THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE SURVEY
(Hen. i-Hen. ii)
This 'Hydarium' of Northamptonshire is found in a Peterborough Cartulary (Cott. MS. Vesp. E. 22, fo. 94 et seq.). It is drawn up Hundred by Hundred, like the surveys of Leicestershire and of Lindsey, and is, therefore, probably connected with the assessment of Danegeld. Although it is of special value for reconstituting the Domesday Vills, the assessment it records so often varies from that which is found in Domesday that we cannot institute a close comparison. The introduction of a 'parva virgata' further complicates the reckoning. That the original document was written on a roll is shown by the use of the phrase 'per alium rotulum'. The statement on fo. 97b that there ought, at one place, to be half a hide more 'per rotulos Wyncestr[ie]', would seem to refer to Domesday; but on the next page we read:
In Pytesle Abbas de Burgo v. hid. [et] dim. set tamen in Rotulis Wyncestr[ie] vi. hid. et iii. parvas virgatas.
Since Domesday records this holding as 'v. hid. et una virgata terræ', the reference (if the text of the survey is right) must clearly be to some other record preserved in the national treasury.
I append about a fifth of the Survey as a specimen of the whole.
Hokeslawe
Twywell. Albr[icus] camerar[ius] ii. hidas de feudo Abbatis de Thorneya. Ibidem de feudo Comitis David. Ibidem de feudo Abbatis Burgi i. magnam virgatam.
In Slipton i. hidam et unam virgatam de feudo Will'i de Corcy. Ibidem Ricardus filius Hugonis ii. partes unius hidæ de feudo Burgi. Ibidem Rogerus nepos Abbatis tertiam partem unius hidæ de eodem feudo.
In Suburc [Sudboro'] ii. hidas [et] dim. de feudo Westmonaster'.
In Lofwyc [Luffwick] Th——[1] i. hidam et unam virgatam de feudo de Deneford. Ibidem Radulfus Fleming i. virgatam et dim. de feudo Comitis David. Ibidem Wydo frater ejus i. magnam virgatam de feudo de Thorneya.
In Drayton Albr[icus] camerar[ius] dimidiam hidam de feudo R[egis].
In Yslep [Islip] idem Albri[cus] de feudo Regis. Ibidem iiiior. sokemanni Regis i. hidam de feudo Westmonaster'.
In Audewyncle [Aldwinkle] Abbas de Burgo iiii. hidas [et] dimidiam quas Ascelinus de Waterville tenet. Ibidem Galfridus de Glynton i. magnam virgatam de feudo Glovernie pertinens ad Barton. Ibidem Ricardus filius Wydonis iii. hidas dim. virg. minus de feudo Regine [sic].
Item in Benifeld [Benefield] Willelmus le Lisurs iii. magnas virg. de feudo Regis.
In Bernewelle [Barnwell] Robertus de ferariis vi. hidas et i. magnam virg. de feudo Regis. Ibidem Reginaldus le Moyne vi. hidas de feudo de Rammeseye.
In Lilleford Willelmus Olyfart v. hidas de feudo Regis Scotie.
Naueford
In Tytheni [? Tichmarsh] Robertus de Ferr[ers] x. hid. Ibidem Ascelinus de Waterville iii. hid. et i. virg. et tres partes dim. hid. de Burgo.
In Thrapston Radulfus fil. Oger ii. hid. et i. virg. de feudo de Brunne. Ibidem Robertus filius Edelinæ i. hid. et i. virg. de feudo de Clare.
In Torpe et Achirche Ascelinus de Waterville vi. hid. [et] dim. de feudo Burgi.
In Clopton Walterus i. hid. et i. virg. de feudo Regis. Ibidem iii. hid. [et] dim. de feudo Burgi. Ibidem Ascelinus dim. hid. de feudo Burgi.
Wadenhowe [Wadenhoe]. Albricus de Ver ii. hid. et i. virg. de feudo Regis David. Ibidem Wymunt de Stok[e] i. virg. de feudo Burgi. Ibidem Rogerus Infans ii. parvas virg. de eodem feudo. Ibidem Wivienus de Chirchefelde dim. hid. de eodem feudo. Ibidem Galfridus de Gonthorp ii. hid. de eodem feudo. In Catteworthe i. hid. [et] dim. de feudo Burgi.
Pokebroc
In Pokebroc Robertus de Cauz i. hid. et. i. virg. de feudo Regis. Ibidem Walterus de Clopton ii. hid. et dim. de feudo Burgi. Ibidem Rogerus Marmium i. hid. et i. virg. de eodem feudo.
In Armeston [Armston] de Burgelay ii. hid. [et] dim. de eodem feudo. Ibidem Turkil i. hid. de eodem feudo. Ibidem Wydo Maufee i. hid. de eodem feudo. Ibidem Galfridus de Gunthorp ii. partes dim. hid. de eodem feudo. Ibidem Tedrik' iii. partes de dim. hid. de eodem feudo.
In Pappele [Papley] i. hid.
In Lillington [Lutton] i. hid.
In Hennington Berengerus le Moyne ii. hid. [et] dim. de feudo de Rammes[eye]. Ibidem Ricardus filius Gilberti i. hid. et i. virg. et dim. de feodo Burgi. Ibidem Wydo Maufe dim. hid. et dim. virg. de eodem feodo. Ibidem Reginaldus le Moyne dim. hid. et dim. virg. de eodem feodo.
In Kynesthorp [Kingsthorp] Walterus de Lodington i. hid. et i. virg. de feodo Burgi. Ibidem Willelmus de Chirchetot dim. hid. de feodo Regis.
In Therninge [Thurning] Rogerus Marmioun iii. parvas virg. de feodo Burgi.
In Ayston [Ashton] Abbas de Burgo iiii. hid. in dominico. Ibidem Papilun dim. hid. de eodem feodo. Ibidem Leuenoth dim. hid. de eodem feodo.
In Undele [Oundle] Abbas in dominico vi. hid. Ibidem Vivien i. parvam virg.[2]
Duo Hundred de Nasso
In Stinton Willelmus de Lisurs ii. hid.
In Bernak Fulco paynel iii. hid.[3]
In Wirthorpe Abbas Croylaund ii. hid. Ibidem de feodo Eudonis Dapiferi i. virg.
In Eston [Easton] Simon i. hid. [et] dim.
In Peychirche [Peakirk]. In Etton. In Northburgo dim. virg.
In dominico Abbatis de Burgo sancti Petri lxx. hid. et iii. virg. et dim.
Hundred de Sutton
In eadem villa [King's Sutton] Dominus Rex habit in dominico iiii. hid.
In eadem villa Willelmus de Quency i. hid. [et] dim. et parvam virg. terre de Comitat Leycestr[ie]. Ibidem Alfredus viii. parvas virg. de Gilberto de Pinkeny. Ibidem Paganus i. hid. et dim. et i. parvam virg. de feodo Comit[is] Leycestri[ie], Robertus filius Osberti tenuit.
In Evenle i. hid. et i. parvam virg. de feodo Comit[is] Leyc[estrie].
In Preston dim. hid. de feodo Comit[is] Leyc[estrie].
In Croulton [Croughton] iiiior. parvas virg. de feodo Comit[is] Leyc[estrie]. Ibidem Sewar' i. hid. et ii. parvas virg. de feodo Leyc[estrie]. Ibidem Brien filius Comitis i. hid. [et] dim. et ii. parvas virg. de feodo de Walinford.
In Neubottle Regis [sic] de Reynes vi. hid. et i. parvam virg. de feodo Comitis Leyc[estrie], Willelmus de Lepyn tenuit.
In furningho [Farningho] iiii. hid. de feodo Comitis Leyc[estrie].
In Cherlington [Charlton] Maynardus i. hid. [et] dim. et i. parvam virg. Ibidem Simon Chendut i. hid. [et] dim. de feodo de Berkamstede et i. parvam virg. Ibidem Odo dapifer viii. parvas virg. de feodo de Colescestra.
In Gremesbir' [Grimsbury] Aunsel' de Chokes ii. hid. et iiii. parvas virg. scil. quarta pars ii. hid.
In Middleton Willelmus Me
chin i. hid. et dim. et i. parvam virg. de feodo Willelmi de Curcy.In alia Middleton [Middleton Chenduit] Simon Chendut ii. hid. de feodo de Berkamstede.
In Thayniford [Thenford] Mainfenn de Walrentone i. hid. Ibidem Robertus Basset i. hid. de feodo de Walingford.
In Ayno [Aynho] Willelmus de Mandeville iii. hid.
In Middelton monachi de sancto Eu'ald[4] ii. hid.
In Walton i. hid. cum ii. virg. in Sutton quas Suouild tenuit.
In Gildeby i. hid. et vii. parvas virg. de feodo de Mortal' [sic].
Hundred de Albodestowe
In Chacombe iiii. hid. de feodo Episc. Lincoln.
In Evenle ii. hid. et [sic] i. parvam virg. minus quas Alouf de Merke tenuit.
In Thorpe [Thorpe-Mandeville] ii. hid.
In Stanes [Stene] Gilbertus de Pinkeny ii. hid.
In Colewyth [Culworth] Willelmus ii. hid. et iiii. parvas virg. Ibidem Otuer i. hid.
In Stotebyr[e] [Stotesbery] ii. hid. quas monachi Norht'[5] tenent.
In Rodestone [Radston] ii. hid. de feodo Comitis Cestr[ie].
In Wytefeld [Whitfield] Gilbertus de Monte ii. hid. et ii. virg. in dominico.
In Merston [Merston St Lawrence] Radulfus Murdac iiii. hid. de feodo Comitis Leyc[estrie].
In Siresham Thomas Sorel i. hid. [et] dim. Ibidem Comes Leyc[estrie] i. parvam virg. Ibidem Gilo dim. hid. Ibidem Willelmus filius Alui' [? Alan] iiii. parvas virg.
In Helmendene [Helmedon] Willelmus de Torewelle iiii. hid. de feodo Comitis Leyc[estrie].
In Chelverdescote dim. hid. Idem. Comes Leyc[estrie].
In Brackle et Hausho [Hawes] idem Comes vii. hid. [et] dim.
Hundred de Wardon
In Wardon Ricardus foliot[6] ii. hid. [et] dim. et i. magnam virg., scilicet quarta pars i. militis de feodo Regis in capite.
In Estone [Aston] et Apeltreya [Apeltre] Willelmus de Bolonia vii. hid. de feodo Comitis de Mandeville.
In Bottolendon [Boddington] Fulco Paynel[7] ii. hid. una ex illis de feodo Cestr[ie]. Ibidem Willelmus Meschin i. hid. Ibidem i. hid. de feodo Episcopi Lincoln.
The only writer, it would seem, who has used this important survey is Bridges, who refers to it throughout in his Northamptonshire as of the time of 'Henry II'. A good instance of the confusion caused by this assumption is seen in the remarks of Bridges as to Barnack (ii. 491), where he is puzzled by our record, giving as its lord, not Gervase Paynell, but Fulc Paynell (who was really his grandfather). To refute his conclusion, it is sufficient to refer to the first name entered—that of 'Albricus Camerarius'. This was no other than Aubrey de Vere, a trusted minister of Henry I, who was made by him Great Chamberlain in 1133, and who was slain in May 1141.[8] His Northamptonshire estate descended to his younger son, Robert, who, as 'Robertus filius Albrici Camerarii', made his return as a Northamptonshire 'baron' in 1166.[9] There can, therefore, be no confusion between Aubrey the Chamberlain (d. 1141) and his eldest son and namesake. Yet if, from the occurrence of his name, we pronounced the date of this survey to be 1133-41, we should be in error. There are names belonging to an earlier, as to a later, date than this.
Among the earliest are 'Ricardus filius Wydonis', the son and successor of Guy de Raimbercurt, a great Domesday tenant-in-chief; Walter fitz Winemar, whose father was both a tenant in capite and under-tenant in Domesday; and Ralf fitz Oger, whose name illustrates the value of these early surveys; for the entry proves that Oger, the Northamptonshire tenant-in-chief (D.B., i. 228), was identical with Oger 'Brito', the Lord of Bourne, Linc. (i. 364b), and that the son and successor of this Oger was Ralf. We also recognize Roger Marmion, who was succeeded, under Henry I, by Robert; Nigel de Albini, the founder of the house of Mowbray; Michael de Hanslape, who died under Henry I; and 'Robertus filius Regis', who became Earl of Gloucester circ. 1122. Other tenants, living temp. Hen. I, are William de Mandeville,[10] William Meschin, Richard Basset, Viel (Vitalis) Engaine, Baldwin fitz Gilbert, and Brian fitz Count. As for Ascelin de Waterville and Alouf de Merke, they are found as under-tenants in Domesday itself. On the other hand, such a name as 'Comes Warenn de Morteyn' points to the latter years of Stephen's reign, or to the early days of that of Henry II; while the mention of the earldoms of Arundel, Ferrers (Derby) and Essex preclude, of course, an earlier date than 1140.
After careful examination, I propound the solution that this survey was originally made under Henry I, and was subsequently corrected here and there, to bring the entries up to date, down to the days of Henry II. The late transcriber, to whom we owe the survey in its present form, has incorporated these additions and corrections in a single text with the most bewildering result. We trace exactly the same process in the Red Book of the Exchequer. In the Black Book the later additions that were made to the barons' cartae of 1166 are distinguished by the difference in handwriting. But in the Red Book these interpolations are found transcribed in the same hand as the genuine original returns. To the uninitiated this has been the cause of no small confusion. So, too, in the above list of Peterborough knights (p. 157), the very first entry, made temp. Hen. I, has been carried on by a later hand to the time of Henry III. But there Stapleton, who transcribed the list, carefully discriminated between the two.[11] It is probable that the lists of Abingdon knights, published in the Abingdon cartulary, are rendered untrustworthy in places from the same cause of error.
The transcriber's ignorance is clearly shown by such a name as 'Comes Mauricius', which is evidently his erroneous extension of an original 'Comes Maur'', i.e. Count of Mortain! So also we are enabled to detect proof of the theory I advance in such an entry as 'Willelmus Meschin de feodo Wellelmi de Curcy'; for William de Curcy held, temp. Henry II, the barony held by William Meschin (his maternal grandfather, according to Stapleton[12]) temp. Henry I. Thus, the original entry will have run 'William Meschin', while a later hand, in his grandson's days, will have added, by way of substitution, 'De feodo William de Curcy'.[13] Our transcriber, combining the two, has, of course, made nonsense of the whole. The same explanation applies to the entry, 'Robertus filius Regis de feodo Glovernie', where the first three words represent the original entry, while the others were added, probably under Henry II, to connect the holding with the fief of [the Earl of] Gloucester. 'Brien filius Comitis de feodo de Wallin[g]ford' is another instance in point, and so, I suspect, is 'Odo [sic] dapifer de feodo de Colcestra'; for I take it that the entry was originally made in the lifetime of Eudo Dapifer (d. 1120) and that, as his 'honour' passed into the King's hands, the 'de feodo de Colcestra' was added at a later time.[14]
I have given sufficient of the survey to prove that, in spite of confusion and corruption, it possesses a real value. If we take, for instance, Polebrook ('Pochebroc'), a township of five hides, we find that in Domesday (221b, 228) Eustace ('the Sheriff') held a hide and a quarter in capite and three hides and three quarters as a tenant of Peterborough Abbey (see p. [138]). Now our survey shows us the former holding in the hands of Robert de Cauz, while the other has been broken up, two-thirds of it passing to Walter 'de Clopton' and one-third to Roger Marmion.
Just below, in the case of Hemington, also a Vill of five hides, which was equally divided between the Abbeys of Peterborough and Ramsey, we read in Domesday that 'iii. milites' held the Peterborough half (221b). Our survey enables us to distinguish their tenancies—Richard fitz Gilbert holding a hide and three-eighths; Guy Maufe, five-eighths of a hide, and Reginald le Moyne the same.[15] But we can go further and identify the first, from his holding, as the son of Gilbert Fauvel, the Domesday tenant (see p. [138]); while the second was the heir, and probably the son of Roger Malfed (see p. [132]).
One more instance may be given. Our survey reckons Clapton ('Cloptone') as five and a quarter hides, of which 'Walter' held one and a quarter in capite. Here again he had succeeded Eustace, whose Domesday estate at 'Dotone' (228) ought, as Bridges conjectured, to have been entered 'Clotone'.[16] On the other hand, his tenancy of the Abbot at 'Clotone' had been broken up, half a hide of it passing to Ascelin de Waterville. All this goes to show that the fief of Eustace the Sheriff did not, as has been alleged, descend to his heirs.
Such an entry as 'In Lilleford, Willelmus Olyfart v. hidas de feudo Regis Scotiæ' is peculiarly suggestive. It reminds us that David Holyfard, godson of King David of Scotland, and his protector in 1141, was the founder of the house of Oliphant; and in the family's possession of Lilford (which was held of the Countess Judith in 1086) we see the origin of their Scottish connection. William 'Olifard' was of Northamptonshire, and Hugh 'Olifard' of Huntingdonshire in 1130;[17] while Hugh 'Olifart' (of Stoke) was a knight of the Abbot of Peterborough in rather earlier days. The earliest member of the house, however, it would seem, on record is Roger Olifard, who witnessed (doubtless as his tenant) Earl Simon's charter to St. Andrew's, Northampton, granted, probably, not later than 1108. This, of course, is but one of the cases in which the son of a Norman house settled in Scotland through its King's connection with the earldoms of Huntingdon and Northampton.
At the close of the survey I have here discussed there is a list of the knights of Peterborough (fos. 99b, 100) holding in Northamptonshire. It ought to be carefully compared with the one I have examined above (p. 131), being, it seems probable, about a generation later. Such entries as these, at least, are conclusive for the holding to which they refer:
| Paganus de Helpestun terciam partem unius militis (Chronicon Petroburgense, p. 171). | Roger fil[ius] Pagan in Helpestun terciam partem i. militis (Vesp. E. xxii., fo. 100). |
In the same way, Roger Marmion had been succeeded by Robert. This second list is of special value from the fact that the Peterborough carta of 1166 gives no particulars of the knights or of their fees.
[1] Or Sh——.
[2] See Chronicon Petroburgense, p. 158.
[3] See Bridges' Northamptonshire, ii. 491.
[4] St. Evroul, Grantmesnil's in Domesday.
[5] St Andrew's Priory, Northampton.
[6] The heir of Guy de Raimbercurt.
[7] Clearly Fulk Paynel the first, Founder of Tykford Priory.
[8] Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 81.
[9] See also as to Twywell itself. Mon. Ang., ii. 603:
'Ego Albericus, regis camerarius terram de Twiwell quamdiu vixero de domino abbate Guntero et monachis de Thorneya per talem conventionem teneo adfirmam.'
'Ego Robertus filius Albrici camerarii regis terram de Twiwelle quamdiu vixero de domino abbate Roberto et monachis de Thorneia per eandem conventionem in feodi firmam teneo per quam conventionem pater meus ante me tenuit.'
The Great Chamberlain occurs again on fo. 97b, where we read:
'In alia Adington Albric[us] Camerar[ius], ii. hid. de feodo Regis.'
[10] If, as probable, the son of the Domesday Baron.
[11] Chronicon Petroburgense, pp. 168-9.
[12] Holy Trinity Priory, York, p. 35.
[13] Since this was written I have come across a curious confirmation of the hypothesis advanced. In the Lindsey Survey (Ed. Greenstreet), an entry on fo. 20, in the original ran: 'Comes Odo [tenet] in Aldobi', above which a later hand has interlined, 'De feodo Comitis Albemerle'. It is curious that in the same survey another later interlineation—'Comes Lincoln'—was, though distinguished by Hearne, incorporated with the text by Mr Waters (see p. [151]).
[14] Eudo was identified with Colchester.
[15] Giving a total of 2⅝, instead of 2½—a trivial discrepancy.
[16] It is singular that in Sussex the 'Cloninctune' of Domesday is, conversely, an error for 'Doninctune'. The source of the error in both cases must have been the likeness of 'cl' to 'd' in the original returns, on which these names cannot have begun with a capital letter.
[17] Rot. Pip., 31 Hen. I.
THE INTRODUCTION OF KNIGHT SERVICE INTO ENGLAND[1]
'The growth of knighthood is a subject on which the greatest obscurity prevails; and the most probable explanation of its existence in England, the theory that it is a translation into Norman forms of the thegnage of the Anglo-Saxon law, can only be stated as probable.'—Stubbs, Const. Hist., i. 260.
In approaching the consideration of the institutional changes and modifications of polity resulting from the Norman Conquest, the most conspicuous phenomenon to attract attention is undoubtedly the introduction of what it is convenient to term the feudal system. In the present paper I propose to discuss one branch only of that process, namely, the introduction of that military tenure which Dr Stubbs has termed 'the most prominent feature of historical feudalism'.
In accordance with the anticataclysmic tendencies of modern thought, the most recent students of this obscure problem have agreed to adopt the theory of gradual development and growth. The old views on the subject are discredited as crude and unhistorical:[2] they are replaced by confident enunciation of the theory to which I have referred.[3] But when we examine the matter closely, when we ask for details of the process by which the Anglo-Saxon thegn developed into the Norman knight, we are met at once by the frank confession that 'between the picture drawn in Domesday and the state of affairs which the charter of Henry I was designed to remedy, there is a difference which the short interval of time will not account for'.[4] To meet this difficulty, to account for this flaw in the unbroken continuity of the series, a Deus ex machinâ has been found in the person of Ranulf Flambard.
Now this solution of the difficulty will scarcely, I venture to think, bear the test of investigation. It appears to have originated in Dr Stubbs' suggestion that there must have been, between the days of Henry I and of William I, 'some skilful organizing hand working with neither justice nor mercy'[5]—a suggestion subsequently amplified into the statement that it is to Ranulf Flambard 'without doubt that the systematic organization of the exactions' under William Rufus 'is to be attributed',[6] and that by him 'the royal claims were unrelentingly pressed', his policy being 'to tighten as much as possible the hold which the feudal law gave to the king on all feudatories temporal and spiritual'.[7] There is nothing here that can be called in question, but there is also nothing, be it observed, to prove that either 'feudal law' or 'military tenure' was introduced by Ranulf Flambard. Indeed, with his usual caution and unfailing sound judgment, our great historian is careful to admit that 'it is not quite so clear' in the case of the lay as of the church fiefs 'that all the evil customs owed their origin to the reign of William Rufus'.[8] And, even if they did, they were, it must be remembered, distinctly abuses—'evil customs', as Henry I himself terms them in his charter—namely (in the matter we are considering), 'excessive exactions in the way of reliefs, marriages and wardships, debts to the crown, and forfeiture. In the place,' we are told, 'of unlimited demands on these heads, the charter promises, not indeed fixed amercements, but a return to ancient equitable custom'.[9] All this refers, it will be seen, to the abuse of an existing institution, not to the introduction of a new one. The fact is that Ranulf's proceedings have been assigned a quite exceptional and undue importance. Broadly speaking, his actions fall under a law too often lost sight of, namely, that when the crown was strong it pressed, through the official bureaucracy, its claims to the uttermost; and when it found itself weak, it renounced them so far as it was compelled. Take, for instance, this very charter issued by Henry I, when he was 'playing to the gallery', and seeking general support: what was the value of its promises? They were broken, says Mr Freeman, to the Church;[10] they were probably broken, says Dr Stubbs, to the knights;[11] and they were certainly broken, I may add, to the unfortunate tenants-in-chief, whom the Pipe-Roll of 1130 shows us suffering from those same excessive exactions, of which the monopoly is assigned to Ranulf Flambard, and which 'the Lion of Justice' had so virtuously renounced. I might similarly adduce the exactions from the Church by that excellent king, Henry II (1159), 'contra antiquum morem et debitam libertatem'; but it is needless to multiply examples of the struggle between the interests of the crown and those of its tenants-in-chief, which was as fierce as ever when, in later days, it led to the provisions of the Great Charter. What the barons, lay and spiritual, complained of from first to last, was not the feudal system that accompanied their military tenure, but the abuse of that system in the excessive demands of the crown.
