The monks of Walden were sceptical of the commitment of their founder and principal patron, Earl Geoffrey de Mandeville II (d. 1144), to ensure that the community would have a prosperous future, thereby sustaining its religious and cultural activities for the benefit of the dynasty and its tenants. This apparent lack of concern on the part of the Mandeville family, whose interests and advancement in the Anglo-Norman period had been defined by Königsnähe, may be part of a spectrum of attitudes towards ecclesiastical power which differentiated the court nobility of the eleventh century from their tenth-century predecessors. After all the great tenth-century kindreds had expressed their local power through alliance and unification strategies with the great East Anglian abbeys. If the hypothesis raised by the Walden Foundation Book proves to be correct then there had been a change in the contours of power binding Crown, court aristocracy and church, that represents a significant shift in the social order, running in parallel with the economic changes discussed in the preceding chapter. If so, across the regions of Europe, lords and social groupings who had formerly expressed their power through one set of values in terms of practical arrangements with ecclesiastical power at the local level, turned to espouse new values in their relationships with ecclesiastical institutions. In this hypothesis the feudal transformation, becomes a significant turning point in history. The purpose of this chapter is to explore that theme through three case studies, beginning with patterns of ecclesiastical patronage by one of King Cnut's followers, and following through patterns of investment in secular and ecclesiastical lordships by Danish, Breton and Norman families whose interests were defined by Königsnähe during Anglo-Danish and early Anglo-Norman periods.

Waltham Holy Cross, Tovi the Proud and his successors

Tovi the Proud attracted historical attention in the twelfth century as the grandfather of Asgar the Staller, who (according to the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio) surrendered London to William I after the battle of Hastings in exchange for the promise that he would become the most senior royal councillor.