Umbr_VuF63 29.09.2005 13:18 Uhr Seite 85 Problems of Integration within the Lands Ruled by the Norman and Angevin Kings of England JOHN GILLINGHAM The history of the lands ruled by the kings of England during the 200 years after 1066 can contribute much to the controversial subject of integration in the middle ages. Here I pick out four themes. 1. The Norman Conquest of England resulted in the virtually total dispossession of the old elite – an event unparalleled in European history. The massive castles and churches built by English labour, paid for by English taxes and dues, lived in by Frenchmen, were the monuments of a deeply divided society, one that was dramatically less integrated than it had been at the start of the year 1066. One of the important developments of the next hundred years or so was a kind of ethnic re-integration, at any rate at the level of freemen. In the celebrated words of Richard FitzNigel writing in the 1170s: sed iam cohabitantibus Anglicis et Normannis et alterutrum uxores ducentibus vel nubentibus, sic permixte sunt nationes ut vix decerni possit hodie, de liberis loquor, quis Anglicus quis Normannus sit genere1). 2. The Norman Conquest had the effect of bringing English culture and society into the mainstream of continental culture. In 1966 in a lecture entitled ›England’s First Entry into Europe‹, Sir Richard Southern examined what he called ›the first experiment in the political unity of England and the continent‹. He concluded that in the later 12thcentury ›not only in politics, but in aristocratic social life and culture, in its economic system and its ecclesiastical organization, England was joined to the Continent. It was an integral but 1) Richard FitzNigel, Dialogus de Scaccario, edd. Charles Johnson/F. E. L. Carter/Diana Greenway (1983) p. 53. There is a good discussion, much wider-ranging than the title implies, in Rüdiger Fuchs, Das Domesday Book und sein Umfeld: zur ethnischen und sozialen Aussagekraft einer Landesbeschreibung im England des 11.Jahrhunderts (1987). Klaus Hillingmeier, Untersuchung zur Genese des englischen Na- tionalbewusstseins im Mittelalter (1996) argues that only in the mid thirteenth century did an English ›Volksbewusstsein‹ clearly emerge. The whole subject has now been well and very thoroughly treated in Hugh Thomas, The English and the Normans. Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation and Identity 1066–c.1220 (2003). Umbr_VuF63 29.09.2005 13:18 Uhr Seite 86 86 JOHN GILLINGHAM subordinate part of a western European order. Never before or since has the union of Eng- land with the community of Europe been so all-embracing and so thoroughly accepted as part of the nature of things‹2). 3. During the course of the twelfth century people living in England began to look upon Ireland, Scotland and Wales as primitive societies that would benefit from being reformed on the English model3). In the case of the English invasion of Ireland beginning in 1169 this came to involve a conscious policy of introducing English law, both secular and ec- clesiastical, with the intention of transforming the Irish way of life. In a document drawn up in 1210, King John stated: ›we desire justice according to the custom of our realm of England to be shown to all in our realm of Ireland‹4). Although the history of Ireland in the next few centuries shows that this early imperialising attempt to ›anglicise‹ the Irish people amounted in practice to very little, the episode itself shows that people at the time were capable of thinking in terms of a policy intended to achieve an entirely new level of integration. 4. For almost 400 years after 1066 the king of England was also the ruler of very sub- stantial territories in France. Among the questions which this has raised in the minds of historians are the following. To what extent, if at all, is it possible to speak of the integra- tion of these territories into a single cross-Channel political unit? Were any conscious ef- forts made to achieve a greater degree of integration? Was it possible to make an integrated whole of England and Normandy but impossible to do the same for the post–1154 Angevin Empire established by HenryII? The problem of integration has become central to a historical debate. According to H. G. Richardson, the dominions ruled by the Angevin 2) Richard Southern, Medieval Humanism (1970) p. 135, 140. As Paul Hyams observed, Southern’s trail- blazing lecture ›originated in radio talks at the time of Britain’s first abortive negotiations for Common Market membership in the early 1960s‹, and was part of ›the quite recent realization of English historians that our island is part of Europe‹. See Paul R. Hyams, The Jews in Medieval England, 1066–1290, in: Eng- land and Germany in the High Middle Ages, eds. Alfred Haverkamp/Hanna Vollrath(1996) p. 173–192, here p. 176. 3) See Rees Davies, Domination and Conquest. The experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1100–1300 (1990); Robin Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles 1100–1400 (1990); John Gillingham, The Beginnings of English Imperialism, Journal of Historical Sociology 5 (1992) p. 329–409, reprinted in idem, The English in the Twelfth Century (2000); Rees Davies, The Peoples of Britain and Ireland, Trans- actions of the Royal Historical Society 6thseries 4 (1994) p. 1–20, 5 (1995) p. 1–20, 6 (1996) p. 1–23, 7 (1997) 1–24; idem, The First English Empire (2000). 4) Quoniam volumus secundum consuetudinem regni nostri Anglie singulis conquerentibus de iniuria in regno nostro Hibernie iusticiam exhiberi: Early Registers of Writs, eds. Elsa De Haas/G. D. G. Hall (Selden Society 87, 1970) p. 1. For reasons why this should be dated to 1210, not 1227, see Paul Brand, The Making of the Common Law (1992) p. 451–455. Umbr_VuF63 29.09.2005 13:18 Uhr Seite 87 THE LANDS RULED BY THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS OF ENGLAND 87 kings, HenryII, Richard I and John, possessed ›a unity of manners and conditions that opened the widest prospects for the adventurous … . Doubtless there were local laws and customs, local conditions and prejudices, even local differences in language, that a new- comer had to face, but no more than is involved today in passing from North to South in the United States or from Ireland to England or England to Scotland‹5). But for many sub- sequent historians it was precisely a ›fatal lack‹ of integration that led to the king of Eng- land losing control of Anjou, Normandy and much of Poitou in 1203–5 and then of the rest of Poitou in 1224. Indeed many historians consider that no serious attempt was made to integrate these diverse regions into a single whole and that ›empire‹ is therefore an in- appropriate term. The clear conclusion of a conference held at Fontevraud in 1986 was that there was no Plantagenet state and no Plantagenet empire; it is permissible to speak of ›l’espace Plantagenêt‹, but that is all6). Against this Jean Dunbabin, while accepting that ›empire‹ is clearly not an ideal term for a group of territories which were only just begin- ning to cohere, has argued that ›»espace« is too empty of meaning to serve the purpose bet- ter‹ and has observed that ›no French historian thinks of talking of »l’espace français« in the twelfth century‹7). If an emperor were to be defined as someone who ruled more than one kingdom, then it is worth recalling that at one time or another many different kings submitted in some way or other to HenryII and his sons: Scottish kings, Welsh kings, and Irish kings. More- over the terms of the settlement made between John and InnocentIII in 1213 applied to totum regnum Anglie et totum regnum Hibernie8). More than sixty years earlier the dat- ing clause of a charter issued in Eleanor’s name in 1152 at and for Fontevraud, includes an intriguing phrase: Henrico pictavorum et andegavorum imperium gubernante9). 1. The destruction of the old English aristocracy and its virtually total replacement by a new francophone elite meant that, in Henry of Huntingdon’s interpretation, ›God had chosen the Normans to wipe out the English nation (ad Anglorum gentem exterminan- dam). Thus because all the English had been reduced to servitude and lamentation (omnes ad servitutem et merorem redacti essent), it became shameful even to be called English (ita etiam ut Anglicum vocari esset, opprobrio)‹. The gens Anglorumhad lost what Max Weber 5) H. G. Richardson, The English Jewry under Angevin Kings (1960) p. 12. 6) Robert-Henri Bautier, Conclusions. ›Empire Plantagenêt‹ ou ›espace Plantagenêt‹. Y eut-il une civi- lisation du monde Plantagenêt?, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 29 (1986) p. 139–147. 7) Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making 843–1180 (2nded. 1999) p. xxvf. 8) Rotuli Chartarum, ed. Thomas Duffus Hardy(1837) p. 195. For some early thirteenth-century refer- ences in Latin and French to HenryII’s dominions as imperiumand empire, see John Gillingham, The Angevin Empire (2nded. 2001) p. 3f., as well as the recent discussion in Martin Aurell, L’Empire des Plan- tagenêt 1154–1224 (2003). 9) Elizabeth A. R. Brown, Eleanor of Aquitaine Reconsidered, in: Eleanor of Aquitaine. Lord and Lady, eds. Bonnie Wheeler/John C. Parsons(2003) nn. 71 and 144. Umbr_VuF63 29.09.2005 13:18 Uhr Seite 88 88 JOHN GILLINGHAM called ›ihre ethnische Ehre‹ – in Henry’s words: ›The lord had deprived the English peo- ple, as they deserved, of both safety and honour, and had commanded that they should no longer be a people (Dominus salutem et honorem genti Anglorum pro meritis abstulerit, et iam populum non esse iusserit)‹10). As late as 1125 William of Malmesbury could observe that ›today no Englishman is an earl, a bishop or an abbot; everywhere newcomers enjoy England’s riches and gnaw at her vitals (Nullus hodie Anglus vel dux, vel pontifex vel ab- bas; advenae quique divitias et viscera corrodunt Angliae). Nor is there any hope of end- ing this miserable state of affairs‹11). Despite the pessimistic note on which William ended this train of thought, the ›miser- able state of affairs‹ did end – as the passage already quoted from Richard FitzNigel makes plain. Richard’s description of the early post-Conquest period as a time when the English lay in ambush for the ›hated Norman people‹ and murdered them whenever opportunity offered, shows that he thoroughly approved of the way things had changed since then12). So also did his contemporary Walter Map. In Map’s view, the reigns of WilliamI (1066–87) and William II (1087–1100) had witnessed per universum sevissima regnum sedicio; the first Norman kings had not been able to rule over a land compositam ad pacembecause its old inhabitants (veteres incole) had continued to offer violent resistance to the incomers. Then Henry I (1100–35) ›by arranging marriages between them, and by all other means he could, brought peace to England, ad firmam populos utrosque federavit concordiam. His rule brought honour to God, and great wealth and happiness to his subjects‹13). Even though there is no evidence that Henry I had actually pursued a consciously integrationist marriage policy in his dealings with his barons, it is plausible that some such train of thought underlay his own marriage to Matilda. No doubt this marriage to the sister of the king of Scots helped to protect England’s northern border, but William of Malmesbury’s observation that Henry became the butt of jokes referring to the royal couple as Godric and Godgiva shows that it was perceived in ethnic as well as diplomatic terms14). In the 1160s Aelred of Rievaulx described ›our morning star HenryII (noster Henricus velut lu- 10) Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum VI c. 38, VII c. 1,ed. Diana Greenway(1996) p. 402, 412. On the traumatic effect of 1066 see Elisabeth van Houts, The Memory of 1066 in written and oral tradi- tions, Anglo-Norman Studies 19 (1996) p. 167–180. 11) William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum 1, c. 227, edd. R. A. B. Mynors/Rodney Thom- son/Michael Winterbottom(1998) p. 414. 12) On Richard’s sense of history see John Hudson, Administration, Family and Perceptions of the Past in Late Twelfth-Century England: Richard FitzNigel and the Dialogue of the Exchequer, in: The Percep- tion of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Paul Magdalino(1992) p. 75–98. 13) Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, edd. Montague R. James/Christopher N.L. Brooke/R.A.B. Mynors(1983) p. 436. 14) William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (as n. 11) c. 394 (p. 716). On the marriage see C. Warren Hol- lister, Henry I (2001) p. 126–128. On perceptions of Matilda’s role as a bringer of Englishness see Thomas, The English (as n. 1) p. 140–146. Umbr_VuF63 29.09.2005 13:18 Uhr Seite 89 THE LANDS RULED BY THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS OF ENGLAND 89 cifer matutinus exoriens)‹ as ›the corner stone (lapidem angularem) joining two walls of English and Norman stock (Anglici generis et Normannici)‹; he looked back upon the mar- riage of love (ex infuso ei amoris affectu) between Henry I and Matilda as the starting point of an Anglicizing process. Habet nunc certe de genere Anglorum Anglia regem, habet de eadem gente episcopos et abbates, habet et principes, milites etiam optimos qui ex utriusque seminis conjunctione procreati15). Whatever we may think of their history, it is clear that all three authors (Richard FitzNigel, Walter Map and Aelred) felt that integration between peoples was possible and desirable; hence it could and should be the object of policy. Moreover it was perfectly pos- sible to think of a policy of imposing a common law as a means of integrating peoples. Ac- cording to Aelred of Rievaulx, King Edgar had ›settled the kingdom of the English into a heavenly peace, and joined peoples of different tongues by the pact of one law (regnum Anglorum celesti quadam pace composuit, et multarum linguarum gentes, unius foedere legis conjunxit)‹16). It was easy enough for both English and Normans to think in terms of the integration of a number of peoples into one. This, after all – the emergence of the gens Anglorum … de tribus Germaniae populis fortioribus, id est Saxonibus, Anglis, Iutis– was the way in which Bede’s authoritative history was structured, while in Normandy a pas- sage in the Inventio et miracula Sancti Vulfranni, a mid eleventh-century history of the relics and monastery of St Wandrille, speaks of the making of one people out of many dif- ferent peoples: atque unum ex diversibus gentibus populum effecit17). Whether the undoubted assimilation between Normans and English really was, as Wal- ter Map thought, an intended consequence of policy is another question altogether. There is very little strictly contemporary evidence for such a policy. According to a tale told by Ælnoth of Canterbury, when William I feared there might be widespread English support for the invasion planned by Cnut of Denmark, he ordered the English ›to shave their beards, change their arms and clothes to the style of the Romans, and indeed, in order to 15) These phrases from Aelred’s Vita sancti Edwardi are taken from the improved text passages printed in Ian Short, Tam Angli quam Franci: Self-Definition in Anglo-Norman England, Anglo-Norman Studies 18 (1995) p. 170–172. As Short points out there, Aelred’s phrase alludes to the biblical: ipso summo angu- lari lapide Christo Jesu(Eph 2, 19–20; 1. Petr. 2, 6–9). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (as n. 11) c.393 (p. 714) had also seen the marriage as one of love, i. e. arranged for the sake of love between two peoples. 16) Aelred, Genealogia Regum Anglorum, MignePL 195, p. 726, composed in the 1150s. In the same pas- sage Edgar was described in words very similar to those Aelred applied to HenryII – quasi stella matutina in medio nevulae. Cf. William of Apulia’s observation that Guiscard’s Normans taught their own language and customs to those who joined their band ›so that one people could be made‹, cited in Thomas, The Eng- lish (as n. 1) p. 84. 17) Discussed by Cassandra Potts, Atque unum ex diversibus gentibus populum effecit: Historical Tradi- tion and the Norman Identity, Anglo-Norman Studies 18 (1995) p. 139–152. On the work itself see Elisa- beth van Houts, Historiography and Hagiography at Saint-Wandrille: the »Inventio et Miracula Sancti Vulfranni«, Anglo-Norman Studies 12 (1989) p. 233–251. Umbr_VuF63 29.09.2005 13:18 Uhr Seite 90 90 JOHN GILLINGHAM deceive the invaders, appear in everything to be French – or as we prefer to call them – Ro- mans‹18). But setting aside this unreliable rumour of an emergency tactic, there is no evi- dence of a deliberate policy of trying to turn Englishmen and women into Normans, and there was certainly no policy of trying to turn Normans into English. On the other hand nor was any attempt made to maintain ethnic purity by prohibiting marriage or sexual re- lations between Normans and English. Indeed it seemed to William of Malmesbury that the Normans were accustomed to intermarry with those whom they subjected to their rule – in this respect they were, he wrote, benignissimi19). Moreover William’s claim to be the lawful heir of Edward the Confessor had massive, if possibly unintended, consequences. It meant, in the first place, that William made no effort to set aside the kingdom of England in the way that the kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria and even Wessex had been set aside in course of the nine and tenth centuries – and as other kingdoms had been in earlier centuries20). In the second place it meant that both Norman kings and their legal experts such as the French-born author of the Leges Henrici Primi and of Quadripartitus stood for the continuation of English law21). This implied that the English ought to be treated justly and their traditional rights recog- nised. The fact that Domesday Inquest juries were made up of French and English in equal numbers reflected the theory. In practice it did not happen like this. Orderic Vitalis be- lieved that William I ›struggled to learn some of the English language, so that he could un- derstand the pleas of the conquered people without an interpreter, and benevolently pro- nounce fair judgements for each one as justice required. But advancing age prevented him from acquiring such learning, and the distractions of his many duties forced him to give his attention to other matters‹22). The conqueror’s military and political priorities meant that, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle noted, ›the more just laws were talked about, the more unlawful things were done‹23). For a generation or so the political and social disaster of 18) Ælnoth of Canterbury, Gesta Swenomagni Regis, in: Vitae Sanctorum Danorum 1, ed. M. C. Gertz (1908) p. 98f. 19) William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (as n. 11) c. 246 (p. 460). 20) Thomas, The English (as n. 1) 276f., and cf. Anton Scharerin this volume. 21) The author ›was born to speak French, not English‹, yet ›the language of the Argumentumleaves not the slightest doubt about his complete identification with England rather than France (or even Normandy) … Q emerges as one of the very first of those who, however French their tongue or culture, had come to regard themselves as entirely »English«‹. Patrick Wormald, ›Quadripartitus‹, in: Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy, eds. George Garnett/John Hudson(1994) p. 111–147, here p. 139f.; Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, 1: Legislation and its Limits (1999) p. 465–473. Cf. on the date and place of origin of the compiler of the laws of Edward the Con- fessor, Bruce O’Brien, God’s Peace and King’s Peace: the Laws of Edward the Confessor (1999) p. 44–61, 134. 22) The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis 1–6, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (1968–1980) vol. 2 p. 256f. 23) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 1087. Umbr_VuF63 29.09.2005 13:18 Uhr Seite 91 THE LANDS RULED BY THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS OF ENGLAND 91 1066 spelt the end of the old English common law24). But in the longer term, as Edward Freeman suggested long ago, the legal fiction may well have helped the process of fusion of peoples. ›Because they still had law in their mouths, they paved the way for those who had law not only in their mouths but in their hearts.‹ Moreover the fact that Norman and other continental lords came to hold their estates in England ›according to the ancient laws of England‹ meant that, in Freeman’s words, ›the conquerors themselves had in a manner become Englishmen‹25). In consequence it did not often happen that the conquerors main- tained one law for themselves and another for the English26). The barrier between the peo- ples was not so great as to prevent the re-emergence of a new common law, the commune ius regni, first referred to under that name by Richard FitzNigel, in contrast to the signi- ficantly more arbitrary law of the forest27). Moreover, as William of Poitiers made explicit, the fact that both peoples were Chris- tian (professione christiana pares) also implied that there should be fair treatment for the defeated28). In many respects, of course, this pious aspiration rang hollow – especially in the ears of those well educated clerics of English birth such as Eadmer of Canterbury who knew that under the new regime they stood little chance of the promotion they felt they deserved29). But if William of Malmesbury was right in his belief that William I abolished the slave trade at the instigation of Archbishop Lanfranc, then it does seem likely that here at least an argument from Christianity had some effect in integrating into society one inar- ticulate and hitherto rightless group: the slaves30). As the early twelfth-century poet, Lawrence of Durham, observed: ›After England began to have Norman lords then the English no longer suffered from outsiders that which they had suffered at their own hands; in this respect they found foreigners treated them better than they had themselves – and 24) Thanks above all to the work of Patrick Wormald(as n. 21), it is now widely accepted that the tri- partite distinction between the laws of Wessex, Mercia and Danelaw was already largely illusory in pre- Conquest England, and that something like a common law had already been established. Certainly there is little or no sign of the tripartite distinction in the detail of Anglo-Norman records. See also John Hudson, The Formation of the English Common Law (1996) p. 16–23. 25) Edward A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England 5 (1886) p. 49–52. 26) On this subject, and on the speed with which in legal terms the French incomers became English, see George Garnett, ›Franci et Angli‹: the legal distinction between peoples after the Conquest, Anglo-Nor- man Studies 8 (1985/86) p. 109–137. 27) FitzNigel, Dialogus (as n. 1) p. 59f. 28) The Gesta Guillelmiof William of Poitiers, eds. Ralph H. C. Davis/Marjorie Chibnall(1998) p. 158. 29) Unum eos, natio scilicet, dirimebat. Si Anglus erat, nulla virtus … eum poterat adjuvare. Si alienigena, … honori praecipuo dignus illico judicabatur.Eadmer, Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. Martin Rule(1884) p. 224. This was written c. 1120 as a judgement on Henry I’s policy. 30) William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (as n. 11) c. 269 (p. 496). For discussion of other reasons see David A. E. Pelteret, Slavery in Early Medieval England (1995) p. 251–259 and John Gillingham, Some Observations on Social Mobility in England between the Norman Conquest and the Early Thirteenth Cen- tury, in: England and Germany (as n. 2) p. 333–355, esp. p. 341–344. Umbr_VuF63 29.09.2005 13:18 Uhr Seite 92 92 JOHN GILLINGHAM better than the native lords of Scotland and Ireland still continue to treat their own peo- ple‹31). Even so the programme of justice for defeated co-religionists might have remained a meaningless slogan, had it not been for the fact that there was a broad similarity between Norman and English cultures. Where there seemed to be a greater cultural difference – as between England on the one hand and Wales and Ireland on the other – the fact that the Welsh and Irish were also Christian was to give them very little protection against the pre- judices of the invaders32). In the sphere of law, as John Hudson emphasises, there were ›sig- nificant similarities between Norman and English custom. Both owed much to a Carolin- gian legacy‹33). Although William I’s own attempt to learn English came to nothing, the next generation of incomers quite quickly learned to speak English, while at same time am- bitious natives learned French. Hence bi-lingualism became an important feature of high status society34). Naturally this facilitated the willingness of the incomers to identify with the law and traditions of the land they occupied, including English saints’ cults35). This willingness to assimilate and adopt helps to explain what is in some ways the most surprising aspect of the fusion of the two peoples – that it was the identity of the losers that triumphed, that the single people that emerged from the process identified themselves not as Normans or French, but as English36). As Hugh Thomas has observed, taking up Susan Reynolds’s argument that governments create peoples rather than vice versa, ›the 31) Sed postquam Anglia dominos cepit habere Normannos, nuncquam hos Anglici passi sunt ab alienis quod saepe passi sunt a suis, et in hoc parte sibi meliores invenerunt extraneos quam se ipsos. Scotia autem et Hybernia, dominos habens de gente sua nec omnino amisit … hunc morem suum. Lawrence of Durham, Vita sancte Brigidae, in: Vitae sanctorum Hibernie ed. W. W. Heist(Subsidia Hagiographica 28, 1965) 1–37, here p. 1. 32) W. R. Jones, England against the Celtic Fringe: a Study in Cultural Stereotypes, Journal of World His- tory 13 (1971) p. 155–171; Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales (1982) p. 158–177; R. Rees Davies, Bucchedd a moes y Cymry. The manners and morals of the Welsh, Welsh Historical Review 12 (1984/85) p. 155–179; John Gillingham, The Beginnings of English Imperialism, Journal of Historical Sociology 5 (1992) p. 392–409, reprinted in idem, The English (as n. 3) p. 3–18. 33) Hudson, The Formation (as n. 24) 18. 34) Ian Short, On Bi-lingualism in Anglo-Norman England, Romance Philology 33 (1980) p. 467–479; idem, Patrons and Polyglots: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England, Anglo-Norman Studies 14 (1992) p. 229–249; Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1377 (2nded. 1993) p. 200ff. 35) Susan J. Ridyard, Condigna Veneratio: Post-Conquest Attitudes to the Saints of the Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Norman Studies 9 (1987) p. 179–206; David Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England (1989) p. 222–238; Paul A. Hayward, Translation Narratives in Post-Conquest Hagiography and English Resistance to the Norman Conquest, Anglo-Norman Studies 21 (1998) p. 67–93. 36) Only one twelfth-century author used a term equivalent to ›Anglo-Norman‹ – itself an eighteenth-cen- tury neologism. This was the author of the work long known as the Hyde Chronicle who used the hybrid term Normanangli (together with closely related variants of it) no less than 23 times in a fairly short text (36 pages in the Rolls Series edition), Liber Monasterii de Hyda, ed. E. Edwards(1886) p. 284–321. The work has now been re-named the Warenne Chronicle by its most recent editor, and re-dated to the 1150s, Umbr_VuF63 29.09.2005 13:18 Uhr Seite 93 THE LANDS RULED BY THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS OF ENGLAND 93 English government, simply by its very existence, helped to maintain and propagate the constructs of England and Englishness‹. ›In all its acts, great and small, the royal govern- ment maintained the strength of England as a construct‹37). Whether king-led governments ever went further and adopted a conscious policy of propagating Englishness among the ruling elite seems very unlikely – above all because the kings themselves, so far as we can tell, remained resolutely Norman38). At any rate for a long time they continued to be re- ferred to as Normans. In the 1180s the anonymous author of the Waltham Chronicle – who thought of himself as English – wrote that ›our Norman kings‹ (Normanni reges nos- tri) have adopted all that is best of the honourable traditions of the pre–1066 kings of Eng- land: quod precipuum est in omni munificentia et regni gloria et morum honestate et cor- poris habitudine decenti suscepisse39). Similarly both Ralph Diceto, dean of St Paul’s, writing in the 1190s and Gerald de Barri, writing from the 1190s until c. 1217, referred to the kings of England as de genere Normannorum40)or Normannica regum prosapia41). Yet while, even after 1154, their kings continued to be perceived as Normans, the de- scendants of victorious Frenchmen were willing to identify themselves as English. The his- tories written in England in the second quarter of the twelfth century by authors such as William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon and Geoffrey Gaimar were histories of England and of the English both before and after 1066, not histories of the Normans. This is all the more surprising since the English were not merely defeated, they were also tinged with barbarism – at any rate in the eyes of learned Italians and Frenchmen such as Lan- i.e. to a generation later than previously thought. See Elisabeth van Houts, The Warenne View of the Past 1066–1203, Anglo-Norman Studies 26 (2003/04) 103–121, as well as her forthcoming edition. 37) Thomas, The English (as n. 1) 274; Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900–1300 (2nded. 1997) 250–331; R. Rees Davies, The Peoples of Britain and Ireland 1100–1400, 2: Names, Boundaries and Regnal Solidarities, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6thseries 5 (1995) p. 13f. 38) However Hugh Thomashas noted two revealing episodes. First, Henry I appealing to all men, espe- cially French-born immigrants, to help him defend ›my land of England‹ in 1101 against all men, especially the duke of Normandy. Second, Becket’s embassy to Paris in 1157 as described by William FitzStephen, magnificently parading luxus Anglicani opulentiamand the superiority of beer over wine. The second, he acknowledges, may reflect FitzStephen’s own feelings rather than government policy, Thomas, The Eng- lish (as n. 1) 275f. 39) The Waltham Chronicle, eds. Leslie Watkiss/Marjorie Chibnall(1994) p. 2f., 56f. 40) Radulphi de Diceto Opera Historica 1–2, ed. William Stubbs(1876) vol. 2 p. 183f., 238f., counting seven kings from William I to Richard I, including Richard’s elder brother as HenryIII. 41) Giraldi Cambrensis Opera 1–8, edd. J. S. Brewer/J. F. Dimock/G. F. Warner(1861–1891) vol.8 p.328. In his Descriptio Kambrie (Opera 6 p. 217f.), Gerald expressed the view that whereas the first three Norman kings had kept the Welsh in subjection, the Welsh had recently enjoyed rather more success be- cause the following three Norman kings had had their hands full trying to deal with the pride of the French. Discussed in John Gillingham, ›Slaves of the Normans‹? Gerald de Barri and regnal solidarity in early thirteenth-century England, in: Law, laity and solidarities. Essays in honour of Susan Reynolds, eds. Pauline Stafford/Janet L. Nelson/Jane Martindale(2001) p. 160–71, esp. 165f. Umbr_VuF63 29.09.2005 13:18 Uhr Seite 94 94 JOHN GILLINGHAM franc of Bec, Pope PaschalII, William of Poitiers, Ivo of Chartres and John of Tours42). A history of a people as barbarous as the English had to be very skilfully interpreted and pre- sented if the new French-speaking lords were to find it an acceptable version of theirhis- tory. This indeed is precisely what William of Malmesbury, the first great post–1066 Eng- lish historian, achieved in his Gesta Regum Anglorum, completed by 112543). To those who said the English were barbarians, William’s answer was that they had been, but were no longer. In his view a combination of Christian religion and French culture had civilised the English44). Of the French, William wrote: Est enim gens illaexercitatione virium et comi- tate morum cunctarum occidentalium facile princeps45).It was in this light that the patriotic William interpreted the Norman, i.e. French Conquest. Politically 1066 was a catastrophe, but culturally it brought great benefits. And most significantly, as presented by William, the Frenchification of the English was not merely a consequence of the Conquest of 1066. That was just the most recent phase of a very old story. The process had begun five hundred years earlier when King Æthelberht of Kent mar- ried the Merovingian princess Bertha. ›From then on‹, William wrote, ›by association with the Franks (Francorum contubernio) a previously barbarous people (gens eatenus barbara) turned to more refined ways (ad leniores mores)‹46). In the seventh century Sigeberht of East Anglia had all his barbarism polished away by his upbringing among the Franks (om- nemque barbariem pro Francorum nutritura exutus). When he returned from exile to rule the East Angles, he founded schools so that the delights of literature could be enjoyed by people hitherto boorish and idolatrous47). In the later eighth century the West Saxon prince Egberht was driven into exile at the court of Charlemagne. There, according to William, he acquired manners very different from the barbarism of his own people (mores longe a gentilitia barbarie alienos). He returned to Wessex to become king having learned what William called regnandi disciplinam. This disciplina involved ruling his people cum clementia et mansuetudine48). The English, in William’s book, were a European people with a long civilising process behind them – a process in which the French were the teach- 42) John Gillingham, Conquering the Barbarians: War and Chivalry in Britain and Ireland, The Haskins Society Journal 4 (1992) p. 67–84, reprinted in idem, The English (as n. 3) p. 41–58, here 57. 43) Rodney M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury (2nded. 2003). Before Thomson’s researches, the best analyses of William as historian were the chapter on him in Heinz Richter, Englische Geschichtschreiber des 12.Jahrhunderts (Neue deutsche Forschungen 187, 1938) p. 54–125 and the essay by J. Sharpewritten as long ago as 1815, reprinted in William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (as n. 11) 2 p. xxxvi–xlvi. 44) John Gillingham, Civilising the English? The English histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume, Historical Research 74 (2001) p. 17–43. 45) William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (as n. 11) c. 106 (p. 152). 46) Gesta Regum (as n. 11) c. 9. 47) Gesta Regum (as n. 11) c. 97. 48) Gesta Regum (as n. 11) c. 106. In William’s history the reign of Egberht of Wessex was pivotal. It was he who made England by unifying the four kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria.