seen that justice and municipal law were carried on through a
series of free assemblies or Gemots; so too the general meeting,
or Gemot of the nation, constituted the chief legislative and
judicial assembly. This was called the Witan or wise men, or the
Witana-Gemot or assembly of wise men. It was doubtless originally
the National Assembly of all free men, but by an easy change which
befalls all such assemblies, attendance on it grew awkward to
the multitude, and was shortly confined to those who bore office
about the court, the king’s Thegns and bishops. The principle
of representation was not understood, and the freemen, although
they possessed an inherent right to be present, were not in fact
represented, except in so far as the presence of friendly and
neighbouring Thegns might be held to represent them. The power
of the Witan was great and various, being in theory the power
of a free nation. They could elect and discrown a king, and
practically did elect him, though usually from among the nearest
relatives of the late king. A remnant of this elective form of
the monarchy still exists in our form of coronation. Peace and
war were discussed in the Witan. The co-operation of the Witan
was necessary to authorize alienation of public land; and to them
ultimate judicial appeals were made. Early in the eleventh century,
however, the king had so far improved his position that he was able
to grant land without their leave, and also to call to his court
cases not yet completed in the lower courts. The same change in
the character of the king, which has been already mentioned, shows
itself here also. He was originally the leader of a free tribe,
perhaps of a clan, but gradually as his dominion extended his power
rose also; and his personal influence, though somewhat undefined,
was paramount. The great king could always wield the Witan as he
pleased. His office was, as has been said, elective, but under
certain restrictions. It seems to have been regarded as necessary
that he should be an Ætheling (or born in legitimate wedlock), and
in England. With this limit, and with a certain preference allowed
to the eldest son, and to the one whom the dying king nominated,
the choice of the Witan was free; and, practically, the prince
of the royal house best fitted for the immediate circumstances
of the kingdom was chosen. Thus the king’s brother was sometimes
chosen instead of his son, who, in his turn, might succeed his
uncle to the exclusion of his uncle’s children. This preference
for the best man over the nearest relative continued after the
Conquest, and renders erroneous the appellation of usurper when
applied to the early Norman kings. The arrangements of finance,
as far as they can be understood, were very simple. Upon every
citizen, whether agricultural or urban, there was laid a _trinoda
necessitas_, that is to say, the duty of serving in war, the repair
of bridges and public roads, and the maintenance of fortifications.
It is plain, therefore, that the wants of the crown were chiefly
personal, that what we consider the chief expenses of government,
justice, maintenance of public works, and military expenditure,
were supported by the people themselves, without the interposition
of government. The expenses of the crown would be discharged very
largely from the public property or folcland reserved to the
nation, and from such taxes as were rendered necessary from time
to time to support the grandeur and hospitality of the king as
national representative.
[Sidenote: Police.]
The system of police was based on the idea of mutual
responsibility. Frankpledge or _frithbohr_, by which is meant
the division of the country into sections of ten men mutually
responsible for one another, cannot be proved to have existed
before the Conquest. On the other hand, its principle no doubt
existed. Every man, by the law of Cnut, was bound to be in a
Hundred and a _tithing_. This latter term cannot be accurately
defined, but it was a subdivision of the Hundred. By the laws of
Æthelstan and Eadgar every landless man was compelled to have a
lord to answer for him in the courts, and every man a surety to
answer for him if he were absent when legally required.
From this sketch it will be seen that, with regard to classes,
there must have been at the time of the Conquest _Thegns_, who
were to all intents and purposes feudal barons; _Sokmen_, those
freemen who owed suit to the lord’s soke or court; a certain number
of _Eorls_ or nobles by birth, who would most likely have become
assimilated to the Thegns; _freeholders_, holding land in common
where it had not yet come under the suzerainty of a lord (this same
class of freemen degenerated under various circumstances and with
varying tenures into villeins, or dependent cultivators, under
lords); and absolute slaves, consisting originally probably of the
conquered race, and added to by criminals and outlaws, or others
who had lost their rights as freemen.
