Henry I

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It follows that Baldwin cannot himself have manifested allegiance in the conventional, formal manner which Henry of Blois describes in his account of his stewardship of the estates of Glastonbury Abbey: ‘When my uncle King Henry had gone the way of all flesh, and my brother Stephen had succeeded to the kingdom . . . Robert [fitzWalter, the Fleming] did homage according to custom, adding an oath of fidelitas, together with the other nobles of the country.’⁵²⁴ The case of Robert fitzWalter the Fleming, otherwise known as Robert of Bampton, also a Devon baron, demonstrates that even when a tenant-in-chief had formally acknowledged the existence of the new king in this way, it did not necessarily do him any good. The Gesta Stephani denounces him as a sot and a glutton. Furthermore, on the death of Henry I he had set about plundering the lands of his neighbours; and after doing homage to Stephen, when he should have refrained from creating mayhem forthwith, his behaviour, on the contrary, grew even worse. He was guilty of perjury and infidelity, and ‘knew that he had offended the royal majesty’⁵²⁵—that same royal majesty to which Baldwin de Redvers’ men, and by implication Baldwin himself, had not sworn. In fact, Robert fitzWalter’s were not the mindless acts of a debauched thug. Among his holdings was Uffculme, which his father, Walter de Douai, appears to have acquired when he married a widow named Eadgyth, who had held it T.R.E.⁵²⁶ She had been leased it by Glastonbury Abbey in the late 1040s or early 1050s;⁵²⁷ but this is not mentioned in Domesday Book, where it appears to be held in chief.⁵²⁸ On her death, Walter had refused to allow it to revert to the abbey in accordance with the terms of the lease. He remarried, and sired Robert. When Walter was sick and thought he was dying, he repented of his treatment of the church of Glastonbury, and seemed intent on restoring Uffculme at last. But a dramatic recovery when he had already been tonsured meant that he reneged on his undertaking, causing so much indignation in the abbey that a formal narrative of the abbey’s claim was drawn up.⁵²⁹ Thus, when Henry of Blois became abbot of Glastonbury in 1126, Uffculme was one of those ancient possessions of the church which he learnt had been lost. But it had been lost so long ago that he hesitated to make a claim, judging it better to bide his time.⁵³⁰ His time came with his brother’s accession as king, an oath to protect ‘my land of England’ against all men, and especially against Curthose. The king commands that his dignitaries in Lincolnshire should receive this securitas from all his demesne tenants, ‘and my barons should make you have the same security from all their men, just as they have conceded to me’. Orderic ii. 208 states that ‘the majesty of a lord should always be dear to his subject faithful men’. This was precisely what Baldwin and his men were not, where King Stephen was concerned. ⁵²⁴ ‘Scriptura Henrici episcopi Wintoniensis et abbatis Glastoniensis’, EEA viii. 208. ⁵²⁵ GS 28. ⁵²⁶ DB i. 111d; Exon. fo. 346b. ⁵²⁷ The Great Chartulary of Glastonbury, ed. A. Watkin, 3 vols., Somerset Record Soc., lix, lxiii–lxiv (1944, 1948, 1949–50), i. no. 172. ⁵²⁸ For detailed discussion, see H. P. R. Finberg, ‘Uffculme’, repr. in id., Lucerna: Studies on Some Problems in the Early History of England (London, 1964), 204–21. ⁵²⁹ Chartulary of Glastonbury, i. no. 172; Finberg, ‘Uffculme’, 210–11; Stacy, ‘Henry of Blois’, 15. ⁵³⁰ ‘Scriptura’, EEA viii. 208; Finberg, ‘Uffculme’, 213; Stacy, ‘Henry of Blois’, 15.

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by which stage he was also, in plurality, bishop of Winchester. At the Easter Council of 1136 in Oxford he obtained a charter from Stephen restoring Uffculme to ‘God and the church of St Mary of Glastonbury’.⁵³¹ It blamed William the Conqueror for taking the manor, presumably because he had bestowed Eadgyth together with her land on Walter, and as a consequence he and his son after him had been deemed to hold it in chief.⁵³² Robert fitzWalter’s homage to the new king appeared not to have given him any warranty where Uffculme was concerned. No wonder he was angry. Yet initially he attempted to plead his case in the king’s court.⁵³³ It was an arguable one: not only could he have invoked the Conqueror’s presumed grant to his father; he could also have cited that clause in Stephen’s Oxford charter of liberties, issued at the same time as the charter restoring Uffculme to Glastonbury Abbey, in which the king conceded ‘that all possessions and tenures of churches, which they had on that day when King William my grandfather was alive and dead, shall be free and quit to them, without any claims from litigants’.⁵³⁴ But the following clause is drafted with a studied vagueness which confirms the impression of ongoing negotiation and redrafting given by one of the extant originals, itself a late draft by an identifiable chancery scribe (scriptor xiii).⁵³⁵ The clause reserved to Stephen’s discretion decisions about ecclesiastical possessions lost prior to the Conqueror’s death: ‘If a church shall henceforth seek to claim possessions held before the death of the same king, which it now lacks, I reserve to my own indulgence and disposition their restoration, or discussion of the matter.’ If Robert fitzWalter knew about this clause, he would have thought it ominous.⁵³⁶ The king was almost certain to use his carefully hedged discretion in favour of his powerful brother, whether over the comparatively trivial matter of Uffculme, or the more important claims of the church of Winchester.⁵³⁷ And that was what he did, regardless of Robert’s homage. With churches as with laymen, restoration of the disinherited to their own almost always entailed the dispossession of someone else. Only when due process failed Robert fitzWalter did he turn to rebellion, ‘utterly neglecting all due fidelitas and legalitas’, in the words of his ultimately triumphant opponent.⁵³⁸ The king thought the siege of Robert’s castle at Bampton sufficiently important to conduct it himself.⁵³⁹ Robert then forfeited and is said to have joined the king’s enemies.⁵⁴⁰ ⁵³¹ RRAN iii. no. 341. According to Henry of Blois, ‘Scriptura’, EEA viii. 208, he asserted his claim to Uffculme only after Robert had rebelled and gone into exile. ⁵³² Finberg, ‘Uffculme’, 210. ⁵³³ GS 28; Finberg, ‘Uffculme’, 215. Despite the hostility of the Gesta Stephani to Robert, it shows that he did comply with a summons to the king’s court. Henry of Blois, ‘Scriptura’, EEA viii. 208, does not mention these proceedings. ⁵³⁴ RRAN iii. no. 271. ⁵³⁵ Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Rawlinson Q. a.1, fo. 26, the Hereford copy, analysed by Bishop, Scriptores Regis, p. 34, pl. V (d); cf. RRAN iv. pl. V. ⁵³⁶ Finberg, ‘Uffculme’, 213. ⁵³⁷ RRAN iii. nos. 945–9 (all 1136). Note that much of the Uffculme charter is identical with no. 948, restoring the manor of Wargrave to Winchester. ⁵³⁸ ‘Scriptura’, 208. ⁵³⁹ GS 30. ⁵⁴⁰ RRAN iii. no. 340 (summer 1136); GS 30.

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It has been suggested that he may have been one of those who took an oath to resist the king with his much more powerful near neighbour, Baldwin de Redvers.⁵⁴¹ Whether he did so or not, Stephen’s support for their respective rivals cost him dear. Baldwin’s role as the vanguard of the empress’s invasion in 1139 is well known.⁵⁴² Less so is the enduring hostility to Stephen of Robert’s daughter, son-in-law, and other connections.⁵⁴³ Baldwin seems to have been unique in refusing to do homage to Stephen, thereby ensuring that for him and his men there was no king. But the case of Robert fitzWalter shows that formal acknowledgement of the new king did not necessarily make any individual tenant-in-chief secure. It might, however, make him more secure than during an interregnum: Miles de Beauchamp, who ‘by the king’s permission’ had custody of Bedford castle, was offered compensation of ‘honours and many gifts’ for not resisting its transfer to Hugh le Poer, and the order to render Hugh the service he owed to the king himself.⁵⁴⁴ But Miles and his brothers were clearly not impressed by what they were offered. According to Orderic, ‘they had not intended to deny the subjection or service due to their lord’, but they nevertheless resisted.⁵⁴⁵ And there is no indication that Robert fitzWalter was offered anything by the king in compensation for Uffculme, which provided him with roughly one-third of his demesne income.⁵⁴⁶ Whereas Baldwin de Redvers chose artificially to prolong the interregnum in his own case and that of his men, there is little sign that the willingness of Robert fitzWalter formally to recognize that it had ended, by doing homage to Stephen, meant that he could drop his guard. A fortiori, the same applied to Miles de Beauchamp. Royal lordship was also anomalous in terms of the king’s scope to disregard warranty he had already given, for there was no forum to which an appeal against his arbitrary exercise of his powers could be taken.

SECURING SUCCESSION: 1100–1135 Precisely because the interregnum was a time of such insecurity, it presented a fleeting opportunity to attempt to redress in particular cases that imbalance between royal lords and tenants-in-chief which was one consequence of the way in which the Conquest had been justified. One of the arguments which Odo of Bayeux had used in favour of replacing William Rufus with Robert Curthose in 1088 was that Rufus was too much of a chip off the old block. According to William of Malmesbury, the bishop warned the barons: ‘It will not be long before ⁵⁴¹ Finberg, ‘Uffculme’, 216. He does not attest any of Baldwin’s charters. ⁵⁴² GS 84. ⁵⁴³ Stacy, ‘Henry of Blois’, 15–16. For the ultimate recovery of Uffculme by his daughter’s second husband, see Finberg, ‘Uffculme’, 220. ⁵⁴⁴ GS 46–50. ⁵⁴⁵ Orderic vi. 510. In this account, the conflict was complicated by the fact that the king had given the daughter of Simon de Beauchamp, their uncle, to Hugh le Poer in marriage ‘with her father’s honour’, and they therefore ‘feared to lose their whole inheritance’. ⁵⁴⁶ Stacy, ‘Henry of Blois’, 15.

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we lose the honours which we have earned by so much effort; we shall have gained nothing by the father’s death if those whom the father made captive are slain by the son.’⁵⁴⁷ The proclaimed virtues of Robert Curthose seem to have amounted to no more than a mildness of disposition which meant that he would not ride roughshod over baronial interests. Evidently some of William the Conqueror’s barons saw the old king’s demise as an opportunity to secure a more pliant successor, as well as to right individual grievances in the interval prior to the succession. In his Historia Novella, William of Malmesbury said that in 1135 those who had hated King Henry’s peace regarded Stephen in much the same light as Odo presented Curthose: ‘All these had gladly assented to a prince whom with little trouble they could influence to their own advantage, urging their own fortunes at the expense of those of the people of the country.’⁵⁴⁸ But perceived ineffectualness was hardly an effective guarantee that a potential successor would act in a congenial manner once he had succeeded as king. Hence, prior to their accessions or when their positions were threatened, Rufus and Henry had felt it necessary to pander to such resentments, on the part of both lay and clerical barons, by making sweeping, detailed undertakings about how they would exercise royal lordship.⁵⁴⁹ Stephen did likewise.⁵⁵⁰ Eadmer gave a characteristically astute assessment of the tensions between a future king and the barons, when he described how the invasion scare of 1101 resurrected the uncertainties of an interregnum: ‘So the king held the nobles (principes) in suspicion, and the nobles the king: he lest they should prove fickle to him, bursting their faith asunder; and they fearing him, lest once peace had been established on all sides, he should rage against them with savage laws.’⁵⁵¹ As soon as the new king was secure from the threat posed by his brother, it was feared—quite rightly—that the renewal he had felt compelled to make of the concessions initially made ‘when I first received the crown’⁵⁵² would not be worth the parchment it was ⁵⁴⁷ GR i. 544. ⁵⁴⁸ HNa 32. ⁵⁴⁹ Rufus: Eadmer, HN 25 (prior to his coronation), 31–2 (during his illness in 1093), discussed above, p. 105; ASC (E) s.a. 1087 (recte 1088) and GR i. 546 (in the face of Curthose’s invasion in 1088). Henry: ASC (E) s.a. 1100, Eadmer, HN 119–20, JW iii. 94, HH, p. 448, GR i. 714 (his coronation ‘edict’); Eadmer, HN 126, Stevenson, ‘Inedited Charter’, 506 (in the face of Curthose’s invasion in 1101). ⁵⁵⁰ GS 6 (to the commune of London in 1135); HNa 28, 92 (undertakings made prior to his coronation to restore and maintain the freedom of the church); RRAN iii. no. 270 (probably issued on the day of his coronation); no. 271 (the Oxford charter of liberties of April 1136, which fulfils the undertakings given prior to the coronation). HH 704 presents a different document, which he claims was issued at Oxford in January 1136; for the difficulties with this evidence, see n. 19. The fact that RRAN iii. no. 270 makes no reference to Stephen’s promises with respect to the church is strange. M. M. Chibnall, Anglo-Norman England: 1066–1166 (Oxford, 1986), 85, proposes that it was issued during Stephen’s initial interregnal visit to London, before he rushed off to take control of Winchester, not at the time of his coronation on his return to Westminster. If so, it would be unprecedented in a post-Conquest charter in styling him king prior to his coronation. It would, however, tally with the view of the GS 6 that he was ‘constituted’ king by the commune and ‘obtained the title of king’ during his first visit to London. ⁵⁵¹ HN 126. ⁵⁵² Stevenson, ‘Inedited Charter’, 506.

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written on. During the same crisis Robert de Meulan, whose key role in Henry’s seizure of power we have already discussed, advised the king to give away London or York if necessary. He reasoned that ‘it was better to give away a small part of the kingdom than to concede victory and life itself to a host of enemies’. He added that when the affair had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion, steps might be taken to recover what had been lost.⁵⁵³ Orderic presents him as talking about land rather than the future exercise of royal lordship. But concessions were made on both counts for the same reason: the acute insecurity of claimants to the throne, even (as in this case) after they had made good their claims. This insecurity did not manifest itself in parallel pledges of good lordship in Normandy, because they had never been part of Norman tradition. Indeed, this traditionally English phenomenon was initially ignored by Normans in England.⁵⁵⁴ The vulnerable nature of Rufus’s position in 1087 and subsequently was what prompted him to re-emphasize it.⁵⁵⁵ Its absence from Normandy does not, therefore, mean that interregna in the duchy were comparatively wellordered transfers of power. As Orderic’s accounts reveal, after the Conquest interregna in the duchy were regarded as opportunities to be exploited as well as disasters to be feared, much as they were in England.⁵⁵⁶ But this appears to have been a post-Conquest phenomenon in Normandy,⁵⁵⁷ a function of the incongruity of the traditional Norman designatory mechanism in a post-Conquest context, and the irreconcilable conflicts within the ducal kin which that incongruity unleashed.⁵⁵⁸ Even though Normandy lacked the strictly dependent system of tenure which characterized post-Conquest England, that incongruity, and the division between England and Normandy which it facilitated in 1087, 1100, and 1144, rendered the duchy vulnerable to the sort of interregnal chaos which erupted in England. Hence, for instance, the disorder there in 1100 when, strictly speaking, there was no interregnum, because the duke was alive, if absent. In this respect, William of Malmesbury’s striking prodigy of female Siamese twins, symbolizing the relationship between England and Normandy, was inapposite.⁵⁵⁹ According to William, one of them, symbolizing Normandy, died, and her putrefying corpse was dragged around by the other, symbolizing England, until she also succumbed. In the case of interregnal disorder, however, the infection was transmitted in the other direction, and was a consequence of the king’s anomalous position in conquered England. It was the way in which the Conqueror’s claim to England had been justified which entailed that the king’s position should be anomalous. Even when Rufus ⁵⁵³ Orderic v. 316. ⁵⁵⁴ English accounts of the Conqueror’s coronation stress the undertakings of good lordship which Archbishop Ealdred extracted from him: ASC (D) s.a. 1066; JW ii. 606. But Norman descriptions—most notably William of Poitiers—ignore this aspect and emphasize the acclamation: GG 150. ⁵⁵⁵ Above, n. 549. ⁵⁵⁶ Orderic iv. 112–14; v. 300; vi. 450–2. See above, pp. 187–90. ⁵⁵⁷ Above, p. 187. ⁵⁵⁸ Above, pp. 176–8. ⁵⁵⁹ GR i. 384–6.

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had succeeded to the kingdom on his father’s nomination, and the acquisition which the Conqueror had always claimed to hold hereditario iure thereby became, in conventional terms, an inheritance, there is no sign that royal successions would henceforth be ordered any better. The agreement between Rufus and Curthose of 1091 apparently provided that if either of them died without legitimate issue, then the survivor should be heir.⁵⁶⁰ But in 1100 it turned out in practice to be a dead letter, even failing any other nomination by the deceased king. There is no indication that it was on the basis of this document that William of Breteuil made his principled stand against Curthose’s younger brother in Winchester. The argument on that occasion allegedly centred on the homage which had been done to Curthose by Henry and others, and (possibly) on the fact that he was the Conqueror’s eldest son.⁵⁶¹ In the absence of any lord to whom the kingdom could escheat, and who might therefore seise an heir with it, a great deal of stress was necessarily laid on the alleged deathbed designations of Rufus by his father and of Stephen by Henry I. It seems that the alleged choice of the predecessor remained as good a claim as there could be in the case of succession to the kingdom. England continued to be treated as if it were an acquisition. Indeed, a king’s wishes were so paramount that Henry’s alleged decision, in his dying agony, to repent of his designation of his daughter Matilda, and to nominate his nephew Stephen in her stead, constituted Stephen’s sole claim to the throne.⁵⁶² It was no wonder that succession remained least secure right at the top of Anglo-Norman society, disorder within the ducal family engendering and exacerbating disorder lower down. The failure of two successive kings to produce surviving legitimate sons was, of course, a further destabilizing factor; but the familial disorder had already been evident on the death of the Conqueror. The problem was structural, not accidental. As a consequence, the interregnum became a crucible for all those tensions which resulted from the king’s need to exploit the extraordinary powers over tenure which he derived from the Conquest. This is what unites the sophisticated drafting of Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’,⁵⁶³ the seemingly crazed slaughter of animals in the royal forest recorded in the Gesta Stephani,⁵⁶⁴ and the retrospectively countenanced skulduggery from which Ilbert de Lacy benefited.⁵⁶⁵ ⁵⁶⁰ ASC (E) s.a. 1091; JW iii. 58; see above, n. 397. ⁵⁶¹ Orderic v. 290, discussed above, p. 181. ⁵⁶² GS 12. When the archbishop of Canterbury was hesitating about whether to anoint and crown Stephen, Hugh Bigod took an oath to the effect that he had been present at Henry’s death, and that the king had ‘conceded’ the kingdom to his nephew: LE 285; GC i. 94; Ralph Diceto, ‘Abbreviationes Chronicorum’, Opera Historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., RS (London, 1876), i. 248. When the dispute between Stephen and Matilda was heard at the Lateran Council in 1139, Stephen’s advocate claimed that Hugh and two other knights had taken an oath to this effect. Matilda’s counsel, Ulger d’Angers, responded that Hugh had not been present at the deathbed, and that his claims were proved false by those who had been: John of Salisbury, HP 84–5. HH 728–30 subscribed to this view, and may well have been present at the council: pp. liv–lv. Orderic vi. 448–50, does not include Hugh in a list of those present at the deathbed. ⁵⁶³ Above, pp. 108–20. ⁵⁶⁴ GS 2–4. ⁵⁶⁵ Above, pp. 192–5.

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No one could have been unaware of the problem. The Conqueror’s strategy for securing Rufus’s consecration had depended entirely on Lanfranc’s cooperation. William of Malmesbury emphasized the efficacy of the father’s deathbed nomination;⁵⁶⁶ but the author of the Acta Lanfranci,⁵⁶⁷ Eadmer,⁵⁶⁸ and Orderic⁵⁶⁹ all recognized that this novel form of arranging the succession in England would have been ineffective without the archbishop of Canterbury’s cooperation. Archiepiscopal compliance was what made Rufus king, but only after the archbishop had, according to Eadmer, procrastinated and thereby extracted from Rufus undertakings about how he would rule if he were to be made king.⁵⁷⁰ He is certain to have known that Ealdred, archbishop of York had extracted undertakings from Rufus’s father in 1066, probably as a preliminary to the coronation ceremony itself.⁵⁷¹ Henry I clearly recognized the uncertainty of the situation following a king’s death. It was, after all, what had allowed him to grab the throne for himself. When it came to making arrangements for his only legitimate son, William Adelin, to succeed him, he seems to have realized that one of the reasons for the insecurity of Rufus in 1087 and himself in 1100 was that no mechanism had existed for binding tenants-in-chief or anyone else in England to a chosen successor. Indeed, if the argument presented above be accepted,⁵⁷² the Conqueror had consciously avoided creating one, and Rufus had done nothing to remedy the defect. The challenge represented to both his surviving younger brothers by Robert Curthose showed the residual force of such a bond even when England was, insofar as it was possible to do so, excluded from its remit. Once he had become king, Henry had wasted no time in creating such a bond between himself and the tenants-in-chief, actualizing the assumption underlying the coronation ‘edict’ that the barons were his by virtue of his being king. He ‘summoned a council to London, at which the archbishop [of York], bishops, princes, nobles, and others did homage and swore fidelitas to the king, and confirmed him in his realm’.⁵⁷³ And further measures had been necessary against the brother to whom many had done homage long before Henry’s own designs on the throne had even been a glint in his eye. In June or July 1101 oaths of ‘security’ were exacted ‘against all men, and specifically against Count Robert of Normandy, my brother’.⁵⁷⁴ According to Eadmer, the king brought wavering magnates to Anselm for peptalks on the fides which they had pledged him. On a grander scale, the archbishop was to do what Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, had done for William Rufus in 1088.⁵⁷⁵ The effect of such sermons on Anselm’s lay audience is worth contemplating. Later, the archbishop addressed the assembled magnates and the army raised to deal with the invasion, and impressed upon them ‘how accursed in the ⁵⁶⁶ GR i. 546, discussed above, p. 176. ⁵⁶⁷ ASC i. 290. ⁵⁶⁸ HN 25. ⁵⁶⁹ Orderic iv. 110. ⁵⁷⁰ Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, CE 151, argues that this account is coloured by Eadmer’s view of Rufus’s behaviour as king. ⁵⁷¹ ASC (D) s.a. 1066. ⁵⁷² Above, pp. 181–3. ⁵⁷³ HC 18; cf. Orderic v. 298. ⁵⁷⁴ Stevenson, ‘Inedited Charter’, 506. ⁵⁷⁵ JW iii. 54.

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sight of God and every good man would be anyone who in any way betrayed the faith which he owed to his prince’.⁵⁷⁶ King Henry was, it seems, acutely aware of the power of fides in securing a succession in England ex post facto. He would have been alert to its potential as a means of pre-arranging the succession after his own death. In the case of his son, he turned to the Norman tradition which William of Poitiers had retrospectively imposed on Anglo-Saxon England. The precise nature of his own status in Normandy is a little hazy, given the manner in which he had taken control of the duchy;⁵⁷⁷ but he proceeded with a traditional ducal designation ceremony for William in Rouen at or soon after Christmas 1114—a charter is dated ‘on the day when the barons of Normandy became the men of the king’s son’.⁵⁷⁸ The innovation happened just over a year later, on 19 March 1116 at Salisbury. According to Eadmer, the king was about to cross to Normandy. Not knowing what might happen to him, he decided to ‘substitute William for himself as heir of the kingdom’. Accordingly, ‘by his nod all the nobles became the men of William, confirmed by faith and oath’.⁵⁷⁹ We have already seen what Eadmer meant by ‘the king’s nod’;⁵⁸⁰ here it authorized the importation into England of the Norman ducal designation ceremony. William of Malmesbury reports that ‘all the free men of England and Normandy, whatsoever their order and dignity and whosoever vassals (fideles) they were, had been forced to pledge themselves by hand and oath.’⁵⁸¹ Although neither Eadmer, nor John of Worcester who partly copied him,⁵⁸² makes William’s point about subtenants also being bound, the fact that the ceremony was staged in Salisbury was evocative, presumably deliberately so. All the sources make it clear that homage was done to William Adelin in England,⁵⁸³ as it had been in Normandy.⁵⁸⁴ As in Normandy, there is no indication that this homage made them tenurially dependent on the king’s son. Thus this imported Norman ceremony severed the bond between homage and tenure which had, in the aftermath of the Conquest, become such a distinctive feature in England. Only laymen did homage to William Adelin, for Eadmer proceeds to relate that: ‘Ralph, archbishop of Canterbury and the other bishops and abbots of the kingdom of the English professed themselves with faith and oath to transfer to him, without any dispute or hindrance, both the kingdom and its crown, if they were still living at the time of his father’s death. When he was king they would do homages to him in good faith.’⁵⁸⁵ Clerics had been barred from doing homage to laymen by a decree of the Council of Clermont, reiterated in Normandy at the Council of Rouen in 1096,⁵⁸⁶ and at the Lenten synod in Rome in 1099.⁵⁸⁷ But ⁵⁷⁶ HN 127. ⁵⁷⁷ Discussed below, pp. 240–1. ⁵⁷⁸ RRAN ii. no. 1074; cf. ASC (E) s.a. 1115. Hollister, Henry I, 238, n. 20 argues that the Chronicle does not justify dating the ceremony to Christmas Day. ⁵⁷⁹ HN 237. ⁵⁸⁰ Above, p. 46. ⁵⁸¹ GR i. 758. ⁵⁸² JW iii. 138. ⁵⁸³ See also Orderic vi. 302. ⁵⁸⁴ ASC (E) s.a. 1115 uses the English neologism man rædene of the Norman ceremony. ⁵⁸⁵ HN 237. ⁵⁸⁶ Orderic v. 22. ⁵⁸⁷ Eadmer, HN 112–14.

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the deal eventually struck between Henry I and Pope Paschal II in 1106, and formally promulgated at the Council of Westminster in 1107, allowed clerics-elect who thereafter did homage to the king to be consecrated, provided that they did not receive investiture from him.⁵⁸⁸ The king thereby became the exception to the rule that clerics could not do homage to laymen. Eadmer’s statement that in 1116 the prelates undertook to do homages to Adelin when he became king, suggests that the deal of 1106–7 took time to harden into another rule, recorded by Glanvill in the 1180s, that only prelates-elect did homage to the king, consecrated prelates being debarred from doing so.⁵⁸⁹ In 1116 it was still envisaged that all existing prelates would do homage to a new king. The new rule was probably a consequence of the Concordat of Worms (1122), itself based on the English compromise of 1106–7, in which Calixtus II allowed that a prelate-elect should ‘perform what he owes to [the emperor] by right in respect of [the regalia]’—in other words, homage.⁵⁹⁰ Certainly Glanvill ’s rule appears already to have existed by 1135: William of Malmesbury seems to have thought that the bishops then merely swore fidelitas to the newly crowned Stephen, and did not do homage to him, unlike laymen.⁵⁹¹ Whenever consecrated prelates were first debarred from doing homage to a king, Eadmer makes it abundantly clear that William Adelin could not become king until after his father’s death. Just as the designation of a successor to the duchy did not make him co-duke,⁵⁹² so the adaptation of the Norman ceremony to the designation of a successor to the kingdom did not make him co-king.⁵⁹³ This remained true in the case of Normandy, when the Norman barons, at Henry’s behest, renewed their homages and their oaths of fidelitas to William after he had done homage for the duchy to King Louis VI in 1120,⁵⁹⁴ ‘just as Rollo, the first duke of Normandy had promised in perpetual right’.⁵⁹⁵ Although he was said ⁵⁸⁸ Anselm, ep. no. 397 (23 Mar. 1106); cf. no. 389 (Dec. 1105); Eadmer, HN 186; VA 140; Southern, Biographer, 178–9; id., Portrait, 302–4. ⁵⁸⁹ Glanvill, ix. 1, p. 106. The Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), cap. 12, C&S ii, p. 882, reiterates the arrangement of 1106–7, although it is not incompatible with Glanvill ’s rule. ⁵⁹⁰ MGH: Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum, i. (911–1197), ed. L. Wieland (Hanover, 1893), 161; R. L. Benson, The Bishop-Elect: A Study in Medieval Ecclesiastical Office (Princeton, 1968), 230–2; I. S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge, 1990), 438. ⁵⁹¹ HNa 32. ⁵⁹² Above, p. 144. ⁵⁹³ His attestation of RRAN ii. no. 1204 (1119, ?June) as ‘Dei gratia rex designatus’ means no more than that he was bound by his consent to recognize the grant in the future. He is also termed ‘rex designatus’ in the dating clause. This is in any case a cartulary copy which may have been interpolated: see J. H. Round, ‘Early Charters of St John’s Abbey, Colchester’, EHR xvi (1901), 721–30, at 723; G. de M., 424–7. A notice of a gift by Henry and William to the church of St Maurice at Angers survives only as an 18th-century abstract from a lost cartulary: RRAN ii. no. 1204a (1119, ?June). Like his ‘concession’ of a gift already made by his father in no. 1223 (?1120), the original document on which it was based must have bound William to recognize the gift in the future. It did not mean that he was co-king or co-duke. Hugh the Chanter, who was in Normandy in 1120, calls William ‘rex et dux iam designatus’ at the end of his life: History, 164; Hollister, Henry I, 275. ⁵⁹⁴ ‘Historia Regum’, SD ii. 258; ‘Annales de Wintonia’, Ann. Mon., ii. 46. ⁵⁹⁵ ‘Ex anonymi Blandinensis appendicula ad Sigbertum’, RHF xiv. 16. On William’s homage to Louis VI, see also GR i. 758; ‘Annales monasterii de Wintonia’, Ann. Mon., ii. 46; C. W. Hollister,

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by John of Worcester to have ‘received Normandy, to be held of the aforesaid king of the French’,⁵⁹⁶ the Brevis Relatio, written some time between 1114 and 1120, makes it clear that this tenurial interpretation of the relationship was not universally accepted.⁵⁹⁷ It was clear that William did not, as a result of his homage, hold Normandy, and that he had not become duke. He remained no more than ‘rex et dux iam designatus’.⁵⁹⁸ This novel attempt to bind the tenants-in-chief (and, according to William of Malmesbury, many subtenants) during a prospective interregnum in England was wrecked with the White Ship. But Henry adapted this Norman device in slightly different form when, fearing that his second marriage would remain childless, he made provisional arrangements in favour of his only surviving legitimate child— ‘to whom alone the legitimate succession was due’⁵⁹⁹—at the Christmas court of 1126–7.⁶⁰⁰ It is possible that he had had her in mind even before the death of her first husband, the emperor Henry V, in 1125.⁶⁰¹ But not long after her return to England as a widow, and in the continuing absence of any other legitimate ‘heir of the kingdom’—with the possible exception of William Clito, whom Henry of Huntingdon at one stage thought to be ‘now the king’s sole heir, and judged worthy in the expectation of all’⁶⁰²—the king was said by John of Worcester to have ‘transferred the regni iura’ to his daughter.⁶⁰³ He did so by ordering the prelates and magnates to promise, ‘by faith and oath, if she survived her father, to defend the kingdom of the English on her behalf against all, unless a son, born from a legitimate union before his death, should succeed him’. If the worst came to the worst, he was determined to avert the succession of his brother’s son. William of Malmesbury specifies the same condition, and adds that they all promised that ‘they would immediately and without hesitation receive his daughter Matilda, formerly empress, as lady (domina)’.⁶⁰⁴ Robert of Torigni, writing within four years of Henry I’s death, said that ‘the bishops and archbishops, the more powerful abbots, the earls and magnates of the whole kingdom of England’ had been made to ‘swear fidelitas to her with binding oaths and promises that they would use all their strength to ensure that after her father’s death the augusta would obtain the monarchy of the greater Britain, now called England’.⁶⁰⁵ Of the contemporary or ‘Normandy, France and the Anglo-Norman regnum’, repr. in id. Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions, 17–57, at 41–3; Lemarignier, Hommage en marche, 92. ⁵⁹⁶ JW iii. 144; cf. SD ii. 258. ⁵⁹⁷ BR, pp. 21–2, 45; cf. Robert of Torigni, GND ii. 286. For the Brevis Relatio’s account, see Lot, Fidèles ou vassaux, 231–5, 258–63; Lemarignier, Hommage en marche, 96–100. ⁵⁹⁸ HC 164. ⁵⁹⁹ HNa 6. ⁶⁰⁰ ASC (E) s.a. 1127; JW iii. 166 ⁶⁰¹ K. J. Leyser, ‘The Anglo-Norman Succession, 1120–1125’, ANS xiii (1990), 225–41. ⁶⁰² HH 594. This aside occurs in the letter De Contemptu Mundi. It suggests that the letter must originally have been composed prior to William Clito’s death, and almost certainly before the oath to Matilda. For an attempted reconstruction of the drafting history of this letter, and its place in that of the Historia Anglorum as a whole, see HH, pp. lxxi–lxxv. ⁶⁰³ JW iii. 166; cf. S D, ii. 281; HH 700. ⁶⁰⁴ HNa 6; cf. 92, for Henry of Blois’ account in his speech at the Council of Winchester at Easter 1141. ⁶⁰⁵ GND ii. 240.

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nearly contemporary narratives only the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that the ceremony was intended to cover Normandy as well,⁶⁰⁶ but the absence in Matilda’s case of any parallel ceremony there strongly suggests that this arrangement was intended to cover the duchy too. This is what Gilbert Foliot states in his letter to Brian fitzCount of 1143 ⫻ 44, on the subject of Matilda’s claim.⁶⁰⁷ The conditional nature of the oaths taken, which would be voided by the birth of a legitimate son to Henry, meant that the designation did not amount to the sort of irreversible post obitum bequest which William the Conqueror had made, in respect of the duchy alone, to Robert Curthose.⁶⁰⁸ The point is reiterated in John of Worcester’s much more extensive rewriting of the event.⁶⁰⁹ The unprecedented, conditional nature of the designation seems to be the most likely explanation for the absence from all the accounts of the ceremony and its repeated confirmations⁶¹⁰ of an element which appears to have been crucial in all previous Norman-style designations, including William Adelin’s: homage. Whereas homage appears to have subsumed the swearing of an oath of fealty,⁶¹¹ the reverse was not the case. The English prelates in 1116 had, as we have seen, professed themselves with fides to transfer the kingdom to William Adelin after his father’s death, but they had not done homage to him.⁶¹² By the time when Glanvill was being written there was a form of ‘fidelitas under faith and oath’ distinct from the form of words used in doing homage;⁶¹³ and consecrated bishops and abbots swore fidelitas to the king, but were not allowed to do him homage.⁶¹⁴ The difference between the designation ceremonies of William Adelin and Matilda lay in the fact that the laymen, like the prelates, merely swore fealty in Matilda’s case, rather than doing homage, as they had to William Adelin. Homage to Matilda would have created an irrevocable bond with her, as it had with William Adelin: so much so that, according to Henry of Huntingdon, admittedly ⁶⁰⁶ ASC (E) s.a. 1127; William of Malmesbury, HNa 92, had heard Henry of Blois tell the Easter Council at Winchester in 1141 that Henry I had ‘some years before his death had the whole kingdom of England, and also the duchy of Normandy, confirmed on oath by all the bishops and barons to his daughter’. John of Salisbury, HP 83, says that the oath taken by Stephen applied to both kingdom and duchy. ⁶⁰⁷ GFL no. 26, p. 63. ⁶⁰⁸ Above, p. 170. ⁶⁰⁹ JW iii. 176–82; cf. pp. xxxii, xxxiv–xxxv. He dates it to Easter 1128, and says that the condition applied to the subsequent birth of an heir of either sex. The dating is impossible, because Henry was not in England at Easter 1128. In the Gloucester version, denoted (G) by the editors, it is dated to Easter 1127: p. xli. It is not entirely clear whether this is intended to be a fuller account of the original designation, erroneously dated, or an account of a subsequent renewal. That it appears to envisage Matilda’s remarriage as a hypothetical possibility suggests the former, because she left for Normandy to be betrothed to Geoffrey sometime after Whitsun 1127: HNa 8; HH 476. It was written between 1140 and 1143. ⁶¹⁰ HNa 18–20 (1131) (cf. HH 486, who does not mention the renewal of the oaths); Diceto, Opera, i. 246–7 (1133); Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols., RS (London, 1868–71), i. 187 (1134). On Diceto, see King’s introduction to HNa, pp. xcvi–xcvii; on Howden, see Chibnall, Matilda, 61. ⁶¹¹ According to Eadmer, HN 55–6, Anselm’s homage to the king meant that he owed him the fides he had promised. ⁶¹² Eadmer, HN 237. ⁶¹³ Glanvill, vii. 18, p. 92; cf. ix. 1, p. 103. ⁶¹⁴ Ibid. ix. 1, p. 106.

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in a bout of moralizing about the uncertainty of earthly existence, William’s ‘certain hope of reigning in the future was greater than his father’s actual possession of the kingdom: for the father had already reigned for a long time, while the son’s reign was all in the future’.⁶¹⁵ And King Henry wanted Matilda’s designation to be no more than a fail-safe device, should he die without siring another legitimate son.⁶¹⁶ Of a conventional frame of mind, he clearly thought that sons should take precedence over daughters in succession to their fathers.⁶¹⁷ But the fact that homage was not done to Matilda at the time of her conditional designation did not mean that it could or would never be done to her. Women were debarred from doing homage de iure according to Glanvill,⁶¹⁸ and up to the early twelfth century they were scarcely ever in a position to accept it.⁶¹⁹ They appear to have been considered as heirs only in the absence of sons.⁶²⁰ It was very difficult indeed for an heiress to enjoy what Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ terms ‘her’ land in her own right.⁶²¹ It is almost certain that a spinster could not inherit, at least until the 1130s;⁶²² only as a widow might a woman find herself in control of her inherited land, and even then her chances were slim.⁶²³ Otherwise an heiress took ‘her’ land to her husband. If she were unmarried at the time of her father’s death, she would be in the wardship of her father’s lord even if she were of full age, until she was married on his advice and direction.⁶²⁴ Thereby the husband would also get the land which had reverted into the lord’s hand. If a daughter had been married during her father’s lifetime, with the requisite consent ⁶¹⁵ HH 594. ⁶¹⁶ JW iii. 178, is alone in appearing to suggest that Queen Adeliza swore that Matilda should succeed only if the king lacked an heir of either sex. There is a possible lacuna in the text which renders its meaning less than clear: see p. xxxiv, n. 55. ⁶¹⁷ LHP 70. 20b. ⁶¹⁸ Glanvill, ix. 1, p. 103. ⁶¹⁹ S. F. C. Milsom, ‘Inheritance by Women in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries’, repr. in id., Studies in the History of the Common Law (London, 1985), 231–60, at 233–6. But note that although Milsom (p.235) leans towards interpreting the silence of Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ on the subject of the widow with hereditas as meaning that ‘the lord did not contemplate that she would hold the inheritance anyway’, this was not necessarily the case. J. C. Holt, ‘Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England, IV: The Heiress and the Alien’, CE 245–69, at 265, draws attention to the way in which a widow could fine at the Exchequer that she should not be compelled, or ‘distrained’, to marry. She would thereby retain control of her inheritance, as well as her dower and maritagium. Holt cites as one of the first recorded instances the Countess Lucy, thrice widowed on the death of Ranulf le Meschin, earl of Chester. In PR 31 Henry I, 110, she offered 100 marks ‘ut possit tenere rectum in Curia sua inter homines suos’. She could only have homines if homage had been done to her. The issue of homage by or to women is not addressed in J. A. Green, ‘Aristocratic Women in Early Twelfth-century England’, in C. W. Hollister (ed.), Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Woodbridge, 1997), 59–82. ⁶²⁰ LHP 70. 20b; cf. RRAN ii. no. 843 (?1107). At a later stage, Glanvill, vii. 3, p. 77. ⁶²¹ See above, p. 109. For the apparent reluctance of Exchequer officials, like the coronation ‘edict’, to describe such land as the female heir’s, see Holt, ‘Heiress’, CE 262. ⁶²² The putative date of a charter of Roger de Valognes in favour of Binham Priory which refers, in passing, to a statutum decretum whereby unmarried daughters might, in the absence of any son, ‘divide their father’s land by spindles’. It appears that they did not have to wait for the lord to take homage from whomever he selected to be their husbands. See Stenton, English Feudalism, 38–41, 260–1; Milsom, ‘Inheritance by Women’, 249; Holt, ‘Heiress’, CE 252–6. ⁶²³ Holt, ‘Heiress’, CE 247–8. ⁶²⁴ Glanvill, vii. 12, p. 85.

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of his lord,⁶²⁵ it seems likely that she would be considered as heir only in the absence of other, unmarried daughters, as well as sons.⁶²⁶ It was axiomatic that no homage was required for the maritagium;⁶²⁷ but if a daughter were heir on her father’s death, her husband, or the husband to whom her father’s lord then gave her in marriage, paid relief and did homage for his deceased father-in-law’s inheritance. Only at that point did succession take place.⁶²⁸ The husband was never described as his father-in-law’s heir, but he was bound to do homage to his deceased father-in-law’s lord on account of his wife, the heiress.⁶²⁹ Although the land might be described as hers before she was married, the grantee was her husband, and the lord’s relationship was with him alone. He was the tenant; her role was confined to transmitting the inheritance to their children.⁶³⁰ It follows that the husband would receive the homage of his father-in-law’s former vassals. Even if a woman held in her own right, and homage was done to her ‘for a certain tenement’, it had to be done to her husband in the event of her subsequent marriage.⁶³¹ The tenant’s formal relationship would henceforth be with the husband. To most of these conventions Matilda was a necessary exception. At the time of her original designation she had not been remarried, or even betrothed. But there must have been an expectation that she would be, otherwise this widow of a barren marriage stood no chance at all of continuing her father’s line. Some of the accounts suggest that, in a mood of optimism, her prospective heirs were included in the terms of the original oaths;⁶³² one that any future husband was.⁶³³ William of Malmesbury related that he had often heard Roger, bishop of Salisbury, claiming that he had sworn at the original ceremony ‘only on condition that the king should not give his daughter in marriage to anyone outside the kingdom without consulting himself and the other leading men’.⁶³⁴ But William added that he did not know whether or not Roger had been speaking the truth, strongly hinting that no such provision had been made. It may be that William’s account of the arrangement that Matilda should be received as domina immediately after her father’s death, without any mention of a prospective husband, was heavily influenced by later events.⁶³⁵ But it is corroborated elsewhere,⁶³⁶ and, as we shall see, this is precisely what happened when she came to England in 1139.⁶³⁷ If John of Worcester’s account, written between 1140 and 1143, of a ceremony erroneously dated to Easter 1128 is indeed a revised version ⁶²⁵ Coronation ‘edict’, cap. 3; 3, 1; Glanvill, vii. 12, p. 85. ⁶²⁶ Milsom, ‘Inheritance by Women’, 236–7, 252. ⁶²⁷ Glanvill, vii. 18, pp. 92–3; ix, 2, p. 106. ⁶²⁸ Ibid. ix. 4, p. 108. ⁶²⁹ Ibid. vii. 12, p. 85. ⁶³⁰ Milsom, ‘Inheritance by Women’, 260. ⁶³¹ Glanvill, ix. 3, p. 106. ⁶³² GS 10, 52; but the author presents the designation and the Angevin marriage as simultaneous. SD ii. 281–2; GC i. 93. ⁶³³ JW iii. 176–8. ⁶³⁴ HNa 10; cf. Eadmer’s story, HN 8, that Harold II told Duke William’s messenger that he could not marry the duke’s daughter, thereby placing a foreign woman ‘over the kingdom’, without consulting the nobles. ⁶³⁵ HNa 6. ⁶³⁶ ASC s.a. 1127; JW iii. 166; SD ii. 281; GFL no. 26, p. 63. ⁶³⁷ Below, pp. 214–15.

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of proceedings at the Christmas court of 1126–7,⁶³⁸ then its reference to ‘any legitimate spouse, should she have one’ receiving the kingdom jointly with her seems to have been misconceived.⁶³⁹ His statement that a child of either sex produced by Henry and Adeliza would render the designation void is also at odds with all the other sources, which refer only to a putative son. Nevertheless, her marriage to Geoffrey, count of Anjou in 1128 might have been understood in some quarters to have transformed him into a potential successor in England and Normandy. In much the same way his father, Fulk, became heir to the Kingdom of Jerusalem through marriage to Melisende, daughter of King Baldwin II, in 1129.⁶⁴⁰ Unsurprisingly, this was how things were seen in Anjou.⁶⁴¹ And not only in Anjou: Symeon of Durham understood this to have been agreed shortly after Matilda’s betrothal;⁶⁴² and Henry of Huntingdon thought that, after Henry I’s death, Geoffrey and Matilda laid claim to England on the basis of the oath taken to Matilda.⁶⁴³ But there is no suggestion that her husband was included within the terms of the oaths when they were subsequently renewed, only that their eldest son, the future Henry II, born in 1133, may have been.⁶⁴⁴ William of Malmesbury said that Henry I, on his deathbed, ‘assigned all his land on both sides of the sea to his daughter in lawful and lasting succession, being somewhat angry with her husband because he had vexed the king by not a few threats and insults’.⁶⁴⁵ This is a characteristically elliptical sentence.⁶⁴⁶ It implies, but does not state, that Henry had, until just before his death, viewed Geoffrey as a potential successor, almost certainly a joint successor. Yet if Henry had indeed envisaged Geoffrey as such, it is curious that he appears to have done nothing to adapt his conditional designation of his daughter to encompass her husband, unless we are to believe John of Worcester’s rewritten account. What William of Malmesbury and the other sources say of the original oaths seems to have remained true of the formal arrangements for the succession, regardless of her husband. With the continuing failure of Henry and Adeliza to produce a legitimate heir, it became more and more likely that the arrangement provisionally made during the Christmas court of 1126–7 would be realized. And that meant ⁶³⁸ Above, n. 609. ⁶³⁹ JW iii. 176–8. ⁶⁴⁰ Orderic vi. 390–2. ⁶⁴¹ John of Marmoutier, ‘Historia Gaufredi ducis Normannorum et comitis Andegavorum’, in Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou, 178–82; cf. Actus Pontificum Cenomannis in Urbe Degentium, ed. G. Busson and A. Ledru, Société des archives historiques du Maine (1902), 445–6; further Chibnall, Matilda, 56–7. ⁶⁴² ‘Historia Regum’, ii. 282; for reservations about Symeon’s accuracy with regard to continental events in 1127–8, see C. W. Hollister (and T. K. Keefe), ‘The Making of the Angevin Empire’, repr. in id., Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions, 247–72, at 262, n. 68. ⁶⁴³ HH 708. ⁶⁴⁴ Above, n. 610. Richard of Hexham, ‘De Gestis Regis Stephani’, CSHR iii. 148; Roger of Howden, Chronica, i. 186. Ralph Diceto, ‘Abbreviationes Chronicorum’, Opera, i. 246–7 says that in 1133 Henry ‘instituted his daughter and her heirs as successors to himself, and bound everyone by oath to observe the arrangement.’ The passage is not in all the manuscripts: for speculation as to why, see King’s introduction to HNa, p. xcvii, n. 411. If JW iii. 176–8 does describe a renewal of the original oath, then it is an exception to this statement. ⁶⁴⁵ HNa 24. ⁶⁴⁶ For another example, which has given rise to various interpretations, see above, p. 176, on Curthose.

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that Matilda would succeed her father in her own right, whatever joy the ageing king took in his infant grandsons,⁶⁴⁷ and whatever vague expectations had been raised by the birth of Henry.⁶⁴⁸ She was to be more than the vessel by means of which the kingdom and duchy would be transmitted to those grandsons, despite Richard of Hexham’s statement (apparently corroborated by Roger of Howden) that ‘England and Normandy had been sworn’ to her eldest son,⁶⁴⁹ and Robert of Torigni’s description, written in the 1150s, of both sons born prior to Henry’s death as ‘King Henry’s legitimate heirs’.⁶⁵⁰ As Robert made clear in the book on the reign of Henry I which he composed c.1139 to append to his interpolated version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, the king had wanted Matilda ‘to succeed him by hereditary right in the kingdom of England after his death’.⁶⁵¹ In his letter to Brian fitzCount, Gilbert Foliot pointed out that this was the purpose of the oaths, and that it applied to Normandy as well as England.⁶⁵²After Stephen’s accession all debate centred on the legitimacy of her claim to be her father’s heir, and on the validity of the oaths taken to support her. It was her ius which she asserted,⁶⁵³ not that of her sons.

MATILDA’S TITLE According to William of Malmesbury, the magnates had sworn at Christmas 1126–7 to receive Matilda as domina immediately after her father’s death.⁶⁵⁴ The precise meaning of this title remains unclear. John of Worcester described Adeliza as regni domna electa on her marriage to Henry I on 29 January 1121; she was crowned and consecrated regina the following day.⁶⁵⁵ Eadmer referred to her as futura regni domina before her marriage, without any implication that this was her status only prior to her coronation.⁶⁵⁶ Its use of a prospective queen-consort can reveal little about its use to describe Matilda’s unprecedented status. After Stephen’s capture at the battle of Lincoln on 2 February 1141 and subsequent incarceration, Henry of Blois, papal legate and bishop of Winchester, ‘received’ Matilda as domina Anglie at a rainy meeting at Wherwell, outside the city, on 2 March. She was then ‘received’ by the citizens and clergy of the city on the following day, and the bishop staged a ceremonial reception in his cathedral.⁶⁵⁷ According to the Gesta Stephani, Bishop Henry ordered that she be ⁶⁴⁷ HH 488. ⁶⁴⁸ Orderic v. 200, 228, n. 2, discussed v. p. xii; vi. p. xxv. ⁶⁴⁹ Richard of Hexham, CSHR iii. 145; Howden, Chronica, i. 187. ⁶⁵⁰ RT, CSHR iv. 128. For Ralph Diceto, Opera, i. 247, who used Robert as a source, they were Matilda’s heirs. In the book he composed to append to the GND ii. 240, Robert of Torigni described all three sons as ‘legitimate heirs of the English principatus’. ⁶⁵¹ GND ii. 240; cf. 264, 274. ⁶⁵² GFL no. 26 p. 63. ⁶⁵³ HNa, 42. ⁶⁵⁴ HNa, 6. ⁶⁵⁵ JW iii. 148–50. William of Poitiers, GG 178 says that domina nostra Matilda was already commonly known as regina before she was crowned, as if this were unusual. ⁶⁵⁶ HN 290. ⁶⁵⁷ HNa 88; RRAN iii. no. 343; JW iii. 252.

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acclaimed as domina et regina in the town square;⁶⁵⁸ according to the Gloucester continuation of John of Worcester, she was already domina imperatrix prior to her ceremonial entry, but now the corona regni Anglie was given to her dominium.⁶⁵⁹ William of Malmesbury later claimed that the ‘clergy of England’—‘whose most potent right it was to elect and ordain a prince’—had elected her Angliae Normanniaeque domina not on this occasion, but later, on 7 April, at the Easter Council of that year held in Winchester.⁶⁶⁰ William could give an eyewitness account of proceedings at the council: ‘I remember it very clearly.’⁶⁶¹ He reported that Henry of Blois argued that God had executed His judgement on Stephen by allowing him to be captured by his enemies, and that he, Henry, had, in his capacity as legate, summoned the council to fill the resulting vacancy, ‘lest the kingdom should totter without a ruler’.⁶⁶² On the basis of this account Matilda is usually reckoned to have assumed the title Anglorum domina only at this point.⁶⁶³ But the rubric of the preceding chapter states that she had been ‘confirmed’ as domina Anglie at the council, with the implication that in some sense she had already been so before it.⁶⁶⁴ Perhaps the author of the rubric was trying to reconcile what William said about the Easter Council with what he had written about Henry of Blois and Holy Church’s ‘reception’ of Matilda as domina at Wherwell on 2 March. Henry of Huntingdon and the Gloucester continuation of John of Worcester agree that it was Stephen’s imprisonment in February which enabled Matilda to be accepted as domina,⁶⁶⁵ ‘having now, as she thought, acceded to the kingdom which had been sworn to her’.⁶⁶⁶ Yet she is described as domina, if not Anglorum or Anglie domina, long before the battle of Lincoln. Shortly after May 1140 Roger, bishop of Chester, confirmed a presentation by Domina nostra Matilda, filia Regis bonae memoriae Henrici.⁶⁶⁷ In a Gloucester interpolation in John of Worcester’s chronicle, she is domina illa shortly after her arrival in England on 30 September 1139.⁶⁶⁸ According to William of Malmesbury, she was viewed as domina even prior to her arrival.⁶⁶⁹ It is striking that in most cases the title is not qualified by any possessive adjective: she was not simply the female equivalent of someone’s lord. This chronicle testimony to use of the title domina long before Stephen’s capture at Lincoln is corroborated by the only surviving writ known to have been ⁶⁵⁸ GS 118. ⁶⁵⁹ JW iii. 292–4. Whereas the GS refers to her getting the regni corona in a physical sense, along with the king’s castle, the Gloucester continuation’s crown seems more abstract. ⁶⁶⁰ HNa 92. ⁶⁶¹ HNa 90. ⁶⁶² HNa 92. ⁶⁶³ RRAN iii. p. xxix. ⁶⁶⁴ HNa 90, n. c. King argues (pp. lxxxv–lxxxvii) that the rubrics are interpolated by a reviser of William’s original text, and (pp. lxxxix–xciv) that William was not the reviser. ⁶⁶⁵ HH 738. ⁶⁶⁶ JW iii. 292. ⁶⁶⁷ ‘Chartulary of the Augustine priory of Trentham’, ed. F. Parker, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 18 vols. in 20, William Salt Archaeological Soc. (1880–97), xi. 322, quoted by G. J. White, Restoration and Reform, 1153–1165: Recovery from Civil War in England (Cambridge, 2000), 38, n. 137. ⁶⁶⁸ JW iii. 270; for the date, see HNa 60. ⁶⁶⁹ HNa 46; cf. 64 (domina imperatrix in 1139), 76 (Robert fitzHamon objects to handing over Devizes ‘dominae suae imperatrici’ in 1140).

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issued between her arrival in England and March 1141. In it she is made to describe how she was received as domina by Miles of Gloucester in 1139, in terms which accord perfectly with William of Malmesbury’s description of the terms of the original oath of 1127: ‘Know you that when I came into England after the death of my father, Miles of Gloucester came to me as quickly as he could at Bristol and received me as domina and as the one whom he had recognized as just heir of the kingdom of England.’⁶⁷⁰ According to a monk writing in Gloucester, Miles and his lord, Robert of Gloucester, had invoked the oath when they invited Matilda to return to England.⁶⁷¹ What is striking about Matilda’s writ is that Stephen is not even mentioned: it is as if she had arrived in England as ‘just heir of the kingdom’ during the interregnum which followed her father’s death. Miles’s recognition of her in Bristol as domina and heir preceded, but was closely associated with, the liege homage which he subsequently did to her in Gloucester, and for which he received an appropriate reward. For the writ continues: ‘Wherefore he took me with him to Gloucester, and there did his liege homage to me against all men. And I wish you to know that then, when I received his homage in Gloucester, I gave him for his service in fee and inheritance to him and his heirs the castle of St Briavel and the whole Forest of Dean.’ There is no evidence that Matilda was simply ratifying an existing situation; these appear to be fresh gifts.⁶⁷² William of Malmesbury underlined the significance of this event.⁶⁷³ Miles was merely the most noteworthy example of a far more wide-ranging process. According to a Gloucester interpolation in John of Worcester, Matilda spent her time at Bristol and Gloucester taking homage from everyone else in these localities and asserting her dominium.⁶⁷⁴ Despite the apparent initial pretence in the writ that Stephen’s accession had never happened, the chroniclers show why Matilda’s accession could not in practice be other than piecemeal. As John of Worcester explained of Miles of Gloucester, Miles had to renounce his ‘oaths of faith to the royal majesty’⁶⁷⁵ before he could go over to the empress. The same was true of everyone else. The original oaths had been administered to

⁶⁷⁰ RRAN iii no. 391 (1139, soon after 15 Oct., the date of her arrival in Gloucester according to JW iii. 270; but this date is incorrect according to Chibnall, Matilda, 83); cf. HNa 6. ⁶⁷¹ JW iii. 252. ⁶⁷² On the evidence of Acta of Henry II, ed. J. Everard, J. C. Holt, and N. Vincent (Oxford, forthcoming), acc. no. 3938H, St Briavel’s castle and the forest of Dean had been in Henry I’s hand on the day of his death. There is no indication that Miles had taken control of them in the interim. I am very grateful to Judith Everard, Jim Holt, and Nicholas Vincent for supplying me with a disc of their forthcoming edition. As numbers have not yet been finally allocated to the documents, I shall use the accession numbers. ⁶⁷³ HNa 62. King understands this passage to mean that Miles had done homage and sworn fealty to Robert of Gloucester during the reign of Henry I. But K. R. Potter, in his edition of HNa (NMT, 1955), 35, read it as a description of Miles’s homage to Matilda. The Latin is ambiguous, but William’s primary concern at this point is with Miles’s relations with the empress. I therefore follow Potter’s reading. ⁶⁷⁴ JW iii. 270–2. ⁶⁷⁵ JW iii. 270.

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individuals,⁶⁷⁶ and it had been a matter of individual conscience to break those oaths by doing homage to Stephen. The decision to break faith with the king in turn, and to do homage to Matilda, was also necessarily an individual, if not entirely a free, one. John of Worcester’s Gloucester continuator recorded with a classical flourish that ‘tortures worthy of Decius or Nero’ were devised to encourage those who were obstinate in their fidelitas to the king. If they remained steadfast, they met sticky ends.⁶⁷⁷ It was, of necessity, slow going. It was hardly surprising that Matilda attributed so much importance to her acceptance of an individual’s homage, for, as we have seen, she had not received anyone’s prior to her father’s death. In her famous first charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville, for instance, issued just before midsummer 1141, the day on which Geoffrey had ‘become my man’ was paired with the day on which her father had been ‘alive and dead’,⁶⁷⁸ in a manner analogous to the pairing of the dates of coronation and of a predecessor’s death in the charters of kings. Matilda’s unprecedented mode of accession meant that there could be no single, fixed terminus to pair with the day of her father’s death. In the confirmation charter she issued in favour of Glastonbury Abbey, her meeting with Henry of Blois, its pluralist abbot, ‘near Wherwell’ was used.⁶⁷⁹ It was on that occasion that Bishop Henry had pledged fides to her, on condition that all important business in England, and especially ecclesiastical and abbatial appointments, should ‘hang on his nod’.⁶⁸⁰ His view of his role is encapsulated in the inscription on a ceremonial plaque which he commissioned: ‘May an angel take the giver [Henry] to Heaven after his gifts, but not just yet, lest England groan for it, since on him it depends for peace or war, agitation or rest.’⁶⁸¹ He was not the retiring type, as Pope Eugenius III later recognized,⁶⁸² and as his flamboyant beard proclaimed.⁶⁸³ He was ‘a man equal in mind to the Muses, and in eloquence higher than Marcus [i.e. Cicero]’.⁶⁸⁴ Instead of the meeting with Bishop Henry, a charter which Matilda issued at much the same time fixed on her ceremonial reception in Winchester on the ⁶⁷⁶ HNa 8; JW iii. 178–80; GS, p. 52; HH 700; Orderic vi. 518. According to John of Worcester and WN, ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’, CSHR i. 32, 37, Roger, bishop of Salisbury, administered the oath to each individual. ⁶⁷⁷ JW iii. 272. ⁶⁷⁸ RRAN iii. no. 274. In a sentence which Professor King considers an interpolation in William of Malmesbury’s text, Geoffrey is said to have ‘sworn fidelitas to the empress after the king’s capture’: HNa 102. ⁶⁷⁹ RRAN iii. no. 343. Cambridge, Trinity College MS. 724, fo. 24v, and London, BL Add. MS. 22934, fo. 21v, read ‘iuxta Warewell’ rather than the printed version’s ‘apud’. This charter of confirmation to Glastonbury Abbey restored Uffculme to it, thereby making an exception to the general terminus of Henry I’s death. ⁶⁸⁰ HNa 88. ⁶⁸¹ G. Zarnecki, J. Holt, and T. Holland (eds.), English Romanesque Art (London, 1984), no. 277a, p. 261. ⁶⁸² John of Salisbury, HP 79. ⁶⁸³ EEA vii. pl. iv; N. Stratford, ‘The Henry of Blois Plaques in the British Museum’, British Archaeological Association Conference, vi (1983 for 1980), 28–37; Zarnecki et al., English Romanesque Art, no. 277b, pp. 261–2. I owe this point to Stacy, ‘Henry of Blois’, 4. ⁶⁸⁴ Zarnecki et al., English Romanesque Art, no. 277b, p. 261.

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following day, perhaps because the lay beneficiary did homage to her then.⁶⁸⁵ When Robert of Gloucester reportedly gave his reasons for abandoning friendship and fides with the king in 1138, and renouncing his homage, he said that he was trying to make amends for his own illegal act: ‘after the oath which he had taken to his sister, he had not been ashamed to give himself with his hands to another during her lifetime.’⁶⁸⁶ The clear implication is that he had sworn at the Christmas court of 1126–7 to do homage to no one other than his sister. But as we have seen, neither he nor anyone else had done homage to her when the oaths were taken, or retaken. It follows that all those who had sworn had bound themselves to do homage to her and to ‘receive her as domina’ at the same time: namely, immediately after her father’s death, if he died without a male heir.⁶⁸⁷ Gilbert Foliot gave Brian fitzCount a detailed analysis of just this predicament.⁶⁸⁸ The oaths had failed to secure the succession for Matilda in 1135. But they meant that both before the battle of Lincoln, and afterwards when Matilda’s triumph seemed likely, her accession was marked by a series of individual ‘receptions’ and homages. The Gloucester continuation of John of Worcester⁶⁸⁹ records a stately progress from Gloucester (17 February 1141), to Cirencester, to Winchester (3 March), to Wilton (?30 March),⁶⁹⁰ to Reading (6 May), to Oxford, to St Albans, and so finally to London.⁶⁹¹ At the very beginning of this process, on 16 February, she and Robert of Gloucester had sent messengers to Henry of Blois, urging that ‘she should be received without any delay in church and kingdom, as King Henry’s daughter, and the one to whom all England and Normandy was sworn’.⁶⁹² It was then that the meeting at Wherwell was arranged. By the end of the process, ‘by receiving hostages and men’s homage she had brought the greater part of the kingdom under her sway’.⁶⁹³ There was clearly no breakneck rush for

⁶⁸⁵ RRAN iii. no. 897. The confirmation is in favour of Thurstan who, according to RRAN ii. no. 1872 (1129 ⫻ 33), was the clerk of William de Pont de l’Arche, the king’s chamberlain. Although GS 118 says that Henry of Blois handed over to Matilda ‘the king’s castle, the crown of the kingdom, which she had always most eagerly desired, and the treasure the king had left there’, Matilda probably had good reason for being grateful to William de Pont de l’Arche for not being difficult, in the way that William of Breteuil had been in 1100: Orderic v. 290, discussed above, p. 138. He had also proved cooperative where Stephen was concerned in 1135: GS 8. On his career, see Green, Government, 267–8. ⁶⁸⁶ HNa 40–2. King understands this sentence to refer to homage having been done by Stephen, rather than Robert of Gloucester. He offers no justification for this curious interpretation. Potter (23) takes it to refer to Robert. ⁶⁸⁷ HNa 6. ⁶⁸⁸ GFL no. 26. ⁶⁸⁹ JW iii. 292–6. ⁶⁹⁰ HNa 90, states that she spent Easter at Oxford, rather than Wilton. For an ingenious attempt to reconcile the two (in favour of William of Malmesbury), see H. W. C. Davis, ‘Some Documents of the Anarchy’, in H. W. C. Davis (ed.), Essays in History Presented to R. L. Poole (Oxford, 1927), 168–89, at 182. ⁶⁹¹ HNa 96 says that she was ‘received’ by the Londoners ‘a few days before’ 24 June. ⁶⁹² HNa 86–8. ⁶⁹³ GS 120; cf. JW iii. 294 for her taking ‘dominium atque hominium’ from the whole city of Oxford and the surrounding region.

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consecration.⁶⁹⁴ True, she made slow preparations;⁶⁹⁵ it took her some time to negotiate a shaky control of London,⁶⁹⁶ and Westminster Abbey was by now the indispensable venue. Her charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville, castellan of the Tower, must have been a crucial element.⁶⁹⁷ But she did not display the same urgency as those whom she had for some time named as her predecessors.⁶⁹⁸ The force of the oaths taken to her during her father’s lifetime, and her consequent piecemeal ‘reception’ as domina and taking of homages, may account for the possible assumption on her behalf of the title Anglorum regina at this time. The title is found as a supplement to ‘M[atildis] imperatrix Henrici regis filia’ in the superscription of the confirmation charter for Glastonbury Abbey, issued on or shortly after 3 March, which survives only in cartulary copies.⁶⁹⁹ It has been suggested that this may be a copyist’s error for Anglorum domina.⁷⁰⁰ All four surviving copies misdate the meeting at Wherwell to Sunday, 16 February, confusing the date of the preliminary negotiations recorded by William of Malmesbury⁷⁰¹ with that of the final settlement struck with Henry of Blois; so errors had clearly crept into this document at an early stage.⁷⁰² In two charters which were probably issued at the same time, and which also survive only as cartulary copies, her title was simply ‘Matilda imperatrix filia Henrici regis’.⁷⁰³ But the evidence of the Glastonbury charter cannot be dismissed quite so easily. The supplementary title is written out in all four copies. According to the Gesta Stephani, Henry of Blois ordered the people of Winchester to acclaim her as domina et regina in the forum of the city on 3 March.⁷⁰⁴ And if this chronicle is discounted, because its author’s views on what constituted a king, and perhaps by extension a queen, were idiosyncratic,⁷⁰⁵ there is further, problematic evidence for her having assumed the title by midsummer 1141. ⁶⁹⁴ Davis, ‘Some Documents’, 184–5, comments on Matilda’s unusual conferring of honours and offices ‘before there was any immediate prospect of a coronation’. ⁶⁹⁵ GS 124. ⁶⁹⁶ This is what she did in St Albans, according to JW iii. 294. ⁶⁹⁷ RRAN no. 274. Matilda conceded to him and his heirs custody of the Tower in this charter; but in reality she was merely confirming what he already had: C. W. Hollister, ‘The Misfortunes of the Mandevilles’, repr. in id., Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions, 117–28, at 126; Davis, King Stephen, 58. ⁶⁹⁸ RRAN iii. nos. 20, 274. ⁶⁹⁹ Ibid., no. 343. ⁷⁰⁰ M.M. Chibnall, ‘The Charters of the Empress Matilda’, in Law and Government, 276–98, at 279. ⁷⁰¹ HNa 88. E. King, ‘Introduction’ to id., (ed.), The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford, 1994), 22, n. 81 suggests amending the text to read dominica tertia, William’s date for the meeting at Wherwell. But all four copies of the charter give William’s date for the preliminary negotiations. ⁷⁰² Davis, ‘Some Documents’, 180. Davis asserts that the appearance of Seffrid, bishop of Chichester, in the witness list is also a mistake, but solely on the basis of his absence from William of Malmesbury’s list of those present in Winchester Cathedral on 3 March, HNa 88. Seffrid’s name may have been included because he had once been abbot of Glastonbury. ⁷⁰³ RRAN iii. no. 897; cf. no. 597. ⁷⁰⁴ GS 118. According to HNa 102 the inhabitants of Winchester are said to have pledged faith to her, when induced to do so by the bishop, ‘almost against their will’. ⁷⁰⁵ GS 4 is alone in stating that Stephen was ‘constituted’ king by the commune of London, and that he received the ‘regis nomen’ at that point, well before his coronation.

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Her first charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville is a damaged, putative original, allegedly in the hand of a chancery scribe known to historians as scriptor xiv. He has been identified as Peter the Scribe, who had worked for Henry I and Stephen, and would go on to work for Archbishop Theobald and Henry II.⁷⁰⁶ The superscription entitles her ‘imperatrix regis Henrici filia’, but the dispositive clause attributes to her the style ‘regis Henrici filia et Anglorum domina’.⁷⁰⁷ Two seventeenth-century transcripts, made before the charter was damaged, describe a seal which no longer survives. One, by Richard St George, gives a rough sketch and the legend: ‘S. MATILDIS IMPERATRIX ROM’ ET REGINA ANGLIAE’.⁷⁰⁸ The other, by Elias Ashmole, gives an almost identical reading of the legend.⁷⁰⁹ There are several extant examples of Matilda’s seal,⁷¹⁰ four of them attached to other documents attributed to scriptor xiv,⁷¹¹ and on all of them the legend reads: ‘⫹ MATHILDIS DEI GRATIA ROMANORUM REGINE’.⁷¹² If both seventeenth-century antiquarians were looking at an example of this seal, then it is very curious that their imaginative reconstructions of its legend independently took exactly the same erroneous form.⁷¹³ This is particularly true of the unusual form ANGLIAE (as opposed to ANGLORUM) which, it has been suggested, may have imitated the use of ANGLIE on the seals of Henry I’s queens.⁷¹⁴ If St George and Ashmole accurately reproduced what they saw, then the inconsistency between the legend on the seal and the titles used in the charter to which it was attached is also curious. But not very curious, for Matilda’s extant seals all style her REGINA ROMANORUM, whereas in her English charters and writs she is never so styled. Rather, whenever her German past is alluded to she is ‘Imperatrix’. Moreover, as already indicated, there is an inconsistency within the text of Geoffrey’s charter between the titles used in the superscription and in the dispositive clause. A writ and a charter issued by Matilda at the same time, neither of ⁷⁰⁶ Bishop, Scriptores Regis, pl. XVII(b); RRAN iii. pp. xiv–xv, xxx; iv. 6–7, 19–20 and pls. XIII–XV; Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, in Law and Government, 276–98, at 291–2, for the identity of her chancellor. ⁷⁰⁷ RRAN iii, no. 274, cf. iv. pl. XIV for a facsimile. For doubts about whether scriptor xiv wrote this charter, and whether it is the original it purports to be, see J. O. Prestwich, ‘The Treason of Geoffrey de Mandeville’, EHR ciii (1988), 283–312, at 311–12. Scriptor xiv wrote up to six of Matilda’s extant putative originals: Bishop, Scriptores Regis, S. 27 (this charter); S. 40 (⫽ RRAN iii. no. 392, dated probably to June 1141); S. 58 (⫽ RRAN iii. no. 628, dated probably c.30 Mar. 1141); RRAN iii. no. 111 (1144); no. 394 (25 July 1141–Dec. 1142), cf. iv. pl. XIII; no. 651 (July 1141–Dec. 1142), cf. iv. pl. XV. Bishop (p. 13, n. 2) regards only the first three as the work of scriptor xiv. In RRAN iii. nos. 392, 628 she is entitled simply ‘imperatrix regis H[enrici] filia’, as in the superscription of no. 274. (‘Imperatrix’ is not in the printed text in RRAN, but is clearly visible in the facsimile.) In the latter two her title is the same as in the dispositive clause of no. 274. For originals in other hands, see RRAN iii. nos. 115 (25 July–15 Sept. 1141); 116 (25 July 1141–24 Dec. 1143); 629 (June–July 1141); 632 (1142 ⫻ 48). ⁷⁰⁸ London, BL Harleian MS. 5019. ⁷⁰⁹ Oxford, Bodleian Library Ashmole MS. 841, fo. 4v: ‘Matildis Imperatrix Rom et Regina Angliae in circumferencia sigilli.’ ⁷¹⁰ RRAN iii. p. xxix. ⁷¹¹ Ibid., nos. 392, 394, 628, 651. ⁷¹² Ibid iv. pls. XIII, XIV; Chibnall, Matilda, pls. 4, 5. ⁷¹³ J. C. Holt, Review of RRAN iii, iv, EcHR, 2nd ser., xxiv (1971), 480–3, at 482; Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, 280, takes the view that they both made the same mistake. ⁷¹⁴ Round, G. de M., 301–2; Prestwich, ‘Treason’, 311.

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which survives as an original, both use the title found in the superscription of Geoffrey de Mandeville’s charter.⁷¹⁵ Other documents, including some drafted for her by scriptor xiv,⁷¹⁶ use the style Anglorum domina found in its dispositive clause. There was, therefore, no consistent pattern to the use of the latter title,⁷¹⁷ despite the familiar assertion that it had been assumed as a consequence of the Council of Winchester.⁷¹⁸ One original charter in favour of Bordesley Abbey, probably issued in the last week of July, does not use it, but an accompanying original, almost certainly issued at the same time, does.⁷¹⁹ In an unprecedented situation, it was hardly surprising that scribes—even the only experienced chancery scribe to work for her with any regularity—were not clear about her exact status, or that they experimented. In any case, she relied principally on beneficiaries’ scribes to write her documents. The only other charter in which Matilda is entitled Anglorum regina is generally condemned as a forgery.⁷²⁰ Nevertheless, the evidence of the lost seal once attached to Geoffrey de Mandeville’s charter, of the Glastonbury charter, and of the Gesta Stephani, taken together suggest that some scribes may have deemed her to be queen even though she had not (yet) been crowned.⁷²¹ As Round stressed, the fact that Geoffrey’s charter was issued at Westminster just before Matilda’s planned coronation may be significant.⁷²² In the charter she was made to say⁷²³ that she had created Geoffrey, amongst many other things, hereditary chief justice of Essex, ‘with all pleas and crimes which pertain to my crown’. She may have recovered a crown from the treasury at Winchester, probably on 3 March,⁷²⁴ but the crown which scriptor xiv had in mind was not a physical one.⁷²⁵ He was trying to suggest that she already disposed of royal rights. Doubts have been expressed about the soundness of his mind,⁷²⁶ but in the case of the abstract crown there were recent precedents,⁷²⁷ including a possible one in a charter of the empress.⁷²⁸ The reference in Geoffrey’s charter to Matilda’s crown ⁷¹⁵ RRAN iii. nos. 316, 911. ⁷¹⁶ Ibid., nos. 111, 394, 651 ⁷¹⁷ Holt, Review of RRAN iii, iv, 482; Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, 278–9. ⁷¹⁸ Round, G. de M., 67; RRAN iii. p. xxix. ⁷¹⁹ RRAN iii. nos. 115, 116; for details, see below, n. 954. ⁷²⁰ Ibid., no. 699; Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, 279. ⁷²¹ The suggestion was made by Round, G. de M., 299–303, but it has tended to be discounted. ⁷²² Ibid., 302. For the plans, see GS 124. ⁷²³ Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, 278, draws attention to the ‘literary style’ of Matilda’s documents, and suggests that her voice may break through the more formal language. ⁷²⁴ GS 118; cf. JW iii. 294. ⁷²⁵ Garnett, ‘Crown’, 210–11. ⁷²⁶ Prestwich, ‘Treason’, 312, reports the opinion of Pierre Chaplais that if the charter was indeed the work of scriptor xiv, then he must have been drunk or senile at the time. As he subsequently worked for Archbishop Theobald and Henry II, he cannot have been the latter. For some of its curious characteristics, see RRAN iv. pp. 19–20. ⁷²⁷ Garnett, ‘Crown’, 199–210. ⁷²⁸ RRAN iii. no. 400 (3–25 Mar. 1141), a general confirmation to St Benet of Holme, which is her only known charter for Norfolk: Chibnall, Matilda, 130. For the possible significance of ‘my crown’, see Round, G. de M., 67; Holt, Review of RRAN iii, iv, 481. Most of the charter, including the phrase ‘my crown’ but excluding ‘of other churches of my kingdom’, is identical with a charter of Stephen, no. 399 (1140), and they could both be modelled on Henry II’s charter.

