The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? 0198726163, 9780198726166

Table of contents :
Cover
Series page
The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain?
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Plates
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Early Twelfth-Century Perspective in English Historical Writing
A Broken Chain
The Stimulus to Mend the Chain
The Role of Precentor
Initial Attempts to Mend the Chain
The Conqueror’s Claim
Norman Counterpoint: Orderic Vitalis
The Chain Mended
Chapter 2: The Audiences for English History in the Early Twelfth Century
Chapter 3: The Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication of Old English Law in the Twelfth Century
Chapter 4: Edward the Confessor: From Critical Standard to Patron Saint
The Royalist Re-appropriation of Edward the Confessor
The Estoire and the Final Flowering of the Silver Age in English Historical Writing
Subsequent Royalist Promotion of St Edward’s Cult
Chapter 5: The Conquest in Historical Writing from the Late Thirteenth Century
Pseudo-Ingulf’s Historia Croylandensis
Alan of Ashbourn’s Lichfield Chronicle
Later Medieval Universal History
Later Medieval Histories of the Kingdom of England
Chapter 6: The Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I: Jurisprudence and Forensic Practice in the Thirteenth Century
Jurisprudence in the Thirteenth Century
Forensic Practice
Quo warranto and Limitation
Ancient Demesne, the Crown, and Inalienability
Chapter 7: The Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II: Edward II’s Reign and After
The Second Flowering of the London Collection
The London Collection and the Politics of Edward II’s Reign
Jurisprudence after Edward II’s Reign
Chapter 8: The Preservation of the Sources for English Medieval History in the Sixteenth Century
The Precedents for Parker’s Commission: John Leland and John Bale
The Appropriation of Monastic Books
The Preservation of Monastic Books
John Prise, Commissioner and Bibliophile
John Joscelyn and Matthew Parker
Matthew Parker as Editor
Chapter 9: Elizabethan Study of Old English Law and Its Post-Conquest Endorsement
ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ
Medievalism in Late Elizabethan Jurisprudence
Chapter 10: The Printing of Twelfth-Century English Historiography, and the Integration of Law with History
Selden’s Edition of Eadmer’s Historia novorum
Conclusion
Manuscripts
Printed Sources
Modern Literature
Index

Citation preview

The Norman Conquest in English History

London, BL, MS. Add. 49366, fo. 3r: the elaborate frontispiece commissioned by ­Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, when he acquired this late twelfthcentury legal compilation of unknown provenance. The book consists of a copy of ­Quadripartitus, amplified in the twelfth century with other materials. It was highly unusual for Parker to provide a frontispiece for one of his medieval manuscripts. The poem which is featured on the frontispiece was written by Walter Haddon, a civil lawyer, Latin poet, and associate of Parker. It is identified and printed below, p. 340 n. 45. The book later came into the hands of Sir Edward Coke, whose flamboyant signature is scrawled across the bottom of Parker’s frontispiece. It remained in his library at Holkham Hall until the twentieth century, and is often referred to as the Holkham Book. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British Library.

The Norman Conquest in English History Volume I: A Broken Chain? GEORGE GARNET T

1

1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © George Garnett 2021 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2021 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937355 ISBN 978–0–19–872616–6 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

For The Master

Acknowledgements This book could never have been undertaken without the support of the Leverhulme Trust, which elected me to a Major Research Fellowship in 2008. The Fellowship afforded me the time to familiarize myself with periods and sources of which I then knew a lot less than I do now. Without support on that scale it would not have been possible for me to extend my range in such a way, mid-career. Not only has the Trust been generous, its officials have also administered the process with the lightest of bureaucratic touches, quite out of keeping with the spirit of the age. The Trustees appear to have been content to wait patiently for the fruits, which have been far slower in appearing than my ludicrously optimistic original plans envisaged. I hope that this book will enable them to feel that their investment has at last begun to pay off. When I began working on this subject I could not have anticipated how relevant it would become to contemporary national politics. The medieval history of England has again begun to be invoked in current political debate, if not (yet) to the same extent as it was in the seventeenth century. It has done so because the crux of that debate has become the constitution, as it was in the seventeenth century. Interpretation of the Conquest is fundamental to that of the constitution. Nigel Farage’s sporting of a Bayeux Tapestry tie when canvassing in the Rochester and Strood by-election in 2014 created the year’s most improbable fashion accessory. On 17 May 2016, during the European Union Referendum campaign, Boris Johnson accused the Remain campaign of ‘the biggest stitch-up since the Bayeux Tapestry.’1 On 17 September 2018 he suggested in his Daily Telegraph column that agreeing to the proposals recently made at Chequers by the then Prime Minister would have amounted to a pusillanimous acquiescence in foreign rule of a kind not seen ‘since 1066’.2 As Prime Minister himself, on 10 September 2019 he chose to be filmed participating in a lesson at Pimlico Primary School on the subject of the Conquest. On a more scholarly level, the eighth centenary of Magna Carta in 2015 celebrated in grand style an English exceptionalism sometimes defined, as it was in 1215, in terms of a restored, mythically autonomous pre-Conquest past and a reaffirmed aboriginal law. That was so in the seventeenth century too. 1  Politics Home: https://www.politicshome.com/news/europe/eu-policy-agenda/brexit/news/75095/ boris-johnson-blasts-biggest-stitch-bayeux-tapestry 2  The Daily Telegraph, 17 September 2018; cf. G.  Garnett, ‘Did English Leaders “Deliberately Acquiesce” in 1066’, BBC History Magazine Extra, September 2018; D.  Hannan, ‘The Norman Conquest was a Disaster for England. We Should Celebrate Naseby, not Hastings’, The Daily Telegraph, 14 October 2016.

viii Acknowledgements In 2019 seventeenth-century precedents have been invoked repeatedly.3 Some of them have followed common law tradition in assuming a law of immemorial antiquity, untouched by the Conquest. That was implicit in the judgment of the Supreme Court handed down on 24 September 2019, on the unlawfulness of the recent purported prorogation of Parliament—a purported prorogation choreographed to conclude on the anniversary of the battle of Hastings. The reasoned section of that judgment began by invoking Sir Edward Coke’s report of the socalled Case of Proclamations, already relied upon by Lord Pannick QC in his advocacy before the court, and in the antecedent proceedings.4 I hope that the following detailed account of development in English understanding of the Conquest in historiographical, legal, and political discussion over half a mil­len­ ium may offer a more nuanced perspective on the very long history of this peculiarly persistent English mode of political legitimation. Anyone familiar with the work of my second doctoral supervisor, Jim Holt, will realize that an important part of the inspiration came from two of his essays on the English constitutional tradition, and from the opening chapter of his Magna Carta, which approaches his subject retrogressively, from a seventeenth-century, legal vantage point. His supervisor, V.H. Galbraith, took a very dim view of his doing so—‘a dreadful start . . . stupid, anachronistic mis-understanding’5—but Holt stuck to his guns, in my view rightly so. Although he discussed my original plans with me, and supplied one of my letters of reference (though refusing point blank to do so in the required email format), the resulting book is the poorer in that it has not benefited from what would have been criticism as forthright as that he had received from his own supervisor. The book has, however, at every stage, from initial conception to final draft, been discussed and read by my fellow Holt pupil and closest intellectual collabor­ ator, John Hudson. His suggestions are frequently acknowledged in the footnotes 3  On 18 March 2019 the Speaker of the House of Commons cited a precedent from 2 April 1604 ­(Commons Journals (1547–1628), p. 162) to justify refusing to allow the Government to bring forward a motion for a third time in a single parliamentary session for a so-called meaningful vote on the Brexit deal negotiated between the Government and the EU: T. Erskine May, Parliamentary Practice, 24th edn (London 2011), p. 397. 4  R (Miller) v. Prime Minister; Cherry v. Advocate General of Scotland [2019] UKSC 41, paras 32, 41; it was also given pride of place in the summary of the judgment. Cf. Lord Pannick, counsel for the appellant in UKSC 2019/0192, and in R (Miller) v. Prime Minister [2019] EWHC 2381 (QB). Coke’s 12 Reports, fos. 74–6 (Proclamations, Mich. 8 Jac. I; The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, Knt. In Thirteen Parts, ed. J.H. Thomas and J.F. Fraser, 13 Parts in 6 vols (London 1826), vi). It is not a report of a court case, but of an opinion delivered by Coke when it was solicited by the Lord Chancellor and sundry other law officers. Coke records himself concluding that ‘the King hath no prerogative, but that which the law of the land allows him’. In support of this, he reports citing, amongst other authorities, Sir John Fortescue’s De laudibus legum Anglie, c. 9, one of Fortescue’s key discussions differentiating a king who ruled ‘politically and regally’ from one who ruled simply ‘regally’; for the implications of this distinction for understanding of the Conquest, see below, pp. 273–4. I should like to thank Mike Macnair and David Pannick for help with this note. 5  Private letter commenting on a late draft of Holt’s book, and dated ‘?3 September [1964]’: Holt Archive, University of St Andrews.

Acknowledgements  ix below, but they give a very inadequate impression of the extent of his contribution. I am unsure whether he will interpret this as an unalloyed compliment, but for me he has come to fill Jim’s shoes, though some of the hobnails seem to have been removed. I must also acknowledge the continuing influences on my approach of my first supervisor, Walter Ullmann, several of whose few works on English subjects proved fecund in the development of the argument, and that of Quentin Skinner, whose Special Subject remains formative forty years after I took it. For me, an important lesson of the latter was that many early modern thinkers continued to frame their arguments in medieval terms—a lesson with an obvious bearing on the current project. Like many of those who taught me in that golden age of the Cambridge History Faculty—Jonathan Riley-Smith and Brendan Bradshaw leap to mind—Walter and Quentin inculcated a belief that trying to understand what people thought, and how thought informed action, is the most interesting and rewarding challenge in historical inquiry. It is also a pleasure to record the importance of my time as a Title A (Research) Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Toby Milsom and Peter Linehan were both then Fellows, and Peter was working on a book about the history and his­tori­og­raphy of medieval Spain which bears some similarities to what I have attempted. My role as convenor for the Oxford History Faculty’s Special Subject on the Norman Conquest of England has required me to reflect on all sorts of aspects of the topic. John Blair and I continue to disagree in our overall interpretation of the Conquest, but listening to his developing views on architecture has led me to appreciate its significance in ways which I would not have done otherwise, and I am grateful. At the weekly class, Stephen Baxter and I now put on public disputations rem­ in­is­cent of those in which I once engaged with James Campbell and Patrick Wormald. From these I learn much. With respect to this book, however, I am even more indebted to Stephen for inviting me to deliver a lecture at King’s College, London in 2009, in memory of Patrick. It prompted me to begin to hone my thoughts at an early stage of the project. Years of argument with Patrick forced me to refine my understanding of English legal matters. Much of what follows could not have been written without the foundations laid by his The Making of English Law, which will endure as one of the great works of scholarship on Anglo-Saxon history. Whereas Patrick was interested in the twelfth-century legal compilations for the light they might throw on pre-Conquest law, I have tried to use them as evidence of how pre-Conquest law was understood (and fabricated) in the twelfth century, and of how that reconstructed (or invented) law was exploited thereafter. Indeed, Quadripartitus and the various apocryphal codifications of Old English law with which it became associated are the most obvious thread running through the long period covered by this book. It remains a cause of great regret that I have had to do my best to

x Acknowledgements formulate and voice Patrick’s objections for him—though I could never hope to replicate the piercing, patrician insistence of his tone. Still more important than Richard Sharpe’s classes on writs and charters and his published scholarship has been a series of early evening drinks with him, post class. Ruminating on some of his comments made me realize how I could tie together architectural transformation and the resurrection of English historical writing. In Durham Cathedral that realization became an epiphany. Even after decades of teaching the Special Subject, tutorial discussion of the sources each year continues to prompt fresh insights, some of which I hastily jot down. It may not be invidious if I single out one fairly recent pupil, George Molyneaux, because he has had the generosity and patience to subject much of what follows to a forensic critique. One of the advantages (or disadvantages) of attempting to cover such a long timescale, across several different fields, is that I have been obliged to give myself crash courses in subjects of which initially I knew little or almost nothing. In order to do so, I have unashamedly solicited the assistance of authorities. I have already mentioned Richard Sharpe, who has responded with an exacting patience to numerous inquiries on palaeographical and codicological matters, and has read much of the book in draft. The constructively unforgiving quality of his criticism is rem­in­is­cent of that of Jim Holt—there seems to be something distinctive about medieval historians who hail from Yorkshire (a view shared by Galbraith, another Yorkshireman). I must also thank John Baker, who has been generous, encouraging, and in­struct­ive by turns, as I have attempted to grapple with English common law in the later middle ages and early modern period. Others who have read and commented on portions include Paul Brand, Hugh Brodie, Hugh Doherty, Elinor Garnett, Adam Leach, Katie McKeogh, John Pocock, Magnus Ryan, Liesbeth van Houts, and George Woudhuysen. The prospect of John Gillingham’s relentless scepticism has been an important discipline. At the very beginning, Barbara Harvey gave me much needed orientation in later medieval English history. In the final stages, Gregory Garnett acted as computer technician. I have tried to acknowledge all other assistance in the footnotes. I am indebted to the many librarians whose patience I may from time to time have tried, most often through electronic ineptitude. These include the staffs of the Bodleian Library (perhaps especially Isabel Holowaty, its History Librarian, who seems willing to answer queries at any time of any day or night), of Cambridge University Library, of the Manuscripts Reading Room in the British Library, and last but most, of St Hugh’s College. Nora Khayi, the College’s Librarian, and her recent locum Marjory Szurko, have been as receptive to suggestions for recondite acquisitions as they have been willing to turn a blind eye to borrowing in grotesque excess of any prescribed limits.

Acknowledgements  xi I am grateful to St Hugh’s and my other Oxford college, Lady Margaret Hall, for allowing me periods of sabbatical leave, and to my tutorial colleagues over the last decade, especially Jon Parkin and Grant Tapsell, for covering for me while I have taken it. Other colleagues in the wider Oxford History Faculty who deserve a special thank you are Rana Mitter, Julia Smith, and John Watts, who collectively persuaded the University to award me an extra term’s leave in order to put the finishing touches to the typescript. In addition, John quietly made 2018 the Faculty’s 1956. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the nurturing I have received from Stephanie Ireland, Cathryn Steele, and Katie Bishop, my editors at OUP. Finally (in chronological terms), I am indebted to another taker of the Special Subject, Kerrith Davies, who responded to a last-minute plea for help by agreeing to compile the index. That he was willing to do so even after indexing an earlier book of mine is a sign of true friendship. I have yet to mention the one person who has not only read the whole more times than she will wish to remember, but also ended up living with it on a daily basis, even on successive Cretan holidays. Helen Pike covered drafts of every part with characteristically purple (in literal more than metaphorical terms) criticism, and buoyed me up through the darker intervals, repeatedly advising that close study of Quadripartitus was bound to be deleterious to health. That it seems in the event not to have proved to be so is thanks to her, and to Elinor, Edmund, and Gregory. They have all supported, diverted, and delighted me, the last three tolerating the Broken Chain rattling in the background for almost half their lives. This book is for Helen. Oxford 14 October 2019

Contents List of Plates List of Abbreviations

Introduction

xv xvii

1

1. The Early Twelfth-Century Perspective in English Historical Writing

13

2. The Audiences for English History in the Early Twelfth Century

81

3. The Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication of Old English Law in the Twelfth Century

104

4. Edward the Confessor: From Critical Standard to Patron Saint

132

5. The Conquest in Historical Writing from the Late Thirteenth Century

173

6. The Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I: Jurisprudence and Forensic Practice in the Thirteenth Century

209

7. The Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II: Edward II’s Reign and After

247

8. The Preservation of the Sources for English Medieval History in the Sixteenth Century

286

9. Elizabethan Study of Old English Law and Its Post-Conquest Endorsement

332

10. The Printing of Twelfth-Century English Historiography, and the Integration of Law with History

360

Manuscripts Printed Sources Modern Literature Index

387 393 407 439

List of Plates Between pp. 234 and 235. 1. London, BL, MS. Yates Thompson 26, fo. 1v: Bede kissing the feet of St Cuthbert. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British Library. 2. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig XI. 6, fo. 44v: a portrait of Eadmer writing. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the J. Paul Getty Museum. 3. London, BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian  B.  xx, fo. 95v: from Book 1 of Goscelin of St-Bertin’s account of the translatio of St Augustine’s relics. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British Library. 4. London, BL, MS. Yates Thompson 26, fo. 2r: Bede writing. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British Library. 5. William of Jumièges presenting his history to William the Conqueror: Rouen, BM MS. 1174 (714), fo. 116r. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque Municipale de Rouen. 6. A watercolour by Charles Stothard of the coronation of St Edward from walls of the Painted Chamber of Henry III (1263–72), in the medieval Palace of Westminster. Reproduced by permission of the Society of Antiquaries. 7. Cambridge, UL, MS. Ee. 3.59, fo. 29r: death and reception of St Edward in heaven, illustrated in La Estoire de Seint Ædward le rei. Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 8. The interior left wing of the Wilton Diptych, which depicts a kneeling Richard II, flanked by Edmund of East Anglia, Edward the Confessor, and John the Baptist. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the National Gallery. 9. Statues on the ruined, thirteenth-century west end of Crowland Abbey church. Reproduced by permission of Crowland Abbey. 10. London, BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 51r: an excerpt from the early fourteenthcentury Lichfield Chronicle. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British Library. 11. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 258, fo. 1r: Mirror of Justices, title page. Reproduced by permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College. 12. William Lambarde, portrait in oils by an unknown artist, c. 1600. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery. 13. London, BL, MS. Add. 62540: a self-portrait sketch by Laurence Nowell. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British Library.

List of Abbreviations Acta, ed. Sharpe Acta of William II and Henry I, ed. R. Sharpe: http://actswilliam2henry1.wordpress.com/ AM Annales monastici, ed. H.R. Luard, 5 vols, RS (1864–69) ANS Anglo-Norman Studies ASE Anglo-Saxon England Bede, HE Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (BI)HR (Bulletin of the Institute of) Historical Research BL British Library Bracton  Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, ed. G.E.  Woodbine, trans. and rev. S.E. Thorne, 4 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1968–77) CBMLC Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues CCC Corpus Christi College CCCM Corpus Christianorum, continuatio medievalis CCR Calendar of Charter Rolls, 6 vols (London 1903–27) CM  Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, chronica majora, ed. H.R. Luard, 7 vols, RS (1872–83) Cod. Codex Iustiniani CREE  Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. W.  Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1882–83) CRR  Curia Regis Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Richard I – 1250, 20 vols (London 1922–2007) CRSHR  Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols, RS (1884–89) C&S I  Councils & Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, I, ad 871–1204, Parts i and ii, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C.N.L. Brooke (Oxford 1981) C&S II  Councils & Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, II, ad 1205–1313, Parts i and ii, ed. F.M.  Powicke and C.R. Cheney (Oxford 1964) Davis, MC G.R.C.  Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain and Ireland, rev. C. Breay, J. Harrison, and D.M. Smith (London 2010) DB Domesday Book, 4 vols, ed. A. Farley (London 1783–1816) Dig. Digestum Iustiniani EcHR Economic History Review Eadmer, HN Eadmeri historia novorum in Anglia, ed. M. Rule, RS (1884) edn edition EHR English Historical Review Foedera  Foedera, conventiones, litterae et cujuscunque generis acta publica, ed. T. Rymer, new edn, 4 vols. in 7 parts (Record Commission 1816–69)

xviii  List of Abbreviations Fulman, Scriptores  Scriptores Rerum Anglicarum scriptores veteres, ed. W.  Fulman (Oxford 1684) Gesetze F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols (Halle 1903–16) GG  William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, ed. M.  Chibnall and R.H.C. Davis (Oxford 1998) Glanvill  The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England commonly called Glanvill, ed. G.D.G. Hall, rev. M.T. Clanchy (Oxford 1993) GND  The Gesta Normannorum ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. E.M.C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford 1992–95) GP  William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum, ed. M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford 2007) GR William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford 1998) HA  Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. D. Greenway (Oxford 1996) HNa William of Malmesbury, Historia novella, 2nd edn, ed. E. King, trans. K.R. Potter (Oxford 1998) HSJ Haskins Society Journal JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History JW  The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R.R.  Darlington and P. McGurk, 3 vols (Oxford 1995–) Ker, MLGB N.R. Ker, ed., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain. A List of Surviving Books, 2nd edn (London 1964); Supplement to the Second Edition, ed. A.G. Watson (London 1987) LECf Leges Edwardi Confessoris LHP Leges Henrici primi, ed. L.J. Downer (Oxford 1972) Litt. T. Littleton, Tenures novelli, first edition c. 1481 LMA London Metropolitan Archives LP  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer et al., 21 vols in 33 (London 1862–1932) MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica ODNB H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison, eds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 2004); and electronic supplements: http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article OV Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. M. Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford 1969–80) PBA Proceedings of the British Academy PL  Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina, ed. J.P.  Migne, 221 vols (Paris 1844–65) P&M F. Pollock and F.W. Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I., 2nd edn, 2 vols, reissued with a new introduction by S.F.C. Milsom (Cambridge 1968) Potthast A. Potthast, ed., Regesta pontificum romanorum (1198–1304), 2 vols (Berlin 1874–75) PQW  Placita de quo warranto, temporibus Edw. I, II, & III, Record Commission (1818)

List of Abbreviations  xix PRS Pipe Roll Soc RCR  Rotuli curiae regis, ed. F. Palgrave, 2 vols, Record Commission (1835) Reg.  Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I, 1066–1087, ed. D. Bates (Oxford 1998) repr. reprinted RH Rotuli hundredorum, 2 vols, Record Commission (1812–18) RP Rotuli parliamentorum, 6 vols (London 1767–77) RS Rolls Series S. P.H.  Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London 1968), revised and updated at http:// www.esawyer.org.uk/ Seipp D.J. Seipp’s Abridgement, which indexes all Year Book reports printed for all the years between 1268 and 1535, and many of the reports printed only in alphabetical abridgements: www. bu.edu/law/faculty-scholarship/legal-history-the-year-books/ ser. series Soc. Society SR Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols (London 1810–28) TCBS  Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society Tite, Records C.G.C.  Tite, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library. Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London 2003) TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society VSD Vita Sancti Dunstani VSW  Vita Sancti Wulfstani, in William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives. Lives of SS. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Idract, ed. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Thomson (Oxford 2002), pp. 1–155 Walt. Cov. Memoriale fratris Walteri de Coventria, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1872–73) WAM Westminster Abbey Muniments Wormald, Legal Culture P. Wormald, Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West. Law as Text, Image and Experience (London 1999) Wormald, Making P.  Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, Vol. I, Legislation and its Limits (Oxford 1999)

Introduction From 1066 successive Norman kings of the English presented themselves as the Old English royal line continued. They came close to glossing over the fact that the kingdom had been conquered at all. Their legitimacy as kings was founded on an official version of certain key events, or rather alleged events, primarily of the 1050s and 1060s. Very quickly, this version of recent history became intrinsic to the operations of the new regime. This was already the case prior to the first extant written statement of Duke William’s claim to the throne of England, in William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum, c. 1071. In the name of con­ tinu­ity with Edward the Confessor’s England, this version of events played an important part in shaping the way in which the kingdom was brutally trans­ formed: most fundamentally in terms of who held land on what terms, and most visibly in terms of architecture. Domesday Book was the monumental written consummation of the tendentious premise that nothing had changed since King Edward’s day, at least so far as tenurial structure was concerned. Many of the indi­ vidual tenants, clerical as well as lay, might be different, but they all held as suc­ cessors of Edwardian antecessores, and the tenurial system was presented as unaltered. The Book purported to be an objective record of facts, most im­port­ ant­ly the corresponding facts for any particular tenancy at two fixed points: ‘now’, in 1086, and ‘in the time of King Edward’, meaning on 5 January 1066, the day of Edward’s death. This chronological framework, first formulated many years before the Domesday Survey had been conceived, meant that the Book embodied an official history which was already deeply entrenched by 1086. The conse­ quences of the trans­form­ation in the kingdom of England which had been administered by reference to that interpretation of the past were so fundamental that they continued to set the context of politics in the twelfth century, and in some respects long afterwards. Twenty years after 1066, Domesday Book was the most substantial early treat­ ment of change over the Conquest, but change disguised as continuity with the Old English past. This study addresses many subsequent treatments in different forms of the same issue, over a far longer time scale. It considers the roles that the Norman Conquest played in English historical writing, in English law, and in English political argument, over a period from c. 1090 to c. 1700. The subject has

The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

2  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 proved to be so vast that it has been necessary to divide the study into two vol­ umes. This first volume takes the story up to the point in the early seventeenth century when the bulk of what were then recognized as the most important sources on the Conquest and what had preceded it had become widely available in print. The second volume will begin a little earlier than the end of the first. It  will examine the use made of these materials in scholarship and in political debate from the later years of Elizabeth’s reign into and through the seventeenth century, when the Conquest rapidly became an even more contested issue than it had been in the twelfth. This first volume opens by showing how and why, within forty years of 1066, a number of writers suddenly and almost simultaneously began to write Latin his­ tories not just of their own monastic houses, but of England. Almost all of them were demonstrably monastic precentors, so in charge of libraries, record-keeping, and liturgy in their communities. Ex officio, they found themselves at the nub of establishing and demonstrating continuity over the Conquest. They were obliged to play a key part in dealing with the implications of the comprehensive rebuild­ ing of the kingdom’s major churches, most pressingly establishing which saints’ relics merited translation from the old into the new churches. They also had to ensure that their institutions’ titles to estates were reliably documented, in a con­ text where traditional titles to land, like traditional claims to sanctity, were subject to newly intense, sceptical scrutiny. The scale of the demolition and construction work which surrounded them must have constituted an even more insistent daily reminder of transformation than the intermittent threats to ancient landed pos­ sessions. In diverse locations around the kingdom, these writers appear to have recognized that it was necessary to reconstruct, or more accurately to construct, a history of England which traversed the Conquest and reached back at least as far as the conversion to Christianity of the Angles and Saxons—collectively termed the English—at the very end of the sixth century and beginning of the seventh. In doing so they were well aware that they were resurrecting a literary genre which to most intents and purposes appeared to have died out in this island with the demise of Bede, the great historian of the conversion, almost four centuries before. Bede’s shadow fell on each of them in a different way, but they were all acutely conscious that they were writing in it. Each after his own fashion sought to provide an historiographical continuation (or in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s revealingly exceptional case, prologue) to Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which the intervening centuries had lacked. They did not work in iso­ lation; many of them were demonstrably aware of what their peers were up to. Precentors in different houses were obliged to correspond with each other by one of their official duties: the commemoration of the dead. William of Malmesbury, by his own estimation and that of posterity the preeminent member of this select group, and certainly the most learned in classical literature, neatly formulated the point in a metaphor he adapted from the late

Introduction  3 antique model provided by the preface to Justinus’ epitome of the otherwise lost histories of Pompeius Trogus. English historical writing was a chain which had been broken with the death of Bede. William and his contemporaries—Eadmer of Canterbury, Florence and John of Worcester, Symeon of Durham, and the secular canon and archdeacon Henry of Huntingdon being the most prominent at the time and subsequently—were attempting to forge a long new section of chain, to be linked to what had been left dangling in 735. For reasons discussed below in Chapter 1, it seems likely that they were right to think that Latin historical writing in England had all but died out after Bede. Why this should have happened here, in striking contrast to West and later East Francia, to Italy and Iberia, is a very interesting question which has scarcely been touched upon by modern historians of the Anglo-Saxon period.1 An obvious fac­ tor is likely to have been the continuing and unique importance of the written vernacular throughout the various kingdoms of England. This was still very much the case after the English kingdom had been formed in the early tenth century. Indeed, it remained so until the half century after the Conquest, when written Old English quickly became obsolescent as a language of legislation, administra­ tion, and devotion. But why the role of the vernacular might have made English monks disinclined to write history in Latin is not immediately apparent. History was an antique genre, so it was probably difficult to conceive of writing it—as distinct from the rudimentary and often shambolic vernacular annals of the vari­ ous manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, initiated at the end of the ninth century—in anything other than an antique language. The explanation for histo­ ry’s post-Bedan demise in England is unlikely to be simple. To provide a fully satisfactory one for this particular instance of English exceptionalism would require a quite different book from that which follows. The question arises because the sudden efflorescence of English historiography about England at the start of the twelfth century threw into striking relief the long, antecedent hiatus, which William of Malmesbury sought to characterize in the metaphor he borrowed and adapted from a Roman historian of the later Empire. That dramatic and in the event collaborative outburst, which burned most brightly in the second quarter of the century, is the subject of the opening two chapters. In the view of William and his contemporaries, writing the history of England and the English necessarily involved filling the post-Bedan gap, and in most cases also recapitulating in summary form much of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. Several of them also suggested that the Norman Conquest had represented some sort of break in the course of English history, as distinct from English his­ torical writing. The Conquest was generally interpreted as a rupture of a magni­ tude exceeding that caused by any earlier invasion. But in so far as they felt the 1  J. Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views on the Anglo-Saxon Past’, repr. in his Essays in AngloSaxon History (London 1986), pp. 209–28, at 216; J. Campbell, ‘Placing King Alfred’, in T. Reuter, ed., Alfred the Great. Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences (Aldershot 2003), pp. 3–23, at 21.

4  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 need to repair it, to trace connections with what had preceded it, they were obliged to mend the historiographical chain which had been broken many cen­ tur­ies before it. Almost all of them were members of institutions which had sur­ vived it, and most were charged with establishing and recording aspects of the continuous life of their churches stretching back into the distant past. For this reason a study of the Conquest’s role in the germination of English historiography about England necessarily involves a consideration not only of the treatment of the Conquest itself by these historians, but also of their awareness that they were writing up for the first time most of English history in the interval between the death of Bede and the immediate aftermath of the Conquest. Mending the his­ torical chain involved mending the historiographical chain. It is striking that one difference between Eadmer’s Historia novorum, the earli­ est of these works, and those which followed was that he did not attempt to mend the latter chain. He was concerned with explaining what the Conquest had changed, and why, not with writing a sequel to Bede, though he was acutely con­ scious of the Bedan model of ecclesiastical history. He opened his account not in the early eighth century but in the second half of the tenth, in the reign of Edgar. In his view it offered a model of equable collaboration between king and prelacy, in counterpoint to the tension which had come to prevail in the aftermath of the Conquest. Things had begun to go awry long before, shortly after Edgar’s death, with the sacrilegious outrage of the assassination of his son and immediate suc­ cessor, Edward the Martyr. That abomination had brought God’s wrath down on the heads of the English. The Conquest had been the latest and most devastating in a succession of divinely ordained afflictions. There could be no certainty that it would turn out to be the last. Eadmer’s immediate historiographical successors expressed enormous admiration for his book, and drew on it. Some of them evi­ dently sympathized with his assessment of the Conquest as providential punish­ ment for sin, Old Testament-style. But none of them borrowed his starting point. Although, like him, they were attempting to explain the Conquest, unlike him this prompted them in their various ways to try to mend the broken historio­ graphical chain. Their research excavated and preserved most of what we know about Old or Anglo-Saxon England, and organized it in a fashion which has proved definitive ever since. In that sense, pre-Conquest English history was largely created from a post-Conquest perspective, with the inevitable consequence of reading current early twelfth-century preoccupations back into the Anglo-Saxon past. We are all familiar with the ‘Beyond’—meaning the retrospective extrapolation—of Domesday Book;2 something similar is more self-consciously true of the great historians of England who wrote in the half century after the Book’s production. 2 F.W.  Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond. Three Essays in the Early History of England (Cambridge 1897).

Introduction  5 In parallel with this intense, concentrated historiographical phenomenon— unparalleled in medieval Europe, and, in terms of analytical influence, through­ out subsequent English history—was a simultaneous attempt to unearth, preserve, translate, and to a considerable extent to invent, Old English royal law, conven­ tionally termed, after the Conquest, the ‘law of King Edward’ (Chapter 3). This William the Conqueror was said and shown, by and large, to have endorsed— much like other aspects of the Edwardian status quo. It was a further mani­fest­ ation of continuity with Old England. The research project into pre-Conquest law was much more focused in terms of subject than that into pre-Conquest history. It was, however, less concentrated in terms of duration: it was still in train in the thirteenth century. By contrast with the historiographical project, the names of the scholars who engaged in it are unknown, or can only be guessed at. But it reached back just as far into the Old English past, and it was animated by similar imperatives. Sometimes its products appeared in the same manuscripts as the his­ tories; sometimes they were clumsily spliced into the very text of the histories; often they were written up in law books which contained no accompanying his­ torical narrative. Precentors who were charged with record keeping and drafting documents were likely to be sensitive to legal matters, and were also likely to appreciate that they sometimes required awareness of an historical dimension. But those who engaged in this highly specialized type of research and fabrication are unlikely to have been precentors, because precentors’ professional responsi­ bilities did not involve the use of royal legislative texts (as distinct from royal charters and writs). They may have needed to consult from time to time the gloss­ ar­ies of Old English technical terms which were compiled in the twelfth century, partly on the basis of the codes. But that is a quite different matter from compil­ ing, translating or confecting codes, which in any case say almost nothing about land law. The resulting collections of genuine and apocryphal Old English codes, often translated with varying levels of competence into Latin, together with various codified versions of what purported to be the Conqueror’s legislation, are conven­ tionally judged to have been quite rapidly superseded by the results of a series of new legal procedures invented in the later twelfth century. It is these new pro­ced­ ures which we now see as the origins of English common law. They are generally considered to have represented a fresh start, and not in any sense to be dependent on the antiquated and moribund legislative relics of Old England, or what in the early twelfth century was considered to have been Old English law. One of the claims advanced below is that many of the collections, most especially what pur­ ported to be the laws of King Edward which William I was said to have endorsed— imaginatively reconstructed in a number of pseudo-codes, one of which is the earliest extant law code in French—continued to be recognized as an important foundation of current law, and therefore to exert influence throughout the rest of the middle ages and later. These texts, still revered and consulted for current

6  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 purposes in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (as shown in Chapters 5, 6, and 7) could not but import interpretation of the Conquest into current jurispru­ dence, and therefore contemporary politics. Moreover, for other and very par­ ticular ­reasons, the Conquest remained a point of reference in certain types of forensic proceedings. A case involving ancient demesne, a category invented in the thirteenth century but deemed by definition to date from before the Conquest—hence ‘ancient’—could only be settled by reference to Domesday Book (Chapter 6).3 Exceptionally, the Book might also be consulted in other types of case. Ancient charters were occasionally quoted and, more rarely, brandished in court. Although the limit of legal memory came to be fixed at Richard I’s cor­ on­ation, that did not prevent the occasional invocation of documents dating from much earlier. By the second half of the twelfth century there were, then, two categories of text written or at least compiled and translated in the first half of that century: histories, and legal compilations. Both bore upon the long history of Old England and the Conquest which had—or had not—terminated it. Counterintuitively, it was the more narrowly focussed legal tradition which was to do more to preserve the Conquest as an issue of debate or dispute during the later middle ages. The extraordinary richness of English historical writing in the first half of the twelfth century was not sustained in the second, even by the decreasing number of his­ tor­ians who continued to attempt to cover the full range of English history. From the thirteenth century there was a growing tendency to concentrate on the recent past, or on the history of a particular church, or on universal history in which eleventh-century England could claim only a minor part. Very occasionally, some arresting (and unsubstantiated) episode from 1066 or its immediate aftermath was recounted (Chapters 4 and 5). But on the whole, and in so far as the Conquest continued to be considered at all, existing accounts were simply cut and pasted, and usually heavily condensed, from earlier treatments. The Conquest became a convenient starting point for histories which aspired to cover more than the very recent past, but that did not mean that much was said about it. It had become a familiar punctuation mark in the course of English history. It did not need to be revisited and probed, just briefly summarized. By contrast, translated collections of Old English codes, and the post-Conquest confections to varying extents based upon them, continued to be copied, espe­ cially in London, and not just in the city’s churches. That recent pieces of legisla­ tion were appended piecemeal to a London compilation of these materials, known as the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, strongly suggests that it was not manufactured in order to satisfy an interest in legal antiquarianism amongst the upper echelons of the city’s administration. Most of these officials were unlikely 3  Claimants also needed to prove that their current lord was exacting services additional to those received by the Conqueror as lord of the manor.

Introduction  7 to have been of scholarly bent. The earliest extant witness of the Collection, ­dating from the start of John’s reign, was designed both to impress and to be of practical use. That use was not confined to municipal matters, because the Collection treated the city as the kingdom on a small scale, and the kingdom as the city on a grand scale. The city was said to be the kingdom’s caput. The Collection was addressed not only urbi, but also regno; it secured the attention of both these pro­ jected audiences, which overlapped to a considerable degree. It appears to have played an important part in expressing and informing opposition thinking in the years immediately prior to Magna Carta. What was now for the first time un­equivo­cal­ly termed the Coronation Charter of Henry I, and the law of King Edward which that document had repeatedly endorsed, were turned against Henry I’s great-grandson and successor, to telling effect (Chapter 4). This adroit piece of political manoeuvring was of such great interest to historians of John’s reign that some of them began to see Henry I’s Charter being invoked every­ where, even on occasions when it demonstrably was not. King John himself became so obsessed with it that in early 1215 he attempted to demand that every free man in the kingdom swear an oath specifically against it when he was obliged to renew his fealty to the king. In the 1230s John’s son and successor Henry III eventually re-appropriated Edward the Confessor for royalty. But he did so by sumptuous elaboration of the saint’s cult established under Henry II, most spectacularly in the new abbey church which he constructed at Westminster to replace Edward’s own building. In it he would eventually be interred beside the splendid new shrine which he had commissioned for the royal saint. In this devotional expression of continuity with Old England, the focus was entirely on Edward as saint, not Edward as lawgiver (Chapter 4). It was epitomized in the coronation ceremony, during which a new king was invested with regalia now identified as those of the Confessor. The evo­ cation of St Edward rendered the current king’s image more numinous, but Henry III tacitly acknowledged that Edward’s law was unlikely ever again to buttress the assertion of royal power. That implicit concession had left open the possibility of again deploying against other kings the texts devised for and attributed to Edward in the twelfth century, just as they had been against John. This is exactly what happened in the reign of Edward II, named like his father after their canonized predecessor. In a sleight of genius, the laws of St Edward were inserted into the coronation ceremony itself, in the form of a new promise on the part of the king to respect them. The ceremonial proclamation of the king’s affinity with his only canonized predecessor became also the means by which he was made to bind himself to respect the saint’s laws. A century or so after its first compilation, the London Collection enjoyed a renaissance which, to judge from the number of surviving copies, was even more influential than it had been in its first, Johannine incarnation (Chapter 7). Despite the title devised for it by mod­ ern historians, the London Collection was not confined to the city where it had

8  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 first been put together. Its wider pertinence was betokened by the parallel it drew between city and kingdom. Its distinctive version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris not only proved peculiarly serviceable to Edward II’s opponents, it was drastically edited and spliced into a history written in Lichfield probably just after the end of Edward’s reign in order to provide the template of an account of the Conquest. Similarly, texts from other twelfth-century compilations of pre- and immediately post-Conquest royal legislation were in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries inserted into the idiosyncratic narratives of the Conqueror’s reign written in monasteries in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. The codes which were selected for inclusion in these histories were principally those apocryphal ones which pur­ ported to record the Conqueror’s endorsement of Old English law. The focus was, in other words, on the nature of the Conquest, on King William’s supposed deter­ mination that it should not alter much, legally speaking. As demonstrated in Chapter  5, however, a very early twelfth-century collection of translated Old English codes—Quadripartitus—was adapted, probably in Yorkshire, to provide the framework for a substantial history of England, from the Conversion to the aftermath of the Conquest. For this, laws of Edward the Confessor had to be freshly concocted, because there was no code attributed to Edward in Quadripartitus. Ancient royal law codes, translated from Old English into Latin or fabricated for the Conqueror in the twelfth century, provided in these exceptional, provincial late medieval histories the substance of analytical treatments of the Conquest which in all other respects were in this period rudimentary and hackneyed. Very occasionally, the codes also continued to be drawn upon in jurispruden­ tial literature. But in this period common law jurisprudence became increasingly technical and specialized, and was from the late thirteenth century written for the most part in the curious law French which lawyers would eventually come to ­consider one of the few lasting legacies of the Conquest. This meant that it tended to be confined to a small, professional audience, and therefore to be of limited influence. Sir John Fortescue, who in the second half of the fifteenth century explicitly discussed the Conquest, albeit to endorse the conventional doctrine of legal continuity, was in this respect very much an exception amongst later medieval English jurists writing about English law. But his purpose was political: to ­contrast royal rule in England and France, always to the detriment of the latter. In these ways the Conquest limped along as a topic of interest, or at least of reference, in later medieval England. In the late thirteenth century Earl Warenne might have been unusually belligerent as a defendant when he brandished his ancestral, rusty sword (rather than a royal charter) in the midst of court proceed­ ings (Chapter 6); but his irate defence of a title to land he claimed to derive from the Conquest would have resonated with his peers. It was and remained a mark of distinction to assert descent from one who had come over with the Conqueror, and/or tenure of an ancestral estate from that time. Most churches could establish title which was far more ancient. The primary position of Henry III’s 1225 reissue

Introduction  9 of Magna Carta in most collections of statutes, its role in thirteenth-, fourteenth-, and early fifteenth-century politics, and in legal education throughout that period and subsequently, all raised questions about the antecedent problem—the ‘mis­ chief ’—for which this allegedly first extant statute had been designed as a remedy. As with the original Magna Carta of 1215, so later, with this legally authoritative version, the document could be interpreted not as an innovation, but as the res­ tor­ation of an earlier legal status quo. That status quo was embodied in the law of King Edward which the Conqueror had, or had not, endorsed, the law which some of his successors might have failed to maintain, the law which kings from Henry III to Henry V had reaffirmed by repeatedly reissuing or endorsing the Charter. It was a law which was deemed to be embodied in the ancient royal law codes, both authentic and apocryphal. Although Magna Carta of 1225 came to be accepted as the first statute, these codes were reassuringly much more statute-like in form. The precondition for the resurrection of the Conquest as a matter of current concern and relevance was the Reformation, and particularly the Dissolution of the monasteries. The revival did not come to pass immediately. Henry VIII and his close advisors were very interested in adducing precedents for English royal control over the clergy, and the exclusion of papal claims to jurisdiction in the kingdom. Many of the best precedents could be adduced from pre- and immedi­ ately post-Conversion British history, fewer from later in the middle ages. The version of the twelfth-century fabrication known as Leges Edwardi Confessoris found in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum became for a third time an important authority during the early 1530s, but on account of its imaginative re­cre­ation of aspects of very early British history, not of William I’s endorsement of King Edward’s law. This was the first occasion on which it was deployed in sup­ port of a king’s pretentions, rather than against them. The king himself signalled his enthusiasm for Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, perhaps because it had the twin advantages that it was easier to find one’s way around than either of William of Malmesbury’s great histories, and that Henry’s Latin was far more readily comprehensible. Henry’s Historia was attractive because it provided a more straightforwardly structured account of the Conversion and its aftermath than Bede. The Leges Edwardi Confessoris, Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia, and the works of William of Malmesbury, like many other books bearing on the history of England which had been suddenly dispersed from monastic libraries, were all products of the great outpouring of attempts in the twelfth century to make sense of English history. Although at this stage their treatment of the Conquest was not of much interest, their construction of English history in general and of the his­ tory of English law in particular was informed by their post-Conquest perspec­ tive, as I have already emphasized. The Conquest had been both their inspiration and their defining premise. Any reading more attentive than the highly selective

10  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 official filleting, in the early 1530s, for ancient precedents preserved in the official collection of useful historical precedents known as Collectanea satis copiosa (Chapter 7) was likely, sooner or later, to draw attention to the subject. Most of the materials being searched treated it, and had been written in response to it. The dispersal of these books in the 1530s, ’40s, and ’50s, and their selective preservation, often by a small sub-set of those officials charged with administer­ ing the Dissolution (Chapter  8)—poachers turned bibliophilic gamekeepers— created the potential for them to be used as sources if and when the Conquest should again become a subject of current interest. A fortiori this was the case when these works, recognized as definitive for the early history of England in modern attempts (such as Polydore Vergil’s) to rewrite that history, were rendered much more widely accessible by the new technology of printing. Some of those who scooped up manuscript histories and law books foresaw the potential. Elizabeth I’s first archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, not only instigated his own central record of who held manuscript witnesses of which medieval books, with a particular interest in those which bore on the his­ tory of the kingdom, he also started the process of producing printed editions of them. In quick succession, he published two editions of Matthew Paris, selected for that historian’s highly congenial hostility to papal interference in English affairs. In terms of printed editions, however, Old English and immediately postConquest law codes stole a march. William Lambarde’s scholarly edition, pro­ duced in collaboration with Laurence Nowell, was first printed in 1568 (Chapter 9). Both scholars were closely associated with Archbishop Parker, who was active, too, in facilitating legal antiquarianism. He was uncharacteristically demonstrative about his pride in owning, and commissioning supplements to, a twelfth-century collection of English law codes which will reappear frequently throughout this study. This is the manuscript now known as London, BL, MS. Add. 49366, and often referred to below as the Holkham book, because it passed from Parker’s library into that of Sir Edward Coke, and thence into the library of the house which his descendants built at Holkham. There it remained until the mid-twentieth century. The frontispiece he commissioned for the book provides the frontispiece for this volume. The great historical works of the early twelfth century and the later medieval resumés of them were very selectively digested in Polydore Vergil’s Historia Anglicana, first printed in 1534, and in Holinshed’s vernacular Chronicles, first printed in 1577, and reissued in a much expanded edition ten years later. But the texts themselves did not begin to be printed until the early 1590s, by which point the medieval English past in the shape of Magna Carta had already begun to be resurrected as a figure in political debate. Thereafter publications swiftly followed. Many of the most important were available by the time King James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth on the English throne in 1603. Most of the rest followed over the next fifty years (Chapter 10). Bare texts of narratives were published, taken

Introduction  11 from manuscripts which came to hand, with individual witnesses sometimes being used as copy texts for the printers. Initially, there was little or nothing in the way of scholarly apparatus. Antiquarian editorial scholarship rapidly developed in sophistication, but of necessity scholars had to devise methods from scratch. They were feeling their way. In this regard too, the legal antiquarians Nowell and Lambarde had already displayed great precocity in the 1560s. This volume concludes with a consideration of John Selden’s 1623 edition of Eadmer’s Historia novorum, which was in itself, appropriately enough, a novelty in terms of scholarly editions of historiographical texts. In his unprecedentedly substantial scholarly apparatus, Selden integrated the fruits of the work of these and other legal antiquaries in order to illuminate Eadmer’s text. Innovative as was his use of the work of other legal historians, however, it is striking that he did not seek out what we now know to be the autograph witness of Eadmer’s book, available in Archbishop Parker’s library. It seems highly improbable that Selden was unaware of the existence of this manuscript, which had been repeatedly transcribed in the sixteenth century, and cited in printed books he must have read. It may have been that his incarceration in the Tower of London during the period when he was preparing the edition ham­ pered his access to certain books, though the richness of citation of other works would suggest that this was not generally the case. Whatever his reasons, for the printed text of Historia novorum he contented himself with a much later witness, which had by then found its way into the library of his friend Robert Cotton. It seems that Selden was far more interested in using Eadmer’s book as a pretext to explore aspects of legal his­ tory related to the Conquest than he was in establishing a definitive critical text. When it came to legal materials, he made a point of parading his palaeographical virtuosity. James VI of Scotland’s accession to the English throne had been widely inter­ preted as analogous to a conquest of England. It had been so because the ruler of one kingdom was acquiring another, an event which was seen as having particu­ lar implications for the extent of his powers in the realm he had just acquired. Inevitably, the analogy directed attention to the Norman Conquest, by far the best-documented of all previous conquests. For the first time in many centuries, the Conquest became a subject of intense and widespread historiographical inter­ est, because it was considered to be of acute contemporary relevance. Soon after James’s accession in England, he propounded a scheme for Union of his two king­ doms. English resistance to this and other alarming projected innovations was often framed in terms of ancient, medieval precedent. Selden became one of the leading figures in this resistance. He presented the edition he produced while a political prisoner in the Tower as an innocuous project of antiquarian scholar­ ship, by implicit contrast with the recent book which had so aroused his sover­ eign’s ire: his Historie of Tithes. But the Historie treated a modern problem historically, with detailed dissection of medieval documentation. The authorities should not have been fooled by Selden’s attempts to present the edition of Historia novorum as disinterested, and lacking in contemporary resonance, because

12  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Eadmer had written half a millennium before. In the seventeenth century no investigation of the medieval English past was without its implications for current politics; the Conquest most of all, because of what was deemed to be its bearing on what were, and what were not, the monarch’s legitimate powers, particularly his legislative powers. The vast majority of Selden’s novel explanatory apparatus to Historia novorum concerns the opening pages of the book—the pages which dealt with the run up to and immediate aftermath of the Conquest. It appears that Selden was much less interested in commenting on the rest of the text. In response to historically-informed opposition and obstruction, James, and Charles I after him, turned increasingly to the medieval past in order to justify their departures from current constitutional convention, to show that they were acting in accord with ancient precedent. The upshot was that the Norman Conquest became an even more controversial topic in the seventeenth century than it had been in the twelfth, when the great histories and legal compilations had first been written. Antithetical in­ter­pret­ ations were now debated openly, indeed belligerently. It is not much of an exag­ geration to say that they set the terms of current political debate. Certainly they remained central to competing interpretations of the proper extent of royal power down to the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. The career of the Conquest in the seventeenth century will be the subject of the second volume of this study. This first volume shows how the materials on which those interpretations were based had come to be written in the twelfth century, the various roles which they had played throughout the intervening half millennium, how so many of them were preserved in the catastrophe of the Dissolution, and how they had subse­ quently been disseminated in print to a much wider public. From that point the mended chain of the early twelfth century became a primary cause of disruption as well as of continuity in what turned out to be, in political terms, England’s most tumultuous century.

1

The Early Twelfth-Century Perspective in English Historical Writing A Broken Chain William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum is, by common consent, the most remarkable example of a sudden efflorescence of historical writing in England in the first half of the twelfth century. Despite William’s conventional, classical protestations of modesty (as distinct from monastic humility), it seems likely that this scholarly consensus endorses his own estimate of his book’s im­port­ance. His aim, he stated in the prologue, was ‘to mend the broken chain of the times [interruptam temporum seriem sarcire]’.1 Perhaps he borrowed the conventional classical metaphor of an historiographical chain from his principal model for an historical prologue: the preface to Justinus’s late second- or early third-century epitome of the Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus, which was a very popular work in the middle ages.2 But whereas Justinus (and before him Trogus, allegedly in 44 volumes) had aspired to universal coverage, in William’s case the series (otherwise termed cursus) temporum was that of ‘the English people’, and he produced two striking variations on the classical metaphor. He elided the writing of history with the history which was written, and he suggested that the chain had been broken.

1  GR I. pr. By contrast, in his later VSD i. prol. 7, he says that his aim is more ambitious than to ‘patch up the broken chain of events [interruptam seriem resarcire]’. 2  M. Iuniani Iustini epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi, ed. O. Seel (Stuttgart 1972), pr., p. 2; R. Syme, ‘The Date of Justin and the Discovery of Trogus’, Historia, xxxvii (1988), 358–71, proposed a much later date for Justinus’ writing. Pompeius Trogus was an Augustan writer. Justinus’ Epitome is recorded in England in the eighth century, but appears to have been re-imported to England after the Conquest: P. Rusche, ‘A Twelfth-Century English Fragment of Justinus’s Epitome’, Scriptorium, xlviii (1994), 140–6. On Justinus in this period, see B. Munk Olsen, L’Etude des auteurs classiques latins aux 11e et 12e siècles, 4 vols (Paris 1982–9), i. 537–51; B.  Guenée, ‘L’histoire entre l’éloquence et la science. Quelques remarques sur le prologue de Guillaume de Malmesbury à ses Gesta regum Anglorum’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, cxxvi (1982), 357–70, at 365, 369–70. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Arch. Seld. B. 16, a compilation in William’s hand of historical texts and the abbreviated version of the Theodosian Code known as the Breviarium Alaricum, contains an Excerptum ex Justino de gestis Romanorum at fos 7v–10v. The excerpt does not include the prologue; it begins in Bk. XLIII. Orderic invoked Justinus in the prologue to Historia ecclesiastica: OV i. 130. William of Poitiers, GG, p. 6, referred in more general terms to the series historiarum. The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

14  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 The break had occurred at the death of Bede,3 whose Historia ecclesiastica ­gentis Anglorum William conventionally refers to as Gesta Anglorum4 or Historia Anglorum.5 In his view, it seems, the subject of Bede’s book was simply the history of the English. After Bede, whose death William placed in 734,6 only the rudimentary vernacular annals now known collectively as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and Æthelweard’s (to William) painful tenth-century attempt to distil some of those annals into Latin—‘the less said of him, the better’—saved the period from ‘the dotage of oblivion’.7 During this lengthy hiatus ‘the cursus temporum limps along without any support from letters’. If the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was indeed ‘a beacon shining bright . . . to keep my course from straying’, it was so only by contrast with the otherwise inspissated gloom.8 William would doubtless have concurred with V.H.  Galbraith’s judgment: ‘Not much research was needed for these [annals], and less learning.’9 Among other early twelfth-century English historians, William expressed most admiration for Eadmer of Canterbury: Eadmer shared with Bede the quality of a ‘sober style’.10 Nevertheless, Eadmer’s Historia novorum, the first version of which was probably completed by 1114, had, in William’s view, skated briskly over the period from Edgar in the third quarter of the tenth century to William the Conqueror, in order to concentrate on recent events. It had not filled the post-Bedan gap, because it was primarily con­tem­por­ ary history. Hence the need to mend the ‘broken chain’ or ‘thread [linea]’,11 ‘to bring forcibly into the light things lost in the rubbish-heap of the past’;12 and hence William’s ‘private satisfaction’, as he concludes his book, ‘that after Bede I  am the only person, or the first, to set in order the continuous history of the English [quod continuam Anglorum historiam ordinaverim post Bedam vel solus vel primus].’13 Like Henry of Huntingdon, another twelfth-century historian who expresses a reverence for Bede14—his ‘authority is incontestable [firmissima]’15— William is emphatic about establishing the continuity of English history, by reestablishing the continuity of English historical writing. To do so would be to

3  GR I. 62, 69. 4  GR I. 19, 51, 65; II. 208; cf. R.W. Hunt, ‘The Library of the Abbey of St Albans’, in M.B. Parkes and A.G.  Watson, eds, Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R.  Ker (London 1978), pp. 251–77, at 270. 5  GR I. 53; GP I. 3. Bede himself, in his preface, refers to it as ‘historia nostrae nationis’: Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford 1969), p. 6; cf. M. Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford 2006), pp. 142, 144, 148. 6  GR I. 54. 7  GR I. pr. 8  GP pr. 4. The version of the Chronicle used by William was one antecedent to E: Two of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles in Parallel, ed. C. Plummer and J. Earle, 2 vols (Oxford 1892–9), ii. pp. lviii–lx; GR ii. pp. 12–13. At this stage it is thought that it was being kept up at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, so it seems likely that William spent some time there: R.M.  Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 2nd edn (Woodbridge 2003), pp. 69–70. 9  V.H. Galbraith, ‘Historical Research in Medieval England’, repr. in his Kings and Chroniclers in Medieval England (London 1982), ch. XI, ‘Introduction’, p. 12. 10  GR I. pr. 3, IV. 315, 332; GP I. 45. 1, III. 107. 1. 11  GR I. 62. 12  GR II. pr. 13  GR V. 445; cf. HNa III. pr. 14  HA pr., IV. 11, 12. 15  HA IX. 1.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  15 follow in the footsteps of Bede, who had set out to do something similar for the period between the arrival of the English in Britain and his own day.16 By implication, at least, the arrival of the Normans was an event of comparable magnitude. In William’s view, continuity in the writing of English history had been broken not just at but by Bede’s death: ‘With Bede was buried almost all historical record down to our own day.’17 Where historical writing in Latin was concerned, English monks during these four centuries were indeed, as James Campbell has observed, for the most part ‘inert’,18 certainly by comparison with authorial activity in con­ tem­por­ary Francia, or Italy, or Spain. When, quite exceptionally, the biography of a West Saxon king was written, it was by a Welsh author, who had perhaps become well-read in Wales,19 though not as well read in the classics as his Carolingian contemporaries.20 For reasons into which it is impossible to delve here, English monks appear to have concentrated much more single-mindedly on pastoral and homiletic writings than their continental counterparts. The point can be well illustrated by their use of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. In so far as they continued to show any interest even in him, they tended to refer to the late ninth-century Old English translation, which is striking (amongst other things) for its lack of concern with preserving Bede’s detailed historical narrative, and for being less 16  GR I. pr. 17  GR I. 62. 18  J. Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, repr. in his Essays in AngloSaxon History (London 1986), ch. 13, pp. 209–28, at 216; J.  Campbell, ‘Placing King Alfred’, in T.  Reuter, ed., Alfred the Great. Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences (Aldershot 2003), pp. 3–23, at 21. In addition to Æthelweard, Asser and Byrhtferth of Ramsey are the only known major exceptions prior to the eleventh century. On Byrhtferth, the compiler of the Historia regum later incorporated by Symeon of Durham, see M. Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Early Sections of the Historia regum attributed to Symeon of Durham’, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature, 900–1066 (London 1993), pp. 317–42; Byrhferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. M.  Lapidge (Oxford 2008), pp. xxxix–xlii; C.  R.  Hart, ‘Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian Chronicle’, EHR, xcvii (1982), 558–82; K. Cross, ‘Byrhtferth’s Historia regum and the Transformation of the Alfredian Past’, HSJ, xxvii (2015), 55–78. This Historia regum began in the seventh century and ended in 887. Lapidge, Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, pp. xlii–xliii, also constructs a hypothetical case for a lost chronicle by Byrhtferth covering much of the tenth century; cf. D.  Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum as a Product of Twelfth-Century Historical Workshops’, in M. Brett and D.A. Woodman, eds, The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past (Farnham 2015), pp. 95–111, at 101. At Glastonbury in the thirteenth century there appears to have survived an account of Æthelstan’s reign which has since been lost; but the date at which it had been written and its relationship to other sources cannot be established: R.  Sharpe, J.P.  Carley, R.M.  Thomson, and A.G. Wilson, eds, English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, CBMLC, iv (London 1996), B39.261. In the eleventh century, the Encomium Emmae and the Vita Ædwardi regis are both the work of continental authors. Even saints’ lives seem thin on the ground compared to the continent: B.’s Vita S. Dunstani, written in the last few years of the tenth century—The Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. M. Winterbottom and M. Lapidge (Oxford 2012), pp. 2–108, lxiv—and a lost Old English life, possibly of the same period: pp. cxxvii–cxxix; also Byrhtferth’s Vita Oswaldi and Vita Ecgwini; and Wulfstan of Winchester’s Vita Æthelwoldi. 19  M. Lapidge, ‘Asser’s Reading’, in T. Reuter, ed., Alfred the Great: Papers for the Eleventh Centenary Conference (Aldershot 2003), pp. 27–47; T.M.  Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons 350–1064 (Oxford 2013), pp. 453–5. 20  J. Campbell, ‘Asser’s Life of Alfred’, repr. in his The Anglo-Saxon State (London 2000), pp. 129–55, at 148.

16  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 interested than Bede had been in the existence of the English as a single people.21 In the vernacular, Bede’s history became instead a source for sermonizing. Æthelweard was for William a pre-Conquest exception which proved the rule, in that he had attempted to record major events, chiefly by rendering a version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle into Latin. But he was also an exception in that, when he turned from the Chronicle to Bede, he used Bede’s original as well as the Old English translation.22 Perhaps he did so because the original could be made more germane to his contention that, as a result of the Anglo-Saxons’ conquest in the fifth century, ‘Britain is now called Anglia, assuming the name of the victors.’23 ‘And they themselves are possessors down to the present day.’24 Had William been capable of overcoming his disgust at Æthelweard’s style, he might well have felt a considerable affinity with his sentiments. William was in any case intent on contrasting his historical writing with the antecedent void which he had identified. In doing so he articulated a theme—the continuous history of the English—which he shared not only with Henry of Huntingdon, but also with all the other major historians who make the early twelfth century the greatest period of English historical writing about England: Eadmer, John (preceded, by his account, by Florence) of Worcester,25 Symeon of Durham, and (in a different vein, because he wrote in French verse, primarily for a lay audience) Geoffrey Gaimar. Yet none of these authors, including those other professed admirers of Bede, Henry of Huntingdon and Symeon of Durham, explicitly states that he shares William’s view that the death of Bede had brought the writing of English history to an abrupt halt which had persisted for almost four centuries. Although they could not have been unaware of the hiatus, they do not explicitly refer to it. Yet for all of them, a fortiori William of Malmesbury, the continuous history of the English meant something more than continuity in the writing of English history. According to Henry of Huntingdon, for instance, it meant the continuous existence of what was originally the ‘kingdom of Wessex’. The kingdom had been established in 519, with Cerdic’s victory over the native British at Charford, and ‘in course of time, [it] subjected all others to itself and obtained the monarchy of 21  G. Molyneaux, ‘The Old English Bede: English Ideology or Christian Instruction?’, EHR, cxxiv (2009), 1289–1323, esp. 1291–2, 1297, 1302, 1312. 22  M. Gretsch, ‘Historiography and Literary Patronage in Late Anglo-Saxon England: The Evidence of Æthelweard’s Chronicon’, ASE, xli (2012), 205–48, at 218–35. The version of ASC used is close to A; whether Æthelweard wrote in the vernacular or produced the extant Latin text himself remains a matter for debate: The Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. A. Campbell (Edinburgh 1962), pp. xxvi–xxix, xxxvi–xxxvii; further Gretsch, 238–48. 23  Chronicle of Æthelweard, p. 9. 24  Chronicle of Æthelweard, p. 10. 25  The current fashion is to attribute authorship to John, but Florence’s prior contribution to the work is recorded (presumably by John) in an effusive obituary notice s.a. 1118, which concludes by breaking into verse: JW iii. 142, cf. p. xv; M.  Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, eds, The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford 1981), pp. 101–26, at 104 n. 3, 110 n. 2.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  17 all Britain’.26 Thereafter, thus transformed, it had persisted ‘down to this day’.27 It was not so much the history of a people, as the history of a kingdom. This process of political unification under the West Saxon kings professedly provided Henry with the chronological structure for his history: ‘On account of this, the dates of  all the other kingdoms are measured relative to those kings’.28 He scarcely bothered with incarnational dates.29 Although continuous, this teleological process had been anything but smooth. The English conquest of Britain had been the third of five Old Testament-style plagues inflicted on the island by divine providence,30 the first two being respectively the Roman and Pictish/Scottish invasions.31 The Danish raids of the ninth to eleventh centuries constituted the fourth.32 The fifth was the Norman Conquest,33 by which God ‘exterminated the English race’ or ‘took away from the English race their safety and honour, and even commanded that they should not be a people’.34 ‘In the year of grace 1066, the Lord, the ruler, brought to completion what He had long planned for the English race [gens]. For He delivered them up for extermination to the violent and cunning race of Normans.’35 The Conquest was, in other words, the worst of the five successive providential plagues. But while it might have ‘exterminated’ the English as a people—although, despite the literal meaning of the much repeated term, he hinted perhaps not forever36—it did not destroy the unified English kingdom, and therefore the power of that kingdom’s king. On the contrary, William I had turned out to be ‘more powerful than any of the kings of the English’.37 The kingdom and its king continued—flourished as never before— even if it was doubtful to what extent the English people might be deemed to have survived. Henry constructed an epilogue to give the impression that he had completed the book ‘in the sixty-ninth year from the coming into England in our times of the most excellent Norman race; the 703rd year from the coming into England of the English; the 2265th year from the coming of the Britons to settle in the same island; the 5137th year from the beginning of the world; the 1135th year of grace.’38 The Conquest was the latest in a sequence of providential events. Henry’s observations about the exercise of royal power deserve to be taken seriously. As befits an historian commissioned by Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, the nephew of Roger, bishop of Salisbury, who became in effect the king’s chief minister in the 1120s, Henry reveals that he was privy to many confidential details about the royal administrative machine.39 Moreover Henry had, so he tells us, spent his youth in the household of Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, who had previously been the king’s chief minister through much of the reigns of William Rufus and Henry  I.40 None of the early twelfth-century historians—not even 26  HA II. 16, cf. 17. 27  HA II. 23. 28  HA II. 16. 29  HA p. lxiv. 30  HA II. 17. 31  HA I, 4, 47. 32  HA IV. 30, V. pr., VI. 3. 33  HA I. 4. 34  HA VI. 38, VII. 1. 35  HA VI. 27. 36  HA I. 4; VI. 27, 38. 37  HA VI. 39. 38  HA VIII. epil. 1–2. 39  HA VI. 36, 40, VIII. De contemptu mundi 9. 40  HA VIII. De contemptu mundi 1.

18  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Eadmer, as amanuensis of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury—knew better how English royal government operated from the inside.41 The Conquest had punished the sins of the English, but providence’s fashioning of a united English kingdom under a single monarch, starting with the ‘Saxon’ victory over ‘the natives of Albion’42 in 519, had not been in vain. Indeed, in some ways—particularly the ruthless Norman exploitation of royal government which Henry described largely in deprecatory terms borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle43—the Conquest had consummated it. The immediate inspiration for Henry’s interpretation of the Conquest as providentially pestilential was scriptural;44 but it was also a lesson that Henry thought he had drawn from Bede’s Historia, which he was said to have rendered more incisive and orderly.45 His interpretation of the Conquest is more overtly schematic than William of Malmesbury’s. But William, perhaps also schematizing and simplifying Bede’s understanding of the workings of providence, likewise ­at­tri­butes the Conquest in some respects to recent failings on the part of the English, which had been justly punished.46 Many of the English clergy had lapsed into ignorance, and many gluttonous, sottish nobles, gratifying their carnal lusts during the day in the connubial bed, scarcely lent half an ear to incompetent priests gabbling their way through the mass outside the bedchamber door, left ajar to facilitate a simultaneous, sacrilegious gesture at devotion. As William reported, Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, soon the only survivor of the Edwardian hier­archy, had been a striking exception to the general rule that English priests ‘sing the mass cursorily in the morning, and then spend the rest of the day intent on food and profit’47 and, in the case of certain Canterbury monks, still more ­rep­re­hen­sible pursuits.48 And Wulfstan himself told some whingeing Englishmen that they had had it coming: ‘It is the scourge of God that you are suffering.’49 It made no difference that not every single Englishman had become a thoroughly bad lot by 1066: ‘in the hour of captivity [God’s] stern judgment sometimes grips the good as well as the bad.’ Divine justice on this scale was bound to involve 41  See J. Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon: In his Time (1135) and Place (between Lincoln and the Royal Court)’, in K. Stopka, ed., The Gallus Anonymous and his Chronicle in the Context of TwelfthCentury Historiography from the Perspectives of the Latest Research (Krakow 2010), pp. 157–72. 42  HA II. 17. 43  HA VI. 38. 44  Gen. 12: 17; Lev. 26: 21, 28; Deut 8, Jer. 14: 17; 4 Kgs. (2 Kgs.): 17; cf. Ps. 77 (78), on the particular relevance of which see HA p. xlix. 45  By the anonymous Le Bec author of a list of contents, HA p. 835: ‘What Bede in his history portrays in a prolix and confused fashion, [Henry] elucidates by abbreviation and ordering.’ 46  GR III. 245; further M.  Winterbottom, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Normans’, Journal of Medieval Latin, xx (2010), 70–7; R.M.  Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Diatribe against the Normans’, in Brett and Woodman, eds, Anglo-Saxon Past, pp. 113–21, which is concerned primarily with a revealing discussion in William’s Commentary on Lamentations: Willelmi Meldunensis monachi, Liber super explanationem Lamentationum Ieremiae prophetae, ed. M.  Winterbottom and R.M.  Thomson, CCCM, ccxliv (Turnhout 2011), I, 2194–2212. For a comparable denunciation of English clerics in the early tenth century, see his VSD II. 9. 2–3. 47  GP IV. 137. 48  GP I. 44. 49  GP I. 42. 6β 5. pp. 94–7; cf. below, p. 91.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  19 collateral damage. ‘It was God’s hidden and wonderful purpose that never again should Englishmen breathe together and fight together in defence of their liberties, as if all the strength of England had fallen away with Harold’.50 England might aspire to ‘breathe in liberty, the empty shadow of which she has pursued for so long’, but in in truth there seemed no prospect of relief: ‘nowadays she groans under the affliction of calamities.’51 Yet William is far too subtle an historian to characterize the Conquest straightforwardly as a biblical pestilence; his analysis of it is nuanced to the point of ambivalence. This was certainly deliberate; but it was facilitated by his (forgivable) failure ever to reconcile his understanding of providence with that of classical fortuna, which he invokes as frequently as one would expect such a well-read author to do.52 That he never even addressed the issue directly was testimony to his ­un-Orosian sense of the opacity of the workings of providence in the world, and his desire to mimic the ancients in their frequent invocations of fortuna as a determining force in mundane affairs. 14 October 1066, the date of the battle of Hastings, had been ‘a fatal day for England, a deadly disaster for our sweet homeland, as she exchanged new lords for old’.53 ‘No Englishman today is an earl, a bishop, or an abbot; new arrivals everywhere gnaw at England’s riches and entrails, nor is there any hope of ending this wretchedness.’54 And yet ‘the standard of religion, dead everywhere in England, has been raised by [the Normans’] arrival’.55 This raising of religious standards together with an expansion in the number of monks had a striking physical manifestation, to which William displayed more of a sensibility than the other early twelfth-century historians: ‘you may see everywhere churches in villages, in towns and cities, monasteries rising in a new style of architecture’. When William adapted Coleman’s Old English Life of Bishop Wulfstan, eventually the sole survivor of the English hierarchy, he recorded, on the basis of the testimony of Prior Nicholas of Worcester, that Wulfstan had wept at the demolition of the old cathedral church: Wulfstan regretted that ‘the work of saints’ was thereby destroyed.56 Nevertheless, he acknowledged the necessity for rebuilding; indeed,

50  GR II. 228. 11; cf. VSW II. 1. 1. 51  GR II. 208.2; note the echo of Lucan, Pharsalia II. 202–3. 52  Perhaps the closest he comes to addressing this issue is in his suggestion that God and fortune vied with each other in William Rufus’s soul: GP I. 50; cf. GR I. 17. 2 (where the term is not used), IV.  389. 7; R.M.  Thomson, ‘Satire, Irony, and Humour in William of Malmesbury’, in C.  Mews, C.  Nederman, and R.M.  Thomson, eds, Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West, 1100–1540: Essays in  Honour of John  O.  Ward (Turnhout 2003), pp. 115–27, at 125; R.M.  Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Historical Vision’, in R.M. Thomson, E. Dolmans, and E.A. Winkler, eds, Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge 2017), pp. 165–73, at 166–8. For men as the victims of fortune’s wheel, see GR I. 8. 2, I. 79; II. 107. 3; II. 228. 1; III. 251. 3; III. 270, etc.; HNa III. pr., 56; at I. 10 the term ‘providential Deitatis’ is used in a sense synonymous with fortuna. 53  GR III. 245. 54  GR II. 227. 55  GR III. 246. 56  VSW III. 10; cf. GP IV. 141. 4–5; on Prior Nicholas, see IV. 151. β2–3. Wulfstan had returned from Canterbury, where he had been visiting the dying Lanfranc, to witness the demolition.

20  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 he had instigated it. In that respect he was no different from the many continental clerics by whom the English hierarchy had been so brutally replaced: ‘God had preserved [Wulfstan] to see the church so exalted.’57 That, quite exceptionally, he had been spared turned out to have been providential for the church of Worcester. The exaltation, or restoration, of the English Church entailed rebuilding every important English church in the continental Romanesque style, as the Normans recreated England in their own (architectural) image. Edward the Confessor’s new Romanesque abbey church at Westminster was the unique exception. No current English cathedral contains any surviving pre-Conquest masonry above ground.58 In this striking, physical sense too, it is clear that for William of 57 Cf. VSW I. 14. 58  E.  Fernie, ‘Saxons, Normans and their Buildings’, ANS, xxi (1998), 1–9, at 2–3; E.  Fernie, The Architecture of Norman England (Oxford 2000), p. 24. E. Fernie, ‘The Romanesque Cathedral, 1093– 1133’, in D. Brown, ed., Durham Cathedral: History, Fabric and Culture (New Haven, CN 2015), pp. 130–41, at 136, suggests that the exceptional design of the southernmost pillar in the transept of Durham Cathedral marks the site of the previous church. The sees relocated after 1075 make an interesting test case, because their Anglo-Saxon cathedral churches had of necessity to be decommissioned as cathedrals. That at Sherborne continued to be used as a dependent priory until Roger, bishop of Salisbury raised it to the status of an independent abbey in 1122. The existing church, which had been extended or remodelled during the episcopate of Ælfwold (1045–58), was further and extensively remodelled in the twelfth century, but nevertheless retains a number of pre-Conquest features: J.H.P. Gibb and R.D.H. Gem, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Cathedral at Sherborne’, Archaeological Journal, cxxxii (1975), 71–110, at 72–5, 76–7, 81–2, 90–7, 107. In that respect it appears to be unique amongst the original cathedrals of the sees which were relocated. The most likely location for Selsey cathedral was Church Norton church, known as St Wilfrid’s Chapel. The original cathedral appears to have been demolished and replaced with a new church by the end of the twelfth century, the chancel of which was rebuilt in the thirteenth century, and most of which (other than the rebuilt chancel) was demolished in 1865: J.  Munby, ‘Saxon Chichester and its Predecessors’, in J. Haslam, ed., Anglo-Saxon Towns in Southern England (Chichester 1984), pp. 315–30, at 317–19; T.W.T.  Tatton-Brown, ‘The Medieval Fabric’, in M.  Hobbs, ed., Chichester Cathedral: An Historical Survey (Chichester 1994), pp. 25–46, at 25; S.E. Kelly, ‘The Bishopric of Selsey’, in Hobbs, ed., Chichester Cathedral, pp. 1–10, at 2. St Peter’s Minster initially served as the relocated cathedral in Chichester, but construction of the new Romanesque cathedral was quickly started: R.D.H.  Gem, ‘Chichester Cathedral: When Was the Romanesque Church Begun?’, ANS, iii (1980), 61–4. The whereabouts of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral at Dorchester are unknown: N. Doggett, ‘The Anglo-Saxon See and Cathedral of Dorchester-on-Thames: The Evidence Reconsidered’, Oxoniensia, li (1986), 49–61. The remains of churches at North and South Elmham are now both considered post-Conquest: E. Fernie, An Architectural History of Norwich Cathedral (Oxford 1993), pp. 208–09; Fernie, Norman England, pp. 236–7. It is disputed which of the two Elmhams was the location of the see relocated via Thetford to Norwich, with the consensus now inclined towards North Elmham: J. Campbell, ‘The East Anglian Sees before the Conquest’, repr. in his Anglo-Saxon State, pp. 107–27, at 110–13. The two Elmhams lie 40 miles apart, North Elmham being in Norfolk and South Elmham in Suffolk. It is likely that the pre-Conquest cathedral church at North Elmham was constructed of timber. The site of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral at Lichfield is not known, but it is thought to lie below the current building: W. Rodwell, ‘Lichfield, Lichfield Cathedral’, Medieval Archaeology, xxxix (1995), 241–2; W. Rodwell, ‘The Development of the Choir of Lichfield Cathedral: Romanesque and Early English’, in J. Maddison, ed., Medieval Archaeology and Architecture at Lichfield, Transactions of the British Archaeological Association Conference for 1987, xiii (1993), pp. 17–35, at 21; W.  Rodwell, ‘Archaeology and the Standing Fabric: Recent Investigations at Lichfield Cathedral’, in T. Tatton-Brown and J. Munby, eds, The Archaeology of Cathedrals (Oxford 1996), pp. 81–94, at 82–4. The relocation of the see of Wells to Bath in the 1090s by Bishop John de Villula meant that the church of Wells was reduced to the status of a college of secular canons. He demolished the cloister and conventual buildings which his predecessor Giso had erected, but otherwise left the former Anglo-Saxon cathedral standing. It was extensively remodelled or rebuilt by his successor, Bishop Robert, in the 1130s and 1140s. Only in the 1170s

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  21 Malmesbury the Conquest represented what was potentially a major rupture in the continuity of English history, as it was in other senses for him and Henry of Huntingdon. William considered it ‘neater’ if he started the second book of Wulfstan’s vita at the beginning of ‘the time of the Normans’, rather than with Wulfstan’s election as bishop in 1062, as Coleman had reportedly done.59 To William’s mind, unlike Coleman’s, even a saint’s vita should be organized around the distinction between ‘the time of the English’ and ‘the time of the Normans’. True, the Norman reform of English religious life might be interpreted not as a rupture but a restoration of that refulgent standard of religious observance, described by Bede, which had come to prevail in England in the immediate aftermath of the conversion.60 In that sense, reform under the Normans was a positive development, though to see it as such was to create a tension not only with his view of the sufferings of the English as a result of the Conquest, but also with that sense of ineluctable decline which William had absorbed from Bede and from certain Roman historians, a digest of whose writings survives partly in his hand.61 History, he loftily opined, should be written ‘in the Roman fashion’.62 Yet even with regard to post-Conquest religious life, William’s ambivalence is at times so arch that it verges on sarcasm. William the Conqueror had ‘canonically’ deposed some prelates ‘for certain [unspecified] reasons’, and replaced them with men of any nationality other than English. ‘He was driven to this, unless I am mistaken, by their ingrained prejudice against the king, for the Normans . . . have a natural kindliness which predisposes them to foreigners living in their midst’.63 According to Gesta regum, therefore, it was the hostility of the English which drove this did construction of the present church begin, on a new, though adjacent, site, and a new alignment. The demolition of the remodelled or rebuilt sometime cathedral church happened in the 1190s: W. Rodwell, ‘The Anglo-Saxon and Norman Churches at Wells’, in L.S. Colchester, ed., Wells Cathedral: A History (Shepton Mallet 1982), pp. 1–23, at 1–3, 5–17; W. Rodwell, ‘Above and Below Ground: Archaeology at Wells Cathedral’, in Tatton-Brown and Munby, eds, Archaeology of Cathedrals, pp. 115–33, at 119–23. The see of Devon was relocated from Crediton to Exeter in 1050. The church in Exeter which passed muster as the cathedral in the late eleventh century no longer survives, but is thought to have been found under the present cathedral close. Bishop Warelwast began its Romanesque replacement in 1112 or 1114: M. Thurlby, ‘The Romanesque Cathedral of St Mary and St Peter at Exeter’, in F. Kelly, ed., Medieval Art and Architecture at Exeter Cathedral, Transactions of the British Archaeological Association Conference, xi (1991), pp. 19–34. This was the last of the Romanesque rebuildings of English cathedrals. 59  VSW I. 16. 60  GR III. 245. 61  GR IV. 337; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Arch. Seld. B. 16. In addition to Justinus, the histor­ ic­al section contains the late antique account of the fall of Troy by Dares Phrygius which, in the middle ages, was attributed (as William does) to Cornelius Nepos, fos 1r–7v; a short fragment on the mythical origins of the Trojans which William attributed to Cato, fos 7–7v; Orosius, fos 11r–72v; selections from Paul the Deacon and Eutropius, fos 73r–113v; Jordanes, fos 113r–34v; and Hugh of Fleury, Historia ecclesiastica, fos 135–40. On this section of the manuscript, and the fifteenth-century copy of it in Oxford, Balliol College, MS. 125, see Willelmi Malmesbiriensis monachi, De gestis regum Anglorum, libri quinque; Historia novella, libri tres, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1887–9), i. pp. cxxxi–cxxxvi; N.R. Ker, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Handwriting’, repr. in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage, ed. A.G.  Watson (London 1985), pp. 60–6, at 63–4; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 28, 57 (who argues that the attribution to Cato is erroneous), 66–7, 90–1. 62  GR I. pr. 63  GR III. 254.

22  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 kindly new king reluctantly to deny ecclesiastical preferment to English clerics. The restoration of English religious life entailed both the elimination of the existing English hierarchy, and their replacement with foreigners. If, therefore, it reconnected with the exemplary religious life of the period just after the conversion, before the English had become corrupt, then that newly re-established continuity was attenuated by what William had previously cited as one of the most striking manifestations of discontinuity: the disappearance of Englishmen from high office. In his Gesta pontificum Anglorum, written in parallel with his Gesta regum, he was sometimes, perhaps partly under the influence of Eadmer, more blunt about decline: he denounced the Conqueror’s ‘improper’ interference in ecclesiastical matters as one aspect of his tyrannical treatment of the English, but added in unresolved counterpoint that ‘the religious life of monks rose splendidly’.64 Even so, there still seems to have been little reason for celebration by his own day, at least with respect to royal treatment of the Church. Henry I’s behaviour, encouraged rather than denounced by his fawning bishops, reduced William to despair: ‘no hope remains, nothing is left’.65 Henry of Huntingdon was less sinuously oblique than William usually is, perhaps because he was content to be more dependent on the lugubriously laconic Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: ‘it was an insult even to be called English’.66 The ‘chain’ of English historical writing might have been broken by Bede’s death, but William, like the other early twelfth-century historians of England, implicitly viewed the Conquest as potentially the weakest link in the continuous history of the kingdom. Indeed, their various historical writings attempted to forge that link anew. With the exception of Eadmer’s Historia novorum, this is demonstrated in the  crudest terms by the amount of space which they devote to pre-Conquest England: in the case of Henry of Huntingdon, two-thirds of his book. Even Gaimar, commissioned in the mid 1130s67 by Constance, wife of the Lincolnshire baron Ralph fitzGilbert, and clearly writing for a lay aristocratic, Francophone audience, devoted thousands of lines to an ‘indefatigable’68 verse adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the compilation of which he attributed to the initiative of King Alfred, who, he claimed, had arranged for a chained copy to be kept at Winchester Cathedral for ready public reference.69 Indeed, he reported that he had consulted it himself.70 By the early twelfth century, interest in the Old English 64  GP I. 42. 6β. 65  GP I. 63. 1β, 3β; cf. 64. 11β. 66  HA VI. 38. 67  I.  Short, ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Liber vetustissimus’, Speculum, lxix (1994), 323–43, at 338, dates the composition to March 1136–April 1137; P.  Dalton, ‘The Date of Geoffrey Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, the Connections of his Patrons, and the Politics of Stephen’s Reign’, Chaucer Review, xlii (2007), 23–47, at 34–9, argues for 1141–50. 68  Campbell, ‘Twelfth-Century Views’, p. 211. 69  Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, ed. I. Short (Oxford 2009), ll. 2329–38. 70  In fact, he had used a version of the so-called Northern Recension, which survives in D and E (F): Short, ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue’, 329–33.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  23 past was clearly not confined to natives giving voice to nostalgic laments, or to the cloister. Gaimar spiced up this account of English history with more overtly le­gend­ary material, such as stories about Haveloc the Dane,71 and more recently Hereward the Wake.72 He evoked the sort of themes which he thought suitable to a history in the new imported vernacular, intended primarily for a lay audience: ‘the love affairs and the courting, the drinking and the hunting, the festivities and the pomp and ceremony, the acts of generosity and the displays of wealth, the entourage of nobles and valiant knights that the king maintained’.73 By contrast, he gave ecclesiastical matters very short shrift. Despite the meretricious elab­or­ation, it is remarkable that his Anglo-Norman lay aristocratic audience found the historical longueurs about Old England entertaining to listen to, for these constitute the bulk of the surviving Estoire. ‘This book is not fiction or fantasy, but is taken from an authentic historical source concerning the kings of the past, and tells of those who ruled over England.’74 Lincolnshire in the early twelfth century may have afforded few distractions for the Francophone elite—Constance fitzGilbert evidently turned to history to pass the time, and ‘often read in her chamber’ the poet David’s (now lost) vernacular history of Henry I’s reign, which had been commissioned by his second wife, Queen Adeliza.75 It is nevertheless striking that they were willing to while away the long evenings listening to this sort of thing. Differently put, it is remarkable that the first extant history book written in French was a history of England, chiefly pre-Conquest England, written in Northern England, in verse.76 When Gaimar eventually got beyond the Conquest, he presented the English, notably the rebel Hereward the Wake, as chivalrous heroes— ‘a nobleman (uns gentilz hom) . . . whom the Normans had disinherited’77—and William I as a treacherous schemer, just like his Norman followers.78 This was the sort of account of post-Conquest events which he knew his lay Anglo-Norman audience would lap up. Presumably he assumed that they did not want to hear yet another recapitulation of the justice of the Conqueror’s cause. But by this point his very long poem was in any case almost at an end. For English and French, cleric and layman (and woman) alike, it seems, the cataclysmic stimulus of the Conquest had within a few decades prompted his­tor­ic­al investigation in the English past of a quality and intensity unparalleled anywhere else in medieval Europe, and it was overwhelmingly concerned with England prior to the Conquest. Hence too the resurgence in the copying of the original

71  Estoire, ll. 37–818. 72  Estoire, ll. 5469–710. 73  Estoire, ll. 6508–18. 74  Estoire, A 16–19. 75  Estoire, ll. 6495–8. 76  I.  Short, ‘Gaimar et les débuts de l’historiographie en langue française’, in D.  Buschinger, ed., Chroniques nationals et chroniques universelles (Göppingen 1990), 155–63. 77  Estoire, ll. 5470–1. 78  Estoire, ll. 5381–5404, 5615, 5636–40. R.R.  Davies, The Matter of Britain and the Matter of England (Oxford 1996), p. 12.

24  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Latin Bede in England in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries,79 after a very long fallow period.80 It is striking that many of these new copies had to be made from continental exemplars, imported into England for the purpose.81 There were not enough English manuscripts of the book around to meet the sudden increase in demand. Bede himself may not have been particularly concerned with the history of the English as a people.82 But it was easier to adapt his original Latin text to such a story than the Old English translation, which had excised much of the material in the original that could have been made germane to it. In the twelfth century the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum could begin to take on the role which some modern commentators have erroneously attributed to it in the eighth: of proph­ esy­ing the coming to pass of a providentially ordained, united kingdom for God’s chosen English people.83 This is most obviously true of Henry of Huntingdon, who, as we have seen, was said by a twelfth-century commentator at Le Bec to have made Bede more ‘systematic’.84 That is one way of putting it. But as we have also seen, William of Malmesbury claimed in the conclusion of Gesta regum that he had been the first writer since Bede to follow Bede’s example in ‘setting in order the continuous history of the English’.85 Co-opting Bede rendered incontestable the continuity in English history and its writing up which constituted the principal message of the early twelfth-century historians. Mending the chain of English historical writing broken by Bede’s death necessarily involved restoring the continuity of English history, the most serious disruption—the weakest link— of which had been occasioned recently by the Conquest. Reconnecting English historical writing meant reconnecting English history. But what explains the precise timing of this unprecedented and unparalleled phenomenon? What prompted, thirty or forty years after 1066, and almost

79  R.H.C.  Davis, ‘Bede after Bede’, repr. in his From Alfred the Great to Stephen (London 1991), pp. 1–14; A. Gransden, ‘Bede’s Reputation as a Historian in Medieval England’, repr. in her Legends, Traditions and History in Medieval England (London 1992), pp. 1–29. A copy which was at Gloucester in the thirteenth century, and may have been there earlier—London, BL, MS. Royal 13. C. v—probably dates from the later eleventh century: R.M. Thomson, ‘Books and Learning at Gloucester Abbey in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in J.P. Carley and C.G.C. Tite, eds, Books and Collectors 1200–1700. Essays Presented to Andrew Watson (London 1997), pp. 3–26, at 3, 11, 19. 80  No surviving copy was made between the second quarter of the ninth century and the end of the tenth at the very earliest: Molyneaux, ‘Old English Bede’, 1293–5. 81  G. Martin and R.M. Thomson, ‘History and History Books’, in N.J. Morgan and R.M. Thomson, eds, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol. II., 1100–1400 (Cambridge 2008), pp. 397–415, at 399. 82  See above, p. 16. 83  P. Wormald, ‘The Venerable Bede and the “Church of the English” ’, repr. in his The Times of Bede. Studies in Early Christian Society and Its Historian, ed. S. Baxter (Oxford 2006), pp. 207–28, esp. 215–17; P.  Wormald, ‘Engla lond: The Making of an Allegiance’, repr. in his Legal Culture, pp.  359–82, esp. 376–7; S. Foot, ‘The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS, 6th ser., vi (1996), 25–49, at 39–41. 84  See above, p. 18.    85  GR V. 445, quoted above, p. 14.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  25 simultaneously in so many different locations in England, the sudden outbreak of  this concentrated, collaborative historiographical endeavour? By William of Malmesbury’s account, there had been nothing like it before in England; there has certainly not been since. This handful of writers determined the shape of English history ever after. Much has been written by modern historians about the ‘twelfthcentury renaissance’, but it is impossible to think of a comparable phenomenon anywhere else in twelfth-century Europe.

The Stimulus to Mend the Chain Writing in the first decade of the twelfth century, an author of apparently con­tin­ en­tal extraction86 who would subsequently become one of the select band of historians of England reveals that this new-found interest in Bede was more than just an intellectual conceit on the part of a very small, exceptionally well-read elite. Symeon of Durham reported that Aldwin, a monk of Winchcombe, had in the early 1070s been so inspired by what he had learnt from Bede’s Historia Anglorum about the monasteries which had once flourished in the kingdom of Northumbria, that, after recruiting two followers—one English, one Norman— from Evesham Abbey, he had set out for the northern fastnesses, and had re-established monastic life in the ruins of Bede’s twinned communities of ­ Monkwearmouth and Jarrow.87 Symeon emphasizes that this bibliophilic monastic revivalist had loaded up the trio’s solitary donkey with books.88 From the twinned coenobial redoubts which Aldwin went on to resurrect came the monks who, in 1083, replaced the secular canons at Symeon’s own cathedral church of Durham.89 The establishment of monastic life in the church where Bede’s relics now lay close by those of Cuthbert (whose vita Bede had written twice, once in prose and once in verse),90 King Oswald (a central figure in the Historia ecclesiastica), and Aidan (also a key figure),91 was to be attributed, ultimately, to the in­spir­ation of Bede’s Historia. That inspiration was twofold. It was Bishop William 86  M. Gullick ‘The Hand of Symeon of Durham: Further Observations on the Durham Martyrology Scribe’, in D. Rollason, ed., Symeon of Durham. Historian of Durham and the North (Stamford 1998), pp. 14–31, at 18. 87  Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius hoc est Dunhelmensis ecclesie, ed. D. Rollason (Oxford 2000), pp. xvi, xci, 200–4, 210; Gransden, ‘Bede’s Reputation’, p. 7. 88 Symeon, Libellus, p. 200. He does not give the titles, but as the other baggage consisted of vestments, it seems likely that he imagined them to have been service books. He reveals that one of the monks from Evesham was illiterate. 89 Symeon, Libellus, pp. xvi, lxxxi, 228–30. 90  Two Lives of St Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life, ed. B. Colgrave (Cambridge 1940), pp. 142–307; Bede’s Latin Poetry, ed. M. Lapidge (Oxford 2019), pp. 181–313. 91 Symeon, Libellus, pp. 56–8, 164–6, 322 (p. 167 n. 37 is corrected in D.  Rollason, ‘The Cult of Bede’, in S. DeGregorio, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Bede (Cambridge 2010), pp. 193–200, at 197); Symeonis monachi, Opera omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols, RS (1882–85), i. 152–3; Capitula de miraculis et translationibus Sancti Cuthberti, in Symeon, Opera omnia, i. 229–61, ii. 333–62, at i. 255.

26  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 of St-Calais’ reading of Bede which had prompted him to install in Durham the monks whose recently established presence in Monkwearmouth-Jarrow had been attributed to Aldwin’s reading of Bede.92 The providential proximity of monkish recruits and the episcopal determination to redeploy them in Durham could both be credited to a work of English history written 350 years previously—to what was at the time still the most recent, indeed the sole, serious work of English history. Bede’s Historia and his prose Vita  S.  Cudbercti proved that the see now re­located to Durham was that originally founded on Lindisfarne in the seventh century by St Aidan, at the invitation of King Oswald. This was the very church over which Cuthbert had come to preside during his lifetime.93 Durham even possessed one of Cuthbert’s own books, found on his chest when his tomb was opened in 1104,94 as well as the miraculously preserved Lindisfarne Gospels.95 Three extant manuscripts in the library at Durham, then as now, bear inscriptions which purport to be in Bede’s handwriting.96 There was once at least one more.97 After 1099 a very ornate ninth-century manuscript, probably from Lindisfarne, in which the names of ninth-century monks had been inscribed, began to be reused as the Liber vitae for the re-established monastic church of Durham. The long dead brethren it recorded and those recently deceased at Durham were all deemed to be members of the same relocated community.98 In a sense more fundamental than the historiographical, in North-East England it was Bede’s Historia which had prompted the mending of the broken chain of monastic living, both in Bede’s own community and in the church of Aidan and Cuthbert. Historical book-learning was shown to have had profound effects which were indistinguishably spiritual and institutional. It was responsible for the post-Conquest monastic renewal on which William of Malmesbury would lay such stress, as he sought to replicate and continue Bede’s Historia for his age. It was no surprise that Symeon

92  De iniusta vexacione Willelmi episcopi primi per Willelmum regem filium Willelmi magni regis, ed. H.S. Offler, rev. A.J. Piper and A.I. Doyle, in Chronology, Conquest and Conflict in Medieval England, Camden Miscellany xxxiv, Camden Soc., 5th ser., x (1997), p. 73. 93 Symeon, Libellus, pp. lxxxiii, lxxxv–lxxxvi, 2–4, 16 and n. 3. 94 Symeon, Libellus, p. 26 and n. 27. 95 Symeon, Libellus, pp. 114, 118–20. 96  J. Williams, ‘The Library’, in Brown, ed., Durham Cathedral, pp. 383–97, at 383, citing Durham, Cathedral Library, MSS. A.II.16 and B.II.30 (R.A.B.  Mynors, Durham Cathedral Manuscripts to the End of the Twelfth Century (Oxford 1939), no. 9, p. 20), and Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. B. 10. 5 (Mynors, no. 8, p. 20). 97  A copy of St Paul’s epistles, recorded in a catalogue of 1392: Williams, ‘Library’, p. 383 n. 3. 98  London, BL, MS. Cotton Domitian A. vii: The Durham Liber Vitae: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A. VII: Edition and Digital Facsimile, ed. D. Rollason and L. Rollason, 3 vols (London 2007); J. Gerchow, ‘The Origins of the Liber vitae’, in L. Rollason, M.M. Harvey, and A.J. Piper, eds, The Durham Liber vitae and Its Context (Woodbridge 2004), pp. 45–61; R.  Gameson, ‘The Cathedral’s Oldest Books’, in Brown, ed., Durham Cathedral, pp. 399–421, at 413. The name Bede is entered twice; neither can have been Bede the historian.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  27 of Durham made extensive use of the very copy of the Historia which William of St-Calais donated to his cathedral library.99 To this manuscript was very soon, at the end of the eleventh century, appended a short vita of Bede,100 and then a copy of Bede’s Historia abbatum of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow.101 In another book Symeon himself copied Bede’s prose and verse vitae of St Cuthbert, and added hagiographies of Aidan and Oswald confected on the basis of Historia ecclesiastica;102 another copy of the prose vita of Cuthbert survives in his hand, followed by the earliest extant witness of the anonymous Historia de Sancto Cuthberto.103 This intensive authorial campaign served to underline the connection between the church of Durham and the history of Bede’s own community in both the distant and the immediate past.104 As with the different types of historical investigation undertaken to establish the title of particular churches to their lands and rights, or the plausibility of particular English saints, the response to the Conquest of historians writing in England in the early twelfth century was to reach back beyond it—in many cases far beyond it—in order to demonstrate continuity with Old England. Sometimes the same writers were engaged in all three types of enterprise—most obviously, William of Malmesbury and Eadmer, who reveal considerable expertise in diplomatic, and were prolific writers of saints’ lives, a genre which (at least in their cases) entailed detailed research in the archives of particular churches. Eadmer knew that Lanfranc required ‘diligent inquiry’ when he commissioned a saint’s life;105 he had learnt from long experience that the research involved was not easy. With some exaggeration, William claimed that such authors were faced with a dearth of existing English hagiographical material comparable to that of ­his­tor­ic­al writing. (In truth he, like Eadmer, was able to draw directly on earlier hagiographers.)106 But in this case the explanation was not solely alleged inertia 99  Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.II.35, fos 38v–118r; Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 31, for an addition in his hand. Mynors, Durham Cathedral Manuscripts, no. 47, pp. 41–2, identifies several copies made from this for northern houses; R.  Gameson, Manuscript Treasures of Durham Cathedral (London 2010), pp. 60–1; A.C. Browne, ‘Bishop William of St Carilef ’s Book Donations to Durham Cathedral Priory’, Scriptorium, xlii (1988), 140–55, at 148, 155. For Symeon’s use of it, and perhaps of another witness which cannot be identified, see Symeon, Libellus, p. lxviii. A copy of Historia ecclesiastica is recorded in the bishop’s list of book donations to the cathedral library, written on the flyleaf of the second volume of his bible: Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. A.II.4, fo. 1r; further Browne, ‘Book Donations’, 140–55 and Pl. 15. 100  Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.II.35, fos 119r–123v; cf. London, BL, MS. Harley 526, fos 28–37; PL xc. 41–54. 101  MS. B.II.35, fos 123v–129r. 102  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Digby 175; Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 24. 103  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 596; Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 24. 104  Gameson, ‘Oldest Books’, p. 421. 105  The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, by Eadmer, ed. R.W. Southern (Oxford 1972), pp. 53–4. 106 G.  Garnett, ‘Dunstan, Edgar, and the History of Not-So-Recent Events’, in J.  Barrau and D. Bates, eds, Lives, Identities and Histories in the Central Middle Ages. Essays Presented to Elisabeth van Houts (Cambridge 2021), pp. 000–00, at 000.

28  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 on the part of earlier (English) hagiographers: ‘the evidence has been destroyed by the violence of enemies, so that knowledge remains only of the names of the saints, and of any miracles they still perform’.107 In his view, he and a few mainly continental specialists who had recently been at work in England, such as Goscelin of St-Bertin, had had to start almost from scratch;108 and at least one of them, Faricius, the Italian abbot of Abingdon, had been let down by his ignorance of the English language.109 (Faricius had previously been a monk of Malmesbury, so William must have felt that he was in a good position to judge.) Doubtless many of the others (with the explicit exception of Goscelin)110 could not measure up to William’s exacting scholarly standards either. He offers no comment on Folcard of St-Bertin111 or on Symeon of Durham, with whom he was nevertheless probably acquainted.112 Initially complimentary about Osbern of Canterbury, a native exception to the rule that hagiographers were recruited from abroad in the eleventh century, William later became inveterately critical of him, just as Eadmer had done a little earlier.113 Nevertheless, in what William condescendingly regarded as their often slipshod fashion, these authors of predominantly continental origin succeeded in rescuing certain English saints from oblivion. Eadmer himself had learnt the ­historian’s craft in this way, and graduated to writing larger scale history. The starting point of his more ambitious enterprise was provided by a hagiographical conceit originally coined by Osbern, elaborating a point initially made at Canterbury late in the reign of Æthelred II—that the then current Danish invasions of England were divinely inflicted retribution for the assassination of Edward the Martyr.114 Eadmer had previously sketched it in his vita of Dunstan.115 William, by contrast with Eadmer, had already finished the first draft of his major historical work, Gesta regum, before he turned his hand to producing hagi­og­raphy and his

107  GP II. 95. 108  GR IV. 342. 1–2. Goscelin, like Eadmer, is said to enable his audience to see the events he describes ‘with their own eyes’. On Goscelin’s career as a peripatetic hired pen, see P.A.  Hayward, ‘Translation-Narratives in Post-Conquest Hagiography and English Resistance to the Norman Conquest’, ANS, xxi (1998), 67–93, esp. 73–85; Goscelin of St-Bertin, The Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely, ed. R.C. Love (Oxford 2004). On him, Folcard, and Drogo of St-Winnocksbergen, see E. van Houts, ‘The Flemish Contribution to Biographical Writing in England in the Eleventh Century’ in D.  Bates, J.C.  Crick, and S.  Hamilton, eds, Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250. Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow (Woodbridge 2006), pp. 111–27. 109  GP V. pr., 188. John Hudson points out to me that like another Italian immigrant—Lanfranc— Faricius might have struggled with the English language. 110  GR IV. 342. 111  See OV vi. 150–2. 112  GP ii. pp. xl, xlii, xlviii, 157, 182. 113  GR II. 149. 3, III. 342. 2; for later criticism, see Saints’ Lives, pp. xx–xxiii, xxxv–xxxvi, VSD, prol. 2-8, I. vii. 1, I. ix. 5, I. xv. 5, II. prol. 1, etc.; J.  Rubenstein, ‘The Life and Writings of Osbern of Canterbury’, in R. Eales and R. Sharpe, eds, Canterbury and the Norman Conquest. Churches, Saints and Scholars, 1066–1109 (London 1995), pp. 27–40. For Eadmer’s criticism, see Lives, pp. 44, 48, and Garnett, ‘History of Not-So-Recent Events’, pp. 000–00. 114  Garnett, ‘History of Not-So-Recent Events’, p. 000. 115  Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, ed. A.J. Turner and B.J. Muir (Oxford 2006), pp. lxviii, 146, cf. 158.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  29 De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie. Despite the contrast in the sequence of their work, in both cases their hagiographies expressed historical views which were of a piece with their large-scale histories. Saints’ lives were necessarily focussed on shoring up the bona fides of saints deemed particularly important to a given institution. They were, therefore, not unrelated to the justification of the church’s claims to its rights and estates, an exercise in which many churches had been forced to engage since the 1070s at the latest. But it was the former imperative which seems to have provided the most important initial stimulus to the post-Bedan resurrection of historical writing in England. Disputed claims to lands and rights prompted urgent historical investigation, but of a sort which at this preliminary stage did not produce much in the way of historical writing. The primary catalyst for the sudden proliferation of hagiographical and soon historical writing seems, rather, to have been the programme of rebuilding major English churches on which William of Malmesbury in particular would soon place so much emphasis. Rebuilding involved the translation of relics into the new church, provided, that is, that the presiding prelate— almost always of continental origin—deemed them worthy of veneration. ‘New Englishmen’, pre-eminently Archbishop Lanfranc,116 were not willing to take on trust the oral traditions which, within any particular house, appear to have been the predominant pre-Conquest English mode of sustaining the sanctity of  its ­relics.117 Such claims, much like claims to estates and other rights, now required documentation in Latin in addition to oral testimony, or, where there was some pre-Conquest hagiographical tradition, much more thorough and extensive docu­men­ta­tion than hitherto. This might be subject to probing scrutiny. In some instances the relics themselves were: at Evesham, reportedly on the advice of Lanfranc himself, they were subjected to the ordeal of fire (and miraculously passed).118 It is therefore no surprise that a sudden, novel outburst of hagiographical activity accompanied the programme of rebuilding, as major ceremonial translations of relics began to take place in England for the first time in almost a century.119 To be more precise, the outburst occurred in the 1080s, 1090s, and 1100s, as rebuilding projects reached the point at which the east ends of the new churches could be brought into liturgical use. Inescapable decisions were therefore prompted about which relics to translate and which (as happened, for instance, at  Malmesbury) to discard as ‘the remains of servile hirelings’, so much more 116 Eadmer, Vita S. Anselmi, pp. 50–2; Letters of Lanfranc, no. 2 (p. 38). 117  William of Malmesbury, GP V. 267, 2, describes Abbot Warin’s investigation of Aldhelm’s tomb, after which ‘res vera narrationi monachorum faveret’; cf. Faricius of Abingdon, Vita S. Aldhelmi, ed. M. Winterbottom, Journal of Medieval Latin, xv (2005), 93–147, c. 22. 4; for this tradition elsewhere, see Symeon, Libellus, pp. lxxvi, lxxxiii, 148; Garnett, ‘History of Not-So-Recent Events’, p. 000. 118  Vita S. Wistani, in Chronicon abbatiae de Evesham, ad annum 1418, ed. W. Dunn Macray, RS (1863), p. 335; H.E.J. Cowdrey, Lanfranc: Scholar, Monk, and Archbishop (Oxford 2003), p. 177. 119  Garnett, ‘History of Not-So-Recent Events’, p. 000.

30  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 ‘rubbish’ to be cast onto that already being dumped,120 as rubble from the ­demolished ancient church at Evesham was into its very crypt.121 At Malmesbury, to adapt the words which William attributed to a tearful St Wulfstan at Worcester,122 it was not just the architectural ‘work of the saints’ which was obliterated, but their bones too. Warin, the Norman abbot who presided over the building project at Malmesbury, had treated the relics of its Old English saints with sacrilegious mockery: ‘Let the most potent of them come to the rescue of the rest!’—although William goes on to report that Warin soon came to see the error of his scepticism. He was persuaded of Aldhelm’s sanctity at least, and organized a new translation of his relics.123 Archbishop Lanfranc went on to ‘promulgate a law [lex] throughout all England’ which proclaimed Aldhelm’s sanctity.124 As the slightly earlier example of the cult of Dunstan at Canterbury suggested, no established pre-Conquest saint, however revered, and however august the church in which he or she was traditionally venerated, was now above question.125 When Cuthbert’s relics were to be translated into the sanctuary at the east end of the new cathedral church at Durham in 1104, cynics—apparently including that epitome of calculating worldliness, Bishop Ranulf Flambard—insisted on repeated inspections to establish whether Cuthbert’s body really was, as had been claimed by Durham monks, miraculously incorrupt.126 The visiting abbot of Séez was enlisted to subject it to an independent and—as it turned out—vigorous examination, including pulling one ear back and forth ‘in no gentle manner’, and manhandling it by the head into a sitting position, ‘shaking it as he held it’. Like everyone else, Bishop Ranulf was convinced by the demonstration: he responded by preaching at interminable length.127 120  William of Malmesbury, GP V. 265. 2. 121  Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. J. Sayers and L. Watkiss (Oxford 2003), p. 102. I am grateful to Hugh Doherty for pointing out to me that Thomas reproduced this account verbatim from Prior Dominic’s very early twelfth-century Vita S. Ecgwini: M. Lapidge, ‘Dominic of Evesham, Vita S. Ecgwini episcopi et confessoris’, Analecta Bollandiana, xcvi (1978), 65–104, at 72–3, 75,104. It is therefore not a thirteenth-century elaboration, but was written not long after the event by someone who was almost certainly an eye-witness. 122  See above, p. 19.    123  GP V. 267. 1–5.    124  GP V. 269. 8. 125  Garnett, ‘History of Not-So-Recent Events’, p. 000. 126  Capitula de miraculis et translationibus Sancti Cuthberti, in Symeon, Opera omnia, i. 247–61, an account which cannot have been written earlier than 1122: C.F. Battiscombe, ‘Historical Introduction’ to C.F. Battiscombe, ed., The Relics of St Cuthert (Oxford 1956), p. 3 n. 1, with the account translated in ‘Appendix II’, pp. 99–106. The relics were moved from the place where they had lain, perhaps since 998, perhaps just during the rebuilding. That place was now marked in the new cloister: Reginald of Durham, Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus quae novellis patratae sunt temporibus, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Soc. (1835), c. XLVIII, pp. 100–1 (a work written in the 1160s and 1170s: V. Tudor, ‘The Cult of St Cuthbert in the Twelfth Century: The Evidence of Reginald of Durham’, in G. Bonner, D. Rollason, and C. Stancliffe, eds, St Cuthbert, His Cult, and His Community to AD 1200 (Woodbridge 1989), pp. 447–68, at 449). Further, J. Crook, The Architectural Setting of the Cult of Saints in the Early Christian West, c. 300–1200 (Oxford 2000), pp. 168–9; D. Rollason, ‘The Anglo-Norman Priory and its  Predecessor, 995–1189’, in Brown, ed., Durham Cathedral, pp. 26–37, at 36–7; N.  Emery, ‘The Contribution of Archaeology’, in Brown, ed., Durham Cathedral, pp. 158–65, at 160. For a contemporary marginal depiction of the new shrine in an early twelfth-century copy of Bede’s Vita  S.  Cudbercti (Oxford, University College, MS. 165, p. 122), see D. Hunt, ‘The Shrine of St Cuthbert’, in Brown, ed., Durham Cathedral, pp. 302–13, at 305 Pl. 258. 127 Symeon, Opera omnia i. 260.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  31 In Cuthbert’s case doubts appear to have been limited to tales of the miraculous endorsement of the authenticity of the alleged remains; they did not extend to his sanctity. But of course if the relics had not been authentic, then no benefit could accrue from their veneration, and Cuthbert’s intercession would be sought in vain in Durham. Some miracle stories about Cuthbert had probably been written up prior to the translation,128 others were demonstrably inspired by it. According to William of Malmesbury, the saint himself had signalled when he was ready to be translated, by making the timber supports for the vaulting in the new presbytery collapse in the middle of the night.129 The importance of Cuthbert’s relocated relics in the subsequent life of the community prompted the recasting and elaboration of the—for pre-Conquest England—exceptionally plentiful existing hagiographical material.130 Elsewhere rejection could extend to those traditionally revered for reasons other than sanctity: the first post-Conquest abbot of St Albans from Normandy refused to allow the remains of the abbey’s (uncanonized) ­legendary founder, King Offa, into the new church; he also destroyed the tombs of previous abbots.131 Not every re-building of a major church is known to have triggered new ­hagiographies and ceremonial translations.132 An almost unremarked133 aspect of the relocation of certain sees determined at the Council of London in 1075 is the apparent absence of major pre-Conquest cults at any of the churches involved. The only arguable exception is that of St Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne (?993–1002), whose vita Goscelin wrote and dedicated to an anonymous bishop, almost certainly Osmund.134 Osmund became bishop in 1078, shortly after the see had been relocated to Old Sarum,135 but remained abbot of the now dependent priory at Sherborne, where the monks stayed. Perhaps because Wulfsige’s body was left behind at Sherborne136—there is no evidence that Goscelin’s vita was inspired by, or presaged, a new translation to Old Sarum137—this attempt to rekindle Wulfsige’s pre-Conquest cult proved unsuccessful. Once the relocation had taken

128 Symeon, Libellus, p. lxxv. 129  GP III. 135. 1–2. This miracle is not recorded elsewhere. 130 Symeon, Libellus, pp. xlii, 52 and n. 67, appears to have been commissioned immediately after the translation; De miraculis; Reginald of Durham, Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti; Hunt, ‘Shrine of St Cuthbert’, pp. 304–6. 131  Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H.T. Riley, 3 vols, RS (1867), i. 62. 132  R. Sharpe, ‘The Setting of St Augustine’s Translation, 1091’, in Eales and Sharpe, eds, Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, pp. 1–13, at 12–13. 133  An exception is Crook, Architectural Setting, p. 188. 134  C.H. Talbot, ‘The Life of Saint Wulsin of Sherborne by Goscelin’, Revue Bénédictine, lxix (1959), 68–85, at 73; R.C. Love, ‘The Life of St Wulfsige of Sherborne by Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’, in K. Barker, D.A.  Hinton, and A.  Hunt, eds, St Wulfsige and Sherborne. Essays to Celebrate the Millenium of the Benedictine Abbey, 998–1998 (Oxford 2005), pp. 98–123, at 99, 103. 135  S.D. Keynes, ‘Giso, Bishop of Wells’, ANS, xix (1996), 203–71, at 208–9. 136  It had been translated into the remodelled cathedral church some time after 1045, and placed in a new reliquary by Bishop Osmund: Love, ‘Life of St Wulfsige’, cc. XVIII and XXI, pp. 114, 115. 137  For an analysis of Goscelin’s account of the successive translations at Sherborne under Bishops Æthelric and Ælfwold, see Gibb and Gem, ‘Anglo-Saxon Cathedral at Sherborne’, 105–10.

32  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 place, the remote Sherborne appears soon to have ceased to be a focus of close episcopal interest.138 Maybe Goscelin had been disappointed: he was (unjustly) scathing about the state of learning in the church of Old Sarum under Bishop Osmund.139 Osmund seems to have been much more interested in his far earlier predecessor, Aldhelm. But Aldhelm’s relics had been kept at various locations within the precincts of Malmesbury Abbey ever since his death,140 and Osmund himself had officiated at their most recent translation, in 1078.141 He would later cadge Aldhelm’s left arm bone off Warin,142 the abbot who had initially been so notoriously contemptuous of the relics of English saints, but had come round in the case of Aldhelm. An arm bone was never going to be sufficient to engender a new cult of Aldhelm at Old Sarum.143 There was great interest in hagiography at Old Sarum, but the copy made there of a standard collection of saints’ lives included none associated with that church, and very few English saints.144 Other than Goscelin’s Vita  S.Wulfsigi, which was focussed on the dependent priory of Sherborne rather than the new cathedral at Old Sarum, it is striking that none of the sees relocated after 1075145 is known to have produced hagiographies in this period;146 and there are no records of consequent translations of relics from the old locations to the new. This may mean no more than that the local saints venerated at these churches failed, on post-Conquest investigation, to pass muster. Certainly distance of relocation in itself had not previously been a bar to translation: Cuthbert, Aidan, Oswald, and Bede147 all ended up together in the east end of the new cathedral at Durham, thereby showing that saints’ relics could be serially peripatetic and nevertheless prosper. The absence of translations in the 138  William of Malmesbury, GP II. 79, is disdainful of this rustic backwater. 139 ‘The Liber Confortatorius of Goscelin of St. Bertin’, ed. C.H.  Talbot, Studia Anselmiana, fasc. xxxviii (Analecta Monastica, 3rd ser. (1955)), pp. 29, 82. For the exceptional standard of learning at Old Sarum under Osmund, see R.M. Thomson, ‘Where Were the Latin Classics in Twelfth-Century England?’, in P. Beal and J. Griffiths, eds, English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, vii (London 1998), pp. 25–40, at 30. 140  For an attempt to make sense of the not entirely congruent accounts of Faricius and William of Malmesbury, see GP ii. pp. 326–9 (Appendix A). 141  GP V.  267. 4. According to Faricius, Abbot Warin had been assisted by Serlo, abbot of Gloucester, not Osmund. 142  GP V. 269. 9–10. 143 Despite GP V.  270. 3–5. Curiously, it was not kept at Sherborne Priory. Abbot Faricius had secured considerably more of Aldhelm’s bones for Abingdon: Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis, ed. J.G.H. Hudson, 2 vols (Oxford 2002–7), ii. 222. 144 T. Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral c. 1075–c. 1125 (Oxford 1992), pp. 40, 70; Salisbury, Cathedral Library, MSS. 221 and 222. 145 In addition to Sherborne/Old Sarum, they were: Wells/Bath; Selsey/Chichester; Lichfield/ Chester/Coventry; Dorchester/Lincoln; North (or South) Elmham/Thetford/Norwich. 146  St Birinus of Dorchester-on-Thames had been translated from Dorchester to Winchester in the seventh century. His cult was therefore a Winchester phenomenon, and the late eleventh-century Vita S. Birini was almost certainly the work of the author of the contemporary Vita S. Swithuni: Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives: Vita S. Birini, Vita et miracula S. Kenelmi, Vita S. Rumwoldi, ed. R.C. Love (Oxford 1996), pp. liv–lx. 147  It is not clear precisely when Bede’s relics were moved into the east end: R.N.  Bailey, ‘Bede’s Bones’, in P.  Binski and W. Noel, eds, New Offerings, Ancient Treasures. Studies in Medieval Art for George Henderson (Stroud 2001), pp. 165–86, at 171–3; Rollason, ‘Cult of Bede’, p. 197.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  33 relocated sees demonstrates that in these cases the prompt which proved so ­productive of historical investigation elsewhere was lacking. The care taken to establish that they were the same sees continued, not new foundations, and that the traditional ranking of English sees remained unaltered by the programme of relocation,148 shows that there was very considerable interest in demonstrating historical continuity in these particular institutions.149 It is therefore all the more striking that none of these churches inspired much in the way of English hagi­og­ raphy in this period, or went on to produce any of the great history books of the early twelfth century. Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia may appear to be an exception to this rule, because it was written in the diocese of Lincoln. But the appearance is illusory. One book contains potted lives of saints drawn mainly from Bede,150 supplemented with brief accounts of a few ‘modern saints’ based on a wide variety of recent hagiographies.151 Other than Birinus,152 none has any Dorchester (or Lincoln) connection, and Birinus’ cult had, as we have seen, been a Winchester phenomenon for centuries. Henry mentions only two translations, of St Alban in 1129, and of St Æthelthryth at Ely in 1106.153 There is no indication that Henry, a secular clerk and diocesan administrative official, was inspired to write history by hagiographical research conducted at Lincoln or anywhere else. In a negative sense, therefore, the sees relocated after 1075 corroborate the importance which I have attributed to the post-Conquest rebuilding of major churches, and the translation of relics as catalysts for investigation of the pre-Conquest past. Elsewhere the association between the three phenomena of rebuilding, translation, and hagiography assumes something approaching a regularity in the 1090s. The first documented major ceremonial post-Conquest translation—more ac­cur­ate­ly, translations—took place at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, in September 1091,154 a week-long spectacle which seems to have been promoted at least in part by a desire to defuse the violent and persistent resistance of English monks to the imposition of Wido as abbot.155 If Wido’s intentions were eirenic, the manner of implementation does not seem best calculated to soothe affronted English sens­ibil­ities. The surviving north porticus of St Gregory in the Anglo-Saxon church of SS. Peter and Paul, begun by Augustine himself, was demolished even before the relics of Augustine and his five immediate successors as archbishop 148  Canons of the Council of London, in C&S I, pt. ii, no. 92: compare the list of bishops at the beginning of the document with the attestations at the end. 149  For the opposite view in the case of Salisbury, see Webber, Salisbury Cathedral, p. 141. 150  HA IX. 151  HA IX. 51–2 (with possible sources identified in the notes), c-ci. 152  For Birinus, see above, n. 146. 153  HA IX. 2, 33. 154  Sharpe, ‘St Augustine’s Translation’, pp. 1, 6–8. 155  Acta Lanfranci, in Two Anglo-Saxon Chronicles in Parallel, ed. C. Plummer and J. Earle, 2 vols (Oxford 1892), i. 290–1; Sharpe, ‘St Augustine’s Translation’, p. 5; A. Williams, The Anglo-Norman Abbey’, in R.D.H. Gem, ed., St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury (London 1997), pp. 50–66, at 54–6. P.A. Hayward, ‘Some Reflections on the Historical Value of the So-called Acta Lanfranci’, HR, lxxvii (2004), 141–60, argues that the account of events in the Acta is untrustworthy.

34  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 (together with the eighth-century Nothelm) could be translated. They had to be extracted from the rubble, before being reverently conveyed into the new church which Abbot Scolland, Wido’s predecessor, had started to construct in the 1070s.156 An account of the translations, together with short and long versions of the vita and miracula of Augustine, survives in a contemporary collection of hagiographies written by Goscelin of St-Bertin, who had probably just been appointed as precentor of the abbey in order to orchestrate the ceremony.157 There is no suggestion in this instance that there were any doubts about the sanctity of the relics, and by Goscelin’s own account he did not write up the translations until seven years after the event;158 but it was evidently felt necessary that Augustine’s life and miracles, and those of the other saints, should now be rewritten. Goscelin was soon seconded to perform a similar job at Barking Abbey, which had close links to St Augustine’s.159 The abbey church there was rebuilt under Abbess Ælfgifu, another quite exceptional Old English survivor in the Wulfstanian mode. Goscelin composed vitae of the early Barking saints Æthelburh, Hildelith, and the late tenth-century Wulfhild, together with accounts of the translations of their relics into the grandiose new church.160 At Winchester, on St Swithun’s feast day 1093, the monks carried the saint’s reliquary from the Old Minster into the new cathedral. The demolition of the Old Minster began on the following day,161 though the site of Swithun’s (now empty) grave in the demolished Old Minster was carefully preserved as the focus of an outdoor ‘memorial court’.162 Walkelin, the bishop under whom the rebuilding project reached this consummation, had 156  Sharpe, ‘St Augustine’s Translation’, p. 1; Goscelin, Historia, miracula et translatio S. Augustini, in Acta sanctorum, Maii vi, ed. D.  Papebroch (Antwerp 1688), 377–443, at 433; BL MS. Cotton Vespasian B. xx, fos 26r–141v, at 96r–v; D. Sherlock and H. Woods, St. Augustine’s Abbey: Report on Excavations, 1960–1978, ed. J. Geddes , Monograph Ser. of the Kent Archaeological Soc., iv (Maidstone 1988), pp. 5, 83–4. St Augustine’s may not only have provided a model for translations, but a text-book resource for the process of rebuilding. There was a pre-Conquest copy, partly by an English scribe, of Vitruvius in its library, but it is not clear whether it was copied there, or when it was acquired: London, BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra  D.  i, fos 2–82; B.C.  Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, CBMLC, xiii, 3 vols (London 2008), ii. BA1.1123. It was the source of the subsequent English tradition. 157  London, BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian B. xx, fos 26r–60v (Historia), 61r–84v (Miracula), 86r–93v (sermo, delivered on the occasion by Gundulf, bishop of Rochester), 94r–141v (Translatio; confusingly, book I (fos 95v–124v) describes the translation, and book II (125v–141v) earlier events. Wido’s activities therefore begin in ch. 2 of book I). For the opening of book I, see below, Plate 3. This collection also includes, fos 2r–24v, Goscelin’s Historia minor de adventu beati Augustini. On the collection see Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s, CBMLC, xiii, iii. pp. 1749–50; Sharpe, ‘St Augustine’s Translation’, p. 6. 158  MS. Cotton Vespasian B. xx, fo. 94r. 159  Sharpe, ‘St Augustine’s Translation’, p. 12 n. 50. 160  Dublin, Trinity College, MS. 176, printed by M.L. Colker, ‘Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury which Relate to the History of Barking Abbey’, Studia Monastica, vii (1965), 383–460; Sharpe, ‘St Augustine’s Translation’, p. 12 n. 50. The church was 110 yards long, making it one of the largest in Northern Europe. 161  Annales de Wintonia, AM ii. 37. 162 Crook, Architectural Setting, pp. 207–09, citing M. Biddle and B. Biddle, Anglo-Saxon Minsters of Winchester, Winchester Studies, iv. 1 (Oxford forthcoming); J. Crook, ‘St Swithun of Winchester’, in J. Crook, ed., Winchester Cathedral: Nine Hundred Years (Chichester 1992), pp. 57–68, at 57–9.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  35 been closely involved in the recent episode at St Augustine’s,163 and his huge new cathedral revealed its architectural influence.164 It is unlikely to be a coincidence that sometime in the 1090s an unidentifiable hagiographer who had access to the archives at Winchester wrote a new vita and (probably) miracula of Swithun,165 which drew on the pre-Conquest material, exceptionally rich at Winchester as at Durham and Canterbury. Whether or not one or both works had been completed to accompany the translation,166 they were evidently prompted by the wholesale physical renewal of the church dedicated, after SS. Peter and Paul, to the saint. Although their author understood English, he was Francophone.167 He had started writing at Sherborne (where there could not have been much call for his hagiographical talents),168 so he was not, or at least not initially, a Winchester monk. Rather, he was another peripatetic specialist writer of continental origin, in the mould of Goscelin or Folcard, recruited to perform a service of which noone then at Winchester was presumably deemed capable. This was the role that Symeon, brought over from Normandy by William of St-Calais, would perform at Durham after 1104.

The Role of Precentor It is no surprise that so many of these hagiographers, several of them soon to branch out into the writing of histories, both of individual churches and of the whole kingdom, can be shown to have been or to have become precentors of their houses. The precentor had by this point come to elide the roles of armarius and cantor.169 As such, a precentor was responsible both for the library of his church170 and for its liturgical life, the performance of the opus Dei, including the chants and readings which constituted important aspects of worship.171 He was, in other words, responsible for organizing his community’s primary function, as well as

163  Acta Lanfranci, i. 292; Sharpe, ‘St Augustine’s Translation’, p. 5. 164  J. Crook, ‘Bishop Walkelin’s Cathedral’, in Crook, ed., Winchester Cathedral, pp. 21–36, at 23. 165 M. Lapidge, The Cult of St Swithun, Winchester Studies, iv. 2 (Oxford 2003), pp. 613, 642. 166  Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, ed. Love, p. lviii; Lapidge, St Swithun, p. 613. 167 Lapidge, St Swithun, p. 642. 168 Lapidge, St Swithun, p. 614. For hagiography at Sherborne/Old Sarum, see above, p. 32. 169  M.E.  Fassler, ‘The Office of Cantor in Early Western Monastic Rules and Customaries’, Early Music History, v (1985), 29–51, at 37–40; for their role in English secular cathedrals, see K. Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages. A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to the Fourteenth Century (Manchester 1949), pp. 161–8. 170  T.  Webber, ‘Cantor, Sacrist or Prior? The Provision of Books in Anglo-Norman England’, in K.  A-M.  Bugyis, A.B.  Kraebeland, and M.E.  Fassler, eds, Medieval Cantors and their Craft. Music, Liturgy and the Shaping of History, 800–1500 (Woodbridge 2017), pp. 172–89, esp. 173–5. 171  The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D.  Knowles, rev. C.N.L.  Brooke (Oxford 2002), p. 122, cf. 28–30. Eadmer wrote the earliest known witness: Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.IV.24, fos 47r–73r. Responsibility for liturgy encompassed ensuring that saints’ feasts were celebrated in the requis­ite manner.

36  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 for the care and augmentation of its book collection and archive. At Christ Church, Canterbury, the position was held by Osbern, and in immediate succession to him, by Eadmer;172 at Malmesbury, by William (who, char­ac­ter­is­tic­al­ly, claimed that in the role of librarian he had surpassed all his predecessors);173 at Durham, by Symeon;174 at Worcester, by Nicholas, the later (from 1113) prior. Nicholas is known to have assisted both Eadmer175 and William of Malmesbury176 with their historical researches, and would have been very well known to Florence and John, both of whom must have been members of the scriptorium. (William regretted that Nicholas had not written Wulfstan’s vita, because his personal acquaintance with the subject made him far better qualified to do so than Coleman. It may be that Nicholas’s drink problem compromised his productivity as a writer—the first known instance of an honourable English tradition.)177 According to the job description for precentors drafted by Lanfranc,178 they were required to contact their opposite numbers in other houses requesting prayers for dead brethren, a process which was bound to establish connections between them, and facilitate the exchange of information. The Durham Liber vitae, for instance, contains records of 23 confraternity agreements which had been established within a short time of the foundation of the cathedral priory.179 We may infer that Nicholas communicated the names of recently deceased Worcester brethren—including Hemming and Florence—to Symeon,180 who has been shown to have inscribed in the book the terms of an arrangement with Wlfranenus, canon of St Paul’s, London.181 Bishop Wulfstan had been an enthusiast for this sort of agreement: a copy of one made in 1077 between the houses of Worcester,

172  Memorials of St Dunstan, ed. W. Stubbs, RS (1874), p. 161; Gervase of Canterbury, ‘Actus pontificum Cantuariensis ecclesiae’, Opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1879–80), ii. 374. 173  He is described as cantor by Robert of Crickdale, canon of Cirencester, no later than 1137: R.W.  Hunt, ‘English Learning in the Late Twelfth Century’, repr. in R.W.  Southern, ed., Essays in Medieval History (London 1968), pp. 106–28, at 117–18; GP V. 271. 2, discussed by S.O. Sønnesyn, ‘Lex orandi, lex scribendi? The Role of Historiography in the Liturgical Life of William of Malmesbury’, in Bugyis et al., eds, Medieval Cantors, pp. 240–54, at 244–5; HNa, pr. p. 2. 174 Symeon, Libellus, pp. xlii–xliv, 258 n. 1; C.C.  Rozier, ‘Symeon of Durham as Cantor and Historian at Durham Cathedral Priory’, in Bugyis et al., eds, Medieval Cantors, pp. 190–206, at 192–3. 175  See below, pp. 37, 75; Garnett, ‘History of Not-So-Recent Events’, p. 000. 176  VSW III. 9. 2, III. 10. 4. III. 13; see above, p. 19, below, pp. 58, 69. 177  VSW III. 17, cf. 16. 178  Monastic Constitutions, p. 122, cf. 28–30; cf. Regularis concordia, ed. T.  Symons (Edinburgh 1953), c. XII, pp. 66–8. 179  J.E. Burton, ‘Confraternities in the Durham Liber vitae’, in Durham Liber vitae, ed. Rollason and Rollason, i. 73–5; cf. iii. 89–128 for names of ecclesiastics other than monks of Durham recorded in the Liber. 180  Durham Liber vitae, iii. 127, B.3.36. 181  Durham Liber vitae, fo. 36v6(1); M.  Gullick, ‘The Scribes of the Durham Cantor’s Book (Durham, Dean & Chapter Library, MS. B.IV.24) and the Durham Martyrology Scribe’, in D. Rollason, M.  Harvey, and M.  Prestwich, eds, Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193 (Woodbridge 1994), pp. 93–109, at 106 n. 53; Burton, ‘Confraternities’, i. 75; further L. Rollason, ‘History and Codicology’, Durham Liber vitae i. 5–42, at 24 n. 151.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  37 Evesham, Chertsey, Bath, Pershore, Winchcombe, and Gloucester was entered in a gospel book at Bath Abbey.182 No-one was better placed than precentors to investigate other aspects of the history of their own houses, and of others, especially in view of their often attested expertise in drafting new (and therefore deciphering old) documents, including charters. Nicholas’s letter to Eadmer on the parentage of Edward the Martyr appears to echo the phrasing of the forged charter of King Edgar in favour of St Mary’s Abbey, Worcester, known from its incipit as the Altitonantis charter.183 It seems that he had inspected documents in the archive with care. The contacts which precentors were officially obliged to make with each other facilitated and indeed encouraged the extension of those researches far beyond the histories of their own churches and the lives and miracles of the saints specially venerated therein. When rebuilding projects were coming to fruition and hagiographies being commissioned from the late 1080s, the post-Conquest programme to equip major English churches with copies of the standard scriptural and patristic works which any respectable continental ecclesiastical library would hold was already well in train.184 In some communities it was evidently regarded as an urgent priority.185 At Malmesbury, Godfrey of Jumièges, Abbot Warin’s successor, had found the existing library quite inadequate.186 At Abingdon, Abbot Faricius was said to have assigned six (presumably professional) scriptores to the copying of patristic works; the production of humdrum service books could be left to mere claustral monks.187 At Winchester in 1107 Bishop William gave the church of Wroughton, Wilts, to the monks and Wlnoth the precentor ‘for the making of books’.188 Bishop William of St-Calais could pride himself on having not only Symeon on the staff of his cathedral’s scriptorium, but also, probably, the most consummate (though 182 N.R.  Ker, Catalogue of Medieval Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford 1957), no. 35, art. 9; D.A.E. Pelteret, Catalogue of English Post-Conquest Vernacular Documents (Woodbridge 1990), no. 78; discussed by E. Treharne, Living Through the Conquest. The Politics of Early English, 1020–1220 (Oxford 2012), pp. 113–21. 183  S. 731; J. Barrow, ‘The Chronology of Forgery Production at Worcester from c. 1000 to the Early Twelfth Century’, in J.S.  Barrow and N.P.  Brooks, eds, St Wulfstan and his World (Aldershot 2005), pp. 105–22, at 120. For the letter to Eadmer, see below, p. 75. 184 N.R. Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford 1960), pp. 4–5, 7–9, 10–15, 22–32, who traces the pattern of copying in particular cases; Webber, Salisbury Cathedral, pp. 31–9 (patristic texts), 44–81 (copying and dissemination); R.  Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066–1130) (Oxford 1999), pp. 5–9, 20, 30–3. T. Webber, ‘The Diffusion of Augustine’s Confessions in England during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in J.  Blair and B. Golding, eds, The Cloister and the World. Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey (Oxford 1996), pp. 29–45, shows that the dissemination of copies of this work was relatively speedy. 185 Webber, Salisbury Cathedral, pp. 9, 17, 29, 31. 186  GP V. 271. 1. 187  De abbatibus Abbendonie: Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols, RS (1858), ii. 289; Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis, ii. pp. cvi–cvii; M. Gullick, ‘Professional Scribes in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century England’, in P.  Beal and J.  Griffith, eds, English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, vii (London 1998), pp. 1–24, at 3 and n. 11. 188  EEA, viii: Winchester 1070–1204, ed. M.J. Franklin (Oxford 1993), no. 17. For this and subsequent dealings concerning this grant, see Gullick, ‘Professional Scribes’, pp. 2–3.

38  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 anonymous) professional of all. In 1086 this individual was seconded, presumably by the bishop, to act as the main scribe of Great Domesday Book; he has also been identified as contributing to three collections of patristic and pseudopatristic works, and as the copyist of a short, uncommon vita of St Catherine of Alexandria,189 all possibly or probably written at Durham. As with the hagiographical hacks, many of the specialist scribes can be shown to have been of con­ tin­en­tal origin. Sometimes it is possible to determine that a particular manuscript had been imported: Bishop William had done so with many of those which he donated to the library at Durham, including the bible on the flyleaf of which his donations are recorded in Symeon’s hand.190 Often it is not. The handwriting of a different anonymous scribe has been detected in books possibly manufactured in different scriptoria: one (probably) copied at St Albans, another seemingly of Norman origin and Exeter provenance, and several of apparently Norman origin, but imported to Durham.191 A third anonymous scribe, who helped to write, in Normandy, the great bible which Bishop William donated to Durham,192 and another of his gifts,193 also wrote, probably in Normandy, the copy of Lanfranc’s 189  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. theol. d. 34, fos 1v–28r (Tertullian); Oxford, Trinity College, MS. 28, fos 89v–91r (Pseudo-Augustine), in which he is one of three contributing scribes (see M. Gullick and C. Thorn, ‘The Scribes of Great Domesday Book: A Preliminary Account’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, viii (1986), 78–80; this book was at Winchester in the sixteenth century); Hereford, Cathedral Library, MS. P.I.10, to which he contributed only the list of contents (P. Chaplais, ‘William of Saint-Calais and the Domesday Survey’, in J.C. Holt, ed., Domesday Studies. Novocentenary Conference, Royal Historical Society and Institute of British Geographers, Winchester 1986 (Woodbridge 1987), pp. 65–77, at 74; M. Gullick, ‘The Great and Little Domesday Manuscripts’, in A. Williams, ed., Domesday Book Studies (London 1987), pp. 93–112, at 102 n. 6. The book was donated to Hereford Cathedral Library in 1611: R.A.B.  Mynors and R.M.  Thomson, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library (Cambridge 1993), p. 70). It is given a Gloucester provenance by Ker, MLGB, p. 351; London, BL, MS. Harley 12, fos 141r–143v (vita of St Catherine, of which there was a copy in Durham in the twelfth century, according to the booklist in Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.IV.24, fo. 2r); further, F. and C. Thorn, ‘The Writing of Great Domesday’, in E.M. Hallam and D. Bates, eds, Domesday Book (Stroud 2001), pp. 37–72, at 38 and n. 8: Chaplais, ‘William of Saint-Calais’, pp. 73–5, who identifies characteristics distinctive of the Durham scriptorium in the last three of these manuscripts; S.  Harvey, Domesday, Book of Judgement (Oxford 2014), pp. 101–6, is more sceptical about the connection with William of St-Calais, deeming Ranulf Flambard a much more likely candidate. 190 Symeon, Libellus, p. 244. A contemporary poetic inscription in the third volume of his copy of Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos (Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.II.14) records that he commissioned it ‘at the time when he withdrew from his bishopric’, i.e. between 1088 and 1091: Gameson, ‘The Cathedral’s Oldest Books’, p. 413. This scribe, whose name is recorded as William, also wrote Bishop William’s copy of Bede’s Historia ecclesistica, and made entries in the Durham Liber vitae: Gameson, Manuscript Treasures, p. 60; for the scribe of William’s bible (Durham, Cathedral Library. MS. A.II.4) never having left Normandy, see p. 53. For Symeon’s having written the list of Bishop William’s donations, see Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 25. 191  Cambridge, Clare College, MS. 18 (St Albans: this includes Orosius, Justinus and Vegetius); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 301 (Normandy-Exeter: Augustine, In evangelium Iohannis); Durham Cathedral Library, MSS. B.III.1, B.III.10, and B.III.16: Gameson, ‘Oldest Books’, p. 413 and n. 77; Gullick, ‘Professional Scribes’, pp. 7–9. 192  Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. A.II.4; M.  Gullick, ‘The Scribe of the Carilef Bible: A New Look at Some Late Eleventh-Century Durham Manuscripts’, in L.L.  Brownrigg, ed., Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence (Los Altos Hills, CA 1990), pp. 61–83. 193  Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.II.17 (Augustine, In evangelium Iohannis).

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  39 version of the Pseudo-Isidorean decretal collection, Collectio Lanfranci, which Bishop Osbern of Exeter gave to his cathedral library.194 At Old Sarum, Bishop Osmund did not stand on his dignity: he was ready to put his hand to communal task of copying, and then of binding ‘what had been copied.’195 Almost half the list of about 50 books recorded as having been given to Durham cathedral library by William of St-Calais are patristic or post-patristic scriptural commentary and theology.196 However, certain works of more recent origin were also deemed essential to the updating of library holdings. No fewer than 11 witnesses of the Collectio Lanfranci owned by major English churches survive, all of them derived from the exemplar imported by Lanfranc.197 Eadmer himself subsequently interleaved a slip in the exemplar, on which he had copied out an additional text from Burchard of Worms’ Decretum which would have seemed particularly pertinent at Canterbury after Lanfranc’s accession in 1070.198 The Collectio appears to have been considered a vade mecum for every postConquest bishop in England (and at least one important abbot).199 Symeon of Durham made several additions to William of St-Calais’ copy.200 The main scribe of the earlier of the two extant Hereford copies also wrote the Holme Lacy chirograph, an original document issued by Bishop Robert Losinga in 1085.201 In view of the Collectio’s contents it would have been easy to categorize it as another

194 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 810; M.  Gullick, ‘English-owned manuscripts of the Collectio Lanfranci (s. xi/xii)’, in L.  Dennison, ed., The Legacy of M.R.  James. Papers from the 1995 Cambridge Symposium (Donington 2001), pp. 99–117, at 110–11. 195  GP II. 83. 12. 196  Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. A.II.4, fo. 1r, discussed above, n. 99; further Browne, ‘Book Donations’; Gullick, ‘Carilef Bible’, pp. 61–83; Gullick, ‘Durham Cantor’s Book’, pp. 102, 106; Gameson, Manuscripts of Early Norman England, p. 17; R.  Gameson, ‘English Book Collections in the  Late Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries: Symeon’s Durham and its Context’, in Rollason, ed., Symeon of Durham, pp. 230–53, at 235–6, 240–1. Bishop William’s list of donations records a copy of Pompeius Trogus’s Historiae, which presumably means Justinus’s Epitoma. 197  To be more precise, from two copies of the exemplar, neither of which survives: Z.N. Brooke, The English Church and the Papacy from the Conquest to the Reign of King John (Cambridge 1931), pp. 231–5. The manuscript is Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. B. 16. 44, which was made after 1059, probably at Bec. There is a surviving fragment of a twelfth manuscript, perhaps also from Bec or from Caen: Paris, BN, MS. n.a. lat. 2657, discussed by Gullick, ‘English-owned manuscripts of the Collectio’, p. 101. 198  M. Gullick, ‘Lanfranc and the Oldest Manuscript of the Collectio Lanfranci’, in B.C. Brasington and K.G. Cushing, eds, Bishops, Texts and the Use of Canon Law around 1100. Essays in Honour of Martin Brett (Aldershot 2008), pp. 79–90, at 85–6 and Pl. 5.7. For its Canterbury pertinence, see Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 33–6. 199  Gullick, ‘English-owned manuscripts of the Collectio’, pp. 99–117. Extant witnesses are associated with Christ Church, Canterbury, Durham, Exeter, Hereford, Lincoln, Salisbury, Worcester, probably Bath, possibly Winchester, and (the only one not from a cathedral) Winchcombe. It seems very likely that there was also a copy at Rochester in the 1120s: Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B77.56. In addition there were, demonstrably, two copies of Lanfranc’s exemplar which do not survive, and ­probably many more which have left no traces. 200  Cambridge, Peterhouse, MS. 74; Gullick, ‘Durham Cantor’s Book’, pp. 106, 108. 201  Hereford Cathedral, MS. O.VIII.8; V.H. Galbraith, ‘An Episcopal Land-grant of 1085’, EHR, xliv (1929), 353–72; Gullick, ‘English-owned Manuscripts of the Collectio’, p. 104. A second Hereford transcript, made from O.VIII.8 (Mynors and Thomson, Hereford Cathedral Library, p. 57), is now divided between Hereford, Cathedral Library, MS. O.IV.5 and MS. P.II.8.

40  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 patristic authority, perhaps the most indispensable of all. In most cases the copies were made at the churches which subsequently owned them.202 In parallel with all these urgently needed ancient or putatively ancient au­thor­ ities, precentors and the scribes working under their direction could turn their attention to other pressing practical needs, including the composition of new hagiographical and historical works. Gazing intermittently as they wrote out of the windows at the demolition and building sites which surrounded them must have prompted reflection about the scale of the transformation not only of their own churches, but of the whole kingdom. The main scribe of Great Domesday, for instance, was probably English;203 but whether he was or not, one suspects that he must have been struck on some level by the irony as he copied out a pseudo-Augustinian sermon on the Ten Commandments and the ten plagues of Egypt.204 The number of surviving post-Conquest manuscripts of Josephus’s De bello Iudaico in the fourth-century Latin translation often ascribed to Rufinus of Aquileia,205 and of the earlier condensed and heavily Christianized Latin version attributed to the fictional Hegesippus,206 suggest that it was then one of the most popular historical works in England on a subject other than England.207 Of course the triumph of the First Crusade lent it a timely relevance.208 But the accounts of Jewish resistance against the Roman conqueror would surely also have resonated with anyone of a ruminative cast of mind who found himself transcribing it. Josephus opened by characterizing this particular war as worse than any earlier one which had afflicted the Jews.209 Hegesippus’s prologue, however, observed that Josephus had failed to grasp the reasons for the suffering of his compatriot co-religionists: that they were being punished for their lack of faith, and their complicity in the death of Christ. This was a point which might have prompted some English readers to reflect that they, by contrast, had a very clear 202  Gullick, ‘English-owned Manuscripts of the Collectio’, p. 114. 203 V.H.  Galbraith, The Making of Domesday Book (Oxford 1961), p. 203; Chaplais, ‘William of Saint-Calais’, p. 70; A.R.  Rumble, ‘The Domesday Manuscripts: Scribes and Scriptoria’, in Holt, ed., Domesday Studies, pp. 79–97, at 84. 204  Oxford, Trinity College, MS. 28, fos 89v–91r. 205  It was last printed in 1524: Flavii Iosephi opera, ed. J. Frobenius (Basel 1524); R.M. Pollard, ‘The De Excidio of “Hegesippus” and the Reception of Josephus in the Early Middle Ages’, Viator, xlvi (2015), 65–100, at 68–9, 72 and n. 35. 206  Hegesippi qui dicitur historiae libri v, ed. V.  Ussani and C.  Mras, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, lxvi, 2 vols (Vienna 1932–60), ; N. Wright, ‘Twelfth-Century Receptions of a Text: Anglo-Norman Historians and Hegesippus’, ANS, xxxi (2008), 177–95. This was often known as De excidio Hierosolymitano. 207 Gameson, Manuscripts of Early Norman England, identifies four contemporary copies of the former and five of the latter. Another copy of the latter which does not survive was commissioned by Faricius, abbot of Abingdon: Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon ii. 289; Hudson, Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis ii. p. cvii. In terms of surviving manuscripts of works of history, it equalled Eusebius, and was exceeded only by Eutropius and Bede: Gameson, Manuscripts, pp. 36–7. 208 K.  Kletter, ‘Politics, Prophecy, and Jews: the Destruction of Jerusalem in Anglo-Norman Historiography’, in K. Utterback and M.L. Price, eds, Jews in Medieval Christendom: Slay Them Not (Leiden 2013), pp. 91–116. 209  Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.II.1, fo. 189v.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  41 understanding of why they had recently been made to suffer so grievously. The numerous Sallustian echoes in Hegesippus’s version would have struck a chord with the better read.210 If the extant Durham copy of the full text of Josephus (together with his De antiquitate iudaica) was already in the library in William of Saint-Calais’ time, the Domesday scribe might have read it.211 William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon were certainly very familiar with the book, and had demonstrably thought hard about modern parallels.212 Unsurprisingly, a few of these educated and sometimes learned men would soon be moved to express their reflections in forms more generalized and ambitious than histories of their particular houses. The techniques used in the com­pos­ition of general histories of the kingdom were much grander and all-encompassing in their assertions of continuity with the Old English past than those in parochial histories or saints’ lives, because they were not concerned with the rights, interests, or saints of any particular church, but with the whole kingdom or (it is not anachronistic to say, given their themes and in many cases their titles) people or nation. It is now time to examine how continuity was established in this novel genre of English historical writing about England, to determine how the chain which William of Malmesbury considered to be broken began to be repaired.

Initial Attempts to Mend the Chain One case which appears not to have been first prompted by hagiographical investigation consequent on the rebuilding of a church neatly illustrates the distinction between enterprising a general history of the English kingdom or of the English people, and establishing in a documentary sense the rights of a particular church. It consists in juxtaposition of the Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis with Hemming’s Cartulary. Both of these works were commissioned prior to 1095 by none other than Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, the last surviving member of the Old English hierarchy; the latter was professedly inspired (in part) by the threat to his church represented by ‘the violence of the Normans’.213 Wulfstan had in his  time been both cantor and secretaries at Worcester, so had experience of 210  Hegesippi historiae, ii. 430–2; Wright, ‘Anglo-Norman Historians and Hegesippus’, 176 n. 3. 211  Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.II.1. The catalogue dates it to 1100. Two of the scribes had west country connections: M. Gullick, D. Marner, and A.J. Piper, Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193: A Catalogue for an Exhibition of Manuscripts in the Treasury, Durham Cathedral, September 1993, ed. D. Rollason (Durham 1993), p. 7. It is possible but unlikely that this was one of the books Aldwin, monk of Winchcombe had brought with him when he re-established monastic life at MonkwearmouthJarrow: Symeon of Durham, Libellus, p. 201 n. 76. Another early twelfth-century Durham manuscript contained an anonymous epitome of part of Josephus’s De bello Iudaico: Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.IV.8; Mynors, Durham Cathedral Manuscripts, no. 76. 212  Wright, ‘Anglo-Norman Historians and Hegesippus’, 188–95 (William), 182–8 (Henry). 213  OV ii. 186, cf. pp. xv, xxi; Hemingi chartularium ecclesiae Wigorniensis, ed. T.  Hearne, 2 vols (Oxford 1723), ii. 391, i. 248–71, 282–6.

42  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 record-keeping and the administration of estates as well as responsibility for ­liturgy.214 He had long esteemed English historical writing, or—what in his view would have amounted to the same thing—Bede: his first act after his consecration, William of Malmesbury noted with approval in the life which he translated from Coleman’s (now lost) Old English original, had been to dedicate a church to Bede, ‘who had been the princeps of letters of the English people.’215 Uniquely for Anglo-Saxon England, Bede’s name appears in a litany in the breviary prepared for Wulfstan’s use.216 Coleman would have been well aware of Bede’s significance: he annotated a Worcester copy of the Old English Bede, which had been transcribed by none other than Hemming.217 In his cartulary, Hemming compiled pre- and post-Conquest documents concerned with Worcester estates, and recorded that those which had become damaged had now been repaired, in order to fortify the church’s title to its lands and rights. He adds that he had put a new lock on the muniment chest to ensure their safe-keeping.218 In turbulent times, perhaps se­cur­ity measures for title deeds needed to be stepped up. The end result of the process of salvage, preservation, and restoration—or rather, though presented as such, considerably more219—went, according to R.W.  Southern, far beyond the practical, legal necessity which had initiated it. Hemming presented ‘a  complete picture of past glories . . . laid up in heaven and apprehensible on earth only by the historical imagination’220— historical imagination informed by elaborately marshalled documentary evidence. The Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis had also, according to Orderic Vitalis,221 been commissioned by Wulfstan. If Wulfstan had conceived Hemming’s cartulary and the chronicle in parallel, he might well have intended that the focus of the latter, too, should be the church of Worcester, much as Orderic’s Historia 214  VSW I. 3. 3. 215  VSW I. 14. 1. 216  M.  Lapidge, ed., Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, Henry Bradshaw Soc. cvi (1991), p. 117; Bailey, ‘Bede’s Bones’, p. 170. 217 Cambridge, UL, MS. Kk. 3. 18, fo. 87v, identified by N.R.  Ker, ‘Old English Notes Signed “Coleman” ’, repr. in his Books, Collectors and Libraries, pp. 27–30; A. Orchard, ‘Parallel Lives: Wulfstan, William, Coleman and Christ’, in Barrow and Brooks, eds, Wulfstan and his World, pp. 39–58, at 43–4; William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. M.  Winterbottom and R.M.  Thomson (Oxford 2002), p. xxxiii n. 112. 218  Hemingi chartularium i. 282; Galbraith, ‘Historical Research’, p. 37; cf. Eadmer, HN, p. 276 on the discovery of documents worn out by age. 219 J.  Barrow, ‘The Chronology of Forgery Production at Worcester from c. 1000 to the Early Twelfth Century’, in Barrow and Brooks, eds, Wulfstan and his World, pp. 105–22, esp. 114–16; cf. R.W. Southern, ‘The Canterbury Forgeries’, EHR, lxxiii (1958), 193–226, esp. 217–26; R.W. Southern, St Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge 1990), pp. 355–6, 359–60, discussing the documents (allegedly found between the pages of an ancient bible) which Eadmer inserted in HN pp. 261–76. 220  R.W.  Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 4: The Sense of the Past’, repr. in his History and Historians, ed. R.  Bartlett (Oxford 2004), pp. 66–83, at 72; see also N.R. Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary: A Description of the Two Cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A. XIII’, repr. in his Books, Collectors and Libraries, pp. 31–59; V.H. Galbraith, ‘Notes on the Career of Samson, Bishop of Worcester (1096–1112)’, repr. in his Kings and Chroniclers, ch. IV, pp. 86–101, esp. 94, 98. 221  OV ii. 186; for the accurate and inaccurate elements in Orderic’s description, see Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 102 n. 4.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  43 ecclesiastica started life as a history of the abbey of St-Evroult.222 However, the surviving manuscripts preserve no evidence of such an initial design, and the choice of Bede, Asser, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as major sources would soon have rendered it impossible of execution. They ensured that, unlike the cartulary, the work encompassed the whole kingdom. Since it had reportedly been begun prior to Wulfstan’s death in 1095, it was by some margin the earliest of the early twelfth-century histories of the kingdom to be started. The author sought not just to record English history from the very beginning in annalistic form, but to fit that history into a chronology which was not Anglocentric, as Henry of Huntingdon’s would be, but universal. The chronological structure of the Worcester Chronicon was provided by Marianus Scotus, an anchorite of Irish extraction from Mainz, who had died in 1082. Marianus had devised a new chronological system to replace the traditional Dionysian one, and used it as the basis for a universal world chronicle,223 running from Creation to 1082.224 Robert Losinga, bishop of Hereford, had imported Marianus’s system into England along with his Chronicon. A late eleventh-century copy of Marianus’s Chronicon, written by several—probably three—continental scribes, includes a famous addition describing the Domesday Survey, followed by a notice of the death of the Conqueror.225 This addition depended on a brief account of the Survey incorporated in a treatise on chronology written by Bishop Robert;226 it was used by whoever drafted the annal for 1086 in the Worcester Chronicon in his account of the Survey. The addition is

222  G. Garnett, ‘Robert Curthose: The Duke Who Lost his Trousers’, ANS, xxxv (2012), 213–43, at 220–4; A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘Computus and Chronology in Anglo-Norman England’, in L. Cleaver and A. Worm, eds, Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World. Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, c. 1066–c. 1250 (Woodbridge 2018), pp. 53–68, at 55–6. 223  Chronicon, in MGH. SS v. 481–569. 224 William of Malmesbury knew both Marianus’s chronicle and Robert Losinga’s compustical ­treatise based upon it: GR III. 292. According to Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 69 n. 186, 123 n. 23, Marianus provides the basis for the Easter tables in William’s own collection of computistical treatises: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Auct. F. 3.14, fos 120r–132v. William prefaced the volume in which they were included with a poem which anticipated, fo. 11v, that it would ‘bring renown to William’s name after his death’: A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Chronological Controversy’, in Thomson et al., eds, Discovering William of Malmesbury, pp. 93–105, at 98–101. In GP IV. 164 William describes Bishop Robert Losinga’s Excerptio de Chronica Mariani, which is included in William’s collection: Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 84–5; GP II. 215; P.A.  Hayward, ‘William of Malmesbury as a Cantor-Historian’, in Bugyis et al., eds, Medieval Cantors, pp. 222–39, at 223–5. 225  London, BL, MS. Cotton Nero  C.  v, fo. 158v, printed by W.H.  Stevenson, ‘A Contemporary Description of the Domesday Survey’, EHR, xxii (1907), 72–84, at 77; Ker, MLGB, p. 207; A.G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts, c. 700–1600, in the Department of Manuscripts, The British Library (London 1979), n. 540; JW ii. pp. lxiv–lxv; M.  Brett, ‘The Use of the Universal Chronicle at Worcester’, in J.P. Genet, ed., L’historiographie médiévale en Europe (Paris 1991), pp. 277–85; Lawrence-Mathers, ‘Chronological Controversy’, Thomson et al., eds, Discovering William of Malmesbury, p. 103. 226  Stevenson, ‘Contemporary Description’, 74, edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library MSS. Auct. F. 3.14 and Auct. F. 5.19. Eleven surviving copies or fragments of this work have now been identified: G. Schmidt, ‘A Saint Petersburg Manuscript of Excerptio Roberti Herefordiensis de Chronica Mariani Scotti’, in Cleaver and Worm, eds, Writing History, pp. 69–92, at 71 n. 9.

44  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 in the hand of the main scribe of the Marianus manuscript, who also wrote a contemporary endorsement on the Holme Lacy chirograph.227 Like the scribe of the chirograph itself, who, as we have seen, also wrote the earlier extant Hereford copy of the Collectio Lanfranci,228 the main scribe of the Marianus manuscript can therefore be identified as a member of the Hereford scriptorium. According to William of Malmesbury, Bishop Robert was a close associate of Bishop Wulfstan, and officiated at his funeral.229 It seems certain that Marianus’s Chronicon, as amplified in the Hereford scriptorium, was introduced to Worcester by Robert.230 A universal chronicle recently imported from the Continent to Hereford provided the template for the Chronicon ex chronicis commissioned at Worcester by its bishop.231 The decision made by the author (or authors) to use that template was what ensured that the scope of the Worcester Chronicon should not only extend far beyond the affairs of the church of Worcester, but be vastly broader even than his other major sources, Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. John of Worcester seems to have been disinclined to précis or recast the sources the compilation of which he effusively attributed to his predecessor, Florence.232 Whichever of them was responsible, in this respect he took the opposite approach to William of Malmesbury, his probable collaborator,233 who made a virtue of doing precisely that.234 For simplicity’s sake, I shall bow to modern scholarly convention, and refer to the Worcester annalist as John, though by his own account it would seem that anything written prior to Florence’s death in 1118 must to some considerable degree be credited to Florence. The annalist tended to reproduce his sources nearly verbatim, albeit translating many of them from Old English. This is why it is possible to characterize the versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he used235—chiefly D, or something very close to it—and also to be precise about the way in which he drew on Eadmer’s Historia novorum as his most important source for the period 1102–21.236 His tendency to transcribe (or translate) almost 227  Galbraith, ‘Episcopal Land-grant’, 353–72; EEA, vii: Hereford 1079–1234. ed. J. Barrow (Oxford 1993), no. 2; Gullick, ‘English-owned Manuscripts of the Collectio’, pp. 104–05. 228  See above, p. 39. 229  GP IV. 164–5; 148. 4. 230  Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 110–11. 231  JW ii. pp. xviii–xx, lxv; Stevenson, ‘Contemporary Description’, 76–8. John of Worcester’s hand appears in a Worcester copy of Bishop Robert’s chronological treatise: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Auct. F. 1. 9, fos 2v–12r; Ker, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Handwriting’, p. 65; JW ii. p. xix n. 6. 232  JW iii. 142, 143 n. 5; on Florence’s role, see V.I.J. Flint, ‘The Date of the Chronicle of “Florence” of Worcester’, Revue Bénédictine, lxxxvi (1976), 115–19; Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 104 n. 3, 110 and n. 2; Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de Regibus Anglorum et Dacorum’, p. 108. 233  VSW I. 1, III. 9. 2 for William’s recorded visits to Worcester; JW ii. pp. xvii–xviii and Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 113–17, for their probable collaboration; further JW ii. pp. lxxi, lxxvi; GR ii. p. 13; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 73–4. 234  GR I. pr. 235  English Historical Documents, I (500–1042), ed. D. Whitelock, 2nd edn (London 1979), p. 120; JW iii. pp. xx–xxvi; S.D. Keynes, ‘Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in R. Gameson, ed., The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol. I., c. 400–1100 (Cambridge 2012), pp. 537–52, at 549. 236  Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 111–12; JW ii. pp. lxxii–lxxiv, lxxxi; JW iii. pp. xxiii, xxvi–xxvii; Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum’, pp. 106–9, proposing two alternative interpretations.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  45 exactly what he saw on the folio in front of him means that his version of Historia novorum, presumably supplied to the Worcester scriptorium, has been identified as one prior to the full text now extant. This is because the phrasing he borrows in his annal for 1116 exactly corresponds with that in a surviving single leaf in Eadmer’s hand which is differently phrased from the final version of the Historia.237 This discovery has implications for the composition of both works, which cannot be explored here. It is also a further indication of how close were the connections between the early twelfth-century historians seeking to mend the chain of English historiography. An inclination to cut-and-paste was not necessarily evidence of a lack of intellectual ability or ambition on John’s part, relative to William of Malmesbury. If, as seems very likely, there was a copy of Orosius’s Historiae adversus paganos in the library at Worcester,238 then John would not have seen it as relevant to his task as he conceived it—of compilation and conflation of transcribed materials in annalistic form. He did not aspire to the sophistication of William’s Latinity, or (given the heavy dependence on what appears to have been for the most part one manu­ script of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) of his analysis; but his horizons were far wider than those of his brother Hemming, and at least in this very precise, tech­ nical sense than William’s. Under the annal for 788, which recorded the meeting of a synod in Northumbria, John calculated that ‘in the twenty-fourth hour’ on 20 March, 5000 solar years—or 1,826,250 days—had elapsed since the fourth day of Creation.239 Evidently Robert Losinga’s obsession with chronology had rubbed off on him. To some extent it had on William too.240 Yet in a sense less systematic than John’s, William was also attempting to establish England’s place within Christendom as a whole: ‘my narrative has often exceeded its limits and goes roaming outside England; for I should like this work to serve as a summary of many fields of history’.241 Eadmer’s particular interests mean both that his book is in one sense more obviously parochial, and that he is much the most perspicacious of the great twelfth-century historians about the fundamental changes to the kingdom as a whole which were consequent of the Conquest. But, despite the heavy—and unique—weighting of his book to the very recent past, even he shares the 237  M. Brett, ‘A Note on the Historia Novorum of Eadmer’, Scriptorium, xxxiii (1979), 56–8, at 58; the leaf is now inserted (not bound) in Cambridge, CCC, MS. 341, a copy of Cambridge, CCC, MS. 452 made in 1567. 238  M.  Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, in M.  Lapidge and H.  Gneuss, eds, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England. Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes (Cambridge 1985), pp. 33–89, no. XI, pp. 69–73; Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Library, p. 141; Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B115.2. 239  JW ii. 221–2. The calculation is further elaborated, the smallest unit being 988,804,800,000 atoms. 240  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Auct. F. 3.14, a copy of Robert’s treatise, was made for William; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 83–5; GP IV. 164, GR III. 292. 241  GR ep. iii.3.

46  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 em­phasis on national continuity. As the only one of these historians who had been alive in 1066 (though a young boy), and perhaps the only one who was not at least half French242—he refers in passing to ‘we English’243—there is a keener, elegiac edge to his regret for the world that had begun to disintegrate soon after King Edgar’s death in 975. But showing that the kingdom of England suffered just  retribution at the hands of both Danish and Norman conquerors—in his view for Æthelred the Unready’s complicity in the assassination of his brother King Edward the Martyr in 978244—in itself created a link across the Conquest. The Conquest was simply the latest and worst of a series of divinely ordained afflictions. The same is of course true of the providential interpretations of the Conquest advanced by Henry of Huntingdon and, more equivocally, by William of Malmesbury. This unanimity on the part of early twelfth-century English historians about the continuity of English history over the Conquest was, or could easily be made, congruent with what might be characterized as the official history of the Conquest, which survives in its fullest (and very early) form in William of Poitiers’ Gesta Guillelmi. One reason why this was so was that, with the exception of plaintive dirges in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, most versions of which simply fizzled out quite quickly in the aftermath of the Conquest, there appears to have been no previous English historical writing about the Conquest for them to draw on. The break in the ‘chain’ identified by William of Malmesbury had not yet been mended. If they wanted to add anything to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, therefore, they had to draw on the only accounts available, which were Norman, and which peddled the official line. This is one reason why their interpretations of the Conquest proved to be compatible with that line. When William eventually attempted to explain why ‘England has become the dwelling-place of foreigners and the dominion of those of alien birth’,245 he did so by turning primarily to these Norman accounts, which sought to justify the Conquest in terms of the legitimacy of Duke William’s claim to succeed Edward the Confessor. Perhaps they were among the works by ‘historians of foreign races’ which he, as librarian of Malmesbury, reported he had ‘assembled with my own money’246 in order to

242  The parentage of John of Worcester is unknown, as is that of Florence. Symeon of Durham’s hand suggests that he may have been educated in France; William of St-Calais appears to have brought him to Durham when he returned from exile in Normandy in 1091: Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 18. But handwriting is not an infallible guide to nationality, still less to sympathy: Eadmer wrote in a Norman hand: R. Gameson, ‘English Manuscript Art in the Late Eleventh Century: Canterbury and its Context’, in Eales and Sharpe, eds, Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, pp. 95–144, at 102–3. William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Orderic Vitalis were all, by their own accounts, half English. 243  Vita S. Dunstani, in Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles, p. 114. 244 Eadmer, HN, p. 3; cf. VSD, Lives and Miracles, pp. 146, 158; Garnett, ‘History of Not-So-Recent Events’, p. 000. 245  GR II. 227, cf. 207. 246  GR II. pr.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  47 pursue his research. It seems that William had used the Gesta Guillelmi,247 and probably the Gesta Normannorum ducum too248 (though in both cases it is more difficult to demonstrate his textual dependence than that of Orderic Vitalis, writing contemporaneously in Normandy). English evidence for the importation and manufacture of these Norman works is not confined to William of Malmesbury. Within a few years the author of Liber Eliensis would adapt the Gesta Guillelmi;249 it is conceivable, but by no means certain, that he used the same manuscript as William of Malmesbury.250 At the end of the twelfth century a copy was also available at St Paul’s Cathedral, where Ralph de Diceto consulted it. It has been ingeniously argued that this might have been the very copy which Orderic had used almost a century before in Normandy, but this suggestion, too, is incapable of proof.251 As an archdeacon of Lisieux, William of Poitiers had the same diocesan as Orderic, which may explain how Orderic came across the Gesta Guillelmi.252 Only one incomplete text of the book now survives, and that in a seventeenth-century printed edition,253 based on a witness borrowed at that point from England, and subsequently lost. So there are no extant variant readings by which it would be possible to distinguish between different versions. The Gesta Normannorum ducum was a much more popular and successful work. Its career in England is more plentifully attested, and different copies and redactions can therefore be identified with confidence. The oldest surviving manu­script, preserving the earliest extant redaction, was probably written in Normandy at end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century, but may have been imported into England at that point, perhaps to one of the Canterbury houses.254 Another copy of a different redaction was made contemporaneously at Durham, so during the pontificate either of William of St-Calais or of Ranulf Flambard.255 Of these two, William of St-Calais’ bibliophilia is, as we have seen,256 much the better-documented. It would seem particularly appropriate for the (probable) man behind the Domesday Survey also to have sponsored one of the few extant English copies of the standard history of the Norman dukes, in a new

247  Gesta regum, ed. Stubbs, ii. pp. cxi–cxiii; GR ii. pp. 219–21, 223–5, 229–36, 250; R.H.C. Davis, ‘William of Poitiers and his History of William the Conqueror’, repr. in his From Alfred the Great to Stephen, pp. 101–30, at 128–9. 248  GR ii. pp. 37, 110–11, 219, 223, 237. 249  Liber Eliensis, ed. E.O.  Blake, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., xcii (1962), pp. xxviii–xxix; II. 90, 107, 109–10; Davis, ‘William of Poitiers’, pp. 128–9. 250  Davis, ‘William of Poitiers’, p. 124. 251  Radulphi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis, Opera omnia, ed. W. Stubbs, RS, 2 vols (1876), ii. 263–4; for the hypothetical connection to Orderic, see Davis, ‘William of Poitiers’, p. 130. 252  OV iii. 21. 253  Historiae Normannorum scriptores antiqui . . . ex mss codd. omnia fere nunc primum edidit, ed. A. Duchesne (Paris 1619), pp. 178–213. 254  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 517; GND i. p. c (Redaction C). 255  London, BL, MS. Harley 491; GND i. p. xcviii (Redaction B). 256  See above, p. 39.

