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continental lands; and a sum of nearly £60,000 was collected in a few months. In spite of the disaffection which succeeded the chaotic tyranny of the next few years, John persisted in his attempt. The emperor Otto, with whom he had been on the closest terms since 1204, came to England in 1207. The two princes conferred together at Stapleford in Essex, and doubtless discussed the joint attack upon Philip which they finally made seven years later, in 1214. The disasters of that year brought their inevitable punishment, the invasion of England and the downfall of Otto.

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Hence during the ten years or so which followed 1204, the affairs of Normandy were overshadowed by the events of a wider contest. After the treaty of Lambeth, in September 1217, the future of the duchy became again an object of prime interest. The treaty of Lambeth did not deal with the conquests of Philip Augustus; it was concerned with the conditions of Louis' departure from England; but, according to Wendover and a London chronicle, the parties to the treaty paid some attention to the young King Henry's claims upon the old Angevin empire. Louis is said to have promised that he would restore Henry's possessions when he should come to the throne of France; and this promise, whatever its origin

1. Stubbs' Constitutional History, i, 620.

2. Rot. de Fin., 459: "Recepta tocius tredecime tam de communi quam de finibus religiosorum et de donis episcoporum, quinquaginta et septum millia ccccxxjli. xjs. vd." This sum would equal nearly £230,000 in money of Tours or Angers.

3. For Otto's visit, see Wendover, Rolls Series, ii, 35: and especially the annals of Saint Edmund (Memorials of St. Edmund, ii, 16) which give the place, Stapleford "in thalamo Samsonis abbatis Sancti Aedmundi." There is a reference to the visit in Rot. de Fin., 384.

4. Wendover, iii, 31; Liber de Antiquis Legibus, ed. Stapleton, Appendix, p. 204. No promise to this effect is to be found in the treaty, but some conversation would of course take place upon the future of the continental lands. M. Petit-Dutaillis suggests that Louis may have promised to approach his father upon the matter; see his Etude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII (1894), pp. 175-6.

and character may have been, was the basis of Henry's later contention that in spite of the conquests of Philip and the judgments of his court, the succession to Normandy and the other continental lands still lay in himself.1

The claim to Normandy was not waived till 1259. In the charters and letters of Henry III, as in those of his father, reference is frequently made to the future recovery of the duchy, and relations between England and the Normans were frequent. From the outset John had been careful to encourage trade between English and Norman ports,2 and Henry III was equally anxious, notwithstanding the measures which the English government took against French merchants, to maintain the goodwill of the Norman traders. The ships of Dieppe, Rouen and Barfleur were especially favoured.3 Before the failure of Henry's expedition to Brittany in 1230, negotiations were also frequent between the king and the Norman barons and clergy. The rule of Philip Augustus and his successors necessarily involved hardship to some persons and caused disappointment to more. Guérin of Glapion, for example, was accused-high though he was in Philip's favour-of intriguing with the emperor Otto. Many Normans joined the allies against Philip in 1214, and for a long time every crisis in French politics, the death of a king, a baronial revolt or an English invasion, reacted upon Norman

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1. Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj., v. 193: "Rex Henricus bis, ut jura sua ultramarina, praecipue Normanniam, de qua pater ejus judicio duodecim parium Franciae abjudicabatur, tanquam de caede nepotis sui Arthuri cruentus, in manu forti reposceret, cum exercitu transfretavit, et bis rediit inglorius, pauper et confusus." On Louis' promise as a basis of Henry's demands, see Wendover, ii, 271; Annals of Dunstable, Ann. Monastici, iii, 82-3.

2. See the long letter of June 4, 1204, in Rot. Pat., 42-3, an elaborate regulation of trade with the possessions of the French king. Safe conduct for particular merchants of Rouen and Caen in December, 1204, and January, 1205 (Rot. Pat., 49, 49b).

3. Berger, in his valuable Histoire de Blanche de Castille, Reine de France (1895), has illustrated this, e.g., p. 76.

4. Above, p. 256. Compare the case of Guy de la Roche, below, p. 415.

society. In 1223, when King Philip died, in 1226, when Louis VIII died, and in 1230, when Pierre Mauclerc, the count of Brittany, welcomed Henry III, English agents were sent to rouse the barons of the duchy. According to Roger of Wendover, Henry would, in 1230, have turned aside to join the malcontents in Normandy if Hubert de Burgh had not dissuaded him.2 The French government realised that special precautions were necessary against English intrigue. For example, when the dean and two canons of Rouen desired to cross the Channel upon the business of their church, permission was only granted after they had taken an oath that they would do nothing against the interests of the king of France or his kingdom.3

At the same time, Henry III was quite alive to the possibility of playing off his claim to Normandy against his claim to Poitou. As early as 1229 he was willing to acquiesce in the loss of Normandy in return for the restoration of the other provinces. On more than one occasion Saint Louis is asserted by Matthew Paris to have proposed a similar division, or to have offered to surrender Normandy itself. In the end an agreement was reached on these lines, but on terms much less favourable to

1. Roger of Wendover (ed. Rolls Series), ii, 271, 316; and iii, 5–6. Annals of Dunstable, in Ann. Monastici, iii, 81, 100; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1216-1225, p. 405-6; Petit-Dutaillis, Louis VIII, p. 232; Berger, Blanche de Castille, pp. 160 seqq.