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may, therefore, corroborate the reported use of a royal style on its lost seal. And the diplomatic use of the title without consecration and coronation was not as unprecedented as it might seem, for while Matilda had been crowned and anointed as regina Romanorum,⁷²⁹ she had never been as empress.⁷³⁰ In her German documents she was accordingly always styled regina Romanorum.⁷³¹ Yet it was the imperial title which she used in her English documents⁷³² (and, reportedly, on the lost seal of her charter to Geoffrey), but not on the surviving seals attached to them. In the vernacular form ⫹PERERIC, it was also found on coins struck in her name with dies distributed from London in 1141 (on the obverse of which it is she who arguably appears crowned).⁷³³ It is perhaps no surprise that another of the documents she issued at Westminster at the same time as her charter to Geoffrey was a writ in favour of William fitzOtto, the official in charge of die-cutting.⁷³⁴ The evidence for the title Anglorum regina or REGINA ANGLIAE being occasionally assumed on Matilda’s behalf in 1141 is thin and perilous, unlike that for Anglorum domina. But it cannot be dismissed as easily as all commentators since Round have been prepared to dismiss it. It is of a piece with the other inconsistent attempts to express the unprecedented nature of Matilda’s position, particularly in the wake of the king’s capture at Lincoln. Her status in Normandy is, if anything, even more problematic. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Henry I had ‘caused archbishops and bishops and abbots and earls and all the thegns that were there to swear to give England and Normandy after his death into the hand of his daughter’.⁷³⁵ William of Malmesbury reported that, at the Council of Winchester in 1141, Henry of Blois ⁷²⁹ RT, GND ii. 218. The coronation took place on 25 July 1110 at Mainz, when she was 8 years old. Matilda herself is likely to be the source for Robert’s detailed knowledge of her life, for he was a monk at Bec, where she gave birth to Geoffrey and spent some time convalescing: GND ii. 244–6. M. M. Chibnall, ‘The Empress Matilda and Bec-Hellouin’, ANS x (1987), 35–49, at 45, points out that he even knew that the archbishop of Trier had held her in his arms while the archbishop of Cologne anointed and crowned her. ⁷³⁰ Her husband was crowned and anointed as emperor in Rome in 1111. She took part in one or possibly two crown-wearings in Rome in 1117, but she was never crowned and anointed as empress by a pope: Chibnall, Matilda, 32–3. She later claimed, however, that she had ‘more than once worn the imperial crown while being led by the hands of the pope through the city of Romulus’: RT, GND ii. 246. Ulger, bishop of Angers, her advocate at the Second Lateran Council, falsely claimed that she had been anointed as empress by Pope Paschal II: John of Salisbury, HP 85. JW iii. 134 mistakenly thought that she had been consecrated as empress at the time of her marriage in 1114. ⁷³¹ Chibnall, Matilda, 32, n. 49. ⁷³² It is found for the first time in RRAN ii. no. 898, dated by Chibnall, Matilda, 70, n. 26, to 1126 ⫻ 28. Some chroniclers were more pedantic than the chancery scribes who drafted Matilda’s documents: according to William of Malmesbury, HNa 92, she was quondam imperatrix; according to John of Worcester and his Gloucester interpolator, iii. 268, she was eximperatrix. Gilbert Foliot, GFL no. 26, p. 63 terms her ‘regina Romani orbis’. ⁷³³ M. Blackburn, ‘Coinage and Currency’, in King (ed.), Anarchy, 145–205, at 173–5, pl. V (e). Of course, the crowned bust is exactly the same as that of Stephen on coins of type 1, with which this issue is, with the exception of the inscription, identical. So it could be viewed as a surviving depiction of Stephen, rather than new one of Matilda. Nevertheless, it proclaims her regality, for minting had been a royal monopoly since the early 10th century. ⁷³⁴ RRAN iii. no. 316. ⁷³⁵ ASC (E) s.a. 1127.

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had said that King Henry had ensured that all the bishops and barons ‘swore the whole kingdom of England, and also the duchy of Normandy, to his daughter.’⁷³⁶ Although most of the sources concentrate on her claim in England, it is clear that the designation was intended to encompass Normandy too. Gilbert Foliot makes this quite clear.⁷³⁷ As with Robert Curthose during the lifetime of his father, the expectation thereby created in Normandy led to conflict with the reigning duke. According to Orderic, it was in Matilda’s case occasioned by her husband, who demanded certain castles which he claimed the king had agreed to give him when he had married her. There was, however, no consensus about which of them was to blame.⁷³⁸ In Orderic’s account, Henry refused to hand over the castles in his lifetime in terms which echo William the Conqueror’s rejections of Curthose’s importunate requests. The final rupture between father and daughter was caused by his treatment of William Talvas, son of Robert de Bellême, identified by Orderic and Robert of Torigni as one of those Norman magnates who secretly favoured ‘the Angevins’.⁷³⁹ The king had seized William’s castles,⁷⁴⁰ no doubt by means of the garrisons he had kept in the citadels since he had restored them to William in 1119.⁷⁴¹ In protest, Matilda flounced off to Anjou, taking with her those grandsons who had so warmed the old man’s heart. When Robert came to write up these events again in the 1150s for his Chronicle, he added that there was ‘a greater cause of this discord’.⁷⁴² His explanation of it is problematical, not least because his syntax leaves something to be desired.⁷⁴³ He appears to say that the king refused a demand from Geoffrey and Matilda to ‘do’ fidelitas for all fortifications in Normandy and England. It is inconceivable that a demand for fealty could have been put to Henry. Perhaps Geoffrey and Matilda were trying to secure some sort of royal guarantee of future possession of the castles, for they are said to have made their demand on account of their sons, ‘who were the legitimate heirs of King Henry’.⁷⁴⁴ Alternatively, the text may be garbled. Robert may originally have meant that the king objected to Geoffrey and Matilda attempting to secure fidelitas from William Talvas, count of Ponthieu, whose involvement in the final conflict between Henry and his daughter and son-in-law is described by Robert in the same paragraph. But William Talvas held no castles in England, and he is distinguished, as a factor in the conflict, from this ‘greater cause’. Whatever the precise nature of the ‘greater cause of discord’, it is clear from the accounts of both Robert and Orderic that Geoffrey and Matilda were not the only ones aggrieved by Henry I’s reservation of ducal rights in baronial castles and his strengthening of fortifications, particularly on the marches.⁷⁴⁵ They were able to capitalize on the resentments thereby engendered. ⁷³⁶ HNa 92. ⁷³⁷ GFL no. 26 p. 63. ⁷³⁸ Orderic vi. 444. HH 490 blames Matilda. ⁷³⁹ Orderic vi. 444; RT, GND ii. 264. ⁷⁴⁰ Orderic vi. 446; RT, GND ii. 264, cf. 252. ⁷⁴¹ Orderic vi. 224. ⁷⁴² RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 128. ⁷⁴³ GND i. p. xci. ⁷⁴⁴ M. M. Chibnall, ‘Normandy’, in King (ed.), Anarchy, 93–115, at 96, suggests something along these lines. ⁷⁴⁵ RT, GND ii. 252; Yver, ‘Châteaux forts’, 94–9.

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Immediately on Henry’s death they attempted to seize control of several frontier castles. But as Robert of Torigni recognized, it was a nice question whether those who held these castles, like Juhel de Mayenne, did so subsequently by their concession,⁷⁴⁶ or whether, as in the case of Guigan Algason in Domfront, Argentan, and Exmes, they simply recognized Matilda as their naturalis domina.⁷⁴⁷ As far as Matilda and Geoffrey were concerned, these supposed concessions were made on condition that the grantee ‘should faithfully assist her in acquiring her inheritance’.⁷⁴⁸ By the time Robert wrote his Chronicle the inheritance had become that of Geoffrey’s wife and sons,⁷⁴⁹ but it was never said to be Geoffrey’s. Matilda’s claim to the duchy was, therefore, no different from her claim to England. According to Robert of Torigni, Henry I wanted her ‘to succeed to the kingdom of England after his death by hereditary right’, and Normandy was ‘her inheritance’.⁷⁵⁰ But in the immediate aftermath of her father’s death, her claim was just as ineffective there, despite the fact that, possibly at Geoffrey’s instigation, she had hurried to Normandy.⁷⁵¹ With the exception of the likes of William Talvas, Juhel de Mayenne, and Guigan Algason on the peripheries, there was little resistance to Stephen in the duchy. The only other identifiable Norman equivalent of Baldwin de Redvers⁷⁵² was Rabel de Tancarville, and even he held out for only eighteen months.⁷⁵³ On the contrary, when news of Stephen’s coronation reached Normandy, an assembly of Norman magnates overturned in his favour the decision it had just taken to elevate his elder brother Theobald IV, count of Blois, as duke.⁷⁵⁴ Both decisions had been made despite the undertakings given to Matilda, and possibly to her sons. They indicate the strength of anti-Angevin sentiment throughout much of the duchy, for the house of Blois was the traditional enemy of Anjou.⁷⁵⁵ As in England, the fact that the barons had not done homage made it much easier for them to renege. In this respect Matilda’s case was very different from Robert Curthose’s. She retained the foothold, centred on Argentan, which she had secured in the duchy immediately after her father’s death. In one of her very few documents surviving from this period, she is styled ‘imperatrix regis Anglorum filia’. The only distinction between this and documents issued subsequently in England is the absence of her father’s name. She adopted no specifically Norman title. The charter is addressed to Richard the vicomte, her ministri, and all her faithful men of Argentan.⁷⁵⁶ Clearly Guigan Algason, through whose good offices she had, on her ⁷⁴⁶ GND ii. 274, states that Matilda ‘conceded’ Ambrières, Gorron, and Châtillon-sur-Colmont to Juhel de Mayenne, but that Juhel said they were ‘in his land’; cf. ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 128. ⁷⁴⁷ Orderic vi. 454. ⁷⁴⁸ GND ii. 274. ⁷⁴⁹ CSHR iv. 128. ⁷⁵⁰ GND ii. 240, 275. ⁷⁵¹ Orderic vi. 454. ⁷⁵² Baldwin eventually sought refuge on his estates in the Cotentin: Orderic vi. 510. ⁷⁵³ Orderic vi. 482–4; RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 132; RRAN iii. no. 749 (1137). ⁷⁵⁴ Orderic vi. 454; RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 128–9. ⁷⁵⁵ Chibnall, Matilda, 54. ⁷⁵⁶ RRAN iii. no. 567; the dating given there is corrected by Chibnall, Matilda, 67, n. 19, 70, n. 29, 74, to 1136 ⫻ 39, probably 1138 ⫻ 39. Another surviving document which is probably to be dated to these years is RRAN iii. no. 20, in which her title is identical. As Chibnall (p. 70) points out,

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arrival in the duchy, secured Argentan and the other towns of which he had been ‘vicomte by the king’s command’,⁷⁵⁷ was not the only one there to have recognized her as domina. Unsurprisingly, Count Geoffrey was also ‘received by . . . the castellans who were of the Talvas fee’ when he invaded the duchy with William Talvas in tow.⁷⁵⁸ But even with such intermittent military interventions from her husband,⁷⁵⁹ it seems that Matilda was incapable of breaking out of this redoubt prior to her departure for England in 1139. The only significant Angevin advance was occasioned by the defection from the king of her half-brother, Robert of Gloucester, and his enlistment in the Angevin cause, in 1138.⁷⁶⁰ The paucity of her surviving charters from this period⁷⁶¹ is testimony to the ineffectiveness in Normandy, as in England, of her father’s arrangements for her succession. As Geoffrey’s unsuccessful demand for castles from his father-in-law suggests,⁷⁶² King Henry seems to have been determined to deny Matilda the wherewithal successfully to assert her ius in Normandy, and perhaps in England too.⁷⁶³ It was not the success of Stephen’s strategy for the defence of Normandy, but an unwillingness on the part of most of the Norman magnates to accept Angevin domination of the duchy,⁷⁶⁴ and their desire to have the same ruler in Normandy as in England, which rendered those arrangements ineffective. Writing with the benefit of hindsight, William of Malmesbury thought that it had been the marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda which had prompted men ‘to assert, as if by some prophetic spirit, that after [King Henry’s] death they would fail to keep their oath’.⁷⁶⁵ Matilda’s ius to Normandy therefore seemed indistinguishable from her ius to England.⁷⁶⁶ But after her arrival in England in 1139 her roles in kingdom and duchy came in practice to differ markedly, and so, as a consequence, did her husband’s. When her cause in England was at a very low ebb in the spring of 1142, it was suggested that Geoffrey should intervene, for ‘he ought by right to defend the inheritance of his wife and sons in England’.⁷⁶⁷ He did not answer the

it confirmed grants by English kings of English churches to St Nicholas, Angers, and therefore assumed that she already had rights in England. The reference to her father as an antecessor means that it must post-date his death, despite the dating suggested by the editors. A writ addressed to present and future vicarii of Exmes, in which she is entitled ‘imperatrix, filia regis Henrici’, probably dates from this period: Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, 294–5. ⁷⁵⁷ Orderic vi. 454. It seems that he had quickly been replaced by Richard. ⁷⁵⁸ Ibid. 454. ⁷⁵⁹ Ibid. 486, 512 reports that a two-year truce was negotiated between him and Stephen in 1137; cf. RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 132. ⁷⁶⁰ Orderic vi. 514–16; HNa 40–2; RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 136. ⁷⁶¹ Chibnall, Matilda, 70, n. 29, appears to prefer 1148 to the editors’ dating 1136 ⫻ 38 for RRAN iii. no. 805. But Chibnall, ‘Normandy’, 104, n. 61, reverts to 1138. ⁷⁶² Orderic vi. 444. ⁷⁶³ Chibnall, ‘Normandy’, 97, suggests that Henry may have been ‘niggardly’ in providing a territorial base for her in England; but Round, G. de M., 2, pointed out that Henry had placed Canterbury and Dover in the hands of Robert of Gloucester, as if he were trying to ensure that someone he trusted would control the route to London after his death. ⁷⁶⁴ For anti-Angevin sentiment, see Orderic vi. 466–8, 472, 526. ⁷⁶⁵ HNa 10. ⁷⁶⁶ HNa 42. ⁷⁶⁷ HNa 122, cf. 124; RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 143.

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summons, but the terms in which it was allegedly put show that in William of Malmesbury’s view he would have fought in England as he did in Normandy, as, in Orderic’s phrase, no more than ‘his wife’s stipendiary’.⁷⁶⁸ This downbeat assessment of his position in Normandy and potentially in England was not confined to certain chroniclers. Thus when Matilda issued her first charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville, just before her planned coronation at midsummer 1141, she granted him land in Normandy as well as in England. The charter was addressed, amongst others, to ‘all her faithful men, French and English, of the whole of England and Normandy’. It made no reference to her husband.⁷⁶⁹ As John Prestwich has pointed out, even someone of the empress’s legendary tactlessness could not have expected her husband to attend her coronation as no more than one of the guests. It follows that in 1141 she did not envisage his playing any role at all in England,⁷⁷⁰ and gave no indication that in Normandy he would be anything more than her ‘stipendiary’. It was evidently unnecessary for him to be recorded as playing any formal part in the grant of land in Normandy. Meanwhile, however, resistance to Geoffrey of Anjou’s interventions in Normandy was crumbling in the wake of Stephen’s capture⁷⁷¹ and Theobald of Blois’ refusal to accept the duchy and kingdom subsequently offered to him in desperation by the Norman magnates.⁷⁷² Having been bitten once in the aftermath of Henry I’s death, Theobald was twice shy. But the rapid spread of Geoffrey’s influence in the duchy had not yet made any apparent difference to his formal status there. This is clear from Matilda’s second surviving charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville, issued some time in the late spring or early summer of 1142, when she was seeking her husband’s intervention in England. It was addressed in the same fashion as the first charter, and also granted lands in Normandy as well as England. But, unlike the first charter, it referred to her husband. Indeed, it did so repeatedly, always entitling him comes Andegaviae.⁷⁷³ It invoked the day on which Geoffrey de Mandeville had ‘adhered to the service of my lord the count of Anjou and myself ’,⁷⁷⁴ and made several references to the ⁷⁶⁸ Orderic vi. 482. ⁷⁶⁹ RRAN iii. no. 274. ⁷⁷⁰ J. O. Prestwich, ‘Geoffrey de Mandeville: A Further Comment’, EHR ciii (1988), 960–6, at 964. ⁷⁷¹ Orderic vi. 546–50; RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 142. ⁷⁷² Orderic vi. 548. ⁷⁷³ RRAN iii. no. 275, cf. no. 634. For the date, see Round, G. de M., 163–200; Prestwich, ‘Treason’; ‘Further Comment’, passim; ‘Last Words on Geoffrey de Mandeville’, EHR cv (1990), 670–1. It seems to me that Prestwich has conclusively refuted R. H. C. Davis’s case for redating the charter to the late summer of 1141:’Geoffrey de Mandeville Reconsidered’, EHR lxxix (1964), 299–307; defended in EHR ciii (1988), 313–17, 967–8; cv (1990), 671–2; King Stephen, 157–60. One consideration of which Prestwich might have made more than he does in ‘Treason’, 294, is the improbability of Geoffrey fighting in Stephen’s cause alongside the Londoners at Winchester almost immediately after the date attributed by Davis to Matilda’s second charter for Geoffrey, in which the Londoners are described as his ‘mortal enemies’. As Charles Coulson, ‘The Castles of the Anarchy’, in King (ed.), Anarchy, 67–92, at 86, suggests, these are likely to be Geoffrey’s own words. ⁷⁷⁴ On the dating of Round and Prestwich, this cannot have been the ceremony referred to in the first charter, when Geoffrey had become Matilda’s man, for he had in the interim gone over to the king, and then reverted to the Angevin cause. Geoffrey’s first oath of fidelitas to the empress, taken in

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count of Anjou’s either sharing or prospectively sharing power with her in England. It envisaged, for instance, that a grant she made to Arnulf de Mandeville, Geoffrey’s illegitimate⁷⁷⁵ son, would be held ‘of my lord the count of Anjou and of me in chief hereditarily (in capite haereditarie), by him and his heirs of us and our heirs’. This is the first reference in any post-Conquest document to holding in chief of two lords jointly. If ‘my lord the count of Anjou and I should wish it’, Geoffrey de Mandeville would receive the huge estate which Eudo Dapifer, his maternal grandfather, had held in England at the time of his death in 1120, but which had then reverted into the king’s hands,⁷⁷⁶ in exchange for most of Geoffrey’s lands and knights’ fees. Their reason for doing this would be ‘quia hoc est rectum suum’.⁷⁷⁷ In effect, the inheritance of Geoffrey’s father and paternal grandfather would be exchanged for the larger one of his maternal grandfather. That her husband’s prospective role in England represented a novel departure by the empress is suggested by the contrast with her first charter for Geoffrey de Mandeville. It follows that she had been forced by events in the interim radically to alter her plans for her husband in England. Yet the second charter says nothing explicitly about her husband’s powers in Normandy, much of which was by this time under his sway. In giving Geoffrey de Mandeville all Eudo Dapifer’s lands in Normandy together with his stewardship, ‘ut rectum suum’, she made no reference to her husband. She acknowledged his role not where it was already a reality, but where it was an imminent possibility. The only other charter of the empress to suggest that he might share power with her in England is in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville’s brother-in-law, Aubrey de Vere. It shares witnesses, hostages, wording, and place-date with her second charter to Geoffrey, and must have been issued on the same occasion.⁷⁷⁸ These two charters, issued when there seemed a real prospect of the count of Anjou coming to England, suggest that by early 1142 there was a considerable gap between the real power which he already exercised in Normandy—and potentially in England—and his formal status. He could no longer accurately be described as a mere ‘stipendiary’ of his wife. In Normandy that gap began to be bridged soon afterwards. As his takeover of the duchy proceeded apace, there is some evidence that he came to be regarded as duke.⁷⁷⁹ Even if this evidence be discounted, Robert of Torigni was firmly of the view that Geoffrey became dux Normanorum when the castle garrison in Rouen the wake of Stephen’s capture, and his subsequent reversion to Stephen’s cause in the late summer of 1141, are described in a passage in HNa, 102, n. g, which King regards as an interpolation. ⁷⁷⁵ J. C. Holt, ‘1153: The Treaty of Winchester’, repr. in CE 271–90, at 276. ⁷⁷⁶ W. Farrer, Honors and Knights’ Fees, 3 vols. (Manchester, 1923–5), iii. 164–295. ⁷⁷⁷ Prestwich, ‘Treason’, 290, 293. She also ‘gave back’ to Geoffrey ‘ut rectum suum’ the lands which Eudo Dapifer had held in Normandy. For Eudo and the Mandevilles, see Hollister, ‘Misfortunes’, 123–7. ⁷⁷⁸ RRAN iii. no. 634; see Prestwich, ‘Treason’, 290–1, 311. ⁷⁷⁹ Gallia Christiana, xi. Insr. 162, a charter of William Talvas, count of Ponthieu (19 Sept. 1143), cited by Haskins, Norman Institutions, 130, n. 24. In RRAN iii. no. 370 (1143) Matilda is made to style her husband dux Normannorum et comes Andegavorum. But it is a cartulary copy.

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surrendered to him in April 1144.⁷⁸⁰ His evidence may be corroborated by Duke Henry’s charter of 1150–1 in favour of the citizens of Rouen, which referred to ‘the day on which the citizens of Rouen became the men of my father’.⁷⁸¹ Robert later contemplated the addition of a history of Geoffrey as duke to the Gesta Normannorum Ducum,⁷⁸² so he had no doubt that Geoffrey had been duke. But no previous duke had acceded in this manner, and views clearly differed. The Annales Uticenses of St-Evroult, for instance, mention no new duke until Geoffrey’s son Henry was given the title in 1150.⁷⁸³ And Geoffrey’s assumption of the ducal title entailed Matilda’s tacit withdrawal from the claim to Normandy which (like her identical one to England) underpinned her first charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville, and even from the sort of unprecedented joint power apparently envisaged for England (but not explicitly for Normandy) in her second charter. Although she and her sons were bound to the terms of Duke Geoffrey’s charter of liberties to the citizens of Rouen⁷⁸⁴ and consented to his charter of 11 October 1148 in favour of the Abbey of Mortemer,⁷⁸⁵ she did not participate otherwise in his Norman acta. It is striking that she and her husband seem not to have issued any charters jointly, whereas each of them did so with their eldest son. Such a withdrawal by Matilda from any formal part in Norman affairs was made easier by the fact that her only elaboration of her existing style ‘imperatrix Henrici regis filia’ related exclusively to England and the English.⁷⁸⁶ It appears, for instance, in both her charters for Geoffrey de Mandeville, and in that for Aubrey de Vere. There had never been any Norman element in her title.⁷⁸⁷ But Matilda’s claims, however residual, were not the only complicating factor where Geoffrey’s status in Normandy was concerned. There were also those of their eldest son. Henry is first referred to by his mother in her second charter for Geoffrey de Mandeville and the parallel one in favour of Aubrey de Vere.⁷⁸⁸ He was 9 years old when they were issued. In the former she agreed with Geoffrey de Mandeville that ‘my lord the count of Anjou, I, and our sons shall not make any peace or concord with the burgesses of London, except by the concession and assent of the aforesaid Earl Geoffrey’. If the plural ‘sons’ is not simply a transcriber’s error,⁷⁸⁹ her other undertakings in both charters related to her eldest son alone. For she pledged herself to ensure that her husband and son would pledge faith in the hands of the respective beneficiaries, just as she had done. Henry is not included in the prospective joint ⁷⁸⁰ ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 148. ⁷⁸¹ RRAN iii. no. 729. ⁷⁸² GND i. p. lxxix. ⁷⁸³ Ordericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. A. Le Prévost, Société de l’histoire de France, 5 vols. (Paris, 1838–55), v. 139–73, at 162. ⁷⁸⁴ Referred to in Duke Henry’s charter, RRAN iii. no. 729. ⁷⁸⁵ Ibid., no. 599. ⁷⁸⁶ Above, pp. 218–21. ⁷⁸⁷ According to William of Malmesbury, HNa 92, Henry of Blois described her as Angliae Normanniaeque domina in a speech delivered at the council in Winchester in April 1141. ⁷⁸⁸ RRAN iii. nos. 275, 634. ⁷⁸⁹ Note that RRAN iii no. 729, Henry’s charter to the citizens of Rouen, refers to a previous charter by Duke Geoffrey in which Geoffrey had undertaken to ensure that Matilda and their sons would bind themselves to his concessions.

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arrangement for England envisaged in the charter for Geoffrey; but Matilda seems to have lost no time in fulfilling the undertaking she had given to Aubrey de Vere about Henry. For Henry issued a confirmatory charter, closely modelled on his mother’s, in which he was entitled ‘filius filie Regis Henrici rectus heres Anglie et Normannie’.⁷⁹⁰ His mother had pledged her faith not in Aubrey’s hand, but in that of Geoffrey de Mandeville (thereby underlining the intimate connection between Matilda’s concessions to Geoffrey and to Aubrey). Henry was probably on the continent when he issued his charter, because he swore in the hand of Hugh of Ing, a vassal of Geoffrey, ‘just as my mother the empress pledged faith in the hand of Earl Geoffrey’.⁷⁹¹ It may be inferred that Matilda also fulfilled her undertaking to ensure that her husband should bind himself to respect the grants to Aubrey in the same way, although no documentary evidence survives. The same must be true of the undertakings she gave about her husband and her eldest son to Geoffrey de Mandeville, for her concessions to Aubrey seem to have been contingent on those to Geoffrey. What were the implications of binding the 9-year-old Henry in this way? Henry’s style in his charter confirming his mother’s grants to Aubrey de Vere presented him as rectus heres of both England and Normandy by virtue of being the son of King Henry’s daughter.⁷⁹² No wonder his mother’s charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville, to which Aubrey de Vere’s was an adjunct, defined the possessions of Geoffrey’s maternal grandfather in both Normandy and England as ‘rectum suum’.⁷⁹³ Geoffrey hoped to recover them, just as Henry aspired to succeed to England and Normandy. But Henry had not succeeded yet. Nor, in his capacity as rectus heres to both kingdom and duchy, had he replaced his mother, who continued to sustain the pretence that she was her father’s successor. As she withdrew in practice from Norman affairs it was, as we have seen, her husband’s formal status there which was transformed, not her son’s. Robert of Gloucester brought Henry to England in the autumn of 1142,⁷⁹⁴ but it was not until early 1144 that he began to appear as co-grantor in his mother’s charters. In one, issued jointly with her, it was his relationship with his father, rather than her, which was stressed, for he is entitled ‘filius comitis Andegavorum’.⁷⁹⁵ The beneficiary, Humphrey de Bohun, had become ‘our liege man against all men’. It seems, therefore, that by this stage homage was being done jointly to mother and son, rather than to wife and husband, as apparently envisaged in Matilda’s charters of 1142 for Geoffrey de Mandeville and Aubrey de Vere.⁷⁹⁶ Another charter, probably also ⁷⁹⁰ RRAN iii. no. 635. ⁷⁹¹ Round, G. de M., 185–6, 384. ⁷⁹² HNa 126 says that Geoffrey of Anjou allowed Henry to come to England in 1142 so that the nobles would be inspired to fight for the cause of the iustus heres. ⁷⁹³ Above, p. 226. ⁷⁹⁴ HNa 126; A. L. Poole, ‘Henry Plantagenet’s Early Visits to England’, EHR xlvii (1932), 447–52. ⁷⁹⁵ RRAN iii. no. 111. This may indicate that it was issued before Geoffrey of Anjou became duke. ⁷⁹⁶ It is difficult to know how seriously to take RRAN iii. no. 635’s statement that Aubrey de Vere should have all their assarts free and quit of all pleas ‘up to the day on which they had adhered to the service of my lord the count of Anjou and myself ’. This might mean that Aubrey and his men had done homage to father and son. Alternatively, it might be evidence of the scribe mindlessly copying Matilda’s charter.

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from 1144, was issued by Matilda ‘imperatrix Henrici regis filia et Anglorum domina et Henricus eius filius’.⁷⁹⁷ During his second visit to England, in late 1146 and early 1147,⁷⁹⁸ the practice continued.⁷⁹⁹ But it is not clear whether those charters of his mother which do not name him as a co-grantor should be ascribed to periods when he was not in England.⁸⁰⁰ What is clear is that he had not replaced her in England; he was still rectus heres. She expressed it rather differently in a charter probably issued in the summer of 1141 and certainly before Christmas 1143: he was ‘my heir’.⁸⁰¹ The title adopted on Henry’s behalf in his charter for Aubrey de Vere skilfully avoided specifying precisely whose heir he was. He remained rectus heres until his mother left England for good early in 1148. Thereafter she dropped the style domina Anglorum, which she had not in any case used at all consistently. And he began to issue charters in his own right in England, using the style ‘ducis Normannorum et comitis Andegavorum filius’⁸⁰² until he replaced his father as duke. Even then he used his Norman title, rather than assuming anything analogous to his mother’s domina Anglorum. He had in practice replaced her in England, but this was not reflected in his title. And she in Normandy nevertheless issued jointly with him two further extant charters in favour of English beneficiaries, in both cases as ‘imperatrix Henrici regis filia’.⁸⁰³ Thus, until 1148 at the earliest, Henry remained no more than rectus heres in England. It was in that capacity that he pledged himself in 1142 to observe his mother’s concessions to Aubrey de Vere and, presumably, to Geoffrey de Mandeville. In Normandy the situation was even more complicated. From April 1144, with the surrender of the citadel of Rouen and the homage of Rouen’s citizens,⁸⁰⁴ Geoffrey of Anjou was recognized within Normandy as duke. He performed the traditional homage to the French king shortly afterwards.⁸⁰⁵ He issued charters as ‘dux Normannorum et comes Andegavorum’,⁸⁰⁶ some of them jointly with ‘Henricus filius eius’.⁸⁰⁷ Henry issued some in his own right, but as he did so with ⁷⁹⁷ RRAN iii. no. 372; cf. Worcestershire Record Office 192. 154 no. 1, identified by Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, 288, n. 63 and appendix I, no. 1 (dated either 1144 or 1146 ⫻ 47). ⁷⁹⁸ GS 204. ⁷⁹⁹ RRAN iii. no. 43, now redated 1146 ⫻ 47: Davis, King Stephen, 169; Chibnall, Matilda, 149. Henry is entitled ‘filius ducis Normannorum’, and the charter is addressed to ‘all their fideles, Frenchborn and English, of the whole of England and Normandy’. ⁸⁰⁰ RRAN iii. nos. 703 (1144 ⫻ 47, probably 1144); 839 (1141 ⫻ 48). ⁸⁰¹ Ibid., no. 116. For the revised date, see E. King, ‘Waleran, Count of Meulan, Earl of Worcester (1104–1166)’, in D. Greenway, C. Holdsworth, and J. Sayers (eds.), Tradition and Change: Essays Presented to Marjorie Chibnall (Cambridge, 1985), 165–81, at 171. ⁸⁰² RRAN iii. no. 420 (1149 ⫻ March 1150), 795 (13 Apr. 1149). ⁸⁰³ Ibid., nos. 88, 836 (both 1150 ⫻ 51). ⁸⁰⁴ Above, p. 227. ⁸⁰⁵ This is strongly implied by John of Marmoutier, ‘Historia Gaufridi ducis’, 215, cf. 72; and less clearly by RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 169; WN, CSHR i. 159; see Lot, Fidèles ou vassaux, 204, n. 1; Lemarignier, Hommage en marche, 45, n. 53. ⁸⁰⁶ RRAN iii. nos. 17 (1144 ⫻ 50), 599 (11 Oct. 1147), 780 (1144 ⫻ 50). ⁸⁰⁷ RRAN iii. nos. 78, 304 (1144 ⫻ 50); no. 780 (1146 ⫻ 50) is issued ‘consilio et concessu Henrici filii mei’, cf. no 79 (1144 ⫻ 50).

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the style ‘ducis Normannorum et comitis Andegavorum filius’⁸⁰⁸ he was clearly not yet duke.⁸⁰⁹ Some seem to have considered that he had become duke in 1149, after his knighting by King David of Scotland.⁸¹⁰ But it was when he returned to Normandy from his third visit to England, in December 1149 or January 1150, that his father ‘restored to him his inheritance from his mother, that is, the duchy of Normandy’,⁸¹¹ and relinquished the ducal title.⁸¹² Henry in turn did homage to Louis VII.⁸¹³ Prior to his father’s death in September 1151, he issued charters as dux Normannorum, including a reissue of Geoffrey’s charter in favour of the citizens of Rouen.⁸¹⁴ A few continued to be issued jointly with his mother,⁸¹⁵ but none jointly with his father. This was the first occasion in Norman history when a duke had transferred the title and, it seems, the function to his son during his own lifetime. That he subsequently lent his son military assistance within the duchy does not mean, pace Le Patourel, that he was still duke.⁸¹⁶ Nor does the issuing of a charter in favour of a Norman beneficiary in which he is entitled Andegavorum comes.⁸¹⁷ Geoffrey’s role as much more than his wife’s ‘stipendiary’ meant that the situation in the duchy was even more complicated than that in England, where he never became the factor envisaged in his wife’s second charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville. But the handover to the rectus heres could be much more clear-cut in Normandy because Geoffrey had taken the duchy from his rival, whereas Matilda had manifestly failed to take England. Had she done so, and been enthroned as planned in the summer of 1141,⁸¹⁸ there would in any case have been no question of her ceding to her eldest son during her lifetime. The unprecedented nature of Matilda’s position and, by extension, those of her husband and their eldest son, occasioned a good deal of reflection on the part of contemporaries, as they sought to justify the defectio⁸¹⁹ from her which acceptance of Stephen had amounted to. Indeed, these attempted justifications provide ⁸⁰⁸ RRAN iii. no. 18 (1146 ⫻ 50), 735 (Easter 1147 ⫻ Easter 1148). ⁸⁰⁹ J. Le Patourel, ‘Angevin Successions and the Angevin Empire’, in id., Feudal Empires: Norman and Plantagenet, ed. M. Jones (London, 1984), ch. 9, pp. 14–15, argues unconvincingly that they were co-dukes. ⁸¹⁰ John of Hexham, in SD ii. 323; Arnulf of Lisieux, Letters, ed. F. Barlow, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., lxi (1939), no. 4. ⁸¹¹ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 161; cf. ‘Annales Uticenses’ (of St-Évroult), in Orderic, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. Le Prévost, v. 162; ‘Annals of St.- Étienne’ in RHF xii. 780; ‘Annales de St-Aubin’, ‘Annales de Vendôme’, ‘Annales de St-Serge, continuatio prima’, in L. Halphen (ed.), Recueil d’annales angevines et vendômoises (Paris, 1903), pp. 12, 70–1, 100; Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, Opera, i. 291; Roger of Howden, Chronica, i. 211. For the date, see Z. N. Brooke and C. N. L. Brooke, ‘Henry II, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine’, EHR lxi (1946), 81–9, at 84. ⁸¹² In charters issued by Geoffrey after January 1150 only his comital title is used: RRAN iii. nos. 440 (soon after 7 Sept. 1151, the date of Geoffrey’s death), 806 (1150 ⫻ 51; an original); Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Aubin d’Angers, ed. B. de Broussillon, 3 vols. (Angers, 1896–1903), ii. no. 864 (10 June 1151). Le Patourel, ‘Angevin Successions’, 14, n. 55, attempts to argue around this evidence. ⁸¹³ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 162. ⁸¹⁴ RRAN iii. nos. 167, 299, 324, 705–7, 728, 729 (the Rouen charter), 731, 809 (all datable to 1150 ⫻ 51). ⁸¹⁵ Ibid. nos. 71, 88, 836; cf. 80 (all 1150 ⫻ Sept. 1151). ⁸¹⁶ Le Patourel, ‘Angevin Successions’, 14, n. 54, discussing RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 161–2. ⁸¹⁷ RRAN iii. no. 806. ⁸¹⁸ GS 124. ⁸¹⁹ HNa 32.

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the most coherent analyses of the obligations to Matilda arising from the oaths taken to her, and of her position subsequent to her father’s death. It is to this issue that I now turn.

THE FORCE OF FIDELITAS King David of Scotland had become the first layman to swear to Matilda on 1 January 1127.⁸²⁰ The author of the Gesta Stephani reports that, probably in 1138, Matilda sent him a letter in his capacity as her uncle and one bound to her by oath. She claimed that she had been ‘denied her father’s bequest and deprived of the kingdom promised and sworn to her, that the laws had been dissolved and justice trampled underfoot, and that the fides of the barons of England and the foedus to which they had sworn had been ruptured and totally disregarded’.⁸²¹ Certainly when David was himself forced to come to terms with Stephen, his conscience was sufficiently pricked by his recollection of this oath for him to have his son Henry do homage to the king, rather than doing it himself.⁸²² It was on the validity of these oaths and, according to the Gesta Stephani, the foedus they created, that debate centred. The author of the Gesta Stephani distorted chronology in order to assert that Matilda’s original designation had been arranged as part of the marriage alliance with Anjou. According to him, her father had had to force the barons to swear; and as he lay on his deathbed, ‘he was very openly penitent about the oath which he had violently imposed on his barons’.⁸²³ The dying king allegedly wanted everyone to recognize that what he had ‘approved for a certain reason in his lifetime’ should not remain unalterable after his death. This account was manifestly tendentious, for Matilda’s designation had long preceded her betrothal to Geoffrey of Anjou; and the whole point of the ceremony, and its repetitions, was that the designation should come into effect on Henry’s death. The Gesta Stephani makes no allusion to the conditional nature of the original oaths, which was elsewhere invoked as the loophole permitting the king to revoke his bequest.⁸²⁴ Rather, the author asserts that they were invalid because they were taken under compulsion. By pointed contrast, in 1135 almost all the chief men of the kingdom had ‘received [Stephen] joyfully and reverently, and having been given many gifts by him, and likewise augmentation of their lands, they devoted themselves wholly to his service by a voluntary oath, after doing homage’.⁸²⁵ The author repeatedly draws attention to the voluntary nature of the initial submissions to Stephen: even when threats had been used to persuade Henry I’s low-born ⁸²⁰ HNa 8; GS 52; JW iii. 178 (the rewritten account entered under 1128). ⁸²¹ GS 52–4. ⁸²² Richard of Hexham, CSHR iii. 146. ⁸²³ GS 10–12. ⁸²⁴ See the summary of Arnulf of Séez’s address to the Second Lateran Council in John of Salisbury, HP 84. ⁸²⁵ GS 12.

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associates to come to court, they were said, in almost identical phraseology, to have ‘devoted themselves wholly to his service after doing homage with a voluntary oath’.⁸²⁶ In Canon Law any oath taken under compulsion was ipso facto invalid: Eadmer and William of Malmesbury hint at the use of this line of argument to nullify the oaths which Earl Harold had supposedly taken to Duke William in 1064 or 1065.⁸²⁷ That some of those who had initially submitted to Stephen later adopted it shows how far such oaths were considered to fall within the scope of ius divinum, as William of Newburgh would put it.⁸²⁸ But of course all such oaths had in the past been taken at the command of the designating ruler: this was so in early Normandy,⁸²⁹ and in the cases of Robert Curthose⁸³⁰ and William Adelin. In the latter instance, according to Eadmer, it was at his father’s ‘nod’ that all the barons ‘were made [William’s] men, with faith and oath’.⁸³¹ Perhaps for this reason, those who supported Stephen seem to have laid more stress on the unprecedented, conditional character of the oaths to Matilda. According to John of Salisbury, Arnulf, archdeacon of Séez, Stephen’s advocate at the Second Lateran Council, mentioned that the oath had been ‘violently extorted’, but explored the implications of its conditional character in some detail.⁸³² Arnulf argued that King Henry had availed himself of the provision for rescinding the designation, although the condition specified in the original oaths had remained unfulfilled, for Queen Adeliza bore him no son. Hugh Bigod and two unnamed knights had allegedly sworn to the truth of this; but Matilda’s advocate stated that Hugh had not been present at the deathbed.⁸³³ Nevertheless, what Robert of Gloucester allegedly described as Hugh’s second act of perjury—his first being that ‘against the empress’—seems to have been an important factor in securing Stephen a rapid coronation.⁸³⁴ Without the specific condition which was manifest in the omission of any act of homage to Matilda on 1 January 1127 or at the repeats of the ceremony, such a last-minute change of mind on Henry’s part would have been irrelevant, as William the Conqueror had been forced to acknowledge on his deathbed in the case of Robert Curthose.⁸³⁵ Moreover, it was the basis of William of Poitiers’ case for the legitimacy of the Conqueror’s succession to Edward the Confessor that Harold had perjured himself by accepting Edward the Confessor’s deathbed bequest to him. For by becoming king, Harold had broken the oath he had taken to Duke William when he had ‘given himself by his hands’ to the duke.⁸³⁶ As we have seen, William of Poitiers implied that the same was true of the English people as a whole.⁸³⁷ In view of the ⁸²⁶ GS 24. ⁸²⁷ HN 7–8; GR i. 452. ⁸²⁸ CSHR i. 32. ⁸²⁹ See e.g. GND ii. 80. ⁸³⁰ Orderic ii. 356. ⁸³¹ HN 237; cf. Orderic vi. 302. ⁸³² HP 84. ⁸³³ HP 85. ⁸³⁴ HH 728–30. It is likely that Henry of Huntingdon attended the Second Lateran Council as a member of Archbishop Theobald’s party: pp. liv–lv. ⁸³⁵ Engels, ‘De obitu’, 225–6, discussed above, p. 170. ⁸³⁶ GG 70, 120, cf. 76, 100; Tabuteau, ‘Rôle’, 153–4. ⁸³⁷ Above, p. 7.

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nature of the undertakings given by Harold and the English nobles, any lastminute change of mind on the part of Edward the Confessor was irrelevant. So both the belt and the braces of the case advanced on Stephen’s behalf against Matilda’s designation involved an implicit admission to the legitimacy of her claim, if it could be shown that the charges of coercion and revocation by Henry were ill-founded. But a third means of invalidating her case was also adopted by Stephen’s apologists, which sought to undercut the issues of the designation and the oaths. This suggests that Matilda’s claim to succeed her father was perceived as distinct from, if closely related to, the oaths by which the barons had bound themselves to recognize it. The most articulate discussion is found in Gilbert Foliot’s response to the (lost) manifesto in support of the empress which had been sent to him by Brian fitzCount.⁸³⁸ According to Gilbert, Brian’s starting point had been that everything which had been King Henry’s ought by right (iure deberi) to go to his only daughter begotten in lawful wedlock. Gilbert agreed, and thought that this could be established by divine, natural, and human law. If it were objected that the royal sceptre should go to a son rather than a daughter, then divine law as promulgated in Scripture proved the opposite. Gilbert had often heard Robert of Gloucester quoting a passage from the Book of Numbers. It referred to Zelophehad of the tribe of Manasseh, who had daughters but no son: ‘The Lord promulgated this law: that the daughters of Zelophehad should receive whole and entire what had been possessed by their father.’⁸³⁹ It was doubly relevant to Robert, for he had obtained the honour of Gloucester by marriage to Mabel, heiress of Robert fitzHamo.⁸⁴⁰ No wonder it was so frequently on his lips. In addition, Gilbert argued, natural law established that a father would have more affection for a daughter than for a nephew—a pointed comment. And both categories of human law—ius gentium and ius civile—made it wrong for a father to disinherit or disown a legitimate child except for certain heinous offences against him, none of which, Gilbert tendentiously claimed, had been committed by that model of filial piety, Matilda. Gilbert therefore offered learned reinforcement for Brian fitzCount’s view. He went on to develop it by recapitulating some of the debate to which he had listened at the Second Lateran Council in 1139. Ulger, bishop of Angers, Matilda’s advocate, had raised two points ‘in particular’ in her favour: ‘namely, hereditary right and the oath taken to the empress.’ As we have seen, William of Newburgh, ⁸³⁸ GFL no. 26, on which see A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and His Letters (Cambridge, 1965), 105–23. ⁸³⁹ Num. 36. The purported quotation is not accurate, and Gilbert does not mention the instruction to the daughters of Zelophehad that they should not marry outside their tribe, lest they should take their patrimony to another tribe. This was, of course, acutely relevant to the empress. In view of Earl Robert’s reputation for learning (below, n. 870), it is very likely that he picked up the allusion, and Gilbert certainly would have done so: Morey and Brooke, Gilbert Foliot, 117; D. Crouch, ‘Robert of Gloucester and the Daughters of Zelophehad’, JMH xi (1985), 227–43, at 233; Chibnall, Matilda, 85–6. ⁸⁴⁰ Hudson, LLL 111–12.

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drawing the line between human and divine law rather differently from Gilbert, had put the latter under the heading of ius divinum; the former he regarded as coming under that of ius humanum. In his view, Stephen had contravened both by becoming king.⁸⁴¹ Gilbert gives no details of the arguments advanced by Ulger under each of these heads; but he does report the response of Ulger’s adversary, Arnulf of Séez. Possibly because Gilbert was chiefly concerned with the issue of female inheritance—for it was on that topic that Brian had sought his opinion—he described Arnulf as concentrating on the legitimacy of Matilda’s claim, rather than on the mechanisms of designation. Arnulf, like a good lawyer, had stated that it was necessary to establish ‘what is the principal ius in the matter, on which that matter principally rests; and what is secondary, depending on that principal ius’.⁸⁴² The oath was secondary, and depended for its validity on the legitimacy of Matilda’s claim to be heir. The archdeacon had resurrected the case against the validity of Henry I’s marriage to Matilda’s mother which Archbishop Anselm himself had investigated and dismissed.⁸⁴³ If she were not the offspring of a legitimate marriage, she could not be heir. And if she were not heir, then the oaths which had been taken to her in that capacity were null and void. That would in turn mean that there could be no charge of perjury against Stephen—levelled against him at the council by Ulger⁸⁴⁴—and those who had acknowledged him as king. John of Salisbury and Gilbert do not agree on whether any attempt was made to refute Arnulf ’s allegation. According to Gilbert, it caused so much uproar that no response was possible; according to John, Ulger trounced his adversary.⁸⁴⁵ Whereas Gilbert considered that Arnulf had concentrated on this issue, John thought that he had also adduced the standard charges about Henry I’s having ‘violently extorted’ oaths, the conditional nature of which had allowed the king to change his mind on his deathbed. The issues of coercion and revocation were in effect independent of each other, for if the oaths were invalid because coerced it did not matter what the precise form of words had been. But the validity of the designation which the oaths sought to guarantee depended on the legitimacy of Matilda’s birth. To judge from Gilbert’s and John’s accounts, the problem which was not addressed directly at the council was what Matilda’s claim would have been if she were the offspring of a legitimate union, but it could nevertheless be shown that the oaths to her had been coerced or that Henry had changed his mind on his deathbed, and disinherited her. Gilbert evidently considered that disinheritance was a theoretical possibility, for he went to some lengths to demonstrate that it would not have been justified in Matilda’s case. He dealt with the issue of coercion only by implication, when he reported that ‘all the bishops and nobles of ⁸⁴¹ CSHR i. 32. ⁸⁴² The editors point out that this is derived ultimately from Digest, 50. 17. 129 and 178. ⁸⁴³ Eadmer, HN 121–5; VA 167–8; Southern, Biographer, 188–90; id., Portrait, 260–2; Morey and Brooke, Gilbert Foliot, 119–22. ⁸⁴⁴ John of Salisbury, HP 83. ⁸⁴⁵ HP 84–5.

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this whole kingdom’ had been summoned individually by name to give their counsel. Yet if, by Arnulf ’s own reasoning, the oaths were only of secondary, dependent importance, then Stephen’s supporters had to prove that Matilda had no ius hereditarium, either by showing that she had never been entitled to it in the first place, or by showing that her father had deprived her of it. Otherwise the oaths binding the barons to accept her after her father’s death might well be invalid, but she would nevertheless still be heir, as her father’s only surviving legitimate child. The oaths taken at his behest were designed to circumvent the problems of interregnum, but they did not in themselves constitute Matilda’s ius hereditarium. Here the implications of Arnulf ’s reasoning corroborated Gilbert’s analysis of what was due by right to legitimate daughters in the absence of sons. As with the arguments used to invalidate Matilda’s designation, the attack was framed in a way which implicitly recognized the force of her claim. Despite the main thrust of Gilbert’s thoughtful letter, most of the propaganda against Stephen—as opposed to that against Matilda—concentrated on the oath which he had jostled with Robert of Gloucester for the privilege of taking first of all the laymen after King David of Scotland.⁸⁴⁶ This was to be expected, since the oath and its reaffirmations seem to have been the only mechanism for securing Matilda’s succession to her father. He was a one-club man as far as arranging the succession was concerned.⁸⁴⁷ Indeed, as evidenced by his arrangements for his own funeral, binding the barons by oath was the only way in which Henry I felt he could ensure that his wishes were carried out after his death.⁸⁴⁸ The latter, less ambitious oath, however, proved more effective than the former. When Henry, the ‘peace of his country’, died, ‘the venerated foedera of hallowed friendship were immediately ruptured amongst the people; the closest bonds of mutual relationship (cognatio) were dissolved’.⁸⁴⁹ This was a conventional characterization of the peace which had died⁸⁵⁰ or been buried with⁸⁵¹ the king. But from an Angevin perspective, this peace had not been re-established in the conventional fashion with Stephen’s accession. On the contrary, as we have already seen, the author of the Gesta Stephani attributed to Matilda the claim that the ‘fides of the barons of England and the foedus to which they had sworn had been ruptured and totally disregarded’⁸⁵² with Stephen’s accession. Or as John of Worcester put it, ‘with Stephen as king . . . there was much discord throughout England and Normandy, and the foedus pacis was torn apart’.⁸⁵³ Stephen was not, therefore, by any means the sole perjurer. William of Newburgh later described how the praevaricator had seized the kingdom, breaking the oath he had taken to keep fidelitas with Matilda, ⁸⁴⁶ HNa 8 (although William of Malmesbury contradicts himself later (112) when he states that Robert swore first). JW iii. 178, in his rewritten account of proceedings, says that Robert deferred to Stephen. ⁸⁴⁷ The papal letter of which Robert of Gloucester took note, may have been a general injunction to the barons: HNa 42; Crouch, ‘Daughters of Zelophehad’, 242, n. 8. ⁸⁴⁸ Orderic vi. 448, discussed above, p. 189. ⁸⁴⁹ GS 2. ⁸⁵⁰ Richard of Hexham, ‘De Gestis Regis Stephani’, 139. ⁸⁵¹ GS 14. ⁸⁵² GS 52–4. ⁸⁵³ JW iii. 216; the phrase is probably scriptural: Isa. 54: 10; Ezek. 37: 26.

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‘with the support of the bishops and nobles who were bound by the same oath’.⁸⁵⁴ Henry of Huntingdon took evident satisfaction in recording how William of Corbeil, archbishop of Canterbury, who had taken the oath first and consecrated Stephen, and Roger, bishop of Salisbury, who swore second and administered the oath to everyone else, came to sticky ends ‘by the just judgement of God’.⁸⁵⁵ By inference, all those others who had taken the oath, but later gave their ‘assent and did homage’ to Stephen, deserved no better. The author of the Gesta Stephani probes the significance of the term foedus further, in the case of Stephen rather than Matilda. He describes how in 1139 Miles of Gloucester ‘broke the fides he had pledged to the king’ and attacked ‘those round about whom he knew to be still bound to the king by fides and homage’.⁸⁵⁶ Miles was also identified by the Gloucester interpolator of John of Worcester as a leading light in the campaign of terror to break the fidelitas of those bound to the king, and to enforce homage to Matilda.⁸⁵⁷ The consequence was that they and others ‘who formerly were allied to the king by faith and oath (fide et iureiurando confoederabantur), broke the bond of peace and concord and attacked him without restraint’.⁸⁵⁸ Such a breach of the iuramenti et hominii foedus,⁸⁵⁹ and of the peace with which it was equated, is unlikely always to have involved the sort of formal renunciation, termed diffidatio, which William of Malmesbury describes in the case of Robert of Gloucester.⁸⁶⁰ To judge from John of Worcester’s account, Miles of Gloucester probably went through this elaborate procedure,⁸⁶¹ but it is almost inconceivable that those whom he coerced did. Yet these were breaches nevertheless. In late 1140 the king was advised to receive the rebellious Ranulf of Chester again ‘as a vassal, to reconstitute the compact and renew peace (ut viro ad foedus redintegrandum ad pacem innovandum recepto).’⁸⁶² This rapprochement between them did not last for long. Ranulf fought against the king at the battle of Lincoln, and must have been one of those against whom Stephen railed after his capture: ‘they were not innocent of a monstrous crime in breaking their faith, condemning their oath, caring nothing for the homage they had pledged him, and rebelling so wickedly and abominably against the man they had chosen of their own will as their king and lord.’⁸⁶³ When Ranulf was restored to the king’s favour ⁸⁵⁴ CSHR i. 32. ⁸⁵⁵ HH 700; for William taking the oath first in 1127, see HNa 8; cf. JW iii. 166. For Roger as ‘diiudicator’ of proceedings, see JW iii. 178. ⁸⁵⁶ GS 90. ⁸⁵⁷ JW iii. 270–2, discussed above, p. 215. ⁸⁵⁸ GS 90. ⁸⁵⁹ GS 90. ⁸⁶⁰ HNa 40, cf. 82. J. Gillingham, ‘1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry into England’, in Law and Government, 31–55, at 48–9, suggests that William may have coined the term; there is no need, however, to infer that the procedure was also new. JW iii. 68 describes William, count of Eu, ‘defecting’ from Curthose and ‘subjugating himself to [Rufus’s] lordship’ in 1093. In 1101, again according to JW iii. 98, the huscarls were persuaded to ‘abandon the fidelity they owed to the king’; on Curthose’s arrival in England, ‘some leading men of the English, redeeming an earlier promise, immediately went over to him’. M. Strickland, War and Chivalry: The Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 (Cambridge, 1996), 40, n. 47, points out that the verb diffidare is found in DIV, p. 76 l. 81. ⁸⁶¹ JW iii. 270. ⁸⁶² GS 110. ⁸⁶³ GS 112–14.

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a second time, in 1146, ‘the foedus of old friendship was renewed between them’; ‘the foedus of peace was reconstituted’.⁸⁶⁴ Doubt has recently been expressed about whether Ranulf ever formally diffidated from the king and did homage to the empress, in the absence of explicit evidence to this effect.⁸⁶⁵ It is nevertheless clear that, in the opinion of the author of the Gesta Stephani, the foedus between Ranulf and Stephen had been ruptured between 1140 and 1146. The consequence of such a breach of foedus was to re-create the conditions of interregnum between the individual baron and the lord king whom he had renounced. He reverted to the same position as Baldwin de Redvers, who had never acknowledged Stephen’s accession.⁸⁶⁶ But as in Baldwin’s case, he did not choose to remain in this Hobbesian state of nature for long: formal diffidations and less elaborate breaches with the king seem to have been followed by homage to Matilda, in fulfilment of the original oath to her.⁸⁶⁷ The defining example was that of Robert of Gloucester.⁸⁶⁸ Only by breaking bonds with the king could the bond with Matilda, which had been ruptured when those bonds were established, be consummated. Baldwin fitzGilbert might have denounced Robert of Gloucester for having ‘the heart of a rabbit’ when it came to action, but even he had to concede Robert’s ‘famed eloquence’.⁸⁶⁹ Though a layman, Robert was a man of learning.⁸⁷⁰ Reasoned justification of his actions mattered to him. He had consulted many clerics about this predicament, and had even received a letter from the pope on the subject.⁸⁷¹ But the fullest discussions are found in the surviving parts of the exchanges between that other learned layman Brian fitzCount—Robert’s colleague in the audit of the treasury in 1128–9⁸⁷²—on the one hand, and on the other, Henry of Blois⁸⁷³ and Gilbert Foliot respectively. When it had suited his purposes to do so—probably in September 1142 or soon after⁸⁷⁴—Henry of Blois reprimanded Brian for looking back like Lot’s wife, who had, as a consequence, been turned into a pillar of salt. The implication was that Brian should not remain obstinately faithful to the empress, but should move with the times and go over to the king. Brian’s response was indignant: ‘It was you, a prelate of Holy Church, ⁸⁶⁴ GS, p. 184. ⁸⁶⁵ P. Dalton, ‘In neutro latere: The Armed Neutrality of Ranulf II Earl of Chester in Stephen’s Reign’, ANS xiv (1991), 39–59, esp. 48–9. Space does not permit a full discussion of his case. But it may be observed that the clear line he attempts to draw between Ranulf ’s pursuit of his own interests and the conflict between Stephen and Matilda is an illusory one. ⁸⁶⁶ GS 30, discussed above, pp. 196–7. ⁸⁶⁷ Even if Dalton were correct about Ranulf, he would not be an exception to this statement. For in Dalton’s view he always preserved a formal, cursory allegiance to the king. The account of Baldwin’s flight to Normandy and going over to the Angevins in GS 44–6, does not explicitly mention his doing homage either to Matilda or to Geoffrey. But this does not mean that he did not. ⁸⁶⁸ HNa 42. ⁸⁶⁹ HH 734. ⁸⁷⁰ GR i. 798. ⁸⁷¹ HNa 42. ⁸⁷² PR 31 H I, 129–31. ⁸⁷³ H. W. C. Davis, ‘Henry of Blois and Brian fitz Count’, EHR xxv (1910), 297–303; G. Constable, ‘Forged Letters in the Middle Ages’, Falschungen in Mittelater. MGH Schriften v. 11–37, at 31–2, suggests that the extant texts are possibly later rhetorical exercises on themes drawn from genuine, earlier letters. ⁸⁷⁴ Morey and Brooke, Gilbert Foliot, 107.

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who ordered me to cleave to the daughter of King Henry, your uncle, and help her to acquire rectum suum, which had been taken from her by force, and to retain what she now has.’ In fact Brian, like Miles of Gloucester, ‘had rebelled against the king with spirit and great resolution’ on Matilda’s arrival in England in 1139,⁸⁷⁵ long before the bishop of Winchester can have issued such a command in 1141. Brian was one of those identified as swearing with her, and pledging themselves for her, at the meeting with Henry of Blois at Wherwell on 2 March 1141.⁸⁷⁶ Like everyone other than Baldwin de Redvers, Brian had initially done homage to Stephen.⁸⁷⁷ But once he had switched allegiance to the empress in 1139, he was not prepared to renege. He repeatedly invoked Henry of Blois’ command of 1141 to justify his rejection of the bishop’s new, contradictory advice. He was particularly stung by the injustice of Bishop Henry’s threat to ‘number you among the infideles of England’. On the contrary, he saw himself as one of the fideles Anglie. His steadfastness in the empress’s cause became proverbial.⁸⁷⁸ This was evidently one of the problems Brian raised soon afterwards in the librum which he sent to Gilbert Foliot for comment. Gilbert argued that Brian had submitted to Stephen out of necessity, much as Robert of Gloucester claimed to have done,⁸⁷⁹ but that ‘you sinned more with your mouth than your heart; and whatever you might promise with your tongue, you maintain faith with your heart’.⁸⁸⁰ Would reverting to the empress, thereby breaking the fidelitas now due to the king, be to compound his sin by perjuring himself a second time? Gilbert thought not: ‘Do not let an empty shell frighten you. You have promised fidelitas to the one and to the other: at first to one to whom you owed it, and afterwards to one to whom you did not owe it. You would not have perjured yourself to the former, if you had not defected to the latter. Turn away from this error, and you heal everything.’ The very act of submission to Stephen had been one of perjury, but reverting to prior allegiance to Matilda would rectify it. Gilbert Foliot would have agreed with the view which Brian fitzCount expressed in his letter to Henry of Blois: that the analogy of Lot’s wife was entirely inapposite where fidelitas to Matilda was concerned. Far from being turned into a pillar of salt for looking back to her, it was only by doing so that the sin of perjury inherent in submission to Stephen could be expiated.

THE FORCE OF CORONATION Yet, Gilbert added, when Brian had slipped this noose he would find others dangled in his way by those who sought to justify King Stephen’s position: ‘The king’s ⁸⁷⁵ GS 90; RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 137. ⁸⁷⁶ HNa 88. ⁸⁷⁷ This is nowhere stated explicitly, but he witnessed the following early charters: RRAN iii. nos. 271, 944, 383, 385. ⁸⁷⁸ GS 134. ⁸⁷⁹ HNa 30. ⁸⁸⁰ GFL no. 26, p. 64.

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election and consecration may equally be raised as objections against you, so that the church whose ordinances you despise and whose sacraments you condemn will rightfully reject you.’⁸⁸¹ Although he appears to equate election with consecration, Gilbert’s refutation of this objection is concerned wholly with the latter. Having already demonstrated that acceptance of Stephen by those who were pledged to Matilda was a sin, he put a rhetorical question to Brian: ‘Do the sacraments lead you to injustice?’ Obviously this could not be the case: ‘A sacrament must be accounted ill if through it a fault is not alleviated, but guilt augmented.’ It followed that Stephen’s consecration could not in any way sanction the prior sin of perjury against Matilda. But other sources suggest that Stephen’s consecration could not be set aside quite as easily as this. According to John of Salisbury, Arnulf of Séez told the Lateran Council that when William Corbeil, archbishop of Canterbury, had heard the oath of Earl Hugh Bigod and the two anonymous knights as to Henry I’s last wishes, ‘he elevated Stephen as king with the unanimous counsel and support of the bishops and nobles. What had been done with such solemnity could not, he concluded, be undone.’⁸⁸² As far as Henry of Huntingdon was concerned, Stephen had usurped the regni diadema, but that did not invalidate the consecration administered by the archbishop, for which Archbishop William was, nevertheless, punished by God.⁸⁸³ He made Ranulf of Chester and Robert of Gloucester acknowledge that Stephen was king, though a treacherous usurper, in speeches delivered immediately before the battle of Lincoln; and Baldwin fitzGilbert belaboured the fact of the king’s anointing, in his corresponding speech to the royal troops.⁸⁸⁴ Henry never doubted that Stephen was king. Orderic Vitalis is particularly revealing about the way in which consecration could foreclose on the better claims of other potential candidates. Writing during Henry I’s lifetime, he seems to have envisaged Matilda’s eldest son as ultimately destined to rule,⁸⁸⁵ although he carefully avoided any direct reference to the designation of Matilda.⁸⁸⁶ But after Stephen’s coronation he scrupulously referred to him as rex, even while the king was imprisoned following the battle of Lincoln.⁸⁸⁷ Here Orderic’s attitude can only be inferred, because of his diplomatic silences and evasions. Elsewhere it is made more explicit. He bent over backwards to justify Henry I’s actions against Robert Curthose and Robert’s son, William Clito. These patently contravened those conventions about inheritance and primogeniture which Orderic held so dear, and he was reduced to arguing that because Henry had acceded in Normandy, it must have been so disposed by God’s ordinance.⁸⁸⁸ When all other attempts at justification ⁸⁸¹ GFL no. 26, p. 64. By election, he meant that clerical prerogative to which William of Malmesbury alluded, HNa 92. ⁸⁸² HP 84. ⁸⁸³ HH 700. ⁸⁸⁴ HH 726, 734. ⁸⁸⁵ Orderic v. p. xii, 200, 228; cf. above, p. 213. ⁸⁸⁶ Ibid. vi. pp. xxv–xxvi. At vi. 518 King David of Scotland is said, in passing, to have taken an oath to his niece at Henry I’s behest. But there is no indication that anyone else had. ⁸⁸⁷ Ibid. 546–8. Orderic finished his Historia while Stephen was still a captive. ⁸⁸⁸ Ibid. 368, cf. 96.

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seemed shaky, divine providence could always be invoked as a last resort. Orderic reported that even before the death of William Adelin, those who sat at table with Henry secretly favoured the cause of his nephew.⁸⁸⁹ All things considered, they were as unimpressed by the argument from providence as Robert Curthose had reportedly been when Henry had become king of England in 1100.⁸⁹⁰ Orderic attributed this sentiment in favour of Clito solely to the barons in Normandy. They might be compared, he thought, to Ahithophel and Shimei and other ‘turncoats (desertores)’, and they behaved like those who: deserting the king divinely ordained by Samuel, joined Absalom, the parricide. This is exactly what many men did when they deserted the peaceful prince consecrated by episcopal election and blessing and, breaking the fides which they had pledged him as lord, voluntarily embraced the cause of the beardless count to do wrong, not because duty forced them to do it, but of their own free will.⁸⁹¹

Just as these ‘turncoats’ were confined to Normandy, so, as far as Orderic was concerned, were Clito’s claims against Henry I. His embarrassment at Henry’s ruling in Curthose’s stead in the duchy is revealed by his never attributing the ducal title to Henry until after Curthose’s death in 1134,⁸⁹² and by his failure to mention that William Adelin was designated as Henry’s successor in Normandy as well as England.⁸⁹³ Yet he presented the anointing which had made Henry rex Anglorum as the first bulwark against defection to Clito in Normandy, not in England. We have seen that, according to Gilbert Foliot, Arnulf of Séez considered that the oaths taken to Matilda ‘as heir’ would have been null and void if she had had no ius hereditarium.⁸⁹⁴ Any fealty sworn and homage done to Henry I in Normandy had not been an aspect of a designation, and was based on no such premise. Even Orderic, Henry’s most voluble champion, never claimed that Normandy was his hereditario iure, although he did argue that Henry had recovered the paterna hereditas from those ‘reprobates’ into whose hands Robert had allowed it to fall.⁸⁹⁵ But in Orderic’s view, Henry’s lack of hereditary right did not mean that those who had bound themselves to the king in this way were obliged to break those bonds and go over to Clito, whose claim was strong, ‘because duty forced them to’. Orderic’s implicit recognition of the strength of that claim is suggested shortly afterwards by his passing reference to the ‘lawful term of William’s rule’, which would begin at some unspecified point in the future.⁸⁹⁶ While Clito’s claim did not justify, in Orderic’s opinion, ‘breaking the fides which they had pledged [Henry] as lord’, in the absence of any hereditary right for Henry, it meant that such bonds would be precarious. Orderic gives the example of ⁸⁸⁹ Ibid. 200. ⁸⁹⁰ BR 37. ⁸⁹¹ Orderic vi. 200–2. ⁸⁹² Ibid. i. 161; Chibnall, ‘Feudal Society’, 40. ⁸⁹³ Orderic vi. 300; cf. the vague account of the events of 1120 which omits to mention that William did homage to King Louis VI: vi. 290. ⁸⁹⁴ GFL no. 26, p. 65, discussed above, pp. 234–5. ⁸⁹⁵ Orderic vi. 62, cf. 368. ⁸⁹⁶ Ibid. 208.

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Reginald de Bailleul, who renounced fidelitas to the king in 1119.⁸⁹⁷ Hence, perhaps, Orderic’s decision to turn to election and consecration⁸⁹⁸ as the unquestionable guarantee of Henry’s position in Normandy. It was apparently on this, rather than hereditary right, that fides to the king in Normandy depended. Consecration as king had secured him England in 1100; after Curthose’s defeat and capture at Tinchebrai in 1106, it was deemed by Orderic to have secured him the duchy too. Pushed to its logical conclusions in this way, Orderic’s reasoning seems both tortured and pretty unconvincing. But his desperate grasping at royal election and consecration demonstrates that the latter was widely accepted as foreclosing further dispute from other contenders, regardless of the merits of their claims. It was, of course, against this view that Gilbert Foliot argued when he wrote that the sacraments could not possibly be used to promote injustice.⁸⁹⁹ Yet Orderic (by implication),⁹⁰⁰ Henry of Huntingdon,⁹⁰¹ and others⁹⁰² agree that it was considered to be one of the weightiest points in Stephen’s favour. The author of the Gesta Stephani was unique among chroniclers in thinking that Stephen had become king when he made a pactio with the commune of London prior to his coronation.⁹⁰³ But even he said that ‘the king’s supporters’ later tried to persuade the archbishop of Canterbury ‘to anoint him to reign and make up, in virtue of [the archbishop’s] ministration, whatever seemed to have been left undone’.⁹⁰⁴ That Archbishop William was a perjurer⁹⁰⁵ did not make him a Stigand or in any way invalidate his consecration of Stephen. If parallels between Stephen and Harold II occurred to anyone other than William of Malmesbury,⁹⁰⁶ they were never made explicit. There was no doubt that Stephen was king; the punishment of the Lord’s anointed for his perjury had to be left to the Lord’s providence. The form that punishment was thought to have taken provides further insights into what made Stephen king. According to William of Newburgh, Archbishop William and Roger, bishop of Salisbury, probably believed that by their perjury they were rendering a service to God. For by means of it they were able to create a ruler who was totally dependent on them, and who would therefore not be able to treat the church as Henry I had done.⁹⁰⁷ If so, they were destined to be disappointed. God punished them for their sin, in Roger’s case, with a neat economy characteristic of divine providence, using the king Roger had helped to create as His agent.⁹⁰⁸ William of Newburgh considered that Stephen turned out to be a perjurer twice over:⁹⁰⁹ not only had he, by becoming king, broken the oath he had ⁸⁹⁷ Ibid. 214. ⁸⁹⁸ For the pairing of the two, see above, n. 881. ⁸⁹⁹ GFL no. 26 p. 64. ⁹⁰⁰ Above, p. 239. ⁹⁰¹ Above, p. 239. ⁹⁰² HP 84; HNa 110; Aelred of Rievaulx, ‘Relatio de Standardo’, CSHR iii. 187. ⁹⁰³ GS 6. ⁹⁰⁴ GS 10. ⁹⁰⁵ HH 700. ⁹⁰⁶ HNa 36 says that Stephen would have lacked little which adorns the regia persona ‘si legitime regnum ingressus fuisset’. GR i. 420 says of Harold: ‘pro persona quam gerebat regnum prudentia et fortitudine gubernaret, si legitime suscepisset.’ ⁹⁰⁷ CSHR i. 32. ⁹⁰⁸ Ibid. 32, 37, cf. HH 700, 720. ⁹⁰⁹ CSHR i. 32–3.

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taken to keep fidelitas with Matilda, he had also broken the undertakings he had then given about how he would rule. The latter were described by Henry of Huntingdon, William’s principal source for Stephen’s reign, as his ‘vow and covenant (votum et pactum) with God and the people’, made on the day of his coronation, recorded and confirmed in a document the text of which Henry purports to give.⁹¹⁰ But ‘subsequently it all came to nothing through his perfidy’.⁹¹¹ The arrest of Roger of Salisbury and the other bishops in 1139, and the seizure of the castles they held, was widely interpreted as the worst instance of such perfidy on the king’s part.⁹¹² For Henry of Huntingdon it marked the turning-point of the reign.⁹¹³ But as he and William of Newburgh pointed out, it was fitting that those of the Lord’s anointed through whose perjury Stephen had been anointed as king should be punished by an act of perfidy on the king’s part. A less profound thinker, the author of the Gesta Stephani was not as attuned to the just ironies of divine providence. Despite his stance in favour of the king, and even though he considered Roger of Salisbury’s motives dubious,⁹¹⁴ he argued that the king had acted wrongly in arresting the bishops, citing (predictably) Luke 10: 16: ‘Touch not mine anointed.’ He added that when Saul had risen up against the priests of the Lord, ‘he was not only deposed from the kingdom in the eyes of the Lord but fell by a most cruel death in war’.⁹¹⁵ It was, he said, because Stephen recognized the gravity of laying hands on the Lord’s anointed that, at the legatine council to which he was subsequently summoned, he agreed to submit to the judgement of the clerics, ‘and putting aside royal garb, groaning in spirit and with a contrite heart, he humbly accepted the sentence enjoined for his fault’.⁹¹⁶ On this the Gesta Stephani is flatly contradicted by William of Malmesbury.⁹¹⁷ But even if, in 1139, the king did divest himself of his royal garb in penance, it is clear that this made no difference to his royal power, and later events showed that further punishment was still due. There was an omen to this effect when Stephen attended mass immediately before the battle of Lincoln. The candle which the king was holding ‘according to the rite and office of the day’ broke in his hand.⁹¹⁸ This incident is also described by Orderic⁹¹⁹ and by Henry of Huntingdon, who makes it clear that he was drawing on the first-hand testimony of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln;⁹²⁰ but the author of the Gesta gives the fullest assessment of its significance. He demonstrates that Stephen was not to suffer the same fate as Saul, with whom he had compared Stephen at the time of his accession.⁹²¹ The flame had suddenly been snuffed, and ⁹¹⁰ HH 708, 704. The document is neither Stephen’s coronation charter (RRAN iii. no. 270) nor his Oxford charter of liberties, issued at Easter 1136 (no. 271). According to Henry, it was issued at Oxford ‘at the close of Christmas’. For the problems with it, see HH 704, n. 19. ⁹¹¹ CSHR i. 33. For specific examples, see JW iii. 202; HNa 36, 58, 92. ⁹¹² HNa 44–50; HH 700, 720. JW iii. 266, his Gloucester interpolator iii. 244–8, and Orderic vi. 530–4, have different perspectives. ⁹¹³ HH 722. ⁹¹⁴ GS 72. ⁹¹⁵ GS 76. ⁹¹⁶ GS 80. ⁹¹⁷ HNa 58. ⁹¹⁸ GS 110. ⁹¹⁹ Orderic vi. 544. ⁹²⁰ HH 732. ⁹²¹ GS 4.