48  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 redaction which may have been devised in his own diocesan scriptorium.257 Be that as it may, the scribe who wrote the first few lines and corrected the whole text has been identified as none other than Symeon, who was probably Norman, and had certainly been brought to Durham by William of St-Calais on his return from exile in 1091.258 It was of course Symeon who, in the Libellus commissioned under Bishop William’s successor Ranulf Flambard,259 attributed the restoration of monastic life in Northumbria, and therefore in Durham, ultimately to the twofold inspiration of the only English historian to be venerated as a saint.260 Symeon went on to write, or at least contribute to, the Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum, a general history of the English kings which demonstrably drew on William of Jumièges,261 but which depended much more heavily on the Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis for the period between 848 and 1119.262 He also wrote part of a Durham copy of Robert Losinga’s treatise on chronography.263 The witness of the Gesta Normannorum ducum which Symeon edited may not have been the only one available at Durham in the early twelfth century. A plaus­ ible case has been made for the copying there at about this time of a different redaction of what seems then to have been considered an indispensable historical text in England, but which also reveals that the copyist was ignorant of Norman geography, as well he might have been.264 Indeed this redaction may also have been devised in England,265 for its geographical errors are reproduced in all later copies of this redaction. Further witnesses, now lost, and therefore impossible to classify in terms of redaction, are recorded at St Albans in the second half of the 257  London, BL, MS. Harley 491; Garnett, ‘Trousers’, 215 n. 17. If the redaction was devised there, its transmission to Normandy would have to be explained. 258  Gullick, ‘Durham Cantor’s Book’, pp. 104, 108–09; Gullick, ‘Hand’, pp. 18–19, 27; also note to Pl. 7a, p. 361. 259 Symeon, Libellus, p. 2. He was probably commissioned by Prior Turgot and the sub-prior Algar: p. xliv. 260  See above, p. 25. 261 For possible use of this copy of William of Jumièges in the Historia de regibus Anglorum, see Symeon, Opera omnia, ii. p. xxxiv; A.J.  Piper, ‘The Historical Interests of the Monks of Durham’, in Rollason, ed., Symeon, pp. 301–32, at p. 321 n. 106. For Symeon’s role in the Historia de regibus Anglorum, see P.  Hunter Blair, ‘Some Observations on the Historia Regum attributed to Symeon of Durham’, in N.K. Chadwick, ed., Celt and Saxon (Cambridge 1963), pp. 63–118, esp. 75; Symeon, Libellus, pp. xlviii–l. 262  Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp 119–21; JW ii. pp. lxxi–lxxiii; D. Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum as a Product of Twelfth-Century Historical Workshops’, in Brett and Woodman, eds, Anglo-Saxon Past, pp. 101, 107. 263  Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. Hunter 100; Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 27 and n. 33; Libellus, p. xlvi, for other evidence of his interest in the subject. 264  Liège, Bibliothèque universitaire, MS. 369C, one item of which—fos 100r–129r—is a witness of Redaction D: GND i. pp. lxv n. 191, ci–cii, 110, 124. This Durham book also contains other historiographical material, including De primo Saxonum adventu (Symeon, Opera ii. 365–84); further Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum’, p. 106; C.C.  Rozier, ‘Durham Cathedral Priory and its Library of History, c. 1090–c. 1150’, in Cleaver and Worm, eds, Writing History, pp. 133–48, at 146; Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 120 n. 1; B.  Meehan, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth, Prophecies of Merlin: New Manuscript Evidence’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, xxviii (1978), 37–46, at 43; Piper, ‘Historical Interests’, p. 312 n. 55. 265  I am grateful to Liesbeth van Houts for this suggestion.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  49 twelfth century,266 and possibly at Rochester, Glastonbury, Peterborough, and Ramsey.267 The Battle monk who wrote Brevis relatio sometime between 1114 and 1120 appears to have had access to a copy, although its redaction cannot be determined.268 It is impossible to establish whether the Quedam exceptiones, a heavily abbreviated version of the C redaction of the Gesta, epitomized sometime between 1101 and 1103, was written in England or Normandy.269 It shows considerable interest in the fitzOsbern family in general, and Osbern fitzOsbern, then bishop of Exeter, in particular,270 so if it was written in England, the author might well have used an Exeter copy of the Gesta. Bishop Osbern was a brother of William fitzOsbern, who ‘had the lordship of the whole of England under King William’,271 and uncle of Gilbert fitzOsbern, archdeacon of Lisieux and Duke William’s messenger to the papal curia in 1066.272 He is, therefore, even more likely than most bishops to have ensured that his diocesan library was equipped with the standard history of the ducal dynasty. Doubtless there were once many more copies, providing monks in English houses with, amongst other things, a handy summary of the official account of the Conqueror’s title to the English throne. That which Symeon of Durham initiated and supervised was a working copy, designed for use, and evidently used heavily.273 It must be a near certainty that William of Malmesbury ensured that there was a similar copy in the library for which he was responsible, whether or not he had to fork out for it himself. Those who sought to re-forge the continuity of English history could not afford to ignore Norman historiography covering the Conquest, even had they been inclined to do so, which they give no sign of having been. In the desert of pre- and immediately post-Conquest English historical writing, Norman accounts provided their best, indeed their only, hope. It is ­striking that so many late eleventh- or early twelfth-century copies of the Gesta Normannorum ducum were imported into or written in England. Much of the far  sparser evidence for dissemination of William of Poitiers’ Gesta Guillelmi is also English. In the absence of any home-grown account of the Conquest which 266  Hunt, ‘Library of the Abbey of St Albans’, pp. 270–1; Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B85.34. 267  GND i. pp. cxx–cxxi. 268 ‘The Brevis relatio de Guillelmo nobilissimo comite Normannorum, Written by a Monk of Battle’, ed. E.M.C. van Houts, in Chronology, Conquest and Conflict in Medieval England, Camden Miscellany, xxxiv, p. 22. 269  GND ii. 290–304. I am grateful to Liesbeth van Houts for alerting me to the date. 270  GND ii. 303–4. It is well-informed about events in Exeter. 271  GND ii. 304. 272  OV ii. 142, 254; P. Bouët, and M. Dosdat, ‘Les évêques normands de 985 à 1150’, in P. Bouët and F.  Neveux, eds, Les Evêques Normands du XIe siècle (Caen 1995), pp. 19–37, at 29; D.S.  Spear, ‘L’administration épiscopale normande: archidiacres et dignitaries des chapitres’, in Bouët and Neveux, eds, Les Evêques normands, pp. 81–102, at 86; D.S. Spear, The Personnel of the Norman Cathedrals during the Ducal Period, 911–1204 (London 2006), p. 173; E. Crosby, The King’s Bishops. The Politics of Patronage in England and Normandy, 1066–1216 (New York, NY 2013), pp. 224–5. 273  M. Gullick, ‘The Two Earliest Manuscripts of the Libellus de exordio’, in Rollason, ed., Symeon of Durham, pp. 106–19, at 119.

50  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 explained why it happened, they formed an indispensable basis for all subsequent English attempts to make sense of it. I shall therefore now turn to these two postConquest Norman accounts of the background to it.

The Conqueror’s Claim Duke William’s claim to the kingdom of England was grounded in a number of events, or alleged events, most of which were recorded as having taken place during Edward the Confessor’s reign. The importance which these Norman historical accounts attributed to that claim—in the most detailed one to survive, the Gesta Guillelmi, it is central—reflects the fundamental importance it rapidly came to assume for the whole Norman regime. The regime was shaped by an official his­ tory.274 William of Malmesbury seems to have recognized its significance both in the Norman accounts, which he gives evidence of having examined in much more detail than any other twelfth-century historian, and to the Norman regime in general. When he set out to explain ‘the cause of this disaster’275—the Conquest— it was to this subject that he turned first, and to which he repeatedly reverted. The difficulties in which he soon found himself embroiled are revealing. He begins by reporting that King Edward, lacking offspring of his own, ‘gave the succession of England’ to Duke William, who was qualified both (in this order) by his personal qualities, and by the fact that he was ‘nearest by blood’, as  the grandson of Edward’s mother’s brother, Duke Richard II, who was also, therefore, Edward’s maternal uncle. This is quite compatible with the account given by William of Poitiers.276 What is quite incompatible with it is William of Malmesbury’s suggestion that Duke William was Edward the Confessor’s second choice. He makes this assertion because he tried to blend what he had read in the Norman sources with English accounts of the reign of Edward the Confessor. From the various versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle—it has been shown that he probably used a version antecedent to E, but others too277—and perhaps also from John of Worcester, who had made detailed use of them, he had learnt that King Edward had arranged for the return of the son of his elder brother King Edmund Ironside, Edward ætheling, from Hungarian exile in the mid 1050s, with a view ‘to either [Edward] or his sons succeeding to the hereditary kingdom of England’.278 According to William, this plan had been thwarted when Edward ætheling died very shortly after his return to England, an event which both extant versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle with an entry 1057—and, following it, John of Worcester—place in that year. It was only when the king ‘lost the hope of his 274 Garnett, Conquered England, esp. chs 1, 2. 275  GR II. 227. 276  GG, pp. 20, 120, 150. 277  Keynes, ‘Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, p. 500. 278  GR II. 228; Edward ætheling had only one known son.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  51 first choice’ in this way that, according to William, he turned to the duke of Normandy. William fails to explain why the king had suddenly ceased to regard the ætheling’s son, Edgar, as a potential successor, when this other ætheling had, according to him, been brought back to England together with his father with precisely this end in view. Moreover, Edgar ætheling’s existence makes it im­pos­sible to see how William of Malmesbury could describe Duke William as ‘nearest by blood’ to Edward the Confessor. In his Vita S. Dunstani, he was a little more candid, and put a rather different spin on the results of the marriage of the Confessor’s Norman mother to his father King Æthelred II: ‘in after years the Normans were able to claim England as of right and bring it under their control, something better observed today with the eyes than written down with the pen’.279 By striking contrast with these English sources, the recall of Edward ætheling and his household is mentioned neither by William of Poitiers nor by William of Jumièges, in his earlier, much briefer account of Duke William’s claim. Indeed William of Jumièges alludes to Edgar’s existence once only, in his account of  events in York in 1069, when he describes Edgar, coyly, as ‘a certain boy’.280 William of Poitiers mentions him three times, the earliest in the aftermath of the battle of Hastings, and on each occasion attributes the title Adelinus to him. Given William’s Sallustian care to write so far as possible only in the pukkah Latin of Republican Rome, the crudely coined (and unglossed) neologism based on Old English reveals both an anxiety to imply his familiarity with English affairs and his poor grasp of them, for in England the conventional Latin translation of ætheling was clito.281 But for him Edgar’s presence in England in 1066 was taken as read; it required no explanation. He comments only on Edgar’s extreme youth, and on his close kinship with King Edward.282 If Edward had indeed chosen Duke William as his heir long beforehand, by implication some time in 1051 or 1052, and had arranged for the English nobles then to swear to accept the duke as king after his death,283 William of Poitiers’ failure to mention the return of the æthelings in 1057 would hardly be surprising. But of course these alleged events of 1051 or 1052, the importance of which could scarcely be overstated, are not mentioned in any of the versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or by John of Worcester.

279  VSD II. 34. 280  GND ii. 180. 281  GG, pp. 146, 162, 166 (cf. OV ii. 276). On the first two occasions he is also described as a ‘boy’. For clito, see D.N. Dumville, ‘The Ætheling: A Study in Anglo-Saxon Constitutional History’, ASE, viii (1979), 1–33, at 7–10. Edgar is so characterized in The Liber vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey Winchester: British Library Stowe 944 together with leaves from British Library Cotton Vespasian A. viii and British Library Cotton Titus D. xxvii, ed. S.D. Keynes, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, xxvi (Copenhagen 1996), pp. 41, 97, fo. 29r and Pl. ix. The term Adeling is applied to him in Domesday Book: I DB 142a. Gaimar, Estoire, l. 4652 calls him ‘l’adeling’. 282  GG, pp. 146, 162. 283  GG, pp. 20, 120; cf. William of Jumièges, GND ii. 158, who does not, however, mention the pledges of faith. The literary form of a res gesta did not require either author to mention dates, or to be precise about chronology.

52  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 William of Malmesbury sometimes draws attention to discrepancies between his sources.284 This is one way in which, by implication to Archbishop Matthew Parker in the later sixteenth century285 and explicitly to the modern historian,286 he seems to surpass Bede himself. He even went so far as to compare different versions of Bede.287 Yet he does not remark on the obvious conflict of evidence in this crucial instance. To anyone who has wrestled with the sources for the succession to Edward the Confessor, however, it is evident that in this case William had decided to reconcile his English sources with his Norman ones by shifting the designation of Duke William, which is not mentioned in the English sources, to some time after the death of the recently returned Edward ætheling, which is not  mentioned in the Norman sources. But a little later in his narrative, when reporting Duke William’s alleged reiteration of his claim just before the battle of Hastings, William of Malmesbury appears to reproduce almost verbatim William of Poitiers’ most detailed account of Edward’s designation of the duke,288 an event which, as we have seen, William of Poitiers had implicitly placed at some point during 1051–52. Of course, William of Malmesbury does not make explicit when this would have taken place, according to the narrative structure of the Gesta Guillelmi; but his use of it shows that he was almost certainly aware of the discrepancy between his implicit dating of the designation and William of Poitiers’. William of Malmesbury had already given a full treatment of the crisis of 1051–52 at the relevant point, and had prefaced it thus: ‘I should like to warn the reader that here I perceive the course of my narrative to be somewhat uncertain, because the truth of the facts remains in doubt’.289 The truth remained in doubt because of the conflict between the English and Norman versions: ‘these differences of opinion . . . put my narrative at risk, since I cannot decide precisely what is the truth, either from the natural division between the two races, or because the fact is that the English are scornful of any superior and the Normans cannot endure an equal’.290 The second putative explanation, which echoes Lucan, serves only to parade William’s classical erudition (a familiar foible). But his candour about the impossibility of establishing the truth on the basis of the discrepant English and Norman sources—‘I will now sketch the king’s quarrel with Godwine and his sons with such truth as I can attain’—makes it all the more striking that he never once, in his detailed discussion of the crisis, alludes to the Norman accounts of King Edward’s designation of the duke, with which he was familiar. As we have seen, both William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers locate the

284  GR I. 9. 1, II. 29; VSD II. pr. 3–4. 285  In the margin of Cambridge, UL, MS. Ii.2.3, fo. 5v, a Gesta regum owned by Matthew Parker, he has written ‘Dissonancia’ next to William’s record of the differences between Bede and other au­thor­ ities on the length of Æthelberht’s reign. 286  Campbell, ‘Twelfth-Century Views’, p. 214. 287  GR II. 208. 288  GR III. 240. 1–2. 289  GR II. 197. 4. 290  GR II. 198; Lucan, Pharsalia I. 125–6.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  53 designation at some point during the crisis. In order to explain it later as the king’s response to the death of the recently returned ætheling, William had to remain silent about it here. Hence, perhaps, his disinclination to be explicit about discrepancies between the two sets of sources when he does discuss the designation. He becomes more open about his balancing of discrepant sources concerned with the duke’s claim when he describes a supposed visit by Harold, earl of Wessex, to Normandy, which must be located sometime in 1064 or 1065. ‘Some say’, he reports, that the king sent Harold in connection with the designation of the duke which William places after Edward ætheling’s death.291 According to ‘others, more familiar with [Harold’s] secret counsels’, the whole episode came about by accident. Harold had set out on a fishing trip from his estate at Bosham, been blown off course by a storm, ‘and to protect himself invented a story which, since it looks very close to the truth, I shall now relate’. Those who said that the king had sent Harold included William of Jumièges292 and William of Poitiers.293 William of Malmesbury strongly implies that his sinuous, alternative version, which, with some (characteristically unspecified) reservations, he prefers, is English in origin; indeed, that it came from sources close to Harold. There is no mention of Harold’s visit in either the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or, following it, in the Worcester Chronicon; but William’s version is in some respects similar to Eadmer’s,294 which we know he had read. William did not reproduce Eadmer’s report that Harold had set out for Normandy contrary to the king’s advice; but they both agree that there was a storm which blew Harold ashore in Ponthieu, that he was imprisoned by the count, and that Duke William negotiated his release. They also agree on some of the undertakings which the earl then supposedly gave to the duke, primarily to assist the duke’s succession to King Edward; and on the fact that the duke undertook to betroth Harold’s sister to one of the Norman magnates, and to give Harold the hand of one of his daughters.295 William’s and Eadmer’s accounts are not, however, identical, in terms either of detail or of interpretation. And they differ markedly on the nature of the duke’s claim. According to Eadmer, while Edward had been in exile in Normandy during his youth he had promised William, ‘interposing his faith’, that if he ever became king of England, he would in due course transfer the ‘right of the kingdom’ to William ‘after him, by hereditary 291  GR II. 228. 292  GND ii. 158–60. 293  GG, pp. 68, 120. 294  HN, p. 6. 295  GR II. 228, III. 238, 276. Unlike Eadmer, William says nothing about the duke’s undertaking to  marry Harold’s sister to a Norman magnate. In that respect, he elaborates on the story as first ­mentioned, in passing, by William of Poitiers in his third recapitulation of the duke’s claim: GG, p. 156. According to Orderic, the duke’s daughter was variously Agatha—OV iii. 114—or Adeliza: GND ii. 160, cf. 262 n. 2. After describing the Conquest on the basis of John of Worcester, Symeon of Durham, Historia de regibus Anglorum, Opera ii. 183–4, reproduces Eadmer’s account of Harold’s undertakings in order to explain why it had happened. He seems to have felt that John had failed to make any sense of it. For an exhaustive survey, see E.A. Freeman, The Norman Conquest of England, 6 vols (Oxford 1867–79), iii. 667–96, esp. 689–93 (‘Note R’).

54  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 right’.296 As an accomplished draftsman of charters and other documents in the Canterbury scriptorium,297 he characterized the arrangement with the diplomatic formula ‘by hereditary right’, which is used neither by William of Jumièges298 nor by William of Poitiers.299 But although he naturally fell into technical language when describing a bequest, his account of a private understanding between Edward and the duke is his only intimation that William had been designated by Edward, and he ascribes the story to William himself, who had allegedly reported it to Harold. The account seems all the more implausible in view of the statement that Edward had given the undertaking when both he and William were young men: in fact, there was an age gap of at least 22 years between them. It is inconceivable that Eadmer did not know of the Norman claim that Edward had as king arranged a formal designation of the duke, so he deliberately ignored it when he came to write up his explanation of how the Conquest had come about. William of Malmesbury in turn ignored Eadmer’s account, and instead, as we have seen, made a number of potentially inconsistent attempts to integrate the Norman account of the designation with what he learnt from his English sources. He also differs sharply from Eadmer on the issue of Edward’s alleged deathbed designation of Harold. This event had been acknowledged by William of Poitiers, but only in a speech attributed to a messenger, an anonymous ‘cowled advocate’, who, reportedly, had spoken on Harold’s behalf immediately prior to the battle of Hastings.300 As a great admirer of Roman historians, William of Malmesbury would have known how much weight to place on a claim of this sort, made in a confected speech attributed to the spokesman of one of the two major pro­tag­on­ ists. In Sallustian form, William of Poitiers had balanced it with the response of the duke’s spokesman, and claimed to have taken particular trouble ‘carefully to establish the tenor [sententia] of the duke’s words’. In William’s view, even Cicero himself would have been incapable of undermining this ducal refutation of Harold’s reasoning.301 He thereby makes it clear how seriously his audience were to take the claim of Harold’s ‘cowled advocate’ that King Edward had, on his 296  HN, p. 7. 297  T. Webber, ‘Script and Manuscript Production at Christ Church, Canterbury, after the Norman Conquest’, in Eales and Sharpe, eds, Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, pp. 145–58, at 148–52; M. Gullick, ‘The Scribal Work of Eadmer of Canterbury to 1109’, Archaeologia Cantiana, cxviii (1998), 173–89, at 183–5; EEA, xxviii: Canterbury 1070–1136, ed. M. Brett and J.A. Gribbin (Oxford 2004), p. lxiii, no. 15 (Pl. Ib). In his VSD, Lives and Miracles, pp. 74, 80, he twice refers to lands held ‘perpetuo iure’. 298  King Edward is said to have ‘established [Duke William] heir’, and at his coronation to be ‘hereditary lord’: GND ii. 158, 170. William of Jumièges was well aware of the diplomatic phrase, and consciously avoided using it in his account of an earlier ducal succession, in 1027: ii. 46, on which see G. Garnett, ‘ “Ducal” Succession in Early Normandy’, in G. Garnett and J.G.H. Hudson, eds, Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy. Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge 1994), pp. 80–110, at 105–6. 299  GG, pp. 68 ‘established William heir’, 114 ‘established that he should succeed him in place of a son’, 120 ‘established me heir’, 150 ‘hereditary delegation’. 300  GG, p. 118. 301  GG, p. 122.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  55 deathbed, chosen Harold as his successor. William of Malmesbury would ­nevertheless have considered it quite appropriate that the earl’s representative should have been made to voice such a claim, because English sources report its having been advanced on Harold’s behalf. William’s artfully Delphic summary indeed says as much: ‘Harold seized the crown, though the English say it was granted by the king. However, this claim rests, in my opinion, more on good will than judgment . . .’302 Much like William of Poitiers, therefore, William of Malmesbury makes it clear that he regards as deeply suspect the claim which he dutifully reports being made in English sources. On this particular question, Eadmer had been much more straightforward than William of Malmesbury would be. According to Eadmer, Harold had succeeded Edward in the kingdom ‘in accordance with what [Edward] had established prior to his death’.303 Elsewhere William wrote that Eadmer ‘describes everything so clearly that it all seems to happen before our very eyes’.304 He is, in other words, so skilled as a writer of history that he almost succeeds in putting his reader into the position of an eye-witness. In the case of Harold’s claim to be King Edward’s chosen successor, however, William could only have concluded that Eadmer’s pellucidity had deserted him. In this regard, Eadmer might be numbered amongst those guilty (in William’s view) of a surfeit of ‘good will’ towards Harold. So must John of Worcester,305 with whom we know William collaborated. Whereas William had favoured an interpretation of Harold’s visit to Normandy which he reported had originated in Harold’s entourage, when it came to Harold’s claim to the throne he  made it quite clear that he had found wanting information derived from a similar source. English and Norman writers, William went on to observe, had adopted antithetical attitudes to William the Conqueror. As he was himself of mixed parentage, he proposed ‘to take a temperate approach in my narrative’.306 In practice, this meant ‘extenuating faults, so far as I can, without sacrificing truth, and praising good actions without undue verbiage. True judges, I believe, will acquit me both of cowardice and bad taste in taking this middle course.’307 William’s profession of impartiality served to demonstrate just how deeply imbued he was with the conventions of classical historiography;308 but in doing so he also hinted that he had other, probably more pressing, reasons than his mother’s English descent for exercising a certain adroit discretion with respect to William the Conqueror. As he had already stated with uncharacteristic candour in his Vita S. Dunstani, there

302  GR II. 228. 303  HN, p. 8. 304  GP I. 45, cf. I. pr. 3; for William’s use of Eadmer’s saints’ lives, see Eadmer, Lives and Miracles, pp. lv–lvi, lxxxix–xc; Vita Sancti Wilfridi, auctore Edmero, ed. B.J. Muir and A.J. Turner (Exeter 1998), pp. xlviii–xlix. 305  JW ii. 600. 306  GR III. pr. 307 Cf. VSD II. 36. 308 Quintilian, Institutio oratoriae X.1.34; Cicero, De oratore II.62; cf. Josephus, De bello Iudaico I.1–3.

56  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 were some things which it was prudent not to commit to parchment.309 But he affected to draw a clear line between rhetorically artful restraint and blatant untruth. In the Vita, commissioned by the monks of Glastonbury, he avoided making any comment at all on Glastonbury’s claim to possess Dunstan’s relics,310 just as he did when he came to write, also at their instigation, De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie.311 The most obvious explanation for his silence on such a pressing matter is that he knew the claim to be untrue, but could hardly say so in works commissioned by Glastonbury, more particularly as himself a confrater.312 Perhaps the last sentence he ever wrote explained that he would recount only what he knew to be true.313 When, after one of his brief digressions in Gesta regum, he returned to the subject of the Conqueror, he immediately laid down as a principle that he would ‘refute falsehood, and set forth the truth’.314 This was a knowing echo of Cicero’s ‘first law of history’,315 which had been endorsed by Bede himself.316 Nevertheless, strident claims to truth-telling on the part of historians during this—or indeed any—period do not inspire confidence. One has only to think of William of Poitiers protesting too much that he would not ‘take a single step beyond the bounds of truth’.317 William of Malmesbury could affect to tell the truth solely on the basis of the sources available to him: ‘the faith of my narrative must rest with my authorities [auctores]’ (another unacknowledged classical echo, this time of Sallust); though he adds, again in accordance with the conventions of classical historiography, ‘whatever I have added about recent times, I have either seen myself or heard from men worthy of faith’.318 It was, perhaps, because he could draw on the direct testimony of eye-witnesses that he was more credulous about recent miracle stories than about those in the distant past.319 He never establishes when he deemed ‘recent times’ to have begun; but for Henry of Huntingdon this 309  See above, p. 51. 310  Saints’ Lives, pp. xxi–xxiii. 311  The deficiency—from a Glastonbury perspective—was made good by the subsequent in­ter­pol­ ation of a chapter by someone else: The Early History of Glastonbury. An Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury’s De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie, ed. J. Scott (Woodbridge 1981), pp. 72–5, cf. 27–33; Saints’ Lives, p. xxiii n. 69. For the relationship between the two works, see p. xv. 312  GR ii. p. xxxii n. 25. 313  HNa III. 79. 314  GR III. 238, cf. V. 445. 315 Cicero, De oratore, II.62. De oratore is not found in William’s collection of Cicero’s works, CUL MS. Dd. 13. 2, on which see Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 51–6, 207. But it has been shown not to contain all the works of Cicero with which William was familiar, and the aphorism was repeated in the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium I.8.13, which was certainly known to William: Thomson, pp. 55–6. The phrase had been echoed by Jerome, Adversus Helvidium, PL xxiii. 197. 316 Bede, HE, pr. 317  GG, p. 28. 318  GR I. pr.; Sallust, Bell. Iug. XVII. 7. William’s florilegium of Roman historians (and other relevant authors, such as Seneca), Polyhistor, ed. H.T. Ouelette (Binghampton, NY 1982), p. 118, suggests that he had read Sallust ‘copiously’. Dares Phrygius’s history, excerpted by William in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Arch. Seld. B.16, purports to be the work of Cornelius Nepos, and is dedicated to Sallust, fo. 1r. The only surviving late eleventh-century English manuscript of Sallust consists of two flyleaves from Bellum Iugurthinum, in Cambridge, CCC, MS. 309: H.  Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Tempe, AZ 2001), no. 88.5. 319  Campbell, ‘Twelfth-Century Views’, pp. 222–3.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  57 dividing line fell at the beginning of William Rufus’s reign, possibly because that was roughly the date of his own birth, and therefore the point from which he might himself be deemed to have been potentially an eye-witness: ‘Down to this point the matters discussed have been those that I have either discovered from reading books of the ancients or learnt from common report. Now, however, the matters to be studied are either those that I have seen myself or heard about from those who did see them.’320 Perhaps William drew the line similarly. His failure to identify the vast majority of his sources, whether written ‘authorities’ or eye-witness reports, accords with another convention of classical historical writing. It is another characteristic shared with Henry of Huntingdon, who does not identify most of his sources,321 other than when he was simply parroting Paul the Deacon’s identification of some of them.322 The only exceptions on Henry’s part were early: Bede, whose status transcended that of any mere historian,323 and (initially) Gildas.324 The (an­onym­ ous) versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he used are referred to simply as ‘the books [or “writings”, or “histories”] of the ancients’,325 a description also applied to Gildas.326 This meant that a great deal of what he wrote had to be taken on trust. William of Malmesbury exhorted his readers to do likewise, with what was doubtless a deliberate Ciceronian (and Hieronymian) echo: ‘I have followed the true law of history, and have set down nothing other than what I have learnt from faithful [oral] reports or writers’.327 But the tensions and even contradictions in his account are evidence of the genuineness of his attempts to make sense of those sources. In this reversion to the subject of the Conqueror, William was again, in view of the circumstances of the accession, led straight back to the respective claims of the king and his competitors. These he attempts to recapitulate.328 Of the three candidates listed—Harold, William, and Edgar ætheling—Edgar is now said to have been ‘nearest to the kingdom by birth’. Edward the Confessor had ‘commended [Edgar] to the magnates’, yet (a characteristically deft piece of obfuscation) had remained ‘silent about his intention, but showed a disposition to be kind [to Edgar]’. How Edward could have ‘commended’ Edgar to his nobles while remaining ‘silent about his intention’ is left unexplored. The statement that Edgar was ‘nearest to the kingdom by birth’ might have been derived from the D manu­ script of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 1066, which stated that becoming king was his ‘birthright (eall swa him wel ge cynde wæs)’;329 or might have been a gloss on John of Worcester, who used a version of the Chronicle very close to D, and 320  HA VII. 1, p. 412; cf. pp. xxvi–xxvii, lxxxv; De contemptu mundi, c. 15, p. 608, cf. pp. 588–90 for his distinction between what he had and had not seen himself. 321  HA p. lxxxv. 322  HA pp. lxxxix–xc. 323  HA pp. lxxxvi–lxxxix; 230–2, 234, 622–4. 324  HA, pp. xc, 626; after the second recension Gildas was anonymized. 325  HA pp. 108, 234, 240, 304, 356, 412. 326  HA pp. 24, 26. 327  GR V. 445. 5. 328  GR III. 238. 329  Two Saxon Chronicles i. 199.

58  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 who details Edgar’s ancestry, but makes no attempt to translate the Old English ‘birthright’.330 We know that William had close Worcester connections—Prior Nicholas of Worcester had assisted him with the Vita S. Wulfstani331—and that he had visited the cathedral on several occasions.332 A version of the former source would probably have been available to him, because it had been kept up in this period in the household of Archbishop Ealdred of York, recently bishop of Worcester.333 The latter source must have been accessible. But William’s statement directly contradicts an earlier one made by him, to the effect that Duke William was ‘nearest by blood’ to Edward the Confessor, a claim which, we have seen, agrees with that made by William of Poitiers.334 It tallies with the assertion, made in the same paragraph as that earlier statement by William of Malmesbury, that the æthelings had been recalled from Hungary in 1057 with a view to one of them eventually succeeding Edward the Confessor. William had said nothing previously about Edward’s alleged ‘commendation’ of Edgar to the English nobles. William implies that whatever it was that the king had done for Edgar while somehow nevertheless concealing ‘his intentions’, the views of Englishmen remained, apparently as a result, divided, although ‘openly all wished Harold well’. In the case of Harold, it seems, William was not so much steering ‘a temperate course’ as being deliberately opaque. On the broad question of succession to Edward, however, the inconsistencies in William’s various accounts in Gesta regum cannot be ascribed to artful ambivalence or diplomatic nuance. He was simply confused. And he was confused because he was trying, and ultimately failing, to blend what he read in his English sources with what he read in his Norman sources. In Gesta pontificum, written later, he may give an oblique hint as to the outcome of further reflection on the matter: ‘William count of Normandy, coming to England, subdued the province by force of arms, supported by God’s permission and supplied with several reasons which he himself judged to be not invalid.’335 But this arch, compounded litotes is as far as he permitted himself to go in implying his view. A Roman historian would have admired the artfulness. As William was well aware, Eadmer had tried to do something similar, when he too had turned to the question of William’s claim in order to explain the events which triggered the Conquest. But Eadmer had avoided internal inconsistencies by saying far less, and making only one attempt to give a quite cursory account. Like the enigmatic depiction in the Bayeux Tapestry, designed at St Augustine’s, Canterbury perhaps as early as the 1070s or 1080s,336 he makes no allusion to a 330  JW ii. 606. 331  VSW III. 9, 10, 13, 17; cf. above, p. 36. 332  Saints’ Lives, pp. xiv–xv; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, p. 8. 333  P.  Wormald, ‘How Do We Know So Much About Anglo-Saxon Deerhurst?’, repr. in his The Times of Bede, pp. 229–48, esp. 236–40. 334  GR II. 227, cf. above, p. 50. 335  GP I. 23. 4. 336  R. Gameson, ‘The Origin, Art, and Message of the Bayeux Tapestry’, in R. Gameson, ed., The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry (Woodbridge 1997), pp. 157–211; C.R.  Hart, ‘The Canterbury Contribution to the Bayeux Tapestry’, in G.  de Boc and F.  Verhaeghe, eds, Art and Symbolism in

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  59 designation in 1051–52, or to the return of the æthelings in 1057, or to Edgar ætheling’s part in the events of 1066. What he is likely to have thought is suggested by a passing comment on the succession of 978 in his Vita S. Dunstani. Although he regarded Æthelred as complicit in the assassination of his brother, King Edward the Martyr, he nevertheless reported that Archbishop Dunstan had ­‘fulfilled the royal ius to [Æthelred], because he was the nearest heir of the ­kingdom’, knowing that any attempt to act otherwise would contravene ‘the laws of the land’.337 This was the single event which had determined the catastrophic subsequent course of English history. But even though Dunstan had foreseen the consequences, he had nevertheless recognized that there was no alternative to the succession of the only available ætheling. Hence Eadmer’s studied failure even to notice the existence of the blameless Edgar in 1066, and his perfunctory, almost farcically improbable accounts of the claims of Duke William and Earl Harold. Instead, he had concentrated all his attention on Earl Harold’s alleged visit to the continent. It seems almost certain that he learnt about this from Norman sources,338 because it is mentioned in no surviving eleventh-century English one (unless the Tapestry be characterized as English); yet, as we have seen, he interpreted it quite differently from any extant Norman source, and, indeed, from William of Malmesbury, who must have known Eadmer’s interpretation. Eadmer plays fast and loose with the details of the Norman claim. I have already suggested that his account of a private agreement about the succession between Edward and William, by implication sometime prior to 1042, is deliberately implausible. His contention that the invasion in 1066 was provoked not by the claim arising from this secret deal, but by King Harold’s reneging on the reciprocal marriage arrangement between him and the duke, is much more so. The words which Eadmer attributed to Harold in justification of his breach of faith are characteristic of the unusual quality of Eadmer’s replication of direct speech. They appear to reproduce authentic plain speaking, rather than aping the orotund rhetorical confections of many Roman historians, as most of their medieval imitators aspired to do. This quality may perhaps be explained by Eadmer’s role as an amanuensis: he was used to taking down what people actually said,339 rather than composing Medieval Europe: Papers of the ‘Medieval Europe Brugge 1997’ Conference, v (1997), pp. 7–15; C.R. Hart, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and Schools of Illumination at Canterbury’, ANS, xxii (1999), 117–67; G.R.  Owen-Crocker, ‘Reading the Bayeux Tapestry through Canterbury Eyes’, in S.  Keynes and A.P. Smyth, eds, Anglo-Saxons: Studies Presented to Cyril Roy Hart (Dublin 2006), pp. 243–65; H.B. Clarke, ‘The Identity of the Designer of the Bayeux Tapestry’, ANS, xxxv (2012), 119–40; and most recently E.C.  Pastan and S.D.  White, with K.  Gilbert, The Bayeux Tapestry and its Contexts. A Reassessment (Woodbridge 2014), which makes a very powerful case for the Tapestry’s ambivalence. There are no firm grounds for dating it with greater precision. 337  VSD, Lives and Miracles, p. 146. 338  See above, p. 47 for a Canterbury manuscript of the Gesta Normannorum ducum. 339 Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 384–8, 411–12; for difficulties he claims to have experienced in reproducing on parchment a sermon he had heard Anselm deliver, see Memorials of St Anselm, ed. R.W. Southern and F.S. Schmitt O.S.B. (Oxford 1969), pp. 31, 273.

60  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 verisimilar speeches in the classical vein to put in the mouths of protagonists. He had a mimic’s quick ear: his experience as a stenographer inclined him to imitate Anselm’s dialectical style even when writing hagiography, for which it was quite unsuitable.340 Moreover, he prided himself on his ‘everyday manner of speaking, though acting as a scribe’, by contrast with certain of his (unidentified) con­ tem­por­ar­ies.341 When rewriting the works of others, he condensed speeches, or excised them altogether.342 But the meaning of Harold’s supposed words, as distinct from their brusque expression, is so bizarre that they could be interpreted as a calculated challenge to the credulity of Eadmer’s audience: ‘My sister, whom according to our pact you ask for, is dead. If the duke wishes to have her corpse, as it now is, I will send it, that I may not be held to have violated my oath.’343 The whole canard may best be read as a satire on the Norman claim, designed to render it so grotesque and implausible as to be absurd. Perhaps Eadmer considered it imprudent to express his scepticism in any more straightforward fashion. Perhaps he too had absorbed enough from the Roman historians to relish pointed obliqueness. With Henry of Huntingdon the balance was different again. Henry said nothing at all about a designation of the duke, but he briefly mentioned the return of the æthelings. Like William of Malmesbury, he was using a version of the AngloSaxon Chronicle antecedent to E, and chose not to ignore its account of their return. However, he also laid great weight on Harold’s visit to Normandy, which was not, of course, mentioned in his (or any) version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He attributed it to the earl’s having been blown off course on an (unexplained) journey to Flanders, a projected destination not mentioned in any other source. For reasons which remain quite unclear, he located it, by implication, in 1062,344 which, again, no other surviving source does. He was able to attribute all the greater importance to Harold’s subsequent breach of his oaths—his perjury— because he ignored the accounts he must have read in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and even in Norman sources, of King Edward’s selection of Harold as his successor. He baldly states that Harold usurped the kingdom. As Eadmer must also have seen, only by ignoring or suppressing material in this way could the two sets of sources on the claim be conflated into some sort of coherent account. It says something for William of Malmesbury’s respect for evidence—manifest, for instance, in his meticulously researched De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie345—that 340  Vita S. Oswaldi, Lives and Miracles, p. 262, cf. p. xxxi. 341  VSD, Lives and Miracles, p. 44. The contemporary he had in mind was Osbern of Canterbury. 342  VSD, Lives and Miracles, pp. 58, 98, 158. 343  HN, p. 8; see below, p. 77 William of Malmesbury, GR III. 238, makes the newly crowned Harold claim, in response to a reproach from the duke, that the daughter of William to whom he had been betrothed had died before she had reached marriageable age, and therefore that this aspect of the agreement was void. 344  HA VI. 25. 345  Discussed above, p. 56; Charters of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. S.E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters, xv (Oxford 2012), pp. 182–9. William occasionally admitted that he ‘improved’ sources, which might

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  61 he could not quite bring himself to do this, or at least, that he was incapable of doing so consistently. As a consequence, he contradicted himself. His self-contradictions suggest that it was impossible to make sense of the eleventh-century English and Norman accounts of Duke William’s claim by combining them, because they were irreconcilable. As Wace, a vernacular verse historian, put it somewhat later in the twelfth century, when discussing two conflicting accounts of Earl Harold’s visit to Normandy in 1064 or 1065: ‘I do not know which is the correct explanation, but we can find both in writing.’346 The early evidence for the Norman claim is all, in its extant forms,347 postConquest, and it is all written in Normandy. The admittedly slight pre-Conquest Norman narrative, written at St-Wandrille in the 1050s—Inventio et miracula Sancti Vulfranni—devotes some attention to Edward the Confessor’s allegedly royal status during his exile in the duchy, but makes no reference to his conferring any sort of claim on Duke William.348 The plentiful contemporary English evidence embodied in the various manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle lends the claim no support at all,349 and is in some respects—for instance, the recall of the æthelings—apparently inconsistent with it. William of Malmesbury had unwittingly exposed this because he, like all the other early twelfth-century English historians except John of Worcester and Gaimar, had recognized that Duke William’s claim was the key to explaining the Conquest. It is clear that the only

involve abridgement or conflation: GR, I. pr. (admitting that he had included only a small selection of events from Bede); GP V. 250; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 157–73; Charters of Glastonbury, pp. 104–5, 187; Charters of Malmesbury Abbey, ed. S.E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters, xi (Oxford 2005), pp. 38–9, 43–4. Perhaps he regarded straightforward suppression as a different matter. 346  Le Roman de Rou de Wace, ed. A.J. Holden (Paris 1970–73), ll. 5603–4. 347  It has been plausibly argued that William of Jumièges had completed a draft shortly prior to 1060: GND i. pp. xxxii–xxxv. No witness survives of this hypothetical, earliest redaction; but the notices of English affairs in the earliest surviving text, dated c. 1070, are so clumsily inserted that it seems certain that they are last minute additions, made to bring the book up to date in the aftermath of 1066. 348  Inventio et miracula Sancti Vulfranni, ed. J. Laporte, Mélanges publiés par la Société de l’histoire de Normandie, 14e série (Rouen 1938), 29–30; E.  van Houts, ‘Historiography and Hagiography at Saint-Wandrille: the Inventio et miracula Sancti Vulfranni’, ANS, xii (1990), 233–52, esp. 247–9, 251. The Inventio survives in what may be an autograph manuscript. It appears to date from 1053x4, with intermittent additions until 1057. Van Houts suggests that the author failed to mention the recent designation because he was ‘extremely cautious’. This seems improbable, especially given that he was writing in Normandy. 349  An enigmatic entry appended to D, s.a. 1051, may recount a trip to England by Duke William; that is how John of Worcester, ii. 562, interpreted it. The most recent discussion is by S.  Baxter, ‘Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question’, in R. Mortimer, ed., Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend (London 2008), pp. 77–118, at 90–5. The entry, which is started with a capital letter towards the end of the annal as if it were a fresh annal, says nothing about a designation, and is not corroborated in any Norman source. It is written in the hand of the scribe (Ker’s ‘fifth hand’) who wrote some but not all of the annal to which the entry is appended, and continued to the beginning of the annal for 1054; it is not clear when he wrote, or whether he was copying a text or composing it: Ker, Catalogue, p. 254; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A Collaborative Edition, Vol. VI, MS. D, ed. G.P. Cubbin (Woodbridge 1996), pp. xii–xiii.

62  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 eleventh-century evidence they had for the claim was Norman. John of Worcester and Gaimar are exceptions because they ignored that Norman evidence, although it seems inconceivable that they did not know it, both directly, and intermediately via William of Malmesbury, Eadmer, and Henry of Huntingdon. We know that John of Worcester collaborated with William, and that from his annal for 1091 on, he drew on Eadmer.350 Gaimar makes much, for instance, of the exploits of the French minstrel Taillefer at the battle of Hastings,351 a story which he might well have derived from Henry of Huntingdon,352 or, like Henry, ultimately from a now unidentifiable French source. Unsurprisingly, he claims to have consulted books in French, as well as in Latin and English; those which can be identified are almost certainly two versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth and two of the AngloSaxon Chronicle.353 For the reign of Edward the Confessor, John stuck pretty closely to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, whereas Gaimar’s sources for the reign, with the possible exception of Henry of Huntingdon, are unidentifiable. Neither John nor Gaimar says anything about Duke William’s claim. Unlike John, Gaimar does not so much as mention the return of the æthelings, or King Edward’s designation of Harold, or Harold’s accession as king. He seems deliberately to eschew altogether the issue of the succession, even though it is almost certain that he would have been prompted to address it in one form or other by whatever sources he was using. The closest he comes to acknowledging the dispute is a cryptic comment at the end of his account of the battle of Hastings: ‘The English paid dearly for their outrageous behaviour.’354 That he was being very tight-lipped rather than incurious is suggested by the amount of attention he devotes to Cnut’s claim to the English throne,355 a more remote and less pressing subject, and one on which there was presumably far less evidence available, then as now. For John, the continuity of English history over the catastrophe of the Conquest depended primarily and simply on the annalistic, un-analytic narrative of the Chronicle.356 It was for this reason that he failed to explain why the Conquest happened. The same may have been true of Gaimar, even though he does not appear to have drawn on any version of the Chronicle in his account of Edward’s reign and the Conquest. But he suppresses so much that it seems more likely that he was taking care to avoid any analysis at all.357

350  JW ii. pp. lxxiii–lxxiv; iii. pp. xx, xxvi–xxvii. 351  Estoire, ll. 5271–306. 352  HA VI. 30; for the possible influence of HA on Gaimar, see Estoire pp. xxxi–xxxii. 353  Estoire, Epilogue ll. 6442–3; further Short, ‘Epilogue’, 327–8. It is impossible to identify any of his French sources. 354  Estoire, l. 5342; further Short, ‘Introduction’, p. xliv. 355  Estoire, ll. 4308–4346, cf. ll. 420, 897–920 and notes. J. Gillingham, ‘Gaimar, the Prose Brut, and the Making of English History’, in his The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge 2000), p. 119. 356 Gaimar, Estoire, is less dependent on it from l. 2586, the accession of Edgar and the annal for 966, than previously. 357 R.H.C. Davis, The Normans and their Myth (London 1976), p. 127: ‘he somehow manages both to describe and to pass over [the Conquest] with a studied casualness’.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  63 For all the other early twelfth-century historians too, the Conquest had been a disaster for England; but what explained it, and made it, paradoxically, a continuation of English history—what grounded it empirically in the alleged events of Edward the Confessor’s reign—was Norman evidence. In addition to the fundamental importance of the claim to the new regime, this was another reason why all these historians (as distinct from the annalist John of Worcester and the poet Gaimar, both of whose works were, in very different ways, shaped by their primary dependence on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) devoted so much attention to integrating it with the English evidence for Edward’s reign. By reproducing some variant of the official view, they could achieve their objective of establishing the continuity of English history. In William of Malmesbury’s opinion, of course, in doing so he also completed his self-imposed (and self-important) task of mending the chain of English historical writing which had been broken by Bede’s death. With these historians, and (as we shall see) to a markedly lesser extent with Orderic Vitalis, writing in Normandy, but also of English birth and mixed parentage, the victor’s story as it first survives in William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers became embedded in subsequent English writing about the Conquest. By  contrast, many contemporary continental accounts, written elsewhere than Normandy and with no obvious Norman connection, regarded the whole enterprise as an unjustified freebooting expedition led by someone with no claim other than conquest.358 For instance, the great twelfth-century German historian Otto of Freising, who based his account of the Conquest on the contemporary chronicle of Frutolf of Michelsberg, asserted that Duke William had killed King Harold and ‘reduced the whole country to servitude’.359 Or Wenric of Trier, who in a letter to Pope Gregory VII in 1080 referred darkly to rulers who ‘having usurped kingdoms by the violence of the tyrant, themselves paved the way to the throne with blood, placed a bloodstained crown on their heads, and established their rule with murder, rape, butchery, and torment.’360 In view of Wenric’s op­pos­ition to Gregorian reform and Gregory’s critical role in securing papal backing for the duke’s invasion in 1066, there is no doubt whom Wenric had in mind; and he used the word tyrant in the classical sense of an illegitimate usurper. By contrast with the stance adopted by the English historians of the early twelfth century, many continental ones were not deceived for a moment by the official line, expounded in its earliest extant forms by William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers. They did not have to be. Partly, this was because they were not writing in

358  E. van Houts, ‘The Norman Conquest through European Eyes’, EHR, cx (1995), 832–53. 359  Otto of Freising, Chronicon VI. 35, in Otto Bischof von Freising, Chronik oder die Geschichte der zwei Staaten, ed. A. Hofmeister and W. Lammers (Darmstadt 1961), p. 490; Frutolf of Michelsberg, Chronicon, in Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken und die Anonyme Kaiserchronik (Darmstadt 1972), p. 78. 360  ‘Wenrici scolastici Trevirensis epistola sub Theoderici episcopi Virdunensis nomine composita’, MGH. Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, 3 vols (Hannover 1891–7), i. 280–99, at 294.

64  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 England or Normandy, and therefore did not need to exercise the sort of discretion at which William of Malmesbury hints.361 But also it was because they were not attempting to establish, or re-establish, the continuity of English history, the theme constantly reiterated by that official line.

Norman Counterpoint: Orderic Vitalis What is so distinctive about the historians writing in early twelfth-century England is highlighted by comparing them with their commensurate Norman contemporary and—to varying degrees—collaborator, Orderic Vitalis. He differs from them in two revealing respects, one of which will detain us for some time; the other can be dealt with in briefer compass. First, he juxtaposes the official justification with a subversive antithesis in a far less balanced way than they do. Orderic knew William of Jumièges inside out, having interpolated him; but in his Historia ecclesiastica he preferred to use William of Poitiers as his main source on the Conqueror’s claim, and the early years of his reign in England.362 This authorial decision was unsurprising. The Gesta Guillelmi provided vastly more detail on these subjects, and analyses of them which Orderic could modulate. He must, for instance, have been well aware that he directly contradicted the Gesta on the nature of William fitz Osbern’s and Odo of Bayeux’s administration in immediately post-Conquest England.363 His account of the harrying of the North has been shown to draw on and echo the now lost ending of the Gesta,364 but we can be certain that his overall de­nun­ci­ ation of the episode was antithetical to that of William of Poitiers. However, Orderic turned to the Gesta Guillelmi not only because of its wealth of empirical material, but also because, unlike the Gesta Normannorum ducum, it contained confected speeches on the classical historiographical model.365 On the subject of the Conquest, the Gesta Guillelmi had shown Orderic how effective this antique device could be, as a way of pausing in a narrative, standing back from events, analysing them, and nudging his audience towards a particular conclusion. Cicero, ‘the greatest author of Roman eloquence’,366 was one model, but although acknowledged as the leading Roman theorist of historical writing, no historical work by him survived. Another, particularly exemplary in this respect, was Sallust, who, for this very reason, had become the most popular Roman

361  See above, pp. 51, 56. 362  OV i. 59. 363  OV ii. 202, cf. GG, p. 164. 364  OV ii. 232 and n. 4. 365  An exception which proves the rule is a short speech by Earl Gyrth to Harold shortly before the battle of Hastings, which Orderic had inserted into the GND ii. 166–8, and which he copied almost verbatim in OV ii. 170–2. 366  GG, p. 122.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  65 historian of the early middle ages.367 Orderic drew attention to William of Poitiers’ ‘clever imitation of Sallust’,368 by which he could have meant both William’s extensive use of confected speeches, and the affected archaism of his vocabulary,369 which was also characteristic of Sallust. (Orderic’s extensive employment of con­tem­por­ary diplomatic terminology would have made him alert to William’s scrupulous avoidance of it, by contrast with William of Jumièges.) Analysis in this classical historiographical guise was often enhanced by ­juxtaposing two antithetical speeches in such a way as to incline the audience to side with one of them. William of Poitiers had a particular predilection for this device.370 But on the subject of the Conquest, Orderic chose not to follow William’s example in this respect, despite his intentionally heavy reliance on the Gesta Guillelmi. Sometimes he imitated another Sallustian gambit: springing an antithetical argument, in the form of a single speech, on his audience at an unexpected point in his narrative.371 As we shall see, this was one of Orderic’s preferred methods for undermining the legitimacy of the Conqueror’s claims and his subsequent actions. Indeed, he does far more of this than subverting William of Poitiers’ narrative. In so far as he juxtaposed antithetical views at all, he tended to do so within individual speeches. His overriding aim appears to have been to moderate William of Poitiers’ eulogy of the Conqueror, and to present a much more equivocal picture, both of the king in particular and of the Conquest in general.372 He had already, in his version of the Gesta Normannorum ducum, 367  B.  Smalley, ‘Sallust in the Middle Ages’, in R.R.  Bolgar, ed., Classical Influence on European Culture, A.D. 500–1500 (Cambridge 1971), pp. 165–75, at 169–70; Munk Olsen, Etude ii. 307–63. 368  OV ii. 258, cf. 190 on the ‘eloquent sophists’ who frequented King William’s court, and who provided ‘abundant material’ for ‘pious historiographers’. 369  For instance, in early 1067 the satellites (not vassals) of Copsi, the new earl of Northumbria, had tried to persuade him to betray the Conqueror, partly ‘in order to defend the libertas handed down by his ancestors’, and partly ‘for the sake of the res publica’: GG pp. 184–6. 370  For instance, GG, pp. 118–20; for an example in Sallust, see Bellum Catilinae, LI and LII, for speeches in the Senate by Julius Caesar and Marcus Porcius Cato respectively. For specific instances of William borrowing content from rather than mimicking the style of Sallust, see GG p. 124, where William, somewhat unhappily, adapts a pre-battle speech of Catiline as Duke William’s address to his troops prior to the battle of Hastings (Bellum Catilinae LXVIII. 4–21). Contrary to what is asserted by the editor, p. 125 n. 5, William of Poitiers was not unusual in also imitating Sallust’s admission that he was giving the imagined gist of the speech, rather than the ipsissima verba. Indeed, this aping of a classical stress on verisimilitude, rather than strict verbal accuracy, was conventional. GG, p. 74, applies Sallust’s comments on the polygamous habits of the ancient Moors to the contemporary Bretons (Bellum Iugurthinum LXXX. 6); GG, p. 114 invokes Sallust’s account of the triumph of Marius in order to demonstrate Duke William’s superiority to this ancient figure (Bellum Iugurthinum CXIV. 3). Marius is just one of many major heroes and historical figures of antiquity to be compared with the duke, always to the latter’s advantage. 371  Historiae I. frs. 55, 77; II, fr. 47; III. fr. 48; cf. Justinus XXXVII. 4–7, for Mithridates of Pontus’s denunciation of Roman imperialism. There is no demonstrable echo of this speech in the Historia ecclesiastica, and there can be no certainty that Orderic was familiar with it. 372  P. Bouët, ‘Orderic Vital, lecteur critique de Guillaume de Poitiers’, in C. Viola, ed., Mediaevalia Christiana XI-XIII siècles. Hommage à Raymonde Foreville (Paris 1989), pp. 26–50; cf. OV ii. pp. xxxii– xxxiv. In terms of style, as distinct from attitude to the Conquest, Orderic also departs from William of Poitiers’ model. He excises from the narrative he based on William’s text most of the showy classical allusions to which William was prone: e.g. OV ii. 168 and n. 2. This cannot have been because he

66  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 greatly toned down the crusty triumphalism of William of Jumièges’ account of the Conquest.373 In the Historia, he went much further, cutting directly against the grain of a far more fulsomely jingoistic source. One of his methods was to excise most of the elaborate classical parallels in which William of Poitiers exulted. When William claimed to write in sermo humilis, he did so because in antiquity a plain or everyday prose style, sometimes elided with the closely related but originally distinct quality of brevity, had been deemed to be appropriate for historical writing.374 Indeed, William could not forbear from affectedly pointing this out.375 It was most appropriate because plain speaking was associated with truthfulness; it had been adopted by Sallust.376 Orderic, by contrast with William, really did try to write in something like this style, perhaps because patristic authorities had deemed the matter-of-factness and lack of pretention of sermo humilis to be that most suitable for Christian writing, intended primarily for a monastic audience.377 It is no accident that he chose not to adapt any of the speeches in which William of Poitiers had expounded, with such forensic acumen, the duke’s claim. Orderic rehearsed a cursory, conventional summary of it, but that was all.378 In the long speeches he attributed to various protagonists, the longest of which is delivered by the Conqueror himself on his deathbed, he scarcely paid passing lip service to it.379 In so far as Orderic’s compositions address English affairs,380 they concentrate on the aftermath of the Conquest, not on what had prompted it; and thought them pretentious, for he repeatedly expresses admiration for William as a stylist: OV ii. 184, 258–60, ‘I have not tried to include all that he says, nor to imitate his artistry.’ 373  GND ii. 164 and n. 6, 168, 170, 172 and n. 1, 176; cf. i. pp. lxxiii–lxxiv. Orderic wrote this sometime between 1095 and 1106: Garnett, ‘Trousers’, 216–17 nn. 25, 34. The Quedam exceptiones, GND ii. 301–2, written between 1101 and 1103, is so terse in its rehearsal of what William of Jumièges had written that it could not be said to have watered it down. However, it adds two details: the duke is described as Edward’s kinsman (cognatus), and Harold is said to have taken his oath in Rouen, a detail found later in Orderic’s Historia, ii. 134, but not in his GND. 374 Cicero, Brutus, 262, discussing Julius Caesar’s style: ‘Nothing is sweeter in history than un­adorned and lucid brevity’; Seneca, Epist. 114.17, on Sallust’s style: ‘amputated sentences, phrases which end before expected, and obscure brevity.’ For a discussion of examples in Gregory of Tours, Bede, Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, see M. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History (Manchester 2011), pp. 297–8, 394. 375  GG, p. 158; cf. A.J. Woodman, Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies (London 1988), pp. 117–59, esp. 126–8. The term sermo humilis is not classical, but patristic. 376 Livy, Ab urbe condita III.56.3, 10.24.4; Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum LXXXV.31. 377  OV i. 130, iv. 150, 228; R. Ray, ‘Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century: Problems and Progress of Research’, Viator, v (1974), 33–59, at 50. 378  Edward the Confessor’s designation of Duke William: OV ii. 134–6; cf. GND ii. 158–60, where he does not weaken William of Jumièges’ account, although note 164 n. 6. 379  OV iv. 80–94; ii. 272–8, 312–14; cf. ii. 266–70, which is narrative rather than a speech, but is in the same vein, and which immediately precedes one of the denunciations; vi. 256–8, where King Louis VI sets out the charge sheet against Henry I at the council of Rheims in 1119. In this instance Orderic may himself have been present: OV i. 25–6. 380  The Conqueror’s deathbed speech is principally concerned with Norman affairs. Much of the information, as opposed to the style, is derived from William of Jumièges.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  67 they all occur after the point in the narrative when Orderic recorded that his copy of the Gesta Guillelmi had concluded.381 The speeches which William had attributed to various protagonists were, by contrast, all delivered prior to the battle of Hastings. The two which follow it take a different form. They are not attributed to protagonists. Rather, the biographer in his own person apostrophizes (re­spect­ive­ly) the dead King Harold382 and the ‘English land’.383 But as with those speeches confected by William for declamation by protagonists prior to the battle, Orderic makes no detectable use of them. The style of Orderic’s speeches might owe something to that of William’s ‘clever imitation of Sallust ’,384 but their content was almost antithetical, and in that respect more accurately imitative of Sallust’s pessimistic assessment of moral decadence. The verdict which Orderic intended his audience to reach is clear both from the volubility of the denunciations of the Conquest voiced in those speeches, and from the fact that two of them explicitly and repeatedly deny that William had any hereditary right at all in the English kingdom, while a third does so by implication, asserting that the Conqueror ‘presumptuously invaded the fair kingdom of England and unjustly slew its true heirs’.385 The dying king himself issues two such denials.386 A third, voiced by Guitmund, abbot of La-Croix-Saint-Leufroi, in his refusal of William’s offer of ecclesiastical preferment in conquered England, explains that ‘according to the laws of the Hebrews and of other races [aliarumque gentium], Edgar ætheling [Adelinus] and many others of the royal line are closer heirs to the English diadem’.387 Orderic had, just beforehand, subtly reminded his audience that Guitmund was a distinguished pupil of Lanfranc,388 so he could scarcely have invoked a more authoritative source. Guitmund is made to allude to the official story by acknowledging William’s ‘friendship with your kinsman Edward’ as a factor, but that is all. He fails to specify what role friendship and kinship might have played in the duke’s claim. This is hardly a compelling case for the defence. Casting doubt on the justice of the claim, and expressing horror at the violence of the Conquest, did not mean, however, that Orderic held any brief for Harold.

381  OV ii. 258. 382  GG, p. 140. 383  GG, p. 156. 384  OV ii. 258. 385  OV ii. 312, a speech delivered jointly by Ralph de Gael, earl of Norwich, and Roger, earl of Hereford, to justify their rebellion in 1075. 386  OV iv. 90, 94. Note that Orderic deleted from William of Jumièges’s text the description of the Conqueror as the Londoners’ ‘hereditary lord’, though he allowed the epithet ‘most noble victor’ to stand: GND ii. 170 n. e. 387  OV ii. 276, cf. ii. 312, iv. 94. The identities of the ‘many others’ are mysterious; perhaps Orderic was thinking of Matilda, granddaughter, through her mother Margaret, of Edward ætheling, and Henry I’s queen. Orderic had studied William of Poitiers intently, so it may not be over-subtle to suggest that his assertion about the leges gentium was a pointed jibe at Duke William’s alleged offer, immediately prior to the Battle of Hastings, to accept judgment on the legitimacy of his case in accordance with the iura gentium: GG, p. 122. 388  He was ‘most learned in letters’ and had, like his teacher, attacked Berengar of Tours’ views on transubstantiation: OV ii. 270.

68  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Harold’s perjury is affirmed in a brief speech attributed to his brother Gyrth which Orderic had written before he had begun work on the Historia;389 and in any case, as Guitmund’s speech made clear by implication, Harold had not been of the royal line, and could not even assert the sort of kinship with the Confessor which Guitmund had attributed to Duke William. Moreover, the only sense in which the king is said to have sanctioned—‘granted’—Harold’s succession is by his naïve acceptance of the earl’s story that the duke had given his daughter to Harold in marriage, and ‘had granted the right [ius] of the whole English kingdom [to him] as his son-in-law’.390 Harold’s claim is thus shown to depend solely on his ‘fraudulent’ misrepresentation of an alleged implication of William’s betrothal of his daughter to the earl: that the duke had intended the betrothal to entail his ‘concession’ to Harold of the ‘right’ which, Orderic reported, the king had previously ordered should be ‘conceded’ to the duke.391 The Confessor had made William ‘heir of his right’, and the duke was therefore the sole source of the ‘right’ which Harold fraudulently claimed to derive intermediately through him from the king. This canard attributed a significance to the supposed marriage agreement which is quite unparalleled in any other account; and Orderic expressed it in the diplomatic terminology which he—by now probably the head of St-Evroult’s scriptorium,392 and an accomplished draftsman of charters—applied elsewhere to ducal succession.393 Its tortuousness served to underline Orderic’s uncharacteristically (and unclassically) blunt description of it as a lie. But it did nothing to strengthen William’s claim, which Orderic had recapitulated once only, immediately beforehand, and in perfunctory terms. Harold’s claim therefore depended, by Orderic’s account, solely on a mendacious misrepresentation of certain details of William’s claim, his opinion of which is subsequently implied in several of his antique-style rhetorical parentheses. Not only did Orderic subvert the credibility of the case mounted on Duke William’s behalf by his principal source, William of Poitiers, he also cut Earl Harold even less slack than William of Poitiers had done. Like his hero Bede, Orderic did not presume to be capable of discerning the workings of God’s inscrutable providence.394 All he could do was try to record what had happened, and accept it in faith as ipso facto providentially ordained.395 Both the Conqueror and Guitmund were made to asseverate that William’s victory could, in the end, be attributed solely to divine grace.396 As William 389  OV ii. 170–2, cf. GND ii. 166–8. Orderic completed his version of GND by 1106: Garnett, ‘Trousers’, 216–17. 390  OV ii. 136. 391  OV ii. 134. 392  D. Escudier, ‘Orderic Vital et le scriptorium de Saint-Evroul’, in P. Bouët and M. Dosdat, eds, Manuscrits et enluminures dans le monde normand (Xe–XVe siècle) (Caen 1999), pp. 17–28, at 24. 393  Garnett, ‘Trousers’, 226–9. 394  OV vi. 8–10. 395  OV v. 4. Like many of his contemporaries, he seems to have considered the First Crusade a partial exception to this truism. 396  OV ii. 276; iv. 90; cf. ii. 268.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  69 sup­posed­ly made very clear on his deathbed, the fact that he had been an agent of  providence did not exculpate him from the sins he had committed in that ­cap­acity. This conventional theological position was evidently Orderic’s: ‘the omnipotent judge disposes all things justly, and leaves no sin unpunished’.397 And it is as far as he goes in reconciling the official story with the subversive antithesis which he elaborates with such relish. Given that antithesis, his acceptance of the workings of providence as unfathomable to mortals might have proved problematic, had he been interested, like those contemporaries known to him who were writing in England, in demonstrating English historical continuity over the Conquest. But for reasons to be explored shortly, he was not in the least interested in doing so; hence his single, scarcely rudimentary summary of Duke William’s claim. His interpretation of the Conquest is voiced chiefly through the mouths of  various protagonists, and is, by and large, a negative one. So his confected speeches owe nothing to the content of those he must have studied so intently in the Gesta Guillelmi. Orderic’s extensive deployment of this antique device highlights another respect in which William of Malmesbury was distinctive, in an English as well as a Norman context. Although manifestly interested in the historiographical use of speeches,398 William was sufficiently confident of his classical learning to make a point of breaking with the whole convention. He eschewed speeches altogether, on the grounds of inauthenticity: ‘Scarcely, scarcely I repeat, has a slender report of events trickled through to us; far less could I believe that words, which flew away the moment they were spoken, could have been caught.’399 In doing so he may consciously have been following Justinus’s attack on Sallust and Livy for ‘transgressing the scope of history’ by attributing fabricated speeches to historical protagonists.400 Thereby William may also have been seeking to demonstrate his superiority to the most revered historians of antiquity. One reason why he played, in the prologue to Gesta regum, with the preface to Justinus’s Epitome, was to draw attention to his superior handling of (by implication) more difficult sources, and to his privileging of content over mere form.401 Elsewhere he deftly implied that 397  OV ii. 350. 398  In his copy of Orosius, he made marginal notes identifying the speeches, presumably for ready reference: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Arch. Seld. B.  16, fos 11r–72v; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, p. 31. 399  VSD II. pr.; cf. I. 9, II. 21, VSW I. ep.; cf. William of Malmesbury, Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary, ed. R.M.  Thomson and M.  Winterbottom (Woodbridge 2015), pr. 42, p. 14. William had ­particular reasons for attacking Osbern’s Vita S. Dunstani on these and other grounds—Saints’ Lives, p. xxi—but it is clear that his objection to the practice was not just ad hominem. He did, however, reproduce a few of Wulfstan’s utterances, when he thought there was reliable evidence for what Wulfstan had said: VSW II. 3 (‘It is established that the bishop answered. . .’), III. 17 (allegedly on the basis of Prior Nicholas’ testimony); and may have attempted to reproduce what he had heard Anselm saying: GP ii. p. 15. 400  Historiae Philippicae XXXVIII.3.10. Justinus explicitly attributes this view to Pompeius Trogus. 401  GR I. pr.; see Guenée, ‘L ‘éloquence et la science’, 365, 369–70. For his borrowing of the metaphor of an historical chain from Justinus, see above, p. 13.

70  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 even Cicero could not match him.402 ‘Common positions [communes loci] can be adapted to either side of an argument according to the skill of the orator.’403 When the historian was as skilled an orator as William judged himself to be, perhaps he did not, in his view, need to confect speeches in order to achieve his intended effect. He was not just manipulating classical models, he was making a point of transcending them. But in transcending them, and eschewing verisimilar speeches, he nevertheless implied, as we have seen, an estimate of the Conquest which was in certain respects very close to Orderic’s, elaborated in such speeches. It appears that William’s repeated agonizing, by contrast with Orderic, over the details of the claim, did not lead him to a significantly higher estimation of the justice of the duke’s cause. But it did facilitate mending the chain of English his­tory, which was his principal aim, whereas for Orderic it was a matter of no concern. Orderic also invoked Justinus in the prologue to Historia ecclesiastica, but unlike William, he did so explicitly, not just by allusion.404 He was not as wellversed in Roman literature as William, and therefore not so confident in manipulating classical models; nor was he so arrogant. Sinuously subtle learned allusion was beyond him. Like William, and like the Roman historians, he knew perfectly well that confected speeches were not accurate transcriptions of what had been said by a particular individual on a given occasion. That reportedly delivered in unison by Ralph de Gael and Roger of Hereford to justify their revolt in 1075 is a particularly striking example.405 Unlike William, he followed classical historiographical convention both in aiming at what he considered verisimilitude, rather than verbatim veracity, and also in occasionally professing himself incapable of doing so, on the (quite inconsistent) grounds that he had not himself been present on the occasion he was recounting.406 In this too he was following the model ultimately provided by the Roman historians. While he evidently admired Justinus’s Epitome as a stylistic model, and occasionally turned to it for factual detail,407 the only one he mentions by name is Sallust.

402  GR IV. 374, which echoes De legibus I. 6: see R.M. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Latin Classics Revisited’, in T. Reinhardt, M. Lapidge, and J.N. Adams, eds, Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose (Oxford 2005), pp. 383–93, at pp. 388, 392, citing Neil Wright’s as yet unpublished ‘ “Exarata barbarica Romano sale condire”: William of Malmesbury and Suetonius’. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawl. G. 139, which is corrected in William’s hand, includes Cicero’s Partitiones oratoriae and De officiis: see Thomson. William of Malmesbury, p. 85. Cambridge, UL, MS. Dd. 13. 2, a fifteenthcentury copy of a collection of Ciceroniana which has been credited to William, does not, however, include De legibus: Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 51–5. 403  GR V 406, i. p. 734; cf. Cicero, De inventione, II. 48. 404  OV i. 130, where he explained that his claustral obligations meant that he could not explore Greek or Roman affairs. 405  OV ii. 312. 406  OV v. 318; i. 79–84; M. Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford 1984), pp. 197–8. 407  Concerning the Near East, primarily in order to flesh out his account of the First Crusade: OV iv. 214, v. 120, 136, 334.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  71 No direct evidence survives of the existence of works by either of them in the library at St-Evroult in Orderic’s day.408 But it is possible to identify a particular occasion when he might have familiarized himself with one of the most influential Sallustian models. On one of his research trips to England, probably when he had been commissioned to write on the history of Crowland Abbey,409 perhaps in 1114–15,410 perhaps in 1119,411 he visited nearby Thorney.412 His knowledge of Thorney’s history, and his praise for the learning of its successive post-Conquest abbots, suggest that, as one would expect of such a scholar, he seized the op­por­ tun­ity to inspect its library.413 There, at the end of the eleventh century, Old English copies of patristic works were erased from several ancient manuscripts in order to manufacture a palimpsest which includes a fragment of a speech attributed to Sallust, as well as the Catilinarian orations.414 It seems that even works by Augustine and Gregory the Great, if written in antiquated pre-Conquest hands, could now be scrubbed and replaced with examples of the most fashionable antique historiographical models favoured by contemporary continental historians. Given Orderic’s interests, it is surely almost certain that he would have been shown this brand-new copy of select bits of Cicero and pseudo-Sallust, which suggested the commitment of someone at contemporary Thorney to state-of-the-art rhetorical scholarship.415 The likelihood that the compiler of this palimpsest was 408  They are not amongst the names in the twelfth-century book list for St-Evroult: Paris, BN, MS. lat. 10062, fo. 80v, printed by H.  Omont, Catalogue général des MSS des bibliothèques de la France, Départements, ii (Paris 1888), pp. 468–9, and photographed in G. Nortier, Les Bibliothèques médiévales des abbayes bénédictines de Normandie (Caen 1966), facing p. 228. The list is partly written in Orderic’s hand: Nortier, pp. 227–9; Escudier, ‘Orderic Vital’, p. 24. 409  OV ii. pp. xxiv–xxix, 238–50; Chibnall, World, pp. 107–8. 410  OV i. 32. 411 Chibnall, World, p. 36. 412  OV ii. pp. xxiv–xxix; Chibnall, World, p. 36. 413  OV vi. 150–2. He identified several books which had been written by Folcard of St-Bertin (who had been acting abbot there, c. 1069–85), and transcribed the epitaph from the grave of one of the abbots. The abbot at the time of his visit, Robert of Prunelai, was a former monk of St-Evroult. Thorney was also visited by Abbot Warin of St-Evroult: OV iii. 346. 414  Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS. Advocates 18. 7. 8 a palimpsest which contains the Invectiva in Ciceronem, a pseudo-Sallustian work often found in manuscripts of Sallust and Cicero; it also includes copies of Cicero’s Catilinarian orations, in which there was great interest partly on account of Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae; the erased texts which can be identified are Augustine’s De Trinitate, the passio of St Laurence, and a service book. E.A. Lowe, Codices Latini antiquiores, 12 vols (Oxford 1934–72), Supplement, nos. 1689–91; N.R.  Ker, ‘A Palimpsest in the National Library of Scotland: Early Fragments of Augustine De Trinitate, the Passio S. Laurentii and Other Texts’, repr. in his Books, Collectors and Libraries, pp. 121–30; I.C. Cunningham, ‘Latin Classical Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland’, Scriptorium, xxvii (1973), 64–90, at 84–5, 88–9. Another early twelfthcentury English copy of the same pseudo-Sallustian fragment is found in London, BL, MS. Harley 3659. It is also in the extant fifteenth-century copy of a Ciceronian collection made at the behest of William of Malmesbury: Cambridge, UL, MS. Dd. 13.2, Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 50–5. The twelfth-century Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. O. 8. 6 contains it too, although the manuscript may not have been written in England. By the mid-twelfth century Durham appears to have held three copies of Sallust: Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesiae cathedralis Dunelmensis, ed. B. Botfield, Surtees Soc., vii (1838), p. 4. 415  It seems likely that this postdated Folcard of St-Bertin’s administration of the abbey, which had ended probably in 1085: OV ii. 344 n. 3. Orderic expressed admiration for Folcard—OV vi. 150—but his literary works were probably confined to hagiography: Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives ed. Love, pp. xliv–xlv. A strong case has been made for his being the author of the Vita Ædwardi:

72  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 particularly concerned with historical writing is strengthened by another manuscript then at Thorney, which included copies of many standard works on chronology. It also contained a calendar, in which has been entered a later note, in Orderic’s own hand, of the feast of St Evroult.416 But if there were any fruits of  this early twelfth-century Thorney interest in history, other than some ­desultory Thorney annals in the computistical codex, they have not survived. Orderic is by far the most distinguished putative reader of these books who can now be identified. The second way in which Orderic is different from contemporaries writing his­ tory in England is that he says very little about English history prior to Edward the Confessor’s reign.417 In another imaginary speech, the English who remained loyal to Rufus in 1088 urged their king to ‘examine the histories of the English’;418 but the Historia ecclesiastica does not suggest that Orderic had followed this advice very assiduously himself, though he claimed to have done so.419 He proclaimed his half-Englishness, and could even copy runes;420 he retained a vestigial Shropshire accent throughout his adult life.421 But he does not display much interest in Old English history.422 What little pre-Conquest material there is seems to be derived from three sources: from John of Worcester, whom he must have met when he visited Worcester and inspected the Chronicon ex chronicis;423 from Bede;424 and from the research which he was commissioned to undertake in England into the history of Crowland Abbey,425 the visit which probably enabled him to work at Thorney too. That he thought the Worcester Chronicon had merely

The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, ed. F. Barlow, 2nd edn (Oxford 1992), pp. lii–lix. But even if this be accepted, the work is more akin to hagiography than history. 416  Oxford, St John’s College, MS. 17, and London, BL, MS. Cotton Nero C. vii, fos 80–4, originally a single codex. It contains works by Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Abbo of Fleury, Bede, Dionysius Exiguus, and others, as well as the calendar, and annals of Thorney. Most of it appears to have been copied at Ramsey in the late eleventh century, and almost immediately transferred to Thorney, where additions were made. For the manuscript, see Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, ed. P.S. Baker and M. Lapidge (Oxford 1995), pp. 373–427; for Orderic’s entry in the calendar—St John’s College, MS. 17, fo. 21v—see OV i. 203; ii. p. xxxix. 417  OV i. 152, 154, 156–7, v. 288–9, vi. 150; there is a digression on monasticism in pre-Conquest England at OV ii. 240–6. See E. van Houts, ‘Normandy’s View of the Anglo-Saxon Past in the Twelfth Century’, in Brett and Woodman, eds, Anglo-Saxon Past, pp. 123–40, at 123, 127–8. 418  OV iv. 126. 419  OV vi. 100. 420  OV i. 202, discussing the copy of the Vita Æthelwoldi in Orderic’s hand found in Alençon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 14. 421  M. Faulkner, ‘Orderic and English’, in C.C. Rozier, D. Roach, G.E.M. Gasper, and E. van Houts, eds, Orderic Vitalis. Life, Works, and Interpretations (Woodbridge 2016), pp. 100–126, at 107–12. 422  Alençon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 14; Wulfstan of Winchester, The Life of St Æthelwold, ed. M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom (Oxford 1991), pp. clvii–clviii. The Vita Æthelwoldi is copied from a Winchester manuscript, but it is not clear that Orderic would have had to visit Winchester in order to participate in its copying, and in any case this source was not required for the few passing references to Æthelwold in the Historia: OV i. 154; ii. 242–4, 343; iii. 82; vi. 150. As he points out in the last of these references, Æthelwold had founded Thorney Abbey, which may explain Orderic’s interest in him. 423  OV ii. 186–8; Chibnall, World, p. 36. 424  OV ii. 240, 264, iii. 62, v. 298. 425  OV ii. pp. xxvi–xxix, 322–46.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  73 appended an account of ‘the events of about a hundred years’ to that of Marianus Scotus suggests that he had not bothered to consult the manuscript very carefully, at least so far as it concerned pre-Conquest England.426 Although the Conqueror’s claim, grounded primarily in alleged events of the Confessor’s reign, was crucial to Orderic’s account of Duke William’s accession as king of England, and although it seems quite likely that he collaborated in some way with William of Malmesbury,427 he made no effort to write English history. Rather, inspired by Bede, a copy of whose Historia ecclesiastica survives in Orderic’s hand,428 his aim was, or became, to accomplish for the Normans what he considered Bede had done for the English: ‘I have attempted, at the inspiration of God, to recount in writing the deeds and events of the Normans for the Normans.’429 To such an enterprise, English history prior to Edward the Confessor’s reign was evidently, in  Orderic’s view, largely irrelevant—which meant that most of the Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis was largely irrelevant. When he inserted into the Historia some material culled from his research trip to Crowland, he suggested that the ‘deeds of the Angles and overseas Saxons might be no less edifying to Northern Christians than those of the Greeks and Egyptians’, and that they would be especially welcome to ‘our own countrymen’.430 The following few pages are, however, his most extensive excursus into pre-Conquest history, and they relate solely to the history of Crowland. His decision almost entirely to ignore a wealth of other potentially inspiring stories must have been a conscious one, for he knew very well that William of Jumièges had later inserted quite a lot of material on England during Edward the Confessor’s reign and earlier into the draft of Gesta Normannorum ducum which had originally been completed by 1060.431 Orderic’s other principal source, William of Poitiers, had included still more. But para­dox­ ic­al­ly, as we have seen, their accounts of these matters, written in Normandy after 1066, were to be taken far more seriously by twelfth-century historians writing in England than they were by Orderic, writing simultaneously, and on a com­men­ sur­ate­ly grand scale, in Normandy.

The Chain Mended The case for continuity between pre- and post-Conquest England expounded by the early twelfth-century historians writing in England appears to have rested 426  OV ii. 186; further Nortier, Les Bibliothèques, p. 226. 427  GR ii. p. 255; De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie, pp. 159, 209–10; OV i. 89, ii. pp. xxiv–xxv, 270 n. 1. The (inconclusive) evidence points to William using Orderic, rather than vice versa. 428  Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 1343, reproduced in L. Delisle, ‘Notes sur les manuscrits autographes d’Orderic Vital’, prefatory to Matériaux pour l’édition de Guillaume de Jumièges preparé par Jules Lair avec une préface et des notes par Léopold Delisle (Paris 1910), pp. 7–27, Pl. iv; OV i. 56–7, 84–5, 203. 429  OV iii. 6; on the gradual shift in plan, see ii. p. xvi. 430  OV ii. 324. 431  GND i. pp. xxxii–xxxv; Garnett, ‘Trousers’, 214.

74  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 initially, and exclusively, on the elaboration of the duke’s claim as preserved in the early Norman accounts of the Conquest. These ‘authorities’ are almost certain to have been among the ‘historians of foreign races’ whose works William of Malmesbury claimed to have bought out of his own pocket for his abbey library.432 If his Gesta regum was to achieve his professed objective of mending the ‘broken chain’ in English historical writing, then he had no alternative but to use them to re-connect the history of England which had been ruptured by the Conquest. There was no other basis on which this could be done. Certainly, the solution adopted by the Worcester annalist(s), which was (apparently) unimaginatively to follow the unreflective Anglo-Saxon Chronicle through the Conquest, recounting one damn thing after another, would not have satisfied someone of William of Malmesbury’s analytical cast of mind. Much the same was true of Eadmer and Henry of Huntingdon. How plausible any of them considered the Norman accounts of the duke’s claim to be is a moot point. Eadmer’s scepticism is perhaps the most overt, though still tongue-in-cheek; but they all at various points conveyed confusion at best, and expressed a shared disapproval of the Conquest which had been justified by reference to the claim. The caveat which William voices elsewhere—that ‘the narrator who by chance in following his authorities tells an untruth has a hard path back to his reader’s good graces’433—could not be taken into account in this particular case, precisely because the untruth was too fundamental. This was perhaps one reason why it was never seriously questioned. Eadmer, as we have seen, was more selective in his handling of the evidence, probably because on this subject he inclined to obliqueness, or even irony, rather than William of Malmesbury’s elaborate and measured ambivalence.434 But on one occasion, when writing to the monks of Glastonbury in 1120 about their claim to possess the body of St Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury and archbishop of Canterbury, Eadmer’s resigned, stiff upper lip cracked slightly.435 Perhaps in part this may have been because the interests of his own house were at stake. But for Eadmer, Dunstan had a significance which was still more weighty and particular. Shortly after the Christ Church fire of December 1067, he recalled witnessing a miracle at the site of Dunstan’s tomb in the burnt out cathedral church, over which a temporary structure had been erected.436 Later, during the rebuilding, probably in 1070–71, he had participated in the temporary removal of Dunstan’s relics into the refectory.437 By his own account, then, he himself had repeatedly 432  See above, p. 46. 433  GR III. 248. 434  For recent thoughts on this, see P.A. Hayward, ‘The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Innuendo and Legerdemain in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum and Gesta Pontificum Anglorum’, ANS, xxxiii (2010), 75–102. 435  Memorials of St Dunstan, pp. 412–22; R. Sharpe, ‘Eadmer’s Letter to the Monks of Glastonbury Concerning St Dunstan’s Disputed Remains’, in L. Abrams and C.J. Carley, eds, The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey: Essays in Honour of the Ninetieth Birthday of C.A.  Ralegh Radford (Woodbridge 1991), pp. 205–15. 436 ‘Miracula S. Dunstani’, Lives and Miracles, pp. 174–6. 437 ‘Miracula S. Dunstani’, Lives and Miracles, pp. 184–6.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  75 witnessed not only Dunstan’s continuing corporeal presence but also his active intervention in the current life of the cathedral; no testimony was stronger than that of an eye-witness.438 Dunstan also seems almost to stand as a symbol of Eadmer’s nostalgic attachment to the lost English past, perhaps not least because, at the beginning of Lanfranc’s pontificate, Dunstan appears to have fallen out of official favour for a time. The strongest evidence that this happened is provided by Lanfranc’s Monastic Constitutions, in which the Feast of St Dunstan is not even mentioned. Eadmer would have been reminded of this difficult period with a particular clarity, because he wrote the earliest surviving witness of the Constitutions.439 For Eadmer, Dunstan represented England at its apogee, under Edgar. It was Dunstan who had prophesied the disasters which would befall the kingdom as a result of the assassination of Edward the Martyr,440 for whom Eadmer composed a hymn, and whose parentage he had researched with the help of Nicholas, precentor and later prior of Worcester,441 that most accommodating of eleventh and early twelfth-century historical research assistants.442 The process of divine retribution had reached its consummation in the Conquest, with the 438  Lives and Miracles, pp. xxxii–xxxiii, for examples where Eadmer is himself the eye-witness, or where he identifies authoritative eye-witnesses. 439 R.W. Southern, St Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge 1963), p. 250 n. 2; N. Ramsay and M.  Sparks, ‘The Cult of St Dunstan at Christ Church, Canterbury’, in N.  Ramsay, M.  Sparks, and T.W.T. Tatton Brown, eds, St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult (Woodbridge 1992), pp. 311–23, at 313. In Early Lives of St Dunstan, pp. cl–cli, Michael Lapidge points out that other scholars have argued that Dunstan’s Feast was implicitly referred to in the ‘feast of the place’ among the five most important feasts at Christ Church, the others being Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and the Assumption of the Virgin: Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii, 82. It is nevertheless striking that Ælfeah and Augustine of Canterbury are both explicitly named in a list of less important feasts: p. 88. Eadmer records Anselm persuading Lanfranc that Ælfeah had authentic claims to sanctity: Life of Anselm, pp. 50–4. That Dunstan is included in a Christ Church calendar in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Add. C. 260, ‘which probably dates from the 1120s but the text it transmits is essentially that of Lanfranc’s era’, does not establish that Dunstan was not also in need of rehabilitation in the early stages of Lanfranc’s pontificate: T.A. Heslop, ‘The Canterbury Calendars and the Norman Conquest’, in Eales and Sharpe, eds, Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, pp. 53–85, at 53, 74; Early Lives, p. cli. For a cross-bearing, in Goscelin’s Vita  S.  Edithae, see Hayward, ‘Translation-Narratives’, 79. The earliest known manuscript of the Constitutions—Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.IV.24, fos 47r–73r—is the work of Eadmer: Gullick, ‘Scribal Work’, 183 and Pl. IV. The manuscript appears to be one of Bishop William’s gifts to his church, and would therefore pre-date his death in January 1096. Brooke asserts, Constitutions, p. xliv, that Eadmer wrote it ‘at a stage in the development of his hand which fits the 1090s’, citing the opinions of Michael Gullick and Tessa Webber; for the former, see ‘Scribal Work’, 183. But even if this dating turned out to be correct, Eadmer was copying a text which has been firmly dated on other grounds to the 1070s. The Constitutions may have been drafted between the rehabilitation of Ælfeah and that of Dunstan. 440  VSD, Lives and Miracles, pp. 146, 158 (on both occasions Eadmer cites ‘chronicles’ as confirming that the prophecy had indeed come to pass; it seems likely that he was referring to ASC (A), which was brought to Canterbury early in the eleventh century); HN, pp. 3, 5. 441 Cambridge, CCC, MS. 371, pp. 5–7; Eadmer, Lives and Miracles, p. lxxxviii; Memorials of St Dunstan, pp. 422–4: Nicholas cites as his sources ‘chronicles and songs’. Eadmer must have visited Worcester to carry out the research necessary for the Vita and Miracula  S.  Oswaldi which he was ­commissioned to write, because he reports that he had handled the chasuble in which Oswald had been buried, which was kept in the vestry at Worcester: Eadmer, Miracula S. Oswaldi, Lives and Miracles, p. 306, cf. p. xxiii. 442  VSW III. 9.2–3, 10.3, 13, 17; GP IV. 147.

76  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 pernicious, innovative consequences of which the Historia novorum was avowedly concerned. By that point Eadmer agreed with William of Malmesbury that English monastic life had, in a literal sense, gone to the dogs.443 Dunstan had foretold it all. Eadmer therefore had reasons which were all the more intense because they were so particular and personal, for ridiculing the Glastonbury monks’ claim that their predecessors had appropriated the saint’s body from Canterbury: especially because it is said that these tales were made up by Englishmen. Alas, why did you not consult some chap from overseas, where they have more experience, more learning, and know better how to make up stories? You could even have paid someone to make up a plausible lie for you on a matter of such importance.

One might almost suspect the hand of an ironic providence in the fact that the earliest surviving example of Eadmer’s penmanship, dating from the 1080s, is a fragment of Augustine’s sermon Contra mendacium (Against Lying).444 William of Malmesbury expressed considerable admiration for one particular ‘chap from overseas’: Goscelin of St-Bertin, one of the two likely candidates for the authorship of the Vita of Edward the Confessor.445 In the cases of several English saints, Goscelin had stepped in to fill the hagiographical gap left by the unproductive English: ‘He composed . . . lives of countless saints of modern times, and rewrote in more elegant fashion those of ancient saints either lost by enemy action or published with no grace of style’.446 Indeed, in this respect he was, in William’s opinion, second only to Bede. He was a striking, continental exception to William’s general denigration of other recent hagiographers, whether homegrown or not.447 In criticizing Osbern, William had been following in Eadmer’s footsteps,448 so English writers were not exempt from Eadmer’s attacks. But it is clear from the letter to Glastonbury that Eadmer took an even more jaundiced view than William about the activities of foreign hacks, whose services were needed not only because of the traditional historiographical inertia of the English, but also because of the losses sustained in the Conquest and its aftermath. (Eadmer lamented that the Canterbury fire of 1067 had consumed almost all the church’s books, ‘sacred and secular alike’.)449 It is difficult not to believe that his rare outburst of contempt for hired pens from overseas was informed by his 443 ‘Miracula S. Dunstani’, Lives and Miracles, pp. 188, 202. 444  London, BL, MS. Harley 5915, fo. 12, identified by Gullick, ‘Scribal Work of Eadmer ’, 175–8, 180, and Pl. I. 445  Life of King Edward, pp. xlvi–lii, lix. 446  GR IV. 342; cf. above, p. 28. 447  For Osbern and Faricius, see above, p. 28; for Coleman, VSW I.16, III. 18. 448 Eadmer, Lives and Miracles, pp. lxxiv–lxxvii. 449 Eadmer, Vita St Bregowini, in B.W.  Scholz, ‘Eadmer’s Life of Bregwine, Archbishop of Canterbury, 761–764’, Traditio, xxii (1966), 127–48, at 144.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  77 reading not just of recent English hagiography produced by foreigners, but also of  the likes of William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers. He might treat the accounts of the Conquest produced by overseas authors with an understated scepticism, unlike William of Malmesbury or Henry of Huntingdon. We have seen that his interpretation of the undertaking which Edward the Confessor had made to Duke William, of Harold’s oath to William, and of Harold’s response to William’s demand that he keep to what he had sworn, is implausible to the point of mockery.450 Yet archly improbable as all this seems, Eadmer had no alternative but to present most of the key events described in the Norman sources, and entirely absent from the English sources, as if, in some form or other, they had actually happened. Otherwise it would have been very difficult indeed to sustain in an analytical work of history, as opposed to an annalistic chronicle, the continuity of English history. And to this he, like the other twelfth-century historians of England, was committed as a fundamental principle, despite his main focus being on post-Conquest innovations. In that sense Eadmer, like William of Malmesbury and the other early twelfthcentury historians of England, demonstrates that the Normans had conquered not only England, but the English past. It was the latter conquest which enabled the Normans to justify the former, and to recreate England in their own image, on the premise that nothing had changed. This was the common ground between the official interpretation of the past and the early twelfth-century historians’ creation of Old English history. It enabled their vision to dominate all subsequent English historical writing on the subject, just as the new Romanesque cathedrals, which so impressed William of Malmesbury, and into which the relics of English saints were solemnly if selectively translated,451 still dominate England. The final statement of William’s Gesta regum has turned out, therefore, to be too modest: ‘If anyone. . . has a mind to follow me in writing on this subject, let him give me the credit for the collection of the facts, and make his own selection from the ma­ter­ial.’ On questions ranging in scale from Duke William’s claim to the overall structure of English history, William’s ‘selection from the material’ has proved to be definitive. But perhaps this is no more than William expected, and his final sentence is merely a flourish of false modesty, designed to defuse the arrogance of the claim that he had just made, to be ‘after Bede the only person, or the first, to set in order the continuous history of the English’. He had already ‘heard it whispered’ that someone was trying to follow in his footsteps. Clearly, he had his ear very close to the contemporary historiographical ground. Whether he was alluding to John of Worcester (whom William probably knew,452 and would 450  HN, p. 8. 451  For the revival of the practice of translating saints’ relics which accompanied the rebuilding of major churches, see Sharpe, ‘St Augustine’s Translation’, pp. 11–13. 452  See above, n. 233.

78  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 surely view as a mere annalist, rather than an historian) or Henry of Huntingdon (an annalist posturing as an historian?) or someone else, it is difficult to believe that he really thought anyone could or would surpass him. No one did. Five centuries later, when the Conquest had become a matter for heated political debate, John Milton wrote that William ‘must be acknowledg’d, both for stile and judgement, to be by far the best Writer of them all: but what labour is to be endur’d, turning over Volumes of Rubbish in the rest, Florence of Worster, Huntingdon, Simeon of Durham, . . .and many others of obscurer note, with all thir monachisms, is a penance to think’.453 Though a little hard on John of Worcester and Henry of Huntingdon, Milton’s assessment is accurate. William is pre-eminent among a group of historians who collectively mended the ‘broken chain’ of English history, not just in terms of his­ tor­ic­al writing, but the history of the kingdom of the English. They incorporated the Conquest into that history, and thereby restored its continuity. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that William considered history to be pre-eminent among the disciplines he had studied in his youth—it was superior to logic, medicine, and ethics454—or that for Henry, also echoing Sallust, it was knowledge of history that distinguished rational creatures from brutes.455 At the end of the twelfth century, however, William of Newburgh, more conventionally for a religious, characterized the writing of history as ‘an easy task’ when compared with the ‘lofty’ subject of theology.456 Even William of Malmesbury, in the preface to his Commentary of Lamentations, says that he regrets the amount of time he has spent on history, as opposed to scripture.457 He may, however, have felt that piety obliged him to express this sentiment, as a monk whose historical researches had frequently taken him away from his monastery, and had therefore necessitated neglect of his vocational obligations.458 In any case, he did not devote himself thereafter to scripture. He continued to write saints’ lives, and eventually reverted to English history, in the form of the Historia novella, which sought to bring the Gesta regum right up to date. As all these historians were well aware, history was not even a formal part of the curriculum in the contemporary schools,459 because it had not been a formal 453 J.  Milton, History of Britain, that Part especially now call’d England. From the traditional ­beginning, continu’d to the Norman Conquest (London 1670), p. 173. 454  GR II. pr. 455  HA pr.; Sallust, Bellum Catilinae I; cf. D.  Greenway, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and Bede’, in J.-P. Genet, ed., La Historiographie médiévale en Europe (Paris 1991), pp. 43–50, at 43. 456  CRSHR i. 4. 457  Liber super explanationem lamentationum Ieremiae prophetae, pr.; GP ii. p. xxv. 458  GP ii. p. xliv; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 7–8. Southern, St Anselm and his Biographer, p. 347, points to the incompatibility between monastic life and sustained intellectual concentration. 459  L.B. Mortensen, ‘The Texts and Contexts of Ancient Roman History in Twelfth-century Western Scholarship’, in P. Magdalino, ed., The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe (London 1992), pp. 99–116, at 115.

Early 12th-c. Perspective in English Writing  79 part of the classical curriculum. It was a literary subcategory of rhetoric. But despite its traditionally lowly status, it unavoidably inveigled itself into most of the formal subjects.460 Moreover, they all understood that in twelfth-century England it had assumed an exceptionally important role. That role is explained by the Conquest, the event with which William of Newburgh chose to begin his ­narrative, after a lengthy demolition of the ‘laughable web of fiction’461 spun over the pre-Conquest period by Geoffrey of Monmouth. William of Malmesbury makes it perfectly clear that he knew he was doing something extraordinary; his fellow historians, with many of whom he can be shown to have collaborated, were less overtly arrogant, but were not unconscious of the unprecedented nature of their collective enterprise. And this was widely recognized. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, treated with respect when new by Robert of Torigni,462 Henry of Huntingdon,463 and something approaching reverence by Alfred of Beverley,464 if later ridiculed by William of Newburgh and Gerald of Wales,465 is most plausibly read as a satire on the whole school.466 Geoffrey supplied a fictive ancient British history which ended shortly after the point where most of them started their English history,467 and which addressed the theme of conquest in the guise of Romans and Saxons, rather than Normans. His history filled a blank space, because prior to the period covered by Bede, there was only Gildas; and Gildas’s book, as William of Newburgh observed, was ‘unpolished’, and copies were very scarce.468 He might have added that even when a rare copy of Gildas was tracked down, it was so ominously prophetic in tone that it was unhelpfully uninformative about actual events. Geoffrey of Monmouth might have been meretricious, but he packed his book with (spurious) detail. To 460  Ray, ‘Medieval Historiography’, 51; Kempshall, Rhetoric and History, ch. 2. 461  CRSHR i. 11. 462  CRSHR iv. 65–6; for possible implicit reservations on his part, see van Houts, ‘Normandy’s View of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, in Brett and Woodman, eds, Anglo-Saxon Past, p. 132. 463  HA, Epistola Warino, pp. 558–82, which is copied by Robert of Torigni; N. Wright, ‘The Place of Henry of Huntingdon’s Epistola ad Warinum in the Text-History of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie: A Preliminary Investigation’, in G. Jondorf and D.N. Dumville, eds, France and the British Isles in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Essays by Members of Girton College, Cambridge, in Memory of Ruth Morgan (Woodbridge 1991), pp. 71–113. 464  Aluredi Beverlacensis annales sive historia de gestis regum Britanniae, ed. T.  Hearne (Oxford 1716); Wright, ‘Anglo-Norman Historians and Hegesippus’, 178. 465 Gerald of Wales, Itinerarium Kambriae, in Opera, ed. J.S.  Brewer, J.F.  Dimmock, and G.F. Warner, 8 vols, RS (1861–91), vi. 1–152, at 58. 466 C.N.L.  Brooke, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth as a Historian’, in C.N.L.  Brooke, D.E.  Luscombe, G.H.  Martin, and D.  Owen, eds, Church and Government in the Middle Ages. Essays Presented to C.R. Cheney on his 70th Birthday (Cambridge 1976), pp. pp. 77–91, esp. 78–80, 83–4; cf. V.I.J. Flint, ‘The Historia Regum of Geoffrey of Monmouth: Parody and its Purpose, a Suggestion’, Speculum, liv (1979), 447–68, esp. 452–60. 467 Henry of Huntingdon, who begins with the first Roman incursions into Britain, is an exception. 468  Historia, pr.; OV vi. 382 and n. 2, attributed to Gildas information he had derived from Nennius; Henry of Huntingdon used Gildas for his accounts of the Trojan origins of Britain and the reign of Arthur: HA, pp. xc–xci.

80  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 adapt William of Malmesbury’s antique metaphor, Geoffrey did not seek to play any part in mending a break in the chain of English history, thereby establishing—or re-establishing—its continuity with the present. That was what William, Henry of Huntingdon, and the rest had already done. Rather, Geoffrey parodied their achievement by forging an antecedent British chain, millennia rather than mere centuries long, the final link of which might be connected to the first link of the English one.

2

The Audiences for English History in the Early Twelfth Century Parody of recent English historiography on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s scale, enjoying the degree of enduring popularity attested by over 220 surviving medieval manuscripts,1 almost 80 of which can be dated to the twelfth century,2 is itself a fulsome acknowledgement of the extent and significance of the English historical enterprise of that century’s early decades. Within a few years of completion, copies of his Historia had evidently spread to Normandy, for that was where Robert of Torigni introduced Henry of Huntingdon to it,3 and almost certainly where Orderic abstracted the prophecies of Merlin from it.4 It was dedicated in the first place to Henry I’s bastard son Robert, earl of Gloucester,5 who had eventually been made a co-dedicatee of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum6 (along with the existing dedicatee, his half-sister the Empress Matilda).7 The earl had, according to William, been a generous patron to men of letters.8 A late twelfth-century manuscript from Robert’s Cistercian foundation at Margam includes three historical works dedicated to him: William’s Gesta regum and Historia novella, and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie.9 Gaimar explains in his epilogue that it was Robert who had supplied Walter Espec with the ‘geste’ which Robert had previously had translated from Welsh books about the British kings, that Walter had lent it to the fitzGilberts, and that Gaimar had made his own copy

1 J.C. Crick, The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vol. III., A Summary Catalogue of the Manuscripts (Woodbridge 1989); J.C. Crick, ‘Two Newly Located Manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae’, Arthurian Literature, xiii (1995), 151–6; J.  Tahkokallio, ‘Update to the List of Manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae’, Arthurian Literature, xxxii (2015), 187–203. 2 J.  Tahkokallio, The Anglo-Norman Historical Canon: Publishing and Manuscript Culture (Cambridge 2019), p. 49. 3  HA, Epistola Warino, p. 558. 4  OV i. 47, 62; vi. 380–8. 5  Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain. An Edition and Translation of De Gestis Britonum, ed. M.D. Reeve and N. Wright (Woodbridge 2007), pr; cf. pp. ix–x, xix. 6  GR I. ep. iii, V. 446–7; Tahkokallio, Historical Canon, pp. 23–4. William extended the dedication to include Robert too for the second version, produced 1127–9. 7  GR I. ep. ii. A first letter, addressed to King David of Scotland, asked him to ensure that the book and an accompanying messenger should reach his niece the Empress: GR I.  ep. I; Takkokallio, Historical Canon, p. 19. 8  Another possible literary client is Serlo of Wilton, the poet, who wrote Earl Robert’s epitaph: Serlon de Wilton: Poèmes latins, ed. J. Olberg (Stockholm 1965), pp. 94–5. 9  London, BL, MS. Royal 13. D. ii; Tahkokallio, Historical Canon, pp. 25–6. The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

82  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 of it.10 For a number of reasons, it is certain that this book is a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia, which Gaimar evidently used, chiefly for the now lost early portion of his poem.11 All this suggests that Earl Robert was very interested in history, particularly English (and probably also British) history, in Latin as well as in his own vernacular; and that his tastes were not unusual for an aristocratic layman (or, on the evidence of his half-sister and Constance fitzGilbert, a laywoman). In the celebrated speech written by Aelred of Rievaulx probably in 115212 and attributed to Walter Espec prior to the battle of the Standard in 1138, Walter is made to claim that, when at leisure, he both ‘occupies’ himself with his­ tor­ies and listens attentively to tales of the deeds of his ancestors. For him, history was a sedate lay pastime comparable to playing dice or chess.13 Gaimar’s testimony suggests that this may really have been the case. According to Alfred of Beverley, it was by the early 1140s a ‘sign of rusticity’ not to be familiar with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s book.14 Most of the great histories of the early twelfth century were written by monks, and monks by vocation, and indeed by law, were deemed to have already passed out of the secular world. But the interests of these histories were by no means exclusively claustral, or unworldly. This is most clearly illustrated in the division between William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum and his Gesta pontificum. With characteristic subtlety, he appears to signal this in the opening words of the prologue to Gesta regum. These invoke Bede, but they do not echo Bede’s opening words, which promise an ecclesiastical history of the English. Rather, as we have already seen, in so far as they have a model it is the preface to Justinus’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus’s world history, which, of course, made no reference to the church.15 The Gesta regum, like Justinus’s epitome, was to be a secular history: in this respect, unlike his handling of sources or his relative weighting of form and substance, William was carefully aligning himself with one of his antique models. Even if, like most historians, he drafted his prologue at a late stage, it must have become clear to him quite quickly as he proceeded with Gesta regum that ecclesiastical history would require separate treatment.16 At some point during the 10 Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, ed. I. Short (Oxford 2009), ll. 6449–54; Tahkokallio, Historical Canon, pp. 57–9. 11  I.  Short, ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Liber vetustissimus’, Speculum, lxix (1994), 323–43, at 327, 338. 12  For this dating, see R. Sharpe, ‘Banners of the Northern Saints’, in M. Coombe, A. Mouron, and C. Whitehead, eds, Saints of North-East England, 600–1500 (Turnhout 2017), pp. 245–304, at 264–5 n. 61. 13  Aelred of Rievaulx, Relatio de Standardo, in CRSHR iii. 185–9, at 185. 14  Aluredi Beverlacensis annales sive historia de gestis regum Britanniae, ed. T.  Hearne (Oxford 1716), p. 2. 15 Justinus, Epitoma, part of which William had copied out in Bodleian Library, MS. Arch. Seld. B.16; B.  Guenée, ‘L’histoire entre l’éloquence et la science. Quelques remarques sur le prologue de Guillaume de Malmesbury à ses Gesta regum Anglorum’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, cxxvi (1982), 357–70, at 361–2. 16  GR I. 83, II. 149, 199, V. 445, all cited by Thomson, GR ii. p. xx; GP i. pp. xxi, xxiv–xxv.

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  83 subsequent writing of Gesta pontificum, he began to cross-refer to Gesta regum, by that title, as a separate work, and amended earlier cross-references accordingly.17 The division is manifest in the different structure of the two works. It seems that he began Gesta pontificum with the archdiocese of Canterbury, much as Gesta regum had opened with Kent, the first kingdom to be converted. But as he explained in the prologue to Book II of Gesta pontificum, it had become clear that it was impossible to continue to survey the English dioceses in accordance with Gesta regum’s opening survey of the Old English kingdoms. After Kent, Gesta regum gave pride of place to Wessex, before touching more briefly on the other kingdoms. According to William, this was a function of the amount of available evidence; but it also, of course, accorded with his understanding of Wessex’s destiny to unify England, under Ecgberht, into a single kingdom.18 With the English dioceses, by contrast, it was quite a different matter. Grouped within the Old English kingdoms in which they had originated, they had to be surveyed in order of foundation,19 and perhaps partly for that reason, separately. This meant dealing with the East Saxons and East Angles before the West Saxons.20 His most basic aim was to record at the very least the name of each successive bishop in each see—and this information survived for the East Saxon and East Anglian dio­ ceses.21 In this crucial diocesan respect, William chose not to follow the overarching teleological chronology of Gesta regum, or that of the most authoritative model for ecclesiastical history: Rufinus of Aquileia’s late fourth-century Latin version of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History.22 Rufinus, and therefore Bede, who had followed his example, proceeded in a roughly chronological order, whereas the Gesta pontificum goes back to the beginning in its account of each bishopric. This meant that it was impossible to reconcile the structure of Gesta pontificum with that of Gesta regum. Whatever William’s original intentions, the two works were bound to become distinct, however extensively he cross-referenced them. And works so distinct in structure and in subject matter were likely to be addressed to rather different audiences, or at least designed to appeal to pro­spect­ ive audiences in different ways. In the absence of any specific dedicatees of Gesta pontificum, to provide clues as to its intended audience, it might be assumed to share those of Gesta regum, given that the two books began as one. Book V of Gesta pontificum, concerning the life and miracles of Aldhelm, Malmesbury’s saint, in a sense fulfils a request 17  GP ii. p. xxi and n. 9. 18  GR I. pr.; cf. II. 106. 19  GP II. pr.; ii. p. xxviii. 20  GP II. pr. 1–2. 21  GP pr. 3, cf. II. 72. 2, 73. 15. 22  It is echoed in GP pr: see ii. pp. xxxiii, 13–14. A sheet from a copy in William’s hand survives: Oxford, Merton College, MS. 181, fo. 231. A copy, c. 1100, was made at Christ Church: Cambridge, CCC, MS. 187; a Salisbury copy of the early twelfth century is also extant: Salisbury, Cathedral Library, MS. 139. Both bear evidence of having been corrected by reference to witnesses other than the original exemplar: T.  Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral c. 1075–c. 1125 (Oxford 1992), pp. 26, 54–5.

84  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 which Queen Matilda had made to William in person, and which William records in the second dedicatory epistle of Gesta regum.23 The queen had become especially interested in Aldhelm because William considered that Aldhelm was of the Old English royal line,24 as she was intensely proud of being.25 This suggests that at least some of the content of Gesta pontificum was already in William’s mind when he wrote Gesta regum, and also that laymen and women might well take an interest in that content (if, in this instance, an unusual and peculiarly worldly one, shared by her brother, King David).26 Nevertheless, Gesta pontificum differs as much in content as it does in structure from Gesta regum. Within the framework of a collection of diocesan histories were found histories of individual monastic houses within each diocese, grouped by shire, and of the lives and cults of the saints traditionally associated with them. It is clear that much of this content would not have as great an appeal to a lay audience as to the religious in those churches. As we have seen, Gesta regum aspired to range further afield than England in its coverage. The most obvious manifestation of this ambition was William’s account of the First Crusade, which, with its stirring descriptions of military engagements (as distinct from the movements of armies, for which he had little patience),27 would fit one of the criteria stipulated by Gaimar for making history appealing to laymen. It has been shown that sample passages from this account display an astonishing virtuosity in their manipulation of Roman authors, and that this manipulation lends William’s text an allusive subtlety and nuance.28 He is thought to have polished this account even more carefully than other parts of Gesta regum.29 Anyone less learned than the author, whether cleric or layman, would probably have been incapable of consciously savouring any more than a few grains of this sprinkling of ‘Roman salt’.30 But the rhetorical piquancy which it lent to William’s prose did not depend on his audience grasping any, let alone all, of his ingenious classical allusions: this is evident, for instance, in his echoing of Suetonius’ portraits of several of the Caesars in his depiction of William Rufus.31 That piquancy inhered not only in the exotic crusading excursion from his main theme, and in other anecdotal digressions designed to afford the reader 23  GR I. ep. ii. 24  For William’s shifting opinion on this question, see: GR ii. p. 9; GP ii. pp. 247–9; R.M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 2nd edn (Woodbridge 2003), p. 38. 25  Henry of Huntingdon, HA IX. 33; OV iii. 354–6. 26  GR I. ep. i. 27  GR II.121. 28 N.  Wright, ‘William of Malmesbury and Latin Poetry: Further Evidence for a Benedictine’s Reading’, Revue Bénédictine, ci (1991), 122–53; N.  Wright, ‘“Industriae Testimonium”: William of Malmesbury and Latin Poetry Revisited’, Revue Bénédictine, ciii (1993), 482–531; further, M.  Winterbottom, ‘Words, Words, Words. . .’, in R.M. Thomson et al., eds, Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge 2017), pp. 203–18. 29 Thomson, William of Malmesbury, p. 179.    30  GR I. pr. 4. 31  N. Wright, ‘The 12th-Century Renaissance in Anglo-Norman England: William of Malmesbury and Joseph of Exeter’, in R. Ashdowne and C. White, eds, Latin in Medieval Britain: Proceedings of the British Academy, ccvi (2017), 73–84, at 75–7.

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  85 or auditor some relief from the detailed narrative of the reigns of English kings, but in that narrative itself.32 Gesta pontificum is written in Latin which is just as studiedly elegant as that of Gesta regum, but it lacks, for obvious reasons, tales of chivalric derring do. Unlike Gesta regum, it scarcely ventures abroad, other than when following a few English prelates on their continental peregrinations.33 Its digressions are less frequent than those in Gesta regum, and, in view of the book’s main theme, they are often improving, miraculous tales about individual saints. True, Gesta regum also contains miraculous matter; but the narrowing of focus in Gesta pontificum again suggests that it was intended for a more restricted, clerical audience—for the most part, a monastic one. Scenes from clerical life afforded plenty of scope for entertainment, often in the guise of denunciations of contemporary clerical—usually, but not exclusively, episcopal—mores.34 England was exceptional in contemporary Christendom in the sense that several of its cathedral chapters were monastic. This was one respect in which the Normans did not in the end attempt systematically to bring England into closer conformity with the continental norm. In some instances cathedral chapters were reconstituted on a secular basis along continental lines, as happened at York, and the newly translated Lincoln and Old Sarum.35 But overall the number of monastic cathedrals was increased, as some reforming bishops of continental origin replaced secular canons with monks, and justified the changes by presenting them as a restoration of ancient tradition.36 William of St-Calais’ replacement of the canons at Durham in 1083 is a case in point.37 But such changes did not prevent—indeed, they seem rather to have exacerbated—tensions between bishops and their predominantly English monks. At Durham, both the change and the tensions proved an important stimulus to Symeon’s historical investigations, and extensive revisions of what he first drafted.38 Elsewhere similar effects were achieved by different means. After the death of the abbot of Bath in 1087, John of Tours, consecrated bishop of Wells in 1088, bought the vacant abbey from the king and transferred his see to Bath, merging it with the abbey, and thereby in effect combining the office of bishop with that of abbot. He then deprived the 32  GR ii. pp. 1–4, 218–19. 33  GP ii. p. xlvi. 34  GP II. 73. 22, 96, III. 134, IV. 137; cf. 68.3 on abbots: ‘For a horde of Norman abbots had flooded the land . . ., bringing to the English sermons they had practised and polished in their own country, and enjoying a leisurely life in successive places at the expense of others.’ 35  See above, p. 32. 36 D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England. A History of its Development from the Times of St Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 940–1216, 2nd edn (Cambridge 1963), pp. 129–34, 619–31; K.  Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages. A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to the Fourteenth Century (Manchester 1949), pp. 10–12. 37  Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius hoc est Dunhelmensis ecclesie, ed. D. Rollason (Oxford 2000), pp. lxxxi–lxxxv, 228–30. 38  Libellus, pp. lxxxvi–lxxxvii; D. Rollason, ‘The Making of the Libellus de exordio: The Evidence of Erasures and Alterations in the Two Earliest Manuscripts’, in D.  Rollason, ed., Symeon of Durham. Historian of Durham and the North (Stamford 1998), pp. 140–56.

86  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 monks—‘dullards and to his mind barbarians’—of the estates dedicated to their sustenance.39 This cannot have made for easy relations, at least until, according to William of Malmesbury, Bishop John eventually mellowed. In this period bishops were also becoming more assertive in controlling monastic houses within their dioceses even when they did not seek to annex them as their own cathedral chapters.40 All these developments were likely to provoke monastic resentment, to which Gesta pontificum pandered. The intimacy and intensity of communal living lent it a particular Trollopian relish. The fifth book, concerned with Aldhelm and the history of Malmesbury Abbey, does not fit into the structure of Gesta pontificum, as William candidly concedes in the prologue. It is not concerned with a diocese, or a number of dioceses. It is strictly parochial, even domestic. Its verbatim reproduction of charters in favour of the abbey, and its assumption of an intimate knowledge of local church buildings, suggest that its intended audience consisted of William’s brethren (and, in this particular case, perhaps also Queen Matilda’s shade). It is more akin to his De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie41 than to the rest of Gesta pontificum, which is clearly not parochial in this sense, although the clergy of the individual churches visited by William on his research trips were doubtless especially interested in what he had to say about the history of their own house and its saints.42 The overall message of Gesta pontificum was much more than that of an elab­or­ate diocesan gazetteer. As the work’s structure reveals, it was conceived as a whole, as an historical account of almost all the major churches of the kingdom,43 and of their saints. It was unprecedented and unparalleled; by contrast with Gesta regum, where he at least had versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in this enterprise William benefited from no ‘beacon shining bright... to keep my course from straying’.44 In Southern’s words, it extended ‘to the whole kingdom the corporate aims of each monastic researcher of [William’s] day.’45 The love of country which William professes at the opening of Gesta regum46 is just as apparent in Gesta pontificum. Perhaps it was in part this which prompted him to provide, in addition to his treatment of churches and saints, a topographical survey of the whole kingdom, most especially of its major towns.47 The diocesan arrangement facilitated such a survey in a way which the Gesta regum’s roughly chronological narrative could not. 39  GP II. 90. 2–4; GR IV. 340. 1–2; EEA, x: Bath and Wells 1061–1205, ed. F.M.R. Ramsey (Oxford 1995), p. xxiv. Cf. Robert of Limesey, bishop of Chester, who, according to William, despoiled the abbey of Coventry, and moved his see there in 1102: GP IV. 173; GR IV. 341. 40 M. Brett, The English Church under Henry I (Oxford 1975), pp. 141–61. 41  All manuscripts of the De antiquitate come from Glastonbury, though it was known to Gerald of Wales: The Early History of Glastonbury. An Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury’s De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie, ed. J. Scott (Woodbridge 1981), pp. 36–9, 182–4. 42  GP ii. pp. xli–xliv; for the trips, see Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 72–3. 43  GP III. 116. 3. 44  GP pr. 4; cf. above, p. 14. 45  R.W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 4: The Sense of the Past’, repr. in his History and Historians, ed. R. Bartlett (Oxford 2004), pp. 66–83, at 76. 46  GR I. pr. 1. 4. 47  GP II. 73, 86.1, 94. 4, III. 99.1, IV. 153.1, 154, 163.1, 172.4.

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  87 In view of the attention William devoted to ecclesiastical architecture—he comments on almost every major Romanesque rebuilding48—he also perhaps considered that a treatment of buildings fitted better here than in Gesta regum. It would, after all, have been an absorbing subject for the monks who worshipped in the new churches and lived in the new buildings he described. In most cases they had lived through the process of construction. Although he reveals great interest in surviving ancient church buildings, identifying Roman49 and even British50 remains, the only suggestion that the comprehensive rebuilding of major Old English churches might be a matter of regret lies in his two accounts of Wulfstan’s weeping at the demolition of the old cathedral church at Worcester.51 But the point of that affecting tale was not to lament the razing of Old England. Rather, it was to portray Wulfstan’s exemplary piety in recognizing the danger of substituting the current material renewal of England’s church buildings for the inner, spiritual renewal of which the new buildings should be no more than an outward and visible sign. In this respect, as in his Englishness, he was an exception to the modern episcopal rule. Ranulf Flambard, bishop of Durham, so called because he and his policies were ‘like a devouring flame’,52 even sought to obscure his manifest spiritual failings by lavish expenditure on building projects.53 By contrast with Eadmer’s sense of elegiac regret for a world which had so recently been destroyed, in an architectural as in other senses, William exulted in the Romanesque rebuilding of England’s churches.54 He does not appear to have seen it as any sort of threat to the continuity of Old English foundations, the expansion of which was facilitated by the provision of large, new premises. Indeed, use of the historic precedence of English sees as the main organizing principle of Gesta pontificum implicitly proclaims that wholesale rebuilding, often on new sites, made no difference to the survival of those churches as institutions over the Conquest. On the contrary, not unlike the swift replacement of English prelates with continental reformers in the early years of the Conqueror’s reign, it rapidly contributed to their renaissance. The message for the intended monastic audience of Gesta pontificum was ultimately a reassuring one: these individual ecclesiastical chains had not been broken in 1066; rather, they had been forged anew, and thereby tempered. They were now stronger than they had been for many centuries, and more substantial than they had ever been. That message was reassuring because of the intense loyalty felt by every monk towards his own community, which comprised not just the living members, but

48  GP ii. pp. xxxix–xl. 49  GP III. 117. 1–2 (Hexham); further, ii. pp. 176–7. William had visited Carlisle, where a Roman triclinium was still standing, despite the best efforts of the Northern weather and demolition gangs: 99. 3. 50  GP IV. 160. 2 (Evesham); De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie, cc. 6–7, 18; GR I. 20 (Glastonbury). 51  GP IV. 141. 4–5; VSW III. 10. 3; see above, p. 19.    52  Orderic iv. 172. 53  GP III. 134. 54  GR III. 246. 2.

88  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 each and every brother, from the time of its foundation.55 The souls of the departed—most particularly, any who had been beatified and whose relics could be venerated—were constantly remembered in the daily devotions of those still corporeally present, and by other confederate houses. As was apparent from hagiographies, some of them were considered to be intermittently active presences in the life of the community. Indeed, its undying character reflected that of the saint or saints to whom it was dedicated, embodied in their venerated relics. Yet there were other, less high-minded sources of reassurance, or at least of solace. Although, as William lamented, new prelates were almost exclusively of continental origin, this was not true of the brethren. Although there had been Frenchspeaking monks at Canterbury already in the 1070s,56 most monks seem to have remained predominantly English, even in the early twelfth century.57 Against the date 14 October, an addition to the early twelfth-century Martyrology of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, records the deaths of ‘Harold king of the English and very many brothers of ours’, meaning not monks but lay casualties who were members of the abbey’s confraternity.58 Whoever made that entry was determined to give Harold his proper title. One would expect, therefore, the intended audience of the Gesta pontificum to be largely English. In its original form, the book sometimes moves beyond resentment to savage denigration of prelates from overseas. The offences which Ranulf Flambard attempted to conceal by lavish expenditure on church buildings ranged from extortion and the successful

55  It is likely that the same was true of nuns. Although Gesta pontificum does consider some nunneries—e.g. Barking Abbey II. 73. 13–14—Lanfranc’s Monastic Constitutions prescribe no regulations for female monastic life. We know, however, that at Barking in the late twelfth century a (French) vernacular verse life of Edward the Confessor was written, on the basis of Aelred of Rievaulx’s Vita. 56  Eadmer of Canterbury, ‘Miracula S. Dunstani’, in Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, ed. A.J. Turner and B.J. Muir (Oxford 2006), p. 186. I am grateful to Richard Sharpe for drawing my attention to the implications of this miracle story. 57 H.M. Thomas, The English and the Normans. Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity 1066–c. 1220 (Oxford 2003), pp. 204–08; E. Mason, St Wulfstan of Worcester, c. 1008–1095 (Oxford 1990), p. 222; I. Atkins, ‘The Church of Worcester from the Eighth to the Twelfth Century: Part II’, Antiquaries Journal, xx (1940), 1–38, 203–28, at 218–20. In the Worcester instance, fewer than half the names of Worcester monks entered in the Durham Liber vitae c. 1104 are English: The Durham Liber Vitae: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A. VII: Edition and Digital Facsimile, ed. D. Rollason and L. Rollason, 3 vols (London 2007), B.3.36, iii. 127; the greater numbers of Durham monks from 1083 to c. 1120 are at first preponderantly English, but rapidly become more balanced: C.1–C.112, iii. 129– 45. However, a Norman name did not necessarily imply that its bearer was not English: Eadmer’s nephew was called Haimo, and another relative Henry: The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, by Eadmer, ed. R.W. Southern (Oxford 1972), p. 159 n. 1; A. Wilmart, ‘Les Reliques de Saint Ouen à Cantorbéry’, Analecta Bollandiana, li (1933), 285–92, at 288. Even Eadmer spelled his English name in the Norman way in his autograph: Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles, p. xiii n. 1. Anselm mentions an English monk called Normannus: S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Opera omnia, ed. F.S. Schmitt, 6 vols (Rome–Edinburgh 1938–61), iv. 141–2, ep. 234. 58  London, BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius C. xii, fo. 145v, photographed in C. Breay and J. Story, eds, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. Art, Word, War (London 2018), no. 158, and discussed in E.C.  Pastan and S.D. White, with K. Gilbert, The Bayeux Tapestry and its Contexts. A Reassessment (Woodbridge 2014), pp. 98–9. The addition is in a smaller script, but looks contemporaneous. Earl Godwin is also commemorated, fo. 125v.

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  89 promotion of simony as a royal policy, to humiliating the monks of Durham by subjecting them to waitress service by provocatively-clad wenches.59 Bishop Samson, Wulfstan’s Norman successor, was greedy in a literal as well as a metaphorical sense: he would have dinner served to him in a dish capable of holding half a sow and twenty-four chickens.60 Wulfstan, by contrast, had foresworn meat for ever, after having once been momentarily distracted while celebrating mass by the aroma of a roasting goose.61 Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, and king’s chancellor, was so avaricious that he boasted that he was doing the monks of Eynsham Abbey a great favour if he allowed them the bare sustenance required to fend off death by starvation.62 He once expressed disdain for the monk’s cowl to a cowled anchorite, who retorted that when the bishop’s last hour came, he would be desperate to don one himself, but would be incapable of voicing his newly conceived vocation.63 (It is easy to imagine the satisfied smirks of the audience at the peculiarly fitting character of this prophesied come-uppance, for William had just recounted how the bishop was struck dumb with apoplexy shortly before his death, while out riding with the king.) Rumour had it that Lanfranc himself had taken bribes.64 William’s voicing of sullen English resentment in Gesta pontificum was not confined to denunciation of prelates: the Conqueror had extorted vast sums of money from the English in order to ‘establish peace in a province which he had occupied by arms. But what sort of excuse is that, to rob the wretched inhabitants of what he proposed to give to their enemies?’65 In the view attributed to Wulfstan of Worcester, the grasping Norman regime was an Old Testament-style ‘scourge of God’, a just punishment inflicted on the sinful English. This did not imply that God held His chosen instrument of punishment in any higher regard.66 The Egyptians, Philistines, and Amalekites had not been divine favourites. As we have seen, in his Vita  S.  Dunstani, William denounced King Æthelred for marrying Emma, daughter of Richard, duke of Normandy, and thereby ensuring that his posterity would eventually lose England.67 William was informing the Glastonbury monks about the origin of the pretext for the Conquest, rather than describing its effects—though he implied a lot about the latter with his subsequent aside about the current advisability of self-censorship.68 But they were hardly in need of instruction about Norman tyranny. The Conqueror had enfeoffed many of his followers on the abbey’s lands;69 and Thurstan, the first 59  GP III. 134.3β 1–2. 60  GP IV. 150β 1–4. 61  GP IV. 137. 3–4; VSW III. 2. 62  GP IV. 177. 6β 1. 63  GP IV. 177. 7β. 64  GP I. 42. 6β 3. 65  GP I. 42. 6β 4–5, where he cross-refers to what he had written in GR III. pr. 1. 66  GP I. 42, 6β 5–6, cf. GR III. 280. The story does not appear in VSW, but compare its account of Wulfstan’s dire prognostications about a punitive invasion if English men did not desist from wearing their hair effeminately long: I. 16. 67  William of Malmesbury, VSD II. 34. 3–4, cf. p. xxxiv; see above, p. 51. 68  On one of William’s reasons for self-censorship in this instance, see above, pp. 51, 56. 69  De antiquitate Glastonie eccelsie, c. 74, p. 152.

90  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Norman abbot, though allegedly capable of reciting its Old English charters from memory in defence of its interests,70 squandered its resources to sate his own gluttony and that of his armed retinue.71 His most notorious act of tyranny,72 however, arose not from greed, but from his determination to impose Norman musical usage, perhaps (as suggested by John of Worcester) that of Fécamp, apparently influential elsewhere in England,73 perhaps that of Bec, on English monks of this grand old house. They proved peculiarly recalcitrant.74 (Who the precentor/cantor was, and what role he played in the episode, is not recorded in any of the many outraged and not entirely consistent accounts.) When the abbot’s confrontation with the brethren reached its climax, the monks fled from the chapter house into the church. Several who sought sanctuary at the high altar were cut down in a hail of arrows fired by the members of the abbot’s retinue. One monk vainly tried to shield himself with a silver crucifix. A miraculous effusion of blood from the figure of Christ, wounded below the knees, mingled with that of the slain on the altar steps, and dripped onto the floor of the church. The wooden rood, directly above the altar, did not escape the desecration. It was left bristling with arrows.75 So notorious did this atrocity become that it appeared, much more briefly, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,76 the Worcester Chronicon,77 and the Gesta regum,78 and (probably revealing that the story had spread to Normandy) Orderic’s Historia.79 In the aftermath the Conqueror felt it necessary to send Thurstan back to St-Etienne, Caen, and also to disperse many of the Glastonbury monks around other houses ‘to be watched over’.80 He appears to have been worried that the wealthiest abbey in England—the burial place of Eadmer’s royal hero, King Edgar—might become a breeding ground for English resentment. There is no 70  De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie, c. 76, p. 155.    71  GP II. 91.3; cf. OV ii. 270. 72  ‘The abbots, carried away by their lofty station, play the tyrant rather than the churchman’: GP II. 91.3. 73  Herbert Losinga, bishop of Norwich, and formerly prior of Fécamp, sought to import elements of Fécamp liturgy to Norwich at the time of the foundation of the cathedral’s priory: Epistolae Herberti de Losinga, primi episcopi Norwicensis, Osberti de Clara et Elmeri, prioris Cantuariensis, ed. R.  Anstruther, Caxton Soc. (London 1846), p. 68; D.  Chadd, ‘The Medieval Customary of the Cathedral Priory’, in I.  Atherton, E.  Fernie, C.  Harper-Bill, and H.  Smith, eds, Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese, 1096–1996 (London 1996), pp. 314–38, at 315–16. 74  D.  Hiley, ‘Thurstan of Caen and Plainchant at Glastonbury: Musicological Reflections on the Norman Conquest’, PBA, lxxii (1986), 57–90, who suggests, 84, that an attempt to impose Bec chants, or Bec musical versions of existing chants, were the most likely scenarios. Thurstan came from Caen, which followed Bec practice. 75  GP II. 91. 4; GR III. 270; and in most detail, De antiquitate, c. 78, pp. 156–8; discussed by Knowles, Monastic Order, pp. 553–5. The extant text of De antiquitate, an interpolated version dating from the mid-thirteenth century, identifies ‘Orosius’ as William’s main source for the event. It seems unlikely that William himself could have made such a mistake, though it is conceivable that his source was bound up with a copy of Orosius. There was a copy of the Old English Orosius in the abbey library probably by the end of the tenth century: M. Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford 2006), p. 73. However, the name in De antiquitate, may well be a late copyist’s error. 76  ASC (E) s.a. 1083. 77  JW ii. 40–2. 78  GR III. 270. 79  OV ii. 270. 80  De antiquitate, c. 78, p. 158.

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  91 record that the imposition of a new liturgy on the canons of Durham by Bishop Walcher, William of St-Calais’ predecessor, had provoked a similar reaction.81 Indeed, it was probably he who showed some sensitivity in adapting elements of the traditional office.82 There was resentment enough at Durham for other ­reasons: Walcher’s assassination in 1080 was variously blamed on the behaviour of his armed retinue,83 and on the machinations of Leobwine, his chaplain.84 Whether or not a continental prelate’s men-at-arms were recorded as imposing new liturgical practices, coercion of monks at the point of the sword was peculiarly enraging. Perhaps it was the very notoriety of the sacrilegious incident at Glastonbury which dissuaded William of Malmesbury from revising, or even deleting, it from the Gesta pontificum, as he refined his text over the years. For in accordance with his dictum that some things were best not written down, his second, more prudent thoughts seem to have led him to tone down, or even to expurgate, many of those sharp expressions of monastic sentiment which must have been designed to appeal to monastic audiences.85 Most of these were couched in entertaining anecdotes which were also, perforce, lost in revision. The very success of the work, like that of the Gesta regum, may have prompted William on second thoughts to bite his lip. Even Ranulf Flambard, the most notorious of post-Conquest prelates, benefited to a degree: the story about his malicious exploitation of comely waitresses disappeared.86 Almost all the original denigration of Samson, bishop of Worcester, and of his immediate successor Theulf, was deleted.87 That reckless disparager of the monastic cowl, Bishop Robert Bloet, was no longer said to have been so, nor to have bragged about his exemplary beneficence to the monks of Evesham in allowing them scarcely enough nourishment to avert death by starvation. The daring suggestion that even Archbishop Lanfranc might have been susceptible to bribery was excised.88 On reflection, it must have seemed still more advisable to delete his de­nun­ci­ ation of the Conqueror’s regime, and Bishop Wulfstan’s characterization of it in terms derived from the Old Testament, as divine retribution.89 This particular revision bears comparison with some of those he made to the Gesta regum. That work had, of course, always been intended for a less restricted audience than the Gesta pontificum, and perhaps for that reason, had, from its earliest version, been 81 Symeon, Libellus, pp. 194–6. 82  C. Hohler, ‘The Durham Services in Honour of St. Cuthbert’, in C.F. Battiscombe, ed., The Relics of St Cuthert (Oxford 1956), pp. 155–87, at 157. 83 Symeon, Libellus, pp. 212, 216–18. 84  JW iii. 32–6, s.a. 1080; GR III. 271. 85  It is easy to demonstrate this, because several extant copies descend from a lost copy, conventionally known as β, which was taken of William’s autograph before he began to revise it: GP i. pp. xv–xvii, xxiii, xxvii; see also Willelmi Malmesbiriensis monachi, De gestis pontificum Anglorum, libri quinque, ed. N.E.S.A. Hamilton, RS (1870), pp. xv–xvi; further Tahkokallio, Historical Canon, pp. 32–3. 86  GP III. 134. 3β 1–2. 87  GP IV. 150. β-151. β. 88  GP I. 42. 6β 3. 89  GP I. 42. 6β 5, II. 49, citing Judith 8: 26–7.

92  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 more oblique and insinuating in its criticisms. After all, William claimed that it had been commissioned by Queen Matilda,90 and it was dedicated to her daughter the Empress, and (a little later) also to the Empress’s illegitimate half-brother Robert, earl of Gloucester.91 It was formally conveyed to the Empress by her uncle, Queen Matilda’s brother, King David of Scotland.92 The likely context for the presentation was her provisional adoption as her father’s successor at the Christmas court of 1126–7.93 This suggests that William envisaged a lay audience for his book which could scarcely have been more influential. Henry of Blois, abbot of Glastonbury from 1126 and bishop of Winchester from 1129, had a copy of Gesta regum made for the library at Glastonbury.94 The purest extant witness of the second or ‘A’ version—the version with the supplementary dedication to Robert of Gloucester—was made at Winchester in William’s lifetime.95 As he deftly expressed it in the prologue to Book V, concerned with Henry I, ruler at the time of writing, he was ‘indeed under a duty not to set down all I knew’.96 Revisions in the version dedicated to Robert of Gloucester toned down criticism of the earl’s grandfather, William I, and uncle, William Rufus.97 Doubtless William also weighed his words cautiously in the ‘three little books to which I have given the name Chronicles’, now lost, which he devoted to Henry’s reign.98 In this respect, the revisions to the Gesta pontificum brought it more closely into line with the more circumspect Gesta regum, which nevertheless also seems to have required some further softening. Because of its subject, most of these revisions were concerned not with prelates,99 but with laymen, especially kings. Thus the Conqueror’s insatiable avarice was no longer to be described as ‘unworthy of such great a majesty’, rather it ‘could be said to be honourable, and not inferior to the royal dignity’.100 The New Forest which he had created was no longer ‘an abom­in­ able sight’; rather it was a place in which the king ‘rejoiced to hunt’—though William of Malmesbury’s unaltered opinion of it is implied by his drawing attention to the several unfortunate deaths of the Conqueror’s progeny which subsequently occurred within its bounds.101 One of those deaths was, of course, that of William Rufus; but whereas William of Malmesbury initially gave credence to common reports that the collapse of the tower of Winchester Cathedral was caused by the burial of the impious king’s corpse beneath it, when he revised his account he explicitly declined to repeat such superstitious rumour, and suggested instead that the tower had collapsed 90  GR I. ep. ii. 91 Tahkokallio, Historical Canon, pp. 19–20. 92  GR I. ep. i. 93 Tahkokallio, Historical Canon, pp. 20–1; G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure 1066–1166 (Oxford 2007), pp. 208–13. 94  R. Sharpe, J.P. Carley, R.M. Thomson, and A.G. Wilson, eds, English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, CBMLC, iv (London 1996), B37. 95  London, BL, MS. Arundel 35; Tahkokallio, Historical Canon, pp. 26–7. 96  GR V. pr. 97  GR ii. pp. xxv–xxvi; Tahkokallio, Historical Canon, pp. 24, 31. 98  HNa pr. 99  But see GR IV. 338. 1, on the relocation of sees. 100  GR III. 280. 2. 101  GR III. 275. 2.

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  93 because it had been shoddily built.102 On second thoughts, in this instance, a natural was to be preferred to a supernatural explanation. Initially, it was Rufus who was said to have cackled with satisfaction at the fiendish ingenuity of Ranulf Flambard’s rapacity;103 subsequently, William decided to soften the slur by attributing the laughter to the king’s courtiers. An unidentified ‘wise man’s’ forthright description of the court itself as a ‘brothel for perverts’ was cut; instead, the sage is said to have vested his hopes for the future in Rufus’s brother Henry, who had always detested indecency.104 As this example underlines, none of these revisions evinces any shift of opinion on William’s part, about either Norman kings or Norman bishops and abbots, but simply a greater diplomatic tentativeness about expressing that opinion. Why he felt it necessary to tone down a disapproval which had been so deftly expressed in the first instance105 is unclear. Perhaps some of the dedicatees of the Gesta regum had suggested to William that he had nevertheless sometimes cut too close to the bone. But the consistency of these revisions makes it indisputable that he had decided to express himself still more circumspectly. Predictably, the circumspection sometimes verged on sarcasm. In a revision which may be dated early in Stephen’s reign,106 William suggested that the lay nobility of his day were ‘more prudent, but also more tenacious’ by comparison with those of the Conqueror’s reign; he no longer thought he should denounce them, as he had in his first version of 1125–26, for ‘casting away shame and grasping every opportunity to beg for money as though it were their daily alms’.107 As for contemporary prelates, he had originally written that ‘through ambition for sacred things, they have embraced wrong rather than right and good’. On second thoughts, he substituted the studiedly opaque assertion that contemporary prelates were ‘less keen, but more generous’—again by comparison with those of the Conqueror’s day. In both cases, events even early in Stephen’s reign would seem to render this muting of criticism absurd, perhaps pointedly so. Certainly William’s new wording is so nuanced as to be intentionally ambiguous. And the contrast which he continues to draw with the reign of the Conqueror, when, allegedly, ‘bishops and abbots competed in religious fervour, and nobles in magnanimous liberality’,108 further obfuscates his assessment of the Conquest. For it suggests that the immediate aftermath marked an apogee of virtue on the part of the new lay and ecclesiastical nobility, after which there had been either a sharp or (on second thoughts) a gradual decline, whereas elsewhere, especially in the unrevised Gesta pontificum, he suggests that in many respects the post-Conquest regime had been a case study in tyranny. As we have already seen, William’s view of the Conquest was complex, 102  GR IV. 333. 6. 103  GR IV. 314. 2, version A. 104  GR IV. 314. 5. 105  GR IV. pr. 106  GR i. p. xxiii; ii. p. xxv. 107  GR III. 238. 6; Willelmi Malmesbiriensis monachi, De gestis regum Anglorum, libri quinque; Historia novella, libri tres, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1887–9), i. p. xxxiv. 108  GR III. 238. 5.

94  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 subtle, and ambiguous, but that the latter was closer to his true opinion is suggested by the views he allowed himself to express in minor works written while he was revising both the Gesta pontificum and the Gesta regum. For instance, the Vita S. Dunstani, written exclusively for the monks of Glastonbury ‘several years’ after the earliest version of the Gesta regum,109 betrays no softening in William’s tone compatible with these revisions. On the contrary, as we have seen, William felt he could continue to give less inhibited vent to his views when addressing a very restricted audience which was, for the most part, likely to share them. It is possible, then, to deduce something about the audience for which William’s historical works were intended. If he initially conceived of it as Benedictine monks—estimated to total roughly 2900–3600 in early twelfth-century England110—one can show how, as his fame and influence spread, he became more cautious about offending the sensibilities of a more broadly based Norman establishment in England. Henry of Huntingdon was not a monk, but a secular cleric, archdeacon of Huntingdon and a canon of Lincoln. He had grown up in the household of one of the initial butts of William’s indignation in the Gesta pontificum—Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, sometime king’s chancellor. Indeed, Henry probably composed the bishop’s epitaph, in which he is unrecognizable as the figure depicted in the anecdote which William deleted from the Gesta pontificum.111 Henry was indignant at the king’s scheming to bring the bishop down.112 By Henry’s own account, he wrote for ‘the many—I mean the less educated [minus doctis]’.113 He was, as we have seen, closely connected to the very top of royal government. He wrote his history for his uncle Alexander, also bishop of Lincoln and also Henry I’s chancellor. It is therefore striking that his assessment of the Conquest and of the Norman regime in England is so similar to William of Malmesbury’s. If, for personal reasons, Robert Bloet received a eulogistic obit­ uary, Ranulf the chancellor, who also suffered that occupational hazard of twelfthcentury English chancellors—an apoplectic fit while out riding with the king—was trampled to death by a monk on horseback immediately behind him.114 Providence could hardly have devised a more fitting end for him. Henry of Huntingdon seems to have felt less need than William to temper his ­denunciations in successive versions, though he did censor his obituary of Henry I when it became clear that Henry’s grandson was likely to become king.115 The 109  VSD II. 14. 2, p. 264; GR ii. p. xxxv. 110 D.  Knowles and R.N.  Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd edn (London 1971), p. 489. 111  HA, VII. 34; cf. VIII. De contemptu mundi 1–2, pp. 586–8. 112  HA VIII. De contemptu mundi, 12, p. 604. 113  HA VIII. De contemptu mundi, pr. p. 584. 114  HA VII. 34. 115  HA X. 1. J. Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon: In His Time (1135) and Place (between Lincoln and the Royal Court)’, in K. Stopka, ed., The Gallus Anonymous and his Chronicle in the Context of Twelfth-Century Historiography from the Perspectives of the Latest Research (Krakow 2010), pp. 157–72, at 169, points out that the deleted passage and its replacement were both exactly sixty words long. Henry did not delete his observation that the embalmer who was poisoned by King

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  95 structure of his Historia,116 the helpful lists of dramatis personae,117 the literary artifice evident in the pseudo-classical speeches,118 the rhythmic prose and accentual verse,119 some of which appears to ape in Latin the rhythms of Old English poetry,120 all lend texture to the narrative. They suggest that he had thought carefully about how to appeal to his intended audience. Even those who read it for themselves would probably have vocalized what they were reading,121 but most would have listened to others reading it to them. It might be more straightforward than William’s, but it still assumed a very high level of Latin literacy on their part—all the more so if they only listened to someone reading it aloud, rather than reading it aloud to themselves. His characterization of them as ‘less educated’ should not be taken literally: according to him, the best that could be said of someone capable of delivering a long speech on the genealogy of the Frankish kings was that he was ‘not uneducated [non indoctus]’.122 Perhaps, in view of his status as a secular cleric, he simply meant that his book was not intended first and foremost for a monastic audience, who might, by his definition, be educated. He seems to have hoped that at least some of his audience would be capable of grasping his implicit comparison of King Henry I with Herod the Great. In order to do so they would need to have been very familiar with the Latin version of Josephus attributed to Hegesippus.123 Hegesippus might be recommended reading in the monasteries,124 and, as already suggested, his themes had obvious resonances for post-Conquest audiences, particularly those of English extraction.125 But for Henry of Huntingdon to expect his audience to pick up the learned echoes and allusions—most profusely, of Sallust—was to assume on their part an almost Tacitean sensitivity.126 Rather than such optimism with regard to the depth of

Henry’s brain ‘was the last of many whom King Henry put to death’: X. 2; further A. Cooper, ‘“The Feet of Those that Bark Shall be Cut Off ”: Timorous Historians and the Personality of Henry I’, ANS, xxiii (2000), 47–67, at 48–51; Tahkokallio, Historical Canon, pp. 40–1. 116  HA, pp. lviii–lix. 117  HA, II. 40, IV. 31, V. 31, VI. 42. 118  HA pp. xxxvii–xxxviii. As with other contemporary historians, Sallust was a particular ­favourite: N. Wright, ‘Twelfth-Century Receptions of a Text: Anglo-Norman Historians and Hegesippus’, ANS, xxxi (2008), 177–95, at 183 and n. 22. 119  This is especially common in books VII and X, which deal with recent events: see HA p. xxxviii, and the references given there; on his verse in these books, see also HA pp. xxxiii–xxxiv, cvii–cix. 120  A.G. Rigg, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’s Metrical Experiments’, Journal of Medieval Latin, i (1991), 60–72; A.G. Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature 1066–1422 (Cambridge 1990), pp. 37–8. 121 J. Leclerq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York, NY 1977), p. 21. 122  HA VII. 38, pp. 478–80. J. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge 2000), p. 128 n. 26, suggests that Henry was referring to himself. 123  Wright, ‘Anglo-Norman Historians and Hegesippus’, 185–8. 124  See the programme of study set out in Epistola anonymi ad Hugonem amicum, in PL ccxiii. 713; P. Delhaye, ‘L’organisation scolaire au XII siècle’, Traditio, v (1947), 211–68; OV i. 15. 125  See above, p. 40. 126 Tacitus was of course not available in twelfth-century England. Had he been, it is easy to im­agine the pleasure he would have given William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon. For the almost defunct twelfth-century tradition, see B. Munk Olsen, L’Etude des auteurs classiques latins aux 11e et 12e siècles, 4 vols (Paris 1982–9), ii. 579–82.

96  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 their reading and their acuity, it may simply be that one of the several qualities which Henry shared with William of Malmesbury was an inclination to exult in his own literary virtuosity. Unlike William, however, he never went so far as to imply that he had surpassed his classical forebears. Modestly, he contented himself with the claim that Clio had placed him only slightly below them.127 Although Henry did not conceive of that audience primarily as embittered monks of English descent, such monks would nevertheless have found congenial much of what he had to say. Copies of his book were soon to be found in many monastic libraries. But the interpretation of the Conquest advanced with increasing levels of artful discretion by William of Malmesbury was certainly not restricted to monks—that much is clear from Henry—or to those of English descent. As we have seen, the Norman account of William the Conqueror’s claim, in one form or another, provided the connection with the English past which was common to all the twelfth-century histories. In some tension with it, above all in those works written in historical as opposed to annalistic form, was their frequently critical assessment of the Conquest and the Norman regime in England. Although Orderic was distinctive in being scarcely concerned with pre-Conquest English history, the tension is also evident both in his interpolations in the Gesta Normannorum ducum of William of Jumièges, and in his Historia ecclesiastica. He must have envisaged that an account which was occasionally very critical of postConquest kings and of at least some of their prelates would be well-received by his brothers at St-Evroult—his ‘simple fellow students’128—not many of whom are likely to have had shared his (partial) English descent. Doubtless with their attention spans in mind, he had begun to experiment with rhyme and rhythm both in his interpolations in the Gesta Normannorum ducum, and in his frequent recasting of William’s original, leaden prose.129 The punctuation of the autograph of the Historia ecclesiastica shows how he intended it to be read aloud, presumably, at least in the first instance, to them.130 Much like his professed model Bede—whose Historia ecclesiastica William of St-Calais had had copied for reading aloud to the monks of Durham131—it was crafted for dramatic impact on his listeners, and was meant to be memorable. History had been designed for performance since antiquity: it was meant to be heard.132 127  A.G. Rigg, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’s Herbal’, Medieval Studies, lxv (2003), 213–92, at 262. 128  OV i. 130, cf. 35; iii. 340. 129  GND i. lxxvi; cf. OV i. 30; H.  Wolther, Orderic Vitalis, ein Beitrag zur klunizenischen Geschichtsschreibung (Wiesbaden 1955), pp. 60, 118–21. 130  OV i. 36 and n. 1, 107–10, 127; ii. pp. xix–xx, xl–xlii; R. Ray,‘Orderic Vitalis and his Readers’, Studia Monastica, xiv (1972), 17–33; R. Ray, ‘Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century: Problems and Progress of Research’, Viator, v (1974), 33–59, at 40–1. 131  Durham Cathedral Library, MS. B.II.35; Browne, ‘William of St Carilef ’s Book Donations’, 148. There are numbered sections in Bk. V, chs. 2–3, fos 183r–185r (the miracles of John of Beverley), for the purpose of lections: R.  Gameson, ‘The Cathedral’s Oldest Books’, in D.  Brown, ed., Durham Cathedral: History, Fabric, Culture (New Haven, CN 2015), pp. 399–421, at 418 and n. 101. 132  For instance, Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum LXXXV.13; Bellum Catilinae LIII.2.

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  97 Indeed, it may be no coincidence that Orderic reveals a musical sensibility.133 He added neumes to a poem he had written, and even did so to a prose passage of the Historia ecclesiastica.134 This sensibility was a characteristic he must have shared with many other contemporary monastic historians, most of whom, as we have seen, were precentors of their houses, as Orderic, St-Evroult’s librarian, must have been.135 Music was central to the performance of the opus Dei, for which precentors were responsible.136 A St-Evroult liturgical book survives in Orderic’s distinctive hand;137 William, described as cantor of Malmesbury Abbey by Robert of Crickdale, canon of nearby Cirencester,138 appears to have taken a professional interest in musical matters.139 One of the scribes at Old Sarum involved in the production of Exon Domesday doodled neumes in the margin.140 The line between the public reading, or declamation, of a rhythmical text, and liturgical incantation, was a fine one. Saints’ lives were used—often adapted—to provide lections for the liturgy. Two witnesses of Eadmer’s Vita S. Wilfridi appear to be 133  OV i. 18; ii. 20, 108, 126; iii. 24, 346; vi. 150: Folcard of St-Bertin, appointed administrator of Thorney by William I, ‘sweetly composed delightful historiae to be sung about St Oswald, bishop of Worcester, and other saints who come from the stock of Albion’ (the historiae here being chants, not history books: Byrhferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. M. Lapidge (Oxford 2008), p. lxxviii n. 205; R. Jonsson, Historia: Études sur la genèse des offices versifiés (Stockholm 1968), pp. 9–17); iii. 424: on Sunday 13 March 1132 Orderic was greatly impressed by the spectacle of 1212 monks chanting the liturgy in procession at Cluny. Laudes regiae have been attributed to Folcard: M.  Lapidge, ‘Ealdred of York and MS. Cotton Vitellius  E.  xii’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, lv (1983), 11–25, at 17–18. M. Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford 1984), p. 102, observes that at St-Evroult an interest in music preceded that in history. It was certainly more central to monastic observance, but one followed from the other. 134  For the poem, see Alençon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 1, fo. 30v, discussed by D. Escudier, ‘Orderic Vital et le scriptorium de Saint-Evroul’, in P. Bouët and M. Dosdat, eds, Manuscrits et enluminures dans le monde normand (Xe-XVe siècle) (Caen 1999), pp. 17–28, at 26–7 and Fig. 7; for the Historia, see OV ii. 90, in the autograph Paris, BN, MS. lat. 5506, fo. 26r. 135  G. Garnett, ‘Robert Curthose: The Duke Who Lost his Trousers’, ANS, xxxv (2012), 213–43, at 221–3; Chibnall, World, p. 33, does not quite commit herself to saying that Orderic was cantor/pre­ cent­or too, but Escudier, ‘Orderic’, pp. 24, 27, makes a strong case for his being musically talented as well as librarian; further C.C. Rozier, ‘Orderic as Librarian and Cantor of Saint-Evroul’, in C.C. Rozier, D.  Roach, G.E.M.  Gasper, and E.  van Houts, eds, Orderic Vitalis. Life, Works, and Interpretations (Woodbridge 2016), pp. 61–77. 136  See above, p. 35. William of Malmesbury commented on Dunstan’s love of music, particularly of the harp and the organ, and invoked King David’s injunction to use harps and organs to praise the Lord: VSD I. 4. 4, Saints’ Lives, pp. 178–80; cf. Ps. 150: 3–4; cf. Osbern, Vita S. Dunstani, in Memorials of St Dunstan, ed. W. Stubbs, RS (1874), pp. 78, 80, who was less enthusiastic. 137  Paris, BN, MS. lat. 10508, on which see L. Delisle, ‘Lettre à M. Jules Lair’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes, xxxiv (1873), 267–81, at 271 n. 4; cf. L.  Delisle, ‘Notes ’, in Matériaux pour l’édition de Guillaume de Jumièges, pp. 485–6; Escudier, ‘Orderic’, p. 24. 138  See above, p. 36 n. 173. 139  William recorded that Dunstan had dedicated an organ at Glastonbury to Aldhelm: VSD II. 10. 3; GP V.  255. 3. P.A.  Hayward, ‘William of Malmesbury as a Cantor-Historian’, in K.  A-M.  Bugyis, A.B.  Kraebeland and M.E.  Fassler, eds, Medieval Cantors and their Craft. Music, Liturgy and the Shaping of History, 800–1500 (Woodbridge 2017), pp. 222–39, at 228–9, is sceptical, but see S.O. Sønnesyn, ‘Lex orandi, lex scribendi? The Role of Historiography in the Liturgical Life of William of Malmesbury’, in Medieval Cantors, pp. 240–54, at 249, 251–2, who draws on William’s Abbreviatio Amalarii: R.W. Pfaff, ed., ‘The “Abbreviatio Amalarii” of William of Malmesbury’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, xlviii (1981), 128–71, at 157. 140  Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS. 3500 (Exon Domesday), fo. 531r. I am grateful to Stephen Baxter for this reference.

98  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 divided up for this purpose.141 In another putative case, selected passages ­concerning a particular saint were excerpted from Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica.142 According to Eadmer, Archbishop Lanfranc instructed Osbern, precentor of Christ Church, to write a ‘history’ of the life and passion of St Ælfeah ‘not only in plain prose for reading, but also put to music for singing’.143 He thereby reveals that a prose historia could indeed provide the material for sung historiae.144 Readings were not confined to the liturgy: they were also prescribed for morning meetings of the Chapter, to accompany meals in the refectory, in the chapter house again for Collation in the evening, and sometimes during manual work.145 Even biblical, let alone more recent, history was deemed too stimulating for Collation, which immediately preceded Compline and then bed;146 at this late hour readings must focus exclusively on monastic devotion.147 But in other extraliturgical contexts hagiography and history might provide suitable material, supplementary to Scripture and the Fathers. In such contexts there was no need for hagiographical material to be restricted to the saints venerated in the liturgy of the particular church148—though a marginal note added to Goscelin of St-Bertin’s 141  Lives and Miracles, p. xxxiv and n. 138; more generally, Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives: Vita S. Birini, Vita et Miracula S. Kenelmi, Vita S. Rumwoldi, ed. R.C. Love (Oxford 1996), pp. xxix–xxxiii; T.  Webber, ‘Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica as a Source of Lections in Pre- and PostConquest England’, in M. Brett and D.A. Woodman, eds, The Long Twelfth-Century View of the AngloSaxon Past (Farnham 2015), pp. 47–74, esp. 48–52. 142  Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, ed. Love, pp. xxxiii, lxvi, discussing Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Digby 39, a late eleventh- or early twelfth-century Abingdon manuscript; Webber, ‘Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica’, pp. 53–4; cf. G.  Philippart, Les Légendiers latins et autres manuscrits hagiographiques (Turnhout 1977), pp. 112–21, for the different contexts in which readings took place. In a late eleventh-century Gloucester copy of the Historia ecclesiastica—BL MS. Royal 13. C. v—the account of the miracles of St Æthelburh has been divided into eight lections, and that for Æthelthryth into twelve: R.M. Thomson, ‘Books and Learning at Gloucester Abbey in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in J.P. Carley and C.G.C. Tite, eds, Books and Collectors 1200–1700. Essays Presented to Andrew Watson (London 1997), pp. 3–26, at 19. 143  Life of Anselm, p. 54. The book is extant: Vita S. Alphegi, ed. H. Wharton, Anglia Sacra (London 1691), ii. 122–48. A twelfth-century copy of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica from an unidentified house— Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 243, fo. 18r—inserts interlinear musical notation in the concluding lines of I. 25: Webber, ‘Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica’, p. 66; T. Webber, ‘Public Reading and its Books: Monastic Ideals and Practice in England, c. 1000–c. 1300’, Lyell Lectures, Bodleian Library, May 2016. 144  See n. 133. 145  T. Webber, ‘Reading in the Refectory: Monastic Practice in England, c. 1000–c. 1300’, London University Annual John Coffin Memorial Palaeography Lecture, 18 February 2010 (published online at http://events.sas.uk/ies/publications); Webber, ‘Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica’, pp. 65–70. The Benedictine Rule prescribed reading at mealtimes: The Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, ed. T. Fry (Collegeville, MN 1981), c. 38. A reading might be started in the chapter house (for collation) and resumed when the monks had processed into the refectory: Regularis concordia, ed. T.  Symons (Edinburgh 1953), p. 40; The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D.  Knowles, rev. C.N.L.  Brooke (Oxford 2002), pp. 54–8; T.  Webber, ‘Books and their Use across the Conquest’, in T. Licence, ed., Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge 2014), pp. 160–89, at 168. 146  Rule of St Benedict, c. 42. 147  T.  Webber, ‘Monastic Space and the Use of Books in the Anglo-Norman Period’, ANS, xxxvi (2013), 221–40, at 235. 148  Thus, for instance, the mid-eleventh century Worcester legendary which is now split between London, BL, MS. Cotton Nero E. i and Cambridge, CCC, MS. 9: Webber, ‘Reading in the Refectory’, pp. 43–5.

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  99 Historia maior of St Augustine instructs that it should be read ‘ad prandium’ in the abbey on the saint’s feast day149—or for historical material to be particular to that institution. A Waltham Abbey copy of Bede explicitly prescribes that it should be read in the refectory.150 A thirteenth-century St Albans collection of historians including Geoffrey of Monmouth, William of Malmesbury, and Aelred of Rievaulx which, it has been suggested, could well have been used by both Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, has pencil notes in the margin to help with reading the text aloud.151 Several items recorded in William of St-Calais’ list of book donations at Durham were intended principally for reading in the refectory. Indeed, the list is headed ‘These are the books which are read at collation.’152 A late-medieval list, also from Durham, consists specifically of titles intended for reading in that setting;153 there is a thirteenth-century example of a similar sort from Bury St Edmunds.154 Wulfstan of Worcester was in the practice of expounding in the vernacular to his fellow diners the meaning of the (Latin) readings they had just heard at table.155 Coleman, author of the original Old English life of Wulfstan which William of Malmesbury had put into Latin, had translated Paul the Deacon’s vita of Gregory the Great the other way, presumably for occasions or audiences for which Paul’s original Latin was considered unsuitable.156 As someone who customarily used a book as a pillow, Wulfstan had improving works— saints’ lives are instanced—read to him while he slept.157 It seems unlikely that, even in his sleep, he was in need of cribs. Absorbing the texts may in any case have been of secondary importance to their physical presence. In preparation for a lawsuit which he went on to win, he had simply held in his hands vitae of his saintly predecessors Dunstan and Oswald.158 This was, by implication, far more efficacious than perusal of any documentation related to the case, and perhaps even than reading the books. It was as if the very vitae were relics.

149  BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian B. xx, fo. 30r; B.C. Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, CBMLC, xiii, 3 vols (London 2008), i. p. 64. 150 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Digby 211, fo. 13v, discussed by Webber, ‘Reading in the Refectory’, p. 46, and Webber, ‘Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica’, pp. 66–7. 151 London, BL, MS. Royal 13. D.  v, on which see Gesta regum, ed. Stubbs, i. p. lxxxiv; R.A.B. Mynors, in William of Malmesbury, Historia novella, ed. K.R. Potter (Edinburgh 1955), p. xl; R.M.  Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey 1066–1235, 2 vols (Woodbridge 1982), i. 73–5, 98–9. 152 Durham, Cathedral Library, MS. B.IV.24, fo. iv; Browne, ‘William of St Carilef ’s Book Donations’, 148. The heading was added in the mid-twelfth-century: M. Gullick, ‘The Scribes of the Durham Cantor’s Book (Durham, Dean & Chapter Library, MS. B.IV.24) and the Durham Martyrology Scribe’, in D.  Rollason, M.  Harvey, and M.  Prestwich, eds, Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193 (Woodbridge 1994), pp. 93–109, at 94. 153  A.J. Piper, ‘The Libraries of the Monks of Durham’, in M.B. Parkes and A.G. Watson, Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R. Ker (London 1978), pp. 213–49, at 230–1. 154 Sharpe, English Benedictine Libraries, B14, for reading at the servitors’ table and at conventual collation. Reading Abbey had a list of books kept in the dormitory to be read in the refectory: B74. 155  VSW III. 2. 3. 156  VSW I. 5. 2. 157  VSW I. 3. 4; III. 6. 1. 158  VSW II. 1. 6.

100  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Monks who paid any attention at all to what they heard being read aloud must have become very familiar with the outlines not only of scriptural history159 and that of Christian late antiquity, and of the lives of saints of particular significance to their own houses, but by extension with the lives of other saints and the his­tor­ ies of other churches. These constituted the core history of England more generally, a fortiori because of the stimulus provided by the Conquest to remedy the deficiency of the monks’ pre-Conquest antecedents in the writing up of hagi­og­ raphy and history. Simply by going through the obligatory annual round of devotion, monks in English houses received an English historical education, as well as a scriptural and late antique one. But this education was not confined to the cloister. As with the story of Duke William’s claim, the critique of the Norman regime in England became an historiographical orthodoxy, common to Normans as well as English, to secular clerics as well as monks, and in due course to at least some Latinate laymen and women too. The literate Norman knight who had sponsored the copying of ‘essential’ books, supplied by Lanfranc, at St Albans Abbey in the late eleventh century himself consulted the copies he had funded, and was given other books by Abbot Paul ‘for his court chapel’.160 The production of books was taken so seriously that the abbot had built a new scriptorium.161 No surviving manuscript from this period which can be linked to St Albans includes a history of England or the English, but certainly extant are new copies of Eusebius162 and Josephus,163 possibly of Orosius and Justinus,164 and a genealogy of the Norman dukes.165 Moreover, it is perfectly possible that the lost copies of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, William of Jumièges’s Gesta, and Marianus Scotus’s Chronicon, all once recorded in a late twelfth-century booklist, also now lost, were already in the library c. 1100.166 The bookish knightly benefactor might have dipped into any of these volumes. Ansold of Maule, an exceptionally devout Norman knight who 159  Monastic Constitutions, pp. 4, 10, 12–14, 16, 18, 22, 26, 34, 72, 74, 80–2, for the schedule of scriptural reading prescribed by Lanfranc. 160  Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H.T.  Riley, 3 vols, RS (1867), i. 57–8; Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey, i. 13; M. Gullick, ‘Professional Scribes in Eleventh- and TwelfthCentury England’, in P. Beal and J. Griffith, eds, English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, vii (London 1998), pp. 1–24, at 7. 161  Gesta abbatum monasterii S. Albani i. 58. 162  Historia ecclesiastica, in London, BL, MS. Royal 12. B. v. 163  De antiquitate iudaica and De bello iudaico, in London, BL, MSS. Royal 13. D. vi, vii. 164  Cambridge, Clare College, MS. 18. The copy of Justinus begins at Book XVIII. R. Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066–1130) (Oxford 1999), no. 49 suggests that this may have been made at Exeter, but with ‘St Albans style art work’; M. Gullick, ‘The Scribe of the Carilef Bible: A New Look at Some Late Eleventh-Century Durham Manuscripts’, in L.L.  Brownrigg, ed., Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence (Los Altos Hills, CA 1990), pp. 61–83, at 62 and n. 18, Gullick, ‘Professional Scribes’, p. 7, and Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Library, p. 318, both suggest St Albans. Gullick identifies the hand responsible for the titles as that of the scribe who wrote the titles in BL, MS. Royal 13 D. vi: ‘Professional Scribes’, p. 7 n. 43. 165  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 290, fo. 225. 166  R.W.  Hunt, ‘The Library of the Abbey of St Albans’, in M.B.  Parkes and A.G.  Watson, eds, Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R. Ker (London 1978), pp. 251–77, at 270, and pp. 38, 48; Sharpe, English Benedictine Libraries, B85.

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  101 nevertheless chose to become a monk only on his deathbed, is said by Orderic to have spent a lot of time studying ‘res gestae as they were inserted in ancient volumes, and thoughtfully investigated them as recounted by learned narrators’.167 Orderic had met Ansold; no-one in twelfth-century Normandy was better qualified to assess the depth of this layman’s historical learning.168 Evidently one did not have to be a monk to absorb the history books being written primarily in monasteries. According to Orderic, Ansold read them critically, and corrected publicly the errors he detected. Laymen who were not as scholarly as Ansold could always just listen: Gerold, a clerk in the chapel of Earl Hugh of Chester, assembled a collection of improving tales of ‘holy knights’ of old for the ‘barons, simple lords, and noble boys’ in the earl’s household.169 None of the historical figures whom Gerold held up to his listeners for emulation was English, but in this anecdote Orderic reveals how monastic history might be disseminated beyond the cloister—almost certainly, in this instance, in the vernacular. Gaimar, himself probably a secular cleric, had been commissioned by a settler of Norman descent who cannot have felt that her Latin was sufficiently good to appreciate the likes of William of Malmesbury or Henry of Huntingdon. Some of the differences between them and Gaimar may be attributed to his writing vernacular verse, and to his unrelieved dependence on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for much of his narrative; but more, as we have seen, reflect the distinctive interests and expectations of a primarily lay, baronial audience of French extraction, settled in England. Perhaps because he had been commissioned by a woman, his treatment of women is both fuller and more positive than one might expect a testosterone-fuelled audience to find appealing.170 These lay tastes had been shaped by listening to chansons de geste recited by itinerant jongleurs, with whom the exceptionally (for a layman) puritanical Ansold of Maule refused to have any truck, lumping them together with whores and jesters.171 Most laymen were less strait-laced: according to William of Malmesbury, the French troops at the battle of Hastings had been inspired by a jongleur in their midst, who had sung the Chanson de Roland.172 If jongleurs were thought to be that much in the thick of it, their songs must have been very appealing to lay ears. Gaimar shows that preConquest England was now as appropriate a setting as Carolingian Francia had been. Perhaps they both seemed similarly distant and fantastical. Gaimar’s failure, quite unlike William or Henry, to say anything at all about Duke William’s claim cannot be attributed to lay tastes, because claims to land 167  OV iii. 180, i. 37. 168  OV i. 65, iii. 182–4; Chibnall, World, pp. 35, 216. 169  OV iii. 216; cf. iv. pp. xxiv–xxv. 170  Estoire, pp. xli–xliii. 171  OV iii. 182. At iii. 218 he unfavourably contrasted a ‘popular song’ about St William of Gellone with ‘an authentic account, carefully written by learned religious, and reverently read aloud by learned readers in the hearing of all the brothers in common’. Of course he thereby implies that he himself had not always been quite as uncompromisingly high-minded as Ansold of Maule. 172  GR III. 242; D.C. Douglas, ‘The “Song of Roland” and the Norman Conquest of England’, French Studies, xiv (1960), 99–116, at 99–100.

102  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 and disputed successions were of burning concern to laymen, as evidenced by most chansons,173 by many episodes related by Gaimar,174 and, most pertinently, by his treatment of Cnut’s claim to the English throne.175 The absence of William’s claim cannot be attributed to the influence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, from which it was also absent, because Gaimar ceased to follow the Chronicle when he got to Edward the Confessor’s reign. Moreover, when he did draw on the Chronicle, for his account of Cnut, he thought it appropriate to add details of Cnut’s claim which were not mentioned in any extant version of the Chronicle. Yet it is difficult to believe that Gaimar was just being very discreet about the Conqueror, for he shares—indeed, he far outstrips—the subtly critical assessment of the king, his followers, and his sons, found in William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Eadmer. To the extent that this, like the interest in the preConquest English past, was shared in the very different genre of historical writing represented by Gaimar, it means that William of Malmesbury and the others had achieved their objective of fashioning a history for England which both assessed the consequences of the Conquest and transcended it. Some historians were more discreet than others, and some, as we have seen, were more discreet in works intended for general audiences than in those designed for monks of primarily English descent; but everyone treated William the Conqueror and his regime, questionable as many aspects of it were, as nevertheless a continuation of English history. Like the rest of that history, the Norman regime, secular and ecclesiastical, provided moral exempla which instructed one on how one should and should not behave. This had been one of history’s prime functions since antiquity: to provide real examples, as distinct from abstract injunctions.176 Or as Wace, another vernacular verse historian writing in Normandy a little later in the twelfth century— and writing English as well as Norman history—put it: ‘To keep in mind the deeds and words and ways of our ancestors, records and chronicles and histories ought to be read out at festivals, the crimes of the wicked and the good deeds of the noble.’177 He seems himself to have read and drawn on Orderic, both the Gesta Normannorum ducum and the Historia ecclesiastica.178 He popularized the Historia ecclesiastica in a form in which it could indeed be read aloud for 173  S.D. White, ‘The Discourse of Inheritance in Twelfth-century France: Alternative Models of the Fief in Raoul de Cambrai’, in Garnett and Hudson, eds, Law and Government, pp. 173–97; Chibnall, World, p. 216. 174  Estoire, pp. xli, xlvii, ll. 98–104, 408–15, 512–23, 1806–1918, 5470, etc. 175  See above, p. 62. 176  Henry of Huntingdon, HA, pr., makes this point by invoking Homer as an historian, by contrast with the philosophers Chrysippus and Crantor, about whom he had learnt from Horace, Epist. I. 2, 3–4. He went on to summarise Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, I, on the importance of historical writing. 177  Le Roman de la Rou de Wace, ed. A.J. Holden, 3 vols (Paris 1970–73), ii. 309, appendice, ll. 1–6. 178  OV i. 114; iv. p. xxii; The History of the Norman People. Wace’s Roman de Rou, ed. G.S. Burgess (Woodbridge 2004), pp. xxviii, xxxvii–xxxix; E.M.C.  van Houts, ‘The Adaptation of the Gesta Normannorum ducum by Wace and Benoît’, in M. Gosman and J. van Os, eds, Non nova, sed nove: mélanges de civilisation médiévale dédiés à Willem Noomen (Groningen 1984), pp. 115–25.

Early 12th-c. Audiences for English History  103 entertainment at gatherings of laymen less bookish than Ansold of Maule— though it should be noted that the earliest extant copy was or at least ended up in the library of Battle Abbey.179 In this modulated and simplified form the history written first and foremost for a monastic audience could be interpreted for a much wider, non-latinate, lay audience. Gaimar might express his disapproval of William the Conqueror in much more simplistic, naive terms than Orderic or William of Malmesbury,180 but his overall assessment was not dissimilar. Thus adapted and in some respects dumbed down for illiterate lay consumption, the history of the Conquest crafted first and foremost in the monasteries was universally accepted. There was, or there soon remained, no alternative.