Mr Freeman, however, who had an equal horror of Ranulf Flambard and of the 'feudal system', did not hesitate to connect the two more closely even than Dr Stubbs, though invoking the authority of the latter in support of his extreme views. The passages to which I would invite attention, as expressing most concisely Mr Freeman's conclusions, are these:
The system of military tenures, and the oppressive consequences which were held to flow from them, were a work of the days of William Rufus.
If then there was any time when 'the Feudal System' could be said to be introduced into England, it was assuredly not in the days of William the Conqueror, but in the days of William the Red. It would be more accurate to say that all that we are really concerned with, that is, not an imaginary 'Feudal System', but a system of feudal land-tenures, was not introduced into England at all, but was devised on English ground by the malignant genius of the minister of Rufus.[12]
As the writer's line of argument is avowedly that of Dr Stubbs, it is only necessary to consider the point of difference between them. Where his predecessor saw in Henry's charter the proof that Ranulf Flambard had abused the existing feudal system by 'excessive' and 'unlimited' demands, Mr Freeman held, and endeavoured to convince us, that he had introduced not merely abuses of the system, but the actual system itself.[13] The question virtually turns on the first clause of the charter;[14] and it will not, I think, be doubted that Dr Stubbs is right in adopting its natural meaning, namely, that the novelty introduced by Ranulf was not the relevatio itself, but its abuse in 'excessive exactions'. Indeed, even Mr Freeman had virtually to admit the point.[15] If, then, the argument breaks down, if Ranulf cannot be shown to have 'devised' military tenure, how are we to bridge over the alleged chasm between the date of Domesday (1086) and that of Henry's charter (1100)? The answer is simply that the difficulty is created by the very theory I am discussing: it is based on the assumption that William I did not introduce military tenure,[16] combined with the fact that 'within thirteen years after the Conqueror's death, not only the military tenures, but the worst abuses of the military tenures, were in full force in England'.[17] But, here again, when we examine the evidence, we find that this assumption is based on the silence, or alleged silence, of Domesday Book.[18] Now no one was better aware than Mr Freeman, as an ardent student of 'the great Record', that to argue from the silence of Domesday is an error as dangerous as it is common. Speaking from a rather wide acquaintance with topographical works, I know of no pitfall into which the local antiquary is more liable to fall. Wonderful are the things that people look for in the pages of the great survey; I am always reminded of Mr Secretary Pepys' writing for information as to what it contained 'concerning the sea and the dominion thereof'.[19] Like other inquests, the Domesday Survey—'the great inquest of all', as Dr Stubbs terms it—was intended for a special purpose; special questions were asked, and these questions were answered in the returns. So with the 'Inquest of Sheriffs' in 1170; so also with the Inquest of Knights, if I may so term it, in 1166. In each case the questions asked are, practically, known to us, and in each they are entirely different. Therefore, when Mr Freeman writes:
The survey nowhere employs the feudal language which became familiar in the twelfth century. Compare, for instance, the records in the first volume of Hearn's Liber Niger Scaccarii. In this last we find something about knights' fees in every page. In Domesday there is not a word—[20]
it is in no spirit of captious criticism, but from the necessity of demolishing the argument, that I liken it to basing conclusions on the fact that in the census returns we find something about population in every page, while in the returns of owners of land there is not a word. As the inquest of 1166 sought solely for information on knights and their fees, the returns to it naturally contain 'something about knights' fees in every page'; on the other hand, 'the payment or nonpayment of the geld is a matter which appears in every page of the survey' [of 1086] because 'the formal immediate cause of taking the survey was to secure its full and fair assessment'.[21] Nor is this all. When the writer asserts that 'in Domesday there is not a word' about knights' fees, he greatly overstates his case, as indeed is shown by the passages he proceeds to quote. I shall be able to prove, further on, that knights' fees existed in cases where Domesday does not mention them, but even the incidental notices found in the Great Survey are quite sufficient to disprove its alleged silence on the subject. As Mr Freeman has well observed:
Its most incidental notices are sometimes the most precious. We have seen that it is to an incidental, an almost accidental notice in the Survey that we owe our knowledge of the great fact of the general redemption of lands.[22]
Here then the writer does not hesitate to base on a single accidental notice the existence of an event quite as widespread and important as the introduction of knight service.[23]
I have now endeavoured to make plain one of the chief flaws in the view at present accepted, namely, that it is mainly grounded on the negative evidence of Domesday, which evidence will not bear the construction that has been placed upon it—and further that, even if it did, we should be landed in a fresh difficulty, the gulf between Domesday and Henry's charter being only to be bridged by the assumption that Ranulf Flambard 'devised' and introduced military tenure, with its results—an assumption, we have seen, which the facts of the case not only fail to support, but even discountenance wholly.
Let us pass to a second difficulty. When we ask the advocates of the view I am discussing what determined the number of knights due to the crown from a tenant-in-chief, we obtain, I venture to assert, no definite answer. At times we are told that it was the number of his hides; at times that it was the value of his estate. Gneist, who has discussed the matter in detail, and on several occasions, has held throughout, broadly speaking, the same view: he maintains that 'since Alfred's time the general rule had been observed that a fully equipped man should be furnished for every five hidæ, but it had never been established as a rule of law as in the Carlovingian legislation':[24] consequently, he urges, 'a fixed standard for the apportionment of the soldiery was wanting' at the time of the Conquest, and this want was a serious flaw in the Anglo-Saxon polity. William resolved to make the system uniform, and
the object that the royal administration now pursued for a century was to impose upon the whole mass of old and new possessors an equal obligation to do service for reward. The standard adopted in carrying out this system was approximately that of the five hides possession of the Anglo-Saxon period; yet with a stricter rating according to the value of the produce.[25]
The difficulty encountered in ascertaining this value was a main cause of the Domesday Survey being undertaken. This is Gneist's special point on which he invariably insists: 'Domesday book laid the basis of a roll of the crown vassals';[26] upon it, 'in later times, the fee-rolls were framed'.[27] By its evidence, 'according to the extent and the nature of the productive property, could be computed how many shields were to be furnished by each estate, according to the gradually fixed proportion of a £20 ground rent'.[28] For 'the feuda militum thus computed are no knights' fees of a limited area',[29] but 'units of possession', the unit being £20 in annual value.
Dr Stubbs, on the other hand, while rejecting the view that military service, since the days of Alfred, had been practically fixed at one warrior for every five hides,[30] leans nevertheless to the belief that the knight's fee was developed out of the five-hide unit, and that the military 'service' of a tenant-in-chief was determined by the number of such units which he possessed. But, as he also recognizes the £20 unit, there will be less danger of misrepresenting his views if I append verbatim the relevant passages:
| The customary service of one fully armed man for each five hides was probably the rate at which the newly endowed follower of the king would be expected to discharge his duty ... and the number of knights to be furnished by a particular feudatory would be ascertained by inquiring the number of hides that he held.[31] | The value of the knight's fee must already have been fixed—twenty pounds a year.[32] |
|
The number of hides which the
knight's fee contained being known,
the number of knights' fees in any
particular holding could be easily
discovered.[33] All the imposts of the ... Norman reigns, were, so far as we know, raised on the land, and according to computation by the hide: ... the feudal exactions by way of aid ... were levied on the hide.[34] |
It cannot even be granted that a
definite area of land was necessary to
constitute a knight's fee; ... It is
impossible to avoid the conclusion
that the extent of a knight's fee was
determined by rent and valuation
rather than acreage, and that the
common quantity was really expressed
in the twenty librates, etc.[35] The variation in the number of hides contained in the knight's fee.[36] |
Mr Freeman's views need not detain us, for he unhesitatingly accepts Dr Stubbs' arguments as proving that the Norman military tenure was based on 'the old service of a man from each five hides of land'.[37]
We find then, I submit, that the recognized leaders of existing opinion on the subject cannot agree among themselves in giving us a clear answer, when we ask them what determined the amount of 'service' due from a Norman tenant-in-chief, or, in other words, how that 'service' was developed in unbroken continuity from Anglo-Saxon obligations.
The third point that I would raise is this. Even assuming that the amount of 'service' bore a fixed proportion—whether in pecuniary or territorial units—to the extent of possession, we are, surely, at once confronted by the difficulty that the owner of x units of possession would be compelled, for the discharge of his military obligations, to enfeoff x knights, assigning a 'unit' to each. A tenant-in-chief, to take a concrete instance, whose fief was worth £100 a year, would have to provide ex hypothesi five knights; if, as was quite usual, he enfeoffed the full number, he would have to assign to each knight twenty librates of land (which I may at once, though anticipating, admit was the normal value of a knight's fee), that is to say, the crown would have forestalled Henry George, and the luckless baro would see the entire value of his estate swallowed up in the discharge of its obligations.[38] What his position would be in cases where, as often, he enfeoffed more knights than he required, arithmetic is unable to determine. I cannot understand how this obvious difficulty has been so strangely overlooked.
The fourth and last criticism which I propose to offer on the subject is this. If we find that under Henry II—when we meet with definite information—a fief contained, as we might expect, more 'units of possession' than it was bound to furnish knights (thus leaving a balance over for the baro after sub-infeudation), we must draw one of two conclusions: either this excess had existed from the first; or, if the fief (as we are asked to believe) was originally assessed up to the hilt for military service, that assessment must, in the interval, have been reduced. In other words, Henry I—if, as Dr Stubbs in one place suggests,[39] he was the first to take a 'regular account of the knights' fees'—must have found the land with a settled liability of providing one knight for every five hides, and must, yet, have reduced that liability of his own accord, on the most sweeping scale, thus, contrary to all his principles, ultroneously deprived himself of the 'service' he was entitled to claim.
Having completed my criticisms of the accepted view, and set forth its chief difficulties, I shall now propound the theory to which my own researches have led me, following the same method of proof as that adopted by Mr Seebohm in his English Village Community, namely working back from the known to the relatively unknown, till the light thrown upwards by the records of the twelfth century illumines the language of Domesday and renders the allusions of monks and chroniclers pregnant with meaning.
1. THE 'CARTAE' OF 1166
In the formal returns (cartae) made to the exchequer in 1166 by the tenants-in-chief (barones) of England, of which the official transcripts are preserved in the Liber Niger and the Liber Rubeus, we have our earliest glimpse of the organization of that purely feudal host among whom our lands had been parcelled out to be held, as I shall show, by military service. We have, therefore, in them our best starting-point for an inquiry into the origin and growth of military tenure in England.
It may be well perhaps, at the very outset, to contrast these cartae of 1166 with those of the Domesday Inquest eighty years before.[40] For the essentially feudal character of the former is at once, by the comparison, thrown into relief. The original returns of the Domesday Inquest were made Hundred by Hundred; those of 1166 were made fief by fief. The former were made by the jurors of the Hundred-court; the latter by the lord of the fief. Thus, while the one took for its unit the oldest and most familiar of native organizations, the other, ignoring not only the Hundred, but even the shire itself, took for its unit the alien organization of the fief.[41] The one inquest strictly continued, the other wholly repudiated, the Anglo-Saxon system.
It is consequently worse than lost labour to examine these two inquests, based as they are on opposite systems, and giving us as they do a cross-division as if they were but successive editions of the national register or rate-book.
The first point to be considered is this: What was the information which the tenants-in-chief were called upon to supply in these returns? It was not, as Dr Stubbs and others have supposed, the amount of 'service' due from each fief to the crown.[42] The information asked for was the number of 'milites' actually enfeoffed by each 'baron' and his predecessors in title, with the number of 'servitia' due from each such 'miles' to the 'baron'. In this distinction, missed by Dr Stubbs, we find the key to the problem. The crown, we shall see, must previously have known the total amount of 'service' due from each fief; but what it did not know, and what it wished to know, was the number of knights' fees which, up to 1166, had been created on each fief.
Although there is great diversity in the form of return adopted—a diversity which imparts to the cartae a pleasant flavour of character—it may fairly be assumed that, as in similar cases, they were called for throughout the realm by one uniform writ. If we may deduce the purport of that writ from the collation of those returns which refer to it most explicitly, we must infer that the information asked for was to be given under four heads:
(1) How many knights had been enfeoffed before the death of Henry I?
(2) How many have been enfeoffed since?
(3) How many (if any) remain to be enfeoffed to complete the 'service' due from the fief. Or, in other words, what is the balance of your 'service' remaining chargeable to your 'demesne'?
(4) What are the names of your knights?
In support of these statements I append the whole of the relevant returns.
| Bishop of Exeter | Archbishop of York | Bishop of Durham |
|---|---|---|
| Praecepistis mihi quod mandarem vobis per breve meum sigillatum et apertum, non quot servitia militum vobis debeam, sed (1) quot habeam milites feffatos de tempore Regis Henrici avi vestri, et (2) quot post mortem ipsius, et (3) quot sint super dominium meum.[43] | Praecipit dignitas vestra omnibus fidelibus vestris clericis et laicis, qui de vobis tenent de capite in Eboracsira, ut mandent vobis per literas suas, extra sigillum pendentes (1) quot milites quisquis habeat de veteri feffamento de tempore Regis Henrici avi vestri, scilicet de die et anno quo ipse fuit vivus et mortuus, et (2) quot habeat de novo feodamento feffatos post mortem bonae memoriae avi vestri ejusdem, et (3) quot feoda militum sint super dominium uniuscujusque, et (4) omnium illorum nomina, tam de novo feffamento quam de veteri feffatorum quae sint in illo brevi scripta, quia vultis quod si aliqui ibi sunt qui vobis nondum fecerunt ligantiam, et quorum nomina non sunt scripta in rotulo vestro, quod infra dominicam primam xlae ligantiam vobis faciant (p. 412). | Praecepit nobis, domine, vestra sublimitas, quod literis nostris sigillatis, extra sigillum pendentibus, vobis mandaremus (1) quot milites feffatos haberemus de veteri feffamento et (2) de novo, scilicet, anno et die quo Rex Henricus fuit vivus et mortuus et de [sic] post mortem ejus ... (3) super dominium vero nostrum, de quo similiter mandare præcepistis, etc. (pp. 416, 418).] |
| Herbert De Castello | Engelard De Strattone | Robert De Brintone |
|---|---|---|
| Michi et comparibus meis mandastis ut vobis per breve nostrum pendens extra sigillum, mandaremus (1) quot milites antiquitus feodatos de tempore Regis Henrici avi vestri habeamus et (2) quot de novo feodamento.... Et hii omnes ligantiam et homagium vobis fecerunt (pp. 275-6). | Michi et ceteris comparibus meis qui de vobis tenemus in capite per litteras vestras mandastis ut vobis per breve nostrum pendens extra sigillum mandaremus (1) quot milites habeamus de veteri feodamento de tempore Henrici Regis avi vestri, et (2) quot habeamus de novo feodamento (p. 276). | Michi et aliis comparibus meis per litteras vestras innotuistis ut per fidem et ligantiam quam vobis debemus per breve nostrum pendens extra sigillum mandaremus (1) quot milites haberemus de veteri feodamento de tempore Henrici Regis avi vestri, et (2) quot milites haberemus de novo feodamento post tempus Regis Henrici avi vestri, et (3) quot milites habeamus super dominium nostrum.... Et vobis quidem et filio vestro ligantiam et homagium fecerunt (p. 277).[44] |
Let me here break off for a moment to consider one of the most important points suggested by this great inquest, namely, the issue of the writs under which it was held. It has been generally assumed that each tenant received his writ direct from the crown; and a casual reading of the cartae might, perhaps, favour such a view. I have, however, been led to the conclusion that a general writ was issued to the sheriff of each county, and that its terms were communicated by him to the several tenants-in-chief, whose capita baroniæ lay within his jurisdiction.
Baderun of Monmouth has heard the writ read out in the county court;[45] Earl Patrick also has heard the writ read out.[46] William fitz Siward derives from the sheriff, he tells us, his knowledge of the writ:[47] even the bishop of Chester has received his instructions from the sheriff.[48] But more especially do I rely upon the return of the Archbishop of York because he recites the tenor of the writ in terms which can leave no doubt that it was addressed, through the sheriff, to the whole shire collectively.[49] If the Archbishop of York did not receive a special writ, we may fairly infer that no other tenant can have done so.
Further, I believe that as the 'barons' received their instructions from the sheriffs, so they also sent in their returns through those officers. The memorandum, for instance, on the missing carta of Osbert fitz Hugh informs us that it was brought to the exchequer by William de Beauchamp. Now, William de Beauchamp was sheriff of the shire. This would account for the grouping of the returns 'per singulos comitatus', as Swereford expresses it, and indeed this arrangement would but follow the existing practice of collecting the scutage shire by shire.
Returning now to the terms of the inquiry, it is obvious that the tenant (baro) to whom such queries were addressed must of necessity have belonged to one of these three classes—
(a) Those who had created the exact number of knights' fees sufficient to discharge their 'service'.
(b) Those who had created more than sufficient.
(c) Those who had created less than sufficient.
This last class requires some explanation. When the number of knights' fees created was not sufficient to discharge the baron's 'service', the balance of that service remained charged on the non-infeudated portion of his fief, that is, on the 'demesne', and was technically said to be 'super dominium'. It is all-important that this should be grasped, for it might otherwise be supposed that such a phrase as 'quot milites super dominium' implied the existence of actual knights enfeoffed on the demesne, which, to those who realize the working of the system of knight-service, is an absolute contradiction in terms. This, it will be found, beautifully explains the first article of the Assize of Arms (1181)—that every tenant is to keep in stock harness for as many knights 'quot habuerit feoda militum in dominio suo'.[50] That is to say, that if, after deducting the knights actually enfeoffed, there remained due from his fief a balance of knight-service, he must keep in readiness harness sufficient for those knights whom he would have to provide himself to discharge that balance.[51]
Having made this point clear, I now pass to the immediate object of the inquest of 1166. What that object was, no one has as yet discovered. Dr Stubbs, for instance, in his preface to the Pipe-Roll of 1166, writes: 'On the immediate purpose for which the inquiry was made—and it can scarcely be doubted that it was for the collection of a scutage—we shall look for further information in the rolls of the succeeding years.' My own researches enable me to assert that this inquest formed part of a financial revolution hitherto ignored, which deserves to be compared with those other innovations in administration and finance that characterized the latter half of the twelfth century in England.
When we come to place side by side the returns of 1166 and the payments made upon those returns in 1168, we find (at least, on the lay fiefs) the same distinction in both between 'the old feoffment' and 'the new'. But while the returns, as we saw, were made under three heads,[52] the payments were made under two, namely, under the two feoffments. The reason of this difference can be established beyond dispute: the exchequer clerks had, in every instance, added the returns under the third head to those under the first, and classed them together as 'old feoffment'. This is one of the points which, I think, have never been hitherto explained.
Plenty of examples might be given, but these two will suffice. Walter de Aincurt returns 24 fees de veteri, 5 de novo, and 11 super dominium. The exchequer, in 1168, records him as paying on 35 fees de veteri, and on 5 de novo.[53] Richard de Haie returns 11 fees de veteri, 4 de novo, and 5 super dominium. The exchequer records him as paying on 16 de veteri, and 4 de novo.
The main point, however, on which I propose to insist, is that these returns were intended to provide, and, as a matter of fact, did provide a new feudal assessment, wholly superseding the old one, in no case to the advantage of the tenant, but in many to the advantage of the crown. The modus operandi was as follows. Instead of either adhering to the old assessment (servitium debitum), or uniformly substituting a new one based on the fees actually created, the crown selected in every case whichever of these two systems told in its own favour and against the tenant of the fief. If he had enfeoffed fewer knights than his servitium debitum required, the crown retained that servitium as the irreducible minimum of his assessment; but if he had created an excess of fees, the crown added that excess to his pre-existing assessment and increased the 'service' due from him pro tanto. This discovery is no conjecture, but is capable of arithmetical demonstration.
It should be noticed how skilfully the queries were framed in the inquest of 1166, to entrap the unwary tenant, and make him commit himself to the facts. If his enfeoffed knights were short of the required number, he was caught under the third query; if, on the other hand, he had an excess, he was caught under the others. Now, did the 'barons', when they made their returns, anticipate this sweeping and unwelcome reform? Presumably not. They appear to have drawn up their cartae carefully and willingly, few of those who had an excess of knights taking even the precaution of mentioning their servitium debitum.[54] The church, moreover, from the terms in which her payments are thenceforth entered (vide infra), must have uniformly and systematically adopted an attitude of protest. Yet there is no trace of such protest in her returns. May we then infer that the crown sought to deliberately entrap its tenants? Two circumstances might favour that view. In the first place the tenants had to make their returns extra sigillum pendentes, thereby solemnly committing themselves;[55] in the second, the tenants would, of course, have been tempted to conceal or understate their excess of knights, had they foreseen the use that the crown would make of their returns.
The question may very fairly be asked, 'What check had the crown upon a tenant in the event of the latter omitting some of his "excess" fees?' The answer is supplied, I think, by a clause in the invaluable return of the northern primate. He there requests that his return may be accepted 'without prejudice', as a lawyer would say, in case of his omitting some small fees. That is to say, these formal returns might be brought up as evidence against tenants-in-chief who had omitted some of their fees, proving that they had thereby themselves disowned their right to the fees in question.[56]
Two points strike one strongly in the preparation of these returns. The first of these is the difficulty experienced in compiling a correct list of under-tenants and their holdings; the second is the employment of the 'Inquest' as a means of ascertaining the particulars.
