Part 9

"The Norman army ... remained concentrated around London [in the winter of 1067], and upon the southern and eastern coasts nearest Gaul. The partition of the wealth of the invaded territory now almost solely occupied them. Commissioners went over the whole extent of country in which the army had left garrisons; they took an exact inventory of property of every kind, public and private, carefully registering every particular. ... A close inquiry was made into the names of all the English partisans of Harold, who had either died in battle, or survived the defeat, or by involuntary delays had been prevented from joining the royal standard. All the property of these three classes of men, lands, revenues, furniture, houses, were confiscated; the children of the first class were declared forever disinherited; the second class, were, in like manner, wholly dispossessed of their estates and property of every kind, and, says one of the Norman writers, were only too grateful for being allowed to retain their lives. Lastly, those who had not taken up arms were also despoiled of all they possessed, for having had the intention of taking up arms; but, by special grace, they were allowed to entertain the hope that after many long years of obedience and devotion to the foreign power, not they, indeed, but their sons, might perhaps obtain from their new masters some portion of their paternal heritage. Such was the law of the conquest, according to the unsuspected testimony of a man nearly contemporary with and of the race of the conquerors [Richard Lenoir or Noirot, bishop of Ely in the 12th century]. The immense product of this universal spoliation became the pay of those adventurers of every nation who had enrolled under the banner of the duke of Normandy. ... Some received their pay in money, others had stipulated that they should have a Saxon wife, and William, says the Norman chronicle, gave them in marriage noble dames, great heiresses, whose husbands had fallen in the battle. One, only, among the knights who had accompanied the conqueror, claimed neither lands, gold, nor wife, and would accept none of the spoils of the conquered. His name was Guilbert Fitz-Richard: he said that he had accompanied his lord to England because such was his duty, but that stolen goods had no attraction for him."

_A. Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, book 4._

"Though many confiscations took place, in order to gratify the Norman army, yet the mass of property was left in the hands of its former possessors. Offices of high trust were bestowed upon Englishmen, even upon those whose family renown might have raised the most aspiring thoughts. But, partly through the insolence and injustice of William's Norman vassals, partly through the suspiciousness natural to a man conscious of having overturned the national government, his yoke soon became more heavy. The English were oppressed; they rebelled, were subdued, and oppressed again. ... An extensive spoliation of property accompanied these revolutions. It appears by the great national survey of Domesday Book, completed near the close of the Conqueror's reign, that the tenants in capite of the crown were generally foreigners. ... But inferior freeholders were much less disturbed in their estates than the higher. ... The valuable labours of Sir Henry Ellis, in presenting us with a complete analysis of Domesday Book, afford an opportunity, by his list of mesne tenants at the time of the survey, to form some approximation to the relative numbers of English and foreigners holding manors under the immediate vassals of the crown. ... Though I will not now affirm or deny that they were a majority, they [the English] form a large proportion of nearly 8,000 mesne tenants, who are summed up by the diligence of Sir Henry Ellis. ... {794} This might induce us to suspect that, great as the spoliation must appear in modern times, and almost completely as the nation was excluded from civil power in the commonwealth, there is some exaggeration in the language of those writers who represent them as universal reduced to a state of penury and servitude. And this suspicion may be in some degree just. Yet those writers, and especial the most English in feeling of them all, M. Thierry, are warranted by the language of contemporary authorities."

_H. Hallam, The Middle Ages. chapter 8, part 2._

"By right of conquest William claimed nothing. He had come to take his crown, and he had unluckily met with some opposition in taking it. The crown-lands of King Edward passed of course to his successor. As for the lands of other men, in William's theory all was forfeited to the crown. The lawful heir had been driven to seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman had helped him; many Englishmen had fought against him. All then were directly or indirectly traitors. The King might lawfully deal with the lands of all as his own. ... After the general redemption of lands, gradually carried out as William's power advanced, no general blow was dealt at Englishmen as such. ... Though the land had never seen so great a confiscation, or one so largely for the behoof of foreigners, yet there was nothing new in the thing itself. ... Confiscation of land was the every-day punishment for various public and private crimes. ... Once granting the original wrong of his coming at all and bringing a host of strangers with him, there is singularly little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror."

_E. A. Freeman, William the Conqueror, pages 102-104, 126._

"After each effort [of revolt] the royal hand was laid on more heavily: more and more land changed owners, and with the change of owners the title changed. The complicated and unintelligible irregularities of the Anglo-Saxon tenures were exchanged for the simple and uniform feudal theory. ... It was not the change from alodial to feudal so much as from confusion to order. The actual amount of dispossession was no doubt greatest in the higher ranks."

_W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 9, section. 95._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071. The Camp of Refuge in the Fens.

"In the northern part of Cambridgeshire there is a vast extent of low and marshy land, intersected in every direction by rivers. All the waters from the centre of England which do not flow into the Thames or the Trent, empty themselves into these marshes, which in the latter end of autumn overflow, cover the land, and are charged with fogs and vapours. A portion of this damp and swampy country was then, as now, called the Isle of Ely; another the Isle of Thorney, a third the Isle of Croyland. This district, almost a moving bog, impracticable for cavalry and for soldiers heavily armed, had more than once served as a refuge for the Saxons in the time of the Danish conquest; towards the close of the year 1069 it became the rendezvous of several bands of patriots from various quarters, assembling against the Normans. Former chieftains, now dispossessed of their lands, successively repaired hither with their clients, some by land, others by water, by the mouths of the rivers. They here constructed entrenchments of earth and wood, and established an extensive armed station, which took the name of the Camp of Refuge. The foreigners at first hesitated to attack them amidst their rushes and willows, and thus gave them time to transmit messages in every direction, at home and abroad, to the friends of old England. Become powerful, they undertook a partisan war by land and by sea, or, as the conquerors called it, robbery and piracy."

_A. Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, book 4._

"Against the new tyranny the free men of the Danelagh and of Northumbria rose. If Edward the descendant of Cerdic had been little to them, William the descendant of Rollo was still less. ... So they rose, and fought; too late, it may be, and without unity or purpose; and they were worsted by an enemy who had both unity and purpose; whom superstition, greed, and feudal discipline kept together, at least in England, in one compact body of unscrupulous and terrible confederates. And theirs was a land worth fighting for--a good land and large: from Humber mouth inland to the Trent and merry Sherwood, across to Chester and the Dee, round by Leicester and the five burghs of the Danes; eastward again to Huntingdon and Cambridge (then a poor village on the site of an old Roman town); and then northward again into the wide fens, the land of the Girvii, where the great central plateau of England slides into the sea, to form, from the rain and river washings of eight shires, lowlands of a fertility inexhaustible, because ever-growing to this day. Into those fens, as into a natural fortress, the Anglo-Danish noblemen crowded down instinctively from the inland to make their last stand against the French. ... Most gallant of them all, and their leader in the fatal struggle against William, was Hereward the Wake, Lord of Bourne and ancestor of that family of Wake, the arms of whom appear on the cover of this book."

_C. Kingsley, Hereward the Wake, Prelude._

The defence of the Camp of Refuge was maintained until October, 1071, when the stronghold is said to have been betrayed by the monks of Ely, who grew tired of the disturbance of their peace. But Hereward did not submit. He made his escape and various accounts are given of his subsequent career and his fate.

_E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 20, section 1._

ALSO IN: _C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, first series, chapter 8._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1085-1086. The Domesday Survey and Domesday Book.

"The distinctive characteristic of the Norman kings [of England] was their exceeding greed, and the administrative system was so directed as to insure the exaction of the highest possible imposts. From this bent originated the great registration that William [the Conqueror] caused to be taken of all lands, whether holden in fee or at rent; as well as the census of the entire population. The respective registers were preserved in the Cathedral of Winchester, and by the Norman were designated 'Ie grand rôle,' 'Ie rôle royal,' 'Ie rôle de Winchester'; but by the Saxons were termed 'the Book of the Last Judgment,' 'Doomesdaege Boc,' 'Doomsday Book.'"

_E. Fischel, The English Constitution, chapter 1._

For a different statement see the following: "The recently attempted invasion from Denmark seems to have impressed the king with the desirability of· an accurate knowledge of his resources, military and fiscal, both of which were based upon the land. The survey was completed in the remarkably short space of a single year [1085-1086]. In each shire the commissioners made their inquiries by the oaths of the sheriffs, the barons and their Norman retainers, the parish priests, the reeves and six ceorls of each township. {795} The result of their labours was a minute description of all the lands of the kingdom, with the exception of the four northern counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland and Durham, and part of what is now Lancashire. It enumerates the tenants-in-chief, under tenants, freeholders, villeins, and serfs, describes the nature and obligations of the tenures, the value in the time of King Eadward, at the conquest, and at the date of the survey, and, which gives the key to the whole inquiry, informs the king whether any advance in the valuation could be made. ... The returns were transmitted to Winchester, digested, and recorded in two volumes which have descended to posterity under the name of Domesday Book. The name itself is probably derived from Domus Dei, the appellation of a chapel or vault of the cathedral at Winchester in which the survey was at first deposited."