There was here every element of the feudal system. Even the tenure
of land upon military service existed. The main distinction between
the condition of England and that of the Continent, where the
feudal system had been fully established, lay in this,--there still
existed a certain number of freemen whose land was their own. They
were indeed obliged to acknowledge the jurisdiction of a lord,
but they were free to choose their own lord. They were suitors to
his court, but he did not possess their land. The feudal system
in its completed form may be regarded as exhibiting two peculiar
features:--jurisdiction was in the hand of large landowners; and
the lord was regarded as the possessor of the land over which he
exercised jurisdiction. In England, one feature alone had become
prominent. The judicial power was in the hand of large landowners;
but their jurisdiction extended over men whose land they did not
possess, but who were owners of their own property, and able to
attach themselves to any lord they liked. With the Conquest, while
the judicial power was restrained, the connection between that
power and the possession of land over which it was exercised became
absolute.
[Sidenote: The Church.]
The Church occupied a position of very great importance. It was the
guardian of the morality of the country, and as such had a share
in all secular jurisdictions; but it was the remnant of a national
Church, not closely united to the Roman See. It was therefore
inclined to be somewhat disorderly. Its bishops were appointed
properly by the king and the Witan, but latterly the power had
practically been with the king alone. These bishops obtained their
license from the Pope. But the case of Archbishop Stigand, to whom
the Pope had not sent the Pallium, shows how little weight was
given to this proceeding. Similarly, the lower clergy had formed
the habit of marrying, contrary to Papal laws, and although there
was a growing feeling that this was wrong, the practice still
continued while the monks were constantly attempting to break free
from their rules and establish themselves as canons.
[Sidenote: Effects of the Conquest.]
[Sidenote: Restraints upon feudalism.]
To such a civilization came William, who had seen the evils of
Continental feudalism in his own country, and had secured his
position only after long struggles. He claimed England, not as a
conqueror, but as the legitimate sovereign, nominated by Edward
the Confessor, and as such was accepted by the Witan, and crowned
in London after the battle of Senlac. His natural policy was,
therefore, to continue such institutions as were not yet feudal,
and thus his arrival checked that natural growth of feudalism which
was running its course in England as in other Teutonic countries.
On the other hand, it was impossible from his position that he
should do otherwise than introduce many feudal institutions. He had
brought with him many of his vassals, who held from him in feudal
tenure; and it was necessary, when, from the confiscated lands of
Harold and his family and of the other nobles who either opposed
his entrance into England or afterwards revolted against him,
he made large grants to reward the adventurers of whom his army
mainly consisted, he should make those grants in accordance with
the system with which he was acquainted in exchange for military
service, and saddled with the usual feudal burdens. While he thus,
on the one hand, was the national English sovereign, on the other
he was the supreme landowner and feudal lord. Under this double
influence, the tenure of land, following the universal tendency
of Europe, became wholly feudal and military. But the other side
of feudalism--with its isolation, the virtual independence of
the feudatories (among whom the king was but the first among his
peers), and the suppression of national jurisdiction, which were
the chief characteristics of French feudalism--was kept in careful
restraint. Thus, the whole machinery of justice, the Hundred
Court and the Shire Gemot were retained under presidency of the
sheriff, side by side with that territorial jurisdiction which
he could not refuse to his feudal vassals. The police system of
mutual responsibility was kept up and systematized under the name
of _frankpledge_, and on the whole nation still lay the _trinoda
necessitas_. The Witan remained, although its members were now
feudal vassals; the laws as they existed were for the most part
perpetuated, though certain emendations were made, such as the law
of Englishry,[4] for the protection of his Norman subjects, and
the liberty allowed to the different nationalities to be tried
according to their own law. At the same time, the further to
restrain the independent power of the great feudatories, the great
earldoms which Cnut had created were broken up, with the exception
of three border counties, Chester, Durham, and Kent; the business
of the counties was transacted by the sheriff, who was a royal
officer, and the earldoms were either of one county only, or if of
more than one, of counties far apart. As a final court of appeal,
he established the Curia Regis, formed of the Justiciary (who was
the king’s representative and regent when he left the country),
with a staff of justices, consisting originally of the officers of
the household, but tending gradually to consist of new nobility
appointed by the king for the purpose. This was the final court of
appeal, and could draw to it any suit from the county court. But
the chief restriction upon military feudalism, which rendered its
appearance in England impossible, was, that each freeholder swore
allegiance, not to his immediate lord, but to the king. Abroad, if
a great noble went to war with the king, his vassals were doing
right in following him; in England, they were committing treason.
