democratic; and when it was applied to a settled life in the new country, the organisation of the town was the form which it took. The Lagmen of Lincoln, Stamford, Cambridge, Chester, and York are a peculiarly Scandinavian institution, which we find still existing at the time of the Domesday Survey.

Thus we see that the fortifications of the Danes, like those of the Anglo-Saxons, were the fortifications of the community.

And we shall see in the next chapter that this was the general type of the fortifications which were being raised in Western Europe in the 9th century.

See Vinogradoff, English Society in the 11th Century, pp. 5, 11, 478.

CHAPTER V

THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE CASTLES

We have now seen that history furnishes no instance of the existence of private castles among the Anglo-Saxons or the Danes (previous to the arrival of Edward the Confessor's Norman friends), and we have endeavoured to show that this negative evidence is of great significance. If, assuming that we are right in accepting it as conclusive, we ask why the Anglo-Saxons did not build private castles, the answer is ready to hand in the researches of the late Dr Stubbs, the late Professor Maitland, Dr J. H. Round, and Professor Vinogradoff, which have thrown so much fresh light on the constitutional history of England. These writers have made it clear that whatever tendencies towards feudalism there were in England before the Conquest, the system of military tenure, which is the backbone of feudalism, was introduced into England by William the Conqueror. “Feudalism, in both tenure and government was, so far as it existed in England, brought full-grown from France,” says Dr Stubbs; and this statement is not merely supported, but strengthened, by the work of the

See Stubbs, Constitutional History, i., 251 ; Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 157 ; Round's Feudal England, p. 261 ; Vinogradoff's English

case.

later writers named. The institutions of the AngloSaxons, when they settled in England, were tribal; and though these institutions were in a state of decay in the 11th century, they were not completely superseded by feudal institutions till after the Norman Conquest.

We should naturally expect, then, that the fortifications erected by the Anglo-Saxons would be those adapted to their originally tribal state, that is, in the words which we have so often used already, they would be those of the community and not of the individual. And as far as we can discover the character of these fortifications, we find that this was actually the

As we have seen, we find one of the earliest kings, Ida, building for the defence of himself and his followers what Bede calls a city; and we find Alfred and his children also building and repairing cities, at the time of the Danish invasions.

The same kind of thing was going on at about the same time in Germany and in France. Henry the Fowler (919-936), that great restorer of the Austrasian kingdom, planted on the frontiers which were exposed to the attacks of the Danes and Huns a number of walled strongholds, not only for the purpose of resisting invasion, but to afford a place of refuge to all the inhabitants of the country.

He ordained that every ninth man of the peasants in the district must build

FORTIFIED WALLS

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for himself and his nine companions a dwelling in the

Burg,” and provide barns and storehouses, and that the third part of all crops must be delivered and housed in these towns. In this way, says the historian Giesebrecht,

" he sought to accustom the Saxons, who had hitherto dwelt in isolated farms, or open villages, to life in towns. He ordered that all assemblies of the people should be held in towns. Giesebrecht also remarks that it is not improbable that Henry the Fowler had the example of Edward the Elder of England before his eyes when he established these rows of frontier towns.2

The same causes led, on Neustrian soil, to the fortification of a number of cities, the walls of which had fallen into decay during the period of peace before the invasions of the Danes. Thus Charles the Bald commanded Le Mans and Tours to be fortified “as a defence for the people against the Northmen.” 3

The bishops were particularly active in thus defending the people of their dioceses. Archbishop Fulk rebuilt the walls of Rheims, between 884 and 900 ;* his successor, Hervey, fortified the town of Coucy (about 900); the Bishop of

1 Giesebrecht, Geschichte der Kaiserzeit, i., 224. The word Burg, which Giesebrecht uses for these strongholds, means a castle in modern German; but its ancient meaning was a town (see Hilprecht's German Dictionary), and it corresponded exactly to the Anglo-Saxon burh. It was used in this sense at least as late as the end of the 12th century ; see, e.g., Lamprecht's Alexanderlied, passim. It is clear by the context that Giesebrecht employs it in its ancient sense.

2 Ibid., 222. Henry's son Otto married a daughter of Edward the Elder. Henry received the nickname of Townfounder (Städtegründer).

3 “Carolus civitates Transsequanas ab incolis firmari rogavit, Cinomannis scilicet et Turonis, ut præsidio contra Nortmannos populis esse possent." Annales Bertinianorum, Migne, Pat., 125, 53.

4 Flodoard, Hist. Ecc. Remensis, iv., viii.

6 Modern historians generally say that he built the castle of Coucy; but from Flodoard's account it seems very doubtful whether anything but the town is meant. Annales, iv., xiii. His words are: “Munitionem quoque apud Codiciacum tuto loco constituit atque firmavit.” Munitio properly means a bulwark or wall.

E

Cambray built new walls to his city in 887-911;1 and Bishop Erluin fortified Peronne in 1001, “as a defence against marauders, and a refuge for the husbandmen of the country.”? But permission had probably to be asked in all these cases, as it certainly had in the last. The Carlovingian sovereigns represented a well-ordered state, modelled on the pattern of the Roman Empire; they were jealous of any attempts at self-defence which did not proceed from the State, and thus as long as they had the power they strove to put down all associations or buildings of a military character which did not emanate from their imperial authority.

The history of the 9th and oth centuries is the history of the gradual break-up of the Carlovingian Empire, and the rise of feudalism on its ruins. In 877, the year of his death, Charles the Bald signed a decree making the counts of the provinces, who until then had been imperial officers, hereditary. He thus, as Sismondi says, annihilated the remains of royal authority in the provinces. The removable officers now became local sovereigns. Gradually, as the Carlovingian Empire fell to pieces, the artificial organisation of the feudal system arose to take its place. By the end of the roth century the victory of feudalism was complete ; and the victory of feudalism was the victory of the private castle.

“The very word castle,” says Guizot, “ brings with

· it the idea of feudal society; we see it rising before us. It was feudalism that built these castles which once covered our soil, and whose ruins are still scattered upon it. They were the declaration of its triumph. Nothing like them had existed on Gallo-Roman soil. Before the

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