REGENBALD, PRIEST AND CHANCELLOR
No better illustration could be given of the fact that valuable historical evidence may lurk, even in print, unknown, than the charters printed, from the Cirencester Cartulary, by Sir Thomas Phillips in Archæologia (1836).[1] One can imagine how highly prized they would have been by Mr Freeman, had he only known of their existence.
Regenbald, of whom Sir Thomas would seem never to have heard, was the first Chancellor of England.[2] Mr Freeman called him, I know not on what authority, 'the Norman chancellor of Eadward'. Whatever his nationality, it is well established that he was that king's chancellor. He occurs repeatedly in Domesday, where he is distinguished as 'Canceler', 'Presbyter', and 'de Cirencestre'. We learn also from its pages that he held land in at least three counties—Berkshire, Herefordshire, and Dorset T.R.E.—and that he seems to have received further grants from King William in his return.[3]
The three charters of which I treat are found in the Cirencester Cartulary and are in Anglo-Saxon. The first is one of King Edward's in favour of 'Reinbold min preost', and is a confirmation to him of soc and sac, toll and team, etc., as his predecessors had enjoyed it 'on Cnutes kinges daie'. The third is a notification from King William that 'ic hæbbe geunnen Regenbald minan preoste eall his lond' as 'he hit under Edƿearde hædde mine meie'. The chief points to be noticed here are that the land is granted de novo, not confirmed, and that the Conqueror speaks of Regenbald as 'minan preoste', implying that he has taken him into his service.
It is the second of these charters that is of quite extraordinary importance. I here append it in extenso as printed by Sir Thomas Phillips:
'Vyllelm king gret Hereman b. & Wulstan b. & Eustace eorl & Eadrich & Bristrich & ealle mine þegenes on Ƿyltoneshyre & on Glouc'shyre fronliche & ic cuþe eoƿ ic habbe geunnan Reinbold mina preost ꝥ land æt Esi & ꝥ land æt Latton & ealle þæra þinge ꝥ þar to lið binnan port & buten mið sace & mið socne sƿa full and sƿa forð sƿa his furmest on hondan stodan Harald kinge on ællan þingan on dæge & æfter to atheonne sƿa sƿa ealra lefest ys & ic nelle nenna men geþafian ꝥ him fram honda teo ænig þære þinga þæs þa ic him geunne habbe bi minan freonshype.'
The relevant entry in Domesday speaks for itself:
Reinbaldus presbyter tenet Latone et Aisi. Duo taini tenuerunt pro II. Maneriis T.R.E. Heraldus comes junxit in unum. Geldabat pro ix. hidis (68b).
If the charter were nothing more than a grant from the Conqueror to a private individual of lands duly entered in Domesday, it would, I believe, as such be unique. Historians have long and vainly sought for any genuine charter of the kind; and here it has been in print for nearly sixty years.
But the document, I hope to show, does far more for us than this: it opens a new chapter in the history of the Norman Conquest.
We first notice that the writ is addressed not to Norman, but to English authorities. The only exception is Count Eustace, who was, of course, not a Norman, and who was known in England before the Conquest as brother-in-law to Edward the Confessor. The obvious inference is that, at the time this writ was issued, Norman government had not yet been set up in the district. Urse d'Abetot, for instance, the dreaded sheriff of Worcestershire, would probably have been addressed in conjunction with Bishop Wulstan had he been then in power. But we know that he came into power soon after the Conquest, for he had time to be guilty of oppression and to be rebuked for it by Ealdred before that Primate's death in 1069. But as our writ is of this early date, it must be previous to the treason of Count Eustace in 1067. It must therefore belong to the beginning of that year, when William had only recently been crowned king.
