by Jack Lindsay
The Chronicle of 1137 speaks even more strongly, ‘And they filled the land full of castles. They cruelly oppressed men of the land with castleworks; and when the castles were made they filled them with devils and evil men. And they said openly that Christ slept, and his saints.’ Without the castles we cannot imagine the full development of the baronial system and the fiefs. Back in the tenth century the raising of castles in regions like Poitou had already started off the movement in this direction; and castles had the same effect wherever they appeared.
Timber was used for a long time, especially where extended defences were needed. The new borough of Montgomery, founded in 1223, was merely palisaded; in 1278 a stone wall was built, but what timber was still sound was taken to the castle to enclose one of the baileys. In the midst of the Welsh war of 1282-3 timber was used to protect the refounded borough of Rhuddlan, and it was not superseded till the fourteenth century. But stone was used early where it was easily available: for example, at Richmond, probably while Alan of Brittany held the honour, 1071-89. Parts of the enclosing wall of Peveril in the Peak district also seem to be early, as do the fortifications at Ludlow in the Welsh marches, begun 1085-95 — a curtain wall flanked by four, small, rectangular towers and cut by a rectangular gatehouse, later incorporated in a late twelfth-century keep. London tower was probably completed before the death of its chief architect, Gundulf bishop of Rochester (1077-1108); it served as a model for strong keeps, and only Colchester was larger. The latter, also of the late eleventh century, was reared on the base of the great Roman temple. Both it and the White Tower of London had an unusually large space for the chapel, while the other floors were divided into two unequal rooms. Rochester and Dover castles of the twelfth century were comparable structures. Most rectangular tower keeps were set inside a bailey; the outer defences were not of stone till the thirteenth century.
The motte mounds were not suitable for bearing heavy weights; but in the twelfth century the palisades were often replaced by roughly circular or polygonal walls following the crest of the mound; they are usually called shell keeps. Inside was a simple tower, doubtless for long often made of timber; where there was enough space inside, a hall and ancillary compartments were sometimes added. Occasionally the shell was built from the base of the mound. At Orford in Suffolk the polygonal tower was flanked by three projecting square turrets so that the defenders could command the whole face (1166-73); at Conisborough in the 1180s we find a round tower, perhaps the earliest in England of stone, with six wedge-shaped turrets around it, serving as both buttresses and fenders. Thus we see the transition from the solid dignity of the rectangular keep to circular keeps or tower houses, always with great concern to maintain a flanking cover of continuous wallfaces, which were characteristic of the thirteenth century. By the early thirteenth century it was found possible to build round towers on the tops of mottes where the earth had settled firmly down, as on the southern Welsh marches. In the late twelfth century a new seige engine, the trebuchet, working on the tip-cat principle, had come in, with higher trajectory and heavier missiles. The area of defence had to be widened and obstacles to attacking forces added; much labour and higher costs were involved. Wards and baileys were enclosed by thick stone curtains strengthened at all salient points with projecting towers. The round or half-round towers had no doubt been suggested by Byzantine constructions seen in the east by crusaders.[425]
There was no direct correlation between the Anglo-Saxon obligation to do fortress work and the forced labour put into the mottes, though many mottes were inside towns. We may assume the Normans drove the peasants to do the building without concern for legalities. But after a while the old system may well have been invoked; in Anglo-Norman charters there was a tendency to link castle work and bridge work. The inferior fiefs rendering castle guard in late Carolingian times, which were continued in Germany and Normandy, were perhaps reflected in England in sergeantry tenures with no service but castle ward. But host service seems in general to have involved castle guard, though we meet instances where this obligation is linked with exemptions or strong reductions in host service. Often it was demanded only in wartime. Like other war services it came to be widely commuted.[426] For a big royal castle, groups and fees had to provide rotating garrisons, with control of the military aspects under a sheriff. A baronial castelry was more cohesive as a feudal unit, and the castle was often the administrative seat of a barony. An analysis of the sites, which were mainly in towns or at crossings of rivers or roads, shows that the aim was not safety in an inaccessible position; the considerations were strategic, whether for war or for the imposition of authority over a valuable area. In Normandy, where by 1172 the ducal demesne was no longer administered by vicomtes and prévôts, it was regrouped in bailiwicks, each centred and dependent on a castle.
