The Norman Conquest

by Marc Morris

  8 Ibid.

  9 Ibid., iii, 254–7.

  10 EHD, ii, 606–7; H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘The Anglo-Norman Laudes Regiae’, Viator, 12 (1981), 59, n68.

  11 EHD, ii, 606–7; E. Searle, Lordship and Community: Battle Abbey and its Banlieu, 1066–1538 (Toronto, 1974), 21 (also Chronicle of Battle Abbey, 20–1), suggests that the abbey was not founded until the mid-1070s, but her argument draws on the discredited thesis of Morton, ‘Pope Alexander II’. Cf. Nelson, ‘Rites of the Conqueror’, 396―7, who argues for an earlier date.

  12 EHD, ii, 606–7; Cowdrey, ‘Anglo-Norman Laudes Regiae,’ 59, n68.

  13 On the basis of ASC E, 1069, it seems more likely that these two bishops were arrested and outlawed during that year rather than in 1070, as is commonly supposed. Cf. e.g. Councils and Synods, ii, 566.

  14 JW, iii, 10–13; WP, 146–7, 160–1.

  15 Letters of Lanfranc, 36–7, 62–3; DNB Æhelmaer; Baxter, Earls of Mercia, 292–3; JW, iii, 14–15.

  16 Above, 92; OV, iii, 236–7.

  17 JW, iii, 12–15; The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, 1, 940–1216, ed. D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke and V. M. C. London (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2001), 24, 36, 66.The deposition of Ealdred of Abingdon is generally dated to 1071, on the basis of Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis, ed. Hudson, i, 224–9, but the sequence of events there is so confused that Ealdred could have been deposed at any point after 1068.

  18 F. Barlow, The English Church, 1066–1154 (1979), 61–2; DNB Thomas of Bayeux; DNB Walcher. The surviving English bishops were Leofric of Exeter (d. 1072), Siward of Rochester (d. 1075) and Wulfstan of Worcester (d. 1095).

  19 Above 76, 144–5, 202.

  20 Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, ed. F. Madden (3 vols., Rolls Ser., 1866–9), i, 12–13; RRAN, 449–52 (no. 131). The controversy goes back to the late nineteenth century, so the literature is vast. See in particular J. H. Round, ‘The Introduction of Knight Service into England’, idem, Feudal England (new edn, 1964), 182–245; J. C. Holt, ‘The Introduction of Knight Service in England’, idem, Colonial England (1997), 41–58;]. Gillingham, ‘The Introduction of Knight Service into England’, idem, English in the Twelfth Century, 187–208.

  21 Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake (Camden Soc, 3rd ser., 92, 1962), 216–17; Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely, trans. J. Fairweather (Woodbridge, 2005), 258–9; Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis, ed. Hudson, ii, 4–7.

  22 ASC E, 1070.

  23 E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Hereward and Flanders’, Anglo-Saxon England, 28 (2000), 201–23; DNB Hereward.

  24 ASC E, 1070.

  25 Ibid.; WM, Gesta Pontificum, 628–9.

  26 OV, ii, 232–5.

  27 Ibid.; ASC E, 1070; JW, iii, 14–15.

  28 RRAN, 79; below, 254; OV, ii, 256–7.

  29 Ibid. The Gesta Herewardi is quoted from the English translation by M. Swanton in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, ed. S. Knight and T. Ohlgren (2nd edn, Kalamazoo, 2000), 647, 651.

  30 Above, 219–20, 238; SD, History, 137–8, 142; ASC E, 1071.

  31 Baxter, Earls of Mercia, 277–8, 284–7; above, 218; OV, ii, 218–19; JW, iii, 18–19.

  32 Baxter, Earls of Mercia, 286–96; above, 71, 175.

  33 ASC D, 1071; JW, iii, 20–1; Baxter, Earls of Mercia, 261–6.

  34 RRAN, 79; ASC D and E, 1071; JW, iii, 20–1.

  35 Gesta Herewardi, 649–58; Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, 191–4 (trans. Fairweather, 226–9). The Liber says William entered Ely on 27 October.

  36 ASC D and E, 1071; JW, iii, 20–1.

  37 OV, ii, 256–9; Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 53.

  CHAPTER 15

  1 For the castle at Ely, see Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, 194 (trans. Fairweather, 229).

  2 SD, History, 138–40.

  3 ASC E, 934, 1072, 1093; JW, iii, 20–1.

  4 Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 57–8; SD, History, 142, 144.

