No More Learning

As soon as he heard of Harold's coronation, he sent
messengers to England, reminding him of his oath and demanding his
allegiance. At the same time he proclaimed to all the world that Harold
was a usurper, and sent envoys to Pope Alexander II denouncing Harold
as a perjurer and asking for a blessing on his proposed invasion of
England. To this appeal the Pope gave a favourable ear; for the Eng-
lish Church in the eyes of the Curia was much in need of reform, and
might well be brought by such an expedition more under papal authority.
Alexander, therefore, by the advice of Archdeacon Hildebrand, sent
William a consecrated banner as a token of his approbation, and thus
gave the duke's piratical adventure almost the character of a holy
war. Pending the result of their negotiations, William summoned a
council of his barons to meet at Lillebonne, and asked them to support
his enterprise. It was only with difficulty that they were persuaded to
help him. Feudal law gave the duke no right to call for their services
out of France, and to most of them it seemed doubtful whether a suf-
ficiently strong force could be got together for so great an undertaking,
or, even if got together, whether it would be possible to build and man
sufficient transports to carry it across the Channel. The first objection
was met by asking for volunteers from outside Normandy and promising
them a share in the plunder of England. And as for the second objec-
tion, William would not listen to it for a moment, but ordered transports
to be built in all parts of the duchy and stores of arms and provisions
to be made ready by harvest time. In these deliberations the most
active advocate of the duke's project was his seneschal William Fitz
Osbern, who perhaps knew something of southern England at first hand,
as his brother Osbern Fitz Osbern already held an ecclesiastical post in
Sussex, being Dean of Bosham, together with an estate in Cornwall".
The appeal for volunteers soon brought adventurous spirits from all
Domesday 1, 17 a. Boseham; 121 b. Stratone.
1
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XV.
32


## p. 498 (#544) ############################################

498
The strength of the Norman army
quarters to William's standard. The largest number are said to have
come from Brittany, led by Brian and Alan of Penthièvre; but the
number of Flemings was almost as great. There were also strong con-
tingents from Artois and Picardy, while Eustace of Boulogne, who had
a long-standing feud with the house of Godwin, offered his services in
person. On the other hand very little help came from Maine or Anjou,
and only a handful of knights from more distant parts, such as Cham-
pagne, Poitou, or Apulia. One would fain know the total number of
William's host, but as usual the figures given by the chroniclers are
merely rhetorical. Several considerations, however, strictly limit the pos-
sible numbers. In the first place, we can be sure that the Norman con-
tingents outnumbered the auxiliaries from other parts. But, as we have
already seen, it is very unlikely that Normandy at this time could put more
than 1200 knights into the field. Again, the Bayeux poet Wace, who
describes the expedition in great detail in Roman de Rou, a metrical
chronicle written about 1172, states that his father had told him that
the number of transports of all kinds was not quite seven hundred; and,
as the Bayeux tapestry testifies, the largest of these were only open barges,
with one square sail, not capable of holding more than a dozen horses,
while the majority were still smaller and less capacious? . It seems then
that the most plausible number we can assume for William's army is
somewhere round about 5000 men. Somewhere about 2000 of these were
probably fully-equipped knights with trained horses, of whom about 1200
hailed from Normandy and about 800 from other districts, while the
remaining 3000 men would be made up by contingents of footmen and
archers and the crews who manned the ships. In that age, however, even
5000 men were an almost fabulously large force to collect and keep
embodied for any length of time, nor were there any precedents for
attempting to transport a large body of cavalry across the sea. No viking
leaders had ever done that. Their fleets had only carried warriors, and
their first operation after landing had always been to seize horses from
the invaded territory. William's knights, on the contrary, must have
their own trained horses; and so William had to provide for bringing
over at least 2500 horses in addition to his men, and this too in small
open boats which were unable to beat to windward; nor could he reckon
on any docking accommodation, either for embarking or disembarking
them. The mere crossing of the Channel, then, would be a remarkable
and very novel feat; and if the weather turned stormy or the tide were
missed, a very hazardous one. Nothing indeed brings out the duke's
prestige so plainly as the fact that he was able to persuade his followers
to take so tremendous a risk. By harvest time, as arranged, his prepara-
tions were fairly complete, and the contingents from western Normandy
1 The reasonableness of Wace's figure is strikingly illustrated by William of
Malmesbury's statement that in 1142 the Earl of Gloucester used 52 ships to trans-
port some 360 knights from Cherbourg to Wareham.


## p. 499 (#545) ############################################

Harold defeats Harold Hardrada
499
and Brittany lay ready with their transports at the mouth of the Dives'.
There they remained windbound for four weeks, and it was only in the
middle of September that they were able to move eastwards to Saint-Valery
in the estuary of the Somme and join the contingents from eastern Nor-
mandy and Picardy. At Saint-Valery the invaders were about 60 miles as
the crow flies from the Sussex coast, instead of about 105 miles as they
would have been had they started from the Dives; but still there was no
sign of a fair wind for England, and whispers began to spread that
William's luck had deserted him.
Meantime, events were taking place in England which greatly
improved William's chances. All through the summer Harold had kept
both men and ships in readiness on the south coast for William's coming.
But when September came the men insisted on going to their homes to
see after the harvest. Scarcely, however, had they disbanded, when
Harold received the unwelcome tidings that his exiled brother Tostig in
alliance with Harold Hardrada, the great warrior-King of Norway, had
entered the Humber with a large fleet and was threatening York. Harold
at once got together his house-carls and such other men as he could lay
hands on, and started to cover the 200 miles between London and York
by forced marches to succour the Yorkshiremen. Before he reached
Tadcaster, news arrived that the Earls Edwin and Morkere had been de-
feated at Fulford outside York, that the city had submitted, and that
the invaders had moved off eastwards to plunder Harold's own manor
of Catton by Stamford Bridge on the Derwent? Harold accordingly
marched past York and fell on the invaders by surprise. A long and
desperate fight ensued, in which both Harold Hardrada and Tostig were
killed, while only a remnant of their men survived to regain their ships
and betake themselves home. This splendid victory was gained on
Monday, 25 September, and at any other time would have made Harold's
position secure. Almost at the same time William at Saint-Valery, in total
ignorance of what Harold was doing, was organising processions of relics
to intercede for more favourable weather. In most years equinoctial gales
might have been expected, but suddenly fate smiled upon him. The
weather became fine, the wind veered round to the right quarter, and on
Thursday, 28 September, he was able to embark all his men and horses.
By nightfall all was ready, but he still had to wait for the tide. The
actual start was not made till near midnight, William leading the way
with a lantern at his mast-head in the Mora, a fast-sailing craft which
had been specially fitted out for him by his wife. The probable intention
was to land near Winchelsea in the great manor of Brede (Rameslie),
which for over 40 years had been in the possession of the monks of
i William of Poitiers states that the whole armament was first assembled at the
Dives. It would, however, have been senseless to bring the eastern contingents so
far west, only to lengthen the crossing.
Domesday 1, 305a. Cattune.
2
CH, XV.
32--2


