ii. 601:

Adeliz, uxor Gilberti filii Ricardi et Gillebertus, et Baldewinus, et Rohaisia pueri Gilberti episcopo Lincolniensi ... salutem.... Hiis testibus, Gilberto filio Gilberti, Galterio, _Hervæo_, Baldwino fratribus ejus et Rohaisia sorore eorum, etc., etc.

The next is the confirmation of this grant by Robert Bishop of Lincoln (ob. 1123) as 'donum Adelidæ _de Montemoraci_' (p. 602). The third is a charter of 'Adeliz, mater comitis Gilberti' (p. 603), who is also styled in the Thorney Register 'Adelitia de Claromonte'. Col. Morres also relied much on a grant to Castleacre by 'Adalicia de Claromonte', to which the first witness is 'Her. de Montemorentino',[5] but the relationship of the witness to the grantor is not stated.

Gilbert (1) Adeliz (2) [? Bouchard] fitzRichard = of Clermont = de Montmorenci of Clare | __________|__________________________ |_____ | | | | | Richard Gilbert Walter | Hervey fitzGilbert, fitzGilbert, fitzGilbert | de Montmorenci, slain 1136 Earl of of Clare | Constable Pembroke | of Ireland | __|________________ | | | Richard Baldwin Rohaisia fitzGilbert, fitzGilbert Earl of Pembroke, of Clare 'Strongbow' Hervey de Montmorency is also mentioned in the Bilegh Abbey confirmation charter of Richard I, but it gives us no information.

We have now, however, sufficient evidence to recover the true genealogy, which is interesting enough. This shows us how Hervey was 'paternal uncle' to Strongbow,[6] and why he witnessed his mother's charter (_ut supra_) with his brothers and sister, but did not join in their grant. We see, also, how Duchesne's error arose from his making the widow not of Gilbert, but of his son and namesake the first Earl of Pembroke, marry a Montmorenci. The error is not surprising in the case of such a family as the Clares, whose alliances and ramifications are made specially puzzling by the repetition of their Christian names.

On the other hand, the 'dimidiation' of Hervey in the pedigree put forward by the Morres family was merely the fruit of the resolve to make him at all costs uncle to Robert fitz Stephen, as the words of Giraldus were supposed to require, in their misquoted form.

Poor Hervey has, indeed, been the sport of genealogists and historians. Mr Dimock, in his Rolls edition of Giraldus, renders his name as 'Mont-Maurice', Miss Norgate as 'Mountmorris',[7] Mrs Green as Mount Moriss,[8] Mr Hunt, who has written his life in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ as Mount-Maurice, and even Mr Orpen, in his admirable edition of the Anglo-Norman poem on the Conquest, as 'Montmaurice' (p. 335). This last is the strangest case, because the forms found in the poem are 'Mumoreci' and 'Momorci', while, as Mr Orpen duly points out, it is 'Munmoreci' in the Register of St Thomas's, and 'Mundmorici' in the Cartulary of St Mary's (p. 266). Hervey was constable to his nephew Earl Richard's troops in Ireland, and described himself as 'Marescallus Domini Regis de Hibernia, et senescallus de tota terra Ricardi Comitis'.

Having now shown that the alleged descent can be absolutely disproved so far as concerns the only Montmorenci whose name occurs in connection with Ireland, I proceed to glance at his supposed relatives, none of whom, it is important to remember, even bore the name of Montmorency.

The chart pedigree printed above (p. 357) will show how Robert fitz Stephen was converted into a Montmorenci, though the parentage of his father Stephen, constable of Cardigan, is wholly unknown. It need scarcely be said that no proof is, or can be, given for this filiation; but the following passage on Stephen is an excellent illustration of the sort of evidence which is vouched for this wholly imaginary pedigree:

Ce seigneur, très-jeune encore, en 1087, confirma conjointement avec son père et son aïeul Hervé, fils de Bouchard, la donation faite par Turillus le Gros à l'abbaye de St. Florent de Saumur de certaines bénéfices.

Sig. Hervei filii Burchardi, Sig. Roberti filii ejus, Sig. Stephani militis ejus.

All that is needed, we are told, is to read grandson ('petit fils') instead of _filius_ for Robert, and great-grandson for _miles_--on the ground that _miles_ sometimes meant 'un jeune homme'! Such is a type of the 'proofs' on which this pedigree rests. But its absurdities and inconsistencies go even further than this. The dates work out as follows:

Hervey de Montmorency | Geoffrey 'le Riche' | Robert fitzGeoffrey tenant-in-chief 1166 | ------------------------------------------- | | | Stephen, Hervey, Geoffrey, born. _circ._ 1080, d. 1205 d. 1211 died 1136, having witnessed above charter in 1087 | Robert fitz Stephen

Thus Stephen, who was born about 1080, and was a witness in 1087, would be _son_ to a man who flourished in 1166, and _brother_ to men who died in 1205 and 1211.[9]

But what are we to say when we learn further that this Stephen, who died in '1136', is the 'Stephanus de Marisco' who appears in the _Liber Niger_ as a tenant of the Bishop of Ely in 1166! The probable, and indeed only, explanation is that Col. Morres did not even know when the returns in the _Liber Niger_ were compiled. Their real date again destroys this cock-and-bull pedigree, or genealogical nightmare, which, for sheer topsy-turveydom, has, I venture to assert, never been surpassed.

I strongly suspect that the whole story arose from the occurrence in Ireland, in the thirteenth century, of the latinized name 'De Marisco' or 'De Mariscis', which represents of course, neither Montmorenci nor Morres, but simply Marsh. Genealogists, no doubt, were attracted by the form 'De Monte Maurisco' into tracing a connection; but, so far as can be understood, Col. Morres discarded this resemblance, and represented his alleged ancestors as 'seigneurs de Mariscis ou des marches' in England, connecting them with the fen district in Cambridgeshire. It would be easy to show that the early pedigree positively teems with absurdities similar to those I have already exposed, but it would be sheer waste of time to devote any more attention to proofs, which Col. Morres proudly boasted were 'vérifiés avec la plus scrupuleuse attention par l'autorité competente et sanctionnés désormais par l'autorisation du prince qui gouverne aujourd'hui l'empire britannique' (p. 25).

I do not hesitate to say that a more impudent claim was never successfully foisted on the authorities and the public. The chief sinner in the matter was, of course, Sir W. Betham, who certified (June 29, 1815) that this audacious concoction was 'established on evidence of the most unquestionable authority, chiefly from the ancient public records' (p. 203). The Crown naturally could only accept the statement of its own officer of arms, and accordingly described the alleged descent as being duly proved and recorded.[10] As for the French expert, the Chevalier de la Rue, of whose investigation and favourable verdict (April 17, 1818) so much has been made, it will scarcely be believed that he actually, with the sole exception of the _Monasticon_, did not attempt to verify the 'proofs' set before him! It will be seen from his own words that his decision was subject to their genuineness:

Toutes les citations puisées par monsieur de Morrès dans les monuments, registres, et terriers publics d'Angleterre étant, _comme je n'en doute pas_, aussi exactes que celles du Monasticon (p. 37).

The value of his loudly-trumpeted verdict may be estimated from this admission.

It is only right that MM. de Montmorency and all those in France who are interested in historical genealogy should understand that no one among ourselves, whose opinion is worth having, would dream of defending this gross usurpation. We may hope and believe that in the present day no officer of arms would behave like Sir W. Betham, and certify, as 'established on evidence of the most unquestionable authority' a descent which is not merely 'not proven', but can be absolutely disproved. It cannot be stated too emphatically, or known too widely, that the house of Morres has no more right, by hereditary descent, to the name and arms of 'De Montmorency' than any of the numerous families of Morris, or indeed, for the matter of that, the family of Smith.[11]

[Footnote 1: See, for instance, the _Complete Peerage_ of G. E. C. _sub_ 'Frankfort de Montmorency'.]

[Footnote 2: _Les Montmorency de France et les Montmorency d'Irlande, ou Précis historique des démarches faites à l'occasion de la reprise du nom de ses ancêtres par la branche de Montmorency-marisco-morres._ Paris, 1828.]

[Footnote 3: _Histoire de la maison de Montmorency_. Paris, 1624.]

[Footnote 4: Vol. x., p. 6.]

[Footnote 5: Blomefield's _Norfolk_, ix. 5.]

[Footnote 6: Since this article was written, Mr Hunt's life of Hervey has appeared in the _Dict. Nat. Biog._ He has arrived at precisely the same conclusions as myself.]

[Footnote 7: _England under the Angevin Kings_, ii. 101, 112.]

[Footnote 8: _Henry the Second_, p. 159.]

[Footnote 9: 'Etienne de Mariscis [_sic_] ... fut tué en 1136 par les Gallois lorsqu'il gouvernait ce pays' (p. 74). 'Il n'était agé lors de sa mort que de cinquante six ou cinquante sept ans' (p. 75).]

[Footnote 10: _London Gazette_, September 9, 1815; _Dublin Gazette_, August 12, 1815.]

[Footnote 11: For an even more illustrious foreign descent, see my paper, 'Our English Hapsburgs: a great delusion' (_Genealogist_, N.S., x. 193).]

THE OXFORD DEBATE ON FOREIGN SERVICE (1197)

Great importance is rightly assigned to the first instances of 'a constitutional opposition to a royal demand for money',[1] of which the two alleged earliest cases are 'the opposition of St Thomas to the king's manipulation of the danegeld [1163], and the refusal by St Hugh of Lincoln to furnish money for Richard's war in France [1197]'.[2] These two precedents are always classed together: Dr Stubbs writes of St Hugh's action:

The only formal resistance to the king in the national council proceeds from St Hugh of Lincoln and Bishop Herbert of Salisbury, who refuse to consent to grant him an aid in knights and money for his foreign warfare ... an act which stands out prominently by the side of St Thomas's protest against Henry's proposal to appropriate the sheriff's share of danegeld.[3]

And Mr Freeman repeats the parallel:

Thomas ... withstands, and withstands successfully, the levying of a danegeld.... As Thomas of London had withstood the demands of the father, Hugh of Avalon withstood the demands of the son. In a great council ... [he] spoke up for the laws and rights of Englishmen ... no men or money were they bound to contribute for undertakings beyond the sea.[4]

Having already discussed the earlier instance,[5] and advanced the view that the Woodstock debate [1163] did not relate to danegeld at all, but to an attempt of the king to seize for himself the _auxilium vicecomitis_ (a local levy) I now approach the later instance.

'This occasion,' we read, 'is a memorable one':[6] it is that of an 'event of great importance',[7] of 'a landmark in constitutional history'.[8] No apology, therefore, is needed for endeavouring to throw some further light on an event of such cardinal importance. But, to clear the ground, let us first define what we mean by 'opposition to a royal demand for money'. However autocratic the king may have been--and on this point there is not only a difference of opinion but a difference in fact corresponding with his strength at any given period--there were limits set by law or custom (or, should we rather say, limits, both written and unwritten?) beyond which he could not pass. 'Domesday', for instance, was a written limit: if the king claimed from a Manor assessed at ten hides the danegeld due from twenty, the tenant need only appeal to 'Domesday' (_poneret se super rotulum Winton'_). Or, again, if from a feudal tenant owing the forty days' service the king were to claim eighty days, he would be transgressing unwritten custom as binding as a written record. But outside these limits there lay a debatable ground where that elastic term _auxilium_ proved conveniently expansive. It was here that the crown could increase its demands, and here that a conflict would arise as to where the limit should be placed, a conflict to be determined not by law, but by a trial of strength between the crown and its opponents. We have, then, to decide to which of these spheres the action of St Hugh should be assigned, whether to that of the lawyer appealing to the letter of the bond, or to that of the popular leader opposing the demands of the king, though they did not contravene the law. If one may use the terms, for convenience sake, it was a question of law or a question of politics; and only if it was the latter had it a true constitutional importance.

The two chief accounts of the Oxford debate are found in _Roger Hoveden_ and the _Magna Vita St Hugonis_. As they are both printed in _Select Charters_, I need not repeat them here. There is, however, an independent version in the _Vita_ of Giraldus Cambrensis, which it may be desirable to add:

In Anglicanam coepit [rex] ecclesiam duris exactionibus debacchari. Unde collecto in unum regni clero, habitoque contra insolitum et tam urgens incommodum districtiore consilio, verbum ad importunas pariter et importabiles impositiones contradictionis et cleri totius pro ecclesiastica libertate responsionis, in ore Lincolnensis tanquam personae prae ceteris approbatae religionis authenticae magis communi omnium desiderio est assignatum (vii. 103-4).

Gerald's editor impugns the correctness of these statements, on the grounds that the assembly was not clerical merely and that the bishop did not speak on behalf of the whole church. But the passage seems to me to refer to a meeting of the clergy in which it was decided that St Hugh should be their spokesman at the council. Of the other objection I shall treat below.

According to Hoveden, Richard asked for either (1) three hundred knights who would serve him, at their own costs, for a year, or (2) a sum sufficient to enable him to hire three hundred knights for a year at the rate of three shillings a day. The _Magna Vita_, however, implies that the former alternative alone was laid before the council. The grounds on which St Hugh protested are thus given by our two authorities:

Respondit pro se, quod ipse in hoc voluntati regis nequaquam adquiesceret, tum quia processu temporis in ecclesiae suae detrimentum redundaret, tum quia successores sui dicerent, 'Patres nostri comederunt uvam acerbam, et dentes filiorum obstupescunt' (Hoveden).

Scio equidem ad militare servitium domino regi, sed in hac terra solummodo exhibendum, Lincolniensem ecclesiam teneri; extra metas vero Angliae nil tale ab ea deberi. Unde mihi consultius arbitror ad natale solum repedare ... quam hic pontificatum gerere et ecclesiam mihi commissam, antiquas immunitates perdendo, insolitis angariis subjugare (_Magna Vita_).

Two points stand out clearly--one that St Hugh took his stand on the prescriptive rights of his church, rights infringed by the king's demand; the other, that he spoke for himself alone, not for the church, still less for the barons, and least of all for the nation. Our authorities, however, are so vague that they leave in doubt the precise point 'taken' by the saintly prelate. Mr Freeman, we have seen, confidently assumes that he 'spoke up for the laws and rights of Englishmen'; Miss Norgate holds that he took up the position of Thomas and Anselm as 'a champion of constitutional liberty',[9] whatever that may mean; even Dr Stubbs claims that he 'acted on behalf of the nation to which he had joined himself'.[10]

I venture to think that the clue to the enigma is to be found in quite another quarter. In the chronicle of Jocelin de Brakelond we find a most instructive passage, which refers, it cannot be doubted, to the same episode. The story is told somewhat differently, but the point raised is the same. King Richard, we are told, demanded that knights should be sent him from England, in the proportion of one from every ten due by the church 'baronies'. The _servitium debitum_ of St Edmund's being forty, the abbot was called upon to send four.[11] That the principle of joint equipment, which had been adopted under Henry II in 1157,[12] and again I think by Longchamp in 1191,[13] was resorted to on this occasion is the more probable because a few years later (1205) we find King John similarly demanding 'quod novem milites per totam Angliam invenirent decimum militem, bene paratum equis et armis, ad defensionem regni nostri'. I admit, however, that it is not mentioned in the other versions of our episode, and Jocelin speaks only of the demand upon the church fiefs. But the point is that when the abbot consulted his tenants as to sending the four knights required, they protested that they were liable to pay scutage, but not to serve out of England.[14] Now this is a _locus classicus_ on the institution of scutage. Its bearing I shall examine below, after finishing the story. The abbot, we read, finding himself in a strait, crossed the sea in search of the king, who told him that a fine would not avail; he wanted men, not money.[15]

Surely we have here the key to the position taken by St Hugh. When he claimed that his fief was not bound 'ad servitium militare ... extra metas Angliae' he cannot have referred to the payment of scutage, for that had been paid by his predecessors and himself without infringing the liberties of their church.[16] He must, therefore, have referred not to 'money', but to _personal_ service outside the realm. But was this exemption peculiar to the church of Lincoln? If we find the same privilege existing at St Edmund's and at Salisbury, may we not infer that the church contingents were only bound to serve in person for 'defence, not defiance',[17] and that we have here the perfect explanation of the fact that scutage, as commutation for service, is an institution, when it first appears, peculiar to church fiefs? The mediaeval dread of creating a precedent preyed on the abbot as on the saint. From the council of Lillebonne to the Bedford _auxilium_ (1224) it was always the same cry:

Creiment k'il seit en feu tornez Et en costume seit tenu Et par costume seit rendu.

It was in this spirit that Hugh of Avalon, I take it, made his stand: other prelates might waive the point, in consideration of the king's necessities, but he, at least, would never allow a standing exemption to be broken through and thus impaired for all time.

His attitude, we are told, proved fatal to the scheme, compelling the king and his ministers to abandon it in impotent wrath. But perhaps his biographer exaggerates the defeat, for the Bishop of Salisbury, we know, had to purchase the king's pardon for his action by a heavy fine, while the Abbot of St Edmund's had to compromise the matter by the payment of a large sum.[18] It seems probable that similar compromises would be arranged in other cases where the request was not complied with.

If, then, I am right in the solution I offer, St Hugh must have taken the narrowest ground, and have acted on behalf of ecclesiastical privilege, and only incidentally even for that, his protest being limited to his own church.[19] And, further, it follows that, like St Thomas, he was acting strictly on the defensive. To say that his action affords 'the first clear case of the refusal of a money grant demanded directly by the crown, and a most valuable precedent, for later times',[20] is, I submit with all respect, to set it in a quite erroneous light. In 1197, as in 1163, the crown was trying to infringe on well-established rights, and St Hugh like St Thomas, resisted that infringement, so far as his own rights were concerned, just as he would have resisted an attempt of the crown to deprive his see of a Manor, of feudal services, or of goods. The crown might take its pound of flesh, but more than that it should not have; never, through any action of his, should his church be deprived of its prescriptive rights.[21]

Here this article originally closed; but I am tempted to refer to one touching on the same subject which appeared a year later in the pages of the same review.[22] Alluding to 'the question of foreign service' as a prominent grievance under John,[23] I wrote:

Ralf of Coggeshall, and Walter of Coventry, assert that the northern barons denied their liability to foreign service in respect of lands held in England. John retorted that the principle had been admitted in the days of his father and his brother, and therefore claimed it _tanquam debitum_. This justifies the fears expressed sixteen years before by St Hugh of Lincoln, and explains what I termed, in examining his action, the mediaeval dread of creating a precedent.[24]

The final loss of Normandy had, of course, altered the case, but even while it still formed part of an English King's possessions, there must always have been scope for argument as to feudal obligations. To quote once more from the same article:

The question must have been complicated by the growth of the king's dominions. Did the feudatories owe service to the king, as their lord, in whatever war he was engaged? Or were they only bound to follow him as King of England? Or were they, as holding _a conquestu_, only bound to serve in the dominions of the Conqueror who enfeoffed them, i.e. in England and Normandy?[25]

On the death of the Conqueror, the question would arise for the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans were no longer one and the same. It comes to the front accordingly in a gathering of the barons at Winchester, which Mr Freeman assigns to Easter, 1090.[26] Orderic, here his authority, places it under 1089, and although his chronology is not to be always blindly followed, there is no ground for supposing here that the date is wrong. When he is following out a story or carried on by allusion, Orderic, like other chroniclers, anticipates or wanders in his dates; but this gathering has no connection with what precedes or follows; there is, therefore, nothing to account for his placing it under 1089, if it really belonged to 1090.

But the point to which I would call attention is the nature and intention of this gathering. Orderic writes:

Confirmatus itaque in regno, turmas optimatum ascivit, et Guentoniæ congregatis, quæ intrinsecus ruminabat sic ore deprompsit.

Mr Freeman attaches to the speech that follows no small importance. Holding that the king 'was now ready to take the decisive step of crossing the sea himself or sending others to cross it', he pointed out that:

even William Rufus, in all his pride and self-confidence, knew that it did not depend wholly on himself to send either native or adopted Englishmen on such an errand. He had learned enough of English constitutional law not to think of venturing on a foreign war without the constitutional sanction of his kingdom. In a Gemot [_sic_] at Winchester, seemingly the Easter Gemot of the third year of his reign, he laid his schemes before the assembled Witan [_sic_], and obtained their consent to a war with the Duke of the Normans.[27]

Of course, in reading Mr Freeman's works we must reconcile ourselves to 'Gemot' and 'Witan' being thrust upon us at every turn, however radically false a conception these words may convey. At the close of his dealing with this episode, he refers us, as a parallel, to the 'full Gemot' of 1047, in which 'the popular character of the assembly still', we learn, 'impresses itself on the language of history'. Now Orderic describes those who were summoned to our Winchester gathering as 'turmas optimatum'; he makes William begin his speech 'nostri egregii barones'; and he places in his mouth language essentially feudal and Norman:

Nunc igitur commoneo vos omnes, qui patris mei homines fuistis, et feudos vestros in Normannia et Anglia de illo tenuistis[28] ... c[oe]nobia quæ patres nostri construxerunt in Neustria ... Decet ergo ut, sicut nomen ejus [_i.e._ Willelmi] et diadema gero, sic ad defensionem patriæ inhæream ejus [_i.e._ Normanniæ] studio.

