jury. If the jury died out in Normandy, it survived in England, where
it flourished in the fertile soil of the popular local courts. It
spread to the British colonies and to the United States; it has in
recent times been reintroduced on the Continent. But it is still the
same fundamental institution, bound by direct continuity with the old
Frankish procedure through the Norman inquests of the twelfth century.
Wherever the twelve good men and true are gathered together, we can
see the juries of Henry II behind them. In such matters the Norman
influence is thus as wide as the common law; we are all heirs of
the early Normans. As Freeman well says: “We can never be as if the
Norman had never come among us. We ever bear about us the signs of his
presence. Our colonists have carried those signs with them into distant
lands, to remind men that settlers in America and Australia came from a
land which the Norman once entered as a conqueror.”[48]
* * * * *
Our survey of Norman history might perhaps stop here; but it needs
to be rounded out in two directions. We have been so busy with the
external history of the Norman empire and with the constitutional
developments to which it gave rise, that we have had no time to
examine the society and culture of Normandy in its flourishing period
of imperialism. And we have been concentrating our attention so
exclusively on the dominions of the Plantagenets that we have left out
of view that greater Normandy to the south which constitutes one of
the most brilliant chapters of Norman achievement and one of the most
fascinating subjects of European history. These topics will be the
themes of the three remaining lectures.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The best account of the downfall of the Norman empire is Powicke,
_The Loss of Normandy_, where abundant references will be found
to further material. The general narratives of Adams, Davis, and
Ramsay may also be consulted, as well as Miss Norgate, _John
Lackland_ (London, 1902). For the French side see Luchaire, in
Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, III, 1. The fullest treatment of
relations between the Plantagenets and France, down to 1199,
is A. Cartellieri, _Philipp II. August_ (Leipzig, 1899–1910),
supplemented by his _Richard Löwenherz im heiligen Lande_, in
_Historische Zeitschrift_, CI, pp. 1–27 (1908), and _Philipp II.
August und der Zusammenbruch des angiovinischen Reiches_ (Leipzig,
1913). For the controversy concerning John’s condemnation by the
court of Philip, see Gross, _Sources and Literature_, nos. 2829,
2833. Characterizations of Richard and John by Stubbs will be
found in his _Historical Introductions_, pp. 315 _ff._, 439 _ff._
J. Lehmann, _Johann ohne Land_ (Berlin, 1904), is more favorable
to John. The biography of the Young King is traced by P. C. E.
Hodgson, _Jung Heinrich, König von England_ (Jena, 1906).
There is no general work on the English occupation of Normandy in
the fifteenth century; the scattered monographs are mentioned in
Prentout, _La Normandie_, pp. 71–76. Something may be expected from
the continuation of the late J. H. Wylie’s work on the reign of
Henry V.
VI
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE
In turning from the general course of Norman history in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries to examine Norman life and culture in this
period, we encounter the difficulties inherent in any attempt to cut
a cross-section of human society in an age which was not conscious of
being a society and has left us for the description of itself only raw
materials of a fragmentary and uneven sort. The chroniclers confine
themselves almost entirely to external events, the charters deal
chiefly with land and boundaries and rights over the land, much of the
literature is theological commentary or rhetorical commonplace which
reflects nothing of the age in which it was written; what is lacking in
all is the concrete detail of daily life from which alone social and
economic conditions and even government itself can be understood. And
when we have pieced together as best we may some notions of Normandy
in this period, our knowledge of the parallel conditions in other
regions is often so inadequate that we cannot be certain how far our
results are characteristic of Normandy, how far typical of the time,
or, because of the scattered nature of our material, how far they may
be merely individual and isolated. Much of the social history of the
Middle Ages is still unwritten; for lack of evidence much can never
be written. Until the available sources have been more fully explored,
nothing beyond a provisional sketch can be attempted.
