The Accepted Theory 225 THE INTRODUCTION OF KNIGHT "The growth of knighthood is a subject on which the greatest obscurity prevails; and the most probable explanation of its existence in England, the theory that it is a translation into Norman forms of the thegnage of the Anglo-Saxon law, can only be stated as probable."-STUBBS, Const. Hist., i. 260. IN N approaching the consideration of the institutional changes and modifications of polity resulting from the Norman Conquest, the most conspicuous phenomenon to attract attention is undoubtedly the introduction of what it is convenient to term the feudal system. In the present paper I propose to discuss one branch only of that process, namely, the introduction of that military tenure which Dr. Stubbs has termed "the most prominent feature of historical feudalism." In accordance with the anticataclysmic tendencies of modern thought, the most recent students of this obscure problem have agreed to adopt the theory of gradual development and growth. The old views on the subject are discredited as crude and unhistorical: they are replaced by confident enunciation of the theory to which I have referred. But when we examine the matter closely, when 1 1 Reprinted, with additions, from the English Historical Review. "The belief which has come down to us from Selden and the antiquarian school, a belief which was hitherto universally received, that William I. divided the English landed property into military fees, is erroneous, and results from the dating back of an earlier [? later] condition of things."-GNEIST, Const. Hist., i. 129. 3 "There can be no doubt that the military tenure, the most prominent B. H. Q we ask for details of the process by which the AngloSaxon thegn developed into the Norman knight, we are met at once by the frank confession that "between the picture drawn in Domesday and the state of affairs which the charter of Henry I. was designed to remedy, there is a difference which the short interval of time will not account for." To meet this difficulty, to account for this flaw in the unbroken continuity of the series, a Deus ex machina has been found in the person of Ranulf Flambard. Now this solution of the difficulty will scarcely, I venture to think, bear the test of, investigation. It appears to have originated in Dr. Stubbs' suggestion that there must have been, between the days of Henry I. and of William I., "some skilful organising hand working with neither justice nor mercy "5-a suggestion subsequently amplified into the statement that it is to Ranulf Flambard "without doubt that the systematic organisation of the exactions" under William Rufus "is to be attributed," and that by him "the royal claims were unrelentingly pressed," his policy being "to tighten as much as possible the hold which the feudal law gave to the king on all feudatories temporal and spiritual." There is nothing here that can be called in question, but there is also nothing, be it observed, to prove that either "feudal law" or "military tenure" was introduced by Ranulf Flambard. Indeed, with his usual caution and unfailing sound judgment, our great historian is careful to admit that "it is not quite so clear" in the case of the lay as of the church fiefs “that all the evil customs owed their origin to the reign of William Rufus." And, even if they did, they were, it must be remembered, distinctly abuses-"evil customs," as Henry I. himself terms them in his charter-namely (in 8 feature of historical feudalism, was itself introduced by the same gradual process which we have assumed in the case of the feudal usages in general."-STUBBS, Const. Hist., i. 261. 4 Stubbs, C. H., i. 260-1. So too Freeman. ་ 8 i. 300. 5 i. 261. Assigned to Ranulf Flambard 227 the matter we are considering), "excessive exactions in the way of reliefs, marriages and wardships, debts to the crown, and forfeiture. In the place," we are told, "of unlimited demands on these heads, the charter promises, not indeed fixed amercements, but a return to ancient equitable custom."9 All this refers, it will be seen, to the abuse of an existing institution, not to the introduction of a new one. The fact is that Ranulf's proceedings have been assigned a quite exceptional and undue importance. Broadly speaking, his actions fall under a law too often lost sight of, namely, that when the crown was strong it pressed, through the official bureaucracy, its claims to the uttermost; and when it found itself weak, it renounced them so far as it was compelled. Take, for instance, this very charter issued by Henry I., when he was "playing to the gallery," and seeking general support: what was the value of its promises? They were broken, says Mr. Freeman, to the Church; 10 they were probably broken, says Dr. Stubbs, to the knights; and they were certainly broken, I may add, to the unfortunate tenants-in-chief, whom the Pipe-Roll of 1130 shows us suffering from those same excessive exactions, of which the monopoly is assigned to Ranulf Flambard, and which "the Lion of Justice" had so virtuously renounced. I might similarly adduce the exactions from the Church by that excellent king, Henry II. (1159), “contra antiquum morem et debitam libertatem"; but it is needless to multiply examples of the struggle between the interests of the crown and those of its tenants-in-chief, which was as fierce as ever when, in later days, it led to the provisions of the Great Charter. What the barons, lay and spiritual, complained of from first to last, was not the feudal system that accompanied their military tenure, but the abuse of that system in the excessive demands of the crown. 