Mr Freeman expressed astonishment and delight at William's 'constitutional language', and declared that though, in its actual wording, the speech, of course, was Orderic's:

the constitutional doctrines which he has worked into his speech cannot fail to set forth the ordinary constitutional usage of the time. Even in the darkest hour in which England had any settled government at all, etc., etc.[29]

And then follows the usual lament for 'the days of King Eadward', when it was not a 'cabinet', but a crowd, that dealt with the delicate question of peace or war.

Now even the late Professor's most ardent followers cannot represent my criticism here as 'trifling', or unimportant. Mr Freeman, I hold, had misconceived the matter altogether. The whole thing is sheer delusion. William's appeal, as set before us, was not the fruit of studies in English 'constitutional law': it was the appeal of a feudal lord to 'barons' holding by feudal tenure. Should there be any one who feels the slightest doubt upon the question, let him turn to Mr Freeman's own account of the great 'Assembly of Lillebonne'. He could not himself avoid a passing glance at the parallel, when he wrote that 'William the Red had as good reasons to give for an invasion of Normandy as his father had once had to give for an invasion of England'.[30] Contrasting that Assembly (1066) with an English Gemot, he wrote that 'in William's Assembly we hear of none but barons'.[31] Precisely. But that remark is equally true of his son's Assembly at Winchester.[32] And when we learn, a few years later, the composition of his Assembly, we find it admittedly restricted to tenants-in-chief.[33] Of the two Assemblies, that of Lillebonne revealed a more active opposition, showed more 'parliamentary boldness', than that of Winchester.[34] The latter merely applauded, we read, the King's appeal. Like his father, he appealed to his barons to follow him on foreign service; like him also, he pleaded his wrongs and the justice of his righteous cause.

Of the two, the father seems, as I have said, to have met with more opposition than the son. One might therefore produce an argument _ad absurdum_, and contend that, on Mr Freeman's showing, an English King was not less, but more, absolute than a Norman Duke. In any case we have now seen that the ideas about 'constitutional usage', and so forth, imported here by Mr Freeman, were nothing but a figment of his brain. The Assembly of Winchester no more resulted from 'English constitutional law' than did the Assembly of Lillebonne, convened for a similar purpose. William Rufus had to deal with barons who could not be anxious to invade Normandy merely to make him Duke of the Normans. If they had any preference in the matter, it would be rather for Robert than for William, for a weak rather than a strong ruler; but, apart from preference, the barons would be loth to engage in internecine warfare merely for the personal advantage of one brother or the other. This was seen in the peaceful close of the invasion by Duke Robert, as with that of Duke Henry half a century later. The question, in short, that arose in 1066, when a Duke of the Normans asked his barons to make him King of the English, arose once more in the days of his son, when a King of the English asked his barons to make him Duke of the Normans.

It was here no question of 'the laws and rights of Englishmen':[35] it was to no folkmoot that William Rufus spoke. When we read of the King in his court, composed of his tenants-in-chief,[36] as surrounded by 'no small part of the nation',[37] when we hear of the mass of 'the Assembly ... crying Yea, yea';[38] when we learn that 'a great numerical proportion, most likely a numerical majority, were natives',[39] we are fairly prepared for the astounding statement that:

The wide fields which had seen the great review and the great homage in the days of the elder William, could alone hold the crowd which came together to share in the great court of doom which was holden by the younger.[40]

For we see that in all these fantasies of a brain viewing plain facts through a mist of moots and 'witan', we have what can only be termed history in masquerade.

[Footnote 1: Stubbs' _Const. Hist._ (1874), i. 510.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 577.]

[Footnote 3: _Select Charters_ (1870), pp. 28-9. So too, preface to _Rog. Hoveden_ (1871): 'It may be placed on a par with St Thomas's opposition to Henry II in 1163' (iv., pp. xci-xcii). So also _Early Plantagenets_ (1876), p. 126, and _Const. Hist._, i. 510.]

[Footnote 4: _Norm. Conq._, v. 675, 695.]

[Footnote 5: See above, p. 377.]

[Footnote 6: _Early Plantagenets_, p. 126.]

[Footnote 7: _Const. Hist._, i. 509.]

[Footnote 8: _Ibid._, p. 510, and pref. to _Rog. Hoveden_, iv., pp. xci-xcii.]

[Footnote 9: _England under the Angevin Kings_, ii. 350.]

[Footnote 10: _Early Plantagenets_, p. 126.]

[Footnote 11: 'Precepit rex Ricardus omnibus episcopis et abbatibus Angliae ut de suis baroniis novem milites facerent decimum, et sine dilacione venirent ad eum in Normanniam, cum equis et armis in auxilium contra Regem Franciae. Unde et abbatem oportuit respondere de iiii. militibus mittendis' (ed. Camden Soc, p. 63).]

[Footnote 12: 'Præparavit maximam expeditionem ita ut duo milites de tota Anglia tertium pararent ad opprimendum Gualenses.' _Robert de Torigni_.]

[Footnote 13: 'Tertium cum omnibus armis totius Angliae militem die nominato mandavit venire Wintoniam.' Ric. Devizes (Rolls Series), p. 409.]

[Footnote 14: 'Cumque summoneri fecisset omnes milites suos, et eos inde convenisset, responderunt feudos suos, quos de Sancto Ædmundo tenuerunt, hoc non debere, nec se nec patres eorum unquam Angliam exisse, set scutagium aliquando ad praeceptum regis dedisse' (_ibid._).]

[Footnote 15: 'Abbas vero in arcto posito, hinc videns libertatem suorum militum periclitari, illinc timens ne amitteret saisinam baronie sue pro defectu servicii regis, sicut contigerat Episcopo Lundonensi [? Lincolnensi] et multis baronibus Angliæ, statim transfretavit, et ... in primis nullum potuit facere finem cum rege per denarios. Dicenti ergo se non indigere auro nec argento, sed quatuor milites instanter exigenti', etc. (_ibid._).]

[Footnote 16: 'In quibis conservandis sive exhibendis hactenus fere per tredecim annos a rectis praedecessorum meorum vestigiis non recessi' (_Magna Vita_).]

[Footnote 17: 'Ad publicam rem tuendam' (_Abingdon Cart._, ii. 3).]

[Footnote 18: 'Quatuor milites stipendiarios optulit abbas. Quos cum rex recepisset, apud castellum de Hou misit. Abbas autem in instanti eis xxxvi. marcas dedit ad expensas xl. dierum. In crastino autem venerunt quidam familiares regis, consulentes abbati ut sibi caute provideret, dicentes werram posse durare per annum integrum vel amplius, et expensas militum excrescere et multiplicari in perpetuum dampnum ei et ecclesiae suae. Et ideo consulebant ut, antequam recederet de curia, finem faceret cum rege, unde posset quietus esse de militibus predictis post xl. dies. Abbas autem, sano usus consilio, centum libras regi dedit pro tali quietantia' (_Jocelin_, p. 63). It is noteworthy that thirty-six marcs would represent just three shillings a day (for forty days) for each knight, the very sum named by Hoveden. In 1205 the pay named in John's writ was two shillings a day (home service), but both these sums are largely in excess of the eight pence a day paid, as we have seen, under Henry II, the discrepancy being incomprehensible, unless the higher wage implied a larger following.]

[Footnote 19: Dr Stubbs held [1870] that he acted 'not on ecclesiastical but on constitutional grounds' (_Select Charters_, p. 28), though he subsequently [1871] doubted whether 'the grounds of the opposition' were 'ecclesiastical or constitutional' (Pref. to _Hoveden_, iv., p. xci), and even admitted that 'the opposition of St Hugh was based not on his right as a member of the national council, but on the immunities of the church' (_Const. Hist._, i. 578).]

[Footnote 20: _Hoveden_, iv., xcii.]

[Footnote 21: 'Antiquas immunitates perdendo.']

[Footnote 22: 'An Unknown Charter of Liberties.' _English Historical Review_, viii. 288 _et seq._]

[Footnote 23: See Dr Stubbs' Pref. to _W. Coventry_, p. lxiv.]

[Footnote 24: _English Historical Review_, viii. 293.]

[Footnote 25: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 26: _Will. Rufus_, i. 222.]

[Footnote 27: _Ibid._, i 222.]

[Footnote 28: Mr Freeman quotes this passage and duly renders it in his text (i. 232).]

[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, i. 22.]

[Footnote 30: _Ibid._, i. 222.]

[Footnote 31: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 290.]

[Footnote 32: 'Turmas optimatum'--'barones'. Cf. _supra_, pp. 247, 262.]

[Footnote 33: _Will. Rufus_, ii. 56-7.]

[Footnote 34: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 294-6, 298.]

[Footnote 35: _Supra_, p. 398.]

[Footnote 36: At Salisbury, January 13, 1096.]

[Footnote 37: _Will. Rufus_, ii. 57.]

[Footnote 38: _Ibid._, 59.]

[Footnote 39: _Ibid._, 57.]

[Footnote 40: _Ibid._, 56.]

RICHARD THE FIRST'S CHANGE OF SEAL (1198)

With the superficial student and the empiric politician, it is too common to relegate the investigation of such changes to the domain of archæology. I shall not attempt to rebut the imputation; only, if such things are archæology, then archæology is history.--STUBBS, Preface to _R. Hoveden_, IV, lxxx.

Historical research is about to pass, if indeed it is not already passing, into a new sphere--the sphere of Archæology. The central idea of that great advance which the present generation has witnessed in the domain of history has been the rebuilding of the historical fabric on the relatively sure foundation of original and contemporary authorities, studied in the purest texts. Chronicles, however, are not inexhaustible: for many periods they are all too few. The reaper has almost done his work; the turn of the gleaner has come. The smaller _quellen_ of history have now to be diligently examined and made to yield those fragments of information which will supplement, often where most needed, our existing stock of knowledge.

But this is not our only gain as we leave the broad highways trodden by so many before us. Those precious fragments which are to form our spoils will enable us to do more than supplement the statements of our standard chroniclers: they will afford the means of checking, of testing, by independent evidence, these statements, of submitting our witnesses to a cross-examination which may shake their testimony and their credit in a most unexpected manner.

As an instance of the results to be attained by archæological research, I have selected Richard the First's celebrated change of seal. Interesting as being the occasion on which the three lions first appear as the Royal arms of England--arms unchanged to the present day--it possesses exceptional historical importance from the circumstances by which it was accompanied, and which led, admittedly, to its adoption.

Historians have agreed, without the least hesitation, to refer this event to the year 1194, and to place it subsequent to the truce of Tillières or about the beginning of August. 'That Richard I,' writes a veteran student,[1] 'adopted a new seal upon his return from the Holy Land is a matter of notoriety.' Speed, in fact, had shown the way. We are told by him that 'the king caused [1194] a new broad seale to be made, requiring that all charters granted under his former seale should be confirmed under this, whereby he drew a great masse of money to his treasurie'.[2] The Bishop of Oxford, with his wonted accuracy, faithfully reproduces the statement of Hoveden (the original and sole authority we shall find for the story), telling us that 'Amongst other oppressive acts he [Richard] took the seal from his unscrupulous but faithful chancellor, and, having ordered a new one to be made, proclaimed the nullity of all charters which had been sealed with the old one.'[3] Mr Freeman similarly places the episode just before 'the licenses for the tournaments' (August 20, 1194), and consistently refers to Dr Stubbs's history.[4] Miss Norgate, in her valuable work, our latest authority on the period, assigns the event to the same date, and tells us that 'Rog. Hoveden's very confused account of the seals is made clear by Bishop Stubbs'.[5] Mr Maitland, in his noble edition of 'Bracton's Note-book', gives a case (ii. 69) in which a charter sealed 'secundo sigillo Regis Ricardi' was actually produced in court (1219), and explains that 'Richard had a new seal made in 1194', referring to Hoveden for his authority.[6]

It should be observed that all these writers rely merely on Hoveden, none of them throwing any light on the process of confirmation, or telling us how it was effected, and whether any traces of it remain. An independent writer, M. Boivin-Champeaux, in his monograph on William Longchamp, discusses the episode at some length, and asserts that the repudiated documents were 'assujettis, pour leur revalidation, à une nouvelle et coûteuse scellure'. Like the others, however, he relies on the authority of Hoveden, and consequently repeats the same date.

In the course of examining some ancient charters, I recognized one of them as nothing less than an actual instance of a confirmation consequent on this change of seal. But its incomprehensible feature was that the charter was confirmed on August 22, 1198, having originally been granted, 'sub primo sigillo', so recently as January 7th preceding. How could this be possible if the great seal had been changed so early as August 1194, and if the first seal, as stated by Dr Stubbs, was 'broken' on that occasion? Careful and prolonged research among the charters of the period (both in the original and in transcripts) has enabled me to answer the question, and to prove that (as, of course, the above charter implies) the change of seal did not take place in 1194, but 1198, and between January and May of that year.

Original charters under the second seal, confirming grants under the first, are distinctly rare. I have found, as yet, but one in the Public Record Office, and only two at the British Museum. But of originals and transcripts together I have noted twenty-eight. The dates of the original grants range from September 5, 1189, to January 7, 1198 (1197-8), and of the confirmations from May 27, 1198, to April 5, 1199.[7]

In a single instance there is fortunately preserved not only the text of the confirmation charter, but also that of the original grant.[8] From this we learn that the charter of confirmation did not necessarily give the wording, but only the gist ('tenor') of the original grant. We are thus brought to the instructive formula invariably used in these charters:

Is erat tenor carte nostre in primo sigillo nostro. Quod quia aliquando perditum fuit, et, dum capti essemus in alem[anniâ], in aliena potestate constitutum, mutatum est. Huius autem innovationis testes sunt Hii, etc., etc.

We may here turn to the passage in Hoveden [ed. Stubbs, iii. 267] on which historians have relied, and see how far the reasons for the change given in the charters themselves correspond with those alleged by the chronicler.

Fecit sibi novum sigillum fieri, et mandavit, per singulas terras suas, quod nihil ratum foret quod fuerat per vetus sigillum suum; tum quia cancellarius ille operatus fuerat inde minus discrete quam esset necesse, tum quia sigillum illud perditum erat, quando Rogerus Malus Catulus, vicecancellarius suus, submersus erat in mari ante insulam de Cipro, et præcepit rex quod omnes qui cartas habebant venirent ad novum sigillum ad cartas suas renovandas.

In both cases we find there are two reasons given; but while one of these is the same in both, namely the temporary loss of the seal when Roger Malchael was drowned, the other is wholly and essentially different. The whole aspect of the transaction is thus altered. To illustrate this I shall now place side by side the independent glosses of the Bishop of Oxford and of M. Boivin-Champeaux:

Richard's first seal was lost Sur deux exemplaires usuels du when the vice-chancellor was grand sceau, le premier, que drowned between Rhodes and Cyprus portait le vice-chancelier in 1190; but it was recovered Mauchien, avait été perdu lors with his dead body. The seal that de l'ouragan qui, en vue de was now broken must have been the Chypre avait assailli la flotte one which the chancellor had used Anglo-Normande, le second était during the king's absence. resté en Angleterre; mais il Richard, however, when he was at avait subi, par suite de la Messina, had allowed his seal to revolution du 10 octobre, de be set to various grants for nombreuses vicissitudes. which he took money, but which Richard se prévalut de ces he never intended to confirm. circonstances jointes au Therefore probably he found it désaveu de la trève de Tillières convenient now to have a new pour publier un édit aux termes seal in lieu of both the former duquels tous les actes publics ones, although he threw the blame passés sous son règne, qui of the transactions annulled upon avaient été légalisés avec les the chancellor. The importance of anciens sceaux étaient frappés the seal is already very great. de nullité et assujettis, pour (_Const. Hist._, i. 506, note.) leur revalidation â une nouvelle et coûteuse scellure. Cette ordonnance aurait pu, à la rigueur, se colorer, si elle n'avait concerné que les actes accomplis pendant l'expédition et la captivité du roi; mais le comble de l'impudence et de l'iniquité était de l'appliquer même à ceux qui avaient précéde son départ ou suivi son retour (p. 223).

Thus both writers assume that there were two seals, one which remained in England with the chancellor, and one which accompanied the king to the east. They further (though Dr Stubbs is somewhat obscure) hold that the two excuses given refer respectively to the two seals, thus discrediting both. But when we turn to the charters themselves, we find but one seal mentioned, and to that one seal alone both the excuses refer. The king explains that on two occasions it was, so to speak, 'out on the loose'--(1) when his vice-chancellor was drowned; (2) when he himself was captured in Germany. This was, of course, the seal which accompanied him to the east.[9] The king makes no allusion to any other or to the chancellor. Such charters and grants as are known to us all proceed from the king himself, either before he left Messina or after he had reached Germany on his return. No charter or grant of Longchamp, as representing him, is known. In short, the whole of our record evidence points one way: the charters which the king proclaimed must be confirmed, and which we find brought to him for that purpose were those which he had himself granted, and no other. Lastly, even had we nothing before us but the passage in Hoveden which all have followed, I contend that it may, and indeed ought to be, read as referring to a single seal. But it is, as Miss Norgate justly observes, 'very confused', from its allusion to the chancellor's use of the seal. That allusion, however, would most naturally refer to the truce of Tillières, and not to the use of a separate seal in England. Therefore even if we accepted, which I do not, Hoveden's statement, it would not warrant the inference that has been drawn.

Again, when Miss Norgate writes of the 'withdrawal of the seal from William', and when Dr Stubbs tells us that the king 'took the seal from' him, these statements may have two meanings. But M. Boivin-Champeaux is more precise: 'L'emploi de ces procédés emportait le mépris et la violation non seulement de tous les actes étrangers au chancelier, mais encore de tous ceux où il avait mis la main. Il ne pouvait décemment conserver les sceaux. Le roi les lui enleva.' This is a distinct assertion that Longchamp was deprived of his office. Yet all our evidence points to the conclusion that he remained chancellor to the day of his death.

Dismissing Hoveden for the time, and returning to the testimony of the charters, we have seen that they point to the event we are discussing having taken place in 1198, between January 7, at which date the first seal was still in use, and May 27, when charters were already being brought for confirmation under the second seal. Passing now from the charters to the seals still in existence, we learn from Mr Wyon's magnificent work[10] (which has appeared since I completed my own investigation) that the first seal was still in use on April 1, 1198,[11] while an impression of the second is found as early as May 22, 1198.[12] Thus our limit of time for the change is narrowed to April 1-May 22, 1198.[13] The evidence of the charters and of the seals being thus in perfect harmony, let us see whether this limit of date corresponds with a time of financial difficulty. For, so desperate a device as that of the king's repudiation of his charters would only have been resorted to at a time of extreme pressure. What do we find? We find that the time of this change of seal corresponds with the great financial crisis of Richard's reign. The Church had at length lost patience, and had actually in the Council at Oxford (December 1197) raised a protest. The 'want of money', in Miss Norgate's words, was 'a difficulty which ... must have seemed well-nigh insurmountable'. Preparations were being made for a huge levy at five shillings on every ploughland. It was at this moment that the desperate king repudiated all the charters he had granted throughout his reign, and proclaimed that they must be 'brought to him for confirmation; in other words ... paid for a second time'.[14]

Let us now look at the other chroniclers. R. Coggeshall is independent and precise:

Accessit autem ad totius mali cumulum, juxta vitæ ejus terminum, prioris sigilli sui renovatio, quo exiit edictum per totum ejus regnum ut omnes cartæ, confirmationes, ac privilegiatæ libertates quæ prioris sigilli impressione roboraverat, irrita forent nec alicujus libertatis vigorem obtinerent, nisi posteriori sigillo roborarentur. In quibus renovandis et iterum comparandis innumerabilis pecunia congesta est (p. 93).

