2

the clergy themselves.1 It appears that John had disregarded this compromise when he imposed a tallage upon ecclesiastical property, and doubtless a closer scrutiny of the rolls would reveal other instances of his antiecclesiastical tendencies. Philip before the end of 1205 called for a clear statement of Norman customs with regard to those matters which were most frequently causes of dispute between lay and ecclesiastical authorities; and in November of that year a jury of important barons, all of them laymen, made a declaration on several points.3 The facts that the statement is based upon lay evidence and lays stress upon the limitations which were placed by Norman practice upon the laws of the Church, go to show that the clergy had availed themselves of the change of government to increase their claims. Yet a comparison of this document with those of Richard's reign, with the custumals, and with the judgments of the exchequer in the thirteenth century, shows that the continuity of custom in the Norman Church was unbroken by Philip's conquests and had only been temporarily disturbed by the policy of John. The statutory additions were few. When in 1207 the archbishop of Rouen and his suffragans suggested a special form of procedure in such of the disputes about patronage as might arise between religious houses (loca religiosa) and laymen, the king

1. Diceto, ii, 86-8.

2. Statuta et consuetudines, c. lxxii, 6: "ne tallagia fiant super ecclesias et possessiones earum; si vero persona vel vicarius ecclesie feodum laicale habuerit, secundum quantitatem feodi respondeat, si feodum amat." For John's taxation, see above, p. 347.

3. Edited by Teulet, Layettes, i, 296, no. 785; French versions in Tardif, I, ii, 89; English translation in Round's Calendar of documents preserved in France. See also Actes, no. 961; Cart. Norm., no. 124, p. 22. The date is November 15th, 1205.

4. As Viollet has pointed out, the author of the first part of the earliest custumal, the Statuta et consuetudines, was preoccupied by the rights of the church: Histoire Litteraire de la France, xxxiii, 54, 60.

issued a constitution giving legal force to the request;1 this act, the result of ecclesiastical initiative, seems to be the only important addition made by Philip to the law relating to the Church in Normandy. During the thirteenth century Norman law, in accordance with its earlier tendency, developed naturally along lines which were more favourable to the Church than was the contemporary development of the common law in England. 2

A Jumièges annalist complains of the exactions with which Philip visited religious houses after the conquest.3 It is likely that here and there communities suffered, but there is sufficient evidence to prove that, after, as before, 1204, Philip continued to confirm the possessions and rights of monasteries and clergy, and to remain on friendly terms with archbishop Walter.1

Norman laws and custom in general were as little affected as the relations between Church and state by Philip's successes. In a well-known passage of his Philippid William the Breton enlarges upon the king's

1. Statuta et consuetudines, c. lxxvii, 7 (Tardif, I, i, 77). The custumal limits the application of Philip's constitution to the cases mentioned in the text, but the constitution itself does not impose any limitation. It survives in letters addressed to the bailiffs (incorporated in the custumal) and more fully in letters addressed to the bishops. The best edition of the latter is in Perrot, Arresta communia scacarii, pp. 127-9.

2. Cf. Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law (second edition), i, 189, 247. For an interesting judgment, on the other hand, by which the exchequer extended to laymen a privilege which had been previously confined to the clergy, see Jugements, no. 230. It belongs to the year 1218, and deals with the process de feodo et elemosina; cf, Tardif, I, i, p. lxxiii.

3. Historiens de France, xviii, 342.

4. For the confirmation of monastic and ecclesiastical rights, see Cart. Norm. and Actes, passim. For an illustration of Philip's influence in the monastery of Saint-Wandrille even before 1193, see Gallia Christiana, xi, 181; where an abbot is said to have obtained his office "favente Philippo Augusto."

attitude to Norman law and institutions. He accepted them entirely "so far as they were not inequitable or did not touch the liberty of the Church." William refers in detail to only one of the few changes in the legal system, by which Normans were "made equal to Frenchmen." Philip, he says, abolished the privileged position of the appellant in the duel, whereby the appellant was simply liable to fine in case of his defeat, while the defendant, if defeated, was put to death.2 For the most part the changes in Norman law during the thirteenth century were due to the judgments of the exchequer and Parlement, and the intellectual influences of the time.3

