The Medieval State: Essays Presented To James Campbell

THE MEDIEVAL STATE

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THE MEDIEVAL STATE Essays Presented to JAMES CAMPBELL EDITED BY

J.R. MADDICOTT AND

D.M. PALLISER

THE HAMBLEDON PRESS London and Rio Grande

Published by the Hambledon Press, 2000 102 Gloucester Avenue, London NWi 8HX (UK) PO Box 162, Rio Grande, Ohio 45674 (USA) ISBN i 85285 195 3 © The Contributors, 2000 A description of this book is available from the British Library and from the Library of Congress Printed and bound in the UK on acid-free paper by Cambridge University Press

Contents Illustrations

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Preface

ix

Abbreviations

x

Contributors

xi

James Campbell as Historian Patrick Wormald

xiii

James Campbell as Tutor David Hargreaves

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'Off To Do Good': James Campbell as Colleague H.G. Pitt Bibliography of James Campbell

xxxi xxxix

1 Peculiarly Patronus Noster: The Saint as Patron of the State in the Early Middle Ages Alan Thacker

I

2 Two Frontier States: Northumbria and Wessex, c. 650-750 J.R. Maddicott

25

3 The Construction of the Early Scottish State Alexander Grant

47

4 Observations upon a Scene in the Bayeux Tapestry, the Battle of Hastings and the Military System of the Late Anglo-Saxon State M.K. Lawson

73

5 Eadmer, his Archbishops and the English State Mark Philpott

93

6 Henry I and Counsel John Hudson

109

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7 Towns and the English State, 1066-1500 D.M. Palliser

127

8 A Twelfth-Century View of the Spanish Past Richard Fletcher

147

9 Anti-Semitism and the Medieval English State Robert C. Stacey

163

10 From Rex Wallie to Princeps Wallie: Charters and State Formation in Thirteenth-Century Wales Charles Insley

179

11 The English State and the Plantagenet Empire, 1259-1360: A Fiscal Perspective Mark Ormrod

197

12 Politics, Sanctity and the Breton State: The Case of the Blessed Charles de Blois, Duke of Brittany (d. 1364) Michael Jones

215

13 The Empire of Tamerlane: An Unsuccessful Re-Run of the Mongol Empire? David Morgan

233

14 Brittany and the French Crown: The Legacy of the English Attack upon Fougeres (1449) Craig Taylor

243

Index

259

Illustrations James Campbell (Barbel Brodf)

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1

Provinces and Royal Thanages in the Early Scottish State

59

2

The Hillock Scene from the Bayeux Tapestry

75

3

The Battle of Hastings: Freeman's Map

77

4

The Battle of Hastings: Baring's Map

77

5

Native Wales in the Thirteenth Century

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Prefacee This collection of original essays is offered to James Campbell by former pupils and others in celebration of his sixty-fifth birthday and, more generally, of his forty and more years as a tutor at Worcester College, Oxford. We wanted to make it a volume with a theme and it seemed appropriate, in the light of James's own interests and of those of many of his former pupils, to choose 'the medieval state'. Sadly, that has meant our not being able to include work by other pupils, but we have tried to bring in as many as possible by interpreting the theme widely and by not confining it to the English state. It would not have been difficult to assemble another collection by distinguished early modern and modern historians who have also sat at James's feet. We are, however, delighted to be able to include personal appreciations of James as historian and tutor by Patrick Wormald and David Hargreaves and as a colleague by Harry Pitt, whose long tutorial partnership with James helped to make undergraduate history at Worcester a doubly rewarding experience for so many of us. We are very grateful to Martin Sheppard for taking on this Festschrift and for carrying it through to completion with such enthusiasm and efficiency. All medievalists already owe a great deal to him for his promotion of their subject - and we hope that readers of this book will feel, as we do, that they now owe more. We have been greatly heartened (but needless to say not surprised) by the warm regard for James expressed by all the contributors and also by others who, for good reasons, have been unable to contribute. We join together with them all in passing on to James our good wishes, our gratitude to him as an inspiring teacher, scholar and colleague, and our affection for him as a friend. John Maddicott

David Palliser

Abbreviations Anglo-Saxons, ed. Campbell et al.

The Anglo-Saxons, edited by James Campbell, (London 1982)

APS

The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes, 12 vols (Edinburgh, 1815-75)

BAR

British Archaeological Reports

Bede

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969)

BIHR

Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research

BL

British Library

Campbell, Essays

J. Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986)

CCR

Calendar of Close Rolls

CPR

Calendar of Patent Rolls

EHR

English Historical Review

Orderic

The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969-80)

RRAN

Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066-1154 ed. H.W.C. Davis et al., 4 vols (Oxford, 1913-69)

RRS

Regesta Regum Scottorum

TRHS

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Contributors Richard Fletcher

University of York

Alexander Grant

University of Lancaster

David Hargreaves

Westminster School

John Hudson

University of St Andrews

Charles Insley

Nene College and Victoria County History, Northampton

Michael Jones

University of Nottingham

M.K. Lawson

St Paul's School

J.R. Maddicott

Exeter College, Oxford

David Morgan

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mark Ormrod

University of York

D.M. Palliser

University of Leeds

Mark Philpott

Keble College, Oxford

H.G. Pitt

Worcester College, Oxford

Robert C. Stacey

University of Washington

Craig Taylor

University of York

Alan Thacker

Victoria County History, London

Patrick Wormald

Christ Church, Oxford

James Campbell (Barbel Brodt)

James Campbell as Historian PATRICK WORMALD

In the autumn of 1954, the two examiners for Oxford's prestigious and lucrative Gibbs Scholarship in History were deadlocked. It was then awarded by examination of undergraduates (their colleges' elite) beginning their final year. The difficulty was that the modernist examiner favoured the front-running medievalist, while her medievalist colleague was sure that a modernist had the edge. Their Solomonic judgement was that the prize be not split but given in full to each. One can see their problem. The budding modernist was called Thomas, his medievalist rival was named Campbell. Sir Keith Thomas has gone on to garner most of the honours known to the profession of history. James Campbell's fame may be less wide, but in his own sphere it is no less deep. He is generally acknowledged the most consistently creative influence on the writing of Anglo-Saxon history today. It is humbling to contemplate the list of James Campbell's papers, produced over more than three decades at the rate of one every fourteen and a half months. It is not that there are so many, nor even that without exception they make major advances in the understanding of the medieval past. Others in our time have written more. In a (very) few cases it has been of comparable quality. What is unparalleled is that James Campbell has said so much of such value about so wide a range of crucial topics. Only the more ethereal arenas of the subject, devotional poetry and preaching, have as yet escaped his roving and piercing intellect (not so the austerities of philology: see his review of place-names in 'Shot-', 'Debt of the Early English Church to Ireland', n. 19, or that essay's concluding remark on the unique loan from Old Irish to Anglo-Saxon vocabulary). To re-read his oeuvre is to be sharply reminded of how much one's thinking owes to what he has thought. Such command of so wide a field is the mark not just of a deeply * References in this paper are confined to James Campbell's own works, since this is no place to discuss them in the detail that warrants conventional footnotes; to save space, I cite his publications Harvard-style (works reprinted in Essays quoted therefrom), the relevant bibliographical niceties being found in the list of his works, below, pp. xxxix-xlii. I am grateful for comment on what I have written by the editors, by Henry Mayr-Harting and by Jenny Wormald.

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learned scholar but of a historian stamped by greatness. My first encounter with James Campbell was in 1966, when I was among three hundred attending his lectures on 'Bede, Ecclesiastical History,, Book IIP - then a set-book (in Latin, naturally) for all sitting History 'Prelims' at the end of their first term. This was not quite the first time he delivered this electrifying series, a Damascus Road for many who have gone on to expound the early history of the British Isles and Europe. Ours was, however, the first year when it was possible to follow up his lectures by reading the superb essay on Bede that he contributed to Dorey's Latin Historians collection. It must be hard for anyone reading this essay for the first time thirty years later to realize just what a departure it was. It seems amazing now that Bede's stripped-down Wilfrid should almost invariably until then have been given priority over the full-colour portrait by Eddius Stephanus; that two ventures from the strait and narrow in Peter Hunter Blair's Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (not a work, for all its own virtues, that ever strayed far from it) should have been rapped over the knuckles by Lady Stenton on the grounds that neither was upheld by Bede. The importance of James Campbell's essay, and of its 'Great Histories' sequel, lay not just in their being the first assessments of Bede's History in the light of the genre to which it belonged, the corpus of his exegetical work, and his own proclaimed intentions in writing it. More important still was that he thereby opened up the study of early English Christianity to perspectives other than Bede's. What is in many ways the key sentence concerns the contrasting historiographical fortunes of seventh-century England and Gaul (Essays, p. 25): 'the one . . . being regarded as moving and edifying, the other as repellent and vicious'; and the contrast being attributable 'not so much to one society's being nobler, or nicer, than the other, as to Bede's aims and tastes being different from those of Prankish historians'. James Campbell was himself (as ever) too kind to say so, but such was exactly the approach to the Age of Bede only a generation before by R.W. Chambers, a very great Anglo-Saxonist indeed. Fittingly, therefore, James Campbell himself followed his Bedan essays with two of truly seminal importance on early English Christianity (each typically published in a journal that is not exactly among the staple reading of professional historians or their pupils). It is hardly too much to say that 'The First Century' rewrote the history of the conversion of England. Bede's background and training led him to stress the bishoprics established by missions from Rome/Canterbury or lona/Lindisfarne. Beside these, James Campbell put an unnumbered, in fact literally uncountable, series of ventures from elsewhere in the seventh-century Irish culture-province, above all the Hiberno-Frankish nexus created by Columbanus; and their normative foundation was not

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an episcopal see but a monastery adaptable to the mores of a Germanic aristocracy. The late Michael Wallace-Hadrill insisted that I remove the term 'epoch-making' from a reference to this essay in my own first publication. He, admittedly, was one of few to whom it will not have been a revelation. Epoch-making it none the less was, because whatever Wallace-Hadrill already knew, he had not himself vouchsafed it. Among the paper's other outstanding features, it anticipated the 'Minster hypothesis' on the organization of the early English Church (pp. 51-3) two decades before this began to gain ground generally; it described the impact of Columbanus (pp. 60-1) in terms foreshadowing Peter Brown's canonical profile of the Holy Man a year later; and it sounded a note which has rung on through ostensibly quite unrelated studies: the existence of what can be called 'Channel History' (cf. 'Age of Arthur1, p. 123), by which is meant a common sphere of experience, reaching well inland from either coast, any part of whose history may, if read with sensitivity, illuminate the rest. Yet not even this was its main methodological breakthrough. What this paper shared with the sibling two years its junior was escape from the tramlines of a canon of sources hitherto deemed 'reliable'. In his 'Observations', James Campbell made the first strong statement of what is nowadays almost an orthodoxy: that Bede seriously, and it may be deliberately, understated the importance for the making of English Christianity of the fact that the Anglo-Saxons conquered territory that was already Christian. 'Channel History' and mysterious inscribers of ogam came in here too (pp. 70-1, the latter fleshed out in 'Debt of the Early English Church to Ireland', pp. 333-4). But the critical factor in the proposition (p. 73) that 'the arrival of Augustine begins not the first, but a later, stage in the conversion of England' lies in the paper's last words: 'we should always be ready to be surprised'. It is this above all that links James Campbell's papers on Bede and the Conversion with the views for which he has since become most famous (in certain quarters notorious), on the genesis of the English state. Meanwhile, there was unfinished Bedan business. It took the form of papers with semantic starting-points: the words Bede used for powerful people and important places. James Campbell was able to show that Bede carefully chose his vocabulary for each; his imprecisions arose from the ambiguities of complex situations. Again, however, it is the importance of uncertainty that is the dominant key. A distinguished contemporary is taken to task (p. 90) - like Wallace-Hadrill thirteen years later ('Sutton Hoo', p. 85) - for failing to discriminate between silent and absent evidence. The taciturnity of witnesses who might be expected to tell of something is a serious objection to believing it; whereas the absence of witnesses in that day and age is itself to be expected. From much the same time, there was a sparkling sketch of the

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'Church in Anglo-Saxon Towns' (among its characteristics a title that gave few clues to its range or substance); and later a return to the early English church in papers on the social context of St Cuthbert's career and on the Irish contribution to early English Christianity. These to say the least well-trodden fields each yielded strikingly full harvests. 'Cuthbert' finishes with his tartest remarks yet about Bede's defects: '[he] can come extremely close to humbug'. Yet what informs this paper and that on 'Towns' is a humane empathy with people seeking to comprehend their faith in their own cultural terms. This theme crops up later still in his paper on 'Maldon', an evocative picture of the tastes and manners of England's first ruling class on the eve of its first crisis; what catches the eye here is the lack of any clear line between clerical and secular establishments (or, one might add, between those of southern England and northern France). James Campbell's church is one whose appeal to less than saintly laymen can be understood, but not at the price paid by some ecclesiastical historians of later eras, of entirely replacing spiritual with material motivation. He shows how to take 'piety' out of church history without removing God. By then, James Campbell had signalled what has come to be seen as his most distinctive thesis in publications of 1975. It is important to appreciate, though at first sight far from obvious, how these works belong together and reinforce each other. Norwich is on the one hand an act of pietas towards his beloved East Anglia, and so a reminder of how important in his intellectual make-up it is that he grew up in a part of England where contemporary evidence for the Anglo-Saxon period is as poor as it becomes rich and diverse when the record-making (or record-keeping) habit ingrained itself in later centuries. (No less notable a mark of East Anglian loyalties is his devotion to the herring, 'the potato of the Middle Ages' ('Was it Infancy in England?', p. 10); and the topic of his regrettably, if not altogether untypically, unpublished Creighton Lecture.) Norwich was also, however, a first occasion to stress a point often made since: 'that the most important economic developments before the Industrial Revolution took place in the later Anglo-Saxon period' (p. i). From a relatively modern economy to a relatively modern state is not a long step, nor one James Campbell has hesitated to take. Advanced economies make for complex societies, and so for the fiscal and human resources required by an intricate political organism. That is perhaps the underlying point of his remarkable later paper on 'The Sale of Land'. It contains the clearest account we have of the relationship between service and office, reward and endowment (p. 31), and it opens up into a subtle apercu of a social economy where treasure and land were not regarded as they would be in later ages but where the balance of the two was no less calculated. The extended review of John Morris's wonderfully wild Age of Arthur,

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also published in 1975, moved another regiment of arguments into the line. It was to be expected of James Campbell that his was both the warmest and the best judgment of this much-derided work. He is always a generous reviewer even of those who may not deserve it, and for reasons that matter in understanding his scholarship. An inborn sympathy for the underdog is compounded by restless impatience with established wisdom, and overlaid by conviction that where so much is unknown, speculative revisionism is not merely justified but devoutly to be wished. 'So difficult, diverse and inadequate are the sources that to seek to write the history of the British Isles from the fourth century to the seventh must be to abandon some of the usual principles of historiography.' Thus the paper's opening words; its concluding paragraph begins by praising Morris for giving 'encouragement to speculate, that is to say think again'. That point is made ever and anon in subsequent papers. We will hear (Essays, p. 188) of the difficillima ars nesciendi; more than once of 'jesting Pilate'; of an early medieval historian's proper motto, dubito ergo sum ('Was it Infancy In England?', p. 17). The object in stressing it here and in his slightly later etching of 'Early Anglo-Saxon Society According to Written Sources' ('the safest course is to delineate not knowledge but ignorance', p. 133) was that it so enlarges the possible scope of archaic government systems. James Campbell's main criticism of Morris was that he ignored the increasingly strong possibilities of organizational linkage between prehistoric, proto-historic and early historic (in British terms, Celtic, Roman and Anglo-Saxon) periods. 'It is easy to forget that institutions which first come into sight in the Dark Ages or later must often have had centuries or millennia of history behind them' ('Age of Arthur', p. 127); 'there is much that is plausible, however surprising, in the attempt to link what is described in Domesday Book and later sources with what existed at a very early date' ('Early Anglo-Saxon Society', p. 136). A marvellously resonant phrase used in an Anglo-American lecture, but so far as I know not published, invoked 'the grammar of Indo-European lordship'. We thus come to his third 1975 publication, the one with which his name is always going to be most closely linked, so the one suitably made the focus for the rest of this appreciation. The obvious thing about 'Observations on English Government' (other than its habitually under-hyped title) is of course that it makes claims for what the preConquest state could do that boggled the conventional historical mind I recall the fluttering it occasioned in intellectually conservative dovecots north of the border. 'Prudent historians, when they consider the ordered power of the late Anglo-Saxon state, are apt to hedge their bets'; but 'the evidence is such as to render the implausible irresistible' (pp. 155-6). So indeed it is, resting as it does not on what documents say, but on what material objects - coins - do (cf. 'Significance of the

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Anglo-Norman State', p. 187). Whatever happens to Anglo-Saxon studies in decades to come, it can be betted that they will never revert to the position, still normative when I was a student, that the 1066 denouement was both inevitable and indeed desirable. Yet that is not ultimately the most important of this paper's conclusions, nor the central thrust of the argument here and in those that follow it up. In coming to terms with what James Campbell has been saying since 1975, four points need to be grasped firmly. First of all, his is no neo-Whig anthem. It would be truer to say that James Campbell is more pessimistically alive to the possibilities of regress than serenely sure of the certainty of progress. Already here (pp. 167-9), further in the final lines of 'Some Agents', and with special notice of Stephen's reign in 'Was it Infancy in England?', we hear how near the English polity came to destruction at the hands of conquerors who did not understand it; just as in another impressive 'off-line' paper on 'Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past', we read that the hard fact patiently dug up by the first generation of post-Conquest historians was thrown away in pursuit of glistening fictions, with results which, as 'the deadly lie of Jewish ritual murder [first] conies to the surface' in 1140 Norwich (pp. 225-6), were truly hideous. In the second place, James Campbell's view of the capacities of Old English government dovetails with, is in fact founded upon, his general approach to early governmental systems. He insists that thin evidence cuts both ways, obscuring knowledge of what was as much as it engenders faith in what was not. 'Historians, quiet men always liable to confuse the less interesting with the more plausible' (Anglo-Saxons, p. 54) speak of 'vague overlordship' meaning that they are themselves vague about it ('Debt of the Early English Church', p. 335; 'United Kingdom', p. 46). 'Our knowledge of so much hangs by so narrow a thread that it is as certain as certain can be that there was a great deal about Anglo-Saxon England about which we do not know, and never will know, anything' (Anglo-Saxons, p. 246); making it a counsel not just of despair but of fools to drown out honest speculation with mantras about 'lack of evidence'. In 'morbid fear of anachronism', scholars gravitate to 'belief that somehow or other everything changes in the sixteenth century' (Stubbs, pp. 10, 13; cf. 'St. Cuthbert', p. 8, 'Late Anglo-Saxon State', p. 62). All this renders us at least as likely to understate as to exaggerate governmental power at any date before the twelfth century. When Domesday Book itself could so easily have been lost, who is to wax dogmatic about the administrative methods of Offa or indeed Cunobelinus (cf. 'Late Saxon State', p. 45)? Part of the secret of the plausibility of James Campbell's case on the history of English government is that he gives it Braudelian longue duree. James Campbell thus reacts to gaps in the evidence as Alexander

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reacted to blocked passes: not retreating in wise resignation but devising strategies for circumvention and advance as audacious as they are often crowned with success. Some of his other qualities come into play here. One, already noted in my comments on Norwich., is how much later English history he knows. He nearly was a later medievalist, his first (and as yet in fact his longest) paper being one of lasting value on Scotland's part in the fourteenth-century phase of the Hundred Years War. 'Observations on Government' and 'Church in Later AngloSaxon Towns' make connections with nineteenth-century developments. The importance of this is that he is entirely aufait with what he himself likes to call the fossil evidence for English administrative prehistory. Many aspects of English government, especially at local level, emerge in the thirteenth century or later but make sense only if a great deal older (cf. in particular 'Some Agents'). Further intellectual assets are the topographical sense attested in his Who's Who list of interests; and above all his archaeological acumen. If this surfaces for any length of time only in his dazzling assault on the nostrums of Sutton Hoo scholarship (compare his paragraph on palaeographers in 'Debt of the Early English Church', pp. 340-1), it was the condition of what seems sure to lend The Anglo-Saxons immortality long after our text is forgotten: it is quite simply the best-illustrated book ever published on the Anglo-Saxons or any early medieval people west of Byzantium. James Campbell's devices to outflank ignorance introduce a third critical feature of 'Observations on Government', its invocation of Carolingian influence. Again, it is possible to miss the point here several times over. It is not merely that he makes so good a case for thinking that English governments were as aware of Prankish techniques before 1066 as scholars have been quite ready to suppose that they were afterwards (p. 166); though the case is so good that, as with 'Bede', one finds oneself wondering how anyone ever thought otherwise. Equally important, here and in the 'Asser' and ^Ethelred papers, is how far analogy with the rest of Europe makes it fair to postulate comparable English developments when contact remains unprovable. His deep reading in arcana of French and German history facilitates a return to 'Channel History', with all the implications for English government and secular culture that it had for the birth of English Christianity. 'It seems likely that England resembled and was linked with its neighbours to a larger extent and in more important ways than can categorically be proved' ('England, France, Flanders', p. 207) is a salient leitmotif in his entire opera. This principle too cuts both ways. James Campbell is no proponent of an English Sonderweg. The point of his essay on 'The Significance of the Anglo-Norman State' in the context where it was given is that students of other early medieval regimes can learn to take their capacities more seriously from what is

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known for England alone. He is increasingly inclined to say the same about population levels ('Was it Infancy . . .?', pp. 13-17, 'Late AngloSaxon State', pp. 64-5). By this token, the urge to bridle at the proposition that 'it is almost as if there are two Englands and one of them is called Scotland' ('United Kingdom', p. 45) should be resisted. What he means is that both England and Scotland throve on the same sort of immemorial - and, as few stress more than he, quite possibly Celtic diet. Which in turn links up with a fourth point, one whose relevance to the springs of the temptation to repudiate his thesis may make the most important of all. Restating it over the subsequent twenty years, most recently in as yet unpublished Ford Lectures, he is more and more prone to relate Anglo-Saxon government power to the depth and breadth of participation in its actions. 'England was, and remained, a country in which the central authority dealt with, and in large measure derived its authority from, an extensive political nation' ('Late AngloSaxon State', p. 52). This of course conjures up an ever hoarier shade than English exceptionalism, the 'ancient (democratic) constitution'. James Campbell does not put it quite as Stubbs and Freeman did though he would wish to be given better reasons than most historians provide why he should not. What he thinks, basing this on knowledge of later arrangements equalled by few since Stubbs himself, is that English government could never have worked as it did but for input from people whose status in society was invisible above ground level. He is, like Maitland, unabashed about believing that strong government is on the whole to the advantage of ordinary people, which is why he endorses it as Maitland did. Such views have been unpalatable on the Left for a century and a half, but for no reason one can see beyond Marxian dismissal of national identity as one more popular opiate. Is it not itself a manifestation of 'the insufferable condescension of posterity' to maintain that the Common Man had no interest in how he or she was governed until (say) education awoke it? James Campbell is, to be sure, a stout patriot. A voice that will be familiar to all who know him lingers over what 'long preserved the ecclesia anglicana from Roman rationalizers' ('Church in Anglo-Saxon Towns', p. 153). But one need not share his pride in being English to agree either that the English state is, relatively speaking, very old, or that its antiquity matters a lot to more than the 'mere English'. In the last decade, James Campbell has turned, as most top-notch historians eventually do, to the historiography of his subject. There is much here that his earlier work leads one to expect: emphasis on what has not been gainsaid in Stubbs's Constitutional History, not least the abiding legitimacy of that discipline; the single criticism of Stenton (as opposed to disciples too loyal for his own good), that he did not always

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shake off 'a primitivist view of the Anglo-Saxon past' ('Stenton', p. 51); and the revelation of what was already perceived, mainly about archaic government systems, by a scholar who took a third in Classics at Worcester College, Oxford in 1837 and went on to become a Leicestershire country gentleman, E.W. Robertson. One theme in these papers is worth drawing out for its bearing on what he may see as his own predicament. Stubbs, Stenton and Robertson, he points out, achieved what they did because all they had to read were sources. Their counterparts today 'dig their own graves by producing more literature than anyone can master' ('Stenton', p. 57; I recall a more sanguinary metaphor in the original lecture). What ensues is an awful vision of modern scholars chipping away at a bibliographical mountain, 'taking a few days to read what may have taken many years to write'. Here are the tones of James Campbell pessimist. No less characteristic is an intellectual virtuosity that relates the dilemmas of contemporary learning not to banalities about RAE but to a paradox inherent in the very florescence of the twentieth-century historical profession. That is why, to return to what I have tried to make a running theme in these remarks, James Campbell's importance lies not in the vast amount he knows, nor even in the unexampled richness of what he writes, but in how he has taught historians of early times to think. He would banish doubt not by recoiling from but by embracing it. In admitting the inevitability of ignorance, we surmount the barrier it interposes between us and antiquity. For so sincerely unassuming a character, James Campbell can be an extraordinarily funny writer and lecturer, exploiting to the full the studied understatement that is the English humorist's forte: ' Tributum . . . in Theodore's Penitential... is not to be such as to burden the poor, which inclines one to think that it was burdening the poor' ('First Century', p. 50); 'there was something of the Elizabeth Taylor about dark age potentates', and 'no wonder they drank so much' ('St Cuthbert', pp. 9-10); Stenton's skills as correspondent emerge in 'a letter in which he explained why the work was not coming along quite so quickly as may have been hoped. Some of us are no strangers to composing such letters . . .' ('Stenton', p. 50). He is at his very wittiest on the trusty formulae of 'Dark Age Prose', its prized quality the ability to nibble a maximum of cheese while keeping one's whiskers well clear of counter-indicators coiled to snap down ('Sutton Hoo', pp. 8off). Yet he is not without his own streetwise rhetoric. 'It is a question whether . . .' serves him as well as 'We would not go far wrong . . .' served Stenton. It has been truly said that 'a paragraph of James Campbell [is] as instantly recognizable as [one] of Maitland or Knowles or Southern'; and, one might add, no less refreshing a draught amidst modern scholarship's predominant aridities. In any event, one effect of his approach is to disarm dissent. James

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Campbell would anticipate little else. I may doubt the dependence of intensive rule upon extensive literacy at any date before the twelfth century, or query the degree of real power exerted by those claiming hegemony over seventh-century Britain. But I would, wouldn't I? He knows that I am no better placed to deny than is he to assert such things; which is how he would wish, how he has taught me to wish, that it should be. Still, if there ought to be some critical note in even the most grateful of encomia, it could surely in this case be that there is not yet more to celebrate.Granted his sense of the frustrations of modern erudition, a Festschrift for James Campbell may properly express the hope that he devote his retirement to writing the Great Book on early English history that no one has written since 1943, and that no one living is better equipped to write.

James Campbell as Tutor DAVID HARGREAVES

My first sight of James Campbell was - I realize with the dismay one might expect of someone coming unwillingly to terms with middle age nearly twenty-five years ago, at entrance interviews. I had taken papers in History (four in those days - English, European, General and a translation paper), but hoped to be admitted to study Law. We were in the drawing room of Harry Pitt's spectacular set on Staircase Eight at Worcester, with its famous roof garden. Today, Flint (the first of Harry's canine club) lies buried in that garden. He was dimly alive then, lying obediently at his master's feet, which did not quite reach the ground. (The chair had a very long seat, and Harry is rather a short man.) I was predictably apprehensive, but also curious. Until that day, I had literally never met a university teacher of any kind, and only once visited Oxford, though my home was less than fifty miles away - and that was on a hurried school trip to see Much Ado About Nothing. Indeed, I probably owed my shortlisting to one of Worcester's several attempts to recruit students educated in the state sector. My voice and manners must quickly have given me away as suburban middle class, but Harry and James concealed their disappointment and settled down to question me. James himself, however, did anything but disappoint. Occupying the sofa, with arms and legs which seemed to rotate independently of the rest of him, he conformed at a glance to my hazy notions of what it meant to be professorial. Blatantly myopic (not an impression I ever had cause to revise), he was dressed in a way which suggested that he was not exactly a slave to fashion. Given the brutalist designs of the mid-1970s, this may have been testimony to his good taste rather than unknowingness, but I doubt it. Most fascinating of all, and enduringly attractive, were his rhythms and idioms of speech, famous for their exactitude - occasionally pedantic, but never pompous. On this occasion, he took the leading role at interview, taking me to task for an essay on the decline of the Carolingian Empire. 'Well', he said, 'you certainly make a jolly plausible case for its collapse.' With a disarmingly regretful note in his voice (a device I later interpreted as a sure sign he was moving in for the kill), he went on 'I

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just can't help feeling it's so jolly plausible, I'm just left wondering how it ever staggered to its feet in the first place'. To my intense delight, I was duly offered a place at Worcester to read Law the following autumn. But James had not quite gone out of my life. He was College Dean at the time, and while I wandered selfconsciously round the Lodge that first day, I had been delighted to find notices from him pertaining to keys, parties, library conventions et al., some of them a dozen years old. This kind of antiquity seemed eminently suitable for an ancient university. He also made an appearance, not I suspect extraordinarily willingly, at the Freshmen's dinner. The Provost was there, flushed and indiscriminately cheerful as always, and told us sensibly not to be alarmed if we found ourselves rather homesick at first. The College doctor, another ancien regime figure, gave some rather crude and serviceable advice to this all-male gathering, and then James stood up. To this day, I have no idea what he did say - sage decanal advice, no doubt, but it could as easily have been biblical exegesis, because he projected his voice so badly and mumbled into the bargain that not one word did I pick up: an achievement of sorts given that I sat near the front of Hall and had the savagely acute hearing of a seventeen-year-old. I sensed his nervousness, and felt sorry for him, while a few others giggled rudely. (Public school hearties were never thin on the ground at Worcester.) I quickly realized I hated Law - nobody's fault but my own - but it did indirectly bring me nearer to James. One November night, moodily blowing smoke rings in the Law Library on Staircase Five, I unwittingly set off the newly installed fire alarms, and was responsible for causing the exodus of those in Hall (Wednesday was Guest Night at Worcester), who tumbled out into the cloister, looking peevish and cold. To my very green eyes, they all looked a mighty patrician lot. Smoke detectors were new technology then, and the instinct was to assume that a towering inferno was raging when they went off, rather than put it down to some callow youth pratting around with a cigarette. James, begowned and en smoking., shot across the terrace building like Torquemada in pursuit of a particularly juicy heretic. Feeling rather like Sydney Carton at the end of A Tale of Two Cities, but brought up in a rather old-fashioned way, I determined to tell him the truth. He was, of course, quite charming ('Don't worry yourself, my dear chap, accidents will happen') and probably relieved that everyone could troop back into Hall without the savoury spoiling. I dropped out of Oxford before the end of that term, initially uncertain about whether to return and then resolved not to. The next year I became a reporter on a regional newspaper. I loved it all, and rediscovered an awful lot of lost direction. By the summer of that year, I knew I wanted to go back to University (I was not unduly bothered where) and

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- for sure - to study History. I made very discreet soundings to Harry Pitt and James Campbell, and was invited to take tea with them. Our second meeting, the forerunner to so much, took place on 2 October 1979- James and Harry were back on Staircase Eight, in much the same position as three years earlier. Tea and cake were served. James asked me some gentle questions about work on the newspaper, and then I was sent out for a walk. I had lost the habits of student leisure: trudging across the college lawns on that autumn afternoon, rediscovering the unvarying gracefulness of it all, struck me hard. When I returned about the prescribed quarter of an hour, I was invited to return in a week's time - this time permanently. James didn't say a great deal, and I wondered briefly if he had been reluctant. Many years later, he assured me this wasn't the case. I think now he saw that I was desperately moved by being given this second chance, and needed to be by myself. Thus, by the time I finally arrived as an History undergraduate, my feelings towards both my tutors were already bound up by an intense Jjistory of their own, and a strong sense of obligation. The rest of this tale is, in many respects, a more conventional one that of the undergraduate who developed a strong affection, as well as a healthy awe, for both of his tutors. James was such a redoubtable scholar, a polymath but fans et origo a medievalist, and an uncompromising tutor. I was relatively diligent, not especially gifted, with my heart and head at their happiest any time after 1688 - and in my studyhabits and attitudes an embryonic schoolteacher rather than a don. Yet he stuck by me manfully, and I relished our time together. This began with weekly seminars on Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica. Many of us had our doubts about middle Latin, but James treated this (quite correctly) as our business and not his. My first introduction to his highly idiosyncratic marking was three words scrawled over my first Latin unseen for him. 'Enterprising,' he wrote, 'but wrong.' Gobbets, as textual commentaries were known in the Oxford History school, were challenging. I was probably unduly impressed by the apparent precocity of some of my colleagues, but James's style neither involved victimization nor petting of anyone present. His effusions or expostulations were reserved for our weekly gobbets, which he marked with faultless thoroughness and speed. 'Your prose,' he complained, early on in the term, 'is somewhat addled.' A week later, it was clearly no better. 'I suggest,' he wrote, 'you read Ernest Gowers' Plain Words (at least twice).' It was to be a line I plagiarized heavily in the years ahead, for my own entertainment and the instruction of my more prolix pupils.

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Despite my infelicitous prose, I passed Prelims securely, along with everyone else. At Provost's Collections at the end of term, I was introduced to yet another of Oxford's many oddities - a verbal report in the third person. Asa Briggs sat at the head of his table, smiling and nodding at me in a way that I blithely interpreted as mark of personal favour, rather than a part of his armoury of avuncular blandness. Harry Pitt, in his wonderful staccato, dealt with me briskly and gently. There followed an extended pregnant pause. Asa muttered questioningly in James's direction, but he was staring myopically at sheaves of paper and said nothing at all. 'James!', barked Harry. He looked up, flustered. 'Oh, my apologies, Provost,' he said, Tm afraid I was dreaming. All too typical of me.' Harry and Asa tried not to smile, and me also. After some preliminary courtesies, he warned: 'He has yet to learn the difference between speculation and fact. And it's going to be someone's duty next term - indeed, I fear it will be mine - to make his life a total misery until he does so.' James did not live up to his words. I studied medieval English History with him very happily for the next two terms, and late medieval in my second year. He also took me for Political Theory. The others that year were all tutored by Oliver Franks, the celebrated Oxford philosopher and former Provost of Worcester. We were (nearly) all ghastly little tufthunters, and there was speculation as to whether or not my singular position with James was a mark of favour or opprobrium. To this day I do not know, and suspect it was more an administrative quirk than the consequence of any ingenious policy. Perhaps more to the point, James and I were very used to each other in tutorials and - it feels like an effrontery to suggest it even now - as comfortable with each other as a fastidious and brilliant medievalist was likely to be with a rather anxious and unspecial undergraduate. As I recall, we generally had tutorials on a Thursday. I tended to write the essays at a single (extended) sitting in the Codrington at All Souls the previous afternoon. I loved the extraordinary beauty of its long reading room, and the watery light which came through the leaded panes of the west window. Scholarship seemed more attainable there than in the crowded Camera, so much more satisfactory from the outside than within. James's rooms, for so many years on the first floor of Staircase Five, were another delight. There was a huge mahogany bookcase the entire width of the room, and an extended table on which endless papers, books and monographs lay scattered. The furniture was comfortable,

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and the whole impression that of somewhere whose owner cared for comfort, but not much for effect. Whatever reluctance he may have felt at either the first or the sixth tutorial of the day, he always greeted me warmly enough, staring as usual anywhere but directly at me, possibly fiddling with pipe or cigarette (he alternated between the two constantly). The famous black cat might also be putting in an appearance. 'Well then,' he would say, sucking in his breath adenoidally, 'What have you got for me today?' I would paraphrase whatever title it was he had set me the previous week. 'Good, good.' He would nod rapidly with his eyes tightly shut. 'Go on then, my dear fellow. Edify me . . .' A tall order. Occasional hints of restiveness might penetrate if it became clear that I was enjoying my own declamation too much. Clicking of teeth or even spluttering might be provoked by a split infinitive, clumsy syntax or the pretentious pronunciation of a foreign name, but otherwise he was a restrained and polite audience. The only eruption occurred during an essay on the legacy of King Stephen. 'If you ever write again about a monarch', he spluttered, 'medieval or other, having a track record - good, bad or otherwise - I'll break your bloody neck.' I relished the resumes above everything. He could hear my concluding paragraph from about three miles away as my voice and idiom moved into best Churchillian mode, but would hear me out patiently. For a few seconds, there would be silence. 'Now then', he might begin, eyes still closed in concentration, 'let me understand. What you're suggesting is . . .' About twenty seconds of beautifully articulated and lucid exegesis would follow, and then his eyes would open and he would ask me with apparent anxiety: 'Now is that about right?' I always thought so. It all sounded so frightfully plausible when he said it. He then would settle back in his chair and close his eyes again. 'Well, that's not a bad essay . . . indeed, I think it's probably rather a good one. It's not, however, a very good one - and I'll tell you why.' Sometimes I forgot why, because I was so entranced by the preliminaries, but his scholarship was enthralling. Though I came to believe he was an especially gifted tutor for those whose appetite for medieval history was stronger than mine, I minded and knew enough to gain a great deal from him - above all, a taste for exactitude. Though a shy man, he was sociable and took trouble with people. Harry and James gave drinks parties for their freshmen after their first

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few weeks, and annual dinners in the SCR. There again, he showed his fundamental even-handedness - he would ignore (rather than put down) the occasional brashness by some slightly bumptious undergraduate, and unobtrusively spend time with the diffident. It worked to my advantage, certainly. One term, my tutorials were fixed with him at 6 p.m. Once my essay had been read and the essential forensic work was done - he would pour me a sherry, and very possibly another. At about seven o'clock came the ritual question. 'Are you dining in Hall?' I was. 'Well, then . . . what about a quick half in the buttery?' We had only a quarter of an hour, but tended to drink fast, and to get in at least a couple of halves. For an entire term, I walked into Hall in only a moderately straight line after tutorials with James. Within the confines of impeccable taste and professionalism, James and Harry relaxed perceptibly as their undergraduates moved nearer Schools. For the General Paper, we met as a group - eight undergraduates and two tutors. Bottles of weak beer helped us to unwind, and to enjoy the stylized arguments they had perfected over the years. Stuart Proffitt wrote an erudite essay on Paderewski to which Harry Pitt, a passionate music lover and a great patron of Stuart himself, refused to give much credence. 'I don't like it. Pompous and dull', he insisted. There was an immediate exclamation of disgust to his left. 'I have no idea, Harry', James interrupted, 'what on earth you're talking about. It was quite brilliant.' We were spellbound, of course, treating this intervention as a furor academicus, rather than a bit of street theatre, obliquely provoking us into polemics. On the eve of Schools, terrified by all that I had forgotten about medieval English History, I begged ten minutes with James and rattled off my list of asinine questions. Scornful of examination spoon-feeding, he treated me as a serious candidate and gave tactful, helpful replies. Gradually, I relaxed and my questions took on a less manic quality. After a while, James said to me quietly: 'I shouldn't worry about your knowledge. What you're frightened of is thought. And, indeed, who wouldn't be? He was referring, of course, to the cold terror of that first five or ten seconds of an examination, when a candidate, having read the question, faces the terrible moment of trying to measure up to the implicit challenges which it contained. To my ears, his words enshrined some of the moral essence of scholarship: that it is the fruit of much labour, but also the productivity of creativity and courage. Though my degree was

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unremarkable, I am enduringly grateful to James for that insight. In the intervening years, I have tried to introduce it to successive generations of bright schoolchildren. Inevitably, we see each other only rarely these days - but there is a measure of professional as well as personal contact, and I value both immensely. He came to lecture to my Sixth Formers, and terrified me by bringing a large collection of precious slides, the dimensions of which were unknown to any slide projector manufactured (I suspect) since the Coronation. We improvised, but it would not have mattered much even if we had not. He is, of course, a supreme lecturer - better even than those marvellous slides of Sutton Hoo. With disgraceful indiscretion, I had imitated him well in advance of his arrival, and my pupils' fascination was both intellectual and spectatorial as they watched him, eyes on ceiling, walking back and forth on an invisible pathway, expounding on the Roman Army of Occupation. 'What a nonsense', he told them, 'to suppose that this was an army composed very much of Romans. We know perfectly well of one worthy centurion from Armenia who ended his days in the unlikely environs of - South Shields' I have, once or twice, enjoyed dinner with him alone. All my youthful impressions of his capacious and versatile intelligence have been underlined, but so too is the sense I have gleaned of his detached benevolence. He has a strong sense of the hilarious and the bizarre, and his conversation reverberates with delight at the fantastic behaviour in which public figures (usually self-important) have been known to indulge. But, though he can be sharply critical, I have never known him to pursue any kind of grudge. I have never heard him gossip, and I trust implicitly his care. He and Harry Pitt constituted an extraordinary duumvirate, which presided over historians at Worcester for some thirty-five years. While his legacy to the world at large will certainly - quite fairly - be that of a formidable scholar, I shall always revere James, first and foremost, as half of a unique partnership - generous and dedicated and greatly cherished.

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'Off To Do Good': James Campbell as Colleague H.G. PITT When in 1957 Worcester College sought a medievalist to succeed Vere Somerset, who had retired after thirty-six years as a Fellow and tutor, it was no surprise that the greater number of the most attractive candidates had been pupils of K.B. McFarlane. For each one he had written a beautiful and carefully crafted reference: what he did not do was to rank them in any order. We saw a number of candidates - all young (as was the way in those days) - and one of whom had not yet taken Schools. The committee then determined to recommend James to the Governing Body. I thought it prudent to call on McFarlane, whom I only knew of and believed to be formidable. He opened by saying 'Have I done something wrong?' I reassured him (what could he have been thinking of?) and told him that we were of a mind to appoint James to our fellowship. He tilted his massive expressionless head to one side slightly and said 'You are doing right'. That was it. James arrived from Merton (where he had briefly been a Junior Research Fellow) and confirmed his tutor's judgement from the very beginning. So started a fellowship still running after forty-three years to the incalculable benefit of hundreds of undergraduates and graduates. For the previous eight years Worcester had been in the doldrums so far as results in Schools were concerned - the year before James arrived we had fielded twentyone Finalists in Schools with only one tutor to shepherd them. By the end of the first generation of James's pupils, in 1960, things changed. The First achieved by one of them that year was the spark which lit a respectable trail as time went on. James was just twenty-two when he arrived, and shy. He never would (and still will not) agree with something which he believed to be wrong, but could not then always defend his position. Instead he had (sometimes still has) a baffling device of silently staring at his interlocutor so that the rim of his spectacles exactly obscured his eyes from being observed. But very soon he grew into a formidable conversationalist and controversialist who loved learned talk and a good argument above all: he could never be accused of a predictable or rigid consis-

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tency in argument and he has at his disposal an almost polymathic expertise. Visitors to the common room need to be warned not to assume that they are safe on any subject, least of all those on which they may think themselves expert. He is quick to puncture humbug. Particularly it is unwise to risk an opinion about any matters referring to East Anglia Qames retains unquestioning loyalty to his native heath) or the Navy. Such discussions, in which James has a huge staying power, are always in good part, good humoured and usually enlightening. To hear him after dinner fencing with Hugo Dyson at Merton about which dreadnought had been sold in which year to which South American navy and after which national hero it had been renamed was pure delight. His astonishing range of knowledge and interests owes much to his skill as a fast reader and a Napoleonic capacity for doing without sleep. If you want a reliable resume of the world's latest news at breakfast, James will give it to you from a night-long attention to the World Service. From the beginning James quickly established his position as a deeply committed tutor and as a Fellow with a strong sense of collegiality. As a tutor he believes completely in the usefulness of his position: with undergraduates of ability he can stretch them far and deep and he has always shown great if stern patience with idlers. He takes infinite trouble with lame dogs, many of whom he has helped over the stile at the end of three years. He has gained a reputation for pithy wit at end of term collections - but it was characteristic of him that once when he had described an earnest plodder as 'careering towards the cliff's edge with all the recklessness of a Gadarene tortoise', he was overcome with remorse and had to be restrained from going to apologize to the man. In Governing Body he was and is always alert and he can spot at once if a potentially disputatious item is about to be eased through by reassuring platitudes. By and large he is suspicious of proposals for change, presuming that most plans for abandoning time-honoured practices were ill-thought out: in modern jargon he might be called proinactive. Always vigilant over proposed expenditures in a poorly endowed college, he enjoyed making the Fellows' flesh creep by projections of the dire consequences which would follow if we went down a new path. He has no belief in an ever-improving economic progress and he can see the merits in a period of national economic stringency: 'Good', he will say, 'that's another half-dozen historic buildings which will not be pulled down'. He would agree with the great Marquess of Salisbury that for a conservative every postponement is a victory. He gave schemes to add to or change the appearance of the College vigorous criticism - with the result sometimes that what others thought a desirable improvement fell by the way. But he could on occasion save us from folly. We have a small common room, in highly varnished dark

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brush-graining which looks handsome, lit by reflected candlelight, when we take dessert there after dinner. But it is rather dark and gloomy in daylight when we lunch. On one occasion, when the room was due for redecoration, the suggestion found some favour that we have it done over in cream or white. The idea did not please James. He delivered a blast against such vandalism. How could we contemplate destroying the ambience of what must be seen as one of the last remaining examples of the dining-room in a small Irish country house? His illogical good sense prevailed. But he did not always win. He once waxed eloquent at a Governing Body meeting in the cause of a dilapidated windmill in East Anglia which was appealing for funds, to which James thought the College should contribute. He turned to Provost Franks for support. Tm glad Mr Campbell has asked me', said the Provost, 'the Pilgrim Trust [of which Franks was a trustee] has just done a national survey of all the country's windmills, arranging them in order of worthiness of preservation. The one Mr Campbell is concerned with conies in the Trust's lowest category.' 'Fair do's, Provost', said James, and we passed on to other business. After the death of our librarian, Richard Sayce, in 1977, James very naturally took his place and the care of the College's intellectual resources became now his greatest and most cherished responsibility in College. He immediately persuaded the College that, for the first time, we should have a full-time professional librarian, and for fifteen years he and Lesley Montgomery (now Mrs Le Claire) worked closely together to bring the library more fully into use than theretofore. James believed both that undergraduates should have a well-stocked and upto-date library within the College and that the rare books and manuscript material in the Fellows' library should be better cared for and made available to scholars. The need for more space for book storage had long been side-stepped because we had seen no way out except for the erection of a new building, bringing with it the cost and inconvenience of a divided site. Spurred on by James, the College architect, Neil Macfadyen, came up with a most ingenious book-stack running the whole length of the existing building above the ceiling of the Lower Library, which could not be seen from the ground. At the same time purpose-designed new rooms were added in the existing storage area of the library for the housing of rare books and manuscript material, while the librarian was at last provided with a suitable office. At a later stage a major work of conservation and rehousing was undertaken of the George Clarke collection of architectural drawings. All this, fired by James's and Lesley Le Claire's enthusiasm, produced a transformation both for undergraduates and scholars and for the standing of the library in the world of learning. In 1971 James had been appointed Dean, a position he occupied with

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clemency, common sense and tolerance, provided offences had not involved the making of noise. From this position he wrote a short sharp letter to The Times., which rounded off a correspondence provoked by Bernard Levin's claim that the world was divided between those who liked cats (himself) and those who liked dogs. The water was muddied by a letter from the editor of Cherwell who maintained (quite untruly) that at Worcester College the problem had been solved when the Fellows had deemed the Dean's dog to be a cat (dogs being forbidden in the College). The editor of Cherwell did not know that the Deanship had recently changed hands and the new Dean had no dog. James wrote, 'Sir, I am the Dean of Worcester College and my cat is not a dog'. Apart from his achievements as a scholar, James's greatest monument is the year he spent as Senior Proctor in 1973-4. He then found himself in a situation which he could not have imagined when he applied for the fellowship so many years before. Relations between senior and junior members of most universities in Europe and America were then balancing on the edge of anarchy: Oxford was no exception. James had to cope with what was probably the most unpleasant confrontation in the university since the St Scholastica's Day riots in 1354. Ostensibly the issue was the 'demand' for a central student union. In fact, the discontent was a symptom of the ubiquitous youth culture of the day which challenged all authority. The agitators, radicals from tiny but serious political groups, soon took to the streets and brought many ill-informed enthusiasts with them. In Michaelmas Term the Examination Schools were occupied for several weeks and were out of the University's control: no miscreants could be clearly identified and no disciplinary action followed. During Hilary term, in an attempt to paralyse the functioning of the University, the sans culottes attempted to occupy the Indian Institute (now the History Faculty Library but then part of the university administrative offices). The guarding of university property and the containment of this incessant popular agitation, much of it orchestrated from outside the University, fell on the minute university police force under the direction of the Proctors, supported by the Vice-Chancellor. The University was determined to keep control of the situation by itself, aware that any attempt to involve the civil police (who had no wish to be called in) would lead to an inevitable escalation and accusations of force and bourgeois brutality. Fortunately, one member of the Proctor's force of bulldogs (as the university's police are called) got inside the Indian Institute at the moment of incursion. He and the willing clerical staff who worked there, aided by workmen who opened a rear window giving access, cleared the building by a peaceful physical ejection. Several ringleaders were identified and charged. These were dealt with

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in the University Disciplinary Court, with lawyers briefed on both sides, in a trial which, interrupted by abuse, violence and clownishness, lasted a fortnight. Eighteen were found guilty and duly rusticated for one year. After this, the eruptions slowly subsided; most of the malcontents finished their courses and have now taken their places in the ranks of the establishment, their locks shorn and their T-shirts abandoned; and their children enjoy an orderly society. In all of this, James, supported by his Junior Proctor, the late Gary Bennett of New College, and their pro-Proctors, never lost his dignity and never wavered. For months he and they lived under continuous pressure and provocation, called out by day and by night and subjected to harassment and threats on the telephone. James was only really angry once: with a modish professor of philosophy who did a private deal with the forces in the Examination Schools so that he could deliver his regular lecture there. He was severely reprimanded. James was deeply offended by the unreason and coarseness of the agitators; finding himself faced with a severed pig's head on the steps of his office in the Clarendon Building and being spat upon from upper windows. Further, unsuccessful, attempts were made on the Indian Institute and the University Offices in Wellington Square. But so thoroughly was decency and calm restored by the time of James's demission of the Proctorship that we, the heirs of James's unwavering single-mindedness, are in danger of forgetting what the University (and other universities who took courage from Oxford's stand) owe him and his colleagues. Had Oxford and, above all, James and the Vice-Chancellor, John (now Sir John) Habbakuk, not stood their ground (with uncertain support from some colleges), much could have been irretrievably lost. If British academics are now much more masters in their own houses than are their colleagues in some parts of the European Community or North America, they owe it very much to James. At the end of his term of office James concluded a full report to Congregation with the words: 'No matter what the temptation to buy peace and hope for the best, never, under any circumstances, should the University make any concessions which will in the slightest impair its power to defend itself'. After this unhappy year James returned to his College duties and took up again what (at least for me) has been a most happy partnership. I can remember no disagreements about whom we should admit or about whom needed chastisement. He was happy to leave the routine administrative matters to me so long as he was provided with at least three copies (to allow for losses) of what his teaching responsibilities would be for the coming term. (He was always something of a mislayer of crucial documents and equally skilful at last-minute rediscovery of them - on one occasion a whole batch of university examination scripts went missing. After much agitation they were discovered under a

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cushion on his sofa.) We usually agreed about faculty matters and enjoyed campaigning in tandem to preserve the syllabus from radical changes. Altogether I could not have had a more congenial and sympathetic colleague to work with nor a more loyal friend. Our friendship withstood one of the greatest of all tests - foreign travel together. James was an excellent companion and greatly increased our mutual pleasure by his observations of the customs and novelties of the people among whom we moved. He had an unerring instinct for small provincial municipal museums and would spend a happy afternoon in building up a picture of medieval Cambrai (was it?) from the display in dusty cases of a brooch, a wooden plough, a broken spoon, a fragment of a psalter or a sliver of lacework. The more obvious beaux arts museums were of less interest to him. But I do remember a most invigorating encounter with the concierges of the museum of Scythian gold in the ancient Pechery lavra at Kiev where we arrived just as it closed and were denied entry. We were leaving the following morning. Without a word of Russian, we staged a vigorous demonstration. I explained loudly that Professor Campbell was a most eminent historian from the University of Oxford and had travelled to Kiev solely to see their treasure. A gathering crowd of curators barred our way, unmoved by our indignation. Eventually they were joined by a young attendant just coming off duty. She spoke English and simply said 'come with me' and, followed by muttering men whom she ignored, she gave us a private tour. 'Take no notice of them,' she said, 'I only work here parttime. They can't do me any harm.' James always showed great enthusiasm at new discoveries. I was wakened in the small hours one night in Moscow and thought I was suffocating. Through a haze of smoke I could make out James, sitting up in bed reading Vernadsky, sustained by very cheap Russian pipe tobacco which he had discovered that afternoon in GUM. He had just found out that early Kievan Rus had a primitive sort of feudal structure. He saw at once the making of a new Special Subject in the history syllabus. I was more immediately concerned with survival and we agreed he should not smoke in the night unless he could position himself near an open window. Later when we visited a village church, east of Moscow, where a service was in progress, James mused, 'Hmm, about the same size of congregation and similar distribution of old women and children as you'd see at a parish evensong in the C. of E. But remember - these old women are not the same ones who were observed by Bernard Shaw and the Webbs; they are their grandchildren.' His adventurousness allowed him to go to the opera in Moscow - something he would not dream of in London. After (what I thought was) a wonderful performance of Eugene Onegin at the Bolshoi, I asked him whether he had enjoyed it.

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'Well,' he said 'I thought I had until you said it had ended. I thought there was another act to come and I realized how relieved I was.' Perhaps the most exciting moment was in Burgos. At James's instigation we stayed at a rather grand hotel (he saw no need for gratuitous discomfort when on holiday). We tidied ourselves up and went down to dine. We crossed to our table under the careful scrutiny of the other rather staid diners. We seemed to pass muster. But as we sat down smoke poured from the pocket of James's jacket. We made a rather less dignified exit but were able to extinguish the conflagration without attracting the attention of what appeared to be the ubiquitous guardias civiles who, no doubt, were on the alert for republican or anarchist terrorists sneaking across the Pyrenees to disturb the tranquillity of El Jefe's old age. After this episode all was quiet and we later spent a happy but rather fruitless afternoon trying to site the regimental formations on the battlefield of Salamanca. This volume is witness to James's quality as a historian and the esteem in which he is held by authors all of whom spent some part of their apprenticeship with him. But James himself, rigidly professional in his work, finds it hard to recognize his own distinction. One evening he came to my room in a state of some agitation and distress. He said he had been the object of a monstrous hoax and did not know what do do about it. He then handed me a letter telling him that he had been elected as a Fellow of the British Academy. He refused to believe that it could be genuine. It took me most of the night and nearly a whole bottle of Scotch to convince him that it was the real thing and nothing more than a proper recognition of his scholarship. James is still at the height of his powers. His position in the world of scholarship and his standing in the University and the College are assured. His friends hope to enjoy his company for many years. Long may he suddenly dart from the room after a long conversation, with the not-quite-ironic cry of 'Ah well, off we go to do good'. We are all beneficiaries of his efforts.

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Bibliography of James Campbell (to 1998) Short book reviews are not included. For items marked * see under 1986. For items marked f see under 2000.

1959 'Worcester College and the University Election of 1865', Worcester College, 1957-59 (the Worcester College house journal), 13-16.

1965 'England, Scotland and the Hundred Years War in the Fourteenth Century', in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. John Hale, Roger Highfield and Beryl Smalley (London), pp. 184-216. 1966 'Bede', in Latin Historians, ed. T.A. Dorey (London), pp. 159-90.* 1968 Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Other Selections, edited, abridged and with an introduction by James Campbell (New York). Introduction, pp. vii-xxxvi.* 'The Diary of John Amphlett of Clent, 1845-1915', Worcester College, 1966-68, 18-32. 1971 'The First Century of Christianity in England', Ampleforth Journal, 76, 12-29.* 1973 'Observations on the Conversion of England', Ampleforth Journal, 78, 12-26.* 1974 'Oration by the Senior Proctor for 1973-4 delivered in Congregation on 20 March 1974', Oxford University Gazette, 104, no. 3594, 1177-80 (contains an account of the disturbances in the University during the proctorial year 1973-4).

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1975 'Observations on English Government from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century', TRHS, 5th series, 25, 39-54.* 'The Age of Arthur' (review of J. Morris, The Age of Arthur, London, 1973)5 Studia Hibernica, 15, 177-85.* 'Norwich', in The Atlas of Historic Towns, ii, ed. M.D. Lobel (London), pp. 1-25 (separate pagination). 1977 'Interesting Times', Worcester College Record, 1977, 21-8 (a partial reprint of the Oration in Congregation, above 1974). 1978 'Die Sozialordnung der Angelsachsen nach den Schriftquellen', in Sachsen und Angelsachsen, ed. C. Ahrends (Hamburg), pp. 455-62; translated as 'Early Anglo-Saxon Society According to Written Sources'.* 'England, France, Flanders and Germany: Some Comparisons and Connection', in Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference, ed. D. Hill, BAR, British Series, 59 (Oxford), pp. 255-70.* 'Richard Anthony Sayce', Worcester College Record, 1978, 8-13. 1979 Bede's Reges andPrincipes (farrow Lecture, 1979).* 'Bede's Words for Places', in Names, Words and Graves, ed. P.H. Sawyer (Leeds), pp. 34-54.* 'The Church in Anglo-Saxon Towns', in The Church in Town and Countryside, Studies in Church History, 16 (Oxford), pp. 119-35.* 1980 'The Significance of the Anglo-Norman State in the Administrative History of Western Europe', in Histoire comparee de Fadministration (IVe-XVIIIe siecks) (Beihefte der Francia, 9, Munich), pp. 117-34.* 1982 The Anglo-Saxons, ed. James Campbell (Oxford); author of chapters i-3> 4 (PP- 8o-i)3 10. 1983 'Gloucester College', Worcester College Record, 1983, 15-24.

Bibliography of James Campbell

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1984 'Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past', Peritia, 3, 131-50.* 1986 Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (The Hambledon Press, London) (reprint of thirteen articles, etc, published between 1966 and 1984, marked * above). 'Asser's Life of Alfred', in The Inheritance of Historiography) 550-900, ed. C. Holdsworth and T.P. Wiseman, Exeter Studies in History, 12 (Exeter), pp. ii5-35-t 'Masterman, Sir John Cecil (1891-1977)', in The Dictionary of National Biography: 1971-1980, ed. Lord Blake and C.S. Nicholls (Oxford), pp. 551-2. 1987 'Some Agents and Agencies of the Late Anglo-Saxon State', in Domesday Studies., ed. J.C. Holt (Woodbridge), pp. 201-18.f 'The Debt of the Early English Church to Ireland', in Irland und die Christenheit: Bibelstudien und Mission, ed. P. Ni Chatham and M. Richter (Stuttgart), pp. 332-46. 1989 'Elements in the Background to the Life of St Cuthbert and his Early Cult', in St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200, ed. Gerald Bonner, David Rollason and Clare Stancliffe (Woodbridge), pp. 3-i9-t 'The Sale of Land and the Economics of Power in Early England: Problems and Possibilities', Haskins Society Journal, i, 23-37.! Stubbs and the English State (Stenton Lecture, Reading).! 'Was it Infancy in England? Some Questions of Comparison', in England and Her Neighbours, 1066-1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. Michael Jones and Malcolm Vale (London), pp. i-i7.f 1992 'The Impact of the Sutton Hoo Discovery on the Study of AngloSaxon History', in Voyage to the Other World: The Legacy of Sutton Hoo, ed. C.B. Kendall and P.S. Wells (Minneapolis, Minnesota), pp. 79-ioi.f Review of M. Biddle, Object and Economy in Medieval Winchester (Oxford, 1990), EHR, 107, 121-4.

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1993 'England, c. 991', in The Battle of Maldon: Fiction and Fact, ed. Janet Cooper (London), pp. i-iy.f 'The Library', Worcester College Record, 1993, 28-9. 1994 Review of C. Hart, The Danelaw (London, 1992), EHR, 109, 102-5. 'Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England, with Special Reference to the Earlier Period', in Stenton's 'Anglo-Saxon England' Fifty Years On, ed. D. Matthew, Reading Historical Studies, i (Reading), pp. 49-59-t 'The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A Maximum View', Proceedings of the British Academy, 87, 39-65.! 1995 'The United Kingdom of England: The Anglo-Saxon Achievement', in Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History, ed. A. Grant and KJ. Stringer (London), pp. 31-47.! Review of J. Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Far Thrupp, 1994), Oxford Magazine, no. 116, 25-7. Review of Karl Leyser, Communications and Power in Medieval Europe (London, 1994), Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 17, 41-8. 1996 'The East Anglian Sees before the Conquest', in Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese, 1096-1996, ed. Ian Atherton et al. (London), pp. 3-21.f 1997 'David Mitchell', Worcester College Record, 1997, 15-16. The History of the English Shires (Matlock) (a lecture, published by the Derbyshire County Council).

1998 Review of The New Cambridge Medieval History, ii, c. 700—900, ed. Rosamond McKitterick, EHR, 113, 680-4. 2000

The Anglo-Saxon State (The Hambledon Press, London) (reprint of twelve articles, etc, published between 1986 and 1996, marked f above).

1 Peculiaris Patronus Noster: The Saint as Patron of the State in the Early Middle Ages ALAN THACKER What follows examines the character of certain significant saints' cults and their role in the emergent states of western Europe in the period between the seventh and mid tenth centuries. The cults under discussion are those which were most closely bound to the state; that is, those best described as 'supra-regional', from having a special relationship with a gens or kingdom, or, more narrowly, with a dynasty ruling such a people or kingdom. Starting with France and Italy, the analysis considers how these cults developed, the kinds of figures who were their focus, and their relation to secular and ecclesiastical authority. It concludes with a discussion of English cults, and the important ways in which they related to, and differed from, the French and Italian exemplars. As a working definition of 'state', I shall adopt that recently proposed by Susan Reynolds and derived from Weber: 'an organization of human society within a more or less fixed area in which the ruler or governing body more or less successfully controls the legitimate use of physical force'.1 As Miss Reynolds goes on to point out, this definition lays stress on legitimacy rather than legislation or taxation, although the existence of such activities may perhaps be inferred from the subjects' acceptance of their rulers' power.2 How do the terms gens or regnum relate to this definition of the state? * I am most grateful to Dr Paul Kershaw and Dr Geoffrey West for reading and commenting very helpfully on earlier drafts of this essay. It was James Campbell who, as my undergraduate tutor at Worcester College, introduced me (through Bede) to early medieval history and its particular pleasures, rooted in a searching and exacting approach to its meagre but excitingly interdisciplinary sources. Ever since, I have always been aware that his has been by far the most formative influence on my intellectual development. This essay is offered in most grateful, if wholly inadequate, acknowledgement of that debt. 1 Susan Reynolds, 'The Historiography of the Medieval State', in Companion to Historiography, ed. Michael Bentley (London and New York), pp. 117-38, at p. 118. 2 Ibid., pp. 117-22.

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In the early Middle Ages a gens might be defined as a community with common law and customs and a sense of ethnic identity,3 but not necessarily common government. It did not always form a state. Kingdoms, on the other hand, might be both more or less than a gem but again were not inevitably states. Frankia, for example, from the early sixth century incorporated kingdoms formerly ruled by other barbarian gentes such as the Burgundians and Visigoths. In the sixth and seventh centuries, however, it was ruled by a single family, the Merovingians, whose legitimacy was widely accepted and who had at their disposal considerable physical force; it could therefore in some sense be thought of as a kingdom or state and is often referred to as such.4 It was, however, usually divided internally into component Teilreiche which in the sixth century in particular had fluctuating boundaries and unstable existences, and which were often at war with each other.5 Although the latter scarcely meet Miss Reynold's state criteria, they undoubtedly impaired the state-like character of the larger polity to which they in some sense belonged. That polity was to remain subject to division under the Carolingians, although West Frankia enjoyed a long period as nominally a single regnum under Charles the Bald (843-77).6 The Lombards, by contrast, comprised a single gens divided into several political entities - a kingdom and more or less independent duchies each having something of the character of individual states.7 The contemporary Anglo-Saxons, too, were presented by Bede in the early eighth century as in some sense a single people, the gens Anglorum, but were divided into a multiplicity of kingdoms, of which some had powerful rulers and a sophisticated internal organization, but many lacked stable boundaries and were only spasmodically fully independent. Unlike Frankia, however, they were not ruled by a single dynasty For a summary of recent views see Guy Halsall, 'The Barbarian Invasions', in New Cambridge Medieval History, i, ed. P. Fouracre (Cambridge, forthcoming); Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300 (2nd edn, Oxford, I997)>PP-254-54 E.g. Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450-751 (London, 1994), pp. 1-4. Wood also terms this state a kingdom. 5 Ibid., pp. 55-8, 60-3, 88-101, 140-9; E. Ewig, 'Die frankischen Teilungen und Teilreiche' and 'Die frankischen Teilreiche im 7. Jahrhundert', both in idem, Spdtantikes undfrdnkisches Gallien (Munich, 1976), pp. 114-71, 172-230. 6 Janet Nelson, 'The Prankish Kingdoms, 814-98: The West', in NCMH, ii, ed. R. D. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 110-41, esp. pp. 130-6; eadem, Charles the Bald (London, 1992). 7 C. Wickham, Early Medieval Italy (London, 1981), pp. 33-4; Paolo Delogu, 'Lombard and Carolingian Italy', in NCMH, ii (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 290-319, at pp. 290-2; Reinhard Schneider, Konigswahl und Konigserhebung in Fruhmittelalter; Untersuchungen zum Herrschaftsnachfolge bei die Langobarden und Merovingen (Stuttgart, 1972). 3

Peculiaris Patronus Noster

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but by a group of (admittedly interrelated) families. Seventh- and eighth-century England as a whole was not therefore a state, nor perhaps were most of its numerous component polities.8 The earliest example in western Europe of a saint with a more than local role is, of course, St Peter, patron of the city, see and territory ruled from Rome. In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great viewed western Christendom as a societas reipublicae christianae, over which he as head of the Roman church exercised a principatus.9 Already the papacy possessed a degree of independence from the Byzantine Empire and its Italian exarch, and its own bureaucracy and means of raising taxes. By the late seventh century papal leadership in the loosening of Italy's ties with Byzantium had given birth to the republic of St Peter.10 Of course the papacy was highly exceptional, with its extensive claims to spiritual and temporal lordship and its scattered patrimony, mostly outside its localized base in and around Rome. Even so, the presence of St Peter's corporeal remains in Rome, and the pope's role as his successor and guardian of those remains, meant that Peter lived in a special way in the city, and provided the most comprehensive example of a holy patron, whose guardianship extended over an entity far wider and more complex than a local dynasty or community. That example was to make apostolicity, with its connotations of mission and doctrinal orthodoxy, a significant qualification for local saints destined for a supra-regional role as patrons of a gens or a regnum. In western Europe, outside Rome, the earliest example of a cult, originally local, which developed supra-regional characteristics is that of St Martin, the fourth-century missionary bishop of Tours. The cult began to take off in the mid-fifth century, and by the early sixth Martin could be defined by Bishop Avitus of Vienne as Gaul's 'chosen particular pastor' (electus proprius pastor}.11 At Tours itself, the saint was energetically promoted by the local bishops, above all, of course, Gregory (d. 594), who described pilgrims coming to the shrine from every part of 8 Patrick Wormald, 'Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum1, in Ideal and Reality in Prankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. P. Wormald, D. Bullough and R. Collins (Oxford, 1983), pp. 99-129. Cf. James Campbell, 'The First Christian Kings', in Anglo-Saxons, ed. Campbell et al., pp. 45-68, esp. pp. 53-61. 9 W. Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government (2nd edn, London, 1962), pp. 36-8. 10 T. F. X. Noble, The Republic of St Peter (Philadelphia, 1984), esp. pp. 15, 57-60, 212-54. 11 And also as patron of Galicia: 'Electum propriumque tenet te Gallia gaudens/ Pastorem, teneat Gallecia tota patronum': Avitus, Opera, ed. R. Peiper, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, VI.2 (Berlin, 1883), P- 195- Cf. Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Sancti Martini, ed. F. Leo, MGH, Auct. Ant. IV. i (Berlin, 1881), I, lines 47-8 (p. 296); Paulinus of Perigueux, De vita Sancti Martini episcopi, libri VI, ed. M. Petschenig, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinontm, xvi (Vienna, 1888), i, line 10 (p. 19).

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Gaul and beyond.12 Martin in his role as pastor and patron of Gaul was a creation of the church. But he was also given status by the Merovingians, who from the time of Clovis (d. 511) adopted him as a special protector, enabling Bishop Gregory to present the fortunes of the royal house as intimately interwoven with those of the shrine at Tours.13 Here, it may be, Martin's soldierly background rendered him attractive.14 Even so, he had no monopoly over the affections of the Merovingians.15 In the sixth century Clovis chose to be buried in his own church of the Holy Apostles in Paris, and other kings and princes were laid to rest in Soissons, near the remains of Sts Crispin and Crispinian or St Medard, and in Paris, by the stolen relics of the Spanish protomartyr Vincent of Saragossa or within the oratory which St Genevieve had erected over the tomb of St Denis near the royal palace of Clichy.16 In the seventh century the Merovingians developed closer relations with the cult, and by the 6yos the famous cappa, supposedly the military cloak which St Martin had shared with a beggar,17 was kept in the palace chapel of Theuderic III (675-690/1 ).18 Its acquisition, perhaps in the time of Dagobert I, might be thought to mark a further stage in the Merovingians' relations with Martin. Ironically, however, it seems to have come just as Dagobert I was looking towards a fresh cult - that of St Denis at Paris.19 Although Martin remained one of the most important saints in Prankish Gaul, and although Dagobert himself commissioned rich new adornments for his shrine,20 the Prankish royal house See Gregory of Tours, Decem libri historiarum, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, MGH, Script. Rer. Merov. I.i (editio altera, Hanover, 1951); idem, Krusch, De virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, Script. Rer. Merov. 1.2 (Hanover, 1885); E. Ewig, 'Le culte de Saint Martin a 1'epoque Franque', Revue d'histoire de I'eglise de France, 47 (1961), 1-18; J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Prankish Church (Oxford, 1983), pp. 39-40, 6r, M. Vieillard-Troiekouroff, Les monuments religieux de la Gaule d'apres les oeuvres de Gregoire de Tours (Paris, 1976), pp. 155-8, 311-24; S. Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin (Ithaca, New York, 1991), pp. 20-9. 13 Greg. Tours, Decem libri, ii. 37-8, 43; iv. 2, 15, 20-1; v. 14, 47; vi. 10 (pp. 85-9, 93-4, 136, 147, 152-4, 207-13, 257, 279-80). 14 Sulpicius Severus, Vita Sancti Martini, ed. J. Fontaine (3 vols, Paris, 1967-9), cc. 2-4 (i. 254-62). Cf. Farmer, Communities, pp. 25-6. 15 See especially Raymond van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, 1993), pp. 13-21. 16 Vieillard-Troiekouroff, Monuments, pp. 206-8, 211-14, 252-3, 288-90. For a full list see K. H. Kriiger, Konigsgrabkirchen der Franken, Angelsachsen und Langobarden bis zur Mitte des 8. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1971), pp. 29-250. 17 Sulpicius Severus, Vita Sancti Martini, cap. 3 (i.256-8). 18 'In oraturio nostro super capella domni Martini': Diplomata regum Francorum ex stirpe Merowingica, ed. G. Pertz, MGH, Diplomata imperil, i (Hanover, 1872), no. 49 (p. 45); Ewig, 'Le culte de Saint Martin', 9. 19 Wallace-Hadrill, Prankish Church, p. 61. 20 Vita Sancti Eligii, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, Script. Rer. Merov. IV (Hanover, 1902), i.32 (pp. 688-9). 12

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5

never accorded him the unquestioned pre-eminence it allowed to his Parisian rival. Martin had a powerful champion of his own in the bishop of Tours, and ultimately the Merovingians preferred a figure dependent on them alone. St Denis, first bishop of Paris, although probably martyred in the third century, was by the sixth believed to have been sent to Gaul by Clement I (c. 9i-c. 101), fourth bishop of Rome and supposedly consecrated by St Peter himself. From such an account Denis could be regarded as having apostolic credentials, like the missionary bishops of Narbonne and Toulouse.21 The church of Saint-Denis, supposedly built around the tomb of the martyred bishop and his two companions, was already highly favoured by the Merovingians in the late sixth century, when Arnegunde, widow of Chlothar I (d. 561), and her grandson Dagobert were buried there. The cult prospered even more under Chlothar II (d. 629), and was raised to the highest rank by his son Dagobert I (d. 639). These two rulers established Denis as the special patron of the royal house; for them he was peculiaris patronus noster, a phrase used continually by their successors in grants to the abbey until their disappearance in the mid-eighth century.22 Dagobert was particularly generous. He caused the saint and his companions to be elevated and enshrined in a splendid monument made of marble and enriched with gold and precious stones by the royal master goldsmith Eligius (d. 660), later bishop of Noyon.23 He endowed the guardian community so richly that he came to be regarded as its founder, and established a fair on the saint's feast day (9 October) which quickly became an international event.24 He introduced the perpetual office, the laus perennis, in imitation of the Burgundian monastery of SaintMaurice-en-Valais and of the church of Saint-Martin at Tours.25 Under Dagobert, however, Saint-Denis remained an episcopal basilica. Only under Clovis II (d. 657) and his wife Balthildis (d. 680) did it 21 Passio sanctorum martyrum Dionysii, Rustici et Eleutherii, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, Auct. Ant. W (2) (Berlin, 1995), pp. 101-5, esp. pp. 102, 103; Liber pontificate, ed. L. Duchesne (3 vols, 2nd edn., Paris, 1955-7), i? no. 4 (p. 123); S. McK. Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis (New Haven, 1987), pp. 3-12, 454-5. Although probably added to the original passio, the Clementine tradition was known to the author of the Vita Genovefae: R. J. Loenertz, 'La legende parisienne de S. Denys 1'Areopagite: sa genese et son premier temoin', Analecta Bollandiana, 69 (1951), 217-37, at 218-21. 22 Wallace-Hadrill, Prankish Church, pp. 126-30; Crosby, Royal Abbey, pp. 7-8. 23 Gesta Dagobertil, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, Script. Rer. Merov. II (Hanover, 1888), cc. 17-20 (pp. 406-7); V. Eligii, i, 32 (pp. 688-9) ~ but note that among Eligius's shrineworks those for St Martin still have pride of place. 24 A. Marignan, La culte des saints sous les Merovingiens (2 vols, Paris, 1899), ii. 133-4; A. R. Lewis, The Northern Seas (Princeton, 1958), p. 125; J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings (London, 1962), pp. 225-6. 25 Anne Walters Robertson, The Service Books of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis (Oxford, 1991), pp. 9-18, 220.

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become, like the other seniores basilicae, a monastery with immunity from the local bishop, the laus perennis, discontinued after Dagobert's death, being then resumed. Through these rulers the cult was brought firmly under royal control.26 The Merovingians' lavish provision of physical and ritual splendour not only honoured the saint but ensured that the benefactors and their relatives who were interred at Saint-Denis were kept constantly in the minds of the clergy, their visitors and dependents. The impact of all this, of course, depended largely upon the numbers of pilgrims resorting to the church. Although, however, Denis remained the Merovingians' favourite saint, there is little, apart from the undoubted popularity of the fair, to indicate that in their day his tomb ever rivalled that of St Martin at its zenith as a theatre for the performance of wonders.27 Denis was still primarily patron of the ruling dynasty of Frankia rather than of the Prankish state and people. The cult's successful transference from the Merovingians to the Carolingians enhanced its role as a state cult. Already in the early eighth century, Charles Martel (d. 741) had lavished unparalleled favour upon the community of Saint-Denis, to such effect that it eventually acquired the entire royal estate at Clichy.28 Charles himself was buried at the abbey.29 With the deposition of the last of the Merovingians in 751 and the arrival of Fulrad as abbot, Saint-Denis became firmly loyal to the supplanting dynasty and in due course the burial place of the first Carolingian king, Pippin (d. 768).30 Fulrad's abbacy (751-84) was also marked by increased interest in the saint's miracles,31 and a reconstruction of the abbey church which included a rehousing of the saint's relics in a ring-crypt based on those currently being built in Rome.32 Even so, under Charlemagne Denis remained only one among several patrons of the regnum Francorum. That is apparent from the royal laudes. In those celebrated litanies, the earliest form of which dates back to the 7805, the saints invoked in the acclamation of the Prankish army, who may be regarded as those then esteemed by contemporaries 26

Ibid., pp. 19-24; J. Semmler, 'Saint-Denis: von der bischoflichen Coemeterialbasilika zur koniglichen Benediktinerabtei', in La Neustrie: les pays au nord de la Loire de 650 a 850, ed. H. Atsma (Sigmaringen, 1989), pp. 75-123. 27 The community maintained no liber miraculorum like Tours. For an early miracle, performed by Eligius of Noyon on Denis's feast day, see Robertson, Service Books, p. 12. 28 Wallace-Hadrill, Prankish Church., pp. 132-3. 29 Kruger, Konigsgrabkirchen, pp. 179, 181. 30 Ibid., 179, 182; Wallace-Hadrill, Prankish Church, pp. 140-1. 31 Leon Levillain, 'Etudes sur 1'abbaye de Saint-Denis a 1'epoque merovingienne', Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Charles, 82 (1921), 5-116, esp. 58-71. 32 Crosby, Royal Abbey, pp. 61-83, esP- PP- 56-61; J. Crook, 'The Architectural Setting of the Cult of the Saints in the Early Medieval West and its Development in the English Romanesque' (Univ. of Oxford, D.Phil, thesis, 1995), pp. 116-19.

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as the principal patrons of the regnum, were seven in number: besides Denis, they included the bishop-confessors Martin of Tours and Hilary of Poitiers, the soldier-martyrs Maurice of Agaunum and Gereon of Cologne, and the preacher-martyrs Crispin and Crispinian of Soissons. Status alone seems to have dictated their inclusion; certainly there can have been no geographical rationale, five of the seven being drawn from what can loosely be regarded as West Frankia.33 The last and crucial development of the Dionysiac legend came under Hilduin (814-40): the identification of the Parisian martyr with the Areopagite, disciple of St Paul and supposed author of the neoplatonist treatise, the Celestial Hierarchy.34 That sensational sleight of hand, which conclusively affirmed the apostolic credentials of the Carolingians' special patron,35 inaugurated a flood of fresh hagiography, including Hilduin's Life, Hincmar's Miracles and the co-authored Gesta Dagoberti.36 It also saw a marked increase in the number of miracles performed by the saint,37 and in 832 Hilduin added a further chapel to the east of Fulrad's confessio to enhance access to the relics.38 Under Charles the Bald, the cult was especially closely identified with the West Prankish regnum and its ruler. In 840 Hilduin was succeeded by a grandson of Charlemagne, and in 867 Charles himself became lay abbot.39 The most potent expression of this relationship was the feasts instituted at the abbey by Charles in 862 in return for his daily commemoration in psalmody and at mass at his intended burial place before the altar of the treasury; in a grant made to his 'glorious lord and protector, our Denis', the king provided for feasts to be kept by the monks and 'in as far as possible the poor' on the anniversaries of his birth, consecration, victory in the field, his marriage to Queen Ermintrude and Ermintrude's own birth; two of these, the victory and the queen's birth, were, as appropriate, to be replaced by commemorations of the royal couple's deaths.40 A second grant made on the same day made similar provision for feasts to commemorate the obits of Ewig, 'Le culte de Saint Martin', 18; E. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1946; 2nd printing, 1958), pp. 15-16, 21. 34 Loenertz, 'Legende parisienne', 221-34. 35 Ibid., 233. 36 Hilduin, Historia Sancti Dionysii, ed. J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, 106 (Paris, 1851), cols 14-50; Miracula Sancti Dionysii, ed. J. Mabillon, Acta sanctorum ordinis Sancti Benedicti, saeculum 3, pars 2 (Paris, 1772), pp. 342-64; Gesta Dagoberti, ed. Krusch, MGH, Script. Rer. Merov. II. 396-425 (and see above n. 23); Levillain, 'Etudes', 28-116; Loenertz, 'Legende parisienne', 221-34. 37 Levillain, 'Etudes', 60. 38 Crosby, Royal Abbey, pp. 85-94. 39 Ibid., pp. 94-5; The Annals of Saint-Benin, trans, and annotated by J. L. Nelson (Manchester, 1991), pp. 86, 138. 40 Ermintrude died in 869. 33

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Charles's grandparents, Charlemagne and Hildegarde, and his paternal aunt, Bertha (d. after 823), invoking as precedent the feasts instituted by Abbot Hilduin to mark major holy days and the obits of the Emperor Louis the Pious (d. 840) and himself. The custom was, however, exploited on a new scale by Charles (not just at Saint-Denis), and represented a highly effective means of enhancing his family's prestige through perpetual (and agreeable) association with the saint and the unchanging liturgical round.41 Such expansive innovations apart, the cult was on the defensive. Although the abbey remained largely unharmed by Viking attacks, the saint's precious relics were several times removed for their protection. Even the addition in 876-7 of a further book of miracles to the two already compiled by Hincmar was motivated largely by the need to defend the reputation of the Areopagite, whose writings were then the subject of dispute.42 By then the cult's greatest days were over, at least until it was raised to prominence again by Suger in the twelfth century. One other major Prankish cult merits attention, although its development is rather different from the two described above. The cult of Remigius (d. 533), bishop of Reims and baptizer of Clovis, remained primarily a local affair long after the saint's elevation and enshrinement in the mid-sixth century.43 Initially, perhaps, the growth in the saint's reputation under the Carolingians owed something to English identification of mission as crucial to the role of patron of the gens:44 it was Alcuin who, conscious of Remigius's role as baptizer of Clovis and his men, accorded Remigius the title of doctor Francorum.45 The main development, however, was the work of Hincmar, archbishop of Reims (845-82), and formed a crucial element in his assertion of his see's primatial claims, especially in his defence of its authority over the almost equally ancient suffragan see of Laon.46 Hincmar translated Remigius's remains to a place of high honour in a new crypt, and in his continuation of the annals of Saint-Benin, sub anno 869, proclaimed the 41 Recueil des actes de Charles II, le Chauve, roi de France, ed. A. Giry, M. Prou, and G. Tessier (3 vols, Paris, 1943-55), ii, nos 246-7 (pp. 53-67); J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, 'A Carolingian Renaissance Prince: The Emperor Charles the Bald', Proceedings of the British Academy, Ixiv (1978), 155-84, at 165-6. 42 Levillain, 'Etudes', 60. 43 Hincmar, Vita Sancti Remigii, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, Script. Rer. Merov. Ill (Hanover, 1896), cap. 25 (p. 321); Crook, 'Architectural Setting', pp. 83-4. 44 Below, pp. 17-18. 45 P. Depreux, 'Imbuendis adfidem prefulgidum surrexit lumen gentibus: La devotion a Saint Remi de Reims au IXe et Xe siecles', Cahiers de civilisation medievale, 35 (1992), 111-29, at 123; Alcuin, Carmina, ed. E. Diimmler, in MGH, Poetae latiniaevi Carolini, i (Berlin, 1881), pp. 310, 316, 342. 46 J. Devisse, Hincmar, archeveque de Reims, 845-82 (3 vols, Geneva, 1975-6), ii. 643-57-

Peculiaris Patronus Noster

9

saint 'apostle of the Franks'.47 In the late 8yos, almost at the end of his career, he wrote an elaborate Life of Remigius, which he viewed as his most important work and in which he again refers to the saint (though only once) as the Franks' apostle. Remigius's claims to that title were clear, and were spelt out in the 869 annal: he not only converted Clovis by his preaching, baptizing him and 3000 of his men on Easter Eve, but also anointed and consecrated the king with heavenly chrism, some of which, Hincmar contended, was still preserved at Reims in his day.48 These claims, which gave the saint a major role in legitimizing the king and through him the West Prankish regnum, were taken up and developed by Hincmar's successor, Archbishop Fulk (883-900). In the mid-88os, in a letter to King Alfred (to which I shall return), he too referred to Remigius as the true apostle of the Franks, through whom they had been delivered from grievous error and brought to worship the one true God.49 In the 8905, remarkably, he even managed to obtain confirmation of Remigius's apostolic status from Pope Formosus (89I-6).50 In Frankia, then, several ingredients went into the making of a Reichsheiliger, a patron of the state: apostolic or martyr status which could recommend him to churchmen, military associations which won favour with the army, and an established tomb-cult which could command popular veneration. The earliest saint so classifiable (however loosely) was largely a creation of the Gaulish episcopate, though he was also adopted as a protector by the royal house. Martin's power, displayed through so many miracles, and the widespread devotion in which he was held, made him a valuable ally. Valuable, but not only to the Merovingians: for a patron more fully their own they turned to Denis. Guarded by a community which was largely their creation, Denis developed by stages into a state as distinct from a purely dynastic patron, a process which culminated in his identification with the Areopagite. With the acquisition of quasi-apostolic status came a well-developed record of popular miracles and the perpetual commemoration of the Carolingians in the domestic ceremonial of the saint's familia. This marked the zenith of royal participation in Prankish state cults. By the 8yos the problems faced by the Carolingians allowed Hincmar, V. Remigii, p. 267; Wallace-Hadrill, Prankish Church, pp. 301-2. Les annales de Saint-Bertin, ed. F. Grat, J. Vieilliard, and S. Clement (Paris, 1964), pp. 162-3; Annals ofSt-Bertin, trans. Nelson, p. 161. 49 Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke (2 vols, Oxford, 1981), i. 6-12. Cf. Janet Nelson, '. . . sicut olim gens Francorum . . . nunc gens Anglorum: Fulk's Letter to Alfred Revisited', in Alfred the Wise, ed. J. Roberts, J. L. Nelson and M. Godden (Cambridge, 1997), PP- 135-44, esp. pp. 141-2. 50 Nelson, 'Fulk's Letter', p. 140. 47

48

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The Medieval State

the church in some degree to take the initiative, in the person of Archbishop Hincmar, with the promotion of Remigius and his representative at Reims to a crucial role in legitimizing royal authority. It is instructive to compare these Prankish developments with the dominant cults of the Lombardic states in contemporary Italy. According to Paul the Deacon, the Lombards had identified with a patron saint from an early period. Queen Theodelinda (d. 628) had founded a celebrated church in honour of John the Baptist at Monza, and in response, Paul claimed, the saint continually interceded for the gens Langobardorum.51 The special nature of the Baptist's relationship with the Lombard monarchy was further demonstrated by Paul's story about King Rothari (d. 652), the violator of whose remains was punished by the saint, on the grounds that the king (despite his Arian faith) 'had commended himself to me'.52 Significantly Rothari had married Gundiperga, the daughter of Theodelinda, who also founded a church dedicated to the Baptist in Pavia, where she and, almost certainly, her husband were buried.53 Perhaps more important, and certainly more fully attested, was the Lombards' close association with the cult of the Archangel Michael. That cult, which was attractive because Michael could be viewed as both warrior and healer, perhaps commanded prestige in the first instance because of its association with the Byzantine emperors.54 It was, however, effectively localized by the archangel's appearances in Puglia to the bishop of Sipontum (now Siponto next to modern Manfredonia), supposedly in the late fifth and early sixth centuries. According to the record of those appearances, Michael revealed that he had consecrated a cave nearby on Monte Gargano, where he had already demonstrated his power, as his sanctuary and cult centre.55 This place, of which he was inspector atque custos, effectively provided the incorporeal archangel with a focus as powerful as the tombs of mortal saints.56 It soon developed into a major pilgrimage centre especially among the Lombards, although in the late seventh or early Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. L. Bethman and G. Waitz, MGH, Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum, v. 6 (pp. 146-7). 52 'Fuerit licet non recte credens, tamen mihi se commendavit.' 53 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, iv. 47 (p. 136). 54 M. G. Mara and F. Spadafora, 'Michele, Arcangelo, Santo', in Bibliotheca sanctorum (12 vols, Rome, 1961-9), ix, cols 410-46, esp. cols 410-37; D. Harrison, 'The Duke and the Archangel', Collegium medievale, 6 (1993), 5-33, at 16-21. 55 Liber de apparitione Sancti Michaelis in Monte Gargano, and Vita Sancti Laurentii Episcopi Sipontini, both in MGH, Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum, ed. G. Waitz et al. (Hanover, 1878), pp. 541-5, esp. at pp. 541-2 (cap. 2-4). 56 Liber, c. 2 (p. 541). 51

Peculiaris Patronus Noster

11

eighth century visitors came from as far away as England.57 The Lombards involvement goes back at least to the reigns of the Lombard dukes of Benevento, Grimoald I (646/7-62) and his son Romuald I (662-87), who protected the sanctuary, adorned it with new buildings and carefully commemorated their patronage in two fine public inscriptions on the so-called 'rulers' pillar' at the site.58 Duke Grimoald, 'vir bellicosissimus et ubique insegnis', was associated with the cult by about 650, when according to Paul the Deacon he repulsed a Byzantine attack on the sanctuary at Monte Gargano with great slaughter.59 Later Beneventan tradition, recorded by Erchempert c. 890, placed the battle on 8 May, the day on which the archangel's appearances in Puglia came to be commemorated.60 In 662 the duke became king of the Lombards, and it was probably in his time that the cult of Michael was popularized in northern Italy.61 Thereafter, the Lombards dedicated numerous churches to St Michael throughout the kingdom62 and in Spoleto perhaps promoted a further cult site in a second grotto at Monte Tancia in Lazio.63 By the 6905 in the reign of 57

See especially the inscriptions within the sanctuary, which date from the midseventh century to the earlier ninth: C. Carletti, 'Iscrizioni murali', in // santuario di San Michele sul Gargano dal VI al IX secolo, ed. C. Carletti and G. Otranto (Bari, 1980), pp. 7-180; M. G. Arcamone, 'Antroponimia altomedievale sulla iscrizioni murali', in ibid., pp. 255-317; R. Delrolez and U. Schwab, 'The Runic Inscriptions of Monte Sant' Angelo (Gargano)', Academiae analecta: medelingen van de Koninklijke Academic voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten in Belgie. klasse der letteren, 45 (Brussels, !983)5 95-130. On St Michael's cult in Lombard Italy more generally see Mara and Spadafora, 'Michele', cols 421, 423-5; Harrison, 'Duke and Archangel', esp. pp. 13-21; A. Petrucci, 'Origine e diffusione del culto di San-Michele nell' Italia medievale', in Millenaire monastique du Mont-Saint-Michel, iii, Culte de Saint Michel et pelerinages au Mont, ed. M. Baudot (Paris, 1971), pp. 339~54, esp. pp. 340-7. 58 Carletti, 'Iscrizione murali', nos 44, 82 (pp. 64-5, 90-1); Delrolez and Schwab, 'Runic Inscriptions', 100-3. 59 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardum, iv. 46 (p. 135). 60 'Nam octavo Ydus Maias, quo beati Michaelis archangeli sollempnia nos sollempniter celebramus quo etiam die priscis temporibus a Beneventanorum populis Neapolites fortiter caesos legimus . . .': Erchempertus, Historia Langobardorum Beneventarum, ed. Waitz et al., MGH, Script, rer. Lang. cap. 27 (p. 244). See also below, p. 13 (at nn. 73-4)61 M. Cagiano de Azevedo, 'Memorie della vittoria sul Gargano e il culto di San Michele a Milano', in // santuario, pp. 501-12; Mara and Spadafora, 'Michele', cols 423-562 Petrucci, 'Origine e diffusione', p. 346; G. P. Bognetti, 'I Loca sanctorum e la storia della chiesa nel regno dei Longobardi', Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia, 6 (1952), 165-204, esp. 195. Cf. Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardum, v. 3, vi. 51 (pp. 145, 183); MGH, Script, rer. Lang., p. 161 n. i. 63 Although first mentioned in 774, a seventh-century altar found at the site suggests that the sanctuary was considerably older: M. G. Mara, 'Contribute allo studio del culto di San Michele nel Lazio', Archivio della societa romana di storia patria, 73 (1960), 269-90; Mara and Spadafora, 'Michele', col. 421.