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the candle broken. But it had then miraculously mended and relit while still in the king’s hand: ‘a sign that he would lose the honor of the kingdom on account of his sin, and that eventually, when penance had been exacted, by God’s favour he would wondrously and gloriously recover it.’⁹²² Yet although Stephen would (temporarily) lose the ‘honor of the kingdom’, he would not lose the ‘title of king (regis nomen)’: ‘That he still kept hold of the candle, though it had been broken in his hand, signifies that he did not utterly abandon the kingdom and did not even lose the title of king, though imprisoned. It was wondrously brought about by God’s providence that although he was kept amongst his bitterest enemies, yet they were unable to make him not king.’⁹²³ Elsewhere the author records that Matilda’s supporters tried to deprive Stephen of the regni nomen and regis honor;⁹²⁴ but he evidently considered that not even imprisonment could affect the former. William of Malmesbury continues to describe him as king during this period.⁹²⁵ Orderic, who did not write with the benefit of hindsight after the king’s release, agreed that Stephen remained king while ‘cast down from the throne of the kingdom’ and in captivity.⁹²⁶ Although the author of the Gesta Stephani had failed to recognize the hand of providence in the arrest of the bishops in 1139, he made the king himself acknowledge that his capture at Lincoln had happened because God was avenging his offences—namely, the arrest of the bishops. Yet those who, as agents of God’s providence, had seized the king ‘were not innocent of a monstrous crime in breaking fides, condemning their oath, thinking nothing of the homage they had pledged him, and in rising up so wickedly and abominably against him whom they had chosen voluntarily as their king and lord’.⁹²⁷ They had broken their individual ‘foedera of oath and homage’ with the king, just as others had done previously when they had gone over to Matilda.⁹²⁸ Now this happened on a much larger scale,⁹²⁹ for it was generally expected that Stephen would be incarcerated for life.⁹³⁰ It was this which deprived him of his honor, but failed to deprive him of the nomen which, in the author’s idiosyncratic view, he had received as a result not of consecration, but of his prior pactio with the commune of London.⁹³¹ That was the author’s interpretation of Stephen’s capture. But he records an opposing one. When, by the will of God, the king had been imprisoned in Bristol, ⁹²² GS 110–12. ⁹²³ GS 112. Orderic says that the candle broke in the king’s hand and fell three times, Henry of Huntingdon that it broke when he handed it to Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. ⁹²⁴ GS 186. Note that the author couples honor and nomen interchangeably with king and kingdom. Waleran de Meulan and other close associates of the king counselled that, for the sake of the king’s peace, the bishops should be made to give up their castles to the king ‘ad honorem regis’: 74. In 1146 the Welsh were terrified to hear the nomen regis: 194. ⁹²⁵ HNa 86, 100, 106. ⁹²⁶ Orderic vi. 544. ⁹²⁷ GS 112–14. According to HNa 92, Henry of Blois told the Easter Council at Winchester in 1141 that ‘God has executed his judgement on my brother in allowing him to fall into the power of the strong without my knowledge’. ⁹²⁸ GS 90. ⁹²⁹ GS 116. ⁹³⁰ GS 114. Robert Curthose’s fate must have seemed a clear precedent. ⁹³¹ GS 6.

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‘the whole of England was shaken with amazement, and to some it was a festival day, and a new light seemed to be dawning, as they hoped that thereby an end might be put to discord and war’.⁹³² Of course, the author rejects this view. Instead, he commends that of ‘others of deeper insight’, to whom it seemed that ‘the wrong they had done to the king and lord could not be expiated without very great prejudice to the kingdom and themselves, nor yet could the turbulent discord be so easily ended’.⁹³³ But it is clear that some regarded Stephen’s imprisonment as the beginning of a period of peace, as if it had ended an interregnum rather than starting something analogous to one. As we have seen, many considered that his accession had broken the foedus with Matilda which had been created by the oaths taken to her.⁹³⁴ It had ‘torn apart’ the foedus pacis.⁹³⁵ Stephen had only ever succeeded in establishing ‘a pretence of peace for a time’.⁹³⁶ According to the Gesta Stephani, Matilda made a ‘foedus of peace and concord’ with Henry of Blois immediately before her ceremonial reception in Winchester, where she was raised to that ‘pinnacle of supreme honor’ which the author considered Stephen had lost.⁹³⁷ The author must be referring to the agreement struck at Wherwell on 2 March and her entry into the city on the following day. We have seen that this meeting was treated as if it marked the start of her reign in a problematic charter which purports to have been issued on 3 March or soon afterwards, and in which she was also apparently first styled ‘Anglorum regina’.⁹³⁸ Perilous as this evidence is, it seems to be corroborated by the Gesta Stephani. For after the ‘king’s castle’ in the city and the ‘crown of the kingdom’ had been handed over to her, together with the ‘treasure the king had left there’, Henry of Blois instructed the inhabitants ‘at a public meeting in the forum of the city to acclaim her as domina et regina’.⁹³⁹ This is the third occasion on which the author refers to Matilda being entitled regina in 1141. In his account of 1139 he looks forward to the time after the king’s capture and imprisonment, when Miles of Gloucester would ‘make her queen of all England’.⁹⁴⁰ Shortly before her ceremonial entry into Winchester, he says that ‘in the capital of her dominium she made herself queen of all England, and gloried in being so called’.⁹⁴¹ It is unclear whether the capital in question was Winchester or London. The latter had previously been described as regni caput,⁹⁴²and it has been suggested that the phrase dominii sui caput may have been coined by this protagonist of the king to stress that Matilda was not the queen she claimed to be, but simply domina.⁹⁴³ The author presents her assumption of the title as the most ⁹³² GS 114; cf. 126, where Matilda’s flight from London is said to have been ‘like a new dawn’ to the king’s supporters; 204, where a similar phrase is used to describe the attitude of Angevin supporters to the arrival of Henry—’iustus regni Anglorum heres et appetitor’—in England in 1147. ⁹³³ Cf. Orderic vi. 546, on the typical interregnal disorder which followed the king’s capture. ⁹³⁴ Above, p. 235. ⁹³⁵ JW iii. 216. ⁹³⁶ HNa 40, cf. 30. ⁹³⁷ GS 118–20. For a detailed account, see HNa 86–90, where it is termed a pactum. ⁹³⁸ RRAN iii. no. 343, discussed above, p. 218. ⁹³⁹ GS 118. ⁹⁴⁰ GS 96. ⁹⁴¹ GS 118. ⁹⁴² GS 12; cf. LE 324. ⁹⁴³ GS 118, n. 1.

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striking manifestation of her overweening arrogance. She might have been elevated to the honor which Stephen had lost, but she was not entitled to the female equivalent of the nomen which he retained. As we have seen, it is possible that the author is right to say that the title was (occasionally) asserted on her behalf.⁹⁴⁴ But if those whom William of Malmesbury terms consulares⁹⁴⁵ did consider that a period analogous to an interregnum had been ended by Stephen’s capture and imprisonment, or by one of the many stages of Matilda’s accession to rule over the English, it was not because she had become queen.

THE BID FOR LEGITIMACY Whatever her title, Matilda began to behave as if, in the words of the Gloucester continuator of John of Worcester, ‘the crown of the kingdom of England had been given to her dominium’.⁹⁴⁶ The author of the Gesta Stephani joined in the chorus of those who denounced her arrogant behaviour, but he was more specific about what this meant. In addition to affecting the title of regina, she had, allegedly, ‘received ungraciously and sometimes with open annoyance’ certain former adherents of the king ‘who had agreed to submit themselves and what was theirs to her’.⁹⁴⁷ More importantly, ‘by reckless innovations she diminished or took away the possessions and lands of those who had been allowed to have them by the king; while the fees and honours of the very few who still obeyed the king she confiscated in their entirety and allowed to others’. The tone is quite different, but it is clear that Matilda was engaging in the same sort of selective purge which Stephen had instituted immediately after he became king, and which the author had then sought to characterize as a restoration of the ‘disinherited to their own’.⁹⁴⁸ According to Henry of Huntingdon, Ranulf of Chester used ‘those whom King Stephen had disinherited’ to make up the second line of Angevin forces at Lincoln.⁹⁴⁹ Doubtless they fought in expectation of their reward. It was for this reason that she would soon run into irresolvable difficulties with Henry of Blois over lands which he considered should go to his nephew Eustace, but which William of Malmesbury thought she might well have promised to others.⁹⁵⁰ What distinguishes Matilda’s behaviour, in the Gesta Stephani’s account, from that of a new king is her attitude to Stephen’s acts: ‘she imperiously annulled any grant which the king had fixed by royal decree; she hastily snatched away and allocated to her own [men] whatever he had given firmly and unshakeably to churches or to his comrades-in-arms.’⁹⁵¹ The author was not exaggerating. It is possible to identify cases of both types.

⁹⁴⁴ Above, pp. 213–14, 218–21. ⁹⁴⁸ GS 22, discussed above, p. 195. ⁹⁵¹ GS 120.

⁹⁴⁵ HNa 84. ⁹⁴⁶ JW iii. 294. ⁹⁴⁷ GS 120. ⁹⁴⁹ HH 726, cf. 736. ⁹⁵⁰ HNa 100.

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A charter of Stephen—a ‘royal decree’—issued just before the battle of Lincoln conceded to God and the monks of Bordesley land, including the ‘demesne land’ of Bidford, which he had previously granted to Waleran de Meulan.⁹⁵² Thereby the king in effect confirmed Waleran’s foundation, shortly before, of Bordesley Abbey.⁹⁵³ In the summer of 1141 Waleran had to come to terms with Matilda. It is evident from two charters then issued by her that Bordesley Abbey had been one of the heads of agreement between them. She did not, as the Gesta Stephani might lead one to expect, confiscate the abbey’s lands and use them to endow her own followers. But she insisted on pretending that it was she who now founded the abbey, and endowed it.⁹⁵⁴ Waleran was reduced from the status of founder to that of a mere witness to the foundress’s charters. Matilda’s first charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville, issued about a month before, shows that she did revoke at least some of Stephen’s grants to laymen. For in it she made provision that if she were ever to return to Theobald, count of Blois, all the land which he had held in England, then before Geoffrey was disseised of those lands, formerly Theobald’s, which he now held in Essex, Hertfordshire, and Cambridgeshire, she would compensate him with lands of equal value.⁹⁵⁵ This means that Theobald had already forfeited all his English lands by the time the charter was issued, at midsummer 1141.⁹⁵⁶ In the case of one manor granted to Geoffrey—Maldon—we know from another document that Stephen had conferred it on his brother.⁹⁵⁷ The empress’s charter records other massive grants to Geoffrey in Essex. The aim was to enable him to wrest the honour of Boulogne, which dominated the county, from Stephen’s queen, and thereby to make London secure.⁹⁵⁸ The honour was, according to William of Malmesbury, amongst the lands which Henry of Blois thought should be given ‘by right’ to his nephew Eustace ‘while his father was held captive’. It was hardly surprising that ‘the empress categorically refused and, it may be, even promised them to others’.⁹⁵⁹ The charter in favour of Geoffrey proves that this is an understatement. William of Malmesbury thought that the disagreement with Henry of Blois to which her refusal gave rise was ‘the origin of all the evil deeds which followed in England’.⁹⁶⁰ But to have complied with the demands put by Henry of Blois and Stephen’s queen would have been to relinquish any hope of securing her

⁹⁵² RRAN iii. no. 114 (Dec. 1140 ⫻ Jan. 1141) (⫽ iv. pl. XXIV). ⁹⁵³ King, ‘Waleran, Count of Meulan’, 170–1, with Waleran’s foundation charter printed at pp.178–9; D. Crouch, Beaumont Twins, 39. ⁹⁵⁴ RRAN iii. nos. 115 (an original), 116 (⫽ iv. pl. XLVII). Both charters may have been drafted by the same scribe, who may also be responsible for RRAN iii. nos. 629, 632. The reasons for dating them to 25 July–1 Aug. 1141 are explained by Davis, ‘Documents of the Anarchy’, 188; King, ‘Waleran, Count of Meulan’, 170–1; Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, 283–6. For their significance, see Chibnall, Matilda, 134–5. In 1156 Matilda referred to Bordesley as a joint foundation of her son Henry and herself: Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, 294. ⁹⁵⁵ RRAN iii. no. 274. ⁹⁵⁶ Round, G. de M., 102. ⁹⁵⁷ RRAN iii. no. 543 (Dec. 1139 ⫻ Mar. 1140). ⁹⁵⁸ Davis, King Stephen, 55–6. ⁹⁵⁹ HNa 100; cf. GS 122. ⁹⁶⁰ HNa 98.

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position. Small wonder that in her response she ‘abused [the queen] in harsh and insulting language’.⁹⁶¹ In addition to nullifying some of Stephen’s grants, it may be that Matilda initially attempted to maintain the pretence which we have seen characterized her first grant to Miles of Hereford: that she was succeeding her father direct, and that the reign of Stephen had never happened.⁹⁶² Thus a charter in favour of Shrewsbury Abbey, probably issued in April 1141, confirms everything Henry I had confirmed together with a number of subsequent gifts, which included grants made by Fulk of Pinley, the sheriff, ‘after my father’s death’.⁹⁶³ The circumlocution, of a type familiar from Domesday Book,⁹⁶⁴ may have been a deliberate attempt to avoid saying that Fulk had done so while Stephen was king. More strikingly, her first charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville used two termini to define rights: the day on which ‘my father King Henry was alive and dead’ and ‘the day on which he became my man’.⁹⁶⁵ The parallel between the way in which she used the date of homage and kings used the dates of their coronations is underlined by the provision that Geoffrey and all his men ‘should be quit with respect to me and my heirs of any crime and any past ill will [committed] prior to the day on which he became my man’. She is made to reiterate the point at the end of the charter, undertaking that they will not be made to answer in court for any crime committed up to that date. They were also to have an indemnity for any assarts made in the forest up to that point.⁹⁶⁶ This is reminiscent of the carte blanche issued by Stephen in favour of Ilbert de Lacy and his men, shortly after his coronation.⁹⁶⁷ It meant that the period between Henry I’s death and the day on which Geoffrey had become her man was defined as a sort of interregnum where Geoffrey and his vassals were concerned. But it did not mean that she maintained the pretence that Stephen had never been king. For she conceded that Geoffrey and his vassals should be quit of all debts ‘which they owed to King Henry or to King Stephen’. If she could pardon debts due to them, then in one sense she was successor to both these kings.⁹⁶⁸ ⁹⁶¹ GS 122. ⁹⁶² RRAN iii. no. 391, discussed above, p. 215; further, Chibnall, Matilda, 129–30. ⁹⁶³ RRAN iii. no. 821. ⁹⁶⁴ Above, p. 19. ⁹⁶⁵ RRAN iii. no. 274; cf. no. 316, issued at the same time, which also uses ‘the day on which my father King Henry was alive and dead’. ⁹⁶⁶ Round, G. de M., 376–8, explains the background. It is impossible to tell whether this meant the forest as constituted at the death of Henry I, or the forest under Stephen. Stephen had promised in his Oxford charter of liberties—RRAN iii. no. 271—to reverse all Henry I’s afforestations, but as Henry of Huntingdon pointed out (708), ‘he broke his vow and covenant with God and the people’. J. H. Round, ‘The Forest of Essex’, Journal of the British Archaeological Soc., liii (1897), 36–52; and VCH: Essex, ii. 615, shows Stephen granting royal permission for assarts in parts of Essex newly afforested by Henry I; further, N. Vincent, ‘New Charters of King Stephen with Some Reflections upon the Royal Forests During the Anarchy’, EHR cxiv (1999), 899–928, esp. 911–19. I cannot see why RRAN iii. no. 559 implies that Stephen had extended the bounds of the forest. ⁹⁶⁷ RRAN iii. no. 428, discussed above, pp. 193–4. ⁹⁶⁸ She had secured control of what was left in the treasury on 3 March: GS 118; RRAN iii. no. 897.

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Debts contracted with Stephen could be remitted in the same way as those contracted with Henry I, just as Henry himself had envisaged with debts owed to his predecessor, William Rufus.⁹⁶⁹ If the corona to which certain pleas and crimes ‘pertained’ was now hers⁹⁷⁰—despite the fact that she had not yet been crowned—then it was implicitly acknowledged that it had been Stephen’s before. At some time between February and July 1141 she appears to have confirmed a grant made by ‘King Stephen’ to Godstow Abbey.⁹⁷¹ This charter is, however, exceptional. On other occasions documents in Matilda’s name avoided admitting that she was confirming Stephen’s gifts,⁹⁷² and whenever possible referred to her father’s grants or to the status quo on the day of his death.⁹⁷³ Nevertheless it is clear that Stephen’s charters were not ipso facto deemed invalid during the period of his imprisonment. Thus by the time she issued her first charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville at midsummer, it seems to have been considered that Matilda had replaced Stephen, who had been king, if a usurping one. But she never referred to the day on which he himself later admitted he had effectively ceased to be king⁹⁷⁴—his capture on 2 February—as a terminus. Indeed, in her charter creating Miles of Gloucester earl of Hereford, issued on 25 July 1141, we seem to hear her own voice breaking through the diplomatic formulae: ‘I then had King Stephen as my captive at Bristol.’⁹⁷⁵ Strictly interpreted, this means that she was prepared to allow Stephen his royal title even while he was her prisoner. She did not regard herself as his successor, despite the quittance she offered to Geoffrey de Mandeville and his men for any debts they owed to King Stephen. The date by reference to which legitimate rights and tenure were defined prior to the point at which she had taken the homage of a given individual was the day on which her father had been alive and dead. That was the last occasion on which the throne had been legitimately occupied prior to her own unconventional, piecemeal accession.⁹⁷⁶ Her occasional,

⁹⁶⁹ Coronation ‘edict’, caps. 6, 9, discussed above, pp. 111–13. ⁹⁷⁰ She made Geoffrey ‘my chief justice in Essex hereditarily and of my heirs concerning pleas and crimes which will belong to my crown’. GS 118 and JW iii. 294 agree that she received the corona regni in Winchester on 3 March; see above, p. 214. ⁹⁷¹ RRAN iii. no. 368 (cartulary copy); cf. no. 366, Stephen’s general confirmation of early 1139. ⁹⁷² Ibid., no. 628 (c.30 Mar. 1141) which, together with no. 629 (June–July 1141), possibly confirm grants made by Stephen in no. 626. Its forged version of Stephen’s first seal may mean, however, that this charter was forged after the king regained control of Oxford in 1142. Matilda’s charter no. 630 (1141 ⫻ 42) repeats the grant made by Stephen in no. 627 (1139 ⫻ 40). Her charters for Bordesley Abbey—nos. 115, 116—repeat and amplify Stephen’s no. 114. Nos. 115 and 116 may be in the same hand as no. 629: see notes to RRAN iv. pl. XLVII. ⁹⁷³ For instance, RRAN iii. no. 316, issued at the same time as no. 274. ⁹⁷⁴ Ibid., no. 276 (Christmas 1141), discussed below, pp. 250–2. ⁹⁷⁵ Ibid., no. 393; for this characteristic in her charters, see Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, 278. Stephen had been taken first to Gloucester, where he arrived on 9 February. He was subsequently transferred to Bristol: see the Gloucester continuation of JW iii. 292. Miles of Gloucester was one of the continuator’s sources; he records the grant of the earldom to Miles: iii. 298. ⁹⁷⁶ Above, pp. 215–18.

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grudging recognition of Stephen’s royal title, now that he was safely in chains,⁹⁷⁷ made no difference to that defining fact. We have seen that Stephen more conventionally twinned this date with the day of his own coronation.⁹⁷⁸ He and Matilda could agree on one thing: the legal significance of the day of Henry I’s death. But she had to make specific exceptions when, for instance, she found it expedient to confirm, without any reference to the status quo at her father’s death, grants which had been made in the interim. Moreover, she rejected out of hand the requests made on behalf of the imprisoned king and his eldest son Eustace. She was asked to allow Eustace the honour of Boulogne, which had come to Stephen iure uxoris in 1125, long before his accession as king,⁹⁷⁹ and also the county of Mortain,⁹⁸⁰ which Henry I had granted to Stephen some time after William of Mortain’s capture at the battle of Tinchebrai.⁹⁸¹ According to Orderic, Theobald of Blois tried to stipulate something similar to Geoffrey of Anjou as a condition of renouncing his regium ius in 1141. He wanted Geoffrey to ‘release [Theobald’s] brother Stephen from his fetters and restore intact to him and his heir the honour he had formerly held in his uncle’s lifetime’.⁹⁸² The empress’s rejection of the pleas to install Eustace in at least some of the lands which his father had held at the time of Henry I’s death, or to turn the clock back and treat Stephen as if he had never become king, was, as we have seen, the turning-point in Henry of Blois’ attitude to Matilda.⁹⁸³ Blood was thicker than the fides he had pledged at Wherwell.⁹⁸⁴ It also demonstrated that what was deemed to have been the situation on the day of her father’s death was not prescriptive; it would not be allowed to override strategic considerations. Matilda was intent on removing the honour of Boulogne from the control of Stephen’s queen.⁹⁸⁵ She was unlikely to countenance its going to their son. And as for Stephen, he seemed doomed to die in captivity.⁹⁸⁶ Despite the doubtless adroit misapprehension on the part of Stephen’s wife and brothers, there was to be no move to restore the status quo on the day when Henry I had been alive and dead. As with T.R.E. after 1066, it was simply a legal terminus. Thus with a little stretching here and there, the conventions engendered by the justification of the Conquest could be made to fit Matilda’s interpretation of the circumstances of Stephen’s imprisonment. Stephen’s actions after his release, in exchange for Robert of Gloucester, in November show that he shared these conventions; but the conclusions he drew from applying them to the same events were, of course, diametrically opposed. After attending the Westminster Council at which Henry of Blois sought to

⁹⁷⁷ HNa 86; GS 124; HH 740; WN, CSHR i. 41. ⁹⁷⁸ Above, p. 194. ⁹⁷⁹ GS 122; cf. the Gloucester continuation of JW iii. 296, which also reports that the queen had offered to persuade her husband to give up the crown and become a monk or pilgrim. ⁹⁸⁰ HNa 100. ⁹⁸¹ Orderic vi. 42. ⁹⁸² Ibid., 548. ⁹⁸³ HNa 98, quoted above, p. 246. ⁹⁸⁴ HNa 88. ⁹⁸⁵ Davis, King Stephen, 55–6. ⁹⁸⁶ GS 114.

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excuse his temporary support for Matilda—now reportedly styled by him ‘countess of Anjou’ and domina Andegavorum, rather than domina Anglorum⁹⁸⁷— the king travelled to Canterbury for Christmas. There he underwent a particularly solemn crown-wearing, as if to emphasize that he had resumed the functions of king.⁹⁸⁸ But ceremony was not enough, for in reality he turned out to have been emasculated. This is graphically demonstrated by the contrast between the countrywide spread of mints where his first coin type was issued, and those, almost entirely restricted to the south-east and East Anglia, where his subsequent issues were produced from the mid-1140s.⁹⁸⁹ The consilium for the ceremony would be unearthed from the Canterbury archives for use in what were clearly thought to be the analogous circumstances of Richard I’s return to England in 1194 after a long period in captivity.⁹⁹⁰ It was during Stephen’s reassertion of his regality at the Christmas feast in 1141 that he issued his second charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville.⁹⁹¹ It survives as an original, the work of the only chancery scribe known to have drafted documents for the king before and after 1141.⁹⁹² The charter opens with a confirmation to Geoffrey of ‘all his tenements that he held, from whomever he shall have held, on the day when I was impeded and captured at Lincoln’. Stephen then made a number of additional grants. All of these are presented as fresh gifts, made by the king at this point. However, Matilda’s second charter in favour of Geoffrey reveals that several of them had been made by ‘King Stephen and Queen Matilda’.⁹⁹³ The queen can have played no part in such grants prior to her husband’s capture or after his release, since they included royal estates and escheats. Moreover, she is not recorded as their cograntor in the king’s charter. It follows that she must have given the lands during her husband’s captivity, when the Gesta Stephani implies she acted in such a capacity.⁹⁹⁴ Geoffrey had indeed been brought back to the king’s side by 14 September, when he participated in the rout of the empress’s forces at Winchester.⁹⁹⁵ Such a purchase of support by the queen might explain the king’s ⁹⁸⁷ HNa 110. ⁹⁸⁸ GC i. 123. Gervase places it under 1142, but Round, G. de M., 137–8, shows that it must have happened at Christmas 1141. Round argues that ‘Stephen himself looked on this as a second coronation, and as no mere “crown-wearing” ’. He cites as evidence RRAN iii. no. 10, in which Stephen confirmed lands to the abbot and monks of Abingdon ‘sicut tenuerunt die qua rex Henricus fuit vivus et mortuus et die qua primum coronatus fui’. But reference to a ‘first’ coronation was quite conventional—e.g. RRAN ii. no. 531—and distinguished it from subsequent crown-wearings. There is no reason to date iii. no. 10 after Stephen’s release. GS 136 describes a ceremonial procession meeting the newly released king, but not the Christmas crown-wearing. ⁹⁸⁹ Blackburn, ‘Coinage and Currency’, 162–5. ⁹⁹⁰ GC i. 524–7. ⁹⁹¹ RRAN iii. no. 276; Round, G. de M., 138–9. ⁹⁹² Scriptor xx: Bishop, Scriptores Regis, p. 30; RRAN iii. p. xv; Cronne, Stephen, 217–18. ⁹⁹³ RRAN iii. no. 275. I follow Round and Prestwich against Davis on the contested subject of the date of this charter: see above, n. 773. Its date is not crucial to my current point: Stephen’s unwillingness to recognize the empress’s existence. ⁹⁹⁴ GS, 126; John of Hexham, in SD ii. 310. RRAN iii. no. 530 seems to have been issued during Stephen’s imprisonment; further, Round, G. de M., 120–1. ⁹⁹⁵ HNa 102.

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statement that: ‘Furthermore, I have given and granted to [Geoffrey] whatever is attested by the queen’s charter.’⁹⁹⁶ But these are not the only gifts made to Geoffrey after 2 February and prior to Christmas which are wrapped up in Stephen’s Christmas present to Geoffrey. In addition, he in effect confirmed a series of grants made by the empress at midsummer in her first charter; but he let slip no hint that this was what he was doing. Instead, he presented them as new gifts. That the only witness common to both charters was Henry of Blois may have made this sleight-of-hand easier to effect. The £100 of land provisionally made up of Maldon, Newport, Depden, Catlidge, and Bonhunt is specified in her charter. Ing and Phingria, included by Stephen in this parcel, but not mentioned by the empress, had presumably been added in order to make up the total value of £100, as she had instructed in the event of a shortfall.⁹⁹⁷ Included within his grant of the fees and service of sixty knights were the twenty which the empress had given, for the only individual named in the empress’s charter, Graelengus de Tany, is amongst those listed by Stephen.⁹⁹⁸ And Matilda had conceded to Geoffrey ‘and his heirs custody of the Tower of London with the small castle which was Ravenger’s in fee and inheritance of me and my heirs with the lands and liberties and all the customs which pertained to the said Tower’. The precise point at which Geoffrey had been able to recover the custody of the Tower which his father, William de Mandeville, had lost, is disputed.⁹⁹⁹ Nevertheless, it is certain that the first extant formal grant is Matilda’s. The wording of Stephen’s charter, which strongly implies a new gift, makes it more likely that he was not confirming his own previous grant.¹⁰⁰⁰ If so, he was again disguising as his own gift a confirmation of a grant by the empress. Whereas Matilda had during 1141 referred explicitly to at least one of Stephen’s grants in confirming it,¹⁰⁰¹ he drew a veil over the fact that he was countenancing and augmenting what she had already conceded. In other words, his attitude was similar to that which she had adopted to him prior to the battle of Lincoln:¹⁰⁰² a pretence that he had never ruled. But he did implicitly admit that there had been a hiatus in his own reign when he used the date of his capture as a terminus. Indeed, it has been suggested that his admission that he had been ‘impeded’ as well as ‘captured’ at Lincoln alluded to his inability to issue legally valid instruments ⁹⁹⁶ I follow the argument in Prestwich, ‘Treason’, 289; ‘Further Comment’, 960–1. Strictly interpreted, ‘furthermore (preterea)’ would imply a further gift made by the queen in a charter, rather than an attempt to summarize gifts already listed. But the catch-all ‘whatever (quicquid)’ looks like an attempt to sweep up any gifts from the queen which had inadvertently been left out of the preceding list. According to the empress’s second charter, Geoffrey had several charters of the king and queen in his possession. ⁹⁹⁷ RRAN iii. no. 274. ⁹⁹⁸ Prestwich, ‘Treason’, 290. ⁹⁹⁹ Davis, ‘Final Comment’, 967; Prestwich and Davis, ‘Last Words’, 670–2. ¹⁰⁰⁰ RRAN iii. no. 276: ‘Et preterea dedi ei et concessi custodiam turris Lond[onie] cum castello quod ei subest, habendum et tenendum sibi et suis heredibus de me et de meis heredibus cum omnibus rebus et libertatibus et consuetudinibus prefate turri pertinentibus.’ ¹⁰⁰¹ RRAN iii. no. 368, discussed above, p. 248; no. 274 does not do so, but it does refer to Stephen as king. ¹⁰⁰² Above, p. 215.

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while in captivity.¹⁰⁰³ The significance attributed to his capture and incarceration is likely to be the source of the superstition—defied by Stephen at Christmas 1146—that no king should wear his crown in Lincoln.¹⁰⁰⁴ This interpretation of the charter’s wording is strengthened by the fact that the rest of the charter presents all subsequent grants to Geoffrey as made by the king when he was no longer captive and, by inference, no longer ‘impeded’. Stephen did not specify when this hiatus had ended, but the charter was issued at the point when his regality was ceremonially reasserted. No document can be dated to the period between the king’s release, on 1 November, and Christmas. The analogy is not exact, but there are similarities between this measure and Rufus’s subsequent treatment of the period of his serious illness in 1093.¹⁰⁰⁵ According to William of Malmesbury, Robert of Gloucester, who had been captured after the rout of the empress’s forces at Winchester, eventually came to an agreement with Henry of Blois about the terms on which he would be swapped with the king. He would agree only on condition that ‘no lands or castles should be returned that had passed into the ius of the empress or any of her fideles after the king’s capture’.¹⁰⁰⁶ In other words, if William of Malmesbury’s report is accurate,¹⁰⁰⁷ those who had benefited from Matilda’s limited revocation of Stephen’s grants¹⁰⁰⁸ were to have what they had received from her secured as part of the agreement whereby Stephen was released and ‘restored to the kingdom’.¹⁰⁰⁹ The king was thereby prevented from nullifying Matilda’s grants in the way in which the author of the Gesta Stephani alleged she had treated his. His Christmas charter in favour of Geoffrey would suggest that he was in any case in no position to do anything other than confirm and amplify the grants she had made. An obvious parallel with the deal struck by Robert of Gloucester might appear to be the blanket pardon which Stephen had granted to Ilbert de Lacy and his men for crimes committed during the precisely defined period of interregnum in 1135¹⁰¹⁰—almost the opposite of the measure proclaimed by Henry I in cap. 14 of his coronation ‘edict’. But of course Matilda’s supporters could never have been brought to accept such an analysis of the nine months during which she had finally succeeded in replacing the usurper Stephen in England. One man’s interregnum was another man’s period of legitimate rule. That was what the author of the Gesta Stephani recognized when he mentioned those who viewed Stephen’s imprisonment as inaugurating a period of peace.¹⁰¹¹ Just as one man’s interregnum was another man’s period of legitimate rule, and one man’s usurper another man’s rightful successor, so one man’s unjust ¹⁰⁰³ Prestwich, ‘Further Comment’, 961, n. 1. ¹⁰⁰⁴ HH 748. ¹⁰⁰⁵ RRAN i. no. 407, discussed above, p. 135. ¹⁰⁰⁶ HNa 118. ¹⁰⁰⁷ GS 136 appears to say that it was agreed that there should be a wholesale restoration of the status quo at the time of Stephen’s capture. If this is what the author meant, then such a deal would have been unworkable, and there is no indication that either party tried to implement it. ¹⁰⁰⁸ GS 120, discussed above, p. 245. ¹⁰⁰⁹ JW iii. 304; GS 126, cf. 137. The author does not say that the king was restored to his honor. ¹⁰¹⁰ RRAN iii. no. 428, discussed above, pp. 193–4. ¹⁰¹¹ GS 114.

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dispossession was another man’s restoration of the disinherited, and one man’s interloper another’s legitimate heir. Indeed, as should be clear by now, these issues were interdependent. Nowhere is this interdependence more perceptively expressed than in the speech which Henry of Huntingdon attributed to Robert of Gloucester prior to the battle of Lincoln. Given Henry’s attitude to Stephen, we may be sure that this represents his own view. Robert proclaimed that the king had ‘cruelly usurped the realm, contrary to the oaths which he swore my sister, . . . and by his example in distributing lands to those who have no right, he has plundered those who are rightful possessors’. It was therefore appropriate that the first charge against the king’s forces should be made, ‘with the assistance of God, the just Judge’, by those whom Stephen had ‘wretchedly disinherited’.¹⁰¹² The illegitimacy of Stephen’s accession had, in other words, infected his grants and dispossessions. William of Malmesbury also noticed the connection. He incorporates the complete text of Stephen’s charter of liberties of Easter 1136, presenting it as the written version of the sacramentum which the archbishop of Canterbury had extracted from Stephen prior to his coronation.¹⁰¹³ It is much more than a straightforward confirmation of ecclesiastical lands as they had been on the day of Henry I’s death. Indeed, it formulated a new sort of terminus. Stephen conceded ‘all the possessions and tenures of churches which they had on that day when King William my grandfather was alive and dead’, and confirmed any grants which had been made to them after that date. Claims to lands lost prior to that point were reserved to the king’s ‘indulgence and disposal’ as regards ‘discussion or restoration’. We have already seen him using this discretion in favour of Glastonbury and against Robert of Bampton in the case of Uffculme.¹⁰¹⁴ Yet according to William of Malmesbury ‘the treasures of some churches were plundered and their landed possessions given to laymen’.¹⁰¹⁵ William attributes the discrepancy between Stephen’s proclaimed intentions and his later deeds in part to the ‘whispers’ of ill-disposed counsellors, but also to the manner of the king’s accession. Stephen, he said, lacked little that befitted the regia persona ‘if he had entered into the kingdom legitimately’.¹⁰¹⁶ Because he had not, his rule was fundamentally flawed. Thus rightful tenants were dispossessed, and rightful claimants were not restored, as a consequence of the king’s own illegitimate tenure. That tenure was founded on acts of perjury by himself and others. It was hardly surprising that he broke those vows which, in Henry of Huntingdon’s view, he had made orally on the day of his coronation, and subsequently confirmed in writing.¹⁰¹⁷ ¹⁰¹² HH 726–8, cf. 724, 736. William of Malmesbury, HNa 82–4, agrees that most of Robert of Gloucester’s army was made up of ‘disinherited men inflamed to war by grief for what they had lost’; cf. GC i. 154 for the ‘disinherited’ who were still ranged against the king in 1153. ¹⁰¹³ HNa 32–6, cf. 28. ¹⁰¹⁴ Above, pp. 199–200. Finberg, ‘Uffculme’, 213–14, 218, discusses the clause. ¹⁰¹⁵ HNa 36. ¹⁰¹⁶ Cf. above, n. 906, for a possible parallel with Harold II. ¹⁰¹⁷ HH 704, cf. 708.

254

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The precise definition of interregnum which had developed as a consequence of the way in which the Conqueror’s claim to the kingdom of England had been framed, had thus become one of the central concepts in debates about royal succession. At no time had this been clearer than in the unprecedented situation of 1141, when the dialectical struggle between Stephen and Matilda was most sharply delineated. For a long time after 1141 the Angevin assessment of Stephen’s reign as in some respects tantamount to an interregnum was not formulated any more clearly or consistently than before. Thus in her second charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Matilda conceded to him lands ‘which King Stephen and Queen Matilda gave to him . . . as in their charters which he has’.¹⁰¹⁸ In so doing she was explicitly treating at least one charter issued by Stephen after his release as she had come to treat some of his earlier acts while she held him captive. But this post-1141 recognition on her part of Stephen’s royal title seems to have been unique. During the king’s captivity she conceded to Godstow Abbey what ‘King Stephen gave to that place’;¹⁰¹⁹ but in 1143, when she appears to have made a further gift of two-and-a-half hides and half a virgate at Shillingford,¹⁰²⁰ she did not admit that this had also been pre-empted by Stephen.¹⁰²¹ It is no surprise that when she issued, jointly with her eldest son, a confirmation of a grant made by Henry I to the Hospital of Beaulieu de Chartres,¹⁰²² she should ignore Stephen’s interim confirmation in the same terms.¹⁰²³ She and her son amended the terms of King Henry’s grant as if for the first time. In fact Stephen had done so a decade before.¹⁰²⁴ These examples can be multiplied, despite the understandable scarcity of extant documents recording similar grants to the same beneficiary by both Stephen and Matilda.¹⁰²⁵ They show Matilda moving away from the position she had come to adopt during Stephen’s captivity, which was still evident in her second charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville, issued some time during the first half of 1142. Instead, she adopted one akin to that held by Stephen in his second charter. She was willing to grant what Stephen granted, and even to augment it. But she maintained a pretence that he had not pre-empted her. Stephen continued to do the same. For instance, he gave ‘my manor’ of Blewbury to Reading Abbey together ¹⁰¹⁸ RRAN iii. no. 275. ¹⁰¹⁹ Ibid., no. 368, discussed above, p. 248. ¹⁰²⁰ Ibid., nos. 370, 371. ¹⁰²¹ Ibid., no. 367. ¹⁰²² Ibid., no. 71 (1150 ⫻ Sept. 1151). ¹⁰²³ Ibid., no. 69 (14 Mar. ⫻ 11 Apr. 1137). ¹⁰²⁴ Ibid., no. 70 (1140). ¹⁰²⁵ See ibid., no. 460, a confirmation of a gift to Lilleshall Abbey issued by Stephen in 1145; no. 461, issued by Matilda 1148 ⫻ 51; and no. 462 (1150 ⫻ 51), Henry’s subsequent confirmation as ‘dei gratia dux Normannorum’. In no. 630 (1141 ⫻ 42) Matilda granted to Oseney Abbey what Stephen had granted in no. 627 (1139 ⫻ 40). See also no. 838 (1135 ⫻ 47), Stephen’s grant of a hermitage to Stoneleigh Abbey, and no. 839 (1141 ⫻ 48), Matilda’s grant of the same hermitage to the same beneficiary; but in this case it is not clear which came first.

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with all its appurtenant rights and customs ‘with which King Henry my uncle or I held better and more freely’.¹⁰²⁶ He drew a veil over the fact that he had not held the manor for some time, because two or three years before Matilda had given it to the abbey ‘as King Henry my father held and had it better, more freely, more peacefully and more fully’.¹⁰²⁷ Similarly he granted three carucates of land and a mill to Haughmond Abbey which Matilda had also given, almost certainly before.¹⁰²⁸ As the case of Beaulieu de Chartres demonstrates, her son Henry adopted the same pretence when he began to issue charters jointly with his mother. And he maintained it after he had apparently superseded her as her ‘heir’¹⁰²⁹ and issued charters on his own.¹⁰³⁰ Thus, some time between May 1152 and August 1153, Stephen granted two hides of land in Cirencester to Cirencester Abbey, ‘one from my demesne and the other from the warland which 4 villeins hold’.¹⁰³¹ The charter was issued on the spot, so the king was evidently in control of the land in question. But probably in April or May 1153, Roger, earl of Hereford, seems to have considered that he controlled these two hides, for Duke Henry then confirmed Roger’s grant of them to the abbey—‘one from my demesne which the earl of Hereford holds at feudal farm (ad firmam feodalem), the other from the warland’.¹⁰³² Stephen’s grant, which was almost certainly earlier, is not mentioned. As far as Duke Henry was concerned, the demesne was (already) his. After Henry had replaced his mother as, in the words of the Gesta Stephani (following its author’s change of heart), ‘iustus regni Anglorum haeres et appetitor’,¹⁰³³ he continued to use the time of Henry I or the day on which the king had been alive and dead as the status quo by reference to which tenure and rights tended to be defined.¹⁰³⁴ He confirmed in turn confirmations and grants which his mother had made according to this term of reference.¹⁰³⁵ He had done the ¹⁰²⁶ Ibid., no. 694 (Christmas 1146 or 1147); cf. no. 694a, a confirmation of what the king had given, issued at the same time by Eustace ‘filius regis comes Bolonie’. ¹⁰²⁷ Ibid., no. 703 (1144 ⫻ 47, probably 1144); cf. no. 704 (1147 or 1149), issued by Henry ‘ducis Normannie et Andegavie filius’; further, Chibnall, Matilda, 131. ¹⁰²⁸ RRAN iii. nos. 376 (1135 ⫻ 52), 377 (June ⫻ July 1141), 378 (1141 ⫻ 43). The Cartulary of Haughmond Abbey, ed. U. Rees (Cardiff, 1985), nos. 1250, 1251, 1252, dates Stephen’s charter after Matilda’s: further, Chibnall, Matilda, 132. ¹⁰²⁹ He is so termed in RRAN iii. no. 116, her charter in favour of Bordesley Abbey. ¹⁰³⁰ See e.g. ibid., no. 104, Henry’s confirmation of a grant made by Ernald de Bosco for the foundation of Biddlesden Abbey, which was probably issued c.7 June 1153. Stephen had issued a confirmation to this effect c.1149—no. 103—but Henry did not refer to it. ¹⁰³¹ Ibid., no. 192. On warland, see R. Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (Leicester, 1997), ch. 4. ¹⁰³² RRAN iii. no. 193. ¹⁰³³ GS 204. ¹⁰³⁴ RRAN iii. nos. 582 (c.7 June 1153); 653 (Sept. 1151 ⫻ Jan. 1153); 710 (Apr. 1153 ⫻ Apr. 1154); 729 (1150 ⫻ 51); 735 (Easter 1147 ⫻ Easter 1148); 901 (probably Apr. ⫻ May 1153); 962 (Apr. 1153 ⫻ Apr. 1154); cf. no. 706 (1150 ⫻ 7 Sept. 1151), in which Duke Henry grants the church of Berkeley to Reading Abbey: ‘Et volo quod eam habeant et teneant sicut melius et liberius tenent quicquid donatione predicti regis Henrici avi mei possident.’ ¹⁰³⁵ Ibid., nos. 379 (c.7 June 1153), confirming Matilda’s 378 (1141 ⫻ 43); 900 (Apr. x Dec. 1154), confirming Matilda’s 899 (July 1141); 462 (1151), confirming Matilda’s 461 (1148 ⫻ 51).

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same when they issued joint charters.¹⁰³⁶ In pious clauses explaining that he was making a grant for the sake of his own soul and those of his antecessores, both his mother and father were included amongst them.¹⁰³⁷ He confirmed the restoration of possessions to the bishop of Bayeux according to what a sworn inquest in Henry I’s time established had been held at the death of Bishop Odo, and what another sworn recognition under his father proved had been the status quo ‘in tempore Henrici regis’. His grandfather and father are both termed his antecessores.¹⁰³⁸ But despite Geoffrey of Anjou’s use of the title dux Normannorum from 1144 at the latest,¹⁰³⁹ and despite Matilda’s claim to have acceded to the kingdom in an unprecedented fashion during 1141, Henry treated neither as his antecessor in the sense which we have seen emerging from the Conqueror’s claim to the kingdom of England. That role was reserved for Henry’s maternal grandfather. We might expect as much in Geoffrey’s case, given that he renounced the ducal title and handed over the duchy—described by Robert of Torigni as Henry’s ‘inheritance from his mother’s side’—to his eldest son in 1150.¹⁰⁴⁰ Although he had become much more than his wife’s ‘stipendiary’ there, his rights derived entirely from her.¹⁰⁴¹ After Henry had become sole duke, but before his father’s death, he issued a charter of liberties to the citizens of Rouen.¹⁰⁴² One clause freed the citizens, from the day on which ‘they became the men of Duke Geoffrey my father’, from liability for the deeds of those who had left Rouen and its commune. But the terminus common to the others was Henry I’s death. Thus the citizens were to hold ‘as each of them held on the day when King Henry was alive and dead’; and ‘if anyone was disseised after the death of King Henry, I will have him reseised if he is in my peace and jurisdiction’. The charter is clearly based on a lost one of Duke Geoffrey to the citizens,¹⁰⁴³ which had probably coincided with or just preceded his assumption of the ducal style.¹⁰⁴⁴ So Duke Henry’s use of Henry I’s death was probably copied from his father’s document: it is notable that King Henry is not termed ‘my grandfather’ in Duke Henry’s charter, although this was already becoming conventional. Although his father had been duke before him, Henry did not attempt to alter the terminus which his father had adopted. In other words, his father was not his antecessor in the technical sense of the term. ¹⁰³⁶ Ibid., nos. 43 (1144); 111 (1144); this was also true of the separate charters of confirmation which he had issued before his accession as duke, eg. no. 635. ¹⁰³⁷ Ibid., no. 90 (1153 ⫻ Apr. 1154). ¹⁰³⁸ Ibid., no. 61 (Sept. 1151 ⫻ Jan. 1153). ¹⁰³⁹ Above, p. 227. ¹⁰⁴⁰ ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 161. Normandy and England are described as Henry’s ius maternum in the account of Geoffrey of Anjou’s will given by WN, ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’, CSHR i. 112, cf. 88. ¹⁰⁴¹ Above, pp. 226–7. ¹⁰⁴² RRAN iii. no. 729. ¹⁰⁴³ Amongst those listed as witnessing the charter is ‘Helias frater ducis’. Helias was Geoffrey’s brother, and therefore Henry’s uncle. ¹⁰⁴⁴ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 128 reports that Geoffrey became duke after the surrender of the castle garrison on 23 April 1144. But at iv. 127 he says that Geoffrey was ceremonially received by the citizens on 20 January.

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That he confirmed his father’s acts¹⁰⁴⁵ does not alter the fact that his maternal grandfather appeared to be their common antecessor.¹⁰⁴⁶ Something similar was true of his mother in England. Henry never sought to define tenure or rights by reference to what had prevailed in her time, or at the point at which she had ceased to rule. Simply to formulate it in the latter way is to highlight the absurdity of the notion. The assertion that Matilda had somehow acceded to the kingdom in 1141 was quietly dropped. There had never been a tempus Matildis. Her antecessor was his. Although there were parallels between Henry’s use of tempus Henrici regis avi mei in his documents issued in England and Normandy at this time, his positions in the kingdom and duchy were not analogous. For he was duke in the latter, but he was not king in the former. That turncoat, the author of the Gesta Stephani,¹⁰⁴⁷ now styled him ‘just heir of the kingdom of England’. But he adopted no such title, unlike that used by his mother shortly after her arrival in England in 1139,¹⁰⁴⁸ or the style attributed to him in his confirmatory charter to Aubrey de Vere of 1142: ‘right heir of England.’¹⁰⁴⁹ Nor did he use a male equivalent of domina Anglorum.¹⁰⁵⁰ He remained content with his continental titles in England. But as we have already seen, he regarded as already ‘of my demesne’ land which Stephen considered to be part of his demesne.¹⁰⁵¹ When he made grants to ‘God and the church of St Paul of Bedford’ c.31 August 1153, he undertook that if ‘on account of the war or for any other reason I should be unable to guarantee them’, he would compensate the church with something of equivalent value ‘from my resources (de redditu meo)’ or ‘in my peace’.¹⁰⁵² This was all he could do ‘for the present’; but when ‘God willing, I shall have obtained my right of England (ius meum Anglie adeptus fuero)’, he would ‘augment’ and ‘maintain everywhere’ the fee of the church. The ‘present’ would end only when he had acceded to his ius; from that point he would be able to confirm a gift ‘by royal authority and corroborate it with the witness of the royal seal’.¹⁰⁵³ But that clearly did not mean that he was unable to make grants ‘for the present’, just as he and his mother had done ¹⁰⁴⁵ RRAN iii. nos. 323 (7 Sept. 1151 ⫻ 30 Mar. 1152); 776 (9 Nov. 1151). ¹⁰⁴⁶ Haskins, Norman Institutions, 135; for a few references to Geoffrey’s official acts in Henry’s charters, see pp. 147, n. 89, 148, n. 91, 152, n. 121; Calendar of Documents Preserved in France Illustrative of the History of Great Britain and Ireland, ed. J. H. Round (London, 1899), no. 1296. ¹⁰⁴⁷ GS 210, 214, 222, 224; see pp. xx–xxi on his changing sides. ¹⁰⁴⁸ RRAN iii. no. 391, discussed above, p. 215. ¹⁰⁴⁹ Ibid., no. 635; HNa, p. 126 refers to him as iustus heres on his visit to England in this year. ¹⁰⁵⁰ Unlike Richard and John, who were both styled dominus Angliae prior to their coronations: Ancient Charters Prior to AD 1200, ed. J. H. Round, PRS x (1888), no. 55. Round’s references to John’s ‘charters’ are inaccurate: John’s letter patent of 17 April 1199 is executed in a writ of Geoffrey fitzPeter, dated 29 April 1199: HMC: Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2 vols. (HMSO, 1907–14), i. p. 8, nos. x (Wells Cathedral, charter no. 14), xi; further, CRR i. 255, 384; Rotuli Curiae Regis, ed. F. Palgrave, 2 vols. (Record Commission, 1835), i. pp. xciv, xcvii; Garnett, ‘Crown’, 213, n. 224. I am grateful to Jim Holt for his help with these references. ¹⁰⁵¹ RRAN iii. nos. 193, 192, discussed above, p. 255. ¹⁰⁵² Ibid., no. 81; for similar arrangements, see nos. 180 (Jan. ⫻ Apr. 1153), 306 (June 1153 ⫻ Apr. 1154). ¹⁰⁵³ Ibid., no. 90.

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previously. Rather, it meant that such grants might be insecure because he did not yet have the clout to ‘deliver’ or ‘guarantee’ all of them ‘everywhere’. He would be able to do so when he had ‘recovered’ his ius or hereditas of the kingdom.¹⁰⁵⁴ In the agreement which he concluded with Jocelyn, bishop of Salisbury, on 9 April 1153, whereby he was to hold the episcopal castle of Devizes for a period of up to three years from that date, or until he should recover his ius, whichever was the sooner, it was envisaged that he would grant land to the church of Salisbury both within the terminus (as it is described) and after he had recovered his ius. Recovery of his ius did not confer the capacity to give, it just made it more effective. In this respect, the circumstances of Stephen’s reign had transformed the position of a potential successor to the kingdom, and with it the significance of royal accession. Previously, intended successors had been denied any landed endowment. To borrow Orderic’s terminology, they secured ‘possession’ together with ‘title’ only when they acceded. Matilda, however, had had to make grants to her supporters long before she was in a position to undergo the consecration which had marked royal accession hitherto. This difficulty was circumvented by laying great emphasis on the homage of individuals which, apparently, fulfilled one of the terms of the oaths taken to her during her father’s reign. These cumulatively marked her effective accession as domina, and culminated, after Stephen’s capture, in her being ‘received’ in Winchester in March 1141, and ‘confirmed’ or ‘elected’ as domina Anglie there at the subsequent Easter Council.¹⁰⁵⁵ While she had been engaged in her struggle with Stephen, she had, on the whole, maintained a pretence that her accession as domina had brought to a close the interregnum which had begun with her father’s death.¹⁰⁵⁶ She displayed no compunction about disposing of land and rights, including demesne estates and revenues of the king. For instance, her first charter for Geoffrey de Mandeville recorded her gift to him of Maldon, which Stephen had previously given to his brother, Theobald, count of Blois.¹⁰⁵⁷ She authorized Geoffrey to subtract the value of Maldon and also Newport from the farm which had been due for Essex on the day of Henry I’s death, thereby confirming that they had then been in the king’s hands. In Exchequer parlance, they had been terre date.¹⁰⁵⁸ She further stipulated that he was henceforth to hold ‘all my escheats which escheat to me in the county of Essex’, but that he should render the ‘right farm’ for them because, unlike Maldon and Newport, they would be ‘in my demesne’. ¹⁰⁵⁴ In ibid., no. 126 (Jan. ⫻ May 1153) he looked forward to the time ‘when by the grace of God I shall have acquired my inheritance’; in no. 796 (9 Apr. 1153) the kingdom is ‘ius suum’; cf. no. 329 (Sept. 1151 ⫻ Jan. 1153) in which Henry, ‘duke of the Normans and count of the Angevins’, confirmed an arrangement which was to hold until the beneficiary recovered ‘hereditarium ius suum in Anglia’. ¹⁰⁵⁵ HNa, pp. 86–8, 90, n. c, 92. ¹⁰⁵⁶ RRAN iii. nos. 391, 821. ¹⁰⁵⁷ Ibid., no. 274. On Maldon, see R. H. C. Davis, ‘The College of St Martins-le-Grand and the Anarchy, 1135–54’, repr. in id., Alfred the Great to Stephen, 237–54, at 244–5. ¹⁰⁵⁸ R. S. Hoyt, The Royal Demesne in English Constiutional History (Ithaca, NY, 1950), 85–6, 90.

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Probably in 1150, Henry had received the subjection of the Normans ‘as their lord and the just heir’.¹⁰⁵⁹ But it is by no means certain that this was a collective act, of the sort which had characterized designation ceremonies in Normandy, and following the Norman model and beginning with William Adelin, in England. The unprecedented manner of his father’s accession as duke had ruptured that tradition. Henry had, therefore, almost certainly received the homage of individual magnates piecemeal in Normandy as—like mother, like son—he did in England.¹⁰⁶⁰ As in his mother’s case, this does not seem to have cramped his style when it came to exercising quasi-royal power in England. As we shall see, he would not ‘recover ius meum Anglie’¹⁰⁶¹ until he received the title of king at his coronation, and with it the ‘royal seal’ which was inseparable from ‘royal authority’.¹⁰⁶² But he already disposed of demesne lands and revenues, at least some of which Stephen considered to be his as king. Henry ‘restored and conceded’ to William Mauduit the ministerium of his chamber ‘just as he had it in the year and on the day when King Henry was alive and dead, and all the land which pertains to the chamber in England and Normandy’. He did the same with a grant which Matilda, Henry I’s queen, had made to William.¹⁰⁶³ The empress had previously restored Queen Matilda’s grant to William as her chamberlain in May 1141.¹⁰⁶⁴ William had been an officer in the staff of the master chamberlain under Henry I, acting as a receiver of payments in the camera curie.¹⁰⁶⁵ Unlike the ‘chamberlainship of my treasury’, with all its appurtenant tenures ‘whether in England or Normandy’, which Duke Henry also claimed in this document to have ‘restored’, William had held the ministerium of the chamber at the time of Henry I’s death. This is confirmed by the Constitutio Domus Regis, which attempted to establish the precise condition of the king’s household at that point.¹⁰⁶⁶ But he seems to have lost it with Stephen’s accession.¹⁰⁶⁷ That Henry and, by implication, his mother considered that they were ¹⁰⁵⁹ GS 224. ¹⁰⁶⁰ RRAN iii. no. 111 (1144), for Humphrey de Bohun becoming ‘our liege man against all men’ of Henry ‘filius comitis Andegavorum’ as well as his mother; no. 309 (Jan. ⫻ May 1153), for Robert fitzHarding becoming ‘my man’; The Charters of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester, c. 1071–1237, ed. G. Barraclough, Record Soc. of Lancashire and Cheshire, cxxvi (1988), no. 87 n., for Rannulf of Chester probably doing homage to Henry on the occasion of his knighting by King David at Carlisle on 22 May 1149. ¹⁰⁶¹ RRAN iii. no. 81. ¹⁰⁶² Ibid., no. 90. ¹⁰⁶³ Ibid., no. 582 (c.7 June 1153); G. J. White, ‘The End of Stephen’s Reign’, History, lxxv (1990), 3–22, at 15–16. ¹⁰⁶⁴ RRAN iii. no. 581 (5 ⫻ 7 May 1141) ¹⁰⁶⁵ PR 31 Henry I, 134.; cf. RRAN ii. nos. 1698, 1719; further, G. H. White, ‘Financial Administration Under Henry I’, TRHS, 4th ser., viii (1925), 56–78, at 72–7. ¹⁰⁶⁶ Constitutio, 133, cf. 129, 131. Henry restored to William the chamberlainship of ‘his’ treasury as William’s brother Robert had held it on the day of his death. Robert died in the wreck of the White Ship—Orderic vi. 304—and both his office and his lands were given by Henry I to William de Pont de l’Arche, who purchased the marriage of Robert’s daughter: PR 31 Henry I, 37; further, J. Le Patourel, Normandy and England: 1066–1144, Stenton Lecture 1970 (Reading, 1971), 36. ¹⁰⁶⁷ He attested under Stephen until 1139, but not as chamberlain: RRAN iii. nos. 255, 667, 727, 749.

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restoring William to a position which he had held in Henry I’s household when they appointed him to the same one in their own households, again shows them acting as if they were successors to Henry I. Because the post had been in Henry I’s household, it seems to have been exercised on both sides of the Channel.¹⁰⁶⁸ After Geoffrey of Anjou had ‘returned’¹⁰⁶⁹ the duchy to his son, the young Henry appears, as we have seen, to have regarded himself as his grandfather’s successor there.¹⁰⁷⁰ But Duke Henry restored to William Mauduit all the land which pertained to the ministerium of his chamber ‘in Normandy and England’. The same was true of land pertaining to the other office restored to William—that of chamberlain of Duke Henry’s treasury. In other words, in this instance Henry’s being duke seems to have allowed him to act as if he were Henry I’s successor in England too, although the charter was issued long before he became king. Duke Henry’s claim to be already some sort of successor to Henry I in England, even though his own charters admitted that he had not yet recovered his ius, were based on more than an elision between his ducal title and his claim to the kingdom. In an original charter probably issued c.7 June 1153, for instance, he freed Biddlesden Abbey from a long list of customary obligations, concluding with ‘all customs pertaining to my crown’.¹⁰⁷¹ As in Matilda’s first charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville,¹⁰⁷² it appears that the crown was already his before he had been ceremonially invested with a physical one; and in his case before he had undergone any sort of ceremonial accession in England. Perhaps a little earlier, he had ‘conceded and confirmed with the defence of my present charter’ to St Augustine’s, Bristol, ‘all those lands and revenues belonging to the crown of England, which have been given in alms or shall be given in the future to the said church of St Augustine . . . by me or by another’.¹⁰⁷³ That the crown was here described as that of England, rather than his, may be explained by the assumption that he could confirm what had been granted by ‘another’ (it being clear who that unnameable other was). A charter recording his gifts to Bermondsey Priory describes some of the revenues granted as belonging ‘to the king’s crown’.¹⁰⁷⁴ Henry could dispose of these while still only ‘duke of the Normans and Aquitainians and count of the Angevins’, but undertook to confirm the gifts ‘with royal authority’ and to corroborate them ‘with the witness of the royal seal’ if and ¹⁰⁶⁸ White, ‘Financial Administration’, 75–7. ¹⁰⁶⁹ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 161. ¹⁰⁷⁰ Above, p. 256; cf. RRAN iii. no. 64 (Apr. ⫻ Dec. 1154), in which Henry granted a house which had been mortgaged to Henry I, but the mortgage of which had fallen in. As a consequence, the house was said to ‘remain in my demesne’. ¹⁰⁷¹ Ibid., no. 104; iv. pl. XL a. It is in the hand of scriptor xxiii, who wrote a number of charters for Henry prior to his accession, and continued to work for him after his accession: Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 26, 30, pl. XXIII. ¹⁰⁷² RRAN iii. no. 274; cf. nos. 399 (1140), 400 (3 ⫻ 25 Mar. 1141). ¹⁰⁷³ Ibid., no. 126 (Jan. ⫻ May 1153). ¹⁰⁷⁴ Ibid., no. 90; this cannot be dated more precisely than 1153 ⫻ Apr. 1154, and may therefore follow the treaty of Winchester of Nov. 1153. Even if it post-dates the treaty, the point made here stands.

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when ‘with God’s support I shall accede to the kingdom of England.’ The St Augustine’s charter similarly gave undertakings about what he would do ‘when with God’s grace I shall have acquired my inheritance’. Both documents make it quite clear that Henry claimed to dispose of what belonged to the (abstract) crown, although he had not yet been crowned with a physical one. Henry, like his mother before him, seems to have clutched even more desperately at the former than at the latter. The reason is not far to seek: the unprecedented circumstances of Stephen’s reign forced the empress and her son—or rather, the draftsmen of their charters— to postulate the existence of an entity distinct from the king’s person to which royal rights could be attributed. There was no other way in which to maintain a pretence that there was no king, but that each of them had in turn in some ways filled the vacancy consequent on the death of Henry I, but before assuming a royal title. The formulation of an abstract crown as a passive subject of royal rights was a more ingenious manifestation of the diplomatic legerdemain evident in the not entirely consistent pretence that Stephen did not exist as king, or the coy reference to him as ‘another’. This crown had more of a future than the polemical one coined by Eadmer.¹⁰⁷⁵ But as yet it was almost as inchoate as the phrase barones regni Anglie, formulated by those who sought to analyse the three-day period of interregnum following William Rufus’s death in terms of tenurial conventions which could not be made to fit it. For this corona, like their regnum, was inconsistent with the basic premise of the antecessor scheme, in terms of which both Matilda and Henry expressed their claims: that each successive king was simply king, not the corporeal instantiation of some abstract public authority. Henry referred to demesne which was said to belong to ‘the crown of England’¹⁰⁷⁶ as ‘my demesne’¹⁰⁷⁷ in the same way as he did to the demesne he held as duke in Normandy.¹⁰⁷⁸ Yet at this stage he had still not ‘recovered’ his ius Anglie.¹⁰⁷⁹ And to compound the contradictions, the crown was described as already his. The contradictions were an inevitable consequence of treating Stephen’s reign as a quasi-interregnum. Theory could not be made to fit the facts. In the struggle to make them congruent, the intimate connection between the king’s person, his position, and his possessions, which was one consequence of the way in which the Conqueror’s claim had been formulated, had been fractured by the predicament of Angevin claimants during Stephen’s reign. The deal struck between the king and Duke Henry in 1153 acknowledged for the first time that the fracture had happened, and by doing so solved the problem of interregnum which had arisen as a consequence of the way in which the Conquest had been justified. It is to this subject that I shall now turn.

¹⁰⁷⁵ Garnett, ‘Crown’, passim. ¹⁰⁷⁶ RRAN iii. no. 126. ¹⁰⁷⁸ Ibid., no. 64. ¹⁰⁷⁹ Ibid., no. 81.

¹⁰⁷⁷ Ibid., no. 193.

IV The Problem Solved Know that for the honour of God and of Holy Church and for the common emendation of my whole realm, I have conceded and restored and in my present charter confirmed to God and Holy Church and to all earls and barons and all my men all the concessions and grants and liberties and free customs which King Henry my grandfather gave and conceded to them. Henry II, Coronation Charter¹

THE SET TLEMENT OF 1153: THE DIPLOMATIC EVIDENCE The story of how and why a settlement came to be imposed on King Stephen and Duke Henry by barons, both ecclesiastical and lay, in November 1153 has been told often enough by others.² Instead, I want to begin by concentrating on the terms of the agreement, because they represent an attempt to grapple with and solve the problems of interregnum as they had manifested themselves during Stephen’s reign.³ There had, of course, been attempts at a compromise peace earlier in the reign, but these could only have been of limited use in formulating the settlement of 1153. There is no record of the terms proposed in 1140⁴ and 1146,⁵ and those of 1141 reveal why any form of compromise was so difficult to achieve. Feelers were put out on two occasions in that year, by Queen Matilda⁶ and Theobald of Blois⁷ respectively—but only after Stephen’s capture at Lincoln, when his cause seemed lost. Although the initiatives differed in detail, common to them both—and to Henry of Blois’ understanding of what should happen to the lands which Stephen had held prior to becoming king⁸—was an assumption that any settlement should be framed in terms of a restoration of the status quo at Henry I’s death, or that Eustace should be substituted as holder of all or some of the lands which his father ¹ Stubbs, Charters, 158. ² Davis, King Stephen, 108–24; H. A. Cronne, The Reign of Stephen (London, 1970), 63–6, 182–4. ³ RRAN iii. no. 272. ⁴ HNa 76–8. ⁵ GS 186. ⁶ GS 122. ⁷ Orderic vi. 548. ⁸ HNa 100, discussed above, p. 246.

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had held at that point. This was compromise only in the sense that it attempted to secure from the empress and her husband at least some of the lands which would otherwise have been forfeit. It appears that no one envisaged that Stephen could ever resume his functions as king. Implicit in the various proposals was an admission that Matilda was the legitimate successor to everything which King Henry had held. In other words, they involved an abandonment of the claim which Stephen had made to the same position. The reverence for the tempus regis Henrici, whether as avunculus or as pater and avus, was shared because each side claimed him as antecessor. Yet he could not be antecessor to them both. There was no room for compromise on this issue. After his release from captivity in November 1141, Stephen was never again in so weak a position that he was prepared to countenance a settlement which acknowledged that he had not been King Henry’s heir. And Matilda had no claim to anything, other than as her father’s heir, for he had excluded her and her husband from any significant landed endowment during his lifetime. Anything she secured in England or Normandy after his death, and anything her husband conquered on her behalf, she claimed in this capacity as Henry’s heir. Thus, in her eyes, restoration to her of what had obtained tempore regis Henrici meant fully conceding her claim, as Stephen’s associates seem briefly to have been prepared to do in 1141, or it meant nothing. But later on Pope Celestine II had hit upon a different strategy for securing an eventual settlement. In 1143–4 he had instructed Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, that there should be no ‘innovation in the kingdom of England with respect to the crown, because it was a res litigiosa, the transfer of which had been rightly denounced’.⁹ Thereby, if John of Salisbury’s account is accurate, the pope acted on the outcome of the investigation, at the Second Lateran Council, into Matilda’s claim. There could be no immediate action because Pope Innocent II had sanctioned Stephen’s accession; but the writing was on the wall so far as the future consecration of a son of Stephen was concerned. In Stephen’s charter of liberties, issued at Oxford at Easter 1136, he had stressed that the archbishop of Canterbury who had ‘consecrated’ him was also papal legate, and that he had subsequently been ‘confirmed’ by the pope.¹⁰ A letter of Innocent, preserved by Richard of Hexham and characterized by him as a confirmation, records that Stephen had ‘promised obedience and reverence to the blessed Peter on the day of your consecration’.¹¹ Such a promise was unprecedented at an English coronation. The new king had been received as a ‘special son of the blessed Peter and the holy Roman church’. The suit between Stephen and Matilda had eventually been heard before the pope at the Second Lateran Council in 1139.¹² If we may believe William of Malmesbury’s explicit references to papal letters which have not survived, successive popes had been closely involved in the twists and turns of the ⁹ HP 83, 85–6. ¹⁰ RRAN iii. no. 271. ¹¹ ‘De Gestis Regis Stephani’, CSHR iii. 147–8; C. J. Holdsworth, ‘The Church’, in King (ed.), Anarchy, 207–29, at 209–10. ¹² HP 83–5; LGF no. 26; Letters of Peter the Venerable, ii. 252.

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conflict in England.¹³ Of course, there were precedents for appeals for papal intervention in cases of disputed succession in post-Conquest England (and Normandy),¹⁴ beginning with the Conqueror himself;¹⁵ but with Stephen’s accession the curia had become the ultimate court of appeal. By forbidding the archbishop of Canterbury to allow any ‘innovation’, Celestine, and subsequently Lucius II and Eugenius III,¹⁶ were in effect asserting ultimate papal control over the succession to Stephen. For no one could succeed as king without being consecrated, and royal consecration was by now acknowledged to be the particular privilege of the archbishop of Canterbury.¹⁷ In increasing desperation, Stephen broke with English (and Norman) tradition by attempting to have his elder son Eustace anointed as co-king during his own lifetime. This dramatic departure from custom may have been facilitated by the fact that it followed another: Stephen had invested Eustace with the honour and county of Boulogne—his ius maternum—and the title of count in 1147.¹⁸ Thereby an intended successor for the first time received significant landed endowment during his father’s lifetime. But the land conferred was part of the vast estates which Stephen, unlike any previous Norman king, had held prior to his accession.¹⁹ It seems likely that Henry I had allowed him to hold them precisely because he had not been the king’s intended successor. Perhaps the unprecedented transfer to Eustace in turn made it easier to envisage associating Eustace in the title of king, on the French model. At any rate, a desperate predicament required a desperate remedy, as Gervase of Canterbury later recognized when he said that Stephen’s concern with the issue of succession arose ‘lest the inheritance which he kept by fraud should fall at the first step’.²⁰ Initially Stephen seems to have acknowledged that, as John of Salisbury put it, a coronation would not be possible without the pope’s favour.²¹ But Eugenius III could not be persuaded to relent. According to Henry of Huntingdon, who was ¹³ HNa 42, 108. The fact that Innocent allegedly advised Robert of Gloucester to stick to the oath he had taken in his father’s presence does not mean that the pope was having second thoughts. It would be quite possible for a canonist to separate the two issues. ¹⁴ Robert Curthose seems to have appealed to Rome against Henry I’s accession in England: see Paschal II’s letter to Anselm, Opera Omnia, iv. ep. 213; Calixtus II intervened on behalf of the imprisoned Curthose at the Council of Gisors in 1119: Orderic vi. 284. ¹⁵ Above, p. 39. ¹⁶ HP 86. ¹⁷ Eadmer, HN 120, reports that Henry I apologized to Anselm for not waiting to be consecrated by him, ‘which he knew to be his of right’; GC i. 150: ‘the coronation of the kings of England belongs by ancient right to the church of Canterbury’; CTB i. no. 153; ii. nos. 286, 300. Textus Roffensis, ed. Hearne, 227 records that when the see of Canterbury was vacant, the bishop of Rochester should consecrate bishops and kings in his stead. ¹⁸ GS 208, cf. 122; Le Patourel, Norman Empire, 100. According to William of Malmesbury, GR i. 710, and Orderic ii. 214, the future Henry I succeeded to his mother’s ius maternum, but only after his father’s death: above, p. 175. ¹⁹ J. H. Round, ‘The Counts of Boulogne as English Lords’, in id., Studies in Peerage and Family History (Westminster, 1901), pp. 147–80, at 167–8; Davis, King Stephen, 7–11; E. King, ‘Stephen of Blois, Count of Mortain and Boulogne’, EHR cxv (2000), 271–96. ²⁰ GC i. 150. ²¹ HP, p. 83; cf. John of Hexham, ‘Historia’, in SD ii. 325–6.

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probably present at the council in April 1152 at which Stephen attempted to have Eustace anointed, Stephen was thwarted because ‘the pope in a letter had forbidden the archbishop to elevate the king’s son as king. This was because Stephen seemed to have snatched the kingdom contrary to the oath.’²² The reason given meant that the papacy would block any future consecration of Eustace too. What Thomas Becket later referred to as ‘the apostolic prohibition of the lord Pope Eugenius’ held firm;²³ and Stephen failed to intimidate any other bishop into doing the deed in Archbishop Theobald’s stead.²⁴ It was papal intervention, not lack of precedent, which prevented Eustace being anointed as co-king. If the Waverley Annals are correct in reporting that the ‘earls and barons’ did homage to Eustace in London in 1152, possibly at this council, then the bishops and abbots cannot have sworn any corresponding fidelitas.²⁵ Homage from those lay tenants-in-chief who were not in the Angevin camp was clearly not going to be enough to secure the succession for Eustace. The only hope for Stephen, and therefore for Eustace, lay in a decisive military victory. Duke Henry could afford to play more of a waiting game. When it became clear that the barons were anxious to prevent either side winning outright,²⁶ Stephen had little option but to sue for the best terms he could get. That is why, when Eustace died unexpectedly (and providentially, according to the Gesta Stephani) in August 1153, soon after negotiations had opened,²⁷ no attempt seems to have been made to suggest that Stephen’s second son, William, should replace his brother as his father’s prospective successor in the kingdom (and duchy). Yet William immediately succeeded Eustace as count of Boulogne.²⁸ If Duke Henry could not be defeated on the battlefield, then no son of Stephen would be king after him. The settlement which was reached between king and duke at Winchester on 6 November appears to have been masterminded by Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, and Archbishop Theobald.²⁹ They are likely to have been among the unnamed ‘religious persons’ who had negotiated the initial truce between king and duke at Crowmarsh in August.³⁰ Thereafter Theobald was ‘deeply concerned in negotiations with the king about making a concordia with the duke’, with Henry of Blois as his ‘coadiutor’.³¹ Winchester was selected as the venue for its ratification. The duke made a ceremonial entry into the city, led by the king. ²² HH, pp. lvi, 758; cf. GC i. 150. Davis, King Stephen, 103, describes anointing in the father’s lifetime as ‘the normal way’ to secure succession for a son. This was so in France, but definitely not in England. ²³ CTB i. no. 153; HP 86 also uses the term ‘prohibition’. For these events, see Saltman, Theobald, 30, 36–8. ²⁴ HH 758; GC i. 150–1. ²⁵ ‘Annales de Waverleia’, Ann. Mon., ii. 234. Consecrated clerics were debarred from doing homage to the king: above, pp. 206–7. ²⁶ HH 766; GS 238. ²⁷ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 173–4, 176; GS 238; HH 768; cf. GC i. 155. ²⁸ EYC viii. 13–15. ²⁹ HH 770. GS 240 and John of Hexham, ‘Historia’, in SD ii. 331 mention only Henry of Blois. For the date, see RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 177. ³⁰ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 173–4. ³¹ HH 770.

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The city and its bishop were well used to staging such ceremonies, having done so for Stephen in 1135³² and Matilda in March 1141.³³ According to Gervase of Canterbury, who supplemented Henry of Huntingdon’s account, the king and duke summoned the barons and prelates to a ‘public assembly’. The duke ‘was received’ on Bishop Henry’s episcopal throne ‘with great rejoicing’, and all those present, presumably in the cathedral, ‘unanimously confirmed’ the peace by oath.³⁴ In brokering this settlement, both bishop and archbishop had plenty of earlier experience to draw on: according to William of Malmesbury, it was they who had settled the terms—the conventio—for the reciprocal releases of Stephen and Robert of Gloucester in 1141.³⁵ The settlement was ratified at Winchester in November, with, according to Gervase of Canterbury, a great oath-taking by the assembled prelates and barons of the kingdom.³⁶ But it was not promulgated in a document until late in the following month. Unlike in the case of Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’, there was, then, plenty of time to draw up the document issued by the king at Westminster, probably just ‘before Christmas’, in which, in Henry of Huntingdon’s words, ‘the concord was confirmed’.³⁷ It purported to record the ‘agreements (conventiones) negotiated between us, which are contained in this charter’.³⁸ Although no original survives of what were doubtless multiple copies, it is therefore unlikely that any of them would have betrayed signs of the sort of last-minute insertions found in the Hereford copy of Stephen’s Oxford charter of liberties.³⁹ The extent to which Stephen’s ‘charter’⁴⁰ contained all the ‘agreements made between me and the duke’ is an issue to which I shall return. Insofar as they can be reconstructed on the basis of the charter, they owe something to the agreements— often termed conventiones—between important barons, by means of which these barons sought mutual security against the worst effects of the guerra between the king and the Angevins.⁴¹ Stephen,⁴² Matilda,⁴³ and Henry⁴⁴ were well-versed in such agreements, for the charters recording the deals which they struck with individual tenants-in-chief sometimes use the term. The last of these, concluded between Duke Henry and Jocelyn, bishop of Salisbury, with respect to the custody of Salisbury castle, also states that ‘this charter bears witness to the conventio’, and records that Archbishop Theobald and Bishop Henry again played a key role. But ³² HNa 28; GS 8. ³³ HNa 88; GS 118. ³⁴ GC i. 156. He wrote probably in the 1190s, and his sources for this event, other than Henry of Huntingdon, have not been identified: p. xliii. John Gillingham points out to me that Theobald is a possible source. ³⁵ HNa 118. ³⁶ GC i. 156. ³⁷ HH 770. ³⁸ RRAN iii. no. 272. ³⁹ Above, p. 200. ⁴⁰ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 273, points out that ‘it does not grant anything specifically and it names no beneficiaries’. ⁴¹ Charters of the Earls of Chester no. 110 (1149 ⫻ 53, probably early 1153), a ‘conventio between Earl Ranulf of Chester and Robert earl of Leicester and a final peace and concordia’, which is also said to be ‘contained in this charter’; Book of Seals no. 212 (25 July 1141 ⫻ 24 Dec. 1143, probably June 1142), otherwise termed a confederatio amoris between Robert, earl of Gloucester and Miles, earl of Hereford. ⁴² RRAN iii. nos. 386, 387. ⁴³ Ibid., no. 275; Round, G. de M., 176; Prestwich, ‘Treason’, 293. ⁴⁴ RRAN iii. no. 796.