Taking the former of these, we find Hugh Wac writing, 'si amplius inquirere possim, notificabo vobis'; and Guarine 'de Aula', 'si plus possim inquirere, faciam vobis scire'; so too the Bishop of Ely, 'de hiis vero certi sumus, et si amplius inquirere poterimus libenter vobis significabimus'; and the Bishop of Bath, 'si certiorem inquirere poterimus veritatem, nos illam vobis significabimus'; and Alfred of Lincoln, 'si plus inquiri potest, inquirere faciemus'. The Bishop of Exeter makes his return, 'sicut eam diligentius inquirere potui'; the Abbot of Tavistock, 'quantum inde sollicitius inquirendo scire potuit'. Hugh de Lacy, in a postscript to his return, adds a fee 'quod oblitus sum'; while the Earl of Clare has to send in a subsequent rider, containing an entry, 'quod ego postquam misi cartam ... recordatus sum'.
From this difficulty it is a short step to the inquests which it seems in some cases to have necessitated. The Abbot of Ramsey heads his return, 'Haec est inquisitio'; the Earl of Warwick similarly commences, 'Hoc est quod inquisivi per homines'. Earl Patrick makes his return, 'secundum quod de probis et antiquis hominibus meis inquirere potui'. 'Fecimus inquirere,' writes the Bishop of Bath, 'per legales homines meos.... Haec autem per eos inquisivimus.'
This brings us directly to the very important inquest referred to in the carta of the Earl of Arundel:
Dominus noster Rex Henricus quadam contentione quae surrexit inter milites de honore de Arundel de exercitu quodam de Walliis, elegit iiij. milites de honore, de melioribus et legalioribus, et antiquioribus ... et fecit eos recognoscere servitia militum de honore, et super legalitatem et sacramenta eorum inde neminem audire voluit.
Mr Eyton argued elaborately on genealogical grounds that this inquest must have taken place under Henry I, but indeed it is quite obvious from the language of the carta itself that this was so. It is, consequently, worthy of notice for its bearing on 'the sworn inquest'. While on this subject, attention may be called to the unique entry in the Pipe-Roll of 12 Henry II (1166): 'Alanus de Munbi debet xl. s. quia non interfuit Jurat' feodorum militum' (p. 8). Investigation proves (through what is known as the Lindsey Survey) that Alan was an under-tenant of the honour of Brittany, the successor of that Eudo who held in Mumby temp. Domesday. This fact throws light on the entry, by suggesting that the inquest referred to concerned the honour of Brittany, the number of fees in which was then and subsequently doubtful.
But to return. It is infinitely easier to trace the change brought about by the inquest of 1166 in the case of the church fiefs than of the lay ones. For on the former it was uniform and glaring. Previously to 1166 the church tenants had paid on their servitium debitum alone; after 1166 they paid, as a rule, on all the fees actually created upon the fief. Thus the assessment of the Bishop of Durham was raised at a blow from ten fees to more than seventy.[57] There were several equally striking cases among the prelates. Now, whether or not the church tenants feared something of the kind, they had generally been careful in their returns to set forth their servitium debitum, and when, in 1168, they were uniformly assessed on their total of fees, their uniform protest is expressed in the formula 'quos non recognoscit' applied to the payment on their excess knights. Such is the meaning of this puzzling formula which is peculiar to the church fiefs.[58] In these cases it wholly replaces the de veteri and de novo assessment which, from 1166, was applied to the lay fiefs.
II. THE SERVITIUM DEBITUM
The essential feature we have to keep in view when examining the growth of knight service is the servitium debitum, or quota of knight service due to the crown from each fief.
This has, I venture to think, been obscured and lost sight of in the generalizations and vague writing about the 'gradual process' of development. It is difficult for me to traverse the arguments of Gneist, Stubbs and Freeman, because we consider the subject from such wholly different standpoints. For them the introduction of knight service means the process of sub-infeudation on the several fiefs; for me it means the grant of fiefs to be held from the crown by knight service. Thus the process which absorbs the attention of the school whose views I am opposing is for me a matter of mere secondary importance. The whole question turns upon the point whether or not the tenants-in-chief received their fiefs to hold of the crown by a quota of military service, or not. If they did, it would depend simply on their individual inclinations, whether, or how far, they had recourse to sub-infeudation. It was not a matter of principle at all; it was, as Dr Stubbs himself put it, 'a matter of convenience',[59] a mere detail. What we have to consider is not the relation between the tenant-in-chief and his under-tenants, but that between the king and his tenants-in-chief: for this was the primary relation that determined all below it.
The assumption that the Conqueror cannot have introduced any new principle in the tenure of land lies at the root of the matter. Assuming this, one must of course seek elsewhere for the introduction of knight service. Have not the difficulties of the accepted view arisen from its exponents approaching the problem from the wrong point of view? The tendency to exalt the English and depreciate the Norman element in our constitutional development has led them I think, and especially Mr Freeman, to seek in Anglo-Saxon institutions an explanation of feudal phenomena. This tendency is manifest in their conclusions on the great council:[60] it colours no less strongly their views on knight service. In neither case can they bring themselves to adopt the feudal standpoint or to enter into the feudal spirit. It is to this that I attribute their disposition to bring the crown face to face with the under-tenant—or 'landowner' as they would prefer to term him—and so to ignore, or at least to minimize the importance of the tenant-in-chief, the 'middleman' of the feudal system. Making every allowance for the policy of the Conqueror in insisting on the direct allegiance of the under-tenant to the crown, and thereby checking the disintegrating influence of a perfect feudal system, the fact remains what we may term the 'military service' bargain was a bargain between the crown and the tenant-in-chief, not between the crown and his under-tenants. It follows from this that so long as the 'baron' (or 'tenant-in-chief') discharged his servitium debitum to the crown, the king had no right to look beyond the 'baron', who was himself and alone responsible for the discharge of this service. It is, indeed, in this responsibility that lies the key to the situation. If the under-tenant of a knight's fee failed to discharge his service, it was not to him, but to his lord, that the crown betook itself. 'I know nothing of your tenant,' was in effect the king's position; 'you owe me, for the tenure of your fief, the service of so many knights, and that service must be performed, whether your under-tenants repudiate their obligations to yourself or not'. In other words the 'baron' discharged his service to the king, whereas the baron's under-tenants discharged theirs to their lord.[61] So the Dialogus speaks of the under-tenant's 'numerum militum quos domino debuerat'.
Let us then apply ourselves directly to the quotas of military service due from the 'barons' to the crown, and see if, when ascertained, they throw any fresh light on the real problem.
No attempt, so far as I know, has ever been made to determine these quotas, and indeed it was the utter want of trustworthy information on the subject that led Swereford to undertake his researches in the thirteenth century. Those researches, unfortunately, leave us no wiser, partly from his defective method and want of the requisite accuracy; partly from the fact that what he sought was not abstract historical truth, but practical information bearing on the existing rights of the crown. We must turn therefore to the original authorities: (1) the cartae baronum, (2) the annual rolls. These were the two main sources of Swereford's information, as they must also be of ours. In the next part of this paper I shall deal with the evidence of the rolls, as checking and supplementing the cartae baronum.
I shall analyse the church fiefs first, because we can ascertain, virtually with exactitude, the servitium debitum of every prelate and of every head of a religious house who held by knight service. The importance of these figures, together with the fact that they have never, so far as I know, been set forth till now, has induced me to append them here in full detail.
| See | Service Due | See | Service Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| knights | knights | ||
| Canterbury | 60 | Bath | 20 |
| Winchester | 60 | London | 20 |
| Lincoln | 60 | Exeter | 17½[62] |
| Worcester | 50 [60] | 'Chester' | 15 |
| Norwich | 40 | Hereford | 15 |
| Ely | 40 | Durham | 10 |
| Salisbury | 32 | Chichester | 4 [2] |
| York | 20 [7] |
Every English See then in existence is thus accounted for with the solitary and significant exceptions of Carlisle and Rochester. The latter See, we know, had enfeoffed knights for their names (temp. Henry I, I think, from internal evidence) are recorded in the Textus Roffensis (p. 223);[63] the former had been created after the date when, as I shall argue, the Conqueror fixed the knight service due from the fees.
In the above list the figures in brackets refer to the assessments previous to 1166. Three changes were made at, or about, that date. The Bishop of Worcester, in accordance with the protest he had made from the beginning of the reign, obtained a reduction of his quota from sixty knights to fifty; while the Archbishop of York's servitium was raised from seven knights to twenty, and that of the Bishop of Chichester from two knights to four. These changes are known to us only from the details of the prelate's scutages; there is nothing to account for them in the relevant cartae, and we can only infer from the formula quos recognoscit that the two bishops whose servitia were increased acquiesced in the justice of the crown's claim.
Proceeding to the 'service' of the religious houses:
| House | Service Due | House | Service Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| knights | knights | ||
| Peterborough | 60 | Wilton | 5 |
| Glastonbury | 40 [60] | Ramsey | 4 |
| St Edmundsbury | 40 | Chertsey | 3 |
| Abingdon | 30 | St Bene't of Hulme | 3 |
| Hyde | 20 | Cerne[64] | 2 [3] |
| St Augustine's | 15 | Pershore | 2 [3] |
| Westminster | 15(?) | Malmesbury | 3 |
| Tavistock | 15(?) | Winchcombe | 2 |
| Coventry | 10 | Middleton | 2 |
| Shaftesbury | 7 [10] | Sherburne | 2 |
| St Alban's | 6 | Michelney | 1 |
| Evesham | 5 | Abbotsbury | 1 |
The changes of assessment on religious houses were few, and are thus accounted for. Glastonbury, which paid on sixty knights in the first two scutages of the reign, paid on forty in the third and in those which followed. Pershore paid on three in the first scutage, protesting that it was only liable to two, and from 1168 it was only rated at two. Shaftesbury, which had paid on ten knights in the first scutage, was assessed at only seven in the third scutage and those which followed. Cerne also succeeded in getting its assessment reduced from three knights to two. With these changes should be compared the letter of Bishop Nigel of Ely to Ramsey Abbey certifying that it was only liable to an assessment of four knights. Two cases remain which require special treatment—Tavistock and Westminster.
Although Tavistock, in the first scutage, appears to have paid on the anomalous assessment of ten and a half knights its payment on fifteen in the two succeeding ones may fairly be taken as evidence that this was its servitium debitum.[65] Its abbot, however, made no reference to that servitium in his return, and—by an exception to the regular practice in the case of church fiefs—we find him charged, not on the fees, (1) 'quos recognoscit', (2) 'quos non recognoscit', but on those which were enfeoffed 'de veteri', and 'de novo' just as if he were a lay tenant. As his fees 'de veteri' were sixteen, this figure recurs in successive scutages, until in 3 John we find him contesting as to one knight ('unde est contentio') who, doubtless, represented the difference between fifteen and sixteen.
The case of Westminster presents considerable difficulty, the entries relating to its payments of scutage being very puzzling. The abbey's fees lay chiefly in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire—especially Worcestershire—and it is under this county that we find it ultimately (i.e. from 1168 onwards) assessed at fifteen fees, an assessment which the abbot himself seems to have claimed, in the first scutage, as the right one.
Taking then the servitium debitum of all the church fiefs, at their earliest ascertainable assessment, we obtain this result:
| Bishops | 458½ |
| Heads of religious houses | 318 |
| Capellaria de Bosham | 7½ |
| —— | |
| Grand total | 784[66] |
Far more difficult is the calculation of the servitium debitum from the lay fiefs. The list which follows is constructed from the evidence of the cartae and the rolls, and, though substantially correct, is liable to emendation in details. It only comprises those fiefs the servitium of which I have been able to ascertain with certainty or probability.
| Robert 'filius Regis' | 100[67] |
| Earl Ferrers | 80 (? 60)[68] |
| Honour of Totness | 75 |
| Honour of Tickhill | 60 (?)[69] |
| Robert de Stafford | 60 |
| Count of Eu | 60 (?)[70] |
| Earl Warrenne | 60 (?)[71] |
| Lacy of Pontefract | 60 |
| Roger de Mowbray | 60[72] |
| Earl of Essex | 60 |
| Walter fitz Robert (of Essex) | 50 |
| Honour of Richmond | 50[73] |
| Gervase Paynell | 50 |
| Reginald de St Valery | 50 (?)[74] |
| Patrick, Earl of Salisbury | 40 |
| Walter de Aincurt | 40 |
| William de Montfichet | 40 |
| Payn de Montdoubleau | 40[75] |
| William de Roumare | 40 (?)[76] |
| Hubert de Rye | 35 |
| Hubert fitz Ralf (Derbyshire) | 30 |
| Walter de Wahulle | 30 |
| William fitz Robert (Devon) | 30 |
| William de Traci | 30[77] |
| Robert de Valoines | 30[77] |
| Maurice de Craon | 30[77] |
| William de Albini (of Belvoir) | 30[77] |
| Bernard Balliol | 30[78] |
| Roger de Arundel | 30[79] |
| Walter de Mayenne | 30 (?)[80] |
| Robert de Albini (Bucks) | 25 |
| Robert fitz Hugh | 25 |
| Alfred of Lincoln | 25 |
| Ralf Hanselin | 25 |
| William de Braose | 25[81] |
| Oliver de Traci | 25[81] |
| Gerard de Limesi | 25 (?)[82] |
| Walter Waleran | 20 |
| Richard de Hay | 20 |
| Honour of Holderness | 20 |
| William de Windsor | 20 |
| Hugh de Bayeux | 20 |
| William de Vesci | 20 (?)[83] |
| Daniel de Crevecœur | 20 (?)[84] |
| Thomas de Arcy | 20 (?)[85] |
| Hugh de Dover | 15 |
| Walter Bret | 15 |
| Baderon de Monmouth | 15 |
| Earl Richard de Redvers | 15[86] |
| Adam de Brus | 15 |
| Hamo fitz Meinfelin | 15 |
| Osbert fitz Hugh | 15 (?)[87] |
| ? Hugh de Scalers | 15[88] |
| ? Stephen de Scalers | 15 |
| Gilbert de Pinkeni | 15 |
| Geoffrey Ridel | 15 |
| Robert Foliot | 15 |
| Robert de Choques | 15 |
| Robert de Caux | 15 |
| William Paynell | 15 (?) |
| Richard de Reimes | 10 |
| Roger de Buron | 10 |
| Richard fitz William | 10 |
| William fitz Alan | 10 |
| Richard de Cormeilles | 10 |
| Roger de Kentswell | 10 |
| William Trussebut | 10 |
| Nigel de Lovetot | 10 |
| Manasser Arsic | 10 |
| Richard de Montacute | 10 |
| Wandrille de Courcelles | 10 |
| Walter de Bolebec (Bucks) | 10 |
| Robert de Hastings | 10 |
| Lambert de Scotenni | 10 |
| Drogo de Montacute | 10 (?)[89] |
| William de Reimes | 10 (?)[90] |
| William de Helion | 10 (?)[91] |
Graeland de Thani of Essex owed seven and a half knights (the half of fifteen), and Roger de Berkeley probably the same. Those who owed a servitium of five knights were Robert fitz Harding, Baldwin Buelot, Simon de Cancy, Nigel de Lovetot (of the honour of Tickhill), Amfry de Cancy, Hugh de Dover (of the honour of Brunne),[92] Walter de Bolebec (Northumberland), Robert de Brus, Roger Bertram, and probably Stephen de Bulmer,[93] and Herbert 'de Castello'.
The cases in which the servitium can be shown not to have been a multiple of five are comparatively few. That of Simon de Beauchamp of Bedford was 54, of William Fossard 33½, of Humphrey de Bohun 30½, of William Malet 20⅙, of Robert de Beauchamp (of Somerset) 17, of William fitz John (of Harptree) 13¾, of William Blund 12, of Hugh Wac 10⅛, of William de Ros, William fitz John (of Weston) and William de Beauchamp (of Worcestershire) 7, of John de Bidun and Jocelin de Lovaine 5½.[94] But these, it will be seen, are quite insufficient to overthrow the accumulated array of evidence on the other side, and some of them are, doubtless, capable of explanation. The Bohun fief, for instance, in 1162 paid on exactly 30 fees.
It is impossible to resist the inference, from such evidence as we have, that the amount of the servitium debitum was a matter of custom and tradition, and could not usually be determined by reference to written grants or charters. On this point the returns of three Essex tenants are most instructive, while their similarity is so striking, that, as in the case of the Shropshire formulæ, it can scarcely be due to accident. The Earl of Essex closes with the words: 'et homines mei dicunt mihi quod debeo Domino Regi lx. milites'. Walter fitz Robert, who follows him, writes: 'et hoc mihi homines mei intelligere faciunt, quod debeo inde Regi servitium de l. militibus'. William de Montfichet ends thus: 'et hoc faciunt homines mei mihi intelligere—quod pater meus deserviebat per xl. milites'. With these expressions we may compare those of William fitz Alan's tenants, who assert that his Norfolk fief 'non debet domino Regi nisi i. militem ... ut antiqui testantur'; that his Shropshire fief 'non debet Regi nisi x. milites in exercitu ... sicut antiqui testantur'; and that, as to his Wiltshire fief, 'non sumus certi quod servitium debeat Regi de hoc tenemento'. The Abbot of Chertsey, also, states his servitium debitum with the proviso 'secundum quod scire possumus'. These expressions explain the uncertainty as to the servitium debitum in such cases as the See of Worcester and Ramsey Abbey.[95]
The same principle applies to the relation between the tenant-in-chief and his under-tenant. Thus the very first entry in the cartae runs as follows:
Willelmus de Wokindone iiij. milites et dimidium; et praeter hoc, ex testimonio curiae meae, dimidium exigo, quem ipse se non debere defendit.
Of another tenant on the same fief we read: 'praeter hoc, ex testimonio curiae meae, adhuc j. militem exigo'. Here, we see, appeal is made not to record evidence, but to oral testimony. So, too, the Bishop of Exeter adds this clause to his return:
Et praeter hos omnes, sicut a multis audivi, comes Gloucestriæ, et comes Hugo, et comes de Clare debent tenere de Exoniensi Episcopo; sed nullum ei servitium faciunt vel recognoscunt.
Surely in all such cases as these the obvious inference is that the tenant had been enfeoffed sine carta, or in the very words of the Provisions of the Barons (1259) 'feofatus sine carta a tempore conquestus vel alio antiquo feofamento' (§ 1).
And now for my theory. No one can have even glanced at the lists I have compiled without being instantly struck by the fact that the 'service' is reckoned in round numbers, and is almost invariably a multiple of 5, if not of 10.[96] This discovery, of course, is absolutely destructive of the view that it always represented the number of five-hide (or £20) units contained in the fief. Further, the number of differing fiefs assessed at precisely the same figure proves that the assessment was wholly arbitrary and cannot have been even the round sum which approximated most nearly the number of such units.[97] What then was the true determinant in the light of these conclusions? I reply—the unit of the feudal host.
'On the continent,' writes Gneist, 'fifty milites, or at least twenty-five, were reckoned to one banneret; in England, in proportion to the smaller scale of enfeoffments, a smaller number appears to have formed the unit of the constabularia.'[98] He is right: the English constabularia, where I find it referred to, consists of ten knights.[99] It is interesting to trace this unit and its multiples recurring in the narratives of Irish warfare, under Henry II, and in other struggles.[100] We meet with it also in the grant by the Empress to Geoffrey de Mandeville, in 1141, of 'feodum et servicium xx. militum' and in Stephen's grant to him of 'lx milites feudatos'.[101]
The next step is to show that the Normans were familiar with servitium debitum in terms of the ten-knight unit when they landed in England. For this we have only to refer to Wace. For in the 'Roman de Rou', as quoted by Mr Freeman himself, we find William fitz Osbern assuring the duke as to his barons:
Vostre servise dobleront:
Ki solt mener vint chevaliers
Quarante en merra volontiers,
E ki de trente servir deit
De sesante servir vos velt,
E cil ki solt servir de cent
Dous cent en merra bonement.[102]
The servitium debitum, therefore, was a standing institution in Normandy, and 'to the mass of his (William's) followers', as Mr Freeman frankly admits,[103] a 'feudal tenure, a military tenure, must have seemed the natural and universal way of holding land'. When we find them and their descendants holding their fiefs in England, as they had been held in Normandy, by the service of a round number of knights, what is the simple and obvious inference but that, just as Henry II granted out the provinces of Ireland to be held as fiefs by the familiar service of a round number of knights,[104] so Duke William granted out the fiefs he formed in England?
If to escape from this conclusion the suggestion be made that these servitia debita were compositions effected by English antecessores, it need only be answered that the fiefs acquired were wholly new creations, constructed from the scattered fragments of Anglo-Saxon estates. And though in the case of the church fiefs this objection might not apply, yet we have evidence, as I shall show, to prove that their servitia also were determined by the conqueror's will, as indeed might be inferred from their close correspondence with those of the lay barons.
But if the lands of the conquered realm were so granted to be held by a servitium debitum of knights, the key of the position is won, and the defenders of the existing view must retire along the whole line; for, as Mr Freeman himself observed, 'Let it be once established that land is held as a fief from the crown on condition of yielding certain services to the crown, and the whole of the feudal incidents follow naturally.'[105]
I am anxious to make absolutely clear the point that between the accepted view and the view which I advance, no compromise is possible. The two are radically opposed. As against the theory that the military obligation of the Anglo-Norman tenant-in-chief was determined by the assessment of his holding, whether in hidage or in value, I maintain that the extent of that obligation was not determined by his holding, but was fixed in relation to, and expressed in terms of, the constabularia of ten knights, the unit of the feudal host. And I, consequently, hold that his military service was in no way derived or developed from that of the Anglo-Saxons, but was arbitrarily fixed by the king, from whom he received his fief, irrespectively both of its size and of all pre-existent arrangements. Such propositions, of course, utterly and directly traverse the view which these passages best summarize:
The belief that William I divided the English landed property into military fees is erroneous.... According to the extent and the nature of the productive property it could be computed how many shields were to be furnished by each estate, according to the gradually fixed proportion of a £20 ground-rent.[106]
There is no ground for thinking that William directly or systematically introduced any new kind of tenure into the holding of English lands. There is nothing to suggest any such belief, either in the chronicles of his reign, in the Survey, which is his greatest monument, in the genuine or even in the spurious remains of his legislation.... As I have had to point out over and over again, the grantee of William, whether the old owner or a new one, held his land as it had been held in the days of King Edward.[107]
There can be no doubt that the military tenure ... was itself introduced by the same gradual process which we have assumed in the case of the feudal usages in general. We have no light on the point from any original grant made by the Conqueror to a lay follower; but ... we cannot suppose it probable that such gifts were made on any expressed condition, or accepted with a distinct pledge to provide a certain contingent of knights for the king's service.[108]
If my own conclusions be accepted, they will not only prove destructive of this view, but will restore, in its simplicity, a theory which removes all difficulties, and which paves the way to a reconsideration of other kindred problems, and to the study of that aspect of Anglo-Norman institutions in which they represent the feudal spirit developed on feudal lines.
III. SCUTAGE, AID, AND 'DONUM'
Precious for our purpose as are the cartae of 1166, their evidence, as it stands, is incomplete. It needs to be supplemented by the early Pipe-Rolls of Henry II's reign. By collating these two authorities we obtain information which, singly, neither the one nor the other could afford. All those entries on the rolls which relate to scutagia, auxilia or dona require to be extracted and classified before we can form our conclusions. Hitherto, historians have remained content with repeating Swereford's obiter dicta, as extracted from the Liber Rubeus by Madox, without checking these statements by the evidence of the rolls themselves.
