The Normans and Their World

by Jack Lindsay

  Normandy was one of the most advanced areas where the close link between land-holding and military service had developed; only a few other areas such as Flanders or Barcelona could be compared with it. It has even been called the cradle of feudalism: a term which is applicable enough if we take it to mean that in it the full logical conclusions of military tenures were first worked out in precise terms. The system tended to produce a series of layers, the members of each of which had relatively equal status. Each layer was interlinked with those above and below it by the right to demand services or the obligation to give them. In such a world there could be nothing like the national state that emerged in the last stages of feudalism; for a man felt more solidarity with men of his own layer than with the men above or below him. While in theory the various layers and all the men in them were firmly locked in a set system of fealties and homages, in practice the groupings were often very fluid (apart from the labourers tied to the soil). The ethic of loyalty and the practice of treachery made up much of the everyday scene of feudalism. In one aspect the system brought to a climax the way of life of the comitatus, the companions who had discarded the bonds of kin and attached themselves body and soul to a war lord; but at the same time it was in decay, corroded by manifold lusts after power and profit. Its operations were too complex and wide-ranging for the old solidarities and bonds to work consistently. Extremes of loyalty and disloyalty continued to mark feudal man.

  The aim of a strong ruler was to make himself as much as possible the centre of the whole network of loyalties. We saw how vassalages could lead to problems of divided fealties, as when William resented Roger of Mortemer letting go his captured lord, Ralf of Montdidier, exiled him, then later gave him back his fief — though keeping Mortemer castle which he granted to a kinsman of the count. We see that he did not like to go too far against a man who had been true to his immediate feudal duty, but wanted to emphasize his own overriding claim. He acted in the same way with the church. A kinsman, Robert of Grandmesnil, during a revolt that involved members of his family, made some remarks that William considered disloyal; he at once deprived Robert of his position as abbot of St nvro ult. Robert went to Rome and returned with papal legates and letters of restitution. William met him at Lillebonne, and replied that he would welcome the legates on any matter of faith or religion, but he would hang from the highest oak in the wood nearby any monk who falsely accused him.[187]

  The advanced state of feudalism in Normandy can be gauged by the extent to which the bonds of kindred had been weakened. After a killing, reconciliation was required, but perhaps only with near relatives of the dead man; and such a reconciliation was of no use without the duke’s pardon. We find the claims of kinship expressly set aside. No oath-helpers of the kindred were invoked; on the contrary the jurors who most nearly corresponded to such oath-helpers could not be related to either party. Remarkable is the anti-kindred bias in such a statement as the following about wardship:

  Who shall take charge of the orphan heir whom it is incumbent to put in another’s care? The mother shall not take charge of him. Why? Because if she took a husband and had children by him, those children for envy of the heritage would kill their elder brother and be heirs, or the husband would himself kill his stepson to give the heritage to his sons. Who then shall have charge? His cousins? No. Why? Lest they perhaps should ardently desire his death and covet his heritage, for that cause killing off the innocent. To avoid then such treachery and to eschew such cruelty, it was established that the orphan should be in charge of him to whom his father was bound in homage.

  The exact date of such sections of the Custumal is not clear; but the passage shows the acute Norman sense of property. It is assumed that anyone is likely to murder children if he can thereby get land. But what matters here is the way in which the argument is used to demolish the claims of the kindred and to hand over to the lord what had previously been theirs. Such attitudes certainly go back to William’s time and even earlier.

  Incidentally we may note that the extreme length to which the idea of incest was stretched in the Christian west was certainly connected with the strength of the kindreds. The early Fathers, in denouncing incest, dealt only with close relationships such as brother and sister, uncle and niece, man and daughter-in-law; but with the early medieval penitentials we enter a world in which relationships are worked out for many degrees. If a man and woman become one flesh, then the relations on either side were brought into a consanguineous connection and the prohibited degrees stretched more and more. Spiritual kinship was added to the list of incestuous taboos. Relations created at baptism were considered similar to, and in some ways more significant than, those between child and parents. The kin-systems linked with the blood feud tended to become identical with the taboo-systems of relationship; Beaumanoir, as late as 1285 in his Coutumes de Beauvais on the customs of the country and the decisions of the court of Clermont, declared:

  It used to be the custom that one could take revenge by right of feud as far as the 7th degree of kinship and this was not strange in the days of old, for marriages could not be made within the 7th degree [Laws of Charlemagne and Pope Gregory]. But as the degree for marriage has been made closer, beyond the 4th degree, so also one should not attack in feud anyone further removed from the kindred than the 4th degree, because the kindred stops there in all cases, since matters have been relaxed so that marriages can be made; except in claiming inheritances, for one can still claim inheritance on the score of kindred as far as the 7th degree.[188]

  The extent of the turmoils we have noted in Norman society may be estimated from the fact that few of the families who had come to the fore by 1066, and who became great landlords in England, were able to trace their line back beyond the reign of Richard II. The great families were mostly descended from the ducal house and consorts of the dukes. They had grown through grants from the ducal estates or by alienation of old church lands. The highest title used in Normandy — that of count, equivalent to the English earl — was reserved for the ruler up to the eleventh century; and even in the last years before 1066 it was extended only to a few members of the ducal family. It had not become hereditary.

