Anglo-Norman Studies 28: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2005

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XXVIII PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2005

The latest volume in the series concentrates, as always, on the half century before and the century after 1066, with papers which have many interconnections and range across different kinds of history. There is a particular focus on church history, with contributions on an AngloSaxon archiepiscopal manual, architecture and liturgy in post-Conquest Lincolnshire, Anglo-Norman cathedral chapters, and twelfth-century views of the tenth-century monastic reform. Other topics considered include social history (the Anglo-Norman family), gender (William of Malmesbury’s representation of Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester), and politics (the sheriffs of Northumberland and Cumberland 1170–1185). The volume is completed with an article on Domesday Book and a double paper on land tenure and royal patronage. CHRIS LEWIS is VCH Editor for Sussex at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XXVIII PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2005

Edited by C. P. Lewis

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Editor and Contributors 2005, 2006 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2006 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 1 84383 217 8 ISSN 0954–9927 Anglo-Norman Studies (Formerly ISSN 0261–9857: Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies)

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this series is available from the British Library

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CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, AND TABLES EDITOR’S PREFACE ABBREVIATIONS

Inside the Anglo-Norman Family: Love, Marriage, and the Family (R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture) John S. Moore Land Tenure and Royal Patronage in the Early English Kingdom: A Model and a Case Study Stephen Baxter and John Blair The Homilies of a Pragmatic Archbishop’s Handbook in Context: Cotton Tiberius A. iii Tracey-Anne Cooper Robert de Vaux and Roger de Stuteville, Sheriffs of Cumberland and Northumberland, 1170–1185 Hugh Doherty The Common Steeple? Church, Liturgy, and Settlement in Early Medieval Lincolnshire Paul Everson and David Stocker The Question of Masculinity in William of Malmesbury’s Presentation of Wulfstan of Worcester Kirsten A. Fenton Share and Share Alike? Bishops and their Cathedral Chapters: The Domesday Evidence Vanessa King Dunstan and Monastic Reform: Tenth-Century Fact or Twelfth-Century Fiction? Nicola Robertson Domesday Now David Roffe

vi vii viii 1

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, AND TABLES Land Tenure and Royal Patronage Table 1 Evidence suggesting comital control of Midland earldoms in Edward 27 the Confessor’s reign Map 1 Bampton hundred and royal patronage in late Anglo-Saxon England 30–31 Table 2 Analysis of Domesday Book for Bampton hundred 32–33 The Homilies of a Pragmatic Archbishop’s Handbook Table 1 The homilies in T Table 2 Contents of British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii Table 3 The occurrence of T’s homilies in other manuscripts

51 62 63

The Common Steeple? Fig. 1

Lincoln, St Peter-at-Gowts: view from SW, published as a postcard by S. Smith of Lincoln (David Stocker and Paul Everson, Summoning St Michael: Early Romanesque Towers in Lincolnshire, Oxford 2006, fig. 4/119) Fig. 2 York, St Mary Bishophill Junior: diagram to interpret evidence for bell hanging recovered through archaeological survey by York Archaeological Trust, after L. P. Wenham, R. A. Hall, C. M. Briden, and D. A. Stocker, St Mary Bishophill Junior and St Mary Castlegate, Archaeology of York 8/2, London 1987, fig. 41 (© York Archaeological Trust/Council for British Archaeology) (Summoning St Michael, fig. 2/52) Fig. 3 Diagrams to illustrate viewsheds from windows in first-floor chambers of selected towers: Coleby, Winterton, Rothwell (Summoning St Michael, fig. 2/49) Fig. 4 Lincoln, St Mary-le-Wigford: view of tower east wall from nave (Summoning St Michael, fig. 4/115) Fig. 5 Typical example of plan-form analysis of a settlement: Harmston Fig. 6 Stoke Dry, St Andrew, Leicestershire: early twelfth-century sculpted shaft Table 1 Synoptic listing of the study group of towers Table 2 Churches arranged by topographical group Table 3 Domesday profile of topographically ‘Type 2’ churches

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107

109 110 116 122 105 118 120

Domesday Now Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4

The summaries of the Domesday corpus Burton abbey’s overstocked Domesday manors and inland in 1114 The value and renders of Bury free men Domesday assessments and values in West Derby hundred in Lancashire

174 180 182 183

EDITOR’S PREFACE The 28th Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies took place between 28 July and 1 August 2005 at its customary venue, Pyke House. The opening reception and the Allen Brown Memorial Lecture were held at Battle Abbey through the kindness of the headmaster of Battle Abbey School, Roger Clark. The papers published here are those delivered at the conference, with the exception of Howard Clarke, ‘Evesham J and Evesham L: two early twelfth-century manorial surveys’, which it is hoped to include in a future volume. David Roffe was not on the advertised programme, and it is good to be able to recognize here his offer to read a paper at less than 24 hours notice to fill an unexpected gap. Besides the papers, the conference heard an introduction to the Acta of Henry I database by Richard Sharpe and Hugh Doherty. The outing, on Saturday 30 July, took in the Kentish churches of Patrixbourne, Coldred, and Postling and the little-known earthwork castle at Coldred. It was led, as so many memorable Battle outings have been, by Tim Tatton-Brown. Warmest thanks are also extended to the incumbents and churchwardens of the three churches, Mr Ian Macdonald of Coldred (owner of the earthworks), and the landlord and staff of the Unicorn at Bekesbourne for their parts in making the day so enjoyable. The unpublishable parts of the Battle conference go a long way towards explaining its success, notably this year a display of medieval arms and armour by Ian Peirce and exhibits of new books by Boydell & Brewer and Oxford University Press. The conference was also marked by a small beginning (its first PowerPoint presentations) and a rather more momentous ending, in that Marjorie Chibnall had let it be known that it would be the last Battle she attended. Battle’s debt to Marjorie is scarcely calculable: she ensured that the conference continued after its founder Allen Brown’s death, directed it for five years, and served as chair and then secretary of the Allen Brown Memorial Trust for many more. Those at the 2005 conference marked the occasion of her retirement from attendance and her imminent 90th birthday with a gift of books, through the generosity of Oxford University Press. The special atmosphere of the Battle conference owes everything to the calm efficiency of the staff at Pyke House, to Ian Peirce’s tireless work before and during the conference, and to the continuing support of the principal of Hastings College of Arts & Technology, Julie Walker. It is a real pleasure for a new director to be able to thank them all. The timely appearance of this volume depends on many people at Boydell & Brewer. It owes most of all to Caroline Palmer, whose support throughout the year from conference to publication, and refusal to panic under any circumstances, make every deadline almost a pleasure to meet. Further information about the Battle Conference can be seen at www. battleconference.com. Chris Lewis

ABBREVIATIONS ANS ASC

ASC, trans. Swanton ASE BAR BIHR Bodl. Book of Fees Cal. Chart. R. Cal. Pat. Chronicles, ed. Howlett Complete Peerage

Curia Regis Rolls

Dialogus de Scaccario

Dugdale, Monasticon EcHR EEA EHD I EHD II EHR EME EPNS

Anglo-Norman Studies Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, cited by year (corrected in square brackets if necessary) and manuscript; unless otherwise stated the edition is Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Charles Plummer, 2 vols, Oxford 1892–9 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. and ed. M. J. Swanton, London 1996 Anglo-Saxon England British Archaeological Reports Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research Bodleian Library, Oxford Liber Feodorum: The Book of Fees, commonly called Testa de Nevill, 3 vols, HMSO 1920–31 Calendar of the Charter Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, 6 vols, HMSO 1903–27 Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, 71 vols, HMSO 1891–1986 Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. Richard Howlett, 4 vols, RS 82, 1884–9 G. E. C[okayne], The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant, new edn by Vicary Gibbs and others, 12 vols, London 1910–59 Curia Regis Rolls of the Reigns of Richard I and John, preserved in the Public Record Office, 7 vols, HMSO 1922–35; Curia Regis Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, preserved in the Public Record Office, 12 vols, HMSO and PRO 1938–2002 Dialogus de Scaccario (The Course of the Exchequer) by Richard fitz Nigel, and Constitutio Domus Regis (The Establishment of the Royal Household), ed. and trans. C. Johnson, revised by F. E. L. Carter and D. E. Greenway, Oxford 1983 William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, new edn by Henry Ellis and Bulkeley Bandinel, 6 vols, London 1817–30 Economic History Review English Episcopal Acta English Historical Documents, c. 500–1042, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, 2nd edn, London 1979 English Historical Documents, 1042–1189, ed. David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway, 2nd edn, London 1981 English Historical Review Early Medieval Europe English Place-Name Society

Exon

Exon Domesday, cited from Libri Censualis, vocati Domesday Book, Additamenta, London 1816 EYC Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. C. T. Clay, 10 vols, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1935–65 Farrer, EYC W. Farrer, Early Yorkshire Charters, 3 vols, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1914–16 GDB Great Domesday Book, followed by folio number, a or b (for recto or verso), and 1 or 2 (for the column), cited from Domesday Book, seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi, 2 vols, London 1783, I, or from Great Domesday Book: Library Edition, ed. Ann Williams and R. W. H. Erskine, Alecto Historical Editions, London 1986–92; followed in parentheses by the abbreviated county name and the entry number (substituting an oblique for a comma between the first and second parts) used in Domesday Book, ed. John Morris and others, 34 vols, Phillimore, London 1974–86 Gesetze, ed. Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Felix Liebermann, 3 vols, Liebermann Halle 1903–16 Gesta Stephani Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis, Oxford 1976 Giraldi Cambrensis Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer, James F. Dimock, Opera and George F. Warner, 8 vols, RS 21, 1861–91 Harmer, AS Writs F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, 2nd edn, Stamford 1989 Howden, Chronica Chronica Rogeri de Houedene, ed. William Stubbs, 4 vols, RS 51, 1868–71 Howden, Gesta Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi [now attributed to Roger of Regis Howden], ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols, RS 49, 1867 HSJ Haskins Society Journal Huntingdon Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People, ed. and trans. Diana Greenway, Oxford 1996 IE Inquisitio Eliensis, in Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis [and] Inquisitio Eliensis, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, London 1876 JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History JMH Journal of Medieval History John of Worcester The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, II–III, Oxford 1995–8 LDB Little Domesday Book, followed by folio number and a or b (for recto or verso), cited from Domesday Book, seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi, 2 vols, London 1783, II, or from Little Domesday Book: Library Edition, ed. Ann Williams, Alecto Historical Editions, London 2000; followed in parentheses by the abbreviated county name and the entry number (substituting an oblique for a comma between the first and second parts) used in Domesday Book, ed. John Morris and others, 34 vols, Phillimore, London 1974–86 Letters of Lanfranc The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson, Oxford 1979

Malmesbury, De Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi de Gestis Pontificum Gestis Pontificum Anglorum Libri Quinque, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, RS 52, 1870 Malmesbury, Gesta William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History Regum of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols, Oxford 1998–9 ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Orderic The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols, Oxford 1969–80 Pat. R. Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III preserved in the Public Record Office, 2 vols, HMSO 1901–3 PR The Great Roll of the Pipe for [regnal year, king], Pipe Roll Society, except for 31 Henry I, HMSO 1929; 2–4 Henry II, ed. Joseph Hunter, London 1844; 1 Richard I, ed. Joseph Hunter, London 1844; 26 Henry III, ed. Henry Louis Cannon, London 1918 PRO Public Record Office, Kew (now The National Archives) RBE The Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. Hubert Hall, 3 vols, RS 99, 1896 Regesta I Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1154, I: 1066–1100, ed. H. W. C. Davis and R. J. Whitwell, Oxford 1913 Regesta II Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1154, II: 1100–1135, ed. Charles Johnson and H. A. Cronne, Oxford 1956 Regesta III Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1154, III: 1135–1154, ed. H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davis, Oxford 1968 Regesta: William I Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. David Bates, Oxford 1998 RS Rolls Series (Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, Published under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls) S P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, London 1968 Symeonis Monachi Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. Thomas Arnold, 2 vols, Opera RS 75, 1882–5 TRE tempore regis Eadwardi (‘in King Edward’s time’), i.e. 1066 TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society TRW tempore regis Willelmi (‘in King William’s time’), i.e. 1086 VCH The Victoria History of the Counties of England [with county name], in progress Vita Eadwardi The Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminster, Attributed to a Monk of Saint-Bertin, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow, 2nd edn, Oxford 1992 Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. and trans. Dorothy Whitelock, AS Wills Cambridge 1930

Inside the Anglo-Norman F amily

R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture

INSIDE THE ANGLO-NORMAN FAMILY: LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND THE FAMILY John S. Moore The Director will, I hope, recall his jesting response when I first suggested this topic to him: ‘I assume there is something to be said about it.’1 The ill-informed will impute sarcasm: better-educated persons who know that Victoria County History editors have to be expert in every period of English history from Roman Britain to the present will recognize knowledge and good sense. Most of the sources to which scholars of the early modern or modern periods would immediately turn for enlightenment on the subject of family love – wills, ecclesiastical court depositions, diaries, autobiographies, biographies, private correspondence, from the eighteenth century onwards newspapers – are of course absent in our period. By contrast the AngloNorman period must indeed seem both loveless and unlovely: remember Sir Frank Stenton’s famous closing denunciation: ‘The Normans who entered into the English inheritance were a harsh and violent race. They were the closest of all western peoples to the barbarian strain in the continental order.’2 And myths about the historical family abound: one, that the family in the past was a much larger entity than the modern nuclear family, I have tried to demolish here on another occasion.3 Linked to that myth is another, that the family in the past was loveless, brought into being by an arranged marriage, insulated from parental love by high infant and child mortality (which, alas, is a fact), so that parents would delay investing in love lest their children die. The assumption that arranged marriages are ipso facto unhappy is quite simply born out of ignorance and a modern Western presupposition that all happy marriages must be based on romantic love. But this assumption is not supported either by studies of family life in the Indian subcontinent where both Hindus and Muslims have for centuries past accepted arranged marriages as the basis of family life4 or by 1

I thank the Director and the R. Allen Brown Memorial Trust for the great honour of asking me to deliver the R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture: I am very happy to do so because I was the last ‘new boy’ recruited to the Battle Conference by Allen Brown. Allen notoriously was no friend to sociology or social history but I think he would have approved of my theme: he was after all a very happy husband and a proud father. Although I shall be saying very little about castles tonight, charters and (even more so) chronicles are my principal quarries for source material. 2 F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn, Oxford 1971, 687. 3 J. S. Moore, ‘The Anglo-Norman Family: Size and Structure’, ANS 14, 1991 (1992), 153–96. 4 The literature on the family in the Indian subcontinent is voluminous, but for the most part takes arranged marriages in traditional South Asian society for granted, e.g. M. N. Srinivas, Marriage and Family in Mysore, Bombay 1942, chaps III, VI; Indian Women, ed. D. Jain, Delhi 1975, chaps 6–7, 12; The Family in India: A Regional View, ed. G. Kurian, The Hague 1974; Family, Kinship and Marriage among Muslims in India, ed. I. Ahmad, Delhi 1976, 45–6, 66–70, 93–8, 179–85, 235, 274–80, 306–8; Indian Women: From Purdah to Modernity , ed. B. R. Nanda, Delhi 1976, 76, 106–7, 110, 125; Indian Women Today, ed. G. Khanna and M. A. Varghese, Delhi 1978, 11–13, 18–19, 21–3; Cross-Cultural Perspectives of Mate-Selection and Marriage, ed. G. Kurian, Westport CT 1979; P. Hershman, Punjabi Kinship and

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modern British divorce rates. As we shall see later, it is also untrue for AngloNorman England. And a recent detailed study of marriage in Tudor Kent has shown that arranged marriages and marriages for romantic love were not stark alternatives, as modern mythology would have us believe, that there was a wide spectrum of arrangements and negotiations involving the parents and ‘friends’ of would-be spouses, and that such arrangements would take account of affection and love (or their absence) between future husbands and wives.5 But it is futile to deal in suppositions: what we need is evidence. My approach is empirical, with no access to postmodernist certainties! And the search for evidence is not helped by the long-term trend of medieval historians since Round’s infamous denunciation of ‘Mr Freeman, his errors’ to prefer archival sources to literary sources, since, in our period at least, the archives do not in general touch on love or the affections. Not in general, certainly, but not absolutely. Even such a dry-as-dust source as Domesday Book has at least one mention of love, which we owe, as we all owe so much in the field of Domesday studies, to Ann Williams for bringing to our attention: ‘a man of Wihenoc’s loved a certain woman on that land [Pickenham, Norf.] and married her. Later he held that land as part of Wihenoc’s fief.’6 Almost equally dry-as-dust and unemotional as sources are medieval charters, but the general context is often revealing and again the rule-proving exception can be significant. As is well known, many charters give (or confirm the giving of) land to religious bodies in return for prayers pro anima, for the souls of, very frequently, named fathers and mothers, wives and children. This may simply be a matter of obligation but it is surely difficult to argue that such benefits did not often, even usually, result from feelings of love and respect. Occasionally, the motivation is made explicit: in May 1278 John de Bretagne, duke of Brittany and earl of Richmond, founded a chantry in Richmond castle to be staffed by six canons from Egglestone abbey (Dur.) to celebrate mass ‘especially (specialiter) for the soul of Lady Beatrice, his former Marriage, Delhi 1981, chap. 7; K. M. Kapadia, Marriage and Family in India, 4th edn, Calcutta 1982, chaps 6–9. The institution only comes under threat with pronounced change or stress, as a result of intermarriage or urbanization: A. D. Ross, The Hindu Family in its Urban Setting, Toronto 1961, 155–9, 252–9, 279, 288; C. T. Kannan, Intercaste and Inter-Community Marriages in India, Bombay 1963; Urbanization and Family Change, ed. M. S. Gore, Bombay 1968, chaps X–XI; S. Vatuk, Kinship and Urbanization: White-Collar Migrants in North India, London 1972, chap. IV; Indian Women, ed. Nanda; G. N. Ramu, Family and Caste in Urban India, Delhi 1977, chap. III; Cross-Cultural Perspectives , ed. Kurian, 169–90; I. Papps, For Love or Money: A Preliminary Analysis of the Economics of Marriage and the Family , London 1980, 20–1, 45–8; G. N. Ramu, Women, Work and Marriage in Urban India, London 1989, 155–6. For arranged marriages of South Asians in modern Britain, see C. T. Kannan, Inter-Racial Marriages in London, Greenford 1972, chap. III; P. Jeffrey, Migrants and Refugees: Muslim and Christian Pakistani Families in Bristol, Cambridge 1976; J. H. Taylor, The Halfway Generation, London 1976, chap. 13; B. C. Parekh, The Indian Family, Southall 1977, 3–4, 7–11; H. Tinker, The Banyan Tree: Overseas Emigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Oxford 1977; Between Two Cultures: Migrants and Minorities in Britain, ed. J. L. Watson, Oxford 1977, 45–50; C. T. Kannan, Cultural Adaptation of Asian Immigrants, Greenford 1978, 22–3, 45–6, 48–51, 128–39; Minority Families in Britain: Support and Stress , ed. V. S. Khan, London 1979, 8, 123–6, 178–80; N. Gahir, ‘An Insight into the Institution of Arranged Marriage within the Sikh Community in Britain’, Bristol Univ. M.Sc., 1982; A. W. Helweg, Sikhs in England, 2nd edn, Oxford 1986, 89, 106, 114, 122, 125–7, 133–9, 153, 157–61, 172–3; A. Shaw, A Pakistani Community in Britain, Oxford 1988; K. Parvin, ‘Young Asian Women and Arranged Marriages’, Bristol Univ. M.Sc., 1989; Changing Ethnic Identities, ed. T. Modood and others, London 1994, 24–35, 68–80; Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage, ed. T. Modood and others, London 1997, 317–19; Ethnic Minority Families, ed. S. Beishon and others, London 1998, pp. ix, 31–5, 43–4, 50–1, 63–4, 75–6, 86–7; Muslim Britain: Communities under Pressure, ed. T. Abbas, London 2005, pp. xi, 12, 23, 44, 62, 71, 84, 134, 136, 162, 184, 195, 198, 207, 216–17. 5 D. O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England, Manchester 2000. 6 LDB 232a (Norf. 21/14); A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, Woodbridge 1995, 198.

Inside the Anglo-Norman Family

3

consort’;7 in October 1281 Duke John confirmed the foundation of another chantry, at West Tanfield (Yorks.), in memory of ‘my beloved consort Beatrice (karissime consortis mee beatricis)’, second daughter of Henry III, who had died in 1274–5, six years earlier.8 It is unlikely that the earl wished to curry favour with his brother-in-law Edward I, whom he was to desert for Philip le Bel of France in 1296, and both charters seem to be simply commemorating a much loved wife. But for the most part we are dependent on literary sources which are likely to arouse the suspicions of historians in all periods as ‘soft’ evidence. Hence Naomi Tadmor, writing about Samuel Richardson’s eighteenth-century novel Pamela, remarked, Research in social history . . . has not been favourably disposed to treating works of fiction as historical sources. Scholars . . . hoped instead to investigate phenomena on the basis of ‘hard facts’. Considering literary evidence to be in the nature of ‘soft’ or ‘flexible’ facts, they deemed reliance on such evidence to be impressionistic.9

Nevertheless, it does not follow that even imaginative fiction, let alone medieval chronicles and similar writings, is devoid of objective content: consciously or unconsciously the writers will reveal the assumptions, the views, and the prejudices of their contemporaries whom they are trying to influence and to inform. Of course they will invent dialogue, following good classical models which no one has seriously suggested should be jettisoned, but the invented dialogue will be what the writers judge, rightly or wrongly, will appeal to their readers. And the same will be equally true of the general line of argument. In assessing such matters we also need to beware of assuming the necessity of change over time. I suspect there can be few university historians who have not at some time trotted out, in a desperate attempt to get their students to use their imagination when viewing the past, the opening line of L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’10 To which one should always add the rider, ‘some things, certainly, but not necessarily everything’. To revise Occam, one should not assume difference without cause, without evidence. Our concern is the third of Anderson’s approaches to the history of the family, the so-called ‘sentiments’ approach.11 This is basically concerned with what it is now fashionable to term ‘interpersonal relationships’ within the family, which can be resolved into three main areas: those between husband and wife; those between parents and children; those between siblings. In all three areas it has been suggested that the family in the past was loveless. Because many marriages, particularly in the upper ranks of society, down to the mid-seventeenth century were arranged by either parents or by feudal superiors exercising the rights of ‘wardship’ and ‘marriage’ for reasons of family advantage, whether political or economic (which is true), some have asserted that considerations of possible liking or affection between the man and woman betrothed were immaterial. The onset of marital and parental love has been variously attributed to the effects of the Enlightenment or the beginnings of the 7

Dugdale, Monasticon, VI (2), 943–4 (the chantry was planned in 1275, soon after Beatrice’s death, but the final agreement was dated 4 May 1278). 8 North Yorkshire Record Office, ZBS 2 (MIC 1025), calendared in Yorkshire Deeds, II, ed. W. Brown, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 50, 1914, no. 471. I am most grateful to Ms M. J. Boustead, Senior Archivist at Northallerton, for providing me with a full transcript of this charter. 9 N. Tadmor, ‘ “Family” and “Friend” in Pamela: A Case-Study in the History of the Family in Eighteenth-Century England’, Social History 14, 1989, 289–306 at 289. 10 L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between, London 1953, 7. 11 M. Anderson, Approaches to the History of the Family , 2nd edn, Cambridge 1995, chap. 3.

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Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century,12 or to the Puritan Revolution in the seventeenth century,13 or to the sixteenth-century Reformation,14 or to changes in the Catholic Church’s views on marriage in the mid-twelfth century.15 (I am not for a moment denying that all these events may have significantly affected the family, but I shall show that none of them caused the appearance of marital or parental love.) Moreover, the existence of parental love has been denied either because most children of the upper classes were cared for in childhood by servants (which has remained true into the twentieth century),16 or because, before the later nineteenth century, levels of infant and child mortality were so high in all social classes (which is again true)17 that parents were afraid to become too attached to children who might well die before they achieved adulthood, or because, among the lower orders, life was so busy, and homes so crowded (as indeed they were) that parents, and especially mothers, had no time for loving their children. In such an allegedly loveless environment, the possibility of love between brothers and sisters has hardly been considered. In addition, the ‘demographic’ and ‘sentiments’ approaches to the history of the family have often interacted. So long as it was believed that families in the past were large, complex units consisting of more than one married couple, of the same or succeeding generations, with their respective children, it was possible to think that affective relationships between spouses or between parents and children would be attenuated by the diffusion of authority within the ‘complex’ or ‘multiple’ family, or by the generational distance between the ‘head’ of such a family and young children who could well be grandchildren of the head. Since we now know that most families in England, as in western Europe, since the early Middle Ages were nuclear families

12 P. Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, London 1962; E. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family, London

1976, chaps 6–8; L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800, London 1977, chaps 6–9. 13 C. Durston, The Family and the English Revolution, Oxford 1989. 14 E. J. Carlson, Marriage and the English Reformation, Oxford 1994. The view of the post-medieval family as a loveless institution has been comprehensively demolished: L. A. Pollock, Forgotten Child hood: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 , Cambridge 1983; J. R. Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present, Oxford 1985; A. Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300–1840, Oxford 1986; S. Ozment, Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe, Cambridge MA 2001. 15 For the changes, see J. T. Noonan, ‘Marital Affection in the Canonists’, Studia Gratiana 12, 1967, 479–509; idem, ‘Marriage in the Middle Ages, 1: Power to Choose’, Viator 4, 1973, 419–34; C. Donahue, ‘The Policy of Alexander the Third’s Consent Theory of Marriage’, in Proceedings of the Fourth Interna tional Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. S. Kuttner, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series C, Subsidia 5, Vatican City 1976, 251–81; J. A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, Chicago 1987; idem, Sex, Law and Marriage in the Middle Ages, Aldershot 1993; M. M. Sheehan, Marriage, Family and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies of M. M. Sheehan, ed. J. K. Farge, Toronto 1996, chaps 5–13. The practical effects of the evolution of the theology of marriage are worked out in R. H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England, London 1974. 16 J. Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny, London 1972. 17 N. L. Tranter, Population since the Industrial Revolution, London 1973; R. Mitchison, British Population Change since 1860, London 1977; J. Ermisch, The Political Economy of Demographic Change: Causes and Implications of Population Trends in Great Britain , London 1983; Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950, ed. F. M. L. Thompson, 3 vols, Cambridge 1990; Mortality Statistics: Childhood, Infant and Perinatal, London 1994–2000; C. Lawrence, Medicine in the Making of Modern Britain, 1700–1920, London 1994; A. H. Halsey, Change in British Society, 4th edn, Oxford 1995; J. Pitcher, Age and Generation in Modern Britain, Oxford 1995; British Population History from the Black Death to the Present Day, ed. M. Anderson, Cambridge 1996; N. L. Tranter, British Population in the Twentieth Century, Basingstoke 1996; E. Royle, Modern Britain: A Social History, 1750–1997, 2nd edn, London 1997; A. H. Halsey, Twentieth-Century British Social Trends, 3rd edn, Basingstoke 2000.

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whose average size was under five,18 such propositions are no longer tenable. The small nuclear family brought both husband and wife on the one hand and parents and children on the other into much closer physical and emotional proximity, except perhaps among the upper classes whose families were the biological core of households of servants and retainers who could number scores or hundreds throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.19 But none of the assumed grounds for the absence of love has been subjected to stringent analysis, and the varying dates that have been proposed for the onset of love of various kinds certainly do not reflect a generally agreed view of the matter among historians. Too often, dubious conclusions have been supported by reference to facts that were themselves correct, as we have just seen, but did not justify the conclusions being drawn. What is needed is less tendentious theorizing and closer attention to the available evidence. However, the evidence is not as satisfactory as we could wish, and, indeed, becomes less adequate in quality and quantity as we move back in time. Most of our ancestors, being below the middling ranks of society, were illiterate until the great expansion of primary education during the nineteenth century; even when they could write as well as read, they were not habitual writers. Consequently, sources such as diaries and letters written by members of the working classes are very rare before the nineteenth century;20 even among their betters, the writing of diaries and autobiographies, and above all the exchange of informal, personal letters, only begin to become common in and after the seventeenth century.21 And all these types of evidence are necessarily socially selective, written by and for members of the upper and middle classes, who even within those social groups may not be typical. For the lower orders, such sources as letters, and the evolving newspapers from the Civil War period on, represent what is at best indirect evidence, filtered through the eyes, ears, and minds of social superiors who often did not understand the conditions in which the poor lived or their mentality, and frequently chose to criticize out of ignorance what they did not comprehend. Thus Victorian middle-class critics of working-class drinking in public houses failed to understand the food value of beer and the benefits of companionship in places where heating was provided free of charge. Yet, because of the lack of direct evidence, indirect evidence of various kinds is all that we have before the nineteenth century in our attempt to recreate, for most people in the past, 18 See Moore, ‘Anglo-Norman Family’, for family size and structure in Anglo-Norman England; for the

nuclear family in England after 1250 and in Carolingian France and Italy, see references cited ibid. 153–4 nn. 4, 7–8. 19 K. Mertes, The English Noble Household, 1250–1600, Oxford 1988, esp. appendix C; C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late Medieval England, New Haven CT 1999, chap. 2. 20 For low general levels of literacy before 1800, see R. S. Schofield, ‘Measurement of Illiteracy in Pre-Industrial England’, in Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. J. Goody, Cambridge 1968, 311–25; D. Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England, Cambridge 1980. For working-class writing, see J. Burnett and others, The Autobiography of the Working Class, 1790–1945, 3 vols, Brighton 1984–9. 21 The paucity of surviving diaries before the seventeenth century is shown in A. Ponsonby, English Diaries from the 16th to the 20th Century, London 1923; idem, More English Diaries, London 1927; W. Matthews, British Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of British Diaries Written between 1442 and 1942, Cambridge 1950, 1–2; The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, I, 600–1660, ed. G. Watson, Cambridge 1974, cols 2253–74. For autobiographies and biographies, again mostly after 1600, see D. Stauffer, English Biography before 1700, Cambridge MA 1930; W. Shumaker, English Autobiography: Its Emergence, Materials and Form , Los Angeles 1954; W. Matthews, British Autobiographies: An Annotated Bibliography of British Autobiographies Published or Written before 1951, Berkeley CA 1955; J. M. Osborn, The Beginnings of Autobiography in England, Los Angeles 1959; P. Delany, British Autobiography in the 17th Century, London 1969; New Cambridge Bibliography, I, cols 2205–6, 2213–14, 2253–74.

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what the great Maitland called ‘the thoughts of our forefathers, their common thoughts about common things’.22 Even then, both direct and indirect evidence is more plentiful for the later medieval and early modern periods than before. The frequent references to ‘my beloved wife’ or similar phrases in wills, and the often careful provisions to ensure the welfare of widows and the upbringing of younger children, also in wills, can be used to demonstrate the existence of both marital and parental love as social norms, and probably the widespread existence of both sorts of love in the real world. But surviving regular series of prerogative wills for both northern and southern England and of regional wills in parts of East Anglia only start in the fourteenth century and for most of England are not available before the sixteenth century.23 Church court records, especially those relating to cases of breach of contract to marry or to cases of irregular marriage, can reveal much about courtship customs, usually preserved verbatim rather than in the stilted language of the common-law courts, and demonstrate that the promise of mutual love was the normal basis on which most couples agreed to marry. Such records are again rare in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and only become common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.24 For the High Middle Ages and before, it is thus necessary to call on types of evidence that would usually be ignored by historians of better documented periods. Private letters are extremely rare, invariably preserved for purposes that have nothing whatever to do with love in the family, and refer only to the highest social groups. Official letters are much more common, partly because of the increasing practice of registering out-letters by both Church and State.25 Sermons, homilies, and penitentials may open windows into practice but are essentially prescriptive rather than descriptive sources. Given the power of the medieval Church, however, what is prescribed may soon become the norm. Chronicles, the most typical form of historical writing in the Middle Ages, were mostly composed by either monks (e.g. the successive scribes of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury) or secular priests (e.g. Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Howden, Gerald of Wales, Walter Map), most of whom were not able fully to represent contemporary marriage from their own experience, though Henry of Huntingdon and his father were both married clergy. Nevertheless, monks were very far from ignorant of the outside world. Even a monk such as Orderic Vitalis, who entered the monastery of Saint-Evroul at the age of ten, would have had memories of his childhood in and around Shrewsbury;26 monks, again Orderic is an example, were certainly interested in what was happening in the regions around their monasteries, especially the doings of the nobility who either were their patrons or might threaten the well-being of their house.27 Monks moved between houses on official business, especially if 22 F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, Cambridge 1897, 520. 23 M. M. Sheehan, ‘English Wills and the Records of the Ecclesiastical and Civil Jurisdictions’, in idem,

Marriage, Family and Law, chap. 10. For a list of surviving thirteenth-century wills, see ibid. chap. 2. From the mid-thirteenth century, wills were increasingly copied into episcopal registers, which are listed in D. M. Smith, Guide to Bishops’ Registers of England and Wales: A Survey from the Middle Ages to the Abolition of Episcopacy in 1646, London 1981; idem, Supplement, Canterbury and York Society 2004. Regular ecclesiastical probate series begin in the fourteenth century: for two good guides, see A. J. Camp, Wills and their Whereabouts, 4th edn, London 1974; J. S. W. Gibson, Wills and Where to Find Them, Chichester 1974. 24 A. Tarver, Church Court Records: An Introduction for Family and Local Historians , Chichester 1995. 25 M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 , 2nd edn, Oxford 1993, esp. chaps 2–3, 5. 26 M. Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis, Oxford 1984, chap. 1. 27 Ibid. chaps 2–5.

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they were members of a Continental house with English estates, the later ‘alien priories’, or on their own affairs: William of Malmesbury visited many other monasteries in order to write biographies and histories.28 Above all, monarchs and the higher nobility tended to treat monasteries as convenient hotels when on their travels, and thus gave monks opportunities of learning about the world outside. Still, many chronicles do not mention marital or parental love at all, including William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Novella, Robert of Bath’s Gesta Stephani, the Chronicle variously attributed to Florence and John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, and most monastic chronicles; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as we shall see, only mentions parental love once and in an odd context. Orderic Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History is therefore an eye-opener since fairly obviously he drew on his memories of the happy childhood he experienced in Shropshire before being given as an oblate at the age of ten to Saint-Evroul. For him, marital love is a fact of life, even if the love on any specific occasion was not a reality known to him. William, son of Archbishop Robert of Rouen, and ‘his beloved wife Hawise whom he sought to please in all things’ (‘dilectaeque suae coniugi Haduisae omnimodis placere volens’) lived a generation before Orderic’s birth, c. 1050, and his description of the effects of the Norman Conquest on England, ‘Matrons . . . mourned the loss of their loving husbands and almost all their friends’ (‘Matronae . . . desolatae gemebant maritorum et omnium pene amicorum’), could only have been derived from his English mother or others of her generation.29 Likewise, Bishop Hugh of Lisieux’s reference to Lisieux cathedral as ‘my beloved spouse’ before 107530 must have been derived from another person, although we shall see shortly that in episcopal letters such phrases are commonplace. But often Orderic is speaking of people he must have known and there is even less reason to doubt him. Thus he writes of the results of Urban II’s successful preaching of the First Crusade, Husbands made arrangements to leave their beloved wives at home, while the wives, lamenting, longed passionately to leave their children and all their riches behind and follow their husbands on the pilgrimage . . . The provident pope . . . absolved all penitents from their sins . . . and with fatherly consideration excused them from any obligation to fast or mortify the flesh in other ways.31

Also in 1095, the imprisonment of the rebellious Robert de Mowbray meant that ‘His wife Matilda . . . had scarcely ever known any joy with him, for she . . . was soon deprived of marital solace . . . her husband being alive in prison.’32 Words put into the mouths of Byzantine Greeks to persuade the Crusaders to return home five years later again reveal Orderic’s views on love: We know well that for the sake of the Crusade you have left wealthy realms which, now that your vows have been worthily fulfilled, you long to see again, all the more because of the tender love of your wives and dear children and the affection of your kinsfolk and friends, whom you left for Christ’s sake.33

Other death-bed speeches probably composed by Orderic are equally revealing of his view of marriage: in 1116, Ansold of Maule addressed his wife Odeline as ‘Dear companion and beloved wife’ and two years later Bricstan of Chatteris’s wife called 28 29 30 31 32 33

R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, Woodbridge 1987. Orderic, II, 42–3, 268–9. Ibid. III, 15–16. Ibid. V, 16–19. Ibid. IV, 282–3. Ibid. V, 274–5.

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him ‘dearest husband’.34 Orderic describes the results of the White Ship disaster in 1120 as follows: ‘Great lords and humble folk wept for their lords, children and kinsfolk, acquaintances and friends; maidens for their betrothed, loved wives for their dear husbands.’35 Finally, Orderic records (or invents) a speech by Ralph, bishop of Jerusalem, to newly arrived Crusaders in 1137: Now therefore I urge you, who for love of God have left your native land, abandoned your beloved wives and hard-won wealth, and travelled here through many perils by sea and land, to follow the example of the saints . . .36

An echo of these words is found in the speech of Peter, bishop of Oporto, to the northern Crusaders en route to liberate Lisbon in 1147: The alluring affection of wives, the tender kisses of sucking infants at the breast, the even more delightful pledges of grown-up children, the much desired consolation of relatives and friends – all these they have left behind to follow Christ.37

Nor was Orderic alone in depicting married life as loving: Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis has Guy’s widow addressing her dead husband in 1109 thus ‘Dearest spouse, what wrongs did you to these men?’ . . . In an outburst of love . . . she gave him [the lifeless corpse] as many sweet kisses as she could . . . so paying her respects to his sorrowful soul: ‘Why did you leave me behind, dearest husband?’, she cried. ‘Has your wonderful fidelity toward me been so rewarded?’38

In 1131 Suger records, apparently as an eye-witness, the death of Prince Philip of France: ‘So great, so astounding were the grief and sorrow that struck his father, his mother . . . that Homer himself would have lacked the skill to express it . . . The father lightened his sorrow for his dead son by the joy he took in his living one.’39 In 1102–3 Anselm wrote Queen Matilda a letter with a remarkable simile of a grieving widow: ‘consider, I say, how this woman, an exile, a pilgrim, groans and sighs like a widow with her true children, waiting for her husband until he returns from the distant region to which he went’.40 Such letters and chronicles may be compared with incidental, passing mentions of married love, as when the poet-historian Geoffrey Gaimar records how ‘Dame Constance borrowed it [Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History] from her husband [Ralph fitz Gilbert] whom she loved much’,41 or when Jordan Fantosme, writing about the rebellion of the Young King in 1173, describes how Pernel de Grandmesnil encouraged her husband Robert III, earl of Leicester, to join the rebellion, and quotes his reply: ‘ “My lady”, said the earl, “now I hear you speaking out, I needs must take your advice, for greatly have I loved you.” ’42 Both marital and parental love are revealed in an anonymous biography of 34 35 36 37

Ibid. III, 196–7, 352–3. Ibid. VI, 302–3. Ibid. VI, 498–501. The Conquest of Lisbon: De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi, ed. C. W. David, 2nd edn, New York 2001, 70–3. 38 Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat , trans. R. C. Cusimano and J. Moorhead, Washington DC 1992, 77–8. 39 Ibid. 150–1. 40 The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, trans. W. Fröhlich, 3 vols, Kalamazoo MI 1990–4, II, p. 225. 41 Lestorie des Engles solum la Translacion Maistre Geffrei Gaimar, ed. and trans. T. D. Hardy and C. T. Martin, 2 vols, RS 91, 1888–9, I, 275, lines 6458–9; II, 203. 42 Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , ed. and trans. R. C. Johnston, Oxford 1981, 72–3.

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Edward the Confessor written for the Godwine family, probably for Queen Edith, c. 1066. According to this work, when Earl Godwine came into prominence early in Cnut’s reign, Godwine . . . showed himself to all good men as much as he could like a father . . . Wherever wrongs appeared, right and law were promptly restored there. Hence he was not regarded as a master but was revered by all the country’s sons as a father . . . But just as a father, after chastising his children, is at peace with them again, and in his goodness gives back the gifts he had taken away, and, calling them to him, shows himself a soothing comforter, so God’s loving kindness, sparing the English after the heavy weight of his rebuke, showed them a flower preserved from the root of their ancient kings . . .43

In 1042, Godwine supported the accession of Edward the Confessor: ‘Earl Godwine . . . took the lead in urging that they [the English] should admit their king to the throne that was his by right of birth; and since Godwine was regarded as a father by all, he was gladly heard in the witenagemot.’44 In 1051–2, the collapse of Edward’s attempt to replace Godwine and his sons with the king’s Norman favourites is again the occasion for emphasizing Godwin’s paternalism: And since . . . Godwine was revered by all Englishmen as a father, when the unexpected news of his departure was known, the heart of the people was sore afraid . . . All the eastern and southern English who could manage it met his ship; all came running to him, I repeat, like children to their long-awaited father.45

Hardly surprisingly, Godwine’s daughter, Queen Edith, is also held up as an example of both motherly and wifely virtue: she cared both for the young princes who had returned from a long exile – ‘Also, why should we pass over in silence how zealously she reared, educated, adorned, and showered with motherly love those boys who were said to be of royal stock?’46 – and for her husband who praised her in his last words, ‘May God be gracious to this my wife for the zealous solicitude of her service. For certainly she has served me devotedly, and has always stood close by my side like a beloved daughter.’47 I am not of course asserting that either Earl Godwine or Queen Edith were such lovable and loving characters in real life, merely that this is how the anonymous biographer portrayed them. The chroniclers also reveal the existence of parental love for children, some examples of which we have seen are intermixed with marital love. The famous epitaph on William the Conqueror in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records how ‘He forbade the killing of boars even as the killing of harts. For he loved the stags as dearly as if he had been their father.’48 (A curious showing of love, but the metaphor of paternal love is strong.) During King William’s quarrel with his son Count Robert in 1078, Queen Matilda, ‘feeling a mother’s affection for her son’, is said to plead for him: ‘O my lord, do not wonder that I love my first-born child with tender affection.’49 Orderic mentions Robert of Bellême’s son William Talvas, ‘this beloved child’, only because of Robert’s maltreatment of his wife, William’s mother, in 1095;50 he had 43 44 45 46 47

Vita Eadwardi, 10–13. Ibid. 14–15. Ibid. 40–3. Ibid. 24–5. Ibid. 122–3. Elsewhere Barlow states that there is no other source for the character of Earl Godwine and Queen Edith, though most of book I, chapter 2, on the marriage of Edward and Edith, is lost: F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, London 1970, 82–4. 48 ASC 1086 [= 1087]. 49 Orderic, III, 102–3. 50 Ibid. IV, 300–1.

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previously said of Ivo, bishop of Sées, ‘As a father loves his children, so he loved his clerks and monks’, and of Gontard, abbot of Jumièges, he ‘tended and loved the obedient and gentle as a father loves his children’.51 He stated as facts that Ansold of Maule on his deathbed spoke to his ‘dearest son’ Peter, and how, after his son Ralph’s death, ‘his sorrowing father [Albert de Cravent] had his body carried to Saint-Evroul’, whilst he remarked of Prince William, killed in the White Ship, ‘the love of his father [Henry I] . . . [was] confidently fixed on him’.52 Finally, Orderic noted Pope Urban II’s ‘paternal affection’ for the monks of Solesmes, doubtless derived from a papal letter, as we shall see.53 Other forms of literary evidence, such as lyric or epic poetry, the chansons of the troubadours, indeed the entire corpus relating to ‘courtly love’, have often aroused the worst suspicions of historians about ‘soft’, contrasted to (supposedly) ‘hard’, evidence. In so far as such writers are arguing a case – especially with regard to courtly love – I agree that the views expressed may not reflect anything more than the ideas of the writers and those who felt like them. For this reason, I regard much of the literature on courtly love as specious and largely irrelevant, since such love tends to be either idealized or adulterous, and on both counts irrelevant to an inquiry into married love. Perhaps mutual attraction leading to love between the lover and his lady may be a pointer to the possibility of mutual attraction leading to love between future spouses, but to go further than that is difficult. What I believe to be far more relevant and significant, both in literary and in archival sources, is the use of language which is good evidence that both marital and parental love were at least not unknown in the earlier Middle Ages and were quite possibly taken for granted as the norm. Finally, there are some snippets of factual information which cannot be disregarded in this connection. When all the evidence has been assembled and reviewed, a strong case can be made for believing that love between husbands and wives, between parents and children, and between brothers and sisters was the norm in the Anglo-Norman world. I am not of course asserting that this was always the case: then as now, some marriages were not happy – Henry I is known to have fathered the largest number of royal bastards in English history, which hardly suggests that his marriage to either Edith-Matilda of Scotland or Adela of Louvain was happy; both had been contracted for purely political reasons.54 Philip Augustus of France had a notorious marital career, nearly divorcing his first wife Isabelle of Hainault (who, perhaps fortunately, died in childbirth in 1190) and rejecting his second wife Ingeborg of Denmark on their wedding night before bigamously marrying Agnes de Méran.55 Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine were a notably unhappy couple, and Henry II had continued quarrels with most of his sons, leading to a civil war backed by Scottish intervention in 1173–4 (the ‘war of the young Henry’) and to revolts by Count Richard of Poitou, backed by France, which contributed to Henry’s death in 1189.56 As Gerald of Wales rightly remarked, ‘The examples of King Henry II and his sons, 51 52 53 54

Ibid. II, 46–7, 294–5. Ibid. III, 194–5, 244–5; VI, 302–3. Ibid. IV, 322–3. Complete Peerage , XI, appendix D; C. Given-Wilson and A. Curteis, The Royal Bastards of Medieval England, London 1984, chap. 4 and appendix; C. W. Hollister, Henry I, London 2001, 9, 41–5, 114, 126–32, 228–31, 238, 280–1, 308–9; K. Thompson, ‘Affairs of State: The Illegitimate Children of Henry I, JMH 29, 2003, 129–51. 55 J. Bradbury, Philip Augustus, King of France, 1180–1223, London 1998, 41, 45–6, 56, 139, 174–5, 177–85, 188, 199, 224, 262, 267, 331, 333. 56 W. L. Warren, Henry II, London 1973, 117–38, 228–9, 562–4, 579–93, 596–601, 616–26.

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who treated their father absolutely disgracefully, ought to have sufficed as a contemporary lesson.’57 Hardly surprising is the king’s reaction to a complaint by a Kentish knight who, Gerald tells us, had transferred the ownership of all his land to his married son and heir: shortly afterwards he was thrown out of the home he had made and his livelihood, as a beggar and pauper. He immediately hastened to Henry II, king of England . . . The king burst into laughter and replied to him that he was pleased and delighted that he had discovered a man who had experienced ingratitude from his son, just as he too had suffered wickedness from his own sons. He immediately had the son thrown out in disgrace, and all the land, as well as the houses and possessions, restored completely to the father.58

A later example of filial disrespect was also adduced by Gerald: very recently, in fact during the pontificate of the present pope Innocent III, a certain priest ceded to his son his well endowed church in a place called Preston in the diocese of London and, prompted by fatherly affection, ensured he should be installed there. However, after a short while the son, finding his father’s life a burden, . . . threw his pious father from the home he had made and drove him out . . . The pope, with paternal concern, . . . caused the son to be dismissed immediately for his ingratitude and the church to be made over to the father again . . .59

It is a grand story, but, alas, that is all it is, a story. Can we believe that Innocent III, the supreme reforming pope, would condone a married priest who had passed on his church to his son who, as a bastard, should not be in priest’s orders at all? And the circumstantial detail is fatal: there is no parish called Preston in the three counties of Essex, Hertfordshire, and Middlesex which partly or wholly comprised the diocese of London, and there is no reference to a Preston in the diocese of London in Innocent III’s register.60 Nevertheless, the priest’s ‘fatherly affection’ and the pope’s ‘paternal concern’ as reported (or invented) by Gerald do suggest that for him, as for other contemporaries, these were the qualities associated with fatherhood. Hence he wrote in a letter to Geoffrey, bishop of St David’s, ‘It is our prayer that you . . . love your sons with fatherly affection.’61 But it is also possible to point to couples who contemporaries observed were happily married, or for whom good evidence supports such a conclusion. William the Conqueror, when duke of Normandy, had clearly fallen in love with Matilda of Flanders and married her, probably in 1051 or 1052, despite the prohibition by Leo IX at the Council of Rheims in 1049, a prohibition which has only recently been satisfactorily explained by a young American scholar, R. P. Crisp.62 According to 57 Giraldus Cambrensis, Speculum Duorum, or a Mirror of Two Men, ed. Y. Lefèvre and R. B. C.

Huygens, Cardiff 1974, 10–11. 58 Ibid. 16–17. 59 Ibid. 14–17. 60 There was no place called Preston in Essex (P. H. Reaney, The Place-Names of Essex, EPNS 12, 1935);

the only Preston in Hertfordshire was in Hitchin parish, which was in Lincoln diocese (J. E. B. Gover and others, The Place-Names of Hertfordshire, EPNS 15, 1938, 22); the only Preston in Middlesex was in Harrow parish (J. E. B. Gover and others, The Place-Names of Middlesex, EPNS 18, 1942, 53). There is no mention of Preston in London diocese in Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III Concerning England (1198–1216), ed. C. R. Cheney and W. H. Semple, London 1953; in The Letters of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) Concerning England and Wales: A Calendar, ed. C. R. Cheney and M. G. Cheney, Oxford 1967; or in Original Papal Documents in England and Wales from the Accession of Pope Innocent III to the Death of Pope Benedict XI (1198–1304), ed. J. E. Sayers, Oxford 1999. 61 Speculum Duorum, 240–1. 62 D. C. Douglas, William the Conqueror, London 1964, 76–7, 391–5; R. P. Crisp, ‘Consanguinity and the Saint-Aubin Genealogies’, HSJ 14, 2003 (2005), 105–15, esp. 112–15.

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Orderic Vitalis, William in the course of his quarrel with his son Count Robert in 1078 addressed Matilda as ‘The wife of my bosom, whom I love as my soul’ (‘collateralis mea quam velut animam meam diligo’), and William of Malmesbury also recorded William’s ‘conjugal affection (coniugalis gratiae)’ for Matilda and his grief at her death.63 Of their children, William Rufus never married and was perhaps homosexual, and Henry I, as we have noted, was hardly happily married.64 Yet William and Matilda’s daughter Adela, married in 1080 to Count Stephen of Blois and Chartres in an arranged marriage obviously designed to secure an alliance with a friendly power among the hostile neighbours of Normandy on its southern frontier, to strengthen Norman control of Maine to the west, and to threaten the French Vexin to the east,65 enjoyed an exceptionally happy marriage. We know this because of the fortuitous survival of two letters written by Stephen to Adela whilst he was away on the First Crusade: one, written before Nicaea in June 1097, begins ‘to my sweetest friend (dulcissimae amicae), my wife’, and he refers to her several times in the letter as ‘my beloved (mi dilecta)’.66 A second letter written before Antioch in March 1098 is addressed to ‘my sweetest and most lovable wife and to my dearest children’ (‘dulcissimae atque amabilissimae coniugi carissimisque filiis’), and calls her ‘dearest’ and ‘my beloved’.67 No other letters survive from an Anglo-Norman Crusader to his wife, indeed an earlier letter from Stephen to Adela sent from Constantinople is lost, and we cannot know how typical Stephen and Adela’s love was: but clearly married love did exist for some couples; it was not just the theoretical maritalis affectio of the medieval canonists and theologians. And as with modern Hindu and Muslim arranged marriages in India, Pakistan, and Britain, arranged marriages are not necessarily unhappy. Despite an age gap of at least twenty years, the arranged marriage of William Marshal to Isabel, daughter of Earl Richard Strongbow, promised by Henry II, fulfilled by Richard I, appears to have been happy, and they had ten children.68 Countess Isabel may even have fulfilled the programme of all romantic novelists, by dying of a broken heart: she expired less than a year after her husband. Another example of love revealed by the letters of a couple married in all but name is that between Abelard and Heloise.69 Given the extreme rarity of private letters, we need to look elsewhere for evidence of love, and an immediate stumbling block comes into view: most surviving letters are business letters written by members of the ruling class. We can never rely, then or now, on the truthfulness of a class once crisply described by one of its members, former American Secretary of State Alexander Haig, as ‘duplicitous bastards’. What I think we can rely on is their sincere hypocrisy: they will always strive to present 63 Orderic, III, 102–3; Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, II, pp. 502–3. As Douglas remarked, ‘according to the

widespread opinion of contemporaries, [William] had been exceptionally attached [to Matilda]’, ‘The marriage . . . was by all accounts very happy’: Douglas, William the Conqueror, 243, 393. 64 F. Barlow, William Rufus, London 1983, 32, 102–6, 329, 373, 409, 428, 436–7; see above for Henry I. 65 Douglas, William the Conqueror, 394–5 and map II. 66 Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100, ed. H. Hagenmeyer, Innsbruck 1901, 138–40, from Rome, Vatican Library, Queen Christina of Sweden MS 1283(41), fol. 73; translated in The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants, ed. A. C. Krey, Princeton NJ 1921, 100–1, 107–9. 67 Kreuzzugsbriefe, ed. Hagenmeyer, 149–52, from Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Latin, MS 14192, fols 23–6; translated in First Crusade, ed. Krey, 131–2, 155–7, and The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials, ed. E. Peters, Philadelphia 1971, 225–8. 68 D. Crouch, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire, 1147–1219, 2nd edn, London 2002, 63, 66–73, 75, 106–8. Crouch interestingly states that ‘with some certainty he [William Marshal] earned his own sons’ love’ (ibid. 162). 69 The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. B. Radice, London 1974; C. J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France , London 1999.

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themselves in a good light. The language used in such letters, conventional though it undoubtedly is, is a good guide both to the contemporary beliefs which it was thought a member of the ruling class should be seen to accept and to contemporary attitudes which should properly be displayed in public. It is a commonplace in official correspondence that popes, archbishops, and bishops are addressed in terms of paternal endearment and themselves address inferiors as sons or brothers, again with protestations of love. Lanfranc refers to Alexander II’s ‘beloved fatherhood’ and to him as ‘dear, revered, and reverend father’, and accepted that Gregory VII ‘was concerned to rebuke me, gently, as a father’; Alexander II wrote to King William I as ‘dearest son’, as did Lanfranc to Earl Roger of Hereford, adding ‘a son whom I cherish’. More specifically, Lanfranc wrote to Abbot Adelelm of Abingdon as ‘beloved son’ and asked him to show ‘fatherly love’ to his sinful monks, and instructed Abbot Odo of Chertsey ‘to receive him [the monk Gregory] . . . and . . . to show him the fatherly love that you would to a son’. Writing to Domnall, bishop of Munster, and other Irish clergy, Lanfranc addressed them as ‘dearest brethren, whom we love as a father’; on another occasion Lanfranc addressed Guthric of Dublin as ‘dearest son’ and referred to Patrick, bishop of Dublin 1074–84, as ‘dearest brother’; he wrote to Wido and his nephew Lanfranc the younger as ‘most beloved brethren’, to Gilbert Crispin as ‘beloved . . . dearest brother’, and to Archbishop Thomas of York as ‘much loved brother’, adding ‘Let us both endeavour to grow in brotherly love for each other’; his episcopal colleagues in England, Herfast of Thetford, Hugh of London, Remigius of Lincoln, Stigand of Chichester, were naturally addressed as ‘well beloved brother’ or ‘beloved brother’.70 Lanfranc’s successor Anselm wrote to Lanfranc whilst Anselm was abbot of Bec, as ‘lord and father . . . deeply revered with much love and loved with reverence’, ‘lovable father’, ‘father . . . reverently loved and lovingly revered’, ‘a father truly lovable and truly loved’;71 elsewhere in his official correspondence Anselm repeatedly referred to ‘dearest son(s)’,72 ‘dearest brother(s)’,73 ‘dearest daughter(s)’,74 ‘dearest sister(s)’.75 Sometimes, the underlying ideas are spelled out at greater length, as when Anselm wrote to Maurice, ‘I have always tried . . . to show you a brother’s love and a father’s care’, or to King Harold’s daughter Gunhilda, ‘beloved sister and daughter . . . the office laid upon me require[s] me to love you with fraternal and paternal affection’, or to William, a monk of Chester, ‘You love me as a father . . . and I . . . love you as a son.’76 Although most of Anselm’s correspondents were clerics or monks with whom the paternal or fraternal relationship was spiritual, they included ‘his most beloved sister Richeza’ and her husband Burgundius ‘beloved brother . . . dearest sister’.77 70 Letters of Lanfranc, pp. 38–9, 60–1, 66–7, 98–9, 100–1, 104–7, 112–15, 116–17, 118–21, 128–9, 132–3, 154–5, 156–7. 71 Letters of St Anselm, ed. Frölich, I, pp. 73, 100, 114, 127. 72 Ibid. I, pp. 147, 172, 180, 191, 201, 210, 239, 242, 252, 309; II, pp. 7, 19, 57, 60, 81–2, 100, 111, 128, 140, 155, 201, 204, 228, 239, 297, 304–6; III, pp. 15, 17, 43, 54, 56–7, 59, 62, 92, 102, 128, 133, 137–8, 175. 73 Ibid. I, pp. 75, 81, 83, 89, 91, 95, 98, 103, 105, 111, 122, 128, 130, 137–8, 157, 165, 180, 191, 199, 201, 208, 210, 214, 236, 238–9, 246, 252, 267, 282, 303, 309, 319; II, pp. 7, 19, 28, 81–2, 84, 95, 107, 129, 134, 140, 144, 204, 239, 262, 267, 271, 297, 302, 305–6; III, pp. 11, 15, 17, 43, 57, 60–2, 73, 108, 129, 137, 175, 177, 189, 216. 74 Ibid. II, pp. 62, 69–70, 102–5, 213, 227, 229–30, 233, 279; III, pp. 30, 46, 63, 75, 77, 167, 170–2, 181, 184, 191–2. 75 Ibid. II, pp. 62, 69–70, 102, 105, 159, 262–3, 268; III, p. 63. 76 Ibid. I, p. 145; II, pp. 64, 228. 77 Ibid. II, pp. 159, 262–3, 268.

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Such conventional expressions of love within a family were by no means confined to ecclesiastics within the Anglo-Norman realm: in 1095 Anselm wrote to Cardinal Walter referring to Urban II’s ‘paternal loving-kindness’, and three years later addressed Urban as ‘beloved father’; in 1101–2 he wrote several times to Urban’s successor Paschal II as ‘beloved father’, the same year that Henry I addressed Paschal as ‘dearest father’, to which the pope replied ‘beloved son . . . dearest son’; in 1104 Queen Matilda, writing to Paschal II, described Anselm as ‘the most loving father of the aforesaid [English] people’.78 After the final reconciliation between Henry I and Anselm, Henry I wrote to him as ‘beloved father . . . dearest father’, and Queen Matilda addressed him as ‘most beloved . . . dearly beloved father’, ‘dearest . . . father . . . knowing the affection of your paternity’; in 1108 Henry I wrote to Anselm, ‘dearest father . . . I entrust to you my son and my daughter, so that you may cherish them with paternal love and care for them with parental love’.79 Anselm’s secretary Eadmer recorded that, as prior of Bec from 1063 to 1093, Anselm’s ‘conduct towards all men was such that all loved him as if he were a very dear father’, and believed that the education of the young should not be achieved just by discipline: ‘besides the pressure of blows, [you] must apply the encouragement and help of fatherly sympathy and gentleness’. His advice to the newly married was also notably enlightened: To married persons he [Anselm] taught how great was the fidelity, love, and companionship with which they should be bound together . . .; that the man on his side should love his wife as himself, knowing none other but her, having regard for the welfare of her body as of his own and entertaining no evil suspicions; that the woman likewise should submit to her husband with all loving obedience, that she should diligently encourage him in well-doing, and calm his spirit with her mildness if he were perchance unjustly stirred up against anyone.80

In and after the twelfth century the language of loving parenthood and brotherhood become commonplace expressions in English episcopal correspondence, monks, canons, and secular priests and monks being routinely addressed as ‘beloved son(s)’ or ‘brother(s)’, nuns as ‘beloved daughter(s)’ or ‘sister(s)’.81 Thus Gerald of Wales in a letter to the clergy and officials of his archdeaconry addressed them as ‘my beloved brothers in Christ’.82 The reforms of marriage law by the papacy in the mid-twelfth century, by insisting on the free consent of both groom and bride as essential to a valid marriage, and also on the indissolubility of marriage, contribute to a greater feeling of mutual love and respect between husband and wife, which is reinforced by medieval sermons on marriage, by the developing theory of maritalis affectio, and the evolving practice of ecclesiastical courts in settling disputed cases.83 Since this is very much a report on work in progress, I will not pretend that all the possible sources have yet been analysed: homilies and saints’ lives strike me as possibly fruitful sources both before and after the Norman Conquest. Dipping into the new edition of William of Malmesbury’s Saints’ Lives, for example, is revealing. 78 Ibid. II, pp. 125, 146, 166, 171, 172, 177, 179–80, 183, 191; III, p. 35. 79 Ibid. III, pp. 155–6, 162–3, 251–2. 80 Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, by Eadmer, ed. and trans. R. W. Southern, London 1962,

22, 38, 55–6. 81 e.g. EEA I: Lincoln 1067–1185, ed. D. M. Smith, London 1980, passim; EEA IV: Lincoln 1186–1202,

ed. idem, London 1986, passim. 82 Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, II, 6, 168–9. 83 For maritalis affectio, see above. For sermons, see D. L. d’Avray, Medieval Marriage Sermons: Mass

Communication in a Culture without Print, Oxford 2001.

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St Wulfstan’s parents ‘were united by marital affection rather than sexual lust’, just as St Dunstan’s parents, ‘joined in lawful matrimony, came together in their youth to enjoy mature affection’.84 William recounts the story of the woman from the Evesham area who ‘had fallen into an extreme of madness. By now . . . she had left her loving parents and the support of her relatives’:85 again, parental love is taken for granted. Wulfstan is praised for his paternal affection: ‘Like a father he rejoiced in the advancement of his sons’; ‘If he knew a priest devoted to [chastity], he . . . loved him like a son.’86 William dedicated his Life of Dunstan to the monks of Glastonbury as ‘your son in affection’, recorded how Archbishop Athelm of Canterbury ‘welcomed his nephew [Dunstan] with all due attention and showed a father’s affection in liberally and bounteously furnishing all his needs’, and noted that in due course Dunstan ‘took over with the primacy the see of St Andrew at Rochester . . . its dear sister’.87 King Edgar is said to have ‘obeyed him [Dunstan] as a son obeys a beloved father’.88 After 1100, of course, the possible sources become voluminous, not always well edited, and very rarely indexed adequately. Increasingly therefore one has to rely on secondary work by others. Non-documentary evidence also cries out for treatment: the art history of marriage as revealed in funerary monuments, illuminated manuscripts, and, later on, monumental brasses remains as yet unwritten.89 And interesting sidelights come to light almost by chance. Frank Barlow’s biography of William Rufus, for example, refers to a matter raised by the masters in Salerno, the premier medical faculty in twelfth-century Europe, who debated the question ‘How is it that parents love their children more than their children love them?’90 Barlow comments, ‘The argument may be specious; but the doctors were trying to explain a situation which was taken for granted.’91 And if ‘falling in love’ was a mirage, why was it that medieval doctors pandering to upper-class hypochondria recognized that lovesickness was a disease?92 Indeed, spy-masters could rely on the power of love: in 1295, in what we today would recognize as a classic honey-trap operation by the SIS (Scottish Intelligence Service), Robert de Roos betrayed Wark-on-Tweed castle (Northumb.) to the Scots, ‘affected by love for a certain woman of the Scottish race whom he intended to marry . . . losing everything on account of the love of his cherished woman’.93 (This of course again demonstrated the truth propagated by all right-thinking theologians and by misogynists like Gerald of Wales that women were the source of original sin and led men astray.) But ‘falling in love’, far from being an invention of the troubadours or the arbiters of courtly love, had been recognized in the eleventh century: Duke Robert I of 84 William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, Oxford

2002, 14–15, 172–3. Ibid. 68–9. Ibid. 92–3, 124–5. Ibid. 166–7, 180–1, 248–9. Ibid. 256–7. Vanessa King has kindly drawn my attention to the tomb of Richard FitzAlan, earl of Arundel (d. 1376), and his second wife Eleanor, previously his mistress (d. 1372), in Chichester cathedral; this is one of the earliest examples of a tomb with effigies of a married couple, and they are depicted holding hands: P. Foster, T. Brighton, and P. Garland, An Arundel Tomb, Otter Memorial Paper 1, 2nd edn, Chichester 1996, 14–22. 90 The Prose Salernitan Questions, ed. B. Lawn, London 1979, 47. 91 Barlow, William Rufus, 26–8. 92 M. L. Wack, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The Viaticum and its Commentaries, Philadelphia 1990. 93 The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden 3rd series 89, 1957, 271. 85 86 87 88 89

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Normandy (d. 1035), according to Orderic, ‘fell in love with the beautiful concubine of an old priest . . . and had by her two children, Richard and William’; in 1102, again according to Orderic, Agnes, countess of Buckingham, ‘burning with a woman’s lust, fell in love with Duke Robert [of Normandy] and bound him to herself in the artful snares of illicit passion’.94 Both marital and parental love were realities in the Anglo-Norman world, as they had been in the Anglo-Saxon world: they were not among the consequences of the Norman Conquest. Riddle 15 in the Exeter Book refers to ‘my . . . children . . . my infants . . . my loved ones’, and though the ostensible subject is a badger, the emotional relationships are obviously human,95 while Riddle 46 refers to Lot and his ‘two daughters, darling sisters’.96 Three centuries earlier, Wynfrith (St Boniface) had addressed Abbess Eadburga as ‘dearest sister’,97 and King Arcestrates of Pentapolis in the romantic tale Apollonius of Tyre asked, ‘Dear daughter, why are you awake so early? . . . Dear daughter, whom have you chosen as a husband?’ and the daughter speaks to her father as ‘my dearest father . . . Dear father’. The tale is a celebration of marriage for love – ‘her heart fell in love with him’ – and of love between parents and children.98 Despite the later history of internecine family disputes, Gerald of Wales stated of Henry II, ‘When they were boys he was devoted to his legitimate children with a spontaneous affection even greater than that usually found in a father’,99 and also recorded how ‘Raymond [le Gros] . . . was fired with a passionate desire to enjoy the embrace of a woman so noble and so desired by him’, Basilia, sister of Earl Richard de Clare, whom he married.100 Gerald also tells the story of a married woman of Cardigan who obstructed her husband’s desire to take the Cross in 1188 and God’s punishment of her: she ‘most unfortunately overlaid her little boy whom she loved very much’.101 Gerald’s friend and fellow archdeacon Walter Map did not share his misogyny but did believe in love: he records that ‘a certain knight had a beloved, good and noble wife’, that Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, king of Wales, ‘had a very beautiful wife whom he loved more ardently than she loved him’, that the father of a Northumbrian knight said to his son, ‘Dearest son, fear not. I am your father’, and that a knight called Eudo suffered ‘his third plague . . . in the death of his first-born son, whom he so singly loved that his own life grew veritably vile in his eyes after his [son’s] death’.102 Walter was not trying to argue a case, these were after all only ‘courtiers’ trifles’, and perhaps more convincing because of his acceptance of love as a fact of life. Still earlier is Beowulf. Its context is the earlier sixth century, for some of the events and people it mentions can be dated by modern scholars: Hygelac, king of the Geats, raided the Frisians and Franks and was killed fighting on the Lower Rhine in AD 521 (lines 194, 1202–14, 2354–66, 2910–21); King Onela of Sweden (lines 62,

94 95 96 97 98

Orderic, V, 282–3; VI, 30–3. The Exeter Riddle Book, ed. and trans. K. Crossley-Holland, London 1978, 35–6, 110–11. Ibid. 69, 122–3. Anglo-Saxon Prose, ed. and trans. M. Swanton, London 1993, 37. Ibid. 234–50, esp. 241–3, 246, 248. See further A. R. Riedinger, ‘The Englishing of Arcestrate: Woman in Apollonius of Tyre’, in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. H. Damico and A. H. Olsen, Bloomington IN 1990, 292–306. 99 Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, V, 305; cf. Expugnatio Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland, by Giraldus Cambrensis, ed. and trans. A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin, Dublin 1978, 130–1. 100 Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, V, 312; Expugnatio Hibernica, 138–9. 101 Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, I, 78; VI, 113. 102 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. and trans. M. R. James, C. N. L. Brooke, and R. B. Mynors, Oxford 1983, 160–1, 186–7, 206–7, 336–7.

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2616, 2932) was killed c. AD 535.103 It was probably composed in the mid-eighth century, though a recent commentator has remarked that ‘current estimates [range] from the seventh century to the eleventh (and indeed every century in between)’.104 It clearly incorporates biblical elements (the Flood, Cain and Abel) and is recorded in a manuscript containing other Christian works,105 and it was probably written down in the second half of the reign of King Æthelred the Unready, 997–1016.106 Though its main concern is with heroic deeds, with ‘the feuding and the foe-history, slaughter-slitting of heroes’ (lines 2999–3000), there are incidental glancing references to family life and its values. Examples include marital love: ‘afterwards for Ingeld [prince of the Heathobards] deadly hatred wells up, and love of his wife grows cold after the surgings of care’ (lines 2064–6); also parental love of children: Hrothgar, king of Denmark, promises, ‘Now I will love you, Beowulf, best of men, like a son in my heart’ (lines 946–8); for King Hrethel of the Geats, ‘it was an awful thing to have to endure that his dear young son should ride the gallows’ (lines 2444–6). Other lines report both parental love and sibling love: ‘unjustly she [Hildeburh, princess of the Half-Danes] was deprived of dear ones . . . of children and brothers . . . The woman was in mourning. Hoc’s daughter howled for good reason’ (lines 1072–6). Even Grendel’s mother, ‘anguished by misery . . . would go upon a sorrowful sojourn, her son’s death avenging’ (lines 1258–9, 1276–8). And the poet is clear that though Grendel and his mother were monsters, they were also human: Grendel was ‘a hostile spirit’ (line 86); ‘The grim demon Grendel was named . . . the soulless man . . . the kin of Cain who killed Abel’ (lines 102–8); ‘Grendel’s mother [was] an awesome assailant in woman’s form . . . [Cain] awoke from thence many damned spirits. One such was Grendel’ (lines 1258–67). Grendel and his mother [were] ‘alien spirits, of whom one was . . . the semblance of a woman. The other wretched one . . . named Grendel trod exile-paths in human form’ (lines 1349–54). Although love of any kind is utterly irrelevant to the main themes of Beowulf, its incidental mention in several contexts demonstrates how much it was taken for granted in the halls of Anglo-Saxon England. Finally in our reconstruction of the Anglo-Norman family there is love and affection between siblings, some examples of which we have already cited: again Orderic blazes the trail with a (probably invented) speech of an elder to a younger brother: I am Robert, son of Ralph the Fair, and your brother . . . I brought you up after both our parents died, and loved you more than any living person. I sent you to the schools of France, kept you well provided with clothes and money, and in many other ways furthered your progress.107

The date of this episode, 1091, is contemporaneous with St Anselm’s repeated use of ‘dearest brother(s) and son(s)’,108 often linked to ‘dearest sisters and daughters’,109 and again suggests that people of the time expected there to be love between siblings just as much as between husbands and wives and between parents and children. Hence in his last sermon Dunstan commended ‘charity and brotherly love’ to his 103 A. Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf, Cambridge 2003, 98–9, and references cited there at

nn. 6–7. Ibid. 6, and references cited there at nn. 38–40. Ibid. 22–3, 130–2. Ibid. 20, and references cited there at nn. 16–21. Orderic, IV, 246–7. Letters of St Anselm, ed. Frölich, I, pp. 145, 191, 210, 239, 242, 252, 309; II, pp. 7, 19, 81–2, 140, 239, 267, 297; III, pp. 15, 17, 43, 57, 62, 108, 128–9, 137, 175. 109 Ibid. II, pp. 62, 64–5, 69–70, 102, 105; III, pp. 63, 167, 184. 104 105 106 107 108

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audience.110 Gerald of Wales tells how ‘in his childhood he was not a little impeded by the companionship of his brothers, who on holiday would play together’, repeatedly refers to his elder brother Philip as ‘that best of brothers’, and finally says that he promoted the interests of Philip’s son, ‘repaying him the love with which he, Philip, had loved his brother [Gerald] from childhood’.111 It is time to bring this disquisition to a close, and since it is, as I said, a report on work still in progress I cannot better Walter Map’s conclusion: I set before you a whole forest and timber-yard, I will not say of stories but of jottings; . . . Every reader must cut into shape the rough material that is here served up to him, that thanks to their pains it may go forth into the world with a fair outside. I am but your huntsman. I bring you the game, it is for you to make dainty dishes out of it.112

110 William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. Winterbottom and Thomson, 290–1. 111 Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, I, 8, 22, 188; III, 326; The Autobiography of Giraldus Cambrensis, ed.

and trans. H. E. Butler, London 1937, 36, 201, 349–50. 112 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, ed. James and others, 208–9.

Land Tenure and Royal Patronage

LAND TENURE AND ROYAL PATRONAGE IN THE EARLY ENGLISH KINGDOM: A MODEL AND A CASE STUDY Stephen Baxter and John Blair1 King Alfred’s version of St Augustine’s Soliloquies contains a famous allusion to the process of tenurial patronage: Every man likes, when he has built up a farm on his lord’s lease with his help, to stay there some time . . . and to work for himself on the lease both on sea and on land, until the time when he shall earn bookland and eternal inheritance through his lord’s kindness.2

This paper is concerned with the various forms of patronage to which Alfred alludes: bookland, land which was not bookland, and leased land (Old English lænland). Its argument comes in two halves. The first half sketches a model of land tenure in late Anglo-Saxon England which stresses the importance of land leased to royal officials on an ex officio basis for the duration of their period in office, and offers a corrective to the view, implicit in much of the literature, that grants by royal diploma were the principal instrument of royal patronage in late Anglo-Saxon England. The second half uses a case study of Bampton hundred in Oxfordshire in the tenth and eleventh centuries to illustrate some of the points made in the first. Bampton hundred has been selected because it affords remarkably clear evidence that late Anglo-Saxon kings could exercise patronage in various ways, for numerous beneficiaries, in a powerful and well co-ordinated manner. It also supplies an unusually well documented example of one of the most important developments in the tenurial structure of late Anglo-Saxon England: the process of manorial fission which caused large tenurial units to fragment into much smaller units of lordship. A MODEL OF LAND TENURE AND ROYAL PATRONAGE IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

The model developed in this paper can be summarized as follows. There was a basic distinction between bookland and folkland (Old English bocland and folcland) in Anglo-Saxon England. Bookland was simply land vested by royal diploma (boc), and folkland was all land other than bookland. The essence of bookland was that it was held 1

The first half of this paper is Stephen Baxter’s work in its entirety, as are the map and the appended table; the second half was written by Stephen Baxter, drawing on a dossier of material supplied by John Blair. We are grateful to John Hudson for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of the paper. 2 Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources , ed. and trans. S. Keynes and M. Lapidge, London 1983, 139. The Old English is printed in King Alfred’s Version of St Augustine’s Soliloquies, ed. T. A. Carnicelli, Cambridge MA 1969, 48: ‘Ælcne man lyst, siððan he ænig cotlyf on his hlafordes læne myd his fultume getimbred hæfð, þæt he hine mote hwilum þar-on gerestan . . . and his on gehwilce wisan to þere lænan tilian, ægþær ge on se ge on lande, oð þone fyrst þe he bocland and æce yrfe þurh his hlafordes miltse geearnige’.