In the secular more than in the ecclesiastical world the annexation of Normandy to the French crown involved hardships to individuals even in the ordinary course of law. Some of the peculiar difficulties which the exchequer and the other courts had to face will come before us in the next chapter. In other cases general rulings must have borne hardly upon litigants. For example, it was obviously necessary that the courts in deciding certain claims to property, should insist upon the production of documents; and these might easily have been lost or

1. Philippid, viii, 226-7 (ed. Delaborde, ii, 219).

2. Ibid, viii, 228-40. An important ordinance issued by Philip Augustus in 1209, upon the division of fiefs, has been shown by M. Génestal, to have had no effect in Normandy: Le Parage Normand, p. 36, note.

3. The development of Norman law in the thirteenth century would have to be studied (a) in the thirteenth century custumal, or Summa de Legibus, as compared with the Statuta et consuetudines, or Très-ancien Coutumier: (b) in the collections of judgments of the Exchequer and Assizes belonging to the thirteenth century. At the end of the century or early in the fourteenth century an intelligent scribe wrote out in the margins of the custumal those judgments and royal ordinances which bore more directly upon the custumal. This work became popular. Perrot has given a table of these marginal texts in his Arresta Communia Scacarii, pp. 33-44.

destroyed.1 Again, the courts refused to acknowledge deeds which had issued from the chancery of John, the prince who had forfeited his duchy;2 hence many vested interests of recent origin must have been swept on one side, a fact which probably accounts for the disappearance of several of the communes which had been granted by John to Norman towns. But upon the whole one cannot but be impressed by the care with which the new govern- 1 ment maintained the social and economic life of the Normans uninterrupted. The authentic charters of early Norman dukes, of the Conqueror and his sons, of Henry II and Richard were respected. The exchequer accepted the letters of contemporary English statesmen, for example, of Earl William the Marshal, as evidence of occurrences before the annexation. The coronation of King Richard was established as the point of departure, or limit of legal memory, for fiscal enquiries and for certain important recognitions and prescriptive rights.4

In the meantime the Normans adjusted themselves to the new order of things. One of Philip's earliest acts was the regulation of the currency and the establishment of the rates of exchange between the monetary systems of Normandy and central France. By this decree sterling

1. A case in Jugements, no. 34. Robert the Angevin lost his suit against the Templars. His charter, he said, had been burnt in his house ten years before (1198).

2. Olim, i, 492, no. ix (1260): "nec consuevit dominus Rex tenere litteras ipsius regis Anglie." No recognition or confirmation of John's charters is contained in the documents collected by Delisle in his Cartulaire Normand, though earlier charters are frequently confirmed.

3. Jugements, no. 246, Easter, 1219: "cum in isto scaccario cognitum sit per litteras domini archiepiscopi Cantuarie et etiam litteras patentes comitis W. marescali Anglie, quod idem Radulphus [obierat?] jam elapsis xx annis et eo amplius," etc.

4. Viollet, in Histoire Litteraire, xxxiii, 63–4. This date was abolished in the Charter to the Normans (1315) and replaced by a prescription of forty years; ibid, p. 72.

5. Cart. Norm., no. 112, p. 20; Delisle in Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes, x, 199.

money, and the money of Tours and Le Mans were given legal currency in Normandy, and all other money was to be exchanged at a fixed rate. Philip also defined or enlarged the privileges of the towns. Communes of the type of Rouen or of Mantes and other French towns spread through the duchy. The men of Rouen even came to an agreement with the men of Paris about the commerce of the Seine. Rapidly and imperceptibly the burgesses and peasantry and the bulk of the lesser gentry lost any interest they had in the old English connection. The loss of Normandy worked a violent revolution in the society of the Anglo-Norman baronage, but in it alone.

1. Cart. Norm., pp. xv-xviii; Actes, nos. 804, 829, 830, 903, 904, 1024, etc. For Philip's policy with regard to the towns, see Giry, Les Etablissements de Rouen, i, 31, 32, 52, 358.

2. In January 1210; Cart. Norm., nos. 171, 1097; p. 296.