  The governmental system was still rather rudimentary, though ahead of other such systems in France. There was a curia or ducal court, made up mostly of kinsmen and personal friends. Few bishops were regularly present, and there was no Norman class at all corresponding to the English thegns. The most important officials included the duke’s steward or seneschal and the chamberlain; constables and marshals as yet had lesser roles. Sometimes the duke appointed delegates (often bishops) to hear judicial cases; but there were no chancellors and no seals. The duke couldn’t issue writs or charters; the chaplains had to be called in for drawing up documents. William’s diplomas were, however, mostly drawn up by the beneficiary and were authenticated by holographic crosses. Documents thus issued were merely the written records of gifts made by word of mouth; sealed writs like those issued by the English kings to the shire courts were unknown on the continent. A personal aspect was indeed prominent in all feudal relations, connected with the idea of reciprocal rights and obligations in lordship and vassaldom — though in fact the relations were continually viewed and expressed in the crudest terms of property and profit. A feudal prince expressed his domination in personal terms, even if he did so within the confines of custom that dictated a complex set of rules and determined the lines of thought and emotion. His curia or household was made up of close personal associates who were there to help him make decisions and carry them out his own servants and churchmen, his own officials and retainers. One of the duties of the magnates was to advise him. But there was only an embryonic bureaucracy, so that the ruler’s relations to anyone with whom he had business, large or small, tended to be direct. There was no class of ministerial nobility like the English thegnhood.

  Besides the meetings of the household curia, there were councils composed of barons come to court for the great chur
ch festivals or to discuss some critical matter. Here were threshed out any disputes between duke and baron, or between the barons themselves. To wage a war the duke needed the assent of his barons. William would have brought up the project of invading England at such a gathering, just as it was at such a gathering that his father had proclaimed him his heir. Charters were issued at such times so as to have a maximum of publicity; trials by ordeal were held. There were no set rules of procedure; anything that deeply concerned duke or baron could be raised; but we do not hear of any judicial activities. Vicomtes and bishops as well as important household officers could attend. In size the council must have been smaller than the English witan; like the household it had originated in imitation of the French king’s court. It was essentially a festive occasion when the barons could relax, get to know one another, eat and drink. But William was not a ruler who liked spending money on festivities; we hear little of his council before 1066.

  The duke knew the layout of all Normandy, a region small enough for him to have ridden over many times; little of significance could happen without his knowledge. He could store in his mind the whole network of duties and obligations; and it did not matter much if he were more or less illiterate. In one sense government was centralized, but in the duke’s person; in another sense it was extremely decentralized, with a minimum of interference from above in the workings of the complex system of dues and obligations. Slowness in the growth of an administrative machine derived ultimately from the low general level of literacy and of economic or social life; but no doubt it was also the result of a Norse preference for direct orders and communications; the duke and his lords, imperfectly literate or not literate at all, could not help being suspicious of systems set down in writing and dependent on a class of clerics.

  The duke was overlord of all landowners, but ruled only his own demesne, his household, his own estates, and the barons or churchmen who held land directly from him. Finance was bound up with administration, and indeed the dividing line between such matters and the military or judicial sphere was thin. As we noted, in comparison with the rulers of the rest of France the dukes kept a great deal of administrative and judicial control in their own hands. Vicaria — the term that had come to be applied to a bundle of rights taken over by barons and transformed into seigneurial prerogatives — were being regained by the dukes at the end of the tenth century. The dukes appointed as their main officials vicomtes, with prévôts to collect the revenue. Leading barons at times held vicomtés, and the office tended to become hereditary. William’s hardest task was to assert full control of the vicomtés; and he may have increased the number, in order to break down concentrations of power. But even at the height of the vicomtés, the holders, like the English sheriffs, never altogether lost their aspect of public functionaries. They were at times unruly; but, mastered where necessary by William, they remained the local agents of his authority. They dealt with almost anything that turned up, but especially with military, financial, and juridical matters; and they had charge of ducal castles.

  The building and control of castles was indeed an important part of ducal policy. Feudal castles were prominent in other areas such as Anjou, and all too often became centres of baronial unrest and self-assertion. But though this did occur in Normandy, the dukes did their best to curb it, demanding licences for all non-ducal castles and using their own castles as centres of intimidation, as key-points in the organization and consolidation of their own grip on the duchy. The castle was used in this way in conquered lands such as England or South Italy.

  In early days immunities had been granted or regranted to the great abbeys; but the practice stopped after the death of Robert the Magnificent. William made no such grants, not even to his own foundations at Caen. Counts, we noted, were rare and late; only one or two comital dynasties established themselves, at Eu and at Evreux. So the great cases in law, those dealing with murder, assault, arson, rape, and the like, stayed in ducal hands. Cessions of justice or any mention of such cases are unusual in charters; anything granted away was almost always on the fiscal and economic side.[189] True, we do find some monasteries exercising full ducal rights, even if we allow for forgeries. But it seems likely that the lay lords did not get the same concessions and that they exercised justice over tenants in their own courts without special grants allowing them to deal with the reserved cases. (By 1091 those cases included murder, assault on men journeying to and from the ducal court, attacks on pilgrims, violation of the currency. Arson, rape, and attacks on houses were lesser crimes left to the barons.)