## p. 500 (#546) ############################################

500
Battle of Hastings, 1066
Fécamp by the gift of Knut and Emma'. The wind and tide, however,
carried the Aotilla farther to the west, and in the morning William
found himself off the small haven of Pevensey, with no obstacle to bar
his entrance. Pevensey itself at this time was a small borough of 52
burgesses ? ; but they could only look on helplessly while William's trans-
ports were one by one beached and unloaded. Once safe ashore, no time
was lost in moving eastwards to the larger borough of Hastings, where
orders were immediately given for the building of a castle.
On the news of William's landing being brought to York, Harold at
once rode south to London to collect fresh forces, leaving Edwin and
Morkere to follow. Many of his best house-carls had fallen at Stamford
Bridge, but a very powerful force of thegns could soon have been mustered
from the shires south of the Welland and Avon if only Harold would
have played a waiting game. He was, however, in no mood to remain on
the defensive. He had just won a magnificent victory, and it seemed to
him a cowardly plan merely to stand by and let the invaders overrun his
native Sussex without hindrance. He therefore, after a few days' halt,
set out again, having with him only such levies as had hastily come in
from the districts nearest London. Passing through the Weald, he led
his forces towards Crowhurst and Whatlington, two villages lying north-
west of Hastings', which had formed part of his personal estates before
he became Earl of Wessex, and on 13 October, the eve of St Calixtus,
he encamped on an open ridge of down which lay midway between his
two properties some six miles from the sea. Early next day William,
eager to attack, marshalled his army near the high ground of Telham,
two miles away, and then advanced in three divisions having the Breton
contingents, say 1000 men, on the left, the Flemings and Frenchmen,
say 1000 men, on the right, and the Normans, say 2400 men, in the
centre. A slight valley intervened between the two armies, and across it
William could see Harold's forces posted in close formation several ranks
deep along the crest of the ridge, having a front of perhaps 500 yards.
The English in accordance with their national custom were all on foot,
the house-carls and thegns being armed with two-handed axes and kite-
shaped shields. Some of Harold's men, however, were just peasants, armed
only with javelins and stone-tipped clubs. The whole body probably out-
numbered the invaders, but Harold knew that he was at a great disad-
vantage in having very few archers, and no mounted troops to match
William's 2000 horsemen. He consequently gave his men orders to stand
strictly on the defensive, and on no account to leave their position, which
was one of advantage, as the enemy would have to attack up a fairly
Domesday 1, 17 a. Rameslie. Cf. also Haskins, EHR, Vol. xxxi (1918),
p. 342.
2 Domesday 1, 20b. Pevensel.
3 Domesday 1, 18 b. Crohest, Watlingetone.


## p. 501 (#547) ############################################

Death of Harold. The Normans advance on London 501
steep slope, whether in front or on the flanks! . William's men, undeterred
by that, came on steadily, the front ranks in each division being made up
of archers and cross-bowmen, followed by lines of heavily-armed footmen
(loricati), while the knights brought up the rear. For some hours all
attempts to storm the hill were in vain, and at one moment William had
great difficulty in preventing the Bretons from retreating in a panic. At
last, however, by the stratagem of a feigned flight on the right, a number
of the English were induced to rush down the hill in pursuit, whereupon
the Norman knights wheeled their horses round, and easily cut them to
pieces. This gave the opening which William was looking for. Renewing
the attack, slowly but surely the Norman knights pressed back the
depleted English shield-wall, until at last Harold was mortally wounded
by an arrow in his eye. For a space some leading thegns still held out
round the king's dragon standard ; but one by one they too were hewn
down, so that by nightfall the English army was reduced to a mere
leaderless rabble which scattered and fled into the woods. The disaster
to Harold's cause was complete. The deaths of his brothers, Earls Gyrth
and Leofwin, together with the slaughter of so many leading men, made it
impossible for the supporters of the house of Godwin in eastern Wessex
to make another stand. Duke William, on the other hand, was too
cautious to press on quickly; and it was not till five days after his
victory that he set out from Hastings to get possession of Canterbury,
moving by Romney and Dover. Meantime, in London, the leaders of the
English Church, headed by Stigand, acting in co-operation with the chief
landowners of the Midlands and the Eastern counties under the guidance
of Aesgar the Staller, the leading magnate in Essex, declared for setting
Edgar the Aetheling on the throne. In this decision Edwin and Morkere
outwardly acquiesced; but secretly the two earls were intriguing to
prevent the crowning of the young prince—he was hardly yet seventeen,
it would seem m-and they soon retired to their estates without summoning
their men to fight for him. Once more it was clearly shewn that the
English race had as yet developed no true national feeling. Perhaps
what the earls hoped for was a partition of the kingdom between
themselves and William, the duke contenting himself with Wessex.
While still at Canterbury, the news was brought to William that Queen
Edith and the men of Winchester were prepared to recognise him. This
made it safer for him to advance on London ; but before actually attack-
ing the city, he thought it more politic to secure as strong a foothold
as possible south of the Thames. He therefore marched past Southwark
and Kingston and up the Thames valley, harrying a wide belt of country,
until he came to the borough of Wallingford, at that time the chief
place in Berkshire. Crossing the Thames at this point, he doubled back
eastwards to Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire, so as to threaten London
1 Freeman's view, that the English line was protected by a palisade, has been
strenuously contested by Mr Round, and seems quite untenable.
CH. XV.


## p. 502 (#548) ############################################

502
London submits. William crowned
from the north-west and cut it off from possible succour from the Mid-
lands. As Edwin and Morkere still remained inactive, the magnates
in London decided that armed resistance was hopeless. They accordingly
went to meet William, and made their submission, the king-elect, Edgar
the Aetheling, being one of the party. The Norman forces thereupon
advanced unopposed to London; and on Christmas Day 1066 William,
like Harold only a year before, was hallowed King of the English in
Edward's new church at Westminster by Ealdred the Archbishop of
York, Stigand of Canterbury's services being refused, on the ground
that he had received his pallium from an anti-Pope.
When once William had been crowned with the traditional rites, his
attitude towards those who had submitted to him necessarily changed
from that of an invader bent on promoting terror and havoc to that of a
lawful sovereign anxious to stand well in the eyes of his new subjects and
eager to give them as good peace as he had already given to Normandy.
Nevertheless, William was faced with a dilemma; for he could not safely
allow his new dominions to remain without a Norman garrison, or risk
offending the soldiery to whom he owed his triumph by disappointing
them of their promised rewards. To feel secure he had to allot extensive
estates to his chief followers, which they, in their turn, could deal out
to their retainers, and also build castles up and down the land for their
protection. As he surveyed his position, however, after the coronation,
William might well think that he had gained sufficient territory to reward
his men lavishly. The area acknowledging his authority was already
much larger than Normandy, and it included a considerable proportion of
the most fertile and best populated parts of the country. It comprised,
moreover, the estates of nearly all those who had actually fought against
him, including a large proportion of the estates of the house of Godwin;
and all these he could legitimately regard as confiscated for treason and
available for distribution. The areas, too, which had not as yet actively
opposed him, such as West Wessex, North Mercia, and Northumbria,
might well submit voluntarily if given more time. He therefore decided
to adopt a waiting policy, and to direct his immediate efforts to organising
the south-eastern half of the country, giving out at the same time that
the English laws and customs would be maintained, and that even those
who had helped to set up Edgar the Aetheling might make their peace
by paying suitable fines and providing hostages. In Essex and East
Anglia there was really little doubt that leniency would be the best policy,
as William knew that several of the leading landowners, such as the
Bishop of London, the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds, Ralf the Staller, and
Robert son of Wimarc, were definitely on his side, being men of French
extraction who had been installed and promoted by King Edward. The
policy of waiting, however, quickly bore fruit in the Midlands as well,
and before long many of the leading Mercians, headed by Edwin and
Morkere, betook themselves to William's court at Barking and did him