This is in complete accordance with the now ascertained fact that Richard changed his seal, and regranted the old charters, within the last year of his life. Similarly independent and precise evidence is afforded by the Annals of Waverley:

MCXCVIII. Anno X. regis Ricardi præcepit idem rex omnes cartas in regno suo emptas reformari, et novo sigilli sui impressione roborari, vel omnes cassari, cujuscunque dignitatis aut ordinis essent, qui vellent sua protectione defensari, vel universa bona sua confiscari.[15]

Further, we read in the Annals of Worcester[16] and in the _Historia Major_ of M. Paris (ii. 450-451)[17] that in 1198, 'circaque festum sancti Michaelis, mutatæ sunt carte quas prius fecerat rex Ricardus, novo sigillo suo'. Now this Michaelmas fell just in the heart of the period within which the process of confirmation is proved to have been going on.

We see, then, that the evidence (1) of the seals, (2) of the charters, (3) of the circumstances of the time, (4) of other chroniclers, all concur in pointing to the spring of 1198. And now we will lastly appeal to Hoveden against himself. After telling us of the king's proclamation on the refusal of the religious to contribute to the carucage in the spring of 1198, he adds:

Præterea præcepit idem rex ut omnes, tam clerici quam laici, qui cartas sive confirmationes habebant de sigillo suo veteri deferrent eas ad sigillum suum novum renovandas, et nisi fecerint, nihil quod actum fuerat per sigillum suum vetus ratum haberetur (iv. 66).

This passage, which ought to be compared with Coggeshall, is merely ignored by Dr Stubbs. Miss Norgate, however, boldly explains it as 'a renewal of the decree requiring all charters granted under the king's old seal to be brought up for confirmation under the new one' (ii. 356). But the passage stands by itself, as describing a new measure.[18]

The only conclusion to be drawn from this cumulative evidence is that the earlier passage in Hoveden (1194) which has been so universally accepted, must be rejected altogether. Against the facts I have adduced it cannot stand.

Incredible though it may seem that a court official, a chronicler so able and well informed, indeed, in the words of his editor, 'our primary authority for the period',[19] should have misstated so grossly an event, as it were, under his own eyes, we must remember that 'Hoveden's personality is to a certain degree vindicated by a sort of carelessness about exact dates'.[20] Yet even so, 'few are the points', our supreme authority assures us, 'in which a very close examination and collation with contemporary authors can detect chronological error in Hoveden'.[21] Nor, of the eight anachronisms laboriously established by Dr Stubbs, does any one approach in magnitude the error I have here exposed. The importance of every anachronism in its bearing on the authorship of the chronicle is by him clearly explained.

How far does the rejection of this statement on the change of seal affect the statement which precedes it as to the Truce of Tillières? Hoveden places the latter and the former in the relation of cause and effect:

Deinde veniens in Normanniam moleste tulit quicquid factum fuerat de supradictis treugis, et imputans cancellario suo hoc per eum fuisse factum, abstulit ab eo sigillum suum, et fecit, etc. (iii. 267).

This is rendered by Dr Stubbs in the margin: 'He annuls the truce and all the acts of the chancellor passed under the old seal.' The passage has also been so read by M. Boivin-Champeaux (p. 221); but if that is the meaning, which I think is by no means certain, Hoveden contradicts himself. For he speaks five months later of the truce ('Treuga quæ inter eos statuta fuerat duratura usque ad festum omnium sanctorum') as not having stopped private raids on either side.[22] R. de Diceto, mentioning the truce (ii. 120), says nothing of it being annulled, nor does R. Newburgh in his careful account. On the contrary, he implies that it held good, though the terms were thought dishonourable to Richard (ii. 420). I should, therefore, read Hoveden as stating simply that Richard was much annoyed at ('moleste tulit') its terms, and was wroth with the chancellor for accepting them.

In addition to correcting the received date for Richard the First's change of seal, the evidence I have collected enables us, for the first time, to learn how and to what extent the confirmation of the charters was effected. We find that it was no sweeping process, carried out on a single occasion, but that it was gradually and slowly proceeding during the last eleven months of the king's life. Here, then, is the explanation of another fact (also hitherto overlooked), namely that only a minority of the charters were ever confirmed under the second seal.[23] For the king's death abruptly stopped the operation of that oppressive decree which was being so reluctantly obeyed.

It should be superfluous for me to add that, in thus correcting previous statements, I have not impeached the accuracy of our greatest living historian, who could only form his judgment from the evidence before him. The result of my researches has been to show that the evidence itself breaks down when submitted to the test of fact.

_Granted_ _at_ _Confirmed_

1. 16 April, 1194[24] Winchester 27 May, 1198 2. 2 December, 1189 Canterbury 15 June, 1198 3. 10 October, 1189 Westminster 1 July, 1198 4. 28 November, 1189 Canterbury 1 July, 1198 5. 1 July, 1190 Dangu 3 July, 1198 6. 5 September, 1189 Westminster 30 July, 1198 7. 17 September, 1189 Geddington 30 July, 1198 8. 25 April, 1194 22 August, 1198 9. 12 December, 1194 Chinon 22 August, 1198 10. 7 January, 1198 Vaudreuil 22 August, 1198 11. 8 December, 1189 Dover 10 September [1198] 12. 6 December, 1189 Dover 15 September [1198] 13. 14 March, 1190 Nonancourt 18 September, 1198 14. 23 March, 1190 Rouen 19 September, 1198 15. 29 November, 1189 Canterbury 9 October, 1198 16. 6 October, 1189 Westminster 20 October, 1198 17. 7 December, 1189 Dover 24 October, 1198 18. 23 March, 1190 Rouen 5 November, 1198 19. 7 December, 1189 Dover 10 November, 1198 20. 17 September, 1189 Geddington 12 November [1198] 21. 28 November,[25] 1189 Canterbury 13 November, 1198 22. 27 July, 1197 Isle d'Andely 14 November, 1198 23. 10 November, 1189 Westminster 30 November, 1198 24. 5 August, 1190 Marseilles 7 December, 1198 25. September, 1197 Rouen 17 December, 1198 26. 1189 [No place] 24 January, 1199 27. 15 April, 1190 Evreux 3 March, 1199 28. 22 June, 1190 Chinon 11 March, 1199 29. 25 April, 1194 Portsmouth 5 April, 1199

_at_ _Grantee_ _Authority_

1. Lions Robert fitz Roger Cart. Ant. EE. 6 2. Château Gaillard Hugh Bardulf Cart. Ant. EE. 10 3. Château Gaillard Ely Cart. Ant. JJ. 43 4. Château Gaillard Ely Cart. Ant. NN. 26 5. Château Gaillard William Longchamp Cart. Ant. JJ. 46 6. Lire Rievaulx Abbey Rievaulx Cartulary (Surtees Soc.), p. 308 7. Lire Rievaulx Abbey Rievaulx Cartulary (Surtees Soc.), p. 308 8. Thomas Basset Hist. MSS., 9th Report, ii. 404 9. Roche d'Orival Alan Basset Cott. Cart. xvi. 1 (Rymer i. 67) 10. Roche d'Orival Alan Basset Anc. Deeds, Ser. A. No. 5924 11. Château Gaillard Shaftesbury Abbey Harl. MS. 61, fo. 26 12. Château Gaillard Peterborough Abbey Cart. Ant. EE. 21 13. Château Gaillard Waltham Abbey Cart. Ant. RR. 7 & 8 14. Château Gaillard Roger de Sancto Manveo Cart. Ant. BB. 6 15. Château Gaillard Fontevrault Cart. Ant. F. 1 16. Lions St Leonard's, Stratford Add. MS. 6, 166, fo. 341 17. Château Gaillard Stratford Langthorne Abbey Cart. Ant. E. 1 18. Château Gaillard St Jacques de Boishallebout Add. Cart. (Brit. Mus.) No. 3 19. Château Gaillard Boxley Abbey Cart. Ant. Q. 8 20. Château Gaillard St Alban's Abbey Ancient Deeds, A. 1050 21. Château Gaillard Tynmouth Priory Cart. Ant. BB. 18 22. Château Gaillard Llanthony Abbey Cart. Ant. B. 26 23. Lions The Templars Deville's Transcripts 24. Lions Church of Durham Surtees Soc., vol. IX. p. lvi. 25. 'Sanctum Ebruskum' Domus Dei (Southampton) Cart. Ant. D. 30 26. Cahagnes Spalding Priory Add. MS. 5844, fo. 228 27. Château du Loir Gilbert fitz Roger Hist. MSS., 10th Report, 325 28. Chinon W. Briwerre Great Coucher II. 1, 67 IV. (1, 2) 29. [No place] Noel 'serviens' Cart. Ant. D. 30

[Footnote 1: Canon Raine, _Historiæ Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres_ (Surtees Soc.), p. 379.]

[Footnote 2: Speed's History (1611).]

[Footnote 3: _Const. Hist._, i. 506.]

[Footnote 4: _Norman Conquest_, v. 693. Compare _The Office of the Historical Professor_, pp. 16, 17: 'In a long and careful study of the Bishop of Chester's writings ... I have never found a flaw in the statement of his evidence. If I have now and then lighted on something that looked like oversight, I have always found in the end that the oversight was mine and not his.']

[Footnote 5: _England under the Angevin Kings_, ii. 343.]

[Footnote 6: I have been able to identify this very charter.]

[Footnote 7: This is the only confirmation I have found later than March 3. If the date can be relied on, it is of special interest as being the day before the king died.]

[Footnote 8: Charters to W. Briwere, June 22, 1190, and March 11, 1199 (1198-9), transcribed in the Great Coucher (Duchy of Lancaster).]

[Footnote 9: Dr Stubbs, indeed, writes, as we have seen, that 'the seal that was now broken must have been the one which the chancellor had used during the king's absence'. But Longchamp had been ejected from the chancellorship in October 1191, whereas Richard limits the period of abuse to the duration of his captivity, which did not begin till December 20, 1192.]

[Footnote 10: _The Great Seals of England_ (Stock), p. 149.]

[Footnote 11: Its impression is attached to a charter tested at Tours, now at Lambeth Palace. If the date of this charter is correctly given, it is an important contribution to the Itinerary of Richard.]

[Footnote 12: _Ibid._, p. 19.]

[Footnote 13: It is singular that Mr Wyon, while giving these _data_, should himself assign the change to '_circ._ 1197', and still more singular that he should elsewhere (p. 20) accept the usual passage from Hoveden (iii. 267).]

[Footnote 14: Miss Norgate (1194), ii. 343.]

[Footnote 15: _Annales Monastici_, ii. 251.]

[Footnote 16: _Ibid._, iv. 389 (Vespasian E, iv.).]

[Footnote 17: Faust A. 8. fo. 136. It is a striking instance of the confusion and blundering to be met with even in our best chronicles that M. Paris (_Chron. Maj._, ii. 356) has an independent allusion to the king's change of seal (as a 'factum Ricardi regis enorme') in which he gives us a circumstantial account of the event and of the prior of St Alban's going over to France to secure the confirmation, 'cum effusione multæ pecuniæ et laboris', but assigns it to the year 1189. Hoveden's error pales before such a blunder as this, which has been accepted without question by the learned editor, Dr Luard.]

[Footnote 18: Hoveden, by placing it wrongly (p. 66) _after_ Hubert's resignation (p. 48), to which it was some two months previous, has misled Miss Norgate into the belief that it was the work of his successor, Geoffrey.]

[Footnote 19: Stubbs' _Hoveden_, iv., xxxii.]

[Footnote 20: _Ibid._, p. xxv.]

[Footnote 21: _Ibid._, p. xxxi.]

[Footnote 22: iii. 276. This distinctly implies that the truce had been nominally in full force. Note that it is here spoken of as '_till_ All Saints', while in the document itself (iii. 259) it is made for a year _from_ All Saints. Miss Norgate (ii. 367) speaks of it as 'till All Saints' (1195), but I think it was made from July 1194 to All Saints 1195.]

[Footnote 23: I have not found a single charter of municipal liberties, though the reign was so rich in them, among these confirmations. Nor since this article first appeared, in 1888 (_Arch. Rev._, vol. i.), have I found more than four additional cases of resealed charters, raising the total to twenty-eight. Of these a detailed list is given on pp. 442-15.]

[Footnote 24: 'Scilicet die secunda coronationis nostræ.']

[Footnote 25: 'December' in Cart. Ant., which date is accepted in Gibson's 'Monastery of Tynmouth'.]

COMMUNAL HOUSE DEMOLITION

There was a strange custom peculiar to the ancient community of the Cinque Ports, which has not, so far as I know, been found elsewhere in England. If a member of any one of these towns was elected to serve as Mayor or 'Jurat' (the governing bodies consisting of a Mayor and twelve 'Jurats'), and refused to accept the office, his house was publicly demolished by the community. An extract from the Custumal of Sandwich, headed 'Pena maioris electi recusantis officium suum', will make the custom clear:

Si maior sic electus officium suum recipere noluit, primo et secundo et tercio monitus, tota communitas ibit ad capitale messuagium suum, si habuerit proprium, et illud cum armis omnimodo quo poterit prosternat usque ad terram.... Similiter quicunque juratus fuerit electus, et jurare noluerit, simile judicium.[1]

Although the custom of house demolition is apparently, as I have said, peculiar in England to the Cinque Ports, it was of widespread occurrence abroad. Thither, therefore, we must turn our steps in order to investigate its history.

It is in Flanders and in Northern France, and in Picardy, most of all, that we find this singular custom prevailing, and discover its inseparable connection with the institution of the _Commune_. It would seem that the penalty of house demolition was originally decreed for offences against the _commune_ in its corporate capacity. Thierry, basing his conclusions mainly on the charters of the _commune_ of Amiens and the daughter-charter of Abbeville writes:

Celui qui se soustrait à la justice de la Commune est puni de banissement, et sa maison est abattue. Celui qui tient des propos injurieux contre la Commune encourt la même peine. Voilà pour les dispositions communes aux chartes d'Amiens et d'Abbeville, c'est-à-dire pour celles qui authentiquement sont plus anciennes que l'acte royal de 1190. Si l'on ne s'y arrête pas et qu'on relève dans cet acte d'autres dispositions, probablement primitives aussi, on trouvera les peines du crime politique, _l'abatis de maison_ et le banissement, appliquées à celui qui viole sciemment les constitutions de la Commune et à celui qui, blessé dans une querelle, refuse la composition en justice et refuse pareillement de donner sécurité à son adversaire.

Une peine moindre, car elle se réduit à ce que la maison du délinquant soit abattue s'il n'aime mieux en payer la valeur, est appliquée à celui qui addresse des injures au Maire dans l'exercice de ses fonctions, et à celui qui frappe un de ses Jurés devant les magistrats, en pleine audience. Ainsi l'abatis de maison, vengeance de la Commune lésée ou offensée, était à la fois un châtiment par lui-même et le signe qui rendait plus terrible aux imaginations la sentence de banissement conditionnel ou absolu. Il avait lieu dans la plupart ... des communes du nord de la France avec un appareil sombre et imposant; en présence des citoyens, convoqués à son de cloche, le Maire frappait un coup de marteau contre la demeure du condamné, et des ouvriers, requis pour service public, procédaient à la démolition qu'ils poursuivaient jusqu'à ce qu'il ne restât plus pierre sur pierre.[2]

The public character of the ceremony, which was no less marked at Sandwich (_vide supra_), is well illustrated in the _Ordonnances_ of Philip of Alsace (_circ._ 1178) on the powers of his _baillis_ in Flanders:

Domus diruenda Judicio Scabinorum, post quindenam a scabinis indultam, quandocunque comes præceperit, aut ballivus ejus, diruetur a communia villæ, campana pulsata per Scabinos; et qui ad diruendam illam non venerit, in forisfacto erit, etc., etc.

This ringing of the communal bell--parallel to the moot-bell of England--is an important feature in the matter. Without insisting upon a stray allusion, one may ask whether an entry in the Colchester records in the sixteenth century, threatening that if an offending burgess does not make amends, the town will 'ring him out of his freedom', may not be explained by this practice.

There are plenty of other early instances of this house demolition in recognized _Communes_. At Bruges we read (_circ._ 1190): 'Si scabini voluerint domum eius prosternere, poterunt', etc., etc. So, too, at Roye, the charter (_circ._ 1183) provides: 'Domus forisfactoris diruetur si Major voluerit, et si Major redempcionem accipiet de domibus diruendis', etc., etc.... 'Si quis extraneus ... forisfactum fecerit ... Major et homines ville ad diruendam domum ejus exeant; quæ si sit adeo fortis ut vi Burgensium dirui non possit, ad eam diruendam vim et auxilium conferemus'.[3] So essential was the power of distraint, as we might term it, given to the community over its members, by the possession of a house, that it was sometimes made compulsory on a new member to become possessed of a house within a year of his joining. This was the case at Laon, one of the oldest of the _Communes_, the charter of Louis VI (1128) providing that 'Quicunque autem in Pace ista recipiatur, infra anni spatium aut domum sibi edificet, aut vineas emet ... per que justiciari possit, si quid forte in eum querele evenerit'. Where, in the absence of such provision, the culprit had no house to be demolished, it would seem that, in some cases, he had to procure one, for the express purpose of being demolished, before he could be restored to his membership. Thus, at Abbeville, the charter of _Commune_ provides that 'si domum non habuerit, antequam villam intret, domum centum solidorum, quam communia prosternat, inveniet'.

Thierry pointed out how the 'commune' of north-eastern France found its way, through its adoption in Normandy, to the opposite corner of the country 'sur les terres de la domination Anglaise'.[4] The form 'jurats' adopted by the Cinque Ports for the members of their governing body suggests, indeed, some connection with Gascony, to which region, as Thierry observed, it more especially belongs.[5] I was much struck, when visiting Bayonne, with its interesting municipal history. Thierry alludes to its peculiar character;[6] and, as the town had commercial relations with the Cinque Ports, and illustrates, moreover, the tendency of a commercial port to adopt, from other regions, a constitution peculiar to itself, I shall here give from its local customs the provisions as to house demolition.

Appended to John's charter granting a _communa_ to Bayonne (April 19, 1215) we find a code of communal ordinances based partly on those in the Rouen and Falaise charters and partly on the customs of La Rochelle. In this code the penalty of destroying the offender's house was decreed for a magistrate who accepted bribes,[7] for a citizen who shirked his military service,[8] for a perjured man,[9] for a thief.[10]

It again appears as the penalty for receiving bribes in the local Custumal assigned to 1273: 'La soe maison sera darrocade, et que jameis ed ni son her no hage juridiccion en le communi.' In the foundation-charter granted to Sanabria by Alphonso IX of Leon, in 1220, we find this penalty similarly assigned to perjury ('que la su casa sea derribada por esta razon'); but when the charter was altered by Alphonso X (September 1, 1258), the penalty was commuted for a pecuniary fine of sixty 'sueldos', on the ground that the destruction of the house was an injury to the city and to himself.[11] This is important as affording an instance of the actual introduction of commutation.

Now, my contention is that, as the practice of communal house demolition wandered down into Gascony, and thence actually crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, so--in the opposite direction--it crossed the channel and established itself in the Cinque Ports. As these movements become better understood, we are learning to treat them scientifically, and to trace them through their growth to their origin. In the case of the _commune_, the principle of filiation enables us to accomplish this with remarkable success.

But, it may be asked, is there any instance, on the other side of the channel, of house demolition being the penalty prescribed for refusal to accept office as Mayor or Jurat? It is, I reply, at Amiens the very penalty prescribed for that offence! The Custumal of Amiens contained these two clauses:

Et convient que chis qui pris est faiche le serment de le mairie; et se il ne veult faire, on abatera se maison, et demourra en le merchy du roy au jugement de esquevins.

Derekief se li maires qui eslus seroit refusoit le mairie et vausist souffrir le damage, jà pour che ne demouerroit qu'il ne fesist l'office; et se aucuns refusoit l'esquevinage, on abateroit sa maison et l'amenderoit au jugement de esquevins, et pour chou ne demoureroit mie que il ne fesist l'office de l'esquevinage.[12]

Thierry, who was ignorant of the Cinque Ports custom--as the historians of the Cinque Ports appear to have been ignorant of that at Amiens--describes this provision as 'loi remarquable en ce qu'elle faisait revivre et sanctionnait par des garanties toutes nouvelles ce principe de la législation romaine, que les offices municipaux sont une charge obligatoire'.[13] But this brings us face to face with the difficult and disputed question of the persistence of Roman institutions. Personally, I have always thought it rash to accept similarity as proof of continuity. Here, for instance, the occurrence of this practice at Sandwich might lead to the inference that the institutions of Sandwich were of direct Roman origin. Yet, if this practice was imported from France, we see how erroneous that inference would be. A _reductio ad absurdum_ of this rash argument, as I have elsewhere pointed out, would be found in the suggestion that every modern borough rejoicing in the possession of aldermen had derived its institutions continuously from Anglo-Saxon times. In the particular instance of this practice, we should note that it occurs (_a_) in that portion of France where the municipal development was least Roman in character; (_b_) in a peculiar and original form--the 'garanties toutes nouvelles' of Thierry.