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Holt has shown that the parallels should not be overdrawn, for the conventiones reached at Winchester in early November and recorded in the royal charter of December could not be secured by the sort of measures which had secured other treaties and agreements during the reign.⁴⁵ Or at least they could not without the measures being recast to fit the unique purpose of these conventiones. The basis of the settlement between Stephen and Henry was an adaptation of the sort of proposal that Stephen’s relatives had made to the Angevins in 1141—of which Bishop Henry must have had clear memories⁴⁶—but combined with an acceptance of the ‘apostolic prohibition’s’ implication that Stephen should remain king for the rest of his life. Stephen did not attempt to sustain the pretence that he, rather than Henry, was still duke of Normandy.⁴⁷ Nor is there any suggestion that Henry owed his title of dux Normannie, attributed to him throughout the charter, to some sort of prior concession by Stephen as previous duke. Henry must have extracted this capitulation at an early, unrecorded stage in the negotiations. As a consequence, where Henry’s succession was concerned, the charter dealt only with the kingdom of England. Stephen, ‘king of the English’, declared that he had ‘constituted Duke Henry of Normandy successor after me of the kingdom of England and my heir by hereditary right, and thus I have given and confirmed the kingdom of England to him and his heirs’. Although that partisan of Duke Henry’s cause, Robert of Torigni, considered that the king had recognized the ‘hereditarium ius which Duke Henry had in the kingdom of England’,⁴⁸ the charter in which the terms of the agreement were officially promulgated makes it quite clear that King Stephen was doing the giving. If he could make Henry his heir iure hereditario, then his was the hereditarium ius. He could give the kingdom to Henry and Henry’s heirs only if he had more than a life interest in it. Conventional diplomatic language for the granting of land was being adapted to describe the creation of an heir.⁴⁹ It was in return for this honor and donatio and confirmatio made to him by the king that Henry had done homage to Stephen. Yet he had received no tenure from the king, simply an expectation that he would be Stephen’s ‘successor . . . of the realm of England’. Although the king said that he had ‘given and confirmed’ the kingdom to Henry and his heirs, he stressed that his earls and barons had done liege homage to the duke ‘saving fidelitas to me for as long as I live and hold the kingdom’. In addition to homage, the duke had given surety to the king on oath ⁴⁵ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 273; contrast King, ‘Dispute Settlement’, 125. ⁴⁶ Above, p. 262. ⁴⁷ For Stephen’s very occasional use of the ducal style, see RRAN iii. nos. 327 (Mar.–Nov. 1137), 262 (June 1139 ⫻ Mar. 1140), both originals written in unidentified hands, the former issued in Normandy and the latter in England. Stephen rarely uses the ducal title, even in documents relating to the duchy: RRAN iv. p. 4. John of Salisbury, HP, p. 44, reports that Stephen stated in 1148 that he had been despoiled of the duchy and part of England by Geoffrey of Anjou, and that he would not submit to papal judgement until these had been restored to him. This looks like an invocation of the canonical principle of exceptio spolii; it is also an explicit admission that Stephen no longer possessed the duchy by this point. ⁴⁸ ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 177. ⁴⁹ LHP 88. 15; on this and the passage in Stephen’s charter, see Hudson, LLL 122–4.

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that he would be fidelis to him and would protect his life and honor. In a reciprocal oath of surety, Stephen had added that he would maintain the duke ‘as my son and heir (sicut filium et heredem) in all things as I am able and guard him against all whom I can’. But he had made no promise to be fidelis; nor, of course, had he done homage to Henry, for kings were debarred from doing homage. Thus Henry’s acceptance of the position of—in Henry of Huntingdon’s words—Stephen’s ‘adoptive son’⁵⁰ and heir appears, from this formal promulgation of the ‘agreements negotiated between us’, to have amounted to much more than the recognition that Stephen was king which Henry had so studiously avoided giving hitherto. It meant that he would in due course owe his ‘ius Anglie’ or hereditas, which he had looked forward to ‘acquiring’ or ‘recovering’ in earlier charters,⁵¹ to Stephen’s grant. As we shall see, this would later be an embarrassment, over which he would attempt to draw a veil. But the charter also incorporated another considerable concession on Henry’s part, which seemed to echo the terms which Matilda had spurned in 1141.⁵² For although Stephen undertook to maintain Henry ‘as my son and heir’, much of the document was concerned with protecting the interests of the king’s surviving son, William.⁵³ William may already have been negotiating with the duke, in the presence of Archbishop Theobald, before the deal was struck between Henry and his father at Winchester in November.⁵⁴ But in accordance with what was agreed there, William had done liege homage to Henry, like Stephen’s other earls and barons; and he had given him surety (presumably on oath, like his father). Like Eustace, but unlike the offspring of earlier post-Conquest kings, he had received very considerable lands during his father’s lifetime. After he had done homage, the duke had ‘conceded’ to him ‘to hold of him [Henry] all the tenures which I [Stephen] held before I took up the kingdom of England, in England, or in Normandy, or in other places’. What had obtained before Stephen had taken up the kingdom—or ‘in my time before I was king’⁵⁵—was not necessarily synonymous with the status quo in King Henry’s time. Indeed, on occasion Stephen showed himself to be acutely aware of the gap between the two dates.⁵⁶ But it is impossible to establish whether this was a canny piece of drafting, designed to secure for William gains made by Stephen during the interregnum in 1135 of which we ⁵⁰ HH 770; cf. GC i. 156, who adds that the duke had taken Stephen ‘in locum genitoris’, Hudson, LLL 123 and n. 67, suggests that Henry had picked up a Roman law term. It is not used in the charter. When Waleran de Meulan deserted Stephen and went over to Matilda in 1141, he and William de Beauchamp, who was already one of her vassals, appear to have settled the differences between them by Waleran adopting William as his son: H. W. C. Davis, ‘Some Documents’, 170–1; Davis, King Stephen, 110, n. 4. ⁵¹ RRAN iii. nos. 81, 126, 796, discussed above, p. 257–9. ⁵² Above, p. 246. ⁵³ Round, ‘Counts of Boulogne’, 169–71. ⁵⁴ John Leland, The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the Years 1535–1543, ed. L. Toulmin Smith, 11 pts. in 5 vols. (London, 1906–10), v. 171, discussed by E. Amt, The Accession of Henry II in England: Royal Government Restored, 1149–1159 (Woodbridge, 1993), 16. ⁵⁵ RRAN iii. no. 288 (c.Dec. 1137 ⫻ Mar. 1138). ⁵⁶ Ibid., nos. 286, 428, discussed above, pp. 193–4.

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know nothing; or whether the date of his accession was in this instance deemed to be equivalent to that of Henry’s death.⁵⁷ Stephen’s holdings under Henry I had been colossal, but this was only the first tranche of what he attempted to secure for his son William in 1153 from his adoptive son and heir. Duke Henry was said also to have conceded that William should hold of him all the lands which had come to William on his marriage to Isabel, the heiress of William (III) de Warenne.⁵⁸ As with the estates which Stephen had held before he became king, William was to hold of the duke in Normandy as well as in England. The only provisions in the settlement relating to Normandy are concerned with ensuring that Henry should recognize William’s claims there. The duke would ‘fully seise’ William and ‘his men who are of that honour’ of all those things belonging to the honour of the earl of Warenne ‘which the duke now has in his demesne’. It was envisaged that this would start to happen immediately: the duke would be given hostages for the custody of certain named castles pertaining to the honour. Indeed, as Holt points out, this particular provision had probably been implemented in some form between the striking of a deal in Winchester on 6 November, and the charter’s being issued at Westminster just before Christmas. For the clause gives Reginald de Warenne, Isabel’s uncle, first refusal of the custody of these castles, yet he appears in the witness list of the charter. This strongly suggests that the clause, framed during the negotiations, was already outdated when it was promulgated. By the time Reginald witnessed the charter, in late December, he is likely to have decided whether he wanted to avail himself of the option which had been secured for him in early November.⁵⁹ In addition, Duke Henry had undertaken to ‘restore’ to William castles belonging to the county of Mortain—which Stephen had held under Henry I⁶⁰—in accordance with King Stephen’s wishes, whenever he was able to do so. Henry would be given hostages for these too. Such hostages would be restored to William ‘when the duke shall have the kingdom of England’—a provision reminiscent of that in the confederatio amoris between Miles, earl of Hereford, and Robert, earl of Gloucester, for the return by Robert of Miles’s son ‘after the war was finished and . . . [they] had regained their lands and rights’.⁶¹ So although it was not envisaged that all these Mortain castles would be handed over to William straight away, it was expected that many of them would have been by the time when, at some unpredictable point in the future, Stephen’s gift of the kingdom to Henry came into force. Henry’s concessions to William were not deferred pro tem., like Stephen’s grant to Henry. William did liege homage to the duke and began to receive them in return; he held of the duke prior to his father’s death, in England as well (apparently) as in Normandy. ⁵⁷ Ibid., nos. 10, 678, discussed above, p. 194; in nos. 163 and 472 Stephen’s ‘time’ as king is deemed to follow on directly from Henry’s. ⁵⁸ Davis, King Stephen, 131. ⁵⁹ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 275. ⁶⁰ Orderic vi. 42. Matilda had refused to let Eustace have the county in 1141, according to HNa 100. ⁶¹ Book of Seals no. 212.

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Furthermore, Henry had ‘conceded’ an ‘incrementum’ which King Stephen had given to William: namely, the castles and towns of Norwich with 700 librates of land, in such a way that the returns of Norwich shall be computed within those 700 librates, and the whole county (totus comitatus) of Norfolk except for those things which belong to churches and bishops and abbots and earls, and specifically excepting the third penny of which Hugh Bigod is the earl, and saving and reserving royal justice in all matters.

This represents the first recorded acknowledgement on Stephen’s part of the comital style apparently granted to Hugh Bigod by the empress by 1142 at the latest.⁶² It is impossible to establish whether Stephen’s original grant—or incrementum— to William, perhaps at the time of his marriage to Isabel in 1148 ⫻ 9, had included the title of earl of Norfolk. But this initial royal recognition of Hugh’s title, albeit ambiguous,⁶³ meant that Duke Henry could not have conceded all of Stephen’s incrementum to William in 1153. For it is inconceivable that the incrementum, comprising Norwich, the attached castles, towns, and 700 librates, and the totus comitatus of Norfolk, would not have cut across rights claimed by Hugh Bigod as earl, even if we accept the minimalist definition of an earl in the Dialogus de Scaccario as the recipient of the third penny of the pleas of the shire.⁶⁴ The clause in Stephen’s charter represents the only extant grant of totus comitatus to exempt the rights of earls, because, as framed in 1153, it is the only such grant not made to the local earl.⁶⁵ The fact that Hugh would not hold the totus comitatus of which the king now recognized him as titular earl shows that this particular compromise was a botched fudge. Both sides had conceded something in negotiation, although the king’s charter made it seem that the only concession had been the duke’s. Neither side was willing to give another iota. Yet such a closet compromise by the king scarcely diminished the magnitude of the lands and rights which William was to hold henceforth by the duke’s concession. In a final provision concerning William, it was proclaimed that the duke had, in order to strengthen the king’s gratia and dilectio towards him, ‘given and conceded’ the lands which Richer de l’Aigle had held of the honour of Pevensey, the castles and towns of Pevensey, and the service of Faramus of Boulogne, castellan of Dover.⁶⁶ The impression given is that these were fresh gifts by Duke Henry, but they are much more likely to be further confirmations of grants already made to ⁶² Davis, King Stephen, 138–9. I have amended Davis’s date of 1141, because it depends on RRAN iii. nos. 275, 634, both witnessed by ‘Earl Hugh of Norfolk’. On the dating of these charters, see above, pp. 225–6. A. Wareham, ‘The Motives and Politics of the Bigod Family’, ANS xvii (1994), 223–42, at 234, argues that Stephen had made Hugh earl in 1140, but there is no solid evidence. He witnessed three charters of Stephen as ‘Earl Hugh’: RRAN iii. nos. 28 (probably 1154), 696 (4 Apr. ⫻ 25 Oct. 1154), 896 (1154). All date from after the agreement. ⁶³ Davis, King Stephen, 139; Cronne, Reign of Stephen, 147. ⁶⁴ Dialogus, 64. ⁶⁵ Cf. RRAN iii. nos. 180, 437. P. Latimer, ‘Grants of “totus comitatus” in Twelfth-Century England: Their Origin and Meaning’, HR lix (1986), 137–45, at 142–5, does not discuss this point. ⁶⁶ For Faramus, a kinsman of Stephen’s queen, see Amt, Accession of Henry II, 85–7.

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William by William’s father. Pevensey had originally been part of the count of Mortain’s fee, but after William of Mortain’s forfeiture in 1106 Henry I had granted it to Gilbert de l’Aigle,⁶⁷ rather than keeping it with the bulk of the lands given to Stephen. Richer de l’Aigle had forfeited it, probably in 1141. Stephen then gave it to Gilbert, earl of Pembroke, who may have forfeited it in turn shortly before his death in 1148 ⫻ 9.⁶⁸ There is no evidence as to what Stephen then did with it prior to the Westminster charter. As for Faramus, it is highly unlikely that Henry would have been in a position to make an initial gift of the service of this self-proclaimed relative of the queen, who had helped to run Stephen’s household while the king was in captivity in 1141.⁶⁹ These further gifts to William by Duke Henry, which probably confirmed earlier grants as he had certainly done in the case of the incrementum, reveal how deceptive are the echoes in the 1153 settlement of the peace proposals put to Matilda in 1141. Stephen, in his capacity as count of Mortain, had not held the honour of Pevensey during Henry I’s reign. What had obtained tempore regis Henrici—or ‘antequam regnum Anglie adeptus essem’⁷⁰—was disregarded in William’s favour, as Stephen attempted to reassemble for his son what William of Mortain had held prior to the battle of Tinchebrai. As for Dover castle, Henry I had entrusted it (and Canterbury) to Robert of Gloucester. It can have come into Faramus’s hands only after the queen took it, with the assistance of ‘her friends and kinsmen and dependants in Boulogne’, from the earl’s castellan, Walchelin Maminot, in 1138.⁷¹ Like the incrementum, and what had come to William on his marriage to Isabel de Warenne—in fact in England, but only in expectation in Normandy—these were additional to whatever his father had held before becoming king (which included the honour and county of Boulogne). The sort of terms which had characterized the peace initiatives of 1141 were echoed in the settlement of 1153. The distinction between what Stephen had held before he became king, and the kingdom which he had acquired, was the basis for the distinction between what William had and what Duke Henry was to have. But there were other important elements in the settlement. There could, for instance, be no straightforward restoration of the status quo in King Henry’s time when Stephen remained king for life and had ‘constituted’ Duke Henry as his heir, but his heir only with respect to the kingdom which he had acquired after Henry I’s death. It was as such that Duke Henry had ‘conceded’ to William not just the lands and rights which Stephen had held prior to his accession, but also others which had come to William, by his father’s gift and otherwise, during his father’s reign. So much for the way in which the principles underlying the peace proposals of 1141 were, in 1153, reconciled with ecclesiastical recognition that Stephen must ⁶⁷ I. J. Sanders, English Baronies (Oxford, 1960), 136. ⁶⁸ GS, pp. 202–4; Crouch, ‘The March and the Welsh Kings’, in King (ed.), Anarchy, 255–89, at 274–5. ⁶⁹ John of Hexham, in SD ii. 310. ⁷⁰ RRAN iii. no. 288. ⁷¹ Orderic vi. 518, 520; cf. HH 712, HNa 42.

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remain king for life. This eventual ‘innovation in the kingdom of England with respect to the crown’⁷² appears to have been masterminded by the current papal legate, ably assisted by his very experienced predecessor.⁷³ The sanctions which were devised to ensure that the agreements were kept, and the practical arrangements for their implementation, suggest further intelligent adaptation of post-Conquest traditions. The closest thing to precedents were the agreements of 1091 and 1101, between Rufus and Curthose, and Henry I and Curthose respectively.⁷⁴ But they included reciprocal succession arrangements, to the effect that if either party died without legitimate male issue, the other would be heir to his territory. In 1091 neither party was bound to the other; and in 1101 Curthose released Henry from the homage he had previously done to him.⁷⁵ By contrast, the settlement of 1153 was not reciprocal as far as succession was concerned; it involved the party constituted as heir doing homage to the other. And it was concerned solely with the kingdom of England. There were other fundamental differences. Unlike the agreements of 1091 and 1101, the settlement of 1153 scrupulously defined the obligations of the men of each party both to their own lord and to the other party. ‘On account of the honour’ which the king had done to the duke, those earls and barons of the duke who had never been Stephen’s men had ‘done homage and taken an oath (homagium et sacramentum . . . fecerunt)’ to the king, ‘saving the agreements established between me and the duke’. Others who had done homage to the king in the past, but who were now bound to the duke, were to ‘do fidelitas to the king as lord’, and were to withdraw service from the duke if he broke the terms of the agreement, ‘until he should correct the error’. The king’s son William would act likewise ‘according to the counsel of holy church’. The king’s earls and barons are said to have ‘done liege homage to the duke, saving my fidelitas for as long as I live and hold the kingdom, on the same condition: that if I should renege on the aforesaid terms, they would wholly withdraw service from me until I should correct the error.’⁷⁶ Similarly, the citizens of towns and the garrisons of castles ‘which I have in my dominium’ are said to have ‘done homage and [sworn] securitas’ to the duke on the king’s orders, ‘saving my fidelitas for as long as I live and hold the kingdom’. There is some doubt about whether all this had already happened by the time the charter was issued. Henry of Huntingdon records that ‘by the king’s command the English magnates (principes) paid to the duke the homage and fidelitas due to a lord, yet preserving honour and fides to the king while he lived’ at Oxford on 13 January 1154.⁷⁷ But if the charter’s use of the perfect tense was evidentiary rather ⁷² HP 86. ⁷³ Saltman, Theobald, 30–3. ⁷⁴ ASC (E) s.a. 1091, 1101; JW iii. 58, 98; Orderic iv. 236, v. 318–20; London, BL Cotton MS. Caligula A. viii, fo. 41r, printed by Hollister, ‘Civil War’, 96. White, ‘End of Stephen’s Reign’, 13, suggests that they were probably used by those who framed the settlement in 1153. ⁷⁵ Orderic v. 318. ⁷⁶ For the distinction between homage and liege homage, see Glanvill, ix. 1, p. 104; cf. Dialogus, 83. ⁷⁷ HH 770–2.

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than historic,⁷⁸ the homage done at Oxford shortly after it was issued had clearly been ordained by it. Conversely, it recorded that the garrison in the Angevin stronghold of Wallingford had done homage to the king, and had given him hostages for the maintenance of fidelitas to him. Thus both Stephen’s and Henry’s men were bound to the other party by homage. Each would continue to serve their original lord only if he kept to the terms of the conventiones. The diffidation which had been one of the most notable characteristics of relations between kings and barons during Stephen’s reign, had been institutionalized as a means of enforcing the agreement. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in characteristically lugubrious mood, said of the 1091agreement that ‘it lasted only a little while’; the same might fittingly have been said of that of 1101. But both agreements lacked any such mechanism to make them stick. A lot of thought had been devoted to making the settlement of 1153 more durable. A solution had been found in an adaptation of the Norman ducal designation ceremony, which Henry I had attempted to use in England as well as Normandy for William Adelin and Matilda, to fit quite new circumstances. Moreover, the problem of two liege lords, which had so concerned Orderic,⁷⁹ and which had taken such an acutely disruptive form from 1139, when for the first time there were two within the kingdom of England, had been tackled head-on. One of the lords had now done homage to the other in return for being constituted as the other’s heir, thereby resolving the cause of the conflict between them. Nothing of the kind had been contemplated in 1091 or 1101, when it had seemed that neither lord stood any prospect of winning an outright military victory, and that henceforth both would be restricted by and large to their respective spheres of kingdom and duchy. And the predicament of dual allegiance, on the disruptive dilemmas of which Orderic had focused,⁸⁰ and to which the other chroniclers attributed the inspiration for the agreement of 1101, had been transformed into the principal force for stability. With the revealing exception of Stephen’s aborted scheme to have Eustace consecrated king during his own lifetime, it had previously been inconceivable for a potential or designated successor to have any share in the position of king (or duke). As I have tried to show, the reasons lay in Norman and English tradition, reinforced by the precision in the definition of the king’s tenure engendered by the antecessor scheme. But in 1153, as the king’s charter recognized, Duke Henry already had a ‘part’ of the kingdom—the pars ducis—which was distinct from the king’s ‘part’. In other words, the charter sanctioned a formal partitioning of the kingdom. There were already ‘earls and barons of the duke’, who by implication had already done homage to him, and held their lands of him. Of course, this had long been true in reality; but here it was acknowledged for the first time in a royal document. Those who framed the terms of the settlement had been forced by circumstances to ⁷⁸ I borrow this distinction from Holt, ‘1153’, CE 275. ⁸⁰ Above, p. 184, n. 413.

⁷⁹ Above, p. 177.

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distinguish between the position of a liege lord and that of the king. It was recognized that the king was no longer, in the words of a well-informed if occasionally unctuous writer, ‘dominus omnium’.⁸¹ Or more accurately, he only became such when the provisions which required the duke’s men to become his too were implemented; and those who had never previously been his men were required to do (simple) homage to him, not the liege homage which his men (including his son William) had to do to the duke. As William’s case highlights, they might all be deemed to hold their lands henceforth of the duke as well as the king. There is no indication of a tenurial hierarchy, with the king at the top and the duke as intermediate lord. Indeed, the provision for liege homage to be done to Henry, rather than Stephen, strongly suggests the opposite. This distinguishes the arrangements of 1153 sharply from those for William Adelin, the only previous designated successor in postConquest England to whom widespread homage had been done at the king’s behest. For in Adelin’s case the homage seems to have followed Norman tradition; there was no suggestion that it had tenurial implications.⁸² Multiple lordship had already been familiar by the end of the Conqueror’s reign, but for tenants to hold in chief of two lords simultaneously in England was quite a different matter. There is no indication in the charter that this unprecedented conundrum was addressed on anything other than a practical level in 1153. That is hardly surprising. Similarly at odds with established conventions was the king’s assertion that he would continue to exercise ‘royal justice’ throughout the whole kingdom, ‘in the duke’s part as well as in my own’. The king accepted that Henry already had a ‘part’, yet he would not have the kingdom itself until after Stephen’s death, as Stephen’s constituted heir and ‘successor of the kingdom of England’. Stephen claimed still to control the ‘business of the kingdom’, but he undertook to transact it henceforth ‘on the duke’s advice’. Stephen’s castles were still—at least in his view⁸³—synonymous with those ‘which belong to the crown’; but if any of the custodians—who had done homage and sworn securitas to the duke on the king’s orders—should rebel, then ‘by common counsel the duke and I shall contain him until he has been forced to satisfy the will of both of us’. In all these instances, the draftsman (or men)⁸⁴ were groping to devise formulas for the unprecedented conventiones negotiated in Winchester in the previous month. Finally, as if to emphasize the duke’s unprecedented status in England, the king proclaimed that ‘the archbishops, bishops, and abbots of the kingdom of England have, at my command, done fidelitas to the duke by oath. Those who become ⁸¹ LHP 43. 1; cf. 55. 3, for a definition of the fides owed to the princeps terrae, which takes precedence over that owed to one’s lord. ⁸² Above, p. 206. ⁸³ Above, pp. 260–1, for Henry and Matilda having adopted this usage. ⁸⁴ Stephen’s chancery had perhaps been reduced to a single, experienced scribe by this stage (scriptor xxii), but his chancellor, Robert de Gant, had been in office since 1140: Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 30, 32; RRAN iii. pp. x, xv. It is impossible to establish what role the scribe would play in the process of drafting. Cronne, Reign of Stephen, 215, attempts a character analysis of scriptor xxii.

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bishops or abbots in the kingdom of England henceforth shall do likewise.’ In 1116 the prelates of England had ‘professed themselves with faith and oath’ to do homage to William Adelin when he became king.⁸⁵ One consequence of the settlement between Henry I and Paschal II in 1106 had been that kings were exempt from the general prohibition of laymen receiving homage from priests: the pope gave permission for those prelates-elect who had done homage to the king during the dispute to be consecrated. By the time Glanvill was written this diplomatic settlement seems to have been transformed into a rule that only prelates-elect, not those who had already been consecrated, could do homage to a king.⁸⁶ To judge from William of Malmesbury, this rule may already have existed by the time of Stephen’s accession, for whereas laymen did homage to the new king, the bishops are said to have sworn fidelitas to him.⁸⁷ Just as prelates-elect in England did homage only to the king, when consecrated they swore fidelitas to no other layman. In the unusual circumstances of Stephen’s reign, the church pre-empted any possible conflict by following ‘only one lord . . . by constitution of the Roman church’.⁸⁸ In 1148 Gilbert Foliot, bishop-elect of Hereford, had undertaken on oath to ‘do fidelitas’ to the duke of Normandy, not King Stephen, after his consecration; but in the event he did it to the king, because Stephen was the princeps then approved by the Roman church.⁸⁹ (As already abbot of Gloucester, he was presumably barred from doing homage.) Yet in 1153 all the existing prelates in England had, on the king’s orders, ‘done fidelitas by oath’ to Duke Henry (when any elected during Stephen’s reign had presumably already done homage to him as king), and any appointed in the future were to do likewise. This broke both English tradition and the existing papal ruling. Given Archbishop Theobald’s role in the settlement, the innovation must have had papal sanction, for he was papal legate. It was as unprecedented as the king’s stipulation that his earls and barons should do liege homage to the duke. In a parallel provision to the threat of withdrawal of service by the lay barons, the archbishops and bishops had ‘taken in hand (in manu ceperunt) from both parties that if either of us should renege on the aforesaid agreements (conventiones), then they will coerce him with ecclesiastical justice until he corrects his error, and returns to observing the aforesaid settlement (pactio)’. They had undertaken to act as sureties, as the empress had promised that the (unspecified) Christianitas Angliae within her power would do in the case of her conventio of 1142 with Geoffrey de Mandeville.⁹⁰ This procedure of captio in manu, which she undertook to ensure the king of France would also perform if she were unable to make him an obses (guarantor),⁹¹ was apparently a description of affidatio in manu from the ⁸⁵ Eadmer, HN 237, quoted and discussed above, pp. 206, 209. ⁸⁶ Glanvill, ix. 1, p. 106. ⁸⁷ HNa 32. ⁸⁸ HP 47. ⁸⁹ HP 47–9. John of Salisbury makes it clear that Henry was the duke in question, but of course Geoffrey of Anjou was still duke in 1148: on this mistake, see pp. xxix, 47 n. 2. ⁹⁰ RRAN iii. no. 275; cf. no. 634. ⁹¹ Cf. ibid., no. 634.

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surety’s perspective. Affidatio in manu was a particularly solemn form of pledge.⁹² When one party performed it to another as part of a bilateral agreement, it had the effect of reinforcing whatever undertaking had been given. Matilda had done so in the hand of her man, Geoffrey de Mandeville, to reassure him about this very conventio et donatio. But a variant, of the type described here, involved someone who was not a party becoming surety, most commonly a cleric. Often such a surety would be vas or mediator for a unilateral undertaking: Bishop Henry of Winchester considered that he had performed this function in the case of Stephen’s pledges of good lordship at the time of his accession.⁹³ Although neither of these terms is used to characterize his role in Matilda’s ‘pactum’ of March 1141, she is said to have ‘sworn and pledged faith to the bishop (iuravit et affidavit imperatrix episcopo)’; and a number of her most important supporters did likewise. Bishop Henry subsequently acted as if he were surety for her undertakings.⁹⁴ Another variation was represented by King Stephen’s undertaking in 1137 that he would never again make an attempt on Robert of Gloucester’s life: ‘he added weight to the oath by putting Hugh, archbishop of Rouen’s hand into Robert’s.’⁹⁵ But in the peculiar circumstances of Stephen’s reign clerics were called upon to act as sureties in this way for bilateral agreements too. When, at Easter 1153, Duke Henry reached his conventio with the bishop of Salisbury for the custody of Devizes castle, he ‘pledged faith in the hand of the lord archbishop of Canterbury, primate of the English and legate of the apostolic see’, that he would keep to its terms, and Bishop Jocelyn did likewise.⁹⁶ Accordingly, each of them would be subject to ‘canonical justice’ if he broke his pledge. Pope Anastasius IV subsequently ratified the agreement.⁹⁷ By November 1153, then, Archbishop Theobald was clearly an expert where affidatio in manu was concerned. He did not just use it as a further means of binding the two principals, with the sanction of excommunication if either of them reneged on the deal they had struck. It also provided him with the practical mechanism by which he sought to ensure that the first and principal term of the settlement would be implemented in due course: that Duke Henry would, as Stephen’s heir, succeed Stephen as king. This objective could be attained only if the interregnum following Stephen’s death were not marked by scenes of anarchic disorder, with which post-Conquest interregna had become synonymous, and if ⁹² Round, G. de M., 176–7, 384–7. For the distinction, see Prestwich, ‘Treason’, 287, Davis ‘Comment’, 313–14; Prestwich, ‘Further Comment’, 962–3. Its precise nature is unclear. ⁹³ HNa 28, 92. ⁹⁴ HNa 88, 100, 108–10. For the bishops acting as vades for the pledges which Rufus made to God during his illness in 1093, see Eadmer, HN 31. For Anselm acting as vas for Henry I’s renewed promises to abolish the evil practices of Rufus’s time, see William of Malmesbury, GP 106; according to Eadmer, HN 126, Anselm acted as medius between king and barons in 1101, Henry ‘placing his hand in Anselm’s, as if standing in their stead’. ⁹⁵ HNa 38. ⁹⁶ RRAN iii. no. 796. ⁹⁷ W. Holtzmann (ed.), Papsturkunden in England, 3 vols., Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse (Berlin, 1930–52), ii. no. 81.

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Henry’s succession were a smooth affair. How could affidatio in manu be used to achieve this? The key lay in the castles. Their importance in the logistics of royal accession had long been recognized.⁹⁸ According to the author of the Gesta Stephani, some of Stephen’s adherents argued in 1139 that the bishops had erected castles ‘not to confer the kingdom on the king, but to snatch his royal dignity away from him, and to plot against the dignity of his crown’.⁹⁹ Castles could evidently be used for either purpose. Control of castles was precisely what Matilda and her husband had lacked in Normandy in 1135 because, according to Orderic, Henry I had adamantly refused to hand any over to them.¹⁰⁰ Following Duke Henry’s return to England in January 1153, his campaign consisted of a series of sieges as he attempted to wrest castles from the king and his supporters.¹⁰¹ The importance of castles to him is well illustrated by his conventio with Jocelyn, bishop of Salisbury, dated Easter 1153, to secure control of Devizes castle for three years, or until he should recover ius suum, whichever was the sooner. For although the duke’s charter recording it does not say so explicitly, the purpose of the conventio was evidently to assist him in recovering his ius.¹⁰² In the charter issued at Westminster eight months later, King Stephen declared that he had, ‘with the counsel of Holy Church’, given the duke ‘such security concerning my castles and fortifications, that on my decease [he] will not suffer any harm or impediment concerning the kingdom’. The ‘security’ was given by adapting the sort of arrangements made with respect to Devizes castle. Thus, for instance, the Tower of London and the ‘motte’ of Windsor had, ‘with the counsel of Holy Church’, been entrusted to the custody of Richard de Lucy.¹⁰³ Richard had sworn in the hand of Archbishop Theobald, and also given his son as a hostage, ‘that after [Stephen’s] decease he will return the aforesaid castles to the duke’. Roger de Bussy and his brother Jordan had done likewise for the castles of Oxford and Lincoln respectively. Although the terms of the settlement meant that Richard de Lucy must have done homage to the duke at some point, the fact that Roger and Jordan are described as ‘liege men of the duke’ suggests that they, unlike Richard, were already in the Angevin camp prior to November.¹⁰⁴ But in their case, as in Richard’s, the liege homage to the duke which would continue to bind them to him after the king’s death had to be reinforced by the ceremony of ⁹⁸ Earl Harold had allegedly promised Duke William that he would construct a castle at Dover for the duke’s use: GG 70, cf. Eadmer, HN 7–8; William of Malmesbury, GR i. 418. For the possibility that Henry I had entrusted Dover and Canterbury to Robert of Gloucester in order to facilitate Matilda’s accession, see Round, G. de M., 2. ⁹⁹ GS 74. ¹⁰⁰ Orderic vi. 444, discussed above, pp. 222, 224. ¹⁰¹ GS 230–8; HH 762–8; RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 171–4; J. W. Leedom, ‘The English Settlement of 1153’, History, lxv (1980), 347–64, at 357–60; Davis, King Stephen, 115–18. ¹⁰² RRAN iii. no. 796. ¹⁰³ He was a local justice in London and Essex during the latter part of Stephen’s reign: Cronne, Reign of Stephen, 188, 256; White, Restoration and Reform, 33. RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 174, for his fighting on the king’s side during 1153. ¹⁰⁴ Amt, Accession, 56.

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affidatio in the hand of the archbishop and the giving of hostages into his custody. Henry, bishop of Winchester, had sworn in the same way with regard to the castle of Winchester and the ‘fortification’ of Southampton, although he had not been required to hand over any hostages. There was, however, one revealing difference between these arrangements and that relating to Devizes castle, in which Theobald had performed the same role. In that case the duke had been bound to return the castle to the bishop of Salisbury if and when, within a period of three years, he recovered ius suum—or, as the draftsman of Stephen’s Westminster charter later put it, ‘when the duke shall have the kingdom of England’. This would happen only when Henry became king, at his coronation.¹⁰⁵ Yet the castles mentioned in this part of the Westminster charter were to be handed over to him ‘without any impediment’ as soon as Stephen died. That the distinction was a considered one, rather than evidence of imprecision in drafting, is highlighted by the arrangements recorded in the charter for the restoration to Stephen’s son William of castles belonging in Normandy to the honour of Warenne and the county of Mortain. The hostages which William and his castellans were required to give to the duke—rather than to the archbishop or any other cleric—were to be returned ‘when the duke shall have the kingdom of England’. Because it seems to have been envisaged that all these castles would have been handed over to William before Stephen’s death, and because Henry was already in control in the duchy, the crucial date was that of Henry’s coronation in England. It was not a matter of Henry securing the castles at the very beginning of an interregnum, but of ensuring that they were not used against him during the critical period before he had become king. In England, by contrast, at King Stephen’s behest, and with the archbishop who would consecrate the duke acting as surety and holding hostages from the castellans, the duke was to be given castles which are said to ‘belong to the crown’ immediately on the king’s death. This was how Archbishop Theobald sought to prevent any ‘impediment’ to the duke’s accession as ‘successor after [Stephen] of the kingdom of England and [Stephen’s] heir by hereditary right’. The discrepancy between the arrangements relating to castles in Normandy and in England serves to highlight the purpose of the latter. The discussion thus far has concentrated on the diplomatic evidence for the precautions which were taken to ensure that Duke Henry’s accession as Stephen’s successor would be different from any previous post-Conquest royal succession. But this succession was also different because there is, for the first time, a surviving bureaucratic record for the government of the kingdom during the gap between Stephen’s death on 25 October 1154 and Henry’s coronation on 19 December. Arguably, it can be used to indicate how the prior arrangements concerning castles were implemented. It is Henry II’s first pipe roll. All that survives of it are extracts and abridgements in the Red Book of the Exchequer, compiled some time prior to ¹⁰⁵ The implication of RRAN iii. no. 90, discussed above, pp. 257, 259; cf. no. 81; C. R. Cheney (ed.), A Handbook of Dates for Students of British History, 2nd edn., rev. M. Jones (Cambridge, 2000), 21.

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1231 by an early thirteenth-century Exchequer clerk called Alexander of Swerford.¹⁰⁶ Exchequer years ran from Michaelmas to Michaelmas, so the original roll for the year 1154–5 would have covered the last month of Stephen’s reign and the interregnum, as well as the first nine months of Henry II’s reign. But Alexander of Swerford’s excerpts from it are not easy to assess. He repeatedly admits that he did not copy everything in front of him,¹⁰⁷ and it can be shown that he tacitly omits material in other places. He reports that many shires had failed to render accounts.¹⁰⁸ His excerpts from later, surviving pipe rolls indicate that what he did choose to copy he did not always copy accurately.¹⁰⁹ Thus even though he includes entries from Henry’s first roll for several shires in which castles specified in the charter of December 1153 were located,¹¹⁰ nothing can be concluded from the fact that no expenses are recorded for the garrisoning of those castles. Alexander might simply have chosen to omit them. But this does not mean that the records inadequately preserved in the Red Book are useless in assessing how the pre-arranged handover of fortifications to the duke was effected. Some shires seem to have rendered accounts for the full year,¹¹¹ some for threequarters of the year,¹¹² some for half the year,¹¹³ some for a third or a quarter,¹¹⁴ and some are so obscure that it is impossible to establish what period they purport to cover.¹¹⁵ The distinction between the full year, which encompassed the last month of Stephen’s reign, and the three-quarter year, which began with Henry’s coronation, has prompted much inconclusive speculation.¹¹⁶ The account for Worcestershire falls into neither of these categories but into that of the very obscure. It is, nevertheless, revealing about the implementation of arrangements for the custody of castles following Stephen’s death. The entry includes an item for the repair of the ‘tower’ of Worcester. To appreciate its significance, it is necessary to say something about the history of Worcester and its castle during Stephen’s reign, which is complicated. Worcester had originally been a royal castle. Stephen had granted it and the city, together with the earldom, to Waleran de Meulan, and Matilda granted them (without the earldom) to William de Beauchamp.¹¹⁷ The conflict between Waleran and William was temporarily resolved, when Waleran went over to the empress, by Waleran’s probable adoption of William as ‘his son’.¹¹⁸ William held the castle as Waleran’s agent, and acted as his sheriff, Waleran being absent in ¹⁰⁶ RBE ii. 648–58; see Amt, Accession, 120–4. ¹⁰⁷ RBE ii. 649, 651, 657, 658. ¹⁰⁸ RBE ii. 658. ¹⁰⁹ Amt, Accession, 122–3. ¹¹⁰ Berks., Lincs. and the city of Lincoln, London, and Oxon. Hants is one of the counties for which there is no entry. ¹¹¹ Berks., Dorset, Essex, Herts., Northants, Oxon., Staffs., Surrey, Wilts. ¹¹² Gloucs., Hereford, Kent, Sussex, Yorks. ¹¹³ Hunts., Som., Suffolk. ¹¹⁴ Cambs., Salop. ¹¹⁵ Devon, Leics., Lincs., Notts.-and-Derby., Norfolk, Worcs. ¹¹⁶ K. Yoshitake, ‘The Exchequer in the Reign of Stephen’, EHR ciii (1988), 950–9, at 951–2; White, ‘End of Stephen’s Reign’, 18–19; Amt, Accession, 43, 62, 73, 124; White, Restoration and Reform, 75. ¹¹⁷ Davis, King Stephen, 155–6. ¹¹⁸ Above, n. 50.

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Normandy from 1141. When this arrangement broke down, the castle and city became the focus of a lot of military activity in the early 1150s, and both are likely to have been in need of repair as a result.¹¹⁹ The upshot of these alarms and excursions was the taking of the castle, by negotiation, by Roger, earl of Hereford, William de Beauchamp’s lord, probably in 1152. Roger had ostensibly been assisting the king to recover the castle, but he promptly broke the pax et concordiae foedus which, according to the Gesta Stephani, he had (briefly) pledged to Stephen.¹²⁰ He must thereafter have accepted that he held the castle as the duke’s custodian, for this entry in the Red Book relating to the castle is followed by a rubricated note, probably to be attributed to Alexander of Swerford, who was perhaps condensing what he read in the original roll. The note suggests that it had been agreed that Duke Henry would resume control of this formerly royal castle not when he became king, at his coronation, but on Stephen’s death: ‘the rest is set against (computantur) the soldiers who garrisoned the castle after the death of King Stephen.’¹²¹ A further note, in the margin, draws attention to this highly unusual reference to Stephen’s death. The shambolic impression which the extracts in the Red Book give of operations of the Exchequer at the beginning of Henry II’s reign may be partly Alexander of Swerford’s fault. But these relics of Henry’s first pipe roll are so chaotic that there can be no presumption that it was Alexander who decided not to record allowances made for the cost of garrisoning royal castles other than Worcester. They may not have been entered in the original roll. Nevertheless, it may be inferred from this note in the Worcestershire entry that Henry as king subsequently accepted financial liability for the garrisoning of royal fortifications from the day of King Stephen’s death. If this inference be legitimate, the Worcestershire entry in the Red Book provides documentary corroboration that the arrangements recorded in the charter of 1153 for the smooth handover of royal castles to the duke immediately on Stephen’s death had worked. Windsor and Oxford castles were in shires for which accounts were rendered for the whole year, and the account of Lincolnshire may do so. Those for London (and, presumably, Middlesex) covered only half the year; but Richard de Lucy was the appointed custodian of the Tower, not Gregory, the sheriff. And Richard de Lucy rendered full annual accounts for the two shires of which he was sheriff, Berkshire and Essex. It is therefore perfectly possible that the original roll which Alexander of Swerford had in front of him included items for the cost of garrisoning many of the royal castles specified in the charter of December 1153, in the same way as it did for Worcester castle. Tenuous as this Worcester evidence is, it suggests that the ¹¹⁹ GS 228–30; HH 754–6; Davis, King Stephen, 111, 156; King, ‘Waleran of Meulan’, 173–4; D. Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, 1135–1154 (Harlow, 2000), 255–8, 289–90. ¹²⁰ GS 230. ¹²¹ RBE ii. 656. After his coronation Henry allowed Roger to keep the castles of Hereford and Gloucester, but not Worcester: Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3938H. According to Gervase of Canterbury (i. 161) Roger rebelled in 1155 because he feared for his remaining castles.

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practical precautions with respect to castles which were taken in 1153, and recorded in the king’s charter, proved to be effective on Stephen’s death.

THE SET TLEMENT OF 1153: THE CHRONICLES It has been essential to establish precisely what the agreements promulgated in the king’s charter were, before tackling the chronicle accounts of the settlement, because the latter make grander and not entirely consistent claims about its contents. Robert of Torigni considered that the king had finally recognized the ‘hereditary right which the duke had in the kingdom of England’, and that the duke had ‘graciously conceded that the king might hold the kingdom for the rest of his life, if he wished’.¹²² This flatly contradicts the first provision in Stephen’s charter, whereby the king proclaimed that he had ‘constituted Henry duke of Normandy successor after me of the kingdom of England and my heir by hereditary right’. Others went even further than this. William of Newburgh, writing in the 1190s, reports that ‘it was decreed that for the future Stephen should reign unimpaired, with glory and honour, in England, like a legitimate princeps; and that Henry should succeed him in the kingdom as legitimate heir’.¹²³ He goes on to give a short, accurate summary of the agreements arrived at between them, as recorded in the charter. He seems to have considered that it was by virtue of the settlement that Stephen became princeps legitimus, for he added that afterwards ‘the king received England, and England received peace’. It was only at that point that Stephen secured possession of the kingdom for the first time, and the kingdom began to enjoy a peace which it had so conspicuously lacked since his formal accession: ‘For very many years previously Stephen was distinguished by the bare title (nomen) of king, but at this time he seemed to receive the substance of this title (huius res nominis), and then began to reign as if for the first time.’ William had previously stated that Stephen lacked the terror which derived from the royal nomen.¹²⁴ Henry I had allegedly recognized that this was an essential quality in a king.¹²⁵ In November 1153, according to William, Stephen received the

¹²² RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 177. ¹²³ ‘Historia’, CSHR i. 91. Cf. the continuation of the Historia post Bedam in London, BL Royal MS. 13 A. vi, fo. 107, printed in Roger of Howden, Chronica, i. pp. cii–ciii, which appears to abridge William’s text. Stubbs (p. cii, n. 4) dates the hand ‘thirteenth century, or possibly later, in imitation of the earlier hand’. The rest of the manuscript dates from the mid-12th century: pp. xxxvi–xxxvii. If the dating of the continuation is accurate, and if it was appended when it was composed, then it is probably of little value. But it may not be. Moreover, the author had access to sources other than William (or other than those used by William). The fact, however, that he places the initial negotiations in Wallingford—perhaps misunderstanding HH 766—does not inspire confidence. I am grateful to John Gillingham for drawing my attention to this passage. ¹²⁴ ‘Historia’, CSHR i. 39; cf. 69, for the absence in Stephen’s reign of ‘fear of the king and the law’. ¹²⁵ RT, GND ii. 264.

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substance of that nomen, as if he had at long last acceded as king.¹²⁶ The reason why the agreement between king and duke might be deemed to have conferred it on Stephen was clear to William: ‘for it was then that he was first cleansed of the stain of tyrannical usurpation, and donned the justice of a legitimate princeps.’¹²⁷ Moreover, he carefully says that Henry was to succeed Stephen as ‘legitimate heir’, not that he was Stephen’s heir. William of Newburgh’s account cannot be dismissed as the anachronistic analysis of a much later writer. His principal source for Stephen’s reign was Henry of Huntingdon,¹²⁸ who probably wrote his account of the events of 1153 in the immediate aftermath, or just after Henry II’s coronation.¹²⁹ Henry’s description of the settlement itself, which is florid where William’s is terse and analytical, says nothing to the effect that the duke had somehow legitimized Stephen as king, although he concludes that ‘the mercy of God brought to the broken realm of England a dawn of peace’.¹³⁰ But later Henry says that ‘King Stephen . . . ruling in peace, for the first time most powerful, thanks to his adoptive son, then obtained what was due to the royal honour’.¹³¹ It seems likely that it was this convoluted sentence which inspired William’s interpretation. But the observation was not confined to Henry of Huntingdon among contemporary writers. The author of the Gesta Stephani, that sometime champion of Stephen’s cause, remarks in passing that it was only after the settlement that ‘the king pacified England and took the whole kingdom into his hand’.¹³² There is no evidence of any connection between him and Henry of Huntingdon.¹³³ And the point might be thought implicit in Robert of Torigni’s statement that Stephen held the kingdom henceforth by the duke’s concession. By this stage Robert’s chronicle was quite independent of Henry of Huntingdon.¹³⁴ William of Newburgh did no more than express in particularly cogent and arresting form at a later date the common opinion of contemporary chroniclers. He was perfectly capable of separating the wheat from the chaff in earlier historical writing, as he showed in his devastating critique of Geoffrey of Monmouth.¹³⁵ Of the ‘agreements negotiated between us’ recorded in the king’s charter, only its provision about the ‘royal justice’ which Stephen would exercise henceforth throughout the whole kingdom could be interpreted as corroborating these statements. Yet the draftsman reveals that, for the first time in post-Conquest England, an attempt had been made to distinguish the position of king from that of liege lord of all the men in the kingdom, and the king’s part of the kingdom from that liege lord’s part. The charter reveals that the position of king had been ¹²⁶ Cf. GC i. 156: ‘The duke accepted him in the place of a father, conceding to him that he should receive the title and substance of the royal pinnacle for all the days of his life.’ ¹²⁷ Cf. William of Malmesbury’s comment, HNa 36, that Stephen would have lacked little which adorned the royal persona, ‘if he had acceded to the kingdom legitimately’. ¹²⁸ CSHR i. p. xxvi. ¹²⁹ HH, pp. lxxvi–lxxvii. ¹³⁰ HH 770. ¹³¹ HH 772. ¹³² GS 240. ¹³³ Davis, King Stephen, 144–6. ¹³⁴ HH, pp. lxxiii, lxxv, 749, n. 140. ¹³⁵ CSHR i. 12–18.

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emasculated, but the chroniclers treated that emasculation as an accession. It followed what was presented in the, by now universally pro-Angevin, chronicles as an extended period of quasi-interregnal disorder. As a quasi-accession, it had to be characterized by the sort of measures which had marked previous royal accessions. Great emphasis has been placed, for instance, on Robert of Torigni’s account of the settlement.¹³⁶ He reports that after Stephen, together with the bishops and other magnates, had taken an oath assuring the duke a trouble-free accession after the king’s death, ‘it was also sworn that those possessions which had been snatched by usurpers (quae direptae erant ab invasoribus) should be restored to the ancient and legitimate possessors, who had them in the time of the excellent King Henry’. This seems to tally with the Gesta Stephani’s independent statement that it was agreed that ‘the disinherited should be recalled to their own (exheredati ad propria revocarentur)’.¹³⁷ The author of the Gesta Stephani had, of course, been a staunch proponent of Stephen’s cause at the time of his accession. In his account of the new king’s actions in its immediate aftermath, he had described how Stephen had restored ‘the disinherited to their own (propria)’.¹³⁸ This was something legitimate kings did after their accessions. The two chroniclers also agree that there was a common undertaking to raze castles which had been ‘constructed after the death of the aforesaid king [Henry]’. Most manuscripts of Robert’s Chronicle give the unbelievable total of 1,115.¹³⁹ Although Henry of Huntingdon, John of Hexham, William of Newburgh, and Gervase of Canterbury say nothing about an agreement to restore the disinherited or those who had been dispossessed since Henry I’s death, they all bear witness to this one regarding ‘adulterine fortifications’.¹⁴⁰ The proliferation of castles under Stephen is interpreted as one of the most striking manifestations of the disorder which had obtained previously: their lords were ‘so many kings, or rather tyrants’.¹⁴¹ Henry of Huntingdon reports that, to Duke Henry’s irritation, ‘his new father’ Stephen procrastinated where the castles of some of his supporters were concerned.¹⁴² But the duke eventually backed down in a confrontation at Dunstable in January 1154, ‘lest he should extinguish the light of concord’. It would in any case have been politically impossible to enforce such an agreement in blanket fashion on the supporters of both king and duke.¹⁴³ While Henry of Huntingdon thought that the duke had kept the light of peace burning by not insisting upon wholesale enforcement, William of Newburgh gives the impression that no exceptions were made. With Stephen itinerating around the kingdom ‘like ¹³⁶ ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 177; Davis, King Stephen, 119–23; Milsom, Legal Framework, 178–9; id., Historical Foundations of the Common Law, 2nd edn. (London, 1981), 129; R. C. Palmer, ‘The Origins of Property in England’, Law and History Review, iii (1985), 1–50, at 9–11. ¹³⁷ GS 240. ¹³⁸ GS 22, discussed above, pp. 195–6. ¹³⁹ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 177 and n. 2. One manuscript gives the more modest and credible figure of 126. GS 240 describes them as ‘new castles’. ¹⁴⁰ The phrase is William of Newburgh’s: CSHR i. 94. See also HH, 772; John of Hexham, SD ii. 331; GC i. 157, which is derived from Henry of Huntingdon. ¹⁴¹ WN, CSHR i. 69. ¹⁴² HH 772. ¹⁴³ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 275.

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a new king, . . . the adulterine fortifications . . . were burnt before his eyes, and melted away like wax in front of a flame’.¹⁴⁴ Although Henry was William’s main source for the events of the reign, he had not borrowed Henry’s account of the omen of the snuffed candle in his analysis of Stephen’s incarceration in 1141.¹⁴⁵ But it may have been at the back of his mind when he described this consequence of the settlement of 1153: Stephen had become, for the first time in William’s view, like a lighted candle. William was not, however, concerned with the practical obstacles in the way of implementing such an agreement during Stephen’s lifetime, and scarcely with the details of such implementation as took place. The only example he gives of a castle forcibly demolished by the king is that of Drax in Yorkshire.¹⁴⁶ He was much more concerned to underline his point about Stephen’s newly legitimate status. Robert of Torigni does not share William’s systematic approach to the analysis of Stephen’s reign, but much the same may be true of his apparently greatly exaggerated estimate of the number of castles demolished. Thus the supposed agreement on the demolition of castles constructed after the death of Henry I was exploited by the chroniclers to make a polemical point about Stephen’s status. There is no trace of it in the king’s charter promulgating ‘the agreements negotiated between us’. But this does not mean that it was merely a figment of their imaginations. While the siege of Drax does not in itself amount to evidence of such an agreement, the (partial) implementation of the agreement is widely attested in general terms in the chronicles. Neither the charter nor any of the contemporary chronicles record an agreement between king and duke to reform the coinage, but Ralph Diceto’s later account of such a measure in the settlement seems to be corroborated by the physical evidence of Stephen’s last issue, type 7.¹⁴⁷ The charter’s record of the offer of the custody of certain Norman castles to Reginald de Warenne probably preserves, as we have seen, the terms of a deal struck in Winchester which had already been acted upon by the time the charter was issued in the following month. For Reginald was one of the witnesses.¹⁴⁸ But the omission of certain heads of agreement from the charter is quite a different matter from the scrupulous reproduction of agreed terms despite their being out of date by the time of promulgation. What principle, if any, determined inclusion of conventiones in the charter remains a mystery. Discrepancies between chronicle accounts and the documentary record were not, however, an unprecedented phenomenon in 1153. William of Malmesbury’s account of the contents of Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ corresponded only in part with the extant document, which does not mention an amnesty for prisoners, the ¹⁴⁴ WN, CSHR i. 94. ¹⁴⁵ HH 732, discussed above, pp. 242–3. ¹⁴⁶ Cf. HH 774; Howden, Chronica, i. 213. ¹⁴⁷ Ralph Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, Opera, i. 297; Blackburn, ‘Coinage’, in King (ed.), Anarchy, 194. Many of the other heads of agreement recorded by Ralph are not corroborated elsewhere, but that ordaining the expulsion of foreign mercenaries is also attested by John of Hexham, SD ii. 331. ¹⁴⁸ The suggestion is Holt’s: ‘1153’, CE 275.

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expulsion of effeminates from court, or the restoration of the use of lamps at night.¹⁴⁹ Henry of Huntingdon’s account of Stephen’s confirmation at Oxford in early January 1136 of the pacta which he ‘had conceded to the people and holy church on the day of his coronation’, is generally taken to be a garbled and misplaced version of the charter which the king issued there after Easter.¹⁵⁰ The first two concessions recorded by Henry can be reconciled with clauses in that charter, but the third, renouncing Danegeld, does not correspond to anything in it. Yet John of Worcester, writing, like Henry, within a few years of the event, and independently of Henry, confirms that Stephen had ‘promised in a royal decree’ that he would never collect the tax.¹⁵¹ The likelihood that such a promise was made is increased by the fact that Henry, who was well informed about the operations of the treasury, specifies the correct rate for Danegeld.¹⁵² Yet the provision was missing from Stephen’s charter. Perhaps the same was true in 1153 of the alleged agreements on adulterine castles and reform of the coinage, for in each case there is evidence which might be interpreted as independent corroboration of the stories told by chroniclers. Whether this can also be said of the other agreement mentioned in the chronicles but missing from the charter—to restore those who had held lands in the time of Henry I but had subsequently been dispossessed,¹⁵³ or to ‘recall the disinherited to their own’¹⁵⁴—is another matter. If the agreements of 1091 and 1101 were indeed regarded as an imperfect template for that of 1153,¹⁵⁵ then the provisions they had both embodied for the restoration of lands to barons who had forfeited during the preceding conflicts might have inspired such a joint undertaking. In 1091 this had involved only the restoration of English lands to those who had remained faithful to Duke Robert.¹⁵⁶ But in 1101 the restorations appear to have been reciprocal. King Henry undertook to ‘restore freely their pristine honours’ to all those who had forfeited in England on account of their loyalty to Curthose, and the duke undertook to ‘return without any charge’ the honours taken from men in Normandy on account of their support for the king.¹⁵⁷ ¹⁴⁹ GR i. 714. ¹⁵⁰ HH 704; cf. RRAN iii. no. 271. ¹⁵¹ JW iii. 202. ¹⁵² HH, pp. lvi, 704–6, n. 19. ¹⁵³ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 177; Davis, King Stephen, 120, suggests that the reference to the time of Henry I reported by Robert was deliberately vague. But in view of the way in which it is paired with the provision for the demolition of castles constructed since Henry’s death, Henry’s ‘time’ is almost certainly synonymous with the day of his death. The obvious precedent is Domesday Book. ¹⁵⁴ GS 240. I take it that the description of a restoration of ‘ancient custom’ and the destruction of ‘new castles’ corresponds to the reference to the status quo on the day of Henry I’s death which I have argued is expressed by Robert of Torigni. Indeed, Robert and John of Hexham say so in the case of the agreement on castles. ¹⁵⁵ Above, p. 272; the similarity is remarked upon by J. Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice: Legal Reforms of Henry II’, Columbia Law Review, lxxxviii (1988), 433–536, at 461, n. 67. ¹⁵⁶ ASC (E) s.a. 1091; JW iii. 58. ¹⁵⁷ JW iii. 98; cf. London, BL Cotton MS. Caligula A. viii, fo. 41r, printed by Hollister, ‘Civil War’, 96. ASC (E) s.a. 1101 records a restoration only in England, but says that Henry gave up ‘all he was forcibly holding against the count in Normandy’.

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The 1101 agreement would therefore seem to provide the more appropriate template for that of 1153. But the differences between the agreements of 1101 and 1153 are more revealing than the similarities. No charter survives promulgating that of 1101, so it is impossible to tell whether the restorations would have been notified in such a document, if it ever existed. The Durham account in London, BL Cotton MS. Caligula A. viii, which has been plausibly linked with Ranulf Flambard, and which is therefore likely to reveal a bureaucratic acuity, distinguishes between the ‘agreement negotiated’ at Alton and the subsequent ‘oath and affidatio’ at Winchester, but does not mention any charter.¹⁵⁸ More importantly in the present connection, this apparently contemporary account states that losses sustained ‘during the period of dispute (tempore diffensionis)’ were restored to barons on both sides at Winchester on 2 August. Unlike 1153, then, it seems that the restorations were not to take place by reference to the status quo at the death of a previous king (unless the ‘dispute’ was deemed to have begun exactly one year before, on William Rufus’s death). In this crucial respect, there was a far closer precedent associated with Henry I for what Robert of Torigni and the Gesta Stephani say was agreed in 1153; but it is Norman rather than English. At the completion of Henry I’s conquest of the duchy of Normandy from his brother, he presided over the Council of Lisieux in October 1106. There he proclaimed his ‘firm peace’ in terms reminiscent of his coronation ‘edict’, and ordained the restoration of the possessions of churches and ‘legitimate heirs’ as they had been held on the day of his father’s death, nineteen years before.¹⁵⁹ The echoes of the definition of interregnum in caps. 12 and 14 of the coronation ‘edict’, in this case encompassing the whole of Robert Curthose’s reign as duke rather than three days, parallel the implications of the pro-Angevin view of Stephen’s reign prior to 1153 embodied in Robert of Torigni, the Gesta Stephani, and other chroniclers. King Henry also set about demolishing the adulterine castles which Curthose and the seditiosi had built in Normandy since William the Conqueror’s death.¹⁶⁰ But these similarities do not in themselves mean that the Council of Lisieux, rather than the agreement of 1101, provided a model for what was allegedly agreed in 1153. Moreover, there is no evidence that anything of the sort was implemented after November 1153, whereas the contemporary account of the agreement of 1101 in Cotton Caligula A. viii records that the restorations took place immediately, at Winchester, when the principals took their oaths and the twelve leading men on either side pledged their faith. In Normandy in late 1106 Henry I did resolve a number of awkward disputes concerning church lands; but there is no evidence that he did so by restoring the status quo on the day of his father’s death.¹⁶¹ This may have been because the preceding period of disorder in the duchy had been far longer than had been the case in England in 1101. ¹⁵⁸ Hollister, ‘Civil War’, 79, 91, 96. ¹⁵⁹ Orderic vi. 92–4. ¹⁶¹ RRAN ii. nos. 790, 791, 792; Haskins, Norman Institutions, 86–7.

¹⁶⁰ Ibid. 98.

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Much the same was true of England in 1153. Why no measure of the sort agreed in England in 1101 could have been implemented in 1153–4, even had it been agreed, is plain. It would have been politically impossible.¹⁶² The settlement of 1153 provided that all the barons do homage to both principals.¹⁶³ Stephen and Henry could hardly have set about dispossessing those who were now men of both of them, even if they had been able to agree about who should be dispossessed. Four supposed instances of restorations have been identified in the period between the settlement and Stephen’s death. On closer inspection these turn out to be no such thing. Stephen dispossessed William de Chesney of Mileham, so that it could be restored to the fitzAlans; but the king compensated him with several other manors.¹⁶⁴ The duke conceded to William Spileman ‘all the land [at Brockenhurst] which was Edward Unnithing’s and his brother Hugo’s and Alvered the Small’s, as well and as freely as they held in the time of King Henry my grandfather and of my antecessores’; and Stephen confirmed the gift.¹⁶⁵ In a case which is specifically dated to ‘the year in which King Stephen and Henry, duke of Normandy, were allied’, the sheriff of Oxfordshire, ostensibly acting on the king’s orders, seised Thurstan fitzSimon of lands which Thurstan claimed were ‘of his hereditary right’, but which ‘the abbot of Abingdon had for some time occupied by fraudulent and unjust usurpation’.¹⁶⁶ The final example seems to intersect with the only specific instance of the supposed agreement to demolish adulterine castles. Philip de Colville, who was besieged by the king in Drax castle,¹⁶⁷ was probably a vassal of Robert de Gant, Stephen’s chancellor. Robert had got Drax and the English lands of William Paynel when Stephen had given him the hand of William’s daughter, for William’s sons, Hugh and Fulk, had supported the Angevin cause in Normandy. It seems that Robert was now forced to give up some of this land to Hugh and Fulk Paynel, and probably ceased to serve as chancellor.¹⁶⁸ The exchange of one parcel of land for another, and the grant of land by reference to the situation in the time of Henry I, were not novel phenomena. They do not amount to evidence of the implementation of a newly agreed policy to restore ‘the disinherited’, however that category was defined. Nor does the king’s intervention on behalf of a layman disputing rightful possession of some land with the abbot of Abingdon. In any case this decision was reversed after Henry became king. Nor does a compromise between Robert de Gant and his wife’s brothers. Yet these are the only cases involving laymen which can be dated with ¹⁶² Holt, ‘1153’, CE 275, 283. ¹⁶³ RRAN iii. no. 272; HH 770–2. ¹⁶⁴ RRAN iii. no. 177. Three of the cases are identified by White, Restoration and Reform, 72. ¹⁶⁵ RRAN iii. nos. 130, 131. Stephen’s grant to Alvric of Brochelea—no. 129—is taken by the editors, White, and Hudson, LLL 150, n. 149, to be probably contemporaneous with that to William Spileman. But if he was the Alvered parvus mentioned in Duke Henry’s charter, it is likely to have been earlier. ¹⁶⁶ HEA ii. 240; White, Restoration and Reform, 71; Amt, Accession, 57. ¹⁶⁷ WN, CSHR i. 94. ¹⁶⁸ EYC vi. 32–3; Davis, King Stephen, 122; Holt, ‘1153’, CE 283, n. 61.

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any certainty to the period between the settlement and Henry II’s accession. In addition, a writ of Duke Henry, addressed to William, earl of Gloucester, orders him to reseise the abbey of Glastonbury with ‘their’ manor of Siston, so that they should hold it ‘as they held on the day on which King Henry was alive and dead’.¹⁶⁹ This writ has been plausibly redated to November 1153, when the settlement was being thrashed out in Winchester under the auspices of Bishop Henry of Blois, who was also, of course, Glastonbury’s abbot.¹⁷⁰ In effect, the duke was ensuring that Stephen’s confirmation, in 1138,¹⁷¹ of the abbey’s recovery of the manor should be respected. But in doing so, he did not acknowledge Stephen’s confirmation, or even his existence. This writ, therefore, provides no support for the putative restoration of the disinherited. Professor Holt has identified a number of other cases as exemplifying the term of the settlement which in his view lies behind the statements in Robert of Torigni’s Chronicle and the Gesta Stephani—that all acquisitions made subsequent to Henry I’s death were at risk.¹⁷² But these confirmations, sometimes of inheritances only, sometimes of selected acquisitions too, were all effected by Henry II, and only after his accession as king. It is difficult to see what the purpose would have been of a secret protocol to this effect in November 1153, if it were to be implemented only after Stephen’s death. There would have been no conceivable point in Stephen’s agreeing to it. Indeed, it would have been obvious that it might be used subsequently to undermine the interests so painstakingly secured in his charter for his son William. As we have seen, these went far beyond a projected restoration to William of what Stephen had held in the time of King Henry I.¹⁷³ For his part, Duke Henry had recognized that he could not possibly hold out for the sort of terms his mother had spurned in 1141.¹⁷⁴ Compromise was the order of the day in 1153. What applied to Stephen, his son William, and Duke Henry applied also to any ‘disinherited’. And those ‘disinherited’ who, according to Gervase of Canterbury, had stood against Stephen in 1153 were not necessarily men who had held, or whose ancestors had held, on the day of Henry I’s death.¹⁷⁵ Moreover, if news of such a secret protocol had leaked out, it could not have been other than destabilizing, especially prior to Henry’s accession. And it is clear that those who designed the settlement were concerned above all to create the framework for a new stability during the indeterminable interim until Duke Henry succeeded as king. Whether or not Holt’s suggestion of such a protocol be accepted, his examples strengthen the argument that nothing was done prior to Henry’s becoming king. If there was a protocol of the type specified by Robert of Torigni and the Gesta Stephani, it was not and could not have been implemented ¹⁶⁹ R. B. Patterson, ‘An Un-edited Charter of Henry Fitz Empress and Earl William of Gloucester’s Comital Status’, EHR lxxxvii (1972), 755–7. ¹⁷⁰ D. Crouch, ‘Earl William of Gloucester and the End of the Anarchy: New Evidence relating to the Honor of Eudo Dapifer’, EHR ciii (1988), 69–75, at 71–2. ¹⁷¹ RRAN iii. no. 342 (Jan. 1138); cf. EEA viii. 209. ¹⁷² Holt, ‘1153’, CE 276–7, 280–2, 287–8. ¹⁷³ Above, pp. 269–71. ¹⁷⁴ Above, p. 268. ¹⁷⁵ GC i. 154; Holt, ‘1153’, CE 280.

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during Stephen’s lifetime. Acquisitions made subsequent to Henry I’s death, even those granted by Matilda or by her son as duke, seem to have had to be conveyed afresh by Henry after he became king.¹⁷⁶ All discussions of this supposed aspect of the settlement of 1153 have tended to elide what happened after Henry had become king with what had allegedly been agreed between Henry and Stephen, presumably at Winchester in November 1153,¹⁷⁷ but had then, for whatever reason, been omitted from the charter which promulgated the settlement. The evidence for the existence of such a protocol in 1153 looks even thinner than that for one to demolish adulterine castles. Indeed, it is non-existent. Why, then, did Robert of Torigni and the author of the Gesta Stephani lay so much stress on its being agreed in 1153? Were they the first historians to confuse what had been agreed at Winchester with what Henry II claimed to be doing later, when he was king? A clue as to the reasons for their insertion of such a measure into their accounts of the settlement may be provided by the discrepancy between their accounts of the relative roles of King Stephen and Duke Henry, and those which had been envisaged in Stephen’s charter. This is most obvious in Robert of Torigni’s account, which is much the most detailed. According to Robert, the king acknowledged Henry’s ‘hereditary right’ in the kingdom, and the duke ‘generously conceded’ that Stephen might hold it for the rest of his life. According to the charter, Stephen ‘constituted’ Henry as ‘successor after me of the kingdom of England and my heir by hereditary right’.¹⁷⁸ In Robert’s account, the oath to dispossess ‘usurpers’ and to ‘recall the ancient and legitimate possessors who were in the time of the excellent King Henry’ was taken only by those who had sworn along with King Stephen to facilitate the duke’s succession after Stephen’s death. In other words, it was taken by those who had hitherto been loyal to Stephen. The same was true of the oath to destroy castles which had been built since Henry I’s death. Robert makes it appear as if the duke had enforced these terms on the king. In the context of Stephen’s alleged recognition of the duke’s ‘hereditary right’ in the kingdom, the account of the king swearing to restore those who had been dispossessed since Henry I’s time was tantamount to an admission of Stephen’s own prior lack of right and his consequent fostering of illegitimate tenure. As we have seen, much the same view underlay Henry of Huntingdon’s analysis of the reign.¹⁷⁹ The supposed oath reinforced Robert of Torigni’s implication that Stephen was the foremost of those usurpers who, following the death of Henry I, had snatched ‘possessions’ from those who ought to possess them. Only when—in ¹⁷⁶ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 278, 285. ¹⁷⁷ Davis, King Stephen, 122, suggests that details were elaborated at a series of meetings between king and duke; cf. Holt, ‘1153’, CE 274. ¹⁷⁸ Cf. GC i. 156, who reports that the king adopted the duke as his son ‘and conceded and confirmed to him the principatus of the whole of England’; and that the duke ‘accepted [Stephen] as father, conceding to him that he should obtain the title and substance of the royal pinnacle for all the days of his life’. ¹⁷⁹ HH 726, discussed above, p. 253.

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the words of William of Newburgh—Stephen at last became ‘legitimate’ himself,¹⁸⁰ could he begin to exercise royal powers over tenure legitimately. He was presented as doing so like any new king, by reference to the status quo when the kingdom had last been legitimately held. In his case, that meant the day of Henry I’s death. The author of the Gesta Stephani was, as we have seen, an acute observer of the connection between a king’s accession and his restoration of ‘the disinherited to their own’.¹⁸¹ He was making the same point independently of Robert. In other words, both Robert and the author of the Gesta Stephani presented the sort of analysis later elaborated by William of Newburgh: that it was only by force of the settlement of 1153 that Stephen had become a ‘legitimate’ king. The settlement had, in the view of these chroniclers, brought to an end a period of quasi-interregnum which had lasted for eighteen years.

THE SET TLEMENT OF 1153 IN PRACTICE The discrepancy between such an analysis and what happened in practice is clear from the charters issued by Stephen and Henry after the settlement. We have seen that the few alleged cases of restoration of the disinherited in 1153–4 turn out, on closer inspection, to be no such thing.¹⁸² There are, however, a small number of charters issued during this period in which each of them explicitly confirmed grants made by the other. Of course, previously Stephen on one side, and Matilda and her son on the other, had matched and outbid each other; but with (amongst originals)the sole, striking exception of Matilda’s first charter in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville,¹⁸³ they had scrupulously avoided admitting the fact. Now, king and duke formally acknowledged each other’s existence for the first time. Thus, probably just before Christmas 1153, at Westminster, Henry, ‘by the grace of God duke of the Normans and Aquitainians and count of the Angevins’, confirmed the grant of the royal manor of Letcombe Regis made to the abbey of Cluny by ‘King Stephen’.¹⁸⁴ Stephen had granted the manor in question in 1136, in lieu of a pension given by Henry I.¹⁸⁵ Duke Henry’s father had previously confirmed the exchange, which, according to his charter, had been made by ‘the empress’.¹⁸⁶ Her charter does not survive, but we may take it that, like her husband’s confirmation, it failed to acknowledge Stephen’s existence, and therefore the fact that she was matching his existing gift. Duke Henry did not mention either his mother’s grant or his father’s confirmation of it. This marks a change ¹⁸⁰ WN, CSHR i. 91. ¹⁸¹ GS 22. ¹⁸² Above, p. 287. ¹⁸³ RRAN iii. no. 274, discussed above, p. 248; cf. no. 368. ¹⁸⁴ Ibid., no. 206; for the date, see White, Restoration and Reform, 70. ¹⁸⁵ Ibid., no. 204; for Henry’s grant and confirmation, see ii. nos. 1691 (May 1131), 1713 (1131, ? 8 Sept.). ¹⁸⁶ Ibid., no. 205 (1144 ⫻ 47).

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from his earlier practice of explicitly confirming some of his mother’s gifts in England.¹⁸⁷ He maintained this altered practice even after he became king.¹⁸⁸ His confirmation of Stephen’s previous grant to Cluny is, however, exceptional. As Holt has pointed out, there are only two other charters issued during this period by Duke Henry which refer explicitly to King Stephen.¹⁸⁹ In one the duke ‘conceded and confirmed, at the request and command of King Stephen’, a grant originally made by Queen Adeliza;¹⁹⁰ in the other, he ‘gave and conceded’ to the bishop and church of Lichfield a die and mint, ‘just as King Stephen had conceded, and confirmed in his charter’.¹⁹¹ All three are concerned with royal estates or royal rights. Another possible example, mentioned during a case in the curia regis in 1212, also concerns two royal manors.¹⁹² The settlement between king and duke appears to have made it possible for the duke to put on record who had granted away what King Henry I (or his queen) had held on the day of his death: the Cluny charter emphasizes that the church and monks were to hold ‘just as that King Henry held in his hand’.¹⁹³ It was no longer necessary for the duke to pretend that Stephen’s grants had been his or his mother’s, as his mother had done in the case of Bordesley Abbey.¹⁹⁴ In cases which did not involve royal estates or rights, however, it seems that Duke Henry’s attitude to Stephen had not shifted as a result of the settlement between them. An extant confirmation by Henry of an earlier grant by Stephen to Thame Abbey was such only in the sense that it used the verb ‘confirm’; it does not say whose gift Henry is confirming.¹⁹⁵ Henry also issued a charter in favour of Meaux Abbey which reproduced the king’s almost verbatim, perhaps at the same time as the king, but (again) without any reference to Stephen.¹⁹⁶ All the other examples of ducal confirmations are in fact entries in the annals of Bermondsey Priory; it is not possible to reconstruct how Henry might have referred to Stephen, if at all, in the lost charters which must lie behind them.¹⁹⁷ But it looks from these few extant examples as if the very acknowledgement of Stephen’s existence still stuck in Duke Henry’s craw, despite his having been instituted by the king as his heir and successor. He did not attest a single surviving charter of Stephen.¹⁹⁸ ¹⁸⁷ Ibid., no. 379 (c.7 June 1153), cf. no. 378. But he did not always mention his mother’s earlier grant: no. 840 (probably c.Apr. ⫻ May 1153), cf. no. 839 (1141 ⫻ 48). Note that he continued explicitly to confirm some of his mother’s grants after the settlement with the king: no. 900 (Apr. ⫻ Dec. 1154), cf. no. 899 (July 1141, for David, king of Scots, also witnessed no. 393, issued then by the empress, also at Oxford). ¹⁸⁸ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 278, shows that Matilda’s charter in favour of Roger of Hereford was used as a model when Henry II’s charter for him was drawn up, probably immediately after the coronation: Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3938H, cf. RRAN iii. no. 393. But it presents everything which Matilda had given anew to Roger and his father Miles before him as fresh grants by Henry. It does not even mention Matilda. ¹⁸⁹ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 284. ¹⁹⁰ RRAN iii. no. 140 (1154). ¹⁹¹ Ibid., no. 458 (6 Nov. 1153 ⫻ 4 Apr. 1154); cf. no. 457 (1149 ⫻ 54). ¹⁹² CRR vi. 272–3, discussed by Holt, ‘1153’, CE 284, n. 70. ¹⁹³ RRAN iii. no. 206. ¹⁹⁴ Above, p. 246. ¹⁹⁵ RRAN iii. nos. 875 (c.Dec. 1153), 874 (1139 ⫻ 53). ¹⁹⁶ Ibid., nos. 584, 583 (Jan. 1154). ¹⁹⁷ Ibid., nos. 94 (1142) and 95 (1153 ⫻ 54), 96 (1143 ⫻ 44) and 97 (1153 ⫻ 54). ¹⁹⁸ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 284.

