What Did the Normans Do for Us?

Page 3 of 4

• 1. National identity
• 2. Castles, cathedrals, monasteries
• 3. Wealth, lordship and political control
• 4. Find out more
• Print entire article

Wealth, lordship and political control

In the mid-1180s the monks of Abingdon Abbey accused their hated custodian of, amongst other wrongs, economic illiteracy. He had stated that not all the oats in Berkshire could supply the monks' horses. To this the monks replied 'that the house of Abingdon is always rich in good wheat, and he who has wheat can buy oats'. The economy of England had been growing at least from the tenth century, and was characterised by increasing markets and growing towns. By the twelfth century, one of the ways in which English writers disparaged other peoples, notably the Welsh and Irish, was to depict their economies as primitive, as lacking markets, exchange and towns. At the same time, kings and lords deliberately sought to stimulate the wealth of their country, as can be most clearly seen by the introduction of coinage and the establishment of boroughs by David I of Scotland and his successors.

Within such an economy, there was clearly room for men to rise by increasing wealth. At the same time, it remained a notably hierarchic society, and the process of Conquest itself strengthened the role of lordship. Domesday Book, the product of William I's great survey of his realm in 1086, shows that the eleven leading members of the aristocracy held about one quarter of the realm. Another quarter was in the hands of fewer than two hundred other aristocrats.

These nobles had received their lands by royal grant, and in turn gave some of their lands to their own followers. Such a form of land-holding is often regarded as an element of feudalism, a form of social organisation once routinely held to have been introduced by the Normans in 1066. In recent years there has been considerable debate about the problems arising from the use of the term 'feudal', a debate wittily foreseen by the great Victorian historian, F. W. Maitland, who stated that '"Feudalism" is a useful word, and will cover a multitude of ignorances.' Nevertheless, whatever the wider problems of writing of 'feudalism', the process of Norman conquest and settlement did tie closely together a variety of types of lordship - regarding protection, service, and jurisdiction - and linked them to the bond of land tenure, the holding of what men at the time referred to as a feudum or fief.

'...eleven leading members of the aristocracy held about one quarter of the realm.'

The strength of lordship could result in royal weakness and the break-up of large-scale political control. This had happened in areas of France during the eleventh century and in England during civil war of the reign of King Stephen, 1135-54. Yet it would be wrong to see aristocracy and king, lordship and kingship as necessarily opposed. In the first place, kings were lords, and exploited the common powers of lordship as well as their own peculiar royal rights. Secondly, kings and lords often regarded one another as their natural companions, engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship. And thirdly, in England both kings and aristocrats continued to operate in political and judicial arenas other than those defined by lordship. Most notable amongst these were the counties or shires which the Normans inherited from the Anglo-Saxons. The long endurance of these, still important to the present day, contrasts with developments in many continental areas. In their self-interested preservation of the machinery of Anglo-Saxon government, the new Norman rulers did learn to be English, and in so doing helped to determine the future political and administrative development of their conquered lands.

NextPrevious

Published: 2001-07-01