Again, we find the infliction of fines for non-acceptance of municipal office a familiar custom in England even to the present day. These fines were undoubtedly commutations for an original expulsion from the community; and at Colchester, for example, we have a case of a man being deprived of 'his freedom' for declining the office of alderman, and of his having to make 'submission' and pay a fine before it was restored. The fact is, that in every community, whether urban or rural, where office was a necessary but burdensome duty--like modern jury-service or mediaeval 'suit'--a penalty had to be imposed upon those who declined to discharge it. The peculiarity of the Sandwich and Amiens cases consists not in the imposition of a penalty, but in the character of the penalty imposed.

Pass we now from the consideration of this penalty to the wider and important conclusions suggested by its local occurrence.

I have always been puzzled by the peculiar phenomena presented by the 'Cinque Ports' organization. To other writers it would seem to present no such difficulty; but to me it is unique in England, and inexplicable on English lines. In that able monograph of Professor Burrows,[13] which is the latest contribution on the subject, the writer, I venture to think, leaves the problem as obscure as ever. I shall now, therefore, advance the suggestion, which has long been taking form in my mind, that the 'Cinque Ports' corporation was of foreign origin, and was an offshoot of the communal movement in Northern France.

From Picardy, which faced the Cinque Ports, they derived, I believe, their confederation. To quote Thierry:

La région du nord, qui est le berceau, et pour ainsi dire la terre classique des communes jurées, comprend la Picardie, l'Artois, etc.... Parmi ces provinces, la Picardie est celle qui renferme le plus grand nombre de communes proprement dites, où cette forme de régime atteint le plus haut degré d'indépendance et où dans ses applications, elle offre le plus de variété. Les communes de Picardie avaient en général toute justice, haute, moyenne et basse. Nonseulement dans cette province les chartes municipales des villes se trouvaient appliquées à de simples villages, dont quelques-uns n'existent plus, mais encore _il y avait des confédérations de plusieurs villages ou hameaux réunis en municipalités sous une charte et une magistrature collectives_.[14]

Let me briefly summarize the arguments on which I base my hypothesis:

(1) There is no parallel to the Cinque Ports confederation in England,[15] but there is in Picardy.

(2) The very name 'Cinque Ports' betrays a foreign origin,[16] as does the fact that the oath taken by the King's Warden to the Corporation was termed, not an oath, but a 'serement' (as in France).

(3) The English Merchant-Guild[17] and the English 'Alderman'[18] were unknown to the Cinque Ports constitutions; but they all possessed the typical constitution of the _communes_ of Northern France, namely a Mayor, with a Council of twelve, these twelve councillors having the French name of _Jurats_.[19]

(4) In the Cinque Ports, as in the French _Communes_, we find side by side with this elective administration, a royal officer, with us a Warden, with them the _Sénéchal_ (or _Prévôt_ or _Bailli_) _du Roi_.

(5) The very same penalty of house demolition for refusal to accept office as Mayor or Jurat was exacted in the Cinque Ports (and nowhere else in England) as at Amiens.

I do not contend that the French 'commune' was adopted intact by the Cinque Ports, for, of course, it was not so. In the matter of names alone, they are not styled a 'commune', nor are the members of their community termed 'jurés' (_jurati_), but 'barons' (_barones_). The study, however, of the 'commune' in France itself reveals the adaptation to environment it underwent on transplantation. And, the salient feature of the Cinque Ports organization, the fact that they formed a single community, possessing a single assembly, and receiving a joint charter, is paralleled most remarkably in the joint 'communes' of Picardy, containing from four to eight separate 'Vills'.[20]

It would be very satisfactory if the French 'communes' could throw light on the obscure title of 'barons' appertaining to the men of the Cinque Ports, and to them, I maintain (against Professor Burrows), alone among English burgesses. I have elsewhere shown that there is evidence of the use of this term at an earlier period than is supposed, viz., in the early years of Stephen;[21] but on its origin the 'commune' throws no light. One can only quote the parallel afforded by the 'commune' of Niort, and this is taken from a late document (1579). Its officers are said to hold of the King 'à droit de baronie, à foi et homage-lige, au devoir d'un gant ou cinq sols tournois, pour tous devoirs, payables à chaque mutation de seigneur'.[22] This 'devoir' is parallel, it will be seen, to the 'canopy-service' (or 'Honours at Court') of the Cinque Ports, rendered as it was, in practice, 'à chaque mutation de seigneur'. It is noteworthy that a French royal charter of 1196 contains the clause: 'prefati quatuor ville exercitum et equitationem novis debent _sicut alie communie nostre_';[23] but one can scarcely connect this with the naval service of the Cinque Ports. Yet it was part, undoubtedly, of the communal principle that the 'commune' should hold directly of the King, and not of any mediate lord, and this principle would explain the style 'barones regis' applied to the men of the Cinque Ports.

To sum up, there are features about the Cinque Ports organization which can only be accounted for, it seems to me, by the hypothesis here advanced. If this novel solution be accepted,[24] a question at once arises as to the date at which this communal confederacy was established. From what we know of the origin of the 'commune', we can scarcely believe in its adoption here till a generation, at least, after the Conquest. 'Only the least informed and most sceptical,' writes Professor Burrows, 'have placed the act of incorporation later than the date of the Conqueror',[25] but a wider knowledge of municipal institutions would lead to the opposite conclusion. It is possible that the reign of Henry I may have witnessed the superimposing of a communal confederacy on the existing institutions of the several ports; it is impossible, at any rate, to trace it in Domesday, and difficult, indeed, to reconcile with its existence the evidence afforded by the Great Survey. It is conceivable that the position already attained, in the Conqueror's days, by Dover, may have served as a model for the other Ports, when they learnt the power of the principle that lay at the root of the _commune_--'L'union fait la force'.[26]

[Footnote 1: Boys' _Sandwich_, p. 431.]

[Footnote 2: _Monographie de la Constitution communale d'Amiens_ (_Essai sur l'Histoire ... du Tiers-Etat_, pp. 347-8). The charter of Abbeville prescribed this penalty ('domus ejus et omnia ad ejus mancionem pertinentia prosternantur') for homicide, which lies outside the class of 'political offences'. Giry, in his _Etablissements de Rouen_ (1883), speaks of the 'abattis de maison' as 'caractéristique du droit municipal du Nord' (i. 431), but I do not find that he anywhere mentions it as the penalty appointed for refusing office.]

[Footnote 3: _Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France_, xi., p. 228.]

[Footnote 4: So also p. 263, where he calls attention to 'l'établissement de la constitution communale de Rouen et de Falaise dans quatre des provinces annexées au XII^{e} siècle à la domination anglo-normande'; and to 'cette adoption de la commune jurée selon le type donné par les grandes villes de la Normandie, événement auquel contribua sans doute la politique des rois d'Angleterre'.]

[Footnote 5: 'À Bordeaux ... le principal titre de magistrature était celui de Jurats, titre qu'on retrouve dans une foule de villes, depuis la Gironde jusqu'au milieu de la chaîne des Pyrénées' (p. 247).]

[Footnote 6: 'Au milieu de cette unité d'organisation administrative et judiciaire la ville de Bayonne se détache, et contraste avec toutes les autres. On la voit, au commencement du XIII^e siècle, abandonner le régime municipal indigène et chercher de loin une constitution éstrangère, celle des communes normandes, transportée et perfectionée dans les villes du Poitou et de la Saintonge; c'est une double cause, la suzeraineté des rois d'Angleterre étendue de la Normandie aux Pyrénées, et le commerce d'une ville maritime, qui amène ainsi aux extrémités de la zone municipale du Midi la commune jurée dans sa forme native, avec toutes ses règles et ses pratiques' (p. 249).]

[Footnote 7: 'La soe maizon, so es del marie o d'aquet quiu loguer aura pres, sera darrocade seins contredit.']

[Footnote 8: 'E en merce de la comunie, de sa maizon darrocar.']

[Footnote 9: 'Sera en merce dou maire e dous pars de sa maizon darrocar.']

[Footnote 10: 'La maison ons ed estaue sera abatude per les justizies de la comunie.']

[Footnote 11: 'Ca esto tornarie en dano de Nos e de la nuestra Puebla.' (_Boletin de la real Academia de la Historia_, October 1888.)]

[Footnote 12: 'Ancienne Coutume d'Amiens' (_Recueil des Monum. ined. de l'Histoire du Tiers-Etat_, I. pp. 159, 160).]

[Footnote 13: He refers us to the Theodosian Code. Lib. XII, tit. 1, 'de decurionibus', and D., Lib. I, tit. 4, 'de muneribus et honoribus'.]

[Footnote 13 (sic): _Cinque Ports_ (Historic Towns Series), by Montagu Burrows.]

[Footnote 14: _Essai sur l'Histoire du Tiers-Etat_, p. 240. (The italics are my own.)]

[Footnote 15: The Danish 'Five Boroughs' stand apart, as a temporary confederation, the character of which we do not know.]

[Footnote 16: Professor Burrows makes light of this name, asserting that 'it is hard to say when the French form came into common use' (p. 56). But 'the five Cinque Ports', which he admits to be the correct style, is a pleonasm which proves the 'Cinque' to be older than the 'Five'.]

[Footnote 17: 'London and the Cinque Ports stand isolated from their fellows in the common absence of the institution' (Burrows, p. 43).]

[Footnote 18: 'The same may be said of the office of "Alderman" ... The term seems to be only accidentally, if not erroneously, used' (_ibid._, p. 44).]

[Footnote 19: The mayor and his twelve _pairs_, _jurats_ (or _jurés_) or _échevins_, were an essential feature of the _commune_, and spread with the communal movement.]

[Footnote 20: _Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France_, xi. 231, 237, 245, 277, 291, 308, 315. The text must now be modified in the light of my further criticism, in the next paper, of the early date alleged for the confederation of the Ports.]

[Footnote 21: This was written in reliance on the statement by Mr Howlett (_Chronicles of the reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I_, vol. iii., p. xl) that an interesting writ he quoted from 'the cartulary of St Benet-at-Hulme' was 'safely attributable to the year 1137'. It is a writ of Robert, Earl of Leicester, acting as justiciary, and 'gives', says Mr Howlett, 'a clear idea of the Earl's position at the opening of the reign'. As he has made himself master of the period, and has specially studied its manuscript sources, I accepted his assurance without question. But as it subsequently struck me that such a writ was more likely to be issued by the Earl when justiciary under Henry II, I referred to the cartulary and found that the writ contained the words 'avi regis', proving it, of course, to belong to the reign, not of Stephen, but of Henry II:

'R. Com(es) leg(recestriæ) Baronibus regis de Hastingg' salutem. Precipio quod abbas et monachi de Hulmo teneant bene et in pace et juste terras suas in Gernemut ... sicut eas melius tenuerunt tempore Regis H. _avi regis_ ... T. R. Basset per breve regis de ultra mare' (Galba E. 2, fo. 33_b_).

We can only, therefore, say of its date that it is previous to the Earl's death in 1168. In any case, however, it is of much interest as connecting Yarmouth with Hastings alone, not, as alleged, with the Cinque Ports as a whole. This is in perfect accordance with the fact that John's charter to Hastings in 1205 duly mentions its rights at Yarmouth, of which there is no mention in his charters to the other ports.

I have noted in this same cartulary, and on the same page, an interesting confirmation by Henry II to the Abbey of the land, 'quam lefwinus et Robertus presbyteri et Bonefacius et ceteri barones mei de Hastingges eidem ecclesie dederunt in Gernemut' apud Den ... Test' Thom' cancellario. Apud Westmonasterium'. The name of Thomas fixes the date as not later than 1158. In the charters of 1205, the people of Hastings are styled 'barons', but those of the other ports only 'homines'.]

[Footnote 22: This represents the 'esporle' of South-Western France (cf. p. 243, n. 278).]

[Footnote 23: _Recueil_ (_ut supra_), xi. 277.]

[Footnote 24: I can find no trace of it in Professor Burrows' careful _résumé_ of the factors in the Cinque Ports organization.]

[Footnote 25: _Cinque Ports_, p. 56.]

[Footnote 26: Professor Burrows is very severe on those who question the alleged charter of Edward the Confessor to the Ports and 'the sweeping franchises' that it conferred (pp. 55-6, 59). But the sole evidence for its alleged existence is the charter of 1278, which does not even, I think, necessarily imply it. For the allusion to the liberties the Ports possessed in the days of Edward and his successors might well be taken from such a charter as that of Henry II to Lincoln, in which he grants to the citizens all the liberties 'quas habuerunt tempore Edwardi et Willelmi et Henrici regum Anglorum'. This does not imply that those kings had granted charters.

[The result of my further investigation has been to develop much further the position here _Arch. Rev._, December 1889, adopted, and to modify accordingly the closing paragraph in the text.]]

THE CINQUE PORTS CHARTERS

I have allowed the preceding paper to stand as it was written, in spite of the rejoinder by Professor Burrows, entitled, 'The Antiquity of the Cinque Ports Charters'.[1]

So far as regards my French analogies, Professor Burrows adopts the argument that I have not proved a parallel sufficiently close and complete. But this does not meet my contention: (1) that in the Cinque Ports organization we find peculiar words and things; (2) that these peculiarities are not found elsewhere in England; (3) that they are found in France. Admitting, however, that 'the earliest title is Norman French', the Professor urges that Edward the Confessor was a 'half-Norman king', and that 'nothing is more likely than that he should grant his charter to the Confederation under a Norman name'.[2]

This brings us at once to Edward's alleged charter; and, indeed, my critic recurs at the outset to his belief in 'the Ports having been chartered as a Confederation by Edward the Confessor' (p. 439). At the close of the article he reminds us again that he 'accepted the charter of Edward the Confessor as a faithful landmark, and showed how the history of our early kings and their institutions appeared to coincide with the statement'. But he adds that 'if proof can be brought against the issue of such a charter', he will be 'the first to recognize it'.

It is curious that my critic cannot perceive what must be obvious to all those who are familiar with 'the history of our early kings and their institutions', namely that the _onus probandi_ rests, not, as he alleges, on those who question, but on those who maintain the startling proposition that Edward the Confessor issued such a charter of incorporation. Nothing short of proof positive could induce us to accept so unheard-of an anticipation of later times. That proof Professor Burrows claims to find in the great charter of Edward I to the Ports. He contends that, according to this document, Edward 'saw' the Confessor's charter,[3] and blames me for omitting its statement to that effect (p. 443). Unfortunately he quotes the words, as indeed he had done in his book, from an English translation only, and that a misleading one. The actual words (as given by Jeake), confirms to the Ports their liberties as held:

temporibus Regum Angliæ Edwardi, Willelmi primi et secundi, Henrici regis proavi nostri, et temporibus Regis Richardi et Regis Johannis avi nostri et Domini Henrici Regis patris nostri per cartas eorundem, sicut cartæ illæ quas iidem Barones nostri inde habent, et quas inspeximus, rationabiliter testantur.

In this peculiar wording we notice two points: (1) that it divides the kings into two groups, and that Henry II is placed in the first group, not, as we should expect, with his sons; (2) that Edward does not say that he has 'inspected' charters of all the kings named, but only 'cartæ _illæ_ quas iidem Barones nostri inde habent'.[4] I claim, therefore, to read the words as not implying that Edward had actually seen any charter older than that of Richard, whose name heads what I have termed the second group of kings. It is noteworthy that Richard's is the earliest charter of which the contents are known to ourselves.

But let us see how the matter stands with reference to previous charters. Professor Burrows holds that the form of Edward I's charter 'certainly supposes that the former charters were granted' also to the Ports collectively.[5] Indeed, he 'need not point out', we read, 'that the charters referred to are charters to the Confederation, not to separate Ports' (p. 444). Where do we find them? 'That the charter of Henry,' we are told (p. 439), 'which we know about from those of his sons, has no more survived than those of his predecessors, has always seemed to me an argument of some weight.' But no charter of Henry II to the Confederation is spoken of by his sons. We have in the _Rotuli Chartarum_ what Professor Burrows terms, 'the series of six charters, dated June 6, and 7, 1205'. Each Port on this occasion received a separate charter, and in each case reference is made to that Port's charter from Henry II. Of a collective charter we hear nothing. Nor are John's charters even identical in form: to quote once more Professor Burrows:

It should also be noted that the franchises of Sandwich are to be such as the town enjoyed in the reigns of 'William and Henry'; of Dover, as in that of Edward'; of Hythe, as in those of 'Edward, William I, William II, and Henry'.[6]

And in none of them is any charter mentioned earlier than that of Henry II.

These charters of John are most important, but have not, so far as I know, received scientific treatment. The charter to Hastings is in many ways distinct from the others. It alone speaks of the 'Honours at Court', the rights at Yarmouth, and the ship-service due, and alone mentions that this service was rendered 'pro hiis libertatibus'. The charter to Rye and Winchelsea is modelled on that of Hastings, and neither of them goes back beyond the charter of Henry II. The charters to Dover and to Hythe, it will be found, are closely parallel, and in both cases the privileges are to be enjoyed as in the times of Edward, William I, William II, and Henry (I). Sandwich has her liberties confirmed as in the days of Henry I, King William, 'and our predecessors'; Romney as in the days of Henry I.

If it be urged that the rights of Yarmouth, though only specified in the Hastings charter, were included under general liberties in the charters to the other Ports, I appeal, in reply, to that writ of Henry II[7] which treats the Barons of Hastings alone as possessing authority at Yarmouth. The charter and the writ confirm one another.

We see, then, that when we interpret the great charter of Edward I to the Ports (1278) in the light of evidence, not of supposition, we find that Henry II and John did grant separate charters to the different Ports as to other towns (not a collective charter to them all), and that these therefore must have been the charters referred to in the general confirmation of 1278. In other words, it was Edward I, not Edward the Confessor, who granted the first 'Charter to the Confederation', as a whole. Utterly subversive though it be of Professor Burrows' view, this is the only conclusion in harmony with the known facts.

Thus the sole result of examining my critic's evidence is to make me carry my scepticism further still. I now hold that even so late as the days of John, the Ports had individual relations to the crown, although their relations _inter se_ were becoming of a closer character, as was illustrated by the fact that their several charters were all obtained at the same time. Hastings alone, as yet, had rights at Yarmouth recognized: hers were the only portsmen styled 'barons' by the crown.

It is always, in these matters, necessary to bear in mind that the local organization was apt to be ahead of the crown, and that communal institutions and municipal developments might be winked at for a time to avoid formal recognition. In this way I believe the rights and privileges belonging in strictness to Hastings alone were gradually extended in practice to the other ports. There is, for instance, a St Bertin charter granted by the so-called 'barons of Dover', although the formal legend on their seal styles them only 'burgesses'. The portsmen may all in practice have been loosely styled 'barons', even though Hastings alone had a special right to that distinction. Professor Burrows speaks of 'its acknowledged claim to be the Premier Port of the Confederation' as 'a circumstance of the greatest significance in our inquiry',[8] and here I entirely agree with him. But I cannot think his explanation of that pre-eminence in any way satisfactory. He lays great stress on 'the identification lately established beyond any reasonable doubt between the town in the Bourne valley and the "New Burgh" of Domesday Book'. I have searched long and in vain for this identification, but, whether it be accepted or not, it throws no light on the old town, the King's town, of Hastings.[9]

The importance of Hastings before the Conquest is shown not only by the action of its ships in 1049, but also by its possessing a mint. Yet the only mention of this town in Domesday is the incidental entry that the Abbot of Fécamp had 'in Hastings' appurtenant to his Manor of Brede, 'iiii. burgenses et xiiii. bordarios'.[10] One is fairly driven to the bold hypothesis that Hastings, which ought to have figured at the head of the county survey (as did Dover in Kent), was one of the important towns wholly omitted in Domesday.[11] The fact that its ship-service, when first mentioned, was as large as that of Dover is a further proof of its importance.

