Such slight evidence as we have on the dealings of Henry with the earls is opposed to the view that anything was done, as suggested, "at the coronation" (December 19, 1154). It was not, we have seen, till January, 1156, that charters were granted dealing with the earldoms of Essex and of Oxford. And it can only have been when some time had elapsed since the coronation that Hugh Bigod obtained a charter creating him anew Earl of Norfolk.[830]
To sum up the result of this inquiry, we have now seen that no such beings as "fiscal" earls ever existed. No chronicler mentions the name, and their existence is based on nothing but a false assumption. Stephen did not "incautiously" confer on men in a state of "poverty" the dignity of earl; he did not make provision for them by Exchequer pensions; no promise was made, in the terms between Henry and himself, to degrade or cashier any such earls; and no proof exists that any were so cashiered when Henry came to the throne. Indeed, we may go further and say that Stephen's earldoms all continued, and that their alleged abolition, as a general measure, has been here absolutely disproved.
[799] So also Gneist: "Under Stephen, new comites appear to be created in great numbers, and with extended powers; but these pseudo-earls were deposed under Henry II." (Const. Hist., i. 140, note).
[800] Stubbs, Const. Hist., i. 362. Hence the name of "fiscal earls," invented, I believe, by Dr. Stubbs. See also Addenda.
[801] See also Select Charters, p. 20.
[802] The error arises from a not unnatural, but mistaken, rendering of the Latin. The term "fiscus" was used at the time in the sense of Crown demesne. Thus Stephen claimed the treasures of Roger of Salisbury "quia eas tempore regis Henrici, avunculi et antecessoris sui, ex fisci regii redditibus Rogerius episcopus collegisset" (Will. Malms.). So, too, in the same reign, the Earl of Chester is suspected of treason, "quia regalium fiscorum redditus et castella, quæ violentur possederat reddere negligebat" (Gesta). This latter passage has been misunderstood, Miss Norgate, for instance, rendering it: "to pay his dues to the royal treasury." It means that the earl refused to surrender the Crown castles and estates which he had seized. Again, speaking of the accession of Henry of Essex's fief to the Crown demesne, William of Newburgh writes: "amplissimo autem patrimonio ejus fiscum auxit."
[803] Anno 1155. Under the year 1171 he records a searching investigation by Henry into the alienated demesnes in Normandy.
[804] The erroneous view is also found in a valuable essay on "The Crown Lands," by Mr. S. R. Bird, who writes: "It is true that extensive alienations of those lands [the demesne lands of the Crown] took place during the turbulent reign of Stephen, in order to enable that monarch to endow the new earldoms" (Antiquary, xiii. 160).
[805] The king's "second charter" to Geoffrey de Mandeville is not in point, for it was unconnected with his creation as earl, and was necessitated by the grants of the Empress.
[806] Const. Hist., i. 362.