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in perpetuity with freedom of alienation. Folkland was a catch-all category for any land which had not been booked. It comprised both royal property and landholdings held by ordinary families and subject to normal inheritance practices. Both bookland and folkland could be loaned or leased to create lænland. Virtually all of the extant documentation relating to pre-Conquest leases has been preserved in the archives of religious houses whose endowments were mostly made up of bookland, and for this reason we know much more about bookland which subsequently became leased than any other form of lænland, but this should not blind us to the possibility that folkland could also be loaned. Indeed, the capacity to loan folkland to royal officials was almost certainly a major element of royal patronage in late Anglo-Saxon England. In particular, there seems to have been a category of estates specifically reserved for the use of earls, and the majority of these were temporary loans held with office. Royal officials below the rank of earl held land from the king on similar terms. Consider each of these points in more detail. In recent publications, the late Patrick Wormald developed a persuasive model of the nature of bookland.3 He argued that bookland did not create a form of hereditary tenure as some historians have supposed; rather, bookland was granted in perpetuity and with full freedom of alienation. This made it possible to distinguish between inherited land, to which kin could automatically lay claim, and land acquired as bookland, which they could not. These characteristics made bookland a vital mechanism for the endowment of religious houses; indeed, for the first century or so of its use in Anglo-Saxon England, bookland was only granted to religious houses (some of them far from strict, as Bede famously complained in his letter to Ecgberht). However, from the late eighth century onwards, bookland was also granted to laymen; and since laymen frequently chose to bequeath bookland estates to their heirs, bookland often became almost indistinguishable from hereditary property. For this reason, the rights conferred with bookland were referred as ius hereditarium and similar expressions in contemporary documents. The tendency for bookland to be elided with heritable property was thus already pronounced before the late ninth century, when King Alfred issued a law code which declared: The man who holds bookland, and his kinsmen left it to him: then we lay down that he may not give it away from his kindred, if there is a document or witness that it was enjoined that he might not do so by those who originally acquired it, and by those who gave it to him; and let him have account of that before his kinsmen with the witness of the king and bishop.4

This in effect meant that bookland could be entailed. If the original essence of bookland lay in perpetual freedom of alienation, it had many other characteristics besides, but in seeking to identify these it is important to 3

See most recently P. Wormald, ‘On þa Wæpnedhealfe: Kingship and Royal Property from Æthelwulf to Edward the Elder’, in Edward the Elder, 899–924, ed. N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill, London 2001, 264–79. Some of Patrick Wormald’s hitherto unpublished papers on pre-Conquest land law were used in the preparation of this paper. These include: (i) a draft of a lecture on ‘The Nature of Title’ which formed part of a lecture series on ‘The Making of English Law’ delivered in Oxford in 1998; (ii) a draft of a chapter called ‘The Foundations of Title’ which was intended to form part of the second volume of The Making of English Law; and (iii) a draft lecture called ‘Thinking about Olde Inglysshe Folke’ delivered at Kalamazoo in 2004. I (S.B.) am grateful to Jenny, Luke, and Tom Wormald for allowing me to read and cite these papers. 4 Alfred 41, in Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, 74: ‘Se mon se ðe bocland hæbbe, him his mægas læfden, 7 þonne setton we, þæt he hit ne moste sellan of his mægburge, gif þær bið gewrit oððe gewitnes, ðæt hit ðara manna forbod wære þe hit on fruman gestrindon 7 þara þe hit him sealdon, þæt he swa ne mote; 7 þæt þonne on cyninges 7 on biscopes gewitnesse gerecce beforan his mægum’. The translation is from Wormald, ‘Nature of Title’.

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21

tread carefully. In particular, it is crucial to distinguish between specific characteristics which are unique to bookland, which are few, and those common to bookland and other forms of tenure, which are many. Because royal diplomas occupy such a dominant place in the pre-Conquest evidence of land tenure, bookland has assumed a disproportionate significance in the literature; and as a result, certain phenomena which are demonstrably associated with bookland have come to be seen as a function of it. For example, there is no reason to doubt that kings granted bookland; that thegns were often the beneficiaries of bookland grants; that royal diplomas (and especially writ-charters) conferred to beneficiaries formally royal dues known as ‘sake and soke’; that royal diplomas contained clauses which reserved the king’s right to exact military service and other services from the beneficiary; or that bookland was often the focus of tenurial disputes. However, there has been a tendency for such points to harden into wider generalizations which cannot be sustained: for example, the idea that bookland was the principal if not only form of tenurial royal patronage; that all land held by thegns was bookland; that all land held with ‘sake and soke’ was bookland; or that military service was a function of bookland.5 This tendency has reached a high-water mark in recent publications by David Roffe. He has argued that bookland estates held by thegns with sake and soke passed from pre-Conquest antecessores to post-Conquest barons with such frequency that the Domesday commissioners developed methods of identifying such property; and that the existence of pre-Conquest ‘king’s thegns’ holding bookland with sake and soke can therefore be inferred from the use of certain formulae in Domesday Book, including the x tenuit formula which occurs frequently in Domesday’s circuit IV. There are interesting possibilities here, but the argument is ultimately unpersuasive because it hangs from a chain of propositions which contains several weak links.6 A useful corrective is simply to recall that bookland was one of two principal categories of land tenure in pre-Conquest England, the other being folkland. The meaning of folkland must be deduced from a total of four texts in which the term is used.7 These are worth quoting in full. 1. S 328 (dated 858): a grant by King Æthelberht of Kent of 5 sulungs at Wassingwell in exchange for 5 sulungs at Mersham, Kent, with the conversion of the latter into folkland. The endorsement reads: ‘The king gave and booked 5 sulungs at Wassingwell to Wulflaf in exchange for 5 sulungs at Mersham, and the king made the land at Mersham into folkland for himself when they exchanged the estates.’ The

5

The proposition that military service was a function of bookland is developed by R. Abels, ‘Bookland and Fyrd Service in Late Saxon England’, ANS 7, 1984 (1985), 1–25, and his Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England, London 1988; but see N. P. Brooks ‘The Development of Military Obligations in Eighth- and Ninth-Century England’, in England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. P. Clemoes and K. Hughes, Cambridge 1971, 69–84. 6 D. Roffe, ‘From Thegnage to Barony: Sake and Soke, Title, and Tenants-in-Chief’, ANS 12, 1989 (1990), 157–76; idem, Domesday: The Inquest and the Book, Oxford 2000, 17–48. Some objections to Roffe’s thesis are listed in a review by S. Baxter published in Reviews in History, Oct. 2001, currently (29 Nov. 2005) available online at http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/paper/baxterStephen.html; and in S. D. Baxter, ‘The Leofwinesons: Power, Property and Patronage in the Early English Kingdom’, Oxford Univ. D.Phil., 2002, 266–71. 7 R. L. Venezky and A. di P. Healey, A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, Toronto 1980, s.vv. folcland, folclande, and folclondes. In addition to the references cited below, there is a fifth reference in a poem, which cannot be precisely dated, in which the word may mean something like ‘a country’: S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, Oxford 1994, 325.

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boundary clause of the Wassingwell estate given in the text of this charter refers to a neighbouring estate ‘in the west, the king’s folkland which Wighelm and Wulflaf hold’.8 2. S 1508 (dated 871×889): the will of Ealdorman Ælfred. ‘I gave to my son Æthelwald 3 hides of bookland, 2 hides at Whaddon and 1 hide at Gatton, and with it one hundred swine, and if the king will grant him the folkland as well as the bookland, then let him have it and enjoy it.’9 3. I Edward 2 (dated 900×924): ‘We have laid down what [penalty] he is worthy of who obstructs another’s justice either in bookland or folkland, and let him fix a day as regards folkland when he will do justice to him before the reeve. If, however, he has no riht, neither in bookland nor folkland, let him who has obstructed rihtes be liable to the king for thirty shillings.’10 4. Ymb Æwbricas, appendix to Alfred-Ine (tenth century?): ‘And on your question about adulterers, whether with nuns or lay women, the forfeited woman and man go respectively to the bishopric with her third, and to the lord – whether it be bookland or folkland, whether of the king himself or of any man – he goes with his two parts to his lord if he has wicked intercourse, and they are both forfeit.’11 These texts leave room for many different interpretations, but a few points are unambiguous. The first text establishes that folkland could be royal property which could be held from the king by his men, and that bookland and folkland could be topographically adjacent. The second text confirms the simple but crucial point that the king could grant folkland to royal officials, including ealdormen. The first two texts thus prove that bookland was not the only form of royal patronage. Of course, this does not mean that all folkland was in the king’s gift: merely that some of it was. Indeed, the third and fourth texts seem to envisage that all land was either bookland or folkland, and that these were mutually exclusive categories; and the fourth text establishes that folkland could be held by other lords besides the king. Much else is controversial. Several nineteenth-century historians argued that folkland was land which belonged to the ‘folk’ or the nation: it was the ager publicus of England.12 Writing in 1893, Vinogradoff rejected this interpretation, arguing that ‘folkland is land that is held by folkright . . . land held under the old restrictive common law, the law which keeps land in families, as contrasted with land which is 8

S 328; trans. in EHD I, no. 93, pp. 530–1; printed in Facsimiles of Ancient Charters in the British Museum, ed. E. A. Bond, 4 vols, London 1873–8, II, 33. Endorsement: ‘se cyning sealde 7 gebocade wullafe fif sulung landes et wassinwellan wið ðem fif sulungum et mersaham 7 se cyning dyde ðet land et mersaham him to folclande ða hie ðem landum iehwerfed hefdan’. Boundary clause: ‘ab occidente cyninges folcland quod abet wighelm 7 wulflaf’. 9 S 1508 (Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. and trans. F. E. Harmer, Cambridge 1914, no. 10, pp. 13–15, 47–9): ‘Ond ic sello Æðelwalde minum sunu III hida boclandes: II hida on Hwætedune, [ane]s hides an Gatatune, 7 him sello þerto C swina; 7 gif se cyning him geunnan wille þæs folclondes to ðæm boclonde, þonne hæbbe he 7 bruce.’ 10 Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, 140: ‘Eac we cwædon, hwæs se wyrðe wære þe oðrum ryhtes wyrnde aðor oððe on boclande oððe on folclande; 7 ðæt he him geandágode of þam folclande, hwonne he him riht worhte beforan ðam geferan. Gif he ðonne nan riht næfde ne on boclande ne on folclande, þæt se wære þe rihtes wyrnde scyldig xxx scll’ wið þone cyning.’ 11 R. Flower, ‘Text of the Burghal Hidage’, London Medieval Studies 1, 1937, 60–4 at 62: ‘Ymb æwbricas þe þu acsodes ge æt nunnum ge æt læwedum wifum symle gæð se forworhta wifmon þam bisceopstole mid hire þriddan dæle 7 se wæpned to þam hlaforde sie swa boclond swa folclond swa þer hit sie ge cyninges selfes ge ælces monnes; þonne geð se wer mid his twæde to þam hlaforde gif he on woh geligeþ 7 hie butu forwohte beoð.’ The translation is by P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, I: Legislation and its Limits, Oxford 1999, 372. 12 This literature is reviewed by P. Vinogradoff, ‘Folkland’, EHR 8, 1893, 1–17 at 1–5. Further references to work on bookland and folkland are collected by S. Keynes, Anglo-Saxon England: A Bibliographical Handbook for Students of Anglo-Saxon History, Cambridge 2003, 169–70.

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23

held under a book’.13 Both Maitland and Stenton accepted the thrust of this argument, though not without reservations.14 Eric John rejected it altogether, arguing that folkland was land available to the king for making loans to his warrior aristocracy: ‘[it] is what Bede’s milites looked to for their provision in life’.15 One of the virtues of Wormald’s case is that it accommodates all of these interpretations. By suggesting that ‘folkland’ simply meant any kind of property which was not bookland, he sidesteps the controversy: folkland could and probably did mean all the different things it has been thought to mean. Attention may now be switched to certain other forms of land tenure which are best regarded as subsets of both bookland and folkland: lænland and comital property. Lænland was simply land subject to the terms of a lease. It came into being when a lord granted the usufruct of an estate to a beneficiary, usually on a temporary basis and in return for rent or service (or both). We have already encountered King Alfred’s famous allusion to this process: a man would hold lænland from his lord in return for service until such time as he might acquire bookland through his lord’s kindness. Lænland was often held for a prescribed period of time, often though not always for a notional ‘three lives’; thus, for example, an estate held on a three-life lease might pass from a man to his widow and to a single heir before reverting back to the original lessor. A well-known memorandum addressed by Oswald, bishop of Worcester, to King Edgar describes the services expected from the tenants of a three-life lease. Such tenants were obliged to ‘fulfil the whole law of riding as riding men should’ (‘ut omnes equitandi lex ab eis impleatur que ad equites pertinet’); they were to render certain dues such as toll and churchscot to the church; they should remain ‘humbly subject to the commands of the bishop’; they should be prepared to build bridges, burn lime, make deer hedges, and provide spears for the hunt; and they should be subject to the authority and will of the archiductor who presides over the bishopric.16 It is not made explicit in this text or any other pre-Conquest source that military service was expected from the tenants of lænland, but there is strong circumstantial evidence that military service was also a basic rationale for this type of arrangement.17 Most of the extant material relating to pre-Conquest lænland describes lease arrangements between religious houses and their tenants, but Domesday Book confirms that kings and other lay lords could also lease property. Thus, although most if not all extant leases relate to bookland, this does not mean that all lænland was bookland: folkland could also be leased. The question as to how dependent land tenure is represented in Domesday Book is problematic, but there are strong grounds for thinking that pre-Conquest tenants who are said to have lacked power of alienation were tenants of lænland.18 Loans of royal property were almost certainly an important element of royal patronage in late Anglo-Saxon England. In a famous passage in Domesday Book and Beyond, Maitland suggested there was a category of property set aside for the use of earls: he called them ‘comital manors’. He reasoned that the enormous wealth of the 13 Vinogradoff, ‘Folkland’, 11. See also P. Vinogradoff, The Growth of the Manor, 2nd edn, London 1911,

142–3, 244–5, 247. 14 F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England, new edn with

foreword by J. C. Holt, Cambridge 1987, 244–58; F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn, Oxford 1971, 306–12. 15 E. John, ‘Folkland Reconsidered’, in his Orbis Britanniae and Other Studies, Leicester 1966, 64–127 at 120. 16 S 1368. 17 Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation, 149–59; for a different view, see R. Allen Brown, Origins of English Feudalism, London 1973, 45–71. 18 Baxter, ‘Leofwinesons’, 254–64.

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Anglo-Norman Studies XXVIII

house of Godwine ‘seems only explicable by the supposition that the earlships and the older ealdormanships had carried with them a title to the enjoyments of wide lands’.19 Maitland went on to cite Exon Domesday’s reference to mansiones de comitatu,20 an entry in Little Domesday which refers to land which belonged to the earldom (consulatus),21 the description of Stafford in Great Domesday Book which refers to twenty-two houses de honore comitum,22 and an important passage on the third penny in the Instituta Cnuti, which may date to the Conqueror’s reign, and which refers to comitales villae.23 This is a powerful argument, and it is one which can be strengthened, because there is further suggestive evidence which points to the existence of comital manors. Place-names are occasionally instructive. Earl Harold held an estate at Aldermaston in Berkshire TRE, a place-name which meant ‘tÃn of the ealdorman’, and the places named Aldermanbury in Bedford and London could have been ealdormen’s burhs.24 Boundary clauses occasionally refer to what sound like appurtenances to comital manors: for example, the boundary clause of a royal diploma issued in 1060 refers to the ealdermannes mere;25 and that of a diploma issued in 1062 refers to the ealdormannes hæcce and cynges hæcce.26 Domesday Book records that the earl’s ‘third penny’ pertained to several of the estates held by earls. Since the third penny was intended to give earls an incentive to ensure the collection of royal revenue derived from towns, trade, and the profits of justice, it is probable that such estates were held by earls as a function of office.27 For similar reasons, estates held by earls to which ‘the soke of the hundred’ or ‘the farm of one night’ pertained are likely to have been comital manors.28 Several estates held by earls rendered a cash value of £56 and other multiples of £8 TRE; and although the point has not been noticed before, it can be shown that £8 was the equivalent of 120 ora at 16 pence to the ora, and that various royal dues and exactions were levied at this rate, especially in the Danelaw. It is therefore probable that such estates were comital manors.29 The problem as to why Domesday Book attributes numerous estates to earls who were either dead or in exile in 1066 19 20 21 22 23

Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 168. Exon, fol. 107r. LDB 118b (Norf. 1/70). GDB 246a1 (Staffs. B/1). Instituta Cnuti, iii. 55, in Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, 614–15: ‘Comitis rectitudines secundum Anglos iste sunt cum rege: tertius denarius in uillis ubi mercatum conuenerit et in castigatione latronum; et comitales uillas que pertinent ad comitatum eius’ (‘According to the English, these are rights of the earl together with the king: the third penny with respect to the vills where a market has convened, and with respect to the punishment of thieves; and comital vills which belong to his earldom’). For the date of the text, see Wormald, Making of English Law, 404–5. 24 GDB 58a1 (Berks. 1/44); M. Gelling, The Place-Names of Berkshire, 3 vols, EPNS 49–51, 1973–6, I, 198. It is possible that the lost place-name Aldermanbury in Bedford, though first recorded only in the early thirteenth century, had similar origins: A. Mawer and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, EPNS 3, 1926, 11–12. Aldermanbury (the burh of the ealdorman?) in London may have been the London residence for the late Anglo-Saxon ealdorman and earls: C. N. L. Brooke and G. Keir, London 800–1216: The Shaping of a City, London 1975, 155; T. Dyson and J. Schofield, ‘Saxon London’, in Anglo-Saxon Towns in Southern England, ed. J. Haslam, Chichester 1984, 285–313 at 306–8. 25 S 1031 (F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, London 1970, 333–5 at 335). 26 S 1036; hæcce probably means ‘fence’ or ‘hedge’ in this context. 27 Baxter, ‘Leofwinesons’, 77–87. 28 A. Williams, ‘Land and Power in the Eleventh Century: The Estates of Harold Godwineson’, ANS 3 1980 (1981), 171–87 and 230–4 at 174. For the farm of one night, see, most recently, R. Lavelle, ‘The “Farm of One Night” and the Organisation of Royal Estates in Late Anglo-Saxon Wessex’, HSJ 14, 2003 (2005), 53–82. 29 GDB 336b1 (Lincs. C/32): ‘If the peace, given by the king’s hand or by his seal, is broken, a fine is paid throughout eighteen hundreds. Each hundred pays £8. Twelve hundreds pay the fine to the king and six to the earl.’ Compare GDB 298b2 (Yorks. C/38–40), 280a1, 280b1 (Notts. B/20; S/3). See further F. M.

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25

may also be relevant here. It is often assumed that the Domesday commissioners and their scribes recorded such tenures because they derived their information from out-of-date geld lists. However, it is worth entertaining the possibility that the estates in question were comital manors which had reverted back into royal control and were being farmed on the king’s behalf in 1066. Some of the estates attributed to Tostig are known to have been held by King Edward on the day he was alive and dead. The estates of former earls were certainly ring-fenced in this way after 1066, for Domesday Book lists many of the estates formerly held by Earl William fitz Osbern (who died in 1071) and Bishop Odo of Bayeux (who was imprisoned in 1082) under separate headings as if these men remained tenants-in-chief; the estates in question were presumably being farmed for King William in 1086.30 The little that is known of the histories of the estates attributed to earls in Domesday Book is also suggestive. Some are known to have been held by royal officials at earlier dates. A remarkable passage in the Waltham Chronicle, compiled in the late twelfth century though drawing on earlier material, says that Athelstan, son of Tovi the Proud and father of Asgar the staller, did not inherit all his father’s property but ‘only that which related to his stallership’ (‘tantum que pertinebat ad stallarium’).31 The passage goes on to say that, because Athelstan lacked his father’s wisdom, King Edward transferred many of his estates to Earl Harold, and Domesday Book confirms that several of the estates once held by the family of Tovi the Proud were held by Harold TRE.32 Stallers were royal officials below the rank of earl and above that of sheriff, so this is explicit (albeit late) evidence that property could be set aside for royal officials and could pass from one such official to another. Some of the estates held by earls TRE are known to have been held by their predecessors in office: for example, Earl Harold held Much Cowarne in Herefordshire TRE, and this estate is known to have been held by Earl Hrani in Cnut’s reign;33 the Huntingdonshire Clamores says that Edward gave Swineshead to Earl Siward with sake and soke, and that Earl Harold later held it in the same way;34 a charter of King William I refers to an estate held by Earl Tostig and before him by Earl Siward;35 and Shipton-under-Wychwood and Princes Risborough both appear to have been held by Earl Ælfgar and Earl Harold in turn.36 In addition, Domesday Book records that Earl Morcar held a large number of estates in Northumbria, and since these were located a long way from his family’s tenurial heartland in the west Midlands it seems unlikely that Morcar acquired them through inheritance or any other private means: the

Stenton, Types of Manorial Structure in the Northern Danelaw, Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History 2, ed. P. Vinogradoff, 1910, 33–4. 30 Baxter, ‘Leofwinesons’, 129–32. 31 The Waltham Chronicle, ed. and trans. L. Watkiss and M. Chibnall, Oxford 1994, 24–5. 32 Ibid. 22 says that Tovi held estates at Hitchin, Lambeth, and Waltham; Earl Harold held estates at each of these locations TRE: GDB 132b1 (Herts. 1/3); 34a2 (Surr. 17/1); LDB 15b (Essex 7/1). Gytha held from Earl Godwine an estate at Wroxall on the Isle of Wight which may have been held by Osgod Clapa, Tovi’s father-in-law, at an earlier date: S 1391; GDB 39b2 (Hants 1/W14). 33 Hemingi Chartularium Ecclesiae Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols, Oxford 1723, I, 274; GDB 186a2 (Herefs. 19/10). The likelihood that this manor was comital is strengthened by the fact that the third penny of three hundreds was assigned to it TRE. 34 GDB 208a2 (Hunts. D/14); A. Williams, ‘The King’s Nephew: The Family and Career of Ralph, Earl of Hereford’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth, and J. L. Nelson, Woodbridge 1989, 327–43 at 339 n. 67. 35 Regesta: William I, no. 115; cf. GDB 299a2 (Yorks. 1Y/5). 36 GDB 154a1, 154b2 (Oxon. B/5; 1/9); 143b1 (Bucks. 1/3); R. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, Cambridge 1991, 89–90. Princes Risborough had once been held by Ælfgifu, probably the sister of Ealdorman Æthelweard: S 1484 (Whitelock, AS Wills, no. 8, p. 119).

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majority of them were probably comital manors which Morcar obtained when he became earl of Northumbria following Tostig’s exile in October 1065. All this is cumulatively suggestive; but there are two further, more compelling reasons for thinking that estates were set aside for earls. First, Domesday Book proves that there was a quantum difference between the wealth of earls and the rest of the English aristocracy.37 Second, the speed and frequency with which the structure of English earldoms changed during King Edward’s reign is most readily comprehensible if it is assumed that there were comital manors in each shire which could be transferred from one earl to another with relative ease. Freeman was long ago struck by ‘the singular fluctuations in the boundaries of the great earldoms’, and ‘the way in which shires were transferred from one jurisdiction to another’ – and well he might have been.38 There is a considerable body of material pertaining to the structure of late Anglo-Saxon earldoms – the address clauses of writs, witness lists of non-royal charters, the Domesday evidence of the earl’s third penny and comital property in towns and countryside, and so on – and when this material is assembled, it becomes clear that several Midland shires between Gloucestershire in the south-west and Lincolnshire in the north-east were frequently transferred between different earldoms during Edward the Confessor’s reign.39 Table 1 summarizes the available evidence. Oxfordshire is a particularly striking case: it appears to have been controlled by as many as seven different earls in the seventeen years between 1049 and 1066.40 But Oxfordshire was by no means unique in this respect: several shires were controlled in quick succession by different earls representing different comital houses. Another way of illustrating the same point is to consider the region controlled by the Leofwineson earls of Mercia between 1016 and 1066. This contracted to a core of shires in the west Midlands when the family’s fortunes were at a low ebb in the early 1020s; it then gradually expanded such that Earl Leofric and his son Earl Ælfgar between them controlled most of England between Thames and Humber by the early 1050s; but it contracted again in the late 1050s and 1060s as the power of the Godwineson family expanded dramatically. (In the early 1060s a new earldom was also carved out in the east Midlands for Earl Waltheof, another earl whose comital estates lay a long way from his family’s tenurial heartland in Bernicia.) This pattern is important. In order to exercise power effectively, earls needed a landed base in the towns and shires within their earldoms. It is therefore difficult to imagine how the king was able to shuffle the shires of the Midlands between different earldoms, except on the presumption that comital property within those shires was transferred to the incumbent earl. In sum, when the author of the Leges Henrici Primi referred to ‘lands held by virtue of office’ by ‘earls and others of high rank’ in the early twelfth century, he was almost certainly alluding to a much earlier system of patronage.41 37 For estimates of the aggregate value of the estates attributed to the families of Earl Godwine and Earl

Leofric in Domesday Book, see Baxter, ‘Leofwinesons’, 122 (these estimates differ significantly from those set out in Fleming, Kings and Lords, 59, 66–9, 71). For estimates of the aggregate value of the estates attributed to English noblemen below the rank of earl, see the tables appended to P. A. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor, Oxford 1994. 38 E. A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England: Its Causes and its Results, 6 vols, Oxford 1867–79, II (3rd edn), 571, 585. 39 Baxter, ‘Leofwinesons’, 56–9. 40 S. Baxter, ‘The Earls of Mercia and their Commended Men in the Mid Eleventh Century’, ANS 23, 2000 (2001), 23–46 at 35–6. 41 Leges Henrici Primi, ed. and trans. L. J. Downer, Oxford 1972, c. 20.2, pp. 122–3: ‘comites et alie potestates in terris proprii potentatus sui’.

Land Tenure and Royal Patronage

27

X X

X

X X X

X

X

X X X

X X

X

X X

Oxfordshire

X X

Nottinghamshire

Lincolnshire

X X

Northamptonshire

Leicestershire

X X

Huntingdonshire

Harold Tostig Gyrth Leofric Ælfgar Eadwine Morcar Siward Waltheof Odda Ralph

Comital house Godwine Godwine Godwine Godwine Leofwine Leofwine Leofwine Leofwine Siward Siward other other

Gloucestershire

Earl Swein

Derbyshire

Table 1 Evidence Suggesting Comital Control of Midland Earldoms in Edward the Confessor’s Reign

X X X

X

X

X

X

X

X X X X

X X

X

Was comital property bookland or folkland? The matter cannot be proven, but it is a reasonable guess that the answer is both, though with a preponderance of the latter. There is no doubt that earls held bookland, but it is striking how few royal diplomas in favour of ealdormen and earls are extant, and how few of the relevant estates were held by earls or their kinsmen in 1066.42 Of course, the charter evidence is fragmentary, and little weight should be placed on this argument from near silence. However, there remains a much stronger argument based on first principles. It is simply difficult to reconcile the nature of bookland, granted in perpetuity with freedom of alienation, with the fluid and impermanent structure of late Anglo-Saxon earldoms. The logical corollary is that the bulk of the estates assigned to earls were not bookland but a kind of folkland: royal lænland, assigned to earls on an ex officio basis for the duration of their period in office. It is probable that royal officials below the rank of earls held royal lænland as well as bookland. There is a large and growing literature on thegns and their tenures,43 but a few points need emphasis here. In the first place, there is no doubt that many thegns 42 For example, even though the families of Earl Godwine and Earl Leofric are known to have been

enormously wealthy, there are only five extant royal diplomas pertaining to their estates, and most of the property in question had been alienated outside their families by 1066: S 892, 932, 970, 1009, 1022; Baxter, ‘Leofwinesons’, 145–7. 43 See in particular J. Gillingham, ‘Thegns and Knights in Eleventh-Century England: Who was then the Gentleman?’, TRHS 6th series 5, 1995, 129–53, reprinted in his The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values, Woodbridge 2000, 163–85; A. Williams, ‘A Bell-house and a Burh-geat: Lordly Residences in England before the Norman Conquest’, Medieval Knighthood 4, 1992, 221–40; A. Williams, ‘Thegnly Piety and Ecclesiastical Patronage in the Late Old English Kingdom’, ANS 24, 2001 (2002), 1–24; A. Williams, ‘Earls, Ceorls, Thegns and Lords: The English Aristocracy in the Eleventh Century’, forthcoming; R. Lavelle, ‘All the King’s Men? Land and Royal Service in Eleventh-Century Wessex’, Southern History 26, 2005, 1–37.

28

Anglo-Norman Studies XXVIII

held bookland. A well-known passage in the text known as Rectitudines Singularum Personarum asserts that ‘The law of the thegn is that he be entitled to his bookright’,44 and this can be put alongside dozens of royal diplomas in favour of ministri or thegns. Second, there was an intimate connection between thegnly status and royal service. Rectitudines goes on to say that thegns were expected to serve the king in various ways, for example by working on deer fences at royal vills, guarding the coast, and providing military watch. Another early eleventh-century tract on status says that a ceorl ‘who possessed fully 5 hides of land of his own, a bellhouse and burhgeat, a seat and special office in the king’s hall, then he was henceforth entitled to the rights of a thegn’; and the same text goes on to describe how an ‘intermediate thegn’ might be expected to ‘attend his lord at the king’s hall’ and ‘thrice go on errand for the king’.45 Many such thegns can be identified in Domesday Book, and it is possible to demonstrate a close and possibly continuous connection between their tenures and later serjeanty tenures.46 Although each of these points is firmly established, it is important to avoid the temptation to make overly rigid connections between them. In particular, it ought not to be assumed that all land held by all thegns was granted in the form of bookland in return for specific royal service; rather, we should keep open the possibility that royal servants could also be rewarded with grants of royal lænland analogous to those held by earls, albeit on a smaller scale. Here it is relevant that the word tainlanda (‘thegnland’) in Domesday Book almost invariably refers to lænland, usually held from religious houses or the king.47 None of these distinctions should be taken as absolute. Bookland could be turned into folkland and vice versa. All four references to folcland occur within the space of fifty years, in the last quarter of the ninth century and the first quarter of the tenth, so we cannot be sure that the word itself had lasting currency, although the concept surely did. Bookland was not in theory hereditary, but often became so in practice. Bookland was theoretically granted with full freedom of disposition, but it had a tendency to revert to royal control from time to time, sometimes as a consequence of forfeiture and other political accidents, and sometimes as a consequence of more prosaic monetary transactions.48 Although lænland was alienated on a temporary basis, it often proved difficult 44 Printed in Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, 444–53, and translated in EHD II, no. 172, pp. 875–9. For discus-

sion, see P. D. A. Harvey, ‘Rectitudines Singularum Personarum and Gerefa’, EHR 108, 1993, 1–22; Wormald, Making of English Law, 387–9. 45 Geþyncðo is printed in Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, 456–9; translated in EHD I, no. 51, pp. 468–71; and discussed by Wormald, Making of English Law, 391–4. 46 J. Campbell, ‘Some Agents and Agencies of the Late Anglo-Saxon State’, in Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt, Woodbridge 1987, 201–18 at 210–12; reprinted in his The Anglo-Saxon State, London 2000, 201–25 at 214–16. 47 References are collected by J. D. Foy, Domesday Book: Index of Subjects, Chichester 1992, 235. Of these, the following entries say that tainlanda could not be alienated by its tenants: GDB 66b1, 66b2, 67a2 (Wilts. 7/4; 7/13; 10/2), 77b2 (Dors. 11/1; Exon, fol. 36r.), 78a1 (Dors. 11/13; Exon, fol. 38r.), 87a1 (Som. 1/21; Exon, fol. 106r.), 87a2 (Som. 1/28; Exon, fol. 113v.), 88b2 (Som. 5/50; Exon, fol. 147v.), 90a2, 90b1, 91a1, 94a1, 95b2 (Som. 8/16, 20, 24, 38–9; 21/55; 25/8). The following entries state or imply that tainlanda was held from another lord, presumably in some form of dependent tenure: GDB 64b2, 71b1 (Wilts. 1/3–5; 32/2), 75b1 (Dors. 1/13), 86a2, 98b1 (Som. 1/4; 46/2–3), 181a2 (Herefs. 1/75), 262b2 (Ches. C/25), 274b2 (Derb. 6/48), 287a2–b1 (Notts. 10/15), 299b2 (Yorks. 1Y/15). The solitary exception is GDB 76a1–2 (Dors. 1/31), 1 hide of thegnland held by a priest who ‘poterat cum ea ire quo uolebat’; but given the foregoing, it is quite possible that the word ‘non’ has been omitted before ‘poterat’ in error. The connection between ‘thegnland’ and dependent tenure is discussed by E. Miller, The Abbey and Bishopric of Ely: The Social History of an Ecclesiastical Estate from the Tenth Century to the Early Fourteenth Century, Cambridge 1951, 36–74, esp. 50–3; and by L. Abrams, Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury: Church and Endowment, Woodbridge 1996, 266–312, esp. 291–300. 48 P. Wormald, ‘A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Lawsuits’, ASE 17, 1988, 247–81, nos. 1–95; reprinted in his Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience, London 1999, 253–87;

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29

for lessors to recover, because tenants were often decidedly reluctant to give up usufruct of their estates when the terms of their leases expired, as the church of Worcester discovered to its cost in the eleventh century.49 Royal officials were prominent among the despoilers of Worcester, and it seems likely that they also did their level best to obtain permanent control of estates loaned to them by the king – and no doubt sometimes succeeded.50 Bookland was often granted to thegns, but not all land held by thegns was necessarily bookland; indeed, during the Conqueror’s reign, the word ‘thegnland’ seems to have used as a gloss for lænland. Such reservations and complications could be multiplied. Nevertheless, the basic distinction between bookland, folkland, and lænland remains useful and important – demonstrably so when one turns to the local evidence. A CASE STUDY: THE ANATOMY OF A ROYAL ESTATE COMPLEX IN BAMPTON HUNDRED

In the later medieval period, Bampton hundred ‘formed a compact block of land bounded on part of the north and much of the east by the river Windrush, on the south by the river Thames, and on part of the south-west by the river Leach’.51 The modern town of Bampton lies about 12½ miles (20 kilometres) west of Oxford. In the eleventh century, Bampton itself was both a royal vill and the site of an important Anglo-Saxon minster with the largest mother-parish in Oxfordshire. Bampton hundred is a promising target for a case study, partly because the source evidence is so rich, and partly because this has been the subject of much valuable recent research.52 In what follows, it is argued that late Anglo-Saxon kings carved up virtually all of Bampton hundred in the exercise of patronage; that this assumed the form of both bookland and royal lænland; that the beneficiaries were numerous and represented a wide spectrum of society; and that all this was achieved in a coherent, co-ordinated manner which resulted in the formation of four topographically distinct zones within the hundred (Map. 1). These comprised a royal core with a contiguous belt of bookland to the north and east, a zone of ‘ministerial property’ held by royal servants and officials to the north and west, and a zone of comital manors on the westernmost edge. Needless to say, there are some exceptions to this neat scheme: in particular, there are parcels of bookland and ministerial properties embedded in the royal core, and for some parts of the hundred there is insufficient evidence to categorize landholdings with any certainty. Nevertheless, the overall pattern is unmistakable and rather remarkable: nothing quite like this has ever been observed in the literature on late Anglo-Saxon land tenure and royal patronage.

J. Campbell, ‘The Sale of Land and the Economics of Power in Early England: Problems and Possibilities’, HSJ 1, 1989, 23–37; reprinted in his Anglo-Saxon State, 227–45. 49 A. Williams, ‘The Spoliation of Worcester’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 383–408; S. Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, in Archbishop Wulfstan: Papers from the Novocentenary Conference, ed. M. Townend, Turnhout, Belgium, 2004, 161–205. 50 Fleming, Kings and Lords, 101–2. 51 VCH Oxon. XIII, 1. 52 Ibid. 6–7, 48; J. Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, Stroud 1994, 62–4; J. Blair, ‘Bampton: An Anglo-Saxon Minster’, Current Archaeology 160, 1998, 124–30; J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, Oxford 2005, references in index. Table 2 below presents the basic data.

Map 1. Bampton hundred and royal patronage in late Anglo-Saxon England

Notes 1. The map is based on a map of Bampton hundred c. 1880 printed in VCH Oxon. XIII, 2. The boundaries are all parish boundaries in 1880 except as follows: Grafton and Radcot were in Langford parish; Weald, Lew, Aston, Cote, Chimney, Shifford, and Brighthampton were all in Bampton parish; and Crawley, Hailey, Curbridge, and Witney were all in Witney parish. 2. Bookland in Bampton and Aston granted together with Chimney and Shifford to Bishop Leofric of Exeter in 1069 (Regesta: William I, no. 138). 3. Bookland in Brighthampton, Aston, and Lew granted to Ælfwine scriptor in 984 (S 853). 4. Bookland in Moreton granted to Saint-Denis together with Taynton in Chadlington hundred in 1059 (S 1028). 5. Ministerial property in Weald held by Theodoric the goldsmith in 1086. 6. Various ministerial properties embedded within Bampton, Aston, and Weald held by Robert d’Oilly and others in 1086. 7. Ministerial property in Little Minster held by Sæwold TRE. 8. A possible ministerial tenure held by Joseph TRE. 9. Parts of Brighthampton and Standlake remained within the royal core in 1086.

32 Table 2

Anglo-Norman Studies XXVIII Analysis of Domesday Book for Bampton Hundred

Vill Alvescot Asthall Astrop [in Brize Norton] Aston Bampton

Charters S 678, 853; R Wm I 138 -

GDB 58/21 29/3 59/10 1/6

TRE holder Goda King Edward?

TRW holder (mesne tenant) Særic Roger d’Ivry Earl William (Roger) King William

Bampton Bampton Bampton Bampton Bampton Bampton Black Bourton Black Bourton Black Bourton Brighthampton Brighthampton Brize Norton Brize Norton Brize Norton Broadwell Bromscott and Pemscott Broughton Poggs Burford Clanfield Chimney Cote Cokethorpe Crawley Curbridge Ducklington Ducklington Grafton Hardwick Hailey Kelmscot Kencot Langford Lew Lew Minster Lovell Little Minster Moreton Radcot Shifford Shilton Standlake Stockley [in Asthall] Weald Westwell

R Wm I 138 S 853; RII 1698, 1711 S 853; RII 1698, 1711 R Wm I 138 S 678 S 771 S 771, 1292 S 678 S 678 S 853; RII 1698, 1711 S 771 S 853 S 853 S 1028 S 654, 911 S 853; RII 1698, 1711 -

1/6 1/6 1/6 5/1 7/33 28/21 40/1 59/12 59/13 7/29 59/25 29/4 58/17 58/26 54/1 27/3 50/1 7/36 29/18 28/20 59/6 17/3 28/26 1/8 20/6 58/20 18/2 58/33 -

Ilbert de Lacy Walter fitz Pons Henry de Ferrières Bishop of Exeter (Bishop Robert) Ilbert de Lacy Robert d'Oilly (Roger) Arnulf de Hesdin (Wimund) Earl William (Roger d’Ivry (Pain)) Earl William (Ansketil) Bishop of Bayeux (Wadard) Earl William (Ansketil de Graye) Roger d'Ivry (Fulk) Theodoric the goldsmith Godwine Christina Robert of Stafford (Gosbert) Robert fitz Murdrac Bishop of Bayeux (Earl Aubrey) Roger d'Ivry (Pain) Robert d’Oilly (Roger) Earl William (Robert) Count of Evreux Robert d’Oilly (Roger) King William (Ælfsige of Faringdon) Walter Giffard (Hugh) Aretius Earl Aubrey Sæwold (Robert d'Oilly) Bishop of Lincoln (Columban) Theodoric the goldsmith Walter fitz Pons

Witney Yelford

S 771, 1001 S 678?

3/1 45/1

Bondi the forester Bishop Leofric Þurgautr 14 thegns Theodoric’s wife Algar (Earl Ælfgar?) Ælfric and Alwine 3 liberi homines Earl Harold Alwine Sæwold Joseph Theodoric’s wife Aldwine, Sæwold, and Eadwine Archbishop Stigand Aldwine, Sæwold, and Eadwine

Total

6/7 1/6 58/18 45/2

Bishop of Winchester Walter fitz Pons

Land Tenure and Royal Patronage

Hides 2 11 1 27.5

Virg. -

£ TRE 11 -

s TRE 20 20 -

£ TRW 12 80

s TRW 50 30 40

0.5 6 3 4 5 3 2 1.5 6 14 1 24 2 7 8 7 4 7 2 4 15 1.5 2 7 3 3 2.5 5

1.5 2.5 1 1 -1

4 4 4 9 25

6 4 4 4 6 13 31

60 40 40 20 10

-1 -1 2 -

6 18 10 3 4 7

40 40 20 40 100 10 10 40 40 10 20 40 -

6 18 7 3 7

50 40 20 35 100 40 -

30 3

-

22 -

60

25 -

50

224.5

5

166

510

266

625

6 16 7 4 6

7 13 7 6 7

33

Notes Goda libere tenuit; serjeanty tenure he has this land, with 2 hides and 1 virgate, as three manors not in GDB; serjeanty tenure the soke of two hundreds belong to this manor; 4 mills, a market, salt rights in Droitwich held by gift of the bishop of Bayeux ‘a parcel of land’ ‘a certain wood’ includes 3 hides in Chimney

Þurgautr libere tenuit

cf. Bayeux Tapestry plate 47

minister regis; Theodoric's wife held it freely minister regis Algar libere tenuit TRE serjeanty tenure libere tenuerunt hanc terram est de primo feudo regis part of the bishop’s 6 hides in Bampton (see 5/1) not in GDB; serjeanty tenure not in GDB; part of Ducklington not in GDB; part of Witney not in GDB; part of Witney

‘the holders of these lands TRE could go where they would’ not in GDB not in GDB; part of Witney not in GDB

minister regis; serjeanty tenure minister regis not in GDB; parcel of outlying bookland not in GDB not in GDB probably Ansketil’s land in Brighthampton (see 59/25) later Earl Harold received it in his own demesne minister regis; Theodoric’s wife held it freely

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Anglo-Norman Studies XXVIII

The royal core In 1086 a large rump of the Bampton territory remained in royal hands. The main Domesday entry for Bampton describes a large and important estate. The recorded population comprised six slaves, forty villani, thirteen bordarii, and seventeen buri (the only boors mentioned in the Oxfordshire Domesday). The entry also records fisheries, salt-houses in Droitwich, four mills, and a market, all of which pertained to the manor. It also says that Bampton was a ‘hundredal manor’ to which the soke of two hundreds pertained, that is, the soke of the two hundred hides which belonged to the single administrative ‘hundred’ of Bampton. In total, the estate was assessed at 27½ hides and rendered a total of £80 and 40s. by tale, making it the second most valuable royal manor in Oxfordshire.53 Domesday Book does not give any indication as to the topographical shape of the manor but later evidence suggests that it included much of the townships of Bampton, Weald, Aston, and Brighthampton.54 By 1086 various bites had been taken out of this royal core including some bookland and ministerial property, and we shall return to these. It is probable that the royal manor in Bampton had once formed the core of a much larger territory of a type familiar to historians of early Britain.55 The extent of the mother parish dependent on Bampton minster is suggestive here: when described in 1318, it included the townships of Clanfield, part of Alvescot, Black Bourton, Lew, part of Ducklington, Yelford, Shifford, Chimney, Brighthampton, and Standlake.56 That Clanfield remained closely associated with Bampton in 1086 is suggested by its Domesday entry, which records that a certain Pain held 6¾ hides at Clanfield from Roger d’Ivry and concludes: ‘hanc terram est de primo feudo regis’ (‘this land belongs to the king’s first fief’).57 This formula is unique in Domesday Book and its meaning is unclear, but it seems probable that Clanfield was described in this way because it was closely associated with the royal manor to which it abutted. This suggestion receives further support from an entry in a late thirteenth-century Oseney cartulary which describes 3 hides in Clanfield as being ‘de antiquo dominico de Bamptona’ and another 5 hides as ‘de lege communi’, the latter forming part of the honour of St Valery.58 The likelihood that Black Bourton, Brize Norton, and Aston had once formed part of a larger territory focused on Bampton is suggested by their place-names and by their topographical relationship with the estate centre. The hypothesis that mid Anglo-Saxon Bampton was the centre of a large territory, and had ‘directional satellites’, would account for the place-names (Brize) Norton, the norð-tÃn to the north of Bampton,59 and Aston, the «ast-tÃn to the east. It is impossible to determine when this configuration came into being, but it certainly existed in the mid-tenth century since the 53 GDB 154b1 (Oxon. 1/6). Benson was attributed a value of £80 and 100s.: GDB 154b1 (Oxon. 1/1). For

‘hundredal manors’, see H. M. Cam, ‘Manerium cum Hundredo: The Hundred and the Hundredal Manor’, in her Liberties and Communities in Medieval England: Collected Studies in Local Administration and Topography, Cambridge 1944, 64–90, with reference to Bampton at 76. 54 VCH Oxon. XIII, 22–31. 55 See most recently R. Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship , London 2000, 1–14. 56 VCH Oxon. XIII, 6–7, 48. 57 GDB 159a1 (Oxon. 29/18). The word feudum occurs fairly frequently in Domesday Book (especially Little Domesday Book), but there are only nine other entries which refer to the feudum of the king, and none of these uses the expression de primo feudo: Foy, Domesday Book: Index of Subjects, 91. 58 Cartulary of Oseney Abbey, ed. H. E. Salter, 6 vols, Oxford Historical Society 89–91, 97–8, and 101, 1929–36, IV, 514–15. 59 The simplex place-name ‘Norton’ remained in use until the fourteenth century: VCH Oxon. XV, Brize Norton: Introduction (Settlement and Population), forthcoming (we are grateful to Dr Robert Peberdy for allowing us to see this section prior to publication).

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bounds of a diploma issued in 958 refer to ‘the boundary of the men of Aston’ (‘on East hæma gemære’).60 Black Bourton is another interesting place-name. Although it was topographically a west-tÃn of Bampton, it evidently became known as burh-tÃn or bur-tÃn. There are various possible explanations for this. In the first place, it has been observed that Bourton and Burton place-names tend to occur when a tÃn was located in close proximity to a burh or ‘fort’, and it has been suggested that their distribution may therefore represent vestiges of ‘a system of defence posts which remained operative until the Danish wars of the late ninth century’.61 Secondly, however, it has also been observed that many Burton place-names were located close to important centres, especially monastic centres;62 so as an alternative to supposing that Black Bourton had its own fort, it is worth considering the possibility that it originated as a service settlement responsible for provisioning or manning the burh of Bampton (burh can mean not just ‘fort’ or ‘stronghold’ but also ‘monastic enclosure’). A third, and related, possibility is that Black Bourton originated as a settlement of geburs or servile peasants (here one recalls the buri mentioned in the Domesday entry for Bampton).63 All of these explanations are consistent with the hypothesis that Black Bourton was at some stage a satellite of a territory focused on the royal manor. At the heart of the royal core stood the minster itself. Although first mentioned in the tenth century (below), its complex ecclesiastical topography, its enormous parish, and eighth- to ninth-century burials excavated in the churchyard combine to indicate an earlier origin. Furthermore, it was apparently around the oval enclosed precinct of the minster, not around the royal house, that the medieval town took shape. All this suggests the possibility that, in accordance with a recently formulated model, the Bampton territory could have emerged in the eighth century as a large monastic estate, only later re-absorbed into royal ownership and use. Whether this was so or not is, however, irrelevant to the present discussion: by the later tenth century Bampton was certainly royal, and its minster was only one of several proprietors of bookland within it. It is to these holdings that we now turn. The eastern zone: all or mainly bookland Perhaps the most striking feature of Bampton hundred in the eleventh century is that it included a continuous belt of bookland to the east of the royal complex. This comprised (working north to south) the townships of Crawley, Hailey, and Curbridge, all in the parish of Witney; an estate at Ducklington which perhaps included Yelford; an estate at Brighthampton which included most of the modern parish of Standlake together with detached holdings in Lew and Aston; a detached parcel of moorland in Northmoor; and a bookland estate in Bampton with detached estates in Shifford and Chimney. There are three pre-Conquest charters relating to Witney and its neighbouring townships. The first of these is a memorandum in Old English which records that 60 S 678 (Charters of Abingdon Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly, 2 vols, Anglo-Saxon Charters 7, 2000–1, II, no. 82). 61 M. Gelling, ‘The Place-Name Burton and Variants’, in Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England,

ed. S. C. Hawkes, Oxford 1989, 143–53 at 143. 62 Some striking examples are Burton Hill near Malmesbury, Burton Moor and Burton Closes near Bake-

well, Higher and Lower Burton between Dorchester (Dors.) and Charminster, Bierton near Aylesbury, Cherry and Bishop Burton near Beverley, Long Burton near Sherborne, and Berrington near Leominster. For other satellites of minsters, see Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 251. 63 For the suggestion that Burton in Devon was a settlement of geburs, see R. Faith, ‘Cola’s TÃn: Rural Social Structure in Late Anglo-Saxon Devon’, in Lordship and Learning: Studies in Memory of Trevor Aston, ed. R. Evans, Woodbridge 2004, 63–77 at 66, 75.

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Anglo-Norman Studies XXVIII

Æthelwold, abbot of Abingdon, gave 17 hides at Curbridge to a certain Bishop Brihthelm in return for land at Kennington in Berkshire; this was done with the permission of King Eadwig, probably shortly before the kingdom was divided between Eadwig and his brother Eadgar in 957. This charter does not contain a boundary clause.64 The second is a royal diploma dated 969 which records a grant by King Eadgar to Ælfhelm minister of 30 hides at Witney together with appurtenant meadow.65 Ælfhelm was probably the thegn of that name who attested King Eadgar’s charters with some regularity between 958 and 974; he was probably also the beneficiary of three further charters issued by Eadgar, and the testator of a will preserved in the Westminster archive.66 Margaret Gelling and others have shown that the boundary clause of Ælfhelm’s Witney diploma corresponds closely with the four modern parishes of Witney, Curbridge, Crawley, and Hailey.67 So, at some stage between 957 and 969, Bishop Brihthelm’s estate at Curbridge must have reverted into royal control; it was then combined with a further 13 hides in Hailey, Crawley, and Witney to form the estate granted to Ælfhelm. However, a royal diploma dated 1044 records that King Edward granted the same 30 hides to Ælfwine, bishop of Winchester (1032–47);68 Domesday Book records that Archbishop Stigand, who was elevated the see of Winchester in 1047 and held it in plurality with Canterbury from 1052 until 1070, held 30 hides at Witney TRE, and that Walkelin, bishop of Winchester (1070–98), held the estate in 1086.69 This sequence is a reminder that although bookland was in theory granted in perpetuity with full freedom of alienation, it could in practice revert into and out of royal control with some regularity. Moving south from the Witney complex, we enter Ducklington, which abutted on to the southern boundary of Curbridge. In this case there is a royal diploma dated 958 comprising a grant by King Eadgar to a thegn named Eanulf of 14 hides at Ducklington together with ‘the old church at Æstlea’ and 40 acres belonging to it at Byrnanlea.70 The beneficiary was probably identical with the discifer (steward) mentioned in the later part of Eadgar’s reign.71 Æstlea (‘east leah’, i.e. wood or clearing) and Byrnanlea (‘Beorna’s leah’) have been identified as Cokethorpe and Barley Park respectively. The section of the boundary clause which deals with the southern and south-western boundary of the estate is problematic; in particular, it is not clear whether the bounds included Yelford. Domesday Book offers some guidance here. There were two manors in Ducklington in 1086, one assessed at 7 hides and held by Robert from the ‘holding’ of Earl William of Hereford, the other assessed at 4 hides and held by Roger 64 S 1292 (Charters of Abingdon, ed. Kelly, II, no. 76). For the problem of identifying bishops named

Brihthelm in mid tenth-century charters, see P. Wormald, ‘The Strange Affair of the Selsey Bishopric, 953–963’, in Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting, ed. R. Gameson and H. Leyser, Oxford 2001, 128–41. 65 S 771 (Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. W. de Gray Birch, 4 vols, London 1885–99, III, no. 1230). 66 S 739, 794, 794a; S. Keynes, An Atlas of Attestations of Anglo-Saxon Charters, c. 670–1066, Cambridge 1998, table 57. The testator of S 1487 (Whitelock, AS Wills, no. 13) was probably the same individual. 67 M. Gelling, ‘English Place-Names Derived from the Compound W†chñm’, Medieval Archaeology 11, 1967, 87–104 at 99–103; M. Gelling, Signposts to the Past: Place-Names and the History of England, London 1978, 202–5; T. C. Cooper, ‘An Analysis of the Saxon Boundary of Witney’, Record of Witney 7, 1980, 3–10; ibid. 9, 1980, 15–23; J. Blair and A. Millard, ‘An Anglo-Saxon Landmark Rediscovered: The Stan Ford/Stan Bricge of the Ducklington and Witney Charters’, Oxoniensia 57, 1992, 342–8 at 342–5; Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 130–3, 198 n. 204. 68 S 1001 (Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici, ed. J. M. Kemble, 6 vols, London 1839–48, no. 775). 69 GDB 155a1 (Oxon. 3/1). 70 S 678 (Charters of Abingdon, ed. Kelly, II, no. 82). 71 Keynes, Atlas, table 57.

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from Robert d’Oilly. Since Eadgar’s grant to Earnulf consisted of 14 hides, this leaves 3 hides to be accounted for, and as a way of resolving this shortfall and the problematic section of the bounds of the Ducklington charter, it has been suggested that Earnulf’s estate included 3 hides in Yelford which were held by Walter fitz Pons in 1086. However, the matter is under debate.72 The vill of Brighthampton, to the south-east of Yelford, also contained bookland. A diploma issued by King Æthelred II in 984 records a grant of 6 hides – 3 at Brighthampton, 2 at Aston, and 1 at Lew – to Ælfwine his minister and scriptor.73 There is a delicious irony here, for Pierre Chaplais, the most determined proponent of the view that late Anglo-Saxon England lacked a central writing office, lives in Lew and may therefore be a resident of a village once held by one of the scribes employed in that very office, if such a thing existed.74 However this may be, Ælfwine’s 6 hides are said to be ‘in communi tellure diremptis’, i.e. scattered though common fields, and this probably explains why the diploma, which is otherwise cast in standard diplomatic, lacks a boundary clause. There is no separate entry for Aston in Domesday Book. Lew was divided into two holdings in 1086: 1½ hides held by Hugh from Walter Giffard, and 2 hides less 1 virgate held by Aretius. The latter holding is listed in a section of the Oxfordshire Domesday headed ‘Terra . . . ministrorum regis’ and was held by Alwine TRE.75 Brighthampton was also divided into two holdings in 1086: 1½ hides held by Wadard from Odo of Bayeux, and 6 hides held by Ansketil de Graye from the fee of Earl William.76 Wadard has acquired a degree of fame as being one of Bishop Odo’s tenants who appears in the Bayeux Tapestry, and it is a magnificent portrait: he is shown on horseback dressed in mailcoat holding a shield in one hand and a spear in the other as he oversees preparations for a great feast before the battle of Hastings.77 Wadard’s holding probably formed part of a grant made by Henry I to a newly founded priory of St Gervase and St Protase attached to the cathedral of Sées (Orne) in 1131, and was later claimed to be ancient demesne.78 Ansketil’s holding can be identified as the later manor of Standlake which was assessed at 5½ carucates in 1220.79 One further parcel of bookland can be identified in this south-eastern corner of the hundred. In 1059 Edward the Confessor issued a diploma granting an estate at Taynton in Oxfordshire to the abbey of Saint-Denis together with detached moor land at Moreton in Northmoor. Although this lies beyond the Windrush, it lay within the bounds of Bampton mother-parish in 1318 and may therefore have formed part of the eleventh-century hundred. There is no discrete entry for this land in Domesday

72 This solution is favoured by Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 130–1, and Blair and Millard, ‘Anglo-Saxon

Landmark’, 342–5. For a different view, see A. Crossley in VCH Oxon. XIII, 111–13, and P. R. Kitson, Anglo-Saxon Charter Boundaries, forthcoming; Charters of Abingdon, ed. Kelly, II, pp. 335–6 essays compromise. The Domesday entries for Ducklington and Yelford are GDB 158b1, 160a1, 161a1 (Oxon. 28/20; 45/1; 59/6). 73 S 853 (Charters of Burton Abbey, ed. P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters 2, 1979, no. 24). 74 For Ælfwine scriptor, see S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘The Unready’, 978–1016, Cambridge 1980, 135–6. For the debate on the late Anglo-Saxon ‘chancery’, see the literature listed in Keynes, Anglo-Saxon England: Bibliographical Handbook, 147–8. 75 GDB 157b1, 160b2 (Oxon. 20/6; 58/20). 76 GDB 156a1, 161a2 (Oxon. 7/29; 59/25). 77 The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. D. M. Wilson, London 1985, plates 46–7. 78 Regesta II, nos. 1698, 1711; C. H. Haskins, Norman Institutions, Cambridge MA 1918, 300–3; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, ed. T. D. Hardy, 2 vols, London 1833–44, II, 149; VCH Oxon. XIII, 122, 180, 210. 79 VCH Oxon. XIII, 180. The south-eastern parish boundary of Standlake was coincident with part of the charter-bounds of Moreton (see below).

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Book, although the entry for Taynton mentions King Edward’s grant and refers to meadow, pasture, and woodland.80 The south-western boundary of the modern township of Brighthampton abuts onto Shifford. This estate is mentioned in a diploma issued by King Æthelred II in 1005 which confirmed the foundation of Eynsham abbey by Æthelmær, the son of Ealdorman Æthelweard and a prominent thegn in Æthelred’s court.81 The diploma records that Shifford was among the estates assigned by Æthelmær for the endowment of Eynsham. It says that Shifford had been granted by King Eadgar to Ealdorman Byrhtnoth, the hero of the Maldon poem, and that a certain Leofwine, Æthelmær’s consanguinus, bequeathed the estate to Æthelmær. The diploma also contains a boundary clause for Shifford which corresponds closely with the boundary of the modern township.82 The only entry for Shifford in Domesday Book records that in 1086 a monk of Eynsham named Columban held 3 hides there from Remigius, bishop of Lincoln; the TRE landholder is not recorded. 83 The last parcel of property in Bampton hundred’s bookland belt is Chimney. In this instance, the relevant charter is dated 1069 and is extant in its original form. It is celebrated as one of the Conqueror’s earliest extant charters, and is therefore important as evidence of continuity in diplomatic practice during the earliest phase of colonial England.84 The question whether or not it records a bookland grant is a delicate one. As Pierre Chaplais has observed, ‘unlike the land-books of Edward the Confessor, which are royal grants stricto sensu, the present charter is simply the royal confirmation of a private grant’.85 The charter says that Bishop Leofric of Exeter gave 6 hides at Bampton, Aston, and Chimney together with 1 hide at Holcombe in Devon to the newly founded cathedral chapter at St Peter’s, Exeter. However, the Old English boundary clause describes two blocks of land said to have been given by King Eadwig to ‘the holy man at Bampton and the community’, and this presumably refers to a bookland grant made between 955 and 957 when Eadwig ruled in both Mercia and Wessex. One of these blocks can be identified as the detached 3-hide unit of Chimney. The other boundary clause is much harder to solve, but one interpretation would make it extend from the Shill brook by Bampton bridge eastwards into Aston township, and if so it would have been a substantial block of land within the royal core containing both the minster and its surrounding town.86 This raises a 80 S 1028; GDB 157a1 (Oxon. 13/1); VCH Oxon. XIII, 150–2. 81 S 911 (The Cartulary of the Abbey of Eynsham, ed. H. E. Salter, 2 vols, Oxford Historical Society 49 and

51, 1907–8, I, no. 1). 82 G. B. Grundy, Saxon Oxfordshire: Charters and Ancient Highways, Oxfordshire Record Society 15, 1933,

54–5; Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 130–3. 83 GDB 155a2 (Oxon. 6/7). For Bishop Remigius, who controlled much of Eynsham’s original endow-

ment in 1086, see D. Bates, Bishop Remigius of Lincoln, 1067–1092, Lincoln 1992. For Columban, see A. Hardy, A. Dodd, and G. D. Keevill, Ælfric’s Abbey: Excavations at Eynsham Abbey, Oxfordshire, 1989–92, Oxford 2003, 11. 84 Regesta: William I, no. 138; facsimile in F. Barlow and others, Leofric of Exeter: Essays in Commemoration of the Foundation of Exeter Cathedral Library in A.D. 1072, Exeter 1972, plate I; P. Chaplais, ‘The Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon Diplomas for Exeter’, BIHR 39, 1966, 1–34; reprinted with addendum in his Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration, London 1981; S. Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS 10 1987 (1988), 185–222 at 220. 85 Chaplais, ‘Authenticity’, 32. 86 Here it is worth noting that in 1086 Bishop Osbern of Exeter claimed that an estate at Buckland (a place-name which means ‘bookland’) in Berkshire, directly across the Thames from Bampton, belonged to his bishopric’s demesne; the estate had been held by Wulfric Kemp TRE, and the Domesday jurors refused to give judgment in respect of the bishop’s claim, referring the matter to the king: GDB 58b1 (Berks. 5/1). Since the bishop of Exeter did not hold any other property in this area, it is possible that his claim was in some way connected with his tenure of Bampton.

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distinct possibility that Eadwig was, in effect, giving back to the minster-priests of Bampton some of their endowment in a new form. Domesday Book records that the estate was held by Bishop Leofric of Exeter TRE, and by Bishop Osbern of Exeter ‘de rege’ and by Bishop Robert of Hereford from Osbern in 1086.87 This holding presumably included Chimney, for which there is no Domesday entry. The estate as a whole seems to have retained a special status long after 1086, for in 1307 the tenants impleaded the farmer of the manor of Bampton Deanery, claiming special status as tenants of ancient demesne.88 The western zone: a comital complex Attention may now be switched from east to west, from Bampton’s bookland zone to its comital property zone. It is probable that the land from the western boundary of Bampton mother-parish to the Gloucestershire border originated as a single block of territory which had been divided into two manors with interlocking dependencies by the late Anglo-Saxon period. At least one and probably both of these manors were held by earls before 1066, so it seems reasonable to interpret the whole as a complex of comital manors. This zone was dominated by the manors of Langford and Broadwell. Langford was held by Earl Harold and was assessed at 15 hides and assigned a value of £18 TRE, and was held by Ælfsige of Faringdon at farm in 1086.89 Broadwell was assessed at 24 hides and 1 virgate, and was held by a certain Ælfgar TRE, and by Christina, sister of Eadgar Ætheling, in 1086.90 The pre-Conquest tenant was almost certainly Ælfgar, earl of Mercia 1057–c. 1062. There were no other significant landholders named Ælfgar in Oxfordshire or neighbouring Gloucestershire or Berkshire TRE. A thegn named Ælfgar, brother of Ordgar, was prominent in the witness lists of King Edward’s diplomas in the 1060s, but his family’s estates and connections lay in Devon and the south-west and it is therefore unlikely that he was the pre-Conquest tenant of Broadwell.91 The fact that the Domesday entry for Broadwell fails to give Ælfgar the title of earl is not especially significant since earls are not consistently identified by title in Domesday Book. More positively, the entry demonstrates that the estate was large and prestigious, sufficiently so for it to be a suitable tenure for a member of the house of Cerdic. The suggestion that Broadwell was a comital manor receives further support from a tenth-century will which reveals that Æthelmær, ealdorman of

87 88 89 90 91

GDB 155a1 (Oxon. 5/1). VCH Oxon. XIII, 34. GDB 154b2 (Oxon. 1/8). GDB 160a2 (Oxon. 54/1). Ælfgar was prominent among the thegns who witnessed Edward the Confessor’s charters. He attended a meeting of the Devon shire court presided over by Earl Godwine in the mid 1040s (S 1474), and he was described as consiliarus in a royal diploma dated 1061 (S 1034). His brother Ordgar witnessed royal diplomas between c. 1031 and 1050, was styled ‘Ordgar Deuonensis’ in a charter of 1043 (S 1226), and was probably a benefactor of Horton and Tavistock, and the father of Ordwulf, a substantial landholder in Devon whose estates passed to the count of Mortain and his man Reginald in 1086. These men were probably descendants of King Edgar’s father-in-law, Ordgar, ealdorman of Devon and Cornwall. See Keynes, Atlas, table 75; H. P. R. Finberg, ‘The House of Ordgar and the Foundation of Tavistock Abbey’, EHR 58, 1943, 190–201; H. P. R. Finberg, ‘Childe’s Tomb’, in his Lucerna: Studies of Some Problems in the Early History of England, London 1964, 186–203; A. Williams, ‘A West-Country Magnate of the Eleventh Century: The Family, Estates and Patronage of Beorhtric Son of Ælfgar’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics: The Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century , ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Woodbridge 1997, 41–68 at 61–2; Clarke, English Nobility, 326.

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Hampshire (d. 982), held land there.92 There is also clear evidence that Oxfordshire formed part of Ælfgar’s earldom at some stage. Domesday Book records that Earl Ælfgar had the ‘third penny’ of Oxford,93 and that his son Earl Eadwine held Bloxham and Adderbury in Oxfordshire, a manor valued at £56 to which the soke of two hundreds pertained TRE.94 Several further parcels of land can be connected with this comital zone. Broadwell parish included the townships of Holwell and Filkins, but there are no entries for these places in Domesday Book, presumably because they formed part of Ælfgar’s manor. Langford parish included the townships of Grafton, Radcot, and Little Faringdon. There are no separate Domesday entries for Radcot or Little Faringdon, presumably because they were subsumed within Langford, but there is an entry for Grafton which records that the count of Evreux held 2 hides there in 1086; the pre-Conquest tenant, who is not named, ‘could go where [he] would’ with the land.95 Two further holdings belong topographically with this zone: 6 hides and 3 virgates at Broughton Poggs, held by three free men TRE and by Robert fitz Murdrac ‘de rege’ in 1086; and 4 hides at Kencot, held by Roger from Robert d’Oilly in 1086.96 The key to the relationship between these estates is that Kelmscott was an outlier of Broadwell, separated from it by Langford and its dependencies; it was presumably intended to provide the Broadwell manor with access to the Thames, and with Thames-side meadow and pasture. It then becomes evident on topographical grounds that Broughton Poggs, a thin finger between Langford and Broadwell, and Kencot, a bite out of the edge of Broadwell, were at some stage hived off the same complex. It therefore seems probable that the whole complex had once comprised a single land unit which covered the whole area between Westwell’s southern boundary and the Thames. Interestingly, the sum of the TRE values of all the properties in this zone was £57, very close to £56, the characteristic value of comital manors; and with one minor anomaly each of the parcels within the zone had TRE values which were multiples of £8 (above, p. 24): Langford (£18) plus Kencot (£6) equals £24; Grafton (£2) plus Broughton Poggs (£6) equals £8; and Broadwell (£25) equals three times £8 plus £1. The fact that the Oxfordshire Domesday records the tenures of three different earls in Oxfordshire calls for some comment. There are several possible explanations. One is that the relevant Domesday evidence was the product of chronological confusion, caused by the rapidity with which comital control of Oxfordshire changed hands in the decade or so before 1066. However, also relevant here is the possibility that some of the estates assigned to earls who were dead in 1066 were farmed on the king’s behalf: Ælfgar’s tenure of Broadwell could be explicable in these terms. It is also probable that Earl Eadwine and Earl Harold both held property in Oxfordshire in 1066, for Harold is known to have married Eadwine’s sister Ealdgyth at some stage between 1063 and 1066 and it has been suggested that Harold acquired some of his estates in Mercia in connection with this marriage: Harold’s tenure of Langford may have been a function of this marriage.97 Before leaving the comital zone, it is tempting to venture one further speculative suggestion. Modern Langford is above all notable for its magnificent late eleventh92 Æthelmær bequeathed land at Cottesmore, a name preserved in the later Cotmore in Broadwell:

Whitelock, AS Wills, p. 26; M. Gelling, The Place-Names of Oxfordshire, 2 vols, EPNS 23–4, 1953–4, II, 308. GDB 154a1 (Oxon. B/1). GDB 154b2 (Oxon. 1/7). Langford, GDB 154b2 (Oxon. 1/8); Grafton, GDB 157a2 (Oxon. 17/3; 17/8). GDB 158b1, 160a2 (Oxon. 28/26; 50/1). Baxter, ‘Leofwinesons’, 38–42.

93 94 95 96 97

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century church. Both the architectural style of the church itself and the design of the decorative friezes embedded in its tower are thought to belong to the immediate post-Conquest period; it may therefore have been commissioned by Ælfsige of Faringdon. However, the two remarkable crucifixion sculptures which have been reset in the porch are of Anglo-Saxon workmanship.98 Were they the product of comital patronage? The northern and north-western zone: ministerial holdings The last of Bampton hundred’s four zones has been labelled ‘ministerial property’ because its tenurial pattern is distinctive. It consists mostly of small holdings, often held by royal servants, ministers and (after the Conquest) sheriffs; many of these are described in the section of the Oxfordshire Domesday devoted to the lands of the king’s ministri, and several of them were later held by serjeanty tenure. The impression is that this zone was used to create ministerial tenures to reward royal household officials and servants. It forms a belt of contiguous land wrapping around the royal core from the south-west to the north-east and includes Alvescot, Black Bourton, Brize Norton, Lew, and possibly Clanfield, plus several parcels of property embedded in the royal core (parts of Asthall and Minster Lovell should perhaps also be included in this category). Domesday Book records two holdings in Lew: 1½ hides held by Hugh from Walter Giffard in 1086, and 1 hide and 3 virgates held by Aretius ‘de rege’ in 1086 and by a certain Ælfwine TRE; the second of these two holdings is listed among the holdings of the king’s ministri.99 Aretius of Lew can be identified as the falconer of that unusual name who occurs in several charters of William II and Henry I.100 Later sources suggest that Aretius’s holding comprised 1 hide in Lew and 3 virgates in Aston and Cote. In the thirteenth century, the holding in Lew was held for the serjeanty of carrying a falcon before the king, or of mewing or guarding a lanner falcon before returning it to the king’s court; and the holding in Aston and Cote was held by the serjeanty of providing a man equipped with helmet, lance, and body armour or (later) with bows and arrows for forty days.101 It will be recalled that the estate granted to Ælfwine scriptor comprised 1 hide in Lew, together with 2 hides scattered through the common fields in Aston. We thus have a rather suggestive sequence: an estate granted to a royal official during Æthelred’s reign, which was held by the king’s falconer in 1086 and as a closely related serjeanty tenure in the thirteenth century. It is precisely this kind of sequence which commends the view that thirteenth-century serjeanty tenures may often have been fossils of much earlier tenurial arrangements. There are three Domesday entries for Brize Norton. One of them records that 14 hides and 1½ virgates held by fourteen thegns TRE were held by Fulk from Roger d’Ivry in 1086.102 The remaining two entries both occur in the section which describes the holdings of royal ministri. They record that Theodoric the goldsmith held 98 Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 135–6, 178. 99 GDB 157b1, 160b2 (Oxon. 20/6; 58/20). 100 Regesta I, no. 347; Regesta II, nos. 673, 854–6, 956, 961; Dugdale, Monasticon, I, 261; Historia et

Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae, ed. W. H. Hart, 3 vols, RS 33, 1863–7, I, 239; Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis: The History of the Church of Abingdon, II, ed. and trans. J. Hudson, Oxford 2002, 116–17, 120–3, 138–41, 158–9, 186–7. 101 VCH Oxon. XIII, 68; Book of Fees, 11, 251, 589, 830; Curia Regis Rolls, III, 77; Oxfordshire Hundred Rolls of 1279, ed. and trans. E. Stone and P. Hyde, Oxfordshire Record Society 46, 1968, 22, 24. 102 GDB 158b2 (Oxon. 29/4). Another 1–hide holding at Astrop in Brize Norton parish was held by a certain Roger from the ‘feudum’ of Earl William fitz Osbern in 1086; the TRE holder is not identified: GDB 161a1 (Oxon. 59/10).

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1 hide in Brize Norton in 1086 which had been held by his wife TRE;103 and that a certain Godwine held 2½ virgates in Brize Norton in 1086 (this entry fails to record the pre-Conquest tenant, but since Godwine is an English name it is probable that he had held the land TRE).104 Brize Norton thus comprised 16 hides and was held by exactly sixteen thegns TRE, a suggestively tidy symmetry. Since Godwine’s name was common he cannot be identified with confidence, but it is worth noting that a moneyer of this name struck coins from the Oxford mint in Edward the Confessor’s reign, that a port-reeve named Godwine attested a lease agreed at the Oxford shire court in c. 1051, and that an ivory seal matrix bearing Godwine’s name was found not far away in Wallingford.105 Theodoric the goldsmith can be identified with much greater confidence. He held 5 hides at Kennington and 1 hide at Wotton in Surrey from King Edward and Earl Harold respectively TRE. This landholder was almost certainly identical with the Theodoric whom the Waltham Chronicle describes as the finest craftsman in gold and silverwork in the city of London, and may have been identical with the Theodoric who held a tenement in Winchester in the time of King Edward. Theodoric the goldsmith undoubtedly prospered after the Conquest. His name occurs in the witness list of a charter issued by Queen Edith at Wilton in 1072. By 1086 he held Kennington in Surrey, six estates in Berkshire, and two estates in Bampton hundred which he had inherited from his wife (Brize Norton plus 2½ hides in Weald).106 This suggests that Theodoric’s craftsmanship was much prized by royalty on either side of the Conquest. Indeed, he may have been much more than a goldsmith. His name is almost certainly German (‘Dietrich’?), and for this reason has been tentatively connected with the design of the coin type in which the king appears enthroned in majesty, and with the cutting of King Edward’s great seal, on the grounds that both display German imperial influence. 107 Moving south-west we encounter another ministerial holding in Alvescot. The Domesday entry for Alvescot is again listed among the holdings of royal ministri and records that Særic held 2 hides ‘de rege’ in 1086 which had been held ‘freely’ by Goda TRE.108 The modern parish of Alvescot includes the townships of Bromscott and Pemscott which were held by Ælfric and Alwine TRE and by Gosbert from Robert of Stafford in 1086.109 In the thirteenth century Alvescot was held by the serjeanty of being chief usher of the king’s hall and for the service of keeping the door to the king’s bedchamber;110 and in the early fourteenth century Henry de Ferrières held the 103 104 105 106

GDB 160b2 (Oxon. 58/17–18). GDB 160b2 (Oxon. 58/26). Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 154–5. F. H. Dickinson, ‘The Sale of Combe’, Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society Proceed ings 22, 1876, 106–13; S. Keynes, ‘Giso, Bishop of Wells (1061–88)’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 204–71 at 247, 262–3; Winchester in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday, ed. M. Biddle, Winchester Studies 1, Oxford 1976, 63; Waltham Chronicle, ed. Watkiss and Chibnall, 62; GDB 36b2 (Surr. 36/4; 36/6), 58a1, 63a2 (Berks. 1/47; 63/1–5), 160b2 (Oxon. 58/17–18); P. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England, Oxford 1997, 316. 107 R. H. M. Dolley and F. E. Jones, ‘A New Suggestion Concerning the So-Called “Martlets” in the “Arms of St. Edward” ’, in Anglo-Saxon Coins: Historical Studies Presented to Sir Frank Stenton on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday, ed. R. H. M. Dolley, London 1961, 215–26 at 220; Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, 216–17; B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘The King Enthroned, a New Theme in Anglo-Saxon Royal Iconography: The Seal of Edward the Confessor and its Political Implications’, in Kings and Kingship, ed. J. T. Rosenthal, Binghampton NY 1986, 53–88 at 78 n. 85. 108 GDB 160b2 (Oxon. 58/21). 109 GDB 158a1 (Oxon. 27/3). There were also 4 hides at Alwoldesberie in Alvescot held freely by Aldwine, Sæwold, and Eadwine TRE, and by Walter fitz Pons TRW: GDB 160a1 (Oxon. 45/3). 110 J. H. Round, The King’s Serjeants and Officers of State, with their Coronation Services, London 1911, 108–10.

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manors of Alvescot, Bromscott, and Pemscott together with 1 hide in Aston for the service of providing an usher in the king’s hall on Christmas Day.111 Since the name is uncommon, Særic can be plausibly identified with the man of that name who held 1 hide and 1 virgate in Middle Aston, in the neighbouring hundred of Wootton, and estates at Winterbourne Gunner and Laverstock in Wiltshire in 1086. Interestingly, both of the latter were listed among the holdings of the taini regis in the Wiltshire Domesday, and both were later held by the serjeanty of serving in the king’s hall.112 Further ministerial properties can be identified in and around the royal manor of Bampton. Black Bourton comprised two 5-hide estates, the classic holding of the Anglo-Saxon thegn.113 Several landholdings were connected in different ways with Robert d’Oilly, sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1086. Roger d’Ivry, who held Clanfield ‘de primo feudo regis’, was a close friend and the sworn brother of Robert d’Oilly with whom he was the co-founder of St George’s College in the Castle in Oxford.114 Presumably the same Roger held 4 hides at Kencot from Robert d’Oilly;115 and a certain Sæwold held 3 hides at Little Minster in Minster Lovell, Robert d’Oilly holding them from him in pledge (in uadimonio); Sæwold’s tenure was listed among the Oxfordshire ministri regis.116 Sæwold is another interesting individual: in addition to his estate at Little Minster he held two further estates listed among the tenures of ministri regis, 4 hides at Thame and 5 hides at Waterstock from Bishop Remigius, nine dwellings in Oxford (six of them derelict in 1086), and two mills ‘juxta murum’ (presumably the town wall of Oxford) which had been given to him and his wife by the Conqueror.117 He was probably identical with one of the three pre-Conquest tenants of Alwoldesberie in Alvescot/Kencot, though if so he no longer held this estate in 1086.118 Sæwold’s tenures in and around the town suggest that he may have held some sort of office in Oxford. Here it is worth noting that several townsmen and royal officials in eleventh-century Oxfordshire, including a moneyer and possibly a sheriff, had names beginning with Sæ-, and since there was a tendency for Anglo-Saxon families to repeat personal-name elements, it is possible that Særic and Sæwold belonged to a small dynasty of Oxfordshire royal officials.119 Several ministerial tenures were embedded within the royal core. We have already encountered Theodoric the goldsmith’s estate in Weald, and Ælfwine scriptor’s holding in Aston which was held by Aretius the falconer in 1086 and later by serjeanty tenure. Robert d’Oilly held a manor in Bampton, and later sources reveal this to have comprised land scattered through Bampton, Weald, and Aston, with a manor house on the south side of the market-place in Bampton itself.120 Ilbert de Lacy held 3 hides in 111 The Edington Cartulary, ed. J. H. Stevenson, Wiltshire Record Society 42, 1987, no. 592. 112 GDB 74a2 (Wilts. 67/95–6), 160b2 (Oxon. 58/22); Book of Fees, 12, 587, 1178, 1226. There was

another serjeanty at Lavestock connected with Clarendon Forest (ibid. 587). See further R. R. Darlington in VCH Wilts. II, 77; Round, King’s Serjeants, 108–10. 113 5 hides here were held freely by a certain Þurgautr TRE, and by a certain Wimund from Ernulf de Hesdin TRW: GDB 160a1 (Oxon. 40/1). The other 5-hide holding in Black Bourton occurs in the ‘feudum’ of Earl William in the Oxfordshire Domesday: GDB 161a1 (Oxon. 59/12–13). By 1086 it had been divided into two holdings comprising 3 hides held by Pain from Roger d’Ivry, and 2 hides held by Ansketil de Graye; neither of these entries supplies the identity of the pre-Conquest tenant or tenants. 114 For Roger d’Ivry, see K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166, I: Domesday Book, Woodbridge 1999, 403–4. 115 GDB 158b1 (Oxon. 28/26). 116 GDB 160b2 (Oxon. 58/33). 117 GDB 154a2, 155b1, 160b2 (Oxon. B/10; 6/10; 6/16; 58/31–4). 118 GDB 160a1 (Oxon. 45/3). 119 Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 155. 120 GDB 158b1 (Oxon. 28/21); VCH Oxon. XIII, 28–30.

