Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

by John Horace Round

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servitia, which formed the only assessment of fiefs down to 1166; (2) the assessment based on the cartae of 1166, which superseded the debita servitia, and is not evidence of their amount.[¹⁸⁴] But then, as I have already explained above, the exchequer official was concerned only with the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,