Norman England was a period of Norman rule in England which lasted from the crowning of King William the Conqueror 1066 to the death of King Henry I of England in 1135. At the start of the reign of Henry I in 1100, the transformation of Anglo-Saxon England into an Anglo-Norman realm was well underway. By its end in 1135, a set of bureaucratic mechanisms had been developed which gave institutional reality to the Norman kings' desire to dominate their new realm.
Background[]
From the 12th century, the Anglo-Norman government of England developed ever more sophisticated instruments of government to rule their disparate subjects. When William Rufus died suddenly in 1100, he was unmarried and childless. His brother, Henry, was nearby when he died. He seized the opportunity to take power, riding to Winchester to claim the treasury and on to London for the Crown. His older brother, Robert Curthose, would later attempt to depose Henry.
The Burghal Hidage, drawn up in the reign of Alfred the Great's son Edward the Elder around 914, was an assessment of what each fortified burh needed to contribute for its defense. Anglo-Saxon charters recorded grants of land by the kings to their retainers and to the Church. The Domesday Book of 1086 went further, revealing the scale of the land held by the French elite. The reign of Henry I would see further administrative reforms.
History[]
Henry I, the fourth son of William the Conqueror, was the first Norman king to be born in England. However, his elder brother Robert Curthose reigned as Duke of Normandy and most of Henry's barons held lands on both sides of the English Channel, so the destinies of the two territories remained firmly intertwined. At Henry's accession he issued a solemn charter promising to restore the laws of his father William the Conqueror and those of Edward the Confessor. Furthermore, his wife Edith was a descendant of Edmund Ironside, and so their marriage symbolically united the English and Norman peoples of the realm.
Abortive coup[]
Henry's attempt to portray the reign of his brother William Rufus as a period of unrestrained oppression and rapacity backfired. One of William's chief advisers, Ranulf Flambard, persuaded Robert Curthose that the English barons would support an attempt by the Norman duke to depose Henry. Robert duly landed in England, but he was easily bought off with the promise of an annuity of 3,000 marks, leaving his baronial supporters to face Henry's justice. Only the ringleader, Robert de Belleme, escaped.
The King and the Church[]
Henry's relationship with the Church was troubled, too, as Archbishop Anselm returned from exile and refused to pay homage to Henry for his Canterbury lands. He also insisted that the King give up his right to invest bishops, a practice known as "lay investitute", which had, in theory, been outlawed by the Pope in 1059. The dispute led to the collective excommunication of those bishops who took Henry's side in 1105, and renewed exile for Anselm. An agreement was finally reached at a meeting between Henry and Anselm in 1106, when the King agreed to give up his power to invest bishops, but reserved the right to receive their homage.
England and Normandy united[]
In 1104, the exiled Robert of Belleme joined forces with Count William of Mortain to attack Henry's interests in Normandy. Not willing to give up his possessions or abandon his supporters there, Henry arrived at Barfleur in 1105 and moved cautiously inland. His brother, Duke Robert, had too little money to raise reinforcements, and in September 1106 at Tinchebrai the army of Normandy was defeated by Henry's force. Normandy and England were reunited under Henry's rule. In an act of clemency that he would later come to regret bitterly, Henry allowed Robert's son, William Clito, to remain in Normandy, where he became the focus for dissent and the pretext for a series of wars with France from 1111-14 and 1116-19, as Louis VI attempted to make him into a puppet Duke of Normandy.
Justice reforms[]
The power of the barons in England had grown dangerously since the death of William the Conqueror, and on his return from Tinchebrai in 1108, Henry I enacted a series of reforms aimed at curbing their power. He began by forbidding members of the royal household to plunder or extort money, on pain of blinding or castration. Henry then stamped down on the practice of county sheriffs who were holding extra sessions of courts to extract profit on their own account. He also began sending royal judges on circuit to hear pleas. As fines from these cases went to the Crown, it was a useful extra source of revenue for the royal coffers too.
Henry's most important minister was Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, and it may have been Roger who devised one of the key administrative advances of the reign. Every year from 1110, officials met at the royal court, normally at Winchester, and prepared a list of the revenues expected to be collected by the county sheriffs. The sums were recorded with notches on a tally stick, one half of which was kept by the official, and the other by the sheriff as a record of what his county was to raise. A mroe permanent record of each year's revenues was set down in Pipe Rolls. The court itself became known as the Exchequer after the chequerboard cloth on which the royal accountants made their calculations.
Loss of an heir[]
Henry's later years were marred by sadness. In 1119, Louis VI was finally defeated in the war over Normandy and he accepted the homage of Henry's son William Adelin as Duke of Normandy. However, on the return journey to England in 1120, the White ship, the vessel carrying the young prince, was wrecked and Henry's only legitimate son drowned. For a while Stephen of Blois, Henry's nephew, looked likely to succeed. then in 1125, Henry's daughter Matilda, who had married the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V in 1110, was widowed and returned to England.
Henry doted on Matilda and at Christmas 1126 the Royal Council was made to swear allegiance to her as heir to the throne. Henry's reign was prosperous and peaceful for the next decade, with his administrative reforms bearing fruit in increased revenues and a smoother operation of justice. However, his decision to leave his crown to Matilda ended in catastrophe. For at Henry's death in 1135, Stephen refused to accept Matilda as queen.
Aftermath[]
The peace and tranquility of England under Henry I was rapidly replaced by a bitter civil war lasting 19 years. Henry I's nephew, Stephen, seized the treasury with the help of his brother Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, and he and leading barons renounced their oath to Matilda. In 1138, her half-brother, Robert of Gloucester, defected from Stephen's side and in 1139, she landed at Arundel in an attempt to unseat Stephen from the throne. Matilda defeated and captured Stephen at Lincoln in 1141. However, Stephen was freed in exchange for Robert of Gloucester, who was also a captive. After years of damaging warfare, Matilda finally left England in 1148. During the civil war, Matilda's second husband, Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, took towns in Normandy, leading to his acceptance as Duke of Normandy in 1144. Henry I's legacy of bringing order and prosperity to England, and in uniting the country once more with Normandy lay in ruins.