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Cunincpert, the cult had gained such prestige that the image of St Michael appeared on the reverse of Lombardic gold coins, a remarkable innovation (perhaps in imitation of Byzantine precedents)64 which continued, except for a brief period in the 7405, until the fall of the kingdom in 774.65 By Cunincpert's time, too, according to Paul the Deacon, St Michael's image was displayed by the Lombard army when ready for battle, and the saint was invoked in oaths of loyalty to Lombard kings.66 The monarchy's attachment to the cult continued until the very end. A remembrance of the family's devotion perhaps colours the chronicle of Novalesa's rather doubtful story of the doomed King Desiderius's nocturnal visit in 774 to the church of San Michele Maggiore in his beleaguered refuge at Pavia; more certainly, the epitaph of his wife, Queen Ansa, celebrated her construction of hostels for pilgrims on the way to Monte Gargano.67 The Beneventan dukes' continued investment in the shrine at Monte Gargano is also evidenced by at least one inscription, on the rulers' pillar there, commemorating a visit by Duke Romoald II (c. 706-731/2), and his first wife Gunperga.68 Royal pilgrimages to Monte Gargano were evidently commonplace; they were, at least, sufficiently unremarkable to provide the pretext for a meeting which Adelperga, daughter of Desiderius and wife of Duke Arichis II (758-87), planned with her brother upon his return from exile in 788.69 From the later eighth century, however, the rulers of Benevento also exhibited a taste for the P. Grierson and M. Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, i, The Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 64-5. The image perhaps originated in an adaptation of the winged Victory (derived from Late Antique coins) which appears on early and midseventh-century Lombardic gold coinage: ILongobardi (Milan, 1987), pp. 166-8 (nos iv, 11-12, 15, 17, 20-1). I am grateful to Dr Geoffrey West for these points and, more generally, for much helpful advice on coinage in early medieval Italy, splendidly surveyed in ch. 5 of his unpublished thesis, 'Studies in Representations and Perceptions of the Carolingians in Italy, 774-875' (Univ. of London, Ph.D. thesis, 1998), pp. 165-210. 65 Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, p. 65. 66 See the story of Duke Alahis of Trento refusing to fight Cunincpert 'quia inter contos suos, sancti archangeli Michaelis, ubi ego illi iuravi, imaginem conspicio': Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardum, v. 41 (pp. 160-1). An alterative reading would be that Alahis saw a vision of the archangel 'among the spears' of Cunincpert's warriors: Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, p. 64. 67 Petrucci, 'Origine e diffusione', p. 346; Cronaca di Novalesa, ed. G. C. Alessio (Turin, 1982), iii. 14 (p. 157); Epitaphium Ansae Reginae, ed. Bethmann and Waitz, MGH, Script, rer. Lang., p. 192. 68 Carletti, 'Iscrizione murali', no. 52 (pp. 69-70); Delrolez and Schwab, 'Runic Inscriptions', pp. 103-5. Rather oddly, the inscription invokes the protection of the Archangel Gabriel for the royal couple. 69 Delrolez and Schwab, 'Runic Inscriptions', 108, quoting T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders (8 vols, Rome, 1892-9), viii. 60-83, at p. 75; Codex Carolini, ed. W. Gundlach, MGH, Epistolae III: Epistolae Merovingici et Carolingici aevi I, p. 613. 64

Peculiaris Patronus Noster

13

adoption of new dynastic patrons. Particularly interesting is the case of Arichis II, who in 760 caused a group of twelve martyrs, supposedly brothers, to be translated from their various burial places in southern Italy and enshrined in his new church of Santa Sophia. A fantastic passio, compiled to commemorate these events, termed the martyrs the duces and patroni of the Beneventans.70 In 768 Arichis complemented this activity with further translations, most notably that of the martyr Mercurius, wishfully identified with the Byzantine military saint Mercurius of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Mercurius joined his twelve 'brethren' in the church of Santa Sophia. In the texts commemorating this event, which derive from a late eighth- or ninth-century original, Mercurius was explicitly described as patronus Beneventani populi and protector of the city, lordship and people of Benevento.71 Such initiatives raise the question of the Beneventan rulers' attitude to the cult of the archangel. No duke or prince is commemorated on the rulers' pillar after Romoald II. Moreover, although Arichis II married into the royal house, then especially devoted to Michael, he was clearly at the very least anxious to supplement the archangel's cult with that of other local saints. Even so, his wife Adelperga continued to promote the cult, and in the neighbouring duchy of Spoleto, the Lombard ruler, Hildebrand also acted as a sponsor, in 774 granting the sanctuary at Tancia to the great monastery of Farfa, with which he had strong links and which thereafter seems to have protected the shrine.72 It was in this period too that the feast of 8 May, commemorating the archangel's appearances on Monte Gargano, gained wide acceptance. This feast is distinct from both the ancient Roman one (29 September), which commemorated the dedication of the church on the Via Salaria, and those which honoured the saint in Byzantium: 8 November (the synaxis ton Asomaton, feast of the Incorporeal Beings) and 6 September (the miracle performed by Michael at Chonai).73 There is no liturgical evidence for the Garganican feast until at least the late eighth century and probably not until the early ninth, when it starts to feature in the calendars (spreading thereafter quite rapidly). It may be too that the Liber de apparitione was put together at that time.74 Translatio duodecim martyrum, ed. Waitz et al.} MGH, Script, rer. Lang. (Hanover, 1878), pp. 574-6; H. Belting, 'Studien zum Beneventanischen Hof im 8. Jahrhundert', Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 16 (1962), 141-93, esp. 156-7. 71 Translatio Sancti Mercurii, ed. Waitz et al., MGH, Script, rer. Lang., pp. 576-80; Belting, 'Studien zum Beneventanischen Hof, pp. 157-9. 72 Mara, 'Contributo allo studio del culto', p. 270. 73 Mara and Spadafora, 'Michele', cols 423-5; Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. A. P. Kazhdan et al. (3 vols, Oxford, 1991), i. 209-10, 427; ii. 1360. 74 G. Otranto, 'II Liber de apparitione e il culto di San Michele sul Gargano nella documentazione liturgica altomedievale', Vetera Christianorum, 18 (1981), 423-42, esp. at 429-42. 70

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The Medieval State

The latter's appearance, and the enhanced commemoration of a feast linking Michael with his Beneventan sanctuary and marking his assistance to the Lombards in battle, suggest a resurgence of princely interest in the cult. With the disappearance of the Lombard monarchy, it had perhaps become a particularly potent symbol of Lombard identity. Similar attitudes may have prompted the commemoration of the archangel in image or circumscription on the Beneventan coinage of Grimoald IV (806-17), Sico (817-32), Siconulph (839-49) and Adelchis II (858-78). The use of the coinage at that time as a vehicle for ideological statement is well illustrated by the intruder Siconulph's expression of his claim to be legitimate prince of Benevento through the issue of denarii with the circumscription princesbenebenti sicono on the obverse. The fact that the reverse of these coins was inscribed arhangelvmihae (Archangel Michael) suggests that the cult had a part to play in the process of legitimation.75 The continuing interest in St Michael was evidently compatible with a search for fresh patrons. In the early ninth century the princes Sico and Sicarius stole the remains of St Januarius, patron of the city of Naples, and installed them in their own cathedral at Benevento. Thereafter Januarius was invoked as the especial protector of the ruling family.76 Finally, in 838 the duchy acquired its first truly apostolic remains, with the translation to Benevento of the relics of St Bartholomew from the island of Lipari and their eventual enshrinement in a church next to the cathedral.77 The Italian evidence, then, complements that from Frankia. It suggests that from an early date Lombard rulers had a highly developed sense of the usefulness of presenting favoured saints as patrons not just of the royal house, but of the entire gens or political community, an attitude perhaps encouraged by the fact that in theory at least the Lombard monarchy was elective and not confined to a particular dynasty.773 The supralocal patrons thus favoured had a number of distinguishing characteristics. They were not drawn from the ruling families themselves and were generally either universal figures with strong local associations, or early martyrs who had suffered locally in the persecutions. In most cases they acquired important new characteristics in the service of their royal impresarios. The Lombard rulers, for 75 / Longobardi (Milan, 1987), pp. 174-7 (nos iv. 40-2, 56); West, 'Studies in Representations', p. 185. I am grateful to Dr West for these references. On Siconulph see Erchempertus, Hist. Lang. Ben., cc. 12, 14-23 (pp. 239-43). 76 Belting, 'Studien zum Beneventanischen Hof, pp. 160-1; Chronicon Salemitanum, ed. U. Westerbergh (Stockholm, 1956), cap. 57 (pp. 57-8). 77 Belting, 'Studien zum Beventanischen Hof, 161-2. 77a Reinhard Schneider, Konigswahl und Konigserhebung in Fruhmittelalter: Untersuchungen zum Herrschaftsnachfolge bei die Langobarden und Merovingen (Stuttgart, 1972).

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example, effectively recreated the cult of St Michael to answer to their own needs and expectations, with a feast which highlighted the saint's local appearances, and with a strong emphasis on his military attributes. Arichis II likewise had a comprehensible agenda in his promotion of new cults in Benevento. The linking together of twelve local martyrs was clearly intended to endow his principality with sanctified Christian founders as authoritative and authenticating in their limited sphere as Christ's own apostles were universally. The adoption of Mercurius, transformed into a soldier saint, was obviously also expedient. These new patrons were intended to be attractive to churchmen and soldiers alike. As in Frankia, we lack the evidence to assess the degree to which the ordinary people identified with those thus offered to them as their state protectors. All that can be said is that all the saints considered had prominent cult sites, and that one, St Michael in Benevento, certainly attracted widespread veneration throughout the Lombard states in the later seventh and eighth centuries; his cult at least would have been a plausible vehicle for the encouragement of solidarity and coherence among the subjects of the rulers who promoted it. Royal expenditure on building pilgrim hostels, themselves institutions likely to foster such sentiments, illustrates one way of using the cult to enhance the monarchy's image. The widespread adoption of the feast of the apparition on the 8 May also suggests that the cult had some impact outside the governing elite. In Italy and France, then, in the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries, certain saints were undoubtedly promoted by rulers as, for want of a better phrase, 'patrons of the state', their images publicly displayed on coinage, shields or standards, their cult sites enhanced with impressive buildings and shrines and approached along routes furnished with pilgrim xenodochia. Some undoubtedly enjoyed popular success, and in those instances we may conclude that devotion to the saint, with his carefully crafted image, contributed to the prestige and encouraged the cohesion of the state with he was associated. The church co-operated actively in this process, at the cult sites and in the liturgy and associated events, in which not just the saint but the local ruler might be commemorated. This balance of interest between church, cult site, and ruler meant that royal dynastic saints were rarely chosen per se as state patrons. Such cults were not exclusive. There seems to have been little idea of a single patron of state or gens. Although Dagobert adopted Denis as his peculiar patron, he continued to honour Martin. Both saints appeared inter alios as special patrons of the army in the Carolingian royal laudes. Similarly in Benevento, when the late eighth- and early ninth-century

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The Medieval State

dukes promoted new cults as patrons of the duchy, they did not abandon Michael. To discard or arouse the jealousy of such powerful and capricious figures would be dangerous. The art lay in cultivating a sufficiency of influential brokers at the court of the heavenly ruler. How does England fit into these developments? Before the tenth century there were few comparable cults. Perhaps the closest analogue is that of St Cuthbert (d. 687), based at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, one of the relatively few pre-Viking English kingdoms that could be characterized as a state. Cuthbert, a holy ascetic, was prior and then bishop at the monastery which had initiated the conversion of the still largely pagan local people.78 I have argued elsewhere that his cult was in many ways modelled upon that of the Prankish Martin, that the monastic guardians of his shrine presented him as a focus for the loyalty of the Northumbrian gens as a whole, and as the special protector of the dynasty which ruled the two provinciae (formerly kingdoms) into which it was divided.79 Interestingly, Bede in his metrical Life of Cuthbert includes the saint in a somewhat eccentric list of holy patrons of peoples or places, comprising Peter and Paul (Rome), John the Evangelist (Asia), Bartholomew (India), Mark (Egypt), Cyprian (Africa), Hilary (Poitiers) and Chrysostom (Constantinople). Cuthbert, who comes at the end, is associated with Britannia and the Angli.80 Cuthbert's cult was relatively successful at an early date. There is evidence that the Northumbrian kings, whose base was in the northern provincia of Bernicia promoted it in the heartlands of southern Deira, in and around York.81 In his poem on the saints of York Alcuin devotes disproportionate space to Cuthbert, who was after all only tenuously connected with that see, and both there and in his letters it is plain that he regarded him as the leading saint of Northumbria and indeed (like Bede) of Britain.82 Cuthbert's standing is also evidenced by the fact that in the late eighth century he became joint titular of a church built to commemorate the murder of King ^Elfwald (779-88) at Scythlescester 78 Two Lives ofSt Cuthbert, ed. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1940); Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969, rev. edn, 1991), iii. 28, iv. 3 (pp. 316, 336-46). 79 Alan Thacker, 'Bede's Ideal of Reform', in Ideal and Reality, pp. 130-53, esp. pp. 146-50; idem, 'The Social and Continental Background to Early English Hagiography' (Univ. of Oxford, D.Phil, thesis, 1978), esp. pp. 124-6. 80 Bede, Vita Sancti Cuthberti metrica, ed. W. Jaager, Palaestra, 198 (Leipzig, 1935), lines 11-29 (pp. 59-60). For discussion of the absence of Martin from that list see Thacker, 'Social and Continental Background', pp. 122-7, and contra: Godman, in Alcuin, Bishops, Kings and Saints of York, ed. P. Godman (Oxford, 1983), p. liii n. 3. 81 See esp. Thacker, 'Social and Continental Background', pp. 136-9. 82 Alcuin, Bishops, Saints and Kings, lines 646-750 (pp. 54-62); idem, Epistolae, in MGH, Epistolae, iv, ed. E. Dummler (Berlin, 1895), esp. nos 16, 20 (pp. 42, 57). Cf. Godman, Bishops, Kings and Saints, pp. lii-liii, where he dissents from my view that Cuthbert's cult was modelled on Martin's at Tours.

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near the Roman wall; in England such honours had hitherto usually been reserved for 'universal' saints.83 No other pre-Viking kingdom produced a saint comparable to Cuthbert. The figure who comes nearest is perhaps Chad (d. 672), first bishop of Lichfield.84 Chad, who is titular of a number of early episcopal churches in the west midlands, clearly became patron of his see,85 but we are not well informed about his significance for the kings of Mercia.86 The fact is that in general early Anglo-Saxon episcopal cults were less impressive than those of contemporary Frankia. More notable, both in number and significance, were royal cults, including (very unusually for the Latin West) those of kings. Indeed, in many ways it is a king who provides perhaps the nearest analogue to Cuthbert. The cult of the Northumbrian Oswald (d. 642) - significantly, Cuthbert's co-dedicatee at Scythlecester - was royally sponsored and, apparently, genuinely popular. Yet although his reputation was diffused remarkably quickly through much of England and beyond, and although (as I have argued elsewhere) the initial suspicions of the church were overcome, Oswald never quite made it as a patron of the Northumbrian state. The clergy, the crucial impresarios, could never commit themselves as unreservedly to a king as to a bishop.87 There is, however, one other saint who has a genuine claim to be the first patron of the English. The early devotion to Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) in England has been recently analysed by the present author, and it is proposed only to summarize the arguments here.88 Though he was admired and perhaps venerated by a relatively restricted and learned group of monks and disciples in the early seventh century, Gregory's cult only really took off in Rome in the 68os. Its earliest effective expression was in England, and was almost certainly the work of Theodore of Tarsus (d. 690), a Cilician outsider nominated to the see of Canterbury by the pope in 669 when the English bishopelect died in Rome. Theodore, who in 679 styled himself 'archbishop of W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), p. 265. Bede, HE, iii. 28; iv. 3 (pp. 316, 336-46). 85 Alan Thacker, 'Anglo-Saxon Cheshire', in Victoria History of Cheshire, i, ed. B. E. Harris and A. T. Thacker (Oxford, 1987), pp. 269-71. 86 For the late ninth- or early tenth-century vernacular Life see R. Vleeskruyer, The Life ofSt Chad: An Old English Homily (Amsterdam, 1953); Janet Bateley, 'Old English Prose Before and During the Reign of Alfred', Anglo-Saxon England, 17 (1988), 93-138, at 104-18. 87 Alan Thacker, 'Membra Disjecta: The Division of the Body and the Diffusion of the Cult', in Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint, ed. Clare Stancliffe and Eric Cambridge (Stamford, 1995), pp. 97-127. 88 Alan Thacker, 'Memorializing Gregory the Great: The Origin and Transmission of a Papal Cult in the Seventh and Early Eighth Centuries', Early Medieval Europe, 7 (1998), 59-84> esp. 75-8, 80-4. 83

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the island of Britain' (archiepiscopus Brittaniae insulate),89 seems to have taken essentially an eastern approach to his authority in England, regarding his office as superior to that of a metropolitan and similar to the headship of a modern 'autocephalous' Orthodox church.90 In tandem with these views, he derived his authority not from Augustine, founding bishop of Canterbury, but from Gregory, successor to the Roman apostles and evangelist of the English as a whole. This approach led to the exaltation of Gregory as founder of the English mission and endowed him with a novel style, 'apostle of the English'. It emancipated Theodore from a power base localized at Canterbury and assisted him in his dealings with English rulers north as well as south of the Humber. Actively disseminated at the archbishop's school at Canterbury, it was repeated by the archbishop's pupils, including Aldhelm (d. 709) in Wessex and perhaps Oftfor (fl. 6905) in Worcester and John of Beverley (d. 721) in York.91 In particular, it informed the earliest Life of the pope, written c. 700 at Whitby, a community with which Theodore had close links and which was the centre of an active Gregorian cult.92 The anonymous author of that Life made great play with Gregory's apostolic status and defined his role in terms of responsibility for the conversion of a people (gens} or region (provincid). He (or she) explicitly characterized Gregory as apostle of the English, but never fully explained who was included under the latter designation.93 The theme was, of course, more fully and persuasively developed by Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History, expressly devoted to the unitary gens Anglorum and to the depiction of Gregory as its spiritual father.94 In the late seventh and earlier eighth century, Gregory's cult was certainly promoted by senior clergy in the important churches of Canterbury, York and Whitby, in all of which he was titular of a chapel or altar, and probably also at Worcester, which seems to have possessed a version of the anonymous Life.95 From the mid-eighth century, however, the pope shared his status as founding father of the English church with his envoy Augustine: in 747 the council of Clofeshoh Bede, HE, iv. 17 (p. 384); Wormald, 'Bede, the Bretwaldas and Origins', in Ideal and Reality, pp. 99-129, esp. 120-9. 90 See Works of Joseph Bingham, ed. R. Bingham (10 vols, Oxford, 1855), i. 94, 171, 201-3, 206-7; Isidore, Etymologiae, ed. W. Lindsay (2 vols, Oxford, 1911), Vll.xii. 6-10 (p. 299). 91 Aldhelm, De virginitate, ed. R. Ehwald, MGH, Auct. Ant. XV (Berlin, 1919), cc. 42, 55 (PP- 293, 3i4)j Bede, HE, iv. 12, 25; v. 3 (pp. 370, 408, 460). 92 The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, ed. B. Colgrave (Kansas, 1968), esp. c. 19 (p. 104). 93 E.g. Earliest Life, cc. 4-6, 28, 30 (pp. 78-84, 124, 132-4). 94 Bede, HE, ii. I (pp. 122-34); Wormald, 'Bede, the Bretwaldas and Origins', pp. 120-3. 95 For this complex material see esp. Thacker, 'Memorializing Gregory', pp. 67-9, 75. 89

Peculiaris Patronus Noster

19

required that the feasts of both saints be generally observed throughout England south of the Humber.96 This change appears to correspond with changes in the position of Theodore's successors, who since the early 7305 had been confronted by a northern metropolitan in the princely personage of Ecgberht, archbishop of York and brother of King Eadberht (737-757/8) ,97 Having perforce to abandon Theodore's pretensions to jurisdiction over the whole of Britannia, they came to focus once again on Canterbury and Augustine, its principal local saint. In so doing, they threw into high relief a cardinal weakness of the Gregorian cult in England - its lack of the supreme focus of a tomb and corporeal remains (or even a miracle-working sanctuary) and consequent dependence upon secondary relics enclosed in altars.98 In England Gregory could have no popular following, no grateful clients whose petitions had been answered in the dramatic environs of a shrine-sepulchre. His was primarily a liturgical cult fostered by a clerical elite. In the ninth century, then, England had at least one saint, Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, not unlike the Prankish and Italian saints discussed above, and still the dominant patron of the once-powerful kingdom of Northumbria." The English church also venerated a non-local patron in the person of Gregory the Great, whose anomalous cult had come to transcend English political divisions. These were the principal resources for fashioning a state cult available to Alfred (871-99), in the new circumstances in which he found himself after the capture of London in 886, when he could increasingly claim to be leader of all the English outside the Danelaw, 'king of the Anglo-Saxons'.100 Clearly 'state cults' of the kind that, it has been argued, existed in contemporary or near contemporary France and Italy, would have offered Alfred valuable ideological underpinning in what was a period of reconstruction, even of state-building. There can, moreover, be little doubt that cults such those of Sts Denis and Michael of Monte Gargano were known to Alfred and his contemporaries. The fame of the Areopagite brought the Parisian cult to English attention in the ninth century and there seems Council of Clofeshoh, cap. 17, in A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland (3 vols, Oxford, 1869—78), iii. 368. 97 Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, ed. C. Plummer (2 vols, Oxford, 1896), i. 360-2, 405-23; ii. 378-9. 98 Hence his English biographer's remarkable claim that miracles are not unique and particular to a single individual but a common manifestation in all the saints: Earliest Life, cap. 30 (pp. 128-34). 99 For the vicissitudes of the community and relics of St Cuthbert after the departure from Lindisfarne see C. F. Battiscombe, 'Introduction', in The Relics of St Cuthbert (Oxford, 1956), pp. 1-114, esp. pp. 25-40; St Cuthbert: His Cult and His Community, ed. Gerald Bonner, David Rollason, and Clare Stancliffe (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 367-467. 100 Alfred the Great, ed. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge (London, 1983), pp. 38-9. 96

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The Medieval State

to have been a long history of English links with the Beneventan sanctuary.101 Interestingly, too, Michael had royal associations for Alcuin, who addressed a sequence in his honour to Charlemagne.102 Both cults were included in the Old English Martyrology, a text which very probably dates from the reign of Alfred himself.103 Oddly enough, there were no obvious West Saxon candidates for he role of state patron. The early West Saxon kings were never closely associated with any dominant saint. Indeed, pre-Alfredian Wessex threw up few notable cults of any description; there were few distinguished holy bishops,104 and even fewer royal saints (in marked contrast to Mercia, Kent and Northumbria).105 In such circumstances the 'pan-English' cult of Gregory had an obvious attraction. In fact, there is quite a lot of evidence that Gregory enjoyed a particularly high reputation among clerical and court circles in late ninthcentury England. The Old English Martyrology, for example, declared: 'he is our father . . . he is our foster-father in Christ and we are his children in baptism'.106 Alfred's personal regard is reflected in the extent to which the pope's writings feature in the translations of his reign - most notably, of course, the Pastoral Care., rendered into English by Alfred himself, and the Dialogues, ascribed to Bishop Waerferth of Worcester.107 In the verse preface to the former Alfred bestowed high praise on its author, 'the Lord's champion, . . . this greatest of Romans, most gifted of men, most celebrated for his glorious deeds'.108 Gregory also received honourable mention alongside Augustine and Jerome in the king's preface to his translation of Augustine's Soliloquies.,109 and in 101

Delrolez and Schwab, 'Runic Inscriptions', 95-130. Alcuin, Carmina, pp. 348-9. 103 Alfred the Great, ed. Keynes and Lapidge, p. 34, quoting Das altenglische Martyrologium, ed. G. Kotzor (2 vols, Munich, 1981), i. 243, 363-7, 400-5, 421-5, 453-4; Bateley, 'Old English Prose', pp. 95, 118. 104 Birinus of Dorchester and Haedde of Winchester are the most notable: Bede, HE, iii. 7;v. 18 (pp. 232, 512-14). 105 Barbara Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1995), p. 208; S. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 118-19,242-3. 106 Das altenglische Martyrologium, ed. Kotzor, ii. 32; trans. An Old English Martyrology, ed. G. Herzfeld, Early English Text Society, old series, 116 (London, 1900), p. 39. 107 King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, ed. H. Sweet, Early English Text Society, old series, 45, 50 (Oxford, 1871); Bischofs Waerferth von Worcester Ubersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen, ed. H. Hecht (Leipzig, 1900); Bateley, 'Old English Prose', pp. 95, 103; M. Godden, 'Waerferth and King Alfred: The Fate of the Old English Dialogues', in Alfred the Wise, pp. 35-51; Alfred the Great, ed. Keynes and Lapidge, p. 29; Asser, VitaAlfredi, ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, 1904), cap. 77 (p. 62). IDS Verse preface to the Pastoral Care, trans. Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, pp. 126-7. 109 T. A. Carnicelli, King Alfred's Version of St Augustine's Soliloquies (Harvard, 1969), p. 47; Alfred the Great, ed. Keynes and Lapidge, p. 138. 102

Peculiaris Patronus Noster

21

a work known at Worcester as Alfred's Dicta, which seems to have comprised the Soliloquies and other texts, including perhaps the Whitby Vita or at least materials relating to the pope's life.110 Worcester, then, fostered Gregory's cult in Alfred's reign and revived interest in the Whitby Life, with its strong emphasis on Gregory's apostolic status.111 That these preoccupations had a wider currency in Alfredian England is perhaps suggested by the letter which Archbishop Fulk of Reims sent to Alfred c. 890, in which he alluded to 'Augustine, first bishop of your gens, sent to you by your apostle, the blessed Gregory'.112 We have already seen that the see of Reims was claiming apostolic status for its first bishop, Remigius, in the later ninth century and that at Fulk's promoting Pope Formosus in the 8905 had explicitly recognized Remigius as apostle of the Franks. The archbishop had perhaps Gregory and the English in mind when promoting this enhancement of his own patron's status.113 Alfred, it has recently been suggested, was in later life increasingly drawn to philosophical and secular discourse, to 'a world of classical history and legend'.114 Harsh experience perhaps left him less sympathetic to the cult of the saints, with its confident emphasis on their continuing and frequent intervention in the natural order on behalf of their clients; certainly Asser, although he presents the king as deeply religious, makes no reference to devotion to any particular saint except for an early attachment to the otherwise unknown Gueriir.115 At all events, it was left to Alfred's immediate successors to draw the saints more fully into the service of the revived and extended West Saxon monarchy. The beginnings of such a development are already apparent in the second English coronation ordo, probably composed for Edward the Elder's coronation in 900.116 At the solemn blessing of the ruler, by then crowned and invested with sword, sceptre and rod (but not anointed), the ordo D. Whitelock, 'The Prose of Alfred's Reign', in Continuations and Beginnings, ed. E. G. Stanley (London, 1966), pp. 70-3; Thacker, 'Memorializing Gregory', pp. 67-9. 111 Cf. the inclusion of material drawn from it in the Dicta and the allusion to Gregory's 'golden mouth' in Waerferth's Dialogues: Thacker, 'Memorializing Gregory', pp. 62, 68. 112 'Augustinus . . . sanctus vestrae gentis primus episcopus, a beato Gregorio apostolo vestro directus', Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, Brett and Brooke, i. 6-12, at p. 8; trans. Lapidge and Keynes, Alfred the Great, pp. 182-6; D. Whitelock, English Historical Documents i (2nd edn, London, 1979), no. 223 (pp. 883-5). Nelson's earlier doubts about its authenticity, expressed in ' "A King Across the Sea": Alfred in Continental Perspective', TRHS, 5th series, 36 (1986), 48-68, at 49, have been abandoned in 'Fulk's Letter', in Alfred the Wise, pp. 135-44. 113 Nelson, 'Fulk's Letter', pp. 139-40. 114 Godden, 'Waerferth and King Alfred', pp. 48-51. 115 Asser, Life of Alfred, cc. 49, 74, 76, 104 (pp. 36-7, 54-7, 59-62, 90). 116 Janet Nelson, 'The Second English Ordo', in eadem, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), pp. 361-74. 110

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The Medieval State

implores divine protection through the intercession of St Mary, St Peter and Gregory, 'apostolic saint of the English' (sanctae mariae ac bead petri apostolorum principis, sanctique gregorii aneglorum [sic] apostolici).117 While, as I have just suggested, this view of Gregory was representative of attitudes already current at Alfred's own court, the sharply focused invocation, at a crucial point in the liturgy, suggests perhaps a strengthening regard for the pope as patron of the new political order. It was, however, not Edward (899-924) but Athelstan (924-39) who displayed the greatest enthusiasm for the cult of the saints and the clearest understanding of the ways in which it could be put to the service of the new state. Athelstan had been brought up at the court of his aunt /Ethelflaed, queen of the Mercians (d. 918), who had already displayed considerable skill in the exploitation of the cults of Oswald, Werburga, Ealhmund and others in her newly established fortifications.118 But his commitment to the saints far outstripped hers. His zeal for relic collecting was remarkable even by medieval standards,119 and he also promoted specific cults; stories were told at his court, for example, about the martyred East Anglian king Edmund, already the object of widespread veneration.120 For our present purposes, however, the crucial figure is, once again, Cuthbert. By the mid-tenth century, there had developed a carefully wrought tradition that Alfred and his immediate successors had become clients and benefactors of the northern bishop, by then established at Chester-le-Street.121 This tradition, probably first recorded in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto at Chester-le-Street before the death of Edmund I in 946,122 traces the dynasty's interest back to Alfred, said to 117 P. Ward, 'An Early Version of the Anglo-Saxon Coronation Ceremony', EHR, 57 (1942), 345-6i> at 356. 118 Alan Thacker, 'Chester and Gloucester: Early Ecclesiastical Organization in Two Mercian Burhs', Northern History, 18 (1982), 199-211, at 203-4, 209-11. 119 P. W. Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter (Woodbridge, 1993), pp. 171-209; D. W. Rollason, 'Relic-Cults as an Instrument of Royal Policy', Anglo-Saxon England, 15 (1986), 91-103, esp. 92-5. Athelstan's heavy investment in Exeter, which included a munificent gift of relics, may have been influenced by Althelflaed's activities at Gloucester: Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter, pp. 23-7, 171-209.1 owe this suggestion to Michael Wood. 120 Three Lives of English Saints, ed. M. Winterbottom (Toronto, 1972), p. 67; David Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1989), pp. 155-7. 121 The imperishable body and its guardians remained at Chester-le-Street from 883 to 995: Eric Cambridge, 'Why Did the Community of St Cuthbert Settle at Chester-leStreet?', in St Cuthbert: His Cult, pp. 367-86; Gerald Bonner, 'St Cuthbert at Chester-leStreet', ibid., pp. 387-95. 122 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ed. T. Arnold, Symeonis Monachi opera omnia, 2 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1882-5), i- 196-214. What follows relies heavily upon David Rollason, 'St Cuthbert and Wessex: The Evidence of Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 183', in St Cuthbert: His Cult, pp. 413-24, and Luisella Simpson, 'The King Alfred/St Cuthbert Episode in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto: Its Significance for MidTenth-Century English History', in ibid., pp. 397-411.

Peculiaris Patronus Noster

23

have been visited by Cuthbert in a vision and told of his and his descendants' destiny to be kings of all Britain: tu es electus rex totius Britanniae. Alfred is also reputed to have admonished his son Edward the Elder to be faithful to Cuthbert and on his deathbed to have instructed him to bestow on the saint two armlets (armillae) and a gold thurible.123 The main focus, however, is upon Athelstan. Edward, like Alfred, is said upon his deathbed to have instructed his son to honour Cuthbert above all saints, and Athelstan himself to have visited the shrine at Chester-leStreet and to have offered there a rich treasure of gifts. Athelstan is also made to commend his brother and successor Edmund (939-46) to the saint's protection and to provide for his own burial by the saint. The main section of the Historia (cc. 1-28) then concludes with the new king, Edmund, visiting the shrine.124 It is clear that some at least of these assertions have a basis in fact. In particular, as David Rollason has shown, the Historians account of Athelstan's devotion is well founded.125 There survives not only a gospel book which Athelstan gave to St Cuthbert,126 but, more importantly, a collection of hagiographical and liturgical materials relating to the cult and put together under the king's patronage in Wessex.127 The collection includes a rhyming office for St Cuthbert, a recent innovation derived from late Carolingian exemplars and probably written for use in the royal chapel. This novel liturgy appears to have spread from the royal court to several important monastic communities, including New Minster at Winchester, Worcester and Peterborough.128 All this suggests that the Cuthbertine community's presentation of their saint as patron of West Saxon imperium reflects its close links with the royal court and, almost certainly, the views of Athelstan himself. The king, recognizing the need for 'ideological validation'129 of his imperial ambitions, not only befriended the community at Chester-le-Street but also promoted Cuthbert at court and in his own southern homelands as the dynasty's special protector. It is fitting to end this account of the early patron saints of the English state with the achievements of Athelstan, often regarded as the true founder of that state. But the story does not, of course, end there. Neither Gregory nor Cuthbert ultimately prospered in their new role. One was not buried in England at all, the other lay too far from the heartlands of the new English monarchy. In the end Athelstan was too 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, cc. 15-19 (pp. 204-7). Idem, cc. 25-8 (pp. 210-12). Rollason, 'St Cuthbert and Wessex', pp. 413-24. BL, Cotton MS Otho B.IX. Cambridge, Corpus Christ! College, MS 183. Rollason, 'St Cuthbert and Wessex', pp. 417-18. The phrase is used by Simpson, 'King Alfred/St Cuthbert', p. 404.

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The Medieval State

conservative. Perhaps because there was so little to build on, he shrank from bringing forward a major new cult to serve alongside Cuthbert in the south.130 Eventually other saints were promoted to fill the vacuum. Cnut, for example, ordered that the feast days of King Edward the Martyr and Archbishop Dunstan be observed throughout England.131 Although the matter remained unresolved at the Conquest, by then the foundations had been long laid for the role that was soon to be awarded to Edward the Confessor and ultimately to St George. 130

A new attitude towards dynastic saints can, however, be observed shortly after his death with the cult at Shaftesbury of Athelstan's sister-in-law, ^Elfgifu (d. 944), queen of Edmund I: Rollason, Saints and Relics, pp. 137-8. 131 Die Gezetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann (3 vols, Halle, 1903-1916), i. 298-9; Patrick Wormald, '^Ethelred the Lawmaker', in Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference, ed. D. Hill, BAR, British Series, 59 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 53-4.

2 Two Frontier States: Northumbria and Wessex, c. 650-750 J. R. MADDICOTT

It is significant that after the death of Redwald no southern or eastern kingdom was supreme. Dominance went to the frontier states of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. It probably had much to do with the conquests they made at British expense . . . Rulers making such conquests had lands to give, slaves to sell, and (possibly) minerals to exploit. The dynamics of power in early England are likely to have been such as to ensure that these advantages enabled them to gather armed power sufficient to dominate their neighbours to the south and east.l With characteristic vigour and originality, James Campbell here provides an explanation for the shifting balance between the states of the heptarchy, and in doing so identifies a pattern which underlay their relationships. Yet, for all its cogency, the argument rests more firmly on intuition than on evidence, and its exponent would be the last person to wish it to remain unquestioned. What follows takes the experience of two of these frontier provinces, Northumbria and Wessex, and assesses the contribution of their locations to the prosperity, political and economic, which each in turn enjoyed. In a short essay it is possible to provide only a broad hypothesis about a complicated subject. It may nevertheless suffice to show that there were significant differences in the evolution of such states, with contrasts as much in evidence as comparisons. The Northumbrian state grew most rapidly between c. 600 and 685, making gains beyond its heartlands which were not to be lost for centuries. Its effective founder, ALthelfrith of Bernicia (d. 616), not only united his native kingdom with that of Deira, but defeated the Irish of Dalriada, in western Scotland, and absorbed extensive (though unlocatable) British territory.2 Between 635 and 670 /Ethelfrith's sons, Oswald and Oswiu, resumed the momentum of their father's conquests after its Anglo-Saxons, ed. Campbell et al., p. 54. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969) (henceforward Bede), bk i, ch. 34 (p. 117). 1

2

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The Medieval State

interruption under the Deiran king Edwin. In 638 the Northumbrians captured the British fortress of Edinburgh, establishing their frontier on the Forth, where it bounded the territory of the Picts.3 Their power soon extended further northwards, for Bede states that either Oswald or Oswiu ruled over the Picts and that around 670 Wilfrid was bishop for Oswiu's Pictish subjects. By the 68os Northumbrian overlordship had also taken in the Irish of Dalriada, the British of Strathclyde and, increasingly, their southern cousins in the former British kingdom of Rheged, around the Solway. After the Pictish victory over Ecgfrith of Northumbria at Nechtansmere in 685 much of this territory was abandoned, as the Picts, the Dalriadic Irish and the Strathclyde Britons regained their independence.4 But even then the Northumbrians' northern frontier continued to lie along the now exposed line of the Forth and, in the west, to expand along the Solway, reaching the major port and ecclesiastical settlement of Whithorn by about 700.5 At its greatest extent, therefore, the Northumbrian empire may have comprised rather more than a third of modern Scotland. Despite Nechtansmere, much of this territory, in Lothian and Rheged, was retained until the tenth century. It is one of the paradoxes of any comparison between Northumbria and Wessex that the expansion of Wessex was to be more permanent but, as we shall see, less immediately profitable. The West Saxon Drang nach Westen gathered pace a generation after the start of Northumbria's aggrandisement. It was first signalled in 658 by Cenwealh's victory over the Britons at Peonnum: probably Penselwood on the Somerset-Wiltshire border, possibly Perm Hill, near Yeovil. The subsequent flight of the Britons as far as the River Parrett, in west Somerset, seems to have opened up much of Somerset to West Saxon occupation. Other later battles, under Cenwealh, Centwine and Ine, who fought against Geraint, king of Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) in 710, suggest that expansion owed as much to purposeful king-led aggression as to the more private initiatives of migrants and settlers.6 Its progress was marked by land grants, 3

Ibid., i. I (p. 21); K. H. Jackson, 'Edinburgh and the Anglian Occupation of Lothian', in The Anglo-Saxons, ed. P. Clemoes (London, 1969), pp. 35-42. 4 Bede, ii. 5 (p. 151), iii. 6 (p. 231), iv. 3 (p. 337), 26 (p. 429)5 J. Campbell, 'Elements in the Background to the Life of St Cuthbert and His Early Cult', in St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200, ed. G. Bonner, D. Rollason and C. Stancliffe (Woodbridge, 1989)3 p. 4; D. P. Kirby, The Earliest English Kings (London, 1991), pp. 84-5. 5 P. H. Blair, 'The Bernicians and their Northern Frontier', in Studies in Early British History, ed. N. K. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 171-2; P. Hill, Whithom and St Ninian (Stroud, 1997), pp. 16-18, 37; R. Cramp, Whithom and the Northumbrian Expansion Westwards (Whithorn, 1995). 6 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. D. Whitelock (London, 1961), pp. 21, 26; M. Todd, The South-West to AD 1000 (Harlow, 1987), pp. 272-4; B. Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1995), pp. 52-3.

Two Frontier States: Northumbria and Wessex, c. 650-750

27

evidence unavailable in the far north. By 682 C entwine was granting to Glastonbury estates around Taunton, well across the Parrett; by 680 there was already a monastery at Exeter, ruled by an English abbot; and by 729 King Althelheard was able to endow Glastonbury with land in the Torridge valley, in remote north-west Devon.7 It was probably about the same time that English colonists began to move into eastern Cornwall, along the Tamar.8 Though major British communities survived 'behind the lines' - for example, at Wareham and Exeter9 there was no visible British revanche and no southern Nechtansmere to reverse the invaders' advance. Northumbria and Wessex had in common not only expanding frontiers, but also the steps by which expansion was followed up. These were most obvious in the measures taken to promote the related interests of church and king in the new territories. As new lands became too extensive to be ruled from old sees, new 'frontier bishoprics' were created: Abercorn, on the Forth, in 681 for the Picts and for the British and Northumbrians of Lothian;10 Sherborne, in Dorset, in 706 for the peoples 'west of the wood' (Selwood);11 and Whithorn around 725 for the British and Northumbrians of south-west Scotland.12 In the case of Whithorn, and perhaps of Abercorn and Sherborne too, the sites chosen were those of pre-existing monasteries of British foundation, and other such monasteries may have been similarly adopted by the colonists and their kings: possibly Glastonbury in the south, to which Cenwealh, Centwine and Ine were all benefactors, and seemingly Melrose and Hoddom in the north.13 These institutions had varying H. Edwards, The Charters of the Early West Saxon Kingdom, BAR, 198 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 15-17, 63, 70; Yorke, Wessex, p. 60. 8 O. J. Padel, 'Glastonbury's Cornish Connections', in The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. L. Abrams and J. P. Carley (Woodbridge, 1991), p. 248. 9 D. A. Hinton, 'The Inscribed Stones in Lady St Mary Church, Wareham', Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 114 (1992), 260; H. P. R. Finberg, 'Sherborne, Glastonbury and the Expansion of Wessex', in his Lucerna (London, 1964), pp. uo-ii. 10 Bede, iv. 12 (p. 371), 26 (p. 429); C. Thomas, 'Abercorn and the Provincia Pictorum', in Between and Beyond the Walls: Essays on the Prehistory and History of North Britain in Honour of George Jobey, ed. R. Miket and C. Burgess (Edinburgh, 1984), pp. 324-3711 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock, p. 26; Bede, v. 18 (p. 515); Aldhelm: The Prose Works, trans. M. Lapidge and M. Herren (Cambridge, 1979), p. 10. 12 Bede, v. 23 (pp. 559-61). 13 Hill, Whithorn, pp. 26-30; Thomas, 'Abercorn', pp. 331-2; K. Barker, 'The Early History of Sherborne', in The Early Church in Western Britain and Ireland: Studies Presented to C.A. Ralegh Radford, ed. S. M. Pearce, BAR, 102 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 77-85; Charters of Sherborne, ed. M. A. O'Donovan (Oxford, 1988), pp. 83-8; J. P. Carley, Glastonbury Abbey (London, 1988), pp. 2-4; Edwards, Charters, pp. 15-17, 20-34; C. Stancliffe, 'Oswald, "Most Holy and Most Victorious King of the Northumbrians" ', in Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint, ed. C. Stancliffe and E. Cambridge 7

28

The Medieval State

fortunes. The see of Abercorn was abandoned after Nechtansmere, that of Sherborne remained until the Norman Conquest - another reminder of how much more permanent was the West Saxon achievement than the Northumbrian. But all represented a form of settlement which contributed to the consolidation of conquest, whether lasting or transitory. So too, and in a related way, did the appropriation of important secular sites. Dunbar and Edinburgh, probable British fortresses in Lothian taken over by the Northumbrians, were not exactly matched in the south, where the great hill-forts of Cadbury Castle and Cadbury Congresbury were abandoned before the Saxons' arrival and not reoccupied.14 But British centres such as Lustleigh, in Devon, later one of King Alfred's manors, were absorbed into the West Saxon fisc.15 In both north and south the founding of new bishoprics, the cultivation of British monasteries, and the acquisition of native centres, were all a means to the transfer of power. The coincidence of method in the expansion of Northumbria and Wessex may be no more than that: a case of two kingdoms facing comparable opportunities and responding in similar ways. But developments in the new territories of the two kingdoms may also embody an element of conscious emulation, for the links between Northumbria and Wessex from c. 635 to 700 were extraordinarily close. The warp of their relationship was kinship and marriage, the weft ecclesiastical contacts. Both can be traced back to Oswald of Northumbria's partial responsibility for the conversion of Cynegisl of Wessex around 635, and his later marriage to Cynegisl's daughter.16 The subsequent evidence is too full to be set out in detail. But we might note that Cenwealh, Cynegisl's son, was on friendly terms with Ahlfrith, Oswiu's son, and used his influence to introduce Wilfrid to Ahlfrith in the 6505;17 that Cenwealh was also the close friend and benefactor of the Northumbrian Benedict Biscop, who visited him on his return from Rome in 672;18 that the wife of King Centwine of Wessex was the sister of lurminburg, second wife of Ecgfrith of Northumbria (a relationship which caused Wilfrid to be driven from the refuge he had sought and briefly found with Centwine after his expulsion from Northumbria by Ecgfrith in 678);19 and that L. Alcock, Bede, Eddius and the Forts of the North Britons ([arrow Lecture, i( pp. 14-15, 18; Jackson, 'Edinburgh', pp. 41-2; L. Alcock, Cadbury Castle, Somerset (Cardiff, 1995), pp. 151-2; below, pp. 43-4. 15 M. Swanton and S. Pearce, 'Lustleigh, South Devon: Its Inscribed Stone, its Churchyard and its Parish', in The Early Church, ed. Pearce, p. 142. 16 Bede, Hi. 7 (p. 233). 17 The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus, ed. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1937), pp. 15-17. 18 'Historia Abbatum auctore Beda', in Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, ed. C. Plummer (2 vols, Oxford, 1896), i. 367. 19 Life of Bishop Wilfrid, p. 81. 14

Two Frontier States: Northumbria and Wessex., c. 650-750

29

Aldhelm of Malmesbury was both the supporter of Wilfrid in his troubles, and the friend, and possibly godfather, of King Aldfrith of Northumbria.20 It comes as no surprise to find that Pecthelm, deacon and monk with Aldhelm at Sherborne, later became the first Anglian bishop of Whithorn:21 a move from one frontier diocese to another which may have recognized that he was an old hand at dealing with Britons. The independence of distant states did not preclude a close interdependence at several different levels. In terms of power and prosperity, however, there was less conformity between the two kingdoms. Northumbria was incomparably the more powerful. The Northumbrian dominance of southern England in the mid-seventh century was hardly less marked than Bede suggests,22 and even after Nechtansmere the state remained a major and autonomous military force, defeating the Picts in 711, taking Dumbarton, the great British fortress of Strathclyde, in 756, and immune to all except occasional chevauchees from an otherwise dominant Mercia.23 In two other ways eighth-century Northumbria demonstrated an equality with, even superiority to, the greatest kingdoms to the south. First, a vigorous cultural life, obvious enough in the days of Bede, was perpetuated (if more narrowly) in the work of the school of York.24 Secondly, Northumbria maintained a good quality silver coinage, especially during the reign of Eadberht (738-57), very large in size and probably under royal (and archiepiscopal) control. In authority, volume and perhaps fineness, it outmatched, in mid-century at least, any coinage produced in the south.25 It is difficult not to see these achievements as integral and unitary: military clout, wealth and religious patronage remained as closely connected as they had been in the days of King Ecgfrith and Benedict Biscop. The dynamism which continued to be found in Northumbria was much less evident in Wessex. After Ine's abdication in 726 the kingdom was intermittently subject to intervention, territorial appropriation and direct rule by Aithelbald and Offa of Mercia. If the Tribal Hidage is indeed a Mercian tribute list, either of the seventh or the eighth century, then it must be significant that it takes in Wessex, with a very large hidage rating, but omits all Northumbria except its southernmost Ibid.; Aldhelm: The Prose Works, trans. Lapidge and Herren, pp. 168-70, 150-1, 32. Bede, v. 18 (p. 513), 23 (pp. 559-61). 22 Ibid., ii. 5 (pp. 149-51); Stancliffe, 'Oswald', pp. 55-6. 23 Kirby, Earliest English Kings, pp. 147-50; Campbell, 'Elements', pp. 6-7. 24 P. H. Blair, 'From Bede to Alcuin', in Famulus Christi, ed. G. Bonner (London, 1976), pp. 239-55; Campbell, 'Elements', p. 7. 25 P. Grierson and M. Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, i, The Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 173, 182; D. M. Metcalf, Thrymsas and Sceattas in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (3 vols, London, 1993-4), iii- 576-80. 20 21

30

The Medieval State

province of Elmet.26 West Saxon religious culture similarly contrasts strongly with that of Northumbria: no de luxe manuscripts, not many stone-built churches, little sculpture, few artefacts to compare with those from monastic sites in eastern and northern England.27 Unlike the achievement of Bede, that of Aldhelm appears to have been an isolated one, without a setting. Appearances may, of course, deceive. Aldhelm's description of the church at Withington in Gloucestershire, not so far from Wessex, with its glass windows, gold and silver cross, and jewelled chalice, is a reminder of how much may have been lost.28 Yet more might have been expected to survive for Wessex than for Northumbria, where the Vikings were to strike harder - we have charters for early Wessex but none for Northumbria - and the impression remains that the contrasts between the two kingdoms were real and not illusory. How can we explain them? Almost certainly not in terms of the quality of kingship, for in the eighth century kingship was an unstable institution in both states. Abdication, deposition, disputed succession, rebellion and civil war were the common methods of political argument, perhaps more frequently employed in Northumbria than in Wessex.29 Such periods of stability as there were benefited Wessex more than Northumbria; no Northumbrian king could rival Ine's thirty-seven-year rule, though Eadberht's twenty years came closest. So dynastic strife did not visibly tip the scales against power and prosperity in one kingdom more than the other. To cite the weight of an expansionist Mercia pressing more heavily on Wessex than on Northumbria as an alternative explanation is merely to restate the question; for the relative immunity of such a wealthy state from Mercian aggression is likely to have reflected Northumbrian strengths as much as Mercian policies. A more convincing answer lies in the relative economic and territorial resources of the two states, the concern of the remainder of this essay. At first sight it may seem perverse to give the palm here to Northumbria. Shut out from power in the south after its defeat by Mercia at the battle of the Trent in 679, its northern territories markedly reduced since Nechtansmere, Northumbria may seem to have been overtaken by Wessex, which continued to expand and to consolidate its own new territories in the south-west. Yet both internally and Cf. C. Hart, 'The Tribal Hidage', TRHS, 5th series, 21 (1971), 141-23, 156-7. D. Hinton, Alfred's Kingdom (London, 1977), p. 24; idem, 'The Archaeology of Eighth- to Eleventh-Century Wessex', in The Medieval Landscape of Wessex, ed. M. Aston and C. Lewis (Oxford, 1994), pp. 34-5; S. Foster, 'A Gazeteeer of the AngloSaxon Sculpture in Historic Somerset', Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, 131 (1987), 51. 28 H. Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1972), pp. 193-4. 29 Anglo-Saxons, ed. Campbell et al., pp. 114-15; Campbell, 'Elements', p. 7. 26

27

Two Frontier States: Northumbria and Wessex., c. 650-750

31

externally, at home, in the conquered lands and in what remained of those lands after 685, Northumbria enjoyed assets which Wessex appears to have lacked and which help to account for its survival as a major power. Chief among them were two resources which Northumbria possessed without recourse to empire-building: silver and cattle. Silver (and to lesser extent gold) was evidently plentiful in early Northumbria, and Bede gives us several examples of its circulation and use. He tells us, admittedly in the context of a vision story, that about 615 ^Ethelfrith of Northumbria offered large gifts of silver to Redwald of East Anglia to put to death the exiled Edwin, Aithelfrith's rival; that Oswald, Edwin's successor, possessed a silver dish for food; and that after Oswald's death his hand and arm were preserved in a silver case at Bamburgh.30 Gold and silver adorned Wilfrid's church at Ripon in the 6705, and a great silver cross and a silver-covered altar were made for Archbishop ^Lthelberht's church at York a century later.31 Apart from the prolific mid-eighth century coinage, Cuthbert's silver-cased altar and a silver plaque from Hexham are unique survivals from what was once considerable riches.32 Their raw material no doubt came in largely by way of gifts, trade and loot. But it is likely that silver was also mined locally and was a natural resource as well as an import. Silver is a by-product of lead extraction, and it is Bede again who writes of the 'rich veins of metal', including lead and silver, to be found in Britain. The occasional references to lead in our sources suggest that it was no scarce commodity in Northumbria. The ruined church at York was reroofed in lead by Bishop Wilfrid about 670; the original thatched church at Lindsifarne was similarly reroofed by Bishop Eadberht about 690; and the archaeologists have shown that lead flashing was also used for the roofs of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow.33 We cannot be sure of its origin. But there is some probability that it came from Alston, in south-east Cumberland. Lead and possibly silver had been worked there by the Romans and were worked again in the twelfth century, when the apparent rediscovery of the silver-bearing properties of the ore temporarily made this district Europe's main silver-producing Bede, ii. 12 (p. 177), iii. 6 (p. 231). Life of Bishop Wilfrid,, p. 35; Alcuin: The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York, ed. P. Godman (Oxford, 1982), p. 119. 32 E. Coatsworth, 'The Pectoral Cross and Portable Altar from the Tomb of St Cuthbert', in St Cuthbert, ed. Bonner et al., pp. 296-301; R. N. Bailey, 'The AngloSaxon Metalwork from Hexham', in St Wilfrid at Hexham, ed. D. P. Kirby (Newcastle uponTyne, 1974), pp. 155-8. 33 Bede, i. i (p. 17), iii. 25 (p. 295); Life of Bishop Wilfrid, p. 35; R. J. Cramp, 'Monastic Sites', in The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. D. M. Wilson (London, 1976), pp. 233, 237. 30

31

32

The Medieval State

centre.34 Bede's knowledge - that of a local man - of Britain's wealth in silver makes it not at all unlikely that this source may already have been under exploitation in the period of Northumbrian power. Cattle were a more certain and ubiquitous resource, as much the foundation of the region's pastoral economy in Bede's day as they had been in the earlier era of the Brigantes, the indigenous Iron-Age people of the north. Bede comments generally on the 'good pasturage for cattle' which Britain enjoyed, but more to our purpose is his casually specific statement that the early monks of Lindisfarne 'had no money but only cattle (nil pecuniarum absque pecoribusY ,35 Vehemently hostile though he was to ecclesiastical wealth, Bede evidently judged cattle to be so universal and customary a form of property as to be acceptable. What he implies has been confirmed by excavation. At the villa regia of Yeavering some 94 per cent of the bones found were of cattle, and the 'faunal record consistently indicates that systematic cattle-breeding was an important activity in the surrounding areas'. Those areas would have included the Lindisfarne estates, which ran close to Yeavering. At Jarrow too cattle bones vastly outnumbered those of any other quadruped.36 Seventh-century Northumbria had more in common with nineteenth-century Texas than just its frontier situation. The uses of cattle were multifarious. In the related economy of early Ireland, dominated by dairy cattle, their most workaday function was to provide milk. But they were also integral to many forms of social relationship, serving as a store of wealth, a mark of status, a bond between lord and client, and a unit of exchange.37 Wealth and status they almost certainly helped to define in Northumbria too. The great palisaded enclosure at Yeavering, predating the Germanic settlement and lasting into the seventh century, probably had among its functions the corralling of the cattle which other evidence shows to have been a regular form of rent and tribute in early medieval Northumbria.38 It I. A. Richmond, Roman Britain (3rd edn, revd. M. Todd, Harmondsworth, 1995), p. 131; N. K. Chadwick, 'The Conversion of Northumbria', in Celt and Saxon, ed. N. K. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1963), p. 159 n. 2; I. Blanchard, 'Lothian and Beyond: The Economy of the "English Empire" of David I', in Progress and Problems in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller, ed. R. Britnell and J. Hatcher (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 25-39. 35 Bede, i. i (p. 15), iii. 26 (p. 311). Cf. N. Higham, The Northern Counties to AD 1000 (Harlow, 1986), pp. 135-6. 36 B. Hope-Taylor, Yeavering: An Anglo-British Centre of Early Northumbria (London, I977):> PP- 325-8; B. A. Noddle, Animal Bones from Jarrow (unpublished Ancient Monuments Laboratory Report 80/87, n.d., n.p., no pagination). 37 A. T. Lucas, Cattle in Ancient Ireland (Kilkenny, 1989), passim; L. Alcock, The Neighbours of the Picts: Angles, Britons and Scots at War and at Home (Groam House Museum Trust [Rosemarkie], 1993), p. 36. 38 Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, pp. 169, 280; W. Rees, 'Survivals of Ancient Celtic Custom in Medieval England', in Angles and Bntons (Cardiff, 1963), pp. 160-2. Cf. Blanchard, 'Lothian and Beyond', p. 25. 34

Two Frontier States: Northumbria and Wessex, c. 650-750

33

gave a physical manifestation to an attribute of rulership which the invader took over from the native. The prestige of a king like Oswald was perhaps not only to be measured by the Beowulfian magnitude of his comitatus and his treasure, but also by the number of cattle - no subject for heroic poetry or ecclesiastical history - which he owned. So at least it was in Ireland. The reservoir of benefits which cattle thus represented could be tapped through the marketing of their products. That the vellum used for the making of the Codex Amiatinus and its two companion volumes in the early eighth century would have necessitated the slaughter of some 1550 calves shows not only the use of one such product but also the prodigious numbers of cattle in Bede's Northumbria and, in an unexpected way, a connection between cattle and culture.39 They were a part of the wealth which made possible the Northumbrian Renaissance. But the demand for vellum is likely to have been minute compared with that for another cattle product: hides and their derivative, leather. The plastic of the middle ages, leather had almost uncountable uses. Some of them are listed in ^Elfric's Colloquy., as applicable to the seventh and eighth centuries as to the tenth when it was written: 'various kinds of footwear, slippers and shoes, leggings and leather bottles, reins and trappings, flasks and leather vessels, spearstraps and halters, bags and purses'. ALlfric could have included the soldier's equipment too: shields, tents, sheaths and armour.40 The constant demand in all early societies for so essential a product makes it highly likely, though impossible to prove, that the export of hides contributed significantly to the Northumbrian economy. Both cattle and hides feature on our earliest tally of British exports, set down by Strabo in the first century AD. The trade cannot be more closely located, but two points are worth noting: that the best (because strongest) hides come from hilly regions where the cattle are exposed to strong winds and a wide range of temperatures; and that when we first have figures for English exports, under Edward I, Newcastle and occasionally Hull exported more hides than any other English ports.41 If this Northumbrian dominance was established early, it would indicate one way in which such 'monastic ports' as Whitby could have acquired 39

R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, 'The Art of the Codex Amiatinus', Jarrow Lecture, 1967, reprinted from Journal of the Archaeological Association, 3rd series, 32 (1969), 2. 40 Anglo-Saxon Prose, ed. and trans. M. Swanton (London, 1975), p. 112; M. R. Nieke and H. B. Duncan, 'Dalriada: The Establishment and Maintenance of an Early Historic Kingdom in North Britain', in Power and Politics in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland, ed. S. T. Driscoll and M. R. Nieke (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 13. 41 The Geography of Strabo, trans. H. L. Jones (8 vols, London, 1923), ii. 157, 255; Encyclopaedia Brittanica (nth edn, 1911), s.v. 'leather'; J. C. Davies, 'The Wool Customs Accounts for Newcastle upon Tyne for the Reign of Edward F, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, 32 (1954), 272.

34

The Medieval State

the foreign-minted sceattas found there.42 For both monks and kings, the export of hides may have been one means by which a natural resource could be turned into another form of wealth. And if it seems prima facie implausible that traders should have travelled long distances across dangerous seas for so utilitarian a commodity we might recall Richard Dana's voyage in 1835-6, described in Two Years Before the Mast: one of many thousands of miles from Boston to California, involving enormous expense and a double rounding of Cape Horn, to bring home 40,000 hides and 30,000 cows' horns.43 Even without its 'empire', then, and therefore largely without the gains in land, loot and tribute accruing from war, Northumbria was potentially a wealthy state. But its position was transformed by its expansion northwards and westwards from the early seventh century onwards. It was greatly to the kingdom's advantage that the earliest of the new territories to be acquired (and the last to be lost) was the land between the Tweed and the Forth, most of it known later as 'Lothian'. Not only was this an agriculturally prosperous and fertile region,44 but its native people, the Votadini, and their northern neighbours, the Picts, were rich in the precious metals needed by all dark-age rulers to maintain the means to generosity which was also a means to power. Raiders of Roman Britain for generations, both the Picts and the Votadini had acquired quantities of Roman silver.45 Some remained in its original form, though broken up, like the great silver hoard found at Traprain Law in East Lothian, the hillfort 'capital' of the Votadini; some was transmuted by the craftsmanship of its new owners. The ten silver chains, some of them decorated with Pictish symbols, and six of them found between Tweed and Forth, almost certainly fell into this second category. Probably symbols of power, Pictish in origin but imitated by the British, they suggest the sort of gains which may have been available to the first generation of Northumbrian conquerors and settlers.46 To judge from the many references to gold in the Gododdin, the national epic of the Votadini originally composed around 600, the Sceattas in England and on the Continent, ed. D. Hill and D. M. Metcalf, BAR, 128 (Oxford, 1984), p. 265. 43 Richard Henry Dana Jr, Two Years before the Mast (Penguin edn, Harmondsworth, 1986), esp. pp. 124, 358. 44 G. Barrow, 'Frontier and Settlement: Which Influenced Which? England and Scotland, 1100-1300', in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. Mackay (Oxford, 1989), pp. 5-6. 45 Campbell, 'Elements', pp. 4-5. 46 'The Work of Angels': Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork, 6th-$th Centuries AD, ed. S. Youngs (London, 1989), pp. 26-8, 33; C. Thomas, 'The Artist and the People: A Foray into Uncertain Semiotics', in From the Isles of the North: Early Medieval Art in Ireland and Britain, ed. C. Bourke (Belfast, 1995), pp. 5-6; C. Cessford, 'Early Historic Chains of Power', Pictish Art Society Journal, 6 (1994), 23-4. 42

Two Frontier States: Northumbria and Wessex, c. 650-750

35

most precious of all metals may also have added to the spoils. The scarcity of recovered gold proves little. Much less subject to casual loss than silver, gold objects are comparably, and frequently, referred to in a more reliable source, eighth-century Anglo-Saxon charters, which archaeology has again failed to validate.47 Via northern intermediaries, Northumbrian expansion in the northeast is thus likely to have resulted in the transmission of some of the riches of Roman Britain to one of its successor states. The northwestern areas over which Northumbria ruled at one time or another Dalriada and Strathclyde from c. 635 to 685 and Rheged beyond that date - were also wealthy, but in different ways. All these petty states contained sites where excavation has revealed an opulent material culture: Dunadd and Dunollie in Dalriada, Dumbarton in Strathclyde, Whithorn and Mote of Mark in Rheged.48 Most of these places had certain common characteristics. With the exception of Whithorn, all were high-status sites, on fortified hilltops and with easy access to the sea. Dunadd indeed may have been the 'capital' of Dalriada, as Dumbarton was of Strathclyde.49 With the exception of Dumbarton (only very incompletely excavated), all have yielded either small gold objects or evidence for the working of gold and silver or, as at Dunadd, both.50 All without exception have produced imported E-ware pottery, dating from the seventh century and brought in by sea from the regions of Touraine and Poitou in western France.51 Other sites share some but not all of these features - notably Buiston crannog in Ayrshire (Strathclyde), which has yielded gold jewellery, evidence of preciousmetal-working and E-ware.52 The impression of wealth in metals which these sites convey is complemented by the occasional casual find 47

Campbell, 'Elements', p. 5 n. 13; idem, 'The Sale of Land and the Economics of Power in Early England: Problems and Possibilities', Haskins Society Journal, i (1989), 27-8. For a more sceptical view of the possibility of gold among the Votadini, see L. Alcock, Economy, Society and Warfare among the Britons and Saxons (Cardiff, 1987), p. 248, and idem, 'The Activities of Potentates in Celtic Britain, AD 500-800', in Power and Politics, ed. Driscoll and Nieke, p. 36. 48 Bibliographies for these sites will be found in Alcock, 'The Activities of Potentates', pp. 40-6; and see references below. 49 Adomnan of lona: Life ofSt Columba, trans. R. Sharpe (Harmondsworth, 1995), p. 291; Alcock, 'The Activities of Potentates', p. 31; Alcock, Bede, Eddius, pp. 12-13. 50 E. Campbell and A. Lane, 'Celtic and Germanic Interaction in Dalriada: The 7thCentury Metalworking Site at Dunadd', in The Age of Migrating Ideas, ed. R. M. Spearman and J. Higgitt (Edinburgh/Stroud, 1993), pp. 52-62. 51 C. Thomas, A Provisional List of Imported Pottery in Post-Roman Western Britain and Ireland (Redruth, 1981), pp. 21-2; idem, ' "Gallici Nautae de Galliarum Provinces" - A Sixth/Seventh Century Trade with Gaul, Reconsidered', Medieval Archaeology, 34 (1990), 1-22; J. M. Wooding, Communication and Commerce along the Western Sealanes, AD 400-800, BAR, International Series, 654 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 73-83, 97. 52 Alcock, Economy, Society and Warfare, pp. 200, 207.

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The Medieval State

notably the magnificent Hunterston brooch, Irish or Irish-influenced work of c. 700, made of silver, gold and amber, and again from Strathclyde.53 Although these sites are located in different kingdoms, they seem to suggest an underlying economic and political pattern widely found in this south-western quarter of Scotland. Almost all were important local centres of power, associated with rulership, precious metals and a foreign trade which may provide an entree to the real source of the region's wealth. The best evidence for that trade, the E-ware pottery of western France, is still more widespread in eastern and northern Ireland, appearing on some thirty-two sites and suggesting that some common mercantile enterprise united the Irish and Scottish shores of the Irish Sea.54 Its occurrence has been plausibly seen as a by-product of a trade in wine, imported in cask, with E-ware pots as cargo 'fillers'; though for the societies of the Celtic west, which lacked any indigenous pottery, the E-ware may have had a higher and more independent value than that.55 It is possible that gold was also among the imports, since the gold which occurs naturally in southern Scotland seems too exiguous to supply the widely evidenced craft of precious jewellery.56 What was exported in exchange has been the subject of various guesses: from Scotland, probably furs, pearls, skins, slaves, hides and semiprecious stones; from the west generally, predominantly wool but also hides and leather goods.57 Evidence from Ireland, admittedly later, suggests that it may be in order to focus more exclusively on the hides which we have already argued to have been so central to the Northumbrian economy. Writing of twelfth-century Ireland, Giraldus Cambrensis alerts us to the possibilities by noting that the country imported copious supplies of wine from Poitou in exchange for hides and animal skins.58 In the later middle ages Ireland's huge herds of cattle made hides its main export after fish;59 and the source of E-ware pottery in just the region from which, according to Giraldus, Ireland later imported wine points to the likelihood of much earlier origins for the trading system which he 'The Work of Angels', ed. Youngs, pp. 75, 91-2. Thomas, A Provisional List, pp. 22-4, supplemented by Wooding, Communication and Commerce, p. 97. 55 For differing views, see Thomas, ' "Gallici Nautae" ', pp. 16-17, and Wooding, Communication and Commerce, pp. 70, 81-2. 56 Alcock, The Neighbours of the Picts, p. 40. 57 Ibid.; L. Alcock and E. A. Alcock, 'Reconnaissance Excavations on Early Historic Fortifications and Other Royal Sites in Scotland, 2: Excavations at Dunollie Castle, Oban, Argyll, 1978', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 117 (1987), p. 144; Nieke and Duncan, 'Dalriada' p. 15. 58 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, ed. J. F. Dimock, 8 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1861-91), v. 28. 53 54

Two Frontier States: Northumbria and Wessex, c. 650-750

37

describes. For the Scottish end of the trade route we have no similar literary references beyond the allusion in Adomnan's Life of Columba dating from the late seventh century but referring to the late sixth - to 'Gallic sailors arriving . . . from Gaul', at a place somewhere near lona, and usually taken to be Dunadd:60 so confirming the archaeological evidence for Scottish links with Francia. Archaeology again hints at the commodities of trade by showing that cattle dominated the agrarian economy of south-west Scotland, just as they did that of Ireland and Northumbria. On all excavated sites cattle bones far outnumber those of other quadrupeds. At Whithorn they constituted 82 per cent of the bone fragments, as against only 2.6 per cent for sheep and goat - a proportion which reflects the subordinate position of sheep throughout the north and west.61 Something of the importance of cattle can be sensed in one of the miracle stories associated with St Ninian of Whithorn in the eighth-century Miracula Nynie episcopi. Recounting how the saint blessed 'his dear herd' of cattle and foiled a nocturnal attempt at theft by rustlers, the story points both to the high value attached to cattle and to another possible parallel with Ireland; for what it describes is akin to one of the cattle raids so common there.62 Though Giraldus remains our only substantive witness, 'if cattle, then hides and commerce' remains an equation with more than circumstantial probability in its favour. For some fifty years in the seventh century the Northumbrian kings thus ruled territories which were rich, commercially vibrant, and part of a continuum with Ireland which was as evident in maritime trade as in politics and the life of the church.63 How effectively they could exploit their opportunities here is a difficult question, but two suggestions can be made. First, they may have been able to levy tribute from these areas, perhaps according to orderly assessment arrangements and perhaps partly in the form of service, especially the ship-service which the peoples of Dalriada may have been obliged to perform for their native rulers. We have Bede's word for it that Oswiu at least made tributary the Irish of Dalriada as well as the Picts.64 Secondly, they were probably appropriating centres and systems for the payment of tribute in kind which were already in use. A plausible case can be made for Adomnan, trans. Sharpe, pp. 132, 290-1; Thomas,' "Gallic! Nautae" ', p. 2. Hill, Whithorn, pp. 605-6; Alcock, Neighbours of the Picts, p. 36. 62 W. W. MacQueen, 'Miracula Nynie Episcopi', Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, 37 (1959-60), 29, 45; Hill, Whithorn, pp. i, 15. For cattle raiding in Ireland, see Lucas, Cattle in Ancient Ireland, pp. 125-200. 63 Cf. Campbell, 'Elements', p. 4. 64 Bede, ii. 5 (pp. 148-51); J. Campbell, 'The Debt of the Early English Church to Ireland', in Ireland and Christendom, ed. P. Ni Chatham and M. Richter (Stuttgart, !987)5 pp. 335-6- Cf. below, p. 52. 60 61

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Dunadd as one such centre: multiple finds of rotary querns and leather scraps may argue for renders in grain and cattle, while Germanic influence on seventh-century metalwork made there points to Northumbrian contacts and possibly to a Northumbrian takeover.65 It is, of course, true that any such exploitation must have been relatively shortlived, ending (if Bede is right) after Nechtansmere. By 685, however, these imperial opportunities may have done much to fuel the royal largesse which underlay the lavish endowment of the Northumbrian church and to make possible the career of such an exwarrior-turned-monastic-founder as Benedict Biscop.66 Even after Nechtansmere not all was lost, as we have seen. Not only was Lothian retained, but along the Solway the Northumbrian realm continued to expand, taking in by 700 the most important of all these regional centres: Whithorn. The recent excavations at Whithorn point to wealth, founded on commercial activity, unparalleled elsewhere in western Scotland. Whithorn has produced the second largest assemblage (after Hamwic) of early medieval vessel glass, much of it imported from the Continent, for any British site; the second largest concentration of Eware (after Dunadd); evidence for the working of gold and silver; and a range of Northumbrian coins, mainly the sceattas and stycas of the eighth and ninth centuries, unique in Scotland.67 Although Whithorn was certainly a monastic town - rare in the British Isles outside Ireland - it is unlikely that Ninian's shrine was the sole motor of this activity; and more likely that the (unexcavated) port of Whithorn, with its excellent harbour,68 and the monastic centre some two miles inland formed twin settlements, with a character akin to one of the great wics of southern and eastern England. That such a place remained a part of 'greater Northumbria' throughout the eighth century may do something to explain the kingdom's survival as a powerful and prosperous state. The appointment of Pecthelm, a man with strong Northumbrian connections,69 as Whithorn's first bishop about 725 should be seen in political as well as ecclesiastical terms. A friendly bishop was a means to Northumbrian control. Northumbria thus possessed not only valuable natural resources but also extensive possibilities of gain from commerce and tribute-taking which were in part the consequences of expansion. In the east, the kingdom's primary and primordial contacts, commercial and cultural, were with Kent and the north-western continental littoral, centering on 65

Nieke and Duncan, 'Dalriada', p. 13; Campbell and Lane, 'Celtic and Germanic Interaction at Dunadd', pp. 60-1. 66 Campbell, 'Elements', p. 5. 67 Hill, Whithorn, pp. 297; 319; 37, 115-17, 403; 332-568 Ibid., p. 5. 69 Ibid., pp. 18-19.

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the Rhine estuary and Gaul. One witness to these contacts, as well as to Northumbria's general prosperity, is the emergence of coinage there at a surprisingly early date: a probable gold thrymsa coinage from York of c. 650; a more certain striking of sceattas in fine silver by Aldfrith around 700; and then the much larger mid-eighth-century sceatta coinage of King Eadbhert and his brother.70 Before 700, when minting was otherwise confined to the south-east, even the occasional and small-scale participation of Northumbria in a coin-using economy is remarkable. Nor is native coinage the only witness to southern contacts. The only coin found at Yeavering was an imitation of one from Randers;71 Oswald's gold and purple banner and the gold and purple altar cloths in Wilfrid's church at Ripon sound very like the goldbraided cloth found mainly in eastern Kent, but ultimately continental in origin;72 the gold and garnet cross found in Cuthbert's tomb is Celtic in form but Kentish in its craft traditions.73 Despite its northerly situation, Northumbria looked firmly southward, across the North Sea to the rich Channel seaboard. But in the north and west there were different connections. These were not only with Ireland but with another commercial system linking the coastlands of western Scotland and - more permanently - the Solway with western France. The willingness of traders from Poitou to make the long sea voyage - some six hundred miles to Whithorn, considerably further to Dunadd - points to the wealth of the hinterland whose harbours they were making for. That too is likely to account for Northumbria's continuing attention to the same regions in the mideighth century. Eadbert's annexation of the plain of Kyle in Ayrshire (Strathclyde) in 750, and his capture of Dumbarton in 756, places very distant from the Northumbrian heartlands,74 are difficult to explain without invoking economic as well as military and strategic consideration. Such activities may not only have been land-based, for in the previous century Edwin's early conquest of Man and Anglesey, probably in the 6205, and Ecgfrith's invasion of Ireland in 684, had testified to a powerful Northumbrian presence in the Irish Sea.75 If we can speak of a Northumbrian 'empire', it was to a degree maritime as well as territorial; and it gave the kingdom access to two different 70 Metcalf, Thrymsas and Sceattas, i. 49-51, 117-19; Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, i. 163, 166, 182. 71 Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, pp. 182-3. 72 Bede, iii. n (p. 247); Life of Bishop Wilfrid, p. 37; E. Crowfoot and S. C. Hawkes, 'Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids', Medieval Archaeology, n (1967), 53-7. 73 R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, 'The Pectoral Cross', in The Relics ofSt Cuthbert, ed. C. F. Battiscombe (Oxford, 1956), pp. 308-25. 74 Bede (continuation), p. 575; Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1882-5), ii. 40; Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, pp. 149-50. 75 Campbell, 'Debt of the Early English Church', p. 336.

