State, Church and society, 1066-1106

Power of the monarchy:

• William didn't change Ed's system; remained supreme decision maker, head of Church +  chief arbiter of justice (could pass laws, mint coins and raise an army).
• Applied long-held techniques of kingship to gain political support.
• Patronage was a vital lever; Anglo-Norman kings had an unprecedented amount of land for distribution.
• Also brought the great men into decision making process in order to bring them on his side.
• Power of the monarchy reached new heights under Norman kings.

The royal household:

• Remained largely unchanged; still made up of the domestic household.
• Domus= material needs, familia= household knights.
• Royal admin carried out in chancery by royal priests.
• Also acted as the King's court (curia regis).
• Like A-S, was designed to support itinerant kingship.
• Employed trusted magnates as regents to deal with kingdom in his absence.

Chancery:

• Tried to ensure admin continuity by retaining its head (regenbald) who served as chancellor under Ed and Harold.
• Replaced in 1069 by a Norman official; wider process in royal household of removing Englishmen from their posts (Normanisation).
• Writs issued more frequently (was successful) and written in Latin (admin language of EU).
• Latin became the standard, reflected the complete take-over of gov by Normans.
• Use of writs extended too; before 1066 were a means of showing land grants but now they were used for more general orders and instructions like summoning knights.

Geld and silver penny:

• Monarchy had established sources of revenue; substantial profits drawn from royal lands.
• Towns generated income for the Crown by taxes on trade, market tolls + local customs.
• Made use of existing geld system; national tax based on landholding (2shillings per hide).
• Used A-S precedent of using this tax in crisis (many individuals and religious institutions exempt from payment as well as land held in demense by his tenants-in-chief.

• Maintained continuity of money supply; few modifications made after conquest.
• Retained most of English moneyers (operated from same 60mints as before).
• Royal control over currency, as before, was absolute.
• No foreign coins allowed to circulate.
• Every 3 years, new silver pennies issued, king taking the profits.
• Coinage system didnt break down post conquest, est 9million silver pennies in 1086.

The office of sheriff:

• Monarchs in admin of pre/post conquest had to ensure all parts of the kingdom were governed well and communicate orders and directives from the centre to the provinces.
• A-N kept system of sub-divided country (earldoms, shires, hundreds) and sherrifs being reps of the King and writs a main method of transmitting instructions.
• Sherrifs also continued to oversee collection of taxes, royal justice in courts and leading armies.
• Few modifications; replaced English sheriffs with Normans to emphasise Norman authority.
• Dismantled great earldoms; sherifs now held more authority to fill power vacuum. 

The Anglo-Norman legal system:

• A-S system worked well; shire and hundred courts preserved and King still font of justice.
• Manorial courts established; lord of manor could maintain order on his estates/settle disputes.
• Implementation of Forest Law demanded its own courts.
• Ecclesiastical cases couldnt be heard in lay courts but only in Church courts before ecclesiastical judges (pressure from papacy).
•  Didn't issue any new law codes of their own however some changes were made.
• Murdrum fine- if a Norman was killed, a financial penalty would be imposed on local community if they failed to produce the killer.
• Built on the established principle of communual responsibility for people's wrongdoing.
• Ordeal by battle was new (already had ordeal by fire/water).
• Once guilt was established, A-S system of compensatory justice fell out of favour for more serious offences, replaced by death by hanging/physical mutilation (more brutal Norman-age).

The end of the English aristocracy:

• Initially invisaged keeping A-S aristocracy; Edwin+Mocar kept earldoms.
• Thegns allowed to retain lands as long as they hadn't fought at Hastings.
• Mixed royal court; Archbisop Ealdred + Stigand still held church offices of York and Canterbury.
• English refused to accept their defeat= the rebellions shifted his treatment of native aristocracy.
• Of the 1,000 tenants-in-chief (13 English), thegnly class (once 4-5,000, had vanished).
• Normans in charge from the smallest village up to the greatest lordship.

Changes in land tenure:

• Land=wealth and power, a chief reason to join William's invasion.
• Whereas Ed was 1 of many landholders, William owned the entirety of England.
• He granted lands to loyal supporters who then handed them to their followers (subinfeudation).
• Immediately after conquest, he granted huge consolidated blocks to closest supporters for security (no regards to previous ownership).
• Creation of rapes (divided shire into parts and led a leading magnate control a section).

• Lots of land taken illegally by force/intimidation; disputed land ownership, seizing Church land.
• 1077; had to ask leading magnates to return any Church property illegally seized.
• Chaos of ownership led to Domesday survey; acted as a judicial inquiry.
• Gave landowners legal security over their estates.
• King= ultimate source of all tenure in England (landholders swore oaths/paid homage to him).

