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Essay

Question: How effective were English kings in establishing royal control in England during the High Middle Ages and what methods did they use to achieve royal control?

 

Keep in mind the following…

The Introduction to a history essay should include, in this order…

1. A brief overview statement of the significance of the general topic.

2.  Mention of the time period (always important in a history essay).

3.  A thesis (the answer to the question).  This is the point of the essay.

4.  An organizing statement that indicates the main ideas you will develop in your body paragraphs to prove your thesis.

The Body Paragraphs should include…       

1.   Topic sentences that state the main idea of each paragraph and link each main idea to the thesis of the essay. A topic sentence says how or why the main idea proves the thesis.

2.   Develop the main ideas through relevant general statements.

3.   Support general statements with specific evidence, examples, and quotations; include commentary on the significance of the evidence. BE SURE TO USE PRIMARY SOURCES TO SUPPORT YOUR MAIN IDEAS.

4.    Provide transition to the next paragraph.

The Conclusion should…

1.      Bring the reader back to the thesis of the essay, but avoid merely repeating the introduction.

2.        Avoid summarizing the entire contents of the essay, but touch on the main ideas.

 

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Focus Correction Sheet: WESTERN CIVILIZATION H

Introduction

Body Paragraphs

Conclusion

Style, Grammar, Spelling

 

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Monarchy in England: Primary Sources

The Domesday Book, 1086, From The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The king spent Christmas with his councilors at Gloucester, and held his court there for five days… the king had important deliberations and exhaustive discussions with his council about this land and how it was peopled, and with what sort of men. Then he sent his men all over England into every shire [county] to ascertain how many hundreds of 'hides' of land there were in each shire. He also had it recorded how much land his archbishops had, and his diocesan bishops, his abbots and his earls, and--though I may be going into too great detail--and what or how much each man who was a landholder here in England had in land or live-stock, and how much money it was worth. So very thoroughly did he have the inquiry carried out that there was not a single 'hide,' not one virgate of land, not even--it is shameful to record it, but it did not seem shameful for him to do--not even one ox, nor one cow, nor one pig which escaped notice in his survey. And all the surveys were subsequently brought to him.

William I as King, From The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

King William was also held in much reverence. He wore his crown three times every year when he was in England: at Easter he wore it at Winchester, at Pentecost at Westminster, and at Christmas at Gloucester. And at these times all the men of England were with him, archbishops, bishops, abbots and earls, thanes and knights. So also was he a very stern and wrathful man, so that none durst do anything against his will, and he kept in prison those earls who acted against his pleasure. He removed bishops from their sees and abbots from their offices, and he imprisoned thanes, and at length he spared not his own [half-]brother Odo… This Odo was a very powerful bishop in Normandy…and him did William cast into prison.

Amongst other things, the good order that William established is not to be forgotten. It was such that any man...might travel over the kingdom with a bosom full of gold unmolested; and no man durst kill another, however great the injury he might have received from him.
 
The Salisbury Oath, From The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Here is set down what William, king of the English, established in consultation with his magnates after the conquest of England:

2. We decree also that every freeman shall affirm by oath and compact that he will be loyal to king William both within and without England, that he will preserve with him his lands and honor with all fidelity and defend him against his enemies.

 

Henry I-- Grant of Tax Liberties to London, 1133

Henry, by the grace of God, King of the English, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, sheriffs, and all his faithful, French and English of all England, greeting.

Know ye that I have granted to my citizens of London, i.e., to them and their heirs from me and my heirs that they shall ferm [pay a tax directly to the crown] for ,300, so that those citizens may choose any sheriff they wish for themselves and any judge they wish for themselves to hear of pleas of my crown [hear cases] and decide them; and let no other judge be over these men of London. And let no one take lodging within the walls of the city, nor shall my vassals [nobles] take hospitality by force. And let all men of London and all their goods both throughout England, and in harbors, be free of …all other [feudal taxes].

