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UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA

INTRODUCTORY NOTE ON AUTHORITIES.

The loss of Normandy has only once been the subject of a separate work-in A. Poignant's inadequate Histoire de la Conquête de la Normandie par Philippe Auguste en 1204 (Paris, 1854). The political histories of Miss Norgate and Sir James Ramsay, Lehmann's Johann ohne Land (Berlin, 1904), and the half-volume written by M. Luchaire for Lavisse's Histoire de France (III, i) contain scholarly narratives; and a detailed account may be expected from the future volumes of Dr. Cartellieri's Philipp II August. Since M. Poignant wrote, the materials for a survey of Norman society at the close of the twelfth century have been completely revised or reedited, and many additions have been made to our knowledge. It is unnecessary, in view of the bibliographies of the late scholars Mr. Gross1 and M. Molinier, 2 to describe the French and Anglo-Norman chronicles of the period.3 Nor is it needful to attempt a critical survey on a large scale of the authorities for Norman history, since the appearance of M. Henri Prentout's studies in Norman bibliography included in his contributions to the excellent series, Les Régions de la France, first published in the

1. Charles Gross, The sources and literature of English history from the earliest times to about 1485 (1900).

2. A. Molinier, Les sources de l'histoire de France (1901-6).

3. Note, in addition, M. Delisle's edition of the fourth part of a Chronique française des rois de France par un anonyme de Béthune in the Recueil des Historiens de France, t. xxiv, pt. ii, p. 751: compare Histoire Litteraire, xxxii, 222; also a new text for the year 1154 onwards of the Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis, prepared by Dr. Wolf Stechele and Dr. Cartellieri (Leipzig and Paris, 1909). may also refer to my remarks upon the contemporary chroniclers in general (English Historical Review, vol. xxi, pp. 630-633) and upon the relations between the Coggeshall chronicler and Roger of Wendover (Ibid, vol. xxi, p. 286).

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Revue de Synthèse Historique.1 At the same time, it may be useful to refer the reader to the more important or more recent contributions to the subject. References to special books and articles upon points of detail or of interest foreign to Norman history will be found in the course of the essay.

It is doubtful whether certainty will ever be reached about the origin and nature of the Norman state in the tenth century. When M. Ferdinand Lot has published his studies on the invasions and upon the charters of Saint-Wandrille, and a critical edition of William of Jumièges 2 has appeared, light will doubtless be thrown on some dark places. Yet even Mr. Haskins, who has made the early history of the duchy his own, practically gives up the study of the 'interaction of Frankish and Scandinavian elements in the tenth century.' On the other hand, researches into later periods have reacted upon the problems of the earlier and in some degree reduced their importance. The exact nature of ducal authority, the precise amount of Scandinavian law in Normandy after the settlement of 912, become questions of less moment when it is proved that before the conquest of England Normandy had become a highly centralised feudal State, with financial, judicial and military institutions well defined. We can stand on firm ground and await with patience the solution or surrender of the questions which vexed Waitz and Palgrave.

1. M. Prentout's articles commenced in the Revue de Synthèse historique for August, 1909. They have been separately published as Les Régions de la France, vii (Paris, 1910).

2. See Delisle, Matériaux pour l'edition de Guillaume de Jumièges préparée par Jules Lair, in the Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes (1910), lxxi, 481-526.

3. For the older theories, see Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, i, 270-271, and especially the summary of literature in Karl v. Amira's valuable review of Steenstrup in Sybel's Historiche Zeitschrift, 1878, Neue Folge, iii, 240:-"Die Anfänge des normannischen Rechts." Prentout has recently discussed the whole question in his Essai sur les origines et la fondation du duché de Normandie (Paris, 1911).

The lead in these inquiries has been taken by Mr. Charles H. Haskins, who is preparing a systematic study of the Norman charters from the accession of William I to the accession of Henry II. The first fruits of his labours have appeared in the American Historical Review and the English Historical Review. I arrange them chronologically :

"Normandy under William the Conqueror" (Amer. Hist. Rev., xiv, 453).

“Knight Service in Normandy in the Eleventh Century" (Eng. Hist. Rev., xxii, 636).

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"The Norman Consuetudines et Justicie' of William the Conqueror" (Eng. Hist. Rev., xxiii, 502).

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The Administration of Normandy under Henry I" (Eng. Hist. Rev., xxiv, 209).

"The Early Norman Jury" (Amer. Hist. Rev., viii, 613-640).

The reconstruction of the Norman State in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries by Mr. Haskins, together with the help of such important works as the Essai sur l'origine de la noblesse of M. Guilhiermoz (Paris, 1902) and Dr. Boehmer's Kirche und Staat in England und der Normandie in XI und XII Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1899), gives point and meaning to the insistence of earlier writers upon the solidarity of the Norman State. Their writings may now be used with more confidence, since their conclusions can be checked and the errors excluded, by reference to known facts. Chief among these suggestive if disputable works are Steenstrup's well-known Inledning i Normannertiden (Kjoebenhavn, 1876), of part of which the author published a French translation, Etudes preliminaires pour servir à l'histoire de Normands et de leur invasions' (Caen, 1880), and M. Flach's pages upon Normandy in his Origines de l'ancienne France (vols. ii and iii, passim, 1893, 1904).

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As was shown by that great pioneer Dr. Heinrich Brunner in his Enstehung der Schwurgerichte (1872), it is

impossible to separate the study of Norman institutions from the study of Norman law. Of recent years the critical examination of the earliest Norman law books has done much for Norman history; some success, for example, has been achieved in separating custom from ordinance in the Statuta et Consuetudines, the oldest custumal of Normandy, which, as M. Ernest Joseph Tardif showed in his excellent edition, included in his Coutumiers de Normandie (Société de l'histoire de Normandie; the first volume published in two parts, 1881 and 1903) was put together in the last months of 1199 or early in 1200, probably by a clerk of the seneschal, William Fitz Ralf (i, pp. lxv-lxxii, lxxxi). The best comparative studies in Norman law are contained in Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law (2nd edition, vol. i, 64-78 and elsewhere), in the works of Brunner and Guilhiermoz, and especially in M. Paul Viollet's article on the Norman custumals in the Histoire Littéraire de la France (1906, vol. xxxiii, pp. 40-190). Dr. Brunner has recently republished his critical bibliography, useful for an account of administrative records as well as of the custumals, in an appendix to his study of the English sourcesGeschichte der Englischen Rechtsquellen im Grundriss (Leipzig, 1909, pp. 62–75).

Besides the earliest custumal, the official records of the Angevin dukes of Normandy survive for some of the later years of the twelfth century. In any case the numerous charters, the English Pipe Rolls, and the chronicles of Robert of Torigni and the author known as Benedict of Peterborough would enable us to be more familiar with the Norman State in the second than in the first part of the century. The charters of the dukes and their subjects have been worked over by several generations of scholars, notably by the great English antiquary Stapleton, and the Norman Lechaudé d'Anisy.

1. In the light shed by the Vatican MS., Viollet argues against Tardif for a revision in 1203-4 (Hist. litt., xxxiii, 48).

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