The Biographer of the Durham bishops has a story to tell of Flambard at this time of his life. Some of those who had suffered by his false accusations and his other devices, seemingly persons about the court, make a plan to get rid of him altogether. A certain Gerald undertakes the task. He meets the Chaplain—Flambard is so called in a marked way throughout the story—in London, and tells him a feigned tale that his old master Bishop Maurice is lying at the point of death in one of his houses on the banks of the Thames—Stepney perhaps; it cannot be Fulham (see Domesday, 127 b) as the story shows—and wishes greatly to see Flambard once more before he dies. He himself had been sent by the Bishop with a boat to bring him with the more speed. Flambard, suspecting no harm, enters the boat with a few followers. The boat goes down the river to a distance which puzzles the Chaplain, who is put off with false excuses. At last he sees a larger vessel anchored in the middle of the stream, and clearly waiting for his coming. He now understands the plot. He is carried into the ship, which he finds full of armed men. With admirable presence of mind, he drops his ring, and his notary (“notarius suus”) drops his seal (“sigillum illius”), into the middle of the river—somewhat after the manner of James the Second—that they may not be used to give currency to any forged documents (“ne per hæc ubique locorum per Angliam cognita, simulata præcepta hostibus decipientibus transmissa rerum perturbarent statum”). Then his men are allowed to go on shore, on taking an oath that they will tell no one that their lord has been carried off. The ship puts out to sea, and presently goes with full sail southward. The Chaplain sits in the stern, while the sailors debate what kind of death he shall die. Two sons of Belial are chosen, who, for the wages of the fine clothes which Flambard has on, will either throw him into the sea or brain him with clubs (“Eliguntur duo filii Belial, qui illum in fluctus projicerent, vel fracto fustibus cerebro enecarent, habituri pretium sceleris optimas quibus tunc indutus fuerat vestes”). The would-be murderers dispute who shall have his mantle, and this delay saves his life. By this time the wind changes; a storm comes from the south, night comes on, the ship is dashed about hither and thither; there is no hope save to try to go back in the direction by which they have come. At this point they again debate the question of Flambard’s death. There is now a fear lest he should escape and avenge the wrong done to him. But, as is usual in such stories, one was found who was of milder mood; his name is not given, but he held the place in the ship next after Gerald (“quidam secundus in navi a Geraldo tantum exhorrens scelus”). He is struck with remorse; he confesses his crime to Flambard, and says that, if he will grant him his pardon, he will do what he can for him and stand by him as his companion in life or death. Then Flambard, whose spirit we are told always rose with danger, speaks to Gerald in a loud voice; Gerald is his man, whose faith is pledged to him; he will not prosper if he ventures on such a crime as this (“Tunc ille, sicut magnanimus semper erat in periculis, ingenti clamore vociferans, quid tu, inquit, Geralde, cogitas? Quid de nobis machinaris? Homo meus es; fidem mihi debes; hanc violare non tibi cedet in prosperum”). He calls on him to give up his wicked purpose; let him name his reward, and he shall have it; he will give him his hand as a sign of his own good faith (“Pete quantum volueris. Ego sum qui plura petitis præstare potero; et ne discredas promissis, ecce manu affirmo quod polliceor”). Gerald, having less faith in his promises than fear of his power, agrees. He goes back to the haven, and receives Flambard in his own house near the shore (“Ille non tam promissis illectus, quam potentia viri exterritus, consentit, eductumque de navi jam in portum repulsa honorifico in sua domo quæ litori prominebat procuravit apparatu”). But, still not trusting Flambard, he took himself off for ever (“Nequaquam credulus promissorum fugæ præsidium iniens æterno disparuit exilio”). Flambard goes back to London with a great array (“Ranulphus vero accitis undique militibus multa armatorum manu grandique strepitu deducitur Lundoniam”). All are amazed to see him whom they had believed to be dead. He takes his old place in the King’s counsels; he rises higher in the King’s favour than ever, and no man dares to form any more schemes against him as long as the King lives.
There seems no reason why this story should not be true; true or false, it is characteristic. Just as in the later case of Thomas of London, we see the greatness to which men of the class of Randolf Flambard could rise—their wealth, power and splendour, their numerous and even knightly following. One is tempted to ask something more about Gerald the author of this daring plot against Flambard’s life. Except that he is said to have gone away for ever, one would be tempted to think that he must be the same as Gerard—the two names are easily confounded—afterwards Bishop of Hereford and Archbishop of York, a man seemingly of much the same class and disposition as Flambard himself, and who appears (see pp. 524, 543) as a ready instrument of the will of William Rufus.
The alleged Domesday of Randolf Flambard.
