THE OXFORD DEBATE ON FOREIGN SERVICE (1197)

GR

REAT importance is rightly assigned to the first instances of "a constitutional opposition to a royal demand for money,"1 of which the two alleged earliest cases are "the opposition of St. Thomas to the king's manipulation of the danegeld [1163], and the refusal by St. Hugh of Lincoln to furnish money for Richard's war in France [1197]." These two precedents are always classed together: Dr. Stubbs writes of St. Hugh's action :

The only formal resistance to the king in the national council proceeds from St. Hugh of Lincoln and Bishop Herbert of Salisbury, who refuse to consent to grant him an aid in knights and money for his foreign warfare an act which stands out prominently by the side of St. Thomas's protest against Henry's proposal to appropriate the sheriff's share of danegeld.

[he] spoke up

stood the demands of the father, Hugh of Avalon withstood the demands of the son. In a great council for the laws and rights of Englishmen were they bound to contribute for undertakings

1 Stubbs, Const. Hist. (1874), i. 510.

no men or money

beyond the sea.*

2 Ibid., p. 577.

3 Select Charters (1870), pp. 28-9. So too, preface to Rog. Hoveden (1871): “It may be placed on a par with St. Thomas's opposition to Henry II. in 1163" (IV. pp. xci.-xcii.). So also Early Plantagenets (1876), p. 126, and Const. Hist., i. 510.

Norm. Cong., v. 675, 695.

Its Alleged Great Importance

5

529

Having already discussed the earlier instance, and advanced the view that the Woodstock debate [1163] did not relate to danegeld at all, but to an attempt of the king to seize for himself the auxilium vicecomitis (a local levy), I now approach the later instance.

"This occasion," we read, "is a memorable one ":" it is that of an "event of great importance," of "a landmark in constitutional history."8 No apology, therefore, is needed for endeavouring to throw some further light on an event of such cardinal importance. But, to clear the ground, let us first define what we mean by "opposition to a royal demand for money." However autocratic the king may have been-and on this point there is not only a difference of opinion but a difference in fact corresponding with his strength at any given period-there were limits set by law or custom (or, should we rather say, limits, both written and unwritten?) beyond which he could not pass. "Domesday," for instance, was a written limit: if the king claimed from a Manor assessed at ten hides the danegeld due from twenty, the tenant need only appeal to "Domesday" (poneret se super rotulum Winton'). Or, again, if from a feudal tenant owing the forty days' service the king were to claim eighty days, he would be transgressing unwritten custom as binding as a written record. But outside these limits there lay a debatable ground where that elastic term auxilium proved conveniently expansive. It was here that the crown could increase its demands, and here that a conflict would arise as to where the limit should be placed, a conflict to be determined not by law, but by a trial of strength between the crown and its opponents. We have, then, to decide to which of these spheres the action of St. Hugh should be assigned, whether to that of the lawyer appealing to the letter of the bond, or to that of the popular leader opposing the demands of the king, though they did not contravene the law. If one may use the terms, for Early Plantagenets, p. 126. "Const. Hist., i. 509.

5 See above, p. 497.

B. H.

8 Ibid., p. 510, and pref. to Rog. Hoveden, IV. pp. xci.-xcii.

M M

convenience sake, it was a question of law or a question of politics; and only if it was the latter had it a true constitutional importance.

The two chief accounts of the Oxford debate are found in Roger Hoveden and the Magna Vita St. Hugonis. As they are both printed in Select Charters, I need not repeat them here. There is, however, an independent version in the Vita of Giraldus Cambrensis, which it may be desirable to add :

In Anglicanam coepit [rex] ecclesiam duris exactionibus debacchari. Unde collecto in unum regni clero, habitoque contra insolitum et tam urgens incommodum districtiore consilio, verbum ad importunas pariter et importabiles impositiones contradictionis et cleri totius pro ecclesiastica libertate responsionis, in ore Lincolnensis tanquam personae prae ceteris approbatae religionis authenticae magis communi omnium desiderio est assignatum (vii. 103-4).

Gerald's editor impugns the correctness of these statements, on the grounds that the assembly was not clerical merely and that the bishop did not speak on behalf of the whole church. But the passage seems to me to refer to a meeting of the clergy in which it was decided that St. Hugh should be their spokesman at the council. Of the other objection I shall treat below.

According to Hoveden, Richard asked for either (1) three hundred knights who would serve him, at their own costs, for a year, or (2) a sum sufficient to enable him to hire three hundred knights for a year at the rate of three shillings a day. The Magna Vita, however, implies that the former alternative alone was laid before the council. The grounds on which St. Hugh protested are thus given by our two authorities:

Respondit pro se, quod ipse in hoc voluntati regis nequaquam adquiesceret, tum quia processu temporis in ecclesiae suae detrimentum redundaret, tum quia successores sui dicerent, "Patres nostri comederunt uvam acerbam, et dentes filiorum obstupescunt" (Hoveden).