179  London, BL, MS. Royal 4 C. xi, fos 249r–278r; Roman de Rou, ed. Burgess, pp. xxii–xxiii. 180  Estoire, ll. 5387–404.

3

The Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication of Old English Law in the Twelfth Century The mending of William of Malmesbury’s broken historiographical chain was the most distinctive and influential intellectual phenomenon of early twelfth-century England, one which still shapes understanding of English history, especially for the pre-Conquest period. But it was closely connected to a parallel attempt to excavate and preserve an aspect of Old England on which the historians of the time all laid great stress, reflecting a claim bruited stridently by the Conqueror’s regime from the very start: namely England’s law. If pre-Conquest England was an exception in early medieval Europe in terms of the paucity of its historical writing, it was also an exception in its fecundity in law codes and other legislative documents. The most substantial of these were codes associated with particular kings, a tradition which was consummated under Cnut. Almost all of them seem originally to have been issued in the vernacular.1 They provided a rich and obvious resource of written relics for those attempting to resurrect England’s history at this time. When, early in Stephen’s reign, Henry of Huntingdon was revising his Historia Anglorum, dedicated to Alexander, bishop of Lincoln,2 a different type of scholar was probably also at work in the same diocese, compiling the earli­est version of an apocryphal law code in Latin which has become known as the Leges Edwardi Confessoris.3 The title is not used in any of the many medieval witnesses, and may be a seventeenth-century invention. In terms of content, ‘laws of King William’ would be another plausible contender,4 though it would fail to underline the code’s fundamental premise of post-Conquest continuity with Old English law. The prologue makes it quite clear that the Leges purported to codify those laws of Edward the Confessor which King William had formally adopted, ‘four years after the acquisition of this land’.5 This formal adoption is described in 1  Ingrid Ivarsen has constructed a very powerful case for thinking that the code of King Ine was first written in Latin, and subsequently translated into Old English, perhaps in the ninth century: ‘King Ine (688–726) and the Writing of English Law in Latin’, EHR, forthcoming. 2  HA pr., pp. 4–6. 3  Gesetze i. 627–72; B.R. O’Brien, God’s Peace and King’s Peace. The Laws of Edward the Confessor (Philadelphia, PA 1999), pp. 44–9. 4 Wormald, Making, p. 410; O’Brien, God’s Peace, p. 154. 5  LECf pr. The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  105 greater detail later in the compilation.6 Bishop Alexander would have been the first to acknowledge that neither the codification of what was presented as Old English law nor the writing of English history was motivated by high-minded antiquarianism: as James Campbell has put it, ‘among the emotions which affected that prelate’s hard head and not always soft heart, it is unlikely that nostalgia for the Anglo-Saxons worked strongly’.7 The bishop and former royal administrator would have seen the theoretical and practical aspects of constructing the Old English past, legal and otherwise, as inseparable, perhaps indistinguishable. Every king since the Conquest had emphasized that pre-Conquest law remained in force, so it made sense for Bishop Alexander to have been associated with a new glossary of Old English legal terms, translated into French as well as Latin.8 A prelate of his stamp would recognize that most modern legal practitioners would need assistance in making sense of English documents, most particularly English charters full of mysterious archaic terminology. The same is true of oral testimony given in English. It is nevertheless striking that collections of Old English laws continued to be made in the twelfth century by those who understood what they were copying or translating. They appear to have been doing so for purposes more practical than nostalgic reverence or academic antiquarianism.9 But in copying, translating, and indeed (as in the case of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris) confecting codes anew, they were according respect to the traditional English format for legislation, especially royal legislation in the name of a particular king, which appears to have been the format which most impressed them. It was, moreover, a well-established pre-Conquest tradition to gather codes and other types of legislative document together into compilations.10 Henry of Huntingdon makes frequent reference to law, and clearly knew some Roman11 and more canon law.12 His position as archdeacon would have made this essential. We catch a glimpse of him acting as a witness on 21 September 1127 at a county court hearing in a dispute between Robert of Yaxley and the abbot of Thorney.13 But Henry does not reveal much knowledge of Old English 6  LECf 34. 7  J. Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, repr. in his Essays in AngloSaxon History (London 1986), pp. 209–28, at p. 211. For pleasure, Alexander could turn to Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose ‘Prophecies of Merlin’ was also dedicated to him: The History of the Kings of Britain. An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum, ed. M.D. Reeve and N. Wright (Woodbridge 2007), cc. 109–10. 8  ‘Expositiones vocabulorum’, The Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. H. Hall, 3 vols, RS (1896), iii. pp. ccclvi–ccclxv, 1032–9; A.G.  Dyson, ‘The Monastic Patronage of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln’, JEH, xxvi (1975), 1–24, at 20; O’Brien, God’s Peace, p. 55. The case for Alexander himself being the sponsor is not watertight. 9  London, BL, MS. Harley 55(B), which is fragmentary survival from a now unidentifiable book: Wormald, Making, p. 255; contrast the much more substantial but still demonstrably incomplete Cambridge, CCC, MS. 383, discussed in this regard by Wormald, pp. 233–4. 10  For instance, Cambridge, CCC, MS. 173, London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xi, and BL, MS. Harley 55 (A) (a fragment of what was obviously a larger book) all date from the early eleventh century. 11  HA VI. 1 and n. 2; p. xxxviii. 12  HA III. 5 and n. 7; pp. xxxiii, xxxix. 13  Cambridge, UL, MS. Add. 3020, fo. 145r–v (Thorney Cartulary), cited by Greenway, HA, p. xlvi.

106  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 law.14 Certain manuscripts of a late (post-1149) version of the Historia Anglorum,15 however, append to it a legal compilation known to modern scholars as Tripartita, which, as this (modern) title suggests, consists of three elements. The first element was a collection of apparently genuine legal fragments of the Conqueror, in the novel English legislative language of Latin, cackhandedly cut and pasted, probably late in his reign, into the traditional English form of a law code. This is now known to modern scholars as Willelmi Articuli, King William’s ‘Ten Articles’;16 Tripartita preserves a very slightly amplified version of the ori­ gin­al. In the Articuli, King William made two references to King Edward.17 The second element in Tripartita was the ‘third’ version (or recension) of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, found only in this collection.18 And the third was a genealogy of the Norman ducal house.19 Whoever, in the early twelfth century, assembled these three originally discrete elements as Tripartita clearly wanted to encapsulate in legal form the claim to continuity over the Conquest. Copies of it circulated independently of the Historia Anglorum, and there is no evidence that it was Henry himself who decided to append it to his book. The version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris unique to Tripartita was rubricated in the form found in manuscripts of the Historia Anglorum after 1161,20 by when (or very soon after) Henry was probably dead.21 Nor is there any evidence that it was he who inserted a late eleventh- or early twelfth-century legal compilation which purported to be a Latin translation of a code of Cnut—the Instituta Cnuti—into his Historia’s account of Cnut’s reign in some witnesses of this late version.22 Under the cover of Cnut’s law the Instituta included a good deal of other material, including translated excerpts of the laws of Ine, Alfred, Edgar, and legal treatises compiled by Wulfstan of York at the beginning of the eleventh century. The Instituta also circulated separately, often together with the Articuli, the form of which the Instituta seems to have influenced.23 In terms of their legislation, both 14  HA I. 7 and n. 35; III. 20; IV. 20; V. pr., 26. 15  Greenway designates it version 5, redactions A and B: HA pp. cliii–clvi. 16  Gesetze i. 486–8; Wormald, Making, 402–05. 17  Wl. Art. 4, 7. 18  B.R. O’Brien, ‘Legal Treatises as Perceptions of Law in Stephen’s Reign’, in P.  Dalton and G.J. White, eds, King Stephen’s Reign: 1135–1154 (Woodbridge 2008), pp. 182–95, at 188. 19  Printed in F. Liebermann, Über die Leges Edwardi Confessoris (Halle 1896), pp. 134–9. 20  HA, p. cliv; cf. Gesetze i. 486 n. a; F. Liebermann, Über die Leges Anglorum saeculo XIII ineunte Londoniis collectae (Halle 1894), pp. 101–02; Über die Leges Edwardi Confessoris, pp. 126, 130–1. 21  HA, p. lvii. 22  HA p. clv; in these manuscripts the Instituta is inserted just before VI. 17, Henry’s account of Cnut’s death. The Instituta are edited by Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 612–17; his dating of the compilation to c. 1110 has been plausibly revised by Wormald, Making, pp. 403–5, 466, to late in the Conqueror’s reign, contemporaneous with the first compilation of the Willelmi Articuli, which may have been designed as a supplement to it. The Instituta Cnuti and Willelmi Articuli are almost always found together: Wormald, p. 403 n. 637. On the Instituta, see B.R.  O’Brien, ‘The Instituta Cnuti and the Translation of English Law’, ANS, xxv (2002), 177–97, with more cautious dating at 185. He makes a plausible case, 186–7, for the translation’s having been done in Worcester. 23 Wormald, Making, pp. 402–5.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  107 conquerors were shown to have venerated Old English tradition. Although Henry of Huntingdon himself appears to have shown no interest in these attempts to render Old English legal materials more readily accessible, at least one and pos­ sibly both24 of which had been composed in his locality, others clearly judged them to be so relevant to his Historia that they needed to be copied alongside it. If there is little sign that Henry himself investigated Old English legislation, there is every indication that William of Malmesbury did. The most jurisprudentially minded of all the twelfth-century historians—a copy of the Breviarium Alaricum, a Visigothic epitome of the Theodosian Code, survives mainly in his hand;25 a copy of the probably sixth-century Collectio canonum Quesnelliana is entirely in his hand26—he recognizes the importance of law to a history of the English kings.27 Unlike Henry, he reveals himself to be abreast of the very latest research into English legal history. He knew Alfred’s code (and Ine’s, appended to it in Alfred’s time).28 He knew that Cnut’s laws were based on Æthelred’s, although this is never acknowledged in them; and he knew that they were now conventionally termed King Edward’s laws.29 In other words, he knew a great deal about the history of English law, apparently more than any other historian of the time. He must have been familiar with one or more of the late eleventh- or early twelfth-century attempts to excavate, compile, and often to translate the laws of Old England.30 The ‘very collision between two races . . . made them necessary’;31 and without that stimulus, probably little would have been ­preserved of them.

24  F. Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta Canuti aliorumque regum Anglorum’, TRHS, 2nd ser., vii (1893), 77–107, at 85–7, argues that it was probably written in the Danelaw by an archdeacon or a clerk of a church court. Greenway, HA, p. clv and n. 31 suggests that it would have been of interest to Henry, and that his father, Nicholas, also archdeacon of Huntingdon, may have been the author. For the church of Worcester as a possibility, see O’Brien, ‘Instituta’, 186–7, 191. 25  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Arch. Seld. B. 16, fos 140v–222v ; see De gestis regum Anglorum, libri quinque; Historia novella, libri tres, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1887–9), i. pp. cxxxvi–cxli; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 63–4, 90–3, 129, 205–06; Wormald, Making, pp. 139–40 and nn. 85, 86. William may have copied a very ancient manuscript which he found in the library at Malmesbury. 26  Oxford, Oriel College, MS. 42. 27  GR I. 9, 35, II. 122, 155, 183. He claimed to have found it in ‘a very ancient book’, and compared it with the modern Collectio Lanfranci; further R.M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 2nd edn (Woodbridge 2003), pp. 64–6, 131–2. 28  GR I. 35, II. 122; Wormald, Making, p. 137. 29  GR II. 183. 9; Wormald, Making, p. 138. 30  Examples are: London, BL, MS. Cotton Nero  A.  i(A) (for a date ‘just before or just after the Norman Conquest’: see A Wulfstan Manuscript Containing Institutes, Laws and Homilies: British Museum Cotton Nero A. I, ed. H.R. Loyn, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, xvii (Copenhagen 1971), p. 19; Cambridge, CCC, MS. 383 (St Paul’s, London); Rochester, Dean & Chapter Library, Textus Roffensis (probably completed in late 1122/early 1123: Textus Roffensis. Rochester Cathedral Library Manuscript  A.  3. 5., 2 Parts, ed. P.  Sawyer, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, vii, xi (Copenhagen 1957–62), i. p. 18); and Quadripartitus, discussed below. On all these, see Wormald, Making, pp. 224–53; for a brief survey, see J.G.H. Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, Vol. II., 871–1216 (Oxford 2012), pp. 869–71. 31  P&M i. 105.

108  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 If William consulted only one of these recent compilations of translated codes, that which best fits the bill is known to modern scholars as Quadripartitus.32 It is the largest and most impressive of them.33 Indeed, as we shall see, it proved to be the most accessible version of most of the Old English law codes34 prior to the publication of William Lambarde’s printed edition of many of them in 1568, which itself drew indirectly on Quadripartitus. No fewer than nine manuscript witnesses still survive (if we include copies of the very early thirteenth-century ‘London Collection’, discussed below); they establish that at one time there were many more.35 As we shall see, copies were still being consulted out in the sticks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.36 For those with access to a copy, it remained an obvious source on the pre-Conquest past when something more detailed than rudimentary narrative was for some reason sought after. It had been assembled early in Henry I’s reign, almost certainly by 1108, perhaps already prior to 1100,37 by a Francophone lawyer, perhaps a judge, with a less than perfect grasp of English.38 He probably wrote in close proximity to the centre of royal government in Winchester,39 and roughly a decade later drafted as a con­tinu­ ation the very different collection which has become known as the Leges Henrici.40 The Leges Henrici has been shown to draw on canonical sources, probably from contemporary French compilations.41 The compiler had moved from the ‘code-by-code arrangement’ of Quadripartitus to a thematic one,42 and used the canonical material chiefly in his exposition of procedural matters.43 His change in the manner of his arrangement and his use of recent canonists, does not, therefore, betoken a shift on his part to a more high-mindedly academic approach to jurisprudence. Old English codes were devoid of procedure. Modern canon law offered guidance on it, as the compiler would know well, if he were a cleric—it has been shown that he was remarkably well informed about the affairs

32 Wormald, Making, p. 138 n. 82. The title was probably coined in the sixteenth century: P. Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, repr. in his Legal Culture, pp. 81–114, at 84–5. 33  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, passim; Wormald, Making, pp. 236–44. 34 Wormald, Making, p. 244, citing Bracton, Fortescue, and Coke. 35 Wormald, Making, pp. 237–9. 36  For the copies available to Alan of Ashbourn at Lichfield, Henry Knighton at Leicester, and the author of the chronicle attributed to John of Brompton at some location which cannot be specified, at least one copy of which ended up at Jervaulx Abbey, see below, Chapter 5. 37 Wormald, Making, p. 244; further R.  Sharpe, ‘The Dating of Quadripartitus Again’, in S. Jurasinski, L. Oliver, and A. Rabin, eds, English Law before Magna Carta. Felix Liebermann and Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Leiden and Boston, MA 2010), pp. 81–93. 38  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 107, 110–11; Wormald, Making, p. 237. 39 F. Liebermann, Quadripartitus. Ein englisches Rechtsbuch von 1114 (Halle 1892), pp. 29–30; Downer, LHP, pp. 44–5; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 107 n. 78. 40 Downer, LHP, pp. 23–8; Wormald, Making, p. 412. 41  B.C.  Brasington, ‘Canon Law in the Leges Henrici Primi’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, cxxiii, Kanonistische Abteilung, xcii (2006), 288–305, esp. 299. 42  J.G.H. Hudson, ‘From the Leges to Glanvill: Legal Expertise and Legal Reasoning’, in Jurasinski et al., eds, English Law before Magna Carta, pp. 221–49, at 228. 43  Brasington. ‘Canon Law’, 299–306.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  109 of Gerard, archbishop of York44—who was also a royal justice. It could be integrated into the Old English material, as the compiler had excavated it and translated it into Latin. Like Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, the compiler of the Leges Henrici was an intensely practical man, not a nostalgic archaiser. He states in the second preface to Quadripartitus—accurately titled its Argumentum—that his aim in his planned second book of recent texts, was to ‘make the work suitable for the everyday courts’. In both Quadripartitus and later in the Leges Henrici, this entailed substantiating the claim, attributed to none other than Henry I himself in the Argumentum of the former, to have ‘given us back the law of King Edward’;45 in other words, to have preserved Old English law, albeit ‘strengthened . . . by the improvements introduced by his blessed father, [and] improved with his own laws’. The ‘law of King Edward’ had to be recorded in detail, in Latin, because current law was based upon it: the ‘ancient teaching of the fathers’ had since been ‘set right by the subtlety of the moderns’.46 But the editor’s practicality did not distance him from William of Malmesbury, his putative reader. They both implicitly acknowledged that the Old English past was too relevant to the present to be left in obscurity. Quadripartitus’s preface to Book II, concerned with the ‘improvements’ effected by Henry I—Book I concluded with some fragments of the Conqueror’s47—solicits the approval of Matilda,48 Henry I’s queen, who had encouraged William of Malmesbury to write the Gesta regum.49 Through her, as William snidely insinuates elsewhere,50 King Henry had sought to reinforce his legitimacy by establishing a marital connection with the Old English royal line. It was no accident that William, like the editor of Quadripartitus, recognized that the queen was a dynastic embodiment of that continuity with Old England which they were both seeking to re-establish in their complementary ways. And in the views of both of them, King Henry had done likewise in legal terms by reaffirming the laga Eadwardi in what William termed his coronation ‘edict’,51 with which the second book of Quadripartitus opens. The ‘edict’ does indeed refer to the laga regis Eadwardi twice—insistently not translating the vernacular term—and also contrasts recent bad practice with that which had obtained ‘tempore regis Edwardi’.52 This body of laws is characterized as ‘decretales emendationes Henrici regis’ in this book’s preface, and the ‘leges Henrici regis’ in the book’s rubric.53 44  Sharpe, ‘Dating’, pp. 86–8. 45  R.  Sharpe, ‘The Prefaces of “Quadripartitus”’, in G.  Garnett and J.G.H.  Hudson, eds, Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy. Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge 1994), pp. 148–72, at 167, Arg. 27. 46  Sharpe, ‘Prefaces’, p. 168, Arg. 31. 47 This includes the Willelmi Articuli only in one late manuscript, London, BL, MS. Cotton Titus A. xxvii: see Wormald, Making, pp. 237, 240, Table 4.7. 48  Sharpe, ‘Prefaces’, preface to King Henry’s improvements, 14, p. 172. 49  GR ep. i. 3, 5–7, ep. ii, I. pr. 4. 50  GR V. 395. 1. 51  GR V. 393. 1. 52  Hn. Cor. 9, 13, 5. 53  Sharpe, ‘Dating’, pp. 85–6, 89.

110  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Quadripartitus was the most ambitious, if inchoate,54 contemporary attempt to reconstruct that law. But even in the early twelfth century, it seems, no trace survived of any code issued by Edward, probably because he had never done so. This was a problem when it was commonly proclaimed (in Gaimar’s words) that ‘so successfully did [Edward] lay down the law that neither before him nor after could any better king have been appointed’.55 It is striking that both Orderic’s interpolations in the Gesta Normannorum ducum and the Quedam exceptiones added to William of Jumièges’s original text statements that (respectively) Edward had been ‘the legitimate restorer of English laws’ and that he had ruled so well that ‘his laws are still required’.56 Both works were written at this juncture, the latter being narrowly dated to between 1101 and 1103.57 As suggested above, the Quedam exceptiones may be English in origin,58 but Orderic’s interpolation reveals that talk of this current political (and legal) pre-occupation in England must have been so insistent and widespread that it had crossed the Channel and reached the farthest flung regions of the duchy. For at the time when Orderic was working on the Gesta Normannorum ducum, there is no indication that he had yet made any research trip to England. The editor of Quadripartitus, in his Argumentum, came up with a solution to the problem of the missing Edwardian law code: as a pre-condition for Edward’s being accepted as king, he had ‘guaranteed on oath to the thegns of all England’, assembled at Hursteshevet, ‘that the laws of Cnut and his sons should continue in his time with unshaken firmness’.59 In the mind of the compiler of Quadripartitus, Edward the Confessor’s laws were Cnut’s laws. His Argumentum began: ‘The laws which are said to be King Edward’s, derived from the institutes of Cnut in the first place, as we received them from our elders . . .’60 Accordingly, Book I opened with both Cnut’s major codes, the most important and also the last codes of Old England. The remainder of the Book was designed to establish that Cnut’s—that is, Edward’s—laws were based exclusively on those of earlier English kings, beginning with the earliest extant West Saxon code of Alfred (to which Ine’s had, from Alfred’s day, been appended), and proceeding in imperfect chronological order to William the Conqueror61 (though the fact of conquest is nowhere acknowledged, even in the Argumentum). As this arrangement suggests, the focus was on Cnut, because it was really on Edward. Cnut had the great 54  As the editor admits, in the preface to Book II, 13: Gesetze i. 543 (Sharpe, ‘Prefaces’, p. 171 and n. 154). 55  Estoire des Engleis, ed. I. Short (Oxford 2009), ll. 4863–6.    56  GND ii. 108, 301–2. 57  See above, p. 49.   58  See above, p. 49. 59  Arg. 9, in Sharpe, ‘Prefaces’, p. 164; J.R. Maddicott, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Return to England in 1041’, EHR, cxix (2004), 650–66, esp. 652–4, makes a very plausible case for the substantial accuracy of this account; he identifies Hursteshevet at 660–2. 60  Arg. 1, in Sharpe, ‘Prefaces’, p. 162. My translation differs slightly. 61 Wormald, Making, pp. 239–42 and Table 4.7.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  111 advantage that there were Old English codes in his name.62 Hence the ­contemporary tendency to attribute confected codes to Cnut: the Instituta Cnuti, the Consiliatio Cnuti, and Pseudo-Cnut de foresta. Or as William of Malmesbury put it, Cnut had ordered ‘all laws laid down by earlier kings, and especially by Æthelred his predecessor, to be observed for all time . . .; the keeping of which . . . is sworn under the name of King Edward even now, not because he decreed but because he observed them’.63 Quadripartitus was not the only early twelfth-century attempt to preserve, or to purport to preserve, the laws of Edward which William had allegedly adopted. The Leges Edwardi Confessoris was another, as is made clear both by its preamble and by its fuller account of King William ‘authorizing’ them as such (at which point the first version of the Leges terminated).64 Its most likely date is early in Stephen’s reign.65 A third was the Leis Willelme,66 a code presented in the new French vernacular, perhaps in conscious imitation of the Old English tradition of vernacular legislation. The Leis purported to record ‘the laws and customs that King William granted to the people of England after the conquest of the land, those same that his cousin, King Edward, held before him’.67 Just as the earliest surviving work of history in French was written in and about England, so the earliest extant legislation in French was of English law—and (paradoxically) unlike the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, but like Quadripartitus and the Leges Henrici, many of the chapters in the Leis are demonstrably based on Old English law, albeit, like them, with misunderstandings compounded by garbled translation.68 The oldest extant witness of the Leis, and the only one of its short version, was inserted as a supplement to an existing copy of Quadripartitus, now London, BL, MS. Add. 49366. The provenance of this book remains obstinately mysterious, but in its original form, prior to the addition of the Leis, it is thought to date from around the middle of the twelfth century.69 A date c. 1175 has been plausibly 62  J.G.H.  Hudson, ‘Administration, Family and Perceptions of the Past in Late Twelfth-Century England: Richard FitzNigel and the Dialogue of the Exchequer’, in P. Magdalino, ed., The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe (London 1992), pp. 75–98, at 94–8. 63  GR II. 183. 9; Thomson, GR ii. 175, suggests that this refers to Willelmi Articuli, 7, or to Henry I’s Coronation Charter, 13. But William’s phrasing is too different for this to be a direct verbal echo. 64  LECf 34. 1a; O’Brien, God’s Peace, pp. 36–8. 65 O’Brien, God’s Peace, pp. 47–8. 66  Gesetze i. 492–520. 67  Leis, pr.; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 87–8; Wormald, Making, pp. 407–9; J. Wüest, Die ‘Leis Willelme’: Untersuchungen zur das ältesten Gesetzbuch in französicher Sprache, Romanica Helvetica, lxxxix (Bern 1969). 68 Wormald, Making, pp. 408–9, for some details; The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, ed. A.J. Robertson (Cambridge 1925), pp. 365–70. 69  I. Short, ‘Patrons and Polyglots’, 243, suggests that the earliest extant witness should be dated to the mid twelfth century: B. Woledge and I. Short, ‘Liste provisoire de mss. du XIIe siècle contenant des textes en langue française’, Romania, cii (1981), 1–17, at 6. Wormald dates the manuscript later, but still considers that the compilation existed ‘by the mid-twelfth century.’ O’Brien, ‘Legal Treatises’, pp. 189–90, argues that it was compiled in Stephen’s reign.

112  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 proposed for the Leis being appended to it.70 A much more extensive version of the code once survived in a number of manuscripts of Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis, a work which will be treated in detail in Chapter 5. The vernacular text of this longer version is demonstrably prior to the extant medieval Latin translation,71 which survives independent of the Historia. All the manuscripts of the Historia which included the Leis are now to most intents and purposes lost.72 It is not clear whether the shorter version was truncated and partly rearranged when it was copied into BL, MS. Add. 49366, or whether it represents a distinct— perhaps original—version of a pre-existing text. That its content is coherent—an apocryphal codification of the laws confirmed by the Conqueror73—and dis­tinct­ ive from the rest of the code in the longer version preserved in the Historia Croylandensis, makes the latter seem the more likely alternative.74 That judgment is supported by the fact that what is in this version the final provision on reliefs is heavily rubricated.75 To the unique version of the Leis in this book was in turn appended a unique, expanded form of the second version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris.76 Perhaps 70 Wormald, Making, p. 408 n. 665; cf. B.R. O’Brien, ‘An English Book of Laws from the Time of Glanvill’, in S. Jenks, J. Rose, and C. Whittick, eds, Law, Lawyers and Texts. Studies in Legal History in Honour of Paul Brand (Leiden 2012), pp. 51–67, at 55. 71  London, BL, MS. Harley 746, fos 55v–58v of which a transcript was made in the sixteenth century by Laurence Nowell, in London, BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius E. v, fos 161v–166r. 72  In the shorter version in BL, MS. Add. 49366, Leis Willelme 20–20.3a, on the subject of reliefs, are located after 28. 2, and concluded the code. The fuller version survives only because it was printed by John Selden in 1623 and William Fulman in 1684: Eadmeri Historia novorum, pp. 173–89; Fulman, ed. Rerum Anglicarum scriptores veteres (Oxford 1684), pp. 88–91. Selden used the witness in BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xiii, most of which, including the whole of the Leis, perished in the fire of 1731. Selden regrets, p. 173, that he had been forced to use this witness when he was unable to secure access to the ‘autograph’ still at Crowland. Fulman claimed to be using the (now lost) so-called Marsham manuscript (because it once belonged to Sir John Marsham). The fuller version also appears to have been in the ‘archetype’ of the Historia, still allegedly at Crowland when Sir Henry Spelman edited the five chapters in which he was interested: Spelman, Concilia i. 623–5, cc. 1, 17, 18, 20, 36. It seems clear that the witness described by Selden as ‘autograph’ was Spelman’s ‘archetype’, though this has been disputed, on unconvincing grounds, by W.G.  Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis. An Investigation Attempted (Cambridge 1894), p. 48. What is unclear is the basis on which Selden felt confident to pronounce it an autograph, if he had not been able to inspect it. Searle, Ingulf, p. 48, also disputes, also unconvincingly, that MS. Cotton Otho B. xiii was the manuscript used by Selden; further Liebermann, Gesetze i. 492, 504–6, 514. 73 Wormald, Making, pp. 408–9. 74  Liebermann took the opposite view: Gesetze iii. 283–4. 75  BL, MS. Add. 49366, fo. 144ˇ; O’Brien, ‘English Book’, p. 59. 76  On BL, MS. Add. 49366 see Liebermann, Gesetze, i. pp. xxix–xxx; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 87–8; O’Brien, ‘English Book of Laws’, passim. The Leis do not follow Quadripartitus immediately; the twelfth-century Roman law procedural ordo known as [Pseudo-]Ulpianus de edendo intervenes: O’Brien, p. 57. The second version of the Leges Edwardi is expanded by supplementing it with selected capitula from the Consiliatio Cnuti. In this code, a Latin translation of Cnut’s laws was prefaced with a prologue which recorded that Cnut, after ‘obtaining’ the kingdom of England, ‘decreed with reasoned deliberation that the whole kingdom . . . should be ruled by one law, just as it was by one king . . .’: F.  Liebermann, Consiliatio Cnuti, eine Übertragung angelsächsischer Gesetze aus dem zwölften Jahrhundert (Halle 1893), p. 1; Wormald, Making, p. 406. The hybrid version in the Holkham book does not include the prologue to Consiliatio Cnuti. Instead, it appends its selection from the Consiliatio to its unique version of the Leges Edwardi, thereby presenting the whole amalgam as Edward’s laws, confirmed by William.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  113 whoever added and elided these two supposed codifications of King Edward’s law, one in the (new, continental) vernacular and the other in Latin, both of which purported to have been formally endorsed by King William, judged that they supplied alternative versions of the code in Edward’s name which was lacking in the original Quadripartitus. To them in turn he appended a selection of laws from the Consiliatio Cnuti—another twelfth-century Latin code attributed to Cnut— though he carefully excised any reference to King Cnut from them.77 Thus elided, these portions of three originally distinct apocryphal codes in two languages greatly elaborated the otherwise brief, fragmentary record of William’s (genuine) procedural writ on exculpation in cases involving Englishmen and Frenchmen. The writ is not included in this book, but is found translated into Latin in other earlier and contemporary witnesses of Quadripartitus.78 The supplementary material added to this mid twelfth-century law book therefore rendered it even more clearly another embodiment of legal continuity over the Conquest. It was to enjoy a very influential afterlife when in the late sixteenth century it passed from an unknown source into the hands of Archbishop Matthew Parker, and thence into those of Sir Edward Coke.79 There is no evidence that William of Malmesbury or Henry of Huntingdon had read either the Leges Edwardi Confessoris or the Leis Willelme (indeed, there is no certainty that the Leis had been written during their lifetimes).80 Henry and the author of the Leges were writing and progressively revising their works in the same diocese at the same time, and someone saw fit to append the Leges to Henry’s Historia, just possibly during his lifetime; but if the Leges was accessible to Henry, he does not appear to have availed himself of the opportunity of drawing on it in his text. There has never been any suggestion that Henry used Quadripartitus. There is not even any certainty that William of Malmesbury did. It contained Æthelstan’s laws. The king was a key figure for William, because in William’s view he had established ‘that there should be one king over England, as obtains nowadays.’81 William claims to draw on sources for Æthelstan’s reign which are otherwise lost;82 yet he makes no allusion to his laws, which are found in every extant witness of Quadripartitus.83 A small group of manuscripts of the Gesta regum

77 The Leis and Leges Edwardi are copied, along with the selection from Consiliatio Cnuti, by the same hand in a new quire: Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 87; O’Brien, ‘English Book of Laws’, p. 59. 78  Conventionally known as Wl. Lad. The Latin translation is found in Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420; London, BL, MS. Royal 11. B. ii; and in BL, MS. Cotton Titus A. xxvii, which may or may not be slightly later. Titus  A.  xxvii also contains the Willelmi Articuli, but as a later insertion. 79  See below, Chapter 9. 80 Wormald, Making, pp. 408–9. O’Brien, ‘Legal Treatises’, p. 189, suggests that the Leis was written prior to Henry II’s accession on the flimsy basis that it does not mention Henry I. 81  GR II. 121. 6; cf. 134. 1. 82  GR II. 132, 133. 2–5, 135. 6–9. 83 Wormald, Making, pp. 240–1, Table 4.7.

114  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 includes two substantial interpolations taken from Quadripartitus: its Latin translation of the Conqueror’s ordinance on exculpation, and the beginning of the preface to Book II.84 It cannot be established whether William was responsible for these, though the crudity of the splicing into the Gesta suggests that he was not. But if William did not himself use Quadripartitus, he must have drawn on another compilation or compilations of Old English law, which may or may not survive.85 Even now it is clear that there were plenty of them around to choose from in early twelfth-century England, especially for such an assiduous visitor of archives; in William’s day there are likely to have been more. That the author of the Liber Eliensis had demonstrably been reading Consiliatio Cnuti suggests that historians less impressively learned than William of Malmesbury were paying careful attention to compilations of pre-Conquest law.86 Influence was not exclusively a one-way process, of legal antiquaries on his­tor­ ians. It has been suggested that the author who revised the first version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris c. 1145—almost certainly the author of the original— may have read Gesta regum. Some of his revisions may betray its influence, or at least their use of similar sources. The revisions concern Edward’s confirmation of the laws of previous kings, and his nomination of Duke William as his successor.87 The conflation between the early twelfth-century attempts to unearth England’s pre-Conquest history and its pre-Conquest law indicate that it was soon widely recognized that these were, or could be, complementary aspects of  the same project. Hence, for instance, the entirely historical cast of the Argumentum which introduces the Old English law codes in Quadripartitus. As Quadripartitus was refined during Henry I’s reign, the probable deletion of the first preface may have laid increasing emphasis on this historical scene-setting.88 A subsequent step in that process is represented by Richard fitzNigel, king’s treasurer and (from 1189) bishop of London. Dialogus de scaccario (1177–1180s), his guide to the procedures of the Exchequer, reveals the acute historical curiosity 84  Some witnesses of the group designated Aa by Thomson and Winterbottom: GR i. pp. xvi–xvii, and n. 17 for Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 5. 34, a Parker transcript which includes more additional material. The interpolation is at III. 297, immediately following on from an excerpt from a letter of Pope Alexander II to King William. The second interpolation follows from the first, without any break. They are printed at GR i. pp. 837–40; cf. ii. 411–12. The first extract is edited by Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 483–4, and the second at i. 542–3 (Sharpe, ‘Prefaces’, pp. 169–71). The latter extract extends only as far as c. 10. 85 Wormald, Making, p. 138 n. 82, explores all the possibilities. 86 R.  Sharpe, ‘Official and Unofficial Latin Words in 11th- and 12th-Century England’, in R. Ashdowne and C. White, eds, Latin in Medieval Britain (Oxford 2017), pp. 247–71, at 257, citing Liber Eliensis, ed. E.O. Blake, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., xcii (1962), II. 32. 87  LECf 34. 3, 35. 2, Gesetze i. 663 and n. i, 666 and n. a; GR II. 183. 9; 228. 1, 2; further Liebermann, Über die Leges Edwardi Confessoris, p. 25; O’Brien, God’s Peace, p. 278 n. 144; O’Brien, ‘Legal Treatises’, pp. 186–7. The former instance seems improbable, because William of Malmesbury’s point is that Cnut endorsed the laws of his ‘antecessor’ Æthelred, whereas the Leges Edwardi assert that Edward had confirmed the law of his grandfather, Edgar, which had supposedly been ‘abandoned from the death of Edgar . . . until his own time’. 88  Sharpe, ‘Dating’, pp. 91–3.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  115 which one might expect of the author of a history (now lost) of Henry II’s reign, entitled Tricolumnis because it was arranged in three columns.89 Richard was the son of Nigel, king’s treasurer and later bishop of Ely, and, like William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon, (probably) of an English mother. Nigel was almost certainly a brother of Alexander of Lincoln, which meant that Richard was a great-nephew of Roger, bishop of Salisbury, from whose ‘overflowing knowledge’, Richard claimed, ‘I received as an inheritance the little that I know.’90 With that background, it is hardly surprising that he shared his uncle’s interest in English history and law. His official duties meant that perforce he knew a good deal about the administrative and fiscal aspects of both. With respect to the latter, he specifies that the third ‘column’ of Tricolumnis was concerned with ‘various public and private matters, including judgments of courts’.91 If Tricolumnis was by his own account contemporary history in the strict sense,92 the main historical focus of the Dialogus is the Conquest and William’s reign. Paradoxically, therefore, the Dialogus is almost certainly more historical in character than his lost work of history. The Dialogus presents the compilation of Domesday Book as the culmination of William the Conqueror’s attempt to ‘bring the people subjected to him under written right and laws’, which meant (in the Romanesque terminology of the late twelfth century)93 ‘that everyone should be content with his own rights and not usurp the rights of others with impunity’.94 But the process which ended in Domesday had been initiated many years beforehand, when the Conqueror had examined ‘the English laws according to their threefold distinction, namely the Mercian law, Danish law, and West Saxon law; some he rejected and some he approved, adding those overseas laws from Normandy which seemed most efficacious for the protection of the kingdom’s peace’.95 Richard claimed to have learnt this not from one of his historically well-informed relatives, but from Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, citing his authority like a good classical historian. Whether or not Bishop Henry was his source, the account is reminiscent of those otherwise found in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris and the Leis Willelme, of the Conqueror’s formal adoption of Old English law. It is more nuanced than either, and textual parallels are limited to the Leis Willelme’s also differentiating between

89  Richard fitzNigel, Dialogus de scaccario. The Dialogue on the Exchequer, ed. E. Amt; Constitutio domus regis. Disposition of the King’s Household, ed. S.D. Church (Oxford 2007), Dialogus, I. v, p. 40, II. iii, p. 116; for columnar arrangement, see Hudson, ‘Perceptions’, p. 80. Except where indicated otherwise, this is the edition of the Dialogus de scaccario I shall cite. 90  Dialogus, I. vii, p. 64. 91  Dialogus I. v, p. 40. 92  Dialogus II. ii, p. 116. 93  Perhaps an allusion to Ulpian’s definition of justice at Dig. 1. 1. 10; Inst. 1. 1. 1. It underpins the undertakings given on John’s behalf in 1199: Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols, RS (1868–71), iv. 88. For Richard’s knowledge of Roman law, see Hudson, ‘Perceptions’, p. 83; F. Liebermann, Einleitung in den Dialogus de Scaccario (Göttingen 1875), pp. 31–2. 94  Dialogus I. xvi, p. 96.    95  Dialogus I. xvi, p. 96.

116  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 the same three constituent regional laws of England.96 Nevertheless, it seems that Richard had been influenced by an historical conceit first propagated by the twelfth-century legal antiquaries (one of whom, as we have seen, demonstrably wrote in his great-uncle’s diocese),97 and which, by the time he was writing, was so familiar that it had also found its way into Wace’s Roman de Rou.98 Similarly, although there are no verbal parallels, he shares their interest in the (pre-­Conquest) origins of Danegeld,99 on which he cites either Gaimar or Geoffrey of Monmouth,100 and the murdrum fine, which he attributes to the Conqueror’s reign.101 On these topics he does not appear to have drawn on the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, for the Leges makes Cnut, not William, the deviser of the fine.102 Unless Richard understood this as a subtle way of avoiding saying that the second eleventh-century conqueror of England was responsible for the legal in­nov­ ation—by analogy with the Pseudo-Cnut de foresta, which made Cnut responsible for introducing forest law into England103—he was evidently adopting the more conventional view, recorded in the Willelmi Articuli,104 the Leges Henrici,105 and the Leis Willelme.106 Nevertheless, on this subject, as on the Conqueror’s formal confirmation of existing English law, it seems that he was following an agenda set by the early twelfth-century legal compilations, for these subjects are scarcely touched upon in the histories. It is unlikely that the same is true of his lengthy and very interesting digression107 concerning the shifting terms on which Englishmen were allowed to hold land after the Conquest: After the conquest of the kingdom, after the just suppression of rebels, when the king himself and the king’s chief men were inspecting the new territory, a careful inquiry was made into who had fought against the king in battle and saved themselves by flight. All of these, and also the heirs of those who had died in 96  The Old English terms are used in the Dialogus, and both the French and Latin versions of Leis Willelme, pr., 2–3.3, 8, 17.1, 21.3–4, etc.; De necessariis observantiis scaccarii dialogus, commonly called Dialogus de scaccario, ed. A. Hughes, C.G. Crump, and C. Johnson (Oxford 1902), p. 202. 97  See above, p. 104; Henry of Huntingdon, HA V. pr., p. 272, states the ‘by right of the kingdom the Normans conceded life, liberty and ancient laws to the beaten’, but nothing more. 98  Roman de Rou, ll. 9000–9010, which is closer to Leges Edwardi Confessoris than Leis Willelme. 99  Dialogus, I. xi, p. 85; LECf 11. 100 Liebermann, Einleitung in den Dialogus de Scaccario, pp. 102, 103. 101  Dialogus, I, x, p. 80. 102  LECf 16. Hudson, ‘Perceptions’, pp. 85–6, emphasizes the differences between Richard’s accounts and those in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. 103  Gesetze i. 620–6. 104  Wl. Art 3. 105  LHP 92. 106  Leis 22. 107  Dialogus I. x. p. 82: ‘Although this does not pertain to the business I have undertaken, in which I am a debtor, yet I shall explain for free what I have learnt from the natives themselves.’ Note the doubtless arch use of the jargon of accounting.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  117 battle, were denied any hope of all the lands, estates, and revenues which they had previously possessed. Indeed, they considered it a great boon merely to stay alive under their enemies. But when those who had been called to battle but not come, or had not been present on account of household or other pressing business, with the passage of time possessed, through loyal service, the favour of their lords, they [also] began to possess [lands], not with any hope of succession, but solely for themselves, at the will of their lords. As more time passed, when those who were hateful to their lords had been ejected from their possessions, and there was no-one to restore what had been lost, a common complaint amongst the natives reached the king: that hated by all and despoiled of possessions, they would be forced to go overseas. Then, when advice had been taken on this matter, it was decreed that what they had been able to acquire from their lords on their own merits, on the basis of a lawful agreement, would be conceded to them by inviolable right. But for the rest they could not claim anything for themselves by title of succession from the time of the subjection of the nation. It is very clear how prudent this decision was, especially because henceforth, in their own interests, they would be bound in every way to procure the favour of their lords through loyal service. In this way, therefore, anyone of the subjected nation who possesses estates or anything else of this sort, holds not what seemed to be owing to him by reason of succession, but has obtained it solely by his own merits or on the basis of an agreement.

The digression immediately follows on from his account of the murdrum fine, presumably because that had sharply distinguished Englishmen from French settlers.108 Richard claimed to derive his information about English tenure from ‘natives’, but it is so detailed, precise, and, on the subject of confiscation of land from English opponents, corroborated,109 that it is difficult not to believe that he was using a written source or sources of some kind. That the claims of Anglici to land were treated differently under Henry II is indicated by other fragmentary evidence.110 Richard was concerned not with tenants-in-chief, but with English subtenants, and the terms on which their tenures were progressively redefined in the decades following the Conquest. His account is ‘not historical in form, but rather a legal theory in historical form’.111 It displays some similarity to Bracton’s thirteenth-century description of tenants in ancient royal demesne,112 a category 108  Dialogus I. x, p. 82. 109  Reg. no. 37 (1066xApril 1070). 110 G.  Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford 2007), pp. 348–50, discusses the inconclusive evidence. 111  De necessariis observantiis scaccarii dialogus, ed. Hughes, Crump, and Johnson, p. 195; the fullest discussion is P. Vinogradoff, Villainage in England (Oxford 1892), pp. 121–2. 112  Bracton fo. 7b (ii. 37–8).

118  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 which, however, did not exist in Richard’s time.113 It is possible that he adapted his analysis from a twelfth-century legal compilation which has since been lost, and which the author of Bracton later also used. But the extant early ­twelfth-­century legal compilations follow the genuine Old English codes in saying almost nothing about land law, so this seems unlikely. Immediately after this discussion, Richard cross-refers, in connection with a different topic, to his later treatment of Domesday Book; but Domesday’s few passing allusions to the redemption of land by the English would not in themselves sustain this particular account of how, in Richard’s terminology, Englishmen’s ‘rights’ were gradually redefined. His striking assertion that Englishmen could not claim any title ‘from the time of the subjection of the nation’ may be an attempt to gloss Domesday’s t. r. e.;114 but if so, he clearly felt Domesday’s jargon needed to be interpreted for his audience, and it would be impossible to infer his analysis of the changing position of English survivors from Domesday itself. It seems most likely, therefore, that Richard is himself responsible for this account. It recognizes, more readily than the legal compilations and in much more explicit, analytical detail than the ­histories, that the Conquest had transformed the terms on which English tenants held. Implicitly it contrasts the bar on their claiming anything from prior to the Conquest, with the titles of French settlers which were recorded in Domesday Book—‘metaphorically’, that is, the book of ‘Last Judgment’115—as vested in the rights of Edwardian antecessores, who, by definition, were deemed to have held t. r. e. Richard must have known this, because his description of Domesday shows that he was very familiar with its layout. Richard advised any reader who was lucky enough to come across a copy of Tricolumnis not to let this invaluable work out of his sight.116 It seems that his advice was not heeded. Stubbs deemed its disappearance ‘one of the greatest losses of the middle ages’.117 But given that it was, by Richard’s account, exclusively concerned with Henry II’s reign, it is unlikely that posterity has been deprived of many of his insights into the Conquest. The Dialogus, however, reveals how central was the ‘primitive state of the kingdom after the Conquest’118 to Richard’s understanding of the operation of royal government in twelfth-­century England. Although he reproduced the legal convention that the Conqueror had endorsed existing English law—familiar from the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, the Leis Willelme, and elsewhere—he tweaked it in such a way as to allow for the importation of Norman customs too. 113 R.S. Hoyt, The Royal Demesne in English Constitutional History: 1066–1272 (Ithaca, NY 1950), pp. 172–4. 114  I am grateful to John Hudson for this suggestion. 115  Dialogus I. xvi, p. 96. 116  Dialogus I. iv, p. 40. 117 W. Stubbs, Lectures on Early English History, ed. A. Hassall (London 1906), p. 135. 118  Dialogus I. vii, p. 62.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  119 In other respects he is less ambiguous about the changes wrought by the Conquest. The unparalleled (in the middle ages) literary form of the Dialogus—an administrative handbook pretentiously modelled on the classical genre of dialogue—and Richard’s knowledge of the machinery of English royal government, meant that he could blend the historical and the legal in a new way. Despite occasional references to pre-Conquest practice,119 he pays little attention to England in that period. He concentrates on the Conquest as a new beginning. It is likely that he shared the view of those who thought the Exchequer had ‘begun with the conquest of the kingdom achieved by King William’, who had reportedly modelled it on an ‘overseas’ (or Norman) Exchequer.120 Implicitly, therefore, Richard undermined the emphasis on continuity which had marked so much of the historical and legal scholarship of the early twelfth century. Indeed, as we have seen, monastic historians such as William of Malmesbury had vilified royal administrators of his ilk—for instance, Richard’s great uncle, Roger of Salisbury, whom William knew well.121 It may be no accident that the only identifiable history book Richard had used to investigate Old England was in the tradition of Gaimar and Geoffrey of Monmouth. Anything more serious-minded would have prompted more detailed discussion of the pre-Conquest period. But at the very time when Richard was writing, the parallel historical attempts to demonstrate that continuity were reaching a more conventional—and from a literary point of view, flat-footed—consummation in the work of another royal official. Roger of Howden’s Chronica was another ambitious attempt to survey the whole of English history, written in the tradition of the great works of the early twelfth century. But it suggests that English historical writing had already declined into a silver age. It implicitly shared William of Malmesbury’s assessment of the significance of Bede’s death by going back to that point. But unlike William of Malmesbury, Roger’s account of this period is highly derivative and brief. It draws indirectly on Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia.122 Whereas Henry had simply enjoyed close connections at the top of royal government, Roger had himself been involved in it, at a high level. From shortly before 1174 he was a clerk at Henry II’s court, where he must have encountered Ranulf de Glanvill and Richard fitzNigel; from 1184 he was from time to time an itinerant justice of the forest in

119  For his possible use of a charter of King Edgar in favour of Ely Abbey, see Hudson, ‘Perceptions’, p. 84. He might have used the copy in the Liber Eliensis, pp. 76–8, or the original, given his Ely connections. 120  Dialogus I. iv, p. 20. Others are said to have believed it existed under English kings. 121  GP IV. 177. 7; cf. I. 71. 1β 1; HNa I. 4, II. 24, 33. 122  To 1148 it is mainly based on the Historia Anglorum vel Saxonum post Bedam, which is made up of extracts from the Durham Historia de regibus Anglorum attributed to Symeon and from Henry of Huntingdon: Chronica i. pp. xxvi–xxxiii. All Roger’s material from Henry comes via the Historia post Bedam: HA p. clvi.

120  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 the northern shires.123 He might therefore be compared to Richard fitzNigel in his own generation, though Richard’s position at court was more august. A more appropriate comparison, given his role as a royal justice, might be with the an­onym­ous compiler of Quadripartitus and the Leges Henrici, and perhaps also with the author of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, in Henry of Huntingdon’s generation. We have seen that Tripartita had almost certainly been appended to Henry’s Historia, and fragments of Quadripartitus had been spliced into William’s Gesta regum, by hands other than those of the respective historians. By contrast, it seems to have been Roger himself who chose to include in his Chronica a collection of legal materials under the rubric: ‘Incipit liber de legibus Anglie.’ This collection is integral to his text, not a later insertion.124 It comprises three elements: Tripartita (as its modern scholarly title suggests, itself tripartite), the legal glossary associated with Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, and the con­tem­por­ ary Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie qui Glanvilla vocatur (1187–89) (henceforth Glanvill). Roger appended a number of recent assizes of King Henry II, but immediately before they started he made it quite clear that the Liber ended with Glanvill: ‘Explicit liber legum Anglie.’125 The early ­twelfth-­century Tripartita and possibly Alexander of Lincoln’s glossary had therefore recently been supplemented with a state-of-the-art account of procedures in the king’s court, illustrated by templates for the royal writs which initiated those ­pro­ced­ures. It is important to note that only with the brand-new Glanvill did a new form of English jurisprudence clearly emerge. It consisted of thematic ­analysis of pro­ced­ures in the king’s court, and to some extent of the substantive law which underpinned those procedures. The new genre had been adumbrated in the Leges Henrici, which had made some attempt at systematization, and had from time to time strayed into consideration of substantive principles.126 The same is true at a slightly later date of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris.127 But Glanvill was far more different from the earlier and (it is usually assumed) more primitive genre: the inchoate compilation of historical and apocryphal legislative texts. The earlier genre nevertheless survived and indeed, as we shall see, continued to flourish in conjunction with the new analytic genre. If the compiler of the Leges Henrici was indeed the compiler of Quadripartitus too, this had been true from the first faltering steps towards thematic arrangement and analysis. The ­juxtaposition of the two genres was evident in London, BL, MS. Add. 49366, the 123  D.J. Corner, ‘Howden, Roger of ’, ODNB. 124  It is found in one extant copy of the Chronica, which is the best: London, BL, MS. Royal 14. C. ii, fos 226r–274r; it is followed by texts of the assize of the forest and the assize of Clarendon, fos 274r–276v. See Howden, Chronica ii. 248–52; J.C. Holt, ‘The Assizes of Henry II: The Texts’, in The Study of Medieval Records. Essays in Honour of Kathleen Major, ed. D.A.  Bullough and R.L.  Storey (Oxford 1971), pp. 85–106, at 89. 125  MS. Royal 14. C. ii, fo. 274r; Holt, ‘Assizes’, p. 92. 126  Hudson, ‘From the Leges to Glanvill’, pp. 229–30, citing LHP 11.15–16a; 61.18c. 127  I am indebted to John Hudson for this point.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  121 t­welfth-century law book which had almost certainly been first compiled some decades before Glanvill was written. As we have already seen, it appended the Leis Willelme and the Leges Edwardi Confessoris to Quadripartitus, but also, in between Quadripartitus and the supplement, inserted the procedural civilian manual [Pseudo-]Ulpianus de edendo.128 In this instance, both categories of jurisprudential work seem to have been included in a book designed—or perhaps adapted— for use by a practising lawyer.129 But of course the modern, procedural element in this book concerned Roman, not English, law, presumably because nothing analo­gous in English law was available to the compiler. In that sense Glanvill marked a shift in English legal genre.130 By contrast with Richard fitzNigel, however, the author of Glanvill was far more disciplined, or single-minded: he was not to be tempted into historical explanations and digressions. Roger of Howden’s Liber, like BL MS. Add. 49366, suggests that there was little need for such digressions in law books, as opposed to bureaucratic manuals, because antiquarian compilations were likely to be readily available in close proximity.131 All Roger’s legal materials other than the assizes had reportedly come into his hands in a single work, the Liber, which must have been very recently compiled, because Glanvill itself was so recent.132 If texts of the recent Henrician assizes had also been available to whoever had compiled the Liber, he did not see fit to include them. Given Roger’s background, it is not surprising that they were available to him: elsewhere in the Chronica, at the relevant point in the narrative, he included the text of the assize of Northampton of 1176.133 Nor was it surprising that he decided to supplement the Liber, which concluded with the nearest thing English law then had to analytical jurisprudence, with working texts of what passed for recent legislation, in the shape of instructions (‘precepta’) to royal justices and accounts of their implementation.134 Roger evidently judged that the assizes filled

128  On the date, see Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 87 n. 22; Wormald, Making, pp. 240–1; O’Brien, ‘English Book of Laws’, pp. 54–5; cf. above, p. 111. 129  O’Brien, ‘English Book of Laws’, pp. 62, 65–6. 130 Wormald, Making, pp. 467–8; Hudson, ‘From the Leges to Glanvill’, 228–30. 131  For the many law books which include copies of Glanvill alongside the antiquarian com­pil­ ations, see S. Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, Unpublished Oxford University D. Phil., 2008, pp. 55–6; Appendices 3 and 4, pp. 227–30. 132  It seems that Roger did not take his text of Tripartita from a volume which included Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia: HA p. clvi; O’Brien, God’s Peace, p. 115. 133 Howden, Chronica ii. 89–91; cf. ‘Benedict of Peterborough’ [=Howden], Gesta regis Henrici secundi, i. 108–11. On this assize, see Holt, ‘Assizes’, pp. 87–92; P.A. Brand, ‘Henry II and the Creation of the English Common Law’, in C.  Harper-Bill and N.  Vincent, eds, Henry II: New Interpretations (Woodbridge 2007), pp. 215–41, at 225; Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws of England, Vol. II., pp. 500, 518–19. 134  Holt, ‘Assizes’, passim; J.C. Holt, ‘Magna Carta, 1215–1217: the Legal and Social Context’, repr. in his Colonial England, pp. 291–306, at 299 n. 26; J.C. Holt, Magna Carta, 3rd edn, ed. G. Garnett and J.G.H.  Hudson (Cambridge 2015), p. 258 n. 30. D.J.  Corner, ‘The Texts of Henry II’s Assizes’, in A.  Harding, ed., Law-Making and Law-Makers in British History, Royal Historical Soc. Studies in History, xxii (1980), pp. 7–20; Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws of England, Vol. II., pp. 472–3, 868–9, cf. 474, 477.

122  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 in some of the background to the most recent development in that jurisprudence—Glanvill’s explanation of procedures in the king’s court—which was consciously and affectedly trying to ape the relative sophistication of contemporary civilian and canonistic scholarship. In this respect too, Glanvill was, as we have already seen, doing something already foreshadowed in the Leges Henrici and Leges Edwardi Confessoris. Roger included all this material in an excursus in his chronologically arranged narrative under 1180 because, he recorded, it was in that year that Ranulf de Glanvill had been appointed ‘Chief Justiciar of all England: by his wisdom were established (conditae sunt) the laws which follow, which are called Anglicanae’.135 Roger’s treatment of Glanvill as but part of the Liber strongly implies that the ‘strange phrase’136 conditae sunt refers not just to Glanvill, but to the whole Liber, which had been ‘established’ by Glanvill’s ‘wisdom’. Clearly neither Roger nor the compiler of the Liber took at face value Glanvill’s claim that ‘the laws of England are not written’, for to have done so would have been to render the copying out of the other constituent parts of the Liber otiose, and, of course, directly to contradict what Richard fitzNigel, another leading royal official, was writing at much the same time: that William the Conqueror had brought the English under written law in the shape of Domesday Book. Rather, both Roger and the author of the Liber would have appreciated that in making the claim, the author of Glanvill was simply attempting to show off his—in truth, rudimentary—knowledge of Roman law.137 For although the author emphasized that he had ‘intentionally adopted a vulgar style and words used in court in order to provide knowledge of them for those who are not versed in this kind of vulgarity’,138 he evidently aspired to be taken seriously by readers of just that ilk. It is very likely that some of them were English. [Pseudo-]Ulpianus de edendo was referred to by Gilbert Foliot, and has been attributed to Master Vacarius.139 Even if that attribution be incorrect, it

135  Chronica, ed. Stubbs, ii. 215. 136  P&M i. 163 n. 1, who notices that Dialogus ii. 14, p. 164, uses it of a legislator. 137  Glanvill, pr., p. 2. In the preface the author of Glanvill was attempting to parade his intellectual bona fides in the most respectable, Romanesque form. Since English law was not Roman, it was, in civilian terms, customary, and customary law, as stated at Dig. 1. 3. 32, was law which was not written. Roman law, by contrast, was termed ius scriptum. This interpretation is confirmed by Glanvill adding that it nevertheless ‘does not seem absurd to call [the unwritten English laws] laws’, for they had been promulgated by the king—who is instead given the Roman title of princeps—with the advice of his council, and (quoting the familiar Roman law tag) ‘what pleases the princeps has the force of law’ (Dig. 1. 4. 1). It was this princely authority, not the quality of being written down, which made them laws. Cf. Dialogus, I. xvi, p. 96. As Maitland pointed out, P&M i. 147, Glanvill referred to the written or­din­ ance which had established the Grand Assize: Glanvill ii, c. 19. pp. 35–6. 138  Glanvill pr., p. 3. 139  The Correspondence of Archbishop Thomas Becket 1162–1170, ed. A.J. Duggan, 2 vols (Oxford 2000), i. 58–63 (no. 22), at 61, identified by A.J.  Duggan, ‘Roman, Canon, and Common Law in Twelfth-Century England: The Council of Northampton (1164) Reconsidered’, HR, lxxxiii (2010), 379–408, at 394–5 and n. 101.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  123 seems certain that the author hailed from this side of the Channel.140 The Roman law manuals Brachylogus and Quaestiones de iuris subtilitatibus have recently been attributed to English lawyers in the circle of the exiled Thomas Becket.141 A discriminating group of compatriot learned lawyers is likely to have been one of Glanvill’s intended audiences. Whether or not Roger considered that the assizes, too, came within the ambit of the laws which Ranulf de Glanvill had ‘established’, all of these materials were evidently in circulation among the upper echelons of the judiciary at the end of the twelfth century. They provide an insight into what justices under Henry II, Richard I, and John thought of as ‘the laws which we call English’. Crucially, they show that those laws continued to be seen as grounded in what William the Conqueror was deemed to have preserved from the royal legislation of Old England. The historical perspective elaborated by royal justices in Quadripartitus, the Leges Henrici, the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, and the other compilations in the early twelfth century, was now presented as relevant to the operation of hundred and shire courts, and as the foundation for many of the procedural in­nov­ ations of Henry II’s reign. It is therefore highly questionable whether the author of Glanvill believed that he had ‘ruthlessly . . . jettisoned the laws of Henry I, of Cnut, of Alfred and all the rest of our ancients’,142 and certain that his colleagues, including Roger of Howden, did not think in this way. Ranulf de Glanvill, like his pupil John, count of Mortain and future king of England, might have learnt his English history from romances.143 But even if they read no other historical works, romances, as we have seen, offered no alternative to the conventional doctrine of continuity over the Conquest. Roger had read much more widely in history, but the account he gives of the Conquest in the Chronica simply repeats verbatim that found in his source, a blending of the Historia regum and Henry of Huntingdon known as the Historia post Bedam.144 He added nothing, other than a marginal addition in his own hand of an extract from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Prophecies of Merlin’. This implies that he saw the Normans as providential agents of dire divine punishment, who had imposed ‘a yoke of perpetual slavery’ on the English.145 This is a view which is unsurprisingly compatible with one of the Historia post Bedam’s main sources, 140 B.C.  Brasington, Order in the Court: Medieval Procedural Treatises in Translation (Turnhout 2016), pp. 123–5. 141  A. Gouron, ‘L’auteur du “Brachylogus”: un compagnon de Thomas Becket en exil?’, in D. Maffei and L. Birocchi, eds, A Ennio Cortese, 3 vols (Rome 2001), ii. 163–73; A. Gouron, ‘Les “Quaestiones de juris subtilitatibus”: une oeuvre du maître parisien Albéric’, Revue historique, no. 618 (2001/2), 343– 62. I am grateful to Emanuele Conte for drawing my attention to these publications. 142 T.F.T. Plucknett, Early English Legal Literature (Cambridge 1958), p. 40. 143  Gerald of Wales, Opera viii. 257–8. 144  Chronica, i. pp. xxxi–xl for a description of the Durham manuscript, now Oxford, St John’s College, MS. 97. 145  Howden i. 113 n. 2; Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, VII. 113, p. 146, ‘Prophecies of Merlin’, vii. 3. For the identification of the hand, see D.J. Corner, ‘The Earliest Surviving

124  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Henry of Huntingdon. But it also shows that so far as the Conquest is concerned, Roger’s book is valuable solely for the light it throws on the history of English law. As a work of history, it had nothing new to say on the subject. The shift in English jurisprudence from stacking up historical and apocryphal texts to thematic analysis did not involve jettisoning the historical foundations as redundant. Quite the contrary. That much had, in a sense, been demonstrated by the Leges Henrici, which had attempted to rearrange translations from ancient texts thematically. It continued to be so after Glanvill. This is confirmed by what is now known to scholars as the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, the earli­ est extant witness of which was apparently compiled in London sometime between 1204 and 1216. It is evidently an imperfect if grand copy, not the ori­ gin­al, which must therefore be somewhat earlier.146 The Collection is prefaced by a chorographical setting of context, largely based on Geoffrey of Monmouth and Henry of Huntingdon, of the ‘number of provinces, countries, counties and islands which without doubt belong to the Crown and dignity of the kingdom of Britain, that is, what is now called the kingdom of the English’.147 This is immediately followed by partial Latin translations of the Tribal and Burghal Hidages, run together with no indication that they were distinct documents.148 They were Manuscripts of Roger of Howden’s Chronica’, EHR, xcviii (1983), 297–310, at 307; Holt, ‘Assizes’, p. 88 and n. 7. 146  Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155. This is the first half of what was originally a single witness; the second half is now London, BL, MS. Add. 14252. For the dating, see D.  Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics: London, 1150–1250’, TRHS, 6th ser., xviii (2008), 69–99, at 80–1 (F.  Liebermann, ‘A Contemporary Manuscript of the “Leges Anglorum Londoniis collectae”’, EHR, xxviii (1913), 732–45, at 734, dates the writing after 1204, because Queen Eleanor is referred to, fo. 125v, in the past tense; in Gesetze iii. 312–13 he dated the manuscript c. 1201; in Über die Leges Anglorum, p. 91, he had dated the compilation to 1206–15, but at that stage this uniquely early witness was not known to him). One scribe wrote most of the manuscript; a second scribe took over at what is now fo. 104v of BL, Add. 14252. Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation’, 81–2, suggests that the second scribe worked during 1214–16, and abandoned the job at the death of the king; a third scribe added two London documents to blank folios left by the first scribe. The first scribe interspersed the passages of historical commentary into the text he had already copied out. He appears to have written them in a different ink, and sometimes to have had to squeeze them into available spaces which were too small (fos 10v, 20r, 34r–v). This suggests that he incorporated them at a late stage, and was perhaps drawing on the compiler’s latest thinking: Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 89 n. 29, cf. Wormald, Making, p. 238. It is likely that the two halves of the book were separated some time before 1300: Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 743–4; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 89 and n. 30. The part in the British Library manuscript is discussed by M. Bateson, ‘A London Municipal Collection of the Reign of John’, EHR, xvii (1902), 480–511, 707–30, who dates it, 482–3, to 1206–16. There are too many careless errors and corrections for this witness to have been the original: Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 744; Downer, LHP, pp. 62–8; Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation’, 81. But it is of course impossible to establish whether the original contained the London documents close to the end on which the dating is based. R. Hanna, London Literature, 1300–1380 (Cambridge 2005), p. 56, describes the script as ‘of a decidedly late twelfth-century mien’. 147  John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155, fo. 3r; Liebermann, Uber die Leges Anglorum, pp. 4–7, identifies some of the sources. The number of dioceses given at the end—28—is from Geoffrey of Monmouth, History, IV. 72, cf. J.S.T. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley, CA 1950), p. 263. 148  MS. Lat. 155, fos 3v–4r. The version of the Tribal Hidage from which the translation was made differed from the sole Old English version now extant, in London, MS. Harley 3271, fo. 6v:

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  125 included on account of their manifest antiquity and because they looked similar in content, not because the compiler had any grasp of their contents.149 The title coined for the conjoined documents echoes that of the chorographical preface: ‘Concerning the number of hides of England in Britain’. Thereafter the Collection consisted primarily of various reworked twelfth-century compilations of genuine and apocryphal Old English laws, supplemented by legal documents concerned with government and justice in London. The laws of the city were appended to those of the kingdom as a whole. Despite its date, the London Collection draws on the earliest extant version of Quadripartitus—which might, as we have seen, be termed the Winchester Collection150—for its pre-twelfth-century material.151 The compiler revealed his historical predilections by rearranging material associated with named kings into chronological order. In that sense his perspective was quite different from that of the compiler of Quadripartitus. For the Argumentum with which Quadripartitus had originally begun, he substituted the newly composed, but self-consciously archaic, prefatory catalogue of ‘provinces, countries, counties, and islands’, followed by the conjoined Tribal and Burghal Hidages. He preserved only two brief excerpts from the Argumentum, drastically abbreviated to its first and ninth chapters alone (the original has 31 chapters)152—in other words, exclusively to those chapters which had encompassed the report of Edward the Confessor’s being forced to confirm existing English law at an assembly of the English nobility at Hursteshevet, as a precondition for his elevation as king.153 But the compiler re­deployed this vestige of the original Argumentum to follow, no longer to introduce, material derived from Quadripartitus. Because he had rearranged the codes in Quadripartitus into a chronological sequence, this heavily edited selection from what had originally been one of the prefaces to Quadripartitus could instead be used to preface material subsequent to Quadripartitus, and attributed to D.N. Dumville, ‘The Tribal Hidage: An Introduction to its Texts and their History’, in S. Bassett, ed., The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (London 1989), pp. 225–30 (Recension C); A.R. Rumble, ‘An Edition and Translation of the Burghal Hidage, together with Recension C of the Tribal Hidage’; and A.R. Rumble, ‘The Known Manuscripts of the Burghal Hidage’, both in D. Hill and A.R. Rumble, eds, The Defence of Wessex. The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications (Manchester 1996), re­spect­ ive­ly pp. 14–35, at 18–23, and 36–59, at 45–53. For the role of both documents in the compilation of historical writing and laws made at Winchester c. 1000, see P. Wormald, ‘BL Cotton MS. Otho B.xi: A Supplementary Note’, repr. in his Legal Culture, pp. 71–80, at 79. 149 The composite document is also found in two thirteenth-century Exchequer documents. The e­ arlier is in Red Book of the Exchequer (TNA E164/2, fos 50v–51r), dated c. 1225, in which the scribe left space for the title which was never supplied, so this is clearly a copy. That in London, BL, MS. Hargrave 313, fo. 15v, is poorly transcribed from the Red Book: further Rumble, ‘Known Manuscripts’, pp. 47, 51–3, 54–5. In these witnesses it does not follow the archaic preface devised for the London Collection. 150  See above, p. 108.    151  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 96–7; Making, p. 243. 152 It is in the original Collection: John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155, fo. 51r (printed by Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 737), followed by a blank verso, with Wl. Art. retr. beginning at the top of 52r. 153  See above, p. 110.   

126  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror. These codes were thereby shown to have been in accord with the earlier laws which Edward had, at Hursteshevet, pledged himself to respect as a precondition for being elevated as king. Henceforth those laws went ‘by King Edward’s name’.154 Book II of the London Collection therefore opens with a version of Tripartita which includes a greatly amplified version of the Willelmi Articuli,155 and a substantially and influentially interpolated—or glossed156—version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris.157 To this the compiler added a copy of the Leges Henrici,158 and an unusual, hybrid version of Glanvill.159 The main source for the new in­ter­ pol­ations in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris was not, however, legal, but Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia (though the distinction between historical and legal is not as clear cut as this might suggest, because Geoffrey had himself made some use of the canon law embodied in the Collectio Lanfranci).160 The choice of source and the thematic similarity with other items in the Collection, render it very likely that the interpolations in the Leges Edwardi and other codes were devised for inclusion in the Collection.161 The London interpolator adapted his Galfridian material so as to present, in the guise of King Edward’s law, the principled foundations for opposition to King John.162 The opposition’s case was woven from words spun in legal contexts,163 but some of the words, and indeed some of the contexts in which the weaving took place, were borrowed from historical writing rather than law codes or forensic practice. And the compiler did not restrict himself to Geoffrey of Monmouth: he elaborated his legal materials with an historical commentary, inserted at a late stage, which seems to be derived from Henry of Huntingdon.164 Inspired by Henry, or perhaps by Henry’s source Bede, in one instance his inventiveness exceeded even Geoffrey’s, for he fabricated a letter

154  Arg. 1; Gesetze i. 532; Sharpe, ‘Prefaces’, p. 162. 155  John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155, fos 52–4; now known as Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati: Gesetze i. 489–91; Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 737. 156 J.C.  Holt, ‘The Ancient Constitution in Medieval England’, in E.  Sandoz, ed., The Roots of Liberty. Magna Carta, Ancient Constitution, and the Anglo-American Tradition of the Rule of Law (Indianapolis, IN 1993), pp. 32–74, at 50. 157 John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155, fos 54–74; Liebermann, Über die Leges Anglorum, pp. 38–66; Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 737–8; Gesetze i. 655–7; J.C. Holt, ‘The Origins of the Constitutional Tradition in England’, in his Magna Carta and Medieval Government (London 1985), pp. 1–22, at 13; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 102–3; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’. pp. 81, 88–9; O’Brien, God’s Peace, pp. 118. The genealogy of the ducal house follows at fos 74–5. 158  John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155, fos 76–127. 159  BL, MS. Add. 14252, fos 2–85; Glanvill, ed. Hall, pp. lv, lvii (who labels it D). The first surviving folio (numbered 2) starts at the end of the prologue. In view of the amount of text missing, it is clear that leaves have been lost. 160  W. Ullmann, ‘On the Influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth in English History’, repr. in his The Church and the Law in the Earlier Middle Ages (London 1975), ch. XIII, pp. 257–76, at 258–63. 161  This is Keene’s assumption: ‘Text, Visualisation’, 87. 162 Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 102–3. 163 Holt, Magna Carta, p. 124. 164 Bateson, ‘Municipal Collection’, 503–5; Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation, 83–4, 86; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 89 n. 29.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  127 allegedly sent by Pope Eleutherius to the British King Lucius ‘69 years after the passion of Christ’.165 The letter provided the core of an interpolated section in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris entitled ‘On the right and appendages of the Crown of the kingdom of Britain’—‘now called the kingdom of the English’, the glossator helpfully explains—and was preceded by a number of statements which were evidently inspired by charges currently being levelled against King John. ‘Force’, ‘violence’, and ‘depraved will’ are denounced, and contrasted with ‘right’, which is what ‘always makes law’.166 A king should do everything ‘properly [rite]’ in the kingdom ‘and by the judgment of the proceres of the kingdom’,167 who must meet with knights and freemen in folkmoots,168 in which sheriffs and constables would be elected every year.169 This principle of consultation was repeated in an in­ter­ pol­ation in the Collection’s copy of the Leges Henrici, which amplifies the original’s regulations on hundreds and tithings, and restricts the king’s ability to exact tax and services.170 From an early thirteenth-century London perspective, it seems, the kingdom should be conceived as a London tithing or hundred on a grand scale. This would have made perfect sense to the London interpolator of the Leges Edwardi, who concluded his section on the city’s folkmoots and ­hust­ings with the statement that London was ‘the head [caput] of the kingdom and the laws and always the court of the lord king’, and, in a fit of Galfridian ­exuberance, that it enjoyed the ‘laws, rights, dignities, and royal customs of ancient great Troy’.171 London was, by heavy-handed implication, another Rome; and it was not only caput of the kingdom, but of the kingdom’s laws. One can imagine readers in the Guildhall nodding in approval, particularly at the latter sentiment. In the papal letter itself, Eleutherius declined to supply King Lucius with the Roman laws for which the king had asked. Instead, he instructed Lucius to adopt law ‘by the counsel of your kingdom’.172 Why the first rejection of the possibility of a reception in England of the ‘laws of Caesar’ should have been credited to a pope, rather than indigenous resistance, has never been explained. In apocryphal guise, the letter reiterated the clear distinction between English and Roman law

165  LECf 11. 1B, Gesteze i. 636. Any variants in John Rylands MS. Lat. 155 are detailed in ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 737–8. According to Bede, HE I. 4, King Lucius had written to Pope Eleutherius, asking that he be made a Christian; cf. Henry of Huntingdon, HA I. 28 p. 48. According to Ralph de Diceto, dean of St Paul’s from 1180–1202, Pope Eleutherius had sent Fagan and Duvian to baptize the king: Radulphi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis, Opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1876), i. 66, ii. 195. 166  LECf 11. 1 A6, Gesetze i. 635. 167  LECf 11. 1 A6, Gesetze i. 635; cf. 11. 1 A8, B2, Gesetze i. 636. 168  LECf 32. A5, 6; Gesetze i. 655. 169  LECf 32.B, B1, B8; Gesetze i. 656–7. 170  John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155, fo. 83r, interpolated after Leges Henrici 8.1a: Gesetze i. 554 n. d; LHP, 8. 1b. For the significance of this passage, see F.M. Powicke, Stephen Langton (Oxford 1928), pp. 123–4; Ullmann, ‘Geoffrey’, p. 262. 171  LECf 32. B12: Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 738; Gesetze i. 657. 172  LECf 11. 1 B-B2, Gesteze i. 636.

128  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 drawn in the prologue of Glanvill (a copy of which, written by the same scribe, follows later in the Collection), where it was asserted that ‘the laws of England are not written’.173 It also endorsed, almost verbatim, the particular manner of legislating which had been commended in the same paragraph of Glanvill’s prologue, albeit in Romanesque vocabulary: ‘by the counsel of the proceres, afforced by the authority of the princeps’.174 Laws, like judgments, should be made only with the advice of the leading men. A king who failed to rule in the proper fashion would no longer deserve the title of king.175 A brief definition of proper kingly rule is set out in what purports to be a summary of the coronation oath,176 which, in another interpolation, Edward the Confessor is said to have tried to keep ‘in so far as he could’177—the implication being not that Edward had been a bit of a plodder, but that other kings did not even try. The relevance of all this, and of other interpolations in the London Collection’s versions of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris and Leges Henrici, to the circumstances of John’s reign is obvious.178 As Liebermann pointed out, the one in the Leges Henrici which is concerned with the necessity for ‘judgment by the proceres’ in the case of royal exactions, displays striking verbal parallels with c. 39 of Magna Carta (1215).179 The Leges Henrici could be assimilated to the early thirteenthcentury model of King Edward’s law just as easily as could the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, which purported to be those pre-Conquest English laws confirmed by William the Conqueror in 1070. Even if the title Leges Henrici had been intended to refer to the code as a whole, rather than just to the Coronation Charter of Henry I—more accurately termed an edictum by William of Malmesbury180—with which it begins,181 it mostly and self-evidently comprises Old English law translated into Latin, not new legislation. King Henry’s law was Old English law, occasionally tweaked. Its point had always been to demonstrate legal continuity, like Quadripartitus to which its compiler had appended it. The Coronation Charter proclaimed that, in place of the abuses of William Rufus’s reign, Henry would restore the laga Eadwardi, together with those ‘emendations’ 173  Glanvill, pr., p. 2, cf. p. lv. This statement is in that part of Glanvill’s prologue which has been lost from BL, MS. Add. 14252. 174  Glanvill, pr., p. 2. According to John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed. C.C.J. Webb, 2 vols (Oxford 1909), VIII. 22, King Stephen had ordered that the leges Romanae, introduced into England by Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, should be expelled from the kingdom; see F.  de Zulueta and P.  Stein, The Teaching of Roman Law in England around 1200, Selden Soc., supp. ser., viii, (1990), p. xxvi. 175  LECf 11. 1 B7; cf. 17. 1; 11 A1. 176  LECf 11. 1 A2, 6–9. 177  LECf 13. 1 A1–2. 178  Holt, ‘Constitutional Tradition’, p. 13, Magna Carta, pp. 102–3, for other examples; Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, 87. 179  LHP 8.1b, Gesetze i. 554 n.d, discussed by Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 740; Ullmann, ‘Geoffrey’, p. 262; cf. Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati 5; Gesetze i. 490. According to Roger of Wendover, when John received absolution from Stephen Langton in Winchester Cathedral on 20 July 1213, he undertook to ‘judge all his men according to the just judgments of his court’: CM ii. 550. 180  GR V. 393; Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 105–6. 181 Wormald, Making, p. 11, suggests that it referred solely to Henry I’s Coronation Charter.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  129 which King William had made to it ‘by the counsel of his barons’.182 That clause had in turn paralleled and perhaps echoed one in the Willelmi Articuli,183 which, as we have seen, probably dates from the end of the Conqueror’s reign.184 It is preserved almost unchanged in the much elaborated version of the Articuli— Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati—which is first witnessed in the version of Tripartita incorporated in the London Collection.185 The London Collection therefore consummated a tradition which reached back via the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, the Leges Henrici, and Quadripartitus to the Conqueror’s reign. But it gave that tradition a new, and consistent, twist. For the first time, King Edward’s law was being used not to bolster a reigning post-Conquest king, but—perhaps inspired by the slur on William Rufus’ manner of ruling in Henry I’s Coronation Charter—to hold him to account. John’s op­pon­ ents came to show considerable interest in Henry I’s Coronation Charter (and, to a lesser extent, those of Stephen and Henry II); all three were included not only in the London Collection,186 but, with accompanying French translations, in a handy briefing document, a bifolium, almost certainly compiled in London at the same time.187 The ‘laga’ of King Edward, however, remained untranslated in the French version of Henry’s Charter as it had in the original Latin,188 perhaps because the Old English term was so familiar that it had become jargon, instantly recognizable to all parties, lay as well as clerical. The Francophone main scribe of the London Collection, whose grasp of English was less than perfect,189 also felt the need to copy out several of his documents in French.190 This suggests that some of those for whose use the London Collection was intended would find it difficult to cope with documents in Latin, just like the Londoners who needed a crib in order to consult the coronation charters. It seems probable that this Francophone audience was predominantly lay. The Collection’s generally secular interests have been taken to suggest that it was from its inception intended for use in the Guildhall.191

182  Hn. Cor. 13. 183  Wl Art. 7; cf. above, p. 106.    184  See above, p. 106. 185  Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 737; Gesetze i. 491. The clause becomes c. 13, and adopts the plural of majesty, as in the copy in the Red Book of the Exchequer. 186 Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 740 (John Rylands MS. Lat. 155, fo. 75v), 742 (fo. 124r), 743 (fo. 125v). 187  London, BL, MS. Harley 458; Holt ‘Constitutional Tradition’, pp. 14–16 and n. 36; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 24–5. 188  Harley 458, fo. 2r, reproduced in Holt, Magna Carta, Pl. 5. 189  Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 744. 190  The part written by the main scribe ends with accounts of various London laws and customs, and a geographical description of Britain, adapted from Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, all written in French: BL, MS. Add. 14252, fos 98r–100v; see Keene, ‘Text’, 86–7, 94–5, who suggests that these documents may have been ‘drafts for internal discussion’. That they are written with elaborate, decorated initials makes this seem unlikely. 191  The extant witness is probably a copy of a lost original, and it is impossible to say whether that original might have had evidence of a link with St Paul’s or another church: Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 743–4; further Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 22–3.

130  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 The London Collection therefore demonstrates that the emergence of a new analytical mode of English jurisprudence had not rendered obsolete the longestablished historical one, and that the historical one, unsurprisingly, was perhaps more accessible to a wide, lay audience. Indeed, the London Collection confirms that the historical genre was still developing in the early thirteenth century, and that both traditions continued to exist in parallel—indeed, cheek by jowl in the same manuscripts. The work with which Glanvill was most commonly bound up was the Leges Edwardi Confessoris—this is the case in 15 of the extant 41 medieval witnesses.192 As we shall see, copies of the London Collection were still being made in the fourteenth century,193 and appear to have been available elsewhere in the kingdom.194 By that point Glanvill itself was regarded as having become outdated.195 That the London Collection was in some respects a prolegomenon to Magna Carta demonstrates that its historical sections were not abstruse antiquarianism, but deemed acutely relevant to the consequences of the procedural in­nov­ ations so innovatively summarized in Glanvill. The interpretation of English legal history expressed by the historical tradition of jurisprudence, of a seamless development in English law from King Alfred or even King Ine onwards, with scarcely a blip at the Conquest, is quite un­con­vin­ cing, despite certain continuities evident over some of this period in the op­er­ ations of hundred and shire assemblies or courts.196 But it was rooted, as we have seen, in the fundamental premise on which the Norman regime was built. What matters is not its historical plausibility, but the influence it came to enjoy. It was accepted unquestioningly for centuries. With considerable ingenuity some ­scholars still try to sustain it, albeit in modified form.197 Roger of Howden’s Chronica became another influential conduit for it, in the guise of Tripartita, not only because his Liber conjoined Tripartita with Glanvill—much like the con­tem­ por­ary London Collection of the Leges Anglorum—but also because he supplemented the hybrid Liber with texts of recent legislation. The manuscript of the Chronica which included all this material, and which is almost certainly corrected in Roger’s own hand,198 was, like the slightly earlier witness of Quadripartitus 192  Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, p. 55, who also identifies seven cases in which glossaries of Old English legal vocabulary were bound up with it. 193  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 88–90; O’Brien, God’s Peace, p. 206, for a list of manuscripts; J. Catto, ‘Andrew Horn: Law and History in Fourteenth-century England’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages, pp. 367–91. 194  See above, Chapter 5. 195  Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, p. 66. It seems that Glanvill followed the Consiliatio Cnuti and the second version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris in the lost manuscript from which the early fourteenth-century London, BL, MS. Harley 1704 was derived. In a note, Ranulf de Glanvill is said to have compiled a book of laws ‘which is called Glanvill’, much of which was now obsolete: Liebermann, Über die Leges Edwardi Confessoris, pp. 124–5; Glanvill p. lvii; contrast O’Brien, God’s Peace, p. 142. 196 G. Molyneaux, The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century (Oxford 2015), pp. 143–5, 170, 217 (hundreds), 165–72 (shires), for the first evidence of the existence of these fora. 197  Patrick Wormald would have been honoured to be cited as an example. 198  BL, MS. Royal 14. C. ii; Holt, ‘Assizes’, p. 89; Corner, ‘Howden’s Chronica’, 305–10.

Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication  131 which first appended the Leges Edwardi Confessoris and Leis Willelme, to have an auspicious future. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, it was acquired by James VI and I, apparently with the intention of using it in the schooling of his heir-apparent, Henry, Prince of Wales. As is demonstrated by the use to which Sir Edward Coke put the copy of Quadripartitus which had been amplified in the late twelfth century and then again in the late sixteenth—the Holkham book—King James was right to feel that his son and prospective successor in his new kingdom would need to be well-versed in its medieval history in general, and its medieval law in particular.

4

Edward the Confessor From Critical Standard to Patron Saint

On 25 August 1213 Archbishop Stephen Langton read out a ‘certain charter of King Henry I of England’ to a congregation of barons in St Paul’s Cathedral. He reportedly added: ‘Through it, if you wish, you will be able to recall long lost liberties to their original state [ad statum pristinum].’ The barons were persuaded. They swore to fight—‘if necessary, to the death’—for those liberties.1 In response, the archbishop promised them ‘his most faithful aid’. Thereby a ‘covenant [confederatio]’ was established between them. That at least is the celebrated, dramatic story told by Roger of Wendover, writing a decade or more after the alleged event. He subsequently recounted how, late in 1214—most likely on St Edmund’s feast day, 20 November2—‘earls and barons of England’ had assembled in the great abbey church of Bury St Edmunds ‘as if intent on prayer, though really for another purpose’. Devotion to the martyred king of the East Angles had been a cover. They had concluded their clandestine deliberations by swearing on the high altar to wage war on the current king if he refused to confirm the ‘certain charter of King Henry I’ which Archbishop Stephen had produced in the previous year in London. The charter, Roger plausibly added, embodied ‘liberties and laws of King Edward’.3 Both stories reveal that in the early thirteenth century what was for the first time unambiguously termed ‘King Henry’s charter’4—his Coronation Charter— was being resurrected as a talisman by those opposed to Henry’s great grandson and successor. Moreover, they suggest that this was so, at least in part, because the Charter was considered to embody the laws of King Edward which it repeatedly

1  Rogeri de Wendoveri chronica, sive, Flores historiarum, ed. H.O. Coxe, 4 vols, English Historical Soc. (London 1841–4), iii. 263–6; CM ii. 552–4, J.C. Holt, Magna Carta, 3rd edn, ed. G. Garnett and J.G.H. Hudson (Cambridge 2015), pp. 18–19, 201. V.H.  Galbraith, ‘Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris’, repr. in his Kings and Chroniclers, ch. X, pp. 5–48, at 21, suggests that Roger probably wrote between 1219 and 1235, D.J. Corner— ‘Wendover, Roger of ’, ODNB—prefers 1220 and Roger’s death in 1236. According to Annales monasterii de Waverleia, AM ii. 127–411, at 277, the meeting happened at Westminster immediately after a service at St Paul’s: C&S II, i. 19–20. The Waverley annalist does not mention Henry I’s Charter. 2 Holt, Magna Carta, p. 336. 3  Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, iii. 293–4; CM ii. 582–3. 4 Holt, Magna Carta, p. 13. It has been assumed that Henry II’s Coronation Charter was referring to the document issued by his maternal grandfather on the day of his coronation when it confirmed any grant made by Henry I ‘by his charter’. But this seems unlikely: G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure 1066–1166 (Oxford 2007), p. 299. The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

Edward the Confessor  133 invoked. In other words, it was deemed to set a pre-Conquest legal standard, what Stephen Langton had reportedly termed the ‘original state’ of ‘long lost liberties’. Neither of Roger’s stirring stories can be accepted at face value. He acknowledged that his account of what the archbishop said ‘secretly’ to the bishops, abbots, and barons in St Paul’s was hearsay.5 That would hardly be surprising if the discussions had been conducted in secret, as Roger specifies had also been the case the following year at Bury. The secrecy might explain why Bury sources, which are very full for this period, fail to corroborate Roger’s description of a conspiratorial gathering by subterfuge. Conversely, such a meeting at Bury at this time seems improbable for various other reasons, chiefly the absence of any corroboration in earlier, much more detailed narratives.6 Roger’s account of it might be compared with his depiction of John’s spending three months in the summer of 1215 on a beach on the Isle of Wight plotting revenge against his barons, a demonstrably false story which nevertheless evokes in memorable form an essential truth.7 Yet whatever might lie behind Roger’s two vivid though uncorroborated reports of events in St Paul’s and Bury St Edmunds, it was not surprising that they seemed plausible when he came to write them up, at a time when the rebellion against John must have appeared to have been a triumphant success.8 Roger had a tendency to impose highly coloured interpretations on events, and sometimes to invent them.9 But even if he was doing so in the case of the alleged episodes in St Paul’s Cathedral and St Edmund’s Abbey, he was not ana­chron­is­tic­ al­ly reading back into John’s reign a view first shaped in the 1220s or 1230s. Several of his accounts of other instances when the laws of King Edward and of King Henry had allegedly been invoked in 1213–1215 by those ranged against John are corroborated by narratives accepted as more reliable.10 By late 1214, the 5 Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 200–2, 335–9; J.C. Holt, The Northerners, 2nd edn (Oxford 1992), pp. 102–3 and n. 9; further, D.A.  Carpenter, ‘Archbishop Stephen Langton and Magna Carta: His Contribution, His Doubts, and His Hypocrisy’, EHR, cxxvi (2011), 1041–65, at 1048. For less scepticism, see J.W. Baldwin, ‘Master Stephen Langton, Future Archbishop of Canterbury: The Paris Schools and Magna Carta’, EHR, cxxiii (2008), 811–46, at 827–8, 830–1. For the suspect nature of Roger’s account of John’s reign, see Galbraith, ‘Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris’, pp. 17–19. 6 Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 18–19, 201–2. 7  Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, iii. 319, CM ii. 613–14; cf. his account of the loss of Hugh de Boves at sea: CM ii. 623. 8  J.C. Holt, ‘King John’, repr. in his Magna Carta and Medieval Government (London 1985), pp. 82–109, at 107. 9 Holt, Magna Carta, p. 9 n. 47. 10  On 4 August 1213, at St Albans, John was instructed ‘that the laws of King Henry his grandfather [sic.] should be kept by all in the kingdom’: CM ii. 551; Holt, Magna Carta, p. 194. At Stephen Langton’s absolution of John in Winchester on 20 July 1213, the king had renewed, at Langton’s instigation, his coronation oath, and had in addition sworn to ‘restore the good laws of his ancestors and especially the laws of King Edward’: CM ii. 550, 552. John’s alleged undertaking on that occasion to ‘restore to each individual his rights’ recalls Roger of Howden’s account of the undertakings given on John’s behalf in 1199: Chronica, iv. 88, cited above, p. 115. In January 1215, at the New Temple in London, John was reminded of the undertakings he had given at Winchester: CM ii. 584–5; and in late April, when Wendover erroneously places the king at Oxford, a cedula drawn up by his opponents in Brackley was presented to Stephen Langton and William Marshal, and communicated by them to

134  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 point at which Roger places the dramatic, clandestine scene at Bury St Edmunds, it is clear that the king’s opponents had resolved to take a stand on, and if necessary to fight for, the laws of Edward and Henry I, and the latter’s Coronation Charter, which, unlike Henry II’s, twice explicitly invoked Edward’s law, and proclaimed Henry’s restoration of it.11 What was now termed Henry’s Charter might be interpreted as an endorsement of Edward’s ‘law’, the only word in the document which is not in Latin, but in the pre-Conquest vernacular. The London Collection had, as we saw in the last chapter, set a political agenda which whilst perhaps initially devised in and for the city, appears from all these chronicles to have spread well beyond it, to the kingdom at large. The Collection produced its own adapted versions of the Leges Henrici and the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, both of which explicitly purported to preserve the laws of Old English kings. Indeed, it included Latin translations of many of those old royal laws in its chronologically re-ordered version of the codes in Quadripartitus, and showed that they had been endorsed not only by Edward, but also by post-Conquest kings. The compiler of the Collection had drastically edited Quadripartitus’s Argumentum to demonstrate that Edward the Confessor had, at an assembly of the English nobility at Hursteshevet, sworn to respect existing English law as a pre-condition for his accession as king.12 The Preface to the Leges Edwardi showed that the Conqueror had given a similar undertaking at an assembly a few years after becoming king. Henry I’s Coronation Charter, issued on the day of his accession, could be construed in no other way. The laws of King Edward and the laws of King Henry were fundamental to the London Collection’s agenda for the kingdom as a whole, of which it presented the city as a microcosm. Probably early in 1215, the Londoners demanded of John (amongst other things) the abolition of all tallages ‘other than by the common assent of the kingdom and the city’.13 Magna Carta’s ‘commune of the land’—the Articles of the Barons’ ‘commune of the kingdom’—for instance, owes an obvious debt to the commune of London. The Mayor of London, who presided over the 24 strong commune consilium of aldermen of London, was to become a member of the council of Twenty-Five, which was deemed to represent the ‘commune of the land’. Commune consilium— a phrase used to characterize advice given by the barons of the whole kingdom in the opening of Henry I’s Coronation Charter14—was frequently invoked in the John. This schedule, also termed capitula, contained material ‘partly written in King Henry’s Charter’, and ‘partly excerpted from the ancient laws of King Edward’: CM ii. 585–6. 11  As pointed out by Holt, Northerners, p. 187, Henry I’s Charter was detailed and contained ‘solid concessions’, whereas Henry II’s consisted of ‘pious and vaporous generalities’. Stephen’s Charter, too, mentioned Edward the Confessor, but was also vague, and was for other, obvious reasons out of the question as a precedent. 12  See above, p. 126.    13  London, BL, Add. MS. 14252, fo. 124r. 14  Here it is used in the ablative, as it is in the only earlier English instance I have found: the first clause of William I’s writ concerning episcopal laws, in this instance in the form communi concilio et consilio archiepiscoporum et episcoporum et abbatum et omnium principum regni mei: Reg. no. 128.

Edward the Confessor  135 interpolations made in the recension of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris peculiar to the London Collection.15 The city’s role as a model is too well known to require further comment.16 The author conventionally known as the Barnwell chronicler has recently been identified as a monk not of Barnwell Priory, Cambridgeshire, but Crowland Abbey, Lincolnshire,17 named Roger. He may have composed his chronicle as late as a decade after the events, perhaps at much the same time as Roger of Wendover; but Roger of Crowland, as he should be known, almost certainly wrote up many of his annals earlier, and is demonstrably far more reliable.18 According to Roger of Crowland, the barons had produced Henry’s Charter at the end of 1214, but had deferred their demand that the king should confirm it until January 1215, when they confronted him in London. There they swore a covenant to protect ‘the liberty of the Church and the realm’ as enshrined in the Charter, which, Roger added, had for the first time become a subject of popular debate.19 The author of the Histoire des ducs de Normandie, who came to England in 1216, seems to corroborate the Crowland chronicler’s account of this event: the barons had demanded that the king should respect the Charter issued by Henry I and confirmed by King Stephen, and had sworn a covenant.20 Copies of the Charter, and of codes purporting to embody the laws of Henry, of Edward the Confessor, and other kings, were, as we have seen, readily available in London, should the king’s opponents have wished to consult them.21 The London Collection also included 15  LECf 32. A4; 32. B1; 32. C4; 32. E6; cf. 11. 1 A8; 32. B8; 32. C7, in which three instances it is in the accusative, preceded by per. 16 Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 19–20, 73–4. 17 C.N.  Ispir, A Critical Edition of the Crowland Chronicle (King’s College, London, unpublished PhD thesis 2015), pp. 248–54. 18  Crowland Chronicle, ed. Ispir, pp. 268–72, 299, convincingly argues that it was started at Crowland Abbey c. 1212, and that the section on the period between 1212 and 1226 was written up at the latest in 1226, and probably almost contemporaneously; R.  Kay, ‘Walter of Coventry and the Barnwell Chronicle’, Traditio, liv (1999), 141–67, argued that the chronicle originated at Peterborough, c. 1225; the standard edition in print of the section on John’s reign remains Walt. Cov., who, ii. p. vii, dates it c. 1225. On its reliability, see Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 193–4, 199–200, 294–5; Ispir, pp. 45–6 and esp. ch. 4. 19  Crowland Chronicle, ed. Ispir, 1215.2, p. 565; Walt. Cov. ii. 218; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 199–200; see also Radulphi de Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson, RS (1875), p. 170. 20  Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, ed. F.  Michel (Société de l’histoire de France, 1840), pp. 145–6. 21  The version of Henry I’s Coronation Charter in the London Collection was different from that in BL, MS. Harley 458. The London Collection’s text appears to be conflated from that preserved in other copies of Quadripartitus and that in what Richard Sharpe terms the Interpolated Version: Acta, ed. Sharpe, pp. 53–4. The Harley text is closely related to (but not identical with) the two copies of the Interpolated Version found in a late thirteenth-century cartulary of the archbishops of Canterbury, now London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 1212, fos 10r–v, 97v–98r, both of which are derived from the same Canterbury source: Acta, ed. Sharpe, pp. 10, 45–8; J.C. Holt, ‘The St Albans Chroniclers and Magna Carta’, repr. in his Magna Carta and Medieval Government, pp. 265–87, at 286 n. 3; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 24–5. More generally, the London Collection preserved in Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155 and London, BL, MS. Add. 14252 is clearly a work in progress. Both scribes, working under the direction of an editor, insert marginal corrections and additions, and leave gaps to be filled. The main

136  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 amongst it supplementary materials a list of nine demands (including that concerning tallage, referred to above) made of the king by the city, possibly in 1215.22 An earlier collection of Old English laws, dating from the beginning of the twelfth century, was almost certainly in the library at St Paul’s,23 where several of those who were to be closely associated with the opposition were canons.24 One of them was the archbishop’s brother (and possibly chancellor),25 Simon Langton. It may have been at this time that the king’s opponents went so far as to use Henry I’s Charter as a preliminary agenda for negotiation, supplemented by a list of notional royal concessions in a document which J.H. Round named the Unknown Charter.26 Indeed, it has been ingeniously suggested that Simon may have drafted—or at least copied—this document.27 The unprofessional way in which the supplementary chapters shift between the first and third person singular renders this unlikely. They suggest that the extant witness is an attempt at a copy of a working document, amended by several different hands. If a working draft survived, it would probably have looked like the Articles of the Barons, with obvious

scribe was careless, and seems to have had little grasp of what he was copying: Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 744; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 89 n. 29; Keene, ‘Text’, 81. It is nevertheless clear from later copies that John Rylands MS. Lat. 155 is not the autograph of the Leges Anglorum: Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 744. It therefore seems highly likely that other copies of the Collection would have been available in London in John’s reign. 22  London, BL, MS. Add. 14252, fo. 124r; Bateson, ‘Municipal Collection’, 726; M.  Weinbaum, London unter Eduard  I.  und II. Verfassungs- und Wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Studien, 2 vols (Stuttgart 1933), ii. 81–2. 23  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 383, on which see F. Liebermann, ‘Matrosenstellung aus Landgütern der Kirche London’, Archiv für Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, civ (1900), 17–24; Wormald, Making, pp. 228–36, with the St Paul’s provenance established, and St Paul’s composition strongly suggested, at 230, 234; T. Gobbit, ‘The Other Book: Cambridge, CCC, MS 383 in Relation to the Textus Roffensis’, in B.R. O’Brien and B. Bombi, eds, Textus Roffensis. Law, Language, and Libraries in Early Medieval England (Turnhout 2015), pp. 69–82, at 76. 24 Gervase of Howbridge/Heybridge, chancellor of St Paul’s, and almost certainly brother of William of Howbridge, one of the rebels; William of Ely: Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 20–1, 23; further, H.G. Richardson, ‘Letters of the Legate Guala’, EHR, xlviii (1933), 250–259, at 252–4, on the enmity at this time between certain canons and the king. 25  Acta Stephani Langton, Cantuariensis archiepiscopi AD 1207–1228, ed. K. Major, Canterbury and York Soc. (1950), pp. xlix–l. 26  J.H. Round, ‘An Unknown Charter of Liberties’, EHR, viii (1893), 288–94; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 345–55; D.A. Carpenter, Magna Carta (Harmondsworth 2015), p. 314. Holt argues that it was prob­ ably compiled in early 1215, others that this was done for negotiations in 1213: Acta, ed. Sharpe, pp. 37, 40. As Holt points out, the French scribe of the only extant witness (who is presumed to have prepared it for King Philip Augustus) made a number of errors in copying out the text in front of him. Although the extant text of the Coronation Charter with which it opens is derived from Quadripartitus, it is not similar to that in the London Collection, and is also different from the Interpolated Version which was the source of Harley 458. If Harley 458 and the Unknown Charter provide evidence of negotiations on the basis of Henry I’s Charter, therefore, the fact that they are not related suggests that there were a variety of texts in circulation—as one might expect, given the numerous chronicle references to invocation of the document. 27 Baldwin, ‘Master Stephen Langton’, 829–32, 845–6; but see Carpenter, ‘Archbishop Langton’, 1049.

Edward the Confessor  137 corrections and additions.28 There is, moreover, no demonstrable link between its text of the Coronation Charter and St Paul’s, or between it and the versions of the Charter available in the London Collection and (with a vernacular French crib) in the contemporary bifolium, London, BL, MS. Harley 458.29 The absence of any connections between all these slightly different versions of the Coronation Charter, many of them available in London, serves to indicate how numerous were the copies in circulation at this time, and therefore how great was the interest in the document. As BL, MS. Harley 458 demonstrates, and as Roger of Crowland reports,30 it was on everyone’s lips in London in January 1215, not just those of the literate. Roger went on to record that shortly afterwards John was pushed by the demands of the Northerners into appending to a conventional exaction of renewed oaths of fealty to himself against all men ‘this uncustomary condition’: that the oaths should also be against the Charter of his great-grandfather, King Henry.31 Such a condition was indeed unprecedented. Given the role which Henry I had from the start played in legitimating the title of the Angevin kings,32 it was richly ironic testimony to the adroitness with which the post-Conquest royal tradition of invoking King Edward’s law (repeatedly endorsed in Henry’s Charter) had been appropriated by those now opposed to the king.33 Henry I’s Charter was being played against his great-grandson. According to Roger of Wendover, John was enraged to be presented in April with capitula, or ‘heads’, to which the barons were demanding that he affix his seal. The list consisted of ‘laws and liberties . . . partly excerpted from the Charter of King Henry . . . and partly from the ancient laws of King Edward’. ‘Why don’t they ask for my kingdom as well, along with these iniquitous demands?’, John is reported to have ex­pos­tu­ lated.34 The Charter of Henry I and the laws of Edward endorsed in it no longer constituted the king’s foundation, but, in the king’s own view, his effective deposition.

28 London, BL, MS. Add. 4838, photographed in Holt, Magna Carta, Pl. 6, cf. pp. 356–72; J.G.H. Hudson, ‘From the Articles of the Barons to Magna Carta’, ANS, xxxviii (2015), pp. 1–17. 29  For detailed comment, see Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 24–5. This also includes Stephen’s Charter (which invokes King Edward) and Henry II’s (which does not). 30  See above, p. 135. 31  Crowland Chronicle, ed. Ispir, 1215.2, p. 565; Walt. Cov. ii. 218; cf. letter of Walter Mauclerk to the king from the papal curia (8x19 March 1215), P.  Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice in the Middle Ages (London 2003), no. 19, cited in this connection by N. Vincent, ‘The Conference at the New Temple, January 1215’, The Magna Carta Project website: http://magnacarta.cmp.uea.ac.uk/. N. Vincent, ‘Magna Carta, Oath-taking and coniuratio’, in J. Aurell, M. Aurell, and M. Herrero, eds, Le Sacré et la parole. Le serment au Moyen Age (Paris 2018), pp. 193–226, at 209–10. 32 Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 298–303. 33 For a possible premonition, c. 1187–8, see Gerald of Wales, De principis instructione, ed. R. Bartlett (Oxford 2018), pp. 488–94, esp. 494. There is no explicit reference to Henry I; but as Bartlett points out, there is a possible allusion to Henry II’s Coronation Charter; cf. Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 13, 85–7. 34  CM ii. 586.

138  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 A few days after 25 April 1215, a ‘disturbance’ broke out between the king and ‘the barons of England, because he was trying to annul by force the Charter of major liberties confirmed to them by . . . the illustrious King Henry’.35 As the Waverly annalist put it, in 1215 the barons sought from John ‘the laws of St Edward and the liberties and free customs of other later kings, which had been corrupted and borne down in the reign of his father and especially in his own time’.36 Neither Henry I’s Charter nor the laws of King Edward are mentioned either in the Articles of the Barons or Magna Carta. But echoes of the former have been detected in Magna Carta,37 and the repeated insistence of the Articles, cc. 1 and 49, on the final settlement’s taking the form of a charter was itself an ac­know­ ledge­ment of the precedent of the document first unambiguously characterized as a charter in the Unknown Charter.38 Despite the absence of any explicit citation in either the Articles or Magna Carta, Henry’s Charter, together with the laws of Edward which it purported to endorse and embody, underpinned the documents of June 1215. In this respect it does not matter that Roger of Wendover’s accounts of events in St Paul’s Cathedral on 25 August 1213 and in Bury St Edmunds Abbey in late 1214 are probably fictional. Whatever his sources were,39 he clearly judged both tales to be credible, and had access to a copy of Henry’s Charter, probably deposited at St Albans, with which to flesh out the first.40 They are not the only probably apocryphal accounts of events at this time which suggest that Edward the Confessor was ceasing to be just the sainted predecessor he had become when Henry II had managed to secure in 1161 the canonization previously sought by Stephen. Rather, King Edward was resuming one of the roles which he had played in Henry’s Charter: he set an ‘original’ or ‘pure’ standard against which a more recent king might be measured. Unlike in 1100, however, the denigrated king was not a very recently deceased and un-lamented predecessor, but the reigning

35  The Chronicle of the Election of Hugh, Abbot of Bury St Edmunds and Later Bishop of Ely, ed. R.M. Thomson (Oxford 1974), p. 166. As Holt, Magna Carta, p. 338, points out, the chronicler mistakes Henry II for Henry I, but it is clear that the bone of contention was Henry I’s Charter. No-one bothered to seek confirmation of Henry II’s. 36  AM ii. 282, quoted by Holt, Magna Carta, p. 118. 37 Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 17–19. 38 Holt, Magna Carta, p. 13 n. 67. 39 Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 338–9. Elias of Dereham has tentatively been suggested as a possibility: Baldwin, ‘Master Stephen Langton’, 845 n. 130; N.  Vincent, ‘Master Elias of Dereham (d. 1245): A Reassessment’, in C.M.  Barron and J.  Stratford, eds, The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Studies in Honour of R.B. Dobson (Donington 2002), pp. 128–59, at 141. For the suggestion that Roger may have drawn on a section of the Annales Sancti Edmundi which has since been lost, see R.  Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge 1958), p. 24; cf. Ungedruckte anglo-normannische Geschichtsquellen ed. F. Liebermann, (Strassburg 1879), pp. 97–8. 40  His text is that sent to Hertfordshire in 1100: Acta, ed. Sharpe, pp. 7, 18–25; Holt, Magna Carta, p. 349. He had already used it when recounting Henry I’s accession: CM ii. 115–17. It therefore differs both from those in the London Collection and in BL, MS. Harley 458. St Albans Abbey was an obvious place to deposit the Hertfordshire copy, just as it was for the 1225 re-issue of Magna Carta: Holt, ‘St Albans Chroniclers’, p. 283.

Edward the Confessor  139 monarch. King John was being juxtaposed with Edward in order to underline how gravely wanting John was considered to be. The evidence for this process of assessing John against what was presented as an immediately pre-Conquest standard of royal rectitude is more widespread still. A story about King Edward survives in the late thirteenth-century Annales de Burton,41 compiled, like most monastic house chronicles, from a wide variety of materials, many of which cannot be securely dated. From the foundation of the abbey in 1004 to 1201 the Annales consist primarily of adapted extracts from Roger of Howden’s Chronica. Following this, and before a very full account of the reign of Henry III, liberally illustrated with documents from both the abbey’s archive and that of its diocesan, the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield,42 is what purports to be a colourful, verbatim transcript of a meeting between King John and Pandulf, a papal nuncio, at Northampton on 29 or 30 August 1211.43 The meeting certainly took place, but the transcript as it stands is, for several reasons, untrustworthy.44 Nevertheless, it or something very like it clearly lies behind briefer descriptions of the meeting in a number of other thirteenth-century

41  AM i. 181–500. The Annales were first edited by William Fulman: Rerum Anglicarum scriptores veteres (Oxford 1684). 42 A.  Gransden, Historical Writing in England, Vol. I., c. 500–c. 1307; II., c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London 1974–1982), i. 408–11. The only witness known to Luard (and Gransden) is the first item in London, BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian E. iii, removed from the Chapter Library, Christ Church, Oxford, probably shortly prior to 1621, and given to Robert Cotton in exchange for another manuscript: C.G.C. Tite, ‘“Lost or Stolen or Strayed”: A Survey of Manuscripts formerly in the Cotton Library’, in C.J. Wright, ed., Sir Robert Cotton as Collector (London 1997), pp. 262–306, at 268. But an earlier witness, which prefaces the ‘Magnum registrum album’ in the Library of Lichfield Cathedral (Lichfield Cathedral Library, MS. 28, fos 1–77r, now deposited in Staffordshire Record Office, LD 532), was made at Burton for Lichfield, apparently in the second half of the thirteenth century, perhaps c. 1260: The Great Register of Lichfield Cathedral, known as Magnum Registrum Album, ed. H.E.  Savage, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, The William Salt Archaeological Soc., 1924 (Kendal 1926), p. xxii. It is evidently a polished copy of the Annales, not a working document. It is written in a hand of roughly that date; the script, the format, and the ornamentation correspond with those in Cotton Vespasian E. iii. The text breaks off after the annal for 1258, at a point corresponding to p. 461 in Luard’s edition (the version in the later, Cotton manuscript breaks off after the annal for 1262): R.L. Poole, HMC: Fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part VIII (1895), pp. 211–12. In the Cotton MS. the Annales de Burton are followed by diocesan constitutions apparently relating to Coventry, and probably issued during the pontificate of Alexander Stavensby (1224–37): M.  Gibbs and J.  Lang, Bishops and Reform 1215–1272, with Special Reference to the Lateran Council of 1215 (Oxford 1934), pp. 108–09. For the use of documents in the Annales, see AM i. pp. xi, xxix. 43  AM i. 209–17. The Lichfield witness of the Annales includes a textually identical copy of the dialogue which has not hitherto been noticed: Lichfield Cathedral Library, MS. 28 (Staffordshire Record Office, LD 532), fos 8r–10v. The dialogue was first printed by Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 263–6. 44  C.R. Cheney, ‘The Alleged Deposition of King John’, in R.W. Hunt, W. Pantin, and R.W. Southern, eds, Studies in Medieval History Presented to F.M. Powicke (Oxford 1948), pp. 100–16, at 106–7, 110– 11; and 116 n. 1, where he suggests that it was probably composed after John’s death; C.R. Cheney, Innocent III and England, (Stuttgart 1976), p. 325. F.M. Powicke, Stephen Langton (Oxford 1928), p. 87 n. 1, attempts to salvage something. E. Mason, ‘St Wulfstan’s Staff: A Legend and its Uses’, Medium Ævum, liii (1984), 157–79, at 159, points out that Josbert, prior of Coventry, was one of the English clerics whom the papal nuncii were instructed to contact on arrival in England, and that he could well have been present at the meeting: Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, ed. C.R.  Cheney and W.H. Semple (Edinburgh 1953), no. 43.

140  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 monastic house chronicles.45 In character it is quite different from the rest of the Annales de Burton, which are otherwise devoid of literary flair. It seems that a— possibly the—Burton compiler decided to incorporate an already existing account of the meeting, just as he did subsequently with many authentic documents of very different character from Henry III’s reign.46 For reasons which will become clear, that account should probably be dated early in the thirteenth century, well prior to the compilation of the Burton annals. For our purposes the dialogue is remarkable chiefly because of its allusions to Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror. At issue was King John’s refusal to countenance the papally orchestrated election, in Rome, of Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury. In the dialogue, John reminded Pandulf that ‘William the Bastard,47 conqueror of England’ had once threatened to depose St Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester. Wulfstan had responded by refusing to surrender his episcopal staff to the king. Instead, he had embedded it in the tomb of Edward the Confessor, the king from whom he had formerly received it. Thereafter no-one other than Wulfstan was able to withdraw it from the stone. On King John’s interpretation, then, Edward the Confessor had provided supernatural sanction for the king’s traditional power to appoint prelates, and he was perfectly entitled to select his own archbishop of Canterbury. As the reference to the outdated practice of the king conferring a bishopric by means of the pastoral staff suggests, the inspiration for this tale was already old by the time the version preserved in the Annales de Burton was composed.48 Something very like it first appears in the Vita beati Eadwardi regis Anglorum written by Osbert of Clare, prior of Westminster, in 1138, to assist in the first (unsuccessful) petition for King Edward’s canonization. It was Osbert who made the first recorded reference to Edward as ‘confessor’, probably to differentiate him

45  AM ii. 268–71 (Waverley), which reproduces parts of the text verbatim, although not the allusions to Edward and William. The annals for the years 1219–66 seem to be written up by the scribes contemporaneously: AM ii. p. xxxvi. In the manuscript these annals follow the Waverley version of the dialogue, so it would seem that the dialogue must have been written prior to the annal for 1219, and therefore quite soon after the event; further Holt, ‘Constitutional Tradition’, p. 8. However, Cheney, ‘Alleged Deposition’, p. 103 n. 1, suggests this is ‘a later addition to or cension of the chronicle’, which had already recorded the mission in its proper chronological context on the preceding folio. See also Chronica monasterii de Melsa, ed. E.A. Bond, 3 vols, RS (1866), i. 387–9; cf. brief entries in Annales de Margam, AM. i. 3–42, at 30–1; Gaufridus de Coldingham, De statu ecclesie Dunelmensis, in Historiae Dunelmensis scriptores tres, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Soc., ix (1839), pp. 26–7. 46  The first few leaves of the copy in London, BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian E. iii are in a thirteenthcentury hand, which breaks off at fo. 12v, and is replaced by a fourteenth-century hand. The change of hand occurs before the dialogue is inserted, at fos 12v–14r. This second hand breaks off in 1263: AM i. p. xxvii. The Lichfield copy appears to have been made earlier: The Great Register of Lichfield Cathedral, ed. Savage, pp. xxii–xxiii. 47  Note that William is so described in versions 3 and 4 of LECf 35. 2: Gesetze, i. 666, and therefore in John Rylands MS. Lat. 155 fo. 74r. 48  Mason, ‘St Wulfstan’s Staff  ‘, 160; P.  Draper, ‘King John and St Wulfstan’, Journal of Medieval History, x (1984), 41–50, at 46.

Edward the Confessor  141 from the son and martyred successor of King Edgar.49 By Osbert’s account, it had been Archbishop Lanfranc, rather than William the Conqueror—‘victor of the Britannic world’—who had attempted to depose Wulfstan at a synod held at Westminster, and therefore in the vicinity of the Confessor’s relics.50 Nevertheless, it seems that resentment at the Norman treatment of English prelates which we have seen being expressed at this time by William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon, could be voiced even at Westminster Abbey, though at this stage responsibility was not foisted on the Conqueror, but on his archbishop. The story was repeated in Aelred of Rievaulx’s Vita of Edward,51 commissioned by the abbot of Westminster in 116052 to promote the second, successful bid for canonization, and closely based on Osbert’s.53 The prologue to the Vita addressed Henry II as a ‘cornerstone’ in whom the English and Norman lines had been united.54 A copy of Aelred’s book was presented to Henry II when he attended the translation of the new saint’s relics, at which Aelred himself appears to have preached as dawn broke on 13 October 1163,55 a date which was possibly chosen because it was the eve of the anniversary of the battle of Hastings. As well as old, the story had become well known by the time the dialogue preserved in the Annales de Burton was composed. A very free Anglo-Norman French verse translation of Aelred’s Vita was made in the second half of the twelfth century by a nun of Barking Abbey.56 It may have circulated in the royal 49  Vita Ædwardi regis: The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, ed. F. Barlow, 2nd edn (Oxford 1992), p. xviii. 50  Osbert of Clare, La vie d’Edouard le Confesseur, ed. M. Bloch, Analecta Bollandiana, xli (1922), 5–131, at 116–20. The story is not found in William of Malmesbury’s Vita S. Wulfstani, so it seems that it could not have been in his vernacular source, Coleman’s Life, either. Barlow, Life of Edward, p. xxxvi, suggests that it might have come from a Westminster source. At Worcester, it first appears in a late twelfth-century abridgement, probably made by Prior Senatus, who died in 1207: Vita Wulfstani, ed. Darlington, pp. xx–xxi, 77–8; William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, pp. xxxiii–xxxiv, 3. The passage from Osbert (mistakenly called Osbern) is summarized in a note in a sixteenth-century hand, tipped into the end of London, BL, MS. Add. 49366. It is impossible to establish when and why this happened. 51  Vita S. Edwardi, in R. Twysden, ed., Historia Anglicana scriptores X (London 1652), cols. 369–414, at 405–08. 52  Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H.T. Riley, 3 vols, RS (1867–9), i. 159. 53 Barlow, Life of Edward, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii. 54  PL 195. 738–9, cf. Ps. 117.22, in which Christ was the cornerstone of the Jews and the Gentiles. 55  Chronicon Angliae Petriburgense, ed. J.A. Giles, Caxton Soc. (1845), p. 98; F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (London 1970), p. 283; A. Squire, ‘Aelred [of Rievaulx] and King David’, Collectanea sacri ordinis Cisterciensium reformatorum, xxii (1960), 356–77, at 375–6; Walter Daniel, The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx, ed. F.M.  Powicke (Oxford 1950), p. 48; P.  Jackson, ‘In translacione Sancti Edwardi Confessoris: The Lost Sermon by Aelred of Rievaulx Found?’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, xl (2005), 45–83. The episode is not included in the sermon, nor is Edward’s gift of a ring to St John. For a later, Westminster account, see Ricardi de Cirencestria speculum historiale de gestis regum Angliae, ed. J.E.B. Mayor, 2 vols, RS (1863–9), ii. 319–27; for an abbreviated version, Flete’s History of Westminster Abbey, ed. J. A. Robinson (Cambridge 1909), pp. 92–4. 56  La Vie d’Edouard le Confesseur, ed. Ö. Södergård (Uppsala 1948); La Vie d’Edouard le Confesseur, by a Nun of Barking Abbey, ed. J. Bliss (Liverpool 2014); M.D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford 1963), pp. 60, 247; J. Wogan-Browne, Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Culture. Virginity and its Authorizations (Oxford 2001), pp. 249–56.

142  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 court, with which the abbey had close connections.57 It retold the story.58 The publicity surrounding the successful petition for Wulfstan’s canonization in 1203 was bound to lead to the dissemination of stories about him, and this one is no exception.59 Given John’s well-attested devotion to Wulfstan—he chose to be buried beside the newly canonized bishop’s shrine in Worcester cathedral60—it is almost certain that he knew the story, even if there is no reliable evidence that he ever commented on it, and no evidence at all that he had read (or listened to) either the copy of Aelred’s Vita presented to his father in 1163, or its Barking verse translation. In late 1212 or early January 1213, John arranged for the barons of England to send a letter in his support to Pope Innocent III. It does not survive, but its text is apparently reproduced in a parallel letter sent in the names of the barons of Ireland. This states: It is manifest that in ancient times before the arrival of the Normans in England, kings of England now canonized conferred certain cathedral churches on archbishops and bishops now canonized, simply and absolutely, according to their own will. Since the arrival of the Normans, the kings of England conceded that elections be conducted with their assent, which hitherto, as we well know, have been conducted in this fashion and firmly observed in cathedral churches.61

The allusion to recent canonization of pre-Conquest English kings and bishops means that there can be no doubt whom John had in mind. The author of the dialogue incorporated in the Annales de Burton may have been elaborating on the king’s known views on the subject, but he was not misrepresenting them. The extant Irish version of the letter strengthens the likelihood that the dialogue preserved in the Burton annals was composed at roughly this time.

57 Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature, p. 62. 58  Vie, ch. 35, ll. 5670–5949. 59 Cheney, Innocent III and England, pp. 56–8; Mason, ‘Wulfstan’s Staff ’, 162–3. 60  Foedera, I. i, 144; Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, iii. 385–6; Rogeri de Wendover, Liber qui dicitur flores historiarum ab anno domini MCLIV. annoque Henrici Anglorum regis secundi primo, ed. H.G.  Hewlett, 3 vols, RS (1886–9), ii. 196 (the later edition omits everything prior to 1154, on the grounds that it is simply a mosaic of fragments of earlier accounts); J. Crook, ‘The Physical Setting of the Cult of St Wulfstan’, in J.S. Barrow and N.P. Brooks, eds, St Wulfstan and his World (Aldershot 2005), pp. 189–217, at 209. 61  TNA, Red Book of the Exchequer E. 164/2, fo. 180r–v, printed and discussed by H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles, The Irish Parliament in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Philadelphia, PA 1964), pp. 285–7. For John’s letter to William Marshal and the Irish justiciar, which alludes to the copy of the English barons’ letter which he has enclosed, see Rotuli litterarum clausarum, ed. T.D. Hardy, 2 vols, Record Commission (London 1833–44), i. 132b. On the letter, see Cheney, Innocent III and England, p. 329; K. Norgate, John Lackland (London 1902), pp. 173–4; Annales Sancti Edmundi, in Geschichtsquellen, ed. Liebermann, p. 155.

Edward the Confessor  143 The author of the dialogue made John himself echo the tale, as the king invoked his favourite, very recently canonized,62 bishop in support of his claim to control the appointment of English prelates. Like the use of St Edward in the baronial letters of late 1212 or early 1213, it was a clever debating point, worthy of the wily John—all the more so because he was made to embellish it by adding that his father, Henry II, had conferred the archbishopric of Canterbury on ‘St Thomas Becket’; and further, in a pointed allusion to the nub of the Becket dispute, by accusing the pope of now trying ‘by his will’ to deprive John of ‘all the liberties which my predecessors had’. John was attacking Innocent for behaving in exactly the way that John was often attacked for behaving. The irony of John’s being made to invoke Becket in this fashion in debate with the papal nuncio is compounded by the fact that, on the occasion of the translation of Edward the Confessor’s relics in 1163, Becket had been allowed to take away from Westminster the old tombstone of Edward the Confessor in which Wulfstan’s staff was said to have become stuck. It was later installed next to the martyr’s own tomb in Canterbury.63 If only the author of the dialogue had known this pertinent detail, he could have used it to telling effect in the mouth of Pandulf. Like John’s elaboration of the moral of the tale with respect to Becket, and unlike his account of the attempted deposition of Wulfstan, the furious response of the nuncio to the king’s provocative arguments has no known literary precedent: You adduce St Edward and William the Bastard. To this I reply that you are not the successor of St Edward nor are you worthy to be compared with him. For he was the protector of Holy Church, whereas you are its destroyer and besieger. But we readily concede that you are the successor of William the Bastard, for he from the start besieged Holy Church, in that he wanted to take away the bishopric of Worcester from St Wulfstan. Therefore you succeed him and not St Edward. In this respect you have not changed, because you and all your predecessors have tried to destroy Holy Church. Furthermore, you prescribe and choose to observe the laws of William the Bastard, even the worst; and you treat with contempt the laws of Saint Edward, even the best.64

62  On 21 April 1203: Vita Wulfstani, ed. Darlington, pp. xlvii, 148–50. 63  ‘Gesta regum continuata’, in Gervase of Canterbury, Opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1879–80), ii. 285. 64  AM i. 213.

144  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 The argument placed in Pandulf ’s mouth is of great interest because it moves away from the use which we have seen being made of Edward the Confessor and Henry I by the opposition to John. In the dialogue, the contrast which John draws between the behaviour of Edward the Confessor and of William the Conqueror is incidental to John’s claim to be able, as Edward’s successor, to exercise Edward’s powers. No objection could prevail against the status quo under Edward. But Pandulf seizes on the king’s criticism of the Conqueror, in place of Osbert of Clare’s Lanfranc, to redraw the conventional dividing line between good and evil, or valid and less valid, custom. It was no longer the death of Henry I (in effect, identical to the accession of Henry II),65 where the conflation of the laga Eadwardi with the laws of Henry I, by implication, fixed it, nor that of Henry II,66 nor that of Richard.67 All of these had been mooted in the negotiations prior to Magna Carta. Instead, Pandulf fixed it at the Conquest, or more precisely, immediately prior to the Conquest, at the death of Edward the Confessor. Of course, such a definition could easily be made congruent with that reverence for the status quo t.r.e. which had become intrinsic to the Norman regime from the very start. But the point of King Edward’s ‘time’ had always been to establish continuity over the Conquest, as affirmed, for instance, in Henry I’s endorsement, in his coronation ‘edict’, of the laga Eadwardi, together with those ‘emendations’ which his father had made to it. To cite a particularly pertinent example, it was implicit in a legal compilation made later in the thirteenth century at Burton Abbey, which included not only Glanvill, but also texts of some of the Old English codes.68 Pandulf, however, did not explicitly mention Henry I, who by implication must have been numbered amongst John’s denounced predecessors. The nuncio rejected the whole notion of continuity over the Conquest. According to him, ‘St Edward’ and ‘William the Bastard’ had treated Wulfstan, and by extension ‘Holy Church’, in antithetical ways. John had shown himself to be a successor of William, not of Edward, in his treatment of Stephen Langton. Moreover, John is accused of having followed the laws of William, which did not reiterate or complement but (again by implication) contradicted those of Edward. According to Pandulf, the Conquest had marked an abrupt rupture in the history of English law, not the almost seamless development demonstrated by

65  Annales de Waverleia, AM ii. 282, quoted above, p. 138; Coggeshall p. 170; Unknown Charter, c. 9; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 118–19. 66  Foedera I. i, 129, a letter from John to Innocent of 29 May 1215, discussed by Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 206–9. 67 Holt, Magna Carta, p. 283, discussing Articles cc. 25, 44, and 46. 68  Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS. Peniarth 390; Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, p. 61. An early example is the late twelfth-century London, BL, MS. Add. 49366, discussed above, pp. 111–13, 121.

Edward the Confessor  145 the Leges Henrici, the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, Henry I’s Coronation Charter, and the rest. In the years prior to Magna Carta the charge that John did not respect the laws of St Edward had become a very familiar one; his father and his brother had sometimes been lumped together with him.69 But to claim that the same was true of all the other post-Conquest kings, including even Henry I and (emphatically) the Conqueror, appears to have been unprecedented. The likelihood that the dialogue was composed early in the thirteenth century70 is strengthened by a fabulous story told in some annals from St Augustine’s, Canterbury. These annals appear originally to have ended in 1221; they were subsequently attributed to, or copied by, Thomas Spott or Sprott, towards the end of the century, but they were almost certainly written much earlier.71 The chronicle 69  Waverly annalist: AM ii. 282, quoted above, p. 138.    70  See above, pp. 140–2. 71  London, BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius A. ix, fos 107–80, with the story at fo. 120. What appears to be the original chronicle, written in a single early fourteenth-century hand, ends at fo. 168ˇ with the election of Abbot Hugh III in 1221. What is probably a different fourteenth-century hand continues the annals until 1273 (fo. 174r), where a gap was left for further material which was never added, and various other hands then append transcripts of assorted documents, not in chronological order. The manuscript was damaged in the fire of 1731, but the final folio (180v) is blank, so there is no indication that any leaves have been lost: B.C. Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, CBMLC, xiii, 3 vols (London 2008), BA1. 931; BA3. pp. 1625–7; R. Sharpe, A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540 (Turnhout 1997), p. 681. Given the date of both main hands, there can be no certainty as to when the original chronicle was written. But the narrative becomes much scrappier after the entry for 1221, at which point the change of hand seems to occur. It also pays far less attention to lawsuits after that point. This suggests that the original chronicle, ending with the entry for 1221, may once have been a distinct, and was probably an earlier, work. This possibility is strengthened by another fourteenth-century witness of the chronicle—London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 419, fos 111–60—which concludes in 1221. It is a much fairer copy than Tiberius A. ix. It has been dated earlier, and, on the basis of its pre-Conquest section, it has been judged a better version of the text: Charters of St Augustine’s Abbey Canterbury and Minster-in-Thanet, ed. S.E. Kelly, AngloSaxon Charters, iv (Oxford 1995), pp. lv, xcvii–xcviii. The fable of Swanscombe Down is recounted at fos 123v–4r. There are no significant variations from the text in MS. Cotton Tiberius A. ix. According to William Thorne, who around 1397 used the annals as the basis for an updated house chronicle, and attributed them to Sprott, they ended either in 1272 or in 1228: William Thorne’s Chronicle of Saint Augustine’s Abbey Canterbury, ed. and trans. A.H. Davis, pref. A.H. Thompson (Oxford 1934), pp. 1–2, 196; Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 1757–8, 1881. It is not clear why Thorne was so confused about where Sprott finished, although it has been suggested that he may have decided that the rudimentary character of the existing chronicle from 1221 onwards meant that he was obliged to begin writing himself from roughly that point: J.C.  Russell, Dictionary of Writers of Thirteenth-Century England, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, special supplement, iii (1936), p. 170. On internal evidence, it seems that the chronicle up to 1221 was compiled sometime after 1238: William Thorne’s Chronicle, p. 127 n. 1; S.E.  Kelly, ‘The Pre-Conquest History and Archive of St Augustine’s, Canterbury’, unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge University, 1987, p. 123. If the sequence of annals eventually broke off in 1272 because they were being written up contemporaneously, and if they were designed to continue the original chronicle, ending in 1221, as their maintenance of its arrangement by abbacy suggests, then the date of the original can probably be pushed back into the first half of the thirteenth century. On Sprott, a late thirteenth-century monk of St Augustine’s, see Kelly, ‘St Augustine’s’, pp. 121–7. The fabulous story was repeated by Thorne without any changes: Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 1786–7; William Thorne’s Chronicle, pp. xx–xxvi (for Thorne’s use of Sprott and other sources), 47–9 (for the story); further Kelly, ‘St Augustine’s’, pp. 128–9; E. John, ‘The Litigation of an Exempt House, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, 1182–1237’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library,

146  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 records that in the very early stages of the Conquest—William is still entitled duke—the men of Kent, recognizing that the English were being enslaved by the Norman conquerors, resolved rather to die fighting ‘for the laws of their homeland [pro patriis legibus]’ than ‘submit to an unaccustomed yoke of servitude’.72 The implication is that hitherto Kentish and English laws had been identical. Under the leadership of Archbishop Stigand and Æthelsige, abbot of St Augustine’s, they ambushed the duke on Swanscombe Down, concealing themselves behind cut branches in order to surround him, thereby anticipating the dénouement of Macbeth by several centuries.73 According to Sprott, the two martial prelates followed the example of the Maccabees in leading resistance against the imposition of an alien law by a conqueror.74 Under great duress, William was forced to concede ‘more prudently than willingly’ that ‘the ancient liberty of the English and their ancestral laws and customs which, before the arrival of Duke William, were in force equally throughout the kingdom of England’ should henceforth ‘remain inviolable in the county of Kent alone’. In other words, Kent had secured for itself an exemption from the ‘unwonted slavery’ being imposed by conquest on the rest of the kingdom, by securing the conqueror’s agreement that in that shire, exceptionally, the existing laws and customs would remain in force. The strong implication, therefore, was that the ‘laws of their homeland’ for which the men of Kent fought were those of all England, and that they became unique to Kent only because Kent alone was exempted from the servitude to which the rest of the kingdom was reduced. In legal terms, the county became a surviving enclave of pre-Conquest England. The grounds for also dating this curious tale to the early thirteenth century are a little firmer than those for dating Pandulf ’s speech to the same period. Taken

xxxix (1956–7), 390–415, esp. 391 n. 1; Holt, ‘Constitutional Tradition’, pp. 9–12; J.C.  Holt, ‘The Ancient Constitution in Medieval England’, in E.  Sandoz, ed., The Roots of Liberty. Magna Carta, Ancient Constitution, and the Anglo-American Tradition of the Rule of Law (Indianapolis, IN 1993), pp. 32–74, at 53–5; R.  Emms, ‘The Historical Traditions of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury’, in R.  Eales and R.  Sharpe, eds, Canterbury and the Norman Conquest. Churches, Saints and Scholars, 1066–1109 (London 1995), pp. 159–68, at 164–6. The chronicler was quite accurate in reproducing the sources which can be identified, and did not embroider them: Kelly, ‘St Augustine’s’, p. 134. It seems likely, therefore, that he was reproducing a source, rather than inventing the story out of his own head. There was considerable interest in Sprott’s annals in the sixteenth century. John Joscelyn made a copy, London, BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius E. xiv, fos 237r–252v, which was in turn copied in London, BL, MS. Harley 692, fos 75r–193v. Another copy of the original is in BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius D. xi, fos 39–69, in turn copied in BL, MS. Add. 49618, fos 1–24. All these early modern copies end in 1221. Their relationship to MS. Cotton Tiberius A. ix or Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 419, if any, has yet to be established. 72  E.A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, 6 vols (Oxford 1867–79), iii. 539 n. 1, is dismissive. 73  The story of Swanscombe Down is recounted in Holinshed’s Chronicles: see below, p. 355. 74  BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius A. ix, fo. 120ˇ; Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 419, fos 123v–124r; cf. I Macc. 3: 59, which does not, however, refer specifically to laws.

Edward the Confessor  147 together, they suggest that the appropriation of Old English law by the opposition to John had not led solely to a reaffirmation of the doctrine of legal continuity over 1066 in a new guise. They offer highly imaginative, detailed sketches of an almost antithetical interpretation of the Conquest, which was to have an im­port­ ant, subversive role in the future: what they both term ‘the yoke of servitude’, later to be known as the Norman Yoke. On this view continuity had not been briefly ruptured by the aberrant John, or even by all the Angevin kings, but at and by the Conquest. The Conqueror and his successors had not affirmed English liberties and the laws on which they were founded, but suppressed them. The call was for the resurrection of those laws and liberties, for the creation of a new continuity with pre-Conquest England by throwing off the tyranny which had been imposed in 1066. It was a rallying cry with a heady future.

The Royalist Re-appropriation of Edward the Confessor In the short run, it was the royalists who wrenched the Old English past back from the opposition. It seems that as far as John’s opponents were concerned, Edward the Confessor and Henry I had done their work before Magna Carta itself was drafted. However important they might have been in its foundations, neither was even mentioned in it. Henceforth it was this Charter, not that of Henry, or the laws of Edward, which kings were asked to confirm—or at least that was the case until Edward II’s reign. This may have made it easier for royalists to recover Edward the Confessor as a talisman, though Henry I seems henceforth to have been forgotten by them, as he was by John in the dialogue with Pandulf. John’s attempted exaction of an oath of fealty against Henry’s Charter may not have worked in the spring of 1215, but thereafter he and his successors seem to have succeeded in consigning it to near oblivion for centuries.75 In death, John had taken the first step towards the royalist re-appropriation of Old England, by electing to be buried in Worcester Cathedral between St Oswald and the newly canonized Wulfstan, the embodiment of prelatial continuity over 1066. In 1218 John’s son and successor was present at the translation of Wulfstan’s relics.76 In his maturity, Henry III may have deemed it an important regal accomplishment to be able to recite the names of the saintly kings of pre-Conquest England.77 But despite his pious presence as a child at St Wulfstan’s translation, in his youth there had been no indication that he took any special interest in Old England in

75  It continued to appear, of course, in fourteenth-century versions of the London Collection, but it had by then ceased to be a lodestone in current political argument. 76  Annales prioratus de Wigornia, AM iv. 353–564, at 409–10; Crook, ‘Physical Setting’, p. 210. 77  CM v. 617, on a visit to St Albans on 3 March 1257. Edward was the only one to have been canonized by a pope.

148  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 general, or in the Confessor in particular.78 He was, however, then young enough not to have been conscious of the ways in which King Edward had been deployed against his father. His devotion to his sainted predecessor seems to have been kindled by the monks of Westminster in the early 1230s.79 It rapidly became intense and extravagant. On 13 October 1233 the king instructed the monks of Westminster to sing ‘Christus vincit’—that is, laudes regiae—before him, and paid the precentor 25 shillings.80 This was almost certainly the first occasion on which they had done so on the anniversary of the translation of the Confessor’s relics.81 In 1235 ‘glorious King Edward’ was characterized as Henry’s ‘special patron’ in a royal charter granting liberties to the abbey.82 In the following year, doubtless at Henry’s instigation, Pope Gregory IX recommended the observance of Edward’s feast to the whole English Church.83 Also in 1236, Henry spent no less than £23 3s 5½d on candles to illuminate the shrine for the occasion;84 in 1238 he provided 500 candles.85 Prior to the feast in 1248 he ordered ‘a huge candle weighing 1000 pounds’ to be placed in ‘the monastery of the blessed Edward’.86 According to Matthew Paris, it was the king’s practice to fast on the eve of the feast, and to wear a hair shirt.87 Given Matthew’s close acquaintance with Henry, and his recorded presence at Westminster for the feast of St Edward’s Translation in 1247 when Henry donated the Holy Blood to the abbey,88 and instructed Matthew to write up the proceedings,89 this is likely to be accurate. In the late 1230s Henry probably commissioned a new and very free French verse translation of Aelred of Rievaulx’s Vita, entitled La Estoire de Seint Ædward; it was certainly dedicated to his queen.90 78  D.A. Carpenter, ‘King Henry III and Saint Edward the Confessor: The Origins of the Cult’, EHR, cxxii (2007), 865–91, esp. 866–8. 79  Carpenter, ‘Origins’, 869–71, 874–6. 80  Calendar of the Liberate Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry III, Vol. I, A.D. 1226–40 (London 1916), p. 234; E.H.  Kantorowicz, Laudes regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA 1946), pp. 175–7. 81  Carpenter, ‘Origins’, 870. 82  WAM 1493, CCR 1226–1257, 208, 209, quoted and discussed by Carpenter, ‘Origins’, 870–1. 83  Les Régistres de Grégoire IX, ed. L. Auvray et al., 4 vols (Paris 1896–1955), ii. 3330; C&S II, i. 243. 84  Calendar of Liberate Rolls 1226–40, p. 243; Carpenter, ‘Origins’, 871. 85  Calendar of the Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 14 vols. (London 1902–38), iv. 91–2; Carpenter, ‘Origins’, 871. 86  Close Rolls, vi. 18–19. 87  CM v. 47–8. 88 N. Vincent, The Holy Blood. King Henry III and the Westminster Blood Relic (Cambridge 2001), pp. 7–20. This was blood which had flowed from Christ’s side when He had been wounded during the crucifixion. 89  CM iv. 644–5. 90  Matthew Paris, La Estoire de Seint Ædward le rei, attributed to Matthew Paris, ed. K.Y. Wallace, Anglo-Norman Text Soc., xli (London 1983), ll. 49–54, cf. The History of Saint Edward the King by Matthew Paris, trans. T.S. Fenster and J. Wogan-Browne (Tempe, AZ 2008), with some commentary; P. Binski, ‘Reflections on La estoire de Seint Aedward le rei: Hagiography and Kingship in ThirteenthCentury England’, Journal of Medieval History, xvi (1990), 333–50, at 340, points out that there is no evidence to link it specifically with Henry III, but see Carpenter, ‘Origins’, 886. On its disputed date, see La Estoire, ed. Wallace, pp. xxi–xxiii, P. Binski, ‘Abbot Berkyng’s Tapestries and Matthew Paris’s Life of St Edward the Confessor’, Archaeologia, cix (1991), 85–100, at 94–7; P. Binski and S. Panyatova, eds, The Cambridge Illuminations: Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West (London 2005), pp. 248–9, P. Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England, 1170–1300 (New Haven,

Edward the Confessor  149 Their first son, born in 1239, was named after the saint, the first time the name had been used in the royal family since the Conquest. Henceforth every king would be called Edward for a century. The focal point of Henry’s chamber in the palace at Westminster, freshly painted on a grand scale at the head of the king’s bed, was a mural of Edward the Confessor’s coronation,91 the ceremony at which Edward had supposedly been invested with the regalia used most recently for Henry III.92 The painting appears to have been very similar to the illustrations of the Confessor’s coronation in the sole extant witness of La Estoire de Seint Ædward and in a partially autograph witness of Matthew Paris’s Flores historiarum.93 This is also true of the depiction of Edward I’s coronation in a slightly later Westminster manuscript of the Flores.94 It has been suggested that this very room—‘the most public and private room in the whole kingdom’95—was then deemed to have been the Confessor’s own bedchamber, for which Henry commissioned a magnificent new bed.96 If the room was so identified, the prominent new painting was intended to evoke on the site of the saint’s death the most transcendent episode of his earthly life. The murals of St Edward and St John the Evangelist in the window splays opposite the bed alluded to that transition from earthly into eternal life, as demonstrated by the episode involving the two saints recounted and illustrated in the Estoire.97 Henry’s elaborate remodelling of the bedchamber made it a venue both for his exercise of royal rule at Westminster and of close physical affinity with his revered forebear and exemplar. Beginning in 1245, he proceeded to rebuild Edward’s great abbey church in a style deemed to befit the resting place of the royal saint.98 The expenditure continued at a profligate average of £2000 p.a. until the completion of the first stage of

CN 2004), p. 139, Carpenter, ‘Origins’, 886. The extant manuscript is a slightly later illustrated copy: Cambridge, UL, MS. Ee. 3. 59. A digital facsimile, is available on the CUL website: . 91  H.M.  Colvin, ed., The History of the King’s Works, 6 vols (London 1963–73), ii. 494–504; H.M. Colvin, ed., Building Accounts of King Henry III (Oxford 1971), pp. 422, 426, 434; P. Binski, The Painted Chamber at Westminster, Society of Antiquaries Occasional Paper, ix (London 1986), pp. 33–45, (colour Pl. I, pls. I, II, copies of the murals made after they had been discovered in 1819; cf. below, Plate 6); D.A. Carpenter, ‘The Burial of King Henry III, the Regalia and Royal Ideology’, in his The Reign of Henry III (London 1996), pp. 427–61, at 453; C. Wilson, ‘A Monument to St Edward the Confessor: Henry III’s Great Chamber at Westminster and its Paintings’, in W. Rodwell and T.W.T. Tatton-Brown, eds, Westminster. The Art, Architecture and Archaeology of the Royal Abbey and Palace, 2 vols (Abingdon 2015), ii. 152–86, at 162–5, 169–70. The precise date of the painting as copied by Charles Stothard in 1819 remains a matter of dispute, because it is unclear how far the decoration of the chamber was reconfigured after the fire of 1263. 92  Carpenter, ‘Burial of Henry III’, pp. 448–9, 451, 452–3. 93  Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS. 6712. 94 Binski, Painted Chamber, p. 39, discussing Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS. 6712, cols 433–4 (Pl. XXXVIIa) and Eton College, MS. 123, fo. 237 (Pl. XXXVI); Wilson, ‘Henry III’s Great Chamber’, ii. 169. 95  Carpenter, ‘Burial of Henry III’, p. 453. 96 Binski, Painted Chamber, pp. 35–6; Wilson, ‘Henry III’s Great Chamber’, 169–71, 175. The room was in fact ‘essentially the work of Henry II’. 97  Estoire, ll. 3453–3570; Binski, Painted Chamber, p. 40 and pl. XXXVIIIa. 98  Colvin, ed., History of the King’s Works i. 155–7; Chronicon vulgo dictum Chronicon Thomae Wykes, A.D. 1066–1289, AM iv. 252.

150  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 the project.99 The scale of the operation necessitated a special ex­che­quer.100 In 1269, on the anniversary of the first translation in 1163, in a year which was calendrically identical with 1163,101 Edward’s relics were translated again, with the king himself helping to shoulder the richly decorated reliquary.102 Edward’s queen, Edith, and Henry I’s first queen, Matilda—a descendant of Edward’s father, and the only member of the royal family to be buried in the abbey since Edward— were also reinterred close by.103 Henry himself would temporarily be buried in the tomb which Edward had vacated in 1163, and ultimately, in 1290, and in accordance with his wishes, in a tomb constructed beside Edward’s new, bejewelled shrine, holding an item of regalia specifically associated with his revered predecessor, with which he had been invested at his coronation.104 He who in life had chosen to sleep in Edward’s supposed bedchamber now rested beside him for eternity. His enthusiasm for the only papally canonized king of the line of Cerdic had supplanted his father’s for the great post-Conquest survivor of the Old English hierarchy, who had been appointed by Edward, and at whose first translation Henry had been present as a young king. Edward the Confessor seemed to have been retrieved from those who had deployed him against Henry’s father and brought firmly back into the royal fold. With the arguable and only partial exception of the Estoire, the royalist reappropriation of Edward the Confessor consists almost entirely in the artistic and liturgical projection of an image of sacral regality rather than in reverence for a great law giver. Even the exchequer Domesday Abbreviatio made at this time, probably at Westminster, is prefaced with illuminations of scenes from the saint’s life, and opens with the words ‘TEMPORE REGIS EDWARDI’ written in ornate gold letters.105 It has been suggested that the invocation of Edward may have been intended as a reassuring signal that King Henry would henceforth rule in a more consensual fashion than hitherto.106 But other than in the Estoire, there is no indication of this intention in the manner in which the cult was fostered 99 R.  Stacey, Politics, Policy, and Finance under Henry III, 1216–45 (Oxford 1988), pp. 242–3; A.R.  Jones, ‘Numerical Archaeology: Gleanings from the 1253 Building Accounts of Westminster Abbey Revisited’, in Rodwell and Tatton-Brown, eds, Westminster. The Art, Architecture and Archaeology of the Royal Abbey and Palace i. 104–28. 100  Colvin, ed., History of the King’s Works, i. 133–6. 101  D.A.  Carpenter, ‘Westminster Abbey and the Cosmati Pavements in Politics, 1258–1269’, in L.  Grant and R.  Mortimer, eds, Westminster Abbey: the Cosmati Pavements, Courtauld Research Papers, iii (Aldershot 2002), pp. 37–48, at 42–4. 102  Chronicon Thomae Wykes, AM iv. 226–7. D.A.  Carpenter, ‘Westminster Abbey in Politics, 1258–1269’, Thirteenth-Century England, viii (1999), 49–58, at 57–8; B.  Weiler, ‘Symbolism and Politics in the Reign of Henry III’, Thirteenth-Century England, ix (2001), 15–43, at 23. Another of the bearers was John de Warenne, earl of Sussex, whom we shall meet in another context below, pp. 224-6. For the costly decoration of the reliquary, see Colvin, ed., Building Accounts, p. 428. 103 B.F. Harvey, Westminster Abbey and its Estates in the Middle Ages (Oxford 1977), pp. 372 n. 4, 373 n. 6. 104  Temporary interment in Edward’s old tomb: Chronicon Thomae Wykes, AM iv. 252; translation in 1290: The Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds, ed. A.  Gransden (London 1964), pp. 94–5; Annales Londonienses, CREE i. 3–251, at 98; regalia: Carpenter. ‘Burial of Henry III’, pp. 440, 443, 457. 105  London, The National Archives, E36/284, fo. 3r; E.M. Hallam, Domesday Book through Nine Centuries (London 1986), pp. 42–4. 106  Carpenter, ‘Origins’, 881–2; Binski, ‘Reflections’, 346.

Edward the Confessor  151 and practised. The king offered no hostages to fortune. He was interested in sacral aestheticism, in laudes, candles, opulent paintings, sumptuous trappings, and gorgeous jewellery, not in the Confessor’s laws (and their endorsement by subsequent kings), which had been exploited to such telling effect by his father’s opponents. The Estoire’s presentation of Edward as a king who had consulted his barons, and sought their consent, may be attributed to its probable author, Matthew Paris;107 it is demonstrably based on the author’s reading of Roger of Wendover.108 But that is as close as the cult of St Edward under Henry III gets to echoing the use to which Edward had been put during John’s reign. The historical writings and collections of laws with which we have hitherto been primarily concerned may have transformed—in many cases out of all recognition—the events, and any preserved, translated, or confected documentation of pre-Conquest England. Yet however much they misrepresented and even traduced Old England, they did so on the basis of genuine or fabricated written records of it. Indeed, the interest of this study of the history of the Conquest’s history lies mainly in the ingenuity and imagination required in order to identify, interpret, or even to invent such material in this way, and then to deploy it for current purposes. This was not the case with Henry III’s cult of Edward the Confessor, which was expressed primarily in pictorial, architectural, and li­tur­gic­al forms. In some instances these drew inspiration from events recorded in Aelred’s Vita109 and repeated in the Estoire which Henry III had probably commissioned. But that was as far as their engagement with Old England went—which is to say, scarcely any distance at all. For the purposes of Henry III’s court artists, late twelfth-century hagiography was quite authentic enough, not least because it supplied useful miracle stories. The most striking example of the resulting gap between eleventh-century reality and thirteenth-century invention is the construction of the new abbey church at Westminster—proudly described as ‘new’ in the letter which the king sent to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Wales, inviting him to attend the translation of St Edward’s relics on 13 October 1269.110 The Edwardian building had been the unique survivor of the programme of demolition and replacement of all other major Old English churches during the reigns of the Conqueror and his sons. This was perhaps partly because it was the only major Old English church built in the Romanesque style, but more because it was the place of Edward the Confessor’s burial, in front of the high altar, and of William the Conqueror’s cor­ on­ation.111 The completion by the 1080s of the building over the dedication of 107 Vaughan, Paris, pp. 168–81; Binski, ‘Reflections’, 338–9; P. Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation of Power 1200–1400 (New Haven, CN and London 1995), pp. 58–9, for a careful consideration of the evidence on the question of authorship. 108  Carpenter, ‘Origins’, 887–9, identifies the models in Roger of Wendover. 109  See, for instance, the set of hangings bequeathed to the choir of Westminster by Abbot Richard of Barking in 1246: Binski, ‘Berkyng’s Tapestries’, 85–100; Binski, Westminster Abbey, p. 56. 110  Calendar of Close Rolls of Henry III, xiv. 71 (July 1269). I am grateful to Hugh Brodie for drawing my attention to this. 111  R.D.H. Gem, ‘The Romanesque Rebuilding of Westminster Abbey’, repr. in his Studies in English Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque Architecture, 2 vols (London 2003), ii. 417–55, esp. 422; G. Garnett, The Norman Conquest. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2009), pp. 91–5, 96–7.

152  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 which the Confessor had presided as one of his last acts, but which he had left unfinished,112 was a physical manifestation of continuity over the Conquest. It was the venue for the consecration of all subsequent kings, Henry III being the exception who proves the rule: he could not be consecrated at Westminster in 1216 because his forces were not then in control of London. The ceremony initially staged at Gloucester on 28 October113 was repeated, by special papal dispensation, at Westminster, at Pentecost, 17 May 1220,114 when Henry was crowned with the ‘diadem of the most saintly King Edward’.115 In the improvised circumstances at Gloucester, only a ‘golden band [circulum aureum]’ had been avail­ able.116 Westminster Abbey was the location for Henry’s ceremonial accession to kingship, when he had come closest to Edward the Confessor in sacramental as well as physical terms. Now this largest extant relic of Edward’s reign was razed too, in order to re-house the saint’s corporeal relics in the most fashionable and opulent setting, modelled on the state of the art Gothic cathedral at Rheims.117 King Henry’s reverence for St Edward entailed the destruction of the most impressive architectural vestige of Old England, commissioned by Edward himself, dedicated in his presence just over a week before his death, and sanctified by his interment within it. For Henry III image was all as far as Edward the Confessor was concerned. In terms of documentation, a recent, very free French vernacular verse translation of Aelred’s Vita sufficed. The material remains of the Confessor’s time—with the exception of the royal saint’s relics and his regalia, used at Henry’s own consecration—were not just of no interest, they could be destroyed in order more effectively to project that image in the most fashionable form. Even if Henry’s bedchamber was considered to have been Edward’s, it too was not reverentially preserved as a relic, but drastically and repeatedly remodelled and refurbished in order to proclaim its connection with Edward.

The Estoire and the Final Flowering of the Silver Age in English Historical Writing The exception to this general truth about the royal connoisseur’s cult of St Edward the Confessor is the vernacular verse Estoire de Seint Ædward. As we have seen, this certainly had royal connections, and seems to have had Westminster ones:118 112  Gem, ‘Rebuilding’, 422, 424, 439. 113 K. Norgate, The Minority of Henry III (London 1912), p. 5 n. 1. On 5 November the papal legate, Guala, wrote to reassure Westminster Abbey that the ceremony at Gloucester would not prejudice its rights: The Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England 1216–1218, ed. N. Vincent, Canterbury and York Soc., lxxxiii (1996), no. 129. 114 D.A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (London 1990), pp. 162, 187–8. 115  Crowland Chronicle, ed. Ispir, 1220.4, p. 599; Walt. Cov. ii. 244. 116  CM iii. 1, cf. AM iv. 60: ‘sertum quoddam loco diadematis’. 117 Binski, Westminster Abbey, pp. 35–6. 118  Binski, ‘Reflections’, 337–8.

Edward the Confessor  153 it includes a valuable description of the old abbey church which is not derived from Aelred of Rievaulx’s Vita.119 The Estoire is the only obvious link between the cult fostered with such fervour under Henry III and the treatment of the Conquest in mainstream historical writing of the first half of the thirteenth century. The author of the Estoire displays an engagement with earlier historical accounts of the reign of Edward which is largely absent from the other expressions of the cult, because they are all visual or liturgical. As its title suggests, the Estoire is more than a saint’s life. It prefaces its free translation of Aelred’s Vita with an elaborated one of Aelred’s De genealogia regum Anglorum.120 This demonstrates at the start that the prophetic vision of the dying saint—that a green tree, severed at the Conquest and removed to a distance of three furlongs, would one day miraculously reunite with the original stump and sprout again—had been realized in Henry II, whose mother was descended, through her mother, Henry I’s first queen, from the Old English royal house.121 Henry III was therefore its current representative, as the Estoire explicitly affirmed.122 As well as this genealogical preface, adapted from Aelred, the Estoire adds a long postscript to its version of Aelred’s Vita: an account of the Conquest up to the aftermath of the battle of Hastings which the author—almost certainly Matthew Paris123—had himself composed. It therefore prompts an assessment of mainstream historical treatments of the Conquest in what turned out to be the final flowering of the tradition of writing histories of the English kingdom which had been inaugurated at the start of the twelfth century. This section of narrative in the Estoire is based on Matthew’s Flores historiarum, the first book of which concludes with events following the battle of Hastings.124 This book of the Flores is a slightly abridged version of the Chronica majora. Up to the annal for 1234 or 1235,125 when Matthew took over, the Chronica majora seems to have been the work of Roger of Wendover, which otherwise survives only in his own Flores.126 So the first book of Matthew’s Flores127 follows a text 119  Estoire, ll. 2290–323; J.T. Micklethwaite, ‘Further Notes on the Abbey Buildings at Westminster’, Archaeological Journal, li (1894), 1–27, at 8–9; Gem, ‘Rebuilding’, 425. It is ignored in J.A. Robinson, ‘The Church of Edward the Confessor at Westminster’, Archaeologia, lxii (1910), 81–100. 120  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 347–70. 121  Life of Edward, ed. Barlow, , pp. 116–18, 130–2; Aelred, Vita S. Edwardi regis et confessoris, in Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 369–414, at 399–401. 122  Estoire, ll. 3846–9. 123  See above, p. 151. 124  Flores historiarum, ed. H.R. Luard, 3 vols, RS (1890); Vaughan, Paris, pp. 174–5, establishes the use of the Flores in the Estoire. 125  Galbraith, ‘Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris’, pp. 23–4, 26; Vaughan, Paris, pp. 21–34; R. Kay, ‘Wendover’s Last Annal’, EHR, lxxxiv (1969), 779–85. 126  Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe; Flores historiarum, ed. Hewlett; Vaughan, Paris, pp. 21–34. The editor of CM attempted to identify the borrowings from Roger’s Flores by using two different typefaces, but a definitive judgment in particular cases will be possible only when the promised new edition of Matthew Paris is published. 127  Tentatively dated to 1240–5: Vaughan, Paris, pp. 92–103, 108; for the relationship between the Flores and Matthew’s earlier writings, see Galbraith, ‘Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris’, pp. 25,

154  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 which can be attributed largely and ultimately to Roger, though Matthew’s Flores should not be confused with Roger’s Flores. The adoption of Matthew’s Flores at Westminster Abbey,128 where it became the basis for a repeatedly supplemented house chronicle129 and whence it circulated widely,130 meant that what had ori­ gin­al­ly been Roger’s cut-and-paste account of the Conquest became extensively known, and influential. Roger’s text on the subject of the Conquest, and therefore Matthew’s, followed one of William of Malmesbury’s variant accounts in the Gesta regum in being guardedly vague about Edward the Confessor’s alleged decision to make Duke William his heir. Like this particular version by William of Malmesbury, it places Earl Harold’s ill-fated fishing expedition in 1059. It records that after his shipwreck on the coast of Ponthieu, and arrest by the Count, Harold had attempted to secure his release from captivity by fabricating a story about having been sent to the Norman duke by King Edward on (unspecified) royal business. Roger then adds: ‘Others relate otherwise, that Harold had been sent to Normandy by King Edward in order to bring Duke William back to England, for the king intended to constitute him as his heir.’131 This is hardly a ringing endorsement of Duke William’s claim to have been designated by Edward the Confessor. Indeed in his Abbreviatio chronicorum—another rewriting of the story, probably started after 1255—Matthew added in parenthesis that ‘this [account] seems to differ from the truth’.132 Given Matthew’s tentativeness on this issue in his other works, including his Flores, it is striking that the Estoire based upon it lays more emphasis on Edward’s bequest of the kingdom to William. The point is twice interpolated, in the mouth of Earl Harold, into the section which is translated from Aelred’s Vita, even though Aelred had not mentioned it.133 It is reiterated elsewhere.134 This uncharacteristic stress on Edward’s responsibility for William’s claim may, perhaps, be 31–4, 45–6. The principal manuscript—Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS. 6712—was partly written by Matthew himself. 128  Perhaps via Pershore: D.A.  Carpenter, ‘The Pershore Flores historiarum: An Unrecognised Chronicle from the Period of Reform and Rebellion in England, 1258–1265’, EHR, cxxvii (2012), 1343–56. 129  A.  Gransden, ‘The Continuations of the Flores historiarum from 1265 to 1327’, repr. in her Legends, Traditions and History in Medieval England (London 1992), pp. 245–65; R.  Mortimer, ‘History and Chronicles at Westminster Abbey, 1250–1450’, in Rodwell and Tatton-Brown, eds, Westminster. The Art, Architecture and Archaeology of the Royal Abbey and Palace i. 291–300, at 292–3. 130  Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, i. pp. xiii–xxxiii. 131  Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, i. 579, cf. CM i. 529, derived from William of Malmesbury, GR II. 228. 3. 132  Abbreviatio chronicorum, included in Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Historia Anglorum, sive . . . Historia minor, ed. F. Madden, 3 vols, RS (1886–89), iii. 159–348, at 168; it is dated probably after 1255 by Vaughan, Paris, p. 114. 133  Estoire, ll. 3623–5, 3900–4; R. Fritz, Uber Verfasser und Quellen der altfranzösischen Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei (Heidelberg 1910), prints key sections of the two texts in parallel. 134  Estoire, ll. 4083–5.

Edward the Confessor  155 explained by the Estoire’s intended royal audience. Henry III was descended both from Edward’s chosen (according to this account) heir and, through his paternal grandfather’s mother, wife of Henry I, from Edward the Confessor’s father, Æthelred the Unready. Of the two lines of descent, the Estoire lays far more weight on the latter, prophesied by the expiring Edward, than on the former.135 The work’s admiration for the Confessor’s designated heir is slightly muted by repeated references to his bastardy,136 and to that of his son, William Rufus.137 They were the second and third in a succession of bastard kings which had begun with Harold II, who is denigrated, in one instance literally as well as metaphorically, in all Matthew’s other treatments of the Conquest.138 To liken the Conqueror to Harold in this way, however subtly, was extraordinary in a work probably commissioned by Henry III himself, and certainly dedicated to his queen. Edward the Confessor, by contrast, was ‘of gentle blood and legitimate’.139 But if Rufus had been illegitimate—which could only be because of the questionable nature of the marriage between the Conqueror and Matilda—then so, by implication, was Henry I. Although he is not labelled as the fourth bastard, the subtle implication must be that his marriage to a descendant of the Old English royal line assumed still greater importance for their descendants, including Henry III. The Estoire’s narrative stops shortly after the battle of Hastings140—Aelred’s account of the miracle of St Wulfstan’s staff is omitted. It seems that the author deemed subsequent events, other than the opening of Edward’s tomb, irrelevant to the Estoire’s purpose. This meant that it did not deal with the adulation of the Conqueror common to Matthew’s various accounts of 1066 and early 1067, and with the abrupt volte face common to their assessments of the king’s behaviour from the middle of that year onwards.141 In his Flores, for example, there is a sudden shift from implicitly comparing the Conqueror’s initial, triumphal entry into London with Christ’s entry into Jerusalem,142 to denouncing his distribution of English lands to his men on his return from Normandy in 1067: ‘already a tyrant 135  Estoire, ll. 3827–30. 136  Estoire, ll. 3016, 3823–30. Harold Harefoot was a bastard, his father Cnut had ‘filled the land with bastardy’: ll. 450–3, 768–73, R. Reader, ‘Matthew Paris and the Norman Conquest’, in J. Blair and B. Golding, eds, The Cloister and the World. Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey (Oxford 1996), pp. 118–47, at 141. 137  Estoire, ll. 3823–4, 3831. 138  Estoire, ll. 3823–3, cf. 4271–4310, 4445–4510, pp. xxviii–xxix; Reader, ‘Matthew Paris’, pp. 126–7, 141. Harold is literally denigrated in the royal genealogies with which Matthew prefaced his Abbreviatio Chronicorum in the autograph London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius  D.  vi: at fo. 11ˇ the medallion representing Harold is shaded black. ‘[I]niuste regnum invadens’, he is not included in the portraits of English kings, fos 6r–9v. 139  Estoire, l. 105. 140 At Estoire, l. 4638, as Harold is buried at Waltham, the penultimate leaf has disappeared from the sole extant manuscript. The final leaf resumes and concludes with an account of the opening of Edward’s tomb in 1102, which is closely based on Aelred. 141  Reader, ‘Paris’, pp. 127–31. 142  Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, i. 599, cf. Mark 2: 9; in Matthew’s Historia Anglorum, i. 7–8, William appeared on this occasion ‘as a host sent from heaven’.

156  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 was made of the king . . . he was suddenly transformed into a different man’.143 By 1070 the tyrant was ransacking the monasteries for ‘money and charters, in which the nobles of England had entrusted their liberties’.144 So clumsy is the change in interpretation and tone, and so unconvincing are Matthew’s attempts to reconcile the resulting contradictions,145 that it can only be explained by discrepancies between his sources, some of which, as we shall see, can easily be identified. The Estoire almost entirely avoids this problem by concluding its narrative before William’s reign in England had formally begun.146 The discrepancies in Matthew’s other works do not mean, however, that Matthew, like a latter-day William of Malmesbury, had attempted to go back to the contemporary auctores for the Conquest, ‘on whom alone the credit of [his] account must rest’;147 and that he was allowing them to speak for themselves, albeit with even less success than William in orchestrating them into some sort of harmony. True, Book II of the Flores, which covers the aftermath of the Conquest, does not follow the Chronica majora as closely as Book I.148 Matthew wrote up this account of the post-Conquest period years after Book I,149 and made more of an effort to elaborate the Chronica majora with new material. But in so far as that material can be identified, it dates from the thirteenth, or at the earliest the twelfth, century. Vaughan identifies William of Malmesbury, possibly Henry of Huntingdon, Robert of Torigni, Ralph de Diceto, and a number of more obscure contemporary house chronicles, notably from Reading and Southwark.150 It has been shown that the material from Southwark and other London churches prob­ ably came from a thirteenth-century collection of these annals which has not survived, but which was available to Matthew at St Albans.151 Unlike William of Malmesbury, Matthew does not appear to have undertaken research trips around the ecclesiastical libraries of England; he used what he had to hand, or what was supplied to him. All these sources had been drawn on in the Chronica majora, but it seems that Matthew consulted them afresh as he revised the text for his Flores. When the Chronica majora reached the Conquest, it had begun to turn to sources 143  Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, ii. 1–2; this amplifies, rather than abbreviates, the account in CM ii. 1. 144  Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, ii. 4; this is partly based on Ralph de Diceto, Opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1876), i. 201, which in turn reproduces John of Worcester, JW iii. 10. But Matthew seems to have invented the ‘charters’ and ‘liberties’ for himself; for further comment on this annal, see Vaughan, Paris, p. 105. 145  Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, ii. 15, discussed by Reader, ‘Paris’, pp. 128, 130. 146 Reader, ‘Matthew Paris’, p. 141 n. 138, identifies passages which are influenced by Orderic Vitalis and Henry of Huntingdon, as well as by Book I of the Flores. None of these is critical of William. See further, Fritz, Über Verfasser, pp. 77–89, on these and other sources. 147  GR I. pr. 7, discussed above, p. 56. 148 Vaughan, Paris, pp. 92, 98–9, 103. 149 Vaughan, Paris, p. 102. 150 Vaughan, Paris, p. 104; another possibility is a source common to Ralph of Coggeshall: F.M. Powicke, ‘Roger Wendover and the Coggeshall Chronicle’, EHR, xxi (1906), 286–96, at 292–3 n. 25. 151  M. Brett, ‘The Annals of Bermondsey, Southwark and Merton’, in D. Abulafia, M. Franklin, and M.  Rubin, eds, Church and City, 1000–1500. Essays in Honour of Christopher Brooke (Cambridge 1992), pp. 279–310, at 289–93.

Edward the Confessor  157 sometimes critical of the Conqueror, notably Henry of Huntingdon,152 so Matthew was given a prompt by the very text he was revising. But he proved in­cap­able of constructing a coherent account of the Conqueror’s reign out of this material. On the subject of the Conquest, Matthew’s twelfth- and thirteenth-century auctores spoke with discordant voices, because their ultimate sources were in turn discordant. Although more than happy to give vent to his prejudices when ­discussing recent events, Matthew evidently did not feel capable of, or perhaps entitled to, impose coherence on his auctores when composing annalistic history for an earlier period. As a consequence, his numerous rewritings of the history of the Norman regime are increasingly messy historiographical palimpsests—much more messy than the Estoire’s account of the period up to the death of Harold. As the title Flores historiarum suggests, the book was meant to be a com­pil­ ation of the best bits—the flowers or blooms—of existing histories, not an ori­ gin­al composition. The title was another phrase apparently coined by Justinus in the preface to his epitome of the Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus,153 and adopted with enthusiasm by medieval historians. This mode of historiographical composition became true not only of works which went by the title of Flores, and it was not an innovation, but traditional. All medieval historians stuck to the classical convention that if they had not been eye-witnesses, or had not been able to derive information from eye-witnesses, then their job was simply to reproduce the existing auctores.154 The convention was reinforced by the humility incumbent on all monks, who as writers often felt obliged to efface themselves altogether from what they wrote. What precisely was meant by reproducing auctores, or by self-effacement, varied greatly from case to case—neither could be characterized as William of Malmesbury’s strong suit. The aim of many monastic historians was, however, simply to preserve the record of events from oblivion; their own names were of little or no account. Matthew Paris’s studiously anonymous successor as author of the Chronica majora is a case in point: he wrote that he did ‘not deserve to have even his name mentioned on the page’.155 This monastic historiographical ideal of preserving the record of events and nothing more, had been articulated most clearly at the end of the twelfth century by Gervase of Canterbury, in one of those rare passages which explicitly articulates common assumptions. He sought to distinguish between chroniclers, whose important function was to compile from sources and establish a chronology, and those who affected the black rhetorical arts of antique historians, of whom he

152  CM ii. 1; Reader, ‘Paris’, p. 128; for another example of Matthew using Henry of Huntingdon at second-hand, see Vaughan, Paris, pp. 191–2. 153 Justinus, Epitoma pr., p. 2. 154  Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri xx, ed. W.M. Lindsay (Oxford 1911), I. 41. 1–2; B. Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages (London 1974), pp. 22–4: M. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History (Manchester 2011), pp. 63, 123, 183–5. 155  CM v. 748.