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The surviving examples of Stephen confirming Henry’s gifts are even fewer, but they do not suggest that the king drew the same distinction between royal and other rights.¹⁹⁹ Probably in January 1154, Stephen ‘conceded and confirmed’ to St Augustine’s Abbey, Bristol, ‘all those lands which Henry, duke of the Normans, gave and conceded to it, and confirmed in his charter’.²⁰⁰ The charter to which he referred was the one issued by Duke Henry between January and May 1153, in which Henry confirmed to the abbey ‘all those lands and returns belonging to the crown of England’ which had been given by him ‘or by another, or which shall be given in the future’.²⁰¹ This suggests that Stephen might already have given something, or might have been expected to do so in the future; and that Henry at that point could not ignore him, but was too coy to name him. Now, after the settlement, the king could explicitly countenance grants which Duke Henry had made from what belonged to the corona Anglie. He also, as we have seen, explicitly confirmed a grant which Henry had made, probably after the settlement, to William Spileman, ‘through his charter, which [William] has’.²⁰² Thus the duke was apparently more grudging than the king about the confirmations he was willing to give, as a result of the settlement, to the acts of the other party. The king had pledged himself to conduct the affairs of the kingdom henceforth ‘by the duke’s counsel’;²⁰³ there is no indication in Stephen’s charter or elsewhere that Henry had given a reciprocal undertaking. Nevertheless, he recognized, like Stephen, that the compromise nature of the settlement meant that it was neither possible nor desirable for the status quo in King Henry’s time to be restored, even where the terra regis was concerned. He was happy to parrot Stephen’s claim that Henry I and the other kings of England were his antecessores,²⁰⁴ and to use the status quo in Henry I’s time to define the rights of a ‘just heir’.²⁰⁵ But he now secured King Stephen’s confirmation for his own earlier grant out of what he had asserted, at the time, belonged to the ‘crown of England’.²⁰⁶ It may be inferred that the same was true of Duke Henry’s grants to Biddlesden Abbey of ‘all the customs belonging to my crown’²⁰⁷—thus characterized by scriptor xxiii—and to Bermondsey Priory of revenues belonging ‘to the king’s crown’, although in these cases Stephen’s post-settlement confirmatory charters do not survive.²⁰⁸ Just as Henry, like Stephen, could have had no desire to see the terra regis restored to its condition on 1 December 1135, so they both recognized that it would not have been possible to do so with other lands which had subsequently been given to new tenants. In this latter respect, they agreed on countenancing changes which had taken place in the interim. But there was nothing new in ¹⁹⁹ Crouch, ‘William of Gloucester’, 73, argues that there must have been a royal charter corresponding to the ducal charter of January 1154 in favour of Earl William’s son Robert. But Stephen’s charter does not survive. ²⁰⁰ RRAN iii. no. 127. ²⁰¹ Ibid., no. 126. ²⁰² Ibid., no. 131, cf. no. 130. ²⁰³ Ibid., no. 272. ²⁰⁴ Ibid., no. 584. ²⁰⁵ Ibid., no. 130. ²⁰⁶ Ibid., no. 126. ²⁰⁷ Ibid., no. 104 (1153 ⫻ Apr. 1154, probably c.7 June 1153). ²⁰⁸ Ibid., no. 90 (1153 ⫻ Apr. 1154).

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1153–4 about them making such changes, usually, but not always, by reference to the status quo at that point.²⁰⁹ And because both sides had been tacitly bidding against each other since 1139, they had in practice reiterated, usually in the course of trumping, each other’s grants. The extant charters suggest that all that was new after November 1153, at least where land other than the terra regis was concerned, was the king’s willingness to be explicit about sanctioning the duke’s grants (but apparently not vice versa). It was not, therefore, just the compromise nature of the settlement which rendered a restoration of the status quo at the death of King Henry utterly impracticable. The shared reverence for the situation on the death of the antecessor claimed by each of them, and the sometimes incompatible grants which had been defined by reference to it, underlined the impossibility of such a recalling of ‘the disinherited to their own’.²¹⁰ For while it might have been possible to establish objectively who ‘the ancient and legitimate possessors in the time of the excellent King Henry’²¹¹ were, the issue of who their proper successors should have been could not be settled so easily. This meant that, as Holt has argued, all acquisitions made since the death of King Henry were at least potentially ‘in question’.²¹² They were so from the time of the agreement, not from Duke Henry’s accession as king. And while King Stephen lived it was obvious that the answer to the question in each particular case could not be other than heavily influenced by that fact. It was during this period of unpredictable duration that the need for compromise was at its most compelling, compounding the problems inherent in the sort of measure recorded by Robert of Torigni and the Gesta Stephani. Even had it been something more than a polemical construct on the part of two pro-Angevin chroniclers, the need for compromise during this period would have rendered its implementation inconceivable. If there had in truth been no agreement to render the interim following Henry I’s death a legal nullity, its nature was transformed by the settlement. Hitherto Stephen had acted like earlier kings, and occasionally paired the date of his antecessor’s death with that of his own coronation when he was confirming tenures.²¹³ We have seen that, lacking any coronation herself, Matilda had substituted for the latter a variety of dates, including that on which the beneficiary had become her man,²¹⁴ that of the meeting at Wherwell in March 1141,²¹⁵ and that of her reception in Winchester on the following day.²¹⁶ Her eldest son seems also to have used the dates of individual acts of homage to him.²¹⁷ The fact that ²⁰⁹ Ibid., no. 309 (Jan. ⫻ May 1153); that doubt has been cast on the authenticity of this charter—Holt, ‘1153’, CE 273, n. 15, 282, n. 58—does not devalue its evidence in this particular respect. For Stephen deliberately disregarding it, see no. 428 (discussed above, pp. 193–4); in no. 274 Matilda ‘restored’ to Geoffrey de Mandeville lands once held by his eponymous grandfather and Serlo de Matom, but which were held by others on the day of Henry I’s death. ²¹⁰ GS 240. ²¹¹ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 177. ²¹² Holt, ‘1153’, CE, esp. 276–81. ²¹³ RRAN iii. nos. 10, 286, 678. ²¹⁴ Ibid., no. 274. ²¹⁵ Ibid., no. 343. ²¹⁶ Ibid., no. 898. ²¹⁷ Ibid., nos. 309 (for doubts about its authenticity, see above, n. 209), possibly 912 (1153 ⫻ 54; it is not clear that this pre-dates the settlement).

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the charter promulgating the agreements grounded the duke’s future title to the kingdom in King Stephen’s grant might lead one to infer that the conventional pairing of the date of the antecessor’s death with the king’s coronation would henceforth have been acceptable to Henry too. But this would have implied an acceptance on his part that all Stephen’s acts prior to the settlement had been legitimate at the time, without any post-settlement confirmation by Henry. Later events suggest that Henry found such an implication unacceptable. Two charters issued by the king, in favour of Reading Abbey and the Templars respectively, suggest that the settlement had initially involved the substitution of a different terminus to the interim period which had begun with Henry I’s death. Perhaps it was envisaged that henceforth this would provide a second point of reference in the confirmation of tenure.²¹⁸ The chronicle accounts of the duke graciously conceding that Stephen might be king for the rest of his life would make what these charters respectively term the compositio or purificatio [recte: pacificatio] et concordia between king and duke an obvious possibility. But, of course, the implications of such a choice would have been quite unacceptable to the king, and it would, therefore, have been impossible to make it. Another possibility was the consequent general homage-taking at Oxford on 13 January 1154, described by Henry of Huntingdon.²¹⁹ In Henry’s account, the king then made the nobles pay homage and fidelitas to the duke. It is likely that this was also the occasion when those of the duke’s men who had not previously been the king’s did homage to Stephen, in accordance with the terms of the settlement laid down in Stephen’s charter of the previous month. Probably William de Vescy, son of Eustace fitzJohn, and therefore firmly in the Angevin camp, had done homage to Duke Henry before January.²²⁰ It is uncertain whether he had done so before or after November 1153. Even if his homage had followed the settlement, the duke’s use of the date on which he had received it as the defining point for William’s tenures did not provide a template for his other confirmations, although, as we have seen, both he and his mother had occasionally used their reception of someone’s homage in this way. So 13 January 1154, like the date of the preceding settlement, was not selected. Instead these two royal charters fix on the following Easter. If this was indeed briefly envisaged as a future terminus,²²¹ Stephen’s death within a few months rendered it an irrelevance.

THE ACCESSION OF HENRY II The compromise nature of the settlement of 1153 meant that it could not, therefore, be treated as a terminus in the definition of tenure, although pro-Angevin chroniclers saw it as marking Stephen’s accession as king. Yet all commentators ²¹⁸ Ibid., nos. 696, 866 (both 4 Apr. ⫻ 25 Oct. 1154). ²¹⁹ HH 770–2. ²²⁰ RRAN iii. no. 912 (1153–4). ²²¹ White, Restoration and Reform, 72.

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accepted that it had inaugurated what, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, ‘soon became a very good peace, such as there never was before’.²²² And they were all the more struck when Stephen’s death in the following October had no effect on this peace, even though the duke had, by that stage, left England. Robert of Torigni commented on the ‘perfect peace’ which continued in England after the king’s demise; but he offered no explanation for this unprecedented phenomenon, other than that it was sustained by fear and love (in that order) of Duke Henry, ‘who no one doubted would come and be king’.²²³ Henry of Huntingdon gives a fuller account. Archbishop Theobald and many nobles had sent messengers to urge the duke to ‘come immediately to take up the kingship’; but he had been delayed by adverse weather and other (unspecified) obstacles.²²⁴ As a consequence, England had been ‘without a king for about six weeks’. This was the first time since the Conquest that an interregnum had been allowed to persist. ‘Yet’, Henry added, ‘by God’s protecting grace [England] did not lack peace, either through love or fear of the king who was about to come’ (thereby inverting Robert’s ordering of the motives). This was not the conclusion of his analysis; he was so astonished by this unprecedented interregnal peace that he was moved to shift into hexameters: ‘The king has died, but England, although without a king, is not without peace. You, Henry, foremost on earth, work this miracle. Not yet king, not yet present, you achieve what the king could not when he was present . . .’²²⁵ The interregnum prior to Henry’s accession, when he was still absent from the kingdom, was more akin to a normal king’s reign than Stephen’s had been: ‘Not yet do you bear the sceptre, delayed beyond the high seas, But through you, though still without you, England enjoys peace.’ William of Newburgh goes into detail about the additional factors not specified by Henry of Huntingdon which had occasioned the delay. Duke Henry was besieging the castle of Torigni when news of the king’s death reached him. His followers are said to have urged him to abandon the siege immediately and to cross to England as quickly as possible, ‘lest it should happen that his old enemies should attempt anything against him on account of the delay’. But, ‘with a remarkable trust in the justice of his cause, he answered that they would not dare to try anything’.²²⁶ In William of Newburgh’s account, it was the duke’s concern to secure the surrender of Torigni, rather than contrary winds, which occasioned the delay. At the beginning of Part III I quoted from Robert of Torigni’s interpolated version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, where Robert Curthose, on hearing of his father’s death in 1087, rejected advice to rush across the Channel to secure the kingdom for himself. I argued that his statement that the English would wait for him even had he been in Alexandria was intended to convey his total failure to grasp the chaotic nature of post-Conquest royal successions, in which swift, ²²² ASC (E) s.a. 1140; cf. HH 772; John of Hexham, SD ii. 231. ²²³ RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 181; cf. ASC (E) s.a. 1154. ²²⁴ HH 774. ²²⁵ HH 776. ²²⁶ WN, CHSR i. 95–6.

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pre-emptive action was the prerequisite. Yet in late October or early November 1154 Duke Henry was proved right in responding in similar terms to the suggestion that he should hurry to England to be crowned at the earliest possible juncture. The reason was not that the English had at long last tired of the disorder which had characterized much of Stephen’s reign²²⁷ and rediscovered the delights of the peace. It was, rather, that the settlement between king and duke had solved the problem of interregnal uncertainty. As the settlement had ordained, all the lay barons were already bound to Duke Henry by liege homage—apparently staged at Oxford in mid-January.²²⁸ This had been true of no other post-Conquest successor to the kingdom.²²⁹ In 1100 those who had been William Rufus’s barones were assumed in Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ to have become Henry’s at the point when Henry became king, long before the vast majority of them could conceivably have done homage to him. Yet after Rufus’s death and prior to Henry’s consecration, there were only barones regni Anglie, because barons could not be the king’s when there was no king.²³⁰ It was this short, chaotic period which had been brought to a close when Henry, on becoming king, proclaimed his ‘firm peace’. William Adelin did not survive to succeed his father, and Henry I had ensured, as we have seen, that Matilda received no irrevocable homage. In 1154, however, the barons were already Duke Henry’s liege men before he became king, and the peace which had been inaugurated by the settlement of 1153 was unaffected by Stephen’s death. It was not simply Canterbury amour propre which prompted Gervase to claim that this unprecedented interregnal peace was maintained ‘at God’s nod, with the cooperation of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury’.²³¹ As we have seen, the settlement had provided that Theobald should take control of key castles on Duke Henry’s behalf at Stephen’s death. He was therefore in charge of ensuring that the peace was maintained in Henry’s continuing absence. Even prior to November 1153, Henry had claimed that what pertained to the corona was already his before he recovered his ius,²³² the kingdom. Although he did not become king until he was consecrated as such on 19 December 1154, the settlement in November 1153 had ordained that this should be true of the castles from the moment of Stephen’s death, which happened on 25 October 1154. And the same was true of the peace which individual bonds of liege homage ensured, and which control of the castles rendered enforceable. This interregnum was, and was widely acknowledged to be, unlike any other. It was so because so much care had been taken over the preparations. The preparations ensured that those incidents of violent self-help which had characterized earlier interregna would not occur again. The general tenor of the ²²⁷ Stenton, English Feudalism, 248. ²²⁸ HH 770; GC i. 157 is derived from Henry. As Holt, ‘1153’, CE 296, points out, the references in the charter to homage having already been done are to ‘an evidentiary rather than an historic past’. ²²⁹ Of course, it was claimed on William the Conqueror’s behalf that this was true of him: above, pp. 6–7. ²³⁰ Above, pp. 118–19. ²³¹ GC i. 159. ²³² RRAN iii. nos. 104, 126, cited above, nn. 206, 207.

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chronicle accounts suggests, as we have seen, that they did not. The one documented case of an aggrieved party attempting to take swift advantage of the king’s death highlights the difference. According to the Battle Chronicle, ‘this most pious King Stephen’ had recently upheld the exceptional freedom of Battle Abbey against the claims of the local diocesan, the bishop of Chichester. The king’s death shortly afterwards was seized upon by Hilary, bishop of Chichester, as a ‘golden opportunity to pursue his case’ against the abbot of Battle ‘to his own advantage’. At a synod, he quickly excommunicated the abbot for failing to respond to an earlier summons.²³³ Two-and-a-half years later, at a hearing in the king’s court held in Colchester, this was precisely what the constable, Henry of Essex,²³⁴ accused Hilary of having done: ‘after King Stephen’s death you did something you would never have dared to do had he been living, for it would not have been in your interest.’²³⁵ The then chancellor, Thomas Becket, reiterated the accusation.²³⁶ The bishop had sought to exploit the king’s death by scrupulous, if devious, observance of due canonical process in a synod presumably summoned for the purpose,²³⁷ rather than by the sort of violence perpetrated on William Maltravers in 1135.²³⁸ The difference between the two cases might be ascribed to Hilary’s being a cleric, rather than a layman. That it amounted to much more is confirmed by the reaction to the bishop’s crafty legal manoeuvre. Richard de Lucy, whom we have already met as the custodian of the Tower of London and Windsor castle, was informed immediately. As a brother of Walter, abbot of Battle, Richard’s interest was more than that of an important royal administrator awaiting the arrival of the new king. He referred the case to Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, who, allegedly acting on Richard’s advice, informed the bishop that he, Theobald, had ‘retained the abbot with him, awaiting the arrival in London of their future lord, Duke Henry. Wherefore he must order him to relax the sentence which he had passed on the abbot, until they could all meet together.’ The bishop complied. Thereby he acknowledged the archbishop’s authority during the interregnum, and (by implication) that of their ‘future lord’. Bishop Hilary had been caught trying to pull a fast one. He had not been attempting to exploit anarchic interregnal uncertainty in the well-worn fashion of 1087, 1100, and 1135. The new-style interregnum reached its pre-ordained conclusion with Henry’s coronation, at the hands of Archbishop Theobald, in Westminster Abbey on 19 December. This was almost certainly the occasion for the issue of ‘that muchneglected document’, Henry’s coronation charter, witnessed by Richard de Lucy alone at Westminster.²³⁹ The responsibilities Richard had been given during the ²³³ CBA 152. M. Brett’s review of this edition, Medium Aevum, l (1981), 319–22, at 322, plausibly argues that the chronicler had spliced in to his narrative an earlier, independent account of the abbey’s litigation between 1148 and 1157. He suggests that it began on p. 146 and ended on p. 208. ²³⁴ He had previously been constable under Henry I and Stephen: Green, Government, 276–7; Amt, Accession, 66, 73–4, 114–15; White, Restoration and Reform, 74, 81, 85, 183–4. ²³⁵ CBA 192. ²³⁶ CBA 200. ²³⁷ CBA 152. ²³⁸ Above, pp. 192–4. ²³⁹ C&S ii. no. 152, pp. 828–9; Stubbs, Select Charters, 158; Holt, ‘1153’, CE 280. As Stubbs observes, the fact that it is not witnessed by Thomas Becket strongly suggests that it was issued prior

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interregnum clearly foreshadowed a central role in the new king’s administration. Unlike Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’, and like Stephen’s first charter of liberties, both of which are found in the manuscripts which preserve the two surviving copies, Henry II’s document describes itself as a charter. It is akin to Stephen’s charter in its generality, and can therefore remain as vague as Stephen’s about the recipient(s) of the concessions it records. If the draftsman consulted any model, it was Stephen’s. But the charter makes no mention of Stephen. Its sole point of reference is Henry I. The new king proclaimed, presumably to every shire court,²⁴⁰ that to the honour of God and Holy Church, and for the common restoration (communi emendatione) of my whole kingdom I have conceded, restored, and by my present charter confirmed to God and Holy Church and all my earls, barons, and men, all the concessions and grants and liberties and free customs which King Henry my grandfather gave and conceded to them.

Then he abolishes and remits any evil customs which Henry I had abolished and remitted, and declares his heirs to be bound by this second concession. Finally, in a rather clumsy piece of drafting, he appears to reiterate his initial concession. He commands that ‘Holy Church’ and all his earls, barons, and men should ‘have and hold all those customs and grants and liberties and free customs, freely and quietly, well and in peace and wholly, of me and my heirs for them and their heirs, as wholly and quietly and fully in everything, just as King Henry my grandfather gave and conceded to them and confirmed by his charter (carta sua)’. This final command amplifies the initial proclamation in three ways. It extends the concession to the heirs of the king’s current vassals; it attempts explicitly to bind Henry’s heirs; and it invokes Henry I’s confirmation of his own grants ‘by his charter’. The draftsman—possibly Richard de Lucy—may have been using Stephen’s charter as an unacknowledged model. That both documents survive only in the same two manuscripts suggests that they were, or soon came to be, categorized as similar. As we have already seen, Stephen had claimed to concede to his barons and ‘confirm by my present charter all the liberties and good laws which Henry, king of the English, gave and conceded to them’.²⁴¹ He had commanded that ‘they themselves and their heirs’ should ‘have and hold all those good laws and liberties of me and my heirs’. There was no precedent for Stephen’s provision to his appointment as chancellor in January 1155. The 14th-century copy preserved in London, BL Cotton MS. Claudius D ii, fo. 73v includes the dei gratia formula which was adopted by the chancery in 1172. It must, therefore, be a revised version. The 13th-century copy found in London, BL Harleian MS. 458 does not include the formula: Holt, Magna Carta, 476, n. 9. This is the manuscript which includes Latin and Anglo-Norman versions of Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ and Stephen’s coronation charter too: Holt, ‘Constitutional Tradition’, 14–15. ²⁴⁰ The address clause, like that of Stephen’s charter, but unlike that of some copies of Henry I’s ‘edict’, remains general. That a general address could be substituted for that to a particular shire in later copies is demonstrated by the textual history of Henry I’s edict: Brett, unpublished edition. ²⁴¹ C&S ii, no. 137, pp. 763–4.

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about the king’s heirs and those of his vassals in Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’; but otherwise Stephen’s charter could be interpreted as a brief, implicit confirmation of that document. True, it contrasted with Henry’s ‘edict’ in its emphasis on continuity with, not condemnation of, his immediate predecessor’s reign.²⁴² Yet Stephen, probably following Henry I’s example, even conceded the ‘good laws and good customs’ which had been enjoyed in ‘the time of King Edward’. Henry II’s charter has in its turn been interpreted in much the same way;²⁴³ but it makes no allusion to Edward the Confessor, only to Henry I. This in itself may have been an implicitly emphatic statement: according to the Gloucester continuation of John of Worcester, a delegation of London citizens had asked Matilda in 1141 for ‘the laws of King Edward, which were excellent, and not those of Henry her father, which were oppressive’.²⁴⁴ The new king’s charter may, therefore, have occasioned some disquiet amongst some of its intended audience. His reference to what Henry I had confirmed by his charter has been taken as an explicit allusion to Henry’s coronation ‘edict’. But Henry II’s charter repeatedly confirms the ‘grants’ as well as the ‘free customs and liberties’ which Henry I had conceded, unlike Stephen’s. The new king was confirming each and every grant of Henry I for which churches or secular landholders could produce a charter of his grandfather. He was not referring to his grandfather’s coronation ‘edict’,²⁴⁵ which would first be termed a charter in the Unknown Charter of 1215,²⁴⁶ and which seems never to have been invoked during the reign of Henry II.

‘ TO RENEW GRANDFATHERLY TIMES’²⁴⁷ This blanket confirmation of his grandfather’s grants, and the implicit disregard of Stephen, as whose heir Henry had succeeded to the kingdom, laid down a principle which would shape many of the legal reforms for which the reign of Henry II is famous. It was not a new principle. As we have seen, confirmation of the status quo in Henry I’s day was common to the charters of Empress Matilda, Duke Henry, and King Stephen, both before and after the settlement of November/December 1153. In its turn, of course, such attribution of prescriptive force to the situation in the ‘day’ of a particular antecessor was modelled on the way in which the Conquest had been justified. Although not new, its emphatic reassertion in this charter at this point, when Duke Henry became king, proved to have consequences almost as important as William the Conqueror’s reverence for the status quo in Edward the Confessor’s day. This reassertion began the process by which the reign of Stephen was written out of history almost as comprehensively ²⁴² ²⁴³ ²⁴⁴ ²⁴⁶

G. J. White, ‘Continuity in Government’, in King (ed.), Anarchy, 117–43, at 118. Stubbs, Charters, 157: ‘simply a confirmation of that of his grandfather’. JW iii. 296. ²⁴⁵ I owe this important point to Jim Holt. Holt, Magna Carta, 418–28. ²⁴⁷ Dialogus, 77.

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as the reign of Harold II had been after 1066. It is the charter which Henry II almost certainly issued on his coronation day, not some new inalienability clause allegedly appended to the promises made by the king during the ceremony,²⁴⁸ which proclaimed what was to become the defining principle of the reign. It is important to emphasize that this happened only at the coronation, because most modern historians have instead attributed the consequences which flowed from it to the settlement of 1153. Thereby they have elided the alleged restoration of the disinherited attributed by some pro-Angevin chronicles to that settlement with Henry II’s frequently repeated aspiration to restore ‘the time of my grandfather’.²⁴⁹ Although the author of the Battle Chronicle does not mention Henry II’s coronation charter, he had evidently reflected on the principle it ordained, which became a common refrain in the official documents of the reign. ‘[Henry II] brought back the times of his grandfather.’²⁵⁰ Such reflection is hardly surprising in someone of his legal acuity.²⁵¹ He reported that sometime in Stephen’s reign, Walter, abbot of Battle, had expressed the view that no king—not even Henry I— could ‘at will alter the ancient laws (iura) of the country for anything other than his own days . . . it should not establish anything for posterity, other than by the common consent of the barons of the realm’.²⁵² No king, in other words, could bind his successors, except with baronial consent. The Chronicle reports that immediately after Henry II’s coronation, with the counsel of his barons, he ‘set everything in order justly. By his authority he confirmed the churches in the possessions and dignities conceded by his antecessores.’²⁵³ Perhaps this decision was taken at the Christmas court held at Bermondsey, at which, according to Gervase of Canterbury, it was resolved to expel Flemish mercenaries from the kingdom, and to demolish castles.²⁵⁴ According to the Battle chronicler, the decision began to be implemented at a council held in London at Lent 1155, when the king ‘renewed the peace and laws and customs constituted throughout England from ancient times’.²⁵⁵ Various bishops and abbots also ‘had the charters ²⁴⁸ H. G. Richardson, ‘The Coronation in Medieval England: The Evolution of the Office and the Oath’, Traditio, xvi (1960), 111–202, esp. 159–61, 166–9, 181–9. For reasons which cannot be explored here, I find the argument that such a clause was introduced in 1154 totally unconvincing. ²⁴⁹ P. R. Hyams, ‘Warranty and Good Lordship in Twelfth-Century England’, Law and History Review, v (1987), 437–503, at 476, 499; Hudson, LLL 255; White, Restoration and Reform, 217. ²⁵⁰ CBA 212. ²⁵¹ N. Vincent, ‘The Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, in R. Gameson and H. Leyser (eds.), Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting (Oxford, 2001), 264–86, asserts (p. 267) that ‘in reality the Chronicle shows surprisingly little interest in the technicalities of the law’. The Chronicle and much of Professor Vincent’s essay demonstrate the opposite. It is striking that the evidence of legal learning is not confined to the section of the Chronicle concerned with the dispute between the abbey and the bishop of Chichester which Martin Brett has suggested may have been an earlier libellus, spliced into the narrative: above, n. 233. ²⁵² CBA 144. ²⁵³ CBA 152–4. ²⁵⁴ GC i. 160; RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 183 does not give the location, but adds that Henry began the process of recovering those things which belonged to the corona regni, and deposing the ‘imaginary and pseudo-earls’ created by Stephen. ²⁵⁵ CBA 154.

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and privileges of their churches confirmed by the writ and seal of the present king’. Walter, abbot of Battle, was anxious to fortify the abbey against the claims which, as we have seen, the bishop of Chichester had attempted to prosecute during the interregnum. Then, at Archbishop Theobald’s insistence, the matter had been deferred until Duke Henry should have become king. Now it could be settled. Walter secured an undertaking that the charters of King William and subsequent (unnamed) kings in favour of his house would be confirmed ‘by the writ and seal of the prince’. Hilary, bishop of Chichester, prepared the ground more carefully on this occasion. He persuaded Theobald that Battle Abbey’s liberties were a threat to the rights of the church of Canterbury as well as those of Chichester. Together they prevailed on the king to delay the sealing of his confirmation. Without the confirmation, the peculiar privileges of Battle Abbey were under threat. The archbishop suggested that the new king might nullify the privileges. Alternatively, the privileges could be redefined henceforth by revising the text of the charter which would receive the king’s seal.²⁵⁶ If the king so decided, the confirmation would in reality be a revision (despite the fact that, according to the chronicler, all previous confirmation charters had been based on a transcript of the Conqueror’s charter);²⁵⁷ or it might be withheld altogether. A king’s scope for action seemed in practice untrammelled, despite Abbot Walter’s argument, supposedly advanced during the reign of Henry I, that baronial consent to a royal decision should bind subsequent kings.²⁵⁸ But there was one exception, at least in the case of Henry II. Perhaps in 1158 the abbot of Battle and Gilbert de Balliol were in dispute about who was the rightful holder of lands at Barnhorn, Sussex.²⁵⁹ The chronicler conceals the fact that this dispute was embroiled in the wider conflict between the abbot and the bishop of Chichester.²⁶⁰ At a meeting of the king’s court held at Clarendon, Gilbert argued, in desperation, that the confirmation charter of Henry I should be discounted. Henry II’s response is celebrated: he picked up his grandfather’s charter and seal, and told Gilbert that if he could prove the charter false he would make Henry ‘a thousand pounds in England’.²⁶¹ Then ‘he added this memorable statement’: ‘If by a similar charter and confirmation the monks could show that they had a right of this sort to this very place, Clarendon, which I love so much, then there would be no way in which I could justly deny it to them, still less deny that it should be completely transferred to them.’ As far as ²⁵⁶ CBA 154. ²⁵⁷ CBA 158. ²⁵⁸ CBA 144; on this passage, see J. G. H. Hudson, ‘Henry I and Counsel’, in J. R. Maddicott and D. M. Palliser (eds.), The Medieval State: Essays Presented to James Campbell (London, 2000), 109–26, at 121–2. ²⁵⁹ Lawsuits, ii. no. 377 for the date; for reasons he does not explain, Vincent, ‘Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, 271, redates it to 1163–6. ²⁶⁰ Vincent, ‘Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, 275. ²⁶¹ CBA 216. J. C. Holt, ‘More Battle Forgeries’, Reading Medieval Studies, xi (1985), 75–86, at 78–9, suggests that the charter of Henry I (RRAN ii. no. 1061; Holt, 83–4, no. 4) is probably a forgery. This suggestion is strengthened by Vincent’s examination of the original, ‘Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, 272 and n. 36.

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Henry II was concerned, a genuine charter of Henry I gave incontestable title. He advised that the abbot did not need to ‘look for any other proof ’. The abbot accepted the king’s advice in the subsequent proceedings, and won. In due course the king issued sealed orders that the disputed lands should be restored to the abbey, ‘to be held as wholly and fully, as free and quit as they had held them in the time of his grandfather King Henry, witness his charter’.²⁶² The original writ paraphrased here in the Chronicle survives. It confirms the church and monks in those disputed lands ‘as the charter of King Henry my grandfather, which I have seen, witnesses they should have’. ²⁶³ Doubt has been cast on its authenticity, and, indeed, on the whole account of this dispute given in the Battle Chronicle.²⁶⁴ But the stance attributed to the king in both Chronicle and writ corresponds to that expressed in other documents which are above suspicion,²⁶⁵ and conforms exactly with what his coronation charter had proclaimed. If the Chronicle’s account was invented in order to fit in with forged documents,²⁶⁶ then the forger (and in turn the chronicler) had taken pains to ensure conformity to the official stereotype. A comparable case between a monastic house and the diocesan bishop, reported in the Gesta Abbatum Monasterii S. Albani, was eventually settled before the king at Westminster in 1163. The bishop of Lincoln disputed the validity of the charters of various Anglo-Saxon kings in favour of St Albans Abbey, on the misconceived basis that they lacked seals. The abbot, Robert, was insufficiently knowledgeable about Anglo-Saxon diplomatic practice to be able to counter this argument, but the king is said to have displayed a wisdom comparable to that of Solomon. He pointed to Henry I’s charter of confirmation, which the abbot had also produced: What are the men of Lincoln muttering about, saying that unsealed privileges are of no weight? Behold! The seal of my grandfather is the seal of all these original charters, the confirmation of which is contained in his charter . . . Whatever has been done in the reign of my grandfather at his request has such validity that it cannot be dissolved for any reason.²⁶⁷

The Gesta Abbatum was first compiled in the thirteenth century by Matthew Paris,²⁶⁸ and did not take its final form until the fifteenth century.²⁶⁹ It is, therefore, a much later work than the Battle Chronicle. But like the Chronicle, it splices ²⁶² CBA 218. ²⁶³ Acta of Henry II, accession no. 2549 H (1155 ⫻ Apr. 1166). For the emergence of a formal invocation of the king’s inspection of charters issued by his predecessors, see N. Vincent, ‘The Charters of King Henry II: The Introduction of the Royal inspeximus Revisited’, in M. Gervers (ed.), Dating Undated Medieval Charters (Budapest and Woodbridge, 2000), 97–120. ²⁶⁴ Vincent, ‘Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, 271–6. ²⁶⁵ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1388H, discussed below, p. 307. ²⁶⁶ Vincent, ‘Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, 276. ²⁶⁷ Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, i. 151–2 (⫽ Lawsuits, ii. no. 405A), cited by Vincent, ‘Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, 272, n. 33. Anglo-Saxon royal charters were not sealed, as the author of this account well knew. ²⁶⁸ R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958), 182–9. ²⁶⁹ Ibid. 189.

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together earlier sources from the abbey’s archive which are otherwise lost. The section which covers the abbacy of Robert de Gorham (1151–66) seems to have been based on a ‘roll’ which Matthew Paris attributes to a certain Adam the Cellarer. The cellarer of St Albans Abbey between c.1140 and sometime after 1167 was called Adam. He is known to have been closely involved in the abbey’s lawsuits. This section of the Gesta Abbatum is principally concerned with detailed, apparently eyewitness, accounts of the abbey’s lawsuits, in which Adam is presented as cutting an important figure.²⁷⁰ If we may trust Matthew Paris’s attribution of his source, therefore, it seems that the Gesta Abbatum preserves a contemporary record by one of the abbot’s most important advisers. The account of these proceedings before the king at Westminster is congruent with other materials concerning this dispute. The point attributed to the king is consistent with a writ from the beginning of the reign, which confirms to the bishop of Coventry all the liberties and customs ‘as his church best had them in the time of King Edward and Earl Leofric, the founder of this church, and as the charter of King Henry my grandfather witnesses that Bishop Robert proved them in his court at Portsmouth’.²⁷¹ The weight which the king attributed to the royal seal—in this case, specifically the seal of Henry I—is confirmed by Richard fitzNeal.²⁷² Like the Battle Chronicle, the story in the St Albans Gesta Abbatum deserves to be taken seriously. It again suggests that, as Henry II’s coronation charter had ordained, during his reign a charter of his grandfather gave the best title there could be—so uniquely good, it seems, that, as the Battle chronicler indicated, even the king could not gainsay it. It could remedy any deficiency. William of Newburgh later wrote that, at the start of his reign, Henry ‘appointed in all districts of his kingdom judges and legal officials (juris et legum ministris) to coerce the boldness of the wicked and to do justice to litigants, according to the merits of the cases’.²⁷³ Not every litigant could produce a charter of Henry I to establish that his claim was irrefutably meritorious. In the case of laymen, unlike the prelates at whom we have been looking, it might be very unclear who could most plausibly justify his claim to the title embodied in a charter of Henry I, even if he could produce such a charter. But Henry II’s coronation charter, and the accounts of proceedings in the king’s court in the Battle and St Albans cases, demonstrate that the reverence for what the king’s grandfather was deemed to have done encompassed far more than what could be proved on parchment. It was by reference to what could be established about the status quo in Henry I’s reign, not just his surviving charters, that Henry II’s newly appointed judges were charged to assess the ‘merits’ of any case. The clearest example is the chronicle reports of the new king’s command that royal rights and lands should be recovered. According to Robert of Torigni, Henry ²⁷⁰ Ibid. 183. ²⁷¹ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 834H (1154 ⫻ 1157, ?Dec. 1154). The charter of Henry I does not survive: EEA xiv. p. xxxv; R. H. C. Davis, ‘An Unknown Coventry Charter’, EHR lxxxvi (1971), 533–47, at 542–3. ²⁷² Dialogus, 14. ²⁷³ CSHR i. 102.

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immediately ‘began to recall into his own ius the cities, castles, and estates which belonged to the crown of the kingdom’.²⁷⁴ The Gesta Abbatum of St Albans, again proving itself to be well informed about the reign of Henry II, goes into more detail: the king had issued an ‘edict’ which ordained that ‘all lands throughout Britain which were established according to the oath of his men to have been in the dominium of his predecessors, the kings of England, at whatever time, should without obstruction by anyone be returned, and should for the future remain in the dominium of himself and of his successors’.²⁷⁵ He acted, in other words, much as Abbot Robert of St Albans was praised for having done with respect to the dispersed possessions of the abbey, after his election three years before.²⁷⁶ That the facts should have been established by inquest seems plausible, because it recalls the familiar procedure of 1086, and was used by Henry for other purposes at this time.²⁷⁷ If for no other reason, it was necessary in order to establish precisely what the shire farms should be.²⁷⁸ But in one important respect the St Albans account is qualified by a more perceptive commentator. William of Newburgh suggests that the king ascribed the exiguousness of royal revenues, as compared to ‘grandfatherly times’, to dispersal of ‘royal resources (regia dominica) through the softness of King Stephen’.²⁷⁹ Accordingly, Henry commanded that whoever now held such grants should relinquish them forthwith, so that the ‘royal resources’ should be ‘recalled to their original right and condition (ius statumque pristinum).’ Their ‘original condition’ was what it had been in his grandfather’s time. Indeed, it was only by reference to a fixed baseline of this sort that royal resources—especially royal landed resources—could be defined, for originally the terra regis was simply that land which the king had not granted to his tenants-in-chief to be held of him.²⁸⁰ That the royal ‘predecessors’ of the St Albans Gesta Abbatum did not include Stephen is stated explicitly by William of Newburgh. Some of those who currently held estates which had once been royal ‘produced charters from King Stephen which they had extorted or bought by grovelling’. It availed them nothing, for ‘the charters of a usurper ought not to prejudice the right of a legitimate prince’. William was not exaggerating. The definition of ‘original’ as what had obtained in the time of King Henry’s grandfather was, as we have seen, not an innovation. This had also been Henry’s position prior to becoming king. But a refusal, on this basis, to acknowledge after his accession the charters of the king as whose heir he had succeeded to the throne accelerated the process whereby King Stephen was rapidly written out of legal history. The few exceptions serve to ²⁷⁴ CSHR iv. 183; for use of corona in this sense in the charters of Stephen, Matilda, and Duke Henry, see Garnett, ‘Crown’, 210–12. Diceto, Opera, i. 297, dates the beginning of this process to 1153. ²⁷⁵ Gesta, i. 123. ²⁷⁶ Ibid. 112. ²⁷⁷ Van Caenegem, Royal Writs nos. 96 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 188H (1156 ⫻ 1173), cf. 2090H (1156 ⫻ May 1162)), 195 (⫽ Acta, acc. no. 1165H (1155 ⫻ Aug. 1158, ? Apr. 1157 ⫻ Aug. 1158) ). ²⁷⁸ Amt, Accession, 149. ²⁷⁹ CSHR i. 103. ²⁸⁰ See the discussion of the Domesday evidence in Garnett, ‘Crown’, 184–9.

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strengthen the point; but they also suggest that the Battle chronicler—or perhaps the king himself—was exaggerating when he claimed that Henry II regarded himself as bound by evidence of his grandfather’s having disposed of any particular royal manor, even if it were the site of his favourite hunting lodge at Clarendon. As we have already seen, the only specific references to Stephen as king in Henry’s charters prior to his own accession as king confirmed Stephen’s grants of royal demesne or other regalian rights²⁸¹—the very category of grant which Henry, on becoming king, ordered should be restored to its ‘original right and condition’. Nevertheless, as king Henry clearly still felt obliged, shortly after his accession, to stick scrupulously to the letter of that confirmation of Stephen’s grants to the abbey of Faversham which, according to the settlement of 1153, he had already given.²⁸² It was at Stephen’s foundation of Faversham, his charter of confirmation recorded, presumably through gritted teeth, that ‘my relatives (cognati mei) King Stephen and Queen Matilda his wife and Eustace their son’ were buried.²⁸³ Faversham was evidently a unique case: its role as Stephen’s planned mausoleum, akin to Henry I’s foundation of Reading, probably accounts both for its special status in the settlement of 1153 and for King Henry’s use of Stephen’s royal title. It may have been easier for Henry to acknowledge Stephen’s kingship in a confirmation to the church where Stephen’s dynastic ambitions were safely interred. But the clause concerning Faversham in the settlement had added, more vaguely, that the duke ‘will confirm, by the counsel of holy church and [Stephen’s] own’, other gifts which Stephen had made to other unnamed churches. One such, as we have seen, was probably Cluny. Henry had confirmed ‘King’ Stephen’s 1136 grant of Letcombe Regis shortly after the treaty of Winchester.²⁸⁴ When he re-confirmed it, between 1171 and 1173, at Chinon, Stephen was still described as king, probably because the scribe simply adapted the earlier confirmation. ²⁸⁵ As in the case of Faversham, Stephen’s largesse was not revoked, despite Henry’s inclination to recover royal estates given away by Stephen. King Henry’s only other confirmation of a grant to a church by ‘King Stephen’ is of Bishop’s Sutton, which Stephen had given to the church of Winchester in exchange for Steeple Morden.²⁸⁶ Unlike the grants to Faversham and Cluny, however, Bishop’s Sutton had not been a royal estate under Henry I. The exceptional attribution of the royal title to Stephen may best be explained by the fact that the charter was almost certainly issued shortly after Henry’s coronation, before Bishop Henry went into exile in or soon after January 1155.²⁸⁷ Perhaps the conventions which the chancery would soon adopt with respect to Stephen had ²⁸¹ RRAN iii. nos. 140, 204–6, 457–8, discussed above, pp. 290–1. ²⁸² Ibid., iii. no. 272. ²⁸³ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1292H (1155 ⫻ Aug. 1158, ?May 1157). By the time of the 1153 settlement, Queen Matilda and Eustace were already buried there. ²⁸⁴ RRAN iii. no. 206. ²⁸⁵ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 381H (1171 ⫻ 1173), cf. the notification of this confirmation, acc. no. 1805H (Dec. 1175 ⫻ Apr. 1179, ?Jan. 1176); RRAN iii. no. 206. ²⁸⁶ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 26H (1154 ⫻ Aug. 1158, ?Dec. 1154); cf. RRAN iii. no. 944. ²⁸⁷ EEA viii. 219. Thomas Becket witnesses as chancellor. He was appointed soon after the coronation: GC i. 160.

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not yet been finalized. This is also suggested by the fragmentary pipe roll account for 1154–5 preserved in the Red Book of the Exchequer, which records that Mary, ‘daughter of King Stephen’, held in Hoo, Kent, ‘per breve Regis’.²⁸⁸ Whether the writ was Stephen’s, recognized by Henry, or Henry’s confirmation of what her father had given her, the official record at Michaelmas 1155 continued to accord Stephen his royal title. If these royal Henrician confirmations to Cluny and Winchester were issued in pursuance of the clause concerning Faversham and other unspecified churches in the settlement of 1153, they are the only surviving ones. Probably at the same time as the confirmation of Stephen’s grant of Bishop’s Sutton, immediately after his coronation, the new king also ‘conceded’, rather than confirmed, East Meon and Wargrave to the church of Winchester.²⁸⁹ In this instance, as the verb implies, the grant is presented as Henry’s own. No allusion was made to the fact that Stephen had previously ‘restored and conceded’ these manors, which had been taken from Winchester by William I.²⁹⁰ Henry presented as his own a grant which contravened the ‘original condition’ of the king’s estates, for they had undoubtedly been royal manors in his grandfather’s day. No re-confirmation by Henry as king survives of the only other extant confirmation he had previously made in 1153–4, of a grant by ‘King Stephen’ to a church—of a die and mint to Lichfield Cathedral.²⁹¹ Otherwise King Henry seems to have exploited the vagueness of the relevant clause in the 1153 settlement, and its use of the future tense with respect to his prospective confirmations of Stephen’s grants to every church except Faversham, in order to ignore (and thereby tacitly to revoke) many of Stephen’s gifts. Thomas Becket would later complain about what he regarded as this violation of the terms of the settlement of 1153.²⁹² The king’s many confirmations of previous grants to churches generally confirmed Henry I’s, and ignored Stephen’s.²⁹³ Henry would silently reverse any of Stephen’s augmentations, and reiterate his grandfather’s charters.²⁹⁴ ²⁸⁸ RBE ii. 649. ²⁸⁹ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 10H. ²⁹⁰ RRAN iii. nos. 947–9. Vincent argues (Acta of Henry II) that Henry confiscated the estates from Bishop Henry on his arrival in Winchester, then restored them at the time of his coronation, and then confiscated them again after the bishop went into exile. It is true that the manors were in the king’s hand from 1155 until 1189, but the confiscation to which Bishop Henry refers (EEA viii. no. 131) can be more plausibly identified as that which followed the bishop’s retreat into exile. Henry II’s accession may have been relatively stress-free, but it is difficult to believe that he would have concerned himself with confiscating, restoring, and re-confiscating manors from the bishop in the space of six weeks. ²⁹¹ RRAN iii. no. 458. ²⁹² CTB ii. no. 244. ²⁹³ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 938H, a confirmation early in the reign of Henry I’s grant of that part of Portswood ‘sicut rex Henricus avus meus eam habuit et tenuit dum erat in suo dominio’, which ignores Stephen’s additional gift; cf. RRAN ii. nos. 1507, 1508, iii. no. 827. G. J. White, ‘The Myth of the Anarchy’, ANS xxii (1999), 323–37, at 328, n. 22, identifies a number of examples: Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2902H (Apr. 1157⫻Aug. 1158, c.17 Jul. 1157, ?Spurious) (ignoring RRAN iii. nos. 213, 215); acc. no. 2386H (1154 ⫻ Aug. 1158) (ignoring RRAN iii. no. 585); acc. no. 1985H (1154 ⫻ May 1162) (ignoring RRAN iii. no. 583). The fact that the first of these may not be genuine strengthens the point. ²⁹⁴ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2564H (1155 ⫻ Aug. 1158), another early charter, granting that Abbot Walter of Ramsey ‘should have and hold in fee farm my manor of [King’s] Ripton of eight

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But Henry did not always negate Stephen’s grants. For instance, shortly after his accession he confirmed to the nuns of Ickleton Priory all those lands given to them ‘reasonably’ from the honour of Boulogne ‘or from the fees of others, just as they ever held them better and more justly, and as their charters, which they have for them, bear witness’.²⁹⁵ The coy vagueness of the phrasing is explained by the charter of King Stephen which recorded, among other benefactions for Ickleton, ‘all my demesne of Willecroft’.²⁹⁶ It seems that Henry could not bring himself to refer to it explicitly. Again, in May 1157 he ‘conceded’ to the abbey of Bury St Edmunds ‘whatever I have in the manor of Beccles, for as long as it shall please me’, without any acknowledgement that he was in fact confirming a grant ‘in perpetual alms’ of a royal manor first made by Stephen.²⁹⁷ In neither case was there to be a restoration of the ‘original condition’ of Henry I’s time. Another early charter in favour of the cathedral church of St Mary, Rouen, grants to it the manor of Kingsclere ‘as King Henry my grandfather had it in his dominium . . . so that I shall retain nothing for my own purposes; and if anyone shall retain anything henceforth, let him be disseised unless he has it by gift of King Henry or by his writ’.²⁹⁸ This again shows that William of Newburgh’s analysis imposes a principled coherence on a royal policy which was in practice much more sinuous. William’s intellectual rigour and neatness has an unworldly quality. He describes his ‘stroll for a while in the paths of historical narrative’ as ‘an easy task, offering me a form of mental recreation’, by comparison with his normal pursuit of the more exacting intellectual discipline of theology.²⁹⁹ In practice, as opposed to theory, King Henry did not feel himself to be bound by the status quo in his grandfather’s time, despite according great weight to his grandfather’s writs and charters. In the particular case of royal demesne, as in general, what counted were the precise terms of the numerous confirmation charters which Henry issued close to the start of his reign.³⁰⁰ This confirms the Battle chronicler’s view that kings could not be bound by the acts of their predecessors, at least not ‘other than by the librates farm per annum as my grandfather King Henry conceded to him and confirmed by his charter’. Stephen’s alteration of the grant to one in alms was silently reversed: cf. RRAN ii. no. 1960, iii. no. 667; White, Restoration and Reform, 123. For confirmation of the liberties of the abbey ‘sicut rex Henricus avus meus ecclesie prefate concessit et carta sua confirmavit’ or similar, see acc. nos. 90H, 2559H (both 1155 ⫻ Aug. 1158). ²⁹⁵ Acta of Henry II acc. no. 4699H (1155 ⫻ Nov. 1164, ?1155 ⫻ Aug. 1156). ²⁹⁶ Vincent, ‘New Charters’, 923 (no. 6). ²⁹⁷ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2957H, cf. RRAN iii. no. 767, White, Restoration and Reform, 124, citing another example. ²⁹⁸ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1388H (1154 ⫻ Aug. 1158, ? 1154 ⫻ July 1157). ²⁹⁹ CSHR i. 4. ³⁰⁰ Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 30–1; T. K. Keefe, ‘Place-date Distribution of Royal Charters and the Historical Geography of Patronage Strategies at the Court of King Henry II Plantagenet’, HSJ ii (1990), 179–88, at 181; Hyams, ‘Warranty’, 476–7 (who asserts, curiously, that whether ‘this stream of royal decisions and confirmations in Henry II’s first years began while Stephen was still alive is relatively unimportant for our picture of the development of warranty and tenant-right’); Holt, ‘1153’, CE 281–2, 290, n. 103; J. C. Holt, ‘The Writs of Henry II’, in Hudson (ed.), History of English Law, 47–64, at 61–3.

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common consent of the barons of the realm’.³⁰¹ It demonstrates that even the reverence for the status quo of his grandfather’s day, ostentatiously proclaimed to every shire court in Henry’s coronation charter, remained, for all the brouhaha, subject to the king’s discretion. What happened in practice is vividly described in one of the handful of other charters of Henry II which attribute the royal title to Stephen—in this instance qualified by a revealing soubriquet. Close to the end of his reign, Henry explains to the abbot and chapter of Cîteaux how his mother’s and his own foundation of Stanley Abbey had come to possess a member of ‘my manor of Faringdon’ called Littleworth.³⁰² ‘When by the bounty of God I acceded to the kingdom of England, I found that in the time of King Stephen, my usurper, much had been dispersed and alienated from the dominii of the kingdom, both into knights’ fees and into alms of churches.’ Among these alienations, the abbey of Thame had, during Stephen’s reign, come to hold Littleworth ‘by gift of my enemies’. On Henry’s accession, probably because he had refused a charter of confirmation when his inquest into royal demesne uncovered the alienation, the abbey had ‘resigned [Littleworth] to me in its entirety’.³⁰³ This is a clear example of the process of recovery which the chroniclers described, for Faringdon (presumably including its member Littleworth) had been a royal manor in the time of Henry I.³⁰⁴ Having recovered it, however, King Henry did not retain it in his own hand. ‘Because it had been conferred in some way or other on a religious house’, and at the request of his mother and Gilbert, abbot of Cîteaux, he had given it to Stanley Abbey. Both recovery and regrant happened very early in the reign, for already before Michaelmas 1156 the monks of Stanley held it as terra data.³⁰⁵ In this case too there was to be no restoration of the status quo in Henry I’s time. That would have involved stripping the abbey of its endowment. The case of Stanley Abbey might be taken to suggest that Henry’s attitude to a grant of royal demesne by Stephen or another ‘enemy’ on Stephen’s side differed when that grant had been to a ‘religious house’, rather than to a layman. His mother seems to have applied a similar principle with respect to Bordesley Abbey.³⁰⁶ But in the Stanley document this suggestion seems to be undermined ³⁰¹ CBA 144. ³⁰² Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 16H (⫽ Round, Ancient Charters, no. 52) (Sept. 1186 ⫻ July 1188). It may be no coincidence that two of the documents in which Stephen was described as king (the other being that for Cluny) were intended for recipients outside Henry’s dominions. They might have been less inclined to accept the official line on Stephen than those within. ³⁰³ The phrase resignare in integrum, presumably derived ultimately from the Roman law procedure, means to return it in its original state. The point is re-emphasized later in the document: Henry had given Littleworth to Stanley Abbey, ‘modo predeterminato ex toto michi resignatum’. ³⁰⁴ PR 31 Henry I, 127. ³⁰⁵ PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 35, 81, 124. ³⁰⁶ Chibnall, Matilda, 135, points to the parallels with the empress’s treatment of Waleran de Meulan’s foundation of Bordesley Abbey. For Henry’s confirmation charter, see Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 69H (1156 ⫻ June 1159); cf. RRAN iii. no. 115, 116. Note that he does not attempt to reverse his mother’s reiteration of Stephen’s grant of the demesne manor of Bidford, no. 114. Restoration of the status quo in Henry I’s day would have meant removing this abbey’s endowment too. For discussion of the empress’s treatment of Bordesley, see above, p. 246.

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by King Henry’s apparently regarding ‘alienations’, whether transformed into ‘knights’ fees’ or into ‘alms of churches’, as equally encroachments on the royal demesne, or what would soon be termed purprestures.³⁰⁷ Did Henry treat Stephen’s alienations of royal demesne to laymen any differently from those made to churches? Was he less willing in the case of laymen to be flexible in the process of restoring the king’s resources to their ‘original’ condition? The charter evidence suggests that he was perfectly willing to be flexible. At the beginning of his reign he ‘gave’ William d’Aubigny the castle and honour of Arundel, and the third penny of the pleas of Sussex, ‘of which he is earl’. The charter is explicit that the honour and castellry should enjoy the same liberties and customs ‘as King Henry my grandfather had [in] that honour when he had it in his demesne’.³⁰⁸ A still more intriguing early charter survives only in the record of a case in the curia regis in 1212, during which it was read out in court. The charter purported to record the king’s grant to Milicent, widow of Hugh de Gournay, of ‘all the new land in England which King Stephen gave to Hugh de Gournay for the increase of his inheritance, and which Hugh gave to his aforesaid wife, namely Wendover and Houghton Regis . . . ’.³⁰⁹ If genuine,³¹⁰ this charter was another of Henry’s rare acknowledgements of Stephen’s royal title, again in relation to a grant of terra regis by Stephen, for both manors had previously been royal. In this instance it occurred in a grant to a layman which must have happened early in his reign.³¹¹ Even if the charter was not genuine, or if the reference to Stephen as king was a later interpolation, perhaps added as a gloss when it was read out in court, the charter of Henry II adduced by the other side in the case in 1212 shows that the king would sometimes grant his manors to laymen as well as churches.³¹² For it records the grant of ‘my manor of Wendover’ to Faramus of Boulogne, presumably after Hugh de Gournay had forfeited it.³¹³ Perhaps the grant was made in (inadequate) compensation for the town, castle, and honour of Dover, which King Henry took from Faramus.³¹⁴ The reference to Stephen as king has been cited as one of the suspicious elements in the surviving text of the charter in favour of Hugh de Gournay. But it is not unique amongst King Henry’s charters for laymen. Early in his reign Henry confirmed to Richard de Lucy, to whom he must have felt especially beholden at that time, ‘that gift which King Stephen and Queen ³⁰⁷ A point made by Holt, ‘1153’, CE 288. ³⁰⁸ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1116H (1154 ⫻ Aug. 1158, ?Dec. 1154). Arundel had been forfeited by Robert of Bellême in 1102, and was given to Queen Adeliza as her dower when she married William d’Aubigny in 1138. He was created earl of Arundel by Stephen c.1141. ³⁰⁹ CRR vi. 272–3; Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1674H (1154 ⫻ 1156, ?Spurious). ³¹⁰ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 284, n. 70 and Vincent, Acta, regard it as dubious. ³¹¹ PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 24 shows that Hugh de Gournay had lost Wendover and Houghton Regis by Michaelmas 1156. ³¹² Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 699H (1155 ⫻ Aug. 1158, ?Apr. ⫻ July 1157). ³¹³ For discussion of the possible sequence of events and dates, see Vincent’s note to no. 699H. On Faramus’s career under Stephen and Henry II, see Amt, Accession, 85–7; his position as a tenant of the honour of Boulogne was specifically protected in the settlement of 1153. ³¹⁴ RBE ii.683; Amt, Accession, 86.

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Matilda and Earl William of Boulogne made to him of the lands of Stanford Rivers, Ongar, Roding, and Crishall, as the charter of Earl William records and as he gave it to him in my presence at Salisbury’.³¹⁵ No doubts have been cast on the authenticity of Henry’s charter. As it records, these lands had been held by Eustace (III) count of Boulogne and his son-in-law Stephen, count of Mortain, in the time of Henry I. In other words, it is explicit that they had not been royal demesne in the time of the king’s grandfather. Nor were they being treated as terrae regis late in Stephen’s reign, if his son William, whose tenure of the honour of Boulogne was secured by the settlement of 1153, could then dispose of them. In this case the putative association between the (rare) use of Stephen’s royal title in charters of Henry II and grants of royal demesne cannot be sustained.³¹⁶ The obvious analogy is with Henry’s confirmation of Stephen’s grant of Bishop’s Sutton to the church of Winchester.³¹⁷ Likewise, the most probable explanation for attributing the title of king to Stephen is that the charter was issued very soon after Henry’s coronation, before the chancery had finalized its line on Stephen.³¹⁸ A charter in favour of Richard de Lucy, of all people, would have to be impeccable. The formulae and occasional discursive asides in the charters are sometimes revealing, but the fullest evidence for Henry’s resumption of royal demesnes is provided by the pipe rolls. This more terse, but more comprehensive, evidence has recently been subject to two careful analyses. They confirm what we have already inferred from the charters.³¹⁹ In a few cases the resumption of a royal manor which had previously been granted to a tenant, and had therefore ceased to appear in the pipe rolls, could lead to its being accounted for separately, rather than included in the shire farm. An example with which we are already familiar is the Berkshire manor of Wargrave, taken from the bishop of Winchester when he went into exile in 1155.³²⁰ In this case, as in some others, the pipe rolls also record the cost to the king of restocking the manor.³²¹ But pipe roll evidence for resumptions of this type occurs throughout the reign.³²² It cannot be adduced as evidence for the rapid implementation of a policy of systematic resumption, as described by William of Newburgh.³²³ ³¹⁵ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 4708H (1155 ⫻ Aug. 1158). The grant at Salisbury must have been a distinct occasion from the grant made by Earl William in his father’s presence between Dec. 1153 and Oct. 1154 at London. This might suggest that, in the interim between the treaty of Winchester and Stephen’s death it was necessary to perform such ceremonies twice, in the presence of the king and duke respectively. The grant involving Queen Matilda must have preceded her death in May 1152. ³¹⁶ It is possible that they had been treated as terrae regis by Stephen up to the settlement of 1153, but at that point they must have been transferred to William. ³¹⁷ Above, p. 305. ³¹⁸ This would not account for the reference to a previous confirmation by ‘King Stephen’ in Henry II’s confirmation of various gifts to Sawley Abbey, which has been dated Nov. 1184 ⫻ 1189: Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 5267H. This survives, however, only in an early modern copy, and Vincent suggests that this may conflate Stephen’s document with Henry’s. ³¹⁹ Amt, Accession, esp. 149–68; White, Restoration and Reform, 112–29. ³²⁰ White, Restoration and Reform, 145 for this and other examples. ³²¹ PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 19, 71–2, 152. ³²² For other examples, dating to 1165 and 1177, see White, Restoration and Reform, 113. ³²³ Ibid. 114–15, shows that the early phases of resumption were dependent on the king’s presence in England.

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More revealing, because more plentiful, are the pipe roll lists of terrae datae which record allowances to sheriffs for royal manors which had ceased to be included in the shire farms. By definition, therefore, terra data is an accounting category. It comprised lands which had been terra regis, that is to say, royal demesne, and would previously have been included in the shire farm, but which had been granted out, and could no longer be included. Whether or not a grant was labelled terra data, therefore, depended on whether the land in question had been taken into account when the farms had last been reassessed. These fixed sums were recorded in an ‘exactory roll’ or ‘roll of farms’;³²⁴ they are not specified in the pipe rolls until 1197.³²⁵ As far as assessment of terrae datae was concerned, therefore, everything depended on when the farms with which Henry II’s resurrected exchequer³²⁶ operated had been fixed. It has been shown that this had almost certainly happened during Henry I’s reign, but later than his sole surviving pipe roll of 1130.³²⁷ Thus when, shortly after his accession, Henry II granted the shrievalty of Gloucestershire to Roger, earl of Hereford, for the ‘same farm’ his father Miles had rendered ‘in the time of King Henry my grandfather’, the farm total then and subsequently was considerably higher than it had been in 1130.³²⁸ The farms are likely to have been reassessed during Henry I’s last stay in England, 1131–3. These were the figures in the ‘exactory roll’ used in the exchequer at the beginning of Henry II’s reign.³²⁹ It was because there was apparently no clear record of royal demesne, as opposed to shire farms, that the inquest into the royal demesne instigated by Henry II was necessary. That the farm totals specified in the ‘exactory roll’ dated from close to the end of Henry I’s reign meant that, as William of Newburgh made clear, the inquest had to use the same point of reference. Its use was a practical as well as an ideological necessity. This is why, with one exception, none of the terrae datae in Henry I’s pipe roll reappears in Henry II’s.³³⁰ What William of Newburgh misunderstood was the purpose of the inquest, which was not to restore the royal demesne to its status quo in Henry I’s reign, but to enable Henry II’s exchequer to use what could be established about that status quo in order to exact revenue. This fiscal purpose is demonstrated by the fact that the totals for terrae datae rose over the first few pipe rolls of Henry’s reign.³³¹ Although the king resumed individual royal manors granted by Stephen—or indeed by his mother and ³²⁴ Dialogus, 65, 125–6; White, ‘Continuity’, 141–2. ³²⁵ White, Restoration and Reform, 137. ³²⁶ Dialogus, 50; White, ‘Continuity’, 139–40. ³²⁷ White, Restoration and Reform, 143–4; for Henry I, see Green, Government, 64–6. She shows that there must have been a re-calculation of farms shortly before 1130. For this reason there are far fewer terrae datae in this pipe roll than in the early pipe rolls of Henry II’s reign. ³²⁸ Acta of Henry II acc. no. 3938H (1154 ⫻ 1155, ?Dec. 1154); White, Restoration and Reform, 142. ³²⁹ White, Restoration and Reform, 143. ³³⁰ Ibid. 145, who identifies the exception: Garsilius de Buignun, who held in Diss in 1130 and 1158, but was then replaced by Richard de Lucy: PR 31 Henry I, 90; PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 125; PR 5 Henry II, 8. ³³¹ Amt, Accession, 150.

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himself during Stephen’s reign³³²—he nevertheless granted many of them out again to other beneficiaries.³³³ Some of the new terrae datae entries were not fresh grants of this type, but a product of the thoroughness of Henry’s inquest into the royal demesne.³³⁴ For instance, soon after his accession he ‘recognized [Hugh Bigod’s] right of four manors’ in Norfolk,³³⁵ one of which had been granted to William de Chesney by Stephen (and had therefore presumably been resumed by King Henry).³³⁶ All four were categorized as terrae datae for the first time in the 1158 pipe roll.³³⁷ Despite the gentle overall rise, most of the grants which are likely to have been made by Stephen disappear from the pipe rolls not all at once, but over the first few years of Henry’s reign.³³⁸ William of Ypres, the Flemish captain of Stephen’s mercenaries, and William of Blois, Stephen’s son, both seem to have lost theirs in 1157, by which point William of Ypres was no longer a potential military threat, because he had gone blind and probably left England.³³⁹ The few exceptions were rare individuals like Richard de Lucy or Thierry d’Alsace, count of Flanders, who were able to make themselves so useful to Henry in their different ways that they did not suffer this form of retribution for their earlier loyalty to Stephen.³⁴⁰ There was no wholesale forfeiture of terrae datae granted by Stephen, but those who sought to keep such lands needed Henry’s confirmation. For instance, the king gave the manor of Linton in Herefordshire to Richard ³³² e.g. the grants by the empress and Henry to William de Beauchamp and William Mauduit (RRAN iii. nos. 68, 582, 111), cited by White, Restoration and Reform, 112; or those of Henry as duke to the monks of Bedford, Bermondsey, and Bristol: RRAN iii. nos 81, 90, 126–8, cited by White, ‘Myth’, 328, n. 24. ³³³ Amt, Accession, 167, calculates that over Henry’s third and fourth regnal years nearly one-third of terrae datae changed hands in this way. ³³⁴ Amt, Accession, 153, 155. ³³⁵ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1345H (1155 ⫻ Aug. 1158, ?1155). Richardson, ‘Coronation in Medieval England’, 157–8, argues inconclusively that Henry had, prior to his accession, already granted these manors to Hugh Bigod. ³³⁶ RRAN iii. no. 176. ³³⁷ PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 125. ³³⁸ Amt, Accession, 157–9; White, Restoration and Reform, 113–15, attempts to establish a chronology of confiscations. ³³⁹ For his forfeiture around Easter 1157, see PR 2, 3, 4, Henry II, 101–2; Amt, Accession, 91; for his going blind, probably shortly before Stephen’s death, see Genealogia Comitum Flandriae, in E. Martène and U. Durand (eds.), Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, 5 vols. (Paris, 1757), iii. 377–440, at 318, cited by Amt (p. 90). For his leaving England, see John of Salisbury, Letters, ed. W. J. Miller, H. E. Butler, and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols., OMT (Oxford, 1955–79), i. 258–60. Note that his lands are not listed under the terrae datae in Kent at Michaelmas 1155: RBE ii. 648–9; PR 2, 3, 4, Henry II, 64. For William of Blois’ terrae datae and their forfeiture, see RBE ii. 654; PR 2, 3, 4, Henry II, 10, 93–4; Amt, Accession, 27–8. ³⁴⁰ For Richard de Lucy’s holdings in the Ongar Hundred of Essex, see above, pp. 309–10. Amt, Accession, 159, demonstrates that although his other terra data at Hatfield ceases to appear in the pipe rolls for the second and third years of the reign, as newly appointed sheriff of Essex he continued to receive the revenue of the manor as an annual ‘gift’ from the shire farm. When he gave up the shrievalty in 1158, Hatfield began to appear in the rolls again as terra data. For the count of Flanders, see PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 16, 37, 39–40, 65, 91; Amt, Accession, 158, 164–5. Another survivor was Richard de Camville, who had served Stephen loyally, and became sheriff of Berks. under Henry: RBE ii. 655; PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 33–5, 40, 80–1, 83. For the recovery of many of Thierry d’Alsace’s terrae datae in 1160, see White, Restoration and Reform, 117.

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Talbot in 1156 ⫻ 1157, but Richard had already held it as terra data in 1155, and probably earlier.³⁴¹ Formally speaking, it was given; in reality, it was confirmed. Those who had been long-term supporters of the Angevin cause did not, however, necessarily keep their terrae datae, whether they had received these from Henry before or after his accession. Whereas Reginald, earl of Cornwall, the new king’s uncle, not only kept his but received fresh grants in 1156,³⁴² Patrick, earl of Salisbury, seems to have lost at least some of what he had held at the beginning of the reign. But he held Amesbury in Wiltshire, perhaps as a fresh grant, from 1156.³⁴³ Very soon after his coronation, Henry II issued a charter in favour of Roger, earl of Hereford. It claimed that, in addition to confirming the lands which Roger’s father, Miles, had held and those which had come to Miles by marriage, the king had ‘given and conceded’ to Roger a number of demesne manors in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.³⁴⁴ The fragments of Henry’s first pipe roll record, under terrae datae in Herefordshire, an allowance for the ‘demesnes of the king which have been give to Roger, earl of Hereford, by charter of the king’.³⁴⁵ In Herefordshire, Henry had in reality confirmed his mother’s grants of royal demesne to Roger’s father, Miles of Gloucester, in 1141;³⁴⁶ but he did not admit this, and presented them as fresh gifts. Henry had not, then, rescinded these existing grants of royal demesne in Herefordshire, and he either failed to rescind others—or possibly made fresh gifts—in Gloucestershire.³⁴⁷ Moreover, he stated explicitly that he had given the latter ‘as my grandfather King Henry had them’.³⁴⁸ Earl Roger became a monk at Gloucester Abbey in 1155,³⁴⁹ and was succeeded by his brother Walter. Walter did not, however, get the Herefordshire royal manors so recently ‘given’ (in truth confirmed) by the king to his elder brother, for they did not recur among the terrae datae in Herefordshire in subsequent pipe rolls.³⁵⁰ But Robert of Torigni was not quite accurate in recording that Walter succeeded ‘only to the paternal inheritance’.³⁵¹ For he also succeeded to three of the five ³⁴¹ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1051H (1156 ⫻ Apr. 1157); RBE ii. 650; White, Restoration and Reform, 122. ³⁴² RBE ii. 649; PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 46; on him, see White, Restoration and Reform, 116. ³⁴³ RBE ii. 649, 657; PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 57, 78, 116. ³⁴⁴ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3938H. The apparatus cites A. Vincent, A Discoverie of Errours in the First Edition of Nobility published by Raphe Brooke Yorke, Herald, 1619 (London, 1622), 239, which records that Henry had previously issued at Warwick a confirmation of Roger’s lands, twelve days after the settlement with Stephen in 1153. White, Restoration and Reform, 120–1, shows that the charter may have been issued immediately after the coronation, or when the king and earl were reconciled at Easter 1155 after falling out over the custody of the castles of Gloucester and Hereford: GC i. 161–2; cf. RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 184. ³⁴⁵ RBE ii. 650. ³⁴⁶ RRAN iii. no. 393; other grants made to Miles by his mother in no. 391 are specifically excluded from the charter. ³⁴⁷ It is impossible to say whether Miles had also previously received the Gloucestershire manors, perhaps by a grant once recorded in a severely damaged charter of King Stephen: RRAN iii. no. 388. ³⁴⁸ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3938H. ³⁴⁹ Historia et Cartularium Monasterii S. Petri Gloucestriae, ed. W. H. Hart, 3 vols., RS (London, 1863–7), i. 331. ³⁵⁰ PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 50, 93. ³⁵¹ CSHR i. 185.

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Gloucestershire manors given by the king to Roger, until they, too, were resumed, presumably on Walter’s death in 1159.³⁵² The distinction in Henry II’s mind seems to have been one between terrae datae and other tenures, rather than between acquisition and inheritance.³⁵³ These examples of terrae datae from the early pipe rolls confirm the impression given by royal charters. There was no wholesale resumption of royal demesne soon after Henry’s accession. The king was quite prepared to confirm or even to make new gifts to supporters of what are acknowledged to have been royal manors under Henry I—provided that the price was right.³⁵⁴ Just as there was no immediate resumption, so there was no progressive one, at least where supporters were concerned. The holdings of individual supporters could be adjusted down as well as up, but this seems to have happened, as in the case of Earl Patrick of Salisbury, for administrative reasons, rather than as a penalty.³⁵⁵ Overall Henry appears during the early years of his reign to have conceded more, not less, terrae datae than had existed at the time of his accession.³⁵⁶ Unlike Adam the Cellarer, whose ‘roll’ Matthew Paris claimed to reproduce in the Gesta Abbatum of St Albans, and William of Newburgh, Gerald of Wales was too much of an old hand, as a former royal apparatchik, to be taken in by the spin. In his De Principis Instructione, he reported that Henry II had been just as profligate as Stephen in dissipating land, and therefore royal revenue.³⁵⁷ Gerald’s claim that the annual receipts had thereby been reduced to ‘scarcely 12,000 marks’ is disaffected, Celtic exaggeration; but the pipe rolls prove that on the question of terrae datae he was closer to the mark than the other chroniclers, at least with respect to the early years of the reign.³⁵⁸ He might have got his figure hopelessly wrong in his disappointed hostility towards Henry II and his sons, but he was right to conclude that financial imperatives drove the implementation of the policy. The picture which emerges from the pipe rolls of Henry’s policy with respect to terrae datae (and other sometime royal manors not so categorized) is thus a nuanced one. It is replicated in the case of the royal forest. The Charter of the Forest of 1217, cap. 4, recorded that there had been a forest regard ‘at the time of the first coronation of . . . King Henry our grandfather’.³⁵⁹ This recollection, more than half a century later, of events at the beginning of Henry II’s reign is confirmed by Henry II’s charter in favour of the bishop of Coventry, probably issued shortly after his coronation. The charter states that the king’s ‘ministri and bailiffs marked out the division between my forests and assarts in the presence of ³⁵² White, Restoration and Reform, 121. ³⁵³ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 278. ³⁵⁴ I am grateful to John Hudson for this suggestion. ³⁵⁵ Amt, Accession, 160, for some examples. ³⁵⁶ Ibid. 150, 194–7; White, Restoration and Reform, 119, shows that the figure for 1188 is similar to that for 1156. ³⁵⁷ Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera Omnia, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. F. Dimock, and G. F. Warner, 8 vols., RS (London, 1861–91), viii. 316. ³⁵⁸ White, Restoration and Reform, 119–20, is more sceptical. ³⁵⁹ Printed in Holt, Magna Carta, 513.