I suppose that the story about a new Survey of England, to which Sir Francis Palgrave attached such great importance, may be held to be set aside by the remarks of Dr. Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 302, 348. He rules that in all likelihood Flambard had a hand in the real Domesday, and that Orderic simply made a mistake as to the date, which he is not at all unlikely to have done. Long before Dr. Stubbs wrote, I had come to the conclusion that the story in Orderic, as it stood, could not be accepted. It is found in Orderic’s first account of Flambard (678 C), where he tells us that he persuaded William Rufus to make a new Survey of England. He measured, we are told, by the rope—according, as it would seem, to the measure of Normandy instead of the measure of England—in order in some way to increase the King’s revenue. The words stand thus;
“Hic juvenem fraudulentis stimulationibus inquietavit regem, incitans ut totius Angliæ reviseret descriptionem, Anglicæque telluris comprobans iteraret partitionem, subditisque recideret, tam advenis quam indigenis, quicquid inveniretur ultra certam dimensionem. Annuente rege, omnes carucatas quas Angli hidas vocant, funiculo mensus est et descripsit; postpositisque mensuris quas liberales Angli jussu Eduardi regis largiter distribuerant imminuit, et regales fiscos accumulans colonis arva retruncavit. Ruris itaque olim diutius nacti diminutione et insoliti vectigalis gravi exaggeratione, supplices regiæ fidelitati plebes indecenter oppressit, ablatis rebus attenuavit, et in nimiam egestatem de ingenti copia redegit.”
I do not profess to know exactly what Flambard is here supposed to have done. Sir Francis Palgrave goes into the matter at some length, both in his English Commonwealth (ii. ccccxlvii) and in his History of Normandy (iv. 59). If I rightly understand his meaning, the carucata in the valuation of the Conqueror was not an unvarying amount of the earth’s surface, but differed according to the nature of the land. A carucate of good land would consist of fewer acres than a carucate of bad. Flambard, we are to understand, measured out the land by the rope into carucates of equal size, and exacted from each the full measure of the geld. That is to say, an estate consisting mainly of poor land would be reckoned at many more carucates, and therefore would have to pay a much higher tax, than it had before. I do not say that this may not be the meaning; but the words of Orderic read to me as if they applied to an actual taking away of land, as well as to a mere increase in its taxation. One might almost fancy that, if a man had land of greater extent than answered to his number of carucates according to the new reckoning, the overplus was treated as land to which he had no legal claim, and was therefore confiscated to the crown. But the real question is whether anything of the kind happened at all. It is not mentioned by any writer except Orderic, and it is the kind of thing about which Orderic in his Norman monastery might not be very well informed. It should be remembered, as Lappenberg (ii. 168 of the original, 226 of the English translation) remarks, that Orderic makes no distinct mention of the real Domesday Survey, and this statement may very well have arisen from a confusion between the great Survey of the Conqueror and some of the local surveys of which there were many. Sir Francis Palgrave believed that he had found a piece of Flambard’s Domesday in an ancient lieger-book of Evesham abbey, which the mention of Samson Bishop of Worcester fixes to some date between 1096 and 1112. Of the genuineness of the document there is no doubt; but I cannot see, any more than Lappenberg did, any reason for supposing it to be anything more than a local survey. The passage printed by Sir Francis Palgrave, which he compares with the corresponding part of the Exchequer Domesday—to which it certainly has no likeness—relates wholly to the two towns of Gloucester and Winchcombe, so that it gives no means of seeing whether the number of carucates in any particular estate differs in the two reckonings.
I cannot believe with Lappenberg that “Henricus comes,” who appears among a crowd of not very exalted people as the owner of one burgess at Gloucester, is the future King; it is surely Henry Earl of Warwick.
Dr. Stubbs, while rejecting Orderic’s story altogether, further rejects Sir Francis Palgrave’s explanation of it. He merely hints that Orderic “may refer to a substitution of the short hundred for the long in the reckoning of the hide of land.” But it is safer to look, as he does, on the whole story as a misapprehension.
Of this way of measuring by the rope—whence the Rapes in Sussex—several examples are collected by Maurer, Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark- Hof- Dorf- und Stadtverfassung, 72. 135. Cf. Herodotus, vii. 23; ὤρυσσον δὲ ὧδε· δασάμενοι τὸν χῶρον οἱ βάρβαροι κατὰ ἔθνεα, κατὰ Σάνην πόλιν σχοινοτενὲς ποιησάμενοι.. In Sussex itself we have (see above, [p. 68]) the story of the measuring of the lowy of Lewes by the rope, which is at least more likely than the story told by the same writer (Will. Gem. viii. 15) that the earldom of Hereford passed in this way to Roger of Breteuil; “Cui comitatus Herefordi funiculo distributionis evenit.”