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Bampton from Bishop Odo of Bayeux in 1086.121 Other small parcels of property are referred to in the entry which deals with the royal manor of Bampton. These comprised ½ hide held by Ilbert de Lacy ‘by the gift of the bishop of Bayeux’; a ‘particular parcel of land’ of unspecified size held by Walter fitz Pons; 60 acres of land in Stockley (in Asthall) held by a certain Joseph TRE which were ‘de dominio regis’ in 1086; and an unspecified quantity of woodland held by Bondi the forester TRE and by Henry de Ferrières in 1086. 122 The problem as to how many of these ministerial tenures originated as bookland grants in the pre-Conquest period is insoluble. With the exception of Ælfwine scriptor’s bookland estate in Lew and Aston, which remained a ministerial tenure for a long time, there is insufficient evidence to go on. There is also some uncertainty as to how Westwell, Burford, Shilton, Asthall, and Minster Lovell should be fitted into the foregoing scheme. There is no clear evidence that these were bookland estates or ministerial tenures, and although they could have been either or both, they might also have been non-royal folkland.123 One is left sympathizing with the men of Wotton hundred in Surrey. They told the Domesday commissioners that Earl Harold held the manor of Wotton TRE – but they did not know how Harold had it.124 CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

In the late Anglo-Saxon period, the exercise of royal patronage caused Bampton hundred to be divided into at least four distinct zones: a central zone of royal demesne with a minster embedded in its core, a bookland zone to the east, a zone of comital manors to the west, and a zone of ministerial holdings to the north and west. This topographical pattern is too neat to be coincidence: it is much better interpreted as the product of ordered power. Especially striking is the impression that the bookland belt was ‘zoned for development’ and parcelled out within a fairly short space of time. Curbridge was in the hands of Æthelwold of Abingdon by 956/7 and may have been obtained shortly before, either from King Eadred or from King Eadwig; Chimney was assigned to Bampton minster by Eadwig between 955 and 957; and Eadgar granted bookland estates at Ducklington in 958, Witney in 969, and Shifford between 957 and 975. This suggests that the bookland zone was substantially formed during the third quarter of the tenth century. While politics and patronage doubtless determined the recipients and the exact timing of each grant, it was evidently an estate-management decision that released these blocks for the creation of bookland. Bampton thus illustrates the process by which, as a consequence of the combined pressures of economic growth from below and demands for patronage from above, ancient patterns of extended lordship gave way to more intensive and closely-focused manorial regimes. The exercise of royal patronage had a major impact on the complexion of local society, and the way it integrated with court society. The beneficiaries of the process of patronage were numerous and varied: they included archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, sheriffs, thegns, and royal servants of different kinds including foresters, 121 GDB 156a1–2 (Oxon. 7/33). 122 GDB 154b1–2 (Oxon. 1/6). 123 GDB 156a2, 157b1, 158b2, 160a1 (Oxon. 7/36; 18/2; 29/3; 45/2); Shilton is not named in Domesday

Book. 124 GDB 36b2 (Surr. 36/4): ‘Heraldus tenuit TRE sed dicunt homines de hundredo quia nesciunt quomodo

Heraldus habuit.’

Land Tenure and Royal Patronage

45

falconers, goldsmiths, and perhaps even a chancery scribe. Royal patronage thus offered a tenurial stake in the wider polity to a very broad spectrum of society. Ministerial or service holdings provided financial support for functionaries whose lives were tied to the court, and who presumably only visited them occasionally: it is unlikely that Ælfwine scriptor or Theodoric the goldsmith was often seen walking through Bampton. On the other hand, the descendants of some of those who held ministerial tenures and the serjeanty tenures which evolved from them did become long-term minor gentry.125 Constellations of ministerial holdings around locally important centres, such as the one described here, would have tended to create groups of men who were identified by common experience in royal service, but who also had local interests and loyalties. In the later Middle Ages, and even later, Bampton was notable as a community of administrators and officials, such as Paulinus the king’s foodbuyer in the thirteenth century, and several tax-collectors in the fourteenth and fifteenth.126 This is one of the ways in which late Anglo-Saxon government contributed to the emergence of politically-aware county communities. The manner in which royal patronage was exercised also has a major bearing on any assessment of the late Anglo-Saxon polity. Much of the foregoing is consistent with the ‘maximum view’ of the late Anglo-Saxon kingdom or state, a view which stresses its coherence, integrity, and power. The first half of this paper has argued that the king was able to loan substantial quantities of property to royal officials for the duration of their period in office; that estates were set aside for the use of earls in every shire; and that this made it possible for the king to restructure the size and composition of his earldoms with relative ease. It is also possible to show that the royal demesne remained substantial until the end of Edward’s reign, and that the king held significantly more land than any earl or family of earls.127 The second half of the paper shows how a whole double hundred in Oxfordshire was carefully divided into distinct zones through the exercise of royal patronage: this too is indicative of royal power, co-ordination, and control. However, the exercise of royal patronage also released political forces which proved rather more difficult to control. Because so much was at stake, royal patronage created intense competition within the aristocracy for the benefits it conferred; as a result, factional rivalry became one of the central facts of court politics in the late Anglo-Saxon period. The rivalry between the families of Earl Godwine and Earl Leofric was particularly long-lasting – the Vita Eadwardi describes it as ‘odia veteri’ (‘an old hatred’) – and had far-reaching consequences.128 Such rivalries had a crucial local dimension. The power of earls was considerable but precarious, for they could easily lose control of all or part of their earldoms and the comital manors which came with them. To compensate for this, earls sought to augment their power by constructing networks of allies and clients in the shires where they held office, forming connections with richly endowed and powerful monasteries, and encouraging men from all ranks of society to commend themselves into their lordships. Such strategies enabled earls to plug into local circuits of power, but they also had the effect of intensifying the rivalry between earls, especially in the debatable territory of the Midlands where earls were placed in direct competition for land, 125 Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 175–6. 126 VCH Oxon. XIII, 13–14. 127 The estimates of the tenurial resources of King Edward and his earls set out by Fleming, Kings and

Lords, 59, 66–9 are seriously misleading. It is proposed to demonstrate this at suitable length elsewhere; for now, see Baxter, ‘Leofwinesons’, 120–32; J. L. Grassi, ‘The Lands and Revenues of Edward the Confessor’, EHR 117, 2002, 251–83. 128 Vita Eadwardi, 76–7.

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allies, and clients. As a result, political developments at the king’s court and the shire courts were intimately connected. This was a highly stressed polity where seemingly minor developments in the localities could quickly assume a national significance. All this placed considerable demands on the personal qualities of the king; indeed, the stability and coherence of the kingdom was to a large extent dependent upon the king’s ability to balance rival factions. There remains considerable scope for rethinking the turbulent politics of the reign of Edward the Confessor, and the crisis which enveloped his kingdom after his death, with these considerations in mind. 129

129 These will be among the central themes of S. Baxter, Lordship and Politics in the Early English

Kingdom: The Earls of the Mercians c. 994–1071, forthcoming.

The Homilies of a Pragmatic Ar chbishop ’s Handbook

THE HOMILIES OF A PRAGMATIC ARCHBISHOP’S HANDBOOK IN CONTEXT: COTTON TIBERIUS A. iii Tracey-Anne Cooper British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A. iii, a bilingual compilation manuscript of some ninety-four texts and two full-page illustrations, was produced at Christ Church, Canterbury, sometime between 1012 and 1023.1 To modern sensibilities the manuscript presents an incongruous assortment of texts: monastic rules, homilies, liturgy, confessional directives, prognostics, scientific treatises, extra-canonical notes and commonplaces, hagiography, a charm, a lapidary, a manual for monastic sign language, and the examinatio of an incumbent bishop (Appendix, Table 2, lists the contents of the manuscript). By examining concurrent text and quire endings and the distribution of the manuscript’s scribal hands it has been possible to conclude that the manuscript was produced in one scriptorium at one time, and this farrago was, therefore, intended.2 The 194 folios of vellum and five scribes involved in the production of Cotton Tiberius A. iii, hereafter referred to as T, represent a considerable investment of resources, which in turn implies that the manuscript was produced with a specific and important function in mind. More than half of the texts in T are pertinent to pastoral care, but it is clear that texts such as the examinatio of the bishop and the opening monastic texts would be largely irrelevant to such usage. Helmut Gneuss undertook a study of the origin and provenance of the manuscript, and commented that the examinatio of the bishop might ‘give us a hint as to who would have consulted this book’,3 and this did actually prove to be the key to my understanding of T. Only an archbishop could examine an incumbent bishop; and an archbishop of Canterbury, in the fulfilment of his diverse roles, would find not only this text but all the other texts in T useful as well. T, then, or so it seems to me, is an archbishop’s commonplace book or pragmatic handbook.4 1

This date for Cotton Tiberius A. iii (hereafter referred to as T) is discussed extensively in T. A. Cooper, ‘Reconstructing a Deconstructed Manuscript, Culture and Community: London, BL MS Cotton Tiberius A. iii’, Boston College Ph.D., 2005 (UMI no. AAT 3176659), 48–65. 2 Ibid. 5–25. N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, Oxford 1957, 248, comments on the original order of the manuscript before antiquarian tampering. H. Gneuss, ‘Origin and Provenance of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: The Case of Cotton Tiberius A. III’, in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes , ed. P. R. Robinson and R. Zim, Aldershot 1997, 13–48 at 23, compares the contents of T to the twelfth-century table of contents and examines T’s relationship with the catalogue of the Christ Church library compiled for Prior Eastry in the 1320s, reproduced in M. R. James, Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover: The Catalogues of the Libraries of Christ Church Priory and St. Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury and of St. Martin’s Priory at Dover, Cambridge 1903, 50, 508. 3 Gneuss, ‘Origin and Provenance’, 35. 4 Patrick Wormald argued against the use of the term ‘commonplace book’ for one of Wulfstan’s books which was mainly composed of legal texts, because he found the term pejorative for such an important and deliberate compilation: ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Holiness of Society’, in his Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience, London 1999, 225–51, esp. 239, 246.

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The term ‘commonplace book’ has been used to refer to a collection of texts, often of varied function and type, that were compiled to suit the needs of a particular individual in the execution of his office. In 1895 Mary Bateson wrote of the manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 265: The purpose of the writer in copying out a quantity of extracts, taken from various sources, seems to have been to make a theological commonplace-book specially intended for a bishop’s use. The sources of the passages are not always acknowledged; they are not methodically arranged and they vary greatly in length.5

If we were to substitute the word ‘archbishop’ for ‘bishop’, Bateson might well have been describing T. Another manuscript which once belonged to a man who was a monk and dean of the New Minster in Winchester (British Library, Cotton Titus D. xxvi and xxvii) is known as Ælfwine’s prayerbook, but should perhaps more appropriately be named Ælfwine’s commonplace book, because as well as prayers it contains computus, prognostics, short notes similar to those in T, and a record of the decisions made at a bishop’s synod.6 Whereas Ælfwine’s prayerbook contains texts which would assist the monk and dean in the execution of his duties, T is a compilation of texts which would have helped an archbishop in the fulfilment of his multifaceted office. Sources suggest that either Lyfing or Æthelnoth, who held the office of archbishop of Canterbury between 1012 and 1023, had the relevant interests and demeanour to have commissioned a pragmatic handbook like T.7 As head of the English Church, the archbishop of Canterbury had many different roles, and the diverse assortment of texts in T can be seen as aids to help him discharge his many duties. By the early eleventh century Christ Church Canterbury had become a reformed Benedictine monastery,8 and the archbishops of Canterbury early in the century were among England’s leading Benedictines: the pre-eminence of the monastic material at the beginning of T (T1–8 in Table 2) may, then, be an indication of the importance with which this role was regarded. The archbishop was also expected to be one of England’s most erudite men and an adviser to the king; thus, he would want to keep at hand texts which reflected contemporary intellectual culture. In T this included not only Ælfric’s De Temporibus Anni, the lapidary, and a text on the formation of a foetus, but also the prognostics, which a recent study by Roy Liuzza has shown were part and parcel of reformed monastic intellectual culture, since the majority of manuscripts containing prognostics were produced at the key reformed monasteries at Canterbury, Worcester, and Winchester.9 The archbishop was also ultimately responsible, through his bishops and clergy, for pastoral provision for every Christian in England, and the number of homilies and confessional directives in T demonstrates the importance of this role. The texts which helped the archbishop execute these various roles, however, were not mutually exclusive. Although textual and intellectual culture has traditionally 5

M. Bateson, ‘A Worcester Cathedral Book of Ecclesiastical Collections, made c. 1000 A.D.’, EHR 10, 1895, 712–31. 6 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, no. 202. 7 Cooper, ‘Reconstructing a Deconstructed Manuscript’, 67–74; J. W. Lamb, The Archbishopric of Canterbury from its Foundation to the Norman Conquest, London 1971. 8 The extent of Christ Church’s Benedictinism in this period is discussed in N. Brooks, The Early History of Christ Church, Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 , Leicester 1984, 256, and Cooper, ‘Reconstructing a Deconstructed Manuscript’, 107–30. 9 R. M. Liuzza, ‘Anglo-Saxon Prognostics in Context: A Survey and List of Manuscripts’, ASE 30, 2001, 181–230.

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49

been regarded as the province of lettered professional religious, there is no reason to suppose that these men did not also transmit aspects of it to an illiterate lay audience. Indeed, the wisdom implied by participation in textual culture would have bolstered the authority of the clergy and may well have been used to augment pastoral care. Many of the texts in T could have been used to answer the questions of a curious laity, while simultaneously impressing on them the wisdom of the professional religious, and consequently making them respectful and compliant with pastoral provision. The texts in T would enable the clergy to answer questions such as: I had dream last night that I was riding a white horse, what does it mean? What is happening during an eclipse? If Noah collected together two of every animal then just how big was the ark?

And also, more seriously: My kinsman has fallen ill. What will the outcome of the illness be?

This last question may have come to be particularly important in this period, not just because the sick man could not be allowed to die unshriven, but also because, as Victoria Thompson has recently suggested, the laity were increasingly adopting, from ecclesiastical culture, elaborate rituals for the dead and dying.10 T, then, assisted the archbishop in addressing the needs of four audiences, the monastic inmates of Christ Church, his bishops to whom he provided guidance in their duties, the secular clergy who operated in Canterbury and its hinterland delivering pastoral care, and the lay Christians of Kent who received this provision. As indicated in Table 2 in the Appendix, T is composed of several discrete collections of texts. The same principles of compilation were applied to each of the discrete collections within T, which were put together with a hitherto underestimated deliberation and textual dexterity. The intellectual culture that produced these collections was profoundly conservative: the texts retained their authority and few new texts were composed. At the same time, however, this intellectual culture was also strikingly creative within these parameters, in the ways in which it adapted older texts to new purposes. The authoritative integrity of the text was far more important than its physical integrity: the texts were subjected to all manner of redaction, extraction, interpolation, and often a redefinition of purpose. Despite the complexity and difficulties of these editorial processes, it was thought more appropriate to bowdlerize an existing text by an eminent author than to compose a new text from scratch. The scholars of this culture were also curators, gathering together comprehensive collections by type, but these collections were not purely intellectual endeavours: each had a practical function and usefulness to professional religious in the early eleventh century. The collection of homilies in T provides not only a fascinating insight into pastoral care and lay piety in the early eleventh century, but also demonstrates the ways in which older texts were used as malleable resources in this period. Table 3 in the Appendix summarizes the other manuscripts in which the homilies of T appear; their range and distribution make it possible to conclude that T’s homilies were not taken from one or two exemplars but had rather been drawn from a pool of homilies and then adapted to suit the compiler’s specific requirements. Of all the manuscripts that share homilies with T, X (CCCC 201) has the largest number in common, seven, 10 V. Thompson, ‘Constructing Salvation: A Homiletic and Penitential Context for Late Anglo-Saxon

Burial Practice’, in Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, ed. S. Lucy and A. Reynolds, London 2002, 229–40.

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but it also has a further six anonymous homilies not found in T, as well as other Wulfstanian homilies.11 So we can see that the compiler of T has not slavishly copied homilies from X or its exemplar, but has selected only those that suited his purposes. This highly selective use of texts is further supported by the instances in which just one or two of T’s homilies appear in other manuscripts. K (CCCC 421), for example, shares only T68 in common with T, but has four other non-T anonymous homilies besides.12 This process of compilation from a pool of available texts holds true for the entire manuscript. In all, the texts incorporated in T can be found in over seventy other manuscripts: some, like Ælfwine’s prayerbook, share a number of texts with T (in this case fourteen), but nearly half of these seventy manuscripts have only one text in common with T. The widespread distribution of T’s texts perhaps affects our usual assessment of how texts travel, through time, space, and context. While longer and more complex texts, such as T56, De Temporibus Anni, would certainly have needed an exemplar present for transmission, shorter texts, like the homilies in T, could be transcribed on wax tablets and then sent to the monastery that requested them. Others, perhaps, could even have been memorized. Thus, the original manuscript need never have left its owner’s library while the text itself travelled out of its locale and out of its original context. We can witness, in this process, an intellectual and textual culture that was both dynamic and conservative, one not bristling with original authors and thinkers, but rather with collectors and curators of texts. Table 1 is a summary of the contents of the collection of homilies in T, which reveals the intention behind the compiler’s selection of these texts: to produce a handbook that would fulfil the most basic requirements of pastoral care. The first homily in this handbook, T59 (Ælfric’s homily for Palm Sunday), is a unique occurrence out of the original calendrical cycle of the Catholic Homilies. As can be seen in Table 3, the other manuscripts that contain T59 (Ga, La, Kc, Li, Pa, Ki, Ka, and Fa) do not include any of the other homilies from T.13 T’s extraction of the Ælfrician homily and its inclusion with anonymous and non-date-specific homilies has significantly altered the original use and meaning of the text. When Malcolm Godden edited the second series of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies he commented on the T version of the homily for Palm Sunday: ‘This is a confused and corrupt version incorporating a vast number of small additions and alterations. As a consequence its relationship to other manuscripts in difficult to establish.’ Indeed, so prolific were the alterations to the homily that Godden was unable to collate it with other versions and had to edit it separately.14 The additions to T59, however, in the context in which it appears in T, can be shown to have been deliberately contrived to allow the homily to suit a purpose different from that which was originally intended. This homily does more than recount the events of Palm Sunday: it encompasses the Gospel story from the Transfiguration to the Resurrection, with a particular emphasis on Christ’s Passion. This is, in essence, the crux of the story of Jesus’s life, and as such it can be considered a synopsis of the most essential biblical knowledge that priests needed to teach laymen. It is the bare minimum of biblical instruction necessary to make sense of Christian rituals. The Transfiguration, witnessed by Moses and Elijah, proves that Jesus truly was the Messiah whom these Old Testa11 12 13 14

Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, nos. 49–50. Ibid. no. 69. Ibid. nos. 15, 38, 41, 21, 331, 56, 57, and 153 respectively. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, The Second Series: Text, ed. M. Goddenm, Early English Text Society SS 5, 1979, pp. lv (quotation), 381–90 (edition).

The Homilies of a Pragmatic Archbishop’s Handbook Table 1

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The Homilies in T

ID

Ker, 186

Fols

Description

T59 T60 T61 T62 T63 T64 T65 T66 T67 T68 T69 T70 T71

16 17 18 19a 19b 19c 19d 19e 19f 19g 19h 19i 19j

77v.–83r. 83r.–87r. 87v.–88v. 88v. 88v.–90r. 90r. and v. 90v. 90v.–91r. 91r. and v. 91v.–92r. 92r. and v. 92v. 92v.–93r.

T72 T73

19k 19l

93r. and v. 93v.

Ælfric’s homily for Palm Sunday Sunday Letter Devil’s account of the next life Wulfstan on the afterlife and good conduct Wulfstan on Christ’s Passion as our salvation A reflection on the Paternoster and Credo To love God with a inward heart Fasting Tithes Lawlessness God’s law vs. temporal law Baptism The Paternoster and Credo in English attributed to Wulfstan Priests set an example Priests do not take payment

ment figures had prophesied. The laity also needed to know the story of the Last Supper in order to understand the Eucharist, and they would have been required to know about the Crucifixion and Resurrection in order to understand that Christ’s death led to their own salvation. Given the content of this homily and its context in the manuscript, some additions have been made to render it more accessible to a theologically unsophisticated laity: to explain who the characters mentioned in the homily actually are, to clarify the action, or to add a simple story-tale flourish to the homily. In the following extract from T59, relating the events of the Transfiguration, the additions made to the T version of the homily are indicated in italics. Moses, the great commander, and Elijah, the prophet, had previously spoken of his [Jesus’s] suffering high upon a certain mountain. Where the Saviour, to that end, went up with Peter, John and Jacob , three disciples. And his face shone on all before him, just as any sun does when it shines most brightly around midday, and his clothing also shone as white as snow. Then Peter, the holy apostle, immediately wished to make three tabernacles there for the fair comrades, one for Christ, and another for Moses, and the third for Elijah. But suddenly there sounded the voice of the Heavenly Father high in a cloud. And He truly spoke thus, ‘This is mine [the] beloved Son, in whom I am pleased, hear him.’ And the cloud vanished straightaway, and then straightaway Moses and Elijah were seen nowhere ever again.15

15 ‘Moyses se mæra heretoga and elias se witega. sædan his þrowunga ær uppae on anre dune. þær se

hælend to astah mid petre. and iohanne and iacobe þry leorningcnihtum. And his ansyne ætforan hiom eallum scan. swa swa ænig sunne deþ þonne heo ealra beorhtost scinþ abutan midde dæg. and his gewæda eac scinon an snawes hwytnesse. Þa wolde petrus sona se halga apostol slean þreo geteld for þare fægran gesihþe crist an. and moyse. þæt oþer. and ðæt þridde elian. Ac færlice þær swegde sio stefn. þæs heofonlice fæder healice of þæm wolcum. and þus soþlice cwæþ þes is min se leofa sunu on him þam me wel gelicode gehæraþ [hine] and þæt wolcn þa rihte toglad. and þa rihte næs moyses. and elias nawhar gesawan.’

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Stylistic flourishes have been added not just to explain the action, but also to slow it down, so that a novice listener could take in the full import of what was happening in the story. In this short extract we can see this process twice. First, when describing the Transfiguration, the versions closer to the Ælfrician original simply state that Christ’s face shone like the sun, but T’s version has added that it shone like the sun when it is at its brightest at noon. This addition is not biblical, but rather underscores the importance of the physical alteration of Christ at this pivotal moment. Secondly, the other key moment in the Transfiguration story is when the Heavenly Father speaks from the cloud and reveals that Christ is indeed His Son. Here, T’s redactor has added a short clause not only to indicate that direct speech is about to occur, but also to establish the veracity of this account of God’s speech. In both these instances the redactor has emphasized the principal component of the action: Christ was physically transfigured and God actually spoke, acknowledging His divine paternity. As well as these short additions to Ælfric’s homily, longer passages have also been interpolated. These interpolated passages do more than clarify the action: they also provide an emphasis which is subtly different from that found in the original. The first of these longer interpolations uses the events of Judas’s betrayal to moralize in terms of contemporary law (again, italics indicate the interpolation). The Saviour himself is the whole truth and all holiness dwells in him, and he who trades truth for money or the things which his comrades ought to have, deprives them entirely through unrighteousness, or [if] another man withholds that which he owes by rights and it is then dear to him, the payment-price of his own soul, wherefore, he is then a companion of Judas, he who betrayed Christ for the corrupt payment-price, in the fiery torture, in hell’s torment.16

The use of the word sceat is interesting because it has a number of meanings that today would be distinct: a sceat was a fixed weight of gold in Kentish laws, but in Kent all penalties and compensation were also reckoned in sceattas.17 Thus, not only does the interpolation speak of the actual coins that Judas received for his betrayal, but also the contemporary custom by which every crime had its fine, and every man, woman, and child had their price, their wergeld, according to which the amount of the fine was assessed. In the wording of the original homily, Judas is said to have received the leþrum (corrupt, wicked, or base) scette for his betrayal, and that perjurers – those who sell truth for money – will join Judas in hell. Our redactor goes beyond the moral message of the original to implicate not just perjurers, but all those who would disrupt peace and justice, either by withholding their comrades’ goods or by withholding the payment of a fine or wergeld, and he is keen to emphasize that such a blatant disrespect of the law leads ultimately to the payment of a even greater sceat, one’s own soul. Good conduct and respect for both secular law and God’s law are themes which some of the other homilies in this collection, T62, T63, T68, and T69, explore in greater depth. In other lengthy interpolations, three interrelated themes are emphasized: culpability for the Crucifixion, Christ’s own explanation of his redemptive Passion, and the details of Christ’s suffering:

16 ‘Se hælend self is eall soþfæstnes and eall halines wunaþ in him and se þy soþfæstnesse beceapaþ wiþ

feo oþþe þa þincg þe his gefaran sceoldon habban ætbryt heom mid ealle . mid unrihte oþþe oþra manna forhylð þe hit mid rihte ahton and byþ him þonne se scæt leofre þonne his agen sawol witodlice he biþ þonne iudan gefera an fyrenum witum on helle wite se þe crist belewde for leþrum scette.’ 17 The Anglo-Saxons, ed. J. Campbell, Oxford 1982, 59.

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Afterwards the ignorant persecutors of the Lord came all together to him and dragged him to their private conference and led him to Pilate, that nation’s leader, [and] with great performance accused him by turns and attacked him exceedingly harshly with slander and joined in false witness to become one liar. Then Pilate, the leader, knew that the Jews had a great envy and anger against the Saviour because of the great miracles which he worked daily. Then Pilate said to the Jews, ‘What do you know of this man?’ But the Saviour did not defend himself against those not speaking the truth, though he was innocent because he wanted, on account of his free will, to suffer by choice and release all of his chosen from hell-pains . And Judas was not then able to possess this land, but his heart split in two and he hung himself and was not able to be placed in any burial ground. And he wished then to perform a penance and said, ‘Woe to me, poor wretch, an outcast, I truly sinned when I sold that righteous blood’.18

The redactor has provided the explanation that Judas sinned because se deofol him on bescet, and that although he felt an agonizing remorse and wished to perform a penance, he was condemned to eternal punishment because he hanged himself unshriven. The Jews, on the other hand, remorselessly persecuted Christ out of jealousy. Christ, for his part, would not defend himself against the false accusations of the Jews because he knew he had to die in order to redeem his followers. These additions, though they may not seem very sophisticated, allow T59 to be used, as Ælfric’s original could not, to address several complex but crucial theological issues pertinent to an uneducated layperson in the early eleventh century. Laypeople might well wonder why an all-powerful Christ would allow himself to be viciously tortured and executed, and so even as the tale is being told the explanation of the redemption has been included. We also see reflected in this homily the same ideas about culpability for sin that are expounded in the confessional handbooks of T. Judas was tempted by the Devil to betray Christ, but this addition to the homily implies that even this most egregious of sins could have been forgiven had Judas confessed and performed penance instead of taking his own life and dying unshriven. The persuasion of prophecy was obviously a major part of the arsenal of this homily’s redactor. He interpolated many passages which helped the audience to understand Christ’s Passion as the heroic fulfilment of an ancient prophecy. Far from being the ignominious death of a criminal, or even the martyrdom of a betrayed Lord, Christ freely allowed his humiliation, torture, and execution because they were pre-ordained elements of the larger divine plan of redemption, which had previously been revealed to the prophets. The various emphases which have been added with the accretions to T59 – the fulfilment of prophecy, the punishment for injustice, the temptation of the Devil, the importance and efficacy of penance, the evils of heathenism (the Jews), and most importantly Christ’s sacrifice for the redemption of Christians – are themes also explored in the succeeding homilies in T. They are the crux of the Christian message and of the good Christian life. Ælfric’s homily for Palm Sunday has, therefore, been very cleverly altered to instil the most important story of the Gospels with the most 18 ‘Eft þa angrede drihtnes æhtras coman ealle tosomne to him and to hiora sundarsprece hine bugan and

hine þa leddan to þere leode ealdormen pilate . mid micelne worhte hine wregende to him betwynan and angunnan hine þa swiþe þærlice to forsecgenne and him þa feola leasunga an liogende wæran. Þa wiste pilatus se ealdorman þæt þa iudeas hefdan micelene andan and graman . ongean þone hælend for þam wundrum . þy he dæghamlice worhte. Þa cwæþ pilatus to þam iudeum hwæt witaþ ge þisum men. Ac se hælend nolde hine betellan mid nanre soþsegene þæh þy he unscylding wære for þon þe he wolde selfwilles þæh þrowian æt þam cyrne . and ealle his gecorenan of helle wite alæsan . and he iudas þa ne noste þæs landes brucan ac on ymbtwa his innoþ tofliow and he hine sylfre on agrum ahencg and he ne moste bion gelogad an nanre bergenne . wolde þa don dædbote and cwæþ ic syngode soþlice wa me earminge wræccan þa þæt ic sælde þæt hritwise blod.’

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important catechismal teaching. This reworking can be seen as a strategic first strike in the war for the souls of the laity. Indeed, for some of its audience it may well have also been their first systematic and authoritative exposure to the central tenets of Christianity. The second homily in T, T60, is a version of the Sunday Letter.19 Tradition has it that the Sunday Letter was written by Christ himself, and that it fell from heaven and passed into clerical hands. The homily begins by telling of a time long ago, when a fire spread from Scotland into England and then across the sea into Europe. A deacon named Nial explains that the fire was sent against a sinful people, in the same way that God sent the flood in Noah’s time. This Old Testament tale is then briefly recounted for the edification of those unfamiliar with the story. The people purged by the fire had sinned because they had not kept the Lord’s Day holy. The homily explains that it was Moses who had instructed men not to work on a Sunday, and so this homily makes the same kind of connection between Old Testament authority and the commands of Jesus as the previous reworked homily for Palm Sunday. The stories of the six days of Creation and God giving the law to Moses are then briefly related, before the homilist turns to the New Testament for the ultimate explanation of why Sunday must be kept as a special day: Sunday was the day of Christ’s Resurrection. Within the compilation of the homiletic handbook, however, T60 serves a greater function than just to warn against working on a Sunday. This function is similar to that of T59, which conveyed the crux of the story of the New Testament, but in this case the Sunday Letter is used as a vehicle for relating the most important stories of the Old Testament, Creation, the Flood and the giving of the Ten Commandments. Thus, in T’s first two homilies, lay listeners would have been furnished with the most essential biblical basics. God created the world, but purged it when it became too sinful. He provided laws to help man know his sins as well as His Son, Jesus Christ, who willingly died so that men could be redeemed from their sins. The adaptation of these texts beyond their original use and context exemplifies not only the care and skill of the anonymous scholars involved in their redaction and compilation, but also the contemporary attitude towards the preservation and transmission of textual knowledge. The use of texts within T can be said to be creatively conservative: their authority remains intact but their meaning is malleable and open to manipulation. The next homily, T61, chillingly informs the lay audience of the consequences of sin.20 The homily purports to be the speech of a devil, captured and forced to talk by a holy hermit from the region of Thebes. The devil tells the anchorite about the various torments that are to be found in hell, beginning with an account of a gruesome torture in which a man was hung upside down by his feet from the highest tree atop the highest cliff in hell until all his blood flowed out of his mouth and his nose. Such a graphic description was no doubt intended to become firmly implanted in the minds of its hearers, prompting them to reject the temptations of the Devil. The devil then goes on to describe the pain and suffering in hell and the extremes of heat and cold that have to be endured there, but he finishes this part of his dire warning with a description of the lawlessness of hell, which would have struck 19 Wulfstan: Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit , ed.

A. S. Napier, Sammlung Englisches Denkmäler 4, 1883, 215, no. 44. Clare Lees’ examination of the tradition of the Sunday Letter and the Sunday Lists does not address the T version: C. A. Lees, ‘The “Sunday Letter” and the “Sunday Lists” ’, ASE 14, 1985, 129–51. 20 F. C. Robinson, ‘The Devil’s Account of the Next World: An Anecdote from Old English Literature’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73, 1972, 362–71; D. G. Scragg, ‘ “The Devil’s Account of the Next World” Revisited’, American Notes and Queries 24, 1986, 107–10.

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particularly at the heart of everything that an eleventh-century noble would hold dear: there is shrieking without consolation and there is slavery without freedom and sadness without joy. There is foulness without change and bitterness without sweetness and there is hunger and thirst continually in hell; misery, grief and wailing. And that worst worm-kind wholly burning and dragon-kind, which never get dark. There is gloomy sulphur fire and extinguishing rain and there is cold and flame and dangerous poison and an intolerable state of lamentation and complaint; the dregs of men murder, seize and torture and no man is able to help another ever. There is no worthy king or honourable ealdormen, and no man is able to remember his lord with songs of praise because of his sorrow.21

The devil’s description of hell, therefore, warns not just of personal pain, but also of the inversion of the social values that brought stability to eleventh-century society. Not only is the lawfulness which accompanies good lordship unobtainable in hell, but the very ideas of kingship and the nobility are irrelevant. The peace and order which the statesman Archbishop Wulfstan had tried to inculcate by inspiring successive kings to produce systematic law-codes, crumbles into the anarchic criminality of hell, where it is not possible to conduct oneself honorably by helping others or remembering heroes. For eleventh-century kings, earls, and thegns the psychological threat of the dishonour and powerlessness implicit in the inability to fulfil their own heroic ideals may have been a greater incentive to Christian righteousness than threats of physical suffering. The devil provides one last macabre description of hell which also inverts correct order and sense. According to the devil, in one part of hell there is an entire ocean of fire encircled by iron walls. Around the fire sit a multitude of bellows, each powered by men with the strength of Samson. A colossal iron plate is placed over this fire, and it is filled with men who have to beat the plate with hammers while they are simultaneously roasted on it. The impact of this graphic inversion of the smith’s labours is effective not just because of the explicit pain involved but also because of the humiliation and helplessness implicitly invoked. The devil then moves on to a description of heaven, and laments that this is a subject about which he is particularly well versed because he was an angel until his pride caused his downfall. Heaven, according to the devil, is a golden, jewel-encrusted marvel, flowing with honey and basking in eternal summer. Moreover, the man righteous enough to get to heaven is rewarded – ‘he þone sie lang to life gescapen butan wrace 7 butan sare’ (‘he then is destined to have a long life without misery and without sorrow’) – but the ultimate reward is that ‘sceapgan þær þes heofon kyning ansione 7 þa wensumness þe an heofonum bioþ’ (‘the form of the Heavenly King is visible there, and there is rejoicing in heaven’). The kingless hell, where praises cannot be sung, thus has its polar opposite in heaven, a place of peace and order, where heroic ideals can be harnessed in the service and adoration of the King of Heaven. After this warning about the pain and anarchy of hell and the promise of eternal bliss, the next ten homilies in T spell out, in no uncertain terms, exactly what a 21 ‘þær biþ wof butan frofre þær biþ þeowdon butan freowdome unrotnes butan gefean þær biþ fulnys 7 7

butan awendednysse 7 biternes butan swetnesse 7 þær biþ hungor 7 þurst an helle suslum 7 geomerung 7 þoterung 7 þæt wyrste wyrm cyng eal byrnende 7 dracan kin þe næfre ne sweortaþ. þær bis swefle fyr sweart 7 rina dwæscedlic 7 þær biþ cele 7 brene 7 broga attor 7 ofergeþyld granung 7 gnornung wrohtiswop man 7 morþor . ras 7 susl 7 þær nan man ne mæg oþran næfre gehylpan. Nis þær cyninges weorþung ne ealdor mannes werþnes þer nan man ne mæg his waldend gemunan mid nanumum lof sange forþan sare.’

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layman needed to do if he wished to avoid the former and enjoy the latter. The fourth homily in the collection, T62, is a short extract from one of Wulfstan’s homilies.22 Wulfstan states that the first thing a Christian needs to know is what one is and what one will become. We all come from the earth and will return to it, but afterwards there will be either ‘ece bliss’ (‘eternal joy’) or ‘ece witan buton ende’ (‘eternal suffering without end’); the decision between the two is made according to what we do in this life. We must be mild-hearted and generous in almsgiving and remember what we promised at baptism: ‘to gode lufian and deoful ascunian’ (‘to love God and shun the Devil’). The message could not be clearer or simpler for a theologically unsophisticated lay audience. After being told about the terrors of hell and the joys of heaven they are told that the decision is ultimately theirs; if they behave righteously and do not allow the Devil to lead them astray, they will experience perpetual bliss.23 The next homily, T63, another extract from a larger Wulfstanian homily, builds further on this simple theology.24 Wulfstan reminds us that eternal bliss is only possible because Christ died for the redemption of man’s sins: ‘crist for us deaþ þrowode ah he gebohte us þa ealle mid his deorwyrþan blode’ (‘Christ suffered death for us because he redeemed us all with his dear-worthy blood’). In seemingly endless variations of the same theme, Wulfstan exhorts his audience to yearn for righteousness and abandon sin, so that they can fully thank Christ for his sacrifice by avoiding the pains of hell and experiencing eternal bliss. Collectively, the Wulfstanian homilies, T62 and T63, comprise a call to good conduct which allows no room for confusion and no margin for error. A man must ‘standan deofles lare’ (‘stand against the Devil’s instigation’) and ‘hæbbe geleafan 7 lufian cyric’ (‘have faith and love the Church’) because ‘we habbaþ ealle anne heofenlice fæder 7 þæt we þurh cristendome sindon ealle gebroþra’ (‘we all have one heavenly Father and we are all brothers through Christendom’). The sixth homily in the collection, T64, is an anonymous reflection on the message of the Paternoster and Credo. Still, it revisits some of the same themes as the previous two Wulfstanian homilies.25 The homily reflects on the purity of Christ and the Virgin Mary and compares their purity to the way a Christian is made pure through baptism. The homilist exhorts his audience, once again, to thank God for causing Christ to suffer so that they might be saved. A stern reminder is issued that when facing ‘lifes reste’, we must eagerly try to please God in all things; this theme is taken up again in the seventh homily, T65, with a reminder always to remember the life facing one when the body and soul separate.26 The congregation is also reminded that, in the future life, the friends one has had in this world can be of no assistance: it is God alone on whom one can depend, and so the faithful are exhorted eagerly to love Him with ‘inweord heort’ (‘an inward heart’). The two Wulfstanian homilies, T62 and T63, and the succeeding two anonymous homilies, T64 and T65, then, combine to form a sustained contemplation on righteousness and loving God. The lay audience is encouraged to reflect on their internal piety, to consider their eternal salvation as a matter for the inward heart. This will lead them to have faith and will, in turn, lead them into good conduct and away from 22 Collated in Wulfstan, ed. Napier, 108, no. 19. 23 It is worth noting that there is no contemplation in these homilies on the grave or on bodily corruption,

though, as Thompson has noted, this was an important theme for the earlier homilies of the Vercelli and Blickling homiliaries: Thompson, ‘Constructing Salvation’, 236. Instead, the eschatology presented by this homiletic programme appears to imply by omission that eternal bliss or suffering began at death. 24 Collated in Wulfstan, ed. Napier, 110–15, 119–21, nos. 20–2 and first paragraph of no. 24. 25 Collated ibid. 121–2, second paragraph of no. 24. 26 Collated ibid. 122, third paragraph of no. 24.

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the temptations of the Devil. Rather than the culture of gift-giving and external piety, the things we have normally associated with the late Anglo-Saxon laity, these homilies suggest that such practices may have been only one facet of the laity’s religious experience. After this protracted harangue directed towards the inner self, the remaining homilies in T’s collection turn to describing the duties that all devout laymen must perform. The compiler’s skill in selecting and ordering his texts for this collection is undeniable. In a few short homilies, with his redactions, interpolations, and extractions, he provides his audience with the central stories of both the Old and New Testaments, and he has also concisely explained how to achieve salvation by internal reflection. So, although the final six homilies in the collection examine the external piety demanded of good Christians, the audience is already aware that these actions do not automatically lead to salvation, but that they are simply an outward reflection of the ‘inweord heort’. In the eighth homily, T66, the anonymous homilist recommends fasting to cure all of society’s ills.27 Whenever a community is beset by ‘here oþþe hunger, man cwealm oþþe orf cwealm, byrne oþþe blodgyte, ungelimplice gewyderu oþþe færlic coþa, oþþe færlic deaþ’ (‘war, hunger, a plague among men or cattle disease, fire or bloodshed, abnormal withering of crops or sudden sickness or sudden death’), the homilist exhorts his audience to follow the example of King David and fast and repent. A three-day fast, ‘to berenan hlafe, to sealte 7 to grenan wrytan’ (‘on barley bread, salt, and green vegetables’) is mandated, and penitent laypeople must also go to church barefoot in their humility, give alms, and pay tithes. The homily also reminds us of the message of the previous four homilies, exhorting ‘ealra þincg ærest gebuge man to rihte 7 ælc unriht forlæte’ (‘in all things first submit to right and abandon everything that is not right’). For their part churchmen will sing and pray in order to intercede with God on behalf of the penitents; and for each of these three days, priests will hear confession and submit the penitents to painful questioning. This expiation of the sin that has brought calamity on society is envisioned as a communal affair, and those who do not do their part eagerly must be punished. Anyone who breaks his fast is to be flogged, and if someone is too proud to fast or pay alms, he not only suffers the wrath of God but is punished in a more temporal and secular manner by being brought before the king. The homilist reminds his audience that the king has been empowered by God to guard the country. Thus, when someone does not take part in a fast designed to cure the country, it is a traitorous matter for both Church and king. The role of christus dominus, God’s anointed, as the enforcer, not just of civil law, but in times of crisis of ecclesiastical law, is a role of both honour and awesome responsibility. David had already been mentioned as the man whose example in fasting should be followed, but the subtext of David’s own culpability was surely heard as well, particularly as the homilist remarks that many thousands can be judged on the account of one man’s sin, as happened to the Israelites. The contemporary king is, therefore, reminded of his own responsibility for the spiritual health of the nation, and thus for its worldly prosperity, because the two are inextricably linked. His responsibility begins with his own actions and piety. Another communal act which welds together Christian society is the payment of tithes, and this is the subject of the ninth homily, T67.28 Every God-fearing man who wants to serve God is advised in this homily to pay sulah ælmeassan (an ecclesiastical tax on ploughed land) fifteen nights after Easter, ieoþaþ teoþunge 27 Ibid. 176, no. 36 as a variant of no. 35. 28 Collated ibid. 116, no. 23.

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[æcerteoþunge?] (a tithe on the produce of the soil) at Pentecost, and eorþwæstma (fruit of the earth) at Ember Night. The faithful are also reminded that at every holy mass the satisfactory contribution is a penny, and St Peter’s Mass Day is the appropriate time of the year at which to donate land to the Church. The Church’s coffers should also be increased by the sawel scætte (‘soul payment’), which should be given whenever a Christian dies. Apparently, the laity did not always hand over these tithes eagerly, and accusations of clerical corruption must not have been unknown, because the anonymous homilist is keen to reassure lay benefactors that every penny collected in the diocese is passed on to the archbishop at Christ Church, and anyone who says otherwise ‘si he iudas gefera þe crist belærde’ (‘is the companion of Judas, who betrayed Christ’). T67 is more than just a list of due dates; it also lays out other direct instructions to the laity, which should be read as an English contemplation on the Continental Truce and Peace of God movements. The homily expressly forbids ‘ordeals and oaths and every high dispute on feast-days and rightly on Emberfast Day and for fourteen nights after a holy day and for fourteen nights besides at Easter’.29 Moreover, as well as being told to ‘beo arful fæder 7 meder’ (‘be respectful to father and mother’), the Christian man must also ‘beo ongebeorhge earmum wyderum 7 steopcildum 7 godes þeawum and godes þearfan’ (‘be a protector of the poor, widows, orphans, and God’s servants and God’s needy’). The same millennial-inspired attempts to establish civil society that were current on the Continent would have been equally relevant in England.30 The homilies of T, alongside Wulfstan’s laws and his mentoring of a peaceable Cnut, can surely be interpreted as an English version of the Continental drive to establish a ‘sanctified peace’. The next two homilies, T68 and T69, although moving from a concentration on the personal to the communal, nevertheless build seamlessly on the theme of establishing a peaceable civil society.31 In T68 the anonymous writer laments the sad state of the nation, remarking that sin has ruled the people for many years, leading to numerous insults and injuries. ‘Might is right’ has been the rule for too long, familial relationships have broken down, and correct guidance has not been given: Often a father now does not protect his child, nor at this time a child his father, nor a brother his other . . . war and hunger, burning and bloodshed on each side; accusations and murder, slander and malice, and plunder and robbery damage us with all their might because in this country it is as if we may long for many injustices . . . 32

Though T68 has not been recognized as having been authored by Wulfstan, its theme is most certainly Wulfstanian. As Godden argues, ‘A prominent theme of Wulfstan’s millennialism is the collapse of kinship loyalty’.33 The homilist’s choice of rhyming couplets is a direct reflection of the description of the anarchy in hell in T61. Lawlessness has reduced the state of the nation to a hell on earth, and the homi29 ‘ordal aþas ælc healic geflit on freolsdagum on riht ymbrenum fæsten dagan for feowertinum 7 7 7 7

nyhtan ær halige dagan oð feowertynum nithum on ufan eastran.’

30 For recent discussion on the apocalypticism of Wulfstan and Ælfric see W. Prideaux-Collins, ‘ “Satan’s

Bonds are Extremely Loose”: Apocalyptic Expectation in Anglo-Saxon England during the Millennial Era’, in The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050, ed. R. Landes, A. Gow, and D. C. Van Meter, Oxford 2003, 289–310; M. Godden, ‘The Millennium, Time, and History for the Anglo-Saxon’, ibid. 155–80. 31 T68 collated in Wulfstan, ed. Napier, 128, no. 27; T69 collated ibid. 274, no. 51. 32 ‘Ne beorh nu for oft fæder his bearne . ne hwilan bearn for his fæder . ne broþar oþrum . . . here 7 hungor, bryne 7 blodgyte on hwylcum ende 7 us stalu 7 cwalu, hol 7 hete 7 ryperas 7 reaflac . deraþ swyþe þearle . forþam on þissum earde is swa hit þencan mæg unrihta feala’. 33 Godden, ‘Millennium’, 174.

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list warns that it will prevail as long as many continue to commit perjury and the guilty go unpunished. The emphasis here is not on personal atonement but on society’s rehabilitation and corporate responsibility through adherence to law. The homilist longs for a return to a golden age, when men will again ‘discharge injustice and bow down eagerly to righteousness and love the customs of our own country, just as our ancestors did who came before us’.34 If lawlessness can be said to have been the theme of T68, then the law, both secular and ecclesiastical, is most certainly the subject of the eleventh homily in this collection, T69. The anonymous homilist advises his congregation to submit to good civil law so that both kingdom and Christendom will hold fast. Though the homily states that the two most important laws are to love one God and to treat others as you would wish to be treated, it continues, ‘this is the law which we must hold first, we must all hold a united Christendom, and strive against vexatious heathendom and we all must rightly hold one liege lord and all together condemn life and land, and we must earnestly exalt righteousness and earnestly abolish injustice’.35 The homily stresses that penance is also necessary even if civil restitution has been made. It is not enough that one pays the penalty determined by a secular court for a crime: one must also atone for the sin. Thus, once more, the lay audience is directed toward an internal contemplation of their conduct. The homilist continues to advise his congregation that absolution can be gained through confession to a bishop, but if a man wants to take it further, he must go to the archbishop and finally, if necessary, to the pope. Still in keeping with the theme of peaceableness and good law, the final segment of this homily reminds us that the right of sanctuary is inviolate. The last two homilies in this collection that are addressed to ‘eallan folce’ outline the briefest of catechisms. T70 emphasizes the importance of baptism. It is, however, stressed that every Christian must understand the meaning of baptism before he can partake of the sacrament.36 It is, therefore, appropriate to baptize a heathen only when he rightly understands what the ritual signifies. This injunction may well encapsulate the raison d’être of this collection of homilies; even if these few short homilies were a layman’s only exposure to the tenets of Christianity it would, nevertheless, be sufficient to permit baptism. The homilist does not express similar qualms about infant baptism, as it is assumed that others will later undertake to help the child to understand his baptism and his faith. The final homily in this collection, T71, which is attributed to Wulfstan, provides instruction to the laity in saying the Paternoster and Creed in English.37 These, then, are the prayers that every Christian should know and say. The order of the homiletic collection addressed to the laity in T is thus highly systematic. The first two homilies provide the most basic instruction about the principal stories of the Old and New Testaments, followed by a warning about the next life and a description of the eternal bliss in heaven and the eternal torture in hell. It is significant, then, that the next four homilies, T62–T65, deal with internal piety, with living a righteous life, loving God and avoiding the wily Devil. Only after the ‘inweord heort’ has been dedicated to God can acts of external devotion be performed. Before these external acts of Christian devotion are outlined, however, 34 ‘geswican unrihtes gebugan iorne torihte lufian ure agenne landside . eall swa ure yldran dydon þe 7 7

toforan us wæron’.

35 ‘þis is seo lagu þe we healdan sculan ærest, þe sculan ænne cristendom ealle healdan 7 ælne

heðenedom mid ealle ofer hogian 7 we sculan ealle ænne cynehlaford rihtlice healdan 7 lif 7 land samod ealle wyrian 7 we sculan iornlice riht upæræran 7 unriht iorne afyllan’. 36 Collated in Wulfstan, ed. Napier, 122, no. 25. 37 Collated ibid. 125, no. 26.

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the audience receives extensive instruction on the importance of lawfulness and good conduct. The ‘inweord heort’ must be matched by righteous external behaviour, and only then can the baptism, fasts, penances, and prayers prescribed in these homilies for the laity be undertaken. The last two homilies in T are not addressed to the laity but to the mæsspreost (mass priest). Both are anonymous and unique to this manuscript. T72 very simply states that a priest must lead by example. He must offer up his own penance to God as well as the penance of his flock. Moreover, he must not be interested in worldly things and never take payment for divine services: ‘he must seek payment in God’s kingdom . . . therefore, he neither avails nor cares for neither high rank nor power if he does rightly’.38 The homilist reminds us that the consequences of transgressions on the part of a priest are terrible because the incompetent or corrupt priest not only condemns himself but his heorde (flock). Priests, moreover, must be educated to a high standard. He asks, in a reflection of Luke 6: 39, ‘Hu mæg blidman [sic] oþerne lædan oððe hu may ungelæred man oþerne læran.’39 The last homily in this collection, T73, further elaborates on the theme of clerical propriety. The homilist announces a curse, first in Latin, then in English, on priests who would dine on people’s sins. A priest who looks for profit will not be able to intercede with God, and the homilist reminds us that those who are most affected by clerical greed are those with the most to lose, those who are bedridden and dying. This concern for the souls of those about to be judged is underscored by the importance given to the commutation of sins found elsewhere in T, namely in its second confessional handbook. A priest must care for the dead ‘mid massan, mid sealm sange 7 mid ælmassan’ (‘with masses, with psalm singing, and with almsgiving’), but the only payment he should expect is ‘halidrihtan gemiltsige us eallan’ (‘the Lord’s mercy on us all’). The first thirteen homilies comprise a comprehensive, if simple, catechism for the layman. The most necessary biblical stories are transmitted, as is basic knowledge of the sacraments in which the laity participates. The overwhelming emphasis of these homilies, however, is not on the external acts of Christianity but on the internal reckoning of the Christian and the pious behaviour which will inevitably result from an earnest internal desire to love God and live righteously. These thirteen homilies provide a comprehensive, yet succinct, introduction to Christianity and may, therefore, have been intended for those not overly familiar with the precepts of the faith. For many bishops in the early eleventh century the reality had to be faced that dwelling within their dioceses were peasants unclear of the tenets of their faith as well as a handful of newly converted Scandinavian immigrants. These thirteen texts, adapted and collected with such dexterity, provided an ideal introduction to Christianity. The final two homilies in the collection address the masspreost directly, ensuring priestly propriety and the effectiveness of the sacraments, particularly penance and extreme unction. It can be argued that the collection as a unit, however, had an audience beyond the laymen and priests directly referenced in the homilies, and this was the bishops who were about to be ordained in the succeeding text, the examinatio of an incumbent bishop.40 This homiletic collection would be an ideal pastoral package for an archbishop to pass on to his new bishops. A pragmatic handbook of the principles of both 38 ‘he sceal in godesdome gesecað agildan . . . þy he na mæg na wandian gif he riht deþ naþor ne for

heanum ne for ricum’. 39 ‘How may a blind man lead others, how may an unlearned man teach others?’ 40 Pontifical of Magdalen College , ed. H. A. Wilson, Henry Bradshaw Society 39, 1910.

The Homilies of a Pragmatic Archbishop’s Handbook

61

lay and clerical instruction may have been deemed particularly necessary in this period, because the majority of bishops appointed during Cnut’s reign had a background of reformed monasticism, and thus were not men over-familiar with the pastoral needs of lay families. The emphasis placed on the ‘inward heart’ in this collection reflects a real concern with the saving of souls, and ensuring that all Christians enjoyed the eternal bliss of heaven and avoided the eternal pains of hell. Millennial expectations and the turmoil of the period must have made this goal seem particularly pressing. Using the homilies of T we can see what the third generation of the Benedictine reform looks like. They had adopted an intense interest in pastoral care from Ælfric and Wulfstan, but they took it one step further. The shadow of the recent past and its glorified reform must have loomed large in the turbulent eleventh century. The leading churchmen of Cnut’s and his sons’ reigns were presented with an ideal from Edgar’s that they would, in the end, have found impossible to implement. An idealized English Church led by reformed monastic houses simply could not meet the needs of the laity and provide them with pastoral care. The tenth-century reforms were, however, part of a venerated ‘golden age’, one that eleventh-century churchmen clung to, particularly in light of the rapidly changing political climate. So, they looked to the texts of the recent past, not merely to copy, but to draw upon as a malleable resource to meet the needs of their Church. Furthermore, we can see their idealized intention for lay piety. It is a conceptualization which focuses on inculcating in the laity an internal religious experience through a concentration on the inward heart, which will then be the impetus for good conduct. We can also see this concentration on interiority in the two collections of confessional texts in T. Collectively these pastoral texts of T formed a compassionate and comprehensive plan to facilitate lay salvation. They are united by their theological simplicity, and comprise a stripped down, bare-bones pastoral handbook, which would – to borrow from a recent political slogan – ensure that no layman was left behind. The collection of homilies in T also shows us that although the intellectual habits of the early eleventh century were not highly innovative, there was a tendency toward recycling texts which was actually quite sophisticated. The intellectual culture that produced this collection of homilies was profoundly conservative. At the same time, however, it was also strikingly creative through the ways in which these texts were adapted and reframed. These simple and bowdlerized texts were not the product of ignorant men who had forgotten their learning, rather they were deliberately conceived as a concise, condensed, and, most importantly, an understandable message for lay people. This collection of homilies, like the other collections within T, is highly programmatic and it must have been quite a difficult task to distil the entire Christian religion to just its very basics and then to be able to relate this in an effective way to a theologically unsophisticated lay audience. Finally, this examination of the compilation of T and of the meaning and use of T’s collection of homilies has demonstrated the need to read texts in context. Using this methodology these texts look entirely different, when taken as a part of a collection, from how they look when studied individually. While individually the homilies of T may look like random and corrupt, even bad, homilies, collectively they form part of a comprehensive and succinct pastoral programme, which in turn forms an important part of an eleventh-century archbishop’s commonplace book.

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Anglo-Norman Studies XXVIII APPENDIX

Table 2

Contents of British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii

T

Ker

Fols

Language

1 2 3

1 2

117v. 118r.–163v. 163v.–164r.

Illumination Latin/OE gloss Latin/OE gloss

4

3

164r.–168v.

5

4

168v.–169r.

6 7 8 9–15 16–26 27 28 29 30 31 32–43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52–55 56

5 6 7a–g 7h–r 8a 8b 8c 8d 8e 9a–l 10a 10b 10c 10d 10e 10f 10g 11 12 13

169r.–173v. 2v. 3r.–27v. 27v.–37v. 37v.–43r. 43r. 43r. and v. 43v.–44r. 44r. 44r. 44r.–56v. 57r. 57v.–58r. 58r.–59r. 59r. and v. 59v.–60r. 60r. 60r. and v. 60v.–64v. 65r.–65v. 65v.–73r.

57

14

73r. and v.

58 59–73 74 75–84 85 86 87

15 16–19(a–l) 20 21a–j 22 23 24

73v.–77v. 77v.–93v. 93v.–94v. 94v.–97r. 97r.–101v. 101v.–102v. 102r.–103r.

Description

Monks presenting the Rule to Benedict Rule of Benedict Injunction to follow the Rule (attrib. Fulgentius) Latin/OE gloss Notes on the Rule (attrib. Benedict of Aniane) Latin/OE gloss De festivitatibus anni (Council of Mainz, 813) Latin/OE gloss Capitula (Aachen, 818) Illumination King between two ecclesiastics Latin/OE gloss Regularis Concordia Latin/OE gloss Prognostics OE Prognostics OE Notes on Old Testament figures OE The six ages of the world OE Fasting instructions OE Notes on Mary OE Introduction to the confessional collection OE (34,41 Latin) Confessional prayers and directives Latin Office for All Saints (includes Litany) Latin Oratio Latin Cross devotion Latin Cross devotion Latin Four reasons to adore the Cross Latin Prayer addressed to the Cross Latin Prayer addressed to the Cross Latin/OE gloss Ælfric’s Colloquy Latin/OE gloss Prognostications OE/Latin title Ælfric’s rendering of Bede’s De Temporibus Anni OE Commonplaces concerned with measurement OE Life of St Margaret OE Homilies Latin Examination for an incumbent bishop OE Directions for confessors OE/Latin title Monastic sign language OE Lapidary OE Warning against worldly pride

The Homilies of a Pragmatic Archbishop’s Handbook 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

25 26 27 28 29 30

103r.–105v. 105r. and v. 105v.–106r. 106r. 106r.–107v. 107v.–111v. 112r. 113r.–114r.

Latin then OE OE OE OE OE Latin Latin Latin

63

Rule of Benedict chap. 4 Alcuin, De Virtutibus et Vitiis, chap. 14 Alcuin, De Virtutibus et Vitiis, chap. 26 Charm to recover lost cattle or goods Ælfric’s letter to Archbishop Wulfstan Full office of the Virgin Mary Litany Prayers of intercession

Table 3 The Occurrence of T’s Homilies in Other Manuscripts MS Date Place

T59 T60 T61 T62 T63 T64 T65 T66 T67 T68 T69 T70 T71 T72 T73

Ga s.xex–xiin Dur.? N s.xiin ? La s.xiin Cant./Ro. M s.xi1/4 Ex. Kc s.xi1 Worc.? E s.xi1 ? K s.xi1 ? O s.xi1 ? X s.ximed ? Li s.ximed NMW H s.xi2 Worc.

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

64 MS Date Place P s.xi3/4 Worc. Pa s.xi3/4 Worc. Q s.xi3/4 Ex. Ju s.xi3/4 Worc. Ki s.xiex/xiii

Anglo-Norman Studies XXVIII T59 T60 T61 T62 T63 T64 T65 T66 T67 T68 T69 T70 T71 T72 T73

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

n

Cant./Ro. Ka s.xii1 Cant./Ro. Fa s.xii1 Cant./Ro.

*

*

Key to manuscripts: Ga CUL Gg.3.28; N BL Add. 38651; La CCCC 162; M Lamb. 489; Kc CCCC 178; E CCCC 419; K CCCC 421; O BL Cotton Otho B. x; X CCCC 201; Li CUL Ii.4.6; H Bodl. Hatton 115; P Bodl. Hatton 113; Pa Bodl. Hatton 114; Q BL Cotton Cleo. B. xiii; Ju Bodl. Junius 121; Ki CCCC 302; Ka CCCC 303; Fa BL Cotton Faustina A. ix [BL = London, British Library; Bodl. = Oxford, Bodleian Library; CCCC = Cambridge, Corpus Christi College; CUL = Cambridge University Library; Lamb. = London, Lambeth Palace] Key to places: Cant./Ro. = Canterbury or Rochester; Dur. = Durham; Ex. = Exeter; NMW = New Minster, Winchester; Worc. = Worcester

Robert de Vaux and Roger de Stuteville

ROBERT DE VAUX AND ROGER DE STUTEVILLE, SHERIFFS OF CUMBERLAND AND NORTHUMBERLAND, 1170–1185 Hugh Doherty The counties of Northumberland and Cumberland, together with their castles, were surrendered to Henry II, king of the English, by Malcolm IV, king of Scots, at Chester in 1157.1 At the Michaelmas session of the exchequer in 1158, the farms and profits of both counties were accounted for by their sheriffs, those of Northumberland by William de Vescy and those of Cumberland by Robert fitz Truite.2 William de Vescy’s father Eustace fitz John had been killed in the king’s service in 1157;3 William himself was a landholder of substantial wealth in northern England.4 He continued to serve as sheriff of Northumberland until Easter 1170, when he was replaced in office by Roger de Stuteville, whose tenure is a central subject of this paper.5 William’s removal coincided with the deposition of sheriffs and their bailiffs commanded by the king at a council immediately after Easter 1170.6 In Cumberland Robert fitz Truite and his son Adam appear to have claimed the shrievalty of Carlisle; Robert’s mother, Truite, was the daughter of the Hildred of Carlisle who had accounted for the farm of Carlisle and the king’s manors in 1129–30.7 Robert retained his office and continued to account for Cumberland until Michaelmas 1173, though his son Adam rendered account on his behalf in the year 1172–3.8 In 1173–4 Adam himself accounted for Cumberland as sheriff in his own right.9 At Michaelmas 1174 he was removed and replaced by Robert de Vaux, the second subject of this study. The removal of William de Vescy and Adam fitz Robert, men with long family 1

I am grateful to Nicholas Vincent for reading this paper and for permission to use his edition of the acts of Henry II; to Peter Damian-Grint for help with Jordan’s Anglo-Norman; and to Richard Sharpe for reading and advising on successive drafts. 2 PR 4 Henry II, 119–20, 177–8. 3 Annales Cestrienses, or Chronicle of the Abbey of S. Werburg at Chester, ed. R. C. Christie, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 14, 1887, 22. 4 Henry II’s charter to him was granted during the king’s Welsh campaign in September 1157 after Eustace’s death earlier in the campaign. The original evidently survived at Malton priory until the early fourteenth century (PRO C 47/9/5, m. 2); it was also copied into the fourteenth-century Percy family cartulary (The Percy Chartulary, ed. M. T. Martin, Surtees Society 117, 1909 (1911), 291–4, no. 759). 5 PR 16 Henry II, 47–52. 6 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 4–5; Gervase of Canterbury, Chronica, in The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS 73, 1879–80, I, 216–19. 7 PR 31 Henry I, 140–2. The identity of Hildred’s descendants and Truite’s relationship to him are set out in a plea of 1225 (Bracton’s Notebook, ed. F. W. Maitland, 3 vols, London 1887, III, 71–2, no. 1040; discussed by J. H. Round, ‘Odard of Carlisle’, The Genealogist new series 5, 1892, 203–4). Adam, once described as Adam fitz Truite (PR 22 Henry II, 115), frequently witnessed private deeds as ‘Adam filius uicecomitis’. See, for instance, the deed of Richard de Morville printed from a lost original in Selectus Diplomatum et Numismatum Scotiae Thesaurus, ed. J. Anderson, Edinburgh 1739, no. lxxv. 8 PR 19 Henry II, 113–14. 9 PR 20 Henry II, 107.

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connexions to shrieval office in these counties, and the installation of Roger de Stuteville and Robert de Vaux constituted a major break in the shrieval administration of these two most northern counties. Roger had no previous connexions with the government of Northumberland, and Robert’s father had been given lands in Cumberland by Henry II only in 1157. Their installation seems to justify the view expressed in the text known as Dialogus de Scaccario:10 ‘It is the king’s prerogative as principal holder of the public dignity’, pronounces the magister, ‘that any man in the kingdom, whoever he is and whomever he serves in arms and office, if the king needs him, may be freely taken and assigned to the king’s service.’ ‘I see the poet’s words are true’ – replies the discipulus, quoting Ovid11 – ‘Have you forgotten that the reach of kings is long?’12 The Dialogus was probably composed in the period 1177–9,13 when Roger and Robert were both sheriffs of their counties. The exchequer establishment, whose view was expressed in the Dialogus, evidently regarded Northumberland and Cumberland as closely connected counties. From Michaelmas 1170 to Michaelmas 1175 the account for Cumberland was entered immediately after the account for Northumberland on the same rotulet of the pipe roll.14 A marginal note entered in the Dialogus in the period 1178–89 paired the two as an example of counties without their own moneyers who could deliver into the treasury ‘pennies of any mint’ (‘cuiuscunque monete denarios’).15 The pipe rolls show both Roger de Stuteville and Robert de Vaux performing the regular duties of their office, but this paper will argue that there was more to unite them than their custody of the two most northern counties. Both men played prominent roles in two very different crises, the first in 1173–4, the second in 1184–5. The reach of King Henry II and indeed of his exchequer, so this paper aims to show, was sometimes less comprehensive than the magister and discipulus might have expected. The Invasions of 1173 and 1174 Decisive events in the fortunes of both men were the invasions by the king of Scots in 1173 and 1174. Both Roger de Stuteville and Robert de Vaux were given important roles in a major vernacular literary work of the period, the 2,065-line poem written in Anglo-Norman French by Jordan Fantosme.16 The date of the poem’s composition 10 There is no title for the text in the earliest four manuscripts, but it was first edited under the title

‘Antiquus Dialogus de Scaccario’ (T. Madox, The History and Antiquities of the Exchequer of the Kings of England, London 1711, appendix, i). For discussion of the manuscripts and the origins of the title, see De Necessariis Obseruantiis Scaccarii Dialogus, ed. A. Hughes, C. G. Crump, and C. Johnson, Oxford 1902, 3–9. 11 Ovid, Heroides, 17.166 (ed. and trans. G. Showerman, London 1977, 236). 12 Magister: Debetur hec prerogatiua dignitatis publice potestati, ut cuiuscunque sit, cuicunque uir aliquis in regno militet uel ministret, si regi necessarius uisus fuerit, libere possit assumi et regiis obsequiis deputari. Discipulus: Ex hoc etiam cerno uerum esse quod dicitur ‘An nescis longas regibus esse manus?’ (Dialogus de Scaccario, 84). 13 The most recent edition (Dialogus de Scaccario, pp. xx–xxi) proposes a date between December 1177 and 1 April 1179; H. G. Richardson, ‘Richard fitz Neal and the Dialogus de Scaccario’, EHR 43, 1928, 161–71 and 321–40 at 340 suggested that ‘the original version’ was written ‘in the late seventies’ and the text extensively revised in the ten years following. 14 PRO E 372/17, rot. 5, m. 1d.–2d.; E 372/18, rot. 5, mm. 1d.–2d.; E 372/19, rot. 7, mm. 1d.–2d.; E 372/20, rot. 8, m. 1d.; E 372/21, rot. 11, m. 2d.; printed in PR 17 Henry II, 74–81; 18 Henry II, 65–70; 19 Henry II, 110–14; 20 Henry II, 105–7; 21 Henry II, 183–5. 15 Dialogus de Scaccario, 9; further on it includes Northumberland and Cumberland, together with Shropshire and Sussex, in a list of shires which rendered their farm by tale only: ibid. 43. 16 The most recent edition of Jordan’s poem, which survives in two manuscript copies, the earlier and

Robert de Vaux and Roger de Stuteville

67

cannot be fixed with any precision, but a date before the death of the Young Henry in 1183 is very likely and one before the settlement imposed on the king of Scots in 1175 possible.17 The poem, like the Dialogus, offers a contemporary commentary on both Roger and Robert. Jordan described events that had occurred in the recent, possibly very recent, past and narrated the actions of individuals who were still alive as he wrote. The subject of the poem was the ‘war without love’ (guerre senz amur) between King Henry II and his eldest son, but the invasions of northern England by the king of Scots in the summers of 1173 and 1174 constituted its principal focus and the barons of northern England its principal characters. The poem is immensely detailed, which only serves to intensify the realism and power of its narrative: it is in some ways the richest record of events in north England.18 The Melrose Chronicle, for instance, in its entry for 1173 recorded that the king of Scots camped for some time at Wark castle,19 the pipe rolls accounted for the transport of supplies to Wark castle and the payment of wages to the castle’s garrison,20 but only the poem mentions that the castle was held by Roger de Stuteville, the cunstable of Wark, in 1173 and defended by him in 1174.21 Roger of Howden reported that Robert de Vaux held Carlisle in custodia in 1174,22 the pipe rolls recorded payment for foodstuffs at Carlisle castle under Robert,23 but only Jordan gives an account of his defence of the city and castle in 1173 and 1174.24 Moreover, the poem stresses the exceptional qualities of leadership, loyalty, and chivalry demonstrated by both men, leading actors in the narrative. During the siege of Wark in 1174, Roger rallies his men ‘well’ (bien) and ‘very nobly’ (mult gentil); emboldens them with expressions of devotion to God and King Henry; counsels the preservation of food and munitions; and forbids them to ‘shout vulgar things’ (dites uilanie) to taunt the frustrated and retreating besiegers. At the siege of Carlisle in 1173, Robert fights ‘vigorously’ (forment); uses the captured booty to ‘strengthen his position’ (esforcerad sa place); and thanks God with a touch of élan, on bended knee with ‘his pointed shoe behind him’ (e estent sa pigace). The poem thus provides evidence that the victories won and the qualities demonstrated by Roger and Robert, and by other northern barons, were celebrated and perhaps circulated in the immediate post-war period, when both men were sheriffs. Jordan did not simply celebrate their successes, however; he justified them. This is

more complete from the early thirteenth century (Durham Cathedral Library, MS C.IV.2, fols 139r.–167v.) is Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , ed. R. C. Johnston, Oxford 1981. All the translations from Jordan’s poem are my own. 17 A date of 1175 ‘or even the end of 1174’ was proposed by M. D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background, Oxford 1963, 75, for whom the poem ‘reads like a paean of praise for the restoration of peace in 1174’; most recent works, including Johnston’s edition (Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , p. xxiii), follow Legge’s dating. 18 See the reference to ‘one of several instances of Fantôsme’s credibility in detail’ in Regesta Regum Scottorum: The Acts of William I, King of Scots, 1165–1214, ed. G. W. S. Barrow, Edinburgh 1971, 22 n. 19a. 19 The Chronicle of Melrose: Facsimile Edition, ed. A. O. Anderson and M. O. Anderson, London 1936, p. 40. 20 PR 20 Henry II, 105. Ranulf of Surtees’s relief of 100s. was paid ‘in custamento militium regis de Werch’ in 1173–4 (Ibid., 107). 21 Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , ed. Johnston, 36–41, 88–99, lines 477–529, 1185–314. Jordan says that Roger had twenty knights among his followers (ibid. 88–9, line 1193); the pipe roll records the presence of ten knights and forty seruientes residing in the castle in 1173–4 (PR 20 Henry II, 105). 22 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 65. 23 PR 19 Henry II, 2. 24 Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , ed. Johnston, 46–57, 100–9, lines 609–764, 1327–454.

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most apparent in his description of the truces won by Roger and Robert from the king of Scots. During the first siege of Wark in 1173 Roger secures respite for forty days in order to inform his lord the king, either by ‘missives sealed with wax’ (mes briés dedanz cire, line 511), or in person, of the threat to the ‘people of his realm’ (la gent de sun empire, line 514). Robert de Vaux is similarly described securing ‘respite’ (respit, line 1425) to go to King Henry and request the surrender of Carlisle castle and its honour during the second siege of Carlisle in 1174. Later, indeed, Robert commits himself to surrender both the tower and city of Carlisle, but only when he is informed that he will be rescued by the king ‘as a loyal knight that has held firm to his honour’ (cume leal chevalier ki ad tenu s’onur, line 1631). Roger of Howden supplied a very different account of this truce. When the king of Scots renewed his siege of Carlisle in 1174, and when victuals for Robert and ‘the burgesses’ had begun to fail, Robert promised ‘to surrender the castle and town of Carlisle at the following feast of St Michael, unless in the meantime he should have help from the lord king of England’ (‘quod ad festum sancti Michaelis sequens, redderet ei castellum et uillam Carleoli, nisi interim haberet succursum a domino rege Anglie’); this he offered ‘by pledge and oaths and hostages’ (‘fide et sacramentis et obsidibus’) to the king of Scots.25 The sudden collapse of King William’s campaign of reconquest on his capture in August 1174 and the unexpected scale of King Henry II’s victory doubtless endowed such truces with less than honourable features in the post-war period. Jordan was keen, however, to present the truces of both men in the best light. Roger de Stuteville seeks respite ‘in great sadness’ (en grant tristur); he parleys ‘wisely and humbly’ (sages par humilité); he is ‘the wise knight who loved his liege lord’ (le sage chevalier, ki sun seignur ama). The value of Roger’s truce, moreover, is explicitly declared by an authorial intervention, ‘Now Jordan Fantosme declares that God took into his keeping all the Northumbrians who were in those parts. But for the truce that Roger asked for they would have been driven out of the land by the Scots.’26 As for Robert de Vaux, he receives the messengers of the king of Scots with bravado, ‘leaning against a battlement’ (a un kernel puiant) and ‘making delicate play’ (bel l’alot manïant, lines 1367–71) with his sword; is cajoled by the messengers with the promise of ‘a large fortune in pure and gold coins’ (tant vus durrad aveir, entre or fin e mangun) and with the threat of being ‘torn to pieces and put to a violent death’ (qu’il ne vus face detraire e a male mort juger, lines 1397–1400); and rejects both, so the messengers inform King William, ‘not even if you offered him Scotland into the bargain’ (ne pur Escoce d’acreis, line 1443). The value of his offer to ask King Henry to surrender Carlisle castle is clearly stated by the king of Scots: ‘he must be joking’ (ço est sun gabbement, line 1454).

25 The poem makes no reference to the contribution of the burgesses, only to the barons (le barnagë) sum-

moned by Robert (ibid. 106–7, line 1435). King William’s messengers declare to him that Robert ‘has plenty of wine and wheat inside the castle; he and his men are in complete agreement’ (‘Il ad enz el chastel asez vin e furment, Si sunt a un acort entre lui e sa gent’) (ibid. 108–9, lines 1445–6); but Roger of Howden reported that the food in Carlisle had run short (‘deficiente’) (Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 65). 26 ‘Or dit Jordan Fantosme que Deus les avua / Tuz ceus de Northumberlant ki furent de dela. / Ne fust icele triewe ke Rogier demanda, / Chaciez fussent de terre par ces d’Albania’ (Jordan Fantosme’s Chroni cle, ed. Johnston, 40, lines 520–4).