Fortunately for our purposes, the fundamental structure of society
in the earlier Middle Ages was exceedingly simple. There were three
classes, those who fought, those who labored, and those who prayed,
corresponding respectively to the nobles, the peasants, and the
clergy. Created by the simple needs of the feudal age, this primitive
division of labor was even declared an institution of divine origin and
necessary to the harmonious life of man. It seemed right and natural
that the nobles should defend the country and maintain order, the
clergy lead men to salvation, the peasants support by their labor these
two beneficent classes, as well as themselves. As an ideal of social
organization, this system of classes is open to obvious objections,
not the least of which is the persistent killing and plundering of the
peasants by the class whose function it was to protect and defend them;
but as a description of actual conditions, it expresses very well the
facts of the case.
* * * * *
With respect to the fighting class, it is characteristic of the Norman
habit of order and organization that the military service of the
nobles was early defined with more system and exactness in Normandy
than in the neighboring countries of northern France. We have already
seen that at a period well before 1066 the amount of service due from
the great lords to the duke had been fixed in rough units of five or
multiples of five, and these again subdivided among their vassals
and attached to specific pieces of land which were hence called
knights’ fees, an arrangement which the Normans carried to England and
probably to Sicily as well. By 1172, when a comprehensive list was
first drawn up, subinfeudation had produced about 1500 knights’ fees
in Normandy, the largest holders being the bishop of Bayeux and the
earl of Leicester with 120, the count of Ponthieu with 111, and Earl
Giffard with 103. From these the class of fully armed knights reached
down to the holders of small fractions of a knight’s fee, all however
serving with the full armor which in course of time came to mark them
off as nobles from the vavassors, or free soldiers, whose equipment
was less complete and whose service tended to take the form of castle
guard and similar duties. Quite early also custom had defined other
characteristic features of the feudal service in Normandy, such as the
period of forty days, the limitation of the obligation to the frontiers
of the duchy, and the incidents of wardship and marriage, deductions
from feudal principles which were here carried to their logical
conclusions.
The symbol of the authority of the military class, the outward and
visible sign of feudalism, was the castle, where the lord resided and
from which he exercised his authority over his fief. Originating in
the period of anarchy which accompanied the dissolution of the Frankish
empire and the invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries, the castle
spread over northern France as feudalism spread, and was introduced
into England by the Normans when they here established their feudal
state. The earliest castles of Normandy and of England were not,
however, the massive stone donjons which Freeman peopled with devils
and evil men. With some exceptions, of which the Tower of London is
the most noteworthy, these ‘hateful structures’ were built of wood and
surrounded by a stockade, surmounting an artificial mound, or _motte_,
thrown up from the deep moat at its base. A great drawbridge, cleated
so that horses should not slip on the steep incline, led from the
farther side of the moat directly to the second story of the tower,
of which the ground floor, used only for stores and the custody of
prisoners, had no entrance from without. Fortresses of this type have
naturally left nothing behind them save the outlines of their mounds
and moats, but they are well known from contemporary descriptions
and are clearly discernible in the Bayeux Tapestry, which gives rude
pictures of the strongholds of Dol, Rennes, Dinan, and Bayeux, and
shows a stockaded mound in actual process of construction at Hastings.
The heavy timbers of these lofty block-houses offered stout resistance
to battering rams, but they were always in great danger from fire, and
wood was replaced by stone in the course of the twelfth century, to
which belong the ‘stern square towers’ which still survive in Normandy
and England, as well as the earliest examples of the more defensible
round keeps and square keeps flanked with round towers. Whether of wood
or stone, the donjon was a stern place, built for strength rather than
for comfort, and bending the life of those within it to the imperious
necessities of defence. Space was at a premium, windows were few and
small,--sometimes only a single window and a single room to each
story,--trap-doors and ladders often did the work of stairways, and
from the wooden castles fires were usually excluded. Nevertheless the
donjons were not, as was once supposed, mere “towers of refuge used
only in time of war,” but “were the permanent residences of the nobles
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.”[49] Only toward the close of
this period do the outer buildings develop, so as to give something of
the room and convenience demanded by the rising standard of comfort;
only in the thirteenth century do the more spacious castles without
keeps begin to make their appearance.