## p. 503 (#549) ############################################

Siege of Exeter. Revolt of Edwin and Morkere
503
homage. The two earls, in fact, as they had not fought against William,
were well received and confirmed in all their possessions on the condition
that they remained in his company. Meanwhile castle-building and the
assignment of confiscated lands to Normans were pressed on steadily, and
by March William felt himself sufficiently secure to risk a visit to
Normandy, for the double purpose of making a triumphal progress
through the duchy and of impressing his continental neighbours. To
grace his triumph he took with him Edgar the Aetheling, Archbishop
Stigand, Earl Edwin, Earl Morkere, Earl Waltheof, and many other
leading Englishmen, and also a great quantity of gold and silver and
plate and jewels, seized from the conquered districts, for distribution as
a thank-offering among the churches of Normandy. In England he left
the direction of affairs in the hands of his half-brother, Odo, Bishop of
Bayeux, and of his seneschal William Fitz Osbern, the former having his
head-quarters in Kent and Essex, and the latter apparently in Hampshire
and the Isle of Wight, together with the custody of more distant strong-
holds in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. For eight months these two
governed as joint-regents; and if they did not foster, at any rate they did
little to repress, the rapacity and licence of the rank and file of the
intending settlers. No serious risings of the English, however, occurred,
the only disturbance of note being an unsuccessful attempt made by
Eustace of Boulogne, helped by the men of Kent, to oust Odo of Bayeux
from Dover, a stronghold which the count claimed ought to have been
entrusted to him and not to the bishop.
In December 1067 William returned from Normandy, and soon
realised that the remoter shires were not going to submit to his authority
without compulsion. To begin with, Harold's mother, Gytha, was still
holding out in western Wessex; and though the men of Somerset had
apparently by this time deserted her cause, it required a march by
William in person to Exeter, and an eighteen days' siege of the borough,
before the men of Devon and Cornwall would come to terms with him.
Then, soon after Whitsuntide 1068, came the news that Edwin and
Morkere, disgusted at the slights put upon them, had broken into revolt,
that Edgar the Aetheling with his sisters had set out for the north, and
that Gospatric, who had been recognised by William as Earl of Bernicia,
was inclined to set Edgar up as king. William, thus challenged, at once
marched his forces into Yorkshire. The rapidity of his movements and
the prompt building of castles at Warwick, Nottingham, and York,
quickly cowed Edwin and Morkere into renewing their allegiance; but
Edgar and Gospatric took refuge at the court of Malcolm Canmore, the
King of Scots (1054-1092), who received them honourably. William
himself did not go beyond York, but turned south again, and spent the
autumn in erecting castles at Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Cambridge.
Being determined, however, to get a footing in the north, he offered the
earldom of Bernicia to one of his Flemish followers, Robert of Commines,
CH. XV.


## p. 504 (#550) ############################################

504
The harrying of the north. Revolt of Hereward
1
1
1
and sent him early in 1069 with a force of 500 horsemen to Durham.
This move ended in disaster, for the Northumbrians at once rose and
massacred Commines and his men; whereupon Edgar, helped by Earl
Waltheof, reappeared in Yorkshire and laid siege to William's forces in
York. Once more William hastened to York and
gave
orders for a second
castle to be built there. But even so the Yorkshiremen were only tem-
porarily quelled, and soon took heart again on hearing that Svein Estrith-
son of Denmark was at last fitting out an army to enforce his claim to
the English crown as Knut's heir. The Danish expedition set out in
August 1068, and after ineffective attacks on Kent and East Anglia,
joined forces with Edgar the Aetheling in the Humber. The fall of York
followed towards the end of September, Waltheof taking a prominent
part in the attack. For a moment the situation looked serious; for a
revolt was also in progress in Shropshire and Staffordshire led by a thegn
named Eadric the Wild, while only a month or two earlier some of
Harold's illegitimate sons, sailing from Dublin, had effected a landing
near Barnstaple in Devon. There was, however, no real co-operation
between William's enemies, and the crisis soon passed away. Leaving the
Bishop of Coutances and Brian of Penthièvre to deal with the danger in
the south, William himself marched upon Stafford, scattering the rebels
before him, and then into Yorkshire, at the same time sending detachments
into Lindsey under the Counts of Mortain and Eu. South of the Humber
these leaders were successful in capturing several parties of Danes, but
William himself was held up at the river Aire by foods for over three
weeks. His mere proximity, however, demoralised the Danes; and when
at last he renewed his advance, he found that the main body had evacuated
York and retreated to their ships. The way was thus cleared for William
to punish the Yorkshiremen. Thrice they had defied him, and he was
determined that it should never occur again. He therefore gave
orders
that the country from the Humber to the Tyne should be systematically
devastated. For several weeks the cruel work went on, the villages one
after the other being burnt, while the inhabitants and cattle were either
killed or driven away. As a result, the whole of the diocese of York,
stretching from the North Sea to the Irish Channel, became so depopulated
that even twenty years later the greater part of it still remained an
uncultivated waste. Nothing in William's career has so blackened his
reputation as this barbarous action; but it led quickly to Gospatric and
Waltheof's submission, and at any rate freed the Normans from all further
danger. In 1070 Cheshire and Shropshire were both overcome without
any serious fighting, and by March William was back at Salisbury and
able to disband his forces. After that, only one more rising of the English
is reported. This was led by Hereward, a petty Lincolnshire landowner,
and was no more than a forlorn hope, provoked by the arrival of the
Danish fleet in the fenlands surrounding Ely. The Danes indeed effected
little beyond the sack of Peterborough, but Hereward held out in the