Robert de Vaux and Roger de Stuteville

69

Roger de Stuteville, Sheriff of Northumberland Roger de Stuteville, sheriff of Northumberland, belonged to a family which had experienced both enrichment and forfeiture in Anglo-Norman England. In 1200 William de Stuteville declared that his ancestors had received a ‘barony’ at the time of the conquest (‘habuit baroniam illam ad acquisitionem Anglie’), but had been disseised by Henry I.27 The fortunes of the family were restored when Robert de Stuteville received (or took back) some share of his father’s former property in Yorkshire early in the reign of Stephen.28 Robert was quick to rebuild his family’s credentials as members of the county community of Yorkshire; he was named, for instance, in the host of Yorkshire barons that crushed the king of Scots at the battle of the Standard in 1138.29 Over the next twenty years he entrenched his position by his support for William of Aumâle, earl of York, and by service in a shrieval capacity.30 The success of his efforts may be gauged by the fact that, when Henry II visited northern England in 1157 and possibly Yorkshire in 1163, Robert was included in the witness clauses of three royal charters for three northern beneficiaries, including one in favour of Robert de Vaux’s father.31 Robert soon became an active agent of the king’s government in the North. He was entrusted with expenditure on Bamburgh castle in 1167–8 and served as a justice in Yorkshire in 1168–9 and in Northumberland and Cumberland in 1169–70. At Easter 1170 he was made sheriff of Yorkshire.32 Sir Charles Clay (1885–1978), editor of the Stuteville deeds in the Early Yorkshire Charters series, identified Roger de Stuteville, sheriff of Northumberland, as the brother of this Robert III de Stuteville restored by Stephen, making them both sons of Robert II de Stuteville, whom Henry I had disseised.33 It is certain that Robert had a brother named Roger: Robert III de Stuteville and ‘his brother Roger’ witnessed the king’s charter for the weavers of York, which was place-dated at Pickering and which can probably be dated to the king’s visit to Yorkshire in 1163.34 William, Roger, and Geoffrey de Stuteville were entered together in the Liber Vitae of Durham as the brothers of Robert de Stuteville, who must be Robert III.35 Moreover, Roger de Stuteville’s installation as sheriff of Northumberland at Easter 1170 27 Summary of the case, probably from a legal memorandum, in Howden, Chronica, IV, 117–18,

reprinted in EYC, IX, 116–17, no. 42. 28 Robert de Stuteville’s deed for St Mary’s, York, refers to the time ‘postquam recuperaui hereditatem

meam in Anglia’: York Minster Archives, XVI. A. 2, fol. 21r. (now fol. 13r.), printed in EYC, IX, 86–7, no. 4. 29 Richard of Hexham, De Gestis Regis Stephani et de Bello Standardii, in Chronicles, ed. Howlett, III, 160. 30 Robert de Stuteville witnessed two deeds of William of Aumâle, one before the death of Eustace fitz John in 1157 (both printed from later transcripts of the originals in Farrer, EYC, III, 91–2, 109–10, nos. 1381, 1400). Robert’s name follows Earl William’s in the witness clause to the act of William, archbishop of York, for the burgesses of Beverley (printed from the original in EYC, I, 100–1, no. 105). The chronicle of Meaux abbey, of which William of Aumâle and Robert were both benefactors, recalled that William gave the wood from William Fossard’s destroyed castle to Robert (Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, ed. E. A. Bond, 3 vols, RS 43, 1866–8, I, 104–5). 31 For the charter in favour of Hubert de Vaux, place-dated at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, see note 135. The other two charters, the first in favour of the weavers of York and the second in favour of the men of Scarborough, are printed in Cal. Pat. 1345–8, 199–200, and in Cal. Chart. R. I, 417, respectively. For evidence that the king visited Yorkshire in 1163, see PR 9 Henry II, 58. 32 PR 16 Henry II, 35. 33 EYC, IX, 3. 34 For the king’s charter, see note 31. 35 Liber Vitae Ecclesiae Dunelmensis (facsimile), ed. A. H. Thompson, Surtees Society 126, 1923, fol. 47v.

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coincided with that of Robert III de Stuteville as sheriff of Yorkshire.36 It has always been supposed, therefore, that the two men were brothers. As Clay himself was aware, there were, however, other men bearing the name Roger de Stuteville alive at this time, possibly as many as three. One seems to have been the younger son of Robert III de Stuteville and is very likely the Roger who witnessed a deed of his father with other brothers.37 A second Roger de Stuteville was the son of John de Stuteville, another brother of Robert III,38 who held property in Newbold upon Avon, Cosford, and Long Lawford in Warwickshire.39 The precise date of this Roger’s succession is not known, but it appears to have occurred before 1183–4.40 The third Roger de Stuteville was the heir of Osmund de Stuteville, whom Clay supposed to have been yet another brother of Robert III de Stuteville.41 This Roger de Stuteville held the manor of Burton Agnes and other property in Yorkshire;42 he also entertained claims to the advowson of the church of Weston Colville in Cambridgeshire.43 There is evidence to connect both Roger de Stuteville of Newbold and Roger de Stuteville of Burton Agnes to the shrievalty of Northumberland. The sister of Roger de Stuteville of Newbold was married to Meldred fitz Dolfin, tenant of the king for Raby in Northumberland.44 Roger de 36 PR 16 Henry II, 47. 37 See the entries for ‘William de Stuteville and his brother Roger’ on fol. 47v of the Liber Vitae of

Durham. For the deed of Robert III, printed from the Rievaulx cartulary, see EYC, IX, 90–91, no. 10. 38 An entry in the Liber Vitae of Thorney abbey reads ‘Iohannes de Stuteuilla Walerannus Agnes uxor

Iohannis Hanenann[us] Rodbert[us] pater Iohannis et mater eius Erenburga’ (BL Add. MS 40000, fol. 2v.). A deed of Robert III de Stuteville for the monks of Rievaulx names Robert and Erneburga as his parents (BL Cotton MS Julius D. i, fols 84r.–86r. (now fols 88r.–90r.), printed in EYC, IX, 90–1, no. 10). A deed of John de Stuteville granted property in Pipewell ‘pro Roberto domino meo et fratre’ (PRO E 327/408, printed in EYC, IX, 131, no. 62). 39 According to two deeds transcribed by Sir William Dugdale (1605–1686) from originals in the College of Arms in 1638, Robert conveyed Newbold to John ‘fratri meo’, and Robert’s son William de Stuteville confirmed Newbold, Cosford, and Long Lawford to his cousin John, ‘cognato meo’ (Bodl. MS Dugdale 13, p. 341; the first deed cited, but not printed, in W. Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 2 vols, London 1656, I, 21–2). 40 In 1183–4 Burga de Stuteville proffered 20 marks for recognition on the death of her brother John concerning the estate of ‘Ketelebi’ in Warwickshire (PR 30 Henry II, 49). Deeds copied into the earliest of the Pipewell cartularies establish that this John, brother of Burga, was very likely John fitz John and therefore Roger de Stuteville’s brother (BL Stowe MS 937, pp. 60–61, fol. 38v.–39r.). John fitz John must therefore have died before 1183–4. A deed of the same Roger de Stuteville for the monks of Monks Kirkby, confirming his father’s gifts, was witnessed by William, abbot of Combe 1183–92 (Annals of Waverley, in Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, 5 vols, RS 36, 1864–9, II, 242–3, 248). The deed was transcribed by Dugdale from the original in the College of Arms (Bodl. MS Dugdale 12, p. 355) and is cited in Warwickshire, I, 64. His transcription provides the only known representation of this Roger de Stuteville’s seal. For two deeds of this Roger in favour of Pipewell, see BL Stowe MS 937, pp. 62–3, 64, fols 39v.–40r., 40v. 41 William de Coleville and his wife Beatrice claimed in 1203 that her great-grandfather Osmund de Stuteville had given the church of Weston Colville (Cambs.) to one Reginald and that ‘ex iure Osmundi descendit illa advocacio Reginaldi Rogero et de Rogero Anselmo de Stuteuille et de Ansello predicte Beatricie’: Curia Regis Rolls, II, 231–2. 42 In 1171–2 Roger returned 18s. 6d. in scutage from the fee which he held of Adam de Brus (PR 18 Henry II, 62); for its location, see the plea concerning Burton Agnes, which refers to tenure in ‘the time of Roger de Stuteville’: Curia Regis Rolls, VI, 235. Roger de Stuteville has been credited with building the twelfth-century chamber block at Burton Agnes, of which much remains standing, dated ‘c. 1170–80’ (N. Pevsner, Yorkshire: York and the East Riding, 2nd edn, London 1995, 366). 43 For Roger’s claims to the church of Weston Coleville, see note 41. 44 Curia Regis Rolls, VII, 283; VIII, 314; Rolls of the Justices in Eyre, being the Rolls of Pleas and Assizes for Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire, 1221–2 , ed. D. M. Stenton, Selden Society 59, 1940, 209, no. 486. Sir Charles Clay was the first to identify the connexion between the two families: ‘A Note on a Neville Ancestry’, Antiquaries Journal 31, 1955, 201–4. H. S. Offler presented evidence that Roger de Stuteville’s sister married twice, the second time to Gilbert Hansard, another landholder in

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Stuteville of Burton Agnes married his daughter Alice to Roger de Merlay, who held the honour centred on Morpeth castle, also in Northumberland.45 This Roger, his wife, and their son Anselm were entered in the Liber Vitae of Durham.46 The identity of the sheriff of Northumberland is further complicated by his connexions to two men, Roger de la Rivere and Robert of Robertot, who figured prominently in the company of Roger the sheriff. Roger de la Rivere witnessed two deeds concerning Warwickshire business alongside Roger de Stuteville of Newbold and Robert III de Stuteville.47 Roger de la Rivere and Robert of Robertot both witnessed deeds conveying Yorkshire property together with Roger de Stuteville of Burton Agnes.48 At the very least, both men were clearly followers and clients of the Stuteville family.49 The only information known about Roger de Stuteville, sheriff of Northumberland, is that he held property in Yorkshire and Suffolk.50 This detail possibly eliminates Roger de Stuteville of Newbold, who in any case inherited only circa 1184. This still leaves Roger de Stuteville, younger son of Robert III, Roger de Stuteville, brother of Robert III, and Roger de Stuteville of Burton Agnes as possible candidates. If there can be no certainty on the precise identity of Roger de Stuteville, sheriff of Northumberland, he was clearly a younger son raised on the coat tails of his elder kinsman, Robert III de Stuteville. He was, too, a member of a family which maintained and cultivated a cohesive sense of its own identity. The clearest expression of this was the family toponymic, taken from Étoutteville-sur-mer in northern Normandy, and borne by members of the family on both sides of the Channel.51 The family’s cohesion in the reign of Henry II is vividly glimpsed in a deed now lost but transcribed in the seventeenth century, by which William de Stuteville confirmed property to his cousin (cognatus) John. The deed was witnessed by his father and lord Robert and Robert’s brother Roger de Stuteville; by two more of Robert’s sons; by Roger de Stuteville ‘brother of John de Northumberland, and proposed that she was ‘Iohanna de Stuteuilla’ entered with Gilbert on fol. 23v. of the Liber Vitae of Durham (‘Fitz Meldred, Neville and Hansard’, in North of the Tees, ed. A. I. Doyle and A. J. Piper, Aldershot 1996, 1–17). 45 PR 10 Richard I, 146; Curia Regis Rolls, VIII, 173. Alice de Stuteville’s husband, Roger de Merlay, succeeded to his lands before 1166 (RBE, I, 444), but their son was a minor when Roger died in 1187–8 (PR 34 Henry II, 100); he succeeded before 1194–5. Roger’s grandson Richard Gubiun conveyed an annual rent to the monks of Newminster for the soul of Alice de Stuteville, his grandmother, for a pittance on Alice’s anniversary (Castle Howard Archives, Newminster cartulary, fol. 7r.; Chartularium Abbatie de Nouo Monasterio, ed. J. T. Fowler, Surtees Society 66, 1876, 15–16). 46 Liber Vitae Dunelmensis, ed. Thompson, fol. 63r. 47 Both deeds were drafted in the name of William Pantulf, who had married Bertha de Stuteville, the kinswoman of Roger de Stuteville of Newbold: BL Add. Charter 24306, printed in Farrer, EYC, I, 54, no. 48; and BL Cotton Charter v. 62, printed in Documents Illustrative of the Social and Economic History of the Danelaw, ed. F. M. Stenton, London 1920, 308, no. 415. 48 BL Add. MS 40008, fol. 122r. and v. (now fol. 126r. and v.), calendared in Abstracts of the Charters and other Documents contained in the Chartulary of the Priory of Bridlington, ed. W. T. Lancaster, Leeds 1912, 165–6. 49 Robertot is under twenty-five miles east of Valmont, the headquarters of the Norman branch of the Stuteville family. A ‘William Robertet’ witnessed a deed of Roger de Stuteville’s daughter Agnes, which survives in a fourteenth-century transcript (Hull University Archives, DDSQ12/1). A Guilberd de la Riuere is entered on fol. 47v of the Liber Vitae of Durham in an entry which included the principal members of the English branch of the Stuteville family and some of their tenants and followers. 50 Debts owed by him in 1185 were commanded to be collected in Suffolk (PR 31 Henry II, 153), but were accounted for under Yorkshire in 1186 and 1187 (PR 32 Henry II, 67; 33 Henry II, 83). 51 For the origins of the name, see L. C. Loyd, The Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families, ed. C. T. Clay and D. C. Douglas, Leeds 1951, 40. The two leading members of the Norman branch during the reign of Henry II were Nicholas de Stuteville and his son Robert (see, for instance the deed printed in A. du Monstier, Neustria Pia, Rouen 1663, 871, and the comments in EYC, IX, 43–54).

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Stuteville’ of Newbold; by the husband of Robert’s daughter; by other relations; and by their tenants, officials, and friends.52 Either Roger could have been the sheriff of Northumberland. The familial solidarity was not confined, however, to the conveyance and confirmation of family property; it was powerfully demonstrated by its collective service in the war of 1173–4. In his list of castles held for the king, Roger of Howden reported that Appleby and Brough were held by Robert de Stuteville, Topcliffe by his eldest son William, and Liddel by his second son Nicholas. He also included Robert and William in his list of the leaders of the exercitus Eboracensis sirie which captured the king of Scots at Alnwick.53 This perception of the family’s contribution to the war effort is most effectively expressed by Jordan Fantosme in a carefully constructed dialogue between the king and the bishop of Winchester. The poem puts into King Henry’s mouth a series of questions about the allegiances and actions of men in England. The Stutevilles receive their own question: ‘How is it with the barons up in Yorkshire? And the Stutevilles, are they defending their castles?’ To which the bishop replies: ‘No treacherous deed ever came from the Stutevilles.’54 A few lines later, however, Roger de Stuteville is the subject of another question, ‘Now tell me truly of my land to the north: has Roger Stuteville made a wicked concord?’55 Roger’s defence of Wark is given prominent treatment by Jordan; unlike his other kinsmen, he is one of the principal figures of the poem. Jordan’s treatment of Roger – as a younger member of a family celebrated for its loyalty and as a northern officer striving to maintain this loyalty and preserve his own fortunes in the stress of war – offers a compelling perception of his own experience. It is often impossible to identify the Roger de Stuteville who witnessed the private deeds of Robert III de Stuteville and the acts of Henry II in the company of this Robert and other kinsmen, but there can be no doubt that his fortunes were closely tied to those of Robert III de Stuteville. Roger’s installation as sheriff of Northumberland, so it was shown earlier, coincided with the installation of Robert III as sheriff of Yorkshire. When, in 1178, the king replaced the castellans of the ‘castles of England’ with household knights from his ‘private household’ (familia priuata), William and Roger de Stuteville received custody of Roxburgh and Edinburgh respectively, both castles surrendered by the king of Scots in 1174 and 1175.56 An entry in the pipe roll account for Northumberland in 1179–80, permitting the sheriff’s expenditure of 50 marks on Alan the constable’s custody of Edinburgh castle for half a year, strengthens the case for identifying the Roger who received custody of Edinburgh castle with the sheriff of Northumberland. By 1178, therefore, Roger had become a member of the king’s familia and a key partisan of the post-war administration of the kingdom. The 1170s, moreover, witnessed a remarkable visitation of favour on the family. The castle and honour of Liddel were conferred, with what legitimacy is unclear, on Robert’s younger son Nicholas by 1174.57 The two royal manors of 52 Bodl. MS. Dugdale 13, p. 341, discussed in note 39. 53 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 65. 54 ‘Pars devers Everwic cument funt les baruns? / E ceus d’Estutevile tienent il lur meisuns? / Certes, sire,

s’il vus plaist, tres bien le savums, De ceus d’Estutevile ne vindrent traisuns’ (Jordan Fantosme’s Chroni cle, ed. Johnston, 114–15, lines 1546–9). 55 ‘Kar me dites or veir de ma terra la North: / Roger d’Estutevile, ad il fait nur acort? (Ibid. 116–17, lines 1558–61). 56 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 160. 57 Howden reported that Liddel castle was in Nicholas’s custody when it was taken by the king of Scots in 1174 (ibid., I, 65). The circumstances of his plantation there are unclear. The feudal survey of 1212 (Book of Fees, I, 198) stated that Liddel was granted by Ranulf Meschin in the early twelfth century to Turgis

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Knaresborough and Aldborough, farmed by Robert de Stuteville from 1171–2,58 were conferred by the king in hereditary fee on Robert’s eldest son William in 1178 or 1179.59 Robert himself, replaced as sheriff of Yorkshire at Michaelmas 1175, continued to maintain his position in the county community,60 and continued, too, to receive substantial expressions of the king’s favour.61 There was material favour, too, for Roger de Stuteville (probably the sheriff of Northumberland): some time in the period between April 1172 and July 1188 the king granted him the right to hunt with his hounds both hares and foxes in the king’s forests in Northumberland and Yorkshire.62 In this office, Roger exercised authority over a county with a memory of its former royal and comital status. Richard of Hexham, writing at Hexham in the mid-twelfth century, narrated the history of the region from the time of the kings of Northumbria, through the time of the earls of Northumbria, to his own day. The county, so Richard reported, stretched from the Tyne to the Tweed and from the Derwent in the west to ‘the sea which is called the ocean’ (mare quod Oceanus dicitur).63 Across the Tyne was the terra sancti Cuthberti, where Roger de Stuteville exercised his office within narrower limits.64 The scope for his interference was also limited in certain parts of the county between the Tweed and the Tyne, in the districts of Hexhamshire65 and Tynedale66 for instance. Roger de Stuteville is not known to Brundos, antecessor of Nicholas de Stuteville; deeds and charters inspected in 1307 (Cal. Chart. R. III, 93) establish that Liddel, with Rosedale in Yorkshire, was held by Turgis’s son William and then by his grandson Turgis II. The last known reference to Turgis II occurs in 1164–5, when the sheriff of Yorkshire collected 1 mark from him (PR 11 Henry II, 51). A charter of William, king of Scots, for Jedburgh abbey, which can be dated to between 1165 and 1170, confirmed gifts of Turgis II of Rosedale, and then of Guy of Rosedale and his son (printed from the original in Regesta Regum Scottorum: William I, ed. Barrow, 163–6). The identity of this Guy is unclear, but it is possible that Nicholas was given Liddel over the claims of other heirs, heirs favoured by the king of Scots. 58 PR 17 Henry II, 63. 59 The charter, which survives as an original (BL Add. Charter 5719, printed in EYC, I, 390–2, no. 598), was witnessed by both Robert and Roger de Stuteville. 60 A final concord dated 1177 was executed before Robert de Stuteville and other prominent figures in Yorkshire, including the husband of Robert’s daughter (printed in Yorkshire Deeds, ed. W. Brown and others, 10 vols, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 1907–53, II, pp. vi–vii; calendared ibid. 60, no. 147a; from the original then in the possession of Lord Wenlock and Mr Hewley Baines). 61 The Rotuli de Dominabus, ed. J. H. Round, Pipe Roll Society 35, 1913, 2, recorded that Robert had custody of the daughter and lands of the Lincolnshire landholder, Matthew de Neville, for eight years before 1183. 62 Until recently the charter was known only from a copy made by Robert Glover (Bodl. MS Rawlinson B. 283, p. 77, fol. 41r.), but the original was rediscovered by Professor N. C. Vincent (Castle Howard Archives, Dacre and Greystoke deeds A1/2). As sheriff Roger de Stuteville accounted for 40s. from perquisites of the forest of Cheviot in 1181–2 (PR 28 Henry II, 49). If the beneficiary is the sheriff, the charter is unlikely to date from after his removal from office in 1185. 63 Richard of Hexham, Historia Haugustaldensis Ecclesiae, in The Priory of Hexham, ed. J. Raine, 2 vols, Surtees Society 44 and 46, 1864–5, II, 1–2. According to Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 45, in 1173 the Young King granted the king of Scots ‘totam Northumberlandam usque ad Tinam’. 64 Roger would have exercised the office of sheriff in the manor and wapentake of Sadberge, situated between the Tyne and Tees, which was granted to the bishop of Durham – ‘cum omnibus ad regis coronam pertinentibus’ – only in September 1189 (Howden, Gesta Regis, II, 87). 65 Richard of Hexham records that when King Stephen granted Henry the earldom of Northumberland (‘in comitatu Northumbrie’), he stipulated that the earl should have no right ‘over the land of St Cuthbert nor over the land of St Andrew of Hexhamshire’ (‘super terram sancti Cuthberti neque super sancti Andree de Hestaldashamscyre’) (Chronicles, ed. Howlett, III, 178). 66 Tynedale was conveyed to the king of Scots in 1158–9 (PR 4 Henry II, 177, 179; 5 Henry II, 13) but was briefly seized from him in 1173–4 (PR 20 Henry II, 105). In 1175–6 one Ralph of Ryedale, ‘qui manet in Stancroft in Tindala’, was fined 5 marks by itinerant justices for a defalta (PR 22 Henry II, 139) and in 1184–5 Reginald Prat, who held property of the king of Scots in Tynedale, was fined 60 marks by itinerant

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have held any lands in Northumberland when he became sheriff. His position in the county will therefore have been dependent on what he acquired with his office, on what he received from the king in the way of custodies, and on what he could appropriate by his own influence. Royal authority in Northumberland was centred upon custody of two royal castles, as King Stephen recognized in 1139.67 The first was the chastel desur la mer, Bamburgh.68 Reginald of Durham, completing the first two books of the Libellus in Honorem Sancti Oswaldi Regis in 1165, evocatively mourned Bamburgh’s decline since the days of the Northumbrian kings, but his explanation, the burden of tribute imposed on the vill ‘in recent times’ (‘his diebus nouissimis’), underlines its continuing importance to the rulers of Northumberland.69 The tribute referred to may have been levied by the Scottish earls of Northumberland, Henry and William, who were probably responsible for the construction of the keep before 1157; even in 1163–4, only a year before Reginald completed his two books, the sheriff was spending the modest sum of £4 on the keep.70 Bamburgh was closely identified with the shrieval operation and shrieval personnel. Certain property in the borough, so the survey of 1212 found, was held by the performance of services connected to the management of the county and the upkeep of the castle community; one William fitz Odo, for instance, held his land by the collection of the king’s debts and the carrying of the king’s writ between the Tweed and the Coquet.71 A jury empanelled coram rege in 1237 remembered that John le uicomte had been ‘sheriff of Northumberland and the king’s constable of Bamburgh’.72 John’s family entertained hereditary claims to the shrieval office, reflected in their use of the surname le uicomte.73 Even before Roger de Stuteville was made sheriff of Northumberland, Robert III de Stuteville had played a visible role in the castle’s repair. In 1167–8 he was entrusted with the expenditure of £30 on the castle.74 As an itinerant justice visiting Northumberland in 1169–70, moreover, he was responsible for punishing two prominent tenants by thegnage who had refused to perform work on the castle, and for collecting a fine

justices ‘for receiving a certain outlaw’ (‘pro receptatione cuiusdam utlagati’) (PR 30 Henry II, 52). Roger himself collected £20 ‘from the thegnage from the king of Scots in Tynedale’ (‘de teinagio regis Scottie in Tindala’) in 1176–7 (PR 24 Henry II, 84) and fined the ‘men of the king of Scots’ (’homines regis Scottie’) 100 marks for a homicide in 1177–8 (PR 25 Henry II, 28). This interference in Tynedale by the itinerant justices and by Roger de Stuteville in his capacity as sheriff must reflect the consequences of the conuencio imposed on William, king of Scots, first at Valognes and Falaise in 1174 and then at York in 1175. According to this conuencio, William had performed homage to Henry II de Scocia et de omnibus aliis terris suis, and was required not to receive fugitives from England in either (Anglo-Scottish Relations, ed. Stones, 2–11, no. 1, at 2). In 1165–6, however, two royal justices visiting Northumberland punished three men from Tynedale for not atoning their court (PR 12 Henry II, 76). 67 According to Richard of Hexham, Stephen reserved the fortresses (oppida) of Bamburgh and Newcastle when he granted the earldom of Northumberland to Henry, son of David, king of Scots, in 1139: Chronicles, ed. Howlett, III, 177. 68 Geffrei Gaimar, L’Estoire des Engleis, ed. A. Bell, 3 vols, Anglo-Norman Text Society 14–16, Oxford 1960, 195, line 6140. 69 Reginald of Durham, Libellus in Honorem Sancti Oswaldi Regis, in Symeonis Monachi Opera, I, 374. 70 PR 10 Henry II, 1. 71 Book of Fees, I, 204–5. 72 Curia Regis Rolls, XIV, 270, no. 1274. 73 John le uicomte followed his brother Adam in office under King David, their father Odard was sheriff under Henry I, and his father Ligulf of Bamburgh was sheriff before him. In 1212 a later John le uicomte claimed that his ancestor John had received 6 bovates in Bamburgh from Henry II (Book of Fees, I, 202); the situation of this modest parcel of land may indicate that the family continued to hold subordinate office even though John was not permitted to continue as sheriff under Henry II. 74 PR 14 Henry II, 169.

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from the burgesses of Bamburgh.75 During the war of 1173–4, Robert also appears to have received the farm of Bamburgh, possibly as an emergency stipend.76 Roger de Stuteville himself accounted for the expenditure of over £19 on repair of the castle gate and the castle itself in 1182–3.77 His position in Bamburgh would have been consolidated by his custody of property in and within the vicinity of the borough. From Easter 1170 to Michaelmas 1178 he returned the rent from land in Bamburgh which had been held by William de Vescy, his predecessor as sheriff.78 On his removal from office at Easter 1185 he was fined 40s. for his unlawful sale of two houses in Bamburgh which belonged to the king.79 But most tantalizing is a fine of one sore hawk owed by one Roger fitz John for settlement concerning land at ‘Neweton’ against John fitz Odard and entered in the Northumberland account in 1178–9.80 Clay was unable to identify this ‘Neweton’, which is probably High and Low Newton-by-the-Sea, nine miles south of Bamburgh, held by the same John fitz Odard (le uicomte) whose predecessors served as sheriffs of Northumberland and who held property in Bamburgh.81 In 1182–3 this debt was transferred to the Hampshire account, where the bishop of Winchester owed the hawk on behalf of Roger fitz John, ‘man of Roger de Stuteville’.82 These entries, which are enigmatic and elusive in character, perhaps offer slight evidence of a dispute between the sheriff himself and the family of his predecessors. The family’s association with the borough and castle of Bamburgh is clear from the Farne Island miracle collection compiled at Durham in the early thirteenth century. Henry of Warter, so one of the miracles relates, fell sick and, commanded by St Cuthbert, travelled to Bamburgh in order to cross to the island of Farne. While waiting to cross, he was sustained by the alms (elemosina) of Nicholas de Stuteville, son of Robert III.83 Nicholas’s elder brother William held the county and castles of Northumberland from May 1199 to Easter 1200,84 and it is possible that his custody of Bamburgh furnished the historical context remembered by the compiler of the miracle collection. But it is not without interest that the manor of Warter in Yorkshire, from where Henry of Warter presumably hailed, was farmed by Robert de Stuteville as sheriff of Yorkshire from Easter 1170 to Michaelmas 1175.85 Roger de Stuteville, presumably of Burton Agnes, himself entertained claims to property in

75 PR 16 Henry II, 51, 52. 76 PR 21 Henry II, 173; 22 Henry II, 103. 77 PR 29 Henry II, 149. In 1181–2 he paid 40s. into the exchequer ‘for a boat wrecked at Bamburgh’ (‘de

naui fracta apud Baenburc’): PR 28 Henry II, 49. PR 16 Henry II, 47; 24 Henry II, 60. PR 31 Henry II, 153. PR 25 Henry II, 28. EYC, IX, 4n. For the gift of property in Newton made by John fitz Odard’s son to the monks of Farne, see the deed printed from Durham Cathedral Muniments, Cart. II, fol. 4r. in J. Raine, The History and Antiquities of North Durham, London 1852, Appendix, 125, no. 713. 82 PR 29 Henry II, 146. 83 BL Harley MS 4843, fol. 57r. and v., printed by E. Craster, ‘The Miracles of St Cuthbert at Farne’, Analecta Bollandiana 69, 1951, 5–19 at 13–14, no. 5. 84 Roger of Howden records that following his coronation King John ‘tradidit Willelmo de Stuteuille Northimbriam et Cumbriam, cum castellis et comitatibus in custodia’ (Howden, Chronica, IV, 90); PR 1 John, 119; 2 John, 1–2. The Nicholas of the miracle story would eventually purchase the lands of his brother William (Rotuli de Oblatis et Finibus, ed. T. D. Hardy, Record Commission 1835, 305). 85 PR 16 Henry II, 36; 21 Henry II, 166. In 1171–2 Robert returned £4 8s. 4d. from the fees of knights holding of the ‘escheat of Warter’ (PR 18 Henry II, 61). Robert was the last sheriff to account for the manor before it was granted to Geoffrey Trussebut (Chronica de Melsa, ed. Bond, I, 172; EYC, X, 120–2, no. 71). 78 79 80 81

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Warter, property which he confirmed to the Cistercians of Meaux (but, so the community’s chronicle remembered, was unable to warrant).86 The second of the two royal castles in Northumberland was the nouum castellum or, in the words of the king’s justiciar in April 1221, ‘our castle upon the Tyne’ (‘castrum nostrum super Tynam’).87 The value of both the town and castle to Henry II’s government was visibly and powerfully demonstrated by the construction of a new keep.88 The building operation was initiated in 1167–8 and continued without break from 1171–2 to 1177–8; the scale of the operation is clear from the substantial sums spent, which totalled over £1,126 by the time work ceased.89 Since the surrender of the northern counties by Malcolm IV, king of Scots, in 1157, custody of the castle had not been in the sheriff’s hands but in those of Roger fitz Richard, lord of the honour of Warkworth.90 In 1175–6 custody was transferred to Roger de Glanville, uncle of the new sheriff of Yorkshire and Westmorland, Ranulf de Glanville, the rising star of royal administration.91 Roger de Glanville also received £30 from Newburn ‘for custody of Newcastle upon Tyne’ (‘in custodia Noui Castelli super Tinam’) ‘by the king’s writ for as long as it pleases the king’ (‘quamdiu regi placuerit per breue regis’).92 Roger de Stuteville was evidently not the only younger relation planted in Northumberland. None the less he continued to exercise his office and exert his influence at Newcastle. As sheriff, he held property both in the town itself and on the strategic bridge over the Tyne;93 he had custody also of land that came into the king’s hands, for instance the land that Gervase the physician had held in the town.94 At his removal, moreover, he was fined 5 marks ‘for giving licence to concord for a false judgement which converted the king’s demesne into a burgage’ (‘pro danda licentia concordandi de quodam iudicio falso de dominico regis

86 Chronica de Melsa, ed. Bond, I, 172. 87 Pat. R. 1216–25, 287–8. 88 The present structure is essentially the keep raised in the period 1168–78. The best study of the castle’s

history remains W. H. D. Longstaffe, ‘The Newcastle upon Tyne’, Archaeologia Aeliana 2nd series 4, 1859, 45–139. 89 £120 19s. 4d. in 1167–8, £185 6s. in 1171–2, £240 5s. 4d. in 1172–3, £12 15s. 10d. in 1173–4, £187 15s. 4d. in 1174–5, £144 15s. 4d. in 1175–6, £141 12s. 11d. in 1176–7, and £97 0s. 1d. in 1177–8: PR 14 Henry II, 169–70, 173; 18 Henry II, 66; 19 Henry II, 110–11; 20 Henry II, 106; 21 Henry II, 183, 184; 22 Henry II, 137, 138, 140; 23 Henry II, 82; 24 Henry II, 60. My total for 1172–3 does not match the figure found in R. A. Brown, ‘Royal Castle-Building in England, 1154–1216’, EHR 70, 1955, 353–98 at 391. 90 Roger fitz Richard is first recorded receiving £20 ‘in burgo Noui castelli’ in 1159–60 (PR 6 Henry II, 56), when he is also recorded receiving £32 12s. from the honour of Warkworth. Since he received £52 12s. in 1157–8 (PR 4 Henry II, 177) – the total of his revenue from Newcastle and Warkworth in 1159–60 – it is probable he enjoyed custody of Newcastle from 1157–8. Jordan Fantosme refers to Roger fitz Richard as ‘master and lord’ (mestre e sire) of Newcastle within the context of 1173–4 (Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , ed. Johnston, 42, line 566); Roger received £20 for the garrison of Newcastle in 1172–3 (PR 19 Henry II, 113). 91 PR 22 Henry II, 137. The evidence for Roger de Glanville’s relationship to Ranulf de Glanville and for the location of his own property is found in his deeds for Castle Acre priory (BL Harley MS 2110, fol. 67r.), Coxford priory (Norfolk RO, DN/SUN/8, fol. 15r.), and Leiston abbey (Leiston Abbey Cartulary and Butley Priory Charters, ed. R. Mortimer, Suffolk Charters 1, 1979, 83–4, no. 39). R. Mortimer, ‘The Family of Ranulf de Glanville’, BIHR 54, 1981, 1–16 at 3–4, reviews the evidence in detail. 92 PR 22 Henry II, 137. The same pipe roll records that the king had granted ‘Hertelawa’ to Ralph de Gaugy and Hugh of Billington in exchange for property in Newburn (ibid. 138). 93 He accounted for the house of one Gospatric of Newcastle from 1174 until his removal from office at Easter 1185 (PR 21 Henry II, 184; 31 Henry II, 150); was released from paying the farm of the house in 1174 and 1175 (PR 21 Henry II, 184); and accounted for a house and booth on the bridge of Newcastle (PR 25 Henry II, 28). 94 PR 16 Henry II, 47. Gervase had received this land, valued at 30s. during Roger’s tenure of office, by gift of King David I (Rotuli Chartarum, ed. T. D. Hardy, Record Commission 1837, 87).

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conuertendo in burgagium’).95 This could refer to property in Bamburgh, where Roger had important interests, but could equally refer to property in Newcastle. Roger de Stuteville’s position in Newcastle was further sustained by his control of the county court. In the twelfth century the court convened at the sheriff’s summons in the castle, probably in the ‘old hall’ in the keep, mentioned in 1237.96 A deed of one Robert Carew for the hospital of St Mary’s, Newcastle, datable to between 1176 and 1179, was place-dated ‘in the full county court at Newcastle’ (‘in plenu comitatu apud Nouum Castellum’).97 The deed is preserved, with other deeds for the hospital, in the Liber Cartarum of Newcastle corporation.98 In this context two other deeds for the same beneficiary deserve consideration. The first is a deed of Geoffrey, abbot of Newminster, conveying property held by Ralph de Pinley, presumably in Newcastle, between 1180 and 1185;99 the deed was witnessed by Roger de Stuteville uicecomes, Gerard the reeve of Newcastle, and other prominent Newcastle men.100 The second deed is a gift by Mabilla de Greinville and her son Ralph de Gaugy of 40 feet of land ‘pertaining to our stable at Newcastle in Westgate’ (‘stabulum nostrum apud Nouum Castellum in Westgate’) between 1173 and 1183.101 The majority of the names in the witness list belonged to important members of the county community (such as Hugh of Morwick) or to men who operated in Newcastle (such as Nicholas fitz Uhtred). Roger de Stuteville was named first, but without his title; his name was followed by those of Roger de la Rivere (de Laripariis) and Robert of Robertot. Both men, as established above, operated in the wider orbit of the Stuteville network. Roger de la Rivere was probably also the first witness in the deed of Robert Carew, mentioned earlier, though the name there was copied as Roger de Lauuer. His prominence in this witness list, preceding even Roger de Glanville, custodian of the keep, and in the witness list of Mabilla de Greinville and Ralph de Gaugy’s deed raises the possibility that he was someone who ranked very close to the sheriff, perhaps Roger de Stuteville’s undersheriff or principal official in the county. The court was always a key setting for the exercise of shrieval authority, but, as the venue for private legal business as well, it provided the sheriff with opportunities for forging ties with the 95 96

PR 31 Henry II, 153. A writ of 1237 referred to both the ‘old hall’ and the ‘new hall’ at Newcastle (Calendar of the Liberate Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, I: 1226–1240, HMSO 1916, 270). 97 Newcastle, Tyne and Wear Archive Service MS 574/95, p. 36 (now fol. 22v.); printed in Early Deeds Relating to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, ed. A. M. Oliver, Surtees Society 137, 1924, 45, no. 60. The deed was drafted after Roger de Glanville, who witnessed the deed, received custody of Newcastle in 1175–6 (PR 22 Henry II, 137) and before the death of Robert Carew before 1178–9 (PR 25 Henry II, 25). 98 The hospital’s archive, including ‘unum coucher magnum et cathenatum’ referred to in an inventory of 1444 (Newcastle Deeds, ed. Oliver, 50–2, no. 70), has largely been lost or destroyed. According to a charter of James I, this occurred when John Raymes was master of the hospital (1558–74); the charter is printed by J. Brand, The History and Antiquities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2 vols, London 1789, I, 588–94. A number of the hospital’s deeds were, however, copied into the Liber Cartarum of Newcastle Corporation. 99 Newcastle, Tyne and Wear Archive Service MS 574/95, pp. 31–2 (now fols 20v.–21r.), no. 48; printed in Newcastle Deeds, ed. Oliver, 44, no. 58. Geoffrey was elected abbot of Newminster following the election of the previous abbot of Newminster as abbot of Fountains; the date of this election is unknown, but must have occurred after mid-January 1180. The date is supplied by a brief chronicle of the abbey, probably compiled in the fifteenth century, found in West Yorkshire Archives Service, Leeds, WYL150/5383 (M/3) (Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of Fountains, ed. J. R. Walbran, Surtees Society 42, 67, 2 vols, 1862–78, I, 132); the date-range is discussed by A. M. Oliver, ‘A List of the Abbots of Newminster’, Archaeologia Aeliana 3rd series 12, 1915, 206–25 at 214–15. The deed was certainly drafted before the removal of Roger de Stuteville, who witnessed as sheriff, from office at Easter 1185. 100 For Gerard the reeve of Newcastle, see PR 24 Henry II, 62; 27 Henry II, 49; Newcastle Deeds, ed. Oliver, 18–19, no. 13. 101 Newcastle, Tyne and Wear Archive Service, MS 574/95, pp. 31–2 (now fol. 22v.); printed in Newcastle Deeds, ed. Oliver, 38, no. 48.

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county’s barones. Among the other witnesses to Mabilla and Ralph’s deed, for instance, was Robert of Dilston. Robert held extensive property throughout the county,102 including the estate of Milbourne north-west of Newcastle.103 In every year from 1171–2 to 1176–7 this Robert of Dilston, together with two others, was entrusted with inspecting the construction of the new keep in Newcastle.104 Roger de Stuteville’s position in Northumberland also depended on his ability to forge ties of service and friendship with powerful men in the county and on the custody of wardships and honours. So much is evident from the union of the daughter of Roger de Stuteville of Burton Agnes to Roger de Merlay of Morpeth,105 and the sister of Roger de Stuteville of Newbold to Meldred fitz Dolfin, regardless of whether either man was identical with Roger the sheriff. Such marriages reflect the sheriff’s efforts to entrench and extend his influence. Custody of wardships and honours was one of the principal means for sheriffs to consolidate their own positions and enrich their followers. The contemporary sheriffs of Yorkshire and of the county and honour of Lancaster were both remembered for their manipulative interest in the custody of heirs and heiresses.106 Roger himself seems to have enjoyed some sort of custody over the honour of Everard de Ros, heir of Walter Espec, who held lands in Yorkshire centred on Helmsley and in Northumberland centred on Wark, a castle on the northern boundary of the county. Everard was a minor in 1166, in the custody of the sheriff of Yorkshire,107 but appears to have attained his majority in 1172–3.108 Yet he did not inherit immediately. Wark castle was held by Roger in 1173 and 1174, perhaps because the onset of the war necessitated that it should be controlled by the sheriff. Everard seems to have inherited soon afterwards, certainly by Michaelmas 1176.109 When he died in 1182–3, his lands were briefly held in

102 As well as Dilston, which he held of the king (RBE, I, 441), Robert held property in Whitfield of the

mother of the king of Scots (printed from the original by J. Hodgson, A History of Northumberland, 3 parts in 7 vols, Newcastle 1820–58, II (3), 17); one knight’s fee of William Bertram of Mitford (RBE, I, 438); and land at ‘Eskeinggefeleswith’ (tentatively identified as Eshells) of the archbishop of York (EEA X: York 1154–1181, ed. M. Lovatt, Oxford 2000, 124–5, no. 110). 103 For Milbourne, see his deed in favour of the Benedictine nunnery of Newcastle, printed from the original by Brand, History and Antiquities of Newcastle, I, 207–8. 104 PR 18 Henry II, 66; 19 Henry II, 110; 20 Henry II, 106; 21 Henry II, 183; 22 Henry II, 137; 23 Henry II, 82. 105 PR 10 Richard I, 146; Curia Regis Rolls, VIII, 173. 106 According to Roger of Howden, Ranulf de Glanville had planned to give the daughter of one Roger de Guillevast to Reiner, his undersheriff in Yorkshire, but when his plans were frustrated by one Gilbert of Plumpton in 1185, Ranulf had Gilbert condemned to death (Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 314–15). The pipe roll for 1184–5, so J. H. Round showed, recorded Ranulf’s removal of Gilbert and his companions from York to Worcester and his sale of Gilbert’s chattels, worth over £19 (PR 30 Henry II, pp. xxxii, 29, 30). A jury of Lancashire knights declared in 1212 that Ralph fitz Bernard, sheriff of the county and honour of Lancaster, had married the sister of William Pincerna, tenant of Warrington, to ‘a certain young man’ (cuidam iuueni) when William was in his custody per dominum regem (Book of Fees, I, 206). 107 RBE, I, 432–3. The sheriff was Ranulf de Glanville, who was pardoned £4 1s. from the aid ‘ad maritandam fil(iam) regis’ collected from Everard’s honour in 1167–8 (PR 14 Henry II, 88). For horses, livestock, and precious items taken by Ranulf from Everard’s lands when sheriff of Yorkshire, see PR 23 Henry II, 81–2. 108 The year witnessed his first payment for the debt of his father (PR 19 Henry II, 4). 109 In 1175–6 Everard reduced his father’s debt by a further £50 and also cleared a smaller one; he was also fined 100 marks for a forest offence (PR 22 Henry II, 100, 102, 116). In 1292 his descendant presented a charter of Henry II granting Everard the ‘terram quam Robertus de Ros pater ipsius Euerardi tenuit de ipso Rege uel de quocumque tenuit anno et die quo fuit uiuus et mortuus’ (Placita de Quo Warranto Temporibus Edw. I, II, & III, Record Commission 1818, 189).

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manu regis and were presumably in Roger’s custody as sheriff.110 Yet within the year custody of Everard’s heir, lands, and castles had been transferred to William de Mandeville, earl of Essex.111 Roger, however, did not immediately relinquish control, for in 1185–6 he was charged for having detained stock from the honour of Wark.112 When Thomas de Muschamp sided with the king of Scots in 1174, his estates seem to have been conferred on Odinel de Umfraville.113 Roger, however, farmed the estate of Lowick, which belonged to Thomas’s mother, Cecily, in the exchequer years 1180–1 and 1181–2,114 and, following Odinel de Umfraville’s own death in 1181–2, he also farmed Thomas de Muschamp’s lands in Northumberland from 1182–3 to Easter 1184.115 The majority of lands, however, were increasingly conferred on other farmers and custodians. The heir and lands of Odinel de Umfraville were given to two local men in 1181–2,116 while the lands of William de Vescy were conveyed to the former sheriff of Cumberland, Adam fitz Robert fitz Truite, in 1183.117 At Easter 1184 not only did Roger lose custody of the lands of Thomas de Muschamp, which were transferred to Adam fitz Robert,118 but the lands of William de Vescy were conveyed to Hugh of Morwick, a local landholder highly favoured by the king.119 At Michaelmas 1184, this same Hugh of Morwick also received custody of the lands of Ralph of Gaugy.120 Hugh, indeed, would play an important role in Roger de Stuteville’s removal from office. Robert de Vaux, Sheriff of Cumberland The career of Robert de Vaux, sheriff of Cumberland, presents many contrasts with Roger de Stuteville’s. He was the son of Hubert de Vaux, a tenant of property in south-west England.121 Hubert was a prominent witness of the charters of Baldwin de Redvers and was evidently a major figure in Baldwin’s following in Devon.122 In the years 1136–9 Baldwin was one of the earliest and more vigorous opponents of 110 111 112 113

PR 29 Henry II, 51. PR 30 Henry II, 34. PR 32 Henry II, 153. Roger of Howden named Thomas of Muschamp in his list of those who fomented rebellion in England (Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 48). In 1174–5 Robert III de Stuteville accounted as sheriff of Yorkshire for over £25 19s. 11d. from the lands of Thomas of Muschamp (PR 21 Henry II, 172–3). He also accounted for £17 10s. ‘de pred(is) captis coram castro Odinelli de Humframuille quod Rex Scottie tunc habebat in terris Ædgari et Thome de Muscampo et aliorum inimicorum Regis’ (ibid. 173). Since Thomas’s lands are next accounted for on the pipe rolls following the death of Odinel de Umfraville in 1181–2, and since the sheriff of Yorkshire accounted for property which ‘Odinellus de Umfravill tenuit de feodo Tome de Muscampo’ in the same year (PR 28 Henry II, 37), it is probable that Odinel had been granted custody of Thomas’s lands in 1175. This might account for the claims raised by Odinel’s great-grandson to four of Thomas’s principal manors in 1239 (Curia Regis Rolls, XV, 179, no. 941), claims settled by final concord in 1241 (PRO CP 25/1/180/4/106). 114 PR 26 Henry II, 142; 27 Henry II, 49. 115 PR 28 Henry II, 49; 29 Henry II, 151; 30 Henry II, 52. 116 PR 28 Henry II, 49–50; 29 Henry II, 16, 46, 48. 117 PR 29 Henry II, 140; 30 Henry II, 154–5. 118 PR 30 Henry II, 52. 119 PR 31 Henry II, 8–9. 120 Ibid. 10. 121 For Hubert’s property of Farwood Barton see the original deed of Baldwin de Redvers for Savigny abbey printed in Charters of the Redvers Family and the Earldom of Devon, 1090–1217, ed. R. Bearman, Devon and Cornwall Record Society new series 37, 1994, 67–9, no. 17. For evidence of other property and services held by Hubert’s heirs in Devon, see the original deed cited in note 302. 122 See for instance Baldwin’s deed for Montacute priory (Bodl. MS Trinity College 85, fol. 126r. (now fol. 51v.), printed from the cartulary in Charters of Redvers Family, ed. Bearman, 71–2, no. 20).

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King Stephen;123 in 1136 he was exiled from England.124 In Normandy he earned a reputation as an active and aggressive partisan of the Empress and the count of Anjou.125 His following was something of a training school for supporters for the Empress. Stephen de Mandeville – that same Stephen whom the Gesta Stephani described as acting uehementer in the cause of the earl of Devon, exciting ‘much trouble in the kingdom’ (‘plurimam in regno discordiam excitare’) and rebuilding castles126 – was also a tenant and follower of Baldwin de Redvers.127 Hubert and Stephen headed the witness lists of four of Baldwin’s charters.128 Unlike Stephen,129 however, Hubert was able to make the transition from comital tenant to follower of the Empress. Between 1141 and 1145 he witnessed an act of the Empress, place-dated at Devizes, his first known appearance at her court.130 Hubert continued to witness her acts over the next decade, every one place-dated at Rouen;131 he even witnessed a writ for Reading abbey perhaps as late as 1159.132 His service to the Empress opened doors to the household of Henry fitz Empress, duke of Normandy; Hubert is found witnessing acts of Duke Henry place-dated at Devizes and Dunstable.133 After Henry fitz Empress became Henry II, Hubert received immediate reward; from Michaelmas 1155 until the final quarter of the exchequer year 1157–8 he received £50 blanch from the royal manors of Calne and Chippenham in Wiltshire, evidently to tide him over until the king granted him something more substantial and permanent.134 He was not required to wait long. At Newcastle upon 123 Richard of Hexham records that Baldwin seized Exeter ‘quia non potuit quendam honorem habere,

quem a rege postulauerat’: Chronicles, ed. Howlett, III, 146–7. 124 For Baldwin’s seizure of Exeter, resistance to the king in Devon, and exile by the king in 1136, see

ibid.; Gesta Stephani, 30–44. 125 Chronicles, ed. Howlett, III, 47; Gesta Stephani, 44–7. 126 Gesta Stephani, 168–70. 127 See, for instance, the deed of one William Avenel for Montebourg, granting Brucheville ‘que erat de

feudo Roberti de Magneuill’ (Stephen’s father); the gift was made ‘concessu comitis Balduini et Stephani de Magneuill’ and was witnessed by both men (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS Lat. 10087, p. 104 (no. 272); printed in Charters of Redvers Family, ed. Bearman, appendix II, 180–1, no. 6). 128 They witnessed two charters for Saint-Martin-des-Champs and one for St James’s priory, Exeter (printed from the originals in Charters of Redvers Family, ed. Bearman, 75–6, 76–7, 78), as well as one for Christ Church, Twynham (printed from various medieval copies ibid. 64–6). 129 Two deeds of Stephen’s son Robert conveyed property to Montacute priory for the soul of his father, ‘qui in precinctu uie Ierosolimitane obiit’ (Bodl. MS Trinity College 85, fol. 76r. and v. (now fol. 88r. and v.); calendared in Two Cartularies of the Augustinian Priory of Bruton and the Cluniac Priory of Montacute, ed. H. C. Maxwell Lyte and others, Somerset Record Society 8, 1894, 185–6, nos. 167–8). Stephen de Mandeville’s death on pilgrimage was prophesied by the hermit Wulfric of Haselbury (Life of Wulfric of Haselbury by John, Abbot of Ford , ed. M. Bell, Somerset Record Society 47, 1933, 119, c. 93). 130 The act survives only in the cartulary of Missenden abbey (BL Harley MS 3688, fol. 24r., printed in The Cartulary of Missenden Abbey, ed. J. G. Jenkins, 3 vols, Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society Record Branch 2 and 10, and joint publication with Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1939–62, I, 64–5; Regesta III, 215, no. 588). 131 Regesta III, 41, 275, nos. 112, 748. Dr Chibnall has proposed that Hubert may have exercised ‘some special responsibility’ in the Empress’s household (‘The Charters of the Empress Matilda’, in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. G. Garnett and J. Hudson, Cambridge 1994, 276–98 at 293). 132 The writ is printed from the Reading cartularies by Regesta III, 261–2, no. 711, and calendared in Reading Abbey Cartularies, ed. B. R. Kemp, 2 vols, Camden 4th series 31 and 33, 1986–7, I, 265, no. 331. 133 Hubert witnessed an act of Henry, duke of Normandy, in favour of Quarr abbey dateable to 1149 (printed from a lost original in Regesta III, 247, no. 666), an act of Henry in favour of Salisbury dated 1149 (printed from the cartulary in Regesta III, 292, no. 795), an act drafted in the name of the Empress and Henry, duke of Normandy, in favour of Stanley abbey in 1150 or 1151 (reprinted from the lost cartulary in Regesta III, 308, no. 836), and an act of Henry for William Spileman (printed from the charter roll of 12 Edward III in Regesta III, 49, no. 130). 134 PR 2 Henry II, 57; 3 Henry II, 77; 4 Henry II, 116, 119.

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Tyne, during the first seven months of 1158, Henry granted him the land of Gille son of Bueth and land in Corby and Catterlen in Cumberland.135 A later deed of Robert de Vaux referred to the ‘barony which the lord Henry king of England gave to my father and me in the land of Gille son of Bueth’ (‘boroniam [sic] quam dominus rex Henricus Anglie dedit patri meo et mihi et terra que fuit Gille filii Bueth’), and for Robert, and for succeeding generations of its lords, this baronia was known as Gilsland.136 Robert succeeded his father in 1164–5, when he too was confirmed in the estates of Gille son of Bueth by the king.137 Until 1173 and 1174 Robert de Vaux can be traced as a regular member of county society in Cumberland, performing the obligations of his rank, witnessing local transactions, and confirming the gifts of his father. His outstanding achievement in this period (and perhaps an early expression of his ambition) was his foundation of an Augustinian priory at Lanercost.138 But it was the events of 1173–4 – his installation as castellan of Carlisle and his (narrowly) successful defence of the city – that transformed his fortunes. At Michaelmas 1174 he was made sheriff of the county of Cumberland, but first accounted for the county, and for the outstanding farms of 1174–5 and 1175–6, in 1176–7.139 In November 1174 the king despatched Roger of Howden, ‘unum de clericis suis’, so Roger himself recorded, to Robert de Vaux to meet the rulers of Galloway, Gille Brigte and Uhtred, sons of Fergus, and ‘attract them into his service’ (‘allicerent eos ad seruitium eius’).140 At the meeting with Gille Brigte (who had slain his brother Uhtred in the intervening period), which occurred about 23 November, Robert de Vaux and Roger of Howden refused to accept his terms of submission – 2,000 marks of silver and an annual revenue of 500 hundred cows and 500 pigs in return for the king’s receiving him ‘in manu sua’ – ‘until they had spoken to the king’ (‘donec 135 The charter survives on the Cartae Antiquae roll DD (PRO C 52/28, no. 7), compiled in a hand of the

late twelfth or early thirteenth century, and in numerous early modern copies made from the roll. It has been printed from one of these copies by W. Hutchinson, The History of the County of Cumberland and Some Places Adjacent, 2 vols, Carlisle 1794, I, 47 n. 136 The deed is preserved in the cartulary of Lanercost priory, the bulk of which was compiled in the mid-thirteenth century (Carlisle, Cumbria RO, DZ/1, Lanercost cartulary, fol. 5r. and v.; printed in The Lanercost Cartulary, ed. J. M. Todd, Surtees Society 203, 1997, 64–5, no. 13). For a description of the cartulary and a study of its compilation, ibid. 28–38. 137 The charter survives, like his father’s, on Cartae Antiquae roll DD (PRO C 52/28, no. 20); printed from the ‘Field Book of Lord William Howard’ in R. S. Ferguson, The Barony of Gilsland and its Owners to the End of the Sixteenth Century, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society old series 4, 1884, 2. 138 For Robert de Vaux’s foundation deed for Lanercost, which seems to have completed the initial foundation phase, see Cumbria RO,DZ/1, fols 1r.–2r., printed in Lanercost Cartulary, ed. Todd, 51–5, no. 1. A brief note entered in the cartulary dates the dedication of the church to 1169; a note made by the antiquary Sampson Leonard (d. 1633) from ‘an olde book’, ‘sometime belonginge to the priory of Lanercost’, dates the foundation and dedication to the same year (BL Harley MS 1178, fol. 8r; H. Summerson and S. Harrison, Lanercost Priory, Cumbria, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Research Series 10, 2000, 5). 139 PR 21 Henry II, 185; PR 23 Henry II, 120. Robert’s predecessor as sheriff, Adam fitz Truite, did not render the farm for the year ending Michaelmas 1173 ‘propter guerram ut dicit’ (PR 21 Henry II, 185). In 1177–8 Robert claimed to have spent £46 6s. 4d. from the county farm on the king’s castle during the war (PR 24 Henry II, 125). Adam and Robert were both pardoned the outstanding sums in 1177–8 (ibid.). 140 This is one of two occasions where Roger of Howden refers to himself in the Gesta Regis (I, 80); for the other passage, in which Roger is despatched to Norwich and other vacant communities with letters to summon clergy to Oxford in 1178, ibid. I, 91. For the possibility that Roger had drafted this section of the Gesta by 1177, see BL Cotton MS Julius A. xi, fol. 112r. (where this early copy of the Gesta ends during its description of the shipwreck that drowned members of the court, including the chancellor), and the discussion in Gesta Regis, I, pp. xxi–xxii.

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locuti fuissent cum rege’).141 In 1176, when Gille Brigte of Galloway submitted to Henry II at Feckenham, swearing fealty and promising to give the king a thousand marks of silver, it was Robert de Vaux who was made responsible for its collection.142 In 1177–8 the sum of £80 11s. was delivered to the king’s chamber from Gille Brigte ‘per manum Roberti de Vallibus’.143 Robert accounted for the modest sum of 40s. from Gille Brigte in 1180–1 and the larger ones of £30, £15, and £33 16s. 4d. in 1181–2, 1182–3, and 1183–4 respectively.144 The choice of Robert to conduct the negotiations in 1174 and collect the money owed by Gille Brigte reflected more than his newly-acquired shrieval authority. The political establishment of Cumberland enjoyed important ties of friendship and familiarity with the rulers of Galloway. The county court of Cumberland, which seems to have convened in the royal castle of Carlisle, was probably the venue where Gille Brigte’s brother Uhtred of Galloway had executed one or more deeds in the period prior to 1174. Robert’s own father, Hubert, was named first in a witness list to Uhtred’s deed for St Peter’s hospital in York, drafted between 1161 and 1164.145 As the broker of relations with Gille Brigte of Galloway and his followers, Robert would have sustained and enhanced his own influence within Cumberland. His tenant Bernard the Fleming, his follower Peter de Tilliol, and even the farmer of the mines of Carlisle, William fitz Erembald, had themselves witnessed deeds of Uhtred of Galloway in the pre-war period. Another tenant and follower, Walter of Windsor, was considered worthy of inclusion, together with Gille Brigte, Uhtred, and Uhtred’s son Roland, in a writ-charter of the king of Scots datable between 1165 and 1173. 146 Robert’s embassy to Galloway in November 1174 underlined his new standing with the king’s government. In March 1177 he attended the royal council of London, and he was a prominent witness, together with other favoured northern barons, including Robert de Stuteville, to the king’s letter to King Alfonso of Castile and King Sancho of Navarre, confirming the peace settlement secured at the council.147 He also witnessed the king’s charter granting Knaresborough and Aldborough to William de Stuteville, which is place-dated at Woodstock and which was drafted in 1178 or 1179.148 Also entered in the witness-list were Robert III and Roger de Stuteville (possibly our sheriff), and four men with whom Robert served as an itinerant justice in these years – Ranulf de Glanville, Bertram de Verdun, William Basset and Ralph Pinkenot. And it was as an itinerant justice in the north and the midlands that Robert de Vaux most visibly demonstrated his service to the king in the post-war period. When Roger of Howden set out the circuits of counties intended to be visited by itinerant justices in 1176, very possibly drawn from an official document, he included Robert among those justices marked for northern England.149 In 1175–6

141 142 143 144 145

Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 80. For Gillebrigte’s submission to Henry II, which occurred around 9 October 1176, ibid. I, 126. PR 25 Henry II, 31. PR 27 Henry II, 25; 28 Henry II, 136; 29 Henry II, 4; 30 Henry II, 42. The deed survives in an enrolment probably compiled for the chancery (PRO C 47/22/4/8); the deeds on this roll were confirmed by Edward I by charter on 1 April 1307 (PRO C 53/9, m. 8; printed in Cal. Chart. R. III, 91–2, no. 6). The deed is calendared and its date-range and context discussed in K. J. Stringer, ‘Acts of Lordship: The Records of the Lords of Galloway to 1234’, in Freedom and Authority: Scotland c. 1050–1650: Historical and Historiographical Essays presented to Grant G. Simpson, ed. T. Brotherstone and D. Ditchburn, East Linton 2000, 213–14, no. 6. 146 Printed from the original in Regesta Regum Scottorum: William I, 178–9, no. 80. 147 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 144–54. 148 For this charter, see note 59. 149 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 107–8.

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Robert indeed served as an itinerant justice in Yorkshire, Westmorland, and Northumberland,150 in 1177–8 in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and Cumberland,151 and in 1178–9 on the midland circuit of Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire.152 The years 1177–9 were important ones in the public renewal and projection of royal justice in the kingdom.153 Robert was clearly a significant figure in this demonstration. But he was more than simply a favoured landholder exercising and executing the justice of a victorious and conquering king;154 he was a vigorous agent of the king’s vindictive greed. At the council of Nottingham in August 1175, so Howden reported, the king had reneged on his promise to exempt landholders from the forest law, despite the very public intervention of the justiciar.155 The king himself, continued Howden, impleaded the comites, barones, and even the clerici of Yorkshire for forest offences.156 Robert de Vaux was one of the three justices who imposed the forest law and collected forest fines in Yorkshire in 1175–6. The result of their efforts was an extensive list of exorbitant fines – they occupy over two-thirds of the dorse of one membrane of the twenty-second pipe roll157 – and a graphic demonstration of Angevin kingship at its most grasping. In 1175–6 Robert, together with two other justices, visited the lordship of Westmorland. Here they punished leading members of the local community for offences committed during the war of 1173–4. The heaviest fine was reserved for Gospatric fitz Orm, who was fined 500 marks ‘because he surrendered the royal castle of Appleby to the king of Scots’.158 Gospatric himself was one of the leading members of secular society in the far north-west.159 His surrender of Appleby forms an important component in the poem of Jordan Fantosme. The poem’s most recent editor underlined the ‘effectively planned contrast’ between Robert de Vaux’s refusal to surrender Carlisle in lines 1409–54 and Gospatric’s ‘very swift’ (mult tost) surrender of Appleby in lines 1455–62.160 Their relationship was not, however, confined to the verse of Jordan’s poem. For copied into the three cartularies of the

150 PR 22 Henry II, 108–21, 138–40. 151 PR 24 Henry II, 6–10, 70–2, 126–7. 152 PR 25 Henry II, 21–2, 49, 64–6, 82–3, 99–100. In 1179–80 Robert’s farm was accounted for by one

Roger of Leicester, presumably his undersheriff or deputy (PR 26 Henry II, 60). Roger is probably to be identified with the Roger of Leicester who served as Theobald Walter’s bailiff when Theobald was sheriff of the county and honour of Lancaster (PR 3 John, 274; 5 John, 232, 234), and was possibly a professional administrator. 153 Dialogus de Scaccario, 77 spoke of the time when, with the restoration of peace following the war of 1173–4, ‘studuit iterum rex auita tempora renouare et, eligens discretos uiros, secuit regnum in sex partes ut eas electi iudices, quos errantes uocamus, perlustrarent et iura destituta restituerent’. 154 See the final concord between Thomas of Arnthorpe and the hospital of the Holy Innocents, Lincoln, made in the presence of Robert de Vaux and other royal justices at Doncaster and dated ‘anno xxiiii imperii regis Henrici secundi’. It was transcribed from the original in a collection of early Lincolnshire deeds of unknown provenance by Roger Dodsworth (1585–1654) (Bodl. MS Dodsworth 88, fol. 60r.). 155 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 94. 156 Ibid. I, 99. 157 PRO E 372/22, rot. 8, m. 5d., printed in PR 22 Henry II, 112–18. 158 PR 22 Henry II, 119. 159 Gospatric held extensive property throughout north-west England, but principally in the lordship of Allerdale. His standing is evident from his inclusion in the witness lists of King David’s act for St Bees (BL Harley MS 434, fols 25v.–26r., printed in The Register of the Priory of St Bees, ed. J. Wilson, Surtees Society 126, 1915, 69, no. 39) and Earl Henry’s foundation charter for Holm Cultram (printed from the cartularies in The Charters of David I, King of Scots, 1124–53, and of his Son Henry, Earl of Northumberland, 1139–52, ed. G. W. S. Barrow, Woodbridge 1999, 149–50, nos. 196–7). 160 Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , ed. Johnston, pp. xvi–xvii, 180–3.

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Cistercian abbey of Holm Cultram is a deed of Gospatric fitz Orm for the community.161 The deed conveyed the estate of Flimby by specified boundaries, together with extensive pasture rights.162 The form of the deed – the reference to the consent of the grantor’s heir and second son,163 the deployment of the warranty clause (one of the earliest examples of its use in a deed drafted in the north-west of England), the careful enumeration of services to be performed by the grantor, and the commitment of the grantor to find property of equivalent value – conveys the impression that it represented a substantial and potentially contentious settlement. The deed’s final sentence stated that the gift ‘was made in full county court at Carlisle, in the presence of Robert de Vaux, justice of the lord king in Cumberland’ (‘in pleno comitatu apud Karliolum coram Roberto de Vallibus domini regis iustic(ia) de Cumberland’). Robert served as justice in Cumberland in 1177–8. It was he, of course, who had fined Gospatric 500 marks for his surrender of Appleby castle in 1175–6, collecting £106 13s. 4d. in the same year. The features of the deed raise the possibility that Gospatric had been compelled to sell Flimby in order to pay his penalty; in 1176–7 and 1177–8, indeed, the sheriff of Westmorland collected £143 6s. 8d. and £40 from him.164 Gospatric fitz Orm’s deed thus provides some measure of Robert de Vaux’s pre-eminent position in the county. The deed declared that it was executed before Robert as ‘justice of the lord king in Cumberland’, but he was present, too, as sheriff of the county. The county of Cumberland was a relatively new creation. At the beginning of the twelfth century Ranulf Meschin had held what was referred to as a potestas centred on Carlisle and Appleby.165 This jurisdiction was soon perceived and continued to be perceived, perhaps incorrectly, to possess honorial and hereditable features. The celebrated charter of David, king of Scots, granting Annandale and other lands to Robert de Brus commanded that Robert should hold ‘those customs which Ranulf Meschin ever had in Carlisle and in his land of Cumberland’ (‘illis consuetudinibus quas Randulfus Meschin unquam habuit in Carduill et in terra sua de Cumber161 The deed survives in the earliest of the three cartularies of Holm Cultram (Carlisle, Cumbria RO, D &

C, Holm Cultram cartulary, pp. 33–4), but the next leaf is lost, meaning that the deed is missing its final 75 words. The deed survives complete in the other two cartularies (BL Harley MS 3911, fols 27r.–28r. (now fols 33r.–34v.); BL Harley MS 3891, fol. 37r. and v. (now fol. 49r. and v.)). It was first printed in J. Stevens, The History of the Antient Abbeys, Monasteries, Hospitals, Cathedral and Collegiate Churches; Being Two Additional Volumes to Sir William Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum, 2 vols, London 1722–3, II, 278, no. 273 (where Stevens printed ‘iustic(iaria)’), and was calendared in The Register and Records of Holm Cultram, ed. F. Grainger and W. G. Collingwood, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Record Series 7, 1929, 18–19, no. 49. 162 The deed excepts the land of Whitecroft which Gospatric ‘had previously given to the canons of Carlisle’; Gospatric’s gift was confirmed by Henry II in July or August 1175 (PRO C 53/93, m. 17; partially printed from PRO C 66/350, part 1, m. 1 in W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, 3 vols, London 1655–73, II, 74). 163 A deed of Gospatric’s son Thomas, which confirmed these same gifts to Holmcultram, was also witnessed by Robert de Vaux and was possibly executed on the same occasion. It was copied into the two later Holm Cultram cartularies (BL Harley MS 3911, fols 28r.–29r. (now fols 34r.–35r.); BL Harley MS 3891, fols 37v.–38r. (now fols 49v.–50r.)), and printed by Dugdale, Monasticon, III, 36–7. 164 PR 23 Henry II, 77; 24 Henry II, 69. 165 Ranulf Meschin refers to the potestas in his foundation deed for his house at Wetheral: Cumbria RO, D & C, Wetheral cartulary, fols 8v., 22v.; printed in Dugdale, Monasticon, I, 398. The edition of the cartulary in Register of the Priory of Wetherhal, ed. J. E. Prescott, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Record Series, 1897, printed its texts from transcripts made in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, including transcripts made by Hugh Todd (c. 1657–1728), now BL Harley MS 1881. The cartulary itself was rediscovered within months of the edition’s publication. A new study of the potestas and of Anglo-Norman rule in Cumbria will be found in R. Sharpe, Norman Rule in Cumbria 1092–1136, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Tract Series 21, 2006.

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land’).166 John of Hexham (composing his chronicle early in the reign of Henry II) related that in 1149 Ranulf Meschin’s son Ranulf, earl of Chester, was induced by political necessity and material reward to remit his indignatio concerning Carlisle, which he claimed ‘by paternal right’ (patrimoniali iure).167 Robert de Vieuxpont, sheriff of Cumberland in the early years of the minority government of Henry III, referred to the mines which ‘always’ (semper) pertained to the ‘castle of Carlisle and its honour’;168 he himself was released from having to account for the profits and farm of the county between 29 July 1218 and 13 February 1222.169 And Jordan Fantosme’s poem has Robert de Vaux himself refer to the castle and ‘honour’ which he holds of the king and which he refuses to surrender (line 1427).170 The county administered by Robert as sheriff was smaller than Ranulf’s potestas, but within this county his position was exceptional. This evidence, not least the evidence of Jordan Fantosme, illuminates the more elusive world of secular perception – how Robert de Vaux, for instance, might have perceived his claims to the county and the nature of his position there. He had only to look southwards to the lordship centred on Appleby, the other part of Ranulf Meschin’s potestas, which had briefly been administered as a shire in 1177–9 but was given to Ranulf de Glanville as a private lordship by Michaelmas 1179.171 Robert de Vaux might have wished to consider his position as less an office and more a lordship. Unlike Roger de Stuteville in Northumberland, Robert de Vaux was sole custodian of the only royal castle in Cumberland; he therefore commanded the venue for the county court.172 He also enjoyed sole custody of the extensive royal forest in Cumberland.173 His position was enhanced, too, by the enduring vacancy in the see of Carlisle. Since the death of Bishop Athelwold of Carlisle in 1156 or 1157,174 the 166 BL Cotton Charter xviii. 45, printed in Charters of David I, ed. Barrow, 61–2, no. 16. 167 John of Hexham, Continuation of Historia Regum, in Symeonis Monachi Opera, II, 323. 168 Robert de Vieuxpont, sheriff of Cumberland, expressed this claim in a letter to the king’s justiciar,

which survives as an original (PRO SC 1/1/210). 169 PRO E 368/4, m. 3d., printed in Madox, History and Antiquities of Exchequer, 591 note t. The evi-

dence for the settlement is discussed by D. Crook in PR 5 Henry III, p. xxvii. 170 Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , ed. Johnston, line 1329, reads ‘A Carduil regieres’. Most editors have

translated the phrase as ‘to royal Carlisle’ (Chronicle of the War between the English and Scots in 1173 and 1174 by Jordan Fantosme , ed. F. Michel, Surtees Society 2, 1840, 61; Chronique de Jordan Fantosme , ed. J. Stevenson, in Chronicles, ed. Howlett, III, 315; R. S. Johnston in Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , 100, line 1328), but regieres is best translated as the adverb ‘again’ or ‘anew’ (F. Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols, Paris 1881–1902, VI, 741, citing this passage). The mistranslation was noted by M. D. Legge in her review of Johnston’s edition (Medium Ævum 52, 1983, 167–9 at 168) and by Johnston himself (‘Some Notes on Jordan’s Fantosme’s Chronicle’, in Studies in Medieval French Literature Presented to Brian Woledge in Honour of his 80th Birthday, ed. S. B. North, Geneva 1988, 87–101 at 100–1), but it has remained in circulation, for instance in H. R. T. Summerson, Medieval Carlisle: The City and the Borders from the Late Eleventh to the Mid-Sixteenth Century, 2 vols, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Extra Series 25, 1993, 80, giving the false impression that Carlisle enjoyed a distinct royal status. 171 PR 24 Henry II, 74–6; 25 Henry II, 25–6; 26 Henry II, 76. 172 For the ‘old hall’ in Carlisle castle, see PRO SC 1/4/3, printed in Royal and Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III, ed. W. W. Shirley, 2 vols, RS 27, 1862–8, II, 124–5, no. 515. 173 Simon de Morville, whose descendants claimed the office of hereditary forester, had first accounted for the rent (census) of the forest of Cumberland in 1165–6. After his death in the following year, the same rent was accounted for by the sheriff until Michaelmas 1172. From Michaelmas 1172 Robert de Vaux, who had married Simon’s widow, accounted for the rent of the forest and continued to do so until his dismissal from office at Easter 1185 (PR 19 Henry II, 114; 31 Henry II, 183; The Receipt Roll of the Exchequer for Michaelmas Term 31 Henry II, 1185, ed. H. Hall, London 1899, 21). 174 1156 in Chronique de Robert de Torigni, Abbé du Mont-Saint-Michel , ed. L. Delisle, 2 vols, Rouen 1872–3, 300; 1157 (‘anno MCLVII, in crastino Ascensionis Domini, qui erat annus regni regis Henrici secundi quintus’) in Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 349.

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diocese had been administered by Robert, archdeacon of Carlisle, with the support of Christian, bishop of Whithorn, who provided the episcopal sacraments. Robert de Vaux was familiar with both men. As well as witnessing prominently in the deeds of Robert and his tenants for his Augustinian foundation of Lanercost, both men worked closely with him to further the interests of his community of canons there. Robert de Vaux secured his claims to the churches of Irthington and Brampton from the prior and canons of Carlisle ‘coram Roberto archidiacono’.175 An act of Christian, bishop of Whithorn, declared that, ‘at the prayer of the foresaid Robert de Vaux’ (‘prece predicti Roberti de Vallibus’), he had been present when Robert made numerous gifts to the canons of Lanercost.176 With no bishop in the see of Carlisle, moreover, there was no churchman with the rank and political influence to contain and challenge Robert’s authority. There was good cause, therefore, for the king, ‘at the petition of the canons’ of Carlisle, to initiate the election of a new bishop when he visited the town in 1186, just a year after Robert’s dismissal from the shrieval office. His nominee, reported Roger of Howden, was welcomed not only by the city, but by the ‘whole county’ (prouincia tota), so ‘deprived of episcopal consolation’.177 Robert, of course, was himself a local landholder with interests to sustain, tenants and followers to reward, and friends to cultivate. It must be no coincidence that Robert’s foundation of Lanercost probably obtained its first royal charter of confirmation, very likely between May 1175 and August 1177, when he was sheriff.178 The canons of Lanercost were not the only beneficiaries of his new influence. In 1177–8 the monks of Wetheral priory and the canons of St Mary’s priory, Carlisle, settled their dispute over two fisheries in the river Eden. The settlement was confirmed by Clement, abbot of St Mary’s, York, the mother-house of Wetheral; his deed, which survives as an original, states that the settlement was made ‘with the counsel and assent of the king’s justices, Robert de Vaux, William Basset and Michael Belet’, who witnessed it.179 By such means Robert could consolidate and extend his influence. The monks of Wetheral had less cause to offer Robert their friendship in the matter of their settlement with William fitz Odard. William was Robert de Vaux’s tenant for the vill of Corby, which had been explicitly granted to Robert’s father Hubert and then confirmed to Robert himself by Henry II. William was evidently a figure of influence in Robert’s following and in wider county circles;180 his name is awarded a prominent place in the witness lists of Robert’s deeds. William’s loyalty and service had been tested and more than demonstrated in the war of 1173–4, or so Jordan Fantosme declared: ‘Robert de Vaux was putting up a vigorous defence; the son of Odard did not fail him’ (‘Robert de Vaus se defendeit forment; le fiz Odart ne li failli nient’); ‘for his lord he performed great acts of boldness’ (‘pur sun seignur enprist grant hardement’).181 This fiz Odart is very likely William fitz Odard of Corby.182 175 Lanercost Cartulary, ed. Todd, 207–8, no. 176. Robert the archdeacon witnessed the deed of two of

Robert’s tenants executed ‘coram domino nostro Roberto de Wallibus’ (ibid. 109–10, no. 57). 176 Ibid. 210–11, no. 180. 177 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 349. 178 The cartulary of Lanercost has two charters of Henry II for the canons; they have identical witness

lists but one includes property not confirmed in the other. Which offers the more reliable text is not entirely clear (Cumbria RO, DZ/1, fols 53r.–54r.). The edition of the cartulary collates the two texts: Lanercost Cartulary, ed. Todd, 196–200, nos. 170–1. 179 Cumbria RO, D/MH10/2/3. The deed was not copied into the Wetheral cartulary. 180 See Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections, Howard of Naworth MSS, C9a/1, printed in Lanercost Cartulary, ed. Todd, 398–9, no. A1. 181 Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , ed. Johnston, 50–1, lines 663–6. 182 R. C. Johnston identified Le fiz Odard as ‘John son of Odard’ (Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , 212), the

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William’s relationship with the Benedictine community of Wetheral was founded on ties of neighbourhood and benefaction. The priory was situated on the west bank of the river Eden; William’s estate of Corby was located on the opposite side of the river. The community counted William’s mother, Anna, and his elder brother (who seems to have died without heirs) among their benefactors. The succession of William to his estates, which certainly occurred before September 1166, seems to have injected more divisive ambitions and anxieties into the relationship with the priory. Deeds copied into the priory’s cartulary, including seven drafted in the name of William fitz Odard, provide some measure of these tensions. A second deed of Abbot Clement, for instance, permitted mass to be celebrated for William fitz Odard, his wife and his domestic familia in the chapel ‘which William had built within his court (curtum) of Corby’, but reserved the sacramental and parochial rights of the prior of Wetheral over the chapel. Clement’s deed, which was attested by Walter, prior of Carlisle, Robert de Vaux, and others from Robert’s orbit, was possibly drafted when Clement, with the counsel of Robert and the other justices, had settled the dispute between Wetheral and the canons of Carlisle.183 William’s own deeds, which are not easily dated, confirmed other settlements with the community. One of the more important confirmed ‘all those good things (omnia bona) which my ancestors conferred’ – the fishery which pertained to the vill of Corby, two bovates in Corby, and the bovate in Warwick given by his mother. The same deed also gave two more bovates in Warwick, the homage of one Thomas, his tenant in Corby, which had been a source of dispute between William and the monks, and the rent of 12d. paid by this same Thomas. All of these gifts were confirmed ‘in the compact of peace which I settled with the monks in the presence of the lord Roger, archbishop of York, and many others’, the deed being witnessed by Archbishop Roger himself; an Abbot Richard (possibly of Whitby or Fountains); leading figures from the see of Carlisle; members of the archiepiscopal household; and others.184 It was drafted some time before 1173 and, to judge from those present, was probably witnessed in York. A second deed of William recorded a very different settlement with the monks of Wetheral. He conveyed to them the land between Wetheral and Warwick ‘which is called the camera of Constantine’; renounced his right to fish ‘either with hook or net or any other method’ (‘nec hamo neque reti nec aliquo modo’) between Monkwath and the pond of the community’s mill; committed himself not to impede the monks from securing their net on the Corby side of the river Eden; and granted two bovates in Corby inperpetuum. These same properties and liberties – the land ‘which is called the camera of Constantine’, the water and river ‘on the Corby side’ where the pond is situated, and the two bovates in Corby – were confirmed in a general charter of confirmation drafted in Henry II’s name for St Mary’s York, of which Wetheral was a

Northumberland landholder, but this is most unlikely. H. R. T. Summerson was the first to propose the identification with William fitz Odard (M. R. McCarthy, H. R. T. Summerson, and R. G. Annis, Carlisle Castle: A Survey and Documentary History, English Heritage Archaeological Report 18, London 1990, 120). 183 The deed was sealed with the seals of William fitz Odard, the archdeacon and chapter of Carlisle, and one Robert de Ros (Cumbria RO, D & C, Wetheral cartulary, fols 47r.–48r.; Register of Wetheral, 98–101, no. 44). The editor of the cartulary identified this Robert as the Robert de Ros who held the honours centred on Helmsley and Wark, but this Robert died between September 1162 and September 1163 and Robert de Vaux did not succeed until after September 1164 at the earliest (PR 9 Henry II, 58). The identity of Robert de Ros remains unclear, but it is possible he was a member of the Carlisle diocesan establishment. 184 Cumbria RO, D & C, Wetheral cartulary, fols 43v.–44r., printed in Register of Wetherhal, ed. Prescott, 78–82, no. 36.