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trading systems and two sets of continental connections, via both the east and the west coasts. It was Northumbria's location and the sorts of enterprise that location encouraged which partly underlay both Northumbria's rise and the surprising gradualness of its decline. Conditions in the new lands of the south-west contrasted strongly with those in the comparable territory of the Northumbrians. Though the West Saxon acquisitions were more permanent, their extent never matched those of 'greater Northumbria' before 685. To judge by archaeology (and in the virtual absence of texts that is all that we can judge by), they were also much poorer in terms of the commodities which contributed most to the power of contemporary rulers. In the period before the conquest, from c. 400 to 600 (as indeed afterwards), the best gauge of that poverty is the near absence of precious metalwork. The record appears to consist of no more than two silver penannular brooches, one found near Dartmouth in Devon, the other from Worlebury in Somerset.76 It is true that they are the only two such brooches known in silver, but they hardly bear comparison with the splendid Hunterston brooch from Strathclyde or with the rich objects and the evidence from precious-metal-working which helps to define the numerous high-status sites of the north.77 In the south-west few comparable sites have been discovered. Those excavated - the most conspicuous - number only Tintagel in Cornwall and Cadbury Castle and Cadbury Congresbury, both in Somerset. The record of precious metals at all three is exiguous. At Tintagel and Cadbury Castle there were slight traces of bronze-working, but none of gold or silver; while Cadbury Congresbury yielded two tiny pieces of scrap gold, but no sign of silver or its working.78 Despite the existence of silver-bearing lead ores in the Somerset Mendips, worked by the Romans, both gold and silver appear to have been extremely rare in the south-west in the two centuries following the end of Roman Britain. The scarcity of precious metals, which occur naturally in the southwest in deposits hardly smaller than those found elsewhere in parts of Celtic Britain much better supplied with gold and silver objects, is easier to identify than to explain. Part of the explanation almost certainly lies in earlier relationships between Britons and Romans. The impact of Todd, The South-West, p. 256. Above, pp. 35-6. 78 C. Thomas, English Heritage Book of Tintagel (London, 1993), pp. 94-5; Alcock, Cadbury Castle, p. 125; P. Rahtz et al., Cadbury Congresbury, 1968-73: A Late/PostRoman Hilltop Settlement in Somerset, BAR, 123 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 131, 238. It is also worth noting the complete absence of exhibits from the four south-western counties, by contrast with the prolific numbers from Ireland, Scotland and even (to a lesser extent) eastern England, in the 1989 exhibition of Celtic metalwork catalogued in 'The Work of Angels', ed. Youngs. 76

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Rome was by no means uniform throughout the region. Much of modern Somerset was heavily Romanized, bisected by the 'economic corridor' of the Fosse Way, and with concentrations of villas around the major Roman towns of Bath and Ilchester.79 By contrast, west of the Parrett in the civitas Dumnoniarum lay 'one of the least Romanized regions of Roman Britain'. Exeter was the only town, there were very few villas, and an essentially Iron-Age pattern of rural settlement.80 Relations between natives and Romans appear to have been everywhere peaceful. This was partly because, in the far west at least, there was so little Roman settlement and partly because there were no visible counterparts in the south-west to the aggressive heroic societies of the north: the Votadini whom we can see in the Gododdin going out to battle with Anglian invaders, the Pictish warriors who appear horsed, helmeted and armed on the Aberlemno cross-slab.81 It is significant that after the initial phase of first-century Roman conquest it was not thought necessary to maintain a large military presence in the southwest.82 The mechanism of hostility, raids and plunder, which in the north transferred Roman wealth into British and Pictish hands, and probably later back to Northumbria, did not exist.83 When Roman control outside Dumnonia broke down in the late fourth century, and raiding began in the rich landscape of the lower Severn, the eastern Bristol Channel and south Somerset, the raiders were Irish, who presumably carried their spoils outside the province altogether.84 It was about this time that much remaining wealth disappeared into the ground, as hoards.85 But whether exported or buried, wealth does not seem to have passed from Roman to Briton. The structures of native power, as they emerged under the western kinglets of the fifth and sixth centuries, made do without it. Cadbury Castle was no Traprain Law. A second possible explanation for the absence of precious metals in the native societies of the south-west is provided, a little paradoxically, by the evidence for other sorts of wealth to which these societies had access. The main indicator of its existence lies in the imported K. Branigan, 'Villa Settlement in the West Country', in The Roman West Country, ed. K. Branigan and P. J. Fowler (Newton Abbot, 1976), pp. 120-22. 80 Todd, The South-West, pp. 216, 219-31; P. J. Fowler, 'Farms and Fields in the Roman West Country', in The Roman West Country, ed. Branigan and Fowler, pp. 167-8; C. Thomas, 'The End of the Roman South-West', in ibid., p. 199. 81 The Problem of the Picts, ed. F. T. Wainwright (Edinburgh, 1955), plate 8. 82 W. H. Manning, 'The Conquest of the West Country', in The Roman West Country, ed. Branigan and Fowler, pp. 35-41. 83 Above, pp. 34-5. 84 B. Cunliffe, Wessex to AD 1000 (Harlow, 1993), pp. 268-9; S. Bird, 'Roman Avon', in The Archaeology of Avon, ed. M. Aston and R. lies (Bristol, n.d.), pp. 69-70. 85 P. Isaac, 'Coin Hoards and History in the West', in The Roman West Country, ed. Branigan and Fowler, pp. 59-60. 79

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Mediterranean pottery of the fifth and sixth centuries which has been found on some twelve sites in Cornwall, five in Devon and four in Somerset.86 It is an accepted view that the Mediterranean voyagers came for tin, the west country's most valuable resource, bringing in exchange oil and wine. The imported goods were then redistributed, perhaps via Tintagel, the major find-spot for imported pottery; and it may have been by redistribution rather than by direct contact that these pots and their contents reached such interior and easterly sites as Cadbury Castle and Cadbury Congresbury.87 The presence of such exotica at all three places is as firm an indicator of high status as it is at Dunadd and the other seaboard sites of Scotland, though their deficiency in precious metals remains as a measure of the difference between the south-west and the north. Yet these imports did little to increase the material wealth of lands which would eventually fall under West Saxon control. Not only does the distribution pattern of the pottery suggest that the main centres of this trade were in western and northern Cornwall, untouched by West Saxon colonization for centuries; but the imports were largely consumables. Prized though they must have been, they made no permanent contribution to the region's resources. That oil and wine were not the sole imports is implied by occasional finds of early Byzantine coins, most suggestively one from Princetown, on tin-rich Dartmoor.88 But this was a low-value copper piece, and neither it nor its companions does much to modify the general conclusions to be drawn from the pottery. In terms of portable and durable wealth, therefore, the British peoples of the south-west seem to have had little to offer their West Saxon conquerors. Of course, there as in the north, expansion brought with it land, a resource so obvious as to be easily overlooked, and one which could be used to endow monasteries and reward nobles. But these were societies which valued treasure and bullion above land,89 and in treasure and bullion the natives, and in consequence the invaders, were poor. As we move towards the era of conquest the limited impoverishment of the Britons may have turned into a more general economic and political breakdown. There are two pointers in this direction. First, our three high-status sites of Tintagel, Cadbury Castle and Cadbury Congresbury all appear to have been deserted after c. 600, while occupation at other British sites such as Glastonbury Tor similarly Thomas, A Provisional List, pp. 6-18. Wooding, Communication and Commerce, pp. 41-54; Alcock, Cadbury Castle, pp. 141-2; Rahtz et al., Cadbury Congresbury, pp. 238-42. 88 'Tenth Report of the Committee on Scientific Memoranda', Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 17 (1885), pp. 69-70; Todd, The South-West, pp. 255-6. 89 Campbell, 'The Sale of Land', pp. 32-7, is crucial here. 86

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ceases.90 Secondly, the evidence for overseas trading contacts also dwindles. That Mediterranean pottery disappears after c. 550 is not in itself significant, for so it did throughout western Britain. Much more telling is the failure of the later E-ware pottery of western France to replace it: E-ware has been found on only three sites in Cornwall, one in Devon and none in Somerset.91 This withering of continental connections has been speculatively interpreted in terms of 'the withdrawal of the Mediterranean market for metals', its consequences a social collapse, as demand slumped for the single commodity which had sustained rulers in power, and a resulting power vacuum which prepared the way for the Saxon conquests.92 From the desertion of sites we might also suspect a measure of depopulation; though the only known cause - cross-Channel emigration to Armorica - lay much earlier, in the late fifth and early sixth centuries. Could bubonic plague, prevalent in the Mediterranean world at this time and perhaps imported thence via maritime trade, have been a more important cause? The devastation of sixth-century Ireland by just such plagues makes this more than a possibility.93 All this is hypothetical. Yet the evidence does suggest that the wellorganized societies of the sixth century, their rulers drinking wine and commanding labour resources sufficient to construct the izoo-yard stone rampart surrounding Cadbury Castle,94 had all but evaporated by the time of the West Saxons' arrival in the south-west. If this was so, the contrast with the north would have been marked, for there, as we have seen, the Northumbrian rulers probably took over and exploited both places and systems which were already functioning in support of their indigenous predecessors. Nor was this the only such contrast, for as commerce contracted in the south-west so it seems to have expanded in the north, where three sites yield the earlier Mediterranean pottery but nine the later E-ware.95 As the native societies of the south-west declined, so those of the north-west prospered. What lay behind this pattern we cannot tell. But it is difficult to doubt that it served to promote the rise of Northumbria and to inhibit that of Wessex. If the south-west was an economic backwater when the West Saxons moved in, so it remained throughout the seventh and eighth centuries. All the mechanisms which in Northumbria and its outlying territories Alcock, Cadbury Castle, p. 152. Thomas, A Provisional List, pp. 20-1; Wood, Communication and Commerce, p. 97. 92 E. Campbell, 'Trade in the Dark-Age West: A Peripheral Activity?', in Scotland in Dark-Age Britain, ed. B. E. Crawford (St Andrews, 1996), pp. 85-6. 93 Todd, The South-West, pp. 238-40; J. R. Maddicott, 'Plague in Seventh-Century England', Past and Present, 156 (1997), i-n. 94 Alcock, Cadbury Castle, pp. 14-23. 95 Atlas of Scottish History to 1707, ed. P. G. B. McNeill and H. L. MacQueen (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 57; Campbell, 'Trade in the Dark-Age West', pp. 87-8. 90

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signalled economic growth were missing. The two most salient of those mechanisms were coinage and coastal trading places. By contrast with the early - and by the mid-eight century prolific - coinages of Northumbria, in western Wessex there was no coinage. Even the minting of the abundant secondary sceattas of the early eighth century did not extend beyond Hamwic or just possibly another unknown location in southern Hampshire, and no sceattas of any type have been found further west than Hod Hill in Dorset and Glastonbury in Somerset.96 In Devon Anglo-Saxon coins of any period remain exceptionally rare; the earliest is a Canterbury penny of Archbishop Ceolnoth (833-70), from Exeter.97 Coastal trading places are as yet unknown. But in the preceding period they appear to have been little more than 'beach markets', such as Bantham and Mothecombe, at the mouths of rivers in south Devon; Bantham's possible continuance into the seventh century may be indicated by its being the only Devon find-spot for Eware pottery.98 There may have been one or two more urbanized places - possibly Exeter, with its early monastery, possibly Wareham." But wholly absent were the great coastal monasteries which in Northumbria became both centres of demand and coin-using markets, filling some of the functions of towns. The greater monasteries of Wessex known to us - Glastonbury, Sherborne, Malmesbury - were all inland, with nothing to suggest that they were of much commercial importance. The southwest had neither its York nor its Whitby nor its Whithorn. Nor is there any sign of the presence there of the Frisian traders who, by about 700, were active on the southern and eastern littoral, from Hamwic round to York. The economic currents which flowed westwards and northwards from Kent and the estuarine coastlands of the Rhine failed entirely to reach the far south-west. The examples of Northumbria and Wessex may suggest the need for caution in regarding our 'frontier states' as anything more than a geographical category. Once we move beyond their similarities of location, we can see that their ability to exploit that location varied greatly and that they developed in very different ways. The chief cause of those differences lay in the nature of the territories and the native 96 Metcalf, Thrymsas and Sceattas, i. 152-7, iii. 321-2; Sceattas in England and on the Continent, ed. Hill and Metcalf, pp. 252-3. 97 M. Dolley and M. Shiel, 'A Carolingian Denarius with a Devonshire Provenance', British Numismatic Journal, 50 (1980), 11; Todd, The South-West, pp. 284-5. 98 A. Fox, 'Some Evidence for a Dark-Age Trading Site at Bantham, near Thurlestone, South Devon', Antiquaries Journal, 35 (1955), 55-67; R. J. Silvester, 'An Excavation on the Post-Roman Site at Bantham, South Devon', Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Society, 39 (1981), 89-116; Todd, The South-West, pp. 248-9; Alcock, Cadbury Castle, p. 146; Thomas, A Provisional List, p. 21. 99 Todd, The South-West, pp. 248-9; Alcock, Cadbury Castle, p. 146.

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societies over which Germanic rule extended. In the north the Northumbrians appropriated the lands of peoples rich in precious metals, commercially prosperous (more so in the seventh century than the sixth), and probably already subject to systems of taxation designed to support lordship. Add to these advantages Northumbria's own natural resources and maritime links to the south, and it becomes possible to discern the conditions which favoured both Northumbrian imperium and the lavish endowment of the church which was the prerequisite for the Northumbrian Renaissance. Wessex, by contrast, came to dominate a more moribund political and economic landscape. Never possessing much in the way of precious metals, but with an active international commerce, with tin as an important resource, and with rulers who lived in some style, the far south-west had been one of the most economically dynamic regions of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. But by the seventh century this vigorous polity had subsided, for reasons which remain mysterious, leaving the West Saxons to enter into a depleted inheritance. Land there was; but not the gold and silver needed to maintain the loyalty of a comitatus and to establish a magnificent church. It was perhaps paradoxical that the 'rise of Wessex', when it came, owed more to expansion into old lands than into new. Egbert's appropriation of Kent in 825 gave him control of a far more wealthy and developed region than the south-west. Kent had a substantial share in cross-Channel trade, a large mint at Canterbury, and a powerful nobility whom good government could induce to be loyal. Showing the value which he attached to his new territory, Egbert visited Kent on a number of occasions. He was never, so far as we known, in Devon - by comparison with Kent, hardly more than a 'third world' locality.100 Given the advantages also accruing from the possession of Hamwic, one of the largest ports in northern Europe, it is perhaps not surprising that the ninth century saw a proliferation of gold and silver metalwork formerly almost unknown in the West Saxon kingdom. 'It is as though Wessex had emerged from being a relative backwater and could now acquire considerable wealth.'101 But it was hardly the westward expansion of the frontier which had made this possible. Only with the destruction of Kent by the Vikings, with the development of Alfred's interest in Somerset and Devon, and with the growth of Exeter in the years around 900, would the south-west begin to contribute substantially to the achievements of Wessex.102 But that was more than two centuries after Cenwealh had defeated the Britons at Penselwood and driven them west to the Parrett. 100 S. Keynes, 'The Control of Kent in the Ninth Century', Early Medieval Europe, 2 (1993)3 111-I2, 120-4; D. Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981), p. 83. 101 Hinton, 'The Archaeology of Eighth- to Eleventh-Century Wessex', p. 38. 102 J. R. Maddicott, 'Trade, Industry and the Wealth of King Alfred', Past and Present, 123 (1989), 7-10, 22, 32-40, 44-7.

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3 The Construction of the Early Scottish State ALEXANDER GRANT While the early English state was experiencing the precocious development that James Campbell has analysed so well, the early Scottish state was also under construction. It was not so centralized or wealthy - for instance, before Anglo-Norman settlers and ideas came into Scotland during the twelfth century, it had no sheriffdoms, burghs or coinage, which were crucial in Anglo-Saxon England - but it was not powerless, and indeed did not suffer external conquest during the eleventh century. Also, as an essentially Celtic state, it stands in striking contrast to the political disunity found in Wales and Ireland. And the fact that it came to share the mainland of Britain with its more glamorous southern neighbour, after they had divided the middle kingdom of Northumbria between them, has of course helped to determine British history to the present day. The history of the early Scottish state - that is, before its 'Normalization' in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries - thus has a wide significance. Unfortunately, it is also exceptionally obscure, because of a fundamental problem of evidence: hardly anything other than king-lists and laconic annalistic chronicles survives from before noo, and although there is much more from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is only what was preserved in private hands, for almost all the government records before 1292 (some 878 rolls of assorted records, together with numerous individual documents, according to a contemporary inventory) were lost after Edward I removed them to Westminster.1 Nevertheless, thanks largely to the remarkable struggles with intractable material carried out by the historians of early Scotland,2 The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland (henceforth APS), ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes, 12 vols (Edinburgh, 1814-75), i. 107-17; cf. B. Webster, Scotland from the Eleventh Century to 1603 (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 122-7. 2 Notably, in recent years, A. A. M. Duncan, G. W. S. Barrow, M. O. Anderson, J. Bannerman, D. Broun and B. T. Hudson; and perhaps most remarkably, E. W. Robertson, whose Scotland under her Early Kings: A History of the Kingdom to the Close of the Thirteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1862) is full of important insights. The essential modern accounts are A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom 1

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it is possible to glimpse at least some of the salient features, and to make suggestions about what may have been going on. Recent work has stressed the ideological side of the process, exemplified in the naming of the kingdom, the creation of its narrative history, and the establishment of ecclesiastical backing for the crown.3 Here, in a complementary approach, some of the likely socio-political factors in the state's construction will be highlighted. As already stressed, detailed analysis is out of the question, but it is worth trying to produce some models and (as James Campbell said of fifth- and sixth-century England) 'imagine the whole as a picture in the fire'.4 To begin, a summary of what is known of the basic political narrative is needed. Between the second and eighth centuries a process of coalescence and conquest turned a fairly large number of smallish tribes into a small number of larger units: northern Picts beyond the Mounth, or Grampian mountains; southern Picts between the Mounth and the Firth of Forth; Scots of Dal Riata (in modern Argyll); Britons of Strathclyde or Cumbria; and Angles of Northumbria (which included modern Lothian). The exiguous sources indicate a general pattern of continuous internal and external conflict, producing an unstable equilibrium in which over-kingships and hegemonies rose and fell,5 just as elsewhere in the British Isles. Then, in the ninth century, came the Viking onslaughts. They devastated all the northern kingdoms - but probably created the conditions in which the Dal Riata king Kenneth mac Alpin and his descendants effected the permanent take-over of southern Pictland after c. 842, establishing a dynasty that has reigned (Edinburgh, 1975), chs 3-6; A. P. Smyth, Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland, 80-1000 (London, 1984); G. W. S. Barrow, Kingship and Unity: Scotland, 1000-1306 (London, 1981), chs 1-2; and B. T. Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland (Westport, CT, 1994). 3 D. Broun, 'The Origin of Scottish Identity', in Nations, Nationalism and Patriotism in the European Past, ed. C. Bj0rn, A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (Copenhagen, 1994), pp. 35-55; D. Broun, 'Defining Scotland and the Scots before the Wars of Independence', in Image and Identity: The Making and Remaking of Scotland through the Ages, ed. D. Broun, R. J. Finlay and M. Lynch (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 4-17; D. Broun, 'The Birth of Scottish History', Scottish Historical Review, 76 (1997), 4-22; B. T. Hudson, ' "The Scottish Chronicle" ', ibid., 77 (1998), 129-61; idem, 'Kings and Church in Early Scotland', ibid., 73 (1994), 145-70; T. Clancy, 'lona, Scotland and the Celi De', in Scotland in Dark Age Britain, ed. B. E. Crawford (St Andrews, 1996), pp. 111-30. 4 Anglo-Saxons, ed. Campbell et al., p. 20. 5 Strong arguments have been made for the expansion of the southern Pictish kingdom of Fortriu, in the lower Tay region, into a hegemony over all the Picts and at times over the Scots as well, and this had led to discussion of the creation of a Pictish state: e.g., M. Lynch, Scotland: A New History (2nd edn, London, 1992), ch. 2; and S. Foster, Picts, Gaels and Scots (London, 1996), ch. 7. But I am not convinced that the political structures of that time were any more lasting than, say, those of Offa of Mercia.

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virtually ever since.6 Until about 900 they were called kings of the Picts, but then the name Alba (nowadays Gaelic for 'Scotland' but originally meaning 'Albion' or Britain) came into use, denoting the creation of a Gaelic kingdom focused on the power bases of the southern Picts (who were essentially Britons)7 in the basin of the River Tay and the eastmidland plain;8 this resembles the adoption of Angelcynn for the newly united West Saxon/Mercian peoples in the 88os.9 Over the next hundred or so years, the kings of Alba gradually extended their territory. South of the Forth, tenth-century gains at the expense of a weakened Northumbria were consolidated by Malcolm II (1005-34), under whom both Lothian to the Tweed and Strathclyde to at least the Solway were finally annexed. North of the Mounth, similarly, the kingdom of Moray - created when a different Dal Riata kindred overran the northern Picts - was attacked from tenth-century Alba, and was brought within his realm by Malcolm II. Malcolm's northern success was partly due to an alliance with the Norse Earl Sigurd of Orkney/Caithness (in the far north), who married his daughter;10 and Sigurd's son and successor apparently acknowledged Malcolm's lordship over Caithness.11 Thus, conceptually at least, Malcolm's kingdom stretched from the Pentland Firth to the Tweed, covering most of modern Scotland. As in England, however, the other theme of the eleventh century is one of struggles to possess that kingdom. Macbeth of Moray (1040-57) won it from Malcolm IPs grandson Duncan I; Duncan's son Malcolm III (1058-93) won it from Macbeth; and following Malcolm Ill's death his sons fought his brother for it. In this period the 'foreign' (English) dimension was increasingly important, especially when Malcolm III married Edgar ALtheling's sister 6 That justifies the traditional practice of numbering Scottish kings from Kenneth mac Alpin, though the current fashion is to identify them by their patronymics, and to use Irish Gaelic orthography: e.g. Malcolm II (1005-34) becomes Mael Coluim mac Cinaeda. I prefer the modern English forms of the kings' names (if such exist), just as for Scottish kings with Anglo-Saxon or French names; to do otherwise denies Gaelic's contribution to modern Scotland, in which Kenneth, Malcolm and so on are common. 7 Cf. W. J. Watson, The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1926), pp. 10-14. 8 Broun, 'Origin of Scottish Identity', pp. 40-52. 9 S. Foot, 'The Making of. Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest', TRHS, 6th series, 6 (1996), 25-49, at 26-7. 10 Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, p. 135, argues that she was a daughter of MaelColuim mac Mael-Brigti, ruler of Moray. But he did not come to power until 1020, whereas the marriage was no later than 1008: B. E. Crawford, Scandinavian Scotland (Leicester, 1987), p. 71. 11 By Earl Thorfinn, to counter the king of Norway's claim to lordship over both Orkney and Caithness: ibid., p. 71. It would only have been a token acknowledgement; nevertheless, that the argument could be made at all is significant, and though Thorfinn subsequently fought against Macbeth, he was probably on good terms with Malcolm III.

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Margaret in c. 1070; and during the 10905 Malcolm's sons needed the backing of William II of England to win the kingship. There was no Norman Conquest of Scotland, however; it was strong enough to resist private colonization by Norman barons, while the Norman kings did not try to conquer it. But Malcolm Ill's youngest son David I (1124-53) recruited many 'Normans' into his service, and his grandsons Malcolm IV (1153-65) and William I (1165-1214) did the same producing the 'Anglo-Norman era in Scottish history'.12 In broad terms, therefore, the political narrative of pre-twelfth-century Alba parallels that of Anglo-Saxon England. Alba was, however, a rather different kingdom, as the word itself demonstrates. The Gaelic Alba, and its normal Latin equivalent Scotia, did not mean all the territory ruled by its kings, as Engla land did,13 but were restricted to the original PictishScottish kingdom north of the Forth, which has been aptly described as 'Scotland proper'; only in the thirteenth century did Alba and Scotia denote what is now modern Scotland.14 This is not just a matter of terminology; for instance, after its annexation Strathclyde was ruled as a sub-kingdom by Malcolm II's grandson (and successor) Duncan, and while its history in the rest of the eleventh century is unclear, under Alexander I (1107-24) it was held, with southern Lothian, by the future David I, who was styled 'prince of Cumbria'.15 Galloway, in the far south-west, was probably even more separate.16 As for the Scandinavianized regions along the west coast and north of the Moray Firth, any acceptance of Malcolm II's kingship would have lapsed with his death, and although Scottish superiority may have been recognized once more under Malcolm III and was confirmed to Edgar (1097-1107) by the Norwegian king in IO98,17 it again would have been only token; the far north and the west coast were not really incorporated into the kingdom until the thirteenth century. Moreover, in the strictest sense Alba or Scotia did not include Moray - as a charter of David I referring to the men of Moray and of Scotia shows.18 G. W. S. Barrow, The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History (Oxford, 1980). P. Wormald, 'Engla Land: The Making of an Allegiance', Journal of Historical Sociology, 7 (1994), 1-2414 Broun, 'Defining Scotland and the Scots', pp. 6-9. 15 Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, p. 117; Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, pp. 134-5; Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis, ed. C. Innes (Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs, 1843), i, no. I. 16 R. D. Oram, 'Fergus, Galloway and the Scots', in Galloway: Land and Lordship, ed. R. D. Oram and G. P. Stell (Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 117-30. 17 After the death of Earl Thorfinn the Mighty, Malcolm III married Ingibjorg, who was either his widow, as in the sagas, or his daughter. See Early Sources of Scottish History, AD 500 to 1286, ed. A. O. Anderson (2nd edn, 2 vols, Stamford, 1990), ii. 2-4, 24-5; and ii. 112-14, f°r the agreement with Edgar. 18 Early Scottish Charters prior to 1153, ed. A. C. Lawrie (Glasgow, 1905), no. no. 12

13

The Construction of the Early Scottish State

51

The early Scottish state can therefore be seen as consisting of a relatively small core - 'Scotland proper', or the original Alba, amounting to about a quarter of modern Scotland - and a very large periphery, comprising Lothian, Strathclyde, Moray and, nominally, the northern and western fringes. That said, one of the most important points about it is that the main peripheral areas did not break away. Lothian, Strathclyde and Moray may not have been part of 'Scotland proper', but having been annexed they stayed within the realm of Alba's kings (unless, that is, Strathclyde included land south of Carlisle, which was lost to England). The case of Moray is particularly instructive. When Macbeth mac Findlaich, the provincial ruler of Moray, killed Duncan I in 1040, he did not assert his province's independence, but instead became king of Alba himself; and subsequent conflicts involving Moray under Malcolm III and his successors were also essentially about the kingship of Alba. In other words, although on its own Alba was a fairly small political unit - comparable, indeed, to the main Irish overkingdoms - it was sufficiently adhesive for Lothian, Strathclyde and Moray to remain attached to it. That makes the kingdom of Alba significantly different from the Irish and Welsh kingdoms,19 and closer, after all, to Anglo-Saxon England. The original Alba, or 'Scotland proper' between the Forth and Moray,20 was thus the crucial element in the early Scottish state. Discussion of its construction will start with the local territorial units. As elsewhere in Britain, these seem to have been what historians nowadays generally call 'multiple estates': units of land with a central base, to which renders in kind were brought from surrounding townships or fermtouns (to use later Scottish terminology).21 The size of Alba's multiple estates may have varied considerably, but in general they seem to have been roughly equivalent to one or two later parishes.22 Within mem, each individual fermtoun appears commonly See, e.g. W. Davies, 'Celtic Kingships in the Early Middle Ages', in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. A. J. Duggan (London, 1993), pp. 101-24; though I feel this exaggerates the area of Alba in c. 900, and am unconvinced that eleventhcentury Scotland had a system of royal officers who arrested those suspected of committing offences (pp. 118-20). 20 That definition of Alba includes Buchan, which may not actually have been part of Alba until the end of the tenth century. In effect, I have followed the (later) ecclesiastical boundaries between the dioceses of Aberdeen and Moray. 21 G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots (London, 1973), chs i, 9. 22 That seems to be the case with those identified in Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, pp. 39-55. For the later rough correspondence of baronies (including many erstwhile manages) with parishes, see A. Grant, 'Baronies, Lordships and Earldoms in the Early Fifteenth Century', in Atlas of Scottish History to 1707, ed. P. G. B. McNeill and H. L. MacQueen (Edinburgh, 1996), pp. 201-7. 19

52

The Medieval State

to have been a half, a whole, or a double 'davach'. This term derives from the Gaelic dabhach, meaning a vat or tub, and 'probably represents the amount of land in respect of which a large vat of grain was paid as a render';23 it was the standard measure of arable land in northern Scotland throughout the Middle Ages, and was reckoned to contain some 200 Scottish acres, plus equally important rights of pasture. That would have been enough to support several peasant families or a minor lord; while the important lords would have had one or more multiple estates, living in them and receiving the bulk of the due renders or rents in kind. This seems a fairly straightforward model for the organization of Alba's rural society. In addition, the multiple estates provided a way of organizing the obligations of tribute, called 'cain' (Gaelic cdin), and hospitality, called 'conveth' (Gaelic coinnmeadti), that were owed to kings and overlords; these were probably assessed on the basis of davachs, which were fiscal as well as economic units.24 The multiple estates would also have been central to the age-old general military obligation of medieval Scotland, known north of the Forth as 'Scottish service', by which each piece of land had to provide one or more men for the king's army, unless the emergency was so great that every man had to turn out 'to defend his head'.25 The Senchusfer nAlban ('History of the men of Alba') gives elaborate details of such a system in seventh-century Dal Riata, where it operated through sets of five houses arranged into larger tribal groupings; later charters indicate that, within Alba, the davach (perhaps notionally equivalent to the five houses) was the basic unit of assessment.26 The multiple estates probably gave a framework for local justice, too, not only as a by-product of lordship, but also in what were later called 'cuthilT courts, which dealt with neighbourhood peasant disputes. It has been shown that 'cuthill' derives from the Gaelic comhdhail., meaning assembly, which occurs in over sixty place-names, occasionally close together but never more than one to a parish;27 the inference is that such a court would have operated in each multiple estate. Who possessed Alba's multiple estates? The law-code known as 'The 23 A. Easson, 'Medieval Land Assessment', in Atlas of Scottish History to 1707, p. 284; also Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, pp. 268-9, though that sees the davach in terms of grain sown. The two amounts were probably the same, judging by the traditional idea that one part of the harvest was for eating, one part for sowing, and one part for the lord. 24 Regesta Regum Scottorum (henceforth RRS), i, The Acts of Malcolm IV, ed. G. W. S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1960), pp. 52-4; RRS, ii, The Acts of William I, ed. G. W. S. Barrow with W. W. Scott (Edinburgh, 1971), pp. 52-3; Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, pp. 152-7. 25 RRS, ii. 56-7; Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, pp. 378-85. 26 J. Bannerman, Studies in the History ofDalriada (Edinburgh, 1974), pp. 27-156. 27 G. W. S. Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours in the Middle Ages (London, 1992), ch. ii.

The Construction of the Early Scottish State

53

Laws of the Brets and the Scots' - probably promulgated in the early eleventh century in order to standardize the cro (equivalent to wergild) and similar payments in Alba and Strathclyde, though its earliest surviving form is twelfth-century French28 - gives six grades of society: king ('le Rey descoce'); king's son and earl ('un conte descoce'); thane ('un thayn'); thane's son; thane's grandson and ogthiern ('un ogettheyrn': Gaelic octhigern, a young or junior lord); and peasant ('un vileyn'). Since the existing text must be an Anglo-Norman version of a Gaelic original, 'le Rey descoce' presumably corresponds to riAlban, and 'un conte descoce' to mormaer., which, as the eleventh- and twelfthcentury Gaelic notes in the Book of Deer show,29 was the equivalent of earl; although mormaer literally meant 'great steward',30 like most of the earls of medieval Scotland the mormaers were lords of provinces. What of 'thayn'? Thanes were clearly pivotal, for their cro is given as a hundred cattle, while for the other ranks it is a multiple or fraction of that;31 thus it is they, most probably, who were the lords of the multiple estates. The term derives, of course, from the Anglo-Saxon peng, which meant either any landowner below the earls, or more specifically a king's man.32 The second meaning was common in Anglo-Norman Scotland, where 'thane' denoted agents who ran units of crown lands (eventually called 'manages') on the king's behalf.33 Occasionally, however, it was used more generally - no doubt following practice in post-Conquest England - to mean a native landowner as opposed to an Anglo-Norman knight,34 and this is what it must have meant in the twelfth-century version of the 'Laws of the Brets and the Scots'. In that case, 'thayn' would also represent a translation of an original Gaelic term: probably toisech, or 'toiseach', which is found along with mormaer in the Book of Deer, and was 'the lowest rank in the three-fold ruling hierarchy' of Scotland's kinbased society, being equivalent to the ruler of a tuath, the smallest local kingdom in Gaelic Ireland.35 The multiple estate apparently corresponds 28 APS, i. 663-5 (with later texts in Latin and Scots). See H. L. MacQueen, 'Linguistic Communities in Medieval Scots Law', in Communities and Courts in Britain, 1150-1900, ed. C. Brooks and M. Lobban (London, 1997), pp. 13-23, at 17-20, and Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, p. 117. 29 Ruaidri, mormaer of Mar, and Colban, mormaer of Buchan, were earls of those provinces during the twelfth century: K. Jackson, The Gaelic Notes in the Book of Deer (Cambridge, 1972), p. 35; Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 74; RRS, ii, no. 197. 30 Jackson, Book of Deer, pp. 102-10. 31 As pointed out by Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, p. 107. 32 F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3rd edn, Oxford, 1971), pp. 487-91. 33 Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, pp. 37-53; A. Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages, from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Centuries', in Medieval Scotland: Crown, Lordship and Community, ed. A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (Edinburgh, 1993), pp. 39-81. 34 E.g. APS, i. 320, c. 16; 377, c. 20; 398, c. 2; RRS, ii, no. 281. 35 J. Bannerman, 'The Scots Language and the Kin-Based Society', in Gaelic and Scots in Harmony, ed. D. S. Thomson (Glasgow, 1990), pp. 1-19, at 6-7.

54

The Medieval State

to the tuath, and 'thane' would therefore correspond to toisech; later usage, in which 'thane' (in the sense of royal agent) was toisech in Gaelic,36 confirms this. That explains the inclusion of the thane's son and grandson in the 'Laws of the Brets and the Scots': they represent members of the toiseach's immediate kindred.37 And, since the royal manages were multiple estates, the double meaning of 'thane' in Scotland is easily understood; a thane or toiseach could be either the lord of a multiple estate or the person who ran one for the king. The operation of local lordship is illuminated by the Gaelic notes in the Book of Deer.3S In about half the grants that these record, the same pieces of land appear to have been given to Deer Abbey jointly by local toiseachs and by mormaers of Buchan; thus, presumably, the renders owed to the toiseachs, and the cain and conveth owed to the mormaer, were both being alienated.39 One territory, however, was given by a lord 'who was mormaer and was toiseach', and would have come from his own lands, rather than from those of the local toiseachs - or from their kindreds' land: references to toiseachs of 'Clann Channan' and 'Clann Morgain' are reminders of the importance of kinship. And there is a gift from a king, Malcolm II, of 'the king's dues' from two pieces of land, one which had already been granted by mormaer and toiseach, and one which was granted by a mormaer about a century later; this shows that the king's cain was separate from the other lords' dues. Most of the grants transferred land or renders, but some 'quenched' or freed Deer's property 'from mormaer and toiseach until Doomsday'; in other words, they removed all obligations, particularly, it seems, the provision of troops, which the toiseachs had to levy from their estates and bring to the mormaer's army of Buchan. The 'quenching' may also have given judicial exemptions; the abbey had its own 'cuthill' court for the new multiple estate formed by its lands.40 At a higher level, however, justice would have been overseen by the province's 'brithem' (Gaelic breitheam), who, as in Ireland, was a hereditary legal expert and upholder of the laws;41 'Mataidin brithem' is in one of five witness lists, and his sons are probably in two others.42 36

Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', p. 42. The ogthiern would therefore have been a more distant member of a kin-group who had managed to maintain noble status rather than sink into the peasantry. 38 Jackson, Book of Deer, pp. 33-6, and subsequent commentary. 39 As is spelled out in one grant: 'Matain son of Cairell gave a mormaer's dues in Altrie, and Cu Li son of Baithin gave a toiseach's dues'. 40 In the sixteenth century one fermtoun near the abbey was called the mains of Cuthill: Illustrations of the Topography and Antiquities of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff, ed. J. Robertson and G. Grub (4 vols, Spalding Club, 1847-69), iv. 27. 41 Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, ch. 2; D. 6 Croinin, Early Medieval Ireland, 400-1200 (Harlow, 1995), pp. 76, 113. 42 Taking 'the two sons of Matne' and 'Gillandris mac Matni' to be sons of Mataidin. 37

The Construction of the Early Scottish State

55

A simple model for the local and regional structure of the early Scottish state can therefore be suggested. It would appear to have consisted of a network of multiple estates, which supported toiseachs and their kindreds, and were grouped into provinces under mormaers. These equate to the earldoms and earls of the Anglo-Norman era; hence Alba would have been divided into nine provinces: Atholl, Strathearn, Menteith, Fife, Gowrie, Angus, the Mearns, Mar and Buchan.43 Toiseachs, mormaers and kings would have lived off their respective renders and dues from the peasantry; and some renders would have gone to the church. The main functions of government, justice and defence, would have operated within this structure. Petty justice was done in the 'cuthill' courts, while disputes over land were settled by perambulations conducted by the provincial brithems.44 Hand-having thieves would no doubt have been dealt with summarily, presumably by local toiseachs.45 Those accused of cattle-rustling, however, could summon warrantors to testify for them at a certain place in each province.46 Oath-swearing was involved, and each province had at least one toiseachdeorto look after a holy object used for judicial purposes.47 As for interpersonal violence, it was meant to be settled through compensation payments (the cro of the 'Laws of the Brets and the Scots') to the victim or his kin; otherwise feud followed.48 It was up to the heads of the kins, and above them the mormaers, to enforce the compensation, which - since inter-personal violence is rarely a simple matter - may often have been worked out by the brithem.49 Major disputes may have been settled in large assemblies brought together by summoning the local army, as in the earliest recorded Scottish lawsuit heard in Fife in 1124 x 30.50 But, of course, the armies were chiefly for defence. As already said, every unit of land had to provide men (through church estates could be exempted), who 43 Angus, Mar and Buchan are recorded as having mormaers and earls; Atholl had a 'satrap' (i.e. mormaer) and earls; Fife, Strathearn, Menteith had earls; Gowrie is called an earldom; and the Mearns had a 'comes' (in 1094; presumably a mormaer). 44 Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, p. 72. 45 Cf. APS, i. 377, c. 20, and RRS, ii. no. 152. 46 APS, i. 372-3; cf. Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, pp. 107-8; and H. L. MacQueen, 'Scots Law under Alexander III', in Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III, 1249-1286, ed. N. H. Reid (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 74-102, at 88-90. 47 W. C. Dickinson, 'The Toschederach', Juridical Review, 52 (1941), 85-109; W. D. H. Sellar, 'Celtic Law and Scots Law: Survival and Integration', Scottish Studies, 29 (1989), 1-27, at 9-11. 48 J. Wormald, 'Bloodfeud, Kindred and Government in Early Modern Scotland', Past and Present, 77 (1980), 54-97. 49 That seems to have been a function of the Irish breitheam: K. Simms, From Kings to Warlords (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 90-1. 50 Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 80; see below, p. 63.

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The Medieval State

would initially have been recruited by the toiseachs, and would have served under the mormaer in the army of the province - known later as the 'army of the earldom'.51 The system survived throughout the Anglo-Norman era, and is illuminated by an enactment of 1221 concerning absences from a northern hosting (though earls and thanes have replaced mormaers and toiseachs).52 If an earl's thanes or other men were absent, the earl and the king shared the fines; but fines from inhabitants of the lands of bishops, abbots, barons, knights, thanes or other crown tenants went to the king alone; and the earls were forbidden to levy fines on the lands of crown tenants. The fine from a defaulting thane on crown land belonged to the king; but in the cases of ogthierns (lesser landowners) or peasants, their superior thane or knight split the fine either with the king or with the king and the earl if they lived in an earldom. The last provision indicates the thane's or toiseach's responsibility for recruitment, but the main thrust was probably at the earls: the implication is that prior to 1221, earls and mormaers got the whole fines from their thanes or toiseachs and other men, and that they could punish anyone from the geographical area of their provinces, even on the lands of crown tenants. That is striking testimony to the role of the earls and mormaers as military leaders which is neatly highlighted by the earliest occurrence of mormaer., in an annal for 918 which said that 'neither king nor mormaer' was killed in a battle against the Norse.53 The implication of this model is that Alba was constructed out of the mormaers' provinces. That is certainly how it was viewed from the vantage point of the early thirteenth century. The description of Scotland north of the Forth called De situ Albanie., dating from 1202 x 14, related that 'this land was anciently divided by seven brothers into seven parts', each consisting of a kingdom and sub-kingdom: Angus with the Mearns, Atholl with Gowrie, Strathearn with Menteith, Fife with Fothrif,54 Mar with Buchan, Moray with Ross, and Caithness (north and south).55 Here the provinces are the fundamental building51 Jackson, Book of Deer, pp. 130-1; RRS, ii. 56-7; Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, pp. iio-n, 378-85; A. Grant, 'Aspects of National Consciousness in Medieval Scotland', in Bj0rn, Grant and Stringer, Nations, Nationalism and Patriotism, pp. 68-95, at 88-91. 52 APS, i. 398, c. 2. 53 Anderson, Early Sources, i. 407. 54 Fothrif is an old name for west Fife and Kinross: Watson, Celtic Place-Names, p. 114. 55 Anderson, Early Sources, i, pp. cxv-cxvii; D. Broun, 'The Seven Kingdoms in De situ Albanie: A Record of Pictish Political Geography or Imaginary Map of Ancient Alba?', forthcoming. I am most grateful to Dr Broun for giving me a copy of this article in advance of publication. Albania is a direct Latinization of Alba.

The Construction of the Early Scottish State

57

blocks of the kingdom of Scotland north of the Forth (though fitted into a sevenfold division of Pictland that is no more valid than the AngloSaxon heptarchy).56 On the other hand, when De situ Albanie was being written, the actual political geography of northern Scotland was very different from that implied in the model - as the map (pi. I, p. 59) demonstrates.57 There were no earls or earldoms in Gowrie and the Mearns, nor, to the north, in Moray and Ross (which were forfeited following rebellion against David I in 1130); the earldom of Angus contained little territory; and the rest of the earldoms hardly constituted contiguous divisions of the country. Between Mar and Buchan, a new 'provincial lordship' of Garioch had been created out of crown property for William I's brother, David, earl of Huntingdon;58 otherwise, most of the territory outside the earldoms consisted of knights' feus acquired by Anglo-Normans, of ecclesiastical property, and of many estates in the king's own possession. The provincial model of the state's construction is seriously oversimplified, at least for the early thirteenth century. Does that also apply to the early Scottish state, before the AngloNorman era? Consider, for a start, the provinces of Fife and Gowrie. During the twelfth century, the earls' lands were only in Fife itself, not in the associated region of Fothrif to the west; but Fife also contained the property of the bishops of St Andrews, the lands of Leuchars, Crail, Ardross and Kennoway, and four royal estates of Falkland, Kingskettle, Dairsie and Kellie.59 As for Fothrif, it was mostly royal or ecclesiastical territory.60 This landholding pattern goes back to David I, and must have been older. After all, the earls of Fife were staunch crown supporters: it is inconceivable that any twelfth-century king would have deprived them of their land (two royal estates in Fife were in fact given to Earl Duncan by Malcolm IV).61 The eleventh-century province of Fife must already have been divided between the earl or mormaer (who had less than half), and other lords, especially the king. A similar division is revealed for Gowrie in a charter of Malcolm IV referring to his revenue 'from all my manors of Gowrie, both of the 56

Which is no doubt why in the Anglo-Norman era the earldoms and the rank of earl were essentially restricted to native families. 57 Based on the material mapped in Atlas of Scottish History to 1707, pp. 184-5, 202-6 (by K. J. Stringer and A. Grant), and Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', p. 44. 58 K. J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, 1152-1219 (Edinburgh, 1985), pp. 60-7. 59 See, e.g., RRS, i. 41-2, 48; ii. 50, 211, 337-8; Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', p. 80. 60 Royal property lay around Kinross, and along the Forth, in the hinterland of Inverkeithing and Kinghorn; ecclesiastical landowners included Dunfermline Abbey (founded by Malcolm III) and the older abbey/bishopric of Dunkeld, the 'culdees' of Lochleven, and the (eventually laicized) Celtic abbey of Abernethy: Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', p. 80; RRS, i. 41, 167; ii, no. 152; Lawrie, Early Charters, nos 3, 5, 8, 209; Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, pp. 42-4, 51. 61 Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', p. 80, nos 66-7.

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The Medieval State

earldom and of my regality'; thus although the earldom was in crown hands, the large royal manors of Scone, Strathardle, Coupar Angus and Longforgan were separate. It is not known when Gowrie went to the crown, but it must have been before Alexander Fs reign; and whenever it happened, the mormaers of Gowrie could not, previously, have had much of the province.62 More generally, the crown lands shown on the map - including those in Fife and Gowrie - are the territories known later as 'manages'. These were run for the kings by agents known as thanes, who appear to have been drawn from the local kindreds and to have been assigned the 'thane's toun', without necessarily having hereditary and proprietorial rights in the manages;63 this is the usage of 'thane' as king's man mentioned above. Records from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries yield the names of sixty-five royal manages, spread across eastern and central Scotland from Haddington north to Dingwall; only two lay south of the Forth, fifty-one were in Alba and eleven were in Moray, while Dingwall was north of the Moray Firth.64 All were multiple estates, and in the 12605 the renders from some of them were called 'waiting', the English equivalent of conveth (which is actually what two manages were called);65 while almost all the individual thanes found in the sources have Gaelic names.66 Such points make it inconceivable that the manages were created ab initio by the Normanizing kings of the twelfth century; they must have been royal estates dating from before the Anglo-Norman era. The heavy concentration of manages in Angus and the Mearns (where the mormaer's land was probably confiscated in c. 1097) indicates that those provinces were like Fife and Gowrie: along the entire east-midland plain from the Forth to the River Dee (at Aberdeen), the kings' property would have been far more extensive than the mormaers'. And although inland and to the north a much higher proportion of Strathearn, Menteith, Atholl, Mar and Buchan belonged to the earls and hence to the mormaers before them, all except the small Menteith also contained significant numbers of manages on 62

Alexander I had a residence at Invergowrie, 'And all the land lyand by / Wes hys demyd than halyly': Andrew of Wyntoun, The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, ed. D. Laing (3 vols, Edinburgh, 1872-9), i. 174. He gave ten territories throughout Gowrie to Scone Priory: Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 36. If these came from the royal manors, where were the earldom lands? Part of Gowrie also belonged to Abernethy: RRS,u, no. 152. 63 Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', pp. 40-2, 56-9; cf. Thainstone in Kintore thanage. 64 Ibid., appendix, pp. 72-81. There were also six thanages belonging to earldoms. 65 The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, ed. J. Stuart et al. (23 vols, Edinburgh, 1878-1908), i. 6, 12, 16; Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', appendix, nos 17, 34. 66 E.g. Mac-bethad and Mael-muire, thanes of Falkland and Kellie in Fife in David Fs reign; and thirteen others: ibid., appendix, nos 4, 10, 12, 28, 44, 47, 61, 63-4, 66, 68-9, 70 (three names). A significant exception is Swain of Longforgan: no. 52.

The Construction of the Early Scottish State

i. Provinces and Royal Thanages in the Early Scottish State

59

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The Medieval State

the fringes and even within the earls' own territories. As well as being divided into provinces., therefore, the kingdom of Alba also had a twopart territorial structure, in which the mormaers possessed only one part. Detailed analysis of this structure is impossible in the absence of a Scottish Domesday Book, but an impression of the balance within it can be formed by looking at the parishes of thirteenth-century Scotland. At the end of the century, the old area of Alba (from the Forth to the edge of Moray) contained 341 parishes. Of these, only some 108 (32 per cent) were within the bounds of the earldoms shown on the map.67 The parishes differed greatly in size, but the variations in population or resources would have been less, and probably evened out across the country as a whole. This suggests that as much as two-thirds of Alba would have been outside the lands of the mormaers, at any rate in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. How much of that was crown land is difficult to say. There were at least fifty-one royal manages in Alba, and all seem to have covered one or more parishes. Thus a reasonable estimate for the extent of the crown lands in that period, as represented by the thanages, would be between fifty and a hundred parishes; since some crown lands were not called thanages, while others were given to the church by the kings from Malcolm III to William I, the upper estimate is more likely. Moreover, during the tenth century the kings of Alba made inroads in Lothian, gaining Edinburgh by c. 96o.68 Thereafter, northern Lothian, perhaps as far as the most southerly royal thanage at Haddington, seems also to have contained large amounts of crown land - adding perhaps another twenty to thirty parishes.69 It thus seems safe to conclude that in the early Scottish state, during the eleventh century, the crown lands would have been significantly larger than those of all the mormaers put together.70 Within the dual territorial structure, the thanages' importance is twofold. First, obviously, they supported the crown economically. In 67 Data from D. E. R. Watt et al., 'Parish Churches about 1300', in Atlas of Scottish History to 1707, pp. 347-60, taking Alba to be the dioceses of St Andrews (north of the Forth), Dunblane, Dunkeld (north of the Forth), Brechin, Aberdeen, and the Strathbogie deanery of Moray. The figures for parishes in earldoms are my tentative assessment. This, of course, is only a guide; the parish structure was twelfth- and thirteenth-century. 68 Hudson, 'Scottish Chronicle', pp. 151, 159. 69 That is a conservative estimate, allowing fewer than half the sixty or so parishes in this region to the crown. Crown lands would have included Callendar and Haddington thanages, and the 'shires' of Stirling, Linlithgow and Edinburgh; cf. RRS, i. 36-7. 70 The biggest earldoms in terms of parishes, Fife and Mar, probably contained twenty-eight and twenty-four respectively; but some of these would have been held by tenants of the earldom, or, earlier, by toiseachs under the mormaers. Strathearn probably had twenty parishes, Buchan fourteen, Atholl eleven, Menteith perhaps six and Angus three or four.

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1263-4 me waitings, or conveth, from the thanages of Forfar and Glamis amounted to 37% cattle, 75 pigs, 291 chickens, 960 eels, over 8 tons of cheese, 291 chickens, 32 chalders (each about a ton) of malt, 10 chalders of barley meal, and about 80 chalders of fodder; the total market value was about £8o.71 These thanages were supposed to provide three-and-a-half nights' waitings, so a year of waitings might have produced around £7500-8500 - surprisingly close to the likely income of the thirteenth-century Scottish crown.72 That does not imply a system of 365 waitings, but suggests that a proportion of the kings' annual maintenance was once assigned to the royal estates on a regularized basis. The thirteenth-century values of twenty-two of the thanages (whose rents, cain and conveth were by then paid in cash) are also known;73 they average around £75 per manage, which means that the sixty-five royal thanages would have been worth, in all, nearly £5000, and those within Alba some £3800. By comparison, Fife, probably the richest earldom, was valued at £432 gross in 1295, and the net revenue from the much smaller Angus was only £80 in I263.74 Thus the contrast between the crown lands and the earldoms is even greater in terms of income than in terms of parishes, possibly because much of the earldoms' rents would have gone to lairds who held land from the earls. And although the cash figures from the thirteenth century do not, of course, apply to the early Scottish state, the conclusion about the relative economic resources of kings and mormaers presumably does while the cain which the kings received from lands which were not their own possessions (and which the kings' thanes may well have collected in the various provinces) should presumably be added in. Secondly, the size of the king's revenues compared with the mormaers' must have meant that the kings were much more powerful as is perhaps reflected in the 'Laws of the Brets and the Scots', where the king's cro was 1000 cattle and the mormaer's was only I5O.75 In other words, the thanages contributed to royal power as much as to finance. One aspect of this was that they gave the kings power bases throughout and beyond Alba. Kingship in the early Scottish state was 71 Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, i. 6-7, 49-50. The details come from poor seventeenthcentury summaries of account rolls for 1263-6 and 1288-90, which were presumably missed when the rest of the financial records, including thanes' accounts, were taken to England; unfortunately the originals of these rolls were subsequently lost, probably in 1660. 72 Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', pp. 48-9, 61-3. 73 For individual figures, see Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', appendix, nos 13-22, 24, 37-8, 40, 47, 49, 53, 56, 64-5, 69-70. 74 Fife: Documents Illustrative of the History of Scotland, 1286-1306, ed. J. Stevenson (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1870), i. 407-18. Angus, Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, i. 9 (which also gives a net income of £60 for Tannadice, one of the province's thanages). 75 APS, L 663.

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peripatetic, and on their circuits the kings not only consumed their local renders and hunted in the surrounding countryside,76 but also, from the thanages, would have been able to assert their authority personally within the various provinces. As the map shows, the thanages provided a set of 'stepping-stones' for royal progresses round and beyond Alba. One such progress can be seen, later, in Alexander Ill's journey in 1264 to Inverness via the thanages of Aberdeen, Kintore and 'Rathenach' on the Spey, which can be traced in the surviving exchequer accounts; and he was also at 'Rathenach' in 1261.77 Alexander's progresses, however, took him through Moray as well as Alba. The Moray thanages are significant, because they presumably antedate Moray's forfeiture to David I in 1130. Who, then, established them? One answer would be the earlier kings of Moray, before it came under Alba's superiority. But it has been convincingly argued that after 1130 the lands of the rebel mormaer or earl were used to endow the followers of David I and his successors, while the thanages mostly stayed in royal hands.78 Thus these royal thanages would not have been part of the mormaer's possessions in the early twelfth century. They must have been established by one of the kings of Alba at an earlier stage of their dealings with Moray: perhaps Malcolm III in the later eleventh century, perhaps even Malcolm II some fifty years earlier.79 Whoever was responsible, creating these outposts of crown lands on the edge of the Moray Firth and indeed beyond Moray, at Dingwall in Ross after Norse control retreated in the far north - was a significant act of royal power, which strikingly illuminates the policy of the kings of Alba towards the provinces during the eleventh century. From the above, it is possible to construct a different, 'royal', model of the early Scottish state, to balance the provincial model outlined earlier. It would be one in which the king possessed unrivalled resources and maintained an active royal presence throughout the provinces by means of the thanages. King's thanes or toiseachs would have run these, and would also have helped to levy the cain or taxation owed from other territories - including the lands of the mormaers. Moreover, since the literal meaning of mormaer is 'great steward', the mormaers, too, would be regarded as royal agents, whose function would have been to control the provinces on behalf of the crown; the provincial armies which they led 76

See Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', pp. 63-4, for forests associated with thanages. Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, i. 12, 14; APS, i. 99. The journey from Aberdeen to 'Rathenach' would have been through the thanages of Formartine and Aberchirder. At Inverness, Kinmylies on the west bank of the Ness was a thanage, and possibly represents the residue of a bigger thanage of Inverness before the royal burgh was created there. 78 G. W. S. Barrow, 'Badenoch and Strathspey, 1130-1312, i: Secular and Political', Northern Scotland, 8 (1988), 1-15, at 2-3. 79 Or, possibly, Macbeth, in between them; though he took Alba over from Moray. 77

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were the king's, while the justice which they and the provincial brithems supervised was the kingdom's. Thus, although the early Scottish state had a two-part territorial structure, both parts would, directly or indirectly, have been subject to the king's authority, in what can be considered an effectively organized state. The account of the lawsuit of 1124 x 30 gives a glimpse of the organization in operation. When the culdees of Lochleven were disputing the boundaries of Kirkness (granted them by Macbeth and his queen) with Sir Robert the Burgundian, they sought justice from David I, and 'the king . . . sent his messengers through the province of Fife and Fothrif, and summoned a multitude of men . . . namely Constantine, Earl of Fife . . . with officers and followers and the army of Fife, and Mac-bethad thane of Falkland, and the chiefs and leaders and commanders of the army of the bishop'; sworn testimony was given; and judgement was made by Dubgall mac Mocche, as the senior of three judices or brithems present.80 It was a royal summons, and although the earl was in charge of the army of Fife, the thane of probably the main thanage in the province was there to represent the king (the separate army of the bishop should also be noted). There is no reason to suppose that this kind of procedure would not have been employed in previous centuries; and through it, royal authority would have been upheld - at least, that is, in theory. But whether or not the political practice corresponded to the theory remains to be considered. Exploration of the political dynamics of the early Scottish state will begin with the royal thanes and thanages. The terminology - including 'waiting' for the hospitality dues, and 'shire', often used for the land of a thanage and, indeed, for any multiple estate - is distinctly English; that reflects borrowing from Northumbria via Lothian.81 There is no evidence that this happened before David Fs reign, though it is not impossible, because there had been considerable English influence under Malcolm III, and even perhaps since the annexation of Lothian. Whatever the case, the institution itself is unlikely to have been copied directly from eleventh- or twelfth-century England, because the Scottish king's thane was significantly different to the English king's thegn.82 Moreover, what were subsequently called thanages are not found in Lothian or Strathclyde, except for Haddington and Callendar. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters., no. 80. Just as, conversely, the Gaelic for waiting appears in Northumbria as coneveis: Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours, pp. 117, 147. 82 The king's thegns in late Anglo-Saxon England were either significant private landowners in their own rights, or subordinate agents, several to each unit of land, below the main royal manager or reeve (who was more like the Scottish thane); see, e.g, D. Roffe, 'From Thegnage to Barony', Anglo-Norman Studies, 12 (1989), 157-76; idem, 'Domesday Book and Northern Society: A Reassessment', EHR, 105 (1990), 310-36, at 329-31. 80 81

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This implies that they were a specifically Scottish institution, which was characteristic of Alba but was also established south of the Forth during the early stages of Scottish expansion there, in the later tenth century. On the other hand, there is a much older English parallel, in the villae regiae or 'royal vills' mentioned by Bede. In James Campbell's analysis, these are multiple estates where the renders belonged to the king83 just as with the Scottish thanages, though the latter were probably smaller.84 But the equivalents of these royal vills can also be found in Wales.85 Presumably, therefore, they represent a way to organize rural lordship that goes back to the ancient British kingdoms. Thus what became the Scottish thanages would have originated with the Picts, who were the Britons' northern heirs86 - as is confirmed by the fact that there seems to have been no equivalent to the villae regiae in Ireland and Dal Riata, the Gaelic parts of the British Isles.87 That is highly significant for the political dynamics. It has been pointed out that the absence of royal centres for the delivery of food renders probably goes far towards explaining the high degree of fragmentation in Ireland and early Dal Riata.88 Conversely, their existence would have helped to promote political unity. Where the kings possessed royal vills and hence extensive resources, their rivals would have had a strong incentive to gain them for themselves, instead of asserting their independence - as in the case of Macbeth. Political conflicts were therefore more likely to have a centripetal than a centrifugal effect. Now unity, or at least cohesion rather than fragmentation, is a longterm theme of Pictish history, evident in its earliest recorded event when the northern tribes under a single leader opposed Agricola at Mons Graupius in AD 83; thereafter, witness their coalescence into the Caledonii and Maeatae of Dio Cassius, the Dicalydones and Verturiones of Ammianus Marcellinus and the northern and southern Picts of Bede, or the creation of southern Pictish hegemonies by Onuist son of Uurguist in the mid-eighth century and Constantine son of Uurguist in the early ninth.89 But Pictish unity must not be exaggerated; for Campbell, Essays, pp. 108-16; cf. pp. 95-6. Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, pp. 39-40. 85 W. Rees, 'Survivals of Ancient Celtic Custom in Medieval England', in Angles and Saxons, ed. H. Lewis (Cardiff, 1963), pp. 148-68; G. R. J. Jones, 'Multiple Estates and Early Settlement', in Medieval Settlement, ed. P. H. Sawyer (London, 1979), pp. 9-34. 86 Fifty of the seventy-one thanages listed in Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', appendix, are at places which occur in Watson, Celtic Place-Names; of these, twenty-four seem to be P-Celtic (though I may have underestimated). Cf. Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, p. 58. 87 T. Charles-Edwards, 'Early Medieval Kingships in the British Isles', in The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, ed. S. Bassett (Leicester, 1989), pp. 28-39, esp. 38-9. 88 Ibid., p. 39. 89 Duncan, Making of the Kingdom., pp. 25, 36-7, 54-5; D. Broun, 'Pictish Kings 761-839: Integration with Dal Riata or Separate Development?', in The St Andrews Sarcophagus, ed. S. M. Foster (Dublin, 1998), pp. 71-83. 83 84

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instance, the early groupings no doubt included subordinate tribes. Most significantly, although the southern and northern Picts probably had single kings, it has recently been stressed that these must have followed the common Dark Age practice of ruling extended territories by allocating parts of them as sub-kingdoms to their kinsmen, who, in order to maintain overall unity, were eligible for the kingship of the confederation; that is the best way to make sense of the fact that until the late eighth century no Pictish king was the son of a previous king.90 Power struggles in this system would have been centripetal, too - a bitter conflict for the overall succession between three lineages of subkings can be seen in the yzos91 - but most of the villae regiae would presumably have been used to maintain the sub-kings on their local circuits, rather than the main kings of the northern and southern Picts.92 In that case, the crucial stage in the construction of the early Scottish state must have been the transition from this system of regional power to one in which the land of the provinces was only partly held by the provincial rulers, and in which the villae regiae were used to support the central king and were run by his local officers - in other words, the twopart territorial structure outlined above. One aspect of the transition is obviously the change in terminology for the provincial ruler, from 'king' to mormaer or 'great steward'. It seems fairly straightforward in the case of the province (and later earldom) of Atholl, which had a sub-king in 739 and a satrapas - which clearly means mormaer - in 965.93 Unfortunately, Atholl is the only Pictish sub-kingdom named in the sources; but it is reasonable to assume that the rest of the provinces of Alba had similar origins, though the correspondence may not have been so exact. Mormaer itself is probably P-Celtic in derivation, and the concept might perhaps be Pictish.94 But its first recorded occurrence is under the year 918, which is not long after the earliest usage of Alba. The latter represents a conscious change of terminology for the kingdom; so it is unlikely to be a coincidence that a new term (whatever its derivation) for the provincial rulers that stresses their subordination appears at much the same time. A. Woolf, 'Pictish Matriliny Reconsidered', Innes Review, 49 (1998), 147-67, esp. 156-8. The group of eligible kinsmen would have been particularly wide, because Pictish society, as opposed to Anglo-Saxon or Gaelic, allowed inheritance through females. Mr Woolf suggests that this derives from earlier British practice which may have been influenced by a change in Roman law under Marcus Aurelius (161-80); but the examples of Boudicca and Cartimandua suggest that women always did have inheritance rights in the early British tribes. 91 Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, pp. 23-8. 92 Cf. Charles-Edwards, 'Early Medieval Kingships', pp. 31-3. 93 Anderson, Early Sources, i. 236; Hudson, 'Scottish Chronicle', pp. 143, 151, 159. 94 Jackson, Book of Deer, pp. 102-10. 90

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In political terms, however., more importance attaches to the succession practices of Kenneth mac Alpin's lineage. Until 1034, with one exception, the kings were drawn alternately from its two or (971-1005) three senior agnatic branches; and they were all the sons of kings. This contrasts with the Pictish succession, and when that was regarded by scholars as strictly matrilineal, then it was believed that Kenneth introduced a totally new system. But it has now been shown that with Pictish kings succession through females was only a possibility, not a rule;95 in that case the mac Alpin system may not have been so different.96 The exception mentioned above was the succession of Eochaid, son of Kenneth's daughter, in 879. And although Malcolm II (1005-34) is usually believed to have changed the rules so that his daughter's son Duncan could succeed, that, again, was not unacceptable by the Pictish rules.97 Thus the mac Alpin kings may not have operated a new system, but simply have tightened 'normal' practice by ensuring that the succession usually went to the senior collateral rather than to any adult kinsman. Be that as it may, the succession practices of the mac Alpin kings must have had very significant political consequences. If most of the provincial rulers were no longer eligible for the kingship, then their status would have declined; that would tally with the introduction of the term mormaer. Conversely, the head of the senior collateral branch who may have been the tdnaiste, or designated successor98 - would have had a much higher status. And that must surely have been reflected in his landed resources; otherwise he would have been unable to mount a successful challenge for the throne, either against his predecessor or after the latter's death.99 In other words, for the system of alternating segments to work, these must have possessed extensive territory and power bases. This must have contributed to the main political theme of the period, namely the violent removal of the kings, which happened to twelve out of Kenneth mac Alpin's twenty successors down to the end of the eleventh century.100 On the other hand, the existence of two or 95

Woolf, 'Pictish Matriliny Reconsidered'. For accounts of the kings, see Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, chs 2-5. 97 As, therefore, was the subsequent succession of Macbeth, through his wife Gruoch, probably a grand-daughter of Kenneth III, and that of her son, Lulach, after Macbeth. 98 Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, pp. 112-13; Sellar, 'Celtic Law and Scots Law', pp. 13-14; cf. 6 Croinin, Early Medieval Ireland, pp. 67-9. 99 Perhaps lands, or an appanage, were set aside for the tdnaiste, in the way that Malcolm II's grandson Duncan was given Strathclyde. The concept of the 'tanistry lands' was certainly known in later centuries: Sellarx'Celtic Law and Scots Law', p. 14. 100 These appear to have been killed by their subjects, probably or certainly in favour of their successors. Two others were removed by their successors; five were killed by external enemies; and only the reigns of Kenneth mac Alpin himself and his brother Donald I ended in natural deaths (Kenneth from cancer). 96

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three powerful kindreds all in competition for the throne must have helped to draw the kingdom of Alba together. Moreover, the mormaers would have had to have taken sides in the power struggles, and could have been displaced if they where on the losing side. Something like that may have happened in Buchan, where at least two different kindreds of mormaers can be found in the notes in the Book of Deer.101 Also, four mormaers are recorded as fighting in Ireland;102 were they exiles from Alba? Thus the contests for the crown probably had the effect of gradually strengthening royal power at the mormaers' expense. In addition, mormaers were not necessarily any more secure than kings; they would always have been vulnerable to challenges from rival members of their kindreds, and their deaths would have been followed by succession disputes. In those circumstances, kings could easily play off rival, would-be mormaers against each other, which, again, would have enhanced royal power. And if that was happening, then the likelihood is that successful kings would have taken more and more of the 'royal vills' - the villae regiae or, later, manages in the provinces for themselves; or, perhaps, would have turned ordinary multiple estates into royal ones. Thus territory, resources, and hence power are likely to have flowed gradually from the mormaers to the kings of Alba. This is, of course, another hypothetical model. But a political narrative that seems to correspond to it does exist, albeit north of the original Alba, in the crown's dealings with Moray and Ross. In the tenth century, Moray appears to have been a separate kingdom, but internal conflict in the I02OS seems to have enabled Malcolm II to assert his kingship over it; the conflict's eventual victor, Macbethad mac Findlaich (Macbeth) was Malcolm's protege, and the kings of Moray became mormaers.103 Subsequently, Macbeth seized the throne of Alba, but he and his stepson Lulach were killed by Malcolm III in 1057-8, and in 1078 Malcolm asserted his power over Lulach's son Mael-Snechta, who may have called himself king of Moray but was at most only mormaer.104 During this period, the mormaer's lands would have contracted, because either Malcolm II or Malcolm III established eleven royal manages in what was now the province.105 Then, in 1130, Moray was confiscated, following 101

The kindred of the mormaer Muiredach mac Morgain was later Claim Morgain, under a toiseach, when the descendants of Cainnech mac meic Dobarcon (clearly a different kindred) were mormaers: Jackson, Book of Deer, pp. 33-5. 102 Ibid., pp. 103-4; Anderson, Early Sources, i. 480, 536. One, in 976, was Donnchad mac Morgain; was that when the change of kindred in Buchan happened? 103 Anderson, Early Sources, L 551, 571; Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, pp. 118-19, J 34~9 (though I would take the titles in the Irish annals less literally); cf. above, note 10. 104 Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, pp. 138-46; Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers, ed. Anderson, p. 100; Anderson, Early Sources, ii. 46. 105 Grant, 'Thanes and Thanages', appendix, nos 2-12. These probably had a

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the rebellion of Earl Oengus of Moray, son of Lulach's daughter.106 David I perhaps gave it to William fitz Duncan, son of his eldest brother Duncan II (1094) and thus the senior descendant of Malcolm III.107 William never claimed the throne, but his descendants 'the MacWilliams' did, mounting repeated rebellions in Moray and Ross; as these were defeated, so loyal landowners were installed in Moray and eventually in Ross.108 The process is frustratingly illustrated by an entry in the inventory of the royal documents lost after 1296: 'Item, one roll of twelve membranes of recognitions and old charters of the time of King William and King Alexander his son [concerning?] those to whom the said kings formerly gave their peace, and those who stood with MacWilliam'.109 A combination of local and, more significantly, national, politics had steadily (if at times with great difficulty) brought Moray and Ross under crown control. Admittedly, the confiscation of Moray and the subsequent rebellions took place during the Anglo-Norman era. It is possible, however, to see earlier parallels, in the provinces which (as has been seen) were wholly or largely in the crown's possession in the early twelfth century.110 In 1094, for instance, Duncan II was killed by the mormaer of the Mearns, on behalf of Duncan's uncle and rival Donald III ban.111 Thereafter, the Mearns was mostly in royal hands; it had surely been confiscated when Edgar seized the crown from Donald ban. But the crown also possessed the earldom of Gowrie; this must also have been confiscated, though there is no way of telling when. And although the earldom of Angus was held by earls, they had very little territory; surely, therefore, at some time much of the province of Angus had been taken over by a king. Then there is Fife. Here, the twelfthcentury earls were descendants of King Dub, who seem to have been excluded from the succession by Dub's nephew Malcolm II, and to have been compensated with the earldom of Fife112 - which Malcolm strategic significance. Fochabers and 'Rathenech' were on either side of the main crossing of the Spey (used by Edward I's army in 1296: Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, pp. 47-9)5 and Kinmylies is at the crossing of the River Ness at Inverness; in between, Kilmalemnock is on the Lossie, Brodie and Dyke are close to the Findhorn, and Cawdor is on the Nairn. The crown would thus have had agents at crossings on all the main rivers in Moray. I am most grateful to my wife for this suggestion. Called 'earl' in Scottish and English sources, but 'king' in the Annals of Ulster. Anderson, Early Sources, ii. 173-4. 107 RRS, ii. 12-13. 108 Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, pp. 193-8. 109 APS, 1.114. 110 Above, pp. 57-8. 111 Anderson, Early Sources, ii. 87-90, where comes is a Latinization of mormaer. 112 J. Bannerman, 'MacDuff of Fife', in Grant and Stringer, Medieval Scotland, pp. 20-38, at 22-5. 106

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could only have done if the previous line of mormaers had been removed. Finally, Atholl may have belonged to a brother of Malcolm III;113 if so, how and when had it come to the royal family? Although it is only possible to glimpse what happened with the Mearns, each case is probably an example of the assertion of royal power over the provinces. That may have happened only in the eleventh century; the reign of Malcolm II (1005-34) appears to be as far back as it is possible to go. This is perhaps appropriate, in view of the story in the late fourteenthcentury chronicle of John of Fordun that under Malcolm II 'almost the whole kingdom was divided up into manages'.114 Malcolm was a successful and powerful king who greatly extended the kingdom, and removed rivals to his grandson's succession;115 so it is not unlikely that he significantly increased the number of what were later the royal manages, which is what perhaps lies behind Fordun's story. On the other hand, Malcolm II's father, Kenneth II (971-95) was also powerful and successful, and 'it is he who gave the great monastery of Brechin to the Lord'.116 Kenneth probably gave Brechin a considerable endowment in Angus, including the large territory of Glenesk,117 but none of it appears to have been inside any of the province's numerous manages; therefore it presumably came from other territory, perhaps at the expense of the local mormaer. Moreover, Kenneth II is said to have been killed at Fettercairn in the Mearns, 'through the treachery of Finella, the daughter of Cunthar, earl [mormaer] of Angus. This Finella's only son had been killed by the aforesaid Kenneth.'118 Thus Kenneth was no doubt in conflict with the mormaers of Angus and the Mearns. So, probably, was his son Malcolm II, who was killed at Glamis in Angus, possibly after a battle there. Also, Kenneth's father, Malcolm I (c. 943-54), and his father, Donald II (c. 889-900), were killed in the Mearns.119 The reason why this segment of the royal kindred found Angus and the Mearns so fatal is probably that their own sphere of influence was much further west, in the region of Atholl, Strathearn and Dunkeld Abbey, to which they seem closely tied. On the other hand, the main rival segment of Constantine II (c. 900-43) and his descendants appears to have had its sphere of influence in or near Fife, and to have been linked with St Andrews Cathedral, which Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, p. 165. John of Fordun, Chronica Gentis Scotorum, ed. W. F. Skene (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1871-2), i. 186. 115 Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, p. 120. 116 Hudson, 'Scottish Chronicle', pp. 151, 161. 117 Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours, pp. 111-13. 118 Anderson, Early Sources, i. 512. 119 Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, pp. 60, 88, 120-1; Hudson, 'Scottish Chronicle', p. 158; Anderson, Early Sources, i. 573. 113 114

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included most of the parishes in Angus and the Mearns in its diocese.120 Dunkeld and St Andrews were the two main churches of early Scotland, and, with respective devotions to St Columba and St Andrew, were rivals;121 this can probably be related to the political rivalries of the two sets of kings. Thus there seems to have been an east-west split in Alba between the royal segments' spheres of influence. That would explain why Kenneth II might have wished to take over territory in Angus and the Mearns, and why it may have cost him his life. More generally, it reveals a political situation in which Angus and the Mearns were a problem for several of the most powerful kings of the period - and the same might be said of the neighbouring province of Gowrie as well. These are the political circumstances in which, it was suggested above, more and more territories were likely to have come into the crown's possession. But for that to be effective, agents were of course needed to run these territories for successive kings - thus producing the royal thanes and manages of later record. In that way, the crucial stage in the construction of the early Scottish state would appear to have come about, giving the two-part territorial and governmental structure that was described earlier in this essay. As will have become evident, the process cannot be attributed to any one particular king; it was really the result of Alba's political dynamics. But three points are worth adding in conclusion. First, although Donald II, Malcolm I, Kenneth II and Malcolm II all found Angus and the Mearns so deadly, it was their line which was eventually to make the kingdom its own, through Malcolm III and his descendants;122 thus it is hardly surprising that the Mearns, Gowrie and so much of Angus finished up as royal territory. Secondly, if, as seems most likely, the royal resources were already growing steadily in the tenth century, that would explain the ability of the eleventh-century kings, especially Malcolm II, to acquire and retain so much territory outside Alba itself. And thirdly, the construction that was the early Scottish state was not replaced overnight when the AngloNorman era began. It did, of course, evolve; but throughout the twelfth, thirteenth and even fourteenth centuries, its main characteristics - the kingship itself, the two-part structure of crown lands and earldoms, the use of local landowners as royal agents, the thanages, and the basic Hudson, 'Kings and Church in Early Scotland', pp. 164-5; Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, p. 63 (but I am unconvinced that Donald IPs line was based in the Mearns). 121 Hudson, 'Kings and Church in Early Scotland', pp. 154-66. 122 Though, strictly speaking, a female line, through the daughter of Malcolm II. Since she was married to the abbot of Dunkeld, the Dunkeld and 'western' connection of Donald II's segment of the royal kindred would have continued and, if anything, have been strengthened. 120

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systems for crown finance, defence and justice - all continued to operate. The early Scottish state was a permanent construction, whose legacy was as important for Scotland's subsequent history as the much better-known legacy of the Anglo-Saxon state was for England's.123 123

I am most grateful to Dr Dauvit Broun for his kindness in reading a draft of this essay and discussing it with me.

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4 Observations upon a Scene in the Bayeux Tapestry., the Battle of Hastings and the Military System of the Late Anglo-Saxon State M. K. LAWSON If a relative plethora of sources provides more evidence on the battle of Hastings than any other event in Anglo-Saxon history, there is surprisingly little of which we can be certain.* The numbers involved, the extent of the initial deployment, the tactics employed and the course of the fighting are all to a greater or lesser degree unclear, and much more debatable than the secondary literature has often been prepared to admit. As a depiction of a conflict which lasted for most of a midOctober day, for example, the Bayeux Tapestry is an inadequate record. Probably inclined to overstress the role of cavalry, it does not show the French mailed infantry mentioned by William of Poitiers,1 and offers only a limited range of scenes: Duke William's horsemen charge the English shield-wall, other infantry fighting in loose order (including Fang Harold's brothers), and a third group defending a hillock; William proves that he is still alive while his archers advance in the lower border, where, as the dead are stripped, further attacks on scattered Englishmen in the scenes above precede the death of Harold and the pursuit of his defeated army. Nevertheless, the Tapestry is a fascinating source: almost certainly seen by, and probably produced for, participants in the battle,2 such details as it offers of the fighting and of military methods and equipment seem likely to be reasonably accurate. Indeed, the scene in which the French attack English infantry on a * George Garnett encouraged the work upon which this essay is based; Gillian Drew, Librarian of St Paul's School, acquired books and articles; my colleague Mr J. R. M. Smith gave generously of his time on the subject of ancient warfare. I am grateful to them. 1 The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), pp. 126-7. 2 N. P. Brooks and H. E. Walker, 'The Authority and Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry', Anglo-Norman Studies, i (1978), 1-34, 191-9, esp. 8-10; D. J. Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1986), passim.

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hillock is vital. It both casts doubt on views about the scale of the battle which have prevailed for the last century, and suggests (with other evidence) that Anglo-Saxon armies fought in varied and reasonably complex ways which have never been properly acknowledged. It is true that there is much about Hastings that we can never know, and that many views of it are possible; and it is equally true that this should encourage the most open-minded of approaches. Or one might say that the battle and the capacities of the Anglo-Saxons' military machine should be considered, like other of their activities, according to the dictum of the philosopher whose nearest approach to a positive statement was: 'Not but what it may not have been, perhaps it was'.3 Preceded by the words 'Hie ceciderunt simul Angli et Franci in prelio', the men on the hillock do not wear armour; three sport moustaches and have spears and shields, while one has a beard and a spear, and two others, with neither facial hair nor weaponry, tumble down the slope apparently in death; before them stands a moustachioed warrior wielding an axe double-handed and wearing a sheathed sword, accompanied by a spear-bearing soldier who is regarding the enemy with some trepidation; to the left a clean-shaven Englishman holding a spear and wearing chain-mail, helmet and scabbard is attacking a horseman by seizing his mount's girthstrap; further to the left a water course has brought down two more horses.4 What, then, are we being shown? Well over a hundred years ago, Freeman offered an explanation which has found little favour since. In his view, the hillock is identifiable today on the western part of the battlefield, lying just to the south of the ridge, about one mile long, upon which the conflict took place, and just to the north of a drainage area often containing much water, which now flows into New Pond. An element of a small but noticeable ridge forming part of the general fall of the ground to the south-west, it is covered by bushes and small trees, with a steep slope to the south but a much more accessible approach from the north. In Freeman's opinion, the English deployed along most of the main ridge and stationed men upon the hillock to protect their front at a point where the approach from the south is less severe than elsewhere. Thus, while prudently giving no estimate of the number involved, he spoke of an 'immoveable wedge of men' covering 'every inch' of the ridge, and his map showed them grouped in forty-nine individual units, with housecarls in the centre and 'light-armed' on the flanks.5 There was little justification for

3

J. Campbell, 'The Significance of the Anglo-Norman State in the Administrative History of Western Europe', in Essays, pp. 171-89, at 178-9. 4 The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. D. M. Wilson (London, 1985), plates 65-7. See Plate 2 opposite. 5 E. A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England (6 vols, Oxford, 2nd edn, 1870-9), iii, map opposite p. 443, pp. 471, 477. For Freeman's map, see p. 77.

2. The Hillock Scene from the Bayeux Tapestry

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some of this, and by the time Sir James Ramsay wrote in 1898 most of it had been rejected. The German scholar Wilhelm Spatz had by then estimated the troops on each side at not much more than 6000-7000, while J. H. Round's refusal to accept the palisade which Freeman had posited along the English front had led to the belief that the latter must have consisted of a continuous length of shield-wall, which was, if we accept William of Poitiers's repeated statements on the density of the English formation,6 many ranks deep. F. H. Baring guessed that it might have numbered 20,000 to 30,000 men, and, as he thought this impossible, concurred with Ramsay that the English had occupied not the bulk of the ridge at the start of the battle but simply its crest.7 On this view, of course, whatever the Tapestry's hillock scene depicts, it would seem to have little to offer on the initial English deployment, and is not support for Freeman's view that this extended over much of the western part of the ridge. Certainly most subsequent writers have followed Baring's line, with the result that the modern view of the English dispositions and of the scale of the battle is not only very different to Freeman's (in minimizing both), but wears an appearance of certainty which the actual evidence does little to warrant.8 Contemporary sources are inconclusive on the size of the force which Harold commanded at Hastings. The E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, perhaps the most contemporary of all, says that he fought The hillock is marked as 'The English Outpost'. J. Bradbury The Battle of Hastings (Stroud, 1998), pp. 176, 189, states (incorrectly) that the hillock is 'very small', and suggests (implausibly) that the Tapestry scene is simply another depiction of the fighting on the main ridge. 6 W. Spatz, Die Schlacht von Hastings (Berlin, 1896), pp. 30, 33; the extensive literature produced between 1892 and 1898 during Round's clash with T. A. Archer and Kate Norgate is listed by J. H. Round, 'The Battle of Hastings', Sussex Archaeological Collections, 42 (1899), 54-63, at 63; William of Poitiers, ed. Davis and Chibnall, pp. 128-9, 130-37 J. H. Ramsay, The Foundations of England (2 vols, London, 1898), ii. 24-6; F. H. Baring, 'On the Battle of Hastings', appendix B of his Domesday Tables (London, 1909), pp. 217-22. Baring's map (see p. 77) of the field and the dispositions of both sides remains the best available on the contours of the site. Ramsey (ii. 16) assessed the French at 5000, Baring (p. 219) at 8000 to 10,000, and the English at 10,000 to 13,000, 'many of them . . . rustics'. 8 For example, F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3rd edn, Oxford, 1971), pp. 592-5; J. Beeler, Warfare in England, 1066-1189 (New York, 1966), pp. n, 16-17; RAllen Brown, 'The Battle of Hastings', Anglo-Norman Studies, 3 (1980), 1-21, 197-201, at 10-11; elsewhere, Brown warned that figures of about 7000 on each side 'are more or less rational guesswork': The Normans and the Norman Conquest (London, 1969), p. 150, n. 47; The Battle of Hastings: Sources and Interpretations, ed. S. Morillo (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. xxii-xxx, with the statement that 'the size of both armies is open to debate', but maps showing an initial English deployment on the crest of the ridge (presumably as we 'know the basic disposition of troops on either side'). For further discussion of the size of the armies, see Appendix, below, pp. 90-1.

Observations upon a Scene in the Bayeux Tapestry

3. The Battle of Hastings: Freeman's Map

4. The Battle of Hastings: Baring's Map

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before all his army had come, while the author of the D text, who had something very like E in front of him, records that the English army was great, but that William came against it unexpectedly, before it was properly organized; nevertheless, Harold and those who followed him (conceivably a hint that some did not) fought hard, and there were heavy casualties on both sides.9 This tendency to offer explanations, if not excuses, for the English defeat is taken further by John of Worcester, who took a pretty partisan view of events between thirty and almost eighty years later. Here, Harold advanced with only half his army, joined battle when only a third of what he had was in order for righting (this being an amplification of D, which John had before him, and whose statement on the size of the army he ignored), drew his forces up in a narrow place from which many of his men retired, but still fought valiantly all day, until he was killed around twilight.10 Of the Norman writers, William of Poitiers insists that the English force, augmented by reinforcements from Denmark, was vast, a view with which William of Jumieges agrees.11 Of course, it can be dismissed as the product of a desire to magnify the achievements of Duke William, and in any case we have no way of deciding what was a large army in eleventh-century terms. Even so, there is reason to think that it occupied rather more than simply the crest of the ridge at Battle. The Tapestry's hillock scene seems to represent an important stage in the conflict, which its audience was expected to recognize. Moreover, it immediately precedes the depiction of Duke William proving to his men that he was still alive, which according to William of Poitiers followed the flight of the Breton foot and horse and the auxiliaries on his left wing, and was itself followed by the annihilation of several thousand of the pursuing English.12 Freeman considered the possibility that the hillock scene shows the last stand of these unfortunates (a common view since), while thinking that the tumbling horses to its left fell some distance away, in the ravine to the west of the ridge.13 An Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer (2 vols, Oxford, 1892-9), i. 198-9. The date of D is uncertain. D. N. Dumville, 'Some Aspects of Annalistic Writing at Canterbury in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries', Peritia, 2 (1983), 23-57, at 34, suggests extreme outer limits of 1080 X 1130 for its compilation. 10 John of Worcester, Chronicon, ed. R.R. Darlington and P. McGurk (Oxford, 1995) ii. 604; on the dating limits, see p. Ixxxi. 11 William of Poitiers, ed. Davis and Chibnall, pp. 126-9; William of Jumieges, Gesta Normannorum ducum, ed. E.M.C. van Houts (2 vols, Oxford, 1992-5), ii. 166. 12 William of Poitiers, ed. Davis and Chibnall, pp. 128-31. 13 Freeman, Norman Conquest, iii. 490-1; C. H. Lemmon, 'The Campaign of 1066', in The Norman Conquest: Its Setting and Impact, ed. D. Whitelock et al. (London, 1966), p. 106. Freeman quoted William of Malmesbury's Gesta regum at this point, which speaks of the English occupying a tumulus after a French feigned flight, and of many enemy deaths in a deep ditch: De gestis regum Anglorum libri quinque, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 2 vols (London, 1887-9), ii. 303; but this may be Malmesbury's own interpretation of 9

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alternative is to see both horses and hillock as in the same locality, and as representing fighting which preceded rather than followed the French flight, as the Tapestry's inclusion of them before the duke's rallying of his men, and close analysis of the scene, in any case suggest. The defenders of the hillock are not solely 'half-armed peasants'.14 While two do bear only spears, the four moustachioed warriors (all unarmoured, but three with spears and shields and one with axe and sword) look very like regular light infantry, and their moustaches 'as if some special significance attached to them'.15 Indeed, it is not improbable that what we are being shown here is one of the English 'picked companies' of the sort present at Brunanburh in 937,16 and this would also fit the way in which their light equipment suits the terrain in which they are deployed. In other words, they did not fetch up on the hillock accidentally, while pursuing the fleeing French, but were placed there from the outset, as Freeman thought. This interpretation is strengthened if we associate with them the figures and horses to the left. On this view, the Tapestry's watercourse is that to the south of the hillock, and its representation of an armoured man seizing the girthstrap of his enemy's horse indicates that this too was held against the French. Furthermore, if Sir David Wilson is correct in thinking that the serrated shapes shown above the water represent a 'defensive work of sharpened stakes', this would underline the determination with which the English held this area and offer a convincing explanation of why the scene's tumbling horses are in such difficulties.17 Wace, who wrote over a century after the Conquest, mentions ditches several times, and reports that during the battle the Normans were pushed back to one which they had previously left behind them, more perishing there than elsewhere, as those who saw the dead said.18 Fortunately, the likelihood that Harold resorted to field defences hardly needs support from evidence of the Tapestry. The various accounts of deaths in ditches, including the so-called Malfosse incident, are well treated in Brown, 'The Battle of Hastings', 18-21. 14

Ibid., 20. The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. F. M. Stenton (London, 1957), p. 175. 16 Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Plummer, i. 108. I have translated the Old English eorod-cist here on the assumption that the second element derives from the verb ceosan, to choose; see Plummer's glossary, ibid., 328, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. M. J. Swanton (London, 1996), p. 108. The word cist can, however, also denote a company, and 'mounted companies' is an alternative: English Historical Documents, c. 500-1042, ed. D. Whitelock (2nd edn, London, 1979), p. 219. Swanton states that the word eored derives from eoh, 'war-horse'; see below, p. 87. 17 The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Wilson, pp. 192-3. Naturally, it is impossible to be sure that they do not depict vegetation; Brown, 'The Battle of Hastings', n. 120, suggested 'tufts of marsh grass'. 18 Wace, Roman de Rou, ed. A. J. Holden (3 vols, Paris, 1970-3), lines 6969-72, 7847-8, 8079-96; ii. 143, 176, 185-6. 15

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such doubtful reliability. In 1064 he had accompanied the Normans on campaign in Brittany, and doubtless thought long and hard about how their cavalry might best be countered: not that there need have been anything novel about his methods, for too little is known about AngloSaxon fighting techniques to make arguments from silence of much weight here. Professor Leyser noted that in the late ninth century Vikings on the Continent often erected 'quick and effective field fortifications, dykes fortified by stakes, palisades and advanced ditches. Time and again their enemies were hampered by these works'. In the 88os Margrave Henry of Neustria was killed when he 'rode into what might today be described as a tank-trap'.19 The implications of all this for our understanding of the battle of Hastings are considerable. First, and assuming of course that the Tapestry's hillock and watercourse have been correctly identified with those visible today on the western part of the field, the view that Harold's deployment was limited to the crest of the ridge becomes untenable. The hillock is some quarter of a mile from the point where he fell, and the protection of it and its approaches by both light and heavy infantry and field defences increases the likelihood that there were also English troops on the flattish western part of the main ridge to the north and north-west, as Freeman thought.20 Despite statements about the density of their line, it would be rash to assume that it consisted simply of a long shield-wall;21 equally, the possibility that the battle involved not several thousand men on the English side but tens of thousands must be strengthened. Another argument on these lines might run thus: Harold had been on the site long enough to build field defences, yet the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that his forces were taken by surprise before they were properly ordered; if he could not organize his men in time, given an area which extended beyond the ridge's crest, might this not be because, as D says, it was indeed a great army, and great in eleventh-century terms was at least bigger than the limits laid down by Spatz and his many disciples? There is reason to doubt their assessment of the size of the French force too, even if the relevant arguments are no more than what might be called a sequence of possibilities. A Norman ship list records the number of vessels owed to Duke William in 1066 by fourteen of his K. J. Leyser, 'Early Medieval Warfare', in his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottoman Centuries, ed. T. Reuter (London, 1994), pp. 29-71, at 48-9; citing, on Margrave Henry, Regino of Prum, Chronicon, ed. F. Kurze (Hanover, 1890), s.a. 887, p. 126. Worth noting, too, are Professor Leyser's comments on the sophistication of the tactics known from continental sources. 20 Apart from Baring's map, the most useful one is the modern Ordnance Survey Pathfinder Map, sheet no. 1290 (TQ 61/71) at 2/£ inches to i mile. 21 Above, p. 76. 19

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magnates, together in four cases with the numbers of milites also due. Until recently treated with circumspection, partly because it was thought to date from the twelfth century and partly, no doubt, because of the somewhat startling nature of its evidence, the list has been rehabilitated in the work of Professor Hollister and Dr van Houts.22 The latter believes that, although extant only in a Battle Abbey copy of c. 1130-60, the document was created in about 1072 or perhaps as early as December 1067, probably at Fecamp, on the basis of information compiled just before the Conquest by monks of that abbey in William's service. The duke's half-brothers, Robert of Mortain and Bishop Odo, owed 120 and 100 ships respectively, others fewer, but the grand total is 776, and 280 milites. The list then states, wrongly as it seems (although its enumeration of magnates may have become truncated in transmission) that the total was 1000, and that the duke also had many other ships from certain of his men, according to their means. Now Wace says that he had been told by his father that 696 ships, including those carrying arms and harnesses, sailed with William from Saint-Valery, although he had also read (in William of Jumieges) that there were 3000 ships.23 He too, like the list, says that William Fitz Osbern contributed sixty and (unlike it) Bishop Odo forty, adding that the bishop of Le Mans provided thirty vessels and their crews. As Dr van Houts has observed, despite their agreements Wace and the list differ sufficiently to seem independent of each other, and this bolsters our confidence in their general reliability on this issue.24 By any reckoning then, Duke William's fleet was sizeable: if we accept the list's evidence that he was owed 1000 ships by a portion of his men and more by others, and consider the possibility that some of his continental allies supplied their 22 C. W. Hollister, 'The Greater Domesday Tenants-in-Chief, in Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 219-48, at 221-6; E. M. C. van Houts, 'The Ship List of William the Conqueror', Anglo-Norman Studies, 10 (1987), 159-83. It is edited by Dr van Houts at 176. 23 Roman de Ron, ed. Holden, lines 6423-32; ii. 123; William of Jumieges, Gesta Normannorum ducum, ed. van Houts, ii. 164. 24 Roman de Ron, ed. Holden, lines 6119-21, 6163-7; ii. 112, 114; van Houts, 'Ship List', 162-3, J68. See also C. M. Gillmor, 'Naval Logistics of the Cross-Channel Operation, 1066', Anglo-Norman Studies, 7 (1984), 105-31. This article, which appeared before recent work on the ship list, argues that there is no proof that William's magnates supplied all the vessels requested, and that building Wace's 696 ships would have severely taxed the timber and labour resources of eleventh-century Normandy. This may be so, although it might seem doubtful whether William would have settled for much less than he wanted, and one could doubtless use similar methods to show that Caesar's men, despite a shortage of materials, could not have produced 600 ships and twenty-eight warships over the winter of 55/54 BC: De hello gallico, v. 2, ed. T. Rice Holmes (Oxford, 1914), p. 171. However, Gillmor stresses the possibility that many of William's vessels came from existing stock, were supplied by his allies, or built from extant supplies of seasoned timber.