  5 Above, 103, 127; Baxter, ‘Edward the Confessor’, Map 10.

  6 Fletcher, Bloodfeud, 186; Baxter, Earls of Mercia, 68, 272.

  7 OV, ii, 232–3, 262–3; Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 58.

  8 Douglas, Conqueror, 212, 224–5.

  9 Ibid., 223–4, 228–9.

  10 Bates, Conqueror, 85–9, has a positive assessment of William’s position at this time.

  11 Above, 202; ASC E, 1087; D. Bates, ‘The Origins of the Justiciarship’, ANS, 4 (1982), 2–8.

  12 Above, 112; Letters of Lanfranc, 30–1; RRAN, 79.

  13 DNB Lanfranc; Letters of Lanfranc, 30–1, 112–13.

  14 EHD, ii, 604–5. Barlow, English Church, 1066–1154, 48–50, 147–52.

  15 Councils and Synods, ii, 614; Letters of Lanfranc, 78–9, 134–5; OV, ii, 200–1; DNB Lanfranc.

  16 ASC D and E, 1067; Fernie, Architecture, 104–6.

  17 Ibid., 106–21, 130-1; M.T. Clanchy, England and Its Rulers, 1066–1272 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1998), 61; WM, Gesta Pontificum, 102–3.

  18 Fernie, Architecture, 108, 130, 144, 152–3, 166; above, 98. Crediton had also been moved for security reasons. Prestwich, Place of War, 4.

  19 Rubenstein, ‘Liturgy Against History’, 282–5, 289–92. Rubenstein successfully overturns the revisionist arguments of S. J. Ridyard, ‘Condigna veneratio: Post-Conquest Attitudes to the Saints of the Anglo-Saxons’, ANS, 9 (1987), 179–206.

  20 Rubenstein, ‘Liturgy Against History’, 282, 292–5.

  21 Ibid., 295–7; Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis, ed. Hudson, ii, xli–xlii; WM, Gesta Pontificum, i, 628–31. See also P.A. Hayward, ‘Translation Narratives in Post-Conquest Hagiography and English Resistance to the Norman Conquest’, ANS, 21 (1999), 67–94.

  22 Letters of Lanfranc, 30–1; OV, ii, 256–7.

  23 RRAN, 48–50, 107.

  24 ASC E, 1083; JW, iii, 38–41.

  25 Letters of Lanfranc, 112–15; EHD, ii, 634.

  26 EHD, ii, 399, 523. It has been suggested that murdrum, or some thing very like it, may have been originally introduced by Cnut to deter Englishmen from killing Danes. Even if this is true, and the law was simply revived by William, it does not diminish its value as evidence for conditions in England after the Norman Conquest (though it might alter the picture of conditions after the Danish one). B. R. O’Brien, ‘From Moroor to Murdrum: The Preconquest Origin and Norman Revival of the Murder Fine’, Speculum, 71 (1996), 321–57.

  27 Letters of Lanfranc, 110–13, 150–3, 166–7; WP, 158–9; OV, ii, 202–3.

  28 Above, 14, 19, 36; J. Gillingham, ‘1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry into England’, idem, English in the Twelfth Century, 215–16.

  29 Ibid., 211–15.

  30 Ibid., 217–18, 228; WP, 157.

  31 Fletcher, Bloodfeud, 1–5; Gillingham, ‘1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry’, 218–19.

  32 OV, ii, 256–7; H. M.Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity, 1066–c.1220 (Oxford, 2003), 145–51.

  33 SD, History, 144.

  34 DNB Gospatric; DNB Edgar Ætheling; ASC D, 1074.

  35 DNB Ralph the Staller; DNB Ralph de Gaël.

  36 ASC D and E, 1075.

  37 Ibid.; JW, iii, 24–5; OV, ii, 310–13; C. P. Lewis, ‘The Early Earls of Norman England’, ANS, 13 (1991), 207–23; Letters of Lanfranc, 118–21.

  38 OV, ii, 312–15; ASC D and E, 1075.

  39 JW, iii, 24–5; Letters of Lanfranc, 118–23.

  40 JW iii, 24–5; ASC D and E, 1075; OV, ii, 316–17.

  41 Ibid.; JW, iii, 26–7; Letters of Lanfranc, 124–5.

  42 Ibid., 124–7; ASC D and E, 1075.

  43 Ibid.; OV, ii, 318–19.

  44 ASC D and E, 1075; JW, ii, 24–5; OV, ii, 320–1.

  45 Ibid., 314–15, 318–23; Gillingham, ‘1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry’, 218.

  CHAPTER 16

  1 Douglas, Conqueror, 230–4.

  2 ASC D and E, 1076; OV, ii, 350–3.

  3 Bates, Conqueror, 159–60.

&nbs
p; 4 Ibid., 104–7; C. W. Hollister, Henry I (Yale, 2001), 31.

