CHAPTER XI
ADMINISTRATION

The art of government in the eleventh century was still a simple, or at least an untechnical, matter. It demanded rather a strong will in the sovereign than professional knowledge in his ministers: the responsibility was the king’s, and his duty to his subjects was plain and recognised by all men. No one doubted that the maintenance of order was the king’s work, but the method of its performance was left to his discretion. It was not a light task, but it was a task which would be done the better the simpler were the agencies employed, the more immediately each act of government was felt to be the personal act of the head of the state. The time was not ripe for the highly specialised administration of Henry II.; it was bound to take more than twenty years before a trained body of administrators could be elaborated out of the transplanted Norman baronage, before the king had learned to whom he could safely entrust the permanent work of civil government. The Conqueror’s administration was by the nature of the case empirical; neither Normandy nor England had anything to offer in the way of centralised routine, but for all that it is from the simple expedients adopted by William that the medieval constitution of England takes its origin.

Just as in Normandy an indefinite body of “optimates” surrounded the duke, and expected to be consulted on occasions of special importance, so in England the king’s greater tenants, lay and ecclesiastical, formed a potential council, the “Commune Concilium” of later writers. The connection between the council in its English and Norman manifestations was something closer than mere similarity of composition; many a man who witnessed the coronation of Queen Matilda in the Easter Council of 1068 must have sat in the assembly at Lillebonne which discussed the invasion of England; and judging from the evidence of charters the barons who accompany the king when in Normandy will probably appear as lords of English fiefs in the pages of Domesday Book. Roger de Montgomery, Henry de Ferrers, Walter Giffard, Henry de Beaumont—such men as these, who were great on either side the Channel, appear in frequent attendance on their lord, whether at Rouen or at Winchester. Their attendance, indeed, was a guarantee of good faith; the baron who, when summoned, neglected to obey, became thereby a suspected person at once: it was considered a sign of disaffection when Earl Roger of Hereford persistently absented himself from William’s court.

In England we know that it was customary for the king to hold a great council thrice in each year. “Moreover” says the Peterborough chronicler, “he was very worshipful: he wore his crown thrice in every year when he was in England. At Easter he wore it at Winchester, at Whitsuntide at Westminster, at midwinter at Gloucester, and then there were with him all the great men of all England—archbishops and bishops, abbots and earls, thegns and knights”; “in order,” adds William of Malmesbury, “that ambassadors from foreign countries might admire the splendour of the assembly and the costliness of the feasts.” As it is only at these great seasons that the Commune Concilium comes practically into being; we may give a list of those known to be present at the Easter feast of 1069 and the Christmas feast of 1077, to which we may add a list of those in attendance on the king when he held his Easter feast of 1080 in Normandy.[[296]]

It will be clear that an assembly of this kind is eminently unfitted to be the organ of systematic government. These great people, bishops, earls, and abbots, had their own work to do, work which for long periods kept them away from the king’s presence. The Commune Concilium is at most what its name implies, an advisory body. As such it plays the part taken in the Anglo-Saxon policy by the “Witan,” and the question arises whether it can be considered a continuation of that assembly under altered conditions and with restricted powers or whether it proceeds from some quite different principle.

It is plain that the Norman council is in no sense a popular assembly; we certainly cannot say of it, as has been said of the “Witan,” that “every free man had in theory the right to attend.” On the other hand it is probable that the alleged popular composition of the Witan is illusory, while the nature of the body which attended Edward the Confessor might be described equally with the Conqueror’s councils as consisting of “archbishops and suffragan bishops, abbots and earls, thegns and knights.” But it is probable that this similarity of constitution is only superficial. If pressed for a definition of the Commune Concilium we might, perhaps, venture to say that it consisted potentially of all those men who held in chief of the crown by military service, of those tenentes in capite whose estates in Domesday are entered under separate rubrics. This definition would include the great ecclesiastical tenants, while it would exclude the undistinguished crowd of sergeants (servientes) and king’s thegns, and it would suggest one most important respect in which the Commune Concilium differs from its Old English representative. All the members of the Norman council are united to the king by the strongest of all ties, the bond of tenure. That great change, in virtue of which every acre of land in England has come to be held mediately or immediately of the king, influences constitutional no less than social relations; the king’s council is a body composed of men who are his own tenants. From this technical distinction follows a difference of great importance; the king’s influence over his council becomes direct and inevitable to a degree impossible before the Conquest. Under Edward the Confessor it is not impossible for the Witan to be found going its own way with but scanty regard to the personal wishes of the king; under the Conqueror and his sons the king’s will is supreme. Most true is it that the three Norman kings were men of very different quality from the imbecile Edward; but nevertheless, the tenurial bond between the king and his barons made it impossible for the latter when in council to follow an independent political course. The Norman kings were wise enough to entertain advice and too strong for that advice ever to pass into dictation.

EARLDOMS
May 1068

Distinct then as is the Commune Concilium from the Witan, we nevertheless meet in the earliest years of William’s reign with certain assemblies which may fairly be considered as transitional forms between the two. Up to the last revolt of Edwin and Morcar not a few Englishmen continued to hold high positions at William’s court; and among the witnesses to the few charters of this date which have survived there still exists a fair proportion of English names. Such men as Edwin and Morcar themselves must have represented the independent traditions of the Old English Witan, and there are other names which are common to the latest charters of King Edward and the earliest charters of King William. As it is very rarely that we can obtain a glimpse of an assembly of this intermediate type we may subjoin a list of those in attendance on the king at or shortly after the Whitsuntide Council of 1069, taken from a charter restoring to the church of Wells lands which Harold, “inflamed with cupidity,” is said to have appropriated unjustly:

King William; Queen Matilda; Stigand, archbishop; Ealdred, archbishop; Odo, bishop of Bayeux; Hugh, bishop (of Lisieux); Herman, bishop (of Thetford); Leofric, bishop of Exeter; Ethelmer, bishop of Elmham; William, bishop of London; Ethelric, bishop of Selsey; Walter, bishop of Hereford; Remi, bishop of Lincoln; Ethelnoth, abbot of (Glastonbury); Leofweard, abbot of (Michelney); Wulfwold, abbot of Chertsey; Wulfgeat, abbot; Earl William; Earl Waltheof; Earl Edwin; Robert, the king’s brother; Roger, “princeps”; Walter Giffard; Hugh de Montfort; William de Curcelles; Serlo de Burca; Roger de Arundel; Richard, the king’s son; Walter the Fleming; Rambriht the Fleming; Thurstan; Baldwin “de Wailen leige”; Athelheard; Hermenc; Tofig, “minister”; Dinni; “Alfge atte Thorne”; William de Walville; Bundi, the Staller; Robert, the Staller; Robert de Ely; Roger “pincerna”; Wulfweard; Herding; Adsor; Brisi; Brihtric.[[297]]