The Normans and Their World

by Jack Lindsay

  The glamorous perspective in which the south was viewed from England may be gauged from an Anglo-Norman romance, Ipomedon, by Hue de Rotelande, a light-hearted poet who seems to belong to the same line of Norman-Welsh clerks as Walter Map and Girald; he has the same flippant and witty note; probably born at Rhuddlan, he lived at Credenhall near Hereford. Ipomedon has a reference to the siege of Rouen in 1174; it was inspired by the wedding of our Henry II’s Joan in 1176 to William II of Sicily — the betrothal had been made in 1164. Most of the poem’s action occurs in Apulia, Calabria and Sicily. The heir to the Apulian kingdom falls in love with the duchess of Calabria when he hears her described; and after many adventures and mishaps he finds and marries her.[352]

  *

  In Apulia and Calabria the Normans, as soon as they were able to settle down, used the system of the military fief that was being developed in Normandy. Certainly Robert Guiscard and Roger I systematically endowed their supporters with the lands they won. But the situations of Apulia and Sicily were different. In Apulia the conquests were made first by small bands, often under Lombards or Greeks, and any form of central authority developed slowly, whereas in Sicily, as in England, a big area was gained in one concerted effort. We find a large number of small fiefs, and a few large lordships with an autonomy that was only gradually modified. Among the latter group were the many comital families, who provided a long lasting source of rivalries and turbulence. The setting up of central control in the feudalized system was also delayed by the existence of great monasteries like Monte Cassino and La Cava, with vast estates. These houses resisted the burden of military services, though the Normans exacted feudal dues and counsel.[353] But fully feudal forms were steadily built up; a charter by Bohemund for St Nicholas of Bari, ascribed to 1090. is wholly feudal in character.

  Inevitably, especially in early days, the Normans were much affected by the customs of the regions where they settled. The comital dynasties often took over Lombard jurisdictions; Richard of Capua in 1065 granted an estate to be held ‘according to the legal customs of the Lombards’. Other lords took up Byzantine forms and terms. Some counts in Apulia appointed catapans to act as their deputies in administration, while Bohemund created his dukes. And Roger I in 1094 granted to the bishop of Messina lands that were to be defined ‘according to the earler divisions of the Saracens’, while he continued to use Byzantine strategoi in Calabria and later introduced them into Messina.[354] In Sicily Roger was able to introduce a centralized system far more quickly than had been possible on the mainland. By 1077 Robert Guiscard seems to have created some very big fiefs in the north of the island, but at his death Roger broke them up into small fiefs and handed them out among his knights; and when he died, Sicily was divided into small fiefs in the north, and some big ones he had created in central and south-east Sicily. Of these latter many were held by the church. We hear of two comtés, but these were made for close relations.[355]

  In south Italy the Normans used Byzantine methods of assessing and collecting taxes; a charter in 1087 shows that at Bari the administration carried on the fiscal registers known as Quaterniones. In Sicily Roger carried on the centralized financial bureau of the diwan.[356] The Moslem system however was reorganized, and we find members of the bureau making visitations, so as to ensure local control. As in England the sheriffs were to be called to yearly account — while in the earlier part of the twelfth century the use of the local units or iklim has been compared with the use made of the hundreds under Henry I of England. The Moslems had kept detailed records or registers, which the Normans took over; a Greek charter to the refounded bishopric of Catania in 1095 adds to the list of granted estates a platea of the dependent peasants. The plateae were rolls (in Greek, or sometimes in Arabic) made up out of the diwan’s records; and it has been conjectured that Roger used such lists to make a survey of his economic and military resources on the same sort of lines as Domesday in England. In any event there are analogies between the way in which a Norman aristocracy was set up in England and in Sicily, and in which advances were made towards a centralized administration.[357] The scope of the system developed under Roger may be gauged by the fact that before the end of the century the emir of Palermo had expanded his jurisdiction so as to become emir over all the dominions in Sicily and Calabria, subject to his lord.[358]

  *

  Bohemund was an outstanding leader in the first crusade. On his return for new forces in 1105, he visited France and married the king’s daughter. Eadmer tells us how Anselm was at Rouen when Bohemund arrived with a cardinal, Bruno, who had with him a Master of the Knights, Ilgyrus. The latter,

  being on terms of friendship with Anselm, entertained him with a great deal of agreeable talk about the wars he had been through, of cities captured, of the situation of the places and not a few other pieces of information which he had picked up on the Jerusalem campaign. He also disclosed to him the fact that he was in possession of many relics of saints and the way in which he had come by them. Among these, and indeed above all those he possessed, he prided himself especially on some hairs of Mary, the blessed Mother of God, of which he said that some had been given him by the Patriarch of Antioch when he held there the post of Master of the Knights under Bohemund...These hairs had been torn out by that Lady herself when, standing beside the cross of her Son, a sword pierced through her soul.