The military strategy involved in the distribution of castles in England need not have been worked out in a system covering the whole country. Even on the Welsh marches the system may have been devised by barons not the king. William knew most of his magnates well, and, especially at the outset, he may have felt that the more castles there were, the more assured was his domination. On the Scottish border fortifications were fairly thin, no doubt reflecting the relatively scanty Norman immigration into the far north.[427] But more than a hundred castles guarded the approaches to London in a belt reaching out from twenty-five miles to fifty miles. William may have encouraged his lords to build here, but they may also have been attracted by the area. Invasion was always a possibility, but William’s main need was to overawe the English. Henry II, wanting to consolidate his hold on Normandy, built castles along its geographically indecisive frontiers.
The essential characteristic of the feudal castle was its expression of power; and though this power was meant to frighten off enemies and impede them if they invaded, it was also meant to warn the people, to let them know who were their masters. The administrative system was naturally linked with the fortress which nakedly announced where power lay.[428] The medieval castle was to go through many more phases until the central government, in Tudor times, was strong enough to abolish livery and maintenance, and to end the need or right of nobles to fortify their residences. The duke of Buckingham, Edward Stafford, who refused to accept this situation, lost his head in 1521 and left his arrogant castle unfinished at Thornbury. Fortifications then became wholly a royal prerogative; Henry VIII, for example, built a chain of artillery forts along the southern and southeastern coast. But the castles, even if an archaic survival, still had a lessened military role to play in the Civil War of the seventeenth century, as was fitting enough in a conflict that ended with the defeat of the feudal state in its last stage.
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There is one more aspect of the castle, not primarily military or administrative, which must be noticed. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries there emerged a definite court culture, with common attitudes, juridical rules, manners and morality, which had its effects, not only on royal or baronial families, but also on the household knights and soldiers of fortune who were the servitors of such groups. This development was strongest in north-western France and was linked with the forces that matured fief feudalism; it involved a sense of lineage and of nobilitas, of a house or family with a genealogy based on strictly agnatic rules, patrilineal descent, primogeniture, and so on. It had first appeared among the princes and comital families of the tenth century, but by 1100 it had spread to the castellan families and it was absorbed by the knights — or rather by the superior section of them which we have discussed. This court culture was essentially linked with the castle; and as it spread socially, its exponents came to be persons who owned small castles or some kind of moated and defended manorhouse. Largely through the ladies in their quarters it was merged with other currents and had important literary effects, some of which will come up later in our inquiry.[429]
Chapter Twelve – State and Church
William took over English institutions, with their mai
n basis in the courts of shire and hundred. He strengthened the office of sheriff, feeling that it had affinities with that of the Norman vicomte and could be made to act yet more directly for the crown. When Latin replaced English in official documents, the sheriff was given the Norman name, but no Norman vicomte was ever turned into an English sheriff. Already under the Confessor the sheriff had been growing in importance as his superior colleagues, bishop and earl, left more and more work in his hands. Now only a few strategic earldoms survived and bishops no longer sat in shire courts; the advent of church courts deprived the sheriff of influence in church pleas, but gave him more autonomy in his secular role. Also, that role was given further scope by the extension of feudal dues and by the forest laws, while, like a vicomte, he took over the duty of keeping the king’s castles as well as commanding shire levies. But his biggest advance was on the judicial side. Royal writs laid down his powers more specifically, bidding him send on a case to the royal court or to assume that court’s role. (Visits from royal judges, whenever they began, were very important only in the twelfth century.) Sheriffs were often appointed from among barons of the second degree, and Domesday shows that they were often changed. They paid a special premium to the king for the privilege of farming out the shire. As with other officials, the right of farming out tempted the sheriffs to extortion or increasing the farm with the king’s permission.