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own vessels, then William of Jumieges's total of 3000 does not look completely ridiculous. Moreover, such conclusions could be supported by what is known of the anchorages employed in 1066. William of Poitiers says that the fleet assembled at the mouth of the Dives and neighbouring ports, was delayed for a month by unsuitable winds, and then blown by westerlies to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme.25 Now the Gulf of Dives may in the eleventh century have provided a very large harbour indeed, for Wace claimed that the river flowed into the sea near Bavent, which is some five miles from the town of Dives-sur-Mer, where the entrance to the English Channel is situated today;26 together with the 'other ports', it may have been able to shelter many hundreds of vessels. The same is true of the Somme estuary at Saint-Valery, and probably of the harbours around Pevensey Bay, where William landed. The presence of sand and alluvium in localities that are today well inland shows that they were once likely to flood, or were open water. One reconstruction of the coast that William found shows the bay itself with an entrance about four miles wide and penetrating inland for about six miles, while the anchorage at Bulverhythe, west of Hastings, had an entrance about two-thirds of a mile wide and a penetration of about two and a half miles.27 Of course, even if we had a reliable total for his fleet we could not deduce the number of men it carried before negotiating the quicksand of average ship capacity. Even so, this is not quite the end of the ship list's significance. Professor Hollister has noted that William of Poitiers names seven prominent Norman lay lords from whose counsel the duke benefited in 1066, and that if we replace Richard, count of Evreux, by his son William, who fought at Hastings and is named in the list, then the seven correspond exactly with the eight (including Odo, a bishop) premier suppliers of ships according to the list. 'One might almost suppose that William of Poitiers was writing with some such ship list at hand'.28 Indeed one might, and one might also compare his comment William of Poitiers, ed. Davis and Chibnall, pp. 102-5, 108-11. Roman de Rou, ed. Holden, line 2882; i. no; Gillmor, 'Naval Logistics', 107.1 have measured the distance from Bavent to Dives-sur-Mer on the Michelin map no. 231, Normandie, at a scale of I cm. to 2 km. Gillmor gives 4.8 km. in error. B. S. Bachrach, 'Some Observations on the Military Administration of the Norman Conquest', AngloNorman Studies, 8 (1985), 1-25, at 6, offers a map of the area, but with an inaccurate scale. The form of the lower Dives at this date is not, of course, known with any precision; see further R. N. Sauvage, L'abbaye de Saint-Martin de Troam au diocese de Bayeux des origines au seizieme sieck (Caen, 1911), pp. 245-52, who thought it 'un vaste lac envahi par les marees'. 27 These calculations have been made from the map prepared by J. A. Williamson and printed in The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, ed. C. Morton and H. Muntz (Oxford, 1972), p. 110. 28 William of Poitiers, ed. Davis and Chibnall, pp. 100-3; Hollister, 'Greater Domesday Tenants-in-Chief', p. 223. 25 26

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that Agamemnon set out with 1000 vessels but that Duke William had more - pluribus - with the list's total of 1000 and multas alias naves; of course, William of Poitiers may have had William of Jumieges's 3000 in mind, even though otherwise 'the two works diverge completely' on the events of 1066.29 One might also begin to think the unthinkable in another respect: if monks of Fecamp were with William's army keeping records (and one is said to have acted as ducal messenger to Harold before the battle),30 might this not be where William of Poitiers obtained his figures of 50,000 for the number supported by the Conqueror at Dives and 60,000 for those he commanded just before Hastings?31 Obviously, the credibility of numbers like 60,000 is desperately difficult to ascertain. Ferdinand Lot noted that 60, 600, 6000 and 60,000 appear frequently in medieval chronicles, nor are they absent from works of Julius Caesar32 which William of Poitiers was eager to imitate.33But that is not to say that he was in this case influenced by Caesar, or simply utilized random round numbers, for such numbers also appear in early medieval assessment systems. The Anglo-Saxon document known as the Tribal Hidage deals repeatedly in recurrent totals of this type, including 600, while sixty appears six times in the ship list (including one reference to milites) and is known also from the Cartae Baronum of 1166, believed to record the quotas of knights which William required from his tenants in England.34 If 60,000 was not the number of men the duke had, it could have been the total that a scribe in his service at some point thought he ought to have had. It is very likely that the Anglo-Saxon military system utilized tens of thousands of men, at least on occasion, and perhaps in 1066. As is well known, the early tenth-century Burghal Hidage implies that West Saxon and Mercian burhs were maintained, and possibly defended, by some 27,000 men.35 The German bishop Thietmar of Merseburg heard that there were 24,000 byrnies in London in 1016, a number which he William of Poitiers, ed. Davis and Chibnall, pp. 110-13; R. H. C. Davis, 'William of Poitiers and his History of William the Conqueror', in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages, ed. R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), p. 78. 30 William of Poitiers, ed. Davis and Chibnall, pp. 118-21; van Houts, 'Ship List', 168. 31 William of Poitiers, ed. Davis and Chibnall, pp. 102-3, 116-17. 32 F. Lot, Van militaire et les armees au moyen age en Europe et dans k Proche Orient (Paris, 1946), i. 285 n. 2; for example, De Betto Gallico, ed. Rice Holmes: 60: v. 5, p. 174; v. 23, p. 196. 600: ii, 15, p. 82; ii. 28, p. 93; iii. 22, p. 122; v. 2, p. 171. 6000: i. 27, p. 32; i. 48, p. 59; ii. 29, p. 94; iv. 37, pp. 168-9; viii. 17, p. 375. 60,000: ii, 4, p. 69; ii. 28, p. 93; v. 49, p. 219; vii. 83, p. 355. (Book viii was not, of course, written by Caesar.) 33 See Appendix, below, pp. 90-1. 34 D. Dumville, 'The Tribal Hidage: An Introduction to its Texts and their History', in The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, ed. S. Bassett (Leicester, 1989), p. 227; J. H. Round, Feudal England (London, 1909), pp. 249, 251, 253. 35 The Defence of Wessex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications, ed. D. Hill and A. R. Rumble (Manchester, 1996), pp. 30-1, 34-5. 29

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seems unlikely to have invented, since he thought it incredible.36 Even more striking, ^Ethelstan required two well-horsed men from every plough.37 The 'plough' to which he refers need not have been connected with the ploughland or the ploughteam of Domesday Book, for by the 1086 assessment the former would have provided over 120,000 and the latter over 160,000 men.38 Nevertheless, his dominions must have contained many 'ploughs', whatever they were, and the probability that a levy of two men on each produced tens of thousands seems high. It is unsurprising, then, that in extreme circumstances the written sources reveal an ability to call on what look like considerable military reserves. In 920 Edward the Elder ordered fortresses to be built at Towcester and Wigingamere, the defenders of both subsequently withstanding sieges until, in the case of the former, reinforcements arrived; then, in the summer, a great force assembled from the men of nearby strongholds and took by storm the Viking defences at Tempsford, while in the autumn Colchester was captured by a great army composed of garrisons and troops from Kent, Surrey and Essex; at much the same time the Scandinavians made an unsuccessful attack on Maldon, suffering 'many hundreds' of dead at the hands of its reinforced garrison. Edward himself then led a West Saxon army (presumably one which had so far been inactive) to Passenham, while Towcester was fortified in stone; and when that army returned home another assembled for the capture of Huntingdon. It may have been the same force which then restored the defences of Colchester.39 More remarkable still, in 1016 Edmund Ironside called up all the people of England five times during his extended campaigns against Cnut.40 Of course, one might argue that the capacity to perform such feats had been allowed to lapse subsequently, but if so it had not reduced contemporaries' opinion of the efficacy of the English navy, whose assistance was sought by both Swegen Estridsson of Denmark and the German emperor Henry III in the IO4OS;41 or the Confessor's ability to Thietmar, Chronicon, ed. R. Holtzmann (2nd edn, Berlin, 1955), vii. 40; pp. 446-7. II Akhelstan 16: Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen ed. F. Liebermann (3 vols, Halle, 1898-1916),!. 158. 38 H. C. Darby, Domesday England (Cambridge, 1977), p. 336. And the statistics are incomplete; for ploughlands and ploughteams, see ibid., pp. 95-136. 39 Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Plummer, i. 101-3. 40 Ibid., 151. 41 A point made by C. W. Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions (Oxford, 1962), pp. 125-6. There has been considerable recent appreciation of the late Anglo-Saxon naval system: for example, M. Strickland, 'Military Technology and Conquest: The Anomaly of Anglo-Saxon-England', Anglo-Norman Studies, 19 (1996), 353-82, at 373-8; N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Great Britain (London, I 997)j i- 14~3°> including the suggestion that some of Alfred's vessels were among the biggest 'built in northern waters during the Middle Ages'. I owe this reference to James Campbell. 36

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reduce the Welsh to subjection in io63.42 In all, then, despite the battles of Fulford and Stamford Bridge, it may well be that the English administrative system allowed Harold to assemble a great army at the hoar apple tree, as the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Norman writers claim, and that William brought against it a force transported in many hundreds of ships and also of very considerable size. The late Anglo-Saxon state geared its people for war to an extent that the English were perhaps not to see repeated until the war of 1914-18. The defeat of the Vikings and reconquest of Danish England were major administrative and military achievements, as the Chronicle entries for the reign of Edward the Elder (noted above) demonstrate. ALthelstan and Edgar established dominion over all Britain, while the less happy reign of ALthelred II ended with a period of intense conflict, which ushered in Cnut's northern empire, partly the creation of English military resources and English wealth. The reign of the Confessor was relatively peaceful, but it must have been obvious that his death was likely to result in bloodshed. As with other aspects of Anglo-Saxon life, the details of military organization, both on the battlefield and elsewhere, are largely hidden from us, but that is not to say that the English armies of 1066 were deficient in these respects, or bound to be defeated by William; indeed, if anything is clear from the sources about Hastings, it is that defeat was far from inevitable. Certainly, the AngloSaxon military system is very likely to have incorporated features of which we know nothing, or almost nothing. The wars of Alfred and his son, for example, often saw attacks on fortresses which may well have involved siege machines; they are mentioned on the Continent, but not in England.43 Similarly, it would be unsurprising if English military organization reflected that of the Carolingians. When Domesday Book for Berkshire tells us that a man went to the army from every five hides, there is an obvious similarity with a capitulary of Charlemagne which requests that all freemen with allods of five, four or three mansi are to attend the army.44 Yet in 806 the degree of military service imposed on the Saxons varied according to the enemy concerned, and it seems unlikely that in England the five-hide rule was the sole yardstick employed: it does not quite suit the fact that two of the Hampshire freemen killed at Hastings held the same estate (of four hides and one See F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (London, 1970), pp. 210-2. Capitularia regum Francorum, i, ed. A. Boretius (Hanover, 1883), no. 77, c. 10; translated by P. D. King, Charlemagne: Translated Sources (Kendal, 1987), p. 245. 44 DB i. 560; Capitularia, ed. Boretius, no. 48, c. 2; King, Charlemagne, p. 260. See further, Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions, pp. 42-3, and on general similarities between Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon government, J. Campbell, 'Observations on English Government from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century', Essays, pp. 155-70, at 159-66. 42

43

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virgate) jointly along with another, or the varied equipment, reflecting different social ranks, found in sources like the poem on the battle of Maldon and the Bayeux Tapestry.45 Charlemagne on occasion also specified the gear that troops were to have with them, as Aithelred II did in 1008 when he ordered that his fleet should be supplied with a helmet and byrnie by every eight hides.46 Moreover, the equipment observable on the Bayeux Tapestry shows uniformity as well as variation. The shield-wall men, for example, almost all have byrnies and helmets, kite-shaped shields and spears,47 while the regularly-equipped moustachioed light infantry on the hillock are accompanied by peasants provided only with spears, and three of the rustic quartet who flee on foot at the end have clubs of similar design.48 While it could be argued that such regularities were simply convenient for the Tapestry's designer, there is reason to think that rather more lay behind them. It is noticeable, for example, that most of the heavily-armed English fighting solely with axes and those with round shields are operating in looser order than the men in the shield-wall.49 It looks as if their weaponry sometimes reflected the functions that soldiers were expected to perform. Creating a formation of overlapping shields was perhaps easier if they were kite-shaped, that is with less width than a round shield and offering more protection to the body of a man standing side-on, and in a position to push with his shoulder behind the shield if necessary. On the other hand, the round shield with its large boss may have been more suited to men fighting in open order,50 while the space required to swing the two-handed axe suggests that the bulk of its bearers must have fought in this way too. Accordingly, one should not be too ready to assume, as might seem natural, that the Tapestry scene showing the deaths of Harold's brothers represents a stage in the battle after the breaking of the shieldwall. It looks as though not all the English were occupied in that wall: there were men armed solely with axes, round-shield men, archers (if Capitularia, ed. Boretius, no. 49, c. 2; King, Charlemagne, p. 257; DB, i. 503; The Battle of Maldon, ed. and trans. D. Scragg, in The Battle of Maldon, AD 991, ed. D. Scragg (Oxford, 1991), pp. 18-31. 46 Capitularia, ed. Boretius, no. 75, no. 77, c. 9; King, Charlemagne, pp. 260, 244; Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Plummer, i. 138. 47 The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Wilson, plates 61-2; one holds a small axe but has spears and a shield too, another only has a double-handed axe. 48 Ibid., plates 67, 73. 49 Ibid., plates 64-5, 70-2. 50 'By efficient movement of his shield arm he could ward off blows from above, side and to front': I. Peirce, 'Arms, Armour and Warfare in the Eleventh Century', AngloNorman Studies, 10 (1987), 237-57, at 244. The hoplites of the ancient world, of course, did use round shields in forming lines of battle: J. K. Anderson, 'Hoplite Weapons and Offensive Arms', in Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience, ed. V. D. Hanson (London, 1991), pp. 15-37, at 16. 45

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present in any number,51 and of course the specialist light infantry on the hillock. One might add that the latter would also have been bestsuited to pursuing a defeated enemy in armies which had no cavalry, if we are safe in assuming that the companies who performed this role at Brunanburh in 937 were not on horseback.52 Of course, there is no reason why Anglo-Saxon military methods should have remained static between the late ninth and mid-eleventh centuries, and some evidence that they did not. Both the fortification of burhs in stone rather than timber,53 and /S-thelred II's requirement that equipment should include helmets and byrnies to an apparently greater degree than had been the case earlier,54 demonstrate a willingness to innovate. The use of the shield-wall, however, changed little. In Bishop Asser's account of the battle of Ashdown in 871 the enemy split into two divisions, forming shield-walls of equal size, whereupon the West Saxons did the same; at Edington in 878 Alfred fought cum densa testudine against the entire pagan army,55 while at Farnham in 893 ALthelweard says that Edward the Elder engaged in an agmine denso.56 Similarly, we hear of the use of the shield-wall again at Maldon in 991, and William of Poitiers's comments on the density of the English line at Hastings must surely refer to the same formation, which is represented, after a fashion, in the Bayeux Tapestry.57 Asser's word for men so arrayed is testudo, which originally denoted a formation of shields used by Roman legionaries, and it was perhaps the implications of such a parallel that led Spatz to deny the use of a shield-wall at Hastings in the most important sentence in his book: Only an army trained in protracted military exercises, such as an army 51 As is well known, the Tapestry shows only one English archer, The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Wilson, plate 62. But there is a danger of being misled by its limitations. If English shield-walls were occasionally fronted by lines of skirmishing archers who withdrew to the rear as the enemy approached, this would not have been easy to represent in such a medium, especially considering the danger of confusion with the many French bowmen in the lower border. Also, the designer seems to have had relatively little interest in depicting troops of modest social origin. 52 Above, p. 79 n. 16. The long-held view that the Anglo-Saxons never used cavalry has recently begun to disintegrate; see for example, Strickland, 'Military Technology', 359-60. 53 Above, p. 84. 54 Above, p. 86; N. P. Brooks, 'Arms, Status and Warfare in Late-Saxon England', in Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference, ed. D. Hill (Oxford, 1978), pp. 81-103, at 85-90. 55 Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, 1904), cc. 37, 56; pp. 28, 45. See the translation in Alfred the Great, trans. S. D. Keynes and M. Lapidge (London, 1983), PP- 79, 8456 The Chronicle of JEthelweard, ed. A. Campbell (London, 1962), p. 49. 57 The Battle of Maldon, ed. Scragg, lines 101-2, 242; pp. 22, 28; above, p. 76 n. 6.

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made up of tactical corps would be, would be capable of forming such an extraordinarily difficult formation as a long, continuous shield-wall.58 Exactly so. A formation probably many ranks deep and fronted by overlapping shields must have taken time to organize, and whether it was employed defensively or, as at Ashdown, offensively, would not be easy to maintain in the stress of battle, as the dead and wounded left the ranks and had to be replaced. Nor is it likely that such formations were the sole province of the well-equipped household troops of great lords, as the Tapestry depiction of an armoured line might lead one to argue, for it is clear from The Battle of Maldon and probably from the Alfredian references that shire levies were incorporated in them too. Moreover, it is virtually inconceivable that a society to which war was so vital did not train levies to this end, a training to which there may be an oblique reference in the statement that at Maldon Ealdorman Byrhtnoth told his men how to stand and asked that they should hold their shields properly, later instructing them to form the 'war-hedge';59 and if as part of a national army shire levies might be expected to form a single line with others of their kind, one would think that they must have had training in that as well. How, otherwise, would different groups have known where to position themselves? As noted above, Norman complaints about the density of the English line at Hastings suggest that a great shield-wall was formed there, even if not all their troops were involved in it, and it may be that the time needed to array a sizeable army in such a fashion allowed the enemy to attack before, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D text, they were properly ordered. Hints of the sort of methods employed to create large formations might be derived from the hoplites of ancient Sparta. They fought in close order with shield and thrusting spear in a manner not dissimilar to that of the shield-wall. In Xenophon's time a hoplite mora was made up of four lochoi, the latter having two pentekostyes of two enomotiai apiece.60 The enomotia may have contained thirty-six men, and if so the lochos had I44- 61 It was the existence of sub-units which allowed the Spatz, Die Schlacht von Hastings, p. 45. 'Nur ein in langwierigen militarischen Exerzitien geschultes, also aus taktischen Korpern zusammengesetztes Heer wiirde imstande sein, eine so ausserordentlich schwierige Formation, wie sie ein lang fortlaufender, gerader Schildwall 1st, zu bilden.' 'Tactical corps' was Spatz's term for highly-trained troops. I am grateful to my colleague Paul Collinson for verifying the translation of this passage. 59 The Battle of Maldon, ed. Scragg, lines 17-20, 101-2; pp. 18, 22. 60 Xenophon, Spartan Society, c. n; translated in Plutarch on Sparta, trans. R. J. A. Talbert (London, 1988), p. 178. 61 P. Connolly, Greece and Rome at War (London, 1981), pp. 39-41. But it should be stressed that this is speculation, and noted with reference to Xenophon's remarks that 'the size and precise relationship to one another of the units mentioned both here and later are obscure': Talbert, in Plutarch on Sparta, p. 187. 58

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phalanx to form up and manoeuvre, as was also the case with the Roman legion, and it would be surprising if the shield-wall did not contain equivalents. Certainly it is worth noting that terms such as eored-hedp, eored-predt, eored-weorod, heap., scild-truma, truma and weorod may sometimes have had more precise meanings than the simple 'troop' and 'company' which is the best we can do in translating them today.62 There is little about the battle of Hastings which is certain. If it is impossible to prove Spatz, Ramsay, Baring and their many disciples wrong in believing it a relatively small-scale affair fought on a restricted hill top,63 the paucity of the evidence and the weakness of their arguments mean that it is far from clear that they were right either. The Bayeux Tapestry has limitations, but it is a reasonable supposition that the scene depicting a hillock and preceded by the words 'Hie ceciderunt simul Angli et Franci in prelio' records an important phase of the battle, which the presence of the water probably locates a considerable distance from the crest of the ridge,64 and not improbably in the vicinity of present-day New Pond and its adjacent ground; if so, the initial English deployment may have been much more extensive than has usually been acknowledged. Similarly, there is no reliable way of fixing the sizes of the armies at a few thousands rather than tens of thousands, but the Tapestry does have indications of an English force which fought in various ways, capable of being adapted to varied terrain and a varied enemy: field defences were some sort of answer to heavy cavalry, if not in this case a wholly successful one. To note these points is both to loosen the straitjacket imposed on this subject in the late nineteenth century and to bring within the bounds of possibility an important hypothesis: that the late Anglo-Saxon state, the culmination of six centuries which formed 'an integral part of the history of one of the most successful human organizations there has ever been',65 possessed a powerful and flexible military system, which reflected the wealth, administrative sophistication and intelligence to be seen in others of its See the entries in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. J. Bosworth and T. N. Toller (Oxford, 1898), and Supplement. 63 To be precise, the restriction of the battle to the crest of the ridge originated with Ramsay. Spatz gave no plan of the field, but seems to have thought that that the English deployed over the full extent of what he described as a narrow hill with a depth of roughly 150 yards and length of only about one mile: Die Schlacht von Hastings., p. 3364 This is not certain, as the western part of the field, which stands on Wadhurst Clay, becomes noticeably waterlogged after rain, and both the monastic fishpond to the east of the abbey terrace and another pond on the northern edge of the hillock contain water all the year round. It is therefore conceivable, if very unlikely, that there was water closer to the crest than that in the New Pond area. 65 Anglo-Saxons, ed. Campbell et al., p. 246. 62

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works, and was itself reflected in the size and tactics of the last army it put into the field; an army overcome by an amphibious operation on an astonishing scale, and a narrow margin.

APPENDIX Limitations of space prevent full consideration here of the reasons advanced by Spatz, Baring and Ramsay for limiting the armies to less than 10,000 men apiece; none carry much conviction, but here is a little of the argument. Spatz Die Schlacht von Hastings, pp. 28-9, thought that the French force must have been relatively small partly because disembarkation at Pevensey took only a day when in 1854 the landing in the Crimea of 60,000 men, just over 1000 cavalry and 128 cannon took five days; and that William could not have marched a large army some seven miles from Hastings to Battle in a brief morning period before engaging the English. It is uncertain whether he did disembark so quickly (the dates of 28 and 29 September given by the D and E versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle hint at a two-day landing), and analogies of this sort are in any case dangerous as evidence of what he could or could not have done. If they are to be employed, there are others which might tend to different conclusions. For example, in 54 BC Julius Caesar, with five legions and 2000 cavalry (i.e. something over 25,000 men) in more than 800 ships, reached the British coast about midday, made an unopposed landing, chose a suitable spot for a camp and inarched against the Britons shortly after midnight: De Betto Gallico, v. 8-9, ed. Rice Holmes, pp. 177-80. Furthermore, there is no certainty that William could not have marched a very large army rapidly to Battle, even if there was such a march, which is very doubtful. Spatz relied here on William of Poitiers (ed. Davis and Chibnall, pp. 116-23), who says that after an exchange of ambassadors Harold hastened his advance to take the duke by surprise, that scouts reported his approach and that William then assembled the soldiers in his camp, as most had gone out foraging. Whatever the size of his command, this leaves scant time to recall the foragers, assemble in marching order, march to Battle and deploy, all before 9 o'clock, when William of Jumieges and John of Worcester say the fighting began, even on the generous assumption that the foragers had been operating during the night: William of Jumieges, Gesta Normannorum ducum, ed. van Houts, ii. 168; John of Worcester, Chronicon, ed. Darlington and McGurk, ii. 604. In fact, to allow his army to forage if he suspected that the enemy were in the vicinity is not the sort of procedure one might have expected the Conqueror to adopt, and it is likely that we are being led astray by William of Poitiers' love of classical allusions, which are a major problem when trying to establish the veracity of his account; see R. H. C. Davis, 'William of Poitiers'. He 'moves about Caesar's Gallic Wars with the ease of a master, using its facts solely as they are relevant to his purpose', and it is noteworthy that in 55 BC the Seventh Legion was attacked by the Britons when foraging and had to be rescued by Caesar with soldiers assembled from

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his camp, while in 54 BC three of his legions and all his cavalry were attacked while out foraging: De Bello Gallico, iv. 32-4, v. 17, ed. Rice Holmes, pp. 165-7, 190-1. These are not precise parallels, but William of Jumieges (ed. van Houts, ii. 16 8) says that Duke William, fearing a night attack, ordered his army to stand to arms from dusk to dawn, before arranging his men in three divisions and moving forward after daybreak to join battle. On balance, this is a preferable tale, and allows more time for even a very large force to march from Hastings, if that is what it did: Jumieges would sanction the interpretation that the French were near Battle the evening before the engagement, and this would make it easier to understand the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D text's claim that the English were attacked before they were properly organized; above, p. 78.

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5 Eadmer, his Archbishops and the English State MARK PHILPOTT Concluding his article about the twelfth-century historians of AngloSaxon England,* James Campbell warned, 'In our attempts to understand them, and their subjects, one of the greatest difficulties which stands in the way is the complex intractability of the hagiographical materials'.1 This intractability may help to explain why, despite Sir Richard Southern's efforts (enthusiastically seconded by Dr Gransden) to draw out the historical and historiographical importance of Eadmer's hagiographical works, it is still fundamentally as true now as it was in 1963, when Southern wrote, that 'Eadmer is known to historians as the author of the Historia novorum in Anglia, the first piece of large-scale contemporary historical writing in England after Bede, and as the biographer of his friend and master St Anselm.'2 Even thus attenuated, Eadmer's works have been vital sources for historians of the English state under the Norman kings. This article, however, braving James Campbell's warning, will explore what can be added from Eadmer's hagiographical accounts of archbishops Bregwine, Oda and Dunstan of Canterbury, and Wilfrid and Oswald of York.3 * It is a pleasure to thank Dr John Hudson, Dr Matthew Kempshall and Dr John Maddicott for their much-appreciated help with this essay. 1 J. Campbell, 'Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past', reprinted in Essays, pp. 209-28, at p. 227. 2 R. W. Southern, St Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 274-87, quotation from p. 229. Compare A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c. 550 to c. 1307 (London, 1974), pp. 129-31. 3 See Eadmer, Vita Beati Bregowini Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, ed. B. W. Scholz, 'Eadmer's Life of Bregwine, Archbishop of Canterbury, 761-764', Traditio, 22 (1966), 123, 127-148, at 137-148; Vita Sancti Odonis, Patrologia Latina, 133, cols 933-44; Vita Sancti Dunstani, Memorials of St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series (London, 1874), PP- 162-249; Vita Sancti Wilfridi auctore Edmero: The Life ofSt Wilfrid by Edmer, ed. and trans. B. J. Muir and A. J. Turner (Exeter, 1998); Vita Sancti Oswaldi et miracula Sancti Oswaldi, The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. J. Raine, Rolls Series, 3 vols (London, 1879-94), u- I-59- On a strict view, Wilfrid was not arc/zbishop of York: see Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, ed. C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896), ii. 117. However, except in the manuscript from St Augustine's Canterbury, Eadmer's Wilfrid was: see Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi,

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It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that Eadmer's Life of St Anselm and Historia novorum have been crucial to historians' attempts to explore the history of the English state under the Norman kings, especially in its relationship to 'the church'. For many years perhaps the standard account of these matters has been Professor Barlow's The English Church, 1066-1154., which draws heavily on Eadmer, not least in chapter seven, 'Church and State'. For example, Eadmer is the only source cited for Barlow's statements that William the Conqueror 'drew the boundaries' for papal intervention in England, the first line of defence being 'to channel all traffic between Rome and his dominions through [William's] own hands'.4 This is a particularly crucial point in any account of Norman England which seeks to follow Campbell in his argument that in 1066 'England was a nation state', since it speaks very clearly to the issues of jurisdictional supremacy within an integral territory which political theorists have tended to identify as essential characteristics of the nation state.5 Nor does this exhaust the extent to which Barlow's view of 'church and state' is shaped by Eadmer. Eadmer also provides most of the evidence that Barlow cites for his account of Anselm's encounters with Rufus, of Anselm's views on 'Church and State', and (albeit to a lesser extent) of Anselm's relations with Henry I.6 Other scholars have sought to amend in certain respects the picture of 'church and state' derived from Eadmer. In perhaps the most important recent analysis of the relations between England and the papacy in Lanfranc's time, Mr Cowdrey has argued, for instance, that the idea of William the Conqueror 'erecting a ring-fence about England which would exclude papal authority and intervention' must be modified because Eadmer, whose testimony is an important prop to the argument, was writing with hindsight, and other evidence demonstrates that under the Conqueror 'the ring-fence was far from complete'.7 Indeed, even Southern, who has done more than anyone else to encourage and to further the study of Eadmer, has argued that he has in some respects misled modern scholarship: p. 8 and note, and compare The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanas, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927), p. 33. F. Barlow, The English Church, 1066-1154 (London, 1979), p. 279 and nn. 38-40. J. Campbell, 'The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A Maximum View', Proceedings of the British Academy, 87 (1995), 39-65, at 47. For some examples of such political theorists, see H. Spruyt, The Sovereign State and its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton, 1994), pp. 3, 193-5. 6 Barlow, English Church, pp. 287-92 and nn. 55, 57, 59, 61-6, 69-71, 73-4, 77-9 (on Rufus's reign); pp. 297-303 and nn. 96, 99, 102, 103, 106-7, 109, 118, 120 (on Henry's reign). The index s.v. 'Eadmer' notes eleven textual references, 'and cited passim'. 7 H. E. J. Cowdrey, 'Lanfranc, the Papacy, and the See of Canterbury', in Lanfranco di Pavia e I'Europa del secolo XI, ed. G. d'Onofrio (Rome, 1993), pp. 438-500, at pp. 479-80. 4

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The emphasis which has often been given to [Anselm's] quarrelling with the king comes partly from the desire to see him doing something in the area of ecclesiastical politics, and partly from the misleading emphasis of Eadmer's Historia Novorum, which (as its name implies) was written to support a theory about the events of the time, which was certainly not in the minds of either Anselm or Eadmer in Rufus's reign.8

None the less, Eadmer remains central to historians' accounts of the English state under the Norman kings and its relations to 'the church'. Indeed, Southern's partial remedy for overdependence on the Historia novorum is a greater emphasis on the Life of St Anselm.9 These works have been even more central to some scholars' analyses of AngloNorman kingship: consider, for example, the argument that the Historia novorum is one of the first places, perhaps the first, where 'corona . . . begins to mean something more than, and something more specific than, simply a physical symbol of regality'.10 Even Professor Gillingham's eloquent rehabilitation of the historical value of the account of William Rufus in Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis allows that his 'precious early evidence of an alternative and secular set of values' forms a complementary corrective to the distortions of monastic historians, chief among them Eadmer.1 * Of course, it is perfectly natural and proper that Eadmer's testimony should be valued, not least when he is describing events which he witnessed himself. However, we have already seen that even Southern has reservations about how far Eadmer actually chose to tell us straightforwardly what he had heard or seen. Dr Garnett's view of the development of the idea of the crown as metonym stresses Eadmer's use of irony.12 Others have been more radical. Professor Vaughn, for example, has argued that the Historia novorum describes Anselm's archiepiscopate in terms of 'subtle, sophisticated and complex ideas', not least in 'Anselm's recapitulation . . . of archetypical Christian exempla ranging throughout the history of the Church, and especially his predecessors at Canterbury'.13 While Vaughn's view has not commanded unanimous agreement, Dr Staunton has demonstrated how, in a comparable way, the Life of St Anselm draws on a wealth of theological and literary R. W. Southern, St Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), p. 247. Ibid., p. 248. 10 G. Garnet!, 'The Origins of the Crown', in The History of English Law: Centenary Essays on 'Pollock and Maitland", ed. J. Hudson (Oxford, 1996), pp. 171-214, at p. 174. 11 J. Gillingham, 'Kingship, Chivalry and Love. Political and Cultural Values in the Earliest History Written in French: Geoffrey Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis', in AngloNorman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, ed. C. W. Hollister (Woodbridge, 1997), PP- 33~58, at p. 57. 12 Garnett, 'The Crown', pp. 181-3. 13 S. N. Vaughn, 'Eadmer's Historia Novorum: A Reinterpretation', Anglo-Norman Studies, 10 (1988), 259-89, at 263. 8

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sources to provide 'a complex picture of Anselm which simultaneously represents his life and acts as an exegetical mediation upon it'.14 There can be little doubt that Eadmer's Lives of the saints of previous generations, in particular of Archbishops Bregwine, Oda and Dunstan of Canterbury, and Wilfrid and Oswald of York, represent a huge, potential source, not least for historians of Christ Church, Canterbury, in the years after the Norman Conquest. They also provide vital evidence about Eadmer himself ('the voice of Christ Church in the last decade of the eleventh century through into the H2o's'),15 his attitudes, his knowledge, and his methods as a writer about the past. Since Eadmer is a mainstay of historians' views on 'church and state', it follows that the Lives might also yield important evidence here. Yet they have been somewhat neglected, to the detriment of our understanding of these issues. A comparison of the beginning of the Historia novorum with the Life of St Dunstan provides a suggestive example. Eadmer begins the Historia with the image of Edgar, ruling the whole of England with holy laws, in co-operation with Dunstan, ordering all Britain by Christian laws. Guided by Dunstan, Eadmer says, Edgar proved himself devoted to God and a victor over the incursions of the 'barbarians'. While both lived, England enjoyed 'peace and happy days'. After Edgar's death his son proved to be a suitable successor until he was treacherously killed by his stepmother and replaced by her son ^Ethelred. This elicited from Dunstan a bloodcurdling prophecy of regal and national doom, the fulfilment of which could be read in the chronicles and 'in our tribulations'.16 Dr Williams has rightly described this passage as 'a eulogy of the "golden age" of Edgar and Dunstan', and noted that 'from this point Eadmer records a steady decline'.17 All the elements Eadmer used in the opening of his Historia (apart from Edgar's victories) can be found in Eadmer's Life of St Dunstan. Indeed Dunstan's prophecy is verbally similar in both books, and in the Life the peace of Edgar and Dunstan's lives is stressed by being made the fulfilment of an angelic prophecy to Dunstan at Edgar's birth.18 However, the Life also gives some rather different impressions of his reign. 14 M. Staunton, 'Eadmer's Vita Anselmi: A Reinterpretation', Journal of Medieval History, 23 (1997), 1-14, at 14. See also Staunton's comments on the Historia novorum in his 'Trial and Inspiration in the Lives of Anselm and Thomas Becket', in Anselm: Aosta, Bee and Canterbury: Papers in Commemoration of the Nine-Hundredth Anniversary ofAnselm's Enthronement as Archbishop, 25 September 1093, ed. D. E. Luscombe and G. R. Evans (Sheffield, 1996), pp. 310-22, at pp. 313-14. 15 M. T. Gibson, 'Normans and Angevins, 1070-1220', in A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. P. Collinson, N. Ramsay and M. Sparks (Oxford, 1995), pp. 38-68, at p. 4716 Eadmer, Historia novorum inAnglia, ed. M. Rule, Rolls Series (London, 1884), p. 3. 17 A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 166. 18 See Eadmer, Vita Sancti Dunstani, pp. 183, 194-5, 2O5j 2 I I > 222-

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Although he eventually repents on each occasion and is reconciled to Dunstan, the king listens to evil counsellors and urges the primate to lift a just sentence of excommunication; Dunstan finds it necessary to forbid the king to hunt on Sundays; and, most importantly, Edgar lustfully molests a young lady at Wilton who tries to protect herself by wearing a borrowed veil, provoking Dunstan to a most public rebuke and the king to grovelling humiliation.19 The image of Edgar and his immediate successors which begins the Historia novorum and which seems to bear so much weight there in setting the pattern of Eadmer's history is thus not the same as that found in the Life of St Dunstan. Indeed it is tempting to conclude that the difference might demonstrate Eadmer manipulating history to serve his rhetorical and polemical purposes in the Historia, and in particular as a means of stressing the disasters which had fallen on England from Dunstan's death until the time of writing. However, it is vital that we should not forget the warning with which we began.20 Eadmer's hagiographies are no less complex, no less intractable than those of his contemporaries. They raise all sorts of problems. At the most basic level, by no means all of the texts are even securely established. For the Lives of Wilfrid and Bregwine there are modern editions, and the Life of St Dunstan was edited by Stubbs. But its modern editors describe the edition of the Life ofSt Wilfrid in Raine's Historians of the Church of York as 'so riddled with faults that it is practically useless as a critical tool', and it is to be feared that the edition of the Life of St Oswald in the same collection (which is the only one available) is no more secure.21 Perhaps even more alarmingly, the most readily accessible edition of the Life of St Oda even attributes it to the wrong author.22 Then there is the question of dating. In order to base any firm argument on Eadmer's hagiographies it would be necessary to establish a definite chronology for their composition as a means of relating them to the various stages in the composition of the Life of St Anselm and the Historia novorum. This is simply impossible, since dating the Lives depends for the most part on inference from hints in the text, and is therefore always likely to remain open to question.23 19

Ibid., pp. 200, 207, 209-11. It is hard to think that the story of the non-professed noblewoman at Wilton and her veil did not have contemporary resonances either in the career of Edith-Matilda, Henry I's queen, or Harold's daughter, Gunhild (see Southern, St Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 260-4). 20 Campbell, 'Twelfth-Century Views', 227, quoted above, p. 93. 21 Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, p. Ixxxiv. 22 Eadmer, Vita Sancti Odonis, col. 933. Contrast Southern, St Anselm and his Biographer, pp. 279-81. 23 See Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, pp. xxix-xx, for criticism of Southern's two attempts at dating in St Anselm and his Biographer, p. 367, and St Anselm: A Portrait, p. 408.

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In these circumstances caution is an essential tool; we can do little more than point to possibilities and note resonances. For example, Osbern's Life of St Dunstan very briefly praises Dunstan's refusal to celebrate Whitsun mass until three false moneyers had received due punishment.24 Eadmer tells the same story with a wealth of corroborative detail, putting into Dunstan's mouth a page-long impassioned denunciation of the crimes of false moneyers as despoilers of the whole realm, forbidding the punishment to be postponed out of deference to the feast. When Dunstan hears that sentence (loss of a hand) has been executed, he begins the mass 'with cheerful expression (exhilarato vultuy.25 Given that Southern dates Eadmer's Life after 1095 and probably before 1109, and that Henry I's reign is notorious for problems with the coinage, it does not seem unlikely that Eadmer is here attempting to mobilize the patronage of Dunstan against the troubles of his own day in precisely the way in which he urges his readers to do at the end of the Life.26 Since an 'elaborate and sophisticated system for managing the currency' was one of the leading characteristics of the English state,27 in this story we seem to be seeing an important part of Eadmer's view of how prelates should act in relation to it. Dunstan does not allow conventional piety to prevent even the bloodiest justice being done; indeed he sees it as his responsibility to his flock and to God to encourage such justice to be done. By the same token, however, some resonances may be misleading. We must be careful not to force the evidence. Modern historians have been inclined to think that Dunstan's charge that /Bthelred II 'had gained the kingdom through a brother's blood', might equally well be applied to Henry I.28 But, although Eadmer points both to the events recorded in chronicles and 'our tribulations' as fulfilling the kingly and national doom provoked by ALthelred's shedding of blood, he seems to show no deviation from his line that William Rufus 'was struck down and killed by the just judgement of God'.29 It would thus seem rather rash to see the prominence of Dunstan's prophecy in the Historia novorum as a covert attack on Henry I. Osbern, Vita Sancti Dunstani, Memorials of St Dunstan, p. 106. Eadmer, Vita Sancti Dunstani, pp. 202-3. 26 Southern, StAnselm and his Biographer, p. 281 n. 2; Eadmer, Vita Sancti Dunstani, p. 222. Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 193, mentions Henry's effort in 1108 to deal with 'moneta corrupta et falsa'. 27 J. Campbell, 'The Significance of the Anglo-Norman State in the Administrative History of Western Europe', in Essays, pp. 155-89, at p. 187. 28 See, e.g. A. L. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 1087-1216 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1955), pp. 113-14. For Dunstan's accusation against /Ethelred, see Eadmer, Vita Sancti Dunstani, p. 215, 'per sanguinem fratris regnum obtinuerat'; and compare Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 3, 'per sanguinem fratris ad regnum aspiravit'. 29 Eadmer, Historia novorum, pp. 3, 116. 24

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Further complexity is added by Eadmer's relationship with his sources. Eadmer could hardly be said to have been neutral and objective when it came to assessing the rights and prerogatives of Christ Church, Canterbury., and its archbishops. Chief among those rights was the claim to primacy over the British Isles, 'in which', as Eadmer's King Eadred prophesied to Dunstan, 'you will act in place of that Apostle [Peter] and the power of binding and loosing which he accepted over the whole world, you will accept from him over all the provinces of England and of the adjacent islands'.30 As Gransden has pointed out, his Canterbury partisanship led Eadmer into his 'worst sin as a historian', 'his willingness to become an accessory to forgery', including in the Historia novorum papal privileges which at the very least he must have known to have been recently concocted in the effort to bolster Canterbury's tottering claim to primacy over York.31 Indeed Eadmer was so committed to the jurisdiction of Canterbury over North Britain that he relinquished the see of St Andrews rather than diminish it.32 Thus when Eadmer claims that 'Theodore restored blessed Wilfrid to the bishopric of the church of York, and also of all the Northumbrians, and also of the Picts as far as King Oswy was able to extend his authority (imperiumy., a modern historian might be inclined to think that he is deliberately being somewhat tendentious.33 However, in this case we are fortunate enough to have Eadmer's sources. The assertion that Wilfrid was restored to his see by Theodore seems to come from Eddius Stephanus; and the crucial phrase about the extent of Wilfrid's authority is taken verbatim from Bede ('the most noble author of the history of our people').34 Here, then, where Eadmer might most be expected to be accommodating his account of the past to his ideals for the past and present, he seems to be representing his sources perfectly fairly. In the case of Wilfrid, this was actually far from easy. Famously, '[Bede's] account differs from that of Eddius': 'Eddius was a very dutiful biographer and shows the great bishop in all his glory: ascetic, brave, and always right', whereas 'Bede's discretion is most apparent in his treatment of Wilfrid'.35 Obtaining a coherent (and edifying) single Eadmer, Vita Sancti Dunstani, p. 187. Compare Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 189, 'Archiepiscopus Cantuariensis primus est totius Angliae, Scottiae, Hiberniae, et adjacientium insularum', and 'Britannia, quam Angli . . . Angliam uocant . . .' (Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, p. 8). 31 Gransden, Historical Writing, p. 141. The question of exactly who made the forgeries and exactly when has still not been entirely satisfactorily resolved. 32 Eadmer, Historia novorum, pp. 29-80. 33 Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, p. 48. 34 Eddius, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, p. 32; Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), bk iv, ch. 3 (p. 336); Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, p. 10. 35 J. Campbell, 'Bede F, in Essays, pp. 1-27, at p. 20; 'Bede II', ibid., pp. 29-48, at p. 41. 30

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narrative from these two must have been hard. One crucial issue (which also bears very strongly on Eadmer's views of 'church and state') was Oswy's motivation in having the Irish-influenced Chad appointed bishop apparently in Wilfrid's place while Wilfrid was abroad seeking consecration. Eddius asserts that the king, who had been brought up by the Quartodeciman party (Eddius's term of abuse for those Irish who disagreed with Wilfrid about the calculation of Easter) was moved by envy and the urgings of the devil to intrude Chad irregularly.36 Bede, on the other hand, says that King Alhfrith, Oswy's son, sent Wilfrid abroad to be consecrated; and while Wilfrid 'lingered' abroad, Oswy imitated the industria of his son and sent a holy man to be consecrated bishop.37 In Eadmer's version the Celtic party seek to entrap Oswy while Wilfrid is spending time abroad, and persuade him to appoint Chad bishop of York, ' "lest, the church having lacked a pastor for too long, the faith of Christ should suffer any injury; especially since it scarcely", they said, "knew where Wilfrid had gone" '.38 Eadmer thus combines elements from both sources; the wickedness of the Celtic party from Eddius, the king's good intentions from Bede. He does so, partly through the half-true, convincing and convincingly insinuating speech he invents for the wicked courtiers. This is characteristic of Eadmer in two ways. First, we can echo Southern's verdict on the Life of St Anselm, 'No one who reads the biography can doubt that Eadmer's chief claim to fame lies in his mastery of the art of recording the spoken word in a vivid and natural way',39 except that in the case of the Life of St Wilfrid there is, of course, no question of his recording the speech. Secondly, the influence of counsel and advisers over kings is a recurring theme of Eadmer's hagiography. According to the Life of St Dunstan, Dunstan was amazed that Edgar ('the religious king') had been 'seduced through a man's lying tongue', when he was persuaded by 'a certain very powerful conies' to oppose his excommunication by Dunstan.40 Eadwig rejects the advice of the elders in favour of the young men with whom he surrounds himself as 'companions and attendants', a rejection associated by Eadmer with Eadwig's spectacular lack of kingly virtue: he was 'a lover of sensual pleasures rather than God, of dissipation rather than sobriety, lusts rather than chastity'.41 Kings, on the other hand, could be shown the right way by (arch)bishops and others. To name only two, that 'most victorious King of the English', Eddius, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, pp. 30-1. Bede, iii. 28 (pp. 314-17) 38 Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, pp. 36-8. 39 Southern, St Anselm: A Portrait, p. 421. 40 Eadmer, Vita Sancti Dunstani, p. 200. 41 Eadmer, Vita Sancti Odonis, col. 940 (compare Vita Sancti Oswaldi, p. 4, and Vita Sancti Dunstani, p. 188). 36

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ALthelstan, had Oda always with him and listened to his advice, while Wihtred of Kent freed all the churches of his kingdom at the instigation and exhortation of Archbishop Berhtwald.42 Assimilating Eddius and Bede, both contemporaries of the saint, into his own Life of Wilfrid., was complex enough, but Eadmer also had to deal with the accumulations of four hundred years of pious tradition, most concretely in the form of a rather difficult tenth-century poem which he believed to be by Archbishop Oda of Canterbury.43 At Christ Church, Canterbury, partly on the evidence of this Breviloquium, it was believed that Oda had translated Wilfrid's relics from derelict Ripon. Eadmer's hagiographical studies, however, seem to have revealed to him the rival tradition that Oswald had later found the relics at Ripon and reinterred them there. Eadmer attempts what the recent editors of the Life of St Wilfrid believe to be an original solution to this dispute, which William of Malmesbury thought insoluble; he says that Oda left a small portion of the relics behind at Ripon.44 Thus, once again, Eadmer was able to reconcile two contradictory sources without contradicting either of them.45 He also shows himself capable of a rational, circumspect and rather irenic championing of the Christ Church version.46 From the historiographical point of view, the problem of the location of Wilfrid's relics was comparatively easily resolved. Much more difficult were the dilemmas raised by Wilfrid's relations with Archbishop Theodore. For anyone with a respect for Bede and an enthusiasm for the authority of Canterbury (and Eadmer had both in large measure), Theodore was bound to be an important figure; 'he was the first of the archbishops whom the whole church of the English consented to obey', and his were the happiest times since the English had come to Britain, with barbarians fearing brave Christian kings, all striving for the joys of the heavenly kingdom, and with learning flourishing.47 Eadmer certainly concurred with this: 'At that time the kingdom of the English people used to shine with twin beauty, since both the kings used to glow with the love of Christianity, and the prelates used to practise with Eadmer, Vita Sancti Oswaldi, p. 3; Vita Beati Bregowini, p. 137. Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, pp. xiii, 10-12. See Southern, St Anselm and his Biographer, p. 279: 'its strange Latinity made it barely intelligible'. 44 Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, pp. xxiii, 142-6 and note at p. 245; compare Vita Sancti Oswaldi, pp. 30-1. 45 Pace the impression given by Southern, St Anselm and his Biographer, p. 278, Eadmer does not 'establish the Canterbury version in a definitive way' by dismissing the other. 46 Contrast R. Sharpe, 'Eadmer's Letter to the Monks of Glastonbury Concerning St Dunstan's Disputed Remains', in The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey: Essays in Honour of the Ninetieth Birthday ofC.A. Ralegh Radford, ed. L. Abrams and J. P. Carley (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 205-15. 47 Bede, iv. 2 (pp. 332-4). 42

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greatest zeal the working of the divine mystery.'48 Eddius's Theodore is very different. He is bribed by King Ecgfrith to act against Wilfrid, condemns him in his absence, and irregularly shares his diocese out among three others. When Wilfrid challenges their actions, king and archbishop admit his innocence but tartly refuse to change their decree, 'a fraudulent judgement'. An unsuccessful attempt to bamboozle the papal court with tricky accusations against Wilfrid is then made in Theodore's name.49 Eadmer adopted several approaches to these problems. First, he softened Eddius's charges against Theodore. He was not bribed, but mistakenly persuaded by false accusations. The reply to Wilfrid's challenge remains tart, but Eadmer carefully distances himself from it with 'ut fertur', and demotes it from a fraudulent judgement to words which were not to Wilfrid's satisfaction.50 Although the hearing in the papal court is in the presence of Wilfrid's accusers, we hear nothing of the charges they bring.51 Secondly, as part of this general lowering of the temperature, Eadmer stressed Wilfrid's Canterbury connections. Eddius's account suggested that Wilfrid's involvement in Canterbury during the vacancy after Archbishop Deusdedit's death was occasional and minor, and Bede mentions almost in passing that Wilfrid then ordained priests and deacons 'even in Kent'. Eadmer, on the other hand, has him spend three years at Canterbury, much occupied with episcopal business.52 This, for example, allows Oda's translation of Wilfrid's relics to be presented as something of a homecoming.53 Thirdly, perhaps inspired by Bede's comment that Theodore was 'the first of the archbishops whom the whole church of the English consented to obey', Eadmer portrays Canterbury as the 'metropolitan see of all England' and its archbishops in Wilfrid's time as exercising uncontested the sort of jurisdiction exercised by a metropolitan of his own day.54 In some respects this is an excellent example of intractability: it is not possible to say exactly what Eadmer is trying to do here. It may be that he has simply and rather uncritically translated into the past the institutions of his own day. However, there are some odd resonances. Eadmer is writing 'the life of St Wilfrid, arc/zbishop of Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, p. 54. Eddius, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, p. 48-50. 50 Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, p. 66. 51 Ibid., p. 78. 52 Eddius, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, p. 31; Bede, iv. 2 (pp. 332-4) p. 334; Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, pp. 42-4. 53 Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, pp. 144-6. 54 Bede, iv. 2 (pp. 332-4); Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, p. 42. Notice that in this context 'Anglia' seems to mean the same as 'Britannia'; compare ibid., p. 8, 'Britain . . . which the English call England', and p. 116, Archbishop Berhtwald of Canterbury summons 'a general council of the bishops of all Britain'. 48

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York and confessor';55 an archbishop who had jurisdiction over one or more archbishops was a primate, yet the jurisdiction of Theodore and Berhtwald is of metropolitans of all England or Britain. Precisely the claim that Canterbury was 'metropolitan of all Britain' brought Anselm's consecration to a halt, Eadmer tells us, when Archbishop Thomas of York protested that it implied that his own see could not be metropolitan. He would not proceed with the service until the documents had been amended to 'primate of all Britain'.56 However, it is clear that at a literary level the assumption of the undisputed jurisdiction of Canterbury helps Eadmer to promote Wilfrid's cult, praising him as highly as Eddius does, while not diminishing the reputation of Theodore, a crucial figure in Canterbury's history, albeit one who was culted at Christ Church's great Canterbury rival, St Augustine's. Southern acknowledges the 'great discretion' with which Eadmer went about his task in the Life of Wilfrid; it is very striking that James Campbell should have selected Bede's portrait of Wilfrid as an example of Bede's discretion.57 This is not entirely a coincidence. There is something perhaps just a little Bedan about Eadmer's hagiographies. Certainly there are sentiments, ideas and patterns in the Prologue of the Life ofSt Duns tan - an expressed desire to get the facts right and to write edifyingly, faith in the testimony of the seniors, and the listing of methodology and helpers - which seem to bear broad comparison to Bede's 'Preface'.58 Eadmer's methods of dealing with conflicting evidence belong with those of Bede, who worked 'either by silent conflation, or by silent discarding', rather than with the distinctively twelfthcentury attempts at open reconciliation of which some of Eadmer's contemporaries were capable.59 Both excel at inventing speech. Where, then, does this consideration of the historiographical intricacies of Eadmer's Lives leave an assessment of his writings as a commentary on early twelfth-century discussions of 'church and state'? The insights and approach gleaned from Eadmer's hagiographies can fruitfully be applied to his account in the Historia novorum of the council of Rockingham of 1095, one of the key episodes in Anselm's deteriorating relationship with Rufus and vital to a number of modern arguments about the state.60 This is no simple eyewitness description, but an accomplished literary composition. Eadmer presents Anselm as Job, a righteous man struck down by unmerited misfortune, surrounded by 55 56 57 58 59 60

Ibid., p. 8.

Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 42. Southern, St Anselm and his Biographer, p. 279; Campbell, 'Bede F, p. 20. Compare Eadmer, Vita Sancti Dunstani, pp. 162-4, and Bede, pp. 4-6. Campbell, 'Twelfth-Century Views', 213-14. For example, Garnett, 'The Crown', p. 175.

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false friends., and with Scripture as his only support.61 He stresses the importance of the comparison by putting it into the mouth of 'a knight coming out of the crowd', and mentioning how it suggested to Anselm the scriptural text 'the voice of the people is the voice of God'.62 Earlier, his suffragans (pkbis pastores) and the barons (populorum principes) had refused to give him advice in accordance with God which might contradict the king's will; so, Eadmer tells us, Anselm announced that he would turn 'to the chief Pastor and Prince of all ... to the Angel of Great Counsel'. Anselm quoted the biblical texts in which Christ thus gave him counsel of the highest authority: 'These words, these counsels are of God. These I approve, these I accept, from these for no reason will I depart.'63 It was political and forensic necessity that rendered such unimpeachable authority essential. Simply to cite the canons about episcopal trials in support of an appeal to Rome, as Bishop William of Durham had done in io88,64 was not a course of action open to Anselm in1095, since the very point at issue at Rockingham was the recognition of the pope. If he had attempted to appeal to these canons, Anselm would have laid himself open to the same objection he had already met at Gillingham: 'From which pope . . .?' Worse still, he might have been held to have proved the truth of the accusation of treasonable diminution of the royal prerogative which had been made against him.65 By contrast, an appeal to the (seemingly) unvarnished words of Scripture gained for Anselm both the moral and the rhetorical high ground. According to Eadmer, the task he thus set his opponents was to compose a reply 'which would both moderate the royal hatred, and not directly attack the previously quoted opinions of God'.66 While it remains for the most part an undercurrent in his account, Eadmer was careful to show Anselm's arguments at Rockingham as being wholly in accordance with canon law. According to Eadmer, Anselm's main opponent, Bishop William of Durham, could not answer the archbishop's arguments, ' "especially since all", he said, "his reasoning rests on the words of God and the authority of Blessed Peter'". By his own account Eadmer was not at the meeting when the bishop supposedly made this speech; the archbishop's party was waiting elsewhere. At best he might have had a generalized report of Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 61. Compare Eadmer, Vita Sancti Oswaldi, pp. 26, 48. 63 Eadmer, Historia novorum, pp. 56-7. 64 For a defence of the contemporaneity of the account of the trial of Bishop William, see M. Philpott, 'The De Iniusta Uexacione Wilklmi Episcopi Primi and Canon Law in Anglo-Norman Durham', in Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093-1193, ed. D. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 125-37. 65 Eadmer, Historia novorum, pp. 52-3. 66 Ibid., p. 58. 61

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what had happened.67 It may be no more accurate a report than the splendid flight of fancy Eadmer invented for, say, Queen lurminburg of Northumbria.68 Eadmer would thus seem to be using this speech to make a point. Like St Wilfrid, who, with his papal letters of restoration, is 'supported by the most holy Word and the authority of Blessed Peter', Anselm is arguing a canonical case.69 This can be traced in Anselm's Angel of Good Counsel speech. The biblical texts revealed by the Angel are Matthew 16:18-19, Luke 10:16, and Zechariah 2:8. These led Eadmer's Anselm to the conclusion, 'Haec, sicut principaliter Beato Petro et in ipso caeteris apostolis dicta accipimus, ita principaliter vicario Beati Petri et per ipsum caeteris episcopis qui vices agunt apostolorum eadem dicta tenemus; non cuilibet imperatori, non alicui regi, non duci, non comiti.'70 This position, and these texts, are to be found repeatedly in the authorities of canon law, not least in the collection which Lanfranc had brought to Canterbury from Bee, now Trinity College, Cambridge, MS B 16 44.71 The implications of Petrine primacy, especially in relation to lay powers, had of course long been a deeply controversial subject. Anselm's comments seem to align him to some extent with Gregory VII. Gregory characteristically interpolated the word principaliter into the Petrine commission when drafting letters himself.72 In addition, while attempting to persuade Henry IV that he should have greater respect for 'the master of the Church . . . Blessed Peter the prince of the apostles', Gregory cited Christ's commission to Peter and applied to the apostles and their successors the Lord's saying, 'who hears you, hears me, and who spurns you, spurns me'.73 When Gregory reproved 67

Ibid., p. 62.

Eadmer, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, pp. 64-6. Ibid., p. 94Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 57. 71 See, for example, Trinity College, Cambridge, MS B 16 44, fos ir, 4v, jv (two quotations); lov (c. iv), I2v, I3r-v (four). These are printed in Decretales PseudoIsidorianae et capitula Angrilramni, ed. P. Hinschius (Leipzig, 1863), respectively at p. 31, Epistola I dementis, c. ii; p. 41, c. xxxvii; p. 51, Epistola II dementis, c. liv, and p. 53, Epistola III dementis, c. Ivii; p. 74, Epistola I Anackti, c. xvii; p. 91, Epistola II Evaristi, c. y j PP- 95~7? Epistola I Akxandri, cc. ii, iv, v (two). Eadmer wrote in the MS; see T. Webber, 'Script and Manuscript Production at Christ Church, Canterbury, after the Norman Conquest', in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints and Scholars, 1066-1109, ed. R. Bales and R. Sharpe (London, 1995), pp. 145-58, at p. 149, n. 18. Anselm probably knew the MS; see M. Philpott, '"In Primis . . . Omnis Humanae Prudentiae Inscius et Expers Putaretur": St Anselm's Knowledge of Canon Law', in Anselm, Aosta, Bee and Canterbury, pp. 94-105. 72 See Gregorii VII Registntm, ed. E. Caspar (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae Selectae, 2; Berlin, 1920-3), iv, 2, p. 295 and n. Compare ii, 70, p. 230; and ii, 72, p. 233. 73 Gregory VII, Registrum, iii, 10, pp. 264-5. 68 69 70

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William I for imprisoning Bishop Ode, in a letter that Anselm and Eadmer may well have known and would certainly have found germane., he cited the text from Zechariah later angelically revealed to Anselm.74 But it is in Gregory's famous and widely circulated letter to Bishop Hermann of Metz that we find the most striking precursors to Anselm's reported arguments of 1095. Of kings and emperors he asks, 'cui eorum data est potestas ligandi solvendique in caelo et in terra?' Elsewhere in the letter he makes perfectly plain that all Christian people are subject to Christ's commission to Peter and thus to the privilege conceded to him principaliter.75 Anselm did not make this last point explicit, but he certainly had said enough to justify the tumult that Eadmer tells us followed the speech.76 But Anselm and Gregory certainly parted company as the Angel led Anselm further: 'Render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar's, and those things which are God's to God.'77 Gregory does not seem to have quoted this text once in his correspondence.78 He was quite sure that the secular power was completely subject to the spiritual, and especially to Peter's power of binding and loosing.79 Eadmer's account of Anselm's argument seems to have owed more to the sort of position adopted by Lanfranc in his commentary on the Pauline epistles, where he asserted that Christian kings bore swords to defend the peace necessary to the church and that to resist them in those things pertaining to them was to resist the ordinance of God.80 Perhaps Anselm's argument owed more to Lanfranc, for their attitude to the commission in Matthew 16:18-19 was similar too. Lanfranc argued that it was 'to be understood of the pastors of the holy church . . . chiefly, however, of the Roman church'.81 Gregory VII, Registrum, ix, 37, pp. 630-1. Gregory VII, Registrum, viii, 21, p. 556 (on p. 558 he expands his comments to include other princes) and pp. 548-9. 76 Eadmer, Historia novorum, pp. 57-8. 77 Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17 or Luke 20:25. 78 It certainly does not occur in the index in Gregory VII, Registrum, or the 'Index of Quotations and Allusions' in The Epistolae Vagantes of Pope Gregory VII, ed. H. E. J. Cowdrey (Oxford, 1972), p. 169. However, we must note the possibility that Gregory's quotation (Registrum, ix, 37, p. 631) of Constantine's supposed remark about bishops, 'Vos dei estis . . . non oportet ut nos homines deos presumamus iudicare' suggested the text to Anselm. The biblical passage does not appear to be in Trinity College, Cambridge, MS B 16 44. 79 See, for example, Gregory VII, Registrum, iv, 2, p. 295; iv, 24, p. 338; vii, 143 p. 487; viii, 21 pp. 548 and 550. 80 Romans 13:2, and Lanfranc's comment on it in Beati Lanfranci archiepiscopi Cantuariensis opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. J. A. Giles (Oxford/Paris, 1844), p. 37, s.v. Itaque qui resistit potestati. 81 Lanfranc, Liber de corpore et sanguine Domini, Patrologia Latina, 150, cols 407-42, at 426. But see the arguments of R. B. C. Huygens, 'Berenger de Tours, Lanfranc et Bernold de Constance', Sacris Erudiri, 16 (1965), 355-403. I quote from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 569, fo. ir. 74

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The climax of Eadmer's account of Anselm's defence at Rockingham is when the archbishop declares that anyone who accuses him 'in nomine Domini me paratum inveniet ei sicut debeo, et ubi debeo, respondere'.82 Just in case his readers (unlike the members of Rufus's court) missed the allusion,83 Eadmer makes absolutely plain what Anselm had in mind: 'videlicet archiepiscopum Cantuariensem a nullo hominum, nisi a solo papa, judicari posse vel damnari, nee ab aliquo cogi pro quavis calumnia cuiquam, eo excepto, contra suum velle respondere.'84 Although Eadmer, characteristically, twists it to make it appear to be a peculiar right of Canterbury, this was certainly an accurate statement of the pseudo-Isidorian canon law.85 In his description of the council of Rockingham, Eadmer showed Anselm arguing his case entirely along the lines suggested by the canons, and presenting it with shrewd advocacy. Anselm was not entirely without competence in canonical matters, and no doubt he made good use of the truce he obtained from Rufus before Rockingham to marshal authorities he might need for the forthcoming confrontation.86 However, we must still allow that Eadmer used all the considerable literary and other resources at his command to present his hero's triumph. Indeed, read alongside Eadmer's hagiographical works, it seems possible that this might be one further example of a characteristic rewriting of historical material. At the very least, this suggests that either in the historian's study or in the council chamber pseudoIsidorian canon law may have been one of the forces that shaped the English state under its Norman kings. Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 61. Very strict conditions (including an appropriate place) are required for bishops' trials. As a primate, Anselm could only be forced to trial before the pope. See, for example, Decretales, ed. Hinschius, p. 185, Epistola II Stephani I, c. viii; p. 486, Epistola Felicis ad Athanasium cet., c. ix; p. 504, Epistola Damasi ad Stephanum, c. xv; p. 505, Epistola Damasi ad Stephanum, c. xix. Also in Trinity College, Cambridge, MS B 16 44, fos 24r (c. iv), 3yv~38r (c. viii), 4ov (c. vii), 4Ov (c. ix). 84 Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 61. 85 Neither primates, nor metropolitans could be judged by their suffragans; see, for example, Decretales, ed. Hinschius, p. 40, Epistola I dementis, c. xxxiii; p. 459, Epistola lulii ad orientales, c. v; p. 474, Epistola lulii ad Eusebium cet., c. xix (also at Trinity College, Cambridge, MS B 16 44, fos 4r, 3ir (c. i), 35v (c. xxxvi). If he wished to do so sponte, any bishop could answer accusers before a tribunal which was not competent to try him; Decretales, pp. 562-3, Decreta Sixti III papae; p. 503, Epistola Damasi ad Stephanum, c. xi. Trinity College, Cambridge, MS B 16 44, fos 5?v-58r, 4or (c. iv). 86 See Philpott, 'St Anselm's Knowledge', passim; Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 53. 82

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6 Henry I and Counsel JOHN HUDSON

Late in Lent 1105 Henry I, intent on wresting control of Normandy from his brother Robert Curthose, crossed the Channel and spent Easter at the village of Carentan. According to Orderic Vitalis, the first of the Normans to join him was Serlo, bishop of Sees. The bishop's Easter sermon lamented the oppression of the church permitted by Duke Robert, and urged that Henry 'Rise up boldly in the name of God, win your paternal inheritance with the sword of justice, and rescue your ancestral land and the people of God from the hands of reprobates.' . . . The king was encouraged by the bishop's words; after hearing the views of the magnates who were with him he said 'I will rise up to work for peace in the name of the Lord, and will devote my utmost endeavours to procure, with your help, the tranquillity of the church of God.' The count of Meulan was present to approve this counsel [consilium], and the other nobles who were there, far from rejecting it, eagerly urged their common leader to take up arms against the despoilers of the people for the preservation of Normandy. *

Thus the inspirational harangue of a bishop, the views of great men, the approval of a key royal supporter, and the more general urging of nobles, all had a part to play. At the same time, the advice urged upon the king coincided with his own desires. Advice and support, counsel and aid, were intimately linked. The subject of the king and counsel was long central to study of the Middle Ages.2 The role of the council, and its relationship to the king, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (6 vols, Oxford, 1969-80), vi. 60-4. I would like to thank Rob Bartlett and Matthew Strickland for their auxilium et consilium; final decisions remained mine. 2 My focus is deliberately upon the king, but counsel appears in a multiplicity of contexts and sources during Henry's reign. See e.g. Orderic, vi. 20: when in 1102 Henry summoned Robert of Belleme to answer charges concerning forty-five offences, Robert responded to the summons, and then was given permission 'that he might go to take counsel with his men, as is customary'. Note also hagiographical works such as Geoffrey of Burton's Life and Miracles of St Modwenna (in the Life Geoffrey added references to counsel to the earlier text, usually attributed to Concubranus writing in the eleventh century); and French vernacular texts like Gaimar's L'estoire des Engleis and La chanson de Roland. Roland includes instances varying from formal councils to the panicked 1

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is at the heart of Stubbs's Constitutional History. Stubbs paid particular attention to the composition of formal councils, emphasizing their role in legislation, taxation, and royal land grants, while also noting the prevalence of 'general business', such as the 'foreign and ecclesiastical policy of the king'.3 He closely associated questions of counsel with questions of consent. He rarely mentioned individual advisers or counsellors or the giving of advice outside formal councils, particularly before the Angevin period. Yet although Stubbs himself provided exceptionally profound and fertile insights, in some who continued to write in a similar tradition, interpretation grew sterile.4 Certainly questions such as who attended councils or why Henry allowed crownwearings to become less frequent still need to be asked. However, the subject can also be reinvigorated by examining a further range of issues, notably by fitting formal councils into a wider context of advice-giving. The vocabulary of the sources here merits examination. The AngloSaxon Chronicle distinguished reed, 'advice', from gewitenemot and similar words meaning 'great council'.5 In Latin, some distinction was made between the words concilium and consilium.6 Normally concilium was used specifically to mean a gathering. Consilium could have the same meaning but was a more flexibly used word, as was its French consultations of Oliver and Roland, the latter matching in desperation consultations with my undergraduate tutorial partner when we discovered a copy of Teach Yourself HomeWiring on James Campbell's table. W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England (3 vols, Oxford, 1874-8), i. 372-3; see also, e.g. i. 570. Note also, e.g. Constitutional History, i. 563-4, on the later twelfth century: 'The national council seems in one aspect to be a realisation of the principle which was introduced at the Conquest, and had been developed and grown in consistency under the Norman kings, that of a complete council of feudal tenants-in-chief. In another aspect it appears to be in a stage of transition towards that combined representation of the three estates and of the several provincial communities which especially marks our constitution, and which perhaps was the ideal, imperfectly grasped and more imperfectly realised, at which the statesmen of the middle ages almost unconsciously aimed.' The phraseology, particularly the emphasis on the 'ideal' reflects the influence - quite probably the direct influence - of German philosophy upon Stubbs: see J. Campbell, Stubbs and the English State (Reading, 1989), p. 6. Cf. Stubbs's comments of a rather different sort in Historical Introductions to the Rolls Series (London, 1902), pp. 89-91. 4 Note, for example, the contortions involved in the arguments of G. B. Adams, Councils and Courts in Anglo-Norman England (New Haven, Connecticut, 1926), pp. 107-11. 5 See below, pp. 112, 113. 6 Note, however, that Orderic used both conciliarius and consiliarius to mean counsellor, apparently without making a distinction: Orderic, i. 272, 275. 7 Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. R. E. Latham et al. (in progress), pp. 419-20, 452; Orderic, i. 272, 275. The Abingdon chronicler's usage in his narratives is similarly consistent, in manuscripts of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, although note the charter of Hugh earl of Chester, Chronicon monasterii de 3

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equivalent, conseil.7 These could mean advice, be it general, specific for example, relating to a law case - or even expert advice, for example, from a physician.8 But they could also mean information, decision, deliberation, opinion, or judgment in a law case. As such usage suggests, it is profitable to extend enquiries concerning counsel into a wide range of areas beyond consent to royal decisions and actions. Charters and chronicles provide the core of my evidence, but information remains sparse and assumptions rarely stated. These difficulties produce obvious problems of interpretation. It is difficult even to enumerate formal councils,9 and certainly no statistical approach can be taken to less formal advice-giving.10 Silence concerning counsel is no certain indication of the absence of counsel. This becomes clear when a charter and a chronicle record the same event. Thus the Worcester chronicle provides a summary of the grants included in Henry Fs Coronation Charter, but omits the references to counsel or consent to be found in the charter itself.11 Who counselled the king? It is useful to begin with a relatively straightforward list, despite variation according to circumstance and the type of advice being given. Charters and chronicles present the king receiving advice from God.12 As for earthly counsel, the chroniclers give details of formally summoned councils: At the following Whitsuntide festival [1109] King Henry held his court in London with great worldly pomp and rich ceremonial. After the more Abingdon, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1858), ii. 20, 'inueni in meo consilio'. Sometimes, perhaps, the two terms were used together for emphasis rather than completeness: William Fs decree concerning local and church courts states that he acted 'by the common council and counsel (concilia et consilio) of the archbishops and bishops and abbots and all the leading men of my realm': Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann (3 vols, Halle, 1903-16), i. 485; Anglo-Norman Dictionary, ed. L. W. Stone and W. Rothwell, i (1977), p. 131; also, e.g. Chanson de Roland, lines 2750, 3779, 37938 See, e.g. Wace, Roman de Rou, ed. A. J. Holden (3 vols, Paris, 1970-3), lines 10443-8, on the peace of 1101. 9 E.g. Adams, Councils and Courts, is inconsistent in his treatment of crown-wearings, witness-lists, etc. 10 For example, documents with long witness-lists of prominent men are certainly records of large courts which may be called councils, but are no proof that those named gave advice on the issue recorded in the document. 11 Florence of Worcester, Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. B. Thorpe (2 vols, London, 1848-9), ii. 47; cf. Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 522. 12 Note, e.g. Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, ii, 7/00-1/55, ed. C. J. Johnson and H. A. Cronne (Oxford, 1956), no. 1591, a grant to St Stephen's, Plessis-Grimoult: 'diuine caritatis intuitu commonitus'.