It is significant of the progress made by the ducal authority
in Normandy that by the time of William the Conqueror definite
restrictions had been placed upon the creation of these strongholds
of local power and resistance. Except with the duke’s license no one
could build a castle, or erect a fortress on a rock or an island, or
even dig a fosse in the open country so deep that the earth could not
be thrown out from the bottom without artificial aid, while palisades
were required to be built in a simple line and without alures or
special works of defence. When the duke desired, he might also place
garrisons in his barons’ castles and demand hostages for their loyalty.
These principles, which were applied also in England, were of course
often difficult to enforce, and they were supplemented in the twelfth
century by the development of a great system of ducal castles, secured
partly by enlarging and strengthening the older fortresses of Rouen,
Caen, Falaise, and Argentan, partly, as we have already seen, by new
strongholds on the frontiers. Powicke has shown us how these castles
became the chief administrative centres in the reigns of Henry II and
Richard, and how the royal letters and accounts reveal their many-sided
activity in the busy days of peace as well as in the more strenuous
times of war.[50] Under _châtelains_ who were royal officers rather
than feudal vassals, with garrisons of mercenaries and retinues of
knights and serjeants, clerks and chaplains and personal servants, they
foreshadow the ultimate replacement of baronial donjons by a royal
bureaucracy.
It is doubtless because of the dominant position of the duke that
Normandy is less rich than some other parts of France in picturesque
types of feudal lords or vivid episodes of feudal conflicts. When they
go beyond the affairs of the church, the Norman chroniclers are prone
to concentrate their attention upon the deeds of the ducal house, and
their accounts of the great vassals tend to be dry and genealogical.
The chief exception is Ordericus Vitalis, whose theme and geographical
position lead him to treat at length the long anarchy under Robert
Curthose and the incessant conflicts of the great lords his neighbors
on the southern border, the houses of Bellême, Grentemaisnil, Conches,
and Breteuil. In the main it is a dreary tale of surprises and sieges,
of treachery and captivity and sudden death, relieved from time to time
by brighter episodes--the lady Isabel of Conches sitting in the great
hall as the young men of the castle tell their dreams; the daily battle
for bread around the oven at the siege of Courcy; the table spread and
the pots seething on the coals for the lord and lady of Saint-Céneri
who never came back; the man of Saint-Évroul who, by the saint’s aid,
walks unharmed out of custody at Domfront; the marvellous vision of the
army of knights and ladies in torment which appeared to the priest of
Bonneval.
With these episodes of Norman feudalism it is interesting to compare
the picture of Anglo-Norman society a hundred years later which we find
in that unique piece of feudal biography, the _History of William the
Marshal_. Companion to the Young King and witness of the final shame
of Henry II, pilgrim to Jerusalem and Cologne, advanced to positions
of trust under Richard and John, earl of Striguil and Pembroke and
regent of England under Henry III, the Earl Marshal stood in close
relations to the chief men and movements of his day. His biographer,
however, does not let himself wander to tell of others’ deeds, and
while his work contains material of much importance for the general
history of the time, its chief value lies in its reflection of the
life of the age and its faithful portrait of the man himself--soldier
of fortune, gentleman-adventurer if you will, but always loyal,
honorable, straightforward, and true, by the standards of his time a
man without fear and without reproach. Brought up in the Norman castle
of Tancarville, the Marshal, like the Young King his master, became
passionately addicted to tournaments, _par éminence_ the knightly
sport of the Middle Ages, which made hunting and other pastimes seem
tame and furnished the best preparation for real war, since, as an
English chronicler tells us, in order to shine in war a knight “must
have seen his own blood flow, have had his jaw crack under the blow
of his adversary, have been dashed to the earth with such force as to
feel the weight of his foe, and unhorsed twenty times he must twenty
times have retrieved his failures, more set than ever on the combat.”