We see then here, I think, the Conqueror, in his first days as an English king, addressing his subjects, in a part of the realm not yet under Norman sway, and doing so in their own tongue and in the forms to which they were accustomed. As King Edward in his charter to Regenbald had greeted bishops, earls, and sheriffs, so here his successor greets two bishops, 'Eustace Eorl', and two Englishmen representing the power of the sheriff. And so again in his charter to London he began by greeting the Bishop and the Portreeve.[4]
The writ, it will be seen, is addressed to the authorities of Gloucestershire and Wilts. The estate lay in the latter county, but the connection of Regenbald de 'Cirencestre' with Glo'stershire may account for the inclusion of that county. Can we identify 'Eadrich' and 'Bristrich' with any local magnates? With some confidence I boldly suggest that the latter was no other than the 'Bristricus' of the Exon Domesday, that famous Brihtric, the son of Ælfgar, who, to quote from the appendix Mr Freeman devotes to him, 'appears distinctly as a great landowner in most of the western shires', one from whose vast domains was carved out later the great Honour of Gloucester. Until now, all we have known of him has been derived from the Domesday entries of his estates T.R.E. and from the legend which associates his name with that of Queen Matilda. But this charter enables us to say that he was living and still holding his great position in the west in the early days of William's reign.[5]
From 'Bristric' I turn to 'Eadric', and ask if we may not here recognize 'Eadric the Wild' himself? This can only be matter of conjecture, but it is certain that these two Englishmen are here assigned the place that would be given to a sheriff, and that 'Eadric the Wild'—'quidam præpotens minister', as Florence terms him—was a magnate in the west (Herefordshire and Shropshire) at the time of the Conquest. Mr Freeman terms him 'a man about whom we should gladly know more'. It is stated by Orderic that he was one of those who came in and submitted to William at the outset. But Mr Freeman held it 'far more likely that he did not submit till a much later time', because Florence says of him in William's absence: 'se dedere Regi dedignabatur'. Orderic's statement, however, is not denied, and Florence's words seem to me quite explicable by the hypothesis that Eadric had refused the 'dangerous honour', as Mr Freeman terms it, of following William to Normandy in 1067 among 'his English attendants or hostages'. Harried, in consequence, by his Norman neighbours, he retaliated by ravaging Herefordshire in August of that year; while Count Eustace also threw off his allegiance and made his descent on Dover.
If the identity of 'Eadric' is matter of conjecture, that of 'Eustace eorl' is certain. But no one has known, or even suspected, that he held, at this period, high position in the west. It may be that, as I have already hinted, he was sent by William to a district, as yet only nominally subject, as being, from his previous connection with England, less obnoxious than a Norman was likely to prove. It would be refining overmuch to suggest that William might also intend to establish him as far as possible from his base of operations at Boulogne.
In any case, we have in this charter a welcome addition to our scanty knowledge of that obscure period when William, as it were, was feeling his feet as an English king. Nor is it its least important feature that it shows us William, contrary to what Mr Freeman held to be his fundamental rule, speaking of his predecessor as 'Harald kinge'.
Before taking leave of Regenbald, we may glance at one of the Domesday entries relating to his lands. Mr Freeman, in two distinct passages, wrote as follows:
|
An entry in 99 reads as if the
same Regenbald had been defrauded
of land by a Norman tenant of his
own. 'Ricardus tenet in Rode i.
hidam, quam ipse tenuit de
Rainboldo presbytero licentia
regis, ut dicit. Reinbold vero
tenuit T.R.E.' (Norm. Conq., v. 751) |
The rights of the antecessor are
handed on to the grantee of his
land. ... So in Exon 432.
'Ricardus interpres habet
i. hidam terræ in Roda quam ipse
emit de Rainboldo sacerdote
[Eadward's chancellor?] per
licentiam regis, ut dicit qui
tenuit eam die qua Rex E.
fuit[6]
et mortuus.' (Ibid., p. 784) |
Although these two passages are found in two different appendices, the entries thus diversely adduced, are, of course, one and the same. But, it will be seen, the 'tenuit' of Domesday is equated by the 'emit' of the Exon book. One of the two must be wrong. I should accept the Exon text because 'emit licentia regis' is the right Domesday phrase, because it makes better sense, and because it is a sound principle of textual criticism that the Exchequer scribe was more likely to write the usual 'tenuit' for the exceptional 'emit' than the Exon scribe to do the converse. I should then read the passage thus: 'emit de Rainboldo sacerdote—per licentiam regis, ut dicit—qui tenuit eam die', etc.
If my view be adopted, we here detect noteworthy error in our great and sacrosanct record.
The charter of Henry I to Cirencester Abbey—in which he had placed Canons Regular, and of which he claimed to be the founder—sets, as it were, the coping-stone on the story of Regenbald.[7] In it we read:
Dedi et concessi ... totam tenuram Reimbaldi presbyteri in terris et ecclesiis, et ceteris omnibusquæ subscripta sunt....
De rebus autem predictis quæ fuerunt Rembaldi hec statuimus.