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my foresters’.³⁶⁰ The purpose of this inquiry, instituted at the very start of the reign, is clear from the surviving fragments of Henry II’s first pipe roll: to demand money for licensing assarts.³⁶¹ The accounts suggest that a vast sum, representing roughly 12 per cent of potential royal revenue, was rapidly raised in this way.³⁶² In certain counties the inquiry was not completed until the following year;³⁶³ that into the extent of the royal demesne recorded in the St Albans Gesta Abbatum took even longer.³⁶⁴ The former was not repeated until 1170; ³⁶⁵ the latter began to be repeated in 1164.³⁶⁶ That they were both instituted simultaneously in 1155 is evidence of an extraordinary bureaucratic effort; but Henry’s subsequent use of both forest and royal demesne meant that both exercises would have to be repeated. If the surviving pipe roll accounts demonstrate that the purpose of the inquiry into the forest, like that into the demesne, was fiscal, they do not explain where the ministri or ‘regarders’, mentioned in the Coventry charter,³⁶⁷ drew the line between forest and assart. The obvious way to draw it was by reference to the situation at a specific point in the past, in the same way that royal demesne was being defined in a simultaneous process of sworn inquest. Henry II confirmed to the bishop of Coventry 1,500 acres of assarts ‘which were made after the death of King Henry my grandfather’.³⁶⁸ This was probably where the dividing-line was drawn. The exchequer certainly did so not long afterwards. According to Richard fitzNeal, barons of the exchequer, by virtue of their office, were quit for assarts of the forest for their own demesnes, provided that such assarts had been made ‘before the day when the illustrious King Henry the first was exempted from human affairs’.³⁶⁹ As Amt has pointed out, Stephen had undertaken, in his Oxford charter of liberties, to reverse the afforestations of Henry I’s reign.³⁷⁰ Disafforestations by Stephen, ³⁷¹ like assarts under Stephen, would all be lumped together by Henry II’s ‘regarders’ as assarts which were by definition illegitimate, simply because they had happened after Henry I’s death. Hence the new king’s ³⁶⁰ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 835H (1154 ⫻ 1157, ?Dec. 1154); cf. acc. no. 1293H (1154 ⫻ 1158, ?Sept. 1157 ⫻ Aug. 1158). Both documents were identified by E. Amt, ‘The Forest Regard of 1155’, HSJ ii (1990), 189–95. ³⁶¹ RBE ii. 648–58. ³⁶² Amt, ‘Forest Regard’, 190–1; id. Accession, 170. ³⁶³ Amt, Accession, 170–1, who shows that the assessments for Hunts. and Surrey appeared for the first time in the pipe roll for 1156. ³⁶⁴ White, Restoration and Reform, 143 adduces evidence for it still proceeding in the north sometime between 1156 and 1158. ³⁶⁵ Amt, Accession, 171. There is no evidence that in this period ‘what is commonly called a [forest] regard’ happened every third year: Dialogus, 58. ³⁶⁶ White, Restoration and Reform, 143–4. ³⁶⁷ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1293H. ³⁶⁸ Ibid., no. 835H. ³⁶⁹ Dialogus, 56. ³⁷⁰ Amt, Accession, 173; RRAN iii. no. 271; cf. no. 382, for a restoration to the bishop of Hereford of what Henry I had afforested. For a charter of Stephen distinguishing between the woodlands of Much Wenlock Priory ‘which King Henry my uncle afforested’ and the ‘ancient forest’, see D. C. Cox, ‘Two Unpublished Charters of King Stephen for Wenlock Priory’, Trans. of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Soc., lxvi (1989), 56–9, no. II (the work of scriptor xxi). ³⁷¹ The traditional picture of Stephen as as profligate with the forest as he was with the demesne has recently been questioned by Vincent, ‘New Charters’, esp. 916–17.

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extraction of large sums of money in return for licensing and therefore legitimizing the current status quo. The money raised meant that, as in the case of the royal demesne (with which royal forest was understandably sometimes categorized), the king would have a strong incentive not to restore what had been the status quo in 1135. Included in his charter in favour of Roger of Hereford is a grant of ‘all the demesnes which King Henry my grandfather had . . . in Gloucestershire, except the castle of St Briavel and the vill of Newnham and the forest of Dean’.³⁷² In this case, therefore, what had been forest in the time of Henry I was specifically exempted from a grant of Henry I’s demesnes. It was preserved whereas they were not. The pipe roll evidence suggests, however, that the treatment of the forest in this instance was the exception, not the rule. The blanket restoration of the forest to its condition in Henry I’s day would have been unworkable and impoverishing, in terms of both revenue and patronage. If, as has recently been argued, Stephen had in some areas presided over an expansion, rather than a diminution, in the forest, then such a policy would have been even more damaging to the king.³⁷³ In fact, from the start of his reign Henry II began to extend the royal forest beyond the bounds of 1135.³⁷⁴ As with royal demesne in general, restoring ‘the time of my grandfather’ did not mean turning the clock back to that time. If this was true of the king’s rights, it was also true of everyone else’s. Robert of Torigni’s account of what was supposedly agreed in November 1153—‘to recall those possessions which had been seized by usurpers to the ancient and legitimate possessors who held in the time of the excellent King Henry’³⁷⁵—cannot, however, be rendered plausible simply by shifting it one year later, and crediting it to Henry II alone. After nineteen years there were not many cases in which someone who had held in Henry I’s time, and been dispossessed in the interim, survived to be ‘recalled’ by Henry II. One exception is Robert, earl of Leicester, who recouped the Norman estates he had lost as a result of his loyalty to Stephen by a timely shift of allegiance in 1153. In general, however, as with the royal demesne, the simple fact of mortality meant that any such restorations would tend to be not to the ‘ancient and legitimate possessors’ of King Henry I’s time, but to their rightful successors. In the case of clerics, this would not present complications. Laymen were another matter. Perhaps it was such lay successors, or heirs, whom the author of the Gesta Stephani had in mind when he erroneously described how, in 1153, Stephen and Henry had agreed that the ‘disinherited’ should be ‘recalled ad propria’.³⁷⁶ The effluxion of time meant that any such policy, whether implemented in 1153 or after Henry II’s accession, would have involved reaching a judgement about who was now entitled to hold as heir of the ³⁷² Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3938H, discussed above, p. 313. The empress had given Miles of Gloucester St Briavel’s castle and the forest of Dean in 1139, so in these instances Henry was amending what his mother had done: RRAN iii. no. 391. ³⁷³ D. Crook, ‘The Archbishopric of York and the Extent of the Forest in Nottinghamshire in the Twelfth Century’, in Law and Government, 325–38. ³⁷⁴ Amt, Accession, 173. ³⁷⁵ CSHR iv. 177; cf. GS, WN. ³⁷⁶ GS, 240.

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tenant in Henry I’s day. In other words, it would have been impossible to restore the status quo in Henry I’s reign. Instead, current decisions about who was the rightful tenant might be legitimized by reference to what was established about that status quo. This could give the king considerably more latitude than is implied by the chronicle accounts of this aspect of the 1153 settlement. Our best evidence for what King Henry II initially did in practice is provided by the many charters of confirmation which survive from the early years of his reign. Some of these simply confirmed what an ancestor had held under Henry I. Pain de Mondoubleau was confirmed in the lands which his paternal grandfather, Patrick (I) de Chaworth (Sourches), had held ‘in the time of King Henry my grandfather’.³⁷⁷ The grandfather was still alive in 1133,³⁷⁸ and the fact that the charter makes no reference to his son (and Pain’s father) Patrick (II), suggests that Patrick (II) had succeeded and died during Stephen’s reign. In this case, the new king was simply confirming Pain’s hereditary succession, but by reference to the status quo under Henry I. Probably on the same occasion, at Northampton in January 1155, the king confirmed to Fulk de Lisours everything which ‘his father or grandfather held better and more freely in the time of King Henry my grandfather’.³⁷⁹ In this case, the ‘time of King Henry’ was not a synonym for the date of his death, but was broadly defined. Slightly later, in the wake of King Malcolm of Scotland’s surrender of Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Northumberland to Henry II, the king ‘regranted’ to Walter fitzIvo ‘all the land of his father which his father held in chief of King Henry my grandfather.’³⁸⁰ All these cases were quite straightforward. Others, while appearing similar, were less so. Henry II’s mandate of 1156 in favour of William, earl of Gloucester, ‘cognatus meus’, ordered that he should hold all his lands as well ‘as Earl Robert his father held them in the time of King Henry my grandfather’.³⁸¹ Earl William had good reason to treat with suspicion the expressions of family feeling, and to regard this standard formula as ominous in his case. After the settlement of 1153, but before his accession as king, Henry had granted William’s infant son Robert (also cognatus meus), and therefore in effect William, ‘the whole land and fief and honour which was Eudo Dapifer’s’, which had reverted to Henry I in 1120.³⁸² The putative exchange of this estate for most of Geoffrey de Mandeville’s existing lands which Matilda had mooted in 1142, should her husband wish it, had never taken place.³⁸³ Henry ignored it. ³⁷⁷ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 25H (probably Jan. 1155). ³⁷⁸ Sanders, Baronies, 125. ³⁷⁹ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 25H. ³⁸⁰ Ibid., acc. no. 3327H (July 1157 ⫻ Aug. 1158). ³⁸¹ Ibid., acc. no. 2201H (Feb. ⫻ July 1156, ?Spurious). The doubts as to this document’s authenticity arise from its appearing to conflate this grant with another in favour of Earl William’s burgesses in Burford. But this and other peculiarities may be explained by the fact that it is issued ‘at Chinon, with the king’s army’. Diplomatic precision might slip on campaign. ³⁸² Crouch, ‘William of Gloucester’, 69–70 and passim. Crouch dates the charter c.January 1154. For the whole honour held by Eudo, see Farrer, Honors and Knights’ Fees, iii. 164–295. ³⁸³ RRAN iii. no. 275, discussed above, p. 226.

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Probably just after his coronation, he also began to disregard his recent grant to Robert, and therefore to William, of Gloucester. The king now gave Warin fitzGerald ‘the fee of knights of the honour of Eudo Dapifer which I had in demesne’, when he made Warin, one of his closest associates according to the Battle chronicler, chamberlain of his treasury.³⁸⁴ So already, before Earl William received the royal charter of confirmation in 1156, at least some and perhaps all of what had been given nominally to his son in early 1154 had been taken away. By 1158 all of it certainly had, for then the honour was in Warin’s hands.³⁸⁵ Henry, shortly before and shortly after his accession, had disposed of parts of Eudo Dapifer’s honour in inconsistent ways. In none of them had he sought to restore the status quo at the end of Henry I’s reign, when the honour had been in the king’s hand. And the case of William of Gloucester shows that a blanket confirmation of land held at that point was not necessarily to be welcomed by the beneficiary, if he had made subsequent acquisitions. As a point of reference, ‘the time of King Henry my grandfather’ could be applied with a selective and sinuous subtlety, to achieve any number of objects. We have already seen that, soon after his coronation, the king issued a charter which recorded that he had ‘given and conceded’ to Roger, earl of Hereford, various demesne manors which Henry I had held. He had also ‘conceded’ to Roger ‘all the justiciarships and offices and tenements which were his father’s, wherever they were, just as his father best held them in the time of King Henry my grandfather’, together with the shrievalty of Gloucestershire ‘for the same farm as his father Miles, earl of Gloucester was accustomed to pay in the time of King Henry my grandfather’. So Roger got both some of Henry I’s demesne manors, and whatever his father had held under Henry I. He received a great deal more too, including what the empress had given Miles along with the earldom of Hereford in 1141 (although, as we have also seen, without any acknowledgement by the king that Matilda had made these grants, and that her charter provided a model). The ‘time of King Henry’ was repeatedly invoked in Henry II’s charter, but it was used to define certain acquisitions by Miles which were now in reality confirmed to Roger³⁸⁶ (and for which there was no precedent in his mother’s unacknowledged charter), together with what may be genuinely new grants of royal demesne to Roger. The charter fails to specify any time for other, later acquisitions of Miles (including those recorded in Matilda’s unmentioned charter). Henry II’s charter appears to draw a considered distinction between what the king had ‘restored and conceded’ to Roger and what he had ‘given and conceded’ to him. It has been suggested that it thereby distinguished what Roger had inherited from his father and mother, from those of his father’s acquisitions which ³⁸⁴ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3089H (1154 ⫻ Aug. 1158, ?Dec. 1154); CBA 196. N. DenholmYoung, ‘Eudo Dapifer’s Honour of Walbrook’, EHR xlvi (1931), 623–9, shows that only a small portion of the original honour was granted to Warin. ³⁸⁵ RBE i. 354–6; Amt, Accession, 36, 75. ³⁸⁶ Two exceptions were the castle of St Briavel and the forest of Dean.

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Roger received, as though by a fresh grant, from Henry II.³⁸⁷ But the distinction is rather one between what Roger’s father Miles had inherited from his father and acquired by his marriage, and what he had acquired in other ways. The charter stressed that Miles of Gloucester had held much of the latter category of acquisition in the time of Henry I, thereby obscuring the fact that he had not acquired the rest until later. Yet Henry II made no attempt to confirm to Roger only what his father had held in the time of the king’s grandfather. Indeed, he gave Roger, probably for the first time, manors which his grandfather, not Roger’s father, had held.³⁸⁸ He did not feel bound to confirm Roger only in what Miles had held in the time of his grandfather. He simply ceased to be precise about when it had been held. If the imprecision implicitly acknowledged the force of invoking a precedent from the time of Henry I, it also showed that Henry II was not constrained by such precedents when he confirmed laymen in their lands. This is consistent with other examples, in which the status quo in Henry I’s time is honoured more in the breach than the observance. Early in the reign, probably on the same occasion when he issued the Mondoubleau and Lisours charters of confirmation, Henry II issued a charter which recorded that he had ‘made’ Hugh Bigod earl of Norfolk.³⁸⁹ Thereby, he disregarded the botched compromise of the 1153 settlement.³⁹⁰ He also ‘conceded’ to Hugh the office of steward in the royal household, ‘as his father Roger held it best and most freely in the time of King Henry my grandfather’. In addition, he ‘recognized [Hugh’s] right (rectum suum)’ concerning certain royal demesne manors, one of which must have been surrendered by William de Chesney, to whom Stephen had granted it.³⁹¹ This suggests that Hugh already had some claim to them,³⁹² but they are not said to have been held by Earl Hugh’s father in Henry I’s time, as they surely would have been, had that been the case. Otherwise the king ‘concedes’ to Hugh ‘all his tenements, of whomsoever’s fee, which he had acquired rationabiliter’. The adverb avoided detailing how and, still more importantly, when any of Hugh’s acquisitions had ³⁸⁷ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 278. ³⁸⁸ D. Walker, ‘The “Honour” of the Earls of Hereford in the Twelfth Century’, Trans. of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Soc., lxxix (1960), 174–211, at 180, identifies the three royal manors of Marden, Lugwardine, and Wilton as having been given by Matilda in 1141, and the four royal manors of Minsterworth, Rodley, Awre, and Dymock as having been added by Henry II in 1155. ³⁸⁹ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1345H (1155 ⫻ Aug. 1158, at Northampton, so probably Jan. 1155). ³⁹⁰ RRAN iii. no. 272, discussed above, p. 270: Hugh, as ‘earl of the third penny’, had been exempted from Duke Henry’s confirmation of Stephen’s grant of the earldom of Norfolk to William de Warenne. ³⁹¹ RRAN iii. no. 176; Amt, Accession, 153; White, Restoration and Reform, 118–19, 121. The manor in question is Acle. White suggests that William de Chesney may have been given the royal manor of Blythburgh in recompense. The manors to which Hugh’s ‘right’ was recognized were first accounted as terrae datae in the pipe roll of 1158: PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 125. ³⁹² Richardson, ‘Coronation in Medieval England’, 157–8, presents evidence from a case in the king’s court in 1225 that Hugh had already been given them by Henry before Henry’s accession as king.

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been made.³⁹³ It was a masterly bit of obfuscation;³⁹⁴ all the more masterly because it exploited the latest legal jargon.³⁹⁵ But obfuscation about how and when a beneficiary had initially received a particular parcel of land was not necessarily accompanied by a lack of precision about what was being confirmed, when the king wanted to confirm acquisitions which had been made since Henry I’s time. For instance, no charter of confirmation from Henry II is extant in favour of Eustace fitzJohn, a rare survivor of Henry I’s reign.³⁹⁶ But there are two charters in favour of his son, William de Vescy (who was given his wealthy mother’s patronymic), one issued by Henry prior to his accession and during Eustace’s lifetime, the other immediately after Eustace’s heroic death on the king’s campaign against the Welsh in the summer of 1157. In the former, Duke Henry confirmed to William everything which his father had given him and ‘all his tenures which he held justly on the day when he did homage to me, from whomever he holds them’.³⁹⁷ I have already discussed its use of the day on which William had recently done homage;³⁹⁸ as far as Duke Henry was concerned, what William had held ‘justly’ at that point was certainly not limited to what his father—then still vigorous, if aged—had held in Henry I’s day. The thinking behind the grant, perhaps not dissimilar to that behind the grant to the son of the earl of Gloucester, was to strengthen the future claim of the son.³⁹⁹ In the event, William de Vescy, unlike Robert of Gloucester, did extremely well, as the king’s charter to him, issued ‘at Rhuddlan, in the army of the Welsh’, presumably very soon after Eustace’s death in an ambush, makes clear.⁴⁰⁰ It is difficult not to conclude that the heroic circumstances of Eustace’s death had more influence on the king than his earlier charter in favour of Eustace’s son. The case of Robert of Gloucester shows that as king, Henry did not necessarily feel bound by a charter which he had issued in favour of a son prior to becoming king. The contrast between the treatment of William de Vescy and that of Henry of Essex, the constable, who disgraced himself by cowardly flight from a subsequent ambush on the same Welsh campaign, is even starker.⁴⁰¹ Thereafter he was rarely ³⁹³ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 278–9. ³⁹⁴ In 1225, however, William d’Avranches argued that Hugh had not acquired Halvergate, another of the royal manors, rationabiliter: CRR xii. 4 no. 24. ³⁹⁵ Glanvill, vii. 2, p. 74; Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice’, 533; for its adaptation from Canon Law, see Hyams, ‘Warranty’, 469, n. 135. The term seems to have been so new to scriptor xiii, who wrote one of the extant copies of Stephen’s Oxford charter of liberties, that he mispelt it: Bishop, Scriptores Regis, pl. V (d). ³⁹⁶ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 5220H: a reference to a charter in a list of the muniments of the Vescy family made in 1316. The charter recorded the king’s grant of Malton to Eustace. Vincent shows that it is unclear whether the grant was by Henry I or Henry II. The charter was certainly not a general confirmation. ³⁹⁷ RRAN iii. no. 912 (1153–4). ³⁹⁸ Above, p. 294. ³⁹⁹ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 279. ⁴⁰⁰ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2051H (July ⫻ Sept. 1157). ⁴⁰¹ GC i. 165; Jocelin of Brakelond, Cronica, 68–71; WN, CSHR i. 108; RT, ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 218. Davis, King Stephen, 152 is wrong to say that Robert de Montfort received the estate. We know that Henry of Essex was disgraced after Eustace’s death, because he witnessed William de Vescy’s charter.

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at court;⁴⁰² but it was not until six years later that Henry was accused of treason as well as cowardice, and defeated in trial by battle by Robert de Montfort. Robert was not motivated solely by disinterested moral outrage: his ancestor, also called Robert, had once held the honour of Haughley, but had been banished by Henry I in 1107.⁴⁰³ Doubtless Robert de Montfort regarded himself as one of the disinherited. Henry of Essex had been given the honour during Stephen’s reign. His defeat by Robert and subsequent disinheritance did not, however, lead to the restoration of Robert de Montfort, nine years into the new reign. Nor did King Henry attempt to revert to the status quo in 1135, when the honour had been held by Robert de Vere.⁴⁰⁴ Instead, unusually, the king kept it in his own hands. In the case of William de Vescy, by contrast, King Henry could not have been more open-handed. He gave William all his father’s lands ‘which he held of me in chief or had held of whomever’, all his maternal grandfather’s lands, everything ‘which King Henry my grandfather gave to Eustace his father’, and all his father’s subtenancies. These lands are then listed in meticulous detail. The list is a long one. But it remains very vague about when Eustace had got them. The fact that the only reference to Henry I is the one I have quoted suggests that many of them had been acquired after his time.⁴⁰⁵ Indeed, as the charter concludes and summarizes the confirmation to William, it says that William is to hold just as well as his father ‘had ever held for a single day or a single night’. Here, perhaps, one catches the king’s very words, uttered in the heat of his gratitude to William’s recently slain father. In this exceptional case, he had no intention of limiting William to the status quo in Henry I’s day. His sentiments are evident in the unprecedented extravagance of this vague but all-encompassing formula. He was clearly able to give vent to them in elaborate detail, by contrast with the terse obfuscation of the charter for Hugh Bigod. The king’s charter making Geoffrey (III) de Mandeville, eldest legitimate son⁴⁰⁶ of the notorious Geoffrey (II), earl of Essex, is an expression of careful calculation, rather than passionate liberality.⁴⁰⁷ It seems that the empress had not made the younger Geoffrey earl in succession to his father when she gave him ‘his whole inheritance and all the tenures which she had conceded to his father’ following his father’s death in 1144.⁴⁰⁸ It may be that Henry II made him earl as if for the first time because he had not been earl before. In this respect his case probably differed from that of Aubrey de Vere,⁴⁰⁹ although the charter which ⁴⁰² White, Restoration and Reform, 85. ⁴⁰³ Sanders, Baronies, 120–1. ⁴⁰⁴ After Robert de Mowbray’s forfeiture, the honour was given with Robert’s sister Alice to her successive husbands. She married Robert de Vere, her second husband, in 1129. They were still alive in 1142: Sanders, Baronies, 120–1. ⁴⁰⁵ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 280, argues otherwise. ⁴⁰⁶ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 276, shows that Geoffrey de Mandeville’s son Arnulf was illegitimate. ⁴⁰⁷ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 4696H (1154 ⫻ Jan. 1156, ?Jan. 1156). ⁴⁰⁸ RRAN iii. no. 277. This is not certain because it survives only in a summary of a lost copy. He attests a later charter of the empress as earl, but as Holt points out, this is not an original: RRAN iii. no. 43 (1144); Holt, ‘1153’, CE 277, n. 27. ⁴⁰⁹ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 413H. I follow the interpretation in Book of Seals, no. 40, against Round, G. de M., 239–40.

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apparently confirmed Aubrey as earl of Oxford was issued at the same time and place. Geoffrey’s case also differs from that of Hugh Bigod, whom the empress and Henry himself had previously recognized as earl of Norfolk,⁴¹⁰ but whom Henry, as we have seen, nevertheless made earl as if for the first time, perhaps in order to resolve the messy compromise of November 1153. Even Robert of Torigni, despite his propensity to overdramatize both the 1153 settlement and the nature of the new king’s policies, said only that King Henry ‘deposed certain imaginary and pseudo-earls’.⁴¹¹ In reality, there was no wholesale resumption, on Henry’s accession, of earldoms created during Stephen’s reign.⁴¹² A few, it has been argued, were withdrawn or surrendered;⁴¹³ most were not.⁴¹⁴ In this respect, too, there was no general attempt to revert to the status quo in Henry I’s time. The creation of Geoffrey (III) de Mandeville as the second earl of Essex was a case in point, for Geoffrey’s father had been made earl of Essex by Stephen in 1139–40⁴¹⁵ and by Matilda in 1141.⁴¹⁶ It was not, however, the only way in which the charter in Geoffrey (III)’s favour disregarded that status quo. King Henry ‘returned and conceded’ to Geoffrey all the lands of his (paternal)⁴¹⁷ greatgrandfather, grandfather, and father, ‘and all their tenements both in demesne and in knights’ fees, both in England and Normandy, which he holds of me in chief and which he may hold of anyone else, and of whomsoever’s fee it may be’. Three manors—(Saffron) Walden, Sawbridgeworth, and Waltham—are identified, because the king quitclaimed forever to Geoffrey the lien (vadium) which Henry I had enjoyed over them.⁴¹⁸ The history of these manors is complicated,⁴¹⁹ but it is clear that Henry I had seized them from Geoffrey’s grandfather William de Mandeville by 1103,⁴²⁰ and that at the time of Henry’s death they were almost certainly in the king’s hands.⁴²¹ The only one to be mentioned in the surviving charters in favour of Geoffrey’s father is Saffron Walden;⁴²² but other evidence shows that the father had recovered Sawbridgeworth and Waltham too.⁴²³ ⁴¹⁰ RRAN iii. nos. 275, 634 (July 1141), 364 (1153–4); Davis, King Stephen, 138–9. ⁴¹¹ ‘Chronica’, CSHR iv. 183. ⁴¹² Round, G. de M., 267–77. ⁴¹³ White, Restoration and Reform, 87; id., ‘Earls and Earldoms During King Stephen’s Reign’, in D. E. S. Dunn (ed.), War and Society in Medieval and Early Modern Britain (Liverpool, 2000), 76–95, at 89. ⁴¹⁴ White, Restoration and Reform, 86–90. ⁴¹⁵ RRAN iii. no. 273. ⁴¹⁶ Ibid., no. 274. ⁴¹⁷ No mention is made of the possibility floated by Matilda in 1142, but never implemented, that Geoffrey’s father might have been given the lands of his maternal grandfather, Eudo Dapifer, instead: ibid., no. 275. As we have already seen, the king had other recipients in mind for these. ⁴¹⁸ Earl Geoffrey subsequently granted Sawbridgeworth to Warin fitzGerald: Liber Niger Scaccarii, nec non Wilhelmi Worcestrii Annales Rerum Anglicarum, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (London, 1774), i. 239; Round, G. de M., 241. ⁴¹⁹ Hollister, ‘Misfortunes’, passim. ⁴²⁰ Cartularium Monasterii S. Johannis Baptiste de Colecestria, ed. S. A. Moore, 2 vols., Roxburgh Club (1897), i. 22; RRAN ii. no. 661. ⁴²¹ Having passed through the hands of several grantees, they were probably amongst the king’s estates in Essex recorded in PR 31 Henry I, 53, 56, 60, 62; Hollister, ‘Misfortunes’, 120, nn. 16, 19. ⁴²² RRAN iii. no. 274. ⁴²³ Ibid., no. 913 (1140–3); Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. W. Dugdale, rev. edn. J. Caley, H. Ellis, and B. Bandinel, 6 vols. in 8 (London, 1817–30), iv. 148–9.

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In other words, in the case of these manors Henry II specifically renounced certain rights of Henry I, in order to give Geoffrey what his great-grandfather had held, his grandfather had lost, and his father had recovered, if only briefly in some instances, after Henry I’s death.⁴²⁴ This explains why, in the second half of the charter, Henry II orders that Geoffrey and his heirs should hold everything, explicitly including the three manors, as his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father ‘had ever best, more freely, more peacefully, more honourably, and more fully held in the time of King William and of King Henry my grandfather’. By invoking the time of King William, it was possible to gloss over the awkward fact that some of what was given to Geoffrey had not been held by his father at the time of Henry I’s death. It had been held by other ancestors at other times, and had been restored to his father during Stephen’s reign.⁴²⁵ Whereas the earldom of Essex had been an innovation of Stephen’s time, and could not be acknowledged as such, other acquisitions made by Geoffrey’s father during that time were in effect restorations from earlier times, and could be so defined. In the terms of Robert of Torigni’s account of the 1153 settlement, Geoffrey was not the heir of one of those ‘ancient and lawful possessors’ of Henry I’s time, whose lands had ‘fallen into the hands of usurpers’ under King Stephen. A cursory reading of the charter might have led one to that erroneous conclusion. But in truth, lands which had been taken from his ancestor by ‘the excellent King Henry’, and restored to his father during Stephen’s reign, were now on the whole confirmed to him, yet without any acknowledgement of the precedents from Stephen’s reign. Geoffrey did not, however, get everything which his father had received from the empress and Stephen. In keeping with the general policy to which Robert of Torigni⁴²⁶ and William of Newburgh⁴²⁷ bear witness, castles which his father had once held—and which the empress had licensed his father ‘to munition at his discretion’⁴²⁸—were demolished.⁴²⁹ The charter made no mention of the custody of the Tower of London, which his father had held. It is possible that Stephen had entrusted it to Richard de Lucy along with other possessions of Geoffrey (II),⁴³⁰ long before the arrangements made in the settlement of 1153. Richard attested the charter in favour of Geoffrey (III). In the Mandeville case, as in all the others at which we have been looking, the king was evidently not circumscribed by what the situation was deemed to have been at any point during the reign of Henry I.

⁴²⁴ Geoffrey de Mandeville was forced to surrender the castle at Saffron Walden along with the Tower of London in 1143: HH 742; Round, G. de M., 207. ⁴²⁵ It is surely for this reason that Geoffrey’s father is not mentioned without his other ancestors: Holt, ‘1153’, CE 277. ⁴²⁶ CSHR iv. 183. ⁴²⁷ CSHR i. 102. ⁴²⁸ RRAN iii. no. 274. ⁴²⁹ PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 132. ⁴³⁰ Richard confirmed to Colchester Abbey whatever the monks had held in Waltham in the time of Geoffrey: Cartularium de Monasterii S. Johannis Baptistae de Colecestria, i. 147; cited by E. Amt, ‘Richard de Lucy, Henry II’s Justiciar’, Medieval Prosopography, ix (1988), 61–87, at 65. We know that from 1155 at the latest he held land in the royal manor of Hatfield, where Geoffrey had received a grant from Stephen: above, n. 340; RRAN iii. no. 276.

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We have already examined the way in which the Lacy claim to the honour of Pontefract, confiscated in 1114–15 and repeatedly granted out by Henry I in much the same way as the three sometime Mandeville manors were, manifested itself in violent self-help immediately after the king’s death.⁴³¹ Stephen’s willingness, very shortly after his accession, to sanction the murder committed in pursuit of Ilbert de Lacy’s claim privileged a grievance nursed for twenty years over the status quo at Henry I’s death. Henry II, soon after his accession, showed himself no more inclined than Stephen had been to attempt to restore that status quo. True, no heirs of the carpetbagging bureaucrat and murder victim William Maltravers are known. He had in any case purchased only a fifteen-year lease from Henry I in 1129.⁴³² But the apparent irrelevance after his own grisly demise of the tenant at Henry I’s death did nothing to annihilate the claim of the nearest heir of the tenant who had preceded him, Hugh de Laval, whose widow had been married to Maltravers. Guy (V) de Laval, great-nephew of Hugh, may have pursued that claim during Stephen’s reign.⁴³³ He certainly did so after Henry II’s accession, when the honour was held by Ilbert de Lacy’s younger brother Henry (who had succeeded some time between February 1141 and June 1143).⁴³⁴ Henry de Lacy seems to have maintained his brother’s self-interestedly staunch loyalty to Stephen. So stalwart a supporter was he that he felt it prudent to secure a specific pardon from Henry II for any offences he had committed ‘in the war, before peace was made between that Henry and King Stephen’.⁴³⁵ In more expansive mood, apparently at much the same time, the king pardoned Henry and his heirs ‘of the anger and malevolence which King Henry his grandfather had against Robert de Lacy his father, and for any offences which he had committed before he had done homage to the king’. It is interesting to note that the king had formally to revoke his grandfather’s ire, some forty years after it had been roused. Furthermore, he ‘conceded and confirmed’ to Henry and his heirs ‘the honour of Pontefract with all its appurtenances, both in England and Normandy’.⁴³⁶ If this summary of the lost charter is accurate, the king appeared to confirm to Henry de Lacy everything which his brother had secured from Stephen. But in fact he did not, for Ilbert’s widow Alice kept her dower when she married Roger de Mowbray, by 1143 at the latest.⁴³⁷ Moreover, testimony given in a case in the curia regis during Henry III’s reign suggests that even if it had been Henry II’s initial intention to confirm everything else to Henry, he soon decided to sanction something closer to a compromise. According to this testimony, Henry de Lacy offered Henry II 1,000 marks to make peace between him and Guy de Laval. The king instructed Henry to give Guy the service of twenty knights and £150 of ⁴³¹ Above, pp. 192–4. ⁴³² PR 31 Henry I, 34. ⁴³³ Wightman, Lacy Family, 77. ⁴³⁴ Ibid. 74. ⁴³⁵ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3997H, a record of a charter of Henry II in an inventory of Lacy muniments. ⁴³⁶ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2598H, a record from the same inventory. It may be that Henry de Lacy first did homage to the duke in accordance with the terms of the settlement in 1153. ⁴³⁷ Wightman, Lacy Family, 74.

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demesne from the honour.⁴³⁸ While the testimony is not historically accurate in every respect,⁴³⁹ the twenty knights’ fees were certainly held by Guy in 1166.⁴⁴⁰ The subtenancy which Guy received as a consequence of royal adjudication was in practice treated like a tenancy-in-chief in certain respects by the royal administration.⁴⁴¹ This corroborative evidence suggests that the account given in court in 1227 was broadly accurate. That in turn suggests that neither Henry II nor even Henry de Lacy thought that what Stephen had confirmed to Ilbert, and what Henry de Lacy had subsequently succeeded to, was any longer tenable. The superficial impression given by King Henry’s charter is belied by the later court record. Yet what Henry II sanctioned was not a return to the status quo at Henry I’s death, or a restoration of everything which Robert de Lacy had held at the time of his forfeiture in 1114–15. It was, instead, a compromise. He was not restoring the situation at any particular point during the time of his grandfather. Rather, he was trying to clear up the mess of conflicting claims which Henry I, and in turn Stephen, had left behind. The deeper one delves into each individual instance, the more often this turns out to be the case. In that of Robert (III) de Stuteville, for instance, his grandfather’s forfeiture in 1106, and Henry I’s subsequent gift of most of the forfeited land to Nigel d’Aubigny, did not mean that the position of Nigel’s son and successor, Roger de Mowbray, was inviolable in subsequent reigns.⁴⁴² Robert de Stuteville was already active soon after Stephen’s accession, when he boasted of his recovery of part of ‘my inheritance in England’.⁴⁴³ After Henry II’s succession, Roger de Mowbray felt it prudent to grant Robert de Stuteville ten (or nine, according to his carta of 1166) fees from the disputed lands at Kirkby Moorside.⁴⁴⁴ There is an irresolvable conflict in the evidence as to whether or not the king was involved in this settlement,⁴⁴⁵ as he certainly was in the case of Pontefract. Regardless, it is clear that everyone—not just the king—was obliged to acknowledge the need for compromise. In a few cases it is possible to establish what happened to heirs of those who had held prior to Stephen’s reign, but had either lost their lands under Stephen or ⁴³⁸ CRR xiii. no. 302. ⁴³⁹ It claims that ‘Henry’ (recte Robert) de Lacy forfeited for fighting against Henry I at the battle of Tinchebrai; and that ‘Guy’ (recte Hugh) de Laval was given the land and held it until the war of Stephen’s reign. ‘In that war the aforesaid Henry entered that land by means of that war.’ William Maltravers is not mentioned. ⁴⁴⁰ RBE i. 421. ⁴⁴¹ Wightman, Lacy Family, 88–9. ⁴⁴² Mowbray Charters, p. xxviii. ⁴⁴³ EYC ix. no. 4. ⁴⁴⁴ Mowbray Charters, no. 386 (⫽ EYC ix. no. 42); RBE i. 419, 429; for the lands granted, see EYC ix. 75, 200–48. ⁴⁴⁵ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 5095H, from the quo warranto inquests of Edward I’s reign, records that King Henry ‘the king’s great-grandfather’ had given it to Robert de Stuteville, and that the present tenant had been able to produce the charter. But when the dispute between Mowbray and Stuteville had come before King John in 1200, it was argued that Roger de Mowbray’s gift had not been confirmed in the court of King Henry or by his writing: Howden, Chronica, iv. 118 (⫽ EYC ix. no. 42).

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failed to hand them on to their heirs. In 1155, for instance, King Henry ‘restored and conceded’ to Richard de la Haye the constableship of Lincolnshire and custody of Lincoln castle, together with all the land which his father Robert had held ‘better and more freely in the time of King Henry my grandfather’.⁴⁴⁶ The charter does not say so explicitly, but Robert had also been constable under Henry I.⁴⁴⁷ In the interim, Ranulph, earl of Chester, had acquired from Stephen rights in the castle and the county.⁴⁴⁸ The clearest piece of evidence is the concordia between him and the king, from 1146, which confirms to him the tower which his mother, Countess Lucy, had founded, together with the constableship of Lincoln castle and Lincolnshire, in hereditary right.⁴⁴⁹ It did him little good. By 1149 he was fighting to wrest the castle from Gilbert de Gant, Stephen’s most recent appointment as earl of Lincoln.⁴⁵⁰ In the settlement of 1153, by which time Ranulph of Chester was dead, it was agreed that Lincoln castle should be held by Jordan de Bussy.⁴⁵¹ Henry II’s charter of 1155 in favour of Richard de la Haye is, therefore, one of the few identifiable instances of his restoring to an heir what an ancestor had held under Henry I and lost under Stephen.⁴⁵² Exceptionally, it seems to implement the policy which, according to the Gesta Stephani, Robert of Torigni, and William of Newburgh, had been agreed as part of the settlement in 1153. When William of Newburgh later described the justices appointed by the new king doing ‘justice to litigants, according to the merits of the cases’,⁴⁵³ these were probably the ‘merits’ he had in mind. But in reality, as we have seen, the case of Richard de la Haye is unusual. For the most part, Henry II’s confirmation charters undermine, rather than corroborate, the polemical oversimplifications of the chroniclers. Nevertheless, the charters also bear plentiful witness to the attempts made to dress up messy compromises, so far as possible, in terms of the official mantra of restoring the time of the king’s grandfather. Compromises had to be made to appear to fit the template, even though, for the most part, they bore little or no resemblance to what the situation had been at that time.

HENRY II’S EARLY LEGAL INNOVATIONS The demand for such charters is explained by the new king’s uncontested authority, following the long war of succession and the formalized stalemate of November 1153. The atmosphere is captured in the Battle Chronicle, which describes how, at a ‘general council’ held in London in Lent 1155, the king not ⁴⁴⁶ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 27H (? Feb. 1155). ⁴⁴⁷ Sir Francis Hill, Medieval Lincoln (Cambridge, 1948), 87; Round, Ancient Charters, 91–2; Green, Government, 258. ⁴⁴⁸ Dalton, ‘In neutro latere’, 45–7. ⁴⁴⁹ RRAN iii. no. 178. ⁴⁵⁰ GS 220; Davis, King Stephen, 106. ⁴⁵¹ RRAN iii. no. 272. ⁴⁵² Hill, Medieval Lincoln, 87, 181. ⁴⁵³ CSHR i. 102.

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only ‘renewed the peace and laws and customs constituted throughout England since ancient times’, but also ‘confirmed with [his] writ and seal the charters and privileges’ of many churches.⁴⁵⁴ That new authority made possible definitive resolutions of competing claims, many of which had been festering for decades, and had often been exacerbated by the peculiar circumstances of Stephen’s reign. The surviving charters of confirmation embody many of these resolutions. The subtlety with which the few charters we have examined in detail were drafted shows that each charter must have been the product of a process of careful investigation. Of course, each party would have conducted its own investigation: as the Battle chronicler writes concerning the abbey’s response to Henry II’s accession: ‘It is necessary in each instance to give a brief summary of the original just possession and of the subsequent unjust spoliation, frequently going back over past times, so that the issue in the prosecution of the restitution may be more clearly elucidated.’⁴⁵⁵ But the king could hardly depend on such partisan accounts. He had to commission his own investigations. Occasionally there are explicit references to such a process. In 1156 the king ordered the sheriff and justices of Kent that if the nuns of Malling should establish their claim to Thorne ‘by the testimony of the lawful men’, then they should hold it ‘as well and in peace and honourably and justly as they held on the day when King Henry my grandfather was alive and dead’.⁴⁵⁶ When this inquiry had been completed, the king issued a further order pursuant to what had been ‘recognized by the lawful men of the shire’.⁴⁵⁷ The process seems, therefore, to have been similar to that used in 1086, and in the current inquiry into the extent of the terra regis.⁴⁵⁸ The evidence is more plentiful for Normandy, where sworn recognitions were being held before the duke’s justices by 1159.⁴⁵⁹ But in Normandy the shire court could not be the forum for the inquest, because there were no shire courts. It has been plausibly argued that a royal instruction in England to conduct some sort of inquiry—which may or may not have taken the form of a sworn recognition—is implicit in every writ using the word ‘iuste’.⁴⁶⁰ But if so, the shire court cannot always have been the forum, because such writs were not invariably addressed to sheriffs. When a lord was the addressee, the inquiry must have been conducted in his court. Probably prior to 1159–61, the king ordered the earl and countess of Chester ‘without delay and justly to have recognized by your barons of ⁴⁵⁴ CBA 154. ⁴⁵⁵ CBA 222. ⁴⁵⁶ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1156H (1155 ⫻ Aug. 1158, ?Jan. 1156); Lawsuits, ii. no. 375. ⁴⁵⁷ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1165H (1155 ⫻ 1158, ?Apr. 1157 ⫻ Aug. 1158); for other sworn recognitions being held by the king’s command, see acc. nos. 188H (1156 ⫻ 1173)(⫽ Lawsuits, ii. no. 441), 2090H (1156 ⫻ May 1162), 1082H (1155 ⫻ Mar. 1156)(⫽ Lawsuits, ii. no. 427), 1090H (1156 ⫻ 1162)(⫽ Lawsuits, ii. no. 399); further Haskins, Norman Institutions, 235–7 (who discusses the large number of instances relating to the bishop of Lincoln), White, Restoration and Reform, 180. ⁴⁵⁸ Above, p. 304. ⁴⁵⁹ Haskins, Norman Institutions, 198–220; White, Restoration and Reform, 181. ⁴⁶⁰ Van Caenegem, Royal Writs, pp. 274–5; White, Restoration and Reform, 172; Hudson, LLL 134; Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice’, 444, n. 33.

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Lincolnshire’ whether Arnulf fitzPeter had lost the land of Hunnington by judgement of the ‘the court of King Henry my grandfather’, and whether Countess Lucy and Earl Ranulph had granted the land to the nuns of Stixwould.⁴⁶¹ Many of the royal charters of confirmation do not, however, appear to be the product of inquiries of this sort conducted in shire courts or lord’s courts, but in the king’s court. The few narrative accounts of cases all concern the king’s court, and all focus on the king himself judging, or at least presiding actively. There are no equivalents to the detailed accounts of the land pleas held in shire courts in the king’s absence during the 1070s and 1080s, or to the joint session of the courts of Norfolk and Suffolk which was in the first instance instructed by Stephen to hear, under the presidency of William Martel, a case of treason.⁴⁶² We have already discussed the dramatic set-pieces from the house chronicles of St Albans and Battle. In the case of Battle’s dispute with the bishop of Chichester, the king resumed and settled a case which had begun under Stephen. In the case of Abingdon’s dispute with Thurstan fitzSimon over certain lands, Stephen’s death provided an unexpected opportunity for the abbot to reopen a case which Stephen had settled in the abbey’s disfavour. King Henry’s attempt to remit the reopened case to the appropriate shire court having failed, he appointed his own justices to hear it.⁴⁶³ They, however, persuaded the king to pronounce himself the sentence which they had formulated, because thereby it would be sanctioned by ‘authority pronounced by the king’s mouth’. The cases which the king heard might have represented unfinished business in the curia regis from the previous reign;⁴⁶⁴ or they might have been initiated, as in the case of Battle’s claim to Barnhorn, in order to secure a definitive judgement from the new king. The king might judge the matter for himself, or he might pronounce a judgement on advice from judges whom he had appointed. An agreement was considered stronger if it was reached in his presence, even if he took no recorded part in reaching it.⁴⁶⁵ Whatever the precise role he took in proceedings, it is obvious that the cases to which he attended himself were by definition exceptional—like, in a different vein, the celebrated one of Warin of Walcote, which he clearly intended as a stark public warning about the future wages of thuggery.⁴⁶⁶ The king did not have the time to deal even with the cases he ⁴⁶¹ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 257H (1155 ⫻ May 1172, ?1163 ⫻ May 1172) (⫽ Lawsuits ii. no. 376B). William I de Roumare wrote to the justice, the sheriff, and all the royal officials of Lincolnshire that he had been present at the judgement in the court of Henry I, and was ‘ready to demonstrate this as the county of Lincoln might decree, and many others who are still alive were there and saw and heard this’: Lawsuits, ii. no. 376C. As William de Roumare died 1159–61, it seems that the case needs to be dated earlier. His letter suggests that the shire court was also involved. ⁴⁶² H. M. Cam, ‘An East Anglian Shire-moot of Stephen’s Reign, 1148–1153’, EHR xxxix (1924), 569–71 (⫽ Lawsuits, i. no. 331). ⁴⁶³ HEA ii. 240–2. ⁴⁶⁴ For other possible examples, see White, Restoration and Reform, 188–9. ⁴⁶⁵ Lawsuits, ii. nos. 364 (Sept. 1157), 382 (Sept. 1158), 385 (1154 ⫻ July 1160); White, Restoration and Reform, 170. ⁴⁶⁶ Rolls of the Justices in Eyre, 1221–2, ed. D. M. Stenton, Selden Soc., lix (1940), 167–9; J. G. H. Hudson, The Formation of the English Common Law: Law and Society in England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Harlow, 1996), 139.

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heard himself,⁴⁶⁷ although they must represent only a tiny proportion of the disputes which arose. The Anstey case, which began in 1158, shows that even a modest subtenant in pursuit of justice would have repeatedly to seek out the king in person, if necessary on the other side of the Channel, in order to secure the issue of writs,⁴⁶⁸ and, at a later stage, to fine with the king in person.⁴⁶⁹ His dogged pursuit of the king meant that he witnessed the judicial combat of Henry of Essex and Robert de Montfort. Final judgement, when it eventually came, was given in the king’s court meeting at Woodstock in the king’s presence, although the fact that Richard of Anstey does not record the king taking any part in it strongly suggests that he did not.⁴⁷⁰ The demand for the definitive authority of royal judgement necessitated the invention of modes of royal intervention which did not involve the king in person, and which were progressively regularized in the late 1150s and early 1160s. The development of such procedures was but one manifestation of those vigorous royal initiatives on fronts as varied as prostitution,⁴⁷¹ the protection of shipwrecked sailors,⁴⁷² heresy,⁴⁷³ the use of unsupported accusations in church courts,⁴⁷⁴ defect of justice,⁴⁷⁵ the confirmation of seisin as on the day of Henry I’s death (or alternatively, of seisin by peasants on or after that date),⁴⁷⁶ and possibly the abuse of distraint.⁴⁷⁷ We know that Henry was no less active in Normandy. The Bec continuator of Robert of Torigni reports, in a ‘provokingly meager summary’ of a document which he almost certainly had in front of him,⁴⁷⁸ that at the Christmas court at Falaise in 1159 Henry ‘instituted leges’ concerning unsupported accusations in deans’ courts, juries of presentment, the keeping of the peace, theft, and the protection of tenure by laymen and churches.⁴⁷⁹ ⁴⁶⁷ CBA 180; White, Restoration and Reform, 170–1. ⁴⁶⁸ P. M. Barnes, ‘The Anstey Case’, in P. M. Barnes and P. F. Slade (eds.), A Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton, PRS xxxvi (1960), 1–24, at 4–5, 7–8, 14; cf. 13 for his making fine with the king in person. ⁴⁶⁹ Barnes, ‘Anstey Case’, 13, 21. ⁴⁷⁰ Ibid. 14, 21. ⁴⁷¹ MTB i. 12, cited by Hudson, LLL 263. ⁴⁷² WN, CSHR i. 282. According to the Battle chronicler, Henry I had issued an edict to the effect that if even one person should escape alive from a ship, ‘he should obtain everything’. But, the chronicler added in world-weary fashion, ‘new king, new law’. After Henry’s death, the edict was abolished: CBA 142. ⁴⁷³ WN, CSHR i. 131–4, records Henry presiding at a trial of heretics who had recently arrived in England. It was held in Oxford, probably in early 1166. See also cap. 21 of the Assize of Clarendon, C&S ii. pp. 925–6. ⁴⁷⁴ MTB iii. 44; Lawsuits, ii. no. 371; Haskins, Norman Institutions, 331–2; R. C. van Caenegem, ‘Public Prosecution of Crime in Twelfth-Century England’, in C. N. L. Brooke et al. (eds.), Church and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Christopher Cheney on his Seventieth Birthday (Cambridge, 1976), 41–76, at 68–70; White, Restoration and Reform, 177. ⁴⁷⁵ MTB i. 31; iv. 40–1; Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, La Vie de Saint Thomas Becket, ed. E. Walberg (Paris, 1936), l. 1400; Howden, Chronica i. 244; M. Cheney, ‘A Decree of Henry II on Defect of Justice’, in Greenway et al. (eds.), Tradition and Change, pp. 183–93. ⁴⁷⁶ See below, p. 349. ⁴⁷⁷ Mentioned in a charter of Robert, earl of Leicester, of the early 1160s: The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, ed. C. W. Foster and K. Major, 10 vols., Lincoln Record Soc. (1931–73), no. 313; Hudson, LLL 28; Hudson, Formation, 128. ⁴⁷⁸ Haskins, Norman Institutions, 159, 329. ⁴⁷⁹ CSHR iv. 327; White, Restoration and Reform, 180.

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In the cases of prostitution and unsupported accusation in church courts, we know that action was prompted by a particular case drawing the king’s attention to a problem; we can infer that the decree on shipwrecked sailors responded to some notorious incident which is not recorded in the surviving sources.⁴⁸⁰ Doubtless the same is true of the genesis of the procedures at which we are looking: that responses to many individual appeals for royal involvement began to generate them. But because they were concerned with disputes over the tenure of land, they could not be devised as straightforward remedies for straightforward problems. The variation in individual tenurial circumstances made tenurial disputes far less straightforward than certain other matters. The thrashing-out of claims, whether in honorial or shire courts, or before panels of justices specially appointed by the king, was bound to stimulate innovation in the modes of the royal involvement for which plaintiffs petitioned. Restoring the time of the king’s grandfather might be constantly proclaimed as a general principle, but to flesh out that principle in a particular case, or a particular type of case, required the formulation of detailed, regularized procedures. This took time, as the king and his officials worked out ways of responding to demand. It is clear that those which flourished represented only a proportion of these innovatory responses.⁴⁸¹ Others must have wilted and died. In this respect, at least, Bracton’s imaginary picture of the king and his advisers devoting ‘many wakeful nights’ to devising crafty solutions is a plausible one, despite being inspired by the learned precedent of Justinian’s Code.⁴⁸² By the time the standard writs were described and categorized in Glanvill, each of them initiated a standard procedure in the king’s court. Indeed, the court could hear only litigation which fitted one of those templates.⁴⁸³ The pellucidity of Glanvill’s summaries of the procedures which flourished can make it all the more difficult to reconstruct the obscure process of formulation prior to the first extant legislation of the mid-1160s. In any case, early royal legislative initiatives were perhaps proclaimed orally, for as Hubert Walter stated in 1194, ‘what the lord king commands by word of mouth is deemed to be more potent than what he has ordered in letters’.⁴⁸⁴ Glanvill was less extreme and more academic, but he had recently made a similar point: ‘although the laws of England are not written, it does not seem absurd to call them laws . . . for this also is a law, that “what pleases the prince has the force of law”.’⁴⁸⁵ When oral pronouncements were set down in writing, texts seem to have varied depending on the recipients. The surviving evidence is embodied in ‘instructions to justices, or royal orders or prohibitions, or general instructions on procedure or points of

⁴⁸⁰ White, Restoration and Reform, 214. ⁴⁸¹ Glanvill, p. xxxv, notes passing references in the treatise to four or five royal decrees which are otherwise unknown. ⁴⁸² Bracton, fo. 164b, iii. 25; the echo is of Cod. 3. 28. 35, proem. ⁴⁸³ P. A. Brand, ‘ “Multis vigiliis excogitatam et inventam”: Henry II and the Creation of the Early Common Law’, in id., The Making of the Common Law (London, 1992), 77–102, at 96. ⁴⁸⁴ RCR i. 47. ⁴⁸⁵ Glanvill, pro., p. 2.

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law’.⁴⁸⁶ In most cases it is very difficult to establish what written legislative text, if any, underpins them. Exceptionally, Glanvill seems to have used the Constitutions of Clarendon of 1164 and the regalis constitutio, as the author terms it, which had recently established the Grand Assize. ⁴⁸⁷ But in general he expresses the exasperation at the quality of the texts which one might expect of a practising lawyer: when it came to writing down the ‘leges . . . et iura regni’, the ‘ignorance of scribes’ was as much of a problem as ‘the confused multiplicity’ of those laws.⁴⁸⁸ Even when they were written down, they might be rapidly revised in response to problems encountered in implementing them.⁴⁸⁹ In the early stages of Henry II’s legislative innovation with which we are concerned, prior to any extant written legislation, the terms of whatever legislation there was, whether in oral or written form, must for the most part be inferred from surviving writs and accounts in monastic chronicles.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE BREVE DE RECTO An important example is the breve de recto (‘writ of right’), or more precisely the procedure which came to underpin the fully developed ‘writ of right’ as recorded in Glanvill. There it is treated almost as an addendum,⁴⁹⁰ because although a ‘writ of right’ was issued in the king’s court, the case it initiated was not pursued in that court, except by default. In this it differed from the other procedures detailed in Glanvill, which is overwhelmingly concerned with the operation of the king’s court.⁴⁹¹ Its awkwardness is still more pronounced in Bracton, which is the reason why it received so little attention from Maitland.⁴⁹² By Bracton’s time it had been rendered almost obsolete by the development of other remedies, culminating in the writs of entry. But that very awkwardness, which set it apart from the various possessory assizes in their mature forms, preserves traces of its origins. It has long been recognized that Henry I,⁴⁹³ and possibly Stephen,⁴⁹⁴ had issued writs ordering the recipient, either a lord or a sheriff, to do ‘right (rectum)’ or ‘full right (plenum rectum)’ to a plaintiff. In many cases a supplementary clause—the nisi feceris clause—threatened that if the recipient failed to comply, ⁴⁸⁶ J. C. Holt, ‘The Assizes of King Henry II: The Texts’, in D. A. Bullough and R. L. Storey (eds.), The Study of Medieval Records: Essays in Honour of Kathleen Major (Oxford, 1971), 85–106, at 89; cf. ‘Magna Carta 1215–1217’, CE 299, n. 26. ⁴⁸⁷ Glanvill, ii. 19, p. 35; x, 12, pp. 126–8; cf. pp. xxxiv–xxxvi. ⁴⁸⁸ Ibid., pro., p. 3. ⁴⁸⁹ D. Corner, ‘The Texts of Henry II’s Assizes’, in A. Harding (ed.), Law-Making and LawMakers in British History (London, 1980), 7–20, shows that this was the case with the Assize of Woodstock in 1184, and that it was probably the case with the Assize of Clarendon. ⁴⁹⁰ Glanvill, xii. 2–5, pp. 137–8; cf. the ‘writ of right’ for dower, vi. 5–6, p. 61, and pp. xxiii–xxiv. ⁴⁹¹ Ibid., Incip., p. 1 n. b; pp. xi, xxii, lxix (where the editor states that the Incipit is ‘perhaps not original’). ⁴⁹² P&M i. 385–7, ii. 75–8. ⁴⁹³ Royal Writs nos. 12, 13, 139, 141, 143; for accounts pro recto in the pipe roll for 1130, see Royal Writs, pp. 231–2, Green, Government, 101–2. ⁴⁹⁴ Lawsuits, i. no. 306; Royal Writs, p. 207.

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then a royal official, a sheriff or justice or occasionally the barons of the exchequer,⁴⁹⁵ would implement the command. ‘The breve de recto was in fact an order with the goad ready to hand.’ ⁴⁹⁶ The peremptory nature of these royal commands now renders their precise meaning opaque. Rectum, nowadays conventionally translated ‘right’, as ius also confusingly is, might more accurately be rendered ‘justice’.⁴⁹⁷ It was, for instance, clearly in this sense that Stephen ordered the abbot of Bury St Edmunds ‘to do him right (rectum)’ concerning certain men of St Edmund who had been accused of treason, when the case was transferred from the joint shire courts of Norfolk and Suffolk.⁴⁹⁸ In many ‘writs of right’ a concluding ne amplius clause, in which the king expresses the wish never to hear anything further about the matter, is appended to the nisi feceris clause. In one recension of Glanvill these refer to ‘defectu iusticie’ rather than ‘defectu recti’, even though the writs otherwise use rectum throughout.⁴⁹⁹ Conversely, ius is never used simply as a synonym for rectum, despite being the root of iustitia. The king never states in a ne amplius clause that he does not want to hear any further complaint pro defectu iuris. Rectum was something which was done to one, not something which belonged to one, like ius. It may be that rectum was the translation of the vernacular dreit,⁵⁰⁰ and was one of those ‘court words’ which the author of Glanvill forewarned his readers he would use ‘in order to provide knowledge of them for those who are not versed in this sort of vulgarity’.⁵⁰¹ Probably very early in the reign of Henry II, two plaintiffs went to the curia regis and secured the issue of a breve recti concerning some disputed land, directed to the prior of Spalding.⁵⁰² That the sheriff was invited to attend the prior’s court when the plea was heard, that the plaintiffs gave the writ to the prior when their plea failed, and that the story was recorded in the Spalding cartulary, all suggest that the procedure was new, and establish that it was not in the mature form described in Glanvill.⁵⁰³ A writ to the sheriff of Norfolk⁵⁰⁴ and a writ to the earl of Norfolk,⁵⁰⁵ commanding each of them to allow the abbot of St Benet’s, Holme, ‘full right’ in a certain pasture and in a particular piece of land respectively, both of which might therefore be categorized as ‘writs of right’, give little assistance in establishing the precise meaning of the king’s command. Nor does a writ to the abbot, ordering him to ensure ‘John and his mother Matilda full right’ in certain lands which they claim of his fee.⁵⁰⁶ Other early writs, however, afford more clues.

⁴⁹⁵ RRAN ii. no. 1538 (1108 ⫻ 27). ⁴⁹⁶ Van Caenegem, Royal Writs, p. 156. ⁴⁹⁷ Hudson, ‘Milsom’s Legal Structure’, 54, 57–8; Hudson, Formation, 127. ⁴⁹⁸ Cam, ‘East Anglian Shire-moot’, 571. ⁴⁹⁹ Glanvill, p. lxix, n. 1. ⁵⁰⁰ P. R. Hyams, Review of Milsom, Legal Framework of English Feudalism, EHR xciii (1978), 861. ⁵⁰¹ Glanvill, pro., p. 3; cf. vii. 1, p. 69. ⁵⁰² F. M. Stenton, ‘The Danes in England’, PBA xiii (1927), 203–46, at 221–2 (⫽ Lawsuits, ii. no. 362). ⁵⁰³ D.M. Stenton, English Justice, 28. ⁵⁰⁴ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2920H (1154 ⫻ 1166, ?1163 ⫻ Mar. 1166). ⁵⁰⁵ Ibid., acc. no. 2919H (Sept. 1155 ⫻ Mar. 1166). ⁵⁰⁶ Ibid., acc. no. 2921H (1155 ⫻ Mar. 1166, ?May 1157).

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For instance, shortly after his accession Henry II ordered an unnamed sheriff of Nottinghamshire to ‘do full right without delay’ to the abbot of Burton ‘concerning the land of Cotes, as I ordered in my other writ’.⁵⁰⁷ The other, earlier writ to which the king refers is almost certainly one ordering the sheriff (who is named on this occasion) to seise the abbot with the land ‘for which he has the charter of King Henry my grandfather and of King William’.⁵⁰⁸ In this instance, the recipient of the command was not the lord, as was the case with the prior of Spalding and would be the case with a mature ‘writ of right’, but the sheriff. A charter of Conan, duke of Brittany and earl of Richmond, to be dated no later than 1158, refers to a breve de recto, but reveals almost nothing about the function of such writs.⁵⁰⁹ This fragmentary evidence from the early years of the reign suggests, therefore, that royal ‘writs of right’ were from the first concerned with plaintiffs’ claims to rights over land which were at present held by someone else. It also suggests, however, that no settled, regular procedure underpinned such writs when they were first issued at the instigation of plaintiffs. The development of a regular procedure was driven by the issuing of many writs. A still more problematic piece of evidence from this early period is the Battle Chronicle’s account of the opening of the Barnhorn dispute, possibly to be dated to 1158.⁵¹⁰ Not unlike the abbot of Abingdon in the case of Thurstan fitzSimon, Abbot Walter of Battle seems to have seized the opportunity of Henry’s accession to raise the issue of the abbey’s claim to Barnhorn. He persuaded the new king to send a writ to John, count of Eu, lord of the current tenant⁵¹¹ and the lord of whom the abbot claimed he should hold. As reproduced in the Chronicle, it commanded Count John to ensure that the abbot ‘should hold full right (plenum rectum) over the aforesaid tenement, or if he did not do so, then the sheriff of Sussex would, so that the king should hear no more complaint concerning the matter’. This writ, which survives only in this purported transcript, therefore appears to have corresponded very closely to the standard ‘writ of right’ later described by Glanvill in the 1180s.⁵¹² It may, in other words, be the anachronistic composition of a later chronicler familiar with current royal diplomatic, the conventions of which he retrospectively imposed on the late 1150s.⁵¹³ Against this ⁵⁰⁷ Ibid., acc. no. 3798H (1154 ⫻ June 1170, ?1155); cf. Lawsuits, ii. no. 517; White, Restoration and Reform, 175, 186. ⁵⁰⁸ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3799H (1155). The Burton Cartulary contains a writ of Henry I, ordering the sheriff of Derbyshire to ‘do right without delay’ between the abbot and Nicholas of Stafford ‘concerning the land of Cotes’, but the text has been shown to be corrupt: Royal Writs no. 139. ⁵⁰⁹ EYC iv. 37–8; Stenton, English Justice, 28–9; Van Caenegem, Royal Writs, p. 206; Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice’, 450. ⁵¹⁰ CBA 212; for the date, see Lawsuits, ii. no. 377. ⁵¹¹ Vincent, ‘Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, 275–6, argues that at some time after 1148 the count of Eu had restored Bexhill (including Barnhorn) to the bishop of Chichester, and that therefore the lord at the time of the case would not have been John of Eu. The evidence is not conclusive, and in any case the abbot may not have recognized the legitimacy of such a restoration. ⁵¹² Glanvill, xii. 4 and 5, p. 138; Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice’, 446; White, Restoration and Reform, 173. ⁵¹³ A possibility admitted by White, Restoration and Reform, 202, n. 229.

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sceptical view, the supposed text differs from the early ‘writ of right’ in favour of Burton Abbey, about which no reservations have been expressed, only in being addressed to the lord, rather than to the sheriff.⁵¹⁴ If the chronicler was accurately reproducing a genuine document, and it did, like the Burton writ, refer to the plaintiff ’s ‘full right’, then another Battle writ dealing with Barnhorn, which survives independently, and is addressed to the sheriff of Sussex and John, count of Eu, suggests what the phrase meant, or had come to mean.⁵¹⁵ In much the same terms as the preceding writ to which the Burton writ refers, this second Battle writ strongly implies (but does not explicitly state) that ‘full right’ might be defined as a claim to land for which a plaintiff could adduce a charter of King Henry I. For it orders that the abbot and monks should ‘have their land in Barnhorn’, which they had claimed in the king’s presence at Clarendon, ‘as freely and quietly and in peace, as the charter of my grandfather King Henry testifies they should have it’. ‘Full right’ might also be defined as whatever had been legitimately held by an ancestor in the time of Henry I. The writ of 1156 which commissioned an inquiry in the shire court of Kent as to whether the nuns of Malling had purchased Thorne ‘reasonably and according to the custom of the province in the time of King Henry my grandfather’, ordered that if it transpired that they had, then they should hold ‘as they held on the day when King Henry my grandfather was alive and dead’. The king did not want to ‘hear any further complaint concerning it for lack of full right (pro penuria pleni recti)’.⁵¹⁶ In this case, there was no question of Malling Abbey having received a charter from Henry I with respect to this particular piece of land; but land which had been legitimately bought in his time should continue to be held as it had been held on the day of his death. ‘Writs of right’ were indeed originally ‘framed with a general, not a specific, purpose in mind’.⁵¹⁷ But it is clear that during the early years of Henry II’s reign they rapidly acquired a more specific purpose, as the new procedure which they stimulated took shape. Indeed, that purpose seems to have been framed before the procedure was fully regularized.⁵¹⁸ It defined rectum; or rather, it gave the word a new, precise definition which it had not had before. The procedure which defined rectum was still not fully formed by the end of the first decade of the reign. There are only six accounts pro recto terre in the pipe rolls of this period, as against forty-four in Henry I’s only surviving pipe roll.⁵¹⁹ It cannot be certain under Henry II, and is impossible under Henry I, that these ⁵¹⁴ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3798H. ⁵¹⁵ Ibid., acc. no. 2548H. Vincent, ‘Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, 273–4, expresses doubts about the authenticity of this writ, because it notifies the sheriff and John of Eu about a decision in an apparently original charter about which he also has grave doubts. But he allows that the peculiarities may be evidence of beneficiary drafting. ⁵¹⁶ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1156H, cited above, p. 327. ⁵¹⁷ P. A. Brand, ‘The Origins of English Land Law: Milsom and After’, in id., Making of the Common Law, 203–25, at 221. ⁵¹⁸ Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice’, 449–50, examines some of the evidence for early development in the formulae of the writs. ⁵¹⁹ Royal Writs, pp. 231–4.

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accounts are for ‘writs of right’. The first pipe roll entry pro brevi de recto dates from 1176.⁵²⁰ Of course it may be that initially payment for such writs did not usually go to the exchequer;⁵²¹ certainly the pipe rolls do not record payments for the early individual writs which we have been discussing. Nothing can be inferred from their initially sparse entries about the formation and operation of the procedure. If we turn from the pipe rolls to the writs we have already examined, it is clear that they were not, as yet, underpinned by an invariable, regular procedure. Some, like the Battle writ, are addressed to lords, and some, like the Burton writ, are addressed to sheriffs. ‘Right’ and its apparent synonym ‘full right’ were not, it seems, formal, technical terms, invariably used. Thus the earlier Burton writ orders the sheriff to seise the abbot, whereas the later writ, explicitly reiterating the previous command, characterizes this as doing ‘full right’ to the abbot. The writ pursuant to the findings of the inquiry which the king had ordered into the claim of the nuns of Malling does not order the sheriff to do them ‘right’. But the king had commissioned the inquiry, according to the earlier writ, for the express purpose of sparing himself from having to listen to any further complaints from the nuns about lack of ‘full right’. In this case the king was backing the nuns against the claims of the heirs of whoever had sold the land to the abbey in Henry I’s day. There are similarities with another case, in which the abbot of St Benet’s, Holme, was trying to hold on to Ranworth, Norfolk, against claims being asserted by a certain Colstan. So when, probably in 1157, the king ordered the sheriff to ensure that the abbot should ‘hold as he had held on the day when King Henry my grandfather was alive and dead’,⁵²² it seems that he might just as well have expressed a fear that the abbot would not receive ‘full right’. Indeed, this writ may have been issued to implement a nisi feceris clause in a prior ‘writ of right’. To command that a plaintiff should hold what his antecessor had held in the time of King Henry—or more precisely, on the day when Henry had been alive and dead—and to command that ‘right’ should be done to a plaintiff, seem to have been, or rapidly to have become, interchangeable. They had become interchangeable before other aspects of the procedure underlying ‘writs of right’ had been fixed, and a clear procedural distinction had been established between writs commanding the recipient to do right and writs ordering the recipient to seise the plaintiff. That fixed meaning survived in Glanvill’s mature ‘writ of right’, the specialized survivor of a type of writ which had originally served a variety of purposes, but which had been progressively honed as other specialized writs were developed to meet each of those purposes.⁵²³ This interpretation of what ‘right’ rapidly came to mean in royal writs of the first years of Henry II’s reign is confirmed by the surviving series of curia regis rolls, which begins in 1194. In a substantial proportion of cases, the count, the formal ⁵²⁰ PR 22 Henry II, 85. ⁵²¹ Royal Writs nos. 98–9. ⁵²² Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2911H (Sept. 1155 ⫻ Sept. 1163, ?Dec. 1157) (⫽ Lawsuits, ii. no. 366). ⁵²³ I should like to thank John Hudson for helping me to formulate this point.

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claim which the plaintiff made to secure the issue of a ‘writ of right’, stated that the plaintiff was the heir of the ancestor who had been seised ‘in the time of King Henry the king’s grandfather, namely the year and the day that he died’. As Professor Milsom has pointed out, the fact that Henry I is referred to as the king’s grandfather suggests that the formula had already ‘set hard under Henry II’.⁵²⁴ The omission of this precise claim from the count was a ground for objection: early in John’s reign a plaintiff failed because he ‘had not specified in his narration the year and day on which King [Henry] the grandfather had been alive and dead, and concerning an uncertain terminus there can be no deraignment’.⁵²⁵ The late evidence of the rolls of the king’s court therefore confirms what early writs of Henry II ordering the recipients to ‘do right’ suggest: that the last day of Henry I’s reign was treated as the final moment of peace and legitimate title. ‘The time of peace’ was ‘in the year and on the day that King Henry the grandfather died’.⁵²⁶ This was by definition the final point at which an ancestor of someone claiming land currently in the hands of another could have been legitimately seised of that land.⁵²⁷ The day of King Henry’s death was identical with the time of King Henry.⁵²⁸ It had been followed by a period of illegitimacy: either any mention of this period was elaborately circumvented, or it was styled, by contrast, tempus gwerrae.⁵²⁹ That the Latinized vernacular, as opposed to the more obvious tempus belli, became a technical term, suggests its popular, lay origins.⁵³⁰ I have already drawn attention to the Abingdon chronicler’s quick ear for Latin legal neologisms.⁵³¹ Writing probably between 1159 and 1164, he remarked that on Stephen’s death the ‘astonishing werra’ ceased throughout England.⁵³² As the ⁵²⁴ Milsom, Legal Framework, 178. ⁵²⁵ PKJ, i. 3481; CRR ii. 12; Milsom, Legal Framework, 179, n. 1. ⁵²⁶ CRR i. 158, cited by Milsom, Legal Framework, 98, n. 5, 179, n. 6. ⁵²⁷ S. F. C. Milsom, ‘Maitland and the Grand Assize’, HSJ vii (1995), 151–77, at 158; Milsom, Natural History, 101. ⁵²⁸ P. A. Brand, ‘ “Time out of mind”: The Knowledge and Use of the Eleventh- and TwelfthCentury Past in Thirteenth-Century Litigation’, ANS xvi (1993), 37–54, at 41–2, argues the opposite, and suggests that the equation between the two was the result of a change in limitation dates c.1200. He adduces a number of later cases recorded in the court rolls—most strikingly of advowson—which show that what was deemed to have obtained in the time of King Henry was identical with what was deemed to have obtained on the day of Henry’s death. He fails to adduce any evidence to show that the two phrases had different meanings earlier than 1200, other than the omission of specific mentions of Henry’s death. As Milsom, Legal Framework, 178, shows and the template of tempus Edwardi regis in Domesday suggests, such omissions were common. ⁵²⁹ RCR i. 25–6, 93, 440–1; CRR vi. 176–7, 287, 296 (all cited by Milsom, Legal Framework, 178, n. 5); also CRR ii. 234, v. 217 (in which the claim of the daughter of someone who had died in the time of King Stephen, and who ‘non fuit saisitus tempore Henrici regis’, appears to have been disallowed for that reason), viii. 19, P&M i. 449. For a possible allusion in a non-royal document, although without using the phrase, see Stenton, English Feudalism, 82, 270. What had been occupied ‘tempore guerre’ by Walter, priest of Waxham, should be returned to the abbot of St Benet’s, Holme: Royal Writs no. 21 (June ⫻ Dec. 1162) (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2926H), discussed below, p. 342. For use of the phrase with this implication in the cartae baronum, see RBE i. 237, 252, 298, 401, 408–9, cited by White, Restoration and Reform, 111, 167. ⁵³⁰ I owe this point to John Hudson. ⁵³¹ Above, p. 64. ⁵³² HEA ii. pp. xxxv, lv, 294.

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case heard in the curia regis in 1227 concerning the dispute over the honour of Pontefract demonstrates, it was by then necessary only to assert that something had happened ‘in that war (guerra) . . . by means of that war (per eandem guerram)’ in order to demonstrate its illegitimacy.⁵³³ It has been argued that the characterization of Stephen’s reign as tempus gwerrae developed only slowly; and further, that reverence for the day on which Henry I had been alive and dead, and rejection of what had obtained during the tempus gwerrae, had only ‘finally come together’ by the time of the first surviving curia regis rolls, in the early 1190s.⁵³⁴ But Henry II’s early writs and his constantly reiterated aspiration to restore the time of his grandfather suggest that the illegitimacy of the tempus gwerrae was not a later development, consequent on the interplay in court cases during his reign between two originally distinct ‘rules’: one that anything which had obtained during Stephen’s reign was ipso facto illegitimate, the other that the death of Henry I was ‘the last moment of official peace’.⁵³⁵ Two unusually verbose, and therefore revealing, writs in favour of Ramsey Abbey may illustrate the point. Sometime between 1155 and August 1158 Henry issued a writ confirming the abbot of Ramsey in all the lands which he held in the time of King Henry my grandfather, well and in peace and justly and freely and quietly as he ever held better and more freely and more quietly on the day when King Henry my grandfather was alive and dead, and if anything was taken from the demesne of the church by war (per guerram) or was given without the consent of the chapter, either land or anything else, then I wish and firmly order that it should be recalled and returned to the demesne of the church.⁵³⁶

In a writ issued during the same period, he ordered that the abbot and monks should enjoy an estate which had been quitclaimed to them in the presence of Henry I, and for which they could adduce the evidence of a charter of Henry I, ‘and they shall not answer for it to Robert Grimbald on the basis of any agreement (aliqua conventione) which was made concerning it in the time of war (tempore guerre)’.⁵³⁷ That anything which had happened tempore gwerrae was ipso facto illegitimate was the logical corollary of using the last day of Henry I’s life as the defining point in the legitimacy of tenure, just as the illegitimacy of events in Harold II’s reign was of William the Conqueror’s reverence for the situation on the day when Edward the Confessor had been alive and dead. Hence the almost total avoidance of any reference to Stephen in the writs and charters issued by Henry from the very start of his reign. Henry was not Stephen’s heir and successor, as he had been presented in the charter which embodied the settlement of 1153. This shift happened immediately ⁵³³ CRR xiii. no. 302, discussed above, p. 325. ⁵³⁴ Holt, ‘1153’, CE 281. ⁵³⁵ Hyams, ‘Warranty’, 498–9. ⁵³⁶ Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis, ed. W. D. Macray, RS (London, 1886), 298 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 53H). ⁵³⁷ Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis, 288 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2562H).

