No More Learning

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. It was harder to deal with
Waltheof, who had not called out his men and who was married to Judith,
the Conqueror's niece; but after five months' hesitation William ordered
him to be executed, possibly to please the loyal barons, who were in-
dignant that so much favour had been wasted on an Englishman.
The only serious domestic trouble of William's later years came from
his eldest son Robert, who, though not wanting in courage, early shewed
himself a spendthrift and quite destitute of statesmanlike qualities. To
1
1
1
1


## p. 519 (#565) ############################################

Robert Curthose. Arrest of Bishop Odo
519
some extent the friction between them was William's fault; for, like
many other men with strong wills, the Conqueror could not bring him-
self to depute any part of his authority to his son, not even in Maine
where Robert was ostensibly count. Not unnaturally Robert as he grew
up resented being kept in tutelage more and more, until at last he
quarrelled openly with his father and betook himself, after some aimless
wanderings, to Paris. Philip, the King of France, always ready to harass
William, took pains to welcome the fugitive, and in 1079 established
him at Gerberoi near Beauvais, where he could attack Normandy. A
personal encounter followed between the father and son, in which Robert
actually wounded William. This scandalous episode, however, led to a
reconciliation, and Robert returned for a time to his father's court. But
the two could never work together; and after Queen Matilda's death,
which occurred in 1083, Robert again went abroad and never returned
in his father's life-time. Of minor troubles in these years, two perhaps
should be mentioned. The first is the murder in 1080 of Walcher, the
Bishop of Durham, who had been put in charge of Northumberland after
the execution of Waltheof. This murder was the work of an English
mob, and shews that William's peace was never properly established north
of the Tees. The second is the outbreak of a quarrel between William
and his brother Odo, leading to the arrest and imprisonment of the
bishop in 1082. This dramatic step fairly astounded Norman society; for
Odo was Earl of Kent and the holder of the wealthiest fief in England,
and only two years before had been in full favour and entrusted with
the punishment of the Northumbrians. Some have supposed that Wil-
liam feared Odo's ambition ; but Odo's hostility to Lanfranc and mere
greed on the king's part may really have been the moving causes. Any-
how he kept the bishop a prisoner at Rouen for the rest of his reign
and sequestrated his large English revenues. That William in old age
became avaricious is attested not only by the Peterborough chronicler,
who had lived at his court, but also by his public measures, such as the
levy of a triple Danegeld in 1083 without, it would seem, any real need,
and the compilation of the Domesday Book in 1086. This failing comes
out too in his refusal to give Robert a position and income suitable to
his expectations. As the chronicler says grimly,“the king loved much and
overmuch scheming to get gold and silver and recked not how sinfully it
was gotten. ” But of course that is only one side of the picture, and it was
just because he paid such close attention to his finances, and thought it no
shame to set down “every ox and cow and pig” in his great survey, that
he was able to found a unique type of feudal monarchy in England, in
which the king's wealth was adequate to his needs so that he could “live
on his own” and pay his way, and not be merely primus inter pares in his
dealings with his vassals. From this point of view the making of Domes-
day was William's greatest exploit, not merely because of the novelty of
the undertaking, but because the inquiry proceeded on the theory that all
CH. XV.


## p. 520 (#566) ############################################

520
The oath of Salisbury. The Conqueror's death
men without exception must answer the king's questions, and because it
practically forced every baron and every subtenant to admit that the king's
grant was the source of their privileges, and the king's writ and seal the
only effective guarantee of their possessions. Further, the survey ignored
the baronial courts, instead of utilising them to obtain information.
But William was still not satisfied that his claims to be a real king and
not merely a feudal overlord had been sufficiently acknowledged. He
accordingly, in August 1086, summoned all the landowners, “that were
worth aught,” to come to Salisbury, “whosesoever vassals they were," and
made them swear oaths of fealty to him “that they would be faithful to
him against all other men,” that is, even against their own immediate
lords. This was William's last public act in England. He crossed the
Channel immediately afterwards, and in 1087 invaded the French Vexin;
but as he sat watching the burning of Mantes he was thrown from his
horse and severely injured. His men carried him to Rouen, where he
died on 9 September. On his death-bed he recognised that Normandy
must pass to Robert, in spite of his undutiful conduct, being his patri-
mony; but as to England, he expressed his wish that it should pass to his
son William, nicknamed Rufus, and sealed a letter to Lanfranc recom-
mending him as his successor.