158  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 took a dimmer view. In his own day, he thought, some chroniclers were overreaching themselves by trying to write like historians. Not Gervase, who cat­egor­ ized himself as a simple chronicler: ‘I want to compile, rather than to write.’156 In his view, it seems, to compile a chronicle was in accord with monastic humility— to efface oneself from what one had written—whereas to write a history was not. The historian was indeed in danger of committing the gravest cardinal sin, that of pride. Even to identify the earlier auctores excerpted might be seen as com­prom­ is­ing the vocational humility of dead monastic writers.157 Nevertheless Gervase had no compunction about identifying some of the authors on whose work he drew, and indeed himself.158 Gervase’s distinction between chronicle and history might have been clear in his own mind, but was difficult to apply in practice to any particular piece of medieval historical writing. A relevant case in point is the Historia rerum Anglicarum of his contemporary159 William Newburgh, a work which Gervase would certainly categorize as history rather than chronicle. Yet William, like Gervase, began to write in any detail only from the start of the reign of Stephen, ‘in whose first year I, William, was born’.160 Prior to that point he cites as his authority ‘certain [unidentified] writers’, the most important of whom appears to have been Henry of Huntingdon.161 These forebears had, he alleges, established the ‘sequence [ordo] of English history’. But William began his narrative, unlike the twelfth-century histories he was using, with the Conquest, treating it and its aftermath down to Stephen’s reign in cursory fashion. In doing so, he deliberately ignored the vast majority of what those earlier historians, including Henry of Huntingdon, had written. This material did not merit preservation in his book. He touched upon the pre-Conquest period only to mention Bede, and to be scathing about Geoffrey of Monmouth.162 These were not the only respects in which he showed himself to be highly original. Despite the avowedly derivative nature of his account of the Conquest, unlike his sources he unequivocally condemned it as an act of aggression against innocent fellow Christians.163 This was very different from the nuanced ambiguity of Henry of Huntingdon, informed by the conflicting sources he attempted to balance. William went on to report that well over a century after Hastings, the battlefield still exuded blood whenever rain fell. Nevertheless, like any event, the Conquest had been providentially ordained: 156  Gervase, ‘Chronica’, Opera i. 88–9. 157  V.H. Galbraith, ‘Historical Research in Medieval England’, repr. in his Kings and Chroniclers, ch. XI, pp. 1–46, at 16, 22. 158  Gervase, ‘Chronica’, Opera i. 9, 594; cf. ‘Actus pontificum Cantuariensis ecclesiae’, ii. 391, 396, 415. 159  Gervase, ‘Chronica’ i. 89. 160  CRSHR i. 19. 161  CRSHR i. 19; for possible use of Symeon of Durham, Historia de regibus Anglorum, see pp. xxv–xxvi. 162  CRSHR i. 11–18. 163  CRSHR i. 20–3.

Edward the Confessor  159 when Ealdred of York had agreed to anoint William he had observed that ‘what is divinely ordained is not to be resisted’. With William of Newburgh, the balance of interest in the historiography of England had shifted away from writing up post-Bedan history in order to mend the broken chain. Instead, his focus was on the recent past, which could now conveniently be deemed to have started with the Conquest. In this regard he set a model for subsequent historical writing about England: for the most part it ceased to pay much attention to Old England. Even Matthew Paris, the most ambitious thirteenth-century historian, was content to rehash what his early twelfth-century predecessors had written about that period, and indeed about the Norman kings too. The periods before and immediately after the Conquest had by and large ceased to be subjects of historiographical investigation or interest. After the high point of the second quarter of the twelfth century, the adoption of more conventional medieval historiographical practice in terms of treatment of sources had already been evident in Roger of Howden and Ralph de Diceto, and thereafter, on a grander scale, in Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris. By Gervase of Canterbury’s definition, they were all chroniclers, not historians— though that very category of chronicler with pretensions to the grandiloquence of antique historians at whom he made his pointed jibe. Unlike William of Malmesbury, or even Henry of Huntingdon, they are really only of interest when they escape from the dead hand of their auctores, and begin to write about recent events which they and their informants had witnessed. The original final sentence of the Chronica majora, in the annal for 1250, made a virtue of this contemporary focus. The Chronica had been written, Matthew Paris said, ‘lest age and oblivion efface the memory of modern events’.164 These thirteenth-century historians of England were compelled to describe such events for themselves, because they had few or no auctores (other than, in Matthew’s case, Roger) on whom to depend. Instead, they illustrated con­tem­por­ ary history with documents. Roger of Wendover, as we have seen, helpfully inserted a text of Henry I’s Coronation Charter into his account of the dramatic scene which had allegedly taken place in St Paul’s cathedral on 25 August 1213. He had already used it to elaborate his description of Henry’s accession.165 He also produced (or copied) a conglomerate text of Magna Carta, combining elem­ ents of the 1215, 1217, and 1225 issues, which Matthew Paris subsequently garbled further.166 In the shortest of his abridgements of the Chronica majora, in BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius  A.  xx, known as Chronica excerpta a magnis cronicis, Matthew included a full text of the Henry I’s Charter s.a. 1215, but the address 164  CM v. 197. 165 Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, iii. 263–6 (1213), ii. 161–4 (1100); cf. CM ii. 552, 115– 17; HA i. 177–81 (1100 only). There are differences between the two versions, which are nevertheless both derived from the text sent to Hertfordshire: Acta, ed. Sharpe, p. 19. 166  Holt, ‘St Albans Chroniclers’, pp. 265–87; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 331–2.

160  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 clause alone s.a. 1213.167 The resonances of the Coronation Charter for the reigns of the Confessor and the Conqueror must have been obvious to Roger and Matthew. Those resonances were particularly noticeable in the case of the Confessor, as was clear from the recent use made of the Charter as recounted by Roger, Matthew, and many other thirteenth-century historians. But their awareness of this recent use did not prompt them to attempt any fresh assessment of the reigns of the Confessor or the Conqueror, or even that of Henry I. To most intents and purposes, their interest seems to have been restricted to the use made of the document in the thirteenth century. So numerous were the other documents, all recent, which Matthew attempted to incorporate that he eventually decided, when composing the Chronica majora’s annal for 1247, to consign them to a documentary appendix, termed by him the Liber additamentorum, with cross-references in the main text of Chronica majora and in one of its later abridgements focused exclusively on English affairs, the Historia Anglorum.168 In apparent contrast with his exploitation of earlier historians, he was not dependent solely on those recent documents which, for one reason and another, had been deposited at St Albans Abbey: the 1225 reissue of Magna Carta,169 for instance, or a rejected draft for the security clause of the 1215 original.170 He had informants, including Hubert de Burgh,171 Peter des Roches,172 and Alexander of Swereford, who probably gave him access to the Exchequer records which he undoubtedly used.173 A marginal note beside the Historia Anglorum’s annal for 1083 suggests that he might have seen Domesday Book;174 if so, he was inspired to comment on nothing other than its name. Unsurprisingly, his system of cross-referencing documents to his main text was, like many of the documents, borrowed from practice in the Exchequer.175 Although Matthew Paris was not involved in royal government, as Richard fitzNigel and Roger of Howden had been (though at very different levels), he seems almost as well-connected as them, or Henry of Huntingdon. He had met, and even discussed his historical writing with, the king himself.176 But he had a detached, monastic perspective, and took a dim view of the grasping activities of modern royal bureaucrats: ‘There were so many tyrants in England that they

167  London, BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius A. xx, fos 101v–102r, 93r. There is evidence that several copies of different traditions had been consulted: Acta, ed. Sharpe, p. 48; Vaughan, Paris, p. 116. The full composite text entered under 1215 in this abbreviation differs from the Hertfordhsire one in­corp­­ orated twice in CM ii. 552, 115, from Wendover, Flores, ed. Coxe, iii. 263–6, ii. 161–4: Acta, ed. Sharpe, pp. 19–20. 168 Vaughan, Paris, pp. 65–77. 169  Holt, ‘St Albans Chroniclers’, p. 283. 170 Holt, Northerners, pp. 116–18; Holt, ‘St Albans Chroniclers’, p. 284; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 289, 376. 171 Vaughan, Paris, p. 13. 172 Vaughan, Paris, p. 15. 173 Vaughan, Paris, pp. 14, 17–18; Historia Anglorum ii. 8, iii. 209; The Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. H.  Hall, 3 vols, RS (1896), i. pp. xviii–xix, xxix–xxx; F.  Liebermann, ed., Ex rerum Anglicarum scriptoribus saeculi XIII, MGH SS xxviii (Hanover 1888), p. 82. 174  Historia Anglorum i. 27 n. 1; Reader, ‘Paris’, p. 136. 175 Vaughan, Paris, p. 18. 176  CM iv. 644–5; v. 129–30, 246–54, 617–18; Vaughan, Paris, pp. 3–4, 13, 18.

Edward the Confessor  161 seemed, as if by multiplicity of rules, to renew ancient times.’177 This was an aside made in the course of a well-informed denunciation of royal extortion in his annal for 1256. By ‘ancient times’ it seems certain that he meant classical an­tiquity, well known for its proliferation of tyrants, not pre-Conquest England. It would be inconsistent even by his standards casually to express a view of the Old English past quite at odds with the more familiar, idealized one adopted in the Estoire. He showed little interest in investigating the subject anew in the Chronica majora and its various abridgements,178 with the revealing exceptions of King Offa, his abbey’s legendary founder,179 and St Alban himself.180 And on Offa, Alexander of Swereford was the authority he cited.181 Like most monastic historians, he was interested in the surviving ancient charters of his own house,182 and there is some indication that he compared sources for the period.183 But the vast majority of documents in the Liber additamentorum date from the thirteenth century.184 If approached with sufficient imagination, this method might have offered the opportunity to say something new about history prior to the thirteenth century. But although Matthew was by no means devoid of imagination, there is no sign that he applied it to his account of the Conquest and its aftermath. His job, as he saw it, was simply to preserve. He said so in the preface to Chronica majora, which was itself imitative: it largely reproduced that of Roger of Wendover to his Flores, which in turn largely reproduced that of Robert of Torigni’s Historia.185 The only acceptable novelty was the production and therefore preservation of previously unnoticed pieces of information. Matthew Paris’s most influential narrative his­tor­ies therefore represent the fossilization of that splendid tradition of English historical writing which had been instigated in the early twelfth century. In so far as Old England and the Conquest are concerned, Matthew’s works are a flat, condensed recapitulation of past historiographical glories, and a swan song.

177  CM v. 595. 178  In his accounts of the reigns of Edmund, Eadred, and Eadwig, he drew on the Vita S. Dunstani by B.: Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. M.  Winterbottom and M.  Lapidge (Oxford 2012), pp. lxxxiii–lxxiv. 179  Vitae duarum Offarum, ed. W. Wats (London 1639); for this and the vernacular verse Vie of St Alban see Reader, ‘Paris’, p. 118 n. 2. Offa of Mercia is said to have founded the abbey in fulfilment of a promise made by a fourth-century namesake, who had been king of the Angles. 180  La Vie de Seint Auban. An Anglo-Norman Poem of the Thirteenth Century, ed. A.R.  Harden, Anglo-Norman Text Soc., xx (Oxford 1968). This is a verse translation of the twelfth-century Vita by William of St Albans. 181  CM vi. 519 n. 1. Clearly Richard fitzNigel had not been the last Exchequer hand to take an interest in English history. 182  Charters of St Albans Abbey, ed. J.C. Crick, Anglo-Saxon Charters, xii (Oxford 2007), pp. 49–51, 229–31, 233–5; for the Conqueror’s reign, Reg. no. 249; another supposed writ of the Conqueror is not in Regesta: CM vi. 34. 183  See his note in the margin of his copy of William of Malmesbury, in which he records a discrepancy with Gildas: Vaughan, Paris, pp. 239–40, quoting BL, MS. Royal 13. D. v, fo. 152r. 184  B. Weiler, ‘Matthew Paris and the Writing of History’, Journal of Medieval History, xxxv (2009), 254–78, at 264–6, lists a selection. 185  CM i. 1–2; Wendover, Flores, ed. Coxe, i. 1–3; CRSHR iv. 612.

162  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Thereafter, for centuries, most histories written in England about England did little more than rehash and continue them.186 This was true even of the few which attempted to cover pre-Conquest England in any detail: for instance, Richard of Cirencester’s late fourteenth-century Speculum historiale, written at Westminster, which drew very heavily on Matthew Paris’ Flores. Richard, another precentor, concluded a book with the events of 1066, and made it clear that he intended to move on to the Conqueror’s reign in the next; but for whatever reason, he failed to do so.187 Historians who aspired to something more tended either to concern themselves with recent events, or to attempt fantastic reconstructions of the long distant past, written in the different tradition of Geoffrey of Monmouth. As we shall see in the next chapter, however, there were a few notable exceptions. It was these that would become immensely influential in early modern assessments of the Conquest and Old England. Despite his vested monastic interest in the continuous life of his community, Matthew acknowledged that the Conquest was the fundamental dividing line in English history. He made a point of beginning his Historia Anglorum with it.188 As in the case of William of Newburgh, Gervase of Canterbury, and Ralph of Coggeshall, antecedent English history could at a pinch be cut altogether, even in a work professedly concerned with the history of the English. The contrast with the great historians of the early twelfth century could not be more striking. Matthew was presumably baffled by William of Malmesbury’s desire to mend the broken chain of English history. For Matthew, the chain was not broken. Indeed, other than for the parochial purposes of St Albans Abbey, its first link could apparently be fastened to 1066. The Historia’s account of what followed displays that ambivalence towards the Conqueror which characterizes Matthew’s other annalistic treatments of the Conquest. His Gesta abbatum, by contrast, offers a much more straightforward in­ter­pret­ ation, which is very sympathetic to the conquered English.189 In its original form it survives only in his Liber additamentorum.190 As a work intended exclusively for the monks of St Albans, it followed in the pro-English vein initiated for such 186  Galbraith, ‘Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris’, pp. 13, 42–3; A. Gransden, ‘Continuations of the Flores historiarum’; Mortimer, ‘History and Chronicles at Westminster Abbey’, passim. 187  B.F.  Harvey, ‘Cirencester, Richard of ’, ODNB; only one manuscript, a fifteenth-century copy, survives: Cambridge, UL, MS. Ff. 1. 28. 188  Historia Anglorum i. 5. Notes in the margins of the manuscript of the 1189–1253 section of the Chronica majora—Cambridge, CCC, MS. 16—instruct the scribe of the Historia Anglorum to omit certain passages: Galbraith, ‘Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris’, pp. 29, 42; Vaughan, Paris, pp.  112–13. Reader, ‘Matthew Paris’, p. 119 n. 5, points out that the ornamental rubric and page headers in the Chronica majora begin in 1066, as do Matthew’s marginal illustrations of heraldic shields; further S. Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Aldershot 1987), pp. 175–7. 189  Gesta abbatum, i. 3–324, esp. 41–51, which is based on Thomas Walsingham’s late fourteenthcentury transcription and continuation of Matthew’s book. Matthew’s Gesta, preserved in London, BL, MS. Cotton Nero D. i, has not been printed since the seventeenth century, when it was edited with the assistance of John Selden: Vitae viginti trium abbatum Sancti Albani, ed. W. Wats (London 1644). 190 Vaughan, Paris, pp. 81–5.

Edward the Confessor  163 house histories by William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum. In it, Matthew claimed to be drawing on ‘the ancient roll of Bartholomew the clerk, who for a long time had been the servant of Adam the Cellarer’.191 For many reasons it seems most likely that the Adam in question was cellarer of St Albans Abbey until his death some time between 1167 and 1176, and that Matthew’s account of the abbots up to and including Robert (1151–66) drew on this roll, and at least one other roll too.192 The legal terminology used by Matthew in the passages based on these rolls reveals that he must have rewritten any material he derived from them. It is too up to date to have been in his sources.193 It is therefore impossible to tell whether they embodied the pro-English and anti-Norman sentiment for which the Gesta abbatum is so striking, but the lesson of the Chronica majora and its various revisions is that this is likely to be the case. As we have seen, Matthew tended to reproduce the drift of his sources, especially when writing about periods prior to his own lifetime. Another factor may be that the Gesta, in this respect like the Estoire, is not straitjacketed by an annalistic structure. It cannot be established whether the phrase ‘yoke of the Normans’ appeared in the ‘roll’ of Adam the Cellarer, or in any of Matthew’s other sources.194 The Gesta abbatum survives only in an amplified fourteenth-century version which incorporates Matthew’s original text. But ‘yoke’ was by now becoming a familiar metaphor for enslavement, with impeccable Roman literary credentials.195 Orderic had used it,196 as had Matthew in Chronica majora.197 Whatever the precise dates of composition of the dialogue between Pandulf and King John preserved in the Annales de Burton,198 and of the fable of Swanscombe Down first extant in the annals of St Augustine, the Norman yoke was already common currency long before Matthew kept repeating it in his Gesta abbatum. Indeed, although the Canterbury account of an oath allegedly taken at Swanscombe Down related exclusively to Kent, in other respects it provided a closer precedent for Matthew’s account of an oath which allegedly encompassed the whole kingdom. In Matthew’s Gesta abbatum, as at Swanscombe Down, Englishmen are said to have rebelled against the Conqueror in order to liberate themselves from ‘the yoke of servitude’.199 They had not endured slavery like this since ‘the time of Brutus’. In order to placate them, King William swore an oath administered by Abbot Frederick at Berkhamsted, on ‘all the relics’ of St Alban, to respect ‘the good and approved 191  MS. Cotton Nero D. i, fo. 30r, printed in Gesta abbatum i. p. xiv. 192 Vaughan, Paris, pp. 182–4. S. Lloyd and R. Reader, ‘Paris, Matthew’, ODNB, express some scepticism about the story, but none of their objections is decisive, and they fail to explain away Matthew’s statement, in his own handwriting. 193  I am very grateful to John Hudson for pointing this out to me; see also Vaughan, Paris, pp. 184–5, for Matthew’s adaptations. 194  Gesta abbatum i. 40, 42, 48, 49. 195  Julius Caesar, Commentarii de bello Gallico I.7; Vegetius, Epitoma rei militaris IV.26. 6; Justinus, Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum XXXVIII.4.12, etc.; subjugare also implies it. 196  OV ii. 202. 197  CM ii. 1. 198  See above, pp. 139–45.    199  Gesta abbatum i. 42.

164  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 laws of the kingdom, which the holy and pious kings of England, his antecessores, and especially King Edward, had established’.200 This is the only mention in any extant account of an oath being administered to the Conqueror by the abbot of St Albans. There is considerable doubt about when Frederick became abbot; it seems most likely that he was elected after 1070.201 But at whatever point Matthew placed the putative oath, he emphasizes that the king took it simply as a ploy to placate the English rebels, much as the St Augustine’s annalist reports William doing at Swanscombe Down. The Conqueror broke his word as soon as he felt secure enough to do so. Not only were the lands of Englishmen, such as the St Albans tenant Turnot, seized from them ‘at will, without any judicial procedure’, and handed out to Normans, but their beards were shaved and their hair shorn.202 To be hirsute had been an English custom since Trojan times.203 Now English custom, like English law, was again violated by the duplicitous Conqueror. King William was not only a tyrant, he was also a perjurer,204 because he had broken the oath administered to him by the abbot of St Albans. These are strong views, unambiguously—indeed, uncompromisingly— expressed. Like the dialogue between Pandulf and King John, and the fabled ambush at Swanscombe Down, both of which almost certainly predate Matthew’s account of events at Berkhamsted, they are a manifestation of a thirteenth-century critique of the Conquest. In the twelfth century criticisms had of course been voiced by Eadmer and John of Worcester, and more ambiguously, by Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, and Orderic Vitalis. In tempered form, this particular expression of that view had had, as we have seen, some influence on Matthew’s Historia Anglorum, which in this respect therefore reproduces the ambivalence of its early twelfth-century antecedents. Where the Historia Anglorum, like the Chronica majora, differs from those antecedents is in its unreflective overall recapitulation of them. What differentiates the Gesta abbatum from Matthew’s more mainstream writings is that many of the authorities on which it is based cannot readily be identified. Like the dialogue between Pandulf and King John preserved in the chronicle of a provincial house far more obscure than St Albans, or the legend of Swanscombe Down written up at an even more distinguished one, it suggests that the thirteenth-century royal re-appropriation of Edward the Confessor, in the guise of the royal saint’s cult, had not quite succeeded in extinguishing alternative interpretations of the Conquest. But the hostile critique of post-Conquest kingship by reference to Old England would not, henceforth, be expressed in historical writing, which was in any case already 200  Gesta abbatum i. 47–8. 201  Vaughan, Paris, pp. 200–4; D. Knowles, C.N.L. Brooke, and V.C.M. London, eds, The Heads of Religious Houses: England & Wales, I.  940–1216, 2nd edn (Cambridge 2001), pp. 65–6; contrast Reader, ‘Paris’, pp. 137–8 n. 109. Abbot Frederick seems to administer the oath not in 1066, but after an English rebellion in which he takes a leading role. 202  Gesta abbatum i. 42, 48. 203  Gesta abbatum i. 48; Historia Anglorum i. 11. 204  Gesta abbatum i. 45.

Edward the Confessor  165 atrophying when Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris wrote. Much more influential was the image of pre-Conquest regal sacrality sketched in the Estoire, which if not written by Matthew Paris himself, was heavily based on highly ­selective use of his historical writing.

Subsequent Royalist Promotion of St Edward’s Cult As for the royal cult which Henry III had promoted with such uninhibited ardour, its future observance depended to a large extent on the personal devotion of each monarch. Edward I donated the crown of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd205 to the saint’s shrine. The Welsh prince might (imprudently) have declined Henry III’s invitation to be present at the translation of the saint’s relics into the new abbey church on the feast of the saint’s translation in 1269, but that was where his regalia ended up.206 In much the same way the conquering king gave the spoils from his vic­tor­ ies in Scotland, including the Stone of Scone, to his canonized namesake.207 When he returned in triumph from Scotland in the spring of 1305, a special service was held in the abbey to give thanks to God and St Edward.208 Edward II refurbished the chapel dedicated to the saint at Windsor Castle, and it was there that his son Edward was baptized.209 Edward III in due course made oblations at the shrine which included St Peter’s own priestly vestments,210 and arranged for two of his children to be buried there.211 Edward I and III were both interred in the Abbey, close to the shrine of their namesake. Nevertheless, the cult had failed to take off as a focus of popular devotion during the reigns of these subsequent Edwards.212

205 The crown—aureola—was offered at the shrine by the king’s ten-year old son Alphonso, together with many other jewels: Annales de Waverleia, AM ii. 401; Annales Londonienses, CREE i. 92. It was said to be the crown of Arthur, and Edward had it re-gilded: Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, iii. 59; Willelmi Rishanger, quondam monachi Sancti Albani, et quorundam anonymorum, chronica et annales, regnantibus Henrico Tertio et Edwardo Primo, ed. H.T. Riley, RS (1865), p. 107; J. Beverley Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, 2nd edn (Cardiff 2014), pp. 332–3, 584 and n. 10. Meanwhile Llywelyn’s head was displayed on the Tower of London, crowned in ivy. 206  See above, p. 151. Gwynedd’s piece of the True Cross—the ‘Cross Neith’—was also deposited at Westminster: Annales de Waverleia, AM ii. 402. 207  The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., lxxxix (1957), p. 281; Documents Illustrative of the History of Scotland from the Death of Alexander III to the Accession of Robert Bruce 1286–1306, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols (Edinburgh 1870), ii. 135. 208  Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, iii. 320–1. 209  He was baptized on 16 November 1307 in the Chapel of St Edward in Windsor Castle, which his father had remodeled: [J.R.]S. Phillips, Edward II (New Haven, CN 2011), pp. 69–70, 201. 210  Chronica Johannis de Reading et anonymi Cantuariensis, 1346–1367, ed. J.A. Tait (Manchester 1914), pp. 120, 153; W.M. Ormrod, ‘The Personal Religion of Edward III’, Speculum, lx (1989), 849–77, at 858 and n. 54. 211 E.H. Pearce, The Monks of Westminster, being a Register of the Brethren of the Convent from the Time of the Confessor to the Dissolution, with Lists of Obedientaries (Cambridge 1916), p. 84. 212 Harvey, Westminster Abbey, pp. 43–4.

166  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 In terms of enthusiasm, Richard II was the first successor to match Henry III. That enthusiasm may have been inspired initially by the fact that the Confessor had died on the eve of Richard’s birthday, Epiphany, 6 January. Richard was said to have worn the saint’s tunic and dalmatic at his coronation,213 and would have been invested with Edward’s crown and other regalia.214 During his reign a great deal of attention was given to celebrating Edward’s regalia. In 1387–89, William of Sudbury, a monk of Westminster, dedicated to Richard a treatise on the subject of the regalia. This advanced new and more extreme claims. Though the regalia were conventionally associated with St Edward, William argued, they had in truth been brought back from Rome by King Alfred after his coronation by Pope Leo III. Their origin was therefore papal. They had been used for the coronation of every subsequent king. St Edward had merely augmented the existing collection.215 They had become particularly associated with him because of his sanctity, and because it was he who had entrusted them to the Abbey. William’s ingenious advocacy of Alfred did not persuade his sovereign to redirect his devotion towards an earlier and un-canonized Old English predecessor. Richard restarted the process of completing the nave of the new abbey church, left unfinished at Henry III’s death in 1272.216 He made munificent gifts to the shrine and the Abbey: a ring the use of which he retained during his lifetime, but which he undertook to lodge in the shrine whenever he left the kingdom, and which he ordained should be used at all future coronations;217 a portable silver altar;218 a profusion of costly vestments;219 and banners, including one depicting ‘Saint Edward’ and another ‘Saint Edmund’.220 The Wilton Diptych depicts the Confessor, standing behind a kneeling Richard, who is flanked by St Edmund, the martyred last king of East Anglia, on the left, and St John the Baptist on the right. It was probably designed late in Richard’s 213  The St Albans Chronicle. The Chronica maiora of Thomas Walsingham, ed. J. Taylor, W.R. Childs, L.  Watkiss, 2 vols (Oxford 2003–2011), i. 144; L.E.  Tanner, ‘Some Representations of St Edward in Westminster Abbey and Elsewhere’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd ser., xv (1952), 1–12, at 3. 214  Flete’s History of Westminster Abbey, pp. 18–20, for the Westminster inventory of 1359; English Coronation Records, ed. L.G.  Wickham Legg (Westminster 1901), pp. xliv, 84, 96, 106–07, 147; Carpenter, ‘Burial of Henry III’, pp. 448–9, 455–6, and n. 162. 215  Richard of Cirencester, Speculum historiale de gestis regum Angliae, ed. J.E.B. Mayor, 2 vols, RS (1863-9), ii. 26–39; P.J. Eberle, ‘Richard II and the Literary Arts’, in A. Goodman and J. Gillespie, eds, Richard II: The Art of Kingship (Oxford 1999), pp. 231–53, at 239–40. 216 R.B.  Rackham, ‘The Nave of Westminster’, PBA, iv (1909–1910), 33–96, at 37–44; Binski, Westminster Abbey, p. 205. 217  The Westminster Chronicle (1381–1394), ed. L.C. Hector and B.F. Harvey (Oxford 1982), p. 372; Calendar of Charter Rolls, Vol. V, 15 Edward III–5 Henry V (1341–1417) (London 1916), p. 312; WAM 9473, cited by N. Saul, ‘Richard II and Westminster Abbey’, in Blair and Golding, eds, The Cloister and the World, pp. 196–218, at 200. 218 P.  Tudor-Craig, ‘The Medieval Monuments and Chantry Chapels’, in C.  Wilson, R.  Gem, P. Tudor-Craig, and J. Physick, Westminster Abbey (London 1986), pp. 115–40, at 117. 219  Saul, ‘Richard II and Westminster Abbey’, pp. 201–2, 204. 220 J.  Wickham Legg, ‘On an Inventory of the Vestry in Westminster Abbey, taken in 1388’, Archaeologia, lii (1890), 195–286, at 227.

Edward the Confessor  167 reign for display in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Pew within the Abbey.221 Richard is shown as a boy, as he had been at the time of his coronation.222 This panel of the diptych therefore represents his coronation, with the three saints supporting him. St John the Baptist, the only one depicted touching him, was his patron saint, probably for two reasons. His accession had taken place on 22 June 1377, the eve of the Vigil of the feast of the saint’s birth; and he was born on the feast of Epiphany, when St John’s baptism of Christ was remembered. Moreover when it seemed that the newborn Richard might die, it was said that he had first been baptized as John—a choice of name which suggests little sensitivity to public reaction.223 According to a legend first found in Aelred’s Vita,224 and made much of in La Estoire de Seint Ædward le rei, the Confessor had formed a union with his patron St John the Evangelist by giving a ring to a beggar who was in truth the saint in disguise.225 Not long afterwards, the Evangelist entrusted the ring to two English pilgrims in Syria, who eventually returned it to Edward,226 together with a prophecy of his imminent demise, and a promise that he and the saint would be ‘peers together in paradise’. A ring had been removed from Edward’s grave at the translation of 1163.227 He is depicted on the diptych prominently holding a ring. Richard had given a ring to St Edward. From the mid-1390s he impaled his arms with the mythical ones of the saint,228 as depicted on another panel of the diptych. This was the heraldic representation of a relationship akin to marriage,229 a union reminiscent of that between Edward and the Evangelist, and similarly symbolized by the giving of a ring. The echo must have been deliberate, and accounts for the elaborate arrangements made by Richard for the custody of the ring. Moreover, 221  Saul, ‘Richard II and Westminster’, pp. 208–9; M.V. Clarke, ‘The Wilton Diptych’, repr. in her Fourteenth Century Studies, ed. L.S. Sutherland and M. McKisack (Oxford 1937), pp. 272–92, at 274–6; D. Gordon, with C.M. Barron, A. Roy, and M. Wyld, Making & Meaning: The Wilton Diptych (London 1993), pp. 59–62. The alternative and now less fashionable view is that the Diptych was made as a memorial after Richard’s death: F.  Wormald, ‘The Wilton Diptych’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xvii (1954), 191–203, at 201; V.H. Galbraith, ‘A New Life of Richard II’, repr. in his Kings and Chroniclers, ch. XIII, pp. 223–39, at 237–8. The arrangement of the saints on the panel mirrors that of their respective chapels in the abbey. 222 Gordon, Wilton Diptych, p. 24; see below, Plate 8. 223  Annales Ricardi secundi, ed. H.T. Riley, RS (1866), pp. 237–8. 224 Aelred, Vita S. Edwardi, in Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 397–8, cf. Osbert, ‘Vie d’Edouard’, ed. Bloch, pp. 124–8; Barlow, Life of Edward, p. xxxviii and n. 108. 225  It came to be believed that Edward had given St John the ring at Clavering, Essex: V.H. Galbraith, ‘Edward the Confessor and the Church of Clavering’, Essex Archaeological Society Transactions, new ser., xvi (1923), 187–9. 226  Estoire, ll. 3453–3570, illustrated in Cambridge, UL, MS. Ee.3.59, fo. 26, reproduced by Binski, Westminster Abbey, p. 67, fig. 86. See the late fourteenth-century painting of St Edward and the beggar, illustrated in J.J.G. Alexander and P.  Binski, eds, The Age of Chivalry. Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400 (London 1987), no. 35. 227  Flete’s History of Westminster Abbey, pp. 71–2. 228  The St Albans Chronicle, ii. 102. As a mark of great personal favour, the king granted others the privilege of also impaling their arms with St Edward’s. 229 Gordon, Wilton Diptych, p. 54.

168  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 the diptych’s depiction of Richard’s reception in heaven—the panel facing that which represents his coronation—has been shown in certain respects to mirror so closely that of St Edward’s reception in heaven as illustrated in the Estoire that it is likely to have been inspired by the Estoire.230 In other words, the connection between the Estoire and the royal promotion of Edward’s cult was still evident a century and a half after it had been written, almost certainly by Matthew Paris. Richard’s will, dated 16 April 1399, followed the template provided by that of Edward II by invoking the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and the heavenly court, but it added Edward the Confessor and John the Baptist.231 They were of course two of the three saints depicted supporting Richard for his coronation on the panel of the diptych opposite that representing his heavenly reception. The similarities between the cult under Richard II and Henry III are not restricted to the predominantly aesthetic mode in which both kings expressed their devotion to their pre-Conquest forebear. Richard may well have attributed his successful facing down of the Peasants’ Revolt to St Edward’s intercession: on 15 June 1381 he prayed at the shrine immediately before the crucial confrontation at Smithfield.232 In a show of carefully-staged grotesquerie, the rebels had on the previous day allegedly offered at the shrine the heads of those they had just executed, including the archbishop of Canterbury,233 to supplement the treasures already deposited there. Richard became a proud, atavistic proselytizer: in 1386 he took the visiting king of Armenia into the Abbey at night in order to show him by candlelight Edward’s regalia ‘with which he had himself been crowned’.234 (He appears also to have inherited Henry III’s love of candles.)235 They were treated as relics. With an uninhibited fervour reminiscent of his great-great-great grand­ father and predecessor, Richard, on the eve of the vigil of the feast of St Edward’s translation in 1392, walked barefoot in procession with the Westminster monks for almost three miles, before returning to the Abbey to pray at the shrine.236 On the vigil of the feast the king and his chapel attended Vespers in the Abbey, remained for Matins, and were present for high mass on the day itself.237 A number of liturgical sequences for Edward survive in the contemporary Missal of

230  Cambridge, UL MS. Ee 3.59, fo. 29, illustrated in Binski, Westminster Abbey, p. 57, fig. 74; Wormald, ‘Diptych’, 201–2. 231  J. Nichols, A Collection of the Wills of the Kings and Queens of England (London 1780), p. 191, cf. 59, cited by Gordon, Wilton Diptych, p. 55, cf. 24. 232  Westminster Chronicle, pp. 8–10. 233  The Anonimalle Chronicle 1333–1381, ed. V.H.  Galbraith (Manchester 1927), p. 145, cf. Westminster Chronicle, p. lxxii, for doubts as to the reliability of this report. 234  Westminster Chronicle, pp. 154–6. In 1384 French ambassadors to Scotland had also been vouchsafed ‘an unrestricted view’ of the regalia, p. 90. 235  See above, p. 148. 236  Westminster Chronicle, pp. 508–10, cf. p. lv for other visits to the shrine; Binski, Westminster Abbey, p. 199. 237  S. Mitchell, ‘Richard II: Kingship and the Cult of Saints’, in D. Gordon, L. Monnas, and C. Elam, eds, The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych (London 1997), pp. 115–24, at 116.

Edward the Confessor  169 Nicholas Lytlington, abbot of Westminster (1362–86).238 The Feasts of St Edward’s Translation and Deposition were soon added to Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, All Souls, and Epiphany (which was the morrow of the Deposition, the anniversary of Christ’s baptism, and Richard’s birthday), as days on which the king ceremonially wore his crown.239 In the Westminster Missal, they were written in gold and blue, to mark them as the highest festivals.240 In 1396 Richard adopted a new signet with the recently-devised impaled coat of arms; he referred to it as ‘our own personal seal of St Edward’, as distinct from the great seal, on which the impaled arms were never used.241 As this administrative detail suggests, the Confessor was important to Richard not only as a focus of dynastic devotion. He associated so closely with his forebear that he felt entitled to invoke Edward’s curse on those who disobeyed him.242 In 1384 he had commissioned sculptures of thirteen English kings to adorn Rufus’s Westminster Hall, which he remodelled extensively. Their names are not recorded, and the highly stylized nature of the six statues which survive in anything like their original state makes it impossible to identify who they represent. But if we miss out Harold II and include Richard himself, the first would have been Edward,243 who was, in that literal sense, fundamental to Richard. When the Revenge Parliament had done its work in 1397, all the Lords who had attended were made, one by one, to take an oath at the Confessor’s shrine to uphold its acts. It was further arranged that the oath should be administered to their successors. The knights also swore. The bishops undertook to excommunicate anyone who broke his oath.244 This unprecedented measure was designed to lend the oaths a particular and appropriate solemnity, and marked the cul­min­ation of Richard’s attempted re-appropriation of St Edward for untrammelled regality. The occasion has been suggested as a possible context for the 238  Missale ad usum ecclesie Westmonasteriensis, ed. J. Wickham Legg, 3 vols, Henry Bradshaw Soc., i (1891), v (1893), xii (1897), cols 616–17 (blessing for vigils of and both feast days), 645–6 (blessing for feast of translation of St Edward), 737–8 (office in the vigil of St Edward), 738–40 (office in the feast of St Edward), 975–6 (office for St Edward’s feast day), 977 (octaves of St Edward), 1134–5 (votive mass for St Edward), 1341 (commemoration of St Edward), 1359–60 (vespers of St Edward); cf. 669 n. 1 (blessing for the dedication of a church). 239  Liber regie capelle. A Manuscript in the Biblioteca publica, Evora, ed. W.  Ullmann, Henry Bradshaw Soc., xcii (1961), p. 64. 240  Missale ad usum ecclesie Westmonasteriensis, p. ix. 241 T.F.  Tout, Chapters on the Administrative History of Medieval England, v (Manchester 1930), p. 204, Pl. iv, No. 6. I am grateful to John Baker from drawing my attention to the point about the great seal. 242  Mitchell, ‘Kingship and the Cult of Saints’, pp. 117–18. 243 Binski, Westminster Abbey, p. 202; J.  Munby, ‘The Late-14th-Century Reconstruction of Westminster Hall’, in Rodwell and Tatton-Brown, eds, Westminster. The Art, Architecture and Archaeology of the Royal Abbey and Palace ii.120–32, at 122; M. Hay, Westminster Hall and the Medieval Kings (London 1995), p. 2, suggests that two larger statues of Edward and Richard were mounted in external niches on each tower; J.  Cherry and N.  Stratford, Westminster Kings and the Palace of Westminster, British Museum Occasional Paper, cxv (1995), pp. 68–7; P. Lindley, ‘Absolutism and Regal Image in Ricardian Sculpture’, in Gordon et al., eds, Regal Image of Richard II, pp. 61–83, at 74–8. 244  Eulogium historiarum sive temporis, ed. F.S. Haydon, 3 vols, RS (1858–63), iii. 377; RP iii. 352, 355–6; M.V. Clarke and N. Denholm Young, ‘The Kirkstall Chronicle, 1355–1400’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, xv (1931), 100–37, at 111.

170  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 commissioning of the Wilton Diptych.245 But those who were made to take the oath were clearly less in awe of the Confessor than Richard was. Doubtless they recalled that at his coronation, garbed in Edward’s dalmatic and stole, Richard had himself been obliged to swear that ‘all good laws of the land were kept everywhere, and especially the laws of St Edward, king and confessor, who lay in that same church’.246 Many of them must have been mindful of the example he had set of keeping faith with St Edward. Two years after they had sworn, on 29 September 1399, Richard, by then incarcerated in the Tower of London, resigned as king in Henry of Lancaster’s favour, removing his ‘gold ring of his patent signet’—­ presumably, that of St Edward—from his own finger and putting it on to Henry’s.247 Thomas Walsingham reported that Henry had previously considered claiming the throne by right of conquest, but had been dissuaded by Sir William Thirning, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, on the interesting grounds that to do so would generate a widespread fear that he might, as a conqueror, disinherit anyone at will, annul the laws and establish new ones; and that as a consequence no-one would be secure in his possessions. Henry was reported to have made a public proclamation to quell the incipient panic.248 Only shortly beforehand, as the crisis developed, all abbeys and major churches had been asked to scrutinize ‘chronicles of the kingdom of England touching the condition and government from the time of William the Conqueror up to the present time’.249 But if this implied that it was considered that the kingdom’s government had somehow been placed on a new footing in 1066, there was evidently great anxiety to avoid giving the impression that any repetition was planned now, in 1399. Henry’s accession was not a conquest in the style of the Conqueror, but was marked by Richard investing him with his ‘own personal seal of St Edward’. Henry was consecrated as king on 13 October, the feast of St Edward’s Translation,250 a choice of date which involved staging the coronation, unusually, not on a Sunday. He was as a matter of course crowned with St Edward’s crown.251 Even if Henry did not start to wear the St Edward signet ring on 29 September 1399, when c. 1408 he commissioned a new great seal, the Old English royal saints Edward and Edmund of East Anglia were depicted, crowned, on it.252 Richard II had not signalled Edward’s importance in royal government in this way.

245 Gordon, Wilton Diptych, pp. 60–1. 246  St Albans Chronicle, i. 142. 247  ‘Les Record et proces del renunciacioun du Roy Ricard le second apres le conquest’, RP, iii. 415–53, at 417; C.  Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397–1400. The Reign of Richard II (Manchester 1993), p. 171. 248  St Albans Chronicle, ii. 208, cf. p. lxxv. Walsingham’s addition is not found in the parliament roll. 249  St Albans Chronicle, ii. 158. 250  St Albans Chronicle, ii. 210. 251 Froissart, Chronique, in Oeuvres de Froissart, ed. K. de Lettenhove (Brussels 1867), xvi. 207. 252  A.B. Wyon, ‘The Great Seals of Henry IV, V, and VI, and More Particularly of the Second Great Seal of Henry IV’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, xxxix (1883), 139–67, at 144, 146–59.

Edward the Confessor  171 In 1413 Henry’s son and successor, Henry V, ensured that Richard at last ended up in the magnificent tomb which he had commissioned for himself, adjacent to Edward’s shrine.253 (In 1400 Richard’s wishes had been disregarded, and he had been interred in the Dominican friary at King’s Langley, probably because Henry IV had been anxious to avoid his remains becoming the focus for a cult).254 Henry IV had been buried not at Westminster, but on the north side of Thomas Becket’s shrine chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, thereby evoking the miraculous oil used for the first time at Henry IV’s coronation (and not Richard II’s), rather than the ceremony’s date.255 But St Edward and St Thomas were not mutually exclusive alternatives, and Canterbury may have been selected rather than Westminster simply because there was no suitable space left close to the Confessor’s shrine. Edward’s original Westminster tombstone, which Becket had brought to Canterbury after the saint’s first translation in 1163—the stone in which Wulfstan’s staff had miraculously stuck, and which had been erected next to Becket’s own tomb—had been moved by Henry IV to cover Edward’s altar in the Cathedral.256 When, after the death of Henry’s queen, a new chantry chapel was constructed for them, it was located close to their tombs, and therefore to St Thomas’s shrine, and it was dedicated to the Confessor.257 The tombstone was probably moved again to top its altar. Even when not buried at Westminster, therefore, English kings were made to cleave to Edward the Confessor in death as they had in life. He took precedence over St Edmund, because he was not only a saint, but a relative and a predecessor, a king of the English, not (just) of the East Anglians. The veneration for Edward meant that the Conquest was simply not an issue. Indeed, as Chief Justice Thirning had emphasized, in turbulent times it was extremely unwise to raise it as such. Continuity with Old England was as central to the cult of St Edward as it was to English law, but in a far less potentially complicated way. The cult as reanimated by Richard II remained what it had been under its first great promoter, Henry III, a century and a half earlier: a ceremonial and architectural assertion of regal sacrality. In so far as it drew on texts, and therefore on

253  St Albans Chronicle, ii. 634–6. 254  J. Burden, ‘How Do You Bury a Deposed King? The Funeral of Richard II and the Establishment of Royal Authority in 1400’, in G. Dodd and D. Biggs, eds, Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406 (Woodbridge 2003), pp. 35–53, at 39–52. 255  W. Ullmann, ‘Thomas Becket’s Miraculous Oil’, repr. in his The Papacy and Political Ideas in the Middle Ages (London 1976), ch. XIV, pp. 129–33; C. Wilson, ‘The Tomb of Henry IV and the Holy Oil of St Thomas of Canterbury’, in E. Fernie and P. Crossley, eds, Medieval Architecture and its Intellectual Context. Studies in Honour of Peter Kidson (London 1990), pp. 181–90; C.  Wilson, ‘The Medieval Monuments’, in P.  Collinson, N.  Ramsay, and M.  Sparks, eds, A History of Canterbury Cathedral (Oxford 1995), pp. 451–510, at 498–9. 256 ‘Gesta regum continuata’, in Gervase of Canterbury, Opera, ii. 285; Wilson, ‘Medieval Monuments’, p. 503 and n. 228; see above, p. 143. 257 F.  Woodman, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral (London 1981), pp. 178–80; Wilson, ‘Medieval Monuments’, pp. 502–3.

172  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 written accounts of alleged events, the thirteenth-century Estoire more than sufficed. We have seen that the Estoire offered more detail about such events than hagiographical convention required. As under Henry III, almost all of this was ignored in the development of the cult, which focused on a very few, pre­dom­in­ ant­ly miraculous episodes. For this reason the reanimation of the cult in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had no implications for understanding of the Conquest, which was glossed over then as it had been in the thirteenth century. In English law, too, continuity was stressed, and any rupture at the Conquest downplayed. But as we shall see, the use which had been made of the twelfthcentury legal compilations, most especially in the London Collection of John’s reign, provided rich scope for reassessing the role of the Old English past and connections with it. The next chapter will show that this is true even of those very few exceptional later medieval historians who attempted to do more than excerpt and précis existing accounts of the Conquest.

5

The Conquest in Historical Writing from the Late Thirteenth Century Historical writing about England in the later middle ages falls, broadly speaking, into three categories, though, as we shall see, not always neatly so. They are: the histories of individual churches; universal histories; and histories of the kingdom. For reasons that will become clear, most of my attention in this chapter will be focussed on certain exceptional examples of the first category, but exceptions which come close to making a nonsense of the threefold categorization, because they stray into the other categories. Histories in this first category were the most varied in character, and also the least changed from what had gone before. In so far as they tended to subsume previous attempts at histories of the house in question, when they got back as far as the Conquest they generally repeated, or more often condensed, earlier narratives and documentation. Where interpretation of the Conquest is concerned, therefore, this suggests a lack of current interest, except, perhaps, in a few cases— for instance, William Thorne’s reworking of the St Augustine’s annals which go under the name of Thomas Sprott—when the older material being recapitulated said something unusual.1 Equally exceptional and in some respects comparable, though very different in character, and self-evidently dating from a much later period, was the debate between Pandulf and King John spliced into the Annales de Burton.2 Yet even these striking and idiosyncratic treatments might have continued to be copied into the annals simply because they happened to be there in the archive, or were supplied to the author in some other way. This chapter will, however, begin by considering a few other exceptional late medieval house chronicles in which treatments of the Conquest were not simply cut and pasted, but apparently (and in some cases demonstrably) devised from scratch. They suggest that a few house historians in this period bucked contemporary historiographical trends, and devoted a good deal attention to the subject of the Conquest. How and why they did so is difficult to determine, not least because none of these unusual texts has (yet) been the subject of a modern scholarly edition. As we shall see, one has not been re-printed since the seventeenth century; another has never been printed. Nevertheless, some suggestions must be ventured, both to explain

1  See above, pp. 145–6.

2  See above, pp. 139–45.

The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

174  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 why a small number of writers became so absorbed in the subject, despite widespread disinterest, and because their treatments of the Conquest achieved, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a readership of which they could never have dreamt.

Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis The most elaborate and imaginative reassessment of the Conquest extant in any later medieval house chronicle was written at Crowland Abbey, an institution which deserves to be celebrated for producing two of the most innovative his­tor­ ies written during this period, one of which was discussed in the previous chapter.3 The other, the Historia Croylandensis, in many ways epitomized because it skilfully mimicked the genre of house chronicle, but the genre in its twelfth-cen­tury form. The range of the Historia’s coverage of the Old English past and particularly the Conquest, the number of witnesses which appear to have survived into the seventeenth century, and the very considerable influence it came to enjoy in early modern debate on the subject, all mean that the book deserves detailed consideration here. The substantial first section of the Historia purports to have been written or at least compiled by Crowland’s abbot, Ingulf (1085–1108), who had also, allegedly, been William the Conqueror’s Chancellor. The book has long been and remains a conundrum. Any attempt at an assessment of it is hampered by the fact that it has never been properly edited. After Francis Palgrave demonstrated in the early nineteenth century that it could not be accepted at face value as the work of Ingulf,4 but was a much later composition by someone masquerading as Ingulf, it has tended to be eschewed by historians as (in Stubbs’ words) ‘a wandering marsh-fire’.5 Nothing in it could be taken at face value, so its ‘fantasies’ were best avoided altogether.6 The consequence has been that the circumstances in which it came to be composed have been largely ignored, because it is very difficult to determine them with much precision. However, some attempt must be made to address them here, albeit inconclusively. This is for two reasons: because they reveal a lot about understanding of the Conquest in a major Benedictine house in the later middle ages; and because Henry Savile printed an edition in 1596 alongside the major works of William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and 3  See above, pp. 135–7. 4 [F.  Palgrave,] ‘Art. XI. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688. By David Hume, Esq. New Edition. London. 1825’, The Quarterly Review, xxxiv (1826), 248–99, at 289–97, esp. 295–6. 5 W. Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Mediaeval and Modern History, 3rd edn (Oxford 1900), p. 52. 6 S.  Raban, The Estates of Thorney and Crowland. A Study in Medieval Monastic Land Tenure, University of Cambridge Department of Land Economy, Occasional Paper no. 7 (1977), p. 12.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  175 Roger of Howden, as if it merited dissemination in their company. It therefore received a great deal of attention in the seventeenth century. Witnesses of the Historia now survive only in fragments of a late fifteenth-cen­tury Cotton manuscript, most of which perished in the fire of 1731, and in a late sixteenth-century transcript, apparently made from a different witness which is no longer extant and cannot be identified. In addition, there are two early modern printed editions of two further manuscripts, both now also lost.7 The section of the Historia which is attributed to Ingulf begins with the abbey’s foundation in 716, and breaks off shortly after an account of a conflagration in 1091 in which the Abbey’s library and archive had, it is emphasized, been totally consumed.8

7  London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho  B.  xiii (on the few surviving leaves of which, see W.G.  Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis. An Investigation Attempted (Cambridge 1894), pp. 50–1; A.  Hiatt, ‘Monastic Forgery: Crowland Abbey’, in his The Making of Medieval Forgeries. False Documents in Fifteenth-Century England (London–Toronto 2004), pp. 36–69, at 49); BL, MS. Arundel 178. A full text, including the various continuations, is printed in Fulman, Scriptores, i. 1–107, from a now lost manuscript then in the possession of Sir John Marsham; Fulman made attempts to supply passages missing from the Marsham manuscript from other exemplars. Searle, Ingulf, pp. 49–50, thought it probable that the manuscript known to William Camden in 1603 was this one: Camden, Anglica, Normannica . . . (Frankfurt 1603), ‘Dedicatio’. As Camden prints nothing from it, this remains conjecture. Partial texts are printed by H. Savile, ed., Rerum Anglicarum scriptores post Bedam praecipui ex vetustissimis codicibus manuscriptis nunc primum in lucem editi (London 1596), fos 484–520 (from a different lost manuscript, similar to but demonstrably not identical with the then recent transcript in MS. Arundel 178, and therefore almost certainly not from Arundel 178’s exemplar), and in The Chronicles of Croyland by Ingulf, ed. W. de Gray Birch (Wisbech 1883) (from MS. Arundel 178, which breaks off at the point when the Leis Willelme were inserted in other witnesses, as is also the case with Savile’s edition). Sir Henry Spelman knew a fifth (possibly sixth), termed by him ‘the archetype’, and described as ‘most ancient [veterrimum]’. In his time it was still kept at Crowland, now reduced to the status of a parish church, ‘under three keys’ held by the churchwardens: Concilia Magni Britanniae, 2 vols (Oxford 1639–64), i. 623–5. With great ingenuity Francis Palgrave infers, Quarterly Review, xxxiv (1826), 295–6, an early fourteenth-century date for this manuscript from a mistake made by Spelman in his transcription; but as Searle, Ingulf, p. 47, points out, the mistake could have been made by the copyist of the manuscript rather than by Spelman. John Selden already knew of the existence of what he termed this ‘autograph’ when he was working on his edition of Eadmer, but unlike Spelman did not manage to examine it: Eadmeri monachi Historiae novorum sive sui saeculi, libri vi (London 1623), p. 172. It is not known on what basis he termed it the ‘autograph’. In des­per­ ation, he used instead MS. Cotton Otho B. xiii: see below, p. 188. Fulman made enquiries after the autograph/archetype in 1684, but it could no longer be found: Scriptores, ‘Lectori’. D.M.  Stenton, English Justice between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter, 1066–1215 (London 1965), pp. 150–3, argues that two folios from it may survive in Lincoln Record Office, but whether they are from this manuscript or not, they come from the second continuation, not from Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia. In 1638–9 Gervase Holles had the Crowland charters in the Historia transcribed, reportedly from a manuscript: London, BL, MS. Lansdowne 207C, cited by J.C.  Crick, ‘The Art of the Unprinted: Transcription and English Antiquity in the Age of Print’, in J.C. Crick and A. Walsham, eds, The Uses of Script and Print, 1300–1700 (Cambridge 2004), pp. 116–34, at 122. It is impossible to establish what that manuscript was. 8 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 107. Where possible, references below are to both Fulman’s and de Gray Birch’s editions. Because the latter breaks off at the point when the Leis Willelme were inserted in other witnesses (at a point corresponding to Fulman p. 88), it does not include Pseudo-Ingulf ’s subsequent narrative. A continuation down to 1117 is falsely attributed to Peter of Blois (Fulman, pp. 108–30); and there are three further anonymous continuations: 1149–1470 (Fulman, pp. 451–546), 1459–86 (Fulman, pp. 549–78), and October 1485–April 1486 (Fulman, pp. 581–93); cf. The Crowland Chronicle Continuations: 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox (London 1986). Fulman does not print the anonymous continuations continuously with the sections attributed to Ingulf and Peter of Blois,

176  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 ‘Our charters, of extreme beauty, written in capital letters, adorned with golden crosses and paintings of the greatest beauty, and formed of materials of matchless value . . . were all destroyed.’9 In total, nearly 400 had reportedly been lost. However, the author (whom in accordance with scholarly convention I shall call Pseudo-Ingulf, but who according to Liebermann was two people)10 adds, a few years prior to the fire he had removed several old charters—some of them duplicates and triplicates—from the muniment room, so that the then cantor, Fulmar, could use them to teach novice scribes how to read ‘Saxon characters, as this kind of writing had for a long time, on account of the Normans, been utterly neglected, and was now understood only by a few of the more aged men.’ Elsewhere PseudoIngulf suggests that ‘Saxon characters’ had begun to fall into desuetude during the reign of Alfred,11 under the influence of the Frankish ­scholars whom that cosmopolitan monarch had invited to his court. This would mean that the particular charters which the post-Conquest abbot had borrowed from his own archive must have been very old indeed. Pseudo-Ingulf ’s intention had been that, thus instructed, the trainee ‘juniors’ would be able to draw on the abbey’s ancient charters to defend its possessions against its enemies—something which Trig, Crowland’s procurator, is later reported to have done in response to the assaults of Ivo of Taillebois,12 the Conqueror’s nefarious sheriff of Lincolnshire. It was only this small cache of royal charters13 and a few other documents,14 all fortuitously extracted by the abbot for educational purposes, which had escaped the flames in 1091; as a result, these remants ‘now form our principal and especial muniments’. Pseudo-Ingulf ’s passing comment that some of those which had been so providentially saved were duplicates or triplicates implicitly explained why they just happened so conveniently to preserve the texts of charters from all

but after intervening works. This leads Searle to conjecture that the Marsham manuscript probably did not include them: Searle, Ingulf, p. 49. 9 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 98. Matthew Paris waxed similarly nostalgic about the lost age when charters had been authenticated by nothing more than ‘golden crosses depicted by the hands of kings’: Gesta abbatum i. 151; cf. Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis, ed. W. Dunn Macray, RS (1886), p. 65. 10  F. Liebermann, ‘Ueber ostenglische Geschichtsquellen des 12, 13, 14. Jahrhunderts, besonders den falschen Ingulf ’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, xviii (1892), 225–67, at 254–5. Nevertheless, I shall refer to a single putative author in subsequent discussion. 11 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 85; Birch, p. 151. 12 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 107. On the general plausibility of this account of Ivo’s activities, see Raban, Estates of Thorney and Crowland, p. 23. 13 S.  82 (716, Æthelbald), 135 (793, Offa), 162 (806, Coenwulf), 189 (833, Wiglaf), 200 (851, Berhtwulf), 213 (868, Burgred), 538 (948, Eadred), 741 (966, Edgar), 965 (1032, Cnut), 1049 (1045x1050, Edward). 14  In addition to these royal charters in favour of Crowland, King Æthelwulf ’s ‘First Decimation’ charter (=S.294a, Fulman, Scriptores, p. 17; Birch, pp. 28–9), and a ‘statute’ of Æthelbald (Fulman, p. 5; Birch, p. 9), there are supposed grants to Crowland by an Earl Ælfgar in 810 (=S. 1189, a post-Conquest fabrication which survives in Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 95–6) and Thorold of Bucknall in 1051 (=S. 1230, spurious: Fulman, pp. 86–8; Birch, pp. 153–4), and a confirmation of Crowland’s lands and privileges by Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury in 966 (=S. 1294, spurious: Fulman pp. 44–5; Birch, pp. 75–7).

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  177 the key junctures in the abbey’s history. They were inserted at the appropriate chronological points in the preceding narrative, from the abbey’s foundation to 1085. All of them are egregious forgeries. Partly on these grounds the entire Historia down to the point at which Pseudo-Ingulf signs off15 has been shown to have been a ‘rifacciamento’,16 confected centuries after the date at which it purports to have been written. But the evidence for late medieval fabrication is not confined to the forged charters. Much of the narrative is based on the histories of John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, Aelred of Rievaulx, and other identifiable sources indisputably later than the ostensible date of the Historia.17 It is clear that the Historia draws on them, rather than they on it.18 At some point during the abbacy of Ingulf ’s successor, Geoffrey of Orleans (1109–c.1123)—probably in 111919—Orderic Vitalis had been commissioned to write up an epitome of the Vita of St Guthlac and a short account of the abbey’s history. Geoffrey had come to Crowland from St-Evroult, so was making an informed choice of jobbing historian and hagiographer. Orderic reported that he stayed at the abbey for five weeks in order to carry out his research.20 In addition to the saint to whom the abbey was dedicated, Orderic’s brief history encompassed the recent death and posthumous miracles of Earl Waltheof.21 By Orderic’s account it was Abbot Ingulf who had arranged for the translation of Waltheof ’s relics from the chapter-house into the (rebuilt) church,22 an incipient cult which Abbot Geoffrey had promoted, having been vouchsafed a vision of Waltheof and St Guthlac in the august company of the apostle Bartholomew, to whom the church was dedicated.23 Translations, as we have seen, had often recently been the occasion for investigation to authenticate (or not) claims to sanctity.24 Although Orderic was unusual amongst medieval historians of his period in seeking to specify his sources, he does not refer to the Historia Croylandensis, or make any demonstrable use of it. Rather, he invokes the sub-prior of the abbey, Ansgot, and other unidentified older monks as his informants, much as William of 15 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 107. By this point he had reverted from 1091 to the events of 1089. 16  The term used by F. Palgrave, The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth: Anglo-Saxon Period. Containing the Anglo-Saxon Policy, and the Institutions arising out of the Laws and Usages which Prevailed before the Conquest, Part II, Proofs and Illustrations (London 1832), p. ccccxlvii. 17 Searle, Ingulf, pp. 16–17 (John of Worcester), 22–3 (Malmesbury), 193. Searle also, p. 20, identifies Orderic’s Historia ecclesiastica as a source, but there is no evidence that Pseudo-Ingulf had access to anything by Orderic other than the brief Crowland narrative and vita of Earl Waltheof which Orderic had left at Crowland, a Crowland copy of which survives in Douai, Bibliothèque municipale MS. 852: R. Sharpe, J.P. Carley, R.M. Thomson, and A.G. Wilson, eds, English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, CBMLC, iv (London 1996), B24. 53, cf. B25. Orderic later spliced this into the Historia ecclesiastica. I should like to thank Richard Sharpe for alerting me to Searle’s error. 18  Thus, for instance, Pseudo-Ingulf elaborates Orderic’s otherwise uncorroborated record of Earl Waltheof having given the manor of Barnack to Crowland: OV ii. 344 and n. 2; Fulman, Scriptores, p. 67; Birch, p. 115; cf. Raban, Estates of Thorney and Crowland, p. 22. As demonstrated by Searle, Ingulf, pp. 28–9, Pseudo-Ingulf blends Felix’s Vita S. Guthlaci with Orderic’s epitome: Fulman, p. 2; Birch, pp. 3–4. 19 M. Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford 1984), p. 36. 20  OV i. 25, 32, 46; ii. p. xxv, 324. 21  OV ii. 320–2, 346; Chibnall, World, pp. 107–8. 22  OV ii. 346. 23  OV ii. 348–50. 24  See above, pp. 27–35.

178  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Malmesbury, researching there a little later, would cite the prior.25 The very strong inference must be that the Historia did not exist then. Moreover, its Ingulfine section has been shown to be full of anachronistic vocabulary and names (both place and personal), historical discrepancies and impossibilities, and odd elements of fantasy.26 It is written with episodic brio. Estimates of the true date of com­pos­ ition of this section vary between 1330–6027 and 1427–90.28 The balance of probabilities lies with the earlier of these alternatives, but it is not necessary to adjudicate between them here: suffice to say that this opening section in its existing form has been shown to be a late medieval confection. The question remains to what extent it is a palimpsest, with layers of much older Crowland materials underlying the surviving, extensively rewritten text, and what the precise ages of those older materials might be. In Pseudo-Ingulf ’s final paragraph he claims that, in addition to the vestigial archive of salvaged Old English charters, he had drawn on two earlier narratives,29 neither of which is extant in any other form. The first was an account of the house from its foundation down to its destruction in 870. This, Pseudo-Ingulf claimed, had been written by the five surviving monks found still in the vicinity or recalled by Thurketel when he had arrived in 948 as newly appointed abbot of the house which King Eadred had just re-founded.30 These brothers were termed the ‘sempectae’, defined as those of at least fifty years standing.31 Given that they had al­leged­ly somehow survived on the site (or elsewhere) since the devastation of 870, they had more than fulfilled that long-service criterion: they are credited with precise ages on a Methusalean scale, ranging from 115 to 168.32 Earlier in the Historia, this supposedly tenth-century account is said to have extended not to 870, but down to ‘the fourteenth year of the renowned King Edgar’, and to have been written by Swetman, ‘then the best notarius’, who had taken down the memories of his most aged brothers.33 Authorship is, however, credited to all five of them collectively, presumably on the grounds that Swetman had transcribed the accounts of the others.34 The second existing narrative on which Pseudo-Ingulf claimed to have drawn had allegedly been written by another bibliophile abbot, Egelric II, who died in 992;35 it covered the period from the re-foundation in 948 to his own day. For the rest of the Historia Pseudo-Ingulf claimed sole responsibility,36 although he 25  OV ii. 338; GP IV. 182. 26 Searle, Ingulf, pp. 114–43, 193–4; Liebermann, ‘Ostenglische Geschichtsquellen’, 259–61. 27  Liebermann, ‘Ostenglische Geschichtsquellen’, 254. 28 Searle, Ingulf, p. 207. 29 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 107. 30 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 29–30; Birch, pp. 50, 55. 31 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 49, 51; Birch, pp. 83, 86; on the etymology of this highly unusual word, see Searle, Ingulf, pp. 91–2. 32 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 51; Birch, p. 86. 33 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 48; Birch, pp. 81–2. 34 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 50; Birch, p. 85. 35 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 54; Birch, p. 92; for his interest in books, and his gifts to the library, see Fulman, p. 53; Birch, p. 91. 36 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 107.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  179 begins to write in his own person only when he reached his own lifetime. He reminisced about how, as a schoolboy whose father was in attendance at Edward the Confessor’s court, he had been helped with his homework by the queen, who had been a bit of a bluestocking. She had coached him in both grammar and logic, the latter being her particular forte.37 A bookish lad, he proudly added that he had gone from Westminster to the ‘studium’ at Oxford, where he had mastered Aristotle and ‘Cicero’s First and Second Rhetoric’.38 Abbot Ingulf ’s putative authorship of the entire Historia down to the early years of Rufus’s reign entailed a detailed focus on the Conquest and its aftermath. This first section is constructed as if from the viewpoint of the post-Conquest abbot. Pseudo-Ingulf devotes far more space to the reigns of Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror than to those of other kings. He nevertheless expresses regret that he cannot recount in still greater detail King William’s progress ‘year by year and step by step’,39 as he attempts to do in rather chaotic fashion for the first four years of William Rufus’s reign. He made substantial use of the great twelfth-century histories, and with limited success intermittently gestured at imposing (or re-imposing) an annalistic structure on his shambolically organized material. It is the adoption of this immediate post-Conquest perspective which is highly unusual in a source written from scratch in the later middle ages. It seems designed to fit the book into a twelfth-century genre of cartularychronicles such as the Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis,40 the Historia of the Abbey of Evesham,41 the Liber Eliensis, and William of Malmesbury’s De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie. In that respect its account of the preservation of ancient documents destroyed in a catastrophic fire, and of the translation of relics into the church rebuilt after the fire,42 was acutely observed. These were favourite tropes of house histories written in the period. The crucial distinction is that the Historia Croylandensis does not just incorporate existing vitae of certain post-Conquest abbots, as several of these histories do, but purports to have been compiled and written in its entirety by one such abbot. In that respect the Historia has much in common with the Historiola de primordiis episcopatus Somersetensis,43 a confection probably of the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, preserved in a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century

37 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 62; Birch, p. 107. 38 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 73; Birch, p. 128; Searle, Ingulf, pp. 135–7. 39 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 70; Birch, p. 121. 40  Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis, ed. J. Hudson, 2 vols (Oxford 2002–07), ii. pp. xxxi–xxxv, xlvi–li, 64–224. 41 Thomas of Marlborough, The History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. J.  Sayers and L.  Watkiss (Oxford 2003); for the Vita of Abbot Æthelwig, pp. xxxi–xxxii, 150–72. 42 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 102. 43  The title is the editor’s: Ecclesiastical Documents, ed. J.  Hunter, Camden Soc., viii (1840), pp. 3–41.

180  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 cartulary of Bath Cathedral Priory.44 This incorporates a detailed account of the efforts of the church’s late eleventh-century prelate—Giso, bishop of Wells—to defend and augment its possessions. This section, too, is written in the person of the prelate. Perhaps not just coincidentally, Giso really had been a royal scribe.45 Royal scribes were used to drafting documents in the first person. It is a highly unusual characteristic for narrative works written in this period. The device was, however, adopted also in the Scriptura attributed to Henry of Blois and written up c. 1140, during his tenure as abbot of Glastonbury (1126–1171). Although in the late 1240s Adam of Domerham (or Damerham) spliced this narrative into the beginning of his history of the abbey,46 in origin, like the Historiola, it was a brief, narrowly focussed first-person account of a series of legal attempts by an abbot to secure his abbey’s estates. It would be stretching a point to describe either it or the Historiola as works of history; certainly that is not how their authors would have categorized them. The Historia Croylandensis is thus unique for England in the sense of being a history of a church which purports to be written in the person and from the perspective of one specific abbot. Prior to his elevation as abbot, Pseudo-Ingulf claimed to have remained close to the centre of English political events by entering Duke William’s service when William had visited England during Edward’s reign. He had returned to Normandy in the duke’s entourage, and had become his ‘scribe’.47 Later he had been promoted to ‘rule the whole of the duke’s court’.48 He was, by implication, very well-informed in addition to being very well-educated. His becoming a monk and ultimately prior of St-Wandrille would not have prevented him from continuing to serve the duke.49 Long after William had become king of the English it had made sense for him to appoint Ingulf as abbot of Crowland, because the abbacy was already by convention apparently a pension for old chancery hands: Thurketel—labelled a ‘London cleric’ by Orderic50—had, according to Pseudo-Ingulf, been successively ‘chancellor’ to Æthelstan and Eadred prior to his elevation as abbot.51 This would have made him peculiarly well-qualified to arrange the inspection of earlier charters which, as recounted in Eadred’s, had accompanied the refoundation in 948.52 Indeed, Thurketel had ‘dictated’ the text of that very charter.53 Abbot Egelric II is not said to have previously been a royal scribe, but his bookishness is also emphasized.54 It may have been thought that 44  London, Lincoln’s Inn, MS. Hale 185 (=Davis, MC no. 25). 45  S.D.  Keynes, ‘Giso, Bishop of Wells (1063–1088)’, ANS, xix (1996), 203–71, at 213–14, 225–6; Charters of Bath and Wells, ed. S.E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters, xiii (2007), pp. 158–9, 169. 46  Adam of Domerham, Historia de rebus gestis Glastoniensibus, ed. T.  Hearne, 2 vols (Oxford 1727), ii. 305–15, more recently EEA viii. 205–13; G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure 1066–1166 (Oxford 2007), pp. 92–3. 47 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 73; Birch, p. 128. 48 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 73; Birch, p. 128. 49 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 74; Birch, p. 130. 50  OV ii. 340. 51 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 31, 32, 38; Birch, pp. 51, 53–4, 63. 52 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 33; Birch, p. 57; OV ii. 340. 53 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 32; Birch, p. 56. 54  See above, p. 178.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  181 St Guthlac himself had set the tone for Crowland: he was reputed to have been ­protective of documents and scribes.55 It followed from Pseudo-Ingulf ’s professional background that he was likely to take a close interest in the character of official documentation. As newly elected abbot he had been obliged to seek from the king confirmation of Crowland’s charters, many of them written in the ‘Saxon’ script which the Normans ‘utterly abominated’, for at this parlous time for the conquered ‘the Saxon nation too was held in contempt and quite disregarded’.56 Saxon script, the style in which novices in scholis were allegedly still being schooled, was not the only aspect of English diplomatic which the Normans reviled. They also ‘condemned’ the traditional English practice of drawing up ornate witness lists for charters, the very characteristic so reverently celebrated by the reportedly English-born57 Pseudo-Ingulf in his lament for the ancient charters lost in the fire of 1091.58 He observed that this practice had already been becoming obsolete during the Confessor’s reign, as the English had begun to adopt Frankish modes of authentication, including the seal, alongside other Frankish customs quite unconnected with diplomatic (for instance, the ceremony of dubbing a knight).59 Nevertheless, the new abbot read out the old charters of Crowland in the presence of King William and his advisers, submitted them for inspection, and prevailed. The Conqueror issued a charter of confirmation which made particular reference to that of the tenth-century re-founder of the church, ‘the egregious King Eadred, my predecessor’.60 As an old chancery hand, the abbot would have been able to cast a professional eye over it. By implication it must have been amongst the documents he had providentially borrowed from the abbey muniments prior to the fire. It is the last in the series of forged royal charters incorporated in the Ingulfine section of the Historia, though the texts of Thorold of Bucknall’s charter, allegedly issued thirty-five years earlier, in 1051,61 and of five lease-hold agreements supposedly drawn up between Ingulf and local landholders after the 1091 fire, are inserted subsequently.62 Pseudo-Ingulf also displayed a considerable interest in documents other than those recording the grant of rights and privileges exclusively to Crowland. They are all post-Conquest. One example is the primacy agreement between Canterbury and York of 1072,63 which could in reality have been taken from

55  OV ii. 328; Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. B. Colgrave (Cambridge 1956), pp. 116–18. 56 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 85, cf. pp. 70–1; Birch, p. 151, cf. p. 123. 57 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 73; Birch, p. 128. 58 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 98. 59 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 70–1, 62; Birch, pp. 122–3, 107. 60 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 85–6; Birch, pp. 151–2; Reg. no. 106: ‘total fabrication’. 61 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 86–8; Birch, pp. 153–4. 62 Fulman, pp. 99–100 (with Eustace, sheriff of Huntingdon); p. 100 (with Ogerus, priest of Rippingale); p. 100 (with Robert, man of Simon of Baston); pp. 100–1 (with William ‘the miller’ and his associate, Agge of Newton); p. 101 (with Gunter Siworth or Siword); Searle, Ingulf, pp. 184–5. 63 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 92–3.

182  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum.64 Another is the apocryphal law code Leis Willelme, to be discussed shortly. Neither of these was specific to the church of Crowland. Fundamental to his account of Crowland’s possessions, however, was the use he made of Domesday Book (or something very closely related to it),65 termed by him a ‘roll of Winchester’.66 He reported that he had consulted it on the very occasion when he had secured the confirmation of the abbey’s rights from the king.67 Consulting it was, he griped in passing, an expensive business, something we know to have been the case in the later middle ages and beyond.68 The results of that consultation are not confined to details in the charters he inserted into the Historia. They are subsumed into a discrete section of the narrative, which the author then attempts to gloss for the benefit of his ‘successors’.69 It is clear that the author did indeed have access to the text of Domesday, or something very closely related to it, although his understanding of it was shaky: he misinterpreted and in some cases garbled many of its technicalities and ab­bre­vi­ ations.70 Furthermore, he claimed that the Conqueror’s Domesday had been modelled on a much earlier Domesday, dating from Alfred’s reign—explicitly also termed a ‘roll of Winchester’71—and that he had extracted details of Crowland’s holdings from both documents.72 No evidence has ever been adduced to corroborate the attribution of a protoDomesday to King Alfred, who in any case had not ruled in the territories in which Crowland’s estates lay. But it is clear that Pseudo-Ingulf had access to genuine documentation other than Domesday relating to the abbey’s estates in the eleventh century, quite possibly a geographically arranged Domesday satellite— analogous to the Inquisitio Eliensis—which would have covered three of the seven Domesday circuits, because Crowland held lands in three circuits. Pseudo-Ingulf erroneously ascribed it to Alfred,73 to whose reign he had, as we have seen, also attributed the beginning of the obsolescence of Saxon script in Old English diplomatic. Perhaps Alfred’s name sprang first to mind when a significant

64  GR III. 298. 65 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 79–80; Birch, p. 140. 66  Elsewhere ‘roll of the king’: Fulman, Scriptores, p. 85; Birch, p. 150. For the term roll, as distinct from book, see M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307, 3rd edn (Oxford 2013), pp. 137–45. For a reference to an extract from ‘the roll of Winchester called Domesday’, with particular reference to Crowland, see the Spalding Abbey cartulary in London, BL, MS. Harley 742, fo. 339v (Davis, MC no. 911), cited by N. Vincent, ‘The Use and Abuse of Anglo-Saxon Cartularies by the Kings of England’, in M. Brett and D.A. Woodman, eds, The Long Twelfth-Century View of the AngloSaxon Past (Farnham 2015), pp. 191–227, at 198 n. 33. Alan of Ashbourn characterized Domesday as ‘rolls’ in the Lichfield Chronicle: London, BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 52r. 67 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 85; Birch, p. 150. 68 E.M. Hallam, Domesday Book Through Nine Centuries (London 1986), pp. 62, 134. 69 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 80–5; Birch, pp. 140–51. 70  Liebermann, ‘Ostenglische Geschichtsquellen’, 35; Searle, Ingulf, pp. 7–12; D. Roffe, ‘The Historia Croylandensis: A Plea for a Reassessment’, EHR, cx (1995), 93–108, at 94–5, cf. 96. 71 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 80; Birch, pp. 140–1. 72 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 80; Birch, pp. 140–1; Searle, Ingulf, pp. 7–8, 12; Roffe, ‘Reassessment’, 95–6. 73  Roffe, ‘Reassessment’, 95–101.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  183 pre-Conquest king needed to be invoked. To Alfred was attributed the division of the kingdom into counties, hundreds, and tithings, which Pseudo-Ingulf not unreasonably considered to have been fundamental to the Domesday Survey.74 Moreover, uniquely amongst English kings, Alfred had shared the quality which Pseudo-Ingulf seemed most to esteem: bookishness.75 (His son, Edward the Elder, was labelled a disappointment on this score, especially by comparison with Alfred’s nephew and Edward’s cousin, Abbot Thurketel.)76 Pseudo-Ingulf ’s use of a source parallel to Domesday Book is the only way of explaining the richness of often accurate detail which cannot have been derived from the Book itself, because it is not recorded there, but much of which appears to be roughly contemporary and compatible with Domesday.77 By extension it has been argued that the charters in Pseudo-Ingulf ’s section of the Historia may also originally have been drafted at this time, though demonstrably elaborated and interpolated in the later middle ages.78 However, the foundation charter of King Æthelbald which Orderic Vitalis had seen in the abbey archive in the early twelfth century and summarized in his epitome of Crowland history differed in content from that incorporated by Pseudo-Ingulf.79 We know from Orderic’s précis of the Vita S. Guthlaci that while working in the library at Crowland he paid very careful attention to the exact phrasing of documents in front of him.80 Furthermore, he was himself an accomplished draftsman of charters,81 and therefore had a keen eye for diplomatic detail. Accordingly, it seems highly unlikely that the text of the charter seen by Orderic survived in Crowland’s archive in Pseudo-Ingulf ’s day. Whilst PseudoIngulf drew on Orderic’s brief Crowland narrative—from which he may have derived information about the fire during Ingulf ’s abbacy (though not its precise date) and about Ingulf ’s prior career as a royal scribe82—he did not elaborate his

74 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 28, 79–80; Birch, pp. 47, 140–1. 75 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 27; Birch, pp. 46–7. 76 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 28, 30; Birch, pp. 48, 51. 77  Roffe, ‘Reassessment’, 98–100. 78  Roffe, ‘Reassessment’, 105–6. 79  OV ii. pp. xxvi–xxvii, discussing the text in the earliest surviving copy of Orderic’s epitome of Felix’s Vita of St Guthlac and short account of the early history of Crowland, in Douai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 852, by contrast with that in the Historia Croylandensis: Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 2–4; Birch, pp. 4–7; cf. OV ii. 338. However, Liebermann, ‘Ostenglische Geschichtsquellen’, 250, and Roffe, ‘Reassessment’, 105, argue that Orderic saw an earlier version of the same document. 80  OV ii. 322–38. It is even possible to determine which extant manuscript is closest to the one he used: 326 n. 1. This is also true of his handling of documents in other contexts: G. Garnett, ‘Robert Curthose: The Duke Who Lost His Trousers’, ANS, xxxv (2012), 213–44, at 222 n. 82. 81  Garnett, ‘Trousers’, 220–3. 82  OV ii. 344–6. It seems to have been well known that there had been a ‘regalium decretorum notarius’ called Ingulf in the reign of the Conqueror. He is made thus to subscribe a charter of William in favour of Westminster Abbey, forged in the 1120s of 1130s, but dated to 2 January 1081: Reg. no. 306; P. Chaplais, ‘The Original Charters of Herbert and Gervase, Abbots of Westminster (1121–1157)’, in P.M. Barnes and C.F. Slade, eds, A Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton, PRS, new ser. xxxvi (1962), pp. 89–110, at 91–4.

184  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 text of Æthelbald’s charter on the basis of Orderic’s brief description of it.83 Nevertheless Orderic’s account reveals that there had been a text of the foundation charter in the archive at Crowland a few years after the fire of 1091. If his description of it as sealed is accurate,84 as seems highly likely in view of his (Norman) diplomatic proficiency,85 then it must have been a recent confection, made in accordance with Norman, not English, modes of authentication, as Pseudo-Ingulf would have known well enough.86 A very few royal charters in the reign of Edward the Confessor might have been authenticated by a seal, but not those of any earlier English king.87 A text of the foundation charter, in a poor twelfth-century imitation of Old English script, survived to be partially engraved by George Hickes at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but had been lost by 1783.88 It appears to have been designed to exemplify the traditional Old English charter witness list so lovingly described by Pseudo-Ingulf in his lament for what had been lost in the fire.89 Orderic’s summary of a charter of King Edgar in favour of the abbey again reveals that such a document existed in the second decade of the twelfth century,90 though again Pseudo-Ingulf ’s version is vastly amplified. Orderic reports that this charter, too, was sealed, which if accurate again suggests that it had been forged very recently. However, in the interim between Orderic and whenever Pseudo-Ingulf wrote there is no clear allusion to any of the latter’s Crowland charters in the plentiful surviving documentation relating to the abbey, until a 1393 Inspeximus of Richard II confirms the foundation and re-foundation charters respectively of Æthelbald and Eadred.91 Had they been known in the abbey during the intervening period 83  OV ii. 338. 84  OV ii. 338. 85  Contrary to Searle, Ingulf, pp. 56, 157, it seems to me that if Orderic used the word sigillum, he did not mean signum; cf. OV ii. 338 n. 1. 86 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 70; Birch, p. 123. 87  S. 1038 (1065), in favour of Malmesbury; further, Keynes, ‘Giso’, 235; S.D. Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS, x (1987), 185–222, 216 n. 188. 88  G. Hickes and H. Wanley, Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archaeologicus, 2 vols (Oxford 1703–05), ii, ‘Dissertatio epistolaris’, Tabula D, and pp. 71–3, reproduced by Searle, Ingulf, frontispiece, and discussed pp. 56–7, 165–6. R.  Gough, Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, No. XI, containing, The History and Antiquities of Croyland Abbey, in the County of Lincoln (London 1783), p. *135, Appendix LXIV, prints a memorandum ‘written in the hand of the last century’ (p. ix) entitled ‘A Noate of such Evidences as belong to the Towne which was delivered to William Wyche’. This records the existence ‘In the long box, the great charter with Ethelbaldus his charter’, which seems to refer to what purported to be the foundation charter. Immediately below, the memorandum records that ‘In the black box’ were, amongst other documents, ‘Six other small charters, the goulden charters, . . . also three sealed charters. . .’; and ‘In the leather bagg, the long rolle of all the charters . . .’. According to Gough, none of these could any longer be found. For twelfth-century attempts to mimic Old English diplomatic, see J.C. Crick, ‘St Albans, Westminster and Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, ANS, xxv (2002), 65–83; J.C. Crick, ‘Historical Literacy in the Archive: Post-Conquest Imitative Copies of Pre-Conquest Charters and Some French Comparanda’, in Brett and Woodman, eds, Anglo-Saxon Past, pp. 159–90; for some late medieval examples, see Hiatt, ‘Crowland’, pp. 52–7. 89 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 98, discussed above, pp. 175–6. 90  OV ii. 342. 91  Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Richard II., Vol. V, 1391–1396 (London 1905), p. 300. This reproduces Pseudo-Ingulf ’s texts of the charters, and even the crosses prefixed to the names in the witness lists, as in Hickes’s facsimile of the ‘Golden Charter’ of 716: Searle, Ingulf, pp. 88–9.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  185 they would surely have been invoked in the confirmations of Richard I, John, and Edward I, and in the Crowland cartulary compiled in the mid fourteenth cen­ tury.92 They were not. Perhaps, as has been suggested, the charters of Æthelbald and Edgar which Orderic had seen were lost in a subsequent fire, in 1146,93 or at some other intervening point. For reasons which are now irrecoverable, probably sometime in the very late fourteenth century someone at Crowland was prompted either by the account Orderic had left in the library or by the re-discovery of the texts of a few sup­ posed­ly pre-Conquest Crowland charters, or both, to elaborate or fabricate from scratch an archive for the abbey. It is impossible to reach a definitive view as to the date when those charters were first forged, and if some or all of them were forged by Pseudo-Ingulf (though he clearly knew a thing or two about diplomatic). It is also impossible to determine whether some of the narrative into which PseudoIngulf inserted them already existed in some form, as he claimed was the case for the period prior to Edgar’s reign, or whether he was solely responsible for confecting it from sources available to him. A revealing example is provided by the several references in the Historia to kings investing new abbots of Crowland with the insignia of office.94 As argued above in another context, this practice was already long outdated by the time a crucial feature was made of it in what purported to be a transcription of a dialogue between Pandulf, the papal nuncio, and King John in the thirteenth-century Annales de Burton.95 A fortiori this was true of a work now judged to have been composed in the late fourteenth century, or perhaps even later. Was PseudoIngulf unreflectingly reproducing it from much earlier sources? Orderic Vitalis clearly had access to an existing list of the dates (though not the years) on which successive abbots of Crowland had died. Although he often attributes their appointment to the king, he, writing in the second or third decade of the twelfth century, never says that they were invested by the king with the staff of office.96 To have done so would have been to describe a process already 92  In 1538 this came into the possession of Richard Ogle, clerk to the court of the abbot, and thence into that of William Cecil. It is now Spalding, Gentleman’s Society, Crowland Cartulary: Davis, MC no. 294. 93  S. Raban, ‘The Property of Thorney and Crowland Abbeys’, Unpublished Cambridge University PhD thesis, 1971, pp. 14–15, cited by Hiatt, ‘Crowland’, p. 42. 94  Thurketel: Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 32, 39; Birch, pp. 55, 68; Wulgeat: Fulman, Scriptores, p. 63; Birch, p. 109; Ingulf: Fulman, Scriptores, p. 76; Birch, p. 133. 95  See above, p. 140. 96  Thurketel ‘asked the king to grant him Crowland’; he died on 28 June and his nephew Egelric ‘succeeded him’; Oscytel died on 21 October ‘and Godric succeeded him’; he died on 19 January and Brihtmer ‘took up the abbacy’; he died on 7 April and Wulgeat, already abbot of Peakirk, ‘petitioned King Edward son of Ethelred to allow both flocks of monks to be united, so that they might become one convent for the glory of God under one abbot and one law’; he died on 7 July and ‘Wulfketel a monk of Peterborough was made abbot of Crowland by the choice of King Edward with the permission of abbot Leofric of Peterborough’; he was deposed, and ‘Ingulf, monk of St Wandrille, received the abbey of Crowland by gift of King William’: OV ii. 340–6.

186  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 regarded as illegitimate. It is certain that Pseudo-Ingulf had read this passage in Orderic’s brief Crowland narrative, and he was much more candid about the practice than Orderic. According to Pseudo-Ingulf, on the death of Abbot Brihtmer in 1048, the prior, accompanied by two brothers, had ‘presented the pastoral staff to the king’, because ‘for many years past no prelatial election had been entirely free and canonical, for the king’s court had at its pleasure conferred all the dignities of both bishops and abbots by ring and staff ’.97 Thereby PseudoIngulf acknowledged that the practice was uncanonical, but nevertheless described several abbots of Crowland being invested in this way—including himself, by King William, in London.98 In this instance he was not, therefore, unthinkingly reproducing what certain ancient sources said. Rather, he seems to have been making a conscious attempt to lend verisimilitude to the pretence that the book had been written in the 1090s. There was nothing unreflecting about his adaptation of ancient sources on this particular subject. Indeed, he reveals the very acute historical awareness that one might hope for in a forger of charters. But he nevertheless unwittingly let slip other evidence that the Historia had been written much later. It is also, however, demonstrable that extensive use had been made of earlier sources roughly contemporaneous with the real Ingulf. That would be of a piece with the great care taken to lend the account verisimilitude.99 It seems very likely that either Pseudo-Ingulf or some anonymous Crowland forebear had consulted both Domesday Book and a related survey, now lost, of the abbey’s estates, analogous to those which survive for Ely, Abingdon, Evesham, and elsewhere.100 Whenever the constituent elements of the Ingulfine section of the Historia were first confected, therefore, they certainly drew on sources of the late eleventh cen­ tury, albeit imperfectly grasped by the author. It thus made good sense to foist the whole confection on the first abbot appointed by William the Conqueror, perhaps all the more so because Ingulf had been finally elevated following the deposition of his Edwardian predecessor at the Gloucester Christmas court of 1085 which had initiated the Domesday Survey.101 According to the author who assumed his persona, Ingulf at last became abbot just when the Survey, of which he would soon make such extensive use, got under way. Pseudo-Ingulf knew from Orderic Vitalis’s brief epitome of Crowland history that Ingulf had been a king’s scribe. He knew from the same source that Ingulf had arranged the translation of Waltheof ’s 97 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 63; Birch, p. 109. 98 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 76; Birch, p. 133. 99  Richard Sharpe points out to me that the term ‘lacus’—Fulman, Scriptores, p. 79—probably refers to drainage channels in the Fens, Latinizing the vernacular ‘lac’. 100  Roffe, ‘Reassessment’, 100–1. 101  OV ii. 344 and n. 3, citing the Thorney annals in Oxford, St John’s College, MS. 17, fo. 29r. The Historia Croylandensis is ambiguous about the date of Ingulf ’s elevation, stating both that he was installed in 1076 and that until the death of his predecessor, Wulfketel, in 1085, he regarded himself only as a procurator and ‘not fully the husband’ of the church: Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 76, 79; Birch, pp. 133, 139.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  187 relics from the burnt out chapter-house into the rebuilt abbey church. He did not learn from Orderic that Ingulf had experienced a vision immediately prior to his investiture. One of the figures who had reportedly appeared to him was a ‘most splendid consul’—a classicizing term used interchangeably with comes, to mean earl—who turned out to be ‘that most holy martyr, Earl Waltheof, [who had been] innocently decapitated’.102 Pseudo-Ingulf had greatly elaborated on Orderic’s hagiographical material about Waltheof. Furthermore, he knew that Orderic had inspected charters of Æthelbald and Edgar in favour of Crowland at the instigation of Ingulf ’s successor. If the Historia was not first conceived in the early twelfth century, its author displayed a remarkable grasp of the post-Conquest context in English monastic houses—perhaps on account of his careful reading of many of the great histories written at that time.103 The story constructed for Crowland is paralleled in ­cartulary-chronicles of indisputably twelfth- and thirteenth-century date all over England. What makes Pseudo-Ingulf ’s section of the Crowland Historia dis­tinct­ ive is that someone in the later middle ages was at the very least prepared to devote a great deal of effort to polishing an existing story, and at most to ghostwrite from scratch what purported to be a late eleventh-century abbot’s history of his own house. In that regard, Pseudo-Ingulf is unique in terms of extant later medieval house chronicles, an exception even more remarkable than Thomas Sprott at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, at the end of the thirteenth century, with his probable rewriting of an earlier account of the episode at Swanscombe Down. Apart from scale, what differentiated the Crowland Historia from the St Augustine’s story was Pseudo-Ingulf ’s determination to document the laws which the Conqueror had allegedly endorsed. He recalled that he had returned to Crowland from London with not only the new royal confirmation charter in his baggage, but also a collection of (unspecified) books, and the Conqueror’s supposed law code.104 This, he correctly emphasized, had endorsed the laws of King Edward. The vernacular law code which, in its fullest surviving version, was crudely spliced into the text at this point was the Leis Willelme, already discussed in Chapter  3.105 In choosing to incorporate a (French) vernacular code, PseudoIngulf doubtless had in mind his earlier assertion that the Normans so loathed the English tongue that under the new regime ‘the laws of the land and the

102  Birch, pp. 132–3; Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 75–6. For Waltheof ’s martyrdom, see Birch, p. 126; Fulman, Scriptores, p. 72, which clearly depends on OV ii. 320–2, but also on other unknown sources. 103  Richard Sharpe has plausibly suggested that the same unidentifiable historian also masqueraded as Peter of Blois, the putative author of the continuation to Pseudo-Ingulf in Petris Blesensis, Continuatio ad historiam Ingulphi in Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 108–30: ‘Peter of Blois and Abbot Henry de Longchamp’, in J.  Roberts and A.  Thacker, eds, Guthlac of Crowland: Celebrating 1300 Years (Donington 2020), pp. 448–72, at 448–9. 104 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 93. 105  Gesetze i. 492–520.

188  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 statutes of the English kings were treated of in the Gallic language’.106 By the time when he was writing, law French was indeed judged by lawyers to be one of the few enduring consequences of the Conquest.107 The Leis survives in a short and a long version, the shorter being in all likelihood the earlier, and probably the ­ori­gin­al.108 The earliest date which has been proposed for its composition is the middle of the twelfth century, because apparently not long afterwards it was added to a collection of law codes thus dated, as part of a supplement to the Holkham witness of Quadripartitus.109 The longer, less thematically coherent, and therefore almost certainly later version once survived in several manuscripts of the Historia Croylandensis, all of them now lost.110 It probably also had an independent existence prior to its incorporation into the Historia, because a medieval Latin translation of it is extant, in a statute book of Lincolnshire provenance ­dating from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.111 If that hypothetical reconstruction of the Leis’s history be correct, it is difficult to determine when the longer version was elaborated on the basis of the shorter. All that can be said with any certainty is that this must have happened before the longer version was translated into Latin. When the longer version was in­corp­or­ated into the Historia Croylandensis is also a moot point. If it was in the Historia from the time when the Historia was first drafted, that is further evidence that the book is much later than it purports to be. The Leis was certainly included in what Sir Henry Spelman, in 1639, termed the ‘archetype’ of the Historia, then reportedly still at Crowland, because he edited from it the very few chapters in which he was interested.112 In 1623 John Selden had confidently pronounced this to be the ‘autograph’ of the Historia, although on what basis is unclear, because he complained that he had failed to secure access to it. He was able to edit the longer version of the Leis from another witness of the Historia, currently in the possession of Robert Cotton, and formerly in that of William Cecil.113 The code was also found in the Marsham manuscript printed by William Fulman in 1684, which is demonstrably neither the putative autograph/archetype—which was by then untraceable—nor Cotton’s copy.114 106 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 71; Birch, p. 123. 107  See below, p. 275. 108  See above, pp. 111–12. 109  In London, BL, MS. Add. 49366, cf. above, p. 112 n. 70. 110  In MS. Add. 49366, Leis Willelme 20–20.3a, on reliefs, were located after 28.2, and rounded off the code. The qualification about lost manuscripts refers to MS. Cotton Otho B. xiii, a few leaves of which survive, though none of them includes any text from the Leis which was once found in this manuscript; cf. above, pp. 112, 175. 111  London, BL, MS. Harley 746, fo. 55v–58v, of which a copy was made in the sixteenth century by Laurence Nowell, now in London, BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius E. v. The statute book also contained a witness of the second version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. 112 Spelman, Concilia i. 623–5; cc. 1, 17, 18, 20, 36. 113  BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xiii. William Lambarde probably copied from this when in the 1560s he appended a transcription of the longer version of the Leis to Laurence Nowell’s transcript of Quadripartitus: Los Angeles, UCLA, MS. 170/529, discussed below, p. 334. For Cecil’s prior ownership of the Cotton manuscript, see Tite, Records, p. 152. 114 Fulman, Scriptores, pp. 88–91.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  189 Yet the code was not found in all witnesses of the Historia. It was not in the now lost manuscript used for Henry Savile’s editio princeps in 1596, though he was aware of the lacuna: what looks like an editorial comment states ‘it seems that the laws of Edward, which are lacking, should be inserted here’.115 The code is also absent from the sixteenth-century transcript in BL, MS. Arundel 178, which was not made from Savile’s exemplar.116 It appears that the lost exemplars for both these sixteenth-century copies simply broke off at this point in the narrative, thereby also omitting the subsequent, fulsome account of the 1091 fire and its aftermath. Given the loss of manuscript witnesses, it is impossible to explain conclusively why this was the case. But the absence of the subsequent narrative as well as the Leis might suggest that this was an omission or a loss—that not only the culminating account of the events of the 1090s but also the intervening vernacular law code had, for whatever reason, disappeared from the text. Pseudo-Ingulf ’s inclusion of the Leis gratified not only his penchant for spli­cing documents into his narrative, but also reaffirmed the conventional point which the Leis had originally been devised to illustrate: that the Conqueror had endorsed Edward the Confessor’s laws.117 This was true regardless of William’s reportedly harsh treatment of the English, his substitution of French for English as the language of law, and the Norman disparagement of traditional English calligraphy and diplomatic. Thomas Sprott at St Augustine’s failed to incorporate or even quote from the text of the traditional English laws which he claimed Duke William had conceded under duress exclusively to the obstreperous men of Kent. Perhaps he did not know of any; perhaps it would have seemed inappropriate to quote a royal code in an account of a privilege restricted to Kent. But there is a third example of later medieval house history which, though less impressive than Pseudo-Ingulf in terms of imaginative reconstruction and scale, nevertheless shares his determination to document the preConquest law which the Conqueror had confirmed. In this case we know who wrote it and when as well as where, though curiously it has not yet been edited or printed.

Alan of Ashbourn’s Lichfield Chronicle The Lichfield Chronicle is another house history from the provinces.118 This title, which has become conventional, was not used in what is clearly the original witness, but is taken from a mid-fifteenth-century copy in which the work is entitled 115 Savile, Scriptores, fo. 509v. 116  Birch, p. 155. 117  For the Leis’s use of Old English law, see Wormald, Making, pp. 407–09. 118  London, BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fos 1r–78v; there is a fifteenth-century copy in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 956, pp. 113–229; H.E.  Savage, The Book of Alan of Assheborn. An Address Given on the Festival of St Chad, 1922 (Lichfield 1922); The Great Register of Lichfield Cathedral, known as Magnum Registrum Album, ed. H.E.  Savage, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, The William Salt Archaeological Soc., 1924 (Kendal 1926), pp. xvi–xvii; P.  Morgan,

190  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Chronicon Lichfeldense.119 The chronicler, Alan of Ashbourn, a vicar choral of Lichfield Cathedral, appears to have made his last entry in the Chronicle in 1332.120 The title is somewhat misleading: the work is composed of six discrete sections,121 the third of which—the key one for our purposes—was entitled De gestis Anglorum,122 subsequently used at Lichfield as a title for the whole book.123 Although this is the third item in the volume as currently arranged, it appears to have been the first Alan wrote.124 It begins in 449, and draws on Gildas, ‘wisest historian of the Britons’, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bede, and Henry of Huntingdon; but its main source is William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum. All of these (other than Henry of Huntingdon) are cited,125 unlike the sources drawn on in the other sections of the Chronicle. As the brevity of this section suggests, Alan ruthlessly epitomized Gesta regum. In that sense, he did what conventional historians in this period usually did: he reduced an earlier history to what he regarded as its bare narrative essentials. But in doing so, he made two striking exceptions: he preserved William of Malmesbury’s supernatural story of Christmas revellers cavorting in a Saxon churchyard in 1012,126 and he chose to insert a heavily altered transcript of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris.127 It is this latter addition—not something he had preserved from William of Malmesbury—which is of great interest in the current context. For it he drew on the London or fourth recension of the Leges. He did not simply reproduce its narrative Prologue, which described how the Conqueror had summoned an assembly in the fourth year of his reign, established on the basis of English testimony what English law was, and formally endorsed it. He amplified the Prologue by inserting after its first sentence a passage very freely adapted ‘Historical Writing in the North-West Midlands and the Chester Annals of 1385–88’, FourteenthCentury England, ix (2016), 109–29. 119  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 956; The Great Register of Lichfield Cathedral, ed., Savage, p. xvi. 120  Alan of Assheborn or Ashbourn arrived in Lichfield in 1322 and died in 1334: Savage, Alan of Assheborn, pp. 13–14. He is identified as the author of the Chronicle at BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 1r. A judgment about what is Alan’s final entry depends on the significance attributed to the change of hand in the midst of the entry for 1332, fo. 67v. 121  The other sections are: (1) Universal annals from Creation to 1292 (fos 1r–24v); (2) a catalogue of popes to 1317 (fos 25r–37v); (4) a vernacular poetical account of the earliest inhabitants of Britain (fos 70r–71v); (5) the succession of archbishops of Canterbury from Augustine to Walter Reynald (fos 72r–74v); (6) ‘The Bishops of the Holy Church of Mercia, now called Lichfield’, down to 1324 (fos 74v–78v). 122  MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fos 38r-69v; MS. Bodley 956, pp. 164–214, which omits item (4). Savage, Alan of Assheborn, p. 19. 123  Great Register of Lichfield, ed. Savage, p. xvi. 124  MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 38r. The prefatory matter suggests that Alan began writing this section in 1323: MS. Bodley 956, p. 164. 125  Gildas, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and William of Malmesbury, all fo. 38r; Bede, fo. 44r. 126  MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 47r; GR II. 174. 127  MS. Cotton Cleopatra  D.  ix, fos 49v–51v; MS. Bodley 956, pp. 182–5; the novel Prologue is printed by B. Thorpe, ed., Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, 2 vols (London 1840), i. p. v n. 1.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  191 from several later chapters in the code,128 before reverting to the second and concluding sentence of the Prologue. To this he appended a further sentence asserting that Ealdred, archbishop of York ‘who crowned King William’, and Hugh, bishop of London had, at the king’s command, written down the sworn testimony of the English.129 In doing so, he was attempting to correct a passage he had found later in the text of the Leges he was using, and which he evidently judged to be factually erroneous. He had realized that Archbishop Thomas of York and Bishop Maurice of London could not in 1070 have performed the role ascribed to them by the London interpolator, and therefore substituted the names of their re­spect­ ive predecessors, Ealdred and Hugh. He had failed to realize that this corrected pairing was also chronologically impossible.130 However, as a writer of narrative he rightly judged that the identification of those who had transcribed the laws made much better sense in the Prologue, rather than buried in the midst of the code. Later in his rearranged version of the code he inserted a fuller account of their role, which corresponded to the new passage he had devised for the Prologue. This he must have composed himself.131 He corrected the text in front of him elsewhere, and with greater historical accuracy: he substituted Zacharias for John as the name of the pope who had authoritatively pronounced in 751 that a king who bore the title without performing the functions should not remain king.132 In this instance he explicitly cited as his authority a source excerpted in the universal annals which constitute the first of the six sections of his Chronicle.133 Alan was, therefore, consciously adapting and correcting not only in the Prologue he fashioned out of a copy of the fourth, London recension of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, but in the unique, rearranged version he then supplied of much of the rest of the code.134 He used it to provide the main substance of his account of the Conqueror’s reign, and Rufus’s too. In this respect his treatment of the Leges was much more sophisticated than Pseudo-Ingulf ’s crude insertion into his Historia of the fullest extant text of the Leis Willelme, one of the documents which Pseudo-Ingulf claimed to have brought back to Crowland from London when, c. 1086, he had secured King William’s confirmation charter in favour of

128  LECf retr. 33, 34–34. 1, 1a-b, 3: Gestetze i. 660, 662, 663–4. Liebermann’s apparatus ignores all but one of the many and substantial variants. 129  MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 50r. 130  Ealdred died in 1069 and Hugh became bishop of London in 1075: Gesetze i. 627 n.*. Alan’s model was the statement inserted by the London interpolator that Archbishop Thomas and Bishop Maurice had transcribed the testimony: LECf 34. 1a; Gesetze i. 662 n. *. 131  MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 51v: ‘Hec itaque leges et quamplures alie, que perlongum foret omnes hic inserere, per predictos pontifices Aldredum Eboracensem et Hugonem Londoniensem in scriptis redacte. A rege Willelmo pro se et suis successoribus communi assensu baronum suorum concesse et in perpetuum confirmate sunt.’ This is inserted after LECf 13. 1 A3: Gesetze i. 640. 132  MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 51r, adapting LECf 17. 1 (=LECf 11. 1 A1). 133  MS. Cotton Cleopatra  D.  ix, fo. 20r; the source is the thirteenth-century universal historian Martinus Polonus. 134 Liebermann, Uber die Leges, pp. 38–9, for some of the details.

192  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 the abbey.135 In Alan of Ashbourn’s case, the (pseudo-)legislative material was integrated into his narrative, indeed he edited it to provide his analysis of the effects of the Conquest. He recast one London interpolation in the Leges Edwardi as the opening of his annal for 1087: ‘For the king ought to do everything rightly in the kingdom’;136 another—the prescription that a new king should take an oath ‘touching the gospels . . . and relics’ as a precondition for coronation—is recast to do service as an account of Rufus’s coronation.137 A large marginal index finger draws the reader’s attention to a statement which might well have seemed particularly pertinent to readers—even readers in Lichfield—who had just lived through the reign of Edward II. In his account of the aftermath of the Conquest, therefore, Alan substitutes expansive material adapted from the Leges Edwardi for his normally sparse, factual narrative, based primarily on William of Malmesbury. There is just one indication that his familiarity with the London Collection extended beyond the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, and it relates to his treatment of the pre-Conquest period: Edward the Confessor, at his accession, is characterized as ‘son of King Æthelred’.138 This phrase had been coined by the compiler of the London Collection when he reconfigured two fragments of the Argumentum to Quadripartitus as a preliminary to his treatment of the Conquest.139 The use of this phrase by Alan of Ashbourn in his account of Edward the Confessor thereby serves to underline that his unusually full treatment of the Conquest is a function of his interest in the Leges. It suggests that a copy of the whole London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, not just of its version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, was available in Lichfield in the early fourteenth century.140 Alan and Pseudo-Ingulf were both interested in the historical context of English law, and had access to apocryphal legislation manufactured in the twelfth century and attributed to the Conqueror. Perhaps it is this shared interest which explains their focus, exceptional in later medieval English historical writing, on the Conquest. Any attempt to set English law in an historical context continued to require reference to the twelfth-century collections of genuine and apocryphal law codes, and specifically to those which dealt with the continuity of English law over the Conquest. Both historians endorsed this conventional doctrine—in Alan’s case contrary to that propounded a century earlier in the Annales de Burton, written in the same diocese, and available to him in a copy prefacing

135 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 93. 136  MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 51r; LECf 11. 1 A6, Gesetze i. 635; see below, Plate 10. 137  MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 51v; LECf 11. 1 A9, Gesetze i. 636. 138  MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 48v. 139  See above, p. 126, below, pp. 265–7; as shown in the latter discussion, it was also echoed in the Proem to the Modus tenendi parliamentum, a work only a few years earlier than the Lichfield Chronicle. 140  This was not the late thirteenth-century Burton legal collection which is now Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS. Peniarth 390, because it does not include the Leges Edwardi; but it is further evidence of provincial legal compilations being made in this period.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  193 Lichfield Chapter Library’s ‘Magnum registrum album’.141 If he had ever read it, he chose to ignore its message. Yet although he endorsed the doctrine of legal continuity over 1066, he nevertheless considered the Conquest a subject of fundamental importance. His account of it is headed by a rubric: ‘Initium regni Normannorum in Anglia’.142 In that respect he was in agreement with Pseudo-Ingulf. What these two highly unusual house historians suggest is that despite a general tendency for the Conquest to atrophy as a subject in house chronicles as in other historiographical genres, it continued to stimulate a few local writers who were interested in law—in these cases so interested that they incorporated substantial excerpts from what purported to be William the Conqueror’s formal endorsement of the laws of King Edward the Confessor. The texts of those legislative endorsements were apocryphal confections of the twelfth century. Even setting aside the extant late sixteenth-century transcript of the Historia Croylandensis, the book appears to have survived in at least five different manuscripts as late as the early seventeenth century. It is unlikely that all of these came from Crowland. This suggests that a later medieval house chronicle which dealt, exceptionally, with the Conquest had been of widespread interest long before its first printing by Savile at the end of the sixteenth century.

Later Medieval Universal History The second genre of late medieval historical writing, and the most influential in the period, is universal history. An attempt at universal coverage did not necessarily involve anything lengthy: the rudimentary pre-1202 section of the Crowland Chronicle might be so categorized, but primarily on account of its dependence on John of Worcester’s Chronicon ex chronicis.143 On a grander scale, this was the format of the Chronica majora, out of which Matthew Paris distilled English material to form his Historia Anglorum. But in the later middle ages it was most influentially exemplified in Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon, which was far and away the most successful English historical work of the period, surviving in over one hundred manuscripts. Copies were not confined to cathedrals and abbeys, but found in parish churches and the private ownership of laymen.144 Its author was a monk of the Benedictine house of St Werburgh, Chester; he wrote during the second quarter of the fourteenth century. His history aspired to be encyclopaedic in geographical and chronological scope. It opens with a survey of the 141  Lichfield Cathedral Library, MS. 28, fos 8r–10v. 142  MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fo. 49v; cf. the list of bishops of Lichfield, fo. 75v: ‘Post adventum Normannorum’. 143  Crowland Chronicle, ed. Ispir, pp. 21–2, 36, 181–8. 144  J. Taylor, ‘Higden, Ranulf ’, ODNB.

194  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 whole known world, and follows this with six further books, purporting to cover the six ages of creation. There is, however, no neat, one-to-one correspondence of book to age. Higden coined his title himself; he defines it as a chronicle which records the events of many periods, or many chronicles;145 it was, he said, ‘plenum historiae’.146 In the traditional Christian providential scheme, each of the six ages corresponded to one of the six days of creation. This meant that Higden devoted much of his attention to events in the very distant past, since the sixth age began with Christ’s incarnation.147 Recent history accordingly received relatively short shrift. England was prominent, indeed architectonic: each book from the fifth on began respectively with successive invasions of Saxons, Danes, and Normans. But English affairs were nevertheless set in the context of the whole of Christendom: Higden was one of those historians who, in the disapproving words of Gervase of Canterbury, ‘made broad their phylacteries, and enlarged their borders’, but in a geographical rather than a stylistic sense.148 Within those all-encompassing borders, it would be more accurate to say that Higden’s focus was British, rather than English, history, because in order to cover insular events from the earliest recorded times, prior to Christ’s incarnation, he could do little other than turn to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae.149 From the chronological point at which other sources became available, his narrative of Anglo-Saxon and post-Conquest England was necessarily cursory, despite its prominence at the beginning of book VII. On the Conquest and its aftermath, for the most part he simply excerpted a few very familiar authorities, most commonly William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon.150 He tends not to quote them verbatim, but paraphrases and simplifies the originals, with increasing confidence as he progressively revised and expanded his text.151 He took William of Malmesbury to task for failing to acknowledge Chester’s splendor—‘he must have been dreaming’—but himself says little in addition about the town’s history.152 He often gives a precise, rubricated citation of his source, as detailed in his initial list of au­ thor­ ities. It was important to him that readers should know whence 145  Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis, together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century, ed. C. Babington and J.R. Lumby, 9 vols, RS (1865–86), i. 26; cf. V.H.  Galbraith, ‘An Autograph MS of Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon’, The Huntington Library Quarterly, xxiii (1959–60), 1–18, at 1 n. 1. 146  Polychronicon i. 30. 147  With which book IV begins: Polychronicon iv. 252. 148  Gervase, ‘Chronica’ i. 87; Galbraith, ‘Autograph’, 18; J. Taylor, The Universal Chronicle of Ranulf Higden (Oxford 1966), p. 102. 149 Taylor, Higden, p. 44. 150  See, for instance, Polychronicon vii. 232–4, citing Henry of Huntingdon HA VI. 27, pp. 384–6, on the reasons for Duke William’s anger towards Harold, and the part played by William FitzOsbern in ducal deliberations; and also citing William of Malmesbury, GR III. 238. 8. Another frequently cited authority for this period is John of Worcester. For Ranulf ’s list of his authorities, see Polychronicon i. 20–6. 151  Galbraith, ‘Autograph’, 4. 152  Polychronicon ii. 78; A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England Vol. II, c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London 1982), pp. 50–2, cf. 104 for a response from Malmesbury.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  195 information was derived. He felt obliged to signal, with a capital ‘R’ or ‘Ranulphus’, when he was instead writing out of his own head. Thus, for instance, although he invoked Gerald of Wales as his authority for King Harold’s having survived the battle of Hastings, he added on his own authority that Harold had ended his days as an anchorite in Chester.153 Ranulf ’s burgeoning pride in his work was eventually expressed, at a late stage in his revisions to his text, in the coy modesty of a clumsy acrostic, which spelled out the letters of his own name.154 But such covert au­thor­ial self-satisfaction did not prompt him to compose afresh anything more substantial than short passages to weave together the authorities he had consulted, paraphrased, and condensed. In his view, this was how history should be written. Other late revisions involved the abbreviation of a detailed account of William the Conqueror’s coronation, and of the claim to be Edward the Confessor’s ­chosen heir which it had consummated.155 That the account of the Conquest remained of sufficient moment in Ranulf ’s mind to continue to mark the opening of the final book of Polychronicon, and merited some redrafting, suggests that it was of considerable importance to him.156 But the three chapters which he devoted to William’s reign take up less space than, for instance, those concerned with Alexander the Great.157 And what there was, was so condensed, hackneyed, and stale that the wide dissemination it enjoyed in the later middle ages—including in John of Trevisa’s English translation—was unlikely to prompt further reflection about, or investigation of, the Conquest. Rather, indeed, the contrary: the Polychronicon, and works based upon it, such as John of Tynemouth’s Historia aurea,158 may have provided some librarians with an excuse to cull ancient manuscripts which Higden was considered to have rendered obsolete.159 Polychronicon provided a pretext for weeding, late-medieval style. It also accelerated the general petrifaction of the Conquest in later medieval English historiography which we have already noticed encroaching on most of the works of Matthew Paris, who was 153  Polychronicon vii. 244. He eventually deleted the claim that the ex-king’s tomb was still visible in St John’s Church, Chester: Galbraith, ‘Autograph’, 17 n. 25. 154  Galbraith, ‘Autograph’, 4–5; Taylor, Universal Chronicle, pp. 92–6. 155  Polychronicon viii. 246–8 n. 8. The account of the coronation appears to be based on William of Malmesbury, GR III. 247. 3. 156  Polychronicon vii. 232 n. 5, 240 n. 5, 246 n. 8, recording the reading in the earliest version, as established by Galbraith, ‘Autograph’, 2–3. In 1355–7 Sir Thomas Gray used it as the basis for the account of the Conquest with which he opened his (French) vernacular Scalacronica. This provides interesting evidence of lay familiarity with Higden, and in Scotland too (where Gray wrote while imprisoned by the Scots): Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, Knight, Scalacronica, ed. J. Stevenson, Maitland Club (Edinburgh 1836), pp. 5–6, 9, cf. vi–viii. I am grateful to Hugh Doherty for drawing my attention to this passage. 157  Polychronicon iii. 392–478. 158  V.H.  Galbraith, ‘The Historia aurea of John, Vicar of Tynemouth, and the Sources of the St Albans Chronicle’, in H.W.C. Davis, ed., Studies Presented to Reginald Lane Poole (Oxford 1927), pp. 379–98; V.H. Galbraith, ‘Extracts from the Historia aurea and a French Brut’, EHR, xliii (1928), 203–17; J. Taylor, English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford 1987) pp. 103–5. 159  V.H. Galbraith, ‘Historical Research in Medieval England’, repr. in his Kings and Chroniclers, ch. XI, p. 31; Taylor, English Historical Literature, p. 101.

196  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Higden’s only competitor in terms of influence during this period. But whereas Matthew had a sufficient range of sources to be able to modulate his interpretation in different works, as evidenced by the Gesta abbatum’s account of Abbot Frederick’s confrontation with William the Conqueror,160 Higden spoke on the subject with an unmodulated, terse, desiccated voice. As the definitive embodiment of high and late medieval universal history, therefore, his book confirmed that in general the genre had at best nothing more than a rudimentary interest in the Conquest.

Later Medieval Histories of the Kingdom of England The third main genre of English historical writing during the later middle ages is in some ways antithetical to that represented by Higden. It does not aspire to chronological comprehensiveness, or to universality. Rather, it focuses on events so recent that there were no available historiographical authorities to be cut and pasted; and those events are largely confined to the kingdom of England. An early example is the book formerly known to modern scholars as the Barnwell Chronicle, now rechristened the Crowland Chronicle, written at Crowland early in the reign of Henry III.161 Quite unlike Pseudo-Ingulf, the brother who probably wrote almost two centuries after him, Roger of Crowland had no interest at all in the history of his own abbey: that is why until very recently it had proved impossible to determine where he wrote.162 We have seen that his account of the final years of John’s reign, and the opening of Henry III’s, is widely acknowledged to be the most acute analysis of the national crisis by a near contemporary. But he did not apply his subtle mind to the compilation of material for the period prior to 1212,163 at which point his annals abruptly become much better informed, more discursive, and more perceptive. Indeed, he took much of his information for annals prior to 1202 from a pre-existing compilation, primarily comprised of material from John of Worcester, but also from Henry of Huntingdon and (when these sources ran out) Roger of Howden.164 In addition, he inserted material from William of Malmesbury, a lost, Latin translation of a version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle close to E,165 and even William of Tyre,166 as well as other sources. He did not, in other words, copy out mindlessly. Yet although he recast, rearranged, and condensed much of his earlier material, overwhelmingly from twelfth-cen­tury historians who had written extensively on the Conquest, his treatment of the subject was cursory. It is not just that he had no new information to give; he was not very interested in it. The vast majority of his rudimentary account is simply distilled from John of Worcester, hence its limp gesture at universal coverage. 160  See above, pp. 163–4. 161  See above, p. 135. 162  See above, p. 135 n. 18. 163  Crowland Chronicle, ed. Ispir, ch. 2, who argues that the monk who compiled that pre-1212 section also wrote the post-1212 section. 164  Crowland Chronicle, ed. Ispir, pp. 188–9. 165  Crowland Chronicle, ed. Ispir, pp. 196–203. 166  Crowland Chronicle, ed. Ispir, pp. 189, 188–9; Kay, ‘Barnwell Chronicle’, 146, 153–4.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  197 Similarly, most of Matthew Paris’s successors at St Albans, such as Thomas Walsingham, precentor and scriptorarius (a term unique to Thomas) of the abbey in the late fourteenth century,167 had no interest in revisiting Matthew’s straightforward recapitulation of the Conquest. They just took up the story where he had left off, in 1259. Indeed, it seems almost certain that Walsingham wrote his account of recent events first, and only later decided to splice it on to an an­onym­ ous St Albans continuation of Matthew Paris’s Chronica majora. It reproduced the efforts of earlier continuators up to 1376, when such authorities seem to have run out, and Thomas began to write in much more detail.168 By contrast with the great historians of the twelfth century, these writers seem to have been overwhelmingly interested in the very recent past, and scarcely at all in anything more distant. Walsingham’s Ypodigma Neustriae, a brief history primarily of England from 911 to 1419, is to some extent an exception.169 As the title and the starting date indicate, the book also attempts coverage of early Normandy, for which Walsingham excerpted William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum before slipping into a disorderly resumé of English history.170 But as his preface states, his initial purpose had been to provide Henry V with background briefing for his current conquest of Normandy.171 In this exceptional case the distant past was seen as peculiarly relevant to current concerns. Historians who had no pre-existing prolegomenon to be continued might dispense with the distant past altogether, and simply write the history of their own time. Henry Knighton, a canon of the abbey of St Mary of the Meadows, Leicester during the last quarter of the fourteenth century, initially conceived his chronicle in this way, opening his account around 1378, and probably starting to write it not long after that date.172 But at some later point he decided that what had begun as an account of Richard II’s reign needed, after all, a long historical introduction,173 much as Thomas Walsingham appears to have composed a link between his history of contemporary events in the late fourteenth century and

167  The St Albans Chronicle. The Chronica maiora of Thomas Walsingham, ed. J. Taylor, W. Childs, and L. Watkiss, 2 vols (Oxford 2003–11), explains the very complicated relationships between the different manuscripts and many imperfect printed editions; cf. J. Taylor, ‘Walsingham, Thomas’, ODNB; J.G.  Clark, A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans. Thomas Walsingham and his Circle c.1350–1440 (Oxford 2004). The new edition includes only the text for the years 1376–1422, so recourse must still be had to the earlier editions. 168  St Albans Chronicle, i. pp. xxxiii–li; V.H. Galbraith, ‘Thomas Walsingham and the St Albans Chronicle’, EHR, xlvii (1932), 19–29; V.H.  Galbraith, The St Albans Chronicle: 1406–1420 (Oxford  1937), pp. ix–x, xxxv–xxxvi, xxxviii, xlvi, li–liii; Taylor, English Historical Literature, pp. 64–7. 169  Thomae Walsingham Ypodigma Neustriae, ed. H.T. Riley, RS (1876). 170 Clark, Monastic Renaissance, pp. 188–9, 266. 171  Ypodigma, p. 3; Clark, Monastic Renaissance, p. 168. 172  Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–1396, ed. G.H. Martin (Oxford 1995), pp. xvi, xxviii. V.H. Galbraith, ‘The Chronicle of Henry Knighton, with a codicological appendix by R.A.B. Mynors’, repr. in his Kings and Chroniclers, ch. XII, pp. 136–48, at 139–41, established the chronology of writing, though his dates have been slightly revised by Martin. 173  Galbraith, ‘Knighton’, p. 142.

198  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Matthew Paris. Knighton therefore prefaced what he had already written with a survey from the ‘conquest of the kingdom of England’ on.174 As he announced, this preliminary survey was simply a conflation of the seventh book of Higden with the Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, written at the very beginning of the fourteenth century.175 Both these sources began with the Conquest; in Walter’s case it was the starting point for his whole history.176 Knighton identifies Higden in his margins as ‘Cistrencis’;177 and Walter, apparently, as ‘Leycestrensis’, perhaps because he was adapting an amplified and extended copy of Walter available to him in his own abbey library.178 Only when the Polychronicon ran out, in 1337, was he at last obliged, as he candidly stated, to ‘go on alone’.179 His account of the Conquest and the subsequent period up to 1337 was, therefore, an afterthought, prompted by an ambition to give the substantial work which he had already written about Richard II’s reign the traditional form of a history of the kingdom. But to his mind that prefatory adjunct required little more than an adaptation of Ranulf Higden’s existing, rudimentary account, citing his sources, just as Higden had previously done. Indeed, Knighton claimed to follow Polychronicon ‘word for word’, though interspersing what he copied with his own observations, and occasionally correcting.180 He even imitated Higden by spelling out his own name in an acrostic in the opening section of his book, an example of his literary virtuosity with which he was so pleased that he could not forbear drawing his readers’ attention to it.181 But he also appears to have departed from both Higden and Walter of Guisborough at the very end of his account of the Conqueror’s reign. There he adopted a novel tactic of a sort I have already noticed in the case of Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis. He inserted a truncated copy of the third version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, the version found only in the twelfthcentury legal compilation known to scholarship as Tripartita.182 So far as we 174  Chronicon Henrici Knighton, vel Cnitthon, monachi Leycestrensis, ed. J.R.  Lumby, 2 vols, RS (1892–5), i. 2–3. He explains that it is also necessary to describe the background to the Conquest, which takes him back to the accession of Edgar: Chronicon, i. 4–5. 175  The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., lxxxix (1957), pp. xxx–xxxi. 176 Perhaps inspired by his most important source, William of Newburgh, of whose Historia Anglorum this is also true: see above, p. 158. 177  Chronicon Henrici Knighton, ed. Lumby, i. 2, is the first reference. 178  Galbraith, ‘Knighton’, p. 144–5 (where Guisborough is referred to as Hemingburgh); Knighton’s Chronicle, ed. Martin, pp. xx, xxiv and n. 35, xxx and n. 54; Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, pp. xvi–xvii, xxxiv. For the first reference, see Chronicon Henrici Knighton, ed. Lumby, i. 58. 179  Knighton’s Chronicle, ed. Martin, p. 2. His statement that ‘Leycestrensis goes on alone’, does not mean that he was now using only the Leicester version of Walter of Guisborough. That had finished in 1326, as he had indicated under that year: Chronicon Henrici Knighton, ed. Lumby, i. 442. Rather, he seems to regard himself as the Leicester continuator of it. 180  Chronicon Henrici Knighton, ed. Lumby, pp. 2, 77. 181  Chronicon Henrici Knighton, ed. Lumby, i. 4; Galbraith, ‘Knighton’, pp. 140; Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. xvii, xxiii. 182  Chronicon Henrici Knighton, ed. Lumby, i. 78–86; Gesetze i. 642; see above, p. 106.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  199 know, this substantial extract was not borrowed either from Higden or Walter of Guisborough. Although Tripartita had been appended to some copies of Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum183 and incorporated (under the year 1180) in Roger of Howden’s Chronica,184 neither historian had inserted any part of Tripartita into his account of the Conqueror’s reign. From whatever source Knighton derived his partial copy of the Leges Edwardi,185 by using it to conclude his narrative of the Conqueror’s reign he was being innovative only in the sense that he was trying to integrate twelfth-century legal and chronicle accounts, much as the author of the Lichfield Chronicle also did earlier in the fourteenth century with edited and rearranged passages from a different recension of the Leges Edwardi,186 and as Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis did with the Leis Willelme, perhaps at roughly the same time as Knighton. But the manner in which Knighton incorporated the Leges was maladroit. Their Prologue states in its opening line that the meeting at which the laws of Edward were formally adopted by William took place in the fourth year of his reign, that is to say in 1070. Yet Knighton inserts the text not at the appropriate point in the narrative, but immediately prior to the king’s death. Centuries later, John Selden would pick out Knighton as in his view an exceptionally—or perhaps more accurately, an uncharacteristically—interesting medieval English historian.187 He, however, was thinking of Knighton’s use of contemporary documentation in his analysis of Richard II’s reign, not of his deployment of what purported to be contemporary documentation in his treatment of the Conquest. For Knighton, as for the two major, recent authorities he spliced together, the Conquest remained an important if distant episode in English history—that was why he followed his historiographical models in eventually beginning his book with it—but there was nothing new to be recorded about it. Indeed, what had previously been written should be précised. It is, nevertheless, noteworthy that the one significant addition he made to those authorities was to juxtapose them with a twelfth-century legal account of the Conqueror endorsing Old English law, preserved in what ­purported to be the codification of that law. For if historical writing about the Conquest had in general become sclerotic by the early fourteenth-century, and 183  It is therefore just possible that Knighton’s amplified, Leicester copy of Walter of Guisborough contained the Leges, because one of Walter’s sources was either Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, or the twelfth-century Historia post Bedam which was heavily based upon it: Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, pp. xxv–xxvi. As we have seen, some copies of version 5, redaction A of the HA append the Tripartita: HA, pp. lxviii, cliv. It is clear that Walter used a copy of version 5. 184  See above, pp. 120–2. 185  It breaks off at the end of LECf 16. 2. 186  London, BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fos 46r-48v, where a marginal finger points to the key passage. It was printed in Ancient Laws and Institutes, ed. Thorpe, i. p. v n. 1. The version of the Leges used in this brief piece differs from that found by Knighton: Gesetze i. 627*; for fuller discussion, see above, pp. 190–1. 187  J. Selden, ‘Prefatory Letter’ to Augustine Vincent, A Discouverie of Errours in the First Edition of the Catalogue of Nobility, Published by Raphe Brooke, York Herald, 1619 . . . [with] A Review of a Later Edition (London 1622).

200  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 seemed to suggest that interest in it, and its very influence, had ebbed away as it receded into the past, it nevertheless remained vital and influential in its legal incarnation. This is exemplified by another striking exception, in this regard comparable with Knighton, and those house histories with a national perspective by Alan of Ashbourn and Pseudo-Ingulf. The contrast presented by these histories throws the general disinterest into sharper relief. As we shall see, this fourth exception also, not coincidentally, draws on one of the twelfth-century compilations of Old English law codes. It is the substantial chronicle traditionally attributed to John Brompton, abbot of the Cistercian house of Jervaulx (1436–c. 1464) in Yorkshire. The attribution depended upon Abbot John’s being named in the sixteenth cen­ tury by John Bale in a note at the top of the opening folio of one of the two extant witnesses, both of which date from the fifteenth century: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 96. However, this inscription is now thought to record nothing more than the abbot’s donation of the book to the library of his house,188 a view which is compatible with Leland’s that the author was unknown.189 An alternative title—The Fitzhugh Chronicle—has been proposed, on the grounds that the appearance of the arms of William, 4th Lord Fitzhugh (1425–52) in the il­lu­min­ ated opening initial190 of this Jervaulx manuscript indicate that he had been its first owner,191 prior to Abbot John. It may be that Lord Fitzhugh had commissioned the manuscript, though that does not mean that he had commissioned the Chronicle it contains. His seat, Ravensworth Castle, was not far from Jervaulx Abbey, with which the only other extant witness has also been associated, if more tentatively. A firmer judgment on this question must await a scholarly edition,192 so for convenience sake I shall continue to use the conventional title John Brompton’s Chronicle. A work which draws on the wealth of source material used in this chronicle could not have been written in a house with the apparently meagre library resources of Jervaulx.193 Precisely when and where it was written, and whence 188  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 96, fo. 1r; the hand is identified by M.R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2 vols (Cambridge 1909–12), i. 183–4. The other complete, much less ornate witness is London, BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius C. xiii, hesitantly ascribed to Jervaulx by Ker, MLGB. 189  Joannis Lelandi antiquarii De rebus Britannicis collectanea, ed. T.  Hearne, 2nd edn, 6 vols (London 1770), iv. 44. 190  Cambridge, CCC, 96, fo. 1r. 191 Parker Library Catalogue: www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/about-corpus/parker-library/collections/ catalogues-manuscripts. 192  It has been printed only once, in R. Twysden, ed., Historia Anglicana scriptores X (London 1652), cols 721–1284. This used both manuscripts, but without recording which reading was preferred at any particular point. 193  R.A.B. Mynors, R.H. and M.A. Rouse, Registrum Anglie de libris doctorum et auctorum veterum, CBMLC, ii (1991), pp. 308–9, reports 56 titles in the library; Ker, MLGB, p. 105, and Supplement, p. 40, trace 11 manuscripts definitely or probably to the house; Leland listed only two—Nennius and a collection of fourteenth-century sermons—but mentioned the Chronicle in his notes: D.N. Bell, ed., The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines, and Premonstratensians, CBMLC, iii (1992), Z10; Leland, Collectanea, iv. 44.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  201 Abbot John Brompton procured his copy, cannot be determined.194 If the manuscript which he donated was commissioned by Lord Fitzhugh, it might con­ceiv­ ably have been written in Yorkshire, but it is impossible to adduce any textual evidence in support of this possibility. Although the other extant witness has also been associated with Jervaulx, if with less certainty, the Chronicle is not a house chronicle. In that sense it might be compared with the Crowland Chronicle of the early thirteenth century, in that it betrays no interest in the fortunes of any particular house; indeed, again like the Crowland Chronicle, it is not primarily concerned with ecclesiastical matters. Rather, it is a very substantial history of the English kingdom which begins with St Augustine’s arrival in Britain in 588 and ends with the death of King Richard I in 1199 (though the original plan, set out at the very beginning, was to go up to the end of Edward I’s reign). In terms of chronological coverage, it is therefore very different from the Crowland Chronicle. The halfway mark in terms of content is reached in about 1135. This means that the book says a great deal about pre-Conquest England and the aftermath of the Conquest, and nothing at all about the recent past. When it was written is unclear. The latest events referred to, and those in passing, occurred in the early fourteenth century.195 The interest in early and disinterest in recent history are both highly unusual characteristics in a later medieval English historical work concerned primarily with political events on what it presents as a national scale. The coverage of a much earlier period was not an afterthought executed in rudimentary fashion, as it had been for Roger of Crowland in the early thirteenth century or Henry Knighton in the late fourteenth, but was evidently the book’s point from its inception. In that regard it has more in common with English histories written in the twelfth than in the fifteenth century. Another exceptional characteristic is that although in terms of its scale and occasionally its content it owes something to Ranulf Higden—as the first recorded post-Dissolution owner of Abbot John’s manuscript, Peter Osborne, is said to have thought196—its focus is almost exclusively on English history. Another exceptional quality which not only reflects but may also help to set the others in context is the use the anonymous author197 makes of Quadripartitus. This feature has received very little scholarly attention, because the text of 194 Liebermann, Gesetze i. xix, suggested ‘from the second half of the fourteenth century’ as the date of composition, and ‘around 1425’ for the writing of Cambridge, CCC, MS. 96. The first date is presumably an inference from the author’s use of Ranulf Higden, the latter is presumably proposed on palaeographical grounds. 195  In 1312 and 1328: Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 1008, 967. 196 Gransden, Historical Writing in England, ii. 56–7. Higden is cited at Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, col. 1145; Richard Sharpe points out to me that the account, col. 961, of Harold’s posthumous life in Chester must have been derived from Higden; cf. above, p. 195. For Osborne’s view, see the flyleaf. 197  I shall refer to a putative single author throughout the discussion, but in the absence of a scholarly edition there is no basis for determining whether the book is the work of one or several hands. The shift in apparent character after 1135 may be evidence of no more than the petering out of Quadripartitus as a major source.

202  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Quadripartitus on which the author of the chronicle drew is close to the most developed version common to the witnesses in Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420 and London, BL, MS. Add. 49366, the Holkham book (though Liebermann showed that the author borrowed directly from neither of these).198 However, that the chronicle’s excerpts from Quadripartitus display no significant textual variants from this particular version does not mean that the Chronicle’s use of them is devoid of interest for our purposes. It is quite remarkable that perhaps as late as the first half of the fifteenth cen­ tury a chronicler should have illustrated much of a history of England, from the conversion down to the twelfth century, by cutting and pasting legislative texts from Quadripartitus.199 In narrative terms the last such excerpt is Henry I’s Coronation Charter.200 Thereafter, in the second half of his book, which covered a mere 64 (as distinct from the first half ’s 547) years, the chronicler excerpted many documents, but none of them could be described as a piece of legislation. His interest in legislative material seemed to expire with the chronologically latest piece in the copy of Quadripartitus on which he drew. His use of the items from the collection which he chose to splice into his narrative required him to re­arrange into chronological order those associated with named kings;201 the rest he left mostly in the order in which he found them in the book from which he was copying, though for reasons which are unclear he inserted them all together in the midst of Æthelstan’s codes.202 He was not following the London Collection, the compiler of which had, as we have seen, long before rearranged the royal law codes in Quadripartitus in chronological order.203 The chronicler did not know of the London Collection. He re-ordered the material he selected from Quadripartitus on his own initiative; several of the texts, most but not all of which were not specifically associated with named kings, he decided to omit.204 Given that a few do include the names of kings, the principle of selection is not entirely clear.

198 F. Liebermann, Quadripartitus. Ein englisches Rechtsbuch von 1114 (Halle 1892), p. 70; Gesetze i. xix–xx; P. Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, repr. in his Legal Culture, pp. 81–114, at pp. 82 n. 4, 84 n. 11; Wormald, Making, p. 243 and n. 322. 199  Liebermann argues, Gesetze i. p. xx, that a fragment of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris—LECf 35.1 a-b, 2—was also used, but as I shall argue, this is not demonstrable. There is no evidence that the chronicler had access to any other compilation of early English law codes. 200  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, col. 1021. 201  The details are set out in Liebermann, Quadripartitus, pp. 65–6; Gesetze i. p. xx. 202  Gesetze i. p. xx: Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, Table 4A, pp. 92–3, gives the ordering in John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420 and BL, MS. Add. 49366. Episcopus, Norðleoda laga, Mircna laga, Að, Hadbot, Blaseras, Forfang, and Hundredgemot, are all inserted into the chronicle in a bloc, between II and IV Æthelstan: Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 845–8. 203  See above, p. 125. 204  The preliminary 49 chapters of Alfred’s code, which precede the code itself; Dunsaete; Alfred & Guthrum (but the so-called appendix, composed of excerpts from various royal codes, and surviving only in Quadripartitus, is included: Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, col. 828); Swerian; Geþyncðo; Rectitudines singularum personarum; Henry I’s Ordinance on shire and hundred courts.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  203 It has been suggested that his account of Edward the Confessor’s recall of the aethelings from Hungary in 1057 adapted the brief treatment of the episode in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris,205 a code not included in Quadripartitus. But the similarities are so vague and general that the attribution is inconclusive, and seems improbable. This is the only putative borrowing from that code which has been identified in the chronicle. Had the chronicler been able to consult a copy, it could have provided him with much material germane to his purpose—indeed, as we shall see, a code of laws which could conveniently be attributed either to Edward the Confessor or William I. It would seem, therefore, that the chronicler drew on Quadripartitus alone for the legislative texts which he made so central to his narrative. Unlike his presumed near contemporary Henry Knighton he did not have a version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris to hand. The version of Quadripartitus on which he drew was one which lacked the compilation’s Argumentum: he therefore could not lift historical material from the Argumentum—for instance, its treatment of Edward’s pre-accession meeting with the English nobles at Hursteshevet, of which the compiler of the London Collection made so much.206 There is not the slightest echo of this episode in the chronicler’s account of Edward’s accession as king.207 At the very end of his narrative of the Conqueror’s reign, he inserted from his version of Quadripartitus a Latin translation of the Conqueror’s legislative writ on exculpation in cases involving Englishmen and Frenchmen.208 It was the only piece of the Conqueror’s legislation included in Quadripartitus, so the chronicler had little choice but to incorporate it, if Quadripartitus was his sole source of legislative texts. As with Knighton’s insertion of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, or Pseudo-Ingulf ’s of the Leis Willelme, it was made to function as an epilogue to William’s reign. Unlike Knighton or Pseudo-Ingulf, neither of whom seems to have had access to Quadripartitus (or indeed to any other compilation of pre-Conquest legislation), the chronicler had done the same in the case of every English king to whom a law code (or codes) was attributed in the collection.209 Even Henry I’s Coronation Charter—entitled ‘Institutiones sive leges’, as if it were a code—is inserted immediately after the account of the king’s death.210 But that each was appended to the 205  Gesetze i. p. xx, contends that LECf 35. 1 a-b, and 2 are used in Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, col. 945. Liebermann identifies no other supposed usage of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. 206 The Argumentum is not in John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420; it is added to BL, MS. Add. 49366 by a sixteenth-century scribe who, according to Matthew Parker, copied ‘e libro veteri ecclesiae Wigorniensis’, Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 84 n. 10, 87–8; Liebermann, Quadripartitus, pp. 68–70. On the London collector’s use of this passage, see above, pp. 126, 134. 207  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, col. 937. 208  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 982–3; Gesetze i. 483–4. 209  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 759–68 (Ine), 819–31 (Alfred, following Quadripartitus in the attribution of both the so-called appendix to Alfred & Guthrum and Edward & Guthrum to Alfred), 835–7 (Edward the Elder), 839–51 (Æthelstan), 858–62 (Edmund), 870–2 (Edgar), 893–9 (Æthelred), 914–32 (Cnut). 210  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 1021–2.

204  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 narrative of the relevant king’s reign does not mean that it was an afterthought. On the contrary, it was a summation. A reader of Abbot John’s manuscript might justifiably infer that the scribe was much more interested in the law codes than the rest of the chronicle, or at least that he anticipated that users of the manuscript would be. Unlike most of the narrative, they are always elaborately rubricated to attract the reader’s attention, and facilitate the identification of particular sections of each text. This is the case, for instance, with Henry I’s Coronation Charter.211 Most (though not Henry I’s Charter) are preceded by a list of chapter headings for ease of reference. In this sense John Brompton’s Chronicle from 588 to the death of Henry I—roughly half of the book’s content—might be seen as a historical re-edition of Quadripartitus; each named royal law code from the collection is set in the context of the king’s reign. Quite independently, the chronicler had hit upon the approach devised by the compiler of the London Collection at the beginning of the thirteenth century. But the chronicler had taken it much further. He had not written a few connecting historical passages between legal texts, but had inserted the texts into a very substantial historical narrative. The difference between treating the Conqueror’s writ as an epitome of his lawmaking, as distinct from Knighton’s use of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris or Pseudo-Ingulf ’s of the Leis Willelme to similar effect, was that unlike those apocryphal codes the genuine writ did not seek to demonstrate William’s endorsement of King Edward’s law. Indeed, it acknowledged that Frenchmen in England under the Conqueror were not under the same law as Englishmen. The chronicler’s use of this item of the Conqueror’s legislation renders John Brompton’s Chronicle exceptional even amongst that very select band of later medieval histories which dealt with the Conquest in any detail. ‘Willelmus Bastard conquestor tocius Anglie’ had been highlighted in the chronicle’s prologue;212 he and the duchy of Normandy were mentioned from time to time long prior to the substantial account of the Conquest.213 The Conquest was, in other words, flagged up from the book’s very start. The eventual account of it is testimony to a long and careful investigation of what appears to have been a wide variety of narrative sources on the subject. But for the legal texts to which the chronicle accorded such import, the chronicler had, as we have seen, no choice but to insert this writ, the only piece of legislation attributed to the Conqueror in Quadripartitus. Unlike the Leges Edwardi Confessoris or the Leis, the writ on exculpation did not require or prompt any consideration of continuity over the Conquest. And as already observed, Quadripartitus also failed to include any code attributed to Edward the Confessor which could be cut and pasted into the chronicle at 211  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 96, fo. 123v. 212  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, col. 725. 213  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 758, 912, 935.

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  205 the end of its narrative of the reign. Unlike in the case of the Conqueror, it also failed to include any other sort of legislative document in the Confessor’s name. Had the chronicler had access to a compilation which included either the Leges Edwardi Confessoris or the Leis Willelme it seems highly likely that he would have used one or the other to supply the deficiency. But he did not. Had his manuscript of Quadripartitus included the work’s Argumentum, he might well have been prompted by its opening statement that the ‘laws that go by King Edward’s name [were] derived from the institutes of Cnut in the first place’ to adapt Cnut’s laws in some way.214 But it seems clear that it did not. In the absence of such cues, the chronicler appears to have felt obliged to confect a substitute for the document which Quadripartitus lacked: a law code to attribute to King Edward. In doing so he acknowledged the unique importance conventionally accorded after the Conquest to the Confessor in the history of English law, for no other king lacking a named code or other legislative document in Quadripartitus is supplied in John Brompton’s Chronicle with something designed to pass for one. The new confection was inserted at the chronicle’s conventional point, immediately after the account of the king’s death.215 It recounts Edward’s fashioning of ‘one common law, which down to the present day is called the Leges Edwardi’. It starts by explaining in supposed chronological order of formation the origins of the various constituent elements of that law; in other words, it takes an historical form. The first known laws in Britain had been those of Dunvallo Molmutius, recorded, the chronicler claimed, in the Brut (and therefore ultimately derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth). Later Marcia, ‘queen of the Britons’ and wife of King Gwithelinus, established a law known as ‘lex Mercia’. Gildas had translated both these laws into Latin; together they constituted what ‘vulgarly’ was known as the Merchenelaga, a term which the chronicler glosses in Latin. This had been in force over eight shires, which are listed. Curiously, he did not draw on the Mircna laga, even though this was one of the unattributed pieces of legislation which he had chosen to preserve from Quadripartitus.216 He stuck to the Brut and Gildas. A second system of law, written ‘in Saxon or English’ and termed Westsaxenelaga (a name also glossed in Latin) had followed, which had first been ‘supplemented’ by King Ine. The chronicler does not say so explicitly, but the subsequent development of this law had been charted in the codes comprised by Quadripartitus and therefore inserted in his chronicle, to some of which he refers again by name here. It had been in force over nine southern shires, which are also listed. 214  Gesetze i. 532; R. Sharpe, ‘The Prefaces of “Quadripartitus” ’, in G. Garnett and J.G.H. Hudson, eds, Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy. Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge 1994), pp. 148–72, at 162. 215  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 956–7. 216  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 845–7. In Cambridge, CCC, MS. 96, fo. 49v, not only is it rubricated, but a marginal title draws attention to it.

206  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Later still, a third system of law had been introduced by the Danes, termed the Denelaga (again glossed in Latin). This had initially been imposed over 15 named eastern and northern shires. The grand total of shires for the kingdom as a whole was therefore 32. These three legal systems, defined interchangeably in terms both of territories and the peoples who inhabited them, had been unified into a single ‘common law’ by Edward the Confessor, alternatively characterized as ‘Edwardus tertius’. This ‘common law’ had subsequently come to be identified with his name. The chron­ ic­ler did not attempt to explain how and why it was Edward who had merged the three existing English legal systems, nor did he summarize the content of the new law. Instead he provided an extensive glossary of Old English legal terminology, some of the terms being defined in both Latin and French, most just in Latin.217 Many of these definitions could have been inferred from the Latin translations of which Quadripartitus consists,218 but not the intermittent French equivalents. By contrast with the codes incorporated in the Chronicle from Quadripartitus, there could be no chapter headings for this summary of the leges Edwardi, because there were no chapters. The absence of any detailed legal provisions means that the scope for rubrication of this passage in Abbot John’s manuscript is limited. The exception is the supplementary glossary, in which each defined term is highlighted.219 On what did the chronicler base this genealogical account of the laws which in his view went by Edward the Confessor’s name? The Leges Henrici twice refers to the threefold nature of English law, using English vernacular terms to characterize them,220 but fails to flesh out these bald statements with any detail as to the respective contents of the three regional legal systems. The Leis Willelme repeatedly elaborates on the detail, and compares the provisions of the three sets of laws.221 What the author of John Brompton’s Chronicle devised is therefore compatible with two twelfth-century codes not included in Quadripartitus, and apparently unavailable to him. It is also com­pat­ible with what appears, to judge from the names, to be a list of shires and brief geographical description of England used in the late twelfth century to conclude the prefatory material to a Durham witness of Symeon’s Libellus.222 This last also separates the 217 Twysden, Scriptores X, col. 957. 218  On this question, see B.R. O’Brien, ‘Translating Technical Terms in Law-Codes from Alfred to the Angevins’, in E.M. Tyler, ed., Conceptualising Multilingualism in England, c. 800–c. 1250 (Turnhout 2011), pp. 57–76. 219  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 96, fo. 95r–v. London, BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius C. xiii, fos 88v–89r, lacks any decoration here as elsewhere. The only illumination is the opening initial, fo. 3r. 220  LHP 6.2, 9.10a. 221  Leis Willelme 2–2.4, 3–3.4, 8, 17.1, 21.2–4. 222 Symeon, Opera ii. 393, cited by Liebermann, Gesetze i. 552 n. f, and first printed by Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, p. [lviii], as part of the prefatory matter to his edition of Symeon’s works. It is found only in Cambridge, UL, MS. Ff. 1. 27, p. 130. This list follows a list of English sees, which in turn follows a brief account of kings of the Northumbrians and the English from Ida to Henry I. These lists have been judged to be in the same hand as the preceding chapter headings, which are also unique to this manuscript: Libellus, p. xxv, cf. xxvi–xxvii. Together they set the history of the church of Durham

Late 13th-c. Conquest in Historical Writing  207 shires of England into three territorial blocs, and, like the Leges Henrici, states that there were 32 in total (though it explicitly excepts Cumberland and Cornwall). But the details of the chronicler’s account differ from all of these sources, and cannot have been derived from any of them. It would seem, therefore, that he was drawing on other ancient materials, now lost, in order to fashion what could serve as the statement of King Edward’s laws inconveniently absent from Quadripartitus. Although he reports the Conqueror swearing at his coronation to ‘protect and preserve the iura of the English Church’ and to ‘establish right laws’,223 he does not characterize the laws of the Conqueror as an endorsement of Edward’s. The Chronicle’s first and indeed only statements to that effect occur in Henry I’s Coronation Charter,224 which, as we have seen, was inserted at the chronicler’s standard point for a king’s legislation, the end of the reign. His conventional recognition of Edward the Confessor’s importance in the history of English law led him with great ingenuity to devise the statement of Edward’s laws which was lacking in his only source of legislative material, Quadripartitus. But he failed to devote any thought to the fundamental tenet of legal doctrine of continuity over the Conquest. In that respect he differed from the other exceptional late medieval historians, at Crowland, Lichfield, and Leicester, who also inserted ancient law codes into their texts. His most substantial adaptation from post-Conquest material in Quadripartitus is not from any royal legislation, but from close to the start of what Liebermann termed the second book, just after Henry I’s Coronation Charter. This little read section of Quadripartitus225 is concerned primarily with attempts during the first decade of the twelfth century to resolve the problem of lay investiture. It is generally ignored not only because its content is so different from the rest of the com­ pil­ation—though this did not discourage the chronicler—but also because the compiler broke off at a very early stage. The chronicler drastically abbreviates his source, so that in his précis all that is preserved are two letters of Henry I written in 1101 to Pope Paschal,226 the proceedings of the council over which Anselm

in a national context, at the start of the section of this Durham historical compilation which has been characterized as its ‘culmination’: C.  Norton, ‘History, Wisdom and Illumination’, in Rollason, ed., Symeon of Durham, pp. 61–105, at 97. LHP 6.1a shares the total, but the Durham list gives their names and a hidage total for Wessex alone. The earliest versions of Henry of Huntingdon give a total of 33 (because Cornwall was in his list from the start): HA I.  5: R.  Sharpe, Norman Rule in Cumbria 1092–1136, Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archaeological Soc., Tract Ser., xxi (2006), pp. 62–3. I should like to thank Richard Sharpe for advising me on this matter. 223  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, col. 962. 224  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, col. 1022. 225 In Gesetze i. 542–6, Liebermann fails to print much of it, simply cross-referring to the (comparatively inaccessible) edition in his Quadripartitus, pp. 146–66. On it, see Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 107–9; R. Sharpe, ‘The Dating of Quadripartitus Again’, in S. Jurasinski, L. Oliver, and A. Rabin, eds, English Law before Magna Carta. Felix Liebermann and Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Leiden and Boston, MA 2010), pp. 81–93, at 86–8. 226  S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Opera omnia, ed. F.S. Schmitt, 6 vols (Rome-Edinburgh 1938–61), iv. 114 (ep. 215), 123 (ep. 221).

208  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 presided at Westminster in September 1102,227 and those of the council held in London at Whitsun 1108.228 The author here simply cut, pasted and condensed from Quadripartitus in order to provide most of the substance of his treatment of the topic. This material extracted from the inception of the inchoate second book of Quadripartitus was evidently of more interest to him than the unattributed items of pre-Conquest legislation which he had decided to omit.229 The scribe of Abbot John’s manuscript, in accordance with his normal practice, rubricated these excerpts too.230 John Brompton’s Chronicle is therefore exceptional even amongst those exceptional examples of later medieval historical writing which consider the Conquest in any depth. Pseudo-Ingulf, Alan of Ashbourn, and Henry Knighton were, arguably, all drawn into doing so by their knowledge of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris or the Leis Willelme, and perhaps also by their more general familiarity with English law. The author of John Brompton’s Chronicle made more extensive use of a twelfth-century compilation of Old English law than any of them, though in his case one dating from very early in that century. But because he was confined to Quadripartitus, and more particularly to a manuscript of Quadripartitus which lacked its Argumentum, and because he showed very little awareness of law more generally, he did not explore the theme of which the compiler of the London Collection had made so much. What is nevertheless remarkable about John Brompton’s Chronicle is that someone in the early fifteenth century who conceived an ambition to write a substantial history of the English kingdom, probably in Yorkshire, should not only have known about Quadripartitus, but had secured access to a convenient manuscript. Exceptional though the chronicle may be in terms of later medieval English historiography, this suggests that over three ­centuries after Quadripartitus had been put together, and many more after the drafting of most of its contents in the original vernacular, someone had not only identified it, but decided to use it as a source of legal evidence for pre- and immediately post-Conquest England. Alan of Ashbourn, Henry Knighton, and PseudoIngulf indicate that other exceptional historians in this period were capable of doing likewise with some of the other compilations of ancient law assembled in the first half of the twelfth century. Few later medieval historians showed much interest in the great history books of the twelfth century; in so far as they attempted to do anything with them at all, it was largely to condense them. By contrast, a great deal of attention continued—or perhaps more accurately came—to be paid to the twelfth-century legal compilations which had been made in parallel with those history books. It is to this subject that I shall turn in the following chapter. 227  C&S I, pt. ii, no. 113, Version V. 228 Liebermann, Quadripartitus 4–8, 18 (pp. 151–5, 163–5); Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, cols 999– 1001. For reasons which it is difficult to explain, Quadripartitus and therefore the chronicle relocate it to Winchester: C&S I, pt. ii, no. 116, Family b, pp. 697–8. 229  Listed above, n. 202. 230  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 96, fo. 114v.

6

The Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I Jurisprudence and Forensic Practice in the Thirteenth Century

During the twelfth century historiographical and legal treatments of the Conquest proceeded in parallel, often literally so, juxtaposed in the same manuscripts. From the early thirteenth century the historiography of the Conquest rapidly atrophies, as it becomes for the most part dull, repetitive, and rudimentary. But this was not true of law in that century and subsequently. In court proceedings, and sym­bi­ot­ic­al­ly in legal literature too, the Conquest remained a point of reference. As a topic for forensic argument, it was not simply invoked from time to time, but probed and discussed. For the most part, as we shall see, the Conquest was considered to have changed little in the course of English law’s almost seamless development. In that sense the message of the great legal collections of the early twelfth century, itself expressing in legal guise the founding premise of the post-Conquest regime, set the main agenda for centuries. The late consummation of those twelfth-century collections, the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum compiled very early in John’s reign, keeps re­appear­ing throughout this period. In this chapter we shall see it occasionally surfacing in Bracton; in the following chapter it will be shown to have played a very important part in the conflicts of Edward II’s reign, in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century jurisprudence, and in a striking curtain call, in the drafting of the preamble to the Statute in Restraint of Appeals of 1533. As I tried to show in Chapter 3,1 and elaborate in this chapter and the next, the fulcrum of the London Collection was a carefully devised, re-enforced demonstration of the familiar doctrine that the Conqueror had formally endorsed pre-Conquest law. The longevity and adaptability of the Collection is the most striking example of the principal contention of these chapters: that throughout the later middle ages, law rather than historical writing provided the main conduit through which the Conquest flowed. In this fashion it was channeled and preserved to irrigate English law, historical writing, and political argument in later centuries. The great 1  See above, pp. 124–6. The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

210  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 historians of the early twelfth century had taken the lead in mending the broken chain of English history, thereby establishing continuity. But it was the work of their less celebrated contemporaries, the compilers, translators, and fabricators of English law codes who forged the links which preserved that continuity through the later middle ages. In this chapter I shall consider law books first, and use them to approach the records of forensic practice on which many of them drew. I shall do so partly because the law books of the period grew out of those of the twelfth century, which, in the absence of much other surviving evidence until close to that century’s end, have been my primary focus hitherto in discussing law; and partly because such jurisprudential works by their very nature can on occasion be revealingly discursive. I shall show that certain aspects of forensic procedure brought the Conquest into quite frequent focus. In the following chapter I shall turn again to the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum with which Chapter 3 ended and Chapter 4 began—but this time to its resurrection, still in London, during Edward II’s reign. In conclusion, I shall pursue the Conquest and its allegedly negligible effect on pre-Conquest law as a theme through the jurisprudence of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries. I shall end by delving into the use made of the London Collection in the early 1530s, as government propagandists scrabbled around for historical precedents, with Henry VIII breathing down their necks.

Jurisprudence in the Thirteenth Century In John’s reign, the London Collection had not been by any means the last hurrah of a moribund tradition of antiquarian legal compilation, irrelevant to current concerns. That much is clear from its pertinence to the affairs of the city at that time, and, more broadly, to the swift and precocious development of a principled opposition to King John. As we shall see, it is affirmed by the redoubled interest shown in the Collection in London in the early fourteenth century. Legal antiquarianism was not a primitive and passing phase of post-Conquest jurisprudence, the obsolescence of which was foreshadowed in the first glimmerings of systematization in the Leges Henrici, and supplanted by the first appearance of Glanvill.2 The Leges Edwardi Confessoris are found in no fewer than fifteen manuscripts which also include Glanvill, in both its earlier (‘alpha’) and later (‘beta’) versions, and which range in date from the end of the twelfth century to the early fourteenth century. Most commonly the Leges Edwardi follow on directly from it, as if they were thought to belong together. The other compilations of antique laws

2  Cf. above, p. 121.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  211 are also frequently found in the same volumes.3 Most of these manuscript collections were not large, elaborate presentation copies, but small, often battered books, designed for use, not for ornamentation.4 Those for whom they were made would have been unlikely to sanction the consumption of valuable parchment for the reproduction of materials of solely recherché, academic interest. Moreover, antiquarian compilation was clearly not obsolete when the new analytic genre was approaching maturity in the massive treatise known as Bracton, at least parts of which had been written by the early 1230s.5 Indeed, antique English material more obviously underpinned, or at least elaborated, parts of Bracton than it did Glanvill. It is true that Romanesque influence was so great in Bracton that it used Roman legal categories to essay a statement of substantive English law with regard to things.6 But although recent civilian jurisprudence might have provided most of the conceptual tools of jurisprudential analysis, it could not supply the content to which those tools were applied. That content could only be derived from English legal procedure, which meant from English legal materials. And intrinsic to the materials on which it was based, embodied first and foremost in Glanvill7 and probably (though this is now disputed) Bracton’s Note Book,8 was that historical dimension. It might be objected that this assertion is simply incorrect in the case of Glanvill, because Glanvill contains no detectable allusions at all to the Conquest or to pre-Conquest kings and laws.9 However, the differing periods of limitation embodied in several excerpted writs preserve vestiges of the template originally established by post-Conquest formulaic reference to the status quo tempore regis Edwardi.10 They are (very) indirect, intrinsic traces of that historical 3  S. Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, University of Oxford D.Phil. Thesis 2007, pp. 55–6; Appendices 3 and 4, pp. 227–30. 4  Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, pp. 22–4, 60–2, 64–6. 5  P.A. Brand, ‘The Age of Bracton’, in J.G.H. Hudson, ed., The History of English Law. Centenary Essays on ‘Pollock and Maitland’ (Oxford 1996), pp. 65–89, at 66–73; P.A.  Brand, ‘The Date and Authorship of Bracton: A Response’, Journal of Legal History, xxxi (2010), 217–44. 6 T.F.T. Plucknett, Early English Legal Literature (Cambridge 1958), p. 80; for some of the Roman (and canon) law influences, see Thorne, ‘Translator’s Introduction’, Bracton i. p. xxxiii; iii. pp. xxxiv– xxxvi; J.H. Baker, ‘Three Languages of the Common Law’, repr. in his Collected Papers on English Legal History, 3 vols (Cambridge 2013), ii. 515–36, at 520–2; S.F.C. Milsom, ‘Law and Fact in Legal Development’, repr. in his Studies in the History of the Common Law (London 1985), pp. 171–89, at 177; S.F.C. Milsom, A Natural History of the Common Law (New York, NY 2003), pp. 2–3. The author’s expertise as a civilian is the main point of H.  Kantorowicz, Bractonian Problems, ed. D.M.  Stenton (Glasgow 1941). 7  Glanvill, pp. lix, lxi; H.G. Richardson, Bracton: The Problem of his Text, Selden Soc., supp. ser. ii (1965), pp. 58, 124–7; Select Passages from Bracton and Azo, ed. F.W. Maitland, Selden Soc., viii (1894), esp. pp. ix–x, xiv–xxiv. 8  S.E. Thorne is the sceptic: Bracton iii. pp. xxxiv–xxxix; Brand, ‘Age of Bracton’, pp. 79–83, summarizes the controversy. Brand suggests, p. 83, that the Note Book may have been put together with a view to the revision of the first version of Bracton. 9  Glanvill, p. xxxiv. 10  Glanvill, pp. 23 n. 1, 180; G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure 1066–1166 (Oxford 2007), pp. 347–8, 350, 352.

212  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 underpinning of post-Conquest law which prompted and shaped all subsequent attempts to demonstrate legal continuity with the pre-Conquest past. The underpinning had been substantiated in the twelfth-century collections which translated pre-Conquest codes and appended to them post-Conquest equivalents, often heavily based upon them. Because Bracton’s Note Book consists of some two thousand transcribed entries from the early thirteenth-century plea rolls of the Common Bench, King’s Bench, and various Eyres—or more accurately, transcripts of earlier transcripts, now lost11—historical traces are more overt in it than in Glanvill. Thus in the course of proceedings alluded to in the Note Book, old charters were adduced which recorded grants by William the Conqueror,12 Edward the Confessor,13 and even King Edgar.14 Title was sometimes pleaded from the Conquest,15 and even from as long as two centuries before it.16 But for many purposes in royal courts, by the thirteenth century the Conquest appears to have come to mark the beginning of a period of prescription.17 Whatever part the Note Book is deemed to have played in the composition of Bracton—some 150 Note Book cases are referred to18—much of Bracton was demonstrably based on plea rolls in one guise or another,19 as well as on writs. It is therefore no surprise that Bracton shares with the Note Book occasional explicit acknowledgements of the historical framework which underpinned the law. In this explicitness Bracton differs from Glanvill. It also, however, differs from the Note Book as well as from Glanvill in citing and paraphrasing some of the leges. Whoever compiled Bracton—probably Martin of Pattishall’s clerk William Raleigh, as well as Raleigh’s clerk Henry de Bracton or Bratton20—they used, in  addition to Glanvill and transcripts of entries from plea rolls, a collection (or more likely several collections) of apocryphal English leges. Traces of historical material remain very apparent in it. The treatise even offers a quite elaborate his­ tor­ic­al explanation of ‘ancient demesne’ tenure, which is grounded in the alleged circumstances of the Conquest and its aftermath. To this I shall return.21 11 Richardson, Problem, pp. 73–4; Thorne, Bracton, iii. pp. xxxvi–xxxviii. 12  Bracton’s Note Book, ed. F.W.  Maitland, 3 vols (Cambridge 1887), 102, ii. 90: the abbot of St Albans held some disputed land ‘of the gift of King William, who came to conquer, by his charter, and by the charters of all kings from king to king.’; 145, ii. 121, which also invokes charters of Edward the Confessor and Henry I. 13  BNB 1716, iii. 555. 14  BNB 1628, iii. 492. For the attractions of a charter of Edgar, see G. Garnett, ‘Dunstan, Edgar, and the History of Not-So-Recent-Events’, in J. Barrau and D. Bates, eds, Lives, Identities, and Histories in the Central Middle Ages. Essays Presented to Elisabeth van Houts (Cambridge 2021), pp. 000–00, at 000. 15  BNB 906, ii. 696. 16  BNB 1237, iii. 251. 17  BNB, 34, ii. 29; 223, ii. 179; 274, ii. 227; 392, ii. 321; 422, ii. 342; 582, ii. 450; 628, ii. 478; 818, ii. 626; 835, ii. 643; 843, ii. 651; 909, ii. 698; 971, iii. 23; 1271, iii. 279; 1272, iii. 280; 1624, iii. 490. P.A. Brand, ‘“Time Out of Mind”: The Knowledge and Use of the Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Past in Thirteenth-Century Litigation’, ANS, xvi (1993), 37–54, at 37–9 and 47. 18  Bracton iii. p. xxxiv. 19  Bracton iii. pp. xxxiv–xxxv. 20 Thorne, Bracton iii. pp. xxxvi; Brand, ‘Age of Bracton’, pp. 73–4. 21  Bracton fos 7–7b (ii. 37–8). There are some similarities with the passage in Dialogus I.  x, pp. 80–2, but Bracton’s account is evidently not derived from it: P.  Vinogradoff, Villainage in England (Oxford 1892), pp. 121–2.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  213 There are, however, few other explicit allusions to the Conquest,22 and fewer still to Edward the Confessor and his laws.23 There is only one to the laws of any other specified pre-Conquest king.24 Yet apocryphal laws attributed to Cnut, Edward the Confessor, and the Conqueror are nevertheless quoted, without acknowledgement, on numerous occasions, albeit almost all of them are concentrated in the section of the treatise concerned with ‘placita coronae’.25 Sometimes this was to establish what the law had been ‘in ancient times’,26 but more often it simply affirmed what the law still was. The intermittent effluxion of time was considered only with a crude parroting of loci classici in the Corpus iuris civilis with respect to custom (consuetudo): it secured ‘the force of law’ by sustained approval,27 it was ‘of no mean authority’.28 Custom could not exist except by continuance. Continuity was, of course, the premise on which the two apocryphal codes used most frequently in Bracton, the early twelfth-century Instituta Cnuti and the very early thirteenth-century London (or fourth) recension of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, had first been conceived. So Bracton was interpreting them in the way that their compilers had always intended. Bracton asserted that the current king could not be obliged to warrant grants made by pre-Conquest kings, because he was not heir to them—itself arresting testimony of the extent to which English law had in truth altered behind the façade of continuity with Old England.29 The ‘man behind the [Domesday] Survey’30 would have been dumbfounded by this authoritative opinion. While it might be the case that the

22  Bracton fo. 36 (ii. 114), fo. 90 (ii. 261); fo. 209 (iii. 132); fo. 382 (iv. 195), fo. 389b (iv. 217), fo. 433 (iv. 345). 23  Bracton, fo. 124b (ii. 351) (LECf 21–21.1, 23–23.1, 23b; Gesetze i. 647, 648). Richardson, Problem, pp. 59, 113, 115, 133, 135, identifies some of these, misses others, and detects some echoes which are not clear enough to establish textual dependence. 24  Bracton, fo. 147 (ii. 418), for an alleged reference to the laws of Æthelstan, which is in an addicio, and which cannot be identified in Æthelstan’s (or any other king’s) extant codes. 25  Bracton, fo. 14 (ii. 58); fo. 56 (ii. 167); fo. 60b (ii. 179) (Inst. Cnuti 70; Gesteze i. 357); fo. 103 (ii. 293) (all LECf 11.1 A2; Gesetze i. 635); fo. 107b (ii. 305) (LECf 11. 1 B7; Gesetze i. 637); fo. 120 (ii. 338) (possibly LECf 14; Gesteze i. 640); fo. 120 (ii. 339) (possibly LHP 10. 1: Gesetze i. 556); fo. 122b (ii. 345) (Inst. Cnuti 35; Gesetze i. 337); fo. 124b (ii. 351) (Inst. Cnuti 21; 20a; 28. 1; Gesetze i. 325, 323, 331); fo. 125b (ii. 354) (LECf 6.2a; Gesetze i. 631); fo. 128b (ii. 361–2) (Inst. Cnuti 13. 2; 15a; LECf 6. 2a; Gesetze i. 317, 319, 631); fo. 130 (ii. 367) (LECf 19. 2; Gesetze i. 645); fo. 134b (ii. 379) (LECf 16–16. 1; 15–15, 2–5; Gesetze i. 641–2); fo. 135b (ii. 382) (LECf 18. 2: Gesteze i. 644); fo. 144b (ii. 408) (Inst. Cnuti 62–62. 1; Gesetze i. 351); fo. 151b (ii. 427) (Inst. Cnuti 2. 1; Gesetze i. 309–11); (ii. 428) (Inst. Cnuti 23, 76; Gesetze i. 327, 363–5); (ii. 429) (Leis Willelme 33; Gesetze i. 514); fo. 184b (iii. 71) (Inst. Cnuti 20; 36. 1; Gesetze i. 323, 339). For the version of LECf used in Bracton, see Liebermann, Über die Leges Edwardi Confessoris, p. 122; H.G. Richardson, ‘Studies in Bracton’, Traditio, vi (1948), 61–104, at 75–8 (who terms what is now called the fourth recension the third, as was conventional when he wrote). A thirteenth-century collection which includes the Latin version of Leis Willelme, as well as Leges Edwardi Confessoris, Instituta Cnuti, Glanvill, and the Libertas Londoniensis is in London, BL, MS. Harley 746. But this or a close relative cannot have been Bracton’s source, or at least Bracton’s sole source, because its text of Leges Edwardi is second, not fourth, recension. 26  Bracton fo. 120 (ii. 338), on treasure trove. 27  Bracton fos 2, 4, 228b (ii. 22, 27, iii. 182), echoing Dig. 1.3.32. 28  Bracton ii. 22, echoing Cod. 8.52.2. 29  Bracton fo. 389b (iv. 217). 30 V.H. Galbraith, Domesday Book: Its Place in Administrative History (Oxford 1974), p. 50.