Dialogue of the Exchequer, 1177

IX. What Scutage is and Why it is so called.

Occasionally it comes to pass that by the machinations of enemies the country is thrown into confusion and there is rebellion in the country. Then the king decrees that a certain sum be paid from each knight's fief, namely, a mark or a pound, whence come the pay and gratuities for the soldiers. For the king prefers to thrust into the vortex of war mercenary troops rather than domestic forces. And so this sum is paid in the name of shields and is therefore called scutage. Moreover, they who sit at the exchequer are quit of this. [Note: The Dialogue of the Exchequer is medieval  essay describing all that went on at the bi-yearly meetings of the exchequer (the treasury of England) officials, and branches out into a description of all the sources of revenue of the English crown.]

Edward I--Confirmation of the Charters, 1297

Edward, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine, to all those that these present letters shall hear or see, greeting. Know ye that we to the honor of God and of holy Church, and to the profit of all our realm that the Great Charter of Liberties …which were made by common assent of all the realm…shall be kept in every point without breach…that our justices, sheriffs, mayors, and other officials which under us have to administer the laws of our land, shall follow the said charters in pleas before them and in judgments in all their points…

 

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Growth of Monarchy in England: Henry I and Henry II            (From  The Making of England, by C.W. Hollister)

The reign of Henry I (1100-1135) is very significant from the standpoint of royal administration. His ambitious military and diplomatic policies required an endless flow of revenue for the building of castles and the hiring of mercenaries. Henry and his ministers exploited the wealth of England to the fullest. Henry's severity is a recurring theme in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

1104: It is not easy to describe the miseries this land was suffering at the time because of various and different injustices and taxes that never ceased or diminished . . ..

1110: This was a very severe year in this land because of the taxes that the king collected for the marriage of his daughter.

1116: This land and people were also this year often severely oppressed by the taxes, which the king collected both in and out of the boroughs.

In 1125, discovering that his minters were producing adulterated coinage, the king had them castrated and deprived of their right hands. Yet, paradoxically, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle observed of Henry on his death, "He was a good man, and people were in great awe of him. No one dared injure another in his time." In short, despite all his ruthless severity --or perhaps because of it --he enforced justice and kept the peace.

Justice could be lucrative to an English monarch. The profits of justice constituted an important portion of the royal revenue, and it evidently occurred to Henry that by extending the scope of the king's justice he could augment the flow of money to his treasury.

Henry's reign witnessed a notable growth in the royal judicial system and the royal administration. His chief administrator was Roger, bishop of Salisbury, one of the great architects of medieval English government. Roger is the first man known to have held the office of chief justiciar in England, who was empowered to supervise the royal administration and act for the king in his absence. The emergence of the chief justiciar, together with related administrative innovations, has been regarded as marking the rise of impersonal government --of government capable of functioning without direct royal supervision, a highly significant step in the direction of administrative sophistication.

Along with the rise of the justiciar, two additional administrative institutions of the highest importance emerged under Henry I: the traveling justices and the exchequer. The traveling justices were royal officials who toured the countryside trying important cases in the shires and thereby greatly enlarging the scope of the king's justice. When one of Henry's traveling justices was present, the shire court was transformed temporarily into a royal court, and ordinary people of the countryside were for the first time brought face to face with the direct judicial authority of the crown. In the years of Henry I the countrywide tours seem to have been spotty and unsystematic, but they were the vital beginning of what would become, under Henry II, a widespread and regular practice.

The exchequer was a royal accounting bureau, permanently stationed at Westminster regardless of where the king might be. It was therefore an important element in the "impersonal" government that was now emerging. The term "exchequer" is derived from the table around which the officials worked. The surface of the table resembled a checker board, being divided into columns representing various denominations of money. Markers were placed on these columns to represent the accounts of sheriffs who reported their collection of royal revenues twice a year to the exchequer officials. The method of accounting was based on the principle of the abacus and the decimal system of arithmetic, which had only recently been introduced from the Islamic world. The exchequer served as an important control on the activities of the king's sheriffs. Audits by the exchequer kept the sheriffs from enriching themselves at the expense of the king’s revenues.

            Henry I put together a remarkably efficient royal administration—the most efficient seen in northern Europe since Roman times. No northern European king was as wealthy as Henry I, for Henry had discovered the positive relationship between the efficiency of a government administration and the size of the king’s revenues. He was fully alive to the fact that strong government was good business.

