IN NORMAN TIMES
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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,
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 fief, which a knight held under
King William were often scattered over various counties.
5. 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.
6. The story is told that the 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.
7. 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. Alban's
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.
=Summary.=--After the Conquest the power of the king increased.
The manors of Saxon nobles who had opposed King William were
granted to his own followers. Other Saxon nobles kept their lands
if they took the oath of allegiance.
The land was given in manors and groups of manors. Between many
of these there were large stretches of the king's own lands. The
lands of bishoprics and abbeys were not much interfered with; but
the king took care that only those were accepted as bishops or
abbots who would be loyal to him.