214  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Conqueror and his successors were not obliged to respect the grants of pre-Conquest kings, the Survey’s fundamental premise was that William was Edward the Confessor’s legitimate heir and successor. It nevertheless seems that, in Bracton’s view, what purported to be the law codes of those pre-Conquest kings had often been endorsed by their more recent successors, just as those successors had, according to the Note Book, successively confirmed certain grants originally made by William the Conqueror, Edward the Confessor, and King Edgar, even if they had not been obliged to do so. There was, therefore, much more to Bracton’s use of the leges than a desire to ape the historical perspective which is intermittently evident in that most authoritative of models, the Corpus iuris civilis—in most sustained fashion in De origine iuris, the second title of the Digest.31 As Bracton demonstrated, far from a sophisticated analytical genre of jurisprudence supplanting a more primitive historical one, both continued to flourish in parallel, and necessarily so. Very occasionally in one section of Bracton the two genres even seem to have come close to coalescing in the same book. It was to exercise an enduring influence. Despite its unwieldy bulk, over fifty manuscripts survive from the medieval period.32 This was clear in a Francophone epitome of Bracton known as Britton, which was written probably in 1291–92.33 In so far as this work superseded and updated,34 rather than simply rearranged, digested and summarized Bracton, it did so by taking into account legislation by statute which had come into vogue since Bracton’s day. This is integrated into the condensed and rationalized Bractonian material. Most (but not all) statutes came to be acknowledged as ‘novel’ law, as distinct from ‘ancient’ law.35 In a very early English statute book the term statute is not used of texts which pre-date Edward I’s reign,36 though some 31  For the medieval civilians’ appreciation of (Roman) historical change, see M.J. Ryan, ‘Political Thought’, in D.  Johnston, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Roman Law (Cambridge 2015), pp. 423–51. 32  Bracton i. 1–20; iii. p. liii. 33  There is a copy in one of Andrew Horn’s books, Cambridge, CCC, MS. 258, fos 53r–183r; Britton, ed. F.M. Nichols, 2 vols (Oxford 1865), i. p. xviii for the date; for thirteenth-century French translations of other legal tracts, see J.H. Baker with J.S. Ringrose, Catalogue of English Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library (Woodbridge 1996), pp. 56, 63–4, 79; for translations of Glanvill, see Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, pp. 45–52; for use of French in court in the thirteenth century, see Baker, ‘Three Languages’, 528–9; also P.A.  Brand ‘The Languages of the Law in Later Medieval England’, in D.A. Trotter, ed., Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 63–76, P.A. Brand, ‘The Languages of the Courtroom in England, c. 1300’, in M. Carruthers, ed., Language in Medieval Britain: Networks and Exchanges. Proceedings of the 2013 Harlaxton Symposium (Donington 2015), pp. 48–58, at 53–5. 34  Fleta, ed. H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles, 3 vols of 4 (the last volume to be planned, an introductory volume i, was never published), Selden Soc., lxxii (1953), lxxxix (1972), xcix (1983), iv. pp. xvii–xviii. 35 T.F.T.  Plucknett, Statutes and their Interpretation in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge 1922), pp. 10, 30. 36  San Marino, Huntington Library, MS. HM 25782, a very early (pre–1290) statute book identified by V.H. Galbraith, ‘A New MS of the Statutes’, Huntington Library Quarterly, xxii (1959), 148– 51. Still earlier ones are identified by P.A. Brand, ‘The First Century of Magna Carta: The Diffusion

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  215 legislation of Henry III’s reign would soon be so categorized.37 But as we shall see, ‘novel’ law was no less likely than ‘ancient’ to have historic foundations, so this did not necessarily lead to an excision from Britton of Bracton’s antiquarian traces. Where Bracton had drawn on the leges, so did Britton.38 There is, however, only one explicit reference to the Conquest in the book, foreshadowed in Bracton.39 There was another late thirteenth-century attempt to distill out of Bracton a more readily usable work, this time in Latin. It is known as Fleta, and is perhaps a little earlier than Britton (c. 1275-c.1292).40 It survives only in a single, ornate manuscript.41 It included the one Bractonian reference to the Conquest which Britton also preserved,42 but reproduced more of Bracton’s historical material,43 and (in so far as the two may be distinguished) some of its use of the leges.44 Fleta may have preserved far more of this material than Britton would do because it appears to have been intended to function as both a text-book for law students and a handbook for stewards and bailiffs.45 It therefore drew on a wider range of sources, and was obliged to leaven the jurisprudential lump. Not all of its his­tor­ic­al material was derived from Bracton: After the arrival [adventus] of the Normans in England, many of the magnates gave this contribution [= churchscot], according to the old law of Moses, in the name of first-fruits, as is contained in the letter of King Cnut sent to the supreme pontiff, in which he calls the contribution chirchsed, that is, semen ecclesie.46

The author’s source here appears to be a garbled account of c. 16 of Cnut’s letter to the English people of 1027, which was reproduced by William of Malmesbury and John of Worcester, and was unknown to Bracton.47 Evidently the author of of Texts and Knowledge of the Charter’, William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, xxv, 2 (2016), 437–53, at 446–9. 37 P.A. Brand, Kings, Barons and Justices. The Making and Enforcement of Legislation in ThirteenthCentury England (Cambridge 2003), p. 1. 38  Britton I. vii (i. 38). 39  Britton III. vii (ii. 26); cf. Bracton fo. 90 (ii. 261). 40  Fleta, iv. pp. xiv, xv–xvii. Like Bracton, it simply breaks off in the midst of an explanation of writ of right procedure. 41  London, BL, MS. Cotton Julius B. viii; further Fleta iv. pp. xi–xii. 42  Fleta I. xiii (ii. 28). 43  See above, pp. 212–13; Fleta I. xvii (ii. 38), cf. Bracton fo. 107 (ii. 304) (coronation oath). Later, Fleta repeats Bracton’s point about the king not being bound to warrant even more pungently than the original: ‘The king is not bound to warrant what was done by kings before the Conquest because they were not his ancestors (antecessores)’: Fleta, iv. 161; cf. Bracton fo. 389b (iv. 217), discussed above, p. 214. 44  For instance, Fleta I. xvii (ii. 35), cf. Bracton fo.107b (LECf 11. 1 B7); I. xxvii (ii. 69), cf. Bracton fo. 124b (LECf 21–21. 1; 23b; Inst. Cnuti 21); however, not all passages derived from the leges come via Bracton: see below, p. 232. 45  N. Denholm-Young, ‘Who wrote Fleta?’, repr. in his Collected Papers (Cardiff 1969), pp. 187–98, at 189–90; D. Oschinsky, Walter of Henley and Other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting (Oxford 1971), pp. 20, 106–12, demonstrates that the author conflates and adapts Walter of Henley with Seneschaucie; Fleta II. lxxi, lxxii–lxxxviii (ii. 238, 241–60); Fleta iv. p. xx. 46  Fleta I. xlv (ii. 102); cf. J. Selden, The Historie of Tithes (London 1618), pp. 215–16. 47  Gesetze i. 276–7.

216  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Fleta had undertaken his own researches.48 Like Britton, this treatise necessarily integrated the statutes which had proliferated since Bracton had been written.49 It even, in a celebrated passage, suggested that statutes, or ‘new remedies for wrongs newly brought to light’, were devised at the king’s ‘court in his council in his parliaments’.50 It has been suggested that the author was a clerk of the Exchequer, although there is no evidence to connect him with that court.51 He did, however, use Richard FitzNigel’s Dialogus de scaccario,52 if not any of its historical passages. Kantorowicz considered that he had had access to a copy of Britton,53 though in truth it was Bracton.54 The putative role of an historical element in making jurisprudence accessible to a wider audience seems to have been the case with a third work, exactly contemporaneous with Britton.55 For our purposes, it is the most revealing of the three treatises. Like Fleta, it survives in only a single medieval manuscript. It is entitled Speculum Justitiariorum, though the book is in the French vernacular, and became known long before its first printing (in 1642) as the Mirror of Justices.56 It is heavily based on Bracton,57 but idiosyncratic, and far more historical in form as well as content than Bracton, or Britton, or Fleta, though it contains nothing which has been demonstrably derived from the leges. Despite its ­historical character, it mentions neither the Conquest nor the Conqueror. The closest it comes to doing so is an oblique reference to merchet being imposed on villeins by sinful men ‘after’ the ‘time of St Edward’,58 who had protected them. Otherwise, as far as the Mirror was concerned, the Conquest might never have

48  For his use of Glanvill and other literary models in his Prologue, see E.H.  Kantorowicz, ‘The Prologue to Fleta and the School of Petrus de Vinea’, repr. in his Selected Studies, ed. M. Cherniavsky and R.E. Giesey (Locust Valley, NY 1965), pp. 167–83. 49  Fleta iv. pp. xviii–xix, xxix–xxxiii. 50  Fleta ii. 109; cf. H.M. Jewell, ‘The Value of Fleta as Evidence about Parliament’, EHR, cvii (1992), 90–4. 51  Denholm-Young, ‘Fleta’, pp. 192–8; N. Denholm-Young, ‘Matthew Checker’, repr. in his Collected Papers, pp. 199–204; Kantorowicz, ‘Prologue to Fleta’, esp. pp. 178–81. H.G. Richardson took a different view: Fleta iv. p. xxv. 52  Fleta II xxvii–xxviii (ii. 132–3); Dialogus I. iii, v. 53  Kantorowicz, ‘Prologue to Fleta’, p. 179 and n. 47. 54  I should like to thank Paul Brand for this correction of Kantorowicz. 55  Another contemporary example is Gilbert of Thornton’s Summa de Legibus, now Harvard Law School MS. 77: see T.F.T.  Plucknett, ‘The Harvard Manuscript of Thornton’s Summa’, Harvard Law Review, li (1938), 1038–56; S.E. Thorne, ‘Gilbert de Thornton’s Summa de Legibus’, The University of Toronto Law Journal, vii (1947), 1–23; P.A. Brand, ‘Thornton, Gilbert of ’, ODNB. An earlier and longer version is in London, Lincoln’s Inn MS. Hale 135. 56  Andrew Horne, La somme appellee mirroir des iustices, vel speculum iusticiariorum (London 1642); The Booke Called the Mirrour of Justices: Made by Andrew Horne with the Book Called, The Diversity of the Courts and Their Jurisdictions, trans. W[illiam] H[ughes] (London 1646); The Mirror of Justices, ed. W.J. Whittaker and F.W. Maitland, Selden Soc., vii (1895), p. xxvi, cf. xlix. The first reference to ‘le Mirror des Justices’ is in E. Plowden, Les commentaries, ou, Les reports . . . de divers cases (London 1571), fo. 8r, where it is said to have been cited in 1550 in proceedings in the Exchequer court. 57  Mirror, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii. 58  Mirror, p. 81.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  217 happened. Dependent feudal tenure,59 knights’ fees,60 wardship,61 and seigneurial justice62 are all innovations attributed to the English conquerors of Roman Britain, not to the Normans. The book holds up King Arthur and King Alfred, rather than Edward the Confessor, as models.63 Maitland characterized this as a ‘reactionary’ or ‘retrogressist’ quality,64 most strikingly apparent in the author’s passionate call for the restoration of trial by ordeal.65 Other modern commentators have been less polite, as indeed was Maitland: ‘not even false history’;66 ‘improbable trash’;67 ‘tendentious tract’.68 But a plausible case has recently been advanced for the author’s being not the eccentric fantasist as which he has often been depicted, but a London-based teacher of English law, who was simply attempting to get his points over to his pupils in arresting and therefore memorable fashion.69 His choice of title must have been a conscious, learned echo of the most successful modern procedural manual of Roman and canon law, Guillelmus Durandus’s Speculum iudiciale70—hence, perhaps, its being in Latin despite the book being in the vernacular. If this in­ ter­ pret­ ation be correct, then pace Plucknett, ‘preoccupation . . . with the Anglo-Saxon laws’ had not inevitably led to ‘a barren and dishonest romanticism—with the Mirror of Justices at the end of the road’.71 The Mirror was not a bizarre, unrepresentative jurisprudential dead end, but just the sort of thing that trainee lawyers might be listening to in lectures by the end of the thirteenth century. On this interpretation, it was the upto-date vernacular text book, just as Britton was the up-to-date vernacular manual for practitioners.72 Bracton had shown that the leges were considered still to be pertinent, as was also suggested by their inclusion in some thirteenth-century statute collections,73 in which the first statute was usually deemed to be the 1225 reissue of Magna Carta (itself in a sense grounded, of course, on Henry I’s Coronation Charter and 59  Mirror, p. 8. 61  Mirror, p. 13. 62  Mirror, p. 12. 60  Mirror, p. 12. 63  Mirror, pp. 3 (Arthur), 8, 166–71 (Alfred); ‘St Edward’ is mentioned on p. 81, but only as a protector of villeins. The reference to Edward I as ‘Roi Edward le secund’ implicitly acknowledges the Confessor as the first King Edward: Mirror, p. 141. 64  Mirror, p. xliii. 65  Mirror, p. 173, cf. p. xlv. 66  P&M i. 28. 67 P.H. Winfield, The Chief Sources of English Legal History (Cambridge 1925), p. 267. 68 Wormald, Making, p. 6. 69  D.J. Seipp, ‘The Mirror of Justices’, in J.A. Bush and A. Wijffels, eds, Learning the Law. Teaching and the Transmission of Law in England 1150–1900 (London and Rio Grande 1999), pp. 85–112; cf. E.F.J. Tucker, ‘The Mirror of Justices: Its Authorship and Preoccupations’, The Irish Jurist, ns, ix (1974), 99–109, for an earlier attempt at rehabilitation. The case against Seipp’s new interpretation is that the treatise survives in only one manuscript, and that its contents bear little resemblance to other thirteenth-century evidence for lectures to trainee lawyers: P.A.  Brand, ‘Legal Education in England before the Inns of Court’, in Bush and Wijfels, eds, Learning the Law, pp. 51–84. Both objections are open to obvious rebuttals. 70 J.A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law ( Harlow 1995), pp. 228–9. 71 Plucknett, Legal Literature, p. 41. 72 Plucknett, Legal Literature, p. 93; Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, p. 152. 73  London, BL, MS. Add. 35179; MS. Harley 746, both described in detail by O’Brien, God’s Peace, pp. 143, 144–5, cf. p. 120 and n. 80.

218  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 the laga of King Edward repeatedly cited and endorsed in Henry’s Charter, even though neither is explicitly mentioned in Magna Carta).74 The Conquest was a less noticeable, if, as we shall see, still an occasional, presence in Bracton; but it featured more prominently in the Note Book. This is hardly surprising, because the Note Book is more immediately and directly dependent on plea rolls than Bracton. That Old English history in general, and the Conquest in particular, should keep surfacing in the plea rolls, as they would do in more detail from the 1290s in those reports of forensic proceedings which would later be termed Year Books, reveals just how intrinsic such history continued to be in English law. It did not fade from the attention of lawyers and the courts as it receded further into the past, pari passu with its increasing fossilization in historical writing. As we shall see, it underpinned some of the new statutes which rendered Bracton increasingly obsolescent. Because its legal importance was so fundamental, there was little need to elaborate on it in a systematic fashion in substantial works of analytical jurisprudence. These were in any case a rare and, as it transpired, already an endangered species, as jurisprudence appears increasingly to have focused on brief treatments of practical questions of procedure: ‘squalid, disorderly little tracts where nothing seems to count except points of practice’.75 If any elaboration were required, it could be supplied from the collections of historic leges, which continued to be copied out in juxtaposition with Glanvill or Bracton (or Bracton’s various Edwardian epigones, including in one instance the Mirror). This, we have seen, was from the very start a characteristic of the London Collection, and remained so throughout its long medieval incarnation. It is therefore primarily to the records of forensic proceedings which begin to proliferate from the end of the twelfth century, when the London Collection was originally fashioned, that we must turn in order to understand how the Conquest remained a vital issue, legally speaking, in later medieval England.

74  See above, p. 138. For the content of statute books, see Brand, Kings, Barons and Justices, p. 1. Huntington Library MS. HM 25782, the very early (pre-1290) statute book identified by Galbraith, ‘New MS of the Statutes’, is unusual in containing Magna Carta of 1215 (under the title ‘Provisions of Runnymede’) as well as Magna Carta of 1225, in that order. Further, Brand, ‘First Century of Magna Carta’, 446–9. 75 Plucknett, Legal Literature, p. 93; H.D.  Hazeltine, ‘General Preface’ to Radulphi de Hengham summae, ed. W.H. Dunham (Cambridge 1932), pp. xi–xxix; for examples of these brief, specialized treatises, see Four Thirteenth-Century Law Tracts, ed. G.E. Woodbine (New Haven, CN 1910), which includes Iudicium essoniorum, Fet asaver, Modus componendi brevia, and Exceptiones ad cassandum brevia. On the genre, see J.S. Beckerman, ‘Law-Writing and Law Teaching: Treatise Evidence of the Formal Teaching of English Law in the Late Thirteenth Century’, in Bush and Wijffels, eds, Learning the Law, pp. 33–50. T.J. McSweeney, ‘Creating a Literature for the King’s Courts in the Later Thirteenth Century: Hengham magna, Fet asaver, and Bracton’, Journal of Legal History, xxxvii (2016), 41–71, argues that the authors of both these treatises borrowed independently from Bracton.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  219

Forensic Practice The format of plea rolls is antithetical to the elaboration of legal doctrine; and as Roger of Seaton, formerly Chief Justice of the King’s Bench warned in 1279, they were hardly infallible even as a record of pleas: ‘one thing is done and something else—more or less—is written in the rolls by the clerks, who do not always understand litigators (=lawyers) and litigants correctly’.76 Plea rolls are by nature terse in the extreme. Their focus was on the formal steps in litigation. Initially, the outcome was not invariably entered,77 although this came to be an important purpose of the roll.78 Any clerk would attempt to enter whatever he considered absolutely essential. In this early period, plea rolls seem to have been compiled at the initiative of individual justices,79 whose views about what was relevant differed. Initially there was, therefore, no standard template. But already by the time of Bracton there was what the treatise describes as a ‘first’ roll, kept by a ‘protonotary’ (or keeper) of rolls in the Bench, and this roll was reportedly the basis for all others.80 Although views might still differ about what deserved to be entered, there was, therefore, a proclivity to standardization. Rolls were almost certain to include some details of the legal steps, including formulaic assertions of fact, which had proved successful in court.81 Occasionally more survived than such bare pleadings. Vestiges are also preserved of the reasoning which had led to the judgment.82 Some of the facts of the case might leak out, especially in early rolls.83 And depending on the nature and details of the case, the relevant facts might be historic. Advocates sometimes invoked in their oral submissions far more his­tor­ic­al detail than the occasional formulaic traces which might have appeared in the 76  Select Cases in the Court of the King’s Bench under Edward I, ed. G.O. Sayles, 3 vols, Selden Soc., lv (1936), lvii (1938), lviii (1939), i. p. clxviii. I should like to thank Paul Brand for correcting my understanding of this comment. 77  In the following early cases, judgments are not recorded on the rolls, but are in corresponding reports: Earliest English Law Reports, ed. P.A. Brand, 4 vols, Selden Soc., cxi (1995), cxii (1996), cxxii (2005), cxxiii (2006), i. 1283.4, 1284.5; ii. 1286.13. 78  P.A. Brand, ‘“Multis vigiliis excogitatam et inventam”: Henry II and the Creation of the English Common Law’, repr. in his The Making of the Common Law (London 1992), pp. 77–102, at 96; J.H. Baker, ‘[Records, Reports and the Origins of] Case-Law in England’, repr. in his Collected Papers, ii. 537–68, at 538–9. 79  Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, p. 120, for the suggestion that Bracton draws on the rolls of Martin of Pattishall, his clerk William Raleigh, and his clerk in turn, Henry de Bracton. 80  Bracton, fo. 352b (iv. 113). I am indebted to Paul Brand for drawing my attention to this passage. He further informs me that this practice appears to have been changed in 1253. The senior justice and his clerks now made the ‘first’ roll, and the keeper of rolls and writs a second. The other justices made copies of the first: Calendar of Close Rolls of Henry III, 14 vols. (London 1902–38), vii. 374. 81  Baker, ‘Case-Law’, p. 539. 82  Baker, ‘Case-Law’, p. 539; J.P.  Dawson, The Oracles of the Law (Ann Arbour, MI 1968), p. 51; P.A. Brand, ‘Reasoned Judgments in the English Medieval Common Law 1270–1307’, in W. Hamilton Bryson and S. Dauchy, eds, Ratio Decidendi: Guiding Principles of Judicial Decisions, Vol. I: Case Law (Berlin, 2006), pp. 55–71, esp. 56–61, 70–1, which draws on plea rolls as well as reports. 83  Milsom, ‘Law and Fact’, pp. 180–3.

220  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 writs which had initiated the action. The plea rolls therefore sometimes record evidence for the continuing importance of history in general, and the Conquest in particular, in English law during the thirteenth century and later. The rolls are not, however, the only contemporary record of forensic argument. If they were, we would know very little about it, because their purpose was not to record it. Reports, which purport to be transcripts—often apparently verbatim— of proceedings, normally—but by no means always—in the vernacular French of the courts, tend to be far fuller than the sparse records of some cases preserved in the rolls.84 Such reports are very rare until what were christened—in the sixteenth century—Year Books begin to survive, from the last decade of the thirteenth century;85 but there are a few.86 Their primary purpose, by contrast with the rolls, was to record forensic argument, initially, it seems, for the benefit of law students, often jotted down by students themselves.87 They provided instructive examples of tactics and strategies for advocates, as they attempted to lick their pleas into shape.88 At this stage, and for centuries to come, they seldom took much notice of formal steps in litigation and the final judgment. Such matters were largely ir­rele­ vant to their purpose. They confirm in far more detail the impression given by occasional entries in the rolls: that the Conquest remained an important point of legal reference. Thus a report on a 1279 case of naifty, between the Prior of Norwich and Richard, son of Ernys, of Hemsby, reveals a crucial detail entirely absent from the corresponding entry in the roll: the defendant argued that he shared a common ancestor with those whom the plaintiff had brought to court to prove his villein status, and that this common ancestor ‘came from Normandy at the Conquest and acquired lands and held them freely all his lifetime’.89 In other types of case too, the rare surviving early reports reveal that the Conquest was mentioned in forensic argument much more frequently than the plea rolls would suggest.90 One report of a case of trespass, heard in 1284, and written in the French of the 84  Baker, ‘Case-Law’, 540–3. P.A. Brand, Observing and Reporting the Medieval Bar and Bench at Work: The Origins of Law Reporting in England, Selden Soc. Lecture, 1998 (London 1999), esp. pp. 7–9; Brand, ‘Languages of the Law’, pp. 63–5, 67–8. 85  Baker, ‘Case-Law’, 542; Brand, Observing, pp. 15–17. 86 Brand, Reports. 87 S.F.C. Milsom, Historical Foundations of the Common Law, 2nd edn (London 1981), pp. 44–8; P.A. Brand, ‘Courtroom and Schoolroom: the Education of Lawyers in England prior to 1400’, repr. in his Making of the Common Law, pp. 57–76; Brand, Observing, pp. 10, 17–18; Baker, ‘Case-Law’, pp. 541–2, 563; Sir John [J.H.] Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 5th edn (Oxford 2019), pp. 188–9: Brand, Reports, iv. pp. xx–xxi. 88  Year Books of Edward II., Vol. III. 3 Edward II. A.D. 1309–1310, ed. F.W. Maitland, Selden Soc., xx (1905), p. xiv; Baker, ‘Case-Law’, p. 565; P. A. Brand, ‘The Beginnings of English Law Reporting’, in C. Stebbings, ed., Law Reporting in Britain (London 1995), pp. 1–14. 89 Brand, Reports, i. 108–10 (1279.2 = (Trin.) 7 Edw. I, pl. 1, fo. 111), where CP 40/30, m. 28d is juxtaposed with the transcript; cf. ii. 372. 90  For another instance, a 1283 case about wardship which came to depend on the issue of priority of feoffment, see Reports, i. 132–7 (1283.7), where the plea roll record, CP 40/49, m. 57d, makes no allusion to the Conquest; cf. ii. 374; cf. Britton III. vii (ii. 26), the only reference to the Conquest in the book.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  221 court-room, attributes to the Common Bench Justice William of Brompton the view that the Conqueror had introduced into England both frankpledge and the murdrum fine. But another report, apparently of the same case, and written in Latin, fails to record either detail; so does the relevant plea roll entry.91 We know that the Conquest was mentioned only because, exceptionally, we have two complementary accounts of what was said in this particular case. The vernacular one is fuller, and happens to preserve this choice detail. In this instance the historical explanation appears to have been irrelevant to the nub of the case, but it suggests that William of Brompton, who has been shown to have been fond of digressions in court,92 was repeating conventional views about the Conquest foreshadowed, for instance, in the Dialogus de scaccario,93 which preserved the expertise of the Exchequer a century before. William liked to colour his advocacy with historical detail, and in this instance he is recorded as having done so at some length.94 As in this case, such historical material could so easily be omitted by the enrolling clerk, bent on concision and the bare steps of the legal process. Once what was later deemed to be the series of Year Books begins, the evidence for such his­tor­ic­al reference becomes much more plentiful. But it may reasonably be inferred that it was already an established feature of pleading in the courts, and that it was far more common than the plea rolls explicitly record. The exceptionally full reports of the Eyre of Kent in 1313–14, surviving in numerous copies, are particularly revealing in this regard.95 During the pre­lim­in­ ary proceedings, Edmund de Passele, an accomplished lawyer,96 appeared before the king’s justices on behalf of the shire community to argue that ‘the people of  Kent’ had enjoyed certain customs (usages) ‘for all time’.97 If the reporter accurately reproduced Edmund’s words, the lawyer was asserting that the customs reached back into (remote) antiquity, or ‘time out of mind’.98 That is confirmed by another account of these proceedings, preserved in several manuscripts, which reports that Edmund claimed that William the Conqueror had 91  Reports i. 169–72 (1284. 11), CP 40/54, m. 23d. 92  Reports i. pp. cxliv–cxlvi, cli–cliii. 93  Dialogus I, x, p. 80, which explains the origin of the murdrum fine in this way. Bracton, fo. 134b (ii. 379) reproduces instead the canard from the LECf 16 (Gesetze i. 642) about the murdrum fine having been introduced by Cnut. Wl. Art. 8, Gesetze i. 488, might be interpreted as attributing the introduction of frankpledge to William I. 94  Reports i. 171. 95  The Eyre of Kent 6 and 7 Edward II (1313–1314): Year Books Ser., Vols V, VII, VIII, ed. F.W. Maitland, L.W. Vernon Harcourt, and W.C. Bolland, 3 vols, Selden Soc., xxiv (1909), xxvii (1912), xxix (1913), i. pp. xxxv; xvi, xciii for the 18 manuscript copies. 96  P.A. Brand, ‘Passele, Sir Edmund’, ODNB. 97  Eyre of Kent i. 18, from the version preserved uniquely in London, BL, MS. Harley 1062, fos 13–31. Note that at this point usage means immemorial custom, not (as it would later) a mere practice which had arisen within the time of legal memory, which was not legally binding, and which was to be contrasted with custom. 98  J.H. Baker, ‘Prescriptive Customs in English Law 1300–1800’, in J.H. Dondorp, D.J. Ibbetson, and E.J.H. Schrage, eds, Limitation and Prescription. A Comparative Legal History (Berlin 2019), pp. 147–87, at 159–60 and n. 71, which quotes several contemporary instances. I am grateful to John Baker for supplying me with a copy in advance of publication.

222  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 ‘granted to the people of the county that they should use the same custom and laws after the Conquest as they had done before’. The Conqueror had, reportedly, made this concession ‘by reason of the peace’ agreed between him and the men of Kent;99 according to a third, distinct version of Edmund’s statement, it was the men of Kent who had formed the last line of resistance against the invader, and had ‘rendered themselves to him on the strength of this covenant’.100 In Edmund’s view, the peculiar Kentish customs included those of gavelkind, ‘which differ from the common law’,101 and exemption from presentment of Englishry.102 These customs had become peculiar to Kent, and therefore a localized exception to the law of the kingdom, as a result of the settlement with the Conqueror. William had simply sanctioned their continuance, and was therefore not their source. But Edmund added that they ‘applied to such different sorts of cases that a man may not keep all of them in view’, so—according to one account—for the convenience of the justices he produced a ‘scroll [escrowett]’, in which was ‘inscribed some part of these customs’. He added that he trusted that the justices would permit oral testimony as to any further ones which might be brought up in the course of proceedings and which turned out to have been omitted from the scroll. This final, brazen attempt at Kentish legerdemain the justices were not prepared to countenance; but they were, reportedly, nevertheless willing to consider anything written down in a revised and amplified version of the scroll.103 Something to that effect, in the vernacular, seems indeed to have been produced before their forebears during the Kentish Eyre of 1293; a royal charter embodying these customs was said to be in the custody of Sir John de Northwood in Canterbury on 19 April 1293.104 The 1293 document in turn followed something similar, in Latin, which was probably produced for the previous Eyre of 1279, but may be earlier. Both conclude that gavelkind had existed ‘before the Conquest, and at the Conquest, and ever since until now [que furent devaunt le conquest, e en le Conqueste, e totes houres ieskes en ca]’.105 It is 99  Eyre of Kent i. 12. 100  Eyre of Kent i. 52. 101  Eyre of Kent i. 18, cf. 11; however, it was ‘closer to the common law than is ancient demesne’: iii. 158. 102  Eyre of Kent i. 12, 52. 103  Eyre of Kent i. 18, cf. 11, where the justices are said to have instructed ‘the community of the whole county’ to ‘put their customs into writing; and then would they allow them so far as they were reasonable’. 104  SR, i. 223–5; London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii, fos 122r–123r; F. Hull, ‘The Custumal of Kent’, Archaeologia Cantiana, lxxii (1958), 148–59; F.  Hull, ‘John Berwycke and the Consuetudines Kancie’, Archaeologia Cantiana, xcvi (1980), 1–15; P.A. Brand, ‘Local Custom in the Early Common Law’, in P. Stafford, J.L. Nelson, and J. Martindale, eds, Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds (Manchester 2001), pp. 150–9, at 158–9. 105 W. Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent (London 1576), pp. 415–27, claimed to provide a transcription ‘of the very text’ of Kentish customs ‘taken out of an auncient and faire written roll, that was given to me by Maister George Multon my father in law, and whiche some time belonged to Baron Hales of this Countrie’: Lambeth Roll 2068, m. 7d, discussed by F.R.H. Du Boulay, The Lordship of Canterbury. An Essay on Medieval Society (London 1966), pp. 144–5; Brand, ‘Local Custom’, p. 158;

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  223 certainly recorded in the twelfth century, and gives every appearance of being ancient in origin.106 So Edmund de Passele in 1313 did not conjure up out of the blue the Conquest in this connection; it was already a familiar point of reference. According to other accounts of the preliminary proceedings in that year, the justices rejected his argument with respect to Englishry on the grounds that there had been presentation for Englishry in the last Kentish Eyre107—the one which had produced the vernacular statement of Kentish customs. But the point here is not the credibility of Edmund’s claims—Bracton’s Note Book had recognized a lex Kantiae108—or the reliability of the details given in the distinct versions, but the fact that different versions agree that such arguments were advanced in court on behalf of the men of the shire in defence of its local customs against royal intrusion. They show that the Conquest remained a fundamental point of reference, particularly with respect to legal, and in so far as it was distinct, customary continuity and discontinuity. Edmund’s intervention, reported in slightly different terms in three distinct manuscript traditions, is strikingly reminiscent of the thirteenth-century St Augustine’s account of what had been settled between ‘Duke’ William and the men of Kent on Swanscombe Down.109 That, too, had emphasized that the Conqueror had been forced to endorse the ancestral customs of Kentishmen. While local customs might be sanctioned by the ruler, it came to be recognized that, unlike franchises, they could not originate in his grant.110 Early in the fourteenth century the Conquest continued to loom large in the minds of the men of this particular shire, and, we may infer, this was true of Kentish laymen as well as monks. The exceptional nature of the legal or customary continuity reportedly secured by the men of Kent, in terms of gavelkind too,111 suggests that it was by this point widely accepted that the Conquest had in general represented an abrupt rupture in most of England’s laws and customs. The ‘common law’ which now obtained throughout the rest of the kingdom was very different from what had been preserved solely in Kent.112 Though Kent was ‘no mountain home of liberty, no remote fastness in which the remnant of an ancient race has found refuge’,113 that was how its inhabitants were coming to present it. J.C. Holt, ‘The Origins of the Constitutional Tradition in England’, in his Magna Carta and Medieval Government, pp. 1–22, at 11–12. 106  F.R.H. du Boulay, ‘Gavelkind and Knight’s Fee in Medieval Kent’, EHR, lxxvii (1962), 504–11; Du Boulay, Lordship of Canterbury, p. 146; K.P. Witney, ‘The Economic Position of Husbandmen at the Time of Domesday Book: A Kentish Perspective’, EcHR, xxxvii (1984), 23–34, at 29–30; Holt, ‘Constitutional Tradition’, p. 12; Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws of England, Vol. II., p. 635. 107  Eyre of Kent i. pp. xxxv–xxxvii, 12, 52, 57. 108  BNB 1644, cf. 1338 for the lex et consuetudo comitatus; P&M i. 186–8. 109  See above, pp. 145–6. 110  John Spelman’s Reading on Quo warranto, ed. J.H.  Baker, Selden Soc., cxiii (1997), p. 7, for Hervey’s Reading on Magna Carta, c. 9 (dated probably 1480s); Baker, ‘Prescriptive Customs’, p. 152. 111  Eyre of Kent i. 18. 112  Eyre of Kent i. 18. 113  P&M i. 187.

224  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 The same had demonstrably been true of the city of London for far longer. Indeed, as we have seen, that had been the main point of the London Collection of John’s reign. Its ancient liberties might be dependent on some earlier royal grant, but its free customs by definition could not be.114 And London makes an even more implausible Montenegro or Asturias than Kent. During the London Eyre of 1321 similar arguments were adduced in support of the city’s ancient liberties. It is no coincidence that Andrew Horn, from 1320 to his death in 1328 Chamberlain of the city, was heavily involved in the promotion of these arguments.115 For as we shall see, he was so interested in pre-Conquest law that he became the prime instigator of the resurrection of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum. One of the legal collections he commissioned, consisting primarily of recent legislation, included a summary of the customs of Kent.116 Communities and institutions—most obviously, churches—which sought to secure their traditional liberties sometimes did so by reaching back prior to the Conquest. But the Conquest itself had also become a point of renewed concentration in response to a royal initiative of Edward I.

Quo warranto and Limitation Paradoxically, the most dramatic and (once) celebrated example of an invocation of the Conquest in court appears not in forensic reports of a case, but in some copies of Walter of Guisborough’s Chronicle, which dates from the early fourteenth century.117 According to this account, in 1279 Edward I unsettled certain magnates through his judges, wishing to know by what warrant [the magnates] held lands. If they did not have good warrant, he immediately seized their lands. Among others, the earl Warenne was summoned before the king’s judges; and, questioned by what warrant he held, he produced in their midst an ancient, rusty sword, and said: ‘Behold, my lords! Behold my warrant! For my ancestors [antecessores] came with William the Bastard and conquered their lands by the sword, and by the sword I shall defend them from anyone wishing to occupy them. For the king did not conquer and subject the land by himself, but our forebears were partners and assistants with him.’ 114  Magna Carta (1225), c. 9. 115  The Eyre of London 14 Edward II A.D. 1321. Year Books of Edward II, Vol. XXVI (parts I, II), ed. H.M. Cam, 2 vols, Selden Soc., lxxxv (1968), lxxxvi (1969), i. pp. xv, xvii. 116 LMA, ‘Liber Horn’, fos 77v–79v; Ker, Medieval Manuscripts I, p. 29. On ‘Liber Horn’, see below, pp. 252–3. 117  The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., lxxxix (1957), p. 216; W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, 3 vols (Oxford 1880), ii. 120–1; W. Stubbs, ed., Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward I, 1st edn (Oxford 1870), p. 422; it survived until the 8th edn (Oxford 1895), pp. 431–2, but was then deleted by H.W.C. Davis, reviser of the 9th, posthumous edition (Oxford 1913).

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  225 As a description of Quo warranto procedure in the 1270s and 1280s, this was exposed by J.H. Round as embodying various apparent inaccuracies, most obviously the fact that the story concerned land rather than franchises over land—that is to say, liberties, which were the subject of the Quo warranto inquests.118 The subsequent scholarly consensus has accordingly been that the tale has ‘the air of later popular legend’,119 and should probably be discounted. Yet it survives in four manuscripts of the Chronicle. It is not confined to a solitary late one, as erroneously declared by Round and Cam. These four include one which has been dated to the early fourteenth century, so not very long after the alleged episode.120 This strengthens the case that something of the tale might be salvaged, even though rusty swashbuckling does not appear from the reports to have been recognized as a legitimate mode of pleading in late thirteenth-century England.121 It might, perhaps, have been the sort of thing that an aggrieved and obstreperous lay party would blurt out in court. Even if the bluff earl had the intellectual capacity to grasp the distinction between land and franchise over land, it and the technical restrictions being imposed on his rights of prescription might well have enraged him. But any lawyer, and the learned clerks making entries in the rolls, would recognize the irrelevance of his unconventional intervention, and therefore omit it from the record.122 A particular hearing, from 1285 rather than 1279, has even been identified as a plausible occasion for the earl’s outburst.123 118 J.H. Round, Peerage and Pedigree. Studies in Peerage and Family History, 2 vols (London 1910), i. 321–3 119 Walter of Guisborough, Chronicle, p. 216 n. 1; cf. H.M.  Cam, Liberties & Communities in Medieval England. Collected Studies in Local Administration and Topography (Cambridge 1944), pp. 176–7. 120  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Digby 168; others are London, BL, MS. Lansdowne 239 (late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century, the witness highlighted by Round and Cam), Cambridge, UL MS. Dd. 2. 5 (fourteenth-century), Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Digby 170 (fourteenth-century). Another manuscript—Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS. 33. 5. 3 (late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century) has a marginal addition beside the annal for 1295 which tells a similar story of the Earl of Gloucester: Chronicle, p. 259 n. j. The early dating of MS. Digby 168 undermines the weight which Round and Cam placed on the late date of MS. Lansdowne 239. For a manuscript stemma, see Chronicle, p. xli. A similar story was told of Gilbert of Clare in the Lanercost Chronicle: Chronicon de Lanercost 1201–1346, ed. J. Stevenson (Edinburgh 1839), p. 168. This includes some information also found in Walter of Guisborough: A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, Vol. I., c. 500–1307 (London 1974), p. 501; A.G.  Little, ‘The Authorship of the Lanercost Chronicle’, Franciscan Papers, Lists and Documents, iv (Manchester 1943), pp. 42–54, on its composition. 121  G.T. Lapsley, ‘John de Warenne and the Quo Warranto Proceedings in 1279’, repr. in his Crown, Community and Parliament in the Later Middle Ages. Studies in English Constitutional History, ed. H.M.  Cam and G.  Barraclough (Oxford 1951), pp. 35–62; M.T.  Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307, 3rd edn (Oxford 2013), pp. 41–5. Earl John appears to have implemented his own Quo warranto hearings in the honorial court in the 1270s: Records of the Barony and Honour of the Rape of Lewes, ed. A.J. Taylor, Sussex Record Soc., xliv (1939), pp. 37, 48, discussed by D.B. Crouch, ‘The Warenne Family and its Status in the Kingdom of England’, in T. Huthwelker, J. Peltzer, and M. Wemhoner, eds, Princely Rank in Late Medieval Europe. Trodden Paths and Promising Avenues (Stuttgart 2011), pp. 281–307, at 282 n. 2, 297. 122  I am indebted to John Hudson for this suggestion. 123  Kirkby’s Quest, an inquiry into knights’ fees and jurisdictional liberties, in Yorks.: Inquisitions and Assessments relating to Feudal Aids, 1284–1431, Vol. I (Record Commission 1899), i. pp. xii–xiii; M.T. Clanchy, ‘The Franchise of Return of Writs’, TRHS, 5th ser., xvii (1967), 59–79, at 75.

226  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 The grounding of title ultimately in conquest by an antecessor who had fought as one of the Conqueror’s companions appears to be in a familiar vein. In the previous century the Battle chronicler, writing around 1180, had attributed to Richard de Lucy the statement that ‘by the conquest at Battle we were all enfeoffed’;124 the Conquest, the chronicler implied, had been a joint enterprise of the Conqueror and his companions.125 There was, however, an implicit distinction between the two cases. Whereas the Battle chronicler makes Richard de Lucy acknowledge that William’s co-conquerors had been granted lands by the victorious king,126 Walter of Guisborough makes the earl Warenne imply that the fact of conquest obviates any need for title to be based on evidence of a subsequent royal grant. What the earl’s antecessor had conquered in 1066 now belonged to him, he contends, by descent, irrespective of such evidence, irrespective of any limitations on prescription, and perhaps even, by extension, independent of the king.127 In Domesday Book an antecessor was the person deemed to have been the t.r.e. tenant of the land which had been granted to a recipient by the Conqueror.128 Here, by contrast, it meant an ancestor who had come over with the Conqueror, and who had acquired land for himself.129 The contrast highlights the novelty, or the irascibility, of the earl’s alleged assertion. When Roger Mortimer was executed in 1330, among his effects were ‘one brass horn which, with a certain falchion, is, it is said, the charter of the land of Wigmore’—land which the family had held since the Conquest.130 This suggests that the ancestral estate was seen as in origin a royal grant, even if held by a ‘sword, helmet, horn or cup’ in lieu of a charter—a view endorsed by Pseudo-Ingulf.131 John de Warenne’s assertion might appear fantastic, even in the mouth of someone with his startling record of forensic intemperance.132 It would, therefore, tend to reinforce doubts about the plausibility of the tale interpolated at an early stage into some copies of Walter of Guisborough’s Chronicle, and also with some variations into the Chronicon de Lanercost.133 That it may nevertheless reflect late thirteenth-century forensic reality is suggested by the record sources. 124  The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. E. Searle (Oxford 1980), p. 310; Clanchy, Memory, p. 42. On the view attributed to de Lucy by the chronicler, see Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 351, 354. 125  Battle Chronicle, pp. 178–80, 182. 126  Battle Chronicle, p. 182. 127 D.W.  Sutherland, Quo Warranto Proceedings in the Reign of Edward I, 1278–1294 (Oxford 1963), pp. 82–3. 128 Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 24–33. 129  Note that Bracton uses antecessor in a sense clearly distinct from that of Domesday: fo. 389b (iv. 217), discussed above, pp. 213, 215 n. 43, below, 231. 130 R.R. Davies, Lords & Lordship in the British Isles in the Late Middle Ages, ed. B. Smith (Oxford 2009), p. 31; for a surviving example, see J.J.G. Alexander and P. Binski, eds, The Age of Chivalry. Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400 (London 1987), no. 165. 131 Fulman, Scriptores, p. 70; Birch, p. 122. The Hundred Rolls for Warwickshire record the claim of Richard de Loges that he ‘had no warrant other than by ancient tenure without charter’: The Warwickshire Hundred Rolls of 1279–1280, ed. T. John (Oxford 1992), p. 143. ‘Ancient’ is not defined. 132  He mortally wounded Alan la Zouche in open court in Westminster Hall in 1270: Lapsley, ‘John de Warenne’, p. 46; F.M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, 2 vols (Oxford 1947), ii. 584–5; Crouch, ‘Warenne Family’, pp. 293–5. 133  Chronicon de Lanercost, p. 168.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  227 Some defendants in Quo warranto proceedings initiated by Edward I’s first great inquiry of 1274–75 are recorded in the rolls as pleading that they held franchises ‘from the Conquest’.134 By 1285, now identified as the likely year of Warenne’s outburst, the king’s serjeants had come consistently to deny that any franchise was prescribable.135 They followed Bracton and perhaps pre-empted its up-to-theminute epigones, Fleta, Britton, and the Mirror of Justices, in defining all franchises as exclusively regalian, while acknowledging that kings could delegate them.136 Indeed, a franchise could only lie in a royal grant, because it was a royally conceded exemption. Delegation and prescription were in the view of these authorities antithetical: ‘No time runs against the king’, Bracton had written, adapting a Roman law tag to English circumstances.137 In the 1285 opinion of Chief Justice of the King’s Bench Ralph of Hengham, Edward I had himself said ‘with his very own mouth’ that he did not wish to be bound by any prescription.138 It was evident that the Conquest would henceforth be frequently invoked in court in support of the contention that franchises might legitimately be prescribed for, rather than just delegated by royal grant. In the view of some defendants, prescription could and perhaps should be traced from that point, regardless of the standard limitations on prescription. It had therefore become urgent for the king’s serjeants and justices to formulate a line on the Conquest’s significance in these respects. Thus, for instance, Gilbert of Thornton, king’s counsel and then from 1290 Hengham’s successor as Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, repeatedly argued that ‘from the Conquest of England’ all franchises had been ‘attached to the king’s Crown’.139 Bracton and its jurisprudential disciples had fused all franchises to the Crown, but they had not identified the Conquest as the cause.140 The forging of this new historical connection—making the Conquest its cause—seems to have been the work of Edward I’s lawyers, prompted by Quo warranto. William the Conqueror had acquired the crown in 1066; no-one else had. The novel legal import of the Conquest was also evident in the king’s unique ability, unlike any of his subjects, to use Quo warranto in claims to land, but only if the land in question were categorized as ‘ancient demesne’—that is to say, if it was recorded as having been the king’s in Domesday Book, and was 134 Sutherland, Quo Warranto, p. 82 n. 3 cites: William of Rosels, Yorks 1279–81, PQW 188–9; Roger Mortimer, Hants in Wilts 1281, PQW 816; Hugh of Oddingselles, Herts 1287, PQW 289; Godfrey of Beaumont, Norf. 1286, PQW 496; Henry of Boyce, Suff. 1286–7, PQW 729. 135 Sutherland, Quo Warranto, p. 72; PQW 239; on the redating of the Warenne episode, see above, p. 225. 136  P.A. Brand, ‘“Quo waranto” Law in the Reign of Edward I: A Hitherto Undiscovered Opinion of Chief Justice Hengham’, repr. in his Making of the Common Law, pp. 393–443, at 437–8. 137  Bracton, fo. 56 (ii. 167), cf. Dig. 41. 3. 18, Cod. 7. 33. 1.    138  Brand, ‘Quo waranto’, pp. 407–8. 139  Humphrey de Bohun, Hunts., 1286, PQW 303; Ralph de Beauchamp, Beds 1287, PQW 3–4; William de Braose, Gloucs 1287, PQW 259; The Eyre of Northamptonshire, 3–4 Edward III (1329– 1330), ed. D.W.  Sutherland, 2 vols, Selden Soc., xcvii (1981), xcviii (1982), i. 92; P&M i. 573; Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 83–4. 140  Bracton, fos 14 (ii. 57–8), 55b–56 (ii. 166–7); Fleta III. vi (iii. 12); Mirror, p. 113; Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 14, 45.

228  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 therefore shown to have been demesne at the time of the Conquest. That was the definition of ‘ancient’. Legal opinions differed, but it seems to have been widely accepted at this point that in other circumstances the king had to pursue claims to other categories of land in the same ways as his men, and that he was subject, or voluntarily subjected himself, to the same temporal limitations on prescription.141 Franchises could only be held legitimately by someone other than the king if the tenant could vouch a royal grant as warranty—most commonly a royal charter, whether the original or a confirmation (though it was sometimes argued that a charter was insufficient in itself).142 Yet the invocation of the Conquest against prescriptive claims, and in favour of delegation, was not sustained unflinchingly by the king’s serjeants. In 1286, Thornton argued that Isabel of Panton could not withdraw her tenants from the sheriff ’s tourn in Rutland: it would not be lawful for any baron to act in this way, ‘especially not for those whose antecessores did not come at the Conquest’.143 The only way to interpret this reported obiter dictum is that it might conceivably be lawful for a baron to act thus, provided that he (or, as in this exceptional case, she) had succeeded as heir to a liberty of this kind acquired by an ancestor at the Conquest.144 Even some of the king’s serjeants, it seems, might occasionally, in the cut and thrust of forensic argument, ac­know­ ledge that possibility, while rejecting prescription against the king in any other circumstance.145 It was therefore hardly surprising that the words attributed to the earl Warenne in Walter of Guisborough’s Chronicle epitomized an effective contemporary defence against royal assertiveness, or that the records reveal a defence along those lines being repeatedly mounted in court. It was, of course, a defence barred to clerical defendants. They would be embarrassed as well as incorrect if they argued that they held as heirs (or successors) of Norman conquerors,146 and could hardly claim that their predecessors had conquered lands or franchises over

141  P.A.  Brand, ‘Limitation and Prescription in the Early English Common Law (to c. 1307)’, in Dondorp et al., eds, Limitation and Prescription, pp. 125–45, at 133, 141–2. I should like to thank Professor Brand for supplying me with a copy in advance of publication. 142  See, for instance, the reported views of Hankford JCP in a case of 1411: Pasch. 12 Hen. IV, pl. 13, fo, 21b. 143  Isabel of Panton, Rutland, PQW 671; Sutherland, Quo Warranto, p. 84. 144  For another oblique allusion, in this case explaining why the abbot of St Mary’s, York, was barred by his clerical status from making such a claim, see CP 40/125m. 260, quoted by Brand, ‘“Quo waranto”’, p. 428 n. 195b. 145  In 1285, in less pressured circumstances, Ralph of Hengham may have mounted a similar argument in response to one of the queries from justices in the Northamptonshire Eyre which I have already discussed, on p. 227. Brand, ‘“Quo waranto”’, p. 440, interprets the passage, p. 427, in this way, but concedes that it is corrupt. There is no explicit allusion to individual conquest, and Hengham argues elsewhere, p. 441, that there should be no distinction between the tenure of judicial franchises by those ‘who came at the conquest of England’ and those who had received them in other ways, for instance by virtue of a grant in maritagium, or for service. 146 Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 78, 83.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  229 lands—that is to say, liberties—in 1066.147 Hence the greater importance for prelates of adducing evidence of a royal grant. That evidence might date from before the Conquest as well as after.148 With a handful of obvious exceptions, such as Battle Abbey, founded as an act of penance by the Conqueror on the very spot where the Conquest had been accomplished, their churches had an existence which transcended the Conquest, and which was, by contrast with lay tenancies, richly documented, with charters recording royal grants.149 ‘Many [houses] of religion were founded before the Conquest and still have the endowments with which they were founded.’150 So whereas the Conquest had come to be of great moment for lay defendants, it was of little significance for the vast majority of clerical defendants.151 But the importance it held for laymen in the 1270s and 1280s, reflected in the tale of the earl Warenne’s irascible outburst in 1279 or 1285, was to be diminished by the 1290 Statute of Quo warranto. The statute bowed to baronial resentment by licensing prescriptive claims in practice,152 without renouncing the Bractonian royalist principle that all franchises were annexed to the Crown, and could therefore be enjoyed only by the king’s delegation. No longer would tenure since the Conquest, as a result of an ancestor’s conquest at that point, be a plausible justification for prescription. The hitherto conventional equation or equivalence between the Conquest and ‘time out of mind’153 was sundered. Henceforth a different, more recent definition of the point at which ‘time out of mind’ had ended was substituted: ‘before the time of King Richard’, with that ‘time’ deemed to have started on the day of his cor­on­ ation, 3 September 1189. There were already precedents for attributing legal significance to this date, or something approximating to it. At the Easter Parliament of 1275 the Statute of 147  PQW 122, 671, 676–7; P&M i. 573 and n. 6; Sutherland, Quo Warranto, p. 101. Cf. v. Abbot of St Mary’s, York in 1298, CP 40/125m. 260, quoted by Brand, ‘“Quo waranto”’, pp. 428–9 n. 195b; Year Books of Edward II., Vol. II., 2 & 3 Edward II. A.D.  1308–1309 and 1309–1310, ed. F.W.  Maitland, Selden Soc., xix (1904), pp. 71–4 (=2 Edw. II, pl. 141, fo, 19); Year Books of Edward II., Vol. VI. 4 Edward II. A.D. 1310–1311, ed. G.J. Turner, Selden Soc., xxvi (1914), pp. 93–6 (=Hil. 4 Edw. II, pl. 44, fo. 26); Eyre of London ii. 177–8 (=14 Edw. II, pl. Civil [54], fo. 86), 209–11 (=14 Edw. II, pl. Civil [68], fo. 86). 148  v. the abbot of St Mary’s, York, PQW 122 (William Inge); PQW 671 (Gilbert of Thornton); v. abbot of Sawtry, Hunts. 1286 PQW 300 (Gilbert of Thornton); v. abbot of Ramsey, 1286 PQW 301–2, 305–6; v. bishop of Coventry, 1292 PQW 676–7; and Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench, ed. Sayles, ii. 142 (1293, Hugh Lowther). On the last of these, see Lapsley. ‘John de Warenne’, p. 48, cf. Sutherland, Quo Warranto, p. 103, n. 2, for a reconstruction of Lowther’s reasoning. 149  For instance, a case initiated by a writ precipe in capite in which the claim of the abbot of Peterborough, founded ultimately on a charter of King Edgar, was contested by the earl of Gloucester’s claim that his ancestor had had seisin in the reign of King Richard (and therefore within the limit of legal memory), see Reports iii. 245–51 (85 Northants. 11). 150  Eyre of Northamptonshire i. 93. 151  For an exception, see a case recorded in the Surrey Eyre of 1279, in which the prior of Christ Church Canterbury claimed that his predecessors had held a disputed estate even before the Conquest, and that it could not, therefore, be ancient demesne which had been usurped: Sutherland, Quo Warranto, p. 53, discussing J.I. 1/877 m. 56; for further discussion of ancient demesne, see below, pp. 233-46. 152  Brand, ‘Limitation and Prescription’, p. 142. 153  Brand, ‘Limitation and Prescription’, p. 138.

230  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Westminster I, c. 39, had updated the terminus in writ of right procedure to Richard’s reign, if not precisely to his coronation.154 The same terminus had also been used in some earlier Quo warranto cases.155 But in laying down this new common timescale for legitimate prescription of franchises, the Quo warranto statute of 1290 attempted to establish that such prescription was valid only if the king, on this basis, now issued a confirmation, in the shape of letters patent, on the basis of which a definitive judgment was then given.156 It was this con­firm­ ation, in effect a new royal grant, which guaranteed the tenure. This was how a compromise was struck which preserved Bractonian theory unalloyed, while allowing time, in practice, to run against the king. Even when the need for fresh, formal written confirmation was dropped shortly afterwards in an amending summary of the statute,157 the recognition by royal justices of prescriptive right amounted in effect to a royal confirmation. Those who could produce royal charters—typically prelates—in most cases had no need of the statute; it was of benefit only to those—most commonly laymen—who could not, and who therefore needed to claim by some sort of prescription.158 The key date for this sort of defendant had ceased to be 1066, and appeared to have become 3 September 1189.159 This would soon be accepted as the common point prior to which ‘time’ was deemed to be ‘out of mind’ or ‘immemorial’, legally speaking. This did not, however, mean either that all reference to the Conquest now ceased, or that the coronation of Richard I immediately became the, or even a, defining point of reference in Quo warranto proceedings, as it had recently been made for those initiated by the writ of right. The statute and its amending summary specified ‘before the time of King Richard’, as well as during Richard’s reign, and afterwards. Only in 1293 would the time prior to Richard’s coronation be excluded from consideration.160 The statute therefore left open, briefly, the possibility of pursuing the matter much further back into the past in the case of laymen as well as clerics,161 as had been the usual practice prior to its issue. A defendant might, for instance, invoke the Conquest when under pressure from 154  SR i. 36; Brand, ‘Limitation and Prescription’, p. 129. Note that other actions had different ­periods of limitation set by the same statute. 155 Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 226–8. 156 T.F.T. Plucknett, Legislation of Edward I (Oxford 1949), p. 46; Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 91–6, 203–5. 157 Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 92–4, 96–7, 204–5; Plucknett, Legislation, pp. 46, 49–50, and the review by F.M. Powicke, EHR, lxv (1951), 105–9, at 109, questions whether the summary was a subsequent amendment; further F.M. Powicke, Thirteenth-Century England, 2nd edn (Oxford 1962), p. 379 n. 2, cf. 342 n. 2. 158  For evidence of the bishop of Worcester’s claim to tenure of a franchise prior to the time of memory and in the absence of an extant charter, see Warwicks, 1285, PQW 783. As Brand, ‘Quo waranto’, p. 428, observes, it seems likely that there had been an oral royal grant. 159 Cam, Liberties & Communities, p. 180. 160  PQW 203, 352; Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 108, 212–13; Brand, ‘Limitation and Prescription’, p. 134. 161 Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 203–5.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  231 an uncompromising royal justice bent on minimizing the extent of the limited concession made by the king in 1290. Such a royalist diehard was Hugh Louther, who to this end continued to exploit Bracton’s distinction between two categories of franchise: major ones which together comprised the Crown itself, and were therefore inseparable from it, and minor ones which were delegable.162 In 1292 Richard of Baskerville argued against Louther that ‘at the time of the Conquest, manors with franchises appurtenant to them were given to those who could conquer them; and ancestors have been seised of this franchise since the Conquest, which is a time more remote than that limited for the writ of right’. Baskerville was pointing out that his ancestors had administered various Crown pleas not simply as far back as Richard I’s coronation, or in the undifferentiated period prior to it, but from the much earlier defining point of the Conquest.163 However, his acknowledgement that they had from the very start done so by royal grant, rather than by individual appropriation, represented a step back from the position attributed to the earl Warenne in Walter of Guisborough’s tale. Baskerville, like a latter-day Richard de Lucy, was claiming that his ancestor had received a grant from the Conqueror, not that the ancestor had conquered anything by and for himself at the time of the Conquest.164 He was acknowledging, in other words, that prescriptive claims rested ultimately on a royal grant, even when it was impossible to adduce surviving written evidence that the grant had ever been made. In that regard, he and Hugh Louther were in agreement, and Baskerville’s old fashioned invocation of the Conquest did not undermine the fine tuning of 1290. The statute had indeed done its work in preserving Bractonian theory on franchises. And if early charters chanced to survive, then prescription and ‘time out of mind’ were irrelevant, because ‘No-one may claim the same liberties both by royal charter and from time out of mind, for these two kinds of warrant contradict one another.’165 In that case, of course, the Conquest was of little moment, because pre-Conquest royal charters could be accepted as still valid. As we have seen, Bracton had stated—an opinion endorsed by Fleta—that the king was not bound to warrant the ‘grants and feoffments’ of pre-Conquest kings, because he was not ‘their heir’.166 But this seems to be one of those instances where Bracton’s 162 Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 101–6. 163  PQW 274; J.I. 1/740 m. 49; Year Books of the Reign of Edward the First: Years XX and XXI (1292– 1293), ed. A.J. Horwood, RS (1866), pp. 113–15 (=Trin. 20 Edw. I, pl. [78]), all discussed by Sutherland, Quo Warranto, p. 102. 164  For earlier examples, see v. Nonant, Dev., 1281–2, PQW 167; v. Lardener, Yorks. 1279–81, PQW 207, discussed Brand, ‘Quo waranto’, p. 428 n. 195a. 165  v. bishop of Winchester, Bucks. 1286, PQW 83–4; Sutherland, Quo Warranto, p. 113; cf. king’s counsel in answer to Gilbert of Clare, PQW p. 338: ‘There is no other warrant than ancient im­me­mor­ ial custom or the king’s special charter, neither of which the earl can show’: Reports iii. 218–23 (85 Northants. 5). It was a fundamental premise that custom could not be the subject of a royal grant: Baker, ‘Prescriptive Customs’, p. 148. 166  Bracton fo. 389b (iv. 217); see above, pp. 213, 215.

232  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 un­com­prom­is­ing royalism—its unwillingness to accept that the king could in any way be bound—was at odds with the practice of the king’s courts. Bracton in effect admits this, by conceding that the king might nevertheless have bound himself to warrant such pre-Conquest grants. As the abbot of Peterborough would argue in a case in 1285, the king alone was entitled to interpret the charters of his predecessores, who in this instance were deemed to include pre-Conquest predecessors.167 In 1330 Serjeant Shareshull argued in a Quo warranto case that ‘The Conqueror did not come to put out those who had rightful possession, but rather those who had wrongfully occupied land to the disinheritance of the king and of his Crown.’ An unsealed charter of King Edgar could be accepted by the king as adequate evidence of rightful possession.168 The most obvious explanation for the inclusion of the detail about the charter’s being unsealed would be to ­indicate that the court had recognized it as authentic. From a defendant’s point of view, one of the drawbacks of pre-Conquest royal charters was not that they pre-dated the Conquest, but that, whether genuine or forged, they were written in archaic terminology which might be deemed to lack the precision now required in the definition of modern franchises.169 Fleta attempted to provide a helpful glossary of Old English names for ‘special liberties from the grants of ancient kings’.170 But the abbot of Glastonbury clearly had his work cut out when, in 1275, he claimed the franchise of return of writs on the basis of a charter of King Ine.171 For such reasons, the charters of much more recent kings were sometimes substituted as more serviceable, though even they might need to be doctored if they were to be invoked as evidence for the existence of very recently devised franchises, such as return of writs.172 In 1411 an attempt by the abbot of Glastonbury to claim jurisdiction in a case of novel disseisin on 167 Brand, Reports iii. 245–51, at 248 (85 Northants. 11); cf. iv. 610–11. 168  PQW 551–7; Eyre of Northamptonshire i. 87–100, at 92–3. 169  P&M i. 577 and n. 2, qualified by Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 115 and n. 8, 231–3; Plucknett, Legislation, p. 41. 170  Fleta I. xlv (ii. 101–2), cf. II. lxi (ii. 205–6), which is adapted from LECf 30–1 (Gesetze i. 653–4); for other examples in thirteenth-century legal compilations, see London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii; BL, MS. Royal 14. C. ii, Roger of Howden’s Chronica incorporating his ‘Liber de legibus Anglie sicut teneri debent in regno Anglie’; BL, MS. Add. 14252; BL, MS. Add. 25005; London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 429; Cambridge, CCC, MS. 70; Oxford, Oriel College, MS. 46; all cited by Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, p. 55. 171  The Great Chartulary of Glastonbury, ed. A. Watkin, 3 vols, Somerset Record Soc., lix (1947), lxiii (1952), lxiv (1956), i. 220. 172  In 1279 the abbey of Chertsey claimed the franchise of return of writs by virtue of a writ of Edward the Confessor: PQW 744. The case was adjourned. The writ was a forgery, but it had been inspected and confirmed by Henry III in 1256: F.E.  Harmer, ed., Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester 1952), pp. 205–10; W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, 6 vols (London 1817), i. 432–4, no. 21; Close Rolls of Henry III, x. 193–4. A charter of Richard I was forged as a substitute between 1279 and 1281, perhaps because of the significance which Richard’s reign was taking on in terms of limitation. It was confected on the basis of two genuine charters of Richard, with suitable interpolations. The Statute of Westminster II (1285), c. 39, seemed to threaten the abbey anew, so it secured the inspection and confirmation by Edward I of the new forgery: S. Painter, Feudalism and Liberty (Baltimore, MD 1961), pp. 178–84; Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) preserved in the Public Record Office,

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  233 the basis of a royal grant recorded in a charter of William the Conqueror, and confirmed by Henry I, prompted one lawyer to argue that for this to be valid the assise would have had to be specifically mentioned in the charters.173 His opinion did not prevail, but it is nevertheless striking that he advanced it. The royal justices seem, perforce, to have become quite expert in the technical history of royal diplomatic, as suggested by the Quo warranto case of 1330 discussed above.174 In 1279 they adjourned a case which hung on a charter of King Richard, because they ruled that it was not clear that royal charters prior to the reign of King John had normally made ‘special mention’ of hundreds which they conveyed.175 In other words, the record implies, the learned judges thought they had sniffed out a forgery. In the abbot of Glastonbury’s case of 1411 it is unclear on what basis the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas felt qualified to pronounce authentic the cited charter of William the Conqueror;176 but this shows that the possibility of its being a forgery was at least mooted. It had, he added, been accepted by the judges in the reign of Edward III, and that was a time when the standards both of the judiciary and of the law had been at their apogee. Their acceptance of it then rendered it incontestable.

Ancient Demesne, the Crown, and Inalienability There was, however, another respect in which the Conquest remained, at least implicitly, a constant point of reference in court proceedings, and therefore in the plea rolls and forensic reports, and by reflection, in some works of jurisprudence. This was ‘ancient demesne’, otherwise termed ‘ancient manors’. Although Bracton gives an historical account of ancient demesne’s origins,177 it does not use either of these phrases. They are, however, defined in Britton as ‘lands which were part of the ancient manors annexed to our Crown’,178 and repeatedly used, without any apparent need for explanation or definition, in Fleta.179 Initially antiquitus appears to have been a synonym for aliquando. In this adverbial sense, it meant nothing more than that at some (unspecified) time in the past the manor in question had been in the king’s demesne.180 But the shift to adjectival usage mirrored a developing precision. What ‘ancient’ meant, or was refined into meaning in the courts during the reign of Edward I, was outlined by Ralph of Hengham in his (London 1916–1968), i. no 1221; CCR, 1257–1300, p. 309. The sequence of events is reconstructed by Clanchy, ‘Return of Writs’, 76–7; Clanchy, Memory, pp. 170–1. 173  Hil. 12 Hen. IV, pl. 3, fo. 12b–13b. 174  See above, p. 232. 175  PQW 694; Sutherland, Quo Warranto, p. 119. 176  Hil. 12 Hen. IV, pl. 3, fo. 12b–13b. 177  Bracton, fos 7–7b (ii. 37–8), cf. above, p. 212. 178  Britton, III. ii, 11 (ii. 12–13); cf. III. xx, 8 (ii. 142). 179  Fleta, I. viii (ii. 17); III. vi (iii. 12); P&M i. 384 n. 1. 180 R.S. Hoyt, The Royal Demesne in English Constitutional History, 1066–1307 (Ithaca, NY 1950), pp. 178–80.

234  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 1285 response to the queries of the Northamptonshire justices: free land cat­egor­ ized as the king’s in Domesday Book,181 a view reportedly shared by Gilbert of Thornton.182 The refined precision appears to have been a consequence of the king’s anomalous use of Quo warranto to recover land, but only land which could be documented and therefore categorized in this way. Another catalyst was the further royal inquest into tenements and liberties of all kinds which was started in 1279.183 These proceedings reveal lowly tenants sitting on juries and anxious to claim ancient demesne status for their tenements. By this point, the status entailed very valuable privileges for the villein tenants, and a corresponding restriction on their lords’ exercise of lordly powers. The privileges included freedom from the obligation to attend hundred and shire courts, and exemption from payment of geld or toll and from contributing to murdrum fines. Moreover, even if the villein sokeman held land in a manor no longer exploited in the king’s hand, he was obliged to pay tallage when the king’s tenants paid. Most important of all, his rents and services were fixed, and could not be raised. In their anxiety to secure these privileges, tenants might assert that the land had been held by one of Edward the Confessor’s predecessors— Æthelstan, for instance184—or (with less hope of success) by one of the Conqueror’s successors.185 There was no superfluity of surviving ancient documentation, so they had to exploit whatever came to hand. The waters could profitably be muddied by attempts to define by reference to surviving ancient documents the precise services due from villein tenants on any particular ancient demesne manor. The exact date of the evidence was not of great moment, provided that it was suitably antique—the men of King’s Ripton, Hunts, for instance, invoked evidence from the reign of Cnut, presumably because that was what chanced to survive.186 The king’s justices responded to this sort of wriggling desperation by applying the Domesday Book test more and more stringently, as Ralph of Hengham 181  Brand, ‘Quo waranto’, p. 438, discussed pp. 402–6; Brand, ‘Limitation and Prescription’, p. 133; cf. above, p. 227. 182  Brand, ‘Quo waranto’, p. 443. 183  For the writ, see RH ii (1818), p. ix; Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 25–31; S. Raban, A Second Domesday? The Hundred Rolls of 1279–80 (Oxford 2004), pp. 37–8, 190–1. 184 Branscombe, Devon: RH i. 68; M.A.  Barg, ‘The Villeins of the Ancient Demesne’, Studi in memoria di Federigo Melis, 2 vols (Rome 1978), i. 213–37, at 219; DB i. 102; E.M. Hallam, Domesday Book through Nine Centuries (London 1986), p. 95. 185  Stonesfield and Combe, Oxon: RH ii. 46; Barg, ‘Villeins’, p. 219; B. Schumer, The Evolution of Wychwood to 1400: Pioneers, Frontiers, and Forests (Leicester 1984), pp. 46–7; Hallam, Domesday Book, pp. 96, 67. 186 Vinogradoff, Villainage , pp. 110–1 and n. 3, quoting YB Trin. 3 Edw. I, m. 14, d. On King’s Ripton, see Select Pleas in Manorial and Other Seigneurial Courts, ed. F.W. Maitland, Selden Soc., ii (1889), p. 99; P&M i. 399 n. 1. In another case, concerning Alvergate, Norfolk, the tenants sought to render the services which they claimed their predecessors had done in the time of Henry II: P.R.  Hyams, Kings, Lords, and Peasants in Medieval England. The Common Law of Villeinage in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Oxford 1980), pp. 64–5, discussing KB 26/121, m. 32 (Norfolk 1240).

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  235 advised them to do in their assessment of the king’s own claims. For a favourable verdict it became generally necessary that the land in question should have been recorded as terra regis in Domesday Book.187 Clerks at the Exchequer were routinely instructed to check,188 and to copy out exemplifications189—the only official exemplifications of records from before the time of legal memory. ‘The record of the Book which is in the Treasury and called Domesday’ could be invoked as proof in other sorts of case too.190 An exemplification was produced in court, in some instances reportedly with a theatrical flourish191 ‘under the foot of the seal’,192 and sometimes quoted in the record in the original Latin.193 But ancient demesne was the only type of case in which the Conquest remained of regular legal significance. Where ancient demesne was concerned, exemplifications of Domesday were, or became, almost always conclusive: in 1279 the tenants of Langar, Notts, who sought ancient demesne status, attempted to avoid the Book being consulted at all. It was, regardless, and their anxiety turned out to have been justified: the Book established the falsity of their claim.194 But if the Exchequer clerks failed to identify the parcel of land in question in Domesday’s terra regis,195 that was not in itself conclusive evidence that it had not then been and therefore could not now be ancient demesne.196 There was and remained some doubt, for instance, about the status of manors which were recorded in Domesday as having been held by Edward the Confessor, but which had no longer been listed in the terra regis when the Book had been compiled.197 Thus in a case of 1321 some argued that anything Edward the Confessor had held in demesne qualified, while others argued that only those lands ‘which the Conqueror conquered, and which had been in the seisin of St Edward on the day he died’ counted.198 In 1375 it was argued that everything which Domesday recorded as having once been in the 187 Hoyt, Demesne, p. 173; Brand, ‘Quo waranto’, p. 406. 188  For instance, J.I. 1/877 m. 56, cited by Sutherland, Quo Warranto, p. 53; further Hoyt, Demesne, pp. 175–7, where the regularising of this procedure is attributed to the inquest of 1274–5 on alienations. 189 H. Jenkinson, Domesday Re-bound, (London 1954), pp. 48–9; Hallam, Domesday, pp. 57–8. 190 Brand, Reports iii. 248 (85 Northants. 11); Year Books of Edward II, Vol. XII: 5 Edward II (1312), ed. W.C. Bolland, Selden Soc., xxxiii (1916), pp. 14–19 (= Pasch. 5 Edw. II, pl. 19, fo. 33); Jenkinson, Domesday Re-bound, pp. 49–50; Hallam, Domesday, pp. 58–64, 107–8. 191  Hil. 29 Edw. III, pl. [29], fo. 9a–9b. 192  Mich. 40 Edw. III, pl. 30, fo. 45b–46b. 193  Mich. 40 Edw. III, pl. 29, fo. 44b–45b; Mich. 40 Edw. III, pl. 30, fo. 45b–46b; Trin. 49 Edw. III, pl. 8, fo. 22b–23a. 194  Placitorum in domo capitulari Westmonasteriensi asservatorum abbreviatio, ed. G.  Rose and W. Illingworth, Record Commission (London 1811), p. 197; DB i. 288–9; Hallam, Domesday, p. 96. 195  Year Books of Richard II: 11 Richard II, 1387–1388, ed. I.D. Thornley and T.F.T. Plucknett, Ames Foundation, Year Books Ser., v (1937), pp. 175–8 (Hil. 11 Ric. II, pl. 15). 196  P&M i. 399 n. 1; Hoyt, Demesne, p. 173. 197  P&M i. 399; Hoyt, Demesne, pp. 172–3 n. 7. Vinogradoff argued, Villainage, pp. 90–1, that strictly speaking any ‘Crown lands... on the day when King Edward was alive and dead’ constituted ancient demesne; but Hoyt shows that this is too neat, and ignores the ambiguities of the thirteenthcentury evidence. 198  Mich. 15 Edw. II, pl. [37], fo. 455r–455v. In a case of 1339—Mich. 13 Edw. III, pl. 54; Year Books of the Reign of King Edward the Third. Years XIII and XIV, ed. L.O. Pike, RS (1886), pp. 103–7—it was argued that only those lands which the Conqueror had established had been in the hands of ‘St Edward’ were ancient demesne.

236  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 hand of Edward the Confessor, but which was held by someone else at the time the Book was made—instancing the manor of ‘Totenham’—was nevertheless ‘adjudged ancient demesne by the whole council’ because it was recorded as having been at an earlier point in the king’s possession.199 There was, however, no doubt that being included in terra regis at the point of Domesday was definitive proof that the land in question had been and therefore remained ancient demesne. Charter evidence, plentiful and reliable though it might be, was insufficient.200 And proving that the land was ancient demesne by the Domesday test did not necessarily entitle particular current tenants on it to the coveted ‘certain status’ of ancient demesne villein sokemen: ‘Domesday Book does nothing for them’ was a characteristic response from a defendant.201 ‘Ancient’ used in its new adjectival sense with respect to royal demesne meant appearance in Domesday Book’s terra regis, not anything more antique. Kings prior to Edward the Confessor were for these purposes strictly speaking ir­rele­vant, although, as we have seen, some claimants attempted to obfuscate by invoking more ancient evidence of their service obligations, and it was perfectly possible that the estates of earlier kings were still in Domesday’s terra regis, and therefore qualified.202 Demesne which kings prior to Edward the Confessor had alienated by definition could not constitute ancient demesne.203 What Edward and/or William the Conqueror were recorded as having held was now treated as if it were the primordial demesne of the king.204 Much of it was no longer in the king’s hand in Edward I’s day; it had often been granted out in the intervening centuries.205 Nevertheless, whether still in the king’s hand or not, all such lands came to be regarded as in some sense the original endowment of the king. The point is underlined by the fact that lands which had first come into the king’s hand subsequent to Domesday Book—for instance by escheat or forfeiture— could not be categorized as ancient demesne.206 Land could be so categorized only if it was recorded as terra regis in the late eleventh-century document, although the category itself had been coined only in the late thirteenth century. 199  Trin. 49 Edw. III, pl. 8, fo. 22b–23a. It is impossible to identify which manor is meant. No manor which might possibly be spelled ‘Totenham’ was recorded in Domesday as having been in King Edward’s hands t.r.e. No manor of any name held by Edward t.r.e. has passed to the earl of Chester by 1086, which is what the Year book entry asserts of ‘Totenham’. It is interesting that Domesday could be so misread in the fourteenth century. I should like to thank Chris Lewis for investigating this puzzle for me. 200  Trin. 49 Edw. III, pl. 8, fo. 22b–23a. 201  Placitorum asservatorum abbreviatio, pp. 270–1, quoted and discussed by R. Faith, ‘The “Great Rumour” of 1377 and Peasant Ideology’, in R.H. Hilton and T.H. Aston, eds, The English Rising of 1377 (Cambridge 1984), pp. 43–73, at 50. 202  For instance, Branscombe, Devon, RH i. 68, which had been held by Edward the Confessor’s predecessors: DB i. 102; Barg, ‘Villeins’, p. 219; Hallam, Domesday Book, p. 95, cited above, p. 234. 203  BNB 1237, cited by Vinogradoff, Villainage, p. 90. 204  P&M i. 383. This may be the implication of the invocation of Domesday by the king’s serjeant in Brand, Reports ii. 189–201 (1285.3), at 198 (though cf. 201), which is not an ancient demesne case. 205 Hoyt, Demesne, pp. 174–5. 206  T. Madox, History and Antiquities of the Exchequer, 2 vols (London 1711), i. 704; Vinogradoff, Villainage, pp. 89–90; Brand, ‘Limitation and Prescription’, pp. 133–4.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  237 It should not be confused with the earlier, twelfth-century, ascription of certain manors, just like pleas and liberties, ‘to the Crown’.207 By Richard fitzNigel’s time, this bureaucratic usage had become standard.208 It was echoed in the in­ter­pol­ ations to the London version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris which ascribed ‘lands and honours . . . dignities and rights and liberties’ to the corona regni.209 How the lands in question were to be defined or identified was not explained. The interpolator did not specifically designate as such estates which were currently in the king’s hand, or had been so at some unspecified point or points in the past. If he took any view on the historicity of ‘Crown lands’, he probably conceived of them as having existed well prior to the Conquest, as Richard fitzNigel certainly did.210 And he neither suggested nor implied that there was a more restricted category of primordial king’s land, whether defined by reference to Domesday Book’s terra regis or not. Nor did he ever use the term ancient demesne: his Crown land bore very little resemblance to it. Bracton repeatedly borrowed, without acknowledgement, from these in­ter­pol­ ations, and accurately reproduced them in most of these respects.211 It differed only in explicitly countenancing the king’s ‘transfer’ to others of lands which ‘belong to the Crown’;212 the interpolator of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, by contrast, had deemed such lands by definition inalienable. Indeed, the in­ter­pol­ ator suggested that the king’s duty not to alienate was embodied in the oath which he took at his coronation, just as his other duties were. The king was obliged to swear ‘touching the sacrosanct gospels’ before the prelates crowned him.213 Edward the Confessor himself, the interpolator claimed, had done his not very impressive best to honour this undertaking to recover lands which had previously been dissipated.214 The implication that the Confessor had taken this very oath confirmed that the Leges Edwardi was incapable of suggesting that lands ascribed 207 For the emergence of this meaning during the early twelfth-century, see G.  Garnett, ‘The Origins of the Crown’, in Hudson, ed., Centenary Essays on ‘Pollock and Maitland’, pp. 171–214; for subsequent developments in England, F. Hartung, Die Krone als Symbol der monarchischen Herrschaft im ausgehenden Mittelalter (Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1940, Phil.-hist. Kl., nr. 13, Berlin 1941), pp. 6–13. 208  Dialogus I. iv, p. 20, cf. II. x, pp. 140, 144; cf. Glanvill, I. 1–2, pp. 3–4. 209  LECf 11. 1 A2; Gesetze i. 635; E.H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ 1957), pp. 167, 346; J.C. Holt, ‘Rights and Liberties in Magna Carta’, repr. in his Magna Carta and Medieval Government (London 1985), pp. 203–15, at 207–9; J.C. Holt, Magna Carta, 3rd edn, ed. G.  Garnett and J.G.H.  Hudson (Cambridge 2015), pp. 108–09, 122–3. H.G. Richardson, ‘The Coronation in Medieval England. The Office and the Oath’, Traditio, xvi (1960), 111–202, argues, 166–7, that these interpolations, and the London recension of the Leges Edwardi, are much older than the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum in which they were included. Indeed, he dates them probably to early in Henry II’s reign. His reasoning is deeply implausible—so much so that it has led to the unwarranted neglect of his earlier work on the English coronation. 210  Dialogus, I. iv, p. 20. 211  Bracton, fos 14 (ii. 58); 56 (ii. 167), 103 (ii. 293), 107b (ii. 305). 212  Bracton fo. 14 (ii. 58). There were other ‘quasi-sacred’ things attributed to the Crown which could not be alienated, but lands were not amongst them. 213  LECf 11. 1 A9; Gesetze i. 636. 214  LECf 13. 1 A2; Gesetze i. 640. He had failed to ‘recover everything. He did not have the strength to be able to restore and reform the kingdom into its original state.’ Cf. above, p. 128.

238  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 to the Crown had acquired their distinctive, inalienable quality at or as a result of the Conquest, or that they were defined by categorization as terra regis in Domesday Book. That specific historical link, definitive of ancient demesne, was forged only later, as I have already suggested, in forensic argument, during the later thirteenth century. Only afterwards would it be possible for Britton, as we have seen, to elide the two categories215—an elision which may have been facilitated by one characteristic allegedly common both to ancient demesne and the Crown land of the London interpolator: inalienability. Maitland considered that there was a ‘strong sentiment’216 in favour of the in­ali­en­abil­ity of royal lands and franchises. He ventured that it was rooted in ancient demesne, which he accepted at face value as genuinely ancient. We now know that the principle of inalienability had long antedated the devising of ancient demesne.217 Unlike that thirteenth-century innovation, the principle was not defined by reference to the surviving documentation of the Conqueror’s reign.218 In other respects the interpolator of the Leges might have expressed himself with a Galfridian flamboyance unbecoming in a lawyer, but his interest in inalienability nevertheless appears to reflect twelfth- and thirteenth-century reality. In 1101 King Henry I told the newly elevated Pope Paschal II that he regarded himself as obliged to preserve in England the ‘dignities, uses, and customs’ which his father had enjoyed in the kingdom.219 In late 1212 or early 1213, in letters helpfully drafted on John’s behalf for the English and Irish barons to send on his behalf to Innocent III, they informed the pope that their king had ‘preserved whole and inviolate the liberty and dignity in which the Crown of England has

215  Britton III. ii, 11 (ii. 12–13), cited above, p. 233.    216  P&M i. 518. 217  Maitland’s view was shared by all scholars prior to the publication of Hoyt’s book, which proved that ancient demesne was a thirteenth-century invention. For inalienability of ecclesiastical estates in twelfth-century England, see M.  Cheney, ‘The Litigation between John Marshal and Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1164: A Pointer to the Origin of Novel Disseisin’, in J.A. Guy and H.G. Beale, eds, Law and Social Change in British History (London 1984), pp. 9–26; M. Cheney, ‘A Decree of Henry II on Defect of Justice’, in D.E. Greenway, C. Holdsworth, and J. Sayers, eds, Tradition and Change: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Chibnall (Cambridge 1985), pp. 183–93; M.  Cheney, ‘Inalienability in MidTwelfth-Century England: Enforcement and Consequences’, Monumenta iuris canonici, series C, Subsidia, vii (Vatican City 1985), pp. 467–78. 218  At least in part it appears to have grown out of the terms in which the Conquest had been justified, as I tried to show in Conquered England, Part IV. But it was not defined by reference to Domesday Book, or any other post-Conquest document. And as established by E.H. Kantorowicz, ‘Inalienability. A Note on Canonical Practice and the English Coronation Oath in the Thirteenth Century’, repr. in his Selected Studies, pp. 138–50, at 147, the introduction of an inalienability clause into the king’s cor­ on­ation promises may plausibly be attributed to the influence of Cardinal Guala, the papal legate who administered the oath of fealty which Henry III took to the pope in 1216. 219  S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Opera omnia, ed. F.S. Schmitt, 6 vols (Rome–Edinburgh 1938–61), iv. 114 (ep. 215). This letter was included in the second part—termed by Liebermann the second book—of Quadripartitus. Indeed, it survives only in Quadripartitus (and therefore also in John Brompton’s Chronicle): R. Sharpe, ‘The Dating of Quadripartitus Again’, in S. Jurasinski, L. Oliver and A. Rabin, eds, English Law before Magna Carta. Felix Liebermann and Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Leiden and Boston, MA 2010), pp. 81–93, at 86 and n. 13.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  239 hitherto rejoiced’.220 Although Bracton gives no indication of knowing it, Henry III may well have sworn at his coronation what the London version of the Leges Edwardi claimed Edward the Confessor had sworn at his: to preserve royal rights and recover those which had been alienated.221 It is more likely that Edward I did likewise;222 in 1275 it was claimed on his behalf that he was bound by his cor­on­ ation oath to ‘do nothing that touches the diadem of this realm without having resorted to the counsel of prelates and magnates’.223 Elsewhere he professed himself obliged to recover royal franchises, even if he himself had alienated them prior to his accession—in one instance, ironically enough, to the earl Warenne.224 Pace Maitland, then, inalienability was by this stage more than a sentiment, even a strong one. It was a legal principle, which had been authoritatively embodied, by 1234, in the universal law of the Church.225 The decretal excerpted in this canon law, written by Pope Honorius III to the archbishop of Kalocsa in 1220, had concerned the king of Hungary,226 but some of its phrasing is close to or identical with English documents, including the London interpolations to the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, which are earlier.227 The relationship between these English documents and Honorius’s Hungarian decretal is beyond the scope of the current discussion,228 but it is irrefragable that the interpolation in the Leges is very closely related to a letter of Pope Gregory IX addressed to King Henry III in 1236, which purports to echo the terms of a letter from the king to him, now lost, to which it replies.229 There are similarities with Innocent III’s annulment of 220 Only the Irish one survives: H.G.  Richardson and G.O.  Sayles, The Irish Parliament in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Philadelphia, PA 1964), pp. 286–7, discussed above, p. 142. 221  Bracton fo. 107 (ii. 304), reproduces a standard text of the oath in the third recension of the English coronation ordo, but fails to mention a fourth clause, concerning inalienability, which is documented elsewhere in the thirteenth century: H.G.  Richardson, ‘The English Coronation Oath’, Speculum, xxiv (1949), 44–75, at 61–3; Kantorowicz, ‘Inalienability’, pp. 138–140, 148; Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, pp. 348–9, 354–8; further W. Ullmann, ‘On the Influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth in English History’, repr. in his The Church and the Law in the Earlier Middle Ages (London 1975), ch. XIII, pp. 257–76, at 262–3. A fourth clause concerned with inalienability is not included in any cor­on­ ation ordo, or in any separate record of what the new king swore during the ceremony, as preserved for 1308: see below, pp. 255–6. 222  Kantorowicz, ‘Inalienability’, pp. 139, 148–9; Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, p. 356. 223  Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons, ed. F. Palgrave, Record Commission, 2 vols in 4 (London 1827–34), i. 381–2, quoted by Richardson, ‘Oath’, 49, and Kantorowicz, ‘Inalienability’, pp. 139 and n. 7, 149 and n. 60, King’s Two Bodies, p. 361, who offers an explanation for the use of diadema in this instance rather than more conventional corona. 224  PQW 429–430, discussed by Brand, ‘Quo waranto’, p. 412. 225  Corpus iuris canonici X., 2. 24, c. 33 (Intellecto); Kantorowicz, ‘Inalienability’, p. 140 n. 13; p.  147 n. 53; p. 150 nn. 66–7, 69; Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, pp. 354–5; P.  Riesenberg, Inalienability of Sovereignty in Medieval Political Thought (New York, NY 1956), pp. 48–51, 113–28. 226  Potthast 6318. It had initially been included in the so-called Compilatio Quinta in 1226; further Richardson, ‘Oath’, 48–9, 52; Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, pp. 354–5. 227  Richardson, ‘Oath’, 52, cf. 61–2. 228  For a characteristically ingenious suggestion, see Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, p. 356; cf. Riesenberg, Inalienability, pp. 100–1, 122–3. 229  Foedera I. i. 229, Potthast 9952; Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland. Papal Letters, AD 1198–1304, ed. W.H. Bliss (London 1893), i. 148; Richardson, ‘Oath’, 52; Kantorowicz, ‘Inalienability’, p. 139.

240  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Magna Carta, dated 24 August 1215.230 It is clear, then, that the London in­ter­pol­ ator was not—at least in this respect—a fantasist. His terminology is shared with the letter sealed at John’s instigation by the Irish barons in late 1212 or very early 1213, and quoted above.231 The putative date of his interpolations—which necessarily existed when the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum was compiled— suggests that he may have helped to shape, rather than just echoed, the development of a doctrine of inalienability with respect to the king’s estates. The English kingdom was fertile ground for the growth of such a doctrine. Shortly after his accession, Henry II reportedly ordained that royal demesne lands and rights should be restored to their status quo under Henry I, or more precisely, on the day when Henry I had been alive and dead.232 In practice, however, there was after 1154 no attempt to impose a blanket restoration of what had obtained in 1135. That would have been impossible. Instead, Henry II exploited what could be established about that status quo in 1135 in order to raise revenue.233 He and subsequent kings held recurrent inquests into alienated royal demesne, both lands and rights, for similar fiscal purposes.234 The Quo warranto proceedings fit into this by then time-honoured tradition. It was how Domesday was interpreted in one fourteenth-century case of novel disseisin.235 The doctrine of inalienability, expressed in the London revision of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, and in a putative new fourth clause of the English coronation oath, elaborated a juridical basis for such exploitation. It was not intended to be, and never was, a justification for wholesale resumption. Paradoxically, inalienability was a means of extracting large sums for royal demesne which had at some point been allowed to pass into other hands. As shown by the sixth chapter of the Dictum of Kenilworth of 1266, subsequently deemed of such moment that it was incorporated into collections of statutes, the principle could and did prove immensely lucrative to kings.236 Ancient demesne, once precisely formulated, had a defining point much earlier than 1135, though whether that point was what had been held by Edward the Confessor at the time of his death in 1066, or such lands still in Domesday’s terra regis in 1086, or some other variant, was the subject of constant forensic contention. But as in the case of previous characterizations of royal demesne as inalienable, no attempt was or could be made to recover for the king himself all ancient demesne which had been alienated. Rather, the new category provided a means 230  Select Letters of Innocent III concerning England (1198–1216), ed. C.R. Cheney and W.H. Semple (Edinburgh 1953), no. 82 (Potthast 4990), pp. 215–16: ‘compositionem inhire cum ipsis non solum vilem et turpem, verum etiam illicitam et iniquam, in nimiam diminutionem et derogationem sui iuris pariter et honoris’; cf. Kantorowicz, ‘Inalienability’, p. 139 n. 6. 231  Richardson, ‘Oath’, 53 n. 54; Richardson and Sayles, Irish Parliament, pp. 286–7. 232 Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 303–8. 233 Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 308–14. 234 Hoyt, Demesne, pp. 146–9, 154–6, 162–70, 202; Hyams, Kings, Lords, and Peasants, pp. 246–7. 235  Mich. 13 Edw. III, pl. 54; Year Books of the Reign of King Edward III: Years XIII and XIV, ed. Pike, pp. 103–7. 236 Stubbs, Charters, p. 408; Hoyt, Demesne, pp. 164–6.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  241 by which royal income could be raised, regardless of whether the land in question were currently in the king’s hand. Purprestures were one such potential source of income.237 Another was tallage, levied exclusively on the king’s demesne in all its forms, and payable by tenants both free and villein.238 It was one manifestation of the increasingly intensive exploitation of royal demesne—or fisc, as Matthew Paris rather affectedly characterized it239—which resulted from the fact that tax­ ation of it was exempt from the requirement to secure conciliar consent consequent on Magna Carta.240 Tallage thereby became a prerogative tax. Its scope could be vastly extended if it covered former as well as current demesne.241 It meant that kings developed a much closer interest in the tenants of those who held lands which could be shown to have once been the king’s, including their villein tenants. Indeed, kings recognized that such villein tenants needed to be husbanded as a newly lucrative royal resource. That all these potential sources of royal revenue, or financial liability, depended ultimately on what could be established by reference to Domesday Book meant that it, and the Conquest more generally, became subjects of intense and repeated administrative and forensic scrutiny. The definition of the king’s land depended on the evidence of the Book. In the early thirteenth century, villein tenants on manors in the royal demesne were, for complicated reasons, progressively debarred from availing themselves of procedures in the king’s central courts or before his justices in eyre, remedies which had formerly been available to them as they were to all free men.242 In other words, in this particular respect the king’s villeins began to be treated like villeins on the estates of lords other than the king. They were obliged to seek just­ ice in the court established for the purpose within the manor, presided over by the king’s bailiff,243 just as the villeins of lords other than the king had long sought justice in manorial courts presided over by their lords’ bailiffs. But the king ensured that in this forum his villeins received protection analogous to that which they had formerly enjoyed in his courts. This was the purpose of new procedures modeled on those available to free tenants, embodied in what would later be

237  Glanvill ix, 11–13, pp. 113–15; Dialogus, II. x, pp. 138–40; Hoyt, Demesne, pp. 93–5, 148–9. 238 Hoyt, Demesne, pp. 107–24, 144–6; S.K. Mitchell, Taxation in Medieval England (New Haven, CN 1951), chs. 5–8; C.  Stephenson, Borough and Town. A Study of Urban Origins in England (Cambridge, MA 1933), pp. 163–5; B.P. Wolffe, The Royal Demesne in English History (London 1971), pp. 22–4; G.L.  Harriss, King, Parliament, and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford 1975), pp. 134–5. 239  CM iii. 219–20. 240 Powicke, Thirteenth-Century England, pp. 529–31. 241 Hyams, Kings, Lords, and Peasants, p. 247 n. 105, points out that there had been no exam­in­ation of this royal expansion. 242 Hoyt, Demesne, p. 197; Hyams, Kings, Lords, and Peasants, pp. 246–8; M.K.  McIntosh, ‘The Privileged Villeins of the English Ancient Demesne’, Viator, vii (1976), 295–328, at 307–12; M.K.  McIntosh, Autonomy and Community: the Royal Manor of Havering, 1200–1500 (Cambridge 1986), pp. 28–31. 243  For these arrangements in the king’s manor of Havering, Essex, which are exceptionally welldocumented, see McIntosh, ‘Privileged Villeins’, 312–20.

242  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 known as the little writ of right close244—the only writ to ‘run’ in the ancient demesne245—and in the ‘very peculiar’ writ monstraverunt.246 These two writs were a manifestation of kings’ desire to husband their valuable resource. Exceptionally, they afforded villein tenants of the king rights analogous to those of free men; hence Bracton’s coining of that Romanesque neologism for villein sokemen, glebae ascripticii.247 Or as Britton later elaborated, affecting to speak in the person of King Edward I: ‘those who are free of blood and hold land of us in villeinage . . . are properly our sokemen’.248 Subsequent jurisprudential con­sid­er­ ation of either of these exceptional writs necessarily raised the subject of the Conquest, at least by implication. Such exceptional rights for villeins were acceptable, indeed desirable, to the king as their manorial lord because kings were the exception to the general lordly move, beginning around 1180, towards direct exploitation of estates.249 This move meant that manorial lords other than the king exploited the labour services of their villeins, in so far as they could, more and more intensively. As Magna Carta would reveal, the king had access to many sources of potential extra income not available to other lords, so the incentives towards direct exploitation did not weigh as heavily on him. In any case, sheriffs were responsible for running most royal estates, and that created its own particular difficulties, because shire farms were fixed by custom. The raising of extra revenue by means of direct exploitation would have been hobbled, so was less appealing than to other lords. Kings were much more interested than other lords in having prosperous villeins who could be milked for tax, especially a tax which could be levied on an almost arbitrary basis, rather than in labour services, which at least in terms of duration tended to be fixed by custom. In Britton’s words, the services of the king’s villein sokemen could not ‘be increased or altered, so that they shall do any other or greater services, or in any way other than as they have been used to do’.250 And of course the 244 McIntosh, Autonomy and Community, pp. 31, 33–4, 43–4; Novae Narrationes, ed. E. Shanks and S.F.C.  Milsom, Selden Soc., lxxx (1963), B 277, B 288; Early Registers of Writs, ed. E.  de Haas and G.D.G. Hall, Selden Soc., lxxxvii (1970), I–1-A-ii-b. 245  Year Books. . . 2 & 3 Edward II, ed. Maitland, p. 59 (=2 Edw. II, pl. 133). 246 Vinogradoff, Villainage, pp. 101–5; Hoyt, Demesne, p. 200; McIntosh, Autonomy and Community, p. 38 n. 8; Novae narrationes, pp. lii–liv, A 33, B 254: ‘this same R. wrongfully demands of them other customs and services than they ought to do for him, and which none of their ancestors, tenants of the aforesaid manor, were accustomed to do in the time when this manor was in the hands of the kings of England, predecessors of our lord king Edward who now reigns, namely in the hands of William the Bastard, conqueror of England, and in the hands of King Henry the elder, which Henry gave the manor of H. to J. de Bigod, ancestor of this same earl, to have and to hold in the same manner as he and his predecessors held’; Early Registers of Writs I–4-B-ii-c. 247  Bracton, fo. 7b (ii. 37); cf. Dialogus I, x, p. 80; I, xi, p. 86; Hyams, Kings, Lords, and Peasants, pp. 26–7, 269–72. 248  Britton III. ii, 11 (ii. 13). 249  P.D.A. Harvey, ‘The English Inflation of 1180–1220’, Past & Present, lxi (1973), 3–30, at 9–14; P.D.A. Harvey, ‘The Pipe Rolls and the Adoption of Demesne Farming in England’, EcHR, 2nd ser., xxvii (1974), 345–59: Hyams, Kings, Lords, and Peasants, pp. 246–8. 250  Britton III. ii, 11 (ii. 13).

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  243 privileges of an ancient demesne villein sokeman became very and increasingly attractive to the villeins of other lords, as the demands which those lords made upon them became more onerous. It meant that their lords’ claims on them were circumscribed by royal authority.251 The writ of monstraverunt protected them against the exaction of any services over and above those which villeins on that land could be shown to have once owed to a king. The privileges became potentially accessible to such tenants once the king’s demesne was defined not as what he currently had in hand, but as what his predecessors were recorded as holding in Domesday Book, when the demesne had been at its greatest verifiable extent. With this document-based, retrospective extension in the bounds of royal demesne, it is easy to see how a common interest developed between the villeins of lords other than the king and the king himself. The rights and privileges accorded to ancient demesne tenants, including use of the little writ of right close and the writ monstraverunt, meant that such villeins fell over themselves in their anxiety to establish in court that their tenures should be categorized as within the ancient royal demesne. This is what connects ancient demesne with villein sokemen: the collusive interest of king and villeins in maximizing the extent of the ancient demesne. It is what explains both the increasingly frequent forensic recourse to Domesday Book and the adoption, initially on behalf of the king, of the canonical rhetoric of inalienability. It was as a fiscal resource, not as land for direct exploitation, that royal administrators saw the royal demesne as inalienable; and there was no shortage of aspiring tax payers, because the advantages of ancient demesne privilege were widely recognized as outweighing the disadvantages of liability to tallage.252 Or at least tallage seems to have been accepted as a price worth paying intermittently for the privileges of an ancient demesne villein sokeman. But the financial self-interest of villeins was not the only reason why ancient demesne status was so desirable: it exempted land from most common law procedures, and could therefore be used to stop a case.253 It could establish a form of personal freedom: hence the extraordinary episode in 1377 when villeins in some forty villages in Devon, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex withdrew, on the basis of mass exemplifications which they had commissioned from Domesday Book, the labour services they owed to their lords.254 The claims were contested, but there could be no clearer evidence that as a result of the invention of ancient demesne the Book had become a subject for intensive discussion in the lower levels of late fourteenth-century society. In those forty villages in 1377 villeins presumably talked of little else. And the freedoms sought were grounded in what the Book established had existed prior to the Conquest. 251 Hoyt, Royal Demesne, pp. 171–207. 252 Hallam, Domesday, pp. 95–7. 253  Mich. 2 Edw. III, pl. 10, fo. 15a–15b; Mich. 4 Edw. III, pl. 34, fo. 47b; Mich. 18 Edw. III, pl. 77 (Year Books of the Reign of King Edward III. Years XVIII and XIX, ed. L.O. Pike, RS (1905), pp. 328–31); Mich. 20 Edw. III, pl. 38 (Year Books of the Reign of Edward III: Year Book XX, ed. L.O. Pike, 2 vols, RS (1908–11), ii. 321–3). 254  Faith, ‘The “Great Rumour” of 1377’, passim.

244  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Claims to ancient liberties were generally grounded in pre-Conquest documentation.255 This particular episode helps to explain why in the later middle ages the Conquest remained the key dividing line in English history, though no longer a subject of widespread historiographical interest. Predictably, Fleta and Britton made the point about inalienability of royal demesne more stridently than earlier treatments.256 Fleta, but not Britton, also developed Bracton’s analysis in another way. It elaborated on the connection between what it termed ‘the ancient manors or rights annexed to the Crown’257 and the historical account which Bracton had given elsewhere of the peculiar privileges of different categories of tenant on the royal demesne ‘before the Conquest, at the Conquest, and afterwards’.258 As we have seen, the particular category which was, according to Bracton, created in the immediate aftermath of the Conquest, had been termed by him glebae ascripticii.259 These were hitherto free Englishmen who had held freely at the time of the Conquest, had then been ‘ejected by the more powerful’, but had subsequently been allowed to ‘return’ to what had once been their tenements. Henceforth they held these restored tenements on new, villeinous terms, while nevertheless remaining free men. They thus became villein sokemen of the royal demesne. Although their restored tenements were newly villeinous, their tenure remained secure so long as they performed their set obligations—hence Bracton’s careful coining of that neologism glebae ascripticii.260 As previously noted, this historically specific account bears some similarities to that found in the Dialogus de scaccario, of certain AngloSaxons who had been dispossessed after the Conquest being given possessions by new French lords, initially on new, precarious terms, and subsequently, at the king’s instigation, of those new grants being secured by ‘inviolable law’.261 But Bracton’s discussion is not dependent on Richard fitzNigel’s, which never suggests that the dispossessed English were restored to what they had formerly held, which repeatedly emphasizes that they had ‘no title of succession from the time of the subjugation of [their] race’, which makes no reference to royal demesne, and which, while not entirely clear, seems to cover both villeins (coloni) and nobles (maiores). It is also plain that Bracton’s concern, unlike fitzNigel’s, is a recondite, legal one. Bracton’s purpose is to explain why different categories of royal demesne 255  J.C. Crick, ‘Pristina libertas: Liberty and the Anglo-Saxons Revisited’, TRHS, 6th ser., xiv (2004), 47–71. 256  Fleta I. viii (ii. 17); III. vi (iii. 12); Britton II. iii, 3 (i. 221–2). In doing so they betrayed something of their origins, for from the summer of 1293 the king ceased to assert a prima facie right to recover any land which could be shown to be ancient demesne. Just as with franchises after the statute of 1290, those who held such lands were now deemed to have prescribed them, provided that their ancestors had held them since the time laid down as immemorial in that statute—the coronation of Richard  I.  See further PQW 203, 352; Sutherland, Quo Warranto, pp. 108, 212–13; Brand, ‘Quo waranto’, pp. 410–11; Brand, ‘Limitation and Prescription’, p. 134 and n. 38. 257  Fleta I. viii. 258  Bracton fos 7–7b (ii. 37–8), 26 (ii. 90), 209 (iii. 132). 259  See above, p. 242.    260  Bracton fos 7 (ii. 37), 209 (iii. 132). 261  Dialogus I, x, p. 82; Vinogradoff, Villainage, pp. 121–2; cf. above, pp. 118, 212.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I  245 tenant are permitted to use certain common law actions and remedies, but barred from using others.262 Uncharacteristically, it seeks to ground its explanation in the historical origins of the categories, all of which it relates to the Conquest. As history, this explanation cannot be accounted a success. Such explanations seldom are. But just as Bracton’s principal purpose was to explain certain legal technicalities, so its invocation of the history of the Conquest to this end reflected, as we might expect, practice in the courts, as evidenced, for instance, by Bracton’s Note Book. In this connection, as in others, the Conquest had become a topic of frequent forensic reference. But Bracton does not explicitly link it with the question of ancient demesne—a phrase which, to reiterate, the treatise never deploys. Bracton therefore never identifies these post-Conquest villein sokemen on royal manors as ancient demesne tenants. Nor does it suggest that ancient demesne was created at or by the Conquest (though it does observe in passing that such sokemen held in villeinage ‘ab antiquo’).263 But it is easy to see how the author of Fleta could have forged a link between notional free English peasant survivors who had been reinstated under the Conqueror on the one hand, and, on the other, the exceptional category of ancient demesne, which not much later was said to be so exceptional that it lay outside the scope of the common law.264 Paradoxically, ancient demesne was exempt from the common law precisely because its villein sokemen enjoyed, by royal favour, some of the privileges enjoyed by free men at common law. The plea rolls appear to record the king’s serjeants repeatedly arguing in court that franchises had been annexed to the Crown at or by the Conquest.265 It hardly required a great logical leap on the part of thirteenth-century English jurisprudents to suggest that the unique privileges of villein tenants on manors which had been the king’s at a fixed point in the past—privileges which Bracton had ascribed (by implication) to William the Conqueror—reflected a parallel, simultaneous fusion of the king’s estates with the Crown. But Bracton assumed, and Fleta states at the outset of its discussion of ancient demesne villeins, that what was annexed to the Crown could be divided into two categories: manors and rights. If the Conquest had had a profound effect on the latter, it made sense for it to have done so on the former too. Forensic proceedings with respect to villein sokemen and ancient demesne, like Quo warranto, had therefore prodded analytical jurisprudents into quasi-historical argument and explanation during the thirteenth century. Under these stimuli, the Conquest was becoming subject to renewed lawyerly attention just as it was fading from the

262 Hoyt, Demesne, p. 184. 263  Bracton fo. 26 (ii. 90). 264  Year Books of Edward II., Vol. I., 1 & 2 Edward II A.D. 1307–1309, ed. F.W. Maitland, Selden Soc., xvii (1903), pp. 92–3, 192; Year Books of Edward II., Vol. XII., 5 Edward II (1312), p. 78; Year Book of the Reign of Edward the Third. Year XX, ed. Pike, ii. 520, no. 99; Plucknett, Legislation, p. 16. 265  See above, pp. 229, 233, 244.

246  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 consciousness of writers of history. Hence its occasional surfacing in works of jurisprudence of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Fashionable, abstract terminology borrowed from the learned law was deployed by the interpolator of the London version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris of John’s reign, and subsequently adopted by Bracton and his epigones. It occasionally found its way into the records of proceedings in the king’s courts. This provides further evidence that legal compilations and analytical jurisprudence were not entirely distinct from forensic practice. The continuing practical relevance of the compilations prompted the multiple recopying, in early fourteenth-century London, of the Collection of Leges Anglorum which had been devised there a century earlier, and which has been discussed in the three preceding chapters. For our purposes, this proved to be the most resilient and therefore the most important jurisprudential work of all. Its renaissance in the early fourteenth century and subsequent career will form the core of the next chapter.

7

The Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II Edward II’s Reign and After

The Second Flowering of the London Collection It was no coincidence that the London Collection was resurrected during the reign of Edward II, which was to prove even more politically catastrophic than John’s. If on the contemporary continent, where the ius commune of canon and civil (Roman) law held sway, political theory was ‘apt to look like sublimated jurisprudence’,1 in England the excavation and invocation of very old royal legis­ lation against current kings tended to take on the appearance of sublimated political theory. Those who found themselves ranged against innovative, grasp­ ing, but often inept kings had learnt a very important lesson from a dynasty which had founded its title on a particular interpretation of the English past, designed to establish that, jurisprudentially speaking (as in other ways), the Conquest had not disrupted the kingdom’s continuity. In the thirteenth and early fourteenth cen­tur­ ies the London Collection proved to be perhaps the most durable source of such jurisprudential reference—certainly the one in which long term English legal continuity loomed largest. This remained true despite the very considerable changes experienced by English law during the thirteenth century, which were more obviously reflected in the other thirteenth-century works of jurisprudence which had intervened between the two flowerings of the Collection. They rapidly became outdated and were superseded. It, by contrast, seemed as relevant in the 1320s as it had in the 1210s, and of course much of its most demonstrably influ­ ential material consisted of re-edited early twelfth-century Latin translations of pre-Conquest material. Andrew Horn, fishmonger and, from 1320 to 1328, Chamberlain of the city, and therefore a judge in the Guildhall court, appears to have been the prime mover in a substantial elaboration and amplification of it.2 He did not do so out of disinterested antiquarian curiosity, though there are indications that such a 1  F.W. Maitland, ‘Introduction’ to O. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, trans. F.W. Maitland (Cambridge 1900), p. viii. 2  J. Catto, ‘Horn, Andrew’, ODNB. The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

248  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 curiosity was sometimes aroused by his discoveries.3 Evidence of his careful investigations in the archives for current purposes is also preserved in the mar­ gins of the city’s copy of the Eyre Roll of 1276, annotated to highlight precedents which could be cited during the Eyre of 1321.4 That Eyre constituted a determined assault by the king on the city’s autonomy,5 and Horn was in the vanguard of the defence.6 In 1310 he himself reports that the then Mayor had unearthed and pub­ lished documents from the Guildhall archive which established ‘ancient customs and liberties’.7 None of the four major books for which Horn was responsible and bequeathed to the Guildhall8 can be straightforwardly identified with his Liber custumarum, which appears to have been compiled sometime between 1324 and 1327, and which includes an extensive account of that later Eyre.9 Nevertheless, his was the mind behind its compilation too; it is very closely interconnected with his other works.10 What sounds like his voice—correcting the king’s justices on procedure, asserting the powers of the Mayor and Aldermen, and recalling unenrolled details of a case involving fishmongers—can occasionally be detected in its report of Eyre proceedings.11 It has been suggested that this ‘Liber’ was omitted from his

3  J. Catto, ‘Andrew Horn: Law and History in Fourteenth-Century England’, in R.H.C. Davis and J.M.  Wallace-Hadrill, eds, The Writing of History in the Middle Ages. Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford 1981), pp. 367–92, at 383–4. 4  The Eyre of London 14 Edward II A.D. 1321. Year Books of Edward II, Vol. XXVI (parts I, II), ed. H.M.  Cam, 2 vols, Selden Soc., lxxxv (1968), lxxxvi (1969), i. p. xv; The London Eyre of 1276, ed. M. Weinbaum, London Record Soc., xii (1976), pp. xi–xii. Horn had access to rolls prepared by Hugh de Waltham, Common Clerk of the city. These recorded precedents Waltham had found in royal ­documents kept in the Tower: The London Eyre of 1244, ed. H.M. Chew and M. Weinbaum, London Record Soc., vi (1970), pp. xiii, xv; London Eyre of 1276, pp. xi-xii, xxv–xxvii. 5  Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis; Liber albus, Liber custumarum, et Liber Horn, ed. H.T. Riley, 3 vols in 4 parts, RS (1859–62), ii, pt. 1, Liber Custumarum, pp. 285–432. 6 M. Weinbaum, London unter Eduard I und II. Verfassungs- und Wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Studien, 2 vols (Stuttgart 1933), i. 34–6; M.  Weinbaum, ‘Andreas Horn, ein Londoner Stadtkämmerer’, in L. Santifaller, ed., Festschrift Albert Brackmann (Weimar 1931), pp. 508–19. 7  Annales Londonienses, in CREE, i. 175; Horn is shown to be the author at pp. xxiii–xxviii; cf. Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 374–5. 8  For his will, see LMA, Hustings Roll 57, no. 16, printed in N.L. Ramsay and J.M.W. Willoughby, Hospitals, Towns, and the Professions, CBMLC, xiv (London 2009), pp. 150–2; Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 370–1. 9  The identification of the various volumes is complicated by their rearrangement in the early modern period, and in this case by the fact that items currently bound together in what is now called the ‘Liber custumarum’ in the LMA were originally parts of distinct volumes. This ‘Liber custumarum’, assembled in the seventeenth century, is not to be confused with Horn’s ‘Liber custumarum’, although much of Horn’s is included in the seventeenth-century one. Horn’s ‘Liber custumarum’ is re-assembled and described in N.R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, I., London (Oxford 1969), pp. 21–2; Ker, MLGB, p. 126 and n. 6; cf. Eyre of London 14 Edward II i. p. xii; Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 378–80. The original volume from which it came is designated C in N.R. Ker, ‘Liber custumarum, and Other Manuscripts formerly at the Guildhall’, repr. in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage, ed. A.G. Watson (London 1985), pp. 135–42, at 136–7; and 139–40, for its being conjoined with other material in the seventeenth century; see below, pp. 249–50. 10  Ker, ‘Liber custumarum’, p. 136. 11  Munimenta; Liber custumarum, ii, pt. 1, pp. 288, 366–7, 406, all cited by Catto, ‘Law and History’, p. 379; cf. Liber custumarum, pp. 394, 399, 401, 403, 408.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  249 will because it was his vade mecum as Chamberlain, and was therefore already lodged in the Guildhall camera during his lifetime.12 As a whole this volume was animated by a concern to record and defend the city’s ancient privileges, which in Edward II’s reign in particular meant defending them against the assertive king. In 1326 the city revolted on the news of the landing of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer.13 When, in March 1327, a new charter was issued in the name of the new king, Edward III, Horn was chosen to read it out to the citizens, assembled in the Guildhall, and to explain its terms in English.14 According to one narrative, it ‘granted to the City of London all their franchises which they had earlier lost, and granted to the City other franchises that had never been granted before’.15 The charter went into great documentary detail about the former; Horn was evidently acknowledged as the pre-eminent expert in London on the current relevance of such historic documentation.16 His expertise was founded on substantial archival research. Two of the manu­ script compilations which he bequeathed to the Guildhall and which contained large amounts of historical documentation were eventually to be dismembered and reassembled, by Matthew Parker and Robert Cotton respectively. This process, together with the complex history of Horn’s other compilations, has been recon­ structed by Neil Ker, on whose findings the following discussion depends.17 Ker labels these two putative Horn originals B and D respectively. In their reconfig­ ured, early modern forms these books were to enjoy, as we shall see in the next volume, a new and arguably still more influential afterlife in the seventeenth cen­ tury. Fortunately, the early modern rearrangements preserve enough clues to reconstruct most of what Horn’s originals contained. They included three extant attempts, demonstrably linked to Horn, to improve on the version of the Leges Anglorum in the London Collection of John’s reign. One of these was originally in his Liber custumarum—labelled C by Ker—the volume which was not in a formal sense bequeathed to the Guildhall, because it was already in the Guildhall’s camera during Horn’s lifetime.18 The section of this original volume which included the Leges now forms part of Oxford, Oriel College MS. 46.19 It was not at the beginning

12  Catto, ‘Law and History’, p. 379. The inner chamber appears to be where records were kept in the pre-1411 Guildhall: C.M. Barron, The Medieval Guildhall of London (London 1974), p. 22. It is unclear how, if at all, this related to the book-room between the Mayor’s Court and the Inner Council Chamber in the Guildhall built after 1411: Barron, pp. 31, 34. 13  Annales Paulini, CREE i. 315–22. 14  Annales Paulini, CREE i. 325; G.A.  Williams, Medieval London. From Commune to Capital (London 1963), pp. 298–300. 15  The French Chronicle of London, ed. G.J. Aungier, Camden Soc., 1st ser., xxviii (1844), p. 59. 16  Eyre of London 14 Edward II i. pp. xix–xxii. 17  Ker, ‘Liber custumarum’, pp. 135–42. For D, Ker’s siglum for the original volume which included the other material included in the current ‘Liber custumarum’, also confusingly later titled ‘Liber regum antiquorum’ and ‘Liber legum antiquorum regum’; see below, pp. 251–2. 18  See above, n. 12. 19  Oxford, Oriel College, MS. 46, fos 1r–108r.

250  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 of the original volume, but started on what was its fo. 97;20 so in this instance Horn does not seem to have seen the Leges as prefatory. This appears to have been the latest of the three surviving copies of the Leges commissioned by him.21 The earliest, to be dated roughly 1313, was originally at the start of the com­pil­ ation by Horn which Ker labelled B. In that respect, it most closely followed the model in the London Collection of John’s reign, though it was demonstrably not copied from the extant manuscript.22 The book was divided, probably by Archbishop Matthew Parker in the mid sixteenth century, into two: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MSS. 70 and 258. An identifiable late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century copy of Quadripartitus had been used at the time of writing to correct and amend the copy of the text of the Quadripartitus element of the Leges found in the London Collection of John’s reign.23 Despite this scholarly meticu­ lousness on Horn’s part, the chronologically re-ordered sequence of royal (and other) law codes from the version of Quadripartitus in the London Collection24 was preserved, contrary to the identifiable model against which the new edition was corrected. While Horn valued textual accuracy, it is evident that he also thought it essential to preserve the London Collection’s chronological re-sequencing of Old English royal legislation. The corrections, additions, and cross-references are likely to be in Horn’s own hand, which also appears in notes added to the Quadripartitus manuscript with which the new edition was collated.25 To this col­ lection were appended two late thirteenth-century law books which I have already discussed: the only extant medieval copy of the vernacular Mirror of Justices, and one of the many copies of the contemporaneous, vernacular Britton.26 Horn lumped the two together as ‘books not sealed by the king, although much pleaded in the times of kings Edward son of King Henry and Edward son of King Edward’.27 In Horn’s view, these two very different almost contemporary works of

20 M.V. Clarke, Medieval Representation and Consent. A Study of Early Parliaments in England and Ireland, with Special Reference to the Modus tenendi parliamentum (Oxford 1936), p. 360; Ker, ‘Liber custumarum’, pp. 135–7. 21 Ker, ‘Liber custumarum’, p. 136; P. Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, repr. in his Legal Culture, pp. 81–114, at 87, 90; Wormald, Making, pp. 237–8. 22  LHP, pp. 62–3. 23  London, BL, MS. Cotton Titus A. xxvii, a witness in the library of St Augustine’s, Canterbury; F. Liebermann, Über die Leges Anglorum saeculo XIII ineunte Londoniis collectae (Halle 1894), p. 2; Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 380, 383; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 87, 89–90. A possible e­ xplanation for two annotations dated to the thirteenth century in the earliest surviving witness of the London Collection, Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155, fos 10r–v, is that it had also been com­ pared with the Titus manuscript: M.R. James. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Latin Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library at Manchester i (Manchester 1921), pp. 269–70. 24  See above, pp. 125–6. 25  Catto, ‘Law and History’, p. 380; R.  Hanna, London Literature, 1300–1380 (Cambridge 2005), pp. 82–3. For Horn’s ownership, see Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 70, p. 101, MS. 258, fo. 1r. 26  Ker, ‘Liber custumarum’, p. 136. 27  Corpus Christi College, MS. 70, p. 190; Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 373–4. The description is in one respect curious, because Britton presents its Bractonian content in the guise of legislative pro­ nouncements by Edward I; see, for instance, Britton, ed. F.M. Nichols, 2 vols (Oxford 1865), i. 1.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  251 jurisprudence belonged together, and they epitomized recent forensic practice. Evidently he did not regard the Mirror as the work of a fantasist; moreover, he considered its historical perspective germane to the understanding of current English law. The scholarly care shown by Horn in undertaking this project—the Quadripartitus manuscript against which this edition was corrected was cited in the margin as from the library of St Augustine’s, Canterbury,28 which he presum­ ably visited—is consistent with his careful archival work on the Eyre Roll of 1276; it also reveals a comparable recognition of the contemporary relevance of historic material, though over a vastly longer timescale. The evidential basis was quite dif­ ferent from that of the Mirror of Justices, and the form totally different, but the implicit message was similar: that English law had developed seamlessly from remote antiquity. It is striking that although the Mirror was included by Horn in this volume, neither the author of the Mirror nor the copyist had made any iden­ tifiable use of any of the ancient laws preserved in the preceding parts of the vol­ ume, which are written in the same hand. This strongly suggests that the Mirror was of distinct origin, and strengthens the case against Maitland’s attempt to identify Horn as the author.29 A second and demonstrably subsequent copy of the Leges, to be dated about 1322, was a much more polished version, as promised in its predecessor.30 It is labelled D by Ker, and its reconstruction is much more complicated than that of Ker’s B.  Surviving parts, now distributed between (1) the Liber albus,31 (2) the current Liber custumarum (not to be confused with Horn’s eponymous work),32 both in the London Metropolitan Archives, (3) London, BL, Cotton MS. Claudius D. ii,33 and (4) Oxford, Oriel College, MS. 46,34 are richly illuminated.35 The book was designed to impress. Its text of Quadripartitus and other royal law codes is now in MS. Cotton Claudius  D.  ii.36 As in the case of Horn’s earlier 28 London, BL, MS. Cotton Titus  A.  xxvii, fos 89r–174v; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 87; B.C. Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, CBMLC, xiii (2008), i. p. lxvii, BA1.895b. 29  The Mirror of Justices, ed. W.J. Whittaker and F.W. Maitland, Selden Soc., vii (1895), pp. xlvii–li; Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 373–4. 30  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 70, p. 191, quoted by Catto, ‘Law and History’, p. 373 n. 2. 31  LMA, MS. CUST 12, fos 16–39. 32  LMA, MS. CUST 6, fos ii, 1–84, 86–102, 173–86. 33  Fos 4r–27v, 33r–43v, 45r–118v, 127r–138r, 269r–80v. 34  Fos 109r–211r. 35  For detailed reconstruction, see Ker, ‘Liber custumarum’, pp. 135–42, esp. 135, 137–9, 140–2, and the supplement, p. 142, to p. 137 n. 11; Ker, Medieval Manuscripts I., 20–1; Ker, MLGB, p. 126 n. 5. Fos 16–39 of the Liber albus were removed from this volume in the middle ages, not by Robert Cotton. The now rearranged segments of the original volume contain miniatures which are the work of artists who decorated the so-called Queen Mary Psalter: London, BL, MS. Royal 2. B. vii, dated c. 1310–20. See further L. Dennison, ‘Liber Horn, Liber Custumarum, and other manuscripts of the Queen Mary Psalter workshops’, in L.  Grant, ed., Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in London, Transactions of the British Archaeological Association Conference, x (Leeds 1990), 118–34; for Oriel College MS. 46, see J.J.G. Alexander and E. Temple, eds, Illuminated Manuscripts in Oxford College Libraries, the University Archives, and the Taylor Institution (Oxford 1985), p. 29; for BL, MS. Cotton Claudius  D.  ii and Oriel MS. 46, see L.F.  Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285–1385, II., A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, ed. J.J.G. Alexander, 5 (London 1986), no. 68, who gives the modern foliation of the constituent parts. 36  BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii, fos 4r–27v, 33r–43v.

252  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 putative B, and by contrast with his later putative C,37 this collection of royal law codes provided the opening folios of D in its original form. Its text of the Leges does not depend on that in the earlier copy—Ker’s B—whereas that which would subsequently be copied in Horn’s Liber custumarum—Ker’s C—does.38 The wit­ ness of Quadripartitus and other leges in D therefore stands apart from Horn’s other two volumes. It suggests that in the interim between their compilation he had undertaken further research to prepare what appears to be a grand, presenta­ tion copy; and that, for whatever reason, this was not taken into account when C was subsequently compiled. The extant London Collection of John’s reign had supplemented its rearranged version of Quadripartitus with its own unique versions of the Willelmi Articuli— the Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati—and of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris in its fourth, much amplified version. These therefore featured in all Horn’s adapta­ tions of the Collection. Indeed, so impressed had Horn long been by the evocative and (as we have seen) highly influential preamble of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris that it had, exceptionally, been featured at the end of another collection of more modern legal materials, beginning with a statement of London customs, known as Liber Horn—the collection which included the record of Kentish custom dis­ cussed earlier.39 Liber Horn is textually linked with the modern materials in Horn’s other collections.40 As its original colophon records, he had commissioned it in 1311;41 material continued to be added until 1319.42 In origin, therefore, it predates those of his extant collections which included copies of the Leges Anglorum.43 It includes twenty folios of notes from Britton;44 and a number of other recent, brief, specialized legal treatises: Ralph of Hengham’s Summa parva,45

37  The table of contents of this volume, now MS. CUST 6, fo. 284, is printed in Munimenta, Liber custumarum ii, pt. 2, pp. 488–90. 38  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 89–90 and n. 32. He characterizes the copy in B, subsequently copied in C, as ‘a more cousinly tradition’ to the extant copy of John’s reign, which is more closely reproduced in D. That the version of the Leges in C was copied from B is also argued by Downer, LHP, pp. 52–7, 71–2; and for the relationship between D and the London Collection of John’s reign, pp. 62–3. Liebermann, Über die Leges Anglorum, pp. v–viii, juxtaposes the contents of the three versions in their modern manuscripts. 39  LMA, MS. CUST 2; see above, p. 224. 40  Thus, for instance, the ordering of statutes in Ker’s C is almost the same as that in ‘Liber Horn’, and one difference can be explained by a peculiarity of Liber Horn: Ker, Medieval Manuscripts I., p. 22. For ‘Liber Horn’, see Ker, Medieval Manuscripts  I., pp. 27–35; Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 371–2. Items in ‘Liber Horn’ are marked with instructions for copying in later books: Ker, p. 28. 41  The original colophon is now in the middle of the volume: LMA, ‘Liber Horn’, fo. 206; Ker, Medieval Manuscripts I, pp. 27–8. 42  Catto, ‘Law and History’, p. 372. 43  LMA, ‘Liber Horn’, fo. 375r–v (art. 81); Ker, Medieval Manuscripts  I., p. 34; Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 371–2, 387. It was bequeathed to the Guildhall along with Horn’s other books; it appears to be the fourth book itemized in his will (the third was a copy of Henry of Huntingdon). 44 Ker, Medieval Manuscripts I., p. 33. 45  Radulphi de Hengham summae, ed. W.H. Dunham (Cambridge 1932), pp. 51–77.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  253 the Exceptiones ad cassandum brevia,46 the Summa Fet asaver,47 Walter of Henley’s Hosebandrie,48 and Seneschausie.49 It appears to be referred to in another of Horn’s books.50 There can be no certainty that the fragment from the beginning of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris was included in this volume when it was first compiled, in 1311. Indeed, its being appended to a collection which had been greatly expanded and reorganized between 1311 and 1319 would suggest not. But even if Horn’s interest in Old English law had not been first aroused by the opening sec­ tion of the Leges Edwardi, the inclusion of this section in this collection indicates that he had come to recognize it as of particular moment. The excerpt continues to the end of LECf 8. 3a, where it terminates. It is followed by the statement: ‘You will find in this book the laws and customs ordained by this same William [the Conqueror] and his successors.’ In fact the manuscript, at least as it survives today, contains no supposed legis­ lation of William I (other than this initial bit of the Leges Edwardi), but many statutes issued by his thirteenth-century successors. In the volume’s present form, therefore, its concluding promise about its contents is only partially fulfilled in the preceding matter. This may be why a corrector inserted a ‘not’ before ‘find’; but two contemporary copyists of Liber Horn seem to have felt that the thirteenthcentury statutes contained in the book justified the promise, and left the state­ ment unchanged.51 The chronologically earliest (apocryphal) royal law in Liber Horn, with which it paradoxically concluded, might be interpreted as reflecting Horn’s jurispruden­ tial trajectory, as evidenced by the multiple legal collections into which he subse­ quently inserted the London Collection’s version of the Leges Anglorum. And of course the Leges Edwardi Confessoris had marked the culmination of the historic part of the Leges Anglorum in that Collection. Liber Horn started where their his­ toric element concluded. It was a book evidently designed for use in the city courts, combining relevant statutes and up-to-the-minute legal treatises with case-law and the customs of the city. Horn’s subsequent compilations worked back from the laws of William I as embodied in the Leges Edwardi, but they were no more mere antiquarianism than was the London Collection on which he based them. Like it, they also included a great deal of more up to date material, particularly material relevant to London. They, too, were evidently designed for practical use. 46  Four Thirteenth-Century Law Tracts, ed. G.E. Woodbine (New Haven, CN 1910), pp. 163–83. 47  Law Tracts, ed. Woodbine, pp. 53–115. 48 D.  Oschinsky, Walter of Henley and Other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting (Oxford 1971), pp. 113–90, 307–85. 49 Oschinsky, Estate Management, pp. 75–112, 261–305. 50  In Ker’s B, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 70, p. 191; Hanna, London Literature, p. 68. 51  LMA, ‘Liber memorandum’ and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson B. 356; Ker, Medieval Manuscripts I., p. 35.

254  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 All Horn’s manuscripts demonstrate that in the early fourteenth century the continuity of English law from the earliest times remained a matter of pressing relevance to an important official in the city, just as it had been to an anonymous counterpart at the opening of the thirteenth century. The sympathy Horn demon­ strably felt for the agenda of the anonymous compiler of the original London Collection is manifest in the treatment of the Lords Ordainer in the con­tem­por­ ary Annales Londonienses, the authorship of which can also, with near certainty, be ascribed to him.52 He was someone deeply interested in ancient law who also wrote contemporary history. In his view, like that of the compiler of John’s reign, ancient law was relevant to current affairs. They were both right. Horn’s conventional stress on legal continuity was compounded by the ma­ter­ ial with which he chose to supplement his first attempt, in Ker’s B, at a new edi­ tion of the London Collection. Although the Mirror of Justices does not contain anything which has been demonstrably derived from the genuine and apocryphal leges, copied out in the same volume in the same hand,53 its fundamental premise too was one of continuity. In striking his reactionary poses the paradoxical author of the Mirror may seem to differentiate himself from his near contemporary Horn, the practical and pragmatic city official.54 But by identifying current legal problems in hypothetical cases attributed to Alfred’s reign, the author of the Mirror underlined the conventional assumption of English legal continuity which he and Horn shared.55 The Mirror was just the sort of thing that trainee English lawyers were listening to in lectures, probably in close proximity to the Guildhall, which was perhaps already one of the two standard venues in London for lawyers to ply their trade.56 It is clear that Horn, for one, considered the Mirror useful, just as he did the leges; otherwise he would not have had them copied, in the latter case repeatedly, and bequeathed them for the use of his successors in the govern­ ment of the city. In their different ways, each reaffirmed the grounding of the particular current laws and customs of London in a law which stretched back at least as far as King Ine (according to the leges) or King Arthur (according to the Mirror of Justices), and perhaps by implication much further. In other words, they set the legal context.

52  CREE, i. pp. xxiii–xxviii; Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 374–6. 53  Whittaker and Maitland, eds, Mirror, p. xxvi; D.J. Seipp, ‘The Mirror of Justices’, in J.A. Bush and A.  Wijffels, eds, Learning the Law. Teaching and the Transmission of Law in England 1150–1900 (London and Rio Grande 1999), pp. 85–112, at 88–9; see above, p. 216. Hanna, London Literature, p. 78, points out that a different scribe copied most of the text of Glanvill in this volume. 54  Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 373–4, gives other reasons for rejecting Maitland’s suggestion that Horn was the author. 55  Seipp, ‘Mirror’, pp. 105–6. 56 W.  Harrison, A Description of England in Shakespere’s Youth [1587], ed. F.J.  Furnivall, 2 vols (Bungay 1877), i. 204, quoted by J.H. Baker, ‘Counsellors and Barristers’, repr. in his Collected Papers, i. 45–74, at 48.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  255 In the original version of the Collection, devised close to the start of John’s reign, a corresponding national chorographical context was set by the self-consciously archaic preface. As we have seen, this detailed ‘provinces, countries, shires and islands’ belonging to the ‘Crown and dignity of the kingdom of Britain, that is, what is now called the kingdom of the English’, and supplemented it with the Tribal and Burghal Hidages.57 All this remained in the versions of the Collection commissioned by Horn.58 New material was added to elaborate the civic rather than the kingdom-wide, national context: William FitzStephen’s description of the city of London;59 and substantial excerpts from Brunetto Latini’s very fash­ ionable Livre du trésor, adapted from their original, exotic Italian civic milieu to the more familiar parochialities of the city of London.60 There is no indication that FitzStephen’s then recent treatise—it was written c. 1173—had been known to the compiler of the original Collection, and Latini’s book had not been written when he was at work. To Horn’s mind, these novel excursus into (re­spect­ive­ly) municipal solipsism and what passed for state-of-the-art civic political theory were not digressions of arcane, academic interest. If the former was simply a mat­ ter of urban pride, the latter provided sage, practical, up-to-the-minute advice on running the affairs of any city. They were both therefore relevant to Horn, his colleagues, and their successors. Like the original compiler in John’s reign, how­ ever, he must have been well aware that the Collection’s relevance was not restricted to the city. An important premise remained that London was in many respects the kingdom in miniature, and the kingdom London on a grand scale.

The London Collection and the Politics of Edward II’s Reign Edward II’s coronation oath was once a subject of heated historiographical debate,61 most of which focused on its so-called fourth and final clause—a fourth clause of a different nature from the hypothetical inalienability clause already 57  See above, pp. 125–6. 58  MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii, fo. 4v, copied from John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155, fos 3v–4r; see also Oxford, Oriel College MS. 46, fo. 2v, copied from Cambridge, CCC, MS. 70, pp. 3–4; A.R. Rumble, ‘An Edition and Translation of the Burghal Hidage, together with Recension C of the Tribal Hidage’, in D.  Hill and A.R.  Rumble, eds, The Defence of Wessex. The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications (Manchester 1996), pp. 14–35, at 18–23. 59  Munimenta, ii, pt. i, 1–25, 491; Ker, ‘Liber custumarum’, p. 138; Ker, Medieval Manuscripts I., pp. 20–1; Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 377, 387. 60  That Horn was himself behind the adaptation is strongly suggested by the novel prominence attributed to the Chamberlain in one interpolation: Catto, ‘Law and History’, pp. 387–8. 61  R.S. Hoyt, ‘The Coronation Oath of 1308: The Background of “Les leys et les custumes”’, Traditio, xi (1955), 235–57; R.S. Hoyt, ‘The Coronation Oath of 1308’, EHR, lxxi (1956), 353–83, with extensive earlier literature listed at 354 n. 1, to which should now be added a very recent attempt to resurrect the subject: A.  Spencer, ‘The Coronation Oath in English Politics, 1272-1399’, in B.  Thompson and J.L.  Watts, eds, Political Society in Later Medieval England. A Festschrift for Christine Carpenter (Woodbridge 2016), pp. 38–54.

256  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 discussed, and attributed to Edward the Confessor in the London recension of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris.62 Edward was asked whether he would, is so far as he was able, grant that the laws and rightful customs which would be chosen by the ‘community of your realm’ (or in the Latin version, vulgus) should be kept and protected, and that he would defend and enforce them to the honour of God.63 For our purposes, however, the first clause of the 1308 oath is of more immediate interest. It is three times the length of any of the following clauses. Like the fourth clause, it appears to have been newly devised for the occasion; these two new clauses are distinctive in form from the intervening pair of clauses, which rehash traditional coronation promises.64 The vernacular text of all four clauses, enrolled on the Close Roll of Edward’s first regnal year, is considered to preserve the words with which the officiating prelate catechized the king in Westminster Abbey on Sunday, 25 February 1308.65 Otherwise there would have been no point in en­rol­ling the text.66 It is impossible to establish whether it, or the Latin version preserved in the Coronation Roll,67 or neither, represents an original draft of the new text. There are serious infelicities in the Latin, but this may suggest that it is the work of an incompetent draftsman, not that it is a poor translation of a (slightly) more accomplished vernacular original.68 Neither is straightforwardly an ­ accurate translation of the other.69 The first clause of the Latin version, unlike its other clauses, is in oratio obliqua rather than oratio recta. This may indicate that it was drafted separately from the rest of the Latin oath; it is unclear what inference, if any, can be drawn about its relationship to the first clause of the vernacular oath which, like the rest of that version, is in direct speech. In this, the form putatively used on the day in the Abbey, the first clause reads: Sire, volez vous granter et garder et par vostre serment confermer au poeple d’Engleterre les leys et les custumes a eux grauntees par les aunciens rois d’Engleterre, voz predecessours droiturus et devotz a Dieu, et nomement les lois, les custumes et les fraunchises grauntez au clerge et au poeple par le glorieus roi seint Edward, vostre predecessour?70 62  See above, pp. 238–9. According to Richardson, ‘Oath’, 62–4, 75, inalienability was subsumed in the first clause to maintain the laws of St Edward. The argument is characteristically convoluted and uncon­ vincing. B. Williams, ‘The Lost Coronation Oath of Edward I, rediscovered in a Dublin Manuscript’, in S. Duffy, ed., Medieval Dublin, ix, Proceedings of Friends of Medieval Dublin Symposium, 2007 (Dublin 2009), 84–90, offers no support for the case that there was an extra clause in Edward I’s oath. 63  The French and Latin versions are conveniently printed in parallel by Hoyt, ‘Oath’, 356. 64  Hoyt, ‘Oath’, 360–2. 65  Calendar of the Close Rolls of Edward II, 4 vols. (London 1892–8), i. 21. The archbishop was abroad and sick, and unable to travel back to England. He deputed his role to the bishop of Winchester. 66  Hoyt, ‘Oath’, 355. 67  Foedera, II. i. 33. 68  Hoyt, ‘Oath’, 357. 69  Hoyt, ‘Oath’, 355–6, prints them in parallel; at 362 he shows that the texts of the second and third clauses are much closer equivalents than those of the first and fourth. L.B. Wilkinson, ‘Notes on the Coronation Records of the Fourteenth Century’, EHR, lxx (1955), 581–600, at 582, discusses the dif­ ferences between the two versions. 70  The Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons, ed. F. Palgrave, 2 vols in 4 pts ([London] 1827–34), II. ii. Appendix, p. 10; Hoyt, ‘Oath’, 355–7, 362, 366, for the relationship between the

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  257 Sire, do you wish to grant, keep, and by your oath confirm to the people of England the laws and the customs granted to them by the ancient kings of England, your rightful and devout predecessors, and specifically the laws, the customs, and the franchises granted to the clergy and to the people by the glori­ ous king St Edward, your predecessor?

Although there is plentiful evidence for earlier English kings confirming on their accessions the laws of their predecessors, most strikingly in the case of the Conqueror during his coronation,71 this is the first extant text of an explicit undertaking to this effect being incorporated into the liturgy for the ceremony. It was an inspired move on somebody’s part. In Henry III’s reign and subsequently the coronation ceremony, always performed in close proximity to St Edward’s ­relics, had come to epitomize the identification between the current king and his canonized, pre-Conquest predecessor. It was the ritual expression of royal sacral­ ity. The regalia with which the new king was invested had been identified as those of the Confessor.72 The new ordo into which the new promises were incorporated carefully resurrected a few elements of the second recension of the Old English coronation ordo which had been out of use for centuries, while preserving much from the third recension which had replaced it.73 Someone had been doing some careful liturgical research in the long interval since the death of Edward I. And the laws of St Edward, the means which had been adapted in John’s reign to hold an erring king to account, were inserted into the very core of the coronation. Thereby the ceremony ceased to be an unambiguous expression of numinous regality; St Edward became again a means of imposing restraints on a king. Whoever drafted the new promise had rendered the Confessor’s role in the cor­ on­ation ambivalent. Henry III and Edward I must have been turning in their graves, adjacent to St Edward’s relics. Is it possible to establish that this new clause was derived from an identifiable source? Attention has been drawn to some parallels between its phrasing and the Prologue to the mid twelfth-century apocryphal vernacular code, Leis Willelme, which proclaims that the ‘laws and customs’ which William granted to the ‘people vernacular and Latin versions. London, BL, MS. Harley 2901, a fourteenth-century service book, includes the oath in Latin in the text of the coronation ordo (fos 4v–5r) and in French at the end (fos 49ˇ–50ˇ): [J.R.]S. Philllips, Edward II (New Haven, CN 2010), p. 142 n. 103. 71  ASC (D) s.a. 1066. 72  D.A. Carpenter, ‘The Burial of King Henry III, the Regalia and Royal Ideology’, in his The Reign of Henry III (London 2003), pp. 427–61, at 454–5. 73 P.E. Schramm, A History of the English Coronation, trans. L.G. Wickham Legg (Oxford 1937), pp. 75, 81; P.E. Schramm, ‘Ordines-Studien III: Die Krönung in England’, Archiv für Urkundenforschung, xv (1938), 305–91, at 346; P.L. Ward, ‘The Coronation Ceremony in Mediaeval England’, Speculum, xiv (1939), 160–78, at 178. A chart juxtaposes forms from the four recensions of the English ordo in Missale ad usum ecclesie Westmonasteriensis, ed. J.  Wickham Legg, 3 vols., Henry Bradshaw Soc. (1891–7), ii. pp. 1437–8. Second recension elements which were reintroduced include the prayers ‘Te invocamus domine sancte pater’ and ‘Deus qui populis tuis virtute consulis’.

258  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 of England’ were ‘the same ones which King Edward his cousin held before him’.74 The parallels are not close enough to establish textual dependence on the Leis. Similarities have also been remarked with a very late twelfth-century French translation of Willelmi Articuli; the chapter in which the alleged similarity has been detected (c. 1) is, however, not that in which Edward’s law is confirmed (c. 7).75 In both chapters the parallels are of a vague and general kind. As with the Leis, they seem attributable to the text’s being in the vernacular and mentioning Edward the Confessor. There is no sign of textual dependence. Neither of these suggestions, therefore, identifies a plausible direct source for the draftsman of the first clause of the oath. It would seem likely that Edward II’s coronation oath was drafted in London during the protracted and reportedly fraught preparations recounted by the London author of the Annales Paulini.76 Much negotiation and effort must have been devoted to crafting the unprecedented first and fourth clauses, the latter of which was clearly and particularly designed to address severe misgivings about the new king’s future conduct—misgivings also expressed in the negotiating ploy of a threat from the ‘earls’ to postpone the coronation.77 In order to defuse that threat, Edward reportedly ‘promised in good faith to do for them in the next par­ liament whatever they sought’.78 It is very tempting to link this promise, reported in the Annales Paulini, with the new fourth clause, in which Edward undertook during the coronation to keep ‘les leys et les custumes droitureles les quiels la communaute de vostre roiaume aura eslu [the laws and rightful customs which the community of your realm shall have chosen]’. This clause, concerned with future laws and rightful customs formulated in some way by the community of the realm, was the counterpart to the first clause, concerned with existing laws and customs of ‘ancient’ English kings, and particularly of ‘Saint’ Edward. The two new clauses are not in tension with each other,79 but complementary. The London Collection had evidently survived in London since John’s reign: it had been used, probably in the city, by the compiler of Bracton;80 it had been res­ urrected and re-copied under Andrew Horn’s auspices within five years of Edward II’s coronation.81 Can its influence be detected on whoever fashioned these new clauses for the coronation? The Collection includes neither the Leis (which we

74  Hoyt, ‘Oath’, 357 n. 1, 359; Hoyt, ‘Background’, 240 n. 16; Gesetze i. 492–520, at 492; Wormald, Making, pp. 407–9. 75  Hoyt, ‘Oath’, 357 n. 3; Gesetze, i. 488–9. 76  CREE i. 259–60; B. Wilkinson, ‘The Coronation of Edward II and the Statute of York’, Speculum, xix (1944), 445–69, at 455–6; cf. Richardson, ‘Oath’, 58–60. 77  CREE i. 260. 78  CREE i. 260. 79  Liber regie capelle. A Manuscript in the Biblioteca publica, Evora, ed. W.  Ullmann, Henry Bradshaw Soc., xcii (1961), pp. 31–3. 80  P.A.  Brand, ‘Legal Education in England before the Inns of Court’, in Bush and Wijfels, eds, Learning the Law, pp. 51–84, at 59–60. 81  Ker’s B, discussed above, pp. 250–1.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  259 know was available to the author of Bracton) nor the French translation of the Articuli; but it does incorporate a much expanded and interpolated recension of the Articuli in Latin, known as Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati. This largely apocryphal code is analogous to, if much less elaborate and flamboyant than, the Collection’s distinctive recension of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris.82 However, the only chapter in this early thirteenth-century London recension of the Articuli which refers to Edward the Confessor—recording William’s endorsement of Edward’s laws, together with his own additions to them—is preserved unchanged from the late eleventh-century original.83 Like the late twelfth-century French translation of that original, it offers no support to a suggestion that the draftsman of the new opening clause of Edward II’s coronation oath had this folio of a copy of the London Collection open in front of him. The clause’s invocation of Edward the Confessor’s laws, customs, and liberties has also been interpreted as a reference specifically to the Leges Edwardi Confessoris.84 The London Collection’s recension of the Leges had been repeatedly drawn on in Bracton;85 it was quoted explicitly in a different context by the author of the Annales Paulini.86 If the suggestion that Bracton was compiled in London be correct,87 it would be no surprise that the author had used only the London recension of the Leges Edwardi.88 Self-evidently this could also be true of an his­ tor­ian writing at St Paul’s Cathedral, even if he had to pop down to the Guildhall to consult a copy. The stroll would have taken him only a few minutes. By contrast with these two London examples, however, there is no textual war­ rant for the view that the new first clause in the coronation oath echoed the London recension of the Leges Edwardi. The London Collection’s interest in Edward the Confessor’s laws, in William I’s endorsement and adjustment of them, in the laws of Edward’s predecessors, in post-Conquest coronation charters some of which explicitly endorsed Edward’s laws, and (in the case of the Leges Edwardi) in an inalienability oath supposedly sworn by Edward at his coronation, might have set an agenda which underpinned the new clause. The Collection’s opening with its chronologically re-ordered version of Quadripartitus, followed immedi­ ately by its singular recensions of Willelmi Articuli and Leges Edwardi (always in that order),89 might be judged to be reflected in the first clause’s distinction 82  Gesetze i. 489–91; Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 737; Liebermann, Über die Leges Anglorum, p. vi, for its appearance in the fourteenth-century MSS. 83  Wl. Art. 7; Wl. Art. retr. 13. 84 Richardson, ‘Oath’, 60–4; Hoyt, ‘Oath’, 357 and n. 1, 359–60; Wilkinson, ‘Notes’, 583. F.W. Maitland, The Constitutional History of England (Cambridge 1908), p. 100, is more cautious. 85  See above, p. 213. 86  CREE, i. p. xliv, discussing the entry in London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 1106, fo. 33, in the Annales’ condensation of Flores historiarum, ed. H.R. Luard, 3 vols, RS (1890), i. 426–7, s.a. 857; Richardson, ‘Oath’, 60. The annalist’s concern is with Peter’s Pence; he quotes LECf 10, Gesetze i. 634. 87  See above, n. 80. 88  See above, p. 213 n. 25. 89 Liebermann, Über die Leges Anglorum, p. vi. The compiler of the London Collection here pre­ served the order in which these two texts were found in his source, the Tripartita. But in view of the

260  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 between the ‘les leys et les custumes’ granted by ‘les aunciens rois d’Engleterre, voz predecessours droiturus’, and ‘les lois, les custumes et les fraunchises’ granted by ‘le glorieus roi seint Edward’. But although the distinction is congruent with the structure of the London Collection, it was not necessarily inspired by that structure. The congruence confirms that the Collection was still as relevant in Edward II’s reign as it had been at the time of its compilation early in John’s, and that its relevance was no more restricted to the affairs of the city in the early four­ teenth century than it had been in the early thirteenth century. Relevance is, how­ ever, a quite different matter from textual dependence, which in this instance too cannot be demonstrated. Edward the Confessor remained a figure to conjure with at the start of the reign of this namesake, termed ‘the fifth Edward’ in the Annales Paulini—itself an indication that at St Paul’s Cathedral English kings were not numbered from the Conquest, as was by this point becoming conventional, but from before it.90 The canons of this particular seventh-century London foundation had a longer per­ spective, which traversed the Conquest. As the Annales record, the coronation had originally been scheduled for Sunday, 18 February.91 It had had to be post­ poned as a result of the archbishop of Canterbury’s being abroad and indisposed, but perhaps more as a result of the baronial brinkmanship recorded in the Annales. The archbishop was still abroad when Edward was anointed exactly a week later. The reliability of the Annales as a record of the details of Edward II’s accession has been questioned.92 But with respect to the threatened postpone­ ment of the coronation they are corroborated at St Albans.93 They record that Edward’s allowing Piers Gaveston to carry the ‘crown of St Edward . . . in his defiled hands’ in the coronation procession was what outraged laity as well as clergy;94 it epitomized the behavior of the king’s favorite on the day and in gen­eral.95 extent to which each was amplified, and his chronological rearrangement of the items in Quadripartitus, it may perhaps be inferred that he judged the Articuli to have been prior to William’s endorsement of Edward’s laws in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. 90  CREE, i. 257; cf. Mirror, p. 141, and Gilbert of Thornton’s Summa—G. E. Woodbine, ‘The Summa of Gilbert de Thornton’, Law Quarterly Review, xxv (1909), 44–52, at 47 n. 1—both of which appear to count Edward I as ‘Edward the Second’, thereby numbering the Confessor as the first. More conven­ tional is Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvan, auctore canonico Bridlingtoniensi in CREE ii. 23–92, at 33: ‘Anno Domini MCCCVIII, et regni regis Edwardi post conqæstum secundi primo  .  .  .’; cf. L.T.R. Memoranda Roll, no. 102, 4 Edward III, m. 154, printed in Fleta, ed. H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles, 3 vols, Selden Soc. (1953–83), iv. p. xxvii: ‘roi Edward tierz apres le Conquest . . .’; Andrew Horn’s will is dated 9 October 1328 ‘regni [regis] Edwardi tercii post conquestum secundo’: Ramsay and Willoughby, Hospitals, Towns, and the Professions, p. 152. 91  Annales Paulini, CREE i. 259–61. 92  H.G. Richardson, ‘The Annales Paulini’, Speculum, xxiii (1948), 630–40. 93  Annales Paulini, CREE i. 260; Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. H.T. Riley, 2 vols, RS (1863–4), i. 121; J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307–1322. A Study in the Reign of Edward II (Oxford 1970), p. 73. 94  Annales Paulini, CREE i. 261; Foedera II. i. 36; Vita Edwardi secundi, ed. W.S.  Childs (Oxford 2005), p. 8, does not mention Gaveston’s role; Richardson, ‘Annales Paulini’, 634–5. 95  Flores historiarum iii. 331; Chronicon de Lanercost, p. 211.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  261 Edward had sanctioned not just a blatant breach of ceremonial protocol, but a sacrilegious act perpetrated in close proximity to the Confessor’s relics, kept in the shrine which was the locus of the royal saint’s continuing immanence. The omens were bad: at a fanfare of trumpets, a wall collapsed, killing a watching knight.96 After the king had received Mass at the conclusion of the ceremony, he stepped down from his throne and approached the altar of the shrine of St Edward. There, the officiating prelate removed the crown from the king’s head and placed it on the altar.97 It was the most sacred of all the regalia; it was kept in the Abbey church, ‘the perpetual repository of all the regalia’, which in the ordo is itself termed ‘diadema regni . . . capud pariter et corona’.98 Gaveston had not only been permitted to carry St Edward’s physical crown in the ceremonial procession into the metaphorical crown of the Abbey church, but also to redeem from the Abbey St Edward’s sword, the Curtana, prior to the ceremony.99 In 1301 the young Edward of Carnarvon had been given a copy of what was probably Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae; and in 1302 an illustrated, vernacular life of Edward the Confessor.100 But the education of this future king in non-mythical English history had evidently been as ineffective or lacking as his training in tact. As dissatisfaction with the king began to be expressed in the parliament which first assembled three days after the coronation,101 and burgeoned while it was in recess over the next month, the documentary terms in which opposition was ul­tim­ate­ly formulated echoed those which would have been familiar to anyone acquainted with the interpolations in the London Collection’s version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. Thus the first article of the Declaration produced by the par­ liament which had reassembled in April: homage and the oath of allegiance is more by reason of the Crown than by reason of the king’s person, and is more bound to the Crown than to the per­ son; and this is apparent because before the estate of the Crown has descended, there is no allegiance to the person. Wherefore, if it should happen that the king be not guided by reason, then by right of the estate of the Crown the 96  Annales Paulini, CREE i. 261. 97  Liber regalis (Westminster Abbey, MS. 38) in English Coronation Records, ed. L.G. Wickham Legg (Westminster 1901), pp. 81–130, at 106; P. Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets. Kingship and the Representation of Power 1200–1400 (New Haven, CN 1995), pp. 130–1, 194–5. The extent to which the procedure prescribed in the late-fourteenth-century Liber regalis had been followed at Edward II’s coronation remains a matter for debate: Carpenter, ‘Burial of Henry III’, pp. 455–6. 98  Wickham Legg, Coronation Records, p. 107. 99  Foedera II. i. 36; P. Chaplais, Piers Gaveston. Edward II’s Adoptive Brother (Oxford 1994), p. 43, downplays the significance of this incident. The Curtana had been identified as St Edward’s sword by Matthew Paris: CM iii. 337. 100 H. Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon 1284–1307 (Manchester 1946), p. 18. 101  Annales Paulini, CREE i. 262–3; The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H.  Rothwell, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., lxxxix (1957), pp. 381–2.

262  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 lieges are bound by the oath taken to the Crown to lead the king back to the estate of the Crown by reason, otherwise their oath would definitely not have been kept.102

(Horn included this first article of the vernacular version of the document in his Annales Londonienses, copying it out in the vernacular.)103 In urging the king to implement the measures against Gaveston which had been decided in the parlia­ ment, the Declaration went on in its third article explicitly to remind Edward of the binding undertaking he had given in the fourth clause of his coronation oath, to keep the laws ‘qe le pople eslira’. The clear implication was that the ‘people’—or, in the words of the clause in its vernacular version, the ‘community of your realm’—was assembled, or somehow represented, in the parliament which had produced—or ‘chosen’—the document. The fourth clause was interpreted as a more formal reiteration of the undertaking previously given by Edward, reported in the Annales Paulini, with which he had bought off those who had been threat­ ening to delay the coronation. The Declaration judged him to have bound himself by the clause of the coronation oath which had reformulated his previous prom­ ise; its authors deemed themselves empowered by those royal undertakings, and bound by their own homage and oaths of allegiance to ensure that the ‘estate of the Crown’ suffered no harm from the king. We saw in a previous chapter that the London interpolations in the Leges Edwardi made repeated reference to commune consilium,104 a phrase occasionally found elsewhere in the London Collection.105 It might easily be interpreted as what the vernacular version of the fourth clause of the coronation oath terms ‘community of your realm’—a term coined after the Collection had first been compiled, but which had come into vogue during the thirteenth century.106 Another key element in the case mounted by the Declaration of April 1308—the Crown—is more obviously prominent in the Collection, most pertinently in the in­ter­pol­ation in the Leges Edwardi which ordains the preservation of the integrity of the Crown.107 According to Walter of Guisborough, after his coronation Edward II had asked the assembled magnates to deliberate on ‘the state of the 102 London, BL, MS. Burney 277, fos 5v–6r (vernacular), printed in H.G.  Richardson and G.O.  Sayles, The Governance of Medieval England (Edinburgh 1963), pp. 467–8; ‘Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon’, in CREE ii. 33–4 (Latin); cf. Maddicott, Lancaster, pp. 81–2. The document was resur­ rected and used against the Despensers in 1321: Maddicott, pp. 281–7. For a first formulation of the argument, see the agreement reached at Boulogne on 31 January 1308: J.R.S.  Phillips, Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, 1307–1324. Baronial Politics in the Reign of Edward II (Oxford 1972), pp. 316–17 (text); Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 73; [J.R.] S. Phillips, Edward II (New Haven, CN 2011), p. 142. 103  Annales Londonienses, CREE i. 153–4. 104  See above, p. 134. 105  Hn. Cor., 1; Wl Art. retr. 5, 6; Gesetze i. 490. 106 J.C. Holt, Magna Carta, 3rd edn, ed. G. Garnett and J.G.H. Hudson (Cambridge 2015), pp. 74, 241, 290; J.R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327 (Oxford 2010), pp. 139–47, 228–32, 324–5. 107  LECf 13. 1 A; Gesetze i. 640; cf. Wl. Art. retr. 9, 11; Gesetze i. 490–1.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  263 Church, which from previous times had been in decline, on the state of the Crown which he had newly assumed and how it ought to be governed according to God and according to justice, and on the peace of the land’.108 The accounts of the parliament which met shortly afterwards, dispersed, and then reassembled in April, suggest that this was precisely what they did. In 1308 the Crown was made the object of a loyalty which could trump personal bonds with the king, if the king were judged to be compromising its interests. It was not a physical crown, of the type that Gaveston had sullied with hands besmirched by activities which scarcely bore thinking about—activities which might well have taken place in close proximity to the depiction of Edward the Confessor’s coronation which adorned the royal bed chamber at Westminster. In the adjacent abbey church the saint had been crowned with that very same crown.109 It was an abstraction. It had already become so by the time the London Collection had first been put together. The interpolations in the Leges Edwardi were replete with references to this Crown,110 also occasionally found elsewhere in the London Collection.111 The specially composed catalogue of ‘provinces, countries, shires, and islands’ with which the Collection opened emphasized that they all belonged ‘by right and without any doubt to the Crown and dignity of the kingdom of Britain’, the ‘excellence’ of which might more properly be termed an empire than a kingdom.112 Bracton had lifted it from the Leges in the London Collection.113 But Edward II’s opponents would not have had to consult the Collection or Bracton in order to encounter it. Already, by the time the in­ter­pol­ator was at work on the Leges Edwardi early in John’s reign, the non-physical ‘Crown’ was a century old.114 It was not just a prod­ uct of abstruse jurisprudential theorizing: reference had with increasing fre­ quency been made to it in the routine records of royal administration.115 As we have seen, it had featured in King Henry III’s correspondence with the Roman curia,116 as it did in that of his son and successor.117 According to Edward I’s let­ ters to Boniface VIII, not only was he obliged by oath to maintain the ‘rights of

108  Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, p. 381, cf. Annales Paulini, in CREE i. 262–3. 109  For the mural, see above, p. 149 and Plate 6; though note that Edward II, like his father before him, also had a private bed chamber at Westminster: H.M. Colvin, ed., History of the King’s Works, i, ii (London 1963), i. 506 n. 3; C. Wilson, ‘A Monument to St Edward the Confessor: Henry III’s Great Chamber at Westminster and its Paintings’, in W. Rodwell and T. Tatton-Brown, eds, Westminster. The Art, Architecture and Archaeology of the Royal Abbey and Palace, 2 vols (Abingdon 2015), ii. 158 n. 26. 110  For other instances, see LECf 11. 1 A; 11. 1 A2; 11. 1 A3; 11. 1 A5; 32. A4; 32. B; 32. B 1; 32. C 3; 32. C 7; 32. E; 32. E 3; 35. 1 A1; Gesetze i. 635, 640, 655, 656, 658, 659, 660, 664. 111  Wl. Art. retr. 1, 9, 11; Gesetze i. 489–91. 112  Liber custumarum ii, pt. 2, p. 624. 113  See p. 000. 114 G.  Garnett, ‘The Origins of the Crown’, in Hudson, ed., Centenary Essays on ‘Pollock and Maitland’, pp. 171–214; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 20, 98. 115  Garnett, ‘Origins of the Crown’, pp. 212–13; RCR i. 31, CRR ii. 136, vii. 175, 244, etc.; cf. the let­ ter of the Irish barons to Innocent III, discussed above, pp. 142, 238–9; Articles of the Barons, c. 14, Magna Carta (1215), c. 24. 116  See above, p. 239. 117  Richardson, ‘Oath’, 49–50.

264  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 the Crown’, so were his magnates, ‘by the bonds of homage and fidelity’.118 In April 1308 an attempt was made to turn this obligation into a means of holding Edward I’s son and successor to account. Thereafter it appeared in many of the documents which framed op­pos­ition demands.119 In none of these instances can the London Collection’s recension of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris be identified as a direct source, although, as we have seen, from Henry III’s reign the correspondence of successive English kings with the Roman curia displays striking similarities with certain interpolations in the Leges.120 The Collection cannot be shown to have been a direct source in the drafting of the opposition’s demands in John’s reign either.121 But the broadly con­ ceptual relevance of much of its content to the development of opposition think­ ing then is clear.122 Because London, ‘que caput regni est et legum [which is the head of the kingdom and the laws]’,123 was treated as the kingdom in miniature, or the kingdom as London on a grand scale, aspects of the mode of government of one could be read across to the other. This remained the case in Edward II’s reign, when intense, renewed interest was being shown in the Collection, and when concepts it embodied—such as the Crown, or commune consilium—had developed in ways which rendered them still more serviceable in the restraint of an errant king than they had been in 1215. Andrew Horn shared with the ­anonymous Guildhall compiler of the Collection an understanding that these concepts were grounded in a legal tradition which transcended the Conquest. William the Conqueror was shown to have taken great pains to emphasize the point. It was the same sense of unbroken legal continuity which underpinned that newly devised restraint on the king, the first clause of the coronation oath of 1308. 118  Letter from the English barons to the pope of February 1301, drafted by royal clerks, in which the barons said that they were bound by oath to preserve the right of the Crown: Walter of Guisborough, Chronicle, pp. 344–5. This may never have been sent, but was widely circulated in England: Foedera I.  ii. 926–7; Willelmi Rishanger, quondam monachi Sancti Albani, et quorundam anonymorum, chronica et annales, regnantibus Henrico Tertio et Edwardo Primo, ed. H.T.  Riley, RS (1865), pp. 208–9; E.L.G. Stones, ‘The Mission of Thomas Wale and Thomas Delisle from Edward I to Boniface VIII in 1301’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, xxviii (1982), 8–28, at 9 and n. 11. For the king’s long letter to the pope, see E.L.G.  Stones, ed., Anglo-Scottish Relations 1174–1328. Some Selected Documents (Oxford 1970), no. 30, pp. 192–218, with the oath invoked at 214; Foedera I. ii. 932–3. The letter also refers, p. 196, to the ‘diadem of the island of Britain, Wales, and Cornwall’. The letter is a product of detailed historical research, based primarily on Geoffrey of Monmouth for the early period, and John of Caen’s ‘Great Roll’ for the Anglo-Saxon period (Foedera  I.  ii. 762–84): pp. xxvi–xxvii, xxxiv, 192 n. 1, 194 n. 1, 198 n. 1; further E.L.G.  Stones and G.G.  Simpson, eds, Edward I and the Throne of Scotland 1290–1296. An Edition of the Record Sources for the Great Cause, 2 vols (Oxford 1978), i. 154–6, who show that the material derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth was inserted as an afterthought. St Edward and ‘William, styled the Bastard’ are both mentioned, but no particular sig­ nificance is attributed to their reigns. Edward also invoked his oath to maintain the rights of the Crown in the Statute de finibus levatis of April 1299: SR i. 126–30, at 126. 119  Ordinances of 1311 cc. 7, 20; Statute of York 1322; Letter of the citizens of London to those assembled at Westminster, January 1327: Calendar of the Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, 1323–1364, ed. A.H. Thomas (Cambridge 1926), pp. 11–12. 120  See above, p. 239. 121 Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 24–5. 122 Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 19–20, 22–5, 102–3. 123  LECf 32. B12; Gesetze i. 657.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  265 Another striking contemporary parallel with a document in the London Collection is provided by the Modus tenendi parliamentum, the first extant ­treatise on English parliamentary procedure.124 It is now generally agreed that the Modus was written during Edward II’s reign, and probably at some point in 1321–22,125 though there remains disagreement about exactly when.126 A power­ ful case has been made for the author’s being a member of Thomas of Lancaster’s household,127 and therefore at the centre of current opposition to the king; but it has not secured universal acceptance.128 Whether the treatise was written by one of Lancaster’s clerks or by a Chancery clerk129 is, however, not important here. Most of the treatise is a very detailed account of what is alleged to be parliamen­ tary procedure, but its Proem attempts to establish a distant and prescriptive ­his­tor­ic­al background. The Proem is clearly original to the text,130 the first seven chapters of which go on to record, in so far as possible, what ‘used to be’ the pro­ cedure, before shifting to what it is, or ought to be, now.131 The Proem has been dismissed as divorced from ‘reality’,132 and has therefore been largely ignored by scholars, though it is clearly the conceit from which the rest of the treatise flows. It proclaims that the treatise will set out the procedure according to which the parliament of the king of England and of his Englishmen was held in the times of King Edward, son of King Æthelred; which procedure was recited by the more distinguished men of the kingdom in the presence of William, duke of Normandy, conqueror and king of England, the conqueror himself command­ ing this, and its being approved by him, and followed in his times, and also in the times of his successors, kings of England.

When not simply dismissed as fantasy, this preamble has been tentatively attrib­ uted to the influence of the new first clause of Edward II’s coronation oath.133 Obviously, however, it says a great deal more than this putative source. A more accurate précis would be the Prologue of Leis Willelme, which specifies that William granted the same laws and customs which ‘King Edward his cousin held 124  N. Pronay and J. Taylor, eds, Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages (Oxford 1980). 125  W.C. Weber, ‘The Purpose of the English Modus tenendi parliamentum’, Parliamentary History, xvii (1998), 149–77, at 150–7. 126  W.A. Morris, ‘The Date of the “Modus tenendi parliamentum”’, EHR, xlix (1934), 407–22, and J. Taylor, ‘The Manuscripts of the “Modus tenendi parliamentum”’, EHR, lxxxiii (1968), 673–88, at 687, both argue that it should be associated with the July Parliament of 1321; Clarke, Medieval Representation, pp. 153, 202, 367, prefers 1322. V.H.  Galbraith, ‘The Modus tenendi parliamentum’, repr. in his Kings and Chroniclers, ch. VI, pp. 81–99, at 84, widens the range to 1316–24. 127 Maddicott, Lancaster, pp. 289–92. 128  Weber, ‘Modus’, 162–4. 129  Weber, ‘Modus’, 173–5. 130  Pronay and Taylor, Texts, pp. 67 (Recension A, now established as the original), 103 (Recension B). 131 Clarke, Medieval Representation, p. 7. 132  Weber, ‘Modus’, 157. 133  Taylor, ‘Manuscripts’, 687 n. 1; Pronay and Taylor, Texts, p. 92; Weber, ‘Modus’, p. 157 n. 67.

266  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 before him’.134 Closer still is the Prologue of Leges Edwardi Confessoris, which describes how William I, four years ‘after the acquisition of England’, summoned an assembly of English nobles ‘wise and learned in their law’ to ‘declare their laws and customs’. After listening to a recitation of these laws by English witnesses, the king reportedly granted that the laws should remain in force: ‘from that day forth . . . the laws of King Edward were confirmed and corroborated and observed before all other laws of the country’.135 According to the London interpolator, ‘Archbishop Thomas and Bishop Maurice wrote down with their own hands all the aforesaid, by the order of King William.’136 This account of a legislative assembly early in the Conqueror’s reign is more wide-ranging in its scope and much more elaborate than the Proem to the Modus, which does not reproduce or echo the wording of the Leges Edwardi. Nevertheless, the parallels in sense, as distinct from phrasing, are striking. The author of the Proem must have heard or read either this story in the Leges, or something simi­ lar, and decided to adapt it to an historical account of the formulation of parlia­ mentary procedure—an account which emphatically established both that the procedure was pre-Conquest in origin, and that the Conqueror, after listening to English testimony, had solemnly endorsed it. Every copy of the London Collection included its distinctive recension of the Leges Edwardi, and therefore the pre­lim­ in­ary account of the assembly, summoned by the Conqueror, which provided the conceit for the code which followed. We have seen that at the time when the Modus was written Andrew Horn had been so enamoured of this preliminary passage to the Leges Edwardi that he had it copied out in his Liber Horn even when most of the rest of the code was not.137 It was evidently an episode which resonated in certain circles in the reign of Edward II, and most particularly in London. If the Modus was the work of a Chancery clerk, then it was probably written in London; if it was the work of someone in Thomas of Lancaster’s house­ hold, we know that there were close links between it and the administration of the city at precisely the point when the Modus was being written.138 It may be possible to identify a second source used by the author of the Modus, also available in the London Collection. In this instance, a clue is provided by shared idiosyncratic wording, a wording which we have already seen is 134  Gesetze i. 492. 135  LECf retr. pr.-pr. 1; 34. 1a; Gesetze i. 627, 662. A heading at the beginning of the code proclaims it to be ‘the laws of King Edward, which William confirmed afterwards’. 136  LECf retr. 34. 1a; Gesetze i. 662 n.*. The interpolation was there from the start: John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155, fo. 72r (where a marginal finger draws attention to it); BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii, fo. 42v; Cambridge, CCC, MS. 70, p. 71; Oxford, Oriel MS. 46, fo. 36v. 137  See above, p. 253. 138  Edward II’s issuing of Quo warranto writs against the citizens provoked strong feelings not only in the city, but amongst Lancaster’s supporters, who presented it as a further manifestation of the malign influence of the Despensers on the king: Eyre of London pp. lxxii–lxxvi; Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvan, auctore canonico Bridlingtoniensi, CREE ii. 63; B. Wilkinson, ‘The Sherburn Indenture and the Attack on the Despensers, 1321’, EHR, lxiii (1948), 1–28, at 20.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  267 revealingly also shared by the contemporaneous Lichfield Chronicle.139 The sense, too, turns out to be peculiarly apposite. The Proem characterizes Edward the Confessor as ‘son of King Æthelred’. The Argumentum—the second preface—of Quadripartitus recounts how Edward the Confessor, ‘son of King Æthelred’, recalled from exile in 1041, had sworn to the ‘barons of all England’ assembled at Hursteshevet that he would maintain the laws of Cnut as a precondition for his elevation to the throne.140 Not only is Edward the Confessor characterized in this distinctive way—found in no other law code—but an assembly of the English nobility is described at which a potential successor to the throne binds himself by oath to maintain the laws of his predecessors. The laws which he endorsed are said at the very beginning of the Argumentum thenceforth to have gone ‘by King Edward’s name’.141 All copies of the London Collection drop the Argumentum with which Quadripartitus originally began. As we have seen, the London compiler had sub­ stituted for it a self-consciously archaic but novel setting of the insular choro­ graphical scene, apparently based on Henry of Huntingdon and Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the crudely conjoined texts of the Tribal and Burghal Hidages. But after, not before, the material derived from Quadripartitus they all include two passages from the Argumentum: its first and ninth chapters142—in other words, only those chapters which had encompassed Edward the Confessor’s preconditional confirmation of existing law at the Hursteshevet assembly, prior to his elevation as king. This was the aspect of the original Argumentum to Quadripartitus which the compiler of the London Collection had sought to emphasize in John’s reign, and which Andrew Horn ensured was reproduced in Edward II’s reign. In the London Collection this carefully edited vestige was re­deployed to follow, not to introduce, material derived from Quadripartitus. Because the codes in Quadripartitus had been rearranged into a chronological order, this highly edited selection could be used as a connecting narrative link with subsequent material attributed to Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror. This had of course all been worked out a century before, in John’s reign. But after 1308 the parallels with the current King Edward, particularly with the new first clause of his coronation oath, would have been obvious to any alert reader—and 139  See above, p. 192. 140  Arg. 9, Gesetze i. 533, discussed above, p. 110. 141  Arg. 1; Gesetze i. 532. The translation is Richard Sharpe’s: ‘The Prefaces of “Quadripartitus”’, in G. Garnett and J.G.H. Hudson, eds, Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy. Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge 1994), pp. 148–72, at 162. 142  See above, pp. 125–6, 255. It is in the earliest extant version of the Collection: Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155, fo. 51r (printed by Liebermann, ‘Contemporary Manuscript’, 737), ­followed by a blank verso, with Wl. Art. retr. beginning at the top of 52r; and is preserved in the ­fourteenth-century copies: Oxford, Oriel College, MS. 46, fo. 27v; Cambridge, CCC, MS. 70, p. 53. It seems certain that it was also at one time in the copy in London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii, but the folio which would have had the opening of Wl. Art. retr. is missing; fo. 34r begins in the midst of 14. 1.

