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gave Conches and Nonancourt, pledged himself not to sell, give or mortgage them. Radepont was held by Pierre of Moret under special conditions of service.2 Domfront was part of the grant to Renaud, count of Boulogne, in exchange for Mortemer. His presence in the west, and that of his brother in Saint-James-de-Beuvron really acted as a check upon the barons of Brittany.

It is indeed interesting to notice how judiciously Philip played off one interest against another, or by apparent concessions strengthened his position. He was not afraid to establish powerful vassals on the Breton frontier, if at the same time, he could recover places of more strategic importance on the Norman border or in Touraine. Accordingly he bought the count of Boulogne out of Mortemer and André of Vitré out of Langeais. At the same time, he tried to break down the barrier between Normans and Frenchmen by the settlement of his barons and servants in the duchy, 5 and by encouraging intermarriage between the great barons of Normandy and the Ile de France. For example, the daughter of the chamberlain of Tancarville married the son of Walter the younger, one of the royal chamberlains; and the son of Count Robert of Alençon married the daughter of Bartholomew of Roie, one of Philip's closest companions, who in 1208 became grand chamberlain of France."

While, however, King Philip secured his position in Normandy, he was careful to make the transition from

1. Ibid, no. 97, p. 13; Actes, no. 900.

2. Cart. Norm., no. 184, p. 297. Compare a somewhat similar provision with regard to Montbason in Touraine (Actes, no. 1009).

3. Actes, no. 884, 885, 986. The Mortemer referred to is Mortemer en-Bray, a fief of Earl Warenne before 1204.

4. Ibid, no. 1000.

5. Grants to balistarii, ibid, nos. 817, 955, 1038; to his falconer, no. 956. The Actes and the Cart. Norm. abound in grants of Norman lands.

6. Actes, no. 917.

7. Cart. Norm., no. 122, p. 22.

Angevin to French rule as easy as possible. As king of France he was in any event overlord of the Normans. His relations with them, especially with the clergy, had commenced long before 1204. In the affairs both of Church and of state he sought to observe the "usages and customs of Normandy."

Throughout the process of annexation Philip professed to act in accordance with the forms of law. He had, he said, conquered Normandy in pursuance of a judgment duly given to his court, and he called upon the bishops and lay barons to swear fealty to him. With the former he had small difficulty. In reply to an appeal for advice they were told by Innocent III to decide for themselves upon the justice of Philip's action; whereupon they submitted. Their successors emphatically recognised the right of the French kings in Normandy.2 On his side, Philip, according to William the Breton, recognised the canonical rights of election of the Norman clergy which had been disregarded by King John.3

With the memories of the dispute about Séez fresh in their minds, the clergy doubtless expected Philip to restore this and other privileges. They had a peculiar advantage in their opposition to interference, for at this period the compromise between the law of Church and state was more precisely defined in Normandy than it was in England. The privileges of the clergy had been secured by King Richard's constitution pro clericis et sacerdotibus, and by the articles drawn up in 1190 by

1. See the pope's reply to the Norman bishops, March 7th, 1205, Potthast, no. 2434; Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. ccxv, p. 564: "justitia praeeunte, per sententiam curiae suae Normanniam acquisivit." 2. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, iv, 646.

3. Philippid, lib. viii, 241-64 (ed. Delaborde, ii, 219-20). Cf. Actes, no. 1109 the bishop of Coutances declares that, during a vacancy in the see of Rouen, the chapter have the administration of the temporalities and spiritualities of the archbishopric.

4. Above, p. 248.

5. Statuta et consuetudines, c. lxxii (Tardif, I, i, 68).

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. +

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.

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