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ceremonious (festiuioribus) days of his crown-wearing, the king began to discuss with the bishops and leading men of the realm what should be done about the consecration of the bishop-elect of the church of York.13 The king sent his writs over all England, and ordered his bishops and abbots and thegns all to come and meet him for his council (gewitenemot) on Candlemas day at Gloucester, and they did so.14

Yet major councils were not necessarily the best forum for consultation. Their formal proceedings often had more to do with royal display, and perhaps with the spreading of information, than with the taking of advice. In general they ratified decisions made beforehand by the king, perhaps in consultation with his closest advisers.15 Nevertheless, men of the type summoned to councils also acted as counsellors in a more general sense. Henry's grant of liberties to the New Minster, Winchester, states that 'my counsellors, the magnates of the realm' were present at the donation.16 More common are references to barons, a word perhaps particularly associated with giving counsel.17 Bishops were consulted, especially concerning ecclesiastical matters.18 Writers beyond England noted Henry's reliance on the older, wiser or greater men, notably at the start of his reign. Suger of Saint-Denis wrote that Henry, 'by counsel of experienced and honourable men', restored the law of former kings and confirmed the customs of the realm.19 Likewise Orderic commented that Henry did not follow the counsels of rash young men as Rehoboam did, but acutely took to heart the shrewdness and advice of wise and old men. He Eadmer, Historia Novorum inAnglia, ed. M. Rule, Rolls Series (London, 1994), p. 207. Note how the bishops later withdraw to consult among themselves, before coming to answer before the king. 14 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 1123; note also e.g. RRAN, ii. nos 619, 778*, 918, 1484. The sources refer to more such councils than before noo, and lay more emphasis on their size, but this may just reflect a change in the amount of evidence: J. A. Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), p. 22. Most recorded councils were in the south of England, with a preference for London and Westminster. 15 For example, when a great conventio or concilium gathered in 1116 for the performing of homage to the king's son, the appearance is that the business had been decided beforehand; Florence of Worcester, ii. 69, also Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1867), i. 92. However, see AngloSaxon Chronicle, s.a. 1123 on the differing opinions concerning the election of an archbishop of Canterbury, and the influence of Roger of Salisbury. 16 RRAN, ii. no. 1125; the magnates, 'by the assent and will of the bishop of that city', encouraged the king's grant. Note also Eadmer, Historia Novorum, p. 147: 'those leading men (principes) on whose counsels the king relied.' 17 See F. M. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism (2nd edn, Oxford, 1961), P-9518 See, e.g. Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, ed. and tr. C. Johnson (rev. edn, Oxford, 1990), p. 92; Eadmer, Historia Novorum, p. 234. 19 Suger, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. and tr. H. Waquet (2nd edn, Paris, 1964), p. 100. 13

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summoned to his counsels Robert of Meulan and Hugh of Chester, Richard of Riviers and Roger Bigod, and other active and acute men. Because he humbly deferred to wise men he deservedly governed many provinces and peoples. Rehoboam was the son of Solomon, whose rash advisers and resultant disasters the Book of Kings records.20 On occasion, however, circumstance severely limited the range of leading men available for consultation. Henry of Huntingdon recorded that in 1101 Henry, deserted by many of the Norman aristocracy, placed Ranulf Flambard in chains 'by counsel of the English people',21 while the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle simply says he acted 'by the advice [rtede] of those who were around him'.22 In times of war, the opinion of fighting men of lesser rank, the type of men referred to simply as milites, may have had an influence absent in other circumstances. Indeed, when the king was besieging Bridgnorth in 1102, the massed urging of the 'country knights (pagenses militesY persuaded Henry to ignore the advice of the leading men of the realm who were urging reconciliation with Robert of Belleme.23 Predominant in sessions of formal councils, in the giving of advice informally at the time of such councils, and in advising in other circumstances, was a quite small group of leading counsellors. Florence of Worcester recorded the deaths of Maurice, bishop of London, Richard, abbot of Ely, Robert, abbot of Bury St Edmunds, Miles Crispin, Robert fitzHamo, Roger Bigod, and Richard de Redvers, and calls them consiliatores regis.24 This is almost certainly not a technical term but rather a way of denoting those who had particular influence with the king. The Abingdon chronicle records that the monastery's abbot, Faritius, when pursuing a lawsuit, sometimes approached the king, sometimes the queen, and sometimes the 'counsellors of the realm (regni consultoresy ,25 Contemporaries also singled out various individuals as particularly influential. According to Simeon of Durham, when Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, was struck by his fatal stroke, he was riding with the king, Orderic, v. 298; 3 Kings (I Kings): 12-14, esP- cn- 12. C. W. Hollister, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London, 1986), pp. 184-5, points out that three of these four had been what he calls curiales of William Rufus. 21 Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. D. E. Greenway (Oxford, 1996), p. 450. 22 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. noo. Cf. Hugh the Chanter, p. 92, where the king in Normandy consulted not only the bishops and others who were with him but also those who were in England. 23 Orderic, vi. 26. See also below, p. 116. Note also the tendency of younger knights to be more enthusiastic than their elders in urging battle: M. J. Strickland, War and Chivalry (Cambridge, 1996), p. 107. 24 Florence of Worcester, Chroniconii. 57. 25 Abingdon, ii. 125; see below, p. 118, for the resultant charter. 20

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separated from others, and discussing matters of counsel (colloquerentur consilio).26 Men involved in administration - for example, the barons of the exchequer and those central to the royal household - had special importance. They included both laymen and clerks, such as Thurstan, later archbishop of York, and John, archdeacon of Sees, who later became bishop of Lisieux. Of him Orderic wrote that 'he was reckoned among the king's leading chaplains, and was often summoned to the king's counsels among his familiares'.27 Access to the king was vital to the giving of advice, the exertion of influence, and participation in royal thinking. Eadmer mentions men close to the king 'who were privy to his secrets'.28 Proximity to the king, though, need not bring uniformity of views. Orderic recorded Robert Curthose's visit to England to request that William of Warenne be readmitted to Henry's good will: 'Hearing this, the king became very angry and asked his attendants and confidants (asseclas et consecretaks) "What should be done concerning my enemies, who have dared to descend on me and invade my kingdom without my permission?" Everyone offered the king different advice.'29 Within the king's closest circle a single, dominant counsellor might emerge. Such predominant counsellors often feature in descriptions of kingship or other forms of leadership,30 and, as we shall see, their utility to the ruler was often matched by the hostility they aroused. Conspicuous at the start of the reign, as he had been before uoo, was Robert, count of Meulan. Henry of Huntingdon referred to him as 'in secular business the wisest man of all living between here and Jerusalem, and King Henry's counsellor (consiliarius}\ while the hostile Eadmer called him 'the person by whose counsel the king carried out all his business'.31 The other outstanding figure was Roger of Salisbury. William of Malmesbury deals with him after Count Robert, describing Roger as the man upon whose counsel Henry chiefly relied.32 A letter of Herbert, bishop of Norwich, to Roger himself also states that Queen Simeon of Durham, Opera omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1882-5), ii- 268; see also Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 1123 (which has Roger of Salisbury as a third member of the party), and Henry of Huntingdon, pp. 586-8 (De contemptu mundi). 27 Hugh the Chanter, p. 56; Orderic, vi. 144. 28 Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 146. 29 Orderic, vi. 12-14; Chibnall comments in a footnote that 'Orderic appears to be groping for a new vocabulary to describe household or chancery officials and servants of a new kind'. 30 Cf. Benedict, the adviser of the earl of Chester, in Abingdon, ii. 71. 31 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum p. 462; see also p. 598 (De contemptu mundi). Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 170; see also p. 191. Note also William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1887-9), ii-48332 William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum, ii. 483. 26

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Matilda 'takes advantage of your advice in everything'.33 Unfortunately the sources do not allow us to distinguish between the subjects on which Roger and Robert gave advice - if there was any such distinction - and we can only conjecture from other information about their activities. Other individuals singled out as counsellors were the king's relatives. There was no living queen mother to exert the kind of influence the Empress Matilda would have upon Henry II, but in the latter years of Henry Fs reign, Matilda was already making her opinions known.34 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 1126 Robert Curthose was transferred to the custody of Henry's bastard son Robert, earl of Gloucester, and that 'this was all done by the advice [rced\ of his daughter'. Henry's queens too may have had influence. In particular, people sometimes approached queens as intercessors, to promote their cases or to persuade the king to make or confirm grants.35 There were also individual counsellors who were trained experts in one field or who had special spiritual authority. Henry of Huntingdon reports that Henry I's eventually fatal attack of food-poisoning resulted from his rejecting the consilium of a doctor who forbade him to eat his beloved dish of lampreys.36 As for spiritual advisers, we have already seen Serlo, bishop of Sees, in action at Easter 1105, and he pressed on with his moral crusade by persuading the king and his magnates to have their decadent long hair cut off.37 In the case of Anselm, his position as counsellor was associated with his position as archbishop of Canterbury. As with the bishop of Sees, the scope of his advice extended beyond purely spiritual affairs to the business of the realm: for example, the defence against invasion at the start of Henry's reign.38 The question of who gave advice is closely related to the type of advice given and to its circumstances. Counsel may have been particularly Epistolae Herberti de Losinga, Osberti de Clara, et Elmeri prioris Cantuariensis, ed. R. Anstruther (London, 1846), no. 26. 34 On the empress under Henry II, see Walter Map, De nugis curialium, ed. and trans. M. R. James, rev. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), pp. 478, 484; on the mother as counsellor, see also, e.g. the stories of Percival from Chretien de Troyes onwards. Orderic, vi. 148 criticizes a woman for ignoring the counsel of her husband. See Gaimar, L'estoire des Engleis, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 14-16 (1960), lines 2685, for taking counsel of kin, 3604, for a daughter counselling. 35 See, e.g. above, p. 113; also below, p. 118, for the queen's involvement with land grants. 36 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglomm, p. 490. The expert, such as Henry I's doctor Faritius, abbot of Abingdon, may well have been able to bring influential advice even outside his area of special expertise. 37 Orderic, vi. 64-6. 38 See, e.g. Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 127. 33

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important to Henry at the start of his reign.39 According to the Abingdon chronicler, at this time Henry was weak and faced many requests for gifts. By prudent counsel, he agreed to these requests, but later he was to abandon such generous behaviour.40 Henry's Coronation Charter concentrates on concessions, but it is notable that clause ten, which records not a grant but the retention of the forests in the king's hand, states that Henry was acting 'with the common consent of my barons'.41 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that Henry sent for Anselm 'on the advice of his council', the 'Hyde' chronicle that he married Matilda 'by the counsel of [Anselm] and his leading men (principumy ,42 In the first years of his reign Henry was faced with the constant threat of invasion and rebellion, and thereafter the taking of counsel is particularly prominent in descriptions of war and of battles. Orderic wrote that in noi 'Robert of Meulan and many other loyal and prudent barons followed their lord faithfully and supplied him with military support and counsel (viribus et consiliisY ,43 Before the decisive battle of Tinchebrai in 1106 both Henry and his brother and opponent Duke Robert took counsel as to possible developments.44 William of Malmesbury records a particularly interesting example of opinions being pressed on the king in 1119. Louis VI of France was devastating Normandy, but Henry, according to the chronicler, preferred his father's example of defeating the French folly by patience rather than force. However, a crowd of fighting men (uulgus militum), regarding his apparent inaction as dishonourable, urged that he allow Louis to be driven back. Henry first tried to appease the men, by expressing his desire to avoid shedding the blood of his loyal followers, but finally decided that his prudence was being misinterpreted as cowardice, turned to battle and won the victory of Bremule.45 On the circumstances, see e.g. Hollister, Monarchy., pp. 175-6. Henry's Coronation Charter stated that he was crowned 'by the mercy of God and the common counsel of the barons of the whole realm of England'; Wace, Roman de Ron, lines 10117-10134, gives a strong view of this baronial counselling; note also Liber monasterii de Hyda, ed. E. Edwards, Rolls Series (London, 1866), p. 304. 40 Abingdon, ii. 50; note the parallel to William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum, ii. 471, on Henry biding his time before avenging himself against those who insulted him early in his reign. 41 Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 522. 42 Liber monasterii de Hyda, p. 305; on this chronicle and its questionable link to Hyde Abbey, Winchester, see D. Bates, 'Normandy and England after 1066', EHR, 104 (1989), 851-80, at 877, and J. Gillingham, 'Henry of Huntingdon and the TwelfthCentury Revival of the English Nation', in Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. S. Forde, L. Johnson and A. V. Murray (Leeds, 1995), pp. 90-1. 43 Orderic, v. 310. Note also ibid., vi. 228: before burning Evreux in 1119 Henry obtained the agreement of its bishop, Audoin. 44 Ibid., vi. 86-8. 45 William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum, ii. 481; see also Liber monasterii de Hyda, 39

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Henry took counsel before many major decisions. In 1106 he wrote to Anselm that 'on Ascension Day I shall have all my barons assembled with me. According to their counsel, I shall then reply to you in suitable fashion'.46 When in 1119 Henry decided to make peace with the king of France, it was 'by the counsel of his great men (consilio optimatum suorumy.47 Increasingly, the succession dominated Henry's thoughts and actions.48 Major events for the royal family took place in the context of courts or councils, although on occasion Henry could act secretively, as was probably the case with the planning of Matilda's marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou.49 Henry also took counsel on ecclesiastical affairs; for example, the primacy dispute.50 Particularly prominent were consultations on ecclesiastical appointments.51 At the start of his reign, according to Orderic, 'he began to console the widowed churches with pastors, and on the advice of senior men (seniorum consultu) placed learned scholars in them'.52 The Battle Abbey chronicle recalls that in 1107 Henry gathered a 'universal council', and assigned shepherds to churches. On the advice of his men, he chose a monk of Caen, named Ralph, for Battle.53 The Abingdon chronicle hints further at the procedure. When Henry appointed Abbot Vincent in 1121, he did so 'by the counsel of his great men . . . in the presence of his bishops and barons . . . with all who were present praising this'. Three levels of participation seem to be distinguished here: the active counsel of the leading men, the important and desirable presence of bishops and barons, and the acclamation of all present.54 In contrast, p. 317, on Henry drawing up his battle lines at Bremule 'sapienti usus consilio'; also Simeon, ii. 267-8, on Henry taking advice from his men at Woodstock before responding to the threat posed by the marriage of William Clito to the daughter of the count of Anjou. Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 176; also e.g. p. 165, on Henry being counselled to speak with Anselm; Hugh the Chanter, p. 62, for Henry summoning the leading men to London in 1115 to treat with them 'concerning the peace, the state of the realm, and matters of business'. 47 John of Worcester, Chronicle, ed. J. R. H. Weaver (Oxford, 1908), p. 14. 48 See, e.g. William of Malmesbury, Historia novella, ed. and trans. K. R. Potter (Edinburgh, 1955), p. 3; Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 290, Simeon, ii. 259, on Henry's second marriage; John of Worcester, p. 27. 49 See below, p. 122. 50 Hugh the Chanter, pp. 30, 68 (a council); note also p. 80. 51 Note also, e.g. Simeon, ii. 268; Hugh the Chanter, pp. 182-4 (great council), 220 (informal). 52 Orderic, v. 296. 53 The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. and trans. E. Searle (Oxford, 1980), p. 116; cf. p. 134, for Henry at an assembly appointing the Canterbury monk Warner as abbot of Battle, by the counsel of William, archbishop of Canterbury, and Seffrid, bishop of Chichester. 54 Abingdon, ii. 161-2. The last group may have been very large if, as is possible, Vincent was elected at the time of the king's second marriage. 46

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the king insisted on giving Peterborough Abbey to Henry d'Angely despite the opposition of the archbishops and bishops, who protested that the nominee should not have two abbacies.55 Henry must also have consulted concerning important grants to the lay aristocracy, but this is very rarely mentioned. Most noteworthy here is clause three of the Coronation Charter. The barons promised to consult the king concerning their plans to marry their daughters. The king likewise promised that he would only give heiresses in marriage 'by counsel of my barons'.56 The clause neatly illustrates the reciprocal obligations of lord and men, with consultation working in both directions. What of land grants? Mention of family participation in the king's grants is extremely rare, notably rarer than in the charters even of important laymen. Of course, Henry only had a legitimate son until 1120, but he is almost entirely absent from the king's grants.57 Mention of barons' consent was not a standard feature of English charters in writ or letter form,58 although occasional references occur in Henry's grants to English churches. Some concern major ecclesiastical events such as the founding of the see of Ely, which is also dated to the council held at Nottingham Castle on 17 October UO9.59 Some concern specific grants,60 while others refer to general confirmations or restorations to churches made 'by the counsel of my barons' or 'by the assent and counsel of my bishops and barons'.61 Further instances may refer to some form of court hearing, as when Henry confirmed Fawler to Abingdon 'by the counsel and assent of the queen . . . and of my barons, both prelates and laymen (baronumque meorum, tarn presulum quam laicorumy.62 Counsel is also mentioned in charters for Norman churches, for example, Henry's confirmation to the abbey of Saint-Vigor at Cerisy.63 Orderic gives a The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, a Monk of Peterborough., ed. W. T. Mellows (Oxford, 1949), p. 100. 56 Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 521. 57 J. G. H. Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford, 1994)? P- l%4> adding RRAN, ii, no. 1091 to those footnoted. The queen is occasionally recorded as consenting to a grant: RRAN., ii, nos 683, 1874; note also nos 634, 1091. 58 For examples, see Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship, p. 228. 59 RRAN, ii, no. 919; see also no. 918. Note also no. 1715, a restoration of the church of Malmesbury to the church of Salisbury, dated at Northampton 'in concilio'. 60 E.g. RRAN, ii, nos 677, 1475 (on which see also John of Worcester, p. 23). 61 Respectively RRAN, ii, nos 1092 (a writ), 928 (a charter, of unusual and perhaps suspicious form). See also nos 544, 1325. 62 Ibid., ii, no. 683, which follows the passage of the Abingdon Chronicle cited above, p. 113. 63 Ibid., ii, no. 1233. Note also no. 809, a confirmation to St Faith at Longueville, 'presente magno procerum conventu'; no. 1183 (Henry makes a concord between the abbot of Caen and the founder of Savigny, on the advice of the archbishops of Canterbury and Rouen, and various other bishops, abbots, and men of religion); nos 1687, 1764. 55

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rather fuller indication of the process which might be involved. In 1113 Henry I was at Saint-Evroul, and was admitted to the monks' fraternity. Then, on the counsel of Robert count of Meulan, the king commanded that a charter be made, and everything which the abbey of Saint-Evroul possessed on that day be listed in it. This was done. Then Arnold the prior and Gilbert of Les Essarts took the charter to the king at Rouen. He willingly confirmed it, making a cross, and handed it to his magnates who were present to be similarly ratified with the sign of the cross . . . This charter was made by the counsel of wise men as a protection against greedy heirs, who every year seized back the alms given by their relatives . . .64

The charter thus distinguishes between the unspecified group of wise men who saw the charter's utility, the specific influence of Robert, count of Meulan, and the ratification as opposed to counsel of those recorded as signatories. What of taxation and legislation, areas traditionally of great concern to those studying counsel and consent? Information on the former is very sparse, perhaps because the standard form of taxation was the customary annual geld. Exceptional taxation - for example, that raised for the marriage of the king's daughter Matilda to the emperor - may have required more consideration.65 Information on legislation is rather more extensive.66 Orderic records that in mid-October 1106 Henry summoned to Lisieux all the great men of Normandy, and held a council most beneficial to the church of God. He there decreed by royal authority that peace should be firmly established throughout Normandy, that - with all robbery and plundering wholly suppressed - all churches should hold their possessions as they had held them on the day his father died, and likewise all other lawful heirs. He took into his own property all his father's demesnes, and by the judgment of wise men decreed void all the gifts his brother had made to ungrateful men through lack of judgment or had unwillingly permitted through weakness.67

Here we have a council as the setting for decrees, without any specific mention of who - if anyone - counselled the king. The later Tres ancien coutumier also preserved a writ of Henry announcing legislation. It is dated to 1135 at Rouen, concerns those 'who kill men in the truces and in the peace of the church and break the truces', and says that the Orderic, vi. 174; the charter is RRAN, ii, no. 1019. RRAN, ii, no. 959, mentioning 'that aid which my barons gave [dederunt] to me', may refer to this tax, although the word 'give' could mean paying rather than granting. The mid-twelfth-century Leges Edwardi Confessoris, 11.2 (Liebermann, Gesteze, i. 636), spoke of William II seeking and the barons granting an aid. 66 See above, p. in n. 7, on William I's decree concerning courts. Note also Leges Edwardi Confessoris, Prol., 34 (Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 627, 661-3); note also E. Cf. retr., 39.1 (Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 670). 67 Orderic, vi. 92-4. 64

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decree was made in the presence of various named bishops and 'by common counsel and assent of all my barons named below'.68 In England, counsel is mentioned in connection with various reforms which could be called legislative. For example, Eadmer states that Henry's actions to end the oppressions brought by those accompanying the court were determined 'through the counsel of Anselm and the great men of the realm'.69 On the other hand, there is no mention of counsel or consent with reference to Henry's decrees concerning the coinage, the treatment of thieves and robbers, or the holding of shire and hundred courts.70 In disputes and lawsuits the king took counsel on a wide range of matters.71 Particularly significant is the link between counsel and the judgment as to the form of proof to be employed. The Battle Abbey chronicle records the following instance. At Henry's Easter court at Winchester, it was disputed whether Battle was to be subject to the abbey of Marmoutier. The king was inclined to Marmoutier's side, 'but decided to settle nothing without counsel'. Among the leading men present was Geoffrey, custodian of Battle between 1102 and 1107, who, the chronicler noted, 'was not excluded from the secrets of the royal hall'. Geoffrey sought to change the king's mind personally and through supporters. When, in the king's presence, the abbot of Marmoutier claimed that William I had subjected Battle to Marmoutier, the king's counsellors demanded written confirmation (confirmationis munimentd). The abbot replied that such a great man's gift made orally should suffice without an eye-witness, and that no one had hitherto sought a written confirmation, as they did not consider it necessary. However, his argument was rebutted, on the grounds that the gift of so great a place must be confirmed by charters, or at least by oral testimony.72 68 RRAN, ii, no. 1908; Coutumiers de Normandie, i, Le tres ancien coutumier de Normandie, ed. E.-J. Tardif, Societe de 1'Histoire de Normandie (1881), c. 71, pp. 65-8. 69 Eadmer, Historia novorum, p. 192. Note also Richard fitzNigel, Dialogus de scaccario, ed. and trans. C. Johnson, rev. F. E. L. Carter and D. E. Greenway (Oxford, !983)5 PP- 41-33 on Henry I's reforms concerning county farms and the process of assaying silver. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, pp. 482-4, attributes to the king a council in 1129 which treated the question of priests' wives; cf. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 1129 which attributes the summoning of the council to the archbishop of Canterbury, 'by the advice [r
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Having discussed who gave counsel and the circumstances in which they did so, I turn finally to the reasons why Henry sought or was given advice. The close association of counsel and consent may not illuminate all areas of advice giving, but remains of great importance: there clearly was a constitutional aspect to counsel. The essential, but not the sole, evidence here is a famous passage of the Battle Abbey chronicle, written in the later twelfth century.73 It had long been held as law that, if the survivors of a shipwreck did not repair the ship within a set time, any remains went to the lord of the land upon which they were washed ashore. Henry I disapproved of this custom, 'and promulgated an ordinance for his own time and throughout his empire, that if even one person should escape alive from the wrecked ship he should have everything'. However, a new king brought a change of law. After Stephen's accession, 'the great men of the realm did away with the recent ordinance and exercised the ancient custom themselves'. A ship from Romney, the land of the archbishop of Canterbury, was then wrecked upon Battle's land of Dengemarsh, and its crew only just survived. The men of Dengemarsh took the wreck by force for the abbey, whereupon the archbishop brought the case to King Stephen's court. He accused the abbot of breaching the peace since he had acted against a decree of King Henry. After much argument from both sides, the court at length was calmed in the following way. Using an argument planned beforehand, the abbot solemnly asserted (testificatus est) that King Henry could at will change the ancient rights of the country for his own time, but nothing would be established for posterity except by the common consent of the barons of the realm.

The barons supported the abbot and his argument, King Henry's decree therefore no longer applied, and the right of wreck once again belonged to the lord upon whose land the ship and goods were washed ashore. Here we have an argument presenting itself as based on some clear constitutional rules relating to consent to legislation. However, the report comes from one of the parties involved and may well make the argument sound more decisive than in fact it was. In addition, the abbot's argument seems to have required some thought, rather than just being an appeal to an obvious and accepted rule. It was also surely an argument calculated to appeal to the magnates. Yet some evidence from Henry's own reign may support the principle put forward by the abbot. Clause thirteen of the Coronation Charter stated that 'I give back to you 73

Ibid., pp. 142-6. The speech as reported by the chronicler allows two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, interpretations: that a king could change the law beyond his reign with the consent of his barons, or that after a king's death the barons could decide that his changes to the law were to be perpetuated.

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the law of King Edward with those emendations with which my father emended it by counsel of his barons'.14 This may be a simple statement of fact or a commonplace, but perhaps the phrase affirms the point made in the Battle chronicle; William may have made various changes to law, but only those made by the counsel of his barons lasted beyond his death.75 The abbot of Battle's argument is best taken as one strongly supported by general notions of proper kingship and law-making, even if it were not part of a set of rigidly defined constitutional rules. Take another example. The major moves concerning the succession in the late H2OS and early 11305 took place in large gatherings.76 Obviously the king could benefit in various ways from such fora, but in addition the leading men believed that they ought to be consulted. William of Malmesbury reported that I myself have often heard Roger bishop of Salisbury saying that he was released from the oath he had taken to the empress because he had sworn only on condition that the king should not give his daughter in marriage to anyone outside the realm without the counsel of himself and the other great men, and that no one had designed or been aware of that marriage except Robert, earl of Gloucester, and Brian fitz Count and the bishop of Lisieux.77

The place of counsel within political thinking, and the flexibility of the ideas involved, is apparent in other ways. Acting with counsel could be contrasted with the king's pleasure or his will, his vis et voluntas. Royal supporters might regard royal discretion as a justified part of kingship, but opponents or victims could condemn it.78 Yet even if a ruler took advice, this need not make his decision or act correct, for an opponent might condemn the counsel as bad. This, according to Orderic, was one justification for Henry seizing Normandy from his illcounselled brother Robert.79 Political thinking was not controlled by set and accepted rules. Rather, different parties sought to support their position by appealing to a variety of principles. The weight such princiLiebermann, Gesetze, i. 522. To push the argument still further - into the yet more dangerous, if Campbellian, realm of interpreting silences - it could be that the lack of mention of counsel in documents such as the 1108 writ on the shire and hundred court reflects the fact that they were reaffirmations of old law, not new laws. But this is almost certainly to expect the texts to make explicit too many assumptions. 76 See, e.g. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, pp. 486-8; note also e.g. AngloSaxon Chronicle, s.a. 1127. 77 William of Malmesbury, Historia novella, p. 5. 78 For the 1108 decree allowing local courts to be called as the king wished, see Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 524. 79 Orderic, vi. 56-8. Ideas of evil counsel could draw on a variety of biblical texts: see, for example, above, p. 112, on Rehoboam, and also Psalm 63 (64). 74

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pies carried varied according to the degree of their general acceptance, their appropriateness to the situation, the power of the parties, and the eloquence with which they were put forward. Such flexibility allowed the king and others to make tactical use of counsel-taking. Perhaps decisions were retrospectively blamed on counsellors. Certainly the need to take counsel could be used as a delaying tactic. This appears to be the case at various stages in the primacy dispute, notably as recorded by Hugh the Chanter. On one occasion, Henry received papal and legatine letters. He 'said he would reply after having taken counsel with his men', but 'put off doing so, once, twice, and thrice'.80 Beyond such issues, the requesting and taking of counsel was in part a simple matter of utility. Henry had to know what was going on in his lands and beyond, and he found out in part by consultation.81 Likewise, he could assess the mood of his followers, and, as we saw in the case of Louis's invasion of Normandy in 1119, the attitudes of those followers could change his intended course of action. Formal councils, in particular, but also the taking of counsel in other circumstances, allowed the king to present himself as a wise ruler. He had to be seen to take counsel and to receive it with good grace. In 1101, according to Orderic, 'all the great men who were with Henry applauded the count of Meulan's speech and urged the king to follow his advice. Being a man of remarkable sagacity, he thanked the confidants (auriculariis) who wished him well and readily accepted their beneficial suggestions.'82 The king's setting, his body language and his capacity to call upon people to speak, thus conferring honour upon them, must all have been of importance, while being hidden by the silence of the sources. His superior status would be additionally emphasized when men travelled to him to participate in counselling, particularly if responding to a royal summons.83 At the same time, the reciprocity of the king's relationship with his followers could be reinforced, as followers counselled king and king counselled followers. In these ways, taking advice, and being seen to take advice, helped to 80

Hugh the Chanter, p. 156. For another aspect of Henry I's feared intelligence network, see J. O. Prestwich, 'Military Intelligence under the Norman and Angevin Kings', in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy, ed. G. S. Garnett and J. G. H. Hudson (Cambridge, I994)> PP- 10-1482 Orderic, v. 316. 83 Those summoned might enjoy, but also be indebted for, royal hospitality, and counsel critical of the king would be the more dishonourable in being criticism of a host; for baronial accommodation at Brampton, see Curia Regis Rolls, vii. 349-50; note also Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 456, for the curia being at New Windsor, which the king himself had built. 81

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build up support for the king.84 The phrase 'counsel and aid' flowed easily from writers' pens in many contexts.85 This clearly also relates to sycophantic counsel, the fact that agreement with the ruler's opinion was presented as counsel. Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain,, being composed in Henry's last years, provides the following example.86 King Arthur received a threatening letter from the Procurator of the Republic of Rome: This letter was read aloud in the presence of the kings and leaders (consulum). Arthur then withdrew with them into a gigantic tower near the entrance [of the palace], to consider what ought to be done . . . [When they had all sat down] Arthur addressed them as follows: 'Companions in good times and bad, whose fortitude both in giving counsel and in waging war I have experienced in the past, give me now your attention . . .' Arthur argued that 'nothing acquired by force and violence is justly possessed by anyone', that the Roman claims against Britain were therefore unjustified, and that therefore the best idea was to attack the Romans. At the end of Arthur's speech, Hoel, king of the Armorican Britons, was told to take precedence in replying. However great their efforts, he said, no one 'could find more excellent counsel' than that produced by Arthur's discerning prudence. Still, he spoke at some length. He was followed by the king of Albany, who began by professing his immense joy in knowing that his lord would strive for what he had said. Such speeches were in part a show of solidarity, in part a currying favour with the king, in part - no doubt - a way of satisfying the counsellor's love of the sound of his own voice. In addition, they could bring honour upon the counsellor, as showing his eloquence, as displaying his wisdom, and as simultaneously demonstrating his membership of the inner circle while singling him out from others around the king.87 Such a means of acquiring honour may have been particularly important for those who had passed their peak of martial prowess.88 Regular participation in giving counsel, knowledge of royal secrets, being 'in the know', reinforced the solidarity of the small but extremely Note also Green, The Government of England., p. 24: 'In practice [Henry's] regime was harsh and exploitative, and if it is asked why there was not more rebellion against it, then one answer lies in the frequency of consultation with the politically powerful classes.' 85 E.g. Abingdon, ii. 63 (a letter of Ralph, archbishop of Canterbury). The need to obtain support and to build up morale must be one reason for the prevalence of counseltaking in the context of war: the greater the consensus, the higher the chance of success. 86 The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey ofMonmouth, i, Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS. 568, ed. N. Wright (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 113-15. 87 See above, p. 114, on Robert, count of Meulan. 88 See above, p. 112, for the association of age and counselling. 84

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powerful group around the king, and helped to define its members against outsiders. However, the privileged position of certain men in the king's counsels could disrupt the harmony of the court. These men restricted access to the ruler.89 In such circumstances it was not only the content of advice, but its secrecy and exclusiveness which inspired dislike, and those characteristic vices of the court, envy, gossip, and faction. Henry of Huntingdon, in his letter De contemptu mundi recalls the fate of Simon, son of Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln: Being brought up ... in royal fashion, and appointed our dean while still a boy, he soon advanced in the king's closest friendship and in court offices (dignitates). He was quick-witted, a good speaker, physically handsome, radiant with charm, young in years but old in prudence, but tainted with the sin of pride. From pride grew envy, from envy hatred, from hatred slanders, conflicts, accusations. . . . So having been highest in eminence in the court and the kingdom, after a short time he fell headlong into the king's deepest loathing, and was put into prison, from which he is said to have escaped by way of a sewer, and still a young man went into exile and misery.90

Counsel and consultation were thus essential to Henry I's kingship. In giving advice, the king and his followers could display such aristocratic virtues as wisdom, prudence, magnanimitas and eloquence.91 The king was under some obligation to consult on certain matters, but more commonly Henry sought advice for his own purposes, in order to gather information, assess opinion and maintain support. Some aspects of the processes of counsel emerge from the limited sources, notably the way in which in a single instance the king might successively receive different types of counsel from different types of adviser.92 We have little evidence of Henry going against the advice he received, although clearly it was part of the skills of a king to weigh up different pieces of advice and select the best course of action.93 According to Orderic, Henry also showed a capacity to identify flatterers from those who truly wished him well.94 Formal councils had a multiplicity of functions, including the giving of advice. They seem particularly important for ecclesiastical elections, especially archiepiscopal ones. However, the thrust of this essay has 89 Cf. the accusation in 1258 that Henry Ill's half brothers 'whispered to him that a prince was not subject to the laws'; Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, 5 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1864-9), i- 4^390 Henry of Huntingdon, p. 596; note also, e.g. R. Sharpe, 'The Prefaces of "Quadripartitus" ', in Law and Government, ed. Garnett and Hudson, p. 157. 91 See e.g. Henry of Huntingdon, p. 606, the letter De contemptu mundi on Henry's virtues. 92 See above, pp. 109,117. 93 See above, p. 113. 94 See e.g. Orderic, vi. 340.

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been to emphasize the informal, to shift the focus from those seated in great gatherings to those in the king's chamber or in the saddle. This was true both in war and peace. Saladin's biographer would say of the Franks that it was one of their customs to take counsel on horseback in matters of war.95 In peace, the hunt must also have been a place of discussion of all subjects important to the king and his circle; no doubt game, gossip, drink and women featured prominently, but so too might the business of the realm. The hunt or the chamber gave the seclusion and the informality needed for effective discussion amongst those who shared the king's secrets, those who had his ear, the auricularii., as Orderic calls them. In praising Henry as a monarch, Orderic also reveals the importance of decision-making by an oligarchy. Recueil des historiens des croisades: historiens orientaux (5 vols, Paris, 1872-1906), iii. 14. I would like to thank my student Sarah Hannam for bringing this passage to my attention, and Hugh Kennedy for translating the Arabic text. 95

7 Towns and the English State, 1066-1500 D. M. PALLISER James Campbell has illuminated many aspects of the early English state, not least its control over, and interest in, the towns. His emphasis is a salutary one for urban historians as well as for students of the state, for it reminds us of something fundamental but neglected. Stubbs and Maitland, Tait and Weinbaum, well understood the importance of towns (or boroughs) in a political context;1 but in the last fifty years, partly under the influence of Pirenne and his followers, it has become fashionable to locate towns in their social and economic, rather than political and constitutional, context. Yet James Campbell's stress on the significance of royal power in relation to towns - unarguable for England from the tenth century, as he has abundantly demonstrated - is now being corroborated on a continental scale, and from a very early period. The emporia or trading settlements round the North Sea and the Baltic, like Dorestad, Haithabu and - in England - Hamwic, 'were directly dependent on royal authority and were administered by nobles'.2 Certainly, as the kings of Wessex created an English state in the ninth and tenth centuries, borrowing systematically from Carolingian institutions as they did so, they developed a system of government in which * I would like to thank all those who made helpful comments and criticisms when preliminary versions of this essay were presented at conferences in Strasbourg, Oxford and Leeds. I am also grateful to Dr A. P. M. Wright for permission to cite his unpublished thesis, to Professor W. M. Ormrod for a similar permission to read two of his papers in advance of publication, and to my fellow-editor and to Professor L. A. Attreed for suggested improvements. 1 This essay follows Susan Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), rather than James Tait, The Medieval English Borough: Studies on its Origins and Constitutional History (Manchester, 1936), in preferring 'town' to 'borough'. The Domesday burgus seems to have meant something like 'town', though by the late thirteenth century '"borough" was increasingly, though by no means always, restricted to the more privileged places': Reynolds, Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns, p. 112. 2 Adriaan Verhulst, 'The Origins and Early Development of Medieval Towns in Northern Europe', Economic History Review, 47 (1994), 370.

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towns played a crucial role as strongpoints and as centres of royal administration. When the Norman duke conquered England in 1066, he inherited a 'uniform and sophisticated' administration, with national taxation, a standardized coinage, and the devolution of responsibilities to local authorities systematically organized.3 All three depended on towns: the sheriff of each shire administered it on the king's behalf, from a shire town; assessments and taxes were organised from the shire towns; and the large number of mints which underpinned the coinage were also located in towns.4 Thus towns were by 1066 built into the framework of a powerful and centralized state, and that remained the position throughout most of the period covered here. It is therefore not surprising that English towns enjoyed only limited independence compared to those of Flanders, Germany or northern Italy. Of course, England was also less urbanized than they were: most of its towns were small, and only London, with perhaps 80,000 or even 100,000 inhabitants before the Black Death, could rival the great continental cities, although the second largest English city, Norwich, may have had as many as 25,ooo;5 and the proportion of English people living in towns was, as we shall see, not insignificant. In any case, however, what was crucial in crown-town relations was the power of the kings rather than the weakness of the towns. 'Throughout the middle ages', said Maitland, 'the central power was stronger in England than elsewhere and the boroughs served the state as its organs and its instruments.' Or, as Susan Reynolds has put it, 'from the twelfth century the constitutional history of English towns was dominated and shaped by royal power'.6 That power was of a dual nature. First, as sovereigns, kings used towns systematically as centres of authority - all royal mints were located in towns, and one town in each shire was designated a county town, housing the headquarters of the sheriff who administered the 3

James Campbell, 'Observations on English Government from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century', TRHS, 5th series, 25 (1975), 39~54, reprinted in his Essays, pp. 155-89. 4 Michael Metcalf, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon and Norman Coin Finds, c. 973-1086 (London, 1998); D. M. Palliser, 'Towns and the Crown in England: The Counties and the County Towns', in B. Brodt (ed.), Power and Authority in Theory and Practice: English and German Towns, c. 1000-1650 (German Historical Institute, London, forthcoming). 5 Derek Keene, 'Medieval London and its Region', London Journal, 14 (1989), 99-111; E. Rutledge, 'Immigration and Population Growth in Early Fourteenth-Century Norwich: Evidence from the Tithing Roll', Urban History Yearbook 1988, 15-30. 6 F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of English Law (2nd edn, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1898), i. 636; S. Reynolds and W. de Boer (eds), 'Select Texts on British Urban History before the Mid-Thirteenth Century', in Elenchus fontium historiae urbanae, ed. C. van de Kieft and G. van Herwijnen, ii, pt 2 (Leiden, 1988), p. 3.

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county for the king. Secondly, the king, as the greatest feudal landholder, was also the immediate lord of nearly all the large towns. Royal lordship extended over most towns before 1066, 'and the fact that this lordship was . . . in large measure preserved by the Conqueror, at least in the more important towns, gave the monarchy an exceptional influence over town development in medieval England compared to other western lands'.7 Unlike the Empire, England had few towns with bishops as their lords; in most cathedral cities except Durham (and Salisbury from the early thirteenth century) the bishop and clergy enjoyed a 'liberty' around the cathedral church, but the town itself was royal. Of the twenty wealthiest towns in 1334 (measured by tax returns), fifteen were royal, three had episcopal lords (Beverley, Lynn, Salisbury), and two had divided lordship (Coventry and Boston), though within a few years Coventry also became a royal town.8 However, the centralized English state did not of course entail royal absolutism. There was an understanding that kings should rule in accordance with justice, with custom and with the advice of their nobles. Even lesser subjects like townsmen were not excluded from consultation. For instance, although charters to boroughs were granted unilaterally by the crown, 'some measure of negotiation lies behind even the most peremptory of them, and invariably much local discussion of the issues involved', and where petitions by townsmen for royal privileges survive, the subsequent charter often closely reflects what was asked for.9 Later medieval kings were constrained to rule according to law, and had frequently to summon assemblies or parliaments to seek advice, to hear grievances and to seek consent for taxation; from 1275 towns were regularly represented in such national assemblies. It was to this tradition of legality and consent that the London citizens appealed in 1220-21, when they told the king's justices that 'it is the lord's court, not the lord, who ought to make the judgement'.10 E. Miller and J. Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts, 1086-1348 (London, 1995), p. 45. 8 R. E. Glassock (ed.), The Lay Subsidy 0/1334 (London, 1975), has the basic statistics, which are conveniently tabulated in Alan Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns, 1400-1640 (Gloucester, 1991), p. 70. The lordship of early Coventry has been recently much debated: see the references in P. R. Coss (ed.), The Early Records of Medieval Coventry (London, 1986), p. xv n. 5. What is indisputable is that between 1330 and 1355 the queen mother wrested control from Coventry Priory: see below, n. 19. 9 G. H. Martin, 'Doncaster Borough Charters', in B. J. Barber (ed.), Doncaster: A Borough and its Charters (Doncaster, 1994), p. 25. For a good example of such a petition (Hull, c. 1299) see Thomas Madox, The History and Antiquities of the Exchequer (ist edn., London, 1711), pp. 291-2; (2nd edn, London, 1769), i. 423-4; the petition is printed in full in note z in both editions. 10 H. T. Riley (ed.), Munimenta Gildhallae Londiniensis, 3 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1859-62), i. 66; Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1997), p. 59. 7

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Between the Norman Conquest and 1348, English towns grew considerably in numbers, size and wealth. In 1086 town dwellers accounted for a proportion of the English population approaching 10 per cent, but by about 1300 perhaps 15, or even 20, per cent: growth was most rapid in the century from c. 1180 to c. 1280, when 'the percentage of people living in towns doubled'. Although towns shrank in size after 1348, the urban sector remained as large, if not larger, relative to the national total, and Christopher Dyer estimates that it contained 'near to 20 per cent of the English population' both in the late fourteenth and in the early sixteenth centuries. And if it maintained its relative size, its share of national wealth may actually have increased. Tax assessments suggest 'that the urban share of England's wealth was higher in the early sixteenth century than in I334'.11 The leading townsmen (citizens, burgesses or freemen) pressed for more autonomy under the crown as their wealth and self-confidence grew. Their first step was usually to bargain with the king to pay him an annual lump sum (firma burgi or borough farm) in lieu of the various dues and rents he received from them. Some leading towns secured this right from Henry I and Henry II, though, with the temporary exception of London, only during royal pleasure. It was also common for the larger towns to secure from the crown the rights to an organization of traders and craftsmen (gild merchant or hanse), to legal privileges including burgage tenure, and to exemption from summons to courts outside the town, at least in civil cases. Until 1189 this was as far as they could go; kings had no intention of allowing the revolutionary power represented by communes on the Continent. It is true that Henry I granted the Londoners wholly exceptional privileges,12 and that they then seized the opportunity of civil war in 1141 to proclaim a commune, but they soon lost most of these gains, and under Henry II they were less privileged than some provincial towns. Henry's sons Richard I and John were, however, short of money, and willing to sell urban charters. Leading towns were often allowed more trading privileges, and the firma burgi in perpetuity rather than during royal pleasure: a grant which seems to have implied more in the way of autonomy than merely the financial. Furthermore, the king often recognized officials elected by their fellow-townsmen, and from the early thirteenth century many towns were headed by an elected mayor. A sign of the growing importance of towns was that the Londoners were active in the rebellion of 1214-15, and that Magna Carta included a 11 R. H. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000-1500 (2nd edn, Manchester, 1996), pp. 49, 87, 115, 170; Christopher Dyer, 'How Urbanized was Medieval England?', in J.-M. Duvosquel and E. Thoen (ed.), Peasants and Townsmen in Medieval Europe: Studia in Honorem Adriaan Verhulst (Ghent, 1995), pp. 172-80. 12 See below, n. 48.

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clause that all 'cities, boroughs, towns and ports' were to have their liberties and free customs. The reigns of Henry III and Edward I saw, however, a reassertion of strong monarchy and a more restrictive policy towards urban privileges. Both kings viewed all 'franchises' or liberties as deriving from the crown. In 1255-7 Henry III launched an attack on boroughs which exercised return of writs, arguing that they could not do so without explicit mention of it in their charters.13 Many boroughs hastened to purchase new charters incorporating the right, but it was one of numerous grievances which led Londoners and other townsmen to support the rebellions of 1258-67. Edward I continued and extended his father's policy, instituting elaborate inquiries in 1278-94, asking by what authority (quo zvarranto) franchises (including boroughs, markets and fairs) were held. The results were meagre, but the threat was real enough. Furthermore, both Henry and Edward were restrictive in granting new urban privileges, and were prompt to cancel charters and to run the towns through their own appointed officials. London, for example, was under direct royal control at least ten times, usually briefly, between 1239 and 1257, and for longer periods of five years and fourteen years later in the century (1265-70, 1285-99). Other towns were not treated quite so highhandedly, but suspensions of liberties included those of York in 1280-83, I29° and 1292-97, and Lincoln in 1267 and 1290-1301, while Norwich was in royal hands seven times between 1234 and 1291.14 Partly as a result of these constitutional clashes, national assemblies including urban representatives were frequently summoned. In the early thirteenth century county and town representatives were occasionally called to general councils or 'parliaments'; in 1265 urban representatives attended Simon de Montfort's revolutionary assembly; and from 1275 the king frequently summoned them to parliaments. A major purpose of those gatherings was authorizing taxes and customs dues for the king; the urban members therefore had a real interest in bargaining in return for these grants. For a time, it remained only one of several ways in which the king could consult urban opinion. Early English 13 M. T. Clanchy, 'The Franchise of Return of Writs', TRHS, 5th series, 17 (1967), 64-8. His interpretation supersedes those of Pollock and Maitland (History of English Law, i. 645 and n.) and J. Tait (British Borough Charters, 1216-1307, Cambridge, 1923, p. xvii f), who regarded these charters as concessions and not impositions. 14 G. A. Williams, Medieval London: From Commune to Capital (London, 1963), pp. 204-8, 232-42, 255-62; D. M. Palliser, 'The Birth of York's Civic Liberties, c. 1200-1354', in S. Rees Jones (ed.), The Government of Medieval York: Essays in Commemoration of the 1396 Royal Charter (York, 1997), p. 102 and n. 62; J. W. F. Hill, Medieval Lincoln (Cambridge, 1948), pp. 213-14, 240; Norwich dates ex inf. J. Campbell.

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parliaments developed alongside separate bodies of townsmen (the socalled estate of merchants) which the king frequently called between 1275 and 1353. These were usually summoned in connection with taxation in wool, but there could be other reasons for sounding out urban views. In 1297 Edward summoned representatives of twenty towns to a colloquium to plan a new town at Berwick-upon-Tweed, which he had just captured from the Scots.15 The long reign of Edward III was a turning-point in relations between the crown and the leading townsmen; conflict was generally replaced by co-operation, with London leading the rest. In his very first year London received a generous charter of privileges, whereby the Crown 'reconciled itself to the idea of an autonomous London'.16 In 1334 royal taxation of town and countryside was made more regular and equitable. From 1353 Edward abandoned the use of merchant assemblies which had helped him and the wool merchants to exploit unpopular wool taxes and loans; instead, he began to move towards a staple system which represented a compromise between different interest groups. An act of parliament in 1354 laid down a procedure for redressing grievances against municipal governments, and it was rare after that for kings to take the drastic step of confiscating towns' chartered privileges. Even so, it would be wrong to see in all this any royal weakness vis-a-vis the towns. W. M. Ormrod has shown that Edward was careful, in restoring royal authority, to keep a firm initiative in his relations with merchants and parliamentary burgesses. The 1353 Ordinance of the Staple, for example, was not forced on the king but was imposed by the government.17 It was Edward Ill's administration which authorized two new types of urban privileges: incorporation, and the status of counties corporate. Between 1345 and 1500 forty-two towns acquired charters of incorporation, formally recognizing their corporate personality at law in the same way as monastic houses or cathedral chapters. In practice, however, many towns already enjoyed de facto incorporation, and Susan Reynolds has recently demonstrated that the new charters owed more to developing legal definitions than to changing realities.18 It needs also to be remembered that the first generally recognized such charter, that M. Beresford, New Towns of the Middle Ages: Town Plantation in England, Wales and Gascony (London, 1967), pp. 3-7. 16 Williams, Medieval London, p. 307. 17 W. M. Ormrod, 'Edward III and the Recovery of Royal Authority in England, 1340-60', History, 72 (1987), 12. 18 Susan Reynolds, 'The History of the Idea of Incorporation or Legal Personality: A Case of Fallacious Teleology', in her Ideas and Solidarities of the Medieval Laity: England and Western Europe (Aldershot, 1995), ch. VI (separately paginated): cf. Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, i. 669 ff. 15

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to Coventry in 1345, was the product of particular local circumstances, in that the king and the queen mother were supporting the citizens in, effectively, transforming a seigneurial into a royal town;19 once this elaborate charter had been granted, however, it became a model for other towns. Nevertheless, the relative unimportance of these overrated grants can be seen from the fact that London never troubled to acquire such a charter, even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when well over a hundred provincial towns had done so.20 A more significant advance was the concept of counties corporate, by which a major town was granted its own sheriff or sheriffs, and exempted from the jurisdiction of the county sheriff and other royal officers. Bristol was granted this privilege in 1373, followed by ten other towns before 1500 (York, Newcastle, Norwich, Lincoln, Hull, Southampton, Nottingham, Coventry, Canterbury and Gloucester).21 Again, the precedent for these grants was a special case. As Edward Ill's charter to Bristol stated, the town and its suburb of Redcliff straddled a county boundary; the respective county and assize towns, Gloucester and Ilchester, were both 'distant thirty miles of roads' which were dangerous to travel, and nearly impassable in winter.22 Once more, however, a valid need for one town became a sought-after privilege for others: the other cities and towns which followed Bristol had no such justification, as none of them except Newcastle lay on a county boundary. Ormrod suggests that York's 1396 charter, the first to emulate Bristol, reflect that city's 'increasingly strident determination to keep up with its competitors'. Norwich, similarly, pressed Richard II for enlarged chartered rights, looking jealously at the privileges of London, and no doubt of York also: Richard did not oblige, but the influential

A. A. Dibben, Coventry City Charters, Coventry Papers (Coventry, 1969), pp. 13-20; P. R. Coss, 'Coventry before Incorporation: A Reinterpretation', Midland History, 2 (1974), 137-51; R. H. C. Davis, The Early History of Coventry, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 24 (Oxford 1976); A. and E. Gooder, 'Coventry before 1355: Unity or Division?', Midland History, 6 (1981), 1-38; T. John (ed.), Medieval Coventry: A City Divided?, Historical Association, Coventry branch (1981). 20 M. Weinbaum, The Incorporation of Boroughs (Manchester, 1937), pp. 132-4, stated that London acquired such a charter in 1608, by which date he lists over 160 other towns as having done so; and the latest list of charters of incorporation follows Weinbaum in this: R. Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political Culture, c. 1540-1640 (Oxford, 1998), p. 346. However, the charter of 1608 'is in no sense a charter of incorporation': P. E. Jones and R. Smith, A Guide to the Records in the Corporation of London Records Office and the Guildhall Library Muniment Room (London, 1951), p. 18 n. i. 21 Not counting the abortive case of Scarborough: see below, n. 34. 22 S. Seyer (ed.), The Charters and Letters Patent Granted . . . to the Town and City of Bristol (Bristol, 1812), p. 40. 19

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Norfolk knight Sir Thomas Erpingham persuaded his successor in 1404 to grant the city the status of a county and other privileges.23 It should be added that towns, even if they acquired 'county' status, were no more than small islands set in the royal sea of the shires. There was no real equivalent to the Italian contadi which would have given the larger towns and cities more power in relation to the crown, not even London's control of Middlesex. Most borough liberties extended only a little way beyond the walls or the built-up area, and there was no large rural hinterland contributing taxes or armed forces to the municipality. In 1559 Lincoln pressed for an extension of the county of their city to a radius of three or four miles, noting that York had 'towns' twelve miles distant within its liberties; but this exaggerated remark related to an exceptional link between the city of York and the adjoining wapentake of Ainsty over which it had considerable but not total control.24 In the fifteenth century the larger towns, and some smaller ones, continued to acquire chartered privileges, and to be represented in frequent parliaments. More towns are known to have been represented in parliament under Henry VI than in any previous reign, and although better preservation of the records is partly responsible, new towns began to return representatives for the first time from the 14405 onwards.25 Furthermore, the weakness of the crown during the intermittent civil wars of 1453-87 played into their hands. Between 1433 and 1482 successive kings remitted some £73,000 in fee farm and tax reductions, and although there were genuine reasons of urban poverty behind at least some of the concessions, the crown's need for urban support certainly played a part. Some of the most generous tax concessions, or grants of new privileges, were made by kings who had just taken the throne in disputed circumstances - in 1461-2, 1483-4 and I485-6.26 It can thus be argued that English towns gradually acquired, between the 11905 and the fifteenth century, a high degree of autonomy under the crown. Such a view, however, relies heavily on a tradition going back to nineteenth-century historians to whom municipal self-govern23

W. M. Ormrod, 'York and the Crown under the First Three Edwards', in Rees Jones (ed.), The Government of Medieval York, pp. 14-33, at P- 33; Lorraine Attreed, 'The Politics of Welcome: Ceremonies and Constitutional Development in Later Medieval English Towns', in B. A. Hanawalt and K. L. Reyerson (ed.), City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1994), pp. 212-13. 24 J. W. F. Hill, Tudor and Stuart Lincoln (Cambridge, 1956), p. 70; Palliser, 'Birth of York's Civic Liberties', pp. 97-8. 25 M. McKisack, The Parliamentary Representation of the English Boroughs during the Middle Ages (London, 1932), pp. 45-6. 26 D. M. Palliser, 'Urban Decay Revisited', in J. A. F. Thomson (ed.), Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1988), pp. 4, 5; Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns, pp. 47-9.

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ment (like parliamentary government) was a natural and just culmination. From that point of view, kings had before 1189 taken a repressive attitude to urban aspirations; from 1189 to 1327 town leaders struggled for more privileges and autonomy (just as the community of the realm struggled for Magna Carta and for royal accountability); and from 1327 to 1485 conflict between crown and towns was replaced by co-operation. In that interpretation, the period 1485-1688 represented a step backwards, as Tudor and Stuart monarchs increasingly interfered with urban privileges and autonomy. However, such a view is not only teleological and oversimplified, but it also sees the greater and royal towns in terms of their own claims, while neglecting many smaller and seigneurial towns altogether. Royal charters to towns have attracted so much attention that - as Warren puts it - 'government in the boroughs has often been considered in isolation from that of the rest of the realm and made to appear to be of a special character'.27 However, much royal government was entrusted to subjects as franchise-holders, and chartered towns were only one type of franchise. As Maitland put it, 'the group of burgesses was a franchise-holder in a land full of franchise-holders, and had to submit to the rules which governed the other possessors of royal rights'. From the king's point of view, 'so far from implying autonomy, selfgovernment obliged the town to answer directly to the Crown for all those functions which it had taken over from the sheriff. In most respects, 'boroughs were like baronial liberties; they might acquire rights to exclude the sheriffs subordinates . . ., but they had to discharge the king's business by their own officials, and were liable to have their franchises suspended or revoked if they were remiss'.28 The king was therefore not reducing his own power when he transferred it from county sheriffs to elected urban officers, but exercising it through different channels: and he was especially anxious to do so for taxation purposes. While 'in Italy, for instance, municipal institutions profited from the weakness of the monarchy, in England they were developed partly because town officials, however appointed, were kept busy raising royal taxes'.29 Taxation was always a major royal interest in the towns. Besides the firma burgi or town dues already noted, the towns contributed both to national taxes and to levies made by the king on his own estates. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the main national tax had been the geld, W. L. Warren, The Governance of Norman and Angevin England, 1086-1272 (London, 1987), p. 218. 28 Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, i. 668; Warren, Governance of Norman and Angevin England, p. 219. 29 Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, p. 180. 27

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to which towns contributed substantially. Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, kings arbitrarily levied tallages on their demesne lands, including the towns, until resistance showed their unpopularity. Instead, from the late thirteenth century, normal taxation took the form of subsidies (direct parliamentary taxes on moveables), coupled with indirect taxation in the shape of customs levied on wool exports (from 1275) and later on cloth exports and wine imports. The leading towns were, however, underassessed to the subsidies in terms of their real wealth, so from the 13405 the crown 'began to redress this imbalance by demanding substantial individual and corporate loans from the English merchant community'.30 In all these ways, the crown was learning to tap more effectively the growing commercial and industrial wealth of England. Even the regular representation of burgesses in parliament, often viewed from the towns' perspective, has to be seen also as 'an integral part of the mobilization of every part of the community to the supply of the king's "necessities" '.31 Apart from raising revenue for the king, urban officers were expected by him to maintain law and order, administer justice through local courts, regulate markets and trade, provide troops or ships for the armed forces, requisition supplies for the royal court and provide transport for royal officials. All these activities were to be undertaken at royal command and not otherwise: there was no question, for instance, of English towns having the right to raise their own militia under their own control.32 It was to ensure that such duties were carried out satisfactorily that kings before 1327 so often reimposed direct royal government in major towns. It is significant that when he took over and refounded Hull as a major support port in 1293, Edward I placed it under a royal keeper; it had no elected mayor until 1331. Even after 1327 monarchs did not abandon the ultimate right to override urban liberties. Edward III put keepers in charge of Southampton after a French raid in 1338; Richard II confiscated London's liberties in 1392; and Henry VI four times imposed direct royal rule on Nottingham. Kings were understandably worried about the potential for disorder among urban crowds, many of them immigrants or visitors. The worry was well expressed by Edward III when he ordered a commission of the peace for the city of Lincoln separate from that for Lincolnshire, explaining in 30

W. M. Ormrod, 'The Crown and the English Economy, 1290-1348', in B. M. S. Campbell (ed.), Before the Black Death: Studies in the 'Crisis' of the Early Fourteenth Century (Manchester, 1991), pp. 157-8. 31 A. Harding, England in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1993), p. 145. 32 Even city councillors with a close relationship with a particular monarch, and at a time of urgent military need by that king, dared not raise troops for his support without a direct order: L. C. Attreed, (ed.), The York House Books, 1461-1490 (2 vols, Stroud, I99i) 5 PP- 366-8.

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an unusual preamble that he did so 'because in our city of Lincoln there is frequent and general movement of our people, and many from the neighbouring parts and elsewhere . . . lodge and stay in the same city'.33 Urban autonomy, therefore, should not be overestimated even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The numerous royal charters entailed more unpaid responsibilities for urban officials; and it was becoming a common practice for the more important towns to purchase confirmation charters at the accession of a new king, thus underlining the point that the interpretation - and even the continuation - of old rights depended on the will of the current ruler. Richard III granted surprisingly generous privileges in 1485 to the Yorkshire port of Scarborough, including the ultimate accolade of county status; when Henry VII supplanted him, a few months later, he did not annul Richard's charter but simply ignored it.34 Likewise, royal tax concessions should not necessarily be taken at face value. The same Richard III granted a substantial reduction in the fee farm of York; but the royal exchequer failed to ratify the full settlement promised, and the citizens were unable to secure a satisfactory confirmation of their reduced payments until I536.35 Three further qualifications should be made to the usual picture of the late medieval chartered town. First, at least half the English towns were seigneurial, and their achievement of liberties generally lagged behind those of royal towns. The earls of Leicester, for instance, controlled the county town of Leicester. Although they granted some autonomy, it was not until the town came into the king's hands in 1399 that its liberties caught up with those of similar towns. Beverley, Durham and Salisbury acquired only limited self-government under their episcopal lords, while monastic houses tended to be stricter still. Westminster, St Albans and Bury St Edmunds acquired no elective governing bodies until their monastic lords were dispossessed in the sixteenth century, although the first of these was allowed some effective autonomy by its abbots.36 A short-lived exception only reinforces the E. G. Kimball (ed.), Sessions of the Peace in the City of Lincoln, Lincoln Record Soc., 65 (1971), PP- x, i, 2. 34 The charter, dated 2 April 2 Richard II, is translated in full, from the original in the borough archives, in anon., Borough of Scarborough: Copy Translations of Charters, etc. (London, 1915), pp. 11-25. It is als° abstracted, at second hand, in Martin Weinbaum (ed.), British Borough Charters, 1307-1660 (Cambridge, 1943), p. 131. 35 A. P. M. Wright, 'The Relations between the King's Government and the English Cities and Boroughs in the Fifteenth Century' (Univ. of Oxford, D.Phil, thesis, 1965), pp. 193-8; L. Attreed, 'Poverty, Payments and Fiscal Policies in English Provincial Towns', in S. K. Cohn, Jr, and S. A. Epstein (ed.), Portraits of Medieval and Renaissance Living: Essays in Memory of David Herlihy (Michigan, 1996); D. M. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), pp. 48, 215-17. 36 Gervase Rosser, 'The Essence of Medieval Urban Communities: The Vill of 33

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point. In 1341 Edward III was persuaded to sell extensive privileges to the burgesses of Wells over the head of their lord, the bishop of Bath and Wells. The bishop, however, secured the cancellation of the charter in 1342 as being prejudicial to his rights. When the leading burgesses formed a sworn commune to resist him, they were heavily fined in the royal courts.37 Secondly, many small towns - whether royal or seigneurial - were too small or poor to achieve much self-government. R. H. Hilton, in a series of penetrating studies of small midland towns, has suggested that half of the urban population lived in 'small market towns', most of them seigneurial: but in these cases the lack of much autonomy was a function of size as well as lordship. Hilton's examples, such as Evesham, Halesowen, Tewkesbury and Thornbury, are seigneurial boroughs, but small royal towns often equally lacked administrative autonomy, or indeed any privileges which marked them off from villages except a market, a fair and, perhaps, burgage tenure.38 Thirdly, there was the anomalous position of Oxford and Cambridge, England's only university towns. It was usual for major religious institutions in royal towns to enjoy 'liberties' which made them islands of jurisdiction outside the control of the urban corporation. Only in Oxford and Cambridge, however, the recruiting grounds for the king's bureaucracy, 'was the clerical community of such paramount importance to the crown'.39 Parliament could declare that 'in the vill of Cambridge there are two communes, one of clerks and one of lay men';40 and in the event of a clash between them the king could be depended upon to support the university. Successive kings in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries granted both universities more and more control over urban administration, and in 1355, after serious riots Westminster, 1200-1540', TRHS, 5th series, 34 (1984), 91-112; idem, Medieval Westminster, 1200-1540 (Oxford, 1989). In some other Benedictine towns there were violent clashes between monks and townspeople, in which the crown almost invariably supported the monastic lords: N. F. Trenholme, The English Monastic Boroughs, University of Missouri Studies, 2 (1927), passim. D. G. Shaw, The Creation of a Community: The City of Wells in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1993), pp. 114-24. 38 E.g. R. H. Hilton, 'The Small Town and Urbanisation: Evesham in the Middle Ages', Midland History, 7 (1982), 1-8; idem, 'Towns in Societies: Medieval England', Urban History Yearbook 1982, pp. 7-13; idem, 'Small Town Society before the Black Death', Past and Present, 105 (1984), 53-78; 'Medieval Market Towns and Simple Commodity Production', Past and Present, 109 (1985), 3-23. On the category in general, see Christopher Dyer, 'Small Towns, 1270-1540', in D. M. Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, i (Cambridge, forthcoming). 39 M. D. Lobel, 'Cambridge', p. 7, in Lobel (ed.), The Atlas of Historic Towns, ii (London, 1975), separately paginated. 40 Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, i. 494. 37

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in Oxford, Edward III gave the university full control of the town market, street cleansing and peace-keeping. When in 1381 Cambridge men seized the opportunity of the Peasants' Revolt to settle scores with their university, it also was given control of the town market by another humiliating royal charter. Kings were also willing to protect outsiders against the interests of native townsmen. It was probably on William Fs initiative that Jews first came to England; it was kings who protected the urban Jewries against often hostile neighbours throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and when they were expelled from the realm in 1290 it was a royal decision and not the result of popular hostility.41 Similarly, kings from the thirteenth century onwards encouraged alien financiers and merchants. It was Italian merchants and bankers who loaned money to the crown almost continuously from 1272 to the 13405, when the Peruzzi and Bardi went bankrupt because of their English loans; and in 1303 Edward I granted large privileges to alien merchants in return for extra customs payments. Indeed, for much of the fourteenth century there were complex manoeuvres between crown, alien merchants, native merchants and parliaments as the kings tried to maximize revenue from customs on wool exports, until the Staple system achieved a fairly stable compromise in the 13505 and 13605, putting alien merchants at a disadvantage over wool exports, and also encouraging the growth of cloth exports under native control. However, it still suited kings to favour Hanseatic merchants intermittently, and Edward IV in 1474 restored their extensive privileges in England after an AngloHanse war. But in making these qualifications to the traditional view of growing urban autonomy, and in stressing the supremacy of the crown over the towns (at least until 1688), it is important not to react too far. Kings had throughout the Middle Ages an interest not only in controlling their towns but in conciliating townsmen because of their political and financial importance. Certainly, from the reigns of Richard I and John onwards, it is possible to detect a concern by the crown to take seriously the power and influence of towns; and it would be wrong to dismiss altogether the view that successive kings granted more and more privileges to townsmen, both collectively and individually, partly as a means of bidding for their support.42 Naturally, most royal grants were made to a body of citizens or burgesses collectively, which in practice meant the ruling group in that town, whether one chooses to call it an 41 Sophia Menache, 'The King, the Church and the Jews: Some Considerations on the Expulsions from England and France', Journal of Medieval History, 13 (1987), 223-36. 42 Edward Miller, 'The Economic Policies of Governments', in M. M. Postan et al. (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, hi (Cambridge, 1963), p. 287.

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'oligarchy' or not.43 By the fifteenth century some royal charters, and some parliamentary statutes., were explicitly designed to bolster the powers of urban rulers, such as the London charter of 1444, which made the mayor and aldermen ex officio justices of peace, with power to determine criminal as well as civil cases; or the statute of 1489 creating self-electing councils at Leicester and Northampton.44 On the other hand, kings and their officers were well capable of siding with lesser townspeople against their councils if they feared oppression leading to disorder, as in 1306 when the royal justices upheld charges of conspiring against the poor by the leading citizens of York.45 London claims attention as a wholly exceptional case. Well before the Norman Conquest it had become the largest and wealthiest English town, judging from the imperfect indicators available. Its contribution to the geld levied by Cnut in 1018, for instance, is said to have amounted to 13 per cent of the English total, while its share of all coins struck at English mints between 973 and 1066 was as high as 24 per cent.46 Guy, bishop of Amiens, described it in his Song of the Battle of Hastings as 'richer in treasure than the rest of the kingdom',47 and it is scarcely surprising that William I considered it vital to hold it securely with two major royal castles rather than the usual county-town quota of one. The wealth of the leading Londoners, however, meant that the relationship was never entirely one-sided. Their hold over a king short of money was most strikingly demonstrated in the early 11305, almost certainly in June or July 1133, when Henry I granted the citizens an amazingly generous charter of privileges, including the fee-farm in perpetuity - and at a much reduced annual sum - and allowing the Londoners to elect the sheriffs who were the actual farmers. This was not only far and away the earliest royal grant of any urban fee-farm in perpetuity but was also 43

For the continuing debate on the existence of oligarchies, see S. H. Rigby, 'Urban "Oligarchy" in Late Medieval England', in Thomson (ed.), Towns and Townspeople in Fifteenth-Century England, pp. 62-86; Jennifer Kermode, 'Obvious Observations on the Formation of Oligarchies in Late Medieval England', ibid., pp. 87-106; Reynolds, Ideas and Solidarities, ch. XV, pp. 50-2; S. H. Rigby and E. Ewan, 'Government, Power and Authority', in Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, i (forthcoming). 44 Calendar of Charter Rolls, vi. 41-44 (not printed in W. de G. Birch, The Historical Charters and Constitutional Documents of the City of London, London, 1884); A. S. Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (2 vols, London, 1894), ii. 287; C. A. Markham (ed.), The Records of the Borough of Northampton (2 vols, Northampton, 1898), i. 101. 45 G. O. Sayles, 'The Dissolution of a Gild at York in 1306', EHR, 55 (1940), 83-98; Palliser, 'The Birth of York's Civic Liberties', pp. 102-3. 46 Calculated from C. N. L. Brooke and G. Keir, London, 800-1216: The Shaping of a City (London, 1975), p. 24; Metcalf, Atlas of Anglo-Saxon and Norman Coin Finds, pp. 293-301. 47 C. Morton and H. Muntz (ed.), The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens (Oxford, 1972), pp. 40-1.

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effectively the first grant of a county corporate - 240 years before Bristol's - since the Londoners were allowed to elect the sheriff of Middlesex. The charter is, indeed, so generous, making concessions which were certainly not observed in the two following reigns, that its date and authenticity have been doubted by many scholars. Nevertheless, Hollister's defence of its genuineness is convincing, and his explanation for Henry's apparent generosity - an urgent need for London money - very plausible.48 The charter was quickly foUowed by other events demonstrating the power of the leading Londoners: their part in choosing (eligendum) Stephen as king in 1135, and their establishing a commune during the political chaos of Ii4i. 49 Thereafter, however, for two centuries the crown's relations with London were very ambivalent: a large, wealthy city close to the centre of power could often seem more of a threat than a potential ally. Stephen, Matilda and Henry II removed many of the privileges granted in 1133, and the fee-farm in perpetuity was not regranted until 1199, and then only in return for the huge sum of £2000, which took over four years to pay.50 By then, however, the royal council had already (in 1191) granted a London commune under an elected mayor, a public recognition of the city's importance, hi the crisis of 1215 the leading citizens pressed King John for substantial concessions over autonomy and taxation, and finally threw in their lot with the rebels. From that reign onwards the city effectively enjoyed corporate status and a considerable measure of selfgovernment, but it was quickly made aware that all depended on royal goodwill. In 1239, defied by the aldermen over his attempt to interfere in London elections, Henry III suspended the city's liberties, the first of a series of quarrels which led to at least ten suspensions of the liberties, and which culminated in the revolutionary events of 1263-5. The mayor and 'a commune of the middling people (communa mediocris populi)' allied with Earl Simon, and provided vital military support to him at Lewes. Unsurprisingly, Henry and his son Edward took their revenge in 1265, and the city's liberties were not fully restored until 1270, after payment of a huge fine of 20,000 marks and an increase in the fee-farm.51 48 The scepticism of C. N. L. Brooke, G. Keir and S. Reynolds, 'Henry I's Charter for the City of London', Journal of the Society of Archivists, 4 (1973), 555-78, is still often cited in preference to C. W. Hollister, 'London's First Charter of Liberties: Is It Genuine?', Journal of Medieval History, 6 (1980), 289-306. However, Reynolds has generously acknowledged that his rebuttal is 'convincing' (Ideas and Solidarities, ch. IX, unpaginated 'Afterthoughts'), while in Elenchus fontium historiae urbanae, ii, pt 2, pp. 62-4, she prints the charter as probably authentic. 49 K. R. Potter (ed.), Gesta Stephani (London, 1955), p. 3; Reynolds, Ideas and Solidarities, ch. IX, p. 342. 50 Brooke and Keir, London, 800-1216, p. 50 and n. 3. 51 Williams, Medieval London, pp. 196-263; J. R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 234, 264-5, 288.

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The alternation of conflict and co-operation was to continue for another half-century. In 1285 multiplying disorders gave Edward I the pretext to seize the city's liberties again; he relented only under pressure of the national crisis of 1297-8, restoring the mayoralty in 1298 and full chartered rights in 1299. In his last years he was more conciliatory, and in 1301 and 1306 he allowed London to compound for its share of the national subsidies, effectively a tax remission. In the following decade Edward IFs relations with the city deteriorated, and in 1321 he launched 'a sustained attack on the city's franchises and free customs', involving a quo warranto inquiry and the forfeiture of the mayoralty.52 Though that office was soon nominally restored, the mayors from 1321 were effectively royal nominees, and not surprisingly Londoners took an active part in the revolution of 1326-7, including the lynching of royal supporters, the forcing of bishops and magnates to make a sworn alliance with them, and participation in the delegation to Kenilworth to secure the king's abdication.53 A turning-point, already noticed, was Edward Ill's comprehensive charter of privileges to London in 1327, signalling a new partnership between king and leading Londoners. A particularly generous clause allowed London to be taxed at the lower rural, rate of a fifteenth (6.7 per cent) rather than the higher, urban, rate of a tenth (10 per cent). London was henceforth under-assessed and its privileged position was further enhanced when the crown agreed in 1334 to work on a compounded, rather than an assessed, valuation of London's wealth. London had long led the way in local legislation on social and economic policies, and Edward Ill's government began to adopt many of these policies, including control of prices and wages, and sumptuary legislation. From the 13605 London merchants dominated the new organisation of Merchants of the Staple; and many leading Londoners acquired posts in government offices at Westminster, or in the royal customs service. The mayor and aldermen played a leading part in defeating the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, for which five of them were knighted by Richard II; and he and his two successors all borrowed extensively from Richard Whittington, four times mayor of London. It is true that Richard II revoked the chartered liberties of London in 1392, and did not fully restore them until I397,54 but he paid dearly for this by then The Eyre of London 14 Edward II, AD 1321, ed. H. M. Cam, Selden Society, 85 (1968), p. xix. 53 M. V. Clarke, Medieval Representation and Consent (London, 1936), pp. 173-95; W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 7^27-7^77 (New Haven/London, 1990), p. xii; W. R. Childs and John Taylor (ed.), The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1307 to 1334 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, 147, 1991 for 1987), pp. 128-9. 54 C. M. Barron, 'Richard IPs Quarrel with London', in F.R.H. Du Boulay and C. M. Barron (ed.), The Reign of Richard II (London, 1970), pp. 173-201. The statement 52

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abnormal high-handedness when the city welcomed Bolingbroke in 1399. In the fifteenth century relations between kings and the London merchants continued to be close, and the crown consistently upheld the Staplers' monopoly of wool exports. Between 1448 and 1460 Londoners, individually and collectively, lent £30,000 to Henry VI, a massive financial investment in his regime. In July 1460, however, they abruptly shifted support to Edward, duke of York, when the city was threatened with sack; and having shifted allegiance, they then provided equally large financial support to the Yorkists, support which was crucial to putting Edward IV on the throne. 'Without a Yorkist victory, the Londoners had no hope of maintaining their privileges intact . . . But with Edward IV on the throne they were able to demand and, ultimately, to secure rights and offices long sought and long denied.'55 Edward at his coronation made six aldermen knights of the Bath, and he and Henry VII were more generous with honours to leading Londoners than any previous monarchs. By this time the leading London merchants trading with the Netherlands had come together to form the Merchant Adventurers of London, formally organized in 1486, and very quickly given strong support by the king. In the sixteenth century they were to become, with royal backing, the most privileged group of English merchants trading overseas. Crown-town relations did not, therefore, follow a uniform course in late medieval England. Kings had interests which might or might not coincide with those of urban rulers and merchants; and they might have more or less need for urban support depending on their own strength or weakness. An often-cited instance of bidding for urban support was the action of the Lord John in 1191 (in his brother's absence overseas) in granting the citizens of London a commune, an action which (Richard of Devizes commented) Henry II would not have permitted even 'for a million silver marks'.56 However, medieval monarchs never abandoned ultimate control over their towns: 'the communal movement was kept in check by a watchful Crown, and its manifestations in England were limited to the introduction of sworn town councils with mayors to preside over them, and a renewed vigour in municipal affairs'.57 Even those privileges, as we have seen, were often abruptly withdrawn by the that London did not regain its liberties until Henry IV's reign, in David Nicholas, The Later Medieval City, 1300-1500 (London, 1997), p. 134, is not correct. 55 C. M. Barron, 'London and the Crown, 1451-61', in J. R. L. Highfield and R. Jeffs (ed.), The Crown and Local Communities in England and France in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1981), p. 100. 56 J. T. Appleby (ed.), The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes (London, 1963), p. 49. 57 Harding, England in the Thirteenth Century, p. 127.

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crown, at least before 1327. It is true that the weakness of the crown in the mid-fifteenth century, and the ensuing civil wars, gave the larger towns a bargaining counter, allowing London, York and Coventry to play crucial roles at key moments, and many other towns to haggle for privileges and tax concessions. This was, however, only a temporary phase; from the later years of Edward IV's reign urban autonomy was checked, and royal letters began to rain down upon towns, intervening in their affairs, controlling their choice of officials, and rebuking mayors and councils over any disorders. It was unnecessary for Edward, or for Henry VII, to withdraw civic liberties, 'for the rulers of great cities like York trembled at the mere threat of royal displeasure'.58 In 1495 Henry VII summoned the mayor of that city before the royal court, and told him that, if he could not prevent riots, 'I must and woll put in other rewlers that woll rewle and govern the citie according to my lawez'.59 And when, in 1596, the corporation of Lincoln objected to admitting the authority of the county justices within their boundaries during a famine, the queen's privy council warned them ominously 'that in a time of such necessity as this, it is unfit to stand curiously and precisely upon advantages of privileges'.60 Taking the long view, Dr Wright has demonstrated that the greater part of the fifteenth century can be seen as an interlude between two different periods of central control over the towns. Until the early years of Henry VFs reign, kings took a firm line with urban disorder, and also continued to extract large sums through traditional financial obligations. Much of this broke down in the middle of the century, but when royal power was revived under Edward IV and the Tudors, it was on a very different basis, and the towns had not had long 'to enjoy their immunity from governmental intervention before a new, and because less formal, more effective and adaptable system was imposed upon them'.61 Nevertheless, even the revived royal power of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had to take note of the power and wealth of the Londoners, on the very doorstep of the central government at Westminster. The attitude of the mayor and aldermen was crucial on occasions of rebellion and disputed succession, and the wealth of the leading merchants was equally crucial for taxes and loans, both individually and corporately. London's contribution to the loan of 1522 to the crown (really a concealed tax) was nearly equal to that of the counties 58 Wright, 'Relations between the King's Government and the English Cities and Boroughs', pp. 394-559 Angelo Raine (ed.), York Civic Records, ii, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, 103 (1941), p. 115. 60 Hill, Tudor and Stuart Lincoln, p. 77. 61 Wright, 'Relations between the King's Government and the English Cities and Boroughs', p. 396.

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of Norfolk and Suffolk put together, and represented about one-eighth of the lay wealth of England.62 Sensible monarchs collaborated with the capital's mayor and aldermen, and those who were on bad terms with them, like Mary I and Charles I, owed much of their political failure to that fact. The discontents of the urban merchants, including the Londoners, played a large part in the fall of the monarchy in the 16405; and the restored monarchy's actions in the wholesale remodelling of borough charters equally stored up resentments which played a large part in the Revolution of 1688. W. G. Hoskins, The Age of Plunder: The England of Henry VIII, 1500-1547 (London, 1976), p. 25. 62

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88 A Twelfth-Century View of the Spanish Past RICHARD FLETCHER

In the second decade of the twelfth century an inmate of the community of San Isidore in the city of Leon in northern Spain resolved to compose a work in celebration of the life and deeds of the Emperor Alfonso VI, lately deceased on i July 1109 in the seventy-third year of his life and the forty-fourth of his reign. The author never accomplished his purpose, thus denying to historians a work from Spain to set alongside such royal biographies as Wipe's Gesta Chuonradi, the anonymous Vita SEdwardi Regis or William of Poitiers's Gesta Guittelmi. All he left behind him were the leisurely preliminaries to his account of 'the lord Alfonso, orthodox emperor of Spain' in the form of a work known to scholars as the Historia Silense-, owing to its supposed association with the Castilian monastery of Silos.1 Alfonso VI deserved such a memorial. The second of the three sons of Fernando I and his wife Sancha, he had succeeded to the kingdom of Leon in the threefold division of his father's realms upon the latter's death in 1065. By 1072 he had reunited the inheritance by ousting his brothers. The elder, Sancho of Castile, was murdered in unsavoury circumstances while besieging the town of Zamora; the younger, Garcia of Galicia, was imprisoned for the remaining eighteen years of his life. Alfonso went on to re-create and extend his father's network of tributetaking from the petty states of the Muslim south which had succeeded to the unitary authority of the caliphate of Cordoba when that had fragmented in the early eleventh century. He also indulged in territorial aggrandizement at their expense, a process crowned in 1085 by his conquest of Toledo, the ancient capital of the Visigothic kings. The colossal wealth thereby gained was poured out profusely upon the churches of Spain and beyond - upon Santiago de Compostela, upon Leon, Oviedo, Sahagiin, and most famously of all, upon Cluny. Alfonso 1 Historia Silense, ed. J. Perez de Urbel and A. Gonzalez Ruiz-Zorrilla (Madrid, 1959), henceforward cited by the editors' slightly eccentric enumeration of chapters. I should like to thank Simon Barton and Peter Linehan for their comments upon a draft of this essay.

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earned the commendation of Pope Gregory VII for bringing his subjects into liturgical conformity with the rest of Latin Christendom and for initiating a closer relationship than had ever existed before between the churches of western Spain and the papacy. He appointed a Cluniac monk, Bernard., to the archbishopric of Toledo, who forcefully continued this aggiornamento of the Spanish church. Alfonso's marriage to Constance of Burgundy, niece of Abbot Hugh of Cluny, strengthened his ties with the territorial princes of France and helped to encourage the flow of soldiers and settlers into Spain to consolidate recent conquests. When those conquests were threatened by the invasion from Morocco of the fundamentalist Almoravids in 1086, Alfonso defended them stoutly. For the last twenty years of his life he stood out, bloody but unbowed, as a bastion of Christendom against a resurgent western Islam: the most renowned monarch of his age.2 Contemporary opinion was in no doubt about the greatness of Alfonso VI. For Grimaldus, recording during Alfonso's lifetime the life and miracles of Santo Domingo de Silos, he was 'the glorious king'. The anonymous chronicler of Sahagun, writing shortly afterwards, left a lengthy eulogy of the king and a moving account of the mourning which followed his death. Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo told how the very paving-stones in the church of San Isidore de Leon wept at the prospect of Alfonso's death. For Nuno Alfonso, canon of Compostela and author of the Historia Compostellana until his promotion to the bishopric of Mondonedo in 1112, the king was 'catholic . . . most excellent. . . venerable . . . most holy . . . most illustrious . . . a man of the greatest statesmanship and piety (prudentie et religionisy. In the words of Nufio's patron, Bishop Diego Gelmirez, 'the church was sustained by his [Alfonso's] efforts'. His daughter Queen Urraca could refer to her father as 'the catholic emperor of blessed memory', and to her brother-in-law Pope Calixtus II the great king was 'of noble memory . . . of distinguished memory'.3 2 For a detailed treatment of the king and his reign see Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of Ledn-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065-1109 (Princeton, 1988). 3 La vita Dominici Siliensis de Grimaldo: estudio, edicion critica y traduccion, ed. V. Valcarcel (Logrono, 1982) ii. 26 (p. 376); R. Escalona, Historia del real monasterio de Sahagun (Madrid, 1782), appendix i, cc. 4, 14 (pp. 298-9, 303); Cronica del Obispo Don Pelayo, ed. B. Sanchez Alonso (Madrid, 1924), pp. 84-65 Historia Compostellana, ed. E. Falque Rey, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, 70 (Turnhout, 1988), i. 6, 7, 10, 23, 25 (pp. 20, 21, 26, 51, 53); La Corufia, Archive Historico del Reino de Galicia, Documentos Particulares, Monasterio de San Payo de Antealtares, no. 27 (an episcopal charter of n October 1113); Cokccion Documental delArchivo de la Catedral de Leon, 775-1230, ed. J. M. Fernandez Caton, v, 1109-1187 (Leon, 1990), no. 1327; Historia Compostellana, ii. 48 (pp. 299-300: two letters of Calixtus II of 7 October 1121 = Regesta pontificum Romanorum, ed. P. Jaffe (2nd edn, by S. Loewenfeld et al., 2 vols, Leipzig, 1885-8), 6926, 6927).

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It is difficult to suppose that the anonymous author of the Historia Silense would in any manner have dissented from this chorus of praise.4 Alfonso was 'prudent in counsel as well as very mighty in arms . . . the most worthy of respect among all the kings who govern Christ's church in a catholic manner' (cc. 7, 12). Phrases such as these suggest how our author might have treated the 'orthodox emperor' in the biography which he never composed. This should not surprise us; for the very little that we can infer about the writer places him in circles close to the royal family. Writing of Alfonso VTs elder sister Urraca (d. noi), he observed that 'she was outstanding in both wisdom and goodness, which indeed we have learned more by experience than by report' (c. 12: my emphasis). In what circumstances could he have experienced the wisdom and goodness of the princess? In another passage he tells us that he had 'submitted [his] neck to the yoke of Christ from the very flower of youth and received the monastic habit at the monastery called Domus Seminis' (c. 7). There has been much discussion as to the identity of this community, too much to go into here. Suffice it to say that of the three favourite candidates Silos is the least likely, and San Isidore de Leon more plausible than Sahagun. The case for San Isidoro rests, first, upon an emendation which is justified by the frequently garbled state of a text whose two earliest manuscripts were copied in the fifteenth century and were at least two removes from the presumed original. The copyist's seminis may most plausibly be interpreted as an incorrect expansion of the abbreviated sci ihns, 'of St John'. Now the monastic house which we know today as San Isidoro de Leon acquired this patron saint only after the translation of Isidore's relics to it in 1063. Before that its patron had been St John the Baptist; it had been the domus sancti lohannis.5 The patronage of St Isidore did not immediately oust earlier loyalties. References to the dual patronage of St John the Baptist and St Isidore can be found in later documents; for instance, in 4 Difficult but not impossible. Dr John Wreglesworth has suggested that the author intended to be subtly critical of Alfonso VI. Although I am not persuaded by his argument, I should like to put on record here my gratitude to him for generously making his doctoral thesis available to me when I was preparing this essay and for some thoughtprovoking discussions about historical writing in early medieval Spain. See J. Wreglesworth, 'The Chronicle of Alfonso III and its Significance for the Historiography of the Asturian Kingdom, 718-910 AD' (Univ. of Leeds, D.Phil, thesis, 1995), p. 112, for the Silense's 'coded criticism' of Alfonso VI. 5 Strictly speaking, St Pelayo and St John the Baptist. It was a double house, the nuns under the patronage of the child-martyr Pelayo and the monks under St John the Baptist: see Raymond McCluskey, 'The Early History of San Isidoro de Leon (X-XII c.)', Nottingham Medieval Studies, 38 (1994), 35-59.1 hope to discuss these matters of authorship and date at greater length in the introduction to a translation of the Historia Silense and other narratives which Dr Simon Barton and I have in hand for the series 'Manchester Medieval Sources'. The first scholar to suggest emending seminis to sancti lohannis was Professor Manuel Diaz y Diaz in a paper published in 1961.

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a diploma of Alfonso VI from IO99.6 The fact that the author of the Siknse refers to himself as taking the habit at the community of St John need not necessarily indicate that this occurred before Isidore's arrival in 1063; though it might do so. A second textual reading points even more emphatically to Leon as the place of composition. One of the works which the anonymous author incorporated into his text was the Translatio Sancti Isidori, assumed to have been composed not long after the passage of the saint's relics from Seville to Leon in 1063. This work has survived independently so that we can examine the editorial changes which the author of the Silense made to it. One of these is pertinent to our enquiries. Early in the Translatio Bishop Alvito of Leon was referred to just like that: Legionensis urbis episcopus. But the author of the Silense changed the phrase to huiuscemodi regie urbis episcopus, 'bishop of this royal city'.7 Leon was frequently referred to as the urbs regia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and the community of St John and St Isidore lay within its walls. San Isidoro, as we may henceforward for convenience call it, was no ordinary religious house. Founded by Sancho I of Leon in about 966, it was intimately connected with the royal family and particularly with its women. Queen Sancha, the wife of Fernando I, was the most recent of a succession of princesses who were its patrons.8 It was at her prompting that Fernando had initiated a rebuilding of its church, apparently in the 10505, with the intention of establishing there a dynastic mausoleum. With the arrival of Isidore's relics, in 1063, a new cult was established under royal patronage. Fernando and Sancha were extremely generous. When the translation was officially celebrated, in a ceremony of the utmost grandeur attended by eight bishops (one from as far away as Le Puy), king and queen issued a diploma listing in detail 6

Leon, Archive de San Isidoro, Reales, no. 128: for the correct date, 17 January 1099, see Reilly, Alfonso VI, p. 292, n. 44. Dr Simon Barton has kindly brought it to my attention that this document has now been published by M. E. Martin Lopez, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de Leon, i, pt I, Documentor de los siglos X-XIII: cokccion diplomdtica (Leon, 1995), no. 9, pp. 31-2. 7 Historia Siknse, c. 96, and note also the hanc eccksiam of c. 103. Geoffrey West has uttered a caution about the huiuscemodi in 'La "Traslacion del cuerpo de San Isidoro" como fuente de la Historia llamada Silense', Hispania sacra, 27 (1974), 365-71, at 366 n. 8. As against this, huiuscemodi urbis in c. 97 clearly means 'of this city'. The author's favourite Sallust regularly used huiuscemodi in the sense of 'this, these', e.g. in Bellum Ingurthinum, ix. 4, huiuscemodi verba, 'these words'. 8 In a charter of 1043 she was referred to as regina que fuit ibi abbatissa, presumably alluding to her role there before her marriage to Fernando in c. 1032. The document is printed as an appendix to Antonio Vinayo, 'Reinas e infantas de Leon, abadesas y monjas del monasterio de San Pelayo y San Isidore', in Semana de historia del monacato Cantdbro-Astur-Leones (Oviedo, 1982), pp. 123-35: I am grateful to Dr Raymond McCluskey for sending me a photocopy of it.

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the treasures, churches and lands (in that order) with which they had endowed the house. Among the former, the exquisite 'ivory cross with the image of our crucified Redeemer' and the names of the donors at the foot may today be seen in the Museo Arqueologico Nacional in Madrid. King Fernando's last days were spent at San Isidore and on his death he was buried there, as was Queen Sancha on her death two years later in 1067. Their son Alfonso VI also showed himself a generous patron, but he was surpassed in this by his elder sister Urraca who particularly associated herself with the continuation of her father's patronage. As her epitaph states, 'she enlarged this church and enriched it with many gifts'. One of Urraca's 'many gifts', a very splendid chalice made out of two antique sardonyx bowls cunningly held together by gold bands studded with pearls and gems, in such a fashion that one bowl forms the cup of the chalice and the inverted other its base, may still be seen at San Isidoro. The house was the best possible vantage point for observing at first hand, 'more by experience than by report', the wisdom and goodness of the Infanta Urraca.9 When did the author of the Historia Silense do his work? It was evidently after Alfonso VFs death in 1109, for he tells us that he decided to compose his biography 'now that the whole length of his fragile life has been run'.10 How long after we cannot confidently judge. In reporting the death in captivity of Alfonso's brother Garcia of Galicia in 1090, the author mentioned - and there is the hint of an eyewitness report here - that the papal legate Cardinal Rainerius, 'who later became pope', attended Garcia's funeral in Leon because he happened to be there to preside over an ecclesiastical council (c. 13). Rainerius became pope as Paschal II in 1099 and died in January 1118. That the author of the Silense gave no hint that Pope Paschal was anything but still alive does not prove that he wrote before 1118; but it suggests it. If the years between 1109 and 1118 were indeed the period of composition - and most scholars think they were - then we should do well to attend to the circumstances and mood of the time. The reign of Alfonso 'the glorious' had ended in misery and uncertainty. His only See John W. Williams, 'Leon: The Iconography of the Capital', in Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Thomas N. Bisson (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 231-58. Fernando I's diploma may be found in Coleccion documental de Fernando I, 1037-1065, ed. P. Blanco Lozano (Leon, 1987), no. 66 (pp. 169-72), and Urraca's epitaph in W. M. Whitehill, Spanish Romanesque Architecture of the Eleventh Century (Oxford, 1941, reprinted 1968), p. 151 n. I. The two objects mentioned in the text are splendidly illustrated in The Art of Medieval Spain, AD 500-1200, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1993), catalogue nos HI and 118. On Urraca's patronage see further Susan H. Caldwell, 'Urraca of Zamora and San Isidoro de Leon: Fulfillment of a Legacy', Woman's Art Journal, 7 (1986), 19-25. 10 Historia Silense, c. 7 (emending vitamfragili to vitae fragilis). 9

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son and heir was killed at the battle of Ucles in 1108. The king-emperor himself was old and ailing. In a desperate attempt to ensure the security of his realm he arranged a second marriage for his daughter by Queen Constance, Urraca, recently widowed by the death of her Burgundian husband Raymond, count of Galicia. Urraca was to be married off to King Alfonso I of Aragon, one of the most celebrated warriors of his age, later to be remembered as Alfonso el Batallador., 'the Battler'. The wedding took place shortly after Alfonso VFs death. But it created more problems than it solved. The marriage was condemned by the bishops as consanguineous.The Aragonese were not liked by the Leonese and Castilians. Urraca and Alfonso proved temperamentally incompatible; and they failed to produce any children. The counties of Galicia and Portugal withdrew their loyalty from the royal consorts. The Aragonese established themselves in eastern Castile and refused to shift when queen and king parted company in 1112. Sporadic warfare between them followed for several years. Meanwhile, local disorders of the sort perennially attendant upon the replacement of a strong ruler by a weak one broke out here and there throughout the old king's realms. Simultaneously, the Almoravids were pressing hard upon the southern fringes of all the Christian kingdoms of Spain, and especially hard upon the vulnerable Tagus valley and that jewel in the Leonese-Castilian crown, Toledo. Every year between 1109 and 1118, save only 1115 when there was a Christian counter-offensive, the Tagus valley was attacked and Alfonso VFs most famous conquest threatened. The danger was very serious and very close. The city was besieged and heroically defended by Alvar Fanez, the former lieutenant of Rodrigo Diaz, el Cid. The extramural monastery of San Servando, within sight of Toledo's citizens across the river, was plundered by the Almoravids and had to be abandoned by its monks. All in all, the second decade of the twelfth century was more perilous for the kingdom of Leon-Castile than any time since the depredations of Almanzor towards the end of the tenth.11 The mood of the time was expressed by the (presumed) diocesan of the author of the Siknse, Bishop Diego of Leon: After the death of Alfonso, king and emperor of Spain, the faith, peace, harmony, chastity, charity, religion and veneration for churches, which under him had long shone far and wide, departed from his realm; and the opposite qualities of these virtues took their place instead.

And he went on to speak of greed and disorder, of clergy despoiled and pilgrims attacked and churches put to the flames. These sentiments were presumably shared by the other prelates who subscribed this For detailed treatment see Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 1109-1126 (Princeton, 1982). 11

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document, Archbishop Bernard of Toledo, Archbishop Paio of Braga, and the bishops of Astorga, Oviedo, Palencia, Salamanca and Santiago de Compostela.12 To sum up the enquiry so far: it is proposed that the author of the socalled Historia Silense was a monk of San Isidore de Leon and that he composed that work at a time of grave peril between 1109 and 1118. This cannot be proved beyond a doubt; it is offered as a working hypothesis. We can, however, be certain of one of his characteristics. Our author was a learned man. He was familiar with several works in a Spanish historiographical tradition, as we shall see shortly. The Historia contains quotations from or reminiscences of the Bible, Ovid, Virgil, Isidore and Gregory the Great. Two authors above all others were dear to him: Sallust and Einhard. Phrases from the Bellum Catilinae, the Bellum lugurthinum and the Vita Karoli are thickly strewn across his pages, not always appositely. When, for example, he tells his readers that he had 'decided to write of the deeds of the Lord Alfonso, orthodox Emperor of Spain, and, separately, the life of the same' he does so in the words of Einhard (together with a hint of Bellum Catilinae., iv. 2). We may well suppose that, had he completed his undertaking, his Vita Adefonsi would have been considerably indebted to the Vita Karoli. But he didn't. We have only, as stated at the outset, the preliminaries. What are these preliminaries? The author began his work (cc. 1-6) by looking back admiringly to the Visigothic monarchy of the seventh century. He laid stress upon the Christian orthodoxy of its kings, the wide extent of their dominion and their victories over their enemies. He made use, among other materials, of Isidore's Chronicle., the rare Vitas sanctorum patrum emeretensium, and Julian of Toledo's Historia Wambae (here misartributed). In c. 7 he announced both his intent to commemorate Alfonso VI and the need for a preliminary diversion: 'before I embark upon the beginning of this discourse I must dwell a little on the many difficulties and threatening obstacles which he overcame in coming to the throne'. Accordingly cc. 8-13 give a full but discreet account of the troubled years between 1065 and 1072, ending with a forward glance at the obsequies of Garcia of Galicia in 1090. The reader might suppose that the time had come to plunge into the Gesta Adefonsi. Not so: another diversion is heralded. (Observe how neatly the author has got past and isolated the murkier episodes of his hero's career; and his heroine's too, for Urraca as well as Alfonso was rumoured to have been a party to Sancho's murder.) Before we come to the narrative of his wars and conquest of cities, of how he governed the kingdom of the Spaniards (regnum Hispanorum), of how Cokccion documental de Leon, no. 1368 (2 July 1120); cf. also no. 1351 (8 January 1116). 12

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greatly he enlarged it from so small [a nucleus], we must go back to an earlier date and unravel the kingdom's origin.