   Henry II reigned for thirty-five years (1154-1189), almost exactly as long as his grandfather, Henry I. The two reigns are similar in many respects, for Henry II undertook quite deliberately to revive his grandfather’s policies and strove to rule in his tradition.

            The growth of towns and commerce was a factor of real importance in the reign of Henry II. Money was becoming more and more abundant. Town life, centering on the supervised town market, was still rustic and parochial by later standards, but it was growing steadily more vigorous. Increasingly, town government was dominated by merchant guilds or market guilds, those within and without the town who were privileged to sell goods in its market. Towns such as Bristol, Newcastle, Northampton, and, above all, London were becoming significant commercial centers. The monarchy, recognizing their importance, granted them charters containing valuable privileges, such as the right to operate a borough court, freedom from customs and tolls, and various commercial monopolies. Henry I had granted his Londoners the privilege of appointing their own sheriff, and by the early thirteenth century they were allowed to elect their own mayor - which they have been doing ever since. In general, English burghers were recognized as a class apart, free of the obligations of feudalism: “A burgher [town dweller] can give or sell his land as he pleases and go where he wishes, freely and undisturbed." (From the Customs of Newcastle—the royal charter granted to the city of Newcastle.)

            Henry II reorganized the method of collecting taxes by changing the basis on which taxes were assessed.  Before Henry II, taxes were assessed on the old method: how much land you owned. This method failed to recognize that amount alone was not always the best measure of an individual’s wealth. Henry’s new tax was assessed as a percentage of a subject’s annual income from rents or from trade.

    It was in the field of law, above all else, that Henry II made his unique contribution. Indeed, he has been called, perhaps without exaggeration, the father of the English Common Law. Here again he followed in the tradition of Henry I, but many policies that Henry I had merely begun his grandson carried to consummation.

In the days of Henry II the royal court significantly increased the range of its judicial activities and the complexity of its organization until, by the reign's end, a number of separate bodies were hearing cases in the king's name. The Great Council--the assembly of lords and bishops that met with the king on extraordinary occasions - served as the royal tribunal in cases of the very highest importance, cases such as the trial of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Northampton in 1164. Cases of lesser significance were usually heard by the Small Council, a group of traveling administrative officers and royal officials who served the king. The Court of the Exchequer, meeting twice annually at Westminster, served as a tribunal in cases involving royal finance in addition to its work in fiscal administration and accounting. Henry II took the further step of establishing a small body of royal justices to sit permanently at Westminster with the power of hearing all but the most important cases that might be brought before it. This court, the Court of Common Pleas, consisted sometimes of five men, sometimes of more, and often included the chief justiciar and the treasurer.

The system of royal tribunals --the Great Council, the Small Council, the exchequer court, and the Court of Common Pleas--was augmented by a revival and expansion of Henry I's policy of sending out traveling justices to hear cases in the shires. Under Henry I their activities had been sporadic; by the closing years of Henry II's reign they were going out on annual circuits that covered large portions of England, bringing the king's justice into remote corners of the kingdom. Besides their judicial activities they served as general royal agents in the countryside, helping to keep the sheriffs in check, holding inquests relating to royal revenues, safeguarding the king's rights over his own royal domain. Over time they would acquire the power to hear every kind of case.

Henry II was determined to expand the royal authority and uphold the royal peace throughout the English countryside. Much of his power in the counties depended on the loyalty and effectiveness of his chief local agents, the sheriffs. In 1170 he undertook a inquest of his sheriff's activities and followed it by replacing most of them with more dependable royal officials.

            Henry II was still faced with the formidable problem of maintaining local law and order without a police force. In 1176, he ordered that juries of twelve men from each county and four men from each town be required to meet periodically. These juries were obliged to report the names of notorious local criminals to the king's sheriff or traveling justice. These juries were fundamentally different from the modern trial jury. The task of the modern jury is to decide whether the accused is guilty or innocent. His juries were closer in spirit to our present grand juries; they were indictment juries rather than trial juries and their chief purpose was to supply information. As such, they mark a notable extension of royal jurisdiction into areas traditionally reserved for the local feudal courts.

            Henry I and Henry II, between them, achieved an enormously significant extension of royal jurisdiction at the expense of feudal and local justice. The various local, feudal legal customs were giving way to a uniform royal law, a common law shared by all Englishmen.

 

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