Anglo-Norman Studies XLII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2019 [42] 9781783275328, 1787449138, 1783275324

Table of contents :
Front cover
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES
Editor’s Preface
ABBREVIATIONS
REASSESSING THE REIGN OF KING ÆTHELRED THE UNREADY
THE ART OF MEMORY: THE POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION OF KING HAROLD II GODWINESON
WOMEN, MEMORY AND THE GENESIS OF A PRIORY IN NORMAN MONMOUTH
THE SINS OF A HISTORIAN: EADMER OF CANTERBURY, HISTORIA NOVORUM IN ANGLIA, BOOKS I-IV
ANGEVIN RULE IN THE WEST OF NORMANDY, 1154-86: THE VIEW FROM MONT-SAINT-MICHEL
‘A GIRLY MAN LIKE YOU CAN’T RULE US REAL MEN ANY LONGER’: SEX, VIOLENCE AND MASCULINITY IN DUDO OF S
COMPILING CHRONICLES IN ANGLO-NORMAN DURHAM, c. 1100-30
ENGLAND, NORMANDY AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL ‘NEW LAW’ IN THE LATER TWELFTH CENTURY
CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES

Citation preview

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XLII PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2019

The wide-ranging articles collected here represent the cutting edge of recent Anglo-Norman scholarship. There is a particular focus on historical sources for the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and especially on the key texts which are used by historians in understanding the past. There are articles on Eadmer’s Historia Novorum, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum, the historical profession at Durham, and the use of charters to understand the role of women in the Norman march of Wales. Other contributions examine canon law in late twelfth-­century England, and Angevin rule in Normandy in the time of Henry fitz Empress. The Old English world is also represented in the volume: there is a fresh investigation into Harold Godwineson’s posthumous reputation, and a new interpretation of the reign of Aethelred the Unready. STEPHEN CHURCH is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia.

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES ISSN 0954-9927

Editor S. D. Church Editorial Board Lindy Grant (University of Reading) Mark Hagger (Bangor University) Leonie V. Hicks (Canterbury Christ Church University) C. P. Lewis (Institute of Historical Research, University of London) Elisabeth van Houts (Emmanuel College, Cambridge)

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XLII PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2019

Edited by S. D. Church

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Editor and Contributors 2019, 2020 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2020 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978–1–78327–532–8 hardback ISBN 978– 1–78744–913–8 ePDF

ISSN 0954-9927 Anglo-Norman Studies (Formerly ISSN 0261-9857: Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies)

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate This publication is printed on acid-free paper

CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES

vi

EDITOR’S PREFACE

vii

ABBREVIATIONS

viii

Reassessing the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready (The Allen Brown Memorial Lecture) Catherine Cubitt The Art of Memory: The Posthumous Reputation of King Harold II Godwineson (The Des Seal Memorial Lecture) Ann Williams Women, Memory and the Genesis of a Priory in Norman Monmouth Emma Cavell

1

29

45

The Sins of a Historian: Eadmer of Canterbury, Historia Novorum in Anglia, Books I–IV John Gillingham

61

Angevin Rule in the West of Normandy, 1154–86: The View from Mont-­ Saint-Michel Mark Hagger

77

‘A girly man like you can’t rule us real men any longer’: Sex, Violence and Masculinity in Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum Fraser McNair

101

Compiling Chronicles in Anglo-Norman Durham, c. 1100–30 Charles C. Rozier

119

The Counts of Louvain and the Anglo-Norman World, c. 1100–c. 1215 Nicolas Ruffini-Ronzani

135

England, Normandy and the Ecclesiastical ‘New Law’ in the Later Twelfth Century Danica Summerlin

155

ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES Emma Cavell, Women, Memory and the Genesis of a Priory in Norman Monmouth Fig. 1 TNA, E211/361: (re-)remembering the genesis of a Norman priory

48

Mark Hagger, Angevin Rule in the West of Normandy, 1154–86: the View from Mont-Saint-Michel Fig. 1 A suggested family tree for Abbot Robert of Torigni

82

Table 1 Western Norman place-dates in the acts of Henry I and Henry II

84

Nicolas Ruffini-Ronzani, The Counts of Louvain and the Anglo-Norman World, c. 1100–c. 1215 Fig. 1 Genealogy of the counts of Louvain before 1139

136

Fig. 2 Geneaology of the counts of Louvain / dukes of Brabant in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

137

Map 1 The duchy of Brabant in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

138

Map 2 Brabantine possessions in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

143

Table 1 Brabantine possessions in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

151–4

The editor, contributors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and persons listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

EDITOR’S PREFACE The forty-second Battle Conference of Anglo-Norman Studies took place at Battle Abbey School in East Sussex between 19 and 22 July 2019. Our hosts, Aaron Pawson, Debbie White, James Dennett, and the other members of the team were courteous and efficient, supporting me in arranging the conference and all of us during our stay. On behalf of all the members of the conference, I should like to extend my thanks to the staff; we will be returning to the School for our 2021 conference. The staff of the School of History at the University of East Anglia have also been extraordinarily kind and generous with their support. I should particularly like to mention Rachel Cole, our School Manager, whose can-do attitude and determination to help us do our jobs meant that she, when no other person could, managed to get the University to support the payment processing for the conference. I should also like to thank my postgraduate students, Sally Spong, Rich Daines (now Dr Daines), and Dan Talbot for acting as the welcoming committee for all newcomers. They did a magnificent job of making people feel at home, and Dan did an excellent job as the conference’s major domus. We are now in the fortunate position that five of the lectures have funding attached to them. The Allen Brown Memorial Trust funds the Memorial Lecture and the Marjorie Chibnall essay (not awarded in 2019); the estate of Christine Mahaney has set aside money to support a memorial lecture (this year’s lecture will be published in next year’s volume), as, too, has the estate of Des Seal, while a further lecture is supported by an anonymous benefactor. The Muriel Brown bursaries and generous donations from supporters allow us to fund postgraduate student places at the conference. The committee would like to express its thanks for all these gifts which help to secure the future of the conference set up by Allen Brown more than forty years ago. The generosity of these benefactors, harnessed to Allen’s vision, is helping to sustain the study of the Anglo-Norman past in a way which would not be otherwise possible. Despite a perfectly orchestrated team effort by the Battle Abbey School staff, it was a weekend not without drama: on the first evening we were assailed by repeated power cuts which kept setting off the door alarm, and on the final day a malfunctioning washing machine situated on the floor above the Library discharged its watery contents to cause a flood where our conference was being held. The staff of the School responded magnificently on both occasions. Nonetheless, I do think that our two speakers during each of these calamities, Katy Cubitt on day one and Mark Hagger on the final day, deserve to be ‘mentioned in dispatches’ for their fortitude. In the finest traditions of the conference, both ‘battled’ on to deliver their papers while chaos swirled around them. These two speakers also deserve their mention because of the location of their individual acts of professionalism: they were tested and triumphed on the very field where, so we are led to believe, Harold and his army were tested and crushed on 14 October 1066. Stephen Church

ABBREVIATIONS AD AmHR ANS ASC

Archives départementales American Historical Review Anglo-Norman Studies Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, cited by year (corrected in square brackets if necessary) and manuscript; unless otherwise stated the edition is Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Charles Plummer, 2 vols (Oxford, 1892–99) ASC, trans. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. and ed. M. J. Swanton   Swanton (London, 1996) ASE Anglo-Saxon England BAR British Archaeological Reports BIHR Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research BL London, British Library BM Bibliothèque Municipale BN Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France BnF Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France Carmen The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy, Bishop of Amiens, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow (Oxford, 1999) CBA Council for British Archaeology CCCC Cambridge, Corpus Christi College DCL Durham, Dean and Chapter Library Dugdale, William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, new edn by  Monasticon Henry Ellis and Bulkeley Bandinel, 6 vols (London, 1817–30) DUL Durham University Library Eadmer, HN Eadmer, Historia novorum in Anglia, in Eadmeri Historia novorum in Anglia, et Opuscula duo; De Vita Sancti Anselmi et quibusdam miraculis ejus, ed Martin Rule, RS 81 (London, 1884) EEA English Episcopal Acta EETS Early English Text Society EHR English Historical Review EME Early Medieval Europe English Lawsuits English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I, ed. R. C. van Caenegem, 2 vols Selden Society, 106–7, (London, 1990–91) Freeman, Norman Edward A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest   Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results, 6 vols, 1st edn (Oxford, 1867–79; revised edn New York, 1873–76) GDB Great Domesday Book, followed by the folio number, a or b (for recto or verso), cited from Domesday Book, seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi, 2 vols (London, 1783), I, or from Great Domesday Book: Library Edition ed. Ann Williams and R. W. H. Erskine, Alecto Historical Editions (London, 1986– 92); followed in parentheses by the abbreviated county name and the entry number (substituting an oblique for a comma

Abbreviations ix between the first and second parts) used in Domesday Book, ed. John Morris and others, 34 vols, Phillimore (London, 1974–86). Gesetze, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Felix Liebermann, 3 vols   ed. Liebermann (Halle, 1903–16) GND The Gesta Normannorum ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford, 1992–95) Harmer, AS Writs F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, 2nd edn (Stamford, 1989) Howden, Chronica Chronica Rogeri de Houedene, ed. William Stubbs, 4 vols, RS 51 ( London, 1868–71) Howden, Gesta Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi [now attributed to Roger of Howden], ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols, RS 49 (London, 1867) HSJ Haskins Society Journal Huntingdon Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People, ed. and trans. Diana Greenway (Oxford, 1996) IE Inquisitio Eliensis, in Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis [and] Inquisitio Eliensis, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton (London, 1876) JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History JL Regesta pontificum romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum MCXCVIII, ed. Philipp Jaffé, Wilhelm Wattenbach, S. Loewenfeld, and others, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1885–88) JMH Journal of Medieval History John of Worcester The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, II–III (Oxford, 1995–98) KCD Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici, ed. J. M. Kemble, 6 vols (London, 1839–48) – cited by charter number. LDB Little Domesday Book, followed by the folio number and a or b (for recto or verso), cited from Domesday Book, seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi, 2 vols (London, 1783), II, or from Great Domesday Book: Library Edition ed. Ann Williams and R. W. H. Erskine, Alecto Historical Editions (London, 2000); followed in parentheses by the abbreviated county name and the entry number (substituting an oblique for a comma between the first and second parts) used in Domesday Book, ed. John Morris and others, 34 vols, Phillimore (London, 1974–86). Letters of Lanfranc The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson (Oxford, 1979) Malmesbury, Gesta William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum:   pontificum The History of the English Bishops, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, 2 vols (Oxford, 2007) Malmesbury, Gesta William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: The History   regum of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998–99) Malmesbury, William of Malmesbury, Historia novella: The Contemporary   Historia novella History, ed. Edmund King, trans. K. R. Potter (Oxford, 1998) MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica

x Abbreviations Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, usually cited from online edn (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/), with article number and date accessed OED Oxford English Dictionary OMT Oxford Medieval Texts Orderic The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969–80) P & P Past and Present PL Patrologia cursus completus, series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–65) Poitiers The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and trans. R. H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1998) PR The Great Roll of the Pipe for [regnal year, king], Pipe Roll Society, except for 31 Henry I, HMSO 1929; 2–4 Henry II, ed. Joseph Hunter (London, 1844); 1 Richard I, ed. Joseph Hunter (London, 1844); 26 Henry III, ed. Henry Louis Cannon (London, 1918) Proc. Brit. Acad. Proceedings of the British Academy RADN Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, ed. Marie Fauroux, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 36 (Caen, 1961) Regesta Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1154, 3 vols (I, ed. H. W. C. Davis (Oxford, 1913); II, ed. Charles Johnson and H. A. Cronne (Oxford, 1956); III, ed. H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davis (Oxford, 1968)) Regesta: William I Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. David Bates (Oxford, 1998) Robertson, AS A. J. Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters (Cambridge,   Charters 1939) RS Rolls Series (Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, Published under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls). S P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968), and with a revised and updated version largely edited by S. E. Kelly, available at http://www. esawyer.org.uk/ s.a. sub anno, annis (‘under the year, years’) s.v. sub verbo, verbis (‘under the word, words’) Tabularia Tabularia: Sources écrites de la Normandie medieval [online journal: www.unicaen.fr/mrsh/craham/revue/tabularia/] Telma Chartes originales antérieures à 1121 conservées en France, ed. C. Giraud, J.-B. Renault et B.-M. Tock, Nancy : Centre de Médiévistique Jean Schneider; éds électronique : Orléans : Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, 2010, http:// www.cn-telma.fr/originaux/ Date de mise à jour : Première version, 10 juin 2010 TRE tempore regis Eadwardi (‘in King Edward’s time’) TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society TRW tempore regis Willelmi (‘in King William’s time’) VCH The Victoria History of the Counties of England [with county name], in progress ODNB

Abbreviations xi Vita Eadwardi

The Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminter, Attributed to a Monk of Saint-Bertin, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992) Wace, The History of the Norman People: Wace’s Roman de Rou,   trans. Burgess trans. Glyn S. Burgess (Woodbridge, 2004) Whitelock, AS Wills D. Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge, 1930) x [The form 1066 x 1087 indicates an uncertain date within the range]

The Allen Brown Memorial Lecture, 2019

REASSESSING THE REIGN OF KING ÆTHELRED THE UNREADY Catherine Cubitt The reign of Æthelred the Unready is one of exceptional interest: it boasts a dramatic narrative, from Æthelred’s ascent to the throne following the assassination of his brother, King Edward, to the invasion and the conquest of his country by the Danish rulers Swein Forkbeard and Cnut and the king’s demise in 1016. The reign is distinguished too by its relatively plentiful textual sources in a variety of genres, such as the unusually informative but opinionated account of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the wealth of the diplomatic record, with many charters surviving from the reign, as well as lawcodes, homilies and political tracts. These various sources not only provide different windows onto the period but are also remarkable for the inclusion, in some, of criticism of the king, a very rare occurrence among AngloSaxon sources. It is not surprising therefore that Æthelred has been well served by scholars of Anglo-Saxon England, with the publication of three full-length biographies in the past decade and a half by Ryan Lavelle, Ann Williams and Levi Roach, building in important ways upon the seminal work of Simon Keynes published in 1980, whose analysis of the charter evidence transformed scholarship on the reign.1 Hayden White famously argued that historians shape their accounts of historical events according to certain narrative forms embedded in our own social consciousness. In the process of studying a given complex of events, [the historian] begins to perceive the possible story form that such events may figure. In his narrative account of how this set of events took on the shape which he perceives to inhere within it, he emplots his account as a story of a particular kind. The reader, in the process of following the historian’s account of those events, gradually comes to realize that the story he is reading is of one kind rather than another: romance, tragedy, comedy, satire, epic, or what have you … The original strangeness, mystery, or exoticism of the events is dispelled, and they take on a familiar aspect, not in their details, but in their functions as elements of a familiar kind of configuration.2

From an eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon perspective, it is hard to write Æthelred’s reign as anything other than a tragedy.3 But tragedies can be told in many different 1 R. Lavelle, AEthelred II King of the English 978–1016 (Stroud, 2002); A. Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (London, 2003); L. Roach, Æthelred the Unready (New Haven, CT, 2016); S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016: A Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980). See also the short biography by R. Abels, Æthelred the Unready: Failed King (Harmondsworth, 2018). 2 Hayden White, ‘The Historical Text as a Literary Artifact’, in his Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (London, 1978), pp. 81–100, at 86; Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, 40th anniversary edition (Baltimore, 2014). 3 For a Viking perspective, see, for example, R. Poole, ‘Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History: Some Aspects of the Period 1009–1016’, Speculum 62 (1987), 265–98.

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Catherine Cubitt

ways – for example, as heroic struggles against overwhelming odds or as doomladen ventures, destined from the beginning for disaster. Negative narratives and stories about the king began to be told very early: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the years 983 to 1016, composed with hindsight not long after Cnut took power, depicts the king and his magnates as incapable of putting up adequate resistance to the Vikings and recounts with bitter relish the treachery and cowardice of the leading men and the ineluctable progress of Danish conquest. The Chronicler’s carefully crafted narrative bypassed criticism of the king by highlighting the treachery of the kingdom’s leading men, ealdormen Ælfric and Eadric Streona and others, thus supplying the tragic plotline with villains to accompany its flawed protagonist. It is a story of human failing, of a kingdom fatally let down by the self-interest of its ruling class.4 In the early twelfth century the Chronicle became one of the main sources for William of Malmesbury’s interpretation of the king, which was further embellished by stories circulating about him. For Malmesbury, Æthelred’s reign was ill omened from its earliest days, doomed because of his complicity in the murder of his brother Edward.5 William saw in Æthelred’s own character the cause of the disasters of his reign, describing him as slothful, greedy and cruel.6 William’s interpretation was shaped by his world-view as a Benedictine monk.7 He had strong views on the moral character of kings and the vital importance of their collaboration with religious advisers, above all with bishops.8 Foreign conquest and invasion were for William manifest evidence of the divine punishment of the English for their sinfulness.9 These leading ideas served as an explanation for an era which ended so disastrously. William’s interpretation of the reign was intrinsic to its structure: its disastrous end was prefigured in its beginning. It was reputed to have been ‘cruel at the outset, pitiable in the mid-course, disgraceful in its ending’. But this apparent coherence is belied by an observation concerning Æthelred by William in his Gesta Regum: ‘I have devoted much thought to this, and it seems to me extraordinary that a man who was, as we learn from our forebears, neither a great fool nor excessively cowardly should pass his life in the dismal twilight of so many calamities.’10 His puzzlement here perhaps articulates something of the challenges facing a historian in imposing narrative order upon the messiness of actual events.

S. Keynes, ‘The Declining Reputation of King Æthelred the Unready’, in Ethelred the Unready, ed. D. Hill, BAR British Series 59 (1978), pp. 227–53, esp. 231–36; C. Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before the Conquest’, in England before the Conquest, ed. P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 215–35; A. Sheppard, Families of the King: Writing Identity in the AngloSaxon Chronicle (Toronto, 2004), pp. 71–120. 5 William of Malmesbury, Vita Dunstani, cc. 21, 23, in William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford, 2002), pp. 272–74; Malmesbury, Gesta regum, I, c. 164, pp. 268–69; Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, 236–38. 6 Vita Dunstani, cc. 21, 34, pp. 272–75, 296–97; Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, cc. 21, 87, Malmesbury, Gesta regum, c. 164–65, pp. 268–77. 7 R. Kemp, ‘Advising the King: Kingship, Bishops and Saints in the Works of William of Malmesbury’; R. M. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Historical Vision’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. R. M. Thomson, E. Dolmans and E. A. Winkler (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 65–79, 165–73. 8 B. Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury on Kingship’, History 90 (2005), 3–22. 9 Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Historical Vision’, 171–73, and see Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, 236–38. 10 Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, c. 164, pp. 268–9: ‘seuus in principio, miser in medio, turpis in exitu’; c. 166, 276–77: ‘Veruntamen multa michi cogitanti mirum uidetur cur homo (ut a maioribus accepimus) neque multum fatuus neque nimis ignauus in tam tristi pallore tot calamitatum uitam consumpserit.’ 4



Reassessing the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready

3

The negative readings of the Chronicle and of medieval historians such as William framed the understanding of Æthelred’s rule and influenced modern historians.11 Sir Frank Stenton, for example, in his magisterial Oxford history, AngloSaxon England, depicted the king as incompetent, ineffective and prone to acts of ‘spasmodic violence’, his rule blighted by the assassination of his brother which destroyed ‘the instinctive loyalty of the common people’. Stenton’s verdict was that Æthelred was ‘a weak king’, conscious that ‘he had come to power through what his subjects regarded as the worst crime committed among the English peoples since their first coming to Britain’.12 This interpretative tradition, with its moralising discourse and teleological historical reasoning, was firmly put to bed by the publication, in 1980, of Simon Keynes’s The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘The Unready’, 978–1016: A Study in Their Use as Historical Evidence, a book which combined a detailed study of the diplomatic of Æthelred’s charters with an eloquent reconstruction of the period. The starting point for Keynes’s work was not the creation of a new narrative for the king’s life but, rather, a forensic investigation of the diplomatic evidence for the existence of a royal writing office. Keynes eschewed the value judgements on the personal qualities of the king and his advisers, focusing on the infinitely more fruitful question of whether the charters issued by the king were the products of his own government and could therefore be regarded as key historical witnesses to royal policy and court politics. The evidence of the charters, especially that of their witness lists as a source for the make-up of the royal council, uncovered new insights into the shifts of policy and political fortunes across Æthelred’s long reign. Keynes divided the reign into a four phases, each punctuated by a significant change, especially in the leading personnel at court. The first of these charted Æthelred’s early kingship from his ascent to the throne as child, when his council shows great continuity with that of his father, Edgar, and when his mother, Ælfthryth, and Bishop Æthelwold were powerful figures. The composition of the court changed in 984, the year of Æthelwold’s death, when Ælfthryth and a number of other men were replaced. The king’s new independence was marked by a move away from support for Benedictine monasticism, which had characterised Edgar’s rule. In the years after 984 the king authorised land transfers damaging to church rights. The 980s also saw the first onslaught of the Viking attacks which came to be so prominent in the reign. The Viking campaign of 991 and the defeat of the English at the battle of Maldon with the death of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth of Essex precipitated a crisis which not only led to the first payment of tribute to the invaders but also to a fundamental change in policy. A charter recording a great Council of Winchester held at Pentecost in 993 describes how the king, anxious about the recent terrible afflictions of the kingdom, had considered their causes and repudiated his earlier actions, which were described as the results of youthful inexperience and the product of misleading counsel. On this occasion, the king restored to the monastery of Abingdon its immunity of abbatial election, which he had previously violated. This change of direction marked the next phase of the reign, once it was accompanied by a change in composition of the royal council, this time replacing the leading men of the previous decade with men favourable to monastic reform, some of whom had served under Edgar and in the early years of Æthelred. The restoration of Abingdon’s privilege was followed in subsequent years by a number of other restorations of church land. Keynes designated the years from 993 to 1006 ‘the years 11 12

Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 228–29, and Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’. F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 3rd edn 1971), p. 374.

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of maturity’ and he highlights the efficacy of the king’s administration, his ability to tax and raise revenue and the flowering of monastic culture, seen most notably in the works of the homilist Ælfric. These positive features provide a counter-balance to the increasing success of the Viking campaigns which the English struggled to resist. The years 1005–6 saw a veritable palace revolution, when the leading courtiers either retired or were summarily removed by prosecution and exile and replaced by men such as Eadric Streona and Ealdorman Ælfric of Hampshire who were not associated with the patronage of Benedictine reform. The closing decade of the reign was marked by further disasters and a devastating intensification of Viking attacks and invasion, with a terrible plague in 1005, and in 1009 the arrival of a great army under Thorkel the Tall. In Keynes’s retelling of Æthelred’s rule, the years from 1005 to 1016 were the darkest, when the kingdom buckled under an overwhelming onslaught. However, the failure to defend the kingdom was not simply caused by the king’s inability to lead an army, or by the cowardice of his magnates on the battlefield. In Keynes’s view other factors needed to be taken into account in the failure of Æthelred’s regime, particularly concerning the nature of the Viking threat, since it was becoming apparent (as a result of archaeological investigations undertaken in the 1970s discovering the widespread establishment of military training camps) that Danish society had become highly militarised in the late tenth century. Keynes presented a radical revision of Æthelred’s rulership. The charters told their own story of the reign, a new narrative which cut across that of the Chronicle and which revealed the inner workings of the court and council. For example, the Council of Winchester in 993 with its associated shifts in personnel and policy marked a major turning point in the reign, but was unrecorded in the Chronicle and consequently overlooked by historians.13 The insights yielded by an intensive analysis of the diplomatic record were combined with the evidence of literary, administrative and other sources to build an understanding of the reign which went beyond the king’s personal rulership to the nuts and bolts of medieval governance. This rescued the reign from condemnation as an unmitigated disaster and demonstrated the effectiveness of its institutional structures and governance.14 Keynes’s account of the central years, 993 to 1006, are particularly interesting in their emphasis on royal administration and on the flowering of monastic learning. In this narration of the reign it is the final decade which takes on a tragic character as the kingdom is overrun by Viking forces. The unhappy reign was reconfigured as one which for most of its duration had been governed effectively and was overwhelmed only in its final decades, by Viking forces of an unprecedented size. Æthelred’s kingship may have ended in failure but it was not without resourcefulness or initiative. This reinterpretation was articulated by a new way of emplotting the reign which undermined the narrative trope of a reign doomed from the outset by the personal inadequacy of the king. The fourfold division of the reign enabled him to avoid the teleology of reading the reign backwards from the calamities of 1014/1016 and also of reading it forwards from the assassination of Edward the Martyr. The Diplomas of King Æthelred created a historiographical transformation; by highlighting the importance of charters for the history of royal administration it repositioned the reign in a different historiographical tradition. Keynes’s demonstration of the existence of a royal writing office, a central agency responsible for the drafting of charters, was a very significant contribution to the emerging debates on the administrative efficiency of the late Anglo-Saxon state. Just as Keynes was 13 14

See, for example, it is passed over by Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 364–93. Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 228–31.



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exploring the diplomatic record and establishing the pre-Conquest precursors of the royal chancery, James Campbell was arguing for the sophistication of royal government, seen, for example, in the periodic manipulation of the silver content of its coinage and in its ability to tax effectively.15 At about the same time Patrick Wormald’s studies of Anglo-Saxon law and dispute settlements argued for the power and authority of pre-Conquest kings as judges and lawgivers.16 The governance of England in the years of Æthelred’s rule became an important element in the interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon state as unusually powerful and sophisticated by comparison to its Continental contemporaries. The so-called ‘maximalist’ view of the pre-Conquest state has become one of the dominant tropes of Anglo-Saxon scholarship, a grand narrative in its own right and one which has in many ways served to rehabilitate the reputation of the rule of Æthelred.17 Keynes’s revisionist interpretation of the reign has been highly influential, and rightly so. It set a new agenda for the study of the reign. This was enthusiastically taken up by Ryan Lavelle in his biography of the king, an excellent textbook for undergraduate study, which took advantage of more recent important archaeological evidence for defensive strategies. Ann Williams’s book followed hard on its heels; it offered a reading enriched by her profound understanding of pre-Conquest nobility and their family networks and landholding. Her biography does particularly important work in highlighting the regionality of late Anglo-Saxon society, bringing a new texture to the study of Æthelred’s politics which emphasises the complexity and fragility of the crown’s relations with the leading families of the kingdom. The decade between the publication of Williams’s and Lavelle’s biographies of Æthelred and that of Roach’s produced a number of significant new studies of aspects of the reign, some of which brought the ecclesiastical politics and religious dimensions of early medieval rule to the fore. Keynes had noted the Council of Winchester in 993 as a turning point; subsequent studies emphasised the significance of its penitential character, with the king’s public admission of wrongdoing. Æthelred, not unlike his Continental contemporaries, Robert the Pious and Otto III, had adopted the language of penance and confession to remake his kingship, to distance himself from his previous actions and to present himself as pious king, humble in the sight of God.18 More prominence was also given in the historiography to the religious mentalities of the day, with reassessments of the power of apocalyptic discourse at court around the year 1000, and to the spiritual anxiety and measures taken to counter the intensification of Viking attacks in the final decades of the reign.19 These new interpretations gave fresh emphasis to the importance of 15 See his collected essays, J. Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986); idem, The Anglo-Saxon State (London, 2000). 16 See his collected essays, P. Wormald, Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West (London, 1999). 17 See, for example, T. Reuter, ‘Modern Mentalities and Medieval Polities’, pp. 3–18, at 15, and ‘The Making of England and Germany, 850–1050: Points of Comparison and Difference’, in his Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities, ed. J. L. Nelson (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 284–99. And see the reservations expressed by Keynes, in S. Keynes, ‘Re-Reading King Æthelred the Unready’, in Writing Medieval Biography 750–1250, ed. D. Bates, J. Crick, S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 77–97, at 82–86. 18 C. Cubitt, ‘The Politics of Remorse: Penance and Royal Piety in the Reign of Æthelred the Unready’, Historical Research 85 (2011), 179–92; L. Roach, ‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, EME 19 (2011), 182–203; ‘Penitential Discourse in the Diplomas of King Æthelred “the Unready”’, JEH 64 (2013), 258–76; Keynes, ‘Re-reading’, pp. 89–95. 19 C. Cubitt, ‘Apocalyptic and Eschatological Thought in England around the Year 1000’, TRHS 6th ser., 25 (2015), 27–52; eadem, ‘On Living in the Time of Tribulation: Archbishop Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos and its Eschatological Context’, in Writing, Kingship and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. R. Naismith and D. A. Woodman (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 202–33; L. Roach, ‘Apocalypse and Atonement in the Politics of Later Æthelredian England’, English Studies 95 (2014), 733–57.

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the ideology of Benedictine reform and its proponents, both lay and ecclesiastical.20 At the same time, the significance of contemporary allusions in the homilies and writings of Ælfric of Eynsham was receiving fresh attention, emphasising the force of their explicit and implicit criticism of the king and his councillors.21 Roach’s biography, published in 2016, was therefore a very timely one, enabling him to incorporate this new work and to offer a fresh look at the reign, and one which brings a deep knowledge and understanding of early medieval politics in Europe. Roach’s interpretation of Æthelred’s rule is darker than those of Lavelle and Williams: after the penitential turn of 993 he sees Æthelred’s policies as driven by a search for religious purity which precipitated the court purge of 1005–6. Greater weight is given by Roach to the tensions within the reign. His is a sympathetic account of the king, emphasising the severity of the Viking attacks of the early eleventh centuries and judiciously measuring Æthelred’s responses and actions against those of contemporary Continental kings. Like Keynes and his fellow biographers, he emphasises the successes of the king’s middle years. He, too, regards the closing decades as the truly disastrous ones; but he argues that while the reign ended in failure, this judgement should not be extended to the whole period.22 Since Keynes’s seminal work a new consensus has emerged. Æthelred’s modern biographers eschew judgements of his personal qualities and analyse instead the challenges which he faced as ruler. They identify the underlying causes of the conquest of the English in 1016 as being the unprecedented severity of the Viking raids from the early eleventh century, and highlight the complexities of national politics. The reign has been re-emplotted so that the 990s are configured as years of mature and successful government. Its tragic qualities are largely confined to the final decades, when the Mercian ealdorman Eadric Streona came to prominence at court after the palace revolution of 1005–6 and the English faced invasion on an unprecedented scale at the hands of Thorkell the Tall in 1009–12 and by Swein Forkbeard in 1013.23 The efficacy of Æthelred’s government is highlighted, his ability to raise large amounts of tribute and taxation is lauded and the long-term resilience of the Anglo-Saxon state and its national identity is emphasised.24 The old narrative which centred on the king’s personal ability to govern has been replaced with new tropes concerning the long-term strength of the Anglo-Saxon state and the resilience S. Keynes, ‘Wulfsige, Monk of Glastonbury, Abbot of Westminster (c. 990–93), and Bishop of Sherborne (c. 993–1002)’, in St Wulfsige and Sherborne Essays to celebrate the Millennium of the Benedictine Abbey 998–1998, ed. K. Barker, D. A. Hinton and A. Hunt (Bournemouth, 2005), pp. 53–94. 21 M. Clayton, ‘Of Mice and Men: Ælfric’s Second Homily for the Feast of a Confessor’, Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 24 (1993), 1–26; eadem, ‘Ælfric’s Esther: a Speculum Reginae?’, in Text and Gloss: Studies in Insular Learning and Literature Presented to Joseph Donovan Pheifer, ed. H. Conrad O’ Brien, A. M. D’Arcy and J. Scattergood (Dublin, 1999), pp. 89–101; eadem, ‘Ælfric and Æthelred’, in Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Related Themes in Memory of Lynne Grundy, ed. J. Roberts and J. Nelson (London, 2000), pp. 65–88; eadem, ‘De Duodecim Abusivis, Lordship and Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Saints and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture in Honour of Hugh Magennis, ed. S. McWilliams (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 141–63; Two Ælfric Texts: The Twelve Abuses and The Vices and Virtues, ed. and trans. M. Clayton (Cambridge, 2013); R. K. Upchurch, ‘A Big Dog Barks: Ælfric of Eynsham’s Indictment of the English Pastorate and Witan’, Speculum 85 (2010), 505–33; C. Cubitt, ‘Ælfric’s Lay Patrons’, in A Companion to Ælfric, ed. H. Magennis and M. Swan (Leiden, 2009), pp. 165–92. 22 Abels, Æthelred, is more critical, highlighting the king’s failure as a military leader and his inability to control rivalries among his elite. 23 Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 209–31, Lavelle, AEthelred, p. 117; Williams, Æthelred, p. 150; Roach, Æthelred, pp. 252–325; S. Keynes, ‘An Abbot, an Archbishop, and the Viking Raids of 1006–7 and 1009–1010’, ASE 36 (2007), 151–220. 24 E.g. Lavelle, AEthelred, p. 138. Abels, Æthelred, is more critical, eg. pp. 59–61. 20



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of English national identity. A much more nuanced and sophisticated understanding has emerged, but at the same time some things have been lost in this much more upbeat evaluation of this king. The concentration on the final decade as the period when royal control disintegrated, and the emphasis on the decisive roles in the kingdom’s downfall of the ferocious Viking campaigns of 1006–7 to 1015 and of the actions of ealdorman Eadric Streona, have obscured long-standing problems in the reign. Short-term issues and events have been seen as the causes of destabilisation, rather than deeper, structural issues such as, for example, factionalism.25 The organic connection between the problems of the early eleventh century and those of earlier years have been neglected. The remodelling of the 990s as an era of successful government has led to the under-assessment of the severity of Viking raids then. But this time saw a step change as the Danes were able to overwinter and penetrate deeply inland. The deep and lasting damage done by campaigns of ravaging has not been given due prominence and, while the efficacy of Æthelred’s policy of paying tribute and hiring Viking mercenaries has been discussed, the negative impact of these measures is given less weight. Yet contemporaries voiced profound misgivings about Æthelred’s style of kingship; and their criticisms were not limited to the final years of his rule. Evidence of unrest and discontent in the 990s has been less emphasised than that of the early eleventh century. The narrative compartmentalisation of the period not only into different phases but also into different topics has allowed important witnesses to dissent and turmoil to be downplayed. Such decisions are inevitable as the constraints of historical narrative – the necessity for selection and for differential emphasis on events and evidence – are multiplied in the composition of a biography. The ground-breaking work of Keynes and the cumulative achievement of Lavelle, Williams and Roach have profoundly deepened our understanding of the politics of Æthelred’s rule and of the administrative and political history of tenthand eleventh-century England, but there is room for reappraisal and for new ways of narration. A vital element in reassessing the reign of Æthelred is the remarkable body of contemporary and near-contemporary criticism of the king. Foremost here are the writings of the homilist Ælfric, the leading intellectual of his age and advocate of monastic reform.26 He was extremely well connected: he dedicated his two series of Catholic Homilies to Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury and his lay patrons were the ealdorman Æthelweard of the western shires and his son, Æthelmær, both of whom were leading figures at Æthelred’s court in the 990s. His works therefore circulated among the highest in the land. His most substantial piece of political theory is his Old English version of the Latin tract the De duodecim abusivis, which he composed probably c. 993–c. 995.27 Allusions to current-day affairs are scattered through his later sermons, especially the homily the Prayer of Moses, part of his sermon series, Lives of Saints, composed around the time of the De duodecim abusivis.28 It would appear therefore that the crisis in 991–93 stimulated Ælfric to produce stern guidance for Christian kingship and good governance. Another set of On factionalism, see P. Stafford, ‘The Reign of Æthelred II, a Study in the Limitations on Royal Policy and Action’, in Ethelred, ed. Hill, pp. 15–46. 26 See the essays and bibliography in Companion to Ælfric, ed. Magennis and Swan. 27 Clayton, ‘De duodecim abusivis’, Two Ælfric Texts. 28 Homilies of Ælfric A Supplementary Collection, ed. J. C. Pope, 2 vols, EETS OS 259–60 (Oxford, 1967), I, pp. 372–77, and see n. 21 above. For the dating of Ælfric’s oeuvre, see P. Clemoes, ‘The Chronology of Ælfric’s Works’, in The Anglo-Saxons, ed. P. Clemoes (London, 1959), pp. 212–47. 25

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contemporary comments clusters in his final period of composition, from 1005 to c. 1010, again presumably the outworking of his anxiety over the state of the nation.29 However, it is important to note two important passages on the kingship, apparently targeted directly at the king and his council, written around the year 1000 (discussed below).30 Ælfric’s commentary on the reign therefore cuts across the king’s so-called successful rule in the 990s.31 Ælfric’s close contemporary Archbishop Wulfstan of York is well known for his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, an excoriating sermon on the sins of the English, probably dating to 1009–14. Its tone is polemical but it contains many valuable insights into the troubles of the time. While this is Wulfstan’s most topical sermon, there are snatches of contemporary reflection in some other sermons, notably On Justice, Virtue and the Law, a work probably preached to the Council of Oxford in 1018. Like Ælfric (whose work influenced the archbishop), Wulfstan was moved to compose a tract on political thought. His Institutes of Polity is a lengthy piece of work and an independent composition in Old English. It dates to the early eleventh century and again must reflect a pressing sense of the need for instruction on the office of kingship, the duties of the council and the responsibilities of the ruling elite.32 The voices of these contemporary spokesmen resonate remarkably well on some themes with that of the author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, who wrote early in the reign of Cnut.33 It is important to underline the significance of these critical voices: to find overt criticism of a king in Anglo-Saxon England is highly unusual. Contemporary sources very rarely openly express disapproval of royal action: Anglo-Saxon writers such as Bede are happy to condemn dead kings, while Alcuin and Boniface did challenge existing rulers but only from the safety of the Continent. Otherwise, critical commentaries on royal rule are conspicuously absent. Ælfric’s views on right rulership and political theory have clear contemporary relevance; the ideas are commonplace but carry a real charge in the light of the problems of the reign.34 A good king, in Ælfric’s view, is sagacious and just, and one who directs himself and his people wisely and firmly. He is obedient to God and protects the church, particularly monks and monasteries. Such a king will be favoured by God and bring peace and prosperity to his kingdom; he will be successful in military affairs. The inverse of this good king is an unwise king, whose people will suffer afflictions and ‘many misfortunes because of his misguidance’.35 The idea that the spiritual standing and moral conduct of a king was inextricably linked to the welfare of his people was a medieval commonplace. for example, it is articulated in the diplomatic record of the 993 Council of Winchester, which describes how Æthelred sought the advice of the assembly on how to act best for his own spiritual health and for the state of the people.36 The negative consequences of poor rulership are expressed pungently in the De duodecim abusivis, which

Homilies, ed. Pope, nos. XIII, XIV with discussion, II, 493–94. See below, pp. 9–10. 31 Cf. Roach, Æthelred, p. 166. 32 Die ‘Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical’, ed. K. Jost (Bern, 1959); see the translation and discussion in The Political Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan of York, ed. and trans. A. Rabin (Manchester, 2015), pp. 101–24. 33 See n. 4. 34 K. R. Kritsch, ‘Fragments and Reflexes of Kingship Theory in Ælfric’s Comments on Royal Authority’, English Studies 97 (2016), 163–85. 35 Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies The Second Series, ed. M. Godden, EETS SS 5 (Oxford, 1979), no. XIX, p. 183: ‘on manegum ungelimpum. for his misræde’. Translation: Clayton, ‘Ælfric and Æthelred’, p. 71. 36 S 876, Charters of Abingdon Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly, 2 vols (Oxford, 2000–1), no. 124. 29 30



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itemises the troubles which will ensue: infertility of the earth, hostile incursions, mortalities of the people and more.37 Ælfric’s understanding of good governance was expressed largely in the form of generalised statements, but this does not mean that his words did not have real bite for contemporaries. As time went on his writing became more pointed. For example, he appended to his translation of the Old Testament book of Judges a list of the Anglo-Saxon kings whose fidelity to God had ensured military success: In England also kings were often victorious by means of God, as we have heard said: as King Alfred was, who often fought against the Danes, until he obtained victory and protected his people; likewise Athelstan, who fought against Anlaf and killed his army and put him to flight and afterwards lived in peace with his people. Edgar, the noble and resolute king, raised up praise of God everywhere among his people, more than all the kings over the English people, and God always tames his enemies for him, kings and leaders so that they came to him, without any fight, desiring peace, subjected to him as much as he wished and he was honoured widely throughout the land …38

Ælfric wrote these words around the year 1000, at a time when the unspoken contrast with the current king must have been apparent to readers and hearers. The implicit comparison between earlier kings who vanquished the Vikings and Æthelred is also present in the composition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where the campaigns of Alfred the Great form a kind of subtext. This is perhaps most visible in the Chronicle’s annal for 1009 concerning Æthelred’s new navy, which was effectively sabotaged by aristocratic faction and disloyalty. The disaster of 1009 has its counterpart in the description in the Alfredian annal for 896 concerning the encounter between Alfred’s newly built battle ships and the Danes, an occasion which had mixed results, but one which contrasts with Æthelred’s debacle. The 1009 annal signals the parallels with its earlier account in its statement that the new navy was greater than any previous one ‘from what books tell us’.39 Any reader of the annals for the earlier wars of the West Saxon rulers against the Vikings would have been very aware of the constant presence of the king in those campaigns. The absence of Æthelred in the defence of the realm would have been highly conspicuous.40 In a sermon for the first Sunday after Ascension day, probably composed soon after the year 1000, Ælfric apparently accuses the king of failing in his duty of seeking candid consultation with his witan, and of preferring the private advice of close associates. [Christ] taught that prophets and those who advise many people must declare their words of advice openly, not through secret whisperings, because many people together Clayton, Two Ælfric Texts, pp. 128–31. The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo, ed. R. Marsden, EETS OS 330 (Oxford, 2008), p. 200: ‘On Englande eac oft wæron cyningas sigefæste þurh God, swa swa we secgan gehyrdon. Swa swa wæs Ælfred cining þe oft gefeaht wið Denan, oþ þæt he sige gewann and bewerode his leode. Swa gelice Æðestan þe wið Anlaf gefeaht and his firde ofsloh and aflimde hine sylfne and he on sibbe wunude siþþan mid his leode. Eadgar se æðela and se anræda cining aræde Godes lof on his leode gehwær, ealra cininga swiðost ofer Engla ðeode, and him God gewilde his wiðerwinnan a, ciningas and eorlas, þæt hi comon him to buton ælcum gefeohte, friðes wilniende, him underþeodde to þam þe he wolde. And he wæs gewurðod wide geond land.’ Translation from Clayton, ‘Ælfric and Æthelred’, 78. 39 ASC C, s. a. 1009, cf. ASC C, s. a. 896, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition volume 5 MS. C. ed. K. O’Brien O’ Keeffe (Cambridge, 2001), p. 92, ‘ðe us bec segað’. See also ASC C, s. a. 1005 plague compared to Alfredian plagues, ASC A, s. a. 896. 40 See the C. Konshuh, ‘Anræd in their Unræd: the Æthelredian Annals (983–1016) and their Presentation of the King and Advisors’, English Studies 97.2 (2016), 140–62, at 141–43. 37 38

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The contemporary resonance of this passage is very strong. Ælfric’s insertion of the biblical admonition that those who take counsel properly will not have to repent their actions subsequently must surely have recalled to its audience the king’s own penitential stance after 993.42 The diplomatic record for the 993 Council of Winchester makes the king express his profound penitence for the wrongdoing of his youth, which took place after the loss of Bishop Æthelwold’s wise guidance after his death. This sentiment of regret for prior actions is repeated in a number of charters dating from the 990s, sometimes implicating his advisers in his poor decisions.43 Ælfric’s extended treatment here of good rulership, which combined strictures concerning the king’s taking of counsel with comments on the need for a king to defend his people even at the expense of his own life with pointed remarks on how a king should not be cruel, is to be read as a barely concealed censuring of Æthelred himself. Ælfric, in his Old English De Duodecim Abusivis, places together two admonitions of the ninth abuse, the unjust king, that a king should have wise councillors and should refrain from anger. In the Latin text these statements occur separately in a long list of admonitions.44 However, Ælfric writes: ‘Wise men must advise him and he must not be prone to anger.’45 It is tempting to see a connection between this comment and Ælfric’s exhortations to the bishops and teachers to speak out and not to be intimidated. In a revised version of one sermon in his first series of Catholic Homilies which was probably reworked between 1002 and 1006, Ælfric urges ‘good shepherds’ to speak out and resist intimidation; in the

Homilies, ed. Pope, no. IX, I, 372–92: 380–81: ‘He sealde eac bysne soðlice mid þam, þæt witan sceolon cyðan heora word openlice, and þa ðe manegum rædaþ, na mid runungum, for ðan þe manega magon maran ræd findan þonne ænlypige magon mid agenum gewille. Be þam ylcan us manað Godes wisdom on bocum: Omnia cum consilio fac, et post factum no pænitebis: Gefada ealle þing fægere mid geþeahte, and æfter þære dæde þe ne ofðingþ nan þing. Ne se wita ne sceal his wisdom behydan, gif he ræd cunne, swa swa hit cwyð be þam ... And þæs behofað se cyning þæt he clypige to his witum, and be heora ræde, na be rununge fare, for þan þe se cyning is Cristes sylfes speligend ofer ðam Cristenan folce þe Crist folce þe Crist sylf alysde...þæt he hi healdan sceol[e], mid þæs folces fultume, wi[ð] onfeohtend[n]e here, and him sige biddan æt þam soðan Hælende, ... Ælc cyning bið halig þe gehylt Godes folc, and mid lufe gewissað, na mid wælhreownysse, ac æfre æfter rihte, na mid anwilnysse, and wyle eac syllan, gif hit swa micel neod bið, his agen lif æt nextan for his leode ware ...’; I, 373 for dating; translation from C. A. Butcher, God of Mercy Ælfric’s Sermons and Theology (Macon, 2006), pp. 91–92 (with changes). See also, Homilies, ed. Pope no. XVIII, lines 169–88 on the need for teachers to speak out. 42 Ecclesiastes 37: 24. 43 Roach, Æthelred, p. 151–52. 44 Clayton, Two Ælfric Texts, p. 187, lines 270–72. 45 Clayton, Two Ælfric Texts, pp. 128–29: ‘Witan him sceolon rædan and he ne sceal beon weamod.’ 41



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same sermon he advocates that the witan ‘desire what is just and remain firm in their counsel’.46 Ælfric’s disquiet at the inner workings of the council is expressed elsewhere in condemnations of illegitimate laws and corrupt judgments. The council had failed in its principal functions – it had passed bad laws which transgressed divine law, rather than upholding and enforcing it: But here in the English nation we feebly keep the laws God established to guide and instruct all those who love him. Instead, we create for ourselves new laws entirely different from those God himself taught. These laws are contrary to God’s laws and to those of all the councillors who lived before us.47

This sermon is likely to have been composed between 1005 and 1010.48 Another sermon composed at this time (discussed further below) includes exhortations to just judgment and warns the witan of the God’s condemnation of those who act wrongly in their judicial duties.49 The themes of unjust judgments and transgressive lawmaking reoccur in the writings of Wulfstan. The archbishop, like the abbot, regarded the deliberations of the council as compromised by bad behaviour. He condemned treachery, duplicity and hypocrisy on the part of the councillors. His sermon On Justice, Virtue and the Law, probably preached to Cnut and the Council of Oxford in 1018, is the most eloquent on the subject of the wicked laws and the divided and divisive councils of Æthelred. Addressing the secular leaders at the council, Wulfstan sternly reminds them that they should not ‘twist injustice into justice or pronounce unjust rulings harmful to the poor’. ‘Too widely and for too long,’ he says, have God’s laws been reviled and his doctrines despised, and secular law has been horribly perverted in this realm on every side … Indeed, formerly treachery was everywhere greater than wisdom, and at that time he was considered wisest who was most devious and who understood most cunningly how to profess falsely that lies were truth and the unjust how to judge others to their detriment …

And he urges the assembly: let us all together, clerical and lay, become resolute before God and the world and have peace and harmony among ourselves according to God’s law … nor let us permit the devil to deceive or divide us, just as he often did at our previous assemblies.50

Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies The First Series Text, ed P. Clemoes, EETS SS 17 (Oxford, 1997), Appendix B, pp. 535–42, at 540: ‘hi riht wyllað and rædfæste beoð’. Discussed by Upchurch, ‘A Big Dog’. And see also Homilies, ed. Pope, no. XX, 654, probably composed 998x1005, and no. XVIII, lines 169–88. 47 Homilies, ed. Pope no. XIV, 520: ‘We wyrcað us sylfe eall-niwe gesetnyssa of ðam þe God sylf taehte, ongean his gesetnyssum, and ealra þaera witena þe waeron beforan us, ongean hy ealle we gað mid ure anwilnysse; as se weg hy fortredon mid teonfullum þeawum, and God sylfne forseon, swa swa we to swiðe doð.’ Trans. Butcher, God of Mercy, pp. 127–28. Homilies, ed. Pope, no. XIV. 48 Homilies, ed. Pope, II, 493. 49 Homilies, ed. Pope, no. XIII, 121. 50 Wulfstan Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit, ed. A. Napier (Berlin, 1883), no. L, pp. 266–74, at 267–68: ‘swa þæt hig wendan unrihte to rihte oððon undom gedeman earmum to yrmðe … hit wæs nu lange, þæt wæron to wide godes laga laðe and lara forsawne, and woroldlaga syndan innan þysan earde wraðe forhwyrfde on æghwylcan ende … and þæt we ealle gemænelice, gehadede and læwede, anræde weorðan for gode and for worolde and habban us gemæne sibbe and some æfter godes rihte … and ne læton us deofol dweljan ne twæman swa swa he oft dyde ...; and see Political Writings, ed. Rabin, no. 6, pp. 143–53, at 147, p. 151 for translation. On the dating, see Wormald, Making, pp. 335–36. 46

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Wulfstan’s denunciations of dishonesty and deceitfulness echo similar words in a sermon on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, where he rails against those who speak other than they think – words presumably targeted at Æthelred’s leading men.51 Ælfric and Wulfstan enjoyed in one way or another the ear of powerful men: Wulfstan as an archbishop through his position at court and Ælfric through his patrons and, no doubt, through the reputation established by his writings. Both concur in seeing something very wrong in the royal council’s performance of its responsibilities. This sense of Æthelred’s witan as failing in its duties can be seen, too, in the account of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which deliberately highlights the witan’s role.52 Behind the Chronicle’s explicit narrative of failure and betrayal by Æthelred’s leading men lies a more complex and ambiguous one concerning the king. The Chronicle only once comments directly on Æthelred, on his death, when it remarks ‘he had held his kingdom with great toil and difficulties as long as his life lasted’, a statement of studied equivocation, neither blame nor praise.53 Otherwise, he is remarkably absent, certainly by comparison with the treatment of previous kings in earlier sections of the Chronicle.54 The Æthelredian annalist did, however, foreground the operation of the king with his council. Its narrative is punctuated by the actions of the king and council, all of which concern either the decision to pay tribute (s.a. 994, 1002, 1006, 1011) or military strategy which ended in disaster. This repeated naming of the king and council with regard to a set of unsuccessful initiatives and to the highly controversial policy of tribute is designed to build a damning picture of the malfunctioning of the council under Æthelred. It culminates in the years 1009–11. In 1009, after an attempt to muster a great naval force was sabotaged by a revolt of the magnate Wulfnoth, the council cannot even meet to decide on what to do – the situation was so ‘rædleas’ (lacking in counsel) that the king, his ealdormen and councillors simply retreated home, unable to convene. In the following annal, for 1010, the Chronicler describes how the Viking army was able to roam and ravage freely while the English forces were always in the wrong place. The king summoned the council to him for deliberations, but ‘if anything was then decided, it did not last even a month’.55 This crescendo of failed counsel climaxes in the annal for 1011, when the Chronicler, having described how the Vikings had overrun East Anglia, along with much of the Midlands and the South, state: Ealle þas ungesælða us gelumpon þuruh unrædas þæt man nolde him a timan gafol beodon oþþe wið gefeohtan ...56 (All those disasters befell us through bad policy, in that they were never offered tribute in time nor fought against …).57

Here the Chronicler makes explicit his judgement of the king and the council, whose deliberations on precisely the issues of defence and tribute he had foregrounded with such insistence. And the use of the word ‘unræd’ here must be a conscious The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. D. Bethurum (Oxford, 1957), no. IX pp. 189–91. Konshuh, ‘Anræd’, 142–43. 53 ASC C, s. a. 1016, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. O’Brien O’ Keeffe, p. 101: ‘he geheold his rice mid myclum gewince 7 earfoðnessum þa hwile ðe his lif wæs’. Translation from English Historical Documents c. 500–1042, ed. D. Whitelock, 2nd edn (London, 1979), p. 249. 54 Konshuh, ‘Anræd’, 142–43. 55 ASC C, s. a. 1009, 1010; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. O’Brien O’ Keeffe, pp. 92–95, at 95: ‘ac þeah mon þonne hwæt rædde þæt ne stod furðon ænne monað’. Translation from English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, p. 243. 56 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. O’Brien O’ Keeffe, p. 95. 57 ASC C, s. a. 1011; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. O’Brien O’ Keeffe, p. 95. Translation from English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, p. 244. 51

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choice, an allusion to the king’s name, Æthelred and its meaning ‘Noble Counsel’. Ælfric, too, exploits the royal resonance of the word ‘ræd’ and its compounds in his critiques of royal rule, for example in his use of ‘misræde’ in describing the afflictions of poor kingship quoted above.58 These contemporary condemnations of the king and his council, with their deliberate play on his name, must prompt the question about the origins of the Æthelred’s byname Unræd. Unræd can be interpreted in two ways, as ‘no counsel’ or, more negatively and more probably, as ‘ill advised’.59 The earliest known record of this byname was a Latin allusion to ‘no counsel’ penned by Walter Map in the 1180s; vernacular forms of the name appear only in the early thirteenth century. The late record of the name has persuaded most historians that it was not a contemporary coinage.60 In 2009, however, Tom Licence drew attention to an earlier Latin citation in the Miracles of St Edmund, written by the Bury monk Herman the Archdeacon. Herman completed the Miracles by 1098 but may have composed the pre-Conquest section in the 1070s. Herman describes how Æthelred, on learning of Swein’s invasion in 1013, took counsel of his nobles and fled to Normandy. Edelredus, set et pauperrimo primam et ut ita dicam nullo resistendi consilio fretus… Normanniam petit. (Æthelred…but after taking advice from the least worthy of his nobles and finding himself, so to speak, unready to resist…fled to Normandy)..61

It is worth noting that Herman’s punning allusion refers both to the quality of the men from whom he sought advice and to the king’s failure to put up an effective resistance to the Vikings. This eleventh-century reference considerably strengthens the probability that the byname originated before the Conquest, and perhaps even in the king’s own day. Æthelred and his contemporaries were highly conscious of the meaning of Old English personal names and attached some significance to moral qualities embedded in them. In two charters from the year 995, for example, the diplomatic text comments on the meaning of a person’s name, in one to draw attention to the lack of fit between the name Æthelsige, ‘noble victory’, and the criminal character of its bearer.62 Byrhtferth’s Life of St Oswald bears witness to the contemporary custom in bestowing verbally playful bynames upon eminent figures. He alludes to the bynames of Archbishop Oda (Oda se Goda) and the ealdormen Æthelstan Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies the Second Series, ed. M. Godden, EETS SS 5 (Oxford,1979), no. XIX, 183, as Clayton, ‘Ælfric and Æthelred’, notes, pp. 71–72, 81–82. And see above p. 8, n. 35. 59 Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, p. 240. 60 Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, pp. 240–41; see also Roach, Æthelred, pp. 6–7; cf. Williams, Æthelred, p. 19; cf. C. Cubitt, ‘Folklore and Historiography: Oral Stories and the Writing of AngloSaxon History’, in Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West, ed. E. M. Tyler and R. Balzaretti (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 189–23, at 211–13; and eadem, ‘Personal Names, Identity and Family in Benedictine Reform England’, in Verwandtschaft, Name und soziale Ordnung (300–1000), ed. S. Patzold and K. Ubl (Berlin, 2014), pp. 223–42, at 228–29 arguing for a contemporary origin. On Old English bynames and nicknames, see G. Fellows-Jensen, ‘Bynames’, in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S. Keynes and D. Scragg (Oxford, 1999), pp. 77–78, who notes that they were rarely recorded before 1066. 61 Miracles of St Edmund in Herman the Archdeacon and Goscelin of Saint-Bertin Miracles of St Edmund, ed. T. Licence (Oxford, 2014), c. 4, 14; for the dating of this section, see pp. lv–lviii, revising that in Licence, ‘History and Hagiography in the Late Eleventh Century: the Life and Work of Herman the Archdeacon, Monk of Bury St Edmund’s’, EHR 124 (2009), 516–44, where attention was first drawn to the allusion (p. 544). 62 S 885 and S 886, Abingdon, ed. Kelly, no. 126, pp. 489–93; Keynes, Diplomas, p. 102. See too Wulfstan of Winchester: The Life of St Æthelwold, ed. M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1991), c. 9, pp. 14–15 and n. 1, p. 14, where Wulfstan gives a moralising etymology for Æthelwold. 58

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‘Half King’ and Æthelwine Amicus Dei, whose sobriquets in the first case deploy sound play and in the second two cases refer to qualities of those men linked to their names – Æthelstan’s political might and Æthelwine’s defence of the monasteries.63 Æthelstan’s nickname presumably riffs upon the fact that he bore the same name as the king Æthelstan, regarded as one of the greatest of Anglo-Saxon rulers, while Æthelwine’s nickname puns upon the meaning of his name, ‘Noble Friend’. These examples indicate a contemporary culture of wordplay upon Old English personal names which operated at the highest levels of society. The byname ‘Unræd’ fits nicely with this onomastic environment and directly addresses contemporary concerns; the issue of good counsel was also foregrounded in Æthelred’s charters of the 990s.64 The cumulative case for regarding the designation Æthelred Unræd as originating in the king’s own days or not long afterwards is therefore strong. Whatever the date of Æthelred’s byname, Unræd, the body of evidence for contemporary or near-contemporary criticism of the king is important and revealing. The negative judgements expressed by Ælfric, Wulfstan and the Chronicler go directly to the heart of early medieval ideas about good and bad kingship: wise rule was an essential characteristic of a good king, one which was closely linked to Christian virtue and obedience to God. A king needed to surround himself with virtuous and sagacious advisers. A king must defend his people militarily and protect them through just judgements; equity, mercy and the protection of the poor and vulnerable were also fundamental qualities.65 Although the censoring of Æthelred’s rule was often expressed by Ælfric and Wulfstan in abstract form as a set of ideals or transgressions of these, there is evidence of concrete and far-reaching complaints against the king. The Chronicle’s description of Æthelred’s negotiated return to the throne in 1014 is an important indicator of serious discontent with his rule. In 1013 the English submitted to Swein and Æthelred fled to Normandy. But Swein’s triumph was cut short by his death in February 1014. At this juncture the council sent to Æthelred to discuss his return: Then all the councillors who were in England, ecclesiastical and lay, determined to send for King Æthelred, and they said that no lord was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would govern them more justly than he did before. Then the king sent his son Edward hither with messengers, and bade them greet all his people, and said that he would be a gracious lord to them, and reform all the things which they all hated; and all the things that had been said and done against him should be forgiven, on condition that they all unanimously turned to him without treachery. And complete friendship was then established with oath and pledge on both sides, and they pronounced every Danish king an outlaw from England for ever. Then during the spring King Æthelred came home to his own people and he was gladly received by them all.66

63 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Life of St Oswald, in Byrhtferth of Ramsey The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2009), I. 1, pp. 10–11 and n. 9, III, 14, pp. 84–85 and n. 149, IV. 14, pp. 130–31. 64 P. Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England: Charters as Evidence’, in Law, Laity and Soliditarities, ed. P. Stafford, J. L. Nelson and J. Martindale (Manchester, 2001), pp. 68–82, at 74–75; Roach, Æthelred, pp. 151–52. 65 M. Clayton, ‘The Old English Promissio Regis’, ASE 37 (2008), 91–150; J. L. Nelson, ‘Bad Kingship in the Earlier Middle Ages’, HSJ 8 (1996), 1–26. 66 ASC C, s. a. 1014, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. O’Brien O’ Keeffe, pp. 98–99: ‘Þa geræddon þa witan ealle þe on Engla lande wæron, gehadode 7 læwede, þæt man æfter þam cyninge Æþelrede sende, 7 cwædon þæt him nan hlaford leofra nære þonne hiora gecynda hlaford, gif he hi rihtlicor healdan wolde þonne he ær dyde. Þa sende se cyning his sunu Eadweard hider mid his ærend(d)racum 7 het gretan ealne his leodscype 7 cwæð þæt he him hold hlaford beon wolde 7 ælc þæra ðinga betan þe hi ealle



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The Chronicler is generally credited here with giving a fairly faithful reportage and historians have not doubted that the king’s restoration was subject to a negotiated agreement.67 The annal signals profound discontent – the king had governed unjustly and was perceived to have committed abuses. On their part, the councillors and people were in need of an amnesty, occasioned by their acceptance of Swein as king, and perhaps also by other earlier treacheries. The disaffection signalled by this annal has been seen as part of the general deterioration of the kingdom in the closing years of the reign. Keynes stated that the complaints reflected ‘the strained conditions of the closing years of the reign when, perhaps, the interests of the country and of the individuals would not necessarily have coincided’.68 Roach emphasises the positive aspects of this passage – the councillors’ affirmation of their loyalty and love for the king, and the actual restoration of Æthelred as king.69 On the other hand, the evidence of contemporary sources may be read as signals of more complex and deeply rooted problems. In 1982 Pauline Stafford published a powerful analysis of this annal and Cnut’s lawcodes of 1018 and 1020 in which she argued for an intensification in the exaction of royal rights under Æthelred and possibly under his father, Edgar. She suggested that they were kings, ‘who exploited their rights of lordship to the full: who married widows and heiresses to gain allies; who took lands rightly belonging to other lords in the forfeitures of their thegns; who extended such forfeiture to the property of wives; who took unfair advantage of intestacy and did not always accept the due heriot as a guarantee of peaceful landholding; and whose activities in these areas were so assiduous that they appeared to be depriving many heirs of their rights’.70 This assessment of Æthelred’s style of government points to far-reaching tensions between the king and his people which go far beyond the pressures induced by Danish invasions in the king’s final decades.71 Stafford suggested that a lengthy section of the second law code of King Cnut, issued in 1020–21, might represent a kind of coronation charter issued by Cnut when he took the throne, which itself answered complaints made against the rule of Æthelred. A close textual analysis of Cnut’s second code suggests that clauses 69 to 83 form a self-contained unit which address abuses of lordship, predominantly of royal lordship.72 The code itself states: ‘Now this is the mitigation by means of which I desire to protect the general public in cases where, until now, they have been far too greatly oppressed.’73 The ensuing clauses concern unlawful demands by royal reeves for purveyance, excessive heriots, protection of the rights of those inheriting intestate property, protection of widows and unmarried women from forced ascunudon, 7 ælc þara ðinga forgyfen beon sceolde þe him gedon oþþe gecweden wære, wið þam ðe hi ealle anrædlice butan swicdom to him gecyrdon; 7 man þa fulne freondscipe gefæstnode mid worde 7 mid wedde on ægþre healfe, 7 æfre ælcne deniscne cyng utlah of Engla lande gecwædon. Þa com Æþelred cyning innon ðam Lengtene ham to his agenre þeode, 7 he glædlice fram him eallum onfangen wæs.’ Translation: EHD, pp. 246–47. 67 See P. Stafford, ‘The Laws of Cnut and the History of Anglo-Saxon Royal Promises’, ASE 10 (1982), pp. 173–90, at 188 and n. 67; Harmer AS Writs, 16 and App. 4, no. 3. 68 Keynes, Diplomas, p. 226. 69 Roach, Æthelred, pp. 295–96. 70 Stafford, ‘Laws of Cnut’, 189. 71 Cf S. Keynes, ‘Crime and Punishment in the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready’, in People and Places in Northern Europe 500–1600, ed. I. Wood and N. Lund (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 67–81, at 75–76. 72 Williams, Æthelred, pp. 124–26, Roach, Æthelred, pp. 294–96. 73 II Cnut, c. 69, Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, 356: ‘þis is þonne seo lihtinge, þe ic wylle eallon folce gebeorgan, þe hig þyson mid gedrehte wæron ealles to swyðe’. Translation from The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, ed. and trans. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1925), p. 209.

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marriages and other oppressions. In the characterisation of Stafford: ‘The chapters deal with heriots, widows, heirs, forfeitures, orphans and the passing on of land, and they are designed to protect a man’s landholding and inheritance from rapacious and arbitrary action.’74 Cnut’s statement that in his legislation he was seeking to redress earlier abuses must refer to the rule of Æthelred, and Stafford describes Cnut as casting aspersions upon his predecessor, possibly to delegitimise any claims to the throne by Æthelred’s heirs. A desire to cast the reign of Æthelred as that of a king with no regard for legality and the rights of his subjects is also manifest in Cnut’s settlement in 1018. When the English council met at Oxford in 1018 to establish peace with their Danish conqueror, they pledged allegiance to Cnut and to uphold the laws of King Edgar. The code issued by the council relates: In the first place, the councillors decreed that, above all other things, they would always honour one God and single-mindedly hold one Christian faith, and love King Cnut with due loyalty, and zealously observe the laws of Edgar.75

Wulfstan may have prepared the way for this statement by his preaching to the 1018 Oxford assembly. In his sermon On Justice, Virtue and the Law, quoted above, he railed against the disrespect for divine law and perversion of secular law under Æthelred.76 The pledge to follow the laws of Edgar was recorded in the AngloSaxon Chronicle and later recalled by Cnut in his proclamation of 1019–20, when he stated: ‘it is my will that all the nation, ecclesiastical and lay, shall steadfastly observe Edgar’s law which all men have chosen and sworn to at Oxford.’77 What is striking about this statement is the way Æthelred’s legislation is passed over, while the lawcode issued in 1018 in fact draws extensively on his laws. The legal corpus from Æthelred’s reign is rich and full; from 1008 it was drafted by Wulfstan, who in fact also composed the codes of 1018 and 1020–21. Why did Wulfstan draw a veil of silence over his own productions? The omission is particularly striking in the light of the long tradition of kings validating their own legislation by affirming and incorporating that of their predecessors. Alfred, as is well known, presented his own code as a reissuing and emendation of those of his predecessors.78 Claims to continuity in lawmaking played an important part in legitimating a new reign, particularly when the succession had been disrupted, for example by conquest. The twelfth-century preface to the Quadripartitus collection of English law claimed that Edward the Confessor had pledged to uphold the laws of Cnut when he returned to England from exile in 1041, an account which John Maddicott has shown should be taken seriously.79 Certainly, in 1065 Edward’s renewed commitment to the laws of Cnut was part of a deal to settle the northern rebellion in that year. William the Conqueror also affirmed his adherence to the laws of his predecessor, Edward, in a writ issued to the bishop, portreeve and burgesses of London shortly after his accession. The coronation edict of his son, Henry I, refers to the Stafford, ‘Laws of Cnut’, 178. A. G. Kennedy, ‘Cnut’s Law Code of 1018’, ASE 11 (1983), 57–81, at c. 1, 72: ‘Þonne is þæt ærest þæt witan geræddan. Þæt hi ofer ealle oðre þincg ænne god æfre wurðodon . 7 ænne cristendom anrædlice healdan . 7 cnut cyngc . lufian . mid rihtan. 7 mid trywðan. 7 eadgares lagan . geornlice folgian.’ 76 See above, p. 11. 77 ASC C, s. a. 1018. Councils and Synods with other Documents relating to the English Church, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 1981), 2 vols, I, no. 60, c. 13, 439: ‘ic wylle þæt eal þeodscype, gehadode 7 læwede, fæstlice Eadgares lage healde, þe ealle men habbað gecoren 7 to gesworen on Oxenaforda’. 78 Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, 46; and see I, 208, IV Edgar 2a. 79 J. R. Maddicott, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Return to England in 1041’, EHR 119 (2004), 650–66. 74 75



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Conqueror’s own adoption and emendation of those laws in promising to restore them after the abuses of William Rufus’s reign.80 These reaffirmations of the English legal tradition served to establish the new ruler as a just and legitimate king. The failure to mention the laws of Æthelred is striking when contrasted with the actions of Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror and Henry I. It expresses more than a desire to uphold and restore the ‘good old law’ as represented by that of King Edgar: it is a deliberate writing out of Æthelred from the legal tradition and therefore a damnatio memoriae of this king. In other ways, Cnut was at pains to maintain continuity with English rule, seen, for example, in his marriage to Æthelred’s widow, Emma, and in his reliance upon Archbishop Wulfstan as a prominent royal agent and as the author of his own laws.81 Some confirmation that Æthelred’s own laws were seen by contemporaries as unjust can be found in the code which he issued in 1014 on his return to rule. The agreement to govern more justly between the king and his councillors, recorded in the Chronicle, was given more concrete form in a set of royal ordinances. Of these, only one, an ecclesiastical code drafted by Wulfstan, survives but it was likely accompanied by a secular code. This lost code may very well have set out the alleviations to abuses of lordship found in Cnut’s code of 1020; indeed, Cnut may have taken these over from the 1014 code.82 The ecclesiastical regulations of the surviving 1014 code explicitly criticise Æthelred’s legal practice: But in assemblies since the days of Edgar, though advisedly they have been upheld in places of note, the laws of Christ have been neglected and the laws of the king disregarded.83

The following clause expands this criticism by making the specific allegation that, contrary to earlier custom, the dues from secular legal penalties were no longer divided between the king and the church as they had been previously.84 The code concludes with an affirmation of earlier royal legislation: But let us do what is our duty, let us take as our example what the secular authorities of old wisely decreed – Æthelstan and Edmund and Edgar, who came last – how they honoured God and kept his law and rendered tribute to him, as long as they lived.85

The explicit disapproval expressed here of Æthelred’s laws lies behind the archbishop’s rhetoric in his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, where he speaks of the deterioration of the ‘the laws of the people’ (‘folclaga’), listing abuses which include the violation of church rights, the maltreatment of widows, especially forced marriages, oppression of the poor and the violation of the rights of freemen and slaves. Later in the sermon he condemns the ‘very base laws and shameful tributes’ which anger God.86 Wulfstan was joined in his condemnation of the king’s law by Ælfric, who in two ASC D, s. a. 1065; G. Garnett, Conquered England Kingship, Succession, and Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 9–24, 105–20; Stafford, ‘Laws of Cnut’, 187–89. 81 P. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith (Oxford, 1997), pp. 226–31. 82 Stafford, ‘Laws of Cnut’, 174–83; Wormald, Making, pp. 346–66. 83 VIII Æthelred, c. 37, Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, 267: ‘Ac on þam gemotan, þeah rædlice wurðan on namcuðan stowan, æfter Eadgares lifdagum, Cristes lage wanodan, 7 cyninges laga litledon.’ Translation from The Laws, ed. Robertson, p. 127. 84 VIII Æthelred, c. 38, Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, p. 267. 85 VIII Æthelred, c. 43, Gesetze, ed. Liebermann, I, p. 268: ‘Ac uton don swa us þea[r]f is: uton niman us to bisnan þæt ærran worldwitan to ræde geræddon, Æþelstan 7 Eadmund 7 Eadgar, þe nihst wæs, hu hi God weorðodon 7 Godes lage heoldon 7 Godes gafel læstan, þa hwile þe hi leofodon.’ Translation from The Laws, ed. Robertson, p. 129. 86 Homilies, ed. Bethurum, no. XX, 268–75, at 271: ‘Ful earhlice laga 7 scandlice nydgyld’. Translation from English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, p. 932. 80

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sermons dating to around 1005–10 denounced the laws of his own day as contrary to those of God and those passed by previous royal councils. He excoriated the wealthy and powerful for their oppression of the poor through excessive demands of labour and other resources.87 There was, then, a contemporary perception of Æthelred as an oppressive ruler who promulgated unjust laws, expressed not only in Wulfstan’s writings but also by his contemporary Ælfric. The presentation of Æthelred as an unjust ruler and the rejection of his legislation may lie behind the uneven transmission of his lawcodes – perhaps some laws were deliberately expunged.88 One might speculate further that Wulfstan’s great dual code for Cnut, the summation of his legislative career, was occasioned by the need to reinstate and reissue his previous regulations published under Æthelred. Wulfstan’s own position is puzzling. Having been a prominent figure at Æthelred’s court, he rapidly transferred his services to Cnut; his repudiation of his previous master’s laws sits oddly with the fact that he himself drafted many of them. These apparent contradictions can be resolved, if only speculatively. One can compare Wulfstan’s role under Æthelred with that played, according to William of Malmesbury, by Archbishop Anselm in the reign of William Rufus: William describes how the archbishop rallied support for King William, lecturing his magnates on the perils of disloyalty in return for the king’s promise to pass good laws.89 Contemporaries judged Æthelred’s rulership severely, regarding him as a king whose council was riven by dissent and duplicity, incapable of carrying out its essential function of devising a successful strategy for the defence of the realm. At the end of his reign and in its immediate aftermath he was condemned for his oppressive rule and unjust government. Stafford suggested that this criticism arose in response to his harsh exploitation of his royal rights. It is possible that such profound discontent was occasioned by the catastrophic conditions of the king’s final years. On the other hand, the abuses indicated in Stafford’s analysis of II Cnut are more indicative of a style of rulership than of emergency measures.90 The problems of the reign are likely to have more deeply rooted causes. The following section examines the claims that the middle phase of the reign, the 990s, was a period of successful rule, and argues instead that it was a crucial decade in which Æthelred’s ability to govern was fundamentally called into question. The Viking attacks of the final decade of the reign, from 1006–16, were the final blow which led to the conquest of England by Swein and Cnut. However, these were the culmination of earlier attacks which had given the Danish invaders dominance in the West Saxon heartlands and South and had deeply demoralised English resistance.91 The concentration by historians on the final defeat of the English in the last decade of Æthelred’s life and the overturning of the West Saxon dynasty downplays Homilies, ed. Pope, nos. XIII, XIV. And see above/below. For the transmission of Æthelred’s laws see, Wormald, Making, pp. 320–66 and https://earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk. The comparison with the multiple transmission of I–II Cnut is instructive. 89 Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, 55. 11β; see Kemp, ‘Advising’, 70. 90 Stafford, ‘Laws of Cnut’, 189–90. 91 For discussion of Viking attacks, see N. Lund, ‘The Danish Perspective’, and R. Abels, ‘English Tactics, Strategy and Military Organization in the Late Tenth Century’, in The Battle of Maldon AD 991, ed. D. Scragg (Oxford, 1991), pp. 114–42, 143–55; R. Abels, ‘English Logistics and Military Administration, 871–1066: the Impact of the Viking Wars’, in Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective, AD 1–1300, ed. A. N. Jørgensen and B. L. Clausen (Copenhagen, 1997), pp. 257–65; idem, ‘Paying the Danegeld: Anglo-Saxon Peacemaking with Vikings’, in War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History, ed. P. de Souza and J. France (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 173–92; N. Lund, ‘Peace and Non-Peace in the Viking Age – Ottar in Biarmaland, the Rus in Byzantium, and Danes and Norwegian in England’, in Proceedings of the Tenth Viking Congress, Larkollen, Norway 1985, ed. J. E. Knirk (Oslo, 87 88



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the extent of devastation wrought by Viking harrying in the 990s and early eleventh century, and also the critical strategic advances made at this time. There are two crucial changes here, firstly the Viking ability to penetrate deeply inland through the river networks and to harry over wide areas, and secondly the establishment of winter camps, which enhanced their freedom of movement, enabled them to replenish their supplies from local resources and increased their capabilities. The depth of Viking penetration inland is a consistent concern in the Chronicle’s record of Viking attack. The damage of the early attacks in the 980s was largely confined to the coast and river estuaries. The 991 campaign differed in scale – Olaf Tryggavason attacked with ninety-three ships – but not in type; it was the terror aroused by the coastal attacks that resulted in the decision to pay tribute.92 But in 994 Olaf and Swein reached London and then ravaged along the coast and into Essex, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire, before gaining increased mobility by seizing horses.93 In 999 the Chronicle bitterly reports how the failure to halt the Viking forces which gained access to Kent via the Thames and Medway allowed them to take horses and ravage as they pleased in West Kent. It records a similar story in 1001, when, despite a bloody battle at Dean in Hampshire, the Danes were able to advance into Devon, proceed inland via the River Exe and eventually over-winter on the Isle of Wight, where they were able to ‘go about as they pleased’ without hindrance ‘no matter how far inland they went’.94 The bitter tone of the annal for 1006 underlies the fear engendered by the Viking armies’ ability to move unchecked around the kingdom. The annal describes the arrival of a large army which was able ‘go about as it pleased’, over-wintering in the Isle of Wight, roaming at will even in the winter through Berkshire and Hampshire, pausing at Cuckhamsley Barrow, where it had been said ‘that if they went to Cuckhamsley they would never get to the sea’.95 Historians have stressed the symbolic significance of the site, indicated by the Chronicler’s allusion to a popular saying. However, the real force of this saying lies in the fact that the Vikings were able to penetrate so far inland and still regain their ships with impunity.96 The 1011 annal simply lists the seventeen areas which the Vikings had over-run, letting its catalogue speak for itself.97 The human cost and economic impact of Viking harrying was immense.98 The destruction of major defensive and economic centres hit both at the capacity of the English to defend themselves and at their economic prosperity. The list of significant and lesser centres is long (nearly twenty between 980 and 1016), and 1987), pp. 255–69. R. Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars: Sources and Interpretations of Anglo-Saxon Warfare in the Viking Age (Woodbridge, 2010); Keynes, ‘Re-reading’, pp. 80–81. 92 ASC C, s. a.991; S. D. Keynes, ‘The Historical Context of the Battle of Maldon’, The Battle of Maldon, ed. Scragg, pp. 81–113, at 88–91; see also N. Brooks, ‘Treason in Essex in the 990s: the Case of Æthelric of Bocking’, in Royal Authority in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. G. R. Owen-Crocker and B. W. Schneider (Oxford, 2013), pp. 17–27, at 18–19. 93 ASC C, s. a. 994. 94 ASC C, s. a. 1001; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. O’Brien O’ Keeffe, p. 89: ‘ðær him ferdon abutan swa swa hi sylf woldan ... ne eodon hi swa feor up’. Translation from English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, p. 238. 95 ASC C, s. a. 1006; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. O’Brien O’ Keeffe, p. 91: ‘gif hi Cwicelmeshlæw gesohton þæt hi næfre to sæ gan ne scoldon ...’. 96 G. Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450–900 (London, 2003), p. 157; Lavelle, AEthelred, pp. 108–9; Roach, Æthelred, pp. 217–18; T. J. T. Williams, ‘Landscape and Warfare in AngloSaxon England and the Viking Campaign of 1006’, EME 23 (2015), 329–59. Williams, Æthelred, pp. 76–77 also emphasizes the strategic importance of Wallingford, Cholsey and Winchester. 97 ASC C, s. a. 1011. 98 On ravaging, see Halsall, Warfare and Society, pp. 138–41. On Viking warfare, see G. Williams, ‘Raiding and Warfare’, in The Viking World, ed. S. Brink and N. Price (London, 2008), pp. 193–203.

