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.