But the important point is this. Here was Stephen anxious on the one hand to reward the Londoners for their allegiance, and, on the other, to punish Geoffrey for his repeated offences against himself, and yet compelled by the force of circumstances actually to reward Geoffrey at the cost of the Londoners themselves. We need no more striking illustration of the commanding position and overwhelming power which the ambitious earl had now obtained by taking advantage of the rival claims, and skilfully holding the balance between the two parties, as was done by a later king-maker in the strife of Lancaster and York.
Passing over for the present the remarkable expressions which illustrate my theory of the differentiation of the offices of justice and sheriff, I would invite attention to Geoffrey's claim to be placed in the shoes of his grandfather, as an instance of the tendency, in this reign, of the magnates to advance quasi-hereditary claims, often involving, as it were, the undoing of the work of Henry I. William de Beauchamp was anxious to be placed in the shoes of Robert le Despenser; the Beaumont Earl of Leicester in those of William Fitz Osbern; the Earl of Oxford in those of William of Avranches; and Geoffrey himself, we shall find, in those of "Eudo Dapifer."
A point of great importance awaits us in the reference which, in this charter, is made to the Exchequer. I expressed a doubt, when dealing with the first charter of the Empress,[486] as to the supposed total extinction of the working of the Exchequer under Stephen. The author of the Dialogus, though anxious to emphasize its re-establishment under Henry II., goes no further than to speak of its system being "pene prorsus abolitam" in the terrible time of the Anarchy (I. viii.). Now here, in 1141, at the very height, one might say, of the Anarchy, we not only find the Exchequer spoken of as in full existence, but, which is most important to observe, we have the precise Exchequer formulæ which we find under Henry II. The "Terræ datæ," or alienated Crown demesnes, are represented here by the "dominia que de predictis comitatibus data sunt," and the provision that they should be subtracted from the fixed ferm ("a firma subtrahantur") is a formula found in use subsequently, as is, even more, the phrase "ad scaccarium computabuntur."[487]
The next clause deals with castles, that great feature of the time. Here again the accepted view as to Stephen's laxity on the subject is greatly modified by this evidence that even Geoffrey de Mandeville, great as was his power, deemed it needful to secure the royal permission before erecting a castle, and that this permission was limited to a single fortress.[488]
In the next clause we return to the system of counter-bids. As the king had trebled the grants of Crown demesne made to Geoffrey by the Empress, and trebled also the counties which had been placed in his charge by her, so now he trebled the number of enfeoffed knights ("milites feudatos"). The Empress had granted twenty; Stephen grants sixty. Of these sixty, ten were to be held of Geoffrey by his son Ernulf. Here, as before,[489] the question arises: what was the nature of the benefits thus conferred on the grantee? They were, I think, of two kinds. In the first place, Geoffrey became entitled to what may be termed the feudal profits, such as reliefs, accruing from these sixty fees. In the second, he secured sixty knights to serve beneath his banner in war. This, in a normal state of affairs, would have been of no consequence, as he would only have led them to serve the Crown. But in the then abnormal condition of affairs, and utter weakness of the crown, such a grant would be equivalent to strengthening pro tanto the power of the earl as arbiter between the two rivals for the throne.
Independently, however, of its bearing at the time, this grant has a special interest, as placing at our disposal a list of sixty knights' fees, a quarter of a century older than the "cartæ" of the Liber Niger.[490]
At the close of all these specified grants comes a general confirmation of the lost charter of the Queen ("Carta Regine").
Our ignorance of the actual contents of that charter renders it difficult to speak positively as to whether Geoffrey obtained from Stephen all the concessions he had wrung from the Empress, or had to content himself, on some points, with less, while on most he secured infinitely more. Thus, in the matter of "the third penny," which was specially granted him by the Empress, we find this charter of Stephen as silent as had been the former.[491] And the omission of a clause authorizing the earl to deduct it from the ferm of the county virtually implies that he did not receive it. He gained, however, infinitely more by the great reduction in the total ferm. The grant by the Empress of a market at Bushey, and her permission that the market at Newport should be transferred to his castle at Walden, are not repeated in this charter; nor does the king, as his rival had done, grant the earl permission to fortify the Tower at his will, or to retain and strengthen the castles he already possessed. On the other hand, he allowed him, by a fresh concession, to raise an additional stronghold. It may also be mentioned, to complete the comparison, that the curious reference to appeal of treason is not found in the king's charter.
We will now turn from this charter to the movements by which it was followed.
At the close of the invaluable passage from Gervase alluded to above, we read:—