_T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, chapter 2._

"Of the motives which induced the Conqueror and his council to undertake the Survey we have very little reliable information, and much that has been written on the subject savours more of a deduction from the result than of a knowledge of the immediate facts. We have the statement from the Chartulary of St. Mary's, Worcester, of the appointment of the Commissioners by the king himself to make the Survey. We have also the heading of the 'Inquisitio Eliensis' which purports to give, and probably does truly give, the items of the articles of inquiry, which sets forth as follows:

I. What is the manor called? II. Who held it in the time of King Edward? III. Who now holds it? IV. How many hides? V. What teams are there in demesne? VI. What teams of the men? VII. What villans? VIII. What cottagers? IX. What bondmen? X. What freemen and what sokemen? XI. What woods? XII. What meadow? XIII. What pastures? XIV. What mills? XV. What fisheries? XVI. What is added or taken away? XVII. What the whole was worth together, and what now? XVIII. How much each freeman or sokeman had or has?

All this to be estimated three times, viz. in the time of King Edward, and when King William gave it, and how it is now, and if more can be had for it than has been had. This document is, I think, the best evidence we have of the form of the inquiry, and it tallies strictly with the form of the various returns as we now have them. ... An external evidence failing, we are driven back to the Record itself for evidence of the Conqueror's intention in framing it, and anyone who carefully studies it will be driven to the inevitable conclusion that it was framed and designed in the spirit of perfect equity. Long before the Conquest, in the period between the death of Alfred and that of Edward the Confessor, the kingdom had been rapidly declining into a state of disorganisation and decay. The defence of the kingdom and the administration of justice and keeping of the peace could not be maintained by the king's revenues. The tax of Danegeld, instituted by Ethelred at first to buy peace of the Danes, and afterwards to maintain the defence of the kingdom, had more and more come to be levied unequally and unfairly. The Church had obtained enormous remissions of its liability, and its possessions were constantly increasing. Powerful subjects had obtained further remission, and the tax had come to be irregularly collected and was burdensome upon the smaller holders and their poor tenants, while the nobility and the Church escaped with a small share in the burden. In short the tax had come to be collected upon an old and uncorrected assessment. It had probably dwindled in amount, and at last had been ultimately remitted by Edward the Confessor. Anarchy and confusion appears to have reigned throughout the realm. The Conqueror was threatened with foreign invasion, and pressed on all sides by complaints of unfair taxation on the part of his subjects. Estates had been divided and subdivided, and the incidence of the tax was unequal and unjust. He had to face the difficulties before him and to count the resources of his kingdom for its defence, and the means of doing so were not at hand. In this situation his masterly and order-loving Norman mind instituted this great inquiry, but ordered it to be taken (as I maintain the study of the Book will show) in the most public and open manner, and with the utmost impartiality, with the view of levying the taxes of the kingdom equally and fairly upon all. The articles of his inquiry show that he was prepared to study the resources of his kingdom and consider the liability of his subjects from every possible point of view."

_Stuart Moore, On the Study of Domesday Book (Domesday Studies, volume 1)._

"Domesday Book is a vast mine of materials for the social and economical history of our country, a mine almost inexhaustible, and to a great extent as yet unworked. Among national documents it is unique. There is nothing that approaches it in interest and value except the Landnámabók, which records the names of the original settlers in Iceland and the designations they bestowed upon the places where they settled, and tells us how the island was taken up and apportioned among them. Such a document for England, describing the way in which our forefathers divided the territory they conquered, and how 'they called the lands after their own names,' would indeed be priceless. But the Domesday Book does, indirectly, supply materials for the history of the English as well as of the Norman Conquest, for it records not only how the lands of England were divided among the Norman host which conquered at Senlac, but it gives us also the names of the Saxon and Danish holders who possessed the lands before the great battle which changed all the future history of England, and enables us to trace the extent of the transfer of the land from Englishmen to Normans; it shows how far the earlier owners were reduced to tenants, and by its enumeration of the classes of population--freemen, sokemen, villans, cottiers, and slaves--it indicates the nature and extent of the earlier conquests. Thus we learn that in the West of England slaves were numerous, while in the East they were almost unknown, and hence we gather that in the districts first subdued the British population was exterminated or driven off, while in the West it was reduced to servitude."

_I. Taylor, Domesday Survivals (Domesday Studies, volume 1)._

ALSO IN: _E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, chapters 21-22 and appendix A in volume 5._

_W. de Gray Birch, Domesday Book._

_F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book (Dict. Pol. Econ.)._

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ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135. The sons of the Conqueror and their reigns.