The best known peculator was Picot of Cambridgeshire. The Ely chronicler complains, not only of the wrongs he inflicted on the abbey, but also of the bitter hostility to St Aethelthryth and her properties manifested by one of his ministri, Gervase, to whom ‘he had committed the business of the whole shire’. Picot imposed a new carrying service on the men of Cambridge, seized their common pasture, pulled down their houses to make room for three mills, compelled them to lend their plough teams nine times a year instead of three. At the Ely monks’ protest he sneered that he knew nothing of their saint. ‘Do you hear this, O Lord, and stay silent?’ cried a monk, profuse with epithets. Picot was a ravenous lion, a filthy hog, and many other beasts, with such an insatiable belly that he would share nothing, not even with God and the angels. We are told that the saint appeared to Gervase and beat him to death: ‘which reveals how marvellous is God in his saints’.[430]
But though at times a sheriff might have to disgorge ill-gotten gains, William prized efficiency above scrupulosity and humanity. The neighbouring magnates, churchmen or lay, however, kept a jealous eye on the sheriffs. In 1075 Roger earl of Hereford revolted when William sent sheriffs to hear pleas in his earldom. Sometimes the sheriff took over management of royal estates, for which there was no regular system. The office grew in stature till there was little likeness to the gerefa of the eleventh-century Rectitudines or to the seneschal or steward of thirteenth-century bishop and baron. By 1071 local administration was wholly in Norman hands.
Under Henry I more and more expedients were devised to increase the yield from the counties. Some old shrieval families held their ground, but new men were brought in and methods were changed. The king sold the shires for sums higher than the traditional farm of royal manors; or he put in custodians who paid over, not the fixed farm, but the actual profits. Groups of counties were granted to members of the court. In 1129-30 eleven shires were jointly held by Aubrey de Vere, who had been made master chamberlain in 1133, and Richard Basset, one of the king’s justiciars. But Henry outreached himself in trying to work out direct control of the royal demesne; and many of the new men were acting as the previous sheriffs had done, and were making the shrievalty hereditary. Still, Henry II carried on much the same shrieval system as Henry I; the office never grew into a fief and continued to be an appointment made by the king at his will and totally accountable to him. The use of itinerant justices reduced the scope of shrieval powers, but the sheriff was now firmly established as an important servant of the king with much influence in local matters.[431]
In Cnut’s reign we find grants of hundreds to laymen; eight and a half were assigned to Emma as her dower. The Confessor granted hundreds in various shires to religious houses; Domesday shows both laymen and clergy holding shires. By 1086 there seem to be at least 130 private hundreds. In some the crown gave up almost all its rights, though it never quite dropped control; and as the hundred was a police unit concerned with the taking of thieves, the sheriff never lost all his rights of supervision. Throughout the medieval period the police and military systems of the realm reposed on the hundredal organization. So, as the king’s justice tightened its hold on crime and the pleas of the crown became once more the crown’s affair, the lords of hundreds found themselves turned into the king’s justiciars (as Edward I’s lawyers called them). When a lord was lord of both hundred and honour, the courts of the two might be held on the same day, but they did not merge — though some confusion occurred when the lord held all the territory of an hundred. The hundred courts kept their own identity and survived the honorial courts.[432]
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William carried on the English fiscal system. Unlike Edward’s quiet reign, his was full of wars, so he had to find means of expanding the revenue; his reign was one of crushing taxation. In 1083 what seems to have been the usual charge of 2s a hide for the geld was raised to a crippling 6s. The sheriffs had the main task of getting in the revenue, but more specialized financial officials appear under Henry I. The treasury was still at Winchester, with accounting done by split sticks, tallies, on which the sums were recorded by notches. Revenue was under the control of a Norman master chamberlain — though England had its separate official until 1087 when Tinchebrai reunited it with Normandy. At some date in the Norman era finance came under two chamberlains of the treasury. In Henry I’s reign appeared a new head, the treasurer, who became one of the great state officers, while the master chamberlain carried on as head of the royal bedchamber.