## p. 521 (#567) ############################################

521
CHAPTER XVI.
ENGLAND, 1087-1154.
A. REIGN OF William Rufus (1087–1100).
William Rufus set out for England even before the Conqueror ex-
pired, and made direct for Winchester to secure the royal treasury. That
done he repaired next to Lanfranc, and on 26 September was crowned king
at Westminster without overt opposition, just seventeen days after his
father's death. In spite of the general calm, men foresaw that the sepa-
ration of England from Normandy must bring trouble, as it placed all
the barons who had estates on both sides of the Channel in a dilemma,
and meant that sooner or later they would be forced to choose between
their allegiance to the duke and their allegiance to the king. For Robert,
on returning from exile, naturally denounced William as a usurper, and
found himself supported not only by those who honestly thought that
the Conqueror's arrangement was a blunder, but also by a body of tur-
bulent spirits both in England and Normandy who, knowing the charac-
ters of the two brothers, thought that the elder would prove the easier
master and less likely than Rufus to stand in the way of their ambitions.
The leader of this section was the Earl of Kent, Bishop Odo of Bayeux,
who emerged from his five years' imprisonment thirsting for vengeance
on Lanfranc, whom he regarded as the instigator of his disgrace, and
determined to upset the Conqueror's dispositions and make himself again
the chief man in England. He accordingly betook himself to his Kentish
estates, and after some months spent in secret plotting put himself openly
at the head of a league for deposing William in favour of Robert. It is
usually alleged that Odo took the field supported by more than half the
baronage, but the accounts that tell the story by no means bear out such
a conclusion. Sporadic risings did indeed take place in districts as far
apart as Norfolk, Somerset, and Herefordshire, led by Roger Bigod,
Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances, and Roger de Lacy respectively; but
these movements were isolated and easily suppressed, and the only real
danger arose in Kent and Sussex, where Odo had the support of his
brother Robert of Mortain, aided by Gilbert of Clare and Eustace of
Boulogne, and could base his movements on four strongholds, Dover,
Rochester, Pevensey, and Tonbridge. Rufus, on the other hand, was sup-
ported not only by the men of the royal demesnes and by all the prelates
of the Church, except William of St Carilef, Bishop of Durham, but, so
far as can be seen, by the greater part of the baronage in the Midlands
CH. XVI,