268  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 we know that Horn, for one, was a very careful editor, and also someone of consid­ erable political influence. This distillation of the Argumentum immediately pre­ cedes the Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati, as if the compiler had recognized the parallel with the laws which (according to the opening of this code) the Conqueror had ‘settled with his princes after the conquest of England’.143 This was an episode which was greatly elaborated in the Leges Edwardi, which in the London Collection follow on from the revamped Articuli. The Collection had therefore been designed to highlight two successive assemblies of the English nobility at which were confirmed by successive kings what had come to be termed the laws of King Edward. At the earlier one this had been set as a prior condition for Edward the Confessor’s accession; at the later one William had done so voluntarily, in the aftermath of his ‘conquest’144 or ‘acquisition’145 of the kingdom. The later one for­ mally reaffirmed the continuity through the Conquest of the law which Edward the Confessor had endorsed at his own accession. This had been a resonant mes­ sage when emphasized in John’s reign. Evidently it remained so in Edward II’s. The Proem to the Modus tenendi parliamentum shadows this model so closely—albeit exclusively with reference to parliamentary procedure—that it is difficult not to infer that the author was familiar with it. If so, he viewed those two eleventh-century legislative assemblies as parliaments. This is exactly what one would expect him to have done. In the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century someone at the Guildhall judged the Modus to be congruent with the Collection, because a copy of the former, tweaked to reflect London concerns, was at that stage added to Horn’s ‘Liber custumarum’.146 Whoever did so is likely to have rec­ ognized the similarities which strongly suggest that the author of the Modus had these two passages from the London Collection in mind when he wrote. In John’s reign these already existing texts had been edited in such a way as emphatically to make the point that Edward the Confessor and the Conqueror had successively bound themselves to respect existing English law. In the mind of the author of the Modus, this historically based demonstration of the continuity of English law in general provided a template for the way in which a prescriptive procedure for Parliament had been established. That procedure, he suggested, was and should still be current, almost three centuries later. Given the number of manuscript copies of the Modus which survive from the medieval period,147 this imaginative 143  Wl. Art. retr. Inscr.; Gesetze i. 489; J.R. Maddicott, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Return to England in 1041’, EHR, cxix (2004), 650–66. 144  Wl. Art. retr., Inscr.; cf. Leis Willelme, prol. 145  LECf pr. 146 Oxford, Oriel College, MS. 46, fos 102r–104v (from Ker’s C); Liebermann, Uber die Leges Anglorum, p. 103; Clarke, Medieval Representation, p. 361; Ker, ‘Liber custumarum’, p. 136; Taylor, ‘Manuscripts’, 681. Pronay and Taylor, ‘Uses’, 15, point out that it is impossible to establish precisely when the Modus was incorporated into this collection. But this certainly happened long after Horn’s day: the copy of the Modus is in script which cannot be earlier than the late fourteenth century. 147  Some thirty are extant: Taylor, ‘Manuscripts’, passim; Pronay and Taylor, ‘Uses’, 12; Pronay and Taylor, Parliamentary Texts, pp. 47–51.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  269 adaptation of the London Collection’s treatment of continuity over the Conquest was to prove very influential. As we shall see in due course, it became still more so in the sixteenth century and later. The influence of the Leges in the London Collection in the fourteenth century was not, however, confined to legal treatises, or to the drafting of new coronation oaths and constitutional documents. I described in Chapter 5 how in the 1320s and early 1330s, so very shortly after the London Collection underwent its renais­ sance and the Modus was written, a Midland historian, Alan of Ashbourn, had drastically edited the whole text of the Collection’s version of the Leges Edwardi148 in order to confect his account of the Conquest. The apocryphal code with brief narrative interludes was adapted to provide the narrative framework for the Conqueror’s reign. Although it seems likely that this Lichfield author had access to the entire London Collection, he chose to draw on it only in his accounts of the reigns of Edward the Confessor, William I, and William Rufus. As we also saw in Chapter 5, it is demonstrable that towards the end of the same century a different recension of Leges Edwardi Confessoris was available not very far away, in Leicester (and, in all probability, a full text of the Leis Willelme at Crowland at much the same time). Throughout the fourteenth century knowledge of the Leges Edwardi, and perhaps especially of their Prologue, was not confined to lawyers or laymen or to the London metropolitan elite. In the reign of Edward II the treatment of the Conquest in the Leges was definitive for some historians as well as for many law­ yers, precisely because it was perceived to be so relevant to contemporary affairs. This particular passage of the Lichfield Chronicle, like the Proem to the Modus tenendi parliamentum, would go on to play a much more influential role in the early modern period than it had in its own time. Vicariously, these two very dif­ ferent but contemporaneous texts of Edward II’s reign multiplied the channels through which the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum would continue to shape understanding of the Conquest for centuries to come. It had come to sup­ ply one of the most important links in what William of Malmesbury had termed the chain.

Jurisprudence after Edward II’s Reign From the early fourteenth century the substantial expository treatments of the common law, such as Bracton, and its updated dependents Fleta and Britton, became increasingly obsolescent. Fleta survived in a single manuscript; so— thanks to Andrew Horn—did the Mirror of Justices. Britton was demonstrably

148 The Lichfield Chronicle: London, BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix, fos 1r–78v; there is a fifteenthcentury copy in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 956; discussed above, pp. 189–93.

270  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 much more popular,149 but there is no indication that this attempt to update Bracton in the 1290s was itself subsequently updated. That English law was not taught in English universities meant that what passed for jurisprudence became, for the most part, increasingly specialized and technical, as its focus became prac­ tical and forensic. Law books appear to have been written exclusively for the use of practitioners and trainee practitioners. I have already mentioned some of the late thirteenth-century examples of short, specialized tracts;150 the genre con­ tinued to thrive. Registers of writs proliferated,151 as (for a time) did collections of precedents for pleading on behalf of a plaintiff, termed ‘counts’ (narrationes), for­ mulated in terms of the relevant writ.152 As lawyers became exclusively narratores, so their primary focus would come to be on forensic tactics rather than substan­ tive law.153 Then counts were largely superseded as the practice of pleading shifted from their use to the practice of tentative special pleading.154 It was by witnessing these elaborate, oral forensic fencing matches, or reading reports of them, that lawyers, whether trainees or qualified practitioners, learnt how most effectively to conduct a particular type of case: hence the proliferation in the fourteenth cen­ tury and later of law reports, latterly termed Year Books. Such exemplary specificity was obviously antithetical to any systematic ex­pos­ ition of English law. That is why Bracton, though increasingly and manifestly antediluvian, nevertheless remained the closest thing to such a general, compre­ hensive doctrinal survey until the seventeenth century.155 What purported to be the transcripts of forensic proceedings reveal that Old English charters continued to be cited from time to time in court; and Domesday Book remained a frequent

149  Twenty-six fourteenth-century MSS are listed in Britton i. pp. xlviii–liii; over 20 more, including LMA, ‘Liber Horn’ and Holkham Hall MS. 248, in J.H. Baker with J.S. Ringrose, Catalogue of English Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library (Woodbridge 1996), p. 63. 150  See above, p. 218; also Brevia Placitata, ed. G.J. Turner and T.F.T. Plucknett, Selden Soc., lxvi (1947), a formulary in which writs are translated into French; Casus Placitorum, ed. W.H. Dunham, Selden Soc., lxix (1950); Placita Corone, ed. J.M. Kaye, Selden Soc., supp. ser., iv (1966). 151  Early Registers of Writs, ed. E. de Haas and G.D.G. Hall, Selden Soc., lxxxvii (1970). 152  Novae Narrationes, ed. E. Shanks and S.F.C. Milsom, Selden Soc., lxxx (1963). 153 S.F.C. Milsom, Historical Foundations of the Common Law, 2nd edn (London 1981), pp. 40–4. 154 Milsom, Historical Foundations, pp. 42–50; Sir John [J.H.] Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 5th edn (Oxford 2019), pp. 83–9. 155  None of the more than fifty extant manuscripts appears to be more recent than the fourteenth century: Bracton i. 1–20; ii. p. liii. It was first printed in 1569. For evidence of erudite lawyers continu­ ing to value their copies of Bracton in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, see J.H. Baker, ‘The Books of the Common Law 1400–1557’, ‘English Law Books and Legal Publishing 1557–1695’, and ‘Common Lawyers’ Libraries 1450–1650’, repr. in his Collected Papers ii. 611–36, at 612; 637–69, at 637; 697–708, at 703, 705; English Legal Manuscripts, 2 vols (Zug 1975–8), ii. 2; D.E.C. Yale, ‘“Of No Mean Authority”: Some Later Uses of Bracton’, in M.S. Arnold, T.A. Green, S.A. Scully, and S.D. White, eds, On the Laws and Customs of England. Essays in Honor of Samuel  E.  Thorne (Chapel Hill, NC 1981), pp. 383–96. Glanvill continued to be copied into the fourteenth century, and to be invoked by lawyers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: S. Tullis, ‘Glanvill after Glanvill’, Unpublished Oxford University  D.  Phil Thesis, pp. 183–5; Appendix 1: ‘List and Schematic Chronology of all Known Glanvill MSS’; Appendix 9: ‘Later Owners of Glanvill MSS’. It was first printed in about 1555.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  271 object of reference in ancient demesne cases. But with the dwindling of any juris­ prudential ambition to survey the whole conspectus of English law, any sense of the law’s historical dimension receded, and with it legal interest in the Conquest. Genetic markers remained detectible: still at the end of the fourteenth century Chaucer’s serjeant owned In termes . . . cas and doomes alle That from the tyme of kyng William were falle.156 It was, however, the ‘books of terms’—that is to say, Year Books—which were important, not the familiar and much too ancient chronological starting point which Chaucer erroneously attributed to them. Moreover, Andrew Horn’s inten­ sive research programme into the history of English law over at least the preced­ ing seven centuries gave every appearance of having been a jurisprudential owl of Minerva. The exceptional, enduring interest of Alan of Ashbourn, Pseudo-Ingulf, Henry Knighton, and the author of John Brompton’s Chronicle in the ancient legis­ lative material which had animated Andrew Horn was out of kilter with the development of professional jurisprudence. ‘Readings’—or lectures for students— on particular statutes, most commonly those of the thirteenth century, begin to survive in fragmentary form from the later fourteenth century, and probably existed earlier.157 Fuller texts are extant from the early fifteenth century. Readers nearly always started by explaining how the statute under consideration had altered existing thirteenth-century law. They seem to have done so exclusively by reference to legal sources. Certainly that is all that survives in writing. The Readings were therefore predicated on temporal change in the law several cen­tur­ ies in the past, but apparently had no interest in setting a broader historical con­ text for such statutory amendments, for instance by reference to other types of source. As we shall see, this lack of historical sensibility can only be shown to have begun to alter in Readings from the 1480s.158 That jurisprudential literature from the beginning of the fourteenth century tended to excise history can be underlined by reference to the most influential of all later medieval English law books, a copy of which must have been found in the offices of most practitioners:159 Thomas Littleton’s vernacular Tenures novelli, written in the 1450s or 1460s, and first printed in 1481, shortly after the author’s death. The adjective in the title differentiated it from the Old Tenures, a title

156  The Canterbury Tales, ‘Prologue’, ll. 323–4. 157 Baker, Introduction, pp. 69–70, 197–8; Sir John [J.H.] Baker, The Reinvention of Magna Carta 1216–1616 (Cambridge 2017), p. 71. 158  Sir John [J.H.] Baker, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, Vol. VI., 1483–1558 (Oxford 2003), pp. 18–24. I should like to thank John Baker for further clarifying my understanding of the treatment of temporal change in the Readings. 159  By 1550 there had been more printings than of the Bible in English: Baker, Introduction, p. 198.

272  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 common to several tracts, the latest of which probably dates from Richard II’s reign.160 As Littleton himself wrote, his book was designed ‘for the better under­ standing of certain chapters of the ancient books of tenures’.161 It did so by formu­ lating ax­ioms of land law with far greater clarity than the Old Tenures; very occasionally it explicitly drew on recent Readings,162 and Littleton’s recollections of the dicta of Chief Justices of the Common Pleas Sir Robert Danby (d. 1474)163 and Sir Richard Newton (d. 1448).164 But though concerned with the ancient real actions and assizes, it is devoid of any historical perspective. Occasionally it refers to statutes, one of which is acknowledged to have changed the law;165 more rarely to the Year Books;166 once to what Littleton had ‘heard it said’ had happened in the time of Richard II.167 Only on a single occasion is the Conquest mentioned, and quite tangentially: the limit of legal memory is said to be identical with ‘the time of limitation in the writ of right, that is to say, from the time of King Richard the First after the Conquest, as is given by the statute of Westminster the first’.168 In other words, in the elaboration of the rules of English land law the Conquest was simply not an issue for Littleton. There is a solitary reference to ‘ancient time, before the limitation of time of memory’ when defining the services of socage tenants.169 But it remains isolated and unexplored. Even the discussion of gavel­ kind fails to prompt any historical curiosity or reflection.170 It was simply an immemorial custom, particular to Kent. Prior to the limit of legal memory, that is to say, prior to the accession of Richard I, time was undifferentiatedly ‘ancient’, and Littleton had very little interest in it, because it was almost entirely irrelevant to his tightly defined purpose. He seems almost equally unmoved by recent devel­ opments which were transforming land law, most strikingly the disappearance of feudal incidents as a result of uses.171 Uses were also largely absent from Readings 160 Baker, Oxford History, p. 501: compiled c. 1380, and first printed c. 1515: The Old Tenures, c. 1515, and the Old Natura Brevium, c. 1518, ed. M.S. Arnold (London 1974). 161  Litt. III. xiii. 162  Litt. III. viii, s. 481, an undated Reading on Westminster II, c. 3. 163  Litt. III. xii, s. 692. 164  Litt. III. xiii, s. 729. 165  Litt. II. iv, s. 103; II. iv, s. 107; II. vi, s. 140; II. viii, s. 154; III. viii, s. 499; III. xii, s. 674; III. xii, s. 685; III. xiii, s. 697; III. xiii, s. 724 (what obtained in common law before the statute of Gloucester), s. 728. 166  Litt. II. iii, s. 96; III. v, s. 383; III. vii, s. 420 (both from the same year, 38 Ed. III); III. viii, s. 514. These are all in Littleton’s original text. At a later stage other Year Book cases were interpolated, eg. I. i, s. 4. 167  Litt. III. xiii, s. 720–3. On this case, see Sir John [J.H.] Baker and S.F.C.  Milsom, Sources of English Legal History. Private Law to 1750, 2nd edn (Oxford 2010), pp. 77–8; Co. Litt. 377b. 168  Litt. II. x, s. 170; J.H. Baker, ‘Prescriptive Customs in English Law 1300–1800’, in J.H. Dondorp, D.J.  Ibbetson, and E.J.H.  Schrage, eds, Limitation and Prescription. A Comparative Legal History (Berlin 2019), pp. 147–87, at 160 nn. 70, 73, for the phrase ‘from the time of which memory of men does not exist to the contrary’, and many variants on it, in fifteenth-century cases. 169  Litt. II. v, s. 119; cf. II. vi, s. 134: ‘where lands or tenements have been granted in ancient time to a dean or chapter’; II. x, s. 164: ‘the ancient towns called boroughs are the most ancient towns which are in England, for those towns that now be cities or counties, in ancient time were boroughs, and called boroughs, for of such ancient towns called boroughs come the burgesses of parliament to the parliament . . .’ 170  Litt. III. ii, ss. 265–76. 171 Baker, Oxford History, p. 631.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  273 and moots, which tended to eschew innovations and to be self-consciously ar­chaic.172 In that respect Littleton simply reflected current culture in English legal education. If Littleton epitomized what passed for English common law jurisprudence in the later middle ages, his contemporary Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench 1442–61, was very much an exception. He wrote a treatise in the English vernacular on what Bracton would have termed public law. The book is now conventionally entitled The Governance of England (1471), a title selected by the work’s Victorian editor from one late fifteenth-century manuscript.173 (What was probably an autograph manuscript was missing when Smith made his cata­ logue of the Cottonian Library in 1696, and was later recorded as having been destroyed in the fire of 1731.)174 The title in other early witnesses, including the editor’s base text,175 appears to have been De dominio regali et politico, or some variant thereon. As in the case of the much earlier Mirror of Justices, a Latin title was used for a vernacular work, even though the vernacular which Fortescue chose to use was English, not law French. It is with the theme evoked by the Latin title—the institutionalized limitation of the exercise of royal rule—that the book opens; what follows demonstrates that the kingdom of England exemplifies it. The choices of subject and language were in themselves sufficient to mark Fortescue out as unique amongst leading common lawyers of the period. His abil­ ity to stand back from legal minutiae and take a broader view had already been apparent in his slightly earlier De laudibus legum Anglie (1468–71),176 on which he draws in the vernacular work, and in his still earlier Opusculum de natura legis naturae (1461–63).177 As in Governance, these earlier and more substantial Latin works revealed—indeed, made a point of proclaiming—a familiarity with main­ stream scholastic authorities.178 De dominio regali et politico signals that scholas­ tic thought was fundamental to the treatise too. On the opening page Fortescue invokes Thomas Aquinas, Roger of Waltham, and Giles of Rome as authorities who had discussed the two categories of dominium he distinguished: dominium regale, and dominium politicum et regale. It was highly unusual for any scholastic writer to be cited in a text concerned with English common law. In this book they prescribed the terms of the argument. 172 Baker, Oxford History, p. 469. 173 Now London, BL, MS. Add. 48031 (formerly Yelverton MS. 35), fos 148v–164r: Sir John Fortescue, Kt., The Governance of England: Otherwise Called, The Difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, ed. C. Plummer (Oxford 1885), pp. 86, 88, 169. 174  MS. Cotton Otho B. i. 175  ‘the deference bitwene dominium regale & dominium politicum & regale’: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 593, fo. 1r. 176  Sir John Fortescue, De laudibus legum Anglie, ed. S.B. Chrimes (Cambridge 1942). 177  The Works of Sir John Fortescue, Knight, Chief Justice of England and Lord Chancellor to Henry the Sixth, ed. Thomas (Fortescue), Lord Clermont (London 1869), pp. 60–184. 178  De laudibus cc. ix, xxxvii, pp. 26, 88, 90; De natura I. xviii (Thomas Aquinas); De natura I. xvi (Giles of Rome).

274  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Fortescue’s Governance/De dominio and his De laudibus were particularly interested in what differentiated the British—later renamed English179—kingdom and therefore English law from that of the continent. Their main theme was iden­ tified in the title and the opening chapters of De dominio as the contrast between the English kingdom as an example of dominium politicum et regale and con­tem­ por­ary France as an example of dominium regale. The distinct character of the British or English kingdom is shown to have originated historically, in Brutus being chosen as king by the band of Trojan refugees who had eventually settled in Britain.180 Fortescue thereby reveals that although the exploitation of Geoffrey of Monmouth and his epigones by English lawyers might have become less visible since the early fourteenth century, as they concentrated increasingly on detailed, practical technicalities, Geoffrey and his ilk remained an obvious and convenient historical authority (as they had been for Andrew Horn and Alan of Ashbourn in the previous century, and the author of John Brompton’s Chronicle much more recently). Fortescue owned a copy of a Latin version of the Brut,181 so was evi­ dently familiar with this material. In his view, Brutus and those who had ‘chosen’ him as king, ‘incorporated’, ‘instituted’, or ‘united’ into a realm, and ‘ordained the same realm to be ruled and governed by such laws as they would all assent unto, which law therefore is called politicum, and because it is ministered by a king, is it called regale’.182 Hence the particular constitution of the kingdom of England, by contrast with the sort of kingdom which had ‘begun of and by the might of the prince’—by conquest—categorized as solely regale.183 According to De laudibus, the English kingdom had always been ruled by ‘the same customs as it is now’. Successive conquerors, whether Romans, returning Britons, Saxons, Danes, returning Saxons, or finally Normans, ‘whose posterity hold the realm at the pre­ sent time’, had not altered those customs, though those kings ‘who possessed England solely by the sword, could, by that power, have extinguished its laws’.184 Here Fortescue silently shifts from comparing ancient British or English cus­ toms with more recent Roman laws—always to the detriment of the latter—to characterizing those customs as laws. It followed that English customs, or laws, had enjoyed a continuous existence from Brutus’s time, long before Rome had been founded, and that English customs ‘are not only good but the best’. Their 179  De laudibus, c. xvii, p. 38. 180  De laudibus, c. xiii, p. 32. 181  Governance, pp. 180, 185 identifying Fortescue’s own fine, illuminated copy, which survives: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson C. 398; cf. De laudibus, p. 158. Note that, contra Plummer, this is not Richard Rede’s chronicle, which was based on this manuscript, but rather the source from which the chronicle was distilled: see S.L.  Peverley, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Brill’s Online Medieval Reference Library), s.v. New Croniclys . . . of the Gestys of the Kinges of England. 182  Governance, ch. ii, p. 112; cf. De laudibus, cc. ix, xiii, xviii, xxxvi, pp. 24, 32, 40, 86; Opusculum de natura legis naturae, in Works of Sir John Fortescue, I. xvi, pp. 77–8. 183 R.W.K.  Hinton, ‘English Constitutional Doctrines from the Fifteenth Century to the Seventeenth I. English Constitutional Theories from Sir John Fortescue to Sir John Eliot’, EHR, lxxv (1960), 410–25, at 413. 184  De laudibus, c. xvii, p. 38.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  275 unique longevity proved the point; and because they were customs, they could not have originated in a royal grant. From the kingdom’s very beginning, they had constituted the ‘political’ aspect of its dominium, one founded on assent. William I, like all previous conquerors of Britain, had chosen not to impose a dominium tantum regale, though he might have done so, being a conqueror. Instead he decided to preserve the aboriginal dominium politicum et regale, which reached back as far as the institution of the kingdom under Brutus. It therefore still obtained in the current day, under William’s ‘posterity’. Fortescue might have been the only major English jurist of the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to continue to explore English law’s history in any detail, but in doing so he simply reiterated the line which had been conventional since the early twelfth century at the latest. In one celebrated case of 1470 reported in the Year Books it was asserted in court that English law dated back to Creation.185 According to De laudibus, the only difference which the Norman Conquest had made was to the language of pleading, which, like that of accounting, hunting, dice, and ball games, had been altered to French.186 But even this alleged legal vestige of the Conquest had, Fortescue reports, been abolished at least in part by a statute of 1362 which had restricted (though not eliminated) the use of French in court.187 By implication, the English language had thereafter been partially sub­ stituted for this Norman import. Fortescue’s decision to write The Governance/De dominio in English reflected the statutory reversal of the one legal consequence of the Norman Conquest which he had noticed in De laudibus. The Conquest is not even mentioned in The Governance/De dominio, which repeatedly contrasts English aboriginal dominium politicum et regale with the untrammeled dominium tantum regale of the French kingdom.188 Nevertheless, in his various works Fortescue had given a new voice and coherence to the historical presentation of English law’s continuity, including over the Conquest. Fortescue’s jurisprudence was exceptional in this period in two respects. First, it was primarily concerned with what a Romanist would term public law. In com­ paring and contrasting that of England with the Continent, and with France in particular—always to the advantage of the former—it set the terms of analysis by reference to scholastic authorities which were entirely outwith English legal trad­ ition, and indeed only tangentially related to civilian tradition. Certainly no English court would have regarded them as valid. Second, and it seems likely as a consequence of Fortescue’s determination to demonstrate the superiority of 185  Wallyng v. Meger (1470), Pasch. 10 Edw. IV, pl. 9, fo. 4b (Year Books of Edward IV: 10 Edward IV and 49 Henry VI, ed. N. Neilson, Selden Soc., xlvii (1930), pp. 38–44), cited by S.B. Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge 1936), p. 202 n. 3. 186  De laudibus, c. xlviii, p. 114. 187  36 Edw. III, stat. i, c. 15. This applied to both oral argument and pleading, though in practice it does not appear to have had any effect on the formal recitation of pleadings: Baker, ‘Three Languages’, 532–3. 188  De laudibus, c. xxxv, pp. 80–6; Governance, chs. iii, iv, pp. 113, 116–18.

276  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 English law, it turned again to that historical perspective which in jurisprudential terms had been largely subterranean since Andrew Horn’s compilations. History established antecedence and therefore superiority in a straightforward way which was readily accessible to a lay audience. Although unusual in this respect amongst later medieval English lawyers, Fortescue was not unique. Something similar can be seen in Morgan Kidwelly’s 1483 Inner Temple Reading on Magna Carta (1225), a course of lectures which begins with an account of the origins of common law. Kidwelly evidently drew on an unidentifiable manuscript of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris—there is a mar­ ginal citation of ‘the book of decrees of William the Conqueror’—to establish that in the fourth year of his reign the Conqueror had endorsed existing English law, with a few amendments. The new king had, allegedly, previously rejected a recep­ tion of Roman law.189 A few years later, c. 1506, Richard Hesketh of Gray’s Inn invoked the ‘laws and decrees’ of William the Conqueror in his widely circulated Reading on the Carta de Foresta,190 the charter first hived off from Magna Carta to accompany its 1217 reissue, and reissued again alongside the legally definitive reissue of Magna Carta in 1225. Even when the alleged laws of the Conqueror were not invoked, the Conquest tended to spring to mind when a reader was dilating on Magna Carta. Thus Thomas Harlakenden’s Reading on c. 35, delivered in Gray’s Inn in 1525, envisaged someone claiming that he and his ancestors had enjoyed certain liberties ‘from the time of 400 years ago, or from the time of the Conquest’ (though he pointed out that such a starting point would be legally invalid, and the hypothetical claimant should instead claim ‘from the time of King Richard the first’).191 Littleton’s Tenures novelli was far more representative than Fortescue, Kidwelly, Hesketh, or Harlakenden, of the jurisprudence of the period; he was also far more influential, at least in the short term. His focus was exclusively on the tech­ ni­cal­ities of one aspect of what a civilian would term English private law; the quasi-civilian distinction between public and private seems never to have entered his mind. Another striking characteristic of his book is the almost total absence 189  Selected Readings and Commentaries on Magna Carta 1400–1604, ed. Sir John [J.H.] Baker, Selden Soc., cxxxii (2015), pp. xliii–xlvi, 97–142, at 97–8; Baker, Reinvention of Magna Carta, p. 76. Kidwelly also cited Glanvill. 190  London, BL, MS. Lansdowne 1145, fo. 71v, cited by Baker, Readings and Commentaries, pp. xlv n. 40, lx n. 26. An extract from the preface, which does not include this section and is edited from different manuscripts, is printed in Readings and Commentaries, pp. 362–3. An extract of a different section, taken from yet another manuscript, is printed in John Spelman’s Reading on Quo warranto, ed. J.H. Baker, Selden Soc., cxiii (1997), pp. 43–52; this also does not refer to the laws of King William, though it does, p. 46, deal with someone pleading on the basis of a grant from the Conqueror. Further, J.H. Baker, Readers and Readings in the Inns of Court and Chancery, Selden Soc., supp. ser., xiii (2000), pp. 29, 316. Hesketh was discussing villeinage and frankpledge, and also cited the laws of Æthelstan. Baker suggests that he was using the Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati from Red Book of the Exchequer fo. 162v, where the code is entitled ‘Carta regis Willelmi conquisitoris de quibusdam statu­ tis’: Gesetze i. 489. 191  Readings and Commentaries, ed. Baker, p. 286; Baker, ‘Prescriptive Customs’, p. 159 n. 66.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  277 of references to actual cases, as recorded in the Year Books. These are also, of course, absent from the works of Fortescue which we have been considering. But during the later fifteenth century they began to appear much more frequently in other law books. Indeed, one novel genre came to consist entirely of excerpts from them. This happened because during the late fifteenth century there began a funda­ mental shift in English forensic practice, from the tentative pleading informed by commun erudition (or communis eruditio) which I have already described,192 to a focus on precedent and case law. Formerly, there appears to have been a conven­ tion of adducing examples by reference to unspecified ‘old books’, not specific citation of particular cases in named books.193 The new practice was obviously far more susceptible to checking. Some manuscript digests of Year Book cases, which reflect the start of this change, survive from this period.194 But it really took off with the invention of printing, the technological innovation which also lent Littleton’s book such unprecedentedly wide influence. Around 1490 someone, probably Nicholas Statham, printed in specially manufactured law French type an ‘abridgement’ of cases from Year Books,195 arranged under headings for spe­ cific legal topics. In some instances it preserves details of cases which are not found in extant Year Books. It was overtaken in 1514–17 by a much more sub­ stantial work of the same character and title, attributed to Anthony Fitzherbert.196 Both were attempts to distil from the vast and varied record of the Year Books significant cases with a bearing on the law, under alphabetically ordered head­ ings. The Year Books had started to be printed during the 1480s.197 This made for ease of reference to the cases cited; what might formerly be available only in extremely rare and (if multiple) varied, sometimes contradictory, manuscript reports of cases, was now rendered more widely accessible and by and large

192 Baker, Introduction, p. 209; Baker, Oxford History, pp. 467–72; J.H. Baker, The Law’s Two Bodies. Some Evidential Problems in English Legal History (Oxford 2001), pp. 66–70, 73–82, 161–70; for commun erudition, see The Reports of Sir John Spelman, ed. J.H.  Baker, 2 vols, Selden Soc., xciii–xciv (1977–8), i. 161; The Notebook of Sir John Port, ed. J.H.  Baker, Selden Soc., cii (1986), p. 100; for Fortescue’s reference to erudition, see E.W. Ives, ‘The Purpose and Making of the Later Year Books’, Law Quarterly Review, lxxxix (1973), 64–86, at 67–9; cf. above, p. 270. 193  This archaic practice was preserved in the rules for mooting in the Inner Temple into the seven­ teenth century: Readings and Moots at the Inns of Court in the Fifteenth Century, II: Moots and Readers’ Cases, ed. J.H. Baker and S.E. Thorne, Selden Soc., cv (1989), p. xcii; Baker, ‘Books of the Common Law’, p. 613. 194  Baker, ‘Books of the Common Law’, pp. 619–20; P. Winfield, ‘Abridgements of the Year Books’, Harvard Law Review, xxxvii (1923), 214–44. 195 Facsimile reprint of untitled, anonymous edition of c. 1490, printed in Rouen: [Nicholas Statham,] Abridgement of Cases, intro. D.J.  Seipp (Clark, NJ 2013), p. xiv; London, BL, MS. Add. 14030, fo. 11, cites it in the 1490s as Statham’s: Baker, Oxford History, p. 501 n. 57; J.H. Baker, ‘Statham, Nicholas’, ODNB. 196  [Anthony Fitzherbert,] Magnum abbreviamentum, 3 parts (London 1514–7); facsimile reprint of the edition of 1577: Anthony Fitzherbert, La Graunde abridgement, intro. D.J.  Seipp (Clark, NJ 2013); F.L. Boersma, An Introduction to Fitzherbert’s Abridgement (Abingdon 1981). 197 Baker, Introduction, pp. 191–2; Baker, Oxford History, pp. 477–9, 507.

278  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 uniform. The results were evident in Statham’s, Fitzherbert’s, and eventually (in 1573, fifteen years after his death) Robert Brooke’s respective Abridgements.198 They made considerable progress in extracting from Year Book cases easily con­ sultable summaries of doctrine, with rationally organized, and eventually num­ bered, extracts, identified by marginal citations, and summary indices. With respect to legal understanding of the Conquest, the consequences may be seen in the entries in these various works under the title Auncien demesne.199 Fitzherbert also compiled La Novel natura brevium (first printed in 1534, but written decades earlier),200 to replace the existing Vieux natura brevium, a title attributed to two or more medieval treatises on writs. His new work included citations, some of which cross-referred to his own Abridgement, and to Year Book cases, which were assessed critically.201 The entry for the writ monstraverunt selfevidently involved reports of ancient demesne cases, and therefore the use of Domesday Book as evidence in court.202 The compilation of salient detail from numerous cases concerned with ancient demesne demonstrated what was in any case clear from the Year Books: that the Conquest had continued to feature in forensic practice, even though it had all but disappeared from jurisprudence between the 1320s and the 1480s. That near disappearance had been a function of a change in the nature of English common law jurisprudence, not a consequence of the Conquest’s sudden forensic oblivion. But although the various Abridgements bear fresh and easily accessible witness to the continuing relevance of Domesday Book in a particular type of proceeding, they do not suggest that legal under­ standing of the Conquest had in any way altered over the centuries since the cat­ egory of ancient demesne had been devised in the thirteenth century. The jurisprudential genre in which Fortescue wrote was completely different, though also, for English common law, similarly unprecedented. Unlike the vari­ ous Abridgements, Fortescue’s works revealed that as soon as English lawyers stood back from the technical minutiae and from the details of forensic proceed­ ings, and considered common law in the round, an historical perspective again became relevant. A fortiori this was the case if an audience wider than legal prac­ titioners was being addressed. Such an approach was likely to lead, in short order, to the subject of the Conquest, because the demonstration of legal continuity across it had been the fundamental premise of English law since the compilations of the twelfth century at the latest. Indeed, that premise, so fundamental to the Norman regime, appears to have drawn on pre-Conquest precedents.203 It was 198  Robert Brooke, La Graunde abridgement (London 1573). 199 [Statham], Abridgement, fos 19b–20a; [Fitzherbert], Magnum abbreviamentum, fos Ciir–Cvr = Fitzherbert, Abridgement (London 1577), fos 85v–88r; Brooke, Abridgement, fos 84–85r. 200 Baker, Oxford History, p. 323 n. 6. 201  Baker, ‘Books of the Common Law’, p. 634. 202 [A. Fitzherbert,] La Novel natura brevium (London 1534), fos 14v–16v. 203 G.  Garnett, ‘Dunstan, Edgar, and the History of Not-So-Recent-Events’, in J.  Barrau and D. Bates, eds, Lives, Identities, and Histories in the Central Middle Ages. Essays Presented to Elisabeth van Houts (Cambridge 2021), pp. 000–00, at 000.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  279 the reason why the laws of King Edward had been confected in the twelfth cen­ tury for the Conqueror to have endorsed in codified form. As the Readings of Fortescue’s contemporaries Kidwelly and Hesketh revealed, even when the legal profession was talking to itself, disputations which were hung on the first item in the Statute Book were apt to do likewise. Copies of these apocryphal codes evi­ dently still lay close to hand in legal circles in London; we have seen they did elsewhere in the kingdom too, and not only in legal circles. What the very different genres of late fifteenth-century jurisprudence reveal is that the absence of an historical dimension from Littleton does not imply that the Conquest had been forgotten in legal circles. It was simply irrelevant to Littleton’s purpose. In that other highly successful, slightly later law book of the period, Christopher St German’s self-consciously philosophical Dialogue between Doctor and Student (1528–31),204 it lurks a little closer to the surface. The earliest ‘statute’ quoted is Magna Carta (1225), the hook on which Kidwelly and Hesketh had hung their Readings.205 In addition to statutes, St German cites the ‘bokes of the lawis of Englande called yeres of termes’ and other records for the ‘maxims and customs’ of English law.206 The common law of the kingdom consisted of ‘dyverse generall Customes of olde tyme vsed through all the realme: which haue ben acceptyd and approuyd by our soueraygne lorde the kynge and his progenytours and all theyr subgettes’.207 Certain particular customs are detailed, the first of which is Kentish gavelkind.208 As with the others—Borough English, the customs of the city of London, and so on—lawyers assumed that it had continued since time immemorial. Presumably lawyers were prompted by the alleged episode on Swanscombe Down to say occasionally of gavelkind alone that it ‘was before the Conquest.’209 But not by St German, who never mentions the Conquest, or the laws of Edward the Confessor, or those of earlier kings; and who does not use material derived directly or intermediately from Geoffrey of Monmouth. He never specifies what ‘olde tyme’ might mean, and which particular ‘progenytours’ he had in mind (if not simply all of them). St German’s scarcely discernable his­ tor­ic­al perspective is therefore very different from that which is far more prom­in­ ent in, for instance, Fortescue’s works. St German cited De legibus once only, and not on a matter of any historical import.210 Almost exactly contemporaneous with St German’s Dialogue is another dia­ logue, also of philosophical bent, which pays a good deal of attention to English

204  St German’s Doctor and Student, ed. T.F.T.  Plucknett and J.L.  Barton, Selden Soc., xci (1974). There are in fact two dialogues, the first of which (1528) was originally in Latin alone, subsequently translated, and the second (1530) in English alone. 205  Doctor and Student, pp. 48–9, 52–3, 65. 206  Doctor and Student, pp. 68–71. 207  Doctor and Student, pp. 44–5. 208  Doctor and Student, pp. 70–1. 209  Reports of Cases from the Time of King Henry VIII, ed. J.H. Baker, 2 vols, Selden Soc., cxx (2003), cxxi (2004), ii. 330, a case from the notebook attributed to William Yelverton. 210  Doctor and Student, p. 282; De legibus, ed. Chrimes, p. cxiv.

280  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 common law as one of the aspects of English government in urgent need of reform in the 1530s: Thomas Starkey’s A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset.211 Starkey initially intended his book for his patron, Reginald Pole, who had played an important part (along with his interlocutor in the Dialogue, Thomas Lupset) in securing in 1529-30 opinions from the law and theology faculties at the University of Paris favourable to Henry VIII’s prospective divorce.212 Not printed until 1871,213 it appears to have enjoyed no success in Starkey’s own day—only one manuscript survives, which almost certainly comes from Starkey’s private papers.214 Nevertheless, the Dialogue’s close connection with a considerable fig­ ure at court, and Starkey’s aspirations to royal service, mean that it should be taken seriously as a reflection of contemporary, informed opinion in official cir­ cles, even if, in the turbulence of the early 1530s, ultimately it failed to find favour. Although Starkey was very interested in English common law, he was not a common lawyer; he studied civil law (amongst other things) in Avignon and in Padua.215 He makes more overt use than St German of medieval English history, and, unlike St German, he focusses specifically on the Conquest. In a discussion of tenure and the feudal incidents of wardship and marriage, he has Lupset consider ‘the ground & the ordynance of the law ’: ‘thys we fynd in storys & in the fyrst instytutyon of our law at such tyme as wyllyam conquerour subduyd our cuntrey & stablyschyd our lawys, certayn landys ware given out of grete famylys to inferior personys for theyr servyce . . .’

In response, Pole did not dispute Lupset’s reconstruction of the legal conse­ quences of the Conquest, but rejected the notion that what had been established in those circumstances should in any sense be considered prescriptive: let hyt be so that at the tyme of the fyrst entre of the conquerour or tyranne cal hym as you wyl thys maner myght be for the tyme convenyent, but now yf we wyl restore our cuntrey to a perfayt state we must schake of al tyrannical custumys & unresonabyl bandys, instytute by that tyranne when he subduyd our cuntrey  . . .216 211  Dated 1529–32: Thomas Starkey, Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, ed. T.F. Mayer, Camden Soc., 4th ser., xxxvii (1989), pp. x–xi. 212  T.F.  Mayer, ‘A Fate Worse than Death: Reginald Pole and the Parisian Theologians’, EHR, ciii (1988), 870–91. 213  England in the Reign of Henry the Eighth. A Dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset, Lecturer in Rhetoric at Oxford, by Thomas Starkey, ed. J.M. Cowper, Early English Text Soc., extra ser., xii (1871). 214  Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, p. x. 215 T.F. Mayer, Thomas Starkey and the Commonweal: Humanist Politics and Religion in the Reign of Henry VIII (Cambridge 1989), pp. 171–98. 216  Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, pp. 77–8.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  281 The Dialogue’s repeated denunciations of the use of law French—‘thys barbarouse tong. . . ’—echoed a familiar trope found, for instance, in Fortescue.217 But the call placed in Pole’s mouth for the abolition of Norman tyranny, which had manifested itself in ‘the lawys gyven to us of such a barbarouse nation as the normannys be’,218 went much further. Pole was not quite made to propose the wholesale abrogation of current English common law, but of ‘veray many’ laws, specifically those tenurial provisions instituted at the Conquest which had produced feudal incidents and other alleged absurdities. The proposal might nominally be restricted to land law, but as no law of any other type is identi­ fied as a candidate for preservation, the implicit assumption is that the legal system allegedly imported and imposed by the Conqueror be substantially abolished. It would be impossible to reconcile this position with the traditional common law doctrine of continuity. King William had not endorsed existing English law, as Morgan Kidwelly, for instance, had asserted on the basis of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. Rather, in Starkey’s view the Conqueror had imposed a novel and tyran­ nical legal system on the English. Yet Starkey was not advocating a res­tor­ation, after a tyrannical hiatus of almost half a millennium, of the laws which the Normans had allegedly replaced. He says nothing about pre-Conquest English law, though some contemporary lawyers were doing just that.219 Instead he advocated either the ­codification of English common law or, preferably, the substitution for it of ‘the cyvyle law of the romanys, the wych ys now the commyn law of al chrystyan natyonys’: ‘that ys to have the cyvyle law of the romaynys to be the commyn law of englond’.220 Ius commune should be substituted for common law.221 Starkey’s attack on English common law as a Norman innovation was explicitly based on unspecified ‘storys’, and evidently prompted by the recent and develop­ ing Tudor resurrection of feudal incidents as sources of revenue. It is possible that he was familiar with Polydore Vergil’s claim that the Conqueror had replaced the common laws which Edward the Confessor had supposedly selected from the laws of previous kings, although Vergil’s Anglica historia, written c. 1512–13, was not printed until 1534.222 The account was in any case well known.223 Starkey’s 217  Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, pp. 82, 90, 128–9; for Fortescue, see above, p. 275. 218  Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, p. 129. 219  Notebook of Sir John Port, no. 99, p. 135, who asserts that Brutus’s laws had remained in use until the reign of Alfred, that Alfred had sought copies of canon and Roman law from the pope and emperor respectively, that he had blended these new materials with existing Trojan law, and that the resulting Alfredian law had ‘continued down to the conquest’. He offers no comment on what had happened subsequently. 220  Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, pp. 129–30. 221 F.W. Maitland, English Law and the Renaissance (The Rede Lecture for 1901) (Cambridge 1901), pp. 7–8 and n. 11, 30. 222  Polydori Vergilii Urbinatis Anglicae historae libri XXVI (Basle 1534), pp. 151–2. For the date, and indications that a presentation manuscript probably once existed, see D.  Hay, Polydore Vergil: Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters (Oxford 1952), pp. 80–1. 223  It is found, for instance, in John Hales’s 1514 Gray’s Inn reading on Westminster II, c. 39: London, Gray’s Inn, MS. 25, fo. 290, trans. Baker, Oxford History, p. 21.

282  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 (and Vergil’s) notion of conqueror as founding legislator is a civilian one; it is the unarticulated assumption underpinning the most influential dialogue advocating legal reform written at this time, though apparently to very different effect.224 Utopus was reported to have assumed the ‘name of victor’, not conqueror, when he ‘gained a victory at his very first landing’, thereby seizing the territory which he went on immediately to transform into an artificial island. The territory and the new commonwealth which he established on it were named after him. Thomas More was uncharacteristically heavy-handed in pointing up the satirical contrast between Utopian laws and the laws of a natural island much more familiar to his readers. Utopian laws are few in number, because few are needed there. They are easily comprehended. The Utopians consider it a major fault amongst other peoples that their laws and therefore their law books are innumerable, and too obscure to be easily and therefore widely understood.225 They, by contrast, have been able to banish all lawyers. More’s aim to highlight current abuses meant that he did not directly address the founding conqueror’s establishment of his new common­ wealth’s laws. It is, however, another implicit counterpoint to the legal system which More knew so well, indeed over which he would preside as Lord Chancellor, and which he was satirizing. It may be no coincidence that he wrote Utopia around the time that he was doing a second stint as a reader at Lincoln’s Inn.226 There is no reason to think that Starkey had conducted any detailed investiga­ tion into the legal aspects of the Conquest in order to bolster the unconventional assertions he makes about it. Nevertheless, that someone who aspired to influ­ ence at Henry VIII’s court should have turned to medieval English history in this way is indicative not only of a general awareness of the historical background to the specific issue of fiscal feudalism, but also of medieval historical justifications in a broader sense. If, despite Starkey’s best efforts, his ideas failed to gain any purchase in his own day, others would come independently to similar conclusions later in the century. Exactly contemporaneous with both A Dialogue between Doctor and Student and A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset was the compilation in 1530, almost cer­ tainly under the direction of Edward Foxe, of the Collectanea satis copiosa. It was not a sustained argument in continuous prose, or in dialogue form, but a battery of excerpted historical precedents initially designed to support the plans for the annulment without papal agreement of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.227 It was expanded in scope over subsequent years, and annotated by the 224  Thomas More, Utopia, ed. E. Surtz and J.H. Hexter (New Haven, CN 1965), p. 112. 225  Utopia, p. 194, cf. 102, 220. 226 Baker, Readers and Readings, p. 116. I am indebted to John Baker for drawing my attention to this. 227 London, BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra  E.  vi, fos 16r–135r; G.D.  Nicholson, ‘The Nature and Function of Historical Argument in the Henrician Reformation’, Unpublished Cambridge University Ph.D.  dissertation, 1977, pp. 81–92, 108–119, 139–52, 172–214 (114–19 for Foxe’s probable role); Appendix I, pp. 289–95, is a detailed palaeographical analysis of the compilation of the Collectanea.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  283 king himself.228 Amongst many other medieval sources, it drew on the London Collection’s version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, specifically the letter of Pope Eleutherius to King Lucius which had been forged by the London interpolator of the Leges, and which was discussed above in Chapter 3.229 The letter was already well known. It was cited in detail, for instance, in a 1514 Gray’s Inn Reading by John Hales,230 and a disputatious member of the audience on that occasion was reportedly able to quote chapter and verse from the Leges Edwardi back at Hales.231 He had not baffled his listeners with an obscure authority unknown to them. A different passage from the Leges was quoted in a roughly con­tem­por­an­ eous Reading on Magna Carta (1225) c. 1.232 But the compilers of the Collectanea had not learnt this material at second hand, from their legal advisors. They had consulted a witness of the London Collection. What appealed to them was Eleutherius’s response to the newly converted British king: that Lucius had no need of the Roman law which he had solicited from the pope. By virtue of adopt­ ing ‘the law and faith of Christ in the kingdom of Britain’, he, as king, should sim­ ply draw on Scripture as a source of law, and should legislate ‘by the counsel [consilium] of your kingdom’. He was now ‘Vicar of God in the kingdom’. It is to say the least curious that the compilers of the Collectanea did not find it awkward to quote a view that Britain owed its freedom from the law of ancient Rome to papal intervention.233 The letter is copied out three times in the Collectanea, on the second occasion under the heading ‘Institutio officium et potestas Regum Anglie’.234 On the first occasion the original’s several references to Britain were excised by the compiler, but on the second they were preserved. Ancient British precedents were particularly germane to the Tudors, as well as forming an his­tor­ic­al basis for the quasi-imperial pretentions of the Reformation monarchy. The compilers of the Collectanea also excerpted the opening section of the introductory passage of the London Collection, which catalogued the number of ‘provinces, shires, and islands which by right looked to and without doubt belonged to the Crown and dignity of the kingdom of Britain’, the ‘excellence’ of J.  Guy, ‘Thomas Cromwell and the Intellectual Origins of the Henrician Revolution’, in A.  Fox and J. Guy, eds, Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform, 1500–1550 (Oxford 1986), pp. 151–78, at 156–7, suggests that Thomas Cranmer was also involved. 228  Nicholson, ‘Historical Argument’, pp. 291–2. 229  LECf 11, 1B-B8; Gesetze i. 636–7; see above, pp. 127–8. 230  On Westminster II, c. 39; Gray’s Inn, MS. 25, fo. 290, translated and discussed by Baker, Oxford History, pp. 20–1. 231 Baker, Oxford History, p. 21. 232  The Rights and Liberties of the English Church. Readings from the Pre-Reformation Inns of Court, ed. M. McGlynn, Selden Soc., cxxix (2015), p. 140, slightly misquoting LECf 17. It is dated to the 1530s or 1540s. 233  F. Heal, ‘What Can King Lucius Do for You? The Reformation and the Early British Church’, EHR, cxx (2005), 593–614, at 600, speculates that there was discomfort at attributing authority to a papal letter, but not with respect to the particular issue of Roman law. 234  BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra E. vi, fos 27r–v, 35r–v, 74v–75r, cf. MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii, fos 35v–36r, which is a likely source; Guy, ‘Intellectual Origins’, pp. 158–9.

284  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 which Crown ought to be termed an ‘empire’ rather than a (mere) ‘kingdom’.235 This was congruent with several of the London interpolations in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris.236 In 1533 it proved to be a perfect precedent for the final text of the repeatedly reworked preamble to the Act in Restraint of Appeals, which proclaimed the kingdom of England to be ‘an Empire, entire of itself ’.237 This was one of those instances when the king himself got involved in the finer points of drafting.238 The London Collection, compiled at the beginning of John’s reign, partly in order to provide historical documentation which could be deployed against an innovating king, was being deployed over three centuries later on behalf of an innovating king intent on establishing that he was doing nothing novel. Indeed, the key terms in the most elaborate preamble to any of the Reformation Statutes, drafted by Thomas Cromwell, and pored over by his sovereign, appear to have been derived from the Collection. They had been excerpted in a substantial brief­ ing paper annotated by the king himself, which included other snippets from what it labelled the Leges Sancti Edwardi.239 We know that there was a witness of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris in the king’s library in the Palace of Westminster, though we do not know at what point it was appropriated from the London Carmelites. But it is part of a copy of Tripartita, and therefore of the third recen­ sion of the Leges.240 It cannot have been the source on which the compilers of the Collectanea drew, because they concentrated on material unique to the fourth recension, found exclusively in the London Collection. The treatment of the Conquest in the Collection in general, and in its version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris in particular, was not in this instance of any interest to those drafting the new Statute. But the ready and continuing availabil­ ity of the text suggests that this material, too, might easily be drawn upon should

235  BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra E. vi, fo. 41v; cf. above, p. 263. The compiler cut ‘countries’ from the list of territories belonging to the Crown. G.D.  Nicholson, ‘The Act of Appeals and the English Reformation’, in C.  Cross, D.  Loades, and J.J.  Scarisbrick, Law and Government under the Tudors. Essays Presented to Sir Geoffrey Elton on his Retirement (Cambridge 1988), pp. 19–30, at 24, mistakenly attributes this statement to the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. In fact, it comes from the newly composed, pseudo-archaic document with which the original compiler prefaced the London Collection, prior to the Tribal and Burghal Hidages. Nicholson plausibly suggests that the compilers of the Collectanea were copying from MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii; see in more detail ‘Historical Argument’, pp. 172–5. 236  LECf 11. 1 A, 32 E; Gesetze i. 635, 659. 237  24 Hen. VIII c.12; Nicholson, ‘Act of Appeals’, pp. 22–3; Guy, ‘Intellectual Origins’, pp. 158–9, 162–3; W. Ullmann, ‘This Realm of England is an Empire’, repr. in his Jurisprudence in the Middle Ages (London 1980), ch. XII, pp. 175–203. Nicholson, ‘Nature and Function’, Appendix II, pp. 296–304, transcribes an early draft of the Act, in SP2/N, fos 78–90 (designated ‘E’ by G.R. Elton, ‘The Evolution of a Reformation Statute’, repr. in his Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, ii (Cambridge 1974), pp. 82–106, esp. 85–8). 238 S.E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament 1529–1536 (Cambridge 1970), p. 167; R. Rex, ‘The Act of Appeals’, in S. Doran, ed., Henry VIII: Man and Monarch (London 2009), no. 139 (p. 145). 239  MS. Cotton Cleopatra E. vi, fo. 42r–v, a passage copied from LECf 10, on Peter’s Pence. 240  London, BL, MS. Royal 13. A. xviii, on which see J.P. Carley, The Libraries of King Henry VIII, CBMLC, vii (London 2000), H2.173.

Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II  285 it ever be considered of relevance; all the more so once many of the most im­port­ ant texts—including the Leges Edwardi Confessoris—were readily available in print, as they were from 1568, in William Lambarde’s ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ. We have seen that some of the texts—particularly the Leges Edwardi—were already very well known to common lawyers. But the printed edition of 1568 was evidence of much more than familiarity with serviceable gobbets. It was the product of thor­ ough palaeographical inquiry largely made possible by one development of the government policy which the Collectanea satis copiosa was intended to justify. It is to the dispersal of most monastic libraries consequent on the Dissolution, and the implications for knowledge of medieval English history in general and the Conquest in particular, that I shall turn in the next chapter.

8

The Preservation of the Sources for English Medieval History in the Sixteenth Century 1568 is not generally accounted a year of great historical moment. Yet in terms of laying the foundations for future historical understanding of and debate about medieval England in general and the impact of the Norman Conquest in particular, Elizabeth I’s tenth regnal year is perhaps the most significant date in the sixteenth century, and indeed for many centuries past. It marked the launching of an officially-sanctioned initiative which greatly facilitated a wide-ranging project for the editing of medieval English historiography; and the simultaneous consummation of a second, more narrowly focussed one, concerned with early medieval English royal law codes. First, on 7 July, a Privy Council letter authorized Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury—who a year or so before had published the first book to print Old English1—to investigate the whereabouts of ‘auncient recordes and monumentes written’ which had been dispersed at the Dissolution of the monasteries; their current owners were exhorted ‘gently [to] impart the same’ to the archbishop’s ‘learned deputies’ for inspection.2 Many of these books came from the few, exceptional monastic libraries which had not been dissolved along with the communities to which they belonged, because the attached cathedrals had survived: Worcester and Durham are prime examples.3 Many more came from the vast majority of monastic institutions which had been dissolved. In both cases, but particularly in the latter, they had found their way into private hands. It was important to establish their current whereabouts, which were even less likely to be known than when they had been held in monastic libraries. Two months later, in September, William Lambarde, a lawyer and antiquary, published an edition of many Old English royal laws, in the second book to print Old English. To those Old English codes, in Old English with a facing Latin ­translation, he appended editions of the Willelmi Articuli and Leges Edwardi 1  Ælfric’s Easter Homily: A Testimonie of Antiquitie, shewing the auncient fayth in the Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord here publikely preached, and also receaved in the Saxons tyme, about 600 yeares agoe (London n.d. [1566/7]); J. Bromwich, ‘The First Book Printed in Anglo-Saxon Types’, TCBS, iii (1959–63), 265–91. 2  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 114, p. 49 (for a contemporary printed copy); Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. J. Bruce and T.T. Perowne, Parker Soc., (1853), pp. 327–8. 3 N.R.  Ker, ‘The Migration of Manuscripts from English Medieval Libraries’, repr. in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in Medieval Heritage, ed. A.G. Watson (London 1985), pp. 459–70, at 464. The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

The Preservation of the Sources   287 Confessoris,4 both of which were of course post-Conquest confections in Latin. It is striking that with one exception all the codes Lambarde selected for inclusion had allegedly been issued in the name of a specific king,5 and that Lambarde made a point of printing them in what he took to be their chronological order. In the latter respect, of course, he followed the model set three and a half centuries earlier by the anonymous individual who compiled the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum close to the start of John’s reign. For it, the amplified version of Willelmi Articuli and the fourth recension of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris—both of which Lambarde drew on in his printed editions—seem also to have been devised. The Privy Council’s commission to the archbishop had been instigated by the archbishop himself. With bureaucratic litotes, Matthew Parker had lobbied William Cecil, Secretary of State, for such a commission: ‘if this opportunity be not taken in our time, it will not so well be done hereafter’.6 Cecil took the point. Like several senior royal officials from the 1530s on, he had become an avid col­lect­or of medieval manuscripts himself.7 He therefore had good cause to understand that unless immediate action were taken, three decades after the dissolution of the monasteries, most of the books dispersed from monastic libraries would be lost forever. If Parker could establish their contents and current locations, then ‘when any neede shall require, resort may be made for the testimonie that may be founde in them, and also by conference of them, the antiquitie of the state of these countryes may be restored to the knowledge of the world’. Thereby, the commission proposed, would be remedied the disappearance of the ‘divers Abbeyes’ which,

4  W. Lambarde, ed., APXAIONOMIA, sive de priscis anglorum legibus libri, sermone Anglico, vetustate antiquissimo, aliquot abhinc seculis conscripti, atque nunc demum, magno iurisperitorum, & amantium antiquitatis omnium commodo, e tenebris in lucem vocati. (London 1568), fos 124v–126r, 126v–[141v]. The previous texts are, in the following order: Ine; Alfred; Alfred & Guthrum; I, II Edward; Edward & Guthrum; II, V Æthelstan; I, II Edmund; II, III Edgar; I, II Æthelred; Dunsaete; I, II Cnut. For the date of going to press, see below, p. 336. 5  The exception is the laws of the Dunsaete, ingeniously entitled Senatusconsultum de Monticolis VValliae, fos 89v–93r, printed in between the laws of Æthelred and those of Cnut. Norðleoda laga, Mircna laga, and Að are all printed at the end of Æthelstan’s laws, as if they formed part of his legislation. 6  Correspondence of Parker, no. CCLI, p. 328. 7  Parker wrote a letter to Cecil on 24 January 1565/6 to accompany a manuscript which he had borrowed and was returning: C.E. Wright, ‘The Dispersal of the Libraries in the Sixteenth Century’, in F.  Wormald and C.E.  Wright, The English Library before 1700 (London 1958), pp. 148–75, at 156; Correspondence of Parker, no. CXCIV, pp. 253–4; cf. The Peterborough Chronicle (The Bodleian Manuscript Laud Misc. 636), ed. D.  Whitelock, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, iv (Copenhagen 1954), pp. 25–5. For Cecil’s collection, which included the Peterborough manuscript, and which was dispersed almost a century after his death, see M. McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age (Oxford 1971), pp. 50–4. He had previously owned London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xiii, the witness of the Historia Croylandensis which ended up in Cotton’s hands, and was destroyed in the fire of 1731: Tite, Records, p. 152. In a collection of notes by William Lambarde, which were bound into a notebook dated by him to 1568, he described it as the ‘prototype’: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. Hist. d. 2, fo. 2v. Cecil also owned the Crowland cartulary, Davis, MC no. 294, now Spalding, Gentleman’s Society: see above, p. 185.

288  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 allegedly, certain of Elizabeth I’s far-sighted ancestors had ‘by special appoyntment’ designated ‘as treasure houses’ for the preservation of historical books and documents—particularly, it seems, books and documents concerning the national past. Such a remedy for the destruction of those royally-established repositories could be sanctioned only by the authority which had recently destroyed so many of them, and plundered those which had been permitted to survive. Less swiftly effective than Lambarde’s edition of Old English law codes in making materials relevant to the history of England widely available, Parker’s commission was in the long term even more important in initiating the process whereby many of the key texts for understanding medieval English history in general, and the Norman Conquest in particular, were (in the humanist cliché of Lambarde’s subtitle) ‘brought to light’. Those key texts were, predominantly, the great works of English history, the most influential of which had been written in the early twelfth century to fill the post-Bedan historiographical gap. Researched in delayed response to the cataclysm of the Conquest, and seeking in different ways to demonstrate continuity with the pre-Conquest past, their progressive dis­ sem­in­ation in print to an unprecedentedly wide audience in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries could not but resurrect the Conquest as an issue of moment, more than half a millennium after the event. Much the same was of course true of Lambarde’s understanding of the early history of English law, which we shall see in effect reproduced in print an interpretation which had been largely forged during the early twelfth century, in parallel with the writing of the great histories. The two developments of 1568, and the way in which they eventually coalesced at the beginning of the seventeenth century, will be the subject of the following two chapters. Together, the effect of these developments was to preserve for posterity products, endangered by the Dissolution, of the connected historical enterprises which had started and so swiftly reached their apogee in the first half of the twelfth century, for the most part in those very same monasteries. Henry VIII’s destruction of the greatest institutions of the middle ages played a large part in revivifying the history of the middle ages which had first been written up within their walls during the middle ages. Lambarde’s project to preserve, edit, and print the surviving early English law codes was much narrower and more self-contained than that to do something similar for the great works of medieval English historical writing. Partly for that reason it had already been accomplished before the more wide-ranging and ambitious project had even been clearly conceived, let alone executed. But in order to understand the project of which Lambarde’s printed edition marked the precocious consummation—which I shall treat in Chapter 9—it is necessary first to consider the long background to the Privy Council’s commission to Archbishop Parker of July 1568, as well as its immediate consequences. And that means returning not just to the Dissolution, but to the years immediately preceding it, where Chapter 7 concluded.

The Preservation of the Sources   289

The Precedents for Parker’s Commission: John Leland and John Bale It might be thought that there was nothing much new about the Privy Council’s commission. There had been several earlier commissions for the identification and collection of selected books from monastic libraries, alleged in 1568 to have been designated by unnamed earlier monarchs as ‘treasure houses’ of documents. The first precedent which can be precisely dated had happened in 1533, shortly before the Dissolution was launched. Then John Leland, Latin poet, royal chaplain, and by his own account ‘Antiquarius’,8 received from Henry VIII what Leland later described as ‘a moste gracyouse commysion to peruse and dylygentlye to search all the lybraryes of monasteryes and collegies of thys your noble reaulme’.9 Authors who had written ‘yn those dayes that the Saxons prevailid of the Britannes, and the Normanes of the Saxons could not but with a fervente zele and an honeste corage commende them to memory els as like to have beene perpetually obscurid, or to have bene lightely remembrid as oncerteine shadowes’.10 He made two circuits of English monastic houses, one beginning immediately after the commission and therefore not long before the start of the first wave of Dissolution, which engulfed the smaller houses;11 the other beginning in 1538, shortly before the second phase and culmination of the process, and continuing through it into its immediate aftermath.12 The second seems also to have been officially sanctioned. During the first circuit Leland made brief lists of books in over 130 monastic libraries. The lists were not comprehensive surveys of the holdings of libraries, but highly selective: they were intended to record only items which he considered of interest either to the authorities or to himself (or both). As we shall see, other writings by him frequently refer to books he had noticed on library shelves but omitted from his lists.

8  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Top. Gen. c. 3, p. 286. 9  The laboryouse journey 7 serche of Johan Leylande for Englandes antiquitees geven of hym as a Newe Yeares gyfte to Kynge Henry the VIII. in the XXXVII. yeare of his reygne, with declaracyons enlarged by Johan Bale (London 1549), sig. B.viiir. For this edition by Leland’s protégé Bale of Leland’s New Year’s Gift to Henry VIII, together with a commentary, see John Leland, De uiris illustribus, ed. J.P. Carley, with the assistance of C. Brett (Toronto–Oxford 2010), pp. xlii-xlv. An autograph draft of the New Year’s Gift is in that of De uiris, in the third volume of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Top. Gen. c. 3, pp. 281–8: De uiris, p. xxvi. In the autograph version the word ‘chathedral’ has been deleted before ‘collegies’: MS. Top. Gen. c. 3, p. 281; De uiris, p. liii n. 155. There is no manuscript warrant for the date attributed to Leland’s address, which appears to have been inferred by Bale; the autograph dates it to Henry’s 25th regnal year, which also cannot be correct. Carley, in Leland, De uiris, pp. xxix, xliv–xlv, proposes re-dating it to 1543 or 1544. For an account of his life, see J.P. Carley, ‘Leland, John’, ODNB. 10  MS. Top. Gen. c. 3, p. 283. 11  For a detailed reconstruction of this first itinerary, and the library lists which Leland compiled as aides mémoires, see Carley, in Leland, De uiris, pp. lxii–xcv, c. 12  Carley, in Leland, De uiris, pp. xcv–c.

290  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 By the time Leland started his second circuit it was for the most part on the verge of being too late for the compilation of lists; working at speed and under great pressure, he was simply trying to salvage whatever he deemed potentially useful. Of necessity, he was very choosy. He collected books, some of which he deposited in ‘the moste magnificent libraries of your royal palacis’,13 and some of which he kept for his own use in the preparation of three projected works: a chorographical history of the realm,14 to be entitled either Civilis historia or De antiquitate Britannica,15 a Topographia Britanniae,16 and a composite genealogy of the British nobility, to be entitled De nobilitate Britannica.17 These planned books were much bruited by him, but he never got round to writing any of them. He did, however, draft, but never published, a biographical dictionary of British writers, chronologically arranged, known as De uiris illustribus.18 Leland would have been well aware that the title had been coined by Suetonius, and imitated by Jerome and Cassiodorus. Many of those he covered were, of course, historical writers. His protégé John Bale twice attempted to follow in his footsteps: first under Edward VI, and then, after an interlude of Marian exile during which most of the books he had previously collected and stored in Ireland were lost,19 during the first few years of Elizabeth’s reign.20 By Bale’s own account, he had already begun to investigate the libraries of Carmelite and Augustinian houses in the same year that Leland received his first commission,21 but at that stage he, Bale, had received no commission, and was himself still a Carmelite friar. He was acting solely on his own initiative. Although the titles which attracted the attention of both book hunters ranged far more widely in subject than historical writing, they came to regard all the literary materials they rescued as an embodiment of the—English, or sometimes British22—national past which was written up in the histories. This 13  Bodleian Library, MS. Top. Gen. c. 3, p. 281. By about 1530 there were libraries in the royal palaces of Westminster, Hampton Court, and Greenwich: Leland, Antiphilarchia (presentation manuscript), Cambridge, UL, MS. Ee. 5. 14, 335–6, cited by J.P.  Carley, ‘The Dispersal of the Monastic Libraries and the Salvaging of the Spoils’, in E. Leedham-Green and T. Webber, eds, The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, Vol. I (Cambridge 2006), pp. 265–91, at 270 n. 15. 14  Laboryouse journey, sig.C.iir, D.iiiiv. 15  Laboryouse journey, [sig. D.viiiv]; Leland, De uiris, p. 76. 16  Laboryouse journey, [sig. D.viv]. 17  Laboryouse journey, sig. E.iiir. 18  Confusingly, this is often referred to as Leland’s Commentarii, because it was first published by Anthony Hall as Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis (Oxford 1709). 19 T.  Graham and A.G.  Watson, eds, The Recovery of the Past in Early Elizabethan England. Documents by John Bale and John Joscelyn from the Circle of Matthew Parker, Cambridge Bibliographical Society Monographs, xiii (1998), pp. 17–18; he was briefly bishop of Ossory from late 1552 until Mary’s accession, following which he soon had to flee into exile. 20  John Bale, Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae, quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam vocant: Catalogus; Posterior pars, quinque continens Centurias ultimas, 2 vols (Basle 1557–59), which is a much expanded version of his Illustrium Maioris Britanniae scriptorium, hoc est, Angliae, Cambriae, ac Scotiae, Summarium in quasdam centurias divisum (Ipswich [recte Wesel] 1548). 21 Bale, Illustrium Maioris Britanniae scriptorium, fo. 246r; Leland, De uiris, p. cvii. 22 Bale, Scriptorum catalogus, i. 671, described Leland as a ‘passionate lover and most diligent investigator of British antiquity’.

The Preservation of the Sources   291 national literary heritage they rightly judged to be in peril. It was ‘as lyttle regarde[d] as the parynges of our nayles’.23 If it was not simply being destroyed along with the institutions in which it had been housed and for the most part written, it was being spirited abroad. In the midst of the first wave of Dissolution, on 16 July 1536, Leland reportedly warned Thomas Cromwell: ‘now the Germanes perceiving our desidiousness and negligence, do send dayly young scholars hither, that spoileth them, and cutteth them out of libraries, returning home and putting them abroad as monuments of their own country’.24 Following the second wave, he told the king in his New Year’s Day address for (possibly) 1545: ‘I trust that this yowr reaulme shall so wele be knowne, ons paynted with his natyve colours, that the renoume therof shal geve place to the glory of no other regyon’.25 That did not entail any focus on the Conquest, to which Leland made no more than very occasional, passing reference.26 For instance, it could not be a matter of chance, but was evidently providential, that Bede’s oratory at Jarrow had been preserved from ‘the ferocity of the Norman William the Great’.27 Robert of Mortain, ‘uterine brother of William I, king of England, despoiled the church of St Petroc of all its estates’.28 Leland planned that one section of his projected De nobilitate should conclude with ‘the vyctorye of kyng Willyam the greate’.29 He similarly envisaged that the second part of De uiris illustribus would be ‘from the tyme of Augustyne, onto the advente of the Normanes’.30 In his notebooks, published long after his death under the title Collectanea, he transcribed brief précis of a few chronicle sources, some of which inevitably covered the Conquest. When working in the library of Cirencester Abbey, for instance, he took extensive notes from a witness of the Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis.31 But his digest passed over the events of 1066 in a few lines.32 At St Augustine’s, Canterbury, he made desultory jottings from William Thorne’s Chronicle, including a mention of the episode at Swanscombe Down, when Kentishmen had ‘extracted liberty’ from the ‘tyrant’.33 But he made nothing of this in his other extant writings. A few of the aristocratic genealogies he reproduced in his Itinerary referred to the Conquest.34 That was hardly suprising, because in the sixteenth century it became even more fashionable than hitherto to claim descent from a companion of the Conqueror.35 23  Laboryouse Journey, The conclusyon [Sig. f vii]. 24  A lost letter, quoted by A. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ed. P. Bliss, 4 vols (London 1813–20), i. 198. 25  Laboryouse journey, sig. E.iiiir. 26  Bald summary in Joannis Lelandi antiquarii de rebus Britannicis collectanea, editio altera, ed. T. Hearne, 6 vols (London 1770), ii. 530–1. 27  De uiris, p. 192. 28  De uiris, c. 35, p. 100. 29  Laboryouse journey, sig. E.iiir. 30  Laboryouse journey, [sig. C.viiir]; Bodelian Library, MS. Top. Gen. c. 3, p. 283. 31  Collectanea iii. 278–89. 32  Collectanea iii. 287. 33  Collectanea iii. 51–4, at 52. 34  The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535–1543, ed. L. Toulmin Smith, repr. with a foreword by T.D. Kendrick, 5 vols (London 1964), i. 237–8, 314 (‘Gilbertus Neville cam yn with King William Conqueror’), ii. 8, 20. 35 W.  Wyrley, The True Use of Armorie (London 1592), p. 26: ‘it is much more glorious and ­honourable to be descended from a most famous nation conquering, then such people by plaine feate

292  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 These are nothing more than passing, often incidental, allusions, for the most part echoing what Leland’s sources had told him. The Conquest was a traditional punctuation mark in the course of English history, but that did not mean that Leland considered it merited any particular attention, or, therefore, that interest in it actuated his selection of books for preservation. Nevertheless, as we saw in Chapter  1, it was architectonic to many of those books, because they had been written in response to it. His most striking and extensive comment on the Conquest relates to law, a subject on which he was hampered by his lack of legal expertise, in itself a severe constraint on his ability to assess the legal and record (as distinct from narrative) sources for the Conquest, or indeed any other subject. He reproduces from Geoffrey of Monmouth the story of the (ancient British) laws of Dunvallo Molmutius, which had, he adds, been preserved and supplemented by the Saxon kings. King Alfred had sanctioned their translation into Old English. Thus far Leland simply parotted Geoffrey;36 but he went on to identify certain Old English kings—Æthelberht, Ine, Alfred, and Edward, ‘the third of that name among the Saxons’ (elsewhere labelled ‘Edward the Simple’)37—who were celebrated as legislators, and had allegedly endorsed these laws. This he did not borrow from Geoffrey of Monmouth. As for the Normans, they did not admit either British or Saxon laws willingly, but in adversity they were all but forced to call the old mixed Saxon and British laws back into use, whose weight and authority set aside some of the tyranny – or, to put it more mildly, the severity – of their own.38

According to Leland, the conquering Normans had in turn, in the face of un­speci­ fied adversity, been obliged to endorse existing laws which were ultimately British in origin. This is a story compatible with the traditional understanding of legal continuity over the Conquest, but with an unconventional, Galfredian twist. It is likely that the Old English kings who had allegedly endorsed the laws of Dunvallo Molmutius were amongst those whose vernacular laws were contained in the collection which Leland noticed, exceptionally, at Christchurch, Twynham,39 and of Armes subiuged’. Wyrley was Rouge Croix Pursuivant, and was denouncing the attempts of some to claim ancestry from prior to the Conquest. Further, F. Heal and C. Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Basingstoke 1994), pp. 34–7; J.  Broadway, ‘No historie so meete’: Gentry Culture and the Development of Local History in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Manchester 2006), pp.  155–7, 159; J.H.  Baker, ‘Tudor Pedigree Rolls and Their Uses’, in N.  Ramsay, ed., Heralds and Heraldry in Shakespeare’s England (Stamford 2014), pp. 125–65, at 132; R. Cust, ‘Heraldry and Gentry Communities in Shakespeare’s England’, in Ramsay, ed., Heralds and Heraldry, pp. 190–203, at 201–2. 36  Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, ed. M.D. Reeve and N. Wright (Woodbridge 2007), III. 39. 37  De uiris, c. 140, p. 284. 38  De uiris, c. 7, p. 20. 39  T. Webber and A.G. Watson, The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons, CBMLC, vi (1998), A8.1.

The Preservation of the Sources   293 which he asserted had been compiled by Alfred. But although he claimed to have read it ‘laboriously’,40 he makes no further comment on its contents. Perhaps he had laboured so hard over it because he had found it baffling. In that important regard he proved far less perceptive than Alan of Ashbourn, Pseudo-Ingulf, Henry Knighton, and the author of John Brompton’s Chronicle (on which Leland briefly commented after visiting Jervaulx Abbey)41 had been in preceding cen­tur­ies. He was also outshone by his contemporaries Parker, Lambarde, and Lambarde’s sometime tutor, Laurence Nowell. His failure to record such law books elsewhere is striking, because there were certainly many in the libraries he inspected.42 He was simply not very interested in them. The obvious explanation is that this was because he was incapable of grasping their significance. The only other instance is not recorded in one of his book lists, but in De uiris illustribus, which mentions that at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, he had spotted a book of ‘public decrees of the realm, composed painstakingly by [Henry I], whence they are even now said to be the Henrician laws, taking their name from their author’. It is impossible to determine whether this was a now lost witness of the Leges Henrici. Leland may simply have been struck by the copies of Henry I’s Coronation Charter and Ordinance on shire and hundred courts he came across in the St Augustine’s witness of Quadripartitus, BL, MS. Cotton Titus A. xxvii— the one which Andrew Horn had consulted for editorial purposes in the early fourteenth century—and therefore mischaracterized the book.43 Patrick Wormald’s suggestion that the book Leland saw at Twynham ‘fits’ the collection now in London, BL, MS. Cotton Nero A. i(A) ‘better than other unplaced survivals’ has little to recommend it in terms of this manuscript’s contents.44 Certainly it contains no reference to Dunvallo Molmutius. 40  De uiris, cc. 8, 115, pp. 22, 244. 41  Collectanea, iv. 44. 42  For instance, Worcester: R.  Sharpe, J.P.  Carley, R.M.  Thomson, and A.G.  Wilson, eds, English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, CBMLC, iv (London 1996), B118, which fails to record what is now London, BL, MS. Royal 11. B. ii, fos 103r–166v. The list also omits what was probably a copy of Britton, attributed by Leland to Henry Bracton: De uiris, c. 276, p. 494. 43  De uiris, c. 145, p. 290. See B.C. Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, 3 vols, CBMLC, xiii (2008), BA1.*895b, for what is now London, BL, MS. Cotton Titus A. xxvii. This manuscript was used by Andrew Horn to correct the Quadripartitus element in his edition of the London Collection, now Cambridge, CCC, MSS. 70 + 258: see above, pp. 250–1. Quadripartitus (and the St Augustine’s witness of it) does not include the Leges Henrici, though both books are thought to be the work of the same man: P.  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, repr. in his Legal Culture, pp. 81–114, esp. 102–6. Of extant manuscripts of the Leges Henrici, none can be associated with St  Augustine’s. Three now lost witnesses of the Leges Henrici are known to have survived until the seventeenth ­century. One of these is associated with the London Guildhall, another later belonged to John Selden and was used by Roger Twysden in the 1644 re-edition of AΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, and the third, according to David Wilkins, ‘seems to have belonged to the archbishop or monks of Canterbury’: LHP, pp. 49–50. Wilkins’ comment makes the third appear the most likely candidate, but there is no other evidence to suggest that any of these might have been at St Augustine’s in the 1530s, nor is there any record in the exceptionally detailed library catalogues that St Augustine’s ever held a copy of Leges Henrici. 44 Wormald, Making, pp. 224–8 and n. 263. There are, however, marginal notes by Robert Talbot (1505/6–1558): Carley, in Leland, De uiris, p. lxv n. 217.

294  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Neither in De uiris illustribus nor anywhere else does Leland explain what he might have meant by his allusion to Norman ‘tyranny’—or at least ‘severity’— being tempered by an eventual and reluctant confirmation of the existing conflation of British and Saxon law. And in his Antiphilarchia—his unprinted dialogue between a reformer and a Catholic, directed against papal influence in Britain (not just England), and presented to his sovereign in 1542—he says something, again in passing, which cannot easily be reconciled with his account of that con­ firm­ation: ‘the Normans many times refused the yoke of the Roman Church as a violent constraint born out of tyranny’.45 In this anti-papal polemic, written in the immediate aftermath of the Dissolution, the tyranny in the late eleventh century was papal, not Norman. Indeed, Leland presents the Normans as stalwart op­pon­ ents of it, in a foreshadowing of the current struggle. They had resisted the im­pos­ ition of a papal yoke. It was only on account of this Norman anti-papal resistance that the Conquest, as distinct from early medieval English or British history in general, merited particular attention here. Bale’s position was comparable, though it led him to be ambivalent about the Conquest. The Conqueror, listed by Bale as one of his writers, had abolished the laws of previous kings, and established new ones; nevertheless a book of laws ‘said to be of King Edward’ had been produced during the reign. The papacy had backed the Conquest, but William had refused to do fealty to the pope.46 Bale never reconciled the inherent tensions in these statements, or formulated a coherent line on the subject. As Leland’s disparate comments suggest, he too was not a systematic historical thinker in the way that, for instance, William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon had been. The Norman Conquest played only a small a part in his understanding of English, or British, history, so it was possible for him to leave such tensions unexplored. To judge from the manuscripts he collected, the medieval English king he esteemed most highly was not William I or Edward the Confessor, but Æthelstan: from Bath Priory he removed a volume of the acta of the Council of Constantinople (680) which had been donated by the king,47 and 45  Cambridge, UL, MS. Ee 5.14, p. 341; C. Brett, ‘John Leland and the Anglo-Norman Historian’, ANS, xi (1988), 59–76, at 74. 46 Bale, Scriptorum catalogus i. 166–7; cf. J. Bale, The First Two Parts of the Acts or Unchast Examples of the English Votaryes (London 1551), Pt. 2, fo. xxv, for outrage at the promotion of a bastard as king, the sources cited including Polydore Vergil and William of Malmesbury. 47 Later this became London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius  B.  v, discussed by S.D.  Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, in M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss, eds, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England. Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes (Cambridge 1985), pp. 143–201, at 159–65. Leland records the book in De uiris, c. 122, p. 262 (cf. p. lxix and n. 244), but not in his list for Bath: Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B8. According to his account, he had composed a poem in the voice of the manuscript itself which recorded that ‘for more than six hundred years’ it had lain ‘hidden, filthy in dust and mould, until the piety of the great Henry recalled me to the air, and restored me to a fitting place’. Leland claimed to have inscribed this poem in the manuscript, though it is not there, perhaps because it never was, perhaps because it was subsequently removed and inserted in another book associated with the

The Preservation of the Sources   295 from St Augustine’s, Canterbury, a gospel book which Leland believed had been donated to the abbey by the king.48 He was not interested in the contents of these books, only in their association with Æthelstan. He was not the sole bibliophile at this time to be star struck by this particular pre-Conquest monarch: Thomas Dackomb had in 1542 purchased what he confidently asserted to be the king’s psalter, which had probably come from the library of one of the Winchester ­houses.49 What most impressed Leland about any early king was a demonstrable connection with manuscripts which still survived; or in the case of Alfred, none of whose library could now be traced, with learning.50 Perhaps it is unsurprising that such a bibliophile should consider the best kings to be bookish. He had good reason to know that his own sovereign was. For Leland, the Danish invasions resonated much louder than the Norman Conquest. Regrettably, they had distracted even the studious King Æthelstan from his books.51 Later, during ‘the reign of Æthelred, father of the third Edward, . . . the plundering Danes mercilessly laid waste the capital of Kent’. Leland inferred that the library of St Augustine’s Abbey had probably ‘suffered losses during the tumult’,52 though he failed to adduce any evidence to that effect. But obviously Kent could not have borne the brunt of the Danes’ attacks. More than a century after their onslaught in the North, Symeon of Durham had taken steps to prevent the destruction they had wrought from consigning all prior history to oblivion: ‘At last it struck [Symeon] . . . that by far the most necessary and useful action would be meticulously to seek out the remains of the libraries which had been sacked by the Danes.’53 In other words, Symeon had been an early

king (see below, n. 48). Nor is there any evidence that the manuscript was ever incorporated into Henry VIII’s libraries. Leland also asserted that it was ‘credible’ that Æthelstan—whom he treats as an author—had bequeathed a large number of (unspecified) books to Malmesbury Abbey. 48  London, BL, MS. Royal 1. A. xviii; Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s, BA8.8 and pp. cii n. 103, 1734; Keynes, ‘Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 165–70. Leland inserted at the beginning of this manuscript a poem which is very similar to the one he claimed in De uiris to have inscribed in MS. Cotton Claudius B. v. It is not clear whether Leland was mistaken in his recollection about where he inscribed the poem, or whether the leaf on which the poem was written was subsequently moved from one manuscript to the other. Nor is there any evidence that this manuscript was incorporated into the king’s libraries in Henry VIII’s time. Lord Lumley’s name is written in it, and in 1596 it was included in his library catalogue: S. Jayne and F.R. Johnson, The Lumley Library: The Catalogue of 1609 (London 1956), p. 65. It would have entered (or re-entered) the king’s library when Lumley’s library was acquired by James I for the use of Henry, Prince of Wales. 49 London, BL, MS. Cotton Galba  A.  xviii, fo. 1r; Keynes, ‘Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 193–6; A.G. Watson, ‘A Sixteenth-Century Collector: Thomas Dackomb, 1496–c. 1572’, repr. in his Medieval Manuscripts in Post-Medieval England (Aldershot 2004), ch. III, pp. 204–17, at 208, 212. It was in Cotton’s hands by 1612. 50  De uiris, c. 215, pp. 236–48. 51  De uiris, c. 122, p. 262. 52  De uiris, c. 287, p. 504. 53  De uiris, c. 160, pp. 306–8; cf. c. 87, p. 192: ‘the Danes, the most violent destroyers in human memory, who burnt so many of the writings of learned Englishmen, could not obscure Bede’s fame or his works in the least’.

296  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 twelfth-century forebear of Leland.54 Even one of the post-Conquest English historians Leland revered was commended for preserving not what might have been endangered by the Normans—there is no suggestion that anything (other than Bede’s chapel at Jarrow) had been—but by earlier invaders, who had devastated the country. Leland implicitly accepted that Symeon and the others had succeeded in that self-imposed task. Now it was necessary to defend the twelfth-century historian he revered most, Geoffrey of Monmouth, the source for the laws of Dunvallo Molmutius. Geoffrey had to be defended from the recent, sceptical denunciations of that Italian papist, Polydore Vergil, whose Historicae Anglicae historiae libri XXVI, completed in 1512–13, had recently been printed for the first time.55 According to Leland, Vergil knew no Old English, and, unlike Leland, had never bothered to travel around the libraries of Britain in order to seek out and examine evidence for himself.56 He was even accused of destroying the evidence so that no one could in the future contest, by reference to it, his papalist interpretations.57 Vergil’s scorn for Geoffrey’s account of King Arthur was particularly offensive,58 not least because it would also have offended Henry VIII, who, like his father, was devoted to this supposed predecessor of the new Welsh dynasty.59 Arthur had been a descendant of the Emperor Constantine himself.60 It has been claimed that Henry refused to accept the dedication of Vergil’s book on account of his scepticism about Arthur.61 Leland’s chapter on Geoffrey is by far the longest in De uiris illustribus: ‘he stands alone in having rescued a great part of Britain’s antiquity well and truly from destruction through a diligence which is beyond all praise’.62 Geoffrey had been another twelfth-century proto-Leland, but unlike his contemporary Symeon of Durham, his focus had been on salvaging, preserving and organizing earlier British, rather than later English, history. Leland paid little attention to the distinction: indeed, he elided the two, as befitted a loyal subject of the Tudor dynasty, who laid considerable emphasis on their Welsh—that is, British—ancestry. While acknowledging the importance of other twelfth-century historians, he accorded

54  Carley, in Leland, De uiris, p. civ. 55  Polydori Vergilii Urbinatis Anglicae historiae libri XXVI (Basle 1534). Vergil’s draft survives in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolico Vaticano, Codices Urbinates Latini 497–8. 56  Carley, in Leland, De uiris, pp. xlii, cxviii–cxxvii, c. 166, p. 330; Epigram by Leland, in Collectanea, v. 127; J.  Leland, Assertio inclytissimi Arturii (London 1544); D.  Hay, Polydore Vergil: Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters (Oxford 1952), pp. 86, 157–8. 57  Written in the margin of a copy of Bale, Scriptorum catalogus, and quoted by Hay, Vergil, p. 159. 58 Hay, Vergil, pp. 109–10, 157–8, 199. 59  The Inventory of King Henry VIII. Society of Antiquaries MS 129 and BL MS Harley 1419, I. The Transcript, ed. D. Starkey, Report of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, lvi (1998), nos. 8906, 13337, 15377. His deceased elder brother had been named Arthur. 60 R.  Koebner, ‘ “The imperial crown of this realm”: Henry VIII, Constantine the Great, and Polydore Vergil’, BIHR, xxvi (1953), 29–52, at 31–2. 61  Koebner, ‘ “The imperial crown of this realm” ’, 35–6; cf. Leland, De uiris, pp. cxvi–cxvii. 62  De uiris, c. 161, pp. 308–22.

The Preservation of the Sources   297 Geoffrey and Symeon primary credit for saving the evidence for the whole continuum of British—subsequently English—history. In a sense, Leland thereby affirmed William of Malmesbury’s point that after Bede there was little alternative to the twelfth-century historians who had sought to mend the broken chain.63 Leland was, however, still more enthusiastic about Ranulf Higden than about Geoffrey and Symeon. He commended Higden for performing similar services in a period of commensurate upheaval, occasioned by the Wars of the Roses. He seems to have seen Higden as another role model: ‘I cannot easily say how much gratitude he deserves from his country . . ., for he abridged into one volume of history information which he had found hitherto, lying around in dark libraries, scattered and in no clear order in the works of various authors.’64 To elevate Higden, at least by implication, over even William of Malmesbury—‘a man born in a rude and barbarous age compared with the fe­li­city of our times’65—is revealing of Leland’s understanding of the function of historical writing. He appears to have approved of Higden’s abridgement of earlier historians, whereas later antiquaries would want to read the materials from which abridgements were made. But then in Leland’s view, Symeon and Geoffrey (and by implication William of Malmesbury) had performed the same function in a previous age, in the wake of an earlier crisis of comparable magnitude. Where he differed from subsequent antiquaries was in privileging a recent abridgement over earlier ones. He liked historians to acknowledge the sources from which they made their abridgements. This was something Higden did,66 and Polydore Vergil,67 like Roger of Howden68 and William Thorne,69 failed to do—a solecism of which Leland took a very dim view indeed when Vergil was guilty of it. His estimate of Higden’s importance was conventional in his day: Polychronicon had already been printed, repeatedly, whereas none of the twelfth-century historians (other than the exception which underlines the point, Geoffrey of Monmouth) yet had. Partly thanks to Leland’s efforts, it would not remain conventional for much longer.

The Appropriation of Monastic Books As the Collectanea satis copiosa, adduced at the end of Chapter 7, demonstrates, initial Henrician interest in history was prompted by a desire to amass precedents to strengthen claims to autonomy from papal jurisdiction. To that end Cardinal Wolsey had already started to acquire monastic manuscripts prior to his fall in 63  See above, pp. 13–15.    64  De uiris, c. 354, p. 568; cf. Carley, pp. civ–cv. 65  De uiris, c. 166, p. 330: William was ‘equal, if not superior, to the Italian Polydore in every branch of knowledge, even if he was not his equal in eloquence’, whereas c. 354, p. 568, ‘Ranulf was superior to [Polydore] “by two full octaves”’. 66  De uiris, c. 354, p. 568. 67  De uiris, c. 166, p. 330. 68  De uiris, c. 160, p. 308. 69  William Thorne’s use of Thomas Sprott: De uiris, c. 287, p. 502.

298  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 1529,70 as he attempted to build up a case for Henry’s prospective divorce in the face of papal obstruction. But only two of the thirty-one manuscripts which can be identified as having been requisitioned at that stage consist of twelfth-century English historians, viz. Geoffrey of Monmouth (and by association Nennius), William of Malmesbury, and Aelred of Rievaulx in one volume;71 and Ralph de Diceto in the other.72 At this stage, as many volumes were assembled on the history of the early Church73 as on that of Britain; far more, if one deems the early Church to encompass copies of patristic and other early Christian writers. The vast majority of the 31 collected by Wolsey are Scripture and scriptural commentary, or scholastic theology, or canon law.74 This was hardly surprising, because initially the pressing issue was King Henry’s prospective divorce. The fruits are evident in Gravissimae atque exactissimae illustrissimarum totius Italiae et Galliae academiarum censurae of 1530, attributed to Edward Foxe.75 Geoffrey of Monmouth, William of Malmesbury, Aelred of Rievaulx, and Ralph de Diceto said little which could have lent weight to this case, and do not appear in the book. The heading of a list, drawn up at about this time, of almost 100 items of interest which had been identified in Lincolnshire monastic libraries, presents it as comprising works of history and divinity (in that order). Its priorities were therefore rather different from Wolsey’s, and are made explicit by the heading. This suggests that it was unlikely to be restricted to the narrow issue of divorce. The list has been shown to be not the work of Leland in 1536,76 as previously thought, but of some anonymous royal agent who toured around the Lincolnshire houses perhaps as early as 1528,77 perhaps a little later. The crosses inserted next to forty of the titles on the list have been identified as in the king’s own hand.78 Alongside the list of books in the Gilbertine Priory of St Catherine in Lincoln the king wrote 70 J.P. Carley, The Libraries of King Henry VIII, CBMLC, vii (London 2000), pp. xxx–xxxii. 71  Now London, BL, MS. Royal 13. D. v (= Carley, Henry VIII, H2.1138), an early thirteenth-century volume, written at St Albans, which had been annotated by both Matthew Paris and Polydore Vergil. The latter particularly admired William of Malmesbury, by contrast with his attitude to Geoffrey of Monmouth: Hay, Vergil, p. 86. The texts are Geoffrey’s Historia regum, Nennius’ Historia Britonum, William’s Gesta regum, Historia novella, and Gesta pontificum, and Aelred’s De genealogia regum Anglorum. From 1521 Wolsey had been abbot of St Albans. 72  London, BL MS. Royal 13. E. vi (=Carley, Henry VIII, H2.1044), also a St Albans manuscript, also annotated by Matthew Paris. 73 Two copies of Eusebius: London, BL, MS. Royal 13. B.  iv (=H2.1134); MS. Royal 13. B.  v (=H2.225), another St Albans manuscript. 74 Carley, Henry VIII, p. xxxi n. 33. 75  Swiftly translated by Cranmer under the title: The determinations of the moste famous and excellent universities of Italy and Fraunce, that it is so unlawful for a man to marry his brother’s wife and the pope hath no power to dispense therewith (London 1531). 76  J.P. Carley, ‘John Leland and the Contents of the English Pre-Dissolution Libraries: Lincolnshire’, TCBS, ix (1989), 330–57, at 331–3, 354–7. 77  The date is an inference from the reference in the list to plague: Carley, in Leland, De uiris, p. lxii n. 198; he is less precise in Henry VIII, p. xxxiv, proposing a date around 1530. 78  London, BL, MS. Royal Appendix 69, printed by J.R. Liddell, ‘ “Leland’s” Lists of Manuscripts in Lincolnshire Monasteries’, EHR, liv (1939), 88–95; Ker, MLGB, p. xii: ‘probably in the king’s hand’; Carley, Henry VIII, p. xxxiii.

The Preservation of the Sources   299 that all the books, or at least the older ones, merited examination.79 The books which the king had marked were requisitioned: most are still in the Royal Manuscripts collection in the British Library; none which is not marked has ended up in the library. Two of the volumes which Henry wanted were witnesses of Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum;80 a third was William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum.81 The king was not interested in Aelred of Rievaulx’s Vita of Edward the Confessor.82 One can imagine Henry’s disappointment when the Hagnaby manuscript misleadingly described in the list as ‘Chronicle of the kings of England from the year of Our Lord 1000 up to the present’, which he marked for sequestration, turned out to consist of Wace and Gaimar.83 It is difficult to conceive of either of these authors providing him with much material germane to his causes. Once Henry had his hands on the (partial) Thornton-on-Humber witness of Gesta pontificum he had ordered, it may have been he himself who made the marginal notes and squiggles84 drawing attention to discussions of Church councils, the respective authorities of bishops and popes, and marriage to the widow of a brother (this last being a further indication of the early date by which the book is likely to have come into the king’s hands).85 The copy breaks off at the beginning of Book II, so includes only William’s history of the church of Canterbury. But for obvious reasons this was the church of most interest to Henry VIII and his advisors in the early 1530s. When the narrative reaches the late eleventh century, marginal squiggles highlight accounts of Stigand’s pluralism, Lanfranc’s receiving professions from those bishops who had been consecrated in Stigand’s time, Pope Alexander II’s remitting the case concerning Canterbury’s primacy to the judgment of the English prelacy, and material from the Canterbury forgeries concerning Canterbury’s metropolitan status.86 Unsurprisingly, William Rufus’s dispute with Anselm over Anselm’s insistence on recognizing Pope Urban contrary to

79  J.P. Carley, ‘The Search for Evidence: the Tabula librorum’, in S. Doran, ed., Henry VIII: Man and Monarch (London 2009), no. 131, p. 139. 80  Now London, BL, MS. Egerton 3668 (=Carley, Henry VIII, H2.723), from the Lincoln Carmelites, and MS. Royal 13. B. vi (=H2.1037), from the Lincoln Dominicans. 81  Liddell, ‘Lists’, 91: ‘Libellus de gestis pontificum anglorum’, Thornton-on-Humber. This is not accounted for in Carley, Henry VIII, pp. xxxiii–ivn. 42, but he suggests, ‘Dispersal’, p. 270, that it is the partial witness in London, BL, MS. Harley 2, fos 98–171, which has a Thornton provenance, from the Augustinian Priory of St Mary the Virgin. 82  Not marked on the list: Liddell, ‘Lists’, 90. It is recorded as belonging to the Lincoln Carmelites. 83  Now London, BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian  B.  xi, fos 2–61 + MS. Royal 13. A.  xxi, fos 40v–150 (=Carley, Henry VIII, H2.1146); Liddell, ‘Lists’, 93. 84  Carley, ‘Lincolnshire’, 333 and n. 17, tentatively suggests similarity with the notes in London, BL, MS. Royal 13. E. iv, which are by Henry. 85  BL, MS. Harley 2, fos 98r–171r. It breaks off abruptly after the prologue to Book II. For what may be the king’s highlighting of a passage on marriage and consanguinity, see J.P. Carley, ‘Marks in Books and the Libraries of Henry VIII’, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, xci (1997), 583– 606, at 591 n. 25 (fo. 130r). 86  MS. Harley 2, fos 112r, 114v, 115r, 118r–v, 123r.

300  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 royal prohibition provoked noticeably excited squiggling.87 But there is no indication that the annotator, whether the king or one of those who probably used this very book as a source for the Collectanea satis copiosa,88 was interested in the Conquest per se. He was struck by the plentiful evidence in its aftermath of the archbishop of Canterbury’s primacy within the English Church, the monarch’s authority over the archbishop and other prelates, and the exclusion of papal influence from England. Henry also ordered a manuscript of Bracton—another source excerpted in the Collectanea satis copiosa—from Kirkstead Abbey, though there is no indication or suspicion that he or any of his propagandists was interested in it for meagre gleanings it might have to offer on the Conquest.89 Perhaps he was aware that it had begun to be read and quoted again by lawyers, after lying fallow for three centuries.90 In the light of historical interests of this nature, it is not surprising that Aelred’s Vita of Edward the Confessor failed to attract the king’s attention. The evidence for books appropriated in the early 1530s from monasteries elsewhere in the kingdom is thinner than that for the Lincolnshire houses, but the pattern of subjects is little different. Some works of English history were taken,91 but the largest single tranche of books acquired by the king’s libraries came from the see of Rochester, with the fall of its learned bishop, John Fisher, in 1535.92 Perhaps for this reason, its unusually well-documented library93 does not appear to have received a visit from Leland. The cache included Lanfranc’s treatise on the eucharist,94 but apparently nothing else with any possible bearing on eleventhcentury England,95 even though the library held at least one copy of the works of William of Malmesbury,96 and of course Textus Roffensis.97 These items were not of interest to, or escaped the notice of, whoever made this particular selection on

87  MS. Harley 2, fo. 141v. Here the squiggles are both extensive and enthusiastic. 88  J.P. Carley, ‘William of Malmesbury, De gestis pontificum, 12th century’, in Doran, ed., Henry VIII: Man and Monarch, no. 132, p. 140, who suggests it may have been the source for the text of the Constitution of Clarendon copied from Gesta pontificum. 89  This may be BL, MS. Royal 9. E. xv (=Carley H2.966). 90  Sir John [J.H.] Baker, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, VI., 1483–1558 (Oxford 2003), p. 23 and nn. 91, 92. 91  See the monastic books of other than Lincolnshire provenance detailed by Carley, Henry VIII, pp. xxxvi–ix and n. 48. A copy of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon—BL, MS. Royal 14. C. ix (=Carley H2.1272)—was taken from Ramsey; a copy of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica—BL, MS. Royal 13. C.  v (=Carley H2.956)—from St Peter’s, Gloucester. 92 Ker, MLGB, pp. 161–3; Carley, Henry VIII, pp. xl–xli. The medieval library of Rochester is exceptionally well-documented, probably because the cathedral priory was reconstituted as a secular chapter in 1541, so there was a high degree of continuity. 93 Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B77–83. 94  London, BL, MS. Royal 5. A. xv (=Carley H2.764). 95  Contrary to Carley, Henry VIII, p. xli, the Rochester books which survive in the royal collection included no historical works by Bede or William of Malmesbury. 96  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Hatton 54; Ker, MLGB, p. 163. This may or may not have been Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B79.120. 97  Rochester, Cathedral Library, MS. A. 3. 5.

The Preservation of the Sources   301 the king’s behalf. The priorities of this anonymous royal agent (or agents) appear to have differed from those of Leland and Bale. Leland’s list from St Augustine’s, Canterbury—one of the best stocked libraries in the kingdom, despite the devastation supposedly inflicted on it by the Danish invasions—suggests that twelfth-century works of English history were not yet, or at least not yet consistently, a priority for him,98 despite the interest which the king himself had recently shown in some of them. There were plentiful holdings of this type in St Augustine’s,99 but Leland recorded none of them in his lists. On his visit to Clare College, Cambridge, however, he was in a more historiographical frame of mind. He noticed Ralph de Diceto, Henry of Huntingdon, Aelred of Rievaulx, as well as Geoffrey of Monmouth. There is no evidence that any of these found their way into the royal libraries.100 Perhaps it was not at this time as straightforward a matter to remove books from a Cambridge college as from a monastery. In other lists Leland recorded five copies of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum;101 and three of Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum.102 Again, none of these is known to have been appropriated for the king. The only one which has certainly survived—the Henry of Huntingdon from Southwick Priory—was taken by Leland for his own use.103 Like his sovereign, Leland appears to have conceived a particular affinity for Henry of Huntingdon—though apparently unlike the king, he was also interested in works by Henry other than the Historia.104 According to Bale, Leland also owned a Gesta regum (often, as in

98  B.C. Barker-Benfield, ed., The Library of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, 3 vols, CBMLC, xiii (2008), BA7. 99  For instance, Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s, BA1.918, 919 (William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum); BA1.920, 921 (William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum); BA1.924 (Henry of Huntingdon). 100  P.D. Clarke and R. Lovatt, The University and College Libraries of Cambridge, CBMLC, x (2002), UC15.24, 26, 27, 28. He saw a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth at Evesham, but it is not in his booklist: Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B31. Bale mentioned all except Geoffrey, other than in the sense that the Clare College copy of Henry of Huntingdon was deemed in some way to depend on Geoffrey: Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 25, cf. J2.10 and 2.39. 101 Only one of these may, possibly, survive. Faversham: Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B35.6; Glastonbury: B44.3a (possibly Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R.  7. 1); Kirkham: Webber and Watson, Augustinian Canons, A14.2; Austin Friars, London: Humphreys, Friars’ Libraries, A6.2; St Paul’s, London: Leland, Collectanea, iv. 47. 102 Eynsham: Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B34.2; Guildford: Dominicans, Humphreys, Friars’ Libraries, F14.*4; Southwick: Webber and Watson, Augustinian Canons, A31.2 (London, BL, MS. Arundel 48). It subsequently passed into the hands of Lord William Howard. 103  This may well be the copy that Bale twice records as being in Leland’s library: Index Britanniae scriptorium quos ex variis bibliothecis non parvo labore collegit Ioannes Baleus cum aliis, ed. R.L. Poole and M. Bateson (Oxford 1902), pp. 163, 166. 104  For the most part these are now lost: De lege Domini, seen at Sawtry Abbey, Hunts: D.N. Bell, The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, CBMLC, iii (1992), Z22.1; De herbis, De aromatibus, and De gemmis, which Leland claimed to have seen, and De ponderibus et mensuris, which he implies was no longer extant: De uiris, c. 167, p. 336; cf. Greenway, HA, pp. cxii–cxvii. D.  Greenway, ‘Henry of Huntingdon as Poet: The De herbis Rediscovered’, Medium Aevum, lxxiv (2005), 329–32; W.E. Black, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’s Lapidary Rediscovered and his Anglicanum ortus Reassembled’, Mediaeval Studies, lxviii (2006), 43–87; Henry of Huntingdon, Anglicanus ortus: A Verse Herbal of the Twelfth Century, ed. W. Black (Toronto 2012).

302  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 this instance, bound together with Historia novella) and two witnesses of Gesta pontificum.105 At Haughmond Abbey in Shropshire Leland found a witness of Eadmer’s Historia novorum;106 it has been conjectured that this was the very one which Bale later recorded as having been in Leland’s collection,107 and which was to end up in Robert Cotton’s. In view of the themes on which the king and his advisors were seeking historical material, this would have been of great interest, had it been drawn to their attention. On the basis of the passages highlighted in the Thornton-on-Humber witness of Gesta Pontificum, it is easy to infer which portions of Eadmer would have excited the king’s attention. But for whatever reason Leland failed to pass the manuscript on. He did not himself find at Sawley Abbey the now sole extant complete witness of Symeon of Durham’s Historia de regibus Anglorum,108 but borrowed it from Thomas Soulemont, who from 1537 was private secretary to Cromwell as well as a prebendary of Knaresborough.109 Soulemont’s timely promotion to the latter office might explain why he found himself for­tuit­ous­ly in the vicinity of Sawley at the time of its surrender in 1538, in a position to intervene and rescue the book.110 Evidently he considered it should be preserved, but not that it should be forwarded to his master.111 Like so many other history books of this type, it ended up in Leland’s hands. Medieval British or English history was intermittently a subject of note for the authorities, but appears not to have been consistently the highest priority. The Conquest was (as yet) no priority at all. And vernacular historical writing was simply ignored. No version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is known to have ended up in the king’s libraries.112 One reason may have been an inability on the part of

105 Bale, Index, p. 136. None of these is known to survive. In 1560, according to Bale’s letter to Parker—Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 18—what was presumably one of these was in the hands of the executors of Leland’s recently deceased executor, Sir John Cheke. Here Bale describes it as consisting of ‘Malmesbury, de regibus et pontficibus, with other antiquytees more’; later, p. 24, he reports that it included the Historia novella. It is unclear whether it (or some other volume) also contained ‘Henry Huntyngton, a very notable historyane’, mentioned in the following sentence. 106  De uiris, c. 147, p. 294, cf. pp. xcviii–xcix and n. 425. London, BL, MS. Cotton Titus A. ix, one of the two now extant medieval witnesses of Historia novorum, is from Haughmond Abbey, and dates from the late twelfth or thirteenth century. 107 Bale, Index, p. 64; for doubts about the connection, see Brett, ‘Leland and the Anglo-Norman Historian’, 69. If she is correct, then there must have been at least three copies extant in the mid sixteenth century. We know that there was a fragment, perhaps more, of an autograph, which ended up in Parker’s library, and is now inserted into Cambridge, CCC, MS. 341: see below, p. 330 n. 301. 108  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 139, which has an erased Sawley ex libris. 109  P.R.N. Carter, ‘Soulemont, Thomas’, ODNB. 110  The manuscript may have gone first to Sir Arthur Darcy, who was granted the abbey’s lands on dissolution, thence to Soulement, and passed through various other hands until Nicholas Wotton, dean of Canterbury and York, gave it, according to John Joscelyn, to Archbishop Matthew Parker: Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 32 n. 14, J2.2. 111  It seems unlikely that this was the volume of reportedly similar content which Bale saw at Westminster Abbey: Bale, Index, p. 488. But on the existing evidence the uncertainty cannot be definitively resolved: Graham and Watson, Recovery, Bn14. 112  A point made by N.R. Ker, ‘Sir John Prise’, repr. in his Books, Collectors and Libraries, pp. 471–96, at 472.

The Preservation of the Sources   303 most to make much sense of the Chronicle, when the study of Old English was still in its infancy; another, that the Chronicle’s concerns are remarkably secular for annals kept up in monastic houses. The various versions include little material which could be interpreted as bearing on the issue of papal jurisdiction in England. Anyone sufficiently learned to make sense of a manuscript of the Chronicle would have known that any such material was distilled and elaborated in more accessible Latin by the twelfth-century historians. A third reason may have been that those manuscripts of the Chronicle which extend as far forward as the reign of Edward the Confessor devote more space to him than to any other king, so lack of interest in him on the part of the King Henry—witness his failure to mark Aelred’s Vita of King Edward for appropriation—and his advisors confirms the impression of their lack of interest in the Conquest and its immediate background, except in so far as it provided evidence for royal (and the rejection of papal) control of the English Church. In a few years’ time, in 1540, the shrine of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey would be dismantled by royal command.113 As far as King Henry was concerned, the bones of the quasi-patron saint of English kings were as disposable as those of all the rest. All that said, it seems that Thomas Cromwell, like his master, took a particular interest in Latin as distinct from vernacular medieval English histories, and was more knowledgeable on the subject than many a contemporary monk. On 3 October 1535 the prior of Christchurch, Twynham—where Leland exceptionally recorded that collection of Old English royal laws—wrote to him: I send you Beda de Ecclesiastica Historia, and another chronicle, whose author I do not know, wherein also another treatise de Gestis Pontificum Anglorum. The other book which you desire, de Gestis Anglorum, cannot yet be found: but as soon as I may have him, if he be within our house, I will send him without delay.114

Cromwell and his sovereign were evidently interested in the same medieval history books, and more interested in them than Leland was. We may infer they were so for the reasons which had prompted King Henry’s marginal annotations 113  J.G.  O’Neilly and L.E.  Tanner, ‘The Shrine of Edward the Confessor’, Archaeologia, c (1966), 129–54, at 129–30. For fuller accounts of the destruction of some others (including the less sensitive one of St Thomas Becket), see D.  Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols, corrected edn (Cambridge 1971), iii. 352–3, 355. In September 1541 the king himself ordered any remnants to be removed: LP xvi. 1192, 1258. 114  LP ix. 529, quoted by Carley, Henry VIII, p. xlii. None of these copies can now be identified. Leland visited Christchurch, and did not record any of these works in his list. He did, however, make excerpts from a witness of William of Malmesbury’s now lost Vita S. Patricii which he found there (also not in his list): Leland, Collectanea, iii. 273–6; Webber and Watson, Augustinian Canons, p. 25; William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Thomson (Oxford 2002), p. 308. He did not include the Vita of St Guthlac—Douai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 852—in his list from Crowland, but did make notes from it: Carley, ‘Lincolnshire’, 334, 342, 353.

304  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 in the Thornton-on-Humber copy of Book I of Gesta pontificum. The shared interests of these influential readers were in the linked themes of papal influence and royal authority over the Church. In so far as those interests led them to concentrate on a particular period of English history, it tended to be early, particularly the period up to and after the conversion. Hence the lure of Bede, ‘the supreme example of a learned Englishman’,115 who had been the acknowledged inspiration of both William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon,116 and who supplied them with much of the content of their coverage of early Old English history. Leland recorded a copy of the Old English Bede at Southwick alongside the copy of Henry of Hutingdon.117 Perhaps he removed it from the Priory’s library on the same occasion. But hence too another and novel attraction of Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose account of the conversion was far more favourable to the Britons in their confrontation with Augustine than Bede’s had been.118 Indeed, Bede’s pro-Roman account was undermined by Geoffrey: according to Bale, the confrontation had been followed by ‘the horryble slaughter of a thousande and two hondred of [the Britons’] Christen mynysters. Thys was at the first entraunce of the popes religyon into Englande vndre kynge Ethelbert and Bertha hys quen.’119 In Bale’s view the foundation of Catholicism in Britain had foreshadowed its Marian ­restoration: in both cases, murderous persecution had ensued. Bale presented himself as a providentially-spared victim of the latter. As Archbishop Parker would later argue, Augustine had not converted the Saxons to Christianity, he had merely imported superstitious Roman ceremonies.120 Many years before Parker wrote this, King Henry himself may have scrawled across the bottom of a page of a propagandistic tract of 1531 a comparison between Gregory the Great and the current pope, entirely to the detriment of the latter.121 In the later view of Bale and Parker, even Gregory, traditionally the author of the conversion of the English, had a lot to answer for. But as the probably Henrician marginal annotations in the Thornton-on-Humber copy of Gesta pontificum showed, it was not only early Old English history which was potentially useful; far from it. On 13 January 1536 Thomas Bedyll,

115 Leland, De uiris, c. 87, p. 186. 116  See above, pp. 14–16, 18. 117  Webber and Watson, Augustinian Canons, A31.3. It survives, but much of it was destroyed in the Cotton fire: London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xi, B. x, fos 55, 58, 62, and MS. Add. 34652, fo. 2. 118  Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, XI. 188. 119  Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 23, with details, n. 84, of the supposed letter of Dinoth, abbot of Bangor, to Augustine. 120 Parker, De Antiquitate, pp. 11, 45. 121  The determinations of the moste famous and excellent Universities of Italy and Fraunce, fos 32v–33r, in the copy in the BL, shelf mark 228 c. 38 (1); G.R. Elton, Policy and Police. The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge 1972), p. 177 n. 2.

The Preservation of the Sources   305 a canon lawyer and agent of Cromwell,122 was combing through the muniments of Ramsey Abbey for serviceable material. He wrote to inform his master that he had found a charter of King Edgar writen in a very antiq Romane hand, hard to be red at the first sight. In the end thereof is subscribed thus: Signum Ædgari incliti et serenissimi anglorum imperatoris +. Whereby it may well be noted that afore the Conquest the said king wrote himself to be emperor of England.123

Here was evidence that Henry’s predecessors had long ago asserted the imperial status so recently (re-)proclaimed in the preamble to the Act in Restraint of Appeals.124 The doubtless intimidated abbot had attempted to ingratiate himself by producing this very charter as evidence that ‘the King is Emperor of the realm as Edgar was’. In Bedyll’s view, this revealed him to be ‘of a good mind.’ Bedyll had also ferreted out another ancient charter, presumably from the same fourteenthcentury Ramsey register.125 This was a document of Edward the Confessor, ‘written afore the Conquest’: it showed that King Edward had called his kingdom ‘Albion’ rather than England, and that he had exempted Ramsey Abbey ‘from all bishops’ powers. The King’s grace may as well exempt all other abbeys or as many as he will from the bishops’ powers.’126 In both cases Bedyll used the Conquest as a conventional and very familiar point of reference, much as we have seen Leland doing; he was emphasizing how ancient was the evidence which he had just discovered. He may also have been implying that it had long preceded the increased papal involvement in the kingdom which was consequent on the Conquest. He cannot have been labouring under the misapprehension that Cromwell might need basic assistance in locating chronologically the reigns of Edgar and Edward the Confessor. Two days later the ever assiduous Bedyll wrote again to underline that the charter of Edgar, like that of the Confessor, exempted the abbot and convent from the jurisdiction of all bishops, subjecting them solely to the king.127 The visitation of monastic houses in 1535–36 was concerned with many matters more pressing than searching their libraries.128 Bedyll’s letters serve to underline that those who found the time to

122  P.R.N. Carter, ‘Bedyll, Thomas’, ODNB; Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 273–4, 285–6. 123  London, BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra E. iv, fo. 203 (LP x. 90), quoted by G.R. Elton, Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge 1973), pp. 15–16. The charter is S. 798, a forgery. 124  See above, p. 284. 125  This is now bound in London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xiv, fos 259–79. 126  S. 1030, a forgery. 127  LP x. 103. 128 Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 268–90, cf. 476–7, for a reconstruction of the itineraries of the most active visitors.

306  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 rifle through the books and papers did not just list or appropriate manuscripts;129 they also excerpted material in situ. ‘Good notes might be gathered out of this’, he advised Cromwell à propos Edgar’s charter.130 Self-evidently, the register from which Bedyll, in 1536, copied excerpts of both charters had not been amongst the Ramsey books which the already precociously compliant abbot had arranged to be delivered to the king in 1531 and 1532.131 But at that point neither the abbot nor the king would have had reason to anticipate that the king would soon become very interested in old monastic cartularies. The rush of events swiftly transformed current official imperatives, and therefore the types of ancient documentation (and precedents embodied therein) which were deemed relevant. For our purposes, the surviving royal acquisition with most potential was an early fourteenth-century volume taken at some unspecifiable point from the library of the Carmelite Priory in London, which Leland and Bale agreed was the most impressive library in the city.132 The manuscript is not recorded, however, in Leland’s lists of books in this library, even though the volume in which it was bound included a major twelfth-century historian, and was therefore the sort of thing he often jotted down elsewhere.133 It opened with Ivo of Chartres’ letters, but then moved on to Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum and, with some intervening historiographical material, Tripartita,134 two works which, as we have seen, had frequently been copied in tandem since the twelfth century.135 Tripartita was obviously very relevant to understanding of the Conquest, particularly legal continuity over it.136 Indeed, that had been the premise on which it had been compiled in the twelfth century, as Laurence Nowell and William Lambarde would recognize two decades later.137 But as we have already seen,138 the com­ pilers of the Collectanea satis copiosa were interested in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris—a version of which formed the second element in Tripartita—only for certain interpolations unique to the fourth recension of the code in the London Collection, and therefore not found in Tripartita. In so far as these interpolations were chronologically specific, they focussed on the earliest period of Old English (or more accurately, British) history. If this manuscript from the 129 N.H. Nicolas, The Privy Purse Expences of King Henry the Eighth (London 1827), pp. 106, 190. 130  LP x. 103. 131  Identifiable Ramsey books in the royal collection include London, BL, MS. Royal 8. D.  iii (=Carley, Henry VIII, H2.626, which contains amongst many other items of a non-historiographical character Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Prophetica Merlini), and MS. Royal 14. C.  ix, cited above, n.  91 (=Carley, H2.1272, a copy of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon). The rest are scriptural or theological. 132 Leland, De uiris, c. 532, p. 736; Bale, Laboryouse journey, sig. Giir–v: ‘In the famouse cytye of London, is but one knowne library, so farre as I can learne, whyche also by fave I have seane over.’ Bale had been a Carmelite until 1536, when he converted to Protestantism. 133 K.W. Humphreys, The Friars’ Libraries, CBMLC, i (1990), C5. 134  London, BL, MS. Royal 13. A. xviii (=Carley H2.173); Ker, MLGB, p. 124. 135 See above, pp. 106, 120, 199, for details of the Version of Historia Anglorum with which Tripartita was paired. 136  See above, p. 106.    137  See below, pp. 337–8.    138  See above, p. 284.

The Preservation of the Sources   307 library of the London Carmelites was already in the king’s possession when the compilers of the Collectanea were at work, they failed to make any use of it. It was almost certainly requisitioned on account of Ivo’s letters, or possibly its text of Henry of Huntingdon—a book in which we have noticed the king himself taking a keen interest—not of Tripartita. And of course much of the Historia is devoted to early Old English history, precisely the period in which the king and his advisors seem to have been especially interested.139 We have already noticed that at some unspecified point Leland borrowed—or removed—another copy from Southwick Priory, perhaps at the same time as he appropriated an Old English Bede.140 Another exceptional Henrician appropriation was a Worcester manuscript which included a sumptuous late twelfth-century witness of Quadripartitus. A very conscious decision had therefore been taken to remove it from the library of an institution which had, exceptionally, survived, although transformed. It seems unlikely that the decision was taken on account of the historic English legal ma­ter­ial, which in this instance was juxtaposed only with (Roman) canon law texts, not also with works of English history. This suggests that it was probably appropriated before 1535,141 for after that date canonistic texts tended to be destroyed rather than coveted. As with the book taken from the London Carmelites, the canon law is the first, and therefore the most obvious, item in the volume. The witness of Quadripartitus which follows after intervening theological and further canonistic items, happens to omit both the Dedicatio and all of the Argumentum except the final introductory rubric to the main text of the book.142 The Argumentum’s historical analysis of the accession of Edward the Confessor, of which the compiler of the London Collection made so much in his preface to the supposed legislation of the Confessor and the Conqueror,143 is therefore entirely absent. And because the Worcester manuscript contains no English legal material other than Quadripartitus, it does not, unlike the manuscript taken from the London Carmelites, include either the Willelmi Articuli or the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. Its only reference to either king is its concluding reproduction, in common with other early witnesses of Quadripartitus, of a Latin translation of William I’s legislative writ on exculpation in cases involving Frenchmen and Englishmen.144 As we have seen, the near absence of the Confessor and the Conqueror from Quadripartitus had troubled the author of John Brompton’s Chronicle a century before.145 It seems highly unlikely that it bothered or was

139  The first four books are, however, abridged in this copy. 140 See above, pp. 301, 304. London, BL, MS. Arundel 48; Webber and Watson, Augustinian Canons, A31.1; Carley, Henry VIII, p. xliv. Bale saw it in Leland’s library: Index, p. 163. 141  London, BL, MS. Royal 11. B. ii; Carley, Henry VIII, H2.1005; further Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 85–6. 142  Arg. 32, Gesetze i. 535. 143  See above, pp. 126, 134.    144  Gesetze i. 483–4. 145  See above, pp. 204–5.

308  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 even noticed by Henry VIII’s agents in Worcester, who were far less familiar with the contents of Quadripartitus. Neither of these manuscripts of genuine and apocryphal antique English royal law provides any evidence of official interest during the 1530s in the legal aspects of the Conquest. The London one was presumably requisitioned on account of contents other than Tripartita, and the Worcester one probably on account of contents other than Quadripartitus. The presence of these texts, which had been so central to assessment of the Conquest since their composition in the twelfth century, was incidental to those who made the decisions to appropriate the manu­ scripts. But it would not remain so for long.

The Preservation of Monastic Books It is demonstrable that from the end of the 1520s the king and his chief minister were personally involved in the selection of the monastic books to be appropriated, and soon to be saved. There were evidently a number of official preferences, several of which shifted over the course of the 1530s. Thus canon law, so desirable because so pertinent to the question of the king’s divorce at the outset of the decade, was deemed not only useless but reprehensible well prior to its close,146 one of those categories of ‘papistical’ books to be purged. The subsidiary interest in early medieval British and English history, however, remained a constant. The accelerating pace of the Dissolution, especially with the destruction of the grander houses in the second wave, meant that quite suddenly an overwhelming profusion of books became available. It was no longer a matter of royal agents inspecting library holdings, or of intimidating heads of house into collaborating by themselves combing through their institutions’ libraries on behalf of the authorities, but of discarded volumes being removed by the wagon147 or even ship load. Thus when John Bale returned from Marian exile and was installed as a prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral shortly after the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, he reminisced about the immediate aftermath of the Dissolution, some twenty years before, in a letter prompted by a request from the newly elevated archbishop, Matthew Parker, for bibliographical assistance: Some [manuscripts] I found in stacyoners and boke bynders store howses, some in grosers, sopsellars, taylers, and other occupyers shoppes, some in shyppes ready to be carryed over the sea into Flaunders to be solde. For in those vncircumspect and carelesse dayes, there was no quyckar merchaundyse than library

146  After the passage of the Act of Supremacy in November 1534 (26 H. VIII, c. 1) references to the pope had to be deleted from books and documents. 147  The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary of Oxford, 1632–1695, described by Himself, ed. A. Clark, 5 vols, Oxford Historical Soc. (1891–1900), i. 424.

The Preservation of the Sources   309 bokes, and all to destruction of learnynge . . . Well, only consyence, with a fervent love to my contray moved me to saue that myghte be saued.148

This was his recollection of circumstances in the late 1530s and early ’40s. His motives had not just been patriotic, though it was that motive which now prompted the new queen to lend her support to his (unsuccessful) attempts to recover the large collection of books which he had been forced to abandon when he had fled Ireland in 1553: they were now, Elizabeth wrote, required ‘for the illustration and setting forth of the storye of this our realme, by him, the said Bayle’.149 In Bale’s apocalyptic view, ancient books did not just supply evidence of the history of the kingdom of England. More broadly, they provided ‘knowledge of thynges necessary in thys fall of Antichriste to be knowne’150—of what had preceded the institution of the reign of Antichrist, and its burgeoning expansion. Yet much of the knowledge necessary in England did concern English history. Looking back not twenty years from 1560, but from a century later, John Aubrey claimed that in Wiltshire ‘in my grandfather’s dayes’, shortly after the Dissolution, ‘the manuscripts flew about like Butter-flies’.151 It is likely that he here echoes his grandfather’s evocative oral account of loose, brightly illuminated leaves of parchment fluttering around in the neighbourhood of dissolved houses. ‘All musick bookes, account bookes, copie bookes, &c. were covered with old manuscripts . . . The glovers of Malmesbury made great havoc of them; and gloves were wrapt up no doubt in many good pieces of antiquity.’ In his own day—‘About 1647’—the Rector of Yatton Keynell, the great-grandson and namesake of the William Stump, ‘cloathier of Malmesbury’, who had bought the site of the Abbey in the 1540s, was stopping the bung holes of his beer casks with stray bits of parchment ‘from severall manuscripts of the Abbey’—‘he sayd nothing did it so well’—and that Stump’s sons ‘scoured their gunnes with them’. A century after the Dissolution, there must still have been a lot of scrap parchment lying around. Writing much earlier, in the immediate wake of the almost wholesale destruction, Bale expressed himself not elegiacally, but with a characteristic earthiness: men (such as William Stump) who bought up monastic sites—‘those superstcyous mansyons’—‘reserued of those lybrarye bokes, some to serue theyr iakes, some to scoure theyr candelstyckes, & some to rubbe theyr bootes’.152 After Sir William Sidney had purchased Robertsbridge Abbey, the early account books of the ironworks which he established on the site were (as Aubrey suggests also happened in Wiltshire) bound with recycled parchment from manuscripts in the 148  Edited in Graham and Watson, Recovery, pp. 17–53, at 17; cf. 2–4, for the context of the cor­re­ spond­ence. The letter is dated 30 July 1560. 149  Calendar of State Papers relating to Ireland, of the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, 1509–1573, ed. H.C. Hamilton (London 1860), i. 158. 150  Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 17. 151  The Natural History of Wiltshire; by John Aubrey, F.R.S., ed. J. Britton, Wiltshire Topographical Soc. (London 1847), II, c. 1, ‘A Digression’, pp. 78–9. 152  Laboryouse journey, sig. B.ir.

310  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 library.153 What was saved from such fates at the time of surrender depended to a large extent on rapid decisions made on the spot by those officially authorized to make a selection, and on the tastes, priorities, and initiative of anyone else with sufficient motive to intervene, and the influence to do so effectively. It is possible that a manuscript of Quadripartitus was rescued in this way—if Sir Henry Sidney inherited one from his father—because his father had decided that it was too interesting to cut up and use in binding the account books of his new enterprise.154 Sir Henry also preserved part of the autograph of Matthew Paris’s Chronica majora;155 the son seems to have been more susceptible than his father to the charms of medieval manuscripts, in his case, those concerned with English medieval history. In general, liturgical and scriptural books, especially those with sumptuous (and therefore valuable) bindings were particularly at risk.156 This was of course not true of historical or legal works. But interest, taste, chance, foible, and serendipity must all have played large parts. In a few cases this is demonstrable. It would seem, for instance, that Cranmer must have had an agent on the spot, with instructions to scoop up patristic works, when Bath Cathedral Priory was dissolved in January 1539.157 (During the visitation of the Priory in 1535, Richard Layton had dispatched to Cromwell ‘a book of Our Lady’s miracles, well able to match the Canterbury tales, which I found in the library’, along with various r­ elics. His tone does not suggest that he forwarded it because he anticipated that Cromwell would find it useful.)158 It is not immediately apparent why and how a large collection of books of canon law and late medieval scholastic theology (but not other subjects) from the Augustinian Priory of Lanthony Secunda should, quite exceptionally, have survived, and ended up together in the library of Lambeth Palace.159 153  C.L. Kingsford, in HMC: Report on the Manuscripts of Lord de l’Isle & Dudley, 6 vols (1925–66), i. 307. For the meagre list of survivals, see Ker, MLGB, p. 160, Supplement, p. 58. A collection of works of English history found its way into Matthew Parker’s library: see below, p. 330 n. 305. 154  It does not survive. There can be no certainty that it came from the Robertsbridge library, or that Sir William ever owned it; see below, pp. 343–4. 155  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 16, written at St Albans, discussed below, p. 328. It is impossible to establish how it came into Sir Henry’s hands. 156  N.L. Ramsay, ‘ “The Manuscripts flew about like Butterflies”: The Break-Up of English Libraries in the Sixteenth Century’, in J.  Raven, ed., Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections since Antiquity (Basingstoke 2004), pp. 125–44, at 129–30; see the Order in Council of 25 February 1550/1, ordering the removal of ‘superstititiouse bookes’ from the king’s library at Westminster: Acts of the Privy Council, n.s., iii, 1550–1552 (1891), p. 224. 157 Ker, MLGB, p. 7 and n. 8. Nine manuscripts came into his hands which were subsequently incorporated into the king’s library: London, BL, MSS. Royal 3. B. xvi (Jerome); 5. B. ii (Augustine); 5. B. xiv (Augustine); 5. D. iv, v (Augustine); 5. D. vi (Augustine); 5. D. vii (Augustine); 6. B. i (Gregory the Great); 6. C.  xi (Jerome). It is impossible to establish whether the Bath copy of the Collectio Lanfranci—London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius  D.  ix—was another of the books appropriated by Cranmer. It might have appeared patristic to the agent. For the identification of it as an early twelfthcentury Bath product, see Gullick, ‘English-Owned Manuscripts’, pp. 107–8. 158  LP ix. 42. 159 Ker, MLGB, pp. 109–12; Ker, ‘Migration of Manuscripts’, p. 467; Webber and Watson, Augustinian Canons, p. 35.

The Preservation of the Sources   311 Many books on other subjects from the Priory’s library are still extant, dispersed in numerous other repositories. By the time it was dissolved, in 1538, there would have been little call for books of canon law. Yet it seems that these particular canon law books had not been removed earlier, en bloc, in order to assist with preparations for the king’s divorce, as had happened elsewhere.160 On Lanthony Secunda’s surrender its books were granted to the last prior, together with (ominously) firewood and a generous pension. He bequeathed the books ‘and my bowe and arrowes’ to a certain Thomas Morgan. They eventually found their way to Lambeth in the time of Archbishop Bancroft (1604–10).161 The complex interplay of individual motives which resulted in selective preservation is well brought out in a recent discussion of the dispersal of the library of Reading Abbey.162 Active interventions about which we know more proved less effective in the long run. The survival of a list of books in the possession of two former monks of Monk Bretton Priory, Yorkshire, drawn up on 21 July 1558, reveals that the former prior, sub-prior, and two ex-monks had, shortly after the surrender of the house in 1538, acquired a large number of books from its library, ­presumably from the king’s receiver. These had been kept together in the forlorn hope that the house might at some point be re-established. The list was inserted into its cartulary, possession of which they had also secured.163 It did not include any works of English history. The cartulary, a bible, and a breviary are all that are now known to survive.164 There is evidence of ex-religious from other Yorkshire houses adopting similar stratagems.165 Works of history and law are unlikely to have been on their lists of most cherished books, in terms either of devotion or utility. In this second round of the Dissolution it appears that no-one bothered as much about the books (as distinct from the cartularies) of many of the grandest

160 A. Coates, English Medieval Books: The Reading Abbey Collections from Foundation to Dispersal (Oxford 1999), p. 130. 161 M.R. James, The Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace (Cambridge 1900), pp. 1–6, s.n. ‘Morgan of Carmarthen’; M.R. James, ed., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace: The Mediaeval Manuscripts, 5 parts (Cambridge 1930–2), s.n. ‘Morgan, canonicus de Kermerd’. Why the archbishop or his librarian should have wanted them early in the reign of James I is a puzzle. 162 Coates, Reading Abbey Collections, pp. 122–69. 163 Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B55, sets out the evidence; Davis, MC no. 675. 164 Ker, MLGB, p. 131. 165 The Cistercian abbeys of Byland and Kirkstall, and the Franciscans of York: C.  Cross, ‘A Medieval Yorkshire Library’, Northern History, xxv (1989), 281–90; M.A.  Hickes, ‘John Nettleton, Henry Savile of Banke, and the Post-Medieval Vicissitudes of Byland Abbey Library’, Northern History, xxvi (1990), 212–17; C.  Cross, ‘Community Solidarity among Yorkshire Religious Houses after the Dissolution’, in J. Loades, ed., Monastic Studies: The Continuity of Tradition (Bangor 1990), pp. 245–54, at 247–9, 250–1. For ex-monks appropriating odd volumes, see Wright, ‘Dispersal’, p. 159.

312  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 monastic houses. Glastonbury,166 Malmesbury,167 and Sherborne,168 are cases in point, despite the fact that they were all exceptionally ancient and well-endowed, with, surviving library lists demonstrate in the case of Glastonbury (and one may infer of the others), libraries to match.169 Leland was inspired to uncharacteristic awe-struck eloquence by Glastonbury, with its rich holdings of works by Bede, Aldhelm, and Alcuin170—writers of a period which we have seen was particularly attractive to the early reformers. But even here no-one appears to have stepped in to salvage such potentially useful books. Much is likely to have depended on the predilections of individual commissioners charged with receiving the surrenders of particular houses. In most cases, however, there is no evidence to support the inference. The Sherborne Missal, the most opulent of extant later medieval English illuminated manuscripts, survived the abbey’s dissolution in March 1539; but there is no record of its having caught the eye of the responsible commissioners, John Tregonwell, William Petre, and John Smyth,171 or of Sir John Horsey, to whom the abbey site was sold.172 Tregonwell and Petre, occasionally assisted by Smyth, were very active as commissioners in the West Country. The swathe they cut through the houses of the region during the early months of 1539 may easily be traced in the official papers.173 The absence of any evidence of an interest on their parts in books may be one reason why so relatively little survives from the rich monastic libraries of

166 Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B44 (Leland’s list), B46 (Bale’s list). Two of Leland’s list of 44 items are known to survive, another two may; none of Bale’s is known to do so; further Ker, MLGB, pp. 90–1, Supplement, p. 38. The archive passed into the possession of Sir John Thynne, secretary to Edmund Seymour, earl of Hertford and later Duke of Somerset, to whom the abbey was granted after Henry VIII’s death: Charters of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. S.E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters, xv (Oxford 2012), pp. 80, 99–100. During the visitation of July 1538 some of the monks were recorded as complaining that there was no longer a library, and that there were no books to read: Dean Cosyn and Wells Cathedral Miscellanea, ed. A. Watkin, Somerset Record Soc., lvi (1941), 159–65. 167  For Leland’s list of books, none of which is known certainly to survive, see Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B54; further, Ker, MLGB, pp. 128–9, Supplement, p. 48. For some conjectural identifications, see R.M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 2nd edn (Woodbridge 2003), pp. 100–9. 168  Of the ten titles noted by Leland, one survives, and at least one other may: Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B94; Ker, MLGB, pp. xii, 179, Supplement, p. 62; R. Stockdale, ‘Benedictine Books, Writers and Libraries: Some Surviving Manuscripts from Sherborne and South-West England’, in K. Barker, D.A.  Hinton, and A.  Hunt, eds, St Wulfsige and Sherborne. Essays to Celebrate the Millenium of the Benedictine Abbey, 998–1998 (Oxford 2005), pp. 164–76, at 164–5. One of these was the fifteenthcentury witness of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum which came into the hands of Matthew Parker: Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 13. 169  The tentative suggestion that Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 1 (William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum) might have been written at Glastonbury depends solely on a general resemblance to some Glastonbury books: Ker, MLGB. 170  J.P. Carley, ‘John Leland and the Contents of English Pre-Dissolution Libraries: Glastonbury’, Scriptorium, xl (1986), 107–20. Bale took a dimmer view of Aldhelm, as an anti-British publicist: Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 23. 171  LP xiv, pt. 1, 556. 172  London, BL, MS. Add. 74236; J.  Backhouse, The Sherborne Missal (London 1999), p. 55. The book is not listed by Leland and is first recorded in France in the eighteenth century. 173  LP xiv, pt. 1, 78, 100, 128, 145, 148, 301, 324, 366, 367, 491, 629, etc.

The Preservation of the Sources   313 this region. The speed with which they moved, visiting some forty houses in four months in winter,174 means that they would have had little time to attend to such niceties, even if so inclined. Bath, over the dissolution of which Tregonwell and Petre presided jointly, appears to have been an exception, perhaps because Cranmer had instructed an agent to salvage patristic works.175 The recalcitrance of the abbot of Glastonbury meant that it was not a routine case. The visitors sent to deal with it were interested in books only in so far as they could uncover compromising literature in the abbot’s study.176 They did not share Leland’s sensibility to the wonders of its library. There was of course a clear distinction between on the one hand the vast majority of monasteries of this type which were dissolved, and on the other those secularized cathedral priories—such as Worcester—existing secular cathedrals, and religious houses newly converted into cathedrals, in which books stood a far better chance of surviving177—though within a few years scholastic theology was systematically culled,178 and Edward VI outlawed surviving Catholic service books,179 vast numbers of which were therefore destroyed. Those books which by good fortune were exceptionally preserved in these institutions might nevertheless suffer considerable damage as they were stripped of their precious bindings: the Durham Liber vitae is a case in point.180

John Prise, Commissioner and Bibliophile John Ap Rice or Price (or Prise, the spelling he affected on the basis of the Latinized form Rheseus) was one of the commissioners appointed to visit monasteries in both waves of the Dissolution, an agent in this process of the same seniority as Tregonwell and Petre.181 Unlike either of them, he was a royal poacher who turned bibliophilic gamekeeper. On 4 November 1539 he received the surrender of Bury St Edmunds, a house with which he was already familiar.182 This was a 174 J. Youings, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (London 1971), pp. 78–80. 175  See above, p. 310.    176  LP xiv, pt. 2, 206, 232, 290 (2), 389, 427. 177 Ker, MLGB, p. xiv; Ker, ‘Migration of Manuscripts’, 464–6; Wright, ‘Dispersal’, pp. 163–4. 178  Wright, ‘Dispersal’, p. 165. 179  Act against Superstitious Books and Images (3 and 4 Edward VI, c. 10). 180  L. Rollason, ‘History and Codicology’, in The Durham Liber vitae: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian  A.  VII: An Edition and Digital Facsimile, ed. D.  Rollason and L.  Rollason, 3 vols (London 2007), i. 5–42, at 23. 181  For his activities during the visitation of 1535–6, see Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 475–6; for 1539, see LP xiv, pt. 1, 395 (Neath), 650 (Dartford), 462 and 475–6 (Bury St Edmunds), 660 (St Augustine’s Priory, Bristol), 690 (St Mark’s Hospital, Bristol), 720 (Wormesley Priory), 728 (Winchcombe Abbey), 752 (Limebrook Priory), 771 and xv. 19 (Hailes Abbey, Gloucs); xv. 24 and 47 (St Peter’s, Gloucester), 49 (Tewkesbury Abbey), 51 (Great Malvern Priory), 81 (Worcester Cathedral Priory), 110 (Cokehill Nunnery, Worcs), 118 (Evesham Abbey), 139 (a long list of houses in Hants., Wilts, and Gloucs), 378 (Cathedral Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, and of Rochester). 182  LP ix. 772; xiv, pt. 2, 462.

314  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 very busy time for Prise, who moved on swiftly to the west of England to receive further surrenders, including (jointly with Petre), Malmesbury183 (where he might have witnessed the scenes recalled by Aubrey’s grandfather). But even in a hurry, he did not leave Bury empty handed: he took with him a Bury copy of the Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis, and other works of history.184 Soon after his departure, Leland arrived for his second visit, ‘to see what bookes be lefte yn the library there, or translatid thens ynto any other corner of the late monastery’.185 (There is more than a hint here of disappointment at what had already been cherry picked, as well as of suspicion of concealment.) There is likely to have been a superfluity: two centuries earlier the library contained around 2,000 volumes.186 Prise soon profited in another way from the process he was administering by purchasing one of Bale’s ‘superstcyous mansyons’—St Guthlac’s Priory in Hereford, a cell of Gloucester Abbey, which he transformed into his home.187 But it is inconceivable that he recycled manuscripts from there188 or anywhere else as lavatory parchment, or sanctioned his servants using them to polish candlesticks or boots, or as bungs for his beer barrels. In the first place he seems to have been commissioned along with William Say, his secretary, to collect transcripts or even the purported originals of the foundation charters of all monastic houses into a central register.189 Post-Dissolution, such a register was of obvious use to the au­thor­ ities in the selling off of monastic estates, in the biggest change in landholding since the Conquest. A fair copy of this register of foundation charters has

183  In January 1539 Cromwell had instructed Petre to stay action against the abbey, which was eventually surrendered in December: LP xiv, pt. 1, 78; pt. 2, 687; xv. 139. 184  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 297; Ker, ‘Prise’, pp. 487, 493. It includes interpolated passages from other chroniclers, and many notes relating to Bury. He also took ‘Johannes Anglicus’, Historia aurea (i.e. John of Tynemouth’s amplification of Higden’s Polychronicon), now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 240, and Sancti Edmundi regis leges Longobardorum (=Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B16.18), now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 742. 185  London, BL, MS. Add. 38132, fo. 17v, printed by Carley, ed., De uiris, p. xcix. Leland had drawn up a list of Bury books during his first itinerary: Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B16. 186 R.  Sharpe, ‘Reconstructing the Library of St Edmunds Abbey: The Lost Catalogue of Henry Kirkstead’, in A. Gransden, ed., Bury St Edmunds: Medieval Art, Architecture and Economy, Transactions of the British Archaeological Association Conference, xx (1998), pp. 204–18. In 1598 William Smart, portreeve of and MP for Ipswich, donated about 100 volumes from the abbey’s library to Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was born in 1530, so he cannot have acquired them in 1539: M.R. James, On the Abbey of St Edmund at Bury, I: The Library, Cambridge Antiquarian Soc., 8vo ser., xxviii (1895), pp. 1–114, at 11–22; M.R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge (Cambridge 1905), pp. viii–ix. It is not known how they came into his possession. 187  LP xv. 280. 188  He owned the cartulary, now Oxford, Balliol College, MS. 271 (Ker, ‘Prise’, p. 487); and a sixteenthcentury rental document, now in Hereford Public Library (p. 486): Herefordshire Archives, BH53/1; A.T. Bannister, ‘The Possessions of St Guthlac’s Priory, Hereford’, Transactions of the Woolhope Field Naturalists’ Club, xxiii (1918), 34–42. I am indebted to Hugh Doherty for this reference. In Prise’s annotations to the cartulary he refers to other priory documents which have not survived: Ker, ‘Prise’, p. 494. Other identifiable volumes include several glossed books of Scripture. 189  Ker, ‘Prise’, pp. 472–3; J.C. Crick, ‘The Art of the Unprinted: Transcription and English Antiquity in the Age of Print’, in J.C.  Crick and A.  Walsham, eds, The Uses of Script and Print, 1300–1700 (Cambridge 2004), pp. 116–34, at 125.

The Preservation of the Sources   315 survived, drawn up by Say.190 It is referred to by Prise himself and later by William Lambarde.191 Prise did not simply preside over this process. He was closely involved in the work. He wrote endorsements on the putative foundation charter of Battle Abbey,192 and on pre-Conquest charters of Bury St Edmunds.193 He must have acquired a degree of palaeographical competence. In seems likely that it was in the course of his professional duties that Prise became an avid bibliophile. He developed particular interests in English and Welsh history, patristic theology, and the theological works of Bede. As he had done at Bury, he took many books from the houses the surrenders of which he administered, especially in Wiltshire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and the Welsh Marches. Amongst those he removed from St Peter’s Abbey, Gloucester, for instance, was a volume including a copy of Augustine’s De octo quaestionibus Dulcitii. He could not have known that its contents list is in the hand of the main Domesday scribe, but it survives thanks to his interest in patristics.194 He recorded in a twelfth-century copy of Bede’s De tabernaculo (provenance unclear) ‘John Prise vindicated this book from the biting of moths.’195 In truth, of course, he saved manuscripts from far worse fates. In his will he instructed his son Richard to print ‘some piece of Antiquitee that is not yet printed out of the written bookes of histories that I have in my house’, and instanced ‘William Malmesburie de Regibus Anglorum or Henricus Huntington’ as possibilities.196 This injunction was revealing in terms of the category of book he identified for publication; and also prophetic, in terms of the future course of historiographical publication in England.

190  Charters of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, and Minster-in-Thanet, ed. S.E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters, iv (Oxford 1995), pp. lix–lx, identifies Winchester, Cathedral Library, MS. XXB (Q) as probably the fair copy of the register made by Say as Prise’s secretary; cf. pp. 5–6. She also lists other extant manuscript copies. 191  Prise refers to it in a marginal note in the manuscript of his Historiae Brytanniae defensio: Oxford, Balliol College, MS. 260, fo. 98; Lambarde made notes from it in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. Hist. d. 2, fos 34r–39v. Lambarde dates the notebook to 1568: fo. 1r. 192  London, BL, Harley Charter 83. A. 12 (Battle Abbey). 193  S. 980 (1021x1023), probably a late eleventh-century forgery; S. 995 (1038x1039), a con­firm­ ation of Cnut’s charter, produced in the twelfth century: Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. S.D. Keynes, Anglo-Saxon Charters, supplementary vol. i (Oxford 1991), no. 33, p. 10. 194  Hereford, Cathedral Library, MS. P.I.10, discussed above, p. 38 n. 189; Ker, ‘Prise’, pp. 481, 486; P. Chaplais, ‘William of Saint-Calais and the Domesday Survey’, in Holt, ed., Domesday Studies, pp. 65–77, at 74. Prise removed other books from Gloucester. This one was recorded as having been donated to Hereford Cathedral Library by Thomas Thornton, the then precentor, in 1611: R.A.B.  Mynors and R.M.  Thomson, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library (Cambridge 1993), pp. 69–70. How it had come into his hands is unclear. 195  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 447, fo. 1r, quoted by Ker, ‘Prise’, p. 476. The final folios of the book have been attacked by insects. The provenance is unclear. The book later came into the possession of Walter Cope: A.G. Watson, ‘The Manuscript Collection of Sir Walter Cope (d. 1614)’, repr. in his Medieval Manuscripts in Post-Medieval England (Aldershot 2004), ch. VIII, pp. 262–97, at 286 (no. 110). 196 F.C.  Morgan, ‘The Will of Sir John Prise of Hereford, 1555’, The National Library of Wales Journal, ix (1955–6), 255–61, at 257.

316  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Many of Sir John’s manuscripts ended up either in Hereford Cathedral Library or in Jesus College, Oxford, but his Gesta regum has disappeared,197 and the only surviving copy of a work by Henry of Huntingdon which can be linked to him (on account of his distinctive marginal annotations) is one of the tract De contemptu mundi, which conventionally forms book VIII of the Historia Anglorum. Prise’s copy is now bound in London, BL, MS. Cotton Domitian A. viii, fos. 111r–119r, which also includes other works once owned by him.198 Like Leland, and for the same reason, he was a great admirer of Geoffrey of Monmouth; he had acquired a fifteenth-century manuscript from St Albans Abbey in 1537,199 and owned at least one other.200 Again like Leland, he presented himself as pat­ri­ot­ic­al­ly defending Geoffrey against the aspersions of the foreign papist, Polydore Vergil, in his case with the added incentive of preserving an account of early Welsh history which he regarded as fundamental: hence the title of his Historiae Brytanniae defensio.201 It was as an ‘annexe’ to the prospective printed edition of this work that he enjoined his son to prepare an edition of either William of Malmesbury or Henry of Huntingdon. In the event, Richard Prise fulfilled his father’s wishes with respect to the Defensio, but not the envisaged supplement. Geoffrey’s history was exceptional in that it had been repeatedly printed long ago, in France, in 1508202 and 1517;203 Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica204 and Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon205 still earlier. (Prise owned copies of Bede’s and Higden’s histories in manuscript, the former from the cell of Battle Abbey at Brecon,206 the 197  Ker, ‘Prise’, p. 477 and n. 3, identifies its characteristics from the quotations in Prise’s Historiae Brytanniae defensio (1573). 198  Sir John’s annotations establish that he also owned the chronicle of St Peter’s, Gloucester and the list of Welsh cantreds which are now found in this volume; but there is no evidence that the rest of its current contents were already bound with these works when they belonged to him: Greenway, HA, pp. lxxiv n. 68, cxxviii; further Ker, ‘Prise’, p. 493. 199  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson B. 189. 200  Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS. Peniarth 42. 201  Ker, ‘Prise’, pp. 479–80, shows that the differences between him and Polydore Vergil were not as great as he wished them to be. 202  Britanniae utriusque regum et principum origo et gesta insignia (Paris 1508). 203  Galfredus Monemutensis, Historia Britonum (Paris 1517); Prise owned at least two copies, one of which is now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Δ. 1. 5, and the other of which was identified by R.B.  Gottfried, ‘Antiquarians at Work’, Renaissance News, xi (1958), 114–20, at 114— Prise recorded that he bought it on 7 November 1530 for 18d. 204  It was first printed (in slightly truncated form) alongside an edition of Rufinus of Aquileia’s Latin translation of Eusebius’ History by Heinrich Eggesteyn in Strasbourg between 1475 and 1480 (the edition is undated); this was reissued in a single volume by another Strasbourg printer in 1500: Ecclesiastica historia divi Eusebii. Et Ecclesiastica historia gentis Anglorum venerabilis Bede cum utrausque historiarum per singulos libros recollecta capitulorum annotatione (Strasbourg 1500); a new edition, with an improved text, was published in Antwerp in 1550; and Bede’s collected works, edited by J. Heerwagen, were published in eight volumes in Basle in 1563. See M.A. Shaaber, Check-List of Works of British Authors printed Abroad, in Languages other than English, to 1641 (New York, NY 1975), pp. 25–9. 205  Selections from Polychronicon were first printed, in an English translation by John of Trevisa, by Caxton in 1480. An edition followed rapidly: Prolicionycion [sic] (Westminster 1482). 206  Hereford, Cathedral Library, MS. P.V.1 + Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. e Museo 93; Ker, ‘Prise’, pp. 491–2.

The Preservation of the Sources   317 latter from Gloucester;207 it is not known whether he also possessed printed copies.) In the Defensio, originally drafted by 1545 at the latest,208 he had already urged the printing of medieval historians, but on that occasion he had op­ti­mis­tic­ al­ly anticipated that this would be ‘at the expense of the royal majesty’.209 His earl­ ier list of authors proposed for publication was longer than that given in his will: it consisted of William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Alfred of Beverley, Roger of Howden, and Gerald of Wales. But the category was the same: in his view, the rescued monastic books in most urgent need of dissemination in print were national histories written during the twelfth century. (It is interesting that in this fuller list too he had decided not to include the Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis, the Bury witness of which he had snapped up in 1539. Perhaps he judged an annalistic chronicle to be less worthy than a history). Moreover, the first two names in his chronologically ordered list were those he would prioritize a decade later in his will. By contrast, there is no surviving evidence that he showed any such interest in his now lost manuscript book of ‘Municipal Laws of England’210— meaning the indigenous laws of the kingdom—let alone any desire that it be printed. The provenance of this collection is as obscure as its contents, though it might conceivably have been a copy of the Leges Anglorum. His eye was presumably caught by the fine, illuminated Bury St Edmunds copy of the Leges Langobardorum because it was entitled (in a hand later than that of the twelfthcentury manuscript) ‘book of St Edmund the king, in which are contained the laws of the Lombards’.211 The large initial at the beginning is particularly striking. Doubtless he often had to make hasty decisions, on the basis of at best cursory inspection. As a scholar, his interests were quite different from those of Andrew Horn or William Lambarde. Prise had acquired at least one copy of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon, but, by contrast with Leland, there is no reason to think that he privileged Higden over William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and their contemporaries. Indeed, it is clear that he did not. In Prise’s view, already formed when he drew up the list in his Defensio in 1545 and re-emphasized in his will ten years later, these were the writers who had established the foundation for all subsequent understanding of the British past. Leland would not have dissented, though as we have seen he rated Symeon of Durham and Geoffrey of Monmouth higher than their contemporaries, and accorded Ranulf Higden’s distillation of the work of such twelfth-century predecessors the highest accolade of all. Prise would not have 207  Oxford, CCC, MS. 89. 208  The autograph—London, BL, MS. Cotton Titus F. iii, fos 170–216v—is dedicated to Sir Brian Tuke, who died in that year; there is a later manuscript copy in Oxford, Balliol College, MS. 260, which is corrected by Prise: Ker, ‘Prise’, p. 474. 209  Defensio, p. 129. 210  Ker, ‘Prise’, J. 2, p. 483. 211  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 742, fo. 1ˇ; Ker, ‘Prise’, J. 29, p. 484. Leland had listed it: see above, n. 184.

318  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 agreed with Leland that a history in which the author had credited his sources might be preferable to those sources themselves. Hence his repeated proposals that they should be published in print, an aspiration also expressed by Leland’s acolyte Bale,212 although apparently not by Leland himself. By the time Prise came to make his will—he died in 1555—he seems to have realized that although monarchs might sometimes take a keen interest in the medieval past, there was little prospect of persuading them to underwrite the expenditure of producing printed editions. Hence his instruction to his son to select one twelfth-century history from his library, and to produce a printed edition of it. Consider likewise the ‘Conclusyon’ to Bale’s Laboryouse Journey, published six years earlier: Lete one noble man therefore, no that the scriptures are plenteously spredde, bring fourth one noble author, and an other emprinte an other, to the conservacion of Englandes Antiquitees. In lyke case lete one ryche merchaunte brynge one worthye worke of an auncyent writer to light, and an other put fourth an other, to the bewtie of our nacyon.213

Possible candidates, after ‘the Bryttyshe authors, whome I have oft named afore’ and Bede (in that order), included Willyam of Malmesbery de Gestis Pontificum et Regum, . . . Simeon of Durham, wyth Rycharde and Johan of Hangustalde, an other Aldrede and Wyllyam of Rieuall, wyth Marianus the Scott. An other Giraldus Cambrensis, an other Henry of Huntyngton, an other Alphred of Beverlay, an other Florence of Worcestre . . .

And so the list goes on, including all those names suggested by Prise in his Defensio, and many others besides.214 ‘MATHEW PARYS’ alone is printed in emphatic block capitals. There is a similar list at the end of his letter to Parker of 1560, which pointedly specifies that copies of all the works listed are ‘[i]n the quenes lybrary’215—the point being that they were readily accessible.

212  His letter to Matthew Parker of July 1560, Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 17, reports that ‘the queynes maiestyes counsell’ had intervened to assist Bale in recovering his books from Ireland ‘for perfourmaunce of an Englysh chronicle, which I haue begonne and not fynyshed’. This probably refers to a book Bayle was writing, rather than to a medieval work which he was preparing for publication. However, one of the main purposes of his letter was to inform Parker of the location of copies of medieval chronicles which were ‘nondum editi’: p. 24, cf. 18. 213  Laboryouse journey [sig. Ff. viv]. 214  The others were Walter of Exeter, Roger of Howden, Matthew Paris, John Bever, Ralph Niger, Ralph de Diceto, William of Newburgh, John of Oxford, the Flores historiarum, Asser, Osbern of Canterbury, Gervase of Canterbury, Richard of Devizes. 215  Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 30.

The Preservation of the Sources   319

John Joscelyn and Matthew Parker After the official requisitions of the 1530s, the preservation of these texts, in whatever form, had become a matter of private initiative on the part of a select number of enthusiasts: Bale’s 1560 letter to Parker named 15 individuals (or their executors), plus six institutions, as the current owners of the hundreds of manuscript works listed. Sometime prior to January 1567, John Joscelyn, chaplain and Latin Secretary to Archbishop Parker, compiled another list of who owned manuscripts of which (for the most part) post-Conquest English historical works. He used Bale’s letter as one of his sources.216 Subsequently, but also prior to January 1567, he prepared a much shorter, analogous list of pre-Conquest historiographical manuscripts.217 The figures corresponding to Bale’s in Joscelyn’s two lists are four individuals and one institution in the pre-Conquest list, and 22 and seven in the post-Conquest list, with some overlap.218 The numbers of individuals and institutions are, in other words, again small, which is why it was possible for someone knowledgeable to attempt to compile such directories of available sources. The preservation of English historical materials was at this point still largely the work of a small group, many of whom were connected. When Archbishop Parker secured his commission, he and his Latin Secretary must to a considerable extent have already been aware who should be offering up which books for inspection. They knew where most of the owners lived. But when so much depended on personal knowledge and acquaintance, there were always going to be gaps—it is remarkable that John and Richard Prise and John Dee were missing from all these documents—and hopes of discovering some unsuspected treasure. How the manuscripts had come into the possession of the current owners is not explained in any of the lists, and is for the most part now irrecoverable. Thomas Dackomb, a minor canon of Winchester, records how much he paid for most of the manuscripts he acquired from the libraries of monastic houses in the vicinity, but not to whom he gave the money.219 I have already mentioned his acquisition of what he confidently asserted to be King Æthelstan’s psalter.220 The price he noted he had paid for it in 1542 has been discreetly erased by somebody.221 In 1548 he paid two shillings for a thirteenth-century witness of Henry of

216 London, BL, MS. Cotton Nero  C.  iii, fos 208v–212r, now edited in Graham and Watson, Recovery, J2 (pp. 60–109), with the use of Bale’s letter demonstrated at pp. 5, 8, and the date discussed at 10. 217  BL, MS. Cotton Nero C. iii, fo. 208r; Graham and Watson, Recovery, J1 (pp. 54–9), with the date discussed at pp. 5, 10. 218  Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 12. Four of Bale’s individuals and three of his institutions are repeated by Joscelyn, but there are also curious omissions from all these documents: cf. Wright, ‘Dispersal’, pp. 157–8, who tots up the numbers slightly differently. 219  Watson, ‘Thomas Dackomb’, esp. pp. 208–9. 220  BL, MS. Cotton Galba A. xviii, discussed above, p. 295. 221  BL, MS. Cotton Galba A. xviii, fo. 1r; Keynes, ‘Athelstan’s Books’, p. 196.

320  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum.222 John Twyne, sometime schoolmaster at St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, subsequently Headmaster of the King’s School, Mayor of the city and its MP, was able to intervene locally, particularly in the case of St Augustine’s. Amongst many other manuscripts, he rescued from the abbey’s library the B text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a partial text of Henry of Huntingdon, and the witness of Quadripartitus which Andrew Horn had used to correct his edition two and a half centuries before,223 and which Leland may (or may not) have noted when he visited St Augustine’s.224 But acquisitions by an individual collector were not always restricted to a particular locality in these early, post-Dissolution years. Thus William Carye, a member of the Clothworkers’ Company resident in London, somehow acquired books from both St Augustine’s (including a late eleventh-century copy of Dudo of St-Quentin’s De moribus, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 276) and Christ Church, Canterbury, from Norwich Cathedral Priory (probably the late fourteenth-century portmanteau collection of English chronicles which included Roger of Howden’s, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 138), from St Albans Abbey, and from Lanercost Priory, close to the Scottish border.225 A case illustrative of the way in which governmental officials could exploit their influence is that of Peter Osborne, appointed Clerk of the Faculties and Keeper of the Privy Purse in 1551. He was too young to have been able to scoop up the manuscript of John Brompton’s Chronicle when Jervaulx Abbey was surrendered in 1537; in any case he has no known connection with Yorkshire. But Bale in his Index, and slightly later in his letter, recorded that the chronicle was by then in Osborne’s possession.226 It had been noticed (although not listed) by

222  Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, MS. 793, fo. 1, noted by A.G. Watson, ‘Additional Notes’, in his Medieval Manuscripts, p. 1. 223  Anglo-Saxon Chronicle B: London, BL, MSS. Cotton Tiberius  A.  vi, fos 1–35 + Cotton Tiberius  A.  iii, fo. 178, included in John Joscelyn’s list of Anglo-Saxon sources, J1.10; Henry of Huntingdon: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 521, a late fourteenth-century witness, and probably that recorded by Joscelyn, J2.39; Quadripartitus: BL, MS. Cotton Titus A. xxvii, which is likely to be the volume unclearly attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth by Joscelyn, because Geoffrey’s Historia preceded Quadripartitus in it: J2. 62b, Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s, BA1.895, see above, pp. 251, 293; further A.G. Watson, ‘John Twyne of Canterbury (d. 1581) as a Collector of Medieval Manuscripts: A Preliminary Investigation’, repr. in his Medieval Manuscripts in Post-Medieval England (Aldershot 2004), ch. IV, pp. 133–51. Twyne also rescued a late twelfth-century witness of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum, which came from Newark Priory, Surrey: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 348; and, from an unknown source, the earliest surviving witness of William of Jumièges’ Gesta Normannorum ducum, in the earliest extant redaction, which Twyne mistook for Dudo’s De moribus: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 517, fo. 1. 224  See above, p. 293. 225  A.G. Watson, ‘Christopher and William Carye, Collectors of Monastic Manuscripts, and “John Carye”’, repr. in his Medieval Manuscripts in Post-Medieval England (Aldershot 2004), ch. V, pp. 135–42; Graham and Watson, Recovery, Bn 15, J2.61. 226  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 96; Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 21; cf. Poole and Bateson, Index, p. 185.

The Preservation of the Sources   321 Leland on a visit to the abbey in 1534;227 perhaps it had been appropriated by him on that occasion. Leland’s executor, Sir John Cheke (d. 1557), whose niece was married to Osborne, might have passed it on to Osborne, or it might have come into Osborne’s hands when he acted as Cheke’s executor. These speculations are all plausible,228 but remain speculations. There is no doubt, however, that Osborne, later an executor of Parker, donated the book to the Parker Library. The other known complete229 witness, also possibly from Jervaulx, was given to Robert Cotton in 1604 by someone who appears to have been deliberately rendered unidentifiable.230 The full text of John Brompton’s Chronicle is only known to have existed in these two manuscripts, the second of which may have come from the same North Yorkshire monastic library as the first. The Chronicle is exemplary of those many works of history which became much more widely known as a consequence of the Dissolution, because the two known witnesses, probably both from the same obscure and remote Cistercian house, chanced to fall into the hands of interested laymen. John Selden would quote extensively from Cotton’s manuscript of the Chronicle in his Historie of Tithes,231 and it was consulted by several other seventeenth-century antiquaries.232 As we have seen,233 it was one of the last major medieval histories of England to be printed, by Roger Twysden in 1652. But that was not for want of trying on the part of potential editors. In 1618 Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc sought to print selections from it, the same year that Selden published his Historie of Tithes;234 so, probably, did William Wats in 1640.235 Both failed. It had long been accepted that if important history books could be printed, they would be made accessible to a vastly expanded number of interested parties who had not had the good fortune to be on the right spot at the right time to acquire manuscript copies for themselves, or to know someone who had been, or someone in whose hands a manuscript of an important historical text had ended up.

227  De uiris, pp. lxxxvii, 819; Collectanea iv. 44, has Leland’s notes on the manuscript. Leland listed only a copy of Nennius and a collection of sermons by the early fourteenth-century monk Robert Gryme: Bell, Cistercians, Gilbertines, and Premonstratensians, Z10. 228  A.F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, Richard III’s Books. Ideals and Reality in the Life and Library of a Medieval Prince (Stroud 1997), pp. 285–6, suggest as an alternative that it was first accessioned by the Royal Library. 229  Part of the prologue is copied on the flyleaf of London, BL, MS. Royal 13. B. ix, in a fifteenthcentury hand. 230  BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius  C.  xiii, fos 2r–256v; for the putative Jervaulx provenance, see Ker, MLGB, p. 105. The name of the donor appears to have been erased from the note on fo. 256v. 231  The Historie of Tithes. That is, The Practice of Payment of them. The Positive Laws made for them. The Opinions touching the right of them. A Review of it Is also annext, which both Confirmes it and directs in the Use of it (London 1618), pp. 213, 214–15, 219–20, 222, 223–24. 232 Tite, Records, p. 110. 233  See above, p. 200. 234  G. Camdeni et illustrium virorum ad G. Camdenum epistolae . . . praemittitur G. Camdeni vita, ed. T. Smith (London 1691), no. CCIV, p. 261 (12 November 1618). 235 Tite, Records, p. 110.

322  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Both John Joscelyn’s lists of manuscript books were concerned overwhelmingly with English historical works, as Robert Cotton recognized in the title he added to the post-Conquest one.236 Despite Joscelyn’s demonstrable knowledge of English legal compilations, he did not include them in his list. In its original form, the list was in chronological order of author,237 an arrangement which followed the model of Leland’s De uiris illustribus and Bale’s Scriptores. It was from the second edition of the latter that much of its content was distilled. Joscelyn also, as we have seen, used Bale’s letter of 1560.238 The list originally started with the late eleventh-century hagiographer Osbern of Canterbury, numbered ‘1.’,239 as, by implication, the earliest noteworthy post-Conquest writer. That the authors listed were in the original version all post-Conquest—by contrast with many in Joscelyn’s probably slightly later240 and far shorter list of narrative sources for the Old English period241—does not, of course, mean that they wrote only about the post-Conquest period. Eadmer’s Historia novorum was, uniquely, included in both the original version of the longer list and in the shorter one.242 (Like Osbern, he was a Christ Church author, so there may have been an element of institutional pride in this on Joscelyn’s part.) Joscelyn subsequently inserted into the longer list eight major pre-Conquest names (and a minor one from just afterwards)243 above Osbern’s. This list was demonstrably a work in progress, repeatedly elaborated, and intended, to judge from a now only partially legible note on what was ori­gin­al­ly its first folio, as a research aid to assist Joscelyn in ‘putting together a history’.244 It is conceivable that this note anticipates De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae & privilegiis ecclesiae Cantuariensis.245 Though the book purported to be the work of Parker, Joscelyn did a great deal of the research on which it was based.246 Selden later attributed it to Joscelyn.247 It drew in an impressively detailed fashion on many of the unprinted works itemized in his two lists, but also on a far wider body of source material. It is conceivable that Joscelyn envisaged writing a quite 236  Graham and Watson, Recovery, J2, p. 61. 237  Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 8. 238  Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 8. 239  Graham and Watson, Recovery, J2.29. 240  Graham and Watson, Recovery, pp. 5, 10. 241  Graham and Watson, Recovery, J1 (pp. 54–9). This list is entitled ‘Books written in the Saxon language’, but as Graham and Watson point out, pp. 5–6, seven of the fifteen titles were written in Latin. It consists of books which treat pre-Conquest history, but some of them—Eadmer’s Historia novorum and several of its six versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle—also cover the period after the Conquest. 242  Graham and Watson, Recovery, J1.9, J2.34. 243  Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 9, J2.20–28. 244  Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 9. 245  [Matthew Parker,] De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae & privilegiis ecclesiae Cantuariensis, cum Archiepiscopis eiusdem 70 (London 1572). It was claimed in Parker’s name that he had already, prior to 1533, completed much of the research on the relationship between the Fathers and early church councils: see ‘Matthaeus’, sep. pagination, p. 4, in the Bodleian Library copy, selfmark 4◦ Rawl. 593; on the complicated history of the variant copies, see J. Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker (London 1711), pp. 415–19; J-L. Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity. The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the 17th Century (Oxford 2009), pp. 78 n. 311, 23 n. 4. It is impossible to verify the accuracy of the claim. 246 McKisack, Medieval History, pp. 44–5. 247 Selden, Historie of Tithes, p. 256.