The question of Swereford's authority is one which it is absolutely necessary to deal with, because his statements have been freely accepted by successive historical writers, and have formed, indeed, the basis on which their conclusions rest. Now the presumption is naturally in favour of Swereford's knowledge of his subject. His introduction to the Liber Rubeus is dated 1230, and he tells us that he had been at work among the records in the days of King John, under William of Ely[109] himself: he wrote with the actual rolls before him; he had been intimate with the leading officials of the exchequer, and enjoyed full knowledge of its practice and its traditions. I cannot wonder that, this being so, his positive assertions should have been readily believed, or that Mr Hall, when, for a short time, I was associated with him in preparing the Red Book for the press, should, with a kindly bias in favour of so venerable an authority, have shrunk from my drastic criticism of his famous introduction to that volume.
On the other hand we have Swereford's own admission that he worked from the rolls alone.[110] These rolls are, for all purposes, as accessible to us as they were to him, while we possess the advantage of having, in contemporary chronicles, sources of information which he did not use, and with which, indeed, he shows no sign of being even conversant. We must go, therefore, behind Swereford and examine for ourselves the materials from which he worked.
Passing, for the present, over minor points, I would fix on the 'Great Scutage', or 'Scutage of Toulouse', as the test by which Swereford's knowledge and accuracy must stand or fall. If he is in error on this matter, his error is so grievous and so far-reaching that it must throw the gravest doubt on all his similar assertions. The date of the expedition against Toulouse was June 1159 (the host having been summoned at Mid-Lent): from the chroniclers we learn that, to provide the means for it, and especially to pay an army of mercenaries, a great levy was made in England and beyond sea. The roll of the following Michaelmas records precisely such a levy, and the payments so recorded must have been made for the expenses of this campaign. But we can go further still; we can actually prove from internal evidence that sums accounted for on the roll of 1159 were levied expressly for the Toulouse campaign.[111] Yet we are confidently informed by Swereford that this levy was for a Welsh war, and that the scutage of Toulouse is represented by the levies which figure on the rolls of 1161 and 1162. He appears to have evolved out of his inner consciousness the rule that a scutage, though fixed and even paid in any given year, was never accounted for on the rolls till the year after.[112] But as even this rule will not apply to his calculation here, one can only suggest that he was absolutely ignorant of the date of the Toulouse campaign.[113] The value of Swereford's calculations is so seriously affected by this cardinal error, that one may reject with less hesitation his statement that the scutage of 1156 was taken for a Welsh war, and not, as there is evidence to imply, for a campaign against the king's brother. Swereford, again, may be pardoned for his ignorance of the fact that scutage existed under Henry I,[114] but when he unhesitatingly assigns the Domesday Survey to the fourteenth year of the Conqueror (1079-80), he shows us that the precision of his statements is no proof of their accuracy. On both these points he has misled subsequent writers.[115]
The incredible ignorance and credulity even of officials at the time are illustrated by the fact that the Conqueror was generally believed to have created 32,000 knights' fees in England, and that Swereford plumed himself on his independence in doubting so general a belief.[116] His less sceptical contemporary, Segrave, continued to believe it, and even Madox hesitates to reject it.
The persistent assertion that the Cartae Baronum were connected with, and preliminary to, the auxilium ad filiam maritandam of 1168 is undoubtedly to be traced to Swereford's ipse dixit to that effect. He distinctly asserts that the aid was fixed (assisum) in the thirteenth year (1167), that the returns (cartae) were made in the same year (1167), and that the aid was paid and accounted for in the fourteenth year (1168).[117] Modern research, however, has shown that the returns were made quite early in 1166, while the youthful Matilda, we know, was not married till October 1168. This throws an instructive light on Swereford's modus operandi. Finding from the rolls that the payments made in 1168 were based on the returns in the cartae, and not being acquainted with the date of the latter, he jumped to the conclusion that they must have been made in 1167, it being his (quite unsupported) thesis that all levies were fixed in the year preceding that in which they were accounted for on the rolls.
Proceeding further, we find him explaining (p. 9) that he omits the aid of 1165, 'quoniam probata summa auxilii propter hoc non probatur numerus militum'. And yet this aid, the last to be taken before the returns of 1166, is of special value and importance for the very purpose he speaks of. It is, indeed, an essential element in the evidence on which I build; and this compels me to discuss the point in some detail.
Those who contributed towards this aid either (1) gave arbitrary sums for the payment of servientes—whose number was almost invariably some multiple of five—or (2) paid a marc on every fee of their servitium debitum. We are only here concerned with those who adopted the latter course. Now let us take the case of those who adopted this alternative in the counties of Notts and Derby, and compare their payments with their servitium debitum as known to us from other sources.
| Payments (1165) | Service (1166) | |
|---|---|---|
| marcae | knights | |
| Hubert fitz Ralf | 30 | 30 |
| Ralf Halselin | 25 | 25 |
| Robert de 'Calz' | 15 | 15 |
| Roger de Burun | 10 | 10 |
In this case there is no doubt as to the servitium debitum, for it is ascertained from the cartae themselves. Having then proved, by this test, the exact correspondence of the payments, I turn to the case of Devonshire.
| Payments (1165) | Service (1166) | |
|---|---|---|
| marcae | knights[118] | |
| Robert 'filius Regis' | 100 | (?) |
| William de Traci | 30 | (?) |
| William de Braose | 25 | (?) |
| Oliver de Traci | 25 | (?) |
| Abbot of Tavistock | 15 | 15 |
| William fitz Reginald | 1 | 1 |
| Ralf de Valtort | 1 | 1 |
| Robert fitz Geoffrey | 1 | 1 |
Here we are supplied by this roll with four important servitia which would otherwise be absolutely unknown to us. And they happen to be of special interest. For while the carta of William de Braose returns twenty-eight fees, and that of Oliver de Traci twenty-three and a half (though he pays on thirty and a half),[119] their payments in 1165, by revealing their servitium debitum, show us that their fiefs represent the two halves of the Honour of Barnstaple (which, therefore, was assessed at 50 knights) then in their respective hands. Again, William de Traci returns his fees in his carta as twenty-five and three-quarters, and says nothing about any balance on his dominium, as he should have done. Hence we should not have known his servitium but for the roll of 1165.
Swereford's extraordinary failure to understand this roll aright is possibly due to the fact that most of the relevant payments are entered without mention of their object. He seems to have been very dependent upon the rolls explaining themselves, and to have worked in the spirit of a copying clerk rather than of an intelligent student.
One more example of his errors will suffice. In his abstracts from the aid 'ad maritandam primogenitam filiam regis' (1168), we read:
Abbas Gloucestriæ de promissione, sed non numeratur quid; sed in rotulo praecedenti dicitur:—Abbas Gloucestriæ debet xxxviij. l. ij. s. vj. d. de veteri scutagio Walliae.
Now (1) the amount of the abbot's contribution is duly entered on the roll ('xl. marcas de promissione de eodem auxilio'), and it is not paid in respect of fees, but is a voluntary proffer; (2) the phrase in the preceding roll is not 'de veteri scutagio', but 'de veteri exercitu'; (3) the payment there recorded represents a contribution of fifty servientes, and had nothing to do with scutage, for the abbot (as Swereford should have known) did not hold by military service, and ought not, therefore, to figure in his lists at all.[120]
Let us turn, therefore, to the rolls themselves. Now, although the language of the exchequer was not so precise as we could wish, it is possible, more or less, to distinguish and classify these levies. Thus, we have of course a typical 'aid' in the levy for the marriage of the king's daughter (1168), while, on the other hand, we have an equally typical 'scutage' in 1156, in the payments made by the church tenants in lieu of military service.
On the institution of 'scutage' there has been much misconception. It is placed by our historians among the great innovations wrought by Henry II, who is supposed by them to have introduced it in 1156.[121] Here we see, once again, the danger of seeking our information on such points secondhand, instead of going straight to the fountainhead for ourselves.
John of Salisbury implies that scutage was no novelty in 1156 when he writes, not that the king imposed it, but that he 'could not remit it'. This inference is at once confirmed by the appearance of scutage eo nomine in the reign of Henry I.
The following charter is found in the (MS.) Liber Eliensis (Lib. III), No. xxi, and in the Cottonian MS. Nero A. 15:
H. rex Anglorum Archiepiscopis, Episcopis, Abbatibus, Comitibus, etc. Salutem. Sciatis me condonasse Ecclesiæ S. Ætheldredæ de Ely pro Dei amore et anima Patris et Matris meae et pro redemptione peccatorum meorum, et petitione Hervei ejusdem Ecclesie Episcopi 40 libras de illis 100 libris quas predicta Ecclesia solebat dare de Scutagio quando Scutagium currebat[122] per terram meam Anglie: ita quod Ecclesia amodo inperpetuum non dabit inde nisi 60 libras quando Scutagium per terram evenerit, et ita inperpetuum sit de predictis libris Ecclesia predicta quieta. T. Rogero Episcopo Saresberiensi, Gaufrido Cancellario meo et Roberto de Sigillo et Willelmo de Tancarvilla et Willelmo de Albineio Pincerna et Radulfo Basset et Gaufrido de Clintona et Willelmo de Pondelarche. Apud Eilinges in transitu meo.
This is followed by (No. xxii) a grant of Chatteris Abbey to the church of Ely;[123] and this again is followed, in a register of Chatteris Abbey,[124] by a remission of 6s 7d Wardpenny hitherto paid by that abbey. The first and third charters receive singular confirmation, being thus accounted for in the Pipe-Roll of Henry I:
Et idem Episcopus debet ccxl. li. ut rex clamet eum quietum de superplus militum Episcopatus, et ut Abbatia de Cateriz sit quieta de Warpenna (p. 44).
This entry, moreover, connects the scutagium with the system of knight-service (superplus militum).
It is delicious to learn, on comparing the records, that the virtuous king who made these grants for the weal of his parents' souls and the remission of his own sins, extorted from the church, for making them, an equivalent in hard cash.[125]
Again, the (MS.) Cartulary of St Evroul contains a confirmation by Randulf, Earl of Chester (1121-29) of his predecessor (d. 1120) Earl Richard's benefaction, 'liberam et quietam ab escuagio', etc., etc. The list of the Abbot of Peterborough's knights (see p. [131]) is a further illustration of knight-service temp. Henry I, while the entry as to Vivian, who was enfeoffed by Abbot Turold: 'servit pro milite cum auxilio' (Chron. Petrob., p. 175), must refer to the somewhat obscure 'auxilium militum' of the period. So also, it would seem, must the curious charter of Eustace, Count of Boulogne,[126] in which he speaks of his knights serving: 'sive in nummis, sive in exercitu, sive in guarda', under Henry I. Most important of all, however, is a passage on which I have lighted since this essay first appeared. In reading through the letters of Herbert (Losinga), Bishop of Norwich (d. 1119), I found this appeal to the Bishop of Salisbury, in the king's absence from England:
In terris meis exiguntur quinquaginta libræ pro placitis, cum earundem terrarum mei homines nec in responsionem nec in facto peccaverint.[127] Item pro militibus sexaginta libræ quos [? quas] tanto difficilius cogor reddere, quanto annis præteritis mea substantia gravius attenuata est (Ed. Giles, p. 51).
The sum is that to which the Ely contribution is reduced by the above charter, and the death of the writer in 1119 proves the early date of the payment.
Indeed, a little consideration will show that payment in lieu of military service, which was the essential principle of scutage, could be no new thing. The two forms which this payment might assume—payment to a substitute, or payment to the crown—both appear in Domesday as applicable to the fyrd; the former is found in the 'Customs' of Berkshire, the latter in other passages. From the very commencement of knight service, the principle must have prevailed; for the 'baron' who had not enfeoffed knights enough to discharge his servitium debitum, must always have hired substitutes to the amount of the balance. Nor is this a matter of supposition: we know as a fact, from the Abingdon Chronicle and the Ely History, that under William I knights were so hired.[128] Here it should be noted, as a suggestive fact, that the 'forty days' of military service, though bearing no direct proportion either to the week or to the month, do so to the marc and to the pound. The former represents 4d, and the latter 6d, for each day of the military service.[129] It may fairly be assumed that this normal 'scutage' would be based on the estimated cost of substitutes paid direct. Thus the only change involved would be that the tenant would make his payments not to substitutes, but to the crown instead.
There is a valuable entry bearing on this point in the roll of 8 Henry II (p. 53). We there read:
Et in liberatione vii. militum soldariorum de toto anno quater xx. et iiii. li. et xviii. s. et viii. d. Et in liberatione xx. servientium de toto anno xxx. li. et vi. s. et viii. d. Et in liberatione viii. Arbalist' viii. li. et xvi. sol. Et in liberatione v. vigilum et i. Portarii vi. li. et xvi. d.
This represents 8d a day to each of the seven knights for a year of 364 days, which, be it observed, corresponds precisely with the statements in the Dialogus: 'Duo milites bajuli clavium quisque in die viii. [den.] ratione militiae; asserunt enim quod equis necessariis et armis instructi fore teneantur', etc. (i. 3). And so, we see, a scutage of two marcs, such as that which was raised for the expedition of Toulouse (1159), would represent, with singular accuracy, 8d a day for the forty days of feudal service, or exactly a knight's pay. Again the pay of the serviens, recorded in this passage, works out at a penny a day for a year of 364 days, which has an important bearing, we shall find, on the roll of three years later (11 Henry II). A similar calculation shows that the porter received 2d a day, and the vigil 1d—the very pay assigned him in the Dialogus (i. 3). There is another similar passage in the roll of 14 Henry II (p. 124):
Et in liberatione i. militis et ii. Portariorum, et ii. vigilum de Blancmost' xviii. li. et v. sol. Et in liberatione xl. servientum de Blancmust' de xxix. septimanis xxxiii. li. et xvi. s. et viii. d. Et xx. servientibus qui remanserunt xxiii. septimanas xiii. li. et viii. s. et iiii. d.
Here again the knight's pay works out at 8d a day, while the porters, the watchmen, and the servientes received 1d. Specially valuable, however, are the entries (to which no one, I think, has drawn attention) relating to the small standing guards kept up in the summer months at 'Walton' and Dover.[130] Eventually the payments to these guards were made from the central treasury ('exitus de thesauro'), and are therefore appended, on the rolls, to the list of combustiones where no one would think of looking for them.
On the roll of 10 Henry II we find: 'Liberatio iiii. militum et ii. servientum de Waletone a festo Ap. Phil' et Jac' usque ad festum S. Luce xxiiii. li. et xx. d.' This works out at exactly 8d a day for the miles, and 1d for the serviens. On the roll of the next year the five knights at Dover are paid £25 for 150 days' service, or exactly 8d a day each. So too on the roll of the thirteenth year we read: 'Liberatio iiii. militum de Waletone xxiii. li. et ix. s. et iiii. d. de clxxvi. diebus.... Et ii. servientibus de clxxvi. diebus xxix. sol. et iiii. d.' Here again the miles gets 8d, the serviens 1d a day. It is needless to multiply instances, but it may be added that similar calculations show the sailors of Richard's crusading fleet to have received 2d and their boatswains 4d a day.
It is, perhaps, possible to trace a complete change of policy in this matter by the crown. The Conqueror, we may gather from divers hints, was anxious to push forward the process of sub-infeudation, that as many knights as possible might be actually available for service. As the chief danger lay, at first, in the prospect of English revolt it was clearly his policy to strengthen to the utmost that 'Norman garrison', as we may term it, which the feudal system enabled him to quarter on the conquered land.[131] But as the two races slowly coalesced, the nature of the danger changed: it was no longer a question of Norman versus Englishman, but of danger to the crown from war abroad and feudal revolt at home. Thenceforth its policy would be no longer to encourage personal service, but rather payment in lieu thereof, which would provide the means of hiring mercenaries, a more trustworthy and useful force. Clearly the accession of the Angevin house would, and did, give to this new policy a great impetus.
The first levy to which the rolls bear witness is that of 1156. As this was only raised from the church fiefs, Henry II was, as yet, confining himself strictly to the precedent set him, as we know, in his grandfather's reign. This levy was at the rate of one pound on the fee, and was made on the old assessment (servitium debitum).
I have already shown that the levy in question was not, as alleged, an innovation. Dr Stubbs writes: 'The peculiar measure of the second year was the collection of scutage from the knights' fees holding of ecclesiastical superiors,[132] a measure which met with much opposition from Archbishop Theobald at the time';[133] and speaking of William of Newburgh, he suggests that 'possibly in William's estimation the consent of St Thomas took from the scutage on church fees its sacrilegious character'.[134] But if the institution was fully recognized under Henry I, how was it 'sacrilegious'? Theobald's 'opposition' in 1156 can only be inferred from the king's reply explaining the necessity for the levy,[135] and was clearly directed, not against the principle, but by way of appeal against the necessity in that instance. Miss Norgate holds that 'no resentment seems to have been provoked by the measure', although she sees in it 'the origin of the great institution of scutage'.[136] Then there is the question of the object for which the levy was made. Swereford says 'pro exercitu Walliæ',[137] and this misled, through Madox, Dr Stubbs (who wrote 'the scutage of 1156 was also for the war in Wales',[138]) and Gneist.[139] The former writer, however, has elsewhere[140] pointed out that 'its object was to enable Henry to make war on his brother'; and Miss Norgate gives the same explanation.[141] Swereford's error, I believe, can undoubtedly be traced to an entry on the Pipe-Roll of the third year (1157) recording the payment by the Abbot of Abbotsbury of two marcs 'de exercitu Walie'.[142] But this must refer to the Welsh campaign of that year, not to the foreign trouble of the year before.[143]
The next levy was 'the scutage of Toulouse' in 1159. This, 'the great scutage' of Miss Norgate,[144] is, strange as it may seem, on the Pipe-Roll itself almost uniformly styled not a scutage, but a donum. The explanation given by Swereford is wholly inadequate, and is this: 'Intitulaturque illud scutagium De Dono ea quidem, ut credo, ratione quod non solum prelati qui tenentur ad servitia militaria sed etiam alii abbates, de Bello et de Salopesbiria et alii tunc temporis dederunt auxilium'.[145]
Miss Norgate, adopting this explanation, writes:
The reason doubtless is that they were assessed, as the historians tell us, and as the roll itself shows, not only upon those estates from which services of the shield were explicitly due, but also upon all lands held in chief of the crown, and all church lands without distinction of tenure; the basis of assessment in all cases being the knight's fee, in its secondary sense of a parcel of land worth twenty pounds a year. Whatever the laity might think of this arrangement, the indignation of the clergy was bitter and deep. The wrong inflicted on them by the scutage of 1156 was as nothing compared with this, which set at nought all ancient precedents of ecclesiastical immunity, and actually wrung from the church lands even more than from the lay fiefs.[146]
I am obliged to quote the passage in extenso, because, in this case, the accomplished writer betrays a singular confusion of ideas, and misrepresents not only the levy, but also the point at issue. The whole passage is conceived in error, error the more strange because Miss Norgate enjoyed over her predecessors the advantage of writing with the printed roll before her. The lay estates were not, as implied ('all lands held in chief of the crown'), in any way exceptionally assessed: in no case was the basis of assessment the unit alleged by the writer; and as to the 'church lands', a reference to the roll will show that all over England there were only eight cases in which those not owing 'services of the shield' contributed (and that in no way as an assessment on imaginary knights' fees) to this levy, while in six out of the eight their contributions were so insignificant that their collective amount barely exceeded £50.[147]
The true explanation is probably to be found in the fact that only a portion of the tax was raised by way of scutage. As this great levy has been wrongly supposed to have consisted of a scutage alone,[148] and as it played an important part in the development of direct taxation, I propose to set forth, for the first time, the various methods by which the money was raised. These were eight in number:
| I. | (Fixed) A donum of two marcs on the fee from the under-tenants of the church, raised by fiefs on the old assessment (servitium debitum). |
| II. | (Fixed ?) A donum of (it is said) two marcs on the fee from the under-tenants of the lay barons, raised partly by counties and partly by fiefs. |
| III. | (Arbitrary) A donum from the church tenants-in-chief themselves, irrespective of their fees. |
| IV. | (Arbitrary) A donum from some of the non-feudal religious houses (tenants in elemosina, and not by military service). |
| V. | (Arbitrary) A donum from the towns. |
| VI. | (Arbitrary) A donum from the sheriffs. |
| VII. | (Arbitrary) A donum from the Jewries. |
| VIII. | (Arbitrary) A donum from the moneyers. |
Of these, the first was strictly regular, being merely a repetition of the scutage of 1156, at the rate of two marcs instead of twenty shillings. The second presents some difficulty. Subject to correction, there are some fifteen cases in which the payment is made separately by fiefs, and in which the rate is clearly two marcs, while there are twenty-two in which the milites of the county pay as a group through the sheriff, and in which, therefore, we cannot actually test the rate of the levy or the manner of raising it. Swereford's ipse dixit as to the rate in these latter cases was probably based on analogy, here our only guide.
With the third and fourth divisions we return to sure ground. To them I invite particular attention, because it is to them (and especially to the third) that apply the complaints of the church chroniclers, and not (as has always, but erroneously, been supposed) to the perfectly legitimate levy of two marcs on the fee. It is necessary to emphasize the fact that the matter has been wholly misunderstood. The bitter complaint of John of Salisbury that Henry, on this occasion, 'omnibus (contra antiquum morem et debitam libertatem) indixit ecclesiis ut pro arbitrio ejus satraparum suorum conferrunt in censum', would have been without meaning had it referred (as alleged) to the latter levy (or even to the insignificant sums contributed ut supra by eight foundations); but when we learn that, over and above this legitimate levy, a far larger sum was arbitrarily wrung from the church, the truth and justice of the protest are at once made evident. I here give two tables illustrative of this exaction. Each is divided into three columns. In the first column I give the number of the knights due from each bishopric and each religious house. In the second column I give the marcs due, and paid on this occasion, on the old assessment (servitium debitum). In the third will be found the exaction complained of, namely, the dona extorted from the spiritual 'barons' themselves.
| Sees | Knights due | Donum of Knights (in marcs) | Donum of Tenant (in marcs) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Winchester | 60 | 120 | 500 |
| Lincoln | 60 | 120 | 500 |
| Worcester | 60 | 120 | 200 |
| Norwich | 40 | 80 | 200 |
| Bath | 20 | 40 | 500 |
| London | 20 | 40 | 200 |
| Exeter | 17½ | 35 | 150 |
| Chester | 15 | 30 | 100 |
| Durham | 10 | 20 | 500 |
| York | 7 | 14 | 500 |
| Total | — | 619 | 3,350 |
| Religious Houses | Knights due | Donum of Knights (in marcs) | Donum of Tenant (in marcs) |
| Peterborough | 60 | 120 | 100 |
| St Edmund's | 40 | 80 | 200 |
| Glastonbury | 40 | 80 | — |
| Abingdon | 30 | 60 | 60 |
| Hyde | 20 | 40 | 150 |
| St Augustine's | 15 | 30 | 220 |
| St Alban's | 6 | 12 | 100 |
| Evesham | 5 | 10 | 60 |
| Wilton | 5 | 10 | 20 |
| Ramsey | 4 | 8 | 60 |
| St Benet of Hulme | 3 | 6 | 30 |
| Pershore | 3 | — | 7½ |
| Chertsey | 3 | 6 | 60 |
| Cerne | 3 | 6 | — |
| Winchcombe | 2 | 4 | 7½ |
| Middleton | 2 | 4 | — |
| Sherburne | 2 | — | 10 |
| Abbotsbury | 1 | 2 | 7½ |
| Total | — | 482 | 1,092½ |
We thus obtain a grand total of 1,101 marcs raised from the church by legitimate scutage, and 4,442½ (or, adding the dona from non-feudal houses, 4,700) marcs by special imposition.[149] This distinction at once explains the real extortion of which churchmen complained;[150] and shows that it had nothing to do with scutage, but was a special imposition on the church fees from which the lay ones were exempt.[151] The idea of the impost was not improbably the adjustment of inequalities in cases where the knight-service was a quite inadequate assessment; the precedent created was not forgotten, and it proved in later days a welcome source of revenue.
