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They have been used by the editors of the well-known collections of ecclesiastical documents, the Neustria Pia and Gallia Christiana. Mr. Round has summarised a valuable collection in his Calendar of Documents preserved in France, 918-1206 (1899). Finally, in his essay upon the acts of Henry II, published in the new and important series of Chartes et diplômes relatifs à l'histoire de France (the introductory volume 1909), M. Léopold Delisle crowned the labours of over half a century. But, in addition to the charters which have been brought together from the departmental archives of France, the student has a few important official rolls at his disposal. The various Chancery rolls which survive for England since John's reign had their Norman counterparts. Of these Norman rolls the charter roll for the second year of King John, the contra-brevia rolls for the second and fourth years, the oblate roll for the second year, and a fragment of a roll for the fifth year remain, and were edited by Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy in 1835. With their help and with the help of the charters and letters of Philip Augustus (edited by Delisle under the title Catalogue des Actes de Philippe Auguste, 1856), it is possible to follow in detail the advance of the French power in Normandy. Supplemented by the charters and records of Norman administration of the thirteenth century, and by the Exchequer rolls, they also enable us to form a picture of Norman government in its most developed state. Of these records, Delisle edited the charters and judgments of the thirteenth century.2 Stapleton produced his classical edition of the exchequer rolls so long ago as 1840-1844. It is probable that the financial records

1. For a fuller account of the work which has been done upon the chartularies, scattered charters, etc., of Normandy, see Prentout in the Revue de Synthèse historique for February, 1910, pp. 50-55; and my remarks in the English Historical Review, xxi, 627–630.

2. Cartulaire Normand de Philippe Auguste, Louis XIII, Saint Louis et Philippe le Hardi (1852); Jugements de l'Echiquier de Normandie. Notices et extraits, xx, pt. ii (1862).

commenced early in the twelfth century, if not earlier. It is certain that some official records of the sums due to the ducal fisc from local officials must have been used even in the eleventh century,' and the advocate De la Foy, who published a work on the constitution of the duchy in 1789, says that he possessed a fragment of an old exchequer roll for 1136.2 There is even evidence for the existence of Norman chancery rolls at the beginning of Henry II's reign.3 Unfortunately the exchequer rolls survive in a fragmentary condition, fairly complete for the years 1180, 1195, 1198, partially for the years 1184 and 1203.

This varied material has been used in the following chapters to illustrate the working of a medieval state in time of war. References to the special monographs and articles which I have used will be found in their proper places. Only those who have tried to cope with the records can know how much they owe to M. Delisle's famous articles on the public revenues of Normandy in the Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes (vols. x, xi, xiii), and to his equally well-known Etudes sur la condition de la classe agricole et l'état de l'agriculture en Normandie au moyen âge (Evreux, 1851; re-issued, Paris, 1903). The latest contribution to the constitutional history of Normandy

1. This follows from the facts proved by Mr. Haskins, American Historical Review, xiv, 467.

2. See the reference in Delisle's introduction to the Norman edition of the exchequer rolls, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, xvi, pt. i, pp. xxx, xxxi.

3. Delisle, Introduction to the Recueil des Actes de Henri II, p. 194 and note. Assize rolls also existed in the time of the Angevin dukes; they are referred to in the custumal (Tardif, Coutumiers, I, i, 24). See also Delisle's Mémoire sur les recueils de jugements rendus par l'échiquier de Normandie, in the memoirs of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, vol. xxiv, pt. ii, pp. 352-367. See also below p. 74.

4. One fragment has been edited by M. Delisle in the introductory volume to his Actes de Henri II (pp. 334–344). It was unknown to Stapleton, who published another fragment of the same roll (Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniae, I, 109–123).

before 1204 has been made by a Norman jurist, M. Lucien Valin, in his study Le Duc de Normandie et sa Cour (912-1204), Paris, 1910. M. Valin has been led into some needless investigations through his ignorance of the papers of Mr. Haskins, and of M. Ferdinand Lot's Fidèles ou Vassaux? (Paris, 1904). His essay, however, which is based upon a careful study of the charters and records to which he has had access, contains much that is suggestive and useful.

It is hardly necessary to remind my readers that the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, re-discovered in 1881 by M. Paul Meyer and edited by him between 1891 and 1901, has shown the way to a more intimate knowledge of the reigns of Henry II and, more especially, of his sons than could ever have been hoped for before its appearance in print.

8

CHAPTER I.

The Angevin Empire.

In this book I wish to study the Norman state during the crisis which led to its union with France. This is not primarily a political, nor economic, nor military study, but rather a picture of the most advanced and self-sufficient country in Europe during the early years of the thirteenth century, in the period of its conquest by Philip Augustus. After three centuries of independence Normandy fell at the very time when the civilisation of Western Europe was asserting its supremacy. The papacy was at the height of its power. The foundations of the kingdoms of France and Castile were laid. In 1204 the Republic of Venice led the warriors of the west in the capture of Constantinople. In 1212 the Moors were driven beyond the Sierra Morena. The next generation combined the wisdom of east and west in metaphysical speculation and the practical arts. Its learning was expressed by the corporations of the universities; its treasures were housed in cathedrals and abbeys of new and surprising beauty. The trade of the east helped to create new political forms in the cities of Flanders and Italy. Normandy had contributed to the preparation for this life, but shared in it only as the demesne of the French king. Although the Norman dukes had elaborated political institutions which were fitted to control a complicated society, and Richard of the Lion Heart had taken the lead in the practice of the arts of fortification and attack as they were developed in the Latin States of Syria, Normandy found no protection in its institutions or its fortresses.

The history of the loss of Normandy, therefore, is of special interest to the student of mediæval society.

Normandy had great resources, a tradition of unity, and an elaborate system of government. Its records, though far from complete, are numerous for the reign of King John. It is possible to study a mediæval State in action, in its strength and weakness, to understand its military organisation, and to estimate the influence of personal and impersonal forces. Moreover, Normandy was opposed by a State of very similar nature and capacity, controlled by a king who is possibly the best example of self-conscious feudalism. At the end of the twelfth century there was in most states no single principle of cohesion; the several principles of co-operation, military, religious, economic, were not consistent, and often fought against each other. The dreadful evils of the time were due to the fact that violence was no longer restrained by the reverence for tribal and family bonds, nor tempered by new relations. They were the evils of a sophisticated barbarism. Now among the French States which had sought to combine and restrain the various forces of society, Normandy and the domains of the French king had been most successful. The one, though nominally dependent upon its rival, had been knit together by strong rulers who had availed themselves of the traditions of racial unity; the other had become the ordered base of a lord whose claims and traditions dated from the monarchy of the Carolingian kings. They fought, and a combination of permanent and temporary advantages gave victory to the latter. The Normans found themselves in the position of the Athenians during the Syracusan campaign: the Sicilian were the only cities, says Thucydides, which the Athenians had ever encountered similar in character to their own.

When Rouen surrendered to Philip Augustus in 1204, and the valley of the lower Seine passed into the possession of a single lord, nature seemed to gain one more inevitable victory. Yet truth, even geographical truth, is not often simple. Normandy had for fifty years been in close political alliance with a group of States upon

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