(10) There should be no miskennings in the Courts, and the hustings should be held every Monday.
What were miskennings? Nobody knows. It is interpreted to mean that a man shall not unjustly prosecute another in any of the City Courts by deserting his first plea and substituting another. According to Norton,[25] it is the same as miscounting, and it means false pleading or mispleading. He goes on to show that the Normans brought with them considerable proficiency in jurisprudence, and a “mischievous dexterity in special pleading, by which the rights of suitors were often made to depend on the ingenuity of the countors (lawyers), rather than on the real merits of the case.”
I have considered this Charter clause by clause, because in it Henry seems to have given the citizens everything that they could ask or obtain by purchase. London was left, save in one respect, absolutely free. In fact, the citizens never did ask for more. The Charter was framed in order to allow the City to get rich without let or hindrance. One right the King reserved: that of taking their money for himself; and this right, there can be no doubt, was the reason why he surrendered all the rest; the reason why London was encouraged to grow so wealthy and so strong. It was a right, however, which was not felt to be a grievance. It was the very essence of things that in a mediæval kingdom the King should be free to tax his subjects. It will be observed that the rights conferred by the Charter of William are not recited here. Probably they were recognised as a matter of common usage, so that it was no longer necessary to repeat them.
[CHAPTER VI]
STEPHEN
The election of Stephen by London is a fact the full importance of which, in the history of the City, was first brought out by the late J. R. Green. This importance signified, in fact, a great deal more than the election of a king by the City of London, a thing by no means new in the history of the City. First, we know that many Normans flocked over to London after the Conquest. Normans there were before that event, but their numbers rapidly increased in consequence. By this time we see that the immigrants no longer considered themselves Normans only, but Londoners as well. William’s Charter especially recognises and provides for this fusion when he “greets all the burgesses in London, Frenchmen and Englishmen, friendly.” The Normans were his subjects as well as the English: they were not, therefore, aliens in his English cities. For instance, Gilbert Becket, father of the Archbishop, was by birth a burgher of Rouen, and his wife was the daughter of a burgher of Caen. But his son Thomas was always an Englishman. The Normans in London, therefore, took their part without question in the election of a king of England. And they elected Stephen rather than Henry, the son of the Empress, because Henry was also the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, and the hatred of Norman for Angevin was greater even than the hatred of Welshman for Englishman. It survived the immigration of the Norman into England; it found expression when King Henry died, and when his stepson Geoffrey of Anjou seemed likely to claim the throne of England, as he claimed the duchy of Normandy, in right of his wife. In Normandy, however, the people rose as one man, and chased him out of the dukedom. In London, the City seems to have assumed the power of electing the King of England, as in the case of Henry, and without consulting bishop, abbot, or noble, did elect Stephen, the nephew of King Henry, and crowned him in Westminster. There were, in fact, two forces working for Stephen. The first was this said Norman jealousy of Anjou. The second was perhaps stronger. The religious revival of which we spoke as belonging to the reign of Henry, was spreading over the whole of western Europe. Green calls it the first of the great religious movements which England was to experience. He seems to forget, however, that there was a much earlier religious movement, which filled the monasteries and weakened the country, by draining it of fighting-men, in the eighth century.
“Everywhere in town and country men banded themselves together for prayer, hermits flocked to the woods, noble and churl welcomed the austere Cistercians as they spread over the moors and forests of the North. A new spirit of enthusiastic devotion woke the slumber of the older orders, and penetrated alike to the home of the noble Walter d’Espec at Rievaulx, or of the trader Gilbert Becket in Cheapside. It is easy to be blinded in revolutionary times, such as those of Stephen, by the superficial aspects of the day; but, amidst the wars of the Succession, and the clash of arms, the real thought of England was busy with deeper things. We see the force of the movement in the new class of ecclesiastics that it forces on the stage. The worldliness that had been no scandal in Roger of Salisbury becomes a scandal in Henry of Winchester. The new men, Thurstan, and Ailred, and Theobald, and John of Salisbury—even Thomas himself—derive whatever weight they possess from sheer holiness of life or aim.”—Historical Studies.
The outward sign of this movement was the foundation of many religious houses, and the building of many churches. The number and importance of the foundations created in or about London, not taking into account those founded in the country, within a space of about twenty years, indicate in themselves a widespread, deep-rooted, religious feeling. It was an age of fervent faith; Stephen himself, rough soldier that he was, felt its influence.
Now this religious fervour was openly scorned and scoffed at and derided by the Angevins. Contempt for religion was hereditary with them. From father to son they gloried in deriding holy things. In the words of Green: “A lurid grandeur of evil, a cynical defiance of religious opinion, hung alike round Fulc Nerra, or Fulc Rechin, or Geoffrey Plantagenet. The murder of a priest by Henry Fitz-Empress, the brutal sarcasms of Richard, the embassy of John to the Moslems of Spain, were but the continuance of a series of outrages on the religious feelings of the age which had begun long ere the lords of Anjou became Kings of England.”
To the reasons why the City had taken upon itself to elect and to crown Stephen, viz. the Norman hatred of Anjou, and resentment against the man of no religion, must be added two more: the conviction that a strong armed man, and not a woman, was wanted for the country; and a general restlessness which, the moment the old king was dead, broke out everywhere in acts of lawlessness and robbery.