## p. 522 (#568) ############################################

522
Revolt of Odo of Bayeux. Ranulf Flambard
4
and in Eastern England, headed by such magnates as the Earl of Chester,
Count Alan of Richmond, William of Warenne, Walter Giffard, Geof-
frey de Mandeville, Robert Malet, and Roger of Beaumont. From the
very outset, in fact, it was clear that Odo had grievously miscalculated
his influence. Even the native English were all on the royal side, so
that Rufus was able to add largely to his forces by summoning foot-
soldiers to his aid as well as the feudal levies, especially from London
and the estates of the archbishopric of Canterbury. As a result the
struggle, though sharp, was of brief duration. By the end of June the
rebel fortresses had all fallen, and Lanfranc could congratulate himself
that for a second time he had driven Odo out of England. Duke Robert,
meanwhile, impecunious as ever, had hardly moved a finger to further
his own cause beyond encouraging Robert of Bellême, the eldest son of
Roger of Montgomery, and Robert of Mowbray, the nephew of Bishop
Geoffrey of Coutances, who was now Earl of Northumberland, his former
associates in his quarrels with his father, to join in the rising. It was to
young men such as these, the duke's special friends, that William was
most severe after his victory, making them share Odo's banishment; but
all the other leaders were treated with great leniency, except the Bishop of
Durham, who, having been one of Rufus'confidential advisers, was put on his
trial for “deserting his lord in time of need. " This trial is somewhat famous.
The bishop pleaded that he could only be tried by an ecclesiastical court;
William, on the other hand, backed by Lanfranc, insisted that he was
charged not as a bishop but as a baron enfeoffed with extensive terri-
tories, and so must answer in the Curia Regis. The case dragged on
for some months and in the end the bishop was allowed to appeal to the
Pope on the point of jurisdiction, but had to surrender Durham Castle.
Odo's rebellion, if hardly more formidable than the rebellion of the
earls in 1075, at any rate served to shew that Rufus had all the deter-
mination of his father and could not be trifled with. His subjects,
however, were soon to learn that though he had his father's strong will
and plenty of energy he had neither his respect for religion nor any
regard for justice. While Lanfranc lived, he did not shew his true
colours; but the aged archbishop passed away in 1089, and immediately
there was a great change for the worse. Being now free to please himself
and to indulge his rapacity, Rufus took for his favourite adviser Ranulf
Flambard, the rector of Godalming, one of the royal chaplains, a self-
made man who had held minor posts under the Conqueror, and who won
Rufus' attention by his skill in devising ways of raising money. This
unscrupulous man, being made treasurer, soon became notorious for his
ingenious and oppressive exactions, and earned the hatred of every class; ;
but his extortionate methods only delighted William, who by degrees
placed him in supreme control of all financial and judicial business.
His first opportunity came when he advised the king to postpone filling
the vacant see of Canterbury, and to take the revenues for his own uses;


## p. 523 (#569) ############################################

Mowbray's rebellion. Rufus invades Normandy 523
and soon this became the regular practice with all benefices in the royal
gift, unless some cleric could be found willing to purchase the prefer-
ment. We are also told that he vexed all men with “unjust gelds,” that
he levied excessive and novel feudal dues, both from the baronage and
the clergy; that he “drove the moots all over England” to inflict ex-
cessive fines, that he increased the severity of the game laws, and that he
even tried to re-assess the Danegeld, though this probably only means
that he ignored the reductions of assessment that had been granted by
King Edward and the Conqueror. Hated as all these measures were,
William's prestige was so great after his victory over Odo that he only
once again was faced with armed opposition. This occurred in 1095 under
the leadership of Robert of Mowbray, who had been permitted to return
to Northumberland, backed by Roger de Lacy and William of Eu.
This outbreak, however, only led to their ruin, William of Eu being
sentenced to mutilation, Mowbray to life-long imprisonment, and Lacy
to forfeiture.
William Rufus' real preoccupations were not with feudal or popular
unrest but with schemes for the enlargement of his dominions and especi-
ally for the recovery of Normandy. He wished to be a conqueror like his
father, and he knew that if he succeeded he could snap his fingers at
discontent. His first move against his brother in 1090 was designed to
take advantage of the discontent of the barons of eastern Normandy
with Robert's feeble rule. Here he easily established himself; for the
great men of the locality were the Counts of Eu and Aumâle, William
of Warenne, Walter Giffard, and Ralf of Mortimer, all of whom, having
still larger interests in England, were afraid of his displeasure and willing
to further his designs. Their men and their fortresses were consequently
at bis disposal, and even in Rouen a party was formed in his favour led
by Conan, one of the richest citizens. In central Normandy, on the other
hand, Duke Robert's position was less precarious, for he could count on
the loyalty of Caen and Falaise, while the chief landowners, such as the
Bishop of Bayeux, the Count of Évreux, William of Breteuil, and Robert
of Bellême, who had been put in possession of his mother's Norman fiefs,
had either little or no stake in England or had fallen out with Rufus.
Here then opposition might be serious, and a struggle seemed probable.
But William, in 1091, was quick to see that the position in western
Normandy offered him a better alternative. There the leading man,
since 1088, had been his younger brother Henry, the third surviving son
of the Conqueror, who had purchased all Robert's estates and ducal
rights in the Cotentin and the Avranchin with the money that had been
bequeathed to him by his father, and now called himself Count of the
Cotentin. But Robert, shifty as ever, had quickly regretted this deal
with his brother and wished to recover the ducal property. William,
knowing this, instead of attacking Robert in central Normandy went to
meet him at Caen and offered to assist him in attacking Henry and in
CH. XVI.