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includes Southampton, London, Exeter, Norwich and Thetford. The relocation of moneyers from Ilchester to South Cadbury and from Wilton to Salisbury is indicative of urban disruption.99 Possibly other centres such as London and Oxford were able to recover comparatively quickly, but the effect of ravaging on the agricultural economy was likely to have been devastating. The Chronicle records burning, slaughter and the capture of local inhabitants.100 The destruction wrought must have included the deliberate burning of fields and pasture, and possibly of woodland, and the seizure of cattle and other livestock.101 Studies of later medieval environmental warfare – during the early fourteenth-century Scots wars – have emphasised the enduring damage resulting from ravaging. The burning of fields not only destroyed the current year’s harvest and injured the next through the lack of seed, but also eroded the soil and reduced fertility.102 According to the Chronicle, the effects of the ravaging wrought by northerners in revolt against Edward the Confessor in summer 1064 were felt for years afterwards.103 The Chronicle record for Æthelred’s reign does not allow us to gauge the intensity of Viking harrying. Certain areas were attacked repeatedly: the coastal regions of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset, and parts of Kent, for example. The annal for 1010 describes how, following failed resistance by the men of Cambridgeshire, the Danes controlled East Anglia, ‘ravaged and burnt that county for three months and even went into the wild fens, slaying the men and cattle, and burning throughout the fens …’.104 Agricultural resources in the vicinity of Viking camps were also depleted by the invaders’ own need for provisions. The winter camp on the Isle of Wight was sustained by supplies from Hampshire and Sussex in 998 and that on the Thames in 1009 by produce from Essex and the neighbouring shires.105 The extent of the damage done by Viking depredation is indicated by the scale of tribute paid to prevent further action, from the first payment of £10,000 in 991 to £48,000 in 1012.106 According to the Chronicle, in 1004 Ulfcetel, unable to rally his army speedily enough to resist Swein’s attack on East Anglia, decided to pay tribute immediately to prevent further devastation.107 The Chronicler did not need to spell out for his audience the details of the damage; the laconic annals refer briefly to burning and slaughter but rarely elaborate upon this.108 However, the homiletic sources are more eloquent: famine, agricultural dearth and pestilence become something of a refrain in the writings of Ælfric and Wulfstan. Ælfric’s De duodecim abusivis lists ravaging, famine, pestilence and bad weather as the consequences of evil rulership. In the Prayer of Moses he comments that disease and hunger afflicted the English after the death of Edgar and inserts a paraphrase of Leviticus describing God’s threatened punishment to Southampton (980), St Petroc’s (981), London (982), Watchet (988), Bamburgh (993), Tavistock (997), Teignton, Pinhoe, Clyst, Waltham (1001), Exeter (1003), Wilton (1003), Thetford (1004), Wallingford (1006), Oxford (1009), Thetford, Cambridge (1010), Northampton (1011). Williams, Æthelred, p. 56, Roach, Æthelred, pp. 202, 232–33. 100 For example, ASC C, s. a. 980, 997, 1001, 1006, 1010. 101 P. Slavin, ‘Warfare and Ecological Destruction in Early Fourteenth-Century British Isles’, Environmental History 19 (2014), 528–50. 102 R. Lomas, ‘The Impact of Border Warfare: the Scots and South Tweedside, c. 1290–c. 1520’, Scottish Historical Review 75 (1996), 143–67; Slavin, ‘Warfare’. 103 ASC D, s. a. 1065. 104 ASC C, s. a. 1010; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. O’Brien O’ Keeffe, p. 94: ‘þone eard .iii. monþas heregodon 7 bærndon, ge fyrðon on þa wildan fennas hi ferdon ...’. Translation from English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, p. 243. 105 ASC C, s. a. 998, 1009. 106 Discussed below, p. 22–4. 107 ASC C, s. a.1004. 108 For example, ASC C, s. a. 997, 1001, 1006. 99



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Moses of agricultural infertility and enemy devastation of land and towns. A Latin tract, the De Tribulationibus, transmitted in the early eleventh-century part of the manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Ms 190, associated with Wulfstan, speaks of famine, fire and slaughter, and of thousands killed and captured.110 Dearth and famine, murrain and pestilence are all listed by Wulfstan in his lament on the present age in the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos. Here he follows the affliction of heavy taxes with crop failures caused by inclement weather. His catalogue of miseries runs from Viking devastation, to oppressive taxes and tributes, to agricultural dearth.111 A remarkable insight into the agricultural disasters of the English is found in his apocalyptic sermon, ‘According to Luke’, possibly composed after the pestilence of 1005. This also alludes to agricultural hardships in its description of the revolt of the earth, God’s creation, against Anglo-Saxon sin: ‘heaven strives against us when it sternly sends us storms that greatly injure cattle and land. The earth strives against us when it withholds earthly fruits and sends us too many weeds.’112 It is not fanciful to see this as a contemporary reference to the effects of ravaging – soil erosion and the loss of fertility. The reference to weeds signals real problems in agricultural productivity perhaps occasioned by a lack of man power resulting from Viking attack or by famine: unless regularly eradicated through intensive labour, weeds rapidly get out of control and render land unfit for farming and can cause disease in livestock.113 The defence of the realm was a fundamental aspect of early medieval kingship.114 Æthelred’s conduct of war was clearly found wanting.115 The inability of the royal council to organise a consistent and timely response to attacks is one of the Chronicler’s main themes. But the failings of government went beyond collective responsibility in council, to the king’s own personal qualities; the absence of Æthelred in the field of battle is a glaring silence in the annals. Battle was a high-risk strategy: defeat could be devastating, but victory did not necessarily yield long-term success, particularly when your enemy was not a homogeneous force.116 It was particularly dangerous for army leaders who were deliberately targeted – as Harold was, for example, at Hastings.117 This insight underlines the force of Ælfric’s statement that a king should be willing to risk his life for his people. Æthelred’s delegation of military leadership placed the lives of his ealdormen and other generals on the line.118 Were the shock waves generated by Byrhtnoth’s death at Maldon occasioned as much by the perception of a self-serving policy on the part of the king as by the loss of the ealdorman?119 Although the king is known from the Chronicle to have 109

Two Ælfric Texts, ed. Clayton, 130–31; Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. W. W. Skeat, 2 vols, EETS OS 76, 82 (Oxford, 1881, 1885), I, no. XIII, 284–95. 110 Keynes, ‘An Abbot’, 175. 111 Homilies, ed. Bethurum, no. XX, 268–72. 112 Homilies, ed. Bethurum no. III, 123–27, at 125: ‘Seo heofene us winð wið þonne heo us sendeð styrnlice stormas 7 orf 7 æceras swyðe amyrreð. Seo eorðe us winð wið þonne heo forwyrneð eorðlices wæstmas 7 us unweoda to fela asendað.’ Translation from http://webpages.ursinus.edu/jlionarons/Wulfstan//frameset1.html. For the dating, see Cubitt, ‘On Living’, pp. 211–14. 113 M. Bailey, ‘After the Black Death: Society, Economy and the Law in Fourteenth-Century England’, The James Ford Lectures, 25 January 2019. 114 Nelson, ‘Bad Kingship’. 115 Abels, Æthelred, pp. 60–62. 116 Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 202–3. 117 Halsall, Warfare and Society, pp. 136–62, 177–214, especially at 137–45, 154–62; J. Gillingham, ‘William the Bastard at War’, and ‘Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages’, in AngloNorman Warfare, ed. M. Strickland (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 143–60, 194–207. 118 For the question of regional versus national levies, see Williams, Æthelred, pp. 78, 101–4. 119 See also, Brooks, ‘Treason’, pp. 24–25. 109

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led the army on four occasion, two of these instances seem to have been harrying campaigns, a less perilous form of warfare.120 Given the hazards of battle, the desire of Ealdorman Ælfric of Hampshire to avoid the fight in 1003 and his pretence of sickness is perhaps more intelligible. Contemporary complaints concerning Æthelred’s absence on the field of battle and his delegation of military leadership are reflected in Ælfric’s tract Wyrdwriteras us secgað, composed in the early eleventh century. Here Ælfric justifies the delegation of military leadership by use of historical examples, citing figures from King David to the emperors Constantine, Gratian and Theodosius.121 This tract illustrates something of the complexity of the situation and may reveal real discontent and upheaval arising from it. Given his insistence on a king’s duty in defence of his kingdom, Ælfric’s apologia for the delegation of military command appears contradictory. However, he is unlikely to have approved of royal ministers who refused to follow the king’s order and he probably composed the tract to advocate obedience to royal orders. In the tract, Ælfric uses a series of biblical episodes concerning King David, a figure famed for his penance and therefore almost certainly associated with Æthelred.122 For example, one such episode records how David’s followers urged the king not to fight his enemy lest the people lose their king through the encounter. Another may respond to Anglo-Saxon unrest, as it recounts how Sheba was killed for inciting rebellion against David.123 Ælfric’s choice of these passages is very deliberate, stressing the dangers to the people if the king were to die in battle, and the second apparently underlining with biblical authority the punishment for disobedience to a king. Ælfric’s Wyrdwriteras indicates that the king’s reluctance to lead the English army provoked complaint and criticism. It is likely that Æthelred’s other chief strategies to ward off Viking attack, the hiring of mercenaries and the payment of tribute, were also unpopular because they resulted in a hefty burden of taxation. William the Conqueror was fiercely censured in the Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for his greed and avarice in the imposition of taxation.124 Archbishop Ealdred of York is said to have cursed the king for his excessive taxation.125 In 1041 the raising of £32,147 for a naval and land force by Harthacnut prompted the citizens of Worcester to murder his tax collector; the Chronicle describes this as a ‘severe tax’.126 Taxation did not make a king popular.127 The costs of paying tribute to buy off Viking attack and geld to hire mercenaries were immense. The Chronicle records payments of tribute in 991, 994, 1002, 1007 and 1012 totalling £137,000. In addition to this, the annal for 1014 reports that Æthelred paid Thorkel £21,000 in order to

ASC C, s. a. 1000 (ravaging in Cumbria), 1009 (two military expeditions), 1014 (ravaging in Lindsey). And cf. Williams, Æthelred, p. 96, Roach, Æthelred, pp. 181–82; Lavelle, AEthelred, p. 81, cites 986 and 1014 as occasions for battle but the Chronicle reports these as harryings; and see p. 97 for Æthelred’s leadership. 121 Homilies, ed. Pope, no. XXII, 725–33. Discussed by Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 206–8 who sees Ælfric as defending the delegation of military leadership, Williams, Æthelred, p. 104, Clayton, ‘Ælfric and Æthelred’, pp. 82–85. 122 On David and Æthelred, see Cubitt, ‘Politics’, 189–90. 123 II Samuel 21: 15–17, II Samuel 20: 1–22. 124 ASC E, s. a. 1087. 125 Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum iii. 116.1, I, 384–85; D. Bates, William the Conqueror (London, 2016), pp. 310–11. 126 ASC C and E, s.a. 1041. 127 S. Coupland, ‘The Frankish Tribute Payments to the Vikings and their Consequences’, Francia 26 (1999), 57–75, at 71. 120



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recruit his forces as mercenaries. These figures are so astronomically high that they have been challenged. John Gillingham argued that the comparison with sums raised by thirteenth-century taxation indicates that they must be an exaggeration.129 On the whole, Anglo-Saxon historians tend to accept the Chronicle figures as accurate, particularly in the light of the scale of the coinage indicated by numismatic evidence.130 It is likely that the actual cost was higher, with the possibility of unrecorded payments for Danish mercenaries and of local payments of tribute made in different regions to alleviate their situation. What was the effect of raising revenue on this scale? In an article published in 1984 Lawson brought together the fragmentary evidence for how such sums might have been collected.131 The responsibility for payment fell on both church and laity, including apparently the king himself.132 A rare piece of evidence survives in a charter dating to 994 concerning the sale of an estate at Monks Risborough, Buckinghamshire to the Bishop of Dorchester by Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury to raise silver and gold to pay off the Viking attackers who were threatening to destroy Canterbury cathedral.133 The will of Archbishop Ælfric of Canterbury stipulated his absolution of debts incurred by the peoples of Kent, Surrey and Middlesex, probably to meet tribute payments.134 When Archbishop Ælfheah was seized by the Vikings in 1011 he refused to allow ransom to be paid. Thietmar of Merseburg thought that Ælfheah was unable to pay and was killed for failing to fulfil a promise. Osbern of Canterbury, in the later eleventh century, claimed that he had refused to sell relics.135 William of Malmesbury reports that Abbot Brihtwold of Malmesbury was forced to alienate estates to raise money for a heavy geld. In addition to raising cash by the sale, mortgaging or lease of lands, churchmen could choose to liquidate the assets locked up in the ornamentation of churches: according to Hemming, Worcester was forced to melt down crucifixes and break up goblets to meet a tribute demanded as a result of Swein’s attacks.136 None of this evidence suggests that payments were made with ease or that the resulting financial pressure had its effect only late in the reign. Archbishop Sigeric was forced to raise a mortgage in 994, while Archbishop Ælfric’s will can be dated to 1002x1005. These are responses by wealthy churchmen, the custodians of great ecclesiastical estates with access-ready bullion locked up in precious adornments; the laity may have suffered more grievously, especially as it seems that the penalty for failure to pay up on time was the forfeiture of estates.137 Some, Lawson suggests, may have been forced to sell to raise funds, while others, wealthier and more fortunate, may have been able to take advantage of their 128

Williams, Æthelred, pp. 151–53; M. K. Lawson, ‘The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Aethelred II and Cnut’, EHR 99 (1984), 721–38. 129 J. Gillingham, ‘“The Most Precious Jewel in the English Crown”: Levels of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Early Eleventh Century’, EHR 104 (1989), 373–384. M. K. Lawson, ‘Collection’, 721–38, ‘“Those Stories Look True”: Levels of Taxation in the Reigns of Aethelred II and Cnut’, EHR 104 (1989), 385–406, ‘Danegeld and Heregeld Once More’, EHR 105 (1990), 951–61. 130 M. Blackburn and K. Jonsson, ‘The Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman Element of North European Coin Finds’, in Viking-Age Coinage in the Northern Lands, ed. M. A. S. Blackburn and D. M. Metcalf (Oxford, 1981), 2 vols, I, pp. 147–255. 131 Lawson, ‘Collection’. 132 S 912, S 943; Lawson, ‘Collection’, 725; Keynes, Diplomas, p. 108, n. 73, pp. 202–3, n. 182. 133 S 882, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. N. P. Brooks and S. E. Kelly (Oxford, 2013), 2 vols, II, no. 134, pp. 993–98. 134 S 1488, Whitelock, AS Wills, no. XVIII and 163 for the suggestion about the purpose of the debts. 135 Lawson, ‘Collection’, 728. 136 Lawson, ‘Collection’, 727. 137 Lawson, ‘Collection’; Roach, Æthelred, pp. 220–225. The De Tribulationibus claims that the payments were so excessive that the wealth of the kingdom might not recover, Keynes, ‘An Abbot’, 174–75. 128

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plight to acquire estates at advantageous prices. He speculates that Eadric Streona may have benefited in this way.138 If lay landowners were feeling the effect of such unprecedented revenue raising, then it is extremely unlikely that they did not pass the burden of it on to their tenants and estate workers.139 Here, it is worth recalling Wulfstan’s complaints about the harsh treatment of the poor and Ælfric’s chastisement of the wealthy for their oppression of the poor and their workers.140 The raising of tribute and its ineffective use occasioned adverse comment by contemporaries: the Chronicle described its payment as ‘hateful’ in the annal for 1006, and later lamented that tribute was never paid in time.141 Wulfstan described the humiliation of the English in paying up but still being subject to Viking fire and slaughter.142 The disasters of Viking attack, the decimation of the land, with resulting dearth and famine, combined with the burden of taxation, may have persuaded some to abandon their king and join with the enemies. A pattern of defections and plots becomes visible in the final decades of the reign, but there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the years 991 to 993 were marked by a real crisis in government which reverberated down the reign into the 990s and beyond. The Council of Winchester in 993 represented a radical turning point in Æthelred’s rule when he remade his kingship, exploiting ideas of penitential rule. Æthelred was able to distance himself from his previous actions and present himself as a pious ruler, mindful of the privileges of the church.143 This can be interpreted as an act of strength by a resourceful king but it also raises questions about the severity of challenges to his rule which provoked it, and about its long-term efficacy.144 There are indications of a serious breakdown in government. A plot to receive Swein Forkbeard into Essex, probably in 991, is recorded in a charter confirming the will of a thegn, Æthelric of Bocking, accused of complicity. The accusation had been made by the king and was resolved only after the thegn’s death. Brooks has argued that Æthelric may have been propelled into negotiations with Swein by the need to protect his estates, which were too close to the Essex coast for comfort. His decision and the accusation against him may reflect local tensions with royal policy.145 A measure of the severity of the crisis of 991 can be seen in the absence of charters from this year until 993. It is difficult to know how to assess gaps in the diplomatic record, given the vagaries of transmission. Given that Æthelred’s charters are preserved in a number of monastic archives, their complete absence for the eventful years of 991 to 992 is significant, especially since, when the diplomatic record resumes, it is with the great privilege of 993 issued at the Council of Winchester.146 This is the only charter surviving for 993 and indicative of a major break which was restored only by the Council itself.147 A source of potential illumination can be gleaned from Continental analogies. In his study of Carolingian charters Koziol notes a caesura in the production of charters for Charles the Bald in Lawson, ‘Collection’, 732–34. Lawson, ‘Collection’, 727. 140 Homilies, ed. Pope no. XIII, 499–500. 141 ASC C, s. a. 1006, 1011; 142 Homilies, ed. Bethurum, no. XX, 272. 143 See above pp. 5–6. 144 Roach, Æthelred, passim. 145 S 939 and see also S 1501; English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, no. 121, p. 579. Whitelock, AS Wills, no. 16 (2), pp. 146–48. Charters of Christ Church, ed. Brooks and Kelly, nos. 136–37, II, 999–1008. Brooks, ‘Treason’. 146 For the archives see Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 235–68. And compare, D. N. Dumville, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992), p. 151 on the absence of charters from 909 to 925. 147 Roach, Æthelred, pp. 136–37; Abels, Æthelred, p. 83. 138

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858 when he was deserted by his counts, who joined with the invading forces of his brother, Louis the German. He argues from his analysis of Charles’s charters that the production of charters was intrinsically linked to the personal relationships between the king and his supporters.148 The possibility of a serious breakdown in relations between the king and his magnates in 991 to 993 may receive some confirmation from the enigmatic record of the Chronicle. For the years 992 and 993 we learn of two attempts to engage the Danish forces which were undermined by the actions of the English: the betrayal of the fleet to the enemy in 992 by Ealdorman Ælfric of Hampshire and the flight of English leaders before battle with the Vikings at the mouth of the Humber in 993.149 The lack of any explicit reference in the Chronicle to a breakdown in government at this time should not surprise us, since it fails to mention the 993 Council of Winchester, a momentous event for the reign. There are hints of civil unrest and rebellion in the writings of Ælfric: in, for example, the depiction in the tract Wyrdwriteras of Sheba killed for inciting revolt against David.150 Ælfric’s most explicit work of extended contemporary commentary, the Prayer of Moses, may have been written in the aftermath of the Council of Winchester.151 Ælfric recounts the ills which have befallen his kingdom after the death of Edgar and the lack of respect for the monastic order which followed it. He sets out a series of biblical exemplars which illustrate the consequences of incurring God’s wrath. Two of these are of special interest: the first briefly describes the fate of Dathan and Abiram, who rebelled against the authority of Moses and were swallowed up alive by the earth with all their families. The second, longer narrative recounts God’s anger at David for numbering the people of Israel.152 The king’s sin visited divine wrath upon his people and 70,000 of his people were killed by a pestilence. This is an exemplar of a penitent king – David was full of remorse for his wrongdoing and besought God for mercy, and it must have spoken to its audience about their king’s own recent repentance. The contemporary resonances of these two biblical stories are underlined by Ælfric’s condemnations of ‘ceorung’, ‘murmuring’, which he adds to them. Courtney Booker has recently anatomised early medieval condemnations and attitudes to ‘murmuring’, an activity particularly condemned by the Rule of St Benedict with its insistence on the monk’s obedience. Murmuratio could be used for the complaints of a people against their ruler, for political criticism.153 Ælfric’s two admonitions are both directed at the present – the first directly concerns civil dissent, stating such ‘ceorung’ angers God: ‘it is very hateful to God in the faithful people, that they shall be disagreeing, and perverse among themselves; and Christ said in his Gospel that no kingdom can stand anywhile entire, if it be not peaceable’.154 Placed as they are immediately after the story of Dathan and Abiram, these words are surely a warning against disobedience and rebellion. The second set of comments against ‘ceorung’ seem to be designed to reconcile his audience to suffering present misfortunes with patience,

G. Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas: The West Frankish Kingdom (840–987) (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 131–41. 149 ASC s.a. 992 and 993. 150 See above, p. 22. 151 For dating, see above p. 7, n. 28. 152 Numbers 16, I Chronicles 21, and II Samuel 24. 153 C. Booker, ‘Iusta murmuratio: The Sound of Scandal in the Early Middle Ages’, Revue Bénédictine 126 (2016), 236–70. 154 Lives, ed. Skeat, no. XIII, 300–1: ‘gode is swyðe lað on geleaffullum folce . þæt hi beon ungeðwære and þwyre him betwynan . and crist cwæð on his godspelle þæt nan cynerice ne stent nane hwile ansund . gif hi gesome ne beoð.’ 148

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and to persuade them to accept them as divine will, both as just retributions for sin and as consequences of living at the end of the world. This sequence of bible stories and Ælfric’s commentary upon them surely signals unrest and strife within the kingdom. Episodes from David’s life were commonly used as images of royal penance (as noted above); however, the choice of the episode concerning David’s census is an unusual one: it made plain the connection between a ruler’s conduct and the misfortunes of his people, but also showed how the king’s penitence alleviated divine wrath. Ælfric seems to be counselling his audience to suffer in silence and not to agitate against the will of God. The political turbulence of the reign is manifest in the diplomatic record of forfeitures, where thegns and magnates were punished for offences by the loss of their lands.155 One charter, for example, records the forfeiture of a noble, Leofric of Whitchurch, for provoking a rebellion in the army. The charter regranting his lands is dated to 1012 but the revolt could have happened many years earlier, in the 990s.156 Other cases of forfeiture tend to be analysed in terms of a crisis of law and order but, as Pauline Stafford remarked: ‘Every legal case involving a great noble had a political dimension, entailed a fall from power and a profit to the king. Where did the politics of the court end and the processes of the law begin?’157 The boundary between legal judgment and court politics could be particularly porous when the royal council was involved as the court of law. In a sermon, composed c. 1005xc. 1010 and apparently with the royal council in mind, Ælfric admonished his audience to make just judgments and condemned the practices of defending a guilty person, deceiving and ruining an innocent person and taking bribes.158 In 994–97, a highranking royal minister, Æthelsige, lost his lands and his position for his appropriation of church land and for other unspecified crimes.159 Since his forfeiture enabled the see of Rochester to repossess land it had claimed, Æthelsige’s fall was surely linked to Æthelred’s continued repositioning of himself as a pious king and protector of ecclesiastical rights.160 Those found guilty by Æthelred’s courts could be condemned as Æthelsige was, as enemies of the king and his people and of God himself, and even the highest in the land were not safe from such accusations.161 The Chronicle records that in 994, the year after Ealdorman Ælfric’s betrayal, his son Ælfgar was blinded. Since in the Carolingian world this punishment was reserved for an offence against the person of the king, it is possible that Ælfgar had been found guilty of lèse majesté.162 In 1002 Ealdorman Leofsige of Essex fell from power, lost his property and was exiled for killing a king’s reeve. His disgrace pervaded his family, as his sister lost property for the crime of giving him refuge.163 The downfall of two exalted members of Æthelred’s council in a less than a decade is indicative of insecurity and suspicion at court. The palace revolution of 1005–6 looks like a bloody coup orchestrated by Eadric Streona. Eadric murdered his Midlands rival, Ealdorman Ælfhelm, after which the king ordered the blinding Keynes, Diplomas, followed by Roach, Æthelred, pp. 235–41. S 927. See Wormald, Making, pp. 148–50; Williams, Æthelred, pp. 103–4. 157 Stafford, Unification and Conquest, p. 62; and see Wormald, Making, p. 534. Cf. Keynes, ‘Crime and Punishment’. 158 Homilies, ed. Pope XIII, for the date see Pope, II, 493, and no. XII, 120–24. 159 S 983, discussed by Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 184–85, Williams, Æthelred, pp. 26–28 160 See Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 184–85. 161 S 893. 162 G. Bührer-Thierry, ‘“Just Anger” or “Vengeful Anger”? The Punishment of Blinding in the Early Medieval West’, in Anger’s Past, ed. B. Rosenwein (Ithaca, 1998), pp. 75–91, at 79–91; Bates, William, p. 289. 163 S 916 and S 926. 155

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of Ælfhelm’s sons, Ufegeat and Wulfgeat. If blinding was the punishment for lèse majesté, as I suggested above, then it looks likely that the ruin of Ælfhelm and his sons was achieved through accusations of infidelity to the king. Æthelred’s susceptibility to fear of conspiracy was demonstrated by the massacre of Danes, likely Danish mercenaries, on St Brice’s day in 1002, instigated through fear of a plot to kill him. The exile and forfeiture of another prominent thegn at court, Wulfgeat, who was reputed to have been one of the court most loved by the king, was also probably occasioned by accusations of plotting against the king.164 The case of Æthelric of Bocking may indicate that the king himself exploited accusations of treachery: although the king had raised the accusation in Æthelric’s own lifetime, it was not resolved, but after Æthelric’s death the king used it to undermine his widow’s right of inheritance. The events of 1005–6 are usually read as evidence of Æthelred taking charge and restructuring his court, but it may reflect weakness rather than strength, with the king manipulated by Eadric Streona’s exploitation of fears of betrayal and rebellion. Williams suggests that opposition to the king may have been coalescing around his sons.165 Insley has illuminated the regional dimension: the destruction of Ælfhelm’s family strengthened Eadric’s position in the Midlands. His analysis raises important questions about the extension of royal authority beyond the South and West Saxon heartlands and relationships between the king and his magnates such as Ælfhelm and Eadric with regional powerbases.166 In 1009 factionalism at court spilled over into rebellion. According to the Chronicle, the major military offensive of 1008 when the king ordered the preparation of great naval force was effectively sabotaged by a feud between Eadric Streona’s brother, Brihtric, and a South Saxon thegn, Wulfnoth Cild. Wulfnoth was provoked to revolt and absconded with twenty ships when Brihtric accused him to the king. Brihtric’s pursuit with another eighty ships ended in their destruction by Wulfnoth.167 That Wulfnoth’s defection was provoked by an accusation by Eadric Streona’s brother, Brihtric, is another sign of the febrile environment at court and among the leading men. The episode seems to have precipitated a further breakdown in government, since no charters are recorded for 1010.168 It illuminates how rivalries among the ruling elite could escalate into national crises. The dysfunctionality of the royal council highlighted by Ælfric and Wulfstan was deeply damaging to the whole kingdom. Æthelred’s reign opened with the assassination of his brother and civil war. It was punctuated by major shifts of policy, seen in changes in the personnel of the royal council in 984, 993 and 1005–6. The years 991–993 and 1009–10 seem to have witnessed crises of government. It closed with Æthelred’s flight in 1013 and foreign conquest in 1016–18. Wulfstan, in a version of his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos composed soon afterward the king’s flight, described him as ‘driven out’, citing this as an example of ‘a full great treachery ... that a man should betray his lord ... drive him in his lifetime from the land’.169 The reign closed with the rebellion of his son, Edmund and defection of Eadric Streona in 1015. The grave severity of the crisis of the final years was certainly caused by the intensification of Danish attack, but Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 210–11. Williams, Æthelred, pp. 131–35. 166 C. Insley, ‘Politics, Conflict and Kinship in Early Eleventh-Century Mercia’, Midland History 25 (2000), 28–42; Stafford, ‘Reign’, and Williams, Æthelred. See also Brooks, ‘Treason’, pp. 24–25. 167 ASC C, s. a. 1009; Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 216–17, Williams, Æthelred, pp. 116–17. 168 Noted by Roach, Æthelred, pp. 284–85. 169 Stafford emphasizes this in Unification and Conquest; cf. Keynes, Diplomas, p. 226, Williams, Æthelred, pp. 121–22, Roach, Æthelred, pp. 292–94. 164 165

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its roots lay further back, in the long-standing history of factionalism at court and in Æthelred’s own unpopularity. The period from 993 to 1005 was characterised by very considerable strategic advances by the Danish. These years must have seen a build-up of anger with the king as he failed to lead his army and exacted taxes to pay tribute and geld to foreign mercenary armies. The catastrophe of the final years of Æthelred’s reign was the result not only of an intensification of Viking invasions but of disaffection with the king. This interpretation of the reign re-emplots it according to a new narrative structure: one of an oppressive ruler whose inability to control aristocratic factions and reluctance to show military leadership were prime factors in its downfall. Much of the foregoing evidence for the troubles of Æthelred’s rule is included in existing accounts of the reign, but embedded in a narrative framework which relativises its importance. The shift in emphasis in this more negative reading does not simply highlight setbacks to Æthelred’s rule but gives greater weight to contemporary criticism. As Stafford argued, at Cnut’s accession Æthelred was judged to be a harsh ruler who exploited his royal rights. Contemporary evidence indicates further that he was seen as an unjust king whose transgressive laws were to be passed over. This view was undoubtedly designed to bolster the legitimacy of the conqueror, Cnut, but it is one manifest in earlier texts and probably also underlies his forced expulsion in 1013.170 The presentation of Æthelred as an unjust and cruel king has its roots in Ælfric’s writings from c. 993–95, in his Old English De duodecim abusivis and related texts. His criticism did not abate but, rather, grew more pointed, attacking the king’s military failure and his dysfunctional council around the year 1000, and then in the often overt strictures on current affairs and Æthelred’s rulership in the homilist’s last years. This renarration of the reign shifts the focus away from external invasion and onto internal matters. It turns the spotlight to issues raised by Stafford and Insley about factionalism, the ability of the West Saxon kings to assert their rule in the provinces and the interplay between the king and council at the centre and regional control. And it puts forward a more organic reading of the reign which sees the final catastrophe and defeat as intrinsically linked to Æthelred’s style of government and to the course of his entire reign. I am very grateful to the 2019 Battle Conference delegates for their lively discussion of this paper, and to Philippe Buc, Stephen Church, Charles Insley, John Hudson, Tom Licence, Rob Liddeard, Anton Scharer and Danuta Shanzer for their advice.

170

Stafford, ‘Laws of Cnut’, 182–83.

The Des Seal Memorial Lecture, 2019

THE ART OF MEMORY: THE POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION OF KING HAROLD II GODWINESON Ann Williams As W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman wrote, long ago, ‘History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember.’1 I myself would go a little further: ‘history is what people want you to remember’, and if that sounds paranoid, a little paranoia never did anyone any harm and is, as far as historians are concerned, a healthy addition to their professional repertoire. The point can be illustrated by considering the posthumous reputation of King Harold II Godwineson, whose defeat at Hastings provided Sellar and Yeatman with the title of their work. Harold’s fall meant the loss not only of the battle, his kingdom and his life, but also his good name, and the almost unanimous strictures on him and on his family from both medieval and modern historians warrant examination.2 Harold’s claim to the kingship was threefold: he had been chosen by the previous king, elected by the English magnates and consecrated in the coronation ritual. Even in near-contemporary sources there is some doubt about the first element, the designation by King Edward. All three recensions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written within a few years of the Conquest, say that Edward chose Harold as his heir, and the claim is grudgingly accepted in the panegyric on Duke William penned by William of Poitiers in the early 1070s.3 The Bayeux Tapestry is more ambiguous. In its scene depicting King Edward’s deathbed only the dying king is identified by name, and the text says merely that he is speaking to his faithful companions (hic Eadwardus rex iniecto alloquit fideles), with no hint of what he is actually saying.4 The other participants in the scene can be identified from the more or less contemporary description of the king’s deathbed in the Life of King Edward who Rests W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That: The History Book to End all History Books (London, 1930), p. 5 (authors’ italics). An earlier version of this article was given to a conference on the Bayeux Tapestry organised by Gale Owen-Crocker at the Department of Continuing Education, Rewley House, Oxford. I should like to thank the members, especially Gale Owen-Crocker, for much useful discussion. My thanks also to Stephen Church, both for his contributions to the article and for asking me to deliver it. 2 E.g. ‘the rule of Edith, Harold and Tostig brought the country to ruin’ (Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor (London, 1970), p. 189). See Ann Williams, ‘The Piety of Earl Godwine’, ANS 24 (2012), 237–56, at 238–39. There are, of course, sympathetic assessments, notably that of Ian Walker, Harold: the Last Anglo-Saxon King (Stroud, 1997), and some of the more extreme views are a reaction to the adulation of Godwine’s nineteenth-century admirer, E. A. Freeman. 3 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A Revised Translation, ed. Dorothy Whitelock and Susie I. Tucker (London 1961) (hereafter ASC, trans. Whitelock), CD 1065, E 1066; Poitiers, pp. 118–19. See also Eadmer, HN, p. 8. For the dating of the various versions of the Chronicle see D. N. Dumville, ‘Some Aspects of Annalistic Writing at Canterbury in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries’, Peritia 2 (1983), 23–57; Stephen Baxter, ‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Politics of mid-Eleventh-Century England’, EHR 122 (2007), 1189–1227. 4 Michael Lewis, The Archaeological Authority of the Bayeux Tapestry, BAR British series 404 (2005) (hereafter Lewis, Bayeux Tapestry), scenes 27–28. 1

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at Westminster. Here the Tapestry’s ‘faithful companions’ appear as Queen Edith, ‘who was sitting on the floor warming [Edward’s] feet in her lap’, Earl Harold, Robert fitzWymarc and Archbishop Stigand, all of whom the king had summoned to hear his prophetic dream of England as a green tree, cut down and carried three furlongs from its stump before regrowing and fruiting once again.6 It may be that the designer of the Tapestry intended to show Edward recounting this dream, but the ‘touching hands’ gesture between the dying king and the figure seated beside his bed (presumably Earl Harold) suggests, rather, that it represents the next part of the Life’s account, when ‘stretching forth his hand to his nutricium [the queen’s] brother Harold, [the king] said, “I commend this woman and all the kingdom to your protection”’.7 The ambiguity of this wording, which falls well short of designation, echoes the ambiguity in the Tapestry.8 As we shall see, a similar ambiguity hangs over Edward’s ‘designation’ of Duke William of Normandy. The Tapestry does unambiguously depict the election, in which the English ‘give the king’s crown to Harold’ (dederunt Haroldo coronam regis).9 This scene follows immediately upon the dead king’s funeral procession, which might seem a little premature, but there was an excellent precedent, for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes how Edward himself had been elected to the kingship on the same day that his predecessor and half-brother died; indeed while the corpse was still lying unburied.10 In the scene which follows the election the Bayeux Tapestry shows Harold in majesty, crowned and seated upon his throne, with the orb and sceptre in his hands, and from this point onwards the Tapestry’s text always describes Harold as ‘king’ (rex) and never as ‘earl’ (dux).11 The ‘E’ recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that Harold was consecrated king on the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January), the same day as King Edward’s funeral, and this date is hallowed by long usage; Herman of Bury, writing c. 1070, says that Harold was enthroned at the Introit of Edward’s funeral mass.12 However, it may not be correct. Coronations were major events which required long preparation (one of the reasons why they were so often delayed), and the Life of King Edward says that the king’s death was followed by a month of masses and prayers, which seems to preclude any immediate consecration of his successor.13 Both the other recensions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle¸ ‘C’ and ‘D’, say merely that Harold was crowned after Edward’s death, without giving any precise 5

5 Vita Eadwardi, pp. 118–25. Both the Tapestry and the second section of the Life probably date from the period 1067–70; for the Tapestry, see K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, ‘Through the Eye of the Needle: Stigand, the Bayeux Tapestry and the Beginnings of the Historia Anglorum’, in The English and Their Legacy¸ 900–1200: Essays in Honour of Ann Williams, ed. David Roffe (Woodbridge, 2012), pp. 159–74; for the Life, see Tom Licence, ‘The Date and Authorship of the Vita Ædwardi Regis’, ASE 44 (2015), 259–85. 6 Vita Eadwardi, pp. 118–19. 7 Vita Eadwardi, pp. 122–23. The word nutricium (nom. nutricius) is translated as ‘governour’, but ‘protector’ seems more appropriate. 8 Pierre Bouet and Francois Neveux, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Succession According to the Bayeux Tapestry’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches, ed Michael J. Lewis, Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Dan Terkla (Oxford, 2011), pp. 59–65, at 61–62. 9 Lewis, Bayeux Tapestry, scenes 27–8 (Edward’s death and funeral), 29 (Harold’s election). 10 ASC, trans. Whitelock, E 1041 (recte 1042). Edward issued his first charter on the day of Hardacnut’s death. 11 Lewis, Bayeux Tapestry, scene 30. 12 ASC, trans. Whitelock, E 1066; Herman the Archdeacon and Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Miracles of St Edmumd, ed. Tom Licence (Oxford, 2014), pp. 62–63; for the date of composition, see pp. liv–lix. John of Worcester follows the ‘E’ Chronicle in placing Harold’s consecration on the day of Edward’s funeral, as does Orderic Vitalis (John of Worcester ii, pp. 601–2; Orderic ii, pp. 136–37). 13 Vita Eadwardi, pp. 124–27.



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date. The king’s death is recorded in the ‘C’ and ‘D’ annals under 1065, since both use Lady Day (25 March) as the beginning of the year. Both recensions then begin their entries for 1066 with the arrival of Harold (described as ‘King Harold’ in ‘D’) at Westminster for the Easter feast; this is followed by the appearance of Halley’s comet, which both recensions date to the ‘the eve of the Greater Litany’ (24 April).15 The appearance of the comet also follows upon the majesty scene in the Bayeux Tapestry and, taken together, these references might imply that Harold was crowned not on 6 January but on Easter Sunday (16 April in 1066), in accordance with the pre-Conquest custom of celebrating royal consecrations on the major feasts of the Church.16 Perhaps, then, Herman’s reference to Harold’s enthronement during Edward’s funeral mass refers to the election (as we have seen, Edward himself was elected before his brother’s burial).17 On the other hand, the majesty scene might represent not Harold’s coronation but a ceremonial crown-wearing for the Easter feast. Whether coronation or crown-wearing, the significance of the image remains the same: Harold is presented as a consecrated king, flanked on his left by two lay magnates, one bearing an upright sword and pointing toward the crowned monarch, and on his right by Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, wearing full regalia and standing in the orans posture.18 The royal image on the Tapestry resembles the majesty portrait on the seal of Edward the Confessor, itself modelled on the imperial imagery of the German emperors.19 Even before his elevation to the kingship the Tapestry gives indications of Harold’s standing. In an early scene showing his journey to Bosham, Harold rides at the head of his mounted retinue; under the inscription ‘Harold dux Anglorum and his men ride to Bosham’, the word dux is emphasised by the upward-pointing finger of one of Harold’s hearthroop.20 There is no exact parallel to the title dux Anglorum (‘duke of the English’) in pre-Conquest sources, and its use in this context has been interpreted as an attempt to establish equivalence with William, dux Normannorum (‘duke of the Normans’).21 However, the comparison is not exact. The Frankish 14

ASC, trans. Whitelock, CD 1065. ASC, trans. Whitelock, CD 1066. In fact Halley’s Comet was visible in southern England from 14 April to 8 June; see Donald K. Yeomans, Jürgen Rahe and Ruth S. Freitag, ‘The History of Comet Halley’, Royal Astronomical Society Canada 80.2 (1986), 62–86, at 74, 79 (I owe this reference to Gale Owen-Crocker). 16 Barbara English, ‘The Coronation of Harold in the Bayeux Tapestry’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History, ed. P. Bouet, B. Levy and F. Neveux (Caen, 2004), pp. 347–82, at 376–77. There is a liturgical significance to 6 January, the feast of Epiphany, when the magi presented their gifts to the infant Christ (Johanna Dale, ‘Royal Inauguration and the Liturgical Calendar in England, France and the Empire c. 1050–1250’, ANS 37 (2015), 83–98, at 94–95. No other pre-Conquest consecration is recorded on this date, but then very few consecrations are precisely dated before 1100. 17 In the ‘E’ chronicle, the account of Edward’s funeral on the feast of the Epiphany is followed by the statement: ‘[a]nd King Harold succeeded to the realm of England, just as the king had granted it to him, and he was chosen to the position’. The annalist then records the consecration, repeating the date, the feast of the Epiphany. ‘E’ does not record the Easter court at Westminster but proceeds to the events in the autumn of 1066. 18 The portrayal of Stigand might suggest that the Tapestry is earlier than his downfall in 1070; see K S B Keats-Rohan, ‘Stigand and the Bayeux Tapestry’, in The English and Their Legacy, ed. Roffe, pp. 159–74, at 170–71. 19 The majesty portrait on William the Conqueror’s seal was based on that of Edward and, although we do not possess an imprint of Harold’s seal, it presumably followed the same model; see T. A. Heslop, ‘English Seals from the mid Ninth Century to 1100’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 133 (1980), 1–20, at 9–10. 20 Ann Williams, ‘How to Be Rich: The Presentation of Earl Harold in the Early Scenes of the Bayeux Tapestry’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches, ed. Lewis et al., pp. 66–70, at 69. 21 Ian Short describes the title as ‘clearly inappropriate in an English context’ (‘The Language of the 14 15

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equivalent to dux Anglorum would be dux Francorum, a title which in the 930s was bestowed by Louis d’Outremer, king of the Franks, upon Hugh the Great. It was inherited by Hugh’s son, Hugh Capet, who in 987 displaced the last Carolingian ruler to become the first Capetian king of the Franks, just as in 1066 Harold replaced the last king of the West Saxon line.22 It would be a step too far to interpret the title dux Anglorum as an acknowledgement of Harold’s right to succeed King Edward, but the parallel with Frankia may have been in the mind of the Tapestry’s designer. Despite some ambiguities, both the Bayeux Tapestry and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle show that in the early years of William I’s reign Harold was seen as a true king, designated by his predecessor, elected by the English aristocracy and consecrated to his royal office. Documentary sources confirm this impression. One of William’s earliest acts as king was to grant lands in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire ‘as fully as they had been held by King Harold’; the writ, like all writs, is undated but must have been issued before the autumn of 1067.23 A second writ of similar date restores land to Westminster abbey ‘as fully and completely as Harold held it on the day he was alive and dead’, words which, though not according Harold his royal title, implicitly recognise his reign.24 Another document from Westminster goes further in referring to King William’s defeat of ‘King Harold and his allies’.25 Harold’s royal status is also acknowledged, although grudgingly, in a writ from May 1068 whereby William restored to Bishop Giso of Wells land ‘which King Harold, consumed by greed, had taken away’.26 Harold’s demotion from consecrated king to treacherous rebel stems from the desire of William the Conqueror to present himself as the legitimate successor to Edward the Confessor.27 At first glance the transformation of William from duke of the Normans to king of the English bears comparison with Harold’s earlier transformation from earl to king; both claimed to have been designated by King Edward, both were elected by the English magnates and both were subsequently consecrated. The designation of William is scarcely less dubious than that of Harold. The claims that Edward sent Robert of Jumièges, archbishop of Canterbury to appoint William as his heir (an embassy which can only have been undertaken in 1051) and subsequently despatched Earl Harold to confirm the promise seem to post-date the fait accompli of the Conquest; no pre-Conquest source, Norman or English, gives any hint that such a momentous promise was made.28 However, William’s victory at Bayeux Tapestry Inscription’, ANS 23 (2001), 267–68, at 279), which is not quite true; Harold’s Mercian contemporary Earl Ælfgar is styled comes Anglorum in a charter of 1061 (S 1237) which, like the Bayeux Tapestry, is influenced by continental practice. In Latin sources from England, dux translates the OE titles earl and ealdorman. 22 Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 834–1180 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 47, 68; Pierre Bouet, ‘Is the Bayeux Tapestry pro-English?’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History, ed. Bouet, pp. 197–215, at 203–5. 23 Regesta: William I, no. 223, p. 710; the grant is in favour of Regenbald, who served both Edward and William (and presumably Harold) as chancellor, and the writ is addressed inter alia to Count Eustace of Boulogne and must, therefore, be earlier than the dispute between William and Eustace in the autumn of 1067; see Simon Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS 10 (1987), 185–222, at 211. 24 Regesta: William I, no. 291, p. 882. 25 Also undated but perhaps based in part on materials composed in the Conqueror’s reign (Regesta: William I, no. 290, pp. 870–81). 26 Regesta: William I, no. 286, pp. 863–65. 27 George Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession and Tenure 1066–1166 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 1–44; idem, ‘Coronation and Propaganda: Some Implications of the Norman Claim to the Throne of England in 1066’, TRHS series 5.36 (1986), 91–116. 28 Poitiers, pp. 20–21, 68–71; Barlow, Edward the Confessor, pp. 107–9, 120–21; Tom Licence, ‘Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question: a Fresh Look at the Sources’, ANS 39 (2016), pp. 113–27, at



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Hastings rendered any designation needless, and he was probably elected king at Berkhamstead, where Archbishop Ealdred of York, the Confessor’s great-nephew Edgar cild, the earls Edwin and Morcar and the chief men of London,‘submitted out of necessity after most damage had been done’.29 According to both versions of the Chronicle, it was Ealdred who crowned William on Christmas Day 1066.30 William was king by right of conquest, like Swein of Denmark and his son Cnut half a century earlier. It is interesting, therefore, that William dated his reign from the moment of his coronation, unlike the Danish kings, whose rule began with their acceptance by the English magnates. Swein of Denmark arrived in Gainsborough in the late summer of 1013, and was immediately accepted as king by the northerners; further submissions followed at Oxford and Bath, so that ‘all the nation regarded him as full king’ even before the flight of King Æthelred to Normandy and the consequent submission of London at Christmas. Swein issued no charters (or none which have survived), but he did levy a tax (heregeld) for the payment of his army, an act which could be performed only by an acknowledged king.31 His death in February 1014 precluded any arrangements for his consecration. The election of Swein’s son Cnut in 1017 is recorded in the ‘A’ recension of the Chronicle, and his first charter was issued in the same year.32 No contemporary source records his coronation but, if the twelfth-century historian Ralph of Diceto is correct in saying that the ceremony was performed by Archbishop Lyfing of Canterbury, it is unlikely that it took place before 1018, when Lyfing returned from Rome with his pallium, the symbol of his office.33 It was in 1018 too that ‘the Danes and the English reached an agreement at Oxford’, perhaps represented by the laws promulgated ‘as soon as King Cnut with the advice of his wise men established peace and friendship between the Danes and the English’.34 On Cnut’s death, on 12 November 1035, the succession was disputed between his sons, Harold I and Hardacnut, with Harold I as the eventual winner. Harold died on 17 March 1040, and if the ‘E’ recension of the Chronicle is correct in saying that he ‘ruled England 116–19. In 1051, during the temporary eclipse of Earl Godwine, Edward was visited by ‘William eorl’ with ‘a great force of Frenchmen’ (ASC, trans. Whitelock, D 1051), but no details of what they discussed are given. Harold’s visit to Normandy is illustrated in the Bayeux Tapestry, but all versions of the Chronicle are silent on the subject. 29 ASC, trans. Whitelock, D 1066. John of Worcester ii, pp. 604–7 adds Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, and Walter, bishop of Hereford. 30 ASC, trans. Whitelock. DE 1066. 31 ASC, trans. Whitelock, CDE 1013. Swein is remembered as ‘king’ in the Durham Liber Vitae (BL Cotton Domitian A vii, fol. 12). 32 ASC, trans. Whitelocke. A 1017; S 949, which confirms a grant of Æthelred to Fecamp Abbey, see C. H. Haskins, ‘A Charter of Cnut for Fécamp’, EHR 33 (1918), 342–44. 33 Ralph of Diceto, Abbreviationes Chronicorum, ed. William Stubbs, RS 68, London 1876, i, p. 169. Lyfing had been appointed by Æthelred in 1013, but the subsequent warfare meant he was unable to undertake the journey to Rome for his pallium until 1017, and in the interim any archiepiscopal functions had to be performed by Wulfstan lupus, archbishop of York (Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984), pp. 287–88). Lawson nevertheless dated Cnut’s coronation to 1017 (M. K. Lawson, Cnut: the Danes in England in the Eleventh Century (London,1993), pp. 128–29). Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith (Oxford, 1997), pp. 174–78, argued that Cnut and Emma were consecrated on the occasion of their marriage, dated to 1017; however (leaving aside the problems of dating the various versions of the coronation Ordo), the Chronicle does not actually say that Cnut and Emma were married in 1017, merely that in 1017 he ‘ordered her … to be fetched as his wife’ (ASC, trans. Whitelock, CDE 1017; the corresponding annal, A 1017, records only that in that year ‘Cnut was chosen as king’). 34 ASC, trans. Whitelock, CDE 1018; for the laws, see Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 201, discussed in Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1999), pp. 199, 131.

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four years and sixteen weeks’, his reign dates from a fortnight after his father’s death, presumably from the council at Oxford where he was elected by ‘Earl Leofric and almost all the thegns north of the Thames and the shipmen in London … to protect (healde) all England for himself and his brother’.35 The ambiguous wording in the ‘E’ recension is due to the fact that the West Saxons, led by Queen Emma and Earl Godwine, had chosen Hardacnut, and the ‘C’ and ‘D’ recensions date the election of Harold to 1037, when Hardacnut was deserted ‘because he was too long in Denmark’. Be that as it may, it was only on Harold I’s death that Hardacnut was accepted as king. No consecration is recorded for either of them, although both issued charters and levied heregeld.36 As for Edward, he may have been designated as Hardacnut’s heir, for the ‘C’ and ‘D’ recensions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle say that when he arrived in England in 1041 he ‘was sworn in as king’.37 He was elected by the English magnates on the day of Hardacnut’s death, 8 June 1042, even before his half-brother’s burial, and immediately issued his first charter as king.38 However, he was not consecrated until Easter (3 April) 1043.39 The primacy of election over consecration in the process of English king-making is underlined by the circumstances of King Æthelred unræd’s return after Swein’s death in 1014; no second coronation was required for him to take up his former authority, only a formal agreement of peace and fidelity between the king and his magnates.40 In contrast, when Richard I returned to England after his imprisonment in Germany he underwent a second coronation, although not a second consecration.41 In this respect William I broke with English custom, employing instead ‘a French interpretation of the constitutive significance of the coronation ceremony’.42 His intention perhaps was to neutralise the claims of the ætheling Edgar, King Edward’s probable choice as his successor and the last male representative of the West Saxon royal house.43 According to the ‘D’ Chronicle, Edgar had been elected king by Archbishop Ealdred and the Londoners in the immediate aftermath of the battle of Hastings, and the Peterborough addition to the annal for 1066 in the ‘E’ recension says that the monks of Peterborough sent their newly elected abbot Brand to Edgar ætheling for confirmation ‘because the local people expected that he would be king’.44 Edgar’s claim resurfaced during the Northern Revolt of 1068–70, when he was elected king by the Northumbrians. Unlike William, however, Edgar never succeeded in getting crowned, which may help to explain why, after the failure of the revolt, William had the royal regalia brought to York and ‘wore his crown’ at the ASC, trans. Whitelock, E 1035: ‘to healde ealles Engla landes for him and his broðer Hardecanute’. ASC, trans. Whitelock, CDE 1040; the Chronicle’s main complaint against Hardacnut was that he raised the rate of the heregeld from sixteen ships (as required by Harold I) to sixty-four. For the charters see S 1467 (Harold I), S 993–997 (Hardacnut). 37 ASC, trans. Whitelock CD 1041. See also the claim that Hardacnut invited Edward to hold the kingdom with him (Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. Alistair Campbell, with a supplementary introduction by Simon Keynes, Camden Classic Reprints (Cambridge 1998), pp. 52–53). 38 ASC, trans. Whitelock, E 1042; S 998, dated 8 June 1042. The chronicle entry is more or less contemporary with the event, as may be seen by the chronicler’s pious wish, ‘may he hold it as long as God will grant him’. 39 ASC, trans. Whitelock, C 1043; D has ‘the first day of Easter’. 40 ASC, trans. Whitelock, CDE 1014. 41 I owe this point to Professor Stephen Church. 42 Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 1–9, quotation on 4. 43 For Edgar as Edward’s chosen heir, see Licence, ‘Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question’, 119–27. 44 ASC, trans. Whitelock, DE 1066. Brand’s visit to Edgar earned him a swingeing fine from King William, although he retained the abbacy till his death in 1069. He had succeeded Edwin and Morcar’s kinsman Abbot Leofric of Peterborough when Leofric died on All Hallows Eve (30 October) 1066. 35

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Christmas feast in the ruined city; a public demonstration that there was only one consecrated king of the English.45 Despite this, the rights of the West Saxon heir were still remembered in 1100, when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded Henry I’s marriage to Edgar’s niece Matilda ‘of þan rihtan Ænglalandes kynekynne: of the true royal line of England’.46 If it was the consecration which made the king, however, there was a problem, for Harold II had also been consecrated as ‘king of the English’. It may be this difficulty which underlay the campaign to diminish Harold’s royal status. As we have seen, there was already some ambiguity about Harold’s claims in the Bayeux Tapestry and the Life of King Edward, both of which may be regarded as ‘English’ sources. In contemporary Norman sources it is not ambiguity but illegality which qualifies Harold’s kingship.47 In his final additions to the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, made between 1067 and 1070, William of Jumièges presents Harold as a usurper and a perjurer who, by seizing the crown on Edward’s death, foreswore his promise to Duke William to expedite the king’s recognition of the duke as his heir.48 Much the same line is taken by Guy of Amiens, bishop of Poitiers, whose poem on the battle of Hastings probably dates from 1067: Harold was a king, but one who was wicked, false, infamous and (of course) perjured.49 William of Poitiers, whose panegyric of William the Conqueror was written in the 1070s, occasionally calls Harold ‘king’, and even admits that Edward designated him as his successor, but argues that the designation was invalid because of Edward’s earlier promise to make Duke William his heir. He also maintains that, since Harold subsequently swore an oath to support William’s claim, he was not a true king but a perjurer and a tyrant.50 Poitiers gets round the fact of Harold’s consecration by saying that the ceremony was invalid because it was performed by Stigand, who held the office of archbishop unlawfully.51 The ostensible reason for Stigand’s deposition and imprisonment in 1070 was his invasion of the see of Canterbury and his appropriation of the pallium given to Robert of Jumièges, but it is arguable that another reason for his removal was to cast doubts over the legitimacy of Harold’s consecration. After Stigand’s fall his successor, Lanfranc, demanded fresh professions from all those bishops who had been appointed during Stigand’s tenure of the archbishopric, including the Norman Remigius, bishop of Dorchester (later Lincoln), who also had to see seek papal forgiveness for being actually consecrated by Stigand in 1068.52 If Stigand had been incompetent to perform consecrations and receive episcopal professions, his capacity to crown a king would certainly have been suspect. From being a king, albeit perjured, Harold was to lose his royal status entirely. Unlike the early grants mentioned above, King William’s later charters of restora-

ASC, trans. Whitelock, D 1068; Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 32–3. 46 ASC, trans. Whitelock, E 1100. 47 Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 9–10; Pierre Bouet and Francois Neveux, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Succession According to the Bayeux Tapestry’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches, ed. Lewis et al., pp. 59–65, at 63–65. 48 GND, ii, p. 260. When recounting Harold’s death at the battle of Hastings, William does imply that the English at least regarded him as a legitimate king. 49 Carmen, verses 129, 261. 50 Poitiers, pp. xxvi–xxvii, 118–19. 51 Poitiers, pp. 100–1; this passage shows that the section was written after the Conqueror’s removal of Stigand from his archbishopric in 1070. Stigand is also shown beside the crowned Harold in the Bayeux Tapestry’s ‘majesty’ scene. 52 Frank Barlow, The English Church, 1000–1066, 2nd edn (London, 1966), pp. 302–10. 45

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tion ignore the reign of his immediate predecessor.53 A writ issued at some time between 1077 and 1080 gives to Archbishop Lanfranc land at Freckenham (Suffolk) ‘just as Harold was holding it on the day when I crossed the sea’, but there is no hint that Harold was king at the time.54 By the 1080s the reign of Harold had been expunged from legal memory. In Domesday Book, which is based on materials collected during the great survey of 1086, Harold’s name is ubiquitous, since he was the greatest lay landholder in England after the king, but he appears only as earl, never as king. Domesday knows only two terms, the time of King Edward (tempore regis Edwardi) and ‘now’ (modo), the time of King William. There are only three references to ‘the time of Harold’, and only one to the time ‘when Harold was reigning’ (quando regnabat), although there is a single mention of the time when he ‘seized the kingdom’ (quando regnum inuasit).55 In all other cases either the lacuna between Edward’s death and William’s coronation is ignored or (if it has to be noticed) some circumlocution is employed: ‘after the death of King Edward’, ‘when King William came to England’, ‘after King William crossed the sea’.56 Harold was not just a perjured king; he had never been king at all. There were precedents for the reigns of unpopular kings to be expunged from official records; in the eighth century, the historian Bede added the reigns of Osric and Eanfrith of the Northumbrians to that of their successor Oswald.57 But it was not just Harold’s kingship which was attacked, but also his reputation. The beginnings of the process are visible from the 1070s and influenced the presentation of the family in the historical works produced in the first quarter of the twelfth century. Orderic Vitalis, for instance, followed the line laid down by William of Poitiers in making Harold, ‘stained as he was by perjury, cruelty and other vices’, usurp the kingdom. Indeed he goes further, alleging that Harold deceived the dying Edward into believing that Duke William had resigned his claim to the succession in Harold’s favour.58 Orderic was writing in the early 1120s, around the time that William of Malmesbury completed the Gesta Regum Anglorum, which originated in a request from Henry I’s English queen, Matilda, for a ‘short essay’ on her descent from the West Saxon kings.59 Since, like Orderic, William was of mixed English and Norman parentage, he undertook to weigh up dispassionately the claims and counter-claims on both sides of the Anglo-Norman divide.60 However, he is noticeably hostile to Harold and his family, attributing the negative aspects of Edward the Confessor’s reign to the violence of Godwine and his sons.61 He is the first to relate the story of the feast at Winchester, where King Edward accused Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 9–24. Regesta: William I, no. 226, pp. 715–16. 55 GDB fol. 38 x 2 (Hants): the entries are contiguous. References to the tempus Haroldi occur in Dorset (GDB fol. 80v), Essex and Norfolk (LDB fols 5v, 236). 56 For these and other examples, see E. A. Freeman, A History of the Norman Conquest of England, 7 vols (London, 1867–76), iii, pp. 16–17 and Appendix B. 57 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and J. N. L. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), pp. 214–15. 58 Orderic, ii, pp. xiv, 134–35. Orderic was born at Atcham (Shropshire), of a French father, Odelerius of Orleans, and an Englishwoman whom he does not name, although it can be deduced that she belonged to a local family, perhaps including the ‘noble priest’ Siward of St Peter’s minster, Shrewsbury; the minster was transformed into a Benedictine abbey by Roger de Montgommery at the urging of Orderic’s father (Williams, The English, pp. 174–75). 59 Rodney Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 2–5. 60 Malmesbury, Gesta regum i, pp. 424–25 (prologue to Book iii); for the ‘English’ and ‘Norman’ views of Godwine, see ibid., ii, pp. 354–55. 61 Malmesbury, Gesta regum i, pp. 350–51. For some reason William gives Godwine two wives, firstly Cnut’s sister, a notorious slave-trader, secondly an unnamed woman who bore all his children. In fact 53

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Earl Godwine of bringing about the death of his brother Alfred. The earl responded ‘may God not permit me to swallow this mouthful, if I was ever aware having done anything designed to endanger him or hurt you’; he then put the morsel in his mouth and choked to death.62 The earl’s elder sons are also stigmatised, Swein as ‘cross-grained and disloyal’ and Tostig as a man of ‘habitual ferocity’.63 Nor does William spare their sister Queen Edith, Edward’s wife: ‘when you saw her, if you were astonished by her learning, you would at the same time feel a certain lack of intellectual humility and of personal beauty’; he also alleges that ‘she was not free from suspicions of misconduct’, although after her husband’s death ‘she satisfied those who stood round with an oath, at her own suggestion, of her perpetual virginity’. He also follows the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in having Edith imprisoned at Wherwell during her family’s exile ‘for fear, no doubt that, while all her kinfolk were sighing for the loss of their country, she might be the only one left snoring in a feather bed’.64 Needless to say, Harold appears in William’s account as a perjurer and a usurper. His version of Harold’s succession to Edward, including his opinion of Harold’s character, is worth quoting in full: while grief at the king’s death was still fresh, on that same feast of the Epiphany [6 January] Harold, who had exacted an oath of loyalty from the chief nobles, seized the crown, although the English say (quamvis Angli dicant) that it was granted to him by the king. This claim, however, rests, I think, more on good will than judgement, for it makes [Edward] pass on his inheritance to a man of whose influence he had always been suspicious; although, not to conceal the truth, [Harold] might have ruled the kingdom, to judge by the figure he cut in public, with prudence and fortitude, had it come to him lawfully.65 For example, during Edward’s life, whatever wars were kindled against him, it was Harold’s valour that extinguished them, for he was always trying to impress public opinion, being of course consumed by ambition to be king.66

This is indeed damning with faint praise, although it does preserve in a back-handed fashion the more favourable judgement of the Worcester chroniclers, to whom we shall return. William naturally accepts the Norman view on Harold’s perjury, and (like Guy of Amiens) accuses him of fratricide for the death of his brother Tostig at Stamford Bridge.67 William’s contemporary, Henry of Huntingdon, does not go so far, although he, like William, lays stress on Harold’s perjury and usurpation;

Godwine’s wife and the mother of his children was Gytha, whose brother Ulf married Cnut’s sister Estrith. 62 Malmesbury, Gesta regum i, pp. 354–55. The apocryphal story is also found in Henry of Huntingdon and in the Hyde Chronicle (C. E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in England (Edinburgh, 1939), pp. 213–29, 233–36). The contemporary account of the earl’s death in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle suggests that Godwine suffered a disastrous stroke (ASC, ed. Whitelock, C 1053). 63 Malmesbury, Gesta regum i, pp. 362–65. William also says that, despite Tostig’s failings, Edward was ‘much attached to him’ (ibid., i, pp. 466–67). Henry of Huntingdon, however, claims that Edward favoured Harold, and tells a story of a quarrel between the brothers at King Edward’s court which the king took as a sign of impending destruction for both of them (Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. Diana Greenway (Oxford, 1996), pp. 382–83). 64 Malmesbury, Gesta regum i, pp. 352–53, 360–61. The Vita Eadwardi claims that Edith was allowed to withdraw to Wilton, where she had been educated. 65 An echo of John of Worcester’s more favourable judgement (see below), qualified by the phrase ‘to judge by the figure he cut in public’. 66 Malmesbury, Gesta regum i, pp. 420–21. Note that William does not say Harold was crowned on 6 January, merely that he seized the crown. 67 Malmesbury, Gesta regum i, pp. 416–19; for the charge of fratricide, see 450–51, cf. Carmen, line 137. Other writers make the same assertion (Freeman, Norman Conquest, iii, pp. 738–39).