## p. 505 (#551) ############################################

The Conqueror re-allots the soil of England
505
Isle of Ely for over a year. The fall of his stronghold marks the completion
of the Conquest. By the close of 1071, William was in full possession of
every English shire; Earl Edwin was dead, Earl Morkere a prisoner, and
Edgar the Aetheling was once more a fugitive in Scotland.
Having followed in outline the five years' struggle by which William
gradually obtained full mastery over his kingdom, it is time to turn to
the measures which he took for its reorganisation and government. At
the outset, as we have seen, it was by no means his intention to make
many sweeping changes. He claimed to be Edward's lawful heir, and
from the first he gave out that it was his will that “all men should have
and hold Edward's law. ” Such surviving writs and charters as date from
the years 1067 and 1068 shew that at first he acted partly through
Englishmen, while to some extent he even seems to have employed the
English local levies in his military operations. The prolonged resistance,
however, which he encountered in so many districts, inevitably led the
Conqueror to change this policy, and gave him an excuse for treating all
the greater English laymen as suspected, if not active, rebels and for
confiscating their estates. He thus by degrees seized nearly all the best
land, with the exception of the broad estates owned by the Church and
the monasteries, and was able to reward his leading fighting-men not
merely handsomely, but with fiefs often ten or even twenty times as
valuable as the lands they possessed across the Channel. And even so
he by no means exhausted the land at his disposal, but was able to retain
for himself far more and far better distributed crown-lands than had
been enjoyed by any English king before him. He was able further to
set aside a sufficient amount of land to provide wages or maintenance
for some hundreds of minor officials and domestic retainers, such as
chaplains,clerks, physicians, chamberlains, cooks, barbers, bailiffs, foresters,
falconers, huntsmen, and so forth, whom he employed about his person
or on his wide-spread estates, or whose past services had entitled them to
either pensions or charity.
The process by which the conquered land was parcelled out into fiefs
for William's fighting-men can unfortunately only be surmised; for no
documents have survived, if any ever existed, recording his grants or the
terms on which they were made. The outcome of the process on the other
hand is very completely set before us, as the resulting fiefs, or “baronies”
to use the technical French term which now came into use, are all described
in minute detail in the book of Winchester," the unique land-register,
soon nicknamed “Domesdei," which the Conqueror ordered to be drawn
up in 1086. This wonderful survey, which we know as Domesday Book,
covers the whole kingdom with the exception of the four northern counties
and a few towns, London and Winchester being unfortunately among the
omissions. Internal evidence shews that the survey was made by sending
several bands of commissioners on circuit through the shires, who convened
CH. XV.


## p. 506 (#552) ############################################

506
The evidence of Domesday Book
the shire-moots and got the information they required from local juries,
containing both Normans and Englishmen, drawn from each hundred.
The resulting returns, which are set out in Domesday Book county by
county and fief by fief, are clearly answers to a definite schedule of questions
which were put to the juries, and which were designed to elicit how many
distinct properties, or “manors” as the Normans termed them, there were
in each hundred, by whom they had formerly been held in King Edward's
day, and to whom they had been allotted, how far they were sufficiently
stocked with peasantry and plough-oxen, and what was estimated to be
their annual value to their possessors, both before the Conquest and at
the date when the survey was made.
Particulars were also called for, which enable us to ascertain the
categories into which the peasantry were divided, the distribution of wood,
meadow, and pasture, and the amount of taxation to which each manor
was liable in the event of the king levying a Danegeld. Unfortunately
the clerks who compiled the record in its final shape at Winchester, and
re-arranged the returns by fiefs instead of as originally by hundreds and
villages, were not directed to summarise the information collected about
each fief; and so the survey contains no totals either of area or value for
the different fiefs by which they can be conveniently compared and
contrasted one with another. With patience, however, such totals can be
approximately worked out, and sufficiently accurate statistics compiled
to shew relatively how much of England William reserved for himself
and his personal dependants, how much he left in the hands of the prelates
and monastic houses, and how much he assigned to the various lay
baronies which he created to reward the soldiery by whose help he had
effected the Conquest. In making such calculations, however, it is not so
much the acreage or extent of any given fief which it is important to find
out as its total annual value. Any wide-spread estate, of course, gave
importance to its possessor from a political point of view; but in the
eleventh century, just as to-day, acreage was only of subsidiary importance,
and the effective power of most of the landed magnates at bottom depended,
not on the area but on the fertility and populousness of their manors
and on the revenue which could be obtained from them either in money or
in kind. It is in fact as often as not misleading to count up the number
of the manors on different fiefs, as some commentators on Domesday Book
have done, and contrast, for example, the seven hundred and ninety-three
manors allotted to the Count of Mortain with the four hundred and
thirty-nine manors allotted to the Bishop of Bayeux, or both with, say,
the hundred and sixty-two manors allotted to William Peverel. For
“manors” or holdings were of every conceivable extent and variety, just
as estates are to-day, and might vary from petty farms worth only a few
shillings a year, in the currency of those times, to lordly complexes of land
stretching over dozens of villages and worth not infrequently as much as
£100 a year or more. Even neighbouring manors of similar acreage


## p. 507 (#553) ############################################

The rental of England in 1086
507
might vary enormously in value in proportion as they were well or badly
stocked with husbandmen and cattle; while in some parts of England
whole districts remained throughout William's reign so badly devastated
that to own them was far more of a liability than an advantage, in view
of the large expenditure required for reinstatement.
To take a leading example, Hugh, the Vicomte of Avranches, was
allotted almost the whole of Cheshire with the title of Earl, a wide
territory which in later centuries gave considerable importance to his
successors; but in Hugh's day (1071-1101) the revenue which could be
derived from all the manors in Cheshire put together was estimated to be
little more than £200 a year. In Middlesex on the other hand the single
manor of Isleworth was estimated to be worth £72 a year in 1086 and
the manors of Fulham and Harrow £40 and £56 a year respectively;
nor were manors such as these by any means the most valuable which
then existed in fertile and populous parts of England. It seems clear
then that the Vicomte of Avranches did not derive his undoubted
importance and power in England so much from his Cheshire estates, in
spite of their extent, as from other far better stocked manors which
William allotted to him in Lincolnshire (£272), Suffolk (£115), Oxford-
shire (£70), and elsewhere, which were together worth over £700 a year,
and without which he and his retainers could hardly have supported
the expense of defending the marches of Cheshire against the tribesmen
of North Wales.
Let us take then the estimated annual value put upon the various
manors and estates by the Domesday juries in 1086 as the most illuminating
basis of calculation open to us.
If this is done, it will be found, after
a reasonable allowance has been made for ambiguous entries and entries
where the value has been inadvertently omitted by the scribes who wrote
out the final revision, that the total revenue in the money of the period
of the rural properties dealt with in the survey, but exclusive of the
revenue arising from the towns, may be thought of in round figures as
about £73,000 a year.
To this total the ten shires of Wessex south of the Thames con-
tributed about £32,000, the three East Anglian shires about £12,950,
the eight West Mercian shires about £11,000, the seven shires of the
Southern Danelaw lying between the Thames and the Welland about
L9400, the northern Danelaw between the Welland and the Humber
about £6450, and finally the devastated lands of Yorkshire and Lanca-
shire about £1200. If it were possible to ascertain the corresponding
values at the date when the estates first came into the hands of their new
owners, the figures would in each case be much smaller; but though there
are some returns in Domesday which give the values when the lands were
received,” these are far too fragmentary to furnish the data necessary for
calculating such general totals. To make up totals from averages is all
that could be done for the earlier date, which would be unsatisfactory;
CH. XV.