This unravelling occupies the remainder of the Historia Silense. To cover the ground from the late seventh century to the accession of Fernando I in 1037 the author relied principally upon two sources, the Chronicle of Alfonso ///and the Chronicle of Sampiro. The first of these, securely attributed to the circle, and possibly to the authorship, of King Alfonso III (866-910) of the Asturian kingdom which was the forerunner of the kingdom of Leon, provides a narrative of royal doings from the accession of King Wamba in 672 to that of Alfonso III in 866. In using this work our author added, omitted and interpolated freely: for instance, he added a chapter (18) which gives a hostile account of Charlemagne's unhappy intervention in Spain in 778. His hand is detectable by the frequency of Sallustian and Einhardian reminiscences in these additions. When Alfonso III failed him in 866 he inserted nine chapters (39-47) apparently of his own composition - though this is a matter of debate - spanning the years from 866 to 924. This section breaks off suddenly, and the text continues with the chronicle attributed to Sampiro, royal notary and bishop of Astorga (d. c. 1042), which runs from 866 to the accession of Alfonso V in 999. There are discrepancies between Sampiro's account of the years 866-924 and that to be found in cc. 39-47 of the Silense. Furthermore, there are no editorial tamperings with Sampiro's text, nor any recollections of the editor's favourite reading. These features have suggested to some enquirers that the text of Sampiro's chronicle either came late to the knowledge of the author of the Silense or was interpolated into his text by a later hand. When Sampiro's account ended in 999 our author himself composed the remainder of the work (cc. 69-106), saving only, as already noted, the Translatio Sancti Isidori which occupies cc. 96-102. The reappearance of Sallust and Einhard once more serves to identify his hand. The bulk of this last section, from c. 80 onwards, is devoted to the reign of Fernando I. With the elaborate - eye-witness? - account of Fernando's death-bed (cc. 105-6), the stage is set for the life and deeds of his son Alfonso VI. The preliminaries are over; but so too is the Historia Silense. This summary anatomy of a composite text reveals it as, generously assessed, miscellaneous; less generously, a bit of a dog's breakfast.13 However, it is permissible to suggest that it has coherence in its presentation of the past of the Spanish state - the Hispanie regnum - as the plinth upon which to erect an image of Alfonso VI. A number of In the judgement, for example, of Peter Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford, 1993), p. 129, the work is 'unfinished and unordered in the form of a series of unreconciled notices and overlapping drafts'. 13

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themes can be identified which combine to frame a vision of the past to comfort and instruct an unhappy present. How far back did the author of the Silense encourage his readers to look? The answer rings out loud and clear from his opening chapters: the Visigothic monarchy after it had abandoned Arianism in 589 under the guidance of King Reccared and Bishop Leander of Seville. There was to be found the model of a good state It was presided over by godly kings such as Sisebut, Hispanorum religiosissimus princeps (c. 2), or Wamba, gloriosissimus rex (c. 5). It was doctrinally orthodox, unlike the monarchies of the Vandals and Sueves, unlike even the Emperor Constantine 'who was led astray towards the end of his life by a counterfeiter of the Catholic faith' (c. 2). It was distinguished for its learning; and the high value which our bookish author placed on this is indicated by the opening sentence of his work. 'Once upon a time Hispania blossomed abundantly with every kind of liberal teaching and in her those thirsting to drink at wisdom's spring everywhere bestowed care on the study of letters' (c. i). Her kings were 'by land and sea victorious and subdued the nations round about' (c. 3). They were in particular repeatedly victorious over the Franks, who were not above giving support to heretics (cc. 4-5). The author lovingly recites the provinces over which the Gothic kings held sway, to indicate the extent of their dominion from the Rhone to the Straits of Gibraltar; and they even added Tingitania, 'in the furthest bounds of Africa', to their lordship (c. 6). When the Visigothic monarchy fell, 'overwhelmed by the strength of the barbarians' (c. i), it was because divine providence acted to punish the sins of the wicked kings Wittiza and Rodrigo. Reaching for his beloved Sallust, our author portrayed Wittiza 'abandoning himself to indolence and sensuality' (Bellum lugurthinum, i. 4), 'his spirit fired "by banquets and lustful indulgence" ' (Bellum Catilinae, vii. 4). And his people followed him: 'casting aside holy religion, spurning the medicines of the soul, wanton desire of overthrowing good order "spread like a plague" (Bellum lugurthinum, xxxii. 4) among the armies of the Goths' (c. 14). There was nothing new about such a portrayal of the seventh-century golden age of the Visigothic monarchy, nor of the manner in which it was betrayed by sinful kings and then chastised by the avenging hand of God. The theme had been enunciated in the author's source for chapters 14 and 15, the Chronicle of Alfonso III. But he evidently thought that the lesson needed restating in his own dark days. In some respects he laid it on more thickly, painting King Wittiza in even blacker colours than his source had done. And then came a new beginning. Cleansed by divine punishment, the heirs of the Goths turned their backs on their 'swinish wallowing' (II Peter 2: 22) and 'as if

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awakening from sleep' were permitted to rebuild their regnum in a manner pleasing to God (cc. 20, 25). It was, as has been observed, 'the theology of the Flood'.14 For there was, our author insists, a rightful regnum in Spain. Once he called it the Hispanie regnum., in one of his additions to the Chronicle of Alfonso III (c. 15). Twice he referred to it as the regnum Hispanorum (cc. 8, 13). In c. 70 he called it the regnum imperium., which is possibly a copyist's misreading for the style regium imperium which he used in c. 83. It was the kingdom over which Asturian kings and their Leonese successors presided, which reached the glorious peak of its renown under Alfonso VI, the restorer of Toledo - 'once the mirror of Christians of all Spain' (c. 9) - to Christian hands. This kingdom was legitimate, it was orthodox and it was cherished by God. It was legitimate not only as the continuation of the Gothic monarchy but also because its rulers were the biological descendants of what the author called in c. 15 the stirps regalis Gotorum (a phrase not be found in his source: possibly he was unaware that the Visigothic monarchy had been, formally, elective). He tells us that his intent was 'to weave the genealogy' of Alfonso VI (c. 31). He shows how the blood of the royal stirps flowed back into the Asturian ruling dynasty through Alfonso I (739-57) and continued in the male line until the death of Vermudo III of Leon in 1037. Fernando I could tap into this royal bloodline by his marriage. Queen Sancha, the patroness of San Isidore, was the crucial link. Thus dynastic legitimacy was maintained, and their son Alfonso VI was 'sprung from the famous stock of the Goths' (c. 8). Fernando's family was nothing like so pukka. The author explains that he must say 'a little' about it (c. 74), and he does precisely that: some thirty-odd lines of printed text. This curtness contrasts starkly with the amplitude of his treatment of Sancha's ancestry over the previous fifty-odd pages. Fernando's family had a nobilis origo but not a royal one. The kingdom which it ruled was of recent foundation, dating only in his - incorrect - view of the matter from the time of Fernando's grandfather.15 Furthermore, its origins appeared to have owed more to the humdrum chance of a mountainous terrain which rendered enemy invasion difficult than to any more exalted cause such as the divine providence which guided the fortunes of the regnum Hispanie. The Cantabriensium regnum (c. 74) - and it sinks to a mere provincia in c. 76 - did not take its name from any of the provinces enumerated in c. 6 as 14

Raymond McCluskey, 'Malleable Accounts: Views of the Past in Twelfth-Century Iberia', in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Paul Magdalino (London, 1992), pp. 211-25, at P- 2J6: and cf. Historia Silense, c. 6, for an allusion to Noah and the Rood. 15 For the early history of the kingdom of Navarre see Roger Collins, The Basques (Oxford, 1986), ch. 5.

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forming the kingdom of the Goths: the reader is left to draw the conclusion that Cantabria was not really a part of the Hispanic regnum at all. Although he concedes that Fernando's father Sancho was a successful king, in general when treating, briefly, of the family he damns with faint praise. It is plain whom he judged the gainer from the marriage of Fernando and Sancha. So much for the kingdom of Navarre. Aragon receives even shorter shrift. It was a 'little fragment' of the Cantabrian kingdom which Sancho had bestowed on his son Ramiro. Three times in two chapters (cc. 75, 76) the author points out that Ramiro was of illegitimate birth, the son of a concubine; and he tells a mocking story of his bootless flight from the battlefield. The implication is surely that the kingdom, like its ruler, lacked legitimacy and dignity. These words were not innocent: they were penned at a time when Ramiro's grandson, Alfonso el Batallador of Aragon, was attempting to rule as an unpopular kingconsort over the Hispanie regnum. Further to the east the author's vision did not stretch. Except for a reference in a chapter which might have come from Sampiro he betrayed no awareness that there were Christian principalities in the eastern Pyrenees and Catalonia. He was, however, well aware of a Prankish kingdom beyond the Pyrenees; but he did not rate it highly. In the past the Franks had aided heretics (c. 4) and rebels against the Visigothic kings (c. 5). The Franks falsely claimed that Charlemagne had made conquests in Spain. On the contrary, he had been bribed with gold 'just like the Franks' (more Franco-rum) and slunk off home leaving the Christians of bellatrix Ispania in the lurch (c. 18). Here too we may suppose allusions which would have had resonance for an early twelfth-century audience. The French army which had come to Spain to fight the Almoravids at Alfonso VFs request in 1087 had frittered away time in a fruitless siege of Tudela and then drifted away homewards. At the time of writing the French were not helping the Leonese regnum in its hour of need. If they were obviously active anywhere in Spain, it was in assistance to - of all people - the despised Aragonese; and in feathering their own nests too.16 This legitimate Leonese regnum had maintained Catholic orthodoxy ever since the momentous decision of 589. The laxities in church discipline encouraged by the evil Wittiza had been corrected by his Asturian successor Fruela I.17 The author of the Silense twice emphasized the For this activity see most recently Clay Stalls, Possessing the Land: Aragon's Expansion into Islam's Ebro Frontier under Alfonso the Battler, 1104-1134 (Leiden, 1995). 17 Historia Silense, c. 27, from the Chronicle of Alfonso III but with a slightly different emphasis. See Roger Collins, The Arab Conquest of Spain, 7/0-797 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 16-19, for an explanation of the strange report that Wittiza compelled his clergy to marry. 16

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orthodoxy of Alfonso VI (cc. 7, 31). His readers would have needed no reminding that the king had in the zoyos guided the change from a liturgy suspected of doctrinal deviance to one with which no fault could be found.18 Whenever possible the author drew attention to the good learning that had accompanied the godliness of the kings. Vermudo I had been 'given over to the study of letters on his father's orders'; and in a passage lifted entire from Einhard we are told of Fernando Fs concern for the education of his sons and daughters, among them, of course, the Infanta Urraca and her brother Alfonso VI.19 This legitimate and godly kingdom enjoyed marks of God's favour. The richly decorated cross commissioned by Alfonso II, still to be seen at Oviedo, was the work of angels masquerading as itinerant goldsmiths.20 King Fernando I conquered Coimbra in 1064 by means of the intercession of St James, 'the knight of Christ'.21 The translation of Isidore's body to Leon in 1063 brought to the urbs regia the hpaniarum doctor., he who 'had graced all Spain with his word and his work'.22 These indications of divine approval also carried the implication that the earthly ruler of this Spanish kingdom was answerable, through His saints and angels, to God alone. This had not been how Pope Gregory VII had seen matters when he rashly asserted papal sovereignty over the regnum Hyspanie. It has been plausibly suggested that this claim provoked Alfonso VFs adoption of the title imperator, first reliably attested in October 1077.23 For the author of the Silense Alfonso VI was 'our emperor' (c. 74). His father Fernando I had never used the title in any genuine surviving instrument running in his name. But our author judged it appropriate to refer to his 'royal empire' (c. 83) and to the 'imperial orders' which he gave to a barbarian ruler (c. 95: King Reccared had issued 'imperial orders' too, in c. 3). It may not be wholly coincidental that Fernando and Sancha patronized artists For the king's part in liturgical change see Reilly, Alfonso VI, ch. 6. Gregory VII's reference to 'the tongues of heretics' occurs in his letter to Alfonso VI of 19 March 1074: Gregorii VII Registrum, ed. E. Caspar (Berlin, 1920-23, repr. 1955), i. 64 (= Regesta pontificum Romanorum 4840). 19 Historia Silense, cc. 32 (another adjustment to the Chronicle of Alfonso III), 81 (ex Einhard, Vita Karoli, c. 19). 20 Historia Silense, c. 29 (an addition to the Chronicle of Alfonso III). 21 Historia Silense, c. 88, for this earliest occurrence of the phrase: the function of c. 89 appears to be to reassure doubters that the saint really was a strenuissimus miles. See also Coleccion documental de Fernando I, nos 73, 74. 22 Historia Silense, cc. 97, 99. See also Coleccion documental de Fernando I, nos 66, 67. 23 Gregorii VII Registrum, i. 7 (30 Apr. 1073), iv. 28 (28 June 1077) (= Regesta pontificum Romanorum 4778, 5041); Reilly, Alfonso VI, pp. 103-4 and references there cited. Like all those who touch on this subject I must acknowledge indebtedness to R. Menendez Pidal, El imperio hispdnico y los cinco reinos (Madrid, 1950) and to J. A. Maravall, El concepto de Espana en la edad media (3rd edn, Madrid, 1981), though my emphases differ from theirs. 18

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from imperial Germany, nor that their liturgical commemorations at Cluny were matched only by those accorded to the Salian emperors Henry II and Henry III and their spouses.24 'Barbarians' was the term most frequently used by our author to designate the Muslims of southern Spain and the Maghrib. He used other terms too: Moors, pagans, Hagarenes, Ishmaelites, Chaldeans, Moabites, Amorites and Saracens. Generally, though not quite invariably, when he used biblical names it was because he found them in his sources. 'Chaldeans', for example, was a frequent designation in the Chronicle of Alfonso III. Sometimes he chopped and changed for the sake of variety, as when in a single chapter of only eleven printed lines (c. 9) he employed successively barbarian (adjectivally), Saracens, Moors and pagans. But 'barbarian' remained his first preference. For the author of the Silense 'barbarians' could be contrasted with Christians (three times in c. 70). They were a mahometica superstitiosa secta, which seems to have meant the same as a barbarica superstitiosa secta.25 They were accustomed to 'belch forth profanities' and they had 'sacrilegious hands' from which it was a good deed to rescue Christian churches (c. 85). Their leaders such as Almanzor 'were buried in hell' (c. 71). A good Christian ruler will 'extend the kingdom of the Spaniards by waging wars against the barbarians' (c. 8) and in this task he will, as we have seen, have the support of the saints. Further, he will have mundane legal justification either in avenging the death of a kinsman (c. 86) or, more significantly, in restoring a Christian dominion which had once existed, in 'cities over whose churches bishops had once upon a time presided' (c. 85) such as Coimbra (c. 88), or those of the province of Carthaginensis (c. 92), or Toledo (c. 9). Canon law had long recognized that retrieval of stolen territory was a just pretext for Christian warfare. At much the same time as the unknown author of the Historia Silense was meditating his work another unknown artist in a different medium, the sculptor of the tympanum of the south doorway of San Isidore, was expressing related notions.26 He had chosen, or been commissioned, to represent a meaning-laden juxtaposition from the book of Genesis. On See John Williams in The Art of Medieval Spain, p. 170, on the Leonese attempt 'to appropriate imperial associations'; Charles J. Bishko, 'Liturgical Intercession at Cluny for the King-Emperors of Leon', Studia Monastica, 3 (1961), 53-76, reprinted with an additional note in his Spanish and Portuguese Monastic History, 600-1300 (London, 1984), no. VIII. 25 Historia Silense, cc. 36 (an addition to the Chronicle of Alfonso HI), 73. 26 Convincingly elucidated by John W. Williams, 'Generationes Abrahae: Reconquest Iconography in Leon', Gesta, 16 (1977), 3-14. Professor Williams has informed me that he now considers this tympanum to have been carved in the 'first decade of the twelfth century at latest'. 24

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his tympanum Abraham, Sarah and Isaac stand for legitimacy, the sacrifice of Isaac prefiguring the death of Christ and the foundation of His church. (The prominence accorded to Sarah was appropriate to a community so closely associated with royal women.) Hagar and Ishmael are the disinherited, their identification as 'barbarians' made unambiguously plain by Ishmael's turban and by Hagar's immodestly lifted skirt (symbolizing the lasciviousness for which, in Christian eyes, Muslim women were renowned). Both the sculptor and the writer were concerned about legitimacy, proper order, duty, the meet and the right. The author of the Silense linked the tasks of reconquest and restoration to a past, a state, a dynasty, a city and a community. His regnum, his imperium, was legitimized in diverse but interlocking ways. We have hints of how he would have treated Alfonso VI, and of how this treatment would have transmitted messages of reassurance to his troubled generation. The kingdom was going through a bad time, assailed by the barbarians, debauched by the contemptible Aragonese, abandoned by the perfidious French. Strains and stresses, however, had happened before. Cherished by God's providence, all would be well. The Hispanic regnum would survive. But it didn't. Alfonso VTs grandson, Alfonso VII, was indeed crowned emperor at Leon in 1135 and was lauded as such by his panegyrist in the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris. But even during his lifetime the Leonese hegemony dissolved. Portugal broke away into an independent monarchy. Navarre recovered her independence. A vastly enlarged Aragon came into being and was joined by a dynastic marriage to the county of Barcelona. Even Leon and Castile parted company on Alfonso VII's death in 1157. The author of the Historia Silense would not have felt at home in the new political landscape. If death were the reason why he never completed the work he had planned, perhaps it was a kindly intervention. William of Malmesbury was 'perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most admired' of that group of Anglo-Norman historians whose twelfth-century views of the Anglo-Saxon past have been studied by James Campbell in a notable essay. Among the few but invariably interesting and sometimes puzzling observations that William had to make about Spain is a notice of Isidore's translation, though he (or his source) garbled the story. William had Isidore translated to Toledo rather than Leon, by Alfonso VI rather than by his father, and purchased for his weight in gold.27 Leonese tradition knew nothing of a sale. On the contrary, the barbarian king of Seville donated 'hanging woven with marvellous craftsmanship' to drape over the sarcophagus 27 William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Angkrum, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1887-89), ii. 193.

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(not impossibly the silk which still lines the saint's reliquary in its resting-place in the Real Colegiata de San Isidore at Leon).28 That essay furnished the title and the inspiration for the present one. It represents but one of numberless ways in which James Campbell's example and counsel have influenced my own study of the middle ages since I composed my first set of gobbets on Bede Book III in October 1962. Three years after that he strove to dissuade me from embarking upon the study of medieval Spain. Because I was stubborn, the history of the English fish trade in the later middle ages remains unwritten (at any rate by me). Although I enjoy catching them and eating them, in a professional context I simply didn't, like Psmith, want anything to do with fish. 28

Illustrated in The Art of Medieval Spain p. 240.

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9 Anti-Semitism and the Medieval English State ROBERT C. STAGEY The precocity of medieval English state development is now widely recognized. What has long been a familiar theme among administrative historians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has been shown by James Campbell to extend far back into the Anglo-Saxon period, with wide implications for our studies of taxation, administration and the medieval English economy. The consequences of this governmental precocity reach well beyond the traditional limits of English constitutional history, however, as James Campbell himself has often emphasized. In grateful tribute, therefore, to his own admonitions to 'Be Bold!', I wish to consider the connections between the precocious development of the medieval English state and the no less precocious development of medieval English anti-Semitism.* To speak of medieval English anti-Semitism is to risk both anachronism and obloquy. As is well known, anti-Semitism is a nineteenthcentury term, first popularized in the iSyos by political parties opposed to the emancipation of German Jewry, and then generalized by historians to describe a more pervasive hostility toward Jews and Judaism.2 It can be argued, therefore, that the term, especially with its overtones of late nineteenth-century 'scientific racialism', has no place in a medieval context.3 Nor would anyone wish to assert that hostility toward Jews in 1

On the precocity of English anti-Semitism, see C. Richmond, 'Englishness and Medieval Anglo-Jewry', in The Jewish Heritage in British History, ed. T. Kushner (London, 1992), pp. 42-59, at p. 50. Z. E. Rokeah, 'The State, the Church, and the Jews in Medieval England', in Antisemitism through the Ages, ed. S. Almog, trans. N. H. Reisner (Oxford/New York, 1988), pp. 99-125, has also considered this subject, but concentrates primarily on the church. 2 R. Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1997), pp. 126-7; G. I. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1990), p. 338; Reinhard Rurup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus: Studien zur 'Judenfrage' der burgerlichen Gesellschaft (Gottingen, 1975). 3 R. Chazan, 'Antisemitism', in Dictionary of the Middle Ages (New York, 1982-9), i. 338; but compare P. Biller, 'Views of Jews from Paris around 1300: Christian or "Scientific"?', in Christianity and Judaism, ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 1992), pp. 187-207.

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the Middle Ages was limited to England. Quite obviously, it was not. Scholars are now generally agreed, however, that the nature of Christian hostility toward Jews and Judaism changed profoundly during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries throughout western Europe.4 Gavin Langmuir has characterized this transformation as a shift from antiJudaism - a xenophobic hostility rooted in the competition between two religious systems - to anti-Semitism - a hostility rooted in the perception that Jews crucified Christian children, consumed Christian blood both figuratively (through usurious money-lending) and literally (through acts of ritual cannibalism), desecrated the eucharistic host, and poisoned Christian wells, out of an inveterate and irremediable hatred toward all things Christian. Langmuir's explanations for this transformation remain controversial; but his case for the transformation itself seems to me compelling, as does his use of the term 'antiSemitism' to describe this new constellation of anti-Jewish attitudes.5 I propose, therefore, to use 'medieval anti-Semitism' to describe this new complex of interrelated Christian myths about Jews. None of these myths had been applied to Jews prior to the twelfth century; by 1300, however, they passed for common knowledge about Jews across most of Christian Europe. Medieval anti-Semitism is thus securely dateable. It is also geographically localizable. All these myths took shape in Europe north of the Alps and west of the Elbe; but with striking and suggestive regularity, they developed first in England. The ritual crucifixion charge, for example, began in England in or soon after 1144 with the mysterious death of William of Norwich, a twelve-year-old apprentice skinner. By the late 11405 knowledge of the ritual crucifixion charge had reached the Continent;6 but nowhere else would ritual crucifixion stories enjoy the widespread credence they claimed in England. England did not generate the ritual cannibalism charge, nor was it the scene of the first fully-elaborated host desecration charge.7 England 4 Langmuir, History; idem, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1990); R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1987); idem, 'Anti-Semitism and the Birth of Europe', in Christianity and Judaism, pp. 33-57; Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes; D. Berger, From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions: Some New Approaches to Medieval Antisemitism (Second Annual Victor J. Selmanowitz Lecture, Touro College, New York, 1997). 5 For recent assessments of Langmuir's work, see Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, esp. pp. 131-4; Berger, 'From Crusades to Blood Libels', pp. 14-16; R. C. Stacey, 'History, Religion, and Medieval Antisemitism: A Response to Gavin Langmuir', Religious Studies Review, 20 (1994), 95-101. 6 J. M. McCulloh, 'Jewish Ritual Murder: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth, and the Early Dissemination of the Myth', Speculum, 72 (1997), 698-740, at 724-8. 7 For the first ritual cannibalism charge, levied at Fulda in 1235, see Langmuir, Toward a Definition, pp. 263-81; on early host desecration charges, see M. Rubin, 'Desecration of the Host: The Birth of an Accusation', in Christianity and Judaism,

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was, however, where the ritual crucifixion charge underwent the theological and devotional developments that helped to produce the host desecration charge that emerged in northern France around I29O.8 England was where money-lending generated the greatest Jewish fortunes in northern Europe, and where Jewish money-lending became most clearly identified with the crown's pursuit of its own financial interests.9 It is also where the new anti-Semitic myths of Jewish greed, filth and diabolism found some of their earliest and most elaborate iconographic representations, on the west front of Lincoln Cathedral, for example, and in the famous Cloisters Cross.10 England was also the first European country to stigmatize its entire Jewish population as coin-clippers and hence criminals - a characterization of English Jewry so successful that it was accepted even by their co-religionists on the Continent.11 England saw the earliest royally sponsored efforts to convert Jews in numbers to Christianity; and in 1290, it witnessed the first permanent expulsion of an entire Jewish community from any European kingdom.12 Why was this so? Why did these anti-Semitic tales of Jewish murder, greed, diabolism and criminality take root first and most firmly in pp. 169-85. Note, however, the very interesting 1285 accusation at Norwich in which a band of Jewish and Christian robbers was accused of burgling a church, breaking open a pyx and then deliberately crushing the consecrated hosts beneath their feet: Z. E. Rokeah, 'The Jewish Church-Robbers and Host Desecrators of Norwich, c. 1285', Revue des etudes juives, 141 (1982), 331-62. Thomas Wykes also incorporates a host desecration charge into his account of the 1222 Council of Oxford: Annales monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, 5 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1864-9), iv. 62. 8 R. C. Stacey, 'From Ritual Crucifixion to Host Desecration: Jews and the Body of Christ', Jewish History, 12 (1998), 11-28. 9 R. C. Stacey, 'Jewish Lending and the Medieval English Economy', in A Commercialising Economy: England, 1086 to c. 1300, ed. R. H. Britnell and B. M. S. Campbell (Manchester, 1995), pp. 78-101; idem, 'Crusades, Martyrdoms and the Jews of Norman England, 1096-1190', in Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzuge, ed. A. Haverkamp (Sigmaringen, 1998), pp. 233-51; idem, 'Jews and Christians in TwelfthCentury England: Some Dynamics of a Changing Relationship', in In the Shadow of the Millenium: Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. M. Signer and J. Van Engen (Notre Dame, forthcoming). 10 On the Cloisters Cross, see now E. C. Parker and C. T. Little, The Cloisters Cross: Its Art and Meaning (New York, 1994). 11 W. Johnson, 'Textual Sources for the Study of Jewish Currency Crimes in Thirteenth-Century England', British Numismatic Journal, 66 (1997), 21-32, esp. 25-6; Z. E. Rokeah, 'Money and the Hangman in Late Thirteenth-Century England: Jews, Christians, and Coinage Offences Alleged and Real, Part F, Jewish Historical Studies (formerly Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England), 21 (1988-90), 83-109; 'Part II', ibid., 32 (1990-2), 159-218. 12 R. C. Stacey, 'The Conversion of Jews to Christianity in Thirteenth-Century England', Speculum, 67 (1992), 263-83; idem, 'Parliamentary Negotiation and the Expulsion of the Jews from England', in Thirteenth-Century England, 6, ed. M. Prestwich, R. H. Britnell and R. Frame (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 77-101.

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medieval England? In attempting to answer this question, certain structural features of Jewish life in medieval England must be noted at the outset. Jews first came to England as a result of the Norman Conquest. No Jews lived in Anglo-Saxon England. Prior to 1066, Jews may., indeed, have been deliberately excluded from the country.13 They were thus aliens in medieval England to a more profound degree than perhaps anywhere else in western Europe. They were also a tiny minority. In a total English population that grew from at least two million in 1066 to perhaps as many as six million by 1300, the Jewish population of the country probably never exceeded 5000, and by 1290 had dropped to fewer than 2000 men, women and children. Jews lived in England under the direct protection and exclusive jurisdiction of the most administratively powerful monarchy in Europe; and they became, between 1175 and 1250, an extraordinarily wealthy community of money-lenders, in part because the English crown assisted them in collecting their debts. Anti-Semitism grew in tandem with Jewish wealth; once established, however, it took on a life of its own, and continued to grow after 1250 despite the increasing impoverishment of the English Jewish community. Observations such as these may help to explain why hostility existed toward Jews in medieval England. They do not explain why the particular and peculiar myths of medieval anti-Semitism should have struck such early, deep and enduring roots in English soil. Anti-Semitism was not, of course, a uniquely English phenomenon. It central myths are rooted in theological perspectives common to all of Latin Christianity. What made medieval anti-Semitism truly dangerous, however, was not the theological content of its myths, but the plausibility those myths assumed for Christians as descriptions of mundane reality. If we are to understand England's role as a forcing ground for medieval antiSemitism, we need therefore to understand how these bizarre and implausible tales of murder, sacrilege and desecration became established in England as commonplace presumptions about how real Jews actually behaved. The plausibility these myths achieved in England, I shall argue, was a product of the peculiarities of England's history during the high Middle Ages. And as so often in the history of England, these peculiarities lead us back to the role of the state. Over the past fifteen years, the origins of the ritual murder accusation have been intensively studied; and although some of the most important work still remains to be published, the outlines of the story are now coming into focus.14 The charge that William of Norwich was murdered 13

J. Campbell, 'Was it Infancy in England? Some Questions of Comparison', in England and her Neighbours, 1066-1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. M. Jones and M. Vale (London, 1989), p. 14. 14 G. I. Langmuir, 'Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder', Speculum, 59 (1984), 822-46 (reprinted in Toward a Definition) was the seminal contribution.

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by Jews in a ritualized demonstration of anti-Christian animus was first enunciated by William's uncle, Godwin Sturt, to an ecclesiastical synod convened at Norwich shortly after William's death in 1144. By the late 11405, knowledge of William's alleged crucifixion had spread to Bavaria, where it may have played some role in the 1147 attack on the Jews of Wiirzburg.15 We do not know how the charge reached Bavaria; but there is clear evidence in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well as in Thomas of Monmouth's Life ofSt William that accounts of William's martyrdom by crucifixion circulated prior to and independently of Thomas's own Life, which cannot have been composed before 1149, and may not have been composed until H55.16 Thomas's Life added a number of important details to the story, not least the claim that such murders were perpetrated annually, and that William's martyrdom was decreed by a worldwide meeting of Jewish representatives gathered at Narbonne. Evidence for first-hand knowledge of Thomas's text is scanty, however, outside the immediate environs of Norwich; and it remains uncertain whether Thomas's Life was directly responsible for communicating the story anywhere beyond the Norwich diocesan boundaries.17 The motives for Thomas of Monmouth's interest in William's case are clear enough. Despite having been the East Anglian episcopal seat since 1096, Holy Trinity priory at Norwich held no relics and for this reason enjoyed no attention whatsoever from pilgrims of any sort. The priory was, in this respect, completely eclipsed in spiritual prestige and income by several surrounding monastic houses, but most notably by St Edmund at Bury, the great thaumaturgic saint of the region. Thomas intended his Life to establish William's claims to be a saint whose power could rival St Edmund's;18 it may be a mark of the eventual success of Modifications to Langmuir's argument have been suggested by McCulloh, 'Jewish Ritual Murder', and by D. J. Miller, whose Cornell Ph.D. thesis, 'Marian Devotion, Ritual Murder, and the Roots of Antisemitism in England, 1135-1260', is eagerly awaited. Dr Willis Johnson is preparing a new edition of Thomas of Monmouth's Vita et Passione Sancti Willelmi Martyris Norwicensis; for now, the standard edition is still The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth, ed. A. Jessopp and M. R. James (Cambridge, 1896). 15 On the Wiirzburg episode, see McCulloh, 'Jewish Ritual Murder', 731-2, and F. Lotter, 'Innocens Virgo et Martyr: Thomas von Monmouth und die Verbreitung der Ritualmordlegende im Hochmittelalter', in Die Legende vom Ritualmord: Zur Geschichte der Blutbeschuldigung gegen Juden, ed. R. Erb (Berlin, 1993), pp. 25-72. 16 Langmuir argued that book I of the Life was composed and circulated first, in 1150, with books II-VI following in 1154-5. McColloh, however, considers that books I-VI were composed as a unit in 1155. At the very least, book I must have been rewritten in 1155, as it contains several references to material that appears only in book II. Both McCulloh and Langmuir agree that books II-VI were composed as a single unit in 1154-5, and that book VII dates to c. 1173. 17 This paragraph follows the argument in McCulloh, 'Jewish Ritual Murder', passim. 18 Life, pp. 205-6, 236-9, 289-94.

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William's cult that, in 1181, Bury too acquired its own child martyr in the person of St Robert of Bury, an infant only six months old when he was allegedly crucified by Jews.19 The success of William's cult was not immediate, however, even within the priory itself, which showed a notable lack of enthusiasm for the initial claims made on behalf of William's sanctity.20 Thomas's Life suggests that the cult at the priory did not really take off until the translation of William's body from the cemetery into the chapter house in 1150. Only then did a surge of miracles take place; and even then, the majority of the recorded beneficiaries came from within a ten-mile radius of Norwich.21 Thomas's Life followed this surge of miracles, and was probably composed in its surviving form in 1155, with a seventh and final book, recounting further miracles, written between 1172 and H74- 22 Only in this final book do we find evidence to suggest that William's fame had spread much beyond the confines of Norwich itself. Initial enthusiasm for William's cult seems to have come not from the priory itself, but rather from the English inhabitants of Norwich. William, his family, and the early witnesses and supporters of his cause were all English or, in Thomas's case, Welsh. Those who doubted his cause - Bishop Eborard and Prior Elias, the Jews of Norwich and their protectors, including Sheriff John de Chesney and King Stephen himself - were all French speakers. At the very least, there are hints of tensions here between the ruling Norman elite (including, of course, the inmates of the priory itself) and the overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon population of Norwich. Beyond this, however, there are also indications in Thomas's Life of popular resistance around Norwich to the priory's belated attempt to monopolize William's cult. Rival accounts were clearly circulating about the date of William's death; other local shrines, not controlled by Holy Trinity priory, were laying claim to the attentions of pilgrims; while William's uncle, Godwin Sturt, was doing a brisk business on his own, healing petitioners with the teasel by which William had been tortured.23 Thomas of Monmouth tells us that, between 1145 and 1149, memory of William had almost entirely died 19 On the Bury ritual crucifixion charge, see now J. Hillaby, 'The Ritual-ChildMurder Accusation: Its Dissemination and Harold of Gloucester', Jewish Historical Studies, 34 (1994-96), 69-109, esp. 85-109, esp. 85-90, 108-9. 20 Life, pp. 85-86; Langmuir, 'Thomas of Monmouth', passim. 21 R. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (paperback edn, Basingstoke, 1995), pp. 161-2; B. Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000-1215 (rev- edn, Philadelphia, 1987), pp. 67-76. 22 I am following McCulloh's dating here; see above p. 167 n. 16. 23 McCulloh has collected the references: 'Jewish Ritual Murder', 715-17 and n. 73. The chapel of St William in the Wood, consecrated by Bishop William Turbe in 1168 (Life, pp. 279, 285), may be another example of an unofficial cult site being taken over by the priory.

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out.24 This may be so; but we should not necessarily conclude from his remark that devotion to St William had been lacking everywhere in Norwich. Thomas's comment may only mean that, before the translation of William's body in 1150, the priory was not receiving the benefits of a devotion that was largely extramural and 'unofficial'. The Englishness of William's early supporters may also have influenced the religious associations that shaped William's cult. A specifically Anglo-Saxon tradition of devotion to martyred child saints, epitomized by St Kenelm and St Pancras, must have played some role in establishing the initial plausibility of William's claims to sanctity.25 So too did a specifically English (although not specifically Anglo-Saxon) enthusiasm for the Virgin Mary and for Marian miracle stories. As Sir Richard Southern has pointed out, twelfth-century England is where the Mariales took shape; and although Mary herself plays a smaller direct role in William's Life than she does in later ritual crucifixion tales, Thomas of Monmouth appears to have drawn several of his most inflammatory anti-Jewish accusations straight from the English Marian legendaries compiled by Anselm the Younger, William of Malmesbury and Prior Dominic of Evesham.26 From the 11408 onwards, hardly a decade passed in which Jews somewhere in England were not accused of ritually murdering a Christian child. In the n6os and nyos, there were also two such allegations in northern France, first at Pontoise and Paris, then at Blois.27 Elsewhere, however, the child murder charge does not appear at all before the mid-thirteenth century and remains uncommon even then. It was thus an almost entirely English enthusiasm. Why was this so? Competition between the Benedictine monasteries that housed the resulting shrines must surely account in part for this multiplication of ritual murder allegations in England. The rivalry between Norwich and Bury produced two such child martyrs; the rivalry between Gloucester Life, p. 84. On this tradition, see the material in Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints' Lives: Vita S. Birini, Vita et Miraculi S. Kenelmi and Vita S. Rumzvoldi, ed. and trans. R. C. Love (Oxford, 1996). The parallels between William and St Kenelm are particularly close. Thomas himself cites St Pancras, St Pantaleon and St Celsus as examples of child saints comparable to William (Life, p. 87). Note also that the one Norman who immediately supported William's sanctity was Prior Aimar of St Pancras's monastery at Lewes. 26 R. W. Southern, 'The English Origins of the "Miracles of the Virgin" ', Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, 4 (1958), 176-216. Credit for discovering Thomas's borrowings belongs to D. J. Miller, whose forthcoming dissertation will assemble the evidence. For the Marian element in thirteenth-century ritual crucifixion stories, see Stacey, 'Jews and the Body of Christ'. 27 W. C. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 18-19. 24

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and Worcester produced one.28 England was a small country with good communications, a plentiful supply of pilgrims, and a particular density of Benedictine houses south of the Humber. That one child martyr should beget another in such a world is perhaps no surprise. In explaining the widening English popularity of the ritual murder charge, however, we should not overemphasize the importance of this competition between monasteries for martyrs. No more than seven monastic shrines to child martyrs were established in England; and it appears that only one, the shrine of 'little St Hugh' at Lincoln, produced more than a very modest revenue. Only three shrines - at Norwich, Bury and Lincoln - can be shown to have survived with certainty until the Reformation.29 Yet stories of ritual crucifixions proliferated in the devotional and popular literature of later medieval England none the less, even after 1290, when not a single practising Jew remained in the country.30 It was not the Benedictine monasteries, but rather the English state that played the crucial role in establishing the context of plausibility within which the ritual crucifixion charge would flourish in later medieval England. No doubt the cults of William of Norwich, Harold of Gloucester and Robert of Bury helped to spread knowledge of the ritual crucifixion charge throughout much of southern England. But the king's judicial eyres played a no less critical role in 'normalizing' and validating such allegations of child murder against Jews. Time after time, when local juries were required by the king's justices to name those responsible for the murder of Christian children, Jews were blamed, usually collectively and anonymously, but sometimes individually and by name.31 In the context of a judicial eyre, such allegations served multiple purposes. Most obviously, they might allow local communities to avoid being fined for their failure to present the real murderers for judgment. But such charges might also function to deflect the justices from pursuing other suspects whom the jurors wished to protect: a mother, for example, or a fellow Christian whose 28

Hillaby, 'The Ritual-Child-Murder Accusation', 82-3. Ibid., 82-4, disposes of the evidence for a continuing cult of St Harold at Gloucester. 30 D. Despres, 'Cultic Anti-Judaism and Chaucer's Little Clergeon', Modem Philology (1994), 413-27. 31 1202, Lincoln, PRO, JUST 1/479, m. 8, and Bedfordshire, JUST i/i, m. sd; 1225, Winchester, Rotuli litterarum clausarum (London, 1833, 1844), ii. sob, 5ib, 53b; 1232 X 1236, Winchester, JUST 1/775 m- 2°j 1230 X 1236, Norwich, Curia Regis Rolls, xv (London, 1972), no. 1320; 1240 X 1245, High Wycombe, JUST 1/56, m. 46d; 1244, London, Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. H. R. Luard, 6 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1872-84), iv. 377-8; but the incident does not appear on the surviving 1244 London eyre roll; 1255, Lincoln, C 60/53 mm. 2, 3; 1276, London, The London Eyre 0/1276, ed. M. Weinbaum (London, 1976), no. 308; CCR, 7272-79, pp. 271-4. 29

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private agreement with the victim's family had already resolved the case to the satisfaction of local people. Allegations of child murder by Jews also served a psychological function: by projecting responsibility for such murders upon Jews, Christians could reassure themselves that no Christian would ever perpetrate such an enormity. This last motive quickly took on a self-fulfilling quality. When an atrocity was discovered, the very hideousness of the deed itself could thus become proof of Jewish responsibility for it. There was also an element of local resentment and perhaps even local resistance toward crown authority in such judicial presentments against Jews. Such resentments may have been present even in the initial allegations surrounding William of Norwich's death in 1144. They are quite clearly evident, however, in Thomas of Monmouth's Life of William, which goes out of its way to emphasize the role of King Stephen's government in protecting the Jews of Norwich from the righteous indignation of the city's Christian populace.32 So negative is Thomas's picture of King Stephen and his officials that one must wonder whether Thomas would have dared to compose it prior to Stephen's death in 1154. Thomas clearly hoped that William's crucifixion might lead to the expulsion of the Jews from Norwich.33 One wonders, indeed, whether what prompted Thomas to compose the Life in 1154-5 was the death of King Stephen, and the hope that a new king might take more interest not only in the shrine of the martyred William, but also in expelling the persons responsible for his death. If these were his hopes, then Thomas must have been disappointed. Henry II did not endorse the ritual murder allegations, and for nearly a century thereafter no English king showed the slightest recorded interest in any of the resulting shrines. In 1189 Richard gave brief and unintentional hope to those who expected him to expel the Jews of England from the realm.34 Thereafter, however, he steadily maintained his father's policy of protecting Jewish lenders, and collecting Jewish debts on the crown's behalf. King John followed suit, although by his massive confiscations of Jewish debts, first in 1207 and then more sweepingly in 1210, he succeeded in identifying the crown even more firmly with the profits from Jewish money-lending than his father had done in 1186, when he confiscated the bonds of Aaron of Lincoln.35 By the 12305, King Henry III had become so identified with Jewish money-lending that when a royal clerk drew a cartoon on an exchequer receipt roll showing demons leading a boatload of Norwich Jews to hell, he portrayed Isaac of Norwich, the wealthiest member of the 32 33 34 35

Life, pp. 29-30, 36-7, 92, 97-112. Ibid., pp. 25, 47, 97. Stacey, 'Crusades, Martyrdoms', passim. J. C. Holt, The Northerners (Oxford, 1961), pp. 164-74.

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Norwich Jewish community, as wearing King Henry's own trefoil crown.36 This identification of the English government with Jewish moneylending has its roots in the 11505 and n6os.37 In 1158 Henry II destroyed the group of Anglo-Saxon merchant-moneyers who had previously been responsible not only for striking the coinage, but also for a good deal of the small to intermediate scale money-lending in the kingdom. In the mid-n6os, when he confiscated the debts of William Cade, he also destroyed the largest single money-lending firm in the kingdom. This sudden elimination of both the top and bottom rungs of the English credit market helped to make possible the extraordinary prosperity that Jewish money-lenders would achieve in England by the u8os. Direct governmental support for Jewish money-lending remained quite limited, however. In no sense did the Angevins set out to make the Jews of England rich. The government kept the peace; and its sheriffs would enforce the collection of debts owed to Jews if the Jewish creditor purchased the necessary writs, a courtesy it extended to Christian creditors also. But this was the extent of the state's support for Jewish money-lending. Only after 1186, when the crown confiscated Aaron of Lincoln's debts and began collecting them directly on its own behalf, did governmental policy identify the crown directly with Jewish lending. The change, however, was immediate and dramatic, especially in the north where the bulk of Aaron's debtors lived. By 1189, when William of Newburgh described the Jews of England for the first time as 'the king's usurers', this dangerous identification between the English government and its support for Jewish money-lending had already been effected.38 Its consequences were quickly apparent, first in the massacres of Jewish communities in 1189-90 that took place in connection with the Third Crusade, and then in the resistance to King John that culminated in the Magna Carta rebellion, with its associated assaults on Jews and Jewish communities.39 During the twelfth century, the English state thus created the contexts within which anti-Semitism took root without directly endorsing anti-Semitism itself. Tensions between the Norman rulers and their English subjects played some role in the emergence of the ritual crucifixion charge at Norwich. So too did the circumstances of the Anarchy itself. A stronger king than Stephen would probably have suppressed William's nascent cult altogether, as the Emperor Conrad III did in a similar case at Wiirzburg. Competition between monastic 36

PRO, £401/1565; Johnson, 'Textual Sources', 23 and n. n. For what follows, see Stacey, 'Jewish Lending', pp. 87-93. 38 'The Chronicle of William of Newburgh', in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Hewlett, 4 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1885-90), i. 322-3. 39 Stacey, 'Crusades, Martyrdoms'; Holt, Northerners, pp. 164-74. 37

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houses multiplied the number of shrines to child martyrs, but by the early thirteenth century it was the intrusive jurisdictional claims of the king's courts that provided the most common arena within which charges of Jewish child murder were aired and investigated. Under Henry II, the English state extended legal protection to Jewish lending and eliminated some of the competing Christian lenders. After 1186 it also involved itself directly in the confiscation and collection of Jewish bonds. In 1210 this latter policy came to a head with the so-called 'Bristol tallage', when King John carried through a sweeping confiscation of Jewish assets and imprisoned a substantial percentage of the English Jewish community. After 1217, however, English Jewish life was rebuilt on the foundations laid under Henry II and Richard I. During the 1220s, official hostility toward Jews and Judaism came mainly from churchmen seeking to impose in England restrictions, like the Jewish badge, demanded by the Fourth Lateran Council. The English government, by contrast, showed little interest in these new restrictions. Exemptions were easily purchased and, as a result, the badge was not effectively imposed in England until the I25os.40 From the 12505 on, however, the crown would actively embrace and promote the new myths of Jewish malevolence which its own policies had inadvertently helped to engender. The circumstances within which this shift occurred are clear enough and have been described elsewhere.41 Crushing royal taxation of Jewish communities between 1240 and 1260, combined with stringent governmental efforts to collect debts owing to Jews by Christians, bankrupted Jewish communities as well as their Christian debtors. To pay their taxes, Jews were forced either to hand over their uncollected bonds directly to the crown, or else to sell the bonds 'short' on the open market. Either way, the bonds tended to wind up in the hands of King Henry's own friends and relations, who promptly foreclosed upon the Christian debtors. The resulting animosities were politically dangerous to the crown; but they proved even more dangerous for the English Jews. Associations of Jews with magic, murder and excrement, previously only hinted at, now become explicit in the pages of the chroniclers;42 while after a sixty-year hiatus, new shrines to the victims of alleged ritual crucifixion began to multiply once again in English churches. In 1244, the canons of St Paul's attempted to promote a ritual crucifixion cult at their house, but without success.43 A new cult may also have arisen at Bristol, in the 40

N. Vincent, 'Two Papal Letters on the Wearing of the Jewish Badge, 1221 and 1229', Jewish Historical Studies, 34 (1994-96), 209-24. 41 Stacey, '1240-60: A Watershed in Anglo-Jewish Relations?', Historical Research, 61 (1988), 135-50. 42 Ibid., 147-50. 43 Chronica majora, iv. 377-8.

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parish church of St Mary, Redcliffe.44 The turning-point, however, came in 1255, when King Henry threw the full weight of the crown's judicial machinery behind a new ritual crucifixion charge at Lincoln. Dispatching his former steward, John of Lexington, to investigate the death of a young boy in the city, Henry quickly became convinced that little Hugh's death was a case of ritual murder. As a result, nineteen Lincoln Jews were executed, and nearly a hundred more imprisoned.45 The case became a sensation, recounted in ballads, chronicles and poems, including the Canterbury Tales. 'Little St Hugh' (so called to distinguish him from the former bishop of Lincoln, St Hugh of Avalon, whose body lay in Lincoln Cathedral) became the best known of all the English martyrs to ritual crucifixion. Not coincidentally, his cult also enjoyed steady royal support, not only in 1255 but afterwards. In 1280 King Edward I almost certainly made offerings at his shrine when he and Queen Eleanor visited Lincoln for the translation of St Hugh of Avalon's body into the newly completed Angel Choir.46 About a decade later, Edward set his support for Little St Hugh in stone. He ordered the royal masons and sculptors to build a new shrine for Little Hugh in the south aisle of the Angel Choir, in a style directly imitative of the Eleanor crosses, with the king's coat of arms prominently displayed on the front of the new shrine.47 A more explicit identification of the crown with the ritual crucifixion charge can hardly be imagined. King Henry's support for the ritual crucifixion charge came only two years after his 1253 Statute of Jewry, by which he imposed a variety of limitations on Jews and Jewish life, including the Jewish badge, that had long been sought by the church.48 It is tempting to link these decisions, and to see the king as having taken a deliberate choice to pre-empt the gathering opposition to his government by aligning himself with the rising tide of anti-Semitism his own policies had helped to promote. Such an interpretation may be too calculating to be a persuasive reconstruction of Henry Ill's motives; but, under Edward I, the impression of a deliberate and calculated embrace of anti44

Stacey, 'Jews and the Body of Christ', 21. G. I. Langmuir, 'The Knight's Tale of Young Hugh of Lincoln', Speculum, 47 (1972), 459-82, reprinted in Toward a Definition. 46 Hillaby, 'The Ritual-Child-Murder Accusation', 93-8. The almoner's roll for the year has perished, but Edward was scrupulous about making offerings to all the saints whose shrines were contained in the churches he visited. It is highly unlikely he would have come to Lincoln for such an elaborate occasion and ignored Little St Hugh. 47 D. Stocker, 'The Shrine of Little St Hugh', in Medieval An and Architecture at Lincoln Cathedral (Oxford, 1992), pp. 109-17; Hillaby, 'The Ritual-Child-Murder Accusation', 90-8. 48 J. A. Watt, 'The English Episcopate, the State and the Jews: The Evidence of the Thirteenth-Century Conciliar Decrees', Thirteenth-Century England, 2, ed. P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 137-47, at 143-4. 45

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Semitism is hard to avoid. From the beginning of his reign, Edward identified himself and his government with the veracity of the ritual crucifixion charge. In 1276 he ordered a group of London Jews who had been acquitted of such charges during his father's reign to be retried before the Easter 1276 parliament. He also added a new article to the 1276 London eyre, instructing the justices to enquire specifically 'de Judeis qui fecerent crudelitatem de pueris Christianis'.49 Two such incidents were apparently reported to the justices; and a further allegation may have arisen at Northampton in I279.50 Seen in this light, Edward's support for Little St Hugh of Lincoln was but an additional chapter in an already familiar story of royal support for allegations of Jewish ritual murder. In 1275, declaring that 'many evils and disinheritances of good men have come about through the usuries which Jews have practised in the past, and many sins have followed thereupon', Edward agreed to end Jewish money-lending altogether, in return for a sizeable tax from his Christian subjects.51 Enquiries were then quickly launched to determine whether Jews were obeying the terms of the new statute, and to enquire also into reports of coin-clipping by both Christians and Jews.52 Any initial appearance of evenhandedness was quickly replaced, however, by a systematic governmental campaign against the English Jewish community premised on the assumption that nearly all the adult Jewish males in the kingdom were guilty of coin-clipping. All that was needed was evidence of their guilt, and that was provided by an elaborate 'sting operation' funded by the king's wardrobe and headed by Henry of Winchester, a convert from Judaism and the godson of King Henry himself.53 In November 1278, 600 Jews were imprisoned in the Tower of London, with an unknown (but presumably additional) number held also at the Guildhall. Convictions followed swiftly; and, although the king postponed the executions for several weeks in honour of the Easter season, by i May 1279 no less than 269 Jews and twenty-nine Christians had been hanged for coinage offences.54 Some Jews may well 49 50

1276 London Eyre, no. 308. The Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds, 1212-1301, ed. A. Gransden (London, 1964),

p. 69. 51 Statutes of the Realm (London, 1810-28), i. 221-2; Stacey, 'Parliamentary Negotiation', pp. 96-8. 52 CPR, I2j2-8i, pp. 236, 240; BL, Add. MS 32085, fo. 120, 'Chapitles tuchaunz La Gyuerie', printed in Select Pleas, Starrs and Other Records from the Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, 1220-84, ed. J. M. Rigg (London, 1902), pp. liv-lv. These fifteen 'chapitles', i.e. articles of enquiry, are unrelated to the draft statute on Jewish moneylending to which they are now conjoined. 53 Stacey, 'Parliamentary Negotiation', p. 97 and n. 131. On Henry of Winchester, see also idem, 'Conversion of Jews', 276-8. 54 Rokeah, 'Money and the Hangman, pt F, 88-98.

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have been guilty as charged, but the impression of a highly differential justice is not lessened by this fact.55 Edward also took pains to portray himself and his government as the reliable protectors of Christian orthodoxy against the religious challenge posed by Judaism. In 1275, Edward had the apostate Dominican Robert of Reading brought publicly before him to declare his conversion to Judaism, before handing him over to the archbishop of Canterbury for judgment.56 In 1279 Edward ordered government officials to enquire into allegations of Jewish blasphemy against Christianity, on which charge at least one Norwich Jew was publicly drawn and burned.57 In 1280 Edward also ordered all English Jews to attend conversionist sermons to be preached to them by the Dominican order.58 About the same time Edward also launched a search for Jews who had converted to Christianity and then returned to Judaism. Once again, candidates for capital punishment were found; but it does not appear that anyone was actually executed on such charges, despite the pleas of Archbishop Pecham for the government to act.59 By 1290, Edward's government had thus successfully stigmatized the English Jewish population not only as vicious usurers and criminal coinclippers, but as the ritual murderers of Christian children and inveterate blasphemers against the Christian faith.60 Given these 'facts', the expulsion of the English Jewish community in 1290 might easily appear as a necessary and obvious step required of a Christian prince. This was very much how Edward himself sought to portray it. On 5 November 1290, just five days after the last practising Jew had departed the kingdom, Edward declared to his exchequer officials that for the honour of Christ, he had expelled the Jews as perfidious men who had maliciously violated his 1275 statute by surreptitiously continuing to lend money at interest.61 In fact, Edward had agreed to expel the Jews 55 Johnson, 'Textual Sources', 25-6, assembles some interesting rabbinic material condemning coin-clipping by English Jews during these years. On differential justice, see Rokeah, 'Money and the Hangman, pt i', 98-9: 'although cases involving Christians outnumber those involving Jews by about five to four, Jews suffered the death penalty in a ratio of nearly ten Jews executed for every Christian so put to death.' 56 Chronicle of Bury, p. 58. 57 CCR, 1272-79., pp. 565-6; CPR, 1272-81, p. 377, for the burning of Abraham son of Deulecresse. For Jews as blasphemers, see also the story of the ritual crucifixion of Adam of Bristol described in Stacey, 'Jews and the Body of Christ', which emphasize? the point repeatedly. 58 CPR, 1272-81, p. 356. 59 D. Logan, 'Thirteen London Jews and Conversion to Christianity: Problems of Apostasy in the 12805', BIHR, 45 (1972), 214-29. 60 For Jews living 'viciously' (visiosemeni) by usurious lending, see the 1285 draft statute on money-lending from BL, Add. MS 32085, printed in Select Pleas, ed. Rigg, pp. liv-lvi. 61 CCR, 1288-96, p. 109. The language here is interestingly close to the 1285 draft statute in BL, Add. MS 32085.

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because the parliament of 1290 demanded it; and in return, the parliament had conceded to the king the largest single tax of the Middle Ages.62 Far from being unaware of, or affronted by, continuing Jewish money-lending., Edward had even considered reauthorizing it in I285,63 despite the fact that his subjects had purchased the 1275 ban on Jewish money-lending with a previous tax. Like so many of his government's statements about Jews, his November 1290 explanation of the expulsion was a lie. But as a final illustration of the connections between medieval anti-Semitism and the English state, it is no less telling for being untrue. There is thus no simple correlation between the growth of English anti-Semitism and the power of the medieval English state. Although the precociously powerful English state provided the circumstances within which the plausibility of the ritual crucifixion charge became established during the twelfth century, it was not until the 12505 that the English crown embraced the charge itself, and not until the 12705 that it adopted anti-Semitism as a deliberate political and religious platform. Prior to the 12705, anti-Semitism had served more often as a language of political opposition to the crown: first in Norwich during the 11405, where it had a distinctively English aspect that it quickly lost; then in the massacres of 1189-90 and 1215-16; and finally in the opposition to Henry Ill's government during the 12405 and 12505. By endorsing the cult of Little St Hugh of Lincoln in 1255, Henry may possibly have hoped to draw the sting from this long-established linkage between anti-Semitism and political opposition. But characteristically, it was a gesture too little and too late to defuse the gathering tide of resentment towards his government's dealings in Jewish bonds; and in the civil wars of the 12605, Jews once again became a principal target of anti-royalist violence. It was not, therefore, until the reign of Edward I that the discourse of anti-Semitism was successfully co-opted by the crown, and that anti-Semitism emerged as a political force to be deliberately deployed and developed in the interests of the English state. 62

Stacey, 'Parliamentary Negotiation', passim. R. Mundill, 'Anglo-Jewry under Edward I: Credit Agents and their Clients', Jewish Historical Studies, 31 (1988-90), 1-21, argues that Edward did in fact reauthorize Jewish money-lending in the mid-l28os. 63

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10 From Rex Wallie to Princeps Wallie. Charters and State Formation in Thirteenth-Century Wales CHARLES INSLEY 'The period from 1172 to 1277 witnessed momentous changes in Wales', R. R. Davies argued in I987.1 It saw the rise to pre-eminence of the principalities of Deheubarth, Powys and especially Gwynedd, the creation of the first, and only, native principality of Wales, and the collapse and dismemberment of that principality in 1283. The key issues concerning Wales in the thirteenth century have been extensively discussed in the past, notably by J. E. Lloyd2 and J. Goronwy Edwards,3 as well as more recently by R. R. Davies himself,4 and it is not proposed to revisit them here. Instead, the relationship between political developments in Wales in the thirteenth century and the neglected field of Welsh diplomatic will be examined. The enduring topos of thirteenth-century Welsh history is the inevitable rise to supremacy of the principality of Gwynedd, a topos fully utilized by subsequent Welsh historiography. Historians such as Lloyd saw the recognition by the English crown in 1267 of a distinct native principality of Wales as the culmination of a process which began with Owain Gwynedd (1137-70), and perhaps even with Owain's father, Gruffudd ap Cynan (c. 1093-1137). It is clear, however, as more recent historians have argued, that the rise of Gwynedd was neither an inevitable nor a seamless process. To an extent, the dominance of 1 R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales, 1063-141$ (Oxford, 1987), p. 213. An earlier version of this essay was read at a conference in Bangor in 1997, and I am grateful to all those there and to others subsequently, especially Dr Huw Pryce, Dr Tony Carr, Professor J. Beverley Smith, Professor Rees Davies and Dr David Carpenter, for their comments. This essay also represents the first fruits of a project to edit the acts of native Welsh rulers, undertaken by Huw Pryce and myself and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. 2 J. E. Lloyd, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest, 3rd edn (2 vols, London, 1939). 3 Littere Wallie Preserved in Liber A in the Public Record Office, ed. J. G. Edwards (Cardiff, 1940). 4 Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change.

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Gwynedd in Welsh politics in the thirteenth century was a function of the collapse and fragmentation of Deheubarth, and the partition of Powys, at the end of the twelfth. Gwynedd, too, seemed set on the road towards partition and fragmentation at that time. The political situation there following the death of Owain Gwynedd was extremely confused, with Owain's sons and grandsons struggling for dominance within the principality. Llywelyn ab lorwerth, Llywelyn 'the Great', only emerged as ruler of all Gwynedd in the early years of the thirteenth century, and spent most of the remainder of his life in an ultimately doomed attempt to create a hegemony of pura Wallia (native Wales) that would endure beyond his death. The meeting of Welsh lords summoned by Llywelyn in 1238 at Strata Florida was seen by Lloyd as the crowning achievement of Llywelyn's life, setting the seal on the rise of Gwynedd. As long ago as 1964, however, Gwyn Williams pointed out that the Strata Florida assembly achieved nothing, since Llywelyn was prevented by Henry III from securing the homage of the Welsh magnates.5 Within eighteen months of Llywelyn's death, his sons Gruffudd and Dafydd had been forced by Henry III to accept the humiliating treaty of Gwern Eigron, which allowed for the partitioning of Gwynedd between the two brothers, reducing it virtually to the status of an English barony:6 should Dafydd die childless (as he ultimately did), then the whole of Gwynedd would escheat to the crown. The fact that in 1246, on Dafydd's death, the principality was allowed to pass to Gruffudd ap Llywelyn's sons Owain, Llywelyn, Rhodri and Dafydd may say more about lack of crown interest in extensive involvement in Wales than about the vitality of Gwynedd. In essence, the principality of Wales recognized, somewhat reluctantly, by Henry III at Montgomery in 1267, was entirely a creation of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.7 It was created at the expense of Llywelyn's brothers Owain and Dafydd at the battle of Bryn Derwin in I255,8 and, like the lordship of Llywelyn's grandfather, at the expense of the weaker G. A. Williams, 'The Succession to Gwynedd, 1238-47', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 20 (1962-4), 393-413; J. Beverley Smith, 'Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales and Lord of Snowdon', Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society, 44 (1984), 7-36 at 8. 6 PRO, E 36/274, fos 330r-v, C 66/51/2; Littere Wallie, pp. 9-10; CPR, 1232-47, p. 264; Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, ed. H. Luard, 7 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1872-9), iv. 321-3; K. L. Maund, Handlist of the Acts of Native Welsh Rulers, 1132-1283 (Cardiff, 1996), no. 364. 7 PRO, C 53/56/2; E 36/274, fos 327r-328v; Littere Wallie, pp. 1-4; Foedera, conventiones, litterae etc. ed. T. Rymer (4 vols, in 7, rev. edn, London 1816-69), I. ii. 474; Maund, Handlist, no. 398. 8 Smith, 'Llywelyn', 12-16; see Maund, Handlist, no. 404, for Rhodri ap Gruffudd's quitclaim of all his rights in Gwynedd to his elder brother Llywelyn. 5

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principalities of native Wales, which had fragmented since the beginning of the thirteenth century. What part diplomatic played in the evolution of these principalities will be explored here. It is a long recognized fact that the formulation of royal and aristocratic documents reflects the status and political aspirations of those responsible for them. For instance, in the twelfth century English magnates consciously imitated the formulation and style of English royal diplomatic, with some of the greater magnates, such as the earls of Gloucester and Chester, even having their own secretariats to produce charters, letters and other memoranda.9 The kings of Scotland from the middle of the twelfth century onwards also imitated the practice of the English royal chancery. This essay will examine the extent to which native Welsh rulers did so too. The subject of Welsh secular diplomatic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has been something of a poor relation when compared with other aspects of medieval Welsh history,10 attracting relatively little systematic attention; studies have been largely confined to the diplomatic of individual documents or to collections of documents.11 Only in the last few years have all the surviving acta of the native rulers been listed, and an edition put in hand.12 Such acta have been extensively plundered by earlier scholars seeking places, dates, names and itineraries, but their diplomatic aspects have remained largely untouched. 9 Earldom of Gloucester Charters, ed. R. B. Patterson (Oxford, 1973); The Earldom of Chester and its Charters: A Tribute to Geoffrey Barraclough, ed. A. T. Thacker, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, 71 (1991). 10 For discussions of Welsh episcopal diplomatic in this period see Llandaff Episcopal Acta, 1140-1289, ed. D. Crouch, South Wales Record Society, 5 (Cardiff, 1989) and St David's Episcopal Acta, 1085-1280, ed. J. Barrow, South Wales Record Society, 13 (Cardiff, 1998). For discussions of native diplomatic in the period up to the eleventh century, see W. Davies, An Early Welsh Microcosm: Studies in the Llandaff Charters (London, 1978) and eadem, The Llandaff Charters (Aberystwyth, 1979). 11 J. B. Smith, 'Dower in Thirteenth-Century Wales: A Grant of the Commote of Anhuniog', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 30 (1982), 348-55; idem, 'Magna Carta and the Charters of the Welsh Princes', EHR, 99 (1984), 344-62; idem, 'Land Endowments of the Period of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 34 (1987), 150-64; The Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. G. C. G. Thomas (Aberystwyth, 1997); H. Pryce, 'The Church of Trefeglwys and the End of the "Celtic" Charter Tradition in Twelfth-Century Wales', Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 25 (1993), 15-54; D. Crouch, 'The Earliest Original Charter of a Welsh King', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 36 (1989), 125-31. There are also earlier studies on individual documents: J. C. Davies, 'A Grant by Dafydd ap Gruffudd', National Library of Wales Journal, 3 (1943-4), 29-32; idem, 'A Grant by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd', ibid., 158-62; K. Williams-Jones, 'Llywelyn's Charter to Cymer Abbey', Journal of the Merionethshire History and Record Society, 3 (1957-60), 45-78. 12 Maund, Handlist: The Acts of Native Welsh Rulers, 1120-1283 ed. H. Pryce and C. L. G. Insley (forthcoming).

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This is unfortunate, since the diplomatic of the Welsh princes may reveal much about native government and authority, and how that authority was perceived by others. This survey will concentrate on charters, for they were more formal documents than other acta, such as letters, and their style seems to have been much more rigid. The way letters were produced may tell us something about the clerks who served native rulers, but it seems to have been the charter which was deployed to elaborate and articulate claims to status and authority.13 Three broad questions will be examined: what comparisons can be made between the formulation of Welsh charters and those from other parts of the British Isles, and what do those comparisons suggest; how did Welsh rulers style themselves in their own documents; and does the means by which the charters were produced reveal something about princely power in native Wales? Compared to historians of medieval England and Scotland, the Welsh historian is poorly served when it comes to acta. Maund identified 543 'princely' acts that either survive or are referred to from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.14 This pales in comparison to the masses of comparable material available in England or Scotland. Barraclough identified 469 surviving acts of the earls of Chester from a broadly similar period,15 while the Haughmond cartulary contains 1357 documents from the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, only a small proportion of which are Welsh.16 Diana Greenway lists 403 acts from 1107-91 from the honour of Mowbray,17 while 590 documents survive from the reign of the Scottish king William the Lion (1165-1214) alone.18 These comparisons emphasize both the poor survival rate of the Welsh material and the limited uses to which it can be put. In most cases, for instance, it is impossible to provide the individual identifications of scribes and scribal careers that Patterson does for the earls of Gloucester and Margam abbey19 or Thomas for the abbey of Strata Marcella.20 13

See M. T. Flanagan, 'The Context and Uses of the Latin Charter in TwelfthCentury Ireland', in H. Pryce (ed.), Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 113-32, for the way Irish kings used Latin charters. 14 Maund, Handlist. In the light of subsequent work on editing the acts which Maund identified, her figures may need to be slightly revised, as new material comes to light. 15 Charters of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester, c. 1071-1237, ed. G. Barraclough, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 126 (Manchester, 1988). 16 The Cartulary of Haughmond Abbey, ed. U. Rees (Cardiff, 1985). 17 Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, 1107-1191, ed. D. Greenway (London, 1972). 18 Regesta Regum Scottorum: William I, 1165-1214, ed. G. W. S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1971). 19 Gloucester Charters, ed. Patterson, pp. 16-21; R. B. Patterson, 'The Author of the "Margam Annals": Early Thirteenth-Century Margam Abbey's Compleat Scribe', Anglo-Norman Studies, 14 (1991), 197-210. 20 Thomas, YstradMarchell,pp. 109-12.

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5. Native Wales in the Thirteenth Century

Of Maund's 543 acts, 282 are charters, of which 200 survive in more or less complete form. The other eighty-two are either so abbreviated as to make it impossible to determine whether they contain any genuine material, or are only referred to in later enrolments. Of the 200 surviving charters, eighty-two exist in single-sheet form, and over half of these are from the Margam archive. Between them, the archives of Margam and Strata Marcella account for well over half the surviving charters. The remainder survive only as later copies, the bulk in chancery enrolments or antiquarian transcripts. If the pattern of survival is examined by principality, then it becomes

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clear that survivals are dominated by charters from Glamorgan (sixty), Gwynedd (forty-four) and the various components of Powys (fifty-two., excluding Arwystli). In several cases, only a handful of acts survive from a particular area: Cedewain (three), Ceredigion (three), Edeirnion (one), Maelienydd (three), Meirionydd (three) and Senghenydd (one). No acts at all survive from Buellt, although Dugdale has a reference to a now lost charter of Meurig ab Addaf.21 Of the rest, seven charters survive from Arwystli, twelve from Deheubarth and thirteen from Gwynllwg. This pattern, however, is slightly misleading. In some cases, the surviving charters from a particular region are dominated by one particular archive: the charters therefore may not be necessarily typical of the acts issued by a particular ruler or dynasty. This is especially true in the case of Glamorgan, where all the surviving acts are from Margam abbey, or Gwynllwg, where eight of the thirteen charters are from Goldcliff priory. In the case of Arwystli and Deheubarth, four archives (Strata Marcella and Haughmond for Arwystli, and Strata Florida and Talley for Deheubarth) account for the bulk of their surviving charters. For other principalities, there is a much greater mix of survivals. Charters from Strata Marcella, Valle Crucis, Haughmond, Basingwerk and Combermere make up the bulk of survivals from Powys, while the majority of surviving charters from Gwynedd are divided between Haughmond, Strata Marcella, Basingwerk, Aberconwy, Cymer abbey, Beddgelert, Cemais, Nefyn and Ynys Lannog.22 Several other factors need to be taken into consideration in assessing the Welsh charters. Firstly, it is strikingly apparent that the bias of survival leans overwhelmingly towards charters granted to ecclesiastical beneficiaries: of the 200 surviving charters listed by Maund, only twenty-six were for laymen; (thirty-seven out of 282 in total). Of these, fifteen date from the period 1277-83 and such grants to lay rather than ecclesiastical beneficiaries may reflect the worsening political situation in Wales after Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's humiliation at the hands of Edward I at Aberconwy. But the general balance of the material may distort any conclusions reached about the agencies producing charters for the Welsh princes: given the ecclesiastical bias, charters will inevitably appear to have been produced by the beneficiaries. In many cases, the charters do not reflect new grants, but confirmations of existing ones. Of Margam's sixty charters, fewer than half (twenty-eight) are fresh grants of land or privileges. In most cases, grants are confirmed at least once, and on several occasions up to eight 21 W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel (6 vols, in 8, London, 1817-30), VI. i. 837. 22 None of the charters from Aberconwy, Cymer, Combermere, Basingwerk, Strata Florida and Talley survive in original form.

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times, as is the case with the charters for Pwll-du Mawr,23 Newcastle24 and the marsh of Afan, while four of the Margam charters are general confirmations of existing grants. Only in seven cases is there only one charter for a particular grant, and two of these are actually confirmations by the lords of Glamorgan of grants made by their men. Clearly, Margam felt the need to reinforce its tenure of its lands by repeated confirmations. In diplomatic terms, this might produce a situation where the specific formulation of a charter is repeated in the confirmation, with only the name of the grantor being changed. A similar ratio of new grants to confirmations is repeated in other archives. The six charters from Priestholm, Anglesey, concern only two separate grants (the vill of Bancenyn, and the abadaeth of Penmon). Most strikingly, all seven of the charters which survive from Strata Florida are confirmations of existing grants.25 Strata Marcella is an exception to this pattern. Most of its possessions are attested by only one charter, and there seems to have been nothing like the rash of confirmations attached to certain of Margam's estates. Strata Marcella was confirmed in possession of a few of its estates, but only Eskengainoc 26 was confirmed more than once in the monks' possession. This pattern is repeated at Haughmond, where only Trefeglwys and Stockett, out of ten grants, were confirmed, although both were confirmed four times.27 Two of the Haughmond charters are general confirmations: one a confirmation by Llywelyn ab lorwerth of the gifts of his predecessors,28 and another a confirmation by Dafydd ap Llywelyn of Gwynedd of the gifts of Hywel ab leuaf of Arwystli and Madog ap Maredudd of Powys,29 one of a few instances before the 12605 where a prince of Gwynedd confirmed grants made by a ruler from a different principality (others being Llywelyn ab lorwerth's grant of Llandimor to Morgan Gam of Glamorgan in c. 1217 and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's confirmation of the gifts of his father and grandfather, and of two rulers of Powys, Owain Brogyntyn and Elise ap Madog, for Basingwerk abbey).30 In the case of Haughmond and Strata Marcella, Maund, Handlist, nos 51, 52, 65, 79, 84, 85, 91, 102. Ibid., nos 59, 70, 72, 84, 85, 89, 91, 93, 99. 25 Although Maund, Handlist, no. 19, seems to be a general confirmation of previous oral grants made by the Lord Rhys and his predecessors. 26 Ibid., nos 210, 228. 27 Ibid., nos 3, 4, 202, 246 (Trefeglwys), 116, 117, 125,126 (Stockett). 28 Ibid., no. 126. 29 Ibid., no. 142. 30 Ibid., nos 132, 143, 147. In all of these charters, the status of the ruler whose grant was being confirmed is never mentioned, perhaps reflecting the pan-Welsh status claimed by the two Llywelyns. Compare with the confirmations of client rulers made by Diarmait Mac Murchada, king of Leinster, where the royal status of such clients as the Ua Riain dynasty is ignored: Flanagan, 'Twelfth-Century Ireland', p. 118. 23 24

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this pattern could be produced for a variety of reasons. It may reflect a larger number of princely benefactors, or it might suggest more settled tenurial conditions in Powys and Gwynedd when compared to Glamorgan. The absence of any Strata Marcella cartulary, when compared to the large number of charter rolls at Margam, may also suggest that the monks of Strata Marcella were less concerned than those of Margam to secure written confirmation of their lands. The overall chronological distribution of the charters suggests that most of those which survive date from the last decade of the twelfth century and the first three decades of the thirteenth, in large measure a reflection of the spread of Cistercian and Premonstratensian monasticism in native Wales from the late twelfth century onwards. This pattern, however, is somewhat distorted by Margam, only nine of whose sixty charters date from after 1226, and is repeated in Gwynllwg, where only one charter survives from after 1227. In the case of Glamorgan and Gwynllwg, the relatively early end to the run of charters may reflect the reduced political status of their rulers, and their inability to issue such acts. For those remaining principalities which possess enough charters to make such assessments, the chronological pattern is much more diffuse. In Deheubarth, seven charters date from c. 1190-1230, and three from after 1250. In Gwynedd, twenty-one charters survive from the period 1190-1230, thirteen from the period 1230-47, and nine from the period 1260-83: of the latter six date from between 1277 and 1283. A similar pattern can also be seen in Powys and its two successors (Powys Wenwynwyn and Powys Fadog) thirty-one charters from the period 1190-1230, only three from the middle of the thirteenth century, and twelve from the period 1250-83. Surprisingly few charters survive from between 1215 and 1270 in southern Powys (Powys Wenwynwyn), and only one of these, a grant of Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn's for Strata Marcella, was for a Welsh beneficiary.31 The diplomatic features of the surviving Welsh charters can be compared with those of a wide range of contemporary acta from the British Isles, extending from those of the kings of Scotland, the various Irish kings, and great English magnates such as the earls of Gloucester and Chester, to lesser English baronial families such as the Bassetts. Perhaps the most obvious observation that can be made about Welsh diplomatic during this period is its almost total penetration by AngloNorman diplomatic forms. To all intents and purposes, the vast majority of Welsh charters conform to the norms of Anglo-Norman Thomas, Ystrad Marchell, no. 80 (1231 X 1232). Two other of Gruffudd ap Gwenywynwyn's charters survive, one for Lilleshall abbey (1216 X 1241), and one for Adam fitzPeter (1252 X 1253). 31

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diplomatic. Most dispense with the invocation and proem of the older 'solemn diploma', and virtually all, like most English and Scottish charters, are phrased as notifications, using the verbs noscere or scire. There are very few exceptions to this. Huw Pryce noted that Madog ap Maredudd of Powys's charter for Trefeglwys (1132 X 1151) may preserve elements of an older, native diplomatic tradition;32 it is possible that Owain Cyfeiliog's foundation charter for Strata Marcella contains similar traces of such native drafting traditions;33 and the presence in a number of charters of lengthy boundary clauses, some in the vernacular, may also be the relic of earlier native diplomatic. But within the framework of Anglo-Norman diplomatic there are significant differences between Welsh charters and those of English and Scottish kings, and great English magnates. Briefly, these differences can be broken down into the form of address, the verb used to introduce the notification, and the type of 'princely style'. Perhaps the most striking difference between English and Welsh acta is the absence from the latter of either general or honorial addresses, or specific addresses. The vast majority of charters issued by the kings of England and Scotland, and by such great magnates as the earls of Chester and Gloucester, begin with an address such as: Ranulfus comes Cestrie episcopis, archidiaconis, decanis, abbatibus, constabulario, dapifero, iusticiario, baronibus, vicecomitibus, ministris et ballivis, universisque sancte dei ecclesie filiis tarn futuris quam presentibus salutem.34 That is, they are addressed to all the grantor's subjects and officials. Such addresses are entirely absent from Welsh charters, with the exception of Dafydd ab Owain Gwynedd's grant of Stockett to Haughmond abbey (1186 X 1194), Morgan and lorwerth ab Owain of Caerleon's grant to Goldcliff priory (1154 X 1158), and Hywel ab lorwerth of Caerleon's confirmation of the gifts of Robert Candos to the same priory (1174 X 1211).3S One should note that all three charters were for English beneficiaries. Since it is clear that magnates such as the earl of Chester were imitating English royal practice, one must wonder why H. Pryce, 'Trefeglwys', 15-54, at 24-7; Maund, Handlist, no. 202. Maund, Handlist, no. 203. This charter begins with an invocation, rare in charters by this date, and the dispositive clause does not begin with a notification, but simply 'Ego Oenus . . .' One could also note Gwenwynwyn ab Owain Cyfeiliog's 1191 grant of Tafolwern to Strata Marcella (Maund, Handlist, no. 208), which also begins with an invocation, but also contains a long preamble. Such preambles were very rare in AngloNorman charters, but occur in the Llandaff material, and may be a relic of native drafting practice. The spelling of Gwenwynwyn's name (Guenoingueri) also betrays the influence of Old Welsh orthography (Pryce, personal communication). 34 Barraclough, Charters of the Earls of Chester, no. 98, pp. 111-12. 35 Maund, Handlist, nos 116, 175, i8ij see also Williams-Jones, 'Cymer', 51. 32

33

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Welsh rulers, even in Gwynedd, did not use such an address, when most Welsh rulers would have claimed regalian powers within their polities. Many Welsh charters simply commence with the notification. This can be paralleled in English acta, but in those of the lesser baronage. Many of the charters issued by the Bassetts of Weldon omit any form of address,36 as do many of those granted to Haughmond abbey,37 and at least one charter of Alan FitzRoland, lord of Galloway and Constable of Scotland.38 If the formulation of charters is some indication of the status claimed by their grantor, then it suggests that those who drafted the surviving Welsh acta perceived the status of many of the Welsh princes as essentially similar to that of English families such as the Bassetts or Mowbrays. A similar conclusion is reached when one considers the form of notification used in Welsh acta. In English and Scottish royal charters,39 and the charters of the earls of Chester and Gloucester, forms of the verb scire had generally supplanted the verb noscere by the end of the twelfth century.40 Scire is only used occasionally in Welsh acta, predominantly in Glamorgan and Caerleon (both lordships heavily influenced by their Anglo-Norman neighbours).41 Again, this is comparable to the charters of the Bassett family, where noscere and its forms was still used extensively in the thirteenth century.42 The phrasing of the dispositive sections of Welsh charters provides another area for comparison. By the end of the twelfth century, the granting verb in the main dispositive clause was couched in the perfect infinitive form: this was true not only for English and Scottish royal acta,43 but also for those of the greater magnates.44 Again, the majority of the Welsh material stands in contrast to this: as in English baronial charters, the perfect tense is the most common form. But two groups of charters, those of the lords of See, for instance, Bassett Charters, c. 1120-1250, ed. W. T. Reedy, Pipe Roll Society, 87 (1989-91), no. 3, p. 2, nos 14-21, pp. 9-12. 37 Rees, Haughmond, nos 477, 479, 481, pp. 106-7. 38 K. J. Stringer, 'Periphery and Core in Thirteenth-Century Scotland: Alan son of Roland, Lord of Galloway and Constable of Scotland', in A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (ed.), Medieval Scotland: Crown, Lordship and Community: Essays Presented to G. W. S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1993), pp. 83-113, at pp. 104-5. 39 Barrow, Regesta, pp. 78-9. 40 J. Hudson, 'Diplomatic and Legal Aspects of the Charters', Chester Charters, pp. 160-1. 41 The verb scire, and the perfect infinitive (see below) is used in Handlist, no. 18, a charter of the Lord Rhys from the last quarter of the twelfth century. This charter is for Chertsey abbey, and its formulation might represent mainstream English diplomatic usage. 42 E.g. Bassett Charters, ed. Reedy, nos 190, 193, 194, 196, 197, pp. 127-32. 43 Barrow, Regesta, p. 78. 44 Hudson, 'Diplomatic and Legal Aspects', pp. 161-2. 36

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Glamorgan and the princes of Gwynedd, form exceptions. Only in these two principalities did the perfect infinitive construction dominate as the thirteenth century progressed. In Glamorgan, this usage probably reflected the influence of the diplomatic of the earls of Gloucester, whose clients the lords of Glamorgan were. All the surviving charters from Glamorgan belong to, and were probably produced at, Margam abbey, a house patronized extensively by the earls of Gloucester. The use of the perfect infinitive in the majority of charters surviving from Gwynedd is perhaps more significant, since it does seem to suggest direct imitation either of royal usage or perhaps of that of the earls of Chester. Related to the issue of tense of the main dispositive verb is the use of the plural of majesty. In English royal charters this form was first used by Richard I, and at Chester it was used occasionally in charters of Earls Ranulf III and John the Scot,45 and then consistently from the early I22OS.46 Alone among the Welsh rulers, the princes of Gwynedd made extensive use of the plural of majesty, again from the early I22os.47 This may have been in imitation of the earls of Chester, with whom Llywelyn ab lorwerth had relatively cordial relations: in 1222 Llywelyn's daughter Elen married John the Scot, nephew of Earl Ranulf III.48 But it is equally possible that Llywelyn was directly imitating the crown, seeking to emphasize the re-establishment of power which he had achieved in the 12205, following the setbacks inflicted upon him by King John,49 by the more royal form of his charters.50 It is already clear from the above discussion that while the diplomatic of the majority of Welsh charters was comparable to that employed by lesser English magnates, those charters from Gwynedd were, in important respects, comparable to those of great English barons, or even to those of the crown. This contrast is reinforced by a consideration of the styles used by Welsh princes in their charters. Throughout the Anglo-Norman world, lords, great and small, were punctilious in their use of titles. The earls of Chester were invariably described as comes., adding the title dux in the period 1188-99, when Barraclough, Charters of the Earls of Chester, nos 327, 290, 412, 469. Hudson, 'Diplomatic and Legal Aspects', p. 161. 47 Maund, Handlist, no. 133, is the first charter of the princes of Gwynedd to use the plural of majesty throughout, although the Cymer abbey charter of 1209 (Maund, Handlist, no. 130) contains a mixture of singular and plural: Williams-Jones, 'Cymer', 50. 48 Maund, Handlist, no. 346. 49 Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, pp. 244-51. 50 Williams-Jones, 'Cymer', 50. See Flanagan, 'Twelfth-Century Ireland', for the way Irish kings used the Latin charter, modelled on the Anglo-Norman form, to enhance their status, especially p. 121, where she notes that Diarmait Mac Carthaig, king of Desmond, used a royal style very similar to that of the German emperor, Frederick I. 45 46

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they were also counts of Brittany.51 Robert I of Gloucester was always described as consul, a title seemingly devised by Robert himself, perhaps to reflect his high birth.52 Ranulf II of Chester used the same title on occasion.53 The king of the Scots had acquired an established royal title from the end of the eleventh century, and William the Lion was always described as rex Scottorum, adding dei gratia after HJ4.54 Even the Scottish earls used established titles in their charters: Alan of Galloway was invariably described as dominus de Galuuath until he became constable, when he added Scocie Constabularius to his style.55 In contrast, Welsh rulers do not, outside Gwynedd and to an extent Deheubarth, seem to have ever adopted a consistent approach to 'princely' titles.56 In the vast majority of cases, a ruler is simply described by his name and patronymic: only fifty-three of the surviving charters have any form of princely style, and thirty of these are from Gwynedd. In Deheubarth, the reference point seems to have been the relationship of the grantor to the Lord Rhys as much as the title of princeps Suthwallie. Even in Gwynedd, where there does seem to have been a consistent and sophisticated approach to titles, the 'kin' dimension of the title never seems to have declined in importance, so that even the last Llywelyn, who was generally styled princeps Wallie et dominus Snaudonie in his charters and letters after 1258 was also invariably referred to as 'Lewelinus filius Griffini'. By thirteenth century the rulers of Gwynedd were as punctilious in their use of titles as their English and Scottish neighbours, and the origins of this can perhaps be detected in the twelfth century. Dafydd ab Owain Gwynedd is once described simply as rex, and once as rex Norwallie. By 1190 Dafydd had changed his title to princeps Norwallie, although it is clear from the letters issued by the prince of Gwynedd that Owain Gwynedd had described himself as Walliarum princeps in his correspondence with Louis VII in n65-6:57 perhaps this reflects a distinction between charters, which were essentially for internal consumption, as it were, and a letter to a foreign ruler, where more precise usage may have been thought necessary. The title princeps Norwallie ('prince of North Wales') was established 51

Hudson, 'Diplomatic and Legal Aspects', p. 155. Gloucester Charters, ed. Patterson, p. 22. 53 Hudson, 'Diplomatic and Legal Aspects', p. 155. 54 Barrow, Regesta, p. 75. 55 Stringer, 'Core and Periphery', pp. 103-12. 56 Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, pp. 252-3. 57 H. Pryce, 'Owain Gwynedd and Louis VII: The Franco-Welsh Diplomacy of the First Prince of Wales, Welsh History Review, 19 (1998), 1-28; M. Richter, 'The Political and Institutional Background to National Consciousness in Medieval Wales', in T. W. Moody (ed.), Nationality and the Pursuit of National Independence: Historical Studies, n (Belfast, 1978), pp. 37-55, at pp. 45-8; Maund, Handlist, nos 327-9. 52

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as the normal form by the turn of the twelfth century, and Llywelyn ab lorwerth was consistent in his use of it, although his uncles had not been. In a charter of 1225 Llywelyn adopted a new title, 'prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowdon', which became the only form used from then until Llywelyn's death in 1240.58 There are only two surviving charters from the brief reign of Dafydd ap Llywelyn (1240-46): in one he was described as 'son of Llywelyn, prince of North Wales', and in the second as 'son of Llywelyn, prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowdon'.59 In six of his letters from 1241, Dafydd is described only as 'son of Llywelyn, formerly prince of North Wales'. This reference to Dafydd's father echoes such usage in Deheubarth, where Maelgwn Fychan was described in his sole surviving charter (c. 1227) as 'Maelgwn, son of Maelgwn, son of Rhys, prince of South Wales',60 which may reflect the problems caused by competing kinsmen in Deheubarth after the Lord Rhys's death. Dafydd's lack of an exact title may also result from problems in the succession to Gwynedd immediately after Llywelyn ab lorwerth's death: both Dafydd's charters date from 1240. In the case of the letters, as Gwyn Williams noted, the absence of any title for Dafydd may reflect the interference in the Gwynedd succession by the English crown during 1240-1: all six letters are to Henry III.61 Dafydd's terminological problems seem to have been resolved by 1245 when he was twice described as 'prince of Wales' in letters to the bailiffs of Buellt and to Walerand le Tyeis and John Lestrange.62 His nephew Llywelyn first used the title 'prince of Wales' in 1258, in his agreement with the Scottish earls, and did so consistently from 1262 onwards. As if to emphasize the distinctiveness of this title, it was adapted for Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's wife, Eleanor de Montfort, who was described in four letters as principissa Wallie, domina Snaudonie.63 Elsewhere, as has been suggested, there was no systematic use of 'princely' styles, either in the charters or the letters. Hywel ab leuaf of Arywstli was twice described as 'king of Arwystli', and given no title at all in the remainder of his surviving charters.64 In Meirionydd, Gruffudd ap Cynan ab Owain Gwynedd was styled 'lord of Anglesey' in one of his charters,65 although he and his brother Maredudd appeared untitled in two subsequent charters,66 while Maredudd's son 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Maund, Handlist, no. 134. Ibid., nos 142, 143. Ibid., no. 27. Williams, 'The Succession to Gwynedd', 397. Maund, Handlist, nos 371, 372. Ibid., nos 440, 443, 446, 456, all from the period 1279 X 1282. Ibid., nos i, 2. Ibid., no. 197. Ibid., nos 198, 199.