## p. 524 (#570) ############################################

524 Rufus and Scotland: annexation of Cumberland
recovering Maine, on the condition that the duke should cede to him
Cherbourg and Mont-Saint-Michel as soon as Henry had been expelled
from them, and also his ducal rights in Fécamp and parts of eastern
Normandy. The terms offered were very one-sided, but Robert thought
it safest to accept them; and shortly afterwards the two elder brothers
advanced against Henry and having ousted him from all his purchases
divided the spoils between them. With this result William might well
feel satisfied. In eighteen months he had acquired a firm grasp on the
duchy both in the east and the west, and what is more he had achieved
his success by a treaty with Robert without any serious fighting.
Meanwhile news came through that Malcolm Canmore had again
overrun Northumberland. Rufus accordingly left Normandy and hurried
north to retaliate. On reaching the Forth, he found Malcolm repentant
and willing to buy him off by doing homage and becoming his man on
the same terms as the Conqueror had exacted in 1072. In 1092, however,
Rufus broke the peace in his turn and overran the districts in Cumberland
and Westmorland, which had been regarded as parcel of the Scottish
kingdom ever since King Edmund had ceded them to Malcolm I in 945.
Not unnaturally Malcolm protested, and came in person to Gloucester to
treat with Rufus. But the English king refused to meet him and required
him as a vassal to submit his case to the Curia Regis. At the same time
he ordered English settlers to be planted in the valley of the Eden and
founded a castle at Carlisle. Malcolm went home indignant and a year
later again invaded England, but was slain in an ambush near Alnwick.
Here, too, William must be credited with a distinct success. Henceforth
the boundary of England was fixed for good at the Solway, and within
a few years Cumberland and Westmorland came to be reckoned as
English shires. Queen Margaret, who had done much to introduce
English ways into her husband's kingdom, died of grief on hearing the
news of his death, whereupon a struggle arose between the Celtic and the
English factions in Scotland as to the succession. The Celtic party set
Malcolm's brother Donaldbane on the throne in preference to any of
Margaret's sons, hoping thereby to put an end to the spread of English
influences ; but four years later Rufus took up the cause of the English
party and sent Edgar the Aetheling into Scotland with a force of Norman
knights, who drove out Donaldbane and made Margaret's son Edgar king.
This prince made the Lowlands his favourite abode, and being largely
dependent on Norman support never sought to deny that Rufus was his
feudal superior.
William's advance in the North had its counterpart also in Wales ;
but there the lead was taken by various barons independently and not by
the Crown. The Conqueror's general policy had been to leave all responsi-
bility for dealing with the Welsh in the hands of the three specially
privileged earls who had been granted the marcher lordships of Chester,
Shrewsbury, and Hereford. At the Conqueror's death, as Domesday