## p. 508 (#554) ############################################

508
The rental analysed. The Crown-lands
and, after all, the values for 1086 are perhaps more to our purpose, as they
indicate better the potentialities of income to which the new landowners
could look forward in 1070, however much for the moment the country-
side had been impoverished by the fighting in the previous four years.
Reckoning then that the income from land which the Conqueror had
at his disposal, exclusive of the rents and other profits of the boroughs,
was potentially about L73,000 a year, Domesday Book, when further
analysed, shews that the distribution of this sum resulting from the king's
grants for the five main purposes for which he had to provide was roughly
as follows: (a) £17,650 a year for the support of the Crown and royal
house, including in that category himself, his queen, his two half-brothers,
and King Edward's widow; (6) £1800 a year for the remuneration of his
minor officials and personal servants, later known as the King's Serjeants;
(c) £19,200 a year for the support of the Church and monastic bodies;
(d) £4000 a year for the maintenance of some dozen pre-Conquest land-
owners and their men, such as Ralf the Staller, Robert son of Wimarc,
Alured of Marlborough, Colswegen of Lincoln, and Thurkil of Arden, who
for one reason or another had retained his favour; and (e) £30,350 a year
for the provision of some 170 baronies, some great and some small, for the
leading captains, Norman, French, Breton, and Flemish, and their retainers,
who had risked their lives and fortunes in the great adventure of
conquering England.
The figures just given, though of course they only claim to be approxi-
mately accurate, are of great interest, revealing as they do that William
retained nearly a quarter of the income of the kingdom from land for
the use of the royal house, and that he assigned little more than two-fifths
of the total for rewarding the chiefs of the great families who had fought
for him, and their military and other followers. Even if the two fiefs,
worth together about 25050 a year, which William assigned to his half-
brothers, the Bishop of Bayeux and the Count of Mortain, be reckoned
to the share of the baronage rather than to the share of the Crown, the
income allotted for baronial fiefs must still be thought of as considerably
less than half the total income of the estates in the kingdom. With these
two fiefs deducted, the share of the Crown may be thought of as about
£12,600 a year; but as some £1600 a year of this was assigned to Queen
Edith and her retainers for her life, William and Matilda's potential
income from their manors before 1076 was roughly £11,000 a year. Even
this smaller figure is about twice the amount of the Crown's revenue in
King Edward's day as estimated by the Domesday juries. The estates, too,
retained by the Conqueror for the Crown were more evenly distributed
over the kingdom than Edward's estates had been, so that the power of
the Crown in many districts was much increased. In the last years of his
reign Edward had possessed no manors in Middlesex, Hertfordshire,
Essex, Lincolnshire, Rutland, Cheshire, or Cornwall, and comparatively
few in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Yorkshire. As arranged by William, the


## p. 509 (#555) ############################################

The ecclesiastical
fiefs
509
Crown had a substantial share everywhere except in Sussex and in the
three counties along the Welsh border, in which districts he parted with
all the old Crown manors and erected marcher fiefs of a special kind,
apparently for military reasons. The ultimate increase in the revenue of
the Crown from land was not, however, solely due to a retention of a larger
number of manors for the royal use, but arose partly from raising the
rents at which the manors were let to farm to the sheriffs and other reeves,
who took charge of them as speculative ventures and recouped themselves
in their turn by raising the dues and increasing the services exacted from
the cultivating peasantry. To what extent these augmented rents were
justifiable or oppressive we cannot tell; but Domesday often records a
thirty, and sometimes a fifty, per cent. rise above the estimated values of
King Edward's day, and in not a few instances the remark is added that
the cultivators could not bear these increased burdens.
Turning from the Crown to the Church, let us next analyse the revenue
of about £19,200 a year set aside for the support of the various classes of
the clergy. This substantial sum is made up of four items as follows:
(a) £8000 a year assigned for the maintenance of the secular clergy, that
is to say of the fifteen bishopries and of the houses of secular canons, some
thirty in number, but exclusive of the endowments of the parochial clergy;
(6)£9200 a year appropriated to some forty monasteries for men; (c) £1200
a year appropriated to some ten nunneries; and (d) £800 a year appro-
priated, by the gift of either Edward or William, to Norman and other
foreign monasteries.
In one sense of course very little of this revenue can be said to have
been assigned to the Church by William, for the greater proportion of
the manors which produced it had long been devoted to religious purposes.
The Conqueror, however, as a matter of policy acted on the principle that
not even the oldest grants to the Church were valid until he had re-con-
firmed them. As a result, the Church suffered not a few losses; but she
was at the same time recouped by many new grants of great value, and
on the whole gained considerably. In particular, the poorly-endowed sees
of the Danelaw acquired a great increase of temporalities. In some cases,
however, such new acquisitions seem to have been purchased. The see of
Canterbury, as might be expected, enjoyed the wealthiest fief, with a
revenue of about £1750 a year, the see of Winchester coming second with
a revenue of over £1000 a year. In general, however, the greater monas-
teries controlled more valuable fiefs than the lesser bishops. The seven
richest houses, that is to say, Glastonbury (£840), Ely(£790), St Edmund's
Bury (£655), the old Minster at Winchester (£640), Christchurch at
Canterbury (£635), St Augustine's (L635), and Westminster (£600), were
assigned between them a revenue of nearly £4800 a year, whereas the ten
poorer bishoprics had less than £3000 a year between them. The see of
Selsey for example had even in 1086 only a revenue of £138 a year, and
the see of Chester even less. It is true the secular clergy had other sources
CH. XV.


## p. 510 (#556) ############################################

510
The English survivors. The lay fiefs
of revenue besides their manorial incomes; but none the less it remains one
of the most outstanding features of the society of the day that the monks
and nuns, who can hardly have numbered all told a thousand individuals,
should have had control of so large a share of the rental of England.
Having provided for himself, his half-brothers, his personal servants,
and the Church, William still had an income of over L34,000 a year from
land at his disposal. Some £4000 of this, as already noted, was either
restored to or bestowed on favoured Englishmen and their retainers; but
these doles were on too small a scale to affect the general character of the
Conquest settlement, and so they need not detain us. It is, however, in-
teresting to observe that Archbishop Stigand occupies an important place
in this category; for he appears in Domesday as holding a personal barony
worth some £800 a year in addition to his immense Church preferments,
and so as a landowner he ranks with the wealthiest of the barons. Let us
pass on then and consider the general body of the military fiefs, the
“baronies” or “honours” as the Normans termed them, which were created
to reward the invading armies, and which form one of the corner-stones of
the English social system for some three centuries. It is here that the
Domesday evidence is particularly welcome, the evidence of the historical
writers being for the most part vague, and limited to too few fiefs to give a
true picture. Domesday on the other hand enables us to analyse and
compare all the fiefs, and shews that there were at least one hundred and
seventy baronies, without counting as such the petty fiefs held directly of
the Crown with incomes of less than £10 a year,
which were also numerous
but only of subsidiary importance.
As with the “manors,” the first thing to note about the “baronies”
is that they were of many different types and varied not only in size and
value, but in compactness and to some extent in the conditions of tenure
under which they held. What a contrast one barony might be to another
can best be seen from the fact that the list of baronies comprises fiefs of
all grades, starting from quite modest estates producing incomes of only
£15 a year or less and gradually advancing in stateliness up to two
princely fiefs with revenues of about £1750 a year each. Another cha-
racteristic is that there were no well-marked groups in the list corre-
sponding to definite grades of rank; nor is there any indication that the
Conqueror distributed his rewards in accordance with any pre-arranged
scheme. A clear idea of the nature of his distribution, however, can only
be gained by attempting some classification; and so it will be well to
divide the baronies arbitrarily into the five following groups: Class A,
containing baronies valued at over £750 a year each; Class B, contain-
ing baronies having revenues between £650 and £400 a year; Class C,
containing baronies having revenues between £400 and £200 a year;
Class D, containing baronies with revenues between L200 and £100 a
year; and Class E, containing baronies valued at less than £100 a year.


