In Norman Times
When Duke William of Normandy became King of England, the power of
the Crown was greater than it had ever been before. All the old
folk-land had become king's land. Many knights had followed Duke
William from Normandy into England, and expected to be provided
for by their leader. The lands belonging to King Harold, and
those of the Saxon eorls who had died fighting at Senlac, King
William regarded as his own. These he granted to his followers,
on condition that they acknowledged him as their overlord, and
followed him in war when required. This was a stricter condition
than had ever before been required in England. The Normans were
used to it, and it did not seem at all strange to them.
Neither was it so very strange to the Saxon nobles and thanes. Most
of them were allowed to keep their estates if they took the oath of
allegiance to the king as the Normans did. Of course they grumbled:
it was only natural that they should do so; but if they did not
acknowledge the king in this way they were looked upon as rebels,
and lost their lands.
King William was very careful, in the grants which he made, not
to put too much power into the hands of his nobles. The old vills
of Saxon times were now pretty generally called manors. When the
king granted land, it was not given in huge slices--whole counties,
halves, and quarters of counties--to this great follower of his or
to that one. Between the old vills, or manors, there were often
wide stretches of the king's own land, the old folk-land. If he had
granted to a Norman knight a quarter of a county or so, he would
have been giving away much of his own land. Besides that, the king
did not mean his followers to become too powerful. He granted the
land in separate manors. It is quite true that in every county we
can, so to speak, put our finger on some Norman knight who came
over with William I, and say that he got the lion's share of the
manors in that county. Thus in Hampshire there was Hugh de Port,
and in Hertfordshire Eustace de Boulogne. But their manors did not
all lie side by side, nor were they conveniently close together.
Just as a villein's holding was spread out in various fields, so
the manors, or fiefs, which a knight held under King William were
often scattered over various counties.
At the time of the Conquest a very large number of manors belonged
to bishoprics and monasteries. Now the Normans were a Christian
race. The Norman Conquest was not like the Saxon or the Danish
Conquest--a rush of heathen, bent on plunder and bloodshed. Bitter
as the strife was, it was not as bad as those invasions had
been. There was something which the Normans and the later Saxons
both respected, and that was their religion. The Normans were a
particularly religious and devout people, stern and cruel as they
were. The lands of the Church and of the monasteries were not
interfered with to any extent. King William, however, took care
that they were in the hands of people whom he could trust.
The story is told that the Saxon abbot, Frederick of St. Alban's,
who did not love the Normans, once remarked to King William that he
owed his easy conquest of England to the fact that so many of the
manors were held by monks and clergy, who could not and would not
bring out their men to fight.
The king replied that that must be mended; for enemies might again
invade the land, and he must have men whom he could depend upon
to meet the foe. At that time a great tract of land between St.
Albans and London belonged to the Abbey, and the abbot allowed
Saxon outlaws to infest it, who were a great nuisance to the
Normans. As the land had been given by former kings, the king
at once took half of it back again, in order to clear out the
outlaws. Abbot Frederick had said too much. He fled away to the
Camp of Refuge at Ely, and King William would only accept as abbot
a Norman and a friend of his--Paul de Caen. That was a very good
appointment for St. Albans. The great tower of the Abbey Church,
still standing, was built by him--more than eight centuries ago.