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cell.185 The charter, which can confidently be rejected as a forgery, was composed at St Mary’s some time in the period between 1175 and 1189 and thus within memory – or even, perhaps, in the course – of the dispute with William fitz Odard. The priory of Wetheral counted these lands and rights among some of the earliest gifts given to the community. One deed of the founder, Ranulf Meschin, had conferred ‘the sluice and pond of the fishery and mill of Wetheral which is situated and secured on the land of Corby’ and prohibited the dominus of Corby from interfering with the pond or fishing between ‘the pond and Monkwath’. These same gifts were confirmed by a writ-charter of Henry I.186 A deed of William fitz Odard’s elder brother, Osbert, recorded the gift of ‘all that part of the fishery in Eden which pertains to my vill of Corby’, ‘all the riverbank opposite the fishery as far as the place called Monkwath’, and the same two bovates in Corby.187 All three of these documents possess possible suspicious features, but their existence is testimony to the community’s close and jealous interest in these properties and liberties. William fitz Odard’s second deed reveals that the monks had been prevented from enjoying peaceful possession of these same properties and liberties. This deed conveyed the two bovates as they had held them previously (antea) – that is, before he had taken the land from them – and he committed himself not to interfere with the securing of the net, as, presumably, he had interfered with it before. His gift of these liberties and properties – in effect, so the cartulary rubric reads, his ‘quitclaim’ (quieta clamatio)188 – may thus have constituted a small victory for the community; but the scale of the victory must have been effectively reduced by the measure of its cost. For William’s gifts did not come cheaply. William may have conveyed ‘all the land’ between Wetheral and Warwick ‘which is called the camera of Constantine’, but land between the ditch and the stream close to Warwick bridge189 – ‘which land had been claimed from them [the monks] by me and my heirs’ – was to remain with William imperpetuum.190 A settlement made ‘in comitatu Karleoli’ between the monks of Wetheral and two knightly landholders in 1230 or 1231 stated that the camera extended beyond the ditch to the stream.191 Land considered by the monks as within the camera, and evidently contested by William, was thus relinquished to him. William also reserved his right to the eighth fish from the monks’ fishing coops. This was evidently a perquisite William was unwilling to give up. The settlement between the monks of Wetheral and the canons of Carlisle, orchestrated of course by Robert de Vaux and the other justices, explicitly reserved the eighth fish from the

185 The charter of Henry II survives in BL Add. MS 38816, fols 22v.–24v., the later twelfth-century

foundation book of St Mary’s, York. The charter has been printed from the early fourteenth-century cartulary (BL Harley MS 236, fols 6v.–9r.) in Dugdale, Monasticon, 1655–73 edn, I, 387–90, and Farrer, EYC, I, 269–77, no. 354. 186 The deed of Ranulf Meschin is copied twice into the cartulary (Cumbria RO, D & C, Wetheral cartulary, fols 23r., 43r.; Register of Wetherhal, ed. Prescott, 6–9, no. 2). The act of Henry I (calendared as Regesta, II, 260–61, no. 1752) is found on fols 43r.–v.; Register of Wetherhal, ed. Prescott, 25–6, no. 8. 187 Cumbria RO, D & C, Wetheral cartulary, fol. 43v.; Register of Wetherhal, ed. Prescott, 77–8, no. 35. 188 Cumbria RO, D & C, Wetheral cartulary, fol. 44v.; Register of Wetherhal, ed. Prescott, 83, no. 38. 189 A thirteenth-century drawing of the stone bridge at Warwick is found in the Lanercost cartulary, in the margin next to a deed of William fitz Odard giving property near the bridge (Cumbria RO, DZ/1, fol. 31r.). The drawing is printed and discussed in J. M. Todd, A Window onto Late Medieval Cumbria, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Tract Series 20, 2000, 15, no. 9. 190 The printed edition of the cartulary reads ‘terra uero a predicto fossato usque ad riuulum qui cadit in Edena iuxta pontem que terra de eadem calumpnia fuit mihi et heredibus meis inperpetuum remanebit’, but the cartulary in fact reads ‘inperpetuum qui (sic; ? l. quiete) remanebit’. 191 Cumbria RO, D & C, Wetheral cartulary, fol. 53r.; Register of Wetherhal, ed. Prescott, 122–5, no. 56.

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fishing coops to the dominum de Corchebi.192 And the monks also quitclaimed to him and his heirs two bovates in Warwick and the rent of 12d. which they had received annually from his land of Corby; this was the same two bovates and rent which William had conveyed to them in the presence of Archbishop Roger and other churchmen prior to 1173. The settlement confirmed by William’s second deed thus constituted a remarkable reversal of the earlier ‘compact of peace’. The only edition of the Wetheral cartulary dated the deed to ‘1175’ because Adam nuper uicecomes (Adam fitz Robert fitz Truite) is found in the witness list.193 The edition did not, however, take its text from the early fourteenth-century cartulary (a later discovery), but from transcripts made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The transcript made by Hugh Todd, for instance, supplies the reading nuper uicecomes,194 where the cartulary itself reads Adam nepos uicecomitis, a very different individual. The deed was certainly drafted before October 1186, when one of the witnesses, Christian, bishop of Whithorn, died.195 Another witness, Simon de Tilliol, only succeeded to his estates in 1182–3 but could have witnessed before this date.196 The other witnesses offer no further help in narrowing the date, but perhaps point to an earlier rather than a later one.197 Robert de Vaux will have been closely interested in William fitz Odard’s exercise of rights in Corby, for the charters of Henry II in favour of his father and himself had explicitly granted and confirmed to them ‘Corby with the fishery’. Robert, indeed, figured prominently in the deed. Not only was he the second witness, following Christian, bishop of Whithorn, but the deed explicitly stated that it was made ‘with the counsel and assent of my lord Robert de Vaux’ (‘consilio et assensu domini mei Roberti de Vals’) and that Robert ‘fixed his seal to this deed in witness’ (‘huic carte sigillum in testimonium apposuit’). The prominence given him may reflect his supremacy in post-war Cumberland and perhaps permits the deed to be dated to before his removal from office at Easter 1185. The vacancy in the see of York following the death of Archbishop Roger in 1181 will certainly have provided William fitz Odard with the opportune moment to overturn the earlier compact of peace witnessed by Archbishop Roger.198 The new settlement may therefore provide some indication of the pressure exerted by Robert on behalf of his tenant and follower.199 William fitz Odard was evidently willing to further his

192 Cumbria RO, D/MH10/2/3. Another deed of William fitz Odard confirmed ‘omnen piscationem in

aqua Edene’, but reserved his right to the eighth fish from the monks’ fishing coop; the date of the deed is unclear. It was copied into the cartulary (Cumbria, D & C, Wetheral cartulary, fol. 49v.; Register of Wetherhal, ed. Prescott, 109–10, no. 48), but evidently survived as an original into the seventeenth century, when it was transcribed by John Burton (1710–71) (Bodl. MS Top. Yorks. e. 9, fol. 13r., continuing on fol. 11v.). William’s son and heir Robert relinquished his claim to the eighth fish and other fishing rights in the presence of itinerant justices in December 1208 (Cumbria RO, D & C, Wetheral cartulary, fol. 46r. and v.; Register of Wetherhal, ed. Prescott, 93–5, no. 42). For the date of the visitation of the justices who witnessed Robert fitz William’s deed, see the eight original final concords printed in Fines siue Pedes Finium siue Finales Concordie in Curia Domini Regis , ed. J. Hunter, 2 vols, London 1835–44, II, 9–14). 193 Register of Wetherhal, ed. Prescott, 89–90, notes 19–20. 194 BL Harley MS 1881, p. 36 (now fol. 20v.). 195 Chronicle of Melrose, ed. Anderson and Anderson, p. 45 (fol. 24r.). 196 PR 29 Henry II, 6. 197 The Heads of Religious Houses, England and Wales, I: 940–1216, ed. D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke, and V. C. M. London, 2nd edn, Cambridge 2001, 158, and Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1066–1300: Monastic Cathedrals, comp. D. Greenway, London 1971, 21 n. 4, both give c. 1175 as the latest date for Walter, prior of Carlisle, on the evidence of ‘Adam nuper uicecomes’ in the witness-list of William fitz Odard’s deed. 198 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 282–3. 199 Between 1164 and 1189 Robert de Vaux confirmed the gifts given to Wetheral by ‘Osbert and William

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claims by means both lawful and unlawful. In 1180–1 he proffered 3 marks for recognition of his rights to three carucates of land over those of the local landholder Odard fitz Adam.200 In 1182–3 the itinerant justices who visited Cumberland fined him ½ mark for an unspecified offence.201 At this date his amercement anticipated the removal of his lord and patron, Robert de Vaux.

Sheriffs, Coinage, and the Profits of Silver Mining At the Easter session of the exchequer in 1185 both Robert de Vaux and Roger de Stuteville were removed from office.202 They were fined for numerous offences, and the fines were duly entered in the pipe roll.203 In 1184–5 the counties of both men were visited by itinerant justices. The pipe roll lists the justices of 1184–5 as Godfrey de Lucy, ‘the sheriff’, and their socii.204 Most previous works have identified the sheriff as Robert de Vaux, but it is more likely to be Hugh of Morwick.205 Hugh, together with Godfrey de Lucy, Hugh Murdac, and other justices, also visited Yorkshire and Northumberland in the same period,206 beginning their visitation of Yorkshire by 10 September 1184.207 The calendar of a now lost deed records that it was witnessed before the king’s justices at Carlisle in October 1184 and names Hugh as one of the justices;208 by Michaelmas 1185, moreover, when the pipe roll was drafted, Hugh had replaced Robert as sheriff. Since the war of 1173–4, itinerant and forest justices had visited Northumberland on six occasions and Cumberland on six.209 The business handled, the fines imposed, and the profits collected by the itinerant justices in 1184–5 seem to have been on a very different scale from previous visitations. This created immediate tensions. Ralph de Ferté, one of Robert de Vaux’s fitz Odard lords of Corby and my other free men in Gilsland’ (Cumbria RO, D & C, Wetheral cartulary, fols 110v–11r.; Register of Wetherhal, ed. Prescott, 301–2, no. 191). 200 PR 27 Henry II, 26. 201 PR 29 Henry II, 5. 202 PR 31 Henry II, 149, 183. 203 According to Dialogus de Scaccario, 101, sales of felons’ possessions were entered at the end of the shire account; Roger’s fines, however, are entered after them at the very end of the membrane (PR 31 Henry II, 153). 204 PR 31 Henry II, 184–6, 187. 205 As proposed by R. W. Eyton in 1878 (Court, Household, and Itinerary of King Henry II, London 1878, 265), and D. M. Stenton in 1966 (Pleas before the King or his Justices 1198–1212, 4 vols, Selden Society, 1948–67, III, lxix). 206 PR 31 Henry II, 67–73, 151–2. 207 BL Add. Charter 20562; printed in EYC, VII, 286–7, no. 176. For other final concords drafted before the same justices in ‘anno regni sui xxx’ see PRO DL 41/133, m. 5 (printed Farrer, EYC, III, 206, no. 1519) and Bodl. MS Dodsworth 128, fol. 163v. (printed in EYC, VII, 177, no. 109). 208 The deed, drafted in favour of Sherburn hospital, passed with other deeds from the hospital’s archive into the possession of Canon William Greenwell. On Canon Greenwell’s death, the deeds were purchased by C. H. Hunter Blair, but then resold at Sotheby’s in the early 1930s. Their present whereabouts is unknown. A description and photograph of the deed’s seal can be found in C. H. Hunter Blair, ‘Seals of Northumberland and Durham’, Archaeologia Aeliana 3rd series 20, 1923, 69–186 (description of the deed and seal at p. 139 (no. 263) and photograph of the seal on plate facing p. 69). The deed was calendared once more in ‘A Second Calendar of Greenwell Deeds’, Archaeologia Aeliana 4th series 7, 1930, 81–114 at 98–9, no. 41. 209 Northumberland was visited by forest justices in 1174–5, Robert de Vaux and other itinerant justices in 1175–6, itinerant justices in 1176–7, 1177–8, 1180–1, and 1182–3; Cumberland by itinerant justices in 1176–7, Robert de Vaux and other itinerant justices in 1177–8, forest justices in 1177–8, itinerant justices in 1180–1 and 1182–3, and forest justices in 1182–3: PR 21 Henry II, 185; 22 Henry II, 138–40; 23 Henry II, 83–4, 121–2; 24 Henry II, 61–2, 126–7; 27 Henry II, 25–6, 49; 29 Henry II, 5–6, 150.

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principal followers, was fined 1 mark ‘because he unjustly contradicted the jurors’ (‘quia iniuste contradixit iuratoribus’).210 In both counties the justices punished offences connected with the shrieval administration of the county. In Northumberland, one Gilbert of Heaton was fined 10 marks ‘because he held the cattle of William Bertram contrary to gage and pledge’.211 William had first made a fine of £200 to have his father’s estates in 1176–7 and had spent the next five years reducing his debt.212 Gilbert, who hailed from Heaton ‘iuxta Nouum castellum’,213 witnessed the deed of Mabilla de Greinville in the company of Roger de Stuteville. It is therefore possible that Gilbert was part of Roger’s shrieval staff and that the retention of the cattle was connected to the payment of the relief.214 Other men in Northumberland punished by these justices were Gilbert de Laval, fined 10 marks for concealing a plea of the crown, and Vincent of Morpeth, fined 3 marks because ‘he prohibited the command of the king to be done’ (‘prohibuit preceptum regis fieri’).215 In Cumberland, Richard fitz Anketin was fined 1 mark for detaining cattle ‘contrary to gage and pledge’,216 and the prominent Carlisle landholder Adam fitz Enisant was fined 40s. for the same offence.217 Richard fitz Anketin served as Robert de Vaux’s steward, while his brother, Robert fitz Anketin, was his tenant in Denton.218 Adam fitz Enisant is better known as Adam nepos uicecomitis, who, it was seen earlier, witnessed William fitz Odard’s settlement with the monks of Wetheral in the company of Robert de Vaux.219 As sheriff of Carlisle, where Adam is known to have held property,220 Robert could easily have recruited him into his service.221 The offences punished by the justices extended to the unlawful appropriation and exploitation of the king’s resources in these counties. In Northumberland one Walter Albus was fined 3 marks ‘because he encroached upon land of the king on the water210 PR 31 Henry II, 185. Ralph held Bowness on Solway; he was a benefactor of Lanercost (Lanercost

Cartulary, ed. Todd, 186–8, nos. 158–9) and a frequent witness of Robert de Vaux’s deeds. 211 PR 31 Henry II, 151. 212 PR 23 Henry II, 83; 28 Henry II, 48 213 This description is found in the lay subsidy roll of 1295–6 (PRO E 159/158/1, m. 25), printed in The

Northumberland Lay Subsidy Roll of 1296, ed. C. M. Fraser, Newcastle 1968, 62, no. 142. 214 The taking of cattle by officials, shrieval or otherwise, was evidently a widespread point of conflict.

For the writ ‘for replevying cattle’, see Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Anglie qui Glanuilla uocatur, ed. G. D. G. Hall and M. C. Clanchy, Oxford 1993, 142 (c. xii § 12). Gerald of Wales, acting as the legate for the archbishop of Canterbury in the diocese of St David’s, excommunicated the sheriff of Pembroke for refusing to restore cattle seized from Pembroke priory (Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, I, 25–6). 215 PR 31 Henry II, 149. 216 PR 31 Henry II, 185. 217 Ibid. In Carlisle one Robert Ruffus was fined 5 marks ‘pro concelamento catallorum latronis in domo sua’ (ibid.). 218 Richard fitz Anketin witnessed a deed of Robert de Vaux as ‘meus seneschallus’; the deed now survives only in a nineteenth-century transcript (Cumbria RO, D/MH10/7/5, pp. 365–9, printed in Lanercost Cartulary, ed. Todd, 404, no. A5, with the omission of a minor clause). Another deed of Robert de Vaux from the same source confirmed to Richard’s brother Robert his moiety of Denton (ibid. 404–5, no. A5). Robert fitz Anketin was a frequent witness to Robert de Vaux’s deeds. 219 While at Carlisle in August 1186 the king granted Adam by charter the land of one Leising (Cumbria RO, D/MH10/2/2, calendared in Acta of Henry II and Richard I, ed. Holt and Mortimer, 26, no. 1). An inquest conducted coram rege in 1201 referred to this Adam as Adam fitz Enisant (Curia Regis Rolls, I, 387–8). 220 In 1179–80 Adam proffered 10 marks ‘pro habenda confirmatione de burgagio quod fuit Dauid Truite in Carleolio’: PR 26 Henry II, 61. 221 Adam was evidently known to David, earl of Huntingdon and brother of the king of Scots, to whom he had loaned money before 1190: PR 2 Richard I, 52.

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front without warrant’ (‘quia occupauit terram regis super aquam sine warranto’).222 Walter was evidently a figure of influence and wealth in Newcastle;223 he is unlikely to have occupied this land without Roger de Stuteville’s connivance. In Cumberland, where Robert himself was under pressure to reward his tenants and followers and where the principal resources of the shire were concentrated in his own custody, the justices uncovered more extensive exploitation. Dereman of Burgh was fined 20s. for an unspecified offence (defalta) and for ‘placing nets before the king’s fishery’ (‘retibus positis ante piscariam regis’).224 Dereman held property in Burgh by Sands, the seat of Hugh de Morville, the son of Robert de Vaux’s wife Ada, and he witnessed a deed of Ada for the canons of Lanercost between 1167 and 1183.225 Robert and his men were also punished by the forest justices who visited Cumberland in 1185–6. They collected £50 3s. 4d. in rent from Robert for his apparently unlicensed custody since his installation as sheriff of Castle Sowerby, a royal demesne estate;226 they fined Alexander of Windsor, one of Robert’s tenants and most prominent supporters, for hunting with his dogs in the king’s forest;227 and they fined Richard fitz Anketin and William de Ferté (brother of the Ralph de Ferté fined for contradicting jurors) for cultivating and concealing demesne of the king. The land occupied by Richard and William is possibly the same land de wasto domini regis, conveyed to the monks of Holm Cultram by both men before itinerant justices in 1188–9.228 As well as Roger de Stuteville and Robert de Vaux, eight other sheriffs were removed at Easter 1185. Two of them seem to have retired before dying within the year;229 four were transferred to other shrievalties;230 and the services of one more

222 PR 31 Henry II, 151. 223 As Walter Albus ‘of Newcastle’, he granted property to St Mary’s hospital in Newcastle (Newcastle,

Tyne and Wear Archive Service MS 574/95, pp. 31–2 (now fols 20v.–21r.), no. 48, printed in Newcastle Deeds, ed. Oliver, 40, no. 52). He was commemorated, together with his wife, son, and daughter, in the Liber Vitae of Durham (Liber Vitae Dunelmensis, ed. Thompson, fol. 54r.). 224 PR 31 Henry II, 185. 225 Lanercost Cartulary, ed. Todd, 86–7, no. 33. For property held by his son, Adam, in Burgh, see the deed in BL Harley MS 3891, fol. 34r; calendared in Register and Records of Holm Cultram, ed. Grainger and Collingwood, 8, no. 25c. 226 PR 32 Henry II, 99. 227 Ibid. An original deed of Robert de Vaux confirming to Alexander of Windsor the estate of Fenton ‘quam pater meus illi dedit et de incremento Korkby cum molendino et piscaria’ was seen at Corby Hall before 1794 but is now lost (Hutchinson, Cumberland, I, 170). Alexander witnessed numerous deeds of Robert de Vaux; Robert witnessed Alexander’s deed for the canons of Lanercost drafted between 1164 and 1174 (Lanercost Cartulary, ed. Todd, 91–2, no. 40). 228 The deed of Richard fitz Anketin survives in Cumbria RO, D & C, Holm Cultram cartulary, p. 50; BL Harley MS 3911, fol. 4v. (now fol. 9v.); BL Harley MS 3891, fols 10v–11r. The final concord of William de la Ferté survives in Cumbria RO, D & C, Holm Cultram cartulary, p. 50, and BL Harley MS 3891, fol. 11v. The deed and final concord have been printed by Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, 1655–73 edn, III, 34. There is also a deed of William de la Ferté, quitclaiming the same property, in BL Harley MS 3891, fol. 11v; calendared in Register and Records of Holm Cultram, ed. Grainger and Collingwood, 28, no. 70a. For the visit of the justices named in the deeds and final concord, see PR 1 Richard I, 88–9, 139–40. 229 William Torel (Herefs.) certainly died before Michaelmas 1185 and possibly before Easter (PR 31 Henry II, 17); William Basset (Lincs.) probably before the end of the year or early in the next (ibid. 80; discussed in Basset Charters, ed. W. T. Reedy, Pipe Roll Society new series 50, 1995, p. xxxv). 230 Alan de Furnell from Cornwall to Oxfordshire (PR 31 Henry II, 105, 200), Michael Belet from Worcestershire to Warwickshire and Leicestershire (ibid. 95, 118). Gilbert Pipard was removed as custodian of the earldom of Chester and appointed sheriff of the honour of Lancaster; Bertram de Verdun was removed as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire and replaced Gilbert as custodian of the earldom of Chester. Both men were despatched with the king’s youngest son, John, to his new lordship in Ireland in 1185. The earldom of Chester and the honour of Lancaster were both important crossing points to Ireland;

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were retained and reserved as a royal justice.231 Only one of the eight, the sheriff of the county and honour of Lancaster, was removed from office, possibly for a private offence committed in Somerset,232 but principally to open the office for Gilbert Pipard, who followed the king’s youngest son John to his new lordship of Ireland. The removal of Roger de Stuteville and Robert de Vaux seems to have been unconnected with the replacement of these other sheriffs. The fines levied on both men provide the most explicit explanation for their removal. Robert de Vaux was fined 100 marks ‘for many disseisins’ (‘pro pluribus dissaisinis’); for having ‘permitted the king’s prisoners to escape from his custody’ (‘cognouit prisones regis euasisse a custodia sua’); and for ‘having sustained the circulation of the old money contrary to the general prohibition’ (‘sustinuit cursum ueteris monete post generalem prohibitionem’). Roger de Stuteville, on the other hand, was fined £100 for converting the king’s demesne into a burgage and for his unlawful sale of two houses in Bamburgh; and a further 50 marks for ‘transgression of the assize and for venison killed’ (‘pro transgressione assise et pro uenatione capta’), which in this context must be the Assize of the Forest enacted in 1184.233 These were not minor offences. The secure custody of the king’s prisoners was explicitly stipulated by the Assize of Clarendon.234 Other sheriffs were punished without loss of office. Wimar the chaplain, sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, was fined 300 marks for a disseisin in the same exchequer year, but remained in office until Easter 1187.235 There was a punitive element to these fines too. If the Roger de Stuteville permitted to hunt fox and hare with his dogs in the king’s forests was the sheriff of Northumberland, now he was punished for overstepping his liberties by hunting deer. In early 1185, so Roger of Howden related, the king was travelling north from Nottingham, ‘wishing to proceed from there to York’ (‘uolens inde procedere usque ad Eboracum’), when he was forced to turn south by news of the arrival of the patriarch of Jerusalem and the master of the Knights Hospitaller.236 The purpose of his visit was unstated by Howden, but his wish to travel to York implies important business in the North. A certain point of crisis must have been events in Galloway. Gille Brigte, ruler of Galloway, had died on 1 January 1185, and on his death, so Howden related, his nephew Roland son of Uhtred had invaded his territory statim, put to the victuals for Gilbert Pipard, for instance, were transported to Ireland from Lancaster in 1185–6 (PR 32 Henry II, 150). 231 Robert of Wheatfield had served as an itinerant justice since 1180 (PR 26 Henry II, 40–1, 109–11, 120–1) and continued to do so following his removal as sheriff of Oxfordshire. In 1186 he served as a justice at Westminster and Woodstock (see the four final concords calendared from cartulary copies in Pleas before King or Justices, ed. Stenton, III, p. lxxi) and was an itinerant justice in 1186–7 and 1188–9 (PR 33 Henry II, 114, 209; 34 Henry II, 61, 115, 125, 132, 153, 206). In 1186–7 he received 20 marks ‘ad sustendandum in seruitio regis per breue eiusdem’ (PR 33 Henry II, 45). 232 The sheriff of the county and honour of Lancaster, Ralph fitz Bernard, was fined 100 marks ‘quia fecit concordiam de placito corone sine licentia iusticiarum’ in Dorset and Somerset (PR 31 Henry II, 182), but was pardoned the entire sum per breue regis in the following year (PR 32 Henry II, 139). Ralph was brother of Robert fitz Bernard, who had served the king in multiple capacities and whose estates were primarily concentrated in Somerset (31 Henry II, 27); Ralph himself held the land of West Hatch in Somerset (deeds calendared from the mid-thirteenth-century cartulary of Wells in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2 vols, London 1907–14, I, 9). 233 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 323–4. 234 W. Stubbs, Select Charters, 9th edn, Oxford 1913, 171, cc. 5–6. 235 For Wimar the chaplain’s fine and debt, which he continued to reduce when sheriff, see PR 31 Henry II, 41. At Easter 1187, when Wimar was replaced in office, he proffered 200 marks ‘ut sit quietus amodo de uicecomitatu et de omnibus querelis erga se et seruientes suos de his que per ipsum fecerint de tempore preterito que ad regem pertineant’ (PR 33 Henry II, 50). 236 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 335.

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sword ‘all the most powerful and richest men of all Galloway’ (‘omnes potentiores et ditiores totius Galwaie’), and occupied their lands.237 The Melrose Chronicle offered more specific detail, reporting that Roland first defeated, in bellum, Gille Phadraig in July and then Gille Choluim later in the year.238 Over the previous decade the king had striven to incorporate Galloway within the scope of his lordship. The king of Scots performed homage for the territory in 1174 and 1175 and received Henry’s permission (licentia) to invade it to subdue Gille Brigte in the same year.239 Henry had sought to attract Uhtred and Gille Brigte into his service in 1174,240 and had received Gille Brigte’s submission in 1176.241 According to Howden, when Roland invaded Gille Brigte’s land, he did so contrary to the prohibition of the king and of his justices (‘contra prohibitionem illius et iustitiariorum suorum’).242 Material incorporated in the Gesta Annalia related that in 1186 the king was grauiter exasperatus with Roland over the deaths of Gille Phadraig and the other men, whom Roland ‘had crushed in the previous year in order to safeguard himself and his rights’ (‘anno precedenti se suaque iura tuendo belli lege prostrauerat’).243 The basis for this interference in the Galloway succession was the submission made by Gille Brigte to Henry II in 1176, when ‘he became his man and swore fealty to him’ (‘deuenit homo ipsius et fidelitatem ei iurauit contra omnes homines’).244 The most compelling guarantee of this fealty was vested in custody of Gille Brigte’s son and heir, Donnchad, whom Gille Brigte had surrendered as a hostage in 1176 and who was still in English custody in 1185. Roland’s invasion and acquisition of Gille Brigte’s lands thus openly challenged the settlement of 1176 and, more ominously, threatened to undermine the king’s claim to informal mastery over the British Isles. In March earlier in the same year, at a council summoned within weeks of Gille Brigte’s death, the king restored the earldom of Huntingdon to William, king of Scots, and, three weeks later, despatched his youngest son John to his new lordship of Ireland.245 It is entirely possible that in early 1185 the king was travelling north to direct affairs in Galloway. The king certainly considered the issue important enough to visit Carlisle, with ‘a great army (‘exercitus magnus’)’ in his train,246 in August 1186. 237 Ibid. I, 339–40. 238 Chronicle of Melrose, ed. Anderson and Anderson, p. 45 (fol. 24r.). 239 According to the terms of the conuencio imposed on William, king of Scots, in 1174 and 1175,

William became the liegeman (homo ligius) of the king of the English de Scocia et de omnibus aliis terris suis (Anglo-Scottish Relations, ed. Stones, 2–11, no. 1). Roger of Howden, who provides one copy of the conuencio’s text, explains that this homage was performed for all tenements, nominatim de Scotia et Galueia (Gesta Regis, I, 95). For King Henry giving King William licence to invade Galloway in August 1175, see ibid. I, 99. 240 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 80. 241 Ibid. I, 126. 242 Ibid. I, 348. 243 John of Fordun, Gesta Annalia, ed. W. F. Skene, Historians of Scotland 1, Edinburgh 1871, 269. The complex codicological history of this material has recently been elucidated by D. Broun, ‘A New Look at Gesta Annalia Attributed to John of Fordun’, in Church, Chronicle, and Learning in Medieval and Early Renaissance Scotland, ed. B. E. Crawford, Edinburgh 1999, 9–30. 244 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 126. 245 For the king summoning the council in February, see Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 335–6. At the council itself, which convened on 10 March, the king granted the earldom ‘although many said that they themselves were nearer by right and now offered the king many great things to have justice’ ‘licet plures dicerent se de iure esse propinquiores, et multa et magna pro recto habendo obtulissent regi’ (ibid. I, 337). John was knighted on 31 March 1185 and despatched to Ireland immediately (ibid. I, 336), but did not sail until the ‘quarto Paschali dies’, which must be 24 April 1185 (Expugnatio Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland, by Giraldus Cambrensis, ed. and trans. A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin, Dublin 1978, 226). 246 Chronicle of Melrose, ed. Anderson and Anderson, p. 45 (fol. 24r). For the hiring of men (seruientes)

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Robert de Vaux had played a prominent part in the king’s efforts to entice the rulers of Galloway into his service and collect the money (not entirely successfully) owed by Gille Brigte for his settlement with the king. Some of his own tenants and followers, as seen above, were important enough to be included in the witness lists of deeds drafted for Roland’s father Uhtred; so too was Robert’s immediate predecessor as sheriff, Robert fitz Truite, and his brother Richard. Uhtred had given Richard all the land of Loch Kindar in Galloway, together with explicitly detailed liberties, some time between 1161 and 1173.247 The impact of subsequent events in Galloway – principally, the massacre of Anglici and Franci loyal to the king of Scots by Uhtred and his brother Gille Brigte in 1174 and the turmoil created by Gille Brigte’s murder of Uhtred248 – on Richard’s tenure of this land is unclear, but his inclusion in the witness list of a deed of John de Courcy, conqueror of Ulster, in this period raises the possibility that he was seeking service and enrichment elsewhere.249 His own relations with Robert de Vaux were no doubt complicated by Robert’s custody of Glassonby and Gamblesby, two estates which Richard had sought to claim in the post-war period.250 There were, however, connexions between the two men. At an unknown date Richard buried his daughter in Robert de Vaux’s foundation of Lanercost, and conveyed property in Botchergate to the house.251 Between 1185 and 1191, moreover, he stood pledge for and paid money owed by Robert de Vaux for former farmers of the mines.252 For Richard fitz Truite, and perhaps other men who operated within Robert de Vaux’s orbit, the events in Galloway were of immense importance. Roland fitz Uhtred himself may have been a familiar figure in county circles. Roland is included, together with Robert de Vaux’s tenant Walter of Windsor, in the witness list of a charter of the king of Scots place-dated at Lochmaben and drafted between 1166 and 1173; Uhtred’s deed in favour of Richard fitz Truite had been made with the ‘consent of my son and heir Roland’; his deed for St Peter’s hospital, probably executed before the Cumberland county court, was witnessed by Roland. Roland seems to have acquired his own share of Galloway probably before January 1185 and possibly by the terms of the peace settlement imposed on Gille Brigte in 1176.253 He himself actively renewed his connexions to Cumberland by confirming – or rather restoring – the vill of Kirkgunzeon given to Holm Cultram by his father. A copy of his deed in one of the Holm Cultram cartularies has preserved only one witness, Christian, bishop of Whithorn.254 His prominence in the witness list, evidenced, too, in Uhtred’s own deed conveying the same property to Holm from north and south Wales for the expected campaign, see PR 32 Henry II, 29, 55, 86; mounted and foot troops were also hired from the earldom of Chester (ibid. 150). 247 Cumbria RO, Lowther Deeds, D/Lons/L5/1/S1 (Box 628); printed in F. W. Ragg, ‘Five Strathclyde and Galloway Charters’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society new series 17, 1917, 198–233 at 218–19, with a photograph of the deed facing 218. 248 For these events, see Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 67–8, 79–80. 249 The deed survives in BL Cotton Roll xiii. 21, m. 1; printed in Register of St Bees, ed. Wilson, 520–1, appendix, no. II (no. 1). See further S. Duffy, ‘The First Ulster Plantation: John de Courcy and the Men of Cumbria’, in Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland: Essays Presented to J. F. Lydon , ed. T. B. Barry, R. Frame, and K. Simms, London 1995, 1–27, at 19. 250 PR 23 Henry II, 122; 24 Henry II, 125. 251 Lanercost Cartulary, ed. Todd, 162–3, no. 126. 252 He stood pledge, together with Adam of Renwick, for 106s. 8d. and on his own for 40s. in 1184–5, and paid 23s. 4d. in 1185–6, 25s. in 1186–7, 12s. 6d. in 1188–9, and 20d. in 1190–1 (PR 31 Henry II, 188; 32 Henry II, 99; 33 Henry II, 97; 1 Richard I, 140; 3 Richard I, 55). 253 Roger of Howden describes Roland invading the ‘land of Gille Brigte’ in 1185 and being confirmed by Henry II in the ‘terra que fuit Uctredi filii Fergus’ in 1186 (Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 289, 348; discussed by A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom, Edinburgh 1975, 184). 254 The deed was copied into the three cartularies of Holm Cultram (BL Harley MS 3911, fols

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Cultram,255 is a reminder that the bishop, who exercised considerable influence in Cumberland and who enjoyed important connexions to Robert de Vaux, provided one important bridge to Roland and events in Galloway. Robert de Vaux was unlikely to be wholly without interest in events in Galloway; given the breadth of his local ambitions, he may, indeed, have been too interested. When Gille Brigte of Galloway died in early 1185, his son and heir Donnchad was in the custody of Hugh of Morwick.256 Hugh was the tenant of Morwick and West and East Chevington in Northumberland.257 Although he did not inherit the property of his father, Ernald of Morwick, until 1176–7, he was evidently active from at least 1160–1.258 The next twenty years saw him consolidate his position in the king’s household and favour, eventually becoming the king’s dapifer. By early 1182 he was one of the king’s household officials who witnessed his will.259 Yet he continued to maintain his northern interests; together with Roger de Stuteville, for instance, he witnessed the deed of Mabilla de Greinville. These interests were substantially enlarged by his custody of honours in Northumberland in 1183–4 and by his custody, too, of Donnchad of Galloway. In 1184–5 he was one of the justices who visited Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Cumberland; he may therefore have been one of the iusticiarii who prohibited Roland of Galloway from entering Gille Brigte’s lands. And at Easter 1185 it was Hugh who replaced Robert de Vaux as sheriff of Cumberland.260 The timing of his installation as sheriff was important,261 occurring before Roland had won his military victories over his enemies and consolidated his position in Galloway. The king’s interests were best served by an effective and loyal sheriff of Cumberland, one moreover who had custody of the principal heir to Gille Brigte’s inheritance (and thus the principal obstacle to Roland’s conquest). The removal of Robert de Vaux and the installation of Hugh of Morwick was made to secure such a sheriff. The removal of Robert de Vaux and Roger de Stuteville occurred within the context of wider efforts to reassert royal control over minting and mining in the North. The county towns of Carlisle and Newcastle had been maintained as centres

106v.–107v.; BL Harley MS 3891, fol. 85r. and v.), but only one (Cumbria RO, D & C, Holm Cultram cartulary, pp. 99–101) preserves Christian’s name. The deed is printed in Stringer, ‘Acts of Lordship’, 217–18, no. 15. 255 All three cartularies abbreviate the witness list of Uhtred’s deed but retain Christian’s name (Cumbria RO, D & C, Holm Cultram cartulary, p. 99; BL Harley MS 3911, fols 100v.–101r. (now fols 106v.–107r.); BL Harley MS 3891, fol. 85r.; printed in Stringer, ‘Acts of Lordship’, 214, no. 7). 256 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 336. 257 For Hugh’s lands, gifts from the king, and documents from his archive, including two charters of Henry II and one papal bull of Alexander III, see the documents printed and calendared from originals now in Durham and from transcripts made by Roger Dodsworth in W. Holtzmann, Papsturkunden in England, 3 vols, Berlin 1931–52, II, 300, no. 112; A. M. Oliver, ‘Early History of the Family of Morwick’, Archaeologia Aeliana 4th series 12, 1935, 274–6, nos. 1–7; Acta of Henry II and Richard I, ed. Holt and Mortimer, 124, no. 214). An unpublished paper by A. J. Piper has thrown fresh light on Hugh’s early career in Northumberland. I should like to thank Dr Piper for sending me his paper and for his advice and assistance on my visits to Durham Cathedral Muniments. 258 Hugh was pardoned 2 marks owed by his father Ernald per preceptum cancellarii in 1160–1 (PR 7 Henry II, 24). This entry explicitly refers to him as Hugh fitz Ernald. 259 Liber Niger Scaccarii, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols, Oxford 1723, I, 3–7. 260 PR 31 Henry II, 183. 261 Two final concords show that Hugh was present at Westminster on 12 March 1185 and ‘at the Easter exchequer’ (‘ad scaccarium Pasche’) on 20 May (printed from cartulary copies in The Cartulary of Haughmond Abbey, ed. U. Rees, Cardiff 1985, 249, no. iii, and The Cartulary of Newnham Priory, ed. J. Godber, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 2 vols, 43 (1963–4), I, 153, no. 276). He presumably travelled north soon afterwards.

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of minting since 1157; only recently the king had consolidated – so the survey of the bishop of Durham’s estates complained in 1183262 – Newcastle’s monopoly on the minting of coins in Northumberland. A likely source of silver for these coins was the silver and lead mines situated in the northern Pennines.263 These mines had been traditionally run by men based in the city of Carlisle, two of whom were William the moneyer and William fitz Erembald. The two names have traditionally been identified as one individual, but it is much more likely that they represented two different men.264 William the moneyer, who held property in Newcastle and interests in Carlisle, was very likely the WILLEM who minted coins in Newcastle.265 He himself had farmed the mines of Carlisle for one year in 1163–4; in 1175–6 he was entrusted with supervising the hiring of two boats for the conveyance of lead from Newcastle to La Rochelle, destined for Grandmont priory;266 and he may be the WILLEM who minted coins in Carlisle (but it is possible that this was William fitz Erembald). William fitz Erembald, whose father was very likely the ERE(M)BALD who struck coins at Carlisle and Corbridge for David I and his son Earl Henry of Northumberland,267 farmed the mines of Carlisle first in 1164–5 and then continuously from 1166–7. In the latter year William’s farm of the mine was raised to 500 marks; by Michaelmas 1180, despite continuing work at the mine, he owed accumulated arrears in excess of £2,106.268 He continued to account for the mine for the first quarter of the exchequer year 1179–80, but was then removed. For the remainder of the year, and for the next year, the mine was farmed by combined sets of four new farmers, possibly men recruited from the mining operation.269 William fitz Erembald’s removal and the installation of new farmers was very likely related to the introduction of the new coinage, struck by command of the king in 1180.270 An entry in the Dialogus, which has been identified as a marginal note entered by the author or another reader in the period 1178–89,271 stated that in the time of Henry I and Henry 262 ‘Cunei monete solebant reddere x marcas. Set dominus rex Henricus secundus per cuneos quos in

Nouo Castello primum posuit redditus x marcarum usque ad tres marcas diminuit et ad ultimum cuneos a multis retro temporibus habitos abstulit’ (Boldon Book, ed. and trans. D. Austin, Chichester 1982, 10–11). 263 K. C. Dunham, B. Young, G. A. L. Johnson, T. B. Colman, and R. Fosset, ‘Rich Silver-Bearing Lead Ores in the Northern Pennines?’ Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 53, 2001, 207–12, assesses the geological evidence. 264 Their identity was first proposed by D. F. Allen, A Catalogue of English Coins in the British Museum: The Cross-and-Crosslets (‘Tealby’) Type of Henry II , London 1951, pp. cxxiv–cxxvii, cxlix. But in PR 16 Henry II, 33, there are two separate entries within the same account for William the moneyer and William fitz Erembald, custodian of the mines; the former appears as ‘Willelmus monetarius de Nouo Castello’ in Liber Vitae Dunelmensis, ed. Thompson, fol. 35r. 265 For William’s tenure of property in Newcastle, see the houses held by his son there (Durham Cathedral Muniments, 3.1.Finc.20 and 3.1.Finc.24, printed in J. Raine, Priory of Finchale, Surtees Society 6, 1837, 22–4, nos. 21–2). The ‘men of William the moneyer’ were punished for a ‘fracas’ (mesleta) in the city of Carlisle in 1169–70 (PR 16 Henry II, 33). William fitz Erembald also held a house in Newcastle (PR 7 Richard I, 24). 266 PR 22 Henry II, 137. 267 J. North, English Hammered Coinage: Early Anglo-Saxon to Henry III, c. 600–1272, 3rd edn, London 1994, 210, nos. 910–12. 268 PR 26 Henry II, 61. 269 PR 27 Henry II, 64–5. 270 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 263. A survey of the evidence for the recoinage of 1180–82 is presented by M. Allen, ‘The Chronology, Mints, and Moneyers of the English Recoinage, 1180–1247’, in J. P. Mass, The J. P. Mass Collection. English Short Cross Coins, 1180–1247, Sylloge of Coins in the British Isles, Oxford 2001, 1–12, at 1–2. 271 First identified as marginal interpolations in De Necessariis Obseruantiis Scaccarii Dialogus, ed. A. Hughes, C. G. Crump, and C. Johnson, Oxford 1902, 7–8, 62. For the proposition that they and other interpolations were made between 1178 and 1189, see H. G. Richardson, ‘Richard fitz Neal and the

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II, ‘certain counties were permitted to pay in pennies of any mint, provided that they were silver and of good weight; because, having no moneyers from an ancient institution, they acquired their money wherever they could, as in Northumberland and Cumberland’.272 This comment has often been taken to refer to the recoinage of 1158, but it is possible that it refers to coins minted in Cumberland and Northumberland before 1180, to the coins, in other words, minted on Robert de Vaux’s and Roger de Stuteville’s watch.273 The introduction of the new coinage was accompanied by the dismissal of all moneyers.274 The Newcastle mint was closed and WILLEM, who had minted coins at Carlisle, replaced by one ALAIN, very likely the Alan who was made custodian of the mine of Carlisle at Michaelmas 1185.275 The success of these measures was dependent on the willingness of sheriffs to implement them in the locality. Robert de Vaux appears to have proved particularly unwilling. In 1180–1 the itinerant justices visiting Cumberland fined his clerk William – surely the same William the clerk who witnessed numerous of Robert de Vaux’s deeds and was the parson of Irthington276 – 5 marks because ‘he ordered the circulation of the old money after the prohibition of the justices’ (‘precepit ueterem monetam currere post prohibitionem iusticiarum’).277 Old coins evidently continued to be circulated with Robert’s support. Among the offences for which he was fined in 1184–5 was the charge that he had ‘sustained the circulation of the old money contrary to the general prohibition’ (‘sustinuit cursum ueteris monete post generalem prohibitionem’).278 It was the sheriff’s duty, so the Dialogus believed, to punish moneyers if coins paid by the sheriff into the treasury did not meet ‘the proper weight’; otherwise the sheriff himself could be penalized.279 Robert de Vaux’s and his clerk’s concern with the type and weight of coins circulating in Carlisle and Cumberland was doubtless founded on more interested motives. Robert’s own father was renowned, in the post-war period, for his coined wealth. ‘Restore the castle and all the tower to him’ (‘rendez lui le chastel e tut le fermeté’), Jordan Fantosme relates the words of the king of Scots’ envoy to Robert, ‘and he will give you more coined silver than Hubert de Vaux amassed in his lifetime’ (‘e il tant vus durra de l’argent muneé, unkes Hubert de Vaus tant n’en out asemblé’).280 The interest in hoarding coins was shared certainly by Robert’s clerk and perhaps by some of his other tenants and followers. A miracle of St Cuthbert from the collection by Reginald of Durham, which must have been written following the invasions of 1173–4, recorded how one Dialogus de Scaccario’, EHR 43, 1928, 161–71 and 321–40 at 332, 336, 338. The fact that the Dialogus survives only in thirteenth-century copies prevents certainty on these identifications. 272 Dialogus de Scaccario, 9. 273 Ibid. 10 (the marginal comment ‘probably alludes to the reform of the coinage in 1158’), citing Allen, Catalogue, which, however, at pp. xcvi–xcvii argued that the Dialogus’s ‘complaint about the inadequacy of the coinage is as appropriate to 1177–8 as to any year in English history’. 274 Howden, Gesta Regis, I, 263. 275 M. R. Allen, ‘The Carlisle and Durham Mints in the Short Cross Period’, British Numismatic Journal 49, 1979, 43–4, presents evidence that the dies for the earliest Short Cross pence from Carlisle, class Ib, cannot have reached Carlisle until after July 1180. 276 Deeds of Robert de Vaux witnessed by William as William the clerk (Lanercost Cartulary, ed. Todd, 51–68, nos. 1–2, 6, 9, 17); a deed of one of Robert’s tenants, executed in Robert’s court, witnessed by William the clerk (ibid. 171, no. 139); a deed of Robert de Vaux witnessed by William ‘clerk of Irthington’ (ibid. 64–5, no. 13); a deed of Simon de Tilliol witnessed by William ‘parson of Irthington’ (ibid. 159, no. 120). 277 PR 27 Henry II, 26. Also punished by the same justices in Cumberland was one William fitz Suain ‘the forger’ (falsonarius), whose fine follows William the clerk’s. 278 PR 31 Henry II, 187. 279 Dialogus de Scaccario, 39. 280 Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle , ed. Johnston, 104, lines 1394–6.

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Gospatric fitz Ulf of Plumbland, ‘a most rich knight’ (‘miles ditissimus’), stored ‘his chest of many marks’ in Plumbland church when the king of Scots invaded.281 (This Gospatric can probably be identified with the Gospatric fitz Ulf who was fined 20s. for a defalta in 1184–5.)282 Robert’s interference in the minting of coins was serious enough, but there are signs that he and Roger de Stuteville also had a hand in matters concerning the operation of the silver mine on the border of their two jurisdictions. By 1179–80 William fitz Erembald had amassed a major debt at the exchequer for the farm of the Carlisle mine. For the first three years William had farmed the mine, in 1166–7, 1167–8, and 1168–9, he had always paid his outstanding debt from the previous year in the next one.283 In 1169–70, however, in the same year that Roger de Stuteville became sheriff of Northumberland, he paid nothing from the farm until the following exchequer year.284 After 1170–1, he accounted for close to two-thirds of his annual farm for the mine in only three years (1172–3, 1175–6, and 1178–9), accounted for less than a quarter of his farm in 1176–7, and paid nothing in 1171–2, 1173–4, 1174–5, and 1177–8.285 If the king’s government had entertained hopes of improving its collection of revenue from the mine by removing William fitz Erembald and installing new farmers in 1179–80, its hopes were quickly frustrated. The new farmers rendered account for 1180–1 and 1181–2; but by 1182–3 they collectively owed over £200.286 Then in 1182–3 William fitz Erembald and unnamed pledges returned the sum of 220 marks for the custody of the mine ‘by Roger de Stuteville and Robert de Vaux and Reiner dapifer, ‘who had given it to them at the said farm in this year’ (‘qui liberauerunt eis eandem minariam ad predictam firmam hoc anno’); the same men stood pledge, too, for the unpaid farm of three of the farmers installed in 1179–80.287 In other words, William recovered the mine, despite his massive and outstanding debts, through the influence of Robert, Roger, and Reiner, the sheriff of Yorkshire. He did not retain it for long, for in 1183–4 the mine was withdrawn from his custody and accounted for by new custodes. William and his pledges were required to pay the remainder of their original proffer (now £52), but for this fine the sheriff Roger de Stuteville ‘is to be summoned, who has received the pledges’ (‘summonendus est qui plegios recepit’).288 And it was Roger who was made responsible, ‘by command of the justices’ (‘precepto iusticiarum’), for the collection and payment of the fine.289 He completed payment only in 1189–90.290 His colleague Robert de Vaux, meanwhile, was made accountable for the outstanding debts of the farmers introduced in 1179–80. The pipe roll for 1184–5 recorded that Robert owed 281 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthberti uirtutibus quae nouellis patratae sunt

temporibus, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Society 1, 1835, 275–8, c. 129. For a hoard of English and Scottish coins from Outchester (Northumb.), close to the shrieval castle at Bamburgh, possibly deposited prior to the war of 1173–4 and discovered in February 1817, see J. Sykes, Local Records or Historical Register of Remarkable Events, 2 vols, Newcastle 1824–33, I, 287. 282 PR 31 Henry II, 185. 283 PR 13 Henry II, 173; PR 14 Henry II, 109; 15 Henry II, 121. 284 PR 16 Henry II, 33. In 1170–71 William paid £33 6s. 8d. from his unpaid farm of 1168–9, the full 500 marks for the unpaid farm of 1169–70, but only 100 marks for his farm of 1170–71 (PR 17 Henry II, 80–81). 285 PR 18 Henry II, 70; 19 Henry II, 112–13; 20 Henry II, 107; 21 Henry II, 185; 22 Henry II, 141; 23 Henry II, 123; 24 Henry II, 127; 25 Henry II, 29–30; 26 Henry II, 61. 286 PR 28 Henry II, 61; 29 Henry II, 98–9. 287 PR 29 Henry II, 99; 30 Henry II, 42. 288 PR 30 Henry II, 42. 289 PR 31 Henry II, 188; 32 Henry II, 100; 33 Henry II, 97; 34 Henry II, 192; 1 Richard I, 140. 290 PR 2 Richard I, 52.

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£316 6s. 8d. for these debts, a sum ‘exacted from him because he knew that he had been commanded by the justices to take sure pledges’ (‘exigitur ab eo quia cognouit preceptum sibi fuisse a iusticiis ut saluos plegios inde acciperet’).291 Among the pledges who proffered sums for these debts in 1184–5 and subsequent years were members of local landholding families, including two of Robert de Vaux’s tenants and followers, William fitz Odard and Simon de Tilliol.292 The way in which these debts were divided by the itinerant justices between Roger de Stuteville and Robert de Vaux suggests that the justices had reason to suspect the two of them of running the mining operation irregularly, of general bad faith over the organization of pledges and the collection of money, and possibly, too, of helping themselves to profits which belonged to the king.293

Conclusion Robert de Vaux and Roger de Stuteville had enjoyed very different positions in their respective shires. Roger de Stuteville’s career as sheriff, and his exercise of that office within his county, was determined by his status as the younger kinsman of a favoured official. His entry to office coincided with and was facilitated by the installation of Robert III de Stuteville as sheriff of Yorkshire. As a younger kinsman of a favoured official, Roger was installed sheriff over a county where his family’s influence counted for more, perhaps, than its very limited territorial interests. This made Roger dependent on what he acquired with his office (principally the castle of Bamburgh, with its territory, and important property in Newcastle) and what he acquired by way of custodies. The invasions of 1173–4 created the opportunity for Roger and his kinsmen to earn honour and reward; Jordan Fantosme’s poem is testimony to their success. The invasions, too, restored the fortunes of Ranulf de Glanville. Ranulf’s promotion, and the promotion of his own kinsmen and friends, in the post-war period posed important challenges to the family of Robert III de Stuteville.294 One important result of their promotion was the transfer of Newcastle to the custody of Roger de Glanville on the death of the previous custodian. At the very end of Roger’s tenure of office, moreover, not only did Reiner dapifer, Ranulf de Glanville’s undersheriff of Yorkshire, escape being burdened with the fines from the mine, despite his involvement in the organisation of pledges for William fitz Erembald in 1182–3, but at Easter 1185, Roger de Glanville was chosen to succeed Roger as sheriff of Northumberland (even retaining custody of Newcastle).295 Roger de Glanville and Reiner dapifer both owed their position to their powerful relation 291 PR 31 Henry II, 188. 292 William fitz Odard stood pledge for £8 9s. 4d. in 1184–5 (together with Michael of Kirkland and

Adam fitz Edmund), and (on his own) paid smaller sums every year until 1193–4 (PR 6 Richard I, 121). Simon de Tilliol stood pledge for £10 in 1184–5 and paid 13s. 4d. in 1185–6 and £4 6s. 8d. in 1186–7 (PR 31 Henry II, 188; 32 Henry II, 99; 33 Henry II, 96–7). 293 In 1961 Professor Sir James Holt briefly charged both men with ‘retaining part of the profits of the Alston lead mines’, but judged the finances of the mines to be ‘in a state of tangled confusion’ (The Northerners, Oxford 1961, 202–3). 294 At some unknown date, but certainly before 1185 and possibly even before 1174, Robert III de Stuteville’s eldest son and heir, William, married Ranulf de Glanville’s neice Bertha; the evidence for the marriage is discussed in EYC, IX, 11–12. Robert III and William, together with Roger de Stuteville (possibly our sheriff), witnessed the king’s charter granting the manors of Leiston (Norfolk) and Upton (Suffolk) to Ranulf de Glanvill between July 1173 and April 1179 (printed from the Leiston cartulary in Leiston Abbey Cartulary and Butley Priory Charters, ed. Mortimer, 75, no. 26). 295 PR 31 Henry II, 150.

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Ranulf de Glanville; Roger de Stuteville’s kinsman, Robert III, on the other hand, had died sometime prior to September 1184. 296 Robert de Vaux’s position in Cumberland was very different. Crucially, he was one of the pre-eminent barons of the county, commanding ties of lordship over tenants and ties of friendship with other members of the community. His father had secured plantation in the north-west through his service to the Empress and her son; but it was Robert’s installation as constable of Carlisle in 1173–4, and his successful (if narrowly successful) defence of the city, which restored him to wider prominence and transformed his position in the county. From Michaelmas 1174, he was sheriff of Cumberland, custodian of the king’s castle of Carlisle, and custodian, too, of the king’s forest in the county. His position was further consolidated by the continuing vacancy in the see of Carlisle and his service as itinerant justice in Westmorland in 1175–6 and Cumberland in 1177–8. The extensive scope for the exercise of his influence offered by these opportunities is implied, perhaps, by the king’s efforts to nominate a new bishop in September 1186 and, more generally, by the legislation of 1194 which prohibited sheriffs from serving as justices in their own counties.297 Robert’s influence in the county and wider district seems to have encouraged his interference, legitimate or otherwise, in the maintenance of private interests, the distribution of material resources, and, perhaps most dangerously, in events in Galloway, and, with Roger de Stuteville, in the management of the minting and mining operation. Roger de Stuteville took five years to pay off the debt from the mine and the fines imposed in 1185.298 A possible restoration to royal favour is perhaps implied by the inclusion of a Roger de Stuteville in the witness lists of two royal charters for the priory of Chartreuse and the leper hospital of Quevilly, both place-dated at Cherbourg in the period between April 1185 and January 1188,299 but the precise identity of this Roger is unclear. Robert de Vaux was held responsible for his own debt from the mine until Michaelmas 1187, when his name was removed from the entry in the pipe roll; he was confirmed in his lands by Richard I on 22 June 1190.300 He made very little headway, however, in reducing the debt from the fines imposed in 1185, finally committing himself to pay 10 marks every year in 1191–2.301 On his death in 1193–4, his brother and heir, Ranulf, proffered 100 marks ‘for the debts of his brother Robert’ (‘de debito fratris sui Roberti’); the pressure of these debts may have even forced Ranulf to sell important property and services in Devon to William Briwerre for 65 marks.302 The shrievalties of Cumberland and Northumberland 296 297 298 299

For the date of Robert’s death, possibly in 1183, see the entry in Rotuli de Dominabus, ed. Round, 2. Howden, Chronica, III, 264. PR 2 Richard I, 52. The charter for Quervilly is printed from an antiquarian transcript of a fifteenth-century French royal inspeximus in Recueil des actes de Henri II roi d’Angleterre et duc de Normandie, ed. L. Delisle, 4 vols, Paris 1909–27, II, 296–7, no. 678. The charter for Chartreuse is printed from the original and subsequent medieval copies by Recueil des plus anciens actes de la Grande-Chartreuse (1086–1196), ed. B. Bligny, Grenoble 1958, 100–2, no. 36. Since Hugh de Nonant witnessed both as electus, they must date from between the king’s departure for Normandy following Hugh’s nomination in early 1185 and his consecration in April 1188; for those dates, see Gervase of Canterbury, Chronica, in The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS 73, 1879–80, I, 326, 406; the depositions recorded in BL Cotton Charter xiii. 26 (partially printed by Dugdale, Monasticon, 1655–73 edn, III, 220–1); and the discussion in EEA XVI: Coventry and Lichfield 1183–1208, ed. M. J. Franklin, pp. xvii–xxx. 300 PR 34 Henry II, 192. For the charter of Richard I, see PRO C52/26, m. 1d; printed from the ‘Field Book of Lord William Howard’ by Ferguson, Barony of Gilsland, 2–3. 301 PR 4 Richard I, 195. 302 PR 6 Richard I, 63. For Ranulf de Vaux’s sale of property, see his original deed, now PRO DL 25/2311, also copied into PRO DL 42/2, fol. 200r.–v.

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retained their hold on the ambitions and aspirations of both families. William de Stuteville was appointed sheriff of the county of Northumberland at Michaelmas 1190 before its transfer to the bishop of Durham and received both the counties of Cumberland and Northumberland, together with their castles, on the accession of John in 1199. And in July 1216 the newly-formed baronial council of Twenty-Five conveyed the castle of Carlisle, together with the shrievalty and forest of Cumberland, to Robert II de Vaux.303 The memory of the rewards offered by tenure of the shrieval office in these counties, more perhaps than the penalties, evidently died hard in both families.

303 For William’s installation as sheriff of Northumberland at Michaelmas 1190, see PR 2 Richard I, 18,

and as sheriff of Cumberland and Northumberland in 1199, see note 84. For Robert II de Vaux in 1216, see Rotuli Litterarum Patentium in Turri Londinensi, ed. T. D. Hardy, Record Commission 1835, 150.

The Common Steeple?

THE COMMON STEEPLE? CHURCH, LITURGY, AND SETTLEMENT IN EARLY MEDIEVAL LINCOLNSHIRE Paul Everson and David Stocker This modest, interdisciplinary paper is a report on fieldwork undertaken a decade ago in Lincolnshire, whilst the authors were collecting material for the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture for that county.1 On most maps of Anglo-Saxon remains in England, Lincolnshire is thickly spread with symbols marking churches. This exceptional density is mostly due to the survival in considerable numbers of church towers of the characteristically simple, tall, unbuttressed type exemplified in a complete form by St Peter-at-Gowts or St Mary-le-Wigford in the southern suburb of Lincoln (Fig. 1).2 They are frequently said to be late Anglo-Saxon in date and thus the Corpus had a legitimate interest in their architectural sculpture, notably the distinctive capitals in their bell-chamber openings. However, we have become interested in the broader meaning of the sculptures, in the towers themselves, and in the settings of the churches to which they were attached. This paper focuses on these more general issues and is offered in advance of publication of the book that records our results in detail.3

Architecture and Obsequies Our study includes sixty towers in all, which have been considered to be relevant to this discussion in the past; and we have discussed all but nine of these in detail. These nine – Barnetby-le-Wold, Brattleby, Claxby-le-Wold, Greetwell, Irby-on-Humber, Laceby, Lincoln St Benedict, Normanby-le-Wold, and Stoke Rochford (forming Group H in Table 1) – appear wholly later in date than the mid twelfth century. Amongst the remaining fifty-one towers, we have identified a group of eleven further examples of early and mid-twelfth-century date (forming Group G in Table 1), which 1

Paul Everson and David Stocker, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Volume 5: Lincolnshire, Oxford 1999. 2 The core literature comprises Anon., ‘Saxon Churches’, The Ecclesiologist 3, 1844, 138–9; A. H. Thompson, ‘Pre-Conquest Church-Towers in North Lincolnshire’, Associated Architectural Societies Reports and Papers 29, 1907–8, 43–71; A. H. Thompson, ‘Saxon Churches in Lincolnshire’, in Memorials of Old Lincolnshire, ed. E. M. Sympson, London 1911, 53–80; G. Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England, Volume II: Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 2nd edn, London 1925; E. A. Fisher, ‘Some Little Known Towered Anglo-Saxon Churches in Lincolnshire’, Lincolnshire Architectural and Archaeological Society Reports and Papers 10 (1), 1963, 12–23; H. M. Taylor, ‘Belfry Towers in Anglo-Saxon England’, North Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies 8, 1968, 11–18; H. M. Taylor and J. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, Volumes I and II, Cambridge 1965; H. M. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, Volume III, Cambridge 1978. 3 David Stocker and Paul Everson, Summoning St Michael: Early Romanesque Towers in Lincolnshire, Oxford 2006.

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Fig. 1 Lincoln, St Peter-at-Gowts: view from SW

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have some or all of the characteristics of our classic ‘Lincolnshire towers’, but which we argue should be considered ‘derivatives’ rather than part of the main group. This leaves a group of forty towers actually or potentially of classic Lincolnshire type (forming Groups A–F in Table 1). They have come down to us in a variety of states of survival, as Table 1 indicates. St Peter-at-Gowts and twenty others are effectively complete; but quite a number have had their bell-chambers replaced, so that it is the tall lower stage that survives but not the distinctive architectural sculpture; whilst a further six are now represented only by their original tower arch. In three cases, the towers themselves have gone completely and are now represented only by loose architectural fragments of shafts and/or capitals from the double bell-chamber openings. Table 1 Synoptic Listing of the Study Group of Towers, with an indication of their form of survival GROUPS A–F: classic ‘Lincolnshire towers’ (40 items) Church [1] Alkborough, St John the Baptist

Group B

[3] Barton-upon-Humber, St Peter

B

[6] Bracebridge, All Saints

A

[7] Branston, All Saints

A

[9] Brigsley, St Helen

A

[10] Burgh-on-Bain, St Helen

F

[11] Burton Pedwardine, St Andrew

D

[12] Cabourne, St Nicholas

A

[13] Calceby, St Andrew

F

[15] Coleby, All Saints

A

[16] Corringham, St Laurence

A

[19] Glentworth, St Michael

A

[20] Grasby, All Saints

D

[21] Great Hale, St John the Baptist

C

[24] Hagworthingham, Holy Trinity

D

[25] Hainton, St Mary

A

[26] Harmston, All Saints

A

[27] Harpswell, St Chad

A

[28] Heapham, All Saints

A

[29] Holton le Clay, St Peter

A

[35] Lincoln, St Mary-le-Wigford

A

[36] Lincoln, St Peter Eastgate

A

[37] Lincoln, St Peter-at-Gowts

A

[38] Lincoln, St Peter Stanthaket

F

[40] Marton, St Margaret

A

[41] Nettleton, St John the Baptist

E

[42] Normanby-by-Spital, St Peter

F

[44] Old Clee, Holy Trinity

A

complete

Survival lower stage tower arch

fragments

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[45] Owmby, St Peter and St Paul

F

[46] Rothwell, St Mary Magdalene

A

[48] Scartho, St Giles

A

[49] South Carlton, St John the Baptist

F

[50] Springthorpe, St Lawrence and St George

A

[52] Swallow, Holy Trinity

A

[54] Thoresway, St Mary

F

[55] Thurlby-by-Bourne, St Firmin

E

[56] Waithe, St Martin

A

[57] West Rasen, All Saints

A

[59] Winterton, All Saints

B

[60] Worlaby, St Clement

F

GROUP G: later twelfth-century variants on typical eleventh-century tower forms (11 items) [4] Blyton [5] Boothby Pagnell [17] Cuxwold [18] Elsham [23] Haceby [33] Lincoln St Margaret Pottergate

[34] Lincoln, St Mark [39] Little Bytham [47] Roxby [53] Syston [58] Whitton

GROUP H: towers previously discussed in this context by others but dismissed here for lack of evidence for either late eleventh- or twelfth-century date (9 items) [2] Barnetby-le-Wold [8] Brattleby [14] Claxby-le-Wold [22] Greetwell

[31] Laceby [32] Lincoln St Benedict [43] Normanby-le-Wold [51] Stoke Rochford

[30] Irby-on-Humber

Although survival is variable, this group of forty buildings offers us a sufficiently large data-set from which to draw meaningful conclusions. So, first, it is necessary to run briefly through the architectural features we have catalogued. Doing this emphasizes what a remarkably homogeneous group of buildings is represented here; if we discount the ‘late derivatives’, the group follows the same detailed specification to a surprising extent. All of the surviving bell-chambers for which we have evidence take the distinctive form that attracted earlier scholars, with enormous, paired, double openings.4 The capitals are usually sculpted, often quite elaborately; and they are very much the showiest architectural feature in the building.5 The very scale, 4 5

See their characterization by Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, III, 891–2, 896, for example. Most accurately illustrated hitherto by the fine drawings in Baldwin Brown, Arts in Early England, II, fig. 192 facing p. 408.

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Fig. 2 York, St Mary Bishophill Junior: diagram to interpret evidence for bell hanging. Note: St Mary, unlike most Lincolnshire towers, is of four storeys, with the bells rung from the third storey (as shown) or – more probably – from the second storey (as the Lincolnshire evidence suggests).

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adventurous design, and expensive decoration of these openings draw our attention, we should say, to the main purpose of these towers. They stand to house bells. In a few cases, it is possible to detect that the bells originally hung downwards from paired overhead beams mounted above the openings in the bell-chambers, as in the published reconstruction of the arrangements in the (functionally slightly different) tower of St Mary Bishophill Junior in York (Fig. 2).6 This advertisement of the towers’ function as bell towers will be important, and we shall return to it. The bells in the upper chambers of all the surviving examples were not rung from the ground, we believe, but from a chamber below the bell-chamber in the manner evidenced at St Mary Bishophill. All of our towers have a room immediately beneath the bell-chamber, for which we think we can demonstrate use as a bell-ringing chamber, and for which no other function is evident. Typically the chambers at that level are lit by a small window or windows. These windows (of which thirty examples survive)7 provide almost the only evidence for the function of these upper chambers. The walls in which windows appear seemed, at first encountering, to be almost random. Given the uniform way in which other aspects of the tower specification has been applied across the group, we might expect the windows all to have occurred in the same wall. Eventually we realized that they are actually placed, not where they would gather the greatest amount of light (otherwise, presumably, they would all be in the south wall), but rather they are sited to overlook the largest area of the burial ground surrounding the church (Fig. 3). So at Winterton, for example, the church sits tight up against the west boundary of the churchyard and the first-floor windows are sited in the north and south walls overlooking the largest available areas of the burial ground. At Coleby, where the church is located towards the south-west corner of the churchyard, the window in the first-floor chamber faces north, overlooking the largest expanse of the churchyard. At Rothwell, where there are large areas of churchyard on all three sides of the tower, there are windows in all three walls. We suggest, then, that the activity in these upper chambers was related to what was going on in the largest areas of the churchyards round about. We shall see later that we believe that this activity was probably the synchronizing of the ringing of bells in the bell-chamber above with burial in the graveyard. The first-floor chambers were usually accessed through a high-level doorway in the east wall of the tower, opening into the nave above the tower arch (see Fig. 4). We have recorded seventeen examples of these doorways,8 and for most of those cases in our core group where we have no evidence for one there is some explanation for its non-appearance. Often both faces of the tower’s east wall are rendered; and in a number of cases the west gable of the nave has been rebuilt when bell-chambers were altered or replaced. These doorways have been the subject of much misguided speculation over the years, usually conjecturing the former existence of a gallery in the western end of the nave; but we believe that the positive and negative evidence for there being access ways to the first-floor chambers in the tower, by means of ladders from the nave, is overwhelming.9 That is not to say that all our towers’ first-floor chambers were accessed through doors in this way. Access to some may have been 6

L. P. Wenham, R. A. Hall, C. M. Briden, and D. A. Stocker, St Mary Bishophill Junior and St Mary Castlegate, Archaeology of York 8/2, London 1987, fig. 41. 7 Summoning St Michael, fig. 2/48 list 5. 8 Ibid. fig. 2/50 list 6. 9 It is important to stress that we are not saying that all such high-level openings in the west walls of early churches are doorways of this type. (Some clearly do relate to galleries at the west end of the nave, as at Deerhurst, Gloucestershire.) We are merely suggesting that this is the case within the group of Lincolnshire structures within this study.

The Common Steeple?

Fig. 3 Diagrams to illustrate the viewsheds from windows in first-floor chambers of selected towers: Coleby, Winterton, Rothwell

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Fig. 4 Lincoln, St Mary-le-Wigford: view of tower east wall from nave, showing tower arch and upper doorway

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by means of a retractable ladder from within the tower space. But the surviving evidence in our sample indicates that access via the upper doorway from the nave was much the preferred route. We return to why that should be below. The ground floors of our forty towers were also all built to a remarkably similar specification. In all examples in this study group, we have been able to show either that the tower had an original western doorway, or that it could have done so prior to that doorway being replaced by later medieval or later alterations. We can say something today about twenty-eight doorways.10 And all but a distinctive group of three in the north-west of the county conform to a very similar architectural design. There are no examples of contemporary doorways in any other walls. The space that these doorways opened into was not large – typically about 4 metres square – and it was often quite dark. In most towers, this space was not lit by direct daylight at all, but in seven clear-cut examples there was a small loop window in the south wall. Intriguingly, four of these seven windows are of ‘keyhole’ form.11 We are not sure what the significance of this detail might be, but, given the liturgical context we shall be discussing in a moment, it may be that this shape in itself had an iconographic meaning we have now lost. Where they existed, these windows would not let a great deal of light into the tower space; but most such spaces were not even provided with this level of lighting. The tower space was lit instead from the east, with borrowed light through the great tower arches that are another distinctive feature of all towers in our group (Fig. 4). These arches are simply decorated; and only three in the grouping of forty classic ‘Lincolnshire towers’ were originally moulded. But even the simplest examples have imposts and sometimes hood-moulds; and these details are always found facing to the east – rarely, if ever, facing west. These observations suggest to us not only that the tower spaces were intended to be lit by artificial lights within and by natural light from the east, but that approach to the tower space was intended from the east, where the spectator would be faced with the architectural detail. This in its turn suggests, we believe, that the western doorway serving the tower space should be thought of an exit rather than an entrance. The architectural remains, then, are telling us something about the function of this remarkably homogeneous group of buildings. They are clearly primarily about the ringing of bells; however, it seems that the bell-ringers rang them, not from the ground floor, but from the first-floor chamber above, and that they did so in a manner and at a time which was synchronized with activity in the churchyard. Furthermore, the fact that, in so many towers, the bell-ringers gained access to the ringing chamber via a ladder or similar arrangement from within the nave (rather than via the more straightforward route through the floor of the chamber from within the tower space) suggests that, at the time the bells were required, the ground-floor space in the tower was in use for something else. This was an activity that benefited from a relatively poorly lit (or artificially lit) atmosphere, and which was viewed from the east from within the church. Not only that, it is possible that the door on the far side of the tower space was used as an exit from the tower space into the churchyard rather than as an entry. We believe that the entire structure of the bell tower was designed to accommodate refinements in the burial liturgy; but before elaborating that theory, we must break off to consider – however briefly – the date of our towers. 10 Summoning St Michael, fig. 2/29 list 3. 11 Ibid. fig. 2/51 list 7. For a clear, drawn illustration of the form, see Baldwin Brown, Arts in Early

England, II, fig. 188.

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Most previous discussion about these structures has revolved around their date. We have explored the question at great length in the book,12 so it is not necessary to go into great detail here. In a nutshell, the style-critical dating of the tower capitals (and indeed all of the other architectural details) must indicate a date in the late eleventh century for the main group of classic ‘Lincolnshire towers’. The bell-chamber capitals of volute and compound volute form, like those at Scartho, are sufficiently distinctive for comparison with other securely dated buildings; they are directly comparable with those in the great Norman buildings of the first and second generations following the Conquest. In particular some of them have direct parallels with Bishop Remigius’s new cathedral at Lincoln, begun in 1073. There are many other less precisely dated details which point towards the same conclusion. For example, eleven towers have fragments of late Anglo-Saxon graveyard furniture built into them – material that is routinely of later tenth- and more frequently eleventh-century manufacture for its primary use.13 Furthermore, several are demonstrably added to earlier churches which display long-and-short quoining. Although this early Norman date runs counter to Harold Taylor’s assessment, it should also be said that we are not alone in allocating these buildings such a late period. This was also the date given them by Baldwin Brown.14 If it is accepted that these buildings do date from the half century following the Norman Conquest, our suggestion that they were built to accommodate advances in the burial liturgy can be placed in a relatively well documented historical context. We have very little relevant documentation for the burial liturgy in parish churches at this early date, and previous discussions have often approached the question by working backwards from information of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century date.15 Nevertheless, it is clear that the burial rite in England underwent substantial elaboration in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In particular, the parochial burial liturgy developed to include elaborations to the placebo and vigil. By the thirteenth century (by which time we have rudimentary documentation) the body of the deceased was brought to the church on the evening before the day of burial and a prescribed round of prayers and other rites was conducted over the coffin, before, on the following day, the body was taken from the church for burial in the churchyard.16 It is usually presumed that this rite was undertaken before the main church altar (and indeed, in those churches without towers, presumably, it would have been). And in later medieval liturgy this was certainly the case, whether there was a tower or not. But all of our towers show signs of substantial alterations in the thirteenth century and later, demonstrating that, by this time, they were clearly not fulfilling the liturgical roles for which they were originally constructed in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The original architectural specification we have documented, however, is perfectly adapted for the performance of these elements of the funeral liturgy, even if the later medieval changes strongly suggest that they ceased to be used for these purposes after about a century. The original architectural features we have observed – the dark tower space viewed from the east and lit largely by candles, the exit from the church to the west, 12 13 14 15

Summoning St Michael, part 3 section 1. Ibid. fig. 3/1 list 12. Baldwin Brown, Arts in Early England, II, chap. 13. However, there are a valuable conspectus and specific studies of the earlier material in D. Sicard, La liturgie de la mort dans l’église Latine des origins à la réforme Carolingienne, Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen 63, Münster Westfalen 1978; and more recently The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church, ed. H. Gittos and M. Bradford Bedingfield, Henry Bradshaw Society Subsidia 5, London 2005. 16 e.g. Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066–1550, London 1997, 44–50.

