_Easter_, 1080: King William; Matilda the Queen; Robert, the king’s son; William, the king’s son; William, archbishop of Rouen; Richard, archbishop of Bourges; Warmund, archbishop of Vienne; Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances; Gilbert, bishop of Lisieux; Count Robert, the king’s brother; Count Roger of Eu, Count Guy of Ponthieu, Roger de Beaumont, Robert and Henry, his sons, Roger de Montgomery, Walter Giffard, William d’ Arques.—_Calendar of Documents Preserved in France_, ed. J. H. Round, No. 78.
Printed in Transactions of Somerset Archæological and Historical Society, xxiii., 56
Bath Chartulary (Somerset Record Society), i., 36.
_Hist. Monasterii de Abingdon_, R. S., ii., 9.
Round, _Calendar of Documents Preserved in France_, No. 712.
Henry I. is seldom found north of Nottingham.
See the complaints of his aggressions in Heming’s _History of the Church of Worcester_; _Monasticon_, i., 593–599.
_Calendar of Documents Preserved in France_, No. 77.
Compare Round, _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, 322.
See the charters of William II. in _Monasticon_, viii., 1167.
Maitland, _Domesday Book and Beyond_, 80-83.
Charter of William I., _Monasticon_, i., 477.
Foundation charter of Blyth Priory, _Monasticon_, iv., 623.
There is some evidence to suggest that the lord of a vill could cause a court to be held there by his steward. This, however, is the result of seignorial, not communal, ideas.
Round, _Feudal England_, 225–314, has given the clearest account of the introduction and development of knight service in England.
_Feudal England_, as quoted above, page 447. See also Morris, _Welsh Wars of Edward_, i., 36, arguing for a total of 5000.
The eventful life of the Conqueror was within two years of its close when he decreed the compilation of that record which was to be the lasting monument of his rule in England. It is probable that if due regard be paid to the conditions of its execution Domesday Book may claim to rank as the greatest record of medieval Europe; certainly it deserves such preference among the legal documents of England. For, while we admire the systematic treatment which the great survey accords to county after county, we must also remember that no sovereign before William could have had the power to draw such wealth of information from all England between the Channel and the Tees; and that the thousands of dry figures which are deliberately accumulated in the pages of Domesday represent the result of the greatest catastrophe which has ever affected the national history. Domesday Book, indeed, has no peer, because it was the product of unique circumstances. Other conquerors have been as powerful as William, and as exigent of their royal rights; no other conqueror has so consistently regarded himself as the strict successor of the native kings who were before him; above all, no other conqueror has been at pains to devise a record of the order of things which he himself destroyed, nor even, like William, of so much of it as was relevant to the more efficient conduct of his own administration. Domesday Book is the perfect expression of the Norman genius for the details of government.