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secured Exmes, Falaise, Bayeux, and the district between the Risle and the Seine, then worked steadily east, south, west, until the fall of Arques in 1145 completed the conquest. At this time several great barons, in return for the rest of their land, gave up fortresses which afterwards became the centres of local administration; William of Warenne, for example, surrendered Neufchâtel-en-Bray or, as it is usually named, Drincourt, and Hugh of Gournai surrendered Lions-la-Forêt.2 The submission of the baronage was completed by the suppression of the rebellion of 1173, when lands were confiscated, castles destroyed, and several important fortresses, including those of the count of Meulan, 3 passed into ducal hands. In the meantime Henry II had gradually continued his father's work, building a castle here, confiscating another there. In 1161 Montfort-sur-Risle, one of the chief fiefs of the count of Meulan was secured and remained in the duke's hands, separately farmed. The family of Montfort continued to provide castellans, but lost all proprietary rights in the castle. In 1166 the count of Alençon and his heirs surrendered the castles of Alençon and Roche Mabille: in this case the local family continued to hold its other lands, but, at any rate until the death of Richard, the custody of the castle at Alençon, which became the centre of an important

1. Robert of Torigni, ed. Delisle, i, 225-237, with Delisle's notes. 2. Ibid., 235.

3. Guillaume le Maréchal, ii, 33; Robert of Torigni, ii, 35-6. The counts of Meulan were unfortunate at least three times between 1160 and 1200, but got back their lands in Normandy except Montfort and Pont-Audemer.

4. On January 31, 1200, Hugh of Montfort quitclaimed all rights to the castle, admitting that the honour of Montfort was in the demesne of Henry II when the latter died. "Et sciatis quod nullo alio jure vel alique alia ratione nisi solius nomine custodie honorem illum recepi, vel in manu mea habui" (Rot. Chart., 59). See Robert of Torigni, i, 329-330; Stapleton, I, cxviii.

bailiwick was entrusted to ducal officials. 1 Roche Mabille was, later in the century, in the hands of the count's brother. 2 In 1168 the count of Perche gave back to Normandy the castles of Moulins and Bonmoulins. 3 Finally, Henry II held at various times the fortresses of the Eure, Ivry, Anet and the castles of the honour of Evreux.

Many of these arrangements were not lasting; but Henry's rule established several important principles. The right of the duke to enter upon the castles of a vassal was exercised; indeed Robert of Torigni suggests that the occasion of the surrender by the count of Alençon was the evil customs enforced in the honour, 5 not military exigencies or the suspicion of infidelity. With this right of entry was established the right or, as the case might be, the duty of sharing in the defence of the castles both in men and money. Thus Tillières on the Avre was practically a ducal castle, in spite of the existence of a nominal lord; and so to a less degree were Conches, Neubourg and Neufmarché-en-Lions, all of which played so important a part in the reigns of Richard and John. Gournai in 1202 was entrusted to ducal commissioners. During the

1. Robert of Torigni, i, 360; Stapleton, I, lxxiv. Ralph Labbe was castellan and farmer in 1198, but was at the exchequer in John's reign. The ease with which Count Robert IV surrendered Alençon to Philip Augustus in January, 1203, suggests that he was in charge of the castle then.

2. Stapleton, II, lxxxvi.

3. Stapleton, I, cxxxiv.

4. Robert of Torigni, ii, 68, 179.

5. i, 360.

6. Tillières did not become an administrative centre, but was in all other respects in the same position as Alençon. The castle appears

Cf.

frequently in the Exchequer Rolls and had its royal castellan. Stapleton, I, cxx; II, xlv. The rights of the lord in the honour of Brézolles were secured by the treaty of 1200. Above pp. 252, 265.

7. I can find no evidence for Stapleton's statement (II, cccxv) that Neubourg was a ducal residence.

preparations of 1203 Stephen of Longchamp was given a licence for the fortification of his manor at Douville and a grant-in-aid was made for the purpose. But the most important result of Henry's firm handling of the castles was that a clear distinction was drawn between ownership of a castle and local administration. When Henry began to reign this distinction was not clear either in England or Normandy; traces of the old confusion may be found in the vested interests preserved by later records. 2 In the reigns of his sons the castellan is rarely a local magnate.3 He is a member of the administrative service, removable at will, sometimes acting as bailiff, sometimes confined to military duties with a salary. Only during the last months of John's rule in Normandy, when he had spent his treasure and was forced to make what arrangements he could, do we find a tendency to return to the old beneficiary

1. Above p. 242. The wages of the garrison were paid by the king (Rot. Norm., 75).

2. The rights of the earl of Chester in the castle of Lincoln are a case in point; Petit-Dutaillis in Mélanges Julien Havet (1895), p. 378. The contrast between the state of things in 1154 and 1200 is seen vividly in King John's grant of 20li. of the third penny of the county of Hereford to Henry Bohun unde eum fecimus comitem Herefordie, compared with the vast privileges granted in the beginning of Henry II's reign to Earl Roger; besides lands, the mote of Hereford with the castle, the shrievalty of Gloucester with the custody of the castle, etc. Fifth Report on the Dignity of the Peerage, p. 4.

3. There are a few instances. For example, Robert of Roos seems to have been constable of Bonneville-sur-Touque in Richard's reign partly in virtue of his relationship with the Trossebot family. See Stapleton, II, lxxvi.

4. For the administrative side of this change, see above, ch. iii. The place of the castle is seen in the wording of John's letters of protection for the abbot of Fécamp, July 27th, 1202, addressed "omnibus castellanis et baillivis suis Normannie" (Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes, 1904, lxv, 396). For the castle as the centre of justice, cf. the inquiry of 1258 upon certain petitions of the bishops: "secundum consuetudinem Normannie cause super hereditatem mote tractentur in assisia castellanie in qua sita est res de qua agitur" (Olim, i, 59–63).

system. The process may be followed at Torigni. On 9th Nov. 1202 the prepositus and men of Torigni were instructed that John du Bois was to be castellan: they were to obey him as constable. In March 1203 John was ordered to surrender the castle and bailiwick to the seneschal; it appears that the king, before giving John fuller powers decided to destroy the fortifications, since on 12th May the seneschal is directed to hand over the town and its appurtenant lands to John du Bois, after the castle had been levelled (cum castrum de Torengy prostratum fuerit). It is uncertain whether the order was carried out or was countermanded, since one of the last acts of the king before leaving Normandy was to confirm the position of John by granting him the castle of Torigni with the service of the knights who held of the castellaria. In any case John was now established as a baron on the site of a ducal castle. He received the service of its dependents and retained its revenues, loans and aids. 5 We cannot tell whether this reversion to feudal type would have become common in Normandy if local resistance to King Philip had lasted for a few years instead of a few months; but the story of Torigni is very suggestive."

1. Rot. Pat., 20. In 1154, Torigni was in the possession of Richard, son of Robert of Gloucester. It may have come to John after the death of Richard's son, Philip de Creully (see Robert of Torigni, ed. Delisle, i, 287, ii, 58; Stapleton, II, xlv).

2. Rot. Pat., 26b.

3. Rot. Norm., 95.

4. Rot. Pat., 36b, November 23rd, 1203.

5. In July the seneschal was ordered to hand over to John the loan which he had raised from the men of Torigni (Rot. Norm., 98). It is significant that Brandin, who had received the terra of Torigni before John du Bois (Rot. Pat., 14b), received it free of tallage.

6. The grant of the Channel Isles to Peter of Préaux (above p. 115) is still more suggestive.

II.

The Norman march was strengthened by those great builders Henry I and Henry II in the exercise of the authority which has just been described. At the end of the twelfth century, the March was regarded as a military whole, varying in its course as war expanded or restricted the political boundary, but stretching from Eu to the bay of Mont Saint-Michel.2 At the close of Henry II's reign, the boundary may be defined by the course of certain rivers whose banks had provided suitable sites for works of defence. Starting from Eu and ending at Pontorson, it followed more or less closely the Bresle, Epte, Eure (between Ivry and the junction of Eure and Avre), Avre, Sarthe, Mayenne, Colmont and, after an interval marked by the limits of the diocese of Avranches, the Couesnon. This line was only in part coincident with the ecclesiastical boundary of the province: thus, the Epte cut across the diocese of Rouen and separated the French from the Norman Vexin; and the southern portion of the diocese of Séez, containing Mortagne and Bellême, no longer formed part of the duchy; while, on the other hand, Roche Mabille (attached to Alençon) and the forts which protected Domfront on the Colmont had been originally part of

1. MODERN AUTHORITIES. Stapleton, Observations; Adolphe de Dion, Exploration des Châteaux du Vexin, in the Bulletin Monumental, 1867, xxxiii, 330-366; and the same writer's Etude sur les Châteaux féodaux des frontières de la Normandie, delivered at the Congrès archéologique de France, 1876, pp. 352-374; L. Bonnard, Une Promenade Historique. La Frontière franco-normande entre Seine et Perche (ix au xiiie siècle), Chartres, 1907; Léon Coutil, 'Le Château-Gaillard' in Recueil des travaux de la société libre d'agriculture, sciences, arts et belles-lettres de l'Eure, 1906, vie série, iii, 49-108, is useful for the defences of the Seine.

2. e.g., in February, 1203, when the march was restricted to the Andelle, Bartholomew the clerk of the royal chamber was ordered to pay wages at Douville, "sicut aliis de Marchia fieri precepimus" (Rot. Norm., 75); so for the men of Neubourg and Pontorson (ibid., 77).

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