The discovery of this exaction identifies, it will be seen, in spite of Swereford's error, the levy accounted for on the roll with the famous 'scutage of Toulouse'. And if even further proof were needed, it is found in an incidental allusion which clinches the argument. Giraldus Cambrensis (iii. 357) refers to Bishop Henry of Winchester assembling all the priests of his diocese 'tanquam ad auxilium postulandum (dederat enim paulo ante quingentas marcas regi Henrico ad expeditionem Tholosanam)'. The sum here named is that which he paid in 1159, as my table shows. Its destination is thus established, as also, it may be noted, the means by which he was expected to recoup himself.
As to the scutage on the lay fiefs, the general impression, broadly speaking, is that Henry replaced his English feudal host by an army of mercenaries paid from the proceeds of a scutage of two marcs per fee on all lands held by military service.[152] But is that impression confirmed by the evidence of the rolls? Without setting forth the evidence in detail, I may sum it up as amounting to this: that the grouped payments found under twenty-two counties[153] present, I think, a total of 1,895 marcs, while those of the fiefs which paid separately amounted to 666. This gives us a grand total of 2,561 marcs, representing, of course, 1,280 knights. Now although the amount of knight service due to the crown from its English realm has been, as we shall see, absurdly exaggerated, the above number, I need scarcely say, must represent a minority of the knights due from the lay fiefs. This sets the matter in quite another aspect. In spite of the passage in Robert de Monte, on which the accepted view is based,[154] the roll presents proof to the contrary, and indeed the words of Robert show that he knew so little of the levy in England as to believe that it was wholly arbitrary. There are, perhaps, indications that the fiefs which, on this occasion, paid scutage, were largely those in the king's hands,[155] and if we add to these the escheated honours, of which the scutage would be paid through the sheriffs, we must conclude that the great bulk of the tenants who had a choice in the matter served abroad with their contingents and did not pay scutage.
Before taking leave of 'the great scutage', another point demands notice. Gervase of Canterbury sets forth its proceeds in terms of great precision:
Hoc anno rex Henricus scotagium sive scutagium de Anglia accepit, cujus summa fuit centum millia et quater viginti millia librarum argenti (i. 167).
Quite desperate attempts have been made to reconcile this statement with the actual sums raised. In his preface to the Gesta Henrici Regis, Dr Stubbs suggests that Gervase included in his total the scutage of two years later (1161), but adds that, if so, the rolls are very incomplete. In his Constitutional History he speaks of 'this [scutage] and a very large accumulation of treasure from other sources, amounting, according to the contemporary writers, to £180,000' (i. 457), but admits, in a footnote, that 'the sum is impossible', and throws out as probable a different explanation. Miss Norgate writes that 'the proceeds, with those of a similar tax levied upon Henry's other dominions, amounted to some £180,000'.[156] But Gervase distinctly states that this sum was raised from England. Now the actual sum raised, by scutage, in England (1159) was £2,440 in all, as I reckon it, while the special clerical impost produced some £3,130 in addition. Consequently, no ingenuity can save the credit of Gervase. He was not, after all, worse than his fellows. We shall find that when mediæval chroniclers endeavour to foist on us these absurd sums they require much bolder handling than they have ever yet received.
Pass we now to the third levy, that of 1161. For this the rate was again two marcs on the fee according to Swereford (followed, of course, by subsequent writers), though the study of the roll (7 Henry II) reveals that in many cases, on the lay fiefs at least, the rate was one marc. Both this and the levy of the following year are most difficult to deal with in every way. We have seen that an entry on the roll of 1163 led Swereford to believe that the levy of 1161 was made for the Toulouse campaign, and Dr Stubbs has made the suggestion that it might have been raised to defray 'debts' incurred on that occasion;[157] but the difficulties in the way of accepting this view seem insuperable.[158]
The fourth levy, which is that of 1162 (8 Henry II), was at the rate of one marc, and is recorded by Swereford, but not by Dr Stubbs.[159] Though richer in names than that of 1161, it is even less useful for our purpose, as the sums entered are most irregular, perhaps owing to the adoption of a new method of collection.[160] Neither of these levies affords, in the absence of corroboration, trustworthy evidence on the servitium of any lay fief.
The fifth levy, on the other hand, in 1165 (11 Henry II), affords most valuable evidence, although it is ignored by Swereford and by those who have followed him. It is, however, of a singular character. The money was raised, we gather from the roll, on two different systems:
(I) By a fixed payment at the rate of one marc on the fee (old assessment).
(II) By an arbitrary payment of certain mysterious sums, which prove to be multiples of the unit 15s 3d. But there is no fixed proportion to be traced between the amount paid and the number of servitia due. Numerous instances are found of a single knight's fee being charged with a sum equivalent to five of these mysterious units. Magnates, again, are found paying apparently strange sums, which prove on dissection to represent 50, 100, 200 and even 300 of these units. The clue to the mystery is found in an entry on the Pipe-Roll of the following year (12 Henry II), which proves that this unit was the pecuniary equivalent of a serviens, and that the various payers had 'promised' the king so many servientes for the war in Wales.[161] Such 'promises' were evidently offers, made independently of the actual service due from the 'promising' party. Following up this clue, we see that the Abbot of Abingdon must, like the Bishop of Hereford, have promised 100 'serjeants',[162] that the Abbot of St Alban's must have done likewise,[163] while the Bishop of London must have promised 150, in addition, be it noted, to paying a scutage of a marc on each knight's fee (20) of his servitium debitum.[164] For the rolls of 1162 and 1163 prove that he had duly paid the scutage of the former year, and that this was a further payment. The varying form of these entries should be observed, for it was evidently quite immaterial to the clerks whether they wrote '5 serjeants' or their equivalent—76 shillings and 3 pence.[165] Taking the pay of the serviens at 1d a day, the unit in question would represent six months' pay (for a year of 366 days).
But, for our present purpose, we must confine ourselves to the scutage proper. The passage on which I would specially dwell is the entry on the roll in which the custos of the archbishopric of Canterbury 'reddit compotum de cxiii. li. de Militibus de Archiepiscopatu de ii. Exercitibus' (p. 109).[166] In the first place, we have here, surely, witness to the two Welsh campaigns of this year, which Mr Eyton adopts, following Mr Bridgeman,[167] but which Miss Norgate rejects.[168] Secondly, this sum resolves itself, on analysis, into two constituents of 84¾ marcs each. Now the return for the archbishopric the following year is: 'Archiepiscopus habet iiijxx. et iiijor. et dimidium et quartam partem feffatos.'[169] Having set forth this exact corroboration, I will briefly trace the servitium of the See. In 1156 and 1159 it pays no scutage when the other church fiefs do, but within six months of Theobald's death it pays to the scutage of 1161 on a servitium of sixty knights, being then in the hands of the crown. Under Becket, in 1162, it is once more omitted; but in 1165 it again pays, as we have seen, and now not on sixty knights but on 84¾. In 1168 it contributes, on the same amount, to the auxilium, and in 1172, but the latter year is the first in which the recognoscit formula is employed, enabling us to determine that, as in 1161, the servitium debitum was sixty knights.
The typical difference between these sixty knights and the 84¾ actually enfeoffed will serve to illustrate the point on which I insist throughout. Had the fee been held by its tenant, he would have raised 84¾ marcs, paid sixty to the crown, and kept 24¾ for himself.[170] But when a custos held the fief, he could keep nothing back, and therefore paid over the whole. We have, I think, an illustration of the same kind in the payment (p. 202, note 76) by the custos of the Romare fief, 'de noviter feffatis' (noviter, be it observed not yet de novo).
Having brought the levies down to 1165, I hope it has now been made clear that the officials of the exchequer were well aware of the amount of servitium debitum from every fief, the levies being always based on the said amount. Swereford, therefore, was quite mistaken in the inference he drew from the inquest of 1166:[171] indeed, his words prove that he completely misunderstood the problem.
This was the last levy raised previous to the making of the returns (cartae) in 1166. These returns were followed in 1168 by the first levy on the new assessment. I have already dealt with the changes which this new assessment involved, but I would here again insist upon the fact that the church and the lay fiefs were not dealt with alike, the latter being assessed wholly de novo, while the former retained their old assessments, while accounting separately, and under protest, for the fees in excess of their servitium debitum. So far as the lay fiefs were concerned, their servitia, congenital with Norman rule, were now swept away. Here, from the single county of Northumberland, are three cases in point:
| 1162 | 1168 |
|---|---|
| De scutagio Walteri de Bolebec. In thesauro v. marcae.[172] | Walterus de Bolebec redd. comp. de iiii. marcis et dim. de eodem auxilio. Idem debet xlviii. s. et v. d. pro tribus Militibus et iiabus. terciis partibus Mil. de Novo feffamento. |
| De scutagio Stephani de Bulemer. In thesauro v. marcae. | Stephanus de Bulemer redd. comp. de iiii. marcis de eodem auxilio. Idem debet xxiii. s. et iiii. d. de i. milite et dim. et quarta parte Mil. de Novo feffamento. |
| De scutagio Radulfi de Wircestria. In thesauro i. marca.[173] | Radulfus de Wigornio redd. comp. de i. marca de eodem auxilio pro i. milite. Idem debet xiii. s. de dim. Mil. et de i. tercia et de i. septima parte Mil. de Novo feffamento. |
The change thus made by the restless king was permanent in its effect, and thenceforth the only assessment recognized was that based upon the fees, which, by 1166, had been created de veteri and de novo.[174]
Before leaving the subject of this levy, there is one point on which I would touch. When we find, as we often do, that the sum paid in 1168 in respect of a fief does not tally with the number of fees recorded in the cartae, we must remember that in the Liber Niger and Liber Rubeus we have not the original cartae, but only transcripts liable to clerical error. Checking the cartae by these payments, we constantly find cases in which the number of fees should be slightly greater than is recorded in the carta.[175] I suspect that the transcriber, in these cases, has omitted entries in the original carta, and this suspicion is strongly confirmed by the fact that where the original return enables us to test the transcript, we find in the great carta for the honour of Clare that the original transcriber has omitted half a fee of William de Hastinges, has left out altogether the entry 'Reginaldus de Cruce, dimidium militem', and has changed the quarter fee of Geoffrey fitz Piers into half a fee; while in that of the Bishop of Chichester, Robert de Denton's half fee is converted into a whole one. The later (Red Book) transcriber has made a further omission.
Another source of discrepancy may be found in the dangerous resemblance of formulae. Thus the carta of Ranulf fitz Walter records three and three-quarter fees duly accounted for. Yet his payment in 1168 is not £2 10s but £2 4s 5d. The explanation is that the holding was really three and one-third fees,[176] but the transcriber read 'iij[a.] pars' (one-third) as 'iij. partes' (three-quarters).
How easily such errors arose may be seen in the elaborate entries on Simon de Beauchamp's fief. Here the formula 'decem denarios quando Rex accipit marcam de milite', correctly reproduced in the Black Book, becomes 'x. denarius', etc., in the Red Book. The former expression means 'tenpence in the marc' (i.e. one-sixteenth of a fee); whereas the latter is equivalent to 'the tenth penny in the marc' (i.e. one-tenth of a fee), and upsets the whole reckoning. The correct formula is a not uncommon one and should be compared with the 'de xx. solidis viii. denarios' (eightpence in the pound) which is given as the holding of two knights of the honour of Clare, and represents the thirtieth of a fee.[177]
Lastly, I think that, on further examination, there are three fiefs of which the servitia debita, though at first sight irregular,[178] may fairly be brought into line as multiples of the constabularia. That of Bohun, though implied by the carta to be thirty and a half knights, paid in the fifth and eighth years on exactly thirty; that of Malet, though similarly given as twenty and one-sixth in the carta, is returned in the Testa de Nevill as exactly twenty;[179] that of Beauchamp of Hacche, though distinctly given as seventeen in the carta, will be found, on careful collation of the rolls for 7 and 8 Hen. II, to be claimed by the exchequer as 17 + 3, i.e. 20.
Here also, perhaps, it may be allowable to glance at the foreign parallels to fiefs of sixty fees and smaller multiples of five. There is a charter of Charles the Fair (1322-28) 'qua Alphonsum de Hispania "Baronem et Ricum Hominem" Navarræ creat; et, ut Baronis et Rici Hominis statum manu tenere possit, eidem de gratia speciali 60 militias [knight's fees] in regno sua Navarræ concedit modo consueto tenendos et possidendos',[180] while an edict of earlier date proclaims: 'De Vasvassore [i.e. baron] qui quinque milites habet, per mortem [? pro morte] ejus, emendetur 60 unciæ auri cocti, et per plagam [? pro plaga] 30, et si plures habuerit milites, crescat compositio sicut numerus militum.'[181]
IV. THE TOTAL NUMBER OF KNIGHTS DUE
'Ad hoc solicitius animum direxi ut per regna Angliæ debita Regi servitia militaria quatinus potui plenissime percunctarer.'[182] So writes Swereford, who proceeds to explain that neither the famous Bishop Nigel himself, nor his successor, Bishop Richard, nor William of Ely (ut supra) had left any certain information on the subject; while he (Swereford) could not accept the common belief that the Conqueror had created servitia of knights to the amount of 32,000.[183] The cause of his failure is found in the fact that he confused two different things: (1) the debita Regi servitia, which formed the only assessment of fiefs down to 1166; (2) the assessment based on the cartae of 1166, which superseded the debita servitia, and is not evidence of their amount.[184] But then, as I have already explained above, the exchequer official was concerned only with the actual claims of the crown; for him the original 'service due' had a merely academic interest.
There are two estimates for the total of which we are in search. One is 32,000 knights; the other 60,000.
'Stephen Segrave,' Dr Stubbs reminds us, 'the minister of Henry III, reckoned 32,000 as the number' (which confirms Swereford's statement); but he himself wisely declines to hazard 'a conjectural estimate',[185] adding that 'the official computation, on which the scutage was levied, reckoned in the middle of the thirteenth century 32,000 knights' fees, but the amount of money actually raised by Henry II on this account, in any single year, was very far from commensurate'. Gneist repeats this figure, but holds that 'as far as we may conjecture by reference to later statements, the number of shields may be fixed at about 30,000'.[186]
On the wondrous estimate of 60,000 I have more to say. Started by Ordericus,[187] this venerable fable has been handed down by Higden and others, till in the Short History of the English People it has attained a world-wide circulation.[188] Dr Stubbs has rightly dismissed the statement 'as one of the many numerical exaggerations of the early historians';[189] but neither he nor any other writer has detected, so far as I know, the peculiar interest of the sum. What that interest is will be seen at once when I say that Ordericus, who asserts that the Conqueror had so apportioned the knight-service 'ut Angliæ regnum lx. millia militum indesinenter haberet' (iv. 7), also alleges that the number present at the famous Salisbury assembly (1086) was 60,000. It is very instructive to compare this 'body whose numbers were handed down by tradition as no less than sixty thousand',[190] with the 'sixty thousand horsemen'[191]—'ut ferunt sexaginta millia equitum'—of thirteen years earlier, and with the number of the Norman invaders, 'commonly given at sixty thousand',[192] of seven years earlier still. It is Ordericus, too, who states that the treasure in Normandy at the death of Henry I was £60,000. His father seems to have left behind him the same sum at Winchester, for, though the chronicle left the amount in doubt, 'Henry of Huntingdon,' Mr Freeman observed, with a touch of just sarcasm, 'knew the exact amount of the silver, sixty thousand pounds, one doubtless for each knight's fee'.[193] He also reminds us, as to the crusade of William of Aquitaine, that 'Orderic allows only thirty thousand. In William of Malmesbury they have grown into sixty thousand. Figures of this kind, whether greater or smaller, are always multiples of one another'.[194]
Pursuing the subject, we learn from Giraldus that the Conqueror's annual income was 60,000 marcs.[195] Fantosme speaks of marshalled knights as
Meins de seisante mile, e plus de seisante treis,
and the author of the Anglo-Norman poem on the conquest of Ireland gives the strength of the Irish host, in 1171, as 60,000 men. Even 'Sir Bevis', if I remember right, slew in the streets of London 60,000 men; and Fitz Stephen asserts that, in Stephen's reign, London was able to turn out 60,000 foot.[196] It may, also, not be without significance that 60,000 Moors are said to have been slain at Navas de Tolosa, and that William of Sicily was said to have bequeathed to Henry II three distinct sums of 60,000 each.[197]
The fact is that 'sixty thousand' was a favourite phrase for a great number, and that 'sixty' was used in this sense just as the Romans[198] had used it in classical times and just as Russian peasants (I think I have read) use it to this day. The 'twice six hundred thousand men', who were burning to fight for England,[199] and the £180,000 (60,000 × 3) of Gervase (1159), are traceable, doubtless, to the same source.
How strangely different from these wild figures are the sober facts of the case! The whole of the church fiefs, as we have seen, were only liable to find 784 knights, a number which, small as it was, just exceeded the entire knight service of Normandy as returned in 1171. As to the lay fiefs it is not possible to speak with equal confidence. I have ventured to fix the approximate quota of 104 (more or less), of which ninety-two are in favour of my theory: forty-eight fiefs, of five knights and upwards, remain undetermined.[200] If the average of knights to a fief were the same in the latter as in the former class, the total contingents of the lay barons would amount, apparently, to 3,534 knights; but, as the latter one includes such enormous fiefs as those of Gloucester and of Clare, with such important honours as those of Peverel and Eye, we must increase our estimate accordingly, and must also make allowance for fiefs omitted and for those owing less than five knights (which are comparatively unimportant).
Making, therefore, every allowance, we shall probably be safe in saying that the whole servitium debitum, clerical and lay, of England can scarcely have exceeded, if indeed it reached, 5,000 knights.
Indefinite though such a result may seem, it is worth obtaining for the startling contrast which it presents to the 60,000 of Ordericus, to the 32,000 of Segrave,[201] and to the 30,000 of Gneist. The only writer, so far as I know, who has approximated, by investigating for himself, the true facts of the case, is Mr Pearson;[202] but his calculations, I fear, are vitiated by the unfortunate guess that the alleged 32,000 fees were really 6,400 of five hides each. It is a hopeless undertaking to reconcile the facts with the wild figures of mediæval historians by resorting to the ingenious devices of apocalyptic interpretation.
V. THE NORMAL KNIGHT'S FEE
Much labour has been vainly spent on attempts to determine the true area of a knight's fee. The general impression appears to be that it contained five hides. Mr Pearson, we have seen, based on that assumption his estimate of 6,400 fees, and other writers have treated the fee as the recognized equivalent of five hides. The point is of importance, because if we found that the recognized area of a knight's fee was five hides, it would give us a link between the under-tenant (miles) and the Anglo-Saxon thegn. But, as Dr Stubbs has recognized, the assumption cannot be maintained; no fixed number of hides constituted a knight's fee.
The circumstance of a fee, in many cases consisting of five hides, is merely, I think, due to the existence of five-hide estates, survivals from the previous régime. We have an excellent instance of such fees in a very remarkable document, which has hitherto, it would seem, remained unnoticed. This is a transcript, in Heming's Cartulary, of a hidated survey of the Gloucestershire Manors belonging to the See of Worcester. I believe it to be earlier than Domesday itself, in which case, of course, it would possess a unique interest. Here are the entries, side by side, relating to the great episcopal Manor of Westbury (on Trym), Gloucestershire.
| Cartulary | Domesday |
|---|---|
| Ad uuestbiriam[203] pertinent l. hide. xxxv. hidas in dominio habet[203] episcopus, et milites sui habent xv. hidas. In icenatune v. hidas, In comtuna v. hidas, In biscopes stoke v. hidas. | Huesberie. Ibi fuerunt et sunt l. hidae.... De hac terra hujus Manerii tenet Turstinus filius Rolf v. hidas in Austrecliue et Gislebertus filius Turold iii. hidas et dimidiam jn Contone, et Constantinus v. hidas jn Icetune.... De eadem terra hujus Manerii tenet Osbernus Gifard v. hidae et nullum servitium facit.... Quod homines tenent (valet) ix. libras. |
The three five-hide holdings, we find, figure in both alike, but Gilbert fitz Thorold's holding of three hides and a half appears in addition in Domesday. The inference, surely would seem to be that Gilbert was enfeoffed between the date of the survey recorded in the Cartulary and the date of the Domesday Survey. If so, the former survey is, as I have suggested, the earlier; and in that survey we have the three tenants of five-hide holdings described eo nomine as the bishop's milites.
In the cartae of 1166 we have fees of 5 hides,[204] of 4,[205] of 6,[206] of 10,[207] of 2½,[208] and even of 2;[209] also of 5 carucates,[210] of 11,[211] and of 14.[212] Cartularies, however, are richer in evidence of this discrepancy. Thus the six fees of St Albans contained 40 hides (an average of 6⅔ hides each), the figures being 5½, 7, 8½, 6, 5½, 7½.[213] So too in the Abingdon Cartulary (ii. 3) we find four fees containing 19 hides, three containing 14, a half-fee 4, a fee and a half 13, one fee, 10, 5, 9. On the other hand, if we take 20 librates as the amount of the fee—which it was already, as Dr Stubbs observes, in the days of the Conqueror—the cartae confirm that conclusion.[214] We must therefore conclude that the knight's fee, held by an under-tenant, consisted normally of an estate, worth £20 a year, and was not based on the 'five hides' of the Anglo-Saxon system.
VI. THE EARLY EVIDENCE
We will now work upwards from the cartae to the Conquest.