  5 OV, ii, 356–7; WM, Gesta Regum, 700–1.

  6 DNB Robert Curthose; OV, ii, 356–7.

  7 Ibid., 356–9.

  8 Douglas, Conqueror, 237–8; OV, iii, 100–3.

  9 Bates, ‘Origins of the Justiciarship’, 4–6.

  10 Bates, Conqueror, 159; WP, 164–5; OV, ii, 266–7; Bernstein, Mystery, 142, 264. Odo was far from being the only fighting churchman: the Penitential Ordinance (above, 236) contains a penance for ‘the clerks who fought, or who were armed for fighting’. EHD, ii, 606.

  11 Bates, ‘Origins of the Justiciarship’, 3–4, 8; ASC E, 1087; OV, ii, 264–5; Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis, ed. Hudson, ii, 12–13.

  12 Above, 202, 215, 218.

  13 Waltham Chronicle, ed. Watkiss and Chibnall, 15, 35; Carmen, 40–3; Clarke, English Nobility, 154; Fleming, Kings and Lords, 171.

  14 In general see ibid., 145–82 (and 163, 166–7, 169 and 180 for the examples cited).

  15 Ibid., 153–8.

  16 Ibid., 160–1, 176–8.

  17 Ibid., 178–9.

  18 DA. Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066–1284 (2003), 81–2; OV, ii, 262–3.

  19 Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis, ed. Hudson, ii, 6–7.

  20 WM, Gesta Pontificum, 426–7; WM, Saints’ Lives, 130–1.

  21 EHD, ii, 897–8.

  22 Liddiard, Castles in Context, 28–30.

  23 S. Painter, ‘Castle-Guard’ and L. Butler, ‘The Origins of the Honour of Richmond and its Castles’, both in Anglo-Norman Castles, ed. R. Liddiard (Woodbridge, 2003), 91–104, 203–10. See also H. M. Thomas, ‘Subinfeudation and Alienation of Land, Economic Development and the Wealth of Nobles on the Honor of Richmond, 1066 to c. 1300’, Albion, 26 (1994), 397–417.

  24 Carpenter, Struggle for Mastery, 85–6; Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 74–5; R. Abels, ‘Sheriffs, Lord-Seeking and the Norman Settlement of the South-East Midlands’, ANS, 19 (1997), 23–31.

  25 In general see Fleming, Kings and Lords, 183–214 (188–9 for Richard fitz Gilbert).

  26 Abels, ‘Sheriffs, Lord-Seeking’, 32–40. See also J. Green, ‘The Sheriffs of William the Conqueror’, ANS, 5 (1983), 129–43.

  27 EHD, ii, 431–2.

  28 Fleming, Kings and Lords, 205–6.

  29 EHD, ii, 449–51. For comment, see J. Le Patourel, ‘The Reports on the Trial on Penenden Heath’, Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, ed. R. W Hunt, W. A. Pan tin and R. W Southern (Oxford, 1948); D. Bates, ‘Land Pleas of William Is Reign: Penenden Heath Revisited’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 51 (1978), 1–19; A. Cooper, ‘Extraordinary Privilege: The Trial of Penenden Heath and the Domesday Inquest’, EHR, 116 (2001), 1167–92.

  30 OV, ii, 266–7; Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, 176–7; Fleming, Kings and Lords, 189–91.

  31 OV, ii, 270–81 (cf. 94–5); E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The Memory of 1066 in Written and Oral Traditions’, ANS, 19 (1997), 176–7.

  CHAPTER 17

  1 OV, iii, 108–11; ASC D and E, 1079; JW, iii, 30–3.

  2 OV, ii, 102–5, 110–13; Bates, Conqueror, 163; The Register of Pope Gregory VII, ed. H. E. Cowdrey (Oxford, 2002), 358–9.

  3 RRAN, 81.

  4 JW, iii, 30–7; Kapelle, Norman Conquest of the North, 138–40.

  5 Ibid., 140–2; SD, Libellus, 218–21; SD, History, 152. Odo was in Caen in July 1080: E. Miller, ‘The Ely Land Pleas in the Reign of William I’, EHR, 62 (1947), 444, n2.