The geographical position of Hastings also severs its case, as widely as do its privileges, from those of the Kentish ports. It is therefore difficult to resist the impression that the distinction in John's charter had a real origin and meaning. The 'barons' of Hastings were, I believe, the men of the _King's_ town (not, as alleged, the Abbot's) and so far from the Abbot's men being admitted to share their distinction, we find the latter, at Rye and Winchelsea, styled in John's charter 'homines', not even 'homines nostri'.

The accepted view as to Rye and Winchelsea is thus set forth by Professor Burrows:

The Confessor had evidently intended to make the little group of Sussex towns, the 'New Burgh', Winchelsea, and Rye, a strong link of communication between England and Normandy; but Godwin and Harold had contrived to prevent the two latter from becoming the property of the Abbey of Fécamp, to which Edward granted them in the early part of his reign; and this formed one of the Norman grievances. William promised to restore them to the Abbey, and when he had conquered England he kept his word.... Of the grant of Winchelsea and Rye to the same Abbey as part of the lands of Steyning we have distinct evidence in the charter of resumption issued by Henry III in 1247 (p. 27; cf. _supra_, p. 248).

Although this view has always been held by local historians and antiquaries, it seems to me obvious that there must be error somewhere. Rye and Winchelsea belonged geographically to the Abbey's lordship of Brede in the extreme west of the county; its lordship of Steyning was in East Sussex. On examining for myself the charter of resumption and comparing it with the Abbey's claims as to Brede at the _quo warranto_ inquiry, I discovered the solution of the mystery. Rye and Winchelsea were not, as alleged, appurtenant to Steyning, but belonged to the Manor of Brede. The Abbey, however, claimed on behalf of its Manor of Brede (including Rye and Winchelsea) all the franchises granted to Steyning, contending that they were meant to extend to all its lands in Sussex. This claim was urged and recognized in the case of the charter of resumption (1246), the source of the whole misapprehension.

But to return to the 'barons', Professor Burrows, discussing the title, writes thus:[12]

It is admitted that the title was at first only held by the Portsmen in common with the citizens of several other places, as that of a responsible man in a privileged community, of a 'baro' or 'vir' of some dignity; but, of course, not in the least in the sense of a 'baron' such as the word came to mean in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

I do not know which were these 'several other places'; but I think the word 'baron' can be shown to have here had a definite connotation. The exemption from 'wardship and marriage', for instance, granted by Edward I (1278), implies that these 'barons' were subject to the burdens of tenants-in-chief, while their extraordinary appeal, after the battle of St Mahé (1293), to 'the judgment of their peers, earls, and barons'[13] has not, so far as I know, received the attention it deserves. By such a phrase the Cinque Ports 'barons' virtually claimed the privilege of peers of the realm.

But one must not wander too far along these tempting paths. When tradition is replaced, as it may be in part, by evidence, we shall have, not improbably, to unlearn much that now passes current as genuine Cinque Ports history. On the other hand, there may be in store for us glimpses of much that is interesting and new.[14]

Apart, however, from problems as yet difficult and obscure, we shall be standing on sure ground in asserting that the charter of Edward I is the first that was granted to the Ports collectively, and that the rights and liberties it confirmed were those which had been granted to the separate ports by Henry II and John, and which it then made uniform and applicable to the whole confederation. As at London,[15] we have always to remember that communal institutions might develop locally before their existence is proved by the crown's formal recognition. Delay in that recognition is not proof of their non-existence. What complicates so greatly the study of the Cinque Ports polity is the difficulty of disentangling its three component elements: the old English institutions common to other towns; the special relation to the crown in connection with their ship-service; and the foreign or communal factor on which I have myself insisted. No impartial student, I believe, will deny that I have fairly established the existence of this third element. Its relative importance and its sphere of action must remain, of course, as yet matter of conjecture.

[Footnote 1: _Archæological Review_, iv. 439-44.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 441.]

[Footnote 3: _The Cinque Ports_, p. 64.]

[Footnote 4: Had he seen them all, the wording would have run, 'per cartas eorundem, quas iidem', etc.]

[Footnote 5: _The Cinque Ports_, p. 63.]

[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, p. 71.]

[Footnote 7: _Supra_, p. 421.]

[Footnote 8: _The Cinque Ports_, p. 26.]

[Footnote 9: The Professor's argument that 'the lordship of St Denis over the Saxon Hastings had ceased--probably when the Northmen took possession of the Seine valley and blocked out the French; that of Fécamp was the renewal of the old idea on an adjoining territory' (_Cinque Ports_, p. 27), is as baseless as that which follows it as to Winchelsea and Rye. For the 'charter of Offa, king of the Mercians' (p. 25), granting Hastings to St Denis, has been conclusively shown by Mr Stevenson to be a forgery.]

[Footnote 10: One cannot, of course, speak positively without seeing that 'identification' on which Professor Burrows relies. But, unless there is evidence to the contrary, it seems difficult to resist the conclusion that this estate of the Abbey 'in Hastings' was identical with that which it actually possessed in the Bourne Valley. For this by no means included the whole 'town in the Bourne Valley', but only that portion of it at the foot of the West Hill, which is bordered by Courthouse Street, Bourne Street, John Street, and High Street, together with St Clement's Church and its block of buildings (_Sussex Arch. Coll._, xiv. 67). And this conclusion is strengthened by the fact that in Domesday its rents are 63s 'in Hastings', and 158s in the 'novus burgus', while at the Dissolution they were only 35s 4d in Hastings. In that case we must after all look for the 'novus burgus' of Domesday at Winchelsea or Rye.

Nor is the history of Hastings harbour at all as clear as could be wished. 'The ancient Harbour once occupied', no doubt, 'Priory Valley' (_Cinque Ports_, p. 9); but I can find no trace of a haven 'formed by the Bourne between the East and West Hills', which replaced it on its silting-up. On the contrary, the old map of Hastings in 1746 (_Sussex Arch. Coll._, vol. xii) shows us the 'haven' (with ships) in the Priory Valley to the west of the Castle Hill. Was not this a later harbour (1637), and the real original one out to the south?]

[Footnote 11: Chichester, Lewes, and Pevensey are all duly entered, under the names of their respective lords.]

[Footnote 12: _The Cinque Ports_, pp. 77-9.]

[Footnote 13: _The Cinque Ports_, p. 123. Compare the banishment of the Despencers (1321) by the 'piers de la terre, countes et barouns'.]

[Footnote 14: The courts of the Cinque Ports, for instance, greatly need investigation. One can only throw out as a mere conjecture the suggestion that if the Court of Guestling derived its name, as Professor Burrows admits is probable, from Guestling (the _caput_ of a Hundred), midway between Hastings and Winchelsea, it may have been originally a _Sussex_ Court for the Hastings group, while the Court of Broadhill--afterwards 'Broderield' and 'Brotherhood' (_The Cinque Ports_, p. 178)--may have been the Kentish one. The admitted corruption in the traditional derivation of both names, together with the court's change of _locale_, shows how much obscurity surrounds their true origin. Few, I think, would accept Professor Burrows' view that, because the Brodhull, when we first have record of it, was held 'near the village of Dymchurch' (p. 46), it was named from 'the "broad hill" of Dymchurch, which may well have been some portion of the wall which extended for three miles along the beach' (p. 47). As the Guestling was not a court of 'Guests', so 'the broad hill', from which the meeting derived its name, must have been originally somewhere else than down 'on Dymchurch beach' (p. 75), between Romney Marsh and the sea.]

[Footnote 15: See my paper on the origin of 'The Mayoralty of London', in _Archæological Journal_ (1894).]

ADDENDA

Pages 20, 107. In case I should not have made sufficiently clear my views as to the filiation of the Domesday MSS., it may be well to explain that what I deny on p. 21 is that the _Inq. Com. Cant._ and the _Inq. El._ can both have been copied from a third document intermediate between them and the original returns. But, as I state on pp. 20, 123, it cannot be _proved_ that the _Inq. Com. Cant._ was itself transcribed direct from the original returns, as it might, possibly, be only a copy of an earlier transcript of these returns.

Page 30. A remarkable instance of the occasional untrustworthiness of the figures given in these texts is afforded by the Manors of Stretham and Wilburton, co. Cambridgeshire, which were farmed together. The correct figures for their ploughteams were these:

Dominium Homines Total Stretham 4[1] 5 9 Wilburton 3[2] 4 7[3] __ __ 7 9

The footnotes show the errors.

Thus the A text, which is the best known, gives two figures out of three wrongly for Wilburton, and Mr Pell, by accepting as genuine these two erroneous figures, was led to quite erroneous conclusions.

Pages 68-9. The parallel for this system of counting by threes and sixes is found in the wergild of Scandinavia, with its _rétt_ of 3 marcs, or 6, or 12, the 6 or the 12 _aurar_, the 12 ells or the 12 feet of _vadmal_.

For the _formulæ_ on p. 68 an instructive parallel is found in the Frostathing's Law:

If a _haulld_ wounds a man, he is liable to pay 6 _baugar_ (rings) to the king, and 12 _aurar_ are in each ring ... a _lendrmann_ 12, a jarl 24, a king 48, 12 _aurar_ being in each ring.

Thus we find in Scandinavia the counterpart of the system of counting found in the 'Danish' districts of England, just as we find in Angeln and Ditmarsh the counterpart of the 'hide', with its four 'yards', found in southern England (_Archæologia_, xxxvii. 380).

Page 105. For the election of _juratores_ we may compare the Abingdon Abbey case, under Henry II: 'ex utroque parte seniores viri eligerentur qui secundum quod eis verum videretur ... jurarent; ... segregati qui jurarent diversis opinionibus causam suam confundebant'. For juries of eight or sixteen we may compare Jocelin de Brakelonde's narrative of a suit for an advowson in 1191: 'delatum est juramentum per consensum utriusque partis sexdecim legalibus de hundredo'.

Page 126. Compare here Mr Freeman's text (iii. 413-4):

There can be little doubt that William's ravages were not only done systematically, but were done with a fixed and politic purpose.... It is impossible to doubt that the systematic harrying of the whole country round Hastings was done with the deliberate purpose of provoking the English king.... The work was done with a completeness which shows that it was something more than the mere passing damage wrought by an enemy in need of food.

Domesday is appealed to, as in the Appendix, for this view.

Page 205. Though I have spoken in the text of _William_ de Montfichet, following, like Dugdale, the _Liber Niger_, I have since found that the tenant of the fief, in 1166, was his son Gilbert, the _carta_ being wrongly assigned in the _Liber Niger_ itself to William. There are similar and instructive errors to be found in it.

Page 244. The succession of Schelin, the Domesday under-tenant by his son Robert, in 1095 identifies the former with Schelin, the Dorset tenant-in-chief, from whom Shilling Ockford took its name, and who was succeeded in Dorset also by his son Robert (_Montacute Cartulary_).

Pages 293-4. To guard (as I have to do at every turn) against misrepresentation, I may explain that the Battle Chronicle is the primary authority I follow for the feigned flight. Its words 'fugam, cum exercitu duce simulante', distinctly assert that the Duke himself, with the main body of his army, 'turned in seeming flight'. It must, surely, be because this evidence is quite opposed to Mr Freeman's view that he ignored it in his text (pp. 488-90). The essential point to grasp, according to my own view, is that a detachment, told off for the purpose, thrust itself between the pursuing English and the hill to cut off their retreat, and that the main body of the Normans then faced about. The English, one may add, are hardly likely to have ventured down into the plain unless the feigned flight was so general as to make them think they could safely do so.

Pages 311-12. 'Mainly from oral tradition.' This refers, of course, to Mr Archer's contention.

Page 356. On the great influence, by their connection, of the Clares see also the _Becket Memorials_ (iii. 43), where Fitz Stephen writes (1163):

Illi autem comiti de Clara fere omnes nobiles Angliæ propinquitate adhærebant, qui et pulcherrimam totius regni sororem habebat, quam rex aliquando concupierat.

We are reminded here of the curious story in the _Monasticon_ (iv. 608) that, some forty years before, Roheis de Clare, the wife of Eudo Dapifer, was, on his death (1120), destined by her brethren for the second wife of Henry I, a story which illustrates, at least, the position attributed to the family.

Pages 357-8. The Montfichet match is not shown in the chart pedigree, nor is the important marriage of Adeliza, another daughter of Gilbert (fitz Richard) de Clare, to Aubrey de Vere, the Chamberlain, which is well ascertained (_Geoffrey de Mandeville_, pp. 390-2). By him she had _inter alios_ a daughter, with the Clare name of 'Rohese', who married Geoffrey de Mandeville, first Earl of Essex (_ibid._). The existence of this Adeliza may be held to be against my affiliation of 'Adelidis de Tunbridge', which avowedly is only a conjecture.

Page 360. A chart pedigree is here given to illustrate the connection of Robert fitz Richard (de Clare), through his wife, with the Earls of Northampton and the Scottish kings:

Earl (1) = Maud = (2) David Simon | dau. of Earl | of Scotland d. '1115'| Waltheof | King 1124 | | d. 1153 ___________| |__________ | | | Earl Maud = Robert Henry Simon de Senlis | fitz Richard of Scotland d. 1153 d. '1140' | d. 1136 d. 1152 ____________________| ______________|________ | | | | | Walter Maud Malcolm William David fitz Robert 'de Senlis,' King 1153 King 1166 Earl 1184 d. 1198 'aged 60' d. 1166 d. 1214 d. 1219 in 1185

Robert fitz Richard and his children (see p. 389) are included in this pedigree, in order to show that their ages present no chronological difficulty, and that the length of time they survived him is clearly due to his marrying rather late in life.

Page 388. I have identified a third fine, since this book was in type, as belonging to the great circuits of 1176. It proves that they began early in the year.

As a corollary to my conclusions on pp. 386-7, I should like to allude to the well-known changes in 1178-80. Great importance is attached to the passage in the _Gesta Regis Henrici_, which describes how the king selected five justices 'de privata familia sua' in the place of the eighteen previously appointed, who as I read the passage, were to accompany his court. I cannot think that this reform, if it took place, enured, for the central body that we really meet with from 1179 onwards is, it seems to me, distinctly different. It consists of the Bishops of Winchester, Ely, and Norwich, whom, says R. de Diceto, in a passage to which the Bishop of Oxford rightly draws attention, Henry, in 1179, appointed 'archijustitiarios regni', with Glanvill, who soon became a chief justiciar with them. These four continue to hold a position severed from that of the other justices, of whom some act with them at one time and some at another. The earliest appearance at present known to me of this well-defined central group is at Oxford, February 11, 1180. We there find the three bishops associated with five justices, headed by Ranulf Glanvill, recorded on a fine. Now, we happen to know that the king was at Oxford about this very time, for he decided there on the issue of his new coinage.[4] His presence would account for this gathering of the four leading justiciars, so that we need not hesitate to connect the two phenomena. We have then here record evidence of the true _personnel_ at the time of the central judicial body, together with the fact of its presence with the king, the fact which had not till now been proved, on his progress through the land.

[Footnote 1: A, B, and C give this figure as 3 (p 141). Their own title requires 4.]

[Footnote 2: A, B, and C give this figure as 3 (p. 141), but elsewhere (wrongly) as 4 (p. 101).]

[Footnote 3: A gives this figure as 6 (p. 101), but B and C, rightly, as 7.]

[Footnote 4: So Eyton (p. 230), not giving his authority; nor have I found it.]

INDEX

Abetot, Urse d', 129, 141-5^{12}, 147-8, 159, 238^{250}, 239, 245, 324, 356

Abingdon Abbey: its knights, 179, 239-40

Airy, Revs. W. and B. R., 55-6

Albini 'Brito', William de, 172, 173; his wife, 359-60

Albini, Henry de, 163, 171, 173-4

---- Nigel de, 174, 179

Alfred, the name of, 254; _see also_ Lincoln

Alfred of Espagne (not Spain), 254, 255

Alfred of Marlborough, 252, 254

Alneto, Herbert de, 369

Amiens: Custumal of, 419

Andrews, Dr, 303^{161}

'Anglicus numerus'--_see_ Hundred

Archer, Mr T. A., 256^{37}, 263^{4}, 264, 265, 266-7, 269, 270-3, 284^{106}, 289, 290, 364, 431; his remarkable statement, 273^{41}; champions Prof Freeman, 300; throws him over, 300-1; contradicts him flatly, 301-2, 306; opposes him wrongly, 274-7; his tactics, 302, 307-8, 309; his knowledge of Old French, 309^{22}; on Wace's age and sources, 311-12; on his sobriety, 313; on Prof Freeman's errors, 334^{13}, 340^{1}

Archers: use of, 280, 283^{104}, 284-7

'Archijustitiarii,' the, 433

Ardres, the lords of, 351-2

Armorial bearings: earliest, 357^{1}, 359^{5}

Arms of England, Royal, 406

Arques, The relief of, 294-6

Arundel, Earl of: his _carta_ [1166], 196

---- Earldom of, 153

Assessment, the system of, 430; Anglo-Saxon, 48 _sqq._; reduced, 51-5, 64; independent of area or value, 62; said to be determined by area, 80, 82, by value, 63; origin of, 82 _sqq._

Assessment for danegeld, 378-9

---- in East Anglia, 88-91; in Kent, 91 _sqq._, 95; exemption from, 95-7; changes of, 129; of Abingdon and Worcester Abbeys, 140; in Lindsey, 149: _see also_ Vills; _Wara_

_Auxilium_--_see_ Scutage

Aynho, Northants, 381

Bainard, Ralf, 350, 360

Baldwin (de Clare), the Sheriff, 256^{37}, 340, 341^{46}, 359, 394-5; his sons, _ib._ 357-8, 369

Bampton, Robert of, 367, 369

Barbery Abbey, 157

Barnstaple, Fief of, 369; Honour of, 212

_Barones_ were tenants-in-chief, 102

Barons--_see_ Cinque Ports

Basset family and fief, 129

---- Ralf, 160, 169

---- Richard, 161-5, 172-3

---- Thomas, 381, 384, 386, 387

---- William, 385-8

Bath, Godfrey, Bishop of, 366, 367-8

Baudri: his poem, 269, 284, 286, 287-8

Bayeux Tapestry, 264, 269, 270-2, 276-7, 280^{88}, 288-9, 290, 300, 310, 318

Bayonne, Custumal of, 418

Beauchamp, family and fief, 141-8, 159, 160-3

Beauchamp, Maud de, 156, 158-9

---- Philip de, 163

Beaumont, Robert de, 273^{41}

Becket, Thomas; his opposition in 1163, 377, 379-80, 398; his movements in 1170, 383, 402

Bedfordshire, Assessment in, 55-8

Bell: Ringing of the town, 417

Bémont, M. Ch., 334

Berkshire, Hidation in, 63-4

Betham, Sir W., 392, 397

Bigot, Roger, 255

Birch, Mr de Gray, 18, 118^{250}, 140

Bishops: knight service of, 198-9, 220; their style before consecration, 327^{11}, 367-8

Blois--_see_ Peter

Boivin-Champeaux, M., 407, 408-10, 412

Bosham: _Capellaria de_, 199^{62}, 201, 249

Boulogne, Eustace, Count of, 250, 256, 293, 324, 325, 349, 351

Boulogne, Eustace (the younger), Count of, 214

Bourne (Cambridgeshire), Honour of, 204

Bourne (Lincoln): descent of, 136-7

Brakelond, Jocelin de, 400-1, 402^{18}, 431

Bretons, 254-5, 256-7, 291; their alleged inferiority, 279^{81}

_Breve abbatis_, the: its meaning, 35, 36, 115-6

Brihtric, son of Ælfgar, 323, 324-5

Bristol: its trade with Ireland, 354

Britanny, Honour of, 196

Buci, Robert de, 129, 172-3

Buckinghamshire, Hidation in, 64

Burkes: origin of the, 390-1

'Burna' (Westbourne), 327

Burrows, Prof Montagu, 248, 420-1, 422-9

Cahors, Patrick de, 95

Cambridge: its wards, 68; its 'lawmen', 79; alleged earldom of, 152-3

Cambridgeshire, hundreds of: analysed, 48-55--_see also Inquisitio_; Picot

_Camerarius_, Aubrey de Vere, 175, 178-9, 432; his son Robert, 179

'Candidus'--_see_ Hugh 'Candidus'

Canterbury, See of: its knights, 199, 236

Canterbury, Geoffrey (Ridel), Archdeacon of, 381, 382, 383-4, 388

_Cartæ_ of 1166, 189 _sqq._, 210-11, 225, 228, 396; sealing of, 194; their evidence, 198-9 _sqq._; errors in, 226-7, 234, 431

_Caruca_, the Domesday: contained eight oxen, 40, 41

Carucate: 120 acres in the, 42^{75}, 67; as a measure of assessment, 66 _sqq._, 73, 78, 79-82; connected with the plough team, 95