## p. 511 (#557) ############################################

Classification and tenure of the fiefs
511
Working on these lines, Domesday enables us to say that in Class A
there were eight baronies, having an aggregate of about £9000 a year; in
Class B ten baronies, with revenues aggregating about £5000 a year; in
Class C twenty-four, with revenues aggregating about £7000 a year;
in Class D thirty-six; and in Class E between ninety and one hundred.
The two wealthiest baronies were those assigned to William Fitz Osbern
and Roger of Montgomery; and next in order came the fiefs allotted
respectively to William of Warenne, Hugh of Avranches, Eustace of
Boulogne, Richard of Clare, Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances, and Geoffrey
de Mandeville. In Class B the richest fief was that assigned to Robert
Malet, and several other famous names figure in it, such as Ferrers,
Bigod, Giffard, Braiose, Crispin, and Taillebois; but it is not till Class C
is reached that we come to the equally famous names of Peverel, Lacy,
Montfort, Toeni, Mortimer, and Vere, and only at the very bottom of
Class C that we find Beaumont and Beauchamp. It remains to be said
that if we insert the English survivors into these classes, Ralf the Staller
and Stigand take rank in Class A, Earl Waltheof in Class B, and Robert
son of Wimarc in Class C. Similarly as regards the bishoprics. The sees
of Canterbury and Winchester, both be it noted held by Stigand, are the
only sees which rank in wealth with the first class of baronies. The
sees of London (£615), Dorchester (£600), Salisbury (£600), Worcester
(£480), and Thetford (L420) rank with the second class; the sees of Exeter
(£360), Wells (£325), York (£370), Hereford (£280), Rochester (L220),
and Durham (L205) with the third, Chichester (£138) with the fourth,
and Chester (£85) with the fifth. York and Durham, however, are not
fully accounted for in Domesday, and so possibly these sees should be
reckoned as baronies of the second class.
The spoils of victory being thus parcelled out, we must next inquire
under what conditions of tenure the baronies were held. On this point
the Domesday survey is unfortunately silent, no questions as to tenure
being put to the hundred juries, and so we have to fall back on infer-
ences drawn from the conditions of tenure found in force in England a
generation or two later, supplemented by the few vague hints which can
be gleaned here and there from monastic chronicles. There can, however,
be hardly any doubt that William from the outset insisted that the
baronies should be held on the same conditions of tenure as the baronies
in Normandy, nor can the barons themselves have desired to hold by any
tenure other than the one they were accustomed to and understood. This
means that the English methods of land-tenure were not adopted, and
that the barons obtained their fiefs on the four conditions of (a) doing
homage to the king and swearing fealty, (6) providing definite quotas
of fully-equipped knights, if summoned, to serve in the king's army for
40 days in the year at their own cost, (c) attending the king's court
when summoned to give advice and assist the king in deciding causes,
and (d) aiding the king with money on the happening of certain events.
CH. XV.


## p. 512 (#558) ############################################

512
The quotas of military service
If these obligations were not sufficiently performed, it was recognised that
the baronies were liable to be forfeited. As to the rules of succession, it was
recognised that no baron had any power to dispose of his barony or any
part of it by will. If a baron died leaving no heirs, the barony escheated,
that is, fell back to the Crown. If there were male heirs it descended to
them, subject to the payment of a relief to the Crown; but already there
was a tendency for the king to claim that fiefs were indivisible and to insist
on enforcing a rule of primogeniture. If there were only female heirs, the
fief was partitioned amongst them provided the king did not interfere. If
the heirs were minors, the king had the right of guardianship, and in
the case of female heirs the right of bestowing them in marriage. A
further question, about which there has been a good deal of discussion,
is how were the quotas of knights to be provided fixed for each barony.
There has been a tendency to suppose that the number of knights de-
manded must have borne some fixed relation either to the size or to the
value of the barony. All the evidence, however, tends to prove that in
this matter there was much caprice and no uniformity, and it seems
probable that the king was able to fix the amount of military service
arbitrarily when the baronies were created, and perhaps solely in accord-
ance with his personal estimation of the merits of the various barons. As a
result the quotas which he imposed, the servitium debitum as it was called,
were for most baronies a round number of knights-5, 10, 15, 20, 40,
60, and so on, the feudal armies being organised on a basis of consta-
bularies of ten knights. Quotas of forty or more knights were imposed
on most of the baronies having revenues of over £200 a year; quotas
of between twenty and forty knights on most of the baronies having
revenues of between L200 and £100 a year. It appears, however, that
several of the poorer baronies had to find comparatively large quotas,
and on the whole the burden of knights' service was lightest for the
richer baronies. It is certainly curious that William was satisfied with
such small quotas, for the system is only designed to produce a force of
some 4200 knights. He made up his mounted force, however, to 5000
knights by imposing tenure by knights' service on all the bishoprics and
on a number of the richer abbeys, and he evidently regarded these selected
ecclesiastical fiefs in many respects as baronies. One more matter re-
quires elucidation. It is commonly supposed that there was a castle at
the head of each barony, but at any rate in William's day this was not
the case. It is true that William himself ordered many castles to be
built, but these were on his own estates; it is also true that many
castles
were erected by William Fitz Osbern, Roger of Montgomery, and Hugh
of Avranches, the three barons with special powers put in charge of the
Welsh marches; but elsewhere William insisted that no castles should be
built without his licence. A small number of barons only were accorded
this special mark of favour, and those who obtained it were not always
the barons with the largest fiefs. Most of the barons, it would seem, far


## p. 513 (#559) ############################################

The under-tenants and the peasantry
513
from having castles of their own, were saddled on the contrary with the
obligation of finding garrisons for the royal castles, a service that came
to be known as “castle-guard. ”
Having set out the baronies and defined their military liabilities and
conditions of tenure, William to all appearances left each baron full
discretion to deal with his barony as he liked. The various manors com-
posing it were handed over as going concerns with the peasantry living
upon them, and each baron selected for himself which manors he would
keep as demesnes for himself and which he would sub-enfeof. The king
did not even insist that enough knights should be enfeoffed to perform
the servitium debitum of the barony. If the barons preferred it, they
had full liberty to farm out their lands to non-military tenants, who
held not by knights' service but by the tenure known as “socage,” that
is to say, by the payment of rents in kind or in money, together with
some light agricultural services. It thus came about that, though the
baronies in their entirety were held by knights' service, only a portion
of the lands which they comprised were actually held by military tenants.
It must not be supposed, either, that when subtenancies were created
the barons only gave them to their kinsmen or retainers from overseas.
The returns in Domesday shew clearly that on all baronies many men
were granted subtenancies who were of English descent, and some of
these undoubtedly held their lands by knights' service subject to the
same conditions as their Norman neighbours. As to the peasant classes,
it was not to the interest of either the barons or their subvassals to
expropriate them to any extent. The invaders were few and could not
provide a peasantry from their own ranks. Their interest lay in having
as numerous a population as possible on their estates, in order that they
might obtain increased dues and increased labour services from them,
and in time bring more land into cultivation. At the same time the
new landlords could see no use in preserving the numerous distinctions
which had differentiated the “geneat” from the “gebur” or the “soc-
manni” from the “liberi homines. ” They found it much more convenient
to regard the peasantry as all equally bound to the soil and all liable to
similar dues. In particular they were hostile to the system of com-
mendation under which some of the cultivating classes had been free to
select and change their lords. As a result commendation was entirely
swept away, and the men in every manor, whatsoever their social status,
became bound to their lords by an hereditary tie. This meant a con-
siderable social revolution, especially in the eastern half of England.
To a great extent the freer classes were merged into the less free, ab-
sorbed into manors, and compelled to do unfree services. Every lord of
a manor was allowed under the new system to maintain a court for his
tenantry and could compel them to bring their civil disputes before it,
provided tenants of other lords were not involved. The net outcome no
doubt was increased exploitation of the peasantry, but at the same time
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XV.
33


