Feudalism – 7

Today’s installment concludes Feudalism in France and England,
our selection by William Stubbs.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of seven thousand words. Congratulations!

Previously in Feudalism in France and England.

Time: 9th. To 12th. Century

All men continued to be primarily the king’s men and the public peace to be his peace. Their lords might demand their service to fulfil their own obligations but the king could call them to the fyrd, summon them to his courts and tax them without the intervention of their lords; and to the king they could look for protection against all foes. Accordingly the king could rely on the help of the bulk of the free people in all struggles with his feudatories and the people, finding that their connection with their lords would be no excuse for unfaithfulness to the king, had a further inducement to adhere to the more permanent institutions.

In the department of law the direct changes introduced by the Conquest were not great. Much that is regarded as peculiarly Norman was developed upon English soil and although originated and systematized by Norman lawyers, contained elements which would have worked in a very different way in Normandy. Even the vestiges of Carolingian practice which appear in the inquests of the Norman reigns are modified by English usage. The great inquest of all, the Domesday survey, may owe its principle to a foreign source; the oath of the reporters may be Norman but the machinery that furnishes the jurors is native; “the king’s barons inquire by the oath of the sheriff of the shire and of all the barons and their Frenchmen and of the whole hundred, the priest, the reeve and six ceorls of every township.”

The institution of the collective Frank pledge, which recent writers incline to treat as a Norman innovation, is so distinctly colored by English custom that it has been generally regarded as purely indigenous. If it were indeed a precaution taken by the new rulers against the avoidance of justice by the absconding or harboring of criminals, it fell with ease into the usages and even the legal terms which had been common for other similar purposes since the reign of Athelstan. The trial by battle, which on clearer evidence seems to have been brought in by the Normans, is a relic of old Teutonic jurisprudence, the absence of which from the Anglo-Saxon courts is far more curious than its introduction from abroad.

The organization of jurisdiction required and underwent no great change in these respects. The Norman lord who undertook the office of sheriff had, as we have seen, more unrestricted power than the sheriffs of old. He was the king’s representative in all matters judicial, military and financial in his shire and had many opportunities of tyrannizing in each of those departments: but he introduced no new machinery. From him or from the courts of which he was the presiding officer, appeal lay to the king alone; but the king was often absent from England and did not understand the language of his subjects. In his absence the administration was entrusted to a judiciar, a regent or lieutenant, of the kingdom; and the convenience being once ascertained of having a minister who could in the whole kingdom represent the king, as the sheriff did in the shire, the judiciar became a permanent functionary. This, however, cannot be certainly affirmed of the reign of the Conqueror, who, when present at Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, held great courts of justice as well as for other purposes of state; and the legal importance of the office belongs to a later stage. The royal court, containing the tenants-in-chief of the crown, both lay and clerical and entering into all the functions of the witenagemot, was the supreme council of the nation, with the advice and consent of which the King legislated, taxed and judged.

In the one authentic monument of William’s jurisprudence, the act which removed the bishops from the secular courts and recognized their spiritual jurisdictions, he tells us that he acts “with the common council and counsel of the archbishops, bishops, abbots and all the princes of the kingdom.” The ancient summary of his laws contained in the Textus Roffensis is entitled “What William, King of the English, with his Princes enacted after the Conquest of England“; and the same form is preserved in the tradition of his confirming the ancient laws reported to him by the representatives of the shires. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle enumerates the classes of men who attended his great courts: “There were with him all the great men over all England, archbishops and bishops, abbots and earls, thegns and knights.”

The great suit between Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury and Odo as Earl of Kent, which is perhaps the best reported trial of the reign, was tried in the county court of Kent before the King’s representative, Gosfrid, bishop of Coutances; whose presence and that of most of the great men of the kingdom seem to have made it a witenagemot. The archbishop pleaded the cause of his Church in a session of three days on Pennenden Heath; the aged South-Saxon bishop, Ethelric, was brought by the King’s command to declare the ancient customs of the laws; and with him several other Englishmen skilled in ancient laws and customs. All these good and wise men supported the archbishop’s claim and the decision was agreed on and determined by the whole county. The sentence was laid before the King and confirmed by him. Here we have probably a good instance of the principle universally adopted; all the lower machinery of the court was retained entire but the presence of the Norman justiciar and barons gave it an additional authority, a more direct connection with the king and the appearance at least of a joint tribunal.

The principle of amalgamating the two laws and nationalities by superimposing the better consolidated Norman superstructure on the better consolidated English substructure, runs through the whole policy.

The English system was strong in the cohesion of its lower organism, the association of individuals in the township, in the hundred and in the shire; the Norman system was strong in its higher ranges, in the close relation to the Crown of the tenants-in-chief whom the King had enriched. On the other hand, the English system was weak in the higher organization and the Normans in England had hardly any subordinate organization at all. The strongest elements of both were brought together.

This ends our series of passages on Feudalism in France and England by William Stubbs. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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