  Two of the hairs were taken to Bec; two were reserved by Anselm and reverently guarded by Eadmer as the Keeper of his Chapel. As for Bohemund, intoxicated by the sense of power that the new army gave him, he treacherously turned from his crusading task to march on Byzantion, the main bulwark against the infidels. But the Venetians helped the emperor, and he failed. Humiliated, he returned to Apulia and died in 1111.

  During these years a fleet of English Varangians was cruising in the Mediterranean under the Byzantine emperor’s orders. Edgar the Aetheling took command, and we find him again entangled with the Normans. In 1097 Guynemer of Boulogne captured the port of Lattakieh. In March 1098 Edgar drove him out and occupied the place in the emperor’s name. But he could leave only a few men as garrison; so the crusaders were asked to help with the defence. Robert of Normandy turned up and the port was handed over to him in trust for the emperor. But his only idea of government was to extort as much money as possible from the people, and he was soon driven out.[359]

  All the crusading chiefs were seeking for kingdoms, their personal ambitions as usual fused with their religious fervour. Bohemund ruled the principality of Antioch. We may assume that his court was made up of leading Norman families as in south Italy, for we find such families present under his successor. When he was imprisoned in 1100, the court might have appointed a regent, but it chose his nephew Tancred, who would have been his nominee. Feudal institu-tions had been imposed on the area, probably from the outset.[360] Following the Norman method of making use of existing govern-mental systems, Bohemund used Byzantine methods of administration — the empire had held Antioch until some twelve years before the Normans conquered it — while the peasants carried on with Moslem customs under the immediate jurisdiction of cadis of their own faith and race.[361] So Frankish knights worked with officials trained in the Byzantine tradition; and though the crusaders usually persecuted Jews both before and after the establishment of the new Latin states, the Jewish community of Antioch, well known for its skill in glass making, seems to have been relatively undisturbed.

  Tancred later became prince of Galilee. And other leaders of northern France played important roles in the east. Thus there were Flemish people at Jerusalem itself, where after Baldwin II tenure became hereditary and a highly logical application of feudal principles was worked out.

  We see that the Normans, when faced with governmental problems, tended to consider seriously what they could use and adapt from the customs of the conquered land, and avoid any unnecessary breaks and confusions. They showed little, if any, originality in devising new forms; but it might be argued that in all the areas they c
ontrolled — Normandy, England, Italy, Sicily and Antioch — they had irrupted into regions with old traditions and well rooted administrative methods, and that they therefore needed the intelligence to absorb and apply what was best in those regions rather than to work out unnecessary novelties. There was one area, however, in which they did innovate, or at least sharpen and systematize trends in Frankish feudalism: they developed the fief with definitely defined military services or obligations. And we find them carrying this development with them into England, the South and Antioch. The system of liege homage, whereby a man might hold land from several lords but owed a special and complete allegiance to the chief of these lords, was developed by them and carried wherever they went. There were slight variations in application of these ideas and methods — for instance the exaction of what were called feudal incidents by the lord from the vassal seems to have been regularized in England earlier than in south Italy or Antioch — but in general the principles of Norman feudalism were the same everywhere. They did not try to transfer administrative methods found and expanded in one area, into other areas they had conquered.

  In the early part of the twelfth century the Normans had developed the most strongly organized kingdoms of Europe, and they ruled the most effective of the crusading states. Two powerful empires, that of Henry II of England and that of Roger II, had been built up. They included some important ports, London, Palermo and Bari — the last named a point where many contacts between east and west were made. Under Roger I Mileto also became a centre for merchants and travellers, from the north beyond the Alps, the Italian ports of the west coast, the Byzantine world and the Moslem south. Under Roger II of Sicily there developed a magnificent culture with many inflowing and partly fused ingredients, which found expression in such buildings as the cathedral of Monreale. To examine this flowering is beyond our scope, but we may note that in January 1186 Henry, son of the emperor Frederick I, married Constance, heiress to the Sicilian crown, and the island entered into a new phase under the Hohenstaufens. In England the effects of the Norman conquest were in the end far more stable and more far reaching in their consequences.

  Chapter Eleven – Tenures, Fiefs, and Military Organization

  We now turn to a more detailed examination of what happened in England. Here we can see how a Norman takeover and transformation of a native system worked out. First we must note the almost total dispossession of the native ruling class in favour of an alien group. At Edward’s death there seem to have been between four and five thousand Englishmen holding estates of the king that the Normans were to call manors. When the Domesday Book (1086) was compiled, there were some 1400 to 1500 tenants-in-chief holding direct from the king, with some 170 or 180 of them getting a yearly income of £100; and there were about 8,000 sub-tenants. Only two of the tenants-in-chief were English; a mere eight per cent of the land was left in English hands. The total population was somewhere between one and two million, having been much reduced by warfare, deaths, ravages and disease since 1066. The thegns were still to be found in most parts of the country, but with diminishing status. Many sank down to peasant level; the more adventurous wandered off to Scotland, Ireland, Denmark or Byzantion. Goscelin, a monk of St Bertin, tells of a vir honorificus, who, though a layman, seems to have been brought up in St Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury; after Hastings he went with other optimates to Byzantion, where he became a duke. He must have entered the Varangian guard. Marrying a rich noblewoman, Eudoxia, he built a basilica by his house, and dedicated it to St Nicholas and his old patron St Augustine; the English exiles used to gather there.[362] A few Normans got estates by marrying English heiresses; and a few Englishmen bought back their lands at high rents. Others survived at a low level as sub-tenants of the new lords. At the end of the county surveys in Domesday we meet groups of thegns reduced to holding tiny pieces of land. Thus, the lands of Merleswein, a great thegn under Edward and William (in his first years), were taken over by Ralph Paynel, ancestor of the Luttrells of Dunster, lords in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Devonshire, Somersetshire and Gloucestershire.