## p. 525 (#571) ############################################

Conquest of South Wales: the marcher lordships 525
shews, his lieutenants had already pressed into northern and mid Wales
beyond the line of Offa's dyke at several points, especially in Gwynedd
where Robert of Rhuddlan had established his outposts on the Conway,
and in Powys where Roger of Montgomery had reached the sources of
the Severn near Plynlimon. In South Wales on the other hand there had
been little advance since the death of William Fitz Osbern in 1071. The
frontier still ran roughly along a line from Radnor through Ewyas to
Caerleon; and though the Conqueror himself in 1081 had ridden west as
far as St David's, he had been content to leave Deheubarth and Glamorgan
in the hands of a Welsh prince called Rhys ap Tewdwr, exacting from
him only an annual tribute of £40. It was in 1088 that new advances
began. In that year Robert of Rhuddlan, soon after returning from the
siege of Rochester, fell a victim to a Welsh attack. But almost immedi-
ately afterwards the Earl of Chester got possession of the districts round
Snowdon. Thence he advanced into Anglesey, and in 1092 we find a Breton
named Hervé appointed to be Bishop of Bangor. It was also in 1088
that the Normans under Bernard of Neufmarché, the son-in-law of the
lord of Richard's Castle, first advanced against Brecknock, while a year or
two later they overran Glamorgan led by Robert Fitz Hamon of Évrecy
near Caen, a Kentish landowner who had come to the front in the struggle
against Bishop Odo, and who had been rewarded for his services to the
Crown by a grant of nearly all the lands which had once belonged to
Queen Matilda. In 1093 came another wave of conquest. In that year
Rhys ap Tewdwr was killed near Brecknock. In the confusion which
followed Roger of Montgomery dashed into Deheubarth, and having
established himself at Cardigan pushed on thence into Dyfed, where his
son Arnulf soon built a castle for himself at Pembroke. About the same
time William of Braiose, a Sussex baron, acquired a lordship at Builth
on the upper Wye, and William Fitz Baldwin, coming from Devon,
erected a fort on the Towy near Carmarthen. Such persistent encroach-
ments led in 1094 to a furious counter-attack by the Welsh, which
brought about the withdrawal of the Normans from Anglesey and the
destruction of a great many of the new castles. Next year the Welsh
even took Montgomery Castle and repulsed a royal army which Rufus
himself led into Gwynedd. In 1096 they besieged Pembroke, but the
castle held out bravely under Gerald of Windsor, and thenceforth the
marcher barons in South Wales nearly always held the upper hand. In
Gwynedd on the other hand the Normans failed to recover the ground
lost in 1094, in spite of serious efforts made by Rufus in 1097 and by
the Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury in 1098. North Wales never was
reduced but remained an independent principality under a Welsh prince
named Gruffydd ap Cynan.
At home the chief event during these years of external expansion was
William's quarrel with the Church. Irreligious and venal, the king saw
no reason at first for putting any curb on Flambard's systematic spolia-
CH. XVI.


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526
Anselm made primate. Council of Rockingham
tion of Church revenues. But in 1093 he fell ill, and fancying himself
face to face with death was seized with remorse. In this mood he gave
way to the general desire that the see of Canterbury should not remain
vacant any longer, and offered the archbishopric to Anselm of Aosta,
a saintly Italian scholar, who had been Lanfranc's favourite pupil and
who for the last fifteen years had been Abbot of Bec. Anselm himself
in no way desired the appointment; but as it was clearly the desire of
the English magnates both lay and clerical, as well as of the king, he
eventually consented, stipulating however that the lands of the arch-
bishopric must all be restored to the see and that he himself should be
free to recognise Urban II as Pope rather than his rival Clement III, the
imperial candidate. But William, as soon as he was well again, forgot
his repentance, and not only retained a good deal of the property of
the archbishopric but made heavy demands on Anselm for aids and
refused to allow him to initiate any Church reforms or hold any synods.
Anselm refused to pay the aids in full, and in 1095 exasperated the king
by asking leave to go to Rome to obtain his pallium from Urban. William
did not wish to be committed to either claimant for the Papacy, and like
his father he claimed that no Pope should be recognised in England
without his permission. The matter was referred to a council of mag-
nates held at Rockingham. The lay barons took Anselm's side and Rufus
had to give way. William next tried to negotiate with Urban for
Anselm's deposition; but he was outwitted by the Pope's legate, who
obtained the king's recognition of Urban and then refused to move
against Anselm, Two years later, in 1097, William again attacked the
archbishop, charging him with breach of his obligations as a tenant-in-
chief. Realising that he could do no good in England, Anselm again
preferred his request to be allowed to visit Urban. At first William
refused to acquiesce, but finally he changed his mind; and, as soon as
Anselm had sailed, once more took possession of the revenues of the
archbishopric. Anselm remained abroad for the rest of William's reign,
universally regarded as a martyr, though at Rome he got little active
support. By his firmness, however, he had set up a new standard of
independence for the English clergy, and had made the opening move in
the struggle between Church and State in England.
To return to secular affairs, William's desire to acquire Normandy
had only been whetted by the gains made in 1091. He therefore took
no pains to observe his treaty with Robert, and three years later resumed
hostilities. His forces invaded central Normandy, hoping to acquire Caen,
but they had little success; for King Philip of France came to Robert's
aid, with sufficient men to enable him to drive William's captains out
of Argentan and the neighbouring district of Le Houlme. They then
together crossed the Seine to attack William in eastern Normandy, but
the king saved himself by bribing Philip to desert his ally. In 1095,
William, being too much occupied in England with Mowbray's rebellion
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## p. 527 (#573) ############################################