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he also accuses both Harold and Tostig of murdering wealthy men and seizing their property.68 However, the condemnation of Harold was not universal. William of Malmesbury himself acknowledges that some of his contemporaries (Angli moderni) took a different view, for which reason ‘my narrative is somewhat in doubt because the truth of the facts is in suspense and uncertain … I cannot decide what precisely is the truth … [for] the English are scornful of any superior and the Normans cannot endure an equal’.69 Indeed in his ‘Deeds of the Bishops’ (Gesta Pontificum) William himself included a favourable vignette of Harold and his father as ‘nobles of very great power’ whose actions ‘were helped by the justice of their case’, but the reason for this judgement is instructive, for the actions in question were the earls’ successful efforts on behalf of the Malmesbury monks to prevent Bishop Herman of Ramsbury from appropriating their church as his episcopal see.70 The Angli moderni to whom William referred presumably include the author of the Life of King Edward. William had clearly read this work, for his description of Harold as ‘endowed … with many good qualities … [but] too careless, it is said, in breaking faith’ recalls the statement in the Life that the earl ‘was rather too generous with oaths’.71 Another ‘contemporary Englishman’ must be Eadmer of Canterbury, whose Historia Novorum was written in the 1120s; Eadmer represents Harold’s oath to William as a forced promise (and therefore invalid), and adds that Edward, far from sending Harold to Normandy to ratify his previous promise of the throne, advised the earl not to visit Duke William and, on his return, lamented that the whole affair would ‘bring untold calamity upon this kingdom’. In Eadmer’s version, Edward designated Harold as his successor.72 This was also the opinion of the authors of the Worcester chronicle, Florence and his younger contemporary John.73 Harold’s family had enjoyed good relations with the bishops of Worcester, especially Wulfstan (1062–95).74 It was through the persuasion of Wulfstan that the Huntingdon, pp. 381–85. For the opinions of other twelfth-century writers, all on the same lines, see Bouet and Neveux, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Succession’, 62–64. 69 Malmesbury, Gesta regum ii, pp. 356–57. William, son of Walter d’Aincourt and Matilda, daughter of Count Alan Rufus and Harold II’s daughter Gunnhild, who died in fosterage at the court of William Rufus, was described as ‘born of royal stock’ on his memorial tablet in Lincoln cathedral (Richard Sharpe, ‘King Harold’s Daughter’, HSJ 19 (2008), 1–27). 70 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford, 2007), pp. 286–89. 71 Malmesbury, Gesta regum i, p. 446–47; Vita Eadwardi, pp. 80–81. Orderic’s description of Harold as ‘very tall and handsome remarkable for his physical strength, his courage and eloquence, his ready jests and acts of valour’ (Orderic, ii, pp. 134–35) may also owe something to the description of Harold in the Vita Ædwardi, pp. 48–49, 50–53. Orderic’s caveat, however, is his own: ‘But what were all these gifts to him without honour?’ 72 Eadmer, HN, pp. 6–9. Another clue to opinions in Canterbury comes from a thirteenth-century obit list of St Augustine’s, which under 14 October commemorates ‘Haroldus rex anglorum et quam plurimi fratres nostri’ (H. Tsurushima, ‘Consideration into British Library MS Cotton Vitellius C. xii, fos. 114r– 155r’, Seiyoushikenkyu (Studies on Western History) 2016); the comparable entry in the Christchurch obit list commemorates those ‘qui occubuerunt in parelio apud bataliam’, but does not mention their commander (Robin Fleming, ‘Christchurch’s Sisters and Brothers: an Edition and Discussion of Canterbury Obituary Lists’, in The Culture of Christendom, ed. Marc A. Meyer (London, 1993), pp. 115–53, at 142). I owe this reference to Hirokazu Tsurushima. 73 Florence, who died in 1118, is acknowledged by John as a major influence on the Chronicon ex Chronicis, which he continued to compile until his own death in the early 1140s. The precise roles of the two monks in the construction of the work are still disputed, but it was certainly revised and completed by John (Simon Keynes, ‘Florence’, in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge et al. (Oxford, 2001), p. 188). 74 It was Ealdred who negotiated the reinstatement of Swein Godwineson after his first exile in 1049, and he appears to have been complicit in Earl Harold’s escape to Ireland when the king exiled the whole 68



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Northumbrians accepted Harold as king; he was repaying the favour, for Harold had supported his candidature as bishop of Worcester in 1062. Wulfstan remembered Harold’s friendship in King William’s reign, when he healed his daughter Gunnhild of a growth on her eyes ‘out of regard for her father’.75 It is therefore not surprising that John of Worcester should present a favourable view of Harold’s succession. He describes Harold as Edward’s subregulus (‘underking’), and claims that Edward ‘had chosen [him] before his demise as successor to the kingdom’. On Edward’s death, therefore, Harold ‘was elected by the primates of all England to the dignity of kingship’. John also says that ‘on the same day’ Harold was consecrated king with due ceremony by Ealdred, archbishop of York. He goes on to praise Harold’s rule, in which he ‘destroyed unjust laws, and set about establishing just ones, showing himself pious, humble and affable to all good men [and] detesting malefactors’.76 In a later work, the Chronicula (dating from the late 1130s) John also wrote (or at least preserved) King Harold’s epitaph: Vir hic bellicosus, strenuus, decorus; Alter Maccabeus statura procerus; Et si vellet Deus, rex summus et verus. ‘This king was warlike, vigorous and comely; another Maccabeus, noble in bearing; and, had God wished it, a great and true king’.77

Another religious house to preserve a favourable view of Harold was Waltham Holy Cross in Essex, of which he had been patron, and where, according to William of Malmesbury, he was buried.78 The continuous history of this community begins when Cnut gave the site to Tovi the Proud (d. after 1043), on whose land in Somerset the celebrated Black Rood of Waltham was discovered. Tovi built a new church at Waltham to house the Rood, but his son was dispossessed by King Edward. The foundation came into the hands of Earl Harold, who re-endowed the community and increased its size to twelve secular canons and a dean.79 As a result of its association with Harold, Waltham Holy Cross suffered considerably under the Norman kings. William I gave the church and its lands to Walcher, bishop of Durham, and it appears in the possession of his successor, William of St Calais, in Domesday Book. William II appears to have restored the community’s possessions, but in 1100 Henry I gave the church to Queen Matilda II.80 In 1177 their grandson Henry II expelled the secular clerks and replaced them with Augustinians. Soon afterwards the history of the community was composed by one of the dispossessed seculars. We do not know his name, but he tells us he was an Englishman who entered the community in 1124

family in 1051 (ASC, trans. Whitelock, E 1051); it is also worth noting that his appointment to the see of York followed upon Godwine’s reinstatement in the king’s favour in 1052. 75 The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury, ed. R. R. Darlington, Camden Society 40 (London, 1928), pp. 18, 22–23, 34. The original vita, written in the vernacular by Colman, once the bishop’s chancellor, does not survive and is known only from William’s Latin translation from the 1130s. 76 John of Worcester, ii, pp. 600–1. It is entirely possible that both archbishops officiated at the coronations of both kings. 77 John of Worcester, Chronicula, Trinity College Dublin Ms 503, fols 95r–v; M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and His Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to R. W. Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26, at 123, n. 3. 78 Malmesbury, Gesta regum ii, pp. 460–61. 79 Simon Keynes, ‘Earl Harold and the Foundation of Waltham Holy Cross’, ANS 39 (2016), 81–111. 80 Waltham Abbey continued to form part of the dower lands of successive English queens for the rest of the Middle Ages (The Early Charters of Waltham Abbey, 1062–1230, ed. Rosalind Ransford (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. xxiii–xxiv).

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as a boy and that he obtained his information from written sources in the church’s archive and the oral testimony of the older canons.81 It is natural that the Waltham chronicler should look favourably on the man who was regarded as his church’s second founder. He says that Earl Harold ‘was elected king by unanimous consent … for England had not given birth to a man as distinguished as he in all respects to undertake such a task’.82 Harold’s fall was foretold by the Black Rood itself, for when the king, riding south with his army to meet the forces of Duke William, visited the church to pray, the figure of Christ was seen to bow its head ‘as if in sorrow’. The omen prompted two of the canons to accompany the king, in order to retrieve his body if the worst should happen.83 And so it did: ‘the king, who was the glory of the realm, the darling of the clergy, the strength of his soldiers, the shield of the defenceless, the restorer of the destitute and the pearl of princes, was slain by his fierce foe’.84 In the aftermath of the battle the canons received Duke William’s permission to identify their patron’s corpse and bear it home for burial, a feat they achieved only with the aid of Harold’s first wife, Eadgifu Swanneshals.85 By the latter part of the twelfth century the disputes of the past were replaced by fresh causes of dissension, and different attitudes to more remote events arose. Harold appears as a legitimate and even (with reservations) admirable king not only in the Waltham Chronicle but also in the writings of Gerald of Wales. In the Descriptio Cambriae, completed in 1194, Gerald praised the pre-Conquest kings on whose achievements (he claims) the Norman success in Wales was built. He singles out three in particular: King Offa, who ‘shut the Welsh off from the English by his long dyke’; King Æthelfrith, who destroyed Chester and massacred the monks of Bangor Iscoed; and ‘last of all and by far the greatest, Harold’, whose successful tactics enabled him to completely subdue the Welsh, a fact proven by the existence of numerous inscribed stones recording his victories (it has to be said that these inscribed stones seem to have existed only in Gerald’s imagination).86 It is true that The Waltham Chronicle, ed. Leslie Watkiss and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1994), pp. xxix–xxxiii. What documents were available to him are unknown; the earliest Waltham cartularies date from the thirteenth century and, apart from the refoundation charter of Edward the Confessor (S 1036), contain nothing earlier than the time of William II (Early Charters, ed Ransford, pp. lxxix–lxxxv and nos 1–2). The Waltham chronicler himself mentions some lost material, notably a charter of restitution attributed to William II (Waltham Chronicle, pp. 58–61), and a list of the treasures of the church written by Master Adelard, whom Earl Harold had appointed (Waltham Chronicle, pp. 36–37, 58–59). For the relic-list, see Nicholas Rogers, ‘The Waltham Abbey Relic-List’, in England in the Eleventh Century, ed. Carola Hicks, Harlaxton Medieval Studies ii (Stamford, 1992), pp. 157–81, at 162–63. 82 Waltham Chronicle, ed. Watkiss and Chibnall, pp. 44–45. 83 Osgod Cnoppe and Ailric Childmaster, both English, to judge from their names. 84 Waltham Chronicle, ed. Watkiss and Chibnall, pp. 48–49. 85 Waltham Chronicle, ed. Watkiss and Chibnall, pp. 46–47. The Waltham chronicler calls her ‘Edith’, as does the Vita Haroldi, which is dependent upon the Waltham Chronicle. In the cartulary of St Benet Holme, however, she appears as Eadgifu ‘swanneck’, donor of land in Norfolk (J. R. West, St Benet of Holme, 1020–1210. The 11th and 12th century sections of Cotton MS Galba E. ii, 2 vols, Norfolk Record Society 1932, i, p. 33, no. 62). The names Eadgyth (‘Edith’) and Eadgifu were occasionally confused in post-Conquest sources, but the monks of St Benet had the correct name, for Harold’s first wife can be identified as the wealthy East Anglian landholder Eadgifu the Fair (Sharpe, ‘King Harold’s Daughter’, 21–23). 86 Descriptio Cambriae, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. James F. Dimock, RS, London 1868, vi, p. 217; Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales and the Description of Wales, ed. and trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1978), p. 266. Gerald is here repeating the estimation of John of Salisbury some thirty years earlier, who praised Harold’s successful tactics and recommended them to Henry II (John of Salisbury, The Statesman’s Book, ed. John Dickinson (New York, 1963), p. 194–95). Like Gerald, John does not describe Harold as king, but his Welsh campaign was undertaken in 1063, when he was still earl. 81



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in this passage Gerald does not explicitly give Harold his royal title, although his kingship is implicit in the wording, but in the Itinerarium Cambriae, completed in 1191, he appears as ‘King Harold’, last of the pre-Conquest kings. It was still perjury which caused his defeat at the Battle of Hastings, but (says Gerald) he was not killed; he was grievously injured but survived to seek refuge as a hermit in Chester, where he died and was buried.87 Gerald’s references to Harold exemplify a shift from history into the realms of legend and saga. Similar stories of Harold’s survival had evidently come to the ears of the Waltham chronicler, who wrote scathingly of tales ‘that Harold dwelt in a cave at Canterbury and that later, when he died, was buried at Chester’.88 Perhaps it was the varying traditions about the disposal of Harold’s body which gave rise to such flights of fancy; William of Poitiers’ remark that ‘it was said in jest’ that Harold’s body should be buried upon the seashore was taken literally by Guy of Amiens, whereas William of Malmesbury, as we have seen, recorded its interment at Waltham.89 Whatever the genesis of the survival stories, they were current by 1163, when Ailred of Rievaulx asserted that Harold ‘either died miserably, or (as some believe) escaped to become a hermit’; and in 1215 Gervase of Tilbury wrote that ‘it remains uncertain to this day whether [Harold] saved himself by flight or fell in battle’.90 More detailed accounts of Harold’s survival are found in Scandinavia. Oda Snorrasson’s life of the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvasson, written about 1190, describes how Harold was rescued from the battlefield by a peasant and his wife; restored to health, he decided to become a hermit and, when he died, he was buried in London by no less a person than King William I.91 The story is elaborated in the thirteenth-century tale of the Norwegian hero, Heming Aslaksson, who entered King Harold’s service after the battle of Stamford Bridge.92 In this version a cottager and his wife, scavenging for valuables on the battlefield of Hastings, saw a brilliant light shining among the heaped bodies, which they thought indicated ‘a holy man among the dead’. What they found, however, was the living body of the wounded king, whom they carried home and hid from the Norman soldiers. They sent word to Heming, who aided his lord to build a hermitage in Canterbury. Harold’s declared wish was to see King William whenever he prayed in the church of Canterbury, from which it appears that his cell was attached to the church and furnished with a window into the interior from which the occupant could see the celebration of the Mass. When, after three years, Harold died, Heming revealed his presence to King William, who visited the hermitage and recognised the body, ‘comely and Itinerarium Cambriae, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. Dimock, vi, p. 140, Gerald of Wales, ed. Thorpe, pp. 198–99. 88 Waltham Chronicle, ed. Watkiss and Chibnall, pp. 56–57. 89 Poitiers, pp. xxii, xxix, 140–41; Carmen, lines 585–92. 90 Ailred of Rievaulx, Vita S Eadwardi regis in Historia Anglicanae scriptores decem, ed. Roger Twysden (Bee, 1652), p. 394; Gervase of Tilbury Otia Imperialia: Recreation for an Emperor, ed. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford, 2002), pp. 478–79. Gervase believed that Harold was brought up in Normandy on the orders of his ‘uncle’ King Edward, and tells of his boyhood friendship with Duke William. Ailred’s Life of St Edward was commissioned by Henry II for the canonisation of Edward the Confessor, and Gervase was writing for Henry’s nephew, Emperor Otto IV. 91 Harold’s story is appended to the legend of Olaf Tryggvasson’s similar survival after the battle of Svold, see Gillian Fellows-Jensen, ‘The Myth of Harold II’s Survival in the Scandinavian Sources’, in King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Gale Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 53–64, at 57–58. 92 Hemings þattr Asklaksonar, ed. Gillian Fellows-Jensen (Copenhagen, 1962); the relevant passage is translated by Margaret Ashdown, ‘An Icelandic Account of the Survival of Harold Godwineson’, in The Anglo-Saxons. Studies presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. Peter Clemoes (London, 1959), pp. 122–36, at 122–24. 87

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well-favoured’; moreover ‘men perceived a sweet odour in the place, so that all who were there were convinced that he was indeed a holy man’. William then had Harold buried ‘in royal raiment’, and allowed Heming to take the dead king’s place in the hermitage. The fullest version of Harold’s survival appears in the Vita Haroldi, written sometime after 1205, perhaps by one of the Augustinian canons of Waltham.93 One of the main aims of the author was to discredit the claim that Harold’s body lay at Waltham, and to this end he spends some time contradicting both the Waltham Chronicle and William of Malmesbury. William, it seems, was led astray by ‘general opinion’, whereas Ailred of Rievaulx, who allowed for the possibility of Harold’s survival, is praised for his ‘balanced account’.94 As for the Waltham chronicler, he was relying on the identification made by Eadgifu Swanneshals, who, unable to identify the king’s body among the dead, ‘seized upon … the mutilated corpse of another man for the sake of appearances’.95 For his own part, the author of the Vita Haroldi claims as his main source one of Harold’s companions, a hermit called Sæbeorht, whom he himself had met at Stanton Harcourt (Oxon) while still ‘of a tender age and young in the profession of religion’.96 He also calls as witness Harold’s younger brother Gyrth, another survivor of the battle of Hastings, who denied that his brother lay at Waltham: ‘perhaps you’ve got some peasant,’ he said, ‘but you haven’t got Harold’.97 Gyrth made this announcement on a visit to the court of Henry II (d. 1189) in the time of Walter, Waltham’s first Augustinian abbot, appointed in 1184; he would have been about 150 years old at the time. In the Vita Haroldi’s account the injured Harold was rescued from the battlefield by some women who were tending to the wounded and carried to Winchester, where he lay low for two years. Once restored to health, he travelled first to Saxony and then to Denmark to drum up support for a reconquest of England. When these efforts failed, he became a pilgrim and visited various Continental shrines, before returning to England to live as a solitary in a cave near Dover. After ten years Harold set out on his travels again, as a preacher to the Welsh, who were most ungrateful, stealing his provisions, robbing him of his clothing and frequently beating him up. At last he prayed to find a safe refuge and was directed to the church of St John at Chester, where a hermitage had recently become vacant, and there he remained until his death. The date is not given, but the vague chronology suggests some time in the reign of William II (1087–1100). The Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor (Jatvarþa saga), which dates from the fourteenth century, claims that Harold lived into the reign of Henry I, which is chronologically possible; Ralph of Coggeshall and the author of the Chronicon Laudunensis (both thirteenth century) say he survived into the reign of Henry II, which is not possible.98 Vita Haroldi. The Romance of the Life of Harold, King of England, ed. and trans. W de Gray Birch (London, 1885), translated in Three Lives of the Last Englishmen, ed. M. Swanton (New York, 1984), pp. 1–40. See also Waltham Chronicle, ed. Watkiss and Chibnall, p. xlv. The author of the vita is noticeably hostile to the secular canons expelled in 1177, which might point to one of the Augustinians who succeeded them, but, although it was undoubtedly copied and preserved at Waltham, it may have originated elsewhere, possibly at Chester (see the article by Stephen Matthews in n. 99 below). 94 For the Vita Haroldi’s treatment of William of Malmesbury, see Martin Foys, ‘Redacting Harold Godwineson: the Vita Haroldi and William of Malmesbury’, in Textiles, Text, Intertext: Essays in Honour of Gale Owen-Crocker, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer and Jill Frederick (Woodbridge, 2016), pp. 239–53. 95 Vita Haroldi, trans. Swanton, pp. 32–34. 96 Vita Haroldi, trans. Swanton, pp. 11–12. This scenario is just possible, assuming that Harold lived to a great age, and that Saebeorht was only a youth when he entered the ex-king’s service. 97 Vita Haroldi, trans. Swanton, pp. 34–35. Gyrth, Godwine’s fourth son, was probably born about 1030. 98 Fellows-Jensen, ‘The Myth of Harold II’s Survival’, pp. 58–60. Chronicon Laudunensis was written 93



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The Vita Haroldi has the character of a hagiography, ‘lacking only a list of miracles and a final resting-place for the saintly body’.99 Harold’s achievement of sanctity appears in most of the survival stories; he spends his life in penitence as a hermit, whether at Dover, Canterbury or Chester, and is regarded as a holy man even before his death. It is an impressive journey, from consecrated king, to perjured traitor, to penitent hermit and finally to the edge of sainthood. In the midst of all these conflicting accounts and opinions, it is difficult – indeed well-nigh impossible – to reach a true estimation of the last Old English king; but this is not really the point. The business of historians is not so much to establish facts as to evaluate evidence; indeed the most valuable lesson which history can teach us is that whenever we are told something, we should ask who is doing the telling, and why. So I suppose that I had better declare my own interest. The nineteenth-century historian Freeman, for whom Harold could do nothing wrong, declared that if he had been present at the battle of Hastings he would have been standing on the right hand of Harold Godwineson. Should I find myself in the same situation, I’d be happy to stand at the right hand of Edward Augustus Freeman. His History of the Norman Conquest is not much read today, but it is not necessary to agree with his conclusions or share his prejudices to appreciate the breadth of his knowledge and his command of his material. Freeman believed that it was the duty of a historian to lay out the sources on which his conclusions were based, exemplifying the theme of this article; before you can decide whether or not to trust what you are being told, you have to know the source from which it is derived.100

by an English monk at the Premonstratensian abbey of Laon. 99 Stephen Matthews, ‘The Content and Construction of the Vita Haroldi’, in King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry, pp. 65–73, quotation on p. 65. See also Alan Thacker, ‘The Cult of King Harold at Chester’, in The Middle Ages in the North West, ed. Tom Scott and Pat Starkie (Oxford, 1995), pp. 155–76. 100 Freeman’s detailed appendices contain a treasure-house of information derived from the original sources (including Domesday Book, which he had clearly read from cover to cover); checking through them before starting on any related project can save the toiling researcher a vast amount of time.

WOMEN, MEMORY AND THE GENESIS OF A PRIORY IN NORMAN MONMOUTH* Emma Cavell Women’s power (broadly defined) in the medieval British Isles remains a dynamic subject of enquiry for historians. In the absence of the administrative and legal documentation generated by the English central government at a slightly later date, one of the principal sources for propertied women’s actions and influence in Norman England and its borderlands are charters of land grant. As Susan Johns demonstrated in 2003, eleemosynary bequests in particular yield some of the most telling insights into elite women’s power in the Anglo-Norman world, revealing the extent to which that power was, as for men, rooted in land tenure.1 The inextricable interconnection of land, religious patronage and family esteem in Norman Britain afforded women of the settler aristocracy a critical (but insufficiently understood) role not just in the endowment of religious communities attached to their families’ estates but also in the creation and preservation of the memory of those acts of endowment. In The National Archives in Kew (TNA), among the ‘Ancient Deeds’ collections, lies an attractive and well-preserved pancarte that sheds light on the founding years of Monmouth priory and the part played by three women of the seigneurial family of Monmouth in that genesis and its memorialisation.2 TNA E211/361 (as the pancarte is now unromantically labelled) is a single parchment sheet measuring around 540 x 205mm and ostensibly written in a protogothic hand of c. 1100. It relays a series of grants and confirmations made around the turn of the twelfth century by the Breton lord William fitz Baderon (d. c. 1125) with his wife Hawise and the couple’s daughters, Yvette and Advenia; and it depicts the occasion of the consecration of the new priory church that was built for the Monmouth monks – a lavish affair attended by many of the great and good of Cambro-Norman/Breton society. Accompanying the text itself are the decorative crosses, not just of the lord of Monmouth himself but also, most intriguingly, of his wife and two daughters. The notice accompanying the women’s signa reads: ‘Lady Hawise and her daughters, namely Yvette and Advenia, made these crosses’.3

I wish to thank my colleague Daniel Power for photographing documents for me while conducting his own research at Archives Départementales (AD) Maine-et-Loire, and Sean Cunningham at The National Archives (TNA) for supplying photographs and measurements of documents in TNA. Daniel Power and Julia Crick gave invaluable insights as I pulled my thoughts together for this piece. I am grateful for the input of the Battle delegates, especially to Brian Golding and Hazel Freestone, who have since corresponded with me regarding specific points. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Norman Edge conference in 2011 and at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in 2013. I am delighted to have had the opportunity to revive the work for Battle and publish it here. As ever, all errors are my own. 1 Susan M. Johns, Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power in the Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman Realm (Manchester, 2003), esp. part 2. 2 TNA, E211/361. 3 ‘Has cruces fecerunt domina Hadewis et filie eius Iueta uidelicet et Aduenia.’ TNA, E211/361. *

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The following article is in two parts. In the first I shall explore the documentation itself, examining the TNA pancarte and considering analogous textual survivals that record the early days of Monmouth priory and the gifts of the founding family around the year 1100. By peeling away the layers of memory and memorialisation encapsulated within the extant pancarte, we are able to gain closer access to the women and their actions. The second part of the article then considers those actions, exploring the integral part played by Hawise of Monmouth and her daughters both in the (documented) benefaction that sustained their family’s relationship with the priory and in the very processes of memorialisation and memory creation that led, ultimately, to the existence of TNA E211/361. In this pancarte we have evidence that the land rights of aristocratic heiresses of the Norman March of Wales, and presumably of lowland England also, were far more consequential than theoretical-legal perspectives have generally allowed. Norman Monmouth: Priory and Family It is first worth familiarising ourselves with the priory and family. A modest house of black monks attached to the great Benedictine abbey of Saint-Florent of Saumur, Monmouth priory was the foundation of the Conqueror’s companion Wihenoc of La Boussac, who had become lord of Monmouth at some point after the fall of the rebellious Roger of Breteuil, earl of Hereford, in 1075.4 Wihenoc had established the original community of monks around 1080, initially at the pre-Norman parish church of St Cadog, beneath Monmouth castle, and ultimately at the purpose-built priory church of St Mary, sited on ‘a gravelly river terrace between the river Wye and its tributary, the Monnow, and within the castle bailey’.5 We have no true foundation charter for the priory – that published by Dugdale is highly suspect6 – but a confirmation diploma issued by the Conqueror, in the king’s chamber at Salisbury castle on 4 February 1081, indicates that some of the earliest property associated with the nascent community included tithes, ploughlands and meadow at Monmouth, as well as lands in Cirencester and Tibberton (Tebristone), Gloucestershire. The new church was consecrated some twenty years after this event, around the year 1100. The prior and monks of Monmouth were supplied, then and for generations to come, by their motherhouse on the river Loire, an institution with close ties to both Brittany and Normandy. Wihenoc himself had retired to Saint-Florent of Saumur by 1083.7

The Text of the Book of Llandaff reproduced from the Gwysaney Manuscript, ed. J. G. Evans (Oxford, 1893) [henceforth LL], p. 278. 5 David H. Williams and Keith Kissack (eds), A History of the Benedictine Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Florent at Monmouth. Published to mark the 900th Anniversary of the Dedication of the Priory Church (Monmouth, 2001), p. 13. 6 Its diplomatic and improbable reference to Wihenoc’s personal seal suggest that this document had later origins: Dugdale, Monasticon, iv, p. 596, no. 1. 7 J. Martindale, ‘Monasteries and Castles: the Priories of St-Florent de Saumur in England after 1066’, England in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Carola Hicks, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 2 (Stamford, 1992), pp. 135–56, at 145–46. For Saint-Florent’s close ties with Breton and Norman powerbrokers, see esp. Paul A. Fox, ‘The Archbishops of Dol and the Origins of the Stewarts’, Foundations. The Journal of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy 3.1 (2009), 61–76, at 69–71 (repr. Journal of the Stewart Society 23.3 (2010), 249–69); George Beech, Was the Bayeux Tapestry Made in France? The Case for Saint-Florent of Saumur (New York and Basingstoke, 2005); Michel Mouate, ‘Les prieurés anglaise de l’abbaye Saint-Florent de Saumur aux XIe et XIIe siècles’, available at https://www.academia.edu/28197021/LES_PRIEURÉS_ANGLAIS_DE_LABBAYE_SAINTFLORENT_DE_SAUMUR_AUX_XI_e_ET_XII_e_SIÈCLES, pp. 6–22; and Martindale, ‘Monasteries and Castles’, pp. 147–49 and generally. 4



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Wihenoc was native of north-eastern Brittany, the son of Caradog of La Boussac, near Dol, and of an unnamed daughter of Juhel archbishop of Dol (c. 1040–c. 1076). He first appears in the surviving records in 1055, as a witness to the donation of the church of Montreuil-sur-Perouse to the abbey of Saint-Serge d’Angers, and evidently numbered among those lesser Breton lords recruited by William the Conqueror for his campaign.8 After his retreat from the secular world Wihenoc remained active in his abbey’s business, and ever on the move, into the opening years of the twelfth century.9 With both his son, Ratier, and at least one brother seemingly already monks at Saint-Florent by the time of his own retirement in 1083, Wihenoc was succeeded in his Insular possessions by his nephew William fitz Baderon, the Domesday lord of Monmouth and a landholder in both Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. William married the shadowy Hawise, possibly the daughter of the English landholder Godric Mapson and the source of her husband’s tenure of Goodrich castle and its lands.10 Although William was himself succeeded about the year 1125 by a son, Baderon (d. 1176), at the beginning of the twelfth century his daughters Yvette and Advenia appear to have been his only living children with Hawise.11 One of the two married into the Cormeilles family, while William’s descendants in the male line continued to hold the lordship of Monmouth until 1256, the year in which a heavily indebted John of Monmouth (d. 1274) surrendered his estates to the Crown.12 I. TNA E211/361 begins with a single, undated grant to God, the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint-Florent, and the monks of Monmouth priory made by William fitz Baderon, lord of Monmouth, his wife Hawise and the couple’s two daughters, Yvette and Advenia. Beginning with a notification clause, and expressed in the third person and the past tense (dederunt, concesserunt), the grant comprised one ploughland from the land which King William had given (dederat) to Hawise in marriage, along with various other offerings, including ‘villa Dom Hyacinthe Morice, Mémoires pour servir de preuves à l’histoire ecclésiastique et civile de Bretagne, 3 vols (Paris, 1742–46), i, pp. 412–13; Hubert Guillotel, ‘Une famille Bretonne au service du Conquérant: les Baderon’, in Droit Privé et Institutions Régionales. Etudes historiques offertes à Jean Yver (Paris, 1976), pp. 361–67 (at 362); Fox, ‘The Archbishops of Dol and the Origins of the Stewarts’, pp. 69–71. See also K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People. A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166. I. Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 44–58, esp. 54–55; eadem, ‘Le rôle des Bretons dans la politique de la colonisation normande d’Angleterre (c. 1042–1135)’, Mémoires de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Bretagne 76 (1996), 181–215; eadem ‘The Bretons and Normans of England 1066–1154: the Family, the Fief, and the Feudal Monarchy’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 36 (1992), 42–78, generally. 9 See e.g. Martindale, ‘Monasteries and Castles’, p. 146 and nn. 26, 27, and the multiple references to Wihenoc’s presence back in England contained within the documentation addressed by this article. 10 See below, pp. 55–6. 11 Robertus ‘Walensis’ appears three times on TNA E211/361, twice as ‘Robertus Walensis filius domini Willelmi’ and the final time as ‘Robertus Walensis filius domini’. Although Keats-Rohan, Domesday People, p. 484, states that Robert was William’s son by Hawise, it seems more likely from the present evidence that Robert was either illegitimate or the son of an earlier wife. Baderon’s late birth is supported to an extent by the evidence of LL. The suggestion (Keith Kissack, The Lordship, Parish and Borough of Monmouth (Hereford, 1996), p. 28) that Evan Trouet, another of the witnesses recorded on the pancarte, was also William’s son is almost certainly incorrect. LL, pp. 36–37, 93, shows William fitz Baderon as lord of Monmouth in 1119, but his son Baderon by 1128. 12 Keats-Rohan, Domesday People, p. 484; eadem, Domesday Descendants. A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166. II. Pipe Rolls to Cartae Baronum (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 410. For an accessible history of the family to 1256, see K. E. Kissack, Medieval Monmouth (Monmouth, 1974), chapter 1. 8

Fig. 1: TNA, E211/361: (re-)remembering the genesis of a Norman priory.



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Chachebren’ (probably New Court in the modern parish of Marstow), which lay in the vicinity of Goodrich castle. These gifts, we are told, the four donors ‘placed with their hands upon the altar’ (super altare posuerunt manibus suis) before a host of witnesses led by Wihenoc himself, by then a monk of Saint-Florent, and including many of William fitz Baderon’s own men. Among the latter were: Hugo dapifer, one of William’s tenants in 1086 and perhaps a fellow Breton;14 Main of la Boussac, possibly a kinsman; William’s cousin Ratier fitz Wihenoc; and one Brien ‘the old’ (senex). These were followed by the name of a monastic servant, recorded simply as Robertus famulus. Also named as witnesses to this grant are Solomon, presumably fitz Baderon’s Domesday tenant of the same name and, given his forename, probably also a Breton; William’s own son Robert ‘Walensis’; and a certain Eudo rotator, perhaps a household comptroller or some such. The witnesses are given in two distinct groupings, as a sort of principal and subsidiary list perhaps connected to separate stages of the agreement, viz. ‘these are the witness to the gifts’ (from Wihenoc to Robert the monastic servant) and ‘there were also these witnesses’ (from Solomon to Eudo rotator). This individual deed is followed by what is effectively a pancarte-within-apancarte, a single continuous text embracing a series of separate concerns dating from around the turn of the twelfth century. Covering about three-quarters of the membrane, the text is preceded by the cross of William fitz Baderon and concludes with the crosses of Hawise, Yvette and Advenia, all in the hand of the scribe who penned the document. There is a slit for sealing at the foot of the membrane, although whether the document was ever sealed is unclear. The continuous text of this lesser pancarte can probably be broken down into three principal notices with their appurtenant witness lists. Directly following a picturesque, if rather laboured, arenga proclaiming the value of written testimony in the preservation of pious bequest, there is a record of the gift by Wihenoc and William fitz Baderon of ‘all their churches and the tithes of all their land’, along with a range of further interests.15 The latter included several named properties, a mill, pannage for the monks’ swine and wood for their building works, and twenty-two burgesses free of all customs, tolls and the like, with the exception of corporal justice. This notice reads like a post hoc collation of bequests made on a series of earlier occasions by the founder and his nephew as successive lords of Monmouth.16 Its witness list is identical to the principal witness list on the stand-alone deed at the top of the membrane. It is followed by a notification of the monks’ obligation to furnish a chaplain for the lord, who would serve him honourably, and a statement that the three women confirmed the grant.17 To this statement is appended a witness list identical to the second, or subsidiary, witness list from the individual deed discussed above, namely from Solomon to Eudo rotator. The second item constitutes a notice that William fitz Baderon gave (dedit) to God, St Florent and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the monks (of Monmouth) the 13

See Rosalind Lowe, ‘Villa Chachebren or New Court, Marstow: a Monmouth Priory Estate’, Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club, 55 (2007), 112–19. 14 See Keats-Rohan, Domesday People, p. 260. 15 I am grateful to Daniel Power for assisting me in deciphering the nightmarish Latin of this arenga. 16 Interestingly, whereas all the other gifts or set of gifts documented on this pancarte are made over to God, SS Florent and Mary the Virgin and their monks (indicating Monmouth priory), this grant is to God and St Florent of Saumur (the motherhouse). 17 ‘Preterea, notificamus quia capellanum debemus inuenire domino, qui honeste sibi seruiat. Hoc donum concesserunt uxor domini Willelmi et filie ipsius, uidelicet Iueta et Aduenia’, TNA, E211/361. My punctuation. 13

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land of ‘Chachebren’, by the mill of Goodrich castle; that this was done on the third day before the blessed feast of our blessed worshipful Father in Lent (18 March), in the presence of the abbot of Saint-Florent who had come to Monmouth at that time; and that William fitz Baderon’s wife Hawise, with daughters Yvette and Advenia, confirmed the grant. It states further that on the same day that the land was given William and his wife and daughters were received into confraternity by Abbot William, as were all of their barons and the barons’ wives and others, great and small, young and old, who had gathered there.18 A selection of names of the (male) witnesses includes not just men who had already appeared on the pancarte as witnesses, among them Robert ‘Walensis’, son of William fitz Baderon, and Hugo dapifer, but also others like Flaald, son of Alan dapifer (the steward of Dol).19 Also reportedly there that day were six monks in the retinue of Abbot William of Saint-Florent, including one Ranulf ‘who dictated and ruled this charter’. It is very probably the same Ranulf the monk of Saint-Florent who appears on the witness lists of all four grants preserved on this membrane, and was among the intimate group attending the Conqueror’s confirmation, issued at Salisbury castle in 1081, of what may have been Wihenoc’s earliest gifts to SaintFlorent in respect of Monmouth priory.20 We presently shall see, too, that this is not the only context in which Ranulf the (busy) monk appears.21 The third notice declares that William fitz Baderon gave to the monks of Monmouth certain land upon the river Monnow to mark the dedication of their priory. As the see of Hereford, to which the priory belonged, was vacant at that time and in the custody of the king’s chaplain, the bishop of Bangor, Hervé le Breton (d. 1131), performed the consecration. Before numerous witnesses, who included Serlo abbot of Gloucester, Marcher lords Harold of Ewyas and Hamelin de Ballon, and the Domesday tenant-in-chief Hascoit Musard,22 William and his wife and daughters confirmed all the gifts outlined. Also there on that day, in the retinue of Abbot Serlo, was Walter de Lacy, a younger son of the Marcher lord Walter I de Lacy (d. 1085) and himself a future abbot of Gloucester.23 To impress the occasion upon the memory of all those assembled, Bernard the king’s chaplain broke a knife under foot – for he was unable to break it by hand – before William, Hawise, Yvette and Advenia together placed the shattered knife upon the altar. The events depicted by TNA E211/361 relate to a period of several years around the turn of the twelfth century. Indeed, the reference to the vacancy of the see of ‘In ipso etiam die quo supradicta terra data fuit sanctis predictis, acceperunt beneficium suum a domino Willelmo abate Willelmus filius Baderonis et uxor eius domina Hadewis, et filie eorum et fere omnes barones eorum et uxores, qui omnes, tam mares quam femine, tam parui, magnique, iuuenes et senes, qui aderant’, TNA, E211/361. My punctuation. 19 A crusader and companion of Henry, count of the Cotentin (the future Henry I of England) in his younger years, Alan steward of Dol had been associated in Brittany with both the abbey of Saint-Florent and Abbot William himself, and with Baderon of la Boussac, father of the donor. Under Henry I, Alan became a leading Shropshire baron and, through his union with Avelina de Hesdin (his second wife), the ancestor of the FitzAlan dynasty of Clun and Oswestry and ultimately the Scottish royal house of Stewart. Nothing much is known of his son Flaald beyond his appearance on the Monmouth deeds above. Fox, ‘Archbishops of Dol’, pp. 71–73. 20 ‘… & Radulfo monacho sancti Florentii qui propter hoc regem adierat’, AD Maine-et-Loire, H3710, no. 1. This charter has been reproduced, with apparatus, as Regesta: William I, no. 268. 21 See below, p. 53. 22 For Abbot Serlo, Harold of Ewyas (Normans) and the Breton Hascoit Musard, see Keats-Rohan, Domesday People, pp. 418, 245, 246. Hamelin de Ballon was installed in his lands by William Rufus. Both Harold of Ewyas and Hamelin de Ballon had founded priories of their own (Ewyas Harold and Abergavenny respectively) by c. 1100. 23 From 1130 to 1139. 18



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Hereford, which ran from August 1100 to September 1102, suggests that the day in March on which William fitz Baderon gave Chachebren and, with his family and others, received the benefit of spiritual confraternity from Abbot William, must have been in either 1101 or 1102.25 However, the extant pancarte now housed in TNA is not from turn of the twelfth century at all. Within its elegant protogothic script are indicators that this document was written at a much later date, likely more than a century and a half later. Evidently ill at ease with the protogothic script, the TNA scribe peppers his text with letter-forms and learned writing habits that are anachronistic for 1101–2. On occasion he slips into what is almost certainly his natural hand: a cursive script of the second half of the thirteenth century or early fourteenth century. This is clearest in the letter ‘d’ of domno on the second line of the standalone deed that opens the TNA pancarte. Other clues to the late date of this document are scattered throughout.26 In fact, the TNA document is a scribal fair copy of an earlier exemplar; and that exemplar can be found among the muniments of the abbey of Saint-Florent in the Archives Départementales de Maine-et-Loire in Angers. Among the materials relating to the abbey’s extensive Insular possessions are two pancartes, measuring approximately 220 x 540 mm and 200 x 630 mm, respectively: H3710, no. 4 and H3710, no. 5. Presumably products of the scriptorium of Saint-Florent, the ultimate beneficiary of all the bequests depicted (and the house to which the prominent Ranulf the monk belonged), the two documents are of like hand, style and content to the TNA document. One is fuller than the other. Moreover, the same hand can be seen on both of the Angers pancartes, although the longer of the two appears to be the work of two individuals.27 Unlike the TNA pancarte, however, neither document bears any evidence of preparation for sealing. The shorter of the two pancartes (H3710, no. 4) bears William fitz Baderon’s cross (again non-autograph) at the top, begins with the same inelegant preamble that we find on the TNA document and proceeds in identical manner through the first notice of the collected grants of Wihenoc and William, the statement of the monks’ obligation to provide a chaplain and the women’s confirmation. The appurtenant witness lists are also the same. The only differences between the two documents up to that point are very minor.28 What follows this material, however, is a copy of a short charter of King William I or II granting to the abbey of Saint-Florent the church of Andover (Hants) and all its appurtenances, such as existed in the time of 24

Additionally, Serlo’s term ended in 1104, while Hervé was translated to Ely in 1105. This is probably the same day as the dedication itself. See below, p. 56–7. 26 The scribe had trouble with the letter ‘d’. He periodically uses a Gothic bookhand ‘d’ of his own day (e.g. dispensator on the last line of the stand-alone deed), or awkwardly replicates the straight-backed ‘d’ of his exemplar (see e.g. domna on the first line, which appears to have been constructed from ‘t’ and ‘l’). Other anachronistic habits include the piercing of ‘p’ and fusing of ‘pp’. Elsewhere there are errors clearly relating to the process of copying, such as in the case of sa\ga/cissimo on line 3 of the main text. Marchegay himself clearly assumed that this document was from c. 1100: see ‘Les prieures anglais’, no. 15, where he refers to this document as ‘pancarte originale, no. 3’. I am very grateful to Julia Crick for her thoughts on the date and hand of this document. 27 I am again grateful to Julia Crick for assisting me in determining whether H3710, no. 5, was the work of one or more scribes. 28 These include: minor orthographical differences, chiefly reflected in the doubling of consonants (ecclesiis, peccorum, carrugarum) in the French document, where the TNA pancarte has only one (eclesiis, pecorum, carugarum); occasional word-order alteration, such as ‘omnia necessaria sibi’ (TNA) for ‘onmia sibi necessaria’ (Angers); alternative spellings of proper nouns, such as Gilbertus (TNA) for Gislebertus (Angers), Rogerus for Rogerius, Reinaldus for Renaldus and ‘Blacenalre’ for ‘Blakenalre’; and one or two errors and omissions, such as ‘iuxta Monemude’ (TNA) for ‘iuxta castellum Monemude’ (Angers). 24 25

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King Edward, with the added stipulation that churches built under the mother church of Andover should either be destroyed or had by the monks of Saint-Florent.29 The witnesses to this grant are given as Wihenoc (as a monk of Saint-Florent), William the monk, and Count Alan (‘Rufus’) and Ivo Taillebois. Thereafter there is large, blank space covering about a third of the membrane, seemingly for further text that was never produced, before the document concludes with a statement that Ranulf (again!) and Gilbert, monks of Saint-Florent, composed (dictauerunt) the charter, while Novis the deacon wrote it out (descripsit). The date was 12 March 1100.30 The second of the two Angers pancartes (H3710, no. 5), meanwhile, is almost certainly the TNA scribe’s copy-text. Written for the most part by the individual – Novis the deacon? – who drafted the shorter document, it corresponds closely to the main text of the TNA pancarte. The spelling follows that of the shorter pancarte, with just one or two exceptions.31 As in the case of H3710, no. 4, the Andover deed is included. The text of H3710, no. 5 can therefore be broken down into the following parts: 1) the signum (here used to denote ‘mark’ or ‘sign’ rather than ‘seal’) of William fitz Baderon at the top of the membrane; 2) the arenga, followed by the notice of collected gifts of Wihenoc and William, the monks’ obligation to provide a chaplain, and the women’s act of confirmation; 3) a copy of the Andover deed of King William; 4) the notice of William fitz Baderon’s gift of Chachebren and the reception into confraternity of those assembled there on that day (18 March 1101/2); 5) the notice of William fitz Baderon’s gift of land on the Monnow and the knife-breaking at the altar; 6) the signa of Hawise, Yvette and Advenia at the foot of the membrane. As stated above, the various acta encapsulated in the three extant pancartes belong to a period of several years on either side of 1100. Their precise timing is irrecoverable, but the dates given by Paul Marchegay in his 1879 calendar-cum-edition of this material cannot be sustained.32 However, what we can say with some certainty is that the collected bequests of Wihenoc and William fitz Baderon (with the monks’ acknowledgement regarding a chaplain and the women’s confirmation), which are common to all three documents, together with the Andover deed that appears on the two French pancartes, have their origins in a time before 12 March 1100. This is the The Edwardian editor of the first volume of the Regesta (no. 428), following Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, Illustrative of the History of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. 1, A.D. 918–1206, ed. J. H. Round (London, 1899), no. 1150, deemed the deed spurious or wrongly dated, because Count Alan Rufus and Ivo Taillebois died in the 1090s. Yet the scribe of the H3710, no. 4, almost certainly intended the date to refer to the creation of the whole document and not to the Andover grant. An inquest held in 1103x1105, now available only in Dugdale’s collections, attributed the Andover grant to the Conqueror: Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vi, p. 992. 30 ‘Hac cartam dictauerunt Rannulfus atque Gislebertus Sancti Florentii monachi. Hanc etiam descripsit Novis diaconus, IIIIto idus Marcia, uidelicet in festiuitate sancti Gregorii papae. Ab incarnatione domini anno existente millesimo centesimo, indictione octaua, epacta VII habente, et concurrentibus VII existentibus’, AD Maine-et-Loire, H3710, no. 4. My punctuation. 31 On one occasion we find the name Walter spelled Galterius in place of the W-spelling that is generally preferred for such names like Walter, William and Wihenoc. This coincides with the second hand. The latter scribe is also responsible for the spelling mistake ‘monacohrum’. 32 Marchegay, ‘Les prieurés anglais’, nos. 11–16. Marchegay’s choice of dates for these acts that are far too early has led him to dispute the accuracy of the reference to the chaplain Bernard’s custody of see of Hereford ‘by the authority of Henry I’ (iussu regis Henrici): no 16. In fact, there is no reason to think this was an erreur du scribe, as Marchegay believed. 29



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date given at the foot of the shorter Angers document and undoubtedly intended to mark the occasion on which that pancarte was created or completed. Indeed, Count Alan Rufus and Ivo Taillebois, on the witness list of the Andover grant, were both dead by the close of 1094.33 The remaining material on the longer Angers pancarte, from the Chachebren grant to the knife-breaking at the altar, probably depicts the affairs of a single day in March 1101 or 1102 – twelve to twenty-four months after the completion of the shorter pancarte. It remains very difficult to determine the processes by which these two documents were created. We have seen that the shorter of the two was written in one hand, presumably that of Novis the deacon, and dated 12 March 1100. There is enough instability, or variability, in this hand to suggest that he may have written the document in more than one sitting. The second pancarte is chiefly the same scribe’s handiwork. Only the middle portion of text, corresponding to the Chachebren grant and the bestowal of confraternity on those assembled, has been written by a second individual, before the original scribe completed the work. The latter document was certainly written in stages. Michel Parisse has called this type of pancarte a ‘recapitulative or summary notice’, since they embrace a succession of separate records of differing length in a sort of file or dossier.34 Indeed, it is difficult to escape the sense that the Angers pancartes represent a combination of (what may be) verbatim charter-transcripts, as in the case of King William’s Andover grant, and what read more like collated lists or summary accounts of grants, ceremonial and the like, to which the link with earlier written evidence feels far less certain.35 It is possible that the author(s) variously copied or précised formal diplomas, collated charte-notices, interpolated their exemplars and perhaps used personal recollection or oral tradition circulating within family and familia. Ranulf the monk was both eye-witness and charter-composer. We have seen that he was involved in the composition of the shorter Angers pancarte; but as a member of Abbot William’s retinue attending the ‘Chachebren’ gift on the longer Angers pancarte he was also said to have dictated, or composed, and ruled ‘this charter’: Ranulfus … hanc cartem dictauit et liniuit. Does ‘this charter’ refer to an earlier deed now lost, or, perhaps more likely, was Ranulf involved in the composition of the longer Angers pancarte too? It is not at all clear, therefore, just how many ‘events’ – that is, recounted events (the grants, ceremonies and dates) and events of recounting (the documentary layering) – are encapsulated within the longer Angers pancarte. The notice of the collected grants of William fitz Baderon and his uncle is particularly difficult to interpret. In the last quarter of the twelfth century an in-house cartulary called the White Book (Livre Blanc, Liber Albus) was compiled by a single scribe in the scriptorium at Saint-Florent. This cartulary contains a collection of entries that correspond to For Alan Rufus and Ivo Taillebois, see Keats-Rohan, Domesday People, pp. 127–30, 283. If, as Bates believes, the Andover deed refers to a grant of the Conqueror, and not Rufus, then the relevant text on the pancartes has its origins in a time before that king’s death in September 1087: Regesta: William I, no. 270. 34 M. Parisse, ‘Les pancartes. Etude d’un type d’acte diplomatique’, in Pancartes monastiques des XIe et XIIe siècles, ed. M. Parisse, P. Pegéot and B-M. Tock, pp. 11–62, at 26–27. 35 Bates has suggested that the Andover deed on this pancarte may be either an English writ converted into French notitia form (by the beneficiary’s scribe) or a notitia composed by a (chancery) scribe used to writing writs: Regesta: William I, no. 270, note; D. Bates, ‘The Earliest Norman Writs’, EHR 100 (1985), 266–84, at 269–70. Given the probable association (according to the present chapter) between the extant pancartes and Saint-Florent Abbey, the former is the more likely explanation of the Andover deed’s writlike flavour. See also Mark Hagger, ‘The Earliest Norman Writs Revisited’, Historical Research 82.216 (2009), 181–205, esp. 183–85. 33

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the constituent parts of the Angers pancarte texts.36 However, far from providing a gateway to lost originals, the entries in Liber Albus appear to have been copied directly from the longer of the two pancartes. The Monmouth material has been configured as a series of discrete entries, as would be expected of an institutional cartulary, and these largely correspond to the breakdown I have suggested above. With the exception of the Andover grant, which has been moved to a section of the cartulary devoted solely to that priory, the entries are arranged in the same order as they appear on the pancartes. Perhaps the only difference worth noting between these entries and the Angers pancartes is the cartulary’s orthographical preference (though this is not wholly consistent) for ‘Guillelmus’ and ‘Guihenocus’ (et cetera) over ‘Willelmus’ and ‘Wihenocus’ – doubtless indicative of its later twelfth-­century French provenance. The cartulary entries even retain certain phrases which make sense only in the context of the full pancarte narratives. Thus the Liber Albus version of William fitz Baderon’s grant of land on the Monnow, the final item on the longer pancarte, includes the pancarte reference to ‘all the gifts which we have indicated above’ (omnes donationes quas superius denotauimus). It is also completed by the signa of Hawise and her daughters.37 Similarly, William’s signum and the arenga are included in Liber Albus as part of the entry detailing the collated bequests of Wihenoc and William and the confraternity ceremony that followed.38 Almost certainly, however, the power and authority of the seigneurial signa and the wordy harangue were intended to apply to the pancarte in its entirety and not to the individual acta with which the cartulary associates them. Perhaps the Angers pancartes were intended as the ‘official’ written records, and whatever went before was disposed of; for, as Michael Clanchy noted, ‘awareness of posterity made monks destroyers as well as preservers of writings’.39 The content of the longer pancarte had a new lease of life in the thirteenth century when it was copied by a scribe likely associated with Monmouth priory. TNA E211/361 is not simply an imitative pancarte designed to retell the earliest years of Monmouth priory’s formal existence. It is also an interpolated record. It begins with a charter, standing alone at the top of the membrane, which was never part of the Angers material. This deed raises some suspicions, chief among which are the alternative treatments of gifts (such as ‘Chachebren’) also addressed in the main pancarte text, and the fact that the bipartite witness list on this deed corresponds exactly to the two witness lists on the original notice relating to the combined gifts of Wihenoc of Monmouth and William fitz Baderon. Nevertheless, among the Ancient Deeds at the National Archives is a single charter of c. 1100 that is almost certainly the ‘original’. Damaged and only partly legible, and once sealed but now bearing only an empty tag at its foot, this document is word for word (that we can still see) identical to the stand-alone text at the top of the TNA pancarte. Its protogothic script is genuine, and its provenance is probably Insular.40 Nor was it unusual at this time for a single AD Maine-et-Loire, H3713, fols 122r–28v. The latest date for any of the materials included in this volume is c. 1176: Inventaire Sommaire des Archives Départementales Maine-et-Loire antérieures à 1790. Archives Ecclésiastiques, Série H, tome II: Abbey de Saint-Florent de Saumur, rédigé par M. Marc Saché (Angers, 1926), pp. 502–37. There also exists a twelfth-century roll of charters, containing copies of the above deeds relating to Monmouth: AD Maine-et-Loire, H3711 (and H1838). Although I have not examined this document, the Inventaire Sommaire above indicates a similar arrangement of Monmouth charter texts to that in Liber Albus. 37 AD Maine-et-Loire, H3713, fol. 123r. 38 AD Maine-et-Loire, H3713, fol. 122r. 39 Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, England 1066–1307, 3rd edn (Chichester and Maldon, 2013), p. 150. 40 TNA, E326/11722. A fourteenth-century copy of this deed also exists: TNA, E210/4437. 36



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bequest to be made more than once, sometimes with additional gifts added and the original donor’s relatives joining in.41 Perhaps the terminological shifts between dedo and concedo in the grants relating to Chachebren reflect this process.42 It is also the case not only that the TNA scribe has jettisoned the Andover grant from his transcript of the longer text, but that the twenty-two burgesses in the market, which his document states were given to Saint-Florent abbey by Wihenoc and William, in fact numbered only seven in his copy-text (and in Liber Albus). The roman numeral VII has become XXII, rendered in oddly formal Lombardic capitals. Was this a scribal error – elsewhere the TNA scribe has rendered Haraldus of Ewyas, Balardus – or was it deliberate? Monmouth priory, which suffered periods of financial stringency and mismanagement from the mid-thirteenth century onwards, was among those Benedictine priories tucked beneath the walls of an important castle and closely interconnected with the nascent boroughs attached to those castles by the end of the eleventh century. Borough property was an obvious boon for houses like Monmouth priory, and, as F. G. Cowley noted in 1977, in the grant of burgesses at the close of the eleventh century ‘lay the origins of the borough rents and jurisdictional rights enjoyed by most Benedictine priories in south Wales throughout the middle ages’.43 At a time when Monmouth was well past its economic prime, the switch from seven to twenty-two burgesses in a text documenting the original gifts of the founding family may not have been so accidental after all. II However the jigsaw puzzle of acta and actions fits together in TNA E211/361 and its older relatives, the prominence of the three women of the Monmouth family in the foundation phase of its own church, and the written memorials of that phase, is impossible to ignore. Hawise’s identity is no longer as obvious as her place on the documentation or in the conveyancing documents depict; but her centrality to both presumably relates directly to that identity. It has been suggested that she was the daughter of the local English landholder Godric Mapson, the Domesday lord of Howle (Hulla) in Archenfield, which is clearly identified with Castellum Godrich in the so-called ‘Herefordshire Domesday’ of the 1160s.44 At some time after 1086 Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship and Gifts to Saints. The Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1050–1150 (Chapel Hill and London, 1988), p. 33 and p. 34, n. 129. 42 E.g. in the main pancarte texts William fitz Baderon’s grant of Chachebren to the Monmouth monks is signalled by dedit, whereas the conveyance of the same, with further interests, by the whole family in the stand-alone deed at top of the TNA document is indicated by concesserunt. The inference is that William’s gift was the original transaction, which was later repeated as a family concern, there being an element of confirmation and concession in the latter grant. Cf. Cynthia J. Neville, ‘Women, Charters and Land Ownership in Scotland, 1150–1350’, Journal of Legal History 26 (2005), 21–45, and Land, Law and People in Medieval Scotland, chapter 3. 43 F. G. Cowley, The Monastic Order in South Wales, 1066–1349 (Cardiff, 1977), p. 58. Prior Walter, whose term in office ended around 1263 (after which he became prior of Sele!), bore considerable responsibility for the priory’s economic decline and in 1264 his successor, Geoffrey Moreteau, was given the task by the abbot of Saint-Florent of revoking Walter’s most damaging alienations: AD Maine-et-Loire, H3710, no. 11. The specific interests do not appear to have been itemised in the abbot’s mandate, so we cannot know if the property described above was at issue. Monmouth priory’s difficulties continued into the fourteenth century: Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, pp. 229–30, 233; R. Graham, ‘Four Alien Priories in Monmouthshire’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 35 (1929–30), 102–21, at 108. 44 Herefordshire Domesday, circa 1160–1170, ed. V. H. Galbraith and James Tait, Pipe Roll Society, n.s. 25 (1947–48), p. 20. For others who identify Hawise with Godric Mapson, see e.g. Goodrich Castle. Its History and Buildings, ed. Ron Shoesmith (Little Logaston, 2014), p. 25 and Lowe, ‘Villa Chachebren or New Court, Marstow: a Monmouth Priory Estate’, p. 119, n. 14. Godric was attached to the household of William FitzOsbern and may have been one of those English landholders who sided with William the Conqueror in the aftermath of 1066. 41

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Goodrich castle came into William fitz Baderon’s hands, perhaps with the land ‘which King William had given to Hawise in marriage’ (quam rex Willelmus Haheuise in maritagio dederat).45 It is not improbable, therefore, that Hawise’s wardship had fallen to the king with Godric’s death, and that king, presumably William Rufus, had granted her marriage and lands to William fitz Baderon. The use of the title domina for Hawise on most occasions on which she appears in the pancartes, and her close association with the recorded transactions, may be further evidence of her status as Godric Mapson’s successor and the source of her husband’s rights to land formerly held by Godric. It is always possible, of course, that the more frequent use in the pancartes of domina for Hawise than dominus for William indicates that she was of higher status than her husband and thus perhaps not Godric’s daughter.46 William and Hawise had two children that we can identify with certainty, although William was ultimately succeeded by a son, Baderon (d. 1176), who, with own his wife, Rohese de Clare, gave generously to Monmouth priory.47 William fitz Baderon was also the father of Robert ‘Walensis’, whom we have already seen among the witnesses to the grants and confirmations recorded on the pancartes. However, around 1100 it was Yvette and Advenia who were given a leading role in the events and whose property claims and place in the family unit, although not as fixed and familiar as freewomen’s inheritance rights would become within a generation or so, were critical to the bequests, confirmations and ceremonial captured in the documentation described above.48 If Robert Walensis was the child of a previous wife or of a lover, and Baderon not yet born, then at the turn of the twelfth century the lord and lady of Monmouth were represented, in progeny and property, by their two daughters. Together Hawise, Yvette and Advenia are documented as co-donors, confirmers, recipients of spiritual benefits and, particularly in the case of Hawise and her maritagium (as recorded in the stand-alone deed), the direct source of certain property interests conveyed to the priory in its early years. There were also other women in attendance on at least some of these occasions, certainly at the conveyance of Chachebren to the monks of Monmouth and the confraternity arrangements that followed, and presumably also to observe the knife-breaking ritual; but the socio-­ cultural contexts in which the written memoria of these occasions were created did not set much store by their identities.49 It is therefore all the more instructive that the extant pancartes position Hawise and her daughters – to borrow a phrase from Susan Johns – ‘at the apex of the internal hierarchy of the [Monmouth] power structures’ they convey.50 Hawise’s status in the family as a unit of lordship is clear from the surviving texts, as is the conjoint nature of the couple’s socio-political power and mutual relationship with the monks of Monmouth and Saint-Florent, the earthly custodians of the perpetual gifts to their patron saints. Also clear are the integral TNA, E211/361, E326/11722 and E210/4437. This point was raised in discussion at the Battle conference 2019, for which I am grateful to fellow delegates. It is also worth noting that the name Hawise (the modern name Avis/Avice) is not native to England but originated with the Normans. Nevertheless, it is possible that the name might have been used for ‘English’ girls born after the Conquest and to a father loyal to the new regime. 47 Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, iv, pp. 196–97. Baderon of Monmouth must have either been Hawise’s son, born after the events depicted here, or the son of a subsequent wife. 48 See e.g. J. H. Baker, Introduction to English Legal History, 4th edn (2002), pp. 265–73; S. F. C. Milsom, ‘Inheritance by Women in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries’, in On the Laws and Customs of England. Essays in Honour of Samuel E. Thorne, ed. Morris S. Arnold (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), pp. 60–89. 49 Johns, Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power, p. 86. 50 Johns, Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power, p. 81. 45

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part in these processes played by Yvette and Advenia, and the (strikingly female) laudatio parentum in action, with all that the latter entailed.51 The pancartes that survive today represent end points in the memorialisation of the relationship between priory and family. The arenga justifies the record that follows, declaring that ‘there is no more credible testimony’ than the written evidence by which the gifts to the Holy are left manifest to mortals. It is far from alone in making such a statement. There remain a number of twelfth-century deeds, both English and French, that laud the role of writing as an adjunct to human memory – although not as a replacement for it, in the modern sense.52 The processes underlying the pancartes, although no longer fully traceable, undoubtedly owe much to the complicity, as principal actors and conspirators, of the women themselves. We cannot be sure of the precise number of individual acts of donation and confirmation incorporated into the pancarte narratives, the combined gifts of Wihenoc and William being especially elusive; but we can be sure of the women’s central role in those ritualised performances – to mark the gifts out ‘in testimony for the future’ (in testimoniis futuris) – of which we have record. It seems likely that the quasi-public ceremony of conveyance on these occasions, accompanied by symbolic objects, was the crucial transaction; the (putative) written actum was subsidiary. The assembled kin, vassals, neighbours, household officers, monks and clerics, those identified by name and those not, presumably listened to spoken words of conveyance, confirmation and dedication at these events, and they certainly witnessed the four family members place objects upon the altar of the priory church. A knife was broken on the occasion of the dedication of the priory and placed upon the altar. Indeed, this final act of knife-breaking at the dedication ceremony was impressed upon the memory of the witnesses with additional effect by the fact that Bernard the king’s chaplain, unable to break the blade by hand (as appears to have been the expectation), had to snap it underfoot. So noteworthy was this mishap that it was not only described in the pancarte narratives but continues to be written and spoken about today.53 Unfortunately, the meaning of symbolic knives and knife-breaking in the conveyancing process is obscure, potentially depriving us of further insight into the women’s roles in these eleemosynary acts, if not also in pre/peri-literate property law.54 It may be, too, that in the layers of memorialisation embedded within the pancartes, acts of giving, confirming and consecrating overlapped with acts of written documentation. Most curious are those ‘gifts and grants’ suggestively but vaguely described in the stand-alone deed at the top of the TNA pancarte as being placed on the altar by William, Hawise, Yvette and Advenia. Were these grants contained within a charter, or charters, proffered symbolically rather than as the sort of primary instrument of conveyance the TNA scribe would have recognised over 150 years later?55 The relationship between the women and the text/s remains See especially, White, Custom, Kinship and Gifts to Saints, generally, for discussion of the nature of the laudatio parentum. 52 Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, pp. 148, 295–96; James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1992), pp. 8–9; Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance. Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 1994), p. 16; Marchegay, ‘Les prieurés Anglais de Saint-Florent’, no. 21. See also Elisabeth van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe 900–1200 (Basingstoke and London, 1999), p. 10. 53 E.g. the present article and the presentation/s that preceded it; Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, p. 260; Brian Golding, ‘Transborder Transactions: Patterns of Patronage in Anglo-Norman Wales’, HSJ 16 (2006), 27–46, at 32. 54 Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, pp. 260–61. 55 See Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, p. 259. 51

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indistinct. The signa on the extant pancartes are non-autograph, so we cannot know if there was ever a point at which Hawise, Yvette and Advenia, or William himself, made the mark of a cross on a piece of vellum somewhere, or gave permission for a third party to do it for them – the monk-scribe who wrote out the longer Angers pancarte, for example. Such convergences are critical but ultimately unidentifiable. It is nevertheless clear that the women’s authority is implied by the extant signa at the foot of the longer Angers pancarte, as a counter-balance to that of William fitz Baderon on the top of the membrane. Almost certainly, in the final stage of memorialisation, represented by the creation of the longer Angers pancarte, this authority was intended to extend to all that is documented therein.56 At Monmouth, Hawise and her daughters were central to the post-Conquest competition for tangible lordly and geographical power (in which monastic foundation played an essential role) that was especially urgent in a contested border zone.57 The familiarity of Saint-Florent itself with political turbulence and fortified sites made it a doubly good choice for the frontier priory’s founding family, and the abbey gradually accumulated rights in castellaria at Monmouth itself and well beyond.58 In many ways the struggle for real-world power in which Monmouth priory had its genesis is encapsulated, within the written memoria of the priory’s early years, in what Patrick Geary called a competition for power over the past.59 In fact, in the context of the Angers documents, it should perhaps be described as competition over a version of the (three-generation) present for the consumption of posterity. It is difficult always to know what has actively been forgotten and what remembered and, as we have seen above, which documents have been preserved and which lost. We know that the late, probably Monmouth-based, creator of the TNA pancarte modified the past transmitted to him by omitting the Andover grant from his version of the pancarte, at the same time as he sought to interpolate his text and augment it with an additional deed. He doubtless wished to lend his creation authority and authenticity by imitating the old hand and retaining the Monmouth family signa. The TNA scribe has thus manipulated a memory that was itself consciously constructed. And the constructed memory of Norman Monmouth contained within the Angers pancartes, especially the longer of the two, is that of colonisers. The foundation of castle, church and borough was central to the Continental invaders’ establishment of power in England, and in the Marches the establishment and retention of colonial power also meant competition against the interests of the native Welsh. It is striking that, for all the representatives of Norman and Breton interests, religious and secular, given a presence on the pancartes, there are no Welsh men or women – except, just possibly, Novis the deacon.60 We will never know if there were any Welsh powerbrokers in attendance on the occasions covered by the pancarte, whether to observe individual gifts subsumed within general references to the benefaction of Wihenoc and William or to be part of the ceremonial described. If they were present, they have been erased from the textual memory. A Welsh dynast Although the link with the Andover deed on the Angers pancartes is not clear to me. See e.g. Golding, ‘Transborder Transactions’, pp. 29, 30. 58 See e.g. Marchegay, ‘Les prieurés anglais’, no. 24 (the chapel of St George at Clun Castle had been given to Monmouth priory by the mid-twelfth century); Golding, ‘Transborder Transactions’, p. 30. 59 Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, p. 7. 60 Individuals, lay and clerical, of the names Nobis and Novis, are found in LL, pp. 216, 217, 262, 270, 274, 303, 312. See also P. Sims-Williams, The Book of Llandaff as a Historical Source (Woodbridge, 2019), pp. 23, 137, 140, 169–70, 172. The name may therefore also be Breton and Novis (more probably) a Continental. 56 57



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certainly appears to have been present on an earlier religious-ceremonial occasion at Monmouth: the consecration, reportedly by the Bishop Herewald of Llandaff (d. 1104), of the church of the castle of Monmouth. According to the Book of Llan Dâv this event was attended by Caradog ap Gruffudd, the expansionist king of Gwlad Morgan.61 Caradog died alongside Trahaearn ap Caradog of Gwynedd at the battle of Mynydd Carn in 1081.62 The surviving memorials depend on the representation of noblewomen’s power as it was understood in this colonial milieu and, presumably, the broader AngloNorman world around 1100. That power was understood by the people assembled at the dedication ceremony and knife-breaking ritual, and as witnesses to any of the gifts to which Hawise, Yvette and Advenia were party, whether as donors or confirmers, or in some other capacity. It was meaningful and memorable for those who saw it ‘performed’, those who benefited from it, and those who documented it. It was understood by Hawise and her daughters too, all three of whom must have been aware of their special status as heiresses (assuming Hawise was Godric’s daughter). Although possibly still children, Yvette and Advenia would likely have internalised a sense of their roles at a very young age; and Elisabeth van Houts has suggested that heiresses’ self-awareness increased where successive generations of women succeeded to inheritances.63 The three women’s power was thus embedded within the textual processes connected to the early endowment of Monmouth priory, elusive though much of this layering is. Most obviously, the application of the three women’s signa to the longer pancarte, as a counterpart to William’s signum, would scarcely have held meaning for contemporaries without a universal acceptance of their role/s. Moreover, while the TNA scribe transformed the historical evidence with which he worked, for presentist purposes mostly likely associated directly with Monmouth priory itself, he too had to understand the form and function of women’s power in the period of his exemplars. He has not supressed or altered the roles of the women, named and unnamed, in any way. Such an acceptance extended to those whom he expected to find value in his creation. Without it, the (new) memory of the genesis of Monmouth priory, with its twenty-two burgesses in the market and a now long-standing mutual relationship with the founding family, would have been eminently forgettable. TNA E211/361 might not even exist today. Its layers of production and reproduction exposed, TNA E211/361 reveals itself to be an uncommonly rich text for the understanding of the power of noblewomen in the Marcher lordships of the post-Conquest era. Despite, indeed because of, its status as a late, imitative, interpolated creation, this pancarte demonstrates the central roles of Hawise, Yvette and Advenia of Monmouth in the endowment of Monmouth priory and memorialisation of that endowment. The women were essential to the bequests, confirmations, consent and ceremonial captured in the documentation that survives today; they were co-donors with William fitz Baderon, recipients of spiritual benefits and the ultimate source of many of the land rights conveyed to the monks of Monmouth and Saint-Florent; and they clearly stood at the epicentre of Monmouth family power and influence around the year 1100. More than that, Hawise and her LL, p. 278. It cannot be, as has been suggested (Golding, ‘Transborder Transactions’, p. 32), that Caradog was present at the consecration of Monmouth priory in March 1101/2 and simply omitted from the record. Even if the new priory church was intended, as part of a narrative of Llandaff diocesan power, Caradog could not have been there. It is more likely that ‘the church of Monmouth Castle’ (ecclesiam de castello Mingui), the consecration of which was attended by Caratocus rex, was simply the chapel of the newly built fortress: LL, p. 278. 63 Van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, pp. 73, 78. 61

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daughters contributed in multiple ways to the production of the extant narratives, not simply as participants in the ritualised performances that guaranteed their gifts and anchored them in the memory of those who watched (and were duly represented in writing), but in their associations – shadowy, indistinct, yet critical – with written memoria of the same acts. Their signa at the foot of the two longer pancartes, mirroring that of William fitz Baderon on the top, imply an equal authority over the pancarte narratives – consciously constructed and arguably colonialist – and all that is represented therein. What TNA E211/361 also reveals is that in precisely the period in which the eminent legal historian S. F. C. Milsom believed aristocratic heiresses to have had little tangible claim to landed inheritance in particular, except as conduits between men, three (probable) heiresses were asserting, performing and helping to commemorate powerful land rights that were in no doubt at all to those around them. They were still in no doubt at least a century and a half later.64

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Milsom, ‘Inheritance by Women in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries’, pp. 60–89.