[Sidenote: William’s position.]
This oath was exacted after the great work of the Domesday Book
was completed. This book consisted of a registration of all the
lands in the kingdom, made by commissioners, after inquiry upon
oath of the chief men and lesser freeholders of each district.
By it not only were the limits of property settled, but the king
knew what resources he could rely upon both in men and money. The
king’s power was nominally limited by the “counsel and consent”
of the National Council, which was at once the old English Witan
and a feudal assembly, but its power was really nominal. The taxes
seldom called for interference, as they were derived principally
either from the old national dues, the _ferm_ of the shire (a fixed
rent of the old public lands and royal domains), the danegelt, and
the proceeds of fines or feudal aids. The army was also completely
in the king’s hands; as national sovereign, the old national
militia was at his command; as feudal sovereign, he could claim
the military service of his vassals, which was defined in every
case by the Domesday Book, while the whole people were bound to him
by oath. We thus see William the Conqueror occupying the position
of a practically irresponsible monarch, with a mixed monarchy of
national and feudal character, but, with the exception of some
parts of the administration of justice, carried on wholly under
feudal forms.
[Sidenote: The Church.]
As regards the Church, two important changes were made. As the
champion of orthodoxy, William, by means of his Archbishop,
Lanfranc, restored the Roman discipline to the Church, and
connected it closely with the See of Rome. And, secondly, he
separated the ecclesiastical jurisdiction from the secular.
The bishops withdrew from the county court (perhaps finding
their position there useless now that those courts had sunk in
importance), and established courts of their own. During William’s
reign no inconvenience arose from this, but the inherent defects
of the step became obvious when Henry II. attempted to reorganize
the kingdom after the disorder of Stephen’s reign. The Conqueror’s
police was unusually strict. It became the common saying that
a man laden with gold could pass unharmed through the country.
He abolished the penalty of death (which was, however, speedily
resumed), and substituted mutilations of various kinds. He also
repressed the right which the Saxon laws had allowed of killing the
murderer or the thief when taken red-handed. It has been suggested
that the great forests he created, and the care with which they
were maintained, is to be attributed as much to the king’s desire
to maintain an efficient staff of police always ready as to his
great love of hunting.
WILLIAM I.
1066-1087.
Born 1027 = Matilda of Flanders.
|
+---------------+-----+------+----------+
| | | |
Robert, Duke William II. Henry I. Adela = Stephen, Earl
of Normandy. | of Blois.
d. 1134. |
+-----------+-----------+
| | |
Theobold Stephen Henry, Bishop of
Winchester.
CONTEMPORARY PRINCES.
_Scotland._ | _France._ | _Germany._ | _Spain._
| | |
Malcolm III., | Philip I., | Henry IV., | Sancho II., 1065.
1057. | 1060. | 1056. | Alphonso VI., 1072.
POPES.--Alexander II., 1061. Gregory VII., 1073. Vacancy one year.
Victor III., 1086.
_Archbishops._ | _Chief-Justices._ | _Chancellors._
| |
Stigand, | Odo of Bayeux, and William | Herfast, afterwards Bishop
1052-1070. | Fitz-Osbern, 1067. | of Elmham, 1068.
Lanfranc, | William de Warenne, and | Osbern, afterwards Bishop
1070-1089. | Richard Fitz-Gilbert, | of Exeter, 1070.
| 1073. | Osmund, afterwards Bishop
| Lanfranc, Geoffrey of | of Salisbury, 1074.
| Coutances, and Robert, | Maurice, afterwards Bishop
| Count of Mortain, 1078. | of London, 1078.
| | William de Beaufeu, Bishop
| | of Thetford, 1083.
| | William Giffard, 1086.
[Sidenote: Intended resistance of the English.]
[Sidenote: Election of Eadgar.]