Unknown to England before the reign of Richard, these manly sports
flourished most of all in France, the country of chivalry and feats
of arms, and for several years we follow the Marshal from combat to
combat through Normandy and Maine, Champagne and the Ile-de-France,
so that his renown spread from Poitou to the Rhine. At one period in
his life he tourneyed every fortnight. The tournaments of his day,
however, were not the elegant and fashionable affairs of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries which the word is apt to call to our minds,
assemblages of beauty as well as of prowess, held in special enclosures
before crowded galleries, with elaborate rules respecting armor and
weapons and the conditions of conflict. On the contrary, they were
fought like battles, in the open, with all the arms and methods of war
and all its manœuvres and ferocity of attack; indeed they differed from
war mainly in being voluntary and limited to a single day. After one
series of such thunderous encounters the Marshal was found in a smithy,
his head on the anvil and the smith working with hammer and pincers
to remove his battered helmet. In a great tournament at Lagni three
thousand knights are said to have been engaged, of which the Young
King furnished eighty. Knights fought for honor and fame and for sheer
joy of combat; they fought also, we must remember, for the horses and
armor and ransoms of the captives. In a Norman tournament the Marshal
captured ten knights and twelve horses. Between Pentecost and Lent of
one year their clerks calculated that he and his companion had taken
prisoners three hundred knights, without counting horses and harness;
yet he seems to have preserved the golden mean between the careless
_largesse_ of the Young King and the merely mercenary motives of the
large number who frequented tournaments for the sake of gain.
* * * * *
Concerning the great agricultural class upon which the whole social
system rested, our information is of a scattered and uneven sort. The
man with the hoe did not interest the mediæval chronicler, and he did
not gain a voice of his own in the period which we have under review.
The annals of the time are indeed careful to record the drouths and
floods, the seasons of plague, pestilence, and famine of which Normandy
seems to have had its share, but they tell us nothing of the effects of
these evils upon the class which they most directly concerned; while
the charters, leases, and manorial records from which our knowledge
of the peasants must be built up give us in this period isolated and
unrelated facts. Moreover our information is confined almost entirely
to the lands of churches and monasteries, where agriculture was likely
to be more progressive because of their closer relations to the world
outside. Normandy was a fertile country, and, so far as we can judge,
its agricultural population fared well as compared with that of other
regions. Certainly there is here, after the eleventh century, no
trace of serfdom or the freeing of serfs, and the free position of
its farming class distinguished the duchy from most of the lands of
northern France. In other respects it is hard to discern important
differences between the Norman peasants and those of other regions.
After the suppression of an insurrection at the beginning of this
century, we do not hear of any general rising of the Norman peasants,
parallel to those risings which make a sad and futile chapter in the
annals of many parts of Europe in the Middle Ages. It was, however, a
local revolt of the thirteenth century on the lands of the monks of
Mont-Saint-Michel that brought out one of the best descriptions of
life on a Norman manor, the _Conte des Vilains de Verson_,[51] and,
while it is a bit late for our purpose, it is confirmed by documentary
evidence, and may well serve as an illustration of the obligations of
the agricultural class:--
In June the peasants must cut and pile the hay and carry it to the
manor house. In August they must reap and carry in the convent’s
grain; their own grain lies exposed to wind and rain while they
hunt out the assessor of the _champart_ and carry his share to his
barn. On the Nativity of the Virgin the villain owes the pork-due,
one pig in eight; at St. Denis’ day the _cens_; at Christmas
the fowl, fine and good, and thereafter the grain-due of two
_sétiers_ of barley and three quarters of wheat; on Palm Sunday
the sheep-due; at Easter he must plow, sow and harrow. When there
is building the tenant must bring stone and serve the masons; he
must also haul the convent’s wood for two _deniers_ a day. If he
sells his land, he owes the lord a thirteenth of its value; if he
marries his daughter outside the seigniory, he pays a fine. He must
grind his grain at the seigniorial mill and bake his bread at the
seigniorial oven, where the customary charges do not satisfy the
attendants, who grumble and threaten to leave his bread unbaked.