## p. 514 (#560) ############################################

514
William's anti-feudal measures
the advent of the new landowners also meant greater activity in farming.
When once the turmoil of the Conquest and reallotment of the land was
over, the new lords set to work with a will at reinstatement, and they
not only, in a few years, restocked the greater proportion of the wasted
manors, but are soon found encouraging the assartation of woodlands,
the drainage of the fens, the building of mills and churches, and the
planting of new urban centres. There were of course black sheep among
them, stupid and avaricious men, of whom little good is reported; but
such men were hardly typical and, at any rate as long as William lived,
they had to keep in the background and curb their passions.
The allotment of the land was perhaps the most complicated and
critical task that William had to undertake. At any rate it was the
most revolutionary of his measures; for it established in England the
cardinal feudal doctrines that all land is held of the king, that all occu-
piers of land except the king must be tenants either of the king himself
or of some lord who holds of the king, that the tie between the lord and
his tenants is hereditary, and that the extent of each man's holding and
the nature of his tenure determine in the main his civil and political
rights. William in fact, whether consciously or not, brought about a
reconstruction of society on a new legal basis, and so in a sense turned
England into a feudal state. But though this is so, William also took
very good care that he himself should not become a feudal king after
the pattern of the king in France or the Emperor in Germany. In
Normandy he had established his ascendency over the baronage and had
shewn how feudalism could be combined with personal government. In
England he worked out exactly the same result on a larger scale. Rich
and magnificent as were some of the new baronies, never allowed
any
of their holders to become petty kings in their own fiefs, to make
private war on their neighbours, or to acquire a jurisdiction over their
tenants which would entirely exclude his own. To this end he main-
tained intact the courts of the shire and hundreds, and to some extent
the Anglo-Saxon system of police. To this end he created only six or
seven earldoms, with strictly curtailed spheres and privileges, and in the
rest of England retained all the fiscal rights that had attached to the
office in his own hands. To this end he insisted on the rule that all
tenants by knights' service owed that service to the king alone and not
to the barons from whom they held their knights' fees. To this end he
maintained side by side with the new feudal cavalry-force the right to
call out the old national infantry levy. Taxation was not feudalised. The
obligation on all freeholders to pay "gelds” was maintained as well as
the obligation to serve in the “fyrd"; and for both purposes William
quickly realised that he must put on record the details of the ancient
hidage scheme from which alone each man's liability could be ascertained.
Lastly, he never allowed his advisory council to take a definitely feudal
shape. As supreme feudal lord he constantly held courts for his imme-
he


## p. 515 (#561) ############################################

The King's Court. Reform of the Church
515
diate tenants; but, the kingdom being large and the tenants widely
dispersed, he soon established the practice of summoning only a portion
of the tenants to any particular court. As a result the court of barons, the
“Curia Regis," as it was called, easily became a very elastic body, very like
the old “Witenagemot” in composition, in which the king could take the
advice of whom he would, but still need never hamper himself by summon-
ing too many of those who were likely to oppose his wishes. So completely
indeed was this principle established, that mere gatherings of the king's
household officers, the steward, the butler, the chamberlain, or the con-
stable, reinforced by one or two prelates and perhaps one or two barons
of moderate estate, came to be regarded before William died as a suffi-
cient meeting of the “Curia Regis” for all but the most important sorts
of business, and the way became cleared for future kings to utilise their
feudal court as the chief organ of government, out of which in due
time the various departments of state for special purposes were each in
turn developed. There were, however, no developments of this nature
in William's day. Confident in his own powers and determined to be
master in everything, his numerous “writs” shew that he settled nearly
every detail himself, and made little use of any subordinates other than
the staff of royal chaplains who prepared the writs under the super-
vision of his chancellor, and the local sheriffs to whom the writs were
addressed, who presided in the shire-courts, had charge of the col-
lection of the revenue, and farmed the royal manors. So confident indeed
was he, that he frequently employed barons of the third grade as sheriffs;
but it is clear that he dismissed them at will, and we never find them
in league against him or attempting independent action. Looked at
broadly, the outcome of the Conqueror's policy was the establishment of
a monarchy of such an absolute type that it could ignore all provincial
differences of law and custom; and so William's measures tended to bring
about a real unity in the kingdom such as had never been known under
the Saxon kings.
One set of deliberate reforms has still to be mentioned. Before the
Conquest the English Church organisation was very defective. Synods
for promulgating ecclesiastical laws had ceased to be held, nor were
there any special ecclesiastical tribunals or any definite system of arch-
deaconries. The special jurisdiction of the bishops was exercised in the
shire and hundred moots, with the result that the enforcement of moral
discipline was at the mercy of doomsmen who were ignorant of Canon Law
and very possibly themselves offenders. Even the powers of the primate
over his suffragans were far from clear; and the two archbishops, instead
of working together, were in dispute as to their spheres of jurisdiction. In
addition to these defects, there was little zeal shewn anywhere for either
discipline or learning. The monasteries had not adopted the Cluniac re-
forms. Simony, pluralities, and worldliness were everywhere rampant. The
authority of the Papacy was only formally admitted, while the primate
CB. XV.
332