The death of Harold left England without a king. As yet, although
William had expected the immediate submission of the whole country,
no such course was thought of. The idea which occupied men’s minds
was the election of a new king, who might continue the defence
of the country. The two sons of Ælfgar, the great northern Earls
Edwin and Morkere, whose jealousy of Harold had been one of the
chief causes of his disaster, found themselves, now that the House
of Godwine was practically destroyed, the most prominent leaders
of the English. They came to London, and there, collecting about
them such nobles and important people as they could readily find,
they held an assembly which in some sort represented the Witan.
They probably expected that the crown would be given to one of
themselves, and that the hour for the triumph of the Mercian house
had arrived. They were disappointed in their hopes. Of properly
qualified candidates there were none, but the Southern Witan
preferred to place the crown upon the head of the grandson of
Ironside, the heir of the old royal house, and elected the Ætheling
Eadgar, young though he was.[5] It does not seem however that he
was actually crowned, that ceremony being postponed till the feast
of Christmas.
After the slaughters of the late battles, the means of resistance
in the Southern counties must have been much diminished, and
when Edwin and Morkere completed their treasonable conduct by
again withdrawing their troops, and, though they had accepted the
election, refused to give practical support to the defence of
Wessex, immediate opposition to the Conqueror became hopeless. No
further combined action was possible and no other great battle was
fought.
[Sidenote: William’s march to London.]
[Sidenote: Receives the crown at Berkhampstead.]
[Sidenote: Coronation of William.]
Meanwhile William, disappointed in his hopes, proceeded with
his own foreign forces to make good his conquest. He determined
to subdue the South-eastern counties before he advanced against
London. He marched eastward, took Romney, and captured the castle
and town of Dover, and had reached Canterbury, when he was seized
with an illness which kept him inactive during the whole month of
November. Thence he sent an embassy which secured the great town of
Winchester, and thence in December he moved to attack the capital,
but contented himself with burning the suburb of Southwark, and
passed on westward on the southern side of the Thames, which he did
not cross till he reached Wallingford, intending to pass northward
and thus cut the city off from the unconquered country. With this
view he marched to Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire. But his progress
had broken the spirit of the Londoners, and he was there met by
Eadgar, Ealdred the Archbishop of York, and others, who submitted
to him, and offered him the crown. After a feigned rejection of it,
till he had further secured the kingdom, he accepted it at the
earnest request of his followers, and marching into London, was
crowned at Christmas. The ceremony was performed by Ealdred of York
in the place of Stigand of Canterbury, whose appointment to the See
had not been strictly canonical; it was impossible that William,
one of whose professed objects was the reform of the uncanonical
Church of England, should receive his crown from the hands of a
schismatic. Stigand’s importance as the chief official of the
English prevented William from taking immediate steps against him.
He was therefore present at the ceremony, but though William thus,
and for some time afterwards, temporized with him, his ruin was
already determined. The coronation was performed with the usual
English ceremonies; the name of the King was proposed for election
to those who were present, and the shout of acquiescence excited
the alarm of the Norman troops outside the church. They proceeded
to set fire to buildings in the neighbourhood; the assembled
multitude rushed from the church to extinguish the flames, and
William was left almost alone with the officiating ecclesiastics.
But the ceremony was completed in the midst of fears and misgivings
of those within the Cathedral, and of uproar and confusion without.
[Sidenote: William’s position as king.]
William was thus crowned King of England, having received the crown
from the hands of the Witan, and having been nominally elected
by the popular voice. His position was in strict accordance with
the claims he had raised, and he proceeded to pursue a policy in
harmony with it. He had come to claim his rights against a usurper,
he had obtained those rights, and would henceforth make them good
while strictly following the forms of law. As crowned King of
England, opposition to him was treasonable, and the property of
traitors legally confiscated. It is clear that this position gave
him great advantages, and would induce many a weak-hearted or
peaceful Englishman to accept without opposition the _de facto_
king, while it enabled William to hide the harsh character of the
conqueror under the milder form of a monarch at war with rebellious
subjects.
In pursuance of this policy, no sudden change was made in the
constitution or social arrangements of the country. In the first
period of his rule, William merely stepped into the place and
exercised the rights of his predecessor; but those rights he found
sufficient to secure his own position and to reward his followers.
For these purposes it was necessary for him to give to Normans much
of the conquered land, by which means he would spread as it were a
garrison throughout the country, and at the same time gratify his
adherents.
[Sidenote: Transfer of property. The form of law retained.]
[Sidenote: Castles built.]
He started from the legal fiction that the whole of the land, as
the land of traitors, was confiscated. The folcland he made crown
property, thus completing a change which had been long in progress.
The large domains of the House of Godwine were by the destruction
of that house naturally at his disposal, as was also the property
of those who had fallen in arms against him at Hastings or been
prominent in opposition. The land thus gained he granted to his
followers, not making a new partition of it, but putting a Norman
in the place of the dead or outlawed Englishman who was legally
regarded as his ancestor. To complete this process, and appropriate
all the conquered land, would obviously have been impolitic; and
very shortly after his coronation he appears to have allowed a
general redemption of property. Proprietors submitted, paid a sum
of money, and received their lands back as fresh grants from the
Conqueror. In addition to this, many of the smaller Thegns and
free Ceorls were too insignificant to be disturbed, and in many
instances some little fragment of their dead husband’s property
was given in contemptuous pity to the widows, saddled frequently
with some ignoble tenure. Still further to complete the subjection
of the country, in every conquered town of importance a castle was
erected.
[Sidenote: Appointment of Earls.]
In addition to his grants of land, William had the government
of the country to attend to, and the vacant earldoms to fill.
In doing this he was guided by his past experience, and in the
fully conquered parts of England was careful not to put any earl
into the position occupied by the great earls of the last days
of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy. In this respect, as in some others,
the spirit of feudalism had been making rapid strides in England,
and the great earls, as well as the great cities, were bidding
fair to assume the position of the feudatories and free cities of
the Continent. William was careful to return to older precedent,
and to confine his earldoms to one shire. The importance of this
in English history is great, as it obliged the nobility to work
in alliance with the commonalty, and secured national rather
than aristocratic progress. Thus his two most trusted servants,
to whom in his absence he left the vice-regency of the kingdom,
William Fitz-Osbern and his brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, were
respectively but Earls of Hereford and of Kent. William thus
arranged that part of England which he had really conquered. In the
North he as yet continued the existing state of things. Edwin and
Morkere did homage and received their Earldoms back again. Waltheof
remained Earl of Nottingham, and Copsige (Copsi or Coxo) was given
the earldom of the Northern province of Northumberland. To secure
the allegiance of these great unconquered Earls, William took them
with him when in March he went to revisit his native duchy. The
kingdom he left in charge, the South to Odo of Bayeux, the North to
William Fitz-Osbern.
[Sidenote: William revisits Normandy.]
[Sidenote: Misgovernment by his viceroys and consequent rebellion.]
His retirement from England has sometimes been traced to an
evil intention of enticing his new subjects into a more serious
rebellion, that he might conquer them more completely. His natural
desire to display his triumph in his own country would seem to
supply a sufficient reason, without attributing to him such
double dealing. The effect of his absence, however, was in fact
to produce such an insurrection. In the midst of his conquests
and confiscations he had always kept a strong hand upon his
followers, and his police was good. The case was different under
the government of his viceroys. The rapacity and licentiousness
of the conquerors made itself heavily felt. Discontent began to
show itself in the North, in the West, and in the South; and the
native English, despairing of their unaided efforts, began to seek
assistance from abroad. The news of this danger brought William
back to England in the December of 1067. But already a revolt in
Bernicia, as the Northern division of Northumberland was called,
had produced the death of the newly-made Earl Copsige. Eadric the
Forester in the West of England, in union with the Welsh, had
ravaged Herefordshire, and the men of Kent had obtained assistance
from Eustace of Boulogne in a fruitless attack upon Dover. It was
the dread of more important foreign allies which brought William
back. The English efforts to get aid from Henry IV. of Germany, or
from the Prince of Norway, had been frustrated either by William’s
intrigues or by the character of the Princes to whom they applied,
but Swend of Denmark seemed likely to embrace their cause.
[Sidenote: William returns.]
[Sidenote: Insurrection in the West. Taking of Exeter.]