THE SINS OF A HISTORIAN: EADMER OF CANTERBURY, HISTORIA NOVORUM IN ANGLIA, BOOKS I–IV John Gillingham Eadmer of Canterbury’s Historia Novorum is a truly remarkable example of the historian’s craft: ‘a highpoint of medieval history writing, in terms of method one hardly ever again equalled; in the clear demarcation of the theme and in his carrying it through, Eadmer is far superior to his contemporaries’.1 This clarity of focus may well derive from the circumstance that, as Martin Rule, the Historia’s Rolls Series editor, wrote in 1884, ‘he is less of an historian than a hagiographer’.2 In other ways too, the Historia is an extraordinary work. As William of Malmesbury noted, ‘Eadmer set down everything so clearly that it all seems to be happening before our very eyes’.3 In control of material and vivid language, he was unquestionably ‘an artist’.4 But he was an artist in the precarious position of being very close to his hero, Archbishop Anselm. According to William of Malmesbury, ‘after Eadmer had put him to bed, Anselm would not get up, or even turn over in bed, unless Eadmer told him to’.5 That in Books V and VI, in which the theme of Canterbury’s relations with York became a consuming one, Eadmer ‘took to lying’, is well known.6 The implication of this judgement is that in Books I to IV, in his treatment of Anselm’s archiepiscopate, Eadmer did not lie, or at least not significantly. In his preface to the Vita Anselmi, Eadmer himself, referring to those four books, described the Historia Novorum as a work of ‘uncontroverted truth’ (inconcussa veritate).7 Indeed, both the ‘die HN ist methodisch ein kaum wieder erreichter Höhepunkt mittelalterlicher Geschichtschreibung. In der klaren Abgrenzung und Durchführung des Themas ... übertrifft Eadmer weit seine Zeitgenossen’, Heinz Richter, Englische Geschichtschreiber des 12. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1938), p. 25. For their generous help I am indebted to Stephen Church, Brian Golding, Samu Niskanen, Ben Pohl, Charlie Rozier, Richard Sharpe and Michael Staunton. 2 Eadmer, HN, p. cxii. Despite Gransden’s emphasisis on Eadmer’s work as hagiographer, she described the Historia as ‘the history of church/state relations in England’, which it plainly was not, Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (London, 1974), pp. 129–140, at 136. Cf. Charles C. Rozier, ‘Between History and Hagiography: Eadmer of Canterbury’s vision of the Historia novorum in Anglia’, JMH 44 (2018), 1–19. 3 Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, vol. 1, i.45.1, p. 108. 4 Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York 1066–1127, ed. and trans. Charles Johnson, revised by M. Brett, C. N. L. Brooke, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1990), p. xiii. Eadmer, of course, denied that artistry, claiming that he had written ‘in rough and unadorned language’, The Life of St Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. R. W. Southern (London, 1962), p. 1. Eadmer’s artistry and his experience as a hagiographer are both well to the fore in Mark Philpott, ‘Eadmer, His Archbishops and the English State’, in The Medieval State. Essays presented to James Campbell, ed. J. R. Maddicott and D. M. Palliser (London, 2000), pp. 93–107. 5 Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, vol. 1, 65.3, p. 196; on William’s Canterbury sources of information, ibid., vol. 2, pp. xxxviii–xli. 6 Hugh the Chanter, pp. xiv–xv. For a recent forthright condemnation of Books V and VI see Bernd Goebel, Im Umkreis von Anselm. Biographisch-bibliographische Porträts von Autoren aus Le Bec und Canterbury (Würzburg, 2017), p. 38. 7 Life of St Anselm, p. 1. My English versions of Latin texts always lean heavily on the published 1

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Vita Anselmi and the first four books of the Historia Novorum, both in their earliest known versions completed by 1114, have been described as ‘historical sources of exceptional quality and veracity’.8 They are unquestionably books of exceptional quality. Here I wish to focus on the question of veracity. It is very likely that William of Malmesbury was referring to Eadmer when he wrote of a ‘completely truthful person whom I know well’. But this Eadmer was also the authority for William’s acceptance of the notorious Canterbury forgeries as genuine papal documents.9 Those historians whose own focus has been on Anselm’s life and thought, above all Richard Southern and Sally Vaughn, have on the whole seen Eadmer as a truthful author. Given Anselm’s fame in so many spheres of religion and philosophy, an Anselm-centric approach to Eadmer’s work is hardly surprising, but it shifts attention away from what might have been the biographer’s own central concerns. Moreover, it resulted in both Southern and Vaughn looking to Anselm’s letters for correctives to Eadmer.10 Comparing Eadmer’s testimony with the letters is unquestionably an important step and has produced dividends, but it is also highly problematic, given the likelihood that Eadmer himself had a role in the creation of the Anselm letter collection.11 It has, moreover, resulted in the trustworthiness of Eadmer’s version remaining untested against the evidence of non-Anselmian sources.12 Although Eadmer probably made contemporary notes throughout the 1090s, the Historia itself was composed after Anselm’s death in 1109, that is, well after 1099, the year in which Anselm and Eadmer in Rome saw Pope Urban II ban homage and investiture.13 For Southern, who believed that Anselm, even if he had known of the ban decreed at the Council of Clermont in 1095, had not raised the issue before 1100, it followed that Eadmer ‘distorted the whole picture of Anselm’s early years’ by writing a history ‘to support a theory about the events of the time, which was certainly not in the minds of either Anselm or Eadmer in Rufus’s reign’.14 But he relativised this judgement: translations cited, but often – as here – modify them. 8 Hugh the Chanter, p. xiv. Even allowing for Pohl’s new analysis of the MSS of the Historia, it remains the case that most of Books V and VI were written after 1119, and most of Books I–IV by 1114. Benjamin Pohl, ‘The (Un)Making of a History Book: Revisiting the Earliest Manuscripts of Eadmer of Canterbury’s Historia Novorum in Anglia’, The Library, 7th series, 20 (2019), 340–70. On the Vita’s date of composition, Life of Anselm, pp. xviii–xx. 9 Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, vol. 1, 65.2, p. 194; vol. 2, pp. 40–41. 10 ‘by far the most important corrective is to be found in Anselm’s letters’, R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), p. 248. Cf. Sally N. Vaughn, Archbishop Anselm 1093–1109. Bec Missionary, Canterbury Primate, Patriarch of Another World (Farnham, 2012), pp. 12, 17. 11 Samu Niskanen, The Letter Collections of Anselm of Canterbury (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 224, 291. Although the earliest extant manuscripts of the archiepiscopal letters date from the 1120s, when Eadmer was in Canterbury as precentor, he clearly had access to earlier editions, for which see Samu Niskanen, ‘The Evolution of Anselm’s Letter Collections’, in Saint Anselm of Canterbury and his Legacy, ed. Giles Gasper and Ian Logan (Toronto, 2012), pp. 40–60, at 48–49. 12 As pointed out by Stefanie Schild, Der Investiturstreit in England (Husum, 2015), p. 16. 13 Eadmer, HN, pp. 112–14. The page numbers of Rule’s edition can be found in the margins of the English translation of Books I–IV, Geoffrey Bosanquet, Eadmer’s History of Recent Events in England (London, 1964). 14 Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 247–48; R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and His Biographer. A Study of Monastic Life and Thought 1059–c.1130 (Cambridge, 1966), p. 310. See Schild, Investiturstreit, pp. 96–104, for the likelihood that Anselm knew of the decrees of the council of Clermont. Cantor’s arguments to this effect (Norman F. Cantor, Church, Kingship, and Lay Investiture in England, 1089–1135 (Princeton, 1958), pp. 100–2), were dismissed, without being mentioned, in Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer, p. 124, and Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 281–82. In a reference for Cantor written in 1960 Southern described his book as containing ‘much’ that was ‘not entirely intellectually honest’. Letter printed by Nicholas Vincent, at http://magnacarta.cmp.uea.ac.uk/read/feature_



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Eadmer was not the first – and certainly not the last – historian to discover the value of a theme which gave coherence and dignity to his story, and made it intelligible to his readers, at the small expense of a little distortion. He did not need to distort it much: it was simply a matter of importing into past events principles which had not been in the minds of the actors. A few small adjustments, no more.15

In Vaughn’s view, ‘Eadmer was truthful, I believe – in the way that truth can be told yet with certain unedifying facts omitted.’16 What was at stake for these scholars – as for Eadmer – was the truth about Anselm, a ‘higher’ truth about a man of God. If untruths about lesser mortals were allowed to flourish, that was merely collateral damage, and, in a ‘greater scheme of things’, it hardly counted.17 Central to those who admire – as I do – the clarity of Eadmer’s handling of the material at his disposal is the preface in which he set out his argument.18 The key sentences are: The principal intention of this work, after showing how Anselm, abbot of Bec, had been made archbishop of Canterbury, is to describe the causes of the discord that arose between him and the kings of England, which led to him being so often and so long in exile from the kingdom, and what has been the outcome of this dispute between them. The cause seems to be the innovation of our time, previously unknown to the English, which came into existence at the time when the Normans began to reign in England – I say nothing of the time before. From the time when William of Normandy subjugated the land by force of arms, no one before Anselm became a bishop or abbot without first becoming the king’s man or being invested with his bishopric or abbacy by receiving his pastoral staff from the king’s hand … Because Anselm wished to abolish this custom, as contrary to God and the canons of the church, and to remove the injustices arising from it, he became hateful to the kings and was forced to leave the country. There were also, as the sequence of things done will show, other causes of his departures.19

of_the_month/Apri.2015_5. See also Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 337–70. 15 Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 415–16. Cf. ‘attempts which have been made to convict him of wilful distortion have not been successful’, Southern, Saint Anselm and His Biographer, p. 304. 16 Vaughn, Archbishop Anselm, pp. 13–14. Earlier she had written, ‘I myself have accused Eadmer of deliberately lying, which I am now convinced he did not – or not in the usual, pejorative sense’, Sally N. Vaughn, ‘Eadmer’s Historia Novorum: A Reinterpretation’, ANS 10 (1987–88), 259–89, at 287. 17 ‘Eadmer was very ready to listen to disreputable stories about William Rufus but it is hard to think they greatly falsified his character’, Southern, St Anselm and His Biographer, p. 145. Vaughn, however, has increasingly come to see Eadmer as responsible for ‘the fiction that Rufus was a homosexual, an atheist, a Jew-lover and a madman’. Vaughn, Archbishop Anselm, pp. xviii, 121–22, 127–28. On the king’s alleged homosexuality, John Gillingham, William II: The Red King (London, 2015), pp. 14, 49–58. 18 Whether it was written, as generally believed, after Books I–IV had been completed, or a few years earlier, as suggested by George Garnett, Conquered England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 48–49, is immaterial here. 19 ‘Et ea quidem hujus operis intentio praecipua est, ut designato qualiter Anselmus Beccensis coenobii abbas fuerit Cantuarensis archiepiscopus factus, describatur quam ob rem, orto inter reges Anglorum et illum discidio, totiens et tam diu exulaverit a regno, et quem eventum ipsa discidii causa inter eos sortita sit. Ipsa denique causa nova res huic nostro seculo videtur, et a tempore quo in Anglia Normanni regnare coeperunt, non dico prius, Anglis inaudita. Ex eo quippe quo Willelmus Normanniae comes terram illam debellando sibi subjegit, nemo in ea episcopus vel abbas ante Anselmum factus est, qui non primo fuerit homo regis, ac de manu illius episcopatus vel abbatiae investituram per dationem virgae pastoralis susceperit … Hunc ergo morem quasi Deo sacrisque canonibus contrarium Anselmus abolere, ac per hoc injustitias inde manantes resecare, desiderans, regibus ipsis invisus effectus est, et patriam exire coactus. Fuerunt et aliae ipsius exitus causae, sicut rerum gestarum series declarabit.’ Eadmer, HN, pp. 1–2. The passage indicated by the ellipsis relates to the exceptional status of bishops of Rochester, invested by their archbishops.

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In this passage Eadmer referred three times to Anselm’s two periods of exile. Modern scholars, with their eye on European comparisons, have tended to focus on the reference to homage and investiture.20 Eadmer’s assertion that homage and investiture, far from being ancient customs, were recent innovations, was characteristic of those Gregorian polemicists who used arguments from history to bolster their case, but it was not an argument he chose to develop.21 Indeed, when he came to list some of William I’s innovations, homage and investiture were not among them.22 True, homage and investiture had their place in the preface, but that was because he claimed they led to Anselm’s exiles and, in consequence, to those things he and his first readers, other members of the community of Christ Church, Canterbury, did care a great deal about, notably the material losses suffered by their church during their archbishop’s absences.23 As Martin Rule wrote in 1884: Eadmer’s ‘main purpose in writing the Historia Novorum was to prove to his contemporaries that for these two absences from his sphere of proper duty Anselm was not to be held responsible’.24 The claim that he was forced to leave (coactus exire) was made not only in the preface but several times more in the course of his narrative, and then again in the summary of Anselm’s career that opens Book V (see below, pp. 66, 70). Indeed, as Michael Staunton has pointed out, it appears that Eadmer returned to the subject of Anselm’s exiles and their justification in what looks to have been his original ending. Although Anselm died in April 1109, the narrative of Book IV as it stands today continues until the end of that year (another ten pages, pp. 207–16, in Rule’s edition). It is widely agreed that an earlier version, of which no manuscript survives, ended two pages earlier (at p. 214).25 In that first version Eadmer’s text ended by quoting Luke, chapter 14 v. 24: ‘I say unto you, That none of those men that were bidden shall taste of my supper.’ A version of the Historia ending with these words would have concluded Southern’s elucidation of the preface was that Eadmer’s Historia ‘concentrated on the theme set out in its title and preface: the New Things that had come to pass in England since the Conquest – in particular the new rules about the homage and investiture of prelates, which (according to Eadmer’s preface) had been introduced into England by William the Conqueror’, Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 247–48. 21 Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Geschichte als Argument’, Historische Zeitschrift 245 (1987), 31–69, at 50–53. 22 Eadmer, HN, p. 10. He may even have come to anticipate Hugh the Chanter’s view that it was all a fuss about nothing much, Hugh the Chanter, pp. 22–25. For the view that it meant little to Anselm either, Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 232–34, 300–303. 23 Anselm himself, particularly during his first exile, theologically an unusually productive period, may have worried less about such matters. He had begun Cur Deus homo in England, amid the distractions of his quarrels with the king, and he wanted to finish it, Richard Sharpe, ‘Anselm as Author: Publishing in the Late Eleventh Century’, Journal of Medieval Latin 19 (2009), 1–87, at 1–2, 46–50, 59. Anselm’s letter collection included letters demonstrating his concern for the management of Christ Church’s estates during his second exile, although even then it seemed to those whom he left behind that he did not care enough, but nothing of the kind survives from his first exile: Brian Golding, ‘Tribulationes ecclesiae Christi. The Disruption caused at Canterbury by Royal Confiscations in the Time of St Anselm’, in Les mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des XIe – XIIe siècles. Études anselmiennes (Paris, 1984), pp. 284–98, at 287–88. 24 Eadmer, HN, p. cvii. Michael Staunton too has highlighted the significance of exiles in Eadmer’s defences of Anselm. See Michael Staunton, ‘Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi: a Reinterpretation’, JMH 23 (1997), 1–14; idem, ‘Exile in Eadmer’s Historia Novorum and Vita Anselmi’, in Saint Anselm. Bishop and Thinker, ed. Roman Majeran and Edward Iwo Zielinski (Lublin, 1999), 47–59; idem, ‘Exile in the Lives of Anselm and Thomas Becket’, in Exile in the Middle Ages, ed. L. Napran and E. van Houts (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 159–80. 25 That the last two pages were a later amplification was, according to Rule, obvious; Martin Rule, ‘Eadmer’s Elaboration of the First Four Books of his Historia Novorum’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 6 (1886), 276. The evidence is set out in Southern, Saint Anselm and His Biographer, pp. 299–300; idem, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, p. 416. 20



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very neatly by harking back to the prognostic discovered at Anselm’s archiepiscopal consecration in September 1093: ‘[He] invited many./ And he sent his servant at the hour of supper to say to them that were invited, that they should come: for now all things are ready./ And they began all at once to make excuse.’26 The familiar parable continues: then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes … then a second time ‘go out into the highways and hedges … so that my house can be filled. For I say unto you, That none of those men that were bidden shall taste of my supper’. vv. 21–24

The fact that Eadmer chose to write on after reaching Anselm’s death and burial suggests that in these closing pages we have clues to his state of mind as he finished writing Book IV. Two subjects were occupying his thoughts. The first, and a foretaste of things to come, was the thorny matter of the rights of Canterbury over York (pp. 207–12). The second (pp. 213–14) was the sexual conduct of priests and canons, together with the arrogance of the men with long hair, the criniti, who mocked those who cut their hair short by calling them peasants or priests, both words evidently terms of abuse in the language of the courtly elite. In Eadmer’s mind these worldly men were those who had been invited, but none of whom would enjoy the lord’s supper. Eadmer tells us why he was going on about this now.27 Because, after his death, Anselm was being criticised by people who said that he would have done better to tolerate those evil customs. Eadmer’s answer to this accusation was an emphatic No! Father Anselm had set the right course. What the future will bring I do not know. But as of now I do know that few (I am speaking of seculars/de secularibus dico) are found who follow Father Anselm’s teaching and hurry to the Lord’s supper with pure and simple heart. He left England once, he left England a second time; just as the lord bade his servant do in the gospel. That in those departures he had brought a vast crowd of foreigners to partake of the lord’s supper by his preaching and admonishing, we know without any shadow of doubt, we who were his companions in his travels and labours. As for those to whom he had been sent to invite first, may almighty God avert that sentence on them which the lord pronounced: But I say unto you that none of those men that were invited shall taste of my supper.28

With these angry last words Eadmer was both answering his master’s critics and justifying the two long absences from Canterbury.29 Martin Rule was convinced that Eadmer succeeded in absolving Anselm from responsibility for those exiles: ‘That he has succeeded none can doubt.’30 But it is a mistake to run the two exiles together. Eadmer dealt with them very differently. This is a crucial aspect of that well-known but still insufficiently explained contrast between the ways he treated Rufus’s and Henry’s reigns.

‘Vocavit multos. Et misit servum suum hora coenae dicere invitatis ut venirent, quia iam parata sunt omnia. Et coeperunt simul omnes excusare’, Luke 14: 16–18, quoted in Eadmer, HN, p. 43. 27 Apparently after Anselm’s death the king had for a while enforced the conciliar decrees requiring priestly celibacy more strictly than Anselm himself had, but ‘the rigour of the king’s edict is now cooling down’. Eadmer, HN, 212–14. See below (pp. 68–9) for further references to this period of lucrative royal activism. 28 Eadmer, HN, p. 214 ‘Dico vobis quod nemo virorum illorum qui vocati sunt, gustabit coenam meam’ (Luke, 14: 24). 29 Staunton, ‘Exile’, p. 55. 30 Eadmer, HN, p. cvii. 26

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Down to the year 1100 the History is remarkable for its long accounts of things said at a succession of royal courts and papal councils. The discussions … [at six royal courts andtwo papal councils] are reported in great detail and in direct speech.

After the discussion of the king’s marriage in November 1100, the debates in which Anselm was involved take a minor place in Eadmer’s narrative … Despite this change, the scale of the work was not seriously affected. The reason for this is the large amount of space … now taken up with the texts of original letters. For the eight years 1093–1100 Eadmer quotes only three documents; for the next years … he gives thirty-eight.31

It is of a piece with this that he quoted only one letter relating to the first exile – and that one written by Anselm himself – whereas from the period of the second exile he included the texts of no less than fifteen letters, ten written by Pope Paschal II. The second exile, 1103–6 Whereas in Books I and II Eadmer had not included the text of a single letter from Urban II, the first eight letters quoted in Book III were all from Paschal II, the first two of them addressed to King Henry. After this dramatic shift of gear it is hardly surprising that Eadmer included the text of a letter in which, no sooner had Anselm gone into exile again, than Paschal took up a position on the matter. Writing to the king in November 1103 he urged him to ‘remove from yourself and from your kingdom the infamy of banishing such a man’.32 Book IV opens with an account of the problems that arose for the English Church as a consequence of Anselm staying at the court of Archbishop Hugh of Lyons for a year and four months. At this point Eadmer inserted the text of a letter written by someone from within the community of Christ Church Canterbury. It criticised Anselm fiercely for not standing by them in a crisis in which churches were despoiled and sins of all kinds abounded, including the marriage of priests, characterised here as ‘the prime evil of all which brings shame upon us/omnium primum malum est ad dedecus honestatis nostrae.’ ‘Holy Father, even if they imprisoned you, ill-treated you … you would not have been justified in running away.’ As it was, you left ‘of your own accord, not being compelled by anyone’.33 This list of charges was followed by a letter in which Paschal referred to himself as sharing in spirit the wrongs and exiles suffered by Anselm.34 Written in March 1105, this letter represented authoritative proof that, for as long as the king insisted on retaining his customary rights over the church, Anselm was not to blame for his exile. But it then became harder for Eadmer to absolve Anselm from responsibility for the sufferings of the English Church. Despite king and archbishop meeting at Laigle Southern, St Anselm and his Biographer, 301, explained the contrast by suggesting that after 1100, Eadmer was excluded from Anselm’s confidence. This is possible, though problematic since Eadmer remained his constant companion and chaplain throughout. More implausible still is Vaughn’s suggestion that Anselm disliked the first half of Historia Novorum, and persuaded Eadmer to renounce dramatic staging and made-up speeches, in favour of document-based accuracy, Vaughn, Archbishop Anselm, 17. 32 ‘Tu tantum talis repulsae infamiam a persona tua et regno amoveas.’ The king’s hard line in ‘asking from us what we cannot possibly grant/quia id a nobis expetere quod praestare omnino possumus’, had resulted in Anselm being afraid to stay in his kingdom. ‘Perspice, fili carissime, utrum decus an dedecus tibi sit, quod sapientissimus ac religiosissimus Gallicanorum episcoporum … propter hoc tuo lateri adhaerere, tuo veretur in regno consistere’, Eadmer, HN, pp. 155–56. On Eadmer’s ‘Gallicanorum’, Vaughn, Archbishop Anselm, p. 141 n.71. 33 ‘sponte tua, nullo penitus cogente’, Eadmer, HN, pp. 160–62. 34 ‘Tuas namque injurias ac repulsas aeque ac nostras portamus’, Eadmer, HN, p. 163. 31



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on 22 July 1105 and agreeing provisional terms of reconciliation, Anselm still chose to stay away. He believed that he ought not to return until the pope, in the presence of royal and archiepiscopal envoys, had approved the terms of the settlement. He remained in Normandy, where Robert Curthose was still duke, for more than another year. But others evidently felt differently. At this point Eadmer inserted the text of a second letter criticising Anselm for his absence from Canterbury. Again, no author was named, but Eadmer noted that it was written by a man who believed that Anselm’s delay was of his own volition (propria voluntate).35 It was at this point, immediately after this second letter of criticism, itself undated but placed by Eadmer after the July meeting at Laigle, that he did something innovative in historical writing in England: he inserted the text of a royal letter. Indeed, he soon inserted the texts of two more. All three royal letters were addressed to Anselm, and all composed within a period of nine or ten months, between October 1105 and May/June 1106. Why these three? From the whole of Anselm’s time as archbishop (1093–1109) he included only five in all, the other two being the newsletter announcing Henry’s victory at Tinchebrai (September 1106) – which enabled Eadmer to claim that God rewarded those who respected Anselm – and another which showed Anselm in 1108x1109 taking an active part in upholding Canterbury’s rights over York.36 He evidently had Anselm’s archive at his disposal, and in that there were other royal letters which he could have included, had he so wished. But he chose not to. He did not, for example, include the text of the letter that Henry had written in August 1100 urging Anselm to hurry back to England, although he referred to its contents.37 Indeed there are five other letters extant in the Anselm collection which can be dated to the period between October 1105 and May/June 1106. No doubt the fact of exile ‘greatly increased the need for correspondence’.38 But this only sharpens the question. Why did Eadmer select these three for inclusion in his Historia and not the others? All three were terse and business-like – not at all the kinds of letter that chroniclers would usually like to copy. Not counting the formulae of address, which Eadmer carefully included, the three of them together take up only twenty-three lines in Rule’s edition. If at this point in his narrative Eadmer had wished to persuade his readers of the high regard in which the king now held Anselm, then another letter might have served that purpose better. In December 1105 Henry had written to Anselm asking him what they should do in the light of news that there were now two popes in Rome.39 This letter would have given a compelling vision of a king consulting his archbishop. But at this point that was not what Eadmer was trying to get across. What concerned him was the need to explain to his audience (primarily the monks of Christ Church Canterbury, whose sufferings were still fresh in the mind when Eadmer wrote) that it was not Anselm’s fault that he still had not returned to them.40 In one way or another, Eadmer’s selection of these three letters explained why

Eadmer, HN, pp. 167–68. Eadmer, HN, pp. 184, 205. 37 Eadmer, HN, p. 119. 38 Richard Sharpe, ‘Proclamations, Treaties and Letters’, in Richard Sharpe and David X. Carpenter, Charters of William II and Henry I Project, Faculty of History, University of Oxford, pp. 120–89. This online edition and translation is by far the most up-to-date and comprehensive available analysis of Henry I’s letters and their transmission. 39 Sharpe, ‘Proclamations’, 151–53. 40 This is not to argue that Eadmer was writing exclusively for the community of Christ Church. On the Historia’s wider readership in the twelfth century, Benjamin Pohl, ‘Eadmer and His Books: a Case of Monastic Self-Publishing’ (forthcoming). 35

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Anselm and the king had been unable to conclude the business that would have allowed the archbishop to return to Canterbury.41 The first of the three, sent in the autumn of 1105, was self-explanatory. It began ‘venerable father, do not be annoyed that I have so long delayed sending envoys to Rome’. In the second, Henry expressed surprise at receiving a letter from Anselm complaining about the way he had been punishing priests who had flouted the archbishop’s decrees against marriage; the message to Eadmer’s readers was not so much the king’s surprise at being rebuked, as the letter’s place and date: Tonbridge, 23 April (1106). Then Eadmer included another letter from Anselm to the king, again rebuking him for meddling in ecclesiastical matters. To this, in the third letter, Henry replied curtly: that he believed he had acted properly; that he would soon cross the Channel and, if, when they met, Anselm persuaded him that he had not acted properly, he would put the matter right. Then, immediately after this letter’s closing address, ‘witnessed Waldric, chancellor, at Marlborough’, Eadmer added a laconic note: ‘while these things were happening, the envoys sent to Rome returned’.42 Only after their return, bearing the pope’s approval, was Anselm able to finalise terms with Henry, a king who – as this correspondence proved – had been both dilatory and in England. No matter how keen Anselm himself had been to expedite matters, these three letters, stylistically so out of place in an ecclesiastical chronicle, proved that it had simply not been possible. True, Anselm had been much criticised, but, rather than ignore this, Eadmer chose a better way: state it openly, even quote the criticism at length and, if it can be rebutted, rebut it.43 Eadmer knew what he was doing – as he himself made clear when in introducing the first letter of criticism, beginning a sequence of twelve letters relating to the long drawn-out ending of the second exile, he stated his intention of setting out what he called ‘the truth of the matter/rei ipsius veritatem’.44 Eadmer and Henry I Without exception, all five royal letters that Eadmer chose to include in the Historia show King Henry in a positive and co-operative, if occasionally dilatory, light. None of them was written before 1105. Thus, although Eadmer certainly did not conceal the fact that for the first few years of his reign Henry regarded himself as entitled to enjoy the same powers over the church as his father and brother had held, he did not include any of the letters in which the king made this explicit. He did not, for example, include the letter sent to Paschal II in 1101 in which Henry wrote: ‘Your Holiness shall know that for as long as, with God’s help, I live, the dignities and customs of the realm of England shall not be diminished. And if I – which God forbid – should ever so abase myself, my great men, and indeed the people of

Gransden, Historical Writing, p. 140. Eadmer HN, pp. 169, 176, 177. Even if Eadmer rather approved of the king taking action against married priests (above p. 65 n. 27), it no doubt made sense for him to portray the archbishop as standing up to the king, and hence to include the texts of Anselm’s two letters on the subject. This does not explain why he included the king’s business-like replies. Evidently they were there for a different reason. 43 Staunton, ‘Exile’, p. 52. Eadmer also included a letter from some bishops lamenting Anselm’s continuing absence; this gave the archbishop an easy opportunity for a sarcastic reply, Eadmer, HN, pp. 174–75. 44 Eadmer, HN, pp. 159–60. 41

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all England, would not permit it in any way.’ Nor did he include the one which showed that, as late as spring 1104, Henry still insisted on his father’s customs.46 Eadmer was evidently prudent in his choice of which of King Henry’s letters to include in the Historia and which to exclude. He was writing while Henry was at the height of his powers. He had conquered Normandy and held his brother, Robert, captive in England. By 1114, he had a male heir just entering his teens. His daughter was married to the German emperor, and at their formal betrothal at Whitsun 1109 (soon after Anselm’s death) ‘King Henry’, in Eadmer’s words, ‘held his court in London with great worldly pomp and rich ceremonial’.47 Central to the king’s position in the world was the legitimacy of his marriage. This was a matter to which Eadmer devoted many lines – five pages in the Rolls Series edition – defending the key part played by Anselm in 1100, explaining that he did so because ‘quite a large number of people have maligned Anselm, saying that in this matter he did not keep to the path of strict right’. He finished this defence by stating: 45

Here, as my conscience truly bears witness, I have described what happened, as I myself was present and heard and saw it all, – simply setting out the girl’s story without asserting whether it was true or not. If anyone still chooses to say that in this matter Anselm did anything which was not right, let him beware. We who have known his inmost heart in this and many other difficulties bear witness that, as he himself used to say, he had not at that time either the knowledge or ability to enable him to act more rightly or more justly than he had.48

In emphasising these points Eadmer was not only – once again – insisting on just how close he had been to Anselm, he was also doing his best – protesting too much, we might think – both to defend the archbishop and to emphasise the validity of the marriage against those who questioned it.49 Eadmer was very probably wise to be prudent, both for the sake of Christ Church and for his own sake.50 When a delegation of 200 barefooted priests, looking for some respite from the financial oppression they and their families were suffering, turned to the queen for help after they had been driven from the king’s sight without the courtesy of an answer, she sympathised enough with their suffering to burst into tears, but, according to Eadmer, was too frightened of her husband to intervene.51 She was not alone. According to William of Malmesbury, ‘all men had love of him on their lips and fear of him in their hearts’. This was a king, Eadmer noted, who was feared by many more than they feared God.52 This is one of two letters from Henry that owe their survival to the compiler of Quadripartitus, Sharpe, ‘Proclamations’, pp. 136–39. Although it was not copied into a surviving Canterbury collection until the thirteenth century, Anselm’s stated policy that copies of royal letters to the pope should be kept only when ‘helpful/utile’, makes it highly likely – to say the least – that Anselm and Eadmer would have known of so clear an expression of Henry’s view; W. Fröhlich, The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury (Kalamazoo, 1990–94), iii. No. 379. 46 Sharpe, ‘Proclamations’, pp. 145–57. 47 Sharpe, ‘Proclamations’, pp. 207. 48 ‘En ordinem gestae rei, teste conscientiae meae veritate, sicut eam praesens audivi et vidi, in nullam partem declinando descripsi, verba puellae ita duntaxat in medio ponens, ut non asseram vera extiterint necne. Si ergo quis in istis Anselmum contra aequum aliquid egisse dicere ultra voluerit, ipse viderit. Nos vero qui cor eius in hoc et in multis agnovimus testimonium ei perhibemus, quia, sicut ipse fateri solebat, nec scire nec posse illo tempore habuit, quomodo in hac melius aut aequius faceret quam fecit,’ Eadmer, HN, pp. 121–26. 49 On Anselm’s difficulties here see Southern, Saint Anselm and His Biographer, pp. 183–190; on Southern’s see Richard Sharpe, ‘King Harold’s Daughter’, HSJ 19 (2007–8), 1–27, at 14–18. 50 In 1120 he was acceptable to Henry as bishop of St Andrews; Eadmer, HN, p. 281. 51 Eadmer, HN, pp. 171–73. 52 Malmesbury, Gesta regum, 411.4; Eadmer, HN, p. 213. See Alan Cooper, ‘The Feet of Those that Bark 45

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Anselm’s First Exile (1097–1100) By contrast, there was nothing to fear from William Rufus, who was well and truly dead by the time Eadmer wrote about him.53 Conventional ecclesiastical wisdom held that so sudden a death had to be God’s punishment for what must have been a seriously blemished life. Rufus was an easy target. Despite this, Eadmer was much less successful in absolving Anselm of responsibility for the first exile. He repeatedly asserted that Rufus had expelled Anselm. He put statements to this effect into the mouths of Anselm in Aversa in 1098 and of Pope Urban (twice) at Bari; and he made the same claim in the summary of Anselm’s life with which he opened Book V.54 But he failed to convince many of his readers that Anselm had been driven out by a wicked king. One reader, William of Malmesbury, wrote in the Gesta Regum that Anselm ‘lacking the support of his fellow-bishops, gave in to the harshness of the time and went of his own accord’.55 This view of Anselm’s first exile is the version that has persuaded most modern scholars, from Cantor through Southern to Staunton.56 It is virtually certain that Anselm had not been expelled in 1097. The only near-contemporary account is the one in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which states that ‘with the king’s reluctant permission, Anselm went overseas because it seemed to him [my italics] that in this country little was done according to justice and according to his orders’.57 Eadmer’s line was that Rufus forced Anselm out by giving him an ultimatum. This is how it was presented in the first letter written by Anselm which Eadmer selected for inclusion in the Historia. Writing to Pope Urban II soon after leaving England in 1097, the archbishop explained that William II had been so angered by his desire to consult Urban that he insisted he had either to promise never to appeal to the pope on any matter whatever or leave the country at once.58 Eadmer dramatically elaborated this version of events in his account of the council meeting at Winchester in October 1097, one of his great set-piece confrontations between the archbishop and the rest.59 But an ultimatum is only an ultimatum if both sides, whether willingly or not, treat it as such. Anselm was presented with an unpleasant choice, but he could have avoided turning it into an ultimatum simply by doing neither – neither making the promise nor leaving the country.

Shall be Cut Off: Timorous Historians and the Personality of Henry I’, ANS 23 (2001), 47–67. A basic fact not sufficiently borne in mind in Warren Hollister, ‘William Rufus, Henry I, and the Anglo-Norman Church’, Peritia 6–7 (1987–88), 119–140. 54 ‘At nunc, ut de rege ipso qui me, sicut notum est, de regno suo expulit, taceam; Quem etiam regni sui fecit extorrem … sed afflictio atque depulsio tanti viri; pulsus ab eodem rege’, Eadmer, HN, pp. 104, 106, 218. 218. 55 ‘sponte discesserit’, Malmesbury, Gesta regum, c.315. On the extent to which William accepted Eadmer’s attitude towards Rufus and Henry I see John Gillingham, ‘The Ironies of History: William of Malmesbury’ s Views of William II and Henry I’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. R. M. Thomson, E. Dolmans and E. Winkler (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 37–48. 56 Cantor, Church, Kingship, pp. 106–8; Southern, Saint Anselm and His Biographer, p. 160; Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 274–75; Staunton, ‘Exile’, p. 48. Also, by implication, Vaughn, Archbishop Anselm, pp. 96–97. 57 ASC E, 1097. 58 ‘iratus petiit, ut de huius licentiae petitione quasi de gravi offensa illi satisfacerem, et securum illum facerem me deinceps nullo modo requisiturum pro aliqua necessitate apostolicum, nec saltem inde locuturum; aut si unquam hoc facturus eram in presenti hoc facerem’, Eadmer, HN, p. 93. 59 ‘quod nunquam amplius Sancti Petri vel eius vicarium pro quavis quae tibi queat ingeri causa appelles, aut sub omni celeritate de terra sua recedes’, Eadmer, HN, pp. 80–87. Virtually identical in the Vita, Life of St Anselm, p. 92. See also William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, I, c. 50, p. 144; Barlow, William Rufus, p. 374; Schild, Investiturstreit, p. 68. 53



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Had he stayed, he would no doubt have had a hard time. Eadmer’s case in defence of Anselm was that Rufus was such a king that it was impossible to have a working relationship with him of the kind that Lanfranc had had with William I.60 But Eadmer’s view of their relationship was strikingly different from that taken by William of Malmesbury in the text of what has been described as ‘the offensive material that is the glory of the Gesta Pontificum’, the text which represents what William really thought before he decided to replace it with more politic words. According to this version, Lanfranc ‘managed the king with holy skill, not sternly upbraiding him, but spicing serious language with jokes’. If Lanfranc had thought of taking a hard line, it would have been wasted effort. For the king was arrogant beyond measure and often did things for no good reason, but simply because he possessed immense power. Not only did he use violence to enforce his will in secular matters, but he intervened entirely improperly in Church matters, allowing no legate to be received in Normandy or the kingdom unless they flattered him by agreeing to what he wished. No council could be assembled by the archbishop without the king’s consent, and nothing could be decided except what he prescribed, no magnate could be excommunicated without a royal order ... The archbishop put up with all this because he had no choice; weighed down as he was by the king’s extraordinary arrogance, he could not stand up against his vices. But he studied his character, chose time and place, making quiet interventions and well-timed suggestions, chipping away at some things, moderating the impact of others.61

Lanfranc had stuck it out until William I died, and beyond, for nineteen years in all; Anselm left his post after four years. Anselm’s inability to manage his king made him vulnerable to the criticism that he was a shepherd abandoning his sheep. According to William of Malmesbury, Bishop Ralph of Chichester (1091–1123) stood up to Rufus in defence of Anselm, ‘but Anselm weakened his hopes and those of other good men, by his departure’.62 To defend Anselm’s first exile, Eadmer employed the rhetoric of exile as a spiritual journey. After leaving the Council of Winchester, Eadmer tells his readers, Anselm returned to Canterbury and, in the presence of a great crowd of monks, clergy and people ‘he took scrip and staff from the altar as pilgrims do’. Later he has Anselm explaining to the duke of Burgundy that he had left England for the sake of the Christian religion and intended, if God’s mercy allowed it, to go to Rome.63 In undertaking this perilous journey he had God on his side. Despite some difficulties in crossing the Channel, it was ‘thanks to God’s mercy’ that a safe landing was made at Wissant. In the Vita Anselmi Eadmer put it more emphatically. God had wanted him to leave the kingdom, as he showed by causing the wind to change direction just when it had seemed that, if they were not going to drown, their ship would have been forced to return to England.64

Eadmer’s famous description of William I and Lanfranc working harmoniously together sits rather uneasily beside his insistence that it was that king who introduced damaging new customs into the church in England; Eadmer, HN, pp. 1–2, 9–10, 12–13, 22–23. 61 It seemed to William that this approach paid dividends: monasticism flourished and Lanfranc was able to hold councils, although on the king’s terms; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, i. pp. 91–93. 62 Ibid., i, c. 96, p. 320. 63 Eadmer, HN, pp. 87–88, 90, 95. These themes were more prominent in the Vita Anselmi, where they were accompanied by stories such as that in which Anselm was delighted by seeing a bird break free from being played with by a boy who held it on a string. On all this see Staunton, ‘Exile’, pp. 52, 56; Staunton, ‘Exile in the Lives of Anselm and Becket’, pp. 159, 172–73. 64 Life of St Anselm, pp. 98–99. 60

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But what Eadmer did not do when writing about the first exile was include any letters relating to it which were composed by pope, king or monks of Christ Church. The one and only letter he quoted was written by Anselm himself. It was on the basis of the later letters criticising the latter part of the archbishop’s second exile that Southern commented that ‘no period in Anselm’s career aroused a greater variety and volume of protest than his second exile’.65 This is certainly the impression created by Eadmer’s Historia. But the absence in that narrative of letters criticising Anselm’s first exile is anything but evidence that none were written. Undoubtedly Eadmer knew of letters which he chose not to include. He tells us, for example, that Urban wrote to Rufus, urging him to restore the Canterbury estates.66 But he did not record its text. Why not? Why did he not include any letters on any subject from Urban II? Not even, although he says the pope condemned it strongly, any letters criticising William’s conduct. Did none of Urban’s letters strike quite the note Eadmer wanted?67 Or, indeed, strike the note which the compilers of Anselm’s letter collection wanted. Here too the absence of any letters from Urban II to Archbishop Anselm, when compared with the great number of letters from Paschal II, is very striking.68 According to Eadmer, in 1097x1098 Rufus wrote letters to all who could cause Anselm trouble.69 But he did not include the text of any. Why, then, did he not include any written by William II? Did they too fail to strike the right note? True, not a single letter sent in Rufus’s name does survive anywhere, in contrast to the twenty-one from Henry I.70 It is easy to imagine that this is just a reflection of changing times, and perhaps of the younger brother’s greater literacy; and so it is, up to a point. But there’s an extra dimension. Of those twenty-one letters, no less than fourteen come from Canterbury, thirteen of them from Anselm’s archive.71 In fact very few letters sent in the names of kings of England do survive from the centuries before 1199, the year of the earliest chancery register. Those that do survive are those that chroniclers and compilers of letter collections chose to include, and they all had agendas of their own. The fact that neither Anselm’s archive, in so far as we know it from the extant letter collections (see above n. 11), nor Eadmer’s Historia contains a single letter from Rufus says much about their closely aligned agendas. So too does the fact that neither source contains any of Urban II’s letters to the archbishop.72 In these circumstances it takes a bold historian to rely on Anselm’s letter collection as a corrective to Eadmer’s narrative. Rufus certainly wrote some letters. The letter collection of Ivo of Chartres contains two which were replies to letters from Rufus, one to Anselm’s friend, Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, and one to Ivo himself.73 Archbishop Life of St Anselm, p. 130 n. Eadmer, HN, p. 96. 67 In the earliest of Paschal II’s letters to Anselm there may be a clue to the view taken at the curia of the archbishop’s first ‘exile’. This referred to the ‘hateful acts of a perverse king’, but did not say that Rufus had driven him out. On the contrary, ‘you had chosen to leave’. Eadmer, HN, p. 135. 68 For the ‘surprisingly’ small number of letters during the first exile, Niskanen, Letter Collections, pp. 207–8; on tensions in the relationship between archbishop and Urban, Vaughn, Archbishop Anselm, pp. 102–3, 107. 69 Eadmer, HN, p. 98. 70 Including three which Sharpe categorised as writs; Sharpe, ‘Proclamations’, p. 131. 71 The odd one out being the writ allowing Archbishop Ralph to dispatch Eadmer to Scotland in 1120, Eadmer, HN, p. 281. 72 On the surprisingly small number of letters from the first exile, see Niskanen, Letter Collections, p. 207–8. 73 Ivo’s reply is printed in PL 162, letter no. 71, and briefly discussed in Gillingham, William II: the Red King, p. 94. 65

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Hugh, writing soon after Pope Urban’s death (29 July 1099), certainly urged the king to restore Anselm to his see and possessions, but also congratulated him on his victories over ‘barbarous nations’ and gave not the slightest indication that he had found the tone of Rufus’s message offensive.74 Since Anselm himself, in a letter to Pascal II, referred to this message, it is certain that Eadmer saw it. But, whether or not he thought of it as one of those Rufus sent with the intention of making life difficult for Anselm, he evidently saw no reason to incorporate it – or indeed any others of Rufus’s letters – into the Historia.75 If in any of them the king had adopted a negative or hostile tone, why would Eadmer not have given the text? That would have made his point for him. Is it not more likely that the reason for Eadmer’s omission of those letters was that Rufus had written all too courteously? That for Eadmer to have quoted words sent in Rufus’s name would have undermined the image of the king which he had so brilliantly built up? It seems certain that we shall never know for sure. No doubt the Rufus as portrayed by Eadmer would not have written respectfully about his archbishop. But what about the Rufus as portrayed by Hugh of Flavigny? Hugh, a monk and a committed Gregorian closely attached to the circle around Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, composed his chronicle either contemporaneously with Rufus’s life or just after 1100.76 According to Hugh’s report of a visit which he himself made to England in 1096 as part of the entourage of a papal legate, Jarento, abbot of Dijon, Rufus received the legate reverently and detained him honourably at court. But the king, knowing Jarento’s reputation and not wishing to have him laying down the law on such matters as simony and clerical marriage as well as on his retention of church property, had taken the precaution of sending an envoy to the curia. He was rewarded when a new envoy arrived from Urban, deferring consideration of awkward matters to a later date. Hugh of Flavigny was convinced that Urban had been influenced by a royal gift of ten marks of pure gold.77 The Rufus who exacerbated disputes by flaring up angrily is a creation of Eadmer’s pen, quite different from the Rufus described by Hugh of Flavigny, with his strategy of postponing awkward matters by a mixture of courtesy and bribery. Neither Eadmer nor any of Anselm’s extant letters so much as mentions Jarento’s visit to England. Nor indeed do they say anything at all about an aspect of the visit by Walter of Albano, the previous papal legate, and the one who brought Anselm his pallium in 1095. According to Hugh of Flavigny, not only had Walter come to an agreement with the king whereby no papal legate was to be admitted unless the king wanted one, but also ‘the archbishop of Canterbury had, on Walter of Albano’s orders, sworn fidelity to the pope saving fidelity to his lord the king’.78 Hugh’s version of Anselm’s oath of fidelity to the king in 1095 helps to explain why Rufus and his advisers were, according to Eadmer, so enraged by Anselm’s insistence at Archbishop Hugh’s letter, together with another sent Hildebert of Le Mans, was printed by J. P. Gilson, ‘Two Letters Addressed to William Rufus’, EHR 12 (1897), 290–93. 75 Nor indeed did Eadmer include the letter to the new pope in which Anselm reported this exchange with Rufus in 1099, letter 210, printed in Vaughn, Archbishop Anselm, 222–22. 76 His chronicle ends in 1102, when he appears to have stopped writing. He made another visit to England in 1100. See Mathias Lawo, Studien zu Hugo von Flavigny (Hannover, 2010), pp. 14, 26–27, 81. 77 ‘Rex suspectam habens viri auctoritatem, quem iam diu venturum audierat, legatum papae praemiserat, et in manu eius auri probati et purissimi decem marchas. Hoc fisus praenuncio, respondere praedicto abbati differebat, et interim eum in pascha secum retentum reverenter et honorifice tractabat.’ Hugh of Flavigny, Chronicon, MGH SS 8, pp. 474–75. 78 Flavigny, Chronicon, p. 475. There are no letters from the legate to Anselm in the latter’s letter collection, just two from Anselm to Walter. 74

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the Council of Winchester in 1097 that, no matter what oaths he had sworn, he would not be bound by them once he became convinced that that to do so would be to go against God’s will.79 It is hard not to think that, because Hugh of Flavigny’s report is so much at odds with Anselmian views of the archbishop’s quarrels with Rufus, the response of many students of Anselm’s life and thought, with the exception of Cantor and – in her first book – Vaughn, has been either to ignore or, at best, to mention it in a footnote and then hasten by.80 Certainly no attempt has been made to draw any inferences from Hugh’s report about the wisdom of relying solely on Anselm’s letters and Eadmer’s narrative.81 Biographers of Rufus have, of course, emphasised Eadmer’s hostility, but have rarely gone further than that.82 Their reluctance to make significant use of Hugh of Flavigny is a testament to the power of Eadmer’s prose.83 Emma Mason pointed out that Eadmer, in justifying Anselm’s quarrels with William, decided that ‘the best form of defence was to attack’.84 More can be said about that plan of attack. Eadmer’s omission of Jarento’s legation highlights the revealing pattern of silences in his narrative of the disputes with William II, but he was far too clever a historian to use just one technique to achieve his ends. Just at that point in his Historia where we might have looked for the text of one of those letters by which Rufus supposedly tried to stir up trouble for Anselm in exile, Eadmer chose instead to report at length some stories which represented the king as a sceptic and a Jew lover who had no respect whatever for the Christian faith.85 Besides the things which we had known King William do habitually while we were in England, reports of new acts were daily brought to us by travellers coming from England which made it plain that he was obstinately set against God’s justice … Of these I think it right to mention a few briefly, lest what is said should be thought to be but idle tales. These I simply set down just as they were told to us without asserting or denying their truth or otherwise.86

According to Barlow, in this passage Eadmer ‘scrupulously distances himself from the stories’.87 On the contrary, Eadmer here indulges in the classic technique of appearing to distance himself from rumour while simultaneously giving it a platform. Given that Eadmer supposedly had his doubts about them, his decision to include scurrilous stories likely to shock pious readers was all the more deliberate and purposeful. Eadmer, HN, pp. 83–85. Cantor, Church, Kingship, pp. 92, 102–4; S. Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom of the Serpent (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 187, 198–99. In neither of his books on Anselm did Southern so much as mention Hugh of Flavigny or the legation of Jarento/Gerento of Dijon. 81 One route for historians wishing to cling on to Eadmer’s version has been to suggest that Jarento may never have reached England; see Schild, Invesiturstreit, p. 66 n. 223, although this is not a thought that occurred to the historian of the pope that sent him; Alfons Becker, Papst Urban II (Stuttgart, 1964), pp. 184–85; nor to Mathias Lawo, Hugh’s historian. 82 For instance, the index reference to Eadmer in Frank Barlow, William Rufus (New Haven and London, 1983 and (with a few correction) 2000), is simply ‘cited passim’. 83 Freeman, the king’s Victorian biographer, acknowledged that he was baffled by Hugh’s account; Edward A. Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry I, 2 vols (Oxford, 1882), Note AA, ii. pp. 588–89. Barlow’s use of Flavigny is minimal and belated, William Rufus, pp. 364–65. 84 Emma Mason, William II: Rufus, the Red King (Stroud, 2005), p. 12. 85 Versions of these stories have become a familiar part of the characterisation of Rufus. Emma Mason, ‘William Rufus: Myth and Reality’, JMH 3 (1977), 1–20; Thomas Callahan, ‘The Making of a Monster: the Historical Image of William Rufus’, JMH 7 (1981), 175–85. 86 Eadmer, HN, p. 99. 87 Barlow, William Rufus, p. 112. 79 80



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No doubt any author whose history intersects with hagiography is in danger of sinning, but Eadmer, more than most, was conscious of the peril. As he laid down his pen at the end of the Vita Anselmi he twice urged his readers to pray for God’s relief and remission of sins for him, just as they would for themselves. He feared that otherwise the merciful Father might be unable to save him, burdened as he was with many sins. That this was not merely a conventional monk’s prayer we can see from the immediately preceding passage: his description of how he had been guilty of the sin of disobedience by not really destroying his draft of the Vita, despite being expressly ordered to do so by Anselm. Famously, he carried out Anselm’s instructions, but only after he had first made a copy. I find it intriguing that Eadmer accused himself only of disobedience and not of deception, since he had done that too: he had intended to deceive Anselm. Was it only this deception of the saint which caused him to be so agitated about the fate of his soul? It is intriguing, too, that in the words that came immediately before his extraordinary confession of sin in cunningly disobeying Anselm’s order he had written: it is shocking for anyone knowingly to write false things in sacred histories. For the soul of the author is killed every time such falsehoods are read or listened to, since in what he has written he lies abominably.88

William of Malmesbury, himself a master of the rhetoric of history writing, knew why Eadmer included so many letters from Henry I’s reign: ‘to make what he said unimpugnable so that no one would criticize him for lying’.89 No doubt Eadmer, if pressed, would have insisted that, no matter how few letters he included from the period of Rufus’s reign, he had written only the truth about it. He was certainly familiar with Anselm’s doctrine that so long as a statement signifies ‘what-oughtto-be’, then it is true even when it states ‘what-is-not’. A few years later after finishing both the Vita and Books I–IV of the Historia, he described those who searched old cupboards and ancient Gospel books until they eventually found the documents that would, centuries afterwards, be revealed as the Canterbury forgeries, as people who were inspired by a desire for what was just (voluntas justi) and for the justice of the church of God (justitia ecclesiae Dei).90 On the basis of such Lanfrancian/ Anselmian conflations as ‘Truth is Rectitude as perceived by the mind; Justice is Rectitude as chosen for its own sake by the will’, Eadmer may well, like the student in Anselm’s dialogue De Veritate, have been willing to say, ‘Now I see the truth in a false statement.’91 But if his rational mind was willing to accept that a statement contains the truth if it does ‘what it ought’, he no doubt knew too, as Anselm himself acknowledged, that this went against ordinary usage: ‘we are not accustomed to call the statement true when it signifies that what-is-not is’.92 If Eadmer had been unreservedly confident that Anselm’s intellectual argument rescued both him and his books from the charge of lying abominably, would he have ended the Vita Anselmi and Historia Novorum I–IV quite so worried about the state of his own soul? We shall never know. ‘Falsa vero scienter aliquem in sacris historiis scribere nefas esse pronuncio. Nam quotiens ea vel leguntur vel audiuntur, anima scriptoris occiditur, eo quod omnibus per ea quae falso scripsit infando ore mentitur.’ Life of St Anselm, pp. 149–151. 89 ‘Ut nullus eum mendatii carperet, et ipse invictum robur dictorum assumeret’, Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, c. 59. 90 Eadmer, HN, p. 261. 91 Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Anselm of Canterbury, trans. Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson (Minneapolis, 2000), pp. 165–68, 171; Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, p. 172. 92 Treatises of Anselm of Canterbury, p. 167. 88

ANGEVIN RULE IN THE WEST OF NORMANDY, 1154–86: THE VIEW FROM MONT-SAINT-MICHEL* Mark Hagger Our understanding of Henry’s administration in Normandy still rests on the foundations laid down by Lucien Valin, Maurice Powicke, Charles Haskins and Jacques Boussard.1 More recent work has nuanced and revised this picture with regard to, for example: the Norman frontier; Henry’s relations with the Norman aristocracy; the elections to Norman bishoprics; and the production of Norman ducal acta and the personnel at court,2 but the mechanisms of rule and the institutions that put them into effect, both at the centre and in the various regions of Normandy, remain largely unloved. These mechanisms are the subject of this article, and I will explore them by examining how one individual, or rather one institution, interacted with Henry’s administration. That institution is the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel and its abbot who was, of course, none other than Robert of Torigni for the whole of the period under discussion. It is unlikely that the experiences of the abbot and monks vis-à-vis Henry were especially remarkable at the time, but they are remarkable now due to the relative richness of the materials that have survived, which allow us to see when and how the abbot interacted with the duke and his officials. This inquiry also provides an opportunity to mitigate the arguments advanced by John Joliffe, Lewis Warren, Maïté Billoré and others, who have seen Henry’s rule as arbitrary and oppressive.3 No doubt some of Henry’s subjects did see it that way, but Torigni’s I would like to thank the director of the conference for the invitation to speak, and the delegates for their questions. I would also like to thank Professor Nicholas Vincent for a now elderly (c. 2003 vintage) electronic copy of his edition of the acts of Henry II, which proved invaluable during the writing of this essay. 1 L. Valin, Le duc de Normandie et sa cour (912–1204): étude d’histoire juridique (Paris, 1910); M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy 1189–1204: Studies in the History of the Angevin Empire (Manchester, 1913); C. H. Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, MA, 1918); J. Boussard, Le gouvernement d’Henri II Plantagenêt (Paris, 1956). Lewis Warren’s biography of the king, Henry II (London, 1973), is too Anglo-centric in its focus to be of much help with his rule over the duchy. 2 D. Power, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early-Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 2004); M. Billoré, De gré ou de force: l’aristocratie normande et ses ducs (1151–1259) (Rennes, 2014); J. Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest: Episcopal Elections in Normandy and Greater Anjou, c. 1140–c. 1230 (Cambridge, 2008); N. Vincent, ‘Les Normans dans l’entourage d’Henri II Plantagenêt’, in La Normandie et l’Angleterre au Moyen Age, ed. P. Bouet and V. Gazeau (Caen, 2003), pp. 75–88; idem, ‘La normandie dans les chartes du roi Henri II (1154–1189): archives, intentions, et conséquences’, in 911–2011: Penser les mondes normands médiévaux, ed. D. Bates and P. Bauduin (Caen, 2016), pp. 405–28; F. Madeline, ‘Penser l’empire normand et Plantagenêt avec des cartes: itinéraires royaux et pensée politique de l’espace’, in 911–2011: Penser les mondes normands médiévaux, pp. 443–74. 3 J. E. A. Joliffe, Angevin Kingship, 2nd edn (London, 1963); Warren, Henry II, pp. 362–96 (ch. 10); M. Billoré, ‘Y a-t-il “oppression” des Plantagenêt en Normandie à la veille de 1204?’, in Plantagenêts et Capétiens: confrontations et héritages, ed. M. Aurell and N.-Y. Tonerre (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 145–161; Billoré, De gré ou de force, particularly ch. 4. For a brief overview see D. Power, ‘Henry, Duke of Normandy’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. C. Holdsworth and N. Vincent (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 100–2. *

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experiences suggest a much more accommodating character to the duke and his administration. Torigni’s experiences of Henry’s regime also provide the opportunity to think about some broader issues, including, in particular, the way that ducal justice was done in Normandy during Henry’s reign.4 Among the most important sources for this exercise is a document that Thomas Bisson christened the ‘Annuary’, which covers the years between 1155 and 1159.5 Bisson noted a lack of obvious precedents for this list of Torigni’s administrative activities, discounting, probably correctly, the influence of the records of the purchases and other transactions actioned by Abbots Lanfranc, Gilbert and Eudo of Saint-Etienne, Caen.6 It is possible, however, that Torigni found a precedent at the Mont itself. Although the originals were lost in 1944, John Horace Round’s Calendar of Documents in France summarises a number of documents recording the activities of Abbot Bernard (1131–49), who had himself previously been a monk at Le Bec, which look remarkably similar to the entries in the Annuary, not least in the use of calendar dating for some of the transactions – itself very much a Bec tradition.7 In any event, the Annuary comprises a record of forty-nine transactions, relating to forty-seven matters. The common thread is the abbot’s management of his abbey’s lands and rights, both large and small. The Annuary is, however, an incomplete record of Torigni’s activities, even for the period it covers. That perhaps tells us something about Torigni’s motivations when curating this record of his activities, but it also means that it must be supplemented by a host of other documents produced by the monks of Mont-Saint-Michel, the ducal administration and ecclesiastical centres, including the papal curia. Some of these records were copied into the abbey’s cartulary, others have been preserved in the transcripts made by François Roger de Gaignières, Léopold Delisle, John Horace Round and others of original documents which survived in the Archives of La Manche until 1944. These, incidentally, reveal the Annuary to have had a pronounced Anglo-Norman focus.8 Indeed, Torigni’s Chronicle itself mentions one The best single discussion of Torigni’s career as abbot to date is A. Dufief, ‘La vie monastique au Mont pendant le XIIe siècle’, in Millénaire monastique du Mont-Saint-Michel: I. Histoire et vie monastique, ed. J. Laporte (Paris, 1967), pp. 101–26. 5 The record is found in the abbey cartulary, Avranches, BM, MS 210, fols 112v–117r and printed in RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 237–60; ed. Howlett, pp. 331–45. The document is discussed by T. N. Bisson, ‘The “annuary” of Robert of Torigni’, ANS 33 (2011), 61–73 and Bisson, ‘Note: a Micro Economy of Salvation: Further Thoughts on the “Annuary” of Robert of Torigni’, ANS 40 (2018), pp. 213–19. 6 The two abbeys were certainly close under Lanfranc and Anselm, as Sally Vaughn has recently highlighted (S. N. Vaughn, ‘Anselm of Le Bec and Canterbury: Teacher by Word and Example, Following the Footprints of His Ancestors’, in A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th Centuries), ed. B. Pohl and L. Gathagan (Leiden, 2018), pp. 57–93), but it is less clear that the two houses remained as close when Torigni was there. 7 Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, 918–1206, ed. J. H. Round (London, 1899), nos. 725–29. Nicholas Vincent raised the question of the transmission of the diplomatic used at Le Bec to Mont-SaintMichel after Bisson had delivered his paper on the Annuary (Bisson, ‘Annuary’, p. 72). While the form of the notices included in the Annuary do not look particularly akin to Le Bec acts, the use of dating clauses in some of the acts produced at the Mont during Torigni’s time as abbot might well have derived from the diplomatic practices at Le Bec, where it is notable from the reign of Henry I onwards, especially as they were not much used elsewhere. It is notable in this respect that dating clauses feature at the head of acts produced at Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux after the election of Abbot Michel, previously a monk at Le Bec, in 1152, but drop off again after his death (for example, Le Cartulaire de l’abbaye bénédictine de Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux (1034–1227), ed. D. Rouet (Paris, 2005), nos. B5, B7, B9, B22, B23, B39). 8 Much of the material printed by Léopold Delisle at the end of his edition of Torigni’s Chronicle is found in the cartulary, broadly between fols 118r and 125r. Torigni’s return for the Infeudationes militum of 1172 follows on fols 132v–133r. The other principal source for Torigni’s administration comprises a transcript made by Gaignières, now BnF, MS lat. 5430A (the manuscript, incidentally, has been digitised). 4



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other matter omitted from his Annuary, namely Henry II’s grant (more properly, re-grant) of the churches of Pontorson to the abbot and monks in 1158, which we will look at in some detail. In sum, we have notice of an additional eighty transactions, ranging across Normandy, Maine, Brittany and England, which combine with those in the Annuary to give us a total of 129 transactions relating to 113 separate matters that can be dated between 1154 and 1186. As the numbers indicate, the details of some of these matters are spread over a number of documents, and where we do have such a series of records we can get a sense of what courses of action might be taken when the abbey’s business failed to go smoothly. Furthermore, if we bring this material together we can perhaps get a better sense not only of how Henry II’s Norman administration operated but also of how and when a regionally important lord might resort to the duke and his justice. Of course, the abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel was himself one of the cogs by which Henry ruled the west of the duchy. Such is made abundantly clear in the wellknown account of the events surrounding Torigni’s election, which is found in his Chronicle: In the month of May, on the 27th day of the month … God’s mercy awarded a period of comparative repose to the monastery of the Blessed Michel in peril-of-the-sea after the tribulations which had oppressed it for nearly five years continuously. And this was brought about by the unanimous election by the whole convent of Robert of Torigni, claustral prior of the monastery of Le Bec. Within the month … Duke Henry gave his cordial assent to the election at Rouen on the day of the feast of John the Baptist [24 June] and it was most willingly confirmed by Archbishop Hugh of Rouen.9

The oppression that the Chronicle refers to is detailed in another narrative, also written by Torigni: On the Abbots of Mont-Saint-Michel. It resulted from the elections of Geoffrey L’Evêque in 1150 and of Richard of La Mouche in 1152, both of whom were elected abbot without the duke’s permission. For his transgression, Geoffrey had been obliged to pay a ruinously large sum for the duke’s peace.10 Richard was forced into exile. The monks subsequently quashed his election and chose another in his place, Robert Hardy, previously cellarer of Fécamp, but Richard refused to back down and petitioned the pope. Eugenius III confirmed his election and commanded Bishop Richard of Avranches to bless him as abbot. But the dispute dragged on regardless. In the end, Duke Henry was threatened with excommunication and interdict, and both contenders for the abbey, as well as Bishop Richard, went to Rome to settle their dispute. All three died on the way.11 Torigni’s election was thus particularly charged, and it completed the restoration of Henry’s authority over ecclesiastical appointments in the west following the debacle that had begun with the election of Henry’s chaplain, Herbert, to the bishopric of Avranches in 1153.12 9 Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, cited as RT with the year (s.a.) and then with reference to the two main editions: (1) Chronique de Robert de Torigni, abbé de Mont-Saint-Michel, ed. L. Delisle, 2 vols (Rouen, 1872–73); and (2) ‘The Chronicle of Robert of Torigni, Abbot of the Monastery of St Michael in Peril of the Sea’, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, vol 4 (London, 1889). Thomas Bisson’s new edition and translation of the Chronicle is in press at the time of writing. 10 T. N. Bisson, ‘On the abbots of Le Mont-Saint-Michel: an Edition and Translation’, HSJ 22 (2012), pp. 182–83. 11 Bisson, ‘On the Abbots of Le Mont-Saint-Michel’, pp. 182–83; Dufief, ‘La vie monastique’, p. 100; K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, ‘Bibliothèque municipal d’Avranches, 210: cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel’, ANS 22 (1999), 101–2; V. Gazeau, Normannia monastica: prosopographie des abbés bénédictins (Xe–XIIe siècle), 2 vols (Caen, 2007), ii. 219–20; J. Peltzer, Canon Law, p. 153; Gazeau, Normannia monastica, i. 49–50. 12 RT, s.a. 1153; ed. Delisle i. 279; ed. Howlett, p. 176; D. S. Spear, The Personnel of the Norman Cathedrals during the Ducal Period, 911–1204 (London, 2006), p. 5; Peltzer, Canon Law, p. 153. Elections to the bishopric throughout the reign are discussed by Peltzer, Canon Law, pp. 145–48, 150–55, 165–66.

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The trouble caused by Richard of La Mouche’s election, as with those of Gerard of Sées and Arnulf of Lisieux, demonstrates the determination of the Angevin dukes to control important ecclesiastical appointments – sometimes in the face of papal interventions. These elections, after all, gave Henry most of the few occasions when he was able to influence the political and tenurial landscape of Normandy, especially as, in the west of the duchy at least, almost all the local aristocratic families remained vital or else left heirs (as opposed to heiresses) by marriage – the county of Mortain being the only notable exception.13 Moreover, control of the bishoprics in particular had become more important than ever by the 1150s, not least because ecclesiastical justice was now a matter of routine in the duchy and might subvert Henry’s authority there.14 Given the political context, as well as the fact that his election as abbot of MontSaint-Michel made Robert of Torigni the most powerful churchman in the Avranchin – not to say one of the most powerful lords in the west – we may wonder what recommended him to Henry in the first place.15 First, his position as prior of Le Bec was clearly important. The most recent successful abbot of the Mont, Bernard, had been a monk of Le Bec.16 Moreover, membership of the abbey was apparently seen as a good qualification for office, for Le Bec remained closely associated with the dukes and had favoured the Angevin cause almost since the death of Henry I.17 Ducal approval of Le Bec certainly explains why so many of its monks were made abbots across the duchy during Henry’s reign, as Torigni was himself at pains to point out.18 Second, Torigni had himself demonstrated his support for the Angevin claim to Normandy in the favourable narrative of the reign of Henry I that he had added to the Gesta Normannorum Ducum (c. 1139) and, perhaps, by his restatement of and justification for the autonomy enjoyed by the dukes of the Normans vis-à-vis

King Stephen’s son William, the heir to his county of Mortain, died in 1159 and the county then fell to the duke, who would retain it in the demesne for the rest of his reign (despite the claims to it of the count of Boulogne). 14 See A. J. Duggan, ‘Henry II, the English Church and the Papacy, 1154–76’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. Harper-Bill and Vincent, pp. 155–83 and also H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Governance of Medieval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 285–320 (ch. 16). 15 With regard to what follows regarding Torigni’s election, I both echo and develop a number of the suggestions advanced by Andrée Dufief in 1967 (Dufief, ‘La vie monastique’, p. 103). The bishop of Avranches is generally seen as a lesser figure than the abbot: J. Peltzer, ‘Portchester, les évêques d’Avranches et les Hommet (1130–1230)’, Annales de Normandie 56 (2006), p. 464; idem, Canon Law, p. 150. The geographical extent of the possessions of Mont-Saint-Michel in both the Avranchin and Cotentin is illustrated by, for example: The Cartulary of the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (Donington, 2006), p. viii and J. Dubois, ‘Les dépendances du Mont-Saint-Michel et la vie monastique dans les prieurés’, in Millénaire monastique du Mont-Saint-Michel: I. Histoire et vie monastique, ed. Laporte, after p. 624 and between pp. 648 and 649. General confirmations issued by the dukes listing the abbey’s properties in full are surprisingly few. Papal confirmations provide a fuller picture, with the most easily accessible being the bull of Alexander III of 27 January 1179, printed in RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 313–21 (no. 43). 16 RT, s.a. 1149; ed. Delisle, i. 251; ed. Howlett, p. 159; Bisson, ‘On the Abbots of Le Mont-SaintMichel’, pp. 180–83. 17 The Empress Matilda is known to have been fond of the abbey (GND, ii. 244–46; M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother, and Lady of the English (Oxford, 1991), pp. 96, 190), although that fondness is not especially evident from the acta that survive from before 1151 (Regesta, iii. nos. 73–80, 731). Moreover, on 29 May 1147 Henry had been received into the abbey with a grand procession, even though Normandy was still ruled by his father at the time (V. Gazeau, ‘The Role of the Abbots of Le Bec (1034–1281)’, in A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec, ed. Pohl and Gathagan, p. 52). 18 RT, s.a. 1179; ed. Delisle, ii. 89–90; ed. Howlett, pp. 286–87. See also Gazeau, Normannia monastica, i. 232–36. 13



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the French kings with which he concluded that work. Indeed, Torigni’s work as a historian not only gave him a chance to promote Henry’s rule, it also gave the duke an ally who knew how the Norman dukes had behaved in the past and something of their rights. If Henry wanted to garrison his subject’s castles, Torigni knew from his own researches that such an action was among the duke’s prerogatives. If the duke wanted to banish rebels and carve up their honours, Torigni knew of precedents that would support him. At a time when Henry was recovering ducal authority and establishing its limits, having a historian as abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel might bring a real political benefit. Third, Torigni’s family background may also have been important. His home town of Torigni-sur-Vire had been a possession of Earl Robert of Gloucester, in right of his wife, while Torigni was growing up. Since Earl Robert’s death in 1147 it had been held by his youngest son, Richard. There is some evidence that Torigni’s family was close to Richard, but first we need to remind ourselves of Robert of Torigni’s own family tree. It has been thought that Abbot Robert’s father was called Teduin – although these days we are less certain.20 However, we do know that he had a nepos called Durand, and that this Durand was himself the son of Robert of Torigni.21 If we translate nepos as ‘nephew’, that would make Robert’s brother another Robert. So it might be better to translate nepos as ‘cousin’, giving us two brothers, Robert of Torigni (probably the elder) and Teduin, each of whom had a son, Durand, the abbot’s nepos, and Robert, our abbot.22 This is important, because Durand the son of Robert of Torigni was at the centre of a dispute c. 1160 which was heard in the court of Earl William of Gloucester at Torigni.23 As the plea was heard in the honour court, the abbot’s family were the men of the lord of Torigni. That direct link with Henry II’s own cousins is further indicated, first by the fact that Torigni is the only writer to record the sieges of Torigni in the 1150s and Richard of Gloucester’s death in 1175, and second by his report of the death of his ‘very dear friend’ Geoffrey of Montfort in 1181, since Geoffrey was probably related to Richard’s wife, the sister of Robert of Montfort.24 The evidence is ambiguous, but it suggests that Torigni’s election might have been intended, at least in part, to gain Richard’s support for Henry’s regime, just as the election of Philip of Harcourt to the bishopric of Bayeux in 1147 was intended to shore up Waleran of Meulan’s support for Geoffrey V.25 Richard is likely to have 19

E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Le roi et son historien: Henri II Plantagenêt et Robert de Torigni, abbé du Mont-Saint-Michel’, Cahiers de civilization médiévale 37 (1994), p. 117; GND, i. lxxxiii–iv, lxxxvii–viii; ii. 218–260, 274, 286. Some of these points are also touched on by Dufief, ‘La vie monastique’, p. 103 and see also E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Latin and French as Languages of the Past in Normandy during the Reign of Henry II: Robert of Torigni, Stephen of Rouen, and Wace’, in Writers of the Reign of Henry II: Twelve Essays, ed. R. Kennedy and S. Meecham-Jones (Basingstoke, 2006), p. 55. 20 See D. S. Spear, ‘Torigni, Robert de [called Robert de Monte] (c. 1110–1186)’, ODNB, https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/23732 . 21 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 250, 252 (no. 1, §§ 32, 36); ed. Howlett, pp. 338–39, 340 (no. 1, §§ 32, 36). 22 According to Isidore of Seville, a nepos was a ‘grandchild’ – although that cannot be the meaning here (Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. S. A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and O. Berghof (Cambridge, 2006), p. 207). Orderic used the word to mean ‘nephew’, ‘grandchild’ or simply ‘kinsman’ (Orderic, i. 331), while the relevant entry in the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources includes the use of the word to mean ‘cousin’ explicitly. 23 Earldom of Gloucester Charters: The Charters and Scribes of the Earls and Countesses of Gloucester to AD 1217, ed. R. Patterson (Oxford, 1973), no. 186. 24 RT, s.a. 1175; ed. Delisle, ii. 58; ed. Howlett, p. 269; RT, s.a. 1181; ed. Delisle, ii. 97; ed. Howlett, p. 291. 25 D. Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1986), p. 54; Dutton, ‘Geoffrey V’, pp. 200–2l; Pelzer, Canon Law, pp. 135–37. 19

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Fig. 1: A suggested family tree for Abbot Robert of Torigni been feeling disaffected at this time. His castle at Torigni had been besieged by Henry in 1151, probably as the result of some manifestation of Richard’s displeasure at the erosion of his authority in the Bessin, caused by the ongoing series of restorations to the bishop of Bayeux. In this context, Henry might have hoped that Torigni’s election would appease his cousin. But if that had been his intention it was not enough, for Henry would besiege Richard at Torigni for a second time in October 1154, a few months after the election.26 But still, the point remains that Torigni’s family background probably helped to single him out for the abbacy. As Henry’s rule was pre-eminently a personal rule, as Joliffe, Warren, Gillingham and others have emphasised,27 we can begin our survey of Torigni’s experience of it by looking at the two men’s personal relationship and face-to-face dealings. That their personal–political relationship was a positive one is perhaps made most apparent by the trickle of patronage Torigni enjoyed throughout much of his career. In 1158 Henry visited the abbey and ‘made a grant to the abbot and monks of the same place of the churches of Pontorson’.28 Torigni’s report of this grant is deceptively bland, as we shall see. In 1161 Torigni stood as godfather to Henry’s daughter Eleanor, along with Bishop Achard of Avranches ‘and many others’.29 In 1162 he was made constable of Pontorson.30 On 14 July 1166 Torigni’s men were exempted from the obligation to work on the ducal castle at Gavray, in return for an annual cash payment.31 He was also perhaps used as one of Henry’s ecclesiastical agents in the west of Normandy and Brittany, for in 1169 he went with Henry’s son, Geoffrey, for his investiture as duke of Brittany at Rennes, and in 1177 he attended the election of the archbishop of Dol.32 By then Torigni would have been seventy-one,33 RT, s.a. 1154; ed. Delisle, i. 286–87; ed. Howlett, pp. 180–81. Joliffe’s thesis is pointed out by Nicholas Vincent, ‘Introduction: Henry II and the Historians’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, p. 17. See also J. Gillingham, The Angevin Empire (London, 2001), p. 67 and the quotation from Warren in the conclusion to this article (p. 99 and n. 127). 28 RT, s.a. 1158; ed. Delisle, i. 312–13; ed. Howlett, p. 197. 29 RT, s.a. 1161; ed. Delisle, i. 334; ed. Howlett, p. 211. 30 RT, s.a. 1162; ed. Delisle, ii. 335; ed. Howlett, p. 212. 31 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 285–86 (no. 21); ed. Howlett, pp. 347–48 (no. 6). 32 RT, s.a. 1169, 1177; ed. Delisle, ii. 13, 72; ed. Howlett, pp. 242, 275–76. 33 His date of birth is revealed by the funeral plaque that was discovered in his coffin in 1875, which declares that he was eighty when he died in 1186 (F. Neveux, ‘L’abbaye bénédictine à la période ducale, 966–1204’, in Le Mont-Saint-Michel: Histoire et imaginaire, ed. M. Baylé, P. Bouet, J.-P. Brighelli et al. 26 27



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so it is perhaps no great surprise that he seems to have retired from an active role in Angevin politics around this time, with the result that the trickle of patronage seems to have dried up. The writ of exemption from work on Gavray comprises one of the small number of acts that Torigni obtained from Henry. The record may well be incomplete,34 but it is notable that Torigni took the trouble to obtain Henry’s charters only infrequently, and even then was sometimes obliged to do so by circumstances rather than at his own volition. That he was not especially concerned to acquire ducal acts is also suggested by his apparent unwillingness to travel far out of his way to get them. Of the eleven surviving and authentic documents that Henry issued for the abbot and monks of Mont-Saint-Michel, or which related to transactions they were involved in, one was place-dated at Saint-James-de-Beuvron (16 miles from the abbey), two at Fougères (31 miles away, and both issued on the same occasion), one at Mortain (33 miles), one at Saint-Lô (54 miles), two at Valognes (85 miles), two at Winchester (235 miles), one at Ludgershall (258 miles) and one at Reading (270 miles). Although some of the places concerned were a long way away from Mont-Saint-Michel itself, almost all of them were quite near to possessions of the abbey, or else en route to them. The visit to Mortain, for example, came as Torigni was returning from a survey of his abbey’s properties in England in 1157 and may not have taken him very far out of his way. As he crossed from Southampton on that occasion the two visits to Winchester may also have been fitted into his itinerary as he took stock of his abbey’s English possessions. Similarly, Ludgershall in Wiltshire was only 10 miles away from his abbey’s property at Wootton Rivers (Wiltshire). It is likely, then, that Torigni grabbed the chance to obtain charters when Henry happened to be close to where he was, rather than having to plan trips with the sole intention of obtaining a grant no matter how far away the duke was at the time. Torigni’s own movements are thus enough to explain the pattern of place-dates at the foot of almost all the documents he obtained from the royal duke. But it was also the case that the route Henry took from England, through Normandy, to his possessions in Maine, Anjou and Poitou meant that he was far more visible and accessible to the communities of the Avranchin and Cotentin than his predecessors had been.35 At least some of his appearances in the west of the duchy may also have been due to his possession of the county of Mortain from 1159. The narratives produced by Torigni, Roger of Howden, Ralph of Diceto and Gervase of Canterbury record that Henry was present at Avranches twice;36 at Barfleur on eleven occasions;37 at

(Paris, 1998), p. 34); B. Pohl, ‘Robert of Torigni and Le Bec: the Man and the Myth’, in A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec, pp. 112–16. 34 For instance, Torigni noted in his annal for 1175 that he had acquired a confirmation of all his abbey’s possessions while in England (although he does not say where). This act has not survived (RT, s.a 1175; ed. Delisle, ii. 58; ed. Howlett, p. 269). 35 The maps produced by Fanny Madeline demonstrate this, with the route from Alençon through rgentan, Caen and Valognes being prominent (Madeline, ‘Penser l’empire normand et Plantagenêt avec des cartes’, in 911–2011: Penser les mondes normands médiévaux, p. 463 (Fig. 3) and p. 466 (Fig. 6). 36 RT, s.a. 1158; ed. Delisle, i. 311; ed. Howlett, p. 196; RT, s.a. 1172; ed. Delisle, ii. 32, 33; ed. Howlett, pp. 253, 254; Howden, Gesta, i. 32; Ralph of Diceto, ‘Ymagines historiarum’, in Radulfi de Diceto Decani Lundoniensis Opera Historica, ed. W. Stubbs, vol. 1, RS (London, 1876), p. 351; Gervase of Canterbury, ‘Chronicle’, in Gervasii Cantuariensis Opera Historica, ed. W. Stubbs, vol. 1, RS (London, 1879), p. 238. 37 RT, s.a. 1154; ed. Delisle i. 287; ed. Howlett, p. 181; RT, s.a. 1157; ed. Delisle, i. 305; ed. Howlett, p. 192; RT s.a. 1162; ed. Delisle, i. 342; ed. Howlett, p. 216; Howden, Gesta, i. 6, 31, 72, 74, 83, 282, 345, ii. 29, 40; Howden, Chronicle, ii. 3, 35, 61, 65, 334, 343; Ralph of Diceto, i. 298–99, 382.

