Just as in Normandy an indefinite body of “optimates” surrounded the duke, and expected to be consulted on occasions of special importance, so in England the king’s greater tenants, lay and ecclesiastical, formed a potential council, the “Commune Concilium” of later writers. The connection between the council in its English and Norman manifestations was something closer than mere similarity of composition; many a man who witnessed the coronation of Queen Matilda in the Easter Council of 1068 must have sat in the assembly at Lillebonne which discussed the invasion of England; and judging from the evidence of charters the barons who accompany the king when in Normandy will probably appear as lords of English fiefs in the pages of Domesday Book. Roger de Montgomery, Henry de Ferrers, Walter Giffard, Henry de Beaumont—such men as these, who were great on either side the Channel, appear in frequent attendance on their lord, whether at Rouen or at Winchester. Their attendance, indeed, was a guarantee of good faith; the baron who, when summoned, neglected to obey, became thereby a suspected person at once: it was considered a sign of disaffection when Earl Roger of Hereford persistently absented himself from William’s court.
In England we know that it was customary for the king to hold a great council thrice in each year. “Moreover” says the Peterborough chronicler, “he was very worshipful: he wore his crown thrice in every year when he was in England. At Easter he wore it at Winchester, at Whitsuntide at Westminster, at midwinter at Gloucester, and then there were with him all the great men of all England—archbishops and bishops, abbots and earls, thegns and knights”; “in order,” adds William of Malmesbury, “that ambassadors from foreign countries might admire the splendour of the assembly and the costliness of the feasts.” As it is only at these great seasons that the Commune Concilium comes practically into being; we may give a list of those known to be present at the Easter feast of 1069 and the Christmas feast of 1077, to which we may add a list of those in attendance on the king when he held his Easter feast of 1080 in Normandy.[296]
It will be clear that an assembly of this kind is eminently unfitted to be the organ of systematic government. These great people, bishops, earls, and abbots, had their own work to do, work which for long periods kept them away from the king’s presence. The Commune Concilium is at most what its name implies, an advisory body. As such it plays the part taken in the Anglo-Saxon policy by the “Witan,” and the question arises whether it can be considered a continuation of that assembly under altered conditions and with restricted powers or whether it proceeds from some quite different principle.