Allusions to early enfeoffment are scattered through the cartae themselves. Henry fitz Gerold begins his return: 'Isti sunt milites Eudonis Dapiferi', and Eudo, we know, 'came in with the Conqueror'. We learn from another return (Lib. Rub., p. 397) that Henry I had given William de Albini, 'Pincerna, de feodo quod fuit Corbuchun xv. milites feffatos'. Now this refers to 'Robertus filius Corbution', a Domesday tenant in Norfolk. The Testa, again, comes to our help. Thus we learn from Domesday that Osbern the priest alias Osbern the sheriff (of Lincolnshire) was William de Perci's tenant at Wickenby, co. Lincoln, but the Testa entry (p. 338a) proves that William had enfeoffed him in that holding by the service of one knight.[215] So too Count Alan (of Brittany) had enfeoffed his tenant Landri at Welton in the same county for the service of half a knight (Ibid., 338b), and we find his son, Alan fitz Landri, tenant there to Count Stephen, a generation later than Domesday, in the Lindsey Survey. The barony of Bywell in Northumberland, we read in the Testa (p. 392a), had been held by the service of five knights[216] since the days of William Rufus, who had granted it on that tenure.[217] After this we are not surprised to learn that the barony of Morpeth had been held 'from the Conquest' by the service of four knights, and that of Mitford as long by the service of five (Ibid., p. 392b), or that those of Calverdon, Morewic, and Diveleston had all been similarly held by military service 'from the Conquest'. In Herefordshire, again, John de Monmouth is returned as holding 'feoda xv. militum a conquestu Anglie'.[218] So too Robert Foliot claims in his carta (1166) that his predecessors had been enfeoffed 'since the conquest of England';[219] and William de Colecherche, that his little fief was 'de antiquo tenemento a Conquestu Angliae' (L.R., p. 400); Humphrey de Bohun enumerates the fees 'quibus avus suus feffatus fuit in primo feffamento quod in Anglia habuit' (Ibid., p. 242), and refers to his grandfather's subsequent enfeoffments in the days of William Rufus (p. 244), while Alexander de Alno similarly speaks of sub-infeudation 'tempore Willelmi Regis' (p. 230). To take one more instance from the cartae, an abbot sets forth his servicium due to Henry, 'sicuti debuit antiquitus regibus predecessoribus ejus' (p. 224). This brings us to the instructive case of Ramsey Abbey.
Dr Stubbs refers to a document of the reign of William Rufus as 'proof that the lands of the house had not yet been divided into knights' fees'.[220] But he does not mention the striking fact that the special knight service for which the abbot was to be liable is distinctly stated to have been that for which his 'predecessors' had been liable.[221] As this charter is assigned to 1091-1100, the mention of 'predecessors' would seem to carry back this knight service very far indeed. And we have happily another connecting link which carries downwards the history of this knight service, as the above-named charter carries it upwards. This is the entry in the Pipe-Roll of 1129-30:
Abbas de Ramesia reddit compotum de xlviij. li. xj. s. et vj. d. pro superplus militum qui requirebantur de Abbatia (p. 47).[222]
Further, we have a notable communication to the abbot from Bishop Nigel of Ely, which must refer to the scutage of 1156 or to that of 1159 (probably the former):
Sciatis quod ubi Ricardus clericus[223] reddidit compotum de scutagio militum vestrorum ad Scaccarium ego testificatus sum vos non debere regi plusquam quatuor milites, et per tantum quieti estis et in rotulo scripti.[224]
Lastly, we have the return in the Black Book (1166):
Homines faciunt iiii. milites in communi in servitium domini regis, ita quod tota terra abbatiae communicata est cum eis per hidas ad prædictum servitium faciendum.
Prof Maitland, writing on the Court of the Abbey of Ramsey, in the thirteenth century, observes that:
The Abbot is bound to provide four knights, and (contrary to what is thought to have been the common practice) he has not split up his land into knights' fees so that on every occasion the same four tenants shall go to the war ... the process by which the country was carved out into knights' fees seems in this case to have been arrested at an early stage.[225]
The case of Ramsey was undoubtedly peculiar, but in the third volume of the Cartulary, now published, we have (pp. 48, 218) fuller versions of the Abbot's return in 1166. The second of these is specially noteworthy, and reads like a transcript of the original return.[226] Here we see separate knights' fees duly entered, with the customary formula 'debet unum militem'. But the service was certainly provided in 1166 and afterwards 'per hidas'. Further inquiry, therefore, is needed; but we have in any case, for Ramsey, a chain of evidence which should prove of considerable value for the study of this difficult problem.
The phenomenon, however, for which we have to account is the appearance from the earliest period to which our information extends of certain quotas of knight-service, clearly arbitrary in amount, as due from those bishops and abbots who held by military service. When and how were these quotas fixed? The answer is given by Matthew Paris—one of the last quarters in which one would think of looking—where we read that, in 1070, the Conqueror
episcopatus quoque et abbatias omnes quae baronias tenebant, et eatenus ab omni servitute seculari libertatem habuerant, sub servitute statuit militari, inrotulans episcopatus et abbatias pro voluntate sua quot milites sibi et successoribus suis hostilitatis tempore voluit a singulis exhiberi (Historia Anglorum, i. 13).
This passage (which perhaps represents the St Albans tradition) is dismissed by Dr Stubbs as being probably 'a mistaken account of the effects of the Domesday Survey'.[227]
But the Abingdon Chronicle, quite independently, gives the same explanation, and traces the quota of knights to the action taken by the Crown:
Quum jam regis edicto in annalibus annotarentur quot de episcopiis quotve de abbatiis ad publicam rem tuendam milites (si forte hinc quid causae propellendae contingeret) exigerentur, etc.[228]
Moreover, the Ely Chronicle bears the same witness, telling us that William Rufus, at the commencement of his reign,
debitum servitium quod pater suus imposuerat ab ecclesiis violenter exigit.[229]
It also tells us that, when undertaking his campaign against Malcolm (1072), the Conqueror
jusserat tam abbatibus quam episcopis totius Angliae debita militiae obsequia transmitti;[230]
and it also describes how he fixed the quota of knights due by an arbitrary act of will.[231] The chronicler, like Matthew Paris, lays stress upon the facts that (1) the burden was a wholly new one; (2) its incidence was determined by the royal will alone.[232]
Here, perhaps, we have the clue to the (rare) clerical exemptions from the burden of military tenure, such as the abbeys of Gloucester and of Battle.[233]
The beginnings of sub-infeudation consequent on the Conqueror's action are distinctly described in the cases of Abingdon and Ely, and alluded to in those of Peterborough[234] and Evesham. At the first of these, Athelelm
primo quidem stipendariis in hoc utebatur. At his sopitis incursibus ... abbas mansiones possessionum ecclesiae pertinentibus inde delegavit, edicto cuique tenore parendi de suae portionis mansione.[235]
At Ely, the abbot
habuit ex consuetudine, secundum jussum regis, prætaxatum militiae numerum infra aulam ecclesiae, victum cotidie de manu celerarii capientem atque stipendia, quod intollerabiliter et supra modum potuit vexare locum.... Ex hoc compulsus quasdam terras sanctæ Ædeldredae invasoribus in feudum permisit tenere ... ut in omni expeditione regi observarent, [et] ecclesia perpetim infatigata permaneret.[236]
For Canterbury we have remarkable evidence, not, it would seem, generally known. In Domesday, of course, Lanfranc's milites figure prominently; but the absence of a detailed return in 1166 leaves their names and services obscure. Now in the Christ Church Domesday there is a list of the Archbishop's knights,[237] in which are names corresponding with those of his tenants in 1086. It can, therefore, be little, if at all, later than the Conqueror's reign. It is drawn up exactly like a carta of 1166, giving the names of the knights and the service due from each. Its editor, instead of printing this important document in full, has, unfortunately, given us six names only, and—mistaking the familiar 'd[imidium]' and 'q[uarterium]' of the list for 'd[enarios]' and 'q[uadrans]'—asserts that the contributions of the knights are 'evidently ... expressed in terms of the shilling and its fractions',[238] thus missing the essential point, namely, that they are expressed in terms of knight service.
As Lanfranc had done at Canterbury, as Symeon at Ely, as Walter at Evesham, as Athelelm at Abingdon, so also did Geoffrey at Tavistock,[239] and so we cannot doubt, did Wulfstan at Worcester. The carta of his successor (1166) distinctly implies that before his death he had carved some thirty-seven fees out of the episcopal fief. Precisely as at Ely, he found this plan less intolerable than the standing entertainment of a roistering troop of knights.[240]
The influence of nepotism on sub-infeudation, in the case of ecclesiastical fiefs, is too important to be passed over. On every side we find the efforts of prelates and abbots thus to provide for their relatives opposed and denounced by the bodies over which they ruled. The Archbishop of York in his carta explains the excessive number of his knights: 'Antecessores enim nostri, non pro necessitate servitii, quod debent, sed quia cognatis et servientibus suis providere volebant, plures quam debebant Regi feodaverunt.' The Abbot of Ely, we are told by his panegyrist, enfeoffed knights by compulsion, 'non ex industria aut favore divitum vel propinquorum affectu'.[241] Abbot Athelelm of Abingdon, says his champion, enfeoffed knights of necessity;[242] but a less friendly chronicler asserts that, like Thorold of Peterborough, he brought over from Normandy his kinsmen, and quartered them on the abbey lands.[243] The Tavistock charter of Henry I restored to that abbey the lands which Guimund, its simoniacal abbot (1088-1102), had bestowed on his brother William. Abbot Walter of Evesham and his successor persisted in enfeoffing knights 'contradicente capitulo'.[244]
So, during a vacancy at Abbotsbury under Henry I, 'cum Rogerus Episcopus habuit custodiam Abbatiæ, duas hidas, ad maritandam quandam neptem suam, dedit N. de M., contradicente conventu Ecclesiæ'.[245] Henry of Winchester has left us a similar record of the action of his predecessors at Glastonbury.[246] His narrative is specially valuable for the light it throws on the power of subsequent revocation, perhaps in cases where the corporate body had protested at the time against the grant. Of this we have a striking instance in the grants of Abbot Æthelwig of Evesham, almost all of which, we read, were revoked by his successor.[247] Parallel rather to the cases of Middleton and Abbotsbury (vide cartas) would be the action of William Rufus during the Canterbury vacancy.[248]
It was to guard against the nepotism of the heads of monastic houses that such a clause as this was occasionally inserted:
Terras censuales non in feudum donet: nec faciat milites nisi in sacra veste Christi.[249]
And by their conduct in this matter, abbots, in the Norman period, were largely judged. But this has been a slight digression.
Now that I have shown that in monastic chronicles we have the complement and corroboration of the words of Matthew Paris, I propose to quote as a climax to my argument the writ printed below. Startling as it may read, for its early date, to the holders of the accepted view, the vigour of its language convinced me, when I found it, that in it King William speaks; nor was there anything to be gained by forging a document which admits, by placing on record, the abbey's full liability.[250]
W. Rex. Anglor[um] Athew' abbati de Euesh[am] saltem. Precipio tibi quod submoneas omnes illos qui sub ballia et i[us]titia s[un]t quatin[us] omnes milites quo mihi debent p[ar]atos h[abe]ant ante me ad octavas pentecostes ap[ud] clarendun[am]. Tu etiam illo die ad me venias et illos quinque milites quos de abb[at]ia tua mihi debes tec[um] paratos adducas. Teste Eudone dapif[er]o Ap[ud] Wintoniam.[251]
Being addressed to Æthelwig, the writ, of course, must be previous to his death in 1077, but I think that we can date it, perhaps, with precision, and that it belongs to the year 1072. In that year, says the Ely chronicler, the Conqueror, projecting his invasion to Scotland, 'jusserat tam abbatibus quam episcopis totius Angliae debita militiae obsequia transmitti', a phrase which applies exactly to the writ before us. In that year, moreover, the movements of William fit in fairly with the date for which the feudal levy was here summoned. We know that he visited Normandy in the spring, and invaded Scotland in the summer, and he might well summon his baronage to meet him on June 3rd, on his way from Normandy to Scotland, at so convenient a point as Clarendon. The writ, again, being witnessed at Winchester, may well have been issued by the king on his way out or back.
The direction to the abbot to summon similarly all those beneath his sway who owed military service is probably explained by the special position he occupied as 'chief ruler of several counties at the time'.[252] We find him again, two years later (1074), acting as a military commander. On that occasion the line of the Severn was guarded against the rebel advance by Bishop Wulfstan, 'cum magna militari manu, et Ægelwius Eoveshamnensis abbas cum suis, ascitis sibi in adjutorium Ursone vicecomite Wigorniae et Waltero de Laceio cum copiis suis, et cetera multitudine plebis'.[253] The number of knights which constituted the servitium debitum of Evesham was five then as it was afterwards, and this number, as we now know, had been fixed pro voluntate sua, in 1070, by the Conqueror.
We find allusions to two occasions on which the feudal host was summoned, as above, by the Conqueror, and by his sons and successors. William Rufus exacted the full servitium debitum to repress the revolt at the commencement of his reign.[254] Henry I called out the host to meet the invasion of his brother Robert.[255] In both these instances reference is made to the questions of 'service due' that would naturally arise,[256] and that would keep the quotas of knight service well to the front. That these quotas, however, as I said (supra, p. 205), were matter of memory rather than of record, is shown by a pair of early disputes.[257]
Let us pass, at this point, to the great survey. I urged in the earlier portion of this paper that the argument from the silence of Domesday is of no value. Even independently of direct allusions, whether to the case of individual holders, or to whole groups such as the milites of Lanfranc, it can be shown conclusively that the normal formulae cover unquestionable military tenure, tenure by knight service.[258]
An excellent instance is afforded in the case of Abingdon Abbey (fol. 258b-9b), because the formulae are quite normal and make 'no record of any new duties or services of any kind'.[259] Yet we are able to identify the tenants named in Domesday, right and left, with the foreign knights enfeoffed by Athelelm to hold by military tenure,[260] owing service for their fees 'to Lord as Lord'. There are some specially convincing cases, such as those of Hubert, who held five hides in a hamlet of Cumnor,[261] and whose fee is not only entered in the list of knights:[262] but is recorded to have been given before Domesday for military service.[263] Another case is that of William camerarius, who held Lea by the service of one knight;[264] so too with the Bishop of Worcester's Manor of Westbury-on-Trym, where the homines of Domesday appear as milites in a rather earlier survey.[265]
Again, take the case of Peterborough. The Northamptonshire possessions of that house are divided by Domesday (fol. 221) into two sections, of which the latter is headed 'Terra hominum ejusdem ecclesiae', and represents the sub-infeudated portion, just as the preceding section contains the dominium of the fief.[266] Here 'Terra hominum ejusdem' corresponds with the heading 'Terra militum ejus' prefixed to the knights of the Archbishop of Canterbury (fol. 4). The Peterborough homines are frequently spoken of as milites (fol. 221b, passim), and even where we only find such formulae as 'Anschitillus tenet de abbate' we are able to identify the tenant as Anschetil de St Medard, one of the foreign knights enfeoffed by Abbot Turold.[267]
But it is not only on church fiefs that the Domesday under-tenant proves to be a feudal miles. At Swaffham (Cambridgeshire) we read in Domesday (fol. 196) 'tenet Hugo de Walterio [Gifard]'.[268] Yet in the earlier record of a placitum on the rights of Ely, we find this tenant occurring as 'Hugo de bolebec miles Walteri Giffard', while in 1166 his descendant and namesake is returned as the chief tenant on the Giffard fief. The same placitum supplies other illustrations of the fact.[269] The cases taken from the Percy fief and from the honour of Britanny afford further confirmation, if needed, of the conclusions I draw.[270]
It will startle the reader, doubtless, to learn that there is in existence so curious a document as a list of knights' fees drawn up in Old English. Headed 'these beth thare Knystene londes', etc., and terming a knight's fee a 'knystesmetehom', it has been placed by the Editors of the new Monasticon (ii. 477) among documents of the Anglo-Saxon era, but belongs, I think (from internal evidence), to about the same period as the cartae (1166). The original is extant in a Cartulary now in the British Museum.
VII. THE WORCESTER RELIEF (1095)
It was urged in the earlier part of this paper that Ranulf Flambard had been assigned a quite unwarrantable share in the development of feudalism in England. But so little is actually known of what his measures were that they have hitherto largely remained matter of inference and conjecture. It may be well, therefore, to call attention to a record which shows him actually at work, and which illustrates the character of his exactions by a singularly perfect example.
The remarkable document that I am about to discuss is printed in Heming's 'Cartulary' (i. 79-80).[271] It is therefore most singular that it should be unknown to Mr Freeman—to whom it would have been invaluable for his account of Ranulf's doings—as it occurs in the midst of a group of documents which he had specially studied for his excursus on 'the condition of Worcestershire under William'.[272] It is a writ of William Rufus, addressed to the tenants of the See of Worcester on the death of Bishop Wulfstan, directing them to pay a 'relief' in consequence of that death, and specifying the quota due from each of the tenants named. The date is fortunately beyond question; for the writ must have been issued very shortly after the death of Wulfstan (January 18, 1095), and in any case before the death of Bishop Robert of Hereford (June 26, 1095), who is one of the tenants addressed in it. As the record is not long, and practically, as we have seen, unknown, one need not hesitate to reprint it.
W. Rex Anglorum omnibus Francis et Anglis qui francas terras tenent de episcopatu de Wireceastra, Salutem. Sciatis quia, mortuo episcopo, honor in manum meam rediit. Nunc volo, ut de terris vestris tale relevamen mihi detis, sicut per barones meos disposui. Hugo de Laci xx. libras. Walterus Punher xx. libras. Gislebertus filius turoldi c. solidos. Rodbertus episcopus x. libras. Abbas de euesham xxx. libras. Walterus de Gloecestra xx. libras. Roger filius durandi [quietus per breve regis][273] x. libras. Winebald de balaon x. libras. Drogo filius Pontii x. libras. Rodbert filius sckilin c. solidos. Rodbert stirmannus lx. solidos. Willelmus de begebiri xl. solidos. Ricardus and Franca c. solidos. Angotus xx. solidos. Beraldus xx. solidos. Willelmus de Wic xx. solidos. Rodbertus filius nigelli c. solidos. Alricus archidiaconus c. solidos. Ordricus dapifer[274] xl. libras. Ordricus blaca[275] c. solidos. Colemannus[276] xl. solidos. Warinus xxx. solidos. Balduuinus xl. solidos. Suegen filius Azor xx. solidos. Aluredus xxx. solidos. Siuuardus xl. solidos. Saulfus xv. libras. Algarus xl. solidos. Chippingus xx. solidos.
Testibus Ranulfo capellano & Eudone dapifero & Ursone de abetot. Et qui hoc facere noluerit, Urso & bernardus sasiant et terras et pecunias in manu mea.
The points on which this document throws fresh light are these. First, and above all, the exaction of reliefs by William Rufus and his minister, which formed so bitter a grievance at the time, and to which, consequently, Dr Stubbs and Mr Freeman had devoted special attention. On this we have here evidence which is at present unique. It must therefore be studied in some detail.
Broadly speaking, we now learn how 'the analogy of lay fiefs was applied to the churches with as much minuteness as possible'.[277] One of the respects in which the church fiefs differed from those of the lay barons was, that on the one hand they escaped such claims as reliefs, wardships and 'marriage', while, on the other, their tenants, of course also escaped payment of such 'aids' as those 'ad filium militem faciendum' or 'ad filiam maritandam'. In this there was a fair 'give and take'. But Ranulf must have argued that bishops and abbots who took reliefs from their tenants ought, in like manner, to pay reliefs to the crown. This they obviously would not do; and, indeed, even had they been willing, it would have savoured too strongly of simony. And so he adopted, as our record shows, the unwarrantable device of extorting the relief from the under-tenants direct. This was not an enforcement, but a breach, of feudal principles; for an under-tenant was, obviously, only liable to relief on his succession to his own fee.[278]
It would be easy to assume that this was the abuse renounced by Henry I.[279] But distinguo. The above abuse was quite distinct from the practice of annexing to the revenues of the crown, during a vacancy, the temporalities. This, which was undoubtedly renounced by Henry, and as undoubtedly resorted to by himself and by his successors afterwards, was, however distasteful to the church,[280] a logical deduction from feudal principles, and did not actually wrong any individual. It could thus be retained when the crown abandoned such unjust exactions as the Worcester relief, and it afforded an excellent substitute for wardship, though practically mischievous in the impulse it gave to the prolongation of vacancies.
There are many other points suggested by the record I am discussing, but they can only be touched on briefly. It gives us a singularly early use of the remarkable term 'honour', here employed in its simplest and strictly accurate sense; the same term was similarly employed, we have seen, in the case of Abingdon (1097), where we also find the fief described as reverting to the crown vacante sede.[281] It further alludes to a special assessment by 'barons' deputed for the purpose; it affords a noteworthy formula for distraint in case of non-payment; and it gives us, within barely nine years of the great survey itself, a list of the tenants of the fee, which should prove of peculiar value.