Normandy mortgaged to Rufus. His death
527
and the quarrel with Anselm to come to Normandy, opened negotiations
with his brother Henry, who had two years before found an asylum at
Domfront, and persuaded him to take up the struggle for him. This
move, however, proved to be unnecessary; for in 1096 the adventure-
loving Robert, carried away by Pope Urban's call for volunteers to deliver
the Holy Sepulchre, took the Cross regardless of his ducal interests, and
to obtain funds offered to mortgage his ducal rights in Normandy to his
brother for 10,000 marks. William quickly found the money, and in
September Robert set out for the East, taking Odo of Bayeux and
Edgar the Aetheling with him.
Being at last in temporary possession of Normandy, but fully con-
vinced that Robert would never be in a position to repay the loan and
redeem his patrimony, William applied himself with a will not only to
the task of restoring the ducal authority, but also to the recovery of
Maine. That county, owing to Robert's weakness, had fallen completely
into the hands of Hélie, lord of La Flèche; but in 1098 William captured
Hélie and soon afterwards, in spite of the opposition of Fulk le Rechin
of Anjou, took possession of Le Mans. He had, however, to conquer
the town a second time in 1099. He also undertook operations for the
recovery of the French Vexin. In 1100, growing still more ambitious, he
began negotiations with the Duke of Aquitaine, who wished to go on
crusade, for taking over the ducal rights in Poitou on the same kind of
terms as had been arranged in the case of Normandy. But this fanciful
scheme was destined to remain a dream. On 2 August, while hunting in
the New Forest, William fell, shot by an arrow from an unknown hand.
He was buried next day in Winchester Cathedral, some of the churches
in the city refusing to toll their bells. A brother-in-law of Gilbert of Clare,
Walter Tirel, lord of Langham near Colchester and of Poix in Picardy,
was thought to be responsible. But no inquiry was ever made. Men
were just content to know that their oppressor was dead. And yet Wil-
liam, despite all his vices and violence, had done a great work. As a
man he had been detestable; but as a king he had known how to make
himself obeyed, and though he pressed his feudal claims too far, he had
maintained unflinchingly his father's two great principles, that peace and
order must be respected and that the king's will must be supreme.
B. REIGN OF HENRY I (1100-1135).
The sudden removal of William Rufus at the age of forty, leaving
no children behind him, gave his brother Henry an easy opening for
making himself King of England. Not only was he on the spot, having
been one of the hunting party in the New Forest, but he was well ac-
quainted with the state of opinion in England, having lived, since 1095,
on friendly terins with Rufus and his various ministers. He was, more-
over, confident in himself. He knew well that all men had a contempt for
his eldest brother; and he could urge, like Rufus before him, that if the
CH.