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Llywelyn was described as 'prince of Meirionydd' in a Strata Marcella charter from the middle of the thirteenth century.67 Maredudd ap Rhobert of Cedewain was styled 'lord of Cedewain' in two of his three surviving charters.68 'Prince of South Wales' seems to have been the most common style for the rulers of Deheubarth and its successor polities in Ceredigion and Ystrad Tywi, but this title was by no means used consistently, and several of Rhys ap Gruffudd's grandsons used no title at all. The Lord Rhys himself was twice described as 'prince of Wales', and once, interestingly, as 'proprietary prince of south Wales'.69 The princes of Powys appear to have used a variety of styles at various points during the twelfth and thirteenth century. As is the case in Gwynedd, the earliest title used is rex: Madog ap Maredudd was described as rex Powyssensium in one of the Trefeglwys charters.70 Gwenwynwyn ab Owain Cyfeiliog seems to have employed on occasion at least two different styles, being described as 'prince of Powys and lord of Arwystli' in one charter, 'and lord of Montgomery' in another, both from the Strata Marcella archive.71 The lords of northern Powys, when, after the middle of the thirteenth century, such titles occur in their charters, invariably described themselves as 'lords of Bromfield', or simply 'of Bromfield', although on one occasion, Gruffudd Fychan ap Gruffudd ap Madog was described as 'lord of IaT.72 The lack of consistency of approach to the issue of 'princely styles' in native Wales probably reflects the continuing importance of expressing lineage, rather than titles which do not seem to have been clearly defined for the majority of rulers who used them. It seems clear that only in Gwynedd did native rulers see the importance of a systematic approach to the use of styles in the advancing and establishing of specific claims to political authority. J. Beverley Smith has argued that the change from rex to princeps, first seen in Owain Gwynedd's overtures to the French king Louis VII, may have actually represented a claim by Owain to greater, not lesser status: that princeps reflected Owain's 'unquestioned eminence as the leader of his nation'.73 Whether Owain really was the 'leader of his nation' is open to question, but it seems likely that, by the twelfth century, the title rex no longer had any clear political meaning, given the multiplicity of Welsh reges. As Huw 67

Ibid., no. 200. Ibid., nos 9, 10. 69 Ibid., nos 18, 19. 70 Ibid., no. 202; note the interesting use of a people, rather than a territory, as the descriptor. 71 Ibid., nos 254, 257. 72 Ibid., no. 239. 73 J. B. Smith, 'Owain Gwynedd', Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society, 32 (1971), 8-17, at 16. 68

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Pryce has recently argued,74 the adoption of the title of princeps can be seen as an expression of defiance to Henry II: after all, it implied that there was only one princeps in Wales. It exalted Owain's status in relation to other Welsh rulers, since it not only implied the royal dignity expressed by rex, but something more besides.75 It suggested that Owain was in some sense an intermediary between Henry II and the Welsh lords, and one can even see parallels to the use of princeps by John of Salisbury in the Policraticus to describe the ruler of a polity.76 It is quite possible that Owain was aware of the works of John of Salisbury and of the Roman sense of princeps when he wrote to Louis in 1165 or 1166, since Policraticus reached its final form about U59.72 It is significant that while Henry II was content for Owain to style himself rex, he was, according to Becket, greatly offended when Owain began to use princeps.78 Pryce also notes that the style used by Owain in his letter to Louis, Walliamm princeps., refers to the 'Waleses', and perhaps implies a claim to authority over all parts of Wales, rather than just Gwynedd.79 Although Rhys ap Gruffudd of Deheubarth was often called princeps in the few charters of his that survive, by the early thirteenth century the princes of Gwynedd were the only native rulers consistently to use the title of 'prince'. This must surely reflect the growing pre-eminence of Gwynedd and the ambitions of its rulers.80 It has also long been recognized that the use from the mid-i22os of the title 'prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowdon' instead of the established 'prince of North Wales' may have been used to articulate a claim to hegemony over the other Welsh polities represented by the ancient houses of Mathrafal (Powys) and Dinefwr (Deheubarth).81 The establishment of this style, along with the adoption of the perfect infinitive in the notification and the use of the plural of majesty, surely reflects the increasing measure of Llywelyn ab lorwerth's authority and prestige in Wales during the 12205 and 12308. Later, from 1258, the rulers of Gwynedd began to be described as 'princes of Wales' in their acta, a clear indication of the status that Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was to claim and acquire in 1267. The usual form of title used after 1262 was in fact 74

Pryce, 'Owain Gwynedd', 22-25. Richter, 'Political and Institutional Background', pp. 45-7; D. Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000-1300 (London, 1992), pp. 85-93. 76 John of Salisbury, Policraticus: Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers, ed. and trans. C. J. Nederman (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 28-9. 77 Ibid., p. xix. 78 Pryce, 'Owain Gwynedd', 22; Materials for a History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. J. C. Robertson and J. B. Sheppard, 7 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1875-85)5 v. 49. 79 Pryce, 'Owain Gwynedd', 23. 80 Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change pp. 252-3. 81 Littere Wallie, p. xxxvi. 75

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'prince of Wales and lord of Snowdon', only reverting briefly to the simpler 'prince of Wales' in 1277-9., perhaps as a result of Llywelyn's submission at Aberconwy in November 1277. It is hard to resist the conclusion that the titles and formulation used in the charters of the rulers of Gwynedd in the thirteenth century were an integral part of their attempts to dominate the Welsh political landscape. It is, of course, necessary to raise briefly the question of who produced charters for the Welsh rulers during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It seems likely that letters were produced by clerks acting for the ruler concerned,82 but does the same apply to more formal documents such as charters? Did diplomatic really reflect the status and ambitions of the Welsh princes, or was it more a reflection of how they were perceived by the religious houses which they patronized? The question of production is a thorny one, hindered by the paucity of surviving originals, and the predominance within that number of charters from the archives of Strata Marcella and Margam. In the case of Margam, Robert Patterson has traced the scribal careers of several of the scribes in the Margam charters, and it is clear that at least eight, and possibly nine, scribes produced charters for a wide range of grantors, including the native lords of Glamorgan and the earls of Gloucester.83 The fact that at least one of these scribes also copied charters into the Margam rolls would seem to prove conclusively that the surviving Margam charters were written by scribes from the abbey: a conclusion supported by the relatively consistent formulation of the Margam charters. At Strata Marcella too the work of several scribes can be identified in the surviving material, and, as at Margam, these scribes appear to have written charters for several grantors.84 The scribe of Gwenwynwyn ab Owain's Tafolwern charter also wrote a charter for Bishop Alan of Bangor, for instance, and one could cite several other examples.85 Again, it seems to be clear that the common denominator here is Strata Marcella, rather than any agencies attached to the rulers of Powys, Maelienydd or Cedewain. As at Margam, one can also see distinctive patterns in the diplomatic of the surviving Strata Marcella charters: all use the perfect tense for the main dispositive verb, and all begin the notification with a variant of noscere rather than scire. It is much more difficult to come to any general conclusions about 82 One of the witnesses to one of Llywelyn ab lorwerth's charter for Priestholm (Maund, Handlist, no. 136) was David notario nostro, who may have perhaps been one of those entrusted with drafting princely correspondence. See also D. Stephenson, The Governance of Gwynedd (Cardiff, 1984), pp. 27-39. 83 Patterson, 'Margam Annals', 203-10. 84 Thomas, Ystrad Marchell, pp. 99-111. 85 Maund, Handlist, no. 208; Thomas, Ystrad Marchell, no. 16, pp. 158-9.

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the remainder of the Welsh material. All the Combermere charters, for instance, place the grantor at the beginning of the address, which may hint at a particular house style, especially since this is the case for other Combermere charters from non-princely grantors on the same enrolment.86 Elsewhere, though, one cannot say clearly whether the beneficiary produced the charter or not. If Margam and Strata Marcella are to be regarded as typical of other Welsh houses, and they may quite easily not have been, then it seems likely that most monastic beneficiaries probably produced their own charters, and that the diplomatic of those charters says more about their particular perceptions of Welsh rulers than it does of such rulers' views of their own authority. It is equally difficult to decide whether the princes of Gwynedd had some form of secretariat or not. Dafydd Jenkins, for instance, although dismantling the assumed correlation between the cynghellor (a local official) of the thirteenth-century redactions of the law of Hywel Dda, and a cancellarius, states that 'there were cancellarii and a chancery in thirteenth century Wales, but we do not know their Welsh names'.87 Yet although it is clear that the princes exerted a considerable degree of influence over the diplomatic of their charters, ensuring the consistent use of tides and of the plural of majesty, this does not a chancery make, as David Stephenson has argued.88 The increasing use of the perfect infinitive in the dispositive sections of Gwynedd charters is more suggestive; but although there is no difficulty in believing that the princes took a close interest in imitating English royal and baronial acta, whether this interest extended to the grammatical structure of the charters is a different matter. Stephenson makes a convincing case for certain ecclesiastical centres in Gwynedd being closely connected with the princes, perhaps even to the extent of drawing up princely charters,89 and while it is difficult to believe that the princes concerned themselves with the minutiae of drafting, one could easily believe it of the abbots of Aberconwy or the clerks of Bangor, several of whom feature prominently in the princes' administration in the thirteenth century.90 Perhaps the situation in Gwynedd was analogous to that in England during the tenth and eleventh centuries, where the production of charters may have been entrusted to a few select centres: the abbey of Aberconwy could easily be cast in this role.91 It must be stressed that although such arrangePRO, C 53/117/4; Maund, Handlist, nos 222, 223, 234. D. Jenkins, 'Cynghellor and Chancellor', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 27 (1976), 115-18. 88 Stephenson, Governance, pp. 27-8. 89 Ibid., pp. 33-7. 90 Ibid., pp. 222-8. Both Anian and Maredudd, abbots of Aberconwy, and David, archdeacon of Bangor were prominent servants of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. 86

87

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The Medieval State

ments were probably informal and ad hoc, there is good evidence for some Gwynedd charters having been drawn up by the beneficiary: for instance, Gruffudd ap Llywelyn's confirmation for Strata Marcella, although it has the correct title, does not use the plural of majesty, or the perfect infinitive.92 In these respects it conforms to the diplomatic of the majority of other Strata Marcella charters. It should by now be clear that a study of Welsh diplomatic is integral to an understanding of the development of native principalities in the thirteenth century. Such a study makes the growing distinction between Gwynedd and the rest of pura Wallia even more marked. Most of the rulers appear to have viewed their status as essentially the same as that of English magnates, or rather those who produced their charters perceived their status to have been similar to that of English magnates. Only in Gwynedd does there seem to have been a systematic attempt to imitate English royal and greater baronial practice, in the use of the perfect infinitive construction and the deployment of the plural of majesty. To achieve this consistency of formulation across charters for a wide range of beneficiaries argues that the rulers of Gwynedd, or their key officials, took an active interest in acquiring the status such formulation implied and in exploiting the charter as a 'literary vehicle for furthering their own agendas'.93 The same is true of the conscious development and articulation of princely 'styles' to reflect the political claims and ambitions of the rulers of Gwynedd both inside and outside Wales. 91 92 93

Cf. Stephenson, Governance., p. 33. Maund, Handlist., no. 135. Flanagan, 'Twelfth-Century Ireland', p. 117.

11 The English State and the Plantagenet Empire., 1259-1360, A Fiscal Perspective W. M. ORMROD Recent scholarship on the Anglo-Saxon period, led by James Campbell, has seen the tenth-century kingdom of England as a model of early state development and even as a prototype of the nation state.1 However, the successive annexations of that kingdom by the crown of Denmark in 1013-16, the duke of Normandy in 1066 and the count of Anjou in 1154, followed by the late eleventh- and twelfth-century expansion of Plantagenet control into other parts of the British Isles and the Continent, inevitably calls into question the degree to which the English unitary state retained its identity and relevance.2 Furthermore, although the collapse of the Angevin Empire in the first half of the thirteenth century coincided with a new phase in administrative kingship that is widely recognized to have enhanced the institutional authority of the English crown,3 the later imperial pretensions of Edward I and Edward III in the British Isles and in France meant that this authority was used principally to engage the kingdom in extravagant foreign wars for the conquest of ultimately untenable dependencies. Ironically, therefore, the scholarly tradition that has identified a new phase of state development in the period 1290-1360 has assumed that this process was distinctive to England and was provoked by the need to exploit the Campbell, Essays, pp. 155-70; idem, 'Was it Infancy in England? Some Questions of Comparison', in England and Her Neighbours, 1066-1453, ed. M. Jones and M. Vale (London, 1989), pp. 1-17; idem, 'The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A Maximum View', Proceedings of the British Academy, 87 (1994), 39-65; idem, 'The United Kingdom of England: The Anglo-Saxon Achievement', in Uniting the Kingdom: The Making of British History, ed. A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (London, 1995), pp. 31-47. For recent use of Campbell's thesis, see A. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 35~432 For the administrative strains imposed on England by these empires, see Campbell, Essays, pp. 167-70; W. L. Warren, 'The Myth of Norman Administrative Efficiency', TRHS, 5th series, 34 (1984), 113-32; J. Gillingham, 'Foundations of a Disunited Kingdom', in Uniting the Kingdom?, ed. Grant and Stringer, pp. 48-64. 3 A. Harding, England in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 40-67. 1

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resources of the 'core' for the purpose of defending the 'peripheries' of a reconfigured Plantagenet empire.4 This essay sets out to question this last assumption by re-examining the nature of empire as it was observed by the English monarchy between the treaty of Paris (1259) and the treaty of Bretigny (1360). It is argued that the reconfiguration of the Plantagenet dominions in the century after 1259 created an entity that was different, not merely in geographical but also in constitutional and institutional terms, both from the Norman and Angevin empires that had preceded it and from the Lancastrian empire that later replaced it. The principal issue is whether the 'state' was a phenomenon that could transcend the boundaries of the kingdom of England and genuinely integrate the dependencies of the crown into a cohesive unit. A good deal of research has already been directed to the constitutional, political, legal and cultural aspects of this subject, most recently by Robin Frame, Rees Davies and Malcolm Vale,5 and such findings provide a comparative context for the present discussion, which focuses on the fiscal structures and practices discernible in the Plantagenet empire from Henry III to Edward III. Most twentieth-century theory on the historical development of fiscal systems has been dominated by Schumpeter's binary model of 'domain states' and 'tax states'.6 However, Richard Bonney and the present author have recently argued for the adoption of a more refined typology, suggesting that there are four systems encountered in the European experience: the 'tribute state', the 'domain state', the 'tax state' and the 'fiscal state'.7 The detailed criteria established to define these categories suggest that Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Angevin R. W. Kaeuper, Law, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1987), pp. 11-133. 5 R. Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles, 1100-1400 (Oxford, 1990); R. R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1100-1300 (Cambridge, 1990); M. Vale, The Angevin Legacy and the Hundred Years War, 1250-1340 (Oxford, 1990). 6 J. A. Schumpeter, 'The Crisis of the Tax State', International Economic Papers, 4 (1954), 5-38; R. Bonney, 'Introduction', in Economic Systems and State Finance, ed. R. Bonney (Oxford, 1995), pp. 1-18. 7 R. Bonney and W. M. Ormrod, 'Introduction', in Crises, Revolutions and SelfSustained Growth: Essays in European Fiscal History, 1130-1830, ed. W. M. Ormrod, R. Bonney and M. M. Bonney (Stamford, 1998), pp. 1-23. For the data underlying the following interpretations, see W. M. Ormrod and J. Barta, 'The Feudal Structure and the Beginnings of State Finance', and W. M. Ormrod, 'The West European Monarchies in the Later Middle Ages', in Economic Systems, ed. Bonney, pp. 53-79, 123-60; W. M. Ormrod, 'The Domestic Response to the Hundred Years War', in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, ed. A. Curry and M. Hughes (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 87-94. 4

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England all conformed to the model of the 'domain state': far from neglecting the precocious taxative authority of the late Anglo-Saxon and Norman regimes,8 this categorization acknowledges both the eleventh-century Danegeld and the early thirteenth-century taxes on moveable property but, by recognizing their extraordinary nature, assumes that over the period as a whole most royal revenue continued to derive from the exercise of regalian rights.9 Such a quantitative approach also confirms the argument that English state finance underwent a decisive shift - a 'fiscal revolution' - in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with the adoption of new and, from the 13405, permanent forms of indirect taxation (the subsidies on overseas trade) and a much greater frequency in the application of the existing system of direct taxation (the subsidies on moveable property). As a result, England became a 'tax state', and remained so at least until the ending of the Hundred Years War in the mid-fifteenth century. How might such a model be applied to empires? Although the Bonney-Ormrod typology uses the terminology of the state, it is partly informed by a series of imperial examples ranging from Ancient Rome and the Carolingian dominions to Spanish America and French Canada. It suggests that the first stages of expansion for a nascent fiscal system depend less on an increase in the exactions made upon the existing subjects of the state (which would signify a domain or tax state) and more on an extension of the number of territories and peoples that might contribute to that central authority. In other words, primitive forms of fiscal state-building rely on conquest, subjection and exploitation: they are as much 'tribute empires' as 'tribute states'. By contrast, while both the domain and the tax states may develop empires, they function rather differently: in the domain system, the resources of the colonies will tend to be extracted in the same manner as those of the core, through the exercise of regalian rights; while in the tax model of empire, the increased ability of the ruler to exploit the fiscal base of the core territory may (to a lesser extent) be extended into the other dominions and will almost always be accompanied by an element of redistribution, whereby the needs of the centre are balanced against those of the peripheries. It is in regard to the latter processes that the 'tax empire' particularly emerges as a more sophisticated form of fiscal (and political) management: whereas the direction of flow of resources in a 'tribute empire' is towards the centre (whether in plunder, hostages, or payments in bullion and kind), the need to maintain vulnerable outposts Campbell, Essays, pp. 171-89. Ormrod and Barta, 'Feudal Structure', pp. 54-8. England may be seen as the satellite of a Danish 'tribute empire' in the eleventh century: M. K. Lawson, 'The Collection of Dangeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Aithelred II and Cnut', EHR, 119 (1984), 721-38; Campbell, 'Was in Infancy in England?', p. 2. 8 9

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The Medieval State

often requires the tax empire to deploy the resources of the heartland (predominantly now in bullion) to support the less developed fiscal regimes operating in the colonies. From this conceptual framework there emerge three points that may provide a framework for the ensuing analysis. First, while the existence of domain-type regimes in the subsidiary parts of an empire does not in itself invalidate the use of the label 'tax state' to describe the core territory, evidence of tax systems in the colonies inevitably strengthens the argument that the dominions as a whole functioned as a 'tax empire'. Secondly, a vital feature of such a system is provided by the capacity of the state to use the revenues of one region for the support of another. Thirdly, the organization required to allow such redistribution ultimately depends not on the manner in which revenue is raised in each province but on the ability of the centre to mobilize its political and administrative resources in the planning and execution of an integrated fiscal regime. What, then, were the characteristics of the fiscal systems operating in the peripheries of the Plantagenet empire between 1259 and 1360? The geographical scope of that empire were not fixed or stable, and we must begin by outlining its evolution during the century in question.10 Gascony and Ireland were the two principal surviving elements of the older Angevin territories, dignified by their formal inclusion in the royal style and, under a settlement of 1254, inseparably linked to the crown of England. The ancient duchy of Gascony was much extended under the terms of the treaty of Paris of 1259, but the terms were never completely fulfilled and the successive confiscations of the duchy by the French crown in 1294, 1323 and 1337 had the result of restricting effective Plantagenet rule to the western seaboard of south-west France. Apart from Gascony, the only other part of the older Norman and Angevin territories to remain in Plantagenet hands after the settlement of 1259 was the Channel Islands. However, in 1279 Edward I became hereditary count of Ponthieu, in northern France, by right of his wife, Eleanor of Castile; from 1342 Edward III claimed the right to govern the duchy of Brittany on behalf of the Montfort family; from 1347 the English enjoyed control of the Channel port of Calais; and for a short while in the 13505 it seemed that a new English regime was to be established in Normandy. Meanwhile, there had also been a significant extension of Plantagenet control in the British Isles. The county of Chester had been annexed to the crown in 1237; and the conquest of the principality of Wales under Edward I brought the area beyond the For what follows, see J. Le Patourel, Feudal Empires: Norman and Plantagenet (London, 1984), chs viii, xii; R. A. Griffiths, King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1991), pp. 33~54. 10

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Marches under the direct authority of the English crown. There followed a much less successful, but prolonged, struggle to establish English sovereignty over Scotland between 1296 and 1328. No sooner had that struggle ended than Edward III asserted feudal suzerainty over the northern kingdom, claimed the lordship of the Isle of Man, and forced his new vassal, Edward Balliol, to cede a substantial part of lowland Scotland to English rule in 1333-4. The pragmatic but aggressive expansionism to which Edward I and Edward III committed the kingdom of England therefore created a fundamentally new political geography of empire in the form of a great arc radiating out from the emergent capital at Westminster to incorporate the whole of the British Isles and significant parts of northern and south-western France. Although there was a wide variety of fiscal structures operating in these dependent territories, they all tended to conform to a 'domain state' model, in so far as their principal function was to produce the ordinary revenues that funded the normal costs of government in the area. The notion that the colonies should augment, rather than drain, the resources of the state in itself probably encouraged the development of tax systems within the dependencies: the customs duties on Gascon wine exports, which developed during the second half of the thirteenth century, vastly increased the revenues of the duty of Aquitaine and thus the spending capacity of the ducal administration.11 By the same token, each dependency could be expected to generate special subsidies for local defence in times of war. At the beginning of the Hundred Years War, for example, the seneschal of Gascony imposed an excise duty on wines sales; this was quickly supplemented by various levies on merchandise entering and leaving the port of Bordeaux.12 Similarly, Edward Ill's administration in Brittany collected ransoms from the inhabitants of the occupied parts of the duchy to pay for the maintenance of the Anglo-Montfortist regime;13 and in Ponthieu a subsidy on wine sales was imposed during the years immediately following the truce of 1360 in order to pay for the rebuilding of fortifications damaged by Valois forces.14 Equivalent systems of raising subsidies for 11 J. P. Trabut-Cussac, L'administration anglaise en Gascogne sous Henry III et Edouard I de 12$4 a 1307 (Geneva, 1972), pp. 313-17. 12 PRO, E 101/166/11, m. 7; E 101/167/2. 13 K. Fowler, 'Les finances et la discipline dans les armees anglaises en France au XlVe siecle', Les cahiers vernonnais, 4 (1964), 63. In Normandy, by contrast, this system of ransoms remained unregulated and operated to the benefit of individual captains: ibid., p. 72; W. M. Ormrod, 'England, Normandy and the Beginnings of the Hundred Years War', in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Bates and A. Curry (London, 1994), pp. 209-10. 14 PRO, E 36/79, fos 105-15, 177-91, 209-64, 267-71, 272-311, 517-26; E 315/438, fos I7~22v; S. B. Storey-Challenger, L'administration anglaise de Ponthieu apres le traite de Bretigny, 1361-1369 (Abbeville, 1975), pp. 170, 247-69, 275-83.

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The Medieval State

local defence existed during this period both in England and (especially) in Ireland;15 and the successive attempts of English parliaments and convocations in the fourteenth century to tie the expenditure of national taxes to specific charges - particularly the defence of the northern march and the protection of shipping - demonstrate the continued vitality of this strong tradition of prioritizing the needs of the home front.16 Significant as these local subsidies might be in demonstrating the ability of colonial administrations to mobilize fiscal resources for war, they do not demonstrate that the empire could be treated as an integrated taxable entity. In the latter respect, however, there were also important, if temporary, advances during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. It seems probable that the new emphasis placed by Henry III and Edward I on the inseparability especially of Ireland and Aquitaine from the English crown had the effect of strengthening the argument that the colonies should contribute to the defence of the king's dominions at large.17 The first notable sign of this new attitude came in 1290, when an extraordinary tax granted by the English parliament was extended to the palatinate of Chester, the principality of Wales and the lordship of Ireland; since the levy was occasioned by the king's need to pay for his recent visit to the duchy of Aquitaine, its imposition upon Edward's wider dominions within the British Isles indicated his new determination - and freedom - to deploy some parts of the empire in support of others. In 1300 he attempted a similar strategy by negotiating J. Scammell, 'Robert I and the North of England', EHR, 73 (1958), 396-401; W. N. Bryant, 'The Financial Dealings of Edward III with the County Communities, 1330-60', EHR, 83 (1968), 760-71; C. McNamee, 'Buying off Robert Bruce: An Account of Monies Paid to the Scots by Cumberland Communities in 1313-14', Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 92 (1992), 77-89; R. Frame, Ireland and Britain, 1170-1450 (London, 1998), pp. 287-90. 16 J. Campbell, 'England, Scotland and the Hundred Years War in the Fourteenth Century', in Europe in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J. R. Hale, J. R. L. Highfield and B. Smalley (London, 1965), p. 192; G. L. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 348-54; W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327-137? (London, 1990), p. 138. 17 For what follows, see J. R. Strayer and G. Rudisill, Taxation and Community in Wales and Ireland, 1272-1327', Speculum., 29 (1954), 410-16; A. J. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland (London, 1968), pp. 166-9; E. A. R. Brown, 'Gascon Subsidies and the Finances of the English Dominions, 1315-1324', Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, original series, 8 (1971), 37-163; List of Welsh Entries in the Memoranda Rolls, 1282-1343, ed. N. Fryde (Cardiff, 1974), pp. xvii-xix; P. H. W. Booth, The Financial Administration of the Lordship and County of Chester, 1272-1377, Chetham Society, 3rd series, 28 (Manchester, 1981), pp. 117-18;]. Lydon, 'Parliament and the Community of Ireland', in Law and Disorder in Thirteenth-Century Ireland: The Dublin Parliament 0/1297, £d- J. Lydon (Dublin, 1997), pp. 129-32. 15

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with the Welsh magnates and the Irish parliament for a subsidy specifically to pay for the war in Scotland. Edward II was again able to secure a subsidy from Wales to support his Scottish campaign of 1318. Most strikingly of all, the latter king also negotiated successfully with the clergy, nobles and townsmen of Aquitaine to obtain subsidies for the Scottish war in 1315 and I32I. 18 Despite the lack of emergent representative assemblies in most of the dependent territories and the vigorous survival of fiscal privileges among the political elites of these regions, the Plantagenet regime therefore appears to have made some significant advances in extending the responsibility, and the burden, of extraordinary taxation to all its principal dependencies. Was this phenomenon altogether novel? The example of King John's request for Irish aid in 1204 to assist in the abortive recovery of Normandy suggests that there were a number of precedents for the strategy of colonial taxation employed under Edward I and II: within the British Isles at least, it is possible to see the extension of English fiscal practices to the dependent territories as part of a longer-term policy of centralization dating from the nyos.19 But the reconfiguration of the empire in the years after 1259 seems to have provoked not merely a decisive shift in its geographical axis but also a profound reassessment of the political and constitutional status of taxation. From the perspective of the later Angevin state (that is, of a dynasty and regime whose heartlands lay not in England and Normandy but in greater Anjou and Aquitaine), it was only natural that the peripheral and conquered territories - Normandy, England, Ireland - should be exploited to pay for the defence of the core, the more so since the fiscal potential of these peripheries was so considerable. When the great crisis of that empire erupted with the confiscation of Normandy by Philip Augustus, however, it was only the remaining peripheries that could be mobilized to pay for the attempted recovery of the duchy: in other words, John's dominions conformed to the model of the 'tribute empire', with the political communities of Anjou and Gascony resolutely resisting the obligation to pay for the war in northern France and the resulting fiscal burden being borne by the colonial outposts in the British Isles.20 After the middle of the thirteenth century, by contrast, when England emerged as the core territory of the Plantagenet dominions, there were three vital differences: the heartland itself, far from being relieved of its 18

For receipts by the constable of Bordeaux from the subsidy of 1321 'pro expeditione guerre Scotiae', see PRO, E 372/183, rots 58, 58d, 60. 19 Otway-Ruthven, History, p. 166; R. R. Davies, 'The English State and the "Celtic" Peoples, 1100-1400', Journal of Historical Sociology, 6 (1993), 1-14. 20 J. C. Holt, 'The Loss of Normandy and Royal Finance', in War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. O. Prestwich, ed. J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), pp. 92-105.

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role as the key source of revenue in the empire, was subject to new and probably unparalleled fiscal pressures; all the dependencies - even the staunchly independent Aquitaine - were required on occasion to accept the idea of extraordinary taxation; and, perhaps most importantly of all, the principle was established that the colonies could be asked to grant taxes not merely for their own internal purposes but for the defence of the empire at large. Consequently, although the taxes raised in the dependencies under Henry III and the three Edwards were too erratic in their application and too modest in their yield to allow us to use quantitative criteria and label any one of the individual colonies a 'tax state' in its own right, it can still be argued with some conviction that the thirteenth century had witnessed a decisive change in the fiscal system of the dominions and transformed them from a 'tribute empire' into a 'tax empire'. The principle that any colony might be called upon to assist in the defence of far-flung corners of the empire provides a link to the second important test we have identified for determining the nature of the fiscal regime: namely, the transfer of resources between component parts of the empire. It has long been appreciated that Ireland, Wales and (to a lesser extent) Gascony provided significant resources - of manpower, victuals and ordnance - for the wars of the three Edwards in Scotland and France;21 the evidence for the similar deployment of tax revenues simply reinforces the well-established point that the crown wished to ensure that all its dominions made an appropriate contribution to these expensive military enterprises. In fact, however, the real determinant of a qualitative change from tribute empire to tax empire must lie in the transfer of resources not so much from periphery to periphery as from centre to periphery. To some extent, the shift towards the greater exploitation of the core after the 12505 was simply a function of England's earlier constitutional status as a Norman and Angevin acquisition and her position as the wealthiest part of the remaining Plantagenet dominions. But as the English barons indicated in 1297, the new emphasis placed by Henry III and Edward I on the inalienability of the colonies still did not impose an automatic obligation on the community of the realm to support the defence of all the dependent territories.22 Instead, as Gerald Harriss has shown, the period from the 12905 to the 13505 witnessed a gradual extension of the plea of necessity to cover the defence of all the king's lands and titles, coupled with a determination on 21

Brown, 'Gascon Subsidies', pp. 37-55; J. Lydon, 'The Years of Crisis, 1254-1315', in A New History of Ireland, ii, Medieval Ireland, 1169-1534, ed. A. Cosgrove (Oxford, !987)5 PP- 195-202; A. F. O'Brien, 'Commercial Relations between Aquitaine and Ireland, c. 1000 to c. 1550', in Aquitaine and Ireland in the Middle Ages, ed. J.-M. Picard (Blackrock, 1995), pp. 66-7. 22 Harriss, King, Parliament, pp. 53-63.

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the part of the crown to spend the resulting subsidies as it, rather than parliament, thought best. As a result, by the middle decades of Edward Ill's reign the profits from direct taxes granted ostensibly for the defence of the realm were in fact being portioned out for the promotion of the Plantagenet cause in a variety of locations and contexts, including the Anglo-Scottish border, French-occupied Aquitaine, English-occupied Brittany and (after 1347) the new conquest of Calais.23 This comparative freedom of manoeuvre to expend the taxes raised in the core territory upon the wars conducted in the colonies signified the English political community's tacit acceptance of the net burden of empire and for the first time allowed the crown to treat the financing of that empire not as a series of self-contained and competing charges but as a coordinated and managed whole. The practical consequence of this new strategy, of course, was that significant sums of money flowed out of England to sustain military enterprises in the dependencies. But although the adverse effects of this trend upon the English economy in the first half of the fourteenth century have been much remarked,24 little attention has been paid to the administrative method and consequent fiscal significance of the process of redistribution. What is striking about the management of English tax revenues assigned for the purposes of imperial defence in this period is the high degree of central control: whereas money flowing into England from the colonies was still often treated as the king's private income,25 the financial assistance provided by the centre to the peripheries was subject to considerable scrutiny. This in turn was made possible by the three mechanisms most commonly deployed for transferring funds to the local theatres of war. During the Welsh, Scottish and French campaigns from the 12905 to c. 1340, much military expenditure was handled by the royal wardrobe: in other words, a fiscal bureaucracy funded predominantly out of English resources was planted in (or near) the designated military zone and given general responsibility for the financial management of the local war. The wardrobe was usually deployed in this manner only when the king was present on the relevant campaign (as, of course, all three Edwards often were).26 But it was possible to replicate its functions by adopting a second technique and appointing special treasurers of war who might take overall charge of the finances of a campaign fought in the king's 23

Ibid, pp. 3I3-75Most notably by J. R. Maddicott, The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown, 1294-1341, Past and Present Supplement, i (Cambridge, 1975). 25 J. F. Lydon, 'Edward II and the Revenues of Ireland in 1311-12', Irish Historical Studies, 14 (1964-5), 39-5726 T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England (6 vols, Manchester, 1920-33), vi. 428, s.v. 'Wardrobe, as War Office'. 24

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absence: the appointment of Nicholas Huggate to undertake such a role in Gascony during the War of Saint-Sardos is a case in point.27 Thirdly, the chief financial officer of the relevant dependency might act as receiver of the English subsidies and paymaster of the English forces in his region. This latter system became the norm in Gascony, a region not visited by kings and their wardrobes after the I28os: during the period of hostility with the French crown during Edward Ill's reign, over 50 per cent of the income of the constable of Bordeaux came from the Westminster exchequer.28 Although the employment of a colonial administration to undertake the local expenditure of English war subsidies may at first appear to represent a devolved system of financial management, it conforms to the centralizing theme asserted above because, as we shall see, the subordinate fiscal administrations of the Plantagenet empire were themselves made accountable to the English exchequer from the time of Edward I. It therefore appears that all the structures regularly employed to redistribute English revenues for the defence of the colonies between the 12805 and at least the 13305 were organized in such a way as to ensure that expenditure was monitored by the wardrobe or (in the king's absence from the relevant campaign) by the Westminster administration. This brings us to the third feature of the medieval 'tax state' that is particularly relevant to the study of imperial fiscal structures: namely, the existence of an integrated system of financial planning. It is doubtful that the later medieval monarchy thought of its dependencies primarily in terms of their material value. The substantial amounts of bullion transferred into English royal coffers from the surpluses generated by the Irish exchequer during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were very much the exception to the rule: while post-conquest Wales produced a modest additional income for Edward I, this hardly compensated for the substantial deficits regularly run up, for example, by the English administrations in Gascony from Henry Ill's time and in Scotland under Edward III.29 That said, there are some snippets of information from the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which suggest that the English state was conscious of the need to assess the worth of the colonies in fiscal terms. Irish revenues were anatomized in 27 Ibid, iv. 73-4; BL, Add. MS 7967; N. Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, 1321-1326 (Cambridge, 1979) pp. 134-48. 28 Fowler, 'Les finances', pp. 60, 83. 29 Lydon, 'Edward II and the Revenues of Ireland', pp. 53-7; J. Griffiths, 'Early Accounts Relating to North Wales, Temp. Edward I', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 16 (1954-6), no; R. C. Stacey, Politics Policy, and Finance under Henry III, 1216-1245 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 174-6; F. M. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century (2nd edn, Oxford, 1962), pp. 304-5; Trabut-Cussac, L'administration, pp. 327-9; Campbell, 'England, Scotland', p. 186.

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the early I28os;30 and a statement of the crown's income compiled in 1324 includes the revenues of Ireland and North and South Wales as well as a valuation of the duchy of Aquitaine.31 The problems encountered by Henry III and his successors in securing the territorial boundaries of Aquitaine as agreed in 1259 also seems to have produced a growing awareness of the relative financial capacity of the duchy's constituent parts. The Agenais was quickly identified as a particularly profitable region: it became a standing grievance on the part of the English crown that it had been inadequately compensated for the twenty-year delay in the transfer of this territory from French to English control under the terms of the treaty of Paris, a resentment compounded by Charles IV's decision to claim the territory as a war indemnity in 1325 and by Philip VTs continued refusal to return it to Plantagenet hands during the I33OS.32 It was the development of financial institutions, however, that ultimately determined the extent (and limitations) of an overall fiscal strategy within the wider dominions of the English state. The wardrobe's activities as an itinerant paymaster's office illustrate how a 'central' financial institution could reach out into the provinces and coordinate military expenditure at the local level. Still more important in this respect, however, was the English exchequer. Normally stationed at Westminster (though occasionally moving out to Shrewsbury and York during periods of sustained campaigning against the Welsh and the Scots), the exchequer's principal function was to audit the accounts of the crown's fiscal agents. After the 12908, its administrative range increased appreciably: from being mainly occupied with ordinary domainal revenues, it began to deal with a whole range of financial accounts, including the assessments and receipts of extraordinary taxation. By Edward Ill's reign it had accommodated the wardrobe into its accounting procedures and, in effect, assumed overall management of the crown's resources in England.33 To this well-known story of Calendar of Documents, Ireland, 1252-1284 (London, 1877), no. 2392. There may be some relationship with the record of English revenues compiled in 1284: M. H. Mills, 'Exchequer Agenda and Estimate of Revenue, Easter Term 1284', EHR, 40 (1925), 229-34. 31 Harriss, King, Parliament, pp. 523-4; Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, pp. 97-8. 32 English Historical Documents, 1189-1327., ed. H. Rothwell (London, 1975), pp. 376-7; PRO, C 47/28/5, no. 6; Trabut-Cussac; L'administration, p. 310;]. B. Henneman, Royal Taxation in Fourteenth Century France: The Development of War Financing (Princeton, 1971), pp. 308-9. 33 Tout, Chapters, ii. 1-163, 224-81; iv. 69-185. For recent discussion see W. M. Ormrod, 'State-Building and State Finance in the Reign of Edward I', in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1989 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Stamford, 1991), pp. 23-8; D. A. Carpenter, 'The English Royal Chancery in the Thirteenth Century', in Ecrit et pouvoir dans les chancelleries medievaks: espace francais, espace anglais, ed. K. Fianu and D. J. Guth (Louvain la Neuve, 1997), pp. 38-42. 30

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English administrative history we should now add a neglected imperial dimension: for it was in precisely the same period that the exchequer asserted its right to supervise the accounts of the previously independent financial administrations in the subordinate parts of the Plantagenet dominions. In 1293 Edward I declared that the accounts of the treasurer of Ireland and the constable of Bordeaux were henceforth to be audited at the English exchequer.34 This move seems to have been provoked primarily by long-standing concerns over the corruption of the Irish fiscal administration and the apparent inability of the Dublin exchequer to provide a suitably rigorous scrutiny of the lordship's finances.35 But it also chimed with a strong and continuing determination to draw the Plantagenet conquests into closer union with the English crown.36 Since the settlement of Wales in 1284, Edward I's administration had already been requiring the chamberlains of north, west and south Wales to account to the English exchequer; this practice continued even after the creation of the king's eldest son as prince of Wales in 1301.37 The same approach was adopted with regard to the shrieval accounts for the Scottish border counties ceded by Edward Balliol to Edward III.38 The conquest of Calais and its hinterland in 1347 and the incorporation into this new acquisition of the county of Guines in 1360 also resulted in the creation of a sophisticated new financial administration particularly closely linked to the Westminster government.39 But the decision to include the revenues of Gascony in the new accounting system imposed in 1293 - a decision that would have been quite unthinkable in the time of Henry II or John - indicated that this new policy of centralization was intended to extend even into the ancient inheritances of the crown. Thus, the new inheritance of Ponthieu, like the new conquest of Wales, was made to account to Westminster, even when its revenues were formally assigned successively to Eleanor of Castile and Edward of Caernarfon;40 and although the county became a virtually autonomous fiscal unit during the period when it formed part of the endowment of Isabella of France, it was quickly assimilated back into English Rotuli Parliamentorum (6 vols, London, 1783-1832), i. 98. H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Administration of Ireland, 1/72-1577 (Dublin, 1963), pp. 52-7. 36 R. R. Davies, 'Lordship or Colony?', in The English in Medieval Ireland, ed. J. Lydon (Dublin, 1984), pp. 142-60. 37 Griffiths, 'Early Accounts', p. 109; List of Welsh Entries, ed. Fryde, passim. 38 Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, ed. J. Bain (4 vols, Edinburgh, 1881-8), iii. 317-47, 368-93; Campbell, 'England, Scotland', p. 186. 39 Le Patourel, Feudal Empires, ch. xiv; E. Perroy, 'L'administration de Calais en 1371-1372', Revue du Nord, 33 (1951), 218-27; S. J. Burley, 'The Victualling of Calais, 1347-65', BIHR, 31 (1958), 49-5740 H. Johnstone, 'The County of Ponthieu, 1279-1307', EHR, 29 (1914), 435-52. 34 35

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accounting practices when Edward III temporarily resumed control in I330-4-41 The practical purpose of this new system of centralized accounting is not altogether easy to fathom: as was the case with so much late medieval exchequer practice, the original intention tended to become lost in a system that regarded detailed auditing as an end in itself. It is possible that the instruction of 1293 concerning the Irish and Gascon accounts may have been connected with Edward I's desire to use the revenues of those dominions as security for the large loans negotiated with the Italian banking companies: an integrated system of accounting was necessary if the resources of the peripheries were to be used to repay the debts of the core.42 More generally, the rendering of accounts by the subsidiary fiscal administrations would make it possible for the central government to identify occasional surpluses in the colonial budgets that might be transferred to the English crown. It would also, perhaps crucially, allow the exchequer to keep track of the subsidies periodically paid out by the English treasury to support the military regimes in the dominions: the obligation upon the treasurers of Brittany during the 13405 and 13505 to account to Westminster must surely be seen not so much as an attempt to audit every item in the ordinary revenues of the duchy but as a means of confirming receipt of the substantial sums poured into this war zone during the Plantagenet occupation.43 This latter interpretation certainly fits with the view that the subordination of the king's wardrobe to the exchequer was a procedural rather than a political matter and arose from the need to ensure the effective coordination of war finance within the empire at large.44 Clearly, centralization had its limitations. While most of the Irish treasurers accounted to the English exchequer after I293,45 the auditing and recording of the Gascon accounts remained notably erratic until the Tout, Chapters, v. 277-8; Storey-Challenger, L'administration anglaise, pp. 35-7; PRO, E 101/166/2 contains a notably self-conscious statement of the obligations of the receiver of Ponthieu to the Westminster exchequer. 42 For the context in the 12905 (but not this particular connection), see R. W. Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown: The Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I (Princeton, 1973), pp. 116-17. 43 Fowler, 'Les finances', pp. 62-3. The detailed account of Giles de Wyngreworth for the period 1359-62 is something of a special case, for reasons explained by J. Le Patourel, 'L'administration ducale dans la Bretagne Montfortiste (1345-62)', Revue historique de droit francais et etranger, 4th series, 32 (1954), 146-7. 44 M. Prestwich, 'Exchequer and Wardrobe in the Later Years of Edward I', BIHR, 46 (i973)> i-io. 45 List of Foreign Accounts, Public Record Office Lists and Indexes, 11 (London, 1900), p. 51; J. F. Lydon, 'The Enrolled Account of Alexander Bicknor, Treasurer of Ireland, 1308-14', Analecta Hibernica, 30 (1982), 9-10. 41

21 o

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mid-fourteenth century.46 The subordinate financial administrations also retained a good deal of autonomy over expenditure, much of which was done at the local level and was never properly recorded in the accounts transmitted to Westminster.47 Nevertheless, if the primary purpose of this process of accounting was, as has been suggested here, to regulate the expenditure of resources flowing from the centre to the peripheries, then the evidence strongly suggests that the level of co-ordination appropriate to the functioning of a 'tax empire' was indeed achieved in the fiscal apparatus of the Plantagenet dominions between the 12905 and the 13505. It was asserted at an earlier stage in this essay that this 'tax empire' of the three Edwards was not only different from the 'tribute empire' of the Angevins but also from the system observable in the period after c. 1360. It therefore remains briefly to outline the arguments for identifying a change in the character of the imperial fiscal system during the later stages of the Hundred Years War. In terms of the constitution of the empire, there was already a significant shift of emphasis evident in the middle years of Edward Ill's reign, as a result of that king's desire to create powerful appanages for his sons. Although the principle was maintained that the chief dependencies within the empire were inalienable from the crown, they tended to take on a greater independence than had been allowed them in the two previous generations.48 This in turn had important fiscal consequences: whereas it was the English state that had effectively taxed the palatinate of Chester and the principality of Wales under Edward I and II, for example, it was now to the Black Prince, as earl of Chester and prince of Wales, that the inhabitants of these areas paid their extraordinary subsidies.49 The same thing 46

The handing over of the revenues of Aquitaine to the Italian financiers provides one explanation for this: Kaeuper, Bankers, p. 116. The extent to which it was also a consequence of the destruction of the Gascon archive in 1294 remains uncertain, but the financial documentation transcribed and calendared during the attempts in 1318 and 1322 to reconstruct that archive from the English royal records certainly suggests that the accounting process was erratic: Gascon Register A (Series of 1318-1319), ed. G. P. Cuttino and J.-P. Trabut-Cussac (3 vols, London, 1975-6), i. xi-xvii, 83-91; The Gascon Calendar 0/1322, ed. G. P. Cuttino, Camden 3rd series, 70 (1949), pp. 134-66, passim. Only two accounts of constables of Bordeaux were transcribed onto the foreign accounts section of the pipe rolls before 1348: List of Foreign Accounts, p. 42. The matter demands further research. 47 The failure of the subordinate financial regimes to adopt the tally of assignment meant that they, unlike the Westminster exchequer, were unable to maintain a record of expenditure at source: Lydon, 'Edward II and the Revenues of Ireland', p. 47. 48 W. M. Ormrod, 'Edward III and his Family', Journal of British Studies, 26 (1987), 398-422. 49 Booth, Financial Administration, pp. 62-70; R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales, 1063-1415 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 398-403; T. Thornton, 'Taxing the

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happened in Aquitaine after 1362, when Edward III raised the duchy to the status of a principality and devolved it again upon his eldest son, who taxed it on his own authority to pay for his subsequent campaigns in Spain.50 And since the obligation upon the financial administrations of Wales and Aquitaine to account to the Westminster exchequer was dropped when Edward of Woodstock assumed the title of prince in these territories,51 the system of central management established under Edward I was also thereby abandoned, making it bureaucratically much more difficult to shift resources either between colonies or from the centre to the periphery. The result was that, by the time the crown and the wider dominions were reunited in the hands of Richard II in the late fourteenth century, both the colonies and the English state had in effect abandoned earlier attempts to establish a fully integrated fiscal regime. Some of this was simply a result of adverse circumstances: the Plantagenet regimes in both Ireland and Gascony were in retreat during the later fourteenth century, and this, coupled with the effects of plague and war on the local economies, meant that it was no longer possible to generate surpluses that might be transferred to other parts of the empire.52 It was also a consequence of the shifting priorities of the crown and the English political community: whereas Edward Ill's regime was prepared to invest huge sums in Aquitaine during the 13505 and in Ireland during the 13605 and 13705, that of Richard II was much more inclined to spend English taxes on the maintenance of Calais and the ring of English-held defences around the northern and western coasts of France.53 But there were also significant indications, made explicit under Richard's successors, of a change in attitudes towards the constitution of the empire. King's Dominions: The Subject Territories of the English Crown in the Late Middle Ages', in Crises, Revolutions, ed. Ormrod, Bonney and Bonney, pp. 103-17. Y. Renouard, 'Les institutions du duche d'Aquitaine', in Histoire des institutions francaises au moyen age, ed. F. Lot and R. Fawtier (3 vols, Paris, 1957-62), i. 179—81. 51 List of Foreign Accounts, pp. 42, 145; F. Beriac, 'Une principaute sans chambre des comptes ni echiquier: 1'Aquitaine (1362-1370)', in La France des principautes: les chambres des comptes, XlVe et XVe siecles, ed. P. Contamine and O. Matteoni (Paris, 1996), pp. 105-22. 52 P. Connolly, 'The Proceedings against John de Burnham, Treasurer of Ireland, 1343-49', in Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland: Essays Presented to J. F. Lydon, ed. T. B. Parry, R. Frame and K. Simms (London, 1995), pp. 57-74; M. K. James, 'The Fluctuations of the Anglo-Gascon Wine Trade in the Fourteenth Century', Economic History Review, 2nd series, 4 (1951), 170-96. 53 Fowler, 'Les finances', pp. 60-1, 83; P. Connolly, 'The Financing of English Expeditions to Ireland, 1361-1376', in England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. Otway-Ruthven, ed. J. Lydon (Blackrock, 1981), pp. 104-21; J. Sherborne, War, Politics and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England (London, 1994), pp. 55-7O; J. R. Wright, 'The Accounts of John de Stratton and John Gedeney, Constables of Bordeaux 1381-90', Mediaeval Studies, 42 (1980), 250 and n. 50. 50

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Alongside the development of more sophisticated internal tax systems in Plantagenet-controlled Ireland and Normandy we have to set the increasing tendency of the English political community to question its duty to subsidize the defence of the crown's wider dominions.54 Parliament's refusal after the conquest of Normandy and the treaty of Troyes of 1420 to accept the notion that English taxes should be used to support the new Lancastrian regime in France marked a striking, if in the end temporary, blow to the principles of obligation earlier established by the three Edwards.55 And to some degree at least this was the product of the crown's own strategy: in contrast to the position in the early fourteenth century, the fiscal principle underpinning Henry V's empire was that, with the notable exception of Calais, all the dominions of the crown should be self-financing, not merely in peacetime but even - at least ideally - in war.56 Finally, and perhaps most significantly, there was an important change during the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the administrative method by which English financial resources were distributed across the empire. The development of the so-called indenture system in the period after c. 1340 meant that the functions previously fulfilled by the wardrobe and by special treasurers of war were increasingly undertaken by military commanders contracted by the crown to provide an agreed military force for a prearranged price. Under these arrangements, it was necessary only for the commander to acknowledge receipt of his payments from the exchequer; he was not always required to make a detailed account for the manner in which his lump sum was spent. When it worked properly, this streamlined system was economical and efficient; consequently, it was extended in the second half of the fourteenth century to include not merely individual military expeditions but also the permanent lieutenancies established in the remaining dependencies of the empire.57 However, when a viceregent was Otway-Ruthven, History, pp. 166-8; C. T. Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, 1415-1450 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 171-86; A. Tuck, 'Richard II and the Hundred Years War', in Politics and Crisis in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. J. Taylor and W. Childs (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 123-6. 55 G. L. Harriss, 'The Management of Parliament', in Henry V: The Practice of Kingship, ed. G. L. Harriss (Oxford, 1985), pp. 149-51. 56 G. L. Harriss, 'Financial Policy', in Henry V, ed. Harriss, pp. 174-6; Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, pp. 241-76; A. Curry, 'L'administration fmanciere de la Normandie anglaise: continuite ou changement?', in La France des principautes, ed. Contamine and Matteoni, pp. 84-103; E. Matthew, 'The Financing of the Lordship of Ireland under Henry V and Henry VI', in Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History, ed. T. Pollard (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 97-115; D. Grummitt, 'The Financial Administration of Calais during the Reign of Henry IV, 1399-1413', EHR, 113 (1998), 277-9957 A. E. Prince, 'The Indenture System under Edward III', in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tail, ed. J. G. Edwards, V. H. Galbraith and E. F. Jacob (Manchester, 54

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required to make up some or all of his stipend from the revenues of the dependency over which he presided - as happened, for example, in the case of Ireland from the late 13508 - then he tended to take control of the financial administration of the relevant colony, and in the process strained or broke the Edwardian practice of requiring the subordinate treasury to account to the English exchequer: after the appointment of the earl of March as lieutenant of Ireland in 1379, the Westminster administration had the greatest of difficulties in requiring the Irish treasurers to make their accounts, and although there was some revival of centralized fiscal authority in the fifteenth century, at least some of the details of earlier accounting practice were permanently lost.58 Conversely, it is ironic that the constables of Bordeaux should so successfully have revived the tradition of accounting to the English exchequer when Edward III resumed control of Aquitaine from the Black Prince in 1372: after Edward's death, any English subsidies for the defence of Gascony were transmitted via the king's lieutenants and other commanders, and the long series of constables' accounts stretching to the final English withdrawal in the 14505 represented merely the remaining ordinary revenues of the duchy.59 In this case, accounting traditions had clearly outlived their original purpose and become a matter of mere bureaucratic form that made little or no dynamic contribution to the fiscal management of the empire. To the extent, then, that the arguments set out above for the existence of a 'tax empire' in the period 1259-1360 depend on the identification of a relatively integrated system of extraction, redistribution and financial control, it is evident that the forms of imperial administration that developed between the 13405 and the 14205 marked something of a retreat from that unified whole and suggest a fiscal system that was significantly more fragmented and particularist than its immediate predecessor: deploying the typology and terminology used here, we could perhaps characterize the Plantagenet dominions in the period 1360-1453 as a series of domain and tax states rather than as a !933)j PP- 283-97; A. E. Prince, 'The Payment of Army Wages in Edward Ill's Reign', Speculum, 19 (1944), 137-60; Sherborne, War, Politics, pp. 1-28. For the private and semi-private administration of funds supplied to commanders under indentures of war, see K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), pp. 23-7. 58

D. Johnston, 'Chief Governors and Treasurers of Ireland in the Reign of Richard IF, in Colony and Frontier, ed. Barry, Frame and Simms, pp. 97-115; List of Foreign Accounts, p. 51. The tradition of sending detailed transcripts of the Irish receipts and issue rolls for audit at the English exchequer, maintained until 1384, was not revived in the fifteenth century: H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, 'Irish Revenue, 1278-1384', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 62, section C (1961-3), 87-100. 59 Compare the regularity of enrolment of the constables' accounts with the irregularity of enrolment of the accounts of lieutenants: List of Foreign Accounts, pp. 42-3; M. G. A. Vale, English Gascony, 1399-1453 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 230-41.

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single 'tax empire'.60 For a number of reasons - constitutional, political, logistical, economic and bureaucratic - the apparently inexorable tendency towards centralization that was such a feature of fiscal administration in the imperial system of Edward I and Edward II had ultimately failed to create its own momentum and begun to falter even as the Plantagenet empire reached its apparent apogee in the treaty of Bretigny. In fine, the fiscal evidence appears to be consistent with, and serves to reinforce, the body of recent scholarship that views Edward I's rampantly expansionist and ruthlessly centralist stance as a highly significant but comparatively brief and ultimately unsustainable interlude in the longer history of English medieval state- and empirebuilding.61 60 Compare the comments of Frame, Ireland and Britain, pp. 289-90, on fiscal fragmentation within the colonies. 61 R. R. Davies, 'In Praise of British History', in The British Isles, 1100-1500: Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections, ed. R. R. Davies (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 9-26; R. Frame, 'Overlordship and Reaction, c. 1200 - c. 1450', in Uniting the Kingdom?, ed. Grant and Stringer, pp. 65-84.

12 Politics, Sanctity and the Breton State: The Case of the Blessed Charles de Blois, Duke of Brittany (d. 1364) MICHAEL JONES

In his remarkable thesis on late medieval sanctity, Andre Vauchez comments on the increasing politicization of the canonizations he studied, while the 'political' saint in later medieval England has recently attracted attention.1 The Avignonese popes principally considered only candidates closely associated with the royal houses of France and Anjou for elevation to sanctity. This tendency, noted by contemporaries, has appeared all the more blatant to modern commentators because the number of promotions in the fourteenth century fell (from forty-nine processes and twenty-four canonizations between 1198 and 1304, to twenty-two processes and only eleven canonizations from 1305 to 1431).2 The English and Aragonese, who were equally aware of the powerful reinforcement that a saint in the family could supply to dynastic ambition, frequently found that even their more appropriate candidates were summarily rejected. They can be forgiven for questioning papal impartiality and for a growing reluctance to embark on what experience proved a long and hazardous business with little guarantee of anything but great expense. Few cases better display the close connection between politics and sanctification than that of Charles de Blois, duke of Brittany from 1341 until his death at the battle of Auray on 29 September 1364, fighting a rival for the ducal throne. Since the Breton Civil War and its immediate aftermath is now also widely recognized as a critical period when not only many institutions of the 1 Andre Vauchez, La saintete en Occident aux derniers siecles du moyen age d'apres les proces de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome, 1981), pp. 90-5, translated as Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 77-80 (both versions will be cited, in the form, Vauchez, p. 90/77); Simon Walker, 'Political Saints in Later Medieval England', in The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society, ed. R. H. Britnell and A. J. Pollard (Stroud, 1995), pp. 77-106. 2 Vauchez, p. 71/61.

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late medieval Breton state but also its ideology were forged, a review of efforts to obtain or thwart Blois's promotion to sainthood may throw light on a multi-layered story, though one where much remains unknown and unknowable. A nephew of Philip VI of France, so related to both St Louis and St Louis of Toulouse, to whom he showed a strong devotion, and champion of the Breton priest Yves Helori, canonized by Clement VI in 1347, Blois had claims to sanctity which were principally advanced by his son-in-law Louis, duke of Anjou, younger brother of Charles V, who also interceded strongly for him with the papacy. As Vauchez comments, this was 'le meilleur exemple d'un culte a la fois politique et dynastique' of the late fourteenth century, though popular enthusiasm was also a major factor in forwarding Blois's cause.3 Naturally John IV of Brittany (1364-99), victor at Auray, did his best to prevent formal proceedings reaching a successful conclusion, acting vigorously to suppress the burgeoning cult of Blois: one constant at least in what follows.4 Some details may be helpful on why the cult developed, how the case for sanctification was presented and, as a curious epilogue, what eventually led Pope Leo XIII in 1904 to beatify Charles and complete what Urban V had started over five hundred years earlier. In presenting the evidence I make few claims to originality: apart from Vauchez's seminal work, most documents on the Processus Apostolici that began officially at Angers in September 1371 were published in 1921 by Dom Antoine de Serent OFM, along with a detailed account of Charles's life by Dom Fra^ois Plaine OSB.5 B-A. Pocquet du Haut-Jusse shortly afterwards provided a solid narrative, based on the Vatican Archives, which more recent work has scarcely improved, except for Vauchez's discovery of documents relating to the examination of the Angers proceedings at the curia in 1372, an essential stage that rarely leaves a trace in the records.6 3

Ibid., pp. 269-71/229-31, 420-6/363-8. Michael Jones, Ducal Brittany, 1364-1399 (Oxford, 1970); cf. C. Prigent, Pouvoir ducal, religion et production artistique en Basse-Bretagne, 1550-1575 (Paris, 1992), pp. 119-32 for 'L'usurpateur et le saint', based heavily on Vauchez. J. Kerherve, L'etat breton aux XlVe et XVe siecks: les dues, I'argent et les hommes (2 vols, Paris, 1987) is fundamental for administrative developments. 5 Monuments du proces de canonisation du bienheureux Charles de Blois, due de Bretagne, 1320-1364, ed. F. Plaine and A. de Serent (Saint-Brieuc/Paris, 1921). Some of Plaine's notes and correspondence have recently come to light in Landevennec, Abbaye StGuenole, Fonds Lebreton. 6 B-A. Pocquet du Haut-Jusse, Les papes et les dues de Bretagne (2 vols, Paris/Rome, 1928), i. 357ff; A. Vauchez, 'Canonisation et politique au XTVe siecle: documents inedits des Archives du Vatican relatifs au proces de canonisation de Charles de Blois, due de Bretagne (+1364)', Miscellanea in onore di Monsignor Martino Giusti (Vatican City, 1978), ii. 381-4044

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In only one respect am I perhaps better placed to comment on these events: I have recently edited the acta of Charles de Blois and his wife, Jeanne de Penthievre, and there is now a more systematic corpus of the documents issued by them as rulers of Brittany than earlier scholars had at their disposal.7 This can be used to control the hagiographical material of the canonization process, adding perspective or precision, especially with regard to understanding the duke's personality, his movements, his role in government, the names of his councillors and so on. His generosity, a matter on which many witnesses in 1371 gave eloquent testimony, for instance, can be measured in part from surviving grants. Likewise in tracing the administrative developments of his reign, especially the beginnings of general taxation and the growth of other governmental institutions and traditions that would be developed or transformed by John IV and his successors, the Recueil provides a firmer base than has been available hitherto. As a result we can reconstruct the life of Blois and assess his rule through a variety of sources other than those that are purely laudatory, trace the origins of his cult, witness the reaction of close contemporaries who chose to politicize it, see how evidence was collected for presentation to the pope and follow the case in the curia itself. If uncertainties remain, most notably with regard to the reasons why Gregory XI did not finally canonize him, Charles's case provides an abundance of material relating to canonization procedures that is seldom equalled in the late Middle Ages; for this reason alone it deserves to be more widely appreciated. A brief outline of the duke's life will explain why his sanctification was proposed. Probably born in 1321, Charles was the second son of Guy, count of Blois, and Margaret de Valois, sister of the future Philip VI of France. A career in the church may have been initially considered: from earliest youth he displayed a piety and scrupulosity, later verging on bigotry, in performing spiritual exercises that were to be among his main qualifications for sainthood. By the age of six, he had already learnt many common prayers, and his elder brother, Louis, who did not share his obsessive interest in pious learning, once remarked, 'You should have been a hermit'.8 But the dynastic needs of the Houses of Blois and Valois ensured that Charles eventually enjoyed a secular career. Recueil des actes de Charles de Blois et Jeanne de Penthievre, due et duchesse de Bretagne (1341-1364), ed. Michael Jones (Rennes, 1996). 8 Monuments, pp. 11-14, f°r testimony on Blois's upbringing, including, 'Carole, vos eritis heremita'; J. Croy, 'Date de la naissance de Charles de Blois', Memoires de la societe historique du Loir-et-Cher, 15 (1901), 266-81; Vauchez, pp. 420-6/363-8 for his character and piety. J-C. Cassard, Charles de Blois 1319/1364, due de Bretagne et bienheureux (Brest, 1994), is a brief modern account, but Plaine's immense life in Monuments, pp. 457-753, remains irreplaceable. 7

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The story of how Charles became a duke starts in 1334, when John III of Brittany (1312-41), lacking a direct heir, despite three marriages, approached Philip VI over his succession. Initially John offered to deliver Brittany to the crown but the Breton nobility opposed his plan, displaying a reluctance for closer union with Valois France that they were to show on several subsequent occasions: essential ideological support for later dukes in developing the late medieval Breton state.9 Thereafter John favoured the claims to succeed him of his niece, Jeanne, daughter of his younger brother, Guy, count of Penthievre (d. 1331). In the next few years numerous suitors were attracted by the presumptive heiress, among them Edward Ill's brother, John of Eltham (d. 1336) and the future Charles II of Navarre (b. 1332). In the end the prize was carried off by the count of Blois, thanks to royal mediation. The marriage contract was drawn up on 4 June 1337 and Charles joined his bride in Brittany shortly afterwards, in expectation of succeeding John III.10 Their plans were thrown into disarray when, on John Ill's death (30 April 1341), John de Montfort, his half-brother, put forward his own claims to the ducal throne. The civil war which followed is well known.11 In the summer of 1341, Montfort and Blois, on behalf of his wife, were invited to submit their respective claims to the parlement of Paris. Montfort's lawyers argued that he was the nearest male heir, while his opponents argued that Jeanne, legally representing her late father, was closer to John III than Montfort, an argument accepted by Philip VI in the arret de Conflans of 7 September 1341. This authorized Blois to proffer homage on his wife's behalf and assume the title of duke.12 Anticipating this unfavourable decision, Montfort left Paris before the arret was published. Already in July 1341 contact had been made with Edward III, and by late September English troops were detailed to support Montfort's bid for the duchy. On the French side, too, preparations for armed intervention quickly took shape. As the autumn progressed Franco-Breton troops achieved a major success when Nantes fell and John de Montfort himself was captured. But the Montfort cause was taken up courageously by his wife, Jeanne de Flandres, who appealed to Edward III for further assistance. Three A. de la Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne (6 vols, Paris and Rennes, 1896-1914), iii. 400-8. 10 A. du Chesne, Histoire de la maison de Chastillon-sur-Marne (Paris, 1621), preuves, pp. 118-20 (now Archives Nationales, Paris, K 42 nos. 37 and 372). 11 See Michael Jones, The Creation of Brittany (London, 1988), pp. 197-218, and idem, 'Nantes au debut de la guerre civile en Bretagne', in Vittes, 'bonnes villes', cites et capitales: melanges qfferts a Bernard Chevalier, ed. Monique Bourin (Tours, 1988), pp. 105-20. 12 Dom H. Morice, Memoires pour servir de preuves a I'histoire ecclesiastique et civile de Bretagne (3 vols, Paris, 1742-6), i. 1421-4. 9

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campaigns in 1342-3 established an Anglo-Breton presence around the coastline from Morlaix to the mouth of the Loire, while Blois and his supporters held most of central Brittany and its two leading cities, Rennes and Nantes. Over the next twenty years, the respective positions of the rival forces remained fairly constant. There were several battles, of which La Roche Derrien in June 1347, when Blois was captured, and Auray (1364) when he was killed, are the most significant. There were also several long sieges (most notably Rennes, 1356-7) but the most characteristic action was small-scale guerrilla warfare, normally waged by individual captains of rival garrisons who acknowledged only the loosest allegiance to either Montfort or Blois. The effects on the local population and countryside were devastating; they were compounded by the Black Death. Although interrupted by ill-kept truces and hampered by the absence of Blois, a prisoner in England from 1347 to 1356, the Penthievre party, implacably led by Jeanne de Penthievre, kept its cause alive by diplomatic and military means. It is against this sombre background that the rule of Charles de Blois between 1341 and 1364 has to be set. The physical suffering of his subjects was a constant concern to him, according to many witnesses in 1371. They testified to the practical ways in which he alleviated misery by individual acts of charity or through remitting general taxation or other burdensome obligations. The acta lend some support to this picture of an anguished duke, whose public and personal misfortunes add further poignancy to the story - military reverses suffered, wounds inflicted, privations and bereavements endured, all with stoic patience and exemplary faith. Informed of the deaths of two of his own children, for instance, or of a battle or town lost, his immediate response was 'Benedictus sit Deus in omnibus operibus suis'.13 At the time, this passive acceptance of misfortune often drove his advisers to despair, though by 1371 they had changed their rune, acknowledging it as an evident mark of sanctity. They also marvelled at the duke's personal austerities. A strict, time-consuming regimen of prayer, readings and religious exercises, including the daily hearing of mass, frequently on more than one occasion, and regular confession so that 'he never slept in a state of mortal sin', was reinforced by acts of self-denial that reveal great physical as well as mental stamina.14 This theme cannot be pursued here, but two extreme examples may be cited: a barefoot pilgrimage through the snow to the shrine of St Yves at Guingamp, and the surprise of many in his household when they discovered after Charles's death that he had worn a lice-infected 13 14

Monuments, pp. 39, 49, 57, 63, etc. Cf. Vauchez, pp. 421-2/364-5.

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hair-shirt under his armour at Auray.15 Other self-imposed penitential devices he is recorded as using include cords bound tightly round his chest so that the knots caused infected wounds, flagellation to draw blood while reciting psalms, and the lesser irritations of putting pebbles or sand in his shoes.16 There is no doubt that he was a difficult paragon to live with, though Charles did not insist on his wife sharing all his privations: while he preferred sleeping on a thin, hard straw palliasse, Jeanne's side of the marital bed had a feather mattress.17 In so far as it is possible to discern what they thought of each other, there are occasional hints throughout their marriage of genuine affection and companionship, though Jeanne did not depose in 1371, so that much of their domestic life together is irrecoverable. Before their nine years enforced separation, when the duke was a prisoner, the couple had at least six children between 1337 and 1347, though Charles is reported as saying that had it not been for his wedding vows he would not have known his wife carnally.18 There is no serious evidence of extramarital sexual activity and many witnesses in 1371 took the duke's chaste behaviour as another sign of sanctity; though Jeanne's remarriage was considered after 1364, she remained a widow for twenty years and possessed at her death relics of Charles which suggest enduring respect.19 Outside the immediate circle of courtiers, some of whom considered the duke far too favourably inclined towards clerics, his reputation for charitable deeds was already widespread in his lifetime. By sending his own doctors to assist women in childbirth, founding hospitals and personally visiting the sick, Charles displayed charity beyond the accepted obligations of his office. Boys were sent to school at ducal expense; widows and orphans maintained, justice administered expeditiously, red-tape swiftly cut as he ordered clerks to write out privileges for petitioners on the spot, even when they had waylaid him in the countryside where he sometimes needed interpreters to translate their requests from Breton into French so that he could take immediate action.20 It was this reputation among ordinary people for justice and charity that first drew pilgrims to the duke's tomb at Guingamp following his death and set in train the events that led to his proposed sanctification. 15 Monuments, pp. 30, 66, 76 (five hair-shirts bought at one time in Paris), 106 (removal of shirt before sleeping with Jeanne). 16 Vauchez, p. 422/365. 17 Monuments, pp. 34, 106. 18 Ibid., pp. 725-6 lists five children: Marguerite (d. by 1364), Marie (d. 1416), Jean (d. 1404), Guy (d. 1385) and Henri (d. after 1384); a son, Charles, also died young (ibid., p. 39). 19 Recueil, pp. 39 n. 88 and 41 n. 99 (relics); no. 308 n. i (remarriage). 20 Monuments, pp. 88-9.

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The first officially recorded miracles attributed to his merits did not occur until August 1367, almost three years after Charles's death.21 But by then both a popular cult of 'St Charles' and its appropriation by various parties with differing interests in its promotion had already occurred. While within a few weeks of his death former supporters began to pay their respects in the Franciscan convent at Guingamp where he was buried, the first signs of a general cult date from around Easter 1366. It was then that children from Blois and 'France' (probably the royal demesne), began to arrive at the tomb in large numbers, claiming that 'God had revealed the sanctity of the late duke'. This galvanized the local populace who had until that moment shown no particular veneration for Blois.22 It is hard to believe that the burgeoning cult was entirely spontaneous. By the time Evan Begaignon, bishop of Treguier (and a cardinal from 1371) authorized indulgences of forty days for visitors to the tomb in 1367, the lead in promoting it had already been seized by the Franciscan order, for whom Charles had always shown a deep respect. Evidence from Angers, Le Mans, Blois, Perigueux and elsewhere of early representations of him in pictorial or sculpted form is mainly associated with their convents.23 It seems likely that they had also organized the pilgrims (especially the bands of children) from outside Brittany who flocked to Guingamp, marking their routes by placing stones on rapidly growing Montjoies.24 At the tomb ex votos had accumulated in such quantities by Easter 1367 that at least one image-maker was gaining a decent living from selling model limbs and other objects in wax, wood and metal. These took a remarkable variety of forms as Brother Derrian le Petit later testified: 'naves, ymagines, pedes cum tibias, manus, brachia, capita, castra, domus, animalia, aves, ciphi, forme seu figure peccuniarum, doliorum vini, et figure oculorum, mammillarum, genitalium cere, ferracula pedum et manuum ac eciam camisie pro insigniis resuscitatorum, baculi, seu potencie, torchi et cerei magni, et multa alia que propter eorum multitudinem dictus testis enarrare nesciret'.25 Certainly it was against the Franciscans, who were celebrating a feast day and calling Charles both a saint and martyr without papal approval, that Urban V, at the prompting of John IV, issued a bull on 15 September 1368, instructing the Breton bishops to halt these practices.26 21

Vauchez, p. 270/230. Ibid., p. 269/229-30, after Monuments, pp. 283, 324, 337. 23 Monuments, pp. 192, 241, 277-8 (statues etc.); Pocquet, Les papes, i. 334 and 350 (Begaignon); Antoine de Serent, 'Charles de Blois, due de Bretagne (1319-1364) et 1'ordre de Saint Francois', Etudes franciscaines, 7 (1956), 204-21, and 8 (1957), 59~7524 Monuments, pp. 325, 330, 334. 25 Ibid., pp. 395-6. 26 Lettres secretes et curiales de Urbain V, ed. P. Lechacheux and G. Mollat (Paris, 1902-55), no. 2843; Vauchez, 'Canonisation', p. 384 n. 12. 22

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By then John had clearly woken up to the political dangers which the cult posed for his own recently established authority. A personal experience at Candlemas 1368 brought home the need for urgent action. Lodging in the Franciscan convent at Dinan for a meeting of the etats, the duke noticed a mural depicting the life of St Francis with a kneeling donor-figure of Blois, identified by the arms of Brittany.27 He ordered it to be whitewashed; next day drops of what appeared to be blood oozed through. As the astonishing news spread, queues formed to gather the liquid, but the duke's household, including some English knights and esquires, among them Robert Knolles, scathingly mocked Breton credulity: 'Falsi rustici vel villani, vos creditis quod sit sanctus, vos mentimini, pravi rustici, per sanctum Georgium, non est sanctus'.28 A ladder was brought and the image further defaced with predictable results: one iconoclast was struck with paralysis. Other miraculous events also began to occur elsewhere not just where support for Blois had traditionally been strong, as in the Tregor, where notarial records attest miracles from 10 June 1368, but alarmingly from 12 June also around Vannes, a principal centre of Montfortist power from the earliest days of the civil war.29 It is thus no surprise that messengers made hotfoot for Avignon; on 15 September 1368 the pope tried to reassure John IV by reporting that he had received no direct request to canonize Charles and that if he were to do so he would safeguard the duke's rights, a message repeated when the bull suppressing Blois's cult was issued.30 But the bishops failed to implement it and a year later, despite promises and a generally favourable attitude towards John IV, Urban V capitulated to requests from Charles V, unnamed bishops and the children of Blois to institute proceedings by appointing a commission headed by Louis de Thezard, bishop of Bayeux, to inquire into Blois's sanctity.31 From this point events ensured, as they had threatened to do since Blois's death, that the matter would assume much wider significance than simply a quarrel between two branches of the ruling ducal family. A few ramifications can be mentioned. Some political issues were very sensitive; for example, the relations of John IV with Urban V and his successor, Gregory XI, with his sovereign, 27 Monuments, pp. 283, 291-3, 406-7; cf. de Serent, Etudes franciscaines, 8 (1957), 61-5; Vauchez, p. 270/230-1; Prigent, pp. 122-3; L. Hery, 'Le culte de Charles de Blois: resistances et reticences', Annales de Bretagne et des pays de I'Ouest, 103 (1996), 40-2. 28 Monuments, p. 283. 29 Ibid., pp. 415-24, 437-40, 442-3. 30 Lettres secretes et curiales du Urbain V, no. 2818, 16 August 1368, but cf. ibid., no. 2843, Pocquet, Les papes, i. 359n. (correcting Monuments, p. 735), and Vauchez, 'Canonisation', p. 384 n. 13, for 15 September 1368. 31 Monuments, pp. 3-4, 17 August 1369.

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Charles V, with his former protector, Edward III, as England and France moved inexorably again to open warfare, and with his own bishops and other subjects, especially those who had reconciled themselves to his rule after previously serving Blois. Tact and skill were necessary to steer a safe course and both public and private interests guaranteed that Duke John's late rival's canonization would be a weapon in any diplomatic manoeuvres. These can be followed at best only in the broadest outline in surviving evidence; at worst they remain completely hidden from view. Take relations with Charles V, for example. After the defeat and death of Blois, peace was agreed between his widow and John IV, thanks to his mediation; later Charles accepted the new duke's homage and formal relations were carefully established, with Charles even smoothing out financial problems arising from John's inability, feigned or otherwise, to pay a substantial pension owed in return for Jeanne de Penthievre's renunciation of her claims to the succession.32 The deterioration of Anglo-French relations in 1368-9 undermined this fragile entente. John IV still had strong ties with Edward III, who was anxious to renew them as war with France loomed; many of John's leading advisers were Englishmen; among Bretons in his service several, including most significantly his chancellor, Hugues de Montrelais, bishop of Saint-Brieuc, and others who were involved in negotiations with Avignon like Guy de Cleder, archdeacon of Dinan and Guillaume Paris, dean of Nantes, had previously served Blois.33 Their new loyalty had yet to be seriously tested. Since there were fears that John would openly espouse Edward's cause, the chance to embarrass him and sow dissension at his court by supporting the call for an inquiry into the sanctity of Blois must have appeared very opportune to Charles V in 1369. Nor can it be entirely coincidental that Charles now began to woo some of John IV's former supporters, including Olivier, lord of Clisson, to stir up trouble on Brittany's borders, and to show a renewed interest in Penthievre claims. Among these were rights in the viscounty of Limoges, then under the Black Prince, which on 9 July 1369 Jeanne released completely to Charles.34 Though no proof can be offered, we may speculate that this was the price for his support in approaching the papacy over the canonization. There is also the matter of the Blois hostages in England: since 1356 Jean and Guy, the late duke's eldest sons, had been pledges for the huge ransom of 700,000 ecus exacted by Jones, Ducal Brittany, pp. 46ff; Recueil, nos 305, 310-14. Pocquet, Les papes, i, passim, for Montrelais, Cleder and Paris. 34 Recueil, no. 320 (Archives Nationales, J 242, no. 51), 9 July 1369; for the circumstances of this 'fictitious' release and Charles V's counter letters stating that the transfer had not taken effect, see R. Delachenal, Histoire de Charles V (5 vols, Paris, 1909-30), iv. 223 n. 2. 32

33

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Edward III for Charles's release. Of this sum, only a small proportion had been paid at his death, and although John IV had agreed to arrange the hostages' release in 1365, they were still closely confined in 1369, pawns in Edward Ill's hands. Would their father's canonization improve their lot? Straws in the wind suggest that they took an active part in promoting it, but it was not until the mid-13805 that this particular hostage crisis was resolved.35 Once more, though likely connections between events can be suggested that do not rely solely on simultaneity, proof is impossible on current evidence. What is certain is that there was much diplomatic intrigue: both Breton factions kept in touch regularly with Avignon. Embassies were also active in Paris and at other courts.36 Hugues de Montrelais found himself in a particularly ambivalent position as spokesman for John IV, former servant of Jeanne de Penthievre, and bishop of a diocese in which the cult of St Charles was taking firm hold.37 For the moment he appears to have adhered closely to John IV: when on 22 October 1370, just over a year after the pope had empowered the bishop of Bayeux and others to start canonization proceedings, Urban V renewed their mandate, it was now only to be exercized outside Brittany.38 At the same time, the role of Louis, duke of Anjou and his wife, Marie, the late duke's daughter, in promoting Blois's cause also becomes more evident, as they took over and directed more forcefully the earlier advocacy of the Franciscans. For instance, two months after the renewed papal commission, on 10 December 1370 at Toulouse, Marie issued her own procuration to Brother Raoul de Kerguiniou of Guingamp, the key figure locally in instigating the proceedings, to assemble witnesses to appear before the commissioners. This was the first of several procurations by the Anjou-Penthievre family, including one issued on 15 May 1371 at Devizes in Wiltshire by her brothers, Jean and Guy, another by their mother on 24 June, and one by Louis of Anjou on 8 July.39 By then, however, Gregory XI had succeeded Urban 35 Michael Jones, 'The Ransom of Jean de Bretagne, Count of Penthievre: An Aspect of English Foreign Policy, 1386-1388', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 45 (1972), 7-26 (The Creation of Brittany, pp. 263-82). Accounts for the hostages' upkeep survive for most years from 1364-85: PRO, Lists and Indexes, 11, Foreign Accounts, p. 107. 36 Recueil des actes de Jean IV, due de Bretagne, ed. Michael Jones (2 vols, Paris, I98c^3)> i- nos 145, 150, 154, 163, 163A, etc. 37 Though twenty-four inhabitants of Lamballe made excuses for not appearing at Angers (Monuments, pp. 452-4). 38 Ibid., pp. 4-5. A mandate of Charles V, dated 8 August, for payment of 1000 francs to the bishop of Bayeux 'lequel doit aller es parties de Bretaigne, d'Anjou et du Meine, pour certaines grosses besoignes que notre saint pere li a comises' probably dates to 1370: Mandements et actes divers de Charles V, ed. L. Delisle (Paris, 1874), no. 1981. 39 Monuments, pp. 5-8.

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V, and though he early showed enthusiasm for the inquiry, a personal matter threatened to influence his actions in the affair. For Roger de Beaufort, the new pope's brother, had recently been captured by the Captal de Buch, lieutenant of Charles II of Navarre, and in trying energetically to arrange his release, Gregory was in touch with several parties already involved in Blois's canonization and intrigue was rife.40 An immediate loser was John IV, whose fragile hold on power in Brittany was crumbling. His efforts to prevent the long-heralded inquiry being held failed in the late summer of 1371. Despite financial difficulties and John's threats against potential witnesses, it opened at Angers on 9 September I37I.41 In the next three months it heard 195 Breton and other testimonies and received written submissions relating to 187 miracles attributed to Blois, the majority healing miracles.42 John IV's representatives continued to protest at Avignon as the inquiry proceeded. As late as 20 November Anjou still feared that it might yet be abandoned because of escalating costs, a worry only lifted when Brother Raoul de Kerguiniou was paid 700 francs in January I372.43 By then the initial investigation was complete and the documents forwarded to Avignon for further scrutiny, along with letters from the bishops of Saint-Pol de Leon, Saint-Malo, Rennes, the recentlyinstalled Jean le Brun of Treguier and the abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel, urging swift completion of the formalities. The Breton bishops could hardly be unaware of John IV's views and of how this would jeopardize his position (Le Brun had been John's almoner and made a leg injury his excuse for not appearing in person at Angers);44 their defiance is evidence of the divisions among the duchy's ruling elite over current policies, but also reflects disputes between the Breton church and state over episcopal rights that long antedated John's reign.45 Two successive bishops of Treguier had encouraged the cult of Blois, despite John IV's opposition; relations with Saint-Malo had been embittered by a feud between the bishop and duke over their respective rights 40 Ibid., pp. 2-3, cf. Pocquet, Les papes, i. 360; Vauchez, 'Canonisation', p. 384 n. 16. By I February 1371 Gregory was already seeking help from Charles V for the ransom, Lettres secretes et cunales du Pape Gregoire XI, 1370-1378, relatives a la France, ed. L. Mirot et al. (Paris, 1935-57), no. 32; cf. also 39 and 132; Michael Jones, 'Fortunes et malheurs de guerre: autour de la rancon du chevalier anglais Jean Bourchier (+1400)', in La guerre, la violence et les gens au moyen age, i, Guerre et violence, ed. Ph. Contamine and O. Guyotjeannin (Paris, 1996), pp. 199-203, for Beaufort's ransom. 41 Monuments, pp. iff. 42 Herve Martin, Les ordres mendiants en Bretagne (vers 1230-vers 1530) (Paris, 1975), pp. 366-71, the best short discussion; see also Hery, Annales de Bretagne, 103 (1996), 39-56. 43 Paul Hay du Chastelet, Histoire de Bertrand du Guesclin (Paris, 1666), pp. 305-8. 44 Du Chesne, Chastilkn, p. 132; for Le Brun's letter of excuse but with an encomium of Blois, see Monuments, pp. 450-2. 45 Pocquet, Les papes i, passim.