Castle-guard, 200^{64}, 232^{216}

Castles built in England, 249-53

Chancellors--_see_ Geoffrey, Ranulf, Regenbald, Waldric

Charters, the re-sealed [1198], 412-15

Chester: Earls of, 151-3; 'lawmen' of, 79; its trade with Dublin, 353-4

Chokes, Anselin de, 177

Church, the: exactions from the, 221, 242-3, 400, 410

Cinque Ports: their system of 'purses', 88^{183}; peculiar penalty in, 416 _sqq._; confederation of, 420-1, 422-4; its name, 421

Cinque Ports: Barons of, 421-2, 428-9; 'honours at court', 422, 425

Cinque Ports: their charters, 424-6, 429; their courts, 429^{14}; their complex polity, 429

Cirencester Charters, The: 323, 326

Civic League, an alleged, 331-3

_Civitas_, meaning of, 262

Clare family and fief, 226, 355-60, 394, 431-2. _See_ Baldwin

Clare, Baldwin Fitz Gilbert de, 134, 179, 359, 394

Clare, Richard Fitz Gilbert de, 255, 355

Clermont, Adeliz de, 394

Cleveland, Duchess of, 297, 358, 371

Clinton--_see_ Glynton

Cockayne, Mr T. O., 124^{1}, 125^{3}, 128^{9}

Colchester: Charter to, 363; municipal custom at, 417

_Commendatio_, 36-40

Commune: offences against the, 416-420; spread of the, 418-19; its independent growth, 426, 429

_Constabularia_, the, 206, 208, 227

_Consuetudines_: due from sokemen and freeman, 36-9

Corfe Castle, 263

Cornhill, Gervase de, 357

---- Henry de, 363

Cornwall, assessment in, 62; low, 84, 86; _see also_ Devon

Cornwall, earldom of, 369

---- Reginald, Earl of, 381, 384, 385

Counties, groups of: defined by assessment, 85-6

Courcy, William de, 180

Coutances, Geoffrey, Bishop of, 114-15, 238^{250}

Craon, Alan de, 164, 172, 174

Crown, Power of the, 399

_Curia Regis_, The, 385-9, 405, 432-3; mention of, 120. _See Placita_

Danegeld: normal, 55, 91; its origin, 82-83; its local incidence, 84-6; its connection with the Hundred, 88-91, 125, 128, 130; early levy of, 124-5; remitted on 'waste', 125; unpaid, 128-9; its assessment, 165-6, 379; alleged debate on, 377; not compounded for, 378

Danish districts: assessment of the, 66, 67-8, 430; the 'long' hundred in, 66-7; limits of, 67-8, 79, 94; carucated, 82-3. _See_ 'Six carucates'

_Dare_--_see Recedere_

_Defensio_: represents assessment, 102, 166

De La Rue, Chevalier, 392, 397

Delgove, M. l'Abbé, 361-2

Democracy: its failure, 302-5

Derbyshire: a Danish district, 68; low assessment of, 85; possible Hundreds in, 165-6

Devon: assessment in, 61-2; low, 84, 86; earldom of, 358, 369; Sheriffs of, 236^{239}

_Dialogus de Scaccario_, 121-2

'Dispensator', Robert, 141-5, 147-8, 155, 158-9, 245

Distraint, 243

Domesday Book: omissions in, 26-7, 35, 41; errors in, 28-30, 41, 44^{76}, 44^{77}, 44^{78}, 47, 74, 113, 119, 180-1, 326; general excellence, 29-30; duplicate entries in, 30-5, 350; not a verbal transcript, 31-5; analysis required, 56, 64, 82, 88; its love of variety, 31, 34, 77, 223-4; Leets mentioned in, 90; its compilation, 118; _Liber de Wintonia_, 118; its two volumes, 119-20; its date, 118, 209-10; used by the pseudo-Ingulf, 120; first mention of, 120-1; _Liber de thesauro_, 121; preserved at Winchester, 121-2; removed to Westminster, 121-2; names of tenants in, 131-3, 137-9; its alleged silence as to feudal tenures, 184-5, 240; contrasted with returns of 1166, 189-90; mentions knight service, 236

Domesday Hide--_see_ Hide

---- MSS: pedigree of, 122-3, 430

---- Survey, the: how executed, 102-6, 114-15; styled _Descriptio_, 118, 122

---- of St Paul's, The, 92-4

---- tenants, and their heirs, 104-5, 106, 109-10, 128-30, 131-4, 137-9, 141-8, 150-2, 154-5, 158-9, 166-74, 179-81, 231-2, 232-3, 237, 240-1, 244-5, 251-2, 254, 256, 350, 355-6, 358, 369, 431

_Dominium_: meaning of, 193

_Donum_--_see_ Scutage

Dorset boroughs in Domesday, 99, 331-4, 341; _see_ Civic League

Dorset, the _firma unius noctis_ in, 96, 99

Dover: as a Cinque Port, 425, 426; Garrison of, 216

Droitwich, survey of, 146, 148

Dublin: its trade with Chester, 353-4

Dugdale, Sir William: his errors, 356, 359-60

Eadgyth--_see_ Edith

Eadric the wild, 253^{22}

Eadric (? the wild), 323, 325

Earldoms of two counties, 328

East Anglia--_see_ Norfolk, Suffolk

Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor, 124, 129, 340, 342

Edward the Confessor: his foreign tastes, 248, 428; his priest, Regenbald, 323; his alleged charter to the Cinque Ports, 422-6

Edward I: his Cinque Ports charter, 424, 425, 426, 428-9

Ellis, Mr A. S., 249^{7}, 257^{43}

---- Sir Henry: ignored the _Inq. Com. Cant._, 18; misrepresented the Northamptonshire geld-roll, 59; edited the _Inq. El._, 107; on date of Domesday, 118^{250}; on its mention, 120; prints the Northamptonshire geld-roll, 124; on Domesday jurors, 140; unduly depreciated by Prof Freeman, 334, 341; on Walter Tirel, 355

Elmley Castle, descent of, 145^{12}

Elton, Mr C., 95

Ely: charters to church of, 213; its knights, 236; despoiled of lands, 349-50; _see also Placitum_

Ely, Nigel, bishop of, 327, 368^{2}

---- William, bishop of: _see_ Longchamp

Enfeoffment: _sine carta_, 206; antiquity of, 232, special, 132; _See_ Feoffment

Engaine family and fief, 124, 129-30, 132, 179

Eschalers, Hardwin d', 31, 32, 117

'Escuz', meaning of, 307-8, 317-18

Essex, Alice of, 381

---- Geoffrey, Earl of, 381, 432

---- William, Earl of, 381, 384

Eudo Dapifer, 131, 180; his fief, 350 his wife, 356, 358, 432

Euremou (Envermeu), Hugh de, 132-134, 137

Eustace, sheriff of Hunts, 138, 180-1

Evesham: Henry II at, 385-6, 390

---- Abbey: its knights, 237-8; its service, 238; Æthelwig, abbot of, 238-9; Walter, abbot of, 237-8^{247}

Evidence, treatment of historical, 291-292, 336-7, 343, 344, 346, 376

Ewald, Mr A. C., 118^{250}

Ewyas Harold, 252

Exaggerations of chroniclers, 222, 228-9

Exchequer: early mention of, 146-7; at Winchester, 381

Exchequer Rolls, 199-200, 209 _sqq._

Exeter: military service of, 65; the Conqueror's siege of, 330 _sqq._; breaching of its walls, 335-7; besieged by Swegen, 335-6; offends William, 338-9; is favoured by him, 339; its alleged penalty, 340; its tribute, 340-2, 344-5; baffles William, 343; is 'betrayed', 344; parallel with Le Mans, 345

Exeter, Baldwin of: _see_ Baldwin

_Exoniensis, Liber_: _see Liber Exoniensis_

Eyton, Mr: on the Domesday hide, 42, 47^{83-5}, 63; his methods, 46, 62, 98-100, 150; his Somerset book, 61, 98; on the Leicestershire hide, 76; on the Devonshire hide, 84; on assessment in Lincolnshire, 86; on the _firma unius noctis_, 99; on the comital Manors of Somerset, 100; his 'Key to Domesday', 99-100, 165^{44}; on Domesday Book, 118; on the Lindsey Survey, 153-4; on Danegeld, 378; on Henry II, 382-4, 385-7, 433^{4}

Falvel (Fauvel), Gilbert, 138, 180

Faritius, Abbot, 120

Fécamp Abbey, grants to, 248-9, 427-8

Feoffment: the 'old' and 'new', 190-2, 194, 196-7. _See_ Enfeoffment

Feudal Court, the, 205-6

Feudalism in England: underrated, 7-8, 208, 245, 248, 403-5. _See_ Knight-service

Fiefs: descent of, 171-4; 'Mouvance' of, 357; the chief lay ones, 201-5; succession to, 129-30, 132-3, 134, 138-9, 144-5, 147-8, 160, 171-4

Fifield: origin of the name, 66

Finance--_see_ Danegeld

Fine, an early Leicestershire, 173

Fines: Introduction of, 385 _sqq._, 432-3; development of, 389-90

_Firma unius noctis_, 96-100

Fitz Audelin, William, 353, 381-2, 385-6, 387, 390-1

Fitz Count, Brian, 177

Fitz Dolfin, Patrick, 370

---- Uchtred, 370

Fitz Maldred, Gilbert, 370

---- Robert, 370

Fitz Odo, William, 369

Fitz Osbern, Earl William, 328, 329^{19}

Fitz Ralf, William, 385-8

Fitz Richard, William, 369

Fitz Stephen, Robert, 394-6

Fitz Uchtred, Dolfin, 370, 371-2

Fitz Walters, Origin of the, 359-60, 432

Fitz Winemar, Walter, 179

Five boroughs, the, 67^{136}, 68

Five hides: a unit of assessment, 47 _sqq._; even in towns, 48, 130; connected with military service, 48, 65-6, 187-8; conspicuous in Oxon and Berks, 63-4; in Bucks, Wilts and Middlesex, 64; originates place-names, 66; its origin, 82 _sqq._; its antiquity, 83; not a knight's fee, 231-2; _see also_ Towns

Five knights: unit of military service, 204-5, 206, 227, 232-3

Flambard, Ranulf: his alleged action, 182-4, 186; his real action, 241-3, 256^{37}

Fleming, Ralf and Guy, 175

Foliot, Richard, 178

Food-rents--_see_ Wales

Foreign Service: Liability to, 398 _sqq._; exemption from, 399-400, 401-2; a moot obligation, 403, 405

Freeman, Professor: unacquainted with the _Inq. Com. Cant._, 18; ignores the Northamptonshire geld-roll, 125; confuses the _Inquisitio geldi_, 124; his contemptuous criticism, 126, 261, 295-6, 332, 346; when himself in error, 126-7; his charge against the Conqueror, 127, 431; on Hugh d'Envermeu, 132-3; on Hereward, 133-6; his 'certain' history, 251, 331; his 'undoubted history', 134-5, 360-1; his 'facts', 333; on Heming's cartulary, 140; on Mr Waters, 155^{23}; on the introduction of feudal tenures, 183-6, 207, 213^{121}, 236^{239}, 239^{258}; on the knight's fee, 188; on Ranulf Flambard, 184; on the evidence of Domesday, 185-6; underrates feudal influence, 198, 404-5; on scutage, 213^{121}; overlooks the Worcester relief, 241; influenced by words and names, 247, 262; on Normans under Edward, 248 _sqq._; his bias, 248, 302-4; on Richard's castle, 249 _sqq._; confuses individuals, 251-2, 296-7, 358; his assumptions, 251; on the name Alfred, 254; on the Sheriff Thorold, 255-6; on the battle of Hastings, 258 _sqq._; his pedantry, 259-63; his 'palisade', 264 _sqq._, 273-4, 285, 287, 297, 300, 309; misconstrues his Latin, 265-6, 333-4; his use of Wace, 267-9, 270, 272^({40}), 274, 289; on William of Malmesbury, 268, 314-17, 336; his words suppressed, 269^{24}, 301-2; on the Bayeux Tapestry, 269-72; imagines facts, 272-3, 285^({117}), 297, 331; his supposed accuracy, 273^{41}, 274, 295, 333-4, 336, 340-1, 342; right as to the shield-wall, 273-7; his guesses, 277-8, 279-80, 282, 289, 291-2, 297, 298-9, 331-3, 347, 351; his theory of Harold's defeat, 278, 292-3; his confused views, 280-1, 309, 335-6, 340-1, 342; his dramatic tendency, 282; evades difficulties, 287-8, 346; his treatment of authorities, 290, 343-4; on the relief of Arques, 295; misunderstands tactics, 293-4, 297; on Walter Giffard, 296-7; his failure, 298; his special weakness, 298, 300; his splendid narrative, 298, 301; his Homeric power, 300; on Harold and his Standard, 308; on Wace, 309-11, 313; on Regenbald, 326; on Earl Ralf, 327-8; on William Malet, 329; on the Conqueror's earldoms, 328-9; his Domesday errors and confusion, 126-7, 326, 328, 333-4, 339-42, 351-2; on 'the Civic League', 331-3; his wild dream, 335; his special interest in Exeter, 330; on legends, 336-7; on Thierry, 344, 348; his method, 346; on Lisois, 350; on Stigand, 350; on Walter Tirel, 360-1; on St Hugh's action [1197], 398; on the Winchester Assembly, 403-5; distorts feudalism, 404; on the King's court, 405; on Richard's change of seal, 407; necessity of criticizing his work, 11-12, 273

Fyfield--_see_ Fifield

Gant, Walter de, 155

Gardiner, Prof, 307

Gaunt, Agnes de, 165

Geld-roll--_see_ Danegeld, Northamptonshire

Genealogy--_see_ Domesday tenants, Fitz Audelin, Marmion, Montmorency, Neville, Tirel

'Gemot', the: not feudal, 404-5

Geoffrey the Chancellor, 366, 368

Geroy and his offspring, 355

Gervase, Chronology of, 373-4

_Gesta Stephani_, authority of, 374-6

'Gewered', 124--_see Wara_

Giffard, the aged Walter, 296; his daughter Rohese, 355, 356

---- William, Bishop of Winchester, 356

Giffards, greatness of the, 355-6, 357-8

Glanvile, Ranulf de, 381, 384, 433

Glastonbury Abbey: its knights, 237, 239^{257}

Gloucester, Family of De, 244-5

---- Robert, Earl of, 154, 179, 180, 369, 374-5

---- William, Earl of, 375

Glynton, Geoffrey de, 175

Gneist, Dr R.: on knight-service, 182^{2}, 186^{24}, 206^{97}, 208^{106}, 228

Godwine, Prof Freeman on, 304

Grantmesnil, Ivo de, 347-8

Green, Mr J. R.: on Chester, 353; on the Danish districts, 67^{136}, 79;

Greenstreet, Mr J., on the Lindsey Survey, 149-50, 153-4

Gresley, William de, 163, 174

Gross, Dr C., on the Coroner, 105^{212}

Grouping of Vills for assessment, 48 _sqq._; _see also_ Vills

Guines, Count of, 352

Gundeville, Hugh de, 381, 382^{7}, 382^{8}, 383^{15}, 388

Hale, Archdeacon, 92

Hall, Mr Hubert, 121, 122, 209, 245, 321, 381^{2}

Hamilton, Mr N. E. S. A.: edits the _Inq. Com. Cant._, 18, 349; rates it too highly, 22-3; edits the _Inq. El._, 107

Hampshire, the _firma unius noctis_ in, 96-7

Hanslape, Michael de, 179

Hapsburgs, the English, 397^{11}

Harding, son of Eadnoth, 256^{37}

Harold: half a Dane, 248; his tactics, 265-6, 276, 277-9, 280-3; styled king by William, 323, 325

Hardy, Sir T. D., 18

Harrison, Mr F., 261, 263^{3}

Hastings, 248; in Domesday, 427; its barons, 422, 426-7, 428; its charter, 425; its harbour, 427-8

Hastings, Battle of, 258 _sqq._, 431 (_see_ Table of Contents)

Hastings, ravages near, 126-7, 431

Henry I: his favourites, 160, 172-3, (358); charters of, 213, 236^{239}, 237, 358, 364-5; he exacts military service, 239; and the Church, 243; his Cirencester charter, 326-7; his Plimpton charter, 366-9

Henry II: his alleged invasion in 1147, 373; his movements in 1142-9, 373-4, 375-6; his action in 1163, 377, 379, 380, 398; his movements in 1175-6, 385-8; confirms fines, 385, 389; his Cinque Ports charters, 422^{21}, 425-6, 429; his writ for Chester, 353; his legal reforms, 432-3

Henry (King), son of Henry II: his court at Winchester, 381 _sqq._; his movements in 1170-1174, 382

Hereford Castle, 252-3. _See also_ Ralf

Herefordshire, Normans in, 249-54

Hereward 'the Wake', 132-6

Hertford, earldom of, 358

Hertfordshire, assessment in, 59

Hesdin, Ernulf de, 95

_Hidarii_: their relation to the hide, 94

Hide, the Domesday: four virgates in, 24^{14}, 41-2, 430; a hundred and twenty acres in, 43-7; not an areal measure, 62-3, but a term of assessment, 63, 82-3, 96; peculiar use of the word in Leicestershire, 76-8, and in Lancashire, 79; the alleged double, 92-4; its origin, 430

Hide, the areal, 66-7

---- of Lancashire, 79

---- of Leicestershire, 76

Historical evidence, treatment of--_see_ Evidence

Historical Research, present sphere of, 406

Historical Truth, 332

'Honour': the term, 243

'Hostiarius', Robert: his fief, 34-5

House, Communal demolition of, 416, _et seq._

Hoveden, accuracy of, 407, 408-9, 410, 412-413

Howlett, Mr R., 373-6, 422^{21}

Hugh 'Candidus': value of his chronicle, 133-4, 135^{15}; on the Peterborough fees, 137

Hundred: quartering of the, 49 _sqq._, 58, 90; it was assessed as a whole, 51-55, 62, 82; the unit for the Domesday Survey, 54; and for collection of Danegeld, 54, 85-6, 88-91; the 'double', 58; and the 'half', 59, 70, 83; the triple, 60; its relation to 100 hides, 59, 87-8; its origin, 87; how named, 165

Hundred Court: used for the Domesday Survey, 102-4, 105, 114; witness of, 170

Hundred, the Leicestershire, 74-6, 160, 165-6

Hundred: the 'Long', 66-8

---- of twelve carucates, the, 69-74, 77-8, 166

Hunt, Rev. W., 250^{13}, 253^{23}, 259, 275, 276, 299, 358, 395

Hunter, Rev. J., 56

Hunting: connected with Pytchley, 129-30; with Langham, 362-3

Huntingdonshire, assessment in, 58

Husting, the Court of, 105

Hythe: its charter, 426

Ilbert, the sheriff, 350

Ingulf, the pseudo-, 120, 122, 132, 136-7, 154, 255^{34}; uses William of Malmesbury, 321-2

_Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis_, the: its discovery, 17; is a transcript of the Domesday returns, 19, 123, 430; its system, 20; collated with the _Inq. El._, 20-2; specimen of, 21; its omissions, 23-5; errors in, 25-6, 31, 36, 45, 46; special information in, 36; illustrates the _caruca_, 41, and the Domesday hide, 42; often omits _terra regis_, 46-7, 50^{88}; value of its Vill-assessments, 47 _sqq._, 52; its lists of jurors, 102 _sqq._; its variants from the _Inq. El._, 108-11

_Inquisitio Comitatus Eliensis_, the, 17-18, 19, 106-18; edited by Sir Henry Ellis, 106-7; again by Mr Hamilton, 18; its origin, 20-1; specimen of, 21; its value, 28-9; its texts, 30, 103-4, 107, 112, 114-15, 123, 430; represents a return, 114; ordered by the Conqueror's writ, 105, 114; errors in, 107-8, 113; its variants from the _Inq. Com. Cant._, 108-10; its lost original, 111; its constituents, 111, 115; its special information, 112-13; its heading and its date, 115; materials employed for it, 115, 430; including Domesday Book (Vol. II), 116, 120; analysis of its contents, 116-18

_Inwara_, 101

Irvine, Mr Fergusson, 79

Jeaffreson, Mr J. Cordy, 353

John, King: demands service abroad, 402-3; his charters to the Cinque Ports, 425-6, 429