  The two Englishmen who were big landowners in 1086 are worth a glance. They were not great men surviving from Edward’s day, but unscrupulous characters who had risen on the backs of their fallen fellows. Thorkill of Arden had a big fief in Warwickshire, mostly made up of the lands of dispossessed Englishmen, valued at over £120; it was assessed at over 135 hides for geld and as able to support nearly 220 ploughs. The value had increased by almost a third since 1066. Thorkill held seventy-one manors, of which only four are known to have been his father’s. He seems to have risen through his zeal as sheriff. But even so his heirs failed to carry on at his level: most of his estates went to Roger of Beaumont, to swell the earldom of Warwick, while his heirs became modest military tenants of the Warwick fief. The other rich Englishman was Coleswain who seems to have made his fortune by building schemes in Lincoln. He held forty-four manors, eleven pieces of sokeland, and seven berewicks, none of which had been his in 1066. He inherited four tofts in Lincoln and got from the king a stretch of wasteland outside the city, on which he built thirty-six new houses; he also built and owned two churches. But his family too, failed to keep up.[363] A few Englishmen, however, like Eadnoth, father of Harding and grandfather of Robert fitzHarding, did beget families that finally rose in the world. Small-holders remained common, especially north of the Humber; in the south the thegnage was driven down in status or its members were replaced by aliens.

  By 1070 only two English earls were still in office, Waltheof and Gospatrick; and Ralf de Gael had a Breton father and English mother. But neither of these lasted long. Nor did the English bishops. In spring 1070 a papal legate came with orders to depose Stigand and the bishops he had consecrated; but William wanted much more. Most of the bishops had unimpeachable orders, and among Stigand’s men was a Norman monk, Remigius, who had been made bishop of Dorchester. So at two councils, besides Stigand, his brother Aethelmar of Elmham and Aethelric of Selsey (transferred to Chichester in 1075) were deposed, while Leofwine of Lichfield, a married man, resigned; Ealdred of York died before action was taken against him. William appointed his own clerks to the vacancies. Only three English bishops remained. One was old and died in 1075; the other two had been keen supporters of William and so were tolerated, as also was the abbot of Evesham. No Englishman now became bishop for several generations. As the abbots died, Normans took over. By William’s death only some small houses had English heads. The lands of the sees and abbeys thus passed into the control of foreign churchmen.

  There were certainly many usurpations of land. We hear of them only when a Norman is wronged by another Norman. Thus in Cambridgeshire Domesday gives us clues to such seizures. Twice we are told that Aubrey de Ver’s predecessor (according to the testimony of the Hundred Jury) had grabbed certain land despite the king’s arrangements. Earl Ralf lost holdings in Whaddon through his revolt; now Richard fitzGilbert had it, though the Hundred declared that his predecessors had never held it. Ely claimed much land that was in lay hands; perhaps it had been taken by aliens after the revolt of 1070 in which Ely tenants took part. Clearly many lords, backed by the sheriff, took estates without the king’s licence and in defiance of the principle of heredity. ‘Aubrey de Ver is convicted in Domesday of having acquired illegally a holding in Abingdon which in 1066 had been held by a sokeman of the king, and which three years before the Inquest Picot the sheriff had proved was not properly Aubrey’s and had recovered’ (Finn).[364]

  One factor, however, that tended to preserve continuity was the desire of the aliens not to lose any profits they could get from old customs or contracts. Domesday shows that in general English tenures could be described in Norman terms. The new pattern did not mean so much a displacement of the previous one as its complication and tightening up. Processes of change, already at work, were speeded up. Domesday shows how carefully the Normans found out and recorded the customs of the boroughs and shires, and the hidage of estates. The
picture is complicated by the fact that tenants-in-chief could be sub-tenants in some of their holdings. Sub-tenancies enabled a tenant-in-chief to gain bases in parts of the country where he held no land as tenant-in-chief. Thus, the count of Eu, who had been given the greatest of Sussex castles, Hastings — to be guarded by the sixty knights of his rape — gained a foothold in Kent through a manor held by knight service which was granted to him by the archbishop of Canterbury. And at times the system gave a magnate the chance to gain land conveniently near his own main holdings.[365]