So long as mediæval society remained almost entirely agricultural
there was no need of adapting its organization to other classes than
those which have just been described. In course of time, however, the
growth of industry and commerce, very slow before the eleventh century,
but rapid and constant in the period during and after the Crusades,
as may be seen by the large number of markets and fairs in Normandy,
created a new class of dwellers in towns who demanded recognition of
their peculiar character and status. By reason of the nature of their
occupations they sought release from the seigniorial system, with its
forced labor, its frequent payments, and its vexatious restrictions
upon freedom of movement and freedom of buying and selling; and as
their economic needs drew them together into industrial and commercial
centres of population, they developed a collective feeling and demanded
collective treatment. They asked, not, as has sometimes been said, for
the overthrow of the feudal system, but for a place within it which
should recognize their peculiar economic and political interests;
and the result of their efforts, when fully successful, was to form
what has been called a collective seigniory, standing as a body in
the relation of vassal to lord or king, and owing the obligations
of homage, fealty, and communal military service. But while not
anti-feudal in theory, this movement was often anti-feudal in practice,
so far at least as the rights and privileges of the immediate overlord
were concerned, and it led to friction and often to armed contests
with bishop, baron, or king. In Normandy, significantly, we find
none of those communal revolts which meet us throughout the north of
France and even as near as LeMans; the towns are always subject to the
ultimate authority of the duke, whose domanial rights were considerable
even in the episcopal cities and who favored those forms of urban
development which strengthened the military resources of the duchy. The
early history of the Norman towns is one of the most obscure chapters
in Norman history, but it indicates a variety of influences which do
not fit into any one of the many theories of municipal origins which
have been the subject of so much learned controversy. Some towns were
originally fortified places, like the baronial stronghold of Breteuil
or Henry I’s fortresses of Verneuil, Nonancourt, and Pontorson on
the southern border. Some took advantage of the protection of a
monastery, as in the case of Fécamp or the _bourgs_ of the abbot and
abbess of Caen. The great ports, like Barfleur and Dieppe, obviously
owed their importance to trade, and it was trade which created the
prosperity of the chief towns of the duchy, Rouen and Caen. However
developed, the Norman municipal type exerted no small influence upon
urban organization: the laws of Breteuil became the model for Norman
foundations on the Welsh border and in Ireland; the _Établissements_
of Rouen were copied in the principal towns of western France,--Tours
and Poitiers, Angoulême and La Rochelle, even to Gascon Bayonne on the
Spanish frontier.
If we take as an illustration of this development the principal Norman
town, Rouen, we find no evidence regarding its institutions before the
twelfth century, while its organization as a commune dates from the
reign of Henry II and probably from the year 1171. The fundamental
law, or _Établissements_, which Rouen then received and which became
the model for communal government elsewhere in Normandy, constitutes a
body of one hundred peers who meet once a fortnight for judicial and
other business and who choose from their number each year the twelve
_échevins_, or magistrates, and the twelve councillors who sit with the
_échevins_ to form the council of _jurés_. Besides these boards, which
are typical of mediæval town constitutions, the peers also nominate
three candidates for the office of mayor, but the choice among these is
made by the king, and the greater authority of the mayor in this system
is evidently designed to secure more effective royal control. It is the
mayor who leads the communal militia, receives the revenues, supervises
the execution of sentences, and presides over all meetings of
magistrates and boards. The administration of justice through its own
magistrates is perhaps the most valued privilege of the commune, but
the gravest crimes are reserved for the cognizance of royal officers,
and the presence of the king or a session of his assize is sufficient
to suspend all communal powers of justice. In a state like the Norman
the limits of municipal self-government are clear.