The details of Regenbald's possessions are given, and are of special value for collation with Domesday. They set him before us not only as a landowner in five different counties, but also as the first great pluralist. Sixteen churches, rich in tithes and glebe—one might really term them 'fat livings'—had passed into the hands of Regenbald 'the priest'. From the king's phrase, 'dedi et concessi', he would seem to have been not merely confirming an endowment by Regenbald, but granting lands which had escheated to himself.[8]
And this conclusion is confirmed by the fact that the king, while granting them, especially reserved the life interest of the Bishop of Salisbury and of two others—one of them, alas! a bishop's nephew—who must have acquired their rights since Regenbald's death.
This charter, apart from its contents, is of great interest from its mention of the place where and the time when it was granted, together with its list of witnesses. These were the two Archbishops, the Bishops of Salisbury, Winchester, Lincoln, Durham, Ely, Hereford, and Rochester: Robert 'de Sigillo', Robert de Ver, Miles of Gloucester, Robert d'Oilli, Hugh Bigot, Robert de Curci, Payne 'filius Johannis et Eustacio et Willelmo fratribus ejus, et Willelmo de Albini Britone'. The charter was granted 'apud Burnam in transfretatione mea anno incarnationis Domini MCXXXIII. regni vero mei XXXIII.'; and 'Burna', as I have elsewhere shown,[9] was Westbourne in Sussex, on the border of Hampshire, then in the king's hands by forfeiture and near the coast. Here therefore we see the king, when leaving England for the last time, surrounded by his prelates and ministers, and are enabled to say positively who were with him. I would note the predominance of the official class represented by the Bishops of Salisbury, Lincoln, and Ely, by the late chancellor, the Bishop of Durham, and by laymen who are found specially entrusted with administrative work. A long list of witnesses such as this is specially characteristic of the closing period of the reign,[10] and, of course, always possesses biographical value.[11]
Another English writ of the Conqueror, which may be profitably compared with that we have discussed, is found in one of the cartularies of Bury St Edmund's.[12] Its address, as rendered in the transcript, runs:
William [sic] kyng gret Ægelmær Bischop and Raulf Eorl and Nordman and ealle myne thegnaes on Sudfolke frendliche.
This writ is obviously previous to the deposition of Bishop Æthelmær in April, 1070, but how far previous it is not easy to say. 'Nordman' is clearly the sheriff of Suffolk, who appears in Domesday as 'Normannus Vicecomes' (II. 438). His name affords presumption, though not proof, that he was of English birth;[13] and as his Domesday holding consisted only of rights over two Ipswich burgesses (which he may have acquired during his shrievalty) he is hardly likely to have been one of the conquering race. Of the third official, Earl Ralf, we know a good deal. Mr Freeman was much puzzled by this 'somewhat mysterious person',[14] but eventually came to the conclusion that 'there were two Ralfs in Norfolk, father and son, the younger being the son of a Breton mother: the elder was staller under Edward and Earl under William'. The younger was the Earl of Norfolk (or 'of the East Angles'), who rebelled and was forfeited in 1075; the elder was that 'Rawulf' who, in the words of the chronicle, 'wæs Englisc and wæs geboren on Norðfolce'. Putting our evidence together, I lean strongly to the view that we have here, as in the case of Regenbald, a writ addressed to English authorities before Norfolk had passed into the hands of Norman authorities. Mr Freeman held that a passage in Domesday (II. 194), to which he had given much attention, should be read—'Hanc terram habuit A[rfastus] episcopus in tempore utrorumque [Radulforum]', and that therefore 'the elder Ralph was living as late as 1070, in which year the episcopate of Erfast begins'. But the context clearly shows that we should read 'A[ilmarus] episcopus', and that, therefore, the elder Ralf died before Æthelmær was deposed. Moreover, Norwich, we are specially told, was entrusted by the Conqueror to William fitz Osbern before his departure from England in March 1067. William was placed, some two years later, in charge of York castle, and we read in Mr Freeman's work that 'the man who now (autumn, 1069) commanded at Norwich, and who was already, or soon afterwards, invested with the East-Anglian Earldom, was the renegade native of the shire, Ralf of Wader'.[15] This, it will be seen, contradicts his own, and supports my reading of the Domesday passage quoted above. Everything therefore points to the 'Raulf Eorl' of our writ dying or being deposed shortly after the Conquest.