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the provision of bells, and the upper windows which allow bell-ringing in synchronization with completion of the ritual at the graveside – can all be understood as providing an architectural setting for the funeral rite. We suggest, then, that the tower space was effectively a chapel, designed to hold the coffin of the deceased and for performance of the vigil liturgy on the night before burial . . . before, in the morning, the body was taken out for burial within the churchyard, as the bells above tolled. This conclusion, derived as it is from evidence in the fabric alone, is quite valid as a functional explanation for these distinctive buildings; but there is some documentary evidence which supports our contention that provision of a distinct architectural space for the vigil was an elaboration in the burial service promoted by the incoming Norman church establishment. Archbishop Lanfranc himself was not only a great codifier and innovator in the matter of liturgy, but he was specifically interested in ensuring that churches provided the appropriate architectural setting for services. In the Decreta Lanfranci, careful prescriptions are made for the performance of the placebo, dirge, and vigil following the death of Canterbury monks,17 and we believe we can show that the peculiar form taken by the transept ends at the monasteries at Canterbury, Saint-Etienne at Caen, and perhaps St Albans also (with all of which churches Lanfranc was directly associated) is designed to accommodate this ritual. In their eleventh-century forms, these buildings all provided a ground-floor chapel for the vigil, located at the end of the transept nearest the graveyard and adjacent to the doorway into the cemetery; and they also included an associated turret, in which bells were mounted that could be synchronized with services in both the churchyard and the transept chapel. Canterbury also acquired a free-standing bell tower in the graveyard, to which we shall return. According to the Decreta Lanfranci, the bodies of the deceased lay in the customary or designated chapel – ‘in loco ubi poni solet’ and ‘in loco in quo caeteri fratres deponi solent’ – overnight before burial, which was situated away from the choir and whence they were taken out into the churchyard, accompanied by the tolling of special bells in the morning.18 The door in the south wall of the transept at Canterbury was evidently primarily a ceremonial exit rather than an entrance. Now we can look, too, at the church erected under the direction of Lanfranc’s student and follower, Bishop Remigius, at his new secular cathedral at Lincoln. As many have commented before, as judged by its plan the church was almost a copy of Lanfranc’s church at Canterbury.19 And, although nothing survives above ground, it is clear that it had the same distinctive two-storeyed chapels in the north transept, the prominent bell turret in the north-west corner, and the doorway next to it that led out 17 The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D. Knowles, London 1951, esp. 122–32. 18 Ibid. 125: ‘positoque corpore in loco ubi poni solet, cessent signa’; while the body lies there, the offices

go on and are attended by the community, except those deputed to remain with the body ‘nunquam enim sine psalmodia corpus esse debet, excepto quando in choro aliquid communis officii celebratur’; 128: when the community gathers for the burial service ‘pergant ad sepeliendum fratrem. Ad quem accedentes sive de capitulo, sive de choro exeant, canendo “Verba mea” ad corpus veniant; interim pulsetur tribus vicibus unum de maioribus signis’; 128: the principal officiants don vestments reserved for the purpose and draw up around the body in a prescribed way and ‘reliquae conventus ad dexteram et ad sinistram sicut est ordo eorum’; then, 129: after the antiphon In paradisum there is a prescribed order for leaving the church for the graveside, while singing In exitu Israel, which implies that the point of exit is immediately adjacent to the location where the body has lain. 19 J. Bilson, ‘The Plan of the First Cathedral Church of Lincoln’, Archaeologia 62 (2), 1911, 543–64; R. D. H. Gem, ‘Lincoln Minster: Ecclesia Pulchra, Ecclesia Fortis’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Lincoln Cathedral, ed. T. A. Heslop and V. A. Sekules, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 8, 1986, 9–28; P. Kidson, ‘Architectural History’, in A History of Lincoln Minster, ed. D. Owen, Cambridge 1994, 14–46.

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to the burial ground, which lay to the north in this case. We suggest that the coincidence of plan types argues that similar arrangements to those identified in the Decreta Lanfranci for his monks were also instituted at the new cathedral at Lincoln for seculars. Here, too, the body of the deceased would be installed before the altar in the lower chapel in the northern end of the north transept for the overnight vigil, and then on the following morning the body would be taken through the north door for burial, in procession and synchronized with the tolling of the bells mounted in the large turret at the north-west angle of the transept. From a comparison between the Decreta Lanfranci and what is known of the layout of Lanfranc’s church at Canterbury, we can say with some confidence that the lower chapel in which the vigil took place was dedicated to St Michael, as may also have been the equivalent chapel at Lincoln.20 Furthermore, the upper chapel of the two-storey pairing – from which the Decreta require the singing of the responses expressing the joy in heaven at the receipt of the dead soul – was dedicated at Canterbury to All Saints (i.e. to the company of heaven). Clearly St Michael has an important role to play in the Anglo-Norman funeral liturgy – not surprisingly, perhaps, given his role as the Christian psychopomp, the conveyor of souls to heaven.21 What is more, St Michael is also strongly associated with bells – as we can see reflected in the dedication to the archangel of the belfry chapel in the cathedral graveyard at Worcester and perhaps also in the dedication of St Michael-le-Belfry at York.22 Apart from indications that the chapel originally intended for the vigil at Lincoln cathedral was dedicated to the saint, we have no direct connections between our Lincolnshire towers and St Michael, but there are plenty of associations between eleventh-century bells and the saint and we might suggest that that some at least would have been dedicated to him. The appearance of such a tower, then, added to the west of at least forty churches in Lincolnshire in the two generations after the Conquest, was far from being an empty architectural statement. The builders were making, we argue, a number of points. First, they were providing the equipment and an architectural setting for the latest thinking in church liturgy, as sponsored by the foremost liturgist of the age, Archbishop Lanfranc (himself the very embodiment of the new Anglo-Norman church settlement). At a more local level also, the sponsors of the towers were associating themselves specifically with the new cathedral rising on the hill in Lincoln, not just because their new towers carried similar architectural details – though that would certainly have been part of it – but because they were associating themselves with the powerful new burial liturgy that the new Norman bishop had given material form to in the north transept of the new cathedral. These towers, then, are declarations of identification with and loyalty to the Norman church settlement. Having reached such an understanding of the function and symbolism of the towers, the obvious next step was to ask who might have built these new architectural 20 The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. R. Willis, London 1845, I, 39; P. B. G. Binnall,

‘Notes on the Medieval Altars and Chapels in Lincoln Cathedral’, Antiquaries Journal 42, 1962, 71. 21 Summoning St Michael, part 3 section 3 with references given there. See now also Richard F. Johnson,

St Michael the Archangel in Medieval English Legend, Woodbridge 2005, esp. 71–86. 22 R. Willis, ‘The Architectural History of the Cathedral and Monastery at Worcester’, Archaeological

Journal 20, 1863, 259–60; C. Norton, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Cathedral at York and the Topography of the Anglian City’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 151, 1998, 5–8, 24, 26; idem, Archbishop Thomas of Bayeux and the Norman Cathedral at York, Borthwick Papers 100, York 2001, 11.

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statements, with their complex and didactic meanings. To do this we need to turn from the buildings themselves to look at contemporary documentation and at the archaeology of their contemporary settlements.

Settlement and Society Although we began this complementary part of our work with a series of received assumptions about the close relationship between parochial churches and the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, we have found that (in our sample anyway) such relationships are actually less close than is frequently thought.23 To put it briefly, we now feel we need to consider the possibility that the wider community might have been just as influential as their lords, both in the foundation of the churches in the first place and in the subsequent erection of towers. Superficially, we might guess that the towers were some kind of marker of ecclesiastical status. So, first, we should assess the types of church likely to acquire such a tower. From other studies we have published, we are clear that the towers are not related to the acquisition of burial rites themselves.24 We have demonstrated that the parochial system in Lincolnshire was well established by the late eleventh century; and with a number of the churches in our study we can show that the churches and their graveyards had been established several generations before the towers were built, since there is early funerary sculpture from the sites. How then can we characterize the churches that were provided with towers in the late eleventh century? We have started by considering the physical evidence. We have information about the eleventh-century plan of the churches in only a small number of our cases. And in most of these cases – Holton or Bracebridge for example – the simple two-celled structure for which evidence survives does not indicate a church of very high status.25 Five of our churches have the more developed later medieval church plans with transepts that might indicate churches of a higher status – namely Corringham, Old Clee, Thurlby-by-Bourne, West Rasen, and Winterton – but the great majority have no such markers. Furthermore, both documentary sources and the place-name itself suggest that the tower at Springthorpe belonged to a church founded in a secondary settlement.26 Indeed we think that, when it acquired its tower, it was probably only a parochial chapel with burial rights. Most towers were added, then, to unexceptional churches of parochial status and, although a few might have been more senior or older elements in the ecclesiastical landscape, at least one was of the lesser rank of parochial chapel. Frustrated by the inconclusiveness of the evidence for church status to be found within the church plans themselves, we have undertaken a detailed analysis of the settlements in which all fifty-one of our churches – classic ‘Lincolnshire towers’ plus their immediate 23 e.g. J. Blair, ‘Local Churches in Domesday Book and Before’, in Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt,

Woodbridge 1987, 265–78; Richard Morris, Churches in the Landscape, London 1989, 163–7 and chap. 6. 24 Everson and Stocker, Corpus 5: Lincolnshire, esp. 72–80; D. A. Stocker and P. Everson, ‘Five Towns

Funerals: Decoding Diversity in Danelaw Stone Sculpture’, in Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress, Nottingham and York, 21–30 August 1997 , ed. J. Graham-Campbell, R. Hall, J. Jesch, and D. N. Parsons, Oxford 2001, 223–43. 25 J. Sills, ‘St Peter’s Church, Holton-le-Clay, Lincolnshire’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology 17, 1982, 29–42 is the principal archaeological study of a surviving church in our core study group. 26 P. L. Everson, C. C. Taylor, and C. J. Dunn, Change and Continuity: Rural Settlement in North-West Lincolnshire, London 1991, 9; K. Cameron with J. Insley, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names, EPNS Popular Series 1, Nottingham 1998, 115.

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Fig. 5 Typical example of plan-form analysis of a settlement within the study group: Harmston near Lincoln derivatives (Groups A–F plus G in Table 1) – stand, to see if we can learn anything about the character of churches that attracted our towers from their setting within the settlement or within the landscape more broadly. Of course, this technique raises questions about the foundation of parochial churches more generally, as well as about those which subsequently acquired towers; but even for these purposes beyond the scope of this present paper, our study group of fifty-one (out of about six hundred in the medieval county, that is about 8.5 per cent) may represent a good basis on which to generalize. To assess the setting of each church, we have undertaken a simple plan-form analysis of each settlement to see where the church lies within it. Harmston, just to the south of Lincoln, offers a fairly straightforward, but illuminating, example. Here, the first edition Ordnance Survey map clearly records blocks of settlement plots of several different characters in the village (Fig. 5). There are several blocks of distinctive, regularly divided crofts, separated by minor lanes or paths; and, equally clearly, there are two largish square enclosures standing out as quite different types of settlement relic. In addition, a third component in the nineteenth-century village was clearly occupied by buildings in only a much more piecemeal fashion. Based on our experience of other examples in Lincolnshire, and elsewhere in England, we are able to suggest that this third type of settlement component is typical of an infilled green. At Harmston, it therefore emerges that the church sits on what we believe was once an open space. This plan-form analysis of Harmston conforms with what we know of the place from Domesday Book, where this is a relatively simple settlement divided between two holdings, only one of which was a free-standing manor at Domesday. The other holding had become a manor by the thirteenth century, but was a soke

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holding in 1086. Indeed this settlement’s population was dominated numerically by sokemen in the Domesday record. Once we had undertaken parallel exercises for all of the fifty-one settlements in our study group,27 we were able to make useful generalizations about where churches are usually placed within Lincolnshire settlements. We find that, with only three exceptions where a convincing analysis is problematic, we were able to group the church sites together and place them into one of only three broad categories (Table 2). In 27 per cent of total occurrences we find that the church site is not related to anything in the late Anglo-Saxon settlement pattern at all, but to some sort of topographical location or pre-existing feature (Table 2, column 1). One surprise with this first type of church site was the clear observation that as many as twelve examples are related to springs, as at Heapham or Rothwell. This is an unexpected finding deserving further consideration but of only tangential relevance to the building of towers and to this paper.28 The second type of church location we have documented is much more predictable. These are cases where the church clearly has a direct physical relationship with the manorial curia (Table 2, column 3). Burton Pedwardine provides a good example of this classic relationship, with the church founded as the property of the manor and physically associated with it. However, Table 2 shows that, even bundling together all variations of manorial relationship, it occurs in only 43 per cent of total occurrences. The third type of church location was a complete surprise and represents one of our more exciting discoveries (Table 2, column 2). In 31 per cent of occurrences we have found that the church within the settlement was not founded near a prominent topographical feature, or within or at the gates of the manor, but on an open ‘green’; on public open space within the settlement, as indeed we have already seen in our specimen of plan-form analysis at Harmston (Fig. 5). The summary listing reproduced as Table 2 shows all our churches allocated to one or more of these three basic types. A notable aspect of this analysis, which undoubtedly deserves more attention, is that a number of our churches move from one category to another, as the settlement develops around them. Some seem to start by a natural feature, around which a settlement subsequently develops, like Holton le Clay. Other churches (like that at Branston) were, we believe, initially founded on a large open green, which was subsequently filled in and the church was subsumed within the manorial curia. This study of church locations within the vill is fascinating in its own right, but for the present purpose we must set aside the multitude of interesting more general questions it raises, and turn back towards the narrower question of the light it might cast on the circumstances surrounding the construction of our towers. Such towers have often been seen hitherto as expressions of lordly patronage, and so the most comfortable group to consider is those which our plan-form analyses show were attached to the 43 per cent of churches physically associated with the manorial curiae. We have been able to subdivide this group into three parts (Table 2, column 3). First, a group of nine towers were added to churches built at or near the centre of the lord’s curia. In these cases, indeed, we sometimes have evidence for the presence of the hall alongside (as is the case very clearly at Burton Pedwardine, for example). Here then, we presumably see the ‘proprietary’ church. Like the churches 27 As reported for each in the form of an inventory in Summoning St Michael, part 4. 28 Summoning St Michael, part 3, section 2.

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Table 2 Churches Arranged by Topographical Group, resulting from plan-form analysis of the settlements Type 1 (18 items) Type 2 (21 items) Location governed by relationship Established on a green or other with a pre-existing, usually natural, public space feature

Type 3 (28 items) Manorial associations: within manorial curia (9) associated with manorial curia gate (13) parts of planned settlement component, typically tofts (6)

[1] Alkborough, St John the Baptist [4] Blyton, St Mary [3] Barton-upon-Humber, St Peter [7] Branston, All Saints

[7] Branston, All Saints [11] Burton Pedwardine, St Andrew [23] Haceby, St Margaret

[7] Branston, All Saints

[9] Brigsley, St Helen

[9] Brigsley, St Helen [10] Burgh-on-Bain, St Helen

[13] Calceby, St Andrew [15] Coleby, All Saints

[41] Nettleton, St John the Baptist [49] South Carlton, St John the Baptist

[12] Cabourne, St Nicholas [18] Elsham, All Saints [24] Hagworthingham, Holy Trinity [27] Harpswell, St Chad [28] Heapham, All Saints

[16] Corringham, St Laurence ? [18] Elsham, All Saints [19] Glentworth, St Michael [20] Grasby, All Saints [21] Great Hale, St John the Baptist ? [25] Hainton, St Mary [26] Harmston, All Saints [28] Heapham, All Saints [29] Holton le Clay, St Peter ? [40] Marton, St Margaret

[52] Swallow, Holy Trinity [53] Syston, St Mary [58] Whitton, St John [60] Worlaby, St Clement [3] Barton-upon-Humber, St Peter [12] Cabourne, St Nicholas [13] Calceby, St Andrew [19] Glentworth, St Michael [20] Grasby, All Saints [21] Great Hale, St John the Baptist [25] Hainton, St Mary

[29] Holton le Clay, St Peter [40] Marton, St Margaret [44] Old Clee, Holy Trinity [46] Rothwell, St Mary Magdalene [48] Scartho, St Giles [50] Springthorpe, St Lawrence and St George [54] Thoresway, St Mary [58] Whitton, St John

[45] Owmby, St Peter and St Paul [47] Roxby, St Mary [50] Springthorpe, St Lawrence and St George [56] Waithe, St Martin [57] West Rasen, All Saints [59] Winterton, All Saints

[26] Harmston, All Saints [27] Harpswell, St Chad [44] Old Clee, Holy Trinity [45] Owmby, St Peter and St Paul [48] Scartho, St Giles [57] West Rasen, All Saints [5] Boothby Pagnell, St Andrew [39] Little Bytham, St Medard [47] Roxby, St Mary [54] Thoresway, St Mary [55] Thurlby-by-Bourne, St Firmin [59] Winterton, All Saints

Total: 67 occurrences Not allocated: Bracebridge, Cuxwold, Normanby-by-Spital

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themselves, the towers might be seen as very visible appurtenances of the manorial lord. The peasantry must have felt that they were entering the lord’s familia in order to worship. However, in some of these cases – Whitton and Branston, for example – we have good reason to think that the church was here first and that the manorial lord placed his new hall alongside it. Perhaps in these cases a slightly different claim was being made. The new manorial lord was laying claim to be the direct successor of the tradition and authority in the vill which had been symbolized formerly by the church alone, and the addition of a tower might be seen as bolstering that claim. In a further thirteen examples, however, our towers were added to churches located at or near the gates of the curia; either just inside it or just outside it, it is not always possible to tell which. It is worth observing, perhaps, that in every one of these cases we have been able to identify some stimulus (sometimes a natural feature, sometimes a ‘green’) which we presume attracted the church prior to, or contemporary with, the establishment of the curia. In these cases, then, the new manor was not appropriating the church to itself in quite the same way as the examples in the earlier category. But such cases still make a clear visible statement that the church was dependent on the lord. In such circumstances, the addition of a tower would still be a visual symbol of the close relationship between the church and the manorial lord, although it might be argued that the liminal location was intended to demonstrate the interdependence of the parties in the feudal bargain. We have also identified six examples where the church seems to have been established as a single or double plot in a row of settlement units as part of the initial layout of the settlement, or as part of its replanning. Churches in such locations have presumably been located through some form of ‘lordly action’, since it is hard to see how else such thoroughgoing replanning within the settlement could be achieved. In such cases we might think the construction or addition of towers was a subsidiary part of the same lordly blueprint for the settlement. Significantly, we believe, several towers in this category belong to our ‘late derivative’ group, although only at Thurlby-by-Bourne do we have documentation that the church and the tower date from the same period.29 The new church at Thurlby, sitting in its regular plot matching the peasant row to its west and with its ‘late derivative’ tower, was probably that consecrated in 1112. The ‘lordly action’ in this case was undertaken by Peterborough abbey. Of course, we can get some information about the lords who built our towers from Domesday Book. Given our clear archaeological dating of these towers in the generation or so between c. 1080 and c. 1110, they are clearly approximately contemporary with the Inquest and the latter must have something to tell us about their ownership and patronage. Having established the likely owner of the church at Domesday (through advowsons, manorial descents etc.), the easiest analysis to undertake is a direct comparison between the lists of towers and tenants-in-chief.30 This exercise shows that there is no correlation between the building of towers and particular tenants-in-chief. When ranked, the number of churches with towers held by tenants-in-chief occurs in approximately the same order as the size of those tenants-in-chief’s Lincolnshire estates. In other words, having a particular tenant-in-chief as overlord made no difference to how likely it was that any individual church would acquire a ‘Lincolnshire tower’. This observation led us to suppose that, insofar as individuals were critical in the sponsorship of towers, the key figures were not the tenants-in-chief, but the next level down – their sub-tenants, 29 EEA I: Lincoln 1067–1185, ed. D. M. Smith, London 1980, 201. 30 Presented as a tabulation in Summoning St Michael, fig. 3/32 list 16.

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Table 3 Domesday Profile of Topographically ‘Type 2’ Churches, those established on greens or other public spaces Church

[4] Blyton

Group DB tenant-in-chief

G

Manorial status (S = soke of)

King

S Kirton

No. of DB sokemen no recorded population 2

Church Largest and holding priest? in vill? -

yes

[7] Branston

A

Walter d’Aincurt

MANOR

yes

yes

[9] Brigsley [13] Calceby [15] Coleby

A F A

Count Alan Earl Hugh King

S Waltham S Greetham MANOR

38 <17 10

yes

yes yes yes

[16] Corringham [18] Elsham

A G

King ? bishop of Lincoln

S Kirton MANOR

45 13

yes -

[19] Glentworth [20] Grasby [21] Great Hale [25] Hainton [26] Harmston [28] Heapham [29] Holton le Clay ? [40] Marton

A D C A A A A A

King bishop of Bayeux Gilbert de Gant ? Earl Hugh King Ivo Taillebois bishop of Lincoln

S Kirton MANOR S Culverthorpe ? S Waddington S Kirton S Tetney S Stow?

24 11 38 4 38 16 14 ?

yes yes -

yes yes (joint) yes yes yes ? yes yes yes yes

[45] Owmby [47] Roxby [50] Springthorpe

F G A

bishop of Bayeux Ralph Pagnell King

MANOR MANOR S Kirton

-

no yes yes

[56] Waithe [57] West Rasen [59] Winterton

A A A

Guy of Craon Ralph Pagnell Earl Hugh

S Ashby MANOR S West Halton

17 23 no recorded population 6 37 16

priest

no yes yes (joint)

reeves, and bailiffs. This lower level of local lord is sometimes named in Lincolnshire Domesday returns, but not in the majority of cases. Nine such individuals, who must have been in residence when the towers were added to the various churches, are named. Five have Anglo-Norman names but four have AngloScandinavian names, although this does not necessarily mean that a greater number were not of Anglo-Scandinavian stock. At the least, these potential tower-builders were not all Norman incomers. Furthermore, these named figures are mostly, though not exclusively, associated with churches located either within the manor or adjacent to its gates. Towers at these churches could be seen as gestures by these minor lords – expensive personal symbols demonstrating not just the lord’s status in the community to its other members through his ownership and enhancement of the church, but also making a political gesture for the benefit of his social equals and superiors. We have seen that the towers carried with them a very specific political and liturgical meaning, demonstrating support for the Anglo-Norman church settlement.

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We have already noted, however, that a large group amongst our towers – amounting to over 30 per cent of the total – were added to churches that were located with no regard to the presence or location of manorial curiae, but rather were placed on open greens within the settlement. Such churches ‘on-the-green’ were not without lords, of course; their tenants-in-chief are listed in Table 3. But an important discovery is that our study shows a clear connection between these churches ‘on-the-green’ and the numbers of sokemen reported in the vill at Domesday. The great majority of the settlements where the church was founded ‘on-the-green’ also have large numbers of sokemen in the vill in the Domesday returns. Typically more than 50 per cent of their total reported population falls into this social category, and in over half the examples that have emerged from the plan-form analysis that figure is over 70 per cent.31 When we rank our sample settlements in order of sokemen, and identify those churches established ‘on-the-green’, it is clear that most churches of this type occur in settlements with a preponderance of sokemen. This coincidence between towers added to churches ‘on-the-green’ and those vills with large numbers of sokemen is hard to ignore. In these cases it is tempting to suggest that the large numbers of sokemen (and indeed in some cases the physical absence of any manorial curia until later in the Middle Ages) resulted in the sokemen procuring – no doubt with the consent of their lords – the establishment of a church on their common space, their green. Furthermore, in at least seven cases that we know of (and probably more for which we have no proof), such churches were established with their rectory alongside them, and in some instances, as at Glentworth or Great Hale, that physical relationship persisted into the modern era.32 In these cases of churches founded ‘on-the-green’, we want to suggest that the sokemen themselves had some voice in the addition of the tower to their church. This seems a reasonable conclusion in circumstances where the church had been founded and the rectory provided using common, rather than explicitly lordly, resources. In these cases, then, given what we have said about the political and liturgical meaning of the towers as architectural statements it may be possible to suggest that there was support for the Anglo-Norman settlement not only amongst the minor aristocracy at the second or even third tier of tenure,33 but also amongst the sokemen themselves. To conclude, we believe that the group of closely related buildings we have defined as ‘Lincolnshire towers’ were built onto churches occupying a variety of ranks within the ecclesiastical hierarchy, even though the towers themselves are not indicators of any particular ecclesiastical status. A substantial number, we find, were probably built at the direct instigation of resident, second-rank lords – sometimes acting very much in their own interests and aiming to make a very personal statement, but frequently (in those cases where the churches lay at the gates of their curiae) clearly acting in conjunction with their community. In a sizeable minority of cases, however, our topographical study allows us to suggest that the impetus for the construction of the tower, like that for the location of the church in the first place, came primarily not from the lords of the vill but from the sokemen.

31 Presented as a tabulation ibid. fig. 3/34 list 18. 32 This observation raises the intriguing possibility that the sokemen might also have employed their

priest, using the same common resources with which they built the church. This in turn might explain why, in cases such as Corringham and Great Hale, some twelfth-century evidence implies resident priests claiming ownership of the village church by hereditary descent, in opposition to the lord of the vill and to the holder of the advowson. See the entries for Corringham and Great Hale in Summoning St Michael, part 4 inventory. 33 For the third tier see C. P. Lewis, ‘The Domesday Jurors’, HSJ 5, 1993, 17–44 at 26–7.

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Fig. 6 Stoke Dry, St Andrew, Leicestershire: early twelfth-century sculpted shaft, now supporting the chancel arch; to the left a soul in the form of a bird ascends to heaven supported by St Michael, who repulses the cat-like devil below; to the right a ringer, representing the community of the living, tolls a bell in an upper opening; other demons lie defeated below

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Our study of the towers themselves shows, we suggest, that they were probably erected to cater for new liturgical developments within the burial rite, sponsored by Lanfranc’s reforms of the Anglo-Norman church. We are proposing, therefore, that the desire to keep up to date with developments in the liturgy, and to take advantage of the efficacy of burial rite, was not confined to the minor aristocracy, but was also felt amongst the sokeman class. They, too, wanted to call on St Michael at the hour of their death, and to benefit from his strength when avoiding the demons who would do battle for their souls (Fig. 6). In doing so, we suggest, they too wanted to demonstrate their support for the Anglo-Norman church settlement.

Masculinity in W illiam of Malmesbury ’s Wulfstan

THE QUESTION OF MASCULINITY IN WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY’S PRESENTATION OF WULFSTAN OF WORCESTER Kirsten A. Fenton One of the more unusual explanations for English defeat in 1066 appears in the Life of St Wulfstan.1 In it Bishop Wulfstan lambastes English noblemen for their luxurious style of living as well as their long flowing hair and he warns them that this will lead to disaster if they do not mend their ways. Not one to be accused of being all talk and no action, Wulfstan proceeds to cut the hair of all those that he can with a special knife which he kept to hand precisely for this purpose. Anyone who thought it worth objecting he would openly charge with effeminacy [mollitia],2 and openly threaten them with ill: men who blushed to be what they had been born, and let their hair flow like women, would be no more use than women in the defence of their country against the foreigner. No one would deny that this was shown to be very true that same year when the Normans came.3

Wulfstan’s prophetic awareness of the coming of the Normans is particularly striking not only because of the wonderful image of Wulfstan as a barber but also because of its explicit use of a gendered language. Men here are compared to women with their long flowing hair and are accused of effeminacy, which implies that they were not acting as men should. Is it also the case that Wulfstan, a cleric reprimanding laymen, is in turn being cast as the ‘real man’ here? He is certainly presented as a figure of power and authority and as a prophet to the English. Is he also a hero in the sense of a masculine ideal? This passage suggests that a gendered reading of the text, with especial reference to the presentation of Wulfstan, may be worth exploring further. These questions are especially interesting in light of recent historiography, which has suggested that the eleventh and twelfth centuries were a period in which questions were raised about masculinity and especially about the masculinity of the clergy. In particular some recent historians feel that there could be problems in 1

Vita Wulfstani, in William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives: Lives of SS. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, Oxford 2002 [hereafter VSW, cited by book and chapter]. I am most grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the award of a Research Fellowship in 2004. I would also like to thank Professor Pauline Stafford whose guidance is, as always, gratefully appreciated. 2 Malmesbury’s choice of words here is interesting and has important gender connotations. The main meaning of mollitia is softness, which can be extended to include effeminacy. There is a possible etymological link between mollis and mulier (woman) with authors like Isidore of Seville (whom Malmesbury knew) making this connection: Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols, Oxford 1911, II, xi.ii.17–19; Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, II, 459; Julia M. H. Smith, ‘Gender and Ideology in the Early Middle Ages’, in Gender and Christian Religion, ed. R. N. Swanson, Studies in Church History 34, 1998, 51–73 at 55–7. For Roman ideas of softness in relation to unmanly actions and behaviour see Mathew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity, Chicago 2001, 24–5. 3 VSW, i.16.3–4.

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presenting a late eleventh-century cleric as an ideal man.4 The Gregorian reform movement of the eleventh and twelfth centuries has been argued to mark a new period of anxiety and concern about gender definition, especially for male clerics.5 The reformers were keen to promote celibacy and chastity for all those in major religious orders, including bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons. Resistance to the imposition of these measures could be violent in the Anglo-Norman world: in 1072 John, archbishop of Rouen, strove to separate priests from their mistresses and was stoned out of the synod for attempting to do so.6 The stress on celibacy and chastity meant that the reformers were excluding the clergy from a masculinity based on marriage and the bearing of children. Jo Ann McNamara has argued that this drive for clerical celibacy posed a problem for the gender system as a whole since it simultaneously defined the clergy, separated them from the laity, and distanced them from traditional ways in which masculinity was defined.7 The crux of the matter was whether clerics could truly be masculine. Recent work has raised the possibility that this stress on celibacy led to a situation where there was more than one valid masculinity within Anglo-Norman society, a point argued by Robert Swanson who sees the existence of a third clerical gender in precisely this period.8 It will be interesting to ask how far these notions are present in William of Malmesbury’s depiction of Wulfstan and how far they affected him. It will certainly be necessary to bear in mind throughout that it is a monk who is writing. William of Malmesbury was a Benedictine monk of the twelfth century and a prolific writer whose literary oeuvre spans a number of genres including political and contemporary history as well as hagiography.9 Wulfstan of Worcester emerges as a prominent figure in three of his works.10 He appears in Malmesbury’s political history of the English, the Gesta Regum Anglorum, which covers events from the end of Roman Britain until c. 1125. Likewise Wulfstan is present in Malmesbury’s ecclesiastical history of the English, the Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, which spans the period from the Conversion to c. 1125. In both these texts Wulfstan features as an important figure defending and protecting the rights and interests of the Worcester

4

Jo Ann McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050–1150’, in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare A. Lees, Thelma Fenster, and Jo Ann McNamara, London 1994, 3–29; Robert N. Swanson, ‘Angels Incarnate: Clergy and Masculinity from Gregorian Reform to Reformation’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley, London 1999, 160–77. 5 Of course the preoccupation with clerical celibacy was not new to this period and the idea of sexual control had been a feature of the Western Church since before the fifth century. What was new to the eleventh and twelfth centuries was Gregory VII’s stress on a sense of moral chastity and celibacy, which added a greater depth to these traditional notions of masculine self-control and which had particular significance for the clergy: H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII and the Chastity of the Clergy’, in Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform, ed. Michael Frassetto, London 1998, 269–302. 6 Orderic, II, 200–1 and n. 5. 7 McNamara, ‘Herrenfrage’. 8 Swanson, ‘Angels Incarnate’. ‘Emasculinity’ would be an example of an alternative masculinity, as suggested for nineteenth-century Britain by John Tosh, ‘What should Historians do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain’, in Gender and History in Western Europe, ed. Robert Shoemaker and Mary Vincent, London 1998, 65–85, esp. 72–5. 9 The most recent overview of Malmesbury’s life and works can be found in R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 2nd edn, Woodbridge 2003. A list of William’s literary works is provided in Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, II, pp. xlvi–xlvii. 10 For Wulfstan see Emma Mason, St Wulfstan of Worcester, c. 1008–1095, Oxford 1990; St Wulfstan and his World, ed. Julia S. Barrow and N. P. Brooks, Aldershot 2005.

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community. The most detailed treatment of Wulfstan, however, appears in Malmesbury’s Life of Wulfstan. Although the chronological sequence of the texts is difficult to establish, it is thought that Malmesbury’s Life was the last of these three works to be written.11 The three books that make up Malmesbury’s Life cover Wulfstan’s early years and education, his episcopate, and his character, personal habits, and miracle working. The Life does not provide what we might see as a biography of Wulfstan, but rather has the general purpose of establishing his sanctity, an aim common to the hagiographical genre.12 Malmesbury’s Life purports to be a Latin translation of a now lost text written in English by Coleman (d. 1113), one time chaplain of Wulfstan.13 This raises all sorts of difficult questions about how to distinguish between Coleman and Malmesbury’s texts. How far, for instance, did Malmesbury shape Coleman’s portrait of Wulfstan? One way to help us establish Malmesbury’s own view is to compare his presentation of Wulfstan with depictions of other male figures in his texts. Similar portraits may act as a guide to the attributes and characteristics which Malmesbury thought it important male figures display; significant differences may signal Coleman’s influence. This paper considers Malmesbury’s presentation of Wulfstan in each of these three texts. It considers questions of masculinity in relation to sexuality, the expression of violence, and prophecy.

Sexuality and Chastity Marriage, sexual activity, and the begetting of children are commonplace themes in definitions of masculinity and were certainly significant c. 1100. The church councils and synods held in the eleventh and twelfth centuries make this clear through their concern with marriage and sexual behaviour. In particular the reform movement attempted to Christianize the secular institution of marriage by promoting monogamy, indissolubility, and consent.14 The decrees that they produced reveal that marriage and sexual behaviour were important definers of lay society. Further, a good proportion of these decrees were specifically directed at male lay behaviour. The law code Cnut II, for instance, warned men that no priest should perform Christian rituals for those who had both a lawful wife and a concubine.15 Similarly at Lillebonne in 1080 bishops were urged to impose canonical sentences on all men who took wives from amongst their kindred.16 This implies a link between such behaviour and definitions of masculinity. Malmesbury too associates sexual behaviour and marriage with maleness and masculinity. Paradoxically, this is made explicit in his explanation for the childless marriage of Edward the Confessor and Edith. The Gesta Regum Anglorum notes that it was Edward’s policy ‘not to know [Edith] in the

11 VSW, pp. xiv–xv. 12 David Rollason, ‘The Concept of Sanctity in the Early Lives of St Dunstan’, in St Dunstan: His Life,

Times and Cult, ed. Nigel Ramsay, Margaret Sparks, and Tim Tatton-Brown, Woodbridge 1992, 261–72 at 267. 13 VSW, pp. 8–11. 14 From an enormous literature see Christopher N. L. Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage, Oxford 1989; James A. Brundage, Sex, Law and Marriage in the Middle Ages, Aldershot 1993; Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Ray, London 1984; Jean-Baptise Molin and Protais Mutembe, Le rituel du mariage en France du XII au XVI siècle, Paris 1974. 15 II Cnut, 54.1, in Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, I: A.D. 871–1204, ed. and trans. D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols, Oxford 1981, I, 499. 16 Orderic, III, 24–37.

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ways of a man (nec virili more cognosceret)’.17 Malmesbury uses the word virilis here to underline the potential procreative power of the male, and through the vir/virilis link he makes a connection with definitions of masculinity. Questions surrounding Edward’s own masculinity are complicated, not least by those of sanctity,18 but the overarching assumption here is that virilis is tied up with definitions of maleness. Yet in line with the church reform movement, clerical figures like Wulfstan could not be like lay males either through marriage or the begetting of children. If masculinity in Anglo-Norman society is so defined it raises important questions about whether clerics like Wulfstan could be fully masculine. In the Life of Wulfstan there are a number of stories in which the theme of sexual behaviour crops up. Wulfstan was said to have experienced some sort of vision after having fended off a beautiful girl whom the Devil had sent to entice him. The text states that ‘Never after that was [Wulfstan’s] heart or eye distracted by anyone’s striking beauty, never was his quiet sleep interrupted by a wet dream.’19 Likewise a beautiful married woman sought to have a sexual relationship with Wulfstan, to which Wulfstan responded, ‘Away with you and take with you the hatred you deserve, you tinder of wantonness, daughter of death, and vessel of Satan.’20 These words were followed by a slap which Wulfstan ‘in his zeal for chastity administered to the face of the gabbling woman with such force that the smack of his palm could be heard through the door of the church’.21 Both these narratives illustrate Wulfstan rejecting women and sexual activity, two apparent definers of lay masculinity in Malmesbury’s world and for Malmesbury himself. Furthermore it is interesting that these episodes were said to have occurred during Wulfstan’s youth, specifically his adolescence (adolescentia). Youth was a period in the male life-cycle when boys learned how to be men through displaying the actions and behaviour appropriate to that society’s construction of adult masculinity.22 Here Wulfstan actually rejects this social development and transition to adult masculinity by choosing not to be sexually active. Moreover the theme of chastity is one that the Life is particularly keen to stress. Alongside these temptation stories, for instance, the Life notes that Wulfstan was very severe towards unchaste clerics. He laid down a general edict informing married priests that they should renounce either their lust or their living. ‘If they loved purity they could stay with his thanks; if they were servants of pleasure they could leave with his outrage (iniuria).’23 Andy Orchard has suggested that the Life’s continual stress on sexual abstinence may have grown out of a desire to imitate earlier traditions reflected in the Lives of the Desert Fathers.24 But this concern was also ‘up-to-date’ in terms of the church councils and synods held in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which stressed that clerics should leave their women and embrace 17 18 19 20

Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, 352–3 (c. 197). The question of gender and sanctity is one to which I hope to return at a later date. VSW, i.1.8. VSW, i.6.3. For comparisons with Ælfric’s Life of Agnes and the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39: 6–12) see Andy Orchard, ‘Parallel Lives: Wulfstan, William, Coleman and Christ’, in Wulfstan, ed. Barrow and Brooks, 39–57 at 48–9. 21 VSW, i.6.3. 22 William M. Aird, ‘Frustrated Masculinity: The Relationship between William the Conqueror and his Eldest Son’, in Masculinity, ed. Hadley, 39–55 at 43; Georges Duby, ‘Youth in Aristocratic Society: Northwestern France in the Twelfth Century’, in his The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan, London 1977, 112–22 (first published in French in Annales 19, 1964); Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe, Philadelphia 2003, 12–17. 23 VSW, iii.12. 24 Orchard, ‘Parallel Lives’, 48.

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a celibate life.25 There is evidence to suggest that this emphasis on chastity may have been part of Coleman’s own analysis. Malmesbury makes scant reference to Wulfstan’s chastity in his Gesta Pontificum,26 and it is not a theme he expands on in either of his works. Temptation stories such as these are conventional features of hagiography and thus issues of genre may help explain their relative absence from both the Gesta Regum Anglorum and the Gesta Pontificum. Clerics were ideally excluded from sexual activity and this is clear in the Life’s representation of Wulfstan resisting the women and forgoing carnal knowledge. Despite this, Wulfstan’s masculinity is not in question in these stories. Both these narratives stress Wulfstan’s need for self-control when tempted by sexual desire, suggesting that restraint was a particularly important attribute to display. Control of sexual activity is something Malmesbury also suggests is admirable in laymen like Henry I. Malmesbury describes Henry I as a paragon of sexual control. Henry was completely free from fleshly lusts (omnino obscenitatum cupidinearum expers), indulging in the embraces of the female sex (amore mulierum) . . . from love of begetting children and not to gratify his passions (voluptas); for he thought it beneath his dignity to comply with extraneous gratification (delectatio), unless the royal seed should fulfil its natural purpose; employing his bodily functions as their master, not obeying his lust as its slave (effundens naturam ut dominus, non obtemperans libidini ut famulus).27

Such a description has struck historians as ludicrous, especially since Henry is known to have produced at least twenty illegitimate children.28 And even Orderic Vitalis and Henry of Huntingdon commented on the voraciousness of Henry’s sexual appetite.29 But here Malmesbury chooses to emphasize and admire both Henry’s sexual restraint and his ability to procreate. Yet whilst Henry’s sexual activity was approved by Malmesbury because it resulted in the begetting of children, Wulfstan had to demonstrate total sexual control.30 There is clearly evidence here of a secular/ecclesiastical divide governing the presentation of male sexual control. In addition, the presentation of the ‘gabbling woman’ is here interesting because it draws on a series of stereotypes concerned with the dangers of woman and womankind. Yet this woman is not just seductive, she is also gabbling (gannitus) and hence verbally uncontrolled. Again the theme of control seems to be important. Moreover this ‘gabbling woman’ is faced by the forceful Wulfstan, who administers a violent smack. Violence may here have a role in emphasizing masculinity through the smack and the expression of it in relation to a ‘gabbling woman’. Fighting, violence, and control seem to be themes that may be worth following up. We turn therefore to the question of violence, fighting, and the bearing of arms, the other great definer of lay masculinity and another area from which clerics are excluded. How is Wulfstan presented here? 25 VSW, pp. 124–5 n. 5; but Mason, Wulfstan, 162–4, suggests Wulfstan was stricter than contemporary

practice. 26 Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 278 (iv.137). 27 Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, 744–5 (c. 412). 28 C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, London 2001, 41–3 on the number of children and the ludicrousness of

Malmesbury’s statement. The editors of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, II, 376 suggest that this statement is an example of Malmesbury’s abilities as an ironist. But, like Hollister, I think Malmesbury is being more serious than Thomson gives him credit for. Compare also Kathleen Thompson, ‘Affairs of State: The Illegitimate Children of Henry I’, JMH 29, 2003, 129–51 for Henry’s use of illegitimate children to further his political designs. 29 Orderic, VI, 98–9; Huntingdon, 700–1 (x.1). 30 Compare St Augustine, ‘The union, then, of male and female for the purpose of procreation is the natural good of marriage’: St. Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings , ed. Philip Schaff, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church 1st series 5, New York 1887, 265.

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Violence and its Expression Violence and its expression are often seen as fundamental in explaining what it means to be a man because they involve the dominance of others, including social peers and women.31 Violence expressed through warfare and fighting are undeniably male activities in Malmesbury’s world and this is underlined by his use of the term virtus. Roman definitions of virtus highlight the complex etymology of this word, tying it not only to military abilities like courage, strength, bravery, and valour but also to virtue in the sense of moral excellence.32 For Latin writers and readers, and especially those like Malmesbury who were steeped in classical tradition, it also has links with ideal masculine behaviour and actions through the vir/virtus connection.33 In Malmesbury’s works the term frequently appears in his descriptions of violent circumstances. For example, both Harold and William the Conqueror were distinguished by their virtus on the battlefield at Hastings.34 Similarly Henry I was ‘armed with virtus like a shield to beat down the dangers in his path’.35 Virtus here describes the desirable characteristics of the male warrior. Yet it was generally agreed that the battlefield was no place for a religious man and indeed in accordance with the monastic rule they were supposed neither to fight nor to carry weapons. Could religious men therefore be male? Were there appropriate ways for them to express violence? Malmesbury’s Wulfstan certainly had virtus. One of the most striking stories told about Wulfstan as a young man involves his defeat of the Devil, which the Gesta Pontificum explicitly presents as being a test of his virtus. Whilst Wulfstan was praying he was attacked by the Devil, who was jealous of Wulfstan’s virtus. Wulfstan cried out in fear but this only made the Devil’s attacks stronger and harder. Only God’s intervention saved Wulfstan and drove the Devil away. Despite Wulfstan’s inaction the passage stresses Wulfstan’s fearlessness, noting that it was said he had the confidence of a lion.36 This establishes a link between virtus, which here is not simply defined as a virtue but as a quality of a fighting beast. A more elaborate version of these events appears in the Life of Wulfstan. Here the texts notes, ‘What was needed was a fight (luctamen): [the Devil] wanted to find out the physical strength (robor) of someone whose heart was bold.’ Once aware that he was facing the Devil (who was disguised as a servant), Wulfstan went on the offensive and ‘brandishing the arms of the faith he found courage for the battle (fidei arma concutiens, in certamen animatur). No small stretch of the night this wrestling bout (lucta) lasted, and it is hard to know which was the greater, the impudence of the Devil or the self-confidence of the saint.’ At last the Devil vanished defeated but 31 Karras, From Boys to Men, 21. 32 Kuefler, Manly Eunuch, esp. 19–20. 33 Etymological links between vir, virtus, and vis (strength) and definitions of masculinity can be found in

the writings of authors like Isidore: Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi, ed. Lindsay, II, xi.ii.17–19. For Malmesbury’s use of Isidore see Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, II, 459. See also Smith, ‘Gender and Ideology’, 55–7. Malmesbury’s knowledge and use of classical sources is phenomenal: Jean Blacker, The Faces of Time: Portrayal of the Past in Old French and Latin Historical Narrative of the Anglo-Norman Regnum , Austin TX 1994, 58–66; Joan Gluckauf Haahr, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Roman Models: Suetonius and Lucan’, in The Classics in the Middle Ages: Papers of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, ed. Aldo S. Bernardo and Saul Levin, Binghamton NY 1990, 165–73; Marie Schütt, ‘The Literary Form of William of Malmesbury’s “Gesta Regum” ’, EHR 46, 1931, 255–60; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 48–62. 34 Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, 454–5 (c. 243). 35 Ibid. I, 742–3 (c. 411). 36 Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 279–80 (iv.138).

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before he did so he trod on Wulfstan’s foot, piercing it ‘as though with a red hot iron’. According to Malmesbury the two Worcester monks Godric and Coleman attested to seeing this rather grim wound and to knowing the servant whose shape the Devil had assumed.37 The account does not appear in the Gesta Regum Anglorum. Overall this narrative episode fulfils a traditional hagiographical motif whereby the would-be saint is subject to a series of trials by Satan. Differences in genre may thus explain its absence from the Gesta Regum Anglorum. However, in the Gesta Pontificum and the Life Wulfstan is presented in terms recognizably masculine by contemporary standards. The stories present the incident in terms of an attack where Wulfstan brandishes arms, wrestles with an assailant, and is involved in a battle, in other words all the things which contemporary church councils denied to the clergy but which in this society and in Malmesbury define noble masculinity.38 In the Gesta Pontificum this is made particularly explicit through linking Wulfstan’s actions and behaviour with virtus. In addition this episode was said to occur during Wulfstan’s youth, which, as we have already noted, is a significant period in the male life-cycle, involving a social transition to adult status. The importance of displaying competence in arms to achieve adult status is discussed by Malmesbury in relation to King Alfred. At the battle of Ashdown (871), whilst Alfred’s brother absorbed himself in praying to God, Alfred, being both immature and hasty, advanced into battle.39 In contrast, his brother refused to fight until he had finished praying. Alfred’s actions caused him to get into difficulties and he had to be rescued by his brother, who, armed with virtus, managed to save the day. Malmesbury specifically calls Alfred a youth (iuvenis) in this narrative episode and seems here to be describing the failings of youth as a time of rashness. Such behaviour contrasts with the youthful Wulfstan’s display of virtus in violent circumstances. In this passage Alfred’s actions are also distinguished from the control and virtus of older men whose behaviour he would seemingly be wise to emulate. The differences in the presentation of Wulfstan between the Gesta Pontificum and the Life may be particularly significant. In the Gesta Pontificum version Wulfstan’s encounter with the Devil appears as a metaphorical battle rather than the physical fight described in the Life. This may represent different authorial interpretations of the same event. Wulfstan appears in the Life as more physically violent, whereas in the Gesta Pontificum he is protected by the power of God, albeit with a side comment detailing Wulfstan’s fearlessness. This may suggest that Malmesbury was more uncomfortable than Coleman with religious men expressing violence. In the Gesta Pontificum Malmesbury presents Wulfstan’s virtus being tested, but in an interesting way. Wulfstan’s virtus becomes almost ‘unmanly’ through his rejection of physical retaliation; he chooses not to respond with physical violence to the Devil’s attacks, and this may be significant. It draws attention to Wulfstan’s self-control in violent circumstances. The very fact that Wulfstan does not react with violence allows Malmesbury to present Wulfstan acting in an appropriately masculine Christian way. Christianity after all condones violence and violent actions and behaviour. Kuefler’s work on masculinity, gender, and Christian ideology in late antiquity explores definitions of virtus.40 Kuefler argues that virtus is at the heart of the Roman gender system 37 VSW, i.4.2–4. 38 e.g. the so-called Canons of Edgar (1005×1008), clause 68b, and the Northumbrian Priests’ Law

(1008×1023), clause 37: Councils and Synods I, ed. Whitelock and others, I, 336–7, 459. 39 ‘immaturitate iuventae’: Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, 178–9 (c. 119). 40 Kuefler, Manly Eunuch, esp. 19–20, 31, 113, 171–2, 207–9, 230–1, 296–7.

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and especially definitions of ideal manliness. However, in the changing world of late antiquity male martial identity was paradoxically characterized by the rejection of traditional Roman military definers. Instead, men were encouraged to embrace the Christian ideology associated with patientia, in the strict Latin sense of enduring or suffering, since by doing so they understood that retribution was in the hands of God rather than man.41 The writings of Ambrose and Augustine, amongst others, helped transmit these ancient traditions of Roman civic masculinity via Christian asceticism to the Middle Ages. This paradox of Christian ideology – that true manliness could only be found in apparent Roman unmanliness – has a long history and may be especially appealing to and expressed in Malmesbury as a result of his erudite classical learning and reading. There are other circumstances where Wulfstan appears involved in violent behaviour and actions. During the rebellion of 1088 Wulfstan acted in the defence of royal power. In the Gesta Pontificum, when the danger posed by Roger of Montgomery’s troops was explained to Wulfstan, he ‘hurled the thunderbolt of his curse (maledictio) against traitors who had not remained loyal to their lord’.42 The curse caused some of the enemy to be paralysed with fear and others to be struck blind, all of which resulted in victory for the king’s troops. By comparison, the Gesta Regum Anglorum notes the king’s troops were ‘inspired by the blessing of Bishop Wulfstan, who had been entrusted with the command of the castle, though greatly outnumbered [they] put [Roger’s] men to flight, killed and wounded many, and took some prisoners’.43 The differences between these two accounts are interesting. The Gesta Regum Anglorum version seems almost to present Wulfstan acting as a secular warrior: defending his castle and rallying his troops to victory. It allows Malmesbury to depict Wulfstan in a traditional masculine role that emphasizes military prowess as a positive masculine attribute, although Malmesbury is careful to present Wulfstan as inspiring his troops with his blessing, and in doing so ensures that Wulfstan is using an appropriately religious ‘weapon’. Such an image recalls Old Testament figures like Moses, who was charged by God to bless the twelve tribes of Israel before his death.44 Likewise in the Gesta Pontificum Wulfstan’s power is couched in suitably ecclesiastical terms. The consequences of his curse could be interpreted, by a monastic audience, as a demonstration of God’s power through Wulfstan as a prophet. In both cases Malmesbury is presenting Wulfstan as a strong and authoritative figure. It is especially interesting that this narrative episode does not appear in the Life of Wulfstan. Coleman must have known about Wulfstan’s involvement in the 1088 rebellion but seemingly chose not to include it in his text. It suggests that Wulfstan’s involvement with the king and royal business was not something of which Coleman approved, or that it was a subject not appropriate within a hagiographical work.45 And specifically it may be that Coleman was uneasy about presenting an English bishop helping a Norman king. Coleman may have been less emphatic about English-Norman interaction than Malmesbury, given the fact that Wulfstan’s successor, the Norman Samson of Bayeux, disbanded the monastery at Westburyon-Trym where Coleman had been prior, forcing his return to Worcester.46 41 Ibid. 109–11. 42 Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 285 (iv.144). Wulfstan is not unique in cursing secular opponents;

Ealdred, archbishop of York, cursed both William I and sheriff Urse d’Abitot: ibid. 253 (iii.115). Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, 546–7 (c. 306). Deuteronomy 33. Mason, Wulfstan, 293. Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 289–90 (iv.150); VSW, iii.10.2.

43 44 45 46

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Of course violence and its expression did not always have to be defined in terms of physical force. Violence can take other forms, including psychological (perhaps caused by the trauma of witnessing violent actions)47 and verbal violence. One way to think about the variety of forms which violence can take is through considering the emotion of anger.48 Wulfstan was about to say mass at a local church when he discovered that all the ornaments were in no fit state for the performance of the ritual, as they were both shoddy and dirty. Wulfstan thus instructed one of the minor clerks to tell the chamberlain to put things right. However, the chamberlain ‘flew into a rage (commoto felle), and gave the boy a great smack’. Wulfstan ‘was enraged by the chamberlain’s high-handed behaviour, and showed it in his face. But restraining (cohibens) his feelings for the moment, he let the whole thing go.’ Yet at precisely the same time Wulfstan was experiencing these feelings of anger the chamberlain collapsed in another room, almost to the point to death. Everyone realized that because he had angered Wulfstan he was now paying the penalty. It took Wulfstan’s blessing and the confession of the chamberlain’s sins before he was restored to health.49 By their very nature emotions are uncontrolled, and this is underlined by the chamberlain’s knee-jerk response. Yet here the text is keen to contrast the chamberlain’s anger with Wulfstan’s and to display Wulfstan’s anger as appropriate because it is controlled. The difficulties in achieving this are underlined since Wulfstan’s feelings almost come out and are reflected in his facial expression. It is his ability to restrain these feelings that is here seen as admirable. This story draws an interesting comparison with the earlier narrative where Wulfstan smacked the woman who tried to tempt him into a sexual relationship. In that example it was seemingly acceptable for Wulfstan to let his emotions go unchecked, whereas here Wulfstan is admired for controlling these very feelings. Perhaps Wulfstan’s vehement desire to remain chaste meant that his response to the woman’s request was deemed acceptable; certainly the text is careful not to describe Wulfstan as angry in those circumstances. This discrepancy in the presentation of Wulfstan certainly raises interesting questions about how religious men could express violence. Although the narrative about the importance of self-control in relation to anger is unique to the Life of Wulfstan, this same motif appears in Malmesbury’s presentation of other male figures. The theme appears in matters concerning the York/Canterbury dispute which were raised at the papal curia in 1071. Thomas, archbishop of York, claimed that the bishops of Worcester and Dorchester should be subject to his jurisdiction. According to the Gesta Regum Anglorum, Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, ‘although firm and unmoved by all unfair attacks, was somewhat provoked by such an impertinent demand, the like of which he had never heard before, and showed signs of rising anger in his face, though for some time he choked back his words’.50 Likewise, in the Gesta Pontificum Malmesbury refers to Lanfranc remaining calm despite his displeasure on hearing Thomas’s claims.51 The Life also refers to this event, stating that Lanfranc ‘felt strongly about the matter for he knew that the privileges of his own church were at risk if he held his tongue; but he made 47 This type of violence is particularly hard to identify, especially since the winners usually write history,

but examples include Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, 462–5 (c. 249); Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 208–10 (iii:prologue). For the idea of trauma in relation to 1066 more generally see Elisabeth van Houts, ‘The Trauma of 1066’, History Today 46 (10), Oct. 1996, 9–15. 48 For social representations of anger see Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein, London 1998. 49 VSW, ii.18. 50 Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, 536–7 (c. 302). 51 Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 41 (i.25).

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replies dictated by justice rather than by resentment’.52 It is significant that in each of these examples Malmesbury emphasizes Lanfranc’s self-control and shows him curbing his anger. It is interesting too that, like Wulfstan, Lanfranc has difficulties containing this anger. There is a further comparison here between the verbal self-control of a man like Lanfranc and the uncontrolled speech of the woman who tried to tempt Wulfstan and as a result was suitably punished. Similarly Malmesbury tells of William the Conqueror’s desire to avenge an insult made by Philip of France. Apparently ‘nothing could pacify [William’s] furious resolve to avenge’ and he was in fact so angry that he burnt St Mary’s church in Mantes. Malmesbury states that William went too close to these flames, bringing on his final illness and death.53 Uncontrolled anger is an issue here. There are links between unrestrained anger and subsequent punishment. The fact that this theme of self-control of anger appears in both the Gesta Regum Anglorum and the Life, as well as the fact it is looked for in both religious and secular men, may well suggest that it was an important part of Malmesbury’s own analysis.

Prophecy One final attribute which is associated with Wulfstan and which can be explored in some detail is prophecy. Prophecy is the gift of foretelling the future and is seen as an ability to interpret God’s will by being His mouthpiece.54 But is it possible to ‘gender’ prophecy? Is prophecy a particularly masculine attribute? Wulfstan’s prophetic statement about the coming of the Normans, with which we opened, can shed some light on these questions. It appears in the context of the Northumbrian rebellion of 1065, seen by some English sources as the internal strife which made 1066 possible.55 Harold Godwinesson arrived in Northumbria to quash this rebellion and called Wulfstan to him. It is to Harold that Wulfstan addresses his remarks. Wulfstan apparently ‘told Harold straight out what damage he would do both to himself and to England unless he had a mind to put right the wickedness of current behaviour. For at that time almost everywhere in England morals were deplorable and in the opulence of peace luxury flourished.’56 This is followed by Wulfstan’s warning that the English fashion for growing their hair long like women, to be like women, meant that they would be defeated like women. As noted, Wulfstan introduced questions of internal decadence in very gendered terms. By the time the Life was written it was known that the English lost in 1066, and with the benefit of hindsight the Life explains that because Harold did not take Wulfstan’s advice this had devastating repercussions for the English nation as a whole. The English lost because they did not correct their sinful behaviour and this was Harold’s responsibility since a king was supposed to govern his people correctly. Harold’s failings as a ruler are underlined in this account. However, Wulfstan also criticizes English noble masculinity in gender-specific terms. According to the Life not only were long-haired men more like women than men but this also meant that they were unable to defend their country appropriately. Such gendered criticisms strike at the very heart of traditional 52 53 54 55

VSW ii.1.3. Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, 510–11 (c. 282). The Encyclopaedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade, XII, New York 1987, 8–23. ASC 1064 [= 1065] CE; Pauline Stafford, Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, London 1989, 95–9. 56 VSW, i.16.3.

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masculine qualities couched in terms of strength, power, and authority. These unashamed men were not fully masculine and they would fail in the defining masculine task of defending their kindred. Here the feminization of the English becomes a cause of conquest. Although this narrative episode does not appear in either Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum or his Gesta Pontificum, the Life’s presentation of Wulfstan may not simply be attributable to Coleman, for Malmesbury presents other Old English male clerical figures, like St Dunstan, in similar terms. Take for instance Malmesbury’s description of Dunstan’s prophecies at the baptism and coronation ceremonies of King Æthelred the Unready.57 Malmesbury notes that Dunstan had foretold the worthlessness of Æthelred when he baptized him as a baby. He writes, ‘when as a baby [Æthelred] was being plunged in the font at his christening, with the bishops standing round, he interrupted the sacrament by opening his bowels, at which Dunstan was much concerned. “By God and His Mother”, he said, “he will be a weak man (ignavus homo)” ’.58 This is a clear statement of Malmesbury’s views on masculinity. He explicitly notes Æthelred’s masculine weakness, and this is confirmed and demonstrated by Æthelred’s literal lack of self-control at the baptismal font. Significantly this critique is put into the mouth of a male cleric. By contrast Dunstan emerges from this portrait as a strong and authoritative figure since he displays those qualities that Æthelred lacks. Dunstan’s strength manifests itself in his abilities as a prophet and his fearlessness in speaking out against the king. Moreover this is not the only time where Malmesbury specifically praises Dunstan for his fearlessness and ability to reprimand noble men. Malmesbury describes how King Eadwig was caught canoodling with prostitutes rather than dealing with matters of state on his consecration day. This shameless conduct was universally resented, and there was subdued protest; only Dunstan, as the rocky element in his name would suggest (nominis sui firmitatem), thought nothing of the king’s contemptuous air, dragged the lecherous youngster (lascivientem iuvenculum) violently (violenter) from the bedchamber, and obliged him through Archbishop Oda to dismiss his concubine . . .59

The contrasting ideas of masculinity apparent in this presentation are striking. Eadwig’s unseemly behaviour in matters of sex and politics contrasts with Dunstan’s fearlessness and strength in standing up to him, all of which is underlined by the etymological breakdown of Dunstan’s name: dun + stan = mountain + stone. It is through displaying actions and behaviour such as these that Dunstan appears as an ideal man. And once again the question of how religious men could express violence appears, with Dunstan forcibly dragging the king away from the women. Here it is Dunstan’s role in upbraiding and correcting Eadwig’s behaviour which produces approval of his violent behaviour. This seemingly appropriate behaviour has a long historical genealogy which goes back to Old Testament prophets like Isaiah. These themes are illuminated further in Dunstan’s prophecy at Æthelred’s coronation ceremony. As Dunstan crowns Æthelred he prophesies the misfortunes that will mark his reign, including invasion and war. The reason that Dunstan gives for these events is the part played by Æthelred’s mother in the murder of her stepson Edward. Malmesbury records Dunstan as saying, 57 Cf. Simon Keynes, ‘The Declining Reputation of King Æthelred the Unready’, in Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference , ed. David Hill, BAR British Series 59, 1978, 227–53 at 236–8. 58 Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, 268–9 (c. 164). 59 Ibid. I, 236–7 (c. 147).

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Inasmuch as you aimed at the throne through the death of your own brother, now hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God:60 the sin of your shameful mother and the sin of the men who shared in her wicked plot shall not be blotted out except by much bloodshed from your unfortunate subjects, and there shall come upon the people of England (gentem Anglorum) such evils (mala) as they have not suffered from the time when they came to England until then.61

This prophecy of Dunstan’s carries with it a warning of national importance. The murder of Edward, in which Æthelred and his mother had some role, will result in punishment on a national level. The punishment, which Malmesbury refers to, is the repeated Danish invasions and eventual conquest of England in 1016. Writing from the vantage point of the twelfth century, Malmesbury knew that Æthelred’s reign would end in conquest, a knowledge which no doubt played a part in shaping the prophecies he placed in Dunstan’s mouth. As with the prophecy of Wulfstan, ideas of gender play key roles in this narrative. From the outset Malmesbury continually emphasized Æthelred’s defective masculinity. More implicit is Malmesbury’s suggestion that these failings brought about an attack against England and prevented him from providing effective defence or protection. The ability to protect and defend is an established early medieval aspect of masculinity envisaged as part and parcel of the warrior ideal. But in Malmesbury’s portrayal Æthelred has failed to live up to this ideal. Yet Æthelred’s masculine weakness underlines Dunstan’s masculinity by emphasizing his strength and authority. This was especially apparent from Malmesbury’s depiction of him as a prophet of national importance. Indirectly Dunstan is associated with the ability to protect and defend but as a prophet rather than a warrior. By forewarning the English of the Danish conquest, Dunstan is given a role in the protection and defence of the English people. Clerics were arguably debarred from such defence because in accordance with the monastic rule and emphasized by the eleventh-century reform they were not supposed to fight. This excluded them from a definitively masculine activity. Here Malmesbury makes prophecy, not the sword alone, an important part of defence. He gives it a clerical form, using in this case the art of prophecy. Prophecy is much less clearly ‘masculine’ than, for example, the expression of violence, but here it parallels fighting in the sense that it plays a role in the protection of the English people. In addition Malmesbury makes the subject matter of Dunstan’s prophecy war and conquest, two activities that in the twelfth century are almost exclusively maleorientated. Strength, power, and authority are thus prevalent in Malmesbury’s depiction of Dunstan but are noticeably lacking in his portrayal of Æthelred. Dunstan’s masculinity is appropriately clerical but is also superior to that of a layman who has failed in his role as a man. In this version of events Malmesbury has made the cleric, not the king, the real masculine hero. What therefore can all this tell us about Malmesbury’s views on masculinity? One of the most striking themes of this paper has been the fact that Malmesbury seems to have drawn on a common language of masculinity that he applied to both lay and religious men. Both were judged and discussed in relation to restraint, the display of virtus, and the presentation of anger. Malmesbury finds it easy to apply these attributes to both, and to that extent he has a single ideal of masculinity in mind. The language used to describe their actions and behaviour underlines this. For example, Wulfstan is described as being involved in a battle and in arming himself before 60 The formula used to introduce the prophecy is characteristic of that used by Old Testament prophets,

e.g. 1 Samuel 2: 27–36; 2 Kings 1: 3–4; Jeremiah 20: 1–6. 61 Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, 268–9 (c. 164).

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engaging in a struggle. Such terminology evokes noble secular masculine values and points towards a common language of masculinity being used for both lay and clerical men. Differences do, however, emerge when the methods by which this masculinity is displayed are compared. For laymen like Henry I this was in marriage and in bed, in relation to the control of the body and its lust, whilst for Wulfstan this need for sexual self-control was reflected in a more total control of the body. Laymen could express violence on the battlefield with worldly weapons whilst for clerics like Wulfstan this was demonstrated through cursing or blessing his enemies. These differences may be strong enough to suggest two different masculinities, although what they have in common is also very important. Moreover this questions the validity of using a term like ‘emasculinity’ to describe clerical masculinity.62 The possibility of an ideal clerical masculinity based on self-control and the expression of violence suggests that the idea of a third clerical gender may be not correct, at least in Malmesbury’s case. Self-control seems to have been a key aspect of Malmesbury’s views on masculinity. It appeared in relation to resisting sexual temptation, in the display of virtus, and in the presentation of anger. From where did Malmesbury draw upon this theme? There is a considerable body of work on ancient and late antique masculinity that indicates the significance of restraint and self-control in constructions of ideal masculine behaviour.63 In particular, the work of Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser has identified restraint as a significant late antique masculine attribute that became important to Christian ideals and the ascetic tradition.64 Significantly, Leyser has argued that the body and its control were a metaphor in which discussions of power and powerlessness could be read.65 He suggested that the fitness of men for office in late antiquity, if not the early Middle Ages, was judged by their capacity to control themselves and others. Restraint, then, is part of an established language of masculinity that had long been important in discussions of power and authority. These ideas may have emerged in Malmesbury as a result of his wide reading, particularly in classical literature. In addition the theme of control was current in the twelfth century through the developing ethos of chivalry.66 John Gillingham and Matthew Strickland have both noted the control of brutality and the more humane treatment of prisoners as ‘new’ aspects of the chivalric code in the Anglo-Norman world.67 Malmesbury 62 Swanson, ‘Angels Incarnate’. 63 See in particular Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early

Christianity, London 1988; Vern L. Bullough, ‘On Being a Male in the Middle Ages’, in Medieval Masculinities, ed. Lees and others, 31–45; Kuefler, Manly Eunuch, passim; Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity, trans. Felicia Pheasant, Oxford 1988. 64 Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser, ‘The Gender of Grace: Impotence, Servitude, and Manliness in the Fifth-Century West’, Gender and History 12, 2000, 536–51; Kate Cooper, ‘Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy’, Journal of Roman Studies 82, 1992, 150–64; Conrad Leyser, ‘Masculinity in Flux: Nocturnal Emissions and the Limits of Celibacy in the Early Middle Ages’, in Masculinity, ed. Hadley, 103–20. 65 Anthropologist Mary Douglas pioneered the idea that the body is a medium through which social order can be discussed: Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, London 1966. 66 Chivalry remains a notoriously elusive concept: see especially Maurice Keen, Chivalry, London 1984, esp. 1–17; Jean Flori, L’essor de la chevalerie, xi–xii siècles, Geneva 1986, esp. 119–90. 67 John Gillingham, ‘1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry into England’, in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. George Garnett and John Hudson, Cambridge 1994, 31–55; John Gillingham, ‘Conquering the Barbarians: War and Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Britain’, HSJ 4, 1992, 67–84; Matthew Strickland, ‘Slaughter, Slavery or Ransom: The Impact of the Conquest on Conduct in Warfare’, in England in the Eleventh Century, ed. Carola Hicks, Stamford 1992, 41–59; Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217, Cambridge 1996.

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may have been particularly sensitive to such ideas, given that in the Gesta Regum Anglorum at least he was writing for a specifically noble audience who would have been aware of such trends.68 Malmesbury’s awareness of self-control in definitions of masculinity may thus have drawn both on older discourses as well as on the noble concerns of his twelfth-century world. The presentation of Wulfstan as a prophet, and one who had particular significance for the English people, is especially interesting. Prophecy appeared as a masculine attribute through Wulfstan’s and Dunstan’s ability to protect and defend others, an idea which was an established aspect of the warrior ideal. In addition the subject matter of both prophecies was war and invasion, which were definitively male activities in the twelfth century. In these circumstances Wulfstan and Dunstan were in some senses acting as heroes. Such a presentation does, however, raise further interesting questions about the Englishness of such figures. Are Wulfstan and Dunstan being presented as particularly English heroes? Wulfstan warns the English generally and Harold specifically of what will happen if they do not mend their sinful ways. As an English bishop he was not afraid to rebuke and criticize a king and his prophecies were of national importance. As an English bishop and saint, Wulfstan was presented as having a very special relationship with the English nation. Similarly, Dunstan’s prophecies at the baptism and coronation ceremonies of King Æthelred are underlined by Malmesbury as having consequences for the English nation and people. By emphasizing Wulfstan’s and Dunstan’s Englishness as well as presenting them as ideal men is Malmesbury perhaps here responding to the criticisms of the English raised by 1066? As a half-Englishman and in writing the history of England and the English, Malmesbury needed to present the English past as one to be proud of.69 Perhaps one of the ways he could do this was by identifying the heroes of the English past. What is especially interesting is that for Malmesbury one of his heroes of the 1066 past was seemingly a cleric like Wulfstan, whose behaviour and actions he could admire and present as truly masculine.

68 Initially the Gesta Regum Anglorum was conceived with the encouragement of Queen Matilda II, wife of Henry I: Gesta Regum, I, 6–9 (Ep.ii). However, she died in 1118 and when he finished and revised the work Malmesbury dedicated it to her stepson, Robert of Gloucester: ibid. I, 798–810 (cc. 446–9). In addition the subject matter of this work is predominantly, though not exclusively, secular political history. 69 William himself tells us that he has ‘the blood of both nations in my veins’: ibid. I, 424–5 (preface to book iii).

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SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE? BISHOPS AND THEIR CATHEDRAL CHAPTERS: THE DOMESDAY EVIDENCE Vanessa King This paper looks at the tenurial relationship between bishops and their familiae in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest, and in particular at the evidence in Domesday Book for the organization of a separate endowment for the community.1 Although the evidence was considered by Professor Crosby in his major study of the mensa episcopalis,2 it seems worth while reconsidering it afresh and in isolation, in order to get a better sense of how far the division of endowments between bishops and their chapters had progressed by the time that Domesday Book provides the first opportunity to look systematically across the dioceses, barely a generation after the Norman Conquest. While reference is made to the archdioceses of Canterbury and York, the focus here is largely on the bishoprics. The last quarter of the eleventh century was a period of transition for both secular and monastic cathedral communities, not least because of the relocation of several sees and the building anew of every English cathedral within the first fifty years after the Conquest. It is argued that while some evidence of change can be found in Domesday, there was no great tenurial revolution as some form of separate endowment was already in place for most cathedral chapters before the Conquest. Despite the impetus of Benedictine reform in the tenth century, of the fifteen dioceses extant in 1066 only three maintained monastic chapters (Canterbury, Winchester, and Worcester); the rest housed secular canons. Beyond this, discerning the composition of cathedral chapters before the early thirteenth century is problematic. Bishop Osmund’s Institutio, dated 1091, which sets out the constitution of Salisbury cathedral, has been shown to have a much later provenance.3 Cartularies, witness lists to episcopal grants, and records of lawsuits, as well as Domesday Book, provide the names of individuals who may or may not have been members of a bishop’s household, the cathedral chapter, or both. References to cathedral personnel depend on how proactive, eminent, or infamous a bishop happened to be to warrant more than a passing mention by chroniclers such as William of Malmesbury or Henry of Huntingdon. Where a bishop’s Vita survives, we may find names of monks or clerics associated with him, the obvious example being that of Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester. The Vita Wulfstani not only charts Wulfstan’s rise through the ranks from 1

I wish to express my gratitude to Robert Baughan, Ann Williams, and David Roffe for their advice during the preparation of this paper. In particular I am grateful to Emma Mason for her continued support and encouragement. 2 Everett U. Crosby, Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England: A Study of the Mensa Episcopalis, Cambridge 1994. 3 Diana E. Greenway, ‘1091, St Osmund and the Constitution of the Cathedral’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Salisbury Cathedral , ed. Laurence Keen and Thomas Cocke, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 17, 1996, 1–9.

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schoolmaster to precentor, sacrist, and provost, before becoming bishop in 1062, but also provides us with the names of monks, priors, and household clerks, some of whom can be identified elsewhere.4 One such example is Alric the archdeacon, who held several estates of the church of Worcester in 1086.5 It is unfortunate that at the close of the first book, before relating the deeds of Wulfstan after 1066, William tells us that he has ‘left out nearly all the names of witnesses that I might not wound the delicate ears of the readers by their barbarous sound’. The reputation a bishop left behind was dependent on how he respected the landed interests of his religious community. Complaints against bishops who alienated their church’s manors to enrich relatives or misappropriated them for their own use were commonplace and not restricted to the new arrivals after 1066. For instance, Archbishop Ealdred left a poor reputation at Worcester because of his retention of manors after his elevation to York, but he was remembered kindly at Hereford, Beverley, and Southwell for his building works and for the acquisition of privileges for the canons.6 His predecessor at Worcester, Bishop Brihtheah (1033–41), was condemned for alienating church estates to his relatives. The evidence suggests that, despite initial fears, the early Norman bishops’ relations with their familiae were no worse than those of their Anglo-Saxon predecessors. No doubt this was due to the peripatetic life of bishops. Travelling around their dioceses, attending both local and royal courts and visiting episcopal estates, meant that their cathedral communities, if they were lucky, might escape with minimal interference in their daily lives. It is also worth remembering that by 1066 a third of the English bishoprics were already in foreign hands. Hereford, Sherborne, and Wells were held by Lotharingians, the bishop of Exeter had been brought up abroad, and the bishop of London was a Norman royal clerk. For a brief spell Canterbury itself had been in the hands of a Norman. The first post-Conquest appointment to the English episcopate was in 1067, that of Remigius, a monk of Fécamp, to the see of Dorchester on the death of Wulfsige. The bishopric, soon to move to Lincoln, was said to have been a reward for his assistance to William at Hastings. However, despite the initial hint of simony, Remigius was remembered kindly at Lincoln, not least through the writings of Henry of Huntingdon, whose father served under him. However, it was in 1070 that the Church first really began to feel the consequences of the English defeat at Hastings. Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, his brother Æthelmær, bishop of Elmham, and Æthelric, bishop of Selsey, were deposed and replaced by Archbishop Lanfranc, Herfast at Elmham, and another Stigand at Selsey. The following year Æthelwine of Durham was deposed for his involvement in the northern revolt and his see given to Walcher. In 1072 Leofwine of Chester avoided deposition by the simple expedient of getting his resignation in first. Thereafter Norman replacements occurred through natural wastage. Further, at the council of London in 1075 it was decreed that sees should be located in urban centres, and a series of moves took place. Elmham was relocated to Thetford, Selsey to Chichester, Sherborne to Old Sarum, and Lichfield to Chester. 4

William of Malmesbury’s Life of Saint Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, trans. J. H. F. Peile, Oxford 1934, 33, 46–7, 53, 71–3, 79. 5 Ibid. 83–4. 6 No tale of episcopal misappropriation can compare to that of Abbot Thurstan of Glastonbury (?1077–?1096), who apparently used manors belonging to the monks to pay for his male prostitutes: William of Malmesbury, The Deeds of the Bishops of England (Gesta Pontificum Anglorum), trans. David Preest, Woodbridge 2002, 131.

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Before moving on to an examination of the individual dioceses, it is pertinent to note a few general points that can be gleaned from Domesday Book. First, it is to be regretted that Durham was not surveyed in 1086, thus denying us the opportunity to see what arrangements, if any, had been in place for the support of either the secular chapter or the monks said to have been introduced in 1083.7 As it is, discussion of the relationship between the monks and their bishop can only be brief. Our chief source for this period is Symeon of Durham, who credits Bishop Walcher (1071–80) with the idea of introducing monks to Durham, though Walcher soon died and the plan came to fruition under William of Saint-Calais.8 Symeon suggests that Bishop William was putting plans in motion for a separate endowment for the monks but died before they were implemented.9 This failure to protect the monks is no doubt the reason behind the production of forged charters in their favour during the twelfth century. It is also the reason, I suspect, behind the production of the Libellus de Exordio. The monks at Durham were keen to ensure their rights to an endowment in line with other monastic chapters; the Libellus, building on the reputation of William of Saint-Calais, was a message to future bishops of Durham from the monks that their claims to a share of Durham’s lands had a legitimate basis with, ultimately, royal sanction.10 A similar situation can also be observed at Worcester.11 To anticipate the detail which follows, there is clear evidence in Domesday to suggest that by 1086 all the English dioceses except Salisbury, Rochester, and Thetford had in place some form of separate endowment for their cathedral communities. It is equally clear that in many instances these arrangements were in place before the Conquest. Where the evidence is not explicit, it can be assumed that provision was made from the episcopal demesne. Domesday manors assigned to the support of the monks or canons were described as de victu monachorum/ canonicorum or de vestitu monachorum/canonicorum. As one might expect, the most detailed entries are those of the long-established and relatively stable cathedral communities of Canterbury, York, Winchester, Worcester, and London. By 1086 the mensa of these dioceses had been divided and, indeed, some semblance of this arrangement was apparent before 1066. Interpreting the Domesday evidence is not without its problems. The commissioners were concerned solely with the holdings of tenants-in-chief and saw monks and clerics simply as tenants like any other. Thus sometimes the details are vague or omitted altogether. An obvious example is the omission of any mention of canons at the superseded cathedral in Crediton even though they occur in the Exon Domesday.12 In the majority of cases, a heading in Domesday Book is all that distinguishes manors that were de victu or de vestitu monachorum or canonicorum from those of the bishop. It is clear that the community derived purely the income from such manors, either in cash or produce or both, as can be seen by the fact that at 7

Symeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio atque Procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, Ecclesie, ed. and trans. David Rollason, Oxford 2000, 228–31. There is a single reference to the monks of Durham holding 7 bovates in Blyborough (Lincs.) under the bishop: GDB 340b1 (Lincs. 3/4). 8 For the view that it was in fact William of Saint-Calais who introduced monks to Durham and was politically motivated, see David Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham and the Community of Durham in the Eleventh Century’, in England in the Eleventh Century, ed. Carola Hicks, Stamford 1992, 183–98. 9 Symeon, ed. Rollason, 232–5. 10 Immediately following the description of Bishop William’s planned division between the monks and the bishop, reference is made to King William’s grant of Billingham specifically for their maintenance: ibid. 232–3. 11 Francesca Tinti, ‘From Episcopal Conception to Monastic Compilation: Heming’s Cartulary in Context’, EME 9, 2002, 233–61. 12 Domesday Book: Devon, ed. Caroline and Frank Thorn, 2 vols, Chichester 1985, II, note for Exon 2/2.

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Winchester several hundredal manors in Hampshire were assigned to the support of the monks. It is most unlikely that the bishop would have granted anything more than income from such estates, as opposed to the estates themselves. As tenant-in-chief, the bishop retained all jurisdictional rights from any assigned manors, and where they were subinfeudated, the tenants answered to the bishop. Confusingly, manors described as de victu or de vestitu occur under both the bishop’s and the monks’ lists of holdings at all three monastic centres. I suggest that such anomalies can be explained by the nature of the returns submitted to the Domesday commissioners. In most cases we shall see that there is a pre-Conquest provenance for their allocation to the monks. Domesday Book makes it clear that by 1086 most secular cathedrals had some form of separate endowment distinct from that of the bishops. As will be noted, in many cases these arrangements were in place before 1066. In the case of York and London, canons were holding not only in common but also as individuals TRE, although official prebendaries appear to have been a post-Conquest phenomenon. By 1086 there were prebends at York and Chichester (discussed below) and soon after 1087 Bishop Maurice of London (1085–1107) reorganized the estates of the canons of St Paul’s into thirty prebends.13 The canons of St Martin’s Dover are also noted as holding individual prebends established by the bishop of Bayeux.14 As one would expect, the amount of land assigned to a particular chapter varied with the comparative wealth of the bishopric and presumably the size of the community.

Exeter Since it was Leofric, bishop of Exeter (1046–72), who was first credited with reforming his chapter ‘contrary to English custom’ on his elevation to the bishopric,15 it seems a sensible place to begin an analysis of the secular cathedrals in the eleventh century. In 1086 the bulk of the bishopric’s manors lay in Devon and Cornwall. The area had once been two sees, the bishop of Cornwall based at St Germans and the bishop of Devon at Crediton. Leofric united them in 1050 and moved his cathedral seat to St Peter’s in Exeter after ejecting the nuns to make room for his canons. The Exeter Book records that when Leofric took over the minster he found only a 2–hide estate at Ide (Devon) in its possession. By the time of his death in 1072 he had restored several estates to the bishopric and assigned some of his personal property to support the canons. Of the lands which he restored or granted to St Peter’s, five manors were held in demesne by the bishop de victu canonicorum and were worth £23 15s. in 1086.16 However, not all the lands regained by Leofric were retained by the bishopric after the Conquest. Sparkwell, assessed at ½ hide, appears 13 For a discussion of Maurice’s reorganization of the canons’ estates see C. N. L. Brooke, ‘The Composi-

tion of the Chapter of St Paul’s, 1086–1163’, Cambridge Historical Journal 10 (2), 1951, 111–32. 14 GDB 1b1 (Kent M/1). 15 Gesta Pontificum, trans. Preest, 134: ‘In the fashion of Lorraine but contrary to English custom the

canons were to eat in one dining room and sleep in one dormitory.’ 16 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson, Cambridge 1956, 226–31, 473–80. For the bishop’s estates

see GDB 101b2–102a1 (Devon 2/1–24), 120b1–2 (Cornw. 2/1–15). Ide was assessed at 2 hides TRE and was assigned to the support of the canons in 1086: GDB 101b2 (Devon 2/6). The estates restored to the church were Culmstock, Branscombe, Salcombe, St Mary Church, Staverton, Sparkwell, Marshall, St Sidwell’s holding, ‘Brightston’, Topsham, Stoke Canon, Sidbury, Newton St Cyres, Norton, and ‘the estate at Clyst that Wid had’. Land given from Leofric’s personal possessions comprised Bampton, Aston, Chimney, Dawlish, Holcombe, and Southwood.

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in the hands of Baldwin the sheriff in 1086.17 The Exeter Book also records that 1 hide at Topsham was only temporarily restored to St Peter’s before it was taken by Harold. In 1086 Topsham was in the hands of the king and the Domesday entry notes Earl Harold as his antecessor.18 There is no reference in Domesday to the superseded cathedral at Crediton, but Exon Domesday notes that there were canons holding a manor in Crediton called Chaffcombe valued at 10s. a year.19 Crediton was also beneficially hidated at 15 hides despite there being land for as many as 185 ploughs.20 Despite Domesday’s silence regarding the canons of Crediton, the canons at the superseded cathedral of St Germans in Cornwall were noted. In 1086 St Germans was assessed as a manor of 24 hides which were divided equally between the canons and the bishop; those belonging to the canons never paid geld and were valued at £5 and those of the bishop paid geld for only 2 hides and were worth £8.21 Leofric’s successor, Osbern fitz Osbern (1072–1103), brother of Earl William fitz Osbern and relative of King Edward, expanded Exeter’s possessions across eight counties. Despite his powerful connections, his Cornish estates suffered at the hands of Robert, count of Mortain, half-brother to the king and the wealthiest landowner in Cornwall. Domesday tells us that the count rendered the bishop’s Sunday market at St Germans worthless by setting up a rival market near by and also appropriated his market at Methleigh (Cornw.).22 The profits accrued from markets were clearly lucrative, and the bishop of Thetford also encountered lay interference with his market rights at an important episcopal manor.23 The count of Mortain’s men also despoiled the canons of St Germans of land which had traditionally rendered them a cask of ale and 30d. a year.24 By 1086 the bishop’s largest holdings were in Devon and consisted of twenty-four manors worth approximately £300. Five belonged to the sustenance of the canons and were worth £23 15s. In both Devon and Cornwall the canons appear to have followed the Continental practice of holding land in common rather than individually, as was also apparent with the canons of St Paul’s in London.

York Not surprisingly, the wealthiest canons were those of St Peter’s in York. Domesday Book lists five estates assessed at 44 carucates 1 bovate which were described in 1086 as ‘now’ held by the canons under Archbishop Thomas (1071–1100), which suggests that Thomas reorganized the ecclesiastical estates soon after his elevation to York.25 Thomas certainly appears to have institutionalized prebends in the North. In 1086 there was a prebendary at Upper Poppleton, a manor assessed at 8 carucates

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

GDB 108a2 (Devon 16/162). GDB 101a1 (Devon 1/44). Devon, ed. Thorn and Thorn, II, note for Exon 2/2. GDB 101b2 (Devon 2/2). GDB 120b2 (Cornw. 2/6). GDB 120b1, 120b2 (Cornw. 2/2; 2/6). LDB 379a (Suff. 18/1). GDB 120b2 (Cornw. 1/12). Walkington, North Cave, North and South Newbald, Riccall, and Dunnington; there were also 3 carucates in Grafton assigned to the support of the canons but waste in 1086: GDB 302b1–2, 303b1 (Yorks. 2B/4–8; 2W/5).

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and held of the archbishop; it had been held by St Peter’s TRE.26 There was also a prebend attached to the archbishop’s manor of Southwell in Nottinghamshire. 27 Although prebends appear to have been instituted by Archbishop Thomas, it is clear that the canons of York, Ripon, and Beverley were holding land in common in 1086, in the case of York and Beverley as they had done in 1066. Shortly after the Conquest Archbishop Ealdred (1060–9) obtained the king’s permission to draw up a privilegium for Beverley exempting its land from the king’s demands, which is reflected in Domesday.28 Although the Domesday entries for St Peter’s York do not expressly state that the canons held manors distinct from those of the bishop before 1066, it is probable that they did. For instance in 1066 Seaxfrith the deacon held a total of almost 20 carucates belonging to the cathedral.29

Hereford At Hereford, the Lotharingian Bishop Robert (1079–95) has been credited with the reorganization of ecclesiastical estates, but although the early history of the see is obscure, Domesday Book supports a pre-Conquest date for the division of land between the secular chapter and the bishop.30 The burning of Hereford and its cathedral in 1055 no doubt explains the lack of charter evidence before 1066, but some time between 1056 and 1060 Archbishop Ealdred, then bishop of Worcester and administrator of the bishopric of Hereford, obtained a writ confirming that the canons of Hereford should have full jurisdiction over their lands.31 The Domesday entry for the lands of the see of Hereford includes the misleading heading ‘These lands mentioned below belong to the canons of Hereford.’32 What follows, in fact, is the entire holding of the bishopric, and the bishop’s tenants were mainly members of his household, including knights, chaplains, and several unnamed clerks.33 The canons did hold some land collectively in 1086: 4 hides in Stradel hundred (the Golden Valley) worth 15s. and part of the manor of Barton near Hereford; they also received 5s. a year from a tenant holding land at the bishop’s manor of Woolhope and 6s. a year from 3 Welsh hides in Brockhampton.34 Apart from the writ obtained by Archbishop Ealdred, Domesday Book also provides some evidence for a pre-Conquest division of land between the bishop and the cathedral canons. In 1066 two canons held 4 hides at Preston Wynne, but by 1086 the estate was in the hands of a clerk and a knight. Under the entry for the 6–hide manor of Holme Lacy we are told that it was rightfully de victu canonicorum but that Earl Harold held it unjustly before it was restored to Bishop Walter (1060–79).35 26 GDB 303b1 (Yorks. 2W/2). 27 GDB 283a1 (Notts. 5/1). 28 Regesta: William I, no. 32; Ripon was assessed at 43 carucates, of which the canons held 14 bovates:

GDB 303b2 (Yorks. 2W/7); the canons of St John of Beverley held land worth £20 in 1086, whereas the archbishop’s interest was worth only £14: GDB 304a1 (Yorks. 2E/1). 29 GDB 298b1, 303b1, 379a1 (Yorks. C/35; 2N/26–30; SN/Y6). He may also be the Seaxfrith associated with Siward at Huby: GDB 331a2 (Yorks. 29N/13). 30 Julia Barrow, ‘A Lotharingian in Hereford: Bishop Robert’s Reorganisation of the Church of Hereford 1079–1095’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Hereford , ed. David Whitehead, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 15, 1995, 29–49. 31 Harmer, AS Writs, no. 49. Regrettably the canons’ possessions are not itemized. 32 GDB 181b1 (Herefs. 2/4). 33 GDB 181b1–182b2 (Herefs. 2/1–57). 34 GDB 181b1, 181b2, 182b1 (Herefs. 2/7, 10, 13, 15, 55). 35 GDB 181b2 (Herefs. 2/12; 2/16).

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London The wealthiest canons after York were those of St Paul’s, and Pamela Taylor has shown that their separate endowment can be traced back to the late tenth century.36 The estates of the bishops and the canons spanned three Domesday counties, Middlesex, Essex, and Hertfordshire. The evidence in Domesday suggests that in 1066 the wealth of the bishop of London was centred on two manors, Stepney and Fulham, worth a total of £88.37 In Stepney a canon, Engelbert, held 1 hide 1 virgate from the bishop which he had also held in 1066.38 Another canon, Sired, appears to have held personal property at Stepney amounting to 6½ hides. By 1086 he was probably dead; 2½ hides were in the hands of the bishop and held of him by Hugh de Bernières, and the other 4 hides, although claimed by the bishop, were held of the king by Robert Fafiton.39 The royal presence is also noticeable in Fulham, where the bishop held a manor of 40 hides. The canons who held 5 hides there for their supplies TRE were holding the same of the king in 1086.40 Fear of encroachment by the bishop may have forced the canons to seek royal protection. One of the canons of St Paul’s, Durand, also held 2 hides at Twyford from the king worth 30s. in 1086. Apart from the land held from the king and bishop, the canons of St Paul’s also held in common a further 58 hides in Middlesex, and four canons appear as individual tenants of the bishop there.41 After the Conquest, perhaps prompted by the entrenched position of the canons, the bishops of London sought to augment their episcopal estates further afield in Hertfordshire and Essex. In 1066 the canons held more land in Hertfordshire than the bishop but by 1086, through a series of purchases, the position was reversed.42 In Essex, whereas the bishop was successful in recovering land lost earlier and acquired new manors, the holdings of the canons remained fairly static. In 1066 the canons were in possession of approximately 78 hides, acquiring only a further 7 hides by 1086.43 It is clear from Domesday Book that the canons of London were substantial landowners, and although the manors outside Middlesex were largely held in common, several estates within the county were held individually. Documentary evidence explored by Pamela Taylor indicates that traces of a division between the canons and the bishop can be traced back to the late tenth century. Although Domesday Book demonstrates that there were some acquisitions by the canons after 1066, the endowment was substantially unchanged by 1086. It is probable the rebuilding of St Paul’s cathedral after a fire in 1087 led Bishop Maurice to seize the opportunity to reorganize much of the land owned by the canons and create thirty prebends.

36 Pamela Taylor, ‘The Endowment and Military Obligations of the See of London: A Reassessment of

Three Sources’, ANS 14, 1991 (1992), 287–312. GDB 127a2–b1 (Mdx 3/1–14). GDB 127b1 (Mdx 3/6). GDB 127a2, 130a2 (Mdx 3/2; 15/1). GDB 127b2 (Mdx 3/14). GDB 127a2–128a2 (Mdx 3/1–30). In 1066 the canons held 18½ hides and the bishop 8½ hides. By 1086 the canons had 38 hides and the bishop 44½ hides: GDB 133b1–134a1, 136a2 (Herts. 4/1–25; 13/1–5). 43 LDB 9b–14a (Essex 3/1–16; 4/1–18; 5/1–12). 37 38 39 40 41 42

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Chichester At the other end of the scale, the ancient diocese of the South Saxons, originally based at Selsey, was one of the poorest sees in the country. After 1075 the Norman bishop, Stigand, relocated his see to Chichester, but eleven years on he was still not able to make his presence felt in his cathedral city. As Domesday Book puts it somewhat drily ‘Modo est ipsa civitas in manu comitis Rogerii’, and it is possible that the new cathedral was not begun until the 1090s.44 No doubt lack of money accounts for the fact that the new cathedral was not consecrated until 1108. The bishop owned less land in his own diocese than the archbishop of Canterbury.45 It is therefore not surprising that there is little evidence for either the superseded chapter at Selsey or the canons of Chichester in 1086. Selsey itself was assessed at 10 hides, most of which was held in demesne and so could have been used to maintain the recently demoted cathedral canons. The bishop’s manor of Preston, described as having always belonged to the monasterium, presumably refers to its ownership by Selsey minster. At the end of the bishop’s Domesday entry the canons of Chichester were noted as holding 16 hides in common, worth £8 in 1086.46 There is evidence that at least one prebend was in existence as 2 hides belonging to it were assessed under Earl Roger’s manor of Treyford in 1086.47 Three clerks, probably from the bishop’s household, held £4 worth of land from his largest manor, Aldingbourne, and another clerk held 2 hides from him at Amberley.48

Chester Another relocated see was that of Lichfield which under the Norman bishop Peter had moved to Chester after 1075. In 1086 the bulk of the bishopric’s estates lay outside Cheshire. The largest manor was Lichfield, where five canons of the superseded cathedral held three ploughs for their sustenance.49 In Chester, the new cathedral church of St John held eight houses in the city, one of which was the dean’s and the rest belonged to the canons. St John’s also held two parts of one hide in ‘Redcliff’ which was worth 13s. 2d. in 1086.50 By comparison, St Werburgh’s minster held 13 houses in Chester and in excess of 25 hides in 1086.51 Like his colleague at Chichester, the bishop was confronted with a powerful local earl, in the form of Earl Hugh, who in the early 1090s, with the support of Archbishop Anselm, replaced the canons of St Werburgh’s with monks from Bec. It is not surprising, therefore, that soon the bishop upped sticks again and moved his seat to Coventry abbey, much to the dismay of its monks. Reading the description of Coventry by William of Malmesbury, one can see that a takeover bid from someone was definitely on the cards: ‘It had so much silver and gold on view that the very walls of the church seemed too flimsy to support the treasuries, which visitors gazed at as though they were a miracle.’52 44 GDB 23a1 (Suss. 11/1); Eric Fernie, The Architecture of Norman England, Oxford 2000, 130–1 sum-

marizes a complex matter. GDB 16a2–17a1 (Suss. 2/1–10; 3/1–10). GDB 17a1 (Suss. 2/7, 9–10). GDB 23a2 (Suss. 11/8). GDB 16b2, 17a1 (Suss. 3/3; 3/5). GDB 247a1–2 (Staffs. 2/16). GDB 263a1 (Ches. B/10; B/12). GDB 263a2–b1 (Ches. A/1–22). Gesta Pontificum, trans. Preest, 209.

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

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Lincoln Remigius was the first post-Conquest appointment to the English episcopacy in 1067 as bishop of Dorchester on Thames, but in the early 1070s he moved his seat to Lincoln.53 However, in 1086 the bulk of his estates still lay in Oxfordshire and consisted of the three hundreds of Dorchester, Thame, and Banbury, assessed at 290 hides.54 These three hundreds may well have formed a ship-soke, such as those held by other Anglo-Saxon bishops, most notably Worcester, but there is no evidence that the bishops of Dorchester possessed or claimed liberties like those associated with Oswaldslow. It is possible that the move to Lincoln was motivated by a desire to resurrect the historic link of Dorchester with the old Anglo-Saxon see of Lindsey. No specific reference to canons at the demoted cathedral in Dorchester appears in Domesday Book but the fact that the bishop retained two thirds of the manor of Dorchester in demesne suggests that it was used in part for their support. Given the wealth of the diocese, provision for the new canons at St Mary’s Lincoln appears to have been relatively meagre, and it may be that the community at Lincoln was still small at the time of the Domesday Inquest. In 1086 six canons were holding five ploughs in demesne belonging to the bishop’s manor of Welton (Lincs.), while at Redbourne (Lincs.), assessed at 1 carucate, Bishop Remigius and the canons of St Mary had two villans ploughing with three oxen, and 24 acres of meadow, the whole worth 10s.55

Thetford Lincoln’s neighbouring diocese, the old Anglo-Saxon see of Elmham, covered both Suffolk and Norfolk. Elmham’s status as a double diocese before 1066 is noted under the Domesday entry for Hoxne, which had been the base for the bishop in Suffolk.56 Norfolk was served from North Elmham, but evidence for the two communities both before and after 1066 is slight.57 In 1086 the see’s possessions consisted of a myriad of smallholdings.58 The first Norman bishop appointed to Elmham, Herfast (1070–84), soon moved his seat to Thetford, and his successor, William de Beaufou (1085–91), was referred to as bishop of Thetford in 1086. Unfortunately there is no evidence for the bishop’s familia other than a reference to an archdeacon, Gunfrid, who held 3 carucates of land at Helmingham (Norf.) in 1086.59 Like the bishop of Chester, the bishop of Thetford was faced with rich abbeys within his diocese over which he had no control, and there is evidence that Herfast attempted to appropriate land from both St Benet’s at Holme and Bury St Edmunds.60 It is worth noting that in 1086 Bury was worth £655 whereas the bishopric was valued at just over £400. Bishop William’s seat in Thetford was evidently the church of St Mary, which controlled four other churches in the town and in 1086 was held by the sons of 53 54 55 56 57

David Bates, Bishop Remigius of Lincoln, 1067–1092, Lincoln 1992. GDB 155a1–b1 (Oxon. 6/1–17). GDB 344a1, 345a1 (Lincs. 7/8; 7/57). LDB 379a (Suff. 18/1). In the will of Bishop Ælfric, who died in 1038, the priests at Hoxne and Elmham were left fenland for their sustenance: Whitelock, AS Wills, no. 26. 58 LDB 191a–201b (Norf. 10/1–93), 379a–381a (Suff. 18/1–6; 19/1–21). 59 He was probably also the Gunfrid who held one sokeman at Swafield of the bishop: LDB 193a (Norf. 10/16; 10/18). 60 LDB 194b, 201a, 201b (Norf. 10/27, 90, 93).

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Bishop Herfast.61 His niece Heloise also held episcopal land in 1086.62 While Bishop William may have accepted the situation, his successor Herbert Losinga did not, and it is probable that the irregular position at Thetford contributed to his decision to move his seat in 1094 to Norwich, where he established a monastic chapter. In 1086 the bishop of Thetford was already in possession of several churches in Norwich, including the church of Holy Trinity which may have provided the site of Losinga’s cathedral and shared its dedication. Bishop Herbert laid the first stone of his new cathedral in 1096, and by 1101 there was an adjoining priory housing sixty Benedictine monks.63

Wells At Wells the canons were used to foreign bishops. By 1086 the incumbent, Bishop Giso, born in Lotharingia, had been in situ for twenty-five years; his predecessor, Duduc, hailed from either Saxony or Lotharingia.64 In 1086 the bishopric’s estates, based solely in Somerset, were assessed at 221 hides. The largest episcopal manor was Wells, assessed at 50 hides and divided between the bishop and the canons, with values of £30 and £12 respectively. The canons held two further episcopal manors worth a total of £8 in 1086 which they had also held before the Conquest. 65 If one compares the wealth of the canons of Wells to the fortunes of those at Lincoln, Chester, and elsewhere, one can understand why Giso was remembered so kindly. However, within four years of his death, his successor John of Tours, a wealthy doctor according to William of Malmesbury, followed the precedent set by others and transferred his see to the wealthy abbey of Bath. William tells us that at first John treated the monks badly, considering them ‘dull and outlandish’, but once he had installed monks of his own choice his attitude improved.66 Some provision was made through the prior for the monks’ sustenance but, unsurprisingly, they never regained control of their estates.

Salisbury Bishop Hereman of Ramsbury (1045–78) had moved his seat to the wealthy abbey of Sherborne (Dors.) soon after 1058, but the monastery’s long-standing royal connections enabled it to survive the bishop’s intrusion, and in 1075 Hereman moved again, to a new site at Old Sarum. William of Malmesbury described Sherborne as ‘a small town which does not attract either because of the numbers of its inhabitants or the charm of its position. Indeed it is a matter for wonder and almost for shame that the episcopal see lasted there for so many centuries’.67 Hereman’s successor Bishop Osmund (1078–99), a relative of King William, retained overall control of Sherborne’s estates in 1086, but nine manors were listed as de victu monachorum and assessed in 1066 at 73 hides, besides 9½ carucates at Sherborne which never 61 62 63 64 65 66

LDB 118b (Norf. 1/70). LDB 200b (Norf. 10/81). ODNB. Simon Keynes, ‘Giso, Bishop of Wells (1061–88)’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 203–71. GDB 89a2–b2 (Som. 6/1–19). William also says that he bought the city of Bath from Henry I for £500 in silver and transferred it to his own use and that of his successors: Gesta Pontificum, trans. Preest, 130. 67 Ibid. 116.

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paid geld and were worth £6 10s. in 1086. The monks also received 15s. a year from fishermen who held Lyme Regis from the bishop.68 In Wiltshire the bishop’s holdings consisted of five valuable manors, the hundredal manor of Ramsbury being the largest with a TRE assessment of 90 hides. In 1086 ‘the priests’, presumably those connected with the old Anglo-Saxon cathedral, held 4 hides there. 69 Osmund had a high reputation as a scholar and was eventually elevated to sainthood in the mid-fifteenth century. However, the history of his episcopacy is obscure. He seems to have been in no hurry to complete the cathedral begun by his predecessor, and there is no mention in Domesday of provision for the canons. The first reference to the chapter appears in Osmund’s so-called foundation charter of 1091, which although it survives only as a late copy, is accepted as genuine. The charter, probably timed to coincide with the completion of the cathedral dedicated in 1092, granted six manors and numerous churches to the canons for their maintenance. Although the number of canons installed by Osmund is unknown, Diana Greenway points out that when the estates granted by the bishop were broken down into individual prebends they provided for twenty-nine canons. 70 Rochester Disentangling truth from fiction about the history of Rochester in the eleventh and early twelfth century is not easy, overshadowed as it was by Canterbury. Indeed, the career of Rochester’s first Norman bishop, Gundulf (1077–1108), was entirely dependent on his friendship with Lanfranc.71 Evidence of Lanfranc’s involvement in the fortunes of Rochester can be seen in Domesday. The entry for the bishop’s manor of Stoke (Kent) notes that it was Lanfranc who recovered the estate for the bishopric, and he was also involved in its securing of the manor of Freckenham (Suff.), assessed at 10 hides in 1086.72 Gundulf also held a small estate from the archbishop in Cambridgeshire.73 However, at Rochester it was Gundulf who was remembered for recovering church land, rebuilding the cathedral of St Andrew, and raising the number of monks from twenty-two to sixty. His Vita, written some time between 1108 and 1122, presents a picture of a monk-bishop along the lines of St Wulfstan.74 As with Osmund at Salisbury, Gundulf appears to have been in no rush to implement a separate endowment for his monks. Marylou Ruud attempts to explain this by suggesting that a separate endowment would not have been necessary if the bishop intended to live with his monks. I would instead incline towards the view held by Rodney Thomson that Gundulf’s known association with Lanfranc lay behind the creation of his Vita and the attribution to him of a division of land between monks and bishop. Thomson suggests that the Vita Gundulfi and a series of forged charters were used by the monks in the twelfth century to authenticate their claims to a share of the bishop’s manors. The so-called foundation charter of 1089, purporting to be a grant by Gundulf and listing the estates granted to the monks, with a reconfirmation by Henry I in 1103, is not without problems. 68 69 70 71

GDB 75b2, 77a1–2 (Dors. 2/1–6; 3/1–18). GDB 66a1 (Wilts. 3/1–5). Greenway, ‘1091’, 5. Marylou Ruud, ‘Monks in the World: The Case of Gundulf of Rochester’, ANS 11, 1988 (1989), 245–60. 72 GDB 5b2 (Kent 4/16); LDB 381a (Suff. 20/1). See also David R. Bates, ‘The Land Pleas of William I’s Reign: Penenden Heath Revisited’, BIHR 51, 1978, 1–19. 73 GDB 190b1 (Cambs. 4/1). 74 The Life of Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, ed. Rodney Thomson, Toronto 1977.

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Canterbury A cursory glance at the Domesday evidence for the lands assigned to the support of the monks of Canterbury shows that they were substantial and spread across four counties, Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Suffolk.75 Nicholas Brooks suggests that the bulk of Canterbury’s endowment had been acquired by the end of the eighth century,76 and it is clear that some provision for the monks was in place before 1066. In 1086 the monks’ main source of income in Kent was the borough of Sandwich, which rendered £50 at farm and 40,000 herrings. Although listed under the archbishop’s holdings, Sandwich was de vestitu monachorum and was probably apportioned to the monks by Lanfranc soon after 1071.77 The main list of manors assigned to the monks in Domesday Book follows those of the archbishop and his knights, but apart from the heading there is little indication of the monks’ interest in the estates. Under the list of the archbishop’s men, the manor of Farningham, valued at £11 in 1086, paid £4 a year for the monks’ clothing, while Graveney paid the monks £1 a year from a total value of £6.78 The manors outside Kent assigned to the monks were worth over £80 in 1086.

Winchester After Canterbury and York, Winchester was the wealthiest see in England. This is reflected in the amount of land assigned to the monks, spread over three counties, Hampshire, Berkshire, and Wiltshire.79 It is therefore not surprising that the see was given to a royal kinsman, Bishop Walkelin (1070–98). The reputation he left behind was not entirely spotless. William of Malmesbury tells us that at first the bishop tried to remove the monks from Winchester and replace them with more than forty canons until Archbishop Lanfranc got wind of the scheme and stopped him in his tracks. 80 Like Canterbury and Worcester, the see of Winchester had a long history and ownership of much of its estates can be traced back centuries.81 The Domesday list of manors assigned to the monks in Hampshire is headed ‘These lands mentioned below are for the sustenance of the monks of Winchester’.82 Included in the list are the hundreds of Evingar and Crondall as well as the hundredal manor of Hoddington; although the Domesday terminology may not be entirely clear, the assignment of such strategic manors to the monks suggests that the phrase de victu monachorum meant that they took revenues in cash or kind from them, not that they owned them outright. Quite apart from his initial attempts to replace the monks with canons, Bishop Walkelin was accused of withholding manors worth £300 from the monks for his own use.83 It is possible that there is evidence of this in Domesday Book. In Hampshire, at first sight, the monks seem to have held possession of only five of the manors allocated to their use: Boarhunt, Wootton St Lawrence, Hayling, 75 GDB 3a1, 4a2, 4b2–5a2 (Kent 2/2, 28, 35; 3/1–23), 16b1–2 (Suss. 2/2, 8–9), 30b2–31a1 (Surr. 2/2,

4–6); LDB 372b–373a (Suff. 15/1–5). Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury, Leicester 1984, chap. 5. GDB 3a1 (Kent 2/2). GDB 4a2 (Kent 2/28; 2/35). GDB 41a1–b2, 43a1 (Hants 3/1–27), 58a2 (Berks. 2/1), 65b1–2 (Wilts. 2/3–12). Gesta Pontificum, trans. Preest, 48. H. P. R. Finberg, The Early Charters of Wessex, Leicester 1964, 214–48. GDB 41a1 (Hants 3/1). Gesta Pontificum, trans. Preest, 114.

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

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Brockhampton, and Havant, worth in 1086 a total of £37 16s. 6d. Among the manors de victu monachorum held by the bishop it is stated that at Chilcomb, beneficially hidated at 1 hide, ‘what the monks hold (quod monachi tenent)’ is worth £80, while South Stoneham, worth £8, though held by the bishop, ‘is for the clothing of the monks (de vestitu monachorum est)’; three other manors, Freefolk, Polhampton, and Bransbury, are said to have been for the monks’ sustenance (de victu monachorum) but only in the pre-Conquest period.84 Leaving aside Chilcomb and South Stoneham, the value of the monks’ estates held by the bishop was just over £300, close to the figure alleged. Alexander Rumble suggests that the quarrel between the bishop and the monks over their estates may have influenced the compilation of the Codex Wintoniensis and notes that the monks appear to have regained all their manors after Walkelin’s death and probably by 1129. 85 Winchester’s lands in Wiltshire were also divided between the bishop and the monks. The monks apparently held nine manors under the title ‘These are for the monks’ supplies’. However, only the first manor, Alton Priors, specifically mentions the monks. We are told that what they have is worth £24 and what the bishop has is worth £5. The rest of the manors total £88 10s. Interestingly the two manors for which Domesday Book gives most detail acknowledging the monks’ interest, Chilcomb and Alton Priors, have documentary evidence surviving from at least the tenth century.86 One member of the cathedral clergy who was a tenant in 1086 was Richer, who held manors totalling 16½ hides and the church of South Stoneham from the bishop.87 At the time of the Domesday Inquest Richer was a clerk but later rose to archdeacon.88 The only other Domesday reference to a member of the Winchester community appears in the entry for the bishop’s 5–hide manor of Fyfield (Wilts.), which in 1066 belonged to the sacrist of the church and was held of the bishop of Winchester by the monk Alsige.89 Although Domesday indicates that the monks held land in 1066, exactly when the division of the mensa between bishop and monks occurred is not at present clear. A glance at the distribution of manors assigned to the monks shows that they were largely situated close to the cathedral, unlike the bishop’s, which were further afield. It is likely that some semblance of the position in 1086 was put in place during the episcopacy of Archbishop Stigand and restructured by Walkelin. Compiling a list of manors to be assigned respectively to the monks or bishop would not have been a random affair, and there is some evidence to suggest that reference could have been made to existing church records which illustrated the terms under which donations had been received. Further study is to be made in this area but two examples are offered here. In 877 Bishop Tunbeorht of Winchester granted 5 hides at Nursling (Hants) to the refectory of the brethren at Winchester; in 1086 Bishop Walkelin held 84 Freefolk, part of the manor of Whitchurch, was de victu monachorum TRE but held of the bishop by Eadnoth (the staller?). Polhampton may have been given by Earl Godwine, who received land there from Cnut in 1033 (S 970). Bransbury was held TRE by Abbot Ælfsige, possibly Godwine’s brother, ‘of Stigand and the monks’. I am grateful to Ann Williams for elaboration on this point. 85 Alexander R. Rumble, ‘The Purposes of the Codex Wintoniensis’, ANS 4, 1981 (1982), 153–66, esp. 161. 86 See my forthcoming paper on the estates of the monks of Canterbury, Worcester, and Winchester. 87 GDB 40b1, 40b2, 41a2, 41b2 (Hants 2/16; 2/19; 3/6, 15–16). The estates consisted of ½ hide at Chingescamp, 10 hides at Chilton Candover, 2 hides at Hurstbourne Priors, 4 hides at Bransbury, and the church of South Stoneham with two dependent churches near Southampton and 1 hide. 88 Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis: The History of the Church of Abingdon, ed. and trans. John Hudson, II, Oxford 2002, 164–5. 89 GDB 65b1 (Wilts. 2/3).

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5 hides at Nursling de victu monachorum which ‘always belonged to the monastery (semper fuit in monasterio)’.90 Around 900 a certain Ceolwynn made a bequest of 15 hides at Alton Priors (Wilts.), also to the refectory, in return for which the community was to provide her son with land rent-free for life; in 1086 Alton Priors was assessed at 20 hides and appears among the bishop’s holdings assigned to the support of the monks.91

Worcester At Worcester the existence of a pre-Conquest and post-Conquest cartulary along with Domesday entries has provided scholars with a unique opportunity to examine in detail the tenurial structure of the bishopric’s estates during the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Domesday survey begins with the details of manors belonging to the bishop in his triple hundred of Oswaldslow, followed by a list of the Oswaldslow manors assigned to the church, totalling 75 hides. This is followed by the church’s manors held elsewhere in the county, which were assessed at 98½ hides. Thus in Worcestershire alone the church of Worcester possessed approximately 173½ hides in 1086.92 As at Winchester and Canterbury, references to the Worcester monks’ holding land for their supplies appear under both their own list of manors and the bishop’s; there are five such references, at Teddington and Mitton, Blackwell, Daylesford and Evenlode (TRE only), Himbleton and Spetchley (TRE only), and Knightwick. The most interesting is the entry for Knightwick, a holding assessed at 1 hide, in the hands of Robert the bursar in 1086, and belonging to the church’s manor of Grimley: TRE this hide used to render sake and soke and every service of the king in the said manor [Grimley], and it is for the household supplies of the monks, but it was leased to a certain nun, Edith, to have and give service for as long as the brothers wished and could do without it. As their community grew in King William’s time, she gave it back, and she is still alive and is herself the witness to this.93

This reference to the growing numbers of the community at Worcester explains why most manors held by the church outside Oswaldslow remained in lordship. Only 7½ hides of some 98½ hides were in the hands of tenants in 1086. In addition there are numerous allusions to food payments, including honey, salt, corn, and eels. It is possible that further study of the pre-Conquest material, as at Winchester, will reveal an early date for the division of estates between the bishop and the monks. At present, the obvious candidate for having instigated major changes must be Archbishop Ealdred, who retained control of several of Worcester’s manors after his elevation to York in 1060.94 While bishop of Worcester he bestowed on the monks 3 hides at Teddington and Alstone (Glos.) and a messuage in Worcester; in 1086 3 hides at Teddington are duly noted as de victu monachorum under the bishop’s manor of Bredon.95

90 91 92 93 94 95

S 1277; GDB 41a1 (Hants 3/2). S 1513; Charters, ed. Robertson, no. 17; GDB 65b1 (Wilts. 2/4). GDB 172b1–174a2 (Worcs. 2/1–85). GDB 173b2 (Worcs. 2/67). William of Malmesbury’s Life of Wulstan, trans. Peile, 29. S 1408; GDB 173a1 (Worcs. 2/23).

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Conclusion In Domesday we can see that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that most bishoprics had in place some division of land between the bishop and his chapter. This is apparent even at the superseded cathedrals of St Germans, Ramsbury, and Lichfield. The entries for the monastic foundations of Canterbury, Winchester, and Worcester in particular make it clear that that although at first sight the monks’ endowment was extensive, on closer inspection one can see that the bishop had not relinquished his rights. Most of the manors assigned to the monks were retained to provide for their sustenance and those that were subinfeudated remained under the bishop’s control, with the monks receiving revenue. Pre-Conquest documentary evidence as well as the detailed Domesday entries for the monastic communities of Canterbury, Winchester, and Worcester provides scope for a more detailed future study of the decision-making process that went into the division of the mensa between the bishop and his monks. Although evidence is sorely lacking for the size of cathedral chapters in the eleventh century, it is clear that those occupied by secular canons were far smaller than those which housed monks. It will be noted that Walkelin’s threatened imposition of over forty canons at Winchester attracted contemporary comment. In reality, York and London aside, secular chapters appear to have been a lot smaller, and this is borne out by their relatively meagre apportionment of land. Monastic communities were much larger, and through necessity a more substantial and organized means of supporting them was in place by 1086. In any discussion of the Domesday evidence for a division of estates between the bishop and his chapter it is important to appreciate that our information is largely based on the returns submitted by the bishop as tenant-in-chief and therefore reflects his concerns. The picture thus usually presented is one in which the bishop and his familia appear as one against the encroachment of local earls and sheriffs. The commissioners were not concerned with the rights of a few monks or canons, who were treated as tenants of the bishop. No revolution in tenurial holding had taken place by 1086. Rather, what emerges is a picture of the cathedral community in transition. It is my contention that more fundamental changes took place during the twenty-five years after the Domesday Inquest. Some of the impetus for this can be attributed to the rebuilding of virtually every cathedral in England, a programme which stimulated the need to provide for chapters, whether monastic or secular, on a more structured and permanent basis.

Dunstan and Monastic Reform

DUNSTAN AND MONASTIC REFORM: TENTH-CENTURY FACT OR TWELFTH-CENTURY FICTION? Nicola Robertson The traditional view of Dunstan’s role in the English monastic revival of the tenth century, known as the Benedictine Reform, is as its instigator and leader.1 Dunstan has been seen as the pivotal force behind the vigorous promotion of ‘reformed’ Benedictine monasticism which revitalized the religious life in England during this time. As Knowles states The beginning of the monastic revival in England, which set in being a life that was destined to endure till the Dissolution of the monasteries six hundred years later, may be dated from the year c. 940, when King Edmund, after his narrow escape from death on the cliffs of Cheddar, set Dunstan, still a young man, as ‘abbot’ in the church of Glastonbury.2

This view of events holds that Dunstan’s appointment to the abbacy of Glastonbury, at some point during the 940s, set in motion a series of events resulting in both the creation of new monastic institutions and the refoundation of existing houses, which were either derelict or inhabited by secular clerics, following the principles of the Rule of St Benedict. Responsibility for establishing the partnership between church and state in the promotion of Benedictine monasticism, epitomized by the relationship between King Edgar and Dunstan himself, has also traditionally been ascribed to Dunstan. The Benedictine Reform reached a climax with the council of Winchester, c. 975, from which emerged the great English customary, the Regularis Concordia, intended to standardize monastic observance throughout the entire kingdom. Recent scholarship has done much to challenge this traditional view of the period; the collections of essays celebrating the millennia of the three figureheads of the reform movement, Dunstan, Æthelwold, and Oswald,3 have highlighted the differences in approach to monasticism and reform which existed at this time; as have the studies of their respective ecclesiastical centres, Canterbury, Winchester, and Worcester.4 Whilst it is now acknowledged that, as Michael Lapidge states, ‘[Dunstan] has often been given personal credit for reforming accomplishments 1 2 3

I would like to thank Mary Swan and Bill Flynn for their help in the preparation of this paper. David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England 940–1216, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1963, 31. St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. Nigel Ramsay, Margaret Sparks, and Tim Tatton-Brown, Woodbridge 1992; Bishop Æthelwold: His Career and Influence, ed. Barbara Yorke, Woodbridge 1988; St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence, ed. Nicholas Brooks and Catherine Cubitt, London 1996. For an analysis of these collections see the review article by Catherine Cubitt, ‘The Tenth-Century Benedictine Reform in England’, EME 6, 1997, 77–94. 4 For Canterbury see Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury, Leicester 1984; for Worcester, Julia Barrow, ‘The Community of Worcester, 961–c. 1100’, in St Oswald of Worcester, ed. Brooks and Cubitt, 84–99; for Winchester, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Martin Biddle, Winchester Studies 1, Oxford 1976; Alexander R. Rumble, Property and Piety in Early Medieval Winchester, Winchester Studies 4 (3), Oxford 2002; for Glastonbury, Lesley Abrams, Anglo-Saxon

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which are now known to be the work of others’,5 he is nevertheless still regarded as the motivating force, the ‘guiding hand’, behind the monastic revival. That Dunstan was an important figure in the political and religious life of late tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England is evident, yet why he was so important and the precise nature of his involvement in the monastic reform is not immediately apparent. The contemporary sources offer no easy solutions to these questions; they are either hagiographical (B.’s Vita Dunstani, Wulfstan of Winchester’s Vita Æthelwoldi, and Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s Vita Oswaldi) or produced by authors and institutions directly associated with the reform movement; both of which mean that they are unable to give us a balanced, unbiased view of the ecclesiastical history of the late tenth century. The first Vita Dunstani, whose author is simply known as ‘B.’, covers Dunstan’s life up to his appointment to the bishoprics of Worcester and London and to the archbishopric of Canterbury in great detail. Thereafter, however, it becomes rather nebulous, shifting from a chronological account of his life to recounting miracles and visions experienced by Dunstan in his youth; hardly any detail is given of his activities as a reformer.6 Dunstan appears as a supporting character in the Vita Æthelwoldi by Wulfstan of Winchester (and its later abbreviation by Ælfric) and in Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s Vita Oswaldi. He is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Old English document known as King Edgar’s Establishment of Monasteries, though neither of these texts gives any great detail concerning Dunstan’s career. The origins of this view of Dunstan as the instigator of a reform movement are unclear; there are vague implications in the contemporary sources but nothing definitive. It is possible that this view of Dunstan occurs as a result of a reinterpretation and reconstruction of the ecclesiastical history of the late tenth century by postConquest, specifically twelfth-century, authors who placed Dunstan at the centre of an organized reform movement. It is my intention here to examine the evidence for Dunstan’s participation in and guidance of the late tenth-century English monastic revival; specifically his ‘reform’ and imposition of the Benedictine Rule at Glastonbury and his activities as bishop of Worcester and London and archbishop of Canterbury. By reading the accounts of Dunstan and his reforms contained in the twelfth-century sources directly against those found in the contemporary material it will be possible to determine the extent to which scholarship, both past and present, has been informed by these later authors’ (re)interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon past. Dunstan’s appointment to the abbacy of Glastonbury c. 940H946, and his subsequent establishment of the use of the Benedictine Rule there, has generally been regarded as a turning point in the ecclesiastical history of Anglo-Saxon England, the inception of what has come to be known as ‘the Benedictine Reform’. There are, however, difficulties with establishing exactly what happened at Glastonbury under Dunstan’s abbacy, which are not clarified either by the contemporary or the post-Conquest sources. Glastonbury forms an important part of B.’s Vita Dunstani: Dunstan was born near Glastonbury and educated in the church, and B. includes a lengthy description of Dunstan’s studies and the books he read there, including those

Glastonbury: Church and Endowment, Woodbridge 1996; The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. Lesley Abrams and James P. Carley, Woodbridge 1991. 5 ODNB. 6 Vita Sancti Dunstani Auctore B., in Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. William Stubbs, RS 63, London 1874, 3–52 [henceforward B. VSD, cited by chapter]. This and all following translations of the text are my own. For an analysis of the date and composition of B.’s Vita see Michael Lapidge, ‘B. and the Vita S. Dunstani’, in St Dunstan, ed. Ramsay and others, 247–59.

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left by Irish pilgrims.7 It is clear from B.’s text that there was a thriving religious community at Glastonbury during the early tenth century and it was at Glastonbury that Dunstan was tonsured into clerical orders, although according to B. Dunstan only became a monk after a painful illness during which he was persuaded to take the monastic habit by Bishop Ælfheah of Winchester, with whom he returned after he recovered from his illness. One interpretation of this could be that whatever form of religious life existed at Glastonbury in the early tenth century, it was not Benedictine monasticism. Given the importance of Glastonbury in B.’s text, it is surely significant that there is little emphasis on any reforms Dunstan may have carried out there. Indeed B. gives more information about Dunstan’s building works there, his ‘reformation’ of the physical structures of the abbey, than about any reforms of its spiritual life.8 Whilst it could be argued that Dunstan’s rebuilding programme may indicate a renewal and revival of the spiritual life of Glastonbury, this does not necessarily indicate that Dunstan implemented the use of the Benedictine Rule there at this time.9 Dunstan was made abbot of Glastonbury by King Edmund after the famous incident at Cheddar Gorge. According to B., after his narrow escape from death, Edmund sent for Dunstan and took him to Glastonbury where he took hold of Dunstan’s right hand and ‘leading him to the priestly bishop’s throne and placing him on it, he also said, “Be the chief and powerful occupant of that seat, and the most faithful abbot of the present church.” ’10 In the following chapter, when describing Dunstan’s activities as abbot, B. then says, ‘Therefore after these things the servant of God, Dunstan, now undertook at the king’s command the aforesaid office for the sake of directing it; and following the most wholesome institution of St Benedict in the aforementioned way, he shone as first abbot of the English nation.’11 It is undoubtedly the combination of these two statements, and in particular the phrase ‘he shone forth as the first abbot of the English nation (primus abbas Anglicae nationis enituit)’, which has resulted in the conclusion both that Dunstan was the first abbot of Glastonbury and that his alleged use of the Benedictine Rule there laid the foundations of the Benedictine Reform which followed. There is, however, nothing in either of these passages to suggest that Dunstan was anything more than one out of a long line of abbots of Glastonbury, albeit a particularly illustrious and influential one. The suggestion that Dunstan was the first abbot is refuted by the use of primus, which is adjectival, not 7

B. VSD, c. 5. For an indication of the texts produced and copied in the early tenth century (though not necessarily at Glastonbury) see Simon Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday , ed. Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss, Cambridge 1985, 143–201; Michael Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, ibid. 33–89. 8 B. VSD, c. 15. A detailed discussion of the problematic sources for Glastonbury abbey and a thorough examination of its endowment throughout the Anglo-Saxon period are provided by Abrams in Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury. See also Matthew Blows, ‘Studies in the Pre-Conquest History of Glastonbury Abbey’, London Univ. Ph.D., 1991. 9 There has been much work in recent years on the textual production of the Benedictine Reform, connecting the copying and use of texts produced in the Carolingian reforms of the ninth century to both the English reform in general and Dunstan’s alleged reform of Glastonbury in particular. Mechthild Gretsch, for example, in ‘Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 57: A Witness to the Early Stages of the Benedictine Reform in England?’, ASE 32, 2003, 111–46, argues that the exemplar of this manuscript (which includes a copy of the Benedictine Rule) was produced at Glastonbury under Dunstan’s direction. Though texts such as the Memoriale Qualiter, Pseudo-Fulgentius, and the De Festivitatibus Anni may have been in existence at Glastonbury during Dunstan’s abbacy, this does not provide incontrovertible proof that Dunstan imposed the use of the Benedictine Rule there. 10 B. VSD, c. 14. 11 B. VSD, c. 15.

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temporal. In addition the use of enituit, ‘shone forth’, supports the argument against a temporal use of primus.12 On this point the twelfth-century authors are in agreement with their tenth-century sources. William of Malmesbury frequently asserts that Dunstan was not the first abbot of Glastonbury in a chronological sense and in one instance criticizes an author (presumed to be Osbern of Canterbury) who claims that he was. In his Vita of Dunstan William quotes verbatim from B.’s text, saying, ‘Then, to quote the words of the old biographer, he led him to the priestly chair, and sat him in it, and said, “Sit in this seat in supreme power, as faithful abbot of this church.” ’ The passage continues These words find a new biographer guilty of (to put it mildly) carelessness; for, as I have remarked elsewhere, he says, and says again, that the holy Dunstan was the first abbot of Glastonbury, and settled monks there with the permission of the king. For what is to be understood by the ‘priestly chair’ if not the seat of the abbot, in which Dunstan is said to have been placed by the king? And how it came to be there in the absence of monks or abbot is up to whoever understands it to explain.13

A similar criticism, again presumably of Osbern, is found in William’s De Antiquitate Glastonie, and in his Gesta Pontificum he emphasizes the continuity of religious life at Glastonbury which, though interrupted by the Danish invasions of the ninth century, was restored by Dunstan in the tenth.14 Significantly, nowhere in these passages does William assert that Dunstan instigated, or even reintroduced, the use of the Benedictine Rule at Glastonbury. Dunstan features in the Vitae of the other two reform saints, Æthelwold of Winchester and Oswald of Worcester, but it is only Wulfstan’s Vita Æthelwoldi which mentions Glastonbury and Dunstan’s possible use of the Benedictine Rule there. Wulfstan describes how Æthelwold, after spending time at Winchester with Bishop Ælfheah, travelled to Glastonbury to study under Dunstan and took the monastic habit there. It is at this point that we come across one of the many inconsistencies in the narrative of the reform. According to B., Dunstan was tonsured into clerical orders at Glastonbury, became a monk through the influence of Bishop Ælfheah, and went with him to Winchester. According to Wulfstan (and Ælfric), Dunstan was tonsured into clerical orders by Bishop Ælfheah but in Winchester and on the same day as Æthelwold. Wulfstan’s narrative includes a prophetic vision of Ælfheah concerning the careers of both Dunstan and Æthelwold which is repeated, along with Dunstan’s tonsure on the same day as Æthelwold, in the Gesta Pontificum.15 Whatever inconsistencies there may be between the Vitae of Dunstan 12 If B. intended Dunstan to be the first abbot of Glastonbury chronologically, then surely he would have

used primum, which has far stronger temporal indications. For a discussion of B.’s language and style see Michael Lapidge, ‘The Hermeneutic Style in Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin Literature’, in his Anglo-Latin Literature 900–1066, London 1993, 105–49 at 119–21 (first published ASE 4, 1975, 67–111). 13 William of Malmesbury, Vita Dunstani, in William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, Oxford 2002, 159–303 [henceforward William, Vita], at 202–5 (i.15.4–5). 14 The Early History of Glastonbury: William of Malmesbury’s De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie, ed. and trans. John Scott, Woodbridge 1981, c. 55; Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, p. 196. 15 B. VSD, cc. 5 (Dunstan is tonsured into clerical orders); 7 (he becomes a monk through Ælfheah’s influence); Wulfstan of Winchester, The Life of St Æthelwold, ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom, Oxford 1991 [henceforward Wulfstan, VSÆ], c. 8; Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 164–5 (ii.75). For detailed discussion and analysis of the careers of Dunstan and Æthelwold see Nicholas Brooks, ‘The Career of St Dunstan’, in St Dunstan, ed. Ramsay and others, 1–23; Barbara Yorke, ‘Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century’, in Bishop Æthelwold, ed. Yorke, 65–88. Interesting points raised by the disparity between B. and Wulfstan are the precise nature of Winchester monasticism in the early tenth century and why, if Ælfheah persuaded Dunstan to become a monk, he did not do the same

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and Æthelwold, Wulfstan’s passage has been taken as confirmation that Dunstan reformed Glastonbury following the principles of the Benedictine Rule. However, nowhere does Wulfstan, or Ælfric after him, explicitly state that the monastic discipline followed at Glastonbury was that of St Benedict. What they do say is that after a period of time Æthelwold wanted to leave Glastonbury: ‘During this reign, Æthelwold, the man of the Lord, in his continuing eagerness to know the scriptures more thoroughly and to receive a more perfect grounding in a monk’s religious life, determined to go overseas.’16 The phrase ‘a more perfect grounding in a monk’s religious life’ is an implicit criticism of Glastonbury’s monastic regime and although some scholars have taken Æthelwold’s desire to experience Continental monasticism as an indication of his austerity rather than an indictment of Dunstan’s Glastonbury, it is nonetheless worth noting.17 That this criticism of Dunstan’s Glastonbury is repeated in the Gesta Pontificum is also striking; William says, ‘For when Æthelwold, in his longing for a stricter life, was thirsting for exile in France, King Eadred kept him in England.’18 In addition, a statement in William’s Vita Dunstani about Æthelwold looking for somewhere to study implies that it was less Glastonbury’s religious life which attracted him than Dunstan’s reputation as a scholar: ‘Though many monasteries were available to his choice and ready to receive him with open arms, he chose from among all men Dunstan as counsellor for his life.’19 The inference here is that it was Dunstan’s personality, and perhaps his reputation as a scholar, which attracted Æthelwold to Glastonbury rather than any regular life based around the Benedictine Rule. If this was the case, then it may explain why Æthelwold wished to travel to Fleury to experience a ‘stricter’ monastic discipline. Only in his De Antiquitate Glastonie does William imply that Dunstan influenced monastic practices at Glastonbury, saying ‘Among other things they began to recite the lofty virtues of their distinguished father Dunstan, who had throughout his life wonderfully honoured Glastonbury by gifts of estates and magnificent liberties and, above all, by instituting there the regular life.’20 Again no precise details about what type of ‘regular life’ that might have been.21 Aside from the Vitae of Dunstan and Æthelwold discussed above, the only other contemporary source to suggest that Dunstan implemented the use of the Benedictine Rule at Glastonbury is the document known as King Edgar’s Establishment of Monasteries, the authorship of which has been ascribed to Æthelwold himself.22 When discussing the refoundation of Abingdon by Æthelwold the text says, ‘Before for Æthelwold. This episode has more to do with creating links between Winchester and Canterbury than providing an accurate representation of Dunstan’s earlier career. 16 Wulfstan, VSÆ, c. 10. The assumption is that Æthelwold wanted to travel to Fleury, given that once established as abbot of Abingdon he sent one of his followers, Osgar, to Fleury to learn Benedictine monasticism so that he could return to Abingdon and instruct Æthelwold and the other brothers; cf. Wulfstan, VSÆ, c. 14. 17 Knowles, Monastic Order, 35. For a more recent survey of the history of the Benedictine Reform see Joyce Hill, ‘The Benedictine Reform and Beyond’, in A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, ed. Philip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne, Oxford 2001, 151–69. 18 Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 166 (ii.75); translation from William of Malmesbury, The Deeds of the Bishops of England, trans. David Preest, Woodbridge 2002, 109. 19 William, Vita, 206–7 (i.17.2). 20 William, De Antiquitate, c. 23. 21 For a comprehensive discussion of William and his sources see William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. xiii–xxxviii, esp. xvii–xxv; R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, Woodbridge 1987, revised 2003. 22 Dorothy Whitelock, ‘The Authorship of the Account of King Edgar’s Establishment of Monasteries’, in Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, ed. J. L. Rosier, The Hague 1970, 125–36.

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that there were only a few monks in a few places in so large a kingdom who lived by the right rule. This was in no more places than one, which is called Glastonbury, where his father, King Edmund, first established monks.’23 The Benedictine nature of Glastonbury is to be inferred from the use of the phrase ‘right rule’ (rihtum regule), since Æthelwold’s commitment to Benedictine monasticism shows that the only ‘right’ rule was St Benedict’s. The statement that Edmund ‘first’ established monks at Glastonbury should not be seen as confirmation of the traditional view of Dunstan’s reformation of Glastonbury. The phrase can be read in two ways: first, as implying that Glastonbury was founded by Edmund, which contradicts all the other sources, including the Vita Æthelwoldi; and secondly, as a statement on the un-Benedictine nature of Glastonbury prior to Dunstan’s appointment there. The inference that Glastonbury and Abingdon were the only two monastic (that is Benedictine) houses in England before Æthelwold’s reformation of the Old and New Minsters in Winchester is repeated in the Vita Æthelwoldi where Wulfstan (and Ælfric) states, ‘Up to then there had been no monks in England at that time, except those dwelling at Glastonbury and Abingdon.’24 There are, however, difficulties with taking these statements at face value. It should be remembered that both these texts, the Vita Æthelwoldi and King Edgar’s Establishment of Monasteries, are documents directly associated with, if not produced at, the Old Minster, Winchester, and as such their views are inherently biased, both towards Benedictine monasticism in general and towards Winchester’s ‘Æthelwoldian brand’ of reformed monasticism in particular. As a result these authors might have assumed that there was no need to be specific about the Benedictine nature of Glastonbury as it would have been assumed by their audience. Similarly William of Malmesbury does not explicitly state that Glastonbury was a Benedictine house, but again he was writing in a Benedictine house for a Benedictine audience, so the Benedictine nature of Dunstan’s Glastonbury may well have been assumed without the need for precise details. In addition, the language used to describe monks and clerics can cause confusion. The use of the words monachos, muneca, monasterium, and minster appears fluid; they can refer to communities of professed monks following the rule of St Benedict but also to secular clerics, who may be following a rule such as the Regula Canonicorum. One example of the ambiguous use of monasterium can be found in Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s Vita Oswaldi, written some time between 995 and 1005, making it contemporary with B.’s text. After being educated in the household of his uncle, Archbishop Oda, Oswald is said to have purchased a monastery for himself in Winchester with money given to him by Oda. Byrhtferth describes Oswald’s life there and the state of monasticism at this time in the following terms: In these days there were neither monastic men, nor rules of the same holy institution in the region of the English, but there were religious and most worthy clerics who, nevertheless, were accustomed to give their treasures, which they were acquiring with avaricious hearts, not to the honour of the church, but to their wives.25

23 An Account of King Edgar’s Establishment of Monasteries, in Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, I: A.D. 871–1204, ed. and trans. D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols, Oxford 1981, I, 142–54 [hereafter KEE], at 148–9. The name given to the document is a modern editorial convention: ibid. 142–3. 24 Wulfstan, VSÆ, c. 18. 25 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita S. Oswaldi, in The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. James Raine, 3 vols, RS 71, London 1879–94, I, 399–475 [henceforward Byrhtferth, VSO], 411. This and all following translations of the text are my own.

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Here the words monasterium and monastici are used to mean different things; the first clearly intended to represent a community of secular clerics in Winchester where there were no monastici, and the second to represent those professed monks who presumably followed the institutions of St Benedict. Thus we can see that there is no explicit evidence for Dunstan ‘reforming’ Glastonbury or instigating the use of the Benedictine Rule there in the 940s. Although Dunstan’s own personal use of the Rule is implied by B., there is no clear statement that he imposed his own monastic practices on the community as a whole. That Glastonbury was a Benedictine house is, however, implied by other tenthcentury sources, particularly the Vita S. Æthelwoldi, but again this is nothing more than a suggestion in the wording of the texts. It must also be remembered that these other texts were written by Benedictines for Benedictines at a time when Dunstan himself was held in very high esteem, particularly at Winchester; therefore Glastonbury’s Benedictine nature may have been assumed by these authors. That the esteem in which Dunstan was held appears to be based primarily on his reputation as a scholar and teacher and his own personal piety, rather than as a zealous reformer, is significant, as is the fact that the twelfth-century sources, particularly William of Malmesbury, state in no uncertain terms that Dunstan was not the first abbot of Glastonbury. The implication in these texts is that rather than instigating the use of the Benedictine Rule at Glastonbury in the 940s, Dunstan’s abbacy merely enabled the community to resume its monastic practices after a period of interruption due to Viking invasions. The evidence for Dunstan’s reforming activities once he was promoted to the bishoprics of Worcester and London and subsequently to the archbishopric of Canterbury is as sparse and confused as it is for his reform of Glastonbury. There is little information available in the contemporary sources, and what mention is made of Dunstan is vague and inexact. The establishment of monasteries during the reign of Edgar is noted in only three manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MSS A, D, and E. In all of these it is Æthelwold who is named as the promoter of reform. MS A, under the annal for 964, describes the expulsion of clerics from the Old and New Minsters in Winchester, Chertsey, and Milton and their replacement with monks.26 The 963 entry in MS E states that in the following year Æthelwold founded many monasteries, and drove the clerks out of the bishopric because they would not observe any rule and set monks there . . . Then afterwards he came to King Edgar [and] asked him that he would give him all the monasteries the heathen men had broken up earlier, because he wanted to restore them; and the king happily granted it.27

The text goes on to describe Æthelwold’s refoundation of the fenland monasteries of Ely and Peterborough, then under the entry for 975, when describing the death of Edgar and the so-called ‘anti-monastic reaction’ which followed, says, ‘And Ealdorman Ælfhere ordered very many monastic institutions to be overthrown which King Edgar earlier ordered the holy Bishop Æthelwold to establish.’28 A similar statement, again under the year 975, is made in MS D.29 In all these accounts, with the exception of the 963 entry in MS E, Æthelwold is merely carrying out Edgar’s orders; the responsibility for instigating the reform lies with the king. This is, 26 27 28 29

ASC 964 A. ASC 963 E; trans. Swanton, 115. ASC 975 E; trans. Swanton, 121–2. ASC 975 D; trans. Swanton, 121: ‘Ealdorman Ælfhere and many others broke God’s law and impeded the monastic rule, and dissolved monasteries, and drove away monks and put to flight God’s servants, whom earlier King Edgar ordered the holy Bishop Æthelwold to establish.’

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perhaps, to be expected; MS A is the Winchester manuscript of the Chronicle and MS E comes from Peterborough, both houses directly associated with Æthelwold. In other texts associated with Winchester and Æthelwold, particularly King Edgar’s Establishment and the so-called New Minster foundation charter, the authorship of which is attributed to Æthelwold himself,30 responsibility for the monastic revival is transferred from Æthelwold and placed directly in the hands of the king. That a similar theme should be displayed in texts produced at houses associated with Æthelwoldian monasticism is, therefore, not surprising. It is, however, interesting that such a theme should be found in MS D, the Worcester manuscript; Worcester had no direct association with Æthelwold or his variety of monastic observance and was significantly different in its approach to monastic reform from Winchester.31 Dunstan is not mentioned in any of these Chronicle accounts and there is little direct evidence from other contemporary sources to indicate that he was involved in the organization of a reform movement, if, indeed, such a thing existed. B. in his Vita gives very little information on Dunstan’s activities as either bishop or archbishop. After a statement concerning Dunstan’s appointment to the bishopric of Worcester there is an oblique reference to something which might be interpreted as reform: the blessed bishop Dunstan, having been set in place by the king, received this same church which was to be guarded under his pastoral skill, in which immediately after the weeds [literally thistles] of errors had been torn out, he planted the vine of true faith and the palm of justice with perceptive care, and the wheaten seed of the Holy Trinity into hearts of believers.32

B. goes on to describe Dunstan’s appointment to the bishopric of London, saying, ‘He was guiding these twin churches under the diligent rule of the excellent for many years.’33 This is a somewhat ambiguous statement as it is unclear from the text who ‘he’ is: it could be Dunstan, but it could also be Edgar. If it is Dunstan then the expression ‘many years’ is confusing as he was only bishop of Worcester for approximately three years before Oswald was appointed as his successor and bishop of London for two years. One reason for confusion in B.’s account may be the circumstances of its composition, discussed below. If this is a reference to Dunstan’s reform of Worcester, it was obviously not very successful if Oswald felt the need to reform Worcester once he was appointed to the bishopric in 962. There is no indication in any of the sources relating to Oswald and Worcester that his activities were the continuation of something which Dunstan had started; it is clear from both the hagiographical and cartulary sources that there were secular clerics in residence at Worcester cathedral when Oswald began his episcopacy and for a considerable period afterwards.34 30 S 745. For a discussion of Æthelwold’s authorship of the charter see Rumble, Property and Piety, 65–97. 31 The history and derivation of MS D is examined in the introduction to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition 6, MS D, ed. G. P. Cubbin, Cambridge 1996. It would appear to have northern origins (probably Worcester or York) and be related to MS E, which may explain the common theme of attributing the origins of monastic reform to Edgar, rather than Æthelwold or Dunstan. 32 B. VSD, c. 25. 33 Ibid. 34 See P. H. Sawyer, ‘Charters of the Reform Movement: The Worcester Archive’, in Tenth-Century Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and Regularis Concordia, ed. David Parsons, London 1975, 84–93; Julia Barrow, ‘Community of Worcester’ and ‘English Cathedral Communities and Reform in the Late Tenth and the Eleventh Centuries’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193, ed. David Rollason, Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich, Woodbridge 1994, 25–39.

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B. is equally vague concerning Dunstan’s activities as archbishop, simply saying, ‘Then he also [began] to renew the destroyed places, to justify certain neglected places, to enrich sacred places, to love the just, to call the wanderers back to the path, to build God’s churches and to fulfil the name of the true shepherd in all things.’35 The only other piece of information in B.’s text which relates to monastic revival comes in his description of Edgar, which reads And when the king had been fittingly instructed in royal ceremony and sacred customs by the blessed Dunstan and other wise men, he began to suppress the wicked everywhere, as well as to love with a pure heart the just and virtuous, to subdue kings and tyrants on all sides, to restore or enrich the destroyed churches of God, and to gather together communities serving in praise of the Supreme Godhead.36

Here again Edgar is given responsibility for the establishment of religious communities, and yet again there is nothing to indicate that these were Benedictine. The traditional view of the Benedictine Reform attributes Edgar’s interest in monastic reform to Dunstan’s influence over the king. This portrayal of Dunstan as the motivating force behind Edgar’s interest in monasticism is implied in the text King Edgar’s Establishment of Monasteries when the author (Æthelwold) describes how Edgar: began zealously to set monasteries in order widely throughout his kingdom and to set up the service of God. By the supporting grace of God, it was performed thus: he availed himself continually of the counsel of his archbishop, Dunstan, through his admonition he constantly inquired about the salvation of his soul, and not that alone but likewise about all the religion and welfare of his dominion.37

It would appear to be these two passages, in B. and in King Edgar’s Establishment, which have been taken as evidence that Dunstan was the instigator and leader of a reform movement. Aside from the fact that the evidence for the existence of a unified reform movement is, in my opinion, very fragile, these two passages present difficulties of their own. B.’s text is hagiography, and is therefore bound to emphasize the importance of its subject. It becomes more problematic when the circumstances of its composition are taken into consideration. Michael Lapidge has demonstrated that, in all probability, B.’s text was written on the Continent, most likely at Liège, at some point between 995 and 1005.38 He has also argued that it is likely that B. was a secular cleric who had known Dunstan during his Glastonbury days and had left England with him when he was exiled by Eadwig, but had never returned. It would appear that B. was writing his text in the hope of gaining the patronage of Archbishop Ælfric, which would allow him to return home to England.39 Unfortunately for B. he had failed to appreciate that many English cathedral chapters, including Canterbury by this time, were monastic and would not have invited a cleric into their midst. If, as is fairly certain, B. was writing on the Continent and with a clerical background, it would explain why his Vita contains very little detailed information about Dunstan’s activities as a reforming bishop and archbishop. Quite apart from the lack of evidence in B.’s Vita concerning Dunstan’s reforming activities, there is little indication of Dunstan ‘the reformer’ in other contemporary sources, a surprise if he really was such an enthusiastic and prolific reformer. 35 36 37 38 39

B. VSD, c. 28. B. VSD, c. 25. KEE, 149. Lapidge, ‘B. and the Vita S. Dunstani’, 247–54. Ibid. 256–9.

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Nothing in the tenth-century texts demonstrates this; the majority of the evidence to support this view of Dunstan comes from post-Conquest, and particularly twelfth-century, sources. John of Worcester’s Chronicle both emphasizes the involvement of Edgar in the reformation of monasteries and assigns the responsibility for it to Dunstan’s influence. Under the entry for 969 he says, ‘Edgar, the peaceable king of the English, ordered the bishops St Dunstan of Canterbury, the blessed Oswald of Worcester, and St Æthelwold of Winchester to expel the secular priests from the greater monasteries built throughout Mercia and install monks.’40 Although at this point the focus of the text is predominantly on Oswald and his reform of Worcester, John earlier, under the entry for 959, states Then the blessed Dunstan . . . was appointed primate of the first metropolis of the English and patriarch. By him and by other wise men, the English king, Edgar himself, was properly instructed: he destroyed the iniquitous everywhere; rebuked the rebellious with severe correction; loved the just and humble; restored and enriched God’s destroyed churches; and when he had banished trivialities from the monasteries of the clerks, he gathered hosts of monks and nuns to the worship of the most high Creator, and ordered more than forty houses to be filled with them.41

This passage appears to be a combination of the descriptions of Edgar found in B.’s Vita Dunstani and Byrhtferth’s Vita Oswaldi. The language of John’s account is strongly reminiscent of Byrhtferth; indeed it is likely that the Vita Oswaldi was a source for this passage.42 If this is the case, then it is significant that in the source text it is Oswald and Æthelwold who are responsible for stimulating Edgar’s interest in monasticism, not Dunstan as John says. In the Vita Oswaldi Byrhtferth describes Oswald’s promotion of monasticism and refoundation of monasteries such as Pershore and Westbury-on-Trym, adding that because Oswald was concerned for the security of his foundations after his death he went to Edgar to ask for advice. As a result of this consultation a council was convened at Easter, to which all the bishops, nobles, abbots, and abbesses were invited.43 It is after the description of this council that Byrhtferth gives his account of Edgar which concludes The king, truly delighted in their holy offices, ordered more than forty monasteries to be set up with monks, loving through all things Lord Christ, and His most worthy soldier, St Benedict, whose fame he knew through the story told by the pious Bishop Oswald. The same king was instructed in knowledge of the true King by the most holy Bishop Æthelwold of the city of Winchester. For in truth he especially called the king himself to this, as he expelled the clerics from monasteries, and as he united our order, because he [Æthelwold] was the excellent adviser of him [Edgar]. Therefore I shall leave behind the blessed deeds of him, which have been clearly described enough.44

There is no mention of Dunstan anywhere in this passage, and it is clear that Edgar was familiar with Benedictine monasticism through the influence of Oswald and 40 John of Worcester, II, 418–19. 41 Ibid. II, 410–13. 42 For a discussion of the sources for this passage and the Chronicle in general, see ibid. II, pp.

lxvii–lxxxi, 411 nn. 7–8; R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, ANS 5, 1982 (1983), 185–96, esp. 191–4 for John’s use of Byrhtferth and B. See also Martin Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Oxford 1981, 101–26; James Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History, London 1986, 209–28 (first published in Peritia 3, 1984, 131–50). 43 Byrhtferth, VSO, 424–5. 44 Ibid. 426–7.

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Æthelwold. Byrhtferth’s text is another hagiography and, as noted earlier, needs to be approached with a degree of caution, but it is surely significant that in a text which has no direct association with either Æthelwold or Winchester it is Æthelwold, not Dunstan, who is characterized as Edgar’s adviser.45 It is also significant that John changed the emphasis of his source text, making Dunstan the character who influenced Edgar and stimulated his promotion of reformed Benedictine monasticism. Given John’s apparent reconstruction of the history of the reform, the brief account of the period contained in another twelfth-century text, Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, is also worth considering. The passage reads Bishop Æthelwold was a builder of fences, who diverted the paths of iniquity and planted the roots of charity. He was a sower of the best counsel. On his advice, King Edgar founded new plantations and the trees of tenderness most gratifying to God. He founded the abbey of Glastonbury. He built the abbey of Abingdon on the Thames. He established the abbey of Peterborough, near Stamford. He set up the abbey of Thorney, near that of Peterborough, in a very beautiful site in the middle of the fens. It was on the advice of Bishop Æthelwold, indeed, that Æthelwine, the king’s ealdorman, founded the abbey of Ramsey on a very pretty island in the midst of the same fens.46

Admittedly there are some glaring errors in this passage: neither Edgar nor Æthelwold founded either Glastonbury or Ramsey, an error which, as Diana Greenway notes in her edition of the text, seems strange given Henry’s close connection with Ramsey.47 That Henry ascribes Edgar’s interest in monasticism to Æthelwold’s influence rather than Dunstan’s, which seems to be the prevailing theme of other twelfth-century texts, is surely significant, especially when Henry’s association with Ramsey is taken into consideration. Ramsey was the place of composition of Byrhtferth’s Vita Oswaldi, the other text which assigns the predominant role in the stimulation of Edgar’s promotion of monasticism to Æthelwold. If Henry was using Byrhtferth as a source text and simply repeating what he read there, it is unlikely that he would have made the obvious error of attributing the foundation of Ramsey to Æthelwold, given that the Vita Oswaldi is as much a Ramsey foundation text as it is a vita of Oswald. It is possible that there was a Ramsey tradition associating Edgar with Æthelwold, to the detriment of Dunstan, which persisted into the twelfth century where it was absorbed by Henry and incorporated into his Historia. The close association of Dunstan and Edgar in the promotion of Benedictine monasticism is a consistent theme running throughout William of Malmesbury’s texts; it can be seen in his Gesta Pontificum, Vita Dunstani, and to a lesser extent in his Gesta Regum, though the language in the Gesta Pontificum and the Vita Dunstani implies varying degrees of reforming activity carried out by Dunstan. In the Gesta Pontificum William says, ‘The divine spirit had assuredly breathed on the heart of the 45 Although not immediately relevant here, it is also worth noting that throughout his text Byrhtferth

appears to be attempting to dissociate Oswald from royal authority, in direct contrast to Wulfstan’s Vita Æthelwoldi where an association with Edgar is one of the key themes in the depiction of Æthelwold’s character. For a more detailed analysis of the relative characterizations of Dunstan, Æthelwold, and Oswald in their vitae see my Sanctity and Hagiography in Anglo-Saxon England (provisional title for a revised version of my Ph.D. thesis, ‘Sanctity in Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin Hagiography: Wulfstan of Winchester’s Vita Sancti Æthelwoldi and Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s Vita Sancti Oswaldi’, Leeds Univ., 2003), Aldershot forthcoming. 46 Huntingdon, 320–1 (v.25). 47 Ibid. 321 n. 171. For further discussions of Henry’s text see Diana Greenway, ‘Authority, Convention and Observation in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum’, ANS 18, 1995 (1996), 105–21; John Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation’, in Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson, and Alan V. Murray, Leeds 1995, 75–101.

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king for he looked to Dunstan’s advice in all matters and unhesitatingly did whatever the archbishop was minded to command.’48 The passage continues The monastic order in every place maintained a life which copied Dunstan’s standards; especially because they were ruled by men with a vital religion and a reputation for knowledge, whom neither sloth could make sluggish nor lawlessness make headstrong. The king and the archbishop between them had everywhere promoted men like this . . . The secular clergy of many churches, when given the choice of changing their clothes or leaving, left their churches, thus making places vacant for better men. Over the whole island religious houses rose up, the altars of the saints were piled with stores of precious metals, nor were the morals of the builders inferior to the splendour of the buildings.49

In this passage it is clear that Dunstan was leading by example. The use of emulam would suggest that rather than actually imposing reforms upon the monastic order, they were merely inspired by Dunstan’s example. The only suggestion of an active reform ‘policy’ is in the phrase ‘The king and the archbishop between them had everywhere promoted men like this.’ There are clearer implications of a reform ‘policy’ to be found in William’s Vita Dunstani, where, after a description of the scandalous behaviour of clerics, the text reads The bishop thought measures were needed to remedy this deplorable and shameful state of affairs; his policy was to allow no one except an abbot or monk of devout behaviour to aspire to the ecclesiastical honours (that is of bishoprics), so that prelates of this kind might lay down by word and example how clerks subordinate to them should act.50

It is interesting that William says that it was Dunstan’s ‘policy’ only to promote monks to bishoprics, as one of the consequences of the monastic reform was the establishment of the uniquely English phenomenon of monastic cathedral chapters. Nowhere in the contemporary source is there any indication that this was a deliberate ‘policy’. The fact that it happened many indicate that such a ‘policy’ existed, but it is perhaps came about more through the influence of Æthelwold and Oswald and the promotion of their students than any direct ‘policy’ instigated by Dunstan. William’s Vita continues The bishops carefully followed the instructions of the primate to bring about the improvement of the clerks, but to little effect, for all their pains. He then used harsher remedies to cut away maladies that had become ingrained: he confronted the clerics with a stern choice – ‘Either live according to the canons or get out of your churches.’ They kicked against the pricks, opted for a softer existence, and emptied the churches in favour of monks.51

This is the clearest indication of any direct reforming activity undertaken by Dunstan and even here there is no explicit statement that he intended to impose Benedictine monasticism on the clerics; what the text says is ‘live according to the canons (canonice uiuite)’; nowhere is the Benedictine Rule mentioned. The imagery of Dunstan giving the clerics a choice, found both in this passage and in the Gesta Pontificum, is also worth noting. It is not found in any of the tenth-century sources associated with Dunstan, but it has distinct echoes of Wulfstan’s Vita Æthelwoldi, where Æthelwold (supported by Wulfstan of Dalham and his soldiers) gives the 48 Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 26 (i.18); William of Malmesbury, trans. Preest, 19. 49 Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 27 (i.18); William of Malmesbury, trans. Preest, 19–20 (adjusted

for a more literal translation). 50 William, Vita, 254–7 (ii.9.3). 51 Ibid. 256–7 (ii.9.4).

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clerics of the Old Minster a choice: ‘either to give place to the monks without delay or to take the habit of the monastic order’.52 Another significant feature of William’s Vita, and one which appears to be unique to this text, is the description of the reaction to Dunstan’s reforms: the clerics appealed to Edgar and the nobles and, as William says, ‘Whereupon the king, moved by the rights and wrongs of the matter and by the archbishop’s wishes, withdrew his favour from clerks who offended the primate by their shameful life and so could not win his forgiveness.’53 The implication that prior to this Edgar had supported the clerics contradicts all the other sources, particularly the contemporary texts, where responsibility for the promotion of Benedictine monasticism and the expulsion of the clerics is attributed directly to Edgar himself. Descriptions of Edgar’s dislike of clerics can be found in Byrhtferth’s Vita Oswaldi and the New Minster foundation charter.54 It is not surprising to find criticism of clerics in these tenth-century texts, particularly the New Minster foundation charter, another Winchester text attributed to Æthelwold himself; what is significant is that William, after a particularly explicit description of all the clerics’ sins, implies that Edgar supported these clerics and had to be persuaded otherwise by Dunstan. Whether this is a more accurate reflection of the reality of the politics of the reform is unclear, but it is another instance of twelfth-century authors reinterpreting their sources in order to establish Dunstan’s identity as the instigator of a monastic reform movement. William’s Vita Dunstani is one of the few sources to give any specific detail of the monasteries allegedly reformed by Dunstan. He says For if we are to believe Osbern, Dunstan built five monasteries from his own resources, while adding to that at Glastonbury in number of monks, estates and buildings . . . There is, in any case, no doubt whatever about Malmesbury, which Dunstan restored to its old state – that is, to be a house of monks – after expelling the clerks intruded there by Eadwig.55

Neither William nor Osbern specifies which five monasteries Dunstan allegedly reformed, but in the Gesta Pontificum the reformation of Malmesbury is attributed to Edgar, who appointed Ælfric as abbot in 974.56 Once again there is an interesting inconsistency between William’s own texts. None of the tenth-century sources gives any specific details of monasteries, other than Glastonbury, which were actually reformed by Dunstan, and, as noted above, the evidence for that ‘reformation’ is inconclusive. Another interesting feature of the Gesta Pontificum is its repetition of a prophetic dream vision experience by Dunstan whilst both he and Æthelwold were at Glastonbury, which is originally found in Wulfstan’s Vita Æthelwoldi. In both cases the details of the dream are almost identical: Dunstan saw a tree of great height whose branches appeared to stretch over all points of the compass and which overshadowed the whole of the country. The branches of this tree were loaded with cowls and at the top there was a larger cowl which protected all the other ones with its

52 Wulfstan, VSÆ, c. 18. 53 William, Vita, 256–7 (ii.9.5). 54 Byrhtferth, VSO, 425: ‘Clerics he [Edgar] held [to be] hateful’; Rumble, Property and Piety, 82: ‘not

supporting rebels who oppose the will of the Almighty in usurping the Lord’s property, I have driven away the wanton clerks’. 55 William, Vita, 258–9 (ii.10.1–2). Cf. Osbern, Vita Sancti Dunstani, in Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, 69–161 at c. 16. 56 Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, 403–7 (v.251–5).

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sleeves.57 Dunstan was amazed at this sight and asked a white-haired old man (an angel) to interpret the meaning of the dream. He was told that the tree represented Britain, the largest cowl was Æthelwold and the numerous smaller cowls represented the countless monks who would be instructed by Æthelwold and who would be drawn from all quarters to serve God. The dream vision is a standard tool in hagiographical narrative, but particularly in Wulfstan’s Vita it is as much political propaganda acting on behalf of Winchester as it is hagiographical convention. The passage clearly sets out Æthelwold’s claim to be the foremost monastic reformer with the most ideal style of monastic observance.58 It is evident that Dunstan was an important figure in the late tenth century, but the contemporary sources are ambiguous concerning the precise nature of his involvement in monastic revival. It is clear from these texts that he was regarded with respect and esteem, a result of his reputation as a scholar and his personal piety. There is no clear contemporary evidence indicating that he was involved in the practicalities of the reform, particularly at Glastonbury. That William of Malmesbury stresses the continuity of monastic life at Glastonbury and gives no indication that Dunstan carried out any reforms there may relate more to the intended audience of the two texts which feature Dunstan most predominantly, the De Antiquitate Glastonie and the Vita Dunstani. The De Antiquitate was clearly intended for a Glastonbury audience and its emphasis on the continuation of a monastic tradition stretching back centuries contributes to the establishment of the monastery’s reputation as an ancient religious centre. Any attempt to unravel the history and development of Glastonbury is fraught with problems, particularly in the twelfth century when it gets caught up in the development of Arthurian traditions and the creation of ‘Englishness’ as a sense of identity.59 The inconsistency in the depiction of Dunstan between the De Antiquitate, the Gesta Pontificum, and the Vita Dunstani is worth noting. That the characterization of Dunstan as the instigator of monastic reform should be much stronger in the Vita than in William’s other texts is to be expected. The nature of the texts and their intended audiences have no doubt influenced the characterization of Dunstan to a certain degree. It is evident that the characterization of Dunstan as the leader of a monastic reform movement originates from the depictions of the saint in William’s Vita and John of Worcester’s Chronicle. However, it is surely significant that there are other twelfth-century texts which do not characterize Dunstan in such a way. It is possible that there are regional variations in the use and representation of Dunstan, with his role as a leader of monastic reform being more predominant in the south-west and Worcester than elsewhere, for example the south-east. If such regional variations can be demonstrated, and it is not the intention of this paper to try and do so, this brings into question the role of Canterbury in the depiction and promotion of Dunstan as a leader of monastic reform.60 It is evident that William knew Osbern of Canterbury’s Vita Dunstani as on a number of occasions he critiques the text. It is possible, therefore, that it was the previous generation of authors, partic57 This is in itself unusual imagery as cowls do not normally have sleeves. 58 It is surely significant that it is repeated by William, as it still retains many of its original implications

in the Gesta Pontificum. Here again there is a variation in the depiction of the role of Dunstan between this and the Vita Dunstani. 59 Antonia Gransden, ‘The Growth of the Glastonbury Traditions and Legends in the Twelfth Century’, JEH 27, 1976, 337–58 discusses the development of Glastonbury and its re-creation of its own identity during the twelfth century. 60 See Alan Thacker, ‘Cults at Canterbury: Relics and Reform under Dunstan and his Successors’, in St Dunstan, ed. Ramsay and others, 221–45 for a discussion of the promotion (or seeming lack) of Dunstan’s cult at Canterbury.

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ularly Osbern, who reconstructed the figure of Dunstan, placing him at the centre of a unified monastic reform movement. Although William chastises Osbern over his comments regarding Glastonbury, he does not contradict him over Dunstan’s other (alleged) reforming activities. It is also worth considering, as Nicholas Brooks has done, that there is very little evidence of Dunstan actively carrying out monastic reforms at Canterbury and it is also clear that Christ Church was not wholly monastic until well after Dunstan’s death.61 At the present time it would be unwise to give a definitive answer to the question whether Dunstan’s role as the instigator of a monastic reform movement was a tenth-century fact or a twelfth-century fiction. There are still many issues which need addressing before any firm statements can, and should, be made. The state and nature of monasticism in the early tenth century needs to be re-examined to establish the extent to which Benedictine monasticism was destroyed by the Viking invasions of the late eighth and ninth centuries. It must be remembered that the sources which tell us that the state of English monasticism was so dire before the Benedictine Reform are all products of that reform, and therefore act as propaganda on behalf of the monks against the secular clerics. The use of the Rule of St Benedict before, during, and after the reform needs to be addressed, as does the use of Chrodegang’s Regula Canonicorum, along with an attempt to get beyond the reform rhetoric and determine the state of the secular clerics in the early (and indeed late) tenth century.62 Of prime importance is the issue of the nature of ‘reform’ in this period; there have been many assumptions made about the progress of the Benedictine Reform, yet apparently very few (if any) attempts to determine what ‘reform’ actually meant at this time. However, leaving these questions aside, it is possible to say that post-Conquest, particularly twelfth-century, sources do appear to be reinterpreting and reconstructing the ecclesiastical history of the late tenth century with Dunstan at the centre of a reform movement, the evidence for which is not present in the contemporary sources. Consequently Dunstan and monastic reform would appear to be, at least in part, a twelfth-century fiction, but fiction based on a reinterpretation of tenth-century facts.

61 Brooks, Early History of Church of Canterbury, 251–3. 62 Julia Barrow, ‘The Clergy in English Dioceses c. 900–c. 1066’, in Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon

England, ed. Francesca Tinti, Woodbridge 2005, 17–26.

Domesday Now

DOMESDAY NOW David Roffe The world of Domesday studies is divided between those who use Domesday data and those who merely worry about them.1 Some five years ago Chris Lewis asserted that a sure-fire way of finding out what you are in for is to look up the word ‘pig’ in the index. If you find it you know that you are in for a feast of figures and yields. If not, look out for texts and procedure.2 I do not know which he intended as a recommendation. I am going to hedge my bets here. I want to look at pigs but in a non-piggy way. In the last fifty years or so there has developed a growing awareness that the Domesday inquest was concerned with lordship. Outside the estate agent’s office and the lunatic fringe, Domesday Book is no longer seen as a comprehensive Rough Guide to Norman England. Paradoxically, in tandem with this acceptance of the limitations of the source, there has developed a new confidence in its thoroughness and scope within its own remit. In the last twenty years sophisticated statistical tools have been brought to bear on the Domesday data, notably by Professors McDonald and Snooks,3 and the results have been held to be significant (both in the statistical as well as in the everyday sense). High correlations are found between almost all the variables of Domesday Book. Thus, it has been shown that manorial resources increase in proportion to the assessment of estates and that values accurately reflect this reality. The record of less important resources, like churches, mills, and fisheries, may be eccentric, but in the essentials of the manorial economy Domesday is consistent and thorough. It is concluded that Domesday Book is about real estates and real economies. Dr Andrew Wareham has stated the case most eloquently in a recent statistical analysis of the Norfolk and Suffolk folios of Little Domesday Book (LDB): LDB can be compared to the Feudal Book of Bury Saint Edmunds and the Inquisitio Eliensis. The latter two sources respectively list the resources and assets of the abbots of Bury St Edmunds and Ely, and they generally correlate with evidence of LDB. The folios of all three texts are characterised by a comprehensive itemisation of all assets and 1

Previous versions of this paper were presented in the postgraduate seminar series of the (then) Department of English Local History, University of Leicester, in 2002, and at the Department of History, Cardiff University, in 2004. I am indebted to all those who commented on the ideas and concepts here presented. The conclusions are drawn from a broader analysis which will be appearing in print in due course. 2 ‘Domesday, with and without the Pigs’, delivered at ‘Domesday Book: New Perspectives’, a seminar held at the (then) Public Record Office, Kew, in February 2000. Sadly, this insightful paper remains unpublished. 3 J. McDonald, Production Efficiency in Domesday England, 1086, London 1998; J. McDonald and G. D. Snooks, ‘The Determinants of Manorial Income in Domesday England: Evidence from Essex’, Journal of Economic History 45, 1985, 541–56; idem, Domesday Economy: A New Approach to Anglo-Norman History, Oxford 1986; idem, ‘Were the Tax Assessment of Domesday England Artificial? The Case of Essex’, EcHR 2nd series 38, 1985, 352–72; idem, ‘The Suitability of Domesday Book for Cliometric Analysis’, EcHR 2nd series 40, 1987, 252–61.

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resources . . . Landlords itemized the number and state of their assets because they were frightened that their capital assets would be run down or misused by lessees, and this concern influenced the contents of LDB.4

For Wareham the Domesday inquest was an inventory survey of a well-established type and Domesday Book preserves much of its data. Despite the fact that it has been widely doubted that the Domesday manor had any coherent meaning, it has been universally assumed that the mansio of the so-called terms of inquiry preserved in Inquisitio Eliensis (IE) is an estate of a well-defined type.5 Wareham’s analysis typifies the attitude of many social and economic historians who choose to use Domesday data. I hope to demonstrate here that much of this is misconceived. I shall argue that, yes, Domesday is about lordship, but not the comic strip caricature so often assumed in many accounts. In 1086 lordship was not monolithic, but was a skein of interlocking and overlapping rights which devolved upon taxation and service rather than land. Domesday data were chosen to illuminate these, its central concerns. Domesday Book tells us less about real estates than networks of soke dues. The inventory school of Domesday studies draws on a long history. From at least the late twelfth century the production of Domesday Book has been understood as the purpose of the Domesday inquest.6 It was a bureaucratic process, drawn up by executive fiat. As reformulated by Round and then Galbraith, this view gave birth to an important corollary: the forms and content of Domesday are a clue to its intent. The resulting hypotheses – Domesday Book as geld list (Round and Maitland), feodary (Galbraith), a pledge of homage (Holt), tax assessment (Harvey), quartermaster’s manual (Higham), even tax return (Bridbury) – have all been posited on its exhaustive scope.7 The premise of all of these analyses does violence to the sources. Galbraith and his followers have produced a complex taxonomy of the Domesday texts which purports to prove that the production of the book was the aim of the Domesday inquest.8 But, as far as I can see, this is nothing more than wishful thinking. The 4

A. Wareham, ‘The “Feudal Revolution” in Eleventh-Century East Anglia’, ANS 22, 1999 (2000), 293–321 at 296. 5 J. H. Round, ‘The Domesday “Manor” ’, EHR 15, 1900, 293–302; J. Tait, review of F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, EHR 12, 1897, 768–77; F. H. Baring, Domesday Tables for the Counties of Surrey, Berkshire, Middlesex, Hertford, Buckingham and Bedford and the New Forest , London 1909, 79, 82, 94, 139–42, 177. For a resurrection of Maitland’s concept of ‘a house against which geld is charged’, see J. J. N, Palmer, ‘The Domesday Manor’, in Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt, Woodbridge 1987, 139–53, and a critique, D. Roffe, Domesday: The Inquest and the Book, Oxford 2000, 217–18. The ‘articles’ are found in the prologue to the Inquisitio Eliensis: Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis [and] Inquisitio Eliensis, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, London 1876, 97 [henceforward ICC or IE as appropriate]. For a recent authoritative survey of the use of Domesday data to reconstruct ‘the Domesday economy’, see S. P. J. Harvey, ‘Domesday England’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, II, ed. H. E. Hallam, Cambridge 1988, 45–136. 6 Dialogus de Scaccario, 62–3. The notion first surfaces in a Worcester source of c. 1140: EHD II, no. 202. 7 J. H. Round, Feudal England, London 1895; F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, Cambridge 1897; V. H. Galbraith, The Making of Domesday Book, London 1961; J. C. Holt, ‘1086’, in Domesday Studies, ed. Holt, 41–64; S. P. J. Harvey, ‘Taxation and the Ploughland in Domesday Book’, in Domesday Book: A Reassessment, ed. P. Sawyer, London 1985, 86–103; N. Higham, ‘Settlement, Land Use and Domesday Ploughlands’, Landscape History 12, 1990, 33–44; A. R. Bridbury, ‘Domesday Book: A Re-interpretation’, EHR 105, 1990, 284–309. 8 See H. B. Clarke, ‘The Domesday Satellites’, in Domesday Book: Reassessment, ed. Sawyer, 50–70, and A. Frearson, ‘Domesday Book: The Evidence Reviewed’, History 71, 1986, 375–92, for recapitulations of the so-called ‘recensionist’ argument.

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so-called articles of inquiry preserved in IE can be no such thing,9 and no single activity can be identified in the inquest records.10 Whether you consider the seigneurially arranged Liber Exoniensis (Exon),11 a compilation of fees by region in the south-west, or the geographically arranged Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis (ICC),12 an account of Cambridgeshire vill by vill, the normal product of the Domesday inquest (its ‘returns’), the writing of LDB and GDB represents the most radical change in form in the whole Domesday corpus.13 Domesday Book is as different as it can be from what went before. It was, furthermore, if dimly perceived then set apart from the inquest records in the first forty or so years of its life. Domesday Book was, if known, not widely disseminated. Extracts are not found in the handful of cartularies – St Augustine’s Canterbury, Peterborough, Rochester, Shaftesbury, Worcester14 – that survive from the period 1086–1135. Moreover, most, probably all, the charters that cite ‘the king’s book’ or the like actually refer to other sources.15 It was, rather, the inquest records, many preserved in the self-same cartularies, that were current and used. It would

9

Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 114–17. In neither form, language, nor content does the prologue conform to the inquest records. Its closest affinities are with the early folios of GDB, with backwards glances to LDB. I have suggested that its most likely origin is as a guide for the abbreviation of the inquest records. 10 Three main activities can be identified, namely a survey of the terra regis, an audit of the geld, and a survey of the lands of the tenants-in-chief: Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 113–46. 11 Printed in Libri Censualis, vocati Domesday Book, Additamenta, London 1816. 12 ICC, 1–96. 13 Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 186–223. To recapitulate, Domesday Book is a compiled source, abbreviated from a number of sources, arranged by fee within counties, and encompasses the lands of the king and his tenants-in-chief. Exon, by contrast, is a series of separate breves arranged by region, while ICC is geographically arranged and excludes the lands of the king. 14 Canterbury, Dean and Chapter, MS Lit. E28; London, Society of Antiquaries, MS 60 (the Black Book of Peterborough); Textus Roffensis: Rochester Cathedral Library Manuscript A.3.5. Pt 1, ed. P. Sawyer, Early English MSS in Facsimile 7, Copenhagen 1957; London, British Library, Harl. MS 61; Hemingi Chartularium Ecclesiae Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols, Oxford 1723. Claims have been made that sections of Heming’s cartulary were extracted from GDB: Domesday Book: Worcestershire, ed. F. and C. Thorn, Chichester 1982, appendix V. Only one copy of the privileges of Oswaldslow hundred is identical with the entry at the beginning of the bishop of Worcester’s Worcestershire breve: GDB 172b1 (Worcs. 2/1; App. V, Worcs. F). It must be remembered, however, that the bishop’s breve appears not to have been compiled by the GDB scribe but to have been copied from a cathedral source: Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 143; S. Baxter, ‘The Representation of Lordship and Land Tenure in Domesday Book’, in Domesday Book, ed. E. Hallam and D. Bates, Stroud 2001, 73–102. Worcester D, a schedule of geld liability of twenty-eight tenants-in-chief in Worcestershire, exhibits the same order of fees as GDB, but is clearly not directly derived from it since it contains information on exemptions that is not found there. The account of the church of Wolverhampton is apparently taken word for word from GDB, but it is postscriptal: N. R. Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary: A Description of the Two Worcester Cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A. xiii’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke , ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin, and R. W. Southern, Oxford 1948, 49–75 at 61. Ker dates the hand of the addition as ‘xi/xii’ century. 15 The writ of 1096H1100 in which Domesday Book is probably first noticed is often cited as evidence that it was in the forefront of public consciousness: V. H. Galbraith, ‘Royal Charters to Winchester’, EHR 35, 1920, 382–401 at 388–9. In reality the document tends to suggest the opposite. It does indeed refer to the gift of Hayling Island (Hants) to the priory of Winchester by Queen Emma ‘as the king’s book testifies’. But this is not quite accurate. More precisely the Domesday entry reads that ‘the monks of the bishopric of Winchester claim this manor, because Queen Emma gave it to the church of St Peter and St Swithun’, and the manor is enrolled in the lands of the abbey of Jumièges: GDB 43b1 (Hants 10/1). Would the monks have cited the text had they known that it ascribed the land to another religious house? It seems more likely that they were using documents that emanated from the Domesday inquest. There are many other such discrepancies: see Regesta II, nos. 468, 976, 1000, 1488, 1500, 1500, 1887; The Cartulary of Worcester Cathedral, ed. R. R. Darlington, Pipe Roll Society new series 38, 1968, 26–7.

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appear that the Book was used as an administrative aid within the treasury and little more. In this respect Domesday Book was typical of abbreviations as a class of document. At the very beginning of his analysis Galbraith states that the notion of Domesday Book as an afterthought is ‘a contingency unlikely in itself, and one for which there is no earlier or later precedent’.16 Well, his premise is simply wrong. Although there is no earlier evidence since substantial inquest records do not survive, later practice is quite clear. Abbreviations of inquest records were always later, and usually post hoc, often as much as a hundred years after the event. The reasons for compilation were various, but the aim was to preserve data that were considered of permanent value for administrative purposes.17 Here what was chosen gives some indication of that reason: content and intent are closely related. The same is not true of all processes that amass information. Inquiries are a case in point. A royal commission on street crime might collect data on levels of school drop-out and unemployment, but without the context we could easily assume that it was all about job creation. Paradoxically, the subject matter of an inquiry is often what its documents are not about. The contents of Domesday Book tell us at best what the book was compiled for. They do not necessarily reveal why the data were collected in the first place. My understanding of the Domesday process begins with that simple proposition. I have argued in Domesday: The Inquest and the Book that the inquest and the production of Domesday Book were two entirely different enterprises. The one was concerned with the collection of evidence to inform the forging of a new ‘social contract’ between William the Conqueror and ‘all those who held land in England’ in the aftermath of the crisis of 1085, a threat of invasion, that had thrown into relief deficiencies in national finances and defence. The other was an administrative initiative that used the records of the inquest, probably to effect a settlement sometime after the revolt against William Rufus in 1088. I do not propose to tackle the problem of the date of Domesday Book here. The issue has dominated the debate since the publication of Domesday: The Inquest and the Book.18 It has all been very entertaining but not much more than a diversion.19 Whatever its date – and I am interested to see that some historians are even happy to contemplate drafting in the early twelfth century20 – Domesday Book was compiled from the returns of the inquest of 1086. Abbreviations were precisely that: throughout the Middle Ages their compilers did not tamper with their sources. Give or take the odd slip or two, Domesday Book was not updated. By and large, it remains sound evidence for the reign of William the Conqueror. My interest lies in the nature of that evidence. We now know that much of it was provided by the tenants-in-chief. One of Galbraith’s great contributions to Domesday 16 Galbraith, Making of Domesday Book, 19. 17 The point is nicely made in a note on the flysheet of the Book of Fees, apparently written when the

work was compiled from a series of thirteenth-century inquest records in 1302: ‘Remember that this book was composed and compiled from several official inquests . . . and therefore the contents of this book are to be used for evidence here in the Exchequer and not for the record’: Book of Fees, I, p. xx. Attitudes to Domesday Book, of course, changed with the passage of time. 18 F. and C. Thorn, ‘The Writing of Great Domesday Book’, in Domesday Book, ed. Hallam and Bates, 37–72 at 71; J. C. Holt, ‘Domesday Studies 2000’, ibid. 19–24 at 24; S. Baxter, review of Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/baxterStephen.html; reply by D. R. Roffe, http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/roffeDavid.html. 19 Whatever the date of Domesday Book, the conceptual distinction between the activities of data collection in the inquest and their (necessarily) subsequent abbreviation remains. 20 J. A. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England, Cambridge 1997, 233.

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studies was to point out that much of the Domesday data – the account of manorial stock and the like – is privileged and could therefore have been presented only by the lord.21 But the tenants-in-chief were not alone in providing evidence. Representatives of the community of the shire also furnished key items of information – assessment to the geld, title, and, it will be argued, values were their main contribution – and their involvement has characterized the whole process. It has been held as axiomatic that local juries were making recognitions, that is, that the Domesday evidence represents tried and tested judgements.22 It is as close as we can get to ‘fact’. And yet where it is possible to test them, those judgements are remarkably insubstantial. Patrick Wormald has systematically examined all of the so-called decisions and awarded them football league points according to whether they were effective or not. At the end of the day he found that home wins overwhelmingly predominated: despite adverse judgements, the tenant almost always retained the land.23 Wormald was frankly flummoxed by the fact. But, of course, it makes perfect sense if we see the Domesday enterprise as an investigative process, a collecting of evidence. There are undoubtedly recognitions in Domesday Book. The clamores of the South Riding of Lindsey are explicitly said to be so: the rubric reads ‘The clamores which are in the SOUTH RIDING of Lincoln, and their settlement by the men who have sworn’ (‘Clamores quae sunt in SUDTREDING Lincoliae et concordia eorum per homines qui iuraverunt’).24 These pleas, however, are ostensibly later than the main Domesday sessions.25 The presentments in the body of the text are simply that, matters that the local community wished to air. There is indeed evidence that complaints, particularly against sheriffs,26 were specifically invited; the acceptance of querele of this kind was a characteristic of inquests throughout the

21 Galbraith, Making of Domesday Book, 81–4. 22 e.g. R. Fleming, ‘Oral Testimony and the Domesday Inquest’, ANS 17, 1994 (1995), 101–22 at 120:

‘Oral testimony was central to the purpose of the inquest, and it provided the means by which neighbours of all social classes and peoples witnessed and recognised the permanence of the Norman settlement: and the inquest rather than the book became the means through which the whole of the tenurial revolution (much of which had been accomplished without written order or public sanction) came clearly and finally into every man’s view, and it was the way in which the Conquest was at last fit snugly and publicly within the law.’ 23 P. Wormald, ‘Domesday Lawsuits: A Provisional List and Preliminary Comment’, in England in the Eleventh Century, ed. C. Hicks, Stamford 1992, 61–102. 24 GDB 375a1 (Lincs. CS). 25 Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 46. Unlike in the earlier sessions, the 12–carucate hundred, the northern equivalent of the vill, was not represented. If Domesday Book is later than 1086/7, then there is no compelling reason necessarily to believe that the clamores were part of the Domesday inquest at all. The discrepancies in the accounts of Holbeach in the breves and the clamores certainly suggest that quite a bit of water had passed under the bridge between the compilation of the one and the other: GDB 338a2, 346b2, 348b1, 368a1, 377b2 (Lincs. 1/32–3; 11/1; 12/83–4; 57/50; CK/71). It should be noted that the invasiones of LDB and the terre occupate sections of Exon, often compared to the clamores, are little more than lists of querele: Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 183–5. 26 There were numerous complaints against the three most notorious sheriffs, Eustace of Huntingdon, Picot of Cambridge, and Urse d’Abetot of Worcester: R. Abels, ‘Sheriffs, Lord-Seeking and the Norman Settlement of the South-East Midlands’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 19–50. In Lincoln the following is recorded: ‘Of the aforesaid waste messuages, 166 had been destroyed on account of the castle. The remaining 74 have been destroyed outside the castle boundary, not because of the oppression of the sheriffs and officers, but because of misfortune and poverty and the ravages of fire’: GDB 336b1 (Lincs. C/26). Burgesses of Great Yarmouth are said to have rendered £4 to the sheriff ‘gladly and in friendship’: LDB 118b (Norf. 1/67). In Gloucestershire there is an explicit complaint: ‘Urse the sheriff oppressed the men [of Sodbury] to such an extent that now they cannot render the salt’: GDB 163b2 (Glos. 1/48).

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Middle Ages.27 But it is one thing to invite juries to dish the dirt and another thing to accept what they say as gospel. Domesday presentments might prefigure future action. David Bates has shown how a claim in Northamptonshire was followed up in the county court after the Domesday inquest.28 But, as the multitude of voices that are repeatedly heard attest,29 they were not recognitions in themselves. This was the reality of all the Domesday data. All respondents to the inquest were of course expected to tell the truth. That was the nature of a verdict, a veredictum. But one man’s truth is another man’s livelihood. It was the role of the regular processes of the law to weigh the evidence. The inquest was there to collect it. The implications of this formulation are far-reaching. It has recently been averred that Domesday Book is a vast legal treatise.30 But, if Domesday Book is not a vast series of recognitions, this strikes me as making as much sense as believing that an opinion poll is the same as the result of a general election. What one jury considered to be right does not necessarily coincide with what the man in the Clopeham furrow believed and certainly did not represent common legal practice. So, our evidence is not self-authenticating as we have been led to believe. Its nature and its scope – surprise, surprise – can only be determined in the light of the purpose of the Domesday inquest. The production of Domesday Book was not it. Furthermore, one would not expect Domesday Book to embody it. The inquest collected evidence for subsequent consideration. It did not prejudice the outcome. It is a sad fact that we have no reports of what was said and done when it was planned at Gloucester in December 1085. Neither do we have an account of the proceedings at Salisbury in August 1086 when the decisions were made in the light of the evidence that had been collected. All we know was that it was done and dusted with ‘all those who held land in England’ doing homage to William and swearing an oath of loyalty.31 How, then, do we proceed? Context and procedure suggest a background. The inquest follows a threat of invasion which had seen the hiring of an unprecedented number of mercenaries.32 Elsewhere I have argued at length that the initial stage of the Domesday inquest was a survey of the royal demesne and a geld audit.33 Faced with calls on his purse from all directions, the king would seem to be looking at ways of maximizing his income. The survey of the lands of the tenants-in-chief followed. For me the key to how it all fits together is the summaries. There are twenty-four in all of these little-remarked documents, two in GDB,34 thirteen in Exon, and nine in IE (Table 1). They supply 27 A. Harding, ‘Plaints and Bills in the History of English Law, Mainly in the Period 1250–1350’, in

Legal History Studies 1972, ed. D. Jenkins, Cardiff 1975, 65–86. Incorporating them into hundredal presentments in the general inquest was a commonplace: L. E. Scales, ‘The Cambridgeshire Ragman Rolls’, EHR 113, 1998, 553–79. 28 D. Bates, ‘Two Ramsey Writs and the Domesday Survey’, Historical Research 63, 1990, 337–9. 29 For an almost deafening example, see GDB 44b2 (Hants 23/3): William de Chernet claimed a tenement as parcel of the manor of Charford and adduced as evidence the testimony from ‘the better and old men of the whole county and hundred’; Picot, by contrast, appealed to the witness of ‘the villagers, the common folk, and the reeves’. 30 R. Fleming, Domesday Book and the Law: Society and Legal Custom in Early Medieval England, Cambridge 1998. 31 ASC 1085 [= 1086]. For the relationship between the Oath of Salisbury and the Domesday inquest, see Holt, ‘1086’. 32 ASC 1085. 33 Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 113–46. 34 Vestiges of a third summary are probably to be found in the Shropshire folios of GDB. There, Earl Roger is said to have had twelve manors that had belonged to the king, with fifty-seven berewicks attached, and eleven other manors. A total value is provided of £300 and 115s. of farm: GDB 254a1 (Salop 4.1/37).

174 Table 1

Anglo-Norman Studies XXVIII The Summaries of the Domesday Corpus

Reference

Lord

Location

Circuit

GDB 270a2 (Ches. R/7) GDB 381a2 (Yorks. SN.CtA/45) Exon 527b Exon 527b Exon 527b Exon 528 Exon 528b Exon 530b Exon 530b Exon 530b Exon 530b Exon 530b Exon 531 Exon 531 Exon 531 IE, 121 IE, 122 IE, 122 IE, 122 IE, 122 IE, 123 IE, 123 IE, 123 IE, 124

The king Count Alan of Brittany

Between Ribble and Mersey Yorks.: Richmondshire

4 6

Glastonbury abbey Glastonbury abbey Glastonbury abbey Glastonbury abbey St Petroc Ralph de Mortimer Miles Crispin Robert son of Gerald Robert son of Gerald Robert son of Gerald Durand of Gloucester Gilbert of Breteuil Count of Mortain Ely abbey Ely abbey Ely abbey Ely abbey Ely abbey Ely abbey Picot the sheriff Hardwin de Scales Hardwin de Scales

Wilts. Dors. Devon Som. Cornw. Wilts. Wilts. Wilts. and Dors. Dors. Wilts., Dors., Som. Wilts. Wilts. Wilts., Dors., Devon, Cornw. Cambs. Herts. Essex Norf. Suff. Hunts. Cambs. Cambs. Herts.

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 7 7 7 6 3 3 3

statistical totals for the lands of various tenants-in-chief. That of Ely abbey in Essex is typical: The same abbot [of Ely] has in demesne in Essex 5 manors [assessed] at 49½ hides. There are 14 ploughs in demesne, and 102 villeins, 45 bordars, 44 slaves who have 39 ploughs. The whole is worth £64 10s. His knights have 2 manors in the same county [assessed] at 5 hides. There are 3 ploughs in demesne, and 6 villeins, 7 bordars, and 7 slaves who have 6 ploughs. It is worth £8. This land suffices for 61 ploughs. It has improved in value by £9 in the hands of Abbot Symeon.35

All the summaries list in this way the number of manors held in demesne, their total assessment to the geld, the number of ploughs of the lord and his men, the numbers of the dependent peasantry, and the total value. Similar statistics are then given for the enfeoffed estates. Finally, the number of ploughlands in the whole of the fee is recorded, usually as a single figure. This last item of information stands out. With the exception of the two GDB summaries, the information is given in unvarying words: ‘this land suffices for [so many] ploughs (hec terra sufficit X carucis)’. With a 35 IE, 122.

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formula drawn from no less than thirteen different shires in five circuits, here is surely a statistic which was demanded by central government. It is the nearest we have to an article of inquiry. The ploughland was a central item of interest in the Domesday inquest. The mention of ploughlands might be unwelcome. However, ploughland is only a problem if we think in reductionist terms.36 Debate has centred on whether the unit is a real measure of land37 or a fiscal unit.38 The one hypothesis has foundered on the fact that working ploughs often exceed the land said to be available for them, the other on any sign of a new assessment after Domesday.39 Well, within our concept of the inquest as investigation we don’t have to think in terms of either/or. It seems to me that all taxation must ultimately be based in a commonly agreed reality. Otherwise you get poll tax riots and defenestration. But whatever base you use for assessment it is only that, a common ground from which negotiation can proceed. The real and the fiscal are not mutually exclusive but different stages in a process of assessment. This is the context in which the ploughland begins to make sense. First, it is untrue to say that it does not appear after Domesday. It does, but significantly not as a new assessment. In the Burton, Ramsey, and Ely surveys of the early twelfth century the ploughland is regularly used as a measure of non-fiscal, that is unhidated, land.40 Here and there it is used in the same way in Domesday Book,41 and it is as close as we will get to real land without getting out a tape measure. However, the main referent of the ploughland in Domesday Book is the land assessed to the geld. Thus, the uninformative ‘there are X hides there, land for Y ploughs’ of GDB is derived from the more expansive ‘X hides which Y ploughs can plough’, or the like, of its sources.42 What it is telling us is that although this land is paying tax at so many hides, there is in fact that much land there. Sometimes working ploughs were counted; at other times they were estimated. It mattered not. The result was the same: the ploughland is a measure of tax capacity. What with beneficial hidation before the Conquest and selective exemption of demesne after, the tax system was not producing to full capacity. We can reconstruct something of what was done with the new information from what we can perceive of the geld in the reign of William Rufus. No new tax was introduced, but by 1096 lay 36 For the following, see Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 149–65; D. R. Roffe, ‘The Ploughland and

the Plough: Some Further Thoughts on a Domesday Conundrum’, text of a lecture given at Cornell Univ., Nov. 2002 (http://www.roffe.freeserve.co.uk/cornell.htm). 37 Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 482–513; C. Hart, The Hidation of Northamptonshire, [University of Leicester] Department of English Local History Occasional Papers, 2nd series 3, 1970, 28; J. S. Moore, ‘The Domesday Teamland: A Reconsideration’, TRHS 5th series 14, 1964, 109–30; Higham, ‘Settlement, Land Use and Domesday Ploughlands’. P. Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, Oxford 1908, 153–74, believed that the ploughland was a measure of the potential for assarting. 38 F. M. Stenton, ‘Domesday Survey’, in VCH Notts. I, 211–13; F. M. Stenton, ‘Introduction’, in The Lincolnshire Domesday and Lindsey Survey, trans. and ed. C. W. Foster and T. Longley, Lincoln Record Society 19, 1921, pp. xv–xix; Harvey, ‘Taxation and the Ploughland’; S. P. J. Harvey, ‘Taxation and the Economy’, in Domesday Studies, ed. Holt, 249–64. 39 Bridbury has tried to cut the Gordian knot by arguing that the statistic refers to service capacity, the number of ploughs assessed to day-work: ‘Domesday Book: Re-interpretation’, 304–5. This is a possible reading of some entries in Exon, but hardly comes to grips with the usual formula of GDB: the ploughland is about land as well as ploughs. 40 ‘The Burton Abbey Twelfth Century Surveys’, ed. C. G. O. Bridgeman, in Collections for a History of Staffordshire, William Salt Archaeological Society, 1916, 209–300 at 211–47; Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, ed. W. H. Hart and P. A. Lyons, 3 vols, RS 79, 1884–93. 41 In Bluntisham (Hunts.), for example, there was unassessed demesne for two ploughs: GDB 204a1 (Hunts. 4/2). Welsh lands measured in carucatae, the Latin translation of ploughland, appear in the Glos. and Herefs. folios. Similar references can be found in Bucks., Northants., Oxon., Dors., and possibly Rut. 42 Notably in Exon. The prototype for the GDB formula is widely found in ICC.

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estates, it would seem, were paying for their demesnes.43 A hard bargain seems to have been struck. The tenant-in-chief retained the spare capacity in the land of his peasants in return for forgoing the exemption of his own demesne. It seems to me that this was almost certainly one of the decisions that were made at Salisbury. Fiddling about with taxation inevitably had repercussions for service. In the reductionist way that characterizes so much of Domesday studies, the two quantities have often been viewed as mutually exclusive opposites. Gentlemen fight while peasants pay their taxes. It was not like that. Almost invariably geld has been understood as Danegeld. It has been reduced to an occasional, although increasingly annual, land tax.44 It was, of course, much more than that. Domesday Book tells us that Stamford was assessed at twelve and a half hundreds, that is 150 carucates, ‘in army service, boat service, and Danegeld’.45 Hides were used to determine military service in Berkshire, and one man was sent from each hide in Cheshire to repair the bridge and walls of Chester, while in the south-west the hide determined contributions to the king’s farm (a food render).46 More significantly still, it also mediated the duties of policing incumbent on the community of the vill. In the North the 12-carucate hundred paid £8 for breach of the peace, and by implication was responsible for the maintenance of tithings (a frankpledge system in which groups of free men were held responsible for the good behaviour of their fellows).47 This was a penalty that was apparently instituted, or perpetuated, by the Wantage Code of c. 997. No similar provision is explicit in the parallel laws for hidated England, although the widespread existence of tithings suggests that something like the 5-hide vill had similar duties.48 Geld, then, was much more than a tax. It constituted the essential cohesion of local societies by articulating all the duties that a free man owed in respect of his station. Domesday demesne fitted seamlessly into it. If it did not render geld in 1086, it was clearly exempt rather than unassessed.49 All Domesday demesne is hidated. It was warland, that is, it defended itself against the geld. We can take the argument little further from the Domesday texts, but the relation of service to geld is explicit in clause eleven of Henry I’s coronation charter: I grant by my own gift that the demesne ploughs of those knights who hold by knight service should be free from all gelds, so that, being relieved of such a great burden, they may furnish themselves so well with horses and arms that they may be properly equipped and prepared to discharge my service and to defend my kingdom.50

43 B. R. O’Brien, God’s Peace and King’s Peace: The Laws of Edward the Confessor , Philadelphia 1999,

168–9. 44 For honourable exceptions, see R. P. Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon

England, London 1988, 113–14, and, more recently, R. Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship, London 1997, 89–125. 45 GDB 336b2 (Lincs. S/1). 46 GDB 56b1 (Berks. B/10), 162b2 (Ches. C/21). For the king’s farm, see, for example, GDB 50b1 (Hants 69/41): ‘Edwin the huntsman holds 2 hides of the king’s farm. King Edward gave them to him. They were then, as now, assessed at 1 virgate.’ 47 D. Roffe, ‘The Lincolnshire Hundred’, Landscape History 3, 1981, 27–36. 48 The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, ed. and trans. A. J. Robertson, Cambridge 1925, III Æthelræd, 3.1; EHD I, 403. In East Anglia the leet performed much the same functions as the 12–carucate hundred. 49 In GDB the fact is sporadically explicit, as in Hunts. In Exon, by contrast, the hidage of the demesne and tenanted land is separately recorded and the total regularly equals the assessment of the manor given in GDB. 50 Select Charters, ed. W. Stubbs, 9th edn, Oxford 1913, 119.

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Service was a condition of exemption. It complemented taxation. Any change in the one affected the other and vice versa. So it is that the figures for manors in the summaries complement the data specifically relating to geld. At first these statistics surprise. There is nothing concrete in Domesday Book to correspond with them; the figures seem to relate more to entries or named holders than manors.51 But this does not indicate that the manor was of no concern in the inquest. In LDB manorial structure is comprehensively recorded. And so it was when the GDB scribe began his work abbreviating the account of the North.52 But thereafter he progressively lost interest in the subject. By the time he reached the Leicestershire folios the manor hardly figures at all.53 There are, nevertheless, clues to its central role in the process of data collection. Throughout the Domesday texts there are innumerable references to land ‘held for a manor’ (the pro manerio formula). Less widely, but still significantly, a concern is evident to identify land that had been added or taken away, an item, it will be remembered, that is specifically noted in the so-called articles of inquiry in IE.54 LDB hints at the reason for all these comments. From time to time we hear that a holding was ‘of the number of his manors’, or ‘of his hundred manors’, or whatever.55 More commonly land is said to have been granted ‘to make up a manor’.56 Size mattered, so did number. Here surely is a proxy for service. The totals in the summaries indicate that the information was important. What was done with it is invisible. However, the homage made at Salisbury must have been made for land and surely service was a quid pro quo. Some forty years later Orderic Vitalis asserted, in what is the first account of the purpose of the Domesday inquest, that it was from this time that land was allocated to knights’ fees.57 But you do not have to be convinced of Orderic’s reliability to understand that service was a fundamental part of the Domesday equation. I would be guilty of reductionism myself were I to claim that the Domesday inquest was only concerned with the geld and service. The participants were manifold and, in so far as they all seem to have co-operated, they must have all expected something out of the process, even if it was only avoiding an amercement. In reality all had much more to gain. As we know from the Old English laws, payment of the geld and service in the fyrd were an irreducible corollary of freedom and right to land. Stating an assessment to the geld, then, and demonstrating that it had been 51 Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 182; R. W. Finn, ‘The Inquisitio Eliensis Re-considered’, EHR

75, 1960, 385–409 at 394–7; idem, Domesday Studies: The Liber Exoniensis, London 1964, 124; idem, The Domesday Inquest and the Making of Domesday Book, London 1961, 67. The 188 manors between the Ribble and Mersey are probably represented by the 182 thegns and drengs who held in 1066. 52 The link here is palpable. In LDB the manor and its berewicks and sokelands (apart from those lands held by liberi homines, men probably represented by thegns in the North) are consistently noticed, although they are not grouped with the caput. The same form is found in the Yorkshire section of GDB, the first to be abbreviated. From Lincolnshire onwards in circuit VI, the manor was fully articulated, the enrolment of the caput and its appurtenances together being the norm. 53 Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 211–20. Frank and Caroline Thorn (‘The Writing of Great Domesday Book’, 40–4) have argued on the basis of rulings that Cornwall was the last county to be written. Their analysis does not take account of the equally important evidence of the diplomatic. 54 IE, 97. 55 LDB 100a (Essex 90/17), 121a, 170b, 246a (Norf. 1/78; 8/117; 29/7). Two hides in Orsett and ‘Gravesend’ in Essex ‘did not belong to [Count Eustace’s] 100 manors’: LDB 9b, 26b (Essex 3/2; 20/4–5). For this reading of the passage, see Finn, Domesday Inquest, 10–11 and n. His renewed doubts, in Domesday Studies: The Eastern Counties, London 1967, 15 n., seem unwarranted. 56 LDB 170b, 206b, 242b, 257b, 258, 336, 435b (Norf. 8/120–1; 13/10; 25/24; 34/13, 18–19; Suff. 7/55; 55/1). 57 Orderic, II, 266–7.

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acquitted, was tantamount to a confirmation of title. Non-participation in the inquest was not an option. Far from hiding land, there was probably a stampede to register tax liability. All sorts of information may have been presented in the same way just to be on the safe side.58 However, the fact merely emphasizes just how central taxation and service were to English society in the late eleventh century. They were, I believe, the focus of the inquest for a king who had found national resources in both tax and service inadequate in the crisis of 1085. It is in these terms that we must examine the significance and referents of Domesday data. The first claim to make seems like a truism. The Domesday inquest concerned itself only with land assessed to the geld (that is, whether it was exempt or not). The significance of this statement will become apparent only when I further assert that not all land was. Some unhidated land, I must confess, is described. In the south and west many royal manors had never been assessed because they rendered a food rent, the farm of one or more nights.59 All, however, belonged to the Crown and were surveyed in the initial stage of the Domesday inquest. The Welsh lands described in the Gloucestershire and Herefordshire folios are also unassessed but they too owe their inclusion to the same special procedure: they are entered, ‘above the line’ in Maitland’s phrase, with the borough before the body of the county texts.60 The survey of the royal fisc was undoubtedly concerned with resources and cash. Otherwise, just about all other lands are hidated or carucated. ‘Just about’, for there are a few incidental references to ‘inland’ that indicate a reserve of land that was ignored. Outside the North, where the term is used interchangeably with berewick,61 inland is most frequently recorded in Oxfordshire and there it is seemingly contrasted with the demesne. The account of Stanton Harcourt exemplifies the type: ‘The bishop [of Bayeux] himself holds Stanton. 26 hides there which gelded TRE. There is land for 23 ploughs. Now in demesne 1 hide and 1 virgate of this land beside the inland.’62 Similar formulas are found in Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, and in Huntingdonshire a non-hidated demesne is consistently recorded in the hundred of Hurstingstone. Elsewhere Domesday Book is largely silent. But inland was clearly not the local phenomenon that this handful of references might suggest. The early twelfth-century surveys of Burton abbey’s estates in Staffordshire and Derbyshire continually make reference to inland, there defined as land that does not pay the king’s geld, in contrast with the hidated and carucated demesne.63 Similarly, the monks of Ramsey recognized demesne of this type throughout their East Anglian estates, as did the canons of St Paul’s in their Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and Essex manors.64 Apart from that of 58 Hence the great differences in content from circuit to circuit, county to county, hundred to hundred, and

lord to lord. The assertion that no one had made a return must have been a dangerous admission. See, for example, GDB 182b2 (Herefs. 2/57): ‘In all there are in the bishopric [of Hereford] 300 hides, although of 33 hides the bishop’s men have given no account.’ In Gloucestershire there are a number of instances in which accounts were not rendered: GDB 164a2, 166b1, 170b1 (Glos. 1/63; 28/7; 75/2). 59 P. Stafford, ‘The “Farm of One Night” and the Organization of King Edward’s Estates in Domesday’, EcHR 2nd series 33, 1980, 491–502. 60 GDB 162a1 (Glos. W/1–19), 179a2 (Herefs. A/1–10). There is an abbreviated account of the Herefordshire customs in the king’s chapter: GDB 181a1 (Herefs. 1/49). 61 F. M. Stenton, Types of Manorial Structure in the Northern Danelaw, Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History 2, ed. P. Vinogradoff, 1910, 5, 12–14. The fact presumably reflects a more stringent tax regime in the North. 62 GDB 155b2 (Oxon. 7/3). All such inland was unhidated except in Wykham, Garsington, Watlington, and Water Eaton, where it was measured in hides but seems never to have paid geld. 63 e.g. ‘Burton Abbey Surveys’, ed. Bridgeman, 236, 244. 64 e.g. Elsworth (Cambs.), where there were said to be ‘three carucates of land in demesne (tres

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Ramsey in Hurstingstone hundred in Huntingdonshire, none of this land is noticed in GDB or LDB. We must conclude that there was land outside the cadastre which was not noticed by the Domesday commissioners. Much of this was clearly land that was so demesnal it was entirely quit. The phenomenon helps to explain why some interests simply do not appear at all in Domesday Book. The estates of Crowland abbey are described in detail, but Crowland itself is absent. The island was a sanctuary in which the writ of the king did not run.65 But not all inland was demesne. Some, probably most, inland was in service of one kind or another. Many counties were lowly rated and some tenements had no liability assessed upon them. In Nottinghamshire, for example, there were typically 1 or 2 carucates per vill and there are relatively few Domesday manors compared with the neighbouring more highly rated Lincolnshire. Twelfth-century charters, however, indicate intricate subinfeudation which is every bit as complex.66 Much land in Nottinghamshire, as elsewhere, does not find its way into Domesday Book. Some of this type of geld-free land may be a function of freehold assarting. That may be the import of a reference to men ‘who live in the wood’ in the account of Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire.67 Most looks like seigneurial assets. Thus, the Burton inlands were let to censores.68 Geld liability was attached to certain tenements and the remaining lands went unnoticed. The extent of ‘inland’, if we may use the term as a portfolio for all types of unassessed lands, is essentially unquantifiable. It is possible that its existence is sometimes hinted at by the statistics for ploughs. In a large minority of entries there are more ploughs recorded than ploughlands. The unlikelihood of overstocking, as the phenomenon is traditionally known, has been a central plank in the fiscal interpretation of the ploughland. I agree on its implausibility but would maintain that the extra ploughs are real enough, being those of unassessed lands. The Burton figures nicely illustrate the point (Table 2). Otherwise, as far as I can see, inland does not figure in the Domesday manor. Demesne ploughs and, where it is recorded, livestock ostensibly relate to the hidated demesne. Likewise, the dependent peasantry are those of the warland. Sometimes the connection is quite precise. Throughout the Ramsey abbey estates there is a pronounced equation of one villein per fiscal virgate. Into the fourteenth century service was demanded and rendered on the basis of these Domesday fiscal tenements.69 A similar equation is found on the Battle abbey estates. As in East Anglia, the reality of field units is represented by redefining the hide as six, seven, or eight virgates, the tenants of which are unrepresented in Domesday.70 More widely, the assessment to the geld was the datum of service for free men and sokemen. What, then, is this manor that does not include a sometimes sizeable asset in land carrucatae terrae)’: Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, ed. Hart and Lyons, III, 248. For St Paul’s see The Early Charters of the Cathedral Church of St Paul, London , ed. M. Gibbs, Camden 3rd series 58, 1939, 118–21. 65 GDB 346b2 (Lincs. 11/1–9). Thorney and Ramsey in the fenland of eastern England, and Glastonbury, Athelney, and Muchelney in the south-west were all within highly privileged ecclesiastical sanctuaries, and likewise none is described in the text. 66 See, for example, the d’Aincourt fee: The Thurgarton Cartulary, ed. T. Foulds, Stamford 1994, pp. xxix–cxc. 67 GDB 148b2 (Bucks. 17/17). 68 J. F. R. Walmsley, ‘Another Domesday Text’, Mediaeval Studies 39, 1977, 109–20. 69 D. R. Roffe, ‘An Introduction to the Huntingdonshire Domesday’, in The Huntingdonshire Domesday, ed. A. Williams and R. W. H. Erskine, London 1989, 11. In Holywell (Hunts.), for example, c. 1135 the 26 villagers of the GDB account are seemingly matched by 25 or 26 tenants of virgates. 70 Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 159.

180 Table 2

Anglo-Norman Studies XXVIII Burton Abbey’s Overstocked Domesday Manors and Inland in 1114

Manor

Burton Stretton Abbots Bromley Leigh Winshill

GDB

1114

Ploughlands

Demesne ploughs

Villagers’ ploughs

Inland ploughlands

Villagers’ ploughs

2 2 1 3 3

2 1 1 1 2

2 5 1 5 1½

2 3 2

2 2 1 2 2

2

and which fails to notice a significant proportion of the peasantry? My answer must be that the Domesday manor is a nexus of soke. If you further ask me what is soke, I shall reply that it is the generic word for all sorts of tribute. What I will not say is that it is an estate.71 The figures for value most clearly illustrate the point. For most economic historians it would seem that the valet and valuit figures are real measures that were related to output.72 I say ‘seem to’ because I have found it extremely difficult to pin them down on what exactly they understand by the figures. No one, I think, nowadays sees them as capital values. Some, however, imply that they are gross or even net receipts, others that they are rents.73 But I suppose that they are most commonly glossed as economic rents, leases, or ‘farms’.74 This formulation I find difficult, not least because farms are often recorded and they are invariably different and larger than the values.75 I will agree, though, that values are sums of money that are rendered in one direction or another. The value of many manors is attached to others, usually demesne estates, and there is a significant number of instances in which it can be shown to be the sum that a tenant paid to an overlord (TRE and TRW).76 In examining to what they relate we can best begin by determining the source of the data. Explicit evidence is limited. There are three references to the presentment of values by the shire and hundred.77 A further eight by Englishmen, Frenchmen, or English and Frenchmen together could refer to presentments by the vill, hundred, or shire,78 while one to ‘the men’ is presumably a reference to a seigneurial source. This 71 Ibid. 28–46, 213, 218, 239–42. 72 A. R. Bridbury, The English Economy from Bede to the Reformation, Woodbridge 1992, 111–32, alone

stands out in maintaining that Domesday values are merely quitrents of one kind or another. 73 N. Mayhew, ‘Modelling Medieval Monetisation’, in A Commercialising Economy: England 1086 to c. 1300, ed. R. H. Britnell and B. M. S. Campbell, Manchester 1995, 55–77 and 60–2; idem, ‘Appendix 2: The Calculation of GDP from Domesday Book’, ibid. 195–6; G. D. Snooks, ‘The Dynamic Role of the Market in the Anglo-Norman Economy and Beyond, 1086–1300’, ibid. 27–54. 74 R. Lennard, Rural England 1086–1135: A Study of Social and Agrarian Conditions, Oxford 1959, 123–8; Harvey, ‘Domesday England’, passim. 75 The account of Marsh Gibbon (Bucks.) makes the point nicely: Æthelric held the manor TRE, ‘but he now holds it at farm of William [fitz Ansculf] in heaviness and misery’; nevertheless, the value of the manor remained 70s. throughout: GDB 148b2 (Bucks. 17/16). 76 The value of Onibury (Salop.) in 1086, for example, was the render that Roger de Lacy agreed to pay the bishop of Hereford for the estate in the previous year, and the 10s. at which each of Ticknall and Stanton by Newhall (Derb.) was valued was the rent that their tenants paid to Burton abbey in the early twelfth century: GDB 252a2 (Salop. 2/2); 273a2, 274a2 (Derb. 3/7; 6/21); V. H. Galbraith, ‘An Episcopal Land-Grant of 1085’, EHR 44, 1929, 353–72 at 357; ‘Burton Abbey Surveys’, ed. Bridgeman, 240. 77 GDB 166b1 (Glos. 28/7); LDB 15b (Essex 7/1), 343a (Suff. 7/121). 78 GDB 2b1 (Kent 1/1), 65a1, 70a2 (Wilts. 1/10–12; 26/5); LDB 18a, 38b (Essex 9/7; 23/2); an eighth

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last is instructive: ‘The whole manor [of Damerham in Wiltshire] TRE was worth £36. It now renders £61, but by the men [the lands] are not valued at more than £45, on account of the confusion of the land, and on account of the farm, which is too high.’79 The evidence of the men is opposed to the recorded value and it would therefore suggest that there was an input from both shrieval and seigneurial sources. What evidence Domesday affords indicates that values were not entirely the privileged data of estate management. That they were in some sense public is inherently likely. Values are consistently given for 1066 and when the estate was acquired, and yet these were statistics that tenants-in-chief cannot regularly have been in a position to know. They can only have been a matter of official record or communal presentment or both. The Domesday Monachorum of Canterbury and the Excerpta of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, are probably examples.80 Both documents lack details of population and stock and would therefore appear to precede the seigneurial presentments, and yet values are consistently recorded. If these documents have been correctly identified as the product of the geld inquest,81 then it would seem that the information was regularly presented by the juries of vill, hundred, and shire. Values were apparently public knowledge. As sums that went out of manors, they were therefore probably grounded in wider tributary relationships. The valuation clause of the entry for Osmaston by Derby in GDB is unique; it is, nevertheless, thought-provoking in this context. It records that Osmaston was worth 40s. in 1066 and 20s. at the time of the inquest, and continues, ‘Of these pennies two parts are the king’s and one part Henry’s.’82 Henry was Henry de Ferrers, who succeeded to the estates of the earl in Derbyshire, and thus it is inevitable that the division of the value in the ratio of two to one should remind us of sake and soke and the rights that liberty conferred upon a king’s thegn or a tenant-in-chief. The receipt of the king’s two pennies was of the essence of soke,83 and so it is clear that the value is a record of its render in this entry. We have no further statement of value in these terms in Domesday Book, but we are probably looking at the essence of the figures. Long ago Tom Cain pointed out that the £150 farm of the soke of Rutland seems to be represented by the sum of the values of the individual manors of the liberty.84 More precise evidence comes from Bury St Edmunds sources (Table 3). In some LDB entries the abbey’s free men are separately valued, and the individual renders that they made are identified in a Domesday schedule known as Bury C.85 Those sums can themselves be identified in the twelfth-century Kalendar of Abbot Samson where they are called hidage

communal presentment is probably recorded in the entry for Sherrington (Suss.), where it is recorded that ‘For the half hide which is not there they deduct 20s.’: GDB 20b2 (Suss. 10/18). 79 GDB 66b1 (Wilts. 7/1). 80 The Domesday Monachorum of Christ Church Canterbury, ed. D. C. Douglas, London 1944, 81–98; An Eleventh-Century Inquisition of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, ed. A. Ballard, London 1920, 1–33. 81 Roffe, Domesday: Inquest and Book, 139–40. A common source underlying them was obscurely labelled as ‘P’ by Galbraith, Making of Domesday Book, 150. 82 GDB 275b2 (Derb. 6/88). 83 e.g. GDB 280b1 (Notts. S/5), a list of ‘those who had soke and sake and toll and team and the king’s customary dues of the 2 pennies’, of whom ‘none could have the earl’s third penny except by his grant, and that for as long as he should live, except the archbishop and Ulf Fenisc and Countess Godgifu’. 84 T. Cain, ‘Introduction to the Rutland Domesday’, in The Northamptonshire and Rutland Domesday, ed. A. Williams and R. W. H. Erskine, London 1987, 27, equating the farm with the TRE value of the Martinsley and Witchley estates alone of £156 12s. 85 Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds , ed. D. C. Douglas, London 1932, 25–44.

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Table 3 The Value and Renders of Bury Free Men Place

Timworth Thurston Tostock Hessett Woolpit Bradfield Rushbrooke

LDB

Bury C

TRE

TRW

30s. – 10s. – – – 16s.

20s. 40s. 10s. 8d. 40s. 10s. 8d. 6s. 21s. 11d.

26s. 0½d. 10s. 5d. 3s. 9½d. 48s. 1d. 10s. 11d. 4s. 4d. 19s. 2d.

Kalendar Summa

Total

26s. 3d. 10s. 8d.+20s. 8s. 6½d. 40s.+14s. 4d. – 5s. 8d. 21s. 4d.

26s. 3d. 30s. 10d. 8s. 8½d. 49s. 1d. 10s. 8d. 5s. 7d. 22s. 11½d.

(hidagium).86 Here hidage was a hundredal due, having its origins in the renders that free men and sokemen made to the king, but it seems to represent the soke dues that were conferred by the right of sake and soke.87 Some free men may have paid in addition a manorial rent, but by and large hidage seems to have represented their full value. And it was a value that was essentially fiscal. Hidage was generally assessed on the fiscal carucate at the rate of 1d. per ware acre or at 16d. for every 15 acres, yielding 10s. 8d. per carucate. This is an equation that can be widely observed in East Anglia; time and again the value of subholdings works out at exactly 1d. per ware acre.88 In West Derby Hundred in Lancashire hidage went under the guise of ‘geld of carucates of land’, and there manors were generally valued according to the amount due at the rate of 32d. per carucate (Table 4).89 A similar relationship can be observed between Domesday manorial values and soke dues in Burton, Ely, Glastonbury, Peterborough, Ramsey, St Paul’s, Shaftesbury, and Winchester sources.90 The equation is not always precise. The Burton survey of 1125 shows that tenements that were converted to day-work between 1086 and the time of that survey ceased to render monetary dues. This is consonant with a widely occurring characteristic of Domesday values. Values complement renders in kind. Thus, figures often subsist side by side with services, but where the render was totally in kind, as in the farm of one night, no valuation is given. Again, an inverse relationship between demesne ploughs and Domesday values has confused many a historian.91 Yet in these terms one would clearly expect monetary renders to go up when labour services go down. Domesday values, then, would appear to be soke dues rendered in cash. They do not represent any sort of overall return from the manor as whole.92 Thus it is that they

86 The Kalendar of Abbot Samson of Bury St. Edmunds and Related Documents, ed. R. H. C. Davis,

Camden 3rd series 84, 1954, 6–22. Selection has been dictated by the record of a separate assessment to the geld and value in LDB and a comparable assessment in the Kalendar. 87 Ibid. pp. xxxii–xlvii. 88 Finn, Eastern Counties, 172–3. 89 GDB 269b1 (Ches. R1/4–38). 90 Bridbury, English Economy, 126–32, tabulates the information. 91 e.g. D. Desborough, ‘An Introduction to the Staffordshire Domesday’, in The Staffordshire Domesday, ed. A. Williams and G. H. Martin, London 1991, 14; Finn, Eastern Counties, 169–76. 92 Bridbury, English Economy, 121–5, reaches the same conclusion from a different direction.

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Table 4 Domesday Assessments and Values in West Derby Hundred in Lancashire Vill

Assessment Car.

Toxteth Toxteth Sefton Kirkdale Walton Litherland Ince Thornton Ravenmeols Little Woolton Smithdown Allerton Speke Childwall Wibaldslei Much Woolton Wavertree Bootle

2 2 6 3 2 3 3 3 3 2 1 3 2 3 2 1 2 2

Value

Vill

Bov.

3

Assessment Car.

4s. 4s. 16s.* 10s. 8s. 8s.* 8s.* 8s.* 8s.* 64d.* 32d.* 8s.* 64d.* 8s.* 64d.* 30d. 64d.* 64d.*

Aughton Formby Ainsdale Upholland Dalton Skelmersdale Litherland Argarmeles North Meols Lathom Hurlston/Marton Melling Lydiate Downholland Altcar Barton Halsall

Bov.

1 4 2 2 1 1 1 2 3 3 3 2 6 6 4 1 2

Value 32d.* 10s. 64d.* 64d.* 32d.* 32d.* 32d.* 8s. 10s. 10s. 8d. 10s. 8d. 10s. 64d. 2s.* waste 32d.* 8s.

Notes: Assessments in hides have been translated into carucates at the rate of 6 carucates to the hide as at GDB 267b2 (Ches. R1/44). * indicates values at the rate of 32d. per carucate.

appear in Domesday Book alongside the renders of churches, mills, and the like as any other render in cash.93 This is a view that is consistent with Robert of Hereford’s account of the Domesday inquest: [In the] twentieth year of his reign by order of William, king of the English, there was made a survey (descriptio) of the whole of England; of the lands in each of the counties; of the possessions of each of the magnates, their lands, their manors (mansionibus), their men both bond and free, living in cottages or with their own houses and lands; of ploughs, horses, and other animals; of the services and payments due from all the men in the whole land. Other investigators followed the first and were sent to counties that they 93 There is considerable evidence that such renders were additional to the values. The value of the mills

and other miscellaneous resources at Leominster (Herefs.) were included in a render of £23 2s., but the manor itself was not valued. The shire stated ‘that if it were freed this manor could be valued at six score pounds, that is 120’: GDB 180a1 (Herefs. 1/10b). For an explicit indication that such sums represented something other than the value, see GDB 155a1 (Oxon. 6/1–2). McDonald and Snooks, Domesday Economy, 88, found no correlation between mill renders and Domesday values, pointing to the same conclusion. Elsewhere, appurtenances are sometimes worth more than the total value. In West Drayton (Notts.), for example, there were three mills rendering 50s., whereas the value was 30s. TRE and 17s. 4d. in 1086: GDB 285a1 (Notts. 9/31). There was a mill in Bromham (Beds.) that rendered 40s. and 100 eels, whereas the value of the manor was only 20s.: GDB 217a2 (Beds. 53/9). The value of appurtenances was also independent of renders: see Houghton Regis (Beds.): GDB 209b1 (Beds. 1/3). It is frequently stated that ‘The whole is worth . . .’ This formula, though, begs the question as to what ‘the whole’ is.

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did not know, and where they themselves were unknown, to check the first description and to denounce any wrongdoers to the king. And the land was vexed with much violence arising from the collection of the king’s taxes.94

Where the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle merely refers to values, Robert glosses as ‘the services and payments due from all the men in the whole land’. It seems to me that, in these terms, the Domesday manor clearly articulates soke dues. As such it can be seen to fit into a wider context of fees and service. Many years ago I argued that if one diverted one’s attention away from commendation – a relationship that demonstrably did not devolve upon land – then a substructure of soke dues could be perceived. Title to land might be transferred by express grant or even by illicit appropriation. But the main method, and the default if you like, was by grant of soke rights which extended over a number of manors.95 Despite endless discussion over the years about the distribution of commendation, it seems to me that the accumulating evidence gathered since merely reinforces the case.96 A manor, or more precisely its hall, was a point of interception of dues. Its holder enjoyed the renders of his tenants in return for rendering dues and services to his lord’s hall. Domesday records the name of the lord at each node and it was those names, it will be remembered, that were counted to determine the number of manors in the summaries. The Domesday inquest was about taxation and service and so it confined itself to soke dues, for these were the tangible rights that the king had over his tenantsin-chief and over their land. The king had no rights over inland, and therefore his interest in land per se did not extend much beyond his own estates. The Domesday inquest generally did not deal with the matter. The results of the various statistical analyses are of a piece with the conclusion. Where recorded resources are related to a system of soke mediated by the geld, correlation of values with assessment and the like naturally follows. Figures that are calculated from each other are by definition

94 W. H. Stevenson, ‘A Contemporary Description of the Domesday Survey’, EHR 22, 1907, 72–84 at 74.

This passage is echoed in a copy of Marianus’s History, probably from Worcester: BL Cotton MS Nero C. v. It reads, ‘William, king of the English, ordered all of the possessions of the whole of England to be described, in fields, in men, in all animals, in all manors from the greatest to the smallest, and in all payments which could be rendered from the land of all. And the land was vexed with much violence proceeding therefrom’: Stevenson, ‘Contemporary Description’, 77. 95 D. Roffe, ‘From Thegnage to Barony: Sake and Soke, Title, and Tenants-in-Chief’, ANS 12, 1989 (1990), 157–76. 96 See, for example, Norfolk, where a very complex tenurial landscape resolves itself into a neat, predominantly antecessorial picture once the holders of sake and soke are identified: D. Roffe, ‘Introduction’, in Little Domesday Book: Norfolk, ed. A. Williams, London 2000, 26–34. A similar picture can be observed in the equally complex Leicestershire: D. R. Roffe, ‘Great Bowden and its Soke’, in Anglo-Saxon Landscapes in the East Midlands, ed. J. Bourne, Leicester 1996, 107–20. The groups of estates transferred in this way can clearly be identified as bookland. Historians have tended to doubt whether the term had any definite content in eleventh-century England: P. Wormald, Bede and the Conversion of England: The Charter Evidence, Jarrow Lecture 1984, 19–24; S. Reynolds, ‘Bookland, Folkland and Fiefs’, ANS 14, 1991 (1992), 211–27; S. Baxter and J. Blair, ‘Land Tenure and Royal Patronage in the Early English Kingdom: A Model and a Case Study’, above. However, they have largely confined their analyses to the pre-Conquest law codes. There the evidence is sparse and often contradictory, but it does not follow that bookland therefore had no content or meaning. Codes were not law manuals in the modern sense; they were not the touchstone of legal practice. They were more ideological and aspirational than practical: P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, I: Legislation and its Limits, Oxford 1999, 131–4. Domesday Book, by contrast, recorded, more or less, what actually happened. In consequence the principles that emerge from its folios have more authority. Tolle, lege! If it be doubted that rules of transfer were adhered to – whether antecession was anything more than a pious myth – then the curious can examine the distribution of predecessors and their correlation with tenants-in-chief at http://www.roffe.freeserve.co.uk/thegns.htm.

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related. Rather than asserting that Domesday Book is about estates because its data correlate, we conclude that its data correlate because it is about soke.97 So, I must conclude emphatically that Domesday is not an inventory survey. What it tells us about estates, as opposed to Domesday manors, is incidental. How, then, can we use its data? I might reply ‘with difficulty’ if you wish to reconstruct anything other than the tributary economy. It is of course true that the issues of soke were part of the lord’s resources and so the Domesday figures will by definition provide minima. At best statistics like ploughlands indicate a potential for arable, numbers of peasants a measure of population, values a basic income. The problem is, of course, determining how representative these quantities are. Although a real measure of fiscal land, ploughlands are as uninformative as hides if we have no idea of the extent of inland. Where population figures are related to geld, they are little more than an index of the rate of assessment. As a record of renders in coin, values only tell us about the lord’s petty cash tin. Domesday statistics are finite data cast adrift in an uncharted sea. But if we accept the Domesday data for what they are we have to ask different questions of them. There is a whole new range of interpretative possibilities out there. In my forthcoming book, Decoding Domesday, I shall be exploring these in detail. Here I can hope only to indicate some general points. First of all, the concept of Domesday as soke must shift our focus in a major way. I as much as anyone have been guilty of mouthing the mantra that resources found their way into Domesday because they contributed to the income of the lord. We have to reformulate that. Resources appear because soke dues are rendered in respect of them. A mere technicality? Well, no. It is a definition that indicates a difference in status. Take the record of churches. It is certainly eccentric. Churches appear in profusion in some counties and not at all in others. It has been divined, rightly I think, that procedural differences underlie distributions on a national scale. Locally, by contrast, we have tended to believe that the churches of Domesday are those that belonged to lords, they are Eigenkirchen.98 However, we know that not all private churches are recorded, even in circuits where they are well represented. If only those that owed soke dues were recorded we now have a reason. We also have an insight into the status of both types of church. How useful this will be has yet to be determined. It does seem to make sense, though, of the high number of churches recorded in areas where there was apparently little inland, such as Lincolnshire and Norfolk. 99 Reassessment of all items of manorial stock can be undertaken in similar terms. That is all bread and butter. It is possible to draw wider conclusions within the terms of the Domesday inquest. I have already suggested that overstocking is almost 97 It is as well to be clear that, in spite of popular perception, statistical correlation proves nothing; it

merely tests hypotheses that must be otherwise coherent. The assertion that God presses a light switch twice a day is not proved by the highly significant correlation of daylight and time of day (p=<0.0000). To borrow a computer cliché, garbage in, garbage out. For a discussion of the relationship of correlation to causality, see D. G. Altman, Practical Statistics for Medical Research, London 1991, 297. I am grateful to my wife, Christine Roffe, for this reference. 98 H. C. Darby, Domesday England, Cambridge 1977, 52–6; J. Blair, ‘Local Churches in Domesday Book and Before’, in Domesday Studies, ed. Holt, 265–78; C. Holdsworth, ‘The Church at Domesday’, in Domesday Essays, ed. C. Holdsworth, Exeter 1986, 51–64. Many churches are recorded on sokeland or the local equivalent in eastern England, but, of course, it must be remembered that all such land fell within manors. 99 The formulation also adds another dimension to the debate over so-called ‘sokemen’s churches’: P. Warner, ‘Shared Churchyards, Freemen Church Builders and the Development of Parishes in EleventhCentury East Anglia’, Landscape History 8, 1986, 39–52; P. Everson and D. Stocker, ‘The Common Steeple? Church, Liturgy, and Settlement in Early Medieval Lincolnshire’, above.

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certainly a marker for inland. The phenomenon is the best guide we have to a phantom Domesday resource. Given the near invisibility of inland in the Domesday corpus, this was probably not an outcome that the commissioners appreciated, let alone anticipated. By contrast, it is certain that, in demanding the ploughland statistics, they had an even more lucrative phantom resource within their sights. Geld exemption did not relieve the lord of a tax burden, it diverted it from his tenants into his pocket.100 In the summaries the ploughland figures are collected by fee and juxtaposed with geld assessment, ploughs, population, and value of the demesne and enfeoffed lands. Assessment, resources, and income are indexed against the land available, providing a measure of how much the tenant-in-chief raked off from the geld. The excess of ploughlands over hides is an index of a resource that is not otherwise quantified in Domesday Book. King William used the information to divert some of the income into the treasury. What use the historian can make of the figures remains to be seen. Finally, values. Valuit and valet figures are only contingently related to output, but the figures are a measure of the importance of cash in the management of estates. Here change is of more importance than magnitude. Our analysis would suggest that increases may often indicate commutation of labour dues and food rents. Domesday values may well be the best measure we have of the extent of demesne exploitation in 1086.101 A wider issue remains with a question mark hanging over it. To whom were the values paid? Was it the tenant-in-chief or the sitting tenant? In a twelfth-century context the answer is simple enough; the one was entitled to service from the other, who otherwise had an incontrovertible right to his land. In 1086 rights were still to become fully territorialized. Domesday Book was to be instrumental in the process. But heritability was yet to be the norm, and tenants-in-chief retained interests of various kinds in their tenants’ lands. Some values were undoubtedly paid out of manors to lords, and if this was common, then Domesday values would be an excellent index of the income in cash of the great lords of Norman England.102 But, at the moment at least, I remain agnostic about that. It is time to draw to a close. Domesday studies have been characterized by reductionism. With the concept of the inquest as an executive process historians have been forced to make stark choices, with all the contradictions that have ensued. In recognizing the inquest for the information-gathering activity that it was, we are freed from that tyranny of either/or. It is an understanding that also dispenses with the need to perceive the Domesday inquest as an exhaustive process. Its focus was 100 In cases of total exemption the lord seems to have levied the geld himself. Thus, Exon, 202, records

that Padstow (Cornw.) never gelded ‘except for the use of the church [of St Petroc]’. LDB records that the geld of Bury St Edmunds was diverted to the monks of the abbey, an arrangement which seems to have been a function of the exemption of the vill by King Cnut in 1021: LDB 372a (Suff. 14/167); S 980. For a more ambiguous reference, see GDB 174a1 (Worcs. 2/74). ‘Under-assessment’ was probably no different in kind. Urban tenements that belonged to rural manors certainly paid their geld to the lord, for geldum was apparently one of ‘the customs’ that he enjoyed. In Huntingdon, for example, the abbot of Ramsey, the abbot of Ely, and Ulf Fenisc had had all customs except geld, but the bishop of Lincoln (recte Dorchester), Earl Siward, and Gos and Hunef had held all customs and sake and soke without reservation: GDB 203a1 (Hunts. B/1–5, 14). An explicit reference to payment to a lord is found in the Sussex folios, where Leofwine held ½ hide of the 59 hides at Washington and gave geld to his lord, but the latter ‘gave nothing’: GDB 28a1 (Suss. 13/9). 101 Hitherto, the ratio of demesne to peasant ploughs has been used as an index. For a succinct account of the methodology, and some of its results, see Wareham, ‘Feudal Revolution’, 294. The assumption that the record of ploughs and value is transparent remains suspect. 102 For a discussion of the issues, see J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The Wealth of the Secular Aristocracy in 1086’, ANS 22, 1999 (2000), 279–91.

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wide, but it was not overarching. In suggesting that tax and service were its interlinked subjects, I have argued that Domesday data were selected to illuminate these, its concerns. The Domesday inquest was less about estates than soke dues. All of what we want it to be – a register of title, a terrier, an index of wealth, a topography of power – it is not. In return, we have a truer understanding of the nature and workings of late eleventh-century society.