11 Mr. Freeman, however, who had an equal horror of 11 C. H., i. 581. • Select Charters, p. 96. 10 Norm. Cong., v. 380. Ranulf Flambard, and of the "feudal system," did not hesitate to connect the two more closely even than Dr. Stubbs, though invoking the authority of the latter in support of his extreme views. The passages to which I would invite attention, as expressing most concisely Mr. Freeman's conclusions, are these: The system of military tenures, and the oppressive consequences which were held to flow from them, were a work of the days of William Rufus. If then there was any time when "the Feudal System" could be said to be introduced into England, it was assuredly not in the days of William the Conqueror, but in the days of William the Red. It would be more accurate to say that all that we are really concerned with, that is, not an imaginary "Feudal System," but a system of feudal land-tenures, was not introduced into England at all, but was devised on English ground by the malignant genius of the minister of Rufus.12 As the writer's line of argument is avowedly that of Dr. Stubbs, it is only necessary to consider the point of difference between them. Where his predecessor saw in Henry's charter the proof that Ranulf Flambard had abused the existing feudal system by "excessive" and "unlimited" demands, Mr. Freeman held, and endeavoured to convince us, that he had introduced not merely abuses of the system, but the actual system itself.13 The question virtually turns on the first clause of the charter; 14 and it will not, I think, be doubted that Dr. Stubbs is right in adopting its natural meaning, namely, that the novelty introduced by Ranulf was not the relevatio itself, but its abuse in "excessive exactions." Indeed, even Mr. Free 12 N. C., v. 377; cf. History of William II., pp. 335, 337, "The whole system, a system which logically hangs together in the most perfect way, was the device of the same subtle and malignant brain." 13 Ibid., p. 374. 14 "Si quis baronum meorum, comitum sive aliorum qui de me tenent, mortuus fuerit, heres suus non redimet terram suam sicut faciebat tempore fratris mei, sed justa et legitima relevatione relevabit eam." Flaws in the Accepted Theory 229 man had virtually to admit the point.15 If, then, the argument breaks down, if Ranulf cannot be shown to have "devised" military tenure, how are we to bridge over the alleged chasm between the date of Domesday (1086) and that of Henry's charter (1100)? The answer is simply that the difficulty is created by the very theory I am discussing: it is based on the assumption that William I. did not introduce military tenure,16 combined with the fact that "within thirteen years after the Conqueror's death, not only the military tenures, but the worst abuses of the military tenures, were in full force in England." 17 But, here again, when we examine the evidence, we find that this assumption is based on the silence, or alleged silence, of Domesday Book.18 Now no one was better aware than Mr. Freeman, as an ardent student of "the great Record," that to argue from the silence of Domesday is an error as dangerous as it is common. Speaking from a rather wide acquaintance with topographical works, I know of no pitfall into which the local antiquary is more liable to fall. Wonderful are the things that people look for in the pages of the great survey; I am always reminded of Mr. Secretary Pepys' writing for information as to what it contained 15 "In that charter the military tenures are taken for granted. What is provided against is their being perverted, as they had been in the days of Rufus, into engines of oppression."-N. C., v. 373. 16 N. C., v. 372; C. H., i. 261. 17 N. C., v. 373. 15 Palgrave, as Mr. Freeman observes, "strongly and clearly brought out the absence of any distinct mention of military tenures in Domesday." Dr. Stubbs more cautiously wrote: "The wording of the Domesday Survey does not imply that in this respect the new military service differed from the old." (C. H., i. 262.) Mr. Freeman confidently asserts: "Nothing is more certain than that from one end of Domesday to the other, there is not a trace of military tenures as they were afterwards understood. . . We hear of nothing in Domesday which can be called knight service or military tenure in the later sense." (N. C., v. 370, 371). Mr. Hunt (Norman Britain) follows the same line, and Gneist, vouching Palgrave, Stubbs, and Freeman, repeats the argument. (C. H., i. 130). |