2. According to Wendover (iii, 33), Hubert's advice on this occasion was afterwards made one of the charges against him. It is not noticed by Master Laurence of Saint Albans in his refutation (Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj., Additamenta, vi, 63).

3. Quoted from the archives of Seine Inferieure by Berger, op. cit. p. 76. Compare the fears of Norman treachery attributed by Matthew Paris to Saint Louis in 1242, Chron. Maj., iv, 204.

4. See the proposals in Royal Letters, ed. Shirley, i, 350, no. 288. At the most Henry asked for territory in western Normandy to link his southern possessions with the Channel : 'de Normannia retineatur ad opus regis unus episcopatus vel duo, ad transitum habendum ad terras predictas; scilicet episcopatus Albrincensis et Constanciensis."

5. Chron. Maj., iv, 203, 506.

Henry III. By the treaty of Paris various actual and contingent rights were recognised as his in Gascony and in the neighbouring provinces, and his claims to Normandy, Anjou, and Poitou were formally given up. The prophecy was fulfilled: miro mutationis modo gladius a sceptro separabitur. 2

Matthew Paris is responsible for a curious story,3 which he repeats more than once, that the conscience of Saint Louis was troubled by the retention of Normandy, and proof of this statement has erroneously been found in the words of two Norman charters issued by the great king.4 It is very probable that during a reign which was by no means free from crises of grave anxiety, Saint Louis thought seriously of a compromise with Henry. And it was quite in accordance with his character if his sense of justice was disturbed by the thought of his father's oath in 1217 and the knowledge that the statesmen of King John had called in question the procedure of John's trial and condemnation. 5 Moreover, Henry III was his relative, and had his own troubles, and the cause of the crusade was harmed by the long, tiresome war between them. On the other hand, it seems certain that Saint Louis was fully satisfied of his right to Normandy. Matthew Paris himself states that the Norman clergy and the French barons

1. Gavrilovitch, Etude sur le traité de Paris de 1259 (1899). 2. Annals of Burton, in Ann. Monastici, i, 487.

3. Chron. Maj., iv, 646; v, 280–1.

4. Cart. Norm., nos. 473, 1185, pp. 78, 325; June, 1248. In these charters Saint-Louis granted Picauville and Saint-Hilaire near Carentan to Bouchard de Mailli, and guarantees certain payments to Port Royal on the revenues of the same. They contain the clause: "hoc etiam semper salvum retinemus, quod si aliquando dictaret nobis conscientia quod de dictis villis restitutionem aliquibus facere vellemus, nobis liceret," etc.

5. Above, p. 219. It should be remembered that the learned jurist M. Guilhiermoz doubts whether the sentences passed on John by the French court in 1202 could be applied to Normandy. The point is not whether this view is correct, but that there was room for doubt.

6. Gavrilovitch, Etude sur le traité de Paris, pp. 41-45.

testified emphatically in his favour. We may see in this story of Saint Louis' conscience, as in other passages of Matthew Paris, not, it is true, the fabrication of facts which never occurred, but the misleading deductions of a patriotic historian.

Long before the treaty of Paris Normandy had been firmly united to the demesne of the French king.

The material for a picture of Norman administration in the thirteenth century is considerable. It shows that the French kings, while making important changes in the government of the duchy, availed themselves of the older constitution. The exchequer remained as the chief court of Normandy for administrative and financial, as well as for judicial purposes. The machinery for the collection of revenue from viscounty and prepositura survived. But Philip Augustus and his successors, by means of a few simple alterations, reorganised these institutions in order to bring them into more accord with the system of government which existed in the Ile de France.

The office of seneschal disappeared in Normandy as it had disappeared in France.3 This change did not take

1. Chron. Maj., iv, 646; v. 280-1.

2. The publications of the Société d'histoire du droit normand, which commenced recently under the title Bibliothèque d'histoire du droit normand, deserve special mention; also the earlier studies of MM. Génestal, Perrot, Lagouelle, and Legras, upon legal and economic history. These matters fall outside the scope of this study. In the following pages I have relied chiefly upon the Cartulaire Normand, which is still the most important collection of texts, upon E. J. Tardif's edition of the custumals, and Delisle's article in the Recueil des historiens de France, xxiv.

3. Tardif, I, i, pp. lxxv, lxxvi. The last official reference to the seneschal is in the ordinance de mutacione monete, probably of date 1204 (Cart. Norm., no. 112, p. 20; Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes, x, 199-204). In unofficial writings or casual deeds various persons are occasionally described as seneschals; for example, the author of Eustace le Moine styles Cadoc seneschal, and other great bailiffs, Renaud of Ville-Tierri, and Peter of Thillai are found with the title. The last

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