Before taking leave of this writ we may note that, dealing as it does with Suffolk, it is addressed to Earl Ralf as Earl, not merely of Norfolk, but of East Anglia. This is of some importance, because Mr Freeman wrote, speaking of the Regents appointed in 1067:
There was no longer to be an Earl of the West Saxons or an Earl of the East Angles.... Returning in this to earlier English practice, the Earl under William was to have the rule of a single shire only, or if two shires were ever set under one Earl they were at least not to be adjoining shires. The results of this change have been of the highest moment. (iv. 70.)
Yet on page 253, as we have seen, we read of 'the East Anglian Earldom', and on page 573 that the younger Ralph 'had received the Earldom of East Anglia'—Florence of Worcester distinctly terming him 'East-Anglorum comite'. Mr Freeman, indeed, was led by this passage to style him 'Earl of Norfolk or of the East Angles'.[16] I believe this latter style to be perfectly correct, and, as I have shown in my Geoffrey de Mandeville (p. 191), to apply even to the Bigod earldom in the days of Stephen.
The curious English writ that has suggested these considerations ought to be compared with a Latin one, also in favour of St Edmund's, on which I lighted in examining the 'Registrum Album' of the Abbey. It is one of those exceedingly rare documents that find their correlatives in Domesday. The words of the writ are these:
W. rex Anglor' E. epo. B. Abbi W. Malet salm. sciatis vos mei fideles me concessisse servitium de Liuremere quam Werno hactenus de me tenuit sancto Ædmundo Et filia Guernonis in vita sua de Abbate B. tenuit.[17]
The last clause is clearly an addition by the cartulary scribe. Now this charter being addressed, like the other, to Æthelmær ('Ethelmerus'), Bishop of the East Angles, is, of course, previous to April 1070. I should, therefore, also place it previous to the capture of William Malet at York in September 1069. But this, unlike the other date, is matter of probability rather than of proof. Mr Freeman believed that William returned, and died 'in the marshes of Ely' (1071), but this is only a guess in which I cannot concur.[18] In any case, we have evidence here of this well-known man having held a position in Suffolk (where he owned the great Honour of Eye) analogous to that of sheriff. He may have succeeded Northman in that office.
The relevant Domesday entry is as follows:
Hujus terram rex accepit de abbate et dedit Guernoni depeiz [de Peiz]. Postea licencia regis deveniens monachus reddidit terram. (363b.)
The charter records, I take it, the 'licencia regis' of Domesday.[19]
[1] Vol. xxvi., p. 256.
[2] Not counting Leofric, styled 'regis cancellarius' by Florence in 1046.
[3] See my life of him in Dictionary of National Biography.
[4] It might even be suggested that not only this charter but the Essex writ in favour of Deorman (addressed to Bishop William and Swegen the sheriff) belonged to the same early period. Compare, however, the Conqueror's Old English writ that I have discussed ('Londoners and the Chase') in the Athenæum of June 30, 1894.
[5] It is a noteworthy coincidence that 'Brihtricus princeps' and 'Eadricus princeps' are among the witnesses to Harold's Waltham charter in 1062, which Regenbald himself also attests as Chancellor.
[6] sic.
[7] See Monast. Anglic., ii. 177.
[8] It is possible, I think, that the only endowment entered to the church at Cirencester in Domesday, viz., two hides at Cirencester, had been originally given by Regenbald.
[9] Henry I, at 'Burne' (English Historical Review, 1895).
[10] As in the charters to Aubrey de Vere (Baronia Anglica, 158) and William Mauduit.
[11] Here, it would seem, is further proof of the Bishops of Ely and Durham assuming their styles before consecration (infra, pp. 366-7).
[12] Harl. MS., 743, fo. 8d.
[13] Mr Freeman held him to be an Englishman.
[14] Norm. Conq. 2nd Ed.), iii. 773. Cf. 1st Ed., iii. 752-3; iv. 277.
[15] Ibid. (1st Ed.), iv. 252-3.
[16] Ibid. (2nd Ed.), iii. 773.
[17] Add. MS., 14,314, fo. 32b (pencil).
[18] See my letter on 'the death of William Malet' in Academy of August 26, 1884.
[19] Since this paper was written, there has appeared the valuable Bath Cartulary (Somerset Record Society) containing a most remarkable charter (p. 36), which should be closely compared with those to Regenbald. It is issued by William the King and William the Earl, and must undoubtedly be assigned to the former's absence from England, March-December 1067. It shows us therefore William fitz Osbern acting as Regent and anticipating the office of the later Great Justiciar by inserting in the document his own name. This charter, like that to Regenbald, is addressed to the still English authorities of an unconquered district.