England and Normandy, 1042–1137 203
is not unreasonable to describe the survey as ‘the title-deed of all the Norman
conquerors of England’.
12
Besides this, it provided the king, county by county,
with the information which his officers, in particular the sheriffs, could use in
administering the royal demesne and the lands of vassals and churches which
came into the king’s hands through vacancy, escheat or forfeiture. It shows
too the mixture of fiscal and judicial elements that was to characterize royal
government throughout the twelfth century.
The evidence collected, which included statements of landholders in the
time of King Edward, when lands were first granted, and in 1066, brings
out forcibly the changes in landed power brought about by the Conquest.
Most striking is the different ratio between the extent of the royal demesne
and that of the greatest tenants-in-chief. Of the lands held by the king and the
wealthiest magnates before the Conquest, Edward the Confessor had held only
34 per cent, compared with 43 per cent in the hands of the Godwine fam-
ily (even after Tostig’s fall) and 23 per cent held by the families of Leofric
and Siward. After the Conquest the proportions were reversed: King William
had 64 per cent and the leading magnates together barely half that amount.
Moreover, the wealth of William’s greatest vassals was more modest than that of
the powerful Saxon earls, and their lands were geographically slightly less scat-
tered. The Godwines had land in thirty counties, whereas the estates of Hugh
of Avranches were spread over twenty, and those of the king’s half-brothers,
OdoofBayeux and Robert of Mortain together, over twenty-one.
Arough calculation of the wealth of William’s vassals holding lands valued
at over
£750 ayear shows Odo of Bayeux (£3,000), Robert of Mortain (£2,100),
Roger of Montgomery (
£2,100), William of Warenne (£1,165), Alan of Brittany,
lord of Richmond (
£1,100)atthe top of the list, followed by Hugh of Avranches,
earl of Chester (
£820), Richard of Clare, Geoffrey bishop of Coutances and
Geoffrey of Mandeville (each
£780), and Eustace II of Boulogne (£770). Most
of these men were ducal kinsmen and all had served him well. The church
retained properties amounting to a little over 25 per cent of the landed wealth
of the kingdom. The bishops of Bayeux and Coutances held their English lands
as secular fees and performed the duties of lay barons in return; they were among
the men most frequently appointed on judicial commissions. Odo of Bayeux,
however, came under suspicion of disloyalty and was arrested and imprisoned
in 1083;itwas possible that his sympathies were with the king’s rebel son, Robert
Curthose. Released on the death of the Conqueror, he rebelled openly at the
beginning of the next reign and suffered exile and forfeiture. Not one of the
great magnates was strong enough to challenge the king as the Godwines had
done; events were to prove that the king’s resources, carefully used, were enough
12
Davis (1987b), p. 28.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008