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on Henry’s accession, as signalled in his coronation charter. The term tempus gwerrae avoided any allusion to whoever might then have been ruler; indeed, it strongly implied that there had been no ruler at that time. On those rare occasions when it proved impossible to avoid a reference to Stephen in person, he tended to be characterized, as we have seen, not as the king’s antecessor, but as ‘my usurper’. The curia regis rolls obviously preserve evidence of the operation of the mature writ of right procedure described in Glanvill, rather than its inchoate origins in the first decade of Henry’s reign. But in the importance they show being attributed to the tenurial situation on the day of Henry I’s death, and their rejection of claims based on tenure tempore gwerrae, they preserve what were essential characteristics from the very start. These characteristics were essential because the ‘right’ to be done to any plaintiff conformed to the template of the king’s own title to the kingdom, as expressed from the moment of his accession, at his coronation. They disregarded the charter evidence for the terms of the settlement of 1153, as the king himself now did, and corresponded to the contradictory interpretation of that settlement later advanced by the Gesta Stephani, Robert of Torigni, and later William of Newburgh. The ‘right’ which any claimant might seek to have done to him at the king’s command was as heir to the person who had held at the death of the king whose heir Henry II claimed to be. There was, in other words, a close nexus between the rectum which the king ordered should be done to a plaintiff and the ius Anglie, spoken of in terms of expectation prior to his accession,⁵³⁸ which he had duly received at his coronation. The ‘association with inheritance’ in the ‘writ of right’ procedure was not, therefore, ‘accidental, a consequence of [particular] events lying in the past’.⁵³⁹ Like the antecessor scheme which underpins Domesday Book, it reveals how, in post-Conquest England, legitimacy of tenure was and continued to be defined by reference to the king’s title. Procedures embodying this principle were all the more necessary in the wake of periods of acute tenurial disruption, in order to settle the competing claims which had arisen. Just as in the aftermath of the Conquest, that inevitably involved a particular, official interpretation of past events, in which the king’s title was grounded. The grounding of his title in turn shaped claims to land, because tenure, as a result of the Conquest, depended ultimately on the king.

THE PREHISTORY OF NOVEL DISSEISIN Important as royal writs commanding the recipient to ‘do right’ to a plaintiff can be shown to be, they were, or more accurately they became, only one of the innovatory legal procedures devised during the early years of Henry II’s reign. ⁵³⁸ RRAN iii. no. 81.

⁵³⁹ Milsom, Historical Foundations, 129.

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The king’s prodigious reforming energy in this area struck contemporaries forcefully, although they did not all take as positive a view of it as more recent historians have done. According to Radulphus Niger, just as Henry followed his grandfather in his insatiable concupiscence, so he did in his greed: ‘Never sated in his quest for gain, he abolished antique laws and every year issued new laws (leges), which he called assizes.’⁵⁴⁰ Like the ‘writ of right’, such measures did not emerge fully formed as the sun rose at the end of one of the ‘wakeful nights’ conjured up by Bracton’s learned imagination. Rather, they seem to have evolved by trial and adaptation. In contrast to the ‘writ of right’, one of them highlights the extent to which the procedural innovations were shaped by the king’s treatment of his grandfather as his antecessor by, exceptionally, establishing a terminus much more recent than the death of Henry I. As such, its early development merits a careful reconstruction. The earliest solid evidence consists of references in two letters of Archbishop Theobald to a king’s constitutio or edictum which appears to have afforded protection against deprivation of incumbents of churches, effected by force and without any judicial process.⁵⁴¹ A great deal of weight has been put on these two oblique allusions,⁵⁴² but they have not been examined in detail. The first letter concerns a dispute apparently rooted in Stephen’s reign. Ernald of Devizes claimed that he had been instituted in the church of Hinton by the diocesan, the bishop of Salisbury,⁵⁴³ ‘by the concession of a certain knight, who asserted that he had the advowson’. Ernald complained to the archbishop that it had subsequently been taken from him by Reginald, earl of Cornwall, ‘by violence and against all respect for the law, in order to intrude Osbert, his favourite’. The archbishop persuaded Reginald to consent to his restoring the church to Ernald, thereby depriving Osbert—but only on condition that Reginald and Osbert could then bring a suit in the archbishop’s court to determine the quaestio iuris. It seems that Ernald had to be restored before this case could proceed, probably in accordance with the Canon Law doctrine of exceptio spolii.⁵⁴⁴ Osbert ‘and the earl’s proctors’ proceeded to argue that it was Ernald who had been intruded into the church by a ‘plunderer’, who had previously deprived the earl of the estate in which the church was situated. This ‘plunderer’ was probably Alan (III), earl of Richmond, who had ⁵⁴⁰ Ralph Niger, Chronica, ed. R. Anstruther (London, 1851), 168. For the various meanings of assize, see F. Joüon des Longrais, La Conception anglaise de la saisine du xiie au xive siècle (Paris, 1925), 48–9, n. 3. ⁵⁴¹ John of Salisbury, Letters, i. nos. 102 (1156 ⫻ 1161), 115 (1160). Haskins, Norman Institutions, 333, suggests that whereas the edict was concerned with the particular case, the constitutio was a ‘decree of general scope respecting advowson’. But this ignores the fact that the constitutio is later referred to as ‘that edict’. ⁵⁴² Royal Writs, pp. 284, n. 2, 331–2; D. W. Sutherland, The Assize of Novel Disseisin (Oxford, 1973), 8; J. Loengard, ‘The Assize of Nuisance’, Cambridge Law Journal, xxxvii (1978), 144–66, at 154–5, n. 28; Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice’, 473–7; White, Restoration and Reform, 177–80. ⁵⁴³ EEA xviii, no. 59. ⁵⁴⁴ Later Osbert would have been protected, provided that Earl Reginald had presented him after usurping the advowson ‘violently, tempore werre’: Glanvill, iv. 10, p. 50.

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held Cornwall in 1140–1.⁵⁴⁵ Ernald had been intruded, the letter reports with a burgeoning indignation which seems likely to reproduce the words spoken in court, ‘without the assent of the earl and of the patrons and in defiance of the custom of the whole church and realm of England and contrary to the king’s constitutio and the ancient dignity of all nobles’. No wonder Henry II had, according to the letter, subsequently sent a writ to Theobald, ordering him ‘to give the earl justice (iustitiam exhibere) concerning the advowson of his church, or to restore to Osbert the aforesaid church, of which he had been deprived, contrary to that edict, after the king’s departure’. Theobald’s letter was written by his secretary, John of Salisbury, in a self-consciously classicizing style; in the current jargon of the king’s court, which John elsewhere characterizes as ‘vulgar’,⁵⁴⁶ the writ (termed a ‘mandatum’) which John paraphrased would have ordered Theobald to do right (facias rectum) to Earl Reginald concerning the advowson.⁵⁴⁷ The second letter concerns a case the origins of which are even murkier. The abbess of Amesbury had recently deprived Jordan, treasurer of the church of Salisbury, of the church of Froyle, for reasons which are not explained. Jordan had previously been confirmed in possession of the church by Pope Adrian IV. The abbess had ejected him ‘by violence and armed force, a thing which does not become any woman, nun, or religious’.⁵⁴⁸ Moreover, she had acted ‘after the edict of the lord king, in contempt of the Roman Church . . . and without any judicial process (absque ordine iudiciario)’.⁵⁴⁹ This constituted a breach of the king’s edict, for which she was liable to punishment. In the king’s absence, Queen Eleanor had sent a writ to the abbess, ordering her to ‘permit Jordan to hold the aforesaid church, as he possessed it by apostolic authority at the lord king’s crossing overseas’.⁵⁵⁰ Theobald warned the abbess that, if she disobeyed, he would make no effort to shield her from the king’s justice. It is clear that the edict or constitutio had been issued recently and that it protected incumbents of churches against violent ejection effected without legal process. On this evidence, it did not address the issue of advowson directly.⁵⁵¹ Rather, it appears to have protected an incumbent from summary ejection and replacement by those who contested the advowson exercised by the patron whose ⁵⁴⁵ John of Salisbury, Letters, i. 162, n. 1. ⁵⁴⁶ Ibid., no. 131. ⁵⁴⁷ Haskins, Norman Institutions, 333; Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3785H, which does not, however, notice that the writ must have been a writ of right. On this case see also Saltman, Theobald, 161–2. ⁵⁴⁸ John of Salisbury, Letters, i. no. 114. ⁵⁴⁹ Ibid., no. 115. As John would have been well aware, ordo iudiciarius was a long-established, technical term of Canon Law, which was available by this time in Gratian: Corpus Iuris Canonici, Decretum, C. 2. 1. 1; 2. 1. 18; 30. 5. 9, etc. ⁵⁵⁰ The queen issued writs in England while the king was abroad only between August and December 1158, and between December 1159 and September 1160: R. Eyton, Court, Household and Itinerary of Henry II (London, 1878), 40–3, 49–51. ⁵⁵¹ White, Restoration and Reform, 178, assumes that it did. Hudson, LLL 256, is more cautious. For a sworn recognition as to advowson, see the writs to Bishop William of Norwich instructing him to ensure that William, abbot of St Benet’s, Holme, had his advowson as proved by sworn inquest: Acta of Henry II, acc. nos. 2932H, 2913H (1156 ⫻ Apr. 1157).

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beneficiary the current incumbent was. In the case of the church of Hinton, the dispute about advowson was clearly rooted in Stephen’s reign. In the case of the church of Froyle, we do not know whose advowson the abbess of Amesbury was contesting, but we may again infer that the dispute went back at least as far as Stephen’s reign. The Battle chronicler gives a vivid account of how the deaths of incumbents ‘in the times of strife under King Stephen’ had allowed the ius patronatus of certain parish churches, which should have reverted to Battle Abbey, to be usurped by those laymen in whose estates the churches were located. The laymen had ‘instituted whomsoever they wished’;⁵⁵² one of them had even ‘comported himself as if he were the parson’.⁵⁵³ These disputes spilled over into Henry II’s reign.⁵⁵⁴ By offering a new protection against arbitrary dispossession to the incumbent of a living at the time of the king’s most recent departure from England, Henry sought to minimize the effect on the current beneficiaries of ongoing disputes about what John of Salisbury, in Theobald’s name, terms the quaestio iuris of advowson. The distinction between the two legal issues is clear in the king’s writ to Theobald concerning the dispute over Hinton. He ordered the archbishop to do right to Earl Reginald. As we have seen, this meant restoring to Reginald what he had held in the time of Henry I, namely, the advowson of Hinton. He also ordered the archbishop, in accordance with the edict, to restore to Osbert the church of which he had been the incumbent, as the beneficiary of Earl Reginald’s advowson, at the time of Henry II’s departure from England. At the conclusion of this case, therefore, the question of what John of Salisbury termed iustitia—in the language of the courts, rectum—and the king’s edict pointed in the same direction.⁵⁵⁵ In the case concerning Froyle, there is no indication that the question of ‘right’ was ever considered in the archbishop’s court. But the royal writ ordering the abbess of Amesbury to restore Jordan to what he had held at the time of the king’s departure shows that the purpose of this recent royal measure was to restrict the ramifications for tenants of the arbitrary assertion of claims by lords. Whether this applied only to the clerical beneficiaries of advowson, or to other tenants as well, remains unclear. The definition of rectum was, as we have already demonstrated, the situation which was deemed to have obtained in the time of Henry I. The king’s edict concerning violent and arbitrary dispossession of churches used the date of the king’s departure from England—it is likely that his most recent departure prior to Theobald’s letters was in August 1158—as the defining point. Dispossession prior to that point would not qualify for protection under the edict: if it had, doubtless Ernald would have sought to avail himself of it. Instead Theobald seems to have arranged Ernald’s (temporary) restoration on the basis of exceptio spolii. Only ⁵⁵² CBA 224. ⁵⁵³ CBA 238. ⁵⁵⁴ CBA 224–38. ⁵⁵⁵ It did Osbert little good, however. Ernald appealed to the pope, and Osbert, judging the church not to be worth the expense, withdrew from the suit and the appeal.

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ejections which had happened since the king’s departure were covered.⁵⁵⁶ The queen ordered Jordan’s restoration to what he had held at that point. The edict was evidently a practical measure, designed to curb disruption consequent on the pursuit of claims without due judicial process during the king’s absence overseas. It is a good illustration of the way in which legal innovation resulted from royal attempts to address particular problems. But the edict’s use of a recent terminus as a quick fix could in turn create problems of its own. We know that not all cases resulted in the happy coincidence between ‘right’ as defined by reference to the status quo in the time of Henry I, and possession as defined by reference to the status quo at the time of the king’s last Channel crossing. Two writs in favour of St Benet’s, Holme, both apparently issued by the king in Normandy in 1162, prior to his return to England, instruct the bishop of Norwich to ensure that the abbot should have what he had held ‘in the time of King Henry my grandfather . . . notwithstanding my assize’.⁵⁵⁷ If this ‘assize’ was the edict of 1158,⁵⁵⁸ or perhaps a later measure along similar lines but framed more broadly, then an attempt might have been made to exploit it by the likes of Walter, the priest of Waxham, who, ‘tempore guerrae’, had ‘occupied’ some land held by St Benet’s in the time of Henry I and ‘unjustly enclosed it within his cemetery’.⁵⁵⁹ The king sought to forestall such misuse of the assize or edict in these cases, and to ensure that the restoration of status quo in the time of Henry I should not be obstructed. Another example is a writ ordering that the tenants of Spalding Priory should render service to the prior and convent, and that the prior and convent should hold all the lands of their demesne, as they had done ‘in the time of King Henry my grandfather’, unless the tenants could adduce proof otherwise— in a charter or some other reasonable form—‘notwithstanding my assize or exercitus.’ ⁵⁶⁰ This final clause may refer to the same assize as the writs in favour of St Benet’s, Holme, issued at much the same time. Alternatively, it could refer to a different measure designed to protect tenants in England who were providing knight service for the king’s campaigns overseas.⁵⁶¹ It might even mean both. The identical clause is found in one other writ, which ordered the current bishop of Exeter to make the ‘lawful men’ of the hundred of Trigg hold a sworn recognition concerning lands which the canons of Plympton had held ‘in the time of Robert Warelwast, bishop of Exeter’, his predecessor but one, and to ensure that what the inquest established should be reinstituted ‘notwithstanding my assize or my exercitus’.⁵⁶² ⁵⁵⁶ Sutherland, Novel Disseisin, 8, n. 3. ⁵⁵⁷ Royal Writs nos. 21, 22 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. nos. 2926H, 2923H) (June 1162 ⫻ Jan. 1163); for the corrected dates, see White, Restoration and Reform, 207, n. 249. ⁵⁵⁸ Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice’, 474, argues that it is; White, Restoration and Reform, 178, n. 90, 208, thinks it more likely that they were separate measures. ⁵⁵⁹ Royal Writs no. 21. ⁵⁶⁰ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3347H (?Aug. 1158 ⫻ 1161). ⁵⁶¹ White, Restoration and Reform, 208. ⁵⁶² Royal Writs no. 23 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3343H) (?1162); White, Restoration and Reform, 207. Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice’, 474–5, suggests that it was a different assize, but on the mistaken assumption that these two writs were issued in 1165, 1166, or 1174.

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In this instance, the time of King Henry was not the defining point, because Robert Warelwast had become bishop of Exeter in April 1138 and died in March 1155. But by referring to the bishop’s ‘time’, any reference to Stephen or the tempus gwerrae was avoided. The clause blocking use of the assize against the canons’ claims clearly had the same purpose as that in the Spalding writ. Whether or not this assize was the same as that referred to in the St Benet’s writs, the purpose of the clause was clearly again to prevent its being exploited to thwart the royal command given in the writ. In these instances, it was necessary for the king to specify that he did not want tenants to be shielded from the consequences of lords being restored to the status quo in Henry I’s time (or, in the case of the bishop of Exeter, that of his antecessor). If these various references to an assize are to the same measure, and if it was identical with the constitutio or edict referred to by Archbishop Theobald, then the king’s departure from England would necessarily be the cut-off point. He was absent from England between August 1158 and January 1163. Even if, as seems more likely, they were distinct measures, the same cut-off point could have been adopted.⁵⁶³ The first evidence of a limitation date in the assize of novel disseisin, in the assize of Northampton of 1176, shows that it was the king’s most recent Channel crossing (in this instance his return to, rather than departure from, England) which defined a disseisin as novel.⁵⁶⁴ Disseisins prior to that point did not come within the delimited scope of the assize. In one sense this may have been ‘arbitrary’,⁵⁶⁵ but there was clear precedent for it. Perhaps it had been true of the assize of novel disseisin from its inception, whenever that is dated:⁵⁶⁶ that the use of the king’s most recent Channel crossing as the cut-off point had been preserved from the earlier, more specific measure or measures which we have been examining. We cannot know for certain, because the original legislation for the assize, like so much of Henry II’s other early legislation, does not survive. But the mature writ of novel disseisin, as recorded in Glanvill, bears traces of its early development which by Glanvill ’s time had become redundant.⁵⁶⁷ It is likely that the limitation date was also such a trace, but it was not one which had become redundant. On the contrary, through successive adaptations it had become intrinsic to the action. Against this view, it has been suggested that the original limitation in royal measures against disseisin would logically have been the king’s first coronation, by analogy with the Assize of Clarendon’s provisions, approved at the Council of ⁵⁶³ White, Restoration and Reform, 208, assumes that it was. ⁵⁶⁴ Stubbs, Select Charters, 180; Sutherland, Novel Disseisin, 9–10, 25–6. ⁵⁶⁵ Milsom, Historical Foundations, 138. ⁵⁶⁶ For the view that it was invented in 1166, see P&M i. 145–6, reiterated by Sutherland, Novel Disseisin, 6–7, 14, 16; M. Cheney, ‘The Litigation Between John Marshal and Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1164: A Pointer to the Origin of Novel Disseisin’, in J. A. Guy and H. G. Beale (eds.), Law and Social Change in British History (London, 1984), 9–26, at 17; for a more gradual evolution, van Caenegem, Royal Writs, pp. 283–92. ⁵⁶⁷ Glanvill, xiii. 33, pp. 167–8; Milsom, Historical Foundations, 139.

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Clarendon at the beginning of 1166, for the investigation of crime.⁵⁶⁸ It is likely that the assize of novel disseisin was first promulgated at this council, although there is no hint of it in the text of the Assize of Clarendon.⁵⁶⁹ Had they been promulgated on the same occasion, it would not be surprising if both pieces of legislation had shared the same cut-off point; all the more so if novel disseisin was originally what we would categorize as a ‘criminal’ offence, which assumed the character of a ‘civil’ remedy only later.⁵⁷⁰ Moreover, the king occasionally confirmed the tenure of land, against a competing claim, as it had been held on ‘day on which I was first crowned’.⁵⁷¹ In an exceptional case this date might be paired with ‘the time of King Henry my grandfather’ (and, in this instance, with the witness of a charter of Edward the Confessor).⁵⁷² It was also used, sometimes as an alternative to the time of Henry I,⁵⁷³ and sometimes on it own,⁵⁷⁴ in the procedures of the king’s court described by Glanvill. But none of this evidence for the date of Henry II’s first coronation occasionally being adopted as a defining point in other respects can counter the clear, early testimony of Archbishop Theobald’s two letters. When the constitutio or edict to which he refers was framed, almost certainly in 1158, the king was not seeking to protect every beneficiary of every presentation which had taken place since his coronation. He had a more limited problem in his sights, and one which was initially concerned with the immediate future rather than the immediate past: the consequences of claimants to advowsons seeking to exploit his forthcoming absence from England to enforce their claims. Recent experience would have made everyone very jittery about the preservation of order. We have already seen that Archbishop Theobald was well aware of the particular problem concerning advowson as well as of the general one of public order. Perhaps it was one of the issues at the back of his mind when, in 1160, he commissioned John of Salisbury to write, in his name, an elegantly sycophantic letter to the still-absent king. He begged Henry to return to England forthwith: ‘During your absence there is no hope of quiet for our countrymen; and so the whole land longs to behold your face.’⁵⁷⁵ This letter gives ⁵⁶⁸ Royal Writs, p. 286; R. C. van Caenegem, The Birth of the English Common Law (Cambridge, 1973), 43, n. 56; H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), 198; H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, Law and Legislation from Æthelberht to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1966), 95, n. 2. ⁵⁶⁹ Sutherland, Novel Disseisin, 7. ⁵⁷⁰ Van Caenegem, Royal Writs, pp. 281–90 (for some serious doubts, see Review by G. D. G. Hall, EHR lxxvii (1961), 315–19, at 318); Milsom, Historical Foundations, 138–9. ⁵⁷¹ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2918H (1155 ⫻ Mar. 1166, ? May 1157) (St Benet’s, Holme). ⁵⁷² Ibid., acc. no. 2910H (1155 ⫻ Nov. 1164, ? Dec. 1157) (St Benet’s, Holme). ⁵⁷³ Glanvill, ii. 3, p. 23, a demandant’s count: ‘pater meus vel avus meus fuit saisiatus in dominico suo sicut de feodo tempore Regis Henrici Primi, vel post primam coronationem domini regis’; iv. 6, p. 46, count for precipe for advowsons: ‘ego fui saisitus vel aliquis antecessorum meorum fuit saisitus tempore regis Henrici avi domini Henrici regis, vel post coronationem domini regis’. ⁵⁷⁴ Ibid. xii. 11, p. 142, a writ of naifty: ‘post primam coronationem meam’; xiii. 3–6, pp. 150–1, writs of mort d’ancestor: ‘post primam coronationem meam’. ⁵⁷⁵ John of Salisbury, Letters, i. no. 121.

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the impression that the king’s absence between August 1158 and January 1163 occasioned more disorder than had the lack of any king at all between Stephen’s death and Henry’s arrival in an England already under the competent, pre-arranged control of Archbishop Theobald himself. Small wonder, then, that in later royal measures against disseisin the date of the king’s departure continued to bear the practical significance which had been attributed to it in the king’s original edict protecting incumbents. The king and his administrators were not, as in the case of the developing ‘writ of right’, defining the ‘right’ (or ‘justice’, in John of Salisbury’s classical Latin paraphrase) to be done to claimants by reference to the king’s title; their concern was with a particular, immediate, and more humdrum problem. They were not providing a framework for the adjudication of conflicting claims to title. They were simply formulating an accessible remedy for those who had recently been disseised, without addressing the basis on which the disseisee had previously been seised. Until the assize began to change the meaning of the term (as the ‘writ of right’ changed the meaning of rectum), being seised was simply a description of one’s condition, by contrast with ius. Ius was something to which one might have an expectation, not something of which one was necessarily seised.⁵⁷⁶ The king’s title and his accession were matters too grandiose, or fundamental, to be of direct relevance in a case involving recent, allegedly improper, disseisin. Indeed, to offer (initially) a blanket protection to incumbents of ecclesiastical livings, let alone (later) to subtenants, as they had held on the day of the king’s first coronation would have been to reopen many compromises which had been reached with much difficulty in the interim. By contrast, the mundane matter of the king’s Channel crossings offered a clear, immediate point of reference for defining what the king’s measure would protect. The way in which the king’s movements could hobble litigants is well brought out by Richard of Anstey’s dogged account of his need repeatedly to petition the king in person, wherever Henry happened to be,⁵⁷⁷ and by the Battle chronicler.⁵⁷⁸ In the case of the edict or constitutio concerning advowson, the king had decided to take precautions, and the chronological framework adopted in those precautions survived in later legislation, even though that legislation was greatly broadened in scope. As a regularized procedure for trial before the king’s justices, the assize of novel disseisin was more wide-ranging than any of the earlier measures. Indeed, it was so different that it has been argued that it is ‘very improbable’ that there was any continuity between it and the earlier measures concerning advowson and incumbency (which do not appear to have come within the scope of the assize).⁵⁷⁹ But as we ⁵⁷⁶ The point is well brought out by Glanvill, iv. 1, pp. 43–4, which assumes that it is possible to be seised of the ius to present a parson to a particular living only if the church in question is vacant. If the church is not vacant, a dispute can concern only the ius of advowson, not seisin of that ius: ibid. iv. 7–11, pp. 47–52, cf. p. xxii. Milsom, ‘Grand Assize’, 164, states: ‘The two things [right and seisin] alternate with the lives and deaths of successive tenants.’ ⁵⁷⁷ Barnes, ‘Anstey Case’, passim. ⁵⁷⁸ CBA 212. ⁵⁷⁹ Cheney, ‘Litigation’, 24.

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have seen from the evidence of the St Benet’s, Holme, Spalding, and Plympton writs, all issued well before novel dissesin was instituted, the king seems already to have extended royal protection to laymen who could claim that they had been disseised unjustly. And the cut-off point, which is not shared with any of the king’s surviving procedural reforms concerning other matters, is not the only common characteristic to suggest some sort of continuity. As Mrs Cheney has demonstrated, Thomas Becket’s attempts as a new archbishop to recover Canterbury estates in accordance with the Canon Law on inalienability led to a conflict with John, hereditary marshal of the king’s court, who held a Canterbury estate at South Mundham.⁵⁸⁰ Becket had succeeded in obtaining the king’s ‘licence’ to recover estates wrongly alienated by his predecessors, or seized by laymen, despite the fact that the ‘most beautiful’ sister of the worst offender, the earl of Clare, had aroused the king’s lust.⁵⁸¹ South Mundham may have been one of the estates which Thomas allegedly took back ‘without proceedings (absque questione)’.⁵⁸² John Marshal (or possibly his father Gilbert) may have got the estate when he (or his father) had been given Bosham, which included neighbouring North Mundham, probably by Henry I.⁵⁸³ After being disseised by the archbishop, who presumably refused to accept his homage, John first came to the archbishop’s court armed with a royal writ.⁵⁸⁴ If he could prove that he (or his father) had held South Mundham in the time of Henry I, then it is difficult to see how this writ could have failed to have had the desired effect. But for whatever reason, it did fail. John then availed himself of Henry II’s novella constitutio concerning defect of justice⁵⁸⁵ to transfer his case out of the court of the person who he claimed should be his lord, the archbishop, and into the court of that lord’s lord, the king. It was heard in the opening session of the great council at Northampton, on 7 October 1164.⁵⁸⁶ But there turned out to be nothing that the king’s court could do for John because, in the words of William fitzStephen, one of the archbishop’s many biographers, writing about ten years later, John was ‘fortified by no right, as the law then stood (nullo siquidem iure munitus, quod tunc lex erat)’.⁵⁸⁷ Mrs Cheney interprets this as an allusion to a change in the law during the intervening decade which would have given the disseised John redress against the archbishop in the king’s court, had it been available to him at the time. William fitzStephen was particularly alert to legal niceties,⁵⁸⁸ and his words deserve to be ⁵⁸⁰ Ibid., passim. ⁵⁸¹ William FitzStephen, ‘Vita S. Thomae’, MTB iii. 43. ⁵⁸² Herbert of Bosham, ‘Vita S. Thomae’, ibid. 250–2, trans. by Cheney, ‘Litigation’, 13–14. ⁵⁸³ VCH: Sussex, iv. 183. ⁵⁸⁴ MTB iii. 50. ⁵⁸⁵ Anonymous I, ‘Vita S. Thomae’, MTB iv. 40–1, discussed by Cheney, ‘Litigation’, 15–16. According to Richard fitzNeal, Dialogus, 71, a novella constitutio was one made since the times of Henry I. ⁵⁸⁶ MTB iii. 49–50; iv. 41. ⁵⁸⁷ Ibid. 50; Cheney, ‘Litigation’, 17, 23. In fact, Becket fled into exile soon afterwards, and the lands of the church of Canterbury were confiscated by the king, who then returned South Mundham to John Marshal: CTB ii. no. 262; F. R. H. du Boulay, The Lordship of Canterbury (London, 1966), 361, 205, 248. ⁵⁸⁸ M. Cheney, ‘William FitzStephen and his Life of Archbishop Thomas’, in Brooke, et al. (eds.), Church and Government, 139–56.

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weighed carefully. If this interpretation is valid, then the earlier measures against disseisin which we have examined cannot, for whatever reason, have fitted John Marshal’s case. The legal change to which William fitzStephen alludes was, she suggests, a new assize on disseisin—almost certainly the assize of novel disseisin— which seems to have been in operation, at least in its supposedly ‘criminal’ form, by 1166.⁵⁸⁹ Indeed, it is probable that the new assize was devised in response to the failure of John Marshal’s case, and that it was the very public spectacle of his failure at Northampton in 1164 that made the lay barons ready to accept the new measure.⁵⁹⁰ Like John Marshal, they held subtenancies too. Becket was not the only prelate who sought to recover estates during the early years of Henry II’s reign. For instance, the bishop of Salisbury had, during Stephen’s reign, carefully prepared his ground by securing a papal privilege, evidently framed at his instigation, which declared that no prescription should run against his church, and listed all the possessions lost since the death of Henry I ‘which shall be recalled to the church’s ius et dominium’.⁵⁹¹ With Henry II’s accession, many prelates sought to act as the bishop of Salisbury had explicit and particular prospective papal sanction for doing, and as he proceeded to do with the king’s ‘licence’.⁵⁹² We have already examined some of the evidence for this.⁵⁹³ If William fitzStephen’s words have been correctly interpreted, then a very plausible case can be advanced for John Marshal’s failure in 1164 having prompted the creation of a new procedure to afford redress for disseised tenants against such action by prelates and lay barons alike. That new procedure continued a tradition initiated by the original edict or constitutio of 1158 for the protection of incumbents, and preserved in what may be subsequent, broader early measures against disseisin. Like them, it revealed the king’s concern to protect those lower down the tenurial scale from the arbitrary exercise of lordly powers by new, or newly restored, lords.⁵⁹⁴ The case of John Marshal shows why it was nevertheless acceptable to those lords. The anonymous biographer of Thomas Becket reports that the novella constitutio on defect of justice ‘did great injury to all the magnates of the kingdom, and they muttered lamentations about it’.⁵⁹⁵ If so, their mutterings must have been ambivalent, for they were tenants as well as lords, and in the former capacity they benefited from this measure as they did from those against arbitrary disseisin. The cut-off point in the king’s various measures against disseisin appears to have been of a different type to that embodied in the procedure underpinning the ‘writ of right’. In the former case, the procedures applied only to dispossessions ⁵⁸⁹ Cheney, ‘Litigation’, 22. ⁵⁹⁰ Ibid. 21. ⁵⁹¹ Holtzmann, Papsturkunden, ii. no. 54, cited by Cheney, ‘Litigation’, 19. ⁵⁹² Saltman, Theobald, charter no. 241 (19 Oct. 1157). ⁵⁹³ For more, see M. Cheney, ‘Inalienability in Mid-Twelfth-Century England: Enforcement and Consequences’, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, series C, Subsidia, vii (Vatican City, 1985), 467–78, at 469–71. ⁵⁹⁴ Hudson, LLL 256; Hudson, Formation, 127–8. ⁵⁹⁵ MTB iv. 41.

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which had happened since the specified point. Under the ‘writ of right’, however, the time of Henry I was terminated by his death, which had been followed by the tempus gwerrae. The former type of terminus extended back to a fixed point in the past, defined by the king’s movements; the latter type extended up to a fixed point in the past, defined by the death of the king’s antecessor. The template for the latter is evidently T.R.E. as defined in the Conqueror’s reign; there is no identifiable template for the former.⁵⁹⁶ Reverence for the status quo in the time of Henry I, or more precisely at his death, rapidly came to mean that no claim could overtly be based on the situation during the subsequent tempus gwerrae. Tempus gwerrae was, apparently by definition, a period of illegitimacy. The point of reference in the original edict concerning incumbency, almost certainly framed in 1158, is likely to have been strictly contemporary, as the king took precautions for his imminent absence from England. But in this and subsequent measures on disseisin it inevitably receded into the past with the passage of time. The cut-off point remained in the past even when it was intermittently updated—a process which is first recorded in 1176.⁵⁹⁷ The updatings meant, however, that the point was always fixed in the recent past. ‘The disseisin must be “novel”.’ ⁵⁹⁸ These measures did not—in practical terms, as we have seen, could not—concern themselves with the situation prior to that recent point. But they treated any contravening actions during that period as subject to reversal, so that the status quo at that prior point should be restored. Their definition of illegitimacy after the specified point was selective, by contrast with an apparently blanket one. In practice, however, as we have seen, the implications of what was established to have been the status quo at Henry I’s death could be variously interpreted. A writ which cannot be later than 1162 commands that the prior and monks of St Swithun’s, Winchester, should not, ‘on the claim of any Anglicus’, be impleaded ‘for any tenement of theirs against my statute (contra statutum meum), unless that Anglicus or his antecessor had been seised in the year and on the day that King Henry my grandfather was alive and dead, or afterwards (vel postea)’.⁵⁹⁹ Commenting on Henry’s invocation of his statutum, Galbraith suggested that the number of early writs of Henry II confirming or restoring lands to churches was so large ‘as to point to some general announcement or assize concerning seisin’.⁶⁰⁰ It would have been one of the foundations of the ‘writ of right’ procedure, and could not, therefore, have been restricted to churches. On this view, the provisions concerning Anglici in this and other writs would be specific exceptions to a general measure.⁶⁰¹ Others have argued that the statutum was not a measure concerning ⁵⁹⁶ But see Reg. nos. 42, 43; RRAN i. no. 291; ii. nos.1189, 1614, discussed above, p. 43. ⁵⁹⁷ Sutherland, Novel Disseisin, 10, shows that it was then made the date of the king’s recent return to England, in May 1175. ⁵⁹⁸ P&M ii. 51. ⁵⁹⁹ V. H. Galbraith, ‘Royal Charters to Winchester’, EHR xxxv (1920), 382–400, no. 43 (⫽ Royal Writs, no. 169; Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2936H). ⁶⁰⁰ Galbraith, ‘Winchester’, 383–4, n. 1. This seems also to be the view of van Caenegem, Royal Writs, pp. 217–18. ⁶⁰¹ Hudson, LLL 257, n. 11; Hudson, Formation, 127.

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seisin in general, but a particular one concerning pleading by Anglici, a term which by this time meant peasants.⁶⁰² No definitive resolution is possible, in the absence of the measure or measures on which these commands were based. The statutum is mentioned explicitly in none of the other writs which exempt churches from all claims to their lands other than those of Anglici who (or whose antecessores) had been seised on the day of Henry I’s death or (sometimes) afterwards.⁶⁰³ On balance, then, it would seem that, provided they fulfilled the stipulated conditions, the claims of certain Anglici were privileged over the blanket confirmation conferred by the general statutum. It is impossible to say how widespread such exceptions were—a single case is recorded in the pipe rolls⁶⁰⁴—or, therefore, to infer that they are traces of a legislative measure. But they would fit in with that royal concern to protect subtenants which we have already detected in a number of the king’s other early measures. The Dickensian pace, complexity, and expense of Richard of Anstey’s case would suggest both that there was considerable demand for royal judgement from subtenants, and vast scope for simplifying access to it. In the present regard, the interest of these writs concerning Anglici lies in their termini. Whereas that in favour of St Martin’s, Dover, not unlike the solitary case recorded in the pipe rolls, specifies only an Anglicus (or his antecessor) who was seised on the same day as the church—the day of Henry I’s death—those in favour of St Swithun’s and of St Mary’s, Worcester, add ‘or afterwards’. At least in these cases, it seems, Anglici were allowed to assert a claim on the basis of having been seised on or after the death of Henry I; but perhaps, by implication, not before.⁶⁰⁵ These two writs would suggest, then, that the special exemption of Anglici from the implications of the statutum extended back only as far as the defining point for the statutum. The terminus for the statutum is, in other words, of a different type from that for the exemption. But if that protecting Anglici is retrospective, like those found in the various royal measures against disseisin, it extends back much ⁶⁰² P. R. Hyams, Kings, Lords, and Peasants in Medieval England (Oxford, 1980), 252; Hyams, ‘Warranty’, 499–500; Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice’, 502; White, Restoration and Reform, 178–9. For the definition of Anglici, see van Caenegem, Royal Writs, p. 216. ⁶⁰³ The Cartulary of Worcester Cathedral Priory, ed. R. R. Darlington, PRS xxxviii (1968), no. 44 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 4657H) (1155 ⫻ 1157, ? 1155); Royal Writs no. 172 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1007H) (1156 ⫻ Sept. 1164, ? Jan. 1156), in favour of St Martin’s Prior, Dover, specifies the Anglicus or his antecessor being seised only on that day. ⁶⁰⁴ John fitzÆssulf claimed against William of Leathley land at Baildon, Yorks., on the grounds that his antecessor, who was an Anglicus, was seised thereof on the day and year when King Henry, the grandfather of the lord king, was alive and dead: PR 31 Henry II, 66; cf. PR 28 Henry II, 45. For a comparable, but antithetical, example, see Henry II’s writ in favour of Gilbert, abbot of Colchester, confirming him in all the lands held by his predecessor and prohibiting ‘that he be placed in a plea on account of any peasant (rusticus) who claims an inheritance’: Royal Writs no. 175 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 2897H) (1158 ⫻ Aug. 1166, ? Jan. ⫻ Aug. 1158). ⁶⁰⁵ Stenton, English Justice, 32 and Hyams, Kings, Lords, and Peasants, 252, argue that the statutum was concerned solely with seisin by Englishmen, and that it deliberately excluded the period prior to Henry I’s death in order to prevent Englishmen from trying to recover lands lost in the aftermath of the Conquest. This seems fanciful.

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further than in those measures concerned with disseisin. In these instances, it seems, the king was anxious to countenance the sort of claim which he specifically prohibited in the case of the new abbot of Colchester.⁶⁰⁶ And the use of the phrase ‘vel postea’ or ‘vel post’⁶⁰⁷ was a clever bit of obfuscation. It could, exceptionally, allow the situation in Stephen’s reign to be taken into account, but without any of the connotations of illegitimacy implicit in tempus gwerrae; or it could, by analogy with one Domesday usage,⁶⁰⁸ refer to Henry II’s own reign. A similar device is found in a number of writs of naifty which date from early in Henry’s reign, and speak of events as ‘post mortem regis Henrici avi mei’.⁶⁰⁹ Perhaps in the cases involving St Martin’s, Dover, and John fitzÆssulf, the solitary ‘English’ claimant recorded in the pipe rolls, such obfuscation was unnecessary. Whether the point of reference was the day of Henry I’s death, as in the statutum, or any time back to that day, the royal protection afforded to these plaintiffs was not short-term, in the fashion of the various measures concerning disseisin, and it was not subsequently moved. Whatever underpinned the protection accorded to Anglici may have been framed to include events in the reign of Stephen, and this was unusual. But its ultimate limit was the conventional one of the death of Henry I. In terms of periods of limitation, therefore, the measures concerning seisin were—and in the mature guise of novel disseisin, remained—the exception. Otherwise, the limitations referred to in Glanvill are all either the death of Henry I, the king’s first coronation, or a choice of the two.⁶¹⁰ They frame the reign of Stephen. It appears that a plaintiff had to make a special payment to be allowed to plead on the basis of tenure ‘a tempore regis Stephani’.⁶¹¹ That novel disseisin was the exception strengthens the reconstruction of its origins outlined above. A cut-off point selected for practical convenience, probably in 1158, lived on in adapted forms in the later action—until the king’s first coronation was (temporarily) substituted for it early in the reign of Richard I.⁶¹² What can be gleaned about Henry II’s legislation suggests that it was all, including the measures on disseisin, informed by that dependence on the king which was one of the most striking consequences of the Conquest. In the exceptional ⁶⁰⁶ Royal Writs no. 175, quoted above, n. 604. ⁶⁰⁷ Worcester Cartulary no. 44. ⁶⁰⁸ Above, p. 19. ⁶⁰⁹ Royal Writs, nos. 114 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 960H) (1155 ⫻ May 1172, ?1155 ⫻ Aug. 1158), 117 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3780H) (?1163 ⫻ Mar. 1166), 118 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 1161H, ?1163 ⫻ Mar. 1166), 119 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 3781H) (1163 ⫻ Apr. 1172), 123 (⫽ Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 483H) (1154 ⫻ Mar. 1166); cf. the charter of confirmation to Reading Abbey, which includes whatever ‘domina mea imperatrix’ had given ‘post mortem regis Henrici avi mei’: Acta of Henry II, acc. no. 4H (?1156 ⫻ May 1159). ⁶¹⁰ For the time of Henry I in Glanvill, see the writs for boundary division at ix, 14, p. 116; xii, 16, p. 144, and the writ ne vexes, xii, 10, p. 141. For the other limitations, see above, n. 597. ⁶¹¹ PR 22 Henry II, 184, cited by Hyams, ‘Warranty’, 498. ⁶¹² PRS xiv. 65; RCR i. 35–6; for details of this and subsequent updatings, see Sutherland, Novel Disseisin, 55, 215–16; P&M ii. 51; S. J. Bailey, ‘The Countess Gundred’s Lands’, Cambridge Law Journal, x (1948), 84–103, at 93, n. 58.

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case of disseisin, the defining issue was originally the king’s presence or absence from the kingdom. In every other case, it was the title by which he claimed England as his ‘right’ or his accession as king. Everyone’s title was, in the last resort, defined by reference to the king’s. This fundamental truth did not escape the acuity of the Battle chronicler. His recognition of its importance is shown by the fact that it is enunciated in the Chronicle on two occasions by Richard de Lucy, who is proudly introduced as ‘one of the most powerful barons of the kingdom’, as well, of course, as Abbot Walter’s brother.⁶¹³ In May 1157, by when Richard was co-justiciar with Robert, earl of Leicester, he reportedly told the king at a meeting of the court held at Colchester that Battle Abbey should be revered by Henry and by all Normans as ‘your chapel and the emblem of your royal crown’,⁶¹⁴ because it was built on the very spot where the renowned King William, by the will of God and with the aid and counsel of our kinsmen, overcame his foes, who sought to deprive him of the realm and crown of England. There he acquired the realm and crown for himself and for his successors. All the people of this realm rejoice that through closeness of consanguinity to him and by hereditary right you now reign on his throne, while we possess abundant possessions and riches through the benefices which he conferred, and by succession to our kinsmen.⁶¹⁵

Richard is made to reiterate the point more epigrammatically sometime in the mid-1170s, by when, following Robert of Leicester’s death, he was chief justiciar and, according to a source less partisan than the Battle Chronicle, was described by the king himself as ‘de Lucy the loyal’.⁶¹⁶ His brother Walter’s successor, Abbot Odo, approached Henry for a renewal of the Conqueror’s foundation charter, which was ‘decayed with age’. Richard advised the king that he should renew the charter: ‘Even if all [the abbey’s] charters perished, all of us should be its charters, for by the conquest at Battle we were all enfeoffed.’⁶¹⁷ It is peculiarly appropriate that this incisive and perceptive characterization of the relationship between king and barons consequent on the Conquest should be placed in the mouth of Richard de Lucy. Richard first appears in England as a tenant-in-chief under Henry I.⁶¹⁸ He had been an important royal official during Stephen’s reign.⁶¹⁹ He was able to draw on this experience when entrusted with a more central role than anyone—with the arguable exception of Archbishop Theobald—in the peaceful administration of the kingdom during the interregnum which followed Stephen’s death.⁶²⁰ He was the sole witness—and therefore quite possibly the ⁶¹³ CBA 142. ⁶¹⁴ CBA 178. ⁶¹⁵ CBA 182 (I have followed almost verbatim the translation in Holt, ‘Revolution of 1066’, CE 173); Richard makes the same points less grandiloquently at 178. ⁶¹⁶ Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedicti Abbatis, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., RS (London, 1867), i. 124. ⁶¹⁷ CBA 310. ⁶¹⁸ Liber Feodorum: The Book of Fees commonly called Testa de Nevill, ed. H. C. Maxwell Lyte, 3 vols. (London, 1920–31), i. 135; cf. RRAN ii. nos. 1688, 1698. ⁶¹⁹ RRAN iii. p. xxiv; J. A. Green, ‘Financing Stephen’s War’, ANS xiv (1991), 91–114, at 113. ⁶²⁰ Above, pp. 277, 280, 297.

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draftsman—of Henry II’s coronation charter. In its terse way, this established a policy for the reign which implicitly rejected the terms of the deal under which Henry had succeeded, and began the process whereby Stephen’s reign, like that of Harold II before him, would be excised from history. Finally, as ‘the most powerful man in the kingdom, or rather the praefectus of England, who, under the king, administered the affairs of the kingdom’,⁶²¹ Richard is certain to have been a key participant in those ‘many wakeful nights’ imagined by Bracton. We know that he was among ‘the oldest and wisest magnates’ whom the king summoned to Clarendon in January 1164 to establish the laws and customs of his grandfather’s reign, subsequently embodied in the Constitutions of Clarendon. Indeed, we have Thomas Becket’s word for it that Richard was one of those who drafted the Constitutions.⁶²² Whereas Becket referred to him as ‘that odious man’,⁶²³ he was one of a very select band of authorities invoked by whoever wrote Glanvill.⁶²⁴ There is, of course, no other evidence that Richard ever voiced the view of the consequences of the Conquest which, according to the Battle Chronicle, he repeatedly expressed to the king. But the cut-off points adopted in the new procedures which he must have helped to devise are revealing of the degree to which those procedures were shaped by the truth embodied in that view. When the ‘time’ of the king’s antecessor or of the king’s first coronation were not used, his Channel crossings were. If his accession as king, or the final earthly moments of the king as whose successor he claimed to have acceded, were inappropriate as defining points of legitimacy, then his own physical departure from (or later, return to) his kingdom might be a substitute. In the variant of novel disseisin which operated in the duchy of Normandy, by revealing contrast, the issue was whether the plaintiff had been disseised since the last harvest.⁶²⁵ In Normandy, ‘[e]very one knows who it was that garnered the last crop’.⁶²⁶ In England, it seems, the king’s presence or absence was more noticeable, because more important, than the very cycle of the seasons. That was hardly surprising, given what depended on him in England, ultimately as a consequence of the Conquest. With the ‘writ of right’, the king’s title ostensibly provided the framework for the settlement of a certain type of tenurial dispute. Even when, in the case of novel disseisin and its antecedents, such fundamental definitions would have been unworkable, it was the king’s physical presence in his kingdom which sprang to mind as the most obvious point of reference. The unique role of the king in England, consequent on the justification of the Conquest, thereby became intrinsic to what would later be termed the common law at its very inception. In this new guise, William the Conqueror’s claim continued to influence the development of the tenurial system which it had engendered, even as the common law slowly transformed that system. ⁶²¹ GC i. 241. ⁶²² C&S ii. 878; CTB i. nos. 79, 80. ⁶²³ CTB i. no. 43. ⁶²⁴ Glanvill, vii. 3, p. 78; cf. pp. xliii–xlvii. ⁶²⁵ ‘Tres ancien coutumier’, caps. 7, 16–19, 21, 23, 57, Coutumiers de Normandie, i. 7, 18–23, 46–8; Haskins, Norman Institutions, 189. ⁶²⁶ P&M ii. 51.

Afterthoughts The cause of this phenomenon, although it may seem somewhat distorted and strained in the king’s interest, you will find to be plain and just enough according to the laws of the country ( patrias leges). Richard fitzNeal, Dialogus de Scaccario¹

The inability of Henry II, like his Norman predecessors on the English throne, to conceive of royal authority in anything other than personal terms was summed up by F.W. Maitland in a characteristic aphorism: ‘the only king known to the law is a natural person.’² The resolutely un-abstract conception of royal authority, and by extension, of all tenure,³ which we have seen underpinned the legal reforms of Henry II’s reign, thereby became embedded in English common law from the very beginning. This was what Maitland meant by the ‘certain thoughtlessness or poverty of ideas’ which, in his view, the Conquest had ‘facilitated’.⁴ The implications for the development of English law are not the subject of this book. But enough has been said to demonstrate that the solution devised in 1153 to the problems of royal succession consequent on the Conquest did not—could not— solve more fundamental problems, inherent in the tenurial system which was itself shaped by the way in which the Conquest had been justified. Nor could the slow, painful formulation of that incoherent abstraction, the Crown,⁵ or, immediately after King Richard’s death in 1199, the attribution to John prior to his coronation of the titles dux⁶ or dominus dux⁷ and dominus Angliae⁸ in the rolls of the king’s court, and the swearing of the ‘peace of the lord king’ while he was still only duke.⁹ In the case of the Crown, it had proved impossible, for reasons I have explored elsewhere, to sustain in practice the un-abstract definition of royal authority. In the case of the interregnum of 1199, a recent innovation in ¹ II, xvi, p. 113. FitzNeal is explaining the exceptional right of the king to recover a debt from the land or goods of a debtor, even if the debtor has sold them after incurring his debt. But the comment might be taken as a more general reflection on the anomalous character of the king in post-Conquest England. ² P&M i. 522. ³ Garnett, ‘Crown’, passim. ⁴ O. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, trans. and intro. F. W. Maitland (Cambridge, 1900), p. x. ⁵ Garnett, ‘Crown’, passim. ⁶ RCR i. pp. lxxxvi, 222, 224, 288, 290, 349, 352; cf. ii. pp. i–iv, 121, 244, 270: ‘tempore quando dominus Rex fuit Dux Normanniae nondum Rex.’ ⁷ RCR i. 266, 274, 280, 285, 305, 324, 325, 361. ⁸ RCR i. pp. lxxxviii–xc, 307, 309, 311, 314, 343. ⁹ CRR i. 267, 384, 437, 440; Select Pleas of the Crown, ed. F. W. Maitland, Selden Soc., i (1888), 40: ‘after the peace of the lord king, then duke of Normandy and lord of England, was sworn.’

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record-keeping¹⁰ presented the bureaucratic instinct for precision with a (probably) unaccustomed challenge: in whose name was royal jurisdiction exercised when there was no king? Perhaps the royal clerks followed a precedent set by Richard, who had adopted the style ‘dominus Anglorum et dux Normannorum et Aquitanorum et comes Andegavorum’ between his father’s death on 6 July 1189 and his coronation on 3 September.¹¹ In neither case was the solution satisfactory; and these solutions left untouched the more fundamental problems, which were intrinsic to the dependent structure of tenure created by the Conquest. These deep-seated problems endured, as Magna Carta demonstrated in its attempt to address some of them. They preserved conquered England as a European anomaly. It had already been so before the Conquest, on account of the precocity of its governmental system. It became doubly so afterwards, because its lord king was now himself an anomaly within the tenurial system which the Conqueror’s claim had shaped, and which therefore depended on him. It was the Conqueror’s attempt to appropriate the English past which provided the tenurial template for the most powerful royal lordship in early medieval Europe. That the justification of William’s claim to the kingdom of England became also the justification of his men’s claim to their lands, created the fundamental flaw in English feudalism. According to the Battle Chronicle, Henry II’s chief justiciar, Richard de Lucy, had perceived this truth;¹² but it is clear from the Chronicle’s reports of Richard’s repeated perorations on the subject that the chronicler considered it a strength to be vaunted, not a weakness. Thomas Hobbes’s more pessimistic assessment in ‘A Review, and Conclusion’ of Leviathan, quoted at the outset of this book, is much closer to the mark. Up to this point in his argument, Hobbes had said very little about ‘Dominion acquired by Conquest’.¹³ Now he sought to define it. Indeed, it provided him with his only empirical example of the creation of a commonwealth, since a commonwealth by institution, as opposed to one by conquest, was by definition purely analytical. The example he explores in detail is the Norman Conquest of England.¹⁴ In his view, the act of conquest itself ‘DISSOLVED’ the previously existing ‘Commonwealth’, because the subjects were no longer afforded protection.¹⁵ A new one was ¹⁰ Brand, ‘Multis vigiliis’, 95, and Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 96–7, adduce inconclusive evidence that the practice may have begun in Henry II’s reign, when Richard de Lucy was chief justiciar; but the first extant roll dates from 1194. ¹¹ Round, Ancient Charters, no. 55. ¹² CBA 178, 182, 310, discussed above, p. 351. ¹³ Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (London, 1651), ch. 20, p. 104, cf. ch. 29, p. 174. ¹⁴ Ibid., pp. 391–2; passing reference is also made to Roman practice. He asserts, ch. 19, p. 95, that ‘he that had the Soveraignty from a descent of 600 years, was alone called Soveraign . . .’; cf. Behemoth, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. W. Molesworth, 11 vols. (London, 1839–45), vi. 165–6. The ‘Review, and Conclusion’ was designed, at least in part, to prepare the ground for Hobbes’s return to England from political exile in France. On the basis of the book’s argument, it signalled to the Commonwealth regime his willingness to submit to the new sovereign. The ‘Review, and Conclusion’ is not found in the Latin translation of Leviathan. ¹⁵ Leviathan, p. 174.

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created not by the victory of the conqueror, but by the submission of the conquered. The submission of the English had therefore marked the ‘Generation’ of a new ‘Common-wealth’; but in this case the ‘Generation’ had been ‘Imperfect’. Rather than simply accepting that ‘the Right of Soveraignty’ had been ‘acquired, in the peoples Submission’, attempts were made to justify the Conquest. The right of the Conqueror and of all subsequent kings of England was grounded ‘on the goodnesse of the cause of William the Conqueror, and upon their lineall, and directest Descent from him’.¹⁶ This mistake created a potentially fatal weakness in the English kingdom: ‘the want of an Absolute and Arbitrary Legislative Power.’ If the right of successive English kings was deemed to depend on the justice of the Conquest ‘by which their Power was at first gotten . . . and not on the Possession’, then there would ‘perhaps’ be no obligation on subjects to obey the ‘Soveraign’. The justness of the Conqueror’s claim could be contested; and the emphasis on justification, which was in Hobbes’s view so catastrophically misconceived, would serve to ‘justifie all the successefull Rebellions that Ambition shall at any time after raise against them, and their Successors’. On this basis, subjects might break the promise of obedience in which their submission—the conqueror’s ‘Right of Soveraignty’—consisted. One of Hobbes’s principal objectives in Leviathan had been to exclude any possibility of a contractual relationship between sovereign and subjects. But in this instance he slips into saying that by their submission a conquered people severally ‘contract with the Victor’. ‘[E]ach particular’¹⁷ might revoke his contract. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is because Hobbes is thinking of the conquest of England. Perhaps because Hobbes presents this paragraph as an afterthought concerning ‘the causes of Dissolutions of Common-wealths’, in the closing pages of his great book, he does not here explain how the justification of the Conquest might in turn make it possible to justify rebellion against the king of England. The ‘Review, and Conclusion’ was designed primarily to reassure the new regime in England that Hobbes, despite his royalist background, represented no threat, and therefore to facilitate his return from exile. It was for this reason that he laid such stress on the absence of any need to justify a new sovereign; indeed, on the dangers inherent in such justification. This very particular purpose means that he does not explore the wider implications of his argument, and they have to be teased out. But elsewhere in Leviathan he asserts that it was ‘manifest’ after the Conquest that all estates were held ‘as of the Victors distribution; as the people of England held all theirs of William the Conquerour’.¹⁸ He would later make much the same point, with respect to the conquerors as well as the conquered, in A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student, of the Common Laws of England: And was not all the Land in England once in the hands of William the Conqueror? Sir Edw. Coke himself confesses it; therefore it is an universal truth, that all Conquer’d Lands, ¹⁶ Ibid., p. 391.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 104.

¹⁸ Ibid., ch. 24, p. 128.

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presently after Victory, are the Lands of him that Conquer’d them . . . It cannot therefore be denyed but that Lands which William the Conqueror gave away to English-men and others, and which they now hold by his Letters Patents, and other conveyances, were properly, and really his own, or else the Titles of them that now hold them must be invalid.¹⁹

All landholders succeeded to the titles of their ancestors. Ultimately, those titles depended on that of the king who, by right of conquest, had enjoyed sole title, and had originally distributed the land. The titles of landholders were therefore only as good as William the Conqueror’s—a point which, as we have seen, William of Malmesbury had put in William Rufus’s mouth, when the king was persuading Roger de Montgommery to remain loyal to him in 1088.²⁰ For William Rufus, this had meant that tenants-in-chief would be unwise to contest his title, because they would, thereby, also contest their own. But as Hobbes recognized, the dependence on the Conqueror’s claim would become a two-edged sword if attempts were made to justify the Conquest, rather than simply accepting it as an inscrutable fact. The official historical justification could be disputed; ‘Approbation of all [a conqueror’s] actions past’ could be denied or rescinded. Then the Conqueror could be shown to have had no ‘Right’ which ‘is all Descended to our present king’;²¹ and rebels could attempt to justify their actions with a competing interpretation of the past. If their titles did not after all depend ultimately on the Conqueror, they might be shown to have a quite different foundation, independent of the king. The attempt to justify the Conquest by establishing continuity with the English past when, in Hobbes’s view, conquest by definition dissolved the previous ‘Common-wealth’, opened up the possibility that rebellious subjects might also look back to pre-Conquest England in order to justify themselves. Clearly Hobbes had a recent rebellion in mind, and there is no sign that barons in twelfth-century England ever articulated a view that their estates were held independent of the king, violently though they many of them jibbed, from time to time, against the implications of their dependence on him. In any case, it would have been literally inconceivable for them to have sought to justify such a view by reference to the Old English past. At least until the end of the twelfth century, any conception of what might anachronistically be termed an ancient constitution was the invention of kings, not barons.²² But baronial scepticism about some of the more fanciful claims to legitimacy made on behalf of their kings is evident in, for instance, William of Malmesbury’s account of Henry I’s barons calling the king and his queen Godric and Godgifu. This was a snide gibe at Henry’s attempt to exploit his marriage to a collateral descendant of the house of Cerdic. ¹⁹ ed. A. Cromartie, in T. Hobbes, Writings on Common Law and Hereditary Right, ed. A. Cromartie and Q. Skinner, Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, xi (Oxford, 2005), 136–7. ²⁰ GR i. 546, quoted above, p. 5. Sadly, I can find no evidence that Hobbes had read this earlier denizen of Malmesbury. ²¹ Dialogue, ed. Cromartie, 25. ²² Holt, ‘Constitutional Tradition’, passim.

Afterthoughts

357

It expressed the intimidated contempt felt by some barons for such specious pretentions.²³ For once, they had the confidence to speak openly because early in Henry’s reign his days seemed numbered in the light of Robert Curthose’s recent resumption of control in Normandy. The king had the self-control to bide his time: ‘in politic silence he let the crazy attacks of fools expend themselves, concealing his resentment under a mask of courtesy, but ready to strike back hard when the time should come.’²⁴ And although William Rufus had succeeded in persuading Roger de Montgommery to remain faithful to him against Robert Curthose in 1088, others of his barons had patently not been convinced. In any case, Rufus’s argument, according to William of Malmesbury, had had nothing to do with establishing tendentious connections with pre-Conquest England. Rather, it derived much of its force from the fact that the Conqueror had chosen him to succeed. Subsequent kings could advance no such claim. As we have seen in the cases of Henry I and Stephen, their claims to the kingdom were contested, and not just by other claimants. Moreover, Hobbes’s perception of a potential weakness at the heart of the official justification of the Conquest, and therefore of its role in the legitimation of tenure, may have been shared by a twelfth-century author. As we have seen, the Battle chronicler was acutely conscious that he was writing on the very spot where the Conquest had happened. He presented the Conquest as a new beginning, and said almost nothing about the details of William’s claim to succeed Edward the Confessor.²⁵ He thereby developed what seems already to have been an incipient historiographical tradition at Battle Abbey. Much earlier in the twelfth century, the Battle monk who wrote the Brevis Relatio changed his mind about his original rubric for the work. He deleted his initial, conventional reference to the hereditary right of ‘William, the most noble comes of the Normans’, and stressed only the Conqueror’s acquisition of the English kingdom ‘by arms’, jointly with the army he had taken over with him.²⁶ This may have been the first implicit acknowledgement of the dangers inherent in the fiction of continuity with the Old English past. That fiction had already razed Old England almost as comprehensively as the Norman regime had replaced the Old English cathedrals and many abbeys with Romanesque churches in the latest continental fashion. The precariousness of the new tenurial system which was founded on that fiction had political consequences which long outlasted the solution devised in 1153 to one striking manifestation of that precariousness: the problem of interregna which were nasty, brutish, and short. Although Hobbes made no comment on the nature of post-Conquest interregna, he was characteristically perceptive about the origins of some of those enduring political consequences: they lay in the justification of the Conquest. For Hobbes, the need for such an historical ²³ GR i. 716. ²⁴ GR i. 716. ²⁵ CBA 66, refers to it only in the first sentence of the main Chronicle; cf. the shorter text, 22. ²⁶ BR 18, 25, n. a. The change is made in the same hand. I do not agree with the editor that it must have been made between 1120 and 1135.

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justification was dangerous: it was ‘one of the most effectuall seeds of the Death of any State’. In truth, ‘there is scarce a Common-wealth in the world, whose beginnings can in conscience be justified’.²⁷ While Hobbes may be as right about this as he is about the consequences of the justification of the Conquest, no one in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and quite possibly no one else in the seventeenth century, would have been capable of thinking it. That is why Duke William’s claim to the kingdom of England was fabricated, with the consequences which have been the subject of this book. The last word should go to the king himself. In 1069, probably at Easter, ‘in the royal town which in the English tongue is called Guerith [Winchester]’, he granted ‘the land which in English is called Harmondsworth’ to the abbey of La Trinité-du-Mont, Rouen.²⁸ As was common practice, the grant was symbolized by the king giving a knife. Obviously he could not lay it on the altar of the abbey church, so it was to be handed over to the abbot. It is in this connection that I have already cited William’s charter, which survives only in a cartulary copy, but a cartulary copy made very soon after the charter was issued, in the late eleventh century.²⁹ The charter records that the king pretended, ‘in jocular fashion’, that he was going to stab the knife through the abbot’s outstretched palm. ‘That’s the way land ought to be given’, he is reported to have said, probably in the ‘raucous voice’ recalled by one obituarist.³⁰ He seems greatly to have relished his own sense of humour; according to William of Malmesbury, ‘it was his practice deliberately to use . . . oaths, so that the mere roar of his open mouth might somehow strike terror into the minds of his audience’.³¹ Unsurprisingly, the shocked nobles around the king remembered this incident, and therefore the grant, well. It was a rare example of the mask slipping, or rather, of the king lifting it voluntarily. What William had conquered by violence, he could—indeed, according to him on this occasion, should—grant out violently. If this incident may be interpreted as a unique acknowledgement on the part of the king himself that the Conquest could not ‘in conscience be justified’, it was amusing—to William, at least—precisely because it exposed, for once, the brutal reality which was otherwise concealed in ceremonial and legal proprieties. Even when the Old English ceremonial forms were preserved, their meaning had, for the most part, been transformed. A particularly striking and pertinent example is the current Old English coronation ordo, which was used to make Duke William king, although, as we have seen, it had never been so used for any earlier English king.³² ²⁷ Leviathan, ‘A Review, and Conclusion’, p. 392. ²⁸ Reg. no. 232. Bates shows that some aspects of the document suggest possible later interpolation, and therefore cast doubt on the reliability of the comment attributed to the king. But La-Trinité is recorded as holding Harmondsworth in Domesday Book, and the cartulary is late 11th-century. ²⁹ Above, p. 70. ³⁰ GND ii. 188, discussed above, p. 169. ³¹ GR i. 510; cf. i. 700, for the disparaging nickname he coined for his eldest son, discussed above, p. 164. ³² Garnett, ‘Third Recension’, 65–71; for Old English kings being kings long before their coronations, see above, p. 2.

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359

I have tried to show that the scrupulous maintenance of the veil of propriety had consequences more profound and disruptive for the English kingdom than even Thomas Hobbes recognized. For instance, he did not see that a purely personal royal lordship, with no conception of what he would term abstract ‘Soveraignty’, was one of those consequences. The veil of propriety had these consequences because it was designed to conceal change, to pretend that the Old English kingdom continued as usual. By doing so, and exploiting the existing governmental structures to implement the Conquest, the kingdom was in truth so changed that Hobbes was quite justified in his implicit characterization of 1066 as the ‘Imperfect Generation’ of the English ‘Common-wealth’.³³

³³ Leviathan, p. 391.

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Index Abingdon Abbey 328, 333 abbot of 287 confirmation grant by Stephen to 194 n. 489, 250 n. 988 tenants of 20 treatment of during vacancy 52 Abingdon History 64, 85, 336 Adam the Cellarer 303, 314 Adam of Damerham (Domerham) 92 Adela, wife of Richard III, duke of Normandy 147 n. 95 Adelaide, uterine sister of William I 153 n. 138 Adelelm, abbot of Abingdon 85 Adelelm, abbot of La Chaise-Dieu 175 Adeliza, sister of Duke Richard III and Duke Robert the Magnificent 150 Adeliza of Louvain, queen; wife of Henry I, and of William d’Aubigny 210 n. 616, 212–13, 232, 291, 309 Adrian IV, pope 340 Ælfwine, abbot of Ramsey 14 n. 114 Ælfwine, bishop of Winchester 35 Ærngrim 89 n. 314 Æthelmær, bishop of Elmham 20 Æthelred (II) ‘Unraed’, king of England 2 charters of 2 coronation of 2 n. 11 Æthelric, bishop of Selsey 17–18 Æthelstan, king of England 2 forged charter of 72 n. 213 Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham appointment of 22, 25 n. 191 as custodian of Winchcombe Abbey 21 death of 57, 87 and n. 302 his homines 88–9 as a lawyer 17 vita of 88, 92 writ summoning him to do military service 58 Ailric 20 and n. 152, 68 n. 189 Alan, count, of Brittany (Richmond) 28 n. 210, 71 n. 210 Alan (III), earl of Richmond 339–40 Alençon 187 Alexander, bishop of Lincoln 242, 243 n. 923 Alexander II, pope 10 n. 76, 17 authority of invoked 35 Alexander of Swerford 279 Alexandria 295 Alfred atheling murder of 7 n. 46

Alfred, king of the West Saxons will of 2 Alfred Greslet 86 n. 295 Alfred, son of Judhael of Totnes 198 n. 521 Alfweard 66 Alice, widow of Ilbert de Lacy 324 Alnoth Cild 42 alodium 229 n. 214, 62 n. 135, 69 n. 195 not found in genuine Old English documents 28 and n. 212 in Normandy 46–7, 74, 102, 113 see also bookland Ailric Bolest 20 Alton Priors (Hants.) 67, 286 see also settlement of 1101 Alvered the Small 287 Alvric of Brochelea 287 n. 165 Alwin the Rat 72 n. 210 Amaury de Montfort 198 n. 523 Ambrières 223 n. 746 Amesbury (Wilts.) 313 abbess of 340, 341 Anastasius IV, pope 276 Angers, church of St-Maurice 207 n. 593 Anglici 348–50 Anschetil de Ros 86 n. 295 Anseis, tenant of Nigel d’Aubigny 103 n. 396 Anselm, St., abbot of Bec; archbishop of Canterbury 264 n. 14 accepts anointing of Henry I by bishop of London 137, 264 n. 17 ‘alive and dead’ 123 n. 508 appointment as abbot 50 appointment as archbishop 53, 61–3, 85 n. 287, 119, 121, 188 n. 445 attends Easter Council at St Peter’s, Rome (1099) 48, 124 author of Lanfranc’s epitaph 41 becomes Rufus’s man in 1093 48, 121, 132, 209 n. 611 concern about Rufus’s filling of Canterbury subtenancies 116 n. 471, 121–2, 125 disputes with Rufus and Henry I 48, 192 exile in 1097 124 treated as quasi-vacancy 124 n. 513 investigates legitimacy of marriage of Henry I and Matilda 234 as mediator 276 n. 94 ‘nod’ of 124

380

Index

Anselm, St., abbot of Bec (cont.) only turns over in bed when instructed by Eadmer 44 his perceptiveness, according to Eadmer 47 pontifical made for viii n. 1 prayer for the filling of the vacant archbishopric 53 promotes loyalty to Henry I 205–6 recognition of Urban II as pope 129–30 refuses to do homage to Henry I 124 returns abbatial staff to Bec 50 returns archiepiscopal ring and staff to the king 50 returns to England after Henry I’s accession 124, 191 n. 471 sets preconditions for becoming archbishop 121 similitudo of 72 use of hominium in his letters 78 n. 243 what he tries to take from Rufus 133 Anselm of St Saba, papal legate 133 n. 568 Ansfrid, abbot of St-Pierre de Préaux 47 n. 15 Ansgar the Staller 26 men of 27 n. 203 Ansketil, tenant of Peterborough Abbey 67 n. 185 Ansketil of Cossington, tenant of Glastonbury Abbey 93 antecessor 35, 24, 29, 43, 57, 69, 113–14, 116, 127–9, 134, 194, 223–4 n. 756, 256, 261, 263, 273, 338 clerical 73, 121 n. 497, 126–7 date of death of 123 and n. 508, 127–8 see also Domesday Book; land pleas of William I Argentan 223 Arles, second Council of (451) 38 n. 279 Arnold, bishop of Le Mans 161 Arnold, son of Giroie 176 n. 343 Arnost, bishop of Rochester 47, 60 Arnulf fitzPeter 328 Arnulf of Hesdin 21 n. 163 Arnulf de Mandeville 226, 321 n. 406 Arnulf of Séez 231 n. 824, 232, 234–5, 239–40 Arundel (Suss.) 309 Ascelin 102 n. 392, 189–90 Asketil, brother of Brand, abbot of Peterborough 22 n. 170 Astronomer, Vita Hludowici Imperatoris 168–9 Aubrey, earl of Northumbria 25 n. 199 Aubrey de Grandmesnil 172 n. 304 Aubrey de Vere (III), earl of Oxford 226–9, 257, 321–2 Augi, antecessor of William de Warenne 28 n. 209 Avigi 21 n. 162

Awre (Glos.) 319 n. 388 Azor, dispensator of Edward the Confessor 68, 84, 86 Baildon (Yorks.) 349 n. 604 Baldwin II, king of Jerusalem 212 Baldwin, abbot of Bury St Edmunds 3, 14 n. 114 confirmed in lands by Rufus 123 n. 509 creates subtenants at the king’s instigation 67 ordered to hand over land of men who died in battle 20 Baldwin fitzGilbert 237, 239 Baldwin de Meulles 197 Baldwin de Redvers 196–9, 223, 237 Banwell (Som.) 11 n. 79, 42 n. 304 Barling (Ess.) 128 n. 532 Barnhorn (Suss.) 301, 328, 333–4 Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter 342 Battersea (Surr.) 11, 13 Battle Abbey 333–5, 341, 351 Brevis Relatio written at 39, 357 grievance with Hilary, bishop of Chichester 297, 300 n. 251, 301, 328, 333 n. 511 possessions made up of lands of many antecessores 73 Battle Chronicle during vacancy 73, 341 on the Conquest 4 on grievance with Gilbert de Balliol 301–2 kings not bound by acts of predecessors 307–8 on Council of London (Lent 1155) 326–7 on return to the days of Henry I promised by Henry II 300 Richard de Lucy quoted in 4, 351, 354 on shipping laws of Henry II 329 n. 472 on William I’s penitential gifts 179 Bayeux Tapestry Ælgyva in 40 n. 294 Harold king in 10 possible grant of regalia to Harold in 180 Beaulieu de Chartres, hospital of 254–5 Bec Abbey 50, 221 n. 729 Beccles (Suff.) 307 Bedford castle of 201 church of 257, 312 n. 332 Bellême 187 Benedict X, antipope 34 beneficium 62 n. 135 in England 77 in Normandy 46–7 and n. 15, 74, 150 and n. 122 and societas of church of St-Martin de Sées 49 succession to, in Normandy 55

Index Bengeworth (Worcs.) 90 Beohrtsige 20 Beorhtwine 29 n. 214 Berengar de Tosny 80 Berkhamsted (Herts.) 1, 76 n. 235 Berkeley (Glos.) 255 n. 1034 Bermondsey (Surr.) Christmas court at (1154) 300 Priory 260, 291–2, 312 n. 332 Bernard, abbot of Ramsey 126 n. 525 Bexhill (Suss.) 333 n. 511 Biddlesden Abbey 255 n. 1030, 260, 292 Bidford (Warks.) 246, 308 n. 306 Binham Priory 210 n. 622 Bishop’s Sutton (Hants.) 305–6, 310 Blewbury (Oxon.) 254 Bonhunt (Ess.) 251 bookland 28–9, 31, 78–9 see also alodium Bordesley Abbey 220, 246, 248 n. 972, 255 n. 1029, 291, 308 Bracton 99–100, 331 Brand, abbot of Peterborough 21 breve de recto 331–8, 340 acquires specific purpose 334, 345 meaning of rectum 332–4 precursors under Henry I and Stephen 331–2 ‘right’ linked to landholding on the day that Henry I was ‘alive and dead’ 335–8, 341, 349, 352 Stephen’s reign as tempus gwerrae 337–8, 348, 350 see also Henry II, legal reforms Brevis Relatio 357 on homage of William Adelin to Louis VI 208 on Lanfranc 39–40, 41 see also Battle Abbey Brian, count of Brittany 25 n. 196 Brian fitzCount 209, 213, 217, 233, 237–9 Brictmer 27 n. 203 Brihtric, thegn of Queen Edith 26 n. 203 Bristol 215, 243, 248, 260–1, 292, 312 n. 332 Brockenhurst (Hants.) 287 Burchard of Worms 9 n. 69, 37 and n. 265 see also Law, Canon Burford (Oxon.) 317 n. 381 Burton Abbey 333–5 see also Nigel, abbot of Burton; Orme, tenant of Burton Bury, abbey of St Edmund 21, 73, 128–9, 307, 332 Anselm, abbot of 129 n. 535 election of Robert, illegitimate son of Hugh d’Avranches 192 Caen, abbey of St-Étienne 160 n. 212, 190

381

William’s regalia deposited there 167 n. 275, 179 Caerleon 196 Calixtus II, pope 207, 264 n. 14 Canterbury, archbishop of, anoints king 38 archbishop of, as lord of the bishop of Rochester 59 Christ Church 14, 16 escheats to Rufus in 1097 124 seised of land 121 n. 498 vacancy of, in 1093 52–3 Collectio Lanfranci imported to 35 primacy of 33 Carlisle, church of 73 n. 219 Catlidge (Ess.) 251 Celestine II, pope 263 ‘Chad’, ‘bishop’ of York 36 Charlemagne, king of the Franks, emperor 169 Charles, count of Flanders 198 n. 523 Charles the Bald, king of the West Franks; emperor 168, 169 n. 282 Charles the Simple, king of the West Franks 142–3 Charter of the Forest (1217) 314 Chastleton (Oxon.) 90 n. 319 Châtillon-sur-Colmont 223 n. 746 Cherbourg, church of Notre-Dame 72 n. 211 Chinon 305, 317 n. 381 Chintila, king of Visigothic Spain 37–8 Cirencester, church of 194 n. 490, 255 Cîteaux 308 Clarendon 301, 305, 334 Assize and Council of (1166) 331 n. 489, 343–4 Constitutions of 331, 352 Clement III, antipope 36, 130 Clermont, Council of (1095) 60, 206 Cluny Abbey 290–1, 305–6 Cnut, king of England in Domesday Book 11 n. 94 laws of 12, 106 on heriots 112 undertakes to keep Edgar’s laws 12 Colchester (Ess.) 297, 323 n. 430, 351 Coleman, author of lost Life of Wulfstan 34 Collectio Lanfranci 35 absence of investitura, investire from 64, 72 absence of saisire from 72 Eadmer familiar with 36 Lanfranc’s personal copy 35 n. 254, 36 marginal marks in Lanfranc’s copy 35–6, 137 n. 11 multiple copies made 39 scribe of one Hereford copy also writes the Holme Lacy chirograph 94 n. 351 ownership inscription in Lanfranc’s copy 39 see also Law, Canon; Lanfranc