Scio equidem ad militare servitium domino regi, sed in hac terra solummodo exhibendum, Lincolniensem ecclesiam teneri; extra

The Question at Issue

531

metas vero Angliae nil tale ab ea deberi. Unde mihi consultius arbitror ad natale solum repedare quam hic pontificatum gerere et ecclesiam mihi commissam, antiquas immunitates perdendo, insolitis angariis subjugare (Magna Vita).

Two points stand out clearly--one, that St. Hugh took his stand on the prescriptive rights of his church, rights infringed by the king's demand; the other, that he spoke for himself alone, not for the church, still less for the barons, and least of all for the nation. Our authorities, however, are so vague that they leave in doubt the precise point "taken" by the saintly prelate. Mr. Freeman, we have seen, confidently assumes that he "spoke up for the laws and rights of Englishmen"; Miss Norgate holds that he "took up the position of Thomas and Anselm as a champion of constitutional liberty," whatever that may mean; even Dr. Stubbs claims that he "acted on behalf of the nation to which he had joined himself." 10

I venture to think that the clue to the enigma is to be found in quite another quarter. In the chronicle of Jocelin de Brakelond we find a most instructive passage, which refers, it cannot be doubted, to this same episode. The story is told somewhat differently, but the point raised is the same. King Richard, we are told, demanded that knights should be sent him from England, in the proportion of one from every ten due by the church "baronies." The servitium debitum of St. Edmund's being forty, the abbot was called upon to send four." That the principle of joint equipment, which had been adopted under Henry II. in 1157,12 and again I think by Longchamp in 1191,13

9 England under the Angevin Kings, ii. 350.

10 Early Plantagenets, p. 126.

11 66 "Precepit rex Ricardus omnibus episcopis et abbatibus Angliae ut de suis baroniis novem milites facerent decimum, et sine dilacione venirent ad eum in Normanniam, cum equis et armis in auxilium contra Regem Franciae. Unde et abbatem oportuit respondere de iiii. militibus mittendis" (ed. Camden Soc., p. 63).

12 66

Præparavit maximam expeditionem ita ut duo milites de tota Anglia tertium pararent ad opprimendum Gualenses." Robert de Torigni. 13 "Tertium cum omnibus armis totius Angliae militem die nominato mandavit venire Wintoniam." Ric. Devizes (Rolls Series), p. 409.

was resorted to on this occasion is the more probable because a few years later (1205) we find King John similarly demanding "quod novem milites per totam Angliam invenirent decimum militem, bene paratum equis et armis, ad defensionem regni nostri." I admit, however, that it is not mentioned in the other versions of our episode, and Jocelin speaks only of the demand upon the church fiefs. But the point is that when the abbot consulted his tenants as to sending the four knights required, they protested that they were liable to pay scutage, but not to serve out of England.14 Now this is a locus classicus on the institution of scutage. Its bearing I shall examine below, after finishing the story. The abbot, we read, finding himself in a strait, crossed the sea in search of the king, who told him that a fine would not avail; he wanted men, not money.15

Surely we have here the key to the position taken by St. Hugh. When he claimed that his fief was not bound "ad servitium militare extra metas Angliae" he cannot have referred to the payment of scutage, for that had been paid by his predecessors and himself without infringing the liberties of their church.16 He must, therefore, have referred not to "money," but to personal service outside the realm. But was this exemption peculiar to the church of Lincoln ? If we find the same privilege existing at St. Edmund's and at Salisbury, may we not infer that the church contingents were only bound to serve in person for

14 "Cumque summoneri fecisset omnes milites suos, et eos inde convenisset, responderunt feudos suos, quos de Sancto Ædmundo tenuerunt, hoc non debere, nec se nec patres eorum unquam Angliam exisse, set scutagium aliquando ad praeceptum regis dedisse" (Ibid.)

15 "Abbas vero in arcto posito, hinc videns libertatem suorum militum periclitari, illinc timens ne amitteret saisinam baronie sue pro defectu servicii regis, sicut contigerat Episcopo Lundonensi [? Lincolnensi] et multis baronibus Angliæ, statim transfretavit, et. in primis nullum potuit facere finem cum rege per denarios. Dicenti ergo se non indigere auro nec argento, sed quatuor milites instanter exigenti," etc. (ib.)

16. "In quibus conservandis sive exhibendis hactenus fere per tredecim annos a rectis praedecessorum meorum vestigiis non recessi" (Magna Vita).