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Cherbourg on four occasions; and at Pontorson and Valognes once each.39 The place-dates appended to Henry’s acts supplement this information and, in the case of Valognes at least, reveal that he made additional visits to the selected places. 38

Table 1: Western Norman place-dates in the acts of Henry I and Henry II Place

Henry I Place-Dates

Henry II Place-Dates

Rouen

99

138

Argentan

16

60

Caen

15

60

TOP THREE

WEST of NORMANDY Valognes

0

30

Domfront

0

16

Cherbourg

0

15

Barfleur

1

12

Mortain

1

6

Avranches

2

1

Pontorson

0

1

Source: The figures are extracted from Vincent, ‘Les Normans dans l’entourage d’Henri II Plantagenêt’, in La Normandie et l’Angleterre au Moyen Age, ed. Bouet and Gazeau, p. 79, with the figures for Rouen and Caen updated by Vincent, ‘La normandie dans les chartes du roi Henri II (1154–1189)’, in 911–2011: Penser les mondes normands médiévaux, p. 407.

We can see the effect of Henry’s more regular presence in the Avranchin and, especially, Cotentin in the behaviour of beneficiaries. The monks of Montebourg, for example, whose archive remains unusually good for such an unexceptional monastery, rarely travelled beyond Caen when seeking Henry II’s acts. Of the fifteen surviving writs and charters, one was place-dated at Montebourg itself, five at Valognes (5 miles away), one at Varreville (9 miles), one at Barfleur (16 miles), two at Cherbourg (17 miles), three at Caen (59 miles), one at Winchester (142 miles) and one at Westminster (214 miles). In contrast, one of Henry I’s thirteen acts for the monks was place-dated at London (185 miles),40 six at Rouen (137 miles),41 two at Argentan (98 miles),42 and one each at La Croix-Saint-Leufroy (150 miles),43 Falaise (82 miles),44 Caen (59 miles),45 and Sainte-Mère-Eglise (6 miles).46 For what such 38 RT, s.a. 1162; ed. Delisle, i. 342; ed. Howlett, p.216; Howden, Gesta, i. 83, 277; Howden, Chronicle, ii. 71, 260. 39 RT, s.a. 1171; ed. Delisle, ii. 26; ed. Howlett, p. 249 (Pontorson); Howden, Gesta, i. 83; Ralph of Diceto, i. 396 (Valognes). 40 Regesta, ii. 334 (no. cviii) = no. 1155 (although, as this was obtained through William of Glastonbury, it is possible that the monks did not travel there themselves). 41 Haskins, Norman Institutions, pp. 101 (nos. 9 and 10), 102 (nos. 11, 12, and 14), 102–3 (no. 15). 42 Haskins, Norman Institutions, pp. 101 (no. 8), 102 (no. 13). 43 Haskins, Norman Institutions, p. 101 = Regesta, ii. no. 1950; NI, p. 102 = Regesta, ii. no. 1953; Calendar of the Charter Rolls, iv. 157 = Regesta, ii. no. 1682. 44 BnF MS lat. 10087, p. 7 (no. 7). 45 H. Chanteux, ‘Recueil des actes d’Henri Beauclerc, duc de Normandie’ (thèse inédite de l’Ecole des Chartes, 1932), no. 155. 46 Regesta, ii. 327 (no. lxxvii).



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a statistic is worth, that equates to a journey of 115.4 miles for every act of Henry I as opposed to 41.1 miles for every act of Henry II. The picture, incidentally, is confirmed in reverse by the habits of the ecclesiastics based at Rouen, who now tended to travel much further than they had during the reign of Henry I to obtain their grants. It may be supposed that they could no longer rest at home, awaiting the duke’s swift return to his capital city, as they had before 1135.47 I have digressed, although I hope to good purpose. The duke’s willingness to entrust Torigni with office and embassies must have reflected his confidence in the abbot and must also have enhanced Torigni’s standing in the west of the duchy. Of course, that trust might result in onerous and perhaps inconvenient journeys and/or obligations which could not be refused. But that does not mean that the conferment of office was unwelcome or oppressive. More likely, Torigni was pleased to have the duke’s favour, and relieved that he could be seen to be at least keeping pace with his important neighbours, who may also have been his political rivals. Richard and William of Le Hommet,48 William Vernon of Néhou,49 Fulk Paynel,50 John of Subligny51 and William of Saint-Jean52 all received patronage at Henry’s hands, including, in some cases, positions in his administration and the custody of ducal castles. Thus, like his great-grandfather and his grandfather, Henry shared out his favour to a number of important local lords, ensuring that none should appear to enjoy his especial favour and thus be in a position to aggrandise themselves at their neighbours’, and potentially Henry’s, expense. As patronage, politics and friendship are reciprocal processes it is not surprising, on one reading of the evidence, that Henry might occasionally demand something from Torigni in return. Thus, Henry seems to have laid the foundations for Abbot Robert’s 1172 grant in heredity of the forestership of the abbey’s forest of Béuais (located around Saint-Michel-des-Loups) to William of Saint-Jean, which is hedged with so many limitations that it looks as if Torigni had been reluctant to The archbishops and canons of Rouen cathedral, for example, were now obliged to venture to Argentan, Caen, Westminster, London, Reading and Northampton (Recueil des actes d’Henri II roi d’Angleterre et duc de Normandie concernant les provinces Françaises et les affaires de France, ed. E. Berger and L. Delisle, 3 vols and introduction (Paris, 1909–27), nos. 48, 52, 53, 290, 395, 445, 586, supplement, no. 32). Delisle and Berger’s edition will shortly be supplemented by the long-awaited edition by Nicholas Vincent. As such, my practice will be to add the numbering that will be found there as ‘ed. Vincent’. In this case, the acts in question are at nos. 2267, 2268, 2264, 3003, 2265, 2269, 2271, 2273. I would like to thank Prof. Vincent for a copy of his concordance in advance of publication. The nuns of Saint-Amand travelled on one occasion to Alençon (Recueil Henri II, no. 599; ed. Vincent, no. 2257); the monks of Saint-Ouen to Westminster (Recueil Henri II, no. 61; ed. Vincent, no. 2261); the monks of Sainte-Trinité-du-Mont to Caen (TNA, C64/15 (Norman Roll 8 Henry V part 3) m.16); and the lepers of the Mont-aux-Malades to Arques and Guildford (Recueil Henri II, nos. 665, 686; ed. Vincent, nos. 2285, 2284). The tanners of Rouen went to Argentan (Recueil Henri II, no. 504; ed. Vincent, no. 2288). It is perhaps worth noting that the various volumes of the Recueil can now be found online, at both gallica. bnf.fr and archive.org. 48 Power, ‘Henry, Duke of Normandy’, pp. 109–111; D. Power, ‘Aristocratic acta in Normandy and England, c. 1150–c. 1250: the Charters and Letters of the Du Hommet Constables of Normandy’, ANS 35 (2013), pp. 259–86, at 260, 263; N. Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, p. 289; Recueil Henri II, no. 549; ed. Vincent, no. 1332. 49 The Pipe Rolls of the Exchequer of Normandy for the Reign of Henry II, 1180 and 1184, ed. V. Moss, The Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, n.s. 53 (2004) (henceforth, Norman Pipe Rolls, Henry II), p. 23. 50 Norman Pipe Rolls, Henry II, pp. 8, 13, 36, and see also Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniae sub Regibus Anglie, ed. T. Stapleton, vol. 1 (London, 1840), p. lxviii. 51 J. Everard, Brittany and the Angevins: Province and Empire, 1158–1203 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 83–85 and Appendix 3. 52 Norman Pipe Rolls, Henry II, p. 9; RT, s.a. 1172; ed. Delisle, ii. 31; ed. Howlett, p. 253. 47

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make it. It was subsequently confirmed in the form of a cyrograph by King Henry in the presence of Henry the Young King and many of the lords of the Cotentin at Saint-Lô.53 Similarly, Henry’s involvement might be discerned in Torigni’s grant to Richard of Ilchester of the church at Martock (Somerset), which Richard returned to the abbot c. 1175, and also in his grant to William of Sainte-Mère-Eglise – one of the clerks of Henry’s chamber – of a pension of 3 marks per year until a church to which the abbot had the right of presentation became available.54 Thus Torigni’s support of Henry perhaps allowed Henry to gain and reward other supporters at the abbot’s expense. Such was the way that Torigni’s relationship with his duke was tested and affirmed. So, Abbot Robert and Duke Henry had a strong and mutually supportive relationship, which both might use to achieve their own objectives. But, as similar relationships also existed between Henry and Torigni’s various neighbours and rivals, he could not have been certain that the duke would always support his case against an equally favoured opponent. Torigni also had relationships with the bishops of Avranches, Coutances and Bayeux to maintain, and that meant recognising their jurisdiction over ecclesiastical pleas. He was himself the lord of many men, some of them powerful lords in their own right, and had his own authority to preserve. Given these competing interests, how did Torigni interact with Henry’s administration when it came to the day-to-day business of his abbey? The investigation can begin with an examination of the events surrounding and following Henry II’s grant of the churches of Pontorson to the abbot and monks in 1158. Torigni tells us in his Chronicle that Henry II had granted the churches to his abbey when he dined there around Michaelmas 1158. That can be taken on trust. But what Torigni fails entirely to mention is that he had already approached Pope Adrian IV regarding these same churches – at least two months earlier. The pope’s response is dated 23 July, almost certainly of 1158. Adrian confirmed the abbot and monks in possession of the churches of Pontorson, which the monastery had been given by the gift of Henry, once king of the English (ab Henrico quondam illustri Anglorum rege), and which had been confirmed by Archbishop Hugh of Rouen.55 The King Henry concerned was, of course, Henry I, and, as Archbishop Hugh had been in office for the last five years of Henry I’s reign, the confirmation that had been shown to the pope may also be supposed to have dated back to the 1130s. The right to these churches was thus already a live subject by the time Henry arrived at the Mont around the end of September. They may have been lost during the Angevin conquest of the 1140s, and/or the abbey’s right to them may have become threatened by Henry’s redevelopment of the town and castle – that nail in the eye of the Bretons – which was underway at the time.56 In any event, Henry now laid the abbot’s fears to rest by renewing the grant of the churches to the abbey. In RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 303–6 (nos. 34, 35); ed. Howlett, pp. 353–5 (nos. 9, 10). RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 308–10 (nos. 38 and 39); ed. Howlett, pp. 356–7 (nos. 13 and 14). It is equally possible that Richard of Ilchester had demanded the church as the price for his help with some matter – Elisabeth van Houts suggested that it related to the confirmations made in 1166, discussed below (Van Houts, ‘Le roi et son historien’, p. 118) – as he did with regard to the share of the church of Luton held by the abbey of St Albans (English Lawsuits, ii. no. 417). 55 Papsturkunden in Frankreich. II. Normandie, ed. J. Ramackers (Göttingen, 1937), p. 86, no. 98. Ramackers dated the act to 1158, and that seems to accord with the pope’s itinerary. 56 Torigni reports that immediately after he had made the grant, Henry went to Pontorson to mark out the site of his new castle (RT, s.a. 1158, references as above, n. 29). For the comment that the castle at Pontorson was like a nail in the eye of the Bretons see John of Marmoutier, ‘Historia Gaufredi ducis Normannorum et comitis Andegavorum’, in Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise, ed. L. Halphen and R. Poupardin (Paris, 1913), p. 297. 53

54



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doing so, he also ensured that any further disputes over those churches would be heard in his court, and not lost to the papal curia. But that was not the end of the matter. It seems that Bishop Herbert of Avranches was not pleased that the monks of Mont-Saint-Michel had retained – or, more accurately transferred – their rights to the new castle’s chapel. One might guess that he had been promised them by Henry before Torigni insisted on his prior right. The manner in which Bishop Herbert’s irritation manifested itself is apparent from a letter that Henry wrote to Archbishop Hugh of Rouen shortly after making the gift. That same letter also told the archbishop what Henry expected him to do about it: ‘I command you that if the bishop of Avranches does not wish to give them [the monks] blessed water for the use of the churches, you shall give it to them, for I do not wish that the churches of my castle, which I have newly established, should remain without divine service.’57 Archbishop Hugh must have unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile the bishop of Avranches to the king’s demands. His failure meant that he would have to provide the blessed water himself, as the king demanded, and as he informed Bishop Herbert in his letter: we, at the prayer of our lord King Henry and by right of our metropolitan authority, have given blessed water to our dear son Robert, abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel in peril of the sea for the chapel at Pontorson, and licence to celebrate divine service in that chapel, since we asked you to give him blessed water a first, second, and third time, and you did not wish to.58

Here, then, was intervention by Archbishop Hugh. But, although this was an ecclesiastical matter, he had been required to act by the duke, and had concluded the business in accordance with the duke’s injunction. The same processes can be seen happening in England at about this same time.59 But even then the matter was not completely resolved. Archbishop Hugh penned a final letter, perhaps two years later, recording how a related dispute had been settled. Be it known … that the controversy between the church of Avranches and the monastery of Mont-Saint-Michel over the churches of Pontorson was rehearsed at Rouen in the presence of our second Henry king of the English … and shall be put to sleep in this way: that the gift of the first and second Henrys, kings of the English, of the said churches to the said monastery shall be held valid and unbroken. And the priest of Boucey, Alan, in whose parish the said castle has been built, as he showed, for settling and halting his whole complaint, shall be given the choice of either accepting twenty livres Angevin as a final settlement or taking ten sous of the said money each year while he lives.60

It is worth pausing here to consider this final act in a little more detail. Although the record states that this was a dispute between Abbot Robert and Bishop Herbert of Avranches, it was one that Torigni had inherited rather than caused, for it was the direct result of Henry II’s reconstruction of the castle at Pontorson on a new site. Henry himself does not seem to have intervened directly, even though he was present at court, and it may be inferred from the record that it was Abbot Robert who stumped up the cash handed over to Alan of Boucey. RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 265 (no. 5); ed. Howlett, p. 345 (no. 2). RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 265–66 (no. 6). 59 Duggan, ‘Henry II, the English Church and the Papacy’, pp. 162–68. 60 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 266–7 (no. 7). Alan the priest of Boucey had made a gift to the abbey in 1155 when his nephew had become a monk there: RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 238 (no. 1, § 3); ed. Howlett, p. 331 (no. 1, § 3). 57 58

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Henry’s apparent aloofness casts a shadow over his original gift. Here is an interpretation: Henry had not liked having his hand forced by Abbot Robert’s papal confirmation. Bishop Herbert’s subsequent refusal to provide holy water had been an irritation, albeit one dealt with without too much trouble, but it would not have happened had Torigni not forced his hand. The second dispute, however, had been a step too far, not least because it had tangentially attacked Henry’s choice of site for his new castle. So Henry had stepped back and, although he kept an interest in proceedings, not least because his chapel and thus his patronage were involved, had obliged Abbot Robert to reach a settlement and pay for it himself. That Torigni felt uncomfortable with the way things had worked out would explain why he omitted any reference to these disputes from his Chronicle, which would have spoilt its resolutely positive tone regarding Henry’s rule and Torigni’s actions as abbot. His failure to mention either the grant or the disputes in his Annuary further suggests that he saw the settlement as a defeat and an unwarranted expense. Indeed, Torigni may have broken off his composition of the Annuary because of the difficulties that the dispute had caused and the (perhaps insurmountable) issues he faced in recording them.61 However, Henry must have been quite happy with this conclusion. The matter had started badly, with the duke forced to confirm Mont-Saint-Michel in possession of the churches at Pontorson or risk an appeal to the papacy. He had then been put to the trouble of protecting his gift from the opposition of the bishop of Avranches. But Bishop Herbert had been defeated in the matter of the blessed water; and the claim he had sponsored on behalf of the priest, Alan, had been resolved at no cost to Duke Henry and in a way that upheld his grant and his authority. Throughout, Henry had been obliged to work through Archbishop Hugh of Rouen,62 but the archbishop had done what he was told, such that the dispute highlighted Henry’s control of the Norman Church. For those in attendance, the duke’s presence at the final hearing could also have turned the archiepiscopal court into a ducal one. It would certainly have been much harder to see the difference. And so it might have seemed that it was Henry who had dragged the abbot and bishop across Normandy for the hearing. Bishop Herbert and his followers would have had plenty of time to dwell on this manifestation of ducal authority as they rode back to Avranches; and as the local community observed the monks conducting their business in the chapel, so they would have seen for themselves that Henry’s authority reached this far-flung corner of his duchy, despite the opposition of their bishop. Now that Henry was victorious, he may have felt a little bit sorry for Abbot Robert, and so, when he was casting around for godparents for his daughter Eleanor in 1161 he decided to make it up to Torigni by inviting him to be one of them, along with Achard, the new bishop of Avranches, and ‘many others’. Other interpretations are possible, but, however we view these events, Henry got his way. The only real variable is how supportive Henry had been of Torigni’s position – which is of course the one thing we would most like to know, so far as present purposes are concerned. A second case, which concerns rights and property at Genêts, one of the abbey’s principal possessions in the Avranchin, provides further opportunities to reflect on Bisson suggested that Torigni simply did not have the time needed to keep up with the writing, which is equally possible (Bisson, ‘A Micro-economy of Salvation’, p. 219). 62 There are at least two reasons why Hugh had jurisdiction: (1) The dispute involved two prelates and concerned churches; (2) Pope Adrian’s letter had made express mention of Archbishop Hugh’s confirmation and had made it the model for his own. 61



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Torigni’s relationship with Henry and his resort to ducal justice. The story begins in 1156, when Henry king of the English pardoned Abbot Robert of Mont-Saint-Michel the forfeiture of Gervase fitz Helias of Genêts, concerning the theft [rapina] from the men of Villedieu[-les-Poêles] that he had obstructed, on the agreement that the same Gervase would take an exchange for the bakery of Genêts. And the king made his charter to the abbot about it.63

One of Robert’s men had got himself into trouble. Gervase’s obstruction of justice brought him before the duke’s court, perhaps during an assize, where he was judged guilty. The extent of his forfeiture is unknown. It may have been a fine, or even the complete loss of his chattels and exile from the duchy.64 However, the penalty was clearly significant, for it caused Gervase to appeal to his lord for help and Torigni agreed to act as a good lord should and to speak to the duke about it. Torigni probably had no choice about this, but once he had been forced to act it appears that he named a price: the revenue-producing bakery. Its acquisition may have been one of the first moves in a process whereby Torigni would create a new priory at Genêts for the better administration of his lands. But, in any event, it should be emphasised that this resort to the duke was entirely unplanned and probably, at least initially, unwelcome. Ten years later, on 12 July 1166, in the chapter at Mont-Saint-Michel, Gervase fitz Helias made a second agreement regarding the exchange he had accepted for the bakery, which itself suggests that there had been further negotiation during the intervening years.65 On the same day Abbot Robert made a related agreement with Rualen of Genêts regarding the surrender of Rualen’s prefecture of Genêts,66 which he held of the abbot: ‘And this same agreement was enacted, indeed, with the assent and counsel of the lord King Henry II’.67 The next day the two documents were brought before the duke, who was besieging the castle at Fougères about 30 miles away, and there Henry confirmed them.68 The agreement made in 1166 with Helias fitz Gervase was related to that made in 1156, which Henry had confirmed. That earlier confirmation may well have given Henry jurisdiction over subsequent disputes and/or changes, at least in Torigni’s view, thereby requiring him to gain the duke’s confirmation for this new arrangement. We are explicitly told that the agreement with Rualen had been made with Henry’s assent and counsel, and that almost certainly gave him the right to confirm it, too. It is a pity that we do not know why Robert had felt the need to discuss it first with Henry. Perhaps he was concerned that Rualen would try to renege on the agreement. That is certainly suggested by the fact that the deed includes an express RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 242–43 (no. 1, § 14); ed. Howlett, p. 334 (no. 1, § 14). Haskins printed records of a dispute that had seen Robert of Thaon and his brothers deprive the monks of Savigny of tithes and lands at Thaon, which ultimately saw Robert put his chattels in the abbot’s mercy and his brothers placed under the duke’s ban (Haskins, Norman Institutions, pp. 323–24, nos. 3 and 4). 65 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 283–4 (no. 19). 66 Bisson thought that Rualen was prévôt rather than prefect (Bisson, ‘Annuary’, p. 219). He certainly appears with both titles, but it is likely that Torigni preferred to use ‘prefect’ to ensure that his official should be seen as his and not the duke’s. The abbot also had a tendency to use obsolete terminology, which can be seen in his highly unusual use of ‘curtes’ to describe the centre at Genêts (RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 242, no. 1, § 13). 67 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 282–83 (no. 18). Dubois suggested, probably correctly, that Torigni intended to extinguish this lay prefecture and to replace it with a priory (Dubois, ‘Dépendances et prieurés’, pp. 627, 630). 68 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 284–85 (no. 20); ed. Howlett, p. 347 (no. 5). 63

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record of his oath to maintain his grant.69 In such cases it was perhaps worth tracking Henry down to his siege camp (relatively) nearby. And it is worth noting, too, that this embassy would have comprised a public demonstration of support for the duke against Ralph of Fougères, one of Torigni’s own tenants, at a time when Henry may well have been in need of it.70 There is indeed some evidence that Henry took it as such, for the next day the duke exempted the men of Mont-Saint-Michel from works on the castle at Gavray.71 After a tour of Brittany, Henry then came to the Mont, and then spent the night at Genêts. The unusual choice of location suggests a link with the confirmation, so that it looks like a reciprocal show of support for the abbot.72 In the event, Abbot Robert was proved right to doubt the good faith of Rualen of Genêts, for the surrender of the prefecture did not go smoothly. We do not know the details, but we do know that Abbot Robert required Henry’s help again before 1170.73 This time Torigni’s recourse to Henry’s justice involved a lengthy journey to Reading, where a new agreement, which may well have been negotiated on the spot, was put into place.74 This time the agreement seems to have stuck. Henry’s authority in the west of Normandy was once again upheld. But again we must ask the question: did Torigni have to seek out Henry to settle the case, given the royal duke’s previous involvement in the deal, or did he decide to do so in order to strengthen the final agreement with the recalcitrant Rualen? Both options speak to Henry’s authority and Torigni’s acknowledgement of it, but they are qualitatively different. The former is about due process, the latter would indicate a belief in the efficacy of Henry’s intervention. Although the matter is arguable, I am strongly of the view that Henry’s earlier grants obliged Abbot Robert to seek his justice when disputes arose – he had, after all, commanded that the agreements should remain unbroken.75 The sense that Torigni was under an obligation to go means that we lack the vote of confidence in Henry’s regime that a choice would have provided. It is nevertheless of note that while Rualen of Genêts might oppose the abbot, despite the duke’s confirmation of the agreement they had struck, he did not later seek to overturn the settlement he had made before Henry II himself in the royal duke’s court and with Henry’s personal involvement. We know more about the cases concerning Pontorson and Genêts than about any of the other pleas Torigni fought as abbot. But we do know that other disputes involving Abbot Robert were heard in Henry’s courts, either before the duke in person or before his officials, and we still have enough evidence to get a sense of why they were brought there. Thus, in 1155, ‘Abbot Robert deraigned the seat of one mill in the pagus of Coutances, in the vill which is called Sainte-Mère-Eglise, through a duel, against Bishop Richard of Coutances … And this was done during Other oaths are found in RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 248 (no. 1, § 30); 330 (no. 52). John of Salisbury wrote to Becket during July 1166 and informed him that the king had ‘suffered heavy loss at the assault of Fougères’ and that Ralph of Fougères was putting up a strong and active defence (The Correspondence of Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury 1162–1170, ed. and trans. A. J. Duggan, 2 vols (Oxford, 2000), i. 452–55, no. 99). 71 He may also have issued a confirmation of the liberties enjoyed by the men of Pontorson, which Abbot Robert witnessed, on the same occasion (Recueil Henri II, no. 269; ed. Vincent, no. 2089). Nicholas Vincent has supported the view previously ventured by Le Cacheux and Font-Réaulx that the act should be place-dated Fougères rather than Surgères (Acts of Henry II, forthcoming). 72 RT, s.a. 1166; ed. Delisle, ii. 362; ed. Howlett, p. 228. 73 I follow Delisle in dating this act after the agreement of 1166, for the more generous settlement offered to Rualen suggests trouble in the interim – and also suggests that Gervase fitz Helias was by then dead. 74 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 286–8 (no. 22); ed. Howlett, pp. 348–9 (no. 7). 75 See on this, albeit for an earlier period, Hagger, Norman Rule, pp. 464–69. 69 70



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the assize at Carentan in the presence of Bishop Arnulf of Lisieux and Robert of Neubourg who then were master justices of the whole of Normandy’.76 In 1157 Torigni brought a claim against Jordan of Sauqueville concerning the unjust exactions he had imposed on the abbey’s men at Eantot, which was heard during an assize at Caen.77 And around 1175 a dispute with William of Le Hommet over alms in Foucarville was settled before Henry II at Valognes.78 We could add to these a plea over the abbey’s possessions at Cancale, settled before Duke Geoffrey of Brittany,79 and a dispute between the monks of La Couture and Saint-Vincent du Mans over property they held from the Mont which was heard before the seneschal of Maine. In all these cases both parties were tenants-in-chief, and in all but one (Cancale) they were disputing secular rights. The ducal court was thus the clear forum and Torigni had no choice but to plead there – when he had made the decision about the forum in the first place. In addition, it is possible that the disputes involved the making of recognitions, which was a monopoly of the duke’s courts,80 and it is equally possible that property held in alms pertained to the duke’s jurisdiction, too (Torigni states this as an established principle in his account of the Sauqueville case, but he is not supported by the relevant sections of the so-called Très ancien coutumier).81 On another three occasions Henry’s officials overstepped the mark. In 1157 Torigni was charged pontage by royal officials at Southampton. He was forced by such iniquity to deviate from the most direct route back to the Mont in order to lay a complaint before Henry while he was resident at Mortain.82 He was rewarded with a grant of an exemption from, among other things, pontage.83 A complaint concerning whether or not the men who lived on the abbey’s manors at Verson and Bretteville-sur-Odon should have to carry the duke’s hay at their own expense was decided in an assize at Caen.84 In a third instance, Bertram of Verdun was commanded not to take customs from the abbot’s men at Pontorson unless they had paid them during the time of King Henry I.85 In such cases Torigni had to plead in the duke’s court because he was complaining against ducal officials. There was no other appropriate forum. The same is also true of the following well-known case, which dates from 1155 and throws up some additional and general points of interest. Abbot Robert wished to hold a duel concerning the honour of Saint-Pair at Mont-SaintMichel, and William of Saint-Jean forbade that any duel concerning the honour of Saint-Pair should be held outside that honour. The same abbot, in assize at Domfront, showed this prohibition to Bishop Arnulf of Lisieux and Robert of Neubourg, who were justices of the king, and by the consideration of the court of the king it was adjudged that all the barons of Normandy who hold in chief of the lord of Normandy

RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 241 (no. 1, § 9); ed. Howlett, p. 333 (no. 1, § 9). RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 251–2 (no. 1, § 35); ed. Howlett, pp. 339–40 (no. 1, § 35). Dubois thought that Eantot should be identified as La Bingard within the commune of Muneville-Le-Bingard to the north of Coutances (Dubois, ‘Dépendances et prieurés’, p. 634). 78 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 307–8 (no. 37); ed. Howlett, pp. 355–6 (no. 12). 79 BnF, lat. 5430A, pp. 39, 197. Judith Everard notes that this might have been the determination of a legal dispute (Everard, Brittany and the Angevins, p. 107, n. 58). I think, on balance, it was. 80 Coutumiers de Normandie: textes critiques, ed. Ernest-Joseph Tardif, vol. 1 (Rouen, 1881), p. 24. 81 Coutumiers, ed. Tardiff, i. 46–49, 99–100. The much later (c. 1270) Summa de legibus is not any clearer, probably because the greater clarity surrounding grants in pure alms meant it did not have to be. 82 It is likely that Henry was at Mortain with Count William, to whom he restored his possessions in England this year (RT, s.a. 1157; ed. Delisle, i. 305–6; ed. Howlett, pp. 192–93). 83 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 246–47 (no. 1, § 28); ed. Howlett, p. 337 (no. 1, § 28). 84 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 250–51 (no. 1, § 34); ed. Howlett, p. 339 (no. 1, § 34). 85 Recueil Henri II, no. 712; ed. Vincent, no. 1868. 76 77

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… could, if they wished, lead all their duels, even from their remotest lands, to their chief seat. And the abbot thus deraigned that he could if he wanted lead all the duels of his whole land to Mont-Saint-Michel.86

William of Saint-Jean was almost certainly acting as a local justice – probably of Gavray – when he reached his verdict regarding the holding of duels. It is certainly difficult to see how he could have been acting in any other capacity.87 He could hardly have been acting as the vicomte of Coutances, an office he held from at least 1160, for vicomtes were demesne officials, and, while vicomtes might thus have presided over the equivalent to the local honour and/or manor courts of the demesne vills within their territory,88 Saint-Pair was not part of the ducal demesne. In fact, in all the sufficiently explicit records and acta that date from Henry’s reign the justices are the only ducal officials who are found hearing those pleas reserved to the duke in the duchy (not just the serious offences later known as the pleas of the sword but also recognitions and possessory assizes), as well as cases that concerned the duke’s tenants-in-chief. Some records make that point simply by stating that a dispute was heard before ‘the justices of the king’.89 Others give a bit more detail. One particularly useful report dates from 1176x1178: I, William of la Mare, make known to everyone present and future the agreement which was made between Robert Neveu of Trouville and Gilbert of Yainville in assize at Montfort before the justices of the king, namely before me, the vicomte of SainteMère-Eglise, and William Malet constable of Pont-Audemer, and Hugh of Cressi constable of Rouen, and Saer of Quency constable of Nonancourt, and Alured of SaintMartin constable of Neufchâtel, and some others.90

The details of this settlement do not concern us. The fact that each of the justices held other offices does. William of la Mare was a vicomte, but stated expressly that he had acted here as a ducal justice – probably the local justice, given the location of his vicomté and the evidence of the Norman pipe roll of 1179–80. The same is, of course, true of all the constables noted in this act. It is also true of Richard of Le Hommet, who judged a dispute involving the monks of Préaux in 1159x1162 as Henry II’s justice, with the record simultaneously remarking his position as constable (of Normandy).91 These two acts, then, demonstrate how less conscientious scribes might deceive us into thinking that men did justice as vicomtes or constables when that was not the case at all.92 A very few English acts might also do the same, or at least throw the station of the characters involved into doubt, were the lack of RT, ed. Delisle, ii, 241–42 (no. 1, § 10); ed. Howlett, pp. 333–34 (no. 1, § 10). Saint-Pair is now within the arrondisement of Avranches, but in this period it was within the diocese of Coutances and would almost certainly have been within the vicomté of Gavray (RADN, no. 49; ‘Polyptychum diœcesis Constantiensis’, RHF, xxiii. 498). 88 Suggested by an act of 1172x1189 for Robert Marmion (Recueil Henri II, no. 701; ed. Vincent, no. 1759) and by the Etat de l’Avranchin of 1171 (Recueil Henri II, Introduction, p. 345 and see below, pp. 97–8). 89 As with, for example, Ctl. Préaux, B102 of 1182x1200. Haskins suggested that ‘the vicomtes and baillies acted as judges in their own districts’, but the instances he cited all make it clear that the individual concerned was actually acting as a ducal justice, which undermines his point (Haskins, Norman Institutions, pp. 167–68 and n. 72). 90 Haskins, Norman Institutions, pp. 327–78 (no. 10), my italics. 91 Ctl. Préaux, B21. 92 Norman scribes seem to have seen the office of constable as conferring prestige on its holder, and might style them accordingly in the text of acts or witness lists. Thus, Osbern de Hosa is styled constable (of Cherbourg) even when acting as the local justice of the Cotentin (Recueil Henri II, no. 688; ed. Vincent, no. 573; BnF, MS lat. 10087 (s. xiii, cartulary of Montebourg), p. 131, no. 383). Robert of Torigni, too, was remembered by the continuator of his On the Deeds of the Abbots, as having ‘achieved very 86 87



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precision not more than made up for by the very large number of documents that dutifully describe those involved in judgments as the king’s justices.93 The Saint-Pair case also reveals – supposing that William of Saint-Jean was indeed a local justice –that the decisions reached by such officials might be appealed before the superior justices of Normandy at an assize, as was also the case with decisions reached by prévôts and other officials.94 Further, the fact that Torigni took his case to Domfront, which would not have been the local assize, indicates that business could be heard before the justices at any session, not just the one that was held closest to the land in question. In this instance, that may have been because the appeal turned on a point of procedure rather than comprising a dispute that could be concluded only by a recognition or with the evidence of the local community. That said, a case involving land and rights at Thaon, to the north of Caen, was decided in an assize at Domfront, too, so the broader principle may well apply.95 Moreover, the court found its verdict by establishing custom. The justices did not therefore act in such a way as to make law or even fix precedent,96 but, as the Très ancien coutumier includes other instances of custom being debated or established by the justices or seneschal during the rules of Henry II and Richard I, it might be thought that they had effectively done so.97 Or, at least, it would be if it could be established that such decisions always held. But it cannot. For example, in 1157 at Caen, during the dispute with Jordan of Sauqueville mentioned above, the justices held that any grants in alms would encompass all the rights that pertained to the property in question unless the donor gained a charter from the duke that explicitly listed all reservations.98 There is nothing to that effect in the relevant chapter of the Très ancien coutumier, which goes into considerable detail about how disputes over alms should be handled.99 Presumably that decision was forgotten or overruled.100 The surviving records of Torigni’s administrative activities make it clear that the local justices comprised his main interface with Henry’s administration – if he were not dealing directly with the duke himself. That is not surprising, simply because by virtue of their role in doing justice they had a wider reach than any other of the duke’s officials. Their activities were not limited to the ducal demesne, but might encompass all free men across the duchy. As such, it is a great pity that we do not know more about the identities of those who held this role in Normandy, in particular, so far as this present study is concerned, in the western counties. Indeed, with the exception of William of Saint-Jean, whose position as local justice has to be teased out of the record, as we have seen, the only local justice whom we know to have operated in this area before 1179–80 is Geoffrey Peile-Vilain, who many good things’ and as ‘the keeper of the castle of Pontorson’, in other words the constable (Bisson, ‘On the Abbots of Le Mont-Saint-Michel’, pp. 184–85.). Almost nothing else is said about him. 93 For cases where the justices are not named as such see, for example, English Lawsuits, ii. nos. 557, 561, 596, 601, 602. For cases where royal justices are identified as such see, for example, English Lawsuits, ii. nos. 544, 554, 562, 563, 575, 577, 583, 585, 587, 589, 590, 597, 599, 600, 602, 606, 609, 610. 94 The two levels of justice in Normandy have been remarked by Haskins, Norman Institutions, pp. 99–104, 164–65 and Hagger, Norman Rule, pp. 476–79. 95 Haskins, Norman Institutions, p. 323, no. 3. 96 Power noticed the different language in these reports by Torigni, and suggested that the court without the king could not command but was required to gain a consensus (Power, ‘Henry, Duke of the Normans’, p. 123). 97 For example, concerning who had the right to try a thief, his lord or the justice, if the justice apprehended him on his lord’s land (Coutumiers, ed. Tardiff, i. 50–1 (§ 59) and see also pp. 51–57 for further examples). 98 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 251–52 (no. 1, § 35); ed. Howlett, pp. 339–40 (no. 1, § 35). 99 Coutumiers, ed. Tardiff, i. 46–49 (ch. 57). 100 There is nothing in the Très ancien coutumier concerning the question of where duels might be held.

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kept the duke’s pleas in the Avranchin in 1171 and who held a piece of land there in right of his office.101 It is only in the Norman pipe roll of 1179–80 that we can see a run of local justices across the duchy, albeit incomplete. A quick word of introduction is required here to establish methodology, in part because the audit in Normandy, and thus the rolls that it produced, took a different form from that in England, and in part because the rolls do not identify the local justices explicitly.102 Thus, in England a writ of summons was sent to the sheriff in advance of the audit, setting out everything for which he was to make an account. The sheriff then got the money and/or his excuses together and made that account at the Upper Exchequer. There, he accounted not only for his shire farm (minus any deductions) but also for the lands recovered or taken into the royal demesne, any aids and scutages and (after 1176) the revenue and debts produced by the justices in eyre. He was responsible for the collection of these sums because he was the official on the ground. The itinerant justices could not do it. They simply levied their fines and moved on – lodging the rolls that listed the sums owed with the Exchequer clerks when they got back to the court.103 Thus the clear reporting of the origin of all debts was, in theory, essential to the English audit and the pipe rolls that were produced there, because although the sheriff collected and accounted for these sums he was not ultimately responsible for them.104 In Normandy, in contrast, there was no over-arching figure responsible for each of the Norman counties. The great bailiffs with their bailiwicks were established only after Henry II was dead;105 the vicomte answered only for the farm of his vicomté (less any deductions), and the prévôts likewise for their towns or vills. The local justice, or one of his subordinate bailiffs for him, answered for the amercements, fines and promises produced in his district. Some of these debts accrued as a result of the local justices’ own actions, but others were the result of the assizes held by the justices of Normandy as they toured the duchy and who, like the itinerant justices in England, could not be expected to collect the money themselves. The sums, in both oats and money, produced by bernage might be accounted for by still other individuals. The duke’s fairs and ovens might be farmed separately from the vicomtés and prévôtés, the money owed being paid over by the individual farmers. This fragmented administrative structure and accountability is demonstrated in the roll of 1180, not only by the way that most of those who had accounted are listed separately at the footer of each rotulet (where in England we have the names of the shires), but also in the physical separation of entries relating to the same county – as with the Avranchin and Bessin.106 We can see this same fragmentation in Wace’s Recueil Henri II, Introduction, p. 346. The differences in account and composition between English and Norman Exchequers have not been highlighted by those who have previously written about them, principally: Magni Rotuli Scaccarii, ed. Stapleton, pp. ix–clxxvii (‘Observations’); V. Moss, ‘Normandy and England in 1180: the Pipe Roll Evidence’, in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Bates and A. Curry (London, 1994), pp. 185–95. 103 Dialogus de Scaccario/Dialogue of the Exchequer and Constitutio Domus Regis/The Establishment of the Royal Household, new edition, ed. and trans. E. Amt and S. D. Church (Oxford, 2007), pp. 116–17. 104 See, for example, Dialogue of the Exchequer, pp. 118–19, which makes it clear that those on whom the justices had imposed fines, or else the justices themselves, owed the relevant debts to the treasury, and pp. 156–77; also M. Hagger, ‘Theory and Practice in the Making of Twelfth-century Pipe Rolls’, in Records, Administration and Aristocratic Society in the Anglo-Norman Realm, ed. N. Vincent (Woodbridge, 2009), p. 63. 105 Contrary to the impression given, in different ways, by Stapleton’s and Moss’s editions of the Norman pipe rolls, the format of the rolls of 1180 and 1184 gives no grounds at all for thinking that the bailiwick had become the predominant administrative unit in Normandy by that time. 106 With regard to the Avranchin, we find the names of those who held small pieces of the demesne as 101

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depiction of the audit, albeit back-dated to the reign of Richard II (d. 1026). When Master Bernard arrived at Rouen ‘from a place beyond Lombardy’ he was told that he would not be able to speak with the duke for at least a week: ‘He remains in that high tower and does not leave it night or day; no one can enter the tower unless he is summoned by name. He has brought together all the prévôts, bailiffs, tax-­collectors, and vicomtes in this land; he is doing his reckoning and his accounts.’107 The audit in Normandy, then, was performed by an official caste of thousands, rather than the thirty or so English sheriffs who cowered while awaiting interrogation at Westminster, and that is one of the main reasons why the rolls look so different.108 The local justices who appear in the Norman pipe roll are not described as justices. Those who took the account and wrote the rolls knew the men who stood before them and the offices they held, but they did not draft their documents for the benefit of twenty-first-century historians. We can deduce that they are justices only because they are the figures who account for the ‘amercements, fines, and promises’ of a given area. The area, incidentally, is not identified either. It must be established from the context and the places included within the account. Thus, in 1179–80 the local justice of the Avranchin was no longer Geoffrey Peile-Vilain but Geoffrey Duredent, who can be identified as such because he accounted for the ‘amercements, fines, and promises’ of an area which must have been the Avranchin, because Geoffrey’s pleas encompassed, inter alia, the Val-de-Sée, Saint-James-de-Beuvron and Saint-Loup. The pleas are laid out in the roll in groups, in part depending on whether the sums had been paid in full, were partly paid or were unpaid, and produced a total revenue of 166 livres 16 sous.109 As many of these pleas concerned recognitions or offences against the duke’s assizes, we have another reason for supposing that they were heard in a ducal court and that Geoffrey was therefore the local justice.110 It is clear that Torigni dealt with both types of ducal justices. It is likely that he would also have had dealings with the duke’s bailiffs whenever a dispute arose, for they were relatively minor officials who helped the local justices to prepare cases for court and then ensured that the decisions made were put into effect – although they may have exercised jurisdiction themselves in some towns, for they seem to have been particularly linked with the duchy’s urban centres.111 In addition, Torigni and his monks must have had dealings with the toll collectors, who had responwell as the account made by the local justice at rot. 1d, while the accounts for the prévôtés at Avranches and Saint-James-de-Beuvron and Pontorson are at rot. 3d. As if to reinforce the point, the accounts for Saint-James and Pontorson are separated by the entry for the vicomté of Auge. 107 Wace, The History of the Norman People: Wace’s Roman de Rou, trans. Glyn S. Burgess (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 113–14, ll. 1975–2032). The Dialogue of the Exchequer also notes that the writs of summons were addressed to both English sheriffs and bailiffs (balliui) (Dialogue of the Exchequer, pp. 118–19). 108 It is likely that such differences in procedure and format in England and Normandy were one of the spurs to the creation of the Dialogue of the Exchequer. 109 London, TNA, E373/10, rot. 1d; Norman Pipe Rolls, Henry II, pp. 8–10. 110 Boussard noted these headings, but interpreted them in a different way to that set out here (Gouvernement, p. 552). 111 Their functions are suggested by: Coutumiers. ed. Tardiff, i. 24 (ch. 25), 44 (ch. 55), 52–53 (ch. 61), 75–76 (ch. 77), 96–97 (ch. 86); Tome II. La Summa de Legibus Normannie in Curia Laicali, ch. 4 (5), pp. 10–11. For the duties of bailiffs elsewhere see W. L. Warren, The Governance of Norman and Angevin England 1086–1272 (London, 1987), pp. 135–36 and see also K. Dutton, ‘Geoffrey, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, 1129–51’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011), p. 116. The association with towns is suggested by a small number of ducal acta, which allow us to see bailiffs at Cherbourg and Falaise during Henry’s reign (Cherbourg: Recueil Henri II, no. 688; ed. Vincent, no. 573; Marchegay, ‘Chartes Normands’, pp. 672–73 (no. 8), translated at CDF, no. 1123; Falaise: Recueil Henri II, no.701; ed. Vincent, no. 1759).

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sibility for the collection of a variety of charges along roads, over bridges and in fairs and markets. Then there were collectors of bernage, who may still have been the keepers of the duke’s dogs. There were the vicomtes and the prévôts, too, of course, who were principally demesne officials but who were also the superiors of the various toll-collectors and so might be approached for a refund if money had been taken from the monks or their men in error. The vicomtes and prévôts would also collect together the issues of the demesne under their jurisdiction, and would consequently be the officials approached when churchmen or churches wanted to claim their tithes (by this date probably in the form of a set cash sum rather than in kind). Thus Abbot Robert and the monks of Mont-Saint-Michel would approach the prévôt of Pontorson for ‘the tithes of the mills and all the issues of the castle’ of Pontorson, as is confirmed by the roll of 1179–80.112 Torigni’s interactions with ducal officials, from the highest to the lowest, would thus have been regular. But we know almost nothing about them, presumably because it was only rarely that things went wrong. It is possible that the apparent lack of trouble was the result of luck, or of simple respect for ducal writs of exemption. But it is also likely that local officials, at least, were well informed about who had the right to what and were aware of the possible flashpoints. Such intelligence was itself the result of local memory. On one occasion at least, in 1171, when Henry commissioned a series of inquisitions on losses to the ducal demesne,113 that knowledge was set down in writing. The findings of that inquiry survive for the Avranchin alone, in the form of a document that Léopold Delisle christened the Etat de l’Avranchin, which is preserved in a book once belonging to the Premonstratensian abbey of Lucerne.114 The Etat falls well short of providing us with ‘an exact picture of the king’s rights and his administration in this district’ as Haskins claimed.115 Indeed, it reveals that Torigni’s characterisation of the inquest as being all about the duke’s rights is somewhat deceptive. Instead, what we have is a record that tells us almost as much about seigniorial rights as about ducal ones, and from which we can infer the claims and counter-claims that were raised as the inquisition proceeded. The Etat consequently reveals how ducal power was mediated, even in a survey focused on the duke’s rights. It also shows us how muddied the waters might be, and how precision and pedantry was by no means restricted to common law procedures. For example: In Genêts, truly, the abbot of the Mont has his market and all the customs of those who sell in the market, except of the men who are quit in the Avranchin. The vicomte of the Avranchin, truly, has all the trespasses, and has the custom of the burgesses of Genêts who buy or sell in the Avranchin. But the knights and vavassors of the fee of the abbot are quit of their livestock and of those things they buy for their own use between the Thar and Couesnon, unless during the fair of St Andrew. And the chamberlains of the king who have custody of the fair have on the day of the fair by custom from the abbot one pound’s worth of pepper and a pondus of wax.116

112 RT, ed. Delisle, ii. 315 (no. 43, a confirmation issued by Pope Alexander III in 1179); Norman Pipe Rolls, Henry II, p. 29 (the tithes amounted to 22l. which was a tenth of the farm). 113 RT, s.a. 1171; ed. Delisle, ii. 28–29; ed. Howlett, p. 251. 114 Printed in Recueil Henri II, Introduction, pp. 345–47. 115 Haskins, Norman Institutions, p. 160. 116 My italics. The statement concerning the payment due to the chamberlains is repeated later. A document written c. 1200 notes that the abbey ‘ought to return to the church of Avranches as the mother church nine pondera of wax, according to the pondus of the said monastery, which is equivalent and of equal weight to four great common pounds and half a pound. The total of these pounds is thirty six pounds (libre) of wax’ (Haskins, Norman Institutions, pp. 340–41).



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This is a nice tangle, which perhaps suggests earlier friction between the vicomte and the abbot about precisely where their respective rights, as well as the boundaries of the Avranchin, ended. Hammering out the answer established seigniorial rights just as securely as ducal ones. This passage also reveals that one significant demesne official whom Torigni would have had to deal with on a regular basis was the vicomte of the Avranchin. The vicomte held his post by hereditary right, and that is perhaps why the Etat also troubles to name him and to set out his rights at such length: The earl of Chester is the vicomte in the fee of the Avranchin, and those which pertain to the Avranchin, and he has in his farm the cens and the toll and all pleas that pertain to the vicomté for 80 livres, of which 20 livres are deducted (computantur) at the Exchequer as the custom (consuete) for Vains which Saint-Etienne of Caen has in alms of the gift of King William.117

It is likely that Earl Hugh was still in post in 1179–80, despite his part in the rebellion of 1173–74 and subsequent imprisonment, but we do not know if this was the case because the account for the vicomté of the Avranchin (like that for Gavray) is missing from the roll. However, we do know that Hugh was acting as prévôt of both Avranches (for a farm of 60 livres) and Saint-James-de-Beuvron (for a farm of 100 livres) during that year.118 The pipe roll also records the existence of a third prévôté, that of Pontorson, but that was held by Michael of Tanie rather than Earl Hugh, with the castle there in the capable hands of William of Le Hommet.119 That raises a question. Why are both Pontorson and Saint-James absent from the Etat, when Avranches is expressly declared to be part of the duke’s demesne? If the inquest was at heart about asserting and recovering the duke’s rights, then one answer to that question is that possession of Avranches had been debated and was now settled in the duke’s favour. Perhaps Earl Hugh II had claimed that it, or part of it, belonged to him. Perhaps the heirs of Gilbert of Avranches had made a claim to a portion of the town along with the constableship of the castle. In contrast, there could have been no doubt about the ownership of Pontorson, and thus no need to mention it. In contrast again, the omission of any mention of Saint-James might have been due to a controversy about the rightful possession of the town, which had once belonged to the earls of Chester, that could not be dealt with in the time-frame, so that it could not be included in the record of the survey.120 Another issue arises from the reference to the ‘pleas of the vicomté’. As a rule, Norman vicomtes did not hear the duke’s pleas. As noted above, that was the purview of the local justice and the justices of Normandy. Moreover, the Norman pipe roll of 1180 makes it certain that Earl Hugh, the vicomte, had not heard the duke’s pleas in the Avranchin. So why does the Etat state that the vicomte’s pleas were included in his farm? The most likely answer to this question is that the vicomtes heard the pleas that arose in the equivalent of the honour courts and manor courts between the duke’s

In Recueil Henri II, Introduction, p. 345. Norman Pipe Rolls, Henry II, p. 29. Powicke thought that the prévoté of Avranches was another name for the vicomté, appearing here as such because the castle was excluded from the farm (Powicke, Loss of Normandy, p. 55, n. 92) and also, probably, because of the lack of a separate account for the county. There is no reason to accept that suggestion. 119 Norman Pipe Rolls: Henry II, p. 29. 120 For the earls’ possession of Saint-James see: GND, ii.208; Regesta, iii. no. 180; Recueil Henri II, no. 94; ed. Vincent, no. 1862; The Charters of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester, c. 1071–1237, ed. G. Barraclough (Gloucester, 1988), pp. 186 (no. 181), 243, 257–58 (no. 259). 117 118

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demesne tenants, free and unfree, respectively.121 This remains a guess, however, as we are entirely ignorant as to proceedings in those courts. Alternatively, although the vicomtes did not hear the duke’s pleas, they may have had the right to some of the fines that accrued, or to a customary payment for the work they had done to prepare a plea for trial.122 Such an interpretation would also encompass the ‘trespasses’ of the burgesses of Genêts that occurred during the market at Avranches. A third possibility is that the ‘pleas that pertained to the vicomté’ were those that were listed later in the Etat itself: ‘The vicomte pleads three times a year in Ardevon and Genêts of his customs that were carried away and secured from the abbot [of Mont-Saint-Michel] ...’. Three times every year, then, Earl Hugh came to Abbot Robert’s two principal demesne vills in the Avranchin to hear pleas. But this was an anomalous situation, for the record makes it clear that when Earl Hugh II or his deputy turned up at Ardevon or Genêts he was continuing an injustice perhaps perpetrated as long ago as the 1020s or 1050s by one of his predecessors. And it is interesting that we know that it was an injustice. The very fact that the right is described in the way that it is in the Etat – that these pleas had been carried away and secured from the abbot (absportatis et procurator ab abbate) – suggests that Torigni had intervened when the inquisition was being recorded, and effectively lodged a complaint about it. The complaint in turn reveals that this vicomte’s right to hear pleas was not usual; but, as they implicitly pertained to the vicomte’s office rather than to Earl Hugh and his family personally, it is likely that they had been included in the farm when it had been calculated, perhaps during the last years of Henry I’s reign or maybe even later.123 The fact that they were recorded in the Etat also reveals that Torigni had lost his appeal. These pleas now belonged to the duke’s vicomte, regardless of how they had come into his hands, not because of oppressive behaviour but most likely because the abbot’s claim was out of time. Lewis Warren wrote that ‘royal power under Henry II could be discriminatory, violent, arbitrary, wilful and selfish – for monarchy was still personal, and it was Janus-faced’.124 That was undoubtedly the case on occasion for some, such as Rotrou of the Perche, who lost Moulins-la-Marche because Henry refused to recognise King Stephen’s grants, or William Talvas and his son John, who lost the castles at Alençon and La Roche-Mabile on what look like trumped-up charges.125 But it was not true for others. Henry could not have remained duke had he alienated all his important subjects. And among those who seem to have benefited from Henry’s regime was Abbot Robert of Mont-Saint-Michel. It is true that the various sources that tell us about Torigni’s relationship with Henry II and his administration in Normandy – some, but by no means all of them produced by Torigni himself – are ambiguous and capable of more than one interpretation. But, from what has

As suggested above, p. 92, on the basis of this passage and Recueil Henri II, no. 701; ed. Vincent, no. 1759. 122 That the Etat was referring here to the fines produced by disputes rather than jurisdiction over them follows from Hagger, Norman Rule, pp. 455–56. In England, if the claimant was successful in his assize, the disseisor would be amerced and would also be liable to give the sheriff an ox or the cost thereof (Hudson, The Formation of the English Common Law, p. 197). 123 See Hagger, Norman Rule, pp. 596–603. 124 W. L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), p. 395. 125 RT, s.a. 1158; ed. Delise, i. 315; ed. Howlett, p. 199; RT, s.a. 1166; ed. Delisle, i. 360; ed. Howlett, p. 227. 121



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survived, Henry’s rule as experienced by the abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel seems generally to have been benign, predictable and supportive. Henry was clearly capable of intervening in the abbey’s affairs – as the circumstances of Torigni’s election reveal very clearly. But once Henry had established Robert as abbot of the Mont, the latter was left to govern his abbey on his own terms. He sought ducal justice when the conventions of his day, or the subject matter of the dispute, demanded it, but otherwise he looked after his own business or litigated elsewhere – in the episcopal courts of the bishops of Coutances, Bayeux, Rouen, Saint-Malo or Dol, or even before papal judges-delegate. Indeed, while Henry has been portrayed as attempting to undermine seigniorial justice, the records of Norman and even English lawsuits reveal that he recognised, respected and enforced the jurisdictions of other lords, including papal judges-delegate.126 There is no ‘hedge of royal controls’ here; no evidence that Henry set out to cripple seigniorial authority.127 Outside of litigation, Torigni seems to have had relatively limited contact with any of the duke’s officials above the rank of toll-keeper. There was an annual visit to the prévôt of Pontorson for the tithes of the town; the thriceyearly intrusion into the abbot’s estate centres/priories at Ardevon and Genêts by the vicomte of the Avranchin; and an occasional, and often short, journey to the duke’s court for a confirmation or a writ of protection. In addition, but rarely, Torigni might be obliged to attend some large assembly convened at Henry’s command and aimed at recovering the ducal demesne or establishing the knight service Henry was owed by his lords. As noted above, such gatherings are likely to have highlighted the dialogue and reciprocity that existed between the duke and his subjects; a dialogue which was fossilised in the Etat de l’Avranchin of 1171, in the Infeudationes militum of 1172 and almost certainly in a host of other surveys and reports now lost. And while it is the documentary sources that tell us most about how Henry’s regime was viewed from Mont-Saint-Michel, nonetheless Torigni’s Chronicle can tell us something, too. While it would be unwise to take anything that Torigni wrote about Henry’s actions in his narrative entirely at face value, the very fact that it exists all might tell us something about Torigni’s view of Henry’s government. It should perhaps be seen as part of the political dance between Torigni and his duke, whereby man supported lord and lord supported man. That Torigni continued to write so positively about Henry until his death suggests that he continued to see Henry as worthy of his support. And if that were the case, then we may conclude that Henry had acted as a good lord and patron, protecting his abbey when required, ensuring its security, doing justice when asked and allowing the abbot the freedom to exercise his rights. And we may suspect that he did so, at least in part, because Abbot Robert had been a loyal supporter in turn, upholding ducal authority on the Breton border and across his dominions as a whole, not least through the production of a favourable account of his reign which was being copied, in whole or in part, probably even while Henry lived, at the ducal/royal monasteries of Fécamp, Jumièges and Reading.128

For example, English Lawsuits, ii. nos. 408, 499. Warren, Henry II, p. 368. 128 The manuscripts are: BnF, MS lat. 4992 (late s. xii from Fécamp) which now ends with the annal for 1182 but was once longer; Rouen, BM, MS 1132 (s. xii from Jumièges), which ends with the annal for 1157; and BL, Harley MS 651 (mid s. xii from Reading), which also ends with the annal for 1157. For a discussion of the MSS see RT, ed. Delisle, i. iii–liii; ed. Howlett, pp. xxxvii–lxv. Other early copies were produced, for example, at Bayeux and Savigny. 126 127

‘A GIRLY MAN LIKE YOU CAN’T RULE US REAL MEN ANY LONGER’: SEX, VIOLENCE AND MASCULINITY IN DUDO OF SAINT-QUENTIN’S HISTORIA NORMANNORUM1 Fraser McNair The first-ever written history of Normandy is a peculiar work. The Historia Normannorum – formerly known as the De Moribus et Actibus Primorum Normanniae Ducum, by which name the majority of previous scholarship refers to it – was written around the year 1000 by Dudo, a canon of the abbey of Saint-Quentin in the county of Vermandois.2 Despite his Frankish background, Dudo was closely entangled with Norman politics and culture for around three decades, a personal acquaintance of the ducal family, probably associated with the Norman schools and richly rewarded by the dukes.3 His work was commissioned by Duke Richard I of Normandy (r. 943–96), known as ‘the Fearless’, and after his death it was recommissioned by his son Richard II (r. 996–1026, known as ‘the Good’) and Ralph, count of Ivry, the elder Richard’s half-brother.4 It is a lengthy work intertwining prose and poetry, the latter usually commenting on the action in the author’s own voice.5 The Historia is the greatest product of the Latin literary culture of the Norman court at the turn of the millennium, a time and place whose unusual creativity in written composition caused Musset to bestow upon it the name of the ‘Ricardian Renaissance’.6 Although how much medieval historians need another renaissance may be 1 Dudo of Saint-Quentin, Historia Normannorum (hereafter HN), ed. J. Lair, De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, Mémoires de la société des antiquaires de Normandie 23, 1865, III.45, 190: ‘Non vales nobis ultra viribus effeminatus praesse …’. I would like to thank Sam Ottewill-Soulsby and Rachel Stone for their comments on this article. 2 For an introduction to the work, see now B. Pohl, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum: History, Tradition and Memory (Woodbridge, 2015). The date of the Historia remains controversial. C. Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity in Early Normandy (Woodbridge, 1997), p. 96, gives it a later date, but M. Arnoux, ‘Before the Gesta Normannorum and beyond Dudo: Some Evidence on Early Norman Historiography’, ANS 22 (1999), 29–48, at 31 has shown that parts of it were known before 1001. F. Lifshitz, ‘Translating “Feudal” Vocabulary: Dudo of Saint-Quentin’, HSJ 9 (1997), 39–56, at 55–56, makes a judicious argument against a later date. 3 For Dudo’s background: L. Shopkow, ‘The Man from Vermandois: Dudo of Saint-Quentin and his Patrons’, in Religion, Text and Society in Medieval Spain and Northern Europe: Essays in Honor of J. N. Hillgarth, ed. T. E. Burman (Toronto, 2002), pp. 302–18, at 303–4; Pohl, Dudo, 121–24; L. Boje Mortensen, ‘Stylistic Choice in a Reborn Genre. The National Histories of Widukind of Corvey and Dudo of St Quentin’, Labirinti 16 (1995), 78–102, at 100–2. 4 Dudo, HN, prologue, 119–20. 5 G. Huisman, ‘Notes on the Manuscript Tradition of Dudo of St Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum’, ANS 6 (1984), 122–35, argued that the poems were not part of the original redaction of the HN but, rather, later compositions; this argument has been convincingly refuted by Pohl, Dudo, 84–108, who provides overwhelming evidence that the poems were a core part of the work. 6 L. Musset, ‘Sur la connaissance du grec et de l’écriture runique en Normandie sous Richard II: une erreur d’attribution’, Annales de Normandie 3 (1953), 84–87, at 84. More generally, L. Musset, ‘Le satiriste Garnier de Rouen et son milieu (début du XIe siècle)’, Revue du Moyen Age Latin 10 (1954), 237–58; J. M. Ziolkowski, Jezebel. A Norman Latin Poem of the Early Eleventh Century (New York, 1989), pp. 37–42.

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questionable, the Historia’s length, mannerist style and willingness to experiment with form and theme mark it out as one of the most important works of post-­ Carolingian history, if not indeed of earlier medieval history more generally. However, as the last item in the list of its qualities may have hinted, it is a deeply eccentric book.7 As is no longer seriously disputed, Dudo was not writing a Viking saga but a work deeply rooted in his broad if not perhaps terribly profound learning, which came directly from a Frankish, Carolingian tradition.8 Despite this very traditional educational background – for he was probably educated in Liège or Laon – the Historia, although rooted in Carolingian ideas, goes in unexpected and even novel directions with them.9 This can be seen in its very subject, for it is the first Latin history of a non-royal aristocratic family, a type of work which was essentially unheard of before Dudo, and remained extremely rare for a century afterwards.10 The Historia’s purpose is to glorify Richard the Fearless, his line and his polity, presenting them as explicitly saintly men and magnificent rulers.11 For this reason, it is notoriously unreliable and actively tendentious. Consequently, historians have traditionally been unkind to Dudo’s work. Perhaps the bluntest summary was that of one historian who described the Historia as being full of ‘monstrous fables’.12 However, since the latter part of the twentieth century Dudo’s work has been rescued from the scrap heap by historians interested in looking at its literary value, as a relic of the cultural history and political thought of turn-of-the-millennium Rouen.13 One of its important themes, which has rarely been touched on and certainly not in any detail, is sex. The study of sexuality in the Middle Ages is by now well established.14 However, for entirely understandable reasons, relating to the quantity and type of evidence, most research focuses on the later medieval period, drawing largely on literary and poetic evidence such as Norse sagas or chansons de geste; or, alternatively, on clerical authors promoting penitence or celibacy.15 Consequently, there are few broad treatments of sex in the post-Carolingian world at all, although some authors, notably Liutprand of Cremona, have received in-depth examinations of their literary use of sex. Much of what there is tends to look forwards to Grego-

Pohl, Dudo, 3. L. Shopkow, ‘The Carolingian World of Dudo of Saint-Quentin’, JMH 15 (1989), 19–37, at 22–27. For the earlier view, see E. Searle, ‘Fact and Pattern in Heroic History: Dudo of Saint-Quentin’, Viator 15 (1984), 119–38, at 120–22. 9 Shopkow, ‘Carolingian World’, 25–27 argues for Liège; S. Lecouteux, ‘À partir de la diffusion de trois poèmes hagiographiques, identification des centres carolingiens ayant influence l’oeuvre de Dudon de Saint-Quentin’, Tabularia ‘Etudes’ 5 (2005) (http://journals.openedition.org/tabularia/1496, accessed 23/01/2018), 13–49, argues for Laon; both are plausible. P. Bauduin, ‘Richard II de Normandie: figure princière et transfers culturels (fin dixième-début onzième siècle)’, ANS 37 (2015), 53–82, at 69–71, perhaps wisely, suspends judgement. See also Pohl, Dudo, 112. 10 Contra Pohl, Dudo, 119. See L. Shopkow, ‘Dynastic History’, in Historiography in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Deliyannis (Leiden, 2003), pp. 217–48, at 224–26. 11 Shopkow, ‘Carolingian World’, 20; Bauduin, ‘Richard II’, 63–67; for an in-depth analysis, V. B. Jordan, ‘The Role of Kingship in Tenth-Century Normandy: Hagiography of Dudo of Saint-Quentin’, HSJ 3 (1991), 53–62. 12 Quoted in E. Albu, Normans in Their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion (Woodbridge, 2001), p. 53. 13 Albu, Histories, pp. 10–11. 14 V. L. Brundage and J. A. Bullough, ‘Introduction’, in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. V. L. Bullough and J. A. Brundage (New York, 1996), pp. ix–viii. 15 For an overview, R. Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others (New York, 2005), pp. 1–19; see also J. M. Jochens, ‘Old Norse Sexuality: Men, Women and Beasts’, in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Bullough and Brundage, pp. 369–400; see also the citations below, nn. 102–34. 7 8



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rian concerns about sodomy and/or clerical celibacy. This is a rather unfortunate gap in the literature. To say that sex was an important part of tenth-century life errs on the bathetic but is nonetheless true; and our understanding of it is as yet limited, particularly in regard to heterosexual, non-celibate male sexuality.17 However, it is a contention of this article that in Dudo’s work the performance of the sexual act by the Norman dukes is a key part of their authority as the best men, and therefore (as Dudo presents it) as the best rulers.18 A study of how sexuality is deployed in Dudo’s work promises three main benefits. In terms of our understanding of the Historia, proper and potent sexual behaviour, both in itself and in combination with the other marker of lay masculinity, violence, was a major factor in Dudo’s explanation of why the dukes were rightful rulers; and a factor which has until now been rather passed over.19 Examining it will hopefully rectify this oversight. In terms of our understanding of early Normandy, understanding how Dudo’s work fits into its cultural context illustrates which aspects of Frankish culture flourished in an environment where, thanks to the region’s Scandinavian heritage and ongoing connections with the Norse world, the parameters were slightly different than elsewhere in the post-Carolingian kingdoms.20 This in turn sheds important light on how Frankish and Scandinavian heritages interacted to produce the peculiar political animal that was the Norman polity.21 Finally, in terms of our understanding of medieval sexuality, an examination of Dudo’s sexual discourse allows the profitable contrast of tenth- and early eleventh-century Normandy with its Carolingian forebears, in turn contributing to our ideas of what can be said to be specifically ‘post-Carolingian’ about Dudo’s world. Consequently, what follows will first examine the Historia Normannorum, close-reading the text in order to substantiate the claim that masculine sexuality is important to ducal authority within the book. Then, it will place Dudo’s work in its literary and cultural context in order to ask questions about the Frankish and Scandinavian influences at play in Norman culture and how these might have influenced the Historia’s content. 16

For the former, P. J. Payer, Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code, 550–1150 (Toronto, 1984), pp. 72–84; J. A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), pp. 152–69; for the latter, M. McLaughlin, Sex, Gender and Episcopal Authority in an Age of Reform, 1000–1122 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 16–49; R. Balzaretti, ‘Men and Sex in Tenth-Century Italy’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley (Harlow, 1999), pp. 143–59; P. G. Jestice, ‘Why Celibacy? Odo of Cluny and the Development of a New Sexual Morality’, in Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform, ed. M. Frassetto (New York, 1998), pp. 81–115. For Liutprand, see below, nn. 117, 118. 17 See R. Stone, Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2012), p. 280. 18 On Dudo and masculinity more generally, see K. van Eickels, Vom inszenierten Konsens zum systematisierten Konflikt: Die englisch-franzsösischen Beziehungen und ihre Wahrnehmung an der Wende vom Hoch- zum Spätmittelalter (Stuttgart, 2002), pp. 245–86. 19 The most significant exception is P. Bauduin, ‘L’insertion des Normands dans le monde franc, fin IXe–début Xe siècle: l’exemple des pratiques matrimoniales’, in La progression des Vikings, des raids à la colonisation, ed. A. M. Flambard-Héricher (Rouen, 2000), pp. 105–17, which nonetheless focuaes rather on marriage than on sex. 20 For this question in regard to Dudo, L. Abrams, ‘England, Normandy and Scandinavia in the Eleventh Century’, in A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World, ed. C. Harper-Bill and E. M. C. van Houts (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 43–62, at 54–55. 21 See on this subject E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Scandinavian Influence in Norman Literature of the Eleventh Century’, in idem, History and Family Traditions in England and the Continent (Ashgate, 1999), II, pp. 107–21; Abrams, ‘England, Normandy and Scandinavia’, p. 44; L. W. Breese, ‘The Persistence of Scandinavian Connections in Normandy in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries’, Viator 8 (1977), 46–67, at 58–60. 16

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Christianity and Sexual Mores Within Dudo’s text, sex plays two different but connected roles, one as a signal of virtue closely connected with Christianity, and the other as an indication of masculinity and right to rule. The first of these is surface-level and the second largely implicit. Nonetheless, they coexist within the work. On a textual level, Dudo distinguishes between (pagan/bestial) lust and (Christian/moral) chastity, and he does so from the very beginning of the Historia. In Book I the ‘Dacian’ (i.e. Scandinavian) people whom Dudo describes are marked above all by their lack of sexual restraint, and indeed this is the reason that Dudo gives for Viking attacks.22 In his presentation the Dacians, unable to cease from constant copulation, suffer from tremendous overpopulation, causing them to send their young men out into the world.23 The Dacians are here presented as bestial: their sexual proclivities are described in exactly the same terms that Dudo later uses to describe deer.24 In Book 4 the subtext becomes text as a group of pagan Dacians describe themselves as explicitly beastlike through their ignorance of Christianity.25 However, with Christianity such sexual licence ceases.26 When Rollo arrives in Francia one of the key elements in his transformation from a pagan warlord to a Christian duke is his marriage to King Charles’s daughter Gisla.27 This Gisla is almost certainly a fictional character, but is prominent within these passages.28 The question therefore becomes what her role in the narrative actually is. Gisla is the first instance within the Historia of a motif whereby women act as ‘peaceweavers’, confirming and making political alliances.29 One can, though, go further here: Rollo’s marriage to Gisla is a demonstration of his new-found sexual control, as he abandons the sexual free-for-all of Dacia for a monogamous marriage.30 Thus, through the agreement at Saint-Clair-sur-Epte Rollo gains Normandy, converts to Christianity and demonstrates his commitment to his new faith (and thus his worthiness to rule his new territory) through the performance of proper sexual behaviour via entering into marriage. These elements are closely linked – indeed, are directly juxtaposed within the narrative – and so a fictional princess gains the prominence she has in the work.31 The idea of sexual control as a legitimising element is present throughout the text. In his introduction to Book 4, the life of Richard the Fearless, Dudo presents Richard’s sex life as one of his admirable qualities, placing him in Heaven among the virgins.32 It is here that the textual appreciation for sexual Dudo, HN, I.1, p. 129; C. Carozzi, ‘Des Daces aux Normands. Le mythe et l’identification d’un people chez Dudon de Saint-Quentin’, in Peuples du Moyen Age: Problèmes d’identification, ed. C. Carozzi and H. Taviani-Carozzi (Aix-en-Provence, 1996), pp. 7–25, at 11; for the literary background to Dudo’s presentation of the Danes as Dacians, F. Stok, ‘Il mondo geo-antropico di Dudone’, Labirinti 16 (1995), 131–59. 23 L. Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC, 1997), p. 69. 24 Dudo, HN, I.1, p. 129: the Dacians petulanti nimium luxu exardescentes; II.47, p. 192: the animals are petulanti luxu urgente. 25 Dudo, HN, IV. pp. 122, 285. 26 Bauduin, ‘Richard II’, 81. 27 On which see Bauduin, ‘Insertion’, 113. 28 On her fictive nature: J. L. Nelson, ‘Normandy’s Early History since Normandy Before 1066’, in Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250, ed. D. Crouch and K. Thompson (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 3–15, at 9–11. 29 On peace-weaving, see Searle, ‘Fact and Pattern’, 136. 30 Dudo, HN, II.xxv, p. 166. 31 Dudo, HN, II.xxx–xxxi, pp. 170–71. 32 Dudo, HN, IV.xlix, p. 213. 22



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control, and even chastity, intersects with the other view on sex found in the work, for in an address to the audience by the muse Urania, Dudo disconnects sexual morality from the actual act of coitus itself: Although (for the sake of having children) he pledged himself to the union of a bed chaste, pure and lawful, who now will try to take from him a virgin’s wreath? No mind conscious of right endures the dishonour of shame, but rather it remains chaste.33

That is to say, rightly done sex doesn’t count.34 This poem is actually a very close paraphrase of part of Heiric of Auxerre’s Vita Germani [VG] – Dudo was evidently drawing on very traditional Carolingian precedents for his arguments.35 He was not the only contemporary to put forward this idea: a similar sentiment can be found in contemporary Ottonian texts, such as the Vita Mathildis posterior [VMP], where the ‘conjugal chastity’ of Matilda and her husband, Henry the Fowler, is praised by the author without meaning that they abstained from sexual activity.36 However, there is an important difference between this sentiment’s use in the VG and the VMP and its use in the Historia. In the former two the idea of conjugal chastity is a device of emphasis, used to buttress a depiction of correct sexual behaviour.37 In the latter, it is a device of excuse, allowing the decoupling of practice and morality, allowing Dudo to present the dukes’ actual sexual practices in such a way as to emphasise their potent masculinity without its having any bearing on their sexual honour. Hence, Richard, despite his numerous illegitimate offspring, can wear a crown befitting a virgin, for his inherent virtue wipes away his sin.38 Not Having Sex as a Challenge to Ducal Authority What the above means in practical terms is that Dudo can present his dukes as conforming to contemporary Christian sexual mores while at the same time engaging vigorously in sexual activity to prove their manliness. In fact, in terms of the narrative role sex plays in the text, the greater danger to Norman ducal authority is not having sex. Both Rollo and William Longsword have to deal with threats to their authority based on the reality or accusation of sexual inactivity. In Book 3 William Longsword’s commitment to chastity even becomes an existential threat to Normandy. Dudo presents William as wanting to renounce the world and become a monk, including renouncing sex.39 However, Dudo was actively hostile to celibacy as an ideal for laymen.40 Within the text of the narrative, the distinction which Dudo draws between the contemplative life William aspires to (but should not take up) and the active life which is his duty is expressed in terms of violence and the duke’s duty to protect his subjects. He does this most explicitly in William’s

33 Dudo, HN, IV.xlvii, p. 213: ‘Quamvis jam pepigisset/ Casti foedera lecti, sinceri licitique,/ Causa posteritatis,/ Serto virgineo quis/ Nunc subducere tentet?/ Non mens, conscia reti,/ Labem passa pudoris,/ Verum casta remansit.’ 34 A similar sentiment is found in Dudo, HN, III.xix, p. 186. 35 Heiric of Auxerre, Vita Sancti Germani, in MGH Poetae III, ed L. Traube (1896), II, lines 201–7, 458. 36 Vita Mathildis reginae posterior, in Die Lebensbeschreibungen der Königin Mathilde, ed. B. Schütte, MGH SS rer. Germ. 66 (1994), cap. 6, p. 157. 37 See P. Corbet, Les saints ottoniens. Sainteté dynastique, sainteté royale et sainteté féminine autour l’an mil (Sigmaringen, 1986), pp. 187–88. 38 Bauduin, ‘Richard II’, 80–81, notices this ‘contradiction’ but does not explain its literary purpose. 39 Dudo, HN, III.36, xxvi, p. 180. 40 For useful parallels, S. J. Ridyard, ‘Monk-Kings and the Anglo-Saxon Hagiographic Tradition’, HSJ 6 (1994), 13–28, at 25–27.

