Bhii Essay Plans Notes

Introduction

• 1016 - interruption of Wessex succession by Cnut

1066 and Normans brought contested successions

• New cross-Channel aristocracy - importance of Normandy

• Ruling elite of about 2,000 men

• Kept many Anglo-Saxon systems -> continuity and absenteeism

Conquest

• Continental issues - Anjou and Gascony

• 1224 - Gascony was only remaining foreign land

• 1259 - Treaty of Paris -> Henry III gave up claims to previous duchies and paid homage to Louis IX for Gascony

• ‘English’ kingship

• 1276-84 effort to gain control of north Wales

1284 - Statute of Wales -> became ‘part and parcel of the body of our crown and kingdom’

• New shires such as Caernarfon

• Introduction of English common law

• Edward I built ring of castles around Gwynedd

• 1210-1394 no English king visited Ireland

• Ireland was asset-stripped - this and declining ability to extract led to revenue of 1318 being of what it had been under Edward I -> contraction of English rule to the Pale around Dublin

• Assertions of superior lordship -> ‘auld alliance’ between Scotland and France

1314 success of Scots at Bannockburn

Finance

• 1277-1301 at least 75k spent on castle-building in Wales

• Inflation -> increased costs while decreasing traditional revenues

• More important development of war - new taxation of personal property -> need for consent

New form of tax first used in 1166 - Holy Land

• 1207 - thirteenth produced 60k

• Richard FitzNeal, bishop of London and Treasurer of England said in The Dialogue of the Exchequer that ‘the power of princes fluctuates according to the ebb and flow of their cash resources’

• John seemed to be at pinnacle of power until Bouvines

• Success of Anglo-Saxon administration and new financial exactions -> bureaucratic developments

Establishment of permanent royal treasury at Winchester by 1066

1110 - earliest reference to exchequer

Mid 1190s - first national customs system

• Gerald of Wales - king is ‘a robber permanently on the prowl, always probing, always looking for the weak spot where there is something for him to steal’

• 1258 - major complaint against Henry III’s taxation

Parliament

• 1259 Provisions of Westminster - one of the earliest references

Reliable elected men meeting 3 times a year - not put in place

• 1214 -> lack of warfare to justify taxation

1250s - Commons given greater role

• Unprecedented taxation in 1290s

Magnates only agreed ‘insofar as they were entitled to’

• 1297 - maltolt

• Redeployment of Magna Carta in 1297 and 1300 -> no further tax levied ‘except by the common consent of all the realm and for the common profit of the said realm’

• 1290-1330 crucial for development of parliament - new emphasis towards common consent

Arguably longer struggle from 12th century - widespread resistance to arbitrary royal power

• 1327 -> meetings of magnates and prelates were not referred to as parliaments

• Can argue for ‘public sphere’ from 12th century - came to fore in 14th

Greater participation, regulation of royal power and diffusion of written word

Writs

• Anglo-Saxon - 2,000 surviving writs and charters

• 13th century - tens of thousand

Clanchy - From Memory to Written Record => literate mentality of same importance as printing press

• 1199 - chancery clerks began to systematically keep copies

• Domesday Book and Magna Carta - participation in literacy

Control and expression with background of 12th century Renaissance

• Seals and charters - codification of traditional rights and customs

Enserfed around population - yet preserved customary rights

• Arguably defined feudal services - reinforced by castles

Feudalism

• Important use of written word and royal seal - verifiable, repeatable and widespread

• Chancery writs began to take set form - ‘unless you do this, my sheriffs shall have it done so that I hear no further complaint for lack of justice’

• Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - describes presentation of Domesday Book to William where ‘all landholding men who were of any account over all England, whatsoever men they were’ paid homage to him

• Late 12th century - undertenants gained the writs of rectum, praecipe and possessory assizes such as mort d’ancestor

• ‘Norman yoke’ had multiple advantages for freemen

• Magna Carta cap. 39 - ‘no free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land’

Already the case for vassals who could in theory appeal to king’s court - yet may not happen -> need for this clause

Common Law

• Cnut’s law codes

• Legal development of Henry II’s reign - with administrative centralisation and documentation

• Treatises - Glanvill and Bracton

• Abandonment of compensatory system

• Glanvill - ‘no one is bound to answer in his lord’s court for any free tenement of his without an order from the king or his chief justiciar’

• 2nd principle was that in criminal cases the king had jurisdiction over everybody

• King claimed inheritance to whole land - important for descent of property, law enforcement and legal position of women

• Primogeniture

Division for female heirs - overall reduced rights

• Constitutions of Clarendon 1164 - beginning of law reform

Criminous clerks and removal of compurgation for many felonies

• 1166 - emergence of the general eyre

Formalised Norman ad hoc commissions - could judge omnia placita

Eventually replaced in 1294 => trailbaston commissions

Religion

• Under papal banner

• William of Malmesbury - ‘by their arrival in England they revived the observance of religion which had grown lifeless. Everywhere you see churches in villages and monasteries in towns and cities, erected in a new style of architecture’

• Parish churches dated from Anglo-Saxon times but were reinvigorated

• Sharper delineation between secular lords and clergy - yet were interconnected

Lanfranc and Anselm initiated a programme of Gregorian Reform -> arguably led to...

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