382

Index

Cologne, archbishop of 221 n. 729 Colstan 335 Conan, duke of Brittany; earl of Richmond 333 Concordat of Worms (1122) 207 Congresbury (Som.) 11 n. 79, 42 n. 304 conveyance by means of an episcopal staff 70 by means of a knife 70 coronation ordo ‘second’ English viii and nn. 1, 2, 358 ‘third’ English viii n. 1, 358 Cotentin 191 homage of Henry to Robert Curthose for 181 Cotes (Leics.) 333 courts coronation ‘edict’ of Henry I addressed to 105 of hundred 17, 24 n. 190, 68 of shire 17, 68 see also Henry II, legal reforms Crishall (Ess.) 310 Danegeld possible role of in the redemption of land 23 n. 184, 79 renounced by Henry II 285 David I, king of the Scots 230–1, 235, 291 n. 187 De Obitu Willelmi 158 n. 186, 167–70, 175, 179 designation of Curthose in 169, 176 Depden (Suff.) 251 Devizes (Wilts.) 258, 276–8 diffidatio see homage Diss (Norf.) 311 n. 330 Domesday Book 12, 285 n. 153 adgarant/Gaurant in 71 n. 210 antecessores in 24–33, 45 see also antecessor charter used to ‘deliver’ land 68 Cheshire 85 circuit I 28 circuit VI 31 clamores/invasiones/terrae occupatae in 31 commendation in 28 commissioners 29, 69 custos in 110 and n. 443 dator in 68 n. 191 Edwardian documents as a basis for 16–17, 70 exchange/escambium in 79 famulus in 68 n. 191 on Harold 18–19 homage in 80 n. 263. homo in 68 n. 191 legatus in 68 nn. 191, 192 Liber Exoniensis 31, 59, 67 n. 179, 72 n. 210 liberator/saisitor 66–9, 71–2 Geoffrey of Coutances as 70 Ivo Taillebois as 71 n. 210 king vouched as 68

not mentioned in gifts to churches 73 see also s.v. libera terra in 72 n. 212 not an objective record of fact 41 nuncius in 68 n. 191 ‘postea’ in 19 ‘relief ’ (⫽heriot) in 56 scribe, main 69 n. 195 seise/saisire in 65, 69 and n. 195, 71 Shropshire 85 soke in 29 stenographers 69 subtenants in 85–6 successor in 32 tenants-in-chief in 85–6 testimony potential, of king 72 n. 210 of hundredal jury 67 and n. 186, 68 and n. 189, 79, 80, 85 of Thorkel and Edric 72 n. 210 vernacular 18 n. 144, 31, 69 n. 195 terms of reference of 18 T.R.E. 12, 17–18, 26, 123, 125, 249, 348 on King William 18, 24 ‘writings’ presented to William I 84 see also Edward the Confessor, ‘time’ of Domfront 223 Dover (Kent) 277 n. 98 castellany of 270–1, 309 church of St Martin 42, 349–50 Drax (Yorks.) 284, 287 Drogo fitzPoyntz 86 n. 295 Dudo of St-Quentin as ‘cancellarius’ 144 on dangers of interregna 185–6 on ducal designation ceremonies 9, 181, 186 on Rollo’s submission to Charles the Simple 75, 142 serial biography by 142 Dunstable (Beds.) 283 Dunstan, St., abbot of Glastonbury; archbishop of Canterbury body of 44 Durand, sheriff of Glos. 66 Durham, cathedral church of St Cuthbert during vacancy 52 grant to 128 Dymock (Glos.) 319 n. 388 Eadgar ætheling election as king 1, 7 n. 47, 33, 42–3 Eadgyth, wife of Walter of Douai 199–200 Eadmer absence of liberator from 73 Anselm’s amanuensis 120 Anselm’s constant companion 44 account of Anselm’s appointment at Canterbury 61–2

Index attends Easter Council at St Peter’s, Rome (1099) 48, 124 coins term dominus rex 104 n. 401 on corona 130–5 denies existence of lay investiture in Anglo-Saxon England 51 hints at a dissident interpretation of the Conquest 42, 44, 232 English descent of 44 on hand of king 44 n. 317 Henry I on usages of his antecessores 133 on homage/becoming the king’s man 48, 62–3, 73, 76, 77 n. 243, 81, 87, 96, 104, 119, 129, 131–2, 207 on initial establishment of Norman power 46 on interregnum 134, 202 on the king’s nod 46, 49, 51, 77, 104–105, 115, 132, 206, 232 on Lanfranc 39, 77 on lay investiture 63, 64, 192 on ‘new usages’ imported into England 47, 74, 131 on Norman customs 46 nostalgia of 44 notes of 48–9 opinion of foreign writers 44 on regalian right 45–51 as a scribe 44, 96 n. 357, 105 and n. 406 on seising 62, 64 on unitary nature of kingship 186 on vacancies 73, 100, 104 verisimilitude of direct speech 120, 130 n. 544 Historia Novorum, analogous to a monastic chronicle for the kingdom 96 first four books completed by 1114 48, 77 n. 243 preface of 48 reason for its being written 47–8 Vita Sancti Anselmi, on Anselm’s perceptiveness 47 avoids mention of corona 132 avoids mention of homage 63, 65 n. 165, 125 avoids mention of seising 65 n. 165 on Council of Rockingham (1095) 132 Vita Sancti Wilfridi 36 see also Collectio Lanfranci Eadric, steersman of King Edward’s ship 20 Eadric pur 26 n. 203 Eadric the Wild 21 n. 165 Eadsige, archbishop of Canterbury 2 Ealdred, bishop of Worcester; archbishop of York 1 consecration of Harold II 10 n. 70 consecration of William I 2, 5, 174 n. 327, 203 n. 554, 205

383

consecration of Wulfstan as bishop of Worcester 34 involved in Eadgar ætheling’s election 42–3 retains Worcester estates 13–14 Ealdred, abbot of Abingdon 22 East Meon (Hants.) 306 Ecgfrith of Mercia 186 Edric, man of Edric of Laxfield 28 n. 210 Edric of Laxfield, antecessor of Robert Malet 28 n. 210 Edward the Confessor, king of England 2, 303, 344 ‘alive and dead’ 11, 12–13, 15, 129 n. 535, 299, 337 as antecessor of William I 32 bequest of kingdom to Duke William 6–7, 8, 180, 183 ‘day’ of 12 and n. 94 death of 3, 15 and n. 117, 16, 18, 19, 22, 42, 69 n. 197, 72 n. 210, 114, deceived by Harold over events of Normandy visit 180 n. 376 designates Harold 9, 180, 183, 232–3 election of, in London 2 funeral of 3 grant to cnihtengild of London 12 n. 94 laga regis Edwardi 106 and n. 412 possibly an innovation of Regenbald 106 ‘law of King Edward’ 106 and n. 412, 126 laws of 12 recalled to England and associated in kingship 186 takes an oath to keep laws of Cnut 12 ‘time’ of 12, 15, 17, 25, 29, 32, 85, 123 n. 509, 128 see also Domesday Book writ of 71 n. 209, 72 n. 210, 128 and n. 532 Edward the Elder, king of England 2 Edward the Martyr, king of England 2 n. 6 election of 3 n. 15 Edward Unnithing 287 Edwin, earl of Mercia 76 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni 168 Eleanor of Aquitaine, duchess of Aquitaine; queen of England 340, 342 Ely Abbey election of Richard, brother of Gilbert fitzRichard of Tonbridge 192 land pleas 15–16, 17 vacancy shortly before the Conquest 57 n. 97 vacancy in from 1075 58 English people guilt of 7, 9, 23, 37, 171, 232 loyalty to William Rufus 177 in rebellion against William I prior to his accession 8, 19, 24, 42 submission of 355

384

Index

Englishmen lands restored to 22 redemption of land by 22–3, 81 survivors 73, 77, 81 see also Anglici English testimony 14, 15, 16 see also Domesday Book Ermenfrid of Sion, papal legate Penitential Ordinance of 5–7, 9, 10, 19, 24, 115 Ernald de Bosco 255 n. 1030 Ernald of Devizes 339–41 Erneis 80 escheat 105, 226, 258 incongruity between in ecclesiastical and lay tenancies-in-chief 117–18 kingdom cannot 118, 187, 204 see also Henry I, coronation ‘edict’; relief; vacant churches Eskil of Ware 26 n. 200, 27 n. 209 Evesham Abbey gift placed an altar of 70 n. 200 reverts into king’s hand during vacancy 58, 87 Evesham N 87–8, 89 and nn. 315, 319 Eudo 72 n. 210 Eudo the Steward 26 n. 200, 67 n. 185, 226, 317–18, 322 n. 417 Eugenius III, pope 216, 264–5 Eustace, count of Boulogne 11, 13 n. 105 his men 69 Eustace fitzJohn 294, 320–1 Eustace, son of King Stephen 185, 245–6, 249, 255 n. 1026, 262–5, 268, 269 n. 60, 273, 305, 310 exchange (escambium) 11, 42, 102–103 by Nigel d’Aubigny 101–3 Exeter (Dev.) siege during the Anarchy 197–8 Exmes 223 Eye (Suff.) Abbey 127 n. 530, 191 contested estate of Robert Malet 190–1 Faramus of Boulogne, castellan of Dover 270–1, 309 Faringdon (Oxon.) 308 Faritius, abbot of Abingdon 64 accession of 92 refusal to do homage to 91 Faversham Abbey 305–6 Feering (Ess.) 11, 129 n. 535 feodum as combination of beneficium and alodium 47 serve as if for 75 Forest of Dean (Glos.) 316, 318 n. 386 Foulton (Ess.) 20

Frodo, brother of Baldwin, abbot of Bury St Edmunds 67, 69 Froyle, church of 340–1 Fulbert of Chartres 4, 148 Fulk de Lisours 317 Fulk Paynel 287 Fulk of Pinley 247 Fulk ‘le Réchin’, count of Anjou 161–2, 212 G. Dunelmensis, royal custodian 52, 110 n. 445, 116 Garsilius de Buignun 311 n. 330 Garsington (Oxon.) 90 Geoffrey de Alselin 25 n. 199, 86 n. 295 Geoffrey (III) ‘le Barbu’, count of Anjou 155, 162, 209 Geoffrey (V) ‘le Bel’, count of Anjou; duke of Normandy 226–7, 228, 249, 260, 267 n. 47, 275 n. 89, 290 ducal charters in Normandy 226–7, 229–30 homage to Louis VII for Normandy 229 marriage to Matilda 209 n. 609, 211–12, 231 Norman campaigns of 223–4 not antecessor to Henry II in Normandy 256–7 possible heir to Henry I 212, 222, 224 role in England 224–6 role in Normandy 225–30, 256 Geoffrey de Montbray, bishop of Coutances 17, 67 n. 185, 69 n. 197, 70 Geoffrey, bishop of Hereford 127 n. 525 Geoffrey, count of Nantes and brother of Henry II 221 n. 729 Geoffrey fitzPeter 257 n. 1050 Geoffrey de la Guerche 27 n. 206 Geoffrey (I) de Mandeville 26, 67, 80 Geoffrey (II) de Mandeville, earl of Ess. 135 n. 577, 196, 216, 218–21, 225–30, 246–8, 250–1, 254, 258, 260, 275–6, 290, 293 n. 209, 317, 321–3 Geoffrey (III) de Mandeville, earl of Ess. 321–4 Geoffrey of Monmouth 282 homage to Stephen mirrored in Arthurian text 196 Geoffrey de Tourville 198 n. 523 Gerard, bishop of Hereford; archbishop of York 126, 192 Gerberoi, siege of (1079) 154, 162 n. 236 Gilbert, abbot of Cîteaux 308 Gilbert, abbot of Colchester 349 n. 604, 350 Gilbert, archdeacon of Lisieux 39 Gilbert de Balliol 301 Gilbert, bishop of Lisieux 50 Gilbert de Clare, earl of Pembroke 271 Gilbert, count of Eu 150 Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster 94, 95, 98

Index Gilbert fitzGilbert 177 n. 354 Gilbert fitzRichard of Tonbridge 192 Gilbert fitzTurold 86 n. 295 Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester; bishop of Hereford, London on disowning a rebellious child 170 on Matilda’s claim 209, 213, 217, 222, 233–5, 237–41 on oath of fidelitas 275 Gilbert de Gant, earl of Lincoln 326 Gilbert de Ghent 26 n. 202, 27 n. 206 Gilbert de l’Aigle 172 n. 306, 271 Gilbert Maminot, bishop of Lisieux 180 Gilbert Marshal 346 Gildenebeorge (Worcs.) 89 Giso, bishop of Wells 12, 35 n. 249, 42 n. 304 autobiography of 92 receives lands anew from William I 59 Gisors, Council of (1119) 264 n. 14 Glastonbury Abbey 216, 288 monks of 44 dispute with Robert fitzWalter the Fleming 199, 253 see also Henry of Blois Gloucester Abbey 134, 313 castle of 280 n. 121, 313 n. 344 Matilda at 215 Stephen taken to 248 n. 975 Godfrey, monk and procurator of Ely 52 Godric, abbot of Winchcombe 21 Godric, alleged antecessor of Henry de Ferrers 24 n. 190 Godstow Abbey 248, 254 Godwine, earl of Wessex 7, 14 Gorron 223 n. 746 Gospatric 86 n. 295 Gozelinus, vicomte of Arques 155 Grand Assize 331 Gregory VII, pope 10 n. 76, 32 Gregory the Sheriff 280 Grimkell 27 n. 203 Guigan Algason 223 Gundreda, second wife of William de Warenne 184 n. 409 Gundulf, bishop of Rochester 47, 60 as royal procurator 62 Gunter, abbot of Thorney 90 Guy of Burgundy 150, 151–2 Guy de Laval 324–5 Guy de Raimbeaucourt 27 n. 203, 66 n. 177 Gyrth, earl of East Anglia 19 Halvergate (Norf.) 320 n. 394 Hamme (Herefs.) see Holme Lacy chirograph Hampton (Worcs.) 90

385

Hardwin de Scalers 66 Harmondsworth (Middx.) 70 Harold, earl of East Anglia, Wessex; king of England accession of 3, 9, 10, 24 ‘alive and dead’ 11, 13 alleged trip to Normandy 7, 180 n. 377 argument against 40–1 consecration of 10 date of death 11 deceives Edward over events of Normandy visit 180 n. 376 denigrated in Domesday Book 41–2 designated by Edward the Confessor 9, 171, 180, 183, 232 as earl 12, 129 n. 535 marriage to William’s daughter allegedly proposed 40 n. 293, 211 n. 634 oath to William 9, 164 n. 252, 232–3, 277 n. 98 paralleled with Stephen 241, 299–30 parallels with Stigand 34 perfidy of 7 and n. 46, 9, 23, 37 referred to as king in documents of William I 11 n. 79 surviving writ of 12 ‘time’ of 18 treatment of in Domesday Book 18–19, 41–2, 114 as a tyrant 9, 37 as a witness, when earl 91 see also Domesday Book; William of Poitiers Harston (Cambs.) 66 Harthacnut, king of England 2 n. 7, funeral of 2 recalls Edward 186 n. 427 Hastings, battle of 1, 5, 7 deaths at 20, 24, 91 Hatfield (Ess.) 312 n. 340, 323 n. 430 Haughley, honour of 321 Haughmond Abbey 255 Helias, brother of Geoffrey (V) of Anjou 256 n. 1043 Hemming 53 snide remarks about Æthelwig 17 Henry I, king of England administration of vacant churches 117 and adulterine castles in Normandy 286 ‘alive and dead’ 216, 247–9, 255–6, 258, 262, 268–9, 285 n. 153, 288, 292–3, 299, 327, 334–8, 344, 349, 352 identical to ‘time’ of Henry I 336 alleged deathbed grant to Stephen, Stephen as heir 232, 234–5, 264 and appointment of Warin de Les Essarts, abbot of St-Evroult 50

386

Index

Henry I, king of England (cont.) attitude to father during father’s lifetime 172, 174 bequeathed money by father 175 birth of 175 n. 334 broods on insults 106–7, 357 exacts auxilium/donum from knights of vacant bishopric of Durham 55 consecration/coronation of 124, 138, 141, 178, 195, 240–1, 264 n. 17 coronation ‘edict’ of 105–20, 298 n. 240, 299 Anglo-Norman version of 106 barones regni Anglie in 119, 129–30, 186, 205, 261, 296 status of arrangements with Rufus in 111, 118, 125–6 his barones and homines in 118–19, 124 his coronation in 118–19, 127, 195–6 drafting of 107, 118, 120, 126, 191, 266 ‘emendation’ in 115, 193, 195 fails to analyse escheat of secular tenancy-in-chief 119 heiresses in 109, 210–11 hereditates in 111 interregnum in 114–16, 118–20, 125, 134–5, 186–7, 193–4, 286 on king’s death 114–16, 127, 128–9, 186–7 murdrum fines in 118 Old English version of 106, 120 ‘firm peace’ in 114–16, 296 precision of 108, 202, 204 regnum in 130 reliefs in 108, 111–13, 248 treatment of Edward the Confessor in 126, 299 treatment of William I in 126 sealing of 108 vacancies in 117, 118, 129 wardship in 109–10, 117 William of Malmesbury’s version of 284–5 and Council of Lisieux (1106) 286 death of 138, 140, 189, 193–5, 204, 231, 349–50 designates Matilda 170 n. 294, 208–13, 223, 231 designates William Adelin 206–7, 232 dissesied of mother’s lands by Rufus 176 n. 340 election of 120, 137, 138, 180, 190–1, 241 in England in 1088 176 n. 340 fills vacant churches of Winchester, Ely and Bury St Edmunds on day of coronation 117, 191 funeral arrangements of 139, 189, 196, 235

gives land to Nigel d’Aubigny 101, 325 he and his wife called Godric and Godgifu by English barons 356–7 homage to Robert Curthose 181, 204 knighted by father (1086) 175 makes claim against brothers on father’s death 176 never pledges fidelitas to Robert Curthose at designation 181–2 pension given to Cluny 290 pipe roll of 1130 311, 331 n. 493, 334 pleads with Anselm to return to England 124 reassessment of farms 311 receives mother’s lands 175 released from homage to Robert Curthose 182, 272 refuses Geoffrey of Anjou’s request for Norman castles 222, 224, 277 requests that Anselm do homage 124 restores Bellême lands to William Talvas 187 n. 438, 188 n. 441 rides from Winchester to Westminster to be crowned 107, 120, 191 seal of 108 seizes Bellême lands from William Talvas 222 and settlement of 1101 (Treaty of Alton) 181, 202–203 terror as essential to good kingship 281 title of, prior to William I’s death 159 and n. 200 words of, according to Eadmer 133 Henry II, king of England; duke of Normandy and of Aquitaine; count of Anjou agrees to William of Blois succeeding to his father’s lands 268–71 and adulterine castles 283–4, 285 n. 153, 300, 323 his antecessores 256–7, 259–60, 287, 292, 300, 339 arrival in England 244 n. 932 attitude to Stephen and his own powers after Treaty of Winchester 257–61, 267–8 and cartae baronum 86 n. 297 and Constitutions of Clarendon 207 n. 589 confirmation of Henrician church grants, not those of Stephen 305–6 consecration/coronation of 278, 282, 289, 297, 300, 344–5, 350, 352 refuses to rush to England for 295–6 unprecedented peace preceding 295 coronation charter of 262, 297–8, 352 cannot accept Stephen as antecessor 294, 299 modelled on Stephen’s charter of liberties 298–9 no longer styled Stephen’s heir 337–8

Index renewal of Henry I’s time 298–300, 303, 308 conventio with Jocelyn of Salisbury 258, 266, 276–7 dispossession of Stephen’s land and officeholders 325–6 ducal charter to Rouen 227, 230, 256 first pipe roll of 278–80, 306, 315 homage to Louis VII for Normandy 230 homage to Stephen 267–8, 272–3 implications for him of Matilda’s designation 212–13 importance to him of castles 277–81, 296 investigations into landholding 327–9 invokes ‘time of King William’ 323 ‘king’s crown’ 260–1, 274, 292, 304, 353, 359 knighted by David I of Scotland 230 legal reforms of 329–31, 353 advowson and protection for ecclesiastical incumbents 339–42, 344–5, 348–9 evident to contemporaries 339 Glanvill on 330–3 heresy 329 prostitution and unsupported accusation 330 shipwreck 329–30 tenure based on Stephen’s reign very uncommon 350 tenurial cases and development of system of writs 330–1 use of dates of Channel crossings 341–6, 352 see also breve de recto; Grand Assize; novel disseisin; Anglici no restoration of status quo of Henry I’s time 316–23 occasional recognition of Stephen’s acts 305–6, 309–10 orders subtenants of vacant abbey to do fidelitas to custodian 125 n. 518 partial restoration and re-disposition of royal estates from Henry I’s time 304–6, 308–14, 327 pipe rolls 310–16, 335, 349–50 pretence that reign of Stephen never occurred 255, 268 recognition of Stephen’s acts without reference to Stephen 307–8 recognition of Stephen’s kingship 268, 271–2, 289–91 refers to Stephen as ‘usurper’ 308, 338 reverence for coronation edict and charters of Henry I 301–3 roles as heir to Henry I, Matilda, Geoffrey, and Stephen 227–30, 256, 267, 276, 282, 289–91, 337–8

387

royal forest and assarting 314–16 Stephen written out of legal history 304–5, 337, 343, 352 transfer of duchy of Normandy from Geoffrey to Henry 230, 259–60 and Treaty of Winchester see Winchester, Treaty of (1153) unprecedented status as heir to Stephen 274–5, 337 and violence preceding Stephen’s coronation 324–5 Welsh campaign of (1157) 320–1 Henry the Young King, son of Henry II 4 n. 23 Henry I, king of France 149 n. 111, 185 n. 422 Henry V, king of the Romans, emperor 208 Henry del Angeli, abbot of Peterborough 54 Henry de Beaumont, earl of Warwick 190–1 Henry of Blois, abbot of Glastonbury; bishop of Winchester; papal legate 278 accession as abbot 101, 104, 199 at Council of Westminster (1141) 249–50 deal with Robert of Gloucester 252 at Easter Council of Oxford (1136) 200 exile of 305, 310 letter to Brian fitzCount 237–8 mastermind behind Treaty of Winchester 265–6, 288 offers terms to Matilda 262, 267 quarrels with Matilda over lands for Eustace 245–6, 249, 262–3 receives Matilda at Winchester 213–14, 216–17, 244, 258, 276 Scriptura of 92–3 speech at Winchester Council (Easter 1141) 138, 208 n. 604, 209 n. 606, 213–14, 216, 218, 221–2, 227 n. 787, 243 n. 927, 244 witnesses Stephen’s charter for Geoffrey (II) de Mandeville 251 Henry of Essex 297, 320–1, 329 Henry de Ferrers 80, 86 n. 295 Henry, earl of Huntingdon 231 Henry of Huntingdon on conflicting claims of Stephen and Matilda 239, 241, 253 present at attempted anointing of Eustace 264–5 present at Second Lateran Council (1139) 232 n. 834 on Treaty of Winchester 282–3 Henry de Lacy 324–5, 337 Herbert Losinga, bishop of Norwich 53 Herbert II, count of Maine 9, 155 and n. 160, 161 see also William of Poitiers Hereford 280 n. 121, 313 n. 344 bishop of 315 n. 370

388

Index

Herfast, bishop of Elmham/Thetford 34 n. 246, 35 heriots 112–13 see also Domesday Book; Leges Henrici Primi Herleva, mother of William I 147 n. 96, 153 n. 138 Herluin, vicomte of Conteville 153 n. 139 Herman, bishop of Ramsbury 97 n. 362 Herman, monk of Bury St Edmunds 3 Herman de Dreux 86 n. 295, 95 Hermer, stipendiary miles 85 Hilary, bishop of Chichester 297, 301, 328, 333 n. 511 Hinton, diocese of Salisbury 339, 341 Holme (Norf.), abbey of St Benet 220 n. 728, 332, 335, 336 n. 529, 342–3, 346 Holme Lacy chirograph 56, 86 n. 295, 94–5, 97–8, 100, 103 no mention of homage in 95–6 homage, arrangements for, in the Treaty of Winchester (1153) 272–4, 282–3, 287, 296 clerical 48 absence of, in Normandy and England prior to 1066 51 differences between Normandy and England after 1066 186 diffidatio, the formal breaking of homage 236–7, 273 done by heirs of subtenants 108 formula possibly used in Leges Henrici Primi 82 Glanvill on 81 clerics not doing 129, 207, 275 distinction between homage and liege homage in 272 n. 76 for ‘mere lordship’ 82–3, 86 ligeancia in 86 n. 297 hominium defined in Abingdon History 78 and n. 244, 91 to king 82, 186 by subtenants 83–4, 198, 206 in late eleventh-century Normandy 74–5 and nn. 224, 225, 186 as a bond for life 9, 267–8 to Matilda as domina 215–18 norm in England 102, 186 not a necessarily tenurial bond, according to Treaty of Winchester 267–8, 274 not done by infant heirs 110 not normally done by or to women 110, 210–13 not explicitly mentioned in De Iniusta Vexacione 61 not done to Matilda at designation 209–10, 217, 232 at Oxford (13 January 1154) 272–3, 294, 296

prior to Domesday 94 problems of homage to Stephen 198–201, 243–4 renewal of homage after breaches 236–7 as tenurial bond 103–4, 186, 206, 355 to Robert Curthose in Normandy 83, 170, 177–8, 181 to William Adelin in England (at Salisbury) and in Normandy 83, 206–7, 209, 275 to William I at Salisbury (1 August 1086) 83–7, 107, 116, 198 n. 523 see also Anselm; Eadmer; Faritius, abbot of Abingdon; Henry of Blois, Scriptura; lay investiture; Orderic; Peter, miles of King William; Walter, abbot of Evesham; William of Poitiers Hoo (Kent) 306 Houghton Regis (Beds.) 309 Hubert Walter, chief justiciar; chancellor; bishop of Salisbury; archbishop of Canterbury 330 Hugh, archbishop of Lyons 121–2, 123, 124, 127 Hugh, archbishop of Rouen 276 Hugh III, count of Maine 161 Hugh d’Avranches 80, 192 Hugh de Beauchamp 26 n. 200, 28 n. 209 Hugh de Bernières 67 Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk 189, 197, 204 n. 562, 232, 239, 270, 312, 319, 322 Hugh, bishop of Bayeux 149, 153 n. 140 Hugh, bishop of Lisieux 151, 153 Hugh Capet, king of France 185 Hugh de Gournay 309 Hugh, eldest son of Robert II the Pious, king of France 185 n. 422 Hugh de Grandmesnil 26 n. 200 Hugh of Ing 228 Hugh de Lacy 86 n. 295 Hugh de Laval 192, 323 Hugh de Montfort 86 n. 295 Hugh Paynel 287 Hugh Peverel 198 Hugh le Poer 201 Hugh de Port 66, 72 n. 212, 86 n. 295 Hugh de Rampton, tenant of Nigel d’Aubigny 103 n. 396 Hugh Unnithing 287 Humphrey de Bohun 228, 259 n. 1060 Hunnington (Worcs.) 328 Ickleton Priory 307 Ilbert de Lacy 193–5, 204, 247, 252, 324–5 Ilbert, sheriff of Herefordshire 65 Ildeberga see Gildenebeorge Ilger, tutor of Robert Curthose 158 n. 189

Index Ing (Ess.) 251 Ingelric, royal priest 23 and n. 181, 27 n. 203 inheritance language hereditates in Normandy 46 initial absence of in conquered England 46, 108 and n. 435, 113 see also Henry I, coronation ‘edict’ of; Henry II, legal reforms of Innocent II, pope 185, 193, 263 inquest procedure 15 Inquest of Sheriffs 87 n. 297 Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis 66 n. 178, 85 Inquisitio Eliensis 18, 66 nn. 177, 178, 85 invest/investiture/investitura 61, 62, 64 meaning of in Normandy 64–5 word not found in Old English documents 65 synonymous with seise 64 Isabel, daughter of William (III) de Warenne 269–71 Ivo of Chartres 4, 35 n. 255, 37 see also Law, Canon Ivo de Grandmesnil 172 n. 304 Jocelin of Brakelond on new lords taking aids from sitting tenants 54 Jocelyn, bishop of Salisbury 258, 266, 276–8 John, king of England; lord of Ireland; duke of Normandy and of Aquitaine; count of Anjou 257 n. 1050 exacts payments from tenants of recently deceased lay tenants-in-chief 55 title prior to coronation 353–4 John, bishop of Avranches; archbishop of Rouen 145 n. 71, 153 John, count of Eu 333–4 John fitzÆssulf 349 n. 604, 350 John Marshal, royal marshal 346–7 Jordan de Bussy 277–8, 326 Jordan de Lestre 198 Jordan, treasurer of church of Salisbury 340–2 Judith, Countess 29 n. 215 Juhel de Mayenne 223 Karski 26 n. 202 Kelvedon (Ess.) 20 Kentford, land plea held at 128 n. 532 see also Ely, land pleas Kingsclere (Hants.) 307 King’s Ripton (Hunts.) 306–7 n. 294 Kingston Bagpuize (Oxon.) 91 Kirby Moorside (Yorks.) 325 Kynesige, archbishop of York 35 n. 249 Laigle incident at 172

389

land pleas of William I’s reign 13–15, 17, 29, 30, 31, 128 n. 532 see also Domesday Book; Ely, church of; Kentford; Penenden Heath Lanfranc, abbot of St-Etienne, Caen; archbishop of Canterbury 17, 33 as abbot of St-Etienne 40 adversary of William of St-Calais 61 as Cheshire cat 41 becomes the king’s man in 1070 48, 77 commanded to anoint Rufus 139 n. 23, 175 n. 329, 178, 184, 205 consecration of Rufus 5, 184, 205 death of 52, 122 epitaph of 41 frames argument against Stigand and Harold 40–1 invests Henry I with knight’s armour 175 n. 333 on liturgical improvisation 137 on penalties for perjury 37 and the primacy of Toledo 38 professions to 33 recovers Canterbury lands 14, 88–9, 121 n. 497 relationship with William I 39 not a successor of Stigand 35, 121 n. 497 writes to Gregory VII 32 writes lost biography of William I 40 n. 295 see also Brevis Relatio; Collectio Lanfranci; Eadmer Lateran Council, Second (1139) 204 n. 562, 221 n. 730, 231 n. 824, 232–4, 239, 263–4 Law, Canon 320 n. 395, 339, 340 n. 549 on continuous corporate life of churches 129 on ecclesiastical vacancy 33–6, 43, 51, 74, 116 on inalienability of ecclesiastical estates 346 on invalid oaths, due to compulsion 232 exceptio spolii 61, 132, 341 see also Burchard of Worms; Collectio Lanfranci; Ivo of Chartres Law, English according to William of Poitiers 171 and nn. 295, 296 see also Bracton; Edward the Confessor, laga regis Edwardi, law of, laws of; Glanvill; Henry II, legal reforms; Leges Edwardi Confessoris; Leges Henrici Primi; Quadripartitus lay investiture 48 absence of, of bishops in England and Normandy 51 of abbots in Normandy 49–51 see also Eadmer; investiture/investitura

390

Index

leases pre-Conquest 97 Leges Edwardi Confessoris supposed quittance of murder charge 193–4 n. 488 Leges Henrici Primi author of 133 on disinheritance 169–70 on fides owed by a man to his lord 82 on king’s gri1 115 on patrimony/acquisition 169, 174 n. 319 on relief 112 and n. 453 on wardship 110 n. 439 Le Mans, church of St-Pierre-de-la-Cour 75 Le Mans, church of St-Vincent 161 Leofric, earl of Mercia 7, 303 Leofric, abbot of Peterborough 21 and n. 168 Leofwine 26 n. 200 Leofwine, bishop of Lichfield 34 n. 249, 58 Letcombe Regis (Oxon.) 290, 305 liberator, liberare 72 and n. 213 see Domesday Book; Robert Blunt Liber Exoniensis see Domesday Book Lichfield, church of 291, 306 Lillebonne, Council of (1080) 115 n. 463, 187 n. 439 Lilleshall Abbey 254 n.1025 Lincoln battle of 213–14, 217, 236, 239, 242–3, 245–6, 250 castle of 277, 280, 326 Linton (Herefs.) 312 Lisieux abbey of St-Désir 160–1 Council, legatine, of (1054) 151 Council, royal, of (1106) 286 Littleworth (Oxon.) 308 London church of St-Martin’s-le-Grand 128 n. 532 church of St Paul 66, 128 n. 532 cnihtengild of 12 n. 94 and the election of Stephen 138 involved in election of Eadgar ætheling 42 Lent Council of (1155) 300 submission of, to Duke William 3 Tower of 251, 277, 280, 297, 323 William I’s writ concerning 12, 106, 108 n. 435 Lothar I, emperor 168 Louis the German, king of the East Franks 168 Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, emperor 168, 169 n. 281 Louis V, king of France 185 n. 420 Louis VI, king of France 4, 182 n. 395, 185, 207, 240 n. 893 Louis VII, king of France 185, 229–30 Louis X, king of France 185

Lucius II, pope 264 Lugwardine (Herefs.) 319 n. 388 Mabel, wife of Robert of Gloucester 233 Maerlesvein the Sheriff 26 n. 199 Magna Carta 354 Maine, county of annexed by William I 155 claim of William I to 9, 172 resistance of against William I 8, 9 retaken by William I in 1073 161 title of Robert Curthose in 159, 161 title of William I in 159 Maitland, F. W. on Normandy 142 pays little attention to breve de recto 331 on the person of the king 353 uncharacteristic naivety of 41 Malcolm IV, king of Scots 317 Maldon (Ess.) 246, 251, 258 Malling Abbey 327, 334–5 Malton (Yorks.) 320 n, 396 Mannig, abbot of Evesham 22, 25 n. 191 Marden (Herefs.) 319 n. 388 Margaret, sister of Herbert, count of Maine 155, 161 Marshwood (Dors.) 99 n. 371 Mary, daughter of King Stephen 306 Matilda, wife of William I; duchess of Normandy; queen of England 19 n. 149, 66 consecration of 163 pays wages of Curthose’s troops 175 possible lethargy of 175 role in Normandy 163 and n. 239 supports Curthose 154 testamentary gifts to La-Trinité 179 n. 365 Matilda of Boulogne, wife of Stephen; duchess of Normandy, queen of England 246–7, 249, 250–1, 254, 271, 305, 310 Matilda, empress on the Romans, domina Anglie/Anglorum, countess of Anjou 289–90, 308, 318 ‘accession’ of 216–18, 247–8, 293 arrives in England in 1139 211 at Bec for birth of Geoffrey 221 n. 729 attacks Normandy following the death of Henry I 223–4 attempts to secure London 217–18 attitude to her husband’s role in England and Normandy 224–8 charters for Geoffrey de Mandeville (II) 219–21, 225–30, 246–8, 254, 258, 260, 276, 290, 293 n. 209 claims of 138, 141, 204, 212–13, 221–3, 231–6

Index differing roles of, in England and Normandy 224–6 ‘elected’ by clergy 214 fealty sworn to at Christmas 1126–7 170 n. 294, 208–13, 218, 231–6, 244, 253, 258, 296 flight from London 244 n. 932 flight to Anjou 222 grants Worcester to William de Beauchamp 279–80 Henry I as antecessor of 223–4 n. 756, 259–60, 263 Henry II as heir of 227–30 hailed as domina 215, 250, 258 homage done to 215–18, 238, 258 imperial coronation of (1110) 221 n. 729 and 730 lacks specific Norman title 223–4, 227 legitimacy questioned 234, 240 marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou 211–12, 224, 231 not antecessor to Henry II in England 257 offers terms 262 pretence that reign of Stephen never occurred 215, 247, 254–5 purge of Stephen’s supporters and annulment of his grants 245–7 quarrels with Henry of Blois over lands for Eustace 245–6, 249 received by Henry of Blois at Winchester 213–14, 216–17, 244, 258 recognition of Stephen’s kingship 247–9, 254 restores William Mauduit 259–60, 312 n. 332 use of regina 218–21, 244–5 Matilda, wife of Henry I; queen 234, 259 Matthew Paris on St. Albans dispute 302–3 on William I’s imposition of servitia debita 58 Mauger, archbishop of Rouen 147 n. 96, 150, 151 Maurice, chancellor; bishop of London anoints Henry I 107 expertise in English law 107 Meaux Abbey 291 Melcombe (Dors.) 71 n. 209 Melisende, queen of Jerusalem 212 Mileham (Norf.) 287 Miles de Beauchamp 201 Miles Crispin 26 n. 203 Miles of Gloucester 196, 215, 236, 238, 244, 247–8, 266 n. 41, 269, 291 n. 188, 311, 313, 318–19 Milicent, widow of Hugh de Gournay 309 Minsterworth (Glos.) 319 n. 388

391

Modbert, monk and custodian of Abingdon 52, 110 n. 445 Montfort-sur-Risle 189 Morcar, earl of Northumbria 76 Mortemer Abbey 227 Much Wenlock Priory 315 n. 370 murdrum fine 106 n. 412, 113 n. 454 Newnham (Glos.) 316 Newport (Ess.) 251 Nicaea, Council of (325) 38 n. 279 Nicholas, abbot of St-Ouen, son of Richard III, duke of Normandy 147, 157 n. 179, 167, 168 Nicholas of Stafford 333 n. 508 Nigel, abbot of Burton 95, 98, 103–4, 112 n. 453 Nigel d’Aubigny 325 letter to his brother William 100–1, 103–4 succeeds his father in England 177 n. 354 Nigel d’Oilly 91 Norman Anonymous viii and n. 2, 114 Norman, sheriff of Suff. 66 Norman fitzTancred 79 n. 254 Normandy anti-Angevin feeling in 223–4 dukes lack powers commensurate to those of kings of England 187–8 indivisibility of 142, 152, 185 interregnal variations with England 203 no Capetian-style association 157, 165, 185–6, 264, 273 poor state of after William I’s death 167 n. 275, 187–9 rights of duke in 188 unique transfer of ducal status during lifetime 230 and see under individual dukes Northampton 317, 319 n. 389 Assize of 87 n. 297, 343 Council of (1164) 346 Norwich bishop of 127, 342 seized in 1136 by Hugh Bigod 189, 197 novel disseisin different time-frame to breve de recto, and exceptions 347–8, 350, 352 first development of 343–4, 346–7 Glanvill on 343 Norman version of 352 purpose of 345 use of Channel crossings 345, 350–1 wider remit than earlier measures 345–6 see also Anglici Ockendon (Ess.) 11 Odard du Pin 198 n. 523

392

Index

Odo, abbot of Battle 351 Odo, abbot of Chertsey 61 Odo Beaucens, steward of Glastonbury 92–3 Odo, bishop of Bayeux; earl of Kent 14, 57 n. 100, 65, 153 n. 139, 162 acquires lands of Evesham Abbey 89 and nn. 315, 319 appeal to 89 becomes bishop 153 and n. 140 death of 88 n. 306 fall of 153 Guibert of Nogent on 153 n. 145 honour of 26 n. 202, 256 incites revolt against Rufus 177 n. 348, 201–2 on Robert de Bellême’s actions in 1087 187 role in government of England 163 seised with land 72 n. 212 Odo the Crossbowman 26 n. 202 Offa, king of the Mercians 186 Ongar (Ess.) 310 Onibury (Salop.) 94, 95, 97 Orderic Vitalis on accession of William I 4 avoids reference to Matilda’s designation 239 avoids title of duke for Henry until after the death of Curthose 240 on claim of Henry I to Normandy 178 n. 359, 239–41 on cross-Channel loyalty to Curthose 177 on designation in France 185 disputes Curthose’s claim to Normandy 190 n. 459 dissident passages 33, 42 on the grant of regalia to Rufus 179–80, 183 on homage 87 n. 300 influence of William of Poitiers on 166 interpolations in GND 165 and n. 259 on lay investiture in Normandy 49 on Nicholas, abbot of St-Ouen 147 on primogeniture 170, 172 and n. 306, 204, 239 on settlement of 1101 (Treaty of Alton) 184 on rewards to William I’s followers 47 on Curthose’s position during William I’s lifetime 165–6, 171 on Curthose’s rebellions 153–4 on legitimacy of Stephen 239 Ordric, abbot of Abingdon 90 Orme, tenant of Burton Abbey 95, 98, 103–4, 112 n. 453 Osbern, ducal procurator 149 Osbert of Hinton 339–41 Oseney Abbey 254 n. 1025 Osmund, antecessor of Roger de Montgommery 26 n. 200 Othenkarl 26 n. 202

Oxford castle of 277, 280 Easter Council of (1136) 196, 200, 202 n. 550, 242 n. 910, 253, 263, 266, 285 homage at (13 January 1154) 272–3, 294, 296 Stephen regains, in 1142 248 n. 972 Pain 193–5 Pain de Mondoubleau 317 Papia, second wife of Duke Richard II 150, 151 Paschal II, pope 124 n. 513, 207, 221 n. 730, 275 letters of 77 n. 243, 264 n. 14 Patrick (I) de Chaworth (Sourches) 317 Patrick (II) de Chaworth (Sourches) 317 Patrick, earl of Salisbury 313–14 peace, of duke and king 6, 114–15, 235, 257, 336 and accession of John 353 preceding Henry II’s accession 295 see also Henry I, coronation ‘edict’; Leges Henrici Primi Penenden Heath 14, 17, 18 nn. 143, 144, 121 see also land pleas of William I Pershore, church of St Mary 66 Peter, miles of the king and feodalis homo of St Edmund 67 n. 185, 93–4 Peter the Scribe 219 Pevensey (Suss.) 270–1 Philip I, king of France 160, 161, 166, 184 n. 409 Philip de Colville 287 Phingria (Ess.) 251 Picot, dapifer of Alberic de Ver 64 Picot, sheriff of Cambs. 66 Plympton Priory 342–3, 346 Poringland (Norf.) 19 Portswood (Hants.) 306 n. 293 post obitum gift 8–9, 19, 31, 166, 170–1 Potterne (Wilts.) 67 n. 185 Pyrford (Surr.) 11 Quadripartitus 126, 133 Quintin, tenant of William d’Ecouis 67 R. the Sheriff 69 Rabel de Tancarville 223 Rainald, count of Burgundy 150 Ralph d’Escures, bishop of Rochester; archbishop of Canterbury 48, 49, 206 Ralph de Gace 149–50 Ralph Paynel 26 n. 199, 178 n. 354 Ralph Pinel 27 n. 203 Ralph of Savigny 66 Ralph the Staller 23 n. 181 Ralph Taillebois 21 n. 162

Index Ramsey Abbey confirmation of customs to 25 recovers land of a tenant who died at Hastings 20 writs of Henry II 337 Ramworth (Norf.) 335 Ranulf Flambard, bishop of Durham advisor to Robert Curthose 182 n. 393 custodian of vacant churches 57 death of 55 first witness of writ levying Worcester relief 57 imprisonment of 128 prayers of sought 100 Ranulf le Meschin (I), earl of Chester 210 n. 619 Ranulf de Gernon (II), earl of Chester 236–7, 239, 245, 259 n. 1060, 266 n. 41, 326, 328 Ranulph, brother of Ilger 27 n. 203 Ravenger 251 Raymond Gerald 79 n. 254 Reading Abbey 73, 194 n. 489, 196, 254–5, 294, 305 Regenbald chancellor to Edward the Confessor, William I, and probably Harold II 13 possible coiner of phrases ‘French and English’ and ‘alive and dead’ 13 possible inventor of laga regis Edwardi 106 receives grants from William I 10–11 and n. 79 Reginald, abbot of Abingdon 18 n. 144, 52, 110 n. 445 Reginald de Bailleul 240 Reginald, earl of Cornwall 313, 339–41 Reginald de Warenne 269, 284 Reinelm, bishop of Hereford 50 n. 42 relief definition of, in Dialogus 55, 56 definition/purpose of in Normandy 55, 109 n. 439 in Holme Lacy chirograph 95 in Domesday Book 56 in Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ 108, 111–12 in Leges Henrici Primi 112 and n. 453 Leis Willelme on 112 n. 453 mutatione domini 54–5 no fixed scale for 113 to be offered to the abbot of Burton 103, 112 n. 453 Worcester 53–4, 56, 79, 86 n. 295, 112, 117, 125 Remigius, bishop of Dorchester/Lincoln 19, 70 professions of, to Stigand and Lanfranc 33–5 Richard I, king of England; duke of Normandy and Aquitaine; count of Anjou 257 n. 1050, 350

393

analogy of his period of captivity with Stephen’s 250 death of 353 exacts from tenants of bishopric of Durham debts owed to him by previous bishop 55 title prior to coronation 354 Richard I, ‘duke’ of Normandy common ancestor of Edward the Confessor and William I 42 designated 143 designates his chosen successor 181 funeral of 144 minority of 149 n. 110 orders Richard II to grant his brother, William, the Hiémois 181 Richard II, duke of Normandy 4 n. 21, 157 n. 185 attends associate-consecration of Hugh, son of Robert the Pious 185 n. 422 does not make Richard II associate-duke 144 designated 144–5, 154 designates Richard III 181 grants his brother, William, the Hiémois 181 grants his son, Robert, the Hiémois 181 lands held of 46 refers to his antecessores 32 Richard III, duke of Normandy 144 death of 146 and n. 84, 147, 152, 185 n. 422 designated 145, 154, 181 Richard de Anstey 329, 345, 349 Richard de Camville 312 n. 340 Richard fitzGilbert 69, 86 n. 295, 177 n. 354 Richard fitzNeal 69, 303, 315, 353 Richard de la Haye 326 Richard de Lucy 297–8, 309–10, 311 n. 330, 312, 351–2 entrusted with the Tower and Windsor 277, 280, 297, 323 quoted in Battle Chronicle 4, 351, 354 Richard de Redvers 191, 196–7 Richard de Sainte-Maire-Église 75, 102 his father Ralph 102 n. 391 Richard, son of Walkelin 129 n. 535 Richard, son of William I attests charters 158 n. 191 in Avranches 182–3 n. 399 death of 172 n. 302, 182 n. 399 Richard Talbot 312–13 Richard, vicomte of Argentan 223 Richer de l’Aigle 270–1 Robert, abbot of St. Albans 302–4 Robert, abbot of St-Martin de Sées 49 Robert, abbot of Thorney 90 Robert, archbishop of Rouen 148–50 holds Évreux 148

394

Index

Robert de Beaumont, count of Meulan, earl of Leicester 25 n. 199 abstemiousness of 107 accompanies Henry I to Westminster for coronation 107 on deathbed 100 reputation as a statesman 107 unwilling to accept his father’s escambium 102 n. 392 Robert de Bellême 171, 172 n. 306, 187, 188 n. 441, 189, 191, 309 n. 308 Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln 53 bears letter instructing Lanfranc to anoint Rufus 139 n. 23, 178 Robert Blunt, sheriff of Norfolk, as liberator 67 Robert Burdet 178 n. 354 Robert de Cambos, tenant of Nigel d’Aubigny 103 n. 396 Robert de Campeaux 193 n. 483 Robert Champart, abbot of Jumièges; bishop of London; archbishop of Canterbury 14, 121 n. 497, 147 Robert de Chesney, bishop of Lincoln 302 Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy already duke c.1070, according to William of Jumièges 156, 164 inaccuracy of this view 163 attestations by 158–9 becomes duke 136, 178 capture of, at Tinchebrai 241 chosen as successor by William and Matilda 8 n. 62 claim to England in 1088 177 claim to England in 1100 138, 141 claim to Normandy disputed by Orderic Vitalis 190 n. 459 confirms father’s grants 160, 161 demands made on father 164–5, 167 n. 269, 172 possible designation of in 1063 154–5 designated shortly before Conquest 155, 163 and nn. 237, 241, 170, 176, 182 n. 399 designated shortly after Conquest 155, 163 and n. 241, 165 n. 259, 182 n. 399 designated when William I was sick at Bonneville 156 n. 167, 163 n. 241, 164 designated in 1079 162, 163 n. 241, 164, 174 his fate as precedent 243 n. 930 father wishes to rescind designation 169, 176, 209 not designated as successor in England 174, 176, 183 does homage to Fulk ‘le Réchin’, count of Anjou, for Maine 162

does homage to Geoffrey ‘le Barbu’, count of Anjou, for Maine 155, 162 does homage to Philip I 162 and n. 233 ducal years of 162 as extraneus 141 gives castle of Ivry 102 n. 392 grants jointly with father 160 heir to Rufus after 1091 183, 204 homage done to 170, 182, 232 invades England in 1101 141, 182 lands held in Normandy during father’s lifetime 164, 173 lay investiture by 50 naivety of 136–7 nickname of 164 papal appeal against Henry I 264 n. 14 rebels against William I 153, 166 rejects advice to rush to England in 1087 295–6 role in Normandy in 1067 163 and n. 239 titles of, prior to William I’s death 158–61 title to Maine 155, 161, 167, 172 violence during interregnum 187 see also homage Robert, dux Francorum 142 Robert of Eu 158 n. 189 Robert fitzHamon 176 n. 340, 214 n. 669, 233 Robert fitzHarding 259 n. 1060 Robert fitzWalter the Fleming, of Bampton 196 n. 501, 199–201, 253 Robert de Gant 274 n. 84, 287 Robert Gernon 27 n. 203 Robert of Gloucester 196 n. 501, 215 n. 673, 276, 317 brings future Henry II to England 228 his character 237 confederatio amoris with Miles of Gloucester 266 n. 41, 269 defection to Matilda and his reasons 217, 224 entrusted with Dover and Canterbury by Henry I 140, 224 n. 763, 271, 277 n. 98 exchanged for Stephen 249, 252, 266 jostles for second place at fealty of 1126–7 235 makes case for Matilda 232–3, 264 n. 13 quoted by Henry of Huntingdon 239, 253 Robert (II) of Gloucester 317–18, 320 Robert de Grandmesnil, abbot-elect of St-Évroult 49 Robert Grimbald 337 Robert de la Haye 326 Robert (I) de Lacy 192–3, 195, 324–5 Robert (II) de Lacy 192 n. 481 Robert, earl of Leicester 266 n. 41, 316, 329 n. 477, 351

Index Robert de Limesey, bishop of Coventry 303, 314–15 Robert Losinga, bishop of Hereford 54, 56, 86 n. 295, 94, 97, 103, 104 takes counsel from his men 95, 100 time of 127 n. 525 treatment of Roger de Lacy 109 Robert the Magnificent, duke of Normandy 157 n. 185, 187 n. 439 accession as duke 146, 147, 152 death of 147, 161 early difficulties 148 established in the Hiémois 145, 181, 182 n. 399 Robert Malet 28 n. 210, 80, 99, 127 n. 530, 190–1 Robert Mauduit 259 n. 1066 Robert de Meulan 190, 203 Robert de Montfort 320 n. 401, 321, 329 Robert, count of Mortain 25 n. 196, 26 n. 199, 69 n. 197, 153 nn. 139, 140, 158 n. 189, 159 behaviour of 153 revolts against Rufus at Odo of Bayeux’s instigation 153 n. 147 Robert de Mowbray 321 n. 404 Robert d’Oilly 26 n. 203, 67, 69 n. 185, 80, 85 Robert II the Pious, king of France 4 n. 17, 185 n. 422 Robert (III) de Stuteville 325 Robert of Torigni on the Treaty of Winchester (1153) 281–4 Robert de Vessey 25 n. 199 Robert de Vere 321 Robert Warelwast, bishop of Exeter 342–3 Robert de Wyville, tenant of Nigel d’Aubigny 103 n. 396 Rochester, church of/bishops of 58–60, 73, 96 duties of bishop during a Canterbury vacancy 62 n. 141, 264 n. 17 see also Eadmer; individual bishops Roding (Ess.) 310 Rodney 319 n. 388 Rodulf, Count 144, 145, 149 Roger d’Aubigny 177 n. 354 Roger Beaumont 102 n. 395 Roger Bigod 319 Roger, bishop of Chester 214 Roger, bishop of Salisbury arrested by Stephen 242 crowns Stephen 236, 241 holds land of Glastonbury Abbey 93 on designation of Matilda in 1126–7 211, 216 n. 676 Roger de Bully 26 n. 202, 27 n. 203, 30 n. 223, 86 n. 295 Roger de Bussy 277–8

395

Roger, earl of Hereford 23 n. 186, 255, 280, 291 n. 188, 311, 313–14, 316, 318–19 Roger fitzDurand 86 n. 295 Roger fitzGilbert 177 n. 354 Roger de Lacy 81 n. 268, 86, 94–6, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104 as miles 95 obligations to Robert Losinga 95 proffers money to Robert Losinga 56, 95 Roger of Le Sap, abbot of St-Evroult 50 Roger de Mara, tenant of Glastonbury Abbey 93 Roger (I) de Montgommery 146, 149 n. 106 Roger (II) de Montgommery 5, 26 n. 200, 173, 177, 184, 356–7 Roger de Mowbray 324–5 Roger the Poitevin 79–80, 86 n. 295, 190–1 Roger de Rames 79 n. 254 Roger de Valognes 210 n. 622 Rollo, ‘duke’ of Normandy 142–3, 207 Rome, Easter Council (1099) 48, 60, 63, 78 n. 243, 206 see also Anselm; Eadmer Rouen church of la-Trinité-du-Mont 70, 358 church of St-Marie 307 Council of (1096) 206 ducal charters of Geoffrey of Anjou and Henry II in favour of 226–7, 229–30, 256 garrisoned by Henry for Curthose in 1088 181 n. 386 Geoffrey captures in 1141 226–7, 256 n. 1044 William Adelin designated there in 1114 206 St. Albans Abbey 302–3, 314–15, 328 St. Briavel (Glos.) 316, 318 n. 386 St-Évroult, abbey of foundation charter of 176 n. 343 St-Pierre de Préaux, abbot of 75, 102 St. Swithun’s, cathedral priory of Winchester 348–9 St-Wandrille, abbey of 109 n. 439 Saffron Walden (Ess.) 322, 323 n. 424 Salisbury (Wilts.) 83 and n. 276, 84, 85, 198 n. 523 bishop of 339, 347 see also homage; individual bishops Samson, abbot of Bury St Edmunds 54 Samson the Breton, monk of St-Evroult 154, 166 Sawbridgeworth (Herts.) 322 Scalpi, huscarl of Harold 20 n. 157 Seffrid Pelochin, abbot of Glastonbury; bishop of Chichester 92–3, 218 n. 702

396

Index

seise/saisire 62, 64–5, 69 not found in Old English documents 65 in Normandy 64 and n. 164 in novel disseisin 345 see also Domesday Book Serlo de Matom 293 n. 209 servitia debita 58 of bishop of Rochester 59 settlement of 1091 173 nn. 315, 317, 176 n. 341, 183–4, 188, 204, 272–3, 285 settlement of 1101 (Treaty of Alton) 182, 183–4, 198–9 n. 523, 202–3, 272–3, 285–7 Shaftesbury, abbess of 59 Shalford (Ess.) 19 n. 149 Shillingford (Oxon.) 254 Shrewsbury Abbey 247 Sibson 90 Sigebert of Gembloux 40 n. 295 Simon, abbot of Ely 69 n. 197 Simon de Beauchamp 201 n. 545 Simon, dispensator of Henry I 90 Sisenand, king of Visigothic Spain 36 Siston (Glos.) 288 Siward, bishop of Rochester 60 Siward, earl of Northumbria 7 Siward Barn, antecessor of Henry de Ferrers 27 n. 206 Solesmes, abbey of St-Pierre 161 Southampton 278 South Mundham (Suss.) 346 Spain, Visigothic, royal anointing in 38 Spalding (Lincs.) 332–3, 342–3, 346 Spearheafoc 26 n. 202 Stamford Bridge, battle of 20 Stanford Rivers (Ess.) 310 Stanley Abbey 308–9 Stapolwine 26 n. 202 Steeple Morden (Cambs.) 305 Stephen, king of England; duke of Normandy acceptance as duke 223 arrests bishops 242–3, 277 arrival in England 43, 138 attempted association of Eustace 185, 264–5, 273 attitude towards interregnal crimes 193–5, 247 burial of 305 capture at Lincoln and its effects 213–14, 225, 243–5, 251–2, 258, 262, 284 charter of liberties (Easter 1136) 202 n. 550, 263 on afforestation 247 n. 966, 315 alleged renunciation of Danegeld in 285 confirms laws of Henry I 298–9 Henry of Huntingdon’s account of 202 n. 550, 242 n. 910, 253, 285

original draft written by scriptor xiii 200, 266, 320 n. 395 restores church lands 200 William of Malmesbury on 253 see also coronation charter; Oxford, Easter Council of (1136) charters for Geoffrey (II) de Mandeville 250–1 claim of 204, 231–4, 238–9, 263 compared to Saul 139 and n. 27, 242–3 confirmation of Matilda’s grants 250–2 consecration/coronation of 137–8, 140, 193, 196, 202, 232, 238–9, 241–2, 253, 276, 293 coronation charter of 202 n. 550 see also charter of liberties crosses Channel 139–40 death of 195 n. 497, 278, 280–1, 295–7, 336 despairs of breaches of homage 236–7 difficulties with men ‘raised from the dust’ 195 ‘elected’ at London 202 n. 550, 218 n. 705 grant of Worcester to Waleran de Meulan 279 homage done to 196, 238 imprisonment in 1141 135 n. 577 invests Eustace with honour of Boulogne 264 invests William with honour of Boulogne 265 jostles for second place at fealty of 1126–7 235–6 legitimacy deemed to be established by Treaty of Winchester 281–2, 289, 294 not stripped of royal title 243, 248, 267 papal intervention in reign of 263–5, 267 n. 47 see also Lateran Council (1139); individual popes perjury of his supporters by association 235–6, 238 position as predecessor acknowledged by Matilda 247–8 pretence that reign of Matilda never occurred 251–2, 254–5 promises not to threaten Robert of Gloucester again 276 re-affirmation of kingship after release 250, 252 refused admission to Dover and Canterbury 140 released from captivity 249, 263, 266 restores lands of ‘the disinherited’ 195, 245, 253, 283 rebellion against, its reasons 196–201, 235–8 rumoured death in 1136 189 secures inheritance of William of Blois 268–71 support of Norman nobles and use of ducal title 223–4, 267 n. 47 and Treaty of Winchester see Winchester, Treaty of (1153) see also Henry II

Index Stigand, bishop of Winchester; archbishop of Canterbury 7, 8 alleged consecration of Harold by 10 not an antecessor of Lanfranc 35 as Anselm’s antecessor 34 n. 243 argument against 40–1 charges against 35 and nn. 250, 255 controls vacant church of Ely 57 n. 97 parallels with Harold 34 parallels with William of Corbeil 241 removal of 33, 121 n. 497 submits to William 76, 81 usurps archiepiscopal office from Robert of Jumièges 34 Stixwould (Lincs.) 328 Stoneham (Suff.), held by abbot of Bury 23 Stoneleigh Abbey 254 n. 1025 Stowe, church of St Mary 19 Symeon of Durham probably arrives in Durham in 1091 167 Tadmarton (Oxon.) 90 Taunton (Som.) 66 Tavistock Abbey 127 Thame Abbey 291, 308 Templars 294 Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury 232 n. 834, 263, 265–6, 268, 275–8, 295–7, 300, 339–41, 343–5, 351 Theobald (IV), count of Blois 141 and n. 50, 223, 225, 246, 249, 258, 262 Theodwin, abbot of Ely 52 n. 57, 58 Thierry d’Alsace, count of Flanders 312 Thomas of Bayeux, archbishop of York 13, 126, 137 death of 192 incorrectly reported to have crowned Henry I 107, 137 n. 10 Thomas Becket, chancellor; archbishop of Canterbury 265, 297, 305 n. 287, 306, 346–7, 352 Thomas II, archbishop of York 126 Thomas of Marlborough 88 Thorkell, tenant of Abingdon Abbey 20 does homage to the abbot 90 Thorne (Kent) 327, 334 Thorold, abbot of Peterborough 67 n. 185 Thurstan, abbot of Ely 22 Thurstan, clerk of William de Pont de l’Arche 217 n. 685 Thurstan fitzSimon 287, 328, 333 Tinchebrai, battle of 188 n. 441, 190 n. 459, 241, 249, 271, 325 n. 439 Toledo, bishop of, as primate 38 fourth Council of 36, 37–8 fifth Council of 37 n. 273

397

sixth Council of 36–7 seventh Council of 37 eighth Council of 38 tenth Council of 38 n. 276 eleventh Council of 38 n. 279 twelfth Council of 38 nn. 276, 279 Torigni, castle of 295 Tothill, in Westminster (Middx.) 94, 98 Trier, archbishop of 221 n. 729 Trigg (Corn.) 342 Troarn, abbey of 160 Truce of God 6 n. 38, 115 Uffculme (Dev.) 199–200, 216 n. 679, 253 Ulf Fenisc 27 n. 206 Ulger, bishop of Angers 204 n. 562, 221 n. 730, 233 Urban II, pope 60 and n. 124, 121, 124, 130–1 Urse d’Abetot, sheriff of Worcs. 89 and n. 319 vacant churches custos of 110 do not fall into the king’s hand in Anglo-Saxon England 57 see also Eadmer; Henry I, coronation ‘edict’; individual churches Vincent, abbot of Abingdon 90 Walchelin Maminot 271 Waleran de Meulan 189, 198 n. 523, 243 n. 924, 246, 268 n. 50, 279, 308 n. 306 Walkelin, bishop of Winchester 35 Wallingford (Berks.) 273, 281 n. 123 Walter, abbot of Battle 297, 300–2, 333, 351 Walter, abbot of Evesham 87 vita of 88, 91 grant in favour of 15 naivety of 91 refuses to take homage from Æthelwig’s men 88–90, 95, 101, 104, 122, 125 settlement with Wulfstan 90 Walter, abbot of Ramsey 54 n. 73, 306–7 n. 294 Walter, bishop of Hereford 35 n. 249 Walter Bolbec 54 n. 73 Walter of Douai 26 n. 199, 199–200 Walter fitzRoger 86 n. 295 Walter fitzIvo 317 Walter of Hereford 313–14 Walter de Lacy 94–5, 96, 103 Walter, priest of Waxham 336 n. 529, 342 Walter, tenant of Geoffrey (I) de Mandeville 67 Walter Tirel 188 Waltham (Ess.) 322, 323 n. 430 Waltheof, earl of Northumbria as a commissioner 17

398

Index

wardship custos 110 in France 110 n. 439 in 11th-century Normandy 109 n. 439 see Henry I, coronation ‘edict’ of Wargrave (Berks.) 306, 310 Warin fitzGerald 318, 322 n. 418 Warin de Les Essarts, abbot of St-Evroult 50 Warin of Walcote 328 Wence, man of Nigel d’Aubigny 101 Wendover (Bucks.) 309 Werrington, abbot of Tavistock 24 Westminster abbey church of St Peter 3, 11, 66, 68 n. 194 Council (1102) 192 n. 478, 207 Council (1141) 249–50 White Ship disaster 208, 259 n. 1066 Wilfrid, ‘bishop’ of York 36 Willecroft (?Cambs.) 307 William, duke of Normandy; king of England 1, 2, 11, 232 accession as duke 147–8 ‘alive and dead’ 127 n. 530, 129 n. 535, 253, 286 annexation of Maine 155 arrival in England 9, 13, 18, 19, 20, 42, 43, 114 attests his own charters 159 nn. 196, 197 at battle of Hastings 7, 8 blamed for loss of Uffculme 200 blesses younger sons for loyalty 154 cannot be called ætheling 43 claim of 15, 32, 127, 171, 261, 352–9 claims to kinship with Edward the Confessor 32–3, 42 confirmation/grant by 16, 22, 70 n. 200 confirms father’s grant 160 and n. 216 consecration/coronation of 2, 5, 7, 22, 42, 43, 115, 157, 174 and n. 327, 203 n. 554 postponed 137 by papal legates in 1070 174 n. 327 contrast between titles in Normandy and Maine 43 death of 127, 128, 136, 138, 140, 188, 286 deathbed concession to Curthose 170, 173 n. 312, 178, 181, 232 deathbed grant of regalia to Rufus 168 and n. 278, 169, 175, 179–80, 203–5 designated as future duke 148, 156 designates no successor in England, according to Orderic 175, 179, 183 dispossession by 20 divides cross-Channel estates 178 n. 355 division of England and Normandy, its result for the aristocracy 178 does not make sons swear homage to Robert Curthose 181–2

makes gift to St Paul’s, London 66 funeral of 102 n. 392, 189–90 garrisons ejected after death 187, 189 n. 452 grant to La-Trinité-du-Mont, Rouen 358 GND dedicated to 147 imports ‘new usages’ 47 instigates the creation of subtenancies 67 instructs Lanfranc to anoint Rufus 139 n. 23, 175 n. 329, 178 intervenes to ensure that subtenants are seised 66, 85 invests Anselm as abbot of Bec 50 invests abbot-elect of St-Evroult 49 laments disloyalty of Curthose 154 learns English 16 as liberator 68 magnanimity to relatives 150–2 minority of 149–50, 152 monument on tomb of 137 n. 7, 138 n. 21 occasionally given title of king on arrival in England 20, 42 offers Harold his daughter in marriage 211 n. 634 orders restoration of land to Shaftesbury Abbey 71 n. 209 orders William Rufus to leave his deathbedside 137, 175 n. 329, 178 possibly does homage to Henry I, king of France 162 n. 237 possibly does homage to Philip I, king of France 163 n. 237 predicts disorder after his death 188 receives England from Edward the Confessor 8, 171, 180 recognized as his father’s successor before designation 148 n. 97, 155 regnal dates of 43 relief 187 n. 434 reseises land ‘into the king’s hand’ 79 returns to Normandy in 1067 11 sick at Bonneville 156 n. 167 testamentary bequests to Battle Abbey 179 n. 365 ‘time’ of 19, 123 n. 509, 323, 333 title of, in continental charters 159–60 title to Maine 161 title (royal) of 8, 43, 157 and n. 181, 179 transfers see of Dorchester to Lincoln 70 writ of 128 and n. 532 William Rufus, king of England accedes to Anselm’s preconditions 121 alleged words to Roger de Montgommery 5, 173, 177, 184, 356–7 arrival in England 43 attests his father’s charters 158 n. 191 attitude to father during father’s lifetime 172–3 attitude to Rochester rebels (1088) 197–8

Index becomes king 136 birth of 158 n. 191 Channel crossings of 43 n. 316, 139, 140 chosen as successor by father 173, 176, 178–80, 183 confirmation to Ramsey Abbey 25 confrontation with Anselm 130 consecration/coronation of 139, 141–2, 178, 180 n. 379, 184 custody of vacant churches 53, 55 death of 114, 125, 128, 138, 188–90, 286 deprives William of St-Calais of bishopric 84 deserts dying father 137, 139, 175 n. 329 disloyalty of his barons, reasons for 177, 181, 184, 202 dispossession by 190–1 division of cross-Channel holdings under 184 ‘edict’ issued in 1093 105, 134–5, 202 fancy hose, takes pleasure in 177 forensic ingenuity of 122 gives undertakings to Lanfranc prior to consecration 141 grants lands belonging to Sherborne Abbey 173 n. 317 illness of, in 1093 48, 52–3, 63, 100, 105, 134–5, 195 n. 497, 252, 276 n. 94 on immunity of kings from shipwreck 139 lands held in England and Normandy during father’s lifetime 173 never pledges fidelitas to Robert Curthose at designation 181–2 not elected king 180 obituary of 45, 117 orders reseisin of monks of St Cuthbert 116 orders that Anselm be seised of archbishopric 121 promises to English in 1088 105, 177 n. 351, 202–3, 205 refusal to recognize Urban II or Clement III 130 reputation of, in Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ 108–9, 115, 125–6 on royal dignity, according to Eadmer 132 secures Winchester 139 time of 128 title of, prior to William I’s death 159 and n. 200 possibly at Touques 139 and n. 23 redeems father’s regalia from St-Étienne 167 n. 275, 179 treatment of the church of Canterbury after Lanfranc’s death 52, 60, 85 n. 287, 116 n. 471, 121, 123 and n. 510, 125 possibly at Wissant 138–9 writs in favour of Bury St Edmunds 123 n. 509, 128 and n. 532 writ in favour of Lincoln 134–5

399

William Adelin 83, 133, 205–9, 232, 240, 259, 275, 296 see also homage William, abbot of St. Benet’s, Holme 340 n. 551 William, archbishop of Canterbury 123 n. 508, 236, 239, 241, 253 William d’Aubigny 177 n. 354, 309 William d’Avranches 320 n. 394 William Baynard, tenant of Westminster Abbey 94, 98 William de Beauchamp 268 n. 50, 279–80, 312 n. 332 William, bishop of London 23 n. 181 William, bishop of Norwich 340 n. 551 William of Blois, son of King Stephen 265, 268–72, 274, 278, 288, 310, 312 William of Breteuil speaks up for Curthose in 1100 138, 141 and n. 46, 181, 204, 217 n. 685 William de Briouze 26 n. 200, 86 n. 295 William de Chesney 287, 312, 319 William Clito 208, 239–40 William (I), count of Eu, half brother of Duke Richard II 145–6, 151, 181, 182 n. 399, 236 n. 860 William, count of Mortain 249, 271 William, count of Talou/Arques 147 n. 96, 150, 151 William d’Écouis 27 n. 206 William fitzStephen 346–7 William Foliot 192 n. 479 William Giffard, chancellor; bishop of Winchester cast of mind of 114 probable role in drafting Henry I’s coronation ‘edict’ 107, 191–2 William, earl of Gloucester 288, 292 n. 199, 317–18 William fitzOsbern gives land to Ralph of Limesy 71 estates divided on death 178 n. 355 role in government of England 163 role in the redemption of land 23 William fitzOtto, die-cutter 221 William of Jumièges date of writing 41 n. 296, 156 informed by Robert Champart 147 on English conspiracy against the Normans 5 n. 37 scissors-and-paste approach to English history 41, 156 views Curthose as already duke c.1070 156–7 William, king’s chamberlain 91 William of Leathley 349 n. 604 William Longsword, ‘duke’ of Normandy 143 assassinated 143, 146, 149 n. 110 William Malet 27, 31, 80, 128 n. 532

400

Index

William of Malmesbury on designation of William Adelin 206 on Eadmer’s acuity 96 hints at a dissident interpretation of the Conquest 42, 232 on interregna 202–3 on settlement of 1091 184 William Maltravers 192–4, 297, 324, 325 n. 439 William de Mandeville 251, 322 William Martel 328 William Mauduit 259–60, 312 n. 332 William de Moyon, sheriff of Somerset 66 William of Newburgh on Henry II’s restorations 304, 307 on oaths 232 on ‘preposterous’ succession to William I 183 on Stephen’s usurpation 233–6, 241–2 on the Treaty of Winchester (1153) 281–4, 290 William Paynel 178 n. 354, 287 William de Percy 80 William Peverel 26 n. 202, 27 n. 203, 30 n. 223 William of Poitiers absence of term homage from 76, 94 apostrophizes Harold’s corpse 37 avoids mention of Curthose 155 n. 160, 156 commends tyrannicide 37 connection with Odo of Bayeux 153 expounds a legal argument 40, 232 invokes Cicero 37 on Edward the Confessor’s bequest/designation 5–7, 8, 166, 171, 180, 183, 232 on Harold’s alleged trip to Normandy 7 on Harold’s alleged submission to William 75–6, 232 on Harold as king 10 and n. 73, 171 on Herbert, count of Maine’s submission to William I 75–6 on marriage agreement between Harold and William I 40 n. 293, 211 n. 634 on Stigand’s submission to William 76, 81 on testamentary custom 171 and n. 295 as a truthteller 40 on William I’s initial distribution of lands 5 on William I’s accession 3–4 on William I’s restoration of lands 23, 76 William de Pont de l’Arche 217 n. 685 William (I) de Roumare 328 n. 461 William of St-Calais, bishop of Durham at Council of Rockingham (1095) 132–3 on king’s powers 133 ‘the man behind the [Domesday] Survey’ 84, 133 returns from exile in 1091 167 trial of 61, 130 and n. 544, 131 death of 52, 116, 128, 194 n. 490 William Scudet (Escudet), king’s cook 67

William, son of Giroie 176 n. 343 William, son of Roger (I) de Montgommery 149 n. 109 William Spileman 287, 292 William Talvas, son of Robert of Bellême 187 n. 438, 188 n. 441, 222–4, 226 n. 779 William de Vescy 294, 320–1 William (I) de Warenne 28 n. 209, 184 n. 409 William (II) de Warenne 106, 184 n. 409 William (III) de Warenne 269, 319 William ‘Werlenc’ 153 n. 140 William of Ypres 312 Wilton, abbess of 59 Wilton (Herefs.) 319 n. 388 Winchcombe, church of 21 Winchester (Hants.) 278, 306 bishop of, grants land at king’s instigation 67 body of Rufus carried by cart to 188 Council of (Easter 1070) 34 not mentioned by William of Jumièges 156 Council of (Easter 1072) 24 n. 186, 37 Council of (Easter 1141) 138, 208 n. 604, 209 n. 606, 216–18, 220, 258 settlement of 1101 ratified at 182 Treaty of 1153 87 n. 297, 260 n. 1074, 261–2, 265–8, 272, 281, 353, 357 alleged restoration of status quo under Henry I 288–9, 292–3 confirmation of royal estates by both Henry and Stephen 290–1, 305 no mention of each other in other confirmations 291–2 its improvements on the settlements of 1091 and 1101 273, 285 links to Council of Lisieux (1106) 286 measures for handover of power 278, 280–1, 288–9, 296 on position of king and liege lord 282–3 religious sureties in 275–8 sidelined by Henry II after coronation 338 supposed restorations following 287–90 Windsor (Berks.) 11, 42, 121 castle of 277, 280, 297 Council of (1070) 23 n. 186 gift made by William I at 22 n. 176, 68, 84 Woodburn (Bucks.) 70 Woodstock (Oxon.) 329 Assize of (1184) 331 n. 489 Worcester castle of 279–80 church of St Mary 14, 16, 21 n. 164, 349 see also relief; Wulfstan Wrabness (Ess.) 129 n. 535 Wulfnoth, antecessor of Brian, count of Brittany 25 n. 196 Wulfstan, St., bishop of Worcester appointment as bishop 57

Index as a lawyer 17 death of 53, 54 profession of, to Lanfranc 34 alleged profession of, to Stigand 34 uses knife to erase documents and clean fingers 34 promotes loyalty to Rufus 205 recovers lands from Thomas, archbishop of York 13–14

401

recovers lands usurped by Francigeni 65 n. 169 settlement with Æthelwig of Evesham 90 Wulfweard 66 Wulfwig, Domesday tenant who vouches the king as tutor 67 n. 183 Wulfwig, bishop of Dorchester 34 n. 249 Yaxley (Suff.) 90 York, fall of (1069) 156 n. 170