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conversation on the subject with Abbot Martin of Jumièges.41 However, as part of the division drawn between the active and contemplative life, Dudo makes it clear that the renunciation of sex is also not appropriate for William. William’s desire to remain chaste is presented as a major stumbling block if Norman history is to work itself out as it should – after all, if William does not reproduce, then he cannot father Richard the Fearless, the main figure of the work as a whole. Indeed, while Abbot Martin criticises William for abandoning his duty of protection, Dudo’s authorial voice takes a different tack. Before becoming duke, William decides that he wishes to become a monk, and is instantly admonished by the author: ‘your semen is necessary for us and for you’.42 When William’s men force him to take a wife, equally, the authorial voice exhorts William to ‘fear not the rights of lawful bedding accruing to you from the alliance you have contracted’ – to do so would be wrong.43 Divine favour is here linked to the continuation of a blessed bloodline, expressed in terms not merely of reproduction but of the physical sex act itself. However, in Rollo’s case the reproductive aspect does not come into play and the danger to Rollo’s authority from sexual impropriety is much more direct.44 In Book 2 Rollo’s wife, Gisla, hides two of her father’s knights from him. Rollo’s men, objecting to Gisla’s act of insubordination, insult Rollo by accusing him of being under her thumb and of never having had sex with her.45 This is a direct challenge to Rollo’s authority.46 Dudo presents him as enraged, and he demonstrates his might by hanging the knights, reasserting his authority over his wife and his territory.47 In the Historia, having sexual relations is a necessary part of male authority, and failing to carry them out is a strike against the duke, who so fails. There is more, however. The cases observed above of Rollo and William are largely negative: that is, not having sex damages ducal authority. At other points within the text, having sex actively strengthens ducal authority; and it is to these points that we should now turn. Sex and Violence Such a dramatic assertion should be qualified: sex which strengthens ducal authority is not simply sex. It is throughout closely tied to violence. William Longsword’s biography is probably the best example of this link between sex and violence: the first half of the biography is cleverly structured as an interlocking series of challenges to William’s masculinity in terms of both martial and sexual prowess, the two resolved at the same time. The instant William becomes duke, the Bretons rebel against him. William prevaricates, and his men exhort him to fight against them, using noticeably gendered rhetoric, urging him to show that they are not effeminate and lacking in strength.48 William then unleashes violence on the Bretons, subduing them militarily. After this victory William’s authority faces a sexual chalDudo, HN, III.58, p. 201; this theme also in II.xxvi, p. 180; see Jordan, ‘Kingship’, 56–58; Shopkow, History and Community, p. 73. 42 Dudo, HN, III.xxvi, p. 180: ‘necesse tibi nobisque fueris/ Semine’. Christiansen (Dudo of SaintQuentin (trans. E. Christiansen), History of the Normans, Woodbridge 1998, p. 58) translates semine as ‘seed’; given the context is the production of children, the blunter translation seems appropriate. Jordan, ‘Kingship’, 57, quotes from this poem but passes over the sexual aspect. 43 Dudo, HN, III.xix, p. 186: ‘Ne … verearis/ Jus liciti quo tu pepigisti foedera lecti …’. 44 On the importance of masculinity to Rollo’s possession of Normandy, van Eickels, Konsens, pp. 263–69. 45 Dudo, HN, II.33, p. 173. 46 Van Eickels, Konsens, p. 268. 47 Christiansen in Dudo, History of the Normans, p. 197, n. 220. 48 Dudo, HN, III.40, p. 184. 41



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lenge through his unwillingness to engage in intercourse, and he is compelled by his followers to take a wife, lest his chastity should prevent him from fathering a son.49 Immediately thereafter William faces the armed rebellion of one of his followers, Riulf. Once again, faced with a violent challenge to his authority, William prevaricates, and decides to seek help from his Frankish relatives.50 This act appears to be the final straw that broke the camel’s back, for William’s chief follower, Bernard the Dane, refuses to follow him, setting out the crux of the matter in the words of this article’s title: ‘a girly man (effeminatus) like you can’t rule us real men any longer’.51 William responds: ‘you have called me a girly man, and frigid in arms [the sexual double entendre here appears to be deliberate], and worthless’. This challenging of his manliness, making it explicit his worth as a ruler rests on his performance of the best masculinity, provokes him to action.52 William, enraged, takes 300 men and kills all his enemies, leaving a field strewn with corpses. As he returns from the battle a messenger comes to tell him of the birth of his son, neatly providing a linked demonstration that William is both militarily and sexually effective.53 This dual proof of William’s potency so effectively confirms his authority that it is never again challenged within the text by his followers.54 Indeed, Dudo describes how, during a conference with King Henry the Fowler of Germany, William’s followers begin to cause trouble, only to be cowed into obedience by a messenger bearing William’s sword as a symbol of his authority.55 The sword is described as having six pounds of gold in the hilt, and, as Christiansen notes, to be balanced, such a sword would indeed have to be very long.56 One does not have to resort to juvenile Freudianism to suggest that in this instance this object does indeed have a double meaning. In embodying his authority in a long sword, Dudo encapsulates William’s authority in a symbol both violent and phallic.57 The same rhythm between episodes of sex and episodes of violence can be seen in Book 4, the life of William’s son Richard the Fearless, and here it is particularly noticeable, because in order to sustain the rhythm of his work Dudo has to delve into Richard’s not particularly creditable sex life.58 In the first sections of the book Richard is a child, not a man – neither sex nor violence plays a part in his presentation, and indeed for the most part he is either off-screen or an object for the other Dudo, HN, III.42, pp. 185–86. Dudo, HN, III.43–45, pp. 187–92. 51 Dudo, HN, III.45, p. 190: ‘Non vales nobis ultra viribus effeminatus praesse …’. 52 Dudo, HN, III. 45, p. 190: ‘me effeminatum armisque frigidum, quin etiam nihilum vocasti’; see C. Potts, ‘“Atque unum ex diversis gentibus populum effect”: Historical Tradition and the Norman Identity’, ANS 18 (1995), 139–53, at 144–45; see van Eickels, Konsens, pp. 268–69. The phrase has the same double-entendre in Dudo, HN, III.47, p. 192; see Shopkow, History and Community, p. 73. 53 Dudo, HN, III. 45, p. 191. 54 Shopkow, History and Community, pp. 72–73. 55 Dudo, HN, III. 53, p. 197; see L. Mathey-Maille, ‘La merveilleuse épée de Guillaume Longue Epée, duc de Normandie’, in ‘Furent les merveilles pruvees et les aventures truvees’: Hommage à Francis Dubost, ed. F. Gingras, F. Laurent, F. le Nan and J.-R. Valette (Paris, 2005), pp. 415–22, at 416–17; Shopkow, History and Community, pp. 73–74. 56 Christiansen in Dudo, History of the Normans, p. 203, n. 269. 57 For the sexual symbolism of the sword in the Carolingian world, see J. L. Nelson, ‘Monks, Secular Men and Masculinity, c. 900’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. Hadley, pp. 121–42, at 134; E. Goldberg, ‘“Regina nitens sanctissima Hemma”: Queen Emma (827–876), Bishop Witgar of Augsburg and the Witgar-Belt’, in Representations of Power in Medieval Germany, 800–1500, ed. B. K. U. Weiler and S. MacLean (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 57–95, at 78; and, more directly, Liutprand’s reference to large genitals as ‘priapic weaponry’ (priapeia arma): Liutprand of Cremona, Antapodosis, in idem, Opera Omnia, ed. P. Chiesa, CCCM 156, 1998, V.32, p. 143. Mathey-Maille, ‘La merveilleuse épée’, 419–22, deals with William’s sword specifically but focuses strictly on the violence aspect. 58 For which see Dudo, HN IV.125, 289. 49 50

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characters to compete over. However, he slowly grows into his role as the adult Norman duke. After his protectors defeat King Louis IV in battle, forcing the king to give Normandy to Richard outright, Richard begins to assert himself, first of all by throwing off the rule of the wicked regent Ralph Torta. He does this by threatening Ralph with implicit violence through the performance of ducal anger.60 Immediately after this episode the Frankish duke, Hugh the Great, arranges a betrothal between his daughter Emma and Richard.61 However, these two incidents are only shadows of sex and violence, promises rather than the things themselves, and do not suffice to secure Richard’s authority, for Richard comes under immediate attack by Louis IV, Count Arnulf the Great of Flanders and the East Frankish king, Otto the Great.62 However, Richard’s army defeats this combined force in a battle at the wood of Maupertuis: ‘when he had by God’s will done this, he began to be considered preeminent in the whole land of the Normans, Bretons, Franks and Burgundians’.63 Again, triumph in violence is paired with triumph in sex: after seeing off his enemies, the dying Hugh the Great calls for Richard and Emma to be married,and Richard’s councillors agree, saying that she is ‘ready for the proper embrace of delightful sex, and not hesitant to succumb to the power of manly semen’.64 It is worth stopping to analyse this passage, for Dudo spends more time on Emma than might be expected.65 After all, Richard’s first wife produced no children (as Dudo himself notes in the following poem), and it was the offspring of his mistress and later second wife, Gunnor, who would continue the Norman line. That Dudo spends this much time on Emma indicates that his priorities are not simply about reproduction. As the lines quoted above indicate, Emma is brought into the narrative so that Richard can display his appropriate masculinity through performing the sexual act.66 However, although good, she is not good enough, and a third and final pairing of violent and sexual episodes follows. First, Richard is attacked by Theobald the Trickster, count of Blois-Chartres-Tours, a war which Richard wins not least by inviting pagan Scandinavians to come and lay waste Theobald’s territories.67 After peace is finally made after Richard’s victories, Dudo turns his attention once more to his sex life: after Emma’s death Richard takes multiple mistresses and finally reproduces. One of these mistresses is Gunnor; Dudo finishes the passage by having Richard marry and beget on her sons and daughters.68 Striking here is that Dudo mentions Richard’s mistresses at all. He does so in the ‘boys will be boys’ manner typical of earlier Carolingian sources, where heterosexual intercourse by unmarried men was mostly tolerated.69 However, he could have chosen simply to pass them 59

Albu, Histories, 21. Dudo, HN, IV.92, 249; on ira, M. Hagger, Norman Rule in Normandy, 911–1144 (Woodbridge, 2017), p. 425. 61 Dudo, HN, IV.93, pp. 250–51. 62 Dudo, HN, IV.94-lxxiii, pp. 251–60. 63 Dudo, HN, cap. 99, p, 261: ‘His ita divino nutu expletis, coepit praecipuus in omni terra Northmannorum Britonumque, Francorum et Burgundionum haberi’. 64 Dudo, HN, IV.102, p. 264: ‘apta … congruenti delectabilis concubitus amplexioni, masculini seminis viribus minime differt succumbere’. 65 Dudo, HN, IV.lxxv, pp. 264–65. 66 The arguments of E. Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley, CA, 1988), pp. 65–66, 94–96, about the importance of Gunnor and her lineage to the work are thus based on a false premise, for Dudo actively goes out of his way to emphasise Richard’s other relationships; see also the comments below about Richard’s bastards. 67 Dudo, HN, IV.114, p. 277. 68 Dudo, HN, IV.125, p. 289. 69 Most famously in Annales Vedastini, ed. B. de Simson, MGH SS rer. Germ. 12, 1909, s.a. 882, 52, which describes King Louis III’s sexual pursuit of a young woman as the result of youthful high spirits; 59

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over. That he does so, again, illustrates that his concern is less with reproduction through Christian marriage and more with demonstrating Richard’s sexual potency – for it is after this final, longest war against Theobald the Trickster and fathering children on multiple women (that is, after making the ultimate proofs of his military and sexual potency) that Richard’s rule in Normandy is finally secure for all time.71 A final and more curious linking of sex and violence in the Historia comes from a recurring image of the Frankish kingdom as a warrior woman, as in Book 1, when she is described as lying on her weapons.72 This image serves above all to justify the authority of the first Norman ruler, Rollo, in terms of both sex and violence. In the rest of Dudo’s work female characters are always given specifically womanly qualities, such as beauty, compatibility, advice and – in the case of William Longsword’s wife Sprota, where Dudo’s imagination evidently failed him – being ‘skilled in the womanly arts’.73 These qualities were very traditionally feminine – Sedulius Scottus, writing in the 850s, attributed similar qualities to an ideal king’s wife.74 Equally, violence is characterised as masculine – when the Franks are unwilling to fight in Book 2, they are characterised as effeminate in exactly the same way as William Longsword is in Book 3.75 This kind of insult is actually rather unusual in a Carolingian context, where cowardice was usually described as ‘hare-like’ rather than effeminate, and illustrates Dudo’s particular concern for masculinity.76 That Francia is presented as both female and warlike is thus an unusual juxtaposition of two qualities which usually remain separate in Dudo’s work. (It is worth saying explicitly that the personified Francia is not merely a feminine noun but a female character, for, as we shall see, the character becomes pregnant.77) The explanation for this very peculiar amalgamation of characteristics lies in Dudo’s wish to characterise Norman authority by both sex and violence. Dudo describes Rollo and his men dominating Francia both militarily and sexually: in Book 1 Dudo tells Francia that Rollo and his companions ‘will fight frequent battles in you … they will crush thousands of Franks’, because of Francia’s weakened military state.78 In Book 2, however, Dudo describes how, once peace has been made and Rollo has established his authority over the country, ‘Francia will beget, produce and give birth to mighty kings, bishops, dukes, counts and magnates’.79 Making Francia a female warrior 70

Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 282; see also McLaughlin, Sex, Gender and Episcopal Authority, pp. 36–37. 70 As William of Jumièges did: The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. E. M. C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford, 1992–95), I.iv.18, pp. 128–30. 71 See Albu, Histories, pp. 21–22 on the structure of Book 4. 72 Dudo, HN, I.xi, p. 136. 73 Dudo, HN, II.42, 186: ‘muliebri exercitio … peritissimae’. 74 Sedulius Scottus, De rectoribus christianis, in Sedulius Scottus, ed. S. Hellmann (Munich, 1906), cap. V, pp. 35–37; see J. L. Nelson, ‘Early Medieval Rites of Queen-Making and the Shaping of Medieval Queenship’, in idem, Rulers and Ruling Families in Early Medieval Europe: Alfred, Charles the Bald, and Others (Aldershot, 1999), XV, pp. 301–15, at 305. 75 Dudo, HN, II.21, p. 160. 76 Stone, Morality and Masculinity, pp. 89–90; for Dudo in comparison with other authors, van Eickels, Konsens, pp. 261–62. 77 Compare the personified Francia in Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Viking Attacks on Paris: The Bella Parisiacae Urbis of Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, ed. and trans. Nirmal Dass (Leuven, Belgium, 2007), bk. 2, lines 596–614, 96, which is very evidently gendered male. 78 Dudo, HN, I.xi, p. 136: ‘Bellabit pagnas in te tempora multas … effera Francorum contundet millia …’. 79 Dudo, HN, II.xiv, p. 144: ‘Francia … Gignet producens, expurget, proferet ingens/ Reges, pontificesque, duces, comites, proceresque …’. See also on this passage B. Pohl, ‘Keeping It in the Family: Re-Reading Anglo-Norman Historiography in the Face of Cultural Memory, Tradition and Heritage’,

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thus allows the Normans to prove his worth as a ruler by showing his worth as a man by dominating the woman warrior in the two fields of masculine power: sex and violence.80 For Dudo’s dukes, then, being seen as effeminatus is potentially to suffer a total collapse of their authority. Therefore Dudo structures his text and presents his context in such a way as to leave the leaders in no doubt of their superlative masculinity, as structured through a rhythm of violence and sex. As the dukes face challenges they respond by defeating their enemies and by demonstrating their sexual potency, thereby securing their authority and demonstrating that they are virile and virtuous men, and therefore rightful rulers. This presentation of a highly violent and sexualised masculinity as an underpinning of ducal legitimacy raises two important questions: how typical was such sexualised discourse when Dudo was writing? And what was it about Normandy which led to its use there? Sexual Culture in Early Normandy Looking at Norman culture at the turn of the millennium, one finds that sexuality was rather more prominent than elsewhere in the Frankish world. Surviving Norman literature, in particular, has a strong sexual streak. For instance, take the lengthy and vituperative poem Moriuht, written around the year 1000 by a man named Werner of Rouen.81 It excoriates an Irish poet, the eponymous Moriuht, in ways sexually explicit even to modern sensibilities.82 The section in which the poet engages in group sex with a shipload of Vikings is perhaps the most eyebrow-raising episode, but is only one of many.83 Although Moriuht has been placed in a Viking context, looking to a Norse tradition of scatological insult and sexual slander, it is important to note that, in terms of its actual content, the literary use of sexuality in the poem is largely classical.84 For the most part, Werner drew on classical authors such as Juvenal.85 Equally, the poem as a whole can be convincingly seen – as by its editor, McDonough – as a form of the Greco-Roman satirical and invective tradition.86 Equally saturated with sex, although not quite as explicit, are the poems Jezebel and Semiramis.87 The former is a dialogue between a male interlocuter and a sexually promiscuous woman about her promiscuity, in which she successfully turns the pious language of her conversation partner into a series of innuendos.88 The latter features the titular queen, having had sex with a bull, accused by her brother of sexual impropriety; she claims that because the bull was in fact the god Jupiter she is innocent of any wrongdoing.89 Moreover, these two poems and Moriuht are in Norman Tradition and Transcultural Heritage: Exchange of Cultures in the ‘Norman’ Peripheries of Medieval Europe, ed. S. Burkhardt and T. Foerster (Aldershot, 2013), pp. 219–52, at 248–50. 80 On this device, see D. Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland (Leiden, 2009), p. 124. 81 C. J. McDonough, ‘Introduction’ to Warner of Rouen, Moriuht: A Norman Latin Poem from the Early Eleventh Century, ed. and trans. C. J. McDonough (Toronto, 1995), places it generally in the first three decades of the eleventh century; E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The Date of Warner of Rouen’s Moriuht’, in History and Family Traditions, IIIb, pp. 1–6, at 3, dates it specifically to 1026, which is possible. 82 McDonough, ‘Introduction’, in Warner, Moriuht, pp. 30–33. 83 Warner, Moriuht, lines 79–80, p. 76. 84 Comparison in Van Houts, ‘Scandinavian Influence’, pp. 108–9. 85 McDonough, ‘Introduction’, in Warner, Moriuht, p. 14. 86 McDonough, ‘Introduction’, in Warner, Moriuht, pp. 18–21. 87 The poems are compared in Ziolkowski, Jezebel, pp. 35–37. 88 Edited Ziolkowski, Jezebel, pp. 65–72; see 1 for innuendos. 89 Edited by P. Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages: New Departures in Poetry 1100–1500



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preserved in the same manuscript, suggesting that they were gathered together due to a similarity of theme. This theme is most likely to be sex.90 This link in turn suggests that there was a demand for writings on this theme in early eleventh-­ century Normandy, because there was a cultural interest in works with a frank sexual flavour. Moriuht, Jezebel, Semiramis, and indeed the Historia Normannorum of Dudo, taken together as the chief monuments of the literature of early eleventh-­ century Normandy, thus illustrate the prominence of sexuality in this literature, to an extent which is not found elsewhere in the post-Carolingian world. Moving to a wider canvas, although sexual mores in early Normandy remain little known, there are tantalising hints that public sexual practices were less constrained than elsewhere. On the one hand, Normandy was one of the few places in the post-Carolingian world where sexually active upper clergy appear to have been normal.91 In the Carolingian realms, celibacy for bishops had long been not only accepted but successfully enforced.92 Examples of non-celibate bishops in the rest of the West Frankish kingdom are rare indeed: Bishop Siegfried of Le Mans is one of the very few documented examples.93 In Normandy, however, prelates such as Richard the Fearless’s son Archbishop Robert of Rouen, a patron and recipient of Dudo’s work, lived openly with a partner and family.94 Equally, tenth-­ century Normandy was remarkable for the prominence and significance of its dukes’ extra-marital partners and their offspring.95 Both William Longsword and Richard the Fearless appear to have been born from what Frankish contemporaries would have called concubines. Richard’s own bastards played a more prominent part in Norman politics than their counterparts elsewhere, many becoming part of the first generation of Norman counts. Equally, Richard married his second wife, Gunnor, only after already begetting several children on her. This does not represent a qualitative difference with Normandy’s neighbours, but it is an important quantitative one.96 Sexuality, in culture and apparently in practice, was more prominent in public life than it was in the principality’s neighbours. (Turnhout, 1986), pp. 66–71. 90 The manuscript also contains a later treatise on making pipe organs: Ziolkowski, Jezebel, p. 29. The three works were probably written by different authors: E. M. C. van Houts, ‘A Note on Jezebel and Semiramis, two Latin Norman Poems from the Early Eleventh Century’, in History and Family Traditions, III, pp. 18–24, at 19. 91 D. Bates, Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982, pp. 209–10); Hagger, Norman Rule, p. 213. 92 M. de Jong, ‘Imitatio Morum. The Cloister and Clerical Purity in the Carolingian World’, in Medieval Purity and Piety, ed. Frassetto, pp. 49–80, at 51; R. Stone, ‘Spiritual Heirs and Families: Episcopal Relatives in Early Medieval Francia’, in Celibate and Childless Men in Power: Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the Pre-Modern World, ed. A. Hofert, M. M. Mesley and S. Tolino (New York, 2018), pp. 129–48, at 132–33, 134. 93 Acta Pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium, ed. G. Busson and A. Ledru, Archives historiques du Maine 2 (1901), p. 354; the argument of M. Gasmand, Les évêques de la province ecclésiastique de Bourges (Paris, 2007), p. 66 that we should be sceptical that tenth-century bishops were celibate despite the absence of much evidence to the contrary is based largely on taking Normandy (and the Spanish March) as typical rather than outliers. 94 R. Allen, ‘“Praesul praecipue, atque venerande”: The Career of Robert, Archbishop of Rouen, 989–1037’, in Society and Culture in medieval Rouen, ed. L. V. Hicks and E. Brenner (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 153–83, at 166. 95 L. Musset, ‘Les apports scandinaves dans le plus ancien droit normand’, in idem, Nordica et Normannica: Recueil d’études sur la Scandinavie ancienne et médiévale, les expéditions des Vikings et la fondation de la Normandie (Paris, 1997), pp. 244–61, at 247. 96 A. Scharer, ‘Alfred the Great and Arnulf of Carinthia: A Comparison’, in idem, Changing Perspectives on England and the Continent in the Early Middle Ages (Farnham, 2014), X, pp. 311–21, at 315; on marriage and concubinage at this time, R. le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe–Xe siècle). Essai d’anthropologie sociale (Paris, 1995), pp. 274–84.

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Historians then and now have attributed this greater public prominence of sexuality to Scandinavian influence on Normandy. William of Jumièges, writing in the mid-eleventh century, referred to the dukes’ unions with their concubines as being more Danico, suggesting that contemporaries saw the greater informality of Norman sexual culture as being a product of the region’s Scandinavian inheritance.97 Modern historians, too, have drawn these parallels. Dealing with the sexuality of Moriuht, Van Houts draws attention to the title character’s audience with Countess Gunnor: she flirtatiously teases Moriuht, implying that she will do him a kindness in return for sexual favours.98 Van Houts proposes, quite reasonably, that this was intended to be funny.99 Just as interestingly, she proposes that the way sexual humour is deployed in Moriuht can be related to a tradition of inter-gender insults known as flyting, known from later saga material. Similarly, Van Eickels has argued that Dudo’s unusual (in a Frankish context) emphasis on masculinity and the use of slurs of effeminacy is a reflection of Scandinavian ideas about nið, gendered insults punishable in later Scandinavian laws.100 All of these ideas are interesting, and do indeed point towards some influence of Normandy’s Viking heritage on the area’s sexual culture. However, it is important to be cautious. The sagas and the Scandinavian legal evidence were composed centuries after the year 1000, and projecting them back onto early Normandy runs the risk of ignoring that time gap in favour of a timeless and universal ‘Viking culture’. To substantiate the significance of a Scandinavian setting for Dudo’s work, the Historia must be compared with contemporary works, not only Norse but also Frankish. Sex and Male Authority in the Frankish World and Scandinavia Late Carolingian understandings of the relationship between sexual activity and non-royal lay masculine authority were diverse.101 One of the most famous West Frankish texts of the tenth century, the Vita of St Gerald of Aurillac, written in the 920s by Odo of Cluny, exhibits a basically negative view of sex which fits with modern stereotypes of medieval sexuality.102 Here, Gerald is praised for living out his life as a celibate, saved from the touch of women through the direct exercise of divine power which interferes with his vision to prevent him from having sex.103 This story has often been seen as an exporting of the monastic ideal of celibacy as

William of Jumièges, GND, I.ii.6(12), 58; I.iii.2, p. 78. Warner, Moriuht, line 264, p. 88. 99 Van Houts, ‘Date’, 5. 100 Van Eickels, Konsens, pp. 266–69; on nið, see P. Sorenson, The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society (Odense, 1983), pp. 79–87. 101 I pass over the penitential tradition, for it was essentially fossilised by the tenth century: Payer, Sex and the Penitentials, p. 72. See also Stone, Morality and Masculinity, pp. 298–99 on this kind of evidence for the Carolingian period. 102 The Vita Geraldi has attracted a lot of attention, and what follows does not attempt a comprehensive overview of the literature. The arguments of M. Kuefler, ‘Dating and Authorship of the Writings about Saint Gerald of Aurillac’, Viator 44 (2013), 49–97, arguing that Adhemar of Chabannes and not Odo of Cluny wrote the VG, are unconvincing; see S. Fray, ‘L’aristocratie laïque au miroir des récits hagiographiques des pays d’Olt et de Dordogne (Xe–XIe siècles)’, unpublished thesis, Université ParisSorbonne – Paris IV 2011, pp. 254–56. For comparison between the two texts, see A. Barbero, ‘Santi laici e guerrieri. Le trasformazioni di un modello nell’agiografia altomedievale’, in Modelli di santità e modelli di comportamento. Contrasti, intersezioni, complementarità, ed. G. Barone, M. Caffiero and F. Scorza Barcellona (Turin, 1994), pp. 125–40. On stereotypes of medieval sexuality, Karras, Sexuality, p. 1–2. 103 Odo of Cluny, Vita Sancti Gerald Aureliacensis, ed. A.-M. Bultot-Verleysen, Subsidia hagiographica 89, 2009, caps 9, 10, 46–52; on this aspect of the text, see S. Airlie, ‘The Anxiety of Sanctity: St Gerald of Aurillac and His Maker’, JEH 42 (1992), 372–95, at 390–91. 97 98



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a model for laymen. However, a challenging argument by Romig has argued that Odo’s discussion of Gerald’s sexuality is primarily aimed at monks: the only reason why Gerald does not become a monk directly is that there are no local monks good enough for his standards.105 Certainly, Odo did allow a role for sex within marriage for strictly reproductive reasons.106 Nonetheless, it is clear that he saw a celibate lifestyle, when carried on by laymen, as worthy of praise.107 As Jestice aptly put it, for Odo, sex was bad.108 However, the Vita Geraldi cannot be taken as an expression of generally held beliefs.109 Another well-known West Frankish hagiographical work, the Vita of the layman St Gangulf of Varennes, written possibly in Burgundy around the turn of the tenth century, presents a perhaps more typical Carolingian view.110 Gangulf was married and, implicitly, sexually active – a state of affairs about which the Vita does not have much in particular to say, but which it certainly does not present as immoral.111 On the flip side, Gangulf’s wife’s adultery – that is, his loss of sexual control over his partner – is not presented as harming Gangulf’s masculine authority, as it might have done in other societies.112 This case illustrates Stone’s convincing argument that sex was not seen as a particularly critical part of masculine noble authority in Carolingian society, either by its presence or by its absence,.113 For the Vita Gangulfi’s author, sexual authority was not fundamental to patriarchal control of a household or a wider society.114 A few decades after the Vitae discussed above, several texts in which sexuality plays a prominent role survive from the East Frankish kingdom, whose links with its Western counterpart were close during the latter half of the tenth century, meaning that its literary products were a part of Dudo’s context (especially if he was in fact trained in Liège).115 However, in these texts sexuality is rarely used to affirm rather 104

E.g. F. Lotter, ‘Das Idealbild adliger Laienfrömmgkeit in den Anfängen Clunys: Odos Vita des Grafen Gerald von Aurillac’, in Benedictine Culture 730–1050, ed. W. Lourdeaux (Leuven, 1983), pp. 76–95, at 84–85. 105 A. Romig, ‘The Common Bond of Aristocratic Masculinity: Monks, Secular Men and St Gerald Aurillac’, in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. J. D. Thibodeaux (New York, 2012), 39–56, at 46–48; although, as Airlie, ‘Anxiety of Sanctity’, 373, 387, notes, Odo did aim the Vita at a lay audience. 106 Airlie, ‘Anxiety of Sanctity’, 389; but see Jestice, ‘Why Celibacy’, 97–98. 107 Romig, ‘Common Bond’, 46; see also C. Lauranson-Rosaz, ‘La Vie de Géraud d’Aurillac, vecteur d’une certaine conscience aristocratique dans le Midi de la Gaule’, in Guerriers et moines: Conversion et sainteté aristocratiques dans l’Occident medieval (IXe–XIIe siècle), ed. M. Lauwers (Turnhout, 2002), pp. 157–81, at 177. See more broadly Jestice, ‘Why Celibacy’, 99–100. 108 Jestice, ‘Why Celibacy’, 97. 109 Shopkow, History and Community, p. 74, notes the limited influence of Cluniac thought on Dudo’s work. 110 For dating and place, see M. Goullet, ‘Les Vies de saint Gengoul, époux et martyr’, in Guerriers et moines, ed. Lauwers, 235–63, at 237–39; J.-P. Poly, ‘Gengoul, l’époux martyr. Adultère féminin et norme populaire au Xe siècle’, La femme au Moyen Âge, no editor given (Paris, 1992), pp. 47–63, at 54, suggests it was written near Toul around the year 936, which is also possible but less likely than Goullet’s suggestion; Airlie, ‘Anxiety of Sanctity’, 390. On this text more generally, see S. Patzold, ‘Laughing at a Saint? Miracle and Irony in the Vita Gangulfi prima’, EME 21 (2013), 197–20. 111 R. Stone, ‘Masculinity without Conflict: Noblemen in Eighth and Ninth Century Francia’, in What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World, ed. J. Arnold and S. Brady (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 76–93, at 84–85; see also Poly, ‘Gengoul’, 58–59. 112 Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 309. 113 Stone, Morality and Masculinity, pp. 299–300. The situation was different for royal men, as well as for women: S. Airlie, ‘Private Bodies and the Body Politic in the Divorce Case of Lothar II’, P&P 161 (1998), 3–38, at 20–25, 31–33; Stone, Morality and Masculinity, pp. 308–9. 114 Stone, Morality and Masculinity, pp. 308–9; see also Airlie, ‘Anxiety of Sanctity’, p. 377. 115 On East–West links, J. Ehlers, ‘Carolingiens, Robertiens, Ottoniens: politique familiale du relations 104

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than degrade male authority, something evident in the two most famously sexual of all Ottonian authors, Liutprand of Cremona and Hrotswitha of Gandersheim. For Liutprand, sexuality – as Buc and Balzaretti have noted – was largely a tool with which to attack Italian monarchs.116 Hence, for instance, in his Antapodosis he accuses Berengar II’s wife, Queen Willa, of carrying on an affair with her fantastically ugly but well-endowed priest Dominic. The events following from this indiscretion include (in addition to adultery) perjury, witchcraft and castration, casting both Berengar and Willa in the worst light possible.117 Space permits the use of only one example from Liutprand’s works, but the more general point could be exhaustively illustrated: within the bishop of Cremona’s works, sex was largely wrongful sex, used to insult. Equally in Hrotsvitha’s plays, overt male sexuality is something displayed by villains, and is used to mock or degrade their authority.118 Hrotsvitha’s plays feature an encyclopaedia of sexual practices, including voyeurism, exhibitionism and an arresting sequence in which a Roman governor makes love to kitchen equipment.119 Yet, as Classen has argued, Hrotsvitha’s sexual themes ‘[fall] into the category of the perverse, criminal, or generally suspect’.120 For these Ottonian authors, male sexuality was addressed mainly as a way to insult or villainise the characters they wrote about. However, there was another approach to masculine sexuality which can be seen at this time, in Normandy’s near neighbour Flanders.121 Around 960 a monk of SaintBertin named Witger produced a genealogy of Count Arnulf the Great and his son Count Baldwin III.122 This genealogy links divinely granted comital charisma and reproduction in a fairly clear manner. It must be said that all genealogies, through their glorification of a parent–offspring succession, implicitly glorify sexual potency (although not necessarily male sexual potency). However, Witger makes what was subtext into text. He describes how, ‘with God protecting’, Arnulf and his wife, Adele, begat a ‘God-beloved son’ named Baldwin, who, ‘with God conceding and franco-allemandes’, in Le roi de France et son royaume autour l’an mil, ed. M. Parisse and X. Barral i Altet (Paris, 1992), pp. 39–45, at 41–45. 116 P. Buc, ‘Italian Hussies and German Matrons: Liutprand of Cremona on Dynastic Legitimacy’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien: Jahrbuch des Instituts für Frühmittelalterforschung der Universität Münster 29 (1995), 207–25, at 214–20; R. Balzaretti, ‘Liutprand of Cremona’s Sense of Humour’, in Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. G. Halsall (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 114–28, at 118–22, Balzaretti, ‘Men and Sex’, 155–56; for an alternate perspective, A. Grabowski, ‘From Castration to Misogyny. The Meaning of Liudprand of Cremona’s Humour’, Acta Poloniae Historica 112 (2015), 243–68, esp. 246–58. 117 Liutprand, Antapodosis, V.32, 142–43; Buc, ‘Italian Hussies’, 215; Balzaretti, ‘Sense of Humour’, 121–22. 118 U. Wiethaus, ‘Pulchrum Signum? Sexuality and the Politics of Religion in the Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim Composed between 963 and 973’, in Hrotsvit of Gandersheim. Contexts, Identities, Affinities and Performances, ed. P. R. Brown, L. A. McMillin and K. M. Wilson (Toronto, 2004), pp. 125–143, at 131; for sexuality in Hrotswitha’s work more generally, see L. M. C. Weston, ‘Virginity and Other Sexualities’, in A Companion to Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (fl. 960), ed. P. R. Brown and S. L. Wailes (Leiden, 2013), pp. 267–86. 119 The incident in question is Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, Dulcitius, in idem, Opera Omnia, ed. W. Berschin, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, 2001, Act IV Scene 1, pp. 168–69. 120 A. Classen, ‘Sex on the Stage (and in the Library) of an Early Medieval Convent: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim. A Tenth-Century Convent Playwright’s Successful Competition against the Roman Poet Terence’, Orbis Literrarum 65 (2010), 167–200, at 193. 121 On this text, see E. Friese, ‘Die Genealogia Arnulfi comitis des Priesters Witger’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien: Jahrbuch des Instituts für Frühmittelalterforschung der Universität Münster 23 (1989), 203–43, esp. in this context 209–12. 122 See Friese, ‘Genealogia’, 234, 238.



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by his father’s will’, took the Saxon noble Matilda as a wife. From them, ‘by the largess of supernal Grace’, it is hoped that Arnulf will see ‘sons of sons, may it please God, unto the third and fourth generation … may the mercy of the God of Heaven, the Father Almighty, make it so!’123 Here, then, God’s favour for Arnulf and his family is shown through the family’s continuation. Arnulf’s begetting of Baldwin and Baldwin’s potential begetting of future offspring are signs of God’s will and protection: the success of the reproductive act is itself a sign of the Flemish comital family’s holiness. Witger’s genealogy is an important point of comparison with Dudo’s work, for it indicates that within a Frankish milieu, a very similar one to the one in which Dudo worked, there were people for whom sexual potency could be used as part of a strategy of legitimation. However, Witger went only part of the way down the road Dudo treads in this regard. Sex in Witger’s work is implicit, and the focus is on reproduction rather than the act of coitus itself. While there are significant similarities we must bring in other points of comparison to understand Dudo’s full context; and it is here that we turn to the contemporary Norse evidence. A fair amount of late tenth- and early eleventh-century skaldic poetry is preserved in later material.124 In the context of the link between sexuality and politics, a recurring motif is striking which portrays the ruler as the lover of a personified feminine territory.125 The Hákonardrápa of Hallfreðr Óttarsson, written for Jarl Hákon Sigurðarson, the most powerful figure in Norway during the late tenth century, Richard the Fearless’s exact contemporary, is wreathed in sexual imagery.126 Strophe 5, which describes how Hákon subdued Norway, links sexual and violent imagery in a way similar to Dudo’s description of Rollo’s relations with a personified Francia, described above: ‘[Hákon] draws under himself the foliage-haired waiting wife of Þriði [i.e. the land] by means of true words of swords.’127 Such a comparison of rule over the land with sexual domination recurs throughout the work: to give only one example, strophe 7: ‘The marriage was concluded, so that the shrewdly advising king’s intimate [i.e. Hákon] afterward possessed the only daughter of Ónarr [i.e. the land]’, where sexual and military potency are directly equated.128 Hallfreðr was drawing on an image which had been developed from the mid-tenth century,129 and the same image can be found in other poems, particularly Eyvindr skáldaspillir Witger, Genealogia Arnulfi Comitis, ed. L. Bethmann in MGH SS 9 (1851), 302–4, at 304: ‘Deo protegente’ … ‘Balduinum … Deo dilectum’ … ‘Deo concedente ac patris voluntate’ … ‘gratia superna largiente’ … ‘filios filiorum, si Deo libitum fuerit, usque in tertiam et quartam generationem’ … ‘Utinam hoc fiat omnipotente Deo patre de celis miserante’. 124 On these, see D. Whaley, ‘Skaldic Poetry’, in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. R. McTurk (Oxford, 2005), pp. 479–502; G. Nordal, ‘Introduction 1.3’, in Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, ed. D. Whaley, 2 vols, SKALD 1 (2009–12), I, p. xxiii. 125 G. Steinsland, ‘Origin Myths and Rulership. From the Viking Age Ruler to the Ruler of Medieval Historiography: Continuity, Transformations and Innovations’, in Ideology and Power in the Viking and Middle Ages, ed. G. Steinsland, J. V. Sigurdsson, J. E. Rekdal and I. B. Beuermann (Leiden, 2011), pp. 15–68, at 31; F. Ström, ‘Poetry as an Instrument of Propaganda: Jarl Hákon and his Poets’, in Specvlvm Norroenvm: Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel Turville-Petre, ed. U. Dronke, G. P. Helgadóttir, G. W. Weber and H. Bekker-Nielsen (Odense, 1981), pp. 440–58, at 448. 126 See O. Sundqvist, ‘Aspects of Rulership Ideology in Early Scandinavia – with Particular References to the Skaldic Poem Ynglingatal’, in Das frühmittelalterliche Königtum: ideelle und religiöse Grundlagen, ed. F.-R. Erkens (Göttingen, 2005), pp. 87–124, at 115–16. 127 Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld Óttarsson, Hárkonardrápa, ed. K. Heslop, in Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, ed. K. E. Gade and E. Marold, 2 vols, SKALD 3 (2017), I, strophe 5, 219: ‘Sannyrðum spenr sverða/ snarr þiggjandi viggjar/ barrhaddaða byrjar/ biðkvǫ́n und sik þriðja’. 128 Hallfreðr, Hárkonardrápa, strophe 7, 223: ‘Roð lukusk, at sá siðan/ snjallráðr konungs spjalli/ átti eingadóttur/ Ónars viði gróna’; Ström, ‘Instrument of Propaganda’, 453–54. 129 R. Frank, ‘The Lay of the Land in Skaldic Praise Poetry’, in Myth in Early Northwest Europe, ed. S. Glosecki (Tempe, AZ, 2007), pp. 175–96, at 177. 123

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Finsson’s Háleygjatal, which describes how ‘Under [Hákon’s] arm the bride of the slaughter-god [i.e. the land] lies all the way to the territory of the Egðir’.130 Within Old Norse studies there is some debate about whether this imagery derives from indigenously Scandinavian sources or whether it may reflect Christian motifs.131 The latter is certainly plausible: Frank has shown that the comparison of conquering land and sexually dominating women has appeared in a number of times and places.132 However, for our purposes its roots are not of particular importance. Rather, what matters is that during the period when Dudo was writing Scandinavia provides the best contemporary parallels for a linking of sexual potency and political authority. These skaldic poems illustrate that, within a Scandinavian context, the expression of masculine sexuality could play a public role in reinforcing claims to rule, which does not appear to have been true in a Frankish one.133 This is significant when dealing with Dudo, because it strongly suggests that the ideas of Van Houts and Van Eickels, outlined above, have hit on something important: that the more public and politically significant sexual culture in Normandy finds its closest parallel in Scandinavia. This link in turn, given Normandy’s Scandinavian background, suggests that Scandinavian influences played an important part in developing Normandy’s sexual culture. Norse Sexuality, Frankish Sexuality, Norman Sexuality: Concluding Towards the Post-Carolingian To argue that Norman sexual culture was influenced by its Norse background is not to suggest that Normandy was an alien environment where ideas about sex, unrecognisable to its Frankish neighbours, had been directly imported by randy, macho Vikings from a Scandinavian homeland untouched by outside influences. Rather, it is to work backwards from the idiosyncratic ideas found in Dudo’s work to ask questions about the context in which these ideas were generated. Dudo’s education was Frankish, and his cultural background was traditionally Carolingian. The same can probably be said about his Norman literary contemporaries, such as Werner of Rouen. Their ideas find echoes elsewhere in Frankish sources, from the genealogy of Witger to the sexually explicit insults of classical Latin literature. However, the different sexual mores of Scandinavia, and in particular the use of masculine sexuality to legitimise political power, are convincing. The links between Normandy and the Norse made Normandy different, and created an environment in which aspects of Frankish culture which were secondary or marginal elsewhere could flourish and be more prominent.134 We do not have to imagine Dudo cribbing from Hallfreðr Ottarsson. Rather, the influence of a culture more steeped in sexual machismo may well have made Dudo’s audience more receptive to a work where ducal authority was tied to demonstrating sexual as well as military potency. Dudo’s use of the Vita Germani, mentioned above, is illustrative here: an unimpeachably Frankish source was employed in a new context to link sexuality and political culture in a way that went beyond even authors, such as Witger, who provide the closest Frankish parallels. Eyvinder skáldaspillir Finnsson, Háleygjatal, ed. R. Poole, Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, ed. Whaley, I, strophe 12, 211–12; on which see Steinsland, ‘Origin Myths’, 27–28. 131 D. Stromback (trans. P. Foote), The Conversion of Iceland: A Survey (London, 1975), p. 70, n. 1. 132 Frank, ‘Lay of the Land’, 175–77. 133 See also Steinsland, ‘Origin Myths’, 25–26. 134 Van Houts, ‘Scandinavian Influence’, 111. 130



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For Dudo’s work makes more out of sex than has previously been realised. From straightforward textual elements such as Rollo’s impregnation of Francia to deeply embedded structural ones such as the alternating proofs of sex and violence in Books 3 and 4, sex plays a major role in how the dukes are legitimated. This was an idea that grew out of a Norman milieu, and would have been best appreciated by a Norman audience because of that. The interaction of Frankish and Scandinavian cultures had created a sexual culture which was clearly related to both, and yet identical to neither: that is, specifically Norman. We can therefore see Dudo as a stepping-stone from a late Carolingian culture to something different, post-Carolingian. The macho gender politics found in Dudo find their reflection in later Anglo-Norman sources down to the twelfth century.135 Dudo’s Historia stands as a monument to the changing times and the development of post-Carolingian sexualities.

Van Eickels, Konsens, pp. 269–80; J. R. E. Bliese, ‘Rhetoric and Morale: A Study of Battle Orations from the Central Middle Ages’, JMH 15 (1989), 201–26, at 204, 208–9.

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COMPILING CHRONICLES IN ANGLO-NORMAN DURHAM, c. 1100–30* Charles C. Rozier Anglo-Norman Durham was home to a considerable body of historical texts during the period to c. 1130. New works were compiled and popular existing texts were procured. Durham authors compiled new works of history, while a combination of internal copying and external procurement gave readers access to popular existing works of the genre by classical and medieval authors. Annals and chronicles were collected in this way from the first decade of the twelfth century onwards. Examining the nature and content of these sources and identifying their place within the wider patterns of intellectual life, this article seeks to explain why Durham compilers produced multiple chronicles over three decades from c. 1100 to 1130. It highlights the value of historical information within broader contemporary debates and demonstrates Durham’s role within intellectual networks that stretched across the Anglo-Norman world and beyond not just in the writing of history but also in studies on the very nature of the world itself. Bishop William of Saint-Calais enacted a Benedictine reform of the community of St Cuthbert at Durham in 1083.1 As part of this move the new monastic community embarked on a significant expansion of its book collection during the period c. 1090–1130. The results can be seen in over 100 surviving manuscripts with a Durham provenance dated to before c. 1130.2 In addition, the contents of two medieval book lists, the first compiled c. 1096 and the second produced in the middle of the twelfth century, suggest the presence of additional titles which no longer survive.3 The character of the expansion reflects wider patterns of monastic book collection throughout

I would like to thank Laura Gathagan, Benjamin Pohl and David Rollason for their feedback on draft versions of this article, and Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn, who assisted with the Latin transcriptions and translations. 1 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie, ed. D. W. Rollason, OMT (Oxford, 2000), pp. 222–41 (hereafter, LDE); W. M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: the Church of Durham, 1071–1153 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 100–41. 2 As listed in R. A. B. Mynors, Durham Cathedral Manuscripts to the End of the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1939); Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, ed. N. R. Ker (London, 1964); Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: Supplement to the Second Edition, ed. N. R. Ker and Andrew G. Watson (London, 1987); Richard Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066–1130) (Oxford, 1999). 3 The earlier list appears on the front flyleaf of Durham, Dean and Chapter Library MS A.ii.4 (fol. 1r). The abbreviation DCL is used for the remainder of this article in order to refer to manuscripts from this collection. The list was edited with commentary and facsimile in Alma Colk Browne, ‘Bishop William of St Carilef’s Book Donations to Durham Cathedral Priory’, Scriptorium 42.2 (1988), 140–55 and, plate 15. The later list appears in DCL, MS B.iv.24, fols 1r–2r, and was edited in Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesie Dunelmensis, ed. B. Botfield, Surtees Society 7 (1838), 1–10. For discussion, see A. J. Piper, ‘The Libraries of the Monks of Durham’, in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson (London, 1978), pp. 213–49, at 214–16. *

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early Anglo-Norman England. Providing for the practical needs of the new foundation was a priority. Acquisitions included the Rule of St Benedict in both Latin and Old English, now DCL, MS B.iv.24, fols 74r–95v in Latin, and fols 98v–123v of the same manuscript in Old English. Numerous liturgical items are recorded in the list of c. 1096, including two breviaries, two books of Antiphons, a gradual, and one book for readings at matins.5 In addition, Durham collected a number of theological and exegetical commentaries, particularly those by Patristic authors. Bishop William’s book list records six works of St Augustine, including three volumes on the Psalter (two of which survive in DCL, MSS B.ii.13 and B.ii.14); the De civitate Dei (DCL, MS B.ii.22); a collection of Augustine’s letters (DCL, MS B.ii.21); and a commentary on the Gospel of St John (DCL, MS B.ii.17).6 The list also features commentaries by Jerome, Gregory the Great and later authors including Bede and Hrabanus Maurus, among others.7 Works of history were among the earliest books collected by the Durham monks.8 The list of c. 1096 includes Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica (now DCL, MS B.ii.35), a lost volume of the Historia Philippicae by Pompeius Trogus9 and the note ‘Paradisus’, which refers to a surviving volume housing Palladius’ Historia Lausiaca alongside Victor of Vita’s Historia persecutionis Africanae prouinciae (now Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Adv. 18.4.3, fols. 1–83).10 In total, the evidence of surviving manuscripts and book lists suggests that over thirty works of history were added to the Durham collection before c. 1130, the details of which are given in the accompanying Appendix. This list includes lengthy narrative works such as Symeon of Durham’s Tract on the Origins and Progress of this, the Church of Durham (numbers 12 and 13),11 texts on the lives and miracles of St Cuthbert (numbers 2–4),12 the short cartulary chronicle known as the Historia de sancto Cuthberto (item 3)13 and several short works that used historical events to argue a particular contemporary case (items 27–30).14 In addition to titles produced by members of the Durham community, a number of existing works (items 8–11 and 4

T. Webber, ‘Patristic Content of English Book-Collections in the Eleventh Century’, in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers, ed. M. Parkes, P. Robinson and R. Zim (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 191–205; Richard Gameson, ‘English Book Collections in the Late Eleventh and early Twelfth Centuries: Symeon’s Durham and Its Context’, in Symeon: Historian of Durham and the North, ed. D. W. Rollason (Stamford, 1998), pp. 230–53, at 250; T. Webber, ‘Monastic and Cathedral Book Collections in the Late Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, ed. P. Hoare, 3 vols (Cambridge, 2006), II, pp. 109–125; R. M. Thomson, Books and Learning in Twelfth Century England: the Ending of alter orbis (Walken, Herts., 2006). 5 Browne, ‘Bishop William of St Carilef’s Book Donations’, 154. 6 Browne, ‘Bishop William of St Carilef’s Book Donations’, 154. 7 Browne, ‘Bishop William of St Carilef’s Book Donations’, 154. 8 For a detailed overview of the books written and collected, see: A. J. Piper, ‘The Historical Interests of the Monks of Durham’, in Symeon: Historian, ed. Rollason, pp. 301–32; C. C. Rozier, ‘Durham Cathedral Priory and its Library of History, c. 1090–c. 1150’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. L. Cleaver and A. Worm (York, 2018), pp. 133–48; C. C. Rozier, Writing History in the Community of St Cuthbert, c. 800–1130 (York, 2020), pp. 105–11. 9 Epitome of the Philippic history of Pompeius Trogus, trans. J. C. Yardley; with introduction and explanatory notes by R. Develin (Atlanta, GA, 1994). 10 The Lausiac history of Palladius, ed. Dom C. Butler, 2 vols (Cambridge, 2014); History of the Vandal Persecution, trans. J. Moorhead (Liverpool, 1992). 11 LDE. 12 Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: a Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life, ed. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge, 1940). 13 Historia de sancto Cuthberto: a History of Saint Cuthbert and a Record of His Patrimony, ed. T. Johnson South (Cambridge, 2002). 14 All edited in Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ed. Thomas Arnold, 2 vols, RS (London, 1882–85). 4



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20–26) allowed Durham readers to access many of the recognised classics of classical and medieval historiography, including those by Eutropius, Josephus, Suetonius, Eusebius, Cassiodorus, Orosius and more recent authors, William of Jumièges and Eadmer of Canterbury. It is clear that the individuals in charge of the Durham collection were deliberately expanding their collection of histories through a combination of external acquisitions, internal copying and new writing. In addition, Anglo-Norman readers also had access to historical texts inherited from previous generations of a community that had been founded on the Island of Lindisfarne as far back as 635.15 Many no longer survive, and three examples serve to demonstrate this. Symeon of Durham copied the Historia de sancto Cuthberto into Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 596 (see Appendix, item 3), but his exemplar manuscript, which must have been held by the community before this date, has since been lost.16 Likewise, scrutinising the source materials available to Prior John Wessington in the later Middle Ages, Craster was able to propose and reconstruct a lost source likely to have been completed c. 1072–83, and which he named the Cronica monasterii Dunelmensis.17 Furthermore, Rollason has suggested the existence of at least one collection of northern annals, whose contents cannot be known in full but which may correspond to one of the two items listed as ‘Cronica Duo Anglica’ in the book list of MS B.iv.24 (fol. 1v).18 A number of authors have recognised the importance of historical writing in Anglo-Norman Durham.19 Offler declared the period to c. 1115 as Durham’s ‘best period of historical activity’,20 and Dumville described Durham as a ‘hot-bed of historiographic activity’ during the Middle Ages.21 More recently, Piper has recognised the ‘exceptionally plentiful’ evidence for Durham’s medieval history writing and observed that: ‘The corpus of historical writing that they produced was considerable, and, so far as is known, survives in its entirety’ (the latter point may be questioned, given Craster’s reconstruction of the lost Cronica monasterii Dunelmensis: see Appendix, item 1).22 Placing the writing of Symeon’s Libellus de exordio in its wider context, Rollason also noted the varied range of historiographical projects in early twelfth-century Durham and argued that their compilers were at the forefront of collaborations with other important centres of Anglo-Norman historiography.23 Annals and chronicles represent a notable sub-group within the corpus of Durham histories. Six compilations of this type feature in the Appendix (numbers 14–19) across a range of contents and forms. DCL, MS Hunter 100 and Glasgow, University Library MS Hunter 85 (T.4.2) (Appendix, items 14–15) contain annals in Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans, pp. 9–99; Rozier, Writing History, p. 105. Historia de sancto Cuthberto, pp. 15–17; Rozier, Writing History, pp. 119–20. On Symeon’s role, see M. Gullick, ‘The Hand of Symeon of Durham: Further Reflections on the Durham Martyrology Scribe’, in Symeon: Historian, ed. Rollason, pp. 14–31, at 24. 17 H. H. E. Craster, ‘The Red Book of Durham’, EHR 40 (1925), 504–32, with reconstruction at 523–29. 18 LDE, p. lxxi; Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesie Dunelmensis, p. 5. 19 For overviews, see Piper, ‘Historical Interests’; LDE, pp. lxxvii–xci; Rozier, ‘Durham Cathedral Priory and Its Library of History’. 20 H. S. Offler, Medieval Historians of Durham (Durham, 1958), p. 6, reprinted in Offler, North of the Tees: Studies in Medieval British History, ed. A. J. Piper and A. I. Doyle (Aldershot, 1996), p. 6. 21 D. N. Dumville, ‘Textual Archaeology and Northumbrian History Subsequent to Bede’, in Coinage in Ninth-Century Northumbria: the Tenth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, ed. D. M. Metcalf, BAR, British Series, no. clxxx (Oxford, 1987), pp. 43–55, at 45. 22 Piper, ‘Historical Interests’, p. 301. 23 LDE, pp. lxxvi–xci. See also Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum as a Product of Twelfth-century Historical Workshops’, in The Long Twelfth-century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. M. Brett and D. A. Woodman (Aldershot, 2015), pp. 95–111. 15

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the margins of the Easter tables in what are essentially computus handbooks, but with markedly different types of entries and in equally distinct approaches to the reckoning of time. Several lists of royal, episcopal and ducal succession down to the early twelfth century constitute the De primo Saxonum adventu (item 16), versions of which survive in four medieval manuscript witnesses.24 DCL, MS C.iv.15 (item 17) contains important textual variants of two Frankish chronicles. The Annales Mettenses priores survive only in the Durham manuscript (fols 1r–28v) and the Durham version of a chronicle attributed to Regino of Prüm (fols 29r–70v) is one of only two known to have been present in medieval England, the other being an abridgement which was copied at Durham during the later twelfth century.25 Item 18 comprises a short world chronicle compiled by Symeon of Durham c. 1125–29, now the opening folios of DCL, MS B.iv.22 (3r–5v). Lastly, a text known as the Durham Historia de regibus is preserved in a later twelfth-century manuscript copy of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 139 (fols 52r–129v).26 This version appears to represent an incomplete draft form of a work that was never finished, likely due to the death of its primary compiler, Symeon of Durham, in c. 1129.27 The discussion which follows explores the underlying causes of Durham’s interest in chronicle writing, c. 1100–30. While the observations of historians like Offler, Piper and Dumville have proven useful in bringing to our attention the number and the variety of historical texts available at Durham, we are yet to explore in detail the precise reasons why these audiences invested so much attention in their acquisition.28 This is especially true for the chronicle texts, whose contents demonstrate several different ways of collecting historical information, both in terms of the selection of material presented and in the ways in which it was placed on the page. Rollason has argued that ‘in Anglo-Norman Durham, the sheer variety of historical writings … should lead us to consider why such a range of historians’ methods were used in the same period, the same place, and perhaps in some cases even by the same scholars and in the same works’.29 The present discussion is intended as a response to this call, but also offers a wider commentary on the place of historical texts within the deeper currents of intellectual culture in the Anglo-Norman world. Three original Durham compilations are examined in turn, from DCL, MS Hunter 100, GUL, MS Hunter 85 (T.4.2) and DCL, MS B.iv.22. It will be argued that the Durham chronicles contributed to a heated contemporary debate on the nature of time, witnessed across several monastic centres of learning throughout England after the 1080s. The Durham chronicles show that their readers and compilers played a leading role in these Edited in Symeonis monachi opera omnia, II, pp. 365–84. Edited respectively in Annales Mettenses Priores, ed. B. Von Simson, MGH, SS Rerum Germanicum, 10, Hanover 1905, and Regino of Prüm, Regionis Abbatis Prumiensis Chronicon, cum Continuatione Treverensi, ed. F. Kurze, MGH, SS Rerum Germanicum, 50 (Hanover, 1890). For discussion and dating of the manuscript, see J. E. Story, ‘Frankish Annals in Anglo-Norman Durham’, in Wilhelm Levison (1876–1947): ein jüdisches Forscherleben zwischen wissenschaftlicher Anerkennung und politischem Exil, ed. Matthias Becher and Yitzhak Hen (Siegburg, 2010), pp. 145–60. 26 Currently being edited in Symeon of Durham, Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum, ed. M. Lapidge and D. W. Rollason, OMT (forthcoming), and discussed in Rollason, ‘Workshops’. 27 P. Hunter Blair, ‘Some Observations on the Historia regum Attributed to Symeon of Durham’, in Celt and Saxon: Studies in the early British border, ed. N. K. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 63–118 (reprinted in P. Hunter Blair, Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, ed. Michael Lapidge and Pauline Hunter Blair (London, 1984), essay no. ix); Michael Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Early Sections of the Historia regum Attributed to Symeon of Durham’, ASE 10 (1981), 97–122, reprinted in Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature, 900–1066 (London, 1993), pp. 317–42; Rollason, ‘Workshops’. 28 Rozier, ‘Durham Cathedral Priory’s Library of History’, pp. 144–48. 29 Rollason, ‘Workshops’, p. 98. 24 25



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discussions, digesting new critiques of the established status quo and working through their implications on both a local and an international stage. The first chronicle examined here appears in DCL, MS Hunter 100: a small science and computus handbook whose contents were assembled at some point during the period c. 1100–20.30 Analysis of handwriting and decorative motifs has shown that the manuscript is a product of Durham scribes and illustrators.31 It contains numerous diagrams and tables relating to scientific and chronological enquiry, alongside copies of short texts and extracts from longer commentaries, including extracts from the De computo of Helperic, diagrams attributed to Abbo of Fleury, extracts from the letters on dating Easter by Dionysius Exiguus and numerous tables and diagrams designed to test the intellectual dexterity of its users.32 The discipline of computus, better understood as the reckoning of time and the calculation of Easter, was essential to the smooth running of any ecclesiastical institution in the Middle Ages. This abstract discipline, which involved the synchronisation of mathematical formulae, the comprehension of complex treatises and navigation of intricate diagrams, in fact had very practical uses. The ultimate aim was that its users could calculate the calendar in any given year (and, especially, identify the date of Easter and thus the liturgical calendar from Lent to Pentecost). Despite the attentions of some of the greatest minds of the medieval Church over several hundred years, by the end of the eleventh century, and especially in the Anglo-Norman context, a small proportion of highly specialised experts in computus were becoming increasingly aware that they were struggling against what Lawrence-Mathers has described as an ‘insoluble problem’.33 Since the sixth century the Christian calendar had been calculated by using a collection of tables mapped out by Dionysius Exiguus, such as those featured in MSS Hunter 100 (fols 27v–41r) and Hunter 85 (fols 18r–24v). However, since Dionysius’ own lifetime it had been clear that the tables contained inaccuracies.34 Dionysius had introduced an annus domini, giving a number to each year after the birth of Christ. However, a line of commentators after him recognised that the date of Christ’s Passion given in the thirty-fourth year annus domini in the Dionysian tables did not match the Easter calculation data in the body of the tables. The traditional annus domini and the information given in the Gospels must, then, have been misaligned from the data in the tables. This situation has been described by Nothaft, who argued that ‘even devout believers such as Augustine had to admit that their own Scriptures were remarkably terse when it came to elucidating the chronological dimensions of Jesus’s life’. The solution, which lay in the ‘study of profane chronology and its application to the 30 F. Wallis, ‘Albums of Science in Twelfth century England’, Peritia 28 (2017), 195–224, at 200. See also F. Wallis, ‘“Sortes sanctorum and Alea celi”: Dicing and Divination in Some Insular Computus Manuscripts’, in Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the Science of Computus, ed. Immo Wartnjes and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Turnhout, forthcoming). 31 A. Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 70–76 and 82–86. 32 For content and binding, see Wallis, ‘Albums of Science’, 203 and 220–24. 33 A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘Computus and Chronology in Anglo-Norman England’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. L. Cleaver and A. Worm (York, 2018), pp. 53–68, at 53. 34 G. Declercq, Anno Domini. Les origins de l’ére chrétienne (Turnhout, 2000) reprinted in English translation, Anno Domini: the Origins of the Christian Era (Turnhout, 2002); P. Verbist, Duelling with the Past: Medieval Authors and the Problem of the Christian Era, c.990–1135 (Turnhout, 2010); P. Nothaft, Dating the Passion. The Life of Jesus and the Emergence of Scientific Chronology (200–1600) (Leiden, 2012); Lawrence-Mathers, ‘Computus and Chronology’ and Gleb Schmidt, ‘A Saint Petersburg Manuscript of the Excerptio Roberti Herefordensis de Chronica Mariani Scotti’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. Cleaver and Worm, pp. 69–92, at 69–71.

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sacred text’, was able to provide what Nothaft described as ‘exegetical clarification and – more significantly – reassurance of the historicity of the events described in the Gospels’.35 While this discussion rumbled on, the tables and annus domini of Dionysius had been widely adopted by the Latin Church. However, the discourse gained renewed momentum in the later eleventh century after a monk of Mainz named Marianus Scotus compiled an extensive dossier of evidence in the form of a treatise and a revised chronicle of world history to 1082. In it, Marianus argued for the recalibration of the Dionysian annus domini by twenty-two years.36 A student of the debate, William of Malmesbury, described how this material arrived in England after Bishop Robert of Hereford brought a version of Marianus’ Chronicle to England in 1082: At that time there was at Mainz an enclosed monk called Marinianus. In his long seclusion he had had the leisure to study the chronographers, and he was the first or only man to recognise the discrepancy of the cycles of Dionysius Exiguus as compared with the gospel truth. He therefore went over the years from the beginning of the era, one by one, and added in the twenty-two years lacking in the Dionysian cycles; he then proceeded to compose a long and wordy chronicle. Robert admired this book beyond all others, marvellously rivalled it, and had it brought to England. In the end, captivated by Marinianus’ genius, he produced a compendium of what he had written on such a large scale, so finely, that the abbreviation is counted more valuable than the original gigantic tome.37

Schmidt has identified a total of eleven complete, abridged or fragmentary copies of Bishop Robert’s work.38 One such copy features on folios 17r–22r of Hunter 100, whose Easter tables also contain an abridged version of Marianus’ chronicle (fols 27v–41r). Immediately preceded by two letters of Dionysius on the Annus domini, the tables of Hunter 100 brought the new, re-dated chronicle of world history to a Durham readership, and in no uncertain terms. Dionysius’ tables had been subdivided according to the principle of Great Cycles. The lunar data in the tables was designed to repeat itself precisely on a cycle of nineteen years, while the solar data repeated every twenty-eight years. As such, each table in the Hunter 100 annals consists of nineteen rows, and there are twenty-eight tables in total. The entire set of data was said to repeat itself every 532 years (19 x 28), and each of these 532-year repetitions was termed a Great Cycle. Commenting on the accuracy of how these cycles were dated, the caption to the first table in Hunter 100 argues as follows: The first year of the Great Paschal Cycle, in the second year of which, following Dionysius, the Lord was born, was the [illegible text] indiction, which truly was the 22nd of the Incarnation, as the Gospels testify. The first year of the second Great Cycle was the tenth indiction and the 532nd year of the Incarnation following Dionysius, but following the Gospels, [it was] 554. The first year of the third Great Cycle, in which we are now, was the second indiction, and the 1064th of the Incarnation according to Dionysius. But following the authority of the Gospels [it was] 1086.39 Nothaft, Dating the Passion, p. 12. Marianus Scotus, Chronicon, ed. G. Waitz, MGH, SS, v (1884), pp. 481–562; P. Verbist, ‘Reconstructing the Past: the Chronicle of Marianus Scottus’, Peritia 16 (2002), 284–334; C. P. E. Nothaft, ‘An Eleventh-Century Chronologer at Work. Marianus Scottus and the Quest for the Missing Twenty-two Years’, Speculum 88.2 (2013), 457–82; A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Chronological Controversy’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. R. M. Thomson, E. Dolmans and E. Winkler (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 93–105, at 100–1. 37 Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum, I, pp. 458–59. 38 G. Schmidt, ‘A Saint Petersburg Manuscript of the Excerptio Roberti Herefordensis de Chronica Mariani Scotti’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. Cleaver and Worm, pp. 69–92. 39 DCL, MS Hunter 100, fol. 27v: ‘Primus annus huius magni cicli paschalis in cuius secundo anno 35

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Similar notices on the dated beginning of each Great Cycle were added throughout the Hunter 100 tables, on each folio to 29r, and then on every verso following this down to folio 40v. This meant that at least every other table appeared with this information, and it was available to the reader for every table as the book lay open. By adding this text the architect of the tables was giving a comparative overview of the annus domini debate and arguing his case for the ‘true’ (i.e. Marianan) year of the Incarnation. Marianus’ influence over the Hunter 100 chronicle is corroborated by additional content. A marginal note adjacent to the opening section is mostly illegible, due to the deterioration of the green ink, but the section which is visible comprises a note that the birth of Christ took place ‘in the twenty-third year, according to the testimony of the Evangelists’ (‘xiii incarnationis secundum historiam evangelii’). Additional notes were added to the head of the right-hand margins of folios 27v–30r, and then every verso down to 40v, with the exception of 32v. Following Marianus’ addition of twenty-two years, these indicated a revised date for the beginning of each column in clear terms. For example, the note on folio 27v dates the second Great Cycle to 554 (‘dliiii recta incarnationis’), the entry on 28r dates the beginning of the right-hand entries to 573 (‘vera incarnatione dlxxiii’), and while the terms ‘recta’ and ‘vera’ disappear from these notices after folio 30r, the seven entries which do include the terms leave the position of the compiler abundantly clear. The annals in the Hunter 100 tables constitute a much shortened form of Marianus’ chronicle. There are 271 entries, predominantly recording papal successions and imperial successions from Roman to Byzantine, Frankish and German rulers. As noted on folio 27v, events in the first 532-year Great Cycle to AD 531 (which would have been corrected to 553) were placed in the left-hand margin, while events from 532 to 1063 (dated 554–1085, according to Marianus) were located in the righthand margin. The Durham compiler added a further six annals independently of Marianus, all pertaining to events of local and more recent historical significance, including: the Norman Conquest; the succession of Pope Gregory VII; the death of Bishop William Walcher and appointment of Bishop William of Saint-Calais; the monastic reform at Durham; the death of Bishop William; and, finally, the death of King William Rufus.40 While the marginal format gave only two columns, a Greek letter gamma indicated that these events had occurred during the third Great Cycle (i.e.,after 1064, or 1086 according to Marianus) as described at the end of the aforementioned note on cycles on folio 27v. Although the last part of this note is now illegible except for the gamma, Lawrence-Mathers has shown that an almost identical note in the Easter tables of Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 157, a contemporary manuscript from Worcester produced under John’s supervision, reads: ‘gamma marks those of the third Cycle thus: Γ’.41 Like the rest of the manuscript, the Easter tables and accompanying annals of Hunter 100 were designed to allow a Durham readership to engage with Marianus’ proposed reconciliation of the annus domini debate. As argued by Hayward, these types of annals were used to make abstract computistical data more concrete, as he iuxta Dionisium natus est Dominus, indictione erat [illegible text]. Qui vere incarnationis est xxii, sicut evangelia testantur. Primus annus secundi magni cicli indictione erat x, et incarnationis [erat] dxxxii, secundum Dionisium. Sed secundum evangelia dliiii. Primus item tercii magni cicli in quo sumus modo indictione erat ii, et incarnationis millesimus lxiiii, annus iuxta Dionisium. Sed secundum auctoritatem evangeliorum milessimus lxxxvi’. 40 C. C. Rozier, ‘Contextualising the Past: History and its Place at Durham Cathedral Priory, c. 1090–c. 1130: The Annals of Durham, Dean and Chapter Library MS Hunter 100’, HSJ 25 (2013), 107–123. 41 Lawrence-Mathers, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Chronological Controversy’, 101.

