Geoffrey de Mandeville: A study of the Anarchy

by John Horace Round

Attention may also be called to the formula of "excambion" (as the Scottish lawyers term it) here employed, for it would seem to be earlier than any of those quoted in Madox's Formularium. But the suggested exchange is specially interesting in the case of Count Theobald, because it gives us an historical fact not elsewhere mentioned, namely, that the Empress, on obtaining the mastery, forfeited his lands at once. Her doing so, we should observe, is in strict accordance with the chroniclers' assertions as to her wholesale forfeitures and her special hostility to Stephen's house. And we can go further still. We can ascertain not only that Count Theobald was forfeited, as we have seen, by the Empress, but also that the land she forfeited had been given him by Stephen himself. In a document which I have previously referred to, we read that Stephen had given him the "manor" of Maldon,[336] being that manor of Crown demesne which the Empress here bestows upon Geoffrey.

Another important though difficult subject upon which this charter bears is that of knight-service. Indeed, considering its early date—a quarter of a century earlier than the returns contained in the Liber Niger—it may, in conjunction with Stephen's charter of some six months later, be pronounced to be among our most valuable evidences for what Dr. Stubbs describes as "a subject on which the greatest obscurity prevails."[337]

Let us first notice that the Empress grants "feodum et servicium XX militum," while Stephen grants "LX milites feudatos ... scilicet servicium" of so and so "pro [LX] militibus." Thus, then, the "milites feudatos" of Stephen equates the "feodum et servicium ... militum" of the Empress. And, further, it repeats the remarkable expression employed by Florence of Worcester when he tells us that the Conqueror instructed the Domesday Commissioners to ascertain "quot milites feudatos" his tenants-in-chief possessed, that is to say, how many knights they had enfeoffed. But the Empress in her charter complicates her grant by adding the special clause: "Et servicium istorum XX militum faciet mihi separatim preter aliud servicium alterius feodi sui." Had it not been for this clause, one might have inferred that the object of the grant was to transfer, to Earl Geoffrey the "servicium" of these twenty knights' fees due, of right, to the Crown, so that he might enjoy all such profits as the Crown would have derived from that "servicium," and, at the same time, have employed these knights as substitutes for those which he was bound to furnish, from his own fief, to the Crown. But the above clause is fatal to such a view. Again, both in the charters of the Empress and of her rival, these special grants of knights and their "servicium" are kept entirely distinct from those of Crown demesne or escheated land, which, moreover, are expressed in terms of the "librata terræ." On the whole I lean strongly to the belief that, although the working of the arrangement may be obscure, the object of Geoffrey was to add to the number of the knights who followed his standard, and thus to increase his power as a noble and the weight that he could throw into the scale. And the special clause referred to above would imply that the Crown was to have a claim on him for twenty knights more than those whom he was bound to furnish from his own fief.

Lastly, we may note the identity of the formula employed for the grant of lands and for that of knights' service. In each case the grant is made "pro tanto,"[338] and in each case the Empress undertakes to make good ("perficere") the balance to him within the limit of the three counties of Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Herts.[339]

With the subject of castles I propose to deal later on. But there is one point on which the evidence of this charter is perhaps more important than on any other, and that is in the retrospective light which it throws on the system of reform introduced by the first Henry.

Incidentally, we have here witness to that system, of which the Pipe-Roll of 1130 is the solitary but vivid exponent, and under which the very name of "plea" became a terror to all men. Every man was liable, on the slightest pretext, to be brought within the meshes of the law, with the object, as it seemed, and at least with the result, of swelling the royal hoard (cf. pp. 11, 12, n. 1). Even to secure one's simplest rights money had always to be paid. Thus, here, Geoffrey stipulates that he and his men are to hold their possessions "sine placito," and "ita quod ... non ponantur in ullo modo in placito de aliquo forisfacto," etc., etc. So again, in his later charter, we find him insisting that he and they shall hold all their possessions "sine placito et sine pecuniæ donatione," and that "Rectum eis teneatur de eorum calumpniis sine pecuniæ donatione." The exactions he dreaded meet us at every turn on the Pipe-Roll of 1130.

But, on the other hand, the charter, broadly speaking, illustrates, by the retrograde concessions it extorts, the cardinal factor in the long struggle between the feudal nobles and their lord the king, namely, their jealousy of that royal jurisdiction by which the Crown strove, and eventually with success, to break their semi-independent power, and to bring the whole realm into uniform subjection to the law.

After the clauses conferring on Geoffrey the hereditary shrievalty of Essex, a matter which I shall discuss further on, there immediately follows this passage, the most significant, as I deem it, in the whole charter:—

"Et ut sit Capitalis Justicia in Essexiâ hereditabiliter mea et heredum meorum de placitis et forisfactis que pertinuerint ad coronam meam, ita quod non mittam aliam justiciam super eum in comitatu illo nisi ita sit quod aliquando mittam aliquem de paribus suis qui audiat cum illo quod placita mea juste tractentur."

The first point to be dealt with here is the phrase "Capitalis Justicia in Essexiâ." Here we have the term "capitalis" applied to the justicia of a single county. On this I would lay some stress, for it has been generally supposed that this style was reserved for the Great Justiciary, the alter ego of the king himself.[340]