The Preservation of the Sources   323 different historical work, which he failed to complete, in much the same way that Leland and Bale had their planned but never written histories. If the Conquest had originally provided Joscelyn with a chronological starting point for his longer list, it signified only the period during which the writers had written, not the period about which they wrote. He soon came to ignore it in the compilation of both his lists. It had been no more than an organizational convenience, not an architectonic principle. He, like Bale and Leland before him, appears to have given no serious thought to it. If he had ever written the history for which the list was devised as a preparatory aid, it looks as if it would not have said much about the Conquest. If that history turned out in effect to be Parker’s De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae, it makes extensive use throughout of the twelfth-century (and later) historians. It could hardly do otherwise, given its subject matter. Most of the book consists of accounts of each successive archbishop, so the archiepiscopates of Stigand,248 Lanfranc,249 and Anselm250 are duly narrated. The story of Swanscombe Down is recounted at some length, with Thomas Sprott cited as the source.251 So is the tale of Wulfstan’s pastoral staff being embedded in the Confessor’s tomb, with John Brompton’s Chronicle cited.252 The Conquest had resulted in increased papal influence in the English Church, one manifestation of which had been the imposition of the doctrine of transubstantiation—a doctrine invented by Berengarius ‘who taught in Fraunce, in the daies when William the Norman was by conquest kyng of England, and Hildebrande, otherwise called Gregorius the seventh, was pope of Rome’.253 Parker’s edition of Ælfric’s Easter Homily demonstrated that this doctrine had not obtained in the pre-Conquest Church. Then the Eucharist had been understood in a way which turned out to be uncannily similar to that of the Elizabethan Church, as the modern English paraphrase of the Old English texts pointed out; and the language of devotion had been the vernacular, as was made evident by Old English texts of the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Decalogue. Pre-Conquest books in Latin which recorded the pre-Conquest doctrine on the Eucharist had been ‘made out of the waye since the conquest by some which coulde not well broke thys doctrine.’254 They had been erased, yet those who had tampered with them had been ‘bewrayed’ by their inability to understand equivalent ancient texts in Old English. By careful comparison of different manuscripts

248  De antiquitate, pp. 87–91. 249  De antiquitate, pp. 93–100. 250  De antiquitate, pp. 100–11. 251  De antiquitate, pp. 89–90. Sprott is in Joscelyn’s second list, J2.80; Joscelyn copied extracts from it in London, BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius E. xiv. John Stow translated it into English in the 1570 edition of his A summarye of chronicles of England, from the first comminge of Brute into this lande, unto this present yeare of Christ. (London 1570), fos 84v–86v. 252  De antiquitate, p. 96; almost certainly Cambridge, CCC, MS. 96, cf. R. Twysden, ed., Historiae Anglicanae scriptores X (London 1652), cols 975–6. 253  A Testimonie, fo. 2r. 254  A Testimonie, fo. 4v.

324  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 it was possible to restore what had been excised from the Latin.255 Lanfranc and Anselm had been more effective than Augustine as agents of papal influence in England, but they too had been unable to read Old English.256 The Conquest had, through increased papal influence, laid the ground for the subversion of English orthodoxy. That did not, however, mean that the circumstances of William’s accession or its secular consequences were in themselves a subject of interest. Parker took a different line from Leland when considering the role of the papacy in post-Conquest England, but he appears to have agreed that it was primarily in terms of that influence that the effects of the Conquest were to be weighed. Perhaps the lack of importance attributed to the Conquest as a conquest was in part a function of the fact that Joscelyn, like Leland and Bale before him, was not a common lawyer. He was, rather, a classical scholar, who developed interests in Hebrew and latterly in Old English. He might have played a small part in the editorial project which produced Lambarde’s ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ,257 but his editorial contribution did not require any competence in common law. Without the insistent stimulus of reference to the Conquest in works of jurisprudence and legal documentation the approach of these antiquaries to the medieval history books they so admired continued to be determined by the official agenda of the 1530s, with its concentration on the early period of English history, and on the literature of devotion in Old English. The same is to an extent true of Joscelyn’s master, Parker. Indeed, this is one reason for the catalytic contribution that Joscelyn and Parker made to Old English scholarship.

Matthew Parker as Editor The Privy Council’s commission to Matthew Parker in 1568 was the closest thing there was to an official response to the repeated pleas of a select group of individuals that the publication of printed editions of medieval works of English history should be facilitated. On its basis not only did Parker redouble his efforts to locate manuscripts, he also, unlike Leland,258 or Bale, or Prise during Prise’s own lifetime, himself arranged the publication of major medieval works of English history. Parker took very seriously the Privy Council’s injunction that he should 255  B.S.  Robinson, ‘ “Darke speech”: Matthew Parker and the Reforming of History’, SixteenthCentury Journal, xxix (1998), 1061–83, at 1061–2, 1065. 256  Cf. John Foxe, Actes and Monumentes, 2 vols (London 1570), i. [A]iiiv, [924]. 257  See below, pp. 336, 345 n. 75 for his annotations in MS. Cotton Nero A. i(A). 258  Leland said to Henry VIII in his New Year Gift that he intended to ‘publyshe the maiestie of the excellente actes of youre progenytours, hytherto sore obscured, bothe for lacke of empryntynge of suche works as laye secretely in corners’: Laboryouse journey, sig. C.iir; at sig. B. viiir he envisages this for ‘the monuments of auncyent wryters, as well of other nacyons as of your owne prouynce, myghte be brought out of deadly darnesse to lyuelye lyght’, but there is no indication that this meant works of medieval historical writing.

The Preservation of the Sources   325 ensure that the ‘wrytynges and recordes’ he had been commissioned to unearth should not ‘remayne obscure and unknowne’. That was hardly surprising, because in all probability he had himself drafted it for the Secretary of State,259 and the preface to his edition of Ælfric’s Easter Homily records that he had long anticipated on his own initiative what the commission officially sanctioned.260 Given the role which Cecil had played two decades before in the dispersal of the library of the Guildhall Chapel in London,261 and given his own interest in medieval books, it is also not surprising that he was receptive to Parker’s proposal. Cecil soon showed himself to be acutely vigilant about the current subversive potential of old books and documents: in 1569 he ordered that the house of John Stow, the London antiquary, be searched.262 Stow was suspected of Catholic tendencies.263 The possession of medieval history books might be perfectly innocent, or it might be evidence of recusancy. That Stow had in his library a number of CounterReformation titles suggested the latter.264 When Parker solicited his letter from the Privy Council, he had very recently, in 1567, produced an edition of the Flores historiarum, then thought to be the work of the fictitious ‘Matthew of Westminster’, but in truth by Matthew Paris.265 Parker learnt so much from the manuscripts of the Flores to which he secured access on the basis of his commission that he swiftly produced a substantially revised edition, in 1570.266 At least one of these manuscripts was, according to Stow, supplied by him.267 259  See above, p. 287; McKisack, Medieval History, p. 27.    260  A Testimonie, fo. 4r. 261  See below, p. 345. 262  A Survey of London, ed. C.L. Kingsford, 2 vols (London 1908), i. pp. xvi–xvii, lvi. 263  I.W.  Archer, ‘John Stow, Citizen and Historian’, in I.  Gadd and A.  Gillespie, eds, John Stow (1525–1605) and the Making of the English Past (London 2004), pp. 13–26, at 20–1; P. Collinson, ‘John Stow and Nostalgic Antiquarianism’, repr. in his This England. Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth in the Sixteenth Century (Manchester 2011), pp. 287–308, at 294, 298–9. 264  A list of Stow’s books was submitted to Cecil: J. Strype, History of the Life & Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, Edmund Grindal (London 1710), Appendix to Book I, pp. 43–5, no. XVII. 265  Elegans, illustris, et facilis rerum, praesertim Britannicarum, ad annum Domini. 1307. narratio: quam Matthaeus Westmonasteriensis monachus, eius author, vir in utraque literatura eruditus, Flores historiarum scripsit (London 1567); R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge 1958), pp. 41, 154. 266  Flores historiarum per Matthaeum Westmonasteriensem collecti, praecipue de rebus Brittanicis ab exordio mundi usque ad annum Domini 1307 (London 1570); alternatively, Matthaeus Westmonasteriensis, florilegus dictus, praecipue de rebus Britannicis ab exordio mundi usque ad annum Domini. 1307 (London 1570). The (incomplete) manuscript on which the edition of 1567 was based was Eton College, MS. 123, which had come from Merton Priory; that of 1570 used in addition Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 572 and London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius E. viii, which had been seen by Leland, Collectanea iv. 27, and Bale, Index, p. 287, at Norwich Cathedral Priory, and is annotated by Parker and John Joscelyn; further Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Historia Anglorum, sive, ut vulgo dicitur, Historia minor, ed. F.  Madden, 3 vols, RS (1866–9), i. p. xx n. 2; McKisack, Medieval History, p. 40. According to Joscelyn, Parker owned an as yet unidentified copy of the whole work, and a copy of ‘tertium historiae librum’, which was formerly Chester Beatty MS. 70: Graham and Watson, Recovery, J2.100. It is impossible to determine when he acquired these two manuscripts. For the differences between Parker’s two editions, and his use of the manuscripts on which they are based, see Flores historiarum, ed. H.R. Luard, 3 vols, RS (1890), i. pp. xliii–xlviii. 267 J.  Stow, The Annales of England (London 1605), p. 1105, quoted by Archer, ‘Citizen and Historian’, p. 22. Stow first made the claim in the second edition of 1592: Robinson, ‘ “Darke speech”’, 1070–1.

326  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Bale’s letter to Parker of July 1560 had been prompted by inquiries made of Elizabeth I by Matthias Flacius Illyricus, one of a group of German Protestant ecclesiastical historians known as the Magdeburg Centuriators.268 Flacius’ final query had concerned Matthew Paris.269 The queen had immediately forwarded Flacius’ inquiries to the archbishop, who had in turn sought Bale’s advice. Parker and Flacius had still been corresponding on the subject of Matthew Paris in May 1561, when Flacius sent Parker copies of some excerpts of Matthew Paris which Parker had been unable to track down in England.270 It would seem that these were extracted from manuscripts amongst the vast quantities which Bale and Leland complained had been shipped abroad by German scholars in the immediate aftermath of the Dissolution.271 If Matthew Paris had not been a subject of interest to Parker before he received Bale’s letter in 1560, he soon became a priority. Parker’s 1567 edition of Gildas was intended as a refutation of Polydore Vergil’s papistical calumnies;272 but thereafter in terms of English historiography, as distinct from Old English scholarship, Parker’s attention shifted from the pre- and post-conversion period of English history to works of the thirteenth century. Armed with his commission of 1568, he decided to edit Matthew Paris after he had printed his revised edition of the Flores, which he did not know to be one of Paris’s works. He resolved, in other words, to print a second high medieval work of English history produced by the St Albans Abbey historians, rather than one of those twelfth-century histories of which he already owned (or would soon acquire) manuscript copies,273 had

268  N.L.  Jones, ‘Matthew Parker, John Bale, and the Magdeburg Centuriators’, Sixteenth-Century Journal, xii (1981), 35–49; Graham and Watson, Recovery, pp. 3–4. The Centuriators compiled the partisan Historia ecclesiastica, integram ecclesiae Christi ideam . . . complectens, 13 vols (Basle 1559–74). 269  Jones, ‘Parker’, 39. 270  Jones, ‘Parker’, 45; Correspondence of Parker, no. XCIX, pp. 139–40 (22 May 1561). For speculation about what Parker received from Flacius, see Historia Anglorum, ed. Madden, i. p. xxix and n. 2. 271  See above, pp. 291, 308. 272  Gildae, cui cognomentum est sapientis, de excidio & conquestu Britanniae [ed. M.  Parker] (London 1567), directed against Vergil’s edition: Gildas Britannus monachus . . . de calamitate excidio, & conquestu Britanniae (Antwerp 1525). 273 It is for the most part not possible to date Parker’s acquisitions. Florence of Worcester: Cambridge, CCC, MS. 92, which had come from Peterborough Abbey; Henry of Huntingdon: Cambridge, CCC, MS. 280; William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum: Cambridge, UL, MS. Ii. 2. 3 (from Buildwas Abbey), Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R.  5. 34 (a sixteenth-century copy by one of Parker’s secretaries, which includes Historia novella and the fifth book of Gesta pontificum. It is a transcript which does not appear to be derived ultimately either from London, BL, MS. Arundel 35 or from Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R.  7. 10, as asserted by Stubbs, Willelmi Malmesbiriensis monachi, De gestis regum Anglorum libri quinque; Historiae novellae libri tres, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1887–9), i. p. lxxii, but from some other source: GR i. p. xvii and n. 17); Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 10; Scheide Library, MS. 159, on deposit in Princeton University Library (formerly Phillips MS. 26641), in which there are notes in his hand; and the brief excerpts in Cambridge, CCC, MS. 139, fos 158r–161v; Gesta pontificum: Cambridge, CCC, MS. 43; Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 13; Cambridge, UL, MS. Ff. I. 25; Gervase of Canterbury: Cambridge, UL, MS. Ff. I. 29; Eadmer: Cambridge, CCC, MS. 452, of which three copies were made in 1567 before it came into Parker’s possession. One of these is Cambridge, CCC, MS. 341 (Rule, ed., p. xii, cf. below, p. 330); Ralph de

The Preservation of the Sources   327 recently secured privileged access to many more, and which were extensively drawn upon in his De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae. His priorities as an editor were closer to those advocated by Bale than by Prise. Joscelyn wrote that ‘he indeuored to sett out in printe certaine off those aunciented monuments whearoff he knew very fewe examples to be extante and which he thoughte woulde be most profitable for the posterytye to instructe them in the faythe and religion off the elders.’274 Matthew Paris had been highlighted by Bale in the conclusion to his Laboryouse journey, and again, prompted by Flacius’s inquiry, at the end of his letter to Parker of 1560, in which Paris was the only English historian to have a whole subtitled section dedicated to him. ‘It were muche pytie that that noble storye shulde perish in one coppye’: Bale’s warning constituted the case for printed editions in general, but he applied it to Paris in particular. What made Matthew Paris an especially attractive prospect to Bale, to Flacius, and to Parker was that ‘no chronycle paynteth out the byshopp of Rome in more lyuely colours, nor more lyuely declareth hys execrable procedynges, than it doth’.275 To Elizabeth’s first archbishop of Canterbury this theme was bound to have great appeal. In 1560 Bale had called on Parker to ‘[m]arke therin [the pope’s] more than Turkysh occupyenges with kynge Henry the thirde’. Since the Flores historiarum was in truth an abridgement by Matthew Paris himself of his own Chronica majora,276 these early Parkerian editorial projects had a common inspiration: Paris’s highly congenial antipathy to the papacy. Parker suggested that so few manuscripts of his works were extant because the papists had suppressed them (by explicit contrast with William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and a long list of other twelfth-century historians).277 By comparison with papal-English relations in the thirteenth century, the Conquest was a subject in which Parker took little interest. It is difficult to know what to make of his underlining in his distinctive red chalk or crayon the Peterborough Chronicle’s account of the good security kept during the Conqueror’s reign.278 As Joscelyn observed in his longer list of historical works, Paris’s Historia Anglorum started with the Conquest.279 On that initial subject the book did no more than succinctly recapitulate earlier treatments;280 it was not a major topic. The autograph manuscript of Matthew Paris which Bale had described in his Diceto: Cambridge, CCC, MS. 76, probably autograph, and probably presented to Archbishop Hubert Walter. 274  The Life off the 70.Archbishopp off Canterbury presentlye Sittinge Englished ([Zurich] 1574), C [ir–v]. 275  Graham and Watson, Recovery, pp. 29–30. 276  Historia Anglorum, ed. Madden, i. p. xxii. 277  Matthaei Paris, monachi Albanensis, Angli, Historia maior, a Guilielmo Conquaestore, ad ultimum annum Henrici tertii, [ed. M. Parker](London 1571), Praefatio ad Lectorem, sig. †iij. 278  Peterborough Chronicle, ed. Whitelock, p. 24. For a discussion of whether all such markings can be attributed to Parker, see Robinson, ‘ “Darke speech”’, 1075–6. 279  Graham and Watson, Recovery, J2. 77. 280  See above, p. 162.

328  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 letter included Historia Anglorum and some continuations of Chronica majora; it belonged to ‘the quenes maiestyes lybrary’, but had been lent, during Edward VI’s reign, to Henry Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, who had been Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain, and had acquired a large number of monastic books during the 1530s. In 1560 he had still not returned the manuscript to the royal library.281 Parker, however, was intent on printing not Paris’s Historia Anglorum, but his Chronica majora. For the main text of the Chronica majora, or as Parker confusingly titled it, Historia maior, he used the partial autograph to which he had gained access, split between Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MSS. 26 and 16. This St Albans manuscript had already been divided into two before Parker’s day: the first part, from Creation to 1188, was then owned by Edward Aglionby of Balsall Temple, Warwickshire, and the Middle Temple;282 the second, from 1189 to 1253, by Sir Henry Sidney, the putative owner of a witness of Quadripartitus which has since been lost.283 Parker treated both parts of the divided partial autograph as the copy text for his printed edition; indeed, he marked it up for the printer in much the same way as we shall see Lambarde doing with the modern transcript of Cnut’s law codes made by his sometime tutor, Laurence Nowell284—the difference being that the witness of Matthew Paris was not a sixteenth-century transcript, but a thirteenth-century original. In the case of Matthew Paris’s autograph, as with Nowell’s transcript, the printer’s inky thumb prints are sometimes visible in the margins.285 In Parker’s mind, there was no tension between antiquarian reverence and current utility: the reverence was a function of the utility. In this respect he differed from Leland and Dackomb, who venerated manuscripts as quasi-relics, simply because they had been associated with King Æthelstan. Parker consulted a number of other manuscripts, including, for the text of the continuation of Chronica majora for the years 1254–59, that from the king’s library currently in the possession of the earl of Arundel, to which Bale had drawn his attention.286 The resulting printed edition of 1571 was a composite text, which drew on both the Chronica majora and the Historia Anglorum.287 For the events of the Conquest, 281  London, BL, MS. Royal 14. C. vii (=Carley, Henry VIII, H2.1041), which had previously been used and annotated by Polydore Vergil, and was seen by Bale in the royal library; Graham and Watson, Recovery, pp. 29–30, J.2.77. The earl also possessed London, BL, MS. Royal 14. C. vi, a very early fourteenth-century copy of the archetype of Matthew Paris’s Flores historiarum (Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS. 6712), and other historiographical materials. It was probably written at the Abbey of St Benet of Holme, Norfolk, but was later at Tintern Abbey. This later passed into the hands of John, Lord Lumley. 282 Previously in the possession of Robert Talbot, prebendary of Norwich (1547–58): Historia Anglorum, ed. Madden, i. p. lvii. 283  Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, ed. Madden, i. p. lvii; for the lost copy of Quadripartitus, see above, p. 310, below, pp. 343–4. 284  See below, p. 336. 285 R.I.  Page, Matthew Parker and his Books (Kalamazoo, MI 1993), pp. 59–60 and Pl. 46 (Cambridge, CCC, MS. 16, fo. 229r). For this book a different printer was used (Reginald Wolfe). 286  He commissioned Cambridge, CCC, MS. 56, which includes a transcript of this portion of BL, MS. Royal 14. C.  vii; for the other manuscripts he used, see Historia Anglorum, ed. Madden, i. pp. xxx–xxxi. 287  Matthew Paris, Historia maior, ed. Parker, sig. †iij.

The Preservation of the Sources   329 with which it started, Parker adapted the text in a manuscript he borrowed from William Cecil;288 for the period from 1067 to 1188 he used Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 26.289 Parker subsequently pursued this prioritizing of St Albans historiography with printed editions of Thomas Walsingham’s Chronica maiora (confusingly titled Historia brevis by him)290 and Walsingham’s Ypodigma Neustriae, an epitome of English (and bits of early Norman) history from 911 to 1419: ‘I thought this history should not be kept privately for myself alone, but should be published for the common utility of all.’291 He drew on a manuscript of the Historia Anglicana (other­wise known as Chronica maiora, or by Parker, compounding the confusion, as Historia brevis), then in the possession of Lord William Howard of Naworth;292 and for Ypodigma, on Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 240,293 the sole extant medieval witness,294 which he had himself acquired. For what turned out to be his final editorial venture he reverted to a more traditional focus on the pre-Conquest period by printing (incongruously in Old English type) an edition of Asser’s Vita Ælfredi,295 based on another manuscript he owned—the only manuscript of Asser known with certainty to have survived the middle ages.296 It had ­previously belonged to Leland, who had presumably acquired it from an unidentified monastic library. Asser had been one of the names Joscelyn had inserted as an after-thought above Osbern of Canterbury in the longer list which had initially consisted of post-Conquest writers.297 Underneath the entry in the list, in a different hand which has been said to display some of Parker’s distinctive characteristics, is

288  Paris, BN, MS. Lat. 6048B, a composite text of the Chronica majora and Historia Anglorum, which started in 1066 and ended in 1208: Historia Anglorum, ed. Madden, i. pp. xxx, xxxiii, lxvi–lxix; Correspondence of Parker, no. CCLXXI, p. 353. 289  Historia Anglorum, ed. Madden, i. p. xxxiii: ‘1089’ and ‘1092’ here are printing errors for 1189 and 1192; further, pp. xxxiii–xxxvii for Parker’s use of these and other manuscripts. For unwarranted changes made to the text by Parker, see CM, ed. Luard, ii. pp. xxii–xxviii; cf. iv. p. xvii. 290  St Albans Chronicle i. p. lxiv. 291  Historia brevis Thomae Walsingham, ab Edwardo primo, ad Henricum quintum (London 1574) ii[r]; Ypodigma Neustriae vel Normanniae: per Thomam de Walsingham: ab irruptione Normannorum usque ad annum. 6. regni Henrici quinti (London 1574). 292  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 195. The manuscript was defective, and Parker used London, College of Arms, MS. Arundel 7, a late transcript of Cambridge, CCC, MS. 195, to fill the gaps: V.H. Galbraith, The St Albans Chronicle, 1406–1420 (Oxford 1937), p. xi; Thomae Walsingham, quondam monachi S. Albani, Historia Anglicana, ed. H.T. Riley, 2 vols, RS (1863–4), i. pp. xi–xii; St Albans Chronicle i. p. lxiv. Parker treated CCC, 195 too like copy for the printer. 293  Despite its title—suggested by Henry V’s conquest of Normandy—and its starting point, this is for the most part a condensed history of England: Ypodigma Neustriae, ed. H.T. Riley, RS (1876). 294  London, BL, MS. Harley 3634 is a sixteenth-century copy. 295  S.C. Hagedorn, ‘Matthew Parker and Asser’s Ælfredi regis res gestae’, Princeton University Library Chronicle, li (1989), 74–90, at 79–88. 296  Later London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho  A.  xii. For reasons which are unclear, this passed from Parker’s library into that of John, Lord Lumley (d. 1609), before ending up in the hands of Robert Cotton. For the details, see Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ed. W.H. Stevenson, rev. D. Whitelock (Oxford 1959), pp. xxxiii–xxxiv; S.D. Keynes and M. Lapidge, eds, Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth 1983), pp. 223–5. 297  Respectively Graham and Watson, Recovery, J2.114, 26.

330  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 what we may take to be the imperative ‘print’.298 The edition also included the Alfredian verse and prose prefaces to Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, with an interlinear translation into modern English, and a translation into Latin.299 The overall image conveyed was one which would have been very congenial to Leland—that of another scholar king. Parker’s preface inquired of the reader: ‘What is more difficult than strenuously to defend both the kingdom’s frontiers against the ferocity of barbarian peoples and to extend the boundaries of learning and letters daily?’300 When Parker did show an interest in one of the great twelfth-century histories, as he did in Eadmer’s Historia novorum, he commissioned one and probably several transcripts of an exemplar known to him, but not (yet) in his possession: what we now know to be the autograph Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 452.301 Important as he evidently thought the work, there is no sign that he planned a printed edition. The absence of one was no obstacle to invoking it in defence of clerical marriage. His A defence of priestes mariages (1567)302 cites it from this witness, then owned by a Dr Henry Johns. Parker might not yet own it, but the passages he cited are marked up in it in his distinctive red chalk or ­crayon.303 Bale identified a passage in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum

298  Graham and Watson, Recovery, J2.26 and n. They express some doubt about whether the word applied to the entry for Asser or that for Osbern. But Parker did not edit Osbern, or indeed any hagiography. The letter ‘p’, allegedly in the same hand, is in the margin beside the entry for Marianus Scotus (J2.30). This had been published in Basle in 1559, but Joscelyn (and possibly Parker) seem unaware of the fact. For Parker’s hand, and comment on his distinctive letter ‘p’, see Page, Parker, p. 127. 299  This book may have been supplied to Parker by John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury: McKisack, Medieval History, p. 30; Robinson, ‘ “Darke speech”’, 1067–8. 300 [Asser,] Ælfredi regis res gestae, [ed. M. Parker] ([London 1574]), Aiiv–Aiiir. 301  In 1567, at Parker’s instigation, three copies were made of Cambridge, CCC, MS. 452, at a time when it was still owned by Dr Henry Johns of Cambridge, a member of Doctors Commons, as recorded by John Joscelyn: Graham and Watson, Recovery, J2.34. These are extant as Cambridge, CCC, MS. 341, Dublin, Trinity College, MS. 491, and London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 175: Historia novorum, ed. Rule, pp. xii-xiii. Cambridge, CCC, MS. 341 is probably the transcript which Bishop Robinson of Bangor reported he was sending to Parker in a letter in Cambridge, CCC, MS. 114, no. 179. Cambridge, CCC, MS. 341 contains two loose leaves in Eadmer’s handwriting, one of a passage from Book V of Historia novorum, in a version prior to that in Cambridge, CCC, MS. 452, and one of the chapter headings of Book I of his Vita S. Anselmi: M. Brett, ‘A Note on the Historia Novorum of Eadmer’, Scriptorium, xxxiii (1979), 56–8. The leaf from the Vita has inscribed on it the name of John Stokesley, canon lawyer and bishop of London 1530–39. He was an enthusiastic advocate of and agent in the Dissolution, so would fit the pattern of the typical book collector at this time. It is impossible to say whether both leaves came from the same volume, and whether Bishop Stokesley also once possessed the leaf from the Historia novorum. Its insertion in Cambridge, CCC, MS. 341 would strongly suggest that in the 1560s (or later) a fragment, at least, of a second autograph of the Historia was still extant. In addition, at this time two further partial copies were in turn made of the same portion of the transcript in Cambridge, CCC, MS. 341: London, BL, MSS. Harley 357 and Arundel 31. These appear to have been dictated, rather than copied, which suggests that there was considerable contemporary interest in the book: Rule, p. xiii. 302  A defence of priestes mariages, stablysshed by the imperiall lawes of the realme of Englande (n.p. n.d.), pp. 293, 295–8, 300–2, 305. Printings of this work differ greatly in content. He also cites William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Howden, William of Newburgh, and other twelfthcentury historians, as he would do shortly afterwards in De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae. 303 Page, Parker, pp. 55, 89–90, pls. 48a and b, 50a and b.

The Preservation of the Sources   331 bearing on this very issue in another manuscript book belonging to Parker.304 Parker arranged the completion of a twelfth-century manuscript of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum with modern manuscript copies of the missing final book (as well as of the Historia novella), and in 1574 presented the resulting supplemented collection to Cambridge University Library;305 but printed editions, as distinct from supposedly restored or amplified manuscripts, of the works of William or Henry of Huntingdon were not for him the priority that they had been for Prise. They would, however, soon become so for others; and many of the manuscripts used in preparing those printed editions were Parker’s, or had at least been consulted by Parker. Afforced by the commission of 1568, he had in one fashion or another shown the way to fulfilling the vision of Leland, Bale, and above all Prise. But he did not do so himself. Epoch making as the commission of 1568 turned out to be, in terms both of assembling medieval manuscripts in Parker’s library and establishing the locations of many of those which were not, it was for others to begin to fulfil that vision in the final decade of the sixteenth century. That will be the subject of the concluding chapter of this volume. First, however, I must revert to the other event of the summer of 1568 which turned out to be of commensurate importance for the subsequent understanding of English medieval history in general, and of the Conquest in particular: the publication of William Lambarde’s printed edition of Old English and post-Conquest royal law codes.

304  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 280, fo. 127v. 305  Cambridge, UL, MS. Ff. I. 25. He arranged for a copy of the Historia novella to be made and added to the witness of Gesta regum in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 5. 34. At the end of another copy of Gesta regum, Princeton University, Scheide Library, MS. 159 (formerly Phillips MS. 26641), p. 365, then in his library, he noted that the Historia novella which one would expect to follow on was missing: C.T.  Berkhout, ‘The Parkerian Legacy of a Scheide Manuscript: William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum’, Princeton University Library Chronicle, lv (1994), 277–86, with Parker’s note photographed at 283. Lambarde had written a title at the beginning: Princeton, NJ, Scheide Library, MS. 159, p. 129, cf. Berkhout, 278, 284. The manuscript came from Robertsbridge Abbey: Ker, MLGB, Supplement, p. 58.

9

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law and Its Post-Conquest Endorsement ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ It is now time to move forward from July to September 1568: to the publication of William Lambarde’s edition of many Old English law codes, in Old English with facing Latin translations, and what purported to be their immediately postConquest confirmations. Unlike the commission to Archbishop Parker, there was no formal official intervention in this project, although as we shall see both the archbishop and the Secretary of State were involved, the archbishop very closely so. Lambarde did not restrict the edition to Old English codes; he also printed what he termed Leges Gulielmi Regis and Leges Edouardi Regis (solely in Latin, and in that order, because that is the order in which they are found in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, regarded by him as authoritative). He thereby presented them as if they marked the conclusion or consummation of a chronologically arranged sequence of all earlier English royal codes. Unlike the commissioned investigative work of Archbishop Parker, the printing of this selection had an immediate and obvious bearing on the interpretation of the Conquest. Together, these two post-Conquest codes were categorized as ‘the laws which King Edward (called the Confessor) passed and King William, the first of that name, approved’.1 The premise was the long conventional one of legal continuity over the Conquest, embodied in the post-Conquest codes which Lambarde decided to print. He evidently chose not to include the Conqueror’s Old English legislative writ on exculpation, even though it was available in Latin translation in many of the com­ pil­ations to which he had access, including the preparatory transcriptions made principally by his sometime tutor Laurence Nowell, with his own add­itions.2 Like 1  W. Lambarde, ed., APXAIONOMIA, sive de priscis anglorum legibus libri, sermone Anglico, vetustate antiquissimo, aliquot abhinc seculis conscripti, atque nunc demum, magno iurisperitorum, & amantium antiquitatis omnium commodo, e tenebris in lucem vocati. (London 1568), [A.i.ˇ]. 2  Los Angeles, CA, UCLA, MS. 170/529, fos 168r–169r, in Nowell’s hand. This he made an explicit point of excerpting from William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum (GR III. 297 in the Aa Group, vol. i. pp. 837), rather than from the Quadripartitus witness, London, BL, MS. Add. 49366 (the Holkham version), much of which he transcribed in this collection, fos 135v–184. The Holkham book was then in the possession of Archbishop Parker. Nowell’s transcription is, however, selective, not systematic. The selected items are copied in roughly the same order as the original, and the general principle of The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  333 Henry I’s Coronation Charter, also found in many of the sources with which Lambarde was familiar, and also excluded by him, it was not cast in the traditional form of an Old English code, and therefore might not have seemed suitable for inclusion in what purported to be a collection of early proto-statutes.3 (John Brompton’s Chronicle had treated it as a code,4 but Lambarde had a more precise grasp of what constituted one.) This is an obvious reason why he might have deemed both of them ineligible for inclusion in the first printed edition of the ancient English laws. That cannot, however, be the reason why he decided not to include the Leis Willelme, with which he was also well acquainted. Perhaps he rejected it because it was in the new, post-Conquest continental vernacular, conventionally interpreted as evidence of legal innovation imposed by the Conqueror,5 even if much of the code’s content was traditionally English. Lambarde may have viewed it as an awkward reminder that the Conquest had brought certain legal changes in its wake— in this case, a change which remained in force in his own day. He is very likely to have been aware that a medieval Latin translation of the Leis existed, because Nowell had transcribed it,6 but he may nevertheless have regarded that as an ir­rele­vance. The most straightforward reason for its rejection, however, would be that in Lambarde’s view the Leis replicated the role of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris in presenting a quasi-narrative account of the Conqueror’s endorsement of King

selection seems to have been items in Quadripartitus which were not included in the London Collection: P. Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, repr. in his Legal Culture, pp. 81–114, at 88 n. 26; P. Wormald, ‘The Lambarde Problem: Eighty Years On’, repr. in his Legal Culture, pp. 139–78, at 142 n. 11; R.  Brackmann, ‘Laurence Nowell’s Old English Legal Glossary and His Study of Quadripartitus’, in S. Jurasinski, L. Oliver, and A. Rabin, eds, English Law before Magna Carta. Felix Liebermann and Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Leiden 2010), pp. 251–72, at 257–8. The transcript ignores many but not all of the twelfth-century additions to the Holkham book, and most but not all of the sixteenth-cen­tury additions commissioned by Parker. Nowell also copied, fo. 211r, a brief excerpt of the ‘laws ascribed to King William the Great’, in Book III of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum, the same source he claimed to have used earlier for the Conqueror’s legislative writ on exculpation (GR iii. 297 in the Aa Group, vol. i. pp. 837): this excerpt consisted of the first four capitula of the second preface to Quadripartitus, beginning ‘Regem Anglie singulari maiestate. . .’ (=Gesetze i. 542; R.  Sharpe, ‘The Prefaces of “Quadripartitus”’, in G. Garnett and J.G.H. Hudson, eds, Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy. Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge 1994), pp. 148–72, at 169). This was not part of the Argumentum, and was therefore not included in what was copied, at Parker’s behest, into the beginning of BL, MS. Add. 49366. It is extant only in one witness of Quadripartitus: BL, MS. Cotton Titus  A.  xxvii. It therefore seems very likely that Nowell was indeed drawing on William of Malmesbury. See  M.  Ferrari, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles–Oxford 1991), pp. 80–1, who identifies which items were written by Nowell and which by Lambarde. 3  I am grateful to John Hudson for this point; cf. F.W.  Maitland, The Constitutional History of England (Cambridge 1908), p. 3: ‘we may compare them to our modern statutes and like our statutes they pre-suppose a body of existing law’. 4  See above, pp. 203–4. 5  Sir John Fortescue, De laudibus legum Anglie, ed. S.B. Chrimes (Cambridge 1942), c. xlviii, p. 114; see above, pp. 188, 275; J.H. Baker, Manual of Law French, 2nd edn (Aldershot 1990), p. 1. 6  London, BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius E. v, fos 161v–166r, a copy of MS. Harley 746, fos 55v–58v.

334  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Edward’s laws, together with those laws, in codified form. In the former respect, both were quite different from the Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati. Understandably, Lambarde decided that it would look odd to include both the Leis and the Leges Edwardi, given that the Leis was obviously not a vernacular version of the Leges Edwardi (though it would seem that whoever made the late twelfth-century additions to the Holkham witness of Quadripartitus had had no such qualms).7 There was not room for both of them in the new edition. Therefore he chose the text which was preserved in a large number of authoritative collections of Old English and post-Conquest law, most notably the London Collection. The Leges Edwardi Confessoris was already well known, indeed celebrated;8 the Leis was, by comparison, rare and obscure. Lambarde had done his homework. He knew that the shorter version of the Leis was preserved only as a twelfth-century addition to the Holkham witness of Quadripartitus, London, BL, MS. Add. 49366. He appended his own transcript of it to Nowell’s copy of much of the rest of the book. He sought to give the impression that he had transcribed it from a witness of the Historia Croylandensis, and did indeed append material from the full version which was available only in that source.9 But it is quite clear from both the content and the arrangement of his transcript that he started by copying the distinctive, shorter version found in the Holkham book.10 Indeed, a transcript by Nowell of something quite different, found elsewhere in the Holkham book, intervenes before the second, much shorter part of Lambarde’s edition of the Leis, which really was in this instance taken from the Historia Croylandensis, as he claims. Nowell’s intervening transcription,11 eventually excluded by Lambarde when he settled on what to include in ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, is revealing about the nature of their collaborative project. It consists of a faithful copy of the Holkham book’s brief selection of a few chapters from the apocryphal Consiliatio Cnuti—a late twelfth-century Latin translation of

7  See above, pp. 111–13, for the additions. 8  Lambarde referred to it briefly in notes taken ‘Ex libro bibliothecae Londoniensis, cui titulus est. Customes’, in his notebook of 1568: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. Hist. d. 2, fos 23r–24v, 25v–26v, at 23v. 9  UCLA, MS. 170/529, fos 187v: ‘a certain chronicle of Crowland, by Abbot Ingulf ’; 205v–207r. Lambarde also made brief notes ‘ex Chronicis Croylandii’ in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. Hist. d. 2, fos 1r–2v, and cross-refers to a transcript of the Leis made in collaboration with Nowell. This must be the Los Angeles MS. 10  UCLA, MS. 170/529, fos 187v–192v, 205v–207. Two blank folios intervene between Nowell’s copy of much of the Holkham manuscript and the start of Lambarde’s copy of the Leis. The witness of Historia Croylandensis used by Lambarde was probably that in London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xiii (see above, pp. 175, 188, 287). It belonged at that time to William Cecil, so may have been made available to Lambarde through the good offices of Nowell, who was then resident tutor in the Cecil household: Tite, Records, p. 152. It includes the longer version of the code. It is impossible to reconstruct how or when this volume came to be bound as it currently is, but it is clear from fos 192v and 205v that the gap between the two parts of the Leis was intentional, and that the final section, which is advertised as being copied from the Historia Croylandensis (cc. 29–52, 2), was added subsequently. 11  UCLA, MS. 170/529, fos 193r–199r.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  335 Cnut’s great codes12—into which are clumsily spliced detailed definitions of the tithing and the foreoath. In the Holkham book this material was added as a supplement to its unique version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris,13 which had in turn been appended to the Holkham witness of the Leis Willelme, but without any acknowledgement that the result was a hybrid of materials taken from at least three originally distinct sources in two different languages, crudely concatenated. Whoever had amplified the Holkham book in the late twelfth century would have found the Consiliatio Cnuti’s emphasis on the continuity of English law as apposite as its emphasis on that law’s unity. He had carefully excised from the translation any reference to Cnut by name, so that the whole newly spliced, hybrid pseudo-code could be presented as the laws of King Edward which the Conqueror had confirmed. Nowell completely ignored the Holkham book’s Leges Edwardi Confessoris, and started copying only when he got to its supplementary selection from the Consiliatio Cnuti. Whereas the Holkham book had implicitly included these excerpts from Cnut’s legislation amongst the laws of King Edward which King William had endorsed, Nowell explicitly attributed them to the Conqueror alone. He entitled them gulielmi leges,14 though he did not in any sense seek to elide them with Lambarde’s transcription of the Leis, between the two parts of which they were inserted. In his choice of title Nowell nevertheless accentuated the point which had already been traditional when the addition had been made to the Holkham book in the late twelfth century: that the Conqueror’s law was Old English law continued. Although Lambarde decided not to include this material in ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, perhaps because it was such a disjointed amalgam of bits of Cnut’s codes and glossarial definitions, its message of legal continuity was entirely in accord with that of his edition. So of course was the Leis, which he himself had edited on the basis of two manuscripts, but which nevertheless, like the writ on exculpation, also failed to make the final cut into print. These were informed editorial choices on Lambarde’s part, not chance omissions. As is demonstrated by this account of what Lambarde decided to omit, ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ was the product of a great deal of codicological research. Much of his achievement must be credited to Nowell, who provided transcripts of ancient exemplars of many Old English codes.15 Nowell was proficient in Old 12  MS. Add. 49366, fos 154r–157r; the selection is conveniently listed by F. Liebermann, Consiliatio Cnuti, eine Übertragung angelsächsischer Gesetze aus dem zwölften Jahrhundert (Halle 1893), pp. xviii– xix, who is unable to detect any principle upon which it was made. B. O’Brien, ‘An English Book of Laws from the Time of Glanvill’, in S. Jenks, J. Rose, and C. Whittick, eds, Laws, Lawyers and Texts. Studies in Medieval Legal History in Honour of Paul Brand (Leiden 2012), pp. 51–68, at 62, makes some suggestions. On the Consiliatio, see Wormald, Making, pp. 405–6. 13  O’Brien, ‘English Book of Laws’, p. 61, who doubts that the scribe who added this composite code to the Holkham book had devised it. 14  UCLA, MS. 170/529, fo. 193r. 15  K. Sisam, ‘The Authenticity of Certain Texts in Lambarde’s Archaionomia’, repr. in his Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford 1953), pp. 232–58; R. Flower, ‘Laurence Nowell and the

336  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 English, then a rare accomplishment. Several of his legal transcripts have survived. Thus, for instance, Lambarde used Nowell’s 1562 copy of the legal section of London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho  B.  xi, a book then owned by William Cecil, in whose household Nowell was at that time resident tutor.16 The Cotton manuscript is considered to have a Winchester provenance; it is not known how it came into Cecil’s hands. Most of it was ultimately lost in the fire of 1731, the text of its legal part therefore surviving thanks to Nowell’s diligence as a copyist. He also transcribed I and II Cnut from what is now London, BL, MS. Harley 55 (B),17 but checked this text against the witnesses in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 383 (by then probably already in Parker’s possession),18 BL, MS. Cotton Nero A. i(A) (heavily glossed by John Joscelyn,19 and therefore almost certainly also then in Parker’s library), and even the Latin translations of these codes in Quadripartitus. Lambarde corrected and marked up this transcript edition of Cnut’s major codes for use by the printer, as a copy text for ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ.20 The transcript is liberally smudged with printer’s ink, as Parker’s autograph of Matthew Paris would soon be;21 its flyleaf even gives the date of the edition’s going to press, 3 September 1568.22 The printer, John Day of Aldersgate, re-used the Old English type which he had recently devised for Archbishop Parker’s A Testimonie of Antiquitie, the edition of Ælfric’s Easter Homily, printed a year or so earlier.23

Discovery of England in Tudor Times’, repr. in E.G. Stanley, ed., British Academy Papers on Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford 1990), pp. 1–27; N.R.  Ker, A Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford 1957), p. li; Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, passim. 16  London, BL, MS. Add. 43703; Flower, ‘Discovery’, pp. 22–3; Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, pp. 158–77; Wormald, Making, pp. 173–7. The same transcript includes a copy of MS. G of the AngloSaxon Chronicle (MS. Cotton Otho B. xi/3); Nowell also copied MS. E, the Peterborough Chronicle (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 636), in MS. Add. 43704: see Joscelyn’s list: T. Graham and A.G. Watson, eds, The Recovery of the Past in Early Elizabethan England. Documents by John Bale and John Joscelyn from the Circle of Matthew Parker, Cambridge Bibliographical Society Monographs, xiii (1998), J1.11, 1.15. Nowell’s brother Robert was Attorney-General of the Court of Wards and Liveries, of which Cecil was Master. 17  London, BL, MS. Harley 55, fos 5r–13; Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, p. 145. It is impossible to establish who then owned the book of which it was at this time part, or even what the other contents of that book then were. It was probably bound up with what is now MS. Harley 55 (A) by John Selden in the next century: Wormald, Making, p. 186. 18  It contains notes by Robert Talbot, prebendary of Norwich (d. 1558) (Wormald, Making, p. 230 n. 267) and John Joscelyn. Talbot had acquired a copy of the Old English translation of Bede, lent copies of Ælfric’s Grammar and his translation of the Heptateuch to Bale, and manuscripts of Orosius and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to Leland: Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, pp. i, 189. 19  A Wulfstan Manuscript Containing Institutes, Laws and Homilies: British Museum Cotton Nero A. I, ed. H.R. Loyn, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, xvii (Copenhagen 1971), pp. 37–9; Wormald, Making, pp. 224–8, 261–2; Graham and Watson, Recovery, p. 18 n. (d). 20  Canterbury, Cathedral Library, MS. Lit. E.2; Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, pp. 143–52. 21  See above, pp. 327–8.    22  Noticed by Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, p. 144. 23  J. Bately, ‘John Joscelyn and the Laws of the Anglo-Saxon Kings’, in M. Korhammer, K. Reichl, and H. Sauer, eds, Words, Texts and Manuscripts. Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Helmut Gneuss on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Woodbridge 1992), pp. 435–66, at 436.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  337 Lambarde’s edition of these codes might, therefore, be deemed the product of scholarly collaboration with Nowell, as Lambarde in effect acknowledged.24 It seems very likely that there were similar Nowell transcripts marked up by Lambarde which have not survived.25 It has been shown that Nowell translated into Old English some texts which were available to him only in Latin versions preserved in Quadripartitus, and that Lambarde printed these modern re-translations on the erroneous assumption that they were the originals.26 He was not himself sufficiently proficient in Old English to detect that they were written in an inauthentic Elizabethan pastiche. Of more immediate import to an assessment of the legal effects of the Conquest, for his base texts of both Willelmi Articuli and Leges Edwardi Confessoris Lambarde depended on Nowell’s 1565 fair copy of his unprinted edition of Tripartita (following on from Nowell’s drastically abbreviated transcript of Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, to which Tripartita was a supplement in many witnesses of one version of the Historia).27 This shows that he was reliant on Nowell not only for texts of codes in Old English, but for texts of these postConquest Latin apocryphal codes too. In both cases, Lambarde inserted in italics in his printed edition elaborated interpolations from the versions of these two texts in a witness of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum,28 the organizational example of which he had followed in ordering his Old English codes 24  AΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, ‘Epistola’, Aiiir. 25  Nowell’s transcript of Edgar’s laws survives, but it is not marked up by Lambarde for the printer: Canterbury, Cathedral Library, MS. Lit. B.2; Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, pp. 157–8; Wormald, Making, pp. 261–2. 26  Sisam, ‘Authenticity’, passim; Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, pp. 140–3; Wormald, Making, p. 261. 27  San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, HM 26341, fos 73r–87v. Lambarde’s dependence is demonstrated by Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, pp. 153–4, who also shows that Nowell was not simply transcribing, but editing, and that Lambarde does not slavishly follow him, but sometimes amends his readings. Less plausibly, Wormald suggests, pp. 153 n. 39, 178, that Nowell’s exemplar may have been the early fourteenth-century copy of Tripartita in Cambridge, UL, MS. Add. 3392, a book once owned by the Cistercian Abbey of St Mary, Dublin, and acquired by Roger Twysden in 1648: J.  Ringrose, Summary Catalogue of the Additional Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library Acquired before 1940 (Woodbridge 2009), pp. 93–5. However, variants in its text of Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum show that it was definitely not Nowell’s exemplar for his drastically abbreviated copy of the Historia, which immediately precedes his manuscript edition of Tripartita. Possible exemplars of the Historia which also include Tripartita are BL, MS. Royal 13. A. xviii and the closely related London, Gray’s Inn, MS. 9, both of which are witnesses of Version 5, redaction A, the only Version known to be accompanied by Tripartita. But it should be noted that the Nowell’s abbreviation of the Historia ends, fo. 72v, in 1146, exactly where Version 4 of the Historia does, that no extant Version 4 witness is supplemented by Tripartita (see Greenway, ed., HA, pp. lxviii, cliv, clvi), and that the script of Nowell’s copy of Tripartita is larger and neater than that of his copy of the Historia, and begins on a fresh folio. It seems, therefore, to have been made at a different time, and very possibly from exemplars which did not include that of the Historia. In the eighteenth century there still allegedly existed a copy made by Lambarde in 1565 of Nowell’s partial transcript of Henry of Huntingdon: J. Nichols, Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, 8 vols (London 1780–90), i. 510–12, at 511, no. X, with the Nowell transcript being no. III. Lambarde’s copy is said, i. 510, to have been prefixed by a note identifying the text as an abridgement of Historia Anglorum. It is impossible to establish whether Lambarde also copied out Nowell’s Tripartita. 28  Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, pp. 153–4.

338  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 chronologically. Nowell had also made some use of the London Collection,29 but Lambarde did not simply reproduce his old tutor’s work. He corrected and altered it by reference, as we shall see, to at least one other witness of the London Collection. His use of italics shows that he wanted readers of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ to be able to distinguish at a glance between the two recensions that he had identified of each code.30 He also chose to print them in the same order in which they appeared in Tripartita, and therefore in the London Collection which had in­corp­ or­ated and amplified Tripartita.31 In this sense, as in the chronological ordering of the pre-Conquest codes, Old English law was transmitted in print in the sixteenth century and later in the form in which the early thirteenth-century London collector had recast the research of his early twelfth-century forebears. Lambarde’s source for additional material from the London Collection appears to have been the early fourteenth-century witness of the London Collection then in the possession of Matthew Parker, hypothetically reconstructed and labelled B by Neil Ker,32 a book which Nowell also seems to have consulted in this form.33 It is not known how a book which Andrew Horn had bequeathed to the London Guildhall in 1328 had come into the possession of Archbishop Parker.34 Perhaps it had already been loaned to him prior to his commission of 1568, and he simply never returned it. Many manuscripts had supposedly been loaned—as it turned out, in effect given—to Parker prior to the commission.35 The fulsome reassurance which Parker’s commission offered to owners of manuscripts that their loans would be returned in due course suggests that they might already have had good reason to worry that this would not, in the event, happen. And we shall see that the Guildhall authorities encountered great difficulty in securing the return of other such manuscripts which had been removed from its collection of administrative books. Parker’s possession of this Guildhall manuscript, and the removal of others, is an important reminder that not all the manuscript books of English 29  Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, p. 153. 30  AΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, fo. 124r. 31  Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, p. 153. 32  Cambridge, CCC, MSS. 70 + 258; Ker, MLGB p. 126; Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, p. 142 n. 11; p. 153 n. 38; p. 155 n. 44; MS. 70 pp. 53–5 (Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati), pp. 55–72 (Leges Edwardi). Parker is presumed to have divided the original book into two: N.R. Ker, ‘Liber custumarum, and Other Manuscripts formerly at the Guildhall’, repr. in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage, ed. A.G. Watson (London 1985), pp. 135–42, at 136. 33  Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, p. 142 n. 11; cf. p. 143 n. 15 and Wormald, Making, p. 238 n. 305, for Nowell’s also being very familiar with the Holkham witness of Quadripartitus, BL, MS. Add. 49366, another book then in Parker’s possession, discussed below, pp. 340–1. Nowell’s highly selective transcription of some of BL, MS. Add. 49366, occasionally amplified by Lambarde, is UCLA, MS. 170/529, discussed above, pp. 332–3. 34  Ker ‘Liber custumarum’, pp. 135–6. It is unlikely that it was amongst the books from the Guildhall library, founded in the fifteenth century to provide theological works for local clergy, settled on the Guildhall College, and dispersed when that chantry college was dissolved: N.L.  Ramsey and J.M.W. Willoughby, Hospitals, Towns, and the Professions, CBMLC, xiv (2009), pp. 156–61. 35  Francis Russell, earl of Bedford, gave Parker an eleventh-century witness of Ælfric’s Homilies, now Cambridge, UL, MS. Ii. 4. 6, in Star Chamber, on 29 December 1567: see fo. 308v. It had been found ‘in the sometime house of Tavistock’ by the earl’s servant, R. Ferror, in 1566, fos 1r, 311v.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  339 law which found their way into the hands of antiquaries in the sixteenth century came from the dispersed libraries of dissolved monasteries. Most of the collections of antique laws probably did,36 but a few—including those from the Guildhall, which were to prove highly influential—were of lay provenance. Once bibliophilic appetites had been whetted by the dispersal of monastic libraries, they could easily become voraciously acquisitive, and could not be sated solely by ancient monastic books. Collectors sought out volumes from other repositories. And of course once books had passed into private hands, the distinction between monastic and non-monastic was often obscured. By such a circuitous if in its case serendipitous route, the book Andrew Horn bequeathed to the Guildhall in 1328 came, through Lambarde, to exercise influence on a scale of which Horn could never have dreamt. That so many of the books used in the preparation of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ demonstrably belonged to Parker or those associated with him shows that the fact that it was published simultaneously with the Privy Council’s commission to the archbishop was not a coincidence, just as it was no coincidence that it was published by Parker’s printer. Without Parker, ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ could not have been produced, as Lambarde in effect acknowledged in the dedicatory epistle to Sir William Cordell, Master of the Rolls.37 In the 1560s the archbishop was the nexus of scholarship on the early history of English law. As we have seen, his influence was not confined to that subject, but was far more extensive, as was implicitly acknowledged by his commission. As is already apparent, ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ was the product of at least six years of intensive investigation into manuscript collections of Old English law of varied provenance, manuscripts which appear recently to have become concentrated in the hands of a few interested parties. It was the work not just of those around Parker, but of the archbishop himself. For instance, the early twelfth-century St Paul’s collection now known as Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 383 is paginated and occasionally annotated in Parker’s red chalk or crayon. He or his associates at different times added to it new transcripts of the two-part code conventionally known as II-III Edgar (copied from what would later become BL, MS. Harley 55 (A)) and the portion of I Cnut (from what would later become MS Harley 55 (B)) which was missing from the St Paul’s book when it came into 36  For instance, of those identified above as having been used by Nowell and Lambarde, and for which any sort of provenance can be established: BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xi (Winchester: Wormald, Making, p. 173; P.  Wormald, ‘BL, Cotton MS Otho  B.  xi: A Supplementary Note’, repr. in his Legal Culture, pp. 71–80, at 73–4); BL, MS. Cotton Nero A. i(A) (possibly Canterbury: Wormald, Making, p. 226; possibly Worcester and subsequently Canterbury: A Wulfstan Manuscript, ed. Loyn, p. 46); Cambridge, CCC, MS. 383 (St Paul’s: Wormald, Making, p. 230, who suggests, n. 268, that it might have been removed from the library of St Paul’s centuries before); BL, MS. Harley 55(B) (an unidentifiable house still producing vernacular books in the twelfth century, such as Worcester or Rochester: Wormald, Making, p. 255). 37  AΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, ‘Epistola’, Aiiiiv.

340  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Parker’s hands.38 Evidently these additions were judged to repair losses, or at least to render the book more useful, something which we have noticed Parker ar­ran­ ging in the case of a manuscript of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum presented by him to Cambridge University Library.39 At the time the two legal fragments from which these copies were made were almost certainly bound in different and now unidentifiable books; it is clear that Lambarde used MS. Harley 55 (B), via Nowell’s transcript,40 but had no access to MS. Harley 55 (A).41 (B) was annotated by Parker himself, which suggests where Nowell probably consulted it.42 The archbishop appears to have valued London, BL, MS. Add. 49366, which contained what is now known as the Holkham witness of Quadripartitus,43 more highly than any of his other medieval manuscripts of English law, even the copy of the London Collection which Andrew Horn had bequeathed to the Guildhall. As we have seen, the Holkham book had already been extensively transcribed by Nowell, and, via that transcription, drawn upon by Lambarde for ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ. That it subsequently passed into the hands of Sir Edward Coke—hence the name ‘Holkham book’—suggests that providence had marked it out for a very special role in English legal history. It is impossible to be certain whence Parker procured it,44 or even whether its origin and provenance was monastic or lay. There was nothing unusual about his annotating his books, as he did this one; but quite exceptionally he had his coat of arms emblazoned in it on a specially commissioned, illuminated frontispiece. The frontispiece quotes in full a Latin poem on the subject of Parker’s coat of arms, written by his close associate, the distinguished civil lawyer Walter Haddon.45 Evidently this was a book in the ownership of which Parker took a very particular pride. As with Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 383, Parker arranged for the book to be supplemented with items which it had not contained in its extant, twelfth-century form, in order to supply material which he considered to have been lost or to be otherwise missing. These included Edgar’s fourth code (copied from another of Parker’s books, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 265);46 the text of Pope Eleutherius’s 38 Wormald, Making, p. 230 nn. 265–6; p. 185 n. 97; p. 253 n. 342; and p. 186 for the suggestion that John Selden might have conjoined the two originally distinct parts of the Harley manuscript. 39  See above, p. 330.    40  Canterbury, Cathedral Library, MS. Lit. E.2, discussed above, p. 336. 41 Wormald, Making, pp. 185, 253. 42 Wormald, Making, p. 253, n. 342. 43  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 87–8. 44  O’Brien, ‘English Book of Laws’, p. 54. 45  BL, MS. Add. 49366, fo. 3r. The poem is printed in G. Haddoni legum doctoris . . . Lucubrationes passim collectae; Poemata, ed. Thomas Hatcher (London 1567), no. 106, and credited to Haddon in the Latin life of Parker printed in J. Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker (London 1711), Appendix to Bk IV, no. XC, p. 164: Sunt antiquorum claves monumenta parentum Venit ab augusta principe stella triplex. Sic bene conspirant virtus, doctrina, potestas, Et placidae pacis semina leta serunt. Sed tamen ad finem decurrunt gaudia vitae Et homo pulvis erit, pulvis ut ante fuit. 46  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 88.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  341 supposed letter to King Lucius (in truth a confection of the London Collection’s version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris which, as we have seen, had proved of great interest in government circles in the 1530s and later);47 and a large portion of the Argumentum to Quadripartitus. The text of this last addition had been taken, Parker recorded, ‘from an ancient book of the church of Worcester, the title of which is De officio misse / Saxon character’.48 He correctly identified Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 265, the source of the transcript of IV Edgar newly inserted into the midst of this manuscript, as a ‘book of the church of Worcester: that is, Penitential of Ecgberht’.49 It was still at Worcester when John Joscelyn drew on it in the preparation of Parker’s A Testimonie of Antiquitie.50 Parker was well acquainted with other Worcester manuscripts: BL, MS. Harley 55 (A) was also from Worcester. He may, therefore, have been correct to assert that the ‘ancient’ book from which was copied the partial text of Quadripartitus’ Argumentum, inserted at the beginning of the Holkham book,51 had a Worcester provenance too. But it is impossible to tell, because the source cannot be identified, and seems not to have survived.52 We shall therefore never know whether one reading unique to the Holkham copy of the Argumentum was reproduced from the putatively Worcester model used by Parker’s copyist, or was his own conjectural amendment.53 Whichever, it is arguably revealing of assumptions about the purpose of Quadripartitus common to the sixteenth century and the twelfth. The Holkham version of the Argumentum asserts that prior to the compilation of Quadripartitus ‘all streams of probity’—meaning legal streams—had been ‘separated hither and thither into parental [or “ancestral”] rivulets’. All the extant twelfth-century witnesses describe the rivulets as ‘dry’, not ‘parental’. In the compilation which the Argumentum 47  See above, pp. 127–8, for the confection; p. 283, for its use in the Collectanea satis copiosa; F. Heal, ‘What Can King Lucius Do for You? The Reformation and the Early British Church’, EHR, cxx (2005), 593–614, for its subsequent use. 48  BL, MS. Add. 49366, fo. 5r. The portion which was not copied was Arg. 12–22, a section of general moralizing and specific comment about Henry I and Robert Curthose. This section has a line drawn next to it in the textually quite similar witness of the opening section of Quadripartitus in London, BL, MS. Cotton Domitian A. viii. The provenance of that section of the volume is unclear. Liebermann, Quadripartitus, pp. 68–70, Gesetze i. 535 n. 12, suggested that the ‘old Worcester book’ might have been bound up in the sixteenth century with Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Hatton 93, but this cannot be verified: Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 88 n. 25. 49  BL, MS. Add. 49366, fo. 117r; Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 87, cf. Making, pp. 213–16. 50  A Testimonie, fos 5r–v, refers to a book of canons of Worcester Cathedral in which a passage concerning transubstantiation had been erased. The passage is Cambridge, CCC, MS. 265, p. 177, and has next to it a note in Joscelyn’s hand: ‘quidam papista hic abraserat tres lineas sed restituuntur e veteri libro Exoniensis bibliothecae in quo etiam hic habetur tractatus [=Cambridge, CCC, MS. 190, p. 156]’: Ker, Catalogue, p. 94. 51  BL, MS. Add. 49366, fos 3r–5v. 52  There is a Worcester manuscript of Quadripartitus: London, BL, MS. Royal 11. B.  ii. But this lacks all the Argumentum except 32: Liebermann, Gesetze i. 535 n. 11. Provided that was the case in the sixteenth century, it cannot have been the source identified by Parker. 53  Arg. 28, the reading adopted by Liebermann, who considered it to be probably a sixteenthcentury correction: Gesetze i. 535 n. 3.

342  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 prefaces, these ‘rivulets’ had been ‘brought together into a single channel of goodness’. The distinctive Holkham reading emphasizes that the book of Old English codes, translated into Latin, and introduced by the Argumentum, represents a confluence, or summation, of varied earlier English legal traditions. It is echoed in the poem by Walter Haddon which adorns Parker’s new frontispiece. This was a characterization of Quadripartitus which would have been as acceptable to lawyers and legal antiquaries in Elizabethan England as it would have been to the author of the compilation at the beginning of the twelfth century.54 But this particular expression of it is now unique to the addition made to the Holkham book by Parker’s copyist, perhaps reproduced from his putatively Worcester model, perhaps invented by him in a moment of inspired insight. And obviously it underlines the original point of Quadripartitus far better than the reading found in all other extant witnesses. There is no copy of the Argumentum in Nowell’s selective transcription of the Holkham book. Because Nowell’s transcription is selective, it is impossible to tell whether this means that Parker had not at that point yet arranged for part of the Argumentum to be copied into the Holkham book. Parker’s notes in and additions to BL, MS. Add. 4936655 suggest that, as far as he was concerned, this twelfth-century book was not just a treasured relic, but a living text, which needed to be filled out with material from other legal com­pil­ ations of the same period, in much the same way as the perceived gaps in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 383 were plugged.56 That, as we have seen, was how the Holkham book had been supplemented in the late twelfth cen­ tury too: then it had been repeatedly amplified, with a procedural manual of Roman law known as [Pseudo-]Ulpianus de edendo (although not so called in this manuscript),57 and also with a unique short version of the Leis Willelme, a unique hybrid version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, and select excerpts from Consiliatio Cnuti.58 A glance at the manuscript in the ownership of which Parker took such exceptional pride, with its additions in twelfth-century script, would have shown him that he was not doing anything unprecedented in supplementing it further. He was improving his book as it had repeatedly been improved in the past, and must have been doing so for the same reason: to render it more useful in the present. Many of the additions which he arranged to be made to it were inserted in between Quadripartitus and [Pseudo-]Ulpianus on the one hand, and the Leis and Leges on the other.59 54  Sharpe, ‘Prefaces’, p. 167 n. 122, interprets the Holkham variant thus. For the poem, see above, p. 340 n. 42, and the frontispiece. 55  See above, pp. 340–1. 56  For Parker’s thoughts on this procedure with respect to another book, see Correspondence of Parker, no. CXCIV, pp. 253–4. 57  The work of three scribes: O’Brien, ‘English Book of Laws’, p. 55; cf. above, p. 121. 58  These are all the work of one scribe: O’Brien, ‘English Book of Laws’, p. 55; see above, pp. 112–3, 334–5. 59  BL, MS. Add. 49366, fos 117r–123v, 129v–139v (124r–129v, 131v, 140r all blank); other modern additions at 158r–161v.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  343 Nowell and Lambarde have left far more evidence than Parker of their investigation and collation of the twelfth-century legal manuscripts which they had managed to track down. In Nowell’s transcript of much of the Holkham book there is a marginal cross-reference beside Henry I’s writ on shire and hundred courts to a ‘book of Lord Sidney’, which must mean one belonging to Sir Henry Sidney, Lord President of the Council of Wales (1560–86), and thrice Lord Deputy of Ireland (1566–67, 1568–71, 1575–78).60 Sidney’s father Sir William had, as we have seen, purchased the site of the Cistercian abbey of Robertsbridge at the time of its dissolution,61 and some of its library came into his hands. We know that Sir Henry was something of a bibliophile.62 Patrick Wormald argued that the cross-reference alluded to a witness of Quadripartitus other than the Holkham book, and that this other witness was Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420, in which (Wormald further argued) the writ had the same ‘rubric’ as that found in Nowell’s transcript.63 The suggestion that other witnesses of Quadripartitus were consulted is plaus­ ible; that John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420 was one of them is not, for two ­reasons. Contrary to Wormald’s assertion, it does not include the ‘rubric’ or heading to Henry I’s writ in Nowell’s transcript, nor is the heading found in any other copy of Quadripartitus.64 Moreover, the recent provenance of John Rylands, MS. Lat. 420 is well attested. In 1571 it had for twenty years been in the possession of William Fleetwood, lawyer, antiquary, and protégé of Parker.65 There is no evidence to link it with Sidney. It is unclear whether the cross-reference in Nowell’s transcript was written by Nowell himself or added by Lambarde,66 though to my

60  Los Angeles, UCLA, MS. 170/529, fo. 178r: ‘habemus in libro Domini Sydney’. The suggestion is Wormald’s: ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 85 n. 13; he cites another cross-reference to a book of Sir Henry Sidney in another sixteenth-century transcript of Old English laws (London, BL, MS. Cotton Julius C. ii, fo. 64v). A copy of the 1568 edition of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, annotated by Lambarde, contains a cross reference in his handwriting to a ‘manuscript of Lord Sidney’ alongside the edition of the Foedus Edouardi & Guthruni, Regum, fo. 55v: Oxford, Bodleian Library, shelf mark 4r L 5 Jur. Seld. It was subsequently owned by Selden. 61  See above, p. 309.    62  See above, pp. 310, 328. 63  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 85 and n. 13; Wormald, Making, p. 238 n. 305. Note that Wormald elides the marginal cross-reference and what he terms the ‘rubric’. 64  Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420, fo. 84r, contains no such heading; nor does BL, MS. Add. 49366, fo. 104v. Further Acta, ed. Sharpe, ‘Liberties, Treaties and Letters’, no. 6, for details of manuscript variants, none of which matches that in the Nowell transcript. 65  In the dedication to his unprinted work Of Forests, which quotes from Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420, Fleetwood asserts that he had acquired the manuscript—‘an old booke written in the Saxone tongue of the lawes made by Athelstane, Edmonde, and Edgare kynges of this realme’— twenty years before ‘by the means of one Mr Badby’ in the house of Mr Eyles, a servant of Lord Chancellor Audley, in Bury St Edmunds: London, BL, MS. Harley 5194, fo. 2r, quoted by Sir John [J.H.]  Baker, The Reinvention of Magna Carta 1216–1616 (Cambridge 2017), p. 218 n. 18. For Fleetwood’s relationship with Parker, see J.D.  Alsop, ‘William Fleetwood and English Historical Scholarship’, Sixteenth-Century Journal, xxv (1994), 155–76, at 156, 160; C.W.  Brooks, ‘Fleetwood [Fletewoode], William (c. 1525–1594)’, ODNB. 66  Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, p. 143 n. 16, cf. p. 152, on the question of whose handwriting was whose.

344  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 eye the latter looks more likely.67 But whoever did so, there must be a strong possibility that he was familiar with a different legal collection, probably a witness of Quadripartitus, which included Henry I’s writ, was then in the possession of Sir Henry Sidney, and is now untraceable.68 In other words, this is further evidence that Nowell and Lambarde made assiduous and continuing efforts to track down existing witnesses in order to edit thoroughly the texts in which they were interested. We have already seen that this was the case with Nowell’s fair copy of his edition of Willelmi Articuli and Leges Edwardi Confessoris, drawn on by Lambarde. Exercises of this sort were just the sort of thing which Joscelyn’s lists were intended to facilitate in a related field. There are, moreover, powerful reasons for inferring that both scholars were also able to draw on at least one other compilation of Old English laws, this time in Old English, which no longer survives.69 This is because many of their readings cannot have come from any of their known, extant sources. If this putative lost Old English law book (or books) did indeed exist, it (or they) cannot have been the ‘old book of the church of Worcester’ from which the Argumentum of Quadripartitus was partially transcribed on Parker’s instructions in order to provide the preface lacking in his prized Holkham book.70 It cannot have been, because that was self-evidently taken from another witness of Quadripartitus, a work which consisted entirely of Latin translations, whereas the inferred lost book or books contained Old English codes in the original Old English. Nowell and Lambarde were engaged in a thorough, collaborative research project which was still in progress, and which on Lambarde’s part continued after 1568. (For reasons which are unclear, in the previous year Nowell had named Lambarde as one of his executors, entrusted his library to him, and travelled to the Continent. He appears to have died not long afterwards).71 ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ represented a careful selection of the results, and a snapshot, or more accurately a series of snapshots, of a process still in train. Lambarde made changes to the typesetting of the edition over the course of its printing, so not all copies are identical.72 Later, after he made the very important discovery of Textus Roffensis,73 he added hand-written marginal notes of its textual implications in two extant copies of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ.74 In one of these he also added notes after he had become 67 For a photograph of Lambarde’s handwriting, see D.X.  Carpenter, ‘The Hand of William Lambarde (1536–1601), Antiquary and Lawyer’, in Acta, ed. Sharpe: https://actsWilliam2Henry1wordpress.com 68  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, p. 85 n. 13; Wormald, Making, p. 238 n. 305; cf. above, p. 310. 69  Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, pp. 176–8. 70  Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, pp. 87–8. 71  R.M. Warnicke, ‘Nowell, Laurence’, ODNB. 72  Bately, ‘John Joscelyn’, pp. 437, 443. 73  Perhaps in 1573; a note in his hand on fo. 167v is so dated: Bately, ‘John Joscelyn’, p. 438. There are brief notes from it—‘ex Registro Roffensi’—in what is now a notebook he compiled in 1568: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Lat. Hist. d. 2, fos 66r–67v. But there is no reason to think that all the notes it now contains were made at the same time. He used the Textus for his Perambulation of Kent (1576). It is also annotated by Parker. 74 Ker, Catalogue, p. li n. 8; Bodleian Library, MS. 4to L.  5 Jur. Seld., fos 52v, 70v, 71r, 71v; Huntington Library, shelf mark 62136; Wormald, ‘Lambarde Problem’, p. 143 n. 15; p. 176.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  345 acquainted with Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 201, yet another of Archbishop Parker’s law books.75 He copied excerpts from its text of the Canons of Edgar onto a blank folio in Nowell’s transcription of the Holkham book.76 Archbishop Parker’s position meant that the Horn manuscript in his possession— Ker’s B—achieved great influence via ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ. It was not, however, the only one of Horn’s witnesses of the London Collection to have been dispersed from the Guildhall’s archive by the later sixteenth century. Those hypothetically reconstructed by Ker, and labelled C and D by him,77 also fell into the hands of private collectors. How this happened is unclear, since it seems very unlikely78 that these books had been in the library attached to the Guildhall College, dissolved along with other colleges and chantries in 1547. In January 1549 books from that library were removed, with the agreement of the Court of Aldermen, by William Cecil,79 probably in his capacity as Secretary to the Lord Protector. They appear to have consisted largely of theological works.80 The legal compilations labelled C and D by Ker would almost certainly have been kept ready to hand in the administrative record collection housed in the book-room, or camera, located between the Mayor’s Court and the Inner Council Chamber.81 In that case they would not have been amongst the books appropriated by Cecil. Both these legal volumes seem to have been acquired by William Fleetwood, since the early 1550s the owner of the witness of Quadripartitus in John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420.82 He became a Member of Parliament in 1558,83 and Recorder of the City of London in 1571.84 Through a long legal career he amassed a very large collection of manuscript Year Books and Readings,85 but his ownership of John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420 shows that he too had since his youth been interested in much older legal records. His library included a copy of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ.86 He was in a perfect position to abstract books and documents on the subject from the Guildhall’s reference collection, if he wished to do 75  Huntington Library, shelf mark 62136, fo. 77v; Bately, ‘John Joscelyn’, pp. 438, 444. For Parker’s treatment of his manuscript, see Wormald, Making, p. 206; for Lambarde’s use of it, Berkhout, ‘Scheide Manuscript’, 284. John Joscelyn and Parker made notes of variant readings from BL, MS. Harley 55 (B) and MS. Cotton Nero A. i(A) in another copy of AΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ: Bately, ‘John Joscelyn’, pp. 448–9; Wormald, Making, pp. 253–4 n. 342. Conversely, Joscelyn made notes from AΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ in Cotton Nero A. i: Bately, pp. 441–2. 76  UCLA, MS. 170/529, fo. 210r; Berkhout, ‘Scheide Manuscript’, 284. 77  See above, pp. 249, 251–2. 78 C.M. Barron, The Medieval Guildhall of London (London 1974), p. 35 and n. 141. 79 Barron, Medieval Guildhall, p. 41 and n. 208; Ramsay and Willoughby, Hospitals, Towns, and the Professions, pp. 160–1. Cecil undertook to return the books, but never did. 80  Ramsay and Willoughby, Hospitals, pp. 156–61. 81 Barron, Medieval Guildhall, p. 31 and n. 100; Ramsay and Willoughby, Hospitals, pp. 148–9. 82  See above, p. 249. 83  P.W. Hasler, ed., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603, 3 vols (London 1981), ii. 133. 84 H.W. Woolrych, Lives of Eminent Serjeants, 2 vols (London 1869), i. 132–64. 85 Baker, Reinvention, pp. 218–19, with details of the manuscripts which have been traced. 86  Bibliotheca monastica-Fletewodiana. A Catalogue of Rare Books and Tracts in Various Languages, including the Ancient Conventual Library of Missenden Abbey in Buckinghamshire; Together with Some Choice Remains of the Late Eminent Serjeant-at-Law William Fletewood, esq. (London 1774), no. 2926.

346  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 so. His continuing interest in ancient English law was manifest in his habit of starting speeches in the House of Commons with quotations from Old English law codes, for instance, those of Edgar and Æthelred.87 In his never-printed book on forests, he argued, on the basis of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, that the Conqueror had summoned ‘a full Parliament anno 4 of his reigne’, in which he had ‘ratyfyed’ all the Edward’s laws;88 indeed, that ‘the Counsell of this kingdome, the which is at thys daye cauled the parliamente’ had already existed many cen­tur­ies earlier, in the time of King Lucius.89 The latter assertion suggests that he may have had the London Collection’s version of the Leges in mind, not John Rylands MS. Lat. 420. But by this point Pope Eleutherius’s letter to Lucius was well and widely known: Speaker Wray had cited him as evidence of the spiritual as well as temporal authority of the Crown in a speech to the House of Commons in 1571.90 Appearing in a court case in 1583, Fleetwood quoted Eleutherius’s letter.91 After Fleetwood’s death in 1594 both volumes C and D passed together with much of his library to Francis Tate, like Fleetwood (and Lambarde) a member of the recently constituted Society of Antiquaries.92 It seems that John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420 passed, probably directly, to Robert Cotton, rather than being bequeathed to Tate, because Cotton is later recorded as lending it to Tate.93 Tate retained for himself parts of each of the two Horn books he had received from Fleetwood—later bound up together in Oxford, Oriel College, MS. 46—and gave the rest to Cotton, probably in 1598.94 A few years later, in response to repeated 87  T.E. Hartley, ed., Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, 3 vols (Leicester 1981–95), i. 202, 236; Baker, Reinvention, pp. 220–4. 88 Fleetwood, Of Forests, London, BL, MS. Harley 5194, fo. 13r, cited by Baker, Reinvention, p. 223 n. 50, cf. p. xlii for other manuscripts of this work, including one autograph. 89 Fleetwood, Of Forests, BL, MS. Harley 5194, fo. 4r, cited by Baker, Reinvention, p. 224 n. 52. 90  Hartley, ed., Proceedings of Parliaments of Elizabeth I, i. 198. 91  Bishop of Salisbury v. Pichaver, BL MS. Harley 1693, fo. 92v, cited by Baker, Reinvention, p. 223 n. 47. 92 C.E.  Wright, ‘The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the Formation of the Cottonian Library’, in F.  Wormald and C.E.  Wright, eds, The English Library before 1700 (London 1958), pp. 176–212, at 182, establishes that the Society was founded in 1585/6. Tate became its Secretary, and maintained a journal of its activities from 1590–1601: Wright, pp. 183–5; L.A. Knafla, ‘Tate, Francis’, ODNB. For other Fleetwood manuscripts subsequently in the possession of Tate, see Baker, Reinvention, p. 219 nn. 22, 23. 93 Tite, Records, [2.59], p. 34. Tite suggests that this was the witness of Quadripartitus in London, BL, MS. Cotton Domitian A. viii, but the fact that the record mentions that it included the text of the treaty of Winchester/Westminster of 1153 identifies it as Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420. Fleetwood allowed Raphael Holinshed to translate the treaty out of this ‘autentike booke conteyning the olde Lawes of the Saxon and Danishe kinges, in the ende whereof the same Charter is exemplifyed, whiche booke is remayning with the right worshipfull William Fleetwoode Esquire, nowe Recorder of London’: The . . . Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irlande. Conteyning, The description and Cronicles of England, from the first inhabiting unto the conquest . . ., 2 vols (London 1577), ii. 389– 90. It was later owned by Sir Henry Spelman: F.  Taylor, Supplementary Hand-list of Western Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1937 (Manchester 1937). 94 C.G.C. Tite, The Manuscript Library of Sir Robert Cotton (The Panizzi Lectures 1993) (London 1994), p. 6 and Fig. 2 (a), points out that Cotton’s signature in MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii, fo. 268r, is dated thus. Tate’s ownership of some of what ended up in Oxford, Oriel College, MS. 46. is recorded at fo. 65r.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  347 approaches from the City authorities, Tate appears to have brokered the return from Cotton to the Guildhall of matter from these two books deemed relevant to the city of London;95 but Cotton retained everything else given to him by Tate. The material Cotton kept for himself is now all contained in BL, MS. Cotton Claudius  D.  ii.96 Thus Andrew Horn’s C and D, after removal probably by Fleetwood from the Guildhall camera, and repeated subsequent dismemberment, were in the early seventeenth century reassembled into the three volumes amongst which their contents are still distributed: Tate’s, Cotton’s, and what is now, confusingly, known as the Liber custumarum, the single receptacle for all the London material (from both C and D) which was restored to the Guildhall through Tate’s good offices in 1609. Tate and Cotton were, therefore, primarily interested in retaining the royal law codes in Horn’s collections. When Parker divided B in two, he ensured that one half—now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 70—should comprise such codes. Law codes were obviously of particular interest to all three collectors, as they had been to Lambarde and Nowell. It was hardly surprising that they were primarily interested in royal legislation—what they would have regarded as proto-statutes. The dispersal in the late sixteenth century of the London Guildhall’s collection of medieval compilations of Old English law codes, and post-Conquest Latin translations of them, was not a direct consequence of the destruction of monastic libraries. But it involved several of the same individuals, whose bibliophilic interest had been aroused by the collection and study of monastic books. The consequence was that the royal law codes in two of Andrew Horn’s manuscripts of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, lodged for centuries in the Guildhall’s administrative reference collection, ended up in the libraries of the two greatest bibliophiles of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and those in the third passed through the hands of a third collector eventually into the library of an Oxford College. Lambarde had used Parker’s Horn manuscript for his edition. Its texts of the London Collection’s interpolations in the Articuli and the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, picked out in italic type, were to become very familiar to all readers. The text of the Articuli in Cotton’s would, as we shall see, be disseminated in print by John Selden,97 and then reprinted in the second edition of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ in 1644. 95  Munimenta ii, pt. 1, pp. xviii–xx. 96  Munimenta ii, pt. 1, pp. xvii–xxiv; Ker, ‘Liber custumarum’, p. 136; Tite, Records, p. 126. J. Catto, ‘Andrew Horn: Law and History in Fourteenth-century England’, in R.H.C. Davis and J.M. WallaceHadrill, eds, The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford 1981), pp. 367–91, at 376, offers a slightly different hypothesis as to the sequence of events, but the upshot is the same. L.F. Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285–1385, Vol. II. A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, ed. J.J.G. Alexander, 5 (London 1986), no 68, does not give the evidence on which she bases her statement that Fleetwood acquired it in 1554. 97  See below, p. 373.

348  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Regardless of the preferences of certain antiquaries for a particular manuscript witness of the London Collection, the ready availability of texts of the Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati and the Leges Edwardi Confessoris in print determined that much future discussion of the effects of the Conquest (or lack thereof) on English law would be shaped by Andrew Horn’s early fourteenth-century resurrection of a collection of (mostly) translated legal texts—the Leges Anglorum— which had originally been put together very early in John’s reign. That London Collection had in turn carefully refashioned the compilation put together at the beginning of the twelfth century, Quadripartitus, and supplemented it with (amongst many other things) recast and amplified versions of the Willelmi Articuli and the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, both derived from Tripartita. The original version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris dated from the late 1130s, not long before Tripartita was compiled; but the original Articuli antedated even Quadripartitus. It included genuine legislative fragments of the Conqueror, cack-handedly cobbled together into the traditional English form of a code, perhaps as early as the final years of his reign.98 And the codes which had been translated into Latin in Quadripartitus reached back as far as the seventh century, to the earliest extant legislation produced in England, not long after the conversion. The research of early twelfth-century legal scholars, inspired by and building on William I’s emphasis on continuity with the pre-Conquest past, had provided the materials which would be used to demonstrate the continuous history of English law from the beginning through to the late sixteenth century and beyond. The post-Conquest endorsements of Old English royal law printed by Lambarde, and indeed much of the Old English material which he and Nowell had traced and edited,99 were products of that school of historical jurisprudence which had suddenly blossomed in the early twelfth century, in parallel with the creation of a post-Bedan history of the English. ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ demonstrated that in the second half of the sixteenth century there was a great deal of life left yet, or perhaps potential for new life, in the tradition which that school had engendered. The book’s publication reinvigorated that tradition and disseminated it far more widely at a time when, as we saw at the end of the last chapter, remote English antiquity was suddenly being combed for precedents, some of which had been detected in the version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris found in the London Collection. For that reason alone the year of the publication of Lambarde’s edition was of great moment in the history of English law in general, and, underscored by its inclusion of the Articuli and the Leges Edwardi, of the Conquest in particular.

98 Wormald, Making, pp. 402–5, cf. above, p. 106 n. 23. 99  Cambridge, CCC, MS. 383; BL, MS. Add. 49366; MS. Harley 55 (B) is mid-twelfth-century; the relevant section of MS. Cotton Otho B. xi is early eleventh-century; Harley 55 (A) is early eleventhcentury; MS. Cotton Nero A. i(A) may or may not be post-Conquest; Cambridge, CCC, MS. 265 is mid-eleventh-century, Cambridge, CCC, MS. 190 is late eleventh-century.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  349 It presented materials of early English legal history in a fashion which, for the first time, was accessible to a wide, non-learned audience. The book was to prove very influential; a considerably expanded version, edited by Abraham Whelock, would be published in 1644.100 This appended (amongst other, slighter additions) the first printing of the early twelfth-century Leges Henrici, edited not by Whelock but by Sir Roger Twysden. The supplement for which Twysden was responsible has its own title page—Leges Willielmi Conquestoris, et Henrici filii eius—but is continuously paginated with the edition which precedes it. However, other than this edition of the already well known Leges Henrici, the new edition of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ was simply an attempt to bring Lambarde’s book up to date in terms of scholarship printed in the interim since 1568.101 Implicitly, it is further testimony to the magnitude of Lambarde’s (and Nowell’s) achievement.

Medievalism in Late Elizabethan Jurisprudence It is striking that in 1568 publication of printed editions of many Old English and two immediately post-Conquest royal law codes stole a march by several decades on that of histories of England written during the period bounded by the confection of the Willelmi Articuli in its original form (probably shortly prior to 1090) and of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris in its original form (probably shortly prior to 1140)—the same period during which many of the compilations of older, preConquest codes had also been put together. It is all the more remarkable given the extent to which common law jurisprudence in England was and continued to be circulated in manuscript in the new age of print. This precocity on the part of legal antiquarianism in England in the late sixteenth century was both a reflection and a harbinger of the relative progress of scholarly activity in the two parallel, related fields. The practice of the courts might have been what kept the Conquest alive as an issue throughout the later middle ages, when it had become moribund in English historiography (with certain striking but isolated exceptions, many in some way informed by the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum). But the highly specialized nature of what passed for contemporary analytical common law jurisprudence, its being written for the most part in law French, and often still circulated only in manuscript, all restricted readership to the few practitioners for whom it was not impenetrable. 100  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ sive de priscis Anglorum legibus libri (Cambridge 1644). This was often bound up with a reprint of Whelock’s 1643 edition of Bede’s Historia ecclesisastica in Old English and Latin under the overall title: Venerabilis Bedae Historia ecclesiastica: cui accessere, Leges AngloSaxonicae. However, the new edition of Lambarde has its own title page, is separately paginated, and appears to have been published subsequently. 101  Discussed in more detail below, pp. 378–9.

350  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 In so far as this literature—primarily, Readings delivered to learned audiences in the inns of court—included medieval material, it came to focus on the thirteenthcentury statutes, and very rarely any later ones. Magna Carta of 1225 (9 Henry III), as confirmed by Edward I in 1297, was treated as the first surviving statutory confirmation, or rather re-confirmation, of existing law,102 so many aspects of which were not touched upon in the extant earlier royal codes. Readings and commentaries on Magna Carta, having become almost obsolescent by the early sixteenth century,103 experienced a sudden but very restricted renaissance from about 1580.104 The renewed interest was in c. 29, and perhaps to a lesser extent and a little later c. 30, concerning merchants. Initially this appears to have been a reaction to the ways in which the Court of High Commission was operating under the aegis of the royal prerogative;105 Magna Carta had an obvious bearing on this, and the resulting infraction of personal liberties.106 But the first commentary, almost certainly by Fleetwood,107 was a little earlier. It cited the first printed edition of Glanvill, published in 1554–55,108 but appears to have preceded that of Bracton, published in 1569.109 It had long been standard practice in a Reading to identify the ‘mischief ’ which any statute was intended to remedy, so discussion of Magna Carta necessarily involved investigation of the situation which had preceded it.110 Fleetwood’s work was a commentary, not a Reading, but it shared many of the characteristics of a Reading. His proclivity to historical elaboration was in any case notorious. Reporters in the courts and in the House of Commons repeatedly expressed exasperation at his discursive and in their view often irrelevant historical digressions in his speeches,111 but in this respect he turned out to be in the jurisprudential vanguard. That Magna Carta was viewed as a reaffirmation or restoration of pre-existing law meant that renewed interest in it was bound to promote increasing attention

102 Baker, Reinvention, pp. 8–10; G. Garnett, ‘Magna Carta through Eight Centuries’, ODNB. 103 Baker, Reinvention, pp. 81–5. 104 Baker, Reinvention, pp. 255–70. 105 Baker, Reinvention, pp. 249–66, 270–5. 106  Sir John [J.H.] Baker, ‘Magna Carta and Personal Liberty’, in R. Griffith-Jones and M. Hill, eds, Magna Carta, Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge 2015), pp. 81–108, at 98–101; Baker, Reinvention, pp. 255, 259–60. 107  Selected Readings and Commentaries on Magna Carta 1400–1604, ed. J.H. Baker, Selden Soc., cxxxii (2015), pp. 366–92; on the question of authorship, see pp. lxxxiii–lxxxiv, and Baker, Reinvention, pp. 226–8. 108  Readings and Commentaries, ed. Baker, pp. 370, 376, 377, 380, 385, 386–7. 109  Readings and Commentaries, ed. Baker, p. 370, 379, 386, 387. Unlike his citations of Glanvill, he does not use folio numbers. 110  Sir John [J.H.] Baker, The Oxford History of the Laws on England, Vol. VI., 1483–1558 (Oxford 2003), p. 22. 111 Parliament: Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth, i. 313, cited by Baker, Reinvention, p. 221; cf. G.R. Elton, The Parliament of England 1559–1581 (Cambridge 1986), pp. 204–5, 296, 341, 345; court proceedings: Specott v. Bishop of Exeter (1588) and Collett v. Webb (1587), both quoted by Baker, Reinvention, p. 221 n. 38; p. 480. A report written for Lord Burghley in 1586 on robbery in London consisted mostly of a disquisition on medieval English law: London, BL, MS. Lansdowne MS. 81, fos 163–167, discussed by Alsop, ‘William Fleetwood’, 174.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  351 to the earlier law it re-confirmed: ‘the lawes of this realme had contynued in this Iland for many yeares before this statute was made (some of which lawes were made by Lucius, sometyme kinge of this realme, some by Canutus, some by St Edward the confessor, some by William the Conquere, and some by others)’.112 Evidence for that earlier law was therefore not restricted to Glanvill and the Dialogus de scaccario.113 The opening paragraph of Fleetwood’s commentary referred to the ‘old law, and especially the laws of St Edward’.114 His commentary on c. 29 began by acknowledging that Henry III’s subjects had demanded the restoration of those laws.115 The commentary was almost certainly drafted well before the appearance of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ. But Fleetwood was closely acquainted with Lambarde,116 so was probably aware of the general tenor of what would appear in the edition. Moreover, he owned his own ancient witness of Quadripartitus, in the shape of John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420.117 So when he referred to the ‘old law’ and ‘the laws of St Edward’ in his commentary on Magna Carta, he was not just unthinkingly parroting a centuries-old formula.118 He knew what he was talking about. He did not, however, invoke the contents of that ancient collection with any precision in the commentary. They were not shown to touch on any of the problems addressed in Magna Carta. But he did, as we have seen, quote them elsewhere in his jurisprudence, and invoke them in his speeches.119 His prized twelfth-century witness of Quadripartitus was a written exemplification of some of that ‘old law’, most of which had not been written, just as most current law was not written. From 1568 ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ fed and possibly promoted a need for evidence earlier than Magna Carta of the written law which had existed prior to the Charter. The edition’s contents were treated as statutes antecedent to what, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, had been conventionally interpreted as the first statute, which therefore appeared at the start of most copies of Antiqua or Vetera Statuta, and thereafter in the Statute Book.120 The amount of attention Magna Carta came to receive gave rise to a variation on the theme of English law’s continuity, a variation which was intrinsic to the Charter itself, and more overtly to the document which had provided its initial template: Henry I’s Coronation Charter. In Archeion, Lambarde’s survey of the higher English courts, first drafted in the late 1570s, he expressed the view that each of these documents had restored a continuity in English law which had been 112  An anonymous Reading on Magna Carta, c. 1, dated to the 1530s or 1540s: The Rights and Liberties of the English Church. Readings from the Pre-Reformation Inns of Court, ed. M.  McGlynn, Selden Soc., cxxix (2015), p. 139, with the date discussed at p. xxxvii. 113  Readings and Commentaries, ed. Baker, p. 373. The Dialogus was first printed in 1711. 114  Readings and Commentaries, ed. Baker, p. 366. 115  Readings and Commentaries, ed. Baker, p. 383. 116  He provided a prefatory Latin poem for the first edition of Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent. 117  See above, p. 343.    118  See above, pp. 138, 145, 170, 257, etc. 119  See above, pp. 346, 350. 120  Even when Edward I’s confirmation of 1297 had been quoted directly, and the text began with his name, it was Henry III’s statute that was confirmed: Baker, ed., Readings and Commentaries, p. xl.

352  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 interrupted by the Conquest. In doing so, he substantially adjusted the message of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ. He asserted that the English had not received a confirmation of their laws from King William shortly after the Conquest, but on the contrary had been enslaved by ‘a meere and absolute power, as in a Realme obtained by Conquest’.121 He appears consciously to contradict the account given at the start of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, which he himself had printed for the first time: although it was demonstrable that Parliament had been well established before the Conquest,122 yet ‘To looke for a Parliament assembled of the English Nobilitie, and Commons, soone after the Conquest, were but to labour, without expectation of good speed; for, Silent Leges inter arma.’123 Some of these tensions and contradictions may be explained by his repeated revisions of the text of Archeion between his first draft and the late 1590s;124 it was not to be printed until 1635, long posthumously, when two editions with considerable variants appeared in the same year, confirming that the textual transmission was confused.125 Successive redrafting, marginal additions, and the use of copyists may all help to explain why the book is ambivalent about how long this period of post-Conquest English slavery had lasted. Thus Magna Carta could be characterized as ‘the first Letters of Manumission of the people of this Realme out of the Norman servitude’.126 But alternatively, Henry I ‘did not onely at his Coronation promise restitution of St Edwardes Lawes, as wee call them; but also delivered out his free Charter of the Grant of the same’.127 Lambarde strongly implies that, unlike William Rufus, Henry kept his word: ‘that King laboured by all meanes, and especially by the restitution of the ancient Lawes (as all Historians doe agree) to heale the hearts of Englishmen, which were before deepely wounded by the oppression of his Father, and Brother William’.128 Whatever the reason for the ambivalence, it is nowhere resolved in the extant printed text of the book. Elsewhere, in his A Perambulation of Kent, not printed until 1576 though its title page states that it had been drafted by 1570,129 he had drawn on the story of Swanscombe Down as recounted at St Augustine’s, Canterbury by Thomas Sprott to show that the Conqueror had both confirmed English law to the inhabitants of Kent and enslaved the English everywhere else: the ‘cominaltie of Kent’ had ‘obteyned with great honour’ from Duke William ‘the continuation of their 121 W.  Lambarde, Archeion: or, A Discourse upon the High Courts of Justice in England, ed. C.H. McIlwain and P.L. Ward (Cambridge, MA 1957), p. 17. 122  Archeion, pp. 126–33. 123  Archeion, p. 134. 124  Archeion, pp. 150–1, 154. 125  Archeion, pp. 145–6. 126  Archeion, p. 62. The book circulated in manuscript: Fleetwood owned a copy dated 1579 (London, BL, MS. Harley 4717; Baker, Reinvention, p. 240). 127  Archeion, p. 134. 128  Archeion, p. 125. 129  A Perambulation of Kent: Conteining the description, Hystorie, and Customes of that Shyre. Collected and written (for the most part) in the yeare. 1570 (London 1576); 2nd edn 1596. It is impossible to establish what Lambarde had added between 1570 and 1576. On 9 May 1573 a transcript of A Perambulation was amongst the books Parker sent to Cecil: Correspondence of Parker no. CCCXXV, pp. 424–5.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  353 auncient usages, notwithstanding that the whole Realme besides suffered al­ter­ ation and chaunge’.130 Lambarde strongly implies that prior to the Conquest Kentish customs had resembled those of the rest of the kingdom.131 Perhaps because the book is concerned exclusively with Kent, Lambarde does not suggest that other Englishmen had been granted by Henry I in 1100 or secured in the statutory Magna Carta in 1225 what the men of Kent had extracted at Swanscombe Down in 1066. But such a position might explain the apparent discrepancy between the implication of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ on the one hand, and the views of Henry I’s Coronation Charter and Magna Carta expressed in Archeion on the other. In all of England other than Kent either Henry I’s Charter or Magna Carta (or both) had brought to an end a tyrannical interlude or aberration consequent on the Conquest, and restored English law to its true, pre-Conquest course. Thus while Archeion suggested an interpretation of the Conquest which adjusted that traditionally espoused by English lawyers, including (by implication) Lambarde himself in his great edition of the law codes, it did not seriously compromise the doctrine of legal continuity with the pre-Conquest past. Indeed that doctrine is assumed elsewhere in the book.132 It could easily be reconciled with the interpretation of the Conquest being propounded contemporaneously, in the vernacular and for a far wider audience, in Holinshed’s Chronicles. The book was first printed in 1577, and substantially expanded and reprinted in 1587, after Holinshed’s death. In both editions 1066 marked the division between the two volumes printed, because it was implicitly recognized as the major dividing line in English history.133 Holinshed’s treatment of the Conquest was slightly elaborated but not changed in the second edition: this ‘politike Conquest’ had imposed an ‘intollerable bondage’ or ‘yoke of thralldom’—an ‘outragious tyrannie’—on ‘Nobilitie’ and ‘Commonaltie’ alike, with new laws, including forest laws, in ‘the Norman toong, which the Englishmen understood not’. This innovation by the Conqueror was ‘a pestilent policie of a spitefull mind, and savouring altogether of his French slaverie’. The evidence on which this assessment was made was all adduced from narrative sources. King William’s successors had on several occasions undertaken to abolish his new laws, and to ‘establish other more equall, and restore those which were used in S.  Edwards

130  Perambulation, pp. 22–4, 390; cf. above, pp. 145–6, 223, 279, 323. Lambarde made brief notes from it which are included in a notebook he dated to 1568: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. Hist. d. 2, fos 55r–56r. 131  Perambulation, pp. 388–415. 132  Archeion, p. 58. 133  The prefatory ‘regum Angliae series’ begins with ‘Conquestor’: The First and second volumes of Chronicles . . . First collected and published by Raphaell Holinshed, William Harrison, and others: Now newlie augmented and continued to the yeare 1586. By Iohn Hooker alias Vowel Gent. and others, 3 vols (London 1587), i. [sig. Avv]. It is not found in the first edition. Note that volume i has several different sequences of pagination in its different sections. Those that are relevant in what follows are ‘The description of Britaine’ (Desc.) and ‘The historie of England’ (Hist.).

354  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 daies’.134 Such promises on the part of newly acceded kings are sometimes ­presented as devious political manoeuvres,135 but that was a view taken in several of the historiographical sources on which Holinshed and his collaborators primarily drew. They made extensive use of the few relevant histories already ­available in print, all of which had been written after—in most cases, long after—the twelfth century: ‘Matthew of Westminster’, Ranulf Higden, and above all Polydore Vergil;136 but they also made a point of frequently citing, and using, many his­tor­ies available only in manuscript, including the major writers of the twelfth cen­tury.137 It emerges, for example, that different witnesses of Henry of Huntingdon had been compared.138 In one recently detected instance, material from the Vita Ædwardi regis hitherto considered lost turns out to have been fortuitously preserved in this way. The text had been supplied by John Stow, one of the team of researchers and writers,139 or as it has been aptly characterized, syndicate.140 Narratives were not the only type of source drawn upon. Starting with the laws of King Ine of Wessex, frequent reference was made to the edition of the law codes ‘by maister William Lambert, and imprinted by John Day, in the yeare 1568, togither wyth the lawes and Statutes of other Kings before the Conquest, as to the learned it may appeare’.141 The name ‘Guilielmus Lambert’ is given in Holinshed’s initial list of authorities, perhaps because the Perambulation of Kent was also frequently cited. Almost all non-narrative sources were available only in 134  Chronicles (1587), iii. 1, 5, 10, 8, 14; cf. i. Desc. 176, which makes a general point, and does not refer specifically to the Norman Conquest: ‘new lords use commonlie to give new lawes, and conquerors abolish such as were in use before them’. 135  Chronicles (1587) iii. 8, 16, 28; J.L. Watts, ‘Monarchy’, in P. Kewes, I.W. Archer, and F. Heal, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford 2013), pp. 375–88, at 384. 136 The 1577 edition—The Firste volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, Conteyning, The description and Chronicles of England, from the first inhabiting unto the conquest . . . (London)—includes a list of acknowledged sources (i. [¶ vir–v]), reprinted in the 1587 edition (i. [sig. A iiir–v]). This is now elaborated by H. Summerson, ‘Catalogue of Principal Sources used in 1577 Edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles’ at http://www.cems.ox.ac.uk/Holinshed; cf. H. Summerson, ‘Sources: 1577’, in Kewes et al., eds, Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles, pp. 63–76, at 65–6; and ‘Catalogue of Additional Sources Referred to in Passing in Holinshed’s Chronicles’, ‘Anonymous Sources Referred to in the Text of Holinshed’s Chronicles’, ‘Personal Sources Used by the Compilers of Holinshed’s Chronicles’, all available on the Holinshed Project website, under the heading ‘The Making of the Chronicles’. 137  Summerson, ‘Sources: 1577’, p. 65, for Symeon of Durham, who is frequently cited, like the other great ‘historiographers’ of the period (ii. 394 (1577)); H. Summerson, ‘Sources: 1587’, in Kewes et al., eds, Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles, pp. 77–92, at 78 (Henry of Huntingdon and Ralph de Diceto in the library of St Paul’s Cathedral), 79 (William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum, Gesta pontificum, and De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie, and Roger of Howden); many other examples in Summerson, ‘Catalogue of Principal Sources’. For numerous cartularies and charters, see Summerson, ‘Anonymous Sources’. 138  Chronicles (1577), i. Hist. 129, which prefers one reading to another found in ‘corrupted copies’: Summerson, ‘Catalogue of Principal Sources’, p. 15. A name found in ‘the printed copie of Bedas booke intituled Ecclesiastica historia gentis Anglorum’ might have been ‘corrupted’, presumably by the editor: i. Hist. 187. 139  H. Summerson, ‘Tudor Antiquaries and the Vita Ædwardi regis’, ASE, xxxviii (2009), 157–84; S.D. Keynes and R.C. Love, ‘Earl Godwine’s Ship’, ASE, xxxviii, 185–223. 140 C.L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford 1913), p. 271. 141  Chronicles (1577) i. Hist. 188, 215, 228, 246, 263; (1587) iii. 13.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  355 manuscript. These included charters and cartularies,142 and the early witness of Quadripartitus in Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420, which had been borrowed from William Fleetwood.143 Much of the knowledge of medieval sources was gained at second-hand: thus the account of the episode at Swanscombe Down was derived from John Stow’s 1570 translation of Thomas Sprott.144 In the 1587 edition a citation of the recently discovered Textus Roffensis was simply lifted (without acknowledgement) from Matthew Parker’s De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae.145 Corners were therefore cut, but it is clear that Holinshed’s Chronicles was the product of a widespread research effort by knowledgeable members of the syndicate,146 who were well aware of the need to consult manuscripts of sources other than narratives. Indeed, they made a show of having done so, and pulled together a great deal of unprinted material. Nevertheless, they failed to say much that was novel or different about the Conquest. On this subject their achievement was to disseminate to a wide audience, in the vernacular, detail from narrative sources which was otherwise not available in print, or only in a form pre-digested by Ranulf Higden or Polydore Vergil. On this basis they emphasized tyrannical aspects of the immediately post-Conquest regime, but also suggested that the excesses had been a brief aberration in the course of English history. Legal con­ tinu­ity with pre-Conquest England had soon been restored. Neither the post-Conquest aberration nor the restoration were unprecedented. In the twelfth year of his reign, Edward the Confessor had selected from the ‘huge 142  The initial list of authorities includes ‘Bermondsey, a Regester booke belonging to that house’; ‘Iohn Stow, by whose diligent collected Summarie, I have ben not only ayded, but also by divers rare monuments, ancient wryters, and necessarie register Bookes of his, which he hath lente me out of his owne Librarie’; ‘Recordes of Battell Abbey’; ‘Recordes and rolles divers’; and ‘other Bookes and Treatises of Historicall mater I have seene and perused, the names of the Authours being utterly unknowen’; cf. Summerson, ‘Catalogue of Anonymous Sources’. He appears to have derived his information from the Battle Abbey Roll via Leland: Summerson, ‘Sources: 1577’, p. 66. 143  See above, n. 93 (ii. 389). It is possible that this was the Liber constitutionum London included in the list of authorities at the beginning of both editions; it may also be alluded to in Holinshed’s well-informed comment that the Old English codes, in the ‘Saxon tongue’, had subsequently been translated into Latin: (1577) i. 188. 144 Stow, A summarye of chronicles of England, fos 84v–86v; Holinshed, Chronicles (1577), ii. 292–3; (1587), iii. 1–2; A. Gillespie and O. Harris, ‘Holinshed and the Native Chronicle Tradition’, in Kewes et al., eds, Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles, pp. 135–51, at 148–9. 145  Chronicles (1587) iii. 1444, taken from Parker, De antiquitate, p. 97. The borrowing is detected by Summerson, ‘Anonymous Sources’, p. 20. The passage has been removed from the vast majority of surviving copies, along with the rest of Francis Thynne’s material on archbishops of Canterbury: C.S. Clegg, ‘Censorship’, in Kewes et al., Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles, pp. 43–59, at 54–6. It is most conveniently consulted in the modern facsimile of the uncut original: The Peaceable and Prosperous Regiment of Blessed Queene Elisabeth: A Facsimile from Holinshed’s Chronicles, ed. C.S. Clegg (San Marino, CA 2005). I should like to thank Ian Archer for unscrambling this problem for me. 146  F.  Heal and H.  Summerson, ‘The Genesis of the Two Editions’, in Kewes et al., Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles, pp. 1–19; Summerson, ‘Sources: 1587’, pp. 77–92. Those involved included William Harrison, John Stow, Francis Thynne, Abraham Fleming, and John Hooker; for a comprehensive list, see Holinshed Project website, under ‘The Making of the Chronicles’.

356  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 and unmesurable masse and heape’ of existing laws, reaching back as far as Dunvallo Molmutius, whose laws Alfred had previously had ‘turned into the Saxon toong’, those which ‘were thought most indifferent and necessary’. Primarily these consisted of the laws of Edgar, which had been eventually codified and endorsed by Cnut. ‘[H]ere it is to be noted, that although they were called saint Edwards lawes, they were for the most part made by king Edgar; but now by king Edward restored, after they had been abrogated for a time by the Danes.’147 The restoration after the Conqueror’s reign of the law which went by the name of St Edward meant that English common law had very ancient foundations: it was based on sundrie maximes or principles, and yeares or termes, which doo conteine such cases as by great studie and solemne argument of the iudges sound practise confirmed by long experience, fetched even from the course of most ancient lawes made farre before the conquest, and thereto the deepest reach and foundations of reason, are ruled and adiudged for law.

The point about the Conquest was emphasized by being made explicit in the 1587 edition.148 Perhaps because the authors considered that restoration to have happened later than the Conqueror’s reign, they made no use of the two apocryphal post-Conquest codes attributed to the king which Lambarde had included in ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ. At precisely the point when English common lawyers began to address the subject of the Conquest as a corollary of their renewed interest in Magna Carta, the authors of Holinshed’s Chronicles were also considering the subject anew and in detail. Yet they inverted the balance of interest, showing less in the Charter than in the Conquest. In terms of analysis, however, they added little to their predominantly narrative sources, and said nothing which could not easily be reconciled with the traditional interpretation. In that respect their treatment of the subject is very similar to Lambarde’s in his Archeion, which he was drafting and revising contemporaneously. It was reiterated by other lawyers in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign. In 1587, in a reworked section of part of what appears to have been the first ever Reading devoted exclusively to c. 29 of the 1225 Magna Carta,149 originally dated 1581, 147  (1577) i. Hist. 274; (1587) i. Desc. 177, 179–80, i. Hist. 15–16, 19, 52, 127, 148, 182 (citing Lambarde’s edition of the codes of Cnut), 191. If the Argumentum to Quadripartitus was already at this stage missing from John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420, it cannot have been the source of this account of the Confessor’s legislative activity. 148  (1587) i. Desc. 180; cf. (1577) i. Desc. 99v. The passage ‘sound . . . conquest’ was added in 1587: R. Houlbrooke, ‘England’, in Kewes et al., eds, Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles, pp. 629–45, at 635 n. 14. 149  Cc. 39, 40 of Magna Carta (1215). The whole Reading had originally been delivered in the Middle Temple in 1581. Only one lecture and some of the disputations survive, recorded in notes taken by a member of the audience. Snagge subsequently worked up part of his Reading for presentation to Sir Christopher Hatton, when Hatton became Lord Chancellor in 1587. This presentation copy survives only in the version which was printed much later: The Antiquity & Original of the High Court

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  357 Robert Snagge invoked ‘stories’ as the basis of his claim that at the Conquest the Conqueror had ‘brought in’ new laws. These innovations had provoked the English into sustained ‘insurrections’: they were ‘ready to endure any pain and loss, rather than the loss of their native Laws & Liberties, and to subject themselves to the Wil-government of their new Lords’.150 The resulting disorder had continued into the reign of Henry III, who, ‘purged and purified by our English Air, and by Education after the order of our Nation’, had decided that he was ‘content to allow Englishmen their English Laws’, and therefore to ‘restore the Laws of the Land and the Liberties of the Subjects, and to limit his Prerogatives’.151 He had done so by granting ‘the Great Charter’. For unexplained reasons the king had subsequently reneged, but eventually, in 1267, reaffirmed the concession in the Statute of Marlborough. Snagge, a bencher of the Middle Temple, was one of that select group of extreme Puritan lawyers who had identified c. 29 as a potential bulwark against the alarming initiatives of the Court of High Commission.152 From the start, he was concerned to distinguish between ‘prerogative rightly used’ on the one hand, and kings who ‘did all, and took all, as pleased themselves, under pretence of their Prerogative’ on the other.153 The reworked Reading was presented to Sir Christopher Hatton on Hatton’s appointment as Lord Chancellor in 1587.154 The passing suggestion that that particular ‘office had been besides the Law, erected out of the absolute Authority that Conquerors claimed’155 was characteristically impolitic of the truculent author.156 In Snagge’s view, c. 29 contained ‘as it were, the sum of all the Charter & Act, and the whole mark that was shot at, to revive the antient Laws and restore the antient Liberty and liberties to the Subjects’.157 The ‘King was pleased to put them again into the force that they had lost by the Conquest.’158 Moreover, he considered that this very chapter was embodied in the of Chancery, and Authority of the Lord Chancellor of England. Being a Branch of Serjeant Snagge’s Reading, upon the 28 [sic] Chapter of Magna Carta, at the Middle Temple, in Lent 13 Eliz. With his Congratulatory Epistle, (by way of Preface) to the Lord Chancellor Hatton, in 29 Eliz., ed. T.L. (London 1654); J.H. Baker, Readers and Readings in the Inns of Court and Chancery, Selden Soc., supp. ser., xiii (2000), pp. 610–11; Readings and Commentaries, ed. Baker, pp. lxxxii–lxxxiii, 256–64; Baker, Reinvention, pp. 251–5. The section which survives is that concerning the ‘law of the land’. Snagge was not a serjeant, but his brother Thomas was. 150 Snagge, Antiquity & Original, p. 7. 151 Snagge, Antiquity & Original, pp. 8–9, quoted by Baker, Reinvention, p. 252; cf. the treatise on Magna Carta which has been attributed to Fleetwood, Selected Readings and Commentaries, p. 383, who identifies them with the laws of St Edward. 152 F.  Thompson, Magna Carta, Its Role in the Making of the English Constitution, 1300–1629 (Minneapolis, MN 1948), pp. 144, 198–216; Baker, Reinvention, pp. 255–61. 153 Snagge, Antiquity & Original, p. 8. 154 Baker, Reinvention, p. 251. 155 Snagge, Antiquity & Original, p. 31, quoted by Baker, Readers and Readings, p. 611. 156 Baker, Reinvention, pp. 253–4. 157 Snagge, Antiquity & Original, pp. 11–12. 158 Snagge, Antiquity & Original, p. 13, cf. 18: ‘when it was lost by the Conquest, it was again restored by common consent of Parliament, as was necessary it should be; for that the force it had by Custom and Usage was interrupted by the Conquest’.

358  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 coronation oath to uphold the Laws of the Land: ‘which Charter so enacted [in the Statute of Marlborough], sithence hath been by all Kings and Queens solemnly sworn at their Coronations to be kept, and so hath been sacredly observed to this day’. Now of course the coronation oath had never mentioned Magna Carta, but it had once invoked the laws of St Edward, which were in truth the immemorial laws of England, beginning ‘before all memory of man that remaineth in the world’.159 It would be easy enough for Snagge to equate them with Magna Carta. Every monarch had therefore reaffirmed in the most solemn ceremonial circumstances, before God, Henry III’s revival or restoration of preConquest law, which, because customary, must have preceded the existence of any king.160 The connection between Magna Carta and legal continuity over the Conquest—the immemoriality of English law—was, according to Snagge, central to the ceremony of royal accession itself. Whoever had drafted the new promises for Edward II’s coronation would have appreciated the point. Renewed interest in Magna Carta and the earlier law it was understood to endorse, now conveniently collected in ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, may help to explain the sudden and enthusiastic resurrection of another medieval text at this time: the Modus tenendi parliamentum. As we saw in Chapter 7, this early fourteenthcentury fabrication appears to have been indebted to the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, particularly to the opening of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. That was now likely to be far more familiar, because it was in print in ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ. The Proem to the Modus purported to date from the eleventh century, and consisted of an account of William I ordering that what he was advised had been parliamentary procedure under Edward the Confessor should be complied with henceforth.161 Fleetwood considered the Modus authentic,162 and possessed a late medieval copy of it.163 It reinforced his conventional view that Parliament had existed long prior to the Conquest, indeed prior to Britain’s conversion to Christianity: it was referred to as the ‘Counsell of thy kingdome’ in Pope Eleutherius’s letter to King Lucius.164 He adduced no evidence as to its origin, and therefore of its being founded by any king.165 Lambarde possessed two ­fifteenth-century manuscripts,166 Nowell a third, part of which Lambarde had 159 Snagge, Antiquity & Original, p. 10, cf. 16, 17, 21. The oath had been enrolled on the Close Rolls, but Snagge would not have had access to them: above, p. 256. 160  Antiquity & Original, pp. 14–15. 161  See above, pp. 266–9. 162  Fleetwood’s ‘Miscellanea’, LMA, CLC/270, MS. 86, fos 1–2, cited by Baker, Reinvention, p. 223, n. 50. 163  Cambridge, MA, Harvard Law Library, MS. 21. 164 Fleetwood, Of Forests, London, BL, MS. Harley 5194, fo. 3v, quoted by Baker, Reinvention, p. 224. 165  Fleetwood’s ‘Relacion and Opinyon of Mr Seriant Fleetwoode concerninge the Originall and beginninge of Courts in England’, London, BL, MS. Hargrave 226, fo. 241, argues that the original court was the Exchequer, out of which Chancery, King’s Bench, and Common Pleas had emerged; further Baker, Reinvention, p. 224; Alsop, ‘William Fleetwood’, 162. It does not treat Parliament as an established court. I should like to thank John Baker for advice on this matter. 166  London, BL, MSS. Add. 32097, 29901.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law  359 transcribed.167 He accorded it pride of place in the list of authorities he cited in his 1584 guide to procedure in the House of Commons. In the discussion of Parliament in Archeion, he dated the Modus to the reign of Edward the Confessor, and added that it was currently ‘to be seene in many hands, purporting the very order, forme, and manner of all this stately Court, and solemne Assemblie’.168 It appears to have become a fashionable vade mecum for current Members of Parliament. Lambarde demonstrated by reference both to the Old English law codes, and to the unwritten law of ancient demesne, that Parliament had existed long before its procedure in Edward the Confessor’s day had been definitively codified in the Modus.169 Just like English law, the statutory partial exemplification of which was by definition assented to from time to time in Parliament,170 Parliament itself was immemorial. In April 1593, Edward Coke, then Speaker, informed the House of Commons that a ‘grave’ Member had given him a copy, and that it proved that ‘there were Parliaments before the Conquest’.171 Coke’s library catalogue records that by the end of his life he had amassed at least three copies, possibly more.172 The outbreak of keen interest in the Modus coincides exactly with the fresh attention paid in legal circles to Magna Carta and the existing ancient law which it was considered to summarize, endorse, and in some respects reinstitute. Conventionally designated ‘the law of King Edward’, and therefore by definition a pre-Conquest phenomenon, much of its written element was now readily available in print, in ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ. By again resurrecting, in a new medium, the antique London school of chronologically arranged com­pil­ation, Lambarde’s edition rendered ancient and apocryphal law codes widely accessible and usable at the very point when interest in different aspects of pre-Conquest English history was being stimulated by the Reformation, and fed by the dispersal of monastic libraries consequent on the Dissolution of the monasteries.

167  London, BL, MS. Cotton Domitian A. xviii. Lambarde copied the chapter which argued that Parliament had six degrees on to the back page of a salvaged medieval penitential: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson D. 1228, fo. 94v, with a note by Lambarde to the effect that this should be at the start of the Modus. 168  William Lambarde’s Notes on the Privileges and Procedures of the House of Commons (1584), ed. P.L.  Ward, House of Commons Library Document no. 10, (London 1977), pp. 55, 44; Archeion, pp. 132–3. 169  Archeion, p. 133. 170  Archeion, p. 139. 171  Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, 1593–1601, iii. 170. The unidentified MP may have been John Hooker, who long before, in 1572, had published The Order and Usage of the Keeping of a Parlement in England, prefaced by an English translation of Modus: V.F.  Snow, Parliament in Elizabethan England: John Hooker’s Order and Usage (New Haven, CT 1977). 172  W.O. Hassall, ed., A Catalogue of the Library of Sir Edward Coke, intro. S.E. Thorne (New Haven, CT 1950), nos. 333, 335, 345, and possibly 350.

10

The Printing of Twelfth-Century English Historiography, and the Integration of Law with History Lambarde’s edition of the Old English and immediately post-Conquest royal law codes played a focused but important and precocious part in the development of the interest in the pre-Conquest origins of English law, and its preservation over the Conquest; it took far longer for the results of the simultaneous commission to Archbishop Parker to become apparent. This was because Parker’s commission covered the whole range of medieval manuscript books, rather than concentrating on a narrow subset; and because Parker’s priority was for current political reasons Matthew Paris and later historians of the St Albans school, not the twelfth-century writers whom many other contemporary antiquaries privileged. But within a quarter of a century, editions of the great English historians of the twelfth century began to be printed in England. A partial edition of William of Malmesbury had already been published by Hieronymus Commelin in Heidelberg in 1587, presumably on the basis of one of those manuscripts the export of which to Germany had been bewailed by Leland and Bale. But it was published an­onym­ous­ly, because the author’s identity was unknown to the publisher.1 That was certainly not the case when the first English edition of Gesta regum, Historia novella, and Gesta pontificum appeared less than a decade later, in a volume of English his­tor­ ies in which William of Malmesbury was accorded pre-eminence. It is to the appearance of printed editions of the definitive books of English his­tori­og­raphy, predominantly those written in the first half of the twelfth century, that I shall turn in this chapter. The first of the great works of twelfth-century historiography to be printed in England was, however, not William of Malmesbury, but the Chronicon ex chronicis attributed to Florence of Worcester. In 1592 Lord William Howard printed an edition based on what is now Dublin, Trinity College, MS. 502, a manuscript of Coventry provenance which he owned; but he made some use also of Dublin,

1  Rerum Britannicarum, id est Angliae, Scotiae vicinarumque insularum ac regionum: Scriptores vetustiores ac praecipui (Heidelberg 1587).

The Norman Conquest in English History: Volume I: A Broken Chain? George Garnett, Oxford University Press (2021). © George Garnett. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726166.001.0001

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  361 Trinity College, MS. 503,2 a Worcester witness of the supplementary Chronicula, which was initially loaned to him by William Lambarde, and then given to him in 1594.3 He noted variant readings from the latter in the margins of the former.4 John Joscelyn knew the latter manuscript, because he copied some of it into London, BL, MS. Cotton Caligula  A.  vi.5 However, it seems inconceivable that Howard knew of Parker’s witness of the main chronicle (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 92), which had been written at Abingdon but had by the midthirteenth century been transferred to Peterborough.6 Had he done so, he would have used it in the preparation of his edition. Nor could he have been familiar with the partially autograph, illuminated Worcester manuscript, now Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS. 157.7 An inscription on the flyleaf records that it was given to the College by Henry Parry, Fellow, on 8 July 1618. That Parry was probably a son of the eponymous bishop of Worcester is suggestive as to its provenance.8 The fact that it had not fallen into the hands of one of the noted contemporary book collectors may help to explain why it was unknown to Howard, to whose taste in illuminated manuscripts9 it would greatly have appealed. It must have escaped Parker’s trawl. Howard, ‘a singular lover of venerable antiquity and learned with all’,10 was unusual amongst those of antiquarian bent in this period in England in that he was and remained a Catholic. Unlike Leland or Bale or Prise or Parker, he was not driven by a desire to uncover ancient English (or British) precedents for reform. Yet nor was the Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis the most promising of texts to evoke the past glories of English Catholicism, in the way that—for 2  Chronicon ex chronicis ab initio mundi usque ad annum Domini 1118 deductum, auctore Florentio Wigorniensi monacho. Accessit etiam continuatio usque ad annum Christi 1141 per quondam eiusdem coenobii eruditum. Nunquam antehac in lucem editum (London 1592); for details, see JW ii. pp. lxxxi–lxxxii; M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, eds, The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford 1981), pp. 101–26, at 105–6 (MS. 502), 110 (MS. 503). Howard’s text was reprinted in Frankfurt 1601 alongside ‘Matthew of Westminster’ as Matthai Westmonasteriensis Flores historiarum et Chronicon ex chronicis auctore Florentio Wigorniensi. Marianus Scotus’s Chronica had been printed in Basle in 1559. 3  Howard recorded that Lambarde made the gift on 30 November 1594; Lambarde recorded that he had bought the book from John Stow in 1573: M.L.  Colker, Trinity College Library Dublin. Descriptive Catalogue of the Mediaeval and Renaissance Manuscripts, 2 vols (Aldershot 1991), ii. 934. 4  R.  Ovenden, ‘The Manuscript Library of Lord William Howard of Naworth (1562–1640)’, in J. M.W. Willoughby and J. Catto, eds, Books and Bookmen in Early Modern Britain: Essays Presented to James P. Carley (Toronto 2018), pp. 278–318, at 299. 5 T.  Graham and A.G.  Watson, eds, The Recovery of the Past in Early Elizabethan England. Documents by John Bale and John Joscelyn from the Circle of Matthew Parker, Cambridge Bibliographical Society Monographs, xiii (1998), J2.33. 6  Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 108. 7  John’s is identified as the fifth of five hands: R.M.  Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Corpus Christi College Oxford (Cambridge 2011), p. 83. 8  JW ii. p. xxviii. 9  Ovenden, ‘Lord William Howard’, pp. 289–91. 10  William Camden, Britannia, siue, Florentissimorum regnorum, Angliæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ, et insularum adiacentium ex intima antiquitate chorographica descriptio. nunc postremo recogn. & adaucta (London 1607), p. 644.

362  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 instance—Thomas Stapleton’s English translation of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica had been.11 Perhaps he knew that Savile was already at work on Henry of Huntingdon, of which it is still possible to prove that he owned three copies.12 He dedicated the edition of the Worcester Chronicon to Burghley. Its title proclaimed that the book had ‘never before been edited into the light’, thereby repeating Bale’s and Lambarde’s hackneyed humanist metaphor about the illumination provided by printing. He shows that this sentiment was not exclusively Protestant.13 Four years later Bale’s familiar metaphor was echoed again in the title of Sir Henry Savile’s edition of a number of other ‘post-Bedan’ English histories.14 As he must have been aware, given that the volume opened with editions of William of Malmesbury’s major works, the title also reiterated William’s point about the long hiatus in English historical writing which had followed Bede’s death. With ostentatious loyalty, he dedicated this compendium of narrative histories of England to Queen Elizabeth. The collection’s premise, as set out in the dedicatory epistle, was one which would have warmed the hearts of Leland and Prise: that it was necessary to counteract the (still) pernicious papistical influence of Polydore Vergil.15 In Savile’s case this was to be accomplished not by defending Geoffrey of Monmouth against Vergil’s denigration, as Prise had attempted to do in his Defensio, but by printing the original16 works of several of Geoffrey’s con­tem­por­ ar­ies, on which Vergil had made a virtue of basing his book. This was the course of action which Prise in his will had—in the event, unsuccessfully—enjoined on his son Richard.17 Readers would thereby be given access to Vergil’s sources, undistorted by his ignorance and wilful misinterpretation. In addition, Savile edited one English history of the late twelfth century, and two which purported to be earlier, one of which really was so.

11  The History of the Church of Englande. Compiled by the Venerable Bede, Englishman. Translated out of Latin in to English by Thomas Stapleton, student in divinite (Antwerp 1565). 12  London, BL, MSS. Arundel 46, 48; London, College of Arms, MS. Arundel 48. He also owned William of Jumièges (London, BL, MS. Arundel 41), Roger of Howden (BL, MS. Arundel 150), William of Malmesbury (BL, MS. Arundel 161), Gervase of Canterbury (BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian B. xix), Ralph of Coggeshall (London, College of Arms, MS. Arundel 11), and many other histories, including—College of Arms, MS. Arundel 38—a sixteenth-century transcript of what purported to be a Vita et gestis gloriosi Gulielmi ducis Normannorum, et victoriosissimi regis Anglorum, extracta fuerunt de quodam libro antiquo monasterii Sancti Stephani de Cadomo. In fact, this is a copy of brief extracts from Orderic Vitalis made in the fifteenth century in London, BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian A. xix, discussed below, p. 366 n. 40. I have already mentioned Parker’s use of his copy of Thomas Walsingham’s Historia, College of Arms, MS. Arundel 7, cf. above, p. 329. For the manuscripts which can now be identified as having been once owned by him, see Ovenden, ‘Lord William Howard’, pp. 313–18. 13  This edition, reprinted in Frankfurt in 1601, would be the only one available until 1848. 14  H. Savile, ed., Rerum Anglicarum scriptores post Bedam praecipui ex vetustissimis codicibus manuscriptis nunc primum in lucem editi (London 1596), reprinted with different pagination, Frankfurt 1601. 15  Savile, ed., Scriptores, ¶ ii. 16 D. Hay, Polydore Vergil: Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters (Oxford 1952), pp. 86–8. 17  See above, pp. 317–18.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  363 It comprised, in roughly chronological order of writing, William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum18 together with its sequel, Historia novella,19 his Gesta pontificum,20 Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum,21 and Roger of Howden’s Chronica.22 Savile then added two much shorter, less celebrated narratives, one of which 18  This seems to have been largely based on London, BL, MS. Royal 13. B. xix (‘B version’)—GR i. p. xxii—to which had been appended a transcript of Historia novella: but Savile had access to other witnesses too, including London, BL, MS. Arundel 35 (the purest copy of the ‘A version’), Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 10 (‘A version’), and a fourteenth-century copy which he owned, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 712 (‘B version’): GR i. p. xxi; Willelmi Malmesbiriensis monachi, De gestis regum Anglorum libri quinque; Historiae novellae libri tres, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (1887–9), i. pp. lxxviii–lxxix; M. McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age (Oxford 1971), p. 64. Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 10 was given to the college by John Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1604: M.R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: A Descriptive Catalogue, 4 vols (Cambridge 1900–04), ii. 224–5 (no. 748). In the mid-seventeenth century the Royal manuscript had belonged to John Theyer; it entered the Royal Library only when it was bought by Charles II: De gestis regum, ed. Stubbs, i. p. lxxviii. Stubbs, i. pp. xciii–xcvii, argued that Savile seems gradually to have changed his mind in the course of editing about which version to treat as his base text, becoming increasingly dependent on the Trinity College witness. But he did not then go back to revise his earlier draft text on this altered basis. He seemed unaware that an edition of most of the first three books of Gesta regum had been published (anonymously) by Commelin in 1587 (alongside Gildas, Bede, and Geoffrey of Monmouth), although the author was not identified: Rerum Britannicarum . . . scriptores, on which see GR i. xiv. 19  Savile’s main source appears to be Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R.  7. 1 (‘A version’), false readings of which he reproduces: McKisack, Medieval History, p. 64; cf. De gestis regum, ed. Stubbs, i.  p. xcvi. This was given to Trinity College by Thomas Neville: James, Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, ii. 215–16 (no. 739). 20  Only the first four books. M. Winterbottom, GP, p. xxv, establishes that Savile’s version is ‘consistently close’ to Cambridge, UL, MS. Ff. I. 25. This is the twelfth-century witness to which Parker arranged Book V should be added, and then donated to Cambridge University Library: Willelmi Malmesbiriensis monachi, De gestis pontificum Anglorum, libri quinque, ed. N.E.S.A.  Hamilton, RS (1870), p. xxiii, cf. above, p. 330. Parker also had book V added to Cambridge, CCC, MS. 43: ed. Hamilton, p. xxiv. Dublin, Trinity College, MS. 337 was completed by one of his scribes from the point at which it broke off in Book III; the scribe copied from Cambridge, UL, MS. Ff. I. 25. Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 13, breaks off part way through Book III, and is completed to the end of Book IV by one of Parker’s scribes. His name is on the fly-leaf. For Parker’s scribes, see B.S. Robinson, ‘“Darke speech”: Matthew Parker and the Reforming of History’, Sixteenth-Century Journal, xxix (1998), 1061–83, at 1076. Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 5. 34 is a copy of Book V alone, made by one of Parker’s scribes. On all these manuscripts, see Hamilton i. pp. xxiv–xxvi. To them Winterbottom adds Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 4, which, according to Hamilton p. xxiv, was also completed by one of Parker’s scribes copying from Cambridge, UL, MS. Ff. 1. 25; further, McKisack, Medieval History, p. 65 n. 1. 21 Greenway, HA, p. cxx–cxxi, cxxix–cxxx, clx, argues that he used London, BL, MS. Add. 24061, and BL, MS. Egerton 3668, both of which he owned, and for the final few chapters (which were in neither of his base manuscripts), probably BL, MS. Royal 13. B. vi (=J.P. Carley, The Libraries of King Henry VIII, CBMLC, vii (London 2000), H2.1037), the witness taken from the Lincoln Dominicans at Henry VIII’s instigation, cf. above, p. 299. 22  Savile used London, BL, MS. Arundel 150, which belonged to Lord William Howard: Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houeden, ed. W.  Stubbs, 4 vols, RS (1868–71), i. p. lxxxii; McKisack, Medieval History, p. 65. In Savile’s corrections appended to the printed text of the Chronica—Scriptores, fo. 471v—he proposed a curious reading found, amongst the many extant manuscripts of the Chronica, only in this one. Howden’s ‘Liber de legibus Angliae’ includes Tripartita, and the correction is in the introduction to LECf 17. Like MS. Arundel 150, the corrected version reports that in response to an inquiry from Pippin and ‘his son’ (not brother) Charles, ‘William the Bastard, king of England’ had issued a ruling on the use of the royal title. The most likely explanation is that an incompetent research assistant had checked the printed text against the manuscript, noticed the discrepancy, and supplied to the printer the nonsensical reading which Savile had chosen not to use in the text, Scriptores, fo. 345: Chronica, ed. Stubbs, ii. pp. xviii–xix; p. 226 n. 1. It is clear that Savile also used other manuscripts of Howden: Chronica, ed. Stubbs, ii. pp. xv–xix. Parker had owned one, which had formerly belonged to Robert Record: Cambridge, CCC, MS. 138; cf. Bale, Index, p. 402; Graham and Watson, Recovery, Bn12e, Bn15, J2.61.

364  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 really was, and one of which purported to be, earlier: Æthelweard’s Chronicon,23 which Savile said he included on account both of its antiquity and the nobility of its author, who, he stressed unctuously, was related to Queen Elizabeth;24 and the fourteenth-century fabrication attributed to Ingulf, abbot of Crowland (1085–1108), who Savile accepted had indeed been the Conqueror’s ‘Secretary’.25 With these two hitherto less noticed, supposedly earlier works of history, Savile started the quasi-chronological sequence of English historians all over again. His Scriptores is, therefore, very much a volume in two parts. In the seventeenth century Savile’s Scriptores was to become the most convenient, standard collection of the most influential medieval English historians. It opened with William of Malmesbury who, Savile proclaimed in a way which would have secured William’s approval, held first place. He presented Henry of Huntingdon and Roger of Howden very much as also-rans. William of Malmesbury had identified Æthelweard as the only example of an intermediary attempt to fill the post-Bedan gap alluded to in the title for Savile’s collection, so Savile was almost obliged to include him. (In his dedicatory epistle he discreetly ignored William’s disparagement of this royally connected historian).26 He chose to round off the volume with a history not noticed by William but which by its own account had been written by an immediately post-Conquest abbot of Norman appointment though English ‘nationality’.27 Given that the Historia Croylandensis purported to have been completed only a decade or so before William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon put pen to parchment, and given the senior office in royal administration allegedly exercised by its supposed author, the book devoted a great deal of space to the imposition of the Conquest. The chronologically arranged ‘Fasti regum et episcoporum Angliae’ which Savile appended to the collection to assist readers went only down to the end of the reign of Harold II and

23  Savile’s text agrees even in its errors with the few surviving fragments of the only know manuscript, dating from the beginning of the eleventh century: London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho A. x (and MS. Cotton Otho A. xii, fos 1–7, formerly part of the same book): The Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. A. Campbell (Edinburgh 1962), pp. xi–xii. Joscelyn recorded it in his list, J2.28, avowedly on the basis of John Bale’s Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae, quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam vocant: Catalogus; Posterior pars, quinque continens Centurias ultimas, 2 vols (Basle 1557–9), i. 167. 24  Savile, ed., Scriptores, [¶ iiˇ]. 25  Savile’s edition is not taken from the late sixteenth-century copy in London, BL, MS. Arundel 178, which is now the sole extant manuscript (only fragments remain of the late fifteenth-century witness in London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xiii, which was then in the possession of William Cecil). The text used by Savile was, however, similar to that in Arundel 178: W.G.  Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis. An Investigation Attempted (Cambridge 1894), p. 46; McKisack, Medieval History, p. 65. In particular, it broke off in the annal for 1085 at the point at which the Leis Willelme was inserted in other witnesses, just as MS. Arundel 178 does. A fourth, more complete manuscript, now lost, which belonged to Sir John Marsham, is preserved in William Fulman’s Rerum Anglicarum scriptores veteres (Oxford 1684). A fifth, characterized by Henry Spelman as ‘the archetype’, is lost except for five capitula of Leis Willelme (1, 17, 18, 20, 36) which he printed in his Concilia, decretales, leges, constitutiones in re ecclesiarum orbis Britannici, 2 vols (London 1639–64), i. 623–5. Selden knew of the existence of this manuscript, and referred to it in the apparatus to his edition of Historia novorum, but was unable to consult it; cf. below, p. 372. 26  See above, p. 14. 27  Savile, ed., Scriptores, fo. 484.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  365 the advent of ‘Willelmus Senior’. Savile’s arrangement of his selected texts therefore served to emphasize that the Conquest had been the major event in English history. Pseudo-Ingulf supposedly in its immediate aftermath, and Æthelweard long before, had in their different ways offered only very partial remedies for the post-Bedan gap. Savile presented William of Malmesbury as the first to respond by attempting to write on chronological and geographical scales commensurate with Bede. Notwithstanding, it was thanks to Savile that Pseudo-Ingulf would be much read and invoked during the seventeenth century, despite the small and shrinking number of sometimes inaccessible manuscripts of a work which was extant in several versions differing markedly in content.28 Savile, a ‘Magasin of learning’ according to his protégé, Richard Montague,29 was not interested in historical writing solely for patriotic reasons. His translation of Tacitus’s Histories and Agricola, also dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, was celebrated in his day, and still is.30 He prefaced it with a work composed in the style of Tacitus, which attempted to bridge the gap between the end of the Annals and the beginning of the Histories.31 Savile showed himself to be acutely aware both that historical writing was analytical in a political sense, and that it had political significance for the time in which it had been written—and in the cases of both his translation of Tacitus and his Scriptores post Bedam, printed, as the prefaces to both works succinctly intimated.32 The first of the great English histories of the early twelfth century, Eadmer’s Historia novorum, had to wait until 1623 to be printed. It was edited by John Selden, using the manuscript from Haughmond Abbey which Leland had recorded and which ended up in Robert Cotton’s library;33 Selden appears to have been uninterested in, or even unaware of the existence of, the earlier witness (and the late sixteenth-century copies thereof) which was now in the Parker library.34 Perhaps his incarceration in the Tower of London at the time rendered ignoring it unavoidable. Lord William Howard seems, as we have seen, ignorant of witnesses of the Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis when preparing his edition of that work.35 Both scholars failed to ferret out manuscript 28  See above, p. 175. 29 R. Montague, Diatribe upon the First Part of the Late History of Tithes (London 1621), p. 126. 30  The Ende of Nero and the Beginning of Galba. Fower bookes of the Histories of Cornelius Tacitus. The life of Agricola, ed. and trans. H.  Savile (Oxford 1591); D.  Womersley, ‘Sir Henry Savile’s Translation of Tacitus and the Political Interpretation of Elizabethan Texts’, Review of English Studies, clxxi (1991), 313–42; P.  Kewes, ‘Henry Savile’s Tacitus and the Politics of Roman History in Late Elizabethan England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, lxxiv (2011), 515–51. 31  The Ende of Nero and Beginning of Galba. 32 Savile, Ende of Nero, sig. ¶3r–v; Savile, ed., Scriptores, [¶ iiv]. 33  Eadmeri monachi Cantuariensis Historiae novorum sive sui saeculi libri vi . . . in lucem ex bibliotheca Cottoniana emisit Ioannes Seldenus & notas porro adjecit & spicilegium (London 1623); London, BL, MS. Cotton Titus A. ix, discussed above, p. 302. His Vita S. Anselmi had long been in print: Fratris Edimeris Angli de vita D. Anselmi archiepiscopi Cantuariensis (Antwerp 1551). 34  Parker had of course invoked Eadmer repeatedly in his A defence of priestes mariages, with which Selden is likely to have been familiar; cf. above, p. 330. But at that point Parker had not yet acquired the manuscript. For the modern copies, see above, p. 330 n. 301. 35  See above, p. 361.

366  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 evidence in the way that Nowell and Lambarde had done decades earlier. If Selden knew nothing of the Parker witness of Eadmer, this shows how imperfect the exchange of information could still be in antiquarian circles,36 select and closely connected though they generally were. The histories of Symeon of Durham, John and Richard of Hexham, Ralph de Diceto, Gervase of Canterbury, William Thorne, and Aelred of Rievaulx’s Vita S. Edwardi regis et confessoris and his De genealogia regum Anglorum, did not appear in print until 1652, alongside John Brompton’s Chronicle and Henry Knighton.37 But these important stragglers aside, by the end of the sixteenth century all the most celebrated works of twelfth- and early thirteenthcentury English historical writing in Latin had been made available in print. William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum swiftly followed in 1602, in an edition by William Camden of Robert of Torigni’s interpolated and extended text, based on two twelfth- or early thirteenth-century English manuscripts.38 The title page implied that they were both in his library; he may also have used the modern transcript based on both of them.39 The other works in this collection show that he was interested in the Gesta Normmanorum ducum for the light it might throw on English history, not—despite the second word in his title— Norman. It is clear that by this date Camden knew of the existence of William of Poitiers’ Gesta Guillelmi, but was quite ignorant of its contents: the fragments he printed as taken from the biography of the Conqueror in fact came from Orderic Vitalis’s Historia ecclesiastica.40 36  The book had, uniquely, been listed twice by Joscelyn: Graham and Watson, Recovery, J1.9; J2.34. The second entry records that what became Cambridge, CCC, MS. 452 was in 1567 in the possession of Dr Henry Johns, of Cambridge. When Selden began work on his edition, Joscelyn’s lists had long been owned by Cotton, and one might expect him to be aware that Parker had acquired Dr Johns’ manuscript, as well as the transcript of it which Parker had commissioned and which was still in his library, Cambridge, CCC, MS. 341; cf. above, p. 330 n. 301. 37  R. Twysden, ed., Historiae Anglicanae scriptores X (London 1652). 38  London, BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius A. viii, from Reading Abbey, written in a hand of the third quarter of the twelfth century (GND i. pp. cxii–cxiii; E.M.C.  van Houts, ‘Camden, Cotton and the Chronicles of the Norman Conquest of England’, in C.J.  Wright, ed., Robert Cotton as Collector (London 1997), pp. 238–52, at 241–2; R.  Sharpe, J.P.  Carley, R.M.  Thomson, and A.G.  Wilson, eds, English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, CBMLC, iv (London 1996), B71. 84(c); this passed through the hands of Sir Walter Cope and Arthur Agarde before ending up in Cotton’s library: A.G.  Watson, ‘The Manuscript Collection of Sir Walter Cope (d. 1614)’, repr. in his Medieval Manuscripts in Post-Medieval England (Aldershot 2004), ch. VIII, pp. 262–97, at 290. London, BL, MS. Cotton Nero D. viii, in a hand of the last quarter of the twelfth century, provenance unknown, contains fragments from redaction A of the Gesta (fos 135v–146v) as well as from the end of Robert of Torigni’s redaction (fos 146v–159v): GND i. pp. xcvi, cxiv; van Houts, ‘Cotton’, p. 242. This was probably also owned by Cope, and had previously been owned by John Stow: Watson, ‘Sir Walter Cope’, p. 288. 39  Paris, BN, MS. lat. 6002, a late sixteenth-century transcript of the former, with marginal notes of variant readings from the latter: GND i. p. cxvi. Anglica, Normannica, Hibernica, Cambrica a veteribus scripta . . . Plerique nunc primum in lucem editi ex bibliotheca Guilielmi Camdeni (Frankfurt 1602), pp. 604–91. This volume included reprints of Parker’s editions of Asser and Thomas of Walsingham’s Chronica maiora, because, Camden claimed in his preface, the existing editions were rare in England. 40  London, BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian A. xix, fos 104r–121v, an early fifteenth-century copy; the two excerpts are of the trial of William of St Calais, bishop of Durham, and of the Conqueror’s death, and therefore come long after material for which Orderic had a model in his full text of the Gesta Guillelmi: OV iv. 38–42, 80–108. There is a sixteenth-century transcript in London, College of Arms, MS. Arundel 38, which at this time belonged to Lord William Howard: see above, p. 362 n. 12. Van Houts,

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  367 Printing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was evidently felt to be a less pressing priority than Latin texts. An edition based on Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 173 (version ‘A’) and a manuscript closely related to and probably copied from it, London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho  B.  xi (version ‘G’), was eventually published as an appendix to Abraham Whelock’s edition of the Old English translation of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica (together with the first English edition of the complete Latin text) in 1643.41 A modern Latin translation of the Chronicle was also supplied. Whelock had, it was later claimed, ‘rescued from moths and worms this monument of the nation’.42 But previously it does not appear to have been recognized as such a monument. The medieval Latin translation and elaboration of another version of the Chronicle closely related to ‘D’, rendered accessible in Lord William Howard’s printed edition of the Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis, had evidently been considered adequate during the preceding half century. As we have already seen, Henry VIII’s divorce had provided the initial stimulus to search libraries for historical precedents as well as legal material, and certain categories of theology. The unprecedented repercussions of the divorce meant that very suddenly an overwhelming profusion of ancient manuscript books became available. The hair-raising tales of Bale and Parker, and latterly of Aubrey, might suggest that untold treasures had almost certainly been lost in the wholesale destruction. Leland’s lists and occasional notes collectively constitute the closest thing to a general survey shortly before disaster overwhelmed the monastic libraries. As we have seen, these lists were in fact highly selective, though in a way which was more likely to record than to ignore medieval histories (if not collections of English law, which Leland, with his lack of legal sensibility, noticed only very exceptionally). Ker’s comparative statistics of survival from the library of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, show that this was also the category of book which ultimately stood the best chance of being plucked from the wreckage.43 Had Parker, for instance, not acquired,44 edited, and printed Asser, or Savile Æthelweard, what ‘Cotton’, p. 243, suggests that Camden’s title page implies that this manuscript was in his possession in 1602. These folios in Cotton Vespasian  A.  xix had been listed as held in Henry VIII’s library at Richmond: Carley, Henry VIII, H1.113, cf. p. lxxxiii. They had been presented to King Henry V by the monks of St Etienne, Caen, c. 1420: J.G. Clark, ‘The Reception of Orderic Vitalis in the Later Middle Ages’, in C.C. Rozier, D. Roach, G.E.M. Gasper, and E. van Houts, eds, Orderic Vitalis. Life, Works and Interpretations (Woodbridge 2016), pp. 352–74, at 352–5. 41  It has its own title page—Chronologia Anglo-Saxonica elegans et perantiqua ex duobus manuscriptis feliciter eruta, ed. A. Whelock (Cambridge 1644), pp. 503–70—but is continuously paginated with the preceding reprint of the edition of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. 42 N. Sykes, Edmund Gibson (London 1926), p. 10; cf. D.C. Douglas, English Scholars 1660–1730, 2nd edn (London 1951), pp. 69–70. 43  N.R.  Ker, ‘The Migration of Manuscripts from English Medieval Libraries’, repr. in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in Medieval Heritage, ed. A.G. Watson (London 1985), pp. 459–70, at 465. 44  According to Joscelyn, prior to coming into Parker’s hands the manuscript had been owned by William Bowyer, Keeper of Records in the Tower (d. 1569/70), John Stow, the London antiquary, and Lady Cheke, widow of Sir John Cheke (d. 1557), sometime tutor to Edward VI. It is not clear whether this list of owners is meant to be sequential: Graham and Watson, Recovery, J2.26. Leland claimed

368  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 would have been irretrievably lost in the fire of 1731 might suggest what could well have been lost earlier, in the lavatories, breweries, and boot rooms of ­re-purposed ‘superstycyous mansions’, or fluttering about in the vicinity of recently dissolved abbeys such as Malmesbury. Some pre-Conquest works of history seem to have vanished, though there is no evidence that the dissolution of the monasteries was the cause: the account of Æthelstan’s reign which William of Malmesbury cites;45 and the putative history of Byrhtferth of Ramsey, which was partially subsumed into Symeon of Durham’s Historia de regibus Anglorum.46 It is less surprising that some vernacular works had disappeared: for instance, the Old English life of St Dunstan,47 and Coleman’s Life of Wulfstan (substantially surviving only in Latin translation by William of Malmesbury).48 In most of these cases the existence and to varying degrees the contents of lost works can be inferred almost exclusively from the use apparently made of them by the great twelfth-century historians. What is surprising is not that some have been lost, but that these few identifiable exceptions aside, the twelfth-century historians do not seem to have had access to any major work which does not still survive,49 albeit in several very important cases only in printed form, and sometimes by the greatest good fortune. This can be explained by the concatenation of two factors. First, the singular reluctance of English clerics to write much history in Latin between Bede and the early twelfth century, about which much was said in Chapter 1. It is highly likely that there was not much pre-Conquest English historical writing to be lost. Second, the effectiveness of the efforts made in the 1530s and later in the sixteenth century by a small number of individuals whose business it was, or who made it their business, to identify and preserve highly selected categories of monastic manuscript. Some works which they noted disappeared nevertheless—for instance several minor treatises allegedly by Henry of Huntingdon which Leland recorded.50 Even some of the books which they rescued have been mislaid subsequently, not least because their private collections were often dispersed after their deaths, and these were books the printing of which had not been prioritized. only to have seen one manuscript: John Leland, De uiris illustribus, ed. J.P. Carley, with the assistance of C. Brett (Toronto–Oxford 2010), p. 252. 45 Possibly the ‘bella Ethelstani regis’ recorded in the Glastonbury booklist of 1248: Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B39.261b. 46  See above, p. 15. 47  Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. M. Winterbottom and M. Lapidge (Oxford 2012), pp. cxxvii–cxxix. 48  It is not clear whether the author of the ‘Description of England’ seen by Leland in the library of St Paul’s Cathedral was the same man. Leland says that he wrote in the vernacular, but also that he flourished in the time of King John: De uiris, c. 204, p. 392. Leland did not record the book in his list: Joannis Lelandi antiquarii de rebus Britannicis collectanea, editio altera, ed. T. Hearne, 6 vols (London 1770), iv. 47. 49  J.  Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, repr. in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London 1986), ch. 13, pp. 209–28, at 216. 50  See above, p. 301.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  369 Examples include William of Malmesbury’s Vitae  S.  Patricii,51 S.  Benigni,52 and S. Indracti.53 But none of those lost after as before the Dissolution appears on the surviving evidence to have been of major significance. In terms of works of particular importance for the history of the Conquest, probably the narrowest squeak was experienced by the most extensive and nearly contemporary Norman narrative, William of Poitiers’ Gesta Guillelmi. We have seen that in twelfth-century England there were at least two manuscripts of the book, one used in the Liber Eliensis (which may or may not also have been the same as that on which William of Malmesbury drew), the other by Ralph de Diceto.54 Nothing is known about what happened to these subsequently. By 1618, almost certainly by c. 1612,55 but possibly not yet by 1602,56 Robert Cotton owned an incomplete witness, about the provenance of which nothing is known.57 In 1618 Cotton first had it transcribed for,58 and then (because the transcript proved to be strewn with errors) lent the original to,59 Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, to provide the copy text for an edition in a volume of medieval Anglo-Norman his­tor­ians to be published by him and André Duchesne.60 By this time Cotton and de Peiresc had a long history of collaboration, so it was not surprising that Cotton was willing to loan the manuscript.61 In addition to the Gesta Guillelmi, the volume comprised Robert of Torigni’s redaction of William of Jumièges’ Gesta, based on Camden’s edition (amended by reference to a twelfth-century Jumièges witness and two now unidentifiable manuscripts in the library of 51 Leland, De uiris, c. 23, pp. 58–62, cf. p. lxiv; Collectanea iii. 273–5, had seen three witnesses, two at Glastonbury, the other at Christchurch, Twynham. The Glastonbury pair are listed by him—Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B44.38; William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, p. 336, cf. 308—but the Twynham one not. 52 Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B44.40 (Leland), cf. 39.247(d), 109.38; Saints’ Lives, pp. 308–9. 53 Sharpe, Benedictine Libraries, B44.39 (Leland), cf. 39.214(c), 45.33; Saints’ Lives, pp. 310–13. 54  See above, p. 47. 55 Tite, Records, p. 52 [50.9], a loan list appended to Cotton’s own catalogue in London, BL, MS. Harley 6018, fo. 160r: ‘Vita Willimi Conquestoris in 8 old but new bound it is best’; cf. entry 102 in the preceding catalogue of manuscripts, unidentified by pressmark, p. 244 (fo. 58r): ‘Fragmentum vitae Willelmi I’. This should not be confused with entry 132, the early fifteenth-century excerpts from Orderic bound in BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian A. xix, discussed above, p. 366 n. 40. 56  Van Houts, ‘Cotton’, p. 243, infers that Cotton is unlikely to have owned the manuscript in 1602 because in that year Camden was ignorant of the contents of the Gesta Guillelmi. Although Camden and Cotton knew each other well, and collaborated, the inference is for obvious reasons inconclusive. 57  R.H.C. Davis, ‘William of Poitiers and William the Conqueror’, repr. in his From Alfred the Great to Stephen (London 1991), pp. 101–30, at 94, suggests that it may have been what he characterizes as the Ely/Malmesbury one, but adduces no evidence in support of this view. 58  Camdeni . . . epistolae, no. CLXXVI, pp. 222–3 (5 March 1618). William Camden acted as intermediary between Cotton and Fabri de Peiresc. 59  Camdeni . . . epistolae, no. CLXXXV (29 April 1618), pp. 231–4. 60  Historiae Normannorum scriptores antiqui ex mss codd. omnia fere nunc primum edidit, ed. A Duchesne and N.-C. F. de Peiresc (Paris 1619). For the edition of Gesta Normannorum ducum, which re-used Camden’s of 1602 but collated various French manuscripts, see GND i. p. cxxviii. 61  In 1606 Cotton gave de Peiresc a fifteenth-century manuscript of French laws: now London, BL, MS. Sloane 2423; in 1618 he lent Peiresc his Genesis, BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. vi: Tite, Records, [92.60] and p. 151. On 5 July 1618 de Peiresc wrote to request the loan of a copy of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ: Camdeni . . . epistolae, no. CXCII, p. 244.

370  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 Jacques-Auguste de Thou),62 Orderic Vitalis’s Historia ecclesiastica, and Dudo of St-Quentin’s De moribus. He had hoped, but failed, also to include relevant extracts from John Brompton’s Chronicle.63 In his letter acknowledging receipt, de Peiresc characterized the manuscript as ‘l’autographe du fragment de Guillelmus Pictavinus bien conditionné’. Cotton’s catalogue of manuscripts, begun in 1621, also described it as a ‘fragment’, but not as autograph or well-preserved.64 De Peiresc had sought to borrow it from across the Channel because the only complete witness known to him in France, which had belonged to the deceased antiquary Pierre Pithou (d. 1596), and had been promised to him by Pithou, had proved inaccessible.65 It has not been traced since.66 Moreover, the last mention of a known location for Cotton’s manuscript is in the preface to the de PeirescDuchesne collection. The only extant text is therefore this printed edition of Cotton’s lost, incomplete witness, which de Peiresc, with his professed interest in palaeography,67 considered to be autograph, and well-preserved. It is unclear whether its loss was a result of its being lent to de Peiresc. It may never have been returned to Cotton. Or it may have been returned and perished in the fire of 1731, along with the sole extant medieval witnesses of Asser and Æthelweard.68 But it is clear that an incomplete text of Gesta Guillelmi has survived only because a manuscript—in all likelihood, a manuscript of English provenance—fell into the hands of Robert Cotton, and he was willing to loan it overseas in order to facilitate the printing of an edition. Although there was, allegedly, at least one other manuscript extant at this point, in France, the case of William of Poitiers’ Gesta Guillelmi exemplifies the warning that John Bale had issued half a century before. What cannot be known is whether de Peiresc ac­cur­ ate­ly reproduced the reportedly ‘well-preserved’ text in front of him. Whatever its condition, it is certainly incomplete. With the publication of most of Gesta Guillelmi almost all the major Latin narratives of the Conquest itself, Norman as well as English, were readily available in printed editions. As John Selden pointed out four years later in the preface to his edition of Eadmer’s Historia novorum, Norman and English events in the postConquest period were so interleaved that it was impossible to understand English 62  GND i. p. cxxviii. 63  Camdeni . . . epistolae, no. CCIV, p. 262 (12 November 1618); cf. above, p. 321. 64 Tite, Records, p. 244, quoted above, n. 55. It is now impossible to establish on what basis de Peiresc concluded that it was autograph, though he reports that he had studied the script closely, and judged it to be contemporary: Camdeni . . . epistolae, no. CLXXXV, p. 232. For the date of the catalogue in BL, MS. Harley 6018, see Tite, Records, pp. 10–11. 65  Camdeni . . . epistolae, no. CLXXXV, p. 232; Pithou’s witness is said to have been ‘complete’ in letter no. CLXXVI. 66  Davis, ‘William of Poitiers’, pp. 95–6, gives a brief account of the dispersal of Pithou’s library. 67  Camdeni . . . epistolae, no. CLXXXV, p. 232. 68  This is the most likely scenario according to Davis, but Gesta Guillelmi’s absence from subsequent catalogues of Cotton’s library is an obvious objection: Davis, ‘William of Poitiers’, pp. 94–5 and n. 6; van Houts, ‘Cotton’, p. 245.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  371 history without being familiar with the Norman narratives.69 In 1602 even someone as knowledgeable as William Camden had been so ignorant that he could mistake excerpts of Orderic’s Historia ecclesiastica for William of Poitiers.70 It seems highly unlikely that he had ever spent any time with a manuscript of the Gesta Guillelmi. From 1619, access to the Norman historians on the subject of the Conquest was greatly facilitated, because they were all in print. Very soon, Selden’s edition of Eadmer was available too, and the focus of that, as Eadmer himself had emphasized, was on the consequences of the Conquest.

Selden’s Edition of Eadmer’s Historia novorum Unlike Parker, or Lord William Howard, or Savile, or Camden, or de Peiresc and Duchesne, Selden provided a substantial apparatus of appendices—termed ‘Notes and Gleanings’—to his edition of Historia novorum. Indeed, his edition was not in a modern sense an edition because it used only one witness of Eadmer’s text, whereas—as we shall see—it devoted great energy and ingenuity, notably in terms of palaeographical research, to the elaboration of the apparatus. To almost all intents and purposes this was a detailed commentary on certain passages selected from the opening pages of Historia novorum—those concerned with the background to the Conquest and its immediate aftermath. Selden thereby greatly accentuated a proclivity in the original text, and one which differentiated Historia novorum from the other great English histories of the early twelfth century. Had Parker chosen to edit and annotate the Historia novorum, he would have concentrated on quite different aspects of the text. He did not, despite his manifest interest in it. Selden’s focus shows how far attention had shifted away from papal intervention in the kingdom of England and towards its Conquest in the half century since Parker had accorded editorial priority to Matthew Paris. Selden selected with great care the passages which he considered required comment. Eadmer’s passing allusion to the laws which William the Conqueror had issued in the secular sphere was one. Eadmer had made a point of not elab­or­ at­ing: in his view he was writing ecclesiastical history, and therefore it was not his business to do so. With a Romanesque coyness, he invited his audience to infer what those laws were from what he reported about post-Conquest innovations in the ecclesiastical sphere. Selden’s scholarly exploration of this allusive statement constitutes not only the lengthiest section in his editorial apparatus, but also his fullest treatment in this work of the effects on the Conquest.71 In a long introduction 69  Eadmeri Historia, p. vii. 70  See above, p. 366. 71  For his earlier thoughts on the Conquest, see his Jani Anglorum facies altera. Memoria nempe a primula, Henrici II. Adusque abitionem quod occurrit Prophanum Anglo-Britanniae resipiens succincto διηγηματικῷ connexum filo (London 1610), discussed by G.  Garnett, John Selden and the Norman Conquest, Selden Soc. Lecture 2010 (London 2013), esp. pp. 11–16.

372  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 to the section, he quoted the key passage from Alan of Ashbourne’s as yet unprinted Lichfield Chronicle—based, as we have seen, on an adaptation of the narrative prologue to the Leges Edwardi Confessoris—in support of the contention that William had in the fourth year of his reign summoned an assembly at which he had endorsed the laws of King Edward. Selden had recently quoted some of the passage in his Historie of Tithes; here he did so at greater length, and stressed that he had taken it from a manuscript.72 Thereby he rendered it readily available in print. He then identified Henry Knighton, that ‘not undiligent writer’, as another important source on the subject,73 also still unprinted. Most medieval historians he dismissed as mere ‘patchwork writers’;74 he had previously instanced Knighton as a striking exception to this generalization, because Knighton, in the style of Tacitus—the princeps of historians75—‘made special use of the publique Tables and Records’.76 It would seem that in Selden’s view the Leges Edwardi Confessoris—the apocryphal code adapted by Henry Knighton as by Alan of Ashbourne—fell into this category of source. Their use of this code justified Selden’s drawing on these two fourteenth-century historians in a gloss on Eadmer’s treatment of the legal effects of the Conquest. Yet perhaps because Selden already entertained doubts about the authenticity of the extant text of the code,77 he decided not to reproduce it in extenso as a law code of the Conqueror. Rather, he appended an editio princeps of the longer version of Leis Willelme, the text of which he took from Cotton’s manuscript of Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis.78 As far as Selden was concerned, the fact that the Leis were in the ‘Gallic or Norman idiom’ was evidence that these laws of Edward confirmed by William had been faithfully taken down by the new king’s scribes.79 Savile’s signalling that he had omitted the code from his recent edition of the Historia because it was missing from the manuscript he had used had been Selden’s spur to track down a witness which included it.80 As he recounted, he had tried (and failed) to gain access to what he termed the ‘autograph’ of the Historia,81 which he 72  Eadmeri Historia, p. 171; London, BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra  D.  ix, fos 46r–48v, discussed on above, pp. 190–1; cf. Historie of Tithes, p. 482. In 1583 Francis Thynne was shown the fifteenth-century copy which is now Oxford, MS. Bodley 956: The Great Register of Lichfield Cathedral, known as Magnum Registrum Album, ed. H.E. Savage, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, The William Salt Archaeological Soc., 1924 (Kendal 1926), p. xvii. Excerpts were made from it in London, BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra C. iii fos 229v–254r. 73  Eadmeri Historia, p. 171. 74  Eadmeri Historia, p. 171; cf. ‘Praefatio’, [a1v]. 75  Eadmeri Historia, p. ii. 76  Selden’s prefatory letter to Augustine Vincent, A Discouverie of Errours in the First Edition of the Catalogue of Nobility, Published by Raphe Brooke, York Herald, 1619 . . . [with] A Review of a Later Edition (London 1622), a1v. 77  Historie of Tithes, pp. 224–5; Eadmeri Historia, p. 172. 78  London, BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xiii; he had already used it in J. Fortescue, De laudibus legum Angliae, ed. J. Selden (London 1616), ‘Notes on Fortescue’, p. 8 (separately paginated); and had used a different section of the manuscript in his Historie of Tithes, p. 324; Tite, Records, p. 152, and (in 1621), pp. 34 [2.69], 87 [237.3]; Eadmeri Historia, pp. 171–89. 79  Eadmeri Historia, p. 189, cf. 172. 80  Eadmeri Historia, p. 172. 81  Eadmeri Historia, p. 173.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  373 accepted as the work of Abbot Ingulf. In it, therefore, Selden must have believed that he might have read the Conqueror’s vernacular law code, copied out in the hand of the king’s own chancellor, whose proficiency in the drafting of documents is a recurrent theme throughout the book. Ex officio, the abbot would have been in charge of the scribes who had transcribed the king’s law code. Selden’s inability to consult the ‘autograph’ might have been a disappointment, but his signalling its existence lent great authority to the code also preserved in another extant witness of Ingulf ’s Historia, which he had been able to use. Selden supplied a parallel Latin translation, apparently of his own devising.82 To the Leis he appended, in sequentially numbered capitula, an edition of Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati.83 Although he was of course familiar with ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ,84 he made a point of informing his readers that he had not used Lambarde’s edition of this particular code.85 He emphasized that in this instance, as in that of the Leis, he had consulted a manuscript. His aim seems to have been to slight Lambarde’s palaeographical competence. Already in 1610, in his Janus Anglorum, Selden had made a virtue of avoiding ‘Mr Lambard’s Archaionomia (or Antiquities of Law)’.86 In the case of the Articuli, he almost certainly used Cotton’s copy of the London Collection, London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii,87 the most sumptuous of Andrew Horn’s copies.88 He may have felt that its splendour lent it a greater authority, but he was probably just parading his palaeographical virtuosity,89 as he was careful to do throughout the apparatus to his edition. When so much source material remained unprinted, this carried a strong implication of superior knowledge. He then added a third piece of the Conqueror’s legislation, the capitula of which he again numbered sequentially after the two preceding codes: the Latin version of William’s writ on exculpation in cases involving French and Englishmen. As we have seen, Lambarde had decided to omit this, almost certainly because it was not presented in the statute-like form of a code.90 The source Selden cited was another history book: John Brompton’s Chronicle, with Cotton’s witness of which—BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius  C.  xiii—he was already very

82  He appears not to have known of the Latin version in London, BL, MS. Harley 746, which Laurence Nowell had copied in BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius E. v, fos 161v–166r: Gesetze i. 493–520. 83  Eadmeri Historia, pp. 189–93. 84  Eadmeri Historia, p. 189. 85 Lambarde, ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, fos 124r–126r; Gesetze i. 489–91. 86 Selden, Jani Anglorum facies altera, ‘Ad lectorem’, [A6v], cf. pp. 50, 63; The Reverse or Back-face of the English Janus (London 1682), ‘Author’s Preface’, [a3v]. 87  London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius  D.  ii, fo. 34r. Only the final few capitula of the code are ­preserved in this manuscript, because one leaf has been lost: cf. above, p. 267 n. 142. It is impossible to establish whether the rest was already missing in 1622. He borrowed the manuscript from Cotton in 1622: Tite, Records, 2.116 and p. 126. 88  Described as ‘gorgeous’ by P. Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, repr. in his Legal Culture, pp. 81–114, at 89. 89  It was almost certainly consulted by Sir Henry Spelman too, and by other antiquaries: Tite, Records, [46.4], [99.1], p. 126. 90  See above, pp. 332–3.

374  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 familiar.91 There the writ had performed the role of a concluding summation of the Conqueror’s reign.92 It was readily available in Latin in many versions of Quadripartitus, but Selden evidently preferred to cite it from this his­torio­graph­ ic­al source. Thus in order to elucidate and elaborate on Eadmer’s treatment of the legal effects of the Conquest, Selden turned exclusively to sources still in manuscript, even in a case where Lambarde’s printed edition was available. With the apparent exception of Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati—the only supposed piece of legislation by William he shared with Lambarde—Selden sought out legislative texts attributed to the Conqueror which had been spliced into as yet unprinted histories, or in the case of Leis Willelme, had been omitted from the printed edition of the history supposedly written by William I’s chancellor, because it was missing from the manuscript which had been printed. He gave pride of place to those in the Historia Croylandensis and John Brompton’s Chronicle, while downplaying the Leges Edwardi Confessoris excerpted in the Lichfield Chronicle and in Henry Knighton’s Historia, which Lambarde had previously printed, though from legal compilations rather than from histories. All these histories were numbered amongst that very select band of exceptional English historians who had gone against the grain of historical writing in the later middle ages by attempting to reconsider the Conquest afresh. The most important way in which they had done so was by adducing texts of what purported to be the Conqueror’s legislation. As I  have already argued, these two unusual features were connected.93 They were what attracted Selden’s attention. Two or more centuries after Pseudo-Ingulf and the author of John Brompton’s Chronicle had decided to incorporate different, earl­ ier texts of the Conqueror’s laws into their accounts of the Conquest, Selden extracted those texts from the histories into which they had been inserted. He deployed them to comparable effect in the scholarly apparatus to his editio princeps of the earliest of the great post-Conquest historians—the one who, uniquely, had been concerned almost exclusively with the Conquest and its consequences, particularly its consequences for prelates in England. Of the two histories from which he extracted texts of the Conqueror’s legislation, he accorded much greater authority to the Historia Croylandensis, because he accepted that it really had been written by Abbot Ingulf, not only an eyewitness, but an actor at the heart of royal government during the reign.94 Of like mind with his chosen historiographical sources, Selden considered that the key to understanding an historical account of the Conquest lay in illuminating it with the legal materials which, exceptionally, these particular histories happened to

91 Tite, Records, p. 110, for his previous use of it. Selden eventually came to the view that John Brompton was not the author, but had simply acquired the book for his house. Moreover, the Chronicle does not mention Jervaulx Abbey at all: Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, p. xxxv. 92  See above, pp. 203–4. 93  See above, Chapter 5. 94  Eadmeri Historia, p. 172.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  375 preserve, and anything more of the same sort which could be unearthed elsewhere: texts of relevant genuine and apocryphal royal legislation which he did not realize had first been gathered together (and in many cases confected from scratch) in the legal compilations of the twelfth century. This was the type of material which Lambarde had first put into print in 1568, to round off his edition of many of the pre-Conquest royal codes with evidence of King William’s endorsement of them. By the time Selden published his edition of the Historia novorum half a century later, he recognized that his readers would consider Lambarde’s edition the obvious source for such material. Yet most of the legislation that Selden attributed to the Conqueror had not been printed by Lambarde. Selden was implicitly criticizing the selection Lambarde had made.95 Whereas Lambarde, for understandable reasons I have already explored, was of the opinion that the Leges Edwardi Confessoris had a far better claim to au­then­ti­ city than the Leis Willelme,96 Selden took the opposite view, on two grounds. The supposed role of the Conqueror’s chancellor in preserving the vernacular code lent it an incontestable authority; and the Leis had reportedly been issued in the fifteenth year of the reign, whereas the Leges Edwardi purported to have been compiled in the fourth. By implication, the Leis therefore represented King William’s mature disposition. Moreover, Selden agreed with Lambarde on one thing: that there was not room for both supposed codes in an authoritative codification of the laws which William the Conqueror had endorsed. Their opening sections were too similar for that to be possible. In seeking to supply texts of the Conqueror’s secular law which the first of the great post-Conquest English historians had not felt obliged to give, Selden’s instinct was to elucidate Eadmer’s passing comment with what he took to be laws of the Conqueror recovered mostly from the treatments of the Conquest by a very select group of later medieval historians. He had long thought that for the period prior to the thirteenth century the paucity of formal legal records meant that it was necessary, in order to reconstruct what the law had then been, to turn to ‘the Monkish Chronologers, which are to be had at the Shops’.97 In his view, the Historia Croylandensis was just such a source. A version of it had recently become available ‘at the Shops’, whereas Henry Knighton and John Brompton’s Chronicle were yet to do so. Selden invoked all three, and reconfigured in modern antiquarian form the late medieval tradition represented by them. But in his view it was not a late medieval tradition, though it had been replicated by a few exceptional later medieval chroniclers. It had been established by William the Conqueror’s chancellor. This marked a significant shift on Selden’s part from the attitude Henry Savile had displayed less than thirty years before, in 1596. Savile had printed some (though only some) of the Liber de legibus Angliae included by Roger of Howden 95  Discussed above, p. 373. 96  See above, pp. 333–4. 97  Janus Anglorum, p. 128; English Janus, p. 96; Garnett, Selden and the Norman Conquest, pp. 8–11.