The Latin term scaccarium, first found in 1110, gave its name during the century to the Exchequer. Meaning a chessboard, it referred to the chequered cloth over the table where the counters were set. Calculation was now done by the abacus, a frame with bells strung on wire, brought in from Laon or Lotharingia. (Arithmetical calculations on the Arabian system were coming into use in the twelfth century; but a gadget like the abacus, which made the processes of addition and subtraction visible, was better suited to illiterate laymen.) William’s need of money made his agents sharp and forceful in collecting revenues; their efficiency was reflected in their thoroughness and their record-keeping. Feudal incidents were increased. Their profitability to the crown now and for centuries to come was shown by the way they went on being exacted long after military fiefs became obsolete. Henry VIII set up a new court to exploit them systematically; and after the Cromwellian revolution, in 1660, the Restoration was linked with an act confessing that ‘the Courts of Wards and Liveries and Tenures by Knight-Service either of the King or others...and the consequents upon the same have been much more burdensome, grievous and prejudicial to the Kingdom than they have been beneficial to the King’. Thus only under Charles II was there a formal renunciation of feudal dues; in France they continued till the Great Revolution.[433] William was much taken up with adding to revenue through taxes and dues of all kinds, but neither he nor his sons issued any law codes like those of the English kings. Their chief innovations were the forest laws, the creation of separate church courts, and the regulation against murder aimed at protecting Normans from attack. The English kings had owned their own chases; but these were now much extended. The royal forests were not wholly woodland; they were reserves set aside for the king under special regulations. Certainly he hunted there, but he also used the system to raise money. The Hampshire reserve was widened to make up the New Forest, with much depopulation on the outskirts; some 2,000 people are said to have been driven out and 20,000 acres added to an already sparsely populated area of 75,000 acres. These forests were usually open to certain agricultural uses; the king got revenue from pannage, a rent for pasturing swine and o
ther beasts, and from fines for purprestures, which worked out as land rents.
William brought in a forest law of Frankish origin to protect his hunting and applied it, in addition to existing laws, across vast tracts. By Henry I’s time all Essex was forest, and few counties lacked wide preserves. Penalties for taking deer or boar grew steadily harsher, and special officials enforced the laws. The nobles disliked the royal forests which limited their own; the church was annoyed at the disregard of its privileges; the people hated the harassments and penalties, the obstructions of agriculture and the closing off of a food supply. But the kings mercilessly defended their forests at all costs as sources of food, sport and revenue. In many districts lords put peasants to work on deer hedges, building temporary hunting lodges or making drives. We meet a Wealden obligation to erect a sumerhus (probably under William).[434] Blinding and castration were the common fate of those convicted of destroying game, but the Angevins preferred fines. The limits of expansion seem to have come under Henry III, when nearly a third of the realm became a royal game preserve, with only Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent unaffected. Under Henry III itinerant justices held pleas of the forest every three years, and in the next century every five years, so an accused man might spend years in jail before being tried.
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In the development of the whole governmental system a key part was played by the court, curia, which in the Norman period was generally a small group of servants dealing with judicial, financial and administrative matters. Men of this sort usually attested the writs of William II and Henry I. But at any time the group could take in the greatest magnates, who enjoyed the social side of the court. They had their own ideas on how things should be run, and when they were present there were likely to be arguments and discussions of the sort that would inevitably have to be carried on before any general rules of feudal law could be formulated and put into action. Many of these magnates would have known the king and his chief ministers well; some may have been reared at the curia, as often happened with the heirs of noble families because of the royal right of wardship. (An epitaph in Lincoln Cathedral refers to William de Aincurt as of royal stock and as brought up at William II’s court.) At the early stage there would have been no sharp and formal line drawn between the curia regis where the king met and entertained his barons, and the Curia Regis from which the later departments of state were derived. The court in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was the judicial centre of the realm, the place from which writs went forth, the seat where ultimate judgments were given, and equally the place where king and barons met to feast, talk, and discuss events and problems. The group of magnates with the king did not constitute a formal court of law, but out of their meetings must have come many decisions which had important effects on all branches of the administration. It was one of the duties of the barons to give the king counsel when he asked for it.