  6 Barlow, Confessor, 174–5, 2O5; above, 226; ASC E, 1087.

  7 Ibid.; K. Mew, ‘The Dynamics of Lordship and Landscape as Revealed in a Domesday Study of the Nova Foresta’, ANS, 23 (2001), 155. In general see C. R. Young, The Royal Forests of Medieval England (Leicester, 1979). Cf. D. Jørgensen, ‘The Roots of the English Royal Forest’, ANS, 32 (2010), 114–28.

  8 JW, iii, 92–3; F. Baring, ‘The Making of the New Forest’, EHR, 16 (1901), 427–38. See also OV, v, 282–5; WM, Gesta Regum, 504–5, 508–9.

  9 Davies, Age of Conquest, 24–34; OV, ii, 260–3.

  10 Davies, Age of Conquest, 33; D. Crouch, ‘The Slow Death of Kingship in Glamorgan, 1067–1158’, Morgannwg, 29 (1985), 20–8; ASC E, 1081.

  11 Ibid.; The History of Gruffydd ap Cynan, trans. A. Jones (Manchester, 1910), 128–31.

  12 ASC C and D, 1036; E, 1052; D and E, 1065; WM, Saints’ Lives, 100–3.

  13 Pelteret, ‘Slave Raiding’, 108–9; Wyatt, ‘Significance of Slavery’, 345–7.

  14 WP, 174–5; Carmen, 12–13; WM, Gesta Regum, 496–9; Pelteret, ‘Slave Raiding’, 113; EHD, ii, 400.

  15 Chepstow Castle: Its History and Its Buildings, ed. R. Turner and A. Johnson (Logaston, 2006), 15–42.

  16 Ibid.; Fernie, Architecture, 61–7. Cf. The History of the King’s Works: The Middle Ages, ed. H. M. Colvin (2 vols., HMSO, 1963), i, 32.

  17 Fernie, Architecture, 55–61.

  18 RRAN, 77, 81; Fernie, Architecture, 32–3, 84, 98, 117–21, 304–5. See also J. C. Holt, ‘Colonial England, 1066–1215’, idem, Colonial England, 7, 12.

  19 P. Grierson, ‘The Monetary System Under William I’, The Story of Domesday Book, ed. R. W. H. Erskine and A. Williams (Chichester, 2003), 112–18.

  20 OV, iii, 232–41.

  21 ASC E, 1087.

  CHAPTER 18

  1 ASC E, 1082; OV, iv, xxvii–xxx, 38–45;WM, Gesta Regum, 506–7. For the clash between Gregory VII and Henry IV, see Holland, Millennium, 349–90.

  2 EHD, ii, 644–9.

  3 OV, iv, 38–45; WM, Gesta Regum, 506–7; RRAN, 77, 81.

  4 WM, Gesta Regum, 501–3; OV, iv, 45–7.

  5 OV, iii, 102–3, 112–13; iv, 80–1; WM, Gesta Regum, 502–3; Bates, Conqueror, 170.

  6 Ibid., 161, 166, 170–2. Cf. Douglas, Conqueror, 243.

  7 OV, iv, 48–9.

  8 Above, 226, 270; ASC D and E, 1069, 1075; E, 1085; WM, Gesta Regum, 474–5, 480–1.

  9 Ibid., 482–3; ASC E, 1085; JW, iii, 42–3.

  10 WM, Saints’Lives, 130–1; J. R. Maddicott, ‘Responses to the Threat of Invasion, 1085’, EHR, 122 (2007), 986–91; ASC E, 1085.

  11 Ibid.; Maddicott, ‘Responses’, 986, 991–5.

  12 H. R. Loyn, ‘A General Introduction to Domesday Book’, Story of Domesday Book, ed. Erskine and Williams, 2; Carpenter, Struggle for Mastery, 103.

  13 EHD, ii, 530; Domesday Book: A Complete Translation, ed. A. Williams and G. H. Martin (2002), vii; S. Baxter, ‘Domesday Book’, BBC History Magazine, 11 (August 2010), 24.

  14 EHD, ii, 881–2; S. Baxter, ‘The Making of Domesday Book and the Languages of Lordship in Conquered England’, Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c.800–c.1250, ed. E. M. Tyler (Turnhout, 2012), 277–8, 299–303.

