CHAP. X. The House of Godwine. 1035 1053. Notes. royal justice in the shape of appeals to the king himself from subordinate jurisdictions; and the growing pressure of this may have been the cause, if not of the institution of the Secundarius under Cnut, at any rate of the continuance of this great officer under a king like the Confessor who needed no vice-gerent through absence from his realm, as it was certainly the cause of the change of his name under the Norman kings to that of Justiciar. It was thus the origin of the three great divisions of the "king's court" with their staff of officers, while its executive functions passed to the offspring of the third body of ministers whose origin dates from the foreign kings of England, the clerks of the royal chapel. The Royal Chapel marks the third stage in ministerial organization. The high reeve indeed early turned into a power which overawed the crown, and the rapid extension of the sphere of the "capellani "may mark a side of the struggle for the independence of the crown. The king's chaplains are first seen as a body under Cnut, but rapidly mount into power under the Confessor, when the "king's writ," issued through them, begins to be the efficient organ of the royal will throughout the realm. From their head, the chancellor, comes our equitable court of justice, from the rest our secretaryships of state, with the whole fabric of modern administration. The system had its origin in lands whose circumstances differed from those of England. In Frankish and other Continental courts, where the customary Teutonic law had to be worked side by side with a Roman written law, the Roman clerk (apocrisiarius, referendarius, cancellarius) was needed to decide whether orders were accordant to law or not (Kemble, "Sax. in Eng." ii. 114), or conflicted with the written jurisprudence, and to affix or withhold the royal signet accordingly. No such need, however, existed in England, and the presence of the royal chaplains, with their head the chancellor, may be best accounted for by administrative reasons; indeed, their institution coincides with the new class of royal writs which came in from the early years of Cnut's reign, issued by the king's personal authority without any confirmation by the Witan. In the first appearance of the chancery under Cnut we see traces of a Lotharingian organization, in the persons of foreign chaplains whose presence was probably due to their foreign training, and to the experience they may have brought of the Imperial CHAP. X. Godwine. 10351053. Notes. chancery. Eadsige (Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), i. 193, on his elevation to the archbishopric under Harald) the later archbishop The House of of Canterbury, and Stigand the priest of Assandun (Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), i. 199; he was chaplain to Harald), who were among the chaplains, were indeed Englishmen. Wythmann, however, to whom Cnut in his early days gave the abbacy of Ramsey, was "Teutonicus natione" (Hist. Rames., Gale, iii. 404). So Duduc ("De Lotharingiâ oriundus," Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), i 218; "natione Saxo," Hunter, "Eccl. Doc." p. 15) was at the close of Cnut's reign, in 1033, bishop of Wells, and in high favour with the king. The manors of Banwell and Congresbury were "possessiones quas hæreditario jure a rege ante episcopatum promeruerat" (Hunter, "Eccl. Doc." p. 15), and he seems in some way to have held the abbacy of Gloucester. He was probably therefore a "capellanus." Hermann, who was made bishop of the Wilsætas in the first years of the Confessor's reign, had probably been inherited by him from his Danish predecessors, and may have belonged to this early group of foreign chaplains. To the same group would belong Leofric who (if Florence is right) must have been Reginbold's predecessor ("Regis cancellario Leofrico Brytonico mox Cridiatunensis et Cornubiensis datus est præsulatus," Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), i. 199). Now, Leofric was "apud Lothar. ingos altus et doctus" (Will. Malm. "Gest. Pontif." p. 201 (Hamilton). Cnut's alliance with Conrad may have had some influence in his choice of Lotharingian clerks. This alliance went on between Eadward and Henry; the intrigues and negotiations before the Council of Rheims may be connected with these Lotharingians entering the chapel. Under the Confessor the Royal Chapel underwent marked changes alike in its organization and in its character. From 1045 we find a chancellor at the head of the clerks holding the royal seal which Eadward first brought into use in England; while the uniform tenour of the writs, and the replacing of the old English writing in the royal documents by the light French hand in use among foreign clerks, alike point to some new arrangement of the secretarial work, and more exact organization of the chancery on foreign models. From this moment also we meet with almost exclusively foreign names, and these no longer names of Lotharingians, but of Normans. The group of Lotharingians who had served under Cnut seems indeed to N N CHAP. X. The House of 1035- Notes. have been wholly broken up. Duduc had even in Cnut's time The earliest signatures given by Kemble (" Sax. in Eng.” ii. 