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put it, ‘to show that the numbers actually referred to real phenomena’.42 Hayward counted Hunter 100 among twelve twelfth-century English computistical manuscripts which include Easter-table annals.43 While these figures are not overwhelming, they do suggest that annals provided a regular accompaniment to the reckoning of time. As a source for history, they offer only a macrocosm running over world events, contrasted briefly with the six notices for recent events which would have been relevant for an Anglo-Norman audience. They allow their readers to consider patterns in recorded world history, while also placing the events of their own time within this. The relatively advanced level of starting knowledge required to read the texts in the manuscript suggests that this was a book for advanced students of the debate. As argued by Faith Wallis, Hunter 100 and the chronicle within it constituted ‘a book for intimate study and reflection on the theme of correction – correction of the errors of chronology that uncoupled time reckoning from the God-given temporal patterns of salvation history’.44 At around the same time as they acquired the Hunter 100 manuscript, the Durham monks put together another corpus of computus materials, now Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter 85 (T.4.2).45 The constituent parts of the manuscript have been dated to the early twelfth century. Gameson suggested that the current codex was originally two separate sections, with the Easter tables and dialogue computus on folios 11–34 produced c. 1100–10 and the remaining portions completed before c. 1125 in a separate volume.46 The quire structures and the two scribal hands of this proposed second section are consistent with a single, co-ordinated production campaign. The quires of the first thirty-four folios are irregular. The first twelve folios at 1–10 (with two removed between 9 and 10) contained a calendar and diagrams. The following sixteen contained the Easter tables at folios 11–26, while the final section of ten at folios 27–34 (with three apparently removed between 34 and 35) contained the dialogue computus attributed to Bede. However, the scribal hands present in the earlier section bear close similarities with those in the second section and, while further analysis is required, it is entirely plausible that the two sections were produced by the same individuals at around the same time. In its selection of contents and the format of its Easter tables Hunter 85 offered a very different perspective on time to that presented in Hunter 100. The writings of Bede had fully adhered to, and had helped to promote, the Dionysian annus domini.47 The compilers of Hunter 100 seem to have been sceptical of the established status quo. As such, they did not include Bede’s works on time, omitted the annus domini from their tables and added numerous notes in line with Marianus’ revisions.48 By contrast, Bede was central to the discussion of these themes in both sections of Hunter 85. The manuscript includes two lengthy texts derived from Bede. The first, in the earliest section of the manuscript, was placed immediately P. A. Hayward, The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: hitherto unnoticed witnesses to the work of John of Worcester, 2 vols (Tempe, AZ, 2010), I, p. 42. 43 Hayward, The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles, I, pp. 22–23. 44 Wallis, ‘Albums of Science’, 216. 45 J. Young and P. Henderson Aitken, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the Library of the Hunterian Museum (Glasgow, 1908), pp. 91–94; Mynors, DCM, no. 71, pp. 55–56; W. Levison and H. Eberhard Meyer, ‘Die Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunelmenses: kritisch untersucht und neu herausgegeben’, Deutsches Arvhiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 17 (1961), 447–506, at 462–78. 46 Gameson, MENE, p. 89, nos. 301–2. 47 Bede, The Reckoning of Time, trans. F. Wallis (Liverpool, 1999); Bede, On the Nature of Things and On Times, trans. C. B. Kendall and F. Wallis (Liverpool, 2010); Nothaft, Dating the Passion, pp. 80–88; Lawrence-Mathers, ‘Computus and Chronology’, p. 58. 48 Wallis, ‘Albums of Science’, 210–11. 42



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after the Easter tables (fols 27v–34v), is labelled De temporibus: interrogatio et responsio and consists of extracts from Bede’s De temporibus and De temporum ratione presented in the format of a dialogue between teacher and pupil. A full standard version of De temporibus was placed at the opening of the original second selection of texts, which opens with an author portrait which is nine lines high (fol. 35r), leaving no doubt as to the authority of Bede on the subject. As these sections of the manuscript show, the figure of Bede loomed large in the intellectual culture of Anglo-Norman Durham. Diehl has identified numerous author portraits in contemporary Durham manuscripts, and Hunter 85 was just one of three containing pictures of Bede.49 The Durham monks collected several Bedan commentaries to c. 1130, highlighting his status as a leading authority on questions of exegesis, theology and the sciences.50 Bede was also of immediate historical significance to the Durham community. Symeon claimed that Bede’s relics had been translated to Durham in the early eleventh century by the sacristan of Durham, Elfred, son of Westou.51 Bede had been the author of the most authoritative prose Vita of St Cuthbert, Durham’s patron, in verse and prose, which both circulated in Anglo-Norman manuscripts; he also gave several descriptions of Cuthbert’s life and community in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. Symeon acknowledged that Bede’s prose Vita and Historia had functioned as key sources for the new, officially sanctioned history of Durham’s monastic community within the Libellus de exordio.52 While the position of Bede in Hunter 85 reflects his general prominence within the field of computus studies as a whole, his place within the history of Cuthbert’s community gave an extra significance to this particular volume’s contributions in the Anglo-Norman debate on computus. Despite its promotion of Bede’s works, the contents Hunter 85, and those of the second section in particular, are not wholly biased in favour of the Dionsyian-Bede tradition. A full version of Bishop Robert’s summary of Marianus against the Dionysian annus domini appears on folios 98v–110r, just after a copy of Bede’s letter to Witchelm on the dating of Easter (93v–95v) and the two letters of Dionysius which also appear in Hunter 100 (95v–98v). The content of this second section would suggest that the Durham scribes were working to produce a compendium of materials on the computus problem, perhaps for teaching purposes, and which urged its readers to explore all possible angles. Palaeographical analysis by Michael Gullick showed that Symeon of Durham added annals to the margins of the Easter tables which correspond to the second Great Cycle for the years AD 532–1063, on folios 18r–24v.53 The collection as a whole was edited by Wilhelm Levison, who gave them the title Annales Lindisfarnensis et Dunelmenses.54 The main scribe of this first section of the manuscript completed the text of the tables to folio 17v, before Symeon executed his own tables for the duration of the section containing his marginal annals to folio 24v, where-

J. Diehl, ‘The Saint, the Voice, and the Author: Imagining Textual Authority and Personal Presence at Durham Cathedral Priory, c. 1080–1150’, Viator 47.3 (2016), 101–28, at 112–13. The other two portraits appear in DCL, MSS A.i.10 and B.ii.8. 50 Browne, ‘Bishop William of St Carilef’s Book Donations’, 154, items 17 and 40; Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesie Dunelmensis, p. 3. 51 LDE, pp. 160–67. For a detailed examination of the evidence, see C. Kendall, ‘Dry Bones in a Cathedral: the Story of the Theft of Bede’s Relics and the Translation of Cuthbert into the Cathedral of Durham in 1104’, Mediaevalia 10 (1984), 1–26. 52 LDE, pp. lxviii–lxix and 18–21. 53 Gullick, ‘The Hand of Symeon of Durham’, p. 29. 54 Levison, ‘Die Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunelmenses’. 49

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upon the original scribe returned to complete the tables to folio 26v (to AD 1216). Following this, an additional later scribe added one more table to the facing page, now folio 27r. The annals compiled by Symeon offer the opposite perspective on the annus domini debate to those in Hunter 100. The tables begin in the upper margin of folio 18r, with a clear declaration of Bede’s role in the debate on the Dionysian annus domini: Bede chose in the present little work to fix the complete order of the paschal circle from a beginning set to the 532nd year of the Incarnation of the Lord, whereas Dionysius started his first circle in the sixth year of Emperor Justinian, who, in the city of Constantinople, constructed a temple to Christ the Lord – who is the wisdom of the Father – which he named Agias Sophias, that is, [the temple] of Holy Wisdom.55

While the actual contents of the Hunter 85 annals are largely focused on historical events, their position on the page made a clear statement on the annus domini debate. Although the Hunter 100 tables argued for the inaccuracy of the Dionysian dating, using repeated marginal notes, the Hunter 85 tables consistently adhered to Dionysius through the inclusion of an entire column containing the annus domini, and which featured on every folio for the duration of the tables and in all sixtyfour of the nineteen-year tables, from 11r to 26v. Added in the left-most column of each table, the annus domini was therefore in direct conversation with the adjacent historical annals. Symeon’s annals in Hunter 85 fulfilled the same function as those in Hunter 100, namely to help orientate students of computus. Even if they were originally included only in a much shorter proposed first section of the manuscript to the current folio 34, the annals were still located firmly within a broader conversation on the calendar and the reckoning of time. However, there are some important differences in content and form between the Hunter 85 and Hunter 100 chronicles. In Hunter 85 Symeon added annals only to the second Great Cycle. Moreover, there was a more pronounced historiographical aspect, indicated by the density of the annals, in some cases by their length, and in their subject matter. Roman imperial succession continued to feature, but papal successions did not. There is a clear focus on Anglo-Saxon history throughout, recording important events and successions in the community of St Cuthbert in Northumbria, but also in England as a whole. This detail suggests that Symeon conducted a significant programme of research into English history for the years 532–1063. His sources have been suggested by Levison, who identified traces of Bede’s Cronica Maiora and Historia ecclesiastica, the Lives of Anglo-Saxon saints and chronicle material which bears similarities with redactions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, although with details relating to Northumbria which may be derived from the lost northern recensions posited earlier.56 Symeon’s work on these annals was not simply historiographical. In addition to the computistical functions of this work, Symeon may also have been operating towards his wider monastic duties. His role as monastic cantor at Durham from at least c. 1115 and his apparent work in support of the previous Cantor William before that date required him to possess an advanced understanding of computus.57 Lanfranc’s Monastic Constitutions provided a normative guide to the organisation of GUL MS Hunter 85, fol. 18r: ‘Bede placuit paschalem plenario ordine circulum presenti opusculo praefigere sumpto exordio a quingentesimo tricesimo secundo dominicae incarnationis anno, ubi primum Dionisius circulum coepit anno sexto principis Iustiniani, qui in urbe Constantinopoli Christo Domino qui est sapientia Domini patris templum construxit quod agias Sophias, id est sanctae sapientiae, nominavit.’ 56 Levison, ‘Die Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunelmenses’, 490–506. 57 C. C. Rozier, ‘Symeon of Durham as Cantor and Historian at Durham Cathedral Priory, c. 1090–1129’, 55



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monastic life in Anglo-Norman England. A copy arrived at Durham in DCL, MS B.iv.24 (fols 47r–71v, with description of the cantor’s role at fols 62v–63r) during the 1090s.59 In it, Lanfranc stipulated that the ideal cantor should supervise the accuracy of the monastic liturgy, should preside over the production and care of books and should also ‘keep count of the week’s and month’s mind’ (‘cura numerandi tricenariua et septenaria’).60 We can be fairly sure that Lanfranc’s ideal cantor should, therefore, possess the required skills in the reckoning of time, and then be able to apply them to the provision of the liturgy. Michael Gullick’s studies of Symeon’s scribal contributions suggests that Symeon was indeed engaged in the reading and editing (and therefore presumably the comprehension) of texts on the reckoning of time, and especially those within Hunter 85.61 The annals in this manuscript highlight a neat intersection between Symeon’s duties and experiences as historian and those of his roles as cantor and computist. The final collection of annals surveyed here is located on the first three folios of DCL, MS B.iv.22. These pages contain a short chronicle of world events, also compiled by Symeon of Durham, and securely dated to after 1125. The text is unedited. Following Bede’s two commentaries on the ages of the world,62 which functioned as the principal source for the first sections, the annals provide a chronicle of male succession from Adam (fol. 3r, col. 1) down to the beginning of the sixth age (i.e. after the birth of Christ) (fol. 4r, col. 1). At this point the entries develop into a much more ambitious rendering of chronology, dating key events from Roman imperial, Frankish and Anglo-Saxon history (fol. 4r, col. 1–fol. 5v) down to the death of German Emperor Henry V.63 The ways in which Symeon presented the information on the page suggest that he was seeking to maximise the chronological aspects of his information. The first two ages (fol. 3r, col. 1) report the line of succession through various Old Testament figures. Although these sections show a general attempt to format the text one line at a time, they are completed in large blocks of text with little designated separation of entries. From the beginning of the third age Symeon sought to simplify the layout through the repetition of a simple formula: ‘Ab Josue usque Othoniele anni xxvi’, ‘Ab Othoniele usque Aoth anni xl’, etc. This formula was used down to the end of the entry for Emperor Justinian (fol. 4r, col. 1). Symeon presented these entries on the page in almost tabular form, with a clear separation of the names and the notice for the number of years. For the entries in the fifth age, Symeon developed this further by adding the number of years in something very close to their own column at the end of each line. Although Symeon’s chronicle covers the first six ages, the bulk of the textual content relates to the sixth and final age (3v, col. 2 to 5v, col 1). For the first section, which follows Bede’s world chronicle (to fol. 4r, col. 1, line 28, for the year 734), Symeon continued to use his single-column format. At the end of these entries he recalibrated his sources into two columns, one for events on the Continent and one for England. This format change allowed Symeon to better present entries which were 58

in Medieval Cantors and their Craft: Music, Liturgy and the Shaping of History, ed. K.A.-M. Bugyis, A. Kraebel and M. Fassler (York, 2017), pp. 190–206. 58 The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D. Knowles with C. N. L. Brooke, OMT (Oxford, 2002), pp. 118–23. 59 Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, p. xliv. 60 Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, pp. 122–23. 61 Gullick, ‘The Hand of Symeon of Durham’, pp. 27 and 29. 62 Bede, The Reckoning of Time, pp. 157–237; Bede, On the Nature of Things and On Times, pp. 117–31. 63 Recorded in the penultimate entry on fol. 5v; Story, ‘Symeon as Annalist’, p. 203, n. 7.

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noticeably longer than previous entries, but also from a much wider geographical spread, to include kings in Wessex and Northumbria, popes and bishops. In a further change to the format each entry from this point onwards began with a notice of the ‘Anno ab incarnatio Domini’. The dates given followed the Dionysian annus domini and made no mention of Marianus’ revisions. The sources are largely unknown. Based on inconsistencies in the dates for Roman emperors, Story proposed that Symeon used at least three records of imperial succession,64 and she also suggested that Symeon had used the annals in Hunter 85 or a shared source.65 Symeon’s sources for the Frankish entries are also unidentified, although sections may point to his use of the chronicle by Regino of Prüm, which, it should be remembered, was also first conceived as a world chronicle from the birth of Christ and titled Libellus de temporibus dominicae incarnationis. Symeon’s work in B.iv.22 provides yet another example of original chronicle writing at Durham. It appears to have drawn on a similar range of sources as the entries in Hunter 85 and to have contributed to similar discussions, but was put together using an entirely different format for its display of information. As with its contemporary siblings, the emphasis of the B.iv.22 chronicle lay on measuring the passage of time. It did not offer a comprehensive history of English and Frankish events, even though we know that Symeon had access to much more detailed sources than he used for this composition. Each stage of the evolution highlights a clear shift relating to the temporal elements. Story argued that these annals demonstrate ‘an historian’s mind at work’, and, while this is true, they also show Symeon working through the challenges of how his sources had recorded the passage of time, before then attempting to reconcile these differences through careful formatting.66 The three chronicle texts produced in Anglo-Norman Durham give important information on the nature, and some of the intended purposes, of one particular sub-branch of historical studies. They highlight the junctions between historical and computistical studies and indicate significant expertise in these fields, and equally important investments of time and resources. By the third decade of the twelfth century Durham’s cathedral priory was at the very centre of an important intellectual network of Anglo-Norman chrono-historiography. Gameson placed Durham ‘at the cutting edge of the changes that were overtaking English book collections at the end of the eleventh century’, and the evidence suggests that this pace was maintained down to the beginning of the 1130s.67 The three chronicle texts in DCL MSS Hunter 100, DCL B.iv.22 and GUL MS Hunter 85 offer a detailed consideration of how one particular genre of history writing functioned within this. In 1984 Campbell highlighted the frequency with which scribes and authors were collaborating in the production of historical materials across the Anglo-Norman realm.68 More recently, Rollason and Lawrence-Mathers have demonstrated a range of connections between centres of historiographical and computistical studies including Hereford, Worcester, Malmesbury and Durham.69 Building on Campbell’s thesis, Rollason in particular has argued that chronicle writing in twelfth-century England was a collaborative process, carried out at what he described as ‘workStory, ‘Symeon as Annalist’, p. 207. Story, ‘Symeon as Annalist’, p. 209. 66 Story, ‘Symeon as Annalist’, p. 206. 67 Gameson, ‘English Book Collections’, p. 251. 68 J. Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, Peritia 3 (1984), 131–50. 69 Rollason, ‘Workshops’; Lawrence-Mathers, ‘Computus and Chronology in Anglo-Norman England’; Lawrence-Mathers, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Chronological Controversy’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, pp. 93–105. 64 65



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shops’ of historical writing, each defined by the presence of more than one individual writing or copying works at each given centre and, more importantly, by the regular exchange of draft works and sources between contributing institutions.70 Campbell, Brett and Rollason have all highlighted Durham’s place within these networks and, in particular, the exchanges between Worcester and Durham which are suggested in textual similarities between John of Worcester’s Chronicle and an ambitious new compilation produced at Durham, the Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum.71 The Historia de regibus survives only in a later twelfth-century copy in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 139 (fols 52r–129v), but Blair and Rollason have shown that the surviving copy represents an incomplete gathering of sources relating to a work which was never actually finished.72 The material for the years 848–1119 derives from an early version of John’s Worcester Chronicle, which lacks revisions that John made after 1119.73 This shows that Durham had procured significant parts of John’s developing Chronicle, at almost exactly the same time that they were acquiring the computistical texts present in MSS Hunter 100 and Hunter 85. All three of the Durham chronicles show evidence of engagement with the wider chronological controversy. The annals of Hunter 100 are a direct abridgement of Marianus’ chronicle as imported by Bishop Robert of Hereford, and the manuscript contains a summary of his treatise. The guide notes on the revised Marianan dating in the Hunter 100 tables are almost identical to those also featured in the corresponding sections of a near-contemporary computus volume produced under William of Malmesbury, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.3.14.74 The copy of John’s Worcester chronicle preserved in Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 157 included both the traditional Dionysian and the revised Marianan annus domini, as if its compilers were unsure as to which dating format would prevail. The annals in Hunter 85 stick proudly to the traditional Dionysian dating, but still speak to the contemporary debate. The tables begin with a clear statement in defence of the Dionysian and Bedan dating, and it is difficult to see these tables as anything other than a rebuttal of Marianus. The debate also explains Symeon’s chronicle in B.iv.22. Here he also used the Dionysian annus domini, but it looks like Symeon was attempting to put together his own independent composition on the date of the world, perhaps, again, in response to the chronicle of Marianus. Although each example is in its own way unique, the range of chronicle-writing projects at Durham echoes much of what can be seen elsewhere in the AngloNorman twelfth century. Some of the best-known authors of history were also active in the field of computistics. Orderic Vitalis claimed that John’s Worcester Chronicle began life as an expanded English version of Marianus Scotus,75 and, as noted above, William of Malmesbury also engaged with the debate. Orderic Vitalis made additions to an Easter-table chronicle at the monastery of Saint-Evroult in Normandy

Rollason, ‘Workshops’. This text, formerly the Durham Historia regum, is available in Symeonis Opera, II, pp. 3–283. See the forthcoming Symeon of Durham, Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum. 72 Blair, ‘Some Observations on the Historia regum’; Rollason, ‘Workshops’. 73 Martin Brett, ‘John of Worcester and His Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to R. W. Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26, at 119–21; John of Worcester, II, pp. lxx–lxxiii. 74 Lawrence-Mathers, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Chronological Controversy’, pp. 98–102. For a description of the manuscript, see: R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 83–85. 75 Orderic, II, pp. 186–89. 70 71

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and, interestingly, also made a single scribal addition to the calendar in a computus manuscript from Thorney Abbey, now Oxford, St John’s College MS 17.76 The twelve twelfth-century English Easter-table annals and the fifteen contemporary computus manuals identified by Hayward highlight Durham’s place within a debate that can be recognised throughout England at centres including Canterbury, Reading, Peterborough and probably many more monastic foundations whose contributions do not survive.77 The significant increase in historical writing seen throughout the Anglo-Norman realm from the last decade of the eleventh century onwards has often been interpreted as a delayed response to the social and political impacts of the Norman Conquest.78 There are indeed important reasons why authors of mixed cultural loyalties at large Benedictine houses would want to turn to the past in order to negotiate the shifting landscape of the present, and Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de exordio is a prime example of this. The Durham chronicles surveyed here show that historiographical projects, even those by the same authors working at the same time as the more politically charged works, could also emerge from important new intellectual stimuli. For their users, debates on the dating of Christ’s passion, reconciling these with the accounts given in the Gospels and delivering an accurate cycle of liturgical worship provided equally important applications of historical knowledge. Ultimately, these Durham chronicle writers were working to recalibrate the inconsistencies of previous patterns in dating historical events, to situate themselves within the cyclical and linear patterns of world history and, through this, to develop a better understanding of the nature of time.

J. Weston and C. C. Rozier, ‘Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts Featuring the Hand of Orderic Vitalis’, in Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed. C. C. Rozier, D. Roach, G. E. M. Gasper and E. van Houts (Woodbridge, 2016), pp. 385–98, at 388 and 390–92; C. C. Rozier, ‘Maîtriser le temps dans l’Historia ecclesiastica d’Orderic Vital’, in Maîtriser le temps et façonner l’histoire, ed. S. Lecouteaux and F. Paquet (Caen, forthcoming). 77 Hayward, Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles, I, pp. 22–3 and 44–46. 78 R. W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing, 4: The Sense of the Past’, TRHS 5th series, 23 (1973), 243–63; Martin Brett, ‘The Use of Universal Chronicle at Worcester’, in L’Historiographie médiévale en Europe: Actes du colloque organisé par la Fondation Européenne de la Science au Centre de Recherches Historiques et Juridiques de l’Université Paris I du 29 mars au 1er avril 1989, ed. Jean-Philippe Genet (Paris, 1991), pp. 277–85, at 279–80; Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, pp. 125–26. 76

Multiple (e.g. Oxford, University College, 165: c. 1104–7)

Oxford, Bodleian, Bodley 596

Oxford, Bodleian, Digby 175

Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, B.ii.35, Bede, Historia ecclesiastica fols 38–118

Does not survive

Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. 18.4.3, fols 1–83 BL, Harley 2729

Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, B.ii.1

Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, C.iii.18 Suetonius, De vita caesarum

BL, Harley 491, fols 3–46

Durham, University Library, Cosin V.ii.6

BL, Cotton Faustina A.V

Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, Hunter Computus manual with Easter-table annals (fols 27v–41r) 100

Glasgow, University Library, Hunter 85 (T.4.2)

2

3

4

5

6

7

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

8

Cronica monasterii Dunelmensis (Craster reconstruction)

Unknown

1

Computus manual with Easter-table annals (fols 18r–24v)

Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio

Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio

William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum ducum

Josephus, De antiquitate Iudaica and De bello Iudaico

Palladius, Historia Lausiaca; Victor of Vita, Historia persecutionis Africanae prouinciae Eutropius, Breviarium historiae Romanae

Pompeius Trogus, Historiae Philippicae

Bede, Vita Cuthberti

Historia de sancto Cuthberto; Bede, Vita Cuthberti

Updated Cuthbert miracles: Capitula miraculorum et translationum sancti Cuthberti (also known as Liber de translationibus et miraculis sancti Cuthberti).

Contents

Item Manuscripts

Appendix: Historical Texts at Durham Cathedral Priory, c. 1100–30

c. 1110–30

1100–20

c. 1104–15

c. 1104–15

s.xii 1/4

s.xii 1/4

s.xii 1/4

c. 1100

Pre-1096

Pre-1096

Pre-1096

1090s

1090s

1080s–1120s

c. 1072–83

Date of MS/text

De iniusta vexacione Willelmi episcopi primi (‘On the Unjust Persecution of Bishop William’). Symeon on Durham’s rights over Carlisle

Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, C.iv.15

Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, B.iv.22, fols 3r–5v

Unknown – multiple?

Does not survive

Does not survive

Does not survive

Does not survive

Does not survive

Does not survive

Does not survive

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 139, fols 50r–51v

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 139, fols 48v–50r

Durham, University Library, Cosin V.ii.6, fols 88r–98r

York, Minster, XVI.i.12, fols 67r–70v; Lincoln’s Inn, Hale 114, fols 161v–165v

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

De primo Saxonum adventu

Unknown

16

Symeon’s letter to Dean Hugh of York on the York archbishops

‘Vitae binae Sancti Anselmi’ = Vita et conversatione Anselmi and Historia novorum in Anglia De obsessione Dunelmi (‘On the Seige of Durham’)

William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum

‘Sallustii iii’

Orosius, Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII

Gesta Francorum (‘Liber de gestis Francorum’)

Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica

Cassiodorus, Historia tripartita

Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum (Now Camb., CCC 139, fols 52r–129v)

Abbreviated world chronicle

Annales Mettenses priores (fols 1r–28v); Regino of Prüm, Libellus de temporibus dominicae inarnationis (fols 29r–70v)

Contents

Item Manuscripts

Before 1122

1120s

1114–29

Before 1108x14

s.xii 1/2

s.xii 1/2

s.xii 1/2

s.xii 1/2

s.xii 1/2

s.xii 1/2

s.xii 1/2

To 1129

c. 1125–29

?1120s (Story: after 1130s)

1120s

Date of MS/text

THE COUNTS OF LOUVAIN AND THE ANGLO-NORMAN WORLD, c. 1100–c.  1215* Nicolas Ruffini-Ronzani In his 2012 monograph, Eljas Oksanen explored the interactions and exchanges between the county of Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world from the battle of Hastings to the end of King John’s troubled reign.1 His book has convincingly demonstrated how complex and vigorous cross-Channel relations were in the High Middle Ages. The question of the interactions between the Isles and the Continent investigated by Oksanen has fascinated British, French and Belgian historians for decades. Most of the works devoted to this topic have focused logically on the powerful county of Flanders, which was located a stone’s throw from the heart of the Anglo-Norman world. However, the Flemish aristocracy never had a monopoly on the exchanges with England. Strong ties also existed between the Anglo-Norman realm and the other principalities of the Low Countries, especially the county of Louvain. In the High Middle Ages the county of Louvain was an important principality located at the heart of Lower Lotharingia, at the western border of the German Empire (see Map 1). The counts of Louvain were the descendants of the Regniers of Hainault, one of the most turbulent lineages in Lotharingia in the tenth and the eleventh centuries (Figs 1 and 2). The towns of Louvain, Brussels and Antwerp were at the centre of their power.2 Due to the lack of sources, the history of the counts of Louvain is poorly known from the death of Lambert I in 1015 until the end of the eleventh century. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that they were key players in the area between France and the Empire towards 1100. Along with the counts of Flanders and the counts of Hainault, they were the most powerful princes in the Low Countries. In 1106 King Henry V gave the prestigious title of duke of Lotharingia to Count Godfrey I of Louvain (1095–1139), who had inherited the county from his elder brother the preceding year. Except between the years 1128 and 1140, the title remained in the hands of the comital family. The status of the duke of Lotharingia evolved after the Diet of Schwäbisch-Hall (1190), which limited the authority of the

I would like to thank Godfried Croenen, Harmony Dewez, John Gillingham, Lindy Grant, David Guilardian, Jean-François Nieus, Milan Pajic, Daniel Power and Nicholas Paul for their comments during the Battle conference and their advice on the early drafts of this article. I am particularly grateful to Elisabeth van Houts for her help and her warm welcome in Cambridge in 2017. 1 Eljas Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 (Cambridge, 2012). 2 On the Regnier and the early counts of Louvain, see Léon Vanderkindere, La formation territoriale des principautés belges au Moyen Âge, 2  vols (Brussels, 1899–1902), II, 102–17; Walter Mohr, Geschichte des Herzogtums Lothringen, 4  vols (Saarbrücken, 1974–86), II; Arnoud-Jan A.  Bijsterveld and David Guilardan, ‘La formation du duché (843–1106)’, in Histoire du Brabant, du duché à nos jours, ed. Raymond Van Uytven (Zwolle, 2004), pp. 41–63; David Guilardian, ‘Les sépultures des comtes de Louvain et des ducs de Brabant (XIe siècle–1430)’, in Sépulture, mort et représentation du pouvoir au Moyen Âge. Actes des 11e Journées lotharingiennes. 26–29 septembre 2000, ed. Michel Margue (Luxembourg, 2006), pp. 491–540. *

Fig. 1: Genealogy of the counts of Louvain before 1139

Fig. 2: Genealogy of the counts of Louvain / dukes of Brabant in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

Map 1: The duchy of Brabant in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries



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dukes to their own county and their imperial fiefs. The counts of Louvain used a surprising number of titles in their charters. They are alternatively described as dux of Lotharingia, comes or dux of Louvain and, later, dux of Brabant. Nevertheless, the title of duke of Brabant seems to assert itself from the end of the twelfth century.4 I will use these different titles as synonyms in this article. Following in the footsteps of Belgian and Dutch historians, I would like to examine the relationships between the counts of Louvain and the Anglo-Norman aristocracy from the beginning of the twelfth century until the end of the First War of the Barons (1215–17). The political, military and commercial interactions between the county of Louvain and England grew in intensity and complexity during these years. Although these cross-Channel relations were unquestionably less significant than the connections between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world, they constituted the first steps in the development of strong exchanges between Brabant and England.5 This article aims to shed new light on the origins of Anglo-Brabantine relations. My argument will focus on two crucial periods for the development of these exchanges. First, I will deal with the marriage between Adeliza of Louvain and King Henry I of England in 1121, as this union marked the first move towards a closer connection between these two ruling families. I will then turn to the late twelfth century and the early thirteenth century. Even though Duke Henry I of Brabant played an important role in the negotiations for the release of Richard I the Lionheart in 1194, the relations between King John, Duke Henry I and his representatives in England were complicated in the context of the political turmoil of the first quarter of the thirteenth century. As we shall see, the interactions between the rulers provided mutual benefits. The English kings used their relations with the Brabantine rulers to challenge the authority of their rivals on the Continent, while the counts of Louvain gained lands, prestige and political support from the English monarchs. 3

Adeliza of Louvain’s marriage in context While the literary connections between England and Lotharingia were strong, political connections seem to have been unimportant before 1100.6 The counts of Louvain and the Brabantine aristocracy did not take part in the Norman Conquest of England. Domesday Book and the earliest known Anglo-Norman records do not mention them among Insular landholders.7 However, it is likely that isolated Brabantines moved to England after 1066 with the objective of making a fortune in Paul Bonenfant and Anne-Marie Bonenfant-Feytmans, ‘Du duché de Basse-Lotharingie au duché de Brabant’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 46 (1968), 1129–65. 4 The charters of the counts of Louvain and the dukes of Brabant have been edited by David Guilardian, ‘Les actes des comtes de Louvain – ducs de Brabant (XIe–XIIe  s.). Contribution à l’étude la formation de la principauté territoriale’, Brussels 2018 (Université Libre de Bruxelles, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation). 5 Jean De Sturler, Les relations politiques et les échanges commerciaux entre le duché de Brabant et l’Angleterre au Moyen Âge. L’étape des laines anglaises en Brabant et les origines du développement du port d’Anvers (Paris, 1936). De  Sturler’s thesis is fundamental for the study of Anglo-Brabantine relations. I owe much to this book, in which almost all the relevant sources are cited. 6 Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum, ch. 90, 305; for the literary Lotharingian connection see esp. E. M. Tyler, England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c. 1000–c. 1150 (Toronto, 2017). 7 Some Lotharingian aristocrats, such as Gerard of Lotharingia and Albert the Lotharingian, appear in the Domesday Book, but we cannot be sure that they came from Brabant. See, for instance, K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents, 1066–1166, I, Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 133 and 206. 3

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the Anglo-Norman El Dorado, as did so many of their contemporaries. A charter of the abbey of St Truiden indicates that in 1095 an anonymous servus came back to the monastery after spending several years in England. This servus was most probably a ministerialis specialising in martial practices, because the charter indicates that he must fulfil military services for the monks.8 However, it seems that the interactions between the Brabantine and the English aristocracies did not involve the comital and royal families until the early twelfth century. Relations between the English and the Brabantine upper aristocracies grew in frequency only after 1100. According to the Annals of Cologne, the young Empress Matilda reconciled King Henry V (1099–1125) with Count Godfrey I of Louvain in 1110 in the context of a conflict about the ducal title.9 This event represents the first documented interaction between the counts and the ruling family of England and Normandy. Although it is difficult to evaluate the reliability of this evidence there is no doubt that relations between the Anglo-Norman king-dukes and the Brabantine counts were quite good in the first quarter of the twelfth century, a supposition confirmed by the marriage between King Henry  I (1100–35) and Adeliza, the daughter of Count Godfrey I of Louvain, in January 1121.10 In the king’s view, the motives for the union were twofold. The birth of a legitimate male heir was the king’s main objective, because of the death of his son William Ætheling in the White Ship disaster the previous year.11 Adeliza’s constant presence at Henry’s side during the first years of their marriage explains why the young queen was less politically active than her predecessors and, during her husband’s reign, played a role in literary patronage only.12 Unfortunately, their union remained infertile.13 King Henry’s second aim was to reinforce his alliance with the German throne and the eastern neighbours of Flanders. By marrying the daughter of one the most powerful princes in the Empire, Henry challenged the influence of his nemesis, William Clito. Indeed, William was supported by the counts of Flanders Baldwin  VII (1111–19) and Charles the Good (1119–27), who were at the same time the main rivals of Godfrey I.14 The marriage between Adeliza and Henry could therefore be seen as an Anglo-Brabantine alliance against common enemies in the context of the political turmoil of the early 1120s.15 8 Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Trond, ed. Charles Piot, 2 vols (Brussels, 1870–74), I, no. 21, 28–29 (see also the database Diplomata Belgica. The Diplomatic Sources from the Medieval Southern Low Countries [now DiBe], Brussels 2015 (www.diplomata-belgica.be/), no. 1395). On this document, see the comments of François-Louis Ganshof, Étude sur les ministeriales en Flandre et en Lotharingie (Brussels, 1926), p. 172, and Michael Mattheus, ‘Forms of Social Mobility: The Example of Zensualität’, in England and Germany in the High Middle Ages, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Hannah Vollrath (London, 1996), pp. 357–69, at 357–59. 9 Annales Coloniensis maximi, ed. Karl August Pertz, in MGH, SS, vol.  17 (Hannover, 1861), pp. 723–847, at 748. 10 About Adeliza of Louvain, see Laura Wertheimer, ‘Adeliza of Louvain and Anglo-Norman Queenship’, HSJ 7 (1995), 101–16, and Kathleen Thompson, ‘Queen Adeliza and the Lotharingian Connection’, Sussex Archaeological Collections 10 (2002), 57–64. 11 Judith A. Green, Henry I: King of England and Duke of Normandy (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 168–70. 12 Wertheimer, ‘Adeliza of Louvain’, 107. Adeliza commissioned a few works during her reign, including the Bestiaire of Philippe de Thaon, the first known French bestiary. A new edition of the text has just been published: Philippe de Thaon, Bestiaire, ed. Luigina Morini, Classiques français du Moyen Âge, 183 (Paris, 2018). 13 Kirsten A.  Fenton, Gender, Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 65–66. 14 Green, Henry I, p. 169; Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, pp. 24–26. 15 See also Edmund King, ‘Stephen of Blois, Count of Mortain and Boulogne’, English Historical Review 115 (2000), 271–96 for a wide-ranging discussion of the politics surrounding Clito’s claim to Flanders and the impact on Anglo-Flemish relations.



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If the marriage was beneficial to Godfrey of Louvain on a political level, it also brought considerable prestige to the Brabantine rulers. Thanks to this union, Godfrey became the father-in-law of the English king and could reasonably expect to be the grandfather of a future royal heir. In addition, the count of Louvain received prestigious gifts from the Anglo-Norman monarch. Thanks to a marginal note in the thirteenth-century autograph manuscript of the Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium of Giles of Orval, we know that Adeliza gave her father a banner ‘which is called a Gallic standard’, and which he proudly displayed on the battlefields until 1129, when it was lost in a battle in Duras.16 Moreover, Adeliza may have planned to give a precious relic of Saint Bregwine, an early bishop of Canterbury, to the Brabantine abbey of Affligem in the months following her marriage.17 It is likely that Adeliza’s marriage was part of a broader political project, as the count of Louvain always tried to strengthen his relations with foreign ruling families. Godfrey I was keen to marry his children to high ranking families settled outside or on the borders of Lower Lotharingia: his son Godfrey  II (1139–42) and his daughter Ida married members of two prominent German families (see fig. 2). These prestigious unions, and particularly Adeliza’s marriage, were long remembered in Brabant. Adeliza was still commemorated as queen of England in the text and in a miniature of a fifteenth-century manuscript containing a copy of the Brabantse Yeesten, a late-medieval Dutch chronicle highlighting the political actions of the dukes of Brabant.18 In such a context, the counts of Louvain enjoyed very good relations with the Anglo-Norman rulers around 1120. The ruling monarchs and the counts were allied on several occasions. As we have seen, Count Godfrey I sided with King Henry I in the conflict against William Clito. Moreover, Godfrey closely collaborated with his son-in-law in the Flemish civil war that broke out in Flanders after the assassination of Charles the Good in March 1127.19 The conflict coincided with his brief deposition as duke of Lotharingia.20 Therefore, Godfrey acted only as count of Louvain in these troubles, and not as a representative of the imperial authority. According to the Flemish chronicler Galbert of Bruges, Henry I, Stephen of Blois and Godfrey I of Louvain supported the same candidate to the county of Flanders in 1127–28. They agreed to back Charles the Good’s nephew, a young noble called Arnulf of Denmark, against William Clito, who had the support of King Louis VI of France (1108–37). Moreover, they planned that Arnulf would marry Ida, one of ‘Captum est et vexillum ducis, quod dicitur Gallice standarre, opera plumario, quod dicitur cum acu factum, quod miserat ei regina Anglie, quod fastu superbie ex precepto illius quadriga boum ferebat; ambientes illud qui omnes custodientes decollate sunt, et omnia castra eius fugata. Dictum vexillum per multos annos postea deportabatur per Leodium in rogationibus ab ecclesia beati Lamberti’ (Giles of Orval, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium, ed. Johannes Heller, in MGH, SS, vol. 25, 1880, 1–129, at 98–99). 17 Bernhard W.  Scholz, ‘Eadmer’s Life of Bregwine, Archbishop of Canterbury’, Traditio 22 (1966), 127–48, here at 146–47. I am very grateful to Elisabeth van Houts for this reference. Prof. van Houts will give a full interpretation of this text in a work about cross-Channel marriages and multilingualism. 18 ‘Vier kindere liet die prince hoghe: / Godevaert, die bleef hertoghe, / Ende Heinric, die wart monnec daer na / Te Haffelgheem, als ic versta, / Ende Aliten, als ict bescreven vant, / Die coninghinne was van Enghelant, / End Yde, van Cleven gravinne, / Ende Clarisse, die om die Gods mine / Maghet bleef, ende maghet starf, / Daer si hemelrike mede verwarf’ (The prince left four children / Godfrey, who became duke. / Then Henry, who was afterwards monk / In Affligem, as I understand. / Then Adeliza, who was queen of England, / As I indicated earlier. / Then Ida, countess of Cleves. / Then Clarissa, who for the love of God / Lived as virgin and died as a virgin / And now is with Him in the Kingdom of Heaven) (Jan van Boendale, De Brabantsche Yeesten, of Rymkronyk van Braband, ed. Jan Frans Willems, 2 vols, 1839–43, I, 359–60). The fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript is now in Brussels, Royal Library, MS IV.684, fol. 6r, online: https://belgica.kbr.be/belgica/. 19 Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, pp. 26–29. 20 Bonenfant and Bonenfant-Feytmans, ‘Du duché de Basse-Lotharingie au duché de Brabant’, 1138. 16

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the daughters of Count Godfrey of Louvain. In case of success, this alliance would have benefited both parties, as it might have extended their influence in Flanders, to the detriment of William Clito.21 However, the plan quickly failed, probably because Arnulf was captured by Clito in Saint Omer and was forced to abandon his dream of ruling the Flemish county.22 In the following months Godfrey renounced his alliance with Henry I and joined the party of William Clito, for reasons that remained unclear. Godfrey and William Clito were indeed allies when the latter unexpectedly died during the siege of Alost on 27 July 1128.23 We do not know how Henry I reacted to Godfrey’s apparent betrayal. The event probably had negative consequences on the friendship between the Brabantine and the Anglo-Norman rulers. Indeed, there is little doubt that relations between the counts of Louvain and the kings of England became less intensive in the second third of the twelfth century, as compared with what they had been during the Flemish civil war, possibly because of this treason. Nevertheless, we cannot exclude the possibility that the political troubles experienced by the English kingdom during the Anarchy and the separation of the duchy from the kingdom may also explain why relations between Brabant and England loosened. It must be noted that Queen Adeliza did not come alone to England in the early 1120s. Her half-brother Joscelin and her household accompanied her. We do not know the nature of the relationship between the young queen and Joscelin before their departure from Brabant, but it is likely that they were bound by a strong friendship. They repeatedly collaborated on the political field in the context of the Anarchy. Joscelin made several gifts to the abbey of Reading for his half-sister’s soul after her death in 1151.24 He also married and settled in England. Towards the middle of the twelfth century, he married Agnes, co-heiress de Percy and daughter of William II de Percy.25 Adeliza contributed to the promotion of some other Brabantines in England at the very beginning of her reign. For instance, her secretary, Godfrey, was appointed bishop of Bath by King Henry I in 1123.26 Thanks to her marriage, Adeliza acquired several properties in England. At Henry  I’s death in 1135 she held lands and monastic houses in Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire and Gloucestershire.27 These lands may have constituted her dower. Her main holding was the honour of Arundel, on the south coast, which then passed to her children with her second husband, William d’Aubigny, the future earl of Arundel and Lincoln (Map  2 and Table  1).28 Adeliza married William d’Aubigny in about 1138. He was the son of King Henry’s butler and a close ally of King Stephen (1135–54).29 Adeliza chose Joscelin as castellan of Arundel. At the same time, Joscelin became lord of the barony of Petworth, some twenty kilometres to the north of Arundel. This grant was confirmed by the future Henry II (1154–89) in

Galbert of Bruges, De multro, traditione et occisione gloriosi Karoli comitis Flandriarum, ed. Jeff Rider, Corpus christianorum, Continuatio Mediaeualis 131 (1994), ch.  99 and 101, 146–47. See also Laurent Feller, L’assassinat de Charles le Bon comte de Flandre. 2  mars 1127 (Paris, 2012), pp. 191–2 and 204, and Green, Henry I, pp. 197–99. 22 Galbert of Bruges, De multro, ch. 97, pp. 144–45. 23 Ibid., ch. 119, pp. 165–66. 24 The Percy Fee, ed. Charles Travis Clay, Early Yorkshire Charters 11 (1963), nos. 289–91, 359–60. 25 David Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, 1135–1154 (London, 2000), p. 264. 26 ASC, I, E 1123 (p. 375), and II, p. 219; Thompson, ‘Queen Adeliza’, pp. 57–64, here at 58. 27 Wertheimer, ‘Adeliza of Louvain’, 109–10. 28 About her possessions, see also Reading Abbey Cartularies, ed. Brian Richard Kemp, 2 vols, Camden Series (London, 1986–88), I, nos. 268–72, 370–71 and 534–36, at pp. 225–28, 301–3 and 403–6. 29 Wertheimer, ‘Adeliza of Louvain’, 110; Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, p. 264. 21



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Map 2: Brabantine possessions in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 1153–54.30 There is no doubt that these lands and rights did not belong to the counts of Louvain, but to Adeliza and Joscelin, respectively, in their own names. A more debatable point is the fact that Adeliza may have ended her days in England. According to early-modern Brabantine sources, she was buried in the transept of the abbey church of Affligem, a monastic house greatly favoured by the comital family.31 However, a charter of Joscelin of Louvain dated 1151–57 states that his sister was buried at the abbey of Reading.32 This twelfth-century evidence appears trustworthy, even though a tomb built in honour of a queen and containing the skelThe Percy Fee, no. 288, 358. Wertheimer, ‘Adeliza of Louvain’, 115; Guilardian, ‘Les sépultures des comtes de Louvain’, pp. 502–3. 32 ‘Et preter hoc quando fui Radingie ad sepeliendam dominam et sororem meam Adaleidem reginam concessi predictis monachis essarta que prenominati tres homines occupaverant de dominio meo unde neque mihi neque monachis aliquod servitium faciebant’ (The Percy Fee, no. 290, 360). 30 31

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eton of a woman was discovered in Affligem in 1930.33 A way to explain this apparent contradiction is to hypothesise that Adeliza’s body might have been divided, one part being buried in Reading and the other in Affligem. So, both monastic houses could have claimed the ownership of her body. However, this hypothesis cannot be demonstrated. Until this question is solved we cannot state with certainty that she was buried in Affligem and thus question the strength of her ties with Brabant at the end of her life. Godfrey I’s children never acted as representatives of the Brabantine comital power in England. Adeliza and Joscelin always pursued their own interests. This was particularly true in the context of the Anarchy, during which they tried in vain to reconcile King Stephen with Empress Matilda.34 Adeliza and Joscelin’s names rarely appear in Brabantine documents. Should we conclude that they no longer had any relations with Brabant once they were settled in England? Of course not. Even after King Henry’s death, Adeliza still had interactions with her family and her native country. In 1143 she and her second husband gave twenty libratas terre in the honour of Arundel to the abbey of Affligem. This gift was confirmed in 1154 by Henry II in the presence of Joscelin of Louvain, Adeliza’s brother.35 The witness lists of the charters reveal that a Brabantine delegation came to England for the reception of the gift. Some English aristocrats were also present in Brabant in the middle of the twelfth century. A charter indicates that a man called ‘Godfrey the English, cousin of the duke’ was present at the Brabantine court in 1173. This man was probably one of the youngest sons of William  I d’Aubigny and Adeliza or a son of Joscelin of Louvain and Agnes of Percy.36 Thus, one cannot affirm that the exchanges between Brabant and England were interrupted in the second third of the twelfth century, as Adeliza, Joscelin and their heirs still had strong ties with their native country until their deaths. Duke Henry I, the Brabantine Aristocracy and the Anglo-Norman World The interactions between the dukes of Brabant and the kings of England received a new impetus at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Thanks to his political talent, Duke Henry I of Brabant (1190–1235) became one of the most prominent figures of his time.37 He played a major role on the political scene in the conflicts between King Philip  II Augustus (1180–1223), the English monarchs and the candidates to the Imperial throne. His relations seem to have been quite good with King Richard I (1189–99), probably because their political agendas converged. Duke  Henry is likely to have taken part in the final negotiations with Emperor Henry VI (1191–97) for Richard’s release in February 1194.38 The Lionheart promised to give him an annual pension in exchange for his homage. Richard made similar promises to several Lotharingian princes, such as Duke Henry III of Limburg (1165– Guilardian, ‘Les sépultures des comtes de Louvain’, appendix 1, p. 536. Adeliza’s role in the context of the Anarchy was particularly complex. As it does not concern her relations with her native country, I do not examine it here. On the topic, see Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, pp. 107–10; Wertheimer, ‘Adeliza of Louvain’, 112–15. 35 Cartulaire de l’abbaye d’Afflighem et des monastères qui en dépendaient, ed. Edgard de Marneffe (Louvain, 1894), nos. 67–68, 104–7 (DiBe, nos. 1924 and 1965). 36 ‘[…] Godefridus Anglicus, ducis cognatus […]’ (Ibid., no. 145, pp. 217–218; DiBe, no., 1976). See also David Crouch, The English Aristocracy, 1070–1272. A Social Transformation (New Haven, 2011), p. 34. 37 On Duke Henry I, see Georges Smets, Henri I, duc de Brabant (1190–1235) (Brussels, 1908). 38 On these events and the implication of the duke, De Sturler, Les relations politiques, pp. 95–7, and John Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven, 1999), pp. 249–50. 33

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1221) and his son Bishop Simon of Liège (1193–94). Richard spent almost a month in Brabant just after his liberation, which is quite surprising for a king whose position was particularly critical in his own lands. He travelled to both Louvain and Brussels before boarding a ship in Antwerp. From there, he sailed to England, after a few days spent in the Zwin estuary, on the Flemish coast.40 As John Gillingham has underlined, this long stay in Brabant and at the borders of Flanders probably followed a political agreement between the rulers. Indeed, Henry I and Richard I were allies of convenience in the middle of the 1190s.41 Whereas Richard was in open conflict with Philip  II Augustus, tensions existed between Henry  I and his neighbours, Counts Baldwin V (1171–95) and his son Baldwin VI of Hainault (1195–1205), who ruled over the counties of Flanders, Hainault and Namur (see map 1). In such a context, Richard and Henry concluded a treaty of mutual alliance. According to Gislebert of Mons, the chancellor and chronicler in the service of Baldwin V of Hainault, Richard I ‘promised aid to the duke against the count of Flanders and Hainault and marquis of Namur, and all the men enfeoffed by him promised aid for him against the king of France, so that at least they made such great war against the count of Flanders and Hainault that the count could by no means bring help to the lord king of France’.42 Gislebert claims that the treaty was never put into practice. Nevertheless, John Gillingham has convincingly argued that Richard  I’s long stay in the Zwin estuary may have been part of the agreement, as his presence intimidated and assuaged Baldwin V, who had attacked several Brabantine towns in 1194.43 In return for the support he gave to Richard I, Duke Henry I received several possessions in eastern England. The honour of Eye was the heart of the Brabantine Insular estates at the turn of twelfth and thirteenth centuries, although the dukes also had possessions in Herefordshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire (map  2 and table  1).44 Henry  I acquired the honour of Eye in fief, thanks to his marriage with Matilda, the daughter of Count Matthew of Boulogne (1160–73), who once 39

‘Deinde rex Anglie promisit, et cartis suis confrmavit, quibusdam archiepiscopis et episcopis, et ducibus et comitibus, et baronibus multis de imperio, redditus annuos pro homagiis et fidelitatibus et auxiliis eorum contra regem Franciae. Recepit itaque homagium […] de duce de Luvain […] salva fidelitate imperatoris’ (Howden, Chronica, III, 234). In 1201 the duke of Brabant was still owed 1,000 marks (PR 3 John, p. 68), perhaps, as De Sturler suggests (Les relations politiques, p. 96, n. 76), a debt incurred as a consequence of paying for Richard’s liberation. 40 Jacques Falmagne, Baudouin V, comte de Hainaut (1150–1195) (Montréal, 1966), p. 248. Two charters of Richard I are dated from Louvain and Brussels. See Hansisches Urkundenbuch, ed. Konstantin Hölbaum, 4 vols (1876–96), I, no. 40, 22–3 (Louvain, 16 February; Duke Henry I appears in the witness list), and Chronique de l’abbaye de Ter Doest, ed. Ferdinand Van de Putte and Charles Carton (1845), no. 9, 40 (Brussels, 25 February; DiBe, no. 2758). 41 Gillingham, Richard I, p. 250. 42 ‘[…] ipsique duci contra comitem Flandrie et Hanonie et marchionem Namurcensem auxilium promisit, et omnes infeodati ab eo auxilium ei promiserunt contra regem Francorum, ita quod saltem tantam comiti Flandrie et Hanoniensi guerram facerent, quod comes nequaquam domino regi Francie auxilium ferre posset’ (La chronique de Gislebert de Mons, ed. Léon Vanderkindere, 1904, ch. 198, 284–85; here in the translation of Chronicle of Hainaut, transl. Laura Napran (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 156). On Gislebert of Mons and the political context in Hainault at the turn of twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Nicolas Ruffini-Ronzani, ‘Laws in the Making. The Production of the “Feudal” and “Penal” Charters of Hainault (July 1200)’, in Identifying Governmental Forms in Europe, 1100–1350. Palaeography, Diplomatics and History, ed. Alice Taylor (Cambridge, forthcoming). 43 Gillingham, Richard I, p. 250; La chronique de Gislebert de Mons, ch. 204, pp. 89–91. 44 On the early history of the castle and honour of Eye, see Chris Lewis, ‘The King and Eye: a Study in Anglo-Norman Politics’, EHR 104 (1989), 569–89. Fourteenth-century documents reveal the composition of the fief of Eye given to the duke (Calendar of the Close Rolls 1313–1318, Edward II (London, 1893), p. 108). This explains why some sources written later than Henry’s death in 1235 appear in table 1. 39

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claimed rights on Eye. Most of the English possessions of the dukes of Brabant were probably acquired at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, after the conclusion of political and military agreements. These fiefs were pivotal in the relations between Duke Henry I and King John (1199–1216). Due to the political context, relations between the rulers were particularly complicated. The Brabantine duke remained faithful to the English king in the months following the death of the Lionheart. According to the Annales Wintonienses, Duke Henry  I and his relative Renaud of Dammartin, count of Boulogne (1190– 1227), came in person to Westminster to pay homage for their English fiefs in May 1199, at the very beginning of John’s reign.46 However, Henry’s position evolved in the following years. Like Renaud of Dammartin in 1202, he chose to support Philip II Augustus against King John in the early years of the thirteenth century.47 In February 1205 the French king received the homage of Henry I at Pacy-sur-Eure in exchange for an annual pension of 200  silver marks.48 A few days later, in the presence of Philip II Augustus, Henry and Renaud concluded the treaty of Vernon, according to which the duke of Brabant renounced his former claims on the Boulonnais in exchange for an annual pension. Both princes also reached an agreement about the English possessions of their father-in-law, the late Matthew of Boulogne.49 This resulted in a major political crisis between Duke Henry I and King John. From February to April 1205 the latter ordered his officers to seize Henry’s possessions in Eye, Sedgebrook, Croxton and Costessey.50 King John became reconciled with Henry  I in 1208, probably because the latter had distanced himself from Philip  II Augustus.51 Hence the duke of Brabant recovered his English lands and rights.52 The fate of the Brabantine possessions in England was determined by the polit45

[…] ‘et insuper duci Lovaniensi quandam terram in Anglia, quam Matheus comes Boloniensis, pater uxoris sue, reclamaverat, in feodo reddidit’ […] (La chronique de Gislebert de Mons, ch.  198, 285). According to De Sturler, Les relations politiques, p. 97, n. 78, it is likely that Matthew never had the real possession of Eye. About Matilda of Brabant, see Jean-Louis Kupper, ‘Mathilde de Boulogne, Duchesse de Brabant (†  1210)’, in Femmes, mariages, lignages, XIIe–XIVe  siècles. Mélanges offerts à Georges Duby, ed. André Joris (Brussels, 1992), pp. 233–55. On the duke’s possessions in Eye, see also Eye Priory: Cartulary and Charters, ed. Vivien Brown, 2  vols (Woodbridge, 1992–94), particularly vol.  2, pp. 31–33. 46 ‘In crastino autem coronationis sue venerunt ad eum dux Lovanie et comes Bolonie et comes de Guines, exigentes ab eo iura sua, que tenentur habere in Anglia’ (Annales Wintonienses, ed. Felix Liebermann and Reinhold Pauli, in MGH, SS, vol. 27 (1885), pp. 449–58, at 453). 47 Henri Malo, Un grand feudataire: Renaud de Dammartin et la coalition de Bouvines. Contribution à l’étude du règne de Philippe Auguste (Paris, 1898), pp. 72–73; Smets, Henri I, duc de Brabant, pp. 114–15. 48 Léopold Delisle, Catalogue des actes de Philippe Auguste (Paris, 1856), no.  909, 209 (DiBe, no. 13710). 49 Malo, Un grand feudataire, nos. 57–8, 283–6 (DiBe, nos. 13711–12). 50 Rotuli litterarum patentium in Turri Londinensi asservati [henceforth RLP], ed. Thomas Duffus Hardy, Record Commission (London, 1835), 50b (Eye, 25  February); Rotuli litterarum clausarum in Turri Londinensi asservati [henceforth RLC], ed. Thomas Duffus Hardy, 2  vols, Record Commission (London, 1833–44), I, 21 (Sedgebrook and Croxton, 2 March; see also DiBe, no. 13715) and 22 (Costessey, 11 March); De Sturler, Les relations politiques, pp. 98–99. 51 Smets, Henri I, duc de Brabant, pp. 124–25. We do not know why Henry I distanced himself from Philip II Augustus. According to Smets, the reconciliation between the duke of Brabant and King John in March 1208 was not linked with the struggle for the Imperial throne between Otto IV of Brunswick and Philip of Swabia, who was supported by the king of France. It must be added that a few months later, in the summer following the assassination of Philip of Swabia, Duke Henry I allied with the French king. They hoped that Henry would be able to seize the Imperial throne. See the charters published in Malo, Un grand feudataire, 279–80, nos. 65–6 (DiBe, nos. 14166–67). 52 RLP, 81 (26 March, Eye); RLC, I, 109b (7 April, Eye); PR 1208, John, 13 (Laxfield); Rotuli chartarum in Turri Londinensi asservati, ed. Thomas Duffus Hardy, Record Commission (London, 1837), 176b and 177b (1 May, Dennington). 45



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ical relations between Henry I and the English kings. Henry’s political positions evolved quickly and frequently during the 1210s and 1220s, on the eve of the battle of Bouvines, during the First War of the Barons and in the first years of Henry III’s reign (1216–72).53 As a result, the kings’ officers seized the honour of Eye between 1213–15, 1216–17 and 1221–25.54 Henry  I definitively lost Eye in 1227, when King Henry III attributed it to his brother Richard of Cornwall, probably because of a new conflict with the duke.55 It is interesting to note that during these years Henry I tried in vain to marry one of his daughters to William II Marshall, the son of the famous earl of Pembroke and regent of England.56 As has been stressed by De Sturler, the tensions between Henry I and the English rulers were especially damaging for the Brabantine merchants, who were at times arrested and whose goods were frequently seized.57 Duke Henry I and the English kings almost never met personally. They probably encountered each other on the Continent on important political occasions (for instance, during the negotiations regarding the liberation of Richard I), but such meetings seem to have been very rare or, at least, did not leave any traces in the records. Even though he had fiefs in eastern England, the duke of Brabant was hardly present on the Isles. It seems that he came into England only once, to perform homage for his fiefs in 1199. However, this does not mean that Henry I did not take an interest in his Insular possessions. The duke made donations to English churches, granted some of his properties and ordered works on his lands.58 In fact, Henry I mainly acted in England through representatives, who sometimes were members of the ducal family. Henry I’s main right-hand man in England was Godfrey of Louvain, Count Godfrey  III’s illegitimate son (see fig.  2). William of Louvain, Henry I’s half-brother, may also have played such a role during the early thirteenth century.59 These men maintained strong relations with their native country and frequently crossed the Channel to accomplish diplomatic missions for the Brabantine duke or the English king. This is certainly revealing of a reinforcement of the exchanges between Brabant and the Anglo-Norman world. The case of Godfrey of Louvain is particularly interesting. As a natural child he did not receive lands in Brabant. But this did not prevent him from playing a major political role in the prince’s entourage. Godfrey was present in England mostly from 1195 onwards. He was warden of the castle of Eye, which belonged to the dukes of Brabant from 1194 and for which he paid scutage in 1199.60 He was also in the king’s service. In 1208, for instance, he went on a diplomatic mission on the Continent for King John.61 He also acted as an intermediary between the ruling monarch Smets, Henri I, duc de Brabant, pp. 135–85; De Sturler, Les relations politiques, pp. 89–115. On Henry  I’s role in the battle of Bouvines (1214), see recently Dominique Barthélemy, La bataille de Bouvines. Histoire et légendes (Paris 2018) and Sergio Boffa, ‘Le rôle équivoque joué par le duc de Brabant Henri Ier à la bataille de Bouvines (27 juillet 1214)’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 59 (2016), 337–56. 54 De Sturler, Les relations politiques, pp. 102–5. 55 Calendar of the charter rolls 6 vols (London, 1903–27), I, 101 (6 October 1227). 56 Ernest van Bruyssel, ‘Liste analytique des documents inédits concernant l’histoire des provinces belges qui existent en Angleterre, dans les archives de la chancellerie’, Bulletin de la Commission royale d’histoire 12 (1859), 33–55, at 46–48. 57 De Sturler, Les relations politiques, pp. 106–11. 58 Eye priory, vol. 2, 31–33. 59 On William of Louvain, see ibid., 92–93, n. 65 60 ‘Godefridus de Luvein c. et quattuor xx. et i. m. de scutagio honoris de Eye’ (Rotulus cancellarii, 339). See also in 1208 and in 1225: RLP, 81, RLC, II, 10b, and the discussion of the family in Eye priory, XI–XII. 61 ‘Invenite dilectis et fidelibus nostris H., archidiacono Staffordis, et Gerardo de Rodes et Godefrido de 53

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and the duke of Brabant in 1212, in the difficult context of the conflict between Frederick  Hohenstaufen (1220–45) and Otto  IV of Brunswick (1209–15) for the Imperial throne. Unfortunately for King John and Duke Henry I, who were among the supporters of Otto,62 Godfrey was arrested in Flanders by Louis of France, son of Philipp II Augustus, during his mission.63 He regained his freedom in the following months. Godfrey was frequently rewarded by the king for his services. For instance, he received a tunic and a grey coat from King John in January 1208 following a reconciliation between the king and the duke.64 Although he divided his time between Brabant and England, as appears from the witness lists of the Brabantine charters and the English rolls,65 Godfrey chose to settle in England in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, in the company of Brabantine followers.66 In 1200 he married Alice of Hastings, the widow of Ralph of Cornhill. He had to pay scutage on the latter’s fiefs from that year on.67 Godfrey of Louvain’s possessions in England were scattered between different shires and were far away from the possessions of Duke Henry I (map 2 and table 1). It is clear that Godfrey was more than a simple Brabantine representative in England. He tried to make his own way in the Anglo-Norman world, probably because he knew he had no future in Brabant. The least that can be said is that he was highly successful in his undertaking. After his death around 1225 he was succeeded by one of his sons, Matthew, who also remained in England and who also played an intermediary role between the English and Brabantine rulers, as his father had done.68 Some other Anglo-Brabantine aristocrats were also present in the duke’s entourage in the middle of the thirteenth century, such as Robert of England, who appears in a ducal charter in 1243.69 Of course, Duke Henry I and Godfrey of Louvain were not the only Brabantines in frequent contact with the English rulers. Dozens more were in England during Luvanis et T. Theutonico, nunciis nostris quos mittimus circa negocia nostra, bonam et securam navem’ […] (RLC, I, 108). 62 On this topic, see Smets, Henri I, duc de Brabant, pp. 131–32, and Natalie M. Fryde, ‘King John and the Empire’, in King John: New Interpretations, ed. Stephen Church (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 335–46. 63 ‘Godefridus de Luvein ex praecepto regis per Flandriam latenter iter faciens, ad ducem Luvein iturus, a filio regis Francie Lodowico captus est’ (Annales sancti Edmundii, in Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, ed. Thomas Arnold, 3 vols, RS, 1890–96, II, 22). See also, the same year, RLC, vol. 1, 130b: ‘Rex Heinrico duci Lovanii refert de hoc quod efficaciter intendit promotioni nepotis sui Othonis imperatoris Romani.’ 64 RLC, I, 100. 65 In Brabantine charters: Cartulaire d’Afflighem, no. 235, 318–20 (1202, DiBe no. 13318); Joseph Daris, ‘Notice historique sur l’abbaye de Beaurepart à Liège’, Bulletin de l’Institut archéologique liégeois 9 (1868), 348 (1202, DiBe no. 31085); Oorkondenboek van Noord-Brabant tot 1312, 2 vols, 1979–2000, II/1: De heerlijkheden Breda en Bergen op Zoom (709–1288), ed. Martien Dillo and Geertrui Van Synghel, no. 939, 159–60 (1212, DiBe no. 14893), etc. For mentions of Godfrey of Louvain in the royal documentation, see, among others, RLC, I, 14 (1204), 100, 108–109 (1208), 143, 147 (1213), 196 (1215), and vol. 2, 10 (1225); RLP, 50b (1205), 81 (1208), 105b (1213), etc. 66 In the middle of the 1190s Godfrey was sometimes accompanied by some followers in England: ‘Alexander capellanus Godefridi de Luvein debet i. m. pro iniusta retrencatione cursus aque. Serlo, serviens eius, debet dimidium m. pro eodem’ (PR 7 Richard I, 6). 67 PR 2 John, 43, 46, 48, and 51. Alice of Hastings and Godfrey had at least three sons. Godfrey and Matthew were hostages of King John in 1213: ‘Duo filii Godefridi de Lovain obsides liberati sunt Roberto de Burgate in custodia’ (RLC, I, 143). John was a clergyman and is mentioned from the 1220s (Eye priory, vol. 1, nos. 68–69 and 187, 73–76 and 152–153). 68 On Matthew I of Louvain, De Sturler, Les relations politiques, p. 97, n. 67. Matthew became the new warden of Eye after his father’s death. See the undated charter of Duke Henry I published in Ecclesiastical documents, ed. Joseph Hunter (London, 1840), pp. 63–64, and its confirmation by King Henry III in April 1226: Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 6 vols (London, 1901–13), II: 1225–1232, 27 (DiBe, no. 34908). See also Eye priory, vol. 1, no. 187, 152–153. 69 ‘[…] Roberto de Anglia, nostro consanguineo […]’ (Roger De Ganck, ‘The three foundations of Bartholomew of Tienen’, in Cîteaux. Commentarii Cistercienses 37 (1986), 49–75, at 73).



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King John’s reign, especially for military and commercial purposes. The presence of Brabantine mercenaries in the Anglo-Norman world was nothing new. The anonymous warring ‘serf’ mentioned in the above-mentioned charter of the abbey of St Truiden may have been a mercenary.70 Paid soldiers designated as ‘Brabantines’ are found in the sources from the middle of the twelfth century onwards.71 It seems that their number increased in England from the beginning of King John’s reign. Several Brabantine aristocrats and mercenaries appear in the chancery rolls of the early thirteenth century, particularly in the context of the First Barons’ War. Some of them played a major role in the king’s armies. As the terms Brabantini and Brabantiones were often used to refer to paid soldiers in general, it is difficult to determine whether the mercenaries designated as Brabantines in the sources really were native of Brabant or whether they came from other principalities, such as Flanders. However, in some cases there is no ambiguity. Walter III Berthout, Godescalc of Machelen, the lords of Diest and the ministerial family of Huldenberg were among the Brabantines frequently present in England. Walter III Berthout, a member of one of the most powerful families from Brabant, was present in the king’s entourage before 1215. As one of his main representatives in the Low Countries he was put in charge of diplomatic missions, such as political negotiations with Count Louis II of Looz (1191–1218) in 1208.72 Godescalc of Machelen and Walter Buc, whose origin is unclear, were among the chiefs of the Brabantine paid soldiers in the king’s armies.73 In 1215 they were responsible for recruiting mercenaries in the Low Countries and were allowed to promise payments in the king’s name.74 These men also exercised ward duties in important castles such as Rochester and Winchester.75 Some of them received money-fiefs and lands as a reward for their support to the English rulers (map 2 and table 1). Godescalc of Machelen and his heirs settled in Montgomery, on the Welsh frontier, while the bulk of the possessions of the lords of Diest were in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Their presence overseas demonstrates how effective the ties between Brabant and the England were at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Trond, I, no. 21, 28–29. Sergio Boffa, ‘Les mercenaires appelés “Brabançons” aux ordres de Renaud de Dammartin et leur tactique défensive à la bataille de Bouvines (1214)’, Revue du Nord 99 (2017), 7–24, at 18 (see the bibliography at n. 79). See also Eljas Oksanen, ‘The Anglo-Flemish treaties and Flemish soldiers in England, 1101–1163’, in Mercenaries and Paid Men. The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. John France (Leiden and Boston 2008), pp. 261–73. 72 RLP, p. 82b; De Sturler, Les relations politiques, pp. 90–91. About the Berthouts, see Godfried Croenen, Familie en macht. De familie Berthout en de Brabantse adel (Louvain, 2003). 73 De Sturler, Les relations politiques, p. 90, n. 45, and Boffa, ‘Les mercenaires’, 22, regard Walter Buc as Brabantine. There was indeed a knightly or ministerial family called Boc in Brabant during the thirteenth century (Croenen, Familie en macht, pp. 190 and 250). Nevertheless, a survey in the Diplomata Belgica reveals that people called Buc or Buk were also originating from Flanders at the beginning of the thirteenth century. See DiBe, nos. 14200 and 15457 for John and Lambert Buc in Ypres (1208 and 1215), 28547 for Jordanus Buc in Eeckhout, near Bruges (1211), etc. On these mercenaries, see also S. D. Church, The household knights of King John (Cambridge, 1999), 113–114. Historians have traditionally seen Godescalc as an aristocrat from the city of Mechelen. However, he is more likely Godescalc of Machelen, a small village in Brabant. I am grateful to Godfried Croenen for his very useful remarks about the Brabantine aristocracy. 74 For instance, see RLC, I, 138 (1213, Walter Buc and Gerard of Zottegem); RLP, 156 (1215, Walter III Berthout, Gerard of Zottegem, and Godescalc of Machelen); De Sturler, Les relations politiques, pp. 90–91. 75 RLP, 178b and 188b (1216, Godescalc of Machelen in Rochester and in Winchester); RLC, I, 583 (1224, the same in Montgomery). 70 71

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Conclusion From the aftermath of the Norman Conquest of England until the end of King John’s turbulent reign, interactions between Brabant and England intensified, although they were never as strong as the Anglo-Flemish relations. Even though Brabantine warriors and clergymen were present in England during the eleventh century, the cross-Channel exchanges between Brabant and the Isles grew in number only from the early twelfth century, when King Henry I sought to reinforce his authority on the Continent at the expense of William Clito. The marriage between Henry I and Adeliza, daughter of Count Godfrey I of Louvain, marked the beginning of a new proximity between the two rulers, who were allies during the Flemish civil war in 1127–28. After a hiatus of a few decades, likely due to the Anarchy, the exchanges between Brabant and England intensified at the turn of the thirteenth century, in the context of the rivalries between the Angevin kings and Philip II Augustus. Most of the time, Duke Henry I was a precious ally to Richard I and John. However, it should be noted that he always acted in his own interests, and not necessarily in accordance with the English political agenda. This was also the case with those other members of the Brabantine family who were present in England, such as Joscelin and Godfrey of Louvain. Anglo-Brabantine relations provided mutual benefits to both sides. The political and military support of the English kings was profitable to the dukes of Brabant, who were in competition with the counts of Flanders and the counts Hainault in the Low Countries. Furthermore, the dukes received gifts, such as a precious banner given by Queen Adeliza, and fiefs, among which the important honour of Eye, in return for the help which they gave to the Anglo-Norman rulers. If these grants constituted a source of revenue for the dukes, they were also a source of prestige. Indeed, the good relations with the English kings were still commemorated in the dukes’ entourage in the fifteenth century. The Anglo-Norman rulers also benefited from their relations with the Brabantine elites. The dukes’ political support helped them to counterbalance the authority of their rivals on the Continent, such as William Clito in the 1120s and Philip Augustus at the turn of the thirteenth century. Moreover, it is likely that the institutional ties which existed between the Emperors and the dukes of Brabant (who theoretically had a superior authority in Lower Lotharingia until 1190) were invaluable in the kings’ eyes, as the dukes were in a position where they could accomplish diplomatic missions in favour of the Anglo-Norman rulers at the Imperial court. Good relations between the kings and the dukes fostered exchanges between the Brabantine and the Anglo-Norman lay elites in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Joscelin and Godfrey of Louvain, natural sons of Count Godfrey I and Count Godfrey III, were among those Brabantines who played a prominent role overseas. They were not the only ones. In the context of the political turmoil of King John’s reign, many mercenaries and aristocrats originating from Brabant placed themselves in the service of King John. Some of them made their fortune in England and settled there, such as the heirs of Godescalc of Machelen on the Welsh frontier. Further prosopographical investigations would provide us with a better understanding of their role in England, especially in military duties or in the service of Brabantine merchants, who largely benefited from their support in the early thirteenth century.

Count of Louvain

Count of Louvain

1199

1199

1203–4

1204

1205

1205

1208

1208

1224–25

1314

1314

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Count of Louvain

Count of Louvain

Count of Louvain

Count of Louvain

Count of Louvain

Count of Louvain

Count of Louvain

Count of Louvain

Count of Louvain

Count of Louvain

1198

1

Owner

First mention

Id.

Tannington

Brundish

Thorndon

Laxfield

Dennington

Croxton

Sedgebrook

Dormington

Badingham

Welbourn

Costessey

Eye

Land

–

–

[…] concessi autem praedicto Mathaeo […] tota demenia Eye et Torendon […]

–

[…] totum manorium de Dineveton quod Henricus dux Lotharingie ei dedit […]

[…] iii. carrucas terre de Sekebroc et de Croxton empte sint per ducem Lovein […]

[…] iii. carrucas terre de Sekebroc et de Croxton empte sint per ducem Lovein […]

[…] sexaginta acras terre cum pertinentiis in parco de Durmieton tenendum sibi et heredibus suis de Henrico, duce Lotharingie […]

Et bene warantizo priori et conventui de Eya ecclesiam de Badingeham sicut de elemosina mea et antecessorum meorum.