New earldoms and the growth of Norman influence:

• Most loyal supporters became new elite; by 1086, half of the land was held by just 200 Normans and half of that was in the hands of only 10 magnates.
• New earldoms of Kent, Herefordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire were far smaller than their A-S predecessors; didn't want to be dominated by his earls like Edward had.
• Worked= magnates had less wealth/power than preceeding English earls.
• A coalition of the top 10 magnates couldn't match William's wealth (income of 12,600).
• 1082= ordered for the arrest of Odo (limitless ambition), Odo was only released after his death.
• 1088= Odo joined a coalition of magnates determined to install Robert not Rufus as King.

The knights of Anglo-Norman England:

• Many similarities; in A-S and A-N England, they were the principal warriors and would've gone to war with a saddled horse, armour, sword and shield.
• Both had strong bonds of loyalty to their lord; giving or arms and armour was a consistent feature before and after conquest.
• Knights were a new social group with a distinct identity post-conquest; for an enfeoffed knight, land formed the basis of his military service and loyalty to his king (stronger bond)
• But a thegn's military service stemmed from his rank not the terms of his land tenure.
• Land grants was one of many ways to secure loyalty.
• Class of landless knights who filled the baronial households (like housecarls in A-S times).
• Knights service was more military orientated than thegns (garrison duty, royal army service).
• Thegns held land for their lifetime (granted by a charter as 'book land') whereas the estates of the knights became hereditary towards the end of William's reign.
• Primogeniture= whereby the first son inherited the family estate (power bases remained intact, new implementation by William).

Town and trading patterns:

• Urban communities of A-S England destroyed; some ruined to make way for castles.
• Normans realised towns were valuable sources of wealth; granted people their pre-conquest rights as he didn't want to disrupt commerce.
• Castle building caused destruction but promoted urban growth (secure trading post, garrisons required goods and resources from local community- towns developed around forts.
• The ecclesiastical building programme brought investment to urban centres.
• Ports benefitted from a strengthening of cross-channel trade; England in Norman orbit.
• As in A-S times, main exports (tin, grain, hides), but English wool was the biggest export, market in the Flemish textiles industry.
• Imports like A-S times= luxury goods (once close ties with Scandanavia now less important).
• Reorientation of trade; French came for new commercial opportunities and trading privellages.
• Normans also introduced a Jewish community for the first time; dealt in silver and exchanging foreign coins for English ones.

Village life:

• Peasants experienced brutality and murder; whole communities displaced from fighting.
• William's systematic wasting of Yorkshire decreased the value of manors.
• Even in areas less affected by fighting, life was more difficult.
• Normans demanded higher rents/increased obligations, peasants had to work harder.
• Downward move from landowner to tenant (land leased at a specific rate).
• Decline in amount of high-status peasants and a subsequent rise in landless labourers.
• Continuity; Normans didn't fundamentally change the structure of agriculture.
• In South+Midlands, manorial system predominated, with a nucleated village.
• In the North+East, more dispersed settlements (manors covered a larger area).
• Change- peasants displaced by fighting displaced in planned, nucleated villages; lords had greater control over the workforce.

Royal forests and forest law:

• Royal forests- one of the most hated symbols of Norman oppression.
• For A-S kings, hunting was a hobby (could train for war).
• Normans designated large tracts of regions as royal forest= land's primary purpose was hunting now rather than agriculture.
• Created Sherwood forest and New forest; villages and hamlets destroyed in their making.
• Many continued to live within the boundaries of the forests; but resented being under separate legal system (restrictions on farming, grazing cattle and gathering wood).
• Hunting prohibited (bar royalty) even on a landholder's own property= severe punishments.

The disappearance of slavery:

• Slave trading and slavery in A-S times, around 10% were slaves in Ed's time.
• Slaves did heavy agriculture to domestic service.
• Normans got rid of this for economic reasons; lords could profit better with rent-paying tenants rather than slaves who were costly to maintain.

• Also moral reasons (assertive Church); religious leaders unhappy with the keeping of concubines among slave owners as it resulted in illegitimate offspring.
• Number of slaves declined; Lanfranc urged the king to take a stand on the export of slaves from ports like Bristol- if they were caught doing so a fine would be paid to him (cut down on slavery whilst still safeguarding some of his income).
• Arrival of Normans hastened slavery's departure.

