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King Henry I's “Old Men”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Barbara MacDonald Walker
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Extract

King Henry I “created men,” the novi homines of the chronicles. He also sustained, supported, and rewarded the “old men,” those men, or their descendants, who had held substantial estates in Normandy or in England prior to 1100. The “old men” who remained prominent in the reign of Henry I, however, were those willing to accept his authority, to lay down anarchical broadswords and seek peace through their loyalty to a nascent idea of the Crown, an Anglo-Norman regnum personified in the King. Loyalty was the stern arbiter, and Henry's feudal justice could be deaf to the entreaties of both family members and friends. While military organization was essential to peace and lawful order in Anglo-Norman society, the Conquest was past and soldierly virtue alone was not sufficient; Henry's kingly task was to mold the energies of his barons into administrative and judicial talents, and to cast those talents into a coherent framework of government. The paternal inheritance, as he viewed it, was an Anglo-Norman polity, its ruling class a nobility with cross-channel relationships in estates and blood ties. Whether or not the link with Normandy was deleterious, it was real to the King and his contemporaries, at the heart of the problems of the reign.

Henry drew upon his nobility for the work of governing, but “new men” also rose to prominence. The degree of attention given to the “new men” has created a congregate conception for assessments of the reign.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , November 1968 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1968

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References

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91. “Militibus et exteris largus erat; sed pauperes incolas regni sui nimis opprimebat, et illis violenter auferebat quae prodigus advenis tribuebat. Multi sub ipso patris sui proceres obierunt, qui proavis suis extraneum jus bellicose vendicaverunt; pro quibus nonnullos degeneres in locis magnatorum restituit, et amplis, pro adulationis merito datis, honoribus sublimavit.” Ibid., IV, 9.

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