[…] pro escambio terre sue de Welleburn quam R. reddidit duci Lovanie

Et baillivis ducis Lovanie lxxvii s. […] apud manerium de Costeseia […]

[…] de firma de Eye […] anno antequam daretur ducisse Luvanie […]

Mention

Table 1: Brabantine possessions in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

Calendar of Close Rolls, 1313–1318, 108

Calendar of Close Rolls, 1313–1318, 108

Ecclesiastical Documents, 63–64

PR 1208, John, 13

Rotuli chartarum, 176b and 177b

RLC, vol. 1, 21

RLC, vol. 1, 21

Rotuli chartarum, 137b

Eye Priory, vol. 1, no. 30

PR 1199, John, 132

PR 1199, John, 263

PR 1198, Richard I, 94

Source

First mention

1136

c. 1136

1140

1147–50

c. 1153–54

c. 1153–54

c. 1174

c. 1175–80

Id.

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Owner

Joscelin of Louvain

Joscelin of Louvain

Joscelin of Louvain

Adeliza of Louvain

Adeliza of Louvain

Adeliza of Louvain

Adeliza of Louvain

Adeliza of Louvain

Land

Mention […] concessi et perpetualiter dedi Deo et ecclesie sancta Marie de Radingia […] Eastonam mmanerium meum […]

Heyshott

Ludford

Petworth

Arundel

Berkeley Hernesse

Betchworth

Source

Sciatis me dedisse et concecisse […] Hessetam et Hameledonam et molendina Wintonie pertinentia ad Hameledonam

[…] totum manerium de Ludforda cum omnibus pertinenciiis suis

Percy Fee, no. 284, 352–353

Percy Fee, no. 68, 66–67

Percy Fee, no. 288, 358

PR 1186–1187, Henry II, 109

Honor de Arundel. […] de veteri firma eiusdem honoris de pluribus annis preteritis, qui similiter remanserunt super homines eiusdem Jocelini Sciatis me concecisse et confirmasse Jocelino fratri regine Adelicie honorem de Petteworth […]

Percy Fee, nos. 288, 358

Reading Abbey Cartularies, nos. 268– 72

Regesta, III, no. 921, 335

Reading Abbey Cartularies, nos. 534–36

Reading Abbey Cartularies, nos. 370–71

[…] sicut Willelmus comes Arondell et regina Adelicia ipsi illum dederunt

Sciatis me concessisse et dedisse ecclesie de Radingia et monachis ibidem Deo servientibus […] ecclesias de Berkelay Hernes […]

[...] ex dono Adelicie regine uxoris regis Henrici culturas de Berchewerda et boscum Norholt et pasturas pertinentes

Stanton Harcourt Notum vobis facio concecisse et dedisse Deo et ecclesie sancta Marie de Radingia […] centum solidatas terre in manerio meo Stantone in Oxonefordschira […]

Aston

1202

1202

28

29

1197

1201

27

33

1143

26

1197

1143

25

32

1190

24

1202

1188

23

1197

Before 1180

22

31

c. 1175–80

21

30

First mention

Id.

Aldsworth

Idsworth and Westmerendona

Wales

Eringeham (Petworth)

Sutton

Hambledon

Land

Lords of Diest

Lords of Diest

Lords of Diest

Denaby Main

Oldcotes

Styrrup

Godfrey of Louvain Sudbury (?)

Godfrey of Louvain Wicken

Godfrey of Louvain Great Easton

Godfrey of Louvain Radnage

Abbey of Affligem

Abbey of Affligem

Joscelin of Louvain

Joscelin of Louvain

Joscelin of Louvain

Joscelin of Louvain

Owner

Et de lxv s. et x d. de firma de Daningebi que fuit eiusdem de anno integro

[…] de firma de Stirap et Vlescotes que fuerunt Arnaldi de Diest […]

[…] de firma de Stirap et Vlescotes que fuerunt Arnaldi de Diest […]

Et l s. de firma de Sobire

Godefridus de Luvein vii. l. et xi. s. et xi d. de Eistanes et de Wica de anno ixo

Godefridus de Luvein vii. l. et xi. s. et xi d. de Eistanes et de Wica de anno ixo

Et Godefrido de Luvein x l. in Radenach

[…] et terram de Aldesworda que fuit Wilhelmi forestarii […]

xx l. terre in Angliam de honore de Arundello scilicet Ideswordam et Westmerendonam […]

De scutagio Walie. […] Feodum quod fuit Jocelini de Luvain debet lv s. pro militibus

Et in Eringeham quam Wuam willelmus de Alta Ripa perquisivit versus Joscelinum nepotem Joscelini fratris regine […]

[…] terram de Fernust, que pertinuit ad Hesshite, et molendinum de Suttune […]

Sciatis me dedisse et concecisse […] Hessetam et Hameledonam et molendina Wintonie pertinentia ad Hameledonam

Mention

PR 1197, Richard I, 154

PR 1197, Richard I, 154

PR 1197, Richard I, 154

PR 1202, John, 263

PR 1202, John, 263

PR 1202, John, 263

PR 1201, John, 162

Cartulaire d’Afflighem, no. 67, 104–6

Cartulaire d’Afflighem, no. 67, 104–6

PR 1190, Richard I, 73

PR 1187–1188, Henry II, 3

Percy Fee, no. 291, 360

Percy Fee, no. 284, 352–353

Source

First mention

1197

1199

1197

1197

1197

1197

1197

1197

1224

Id.

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

Owner

Godescalc of Machelen

Ministeriales of Huldenberg

Ministeriales of Huldenberg

Ministeriales of Huldenberg

Ministeriales of Huldenberg

Ministeriales of Huldenberg

Ministeriales of Huldenberg

Lords of Diest

Lords of Diest

Land

Montgomery

Adwick upon Dearne

Mexborough

Ordsall

Tinsley

Nettleworth

Strelley

Cheshunt

Thornton

Mention

Dominus rex commisit Huberto Huse et Godescallo de Maghelin castrum de Mungumery et honorem de Muntgumery

Et de c s. et iiii d. de firma de Mekeburc [et] de Acwich de anno integro

Et de c s. et iiii d. de firma de Mekeburc [et] de Acwich de anno integro

Et de xlviii s. et iiii d. de firma de Ordeshal

Et viii l. de firma de Tineslaw […]

Et de xvi s. de firma de Netlewurda […]

[…] de firma de Stradleg que fuit Arnaldi de Heldeberewe de dimidio anno

[…] de redditu assiso de Cestrehunt de termino sancti Michaelis anni preteriti postquam Aernulfus de Diest habuit terram illam

Et Ernulfo de Diest pro instauramento manerii de Torenton […]

Source

RLC, 583

PR 1197, Richard I, 154

PR 1197, Richard I, 154

PR 1197, Richard I, 154

PR 1197, Richard I, 154

PR 1197, Richard I, 154

PR 1197, Richard I, 154

PR 1200, John, 88

PR 1197, Richard I, 198

ENGLAND, NORMANDY AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL ‘NEW LAW’ IN THE LATER TWELFTH CENTURY* Danica Summerlin At some point in the 1180s a scribe in south-west England copied out sixty-five folios of papal letters, beginning with a red rubric noting that ‘here begin the decretal letters of Pope Alexander III, concerning the position and law of marriages contracted or entered, of which the first was sent to the archbishop of Canterbury and his suffragans’.1 At some point these letters had been in the possession of an experienced legal mind, perhaps even that of the copier: instead of a jumble of letters, the collection’s chapters were divided into seven thematic titles. As well as marriage, the collection devoted titles to the position of the religious orders and their privileges; to the position of clerics; to the position and rights of churches; to cases which could not be appealed; to cases which could be appealed and the circumstances under which a case could be appealed to Rome; and to informing judges about the various cases and emergencies which would come under their jurisdiction.2 The sole contents of BL Royal 10.A.ii, the Collectio Wigorniensis, to give this sixty-five folio collection its most recent title, is one of the group of manuscripts which demonstrate the vitality of a particular subset of canon law in the later twelfth century: the decretal collections.3 Often described as the ‘classical period’ in medieval canon law, the years between 1140 and 1234 are known for the liveliness of I would like to thank Stephen Church for the invitation to Battle, and the attendees there and at the St Andrews workshop on comparative legal history in June 2018 for their thoughts on the issues discussed here. Any errors are, of course, my own. Throughout this study, WH refers to the Walther Holtzmann Kartei, a card file created by Holtzmann for the study of decretals and freely available online via the Stephan Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law, at Letters contained in the file are listed by their WH number first, then JL number, if applicable. Secondary material on canon law tends to be scattered and to fall in obscure, hard-to-find journals; wherever possible, therefore, reference has been made to the overview provided in The History of Medieval Canon Law in the Classical Period, 1140–1234: from Gratian to the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, ed. Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (Washington, DC, 2008) [henceforth HMCL], which contains ample references to earlier literature. 1 London, British Library Royal 10.A.ii, fol. 5ra: ‘Incipiunt decretales epistole Alexandri pape iii de statu et iure coniugii contracti et contrahendi, quarum 1. destinata est Cantuariensis archiepiscopo et eius suffraganeis.’ The indispensable guide to this collection remains H. E. Lohmann, ‘Die Collectio Wigorniensis (Collectio Londinensis Regia): ein Beitrag zur Quellengeschichte des kanonischen Rechts in 12. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung 22 (1933), 36–187, with the analysis at 79–149, but see also Charles Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections and Their Importance in English History (London, 1964), pp. 96–98, and 110–17 where he suggests that Baldwin of Forde was involved in the compilation of the collection, even if he was not directly responsible for it himself. 2 London, British Library, Royal MS 10.A.ii, fols 14ra, 22ra, 29ra, 38ra, 42ra, and 44ra, all printed in Lohmann, ‘Die Collectio Wigorniensis’, 89, 101, 108, 119, 123, 125. 3 The classic introductions are now Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections; Walther Holtzmann, Studies in the Collections of Twelfth-century Decretals, ed. and trans. C. R. and M. G. Cheney, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series B: Corpus Collectionum 3 (Vatican City, 1979) [hereafter Holtzmann-Cheney]; Charles Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections from the Decretum Gratiani to the Compilationes *

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their scholarly debates and the speed with which the law adapted, with long-lasting effects. The decretal collections, named for their high proportion of recent papal letters used as precedents, demonstrate the interaction of learned laws and legal praxis at the time with the emerging Romano-canonical legal system. Central to the narrative of a vibrant period are two immense compilations: the idiosyncratic Concordia Discordantium Canonum, better known as Gratian’s Decretum and which appeared in the years around 1140,4 and the Decretals of Gregory IX, also known as the Liber Extra.5 Compiled by Raymond of Peñafort and promulgated in 1234, its title demonstrates that the Liber Extra was perceived as a supplement to Gratian: it was a book of extravagantes, or texts which wandered outside the Decretum. The surviving decretal collections compiled in the period between these two behemoths contributed, some more than others, to the development of the ius novum, or ‘new law’ of the decretals. As private collections compiled locally, these decretal collections represent the interests of lawyers and clerics away from the papal curia, and are thus one route into understanding the complexities of contemporary legal culture in different regions. The twelfth century saw a general movement toward a single legal culture, founded on the Romano-canonical legal system and employing university-educated clerics. Local variations to this single culture remain imperfectly understood, and this article will contribute to those questions through investigation of the different roles played by England and Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine in the ius novum, with particular interest in the relationship between England and Normandy. Despite sharing a secular ruler in Henry II, these areas made significantly different contributions to the nascent decretal collections. Writing a full history of the decretal collections is impractical, so these are preliminary thoughts that I hope will suggest a new approach to existing evidence. But a comparison of the manuscripts containing the collections, the contents of those collections and the recipients of the letters they include across a broad base also has the potential to open new avenues and suggest novel ways of understanding the practice of canon law in the later twelfth century. Beginning with a brief overview of the narrative of legal change in the later twelfth century, including the heightened role given to England, this article will then use manuscripts of collections including

Antiquae: the Making of the New Case Law’, HMCL, pp. 246–92; Ken Pennington, ‘Decretal collections, 1190–1234’, HMCL, pp. 293–317. Atria A. Larson and Keith Sisson, ‘Papal Decretals’, in A Companion to the Medieval Papacy, ed. Keith Sisson and Atria A. Larson (Leiden, 2016), pp. 158–73 provides an overview for the entirety of the medieval period, with some useful comments on general principles for the period at pp. 165–73. 4 Emil Friedberg, ed., Decretum Magistri Gratiani, Corpus Iuris Canonici, 1 (Leipzig, 1879) [henceforth Gratian, Decretum]. Friedberg’s edition has known complications, given its relatively narrow source base. Research on the Decretum is very much alive: see Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge, 2000), Peter Landau, ‘Gratian and the Decretum Gratiani’, HMCL, pp. 22–54, and the overview of research until 2013 in Melodie H. Eichbauer, ‘Gratian’s Decretum and the Changing Historiographical Landscape’, History Compass, 11 (2013), 1111–25. The most recent contributions are New Discourses in Medieval Canon Law Research. Challenging the Master Narrative, ed. Christof Rolker (Leiden, 2019), especially Stephan Dusil, ‘The Decretum of Gratian: a Janus-faced Collection’, pp. 127–44. 5 Emil Friedberg, ed., ‘Decretalium D. Gregorii Papae Compilatio’, in Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2 (Leipzig, 1879), 1–928 [henceforth Liber Extra or X]. There is comparatively little research on Friedberg, although see Edward Andrew Reno III, ‘The Authoritative Text: Raymond of Penyafort’s Editing of the Gregorian Decretales (1234)’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia, 2011); and the work of Martin Bertram and Barbara Bombi, especially Bertram’s ‘Signaturenliste der Handschriften der Dekretalen Gregors IX (Liber Extra). Neubearbeitung April 2014’, Online Publication of the Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom (Rome, 2014), www.dhi-roma.it/bertram_extrahss.html (last accessed 29 September 2019).



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the Collectio Wigorniensis to investigate the extent of and rationale behind any differences between England and Henry II’s lands in France. Gratian’s Decretum relied on centuries of accumulated legal knowledge, but, in contrast, the texts, letters and conciliar decisions contained in the collections compiled after its appearance were heavily biased toward recently transmitted material. The ‘new law’, therefore, emerged from a combination of a few conciliar decisions, supplemented by swathes of recent papal letters written in judgment or response to queries and appeals from local churches – the ‘papal decretals’ that gave the later twelfth-century collections their name.6 These decretals answered specific questions arising from gaps in Gratian’s work and were – in theory – based anew on the principle expressed in the Decretum that ‘Decretals are equal in law to conciliar decrees’; the voracious appetite of clerics for new rulings reinforced the acceptance of the papal role at the head of the ecclesiastical legal system.7 Nevertheless, the twelfth-century collections were predominantly private, especially in the critical period between 1170 and 1190. Pope Alexander III, as demonstrated by his comment that his letters ‘have not usually made law on such matters’ when referring to marriage within the prohibited degrees, even tried to prevent his letters being used as legal precedent.8 The limited success of such sanctions is demonstrated by the survival of the letters in a legal collection for precisely that purpose. While the existence of local or regional canonical collections is widely accepted in the period before the dissemination of Gratian, scholarly recognition of legal diversity after c. 1150 is more recent. Alfred Beyer and Atria Larson demonstrated the existence of local abbreviations of the Decretum, showing that attempts were made at local levels to streamline the collection.9 John Wei, moreover, suggested that the S-group of Gratian manuscripts, particularly important as a source for Friedberg’s 1879 edition, was connected to the Paris basin.10 Ken Pennington has pointed to small modifications in the decretal collections in northern France in the early thirteenth century.11 Yet most histories of the decretal collections trace their overall The decrees of Alexander III’s 1163 council at Tours and his 1179 Lateran Council, alongside Innocent III’s 1215 Lateran Council, are the recent acta found most frequently in the collections: see Anne J. Duggan, ‘Conciliar Law 1123–1215: the Legislation of the Four Lateran Canons’, HMCL, pp. 338–41, 353–66. 7 Gratian, Decretum, d.a.c. 20, although this has been debated at length by scholars of canon law: e.g. Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections, pp. 24–38; for a lengthy discussion on decretals’ authority according to the canonists, see Jacoba Hanenburg, ‘Decretals and Decretal Collections in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 34 (1966), 552–85; more recently Larson and Sisson, ‘Papal Decretals’, pp. 158–59, 162–65. 8 The best literature on this point remains the works of Anne Duggan, who has established the reluctance of popes, especially Alexander III, to be seen as deliberately contributing to legislation: Anne J. Duggan, ‘Making Law or Not? The Function of Papal Decretals in the Twelfth Century’, Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law: Esztergom, 3–8 August 2008, ed. S. Anselm Szuromi and Peter Erdó, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series C: Subsidia 14 (Vatican City, 2010), pp. 41–70; Anne J. Duggan, ‘“Our letters have not usually made law (legem facere) on such matters”(Alexander III, 1169): a New Look at the Formation of the Canon Law of Marriage in the Twelfth Century’, Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law: Toronto, 5–11 August 2012, ed. Stephan Dusil, Joseph Goering and Andreas Thier, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series C: Subsidia 15 (Vatican City, 2016), pp. 627–50. 9 Alfred Beyer, Lokale Abbreviationen des Decretum Gratiani, Bamberger Theologische Studien, 6 (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1998); Atria A. Larson, ‘An Abbreviatio of the First Recension of Gratian’s Decretum in Munich?’, The Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law 29 (2011), 51–118. 10 John C. Wei, ‘Gratian’s Decretum in France and Halberstadt’, in Rechtshandschriften des deutschen Mittelalters: Produktionsorte und importwege, ed. Patrizia Carmassi and Gisela Drossbach, Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien 29 (Wolfenbüttel, 2015), p. 379. 11 Described in e.g. Pennington, ‘Decretal Collections’, pp. 303–4. 6

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history. Restricted by the anonymity and difficulties in unearthing the provenances of collections and manuscripts, these histories understandably stop short of considering regional differences in the later twelfth century. Such an analysis is precisely the point of this article. England has long been central to the study of twelfth-century canon law. While early accounts of the history of decretal collections focused on their supposed Italian origins, Charles Duggan’s Twelfth-century Decretal Collections and Their Importance in English History transformed the debate.12 As a result of Duggan’s work, the importance of English clerics in shaping the ius novum is now widely accepted. Furthermore, since the ground-breaking 1949 article by Stephan Kuttner and Eleanor Rathbone the existence of law schools outside of Bologna, and particularly north of the Alps, has been recognised.13 Law schools have been identified north and south of the Alps, including in Provence,14 in Paris, particularly at St Victor,15 in Cologne,16 at Oxford17 and at Lincoln,18 all of which vied with the Bolognese schools for influence in the 1160s, 1170s and 1180s. Some overlap between these schools and the locations where decretal collections are known to have been compiled can be demonstrated; and while Kuttner and Rathbone’s argument for Anglo-Norman schools of law found acceptance in part because of their detailed knowledge of the manuscripts, their proposition was founded on a well-established awareness of the importance of decretals sent to England. But the reasons behind the influence of English clerics over the collections remain elusive. Some suggestions can be found in the corpus of manuscripts that provide the foundations for any study of medieval canon law. Over a thousand manuscripts Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections. Stephan Kuttner and Eleanor Rathbone, ‘Anglo-Norman Canonists of the Twelfth Century: an Introductory Study’, Traditio 7 (1949–51), 279–358; as they put it on p. 280, the evidence is ‘sufficient to demonstrate the existence in its own right of an Anglo-Norman school of canonists toward the turn of the twelfth century’. 14 Any law school in Provence was heavily influenced by Roman law; research into it is summarised by Uta-Renate Blumenthal, ‘The Revival of Roman Law: the Exceptiones Petri’, Haskins Society Journal 21 (2009), 113–23. Both André Gouron, ‘Die Entstehung der französischer Rechtsschule. Summa Iustiniani est in hoc opera und Tübinger Rechtsbuch’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, romanistische Abteilung 93 (1976), 138–60, at 155 and more recently Uta-Renate Blumenthal, ‘Dating the Exceptiones Petri’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung 101 (2015), 54–85, at 69 suggest dates for these works in Provence between 1120 and 1130. 15 Gisela Drossbach, ‘Die Collectio Victorina prima – Dekretalenrecht in Saint Victor’, in Diligens Scrutator Sacri Eloquii: Beiträge zur Exegese- und Theologiegeschichte des Mittelalters. Festgabe für Rainer Berndt SJ zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Hanns Peter Neuheuser, Ralf M. W. Stammberger, and Matthias M. Tischler (Münster, 2016), pp. 349–63. 16 See the works of André Gouron, esp. André Gouron, ‘Canon Law in Parisian Circles before Stephen of Tournai’s Summa’, Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. Stanley Chodorow, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series C: Subsidia 9 (Vatican City, 1992), 503; Peter Landau, ‘Die Kölner Kanonistik des 12. Jahrhunderts: Ein Höhepunkt der europäischen Rechtswissenschaft’, in Rhenischen Vereins für Rechtsgeschichte e.V. zu Köln am 28. Mai, 2008, Kölner Rechtsgeschichtliche Vorträge 1 (Badenweiler, 2008), 1–29; Summa ‘Elegantius in iure diuino’, seu Coloniensis, ed. Gérard Fransen with Stephan Kuttner, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series A: Corpus Glossatorum 1 (4 vols, Vatican City, 1969–90). 17 Martin Brett, ‘English Law and Centres of Law Studies in the Later Twelfth Century’, in Archbishop Eystein as Legislator: the European Connection, ed. Tore Iversen (Trondheim, 2011), pp. 87–102, at 95–98, 102; R. M. Thomson, ‘Serlo of Wilton and the schools of Oxford’, Medium Aevum 68 (1999), 1–12, at 10–12. 18 Peter Landau, ‘The Origins of Legal Science in England in the Twelfth Century: Lincoln, Oxford, and the Career of Vacarius’, in Readers, Texts and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages: Studies in Medieval Canon Law in Honour of Linda Fowler-Magerl, ed. Martin Brett and Kathleen G. Cushing (Farnham, 2009), pp. 165–82; although see now Brett, ‘English Law’, pp. 99–101. 12 13



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containing ecclesiastical legal material survive from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.19 These codices comprise, among other things, collections of letters and legal extracts, commentaries on collections and legal ideas, and questiones compiled by students and teachers as part of the daily teaching of law in the schools and, later, universities. Of these manuscripts, around eighty have been identified as decretal collections, although, in the absence of any clear line demarcating decretal collections from other canonical collections, together with the increasingly fluid interpretations among scholars of what distinguishes a decretal collection, arriving at an exact number is an inexact science.20 Around half the surviving pre-1190 collections of decretals are now believed to be English in origin, or at the very least to come from an English milieu; of the six major ‘families’, or groups of primitive collections, three have strong English connections – the ‘English’, ‘Worcester’ and ‘Bridlington’ groups.21 All this is in addition to the Appendix Concilii Lateranensis collection, described by Kuttner and Rathbone as the ‘fountainhead of the main decretal tradition’, and widely accepted as English in origin.22 Many decretal collections compiled in England now exist in manuscripts which contain legalia, or selections of material. The Cantuariensis manuscript, for example, also contains a series of ordines and other legal material, including writings of Peter of Blois.23 A manuscript in Oriel College, Oxford contains not only two partial decretal collections but also questiones and Roman law selections.24 Holtzmann linked the Collectio Fontanensis in its current form to Fountains Abbey; some of its contents, relating to specific rights, are found in no other collection. A composite manuscript, the section containing the letters includes other material including a Decretum fragment and Roman law material.25 Wigorniensis altera, the earliest gathering of papal decretals, is now a composite manuscript which comprises selections of extracts from theological material, including sententiae and excerpts from the Church Fathers and poetry alongside a summa on the Decretum of Gratian, extracts from other canon law books and a text of the earlier secular legal compilation known as the Quadripartitus.26 Whether the range of contents in Stephan Kuttner’s monumental Repertorium der Kanonistik (1140–1234). Prodromus Corporis Glossarum, Studi e Testi 71 (Vatican City, 1937) [henceforth Repert.] lists 1109 manuscripts, not including those of the Liber Extra. With further additions through chance discoveries or large-scale projects such as those of Kuttner, Gero Dolezalek and Martin Bertram, it is not inconceivable that 1,500 manuscripts or more contain canon law material from the period. 20 E.g. the Collectio Oenipontana, an appendix to a manuscript of Gratian’s Decretum, was not classed as a Gratian appendix by Walther Holtzmann or Charles Duggan, but a decretal collection by Stephan Kuttner: Innsbruck, Universitätsbibliothek und Landesbibliothek Tirol, MS 90: Repert., p. 282; Holtzmann-Cheney, p. xxxii; Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections’, pp. 253–56. 21 There are six groups in total, broadly conceived on the basis of connections between the ordering of the material: the English, French, Italian, Spanish-Curial/Tortosa, Bridlington and Worcester groups. Holtzmann-Cheney, p. xxxii lists all the manuscripts known to Holtzmann; Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections, pp. 68–110 provides overviews of the three groups linked to England. 22 Kuttner and Rathbone, ‘Anglo-Norman Canonists’, p. 283; the Appendix was among the first divided into titles and was believed to have influenced all later thematic collections. 23 For the ordines, London, BL, Royal 10.B.iv, fols 1r–9r, 33r–41r, see Linda Fowler-Magerl, Ordo iudiciorum vel ordo iudiciarius. Begriff und Literatorgattung, Ius Commune Sonderhefte, 19 (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), pp. 273–89. 24 Oxford, Oriel College MS 53, fols 240r–249v, 340–349v; Repert., p. 295; Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections’, p. 279. 25 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud misc. 527, fols 24r–45v; Holtzmann-Cheney, pp. 100–15; see now Peter Landau, ‘Collectio Fontanensis: A Decretal Collection of the Twelfth Century for an English Cistercian Abbey’, Law as Profession and Practice in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of James A. Brundage, ed. Kenneth Pennington and Melodie H. Eichbauer (Farnham, 2011), pp. 187–204. 26 London, BL, Royal 11.B.ii: Repert., as ‘Collectio Londoniensis IV’, pp. 283–85; Duggan, Twelfth-cen19

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these manuscripts was a deliberate contemporary choice is debatable: it is certainly likely that some were gathered together later, either in the medieval period or after. There are also two important exceptions, where a closer relationship with Gratian’s Decretum is evident. In a Durham manuscript the decretal collection falls before a copy of the Decretum of Gratian, and the Collectio Roffensis follows an abbreviation of the Decretum created by the canonist-bishop Omnebene.27 These cases have more in common with the collections of Holtzmann’s ‘Italian’ group, all of which are bound together with either full or abbreviated copies of the Decretum, and the Dekretanhänge, short collections of canonical material (including papal letters) appended to full manuscripts of Gratian.28 For example, the Decretum in Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale 103 includes a handful of decretals in its fly-leaves; the manuscript was probably Cistercian.29 Elsewhere, such Dekretanhänge exist today in Biberach, Pommersfeld, Heiligenkreuz, Munich and Innsbruck.30 Something similar can be said for one of the later, systematic, decretal collections: Erlangensis, copied around the turn of the thirteenth century, follows on from a copy of the Decretum.31 Both other early groups of decretal collections have more in common with the English manuscripts. In the ‘French’ family, two are composite manuscripts which now also contain copies of sermons, one is a fragment and one a miscellany.32 Of the three collections in the ‘Spanish-curial’ family, by contrast, two were standalone manuscripts and one follows a copy of Gratian connected to the Cistercian abbey at Eberbach.33 Duggan nevertheless connected at least one of the stand-alone collections, Alcobacensis, to Anglo-Portuguese networks in the 1160s and 1170s and suggested an English origin for some of the material.34 The line between ‘collection’ and ‘appendix’ is a porous one: it is never clear at what point a collection exists separately from Gratian. Equally, each of these groups or families of collections possesses its own individual character. But, unlike most tury Decretal Collections, pp. 69–70, 152–54; see now also Duggan, ‘Making Law?’, pp. 56–57. 27 Durham, Dean and Chapter Library C.III.1, fols 8va–18va, with intermissions and see n. 49 below; London, BL Royal 10.C.iv, fols 137v–154r, analysed Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections, pp. 173–84. 28 See Holtzmann-Cheney, p. xxxii; now John C. Wei, ‘Gratian’s Decretum in France and Halberstadt’, Rechtshandschriften des deutschen Mittelalters: Produktionsorte und importwege, ed. Patrizia Carmassi and Gisela Drossbach, Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien 29 (Wolfenbüttel, 2015), 363–83, at 377. For an overview of the ‘groups’, see n. 21 above. 29 Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale 103, flyleaves; Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections’, p. 255. 30 Biberach an der Riss, Spitalarchiv B 3515: Stephan Kuttner, ‘The “Extravagantes” of the Decretum in Biberach’, The Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law 3 (1973), 61–71; for Heiligenkreuz, Pommersfelden and Munich see the overall discussion in Rudolf Weigand, ‘Die Dekretanhänge in den Handschriften Heiligenkreuz 44, Pommersfelden 142 und München 28175’, The Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law 13 (1983); for Innsbruck, see n. 20 above. 31 Erlangen, Universitätsbibliothek 342, fols 291ra–306va; Repert., p. 294. Other collections of the family, however, exist separately. 32 The French family comprises only four collections in total: Cantabrigiensis: Cambridge, Trinity College R.9.17; Parisiensis I: Paris, BnF lat. 1596; Aureavallensis, Luxembourg, Bibliothèque nationale, 30, from the (Cistercian) house at Orval; and Victorina I, Paris, BnF lat. 14938, from the Abbey of St Victor. Cantabrigiensis is incomplete; both Parisiensis I and Victorina I are in composite manuscripts where they are now supplemented by sermons of Alexander III and Innocent III respectively. For details on the collections, see: Emil Friedberg, Die Canones-Sammlungen zwischen Gratian und Bernhard von Pavia (Leipzig, 1897, rep. Graz, 1958), pp. 5–21 (Cantab.), 45–63 (1 Par.); for the Orval collection, Walther Holtzmann, ‘Beiträge zu den Dekretalensammlungen des zwölften Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung 47 (1927), 77–99. 33 Lisbon, Biblioteca Nacional, Alcobaça 144, from the monastery of the Cistercian house at Alcobaça; Tortosa, Biblioteca Capitolare, 144; London, BL Arundel 490, from the Cistercian abbey of Eberbach. 34 Summarised in Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections’, pp. 262–65, most explicitly on p. 264.



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of the ‘English’, ‘Worcester’ and ‘Bridlington’ groups, both the ‘Italian’ group and the Dekretanhänge seem to represent additions and notes made to full copies of the Decretum. That could represent two different purposes behind the compilation, with collections connected to England more likely to be seen as distinct from Gratian. Beyond the total contents of the manuscripts, there is also something clearly different about some of the English collections: their proportion of contemporary papal letters. The best example of these collections remains Wigorniensis, the Worcester collection mentioned above.35 It clearly preferred decretals, as shown in title rubrics which explicitly indicated letters alone as the source.36 The rubrics are supported by the contents. Recent conciliar provisions, including canons promulgated at Tours in 1163 and the Lateran in 1179, are absent from the collection, despite it being compiled after 1179.37 Overall, Wigorniensis contains only two excerpts from conciliar canons, both of which were misattributed to letters of Alexander III; one is from the early years of the Church, and one much later.38 There is also a total absence of earlier material, with the exception of an odd mishmash of a chapter, formed of ten discrete sections pulled together and attributed in the inscription to Alexander III.39 As a result, Wigorniensis clearly, and heavily, relies on Alexandrine letters. The distinction drawn in the rubrics of Wigorniensis demonstrates the critical role of decretals, but is not seen elsewhere in the ‘Worcester’ family. Two of the five other collections present formal book copies dating to the 1190s.40 Of the others, in Claustroneoburgensis the rubric for the first title reads ‘here begin the decrees or sentences of Pope Alexander III, bishop of the Roman See’; it opens with the 1179 Lateran canons.41 Cheltenhamensis uses standard titles with few specifics, such as ‘De transactionibus et iure patronatus’.42 Trinitatis, considered the oldest, albeit fragmentary, manuscript witness of the family, includes both: the third title reads ‘the third part concerning ecclesiastical persons and their institutions, and their equipment’, and the fourth ‘here begin the decretal letters of Pope Alexander III concerning the status and law of the church, of which the first was sent to the archbishop of York’, exactly the same as Wigorniensis.43 While the other collections present predominantly similar material and a similar organisation, none is as clear

London, British Library Royal MS 10.A.ii, fols 5–62; Hans-Eberhard Lohmann, ‘Die Collectio Wigorniensis (Collectio Londoniensis regia). Ein Beitrag zur Quellengeschichte des kanonischen Rechts im 12. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung 22 (1933), 36–187, at 42, 161. 36 London, BL, Royal 10.A.ii, various fols: see n. 1 above. 37 One letter in the body of the collection, to Hugh du Puiset, bishop of Durham, and in the main hand, cited the 1179 council as an authority, meaning that the surviving copy must post-date it. (WH 207 = JL 13868, London, BL, Royal 10.A.ii, fol. 26rb–va).
 38 Christopher N. L. Brooke, ‘The Canons of English Church Council in the Early Decretal Collections’, Traditio 13 (1957), 471–81, at 478, and Wig. 2.13(f). 39 Wig. 2.13 is comprised of ten discrete sections taken from a variety of sources and including their own inscriptions: Lohmann, ‘Die Collectio Wigorniensis’, pp. 93–94. 40 Cambridge, Peterhouse MSS 114, 180, 193, 214 (first and last quires) and London, BL Cotton Vitellius E.xiii. These are sister-manuscripts, seemingly identical although the latter was badly damaged in the 1731 Cotton fire: Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections’, pp. 275–76. 41 Klosterneuburg, Stiftsbibliothek 19, fol. 36ra. 42 Gisela Drossbach, Die Collectio Cheltenhamensis: eine englische Decretalensammlung. Analyse beruhend auf Vorarbeiten von Walther Holtzmann†, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, series B: Corpus Collectionum, 10 (Vatican City, 2014), p. 41; also e.g. London, British Library, Egerton 2819, fol. 7vb. 43 Charles Duggan, ‘The Trinity Collection of Decretals and the Early Worcester Family’, Traditio 7 (1961), 518, 522; Cambridge, Trinity College, R.14.9, fols 83r, 86v. 35

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as Wigorniensis in linking the contents explicitly with letters of a particular, named pope. It is a curiosity, albeit an important one. Although no other collection is as explicit as Wigorniensis in preferring letters, early English collections still preserve growing numbers of recent decretals. Cantuariensis, one of Holtzmann’s ‘English’ family, comprises mostly decretals.44 Wigorniensis altera consists of eleven or twelve papal decretals;45 three of the four parts of Belverensis, its near contemporary, present only decretal material of Alexander III. By contrast, the other section contains no recent letters at all.46 Likewise, the Bridlington collection and its sister manuscript, Cotton Claudius A.iv, focus on papal letters, in the case of Bridlingtonensis in a beautiful manuscript which, despite its beauty, mangles the texts.47 The same focus on recent letters is also evident in the sole systematic decretal collection of known English origin: the Appendix Concilii Lateranensis, where only twenty-four of 579 chapters definitely predate 1154 and the pontificate of Adrian IV.48 Although the Appendix contains recent conciliar proclamations – as the name suggests, the collection proper follows a copy of Alexander III’s 1179 Lateran decrees, and it incorporates those issued at Tours in 1163 – they are a minority in a collection which otherwise preserves mostly Alexandrine decretals. Yet, other canonical collections compiled during the early to mid-1180s show a much greater proclivity to include older texts than is seen in these English collections. Critically, those manuscripts which refer back to earlier law the most are Continental in origin, either in terms of their direct provenance or in terms of the initial location where they were compiled or copied. The collections appended to Gratian manuscripts use more old law than those which are not.49 Meanwhile the Francofurtana, a systematic collection which survives in four manuscripts and has been linked with a degree of certainty to northern France and most likely Sens, contained 132 pre-Gratian texts in its most basic version, with a further 143 seeming to pre-date the 1140s but with no inscription appearing in a later redaction.50 Overall, On Cantuariensis, see Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections, pp. 162–71; the only two chapters which are not taken from recent papal decretals are Cant. 1.26, Videtur nobis, purporting to be a letter of an unidentifiable Pope Celestine to the bishop of Florence, and Cant. 3.14, c. 1 from Alexander III’s 1163 council at Tours, Maioribus ecclesie beneficiis. See also Robert Somerville, Pope Alexander III and the Council of Tours (1163) (Berkeley, 1977), pp. 43–8 for the transmission. 45 London, BL Royal 11.B.ii, fols 97ra–102ra; see n. 26 above. 46 Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections, pp. 155–61 for Belverensis (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS E.Mus. 249, fols 121ra–135rb). 47 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 357, fols 80–133; London, BL Cotton MS Claudius A.iv, fols. 189–216. See the discussion in Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections, pp. 85–95, which suggests a Canterbury provenance in the early 1180s for both manuscripts. On Claudiana, see now also Holtzmann-Cheney, pp. 132–34; Mary Cheney, ‘The Council of Westminster, 1175: New Light on an Old Source’, SCH 11 (1175), 61–68. 48 For Appendix, see the very vague analysis in Die Canones-Sammlungen, ed. Friedberg, 63–84; Peter Landau, ‘Studien zur Appendix und den Glossen in frühen systematischen Dekretalensammlungen’, The Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, new series 9 (1979), 1–21, at 1–5; Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections’, pp. 277–70. The chapters in question are 6.5, 6.27, 13.9, 13.15, 17.7, 31.6.2, 38.5, 38.6, 43.2, 43.4, 43.5, 44.1, 45.8, 48.2, 49.10, with an additional chapter given no inscription at 38.7, all available in Philipp Crabbe, Conciliorum omnium tam generalium quam particularlium (2nd edn, 2 vols, Cologne, 1551) vol. 2 and in later collections to Mansi. 49 See, for example, the collection in Milan, Biblioteca Capitolare di S. Ambrogio, M 54, fols 307v– 320r, Ambrosiana, analysed Holtzmann-Cheney, pp. 37–42; equally of the Durham manuscript the section with a probably Italian origin on fols 5vb-7va contains more earlier material: see Holtzmann-Cheney, pp. 76–77; more generally Charles Duggan, ‘A Durham Canonical Manuscript of the Late Twelfth Century’, SCH 2 (1965), pp. 179–85. 50 Die Collectio Francofurtana: eine französische Decretalensammlung, ed. Peter Landau and Gisela Drossbach, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series B: Corpus Collectionum 9 (Vatican City, 2007), passim; Repert., 295–96. 44



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therefore, around one third of the Francofurtana’s contents as preserved in the St Maximilian manuscript pre-dated Gratian. Among the other systematic collections the Bambergensis group is the most complicated and had the widest dissemination; the inclusion of a title on the archbishopric of Dol led Deeters and others to suggest an origin at Tours, possibly using the Appendix as a principal source.51 While most of the nine manuscripts in the group feature comparatively few pre-Gratian texts, Lipsiensis is different. Probably compiled in northern Italy, and containing 148 pre-Gratian extracts equivalent to just over 20 per cent of its contents, the Lipsiensis is seen as a stepping-stone between the Bambergensis and the more successful Breviarium Extravagantium or Compilatio Prima of Bernard of Pavia.52 In contrast to the relatively close circulation of most of these letter-focused traditions, Bernard’s collection employed non-decretal material for a third of its chapters. It survives in well over 100 manuscripts disseminated across Latin Christendom and, used in both Bologna and beyond, it thus cemented the quin-partite structure adopted in the remainder of the Quinque Compilationes and the Liber Extra.53 The Appendix Concilii Lateranensis, meanwhile, survives today in three manuscripts, although a fourth, now lost, copy formed the basis of Crabbe’s 1552 edition.54 The surviving evidence suggests that the Appendix was used mostly in England and lacked the Breviarium’s success, as measured in terms of manuscript survival alone.55 Late twelfth-century collections, therefore, preserved a range of contents, both in the manuscripts more broadly and in the collections themselves. However, those known to have an English provenance are more often found separate from full Gratian manuscripts and, possibly as a result, have a more pronounced interest in recent papal letters than in earlier law. But the important point across the decretal collections, whatever their provenance, is the predominance of English material in the collections themselves. Of the around 1,100 letters sent by popes, from Paschal II (1099–1118) to Celestine III (1191–98), and which were incorporated into the collections, about half were sent to England: an astonishingly high proportion. It has long been established, by Charles Duggan and Mary Cheney in particular, that three English dioceses were frequent recipients of the letters preserved in the decretal collections: Worcester, Exeter and Canterbury.56 The bishop of Worcester It survives in nine full manuscripts, three fragments, two lists of titles and a set of seventeenth-century notes compiled by Baluze: the best summary remains Walter Deeters, Die Bambergensisgruppe der Dekretalensammlungen des 12. Jahrhunderts (Bonn, 1956), passim but now Peter Landau, ‘Die Entstehung der systematischen Dekretalensammlungen und die europäischer Kanonistik der 12. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung 96 (1979), pp. 134–35. The precise relationship between Appendix and Bambergensis remains uncertain: Gero Dolezalek, ‘A Series of Papal Decretals from the Late 12th Century and its Usefulness for Dating Manuscripts of Roman Law’, Rivista Internazionale di diritto comune 15 (2004), 87–94 suggested a distinct, standalone source for both. 52 Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek 975, fols 116–53; see also Repert., 292; Quinque Compilationes, ed. Friedberg, 189–208. On the relationship between Lipsiensis and the Breviarium see the conflicting interpretations in Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections’ p. 281 (who attributes it to Bernard himself) and Pennington, ‘Decretal Collections’, p. 296, who omits it from Bernard’s œuvre. 53 Emil Friedberg, Quinque Compilationes Antiquae, necnon Collectio Canonum Lipsiensis (Leipzig, 1882), pp. 1–65; Gérard Fransen, ‘La tradition manuscrite de la “Compilatio Prima”’, Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Medieval Canon Law: Boston College, ed. Stephan Kuttner and J. Joseph Ryan, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series C: Subsidia 1 (Vatican City, 1965), pp. 56–62, at 56; for an overview, see Pennington, ‘Decretal Collections’, pp. 295–300. 54 See n. 50 above. 55 Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections’, pp. 277–80; Landau, ‘Die Entstehung’, 129–33 on App. and then 134–35; but cf. Kuttner and Rathbone, ‘Anglo-Norman Canonists’, 283–84 on the use of the Appendix solely among the Anglo-Norman school of canonists. 56 Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections, p. 149; Mary G. Cheney, Roger, Bishop of Worcester: an English Bishop in the Age of Becket (Oxford, 1980), at e.g. pp. 193, 202. 51

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received seventy-six of the preserved Alexandrine decretals and the bishop of Exeter sixty; the two archbishoprics of Canterbury and York received sixty-four and forty-six, respectively. In comparison, the largest number of papal letters addressed to a non-English prelate were the seventeen sent to the dean of Reims; the archbishop of the same province received thirteen. If we focus for a moment on the lands of Henry II on the Continent, then the archbishop of Rouen was the recipient of six letters of Alexander III;57 the bishops of Bayeux58 and Poitiers each received four,59 Bordeaux60 and Le Mans three61 and Evreux62 and Lisieux63 two each. The bishop of Limoges and the dean and chapter there each received one letter.64 As a result, these Continental Angevin-controlled lands rank alongside some Italian cities and monasteries in their contribution to the collections. Genoa, Pavia, Padua, Palermo, Ravenna, Veroli, Brescia, Grado, Lucca, Piacenza, Salerno, Città di Castello, Milan, Parma, Venice and even Split were in the cluster of bishoprics to receive between two and six of the Alexandrine decretals incorporated into the collections. In total, around eighty letters in the collections were addressed to clerics in the Angevins’ Continental domains of Normandy, Anjou, Touraine and Aquitaine. Some of these letters may have been forgeries.65 Of the decretal letters found in or connected to the surviving twelfth-century collections, therefore, a similar number survive for the entirety of those Continental domains as were sent to the bishopric of Worcester under Alexander III alone. Of these eighty, around 40 per cent were included in the Liber Extra and thus became the codified law of the Latin Church after 1234 – the same proportion as the English material, roughly 40 per cent of which entered the Liber Extra. The disparity in the total number of letters which survived from the regions (eighty against over 500) means that the figures are vastly different, but the equality of the proportions is important. Either there was a similar chance of the letters reaching Bologna when Raymond of Peñafort was there gathering together the letters into the Liber Extra in the years prior to 1234, or Raymond or his precursors – mostly Bernard of Pavia, although some were mediated through the 1210 Compilatio Secunda of John of Wales – decided that roughly the same proportion of letters sent to England and to Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine represented high-quality legal precedents which were deemed worthy of being kept. Although the hypothesis that the volume of letters to England represents a deliberate attempt by the papacy (or the English clergy) to bring the English Church up to speed with Rome has long been discarded, further distance can be created if letters to Norman, Angevin and other French recipients are seen as having overarching legal value as often as those from English sources.66 See n. 73 below. WH 554 = JL –; WH 797 = JL –; WH 855 = JL – (joint); WH 838 = JL 13773. 59 WH 442 = JL 14059; WH 617 = JL –; WH 827 = JL –; WH 1066 = JL 14058. A further letter was sent to R., archdeacon of Poitiers alongside the bishop of Winchester, also by Alexander III. 60 WH 191 = JL 13790; WH 867 = JL 13800; WH 920 = JL –, sent to the archbishop and his suffragans. 61 WH 416 = JL 13841; WH 1036 = JL 13842; WH 295* = JL – (*=addition to Holtzmann’s card file). 62 WH 79 = JL 13804; WH 1025 = JL 14307. 63 WH 308 = JL 138999; WH 557 = JL 14219/13915/13921. 64 WH 178 = JL – to the bishop; WH 263 = JL 13983, to the dean and canons 65 Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections’, p. 268 n. 7 points to earlier work suggesting that a letter to the archbishop of Bordeaux and his suffragans was forged; there is no space here to list all eighty letters, but details can be found in the Holtzmann Kartei. 66 The classic study is Maitland, but see more recently Z. N. Brooke, The English Church and the Papacy: from the Conquest to the Reign of King John (London, 1931, re-issue, 1989), p. 214; rebutted by Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections, pp. 140–45 and Mary G. Cheney, ‘The Compromise of Avranches of 1172 and the Spread of Canon Law in England’, EHR 56 (1941), 177–97, who explicitly 57 58



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While English collections present recent decretal material on an increased scale, they were not the first to preserve papal letters at all. The northern-French Collectio Britannica, for example, employed decretals of Pope Urban II.67 Individual papal letters are also found in the early Dekretanhänge: for example, a letter of Honorius II, Inherentes, is often added at the end of Decretum manuscripts.68 A small number of letters of Eugenius III and Adrian IV were preserved in the decretal collections. Such letters sent by Alexander’s predecessors are more likely to have been sent to non-English recipients. Of the twelve letters of Eugenius III included in the collections, only one was sent to an English bishop;69 similarly, of the ten letters of Adrian IV incorporated into the collections, only one was addressed to an English prelate.70 It was only in the 1160s, therefore, that the of amount of recent material sent to English recipients began to increase rapidly. There is a great difference in the quantity of material involved, from tens to hundreds, but the comparison between Alexander’s letters and those of his predecessors suggests either that earlier in the century English clerics had a limited desire to gather such precedents or that any attempts they made lacked the influence to be preserved in the manuscript record. Among these varied collections, and when provenance and contents are considered together, the pivot was England, supplemented by northern France and, later, Italy. Letters sent to recipients in Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, by contrast, left a relatively slight impression on the decretal tradition. Despite arguments that one group of collections originated in Tours, only five letters sent to the archbishop between 1154 and 1187 were included in the collections.71 More importantly, much Norman or Angevin material was mediated through collections with a stronger connection to northern France than to England, perhaps due to geography. WH 196, from Alexander III to the archbishop of Tours, appeared in two early collections of the French group, Parisiensis I and Victorina I, and the French/Bolognese Collectio Parisiensis II (compiled before 1180) before appearing in English collections from the 1180s.72 Of the six letters of Alexander III sent to the archbishop of Rouen and incorporated into the collections, only one is widely found in the early English

notes on p. 187 that, in order to be asking specific questions of law, the English bishops in question must have had a deep familiarity with it. 67 Christof Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 92–100, 254. 68 E.g. Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare CLXXXIV (164), fol. 254rb; Kuttner, Repert., pp. 273–76 lists Inherentes as also surviving among the ‘Kürze Dekretalenanhänge’, in Ghent, University and Commune Library 55, Montecassino Biblioteca dell’Abbazia 64 and 65, Pommersfelden Schlossbibliothek 2744, Rouen, BM 707 and Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal.lat 622. 69 WH 332 = JL – to Uberto, archbishop of Milan; WH 415* = JL 8963 to A, bishop of Florence; WH 545 = JL 9653 to the archbishop of Arles and the bishops of Aix-en-Provence, Maguelonne, and Nimes; WH 560 = JL 9506 to a cardinal priest ‘G.’ and the bishop of ‘Aretino’; WH 595 = JL 9658 to the clerics of Urbino; WH 603 = JL 14216 to the chapter of Bordeaux; WH 625 = JL 9654 to Master Omnebene and Arditius, subdeacon of the Roman church; WH 752 = JL – to the abbot of Saint-Denis; WH 943 = JL – to the cardinal deacon of Saint Eustacius; WH 1011 = JL 9667 to the bishop of Padua; WH 1015 = JL 9656/9508 to Conrad, vicar and clerk; and WH 656* = JL –, to G., bishop of Bologna. The exception is WH 736 = JL 8959 to Jocelin, bishop of Salisbury. 70 WH353* = JL – to the bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne; WH366 = JL – to the archbishop of Sens and the bishop of Auxerre; WH 344 = JL 10445 to Everard, archbishop of Salzburg; WH 664 = JL 10444 to Adam, prior of either Pontigny or Pontirolo; WH 1049 = JL 10062 to the archbishop of Tours; WH 454 = JL – to the bishop of Città di Castello; WH 533* = JL – to an unknown recipient; WH 735 = JL 10459 to the monks of Astino. The exception is WH 134 = JL 11660 to the archbishop of Canterbury. 71 WH 40 = JL 15511 of Urban III; WH 62 = JL 15198 of Lucius III; WH 196 = JL 14121 of Alexander III; WH 645 = JL 14547 of Lucius III; WH 1049 = JL 10062 of Adrian IV. 72 WH 196 = 2 Par. 17.4: Friedberg, Die Canones-Sammlungen, p. 35, 1 Par. 132: Friedberg, Die Canones-Sammlungen, p. 59; 1. Vict. 26.

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traditions. Three are found in collections of the ‘French’ or ‘Spanish’ groups mentioned earlier. For Alexander’s successors, most decretals sent to the archbishop (as identified by Holtzmann) survive via the Rotomagensis Prima collection, the first collection believed to have a Norman origin.74 By the time that the collection was compiled, after 1185 and maybe as late as the 1190s, there existed a more concrete decretal tradition in Normandy.75 From the 1190s other decretal collections began to be compiled there, including those known as Sangermanensis and Abrincensis. None of these three collections was based on English collections, however: Rotomagensis Prima used the northern-French Francofurtana as its source, while Sangermanensis and Abrincensis depended heavily on Bernard of Pavia’s Breviarium Extravagantium.76 It is not a stretch, therefore, to point to stronger links between the collections compiled in Normandy and those of Italy and the Paris basin than to those that emerged from England. The overlap in personnel between England and Normandy makes the close connection between French and Norman decretal collections interesting. To take one example, Walter of Coutances was consecrated bishop of Lincoln in 1183 before moving to Rouen to become its archbishop (1185–1207). He was a key figure in England during King Richard’s absence in the early 1190s, and Peter Landau has argued that he was a central figure in any Anglo-Norman school of canon lawyers.77 Walter was born in England, educated in Paris and spent time as treasurer in Rouen before being elected to Lincoln. His return to Rouen provides a direct connection between canon law in England and in Normandy, especially if, as Landau has argued, the Appendix was compiled in Lincoln and Walter then took his personal copy to Normandy.78 While that would explain, perhaps, the absence of the manuscript from Lincoln’s thirteenth-century book list, it remains unlikely.79 While Walter’s predecessor Rotrou seems to have had few connections, Master Ralph of Warneville had been treasurer, archdeacon and chancellor at York before being elected bishop of Lisieux in 1181.80 Henry de Beaumont, bishop of Bayeux, had previously been dean of Salisbury.81 In the opposite direction, both Bartholomew of Exeter and Roger of Worcester were of Norman ancestry, the former born on the Cotentin and the latter 73

WH 478 = JL 14087, which survives broadly across the tradition. WH 386, also to Rotrou, survives first in the Rotomagensis Prima collection, distributed throughout. Of the other four letters, WH 79 = JL 13804 and WH 836 = JL 13583 were both transmitted first in French collections of the 1170s before their inclusion in the Wigorniensis and Appendix groups; WH 383* = JL 11908 was sent to Rotrou and the bishop of Amiens after Becket’s murder and appears briefly in Cantuariensis as 1.46 and in Parisiensis I as 171. WH 1031 = JL 14086 appeared first in the collections of the 1180s, either via Wigorniensis or the Appendix, and was widely circulated thereafter. 74 Paris, BnF lat. 3922A, fols 148r–167v, 245. 75 The collection is based on the northern-French Francofurtana: Holtzmann-Cheney, pp. 160–208, with the analysis from p. 169; Jörg Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest: Episcopal Elections in Normandy and Greater Anjou, c. 1140–c. 1230 (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 61–62; Duggan, ‘Decretal Collections’, pp. 283–84. 76 Paris, BnF lat. 12459, fols 1–106v; Avranches, Bibliothèque de la Ville 149, fols 79–109, which may have come from the library at Mont St Michel: the most recent summary is Peltzer, Canon law, pp. 62–65. 77 Walter tends to be somewhat shadowy: Ralph Turner, ‘Walter de Coutances (d. 1207)’, ODNB, read online at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6467 (last accessed 25 September 2019), but see now Peter Landau, ‘Walter von Coutances und die Anfänge der Anglo-Normannischen Rechtswissenschaft’, in Panta Rei: Studi dedicati a Manlio Bellomo, ed. Orazio Condorelli (5 vols, Rome, 2004), 3.183–204, who on p. 203 concludes that Walter was central to an Anglo-Norman school of canonists. 78 Landau, ‘Walter von Coutances’, pp. 198–200. 79 A problem raised by Brett, ‘English Law’, p. 101. 80 David S. Spear, The Personnel of the Norman Cathedrals during the Ducal Period, 911–1204 (London, 2006), p. 170. 81 Spear, Personnel, p. 33. 73



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a cousin of Henry II through his uncle Robert of Gloucester. Richard of Dover, although leaving a slight imprint before his election as archbishop of Canterbury in 1173, is also believed to have connections to the province.82 Alongside these crossChannel networks, though, others formed with the Paris basin: for most of the late twelfth century the bishop of Avranches was both a magister and from Normandy, with Achard being previously abbot at St Victor in Paris.83 What is interesting is that these links within France are also supported by the surviving manuscripts. Normandy was not uninterested in canon law more generally in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while other areas of western France were a known focal point for canon law in the eleventh century.84 The Collectio Lanfranci, for example, was disseminated in both England and Normandy; of the four surviving manuscripts containing only the decretals, three are now believed to have a Norman provenance.85 Meanwhile, one of the earliest identifiable mentions of Gratian’s Decretum was gifted to Bec in 1153 by Philippe de Harcourt, while copies of Burchard of Worms’ Decretum, the major eleventh-century collection compiled around 1020, circulated in the region.86 A copy from 1080 of the canons of Lillebonne, whose obedience was restated by Henry II in 1162, can be found alongside an incomplete version of the canons of the 1179 Lateran Council now in the Vatican, and Jörg Peltzer has demonstrated how canon law helped to shape episcopal elections in Normandy in the late twelfth century.87 Outside Normandy, Tours may have been the birthplace of an influential group of manuscripts, and Fransen argued for a legally interested cleric in Limoges in the 1190s.88 That demonstrates an interest and an appetite for canon law in the Angevin Continental domains, but for some reason it took longer for that interest to turn to the collection and compilation of recent papal letters. Why, then, was there so decided an interest in recent legal precedent in England but not in Normandy or Anjou, despite the overlap in personnel? The varied survival of manuscripts between regions will always present one explanation. More smaller, earlier collections survive in England. As a result, letters discarded from the later, more legally refined collections are more likely to come to scholars’ attention. Isolated examples of early collections survive in France, for example, in the decretals sent to Reims preserved in the Brugensis collection and the inclusion of letters 82 Charles Duggan, ‘Richard of Dover (d. 1184)’, ODNB, at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/23514 (last accessed 28 September 2019). 83 Spear, Personnel, p. 5. 84 On three collections given tentative origins in Poitiers or Bordeaux, see the thoughtful but inconclusive comments in Rolker, Canon Law, pp. 73–81. 85 Lotte Kéry, Canonical Collections of the Earlier Middle Ages (Washington, DC, 1999), pp. 240–41. 86 For Harcourt’s gift to Bec, see Anne J. Duggan, ‘Roman, Canon and Common Law in Twelfth-century England: the Council of Northampton (1164) Re-examined’, Historical Research 83 (2010), 390–91; Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 145–46 also points to manuscripts of Burchard in Angers, Bayeux and Poitiers, and two in Bec. A manuscript now in Angers was previously at Tours: Kéry, Canonical Collections, p. 137. 87 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg.lat. 596, fols 1r–8v: the 1179 canons end abruptly mid-decree; Martin Brett, ‘A Collection of Anglo-Norman Councils’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 26 (1975), 302 suggests a Norman provenance. For canon law in Normandy and Anjou, see Jörg Peltzer, ‘The Angevin Kings and Canon Law: Episcopal Elections and the Loss of Normandy’, ANS 27 (2005), 177. 88 For Bambergensis, see n. 51 above; Gérard Fransen pointed to two sets of canonical material which he suggested were in St Martial, Limoges by the 1190s: Gérard Fransen, ‘Questiones Vaticanae, Urgellenses, Lemovicenses’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung 86 (1969), 438–39; Gérard Fransen, ‘Questiones Lemovicenses II’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung 107 (1990), 156–71.

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to Walter of Coutances in Rotomagensis.89 But it is only part of any explanation: Maitland established that around 40 per cent of the letters sent by Alexander III gathered in the Liber Extra had English recipients; in the case of both the Reims and the Rouen letters, a handful more survive than elsewhere, but not the dozens sent to the active, English judges.90 That cannot be explained only by the chance survival of manuscripts. Drawing a plausible timeline of these developments, starting with the Gratian appendices, is possible, but it all too easily assumes a single line of transmission and progression. In this timeline England bypasses the stage of appendices to Gratian, while Normandy bypasses both the appendices and the early, ‘primitive’ collections to engage with recent canon law only in the late 1180s and 1190s. Despite its alluring simplicity, such a timeline opens up questions. It is easy to see Norman clerics building on earlier precedents, but if England missed the critical first stage of appendices to Gratian, why did clerics start gathering recent decretals at all? Furthermore, for all the scholarly scrutiny on the innovative, new collections, the most widespread included a wider range of legal material than purely recent papal letters. The best example is the Breviarium of Bernard of Pavia, while the Paris basin saw the emergence of collections with both a predominant interest in recent letters and a broader interest in expanding Gratian by whatever means necessary.91 Although from a modern perspective the new decretal law was created in this time, its success was not a foregone conclusion in the late twelfth century. The example of Normandy, where it took longer to find root than in England, therefore becomes all the more interesting in comparison. Among the explanations for the sustained focus on new letters in the decretal collections which emerged from England, two are particularly plausible. One points to the potential shared legal experiences of the personnel who judged cases in twelfth-century England. Although canon law is often presented as separate from secular law, prelates occupied positions in both ecclesiastical and secular society, and the lawyers they employed were often skilled in both laws. Rather than representing two discrete legal cultures, the legal systems overlapped. By the mid-twelfth century, English secular law was starting to develop its own form, connected to, yet distinct from, the customary and learned traditions elsewhere. At the same time, English lords and prelates recognised and accepted papal law long before the Compromise of Avranches in 1172. It is not impossible that English clerics looked to the developing secular legal traditions and drew on their authorities in compiling canonical collections.92 The other possible explanation takes its inspiration from canon law. Despite its wide circulation on the Continent, neither of the two surviving copies of Burchard of Worms’s Decretum from twelfth-century England was of Norman origin. Durham, Dean and Chapter Library B.IV.17 is closely related to two manuscripts with a provenance in northern France, in the regions around St Omer and Bruges, respectively.93 Cotton Claudius C.vi, which may have been copied in the province of Canterbury, Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections, p. 146 for Reims. Discussed in Cheney, ‘Compromise of Avranches’, p. 185. 91 See the discussion in n. 28 above. 92 See, for example, the Civil Law, Common Law, Customary Law project at the University of St Andrews, and in particular the work of Sarah White, one of the post-doctoral researchers on the project, who is developing a project on the legal personnel in late-twelfth century England, and the ongoing work by Abigail Firey and Melodie Eichbauer on northern France. 93 Lotte Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 135–37: Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, B.IV.17 as probably that listed in Durham in the twelfth century, and related to Saint Omer, BM 194 (s. xi2, prov. Saint 89

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is linked to the Burgundian group of manuscripts, possibly a copy of a manuscript in Besançon in the mid-eleventh century.94 Those locations could suggest a route of travel along the Via Francigena, one of the principal travel routes from Italy to northern France and England.95 Another Durham manuscript, C.III.1, contains Burchard excerpts as well as a Gratian and decretals, and has been linked, through the work of the canonist Rufinus, to Bologna.96 Two surviving manuscripts do not necessarily mean only two manuscripts in eleventh- and twelfth-century England, but if Burchard’s Decretum was rarer there than elsewhere – maybe supplanted by the Collectio Lanfranci in one of its forms – then English clerics would have had access to a different selection of texts than those in France and Italy. Canonical collections build on each other and on other texts; in decretal collections containing pre-Gratian material, the Decretum of Burchard is assumed to be an important source, as it was for the paleae (or additions) to Gratian’s Decretum. If English clerics were missing that material, then they would also have lost the knowledge that it contained and would have had to seek that elsewhere instead. Concurrently, the English Church experienced a lapse in ecclesiastical authority that was not experienced in Normandy or Anjou: the absence of the metropolitan. Although Thomas Becket held the position of archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his death in December 1170, from late 1164 that was more in name than in practice. The province of Canterbury was therefore missing the man who wielded the highest judicial authority in the ecclesiastical province. There was no such absence in Normandy. There, bishops continued to exercise authority with the active support of the king.97 The role of the metropolitan in the twelfth-century Church is often overshadowed by the growing dominance of the papacy, but they existed for a reason. A metropolitan with limited practical authority, combined with a pope not known for reticence in expressing his views when prompted, could explain why England, and not Normandy, Anjou or Aquitaine, saw the growing recourse to recent papal decretals in the twelfth century. They were the best option in the turbulent 1160s. It is important, as emphasised by both Charles Duggan and Mary Cheney, that the central role of English clerics is not over-simplified.98 Multiple factors influenced the English focus on the recent papal letters; where scholars differ is in their arguments as to the most important factor: while Duggan saw the chance survival of manuscripts combined with the long-term impacts of the Becket conflict as key, Cheney pointed to ‘the reforming zeal’ of individual prelates as the catalyst. She suggested that men such as Roger of Worcester asked for more letters from Alexander III in order to strengthen their attempts at reform.99 In contrast to the idea that Becket’s followers and supporters sought out papal letters, though, Julie Barrau has suggested that Becket and his allies used biblical quotes and allusions in lieu of the

Omer) and BAV, Reg.lat. 979 (s. xi2, prov. Bruges); London, BL Cotton Claudius C.vi, with a probably Canterbury provenance but a copy of a book from Besançon. 94 Kéry, Canonical Collections, p. 137. 95 Hypothesised by Linda Fowler-Magerl, ‘The Collection and Transmission of Canon Law along the Northern Section of the Via Francigena in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Bishops, Texts, and the Use of Canon Law around the Year 1100. Essays in Honour of Martin Brett, ed. Bruce C. Brasington and Kathleen G. Cushing (Farnham, 2008), pp. 129–39, most clearly on p. 139. 96 Rudolf Weigand, ‘Burchardauszüge in Dekrethandschriften und ihre Verwendung bei Rufin und als Paleae im Dekret Gratians’, Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht 158 (1989), 429–51, with an analysis of the Durham manuscript on p. 429. See also n. 49 above. 97 Jörg Peltzer, ‘Henry II and the Norman Bishops’, EHR 119 (2004), 1202–29. 98 Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections, pp. 142–45; Cheney, Roger of Worcester, pp. 193–95. 99 Cheney, Roger of Worcester, pp. 208–12, at 210.

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canons because they saw canon law as untrustworthy or liable to manipulation.100 That makes it harder to suggest that the men who supported and surrounded Becket relied on papal correspondence for an ideological reason, and reopens the question as to why they would ask the pope for advice, and then collect the answers, when clerics elsewhere did not. The absences of the metropolitan could provide an answer to that question. When Duggan and Cheney wrote, the traditional, linear narrative of medieval canon law was predominant, underpinned by the idea that the growth of papal authority was a critical feature of the twelfth-century Church. The transition that it envisaged, centred on a clear passage from ‘old’ law to ‘new’, has become murkier with time. There is now no easy story explaining when or why canon law changed. Studies of specific individual provinces, though, can help to show how the circumstances faced by local clerics influenced their interaction with canon law and ultimately bolstered papal authority. For scholars of canon law, that strengthens the growing idea that employing pre-Gratian canon law after c. 1170 did not automatically make a collection out of date; for scholars of the Church more broadly, it intimates how local use and repetition of canon law was key to the papacy’s ultimate dominance, while distinguishing between the churches in England and Normandy. In both cases, the contrast between England and Normandy demonstrates how those repetitions were unevenly distributed across Latin Christendom, even where the secular authority figure was the same person. The interest in recent decretal material in England had many factors. Unlike others areas, though, the lack of a metropolitan created an environment where recourse to the papacy was not only possible but potentially necessary.

Julie Barrau, Bible, lettres et politique. L’Écriture au service des hommes à l’époque de Thomas Becket (Paris, 2013), passim and esp. e.g. p. 374. 100

CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES For details of all previous volumes please go to www.boydellandbrewer.com. An asterisk after a title indicates the R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture. Volume 37 (2015) Edmund King, Henry of Winchester: the Bishop, the City and the Wider World* Richard Allen, Episcopal acta in Normandy, 911–1204: the charters of the bishops of Avranches, Coutances and Sées Pierre Bauduin, Richard II de Normandie: figure princière et transferts culturels (fin dixième–début onzième siècle) Johanna Dale, Royal Inauguration and the Liturgical Calendar in England, France, and the Empire c. 1050–c. 1250 Jennifer Farrell, History, Prophecy and the Arthur of the Normans: the question of audience and motivation behind Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae Peter Fergusson, Canterbury Cathedral Priory’s Bath House and Fish Pond Sara Harris, Tam Anglis quam Danis: ‘Old Norse’ Terminology in the Constitutiones de foresta Nicholas Karn, Quadripartitus, Leges Henrici Primi and the Scholarship of English Law in the Early Twelfth Century Lauren Mancia, John of Fécamp and Affective Reform in Eleventh-Century Normandy Eljas Oksanen, Trade and Travel in England during the Long Twelfth Century Gesine Oppitz-Trotman, The Emperor’s Robe: Thomas Becket and Angevin Political Culture Benjamin Pohl, The Illustrated Archetype of the Historia Normannorum: Did Dudo of Saint-Quentin write a ‘chronicon pictum’? Volume 38 (2016) John Hudson, From the Articles of the Barons to Magna Carta* Anna Sapir Abulafia, Jews in the Glosses of a Late Twelfth-Century AngloNorman Gratian Manuscript (Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 283/676) Casey Beaumont, Monastic Autonomy, Episcopal Authority and the Norman Conquest: The Records of Barking Abbey Giles E. M. Gasper, Economy Distorted, Economy Restored: Order, Economy and Salvation in Anglo-Norman Monastic Writing Kate Hammond, Monastic Patronage and Family Disputes in Eleventh- and Early Twelfth-Century Normandy Alan V. Murray, Constance, Princess of Antioch (1130–1164): Ancestry, Marriages and Family Jean-François Nieus, Early Aristocratic Seals: An Anglo-Norman Success Story Jonathan Paletta, English Towns and Urban Society after the Norman Conquest

Susan Raich, Wreck of the Sea in Law and Practice in Eleventh- and Twelfth-­ Century England Miri Rubin, Social Life and Religious Culture in Twelfth-Century Norwich and Norfolk Luigi Russo, Bad Crusaders? The Normans of Southern Italy and the Crusading Movement in the Twelfth Century Hugh M. Thomas, Turold, Wadard and Vitalis: Why Are They on the Bayeux Tapestry? Volume 39 (2017) Christopher Clark, Why Do Battles Matter? Julie Barrau, From Conquest to Commonwealth: Cross-Channel Circulation of Biblical Culture in the Anglo-Norman World Laura Cleaver, Documentation, Forgery and the Making of the Chronicle of Battle Abbey (British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A II) F. P. C. de Jong, Rival Schoolmasters in Early Eleventh-Century Rouen with Special Reference to the Poetry of Warner of Rouen (fl. 996–1027) Brian Golding, Remembering the Battle of Hastings: Memorialization, le Souvenir Normand, and the Entente Cordiale Simon Keynes, Earl Harold and the Foundation of Waltham Holy Cross (1062) Tom Licence, Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question: A Fresh Look at the Sources Brigitte Meijns, England and Flanders Around 1066: The Cult of the English Saints Oswald and Lewinna in the Comital Abbey of Bergues Thomas O’Donnell, The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio: Politics and the Poetics of 1067 Alheydis Plassmann, England and Germany: Two Perspectives Élisabeth Ridel, Les préparatifs nautiques de la Conquête: un héritage viking? Les mots ont la parole... Christopher Whittick, Battle Abbey and the Vellomaniacs – Locating the Monastic Archive Ann Williams, Of Danes and Thegns and Domesday Book: Scandinavian Settlement in eleventh-century Berkshire Volume 40 (2018) Nicholas Vincent, English Kingship: the View from Paris, 1066–1204* 2017 C. P. Lewis, Audacity and Ambition in Early Norman England and the Big Stuff of the Conquest* 2016 Mathieu Arnoux, Ressources et croissance dans le monde anglo-normand: sources et hypothèses James Barnaby, Becket vult: the Appropriation of St Thomas Becket’s Image during the Canterbury Dispute, 1184–1200 Dominique Barthélemy, La Bataille de Bouvines reconsiderée Scott G. Bruce, Abbot Peter the Venerable’s Two Missions to England (1130 and 1155/1156) Francis Gingras, La production manuscrite anglo-normande et la Bible d’Herman de Valenciennes: usage et réception d’un livre vernaculaire (XIIe–XIVe siècles) Frédérique Lachaud, Ralph Niger and the Books of Kings

Anne E. Lester, From Captivity to Liberation: the Ideology and Practice of Franchise in Crusading France Amy Livingstone, ‘Daughter of Fulk, Glory of Brittany’: Countess Ermengarde of Brittany (c.1070–1147) Fanny Madeline, The Idea of ‘Empire’ as Hegemonic Power under the Norman and Plantagenet Kings (1066–1204) Emily Joan Ward, Child Kingship and Notions of (Im)maturity in North-Western Europe, 1050–1262 Thomas N. Bisson Note: A Micro-Economy of Salvation: Further Thoughts on the ‘Annuary’ of Robert of Torigni Volume 41 (2019) Sally Harvey, Horses, Knights and Tactics* 2018 Sabina Flanagan, Baldwin of Forde, Bartholomew of Exeter and the Authorship of the Liber de sectis hereticorum et orthodox fidei dogmata Hazel Freestone, Evidence of the Ordinary: Wives and Children of the Clergy in Normandy and England, 1050–1150 Tom Lambert, Anthropology, Feud, and De obsessione Dunelmi Aleksandra McClain and Naomi Sykes, New Archaeologies of the Norman Conquest Nicholas L. Paul, An Angevin Imperial Context for the Amboise-Anjou Narrative Programme Charlotte Pickard, The Noble Leper: Responses to Leprosy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries David Pratt, Royal Taxation and Written Record in Eleventh-Century England and Ninth-Century West Francia Richard Purkiss, Early Royal Rights in the Liberty of St Edmund David Roffe, Castle Construction, Conquest and Compensation Lucia Sinisi, Four Scenes from the Chanson de Roland on the Façade of Barletta Cathedral (Southern Italy) Linda M. A. Stone, ‘The Jews are our Donkeys’: Anti-Jewish Polemic in Twelfth-Century French Vernacular Exegesis