  15 Carpenter, Struggle for Mastery, 103.

  16 Baxter, ‘Making of Domesday’, 278–84; S. P. J. Harvey, ‘Domesday Book and Anglo-Norman Governance’, TRHS, 5th ser., 25 (1975), 175–93; idem, ‘Domesday Book and Its Predecessors’, EHR, 86 (1971), 753–73.

  17 EHD, ii, 879–83; C. P. Lewis, ‘The Domesday Jurors’, Haskins Society Journal, 5 (1993), 18–19; R. Fleming, Domesday Book and the Law (Cambridge, 1998), 12.

  18 Baxter, ‘Making of Domesday’, 284–7.

  19 R. Lennard, Rural England, 1086–1135 (Oxford, 1959), 155–6. Cf. Fleming, Domesday Book and the Law, 2–3.

  20 R. Fleming, ‘Domesday Book and the Tenurial Revolution’, ANS, 9 (1987), 88, 101. Fleming later increased her estimate of territorial grants from ‘almost a quarter’ to ‘over a third’: idem, Kings and Lords, 211–12.

  21 Fleming, Domesday Book and the Law, 1; Abels, ‘Sheriffs, Lord-Seeking’, 33–6.

  22 EHD, ii, 530, 851; Lewis, ‘Domesday Jurors’, 19.

  23 Prestwich, Place of War, 114–15; Domesday Book, ed. Williams and Martin, 128, 1249.

  24 Above, 24, 75; Barlow, Confessor, 106, n5.

  25 EHD, ii, 483–6; J.
A. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 2002), 230.

  26 Palmer, ‘War and Domesday Waste’, 256–78, successfully refutes D. M. Palliser, ‘Domesday Book and the Harrying of the North’, Northern History, 29 (1993), 1–23; History of the King’s Works, ed. Colvin, i, 24; Domesday Book, ed. Williams and Martin, 716–17, 882–3.

  27 WM, Gesta Regum, 464–5; SD, History, 137; Palmer, ‘War and Domesday Waste’, 273–4.

  28 S. Baxter, ‘Lordship and Labour’, A Social History of England, 900–1200, ed. J. Crick and E. van Houts (Cambridge, 2011), 104–7; Domesday Book, ed. Williams and Martin, 409; ASC E, 1087; EHD, ii, 882.

  29 Fleming, Kings and Lords, 123–6; Baxter, ‘Lordship and Labour’, 105; R. Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (1997), 215.

  30 Baxter, ‘Lordship and Labour’, 104, 107, 109–10; idem, ‘Domesday Bourn’, in D. Baxter, Medieval Bourn (Cambridge, 2008), 35–45; ASC E, 1087.

  31 S. P. J. Harvey, ‘Taxation and the Economy’, Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt (Woodbridge 1987), 256–62.

  32 Loyn, ‘General Introduction’, 14; EHD, ii, 484.

  33 ASC E, 1083.

  34 ASC E, 1085; Harvey, ‘Domesday Book and Anglo-Norman Governance’, 181; N. J. Higham, ‘The Domesday Survey: Context and Purpose’, History, 78 (1993), 14–16.

  35 F.W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (new edn, 1960), 27–8. See also P. Hyams, ‘“No Register of Title”: The Domesday Inquest and Land Adjudication’, ANS, 9 (1987), 127–41; Maddicott, ‘Responses’, 996–7.

  36 J. C. Holt, ‘1086’, Domesday Studies, ed. Holt, 48.

  37 ASC E, 1086; JW, iii, 44–5.

  38 Above, 233, 259; History of the King’s Works, ed. Colvin, i, 824–5.

  39 J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The Wealth of the Secular Aristocracy in 1086’, ANS, 22 (2000), 279, 286, 290; Garnett, Short Introduction, 84–8.

  40 EHD, ii, 453–4.

  41 Ibid., 601–3. The witness named Alfred is thought to have been a Breton.

  42 Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, 99, 105 (cf. Green, Aristocracy, 61–2); Carpenter, Struggle for Mastery, 79; Baxter, ‘Domesday Book’, 27.

  43 Carpenter, Struggle for Mastery, 81.

  44 Clarke, English Nobility, 32–3.

  45 OV, iii, 214–17; Baxter, ‘Domesday Book’, 27 (cf. Fleming, Kings and Lords, 219).

  46 Fleming, Kings and Lords, 58–71, 219–28, but cf. Baxter, Earls of Mercia, 128–38.