376  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 under the year 1180,98 but had presumably done so only because it was integral to Roger’s text. He had signalled that the Leis Willelme was missing from the witness of the Historia Croylandensis which he printed.99 He shows that he knew that the code was integral to Pseudo-Ingulf ’s text, but for whatever reason, he had not tracked down a copy, even though one was obviously known to Nowell and Lambarde not long before, and to Selden not long afterwards. It seems that Savile, like Lord William Howard in his edition of the Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis, and Matthew Parker in his editions of Matthew Paris—and, we might infer, Richard Prise, had he ever got round to complying with that particular wish expressed in his father’s will—was not very interested in printing the legislative texts occasionally inserted into histories, only the historical narratives. Selden, by contrast, was very interested indeed in preserving the integration of the two types of source found in certain exceptional works of history. In that respect he had taken on board the implications of Lambarde’s edition, whatever reservations he might have had about its execution. He wanted to surpass it by adducing texts of the Conqueror’s laws ignored by Lambarde in 1568, the most substantial of which was in the ‘Gallic or Norman’100 vernacular; and by providing what he strongly implied was a superior text of one document Lambarde had already printed. He had recognized that in order to understand the legal consequences of the Conquest it was necessary to triangulate historical writing about it with what he deemed the most reliable texts of the Conqueror’s legislation, most of which were to be found in histories. The apparatus to his edition of the Historia novorum therefore elides the two types of late sixteenth-century antiquarian editorial activity which have been the subject of Chapters 8, 9, and 10. Echoing Boethius, he urges future editors of historiographical texts to investigate the record evidence, ‘examining the texts scrupulously, so as to add the forgotten parts to the familiar’. His edition set out a ‘path’ for other scholars to follow.101 Such an example was necessary because contemporary historians tended to content themselves with recasting the work of their predecessors in an elegant style, rather than investigating ancient manuscripts and records. He likened them to someone who finds the lion skin and club of Hercules, and places them on a ‘prostituted Omphale’.102 He, by contrast, set out to edit an old historian, but what that meant for him was focussing almost all his attention on illuminating the text by reference to other types of ancient source. The irony is that despite Selden’s privileging of histories as repositories of evidence for early English law, and despite his decision to edit the early-twelfth century historian who had been clearest about the dramatic and abrupt 98  Savile, ed., Scriptores, fos 342v–348v. He printed only Tripartita, including the Norman ducal genealogy, not Bishop Alexander’s glossary and Glanvill. 99  Savile, ed., Scriptores, fo. 509v, discussed above, p. 189. 100  Eadmeri Historia, p. 189. 101  Eadmeri Historia, p. xiv; cf. Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae V. 3. 102  Eadmeri Historia, p. ix; cf. Lucian, How to Write History x.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  377 consequences of the Conquest, his assessment was in accord with that embodied in the legislative texts he preferred to extract from histories: that there had been legal continuity over the Conquest.103 His reading of Historia novorum on this subject, embodied in his editorial apparatus, is antithetical to the plain sense of Eadmer’s text.104 It is expressed not only in his lengthy elaboration of Eadmer’s brief allusion to the Conqueror’s secular laws, but also in his commentary on Eadmer’s fuller account of the celebrated land plea at Penenden Heath.105 In this Selden drew on two independent manuscript accounts of the plea,106 and made the connection with the corresponding Domesday entries. In doing so, he accepted at face value the Domesday fiction of tenurial continuity over the Conquest, which Eadmer had certainly not done.107 On Domesday Book, which Selden discussed in some detail in the preface, he followed the unpublished treatise on the subject by Arthur Agarde, deputy chamberlain of the Exchequer,108 then in the possession of Cotton. This had drawn his attention to the terms of reference for the whole Survey preserved in the (unprinted) Inquisitio Eliensis.109 The significance of that template, stipulating that everything should be recorded at three distinct points in time—‘T.R.E.’, when the land had been given, and ‘T.R.W.’—had been noticed by Agarde.110 It created the fictional template of ten­ ur­ial continuity over the Conquest which is intrinsic to the Book. But Agarde did not see it as a fiction. For him, Domesday Book was a momentous manifestation of William I’s con­firm­ation of Old English law.111 Tenure was very important aspect of law. Selden agreed. As an appendix to his preface, he printed the key passage from Inquisitio Eliensis.112 Selden’s scholarship might have been innovative, but

103 Garnett, Selden and the Norman Conquest, pp. 13–15. 104 Garnett, Selden and the Norman Conquest, pp. 38–41. 105  Eadmeri Historia, pp. 197–200. 106  He claimed to print the account in Textus Roffensis, a manuscript to which Lambarde had drawn attention in his A Perambulation of Kent: Conteining the description, Hystorie, and Customes of that Shyre. Collected and written (for the most part) in the yeare. 1570 (London 1576), p. 306, cf. 178– 80 (though he did not print this text). In fact, Selden printed the different account in London, BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian  A.  xxii, a book which he borrowed from Cotton c. 1623: Tite, Records, p. 176. Lambarde wrote a note, fo. 2, cross-referring to Textus Roffensis. Selden must have seen this. 107  Discussed in more detail, Garnett, Selden and the Norman Conquest, pp. 37–40. 108  Damaged versions in Latin and English are found in London, BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius C. ix, fos 223/229r–224/230v (Latin); 229/235r–233/239v (English). It was probably written in 1599, and has been printed twice: R. Gale, ed., Registrum honoris de Richmond. Exhibens terrarum & villarum quae quondam fuerunt Edwini comitis infra Richmundshire descriptionem (London 1722), app. I, pp. 1–7; T. Hearne, ed., A Collection of Curious Discourses, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Oxford 1771), i. 43–50. 109  London, BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius A. vi, fo. 38. 110  See Agarde’s still unprinted glossary of Domesday terminology: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Top. Gen. c. 22, fo. 52r; E.M. Hallam, ‘Arthur Agarde and Domesday Book’, in C.J. Wright, ed., Robert Cotton as Collector (London 1997), pp. 253–61, at 255. In the Inquisitio Eliensis, the abbreviations are not used. 111  BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius C. ix, fos 229/235r–233v/237v; Bodleian Library, MS. Top. Gen. c. 22, fo. 44r. 112  Eadmeri Historia, pp. xv–xvi.

378  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 his conclusions—at least his mature conclusions,113 embodied in this edition—were those of a conventional English lawyer.

Conclusion Selden’s account of the Conqueror’s secular legislation was to be profoundly influential. In 1644 the considerably expanded version of Lambarde’s ­ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, now including (amongst other additions) the first printing of the early twelfth-century Leges Henrici, was published.114 In preparation Abraham Whelock revised Lambarde’s work thoroughly.115 Selden had supplied him with a copy of the 1568 edition corrected by Lambarde himself.116 It is possible that this was the copy which Selden owned after Lambarde, and which is now in the Bodleian Library.117 But it was Roger Twysden, not Whelock, who was re­spon­sible for the edition of the Leges Henrici118 which had been promised by Lambarde in the dedicatory epistle of the first edition, but never delivered.119 The Leges Henrici120 was the second item in a supplementary new section or appendix, separately ­entitled ‘Leges Willielmi Conquestoris, et Henrici, filii ejus’. The section’s first code, presented as the Conqueror’s laws, was simply reprinted from Selden’s apparatus to Historia novorum, as Twysden candidly acknowledged.121 It comprised the Leis Willelme (in Selden’s parallel Latin translation as well as the ori­gin­al French),122 followed by the Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati123 (the text of which Twysden in effect reprinted for a second time in a single volume, because Whelock had already reprinted it124 along with the other codes edited by Lambarde), and rounded off with the Latin translation of the writ on exculpation.125 All these 113  See earlier works discussed by Garnett, Selden and the Norman Conquest, pp. 8, 11–23. 114  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn. This was often bound up with the 1644 reprint of Whelock’s 1643 edition of Bede’s Historia ecclesisastica in Old English and Latin under the overall title: Venerabilis Bedae Historia ecclesiastica: cui accessere, Leges Anglo-Saxonicae. However, the new edition of Lambarde has its own title page, is separately paginated, and appears to have been published subsequently. 115  A copy of Whelock’s edition, bound, as often, with the 1644 reprint of his edition of Bede, and now in the Bodleian Library, shelf mark Vet. A.3 c. 196, includes an early nineteenth-century transcript of an otherwise lost twelfth-century leaf of a copy of II–III Edgar: Wormald, Making, pp. 259–60. As the nineteenth-century owner recorded in a pencil note on p. 62, the variants were inscribed in the margins of the edition by him, not by Whelock, who presumably knew nothing of the stray leaf. 116  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, ¶2. 117  Bodleian shelf mark 4ͦ L 5 Jur. Seld. 118  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, pp. 175–216. 119  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 1st edn, [Bi v]. Henry Spelman had also promised an edition in his Archaeologus in modum Glossarii ad rem antiquam posteriorem (London 1626), s.v. aberemurdrum, pp. 4–5; elsewhere he quoted many passages from the text. 120  In his preface—ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, p. 153—Twysden cited three manuscript witnesses: that in the Red Book of the Exchequer, and two which are no longer extant, one of which belonged to John Selden, and the other to Twysden himself. The variant readings recorded suggest that both these witnesses belonged to the London Collection: Downer, LHP, p. 49. 121  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, p. 157. 122  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, pp. 159–69. 123  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, pp. 170–2. 124  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, pp. 136–7. Of course, Whelock here reprinted the Lambarde edition which Selden had disparaged. 125  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, pp. 172–3.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  379 Twysden placed, in this order, immediately after the by then already celebrated passages from the Lichfield Chronicle and Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis,126 which Selden had also printed in the same section of his apparatus. Within a decade Twysden would, as we have seen, go on to print a massive volume of hitherto unedited medieval histories, including some of those which had shown exceptional interest in the Conqueror’s laws, namely the Annales de Burton, John Brompton’s Chronicle, and Henry Knighton’s Historia.127 Selden contributed a substantial introduction, which examined the manuscript traditions, and elaborated on each historian (in greatly varying detail) in much the fashion exemplified by his gleanings on Historia novorum.128 Several of the histories included were amongst those identified by Selden in his preface to his edition of Historia novorum as texts he would not excerpt in his apparatus, because to do so would discourage some future scholar from publishing the full texts.129 (He clearly had no such qualms about the Lichfield Chronicle, perhaps because the significant passage was so different in nature from the rest of the book.)130 Twysden had turned out to be that future scholar. But in the second edition of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, all the additions, other than the Leges Henrici, made by Twysden were taken from the key section in Selden’s apparatus to Historia novorum. And in preparing the edition of the Leges Henrici, he made use of a manuscript belonging to Selden which no longer survives.131 Selden’s edition of Historia novorum therefore marks a fitting consummation and integration of two parallel antiquarian endeavours: the attempts made in response to the dispersal of monastic libraries to preserve, understand, edit, and print (i) the major works of medieval English historical writing and (ii) historical compilations of English laws. In both cases, the most important and influential dated from the first half of the twelfth century. Those two strands of post-Dissolution editorial scholarship had taken off in different ways in 1568. It is likely that at the same time that shadowy hero of Elizabethan legal antiquarianism, Laurence Nowell, made a transcript of William of Jumièges’ Gesta Normannorum ducum. Like so much of Nowell’s unprinted work, it is almost certainly still extant.132 A few years before, as we have seen, he

126  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, pp. 158. 127  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X. 128  Twysden, ed., Scriptores X, pp. i–xlviii. Ralph Jennyngs, the amanuensis who copied the manuscripts, records that Archbishop Ussher was also involved: Scriptores X, col. 2768v. 129  Eadmeri Historia, pp. vi–vii. They were Ailred of Rievaulx, Ralph de Diceto, ‘Turgot’ of Durham (whom Selden identified as the true author of John Brompton’s Chronicle), and ‘Robert’ (recte Henry) Knighton. 130  See above, pp. 190–2, 269. 131  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, p. 153; F. Liebermann, Über das Englische Rechtsbuch Leges Henrici (Halle 1901), pp. 13–15; LHP, pp. 49, 73. 132  R. Flower, ‘Laurence Nowell and the Discovery of England in Tudor Times’, repr. in E.G. Stanley, ed., British Academy Papers on Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford 1990), pp. 1–27, at 6. It is listed by J. Nichols, Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, 8 vols (London 1780–90), i. 511, no. VI, which records that at the end is written: ‘Laurentius Noelus transcripsit, 1568, in Gallia nactus vetustissimum exemplar.’ I am very grateful to Nigel Ramsay for his suggestion that this was amongst the Nowell manuscripts

380  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 had not ignored Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum when he transcribed the witness of Tripartita which was appended to it, but had copied much of that too.133 His name, with the date 1563, appears on the first folio of the only ­thirteenth-century witness of Matthew Paris’s La Estoire de Seint Ædward le rei; it is also recorded that William Lambarde subsequently gave the book, presumably in his capacity as Nowell’s executor, to Sir Walter Cope.134 John Stow had consulted a copy of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon owned by Nowell.135 Nowell’s legal research was more thorough and systematic, but did not exclude parallel work on historical writing, and cartography.136 However, for all his scholarly activity ­precedent to the production of printed editions by others, and his preparation of his own manuscript editions,137 Nowell printed nothing himself. Lambarde, by contrast, not only published his great edition of the law codes, he also, in his vernacular A Perambulation of Kent, wrote a chorographical history which made extensive, detailed, and carefully documented use of unprinted medieval historiography and medieval records (as Thomas Wotton, sometime sheriff of Kent, signalled in an epistle to readers, and William Fleetwood reiterated in a prefatory Latin poem).138 In that respect Lambarde realized, with respect to a single shire, the ambition which Leland had proved incapable of fulfilling for himself.139 Lambarde was quite conscious of the fact that he was not writing history, as the genre was traditionally defined: ‘my purpose specially is to write a Topographie, or description of places, and no Chronographie, or storie of times (although I must now and then use bothe, since the one can not be fully perfourmed without enterlacing the other)’.140 He was consciously devising a new genre of antiquarian writing, though one which had both ancient and medieval precedents— for instance, in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum. In so far as the content was chronologically specific, it was concerned with Kent prior to the Conquest, the period with the sources for which he was most familiar. It had originally been auctioned at the Hodgson’s sale in June 1924, and that it is now Charlottesville, VA, University of Virginia, MS. Hench 15: C.U.  Faye and W.H.  Bond, Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (1962), p. 515. I have not been able to examine the manuscript. 133  Huntington Library, HM 26341. 134  Cambridge, UL, MS. Ee. 3. 59, fo. 1; Watson, ‘Sir Walter Cope’, p. 292. 135  The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A.H. Thomas and I.D. Thornley (London 1938), p. xvi. 136 P.D.A. Harvey, Maps in Tudor England (London 1993), pp. 25, 52, 54. His ‘General Description of England and Ireland’, c. 1564—London, BL, MS. Add. 62540—had been commissioned by Cecil, who was said always to carry it with him. Nowell sketched a self-portrait on it: see above, Plate 13. 137  See the sumptuous manuscript edition of Alfred’s law code, together with parallel translation into modern English, in London, BL, Henry Davis Collection 59; R. Brackmann, ‘Laurence Nowell’s Edition and Translation of the Laws of Alfred in London BL Henry Davis 59’, The Heroic Age. A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe, xiv (2010): http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/ issues/14/brackmann.php. 138  Perambulation (1576), [¶¶.ii.v]. 139  See above, p. 290. 140  Permabulation (1576), p. 18.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  381 his intention to accomplish for the rest of the country what he had done for his native county,141 but he eventually came to the conclusion that this was simply not possible for him. When he realized how much progress William Camden had made with just such a scheme, he consciously and generously handed on the torch to him.142 Camden’s Britannia, published in Latin and eventually translated into English,143 and repeatedly revised, became the consummation of the new genre. As its title intimated, it comprised Wales and Scotland as well as England. Indeed, as far as Camden was concerned, Britannia included Ireland too. As each new edition emerged, Camden was able to take account of the latest publications and of the latest as yet unpublished research.144 Although he was able to adduce material which bore upon the Conquest, the chorographical arrangement was not apt to promote sustained discussion of it. Camden’s Britannia therefore informed analysis of the Conquest by providing a massive resource of data, rather than by developing much in the way of argument of its own. The two strands of editorial work which have been the main focus of Chapters 8, 9, and 10 were for the most part distinct though connected during Elizabeth’s reign. They coalesced and reached a joint consummation following the accession of James I, prompted by the challenge which he was understood to pose to English traditions, most especially legal traditions. Selden’s edition of Historia novorum epitomizes that consummation. In their different ways he and his con­tem­por­ar­ies— Edward Coke and Henry Spelman turned out to be the other two who would become most influential in the seventeenth century—found themselves deploying their considerable if diverse historical scholarship to current political purposes. As medieval precedent was invoked against the highly offensive proposed innovations of James I and his son and successor, so these monarchs responded in kind. Argument about what the Conquest had or had not changed became central to that debate; and there can be no doubt that those who ranged themselves against Stuart innovation made most of the running, at least until after the Restoration. At the time of his succession to Elizabeth, James was already king of another kingdom. His project to unify his new with his old kingdom, by making them share a common system of law, was widely deemed analogous to another conquest of England,145 five and a half centuries on. The Norman Conquest had of course

141  P.W. Hasler, ed., History of Parliament: House of Commons 1558–1603, 3 vols (London 1981), ii. 430. 142  Camdeni . . . epistolae, no. XXII, pp. 28–30 (29 July 1585). 143 W.  Camden, Britannia, sive florentissimorum regnorum Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae insularum adjacentium ex intima antiquitate chorographica descriptio (London 1586). Many further expanded editions followed; it was translated into English as W. Camden, Britain, or a Chorographical Description of the Most Flourishing Kingdomes. England, Scotland, and Ireland, trans. Philemon Holland (London 1610). 144  For example, the case of Sharnborn, discussed below. pp. 383–5. 145  G. Garnett, ‘“The ould fields”: Law and History in the Prefaces to Sir Edward Coke’s Reports’, Journal of Legal History, xxxiv (2013), 245–84, at 248–9; Baker, Reinvention, pp. 241–2, 300–1.

382  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 been seen as the key event in medieval English history ever since its immediate aftermath. In 1603 it suddenly gained a new, acute, contemporary resonance. Throughout the seventeenth century and indeed later, the Conquest in particular, and medieval English history more generally, became intrinsic to debate about how the English kingdom should be governed currently. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the terms of debate in the kingdom’s most cataclysmic century, politically speaking, since the eleventh, were largely shaped by contemporary interpretation of the decisive event of the eleventh. And that interpretation was not simply a matter of assertion. It could be and was based on detailed investigation of evidence which was becoming more and more widely available. It is important to recall that Selden’s edition of Historia novorum, which accentuated Eadmer’s already exceptional focus on the impact of the Conquest, though to antithetical effect, was prepared while the editor was imprisoned in the Tower of London. He dedicated it to John Williams, dean of Westminster, whom he credited with securing his release.146 He had been incarcerated on account of what he had recently published in his Historie of Tithes. His monarch had twice, in person, interrogated him on the subject.147 With James’s accession research in medieval English history had ceased to be something countenanced and encouraged by the authorities, as had been the case throughout the time of Leland, Bale, Parker, and Lambarde, and become something they regarded with suspicion and trepidation. This abrupt reversal in official attitudes happened at exactly the point when fresh attention came to be focussed on the Conquest. Unlike the Historie, Selden’s scholarship in the editorial apparatus to Historia novorum was discreetly veiled in a learned language, and at first sight appeared both arcane and obscure. He concluded his preface with the observation that the edition’s subject was so remote that he should be safe from ‘either the ignorance or the impudence of slandering informers’.148 The title page, however, had quoted an epigram of Juvenal to the effect that it was only prudent to dress up satire in antique terms.149 In other words, in plain sight Selden had hinted at a contemporary agenda for this innovative work of scholarship. We have seen that well before James’s accession renewed legal interest in Magna Carta had led to a fresh focus on earlier English law, unwritten as well as written, which it was considered to reaffirm. From the 1570s, one political manifestation was the great interest suddenly shown by MPs in the Modus tenendi parliamentum. If much of this new interest in the second half of Elizabeth’s reign was initially provoked by the activities of the prerogative Court of High Commission,150 this was a fortiori the case on a far wider front after James’s accession. With most 146 G.J. Toomer, John Selden: A Life in Scholarship, 2 vols (Oxford 2009), i. 138. 147  G.J. Toomer, ‘Selden’s Historie of Tithes: Genesis, Publication, Aftermath’, Huntington Library Quarterly, lxv (2002), 345–78, at 360–75; Toomer, Selden i. 305–10. 148  Eadmeri Historia, p. xiv. 149  Sat. 1.162–3. 150 Baker, Reinvention, pp. 249–66, 270–5.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  383 of the great post-Conquest historical works also now in print, and therefore readily accessible, argument became possible on an unprecedented scale. Even relatively obscure sources which were not, or not yet, in print were widely invoked. This was not simply because the locations of their manuscript witnesses had become well known to the small band of scholars who made most of the running in investigation of England’s medieval past. Once quoted and discussed in print, they became part of the debate, even if available only at second hand, in gobbet form. The key passage from the Lichfield Chronicle, first printed by John Selden in his Historie of Tithes, reprinted very shortly afterwards in the apparatus to his edition of Historia novorum, and included (with acknowledgement to Selden) by Roger Twysden in the supplement to the second edition of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ,151 is a case in point. That attempt to epitomize the Conquest, highly unusual for the fourteenth-century, was accepted as a reliable account precisely because it was congruent with the long-established doctrine of legal continuity. And that congruence was hardly surprising, because the account was simply a re-edited version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. What was to become another important source on the subject may also have been fabricated in the later middle ages, or perhaps much more recently. In the absence of the allegedly ancient document relating to Sharnborn, Norfolk, which Sir Henry Spelman claimed to have transcribed, it is impossible to tell. All we now have is what purports to be that transcription.152 But this elaboration of the Domesday entry153 for the manor, once Camden had printed it on the alleged basis of ‘old deeds and evidences’,154 would soon become a locus classicus in the 151  AΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, p. 158. 152  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Ashmole 1141, v, fos 1b, 2–15; printed H.  Spelman, Reliquiae Spelmannianae. The Posthumous Works of Sir Henry Spelman Kt. Relating to the Laws and Antiquities of England (Oxford 1698), pp. 187–200; cf. Spelman, Archaeologus, s.v. ‘Drenges’, p. 227, and H.  Spelman, in D.  Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxonicae Ecclesiasticae & Civiles. Accedunt Leges Eduardi Latinae, Guilielmi Conquestoris Gallo-Normannicae, et Henrici  I.  Latinae. Subjungitur Domini Henr. Spelmanni Codex Legum Veterum Statutorum Regni Angliae, quae ab ingressu Guilielmi  I.  usque ad annum nonum Henr. III. edita sunt (London 1721), pp. 287–8 This is not to insinuate that Spelman forged it. He comments, fos 13r, 14r, that the hands in the original which he claims to be transcribing change and become more modern at these points in the original text. He does not suggest how modern. According to Sir John Davies, Le Primer Report des Cases & Matters en Ley resolues & adiudges en les Courts del Roy en Ireland (Dublin 1615), fo. 41r, ‘Calthorp J.’ had seen ‘an authentique Copy de cest Judgement’ in the library of Sir Christopher Heydon of Baconsthorpe, Norfolk, who is better known for his astrological than for historical or legal interests. Spelman printed a Latin translation of the Tribal Hidage, from what he described as a veterrima scheda formerly in the possession of Francis Tate. The text, no longer extant in any other form, differed from the version in the London Collection, and seems to have been authentic: Spelman, Archaeologus, s.v. ‘De Hidis & Hidagiis Anglo-saxonicis’, p. 353; D.N. Dumville, ‘The Tribal Hidage: An Introduction to its Texts and their History’, in S. Bassett, ed., The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (London 1989), pp. 225–30. 153  II DB 213a. 154 Camden, Britannia (1607), p. 350; Britain (1610), p. 480. This is the episode’s first appearance in print. It is not mentioned in earlier editions of Britannia, which by contrast emphasize tenurial transformation after the Conquest; further J. Greenberg and L. Martin, ‘Politics and Memory: Sharnborn’s Case and the Role of the Norman Conquest in Stuart Political Thought’, in H. Nenner, ed., Politics and the Political Imagination in Later Stuart Britain: Essays Presented to Lois Green Schwoerer (Rochester, NY 1997), pp. 121–42.

384  Norman Conquest in English History: Vol. 1 demonstration of tenurial continuity over the Conquest. It was invoked, for instance, in Twysden’s account of King William’s laws in the 1644 edition of ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ.155 It concerned an Englishman named Edwin of Sharnborn who had held prior to the Conquest. Shortly after his accession King William had granted two of Edwin’s manors to William de Warenne and William d’Albini respectively, but had subsequently (on Edwin’s plea) revoked the grants and restored the manors to Edwin. However, the case did not lead Camden, who had a track record of accepting newly unearthed, convenient documentation as authentic,156 to the obvious conclusion that existing Old English tenurial rights were acknowledged to have endured. Counterintuitively, he continued to assert that William had secured England by conquest, and exercised the rights of a conqueror in the kingdom. In Selden’s first invocation of the case, in his commissioned commentary on Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion of 1612, he followed suit,157 although ostensibly on the authority of contemporary continental civil lawyers.158 Indeed he made a point of asserting that William had ‘dispos’d all things as a Conquerour’, a conqueror who had eventually decided to use his absolute rights as such to confirm most existing English law, though with the explicit exception of the law of tenure. By the time Selden came to write Historie of Tithes, however, he acknowledged that William had had a claim to the throne, and therefore could not have acted as a conqueror. All that is plain out of the stories, and justified most infallibly by that of the Titles of many common persons made to their possessions in England after his Kingdom setled, upon the possession of themselves or their Ancestors in the time of the Saxon Kings, especially of the Confessor.159

155  ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝΟΜΙΑ, 2nd edn, p. 155. 156  Camden was credulous about the account sent to him by Henry Savile the Elder which recorded King Alfred’s intervention in a teaching dispute at Oxford University. This Henry Savile, father of Henry Savile of Banke, neither of whom should be confused with the eponymous Warden of Merton College and editor of Scriptores, claimed to have come across the passage in a manuscript of Asser in his possession: A.G.  Watson, ‘The Manuscripts of Henry Savile of Banke’, repr. in his Medieval Manuscripts in Post-Medieval England (Aldershot 2004), ch. IX, pp. 1–91, at 83–5. The passage was incorporated by Camden for the first time into the 1600 edition of Britannia, pp. 331–2; Britain, (1610), pp. 378–9. He also inserted it into his reissue of Asser: Anglica, Hibernica, Normannica, Cambrica, a veteribus scripta (Frankfurt 1602), p. 16. In this case it is clear that the passage was recently forged by someone. 157  ‘Illustrations’ to M. Drayton, Poly-Olbion (London 1612), p. 268, cf. pp. 73–4. 158  He cites Alberico Gentili, De iure belli ac pacis, libri III (Hannover 1598), III., cap. v, pp. 499– 505, whose citation, p. 499, of F. Hotman, Quaestionum illustrium liber (Geneva 1573), q. v, p. 33, was lifted by Selden. He added a citation of Sir Edward Coke’s recently published report on Calvin’s Case, though to support an interpretation of the Conquest antithetical to that espoused by Coke: Garnett, Selden and the Norman Conquest, p. 21. 159  Historie of Tithes, p. 483.

Printing of 12th-c. English Historiography  385 He had been studying Domesday Book, which he cited repeatedly.160 He illustrated the point by reference to the Sharnborn case, now interpreted straightforwardly as evidence of tenurial continuity. ‘How could such Titles have held if [William] had made an absolute conquest of England, wherein a universall acquisition of all had been to the Conqueror, and no title could be derived but of or under him.’ This reinterpretation, sketched in the ‘Review’ of the Historie of Tithes, was to be elaborated in great documentary detail in the editorial apparatus to Historia novorum. It reinforced traditional English legal orthodoxy with the latest his­tor­ic­al scholarship, and reached much the same conclusion as Sir Edward Coke, though by a rather different route.161 The historiographical tradition concerning the Conquest which had lain largely dormant since the thirteenth century, and the legal tradition which had been kept alive through the later middle ages in the courts and in what passed for common law jurisprudence, were thus both revitalized as they coalesced around the beginning of the seventeenth century. That process was facilitated by and manifest in the publication in print of editions of most of the seminal texts which had been written primarily in the first half of the twelfth century. The resurrection of the Norman Conquest as a political issue in the seventeenth century, when it assumed an importance commensurate with that attributed to it in its immediate aftermath, will be the subject of the second volume of this study.

160  Historie of Tithes, [p. 493]. He seems to have secured access to Agarde’s guide to Domesday only in 1621: Tite, Records, [2.85]. 161  Garnett, ‘“Ould fields”, passim.

Manuscripts Aberystwyth National Library of Wales, MS. Peniarth 42. National Library of Wales, MS. Peniarth 390. Alençon Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 1. Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 14. Baltimore, MA Walters Art Gallery, MS. 793. Cambridge UL, MS. Add. 3392. UL, MS. Dd. 2. 5. UL, MS. Dd. 13. 2. UL, MS. Ee. 3. 59; for a digital facsimile, see: . UL, MS. Ee. 5. 14. UL, MS. Ff. 1. 25. UL, MS. Ff. 1. 27. UL, MS. Ff. 1. 28. UL, MS. Ii. 2. 3. UL, MS. Ii. 4. 6. UL, MS. Kk. 3. 18. Clare College, MS. 18. Corpus Christi College, MS. 9. Corpus Christi College, MS. 16. Corpus Christi College, MS. 26. Corpus Christi College, MS. 43. Corpus Christi College, MS. 56. Corpus Christi College, MS. 70. Corpus Christi College, MS. 76. Corpus Christi College, MS. 92. Corpus Christi College, MS. 96. Corpus Christi College. MS. 114. Corpus Christi College, MS. 138. Corpus Christi College, MS. 139. Corpus Christi College, MS. 157. Corpus Christi College, MS. 173. Corpus Christi College, MS. 187. Corpus Christi College, MS. 190. Corpus Christi College, MS. 195. Corpus Christi College, MS. 201. Corpus Christi College, MS. 240. Corpus Christi College, MS. 258. Corpus Christi College, MS. 265. Corpus Christi College, MS. 276.

388 Manuscripts Corpus Christi College, MS. 280. Corpus Christi College, MS. 290. Corpus Christi College, MS. 341. Corpus Christi College, MS. 371. Corpus Christi College, MS. 383. Corpus Christi College, MS. 452. Trinity College, MS. B. 10. 5. Trinity College, MS. O. 8. 6. Trinity College, MS. R. 5. 34. Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 1. Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 4. Trinity College, MS. R. 7. 13. Cambridge, MA Harvard University, Harvard Law Library, MS. 77. Canterbury Cathedral Library, MS. Lit. B.2. Cathedral Library, MS. Lit. E.2. Charlottesville, VA University of Virginia, MS. Hench 15. Douai Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 852. Dublin Trinity College, MS. 176. Trinity College, MS. 337. Trinity College, MS. 491. Trinity College, MS. 502. Trinity College, MS. 503. Durham Cathedral Library, MS. A.II.4. Cathedral Library, MS. B.II.35. Cathedral Library, MS. B.IV.24. Edinburgh National Library of Scotland, MS. Advocates 18. 7. 8. National Library of Scotland, MS. 33. 5. 3. Eton Eton College, MS. 123. Exeter Cathedral Library, MS. 3500. Hereford Cathedral Library, MS. P.I.10. Cathedral Library, MS. P.V.1. Lichfield Cathedral Library MS. 28. now deposited in Staffordshire Record Office, LD 532. Liège Bibliothèque universitaire, MS. 369C. London BL. MS. Add. 4838. BL, MS. Add. 14030. BL, MS. Add. 14252. BL, MS. Add. 24061.

Manuscripts  389 BL, MS. Add. 25005. BL, MS. Add. 29901. BL, MS. Add. 32097. BL, MS. Add. 34652. BL, MS. Add. 35179. BL, MS. Add. 38132. BL, MS. Add. 43703. BL, MS. Add. 43704. BL, MS. Add. 48031. BL, MS. Add. 49366. BL, MS. Add. 49618. BL, MS. Add. 62540. BL, MS. Add. 74236. BL, MS. Arundel 31. BL, MS. Arundel 35. BL, MS. Arundel 41. BL, MS. Arundel 46. BL, MS. Arundel 48. BL, MS. Arundel 150. BL, MS. Arundel 161. BL, MS. Arundel 178. BL, MS. Burney 277. BL, MS. Cotton Julius B. viii. BL, MS. Cotton Julius C. ii. BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius A. iii. BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius A. vi. BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius A. ix. BL, MS. Cotton Tiberius C. xiii. BL, MS. Cotton Caligula A. vi. BL, MS. Cotton Claudius B. v. BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D. ii. BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D. vi. BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D. ix. BL, MS. Cotton Claudius E. viii. BL, MS. Cotton Nero A. i (A). BL, MS. Cotton Nero C. iii. BL, MS. Cotton Nero C. v. BL, MS. Cotton Nero C. vii. BL, MS. Cotton Nero D. i. BL, MS. Cotton Nero D. viii. BL, MS. Cotton Nero E. i. BL, MS. Cotton Galba A. xviii. BL, MS. Cotton Otho A. x. BL, MS. Cotton Otho A. xii. BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. vi. BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. x. BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xi. BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xiii. BL, MS. Cotton Otho B. xiv. BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius A. viii. BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius A. xx.

390 Manuscripts BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius C. ix. BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius C. xii. BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius D. xi. BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius E. v. BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius E. xiv. BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian A. xix. BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian A. xxii. BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian B. xi. BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian B. xix. BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian B. xx. BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian E. iii. BL, MS. Cotton Titus A. ix. BL, MS. Cotton Titus A. xxvii. BL, MS. Cotton Titus F. iii. BL, MS. Cotton Domitian A. vii. BL, MS. Cotton Domitian A. viii. BL. MS. Cotton Domitian A. xviii. BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. i. BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra D. ix. BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra E. iv. BL, MS. Cotton Cleopatra E. vi. BL, MS. Egerton 3668. BL, MS. Harley 2. BL, MS. Harley 55. BL, MS. Harley 357. BL, MS. Harley 458. BL, MS. Harley 491. BL, MS. Harley 692. BL, MS. Harley 742. BL, MS. Harley 746. BL, MS. Harley 1062. BL, MS. Harley 1704. BL, MS. Harley 2901. BL, MS. Harley 3659. BL, MS. Harley 4717. BL, MS. Harley 5194. BL, MS. Harley 6018. BL, Henry Davis Collection 59. BL, MS. Lansdowne 239. BL, MS. Lansdowne 1145. BL, MS. Royal 1. A. xviii. BL, MS. Royal 2. B. vii. BL, MS. Royal 3. B. xvi. BL, MS. Royal 5. A. xv. BL, MS. Royal 5. B. ii. BL, MS. Royal 5. B. xiv. BL, MS. Royal 5. D. iv + v. BL, MS. Royal 5. D. vi. BL, MS. Royal 5. D. vii. BL, MS. Royal 6. B. i. BL, MS. Royal 6. C. xi.

Manuscripts  391 BL, MS. Royal 8. D. iii. BL, MS. Royal 9. E. xv. BL, MS. Royal 11. B. ii. BL, MS. Royal 12. B. v. BL, MS. Royal 13. A. xviii. BL, MS. Royal 13. A. xxi. BL, MS. Royal 13. B. iv. BL, MS. Royal 13. B. v. BL, MS. Royal 13. B. vi. BL, MS. Royal 13. B. ix. BL, MS. Royal 13. C. v. BL, MS. Royal 13. D. ii. BL, MS. Royal 13. D. v. BL, MS. Royal 13. D. vi. BL, MS. Royal 13. D. vii. BL, MS. Royal 13. E. vi. BL, MS. Royal 14. C. ii. BL, MS. Royal 14. C. vi. BL, MS. Royal 14. C. vii. BL, MS. Royal 14. C. ix. BL, MS. Royal Appendix 69. BL, MS. Yates Thompson 26. College of Arms, MS. Arundel 7. College of Arms, MS. Arundel 11. College of Arms, MS. Arundel 38. College of Arms, MS. Arundel 48. Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 175. Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 429. Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 1106. Metropolitan Archives, MS. CUST 2. Metropolitan Archives, MS. CUST 6. Metropolitan Archives, MS. CUST 12. Metropolitan Archives, MS. ‘Liber Horn’. Metropolitan Archives, ‘Liber memorandum’. The National Archives, E36/284. Los Angeles, CA University of California, Los Angeles MS. 170/529. Malibu, CA J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig XI. 6. Manchester Chetham’s Library, MS. 6712. John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 155. John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420. Oxford Bodleian Library, MS. Add. C. 260. Bodleian Library, MS. Arch. Seld. B. 16. Bodleian Library, MS. Auct. F. 1. 9. Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 240. Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 297. Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 447. Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 517.

392 Manuscripts Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 521. Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 956. Bodleian Library, MS. Digby 168. Bodleian Library, MS. Digby 170. Bodleian Library, MS. Digby 211. Bodleian Library, MS. e Museo 93. Bodleian Library, MS. Hatton 54. Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. Hist. d. 2. Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 243. Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 572. Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 593. Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 636. Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 742. Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson B. 189. Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson B. 356. Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson C. 398. Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson D. 1228. Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson G. 139. Bodleian Library, MS. Top. Gen. c. 3. Balliol College, MS. 260. Balliol College, MS. 271. Corpus Christi College, MS. 89. Merton College, MS. 181. Oriel College, MS. 42. Oriel College, MS. 46. St John’s College, MS. 17. St John’s College, MS. 97. Trinity College, MS. 28. Paris BN, MS. lat. 5506. BN, MS. lat. 6048B. BN, MS. 10062. BN, MS. lat. 10508. Princeton, NJ Scheide Library, MS. 159, on deposit in Princeton University Library. Rochester Cathedral Library, MS. A. 3. 5. Rouen Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 1174. Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 1343. Salisbury Cathedral Library, MS. 139. Cathedral Library, MS. 221. Cathedral Library, MS. 222. San Marino, CA Huntington Library, HM 26341. Spalding Gentleman’s Society, Crowland Cartulary. Stafford Staffordshire Record Office: see Lichfield Cathedral Winchester Cathedral Library, MS. XXB.

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Ælfeah, St, archbishop of Canterbury  75n.439, 97–8 Ælfgar Leofricsson, earl of Mercia  176n.14 Ælfgifu, abbess of Barking  33–5 Ælfric, abbot of Eynsham  336n.17, 338n.35 his Easter Homily  286n.1, 323–5, 335–7 Ælfwold, bishop of Sherborne  20n.58, 31n.137 Æthelbald, king of Mercia  176nn.13–14, 183–7 Æthelberht, king of Kent  52n.285, 304 laws of  292 Æthelburh, St, foundress and first abbess of Barking translation of into the new Abbey church 33–5 Æthelburh (Ethelburga), St, queen of Northumbria 98n.142 Æthelred II, king of England  28–9, 45–6, 50–1, 58–60, 89–90, 149–50, 154–5, 185n.96, 192, 265, 266–7, 295–6 laws of  107, 110–11, 114n.87, 203n.209, 287nn.4–5, 345–6 Æthelric, bishop of Sherborne  31n.137 Æthelsige, abbot of St Augustine’s, Canterbury 145–6 Æthelstan, king of England  15n.18, 180–1, 234, 295–6, 368 his bibliographic donations  294–5, 319–20, 327–9 laws of  113–14, 202, 203n.209, 213n.24, 276n.190, 287nn.4–5, 343n.65 Æthelthryth (Etheldreda), St, foundress of Ely 98n.142 translation of relics (1106)  33 Æthelweard  14–16, 363–5, 367–8, 370 Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham  179n.41 Æthelwold, St, bishop of Winchester  72n.422 his Vita  15n.18, 72n.420; see also Wulfstan of Winchester Æthelwulf, king of Wessex  176n.14 Abingdon Abbey (Berks.)  32n.143, 37–9, 186–7, 360–2 Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis 179 see also Faricius

Abbo, abbot of Fleury  72n.416 Act of Supremacy, 26 Henry VIII, c. 1 (November 1534)  308n.146 Adam the Cellarer  162–4 Adam of Domerham (or Damerham), monk of Glastonbury 179–80 Að  202n.202, 287n.5 Adeliza, possible daughter of William the Conqueror  53n.295, 60n.343, 67–8 see also Agatha Adeliza, second wife of Henry I, queen of England 22–3 Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx  81–2, 98–9, 297–8, 301–2, 318, 379n.129 his De genealogia regum Anglorum 153, 298n.71, 365–6 source for Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis 176–7 his Vita S. Edwardi regis  88n.55, 140–2, 148–9, 151–6, 167–8, 299–300, 302–3, 365–6 printed by Roger Twysden (1652)  365–6 Agarde, Arthur, deputy chamberlain at the Exchequer  366n.38, 376–8, 385n.160 Agatha, possible daughter of William the Conqueror  53n.295, 60n.343, 67–8; see also Adeliza, possible daughter of William the Conqueror Agge of Newton  181n.62 Aglionby, Edward  327–9 Aidan, St, bishop of Lindisfarne  25–7, 32–3 Alan of Ashbourn, vicar choral of Lichfield  108n.36, 192–3, 200, 208, 271, 274, 292–3 his Lichfield Chronicle  182n.66, 189–93, 266–7, 269, 371–3, 378–9, 382–3 sources  189–92, 191n.133, 274 surviving witnesses  189–90 title 189–90 use and adaptation of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, especially Leges Edwardi Confessoris  189–92, 198–9, 207–8, 269, 371–4

440 Index Alan la Zouche  226n.132 Alban, St  160–1, 163–4 translation of relics (1129)  33 Alcuin 311–12 Aldhelm, St, abbot of Malmesbury, bishop of Sherborne  29n.117, 83–4, 86, 97n.139, 311–12 new translation of his relics arranged by Abbot Warin  29–32 Aldwin, monk of Winchombe  25–6, 41n.211 Alexander II, pope  114n.84, 299–300 Alexander, bishop of Lincoln  17–18, 94–6, 104–5, 109, 114–15, 120–1, 376n.98 Alexander the Great  195–6 Alexander Stavensby, bishop of Coventry 139n.42 Alexander of Swereford  159–61 Alfred, king of Wessex  15–16, 22–3, 165–6, 175–6, 216–17, 254, 294–5, 329–30, 384n.156 earlier version of Domesday Survey attributed to 181–3 laws of  105–7, 110–11, 123–4, 130–1, 202n.204, 203n.209, 281n.219, 287n.4, 292–3, 355–6, 380n.137 treaty with Guthrum (Alfred & Guthrum)  202n.204, 203n.209, 287n.4 Alfred of Beverley  79–82, 316–18 Algar, sub-prior of Durham  48n.259 Alphonso, son of Edward I, earl of Chester  165n.203 Altitonantis charter (S. 731)  37 Alvergate (Norf.)  234n.186 ancient demesne  5–6, 118–19, 212, 222n.101, 227–8, 229n.151, 233–46, 270–1, 278, 358–9; see also Domesday Book; villeinage; English common Law, little writ of right close, writ Monstraverunt Anglo-Saxon Chronicle  3, 14–15, 46–7, 75n.440, 90–1, 287n.7, 302–3, 319–20, 322n.241, 327–9, 336nn.16,18 on the circumstances surrounding the succession to Edward the Confessor  50–1, 53, 57–8, 60–2, 101–2 printed by Abraham Whelock (1643)  367 source for Æthelweard  15–16 source for Geoffrey Gaimar  22–3, 61–3, 101–2 source for Henry of Huntingdon  17–18, 22, 57, 60–1 source for Orderic Vitalis  42–4 source for Roger of Crowland  196 source for William of Malmesbury  50–1, 57–8, 60–1, 86 source for the Worcester chroniclers  42–5, 61–3, 73–4

Annales de Burton  139–42, 144–5, 163–4, 173–4, 185, 192–3, 379 Annales Paulini 258–62 Anselm, St, archbishop of Canterbury  17–18, 58–60, 69n.399, 75n.439, 88n.57, 207–8, 299–300, 323–4 Ansgot, sub-prior of Crowland  177–8 Ansold of Maule  100–3 antecessor  1, 114n.87, 118–19, 163–4, 215n.43, 224, 226, 228; see also Domesday Book, tempore regis Edwardi (t.r.e.) Aquinas, St Thomas  273 architecture Henry III’s reconstruction of Westminster Abbey, and refashioning of the palace  148–52, 165–6 transformation of England post-1066  1–2, 19–21, 29–35, 37–42, 74–8, 87, 151–2 rebuilding of cathedrals of relocated sees 14n.5 see also Abingdon, Barking, Canterbury (Christ Church), Canterbury (St Augustine’s), Chichester, Church Norton, Dorchester-on-Thames, Durham, Ely, Exeter, Lichfield, Malmesbury, North Elmham, Old Sarum, Salisbury, St Albans, Selsey, Sherborne, Wells, Westminster, Winchester, Worcester, saints’ relics, translation of, William of Malmesbury Aristotle 178–9 armarius  35–7; see also cantor, precentor Armenia 168–70 Arthur, king of the Britons  79n.468, 165n.203, 216–17, 254, 296–7 Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII, prince of Wales 296n.59 Articles of the Barons  134–8; see also Magna Carta, Unknown Charter Asser  42–4, 318n.214 his Life of King Alfred  15–16, 329–30, 366n.39, 367–8, 370, 384n.156 Asturias 224 Aubrey, John  309–10, 313–15, 367–8 Audley, Thomas, Lord Chancellor  343n.65 Augustine, St, archbishop of Canterbury  33–5, 71–2, 75n.439, 98–9, 190n.121, 200–1, 304, 323–4 Augustine, St, bishop of Hippo  76, 315 Avignon 280 B. 

his Vita S. Dunstani 15n.18 Baconsthorpe (Norf.)  383n.152

Index  441 Bale, John, bishop of Ossory  300–1, 309–10, 312n.170, 313–15, 323–5, 336n.18, 360–2, 364n.23, 367–8, 370, 382 books lost in Ireland  290–1, 309, 318n.212 interpretation of the past  294, 304 investigation of libraries  200, 290–1, 302n.111, 306–7, 312n.166, 330–1 and John Leland  301–2, 307n.140, 317–18 his Laboryouse Journey  289n.9, 318, 326–7 his letter to Matthew Parker (1560)  302n.105, 308–9, 318n.212, 319–23, 326–9 his Scriptores  296n.57, 322–3 Bancroft, Richard, archbishop of Canterbury 310–11 Barking Abbey  33–5, 88n.55, 141–2 abbesses of, see Ælfgifu; Æthelburh Barnack (Cambs.)  177n.18 Barnwell Priory (Cambs.)  135–7 Barnwell Chronicler, see Roger of Crowland Bartholomew, St, the apostle  177–8 Bartholomew the clerk  162–3 Basle  330n.298, 361n.2 Bath Abbey (Som.)  35–7, 85–6 bishops of, see John of Tours, or de Villula; Robert of Lewes cathedral priory  179–80, 294–5, 310–13 copy of Collectio Lanfranci at  39n.199, 310n.157 see of  20n.58, 32n.145 Battle Abbey (Suss.)  48–9, 102–3, 228–9, 313–17, 355n.143 chronicler 226 see also Brecon, cell of Battle Abbey at Bayeux Tapestry  58–60 Bec Abbey  39n.197 liturgical usage at  89–90 Anonymous of  18n.45, 24 Becket, St Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury  122–3, 143, 171 his shrine  171, 303n.113 Bede  9, 21–2, 40n.207, 56–7, 63, 66n.374, 72n.416, 76–80, 295n.53, 311–12, 318, 368–9 compared to other historians  17–19, 24, 52, 83, 364–5 alleged examples of his hand  26–7 general influence of  2–4, 25–6, 33, 120, 158–9, 362 his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 2–4, 14–16, 18–19, 25–7, 38n.190, 72–3, 97–101, 300nn.91,95, 303, 316–17, 336n.18, 349n.100, 354n.139 early printed editions of  316–17, 349n.100, 363n.18, 367, 378nn.114–115

Old English version of  41–2, 304, 306–7, 336n.18, 367 revival in copying of Latin version  23–4 Thomas Stapleton’s English translation of 360–2 influence at Durham  16, 25–7, 38n.190 influence on Æthelweard  15–16 influence on Alan of Ashbourn  189–90 influence on Henry of Huntingdon  14–16, 33, 57, 304 influence on the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum 126–7 influence on Orderic Vitalis  42–4, 68–9, 72–3, 96 influence on William of Malmesbury  14–16, 18–19, 21–2, 24, 52, 56–7, 60n.345, 63, 76–8, 82–3, 297, 304, 362 influence at Worcester  41–4 John Prise’s interest in  315–17 his oratory  291–2, 295–6 relics of  25–6, 32–3 his De tabernaculo 315 his Vita S. Cudbercti  25–7, 30n.126 see also Plates 1, 4 vita of  26–7 Bedyll, Thomas, agent of Cromwell  304–6 Berengar of Tours  67n.388, 323–4 Berhtwulf, king of Mercia  176n.13 Berkhamsted (Herts.)  163–5 Bermondsey Priory  355n.143 Bertha, St, queen of Kent  304 Bever, John  318n.214 Birinus, St, of Dorchester-onThames  32n.146, 33 Blaseras 202n.202 Boethius 376 Boniface VIII, pope  262–4 boroughs 272n.169 Borough English  279 Bosham (Suss.)  53 Bowyer, William  367n.44 Brachylogus 122–3 Brackley (Northants.)  133n.10 Bracton  118–19, 219–20, 226n.129, 237–40, 269–70, 273, 299–300, 350 and ancient demesne  118–19, 233–4, 241–2, 244–6, 270–1 authorship and date  211–12, 258–9 on William the Conqueror’s claim to the kingdom of England  213–14, 215n.43, 231–2 on franchises  226–31 later works based upon  214–17, 226–8, 269–70

442 Index Bracton (cont.) influenced by the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  209–10, 213–14, 258–9, 262–4 relationship to Bracton’s Note Book 212 use of documents  212 use of and association with lawcodes  213–18 Bracton’s Note Book  211, 213–14, 245 recognises Kentish customs  223 relationship to Bracton 212 use of early charters  211–12 use of plea rolls  211–12, 217–18 Branscombe (Dev.)  236n.202 Brecon, cell of Battle Abbey at  316–17 Brevia placitata 270n.150 Breviarium Alaricum  13n.2, 107 Brevis relatio 48–9 Brihtmer, abbot of Crowland  185–6 Bristol St Augustine’s Priory  313n.181 St Mark’s Hospital  313n.181 Britton  214–17, 226–7, 233–4, 237–8, 241–5, 269–70, 293n.42 appended to the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum by Andrew Horn  250–1 use in Liber Horn 252–3 Brompton, John, abbot of Jervaulx  108n.36, 200–1, 204, 206–8, 374n.91 Brooke, Sir Robert  277–8 Brunetto Latini his Livre du trésor 255 Brut Chronicle  205, 274 Brutus  163–4, 274–5, 281n.219 Burchard, bishop of Worms  39–40 Burghal Hidage  124–6, 255, 267, 284n.235 Burgred, king of Mercia  176n.13 Burton Abbey (Staffs.)  139–40 legal compilation made at  145, 192n.140 see also Annales de Burton Bury St Edmunds (Suff.)  343n.65 Abbey  98–9, 132–4, 138–9, 313–17 Byland Abbey (Yorks.)  311n.165 Byrhtferth of Ramsey  15n.18, 72n.416, 368 Caen  39n.197, 90n.74 Abbey of St-Etienne  90–1, 366n.40 Caesar, Gaius Julius  65n.370, 66n.374 Cambridge Clare College  301–2 Pembroke College  314n.186 Camden, William  175n.7, 371, 384 his Britannia  380–1, 383–4, 384n.156 edition of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum (1602)  366, 369–71

Canterbury archbishop of  256n.65, 260–1, 293n.43; see also St Ælfeah, St Anselm, St Augustine, Richard Bancroft, St Thomas Becket, Thomas Cranmer, St Dunstan, Hubert Walter, Lanfranc, Stephen Langton, St Nothelm, Matthew Parker, Reginald Pole, Walter Reynald, Stigand, Theobald of Bec Christ Church Cathedral  19n.56, 28–9, 39–40, 83, 143, 308, 313n.181, 319–20 cathedral library  33–5, 53–4 copy of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum in  47–8, 59n.338 city of  222–3 chapel dedicated to Edward the Confessor 171 chapel dedicated to Thomas Becket  171 cult of St Dunstan  29–30, 74–6 dean of, see Nicholas Wotton fire of December 1067  74–7 King’s School  319–20 monks of  18–19, 87–9, 293n.43 precentor of  35–7; see also Eadmer of, Osbern of prior of  229n.151 rebuilding of cathedral  74–6 Canterbury, St Augustine’s Abbey  58–60, 87–9, 98–9 abbots of, see Æthelsige, Hugh III, Scolland, Wido annals of  145–6, 163–4, 173–4, 187, 189, 223, 352–3; see also Thomas Sprott, William Thorne Bayeux Tapestry designed at  58–60 library  14n.8, 250–1, 291–6, 301–2, 319–20, 367–8 martyrology of  87–9 rebuilding of  33–5 translation of relics at (September 1091)  33–5; see also Plate 3 version of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written at 14n.8 cantor  35–7, 41–2, 89–90, 97–8, 175–6; see also armarius, precentor Carlisle (Cumb.)  87n.49 Carta de Foresta  276 Carye, William, member of the London Clothworkers’ Company  319–20 Cassiodorus (Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)  290 Casus placitorum 270n.150 Catherine, St, of Alexandria  37–9

Index  443 Catherine of Aragon, wife of Henry VIII, queen of England  282–3 Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina)  65n.370 Cato, Marcus Porcius, the Elder  21n.61, 65n.370 Cecil, William, Secretary of State, Lord Burghley  352n.130, 380n.136 his book collection  185n.92, 188, 287n.7, 324–5, 327–9, 334n.10, 335–7, 345, 364n.25 launches Privy Council commission to investigate historical records  287–8, 324–5, 332 Cerdic, king of Wessex  16–17, 149–50 Chanson de Roland 101 Charford, battle of (519 AD)  16–17 Charles I, king of England and Scotland  11–12, 381 Charles II, king of England and Scotland 363n.18 Charles, variously a son or brother of Pippin III  363n.22 Chaucer, Geoffrey  270–1 Cheke, Sir John  302n.105, 320–1, 367n.44 Chertsey Abbey (Surr.)  35–7, 232n.172 Chester 201n.196 bishop of, see Robert of Limesey earl of, see Alphonso, Hugh d’Avranches its splendour overlooked by William of Malmesbury 194–5 see of  32n.145 St Peter’s Church  194–5 St Werburgh’s Abbey  193–4 see also Ranulf Higden Chichester Cathedral (Suss.)  20n.58, 32n.145, 36n.173 see also Church Norton, Selsey Christchurch Priory, Twynham (Dor.)  292–4, 303, 369n.51 Chronicon de Lanercost  225n.120, 226–7 Chrysippus 102n.176 Church Norton (Suss.) original site of see of Selsey  20n.58 see also Selsey, Chichester Cicero, Marcus Tullius  54–7, 64–5, 69–72, 178–9 Cirencester Abbey (Gloucs.)  291–2; see also Richard, precentor of Cirencester, Robert of Crickdale, canon of Clarendon (Wilts.) Assize of (1166)  120n.124 Constitutions of (1164)  300n.88 Clavering (Ess.)  167n.223 Cluny 97n.133 Cnut, king of England, Denmark and Norway  155n.134, 234

allegedly introduces murdrum fine  115–16, 221n.93 charters of  176n.13, 315nn.192–193 his claim to the English throne  61–2, 101–2 confirms Æthelred’s laws  114n.87 laws of  104–7, 110–11, 112–13, 123–4, 203n.209, 204–5, 213–14, 215, 266–7, 287nn.4–5, 327–9, 334–7, 339–40, 350–1, 355–6 his letter to the English (1027)  215–16 Coenwulf, king of Mercia  176n.13 Coke, Sir Edward  vii–viii, 10, 340–1, 358–9, 381, 384n.158, 385 his ownership and use of London, BL, MS. Add. 49366  112–13, 130–1 Cokehill Nunnery (Worcs.)  313n.181 Coleman, monk of Worcester and hagiographer  19–21, 35–7, 41–2, 98–9, 141n.50, 368 Collectanea satis copiosa  9–10, 297–300 its compilation  282–3 Henry VIII’s personal annotations in  282–4 use of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  282–5, 306–7 see also Edward Foxe Collectio canonum Quesnelliana copied out in William of Malmesbury’s hand 107 Collectio Lanfranci  37–40, 42–4, 107n.27, 126–7, 310n.157 Commelin, Hieronymus  360, 363n.18 Consiliatio Cnuti  113–14, 130n.195, 342 attribution to Cnut  110–11 excision of Cnut’s name from, in the Holkham Book’s copy  112–13, 334–5 Constance, wife of Ralph fitzGilbert  22–3, 81–2, 101 Constantine the Great, Roman emperor  296–7 Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons  2, 7–9, 21–2, 83, 202, 303–4, 326–7, 348, 358–9 Cope, Sir Walter  315n.195, 366n.38, 379–80 Copsi, earl of Northumbria  65n.369 Cordell, Sir William, Master of the Rolls  339 Cornelius Nepos  21n.61, 56n.318 Cornwall 206–7 Coronation Charter of Henry I  111n.63, 159–60, 332–3 affirms laga Eadwardi  109, 144–5 an ‘edict’, according to William of Malmesbury  109, 128–9 in John Brompton’s Chronicle  202–4, 207–8 in Latin and Anglo-Norman translation in London, BL, MS. Harley 458  135–7, 138n.40

444 Index Coronation Charter of Henry I (cont.) in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  6–7, 129–30, 134–5 Interpolated Version  135n.21, 136n.26 possibly noticed by John Leland  293–4 use of against King John  6–7, 132–9, 147–8, 159–60, 217–18, 351–3 Coronation ordo third recension of  239n.221, 240 fourth recension of  255–61, 265–9, 357–8 Corpus iuris civilis 213–14 Cod.  213n.28, 227n.137 Dig.  115n.93, 123n.137, 213n.27, 227n.137 Inst. 115n.93 see also law, Roman Cotton, Sir Robert  322–3 his library  11, 139n.42, 273, 295n.49, 304n.117, 329n.296, 335–7, 366n.38, 369–70, 376–8 his study of Andrew Horn’s manuscripts  249–50, 251n.35, 346–7, 373 his witness of Eadmer’s Historia novorum  301–2, 365–6, 366n.36 his witness of Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis  175–6, 188, 287n.7, 371–3 his witness of John Brompton’s Chronicle  320–1, 373–4 Council of Constantinople (680)  294–5 Council of Twenty-Five (of Magna Carta)  134–5 Court of High Commission  350, 357–8, 382–3 Coventry (Warks.)  360–2 Abbey 86n.39; see also Josbert, prior of Coventry bishop of  139–40, 229n.148; see also Alexander Stavensby see of  32n.145 Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury  282n.227, 298n.75, 310–13 Crantor 102n.176 Crediton (Dev.)  20n.58 Cromwell, Thomas, 1st Earl of Essex  284, 290–1, 301–6, 308, 310–11, 314n.183 Cross Neith, Welsh fragment of the True Cross 165n.204 Crowland Abbey (Lincs.)  112n.72, 135–7, 174, 180–3, 188, 193, 196, 207, 269, 303n.114; Plate 9 abbatial investiture at  185–7 abbots of, see Brihtmer, Egelric II, Geoffrey of Orleans, Godric, Ingulf, Oscytel, Thurketel, Wulfketel; Wulgeat cartulary  184–5, 287n.7 fire of 1091  175–7, 179, 181, 183–4, 189 forged charters  176–7, 181–5, 191–2

historical writing at, see Roger of Crowland, his Crowland Chronicle (formerly known as the Barnwell Chronicle), Historia Croylandensis officials of, see Ansgot, Fulmar, Richard Ogle, Trig and Orderic Vitalis  71–3, 177–8, 177nn.17–18, 183–7 promotion of cult of Earl Waltheof at  177–8, 186–7 see also St Guthlac, Swetman Cumberland 206–7 custom(s) 231n.165 (along with laws) granted to the English by William I  111, 145–6, 221–2, 252–3, 257–8, 265–6 conceded to Kent  145–6, 163–4, 221–4, 252–3, 271–3, 291–2, 352–3; see also gavelkind, Swancombe Down of being hirsute  163–4 violated by William I  163–4 Sir John Fortescue on  274–5 Frankish 181 free 138 Henry I preserves in England those enjoyed by his father  238–40 London  127–8, 130n.190, 224, 247–9, 252–4, 279 Norman 119 rightful customs and laws granted by Edward II  255–9 Christopher St German on  279 shire farms fixed by  242–3 Trojan origins of  127–8, 163–4, 274–5 Cuthbert, St  25–7, 32–3 translation of  29–31 vigorous inspection of his corpse (1104) 29–30 Bede’s vita of, see Bede Dackomb, Thomas  294–5, 319–20, 327–9 Danby, Sir Robert, Chief Justice of Common Pleas 271–3 Danegeld 115–16 Danelaw, or Denelaga  107n.24, 115–16, 206 Danish invasions of England  16–17, 28–9, 45–6, 295–6, 301–2 Darcy, Arthur  302n.110 Dares Phrygius  21n.61, 56n.318 Dartford Priory (Kent)  313n.181 David I, king of Scotland  81n.7, 83–4, 91–2 David, poet & historian  22–3 Day, John, of Aldersgate  335–7, 354–5 Dee, John  319 Despenser family  262n.102, 266n.138 Devon  20n.58, 243–4

Index  445 Dictum of Kenilworth (1266)  240 Dinoth, abbot of Bangor  304n.119 Dionysus Exiguus  72n.416 Dissolution of the Monasteries  9–10, 12, 284–315, 321, 326, 330n.301, 343, 358–9, 368–9; see also William Petre, John Smyth, John Tregonwell Domesday Book  5–6, 42–4, 51n.281, 159–60, 213–14, 226, 270–1, 278 and ancient demesne  227–8, 233–41, 243–4 its ‘beyond’  4 exemplifications of  234–6, 243–4 Exon Domesday  97–8 Richard fitzNigel’s analysis of  115–16, 118–19, 122–3 main scribe of Great Domesday  37–41, 315 tenurial continuity  1–2, 376–8, 383–5 William of Saint-Calais’ role in its production 47–8 use in Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis  181–3, 186–7 see also antecessor, tempore regis Edwardi (t.r.e) Dorchester-on-Thames Cathedral (Oxon.)  20n.58, 32nn.145–146, 33 Drayton, Michael his Poly-Olbion (1612)  384 Drogo of St-Winnocksbergen  28n.108 Dublin St Mary’s Abbey  337n.27 Duchesne, André  369–71 Dudo of St-Quentin his De moribus  319–20, 369–70 Dunsæte  202n.204, 287nn.4–5 Dunstan, St, archbishop of Canterbury  176n.14 B.’s Vita S. Dunstani  15n.18, 161n.176 Eadmer’s Vita S. Dunstani  28–9, 58–60, 74–6 his cult  29–30, 74–6 his love of music  97nn.136,139 Osbern’s Vita S. Dunstani 69n.399 other ‘lives’ of  15n.18, 98–9, 368 relics of  55–6, 74–6 William of Malmesbury’s Vita S. Dunstani  50–1, 55–6, 89–90, 93–4 Dunvallo Molmutius, putative first British law-maker  205, 292–4, 296–7, 355–6 Durham bishops of, see Ranulf Flambard, Walcher, William of St-Calais Cathedral  25–6, 31–3, 46n.242, 90–1, 206–7 rebuilding of  20n.58, 29–30 copies of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum at  47–50 Liber vitae  26–7, 35–7, 88n.57, 313

library  26–7, 33–41, 71n.414, 75n.439, 96, 98–9, 286 canons replaced with monks at  25–7, 47–8, 85–9 precentor of  35–7; see also Symeon of see also Algar, St Cuthbert, Turgot Duvian 127n.165 Eadmer of Canterbury  2–4, 16–18, 39–40, 42n.220, 77–8, 90–1, 97–8, 326n.273 authorship of saints’ lives  27–9, 75n.441 on claims to England in 1066  54–5, 58–61, 73–4, 76–7 his criticism of existing historical and hagiographical works  27–8, 58–60, 76–7 his family  88n.57 his hand  44–5, 46n.242, 75n.439, 330–1 on Harold Godwinson’s alleged visit to Normandy 53–4 his Historia novorum  14–15, 22–3, 44–6, 74–6, 301–2, 322–3, 330–1 John Selden’s edition of (1623)  11–12, 175n.7, 365–6, 370–85 influence on William of Malmesbury  14–15, 22, 53 his interpretation of the Conquest  22, 45–6, 58–60, 74–7, 87, 101–2, 164–5, 376–8 portrait of  Plate 2 as precentor of Christ Church  35–7 source for John of Worcester’s Chronicon ex chronicis  44–5, 61–2 his spelling of his name  88n.57 his connections to Worcester  35–7, 75n.441 his Vita S. Dunstani  28–9, 58–60, 74–6 his Vita and Miracula S. Oswaldi 75n.441 his Vita S. Wilfridi  55n.304, 97–8 wider literary, scriptural, and oratorical work  27–9, 39–40, 58–60, 74–6 Eadred, king of England  161n.176, 176n.13, 178, 180–1, 184–5 Eadwig, king of England  161n.176 Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, archbishop of York  57–8, 158–9, 190–1 Ecgberht, king of Wessex  83 Edgar, king of England  4, 14–15, 62n.356, 140–1, 178, 185, 198n.174 charters of  37, 119n.119, 176n.13, 183–7, 211–14, 229n.149, 231–2, 304–6 laws of  105–7, 114n.87, 203n.209, 287n.4, 337n.25, 339–41, 343n.65, 344–6, 355–6, 378n.115 his place in Eadmer’s Historia novorum 4, 45–6, 74–6, 90–1 Edgar ætheling, son of Edward ætheling 50–1, 57–62, 67, 203–4

446 Index Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor, queen of England  149–50, 178–9 Edmund I, king of England  161n.176 laws of  203n.209, 287n.4, 343n.65 Edmund II ‘Ironside’, king of England  50–1 Edmund the Martyr, St, king of East Anglia  132, 165–7, 170–1, 316–17 Edmund de Passele, lawyer  221–3 Edward the Confessor, king of England  63, 137n.29, 143–4, 159–60, 171, 178–9, 216–17, 234, 294–6, 384 Aelred of Rievaulx’s Vita S. Edwardi regis  88n.55, 140–2, 148–9, 151–6, 167–8, 299–300, 302–3, 365–6 association with St John the Baptist 166–8 association with St John the Evangelist  148–9, 167–8 Barking vernacular verse ‘Life’ of  88n.55, 141–2 his supposed bedchamber at Westminster  148–52, 262–4 canonization of (1161)  138–41 chapel dedicated to him in Canterbury Cathedral 171 chapel dedicated to him at Windsor  165 charters  176n.13, 183–4, 211–14, 232n.172, 305–6 his abbey church at Westminster  19–21, 149–52 his coronation  148–9, 192, 238–40, 259–60, 262–4, 307–8; see Plate 6 for depiction of, on the wall of Henry III’s bedchamber at Westminster alleged designation of Edgar ætheling as his successor 57–8 alleged designation of Harold Godwinson as his successor  54–5, 60–2, 67–8 first dubbed ‘Confessor’  140–1 first translation of his relics (1163)  143, 148–9, 167–70 La Estoire de Saint Ædward le rei 148–65, 167–8, 171–2, 379–80 laws of, see ‘law of King Edward’, Leges Edwardi Confessoris miracle of Bishop Wulfstan II’s staff  139–45, 155–6, 171, 323 Osbert of Clare’s Vita beati Eadwardi regis Anglorum 140–1 his recall of the æthelings  50–1, 57–60, 203–4 his reception in heaven, depicted in La Estoire 149, Plate 7 relics and regalia of  7, 148–52, 165–6, 168–70, 257, 260–1 revival of his cult under Henry III  7, 147–53, 164–5, 168–72 Richard II’s devotion to his cult  165–72 and royal demesne  234–8, 240–1

second translation of his relics (1269)  149–52 supposed parliamentary procedure under  265, 358–9 his sword, Curtana 260–1 ‘time of King Edward’, see Domesday Book; tempore regis Edwardi (t.r.e.) tomb and shrine  7, 140, 143, 148–52, 155–6, 165–6, 168–71, 260–1, 302–3, 323 tombstone  143, 171 allegedly visited in England by William the Conqueror  61n.349, 180–1 the Vita Ædwardi regis  15n.18, 71n.415, 76–7, 353–4 vita given to Edward II  260–1 and William the Conqueror’s claim to England  46–7, 50–4, 58–62, 66n.378, 67, 72–3, 76–7, 101–2, 114, 154–5, 195–6 in the Wilton Diptych  166–70; see also Plate 8 Edward the Elder, king of England  182–3 laws of  203n.209, 287n.4 aprocryphal treaty with Guthrum (Edward & Guthrum)  203n.209, 287n.4 Edward the Martyr, king of England  4, 28–9, 37, 45–6, 58–60, 74–6, 140–1 Edward I, king of England  184–5, 200–1, 214–15, 217n.63, 224, 232n.172, 236, 242n.246, 250–1, 257 his bedchambers at Westminster  263n.109 confirmation of Magna Carta in 1297  350, 351n.121 his coronation  148–9, 238–40 his correspondence with the papal curia 262–4 his donations to Edward the Confessor’s shrine 165 and Quo warranto  224, 226–8, 233–4 Edward II, king of England  147–8, 191–2, 210, 250–1, 259–60, 265–7, 269 baptised in the chapel dedicated to Edward the Confessor at Windsor  165 his bedchambers at Westminster  263n.109 his coronation  7–8, 255–68, 357–8 and the Declaration of April 1308  261–4 endorses the ‘law of King Edward’  7–8, 256–8 opposition to  7–8, 209–10, 247–9, 261–5 Ordinances of 1311  264n.119 and Quo warranto proceedings  266n.138 Statute of York 1322  264n.119 his will  167–8 Edward III, king of England  233 his London charter  248–9 Edward VI, king of England  290–1, 313, 327–9, 367n.44 Edward ætheling, son of Edmund II ‘Ironside’  50–3, 57–62, 67n.387, 203–4 Edwin of Sharnborn  384

Index  447 Egelric II, abbot of Crowland  178–81, 185n.96 Eggesteyn, Heinrich  316n.204 Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II, queen of England 124n.146 Eleanor of Provence, wife of Henry III, queen of England  148–9, 154–5 Eleutherius, pope  126–8, 282–3, 340–1, 345–6, 358–9 Elias of Dereham  138n.39 Elizabeth I, queen of England  10–11, 286–8, 290–1, 308–9, 326, 356–7, 362–5, 381–3 Ely (Cambs.) Abbey  33, 119n.119, 186–7 bishops of, see Nigel historical writing at, see Liber Eliensis Inquisitio Eliensis  182–3, 186–7, 376–8 translation of Æthelthryth’s relics at (1106)  33 see also Æthelthryth Emma of Normandy, wife of Æthelred II and Cnut, queen of England  50–1, 89–90 Episcopus 202n.202 Eusebius Pamphili of Caesarea  40n.207, 83, 100–1, 298n.73, 316n.204; see also Rufinus of Aquileia Eustace, sheriff of Huntingdon  181n.62 Eutropius, Flavius  21n.61, 40n.207 Evesham Abbey (Worcs.)  25–6, 29–30, 35–7, 91, 186–7, 301n.100, 313n.181 abbot of, see Æthelwig Historia of  179 Exceptiones ad cassandum brevia 218n.75, 252–3 Exchequer  114–15, 119–20, 125n.149, 159–60, 215–16, 220–1, 234–6, 358n.166 see also Alexander of Swereford, Richard fitzNigel Exeter (Dev.) bishops of, see Osbern fitzOsbern, Walter Stapledon, Warelwast Cathedral  20n.58, 37–9, 100n.164 copy of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum at  48–9 Eynsham Abbey (Oxon.)  87–9 abbot of, see Ælfric eyre(s) of Kent (1279)  222–3 of Kent (1293)  222–3 of Kent (1313–14)  221–2 of London (1276)  247–8, 250–1 of London (1321)  224, 247–9 of Northamptonshire (1329–30)  227n.139, 228n.145, 228–9, 231–2 of Surrey (1279)  229n.151

Fabri de Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude  321, 369–71 Fagan 127n.165 Faricius, abbot of Abingdon  27–8, 32nn.139–141, 37–9, 40n.207, 76n.447 Fécamp Abbey liturgical usage at  89–90 Ferror, R., servant to Francis Russell, earl of Bedford 338n.35 Fet asaver  218n.75, 252–3 First Crusade  40–1, 68n.395, 70n.407, 84–5 Fisher, St John, bishop of Rochester  300–1 Fitzalan, Henry, 12th earl of Arundel  327–9 Fitzherbert, Sir Anthony  277–8 his Magnum abbreviamentum 235n.196 his La Novel natura brevium 278 Fitzhugh, William, 4th Baron Fitzhugh  200–1 Flanders  60–1, 308–9 Fleetwood, William  358–9, 380–1 his commentary on Magna Carta  350–1, 357n.152 his manuscript ownership  343–7, 350–1, 352n.127, 354–5 Fleming, Abraham  355n.147 Fleta  215–17, 226–7, 231–4, 244–6, 269–70 glossary of Old English terms in  232–3 Florence of Worcester  2–3, 16, 35–7, 44–5, 46n.242, 73–4, 77–8, 318, 326n.273 commissioned by Bishop Wulfstan II  41–2 first printed edition, by Lord William Howard 360–2 see also John of Worcester Folcard, monk of St-Bertin  27–8, 33–5, 71nn.413, 415, 97n.133 Forfang 202n.202 Fortescue, Sir John, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench  7–8, 276–9, 281 his comparison of English and Continental law 274–6 his De laudibus legum Anglie 273–5 his The Governance of England, a.k.a. De dominio regali et politico 273–5 his invocation of scholastic thought  273, 275–6 his Opusculum de natura legis naturae 273 owns a copy of the Brut 274 Foxe, Edward, bishop of Hereford  282–3; see also Collectanea satis copiosa France  46n.242, 274–6, 312n.172, 316–17, 323–4, 369–70 Fortescue’s view on 274–5 historical writing in  3, 15–16, 101 royal rule in  7–8 franchises  223, 225–33, 238–40, 244n.256, 245, 248–9, 257 Frankfurt  361n.2, 362nn.13–14 frankpledge  220–1, 276n.190

448 Index Frederick, abbot of St Albans  163–4, 195–6 Frutolf of Michelsberg  63–4 Fulman, William his printed edition of Annales de Burton  139nn.41,43 his printed edition of Psuedo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis, including the Leis Willelme (1684)  112n.72, 175nn.7–8, 188, 364n.25 Fulmar, cantor of Crowland  175–6 gavelkind  221–3, 271–3, 279; see also customs, Kent, Swanscombe Down Gaveston, Piers, 1st earl of Cornwall  262–4 outrageous behaviour at Edward II’s coronation 260–1 Geoffrey Gaimar  16, 22–3, 61–3, 81–2, 84–5, 101–3, 110, 115–16, 119–20, 299–300 Geoffrey of Monmouth  66n.374, 98–9, 161–2, 274, 279, 297–8, 301–2, 304, 327, 362 his Historia regum Britanniae  61–2, 79–82, 126–7, 194–5, 260–1, 292, 298n.71, 316, 320n.223 his Prophecies of Merlin  81–2, 105n.7, 124, 306n.131 influence on Edward I’s letter to Boniface VIII  264n.118 influenced by Bede  2 mocked by later historians  78–80, 158–9, 296–7, 362 potential source for Richard fitzNigel  115–16, 119–20 early printed editions of  297, 316–17, 363n.18 respected by later historians  79–82, 292, 296–7, 316–18 satirises work of his contemporaries  79–82 source for Alan of Ashbourn  189–90, 274 source for John Brompton’s Chronicle  205, 274 source for Geoffrey Gaimar  61–2, 81–2 source for the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  124–8, 238–40, 267, 274 source for Ranulf Higden  194–5 his use of Collectio Lanfranci 126–7 Geoffrey of Orleans, abbot of Crowland  177–8 Geþyncðo 202n.204 Gerald of Wales  79–80, 86n.41, 194–5, 316–18 Gerard, archbishop of York  108–9 Germany 360 Gerold, clerk of Hugh d’Avranches, earl of Chester 100–1 Gervase of Canterbury  157–9, 162, 194–5, 318n.214, 326n.273, 362n.12 first printed by Roger Twysden (1652)  365–6

Gervase of Howbridge/Heybridge, chancellor of St Paul’s, London  136n.24 Gilbert de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford, 7th Earl of Gloucester, 3rd Lord of Glamorgan, 9th Lord of Clare  225n.120, 231n.165 Gilbert fitzOsbern, archdeacon of Lisieux  48–9 Gilbert Foliot, bishop of Hereford, bishop of London 122–3 Gilbert Neville  291n.34 Gilbert of Thornton, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench  227–8, 229n.148, 233–4 his Summa de legibus 216n.55 Gildas  57, 79–80, 161n.181, 189–90, 205 early printed editions  326–7, 363n.18 Giles of Rome  273 Giso, bishop of Wells  20n.58, 179–80 Glanvill  120–5, 213n.25, 254n.53, 270n.155, 276n.189, 376n.98 copies juxtaposed with Leges Edwardi Confessoris  130, 210–11, 218 first printed edition of  350 hybrid version of in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  126–8, 130–1 inclusion in Burton legal compilation  144–5 inserted into Roger of Howden’s Chronica  120–3, 130–1 interest in Old English law  211–12, 350–1 source for Fleta 216n.48 Glanvill, Ranulf de  120, 122–4, 130n.195 Glastonbury Abbey  76–7, 91–2, 97n.139, 311–12, 368n.45, 369n.51 abbot of  232–3, 312–13; see also Dunstan, Henry of Blois, Thurstan copy of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum at  48–9 historical writing at  15n.18 monks of  55–6, 74–6, 89–91, 93–4; see also Adam of Domerham riot of 1083  89–91 William of Malmesbury’s works commissioned for  28–9, 55–6, 60–1, 86, 90n.75, 179, 354n.138 Glorious Revolution  12 Gloucester Abbey  24n.79, 35–7, 38n.189, 98n.142, 300n.91, 313–17, 316n.198 abbot of, see Serlo Christmas court of 1085  186–7 earl of  229n.149; see also Gilbert de Clare, Robert site of Henry III’s initial coronation  151–2 Statute of, 6 Edw. I (1278)  272n.165

Index  449 Gloucestershire  313n.181, 315 Godfrey of Beaumont  227n.134 Godfrey of Jumièges, abbot of Malmesbury 37–9 Godric, abbot of Crowland  185n.96 Godwin, earl of Wessex  52–3, 88n.58 Goscelin, monk of St-Bertin  27–8, 31–3, 75n.439, 76–7, 98–9 probably precentor of St Augustine’s, Canterbury 33–5 Gravissimae atque exactissimae illustrissimarum totius Italiae et Galliae academiarum censurae 297–8 Gray’s Inn  276 Great Malvern Priory (Worcs.)  313n.181 Greenwich 290n.13 Gregory I the Great, St, pope  71–2, 304, 310n.157 Paul the Deacon’s Vita of  98–9 his Pastoral Care 329–30 his porticus at St Augustine’s, Canterbury 33–5 Gregory VII, pope  63–4, 323–4 Gregory IX, pope  148–9, 238–40 Gregory of Tours  66n.374 Gryme, Robert  321n.227 Guala Bicchieri, cardinal and papal legate 238n.218 Guillelmus Durandus his Speculum iudiciale 216–17 Guitmund, abbot of La-Croix-Saint-Leufroi  67 Gundulf, bishop of Rochester  34n.157 Gunter Siworth/Siword  181n.62 Guthlac, St  177–8, 180–1 Vita of  177–8, 183–4, 303n.114 Guthrum, Danish king  202n.204, 203n.209, 287n.4 Gwithelinus, king of the Britons  205 Gwynedd 165n.204 Gyrth Godwinson, earl of East Anglia  64n.365, 67–8 Hadbot 202n.202 Haddon, Walter  340–2 hagiography, see saints’ lives Hagnaby (Lincs.)  299–300 Hailes Abbey (Gloucs.)  313n.181 Haimo, Eadmer’s nephew  88n.57 Hales, Sir Edward  222n.105 Hales, John his 1514 Gray’s Inn Reading on Westminster II  281n.223, 282–3 Hall, Anthony  290n.18 Hampshire  243–4, 313n.181

Hampton Court (Surr.)  290n.13 Harlakenden, Thomas  276–7 his Reading on Magna Carta c. 35  276 Harold I Harefoot, king of England  155n.134 Harold II Godwinson, earl of Wessex, king of England  18–19, 53–4, 64n.365, 66–7, 168–70, 364–5 allegedly an anchorite at Chester  194–5, 201n.196 allegedly buried at Waltham  155n.138 claim to the kingdom of England  54–5, 57–62, 67–8 death  63–4, 87–9, 156–7 allegedly survives Hastings  194–5 his alleged visit to Normandy  53–4, 58–61, 66n.373, 67–8, 76–7, 154–5 Harrison, William  355n.147 Harrying of the North  64 Harthacnut, king of England and Denmark 315n.192 Hastings, battle of (14th October 1066)  19–21, 51–2, 54–5, 61–2, 64n.365, 65n.370, 66–7, 67n.387, 101, 140–1, 153–6, 158–9, 194–5, 226 Hatton, Sir Christopher, Lord Chancellor  356n.150, 357–8 Haughmond Abbey (Salop.)  301–2, 365–6 Haveloc the Dane  22–3 Havering (Ess.)  241n.243 Hegesippus  40–1, 94–6; see also Josephus Heidelberg 360 Hemming, monk of Worcester  35–7, 45 his Cartulary 41–4 Henry I, king of England  22, 66n.379, 91–3, 113n.80, 138n.40, 144, 159–60, 206n.222, 240, 341n.48 accused of not respecting the ‘law of King Edward’ 144–5 charters of  212n.12, 232–3; see also Coronation Charter, a.k.a. ‘edict’, of Henry I his first marriage, to Matilda  109; see also Matilda of Scotland implied illegitimacy  154–5 laws of  108–9, 114, 133–7, 144–5; see also Leges Henrici letter to Paschal II  207–8, 238–40 his Ordinance on courts  202n.204, 293–4, 343–4 restores the ‘laws of King Edward’ together with William the Conqueror’s emendations  109, 128–9, 133–5, 137–8, 144–5, 217–18 royal servants of  17–18, 94–6

450 Index Henry II, king of England  113n.80, 118–20, 144–5, 153, 234n.186, 237n.209 accused of not respecting the ‘law of King Edward’ 145 arranges canonisation of Edward the Confessor, and establishes cult  7, 138–41 assizes 120–4 Coronation Charter  129–30, 133–4, 137nn.29,33, 138n.35 and royal demesne  240 and Thomas Becket  143 unites English and Norman lines  140–1, 153 Henry III, king of England  139–40, 153, 196, 232n.172, 250–1, 257, 327 his bedchamber at Westminster  148–52 his burial  149–50 probably commissions La Estoire de Saint Ædward le rei  148–9, 151, 154–5 his coronations  148–9, 151–2, 238–40 issues the Statute of Marlborough (1267) 356–8 laws of  214–15; see also ‘law of King Edward’ love of candles  150–1, 168–70 rebuilding of Westminster Abbey, and refashioning of the palace  148–52, 165–6 recites names of pre-Conquest royal saints 147–8 reissues of Magna Carta  8–9, 350, 351n.121, 356–7 relationship with Rome  238–40, 262–4 revives the cult of Edward the Confessor  7, 147–53, 164–6, 168–72 Henry IV, king of England  168–70 burial of  171 consecrated on feast of St Edward’s translation 170 rejects the idea of claiming the throne by right of conquest  170 Henry V, king of England  8–9, 171, 197, 329n.293, 366n.40 Henry VII, king of England  296–7 Henry VIII, king of England  282, 288, 290–1, 294, 305–6, 312n.166, 327–9, 363n.21, 366n.40 his annotation of books and documents  282–4, 298–300, 303–5 his antiquarian interests  289, 294n.47, 298–304, 307–8, 363n.20 his search for legal precedents for his divorce  9, 210, 279–80, 282–3, 297–300, 308, 310–11, 367–8 his veneration of King Arthur  296–7

Henry, prince of Wales, son of James VI and I  130–1, 295n.48 Henry, relative of Eadmer  88n.57 Henry of Blois, abbot of Glastonbury, bishop of Winchester  91–2, 115–16 his Glastonbury Scriptura 179–80 Henry of Boyce  227n.134 Henry de Bracton/Bratton, clerk to William Raleigh  212, 219n.79, 293n.42 Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon  66n.374, 77–8, 159, 206n.222, 252n.43, 294–5, 326n.273, 327 background and intended audience  17–18, 94–6, 105–7, 114–15, 160–1 on claims to the kingdom of England in 1066  60–1, 73–4, 101–2 De contemptu mundi tract  316 his criticism of the Norman regime  73–4, 94–6, 101–2, 124, 140–1, 156–9, 164–5 Henry VIII’s respect for  9, 299–300, 306–7 his Historia Anglorum  9–10, 33, 94–6, 104–7, 130n.190, 299–302, 306–7, 316, 319–20, 330–1, 337–8 his interpretation of the Conquest  16–22, 45–6, 124 his interest in law and legal insertions in his Historia  105–7, 113–14, 120, 122n.132, 198–9, 306–7, 337–8, 379–80 interest of John Bale and John Prise in 315–18 other works by  301n.104, 368–9 influenced by Bede  2–3, 14–16, 18–19, 24, 33, 304 the nature of his work  16–17, 22–3, 42–4, 56–7 potential source for John of Worcester’s Chronicon ex chronicis 61–2 first printed by Henry Savile (1596)  174–5, 360–5 his respect for Geoffrey of Monmouth  79–82 source for Alan of Ashbourn  189–90 source for Geoffrey Gaimar  61–2, 101 source for the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  124–7, 130n.190, 267 source for Ranulf Higden  194–5 source for Raphael Holinshed  353–4 source for Roger of Crowland  196 source for Roger of Howden  120, 124 source for Matthew Paris  156–7, 156n.144 source for Walter of Guisborough  199n.183 source for William of Newburgh  158–9 transcribed by Laurence Nowell  337–8, 379–80 his treatment of sources  40–1, 57, 60–2, 76–7, 79n.468

Index  451 Herbert Losinga, bishop of Norwich  90n.73 Hereford bishops of, see Edward Foxe, Gilbert Foliot, Robert Losinga cathedral library  38n.189, 39–40, 42–4, 316 earls of, see Roger de Breteuil, William fitzOsbern St Guthlac’s Priory, a cell of Gloucester Abbey, in 313–15 see also Thomas Thornton Herefordshire 315 Hereward the Wake  22–3 Herod the Great  94–6 Hesketh, Richard, of Gray’s Inn  276–7 his Reading on Carta de Foresta  276, 278–9 Heydon, Sir Christopher  383n.152 Hickes, George  183–4 Hildelith, St translation of into the new abbey church at Barking 33–5 Histoire des ducs de Normandie 135–7 Historia Anglorum vel Saxonum post Bedam  120n.122, 124, 199n.183 Historia Croylandensis, attributed to PseudoIngulf  174, 184–5, 192–3, 196, 226, 271, 292–3, 378 authorship and date  174–9, 187–8, 363–5; see also Ingulf, abbot of Crowland compared to other cartulary-chronicles  179–80, 187, 200, 207–8 includes expanded, second ‘recension’ of Leges Edwardi Confessoris 112–13 includes long version of Leis Willelme  111–13, 175nn.7–8, 181–2, 187–9, 191–2, 198–9, 203–4, 207–8, 269, 334–5, 364n.25, 371–6 on royal investiture of abbots  185–6 on Old English diplomatic  175–6, 181–5 printed by William Fulman (1684)  175nn.7–8, 188, 364n.25 printed by Henry Savile (1596)  174–5, 189, 193, 363–5, 375–6 alleged sources  176–9, 181–7 surviving witnesses  112n.72, 175–6, 188–9, 193, 287n.7 use of documents, including Domesday Book  176–7, 180–4, 186–7, 189 used by John Selden  371–5, 378; see also Crowland Abbey, Ingulf, abbot of Crowland historiae (chants)  97–8; see also liturgy, music Historiola de primordiis episcopatus Somersetensis 179–80 Holinshed, Raphael  346n.93, 354–5 his Chronicles  10–11, 146n.73, 353–6

Holkham Book, or London, BL, MS. Add. 49366  frontispiece, 10, 144n.68 its hybrid version of Consiliatio Cnuti and Leges Edwardi Confessoris 112–13, 120–1, 130–1, 334–5, 342 includes [Pseudo-]Ulpianus de edendo  112n.76, 120–1, 342 influence on William Lambarde’s APXAIONOMIA 334–5, 340–1 ownership by Matthew Parker  10, 112–13, 332n.2, 338n.33, 340–2, 344 ownership and use by Edward Coke  112–13, 130–1 selectively transcribed by Laurence Nowell  334–5, 338n.33, 340–5 its version of Leis Willelme  111–12, 120–1, 130–1, 334–5, 342 its version of Quadripartitus  111–13, 120–1, 130–1, 187–8, 201–2, 332n.2, 333–5, 338n.33, 340–3 Holles, Gervase  175n.7 Holme Lacy chirograph  39–40, 42–4 Homer 102n.176 Honorius III, pope  238–40 Hooker, John  355n.147, 359n.172 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)  102n.176 Horn, Andrew, Chamberlain of London  214n.33, 224, 264, 267–71, 274–6, 316–17, 319–20, 347 appending of copies of the Mirror of Justices and Britton to the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum 250–1 authorship of Annales Londonienses  254, 262 editorial meticulousness of  250–1, 267–8, 293–4, 319–20 his hand  250–1 his Liber Horn  252–3, 266 his interest in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  247–8, 253, 255, 258–9, 264, 293–4 and the Eyre of 1321  247–9 Modus tenendi parliamentum appended, long after his death, to his Liber custumarum 268–9 reads out Edward III’s charter to the citizens of London assembled in the Guildhall (March 1327)  248–9 his copy of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, labelled B by Ker, now contained in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MSS. 70 & 258  249–52, 254, 338–41, 345, 347–8; see Plate 11 for record of his ownership

452 Index Horn, Andrew, Chamberlain of London (cont.) his copy of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, labelled C by Ker (Horn’s Liber custumarum), now dispersed between LMA, MS. CUST 6, Oxford, Oriel College, MS. 46 & London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D ii  248–52, 345–8 his copy of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, labelled D by Ker, now dispersed between LMA, MS. CUST 12, LMA, MS. CUST 6, London, BL, MS. Cotton Claudius D ii & Oxford, Oriel College, MS. 46  249–52, 345–8, 373 Horsey, Sir John  311–12 House of Commons  viii n.3, 345–6, 350, 358–9 Howard, Lord William, of Naworth  371 his library  301n.102, 329–30, 363n.22, 366n.40 his edition of John of Worcester’s Chronicon ex chronicis (1592)  360–2, 365–7, 375–6 Hubert de Burgh, earl of Kent  159–60 Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury 326n.273 Hugh III, abbot of St Augustine’s, Canterbury 145n.71 Hugh d’Avranches, earl of Chester  100–1 Hugh de Boves  133n.7 Hugh of Oddingselles  227n.134 Hugh d’Orevalle, bishop of London  190–1 Hugh de Waltham, Common Clerk of London 248n.4 Humphrey de Bohun  227n.139 Hundredgemot 202n.202 Hungary  50–1, 57–8, 203–4, 238–40 Hursteshevet (Hants.)  110–11, 125–6, 133–4, 203–4, 266–7 Iberia 3 Ida, king of Bernicia  206n.222 Illyricus, Matthias Flacius  326–7 inalienability  237–41, 243–5, 255–6, 259–60 Ine, king of Wessex charters of  232–3 laws of  104n.1, 105–7, 110–11, 130–1, 205, 254, 287n.4, 354–5 Ingulf, abbot of Crowland alleged authorship of Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis  174–6, 179, 186–7, 334n.9, 363–4, 371–5 his supposed life and career  174–5, 177–81, 183–6, 185n.94, 364–5, 371–5 translation of Waltheof ’s relics  177–8, 186–7 Inner Temple  277n.193 Innocent III, pope  142–3, 144n.66, 238–40, 263n.115

Instituta Cnuti attributed to Cnut  110–11 contents of  105–7 inserted into Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum 105–7 its relationship to Willelmi Articuli 105–7 used by Bracton 213–14 Inventio et miracula S. Vulfrani 61–2 Ireland  142, 290–1, 309, 318n.212, 380–1 Isabel of Panton  228 Isabella of France, wife of Edward II, queen of England 248–9 Isle of Wight  132–3 Italy  3, 15–16 Iudicium essoniorum 345n.75 ius commune  247, 281 see also law, canon; law, Roman Ivo, bishop of Chartres  306–7 Ivo of Taillebois, sheriff of Lincolnshire  175–6 James VI, king of Scotland, I, king of England  10–11, 311n.161, 381–3 accession and perceived parallels with Norman Conquest  11–12 acquisition of historical texts by  130–1, 295n.48; see also Henry, Prince of Wales Jarrow (Co. Durham)  291–2, 295–6 refoundation of Abbey  25–7, 41n.211 see also Monkwearmouth Jennyngs, Ralph  379n.128 Jerome, St  290, 310n.157 Jerusalem 155–6 Jervaulx Abbey (Yorks.)  108n.36, 200–1, 292–3, 320–1, 374n.91 abbot of, see John Brompton see also John Brompton’s Chronicle Jewel, John, bishop of Salisbury  330n.299 Jewish Revolt against Rome  40–1 John, king of England  7, 115n.93, 123–4, 196, 247, 368n.48 accused of not respecting the ‘law of King Edward’ 144–5 charters of  184–5, 233 his clash with the Papacy and nuncio Pandulf  140, 142–7, 163–5, 173–4, 185, 238–40 composition of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum during his reign  172, 209–10, 224, 245–6, 249–55, 258–60, 262–4, 267–9, 284, 286–7 contrasted with Edward the Confessor  138–40 demands oaths against Henry I’s Coronation Charter  6–7, 137, 147–8 his devotion to St Wulfstan  141–3, 147–50

Index  453 opposition to  6–7, 126–30, 132–8, 144, 146–51, 210–11, 257, 264, 284 see also Articles of the Barons, Magna Carta, Unknown Charter John, St, the Baptist  166–8 John, St, the Evangelist  148–9, 167–8 John of Beverley, St, bishop of Hexham, bishop of York  96n.131 John Brompton’s Chronicle, a.k.a. The Fitzhugh Chronicle  271, 274, 292–3, 320–1, 323, 369–70, 374–5 authorship of  108n.36, 200–1, 374n.91, 379n.129 date 200–1 Edward the Confessor’s laws not endorsed by the Conqueror in   207 invents ‘one common law, which down to the present day is called the Leges Edwardi’  7–8, 204–7 lack of access to Leges Edwardi Confessoris  202n.199, 203–5, 208 and Quadripartitus  7–8, 201–8, 238n.219, 307–8 on William the Conqueror’s writ on exculpation  203–5, 332–3, 373–4 first printed by Roger Twysden (1652)  365–6, 379 see also John Brompton’s Chronicle John of Caen his ‘Great Roll’  264n.118 John of Hexham  318 first printed by Roger Twysden (1652)  365–6 John de Northwood, Sir  222–3 John of Oxford  318n.214 John of Tours, or de Villula, bishop of Bath and Wells  20n.58, 85–6 John of Trevisa  195–6, 316n.205 John of Tynemouth  314n.184 his Historia aurea 195–6 John de Warenne, 6th earl of Surrey  238–40 brandishes his rusty sword  8–9, 224–9, 231 see also Quo warranto John of Worcester  2–3, 16, 35–7, 46n.242, 73–4, 78, 89–90, 156n.142 his collaboration with Orderic Vitalis  72–3 his collaboration with William of Malmesbury  54–5, 61–2, 77–8 commissioned by Wulfstan II, bishop of Worcester 41–4 his criticism of the Norman regime  164–5 his Chronicon ex chronicis  53, 90–1, 291–2 its supplementary Chronicula 360–2 John Prise’s copy of  313–17 his hand identified  44n.231 his knowledge of Cnut’s letter to the English (1027) 215–16

first printed by Lord William Howard (1592)  360–2, 365–7, 375–6 on the succession to Edward the Confessor  50–1, 53n.295, 54–5, 57–8, 61–3 his sources  44–5 source for Orderic Vitalis  53n.295 source for Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis 176–7 source for Ranulf Higden  194n.150 source for Roger of Crowland  193–4, 196 source for Symeon of Durham  47–8 source for William of Malmesbury  50–1, 57–8 see also Florence of Worcester Johns, Dr. Henry  330–1, 366n.36 Josbert, prior of Coventry  139n.44 Joscelyn, John, secretary to Matthew Parker  302n.110, 324, 325n.266, 326–7, 335–7, 340–1, 345n.75, 360–2 copying of Thomas Sprott  145n.71, 323n.251 his list of manuscript ownership  319, 322–3, 323n.251, 327–30, 330n.301, 343–4, 364n.23, 366n.36, 367n.44 Josephus, Titus Flavius  40–1, 94–6, 100–1; see also Rufinus of Aquileia Justinus, Marcus Junianus  21n.61, 38n.191, 69–70, 100–1 epitome of Historiae Phillipicae of Pompeius Trogus  2–3, 13, 39n.196, 82–3, 157 Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)  382 Kalocsa, archbishop of  238–40 Kent  83, 295–6, 380–1 customs of  163–4, 221–4, 252–3, 271–3, 279, 291–2, 352–3; see also gavelkind earl of, see Hubert de Burgh Eyre of 1279  222–3 Eyre of 1293  222–3 Eyre of 1313–14  221–2 men of  145–6, 189, 221–3, 291–2 royal dynasty of, see Æthelberht; St Bertha sheriff of, see Thomas Wotton Kidwelly, Morgan  276–7, 281 his 1483 Inner Temple Reading on Magna Carta (1225)  276, 278–9 King’s Langley Friary (Herts.)  171 King’s Ripton (Hunts.)  234 Kirkstall Abbey (Yorks.)  311n.165 Kirkstead Abbey (Lincs.)  299–300 Knaresborough (Yorks.), Trinitarian Covent  301–2 Knighton, Henry, canon of St Mary of the Meadows, Leicester his Chronicle 108n.36, 200–1, 271, 292–3, 375 insertion of truncated, third ‘recension’ of Leges Edwardi Confessoris into his Chronicle  198–200, 203–4, 207–8, 269, 371–4

454 Index Knighton, Henry, canon of St Mary of the Meadows, Leicester (cont.) his sources  197–8 first printed by Roger Twysden (1652)  365–6, 379 knights’ fees  216–17, 225n.123 Lambarde, William  287n.7, 313–17, 343, 346–7, 360–2, 375–6, 379–80, 382; portrait of Plate 12 his ΑΡΧΑΙONOMIA (1568)  10, 108–9, 284–8, 324, 330–41, 344–56, 358–60, 373–4, 376, 380–1 calculated omissions from  188n.113, 332–7, 373–6 re-edition by Roger Twysden and Abraham Whelock (1644)  293n.43, 347, 349, 378–9, 382–4 his A Perambulation of Kent 222n.105, 344n.73, 351n.117, 352–5, 377n.106, 380–1 his Archeion  351–3, 356, 358–9 his collaboration with Laurence Nowell  10–11, 292–3, 306–7, 327–9, 332–3, 335–41, 343–5, 347–9, 358–9, 365–6 his hand  343–5 Matthew Parker’s support of  335–40, 344–5, 347 possible use of lost Old English sources  344 his use of the Holkham Book  334–5, 340–1 his use of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  286–7, 332–4, 337–9, 347 Lambeth Palace  310–11 Lanercost Priory (Cumb.)  319–20; see also Chronicon de Lanercost Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury  19n.56, 27–30, 67, 299–301, 323–4 accused of corruption  87–9, 91 his ambivalence towards Old English saints  27–30, 74–6, 97–8 and the Collectio Lanfranci 37–40 his supposed attempt to depose St Wulfstan  140–1, 144–5 his Monastic Constitutions  35–7, 74–6, 88n.55, 100–1 Langar (Notts.)  234–6 Langton, Simon, brother of Stephen  135–7 Langton, Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury  128n.179, 132–3, 133n.10, 140, 144–5 Lanthony Secunda Priory (Gloucs.)  310–11 laudes regiae  97n.133, 148–51 law, canon  238–40, 247, 297–8, 307–8, 310–11

Henry of Huntingdon’s knowledge of  105–7 use of by compiler of Leges Henrici 108–9 X., 2. 24, c. 33 (Intellecto) 238–40 see also Thomas Bedyll, Burchard, bishop of Worms, Collectio canonum Quesnelliana, Collectio Lanfranci, Guillelmus Durandus, inalienability, ius commune, Ivo, bishop of Chartres, John Stokesley, bishop of London law codes, Old English  5–9 printing of  10, 286–8, 332–49, 354–5 see also William Lambarde profusion in pre-Conquest England  104–5, 110 see also Æthelberht, Æthelred II, Æthelstan, Alfred, Að, Blaseras, Cnut, Dunsæte, Edgar, Edmund I, Edward the Elder, Episcopus, Forfang, Geþyncðo, Hadbot, Hundredgemot, Ine, the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, Mircna laga, Norðleoda laga, Quadripartitus, Swerian law, English common  7–8, 243–5, 269–70, 273, 276, 278–82, 284–5, 324, 385 ancient origins of, according to Raphael Holinshed 355–6 assizes included in Roger of Howden’s Chronica 120–4 assize of novel disseisin  232–3, 240 Grand Assize  123n.137 its debt to post-Conquest law codes  5–6 allegedly dates back to Creation  275 Kentish exceptionalism  221–3; see also Edmund de Passele, gavelkind, Kent, Swanscombe Down law French  7–8, 187–8, 273, 275, 277–8, 281, 333–4, 349, 353–4 manuscript culture of  349 periods of limitation in  5–6, 211–12, 221–2, 226–36, 229n.149, 244n.256, 271–3, 276; see also Richard I, first coronation as the limit of legal memory pleading  269–70, 277–8 prescription  211–12, 225–31 writ Monstraverunt  241–4, 278; see also ancient demesne writ precipe in capite 229n.149 writ of right (breve de recto) 215n.40, 229–31, 271–3 writ of right close, little  241–4 see also ancient demesne, Bracton, Brevia placitata, Britton, Robert Brooke, Casus placitorum, Edward Coke, custom(s), eyre(s), Exceptiones ad cassandum brevia, Anthony Fitzherbert, Fleta, John Fortescue, Glanvill, John Hales,

Index  455 Thomas Harlakenden, Ralph of Hengham, Richard Hesketh, Iudicium essoniorum, Mirror of Justices, Morgan Kidwelly, Thomas Littleton, Modus componendi brevia, Old Tenures, Placita corone, plea rolls, Registers of writs, Christopher St German, Robert Snagge, Nicholas Statham, Quo warranto, statutes, Year Books ‘law of King Edward’, a.k.a. laga Edwardi  5, 7–8, 107, 110–13, 279, 284, 348–9, 353–4, 357–9 allegedly conceded, under duress, to Kent by William the Conqueror  145–7, 163–5, 189, 221–3, 291–2, 323, 352–5 allegedly conceded under duress by William the Conqueror at Berkhamsted  163–5, 195–6 concocted version in John Brompton’s Chronicle 203–7 confirmation of existing laws by Edward the Confessor  110–11, 114, 125–6, 128, 134–5, 203–4, 259–60, 266–9, 292, 307–8, 355–6 confirmed by Richard II  168–70 confirmed by William the Conqueror  5–9, 104–7, 111–13, 115–16, 119, 123–4, 128–9, 134–5, 187, 189–93, 199–200, 209–10, 213–14, 257–60, 265–9, 274–6, 278–9, 281, 332–5, 345–6, 371–3, 375–8, 384 as a restraint on Edward II  7–8, 256–60 and Henry III  7, 350–1, 356–8 Normans forced to concede Old English law, according to John Leland  292, 294 restored by Henry I together with William the Conqueror’s emendations  109, 128–9, 132–5, 137, 144–5, 217–18, 259–60, 351–2 used against King John  8–9, 126–7, 129–30, 132–5, 137–8, 144–5, 147–8, 150–1 William the Conqueror and his successors accused of not respecting  8–9, 144–7, 207, 294, 351–4 see also Leges Edwardi Confessoris law, Roman  115n.93, 122–3, 128, 213–14, 247, 275–6, 281 and custom  123n.137, 213–14 compared with English customs by Sir John Fortescue 274–5 Henry of Huntingdon’s knowledge of 105–7 influence on Bracton  211, 227, 241–2 possible reception of in England  276, 280–3; see also Thomas Starkey

see also Brachylogus, Bracton, Breviarium Alaricum, Corpus iuris civilis, Guillelmus Durandus, ius commune, [Pseudo]Ulpianus de edendo, Quaestiones de iuris subtilitatibus, Theodosian Code, Ulpian Layton, Richard  310–11 Leges Edwardi Confessoris  9–10, 121–2, 144–5, 307–8, 343–4 appended to Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum  105–7, 113 association with Glanvill  130, 210–11, 218 date and authorship of  104–5, 111, 113, 120–1, 348–9 first recension of  111, 114, 348 second recension of  188n.111, 213n.25 second recension of, expanded in the Holkham Book  112–13, 120–1, 130–1, 334–5, 342 third recension of, unique to Tripartita  105–7, 198–9, 284, 306–7, 337–8, 348 truncated, third recension in Henry Knighton’s Chronicle  198–200, 203–4, 207–8, 269, 371–4 fourth recension of, in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  7–9, 126–9, 134–5, 189–92, 198–9, 213–14, 237–40, 245–6, 252–3, 255–6, 258–69, 282–7, 306–7, 332–4, 337–8, 340–1, 345–9, 358–9 in Liber Horn  252–3, 266 in the Palace of Westminster library  284 not used in John Brompton’s Chronicle  202n.199, 203–5 possible inclusion in Walter of Guisborough’s Chronicle 199n.183 potential source for fourth English coronation ordo  255–6, 259–60 printed editions of  284–7, 333–4, 337–8, 347–9, 351–2, 371–5, 382–3 source for Alan of Ashbourn’s Lichfield Chronicle  189–92, 198–9, 207–8, 269, 371–4, 382–3 unidentified witness of, used by Morgan Kidwelly  276, 281 and William the Conqueror’s confirmation of Edward the Confessor’s laws  111, 115–16, 119, 123–4, 134–5, 259n.89, 265–6, 333–4, 345–6 see also ‘law of King Edward’ Leges Henrici  111, 115–16, 121–5, 144–5, 210–11 authorship and date of  108–9, 120–1 in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  126–9, 134–5, 378n.120 lost witnesses of  293–4

456 Index Leges Henrici (cont.) printed by Roger Twysden (1644)  349, 378–9 on triple division of English law  206–7 see also Henry I Leicester  108n.36, 207, 269 abbey library  197–8, 199n.183 see also Henry Knighton Leicestershire 7–8 Leis Willelme  204–5, 258–9, 375–6 absence from some witnesses of PseudoIngulf ’s Historia Croylandensis 189, 364n.25, 371–6 date of  111–13, 375 deliberately omitted from William Lambarde’s APXAIONOMIA  333–5, 376 earlier, Latin translation of long version, transcribed by Laurence Nowell  111–12, 187–8, 213n.25, 333–5, 373n.82 long version included in Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis 111–13, 175nn.7–8, 181–2, 187–9, 191–2, 198–9, 203–4, 208, 269, 334–5, 364n.25, 371–4 potential source for fourth English coronation ordo  257–8, 265–6 printed editions of  112n.72, 371–3, 376, 378 short version appended to the Holkham Book  111–12, 120–1, 130–1, 334–5, 342 on triple division of English law  115–16, 206–7 and William the Conqueror’s confirmation of Edward the Confessor’s laws  111, 115–16, 119, 371–3 Leland, John  303–6, 323–6, 330–1, 336n.18, 355n.143, 360–2, 368–9, 382 his Antiphilarchia 294 commissioned to investigate ancient manuscripts  289–93, 296–302, 304, 306–7, 311–15, 319–21, 365–8, 368n.48 his De uiris illustribus, a.k.a. Commentarii  290–4, 294nn.47–48, 296–7, 322–3 his Itinerary 291–2 his rudimentary legal interests  292–4, 303, 367–8 his notebooks, collected as Collectanea  200, 291–2 projected (but never completed) works of  290–2, 380–1 his respect for Geoffrey of Monmouth  296–7, 316–18 his respect for Ranulf Higden  297, 317–18 his respect for royal learning  294–6, 327–30 his respect for Symeon of Durham  295–7, 301–2, 317–18 Leo III, pope  165–6 Leofric, abbot of Peterborough  185n.96

Leofwine, chaplain to Walcher, bishop of Durham 90–1 Liber albus 251–2 Liber constitutionum London 355n.144 Liber custumarum  248n.9, 251–2; for Horn’s work of this title, see Andrew Horn Liber Eliensis  47, 113–14, 119n.119, 179, 369–70 Liber regalis 261n.97 Libertas Londoniensis 213n.25 Lichfield (Staffs.)  7–8, 108n.36, 191–2, 207 Cathedral  20n.58, 32n.145 cathedral library  139nn.42–43, 140n.46, 192–3 see also Alan of Ashbourn Limebrook Priory (Herefs.)  313n.181 Lincoln 363n.21 bishops of, see Alexander; Robert Bloet canons established at  85–6 St Catherine’s Priory in  298–9 copy of Collectio Lanfranci at  39n.199 Record Office  175n.7 see of  32n.145, 33 see also Dorchester-on-Thames Lincolnshire  7–8, 22–3 monastic libraries of  298–301 sheriff of, see Ivo of Taillebois Lincoln’s Inn  281–2 Lindisfarne (Northumb.)  26–7 Lisieux Cathedral  47; see also Gilbert fitzOsbern, William of Poitiers Littleton, Sir Thomas  273, 279 his Tenures novelli  271–3, 276–8 liturgy  2, 35–7, 41–2, 90–1, 90n.73, 97–9, 168–70, 257; see also armarius, cantor, historiae (chants), laudes regiae, music, precentor Livy (Titus Livius)  69–70 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Wales  151–2, 165 London  151–2, 156–7, 210–11, 245–6, 258–9, 266, 269, 278–9, 319–20, 345–6 aldermen of  134–5, 248–9, 345 bishops of, see Gilbert Foliot, Hugh d’Orevalle, Maurice, Richard fitzNigel, John Stokesley, Wulfstan (also of Worcester and archbishop of York); see also St Paul’s Carmelite Priory  306–8 Commune of  134–5 compilation of the London Collection  6–7, 124–5, 129–30; see also London Collection of the Leges Anglorum Council of (1075)  31–2, 33n.148 Council of (1108)  207–8 Eyre of 1276  247–8, 250–1

Index  457 Eyre of 1321  224, 247–9 Ingulf of Crowland’s return from  185–7, 191–2 laws of  124–5, 127–8, 130n.190, 248–9, 254 Londoners  67n.386, 129–30, 134–5, 264n.119 Mayor of  134–5, 247–9, 345 New Temple  133n.10 Smithfield 168–70 Tower of  11, 165n.203, 168–70, 382 William the Conqueror’s entry into (1066) 155–6 see also customs of London Collection of the Leges Anglorum 172, 208, 349 Andrew Horn’s interest in and witnesses of  224, 247–55, 258–9, 264, 266–7, 293–4, 338–41, 345–8, 373 and London’s laws  134–7, 210–11, 224, 253–5, 259–60, 264 its compilation  124–6, 209–10, 218, 237n.209, 259–60, 284, 286–7, 348 its enduring popularity  130, 135–7, 209–10, 245–6, 269 its fabricated letter of Pope Eleutherius  126–9, 340–1, 345–6 in Edward II’s reign  7–8, 209–10, 224, 247, 258–60, 262–8 in Henry VIII’s reign  9, 209–10, 283–4 inclusion of coronation charters  129–30, 135–7, 138n.40, 147n.75, 259–60 influence on Bracton  209–10, 213–14, 258–9, 262–4 influence on Collectanea satis copiosa  282–5, 306–7 influence on Modus tenendi parliamentum  266–9, 358–9 influence on William Lambarde’s APXAIONOMIA  286–7, 332–4, 337–9, 347 fourth recension of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris in  7–9, 126–9, 134–5, 189–92, 198–9, 213–14, 237–40, 245–6, 252–3, 255–6, 258–69, 282–7, 306–7, 332–4, 337–8, 340–1, 345–9, 358–9 and opposition to King John  6–7, 126–30, 134–7, 210–11, 264, 267–9, 284 putative witness belonging to John Prise 316–17 its sources  126–7, 267, 284n.235, 383n.152 its version of Glanvill  126–7, 130–1, 218 its version of Leges Henrici  126–9, 378n.120 its version of Quadripartitus  108–9, 125–6, 128–9, 134–5, 192, 202–4, 250–3, 259–60, 267, 307–8, 332n.2, 348

its version of Tripartita 126–31, 259n.89, 337–8 its version of Willelmi Articuli  126–9, 252–3, 258–60, 267–8, 286–7, 332–4, 337–8, 347–8, 373–4, 378 used by Alan of Ashbourn  190–2, 207–8, 269 London, Guildhall  247–8, 254, 268–9, 293n.43, 324–5, 345–7 and the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  127–30, 259, 264 works bequeathed to its library by Andrew Horn  248–50, 252n.43, 338–41, 345 London, St Paul’s Cathedral  35–7, 47, 260–1, 354n.138, 368n.48 legal works held in its library  107n.30, 130n.191, 135–7, 259, 339–40, 339n.36 Stephen Langton allegedly reads Henry I’s Coronation Charter to King John’s barons at  132–9, 159–60 see also London, bishops of, Gervase of Howbridge/Heybridge, Ralph de Diceto, Wlfranenus Louis VI, king of France  66n.379 Lowther/Louther, Hugh  229n.148, 230–1 Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus)  52–3 Lucius, putative king of Britain  126–8, 282–3, 340–1, 345–6, 350–1, 358–9 Lumley, Lord John  295n.48, 328n.281, 329n.296 Lupset, Thomas  279–80; see also Thomas Starkey Lytlington, Nicholas, abbot of Westminster 168–70 Maccabees 145–6 Magdeburg Centuriators  326 Magna Carta  10–11, 144–5, 351–2, 356, 358–9, 382–3 annulled by Innocent III  238–40 association with Carta de Foresta  276 Edward I’s confirmation of 1297  350, 351n.121 and the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  6–7, 128–30, 134–5 absence of Henry I’s Coronation Charter and ‘law of King Edward’ from  138, 147–8, 217–18 and royal revenue  240–3 Readings and commentaries on  223n.110, 276, 278–9, 282–3, 350–3, 356–8 re-issue of 1217  276 re-issue of 1225  8–9, 138n.40, 159–60, 217–18, 276, 279, 350, 351n.121, 352–3, 356–8 in statute books  8–9, 217–18, 278–9, 350–1 used by Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris 159–60

458 Index Magna Carta (cont.) see also Articles of the Barons, Unknown Charter Mainz 42–4 Malmesbury (Wilts.) Abbey  86, 184n.87, 294n.47, 311–15, 367–8 abbots of, see Aldhelm, Godfrey of Jumièges, Warin cult of Aldhelm at  29–32, 83–4, 86 Faricius as monk at  27–8; see also Faricius, abbot of Abingdon glovers of  309; see also Thomas Stump leaves of illuminated manuscripts flutter in the breeze around  309, 367–8 library  35–9, 46–7, 97–8, 107n.25, 369n.57 rebuilding of  29–30 see also William of Marcia, putative queen of Britain  205 Margam Abbey  81–2 Margaret, queen of Scotland  67n.387 Marianus Scotus  42–4, 72–3, 100–1, 318, 330n.298, 361n.2 Marius, Gaius  65n.370 marriage (feudal incident)  280 Marsham, Sir John  112n.72, 175n.7, 188, 364n.25 Martin of Pattishall  212, 219n.79 Martinus Polonus  191n.133 Matilda, Empress, daughter of Henry I, domina Anglie/Anglorum  81–2, 91–2, 153 Matilda of Flanders, wife of William I, duchess of Normandy, queen of England  154–5 Matilda of Scotland, first wife of Henry I, queen of England  67n.387, 83–4, 86, 91–2, 109, 149–50, 153, 154–5 Matthew Paris  176n.9, 240–1 his Abbreviatio chronicorum  154, 155n.136 ambivalent attitude toward and interest in the Conquest  154–7, 159–65, 327–9 authorship of La Estoire de Saint Ædward le rei  150–1, 153, 164–5, 167–8, 379–80 continuation by Thomas Walsingham  197–8 his Chronica excerpta a magnis cronicis 159–60 his Chronica majora  153–4, 156–7, 159–65, 193–4, 197, 309–10, 327–9 his Flores historiarum  148–9, 153–7, 259n.86, 318n.214, 324–7, 328n.281, 353–4 his Gesta abbatum  162–5, 195–6 his hand  163n.190 his Historia Anglorum  159–60, 162, 164–5, 193–4, 327–9 identifies the Confessor’s sword, Curtana  261n.99

his Liber additamentorum 159–63 and the Norman yoke  163–4 printed by Matthew Parker  10, 318, 324–9, 335–7, 360, 371, 375–6 identification and treatment of his sources  98–9, 153–7, 159–65, 298nn.71–72 and William the Conqueror’s oath at Berkhamsted  163–5, 195–6 ‘Matthew of Westminster’  324–5, 353–4, 361n.2; see also Matthew Paris Mauclerk, Walter  137n.31 Maurice, bishop of London  190–1, 265–6 Merchenelaga 205 Merton Priory (Sy.)  325n.266 Middle Temple  327–9, 356n.150, 357–8 Milton, John  77–8 Mircna laga  202n.202, 205, 287n.5 Mirror of Justices, a.k.a. Speculum Justitiariorum  216–17, 226–7, 254, 273 appended to the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum by Andrew Horn  250–1, 269–70 Mithridates VI, king of Pontus  65n.371 Modus componendi brevia 345n.75 Modus tenendi parliamentum  266–7, 358–9, 382–3 appended, long after Andrew Horn’s death, to his Liber custumarum 268–9 authorship and date  265–6, 269, 358–9 its Proem  192n.139, 265–9, 358–9 Monk Bretton Priory (Yorks.)  311 Monkwearmouth (Co. Durham) refoundation of Abbey  25–7, 41n.211 see also Jarrow Montague, Richard  365 Montenegro 224 More, Sir Thomas, St, Lord Chancellor his Utopia 282 Morgan, Thomas  310–11 Multon, George, William Lambarde’s father-in-law 222n.105 murdrum fine  118–19, 234 originator of  115–16, 220–1 music  35–7, 89–90, 97–8; see also cantor, Dunstan, historiae (chants), laudes regiae, liturgy, Orderic Vitalis, precentor Neath Abbey (Glam.)  313n.181 Nennius  79n.468, 200n.193, 297–8, 321n.227 his Historia Britonum 298n.71 Newark Priory (Sy.)  320n.223 New Forest  91–2 Newton, Sir Richard, Chief Justice of Common Pleas 271–3

Index  459 Nicholas, archdeacon of Huntingdon, father of Henry of Huntingdon  107n.24 Nicholas, prior of Worcester  19–21, 57–8, 69n.399 precentor of Worcester  35–7, 74–6 his drink problem  35–7 Nigel, treasurer and bishop of Ely  114–15 Norðleoda laga  202n.202, 287n.5 Normandy  31, 33–5, 37–9, 46–9, 46n.242, 61–4, 72–3, 81–2, 90–1, 100–3, 115–16, 155–6, 180–1, 197, 204, 220–1, 329n.293 Harold Godwinson’s alleged visit to  53–5, 58–61, 154–5 Normannus, English monk of Canterbury 88n.57 Norman yoke  124, 145–7, 163–4, 353–5 Northampton 139–40 assize of (1176)  121–2 Northamptonshire 233–4 Eyre of (1329–30)  227n.139, 228n.145, 228–9, 231–2 North Elmham (Norf.) see of  20n.58, 32n.145; see also Thetford, Norwich Northumbria earls of, see Copsi; Waltheof II kings of  206n.222; see also Ida of Bernicia, Oswald restoration of monastic life in  25–6, 47–8; see also Jarrow, Monkwearmouth Synod held at Picanheale, Northumbria, in 788 45 see also Æthelburh, queen of Northumbria Norwich bishop of, see Herbert Losinga Cathedral  90n.73, 319–20, 325n.266 earl of, see Ralph de Gaёl, or Guader prior of  220–1 see of  20n.58, 32n.145, 90n.73 see also North Elmham, Thetford, Robert Talbot Nothelm, St, archbishop of Canterbury  33–5 Nowell, Laurence his collaboration with William Lambarde  10–11, 292–3, 306–7, 327–9, 332–3, 335–41, 343–5, 347–9, 358–9, 365–6 his hand  332–3 retranslation of codes extant only in Latin back into Old English  337 self-portrait  380, Plate 13 his transcript of select passages from the Holkham Book  332n.2, 334–5, 338n.33, 340–5 his transcript of Latin translation of Leis Willelme  111–12, 187–8, 333–5, 373n.82, 375–6

his transcript of Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum and Tripartita 337–8, 343–4, 379–80 his transcript of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum 379–80 his transcript of Quadripartitus 188n.113, 337, 343–4 his use of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum 337–40 use of lost Old English sources  344 Nowell, Robert  336n.16 Odo, bishop of Bayeux, earl of Kent  64 Offa, king of Mercia  31, 160–1, 176n.13 Ogerus, priest of Rippingale  181n.62 Ogle, Richard, abbot of Crowland’s clerk of court 185n.92 Old Sarum  35n.168 canons established at  85–6 Cathedral 31–3 library  37–9, 97–8 see also Salisbury, Sherborne Old Tenures 271–3 Orderic Vitalis  42–4, 53n.295, 64, 100–1 on claims to the kingdom of England in 1066  64–70, 72–3 Classical influences upon  64–73 commissioned to produce works for Crowland Abbey  71–3, 177–8, 177nn.17–18, 180–1, 183–7 his dim view of the Norman regime in England  64–9, 96, 102–3, 163–5 his hand  71–3, 97–8 his Historia ecclesiastica  64–8, 70, 72–3, 90–1, 96–8, 102–3, 177n.17, 366, 369–71 invokes Justinus  13n.2, 70 his lack of interest in pre-Conquest England  72–3, 96 as librarian and possible precentor of St-Evroult 97–8 his musical sensibility  97–8 parentage of  46n.242, 63–4, 72–3, 96 possible collaboration with William of Malmesbury 72–3 reverence for Bede  68–9, 72–3, 96 source for Geoffrey Gaimar  102–3 source for Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis  177nn.17–18, 183–7 source for Matthew Paris  156n.144 his use of Geoffrey of Monmouth  81–2 his use of William of Poitiers’ Gesta Guillelmi  46–7, 63–9, 72–3, 366n.40

460 Index Orderic Vitalis (cont.) his use and interpolation of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum  46–7, 63–4, 64–6, 66nn.378,380, 67n.385, 68n.389, 72–3, 96, 102–3, 110; see also Plate 5 his research trips  71–3, 110, 177–8, 183–4 Orosius, Paulus  21n.61, 38n.191, 45, 69n.398, 90n.75, 100–1, 336n.18 Osbern fitzOsbern, bishop of Exeter  37–9, 48–9 Osbern, precentor of Canterbury  27–9, 35–7, 60n.341, 76–7, 97–8, 318n.214, 322–3, 329–30 his Vita S. Dunstani 69n.399 Osbert of Clare, prior of Westminster  144–5 his Vita beati Eadwardi regis Anglorum 140–1 Osborne, Peter, Clerk of the Faculties and Keeper of the Privy Purse  201, 320–1 Oscytel, abbot of Crowland  185n.96 Osmund, bishop of Salisbury  31–2, 37–9 Oswald, St, bishop of Worcester, archbishop of York  75n.441, 98–9, 147–8 Folcard of St-Bertin composes historiae about 97n.133 Oswald, St, king of Northumbria  25–7, 32–3 Otto, bishop of Freising  63–4 Oxford  133n.10, 178–9, 347 Chapter Library, Christ Church  139n.42 Jesus College  316 University of  384n.156 Padua 280 Pandulf, nuncio of Pope Innocent III  139–40, 143–8, 163–5, 173–4, 185 Papacy its claims to jurisdiction over England  9–10, 140, 142, 282–3, 294, 297–300, 302–6, 323–4, 327–9, 371 Polydore Vergil’s support for  296–7 its role in English coronation  151–2, 165–6 its support for the Norman Conquest  63–4, 294 see also Alexander II, Boniface VIII, Eleutherius, Gregory I the Great, Gregory VII, Gregory IX, Honorius III, Innocent III, Leo III, Pandulf, Paschal II, Urban II, Zacharias Paris, University of  279–80 Parker, Matthew, archbishop of Canterbury  292–3, 304, 324, 343–4, 352n.130, 371, 382 John Bale’s letter to (1560)  302n.105, 308–9, 318–23, 318n.212, 326–9

and Andrew Horn’s manuscripts  249–51, 338–9, 345, 347 his printed edition of Asser  329–30, 366n.39, 367–8 his printed edition of Gildas  326–7 his printed editions of Matthew Paris  10, 318, 324–9, 335–7, 360, 371, 375–6 his De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae & privilegiis ecclesiae Cantuariensis 322–3, 326–7, 330n.302, 340–1, 354–5 his A defence of priestes mariages (1567)  330–1, 365n.34 his hand  329–30 his interest in William of Malmesbury  52, 312n.168, 330–1, 363n.20 his library  11, 52n.285, 114n.84, 302nn.107,110, 310n.153, 312n.168, 320–1, 330–1, 335–7, 360–2, 363n.22, 365–6 his ownership of the Holkham Book  Frontispiece, 10, 112–13, 203n.206, 332n.2, 338n.33, 340–2, 344 his Privy Council commission to investigate historical records  10, 286–9, 319, 324–7, 330–2, 338–9, 360–2 publishing of first Old English text  286, 323–5, 329–30, 335–7, 338n.35, 366n.39, 367–8 supports the research precedent to William Lambarde’s APXAIONOMIA 335–40, 344–5, 347 Parry, Henry, bishop of Worcester  360–2 Parry, Henry, son of the above, fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford  360–2 Paschal II, pope  207–8, 238–40 Paul of Caen, abbot of St Albans  100–1 Paul the Deacon  21n.61, 57, 98–9 Peasants’ Revolt (1381)  168–70 Penenden Heath, land plea heard at  376–8 Pershore Abbey (Worcs.)  35–7, 154n.126 Peter, St  165 Peter of Blois  175n.8, 187n.103 Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester 159–60 Peter’s Pence  259n.86, 284n.239 Peterborough Abbey (Cambs.)  135n.18, 326n.273, 360–2 abbot of  229n.149, 231–2; see also Leofric copy of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum at  48–9 Petre, William, royal commissioner for the Dissolution 311–15 Philip II Augustus, king of France  136n.26 Pippin III, the Short, king of Francia  363n.22 Pithou, Pierre  369–70

Index  461 Placita corone 270n.150 plea rolls  220 on franchises  225–7, 245 their occasional interest in Old English and Conquest history  218–20, 233–4 their nature  217–21 use in Bracton  212, 217–18 use in Bracton’s Note Book  211–12, 217–18 Pole, Reginald, cardinal archbishop of Canterbury 279–80 Polydore Vergil  294n.46, 353–5 criticism of  296–7, 316, 326–7, 362 his Historicae Anglicana  10–11, 281–2, 296–7 his sources  10–11, 298n.71, 328n.281, 362 his support for the Papacy  296–7 Pompeius Trogus, Gnaeus  2–3, 13, 39n.196, 69n.400, 82–3, 157; see also Justinus Ponthieu  53–4, 154 precentor  2–5, 35–41, 89–90, 97–8, 148–9; see also armarius, cantor, Eadmer of Canterbury, Fulmar, Goscelin of St-Bertin, historiae (chants), liturgy, music, Nicholas, prior of Worcester, Orderic Vitalis, Osbern of Canterbury, Richard, precentor of Cirencester, Symeon of Durham, Thomas Thornton, Thomas Walsingham, William of Malmesbury, Wlnoth Primacy Agreement between Canterbury and York (1072)  181–2, 299–300 Prise, Sir John  313–15, 318–19, 324–7, 330–1, 360–2, 375–6 his Historiae Brytanniae defensio  316–18, 362 his copy of Leges Langobardorum 316–17 Prise, Richard  315–16, 318–19, 362, 375–6 Pseudo-Cnut de foresta attribution to Cnut  110–11, 115–16 Pseudo-Ingulf see Ingulf, abbot of Crowland [Pseudo-]Ulpianus de edendo  112n.76, 120–3, 342

in the Holkham Book  111–13, 120–1, 130–1, 187–8, 201–2, 332n.2, 333–5, 338n.33, 340–3 inclusion of Willelmi Articuli in late witness of  109n.47, 113n.78 inclusion of William the Conqueror’s writ on exculpation in several witnesses of  112–14, 203–5, 307–8, 373–4 insertion into William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum  113–14, 120 and investiture  207–8, 238n.219 in John Brompton’s Chronicle  7–8, 201–8, 238n.219, 307–8 Laurence Nowell’s transcript of  188n.113, 332n.2, 337, 338n.33, 341–4 and the ‘law of King Edward’  109–13, 125–6, 204–7 in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  108–9, 125–6, 128–9, 134–5, 192, 202–4, 250–3, 259–60, 267, 307–8, 332n.2, 348 in Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS. Lat. 420  201–2, 343–7, 350–1, 354–5, 356n.148 possible use by Henry of Huntingdon  105–7, 107n.30 possible use by William of Malmesbury  108–9, 113–14 records Edward the Confessor’s confirmation of existing law  110–11, 125–6, 203–4, 267, 307–8 St Augustine’s, Canterbury witness of  250–1, 293–4, 319–20 Worcester witnesses of  307–8, 340–2, 344 Quaestiones de iuris subtilitatibus 122–3 Quedam exceptiones  48–9, 66n.373, 110; see also William of Jumièges Queen Mary’s Psalter 251n.35 Quo warranto  225–34, 240, 245–6, 266n.138

Quadripartitus  110, 335–7 Andrew Horn’s use and editing of in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  250–2, 267, 293–4, 319–20 its Argumentum  109–11, 114, 125–6, 134–5, 192, 203–5, 208, 266–8, 307–8, 332n.2, 340–2, 344, 356n.148 its compilation  108–9, 114, 120–1, 123–4, 348 Coronation Charter of Henry I preserved with  135n.21, 202, 204, 207–8 its Dedicatio 307–8 earliest extant version, the Winchester Collection  108, 125–6 Henry Sidney’s lost witness of  309–10, 327–9, 343–4

Raleigh, William, clerk to Martin of Pattishall  212, 219n.79 Ralph de Beauchamp  227n.139 Ralph of Coggeshall  156n.148, 162, 362n.12 Ralph de Diceto, dean of St Paul’s, London  his Abbreviationes chronicorum and Ymagines historiarum  47, 127n.165, 159, 297–8, 301–2, 326n.273, 354n.138 printing of  318n.214, 365–6, 379n.129 source for Matthew Paris  156–7 his use of William of Poitiers’ Gesta Guillelmi  47, 369–70 Ralph de Gaёl, or Guader, earl of Norwich  67n.385, 70

462 Index Ralph of Hengham, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench  227–8, 228n.145, 233–6 his Summa parva 252–3 Ralph Niger  318n.214 Ramsey Abbey (Hunts.)  72n.416, 300n.91, 304–6 abbot of  229n.148 copy of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum at  48–9 see also Byrhtferth of Ramsey Ranulf the Chancellor  94–6 Ranulf Flambard, bishop of Durham  38n.189, 47–8, 87–9, 91–3 his examination of St Cuthbert’s corpse 29–30 Ranulf Higden, monk of St Werburgh’s, Chester 193 his Polychronicon  193–8, 297, 300n.91, 306n.131, 314n.184, 316–18, 379–80 his sources  194–5 source for Henry Knighton  197–9 source for John Brompton’s Chronicle 201, 201n.194 source for Raphael Holinshed  353–5 English translation of, by John of Trevisa 195–6 Ravensworth Castle (Yorks.)  200 Reading Abbey (Berks.)  99n.154, 156–7, 310–11, 366n.38 Record, Robert  363n.22 Rectitudines singularum personarum 202n.204 Red Book of the Exchequer  125n.149, 129n.185, 276n.190, 378n.120 Rede, Richard  274n.181 Registers of writs  269–70 Revenge Parliament (1397)  168–70 Reynald, Walter, archbishop of Canterbury 190n.121 Rheims 151–2 Council of (1119)  66n.379 Richard I, duke of Normandy  89–90 Richard II, duke of Normandy  50–1 Richard I, king of England  123–4, 144–5, 200–1 accused of not respecting the ‘law of King Edward’ 145 charters of  184–5, 232n.172, 233 his first coronation as limit of legal memory  5–6, 229–31, 229n.149, 244n.256, 271–3, 276 Richard II, king of England  271–3 his burial  171 his coronation  165–6 his devotion to Edward the Confessor’s cult 165–72

endorses the ‘law of King Edward’  168–70 Henry Knighton’s account of his reign 197–200 1393 Inspeximus of charters in favour of Crowland Abbey  184–5 invests Henry IV with ‘seal of St Edward’  170 his love of candles  168–70 and the Peasants’ Revolt  168–70 resignation as king  168–70 walks barefoot in procession with the Westminster monks  168–70 his will  167–8 in the Wilton Diptych  166–8 Richard of Barking, abbot of Westminster 151n.107 Richard of Baskerville  230–1 Richard, precentor of Cirencester, his Speculum historiale 161–2 Richard of Devizes  318n.214 Richard fitzNigel, royal treasurer, bishop of London  120–3, 160–1, 237 his Dialogus de Scaccario  114–20, 215–16, 220–1, 244–5, 350–1 his [lost] Tricolumnis  114–15, 119 Richard of Hemsby, son of Ernys  220–1 Richard of Hexham his Historia 318 printed by Roger Twysden (1652)  365–6 Richard de Loges  226n.131 Richard de Lucy, Chief Justiciar of England  226, 231 Richmond Palace (Sy.)  366n.40 Robert, man of Simon of Baston  181n.62 Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln  17–18, 87–9, 91, 94–6 Robert of Crickdale, canon of Cirencester  36n.173, 97–8 Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy  341n.48 Robert, earl of Gloucester  81–2, 91–2 Robert de Gorron, abbot of St Albans  162–3 Robert of Lewes, bishop of Bath and Wells 20n.58 Robert of Limesey, bishop of Chester  86n.39 Robert Losinga, bishop of Hereford  39–40, 42–5, 47–8 Robert, count of Mortain  291–2 Robert of Prunelai, abbot of Thorney  71n.413 Robert of Torigni, abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel  79–82, 156–7 his Historia 161–2 his interpolations in William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum  366, 369–70 Robert of Yaxley  105–7

Index  463 Robertsbridge Abbey (Suss.)  309–10, 331n.305, 343 Robinson, Nicholas, bishop of Bangor  330n.301 Rochester (Kent) bishops of, see Gundulf, St John Fisher Cathedral 313n.181 library  107n.30, 300–1, 339n.36 copy of Collectio Lanfranci in  39n.199 copy of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum in  48–9 see also Textus Roffensis Roger de Breteuil, earl of Hereford  67n.385, 70 Roger of Crowland  135–7, 196, 201 his Crowland Chronicle  174, 193–4, 196, 200–1 Roger of Howden  133n.10, 159, 297, 319–20, 330n.302, 362n.12 his background  120–1, 160–1 his Chronica  120–1, 124, 130–1, 139–40, 198–9, 232n.170 his Gesta regis Henrici secundi 122n.133 his hand  124, 130–1 his legal interests and insertions in his Chronica  120–4, 130–1, 198–9, 232n.170, 363n.22, 375–6 his ‘Liber de legibus Angliae’  120–3, 130–1, 232n.170, 363n.22 Henry Savile’s edition of (1596)  174–5, 363–5, 375–6 printing of requested by John Bale  316–17, 318n.214 his sources and their treatment  120, 124, 159 use of by later historians  139–40, 196, 354n.138 Roger Mortimer, 1st baron Mortimer  227n.134 Roger Mortimer, 1st earl of March  226, 248–9 Roger le Poer of Avranches, bishop of Salisbury  17–18, 20n.58, 114–15, 119–20 Roger of Seaton, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench 219–20 Roger of Waltham  273 Roger of Wendover  128n.179, 164–5 on baronial opposition to John  132–9 his contributions to Chronica majora 153–4 his criticism of the Norman regime  154 his Flores historiarum  153–4, 161–2 influence on Matthew Paris  150–1, 153–4, 156n.144, 159–62 identification and treatment of his sources  98–9, 154, 159–62 Rome  127–8, 140, 165–6, 274–5, 282–3 Rufinus of Aquileia  40–1, 83, 316n.204; see also Eusebius, Josephus

Russell, Francis, earl of Bedford  338n.35 Rutland 228 St Albans (Herts.) Abbey  31, 133n.10, 138–9, 147n.77, 159–60, 162, 164–5, 197, 260–1, 329–30 abbot of  31, 163–4, 212n.12, 298n.71; see also Frederick, Paul of Caen, Robert de Gorron historical writing at  37–9, 48–9, 98–101, 156–7, 298nn.71–73, 310n.155, 316, 319–20, 326–7, 360; see also Matthew Paris, Thomas Walsingham monks of  162–3 see also Adam the Cellarer, Turnot, tenant of St Albans St Benet’s Abbey, Holme (Norf.)  328n.281 St-Evroult Abbey  42–4, 67–8, 71–2, 96–8, 177–8; see also Orderic Vitalis, Warin St German, Christopher  280 his Dialogue between Doctor and Student  279–80, 282–3 St Petroc’s, Bodmin (Corn.)  291–2 St-Wandrille Abbey  61–2, 180–1, 185n.96 saints’ lives  25–42, 50–1, 55–60, 71n.415, 76–8, 83–4, 86–9, 97–101, 151, 153, 171–2, 186–7, 330n.298 Old English production of compared to Continental 15n.18 see also St Æthelwold, Aelred of Rievaulx, B., Bede, Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Coleman, St Dunstan, Eadmer, Edward the Confessor, Folcard of St-Bertin, Goscelin of St-Bertin, St Guthlac, historiae (chants), Inventio et miracula S. Vulfrani, Osbern of Canterbury, Osbert of Clare, Paul the Deacon, Waltheof, William of Malmesbury, William of St Albans, Wulfstan of Winchester saints’ relics  25–6, 55–6, 74–6, 87–9, 163–4, 191–2, 310–11 translation of  2, 29–35, 77–8, 140–1, 143, 147–52, 165, 167–8, 171, 177–9, 186–7 vitae treated as relics  98–9 see also St Æthelburh, St Æthelthryth, St Alban, St Aldhelm, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, St Cuthbert, St Hildelith, Edward the Confessor, Ely, St Swithun, Waltheof, St Wulfhild, St Wulfstan II Salisbury  33n.149, 83n.22 bishops of, see John Jewel; Osmund; Roger le Poer copy of Collectio Lanfranci at  39n.199 see also Old Sarum, Sherborne

464 Index Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus)  56–7, 64–7, 69–72, 78, 94–6, 102n.176 Samson, bishop of Worcester  87–9, 91 Savile, Henry, the Elder of Banke  384n.156 Savile, Henry, the Younger of Banke  384n.156 Savile, Sir Henry, Warden of Merton College, Oxford, Provost of Eton College  367–8, 371, 384n.156 his edition of William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Howden, Æthelweard and PseudoIngulf ’s Historia Croylandensis (1596)  174–5, 175n.7, 189, 193, 360–5, 371–3, 375–6 his translation of Tacitus  365 Sawley Abbey (Lancs.)  301–2 Sawtry Abbey (Hunts.)  301–2 abbot of  229n.148 Say, William, secretary to Sir John Prise  313–15 Scolland, abbot of St Augustine’s, Canterbury 33–5 Scotland  165, 168n.232, 380–1 Séez, abbot of  29–30 Selden, John  162n.187, 199–200, 322–3, 336n.17, 340n.38, 343n.60, 364n.25, 375–6 his commentary on Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion 384–5 his disparagement of William Lambarde’s APXAIONOMIA  373, 375–6, 378n.124 his edition of Eadmer’s Historia novorum  11–12, 175n.7, 365–6, 370–9, 381–3 his Historie of Tithes  11–12, 321, 371–3, 382–5 his Janus Anglorum 373 his imprisonment in the Tower  382 influence his Historia novorum on future printed editions  378–9, 382–3 his possession of a lost witness of Leges Henrici  293n.43, 379 prints Leis Willelme  112n.72, 188, 371–6, 378 prints Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati  347, 373–4, 376, 378 prints William the Conqueror’s writ on exculpation 373–4 his use of Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis 371–5 Selsey Cathedral (Suss.)  20n.58, 32n.145; see also Chichester, Church Norton Senatus, prior of Worcester  141n.50 Seneschaucie  215n.45, 252–3 Serlo, abbot of Gloucester  32n.141 Serlo of Wilton, poet  81n.8

Seymour, Edmund, earl of Hertford, duke of Somerset 312n.166 Shareshull, king’s serjeant  231–2 Sharnborn (Norf.)  381n.144, 383–5 Sherborne (Dor.) bishops of, see Ælfwold; Æthelric; Aldhelm; Wulfsige priory  20n.58, 31–3, 311–12 production of saints’ lives at  33–5 the Sherborne Missal 311–12 see also Old Sarum, Salisbury Shropshire 72–3 Sidney, Sir Henry  309–10, 327–9, 343–4 Sidney, Sir William  309–10, 343 Simon of Baston  181n.62 Smart, William, portreeve and MP for Ipswich 314n.186 Smyth, John, royal commissioner for the Dissolution 311–13 Snagge, Robert  356–8 Snagge, Thomas  356n.150 Society of Antiquaries  346–7 Soulemont, Thomas, private secretary to Thomas Cromwell  301–2 Southwark 156–7 Southwick Priory (Hants.)  301–2, 304, 306–7 Spain 15–16 Spalding Priory (Lincs.)  182n.66 Spelman, Sir Henry  112n.72, 175n.7, 188, 346n.93, 364n.25, 373n.89, 378n.119, 381, 383–4 Sprott/Spott, Thomas, monk and annalist of St Augustine’s, Canterbury  145–6, 173–4, 187, 189, 297n.69, 323, 352–5; see also Swanscombe Down, William Thorne Standard, battle of the (1138)  81–2 Stapledon, Walter, bishop of Exeter  318n.214 Stapleton, Thomas  360–2 Starkey, Thomas his A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset 279–83 on the imposition of new laws by William the Conqueror 281–2 Statham, Nicholas  277–8 statutes 215–18 Henry III’s re-issue of Magna Carta (1225) as the first statute  8–9, 217–18, 278–9, 350–1 in Liber Horn  252n.40, 253 Old English codes as proto-statutes  8–9, 176n.14, 214–15, 332–3, 347, 350–1, 354–5 Readings on  271–3, 276, 278–9, 282–3, 345–6, 350

Index  465 statute books  187–8, 214–15, 217–18, 240, 278–9, 350–1 Statute de finibus levatis, 27 Edw. 1 (1299)  264n.118 36 Edw. III, stat. 1 (1362)  275 Statute of Gloucester, 6 Edw. I (1278)  272n.165 Statute of Marlborough, 52 Hen.III (1267)  356–8 Statute of Quo warranto, 18 Edw. I (1290)  228–31, 244n.256 Statute in Restraint of Appeals, 24 Hen.VIII, c. 12 (1533)  209–10, 283–5 Statute of Westminster I, 3 Edw. I (1275)  229–30, 271–3 Statute of Westminster II, 13 Edw. I, c. 1 (1285)  232n.172, 272n.162, 281n.223, 283n.230 Statute of York, 16 Edw. II, stat. 1 (1322) 264n.119 Stephen, king of England  93–4, 104–5, 111, 111n.69, 128n.174, 158–9 allegedly confirms Henry I’s Coronation Charter 135–7 his Coronation Charter  129–30, 134n.11, 137n.29 seeks canonization of Edward the Confessor 138–41 Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury  145–6, 299–300, 323 Stokesley, John, bishop of London  330n.301 Stone of Scone  165 Stow, John  323n.251, 324–5, 353–5, 355n.147, 361n.3, 366n.38, 367n.44, 379–80 Strasbourg 316n.204 Stump, William, clothier of Malmesbury  309–10 Stump, William, rector of Yatton Keynell (Wilts.) 309 Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus)  84–5, 290 Summa Fet asaver  218n.75, 252–3 Surrey 243–4 Eyre of 1279  229n.151 Sussex 243–4 Swanscombe Down (Kent), ambush at  145–6, 163–5, 187, 223, 279, 291–2, 323, 352–5; see also Thomas Sprott/Spott, William Thorne Swerian 202n.204 Swetman, supposed monk of Crowland  178 Swithun, St translation of into new cathedral church at Winchester (1093)  33–5 Symeon of Durham  2–3, 27–8, 77–8, 85–6, 318, 354n.138, 365–6

brought to Durham from France  33–5, 46n.242, 47–8 cited by Holinshed  354n.138 his hand  26–7, 37–40, 46n.242, 47–50 his Historia de regibus Anglorum  15n.18, 47–8, 120n.122, 124, 158n.159, 301–2, 368 partially subsumes Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s otherwise lost history  15n.18, 368 first printed by Roger Twysden (1652)  365–6 his Libellus  47–8, 206–7 John Leland’s respect for  295–7, 317–18 as precentor  33–40 his respect for Bede  16, 25–7, 47–8 source for William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum Anglicarum 158n.159 his use of John of Worcester  53n.295 his use of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum 47–50 Syria 167–8 Tacitus (Publius Cornelius Tacitus)  95n.126, 365, 371–3 Taillefer, minstrel  61–2 Talbot, Robert, prebendary of Norwich  294n.44, 328n.282, 336n.18 Tate, Francis  346–7, 383n.152 Tavistock Abbey (Dev.)  338n.35 tempore regis Edwardi (t.r.e), ‘time of King Edward’  1, 109, 144–5, 211–12, 216–17, 226, 234–6, 240–1, 376–8; see also ancient demesne, antecessor, Domesday Book, Edward the Confessor Tewkesbury Abbey (Gloucs.)  313n.181 Textus Roffensis  300–1, 344–5, 354–5, 377n.106; see also Rochester Theobald of Bec, archbishop of Canterbury 128n.174 Theodosian Code  13n.2, 107 Thetford, see of  20n.58, 32n.145; see also North Elmham, Norwich Theulf, bishop of Worcester  91 Theyer, John  363n.18 Thirning, Sir William, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench 170–1 Thomas I of Bayeux, archbishop of York  190–1, 265–6 Thomas, 2nd earl of Lancaster  265–6 Thomas Walsingham, precentor of Saint Albans  162n.187, 170, 197–8 his continuation of Matthew Paris’s Chronica majora  197, 329–30, 362n.12, 366n.39 his use of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum 197 his Ypodigma Neustriae  197, 329–30

466 Index Thorne, William  173–4, 297 his Chronicle  145n.71, 291–2 printed by Roger Twysden (1652)  365–6 see also Thomas Sprott/Spott Thorney Abbey (Cambs.)  71–3, 97n.133 abbot of  105–7; see also Robert of Prunelai Thornton, Thomas, precentor of Hereford 315n.194 Thornton-on-Humber, Augustinian priory of St Mary the Virgin (Yorks.)  299–305 Thorold of Bucknall  176n.14, 181 Thou, Jacques-Auguste de  369–70 Thurketel, abbot of Crowland  178, 180–3, 185nn.94,96 Thurstan, abbot of Glastonbury  89–91 Thynne, Francis  355nn.146,147, 372n.72 Thynne, Sir John, secretary to Edmund Seymour 312n.166 Tintern Abbey (Monms.)  328n.281 ‘Totenham’ 234–6 Tregonwell, Sir John, royal commissioner for the Dissolution 311–15 Tribal Hidage  124–6, 255, 267, 284n.235, 383n.152 Trig, procurator of Crowland  175–6 Tripartita 308 appended to Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum  105–7, 120, 122n.132, 198–9, 306–7, 337–8, 379–80 unique, third recension of Leges Edwardi Confessoris  105–7, 198–9, 284, 306–7, 337–8, 348 inclusion of Willelmi Articuli 105–7, 337–8, 348 inserted into Roger of Howden’s Chronica  120–1, 122n.132, 130–1, 198–9, 363n.22, 376n.98 in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum  126–31, 259n.89, 337–8, 348 transcribed by Laurence Nowell  337–8, 343–4, 379–80 Troy  21n.61, 79n.468, 127–8, 274, 281n.219 Tuke, Sir Brian  317n.208 Turgot, prior of Durham  48n.259, 379n.129 Turnot, tenant of St Albans  163–4 Twyne, John, school master and MP for Canterbury 319–20 Twysden, Sir Roger  337n.27, 365–6, 379 co-editor of new edition of William Lambarde’s APXAIONOMIA (1644)  293n.43, 347, 349, 378–9, 382–4 his edition of John Brompton’s Chronicle (1652)  321, 365–6, 379

Ulpian (Gnaeus Domitius Annius Ulpianus) 115n.93 Unknown Charter  135–8; see also Articles of the Barons, Magna Carta Urban II, pope  299–300 Ussher, James, archbishop of Armagh  379n.128 Utopia 282 Vacarius, Master  122–3 villeinage  216–17, 220–1, 234–6, 240–6, 276n.190; see also ancient demesne Vieux natura brevium 278 Wace  60–1, 102–3, 115–16, 299–300 Walcher, bishop of Durham  90–1 Wales  15–16, 81–2, 380–1 Walkelin, bishop of Winchester  33–5 Walter Espec  81–2 Walter of Guisborough  262–4 his Chronicle  197–8, 224, 226–7 on John de Warenne’s claims  224–9, 231 possible insertion of Leges Edwardi Confessoris 198–9 source for Knighton’s Chronicle 197–9 Walter of Henley  215n.45 his Hosebandrie 252–3 Waltham Abbey (Ess.)  98–9, 155n.138 Waltheof II, earl of Northumbria  177–8, 177n.17, 186–7 wardship  217–18, 220n.90, 280 Warelwast, bishop of Exeter  20n.58 Warin, abbot of St Evroult  71n.413 Warin, abbot of Malmesbury  29n.117, 31–2, 37–9 his mockery of the relics of Old English saints 29–30 Wars of the Roses  297 Wats, William  321 Waverley annalist  132n.1, 138, 140n.45 Wells (Som.) bishops of, see Giso, John of Tours, or de Villula, Robert of Lewes see of  20n.58, 32n.145 see also Historiola de primordiis episcopatus Somersetensis Welsh Marches  315 Wenric of Trier  63–4 Wessex 206n.222 earls of, see Godwin; Harold II Godwinson kingdom of  16–17, 83 kings of, see Æthelwulf; Alfred; Cerdic; Ecgberht; Ine Westminster  132n.1, 152–3, 161–2, 178–9 Abbey  7, 19–21, 140–1, 151–4, 166–7, 171, 183n.82, 255–6, 302n.111 Henry III’s rebuilding of  7, 148–52, 165–6

Index  467 abbots of, see Nicholas Lytlington; Richard of Barking Council of (1102)  207–8 dean of, see John Williams Edward the Confessor’s tomb and shrine at  140–1, 143, 149–52, 155–6, 165, 168–71, 260–1, 302–3 Hall  168–70, 226n.132 letter of the citizens of London to those assembled at Westminster (Jan.1327)  264n.119 Missal of Nicholas Lytlington  168–70 monks of  148–9, 168–70; see also William of Sudbury Palace of  148–9, 262–4, 284, 290n.13, 310nn.156–157 prior of, see Osbert of Clare Statute of Westminster I, 3 Edw. I (1275)  229–30, 271–3 Statute of Westminster II, 13 Edw. I, c. 1 (1285)  232n.172, 272n.162, 281n.223, 283n.230 Treaty of (1153)  346n.93 Westsaxenelaga 205 Whelock, Abraham  349, 367, 378 Wido, abbot of St Augustine’s, Canterbury  33–5 Wiglaf, king of Mercia  176n.13 Wigmore (Herefs.)  226 Willelmi Articuli  111n.63, 115–16, 307–8 amplified version (Willelmi Articuli Londoniis retractati) in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum 126–9, 252–3, 258–60, 267–8, 286–7, 332–4, 337–8, 347–8, 373–4, 376, 378 amplified version in the Red Book of the Exchequer 276n.190 date of original version  105–7, 128–9, 348–9 included in late witness of Quadripartitus  109n.47, 113n.78 included in Tripartita  105–7, 337–8, 348 French translation a potential source for fourth English coronation ordo 257–8 printed by John Selden (1623)  347, 373–4, 376, 378 printed by William Lambarde (1568)  332–4, 337–8, 343–4, 348–9, 373–4, 378 its relationship to Instituta Cnuti 105–7 William I the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, king of England  14–17, 55–7, 65nn.368–369, 93–4, 97n.133, 114–15, 119–20, 140n.45, 159–62, 170, 175–6, 179, 181–2, 194n.150, 198–9, 216–17, 228–9, 264, 264n.118, 269, 294–5, 323–4, 327–9, 357–8, 385

accused of not respecting, but replacing, the ‘law of King Edward’  145–7, 280–2, 294, 351–7 and ancient demesne  6n.4, 227–8, 234–6, 238–40, 242n.246, 245 his alleged attempted deposition of Bishop Wulfstan II of Worcester  140–1, 143–5 charters of  161n.180, 181, 183n.82, 191–2, 211–14, 232–3 his claim to the kingdom of England  1, 46–7, 49–55, 57–70, 72–4, 76–8, 96, 100–2, 114, 154–5, 195–6, 213–14, 215n.43 his coronation  151–2, 158–9, 190–1, 195–6, 207, 257 criticism of  22–3, 63–4, 67–8, 89–92, 101–3, 143–5, 154–9, 162–5, 189 death of  42–4, 65–9, 199–200, 366n.40 supposed employment of Ingulf of Crowland  174–5, 180–1, 183–7, 185n.94, 363–5, 371–5 endorses the ‘law of King Edward’, with emendations  5–9, 104–7, 111–13, 115–16, 119, 123–4, 128–9, 134–5, 187, 189–93, 199–200, 209–10, 213–14, 257–60, 265–9, 274–6, 278–9, 281, 332–5, 345–6, 371–3, 375–8, 384 his entry into London (1066)  155–6 allegedly forced to concede Old English law to Kent  145–7, 163–5, 189, 221–3, 291–2, 323, 352–5 allegedly forced to endorse Old English law at Berkhamsted  163–5, 195–6 in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales 271 his supposed introduction of frankpledge 220–1 his supposed introduction of the murdrum fine  115–16, 220–1 laws of  109–11, 122–3, 125–6, 134n.14, 187, 213–14, 238–40, 252–3, 267, 280, 307–8, 333–5, 348, 350–1, 371–8, 383–4; see also Leis Willelme, Willelmi Articuli his marriage to Matilda of Flanders  154–5 allegedly confirms Old English parliamentary procedure  265–6, 358–9 his writ on exculpation  112–14, 203–5, 307–8, 332–3, 335, 373–4 and Quo warranto  224, 226–8, 231–2 his relations with the Papacy  48–9, 114n.84, 294 his treatment of the English Church  21–2, 87–91 alleged visit to England (1051) 61n.349, 180–1

468 Index William II Rufus, king of England  17–18, 56–7, 72–3, 84–5, 91–3, 128–30, 155, 179, 191–2, 299–300, 351–2 Alan of Ashbourn’s treatment of, in the Lichfield Chronicle  191–2, 269, Plate 10 his soul  19n.52 William d’Albini  384 William de Braose  227n.139 William of Brompton, justice of the Common Bench 220–1 William of Ely  136n.24 William fitzOsbern, earl of Hereford  48–9, 64, 194n.150 William fitzStephen  255 William, St, of Gellone  101n.171 William Giffard, bishop of Winchester  37–9 William of Howbridge  136n.24 William of Jumièges  76–7 his Gesta Normannorum ducum  1, 46–50, 59n.338, 72–3, 100–1, 320n.223, 362n.12, 379–80 Orderic Vitalis’s use of and interpolations in Gesta Normannorum ducum 46–7, 63–4, 64–6, 66nn.378,380, 67n.385, 68n.389, 72–3, 96, 102–3, 110, Plate 5 Robert of Torigni’s interpolated version, printed by William Camden (1602)  366, 369–71 probable source for William of Malmesbury  46–7, 49–50 source for Symeon of Durham  47–8 source for Thomas Walsingham  197 on William the Conqueror’s claim to the kingdom of England  1, 51–4, 61n.347, 63–4, 66n.378, 96 known witnesses of, see Christ Church, Canterbury, Durham, Exeter, Glastonbury, Peterborough, Ramsey, Rochester William of Malmesbury  24–5, 32n.140, 101, 114–15, 128–9, 157, 159, 294–5, 294n.46, 297–301, 327, 368 adaptation of Coleman’s Life of St Wulfstan  19–21, 35–7, 41–2, 57–8, 98–9, 141n.50, 368 his architectural sensibility  19–21, 29–31, 77–8, 87 his attitude towards the Conquest and Norman rule  18–22, 45–6, 50, 55–7, 63–4, 73–7, 87–96, 101–3, 119–20, 140–1, 164–5 his ‘broken chain’  2–4, 12–15, 22, 24, 41, 44–7, 63, 69–70, 73–4, 78–80, 104–5, 159, 162, 209–10, 269, 297

on claims to the kingdom of England in 1066  50–5, 57–62, 77–8, 101–2 Classical influences upon  2–3, 13, 21–2, 40–1, 45, 54–7, 69–70, 82–5, 94–6 his collaborators  35–7, 44–5, 54–5, 57–8, 61–2, 72–3, 77–9 his Commentary of Lamentations 78 his criticism of Æthelweard  14–16, 364–5 his criticism of the Old English Church  18–19, 74–6 his De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie 28–9, 55–6, 60–1, 86, 90n.75, 179, 354n.138 dedications of his works  81–4, 91–4, 109 his Gesta pontificum Anglorum  22, 57–8, 85–90, 94–6, 162–3, 298n.71, 299–305, 312n.168, 318, 326n.273, 339–40, 354n.138, 380–1 his Gesta regum Anglorum  13, 21–2, 24, 28–9, 52n.285, 56–8, 69–70, 73–4, 77–8, 81–2, 90–1, 109, 113–14, 120, 154, 181–2, 189–90, 298n.71, 301–3, 312n.169, 315–16, 318, 320n.223, 330–1, 332n.2, 354n.138 comparison of these two works  82–7, 91–4 his hand  13, 21–2, 70n.402, 83n.22, 107 his Historia novella  78, 81–2, 298n.71, 301–2, 326n.273, 330–1, 360 knowledge of Cnut’s letter to the English (1027) 215–16 knowledge of Marianus Scotus and Robert Losinga  43n.224, 45 influenced by Bede  14–16, 18–19, 21–2, 24, 26–7, 52, 56–7, 60n.345, 63, 76–8, 82–3, 120, 297, 304, 362 influenced by Eadmer  14–15, 22, 53–5, 58–60 influence on Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris  98–9, 154, 156–7, 161n.181, 298n.71 insertion of excerpts from Quadripartitus into Gesta regum Anglorum  113–14, 120 John Prise’s interest in  316–18 his legal knowledge and interests  107–11, 113–14 lost works by  91–2, 303n.114, 368–9 Matthew Parker’s interest in  52, 312n.168, 330–1, 363n.20 as precentor and librarian  35–7, 46–7, 49–50, 71n.414, 73–4, 97–8, 107nn.25,27 printed by Hieronymus Commelin (1587)  360, 363n.18 printed by Henry Savile (1596)  174–5, 360–5 his research trips  57–8, 86, 87n.49, 156–7, 177–8

Index  469 on the revival of ecclesiastical standards post-1066  19–22, 26–7 source for Alan of Ashbourn  189–92 source for Pseudo-Ingulf ’s Historia Croylandensis  176–7, 181–2 source for Ranulf Higden  194–5 source for Raphael Holinshed  354n.138 source for Roger of Crowland  196 his possible use of John of Worcester’s Chronicon ex chronicis  50–1, 57–8 his probable use of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normmanorum ducum  46–7, 49–50 his use of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 50–1, 57–8, 60–1, 86 his use of William of Poitiers’ Gesta Guillelmi  46–7, 50, 52, 369–70 his views on existing hagiographical works  27–9, 69n.399, 76–7 his Vita S. Dunstani  50–1, 55–6, 89–90, 93–4 William Marshal  110n.61, 133n.10 William ‘the miller’  181n.62 William of Newburgh  78, 158–9, 318n.214, 330n.302 his criticism of Geoffrey of Monmouth  78–80, 158–9 his Historia regum Anglicarum 158–9, 198n.176 his lack of interest in the Old English past  158–9, 162 William of Poitiers  56–7, 76–7 as archdeacon of Lisieux  47 his Gesta Guillelmi  13n.2, 46–7, 49–50, 52, 64–9, 366 printed by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and André Duchesne (1619)  369–71 source for Orderic Vitalis  46–7, 64–9, 72–3 source for William of Malmesbury  46–7, 52, 369–70 on William the Conqueror’s claim to the kingdom of England  50–5, 57–8, 63–4 William of Rievaulx  318 William of Rosels  227n.134 William of St Albans  161n.178 William of St-Calais, bishop of Durham  85–6, 90–1, 366n.40 inspired by Bede  25–6 his bibliophilia  26–7, 37–41, 47–8, 75n.439, 96, 98–9 brings Symeon to Durham  33–5, 46n.242, 47–8 his reverence for Bede  25–7, 96

William of Sudbury, monk of Westminster 165–6 William of Tyre  196 William de Warenne, 1st earl of Surrey  384 Williams, John, dean of Westminster  382 Wilton Diptych  166–70; see also Plate 8 Wiltshire  243–4, 309–10, 313n.181, 315 Winchcombe Abbey (Gloucs.)  35–7, 313n.181 copy of Collectio Lanfranci at  39n.199 Winchester (Hants.)  108–9, 181–2, 208n.228 bishops of  231n.165, 256n.65; see also St Æthelwold, Henry of Blois, Peter des Roches, Walkelin, William Giffard Cathedral  22–3, 37–9, 92–3, 128n.179, 133n.10 rebuilding of  33–5 cult of St Birinus at  32n.146, 33 cult of St Swithun at  33–5 library  72n.422, 91–2, 125n.148, 294–5, 315n.190, 335–7 possible copy of Collectio Lanfranci at  39n.199 Treaty of (1153)  346n.93 the Winchester Collection – the earliest extant version – of Quadripartitus 125–6 see also St Swithun, Wlnoth Windsor Castle (Berks.)  165 Wlfranenus, canon of St Paul’s, London  35–7 Wlnoth, precentor of Winchester  37–9 Wolfe, Reginald  328n.285 Wolsey, Thomas, cardinal archbishop of York, Lord Chancellor  297–9 Woodstock, Assize of, a.k.a. of the Forest 120n.124 Worcester bishops of  230n.158; see also Ealdred, Oswald, Henry Parry, Samson, Theulf, Wulfstan I, St Wulfstan II burial place of King John  141–2, 147–8 Cathedral and priory  19–21, 29–30, 37, 41–4, 57–8, 75n.441, 87, 88n.57, 313n.181 cathedral library  41–2, 44–5, 98n.148, 106n.22, 107n.24, 141n.50, 286, 293n.42, 307–8, 313, 339n.36, 340–2, 344, 360–2 copy of Collectio Lanfranci at  39n.199 historical writing at, see Coleman; Florence of Worcester, Hemming, John of Worcester precentor of  35–7; see also Nicholas, prior of Worcester prior of, see Nicholas; Senatus visited by Eadmer  75n.441 visited by Orderic Vitalis  72–3 visited by William of Malmesbury  57–8 Wormesley Priory (Herefs.)  313n.181

470 Index Wotton, Nicholas, dean of Canterbury and York 302n.110 Wotton, Thomas, sheriff of Kent  380–1 Wray, Christopher, Speaker of the House of Commons 345–6 Wroughton (Wilts.)  37–9 Wulfhild, St translation of into the new abbey church at Barking 33–5 Wulfketel, abbot of Crowland  185n.96, 186n.101 Wulfsige, St, bishop of Sherborne  31–2 Wulfstan, bishop of London and Worcester, archbishop of York  105–7 Wulfstan II, St, bishop of Worcester  35–7, 69n.399, 87–9, 98–9 attempted deposition of and miracle of his staff  140–1, 143–5, 155–6, 171, 323 canonization and translation of  141–2, 147–50 commissions historical works  41–4 King John’s devotion to  141–3, 147–50 lives of, see Coleman; William of Malmesbury on the sins of the English  18–19, 89–92 weeps at the rebuilding of Worcester Cathedral  19–21, 29–30, 87 Wulfstan of Winchester his Vita Æthelwoldi 15n.18

Wulgeat, abbot of Peakirk and Crowland 185nn.94,96 Wyrley, William, Rouge Croix Pursuivant 291n.35 Year Books  220, 233–4, 269–73, 275–8, 345–6 printing of  277–9 references to Old English history and the Conquest in  218, 220–1 Yelverton, William  279n.209 York 51 archbishops of, see Ealdred, Gerard, Oswald, Thomas I of Bayeux, Thomas Wolsey, Wulfstan (also bishop of Worcester and London) bishop of, see John of Beverley canons established at  85–6 dean of, see Nicholas Wotton Franciscan friary  311n.165 St Mary’s Abbey  228n.144, 229nn.147–148 Statute of, 16 Edw. II, stat. 1 (1322)  264n.119 see also Primacy Agreement between Canterbury and York (1072) Yorkshire  7–8, 200–1, 208, 311, 320–1 Zacharias, pope  190–1