115) date from 1045, i.e. from the opening of the strife between the king and Godwine-a significant date. They are those of Hermann capellanus (Flor. Worc. a. 1045); Wulfwig cancellarius (Cod. Dip. 779); Reginboldus sigillarius (Cod. Dip. 810); Reginboldus cancellarius (Cod. Dip. 813, 824, 825, 891); with a staff of the same date, Ælfgeat notarius (Cod. Dip. 825), Petrus capellanus (ib. 813, 825), Baldwinus capellanus (ib. 813), Osbernus capellanus (ib. 825), Robertus capellanus (ib. 825). Then, in 1047, Florence gives Heca as chaplain, afterwards bishop of Selsey; and, in 1049, Florence also notes Ulf as chaplain, who became bishop of Dorchester in 1051; Cynesige as chaplain, afterwards archbishop of York; and William, 1051, bishop of London (for these Kemble gives no signatures). Two other names are from Florence: Godmann, chaplain in 1053, and Gisa in 1060. It may be that this organization of the chancery or chapel marks Eadward's first period; his struggle with Godwine, and the foreign names of the staff, would suggest this idea. Godwine's triumph may have given a temporary blow to this new administrative scheme, for Kemble notes two chaplains, Cynesige and William, as signing in 1051, but none after, save Gisa in 1060 (Kemble, “Sax. in Eng." ii. 116). The charter in which Wulfwig figures as "regiæ dignitatis cancellarius" (Cod. Dip. 779) is noted by Mr. Freeman as " doubtful." He afterwards succeeded Ulf as bishop of Dorchester. The group therefore really begins with the Norman Reginbold. Reginbold "appears in Domesday (1806) by the description of CHAP. X. Godwine. 1035 1053. Notes. 'Reinbaldus Canceler' as holding lands in Herefordshire T.R.E." ... After the Conquest "he still held lands in Berkshire The House of (56b, 60, 63), Gloucestershire (1666), and Wiltshire (686), if he is, as he doubtless is, the same as Reinbaldus de Cirencestre' and Renbaldus presbyter.' He was dean of Cirencester (Ellis, i. 398), and besides his lay fees he held several churches in Wiltshire (Dom. 656).” (Freeman, "Norm. Conq." ii. 357, 358). The permanence of the new organization is shown. by his remaining with his fellows after the restoration of 1052. Thus he signs the Waltham charter as "regis Cancellarius," with Peter and Baldwin as king's chaplains (Cod. Dip. 813). Of the notary Elfgeat I find no other notice. Peter and Baldwin, as we see, remained in the chancery with Reginbold to the end of the reign, when Baldwin became abbot of S. Edmundsbury (Freeman, "Norm. Conq." ii. 586. "He had been a monk of S. Denis, a certain presumption, though not amounting to proof, of his French origin.") Before his abbacy of S. Eadmund's he had been prior of Earl Odda's church at Deerhurst. (See charter in Monast. iv. 665. On Abbot Leofstan's illness, King Eadward "Baldwinum, S. Dionysii monachum, ejus artis peritum, dirigendum curavit."- Will. Malm. "Gest. Pontif." (Hamilton), p. 156). Osbern's name indicates his Norman blood, but I know no more of him. Robert is of course the abbot of Jumièges, and probably the real mover in the whole matter. Promotion, indeed, to sees did not necessarily vacate the ministerial post, for Robert begins to sign as bishop of London in 1046 (Cod. Dip. 784), but this see would leave him free to assist in the chancery. Ulf too must have been added to it soon after 1045, for in 1049, when named to Dorchester, he is described as the king's "preoste" (Eng. Chron. (Ab.) 1049), and "regis capellanus" (Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), i. 203). William, too, who is named "chaplain of the king" (Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), i. 207), on his promotion to London in 1051, must have been introduced into the chancery after 1045, perhaps taking Robert's place on his rise to the primacy. Gisa alone among these later chaplains was a Lotharingian; he was appointed bishop of Wells in 1060. His solitary figure cannot have materially changed the French aspect of the chancery throughout Eadward's reign. The fact that Walter, the Lotharingian who at the same time became bishop of Hereford, СНАР. Х. was Eadgyth's chaplain, may show that clerks were again being The House of brought from this quarter, or simply be a part of the Lotharingian traditions of Godwine's house as shown by Adelhard and Harold. Godwine. 1035 1053. Notes. [Dr. Stubbs has pointed out to me another foreign chaplain of Eadward's of whom we find mention elsewhere. "Helinandus, vir admodum pauperis domus et obscure progenitus, literaturâ pertenuis et persona satis exilis, cum per notitiam Gualteri comitis Pontisarensis, de cujus comitatu gerebat originem, ad gratiam Eadvardi Anglorum Regis pertigisset (uxor enim sua cum prædicto comite sibi necessitudinem nescio quam creârat), capellanus ejus fuit, et quia Francicam elegantiam nôrat, Anglicus ille ad Francorum Regem Henricum eum sæpius destinabat." (Guibertus de Novigento "De Vitâ suâ,” lib. iii. c. 2, Opera, ed. D'Achery, p. 496). King Henry made him bishop of Laon (Ibid.) in 1052; he died in 1098 (Gallia Christiana, vol. ix. col. 524, 525). The second bishop of Laon after Helinandus had also been in the service of a king of England, but this must have been Henry I. (Guibertus "De Vitâ suâ," lib. iii. c. 4, ed. D'Achery, p. 299).—A. S. G.] |