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in the city, inflamed by the recent construction of the ducal Tour Solidor to cow the citizens. A desultory siege of Saint-Malo by Silvestre de la Feuillee, captain of Solidor, exacerbated matters in 1371-2. Similar ducal towers had also been built provocatively at Saint-Brieuc and Quimper; the latter particularly incensed local church authorities and attracted papal threats of excommunication at the very moment that the curia began examining the Angers inquiry.46 Despite such setbacks, John IV did not relax his diplomacy. Protests continued at Avignon, with efforts concentrating on finding technical faults to invalidate the inquiry.47 Gregory XI's concern for his brother's ransom provided some leverage. In order to raise money for Beaufort's release, his marriage to a rich Breton heiress Jeanne, lady of Rays, was arranged; Gregory XI wrote to Hugues de Montrelais, asking him to forward the matter on 8 March 1372 and a fortnight later sent Guy de Cleder to remonstrate with John over his excesses (notably at SaintMalo) and with instructions to collect various taxes.48 There was obviously bargaining room here: in return for allowing subsidies to be raised and the Beaufort-Rays match to proceed, the duke could ask that the canonization make no further progress. Nor did he give up efforts at the French court, where around i April envoys complained about Charles V's part in promoting the inquiry.49 But the slow deterioration of John's position continued. A new stage was reached on 18 June 1372, when Gregory XI appointed three cardinals to examine the records of the Angers inquiry. Two days later messengers were despatched to Brittany, presumably to inform the duke.50 On i July a notarized copy of the testimony from Angers was officially handed to Cardinal Grimoard, despite protests by John IV's proctor.51 The firm line that the pope was taking over the duke's various interests was reinforced by two letters on 4 and 9 July ordering him to desist from attacks on the bishops of Saint-Malo and Quimper.52 In the meantime the cardinals' commission heard arguments for and against breaking the seals on the Angers inquirybook at meetings on 10, 17, 26, 27 and 29 July and 4 August, when not only spokesmen of the Penthievre and Montfort parties presented their cases but independent experts were also called in. On 7 August, again 46

Ibid., i. 374ff. Lettres secretes et curiales du Gregoire XI, no. 775; Vauchez, 'Canonisation', pp. 390-1. 48 Lettres secretes et curiales du Gregoire XI, nos 691, 711-20, cf. also nos 686, 692-4, 758; Pocquet, Lespapes, i. 368, 381-2. 49 Morice, Preuves, ii. 37; Recueil Jean IV, no. I95A; Pocquet, Les papes, i. 361; Vauchez, 'Canonisation', p. 391 n. 29. 50 Lettres secretes et curiales du Gregoire XI, no. 829; Vauchez, 'Canonisation', p. 390. 51 Vauchez, 'Canonisation', p. 390. Grimoard was Urban V's brother. 52 Lettres secretes et curiales du Gregoire XI, nos 846 and 2596. 47

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in the face of strong protests by John IV's proctor, the original seals were broken open. Finally, after more discussion, on 30 August 1372 the results of the Angers inquiry were officially received by the curia.53 Then despite John IV's own mounting political and military difficulties in Brittany, where support for him had all but evaporated and the arrival of an English expeditionary force under John, lord Neville, simply aggravated matters, proceedings at the curia inexplicably hung fire.54 On 22 October 1372 Hugues de Montrelais, whose role throughout appears extremely devious, agreed not to oppose the canonization and protested his fealty to Louis of Anjou, although still chancellor of John IV to whom he had sworn a similar oath only a few months earlier.55 In any event John IV trusted him sufficiently to send him back to Avignon with Guy de Cleder. On their arrival, the Beaufort-Rays match, for which Montrelais acted as proctor, was contracted in the pope's own presence on 3 December.56 Though John IV's relations with Gregory XI were complicated by continuing disputes at Saint-Malo, the fact that a papal embassy sent to Brittany early in 1373 was detained en route by royal officers suggests that an accommodation had been reached.57 For when John fled his duchy in late April and the field was clear for a final declaration of Blois's sanctity, nothing happened. It was three years - years of intense Anglo-French diplomatic and military activity - before it again appeared on the papal agenda.58 This was in February 1376, two months after Montrelais's elevation to the cardinalate, while Brittany was now firmly in the hands of Charles V's lieutenants, when the pope ruled that the faults of form in the Angers inquiry were not sufficient to invalidate it, thus clearing the way for a final decision.59 Although curial scrutiny had reduced the miracles attributed to Charles to a sixth of those reported at Angers, enough proof remained for his sanctity to be accepted.60 Rumours Vauchez, 'Canonisation', pp. 393-404, printing the Processus super apericione libri habitus in curia. 54 Jones, Ducal Brittany., pp. 6yff, for John's alliance with Edward III in 1372. 55 Hay du Chastelet, pp. 308-9, and Morice, Preuves, ii. 50-1; Archives Departementales de la Loire-Atlantique, E 142 no. 22, 9 May 1372 (fealty to John IV). 56 Lettres secretes et curiaks du Gregoire XI, nos 1028-9; Cleder was certainly at the curia by 26 November (ibid., no. 994); their mission suggests that Pocquet's view (Lespapes, i. 360) that Montrelais supported the canonization in December 1371 is incorrect. 57 Lettres secretes et curiales du Gregoire XI, no. 1161, 22 March 1373; Cleder was sent to collect taxes in the dioceses of Reims and Sens in March 1373, a move probably designed to remove him from John IV's presence at a critical moment (Pocquet, Les papes, i. 388). 58 George Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford, 1975), for a good treatment of Anglo-French and papal diplomacy in the early 13705. 59 Pocquet, Les papes, i. 361 after Reg. Av. 287, fo. 38v, edited in idem, 'La "saintete" de Charles de Blois', Revue des questions historiques, 54 (1926), 114-15. 60 Vauchez, p. 563/482 n. 5. 53

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began to circulate to this effect. On 7 September 1376, Cristoforo di Piacenza, an envoy of Ludovico Gonzaga, ruler of Mantua., wrote from Avignon to his master that on the following Wednesday (10 September), 'Gregorius X I . . . ducem Britanie qui, uti audio, fuit iustus dominus, canonizat'.61 It is possible that it was just such news that caused John IV, an exile in England since April 1373, to leave hurriedly for Flanders in August 1376, a move which certainly took Edward III by surprise.62 Alarm proved unnecessary: on 13 September Gregory XI finally left Avignon for Rome and nothing more was heard of Blois's canonization for the rest of his pontificate.63 Nor does it appear to have resurfaced when anti-pope Clement VII succeeded, despite his close links with Charles V, Louis of Anjou and Hugues de Montrelais; the fact that most documents concerning the case were almost certainly then in Urban VI's hands at Rome may also have been an important consideration in preventing further progress.64 It was obviously providential for John IV, whose luck soon changed even more dramatically when an attempt by Charles V to take advantage of his absence from Brittany and to annex it directly to the crown in December 1378 completely misfired. Underestimating the strength of provincial sentiment, this move strained relations with Jeanne de Penthievre and provoked another strong reaction amongst Breton nobles and townsmen that led them to recall John IV from England in August I379-65 Few, even in his own family, now appeared interested in formally pursuing Blois's canonization, which remained in abeyance until the 18705. 61

A. Segre, 'I dispacci di Cristoforo di Piacenza procuratore mantovano alia corte pontificia, 1371-1383', Archivio storico italiano, 5th series, 43 (1909), 94. 62 Foedera, III, ii. 1062, 23 August 1376: 'nostre tres cher filz Johan, due de Bretaigne, par consail et abatement des auscuns Bretouns est alez en Randres sans scieu de nous et ne savons a quele entente . . .'; John was at Robertsbridge abbey, Sussex on 10 August (Recueiljean IV, i. no. 245). 63 N. M. Denis-Boulet argued that Blois was indeed canonized in 1376: 'La canonisation de Charles de Blois (1376)', Revue d'histoire de I'eglise de France, 28 (1942), 217-24. But she was refuted by M-H. Laurent, 'Charles de Blois fut-il canonise en 1376?', ibid., 46 (1951), 182-6, and 47 (1952), 192-4, a view now generally accepted (cf. Vauchez, p. 292/250 n. 5). 64 Monuments, p. 743; Louis of Anjou, in his will of 26 September 1383, Archives Nationales, J IO43A and P I33417 no. 33 = E. Martene and U. Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum (3 vols, Paris, 1717), i. 1594-1612, stipulated that if he were to obtain the kingdom of Naples, 'diligemment et de tout nostre povoir nous poursuivrons a despens les canonizacions de saint memoire pape Urbain Ve, de messire Charles, jadis due de Bretaigne pere de la royne nostre compaigne, et celle de la demme [de] saint Elizeare, conte de Arian' (ibid., 1606 and cf. Revue d'histoire de I'eglise de France, 46 (1951), 185). For Elzear of Sabran (d. 1323, canonized 1369) and his wife, Delphine (d. 1360), see Vauchez, passim and J. Campbell, Enquete pour le proces de canonisation de Dauphine de Puimichel (Turin, 1978). 65 Jones, Ducal Brittany, pp. 85-7.

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By 1380, then, Charles's cult had already passed its apogee; as those who had personally known or served him died, and John IV and his successors entrenched themselves in power, enthusiasm inevitably waned.66 The sadly mutilated tomb of Roland de Coetgoureheden, Charles's seneschal, erected at Guingamp in the mid-13705, now provides one of the few contemporary material traces of his cult since the paintings, stained glass and images of Blois once found in other late medieval churches and chapels have almost entirely perished. Although heavily restored, enough of the original monument remains to show that the crowned figure presenting Coetgoureheden to the Virgin is Charles himself, a duke who, for all his piety and neglect of secular responsibilities, was indeed conscious of his regalities.67 Fragmentary murals at Saint-Leonard de Mayenne provide another rare indication of a cult which flourished as much beyond Brittany as within it, usually being connected with places where feudal lordship or the Franciscans provided direct links with the Penthievre family.68 Documentary evidence for veneration of Blois after 1380 is now almost as scarce as the archaeological. Bertrand du Guesclin, constable of France, who had long served the Penthievre cause, in the will he drew up in July 1380, instructed a pilgrim to visit and pray for him at the tombs of St Charles and St Yves.69 A few others followed suit.70 Some like the blessed Jeanne-Marie de Maille treasured relics; at her death in 1414, she owned part of one of Blois's hair-shirts.71 The Carmelites of Angers for many years had a famous richly embroidered pourpoint or doublet, now in the Musee des Tissus at Lyon, which is attributed to Blois, further evidence that he did not always spurn worldly display.72 John, duke of Berry, had a copy of the canonization inquiry in his famous library; other copies besides those still extant are known.73 But as the Montfort dynasty tightened its hold after 1381, few openly displayed an enduring enthusiasm for Charles. It is even Monuments, pp. J2^ff. J.-Y. Copy, Art, politique et societe au temps des dues de Bretagne: les gisants hautbretons (Paris, 1986), p. 113, and Prigent, Pouvoir, pp. 128-31 (Coetgoureheden); Michael Jones, ' "En son habit royal": le due de Bretagne et son image vers la fin du moyen age', in Representation, pouvoir et royaute a la fin du moyen age, ed. J. Blanchard (Paris, 1995), pp. 271-3, briefly examines what John IV's symbolism owed to Blois. 68 I have been unable to obtain an article from La province du Maine, cited by Vauchez and Prigent for the murals; for the lordship and lands of Blois in Maine see Recueil, passim. 69 Morice, Preuves, ii. 287. 70 Monuments, p. 745. 71 Ibid., p. 746. 72 PI. 27 in Patrick Galliou and Michael Jones, The Bretons (Oxford, 1991), p. 228. 73 Monuments, p. 746 (Berry); for a copy at the abbey of Cluny of the testimony collected in 1371, lost at the Revolution, see L. Delisle, Inventaire des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Nationale, Ponds de Cluni (Paris, 1884), p. xx. 66 67

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possible that a verse-life of John IV written by his secretary, Guillaume de St-Andre, c. 1382-4, was a deliberate attempt to provide an alternative ideal Montfortist model of a Christian ruler to counter current views of Charles de Blois; John IV was not slow to seize other such opportunities for effective propaganda.74 Certainly by 1400 little is heard of Blois's cult except for one final medieval echo: on 24 August 1454 Guillaume de Bretagne, Charles's last surviving grandson, domiciled far from the duchy, urged his relatives in his will to continue to press for the canonization. But nothing came of it.75 Nevertheless some continued to revere his memory: when the prince of Dombes sacked Guingamp during the Wars of Religion in 1591, Blois's physical remains were spirited away by the Franciscans and later lodged by Dombes' rival, the due de Mercoeur, in the still-surviving chapel of Notre-Dame des Graces on the outskirts of the own.76 They were periodically displayed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before the Revolution brought new indignities. Choice relics, like a leg bone given to the bishop of Blois in 1731, had already been detached;77 in 1843 a M. de Blois of Morlaix divided what was left into four parts, depositing one with the bishop of Quimper; a second portion eventually found its way to Blois. In 1874 farce marred the solemn transfer of the remaining bones to a new reliquary at Notre-Dame des Graces when it proved to be too small, a matter set right by making an elaborate new one in the following year. Though driven shortly afterwards into exile in Spain by a staunchly republican government, a group of religious led by Dom Plaine, continued to press for official recognition of a cult which still attracted a following. In 1889 a new dossier was presented to Rome; in 1892 the process was reopened and, finally, in 1904, Charles de Blois was raised to the ranks of the blessed. A year later a magnificent service was held in Blois to celebrate his elevation at which many eulogies were pronounced.78 Enthusiasm in Brittany itself remained muted until July 1910 when a procession was held at Guingamp in which ten bishops and some 30,000 people allegedly took part. Because of some 74 Michael Jones, 'Un prince et son biographe: Jean IV, due de Bretagne (1364-1399) et Guillaume de Saint-Andre', in Les princes et I'histoire du XlVe au XVIIIe siecles, ed. Chantal Grell et al. (Bonn, 1998), pp. 189-203. 75 Archives Departementales des Pyrenees-Atlantiques, E 648 (Monuments, p. 753). 76 Monuments, p. 747-8. 77 Landevennec, Fonds Lebreton, Paroisses: Graces, letter of M. de Caumartin, bishop of Blois asking for a relic, 29 June 1730, together with an account of the separation 'd'un os de la Jambe', 20 May 1731. 78 Ibid., pp. iv-viii. The panegyric of Monseigneur Touchet, bishop of Orleans, included an extraordinarily Anglophobic denunciation of Edward III and the Montfortists.

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unexplained damage, the reliquary had to be replaced again in I929,79 while in 1939 the first parish church dedicated to St Charles de Blois was opened at Auray itself. But the most enduring monument to the prodigious efforts of Dom Plaine and Dom Antoine de Serent, who shared his enthusiasm for Blois, is the lovingly prepared edition of the Processus Apostolici published in 1921. As one who first met John IV of Brittany while studying the special subject 'Richard II' with James Campbell, later becoming that duke's apologist and a student of the late medieval Breton state, I do not begrudge this posthumous vindication. It has become increasingly clear recently that the Montfortists owe more to Charles de Blois than I, for one, have commonly acknowledged. His reign saw the start of major administrative developments, especially as financial needs during the Breton civil war began transforming seigneurial, patrimonial, forms of governance into professionalized and bureaucratic ones as more regular forms of taxation were imposed. But it can also, and even more significantly, be seen as a decisive period in the elaboration of the myth and symbolism that later provided the Montfort dynasty with some of its most powerful tools for state-building. Through his piety, Charles, for instance, popularized the cult of his sainted predecessors, Salomon and Judicael (with their largely mythical vitae), thereby reviving notions of Breton kingship;80 he emphasized the use of a royal crown (rather than the traditional ducal cercle), as is seen on Coetgoureheden's tomb and his own signet seal; he used the title ldei gratia1 on his gold coinage (another usurpation of what the Valois would later consider their sovereign rights).81 These lessons in projecting a particular image of the duke were not lost on John IV and his successors, for whom ducal 'regalities' in a wide variety of guises were fundamental to claims not only to adminsitrative but also to ideological autonomy. The political intrigues over Charles de Blois's sanctification traced here surely reflect strong contemporary awareness of the importance of this image-making for the Breton state. It was impossible, of course, for the Montfortists to endorse Blois's sanctity, but they could copy and even improve upon Blois's methods once they were firmly in power. How John IV managed (albeit somewhat fortuitously) to survive the major crisis which the proposed sanctification of his late rival posed to his embryo state has 79

Cf. the account of the translation of relics to a new reliquary on 10 March 1929, Landevennec, Fonds Lebreton, Paroisses: Graces. 80 Cf. A. Vauchez, 'Le due Charles de Blois (+1364) et le culte des saints rois bretons du haut moyen age', in Haut moyen age: culture, education et societe: etudes offertes a Pierre Riche, ed. Michel Sot (Paris, 1990), pp. 5-15. 81 Jones, 'En son habit royal', 271-3; Copy, p. 111, for a royal d'or issued in imitation of John II of France.

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been the main subject of this account; it is offered as a small token of gratitude to James Campbell who first introduced me to the late fourteenth century.

13 The Empire of Tamerlane: An Unsuccessful Re-Run of the Mongol State? DAVID MORGAN Tamerlane, Timur the Lame (?I336-I4O5), has not on the whole had a good press from historians. For Gibbon he was 'rather the scourge than the benefactor of mankind'. While, at the time of his accession, it might have been true that 'Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine', and that Timur restored some kind of order, 'the remedy was far more pernicious than the disease . . . the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities, was often marked by his abominable trophies, by columns, or pyramids, of human heads.' He was not even much of an empire-builder, since 'his most destructive wars were rather inroads than conquests. He invaded Turkestan, Kipzak, Russia, Hindostan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia and Georgia, without a hope or a desire of preserving those distant provinces. From thence he departed, laden with spoil; but he left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor magistrates to protect the obedient, natives.'1 Timur's early court historians, notably Nizam al-Din Shami and Sharaf al-Din 'Ali Yazdi (who wrote in Persian), of course presented a very different picture of their hero and patron. Nevertheless, the all too obvious facts of death and destruction on a massive scale have deterred most modern historians from taking Timur at his apologists' evaluation. More influential, among the contemporary accounts, was the hostile polemic of Ibn 'Arabshah (though this might also have something to do with the fact that his book, unlike Shami's and Yazdi's, exists in a comparatively recent and accessible English translation).2 The standard biography in English, since its publication in 1962, has been Hilda 1 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. D. Womersley (3 vols, London, 1994), ii. 850. 2 Ibn 'Arabshah, Tamerlane or Timur, the Great Amir, trans. J. H. Sanders (London, 1936).

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Hookham's Tamburlaine the Conqueror.3 This is a strikingly good book, very judicious and well informed: the remarkable work of a history teacher at a midlands girls' grammar school who is otherwise chiefly remembered as having been Margot Fonteyn's mother. But although her book filled the need for a modern, up-to-date biography, it did little to change the traditional picture. It could well be argued that this was because the traditional picture was in essence right. But in one respect, at least, Timur subsequently came in for a degree of rehabilitation. There was and is little that can be done for his human rights record. But it can be shown that although what he did was certainly unpleasant, he at least knew what he was about. The old version of his career tended to represent it as a series of more or less random campaigns of plunder and destruction. There seemed to be no overall plan, no rational basis underlying it. To establish that such a rationale did in fact exist (or at any rate that it very probably did) was the achievement of Beatrice Forbes Manz, in her The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, published in I989.4 She argued that Timur had found a solution to the perennial problem faced by every nomadic tribal unifier: what to do with his previously, and still potentially, unruly followers once they were denied their traditional custom of raiding and pillaging each other. The answer was in itself an obvious one, and in principle the same as that adopted by Chinggis (Genghis) Khan in the thirteenth century and indeed by the Prophet Muhammad's successors in the seventh: the mounting of external campaigns of conquest. This would keep his followers pleasantly and profitably employed, sufficiently busy, and sufficiently contented, not to be a danger to the state which they had been instrumental in founding. Between 1370, when Timur had achieved a dominant position in his homeland of Transoxania, and 1405, when he died, he was almost invariably away from home, campaigning in one direction or another. With him went his superlative army of (largely) Chaghatai nomad cavalry. There was little delegation of authority: Timur trusted no one, and preferred to remain personally in command. With the army of Transoxania under his own eye and enjoying itself in devastating other territories, he could be sure of its loyalty. Eventually, detachments of Chaghatai nomads were permanently settled in conquered territories, and tribal levies from the conquered lands were transferred to Transoxania, thus both ensuring the security of Timur's homeland and reducing the number of troops that might be available to his defeated enemies. In Beatrice Manz's view Timur's main priority, then, was not empire-building as such but control of his own military elite. This is the 3 4

Hilda Hookham, Tamburlaine the Conqueror (London, 1962). Beatrice Forbes Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge, 1989).

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explanation she offers for the apparent inefficiency of Timur's career of conquest, in that he seems to be continually invading the same areas. As long as his soldiers were contented, fighting and plundering in someone else's territory rather than at home in Transoxania, then all was well. In the light of this, to what extent - if at all - can Timur's career be seen as an attempt to re-establish the empire of Chinggis Khan? It should first of all be pointed out that there is a case for maintaining that Timur did nothing of the sort.5 Chinggis and his successors had built up an empire by attacking and conquering the great sedentary lands of Asia from a base in their native steppe grasslands to the north: Timur did just the opposite. He fought with an army of Chaghatai nomads not dissimilar in lifestyle or military organization from the followers of Chinggis Khan, but he operated from a secure base in largely sedentary Transoxania. And though he campaigned continually in sedentary Persia, many of his campaigns were attacks on nomadic areas, the Golden Horde to the north and the Chaghatai khanate to the east. More to the point, as Gibbon rightly observed, these and other expeditions were 'rather inroads than conquests': he made no attempt to incorporate those nomadic areas, or indeed Anatolia, into his empire, although they had all been parts of the Mongol Empire. He seems largely to have been concerned to neutralize them, to ensure that they would pose no threat to his own power. He showed no interest in ruling these vast territories. This was an odd way in which to go about reconstituting the Mongol Empire. Nevertheless, there is in fact no doubt that Timur's career was represented, then and later, as the re-establishment of that Empire. First, there is Timur's alleged birth date. Much play was made of the claim that Timur was born in the very same (Muslim) year in which Abu Sa'id, the last effective Mongol ruler of Persia, had died. Khwandamir, a late Timurid historian, puts it like this: 'In the year 736 [1335/6], when Sultan Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan died, the Chinggisid sultans' fortune and independence came to an end in Iran. In accordance with the miraculous words, "Whatever verse we abrogate, or cause thee to forget, we will bring a better than it, or one like unto it" [Qur'an 2, 106], Amir Timur Giiregen was born . . . for in Rabi' I of the abovementioned year occurred the death of the felicitous padishah Abu Sa'id, and on Tuesday eve the 25th of Sha'ban 736 [8 April 1336] the SahibQiran [Timur] was born in Kish.'6 A similar point is made in the inscriptions on Timur's cenotaph and tombstone in the Gur-i Mir in Samarqand, both of which attribute to Timur a common ancestry with Cf. David Morgan, Medieval Persia, 1040-1797 (London, 1988), p. 89. Khwandamir, Habib al-Siyar, ed. Jalal Huma'i (Tehran, AHS 1333), iii. 393: translation (slightly adapted) from Wheeler M. Thackston, A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art (Cambridge, MA, 1989), p. 102. 5 6

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Chinggis Khan (contrary to what has often been alleged, by myself and others, Timur never claimed actually to be descended from Chinggis Khan).7 It might be added that the accounts we have of Timur's early life bear a striking, and perhaps a suspicious, resemblance to the early life of Chinggis Khan as portrayed in such documents as the Secret History of the Mongols. Even if he left large parts of the old Mongol Empire invaded and subjugated but essentially unoccupied, there can be little doubt that, in Beatrice Manz's words, Timur 'set out to conquer the whole of the former Mongol Empire and almost succeeded'.8 It should be remembered that at the very end of his life, Timur was en route to Ming China, the conquest of which, if achieved, would certainly have confirmed his standing as successor to the Mongols. There had, however, been important changes since the days of Chinggis Khan. Timur had been born and brought up a Muslim, as had his Transoxanian followers. He was a product of a Muslim as well as a tribal nomadic society. So he functioned within both the Turco-Mongol and the Islamic traditions. This had advantages and disadvantages. A problem with the TurcoMongol tradition was that, in the circumstances of the late fourteenth century, the prestige of the house of Chinggis Khan was so vast that only a member of that lineage could legitimately reign and have the title of Khan, whereas in the Islamic tradition the holder of real power, the sultan (an Arabic word originally meaning 'power') should also act as the formal ruler. Timur seems on the whole to have laid his principal emphasis on the Turco-Mongol heritage. He married two Chinggisid princesses, thus earning himself the title of guregen> son-in-law, and until the last years of his life he maintained a member of the house of Chinggis Khan as nominal khan. It is true that no one could have been under any misapprehension about where the real power lay - the nominal khan did not, for example, take precedence over Timur at court - but it was evidently felt to be a necessary element of legitimation. It is interesting, though, to notice that Timur's tame Chinggisid was not a member of the house of Chaghatai, Chinggis Khan's second son whose descendants had ruled in Transoxania before the time of Timur (and who continued to rule in the eastern half of the old Chaghatai khanate, known as to the Transoxanians, perhaps disparagingly, as Mughulistan, the land of the Mongols). Timur's Chinggisid Khan was a descendant of Ogedei, The standard study is now John E. Woods, 'Timur's Genealogy', in Intellectual Studies on Islam: Essays Written in Honor of Martin B. Dickson, ed. Michel M. Mazzaoui and Vera B. Moreen (Salt Lake City, 1990), pp 85-125. For my own misleading remark about the inscriptions, see David Morgan, Medieval Persia, p. 85. 8 Beatrice Forbes Manz, 'Tamerlane and the Symbolism of Sovereignty', Iranian Studies, 21 (1988), 105. 7

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Chinggis's third son and immediate successor as Great Khan (r. 1229-41): this was a line not much associated with rule over a particular khanate among those into which the Mongol Empire had fallen. It is conceivable, therefore, that in deciding that his empire should be represented, nominally, by a descendant of Ogedei, Timur was at least implying a universal claim: to be the restorer of the Mongol Empire as a whole, not merely the Chaghatai Khanate or the Ilkhanate in Persia. It may well be that Timur found his inescapably non-Chinggisid status distinctly frustrating. This could be an explanation for the grandiosity of some of his projects, whether destructive - the barbarity of his massacres makes those of Chinggis pale into comparative insignificance - or constructive. His glorification of Samarqand, the capital he rarely saw, and his erection of suburbs named after the great cities he had sacked, is well known. Most conspicuous of all was his great mosque, the Bibi Khanum. This was so grandiose that its dome collapsed very quickly. Some indication of why this may have happened may be deduced from a story told by Timur's historian Sharaf al-Din 'Ali Yazdi: When His Highness [Timur] passed through the congregational mosque he had erected, the gateway (dargah) that had been built during his absence seemed too small and low in his exalted view. He therefore issued an edict that it be razed and another,- larger and higher, be built. Khwaja Mahmud Da'ud, for his shortcoming with regard to the erection of the aforementioned gateway, was held for investigation.9

The mosque was modelled on the (no longer extant) mosque of the penultimate Mongol Ilkhan, Oljeitii, in Sultaniyya:10 Evidently it was not a very successful imitation, any more than Timur's empire was a convincing facsimile of that of the Mongols. The debilitating effect of the great Mongol example - it might not be going too far to call it an inferiority complex - is perhaps most vividly illustrated in an anecdote told by Clavijo, the Castilian ambassador who travelled to Timur's court at Samarqand at the very end of the reign. The story concerns Timur's son Miranshah, who had been appointed by his father as governor of Azarbaijan in north-west Persia. Miranshah, Clavijo tells us, after wreaking havoc in Tabriz, arrived at the city of Sultaniyya, which had been the last of the Mongol capitals of the Ilkhanate: Standing some distance outside the city is an immense [mosque and] palace of many apartments that was built in past times by a certain great 9 Sharaf al-Din 'Ali Yazdi, Zafar-nama, ed. Muhammad 'Abbasi (Tehran, AHS 1336), ii. 421: trans. Thackston, A Century of Princes, p. 90. 10 Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250-1800 (New Haven/London, 1994), p. 40.

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lord, whose body was later buried here in a magnificent tomb. Miran Shah now gave command to have the whole of this edifice demolished and by his orders the body of the founder that lay buried there was forthwith thrown out lying on the ground to perish dishonoured. Some say the Prince did all these things by reason of the madness that had overtaken him: but according to another report he was heard at one time saying to himself: 'Forsooth I am the son of the greatest man in the whole world, what now can I do in these famous cities, that after my days I may be always remembered?' He therefore began to build, but soon came to note that nothing of what he built was better than what had already been built by others before him. Considering this he was heard to say: 'Shall nothing remain of me for a remembrance?' and added 'They shall at least remember me for some reason or other': and forthwith commanded that all those buildings of which we have spoken should be demolished, in order that men might say: that though Miran Shah forsooth could build nothing, he yet could pull down the finest buildings of the whole world.11

According to Clavijo, this was too much even for Timur. On hearing of his son's activities he hastened to Azarbaijan, deposed Miranshah and even considered having him executed. The building which so aroused Miranshah's jealousy was the magnificent mausoleum of the Ilkhan Oljeitii, which still 'survives as the most eloquent testimony to the fact that the Mongols could build as well as demolish'.12 On'his death in 1405, Timur 'left behind a political order which could not function without him'.13 He had attempted to divide his realm between his four sons and their descendants - surely a conscious imitation of Chinggis's division of his conquests between the lines of Jochi, Chaghatai, Ogedei and Tolui - and he had tried to prescribe who should succeed him. But his political system was so utterly dependent on Timur himself that it could not and did not survive him. There was a long and debilitating struggle between his descendants, from which his fourth and only surviving son, Shah Rukh - not Timur's own choice as his successor - ultimately emerged victorious over what was left of his father's conquests. Timur 'had given his dynasty sufficient power and charisma to maintain their rule, but when the question of the succession was finally decided, the realm his successors inherited was a smaller and poorer one.'14 The empire outlived its founder by a century, but that century was one of steady and inexorable contraction. This is in very sharp contrast indeed with the Timurid empire's supposed model. The death of Chinggis Khan was followed by no succession struggle - the founder's instructions on this matter were obeyed, and in any case the Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane, trans. Guy Le Strange (London, 1928), pp. 162-3. 12 David Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford, 1986), p. 171. 13 Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, p. 145. 14 Ibid., p. 147. 11

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functioning of the Mongol Empire was in no way dependent on Chinggis himself: unlike Timur, he had been able and willing to delegate. Far from contracting or collapsing on Chinggis's death in 1227, his empire continued to expand for a further half century. So much for Timur. Gibbon was not far wrong about him. But what should be said about the Timurids, the descendants of the conqueror who presided for a hundred years over the dissolution of his empire? Here the situation is rather different: Timur has few apologists, but his descendants (though not usually Miranshah) have many. This is essentially on the basis of their much-lauded cultural achievements, which some have even sought to dignify with the term 'the Timurid Renaissance', though it is not clear what, if anything, was being reborn. As I once put it myself, the Timurid dynasty 'had got off to the worst possible start with the appalling career of Temur, but for all their internecine struggles, many of them had done much to atone for the destruction inflicted by their ancestor'.15 Since I wrote those words, the Timurids' cultural stock has risen even higher, as a result of a series of conferences, exhibitions and publications, of which the most spectacular is Thomas Lentz and Glenn Lowry's Timur and the Princely Vision.16 Nevertheless my assessment, let alone those of others who are more enthusiastic than I, now seems excessively generous. Judged by the highest relevant standards, those of the Mongols, most of the Timurids were singularly insignificant politically, though they were still haunted by the ghost of the unattainable Mongol ideal. If Timur had to some extent modelled himself on Chinggis Khan, Shah Rukh's exemplar was probably the Ilkhan Ghazan Khan (r. 1295-1304), who had taken the Mongols in Persia over to Islam and had attempted, through a series of administrative reforms, to undo the damage of the previous seven decades of Mongol rule. Shah Rukh, from his capital in Herat (he had moved the centre of the Timurid empire there from Samarqand), may well have seen himself as the restorer of Ghazan's Islamic Mongol state. Shah Rukh was noted for, on the one hand, bringing about a substantial shift in emphasis away from Mongol law and custom and towards Islamic law, and on the other, retaining much respect for the Mongol tradition, as had Ghazan himself. We may note that the non-Timurid rulers of Azarbaijan referred to Shah Rukh's government as 'Ilkhani', and that Shah Rukh himself used the title Padishah-i Islam, which had been regularly used of Ghazan, notably by his minister and historian Rashidal-Din.17 Morgan, Medieval Persia, p. 98. Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Los Angeles, 1989). 17 I owe these points on Shah Rukh and Ghazan Khan to Beatrice Forbes Manz, 'Mongol History, Rewritten and Relived', forthcoming. See also idem, 'Temur and the 15

16

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I am inclined to think that the Timurids tend to be overrated because of generalization from the artistic achievements which were brought about under their rule or patronage. Those achievements are not imaginary, though I suspect they are in some ways more apparent than real. In the field of architecture, I would suggest that they would not seem so superior to the Mongols were more Mongol buildings still extant: the Sultaniyya mausoleum, so immeasurably superior to anything the Timurids erected, is still there to warn us of the dangers of forming conclusions based on little more than the accidents of survival. Everyone who takes an interest in Persian art is taught to revere Timurid mosaic tilework, and to contrast it to its advantage especially with the painted tiles of the succeeding Safavid period. But here we have perhaps all been brainwashed, at an early and formative age, by reading that wonderful, immensely persuasive, but profoundly misleading book, Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana. Timurid book painting has been widely extolled, and much of it is indeed quite attractive. But to my (admittedly inexpert) eye it seems singularly insipid when compared with what came before and after: the Mongol Demotte or the Safavid Houghton Shah-namas, for example. Historical writing under the Timurids has also been praised. Whatever its quality, what it undoubtedly does demonstrate is the Timurids' Mongol obsession, especially in relation to what was produced at the court of Shah Rukh at Herat.18 One might wish that the Timurid historians had chosen to emulate the straightforward and unadorned literary style of the greatest of the Ilkhanid historians, Rashid al-Din (d. 1318); but unfortunately they did not. Most notably, Hafiz Abru produced in Herat an edition and continuation of Rashid al-Din's Jami' al-tawarikh, and as Alexander Morton has shown,19 it was probably there, between about 1402 and 1420, that the volume of letters formerly attributed to Rashid al-Din (d. 1318) was concocted, for what reason remains obscure: but the Mongol shadow pervades all. Only in India, which was sufficiently distant from the Mongols in both space and time, did Timurid descent became prestigious enough in itself for the Mongol shackles to be thrown off. Yet even then, Babur was the founder of the Mughal Empire: 'Mughal' is simply the Persian version of the word 'Mongol'. And he was descended from both Problem of a Conqueror's Legacy', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series, 8 (1998), 21-41. My indebtedness, here and elsewhere, to Professor Manz's works should not be taken necessarily to imply her agreement with the views expressed in this essay. See John E. Woods, 'The Rise of Timurid Historiography', Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 46 (1987), 81-108. 19 Alexander H. Morton, 'The Letters of Rashid al-Din: Ilkhanid Fact or Timurid Fantasy?', in Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David Morgan (ed.), The Mongol Empire and its Legacy (Leiden, I999)> PP- 155-9918

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Chinggis Khan and Tamerlane: an unpromising pair of ancestors who seem, however, to have cancelled each other out, since Babur was so unusually humane and enlightened a ruler - or so he says.20 20

See Stephen F. Dale, 'Steppe Humanism: The Autobiographical Writings of Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (1483-1530)', International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 22 (1990), 37-585 and idem, 'The Legacy of the Timurids', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series, 8 (1998), 43-58.

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14 Brittany and the French Crown: The Legacy of the English Attack upon Fougeres (1449) C. D. TAYLOR During the late middle ages royal officials slowly extended the authority of the French crown at the expense of local privilege and independence. The English dukes of Aquitaine were the most famous opponents of the Capetian and Valois claims to sovereignty and resort, but the successful conclusion of the Hundred Years War did not put an end to challenges presented by other princes, particularly the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany. In the early 14605, Francis II, duke of Brittany, disputed Louis XI's regalian rights over the Breton bishoprics and also demanded the right to implement an independent foreign policy, or at least to be recognized as an ally rather than a subject of the French crown. On I October 1463 Louis had concluded the truce of Hesdin with the new Yorkist king of England, Edward IV, and, contrary to recent practice, the duchy of Brittany was not explicitly cited as a French ally. Duke Francis objected to this clear challenge to his independence; and the English certainly did not accept that Brittany was included within the truce if not explicitly named, and so continued to take military action against the subjects of the duke. Yet there was again no direct mention of the duchy when the truce was extended to maritime affairs on 12 April 1464. Clearly Louis's strategy was to circumscribe the duke's freedom to conduct an independent foreign policy, by assuming that Brittany was part of the French kingdom and hence automatically subject to any alliance or treaty contracted by the king. Unfortunately, the plan failed because Edward IV negotiated a separate alliance with Duke Francis II of Brittany and Charles count of Charolais, son of Philip of Burgundy, against Louis XI. Moreover, Edward's secret * My thanks to M. C. E. Jones, M. K. Jones, M. H. Keen, P. S. Lewis and J. L. Watts for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this piece. All references to the treatise Pour ce que plusieurs are to Bibliotheque Nationale, manuscrit francais 5058, upon which my forthcoming edition will be based. An older edition appears in Pretensions des Anglois a la couronne de France, ed. R. Anstruther (London, 1847), pp. 1-117.

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marriage to Elizabeth Woodville pre-empted any chance of an AngloFrench match to cement an alliance with Louis.1 At the height of this crisis, an anonymous royal official, perhaps Guillaume Cousinot II, produced for other administrators and diplomats a comprehensive manual concerning the legal issues that had arisen during the Hundred Years War. This text, Pour ce que plusieurs., mainly updated the material presented by earlier officials like Jean de Montreuil and Jean Juvenal des Ursins. Yet there was one completely new section, addressing the responsibility for the breach of the Anglo-French truce in 1449: the author argued that the English had seized the Breton fortress of Fougeres as part of a devious plan to win over the duchy to their side and thus to sever the traditional sovereign and feudal bond between the French crown and the dukes of Brittany. Clearly such an account had enormous implications for the later debate over the place of the duke of Brittany in the Anglo-French truce of Hesdin of 1463: the official treatise emphasized that the duchy had always been subject to the alliances and agreements arranged by the French sovereign, while also demonstrating that the English could not be trusted after their nefarious actions in the 14405. Royal diplomats were thus armed with useful arguments for the negotiations with the Yorkists and the Bretons; Louis himself echoed the treatise when he commented, after Francis II had concluded a separate truce with the English, that 'est bien estrange . . . d'oir, car quelque guerre ou autre chose qu'il soit advenue par cy devant, jamais Breton ne seroit Angloys centre la couronne de France'.2 Thus there is certainly reason to be suspicious of the unusual evidence provided by Pour ce que plusieurs. Yet historians have consistently relied upon this treatise as a source for the strange events surrounding the capture of Fougeres in March I449-3 There is no other B.-A. Pocquet du Haut-Jusse, Francois II, due de Bretagne et I'Angkterre (1458-1488) (Paris, 1929)3 pp. 70-103; J. Calmette and G. Perinelle, Louis XI et Angleterre, 1461-1483 (Paris, 1930), pp. 55-9, and B.-A. Pocquet de Haut-Jusse, 'Une idee politique de Louis XI: la sujetion eclipse la vassalite', Revue historique, 216 (1961), 386-9; and see also C. L. Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth (2 vols, London, 1923), ii. 350-3, and M. H. A. Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, 1464-1472 (Univ. of Oxford, D.Phil, thesis, 1992), pp. 26-7. For the dispute over the Breton bishoprics, see P. Contamine, 'Methodes et instruments de travail de la diplomatic francaise. Louis XI et la regale des eveches bretons (1462-5)', in Des pouvoirs en France, 1300-1500 (Paris, 1992), pp. 147-67. 2 Calmette and Perinelle, Louis XI et Angleterre, 56-7. For the authorship of Pour ce que plusieurs, see my forthcoming edition, together with C. D. Taylor, 'Sir John Fortescue and the French Polemical Treatises of the Hundred Years War', EHR, 104 (1999), 112-29. 3 A. Bossuat, Perrinet Gressart et Francois de Surienne, agents de I'Angleterre (Paris, J 936), pp. 304-6; M. H. Keen and M. J. Daniel, 'English Diplomacy and the Sack of Fougeres in 1449', History, 59 (1974), 375~9i; M. G. A. Vale, Charles VII (London, 1974), 116-18. 1

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direct evidence that the enterprise was carried out in the hope that the duke would miraculously be won over to the English cause. Rather, the English wished to secure the release of Gilles de Bretagne, brother of Duke Francis, and thus seized Fougeres as a valuable property to exchange for him. When the French reacted with such hostility to the seizure, the English defended their action by a number of arguments, including the claim that Brittany was subject to the English king and thus should not be included in the truce. The later claim that Suffolk and Somerset had authorized the attack as part of a nefarious plot to sever the alliance between Duke Francis II and Charles VII has encouraged historians to view the enterprise as the high point of English deceit and trickery during the Hundred Years War: in reality it is an example of the confusion and lack of long-term strategic planning which characterized English foreign policy under Henry VI. After the duke of Burgundy was reconciled with Charles VII by the treaty of Arras in 1435, the English government had gradually recognized the need to reach a diplomatic solution to the war. In pursuit of this goal, English and French ambassadors agreed a truce at Tours in May 1444, together with the marriage of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. Yet there were a number of disputes which threatened the truce. Most importantly, Henry VI had promised to deliver Le Mans and Maine to the French, but the handover was delayed by the resistance of his subjects in France and took place only in March 1448, under the threat of military action by Charles. A second difficulty arose when some of the captains retiring from Maine occupied and fortified the fortresses of St James de Beuvron and Mortain on the Breton-Norman frontier, against the terms of the truce.4 The event which finally destroyed the delicate balance of the truce was the seizure of the Breton town of Fougeres on 24 March 1449 by an Aragonese mercenary captain, Francois de Surienne.5 The French were quick to point out the strong ties between Francois de Surienne and the English; on 29 June 1449, the French ambassadors described him as 'messire Francois Larragonnois, chevalier de lordre de la Jarretiere . . . conseiller et pensionnaire dudit prince nepveu, et soubz le gouvernement et lieutenance du dit haut et puissant prince, due de Somerset'. Surienne was indeed a member of Henry VTs Norman council, and was 4 R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI: The Exercise of Royal Authority, 1422-1461 (London, 1981), pp. 483-510. 5 Fougeres, dep. d'Dle et Vilaine. The duke of Alencon had pledged the lordship of Fougeres to the duke of Brittany to raise money for his ransom after the battle of Verneuil 17 August 1424. The king ignored the petitions of Alenfon for help to recover the lordship, and the subsequent events surrounding the attack in 1449 merely served to reaffirm Brittany's title: Bossuat, Perrinet Gressart et Francois de Surienne, p. 313.

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appointed a knight of the Garter on 27 November 1447. Moreover, he received wages for his service on the council, the payment of a pension agreed in 1442, a sum of 100 livres at the time of his nomination to the order, and the discharge of his dues to the college of St George at Windsor, together with the castle and captaincy of Porchester.6 From the French point of view, this looked very much like advanced payment for the assault on Fougeres. They charged Somerset with complicity in the attack, citing both letters that he had written before the enterprise, acknowledging that Surienne was advancing towards the lower boundaries of Normandy, and the depositions of Englishmen captured at Saint-Aubin du Cormier who reported that the attack upon Fougeres had taken place with the consent of the duke. The French were also aware that Francois de Surienne had received reinforcements from the English garrisons in lower Normandy, particularly those of Avranches and Tomblaine.7 Thus when the English failed to resolve the situation, royal assemblies at Roches-Trenchelionon 17 July and on 31 July unanimously agreed that Charles VII was freed from any obligation to uphold the truce. On the second occasion, Guillaume Juvenal des Ursins informed the English ambassadors Jean 1'Enfant and Jean Cousin that Charles VII was formally declaring war on Henry VI. Within just over a year, the French had reconquered Normandy.8 Naturally the English involvement in the assault on Fougeres was cited as the principal justification for the decision to abandon the truce. In an open letter to the inhabitants of Normandy written in July 1449, Charles VTI argued that the English had broken the truce by making war on the duchy of Brittany and other places obedient to the king of France; French ambassadors told the duke of Burgundy that Charles wished to resume hostilities because it was the king's duty as sovereign lord to support the duke of Brittany against the English and 'le roy ne le peut ou doit habandonner'.9 On 31 July 1449, Guillaume Juvenal des Ursins told the English ambassadors that Charles had to act to protect 6 Narratives of the English Expulsion from Normandy, 1449-1450, ed. J. Stevenson, Rolls Series (London, 1863), pp. 441-2, and also pp. 415-16, 436-7, together with Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France During the Reign of Henry VI, ed. J. Stevenson, Rolls Series, 2 vols in 3 (London, 1861-4), i. 249 and the letter sent by Charles VII to the king of Castile on 2 April 1451, in E. Cosneau, Le connetabk de Richemont (Arthur de Bretagne), 1393-1458 (Paris, 1886), pp. 619-20. In general see Bossuat, Perrinet Gressart et Francois de Surienne, pp. 313-15, and Keen and Daniel, 'English Diplomacy and the Sack of Fougeres', 377. 7 Narratives of the English Expulsion from Normandy, pp. 441-3, 449-50, 457-8, and Mathieu d'Escouchy, Chronique de Mathieu d'Escouchy, ed. G. du Fresne de Beaucourt (3 vols, Paris, 1863-4), iii. 225-42. 8 Chronique de Mathieu d'Escouchy, iii. 185-6, 245-51; Letters and Papers, i. 243-64. 9 Ordonnances des roys de France de la troisieme race, ed. E. de Lauriere, D. F. Secousse et al. (Paris, 1723-1849), xiv. 59-64; Letters and Papers, i. 264-73.

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his frontiers, his kin and his subjects: Somerset had refused to make reparation for the seizure of Fougeres, despite the article of the truce that required 'que chascune des parties estoient tenues fair reparer les attemptaz qui avendroient en ladicte treve, si tost qu'ilz vendroient a leur congnoissance'.10 A commission of enquiry held in Rouen at the end of 1449, together with Surienne's own deposition, written on 15 March 1450, provided conclusive proof of the involvement of the dukes of Suffolk and of Somerset in the plot.11 Jean Juvenal cited these materials three years later in Verba mea auribus percipe, domine., reporting that the English council and the dukes of Suffolk and Somerset had all approved of Surienne's plan to capture Fougeres; he explained the actions of Surienne by observing that the Breton town 'estoit 1'une des belles conquestes que on pourroit faire, et que par ce moyen il tendroit toute Brethaingne, Anjou, Le Maine en crainte et doubte'; and he placed the enterprise within the wider context of English attempts to break truces and treaties whenever it was to their advantage.12 Thus the French viewed the attack upon Fougeres as yet another example of English deceit and disregard for the truce. Fifteen years later the anonymous treatise Pour ce que plusieurs offered the new analysis of the attack upon Fougeres already noted. It reported that the English had captured Fougeres as part of a plot designed to 'attraire le due et la duche de Bretaigne a leur obeissance comme leurs subgez et loster hors de la main et de lobeissance du roy Charles qui estoit aincoires plusgrant entreprise et infration de treue xx. foiz que nestoit ladicte prise de Fougeres'. Thus the English sought to sever the traditional bond between the French crown and the duchy of Brittany which had existed since the time of King Clothair, grandson of Clovis: counts and dukes of Brittany had paid homage to French kings since the reign of Philip Augustus, but the English king wished to bring the duchy under his control.13 Given the context within which Pour ce que plusieurs was written, it is perhaps not surprising that, in the words of Andre Bossuat, 'Mieux qu'aucun autre document contemporain, ce memoire montre que la rupture des treves cut comme raison principale . . . la question de Bretagne'.14 The anonymous author certainly had access to official records: he cited the 'deposicion de messire Francois de Surienne dit 1'Arragonnois, Letters and Papers, i. 243-64; Chronique de Mathieu d'Escouchy, iii. 245-51. * Thomas Basin, Histoire des regnes de Charles VII et de Louis XI par Thomas Basin, ed. J. Quicherat (Paris, 1859), iv. 290-347. 12 Jean Juvenal des Ursins, Les ecrits politiques de Jean Juvenal des Ursins, ed. P. S. Lewis (3 vols, Paris, 1978-93), ii. 231-3, iii. 79; and see also Basin, Histoire des regnes de Charles VII et de Louis XI, iv. 295. 13 Pour ce que plusieurs, fos 521-541, 56r. 14 Bossuat, Perrinet Gressart et Francois de Surienne, p. 332. 10 1

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executeur de ladicte enterprise et de pluiseurs autres qui aidierent a icelle conduire', and he was also aware that the French ambassadors to the conferences in June and July 1449 had apostolic and imperial notaries produce written instruments of their negotiations with the English, perhaps indicating that he had either seen those documents or was even present when they were drawn up.15 Moreover, the author was aware of the complicated debate over ecclesiastical revenues during the diplomatic negotiations after the treaty of Tours and he also had detailed information about the personnel employed by both sides for embassies after the attack upon Fougeres.16 Yet he was by no means a dispassionate chronicler of events, as seen most clearly in his discussion of the Salic Law. Previous polemical writers like Jean de Montreuil, Jean Juvenal and Noel de Fribois had demonstrated at least some degree of care in the handling of this problematic authority, but the author of Pour ce que plusieurs felt no such concerns when propagating 'la contreverite par excellence': he gave an entirely fictitious report of a debate over the French succession between Edward III and Philip of Valois in 1328, reporting that the English king had conceded that the Salic Law overturned the Plantagenet claim to the French throne.17 Significantly the author employed exactly the same technique in his discussion of the attack upon Fougeres. He provided a detailed account of a meeting where Somerset's envoys supposedly argued that the capture of Fougeres was not an infraction of the truce because the duke of Brittany was a subject of the king of England, and that the action was carried out by friends of Gilles de Bretagne, who was being held prisoner by his brother, the duke, even though he was a liegeman of the king of England. In reality Jean 1'Enfant and Jean Hanneford did meet with Charles VII at Razilly on 23 April, but advised him to raise the matter of Fougeres directly with Henry VI because the matter was too important for Somerset to deal with on his own.18 At the core of the account offered by Pour ce que plusieurs was the claim that the attack upon Fougeres was an attempt to subvert the allegiance of the duke of Brittany, the culmination of a 'strategeme bien merveilleux' which began when the English falsely included the duchy Pour ce que plusieurs, fos 511 and 6or, perhaps drawing in part upon the collection of documents in BN, manuscrit francais 4054. Note that the treatise may well have been written by Guillaume Cousinot, an active agent in the diplomatic negotiations of the late 14405. See above, p. 244 n. 2. 16 Pour ce que plusieurs, fos 5iv, 56v and syv-sSr. 17 Pour ce que plusieurs, fos 4r-i2r. For the phrase 'la contre-verite par excellence', see K. Daly and R. E. Giesey, 'Noel de Fribois et la loi salique', Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Charles, 91 (1993), 10. 18 Pour ce que plusieurs, fos 52r-v; Chronique de Mathieu d'Escouchy, iii. 231-3; Narratives of the English Expulsion from Normandy, pp. 420-4. 15

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amongst their allies in the prorogation of the truce by the treaty of Lavardin in March 1448: le patriarche de Poitiers et les autres commissaires de la part de France venissent enuiron minuit ou fons du fosse du Mans, ouquel lieu se troimerent semblablement les commissaires de la part des Anglois, et baillerent leur appointement dunepart et dautre sans chandeille ne regarder quil y auoit dedens, et incontinent les gens darmes entrerent dedens laditte place. Or est vray que lesdits commissaires de la part des Anglois en la treve quilz baillerent de leur part au dessceu et sans le consentement des commissaires de la part de France comprindrent le due de Bretaigne de leur part comme le roy de France lauoit compris de la sienne.

Thus the English emissaries took advantage of the darkness to hide the fact that they had included the duke of Brittany amongst their allies: 'Et soit bein notte ceste cautelle, car cest toute leur iustification de la prise deFougieres'.19 Yet this unique and unconfirmed story of a candlelight deception carefully ignored the genuine arguments that the English might use to justify their claims on the loyalty of the duke of Brittany. For over two hundred and fifty years the counts of Brittany had paid homage to the dukes of Normandy and thus were only the arriere-vassals of the king of France. The revival by Henry V and his son of the ancient English claim to the duchy of Normandy raised the possible further claim that the Bretons dukes owed a greater allegiance to the English kings than to those of France. Indeed, one of the English demands during the peace negotiations at Calais in 1439 was for Normandy together with the homage of Brittany.20 But perhaps more importantly., Henry VI could also claim sovereignty over the duchy in his capacity as king of France, thanks to the treaty of Troyes.21 Duke John V had ratified the treaty twice, first on 8 October 1422 and again on 3 July 1427. On the second occasion the Breton estates followed suit; there were over fifty oaths in support of the action from two of the sons of the duke, five bishops, Pour ce que plusieurs, fos 49v-5or. For the inclusion of Brittany as an English ally in the English copy of the prorogation, see Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, ed. T. Rymer (10 vols, The Hague, 1739-45), V. i. 190, and below, p. 251 n. 26. 20 P. Jeulin, 'L'hommage de la Bretagne', Annales de Bretagne, 41 (1934), 411-18, and C. T. Allmand, 'The Anglo-French Negotiations at Calais in 1439', BIHR, 40 (1967), 23. For the French defence against such claims, see for example Jean de Monteuil, Opera, ed. N. Grevy-Pons, E. Ornato and G. Ouy (4 vols, Turin-Paris, 1963-86), ii. 94; Les ecrits politiques de Jean Juvenal, i. 207, 424, ii. 69-71, 133; Robert Blondel, Oeuvres de Robert Blondel, ed. A. Heron (2 vols, Rouen, 1891-3), i. 194, 354 (and also see pp. 169, 3I7)21 Jean 1'Enfant and Jean Cousin declared on 31 July 1449 that 'ledit Roy d'Angleterre ne reclamoit aucun droit audit duchie de Bretaigne a cause du Royaume d'Angleterre': Chronique de Mathieur d'Escouchy, iii. 249. 19

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seven chapters, thirty-four barons, lords and knights, as well as representatives of the towns of Quimper, Saint-Pol and Dol.22 The instructions given by the royal council to Somerset in October 1448 clearly demonstrate that these historical ties loomed large in the English memory. The council declared that if the Breton ambassadors would only meet with the English in the presence of the French, then: in this matiere consideration is to be had to the othes made by the Duke of Bretaigne that dede is, by his brethern, his soones, and by the barons and notable persones of his duchie to the King, as it appereth by thaire lettres patentes . . . from theffect of which . . . it nis not the Kings intent in any wise to departe or doe any thing that may be prejudiciall thereto.23

At the subsequent conference held at Vaudreuil on 15 November 1448, Adam Moleyns refused to negotiate with either the ambassadors of Brittany or Burgundy in the presence of the French: the Burgundians had committed themselves to the treaty of Troyes with even greater force than the Bretons, as demonstrated by the great efforts that they made in 1435 to justify their reconciliation with Charles VII. In the context of these debates, it is not surprising that Bishop Thomas Bekynton included copies of almost all the extant documents concerning the treaty of Troyes and the subsequent oaths in his collection of diplomatic documents, produced during the 14405.24 On 16 March 1446 Duke Francis I paid homage to the French king, thus forcing the English to reconsider the question of the allegiance of Brittany that they had studiously ignored during the negotiations for the truce of Tours.25 The next year, they stopped listing Brittany among the current French allies and actually included the duchy among their own allies in the copy of the prorogation of the truce at Lavardin, though 22

Charles VII gave a full pardon for all previous agreements between Duke Jean V and the king of England when Duke Francois paid homage on 16 March 1446: Memoires pour servir de preuves a I'histoire ecclesiastique et civile de Bretagne, ed. Dom Morice (Paris, 1742-6), ii, cols 1119-1120, 1125-8, 1135-7, 1200-2, 1400; P. Jeulin, 'L'hommage de la Bretagne', 444-5; A. La Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne, iv, 1364-1515 (Rennes, 1906), pp. 217-20. 23 Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, 1386-1542, ed. N. H. Nicholas (7 vols, London, 1834-7), vi. 63. 24 The French, Burgundians and Bretons at Vaudreuil replied that neither of the dukes owed homage to Henry VI but were rather the kinsmen, friends, vassals and subjects of the king of France: Memoires pour servir, ii, cols 1439-41; and for Bekynton's collections, see Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 885 and BL, MSS Cotton Tiberius B xii, Harley 861 and Harley 4763. 25 P. Jeulin, 'L'hommage de la Bretagne', 446-8. When the French diplomats cited the homage of 1446, the English claimed to know nothing of this and also observed that 'se le dit due de Bretaigne lavoit fait depuis les treves, ce ne devroit pourtant prejudicier au droit du roy, nostredit seigneur': Narratives of the English Expulsion from Normandy, p. 479-

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there is no contemporary report that this was done by the elaborate trickery reported by Pour ce que plusieurs.26 In August 1448 ambassadors sent from England to discuss the breaches of the truce naturally reinforced their arguments by citing the fact that the duke of Brittany was an English ally according to the prorogation of the truce in March of that year; Adam Moleyns observed that 'Britiannia, sub treuga dicti Principis Anglic tanquam de sua obedientia continebatur'.27 In the aftermath of the assault on Fougeres, the English ambassadors were scrambling to find any argument to defend this clear breach of the truce. Thus it is not surprising that during the negotiations at the Louviers conference in June and July 1449, the English ambassadors cited the debate over the status of Brittany from the previous year, arguing that Somerset could only accept a resolution of the matter that would not prejudice the question of the subjection of Brittany: any concessions on that matter would have to be approved by Henry VI.28 Thus the English did resurrect the claim to overlordship over Brittany from 1447 onwards. But their intention was less to force the duke of Brittany to return to their side than simply to use the confusion surrounding the status of Brittany in order to justify their repeated breaches of the truce. Indeed it is not quite clear how such an enterprise might have won over Duke Francis, especially since Somerset's attack on La Guerche in October 1443 had played an important role in persuading him to side with Charles VII in the truce at Tours.29 The French were certainly suspicious of English attempts to question the status of Brittany. Charles VII noted that Somerset considered 'le fait de mondit seigneur de Bretaigne tout different de celluy du Roy, que ce n'estoient que voyes exquises pour trouver maniere de lui fere perdre ledit monseigneur de Bretaigne et ses subgetz'. Similarly, in the statement read out to the English ambassadors on 31 July 1449, the French highlighted Somerset's refusal to negotiate upon the status of Brittany, and observed that 'seroit faire trop plus grant prejudice au roy [de France] que la restitucion de Fougieres ne lui pourroit prouffiter'.30 Yet the only other source beyond Pour ce que plusieurs to claim that the English seized Fougeres as part of a plot to win over the duke of Brittany was a French royal letter sent to the king of Castile and Leon in April 1451: the English were accused of making open war against the terms of the treaty with the intention 'de actraire et attribuer a eulx la Memoires pour servir, ii, col. 1399; Foedera, V. i. 133, 147, 151, 155, 168, 173. The Breton ambassador, Michel de Parthenay, replied that the duke 'esse comprehensum sub treuga dicti Franciae Regis christianissimi tanquam de sua obedientia suum subditum, vassallum et consanguinem': Memoirs pour servir, ii, cols 1430-5. 28 Narratives of the English Expulsion from Normandy, pp. 427, 431-2. 29 See below, p. 253 n. 38. 30 Chronique de Mathieu d'Escouchy, iii. 233; Letters and Papers, i. 256, 263. 26 27

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subgection et obeissance de nostredict neveu de Bretaigne et de son pais et duche'.31 No other source claimed that the English actually staged the attack upon Fougeres to win the Bretons to their side. The enterprise against Fougeres was principally designed to secure the freedom of Gilles de Bretagne, the anglophile brother of Duke Francis II of Brittany, who had been arrested on 26 June 1446 for conspiring with the English and who remained in custody successively in Chateaubriant, Montcontour and finally La Hardouinaie, where he was murdered on the night of 24 April 1450.32 Gilles has been an important ally of the English during the negotiations of the early 14405, particularly as a counterweight to the developing amity between the duke and the French crown. Moreover, Gilles would have proved to be an even more valuable ally if he had gained control of the lands that he claimed from his brother or even become duke in his own right. Gilles had been lauded in the highest terms for his obedience, service and devotion to the English crown in the letters by which Henry VI granted him a pension in December 1443, and the Boke of Noblesse regarded the imprisonment of the 'noble and trew knight' Gilles as an insult and offence against Henry VI, comparable with other dishonourable French breaches of the truce. These French crimes included taking of youre shippis and marchaundises upon the see, keping men of noble birthe undre youre predecessoure obedience and divers other true lieges men prisoneris under arest, as that noble and trew knight ser Gillis the Duke is son of Bretaine . . . And also before the taking of Fugiers ser Simon Morhier knight. . . And sithen the lord Faucomberge take prisoner by subtile undew meanys of a cautel taken under safconduct of youre adversarie at Pountelarge . . . And also the said forteresse of Pountlarge take the said day be right undew meanys33

It is this sense of outrage that probably explains the attack upon Fougeres. From this perspective, Somerset was correct when he reassured Francois de Surienne that its taking would not dishonour the order of the Garter, but rather serve his king well.34 There is no evidence to suggest that the English were willing to commit military forces to help Gilles de Bretagne in his domestic strategies: during his interrogation on 10 January 1447, Tangui the bastard Cosneau, Le connetable de Richemont, p. 620. For the dealings of Gilles with the English, see La Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne, iv. 311-41; Bossuat, Perrinet Gressart et Francois de Surienne, 308-311; Keen and Daniel, 'English Diplomacy and the Sack of Fougeres', 378-9, 384-6. See also Memoires pour servir, ii, cols 1364, 1378-81, 1386-8, 1392, 1407-9. 33 Memoires pour servir, ii, col. 1364; The Boke of Noblesse, ed. J. G. Nichols (London, 1860), p. 5. 34 Letters and Papers, i. 284-5. 31

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testified that Gilles expected the English to provide him with an army of five or six thousand men with which to secure what was rightfully his within the duchy, but Tangui had not believed his friend.35 Yet the English friends of Gilles were certainly concerned about his safety. On 6 June 1446, Hoo and Roos reported that his residence at Le Guildo was not secure and offered to provide men to protect the prince; twenty-five soldiers were sent from Avranches to serve as his bodyguards, and when these men had to return to their normal duties, Gilles was offered elite troops, 'le nombre que votre plaisir est d'en avoir'. On 25 June 1446, William Roskill sent a warning to the prince to leave his home immediately because men at arms were plotting against him.36 Soon after the arrest of Gilles, Matthew Gough tried to employ Thomassin Duquesne, Surienne's escalade-master, to free the Breton prince. At the inquiry into the attack upon Fougeres, Pierre Tuvache and Jacquemin de Molineaux testified that Suffolk had initiated the enterprise in order to secure the release of Gilles: in May 1446, Surienne's agent Jean le Rousselet had travelled to London and there met with Suffolk, who plotted 'pour trouver moyen de recouvrer messire Gilles en prenant la place de Montaulban, pour ce que le seigneur de ladite place avoit ledit messire Gilles en garde, ou autre place par quoy on peust avoir ledit messire Gilles'; Rousselet told Tuvache that Surienne was to attack either Fougeres, Laval or Vitre in retaliation for the imprisonment of Gilles de Bretagne by his brother.37 The English clearly assumed that a smallscale attack on a Breton stronghold might be enough to push the duke into freeing Gilles, especially after Francis indicated, shortly before August 1448, that he would be prepared to release Gilles with the consent of Charles VII; after all, such actions were not unprecedented and appeared to pose a limited risk to the truce.38 Not surprisingly, the English preferred to conduct negotiations for the release of Gilles on an informal basis and regarded this matter as being separate from the discussion of the truce. No mention was made of Gilles when the English, French and Bretons met in August 1448 to Memoires pour servir, ii, cols 1407-9. Memoires pour servir, ii, cols 1401-4. 37 Letters and Papers, i. 280-1, and Basin, Histoire des regnes de Charles VII et de Louis XI, iv. 320-3. 38 John Beaufort, earl of Somerset (d. 1444), had led an attack into Brittany and captured La Guerche in October 1443, before the treaty of Tours; this had played a major role in persuading Duke Francis to take part in the treaty of Tours on the French side. Francois de Surienne had himself seized Dreux, a town on the border between Normandy and French-held territory, shortly before January 1448; this attack was not mentioned in any of the chronicles, presumably in part because the town had been regarded as impregnable, so that the subsequent defeat was particularly embarrassing: Cosneau, Le connetabk de Richemont, pp. 343-5; Bossuat, Perrinet Gressart et Franfois de Surienne, pp. 305-6. 35

36

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discuss outstanding issues between England and Brittany but the English did petition Charles VII to release Gilles on two more informal occasions during I448.39 Even in the aftermath of Fougeres, the release of Gilles de Bretagne was not a central issue for the English negotiators. Pour ce que plusieurs falsely reported that in May 1449 the English ambassadors to Charles VII demanded that Gilles be freed: le due de Bretaigne . . . auoit pris et tenoit prisonnier messire Gilles de Bretaigne son frere a tort et centre raison, et lequel messire Gilles estoit homme lige et vassal dudit roy dAngleterre, et ne voloit ledit due de Bretaigne deliurer icellui messire Gilles ne le rendre audit roy dAngleterre son souuerain seigneur, jasoit ce que par pluiseurs fois il en eust este somme et requis. Parquoy nestoit pas merueilles se les amis dudit messire Gilles auoient fait aucune entreprise sur ledit due de Bretaigne.40

In fact the English ambassadors never raised this issue except during the conferences in June and July 1449, when they called for 'la deliverance de messire Gilles de Bretaigne., qui est homme lige et subget du roy, nostredit seigneur'. This, the eighteenth article in the first written presentation by the English, seems to have been employed as just one of a list of French and Breton breaches of the truce. Significantly, the French negotiators declared that Charles VII desired good relations between the duke and his brother and would work to that end when the matter of Fougeres had been resolved.41 In retrospect the attack upon Fougeres was misjudged because the English had placed too much faith in the patience of both Charles VII and Duke Francis. Yet the enterprise had come very close to succeeding. Duke Francis sent Michel de Parthenay, constable of Rennes, to negotiate with Francois de Surienne, and according to testimony given at the inquiry held at Rouen, Parthenay is reported to have said 'On dit que vous 1'avez prise pour avoir messire Gilles. Qui vous le rendroit avec un bon pot de vin, seriez-vous content?' Intriguingly Surienne replied that 'J'ai pouvoir de prendre, et non de rendre', and the opportunity was missed.42 Nevertheless Francis did almost release Gilles in May 1449 on the orders of Charles VII. Arthur de Richemont and Guillaume de Rosnivinen persuaded the French king to allow his Memoires pour servir, ii, cols 1412-15, 1429-30. Pour ce que plusieurs, fos 52r-v, and see also 55r-v. 41 Narratives of the English Expulsion from Normandy., pp. 429-30, 474-6, 479-80. The English also cited the French seizure of Pont de 1'Arche, Conches and Gerberay, and the unjust imprisonment of certain Englishmen. 42 Basin, Histoire des regnes de Charles VII et de Louis XI, iv. 326. On 31 July 1449 the English ambassadors claimed that Surienne had not wished to accept Pathenay's offer 'sans premierement le notifier au Roy [Charles VII]': Chronique de Mathieu d'Escouchy, iii. 250. 39

40

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255

release, arguing that the Bretons were very moved by the misfortunes of Gilles and might cause problems if he were not set free, that Gilles had atoned for any error, and that his deliverance might facilitate the restitution of Fougeres by the English and so restore peace. In consequence Charles sent Pregent de Coetivy, admiral of France, to Brittany to secure the release of Gilles; the duke initially complied but at the very last minute, on 30 May 1449, countermanded the release of his brother.43 Somerset had refused to make reparation for the enterprise and so his intransigence, reminiscent of the position that had delayed the handover of Maine for so long, may have driven the French and Bretons to take a more hostile line: just two days later Pont de 1'Arche was taken by Jean de Breze, Robert de Flocques and Jacques de Clermont.44 As a result, the Bretons and the French now held important bargaining chips to exchange for Fougeres, particularly in view of their capture of Lord Fauconberge and their subsequent seizure of Conches and Gerberoy. Under these circumstances the last-minute decision to prevent the release of Gilles de Bretagne strengthened the French negotiating position still further. By the end of June Duke Francis and Charles VII had signed an offensive and defensive alliance, and the English were no longer in a position to influence events. Somerset's intransigence in the face of French protests is entirely explicable without reference to a plot to subvert the allegiance of the duke of Brittany. He argued that he did not have sufficient power to negotiate over Fougeres because of the problem of the status of Brittany. This was a notorious delaying tactic of the English ambassadors, contradicted by letters of Henry VI which declared that Somerset and the ambassadors in France had no need to refer back to either Henry or his council.45 Yet Somerset may well have been following royal orders when he claimed that he had no power to make reparation for the seizure of Fougeres. In October 1448, the duke had 43

Coetivy had himself benefited from the original imprisonment of Gilles, receiving the rights to his lordships when they were confiscated on royal orders in June 1446, and had also led the force which arrested the prince on 26 June 1446. We can only speculate as to what role the admiral of France may have played in Duke Francis's decision not to follow the royal instructions: Cosneau, Le connetabk de Richemont, p. 382; Keen and Daniel, 'English Diplomacy and the Sack of Fougeres', 119. 44 The captors cried 'Sainct Yves! Bretaigne', and, according to Blondel, would only speak in Breton. Clearly every effort was being made to make this attack appear the work of Breton supporters of the duke, rather than an official French assault which would represent a breach of the truce: Oeuvres de Robert Blondel, ii. 26-34. 45 The English had used this argument during the negotiations concerning the surrender of Le Mans and Maine, and the English fortification of St James de Beuvron, but in response to French protests, Henry VI had asserted the competence of his representatives to resolve any issue in contention: Chronique de Mathieu d'Escouchy, iii. 204-5, 230-1, together with Letters and Papers, i. 260.

256

The Medieval State

asked the royal council for instructions on the debate over the status of Brittany and was instructed to hold the duke of Brittany to the promises and oaths made by his father in support of the treaty of Troyes: if the Bretons refused to comply, then one course of action would be to refer the matter back to Henry VI. Inevitably, any concession regarding the subjection of Fougeres would prejudice these oaths and so Somerset was technically right to require the matter to be examined by Henry VI himself. But this angered the French and so imperilled the negotiations, against the express orders of the council: the debate over Brittany was secondary to the need to avoid 'any open troubling of the tretee to be had betwix thambassatours of both partys at this time'.46 The duke may have also been influenced by the specific question of financial reparation for the damage done to Fougeres. At the conferences held in June and July 1449, the French demanded that the English make full reparation for goods taken to the value of 'deux millions dor et plus'.47 The suspicion must be that the money and goods taken from Fougeres ended up in the hands of Somerset and the English administration in Normandy. After the capture of Rouen, the French wanted the chambre des comptes materials and carefully copied the receiver-general's accounts for Normandy between 1448 and 1449. These accounts not only demonstrated that Somerset had communicated with Francois de Surienne in May and June 1449, via the herald Mortain, but also showed the movement of large amounts of Breton money and gold from Carentan to Caen in May of the same year. Sir John Fastolf subsequently suggested that the royal council should 'demande au due de Somerset. . . combien il eut dargent de la prinse de Forgieres'. As Basin noted, Somerset's chief fault was his greed.48 Thus the French hostility towards the English, culminating in the declaration of war on 31 July 1449, is entirely explicable without reference to any supposed English plot to attract Brittany to the subjection of Henry VI: the English had repeatedly acted against the tenor of the truce and had obstructed all attempts to resolve difficulties by negotiation. But in the 14605, when the question of the loyalty of the duke of PPC, vi. 63-4. The council recognized that those on the spot 'shall mowe better feel how the principal matier shall mowe be kept out of rupture than it is possible to the King and my lordes here to feele'. 47 Narratives of the English Expulsion from Normandy, pp. 447, 496-7, 511-12. The financial losses suffered by the inhabitants of Fougeres led the duke of Brittany to exempt them from the 'taille, subside et autres subventions' on 12 December 1449: Memoires pour servir, ii. 1515-16. 48 BL, Add. MS 11509, fos 7Ov, 82r-v; Letters and Papers, ii: 2. 718-20. My thanks to Michael K. Jones for these references. For Basin's comment, see Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, ed. C. Samaran and H. de Surirey de Saint-Remy (2 vols, Paris, 1933-44), ii- 66, 69-75; and Basin, Histoire des regnes de Charles VII et de Louis XI, iv. 192-7. 46

Brittany and the French Crown

257

Brittany was again a matter of great importance for the French crown, Pour ce que plusieurs provided a highly dramatic and entertaining interpretation of the English actions in 1449. This account is so convincing that it has fundamentally shaped the way in which the affair has been regarded by historians. Keen and Daniel described the events surrounding the attack on Fougeres as a 'sorry tale of false hope, diplomatic dishonesty and military irresponsibility'.49 To a large degree these judgements must stand: the English failed to live up to both the spirit and the letter of the truce, tried to persuade the duke of Brittany to abandon his close relationship with the French Crown and staged an unwarranted assault on his territory. But in an effort to persuade Duke Francis II to accept further encroachments upon his independence, Pour ce que plusieurs developed the notion of a complex plot by the English to subvert French sovereignty. The skill of this anonymous author is amply demonstrated not only by his crucial role in the success of the myth of the Salic Law, but also by the continuing influence of the spin that he applied to the attack upon Fougeres, 'cette comedie des Anglais'.50 49 50

Keen and Daniel, 'English Diplomacy and the Sack of Fougeres', 390. La Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne, iv. 353.

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Index ^thelred, II, king of England, 85,87, 98 Alba, see Scotland Alfonso VI, king of Leon and Castile, 147-60 Alfred, king of Wessex, 9, 19-23, 28, 45, 84n., 88 Anglo-Saxon Chronick, 76, 80, 85, 88, 90, no, 113, 115-16, 167 Anglo-Saxons, 2, 16-45, 71, 73-91, 163, 166, 197 Anselm, St, 93-7, 103-7, n? Anti-Semitism, 163-77 Aquitaine, see Gascony Aragon, kingdom of, 152, 157, 160, 215 Athelstan, king of England, 22-4, 84, 101 Augustine of Canterbury, St, 18, 19, 21 Battle abbey, 81, 117, 120-22 Bayeux Tapestry, 73-91 Bede, 2, 16, 18, 26, 29-32, 37-8, 64, 99, 100-2 Benevento, duchy of, 11-15 Bishops, bishoprics, 3-10, 17-22, 27-9, 57, 69-70, 81-3, 93-107, 109, 112-18, 120-2, 129, 137-8, 140,

142,150,152-3,167-8,176, 223-5, 230, 243, 249-51 Bonney, Richard, 198-9 Bordeaux, 201, 206, 208, 213 Bretigny, treaty of, 198, 214 Bristol, 133, 173-4 Brittany, county and duchy of, 78, 190, 201, 205, 209, 215-31, 243-57 Bury St Edmunds, 137, 167-70 Calais, 200, 205, 211-12 Cambridge, 138-9

Campbell, James, xiii-xlii, 25, 47-8, 64, 93-4, 103, 127, 160-1, 163, 197, 232 Canterbury, city and see of, 17-19, 45, 93, 99, 101-2, 121, 133 Carolingians, 2, 6-10, 15, 127 Castile, kingdom of, 147, 152, 160, 251 Charlemagne, king and emperor, 6, 8, 85-6, 153-4 Charles the Bald, king and emperor, 2, 7,8 Charles VII, king of France, 244-8, 250-5 Charles de Blois, duke of Brittany, 215-32 Charters, English urban, 129-37, 139-43; Welsh, 181-96 Chester, county, earldom and palatinate of, 181-2, 186-7, 189-90, 200, 202, 210 Clovis I, king of the Franks, 4, 8, 9 Cnut, king of Denmark and England, 24, 84, 140 Coimbra, 158-9 Coinage, 12, 14, 29, 31, 34, 38, 42, 44, 47, 128, 140, 165, 175-6 Communes, urban, 130, 141, 143 Compostela, Santiago de, 147-8, 153 Councils, royal, 103-7, 109-12, 119, 123, 125-6, 245-8 Counsellors, royal, 109-26 Coventry, 129-133, 144 Currency, see Coinage Cuthbert, St, 16, 19, 22-4 Dagobert I, king of the Franks, 4-6, 15 Dalriada (Dal Riata), kingdom of, 25-6, 35, 37, 48-9, 52, 64

The Medieval State

26o

David I, king of Scots, 50, 62-3, 68 Davies, R.R., 179, 198 Deheubarth, principality of, 179-80, 184, 186, 190-3 Denis, St, 4-9, 15, 19 Denmark, kingdom of, 78, 84, 197 Domesday Book, 59, 84-5 Dunadd, 35, 37-9, 42 Dunstan, St, 24, 93, 96-100 Durham, city and see of, 129, 137 Eadmer, 93-107, 114 Earls, Scottish, 53, 55-61, 63, 70 English, see Chester; Gloucester Ecgfrith, king of Northumbria, 26, 28, 39 Edgar, king of England, 96-7 Edinburgh, 26, 28 Edmund I, king of England, 22-3 Edward the Elder, king of Wessex, 21-22, 84-5, 87

Edward the Confessor, king of England, 24, 84-5, 122 Edward I, king of England, 47, 131-2, 136, 141-2, 174-7, 184, I97> 2OO-8, 2IO-I2, 214

Edward II, king of England, 142, 204-5, 208-10, 214 Edward III, king of England, 132, 136, 138-9, 142, 197-8, 200-1, 203-13, 223-4, 248 Edward IV, king of England, 139, 143-4, 243-4 Edwin, king of Northumbria, 26, 39 Empire, emperors, Holy Roman, 84, 105, 128-9, i59> i?2 England, passim; see also Anglo-Saxons; Kent; Mercia; Northumbria; Wessex Estates, multiple, 51-6, 58, 63-5 France, French, i, 15, 19, 35, 43, 148, 157, 165, 169, 197-231^ 243-57 Frankia, Franks, 2-10, 15, 17 Freeman, E.A., 75-6, 78-80 Galicia, county of, 147, 153

Gascony, Aquitaine, 201-11, 213, 243 Genghis Khan (Chinggis), 234-9, 241 Germany, see Empire Gibbon, Edward, 233, 235, 239 Glamorgan, 184-6, 188-9 Gloucester, city of, 133, 169-70; earldom of, 181-2, 186-7,189-90, 194 Gold, 34-6, 39, 40, 42, 151, 160 Gransden, Antonia, 93, 99 Gregory I (the Great), pope, 3,17-23, 153 Gregory VII, pope, 105-6, 148, 158 Gregory XI, pope, 224-5 Gregory of Tours, 3-5 Gwynedd, principality of, 179-80, 184-96, 200 Harold II, king of England, 73, 76, 78-80, 83, 85-6 Hastings, battle of, 73-91 Henry I, king of England, 98, 109-26, 130, 140 Henry II, king of England, 115, 130, 141, 143, 171-35 i9i> i93> 208 Henry III, king of England, 131, 141, 171-4, 177, 180, 198, 202, 204 Henry IV, king of England, 134,143 Henry VI, king of England, 134,136, 143-4, 245-73 249-52, 255-6 Henry,VII, king of England, 137, 143-4 Henry of Huntingdon, 113-15, 125 Hincmar, archbishop, 8-10 Hollister, C.W., 81-2, 141 Hull, Kingston-upon-, 133, 136 Ireland, Irish, 32, 36-7, 39, 47, 200-4, 206-9, 212-13 Isidore of Seville, 153, 160 Italy, i, 3, 15, 19, 28, 134-5, 139 Jews, 139,163-77 John, king of England, 130, 139, 141, 143, 171, 173, 189, 203, 208 John IV, duke of Brittany, 216-32 Julius Caesar, 83, 90-1

Index

261

Kent, kingdom of, 20, 38, 45, 101

Nottingham, 133, 136

Leicester, 137, 140 Leon, city and kingdom of, 147-61, 251 Lincoln, city of, 131, 133-4, 136-7, 144, 170-1, 174-5, 177 Lindisfarne, 16, 19 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd, 180, 184-5, 190-1, 193-4 Llywelyn ap lorwerth (the Great), prince of Gwynedd, 180, 189, 191, 193 Lombards, 2, 10-15 London, city of, 19, 83, HI, 128-34, 136, 140-5; see also Westminster Louis Vi, king of France, 116-17, 123 Louis VII, king of France, 190, 192-3

Orderic Vitalis, 109, 112, 116-19, 122-3, 125-6 Ormrod, W.M., 198-9 Oswald, St, king of Northumbria, 17, 22, 25-6, 28, 31, 33, 39, 93, 96-7 Oswiu (Oswy), king of Northumbria, 25-6, 28, 37, 99, 100 Oxford, 138-9

Magna Carta, 130, 135, 172 Maitland, F.W., 127-8, 135 Malcolm II, king of Scots, 49, 50, 54, 62, 66-70 Malcolm III, king of Scots, 49-51, 59, 62-3, 67-8 Maldon, battle of, 86-8 Margam Abbey, 182-6, 189, 194-5 Martin of Tours, St, 3-9, 15, 16 Matilda, empress, 115, 117, 141-2, 144 Mayors, English, 130, 136, 141 Mercia, kingdom of, 17, 20, 25, 29, 30, 49 Merovingians, 2, 4-6, 9 Michael, archangel, 10-16, 19, 20 Mongol empire, 233-41 Monte Gargano, 10-15, I9> 2O Mormaers, 53-6, 59-63, 65, 67-9 Navarre, kingdom of, 156-7, 160 Norman Conquest of England, 73-91, 128, 130, 140, 166-7, J97 Normandy, Normans, 47, 49, 50, 80, 109, 116, 118-19, 122, 200, 212 Northumbria, kingdom of, 16-20, 25-45, 47, 63, 99 Norwich, city of, 128, 131, 133-4, 164, 166-72, 177

Papacy, popes, 3, 21, 94, 104-6, 148, 151, 215-17, 221-8; see also Gregory I; Gregory VII; Gregory XI Paris, 4, 5, 169 Treaty of, 198, 200, 207 Parliaments, English, 129, 131-2, 136, 139, 177, 202, 212 Paul the Deacon, 10, 12 Pavia, 10, 12 Peasants' Revolt, 139, 142 Peter, St, 3, 5, 16, 99, 105-6 Picts, Pictland, 26, 34, 41, 48-9, 57, 64-6, 99 Pilgrimage, pilgrims, 3, 6, 10, 12, 15, 152, 218; see also Saints, cult of Plantagenet empire, 197-214 Portugal, 152, 160 Powys, principality of, 179-80, 184-7, 192-3 Redwald, king of East Anglia, 25, 31 Remigius, St, 8-10 Reynolds, Susan, i, 2, 128,132 Rheged, kingdom of, 26, 35 Richard I, king of England, 130, 139, 171, 173 Richard II, king of England, 133, 136, 142-3,211 Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, 106, 114, 116, 122 Rome, 6, 16, 94, 104; see also Papacy Saint-Denis, abbey of, 4-8, 112 Saints, cult of, 1-24, 166-74, T 77> 215-41

262

The Medieval State

Salisbury, 129, 137 Sallust, 153-5 Scotland, Scots, kingdom of, 26-8, 36-7, 47-71, 132, 182, 187, 190, 201, 203-8 Seville, 155, 160 Sheriffs, English, 128, 133, 135, 140 Silos, monastery of, 147-9 Silver, 31-2, 34, 40, 42 Soissons, 4, 7 Southampton, 133, 136 Southern, R.W., 93-4, 100, 103, 169 Spain, 147-61, 230 Spatz, Wilhelm, 76, 80, 87-90 Spoleto, duchy of, u, 13 Staple, 132, 139, 143 Stephen, king of England, 141, 171-2 Strata Marcella, abbey, 182-6, 194-6 Strathclyde, 26, 35, 48-9, 51, 63 Stubbs, William, no, 127 Tamerlane (Timur), emperor, 233-41 Taxation, tribute, i, 37-8, 45, 51-5, 71, 119, 128, 132, 134-6, 139-45, 173, 175, 198-214 Thanes, manages, Scotish, 53-6, 58-64, 67,70 Theodore of Tarsus, archbishop of Canterbury, 17-19, 99, 101-3 Timurid empire, 233-41 Toledo, 147-8, 152-3, 156, 159-60 Tours, see Gregory; Martin Towns, English, 44, 127-45 Trade, commerce, 33-45, 127, 136, 139, 143, 199, 201 Tribal Hidage, 29, 30, 83

Universities, English, 138-9 Vikings, 8, 48, 56, 80, 84-5 Visigoths, kingdom of, 2, 147, 153-7 Wace, 79, 81-2 Wales, Welsh, 47, 168, 179-96, 200-8, 210 Weinbaum, Martin, 127, I33n. Wessex, West Saxons, kingdom of, 19-31,40-45,49,127-8 Westminster, 47, 137, 144, 201, 208-11, 213 Whitby, 18, 21, 33 Whithorn, 26-7, 37-9 Wilfrid, St, 26, 28-9, 31, 93, 96-7, 99, 100-3, 105 William I duke of Normandy and king of England, 73, 78, 80-3, 85, 90-1, 94, 106, 128-9 139, 140 William II (Rufus), king of England, 94-5, 103, 107 William of Jumieges, 78, 81-3, 90-1 William of Malmesbury, 101, 122,160, 169 William of Norwich, 166-72 William of Poitiers, 73, 76, 78, 82-3, 87,90 Winchester, 23, 112, 120 Worcester, see and monastery of, 18, 20, 21, 23, 170 Yeavering, 32, 39 York, cathedral and see of, 18, 19, 29, 31, 44,93,97,99,H2; city of, 131, 133-4, 137, 140, H4