Controlling the Church and deposition of Archbishop Stigand:

• Founded Abbey of St Stephen at Caen (1063) to act as a powerhouse of prayer.
• Blended piety with ruthlessness; tightly controlled the Norman church and wanted to extend this level of domination to England's ecclesiastical affairs.
• Saw A-S church as a major source of power + influence; wanted Normans with roles of power.
• At a Church council in 1070, the papal legate deposed Stigand; removal of bishops approved by William, papal blessing also was needed (stigand held 2 offices and supported antipope).
• More bishops removed; insatlled loyal supporters from Normandy and France.
• Normanisation didn't extend to lower levels of Church; English priests, monks and nuns weren't figures of importance or capable of posing a military danger so were left alone.

Archbishop Lanfranc's reform of the Church:

• His appointment showed that William's takeover of the Church wasn't solely for power.
• Both supporters of papal reform (remove abuses of canon law like simony, nepotism, pluralism and clerical marriage).

• Lanfranc covened 10 great Church councils (few had taken place in A-S England); Lanfranc identified as the 'primate of the whole of Britain'.
• 1070; Lanfranc formally established the primacy of Canterbury over York.
• The London council approved the transfer of 3 bishop-seats from rural to urban areas.
• Part of a wider reorganisation aimed at creating a uniform, hierarchial Church.
• Bishoprics subdivided into archdeaconries; few had been appointed pre-1066.
• Archdeaconries divided into deaneries headed by deans (another layer of control).
• Many reforms by Lanfranc were administrative; seeing church reorganisation as the first step towards reinforcement of higher morals; demanded bishops hold own councils (synods).
• Clerical matters could still be heard in shire courts not just Church courts.
• Lanfranc used synods to speak about corruption like symony.
• Demanded celibacy from clergy, parish priests already married allowed to remain so.
• Normans (motivated by religious idealism) sped up process of papal reform.
• Ordered romanesque construction; A-S churches rebuilt (Normanised).

William II and Archbishop Anselm:

• Lanfranc died in 1089; appointed Anselm in a moment of weakness.
• Rufus saw the Church as an insitution to be controlled/exploited whereas Anselm was enthused with the reform movement; unlike close co-opertation of William and Lanfranc.
• Dispute over which pope to recognise; Anselm already recognised Urban II and out of loyalty refused the King's demand to retract, wanted to collect pallium from him.
• Debate held by King; opened secret negotiations with Urban through his legate.
• In return for recognising the Pope, he secured the concession that no legates or papal letters would be sent to England without his consent (King in control of info from Church to centre).
• William attempted to link the recognition of Urban to the removal of Anselm; rejected by legate.
• William repeatedly refused Anselm permission to organise a reforming council (corrupted).
• William sold Church offices= corruption.
• Ultimatium; if Anselm left for Rome, he'd confiscate his lands and never again receive his as archbishop, if he stayed he'd pay a fine and have to promise not to appeal to Rome again; he submitted.

Henry I, Anselm and the investiture controversy:

• Invited Anselm to return from exile in 1100; focused on freeing Church from secular control.
• Lay investiture had been condemned at papal councils as it implied a bishop was dependant for his power on his lay lord, rather than power stemming from the Church.
• Anselm enforced the pope's reforming decrees and announced he was unable to sumbit.
• Anselm warned Henry that if he attempted to invest new bishops himself they wouldn't be recognised.
• Direct attack on monarchy's traditional rights over the Church, also a strategic issue= bishops were tenants-in-chief and owing knight service/paying homage confirmed feudal relationship.
• Didn't want to disunite Church so the matter of investiture and homage was ignored by referring it to Rome.
• 1101; Pope urged King to abandon lay investiture but no reference to homage.
• Anselms departure in 1103 increased magnitude of dispute; more intervention from pope.
• Henry and Anselm reconciled in 1106; King agreed to give up investiture but he retained the rights to receive homage; could be seen as Henry surrendering but his leading churchmen still had to profess obedience and perform their feudal obligations.

The Norman kings and the papacy:

• Ed experienced the first hint of the reforming hand of the papacy; maintained firm control of the Church and cordial but distant relations with Rome.
• William managed to have positive dealings with the papacy who valued his support for moral reform; received papal banner at Hastings.
• Gregory VII wanted to expand papal authority; wanted to enforce regular attendance of English bishops at Rome and demanded William pay homage to him for his kingdom.
• William and Lanfranc were reformers but didn't want to diminish control over Church.
• Lanfranc avoided attending papal synods and William rejected any act of fealty.
• But he did agree to the payment of Peter's Pence (ancient tax given to Rome) but stressed that it didn't imply submission.
• Rufus successfully continued his father's policy of resisting papal encroachment; Urban II only recognised by him on the condition that papal legates sought royal consent before entering England.