William, Duke of Normandy,
claimed that the Confessor had promised him the
Crown of England (although the king had no right to do so as the succession had to be
approved by the Witangamoot) and that Earl Godwin's son
Harold who was elected by the
Witan as successor to the Confessor in
1066 had sworn a sacred oath pledging William
the crown.
Regardless of the validity of the oaths, William of Normandy obtained
the blessing of the Church to invade England and wrested the crown from Harold by
killing him and defeating the English army at the Battle of Hastings or Senlac
(which took place near the village of Battle in Sussex)
in 1066. He was crowned in London on Christmas Day.
It was to be five years before WIlliam I subdued the English -
subsequent revolts against him were by the powerful Norman barons. All opposition to
the King was dealt with ruthlessly.
The Conqueror ordered the compiling of the
Domesday Book to assess the realm for taxation in 1086 and died in the following year to
be succeeded by his eldest son William (Rufus) II.
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Norman Britain: Monarchs
William II 'Rufus '
(1087-1100)
|
William II was surnamed 'Rufus ' either becuase of his
red hair or because his face would flush during his frequent rages. Far from popular,
Rufus was killed by an arrow under suspicious circumstances while hunting in the
New Forest in 1100. He was succeeded by his brother Henry I
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Norman Britain: Monarchs
Henry I
(1100-1135)
|
Henry I established the rule of law in England protecting the vassals of the barons of
the realm by sending his ministers to sit in judgement in the kings courts throughout
the land. He did not do so because of particularly virtuous character but because he
appreciated that the king could only be prosperous if his realm was prosperous and that
this was impossible in a lawless kingdom where the law was administered at the whim of
local magnates. Henry made his peace with Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury with whom
his brother William (Rufus) II had quarelled and made vast
improvements in the system for collecting the royal revenues.
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Norman Britain: Monarchs
Stephen & Matilda
(1135-1154)
|
The drowning of Henry I's only son in the sinking of the White ship off the coast of
Farnce left the Norman dynasty
without a male heir and, although the Witan had
agreed that his daughter Maud or Matilda should succeed to the throne on Henry's
death, the crown was contested by Stephen of Blois and the events which followed
not only destroyed Henry I's legal and administrative reforms, but threw England into
a long and protracted civil war. A year before his death, peace was established between
the two contenders for the crown when Stephen agreed that
Matilda's son Henry Plantagenet
should succeed him on his death.
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Norman Britian
NORMAN RULE
|
Having won the Battle of Hastings in 1066, Willliam of Normandy marched his army to London
thus blocking possible opposition from the Mercian army which was to have aided Harold but
ha dnot materialised. William agreed to uphold the English laws and having first chosen
Edgar the Atheling, the Witangamoot changed its mind and offered the crown to The
Conqueror who was crowned on Christmas Day at Westminster Abbey.
The estates of those who had supported and aided Harold were forfeited and distributed
amongst William's Norman, Breton or Flemming followers - in this manner, half of the
English manors passed into the hands of the foreigners. More forfeitures followed over
the five years following the Conquest as the English rose against their Norman rulers.
Although William I agreed to uphold the laws of the English, this was no longer done
according to English customs, but the laws were interpreted by Normans according to
their habits of government and, although the King still relied on the advice of the
great council or Witan (which advice he was not obliged to take), it was now composed
of Normans.
One of the greatest changes after the conquest was in land tenure. In Normandy the
the authority of the lord over his tenant was much greater than it had been in
pre-Conquest England. Before the conquest, England consisted of villages, more-or-less or
at least originating as family settlements. The arable land of these settlements belonged
to individuals although one would invariably hold more land than the others and was
the lord of the village entitled to service from the free tenants in the form of tending
the lord's land. The Saxon villages had been practically self-contained communities
producing most of what they required and supplying men at arms to the shire levies
when required.
The Normans, on the other hand, started with the proposition that all land within the
realm was the property of the King and held of him by his tenants-in-chief in return
for an agreed service. A man holding of a lord thus held of the king.
The Norman unit of administration was the '
manor' which corresponded to the
Saxon village or the ecclesiastical parish. Whereas in Saxon times the family were
responsible for the affairs of the village, under the Normans a Lord held the manor
from the king and tenants held their rights from the lord of the manor. A powerful man
might hold many manors of the king, often in different parts of a county or even the
country.
As well as free tenants who were only bound to their lord by owing some
service in echange for the land they held, there were also serfs (called
'villeins' by the Normans) who were
bound in perpituity to the service of their lord and such service was often humiliating.
The Norman period saw a large decrease in the number of free tenants and a corresponding
increase in the number of villeins because the lord of the manor having claimed that a
man held his land by villeinage, it was very difficult to prove otherwise.
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Norman Rule
THE GROWTH OF FEUDALISM
|
There may ahve been a tendency towards feudalism in
Saxon England but with the Norman Conquest, it became the system by which society in
England was organised. All land was held of the King by vassals doing him homage and
undertaking military and other services in return for their holdings.
The King's vassal might bestow part of the land he held of the King on
his own men in return for service but
William the Conqueror ensured that such men owed
homage to the King first and their immediate lord after - a man might be required to serve
the King against the King's vassal who might be his immediate lord but he could not
serve his feudal lord against the king. In this manner, The Conqueror ensured that
powerful barons could not become a threat to himself, or at least, the threat was
minimized.
Another safeguard for the monarch who had to maintain a hold over both
England and Normandy across the English Channel was that the powerful barons held manors
which were widely dispersed and, in the event that a baron rose against the King, he
did not have a consolidated territory to draw on as a power-base. Despite this, the
Norman barons did occassionaly rebel but were crushed with utter ruthlessness by the
first three Norman monarchs.
The legal reforms introduced by King Henry I
(1100-1135) by which jurisdiction was removed from the barons to the King's judges
further weakened the barons.
| ENGLISHRY (Englescherie) |
| A legal term introduced during the reign of the Conqueror (1066-1087), to the presentment of the fact that a person slain was an Englishman. If an unknown man was found slain, he was presumed to be a Norman, and the hundred was fined accordingly unless it could be proved that he was English. Englishry, if established, excused the hundred from the fine. W Stubbs, in his Constitutional History, suggests that similar measures were possibly taken by the Danish king Canute (1017-35). Englishry was abolished in 1340. |
BRITAIN
Roman
Saxon
Medieval
TRIAL BY JURY
TRIAL BY ORDEAL
Locally
DORSET
Feudalism
Norman Influence on the English Language
History of English Law
by Pollock and Maitland, 1895
The English and the Norman Conquest
by Ann Williams, publisher The Boydell Press, 1997
Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries
by Pauline Stafford, publisher Arnold, 1989
England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075-1225
by Robert Bartlett, publisher Oxford University Press, 2000
The Feudal Kingdom of England, 1042-1216
by Frank Barlow, publisher Longman, 1999
Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy
by George Garnett and John Hudson, publisher Cambridge University Press, 1994
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