Middle Ages

D1

a

A System of Knightly Service

The new king kept about 20 percent of the land for himself and divided the remainder among his major vassals—barons and important churchmen—giving them the land as fiefs. The barons then gave some of their land as fiefs to their knights. In this way William introduced the Norman system of lords and vassals into England. He depended on the military service of his barons and their vassals, as well as on their aids (payments to him).

The king also depended heavily on the English peasants. They grew the crops and tended the livestock that were essential to the kingdom, and the dues they paid were important sources of revenue for the king. In order to keep track of his resources, William ordered his officials to draw up detailed surveys of the land, people, livestock, and crops, as well as the dues that were owed the king. The summary of these reports, which was called Domesday Book, told him exactly what resources and revenues he could expect each year.

The English king’s political roles were often quite complicated. For example, William did not give up being duke of Normandy when he became king of England. Instead, he merely incorporated England into his existing domain. His conquest drew England into close relations with the rest of Europe. These relations became even closer after the count of Anjou—a principality in what is now western France—married William's granddaughter. When their son Henry II became king of England in 1154, England became part of a vast territory that included more than half of what is now France. In England Henry was king. On the European continent, he was duke of Normandy and count of Anjou, and he held similar titles for his other continental possessions.

The English king held all these lands, except England, as a vassal of the French king. As long as the monarchs were on good terms, this posed little problem. However, as competition and tensions increased between the two, this relationship came to be a distinct disadvantage for the English king, who was bound by the customs of lords and vassals to serve the king of France.

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D1

b

Law and the Courts

Henry II strengthened the monarchy’s control over England by establishing a new centralized system of justice. He declared that crimes such as murder and arson were crimes against the king, no matter where in the kingdom they were committed. He ordered local juries to meet in each district every year to name people suspected of such crimes and to bring them before the king's judges. (This is the origin of the American grand jury.) He also set up a system of traveling justices to hear property disputes and other civil cases.

By standardizing laws and punishments throughout his kingdom and by putting the law in the hands of royal officials instead of local barons, Henry II began to establish English common law—law that applied to all of England. These changes united England under one set of laws and under one system of justice. This system of justice gave the king not only power and prestige but also money: He collected fines from criminals and fees from civil cases. Twelfth-century English kings were rich. Money flowed to the royal treasury from courts, lands, taxes on cities, knightly aids, and other sources.

D1

c

Loss of Territory and Magna Carta

The strength of English kings provoked jealousy and competition. On the continent, French kings maneuvered to take English territory that they felt was theirs. In England, the monarchy demanded more and more money from the barons to fight the French, and the barons banded together against the king to assert their rights. Both of these developments came to a head during the reign of Henry II's son John. He lost important continental territory to the French king in a series of wars. In England the barons forced John in 1215 to assent to their demands in a document called Magna Carta.

Magna Carta outlined the barons' customary rights and prohibited the king from changing anything without their consent. More importantly, however, it stated that all free men in England had certain rights that the king had to respect. As the definition of free man became broader—in 1215 it applied only to the barons, their vassals, and a few townspeople—Magna Carta came to be seen as a declaration of liberty for all Englishmen.

Magna Carta did not really weaken the power of the king, but it did change it. From that point on, the king had to work with his barons. Previous kings had met and consulted with their barons (in meetings that were the origins of the English Parliament), but they had not in any sense been obligated to do so. After Magna Carta, if the king refused to work with his barons he suffered hostility and occasionally even open rebellion.

In 1264, at the end of the reign of Henry III, the barons actually captured the king and began to rule on their own (see Barons' War). To increase their base of support, the barons called a Parliament consisting not only of the barons but also of representatives of the towns, the so-called commons. Even though Henry's son Edward I soon regained control of the government, he and succeeding kings recognized that English royal power depended on the support of representatives of both the barons and the commons.

D

2

A Growing Monarchy: France

At the time that William conquered England, the king of France was one of the weaker rulers in his kingdom. In fact, it was his kingdom only in the sense that most of its counts and dukes were technically his vassals. The king effectively ruled only the region around Paris.

Nevertheless, a number of factors worked to enhance the power of the French monarchy. The Paris region was prosperous, and Paris itself was an important center for scholars, merchants, and craftspeople. French kings collected taxes, tolls, and dues there. Their very weakness insulated them from political challenges. For example, the king of France invested churchmen just as the emperor did, but the pope did not bother challenging him during the Investiture Controversy.

Despite this perceived weakness, French kings were strong enough to overcome the castellans in the region around Paris. In their struggles with the castellans, the kings of France gained the moral support of major churchmen, including Suger, the abbot of Saint-Denis, one of the most important monasteries in France. Suger praised the early-12th-century king Louis VI as a Christian soldier who fought on behalf of God and the Christian church. In this way, Suger gave the monarch the honor of a hero and the glory of a Crusader. By the end of the 12th century, the French monarchy had gained both prestige and a solid territorial base.

D2

a

Philip II

French king Philip II built on this foundation in the late 12th century. To expand his territory, he used his position as lord in a clever way. King John of England was technically a vassal of Philip because of his French possessions. After John married the fiancée of another of Philip's vassals, Philip summoned John to his court for violating his oath of loyalty. John refused to appear, and Philip claimed all of John's continental fiefs. Then he established a strong mercenary army to repel John’s attempts to retake the territories. By 1205 Philip was master of Normandy, Anjou, and other northern French territories formerly held by the English king. In 1214 Philip put an end to John's resistance in the Battle of Bouvines. Unhappiness with John's loss of territory in France and with his increasing taxation to pay for military campaigns helped provoke the barons in England to draw up Magna Carta.

Philip matched his battlefield victories with administrative reforms. He employed educated masters as his officials to collect taxes and administer royal estates. The king created a central archive to hold written copies of royal decrees. Like the kings of England, he had his justices travel from region to region to hear cases and appeals. Despite these reforms, however, royal administration and law were never as efficient and widespread in France as they were in England.

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