If the sums entered be added up, their total will amount to exactly £250. It is tempting to connect this figure with a servitium debitum (teste episcopo) of fifty fees at the 'ancient relief' of £5 a fee; but we are only justified in treating it as one of those round sums that we find exacted for relief under Henry II, especially as its items cannot be connected with the actual knights' fees. The appended analysis will show the relation (where ascertainable) of sums paid to hides held.
| Domesday, 1086 | The Relief, 1095 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| h. | v. | £ | s | |||
| Roger de Laci | 23 | 2 | Hugh de Laci | 20 | 0 | |
| Walter Ponther | 10 | 2 | Walter Punther | 20 | 0 | |
| Gilbert fitz Thorold | 7 | 2 | Gilbert fitz Thorold | 5 | 0 | |
| Bishop of Hereford | 5 | 0 | Bishop Robert [of Hereford] | 10 | 0 | |
| Abbot of Evesham | 9 | 0 | Abbot of Evesham | 30 | 0 | |
| Walter fitz Roger | 8 | 0 | Walter de Gloucester | 20 | 0 | |
| Durand the sheriff | 6 | 0 | Roger fitz Durand | 10 | 0 | |
| Winebald de Balaon | 10 | 0 | ||||
| Drogo | 10 | 0 | Drogo fitz Ponz | 10 | 0 | |
| Schelin | 5 | 0 | Robert fitz Schilin | 5 | 0 | |
| Robert Stirman | 3 | 0 | ||||
| Anschitil | 2 | 0 | Anschitil de Colesbourne | 10 | 0 | |
| Roger de Compton | 1 | 0 | ||||
| Eudo | 1 | 3 | Eudo | 3 | 0 | |
| William de Begeberi | 2 | 0 | ||||
| Richard & Franca | 5 | 0 | ||||
| Ansgot | 1 | 2 | Angot | 1 | 0 | |
| Berald | 1 | 0 | ||||
| William de Wick | 1 | 0 | ||||
| Robert fitz Nigel | 5 | 0 | ||||
| Ælfric the archdeacon | 4 | 0 | Ælfric the archdeacon | 5 | 0 | |
| Orderic |  | 6 | 1 | Orderic the Dapifer | 40 | 0 |
| Orderic | Orderic Black | 5 | 0 | |||
| Coleman | 2 | 0 | ||||
| Warine | 1 | 10 | ||||
| Baldwin | 2 | 0 | ||||
| Swegen fitz Azor | 1 | 0 | ||||
| Alfred | 1 | 10 | ||||
| Siward | 5 | 0 | Siward | 2 | 0 | |
| Sawulf | 15 | 0 | ||||
| Ælfar | 2 | 0 | ||||
| Cheping | 1 | 0 | ||||
| —————— | ||||||
| £250 | 0 | |||||
The comparison of these two lists suggests some interesting conclusions. Roger de Laci, forfeited early in the reign for treason, had been succeeded by his brother Hugh. 'Punher' supplies us with the transitional form from the 'Ponther' of Domesday to the 'Puher' of the reign of Henry I. The identity of the names is thus established. Walter fitz Roger has already assumed his family surname as Walter de Gloucester, and his uncle Durand has now been succeeded by a son Roger, whose existence was unknown to genealogists. The pedigree of the family in the Norman period has been well traced by Mr A. S. Ellis in his paper on the Gloucestershire Domesday tenants, but he was of opinion that Walter de Gloucester was the immediate successor in the shrievalty of his uncle, Durand, who died without issue. This list, on the contrary, suggests that the immediate successor of Durand was his son Roger, and that if, like his father, he held the shrievalty, this might account for the interlineation remitting, in his case, the sum due. In this Roger we, surely, have that 'Roger de Gloucester' who was slain in Normandy in 1106, and whom, without the evidence afforded by this list, it was not possible to identify.[282]
The chief difficulty that this list presents is its omission of the principal tenant of the see, Urse d'Abetot. One can only assign it to the fact of his official position as sheriff enabling him to secure exemption for himself, and perhaps even for his brother, Robert 'Dispensator'. Their exemption, however accounted for, involved an arbitrary assessment of all the remaining tenants, irrespective of the character or of the extent of their tenure. With these remarks I must leave a document, which is free from anachronism or inconsistency, and as trustworthy, I think, as it is useful.
It is my hope that this paper may increase the interest in the forthcoming edition of the Liber Rubeus under the care of Mr Hubert Hall, and that it may lead to a reconsideration of the problems presented by the feudal system as it meets us in England. Nor can I close without reminding the reader that if my researches have compelled me to differ from an authority so supreme as Dr Stubbs, this in no way impugns the soundness of his judgment on the data hitherto known. The original sources have remained so strangely neglected, that it was not in the power of any writer covering so wide a field to master the facts and figures which I have now endeavoured to set forth, and on which alone it is possible to form a conclusion beyond dispute.
[1] Reprinted, with additions, from the English Historical Review.
[2] 'The belief which has come down to us from Selden, and the antiquarian school, a belief which was hitherto universally received, that William I divided the English landed property into military fees, is erroneous, and results from the dating back of an earlier [? later] condition of things.'—Gneist, Const. Hist., i. 129.
[3] 'There can be no doubt that the military tenure, the most prominent feature of historical feudalism, was itself introduced by the same gradual process which we have assumed in the case of the feudal usages in general.'—Stubbs, Const. Hist., i. 261.
[4] Stubbs, servitia, i. 260-1. So too Freeman.
[5] Stubbs, servitia, i. 261.
[6] Ibid., i. 298.
[7] Ibid., i. 298, 301.
[8] Ibid., i. 300.
[9] Select Charters, p. 96.
[10] Norm. Conq., v. 380.
[11] servitia, i. 581.
[12] N.C., v. 377; cf. History of William II, pp. 335, 337, 'The whole system, a system which logically hangs together in the most perfect way, was the device of the same subtle and malignant brain.'
[13] Ibid., p. 374.
[14] 'Si quis baronum meorum, comitum sive aliorum qui de me tenent, mortuus fuerit, heres suus non redimet terram suam sicut faciebat tempore fratris mei, sed justa et legitima relevatione relevabit eam.'
[15] 'In that charter the military tenures are taken for granted. What is provided against is their being perverted, as they had been in the days of Rufus, into engines of oppression.'—N.C., v. 373.
[16] N.C., v. 372; servitia, i. 261.
[17] N.C., v. 373.
[18] Palgrave, as Mr Freeman observes, 'strongly and clearly brought out the absence of any distinct mention of military tenures in Domesday'. Dr Stubbs more cautiously wrote: 'The wording of the Domesday Survey does not imply that in this respect the new military service differed from the old.' (servitia, i. 262.) Mr Freeman confidently asserts: 'Nothing is more certain than that from one end of Domesday to the other, there is not a trace of military tenures as they were afterwards understood.... We hear of nothing in Domesday which can be called knight-service or military tenure in the later sense.' (N.C., v. 370, 371.) Mr Hunt (Norman Britain) follows the same line, and Gneist, vouching Palgrave, Stubbs, and Freeman, repeats the argument. (servitia, i. 130.)
[19] 'I spoke to Mr Falconberge to look whether he could out of Domesday Book give me anything concerning the sea and the dominion thereof' (1661).
[20] N.C., v. 465.
[21] N.C., v. 4.
[22] Ibid., p. 42.
[23] As so much stress has been laid on the argument from Domesday, it is desirable further to demonstrate its worthlessness by referring to the Lindsey Survey (vide supra, p. 149). This survey can only be a few years previous to 1120, and was therefore made at a time when, ex hypothesi, feudal tenures had been established for some time. Yet here, also, page after page may be searched in vain for any mention of 'knights' or 'fees'.
[24] Gneist, servitia, i. 132.
[25] Gneist, servitia, i. 118.
[26] Ibid., i. 156, 133, 124.
[27] Ibid., i. 130.
[28] Ibid., i. 156.
[29] Ibid., i. 133.
[30] Stubbs, servitia, i. 192. I do not quite understand the passage that 'it is probable that the complete following out of the Frank idea [exact proportion of service to hides] was reserved for Henry II, unless his military reforms are to be understood, as so many of his other measures are, as the revival and strengthening of anti-feudal and pre-feudal custom'. (Ibid.) The allusion is, clearly, to the assize of arms; but was that assize based on fixed quantities of land? Mr Little has discussed the five-hide question in the English Historical Review, xvi. pp. 726-9 (vide supra, p. 65).
[31] Ibid., i. 262.
[32] Ibid., i. 262.
[33] servitia, i. 386.
[34] Ibid., i. 581.
[35] Ibid., i. 264-5.
[36] Ibid., i. 432.
[37] 'The growth of the system of knights' fees out of the older system of hides is traced by Stubbs. The old service of a man from each five hides of land would go on, only it would take a new name and a new spirit' (N.C., v. 866).
[38] This argument, of course, applies, mutatis mutandis, to a five-hide unit as well.
[39] servitia, i. 265.
[40] Henry of Huntingdon (p. 207) speaks of the Domesday returns by the same name (cartae).
[41] Domesday Book occupies a medial position, being arranged under counties, but within each county, under fiefs.
[42] Compare the carta of the bishop of Exeter, Præcepistis mihi quod mandarem vobis non quod servitia militum vobis debeam, etc. Dr Stubbs writes: 'The king issued a writ to all the tenants-in-chief of the crown, lay and clerical, directing each of them to send in a cartel or report of the number of knights' fees for the service of which he was legally liable.'—Const. Hist., i. 584.
[43] The bishop of 'Coventry' expresses it: 'numerum ... eorum si quos in dominio tenemus, et eorum nomina' (p. 263).
[44] These references are to the pages of the forthcoming edition of the Liber Rubeus. It will be observed that the second three returns are too closely alike for accidental coincidence; the three Shropshire 'barons' who made them must have been in some communication. Note here the remarkable use of the term 'compares'.
[45] Audivi praeceptum vestrum in consulatu Herefordiae.
[46] Audito praecepto vestro.
[47] Praeceptum vestrum, per totam Angliam divulgatum, per vicecomitem vestrum Northumberlande ad me, sicut ad alios, pervenit.
[48] Mandavit nobis ... Vicecomes Stephanus, ex parte vestra quatinus, etc.
[49] Praecepit dignitas vestra omnibus fidelibus vestris, clericis et laicis, qui de vobis tenent in capite in Eboracsira ut mandent, etc.... Quorum ego unus, etc.
[50] It should be scarcely necessary to warn the reader against confusing the dominium, or non-infeudated portion of the entire fief, with the dominium, or demesne portion, of each Manor upon that fief.
[51] An instance in point is afforded by the Bardolf barony (i.e. fief) temp. John: 'Heres Dodon' Bardulf tenet feoda xxv. militum per totum. Inde xv. milites sunt feoffati et x. feoda sunt super dominium' (Testa de Nevill, p. 19).
[52] (1) Old feoffment, (2) new feoffment, (3) demesne.
[53] He and his successors are consequently found paying, time after time, on thirty-five fees.
[54] William de Beauchamp, of Worcestershire, is virtually a solitary exception. He inserts, cavendi causa, this significant clause: 'De hiis praenominatis non debeo Regi nisi servitium vii. militum, nec antecessores mei unquam plus fecerunt, sed quia dominus Rex praecepit michi mandare quot milites habeo et eorum nomina, ideo mando quod istos [i.e. 16] habeo fefatos de veteri feffamento; sed non debeo Regi nisi servitium vii. militum.' But William was a sheriff at the time, and may have had special information which put him on his guard.
[55] Compare the case of the Irish bishops six years later (1172), who sent the king 'litteras suas in modum cartae extra sigillum pendentes' (Howden). Note also that the addition of the seal made the return essentially a carta. In Normandy, the tenants by knight-service were only required (1172) to seal the return (breve) of their servitium debitum.
[56] The point is of some importance in its bearing on the right of the individual to assess himself, which is held in this case to have been exercised. 'The assessment,' writes Dr Stubbs, 'of the individual depended very much on his own report, which the exchequer had little means of checking.'—servitia, i. 585.
[57] By one of those slips so marvellously rare in his writings Dr Stubbs writes that 'the Bishop of Durham's service for his demesne land was that of ten knights, but it was not cut up into fees' (i. 263). What the bishop said was that he owed no service for his demesne, because there were already over seventy fees created on his fief, though he only owed ten.
[58] This is one of the points on which Madox is completely at sea. He quotes the case of the Bishop of Durham (1168) as an instance of 'Doubts about the number of knights' fees' (Baronia Anglica, p. 122); and he writes, of the above uniform formula: 'This uncertainty about the number of the fees frequently happened in the case of ecclesiastical persons, Bishops, and Abbots.'—Exchequer, i. 647.
[59] servitia, i. 264.
[60] See my papers on 'The House of Lords; the Transition from Tenure to Writ' (Antiquary, October and December 1884, April 1885).
[61] See, for instance, the language used in the carta of Ralf de Worcester (p. 441): 'Teneo de vobis in capite de veteri fefamento feodum i. militis, unde debeo vobis facere servitium i. militis. Et de eodem feodo Jordanus Hairum debet mihi facere iiii.am. partem servitii,' etc. In Normandy (1172), the phrase ran: 'quot milites unusquisque baronum deberet ad servicium regis, et quot haberet ad suum proprium servicium'.
[62] Sometimes Exeter pays on 15½ (14, 33, Hen. II), but 17½ (2, 5, 7, 18 Hen. II) is the normal amount. The explanation of this odd number is found in the Testa de Nevill (p. 226) where ('Veredictum militum de Rapo de Arundel') we read: 'Episcopus Exoniensis tenet de Domino Rege de Capellaria de Boseham vii. feoda militum et dimidium.' The Bosham estate (as belonging to Osbern) had formed part of the episcopal fief in Domesday, but (the bishops having founded a church there) we find it assessed and paying separately as 7½ fees.
[63] I have found a case bearing upon this point and reported at great length (Thorpe's Registrum Roffense, pp. 70 et seq.). It arose from an attempt of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1253, to distrain the Bishop of Rochester for the 'auxilium ad filium regis primogenitum militem faciendum'. The bishop 'posuit se super recordum rotulorum de Scaccario, per quos rotulos poterit et illa quam rex contra episcopum et etiam illa quam archiepiscopus contra episcopum movit questio diffiniri. Didicerat enim episcopus per unum fidelem amicum quem in scaccario tunc habebat quod nunquam tempore alicujus regis pro aliquo feodo episcopatus aliquod fuit regi factum servicium vel datum scutagium.... Unde consulebat quod audaciter poneret se episcopus super recordum rotulorum de Scaccario, nichil enim tenet episcopus per baroniam de rege, sed per puram elemosinam, quod non est dicendum de aliquo episcopatu Anglie, nec de Archiepiscopatu, nisi dumtaxat de Karleolen. Cumque cum audacia institisset episcopus, quod decideretur per rotulos de Scaccario quibus creditur in omnibus illis sicut sancto evangelio', etc., etc. The barons of the exchequer examined the rolls, 'a tempore primi conquestus' (?) and reported: 'nusquam invenerunt episcopum Roffensem solvisse aut dedisse aliquod servicium regibus temporale'. But the dispute was not finally decided till 1259. The clue to the matter is found in the Canterbury 'Domesday Monachorum' (8th Report Hist. MSS. i. 316), where a list of the archbishop's knights, perhaps coeval with Domesday (vide infra, p. 236), is headed by 'Episcopus Roffensis' with a servitium of ten knights to the Primate.
[64] Cerne had to provide 'ten' knights ad wardam at Corfe Castle, or 'two' ad exercitum (vide cartam).
[65] This indeed is proved by an extract quoted by Madox (Exchequer) from the Roll of 22 Hen. II (rot. 10a).
[66] The effect of all the changes of assessment we have traced under Henry II would only be the reduction of this total to 774.]
[67] Roll of 11 Hen. II. (This was, of course, the son of Henry I by Edith.)
[68] The custos of his fief paid scutage for eighty knights in 1159, but he speaks 'de meis lx. militibus' in his carta.
[69] The undoubted assessment in 1162. Afterwards it is found paying on sixty and a fraction.
[70] 'Lx. milites ... habere solebat pater meus' (carta).
[71] This figure is given in the Liber Niger, but is really derived from his recorded payments.
[72] Tot habuit milites feodatos ... scilicet lx. de antiquo feodo (carta).
[73] In Yorkshire alone. In all England, many more.
[74] This figure is taken from the payments in 1161 and 1172.
[75] Roll of 11 Hen. II.
[76] Ibid. It is impossible, within the compass of a note, to discuss the two consecutive and most important entries on the Roll (pp. 37-8), which represent a payment by the Earl of Chester on 20 fees, 'pro feodo Turoldi vicecomitis', and by Richard de Camville on 40 fees, 'pro feodo Willelmi de Romara'. I called attention to the former entry in the Academy (April 21, 1888), but did not at that time explain it. Mr R. E. G. Kirk undertook to explain 'its real meaning' (Genealogist, v. 141), which, however, he completely mistook (Ibid., July 1891). The two entries, I think, should be read together as relating to the estates of the famous Lucy, the common ancestress of the earl and of William. If so, they may refer to a fief with an original servitium of 60 knights, of which one-third was in the hands of the Earl of Chester, and two-thirds in that of his cousin. Independently of the light they throw on the obscure history of this divided and contested fief, they are of value for the unique reference (in this Roll) to 'noviter feffati' (vide infra). The total (including these) for the two fiefs is 6631⁄80. There is no return for the earl's Lindsey fief in 1166, but William de Roumare's return acknowledges 57 fees. If to these we add the 9½ fees which, it says, had formerly existed in addition, we obtain 66½. This suggests that the one fief of 1166 represents the two of 1165. It should be added that the Hampshire fief of William de Roumare is paid for as 20 fees in 1159 and 1162, and was similarly accounted for by Richard de Camville in both these years.
[77] Roll of 11 Hen. II.
[78] He omitted to send in a carta in 1166; but, both before and after, he paid on 30 fees.
[79] He twice pays on 30 fees before 1166, in which year his fief was held by Gerbert de Percy. Subsequently, as the honour of Poerstoke (Poorstock), it always pays on 30.
[80] This is a very difficult case. Walter's carta might easily be read as implying a servitium debitum of 20 fees, and his fief paid on 29 de veteri and 1½ de novo. But careful scrutiny reveals that the words 'hos iiijor. milites qui has predictas terras tenent' are preceded by six names. If they refer, either to the four names immediately preceding, or (which is more probable) to the four knights who held his lands but rendered him no service, the total of his servitium debitum would, in either case, be 30.
[81] Roll of 11 Hen. II.
[82] He paid on 25 fees in 1162.
[83] 'Feodum xx. militum de rege de veteri feffamento quod pater suus tenuit' (carta).
[84] He paid on 20 fees in 1161, but the subsequent assessment of the fief varies considerably.
[85] He paid on 20 fees in 1162 and 1165, and returned his fees in 1166 as 20 de veteri and ¾ de novo.
[86] The scutages record him as paying always on 15 knights quos recognoscit—the formula for servitium debitum.
[87] His payment on 15 fees in 1161 probably represents his servitium debitum. His total enfeoffments were 23.
[88] Hugh and Stephen de Scalers are the names given in the cartae, but Henry and William de Scalers held the fiefs at the time.
[89] He paid 10 marcs in 1168, though his carta only records 9-5/6 fees.
[90] A difficult fief to deal with, but almost certainly the half of an original Reimes fief owing 20 knights (vide supra).
[91] Apparently 15 at first, and 10 later.
[92] i.e. the Peverel Honour of Bourne, Cambridgeshire (held in Domesday by Picot, the Sheriff), not Bourne, Lincolnshire, held by the Wakes.
[93] He only pays on 5 fees in 1162, and the excess de novo in his carta is accounted for, he says, by the necessities of his position.
[94] This is not proved for the latter fief.
[95] Compare with these allusions to a traditional servitium debitum the significant words of Wace (Roman de Rou):
'Ne ke jamez d'ore en avant,
Ço lor a miz en covenant,
N'ierent de servise requis,
Forz tel ke solt estre al paiz,
E tel come lor ancessor
Soleient fere a lor Seignor,'—
which are the reply to the fears of the barons (Norm. Conq., iii. 298):
'Li servise ki est doblez
Creiment k'il seit en feu tornez,
Et en costume seit tenu
Et par costume seit rendu (lines 11272 et seq.).'
[96] It can be shown that the 'service' in Normandy was based on precisely the same five-knight unit.
[97] 'The estates of the twenty greatest feodaries in Domesday Book contain, according to the ordinary computation, 793, 439, 442, 298, 280, 222, 171, 164, 132, 130, 123, 119, 118, 107, 81, 47, 46 and 33 knights' fees.'—Gneist (Const. Hist., i. 334).
[98] servitia, i. 289.
[99] For instance, the Abbot of St Edmund's 'quinquaginta milites' are spoken of as 'milites de quatuor constabiliis' with 'decem miles de quinta constabilia' (Memorials of St Edmunds, Ed. Arnold, i. 269, 271).
[100] Robert fitz Stephen lands with 30 knights, Maurice de Prendergast with 10, Maurice fitz Gerald with 10, Strongbow with 200, Raymond the Fat with 10, Henry himself with either 400 or 500, etc.
[101] See my Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 103.
[102] Lines 11253 et seq. The figures, however, are far too large, and savour of poetic licence.
[103] N.C., v. 368.
[104] Meath with a servitium debitum of 100, Limerick of 60, Cork with two servitia of 30 each.
[105] N.C., v. 378.
[106] Gneist, C.H., i. 129, 156.
[107] Freeman, N.C., v. 372, 371.
[108] Stubbs, C.H., i. 261.
[109] Mr Hall informs me that is the name of the official referred to.
[110] 'Prout rumor ex rotulis ad me devenit.'
[112] 'Et nota quod quandocumque assidentur scutagia, licet eodem anno solvantur, annotantur tamen in annali anni sequentis' (Red Book, ed. Hall, p. 8).
[113] It is just possible that the source of his error is to be found in a solitary entry on the roll of 1163: 'Advocatus de Betuna reddit compotum de vi. li. xiii. s. iiii. d. de auxilio exercitus de Tolusa' (p. 9)—which refers to the levy of 1161.
[114] 'Temporibus enim regis Henrici primi ... nec inspexi vel audivi fuisse scutagia assisa' (p. 5).
[115] vide supra, p. 118 note.
[116] 'Illud commune verbum in ore singulorum tunc temporis divulgatum.'
[117] See Red Book of the Exchequer, pp. 5, 8.
[118] See list of church fiefs.
[119] His carta is corrupt.
[120] 'Abbas Gloucestrie tenet omnes terras in libera elemosina.'—Testa, p. 77.
[121] 'A new impost specially levied (1156) upon some of the ecclesiastical estates, under the name of scutage' (Norgate's Angevin Kings, i. 433). 'The famous scutage, the acceptance of a money composition for military service, alike for the old English service of the fyrd' [this, of course, is a misconception], 'and for the newer military tenures, dates from this (1159) time' (Freeman's Norman Conquest, v. 674). 'The term scutage now (1156) first employed.... As early as his second year (1156) we find him collecting a scutage, a new form of taxation' (Stubbs' Const. Hist., i. 454, 458, 581, 590).
[122] The phrase 'debet scutagium quando currit' is of course, a normal one.
[123] 'Teste Gaufrido Cancellario et Willelmo de Albineio Pincerna et Gaufrido de Clintona et Pagano fil Johannis. Apud Sanctum Petrum desuper Divam.'
[124] Cott. MS. Julius A., i. 6, fo. 74a.
[125] These charters have an independent value for the light they throw, in conjunction with the roll, on the movements of the king. The roll itself alludes to the occasion on which the king crossed from Eling—'ex q[uo] rex mare transivit de Eilling[es]'—and as it is assigned to Michaelmas, 1130, the entry cannot refer to his departure at that very date, especially as these charters are not paid for among the nova proceedings of the year. They must therefore have been granted at his previous departure (August 1127), when he must have crossed from Eling and have gone to S. Pierre sur Dive (and Argentan) in Normandy. Pleas were heard before him at Eling on this occasion (Rot. Pip., pp. 17, 38), and are referred to in a charter of Stephen to Shaftesbury Abbey.
[126] Printed in Athenæum, December 2, 1893.
[127] Cf. Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 105.
[128] 'Abbas locum sibi commissum munita manu militum secure protegebat; et primo quidem stipendiariis in hoc utebatur' (Cart. Abingdon, ii. 3). 'Unde abbas tristis recedens conduxit milites', etc. (Historia Eliensis, p. 275). So too Bishop Wulfstan is found 'pompam militum secum ducens qui stipendiis annuis', etc. (W. Malmesb.)
[129] It is singular that in his admirable work, The English Village Community, pp. 38-9, Mr Seebohm connects 'the normal acreage of the hide of 120 a., and of the virgate of 30 a., with the scutage of 40s per knight's fee', and argues that 'in choosing the acreage of the standard hide and virgate, a number of acres was probably assumed corresponding with the monetary system, so that the number of pence in the scutum should correspond with the number of acres assessed to its payment'. It need hardly be observed that the institution of scutage was, on the contrary, long posterior to that of a hide of 120 acres.
[130] Walton was at the mouth of the Orwell and the Stour, and was thus an exposed port towards Flanders as Dover was towards France. It is noteworthy that when the Earl of Leicester did invade England from Flanders a few years later, it was at 'Walton' that he landed.
[131] Compare Will. Pict.: 'Custodes in castellis strenuos viros collocavit ex Gallis traductos, quorum fidei pariter ac virtuti credebat, cum multitudine peditum et equitum, ipsis opulenta beneficia distribuit,' etc.
[132] Should not this rather be 'from ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief holding by military service'? For it was neither collected from knights' fees, nor with reference to their existing number.
[133] Preface to Gesta Henrici Regis, II. xciv. So too Const. Hist., i. 454: 'The practice was, as we learn from John of Salisbury, opposed by Archbishop Theobald'; and (i. 577) 'Archbishop Theobald had denounced the scutage of 1156'; and (Early Plant., p. 54) 'he made the bishops, notwithstanding strong objections from Archbishop Theobald, pay scutage'.
[134] Preface to Gesta Henrici Regis, II. xcviii.
[135] 'Honori et utilitati ecclesiae tota mentis intentione studiosius invigilabit. Verum interim', etc. John of Salisbury (Ep. cxxviii). Note that 'ecclesiae' is the church at large, not the See of Canterbury.
[136] Angevin Kings, i. 443.
[137] Red Book, p. 6.
[138] Preface to Gesta Henrici Regis, II. xcv.
[139] Const. Hist., i. 454.
[140] Ibid., i. 164.
[141] Angevin Kings, i. 458. Both writers quote the passage from John of Salisbury (Ep. xcxviii), on which this explanation is based.
[142] His servitium debitum was one knight.
[143] The force for the Welsh campaign was raised, as we learn from Robert de Monte (alias de Torigni), 'by demanding that every three knights should, instead of serving in person, equip one of their number', as Dr Stubbs rightly puts it (Const. Hist., i. 589), and not, as he elsewhere writes (preface to Gesta Henrici Regis, II. xciv.), by requiring every two to add to themselves a third, 'by which means, if we are to understand it literally, 90,000 knights would appear from 60,000 knights' fees'. The real number would probably be under 2,000.
[144] 'This impost, which afterwards came to be known in English history as the "Great Scutage"' (Angevin Kings, i. 459).
[145] Liber Rubeus, p. 6.
[146] Angevin Kings, i. 461.
[147] The abbots of Shrewsbury, Thorney, and Croyland; the abbesses of Barking, Winchester, and Romsey. The total of their dona amounted to £51 13s 4d.
[148] Not, however, by Dr Stubbs (Preface to Gesta Henrici Regis, II. xciv-xcvi).
[149] Dr Stubbs, independently, reckons the total payments of the church at £3,700 (Gesta Henrici Regis), which does not differ greatly from the above calculation (£3,167 6s 8d).
[150] 'Ille quidem gladius quem in sancte matris ecclesiae viscera vestra paulo ante manus immerserat cum ad trajiciendum in Tolosam exercitum tot ipsam marcarum millibus aporiastis.' Gilbert Foliot (Ep. cxciv).
[151] 'Nec permisit ut ecclesiae saltem proceribus coaequarentur in hac contributione vel magis exactione tam indebita quam injusta.' John of Salisbury (Ep. cxlv). Swereford, though confused in his account of the tax, points out that levy was made 'non solum super praelatos, verum tam super ipsos, quam super milites suos' (L.R., p. 6).
[152] Gneist, for instance, writes: 'The first general imposition took place in 5 Henry II for the campaign against Toulouse, with two marcs per fee from all crown vassals' (servitia, i. 212).
[153] Entered as 'Dona militum comitatus', not to be confused with the 'dona comitatus', a special levy of the following year (6 Hen. II), raised, it will be found, from the western counties, from Stafford in the north to Devonshire in the south.
[154] 'Rex ... nolens vexare agrarios milites ... sumptis lx. solidis Andegavensium in Normannia de feudo uniuscujusque loricae et de reliquis omnibus tam in Normannia quam in Anglia, sive etiam aliis terris suis, secundum hoc quod ei visum fuit, capitales barones suos cum paucis secum duxit, solidarios vero milites innumeros' (p. 202, ed. Howlett).
[155] This was certainly the case with the fiefs of Simon de Beauchamp and the Earl Ferrers, two of the most considerable.
[156] Angevin Kings, i. 462.
[157] 'A second scutage was raised in the seventh year, probably for payment of debts incurred for the same war, the assessment being in this, as in the former case, two marcs to the knight's fee.' (Preface to Gesta Henrici Regis, p. xcv.)
[158] If it was raised for this purpose, it must have been levied either (1) from all tenants-in-chief, which it certainly was not; or (2) from the same contributors as in 1159, which a comparison of the two rolls will at once show it was not; or (3) from a new set of contributors, which was also not the case, for the prelates, the Ferrers fief, etc., are found contributing as before.
[159] Const. Hist., i. 582.
[160] Instead of a fief paying en bloc, it seems to have paid through the sheriffs of the counties in which it was situate.
[161] 'Episcopus de Heref' reddit compotum de lxxvi. libris et v. solidis de promiss[ione] c. Servientium de Wal' (p. 84).
[162] 'Abbas de Abendona reddit compotum de lxxvi. libris et v. solidis de promise sione servientium in Waliam' (rot. 11 Hen. II, p. 74).
[163] 'Abbas de Sancto Albano reddit compotum de lxxvi. libris et v. solidis de Exercitu' (Ibid., p. 19).
[164] 'Episcopus Lond' reddit compotum de xiii. libris et vi. sol. et viii. den. de Servicio militum.... Idem reddit compotum de cxiiii. marcis et v. sol. de promissione servientium Walie' (Ibid., p. 19).
[165] 'Willelmus de Siffrewast reddit compotum de lxxvi. sol. et iii. den.... Hugo de Bochelanda reddit compotum de. v. servientibus' (Ibid., p. 75). Compare the love of variety in Domesday, supra, pp. 41, 42, 77.
[166] 'Scutagium de ii. exercitibus' in next roll (rot. 12 Hen. II).
[167] Itinerary of Henry II, p. 79 et seq. Compare also the payment from the Giffard fief 'de secundo exercitu' (p. 25).
[168] Angevin Kings, ii. 180, note.
[169] Liber Rubeus, p. 193.
[170] This was the point on which Abbot Sampson insisted, against his knights, at St Edmund's. In the case of Canterbury, the inquest of 1163 would have ascertained the actual number of the archbishop's knights and their fees.
[171] Ignorasse quidem haec [debita] servitia militaria Regis ... successores subsequentium argumento non immerito potuit dubitare: quia cum Rex Henricus ... traderet, a quolibet sui regni milite marcam unam ... exegit, publico praecipiens edicto quod quilibet praelatus et baro quot milites de eo tenerent in capite publicis suis instrumentis significarent' (Liber Rubeus, p. 4).
[172] 'Teneo de vobis ... feodum i. militis, unde debeo vobis facere servitium i. militis' (carta).
[173] 'De hoc predicto feodo debet Regi v. milites' (carta).
[174] It must always be remembered that, as explained above, in cases where the requisite number of knights had not been enfeoffed by 1166, the balance de dominio was added to those actually created, as de veteri together.
[175] Thus Daniel de Crevecœur pays on one fee (de veteri) more than his carta records, William de Tracy on half a fee (de veteri), Adam de Port on one, the Earl of Gloucester on two, the Earl of Warwick on two and a half, Maurice de Craon on one, the Abbot of Hulme on a quarter of a fee, William de Albini (Pincerna) on one, Henry de Lacy on one and a half, William de Vescy on one, Bertram de Bulemer on a half, and William Paynell on one (these figures are all subject to correction). The case of William de Vescy is specially conspicuous, because the nineteen fees enumerated are distinctly spoken of as twenty.
[176] This brings it into relation with the Constabularia of which it thus formed just a third.
[177] The same formula is found in Domesday applied to hidation in East Anglia, where the assessment of Manors is expressed not in terms of the hide, but in fractions of the pound. (vide supra, p. 89.)
[178] vide supra, p. 205.
[179] 'Willelmus Malet tenet Cari de Domino Rege et alias terras suas per servicium viginti militum' (p. 163).
[180] Ducange (1887), ii. 581.
[181] Ibid., viii. 255. Ducange indeed asserts that five knights was the qualification in Normandy for barony, but the statement is based on a mistaken rendering and is elsewhere disproved.
[182] Liber Rubeus, p. 4.
[183] 'Illud commune verbum in ore singulorum, tunc temporis divulgatum, fatuum reputans et mirabile, quod in regni conquisitione Dux Normannorum, Rex Willelmus, servitia xxxii. militum infeodavit' (Ibid.).
[184] Swereford, it is clear, failed to grasp the great change of assessment in 1166.
[185] Const. Hist., i. 432.
[186] Ibid., i. 157. Dr Stubbs rightly rejects Mr Pearson's conjecture that the number of 32,000 applied to the hides, and that 'the number of knights' fees, calculated at five hides each, would be 6,400'.
[187] 'His temporibus militiam Anglici regni Rex Willelmus conscribi fecit et lx. millia militum invenit, quos omnes, dum necesse esset, paratos esse praecepit.'
[188] 'A whole army was by this means encamped upon the soil, and the king's summons could at any moment gather 60,000 knights to the royal standard.'
[189] Const. Hist., i. 264. Compare pp. 16, 17.
[190] Freeman (Norm. Conq., iv. 694).
[191] Ibid., iv. 562.
[192] Ibid., iii. 387. In Social England (i. 373) we read that 'William is believed to have landed in England with at least 60,000 men, 50,000 horse and 10,000 foot'. But on turning to p. 306 of that great effort of co-operative genius, we learn that only 'some of William's ships carried horses to the number of from three to eight—as well as men'. So the number of his ships (396, according to Wace) is as great a difficulty as the proportions of Noah's Ark.
[193] William Rufus, i. 17.
[194] Ibid., i. 313.
[195] 'Annui fiscales redditus ... ad sexaginta millia marcarum summam implebant.'
[196] 'Sexaginta millia peditum' (p. 4).
[197] 'Sexaginta millia silinas de frumento, sexaginta millia de hordeo, sexaginta millia de vino' (Richard of Devizes, ed. Howlett, p. 396).
[198] 'Sexaginta accipitur indefinite de magno numero. Sexcenti saepe usurpatur pro numero ingenti et indefinito' (Forcellini, Totius Latinitatis Lexicon).
[199] 'Bis sex sibi millia centum' (Carmen de bello Hastingensi).
[200] It must be clearly understood that these figures cannot be absolutely accurate. Some honours are omitted, it seems, in the returns from which we have to work, and for these allowance must be made.
[201] '[1235] Sicut Stephanus Segrave ... asserebat et affirmabat vetus scutagium ad xxxii. millia scuta assumabatur et irrotulabatur; et ad tantundem plene et plane potuit novum scutagium de novis terris assumari' (Ann. Monast., i. 364).
[202] 'Nine thousand for all England would be a large estimate at any time of the twelfth century' (Early and Middle Ages, i. 375).
[203] The italics represent Anglo-Saxon characters.
[204] Lib. Rub., pp. 188, 214, 237, 238, 292.
[205] Ibid., pp. 211, 214.
[206] Ibid., pp. 214, 292.
[207] Lib. Rub., p. 292.
[208] Ibid., pp. 200, 210.
[209] Ibid., p. 210.
[210] Ibid., pp. 390, 444.
[211] Ibid., p. 429.
[212] Ibid., pp. 431-2.
[213] M. Paris, Additamenta, p. 436. This list, which seems scarcely known, is very valuable for its early date, being, I think, about contemporaneous with the cartae of 1166.
[214] L.R., pp. 229, 245, 356.
[215] 'Et predictus Willelmus dedit predictas tres carucatas terre Osberto vicecomiti pro servicio unius militis.'
[216] Together with castle-guard of thirty knights at Newcastle.
[217] 'Post tempus domini Regis Willelmi Ruffi, qui eos feoffavit.'
[218] Testa, p. 69.
[219] 'Post Conquestum Angliae' (Liber Rubeus, p. 332).
[220] Const. Hist., i. 263.
[221] 'Et deinceps tres (milites) mihi habeat sicut antecessores sui faciebant in septentrionali parte fluminis Tamesie' (1091-1100).—Ramsey Cartulary, i. 234.
[222] Compare the Ely entry (supra p. 213) for 'superplus'.
[223] Could this have been Richard fitz Nigel himself?
[224] Ramsey Cartulary, i. 255. Compare with this expression 'in rotulo scripti', the Conqueror's command (infra), that the number of knights 'in annalibus annotarentur'.
[225] Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. 50.
[226] It enables us to correct such an entry in the Black Book as 'Radulfus Maindeherst', by identifying him with Ralph Mowyn, the tenant at Hurst. It supplies an entry as to Henry de 'Wichetone' (Whiston) which is omitted in L.R., and entered in L.N., with wrong name and wrong holding; and, better still, it shows that Silvester of Holwell held only 2 hides, not 12, as given in error, both in L.N., and L.R. The existence of this error in both bears, of course, on their relation (cf. p. 287, supra).
[227] Const. Hist., i. 357. Gneist writes that Matthew's statement 'is for good reasons called in question by Stubbs' (servitia, i. 255, note).
[228] Cartulary of Abingdon, ii. 3.
[229] Historia Eliensis (ed. 1848), p. 276.
[230] Ibid., p. 274.
[231] 'Praecepit illi (i.e. abbati) ex nutu regis custodiam xl. militum habere in insulam.' Ibid., p. 275. This is the very servitium debitum that appears under Henry II.
[232] Compare for the initiative of the crown, the Domesday phrase, 'miles jussu regis', and the statement that Lanfranc replaced the drengs of his See by knights at the royal command ('Rex praecepit.')
[233] Madox writes (Baronia Anglica, p. 114) bitterly and unjustly: 'In process of time, several of the religious found out another piece of art. They insisted that they held all their land and tenements in frankalmoigne, and not by knight-service.' In the cases he quotes, 'this allegation' was perfectly correct, and was recognized as such by the judges.
[234] Turoldus vero sexaginta et duo hidas terrae de terra ecclesiae Burgi dedit stipendiariis militibus' (John of Peterborough, ed. Giles).
[235] Cart. Abingdon, ii. 3.
[236] Liber Eliensis, p. 275.
[237] 'De militibus Archiepiscopis.' 8th Report on Historical MSS., i. 316.
[238] Ibid.
[239] A charter of Henry I (Mon. Ang., vi. 496) addressed 'Willelmo Episcopo Exoniensi et Ricardo filio Baldwini vicecomiti' (see p. [256]37) contains the clause: 'Prohibeo ne aliquis præter monachos ipsas terras amplius teneat vel alias aliquas quæ de dominio ecclesie fuerunt, exceptis illis quas Gaufridus abbas dedit ad servicium militare.' Abbot Geoffrey is said to have died in 1088. A curious difficulty has been raised about the words in italics. It is argued in Alford's Abbots of Tavistock (p. 68) that as, according to Mr Freeman, military tenures did not exist in Abbot Geoffrey's day, there was perhaps a second abbot of that name to whom that charter refers. But he is only introduced by Mr Alford under protest; and we see now that there is no need for him. Henry's charter being witnessed by Ralph, Archbishop of Canterbury, William, the King's son, and the Count of Meulan, at Odiham, belongs, I may observe to 1114-16.
[240] 'Quis stipendii annuis quotidianisque cibis immane quantum populabantur' (Will. Malmesb., Gesta Pontificum).
[241] Liber Eliensis, p. 275.
[242] Cart. Abingdon, ii. 3.
[243] Ibid., p. 2331: 'misit ... in Normanniam pro cognatis suis, quibus multas possessiones ecclesiae dedit et feoffavit, ita ut in anno lxx. de possessionibus ecclesiae eis conferret.'
[244] Cott. MS. Vesp. B. xxiv. f. 8, 'Randulfus frater abbatis Walterii habet in Withelega iii. hidas de dominio, etc., etc. ... dono Walterii Abbatis contradicente capitulo'. This was the 'Rannulfum [sic] fratrem ejusdem Walteri abbatis ... qui cum fratre suo tenebat illud placitum' (temp. Will. I), whom the Bishop of Worcester's knights challenged to trial by battle (Heming's Chart. Wig., ed. Hearne, p. 82). His holding was represented in 1166 by the fees of Randulf de Kinwarton and Randulf de Coughton. Other cases of contested enfeoffment by Abbots Walter and Robert are those of Hugh Travers and Hugh de Bretfertun.
[245] See the carta of 1166, which explains how this holding became half a fee.
[246] 'Miles quidam, Odo nomine, dono praedecessoris mei Sifridi abbatis, ob graciam cusjusdam consobrinae suae, quam idem Odo conjugem duxerat ... tria maneria de dominio sibi astrinxerat ... invitis fratribus. Alius quidam ... dono abbatis ... tamen absque fratrum consensu manerium possidebat' (Domerham, p. 306).
[247] ' De his terris quas, ut diximus, suo tempore acquisivit, quibusdam bonis hominibus pro magna necessitate et honore ecclesiae dedit, et inde Deo et sibi fideliter quamdiu vixit serviebant' (Chronicon Evesh., p. 96). His successor, Walter (1077-86), incited by his own young relatives, 'noluit homagium a pluribus bonis hominibus quos praedecessor suus habuerat suscipere eo quod terras omnium, si posset, decrevit auferre' (Ibid., p. 98). In the result, 'dicitur quod fere omnes milites hujus abbatiae haereditavit' (Ibid., p. 91).
[248] He begged Anselm that 'terras ecclesiae quas ipse rex, defuncto Lanfranco, suis dederat pro statuto servicio, illis ipsis haereditario jure tenendas, causa sui amoris, condonaret' (Eadmer).
[249] Foundation charter of Alcester Priory.
[250] Three other documents are found on the same folio. Of these the first is addressed to Lanfranc, Odo of Bayeux, Bishop Wulfstan, and Urse d'Abetot, and witnessed by Bishop Geoffrey (of Coutances) and (like our writ) by Eudo Dapifer, being also witnessed, like it, at Winchester. It is noteworthy that it grants Æthelwig the Hundred of Fishborough 'in potestate et justitia sua'.
[251] Cott. MS. Vesp. B. xxvi. f. 15[18].
[252] 'Rex commisit ei curam istarum partium terrae ... ita ut omnium hujus patriae consilia atque judicia fere in eo penderent' (Hist. Evesham).]
[253] Florence of Worcester.
[254] 'Cernens itaque rex grande sibi periculum imminere, debitum servitium ... exigit' (Liber Eliensis, p. 276).
[255] 'Rex Henricus contra fratrem suum Robertum, Normanniae comitem, super se in Anglia cum exercitu venientem, totius regni sui expeditionem dirigit' (Cart. Abingdon, ii. 121).
[256] In the former case, between the crown and its tenant; in the latter, between the tenant and his under-tenant.
[257] 'Idem [Godcelinus de Riveria] dicebat se non debere facere servitium, nisi duorum militum, pro feudo quem tenebat de ecclesia, et abbas et sui dicebant eum debere servitium trium militum' (Cart. Abingdon, ii. 129). 'Cum a quodam duos milites ad servicium regis exigerem (tantum enim inde deberi ab olim a commilitonibus didiceram) ipse toto conatu obstitit, unius dumtaxat se militis servicio obnoxium obtestans.'—Henry, Abbot of Glastonbury (Domerham, p. 318).
[258] Thus undermining Mr Freeman's argument: 'We hear of nothing in Domesday which can be called knight-service or military tenure in the later sense; the old obligations would remain; the primeval duty of military service, due, not to a lord as lord, but to the state and to the king as its head, went on,' etc. (Norm. Conq., v. 371).
[259] Norm. Conq., v. 865.
[260] Cartulary of Abingdon, ii. 3-7.
[261] 'In Winteham tenet Hubertus de Abbate v. hidas de terra villanorum' (i. 58b).
[262] 'Hubertus i. militem pro v. hidis in Witham' (p. 4).
[263] 'In Wichtham de terra villanorum curiae Cumenore obsequi solitorum, illo ab abbate cuidam militi nomine Huberto v. hidarum portio distributa est' (p. 7).
[264] See Cart. Ab., ii. 138. Cf. Domesday, i. 58b: 'Willelmus tenet de abbate Leie.'
[266] This distinction, it will be found, is preserved in Henry's Charter of Liberties (1101): 'nec ... aliquid accipiam [1] de dominico ecclesiae vel [2] de hominibus ejus'.]
[267] See my paper on 'The Knights of Peterborough', supra, p. 131.
[268] In the transcript of the original return it is: 'habet hugo de bolebech ... de waltero giffard'.
[269] Inquisitio Eliensis (O. 2. 1), f. 210, et seq. (see below, page 349).
[271] Hemingi Chartularium (ed. Hearne), 1723.
[272] Norman Conquest, vol. v.
[273] Interlineation.
[274] Dapifer to Bishop Wulfstan.
[275] He witnessed, as 'Ordric Niger', the conventio between Bishop Wulfstan and Abbot Walter of Evesham, and was perhaps Bishop Wulfstan's reeve (Heming, p. 420).
[276] Probably Bishop Wulfstan's chancellor.
[277] Although, from his ignorance of this document, Dr Stubbs was not aware of Ranulf's modus operandi, its evidence affords a fresh illustration of his unfailing insight, and of his perfect grasp of the problem even in the absence of proof. 'The analogy', he writes, 'of lay fiefs was applied to the churches with as much minuteness as possible.... Ranulf Flambard saw no other difference between an ecclesiastical and a lay fief than the superior facilities which the first gave for extortion.... The church was open to these claims because she furnished no opportunity for reliefs, wardships, marriage, escheats, or forfeiture' (Const. Hist., pp. 298-300).
[278] It has been urged to me that relief on mutatio domini was a recognized practice, but I cannot find proof of it in English feudalism.
[279] 'Nec mortuo archiepiscopo, sive episcopo, sive abbate, aliquid accipiam de dominico ecclesiae vel de hominibus ejus donec successor in eam ingrediatur.'
[280] There is a very important allusion to it, as introduced under Rufus, in the Abingdon Cartulary, ii. 42: 'Eo tempore [1097] infanda usurpata est in Anglia consuetudo, ut si qua prelatorum persona ecclesiarum vita decederet mox honor ecclesiasticus fisco deputaretur regis.'
[281] Compare the words of the chronicle on the king claiming to be heir of each man, lay or clerk, with the expression 'honor in manum meam rediit'.
[282] 'Rogerium de Glocestra, probatum militem, in obsessione Falesiae arcubalistae jactu in capite percussum' (William of Malmesbury, ii. 475).