  We find the dukes administering justice in the early eleventh century. What was needed was knowledge of custom, not learning or eloquence; and justice was expected to be open to all, great or small. Defendants often had to pass an ordeal to test the truth of their case. Women held red hot iron, which was thought to blister their hands if they were guilty; men were often tied up and thrown into consecrated water, where if innocent they sank. But the warlike Normans often preferred ordeal by battle, a new form. There is no evidence of their using a jury; but Frankish kings used to summon groups of neighbours to declare on oath what they knew of the rights to a piece of land, and the Normans may have taken over this practice, though not inclined to judicial oaths. They had no written law of any kind; their first legal treatise, the Très Ancien Coutumier, as we have it, cannot date before the start of the thirteenth century, though it seems to hold earlier elements. Before 1066 they had not gone beyond the notion of ancient custom known to all and reasserted by king and lords.

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  The vicomtes paid a fixed rent for their office, and made their own profit out of what extra they could collect.[190] By thus farming out the revenues the duke knew just what the returns would be, and could grant definite sums of money out of a certain area’s revenue. We see this system in action in the mid-eleventh century. A chamberlain was in charge of the camera or chamber where the revenues were kept in coffers. But the office is not clearly differentiated; the same title was given to various officials at the same time. The chamberlain of the camera probably had the task of merely guarding the money. In thus owning clearly defined cash revenues Normandy was ahead of the rest of France, even though we can make out no definite method of accounting or allocating money. Usually in early medieval times a prince could grant an income only by a gift in kind or by assigning it from some specific feudal source.

  Coins of the ducal era are very rare inside Normandy or outside it, but documentary evidence shows that a large quantity of money was often in circulation. We see from the records of Fécamp that abbot John of Ravenna could pay out in mid-century sums of £50, £80, even £312, to defend certain domains against lords anxious to found new priories: large sums for the day. Coins and metal increased under Richard II; then again after 1066 — a regression covering the second third of the century. At times men preferred to pay in horses rather than in coins. But even so, compared with other regions (such as Burgundy), Normandy was rich in money.[191]

  The collectors of the graverie, the direct money tax, can be clearly identified from the middle of the century. They were inevitably considered avaricious. One of them, Herbert, in the Vexin, rose in the world; his son-in-law gave three acres to the abbey of the Trinité, while a nephew held a benefice at Verclives and gave its tithes to the same abbey. Collectors of ducal or seigneurial market tolls had high enough status to witness charters; they often acted as general financial agents for their lords, while the ducal collectors had to handle large amounts of cash, as when they delivered alms to church-establishments. These men could become land-owners. The texts enable us to pick three of them out: Raoul, Eudes, Renouf. Raoul lived in a suburb of Rouen and his son had a miraculous cure. An inscription found in the chapel of St Nicholas in the cathedral addresses him: ‘You dead, thieves and false money live again.’ And, ‘You gone, the people [plebs] are mourning, the city moans.’ He had been murdered by thieves. Eudes, son of one of William’s cooks, held land near Clères
which he sold to the abbey of the Mont du Rouen for £25.

  Renouf turns up a little after 1035, and some time before 1048 was engaged in business with the Italian abbot Suppo of Mont St Michel; there was trouble and he seized the mill of the count at Vains (donated by Robert the Magnificent to the abbey); between 1058 and 1066 the new abbey had to buy the mill back ‘at no small price’ from Renouf’s son. Duke William had to intervene to see the matter settled. Renouf appears as witness in a document of St Amand of Roune. On 18 June 1066:

  At Caen the Countess [Matilda] has bought from Waleran son of the moneyer Renouf a land of one plough, and at Amblie a mill and the land that his brother Conan had held in allodium in this locality, for 20 pounds and a gold mark, with the Count’s assent.

  The son Waleran emerges as a well known member of the nobility, in continual contact with the abbeys of Fécamp, the Trinity, St Etienne and Caen. He was very shrewd, as his success in lawsuits attests. A case at the royal court ended with Matilda having to indemnify him in hard cash. Driving a severe bargain with the abbey of Mont St Michel and getting away with it, he was generous to the Trinity of Caen. We see from his largesse how he profited from the conquest of England. In 1066-77 he gave the abbey a house that had belonged to the Englishman Liefred, west of the city of London, in Wood Street, not far from the church of St Peter in Westcheap. Soon after that he conceded to the abbey the church of St Mary of Bury, Suffolk, and important rural lordships including the manor of Panfield, Essex, and various dependencies in Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire. By the third generation the family seems to be recognized as one of knightly rank; its landed estates became vast lordships. The son Waleran kept up his connections with the trading centres (Rouen, and doubtless London and Caen) while becoming a big landlord in Normandy and England.[192]