## p. 516 (#562) ############################################

516
Archbishop Lanfranc. William and the Papacy
himself had been uncanonically elected. To continental observers such
a state of affairs was intolerable; nor could William as a zealous Church-
man, whose expedition had been blessed by the Pope, afford to ignore
it. As soon therefore as he felt himself secure, he took the matter up,
assisted by three papal legates who arrived in England early in 1070.
The first matters taken in hand were the deposition of Stigand and three
other bishops, the appointment of Lanfranc, the great Italian scholar and
theologian of Bec and Caen and William's trusted friend, to be Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, and the appointment of Thomas, a canon of
Bayeux, to the see of York, which had fallen vacant by the death of
Archbishop Ealdred. Under these new shepherds the English Church was
soon put in better order. One after another, as vacancies occurred, the
bishoprics and abbeys were put in charge of carefully selected foreigners.
The holding of synods was revived. Monastic discipline was tightened up.
Study and learning were encouraged. The canons of cathedrals were
made to observe celibacy. Sees, such as Dorchester and Selsey, which
had been situated in villages, were removed to populous towns, while
everywhere there arose a movement, headed by Lanfranc at Canterbury,
for building more magnificent churches. Most far-reaching of all were
two reforms introduced in 1072. These were the definite subordination
of York to Canterbury, and the creation, as in Normandy, of a distinct
set of ecclesiastical courts, the so-called “Courts Christian," in which in
future the bishops were to be free to deal with ecclesiastical causes and
to receive the fines arising from all matters contra christianitatem, un-
hampered by lay interference. The latter change was perhaps not alto-
gether wise; for it set up rival jurisdictions side by side which sooner or
later were bound to come into collision, and also gave an opening for the
Papacy, as the source of the Canon Law, to claim the legal sovereignty of
the Church in England. These dangers, however, were remote, and William
could afford to ignore them, being quite accustomed to such courts in
Normandy and confident that he would not fall out with Lanfranc. Nor
did he fear the Papacy, not even in the person of Hildebrand, who just
at this moment was elected to succeed Alexander II. On the contrary,
when in 1080 Gregory VII demanded that he should do fealty as the Pope's
vassal, William refused point-blank; nor did he ever admit that anyone
but himself had any right to control the English Church. Throughout
his reign he not only appointed bishops and abbots at will but also in-
vested them with their spiritualities, and in his determination to be
master went so far as to insist that no Pope should be recognised without
his leave, that no papal letters should have any force in his dominions until
he had approved them, and that none of his officers or barons should be
subjected to excommunication without his consent. So uncompromising
an attitude naturally led to strained relations between himself and
Gregory; but in view of the Conqueror's proved zeal for clerical efficiency,
the great Pope never thought it politic to begin an open quarrel.


## p. 517 (#563) ############################################

Invasion of Scotland. Revolt of Maine
517
The events of the last fifteen years of William's career, when once
he had brought unity and order into his new dominions, are not of the
same interest as the story of the Conquest or even of his early days.
Both in England and Normandy men feared to provoke him, and his most
serious preoccupations were not at home but with the outside world,
especially with the county of Maine, where his claim to exercise over-
lordship on behalf of his son Robert entailed the constant hostility not
only of the local baronage but also of Fulk le Rechin, the Count of
Anjou. Much of his time was accordingly spent in Normandy, English
affairs being entrusted as a rule to Lanfranc. His foreign difficulties began
in 1069, when Azo, an Italian marquess who had married a daughter of
Count Hugh III, was acclaimed Count of Maine in opposition to the youth-
ful Robert. Azo was really put forward by Geoffrey of Mayenne, William's
old antagonist; and he soon went back to Italy, leaving his wife Ger-
sindis and a son to carry on the struggle under Geoffrey's protection.
For three years William had no time to deal with the revolt, yet
Gersindis made little headway, having compromised herself by becoming
Geoffrey's mistress, while Geoffrey's own arrogance drove the townsmen of
Le Mans, in 1072, to set up a government of their own and to summon
Fulk le Rechin to their aid. This popular rising in Le Mans in opposition
to the exactions of the neighbouring baronage has an interest as one of
the earliest attempts in North France to form a commune based on an
oath of mutual assistance, but it was really a very ephemeral affair
leading to nothing but the occupation of Le Mans by Fulk? . In 1072
William himself was occupied partly in Northumberland, where he set
up Waltheof as Earl, in place of the half-Scotch Gospatric who had
bought the earldom in 1069, and partly in leading his forces into Scot-
land against Malcolm Canmore, who had recently married as his second
wife Edgar the Aetheling's sister Margaret, and who was harbouring
Edgar and other English refugees. Malcolm, realising that his men were
no match for Norman knights, retired before them, but came to tern
when William reached Abernethy near Perth, and agreed to expel Edgar.
At the same time Malcolm did some kind of homage, sufficient at any
rate to enable men in after days to boast that William had reasserted the
old claim of the English crown to suzerainty over Scotland. This suc-
cess left William at last free to attend to Maine, and in 1073 he set out
for Le Mans, taking it is said some English levies with him. On this
occasion the Norman force advanced from Alençon down the Sarthe
valley, and though it met with some resistance at Fresnay and Beaumont
from the local vicomte, Hubert of Sainte-Suzanne, easily reached Le Mans,
only to find that Fulk le Rechin had retired. Once more William had
triumphed; but the successes of 1072 and 1073 were not really con-
clusive. Neither Malcolm nor the men of Maine nor the Count of Anjou
1 Le Mans was, even in 1100, economically little more than a market town.
Cf. EHR, Vol. xxvi (1911), p. 566.
CH. XV.


## p. 518 (#564) ############################################

518
Peace with Anjou. The rising of the Earls
as
were cowed, and all three continued to seize every opportunity of annoy-
ing him. In 1076, for example, Fulk attacked the lord of La Flèche
on the Loir, an Angevin upholder of the Norman cause in Maine, and
also dispatched assistance to the Breton lords who were defying Wil-
liam at Dol. In 1079 Malcolm overran Northumberland as far as the
Tyne, an act which led to the foundation of Newcastle as a defence
against further Scotch raids. In 1081 Fulk, assisted by Hoel, Duke of
Brittany, burnt the castle of La Flèche before the Normans could gather
their forces, and even when William did come in person to the rescue
of his adherents, he found it politic to avoid a battle and agreed to an
arrangement known as the Peace of Blanchelande, under which Robert,
now perhaps 26 years of age, was recognised by Fulk le Rechin as Count
of Maine, but only on the condition of accepting Fulk as his overlord
and doing him homage. Even this peace was not well kept; for in 1083
Hubert of Sainte-Suzanne and others of Maine once more took up arms
against the Norman domination over their fiefs, and for three years
defied all attempts made by William to subdue them. The fact is, in
spite of much rhetorical talk about William's conquest of Maine, the
greater part of the county was never thoroughly in his grasp,
and
years went by the influence of Anjou kept increasing.
During all this time we hear of no challenge to William's autocratic
rule either in England or in Normandy, except in 1075, when a handful
of barons plotted a rising, but with such little general support that
William did not even return to England to deal with it. The chief
conspirators were two rash young men who had recently succeeded to
their fathers' baronies, Roger, Earl of Hereford, the son of the trusted
William Fitz Osbern who had been killed in Flanders in 1070, and Ralf
of Guader in Brittany, the son of Ralf the Staller, who had been recog-
nised by William as Earl of East Anglia. These two earls were aggrieved,
partly because William had forbidden Ralf to marry Roger's sister and
partly because the sheriffs claimed jurisdiction over their estates. They
accordingly took up arms and for a moment enticed Waltheof, Earl of
Northumberland, to dally with their schemes. Waltheof, however, soon
repented and disclosed their intentions to Lanfranc, who had no diffi-
culty in rallying the mass of the barons to the king's side and easily
dispersed the forces of the rebels both in Worcestershire and in Norfolk.
Ralf was wise enough to flee the country, but Roger was captured
and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment.