THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER FOR NORMAN GOVERNMENT

The twelfth century was a pivotal period for the development of systems of government in western Europe. These changes have been characterised variously as the ‘rise of administrative kingship’, or, by the historian of the county-bishopric of the Beauvaisis, to the east of Normandy, as a ‘new mode of exercising power’. For another distinguished historian of twelfth-century France these changes signified the beginnings of the retreat of ‘lordship’ in the face of ‘government’, although the practices and structures of lordship were too entrenched to be overthrown completely, and in many respects the French principalities are best viewed as lordships writ large. Characteristic developments included the growing use of written records and revocable offices which could hold officials more accountable, the rise of extraordinary taxation such as scutages, tallages and aids, and the increasing recourse to more rational judicial methods.

The duchy of Normandy appears to have been at the forefront of these developments. By the death of Henry I in 1135, its administration was noticeably more sophisticated than that of most other French principalities, even though it was still more primitive than in Normandy's great colony of England. Some developments arose in parallel with their better-known English counterparts, or were borrowed directly from England after 1066. The Anglo-Saxon writ, for instance, became a major tool of Norman administration in the twelfth century.