Jones, Mr: on Wilts, in Domesday, 125^{2}

Jumièges, William of, 314, 318, 319

_Jugum_, the Kentish: its four 'virgates', 95

Juhel: a Breton name, 254-5

---- 'of Lincoln', 255; _see also_ Thorold

'Jurats', the, 416, 421

Jurors of the Domesday Survey, 102-6, 430-1; half English and half foreigners, 104; variants in lists of, 108-10; in Herts, 115

Kemble, Mr J. M.: on the hide, 62

Kent: low assessment of, 86; the _sulung_ of, 92-5; the 'lathes' of, 94^{197}; its landowners, 95; under Stephen, 125-6

Knight-service; its introduction into England, 182 _sqq._; how determined, 186-9, 206; returns of, 189 _sqq._; '_super dominium_', 191-2, 193-194; the '_servitium debitum_', 194-195, 197 _sqq._, 212, 219, 220, 225, 227, 228, 234, 239; in Normandy, 206^{96}, 207, 230; in Ireland, 207; introduced by the Conqueror, 207, 234-6; the author's theory of, 206-8; aggregate of, 228, 230

Knight-service: of bishops, 399-401

Knight's fees: standard of, 186-9, 231-232; return of, 189-90 _sqq._; views on, 208; number of, 210-11, 228-30; Old-English list of, 241

Knights: Inquest of [1166], 185, 189-190 _sqq._, 210-11; through the sheriffs, 191-2; its object, 193 _sqq._; how conducted, 195-6; effect on Church fiefs, 196-7; depends on tradition, 205-6

Knights: Joint Equipment of, 400; Payment of, 214-6, 235-6; wages of, 399-400, 402^{18}

Laci family and fief, 141-4, 145, 244

Lancashire, the 'hide' in, 79

Lanfranc, Archbishop, 114, 235^{232}, 236

Langham, Essex, 355, 357, 362

'Laudabiliter', the 'Bull', 390

Laund Priory: when founded, 368

Law, Constitutional: studied by William Rufus, 403

Leets: mentioned in Domesday, 90, 166; found a century later as groups of Vills, 89

Leicester: alleged destruction of [1068], 331^{7}, 347; Justices at [1176], 388; Military Service of, 68

Leicester, Hugh de, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164

Leicestershire Survey, the, 74-6, 80-2, 160, _sqq._

_Liber Exoniensis_: 42^{72}, 122^{265}, 125^{2}

---- _Niger_, 179, 189, 226, 431. _See_ 'Cartæ'

---- _Rubeus_, 179, 189, 192^{44}, 209, 226, 245

_Liberi homines_: their tenure, 37^{52}, 38-40

Liebermann, Dr F., 256

Lincoln: Alfred of, 255; Colswegen of, 131, 132; Earldom of, 151-3; the 'long' hundred at, 66; William's treatment of, 342: _see also_ Juhel, Thorold

Lincoln, Alexander, Bishop of, 327, 366, 367, 368

---- St Hugh of: opposes the Crown, 398 _sqq._; in the cause of privilege, 402

Lincoln, Simon, dean of, 173^{63}

Lincolnshire: a Danish district, 67, 68; assessment in, 86

Lindsey Survey, the, 69-73, 149 _sqq._, 160, 180^{13}, 186^{23}, 196

L'Isle, Robert de, 164, 165, 174

Lisures, Fulc, de, 130

---- William de, 176, 177

Little, Mr: on the five-hide unit, 65

London: its Norman port at Dowgate, 249

Londoners and the chase, 324^{4}

Longchamp, William, 400, 407, 409-10, 414-15

Longevity, remarkable, 296

Lords, the House of: its feudal origin, 198^{60}

Luard, Dr H. R., 411^{17}

Luci, Richard de, 381, 384

Lucy, The Countess, 151-2, 153, 154, 255

Madeley (Staffs.), descent of, 173

Madox: on church fees, 197^{58}

Maitland, Prof: on the Hundred, 87; on the Leet, 90; on the Ramsey knights, 234; on fines, 385, 388; on Richard's seals, 407

Malchael, drowning of Roger, 408-9

Maldon, Battle of, 266, 268, 277

Malet, William, 255, 256, 329, 349; his death, 134

Malmesbury, William of, 268, 276, 277, 291, 295; used by Wace, 313-18; by 'Ingulf', 322; his legends, 315-316, 336

Man, Isle of: 'sheaddings' in, 71^{145}

Mandeville, Geoffrey de, 256. _See_ Essex

Mandeville, William de, 177, 179

Manor, the two-field and the three-field, 79-82

Manors 'de Comitatu', 100

Marmion family and fief, 143, 145, 155-9, 176, 179, 180, 181; name, 158

Marriage, rival claims settled by, 159

Marsh (_De Marisco_), Family of, 396-7

Marten skins: Ireland exports, 354

Martinwast, Ralf de, 162, 168

Matilda, wife of King Stephen, 352^{1}

Maud, Queen of Henry I, presides over suit, 120

Mayoralty, Compulsory, 416, 419-20, 421

Merc (Marck) family and fief, 351-2

---- Alouf de, 177, 179

Meschin, Ranulf, 150-2

---- William, 152-3, 164, 171, 174, 177, 178, 179, 180, 360

Meulan, Robert, Count of, 140, 142-3, 145, 154-5, 347-8

Meyer, M. Paul, 307

Middlesex, Hidation in, 64

Monasteries, knight-service of, 200-1, 220, 233-8

Montfichet, William de, 202, 205; his wife, 358; their son Gilbert, 431

Montfort, Hugh de, 255

Montmorency claim, the, 392 _sqq._

Moore, Mr Stuart, 124

Morkere, Earl, 125

Morres--_See_ Montmorency

Mortain, Robert, Count of, 124, 128; his wife, 124, 128

Mortain, Stephen, Count of, 160, 164-165, 172, 180

Moustiers, Lisois de, 38, 349-50

Mowbray, Roger de: his fief, 171

Mustere, Walter de, 162

Nepotism, Ecclesiatical, 236-8, 326-7

Neville family and fief, 137-8, 370

---- their origin, 370-2

---- Alan de, 381, 384

Nomenclature, loose Norman, 138^({21}), 178-9, 360-1

Norfolk, assessment in, 88 _sqq._

---- Ralf, Earl of, 327-8, 349

Norgate, Miss Kate, 213^{121}, 217-18, 222, 224, 266^{16}, 269^{24}, 279^{82}, 280^({84, 86}), 281^{96}, 282, 289^{122, 123}, 293^{133}, 311, 365, 374, 375^{7}, 377^{1}, 378, 379^{10}, 390-1, 395, 400, 407, 409, 410-12, 412^{18, 22}; on scutage, 217-18, 222

Norman Conquest, the: a starting point, 247-8

Normans under Edward, 247 _sqq._

Northamptonshire: its geld-roll, 124-130; its devastation in 1065, 125; its Hundreds, 59, 128; its 'hidation', 67^{136}

Northamptonshire Survey, the, 175-81

Nottinghamshire: a Danish district, 68; low assessment of, 85-6

Odards, two, 371

Oger 'Brito': his son Ralf, 176, 179

Olifard family, 181

---- William, 176

Oliphant--_see_ Olifard

Oman, Mr, 265^{10}, 276, 286, 299

_Oppidum_, meaning of, 262

Ordericus Vitalis, 260-2, 291, 331, 336, 347-8, 360-1, 362

Osbern, Bishop of Exeter, 249

---- the son of Richard, 249-52, 253

---- 'Pentecost', 251-2

Osmund, 'the King's writer', 124

Oswaldslow Hundred, 141-4

Oxen--_see Caruca_

Oxford, justices at [1176], 389, [1180], 433

Oxford, Aubrey, first Earl of, 352

Oxfordshire, Hidation in, 63

Palgrave, Sir Francis, 17-18, 332, 341, 346

Palmer, Mr C. F. R., 157^{29}

Paris, M. Gaston, 307

Paynel, Fulk, 148, 177, 178

Pearson, Prof.: on knight service, 231

Pedantry is not accuracy, 262

Pedigree-makers, 134, 390-1, 394-7

Pell, Mr O.: his theories, 30, 41, 46, 63, 66, 74^{149}, 76, 101, 430

Pembroke, Gilbert, Earl of, 357, 393-4

---- Richard, Earl of, 393-4

Pepys, Samuel: on Domesday Book, 185

Percy, William de: his wife, 358-9

Peter of Blois: his alleged chronicle, 120, 154

Peterborough, Cartulary of, 124; its _scriptorium_, 124--_see_ Hugh

Peterborough, Turold, Abbot of, 135-6

Peterborough, knights of, 131-9, 181, 214, 240

Picardy, the Commune in, 416-17, 418, 420-1

Picot, Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, 31, 103, 104, 117, 138, 204^{92}, 349

Pistres, Roger de, 244-5, 364

_Placita_, 115, 214^{125}, 349, 387-8; _regia_, 255; _regalia_, 256^{37}; _in curia regis_, 386-8; _abbatis_, 132

_Placita_, early: in Cambridgeshire, 104; in Dorset, 105; in London, 105; in Hants, 214^{125}

_Placitum_, the great Ely, 37-8, 39, 349

Plagiarism, medieval, 285^{117}

Plimpton Priory, royal charter to, 366

Plough--_see Caruca_

Ploughland--_see Carucate_

Plumpton Plain, 262

Pluralist, the first great, 326-7

Poitiers, William of, 270, 273^{41}, 276, 284, 285-6, 287, 288, 291, 292-4, 295, 336, 343-5

Pomerey family, 369

Port, Henry de, 161

Precedent, dread of creating a, 401, 403

Puher family, 145, 244

Quency, William de, 177

Raimbercurt, Guy de, 31, 35, 117, 170, 178^{6}; his son Richard, 175, 179

Ralf, Earl of Hereford, 252-4

Ramis, Roger de, 162

Ramsey Abbey: knight-service of, 233-234; its _carta_, 234

Ranulf, the chancellor, 365, 367, 368

_Recedere, potuit_: a phrase distinguishing tenure, 28, 31, 32-4, 35-40

Records, historical value of, 406

Red Book of the Exchequer--_see Liber Rubeus_

Redvers, Baldwin de, 367, 369

Regenbald, the chancellor, 257, 323 _sqq._

Regent, the Justiciar as, 329^{19}

Relief, the feudal, 241-3

'Ricardi': Clares so styled, 355

Richard I: his demand in 1197, 398-402; his change of seal [1198], 406 _sqq._; his captivity, 408, 409; his want of money, 399, 410; angry with Longchamp, 412-13; his movements, 414; his Cinque Ports charter, 425

Richard the son of Scrob, 249-54

Richard's castle: descent of, 145, 147-8; building of 249 _sqq._

Ridel, Geoffrey (I and II), 173; (II), 388

Robert, son of Wimarc, 251^{16}, 256-7

Rochester, See of: its knight-service, 199^({63})

Rollos, Richard de--_see_ Rullos

_Rotuli Wincestrie_, 175

Rouen: its trade with Ireland, 354; Henry I at, 364

Roumare, William de, 151-3, 202

Rullos, Richard and William de, 136-7, 161

Rutland in Domesday, 68^{137}, 73, 84^{173}

Rye--_see_ Winchelsea

_Saca_--_see Soca_

St Bertin, Abbey of, 351, 361^{12}

St Edmund's Abbey: its knights, 400-1; Baldwin, Abbot of, 255, 329

St John, Thomas de, 173^{63}

---- William de, 381, 383^{15}

St Medard, Anschetil de, 131, 240

Salisbury, Edward of, 162, 171, 173, 174

Salisbury, Herbert, Bishop of, 398, 401-402

Salisbury, Roger, Bishop of, 213, 214, 327

Sandwich: Custumal of, 416, 419-20; its charter, 425

Sawley, the 'Hundred' of, 73, 165-6

_Scalariis_--_see_ Eschalers

Scotland, David, King of, 160-5, 174, 175, 176, 432

Scotland, Malcolm, King of, 124, 432

Scrivelby, descent of, 158

Scutage, 209 _sqq._; antiquity of, 212-15, 217 _sqq._; on church fiefs, 401

Seal, Richard I's change of, 406 _sqq._

Seebohm, Mr F., 40, 83-4, 86, 92, 93-5, 97, 189, 215^{129}

'Senlac', the name of, 259-63

Senlis, Matilda de, 360, 432

_Servientes_, pay of, 215-16, 223-4

Sheriff's aid, the, 379

Sheriffs named from county town, 138-9

Sherstone, battle of, 280-1

Shield-wall, the, 264, 265, 266, 268-9, 273-7, 284, 300-1, 306, 307, 317-18, 321. _See_ 'Testudo'

Sicily, Prof Freeman on, 303

Six carucates a unit of assessment, 66-76, 79-82, 160; Scandinavian, 430

'Sixty thousand', loose use of, 228-9

Skeat, Prof: on 'leet', 90

Snorro, 321

_Soca_, 28-9, 31, 32-3, 35-40, 112; detached from tenure, 100-101

Soke of Eadulfsness, the, 94

Sokemen, 28-9, 31, 32-3, 35-40

_Solanda_: not identical with _solinum_, 91-4; referred to a prebend, 93

_Solinum_: the Kentish _sulung_ or ploughland, 91-5; its four _juga_, 95

Somerset: assessment in, 61; the _firma unius noctis_ in, 96-9; comital Manors of, 100

Stafford, Robert de, 173

Staffordshire, low assessment of, 85-6

Stamford: its wards, 68

Standard, battle of the, 276^({62})-277^{67}, 279-80

Stapleton, 131, 132^{4}, 352; on the Lindsey Survey, 149; on William Meschin, 151-2, 153^{14}; on the Marmions, 155-9; Lambert's statement disproved by, 352

Stephen, King, devastation under, 125; _see also_ Mortain

Stevenson, Mr W. H., 149; on Mr Pell's theories, 63; on the 'long' hundred, 66; on the hundred of land, 70^{143}; on the Leicestershire 'hide', 77-8; on the St Denis charters, 427^{9}

Steyning: granted to Fécamp, 249, 428

Stigand, archbishop, 349-50

Stubbs, Dr (Bishop of Oxford): on the hide, 47^{85}; on the hundred, 54, 87-8; misled by Ellis, 59, 124; on Stephen's earldoms, 152; on the origin of knight-service, 182-4; on the knight's fee, 187-9, 232; on the _Cartæ Baronum_, 189 _sqq._; on personal assessment, 195^{56}, 196^{57}; on scutage, 217-18; on joint equipment, 218^{143}; on feudal tenures, 208^{108}, 234; on aggregate of knights, 228-9; on knights' fees, 233; his insight, 54, 242, 245, 334^{14}, 335^{15}; on 'Ingulf' 298; on the Woodstock debate, 377, 398; on danegeld, 377-8; on Becket's opposition, 380^{13}; on the _curia regis_, 387-8, 432-3; on St Hugh's opposition [1197], 398, 400, 402^{19}; on archæology, 406; on Richard's change of seal, 407-10, 411-15

Sudbury, peculiar position of, 90

Sudely, John de, 147

Suffolk: assessment in, 88 _sqq._; Nordman, sheriff of, 327, 329

Sussex ports, Normans at, 249; _see also_ Cinque Ports

Swereford, errors of, 118^{250}, 198, 209-10, 212, 217-18, 225, 228

Tamworth, descent of, 156, 158-9

Tavistock Abbey, military service of, 201, 236

Taxation--_see_ Danegeld, Assessment

Taylor, Canon Isaac: his theory of assessment, 62, 80^{166}-81; on the carucate, 66^{133}; on the hundred, 74^{151}

'Testudo' (shield-wall), 277, 317-18, 321

Thegn, the: qualification of, 65-6; in Yorkshire, 69

'Thegnland', 35-40

Thierry, Mons.: on the Commune, 416-17, 418

Thinghoe, hundred of: inquest on, 88

Thorold (of Lincoln) the Sheriff--_see_ Turold

Tillières, Truce of, 406, 409, 412-13

Tirel, Walter, 355 _sqq._; his parentage, 360-1; his wife Adeliz (de Clare), 355-6, 362-3; their son Hugh, 355, 357, 361, 362-3; the family, 360-2

Toeni family and fiefs, 146

Toni, Robert de--_see_ Stafford

Totnes, Honour of, 369^{4}

---- Juhel de, 254-5, 367, 369^{4}

Toulouse, the 'scutage' of, 209-10, 215, 218-23

Tout, Prof T. F.: on Hereward, 134^{11}-136; on William Fitz Audelin, 390

Towns: assessed on same system as Vills, 48, 55, 58, 59, 60, 64-5, 130

Tracy family--_see_ Sudeley

Treasury, the Royal: at Winchester, 121-2; its contents, 121-2

Trithing: in Lindsey, 70; an equal division, 71

Tuchet, Henry, 165, 172, 174

Turold, the sheriff, 202^{76}, 255-6

Vautort, Reginald de, 369

_Vendere_--_see Recedere_

Verdon, Bertram de, 387-8

Verdon, Norman de, 161-3, 166-7

Vere, Aubrey de--_see Camerarius_

Vills, grouping of, 49 _sqq._, 63^{122}, 71-3, 75, 88-91, 96-7, 99

Vinogradoff, Prof P., 92, 93-5, 101, 303^{161}

Vincent, Mr J. A. C., 67, 154^{15}

Virgate, the Domesday: 30 acres in, 42; essentially a quarter, 50, 430; in Kent a quarter of the _jugum_ and even of an acre, 95; the 'parva', 175

Wace: Master, 306 _sqq._; Prof Freeman's use of, 267-9, 289, 309-11, 319-20; the disputed passage in, 267, 302, 306; its four or five renderings, 307, 317-18; Prof Freeman's final view of it, 268, 300-1, 306, 308, 317; contradicted by Mr Archer, 301-2, 306; his accuracy, 271, 309-10, 313-14; on the 'fosse' disaster, 289-91; on the feigned flight, 294-5; his 'escuz', 307; lacks corroboration, 309; his errors, 310; his anachronism, 310-11; his late date, 311; his sobriety, 312-13; his sources, 313-20

Wake family and fief, 134, 136-7; pedigree of, 359

Walchelin, Bishop of Winchester, 114-15

Waldric, the Chancellor, 364

Wales, food-rents in, 84, 97

Waltheof, Earl, 349

Walton, garrison of, 216

Wapentake, the: in Lindsey, 70, 76, 149; in Holland, 73; in Rutland, 73; in Yorkshire, 80; in Leicestershire, 160

_Wara_, 35, 60^{114}, 166; its meaning in Domesday, 100-2; in the Burton Cartulary, 101

Warenne, William de, 37

Warwick: military service of, 68

---- Roger Earl of, 367, 368

'Waste': on the rolls, 125-6, 128; in Domesday, 126-8; under Stephen, 126

Waters, Mr Chester, 62; on the Lindsey Survey, 149-52, 153-4, 155, 160, 166^{46} 180^{13}; on the Marmions, 158-9

Webb, Mr P. C., 17-18, 118^{250}

William I: introduces knight-service, 207, 232, 234-6, 239; writs of 114, 238; his tactics, 285-6, 293, 294, 299; his charter to Regenbald, 324; his English writs, 324-5, 327-8, 329; his 'licentia', 326-7, 329; his siege of Exeter, 330 _sqq._; his great danger [1067], 330; his alleged harrying, 333; his policy, 337-8, 343, 346; his vengeance, 339; raises castles, 339; increases town tributes, 342; his treatment of Exeter and Le Mans, 345; favours Ely Abbey, 349; his Lillebonne assembly, 401, 405

William II: exacts military service, 235, 239; did not introduce it, 182-4; his extortions, 241-3; his dealings with the Church, 241-3; his appeal to the barons, 403-5; studies constitutional law, 404; his court at Salisbury, 405^{36}

Wiltshire: the _firma unius noctis_ in, 96, 98. _See also_ Jones

Winchelsea and Rye, 248; their charter, 425-6; members of 'Brede', 428

Winchester: early suit at, 120; the Royal treasury in its castle, 120-2, 175; Exchequer at, 381; feudal assembly at, 403-405

Winchester, Henry Bishop of, 237

Windows, strange use of, 308^{14}

Winemar, Walter Fitz, 179

Wirral peninsula, the, 79

Witan--_see_ Gemot; Lords

Woodstock, council at, 377, 398-9

Worcester, see of: its knights, 231, 236, 240, 241 _sqq._

Worcestershire: assessment of, 60; survey, 140-8

Wording, alteration of, 22, 34-5

Writs addressed through sheriff [1166], 192-3

Wyon, Mr, 410

Yarmouth, rights of Hastings at, 422^{21}, 425-6

Yorkshire: a Danish district, 68-9; its assessment, 73-4, 79-81

* * * * *

Transcriber's Note:

^ denotes a superscript.

