(23) Trace the status of the different residents on a manor mentioned in the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. (24) Norman and Anglo-Saxon sports, as illustrated in Scott's Ivanhoe.

Secondary authorities

Sources

REFERENCES

Bright, History of England, I. 36-39, 42-43, 48-50, 55; Gardiner, Student's History, 81, 104-114, 116-117, 127, 140-141; Ransome, Advanced History, 94-101, 116-117, 258-260; Green, Short History, 83-90, 245–246, — History of the English People, bk. i. ch. iv. ; Montague, Elements of Constitutional History, chs. iii. iv.; Gibbins, Industrial History, 7-22; Cheyney, Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England, ch. ii.; Cunningham and McArthur, Industrial History, 28-37; Ashley, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, I. 134-162, 229-244; H. Taylor, The English Constitution, I. 222-267; Medley, Students' Manual of English Constitutional History, 19-36; Taswell-Langmead, Constitutional History, ch. ii.; Stubbs, Select Charters, 13-19,- Constitutional History, I. chs. ix. xi.; Freeman, Norman Conquest, V. ch. xxiv.; Powell and Tout, History of England, bk. ii. ch. v.; Johnson, Normans in Europe, chs. xiii. xiv. xvii.; Ramsay, Foundations of England, II. ch. x.; Wakeman, Introduction to the History of the Church of England, chs. iii. ix.; Wakeman and Hassall, Essays Introductory to English Constitutional History, no. ii.; Creasy, Rise and Progress of the English Constitution, chs. vii. viii.; Traill, Social England, I. 236–253, 356–359; Lang, History of Scotland, I. ch. vi.; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, I. bk. ii. chs. i. ii. See New England History Teachers' Association, Syllabus, 238.

Adams and Stephens, Select Documents of English Constitutional History, nos. 1-6; Colby, Selections from the Sources, nos. 14-16; Henderson, Select Documents, 9; Cheyney, English Manorial Documents (University of Pennsylvania Reprints, III. no. 5), — Documents Illustrative of Feudalism (University of Pennsylvania Reprints, IV. no. 3).

CHAPTER VIII.

ENGLAND UNDER THE LATER NORMAN KINGS (1087-1154)

acteristics of the Nor

man period

Ir is not to be supposed that the followers of the Conqueror, who had hoped to carve out for themselves in England counties and duchies like those in France, accepted without 114. Charprotest the novel feudal limitations imposed by William. In the century which followed the conquest, the great Norman landholders struggled hard to exalt the power of the baronage at the expense of that of the monarch. The palatine earls, in particular, often took advantage of their position and their privileges to defy the authority of the king. In this contest between the lower Continental and the stricter English types of feudalism, the instinct of the English people to seek liberty through order rather than through anarchy finally gave the victory to the champions of centralization.

of William II. (1087

1100)

The Conqueror left his domain of Normandy to Robert, his eldest surviving son, and named his younger son, William Rufus (or "the Red "), as his successor on the English 115. Reign throne. During William II.'s reign of thirteen years, England suffered from the misgovernment of a headstrong, violent, and grasping monarch. So wicked in his private life that at his death he was buried without religious services, naturally violent and rendered still more harsh by the rebellions of his Norman-English nobles, by quarrels with his brother, and by controversies with the kings of Scotland, Wales, and France, William Rufus is remembered chiefly for his acts of tyranny.

These acts took the form of excessive taxation, in which the fiscal machinery created by his father was employed to wrest from his vassals the largest possi ble sums of money, so that some of his subjects complained that they "would rather wish to die than to live under his tyranny." Aided by an able but ruthless justiciar, Ranulf Flambard, he exacted the feudal dues of relief, wardship, and marriage with extreme severity. He summoned twenty thousand men to rendezvous at the coast for an expedition into Normandy, and then seized the money they had brought for passage and sent them home penniless. He not only sold appointments to benefices, but even kept important ecclesiastical offices vacant for long terms of years in order to enjoy their revenues himself. The archbishopric of Canterbury was thus left vacant for a period of four years. When he finally was frightened by sickness. into appointing Anselm, a Norman monk, to the vacancy, the latter at first refused to be "yoked to England's plow with a king fierce as a savage bull." Anselm finally accepted the office, but was soon forced to leave England for Rome, where he remained until William's death in 1100.

William's harsh forest laws, and the death penalty which he im

NORMAN SPEARMAN.

In full suit of mail made of

square plates quilted on cloth or leather, style of eleventh century. From an ancient MS. psalter.

posed for their non-observance, are remembered because he met his death while hunting in the New Forest. Whether due to treachery or to accident, this fate seemed to his subjects a retribution for his tyranny.

116. Henry

I. (1100

William's elder brother, Robert, should now have succeeded him, but Henry, a younger brother, took advantage of Robert's absence on the First Crusade, and, hastening to Winchester, secured from the barons there present his own election to the kingship, gained possession of the royal treasury, and proceeded to fill the offices with his own friends. In contrast with his brother's reign, that of Henry I. stands out as a period of good government. Born in England, educated like a churchman, gifted by nature with a wise and stable character, he atoned for his hasty seizure of the crown by thirty-five years of good rule.

1135)

ter of Henry I.

Henry began his reign by issuing a charter, which is extremely important because up to this time the royal powers of the Norman kings were never formally defined; 117. Charthenceforth the people had the king's written acknowledgment of certain limitations upon his own authority. In the charter, Henry restored the laws of Edward the Confessor wherever they had fallen into abeyance; promised to archbishops, bishops, abbots, barons, earls, and wards of the crown freedom from unjust exactions; granted remission of debts; forgave past crimes; and guaranteed order in the future.

In its pledges against certain forms of arbitrary taxation, against tyranny over vassals or the church, against violation of the laws of the land," and against oppression of mesne tenants by the baronage, this charter contained by implication all that was vital in the later Magna Charta (§ 170). Later, Henry won the favor of the church by recalling to England Anselm, the able Archbishop of Canterbury whom William Rufus had exiled; and he attached to himself the hearts of

the English people by marrying Matilda, daughter of Malcolm of Scotland and Margaret of England (pp. 73, 127).

118. Henry's re

forms

Except at the beginning of his reign, when his brother Robert disputed his right to the crown, England enjoyed under Henry a needed peace. A strong hand was required, however, to curb the headstrong ambitions of his more powerful vassals. Henry brought charges of treason against their leader, Robert, Earl of Shrewsbury, seized his castles on the Welsh border, and drove him into exile in 1102. He followed this up by banishing and fining several other unruly earls, and thus crippled the power of all the greater earldoms created by his father.

He then undertook the promised reforms in administration, in which he was aided by his great justiciar, Roger of Salisbury. William Rufus had allowed the barons to usurp many of the powers of local government; Henry gave them back to the hundred and shire "courts," as the moots were now called. He encouraged suitors who failed to get justice in these courts to appeal to the Curia Regis at Westminster, and also induced the great barons to do the same instead of deciding quarrels by private warfare or judicial combat. By the advice of Roger of Salisbury, he organized the members of the Curia into a Court of the Exchequer, to deal only with fiscal matters, and sent these "Barons of the Exchequer" on circuit to assess the sums due to the king. In 1124, also, he sent out a deputation from the Curia Regis which began the system of royal control over criminal justice. In Leicestershire alone A.-S. Chron- these judges "hanged more thieves than had ever been icle, 1124 executed within so short a time, being in all four and forty men." By the common people, grateful for the restoration of order, Henry was hailed as the "Lion of Justice."

Just at this time the subject of the "investiture" of bishops 119. The and abbots was becoming a burning question on the Contiquestion of investiture nent: the Pope claimed the right to invest them with