The ligature æ is not necessarily consistent in its use, e.g. 'mediæval' is used more in Part I of this book, but not in Part II; 'mediaeval' is used in both parts.

The original book contained a Foreword, which is not present in the scans from which this book derives.

'Foreword ... page 7' has been removed from the Table of Contents.

Page 51: Text and table were slightly re-arranged for better flow.

Page 138: 'Lincolnshire' could be an error for 'Lincolnescire' or 'Lincolnescira', both appearing on page 137.

(p. 137): "Hugh Candidus wrote of the former:

Heres Galfridi de Nevile tenet in Lincolnescire,..."

Page 251: "as we gather from Florence [?] ..."

64 Floriacensis Vigorinensis: John of Worcester (fl. 1095-1140), chronicler, the author of the world history formerly attributed to Florence of Worcester.

Survives in five twelfth-century manuscripts.

Holinshed's last citation is under 1115, ... ~ CATALOGUE OF PRINCIPAL SOURCES USED IN 1577 EDITION OF HOLINSHED’S CHRONICLES COMPILED BY HENRY SUMMERSON [http://www.cems.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/ Catalogue%20of%20principal%20sources.....pdf]

'Stamford Bridge' and 'Stamfordbridge' both appear more than once in this book, and in the First edition. Two instances of 'Stamfordbridge' have been corrected to 'Stamford Bridge', to correspond to the First edition.

Page 323 (in Chaper 'REGENBALD, PRIEST AND CHANCELLOR'): A Charter in Anglo-Saxon has been restored from the 1st edition (1895).

Anglo-Saxon letters in this Charter include:

þ = (lower-case) thorn; [W] representing Capital Wynn; [w] representing lower-case wynn; ð = (lower-case) eth; [þt] representing thorn with stroke, an abbreviation for þæt

þ and ð are also used elsewhere in the book.

Page 381: The printer has used a symbol to simulate a mediaeval scribe's abbreviarion of 'et'.

This has been replaced in this .txt version of the book by [et].

Pages 412-415: The 2-page table which interrupted the text has been removed to the end of the chapter (as it was in the First edition), and the page numbers and footnote numbers amended.

As the table is spread across two pages, line numbers have been added to connect the two pages.

The column headings run: _Granted_ _at_ _Confirmed_ _at_ _Grantee_ _Authority_

Line 1. of the first table is followed by line 1. of the second table, and so on. The brackets between lines 6. and 7. have been removed, and the common information duplicated, to enable the two sets of line-numbers to co-relate.

Page 432: 'enured' = 'inured' = (legal) 'took effect', etc.

Errata:

Many printer's errors, nearly all absent from the first edition, appear to have been introduced by a careless printer working from a copy of the first edition. Abbreviated titles, 'Mr.', 'Prof.', etc., in the First edition have mostly appeared in this edition as 'Mr', 'Prof', etc. These have been retained. Incorrect punctuation has been repaired without comment, except in the Index. Here the printer of this edition has replaced many of the colons of the First edition with commas, and added extra commas after sub-listings. These have been retained. Double quotes were used in the first edition; single quotes in this edition. This has led to some confusion where ' is used for both an abbreviation and a following end quote (''). Other errors are listed below.

Page 10, Footnote 3: '1404' corrected to '430'.

"See p. 430."

Page 24: 'invinit' corrected to 'invenit'. (Correct in 1895 ed.)

"... et vendere potuit, et iiii^{tam.} partem unius Avere vicecomiti invenit."

Page 26: 'defend [ebat]' corrected to 'defend[ebat]'.

"Pro v. hidis se defend[ebat] semper."

Page 29: 'vig.' corrected to 'virg.', (as 1895 ed.).

"i. 198 (_b_) 1. 'tenet Durand ... i. hidam et i. virg.', _for_ 'tenet Durand i. hidam et dim. virg.'"

Page 30, footnote 38: 'earucis' corrected to 'carucis'.

'carucis' is a ploughland; 'earucis' does not exist.

"... 'vi. carucis ibi est terra'. See _Addenda_.]"

Page 33: 'licentiat' corrected to 'licentia', (as 1895 ed.).

"Absque eius licentia dare terram suam potuerunt,..."

Page 33: 'receder' corrected to 'recedere', (as 1895 ed.).

"Potuerunt recedere cum terra ad quem dominum voluerunt."

Page 34: 'teræ' corrected to 'terræ', (as 1895 ed.).

"Robertus hostiarius tenet de rege ii. car. terræ in Howes."

Page 34, footnote 44: 'ne musad' corrected to 'nemus ad'

"'silua ad sepes refici.' (I.C.C.) = 'nemus ad claud. sepes' (D.B.)."

Page 36: 'abbats' corrected to 'abbatis', (as 1895 ed.).

"Non potuit dare nec vendere absque licentia abbatis."

Page 37, footnote 54: 'commdantione' corrected to 'commendatione', (as 1895 ed.).

"[... 'In soca et commendatione abbatis de eli' (D.B., ii. 441).]"

Page 66, footnote 133: 'Curacate' corrected to 'Carucate', (as 1895 ed.).

"Mr Stevenson, perhaps, is rather too severe on Canon Taylor's 'Carucate' remarks in the _New English Dictionary_."

Page 68: 'emenadtionis' corrected to 'emendationis', (as 1895 ed.).

"Hujus emendationis habet rex ii. partes, comes terciam."

Page 72: '65' corrected to '63'.

"Lastly, to complete the parallel with the Leicestershire Hundreds _infra_, we may take this case (_cf._ p. 63, note 122.)"

Page 81, footnote 169: '43' (11 (2 + 3 + 3 + 43).) corrected to '3'.

"... These assessments would give us 24 (6 + 6 + 6 + 3 + 3) + 24 (4 + 6 + 10 + 2 + 2) + 18 (3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3) + 11 (2 + 3 + 3 + 3)."

Page 89, footnote 184: 'constituuntut' corrected to 'constituuntur', (as 1895 ed.).

"'In hundredo de Tinghowe sunt xx. villæ ex quibus constituuntur ix. lete, quas sic distinguimus.' Gage's Suffolk, p. xii."

Page 90: eim[idium] corrected to 'dim[idium]', (as 1895 ed.)

"'Hund[redum] et dim[idium] de Clakelosa de x. leitis' (ii. 212_b_)."

Page 93: '_sullung solanda_'corrected to '_sullung_ or _solanda_', (as 1895 ed.).

"... shows that in the Kentish district, and in Essex, where the _sullung_ or _solanda_ takes the place of the hide,..."

Page 95: 'basse' corrected to 'bases'.

"Mr Seebohm bases this statement on Anglo-Saxon evidence,..."

Page 95: 'Cland. A. IV' corrected to 'Claud. (for Claudius) C. IV'. ('The bookcases of Sir Robert Cotton's library were identified by busts of Roman emperors. Cf. <http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=h2p8tEBZ9YYC&pg=PA193>

'A. IV' corrected to 'C. IV' (Wrong in 1895 ed., correct in Elton's book).)

"Mr Elton, in his well-known _Tenures of Kent_, attaches considerable importance to a list, 'De Suylingis Comitatus Kantiæ et qui eas tenent;...' in the Cottonian MS., Claud. C. IV, which he placed little subsequent to Domesday."

Page 96: 'numquam' and 'nunquam' are interchangeable; they both mean 'never', or 'not'.

Page 96: 'indominio' corrected to 'in dominio', (as 1895 ed.).

"Rex tenet in dominio _Basingestoches_."

Page 101: 'p. 61' corrected to 'p. 60'.

"in those Worcestershire Manors which were annexed as estates to Hereford, but which were assessed in those Worcestershire Hundreds where they actually lay (see p. 60)."

Page 107: Missing tag for footnote 219 added to page (as 1895 ed.).

Page 109: 'p[ræ] fectus' corrected to 'p[ræ]fectus' and 'hui [us]' corrected to 'hui[us]'

"Ric[ardus] p[ræ]fectus hui[us] hundreti" (TN: words italicised in text).

Page 113: 'Abllot's' corrected to 'Abbot's'.

"Abbot's sokeman 8(Acres) 20(Pence)"

Page 116: '_brere_' corrected to '_breve_'.

"et sunt scriptæ in _breve regis_ (i. 178)."

Page 117: "... by by...." First 'by' replaced with 'but'.

"is arranged not by Hundreds but by fiefs."

Page 117: 'dermodesdun a' corrected to 'dermodesduna', (as 1895 ed.).

"In dermodesduna tenuerunt xxv. liberi homines...."

Page 122: 'Huntington' corrected to 'Huntingdon', (as 1895 ed.).

"and Henry of Huntingdon states that '... inter thesauros reposita usque hodie servantur'."

Page 147: 'hidæet' corrected to 'hidæ et'.

"Summa lx. hidæ et dimidia."

Page 151: '1212' corrected to '1122'.

"Consequently Hugh, the youngest brother, can have been only a boy in 1122."

Page 151: '50' corrected to '60'.

"... two knights' fees of Stafford in 1166,[59] and that another is Robert Bagot, who held a quarter of a fee,[60] while Geoffrey Ridel himself then held one, namely, Madeley.[61]"

Page 161: 'ed' corrected to 'de'. (Roger de Moubray)

"In Picwell et in Lucerthorp de feudo Rogeri de Moubray xv. car."

Page 173: 'June 31st'. This agrees with the 1895 ed., but may refer to a document of 1st July, 1176. (see page 388, paragraph beginning: "Having now traced the royal _iter_, of which the pleas are....").

Page 177: 'Comitis[is]' corrected to 'Comit[is]', to match similar.

"In Evenle i. hid. et i. parvam virg. de feodo Comit[is] Leyc[estrie]."

Page 189 (et seq.): 'I. THE CARTAE OF 1166'. The 3rd impression agrees with the 1st Edition (1895). Subsequent 'cartæ' in this chapter (3rd impression) do not. All instances of 'cartæ' in this chapter have been corrected to 'cartae', as 1895 ed.

Page 208, Footnote 106: 'Gnesit' corrected to 'Gneist'.

"[Footnote 106: Gneist, _C.H._, i. 129, 156.]"

Page 212: _cartae_ corrected to '_carta_.

"For while the _carta_ of William de Braose returns twenty-eight fees,..."

Page 212: 'xxxviij. lij. s. vj. d.' corrected to 'xxxviij. l. ij. s. vj. d.' (38 pounds, 2 shillings, 6 pence)

"Abbas Gloucestriæ de promissione, sed non numeratur quid; sed in rotulo praecedenti dicitur:--Abbas Gloucestriæ debet xxxviij. l. ij. s. vj. d. de veteri scutagio Walliae."

Page 213: 'Charteris Abbey' corrected to 'Chatteris Abbey'.

Chatteris is a town about ten miles from Ely. Charteris appears to be in Scotland. r/t is a not uncommon printer's error in older books.

Page 215, Footnote 128: 'millitum' corrected to 'militum'.

"So too Bishop Wulfstan is found 'pompam militum secum ducens qui stipendiis annuis', etc. (W. Malmesb.)"

Page 217: 'Archibishop' corrected to 'Archbishop'.

"... Archbishop Theobald...."

Page 224, Footnote 161: This edition used single quotes, where earlier editions used double quotes. Sometimes this leads to confusion:

'Episcopus de Heref' reddit compotum de lxxvi. libris et v. solidis de promiss[ione] c. Servientium de Wal'' (p. 84).

where the following would have been clearer:

[... "Episcopus de Heref' reddit compotum de lxxvi. libris et v. solidis de promiss[ione] c. Servientium de Wal'" (p. 84).]

(Heref' and Wal' are abbreviations).

Page 230: 'restoring' corrected to 'resorting'.

"It is a hopeless undertaking to reconcile the facts with the wild figures of mediæval historians by resorting to the ingenious devices of apocalyptic interpretation." (as 1895 ed.)

Page 253, Footnote 22: 'pa' corrected to 'þa', as in 1895 ed.

"... but the words of the Worcester chronicler 'þa castelmenn on Hereforda' seem to fix the meaning to the city itself'"

Page 254: 'Althelings' corrected to 'Athelings', as in 1895 ed.

"The two former would naturally be given to godsons or dependants of the two Athelings while in Normandy [_i.e._ after 1013]."

Page 254: 'Britio' corrected to 'Brito' as in 1895 ed.

"... we have another Breton tenant-in-chief, 'Alvredus Brito'."

Page 255: 'Al veredus' corrected to 'Alveredus'.

"... et Hispaniensis Alveredus, cum aliis compluribus."

Page 256: 'Leibermann' corrected to 'Liebermann'.

"I can now, by the kindness of Dr Liebermann, add the instance of the Mandeville fief in Surrey,..."

Page 256: 'Wesmam' corrected to 'Wesman' as in 1895 ed.

"'De his hidis tenet Wesman vi. hidas de Goisfrido filio comitis Eustachii;..."

Page 261: 'pæt mysnter æt pære Bataille' corrected to 'þæt mynster æt þære Bataille'.

"... the usual title is 'ecclesia Sancti Martini de Bello', 'ecclesia de Bello', or, as we have seen, in English 'þæt mynster æt þære Bataille'."

Page 261: 'pære' corrected to 'þære'.

"('He com him togenes æt þære haran apuldran')."

Page 273: 'in' corrected to 'it'.

"... the palisade, and that it figures 'now in every history'."

Page 285, Footnote 117: '_stravil_' corrected to '_stravit_.' as 1895 ed.

"As the writer had just described how the Duke '_stravit_ adversam gentem',..."

Page 289, Footnote 122: 'foosse' corrected to 'fosse'.

"... than that they did not notice the fosse."

Page 289, Footnote 123: 'smewhat' corrected to 'somewhat'.

"'The passage,' as she says, 'is somewhat obscure.'"

Page 292, Footnote 129: 'quas ivolante' corrected to 'quasi volante'.

"'Ausa sunt, ut superius, aliquot millia quasi volante cursu, quos fugere putabant urgere' (_Will. Pict._).]"

Page 295: '_d' Arches_' corrected to '_d'Arches_' (as 1895 ed.)

"_À la tur d'Arches fist porter_,"

Page 300, Footnote 148: 'Coonq.' corrected to 'Conq.'

"[Footnote 148: _Norm. Conq._, ii. 469; and _supra_, p. 356.]"

Page 301, Footnote 152: missing 'is' inserted, as in 1985 ed.

"[Footnote 152: 'The Reviewer ... tells us that ... Mr Freeman ... is wrong, completely wrong,...']"

Page 318: 'II.' corrected to 'll.' (lines), as in 1895 ed.

"it is hard to believe that the writer of ll. 8103-38 had not seen that famous work."

Page 327: 'Buro nam' corrected to 'Burnam', as 1895 ed.

"The charter was granted 'apud Burnam in transfretatione mea anno incarnationis Domini MCXXXIII...."

Page 329, Footnote 17: '14, 314' but corrected to '14,314'.

"Add. MS., 14,314, fo. 32_b_ (pencil)."

Page 335: 'Lubeck' corrected to 'Lübeck'.

"... we see that the path was opening by which Exeter might have come to be another Lübeck, the head of a Damnonian Hanse,..."

Page 355: 'daous' corrected to 'dacus', as 1895 ed.

Laingaham tenet Walterus Tirelde R. quod tenuit Phin dacus pro ii. hidis et dimidia et pro uno manerio (_Domesday_, ii. 41).

Page 358, Footnote 1: 'Guillelum' corrected to 'Guillelmum', as 1895 ed.

"'Baldwinus vero genuit Rodbertum, et Guillelmum,...'"

Page 358, Footnote 6: 'Boynard's' corrected to 'Baynard's', and 'Fatome' corrected to 'Fantôme' as 1895 ed.

"Ancestor of the fitzWalters of Dunmow and of Baynard's Castle, who are accordingly spoken of by Fantôme as 'Clarreaus'--a word which has puzzled his editor, Mr Howlett."

Page 360: 'Acheres' corrected to 'Achères', as 1895 ed.

"... Lord of Poix in Ponthieu and of Achères by the Seine'..."

Page 368: 'p. 481' corrected to p. 365'.

I have already determined (p. 365) the date of Ranulf's accession to the post.

Page 369: (Richard fitz Baldwin, a sheriff of Devon): 'page 237' corrected to 'page 236, note 239'

"... Ricardo filio Baldwini vicecomiti...."

Page 369, footnote 4: 'pp. 330, 472' corrected to 'pp. 256, footnote 37; 358'

"... in conjunction with William fitz Baldwin (see pp. 256, footnote 37; 358")

Page 369, Footnote 4: Three instances of 'Nunant' corrected to 'Nonant', as 1895 ed.

[1st ed. has Nunant for the previous 3 occurrences of the name, but Nonant here and the next 2 occurrences. Possibly the variation may be deliberate and reflect the spelling in the sources.]

Page 371: There would appear to be some error here. The family tree (also in the 1st ed.) disagrees with the text, where Dolfin is said to be the son of Uchtred and brother of Eadwulf.

Page 377: 'notros' corrected to 'nostros', as 1895 ed.

"... et servientes vel ministri provinciarum, et homines nostros manutenuerint,..."

Page 381: 'pertinen [ciis]' corrected to 'pertinen[ciis]', as 1895 ed.

"... suis heredibus villam de Aynho cum omnibus pertinen[ciis]...."

Page 394: 'ROBERT I' corrected to 'ROBERTI', as 1895 ed.

"Robertus Stephanides ... Inter cæteros _Herveius de Montemaurisco_ ROBERTI PATRUUS, _nepoti suo se_ comitem præbuit (p. 77)."

Page 400: 'sevitium' corrected to 'servitium', as 1895 ed.

"Scio equidem ad militare servitium domino regi,..."

Page 402, Footnote 18: 'consuelentes' corrected to 'consulentes', as 1895 ed.

"In crastino autem venerunt quidam familiares regis, consulentes abbati ut sibi caute provideret,..."

Page 417, Footnote 2: 'donus' corrected to 'domus', as 1895 ed.

"('domus ejus et omnia ad ejus mancionem pertinentia prosternantur')"

Page 424: 'confirms' corrected to 'confirm', as 1895 ed.

"The actual words (as given by Jeake), confirm to the Ports their liberties as held:..."

Page 430, Footnote 10: 'sitting' corrected to 'silting', as 1895 ed.

"... but I can find no trace of a haven 'formed by the Bourne between the East and West Hills', which replaced it on its silting-up."

Page 432: 'p. 389' corrected to 'p. 359'.

"Robert fitz Richard and his children (see p. 359) are included in this pedigree,"

Page 438: 'habour' corrected to 'harbour'

"Hastings, harbour, 427-8, and Footnote 10."

Page 442: Index numbers: 555, 558-60 removed. Correct for First Edition; too high for 3rd Impression.

Index: The Index was unreliable.

Though most page numbers were correct, some page numbers belonged to the first edition, and had not been correctly translated, or not removed after translation; some were merely incorrect. All page numbers were checked, and retained, amended, or deleted without TN comment, except where the error was not simply numerical.

As the Footnotes have now been removed from the ends of pages to the ends of Chapters, there is no longer the connection from the Index page reference to a footnote, which may have held the only information on the page to the Index topic. Accordingly, where the information sought is only in the footnote, the footnote number, as a superscript, has been added to the page number in the Index, e.g.

"Ellis, Mr A. S., 249^{7}, 257^{43}"

Index: 'Feif' corrected to 'Fief'.

"Barnstaple, Fief of,..."

Index: 'Beauchamp, Maud de, 156, 158-9'.

The reference to p. 158 is to 'Matilda Beauchamp'. 'Matilda' and 'Maud' were apparently interchangeable, so this reference would be correct.

However, p. 159 has:

"... in their rivalry for Tamworth,[36] the Marmions embraced the cause of Stephen, and the Beauchamps that of Maud, their variance being terminated under Henry II by a matrimonial alliance."

Surely this Maud is not Maud de Beauchamp, as the entry implies, but the Empress Maud, daughter, and surviving heir, of Henry I, and mother of Henry II; and bitter rival of her cousin, Stephen of Blois, crowned King of England, while she was not quite crowned Queen.

Index: 'Couut' corrected to 'Count'.

"Fitz Count, Brian,..."

Index: 'Hamslape' corected to 'Hanslape'.

"Hanslape, Michael de, 179"

Index: 'Knight's-fees' corrected to 'Knight's fees', as 1895 ed.