Luscombe D., Riley-Smith J. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 4: c. 1024-c. 1198, Part 2
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The kingdom of the Franks: crown and government 511
VI, to 19.1 under Louis VII, and finally to 28.1 under Philip Augustus.
1
The
contemporary chroniclers were chiefly monks or clergymen, like the Norman
Or deric Vitalis or the Flemish Galbert of Bruges, whose horizons were lim-
ited to the provinces where they lived or to events that caught their attention.
Few chroniclers, however, took note of the French king except when he in-
truded upon their limited worlds. The Capetians none the less found their
own spokesmen at the royal abbey of St-Denis to the north of Paris where the
monks began compiling a short chronicle, the Gesta gentis Francorum during
the reign of Louis VI. In the succeeding reign the influential Abbot Suger,
confidant and adviser to Louis VI and Louis VII, wrote a Life of Louis VI.
Neither a full biography nor a regnal history, this work rhetorically shaped the
activities of the king around symbolic and often sacred images. Both the extant
royal charters and the historiography of St-Denis therefore offer a perspective
on the Capetians that was highly configured by ecclesiastical concerns.
During the first half of the twelfth century the leading barons of northern
France began to consolidate their hold on their principalities. This can be seen
in Blois and Anjou, but especially in Flanders and the Anglo-Norman realm,
where, in the last case, Henry I was unusually effective. Parallel efforts were
undertaken by Louis VI and Louis VII to exploit the two fundamental resources
of land and men. Louis VI inherited from his father a royal domain consisting
of a conglomerate of lands, revenues and rights productive of income, the
extent of which is known chiefly through charters. Restricted in scope, it was
centred on Paris and Orleans but extended to the north-east to Laon and to
the south-west towards Sens. Interlaced with these royal holdings were those
of local lords who possessed castles that dominated the vicinities. So powerful
were these castellans that, for example, it was difficult for the king to travel
safely from Paris to Orleans. Suger depicted scores of Louis’s campaigns against
powerful castellans such as Thomas of Marle and Hugh of Le Puiset who
besieged and subjugated troublesome castles such as Montaigu, Montlh
´
ery,
and Le Puiset. Although often frustrated in these endeavours, by his death
Louis VI had succeeded in pacifying most of the royal domain, a programme
brought to completion by his son.
To manage and collect income from the royal domain Philip I had created
local officials called pr
´
ev
ˆ
ots who were retained by the two Louis not only as
1
These statistics are calculated from the Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier and the Recueil des actes de
Philippe Auguste and from the estimates kindly furnished by Jean Dufour and Michel Nortier, editors
responsible for the editions of the charters of Louis VI and Louis VII respectively. The figure of
28.1 for Philip Augustus is based on the years 1179 to 1203, before the registers were compiled. (See
Baldwin (1986), p. 403.) If the charters preserved in the registers are included, the figure jumps to
41.1 per annum. The annual figures (increasing from 5.7 to 28.1)are statistically comparable because
they are essentially compiled from the same collections of sources.
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512 john w. baldwin
domanial agents but also as royal officials to guard castles and administer jus-
tice. Because of the domain’s diminutive size, transversable in a matter of days,
the king travelled about to supervise the pr
´
ev
ˆ
ots and receive the revenues. It
was easier to bring the government to the countryside than the contrary. The
Capetian court, like that of all early medieval monarchs, was therefore ambu-
latory, transported in baggage wagons and halting at the chief centres of Paris
and Orleans as well as at dispersed castles, monasteries and royal residences.
The king’s companions can be ascertained from the royal charters. In Philip
I’s reign these documents contained extensive lists of witnesses who consti-
tuted the royal entourage, but under Louis VI the charters began to change.
The multiple witnesses were replaced by five household officers who by mid-
century became the sole personages to co-sign the kings’ acts. Reminiscent of
the Carolingian household, these officers were named for their domestic duties:
the seneschal supplied the household, the butler the drink, the chamberlain
cared for the bedroom, the constable for the horses and the chancellor super-
vised the chapel and eventually the secretariat. Their exclusive place on the
royal charters indicated that their domestic tasks were giving way to responsi-
bilities as royal counsellors and governmental agents, since the great magnates
of France, with few exceptions, rarely attended court. The household officials
were recruited from the principal castellan families of the royal domain, three
of whom, the Rochefort-Montlh
´
erys, the Garlandes and the Senlis, competed
with each other to monopolize the offices and to make them hereditary. When
the Garlandes finally took over three of the offices, and Stephen of Garlande
held the position of seneschal and chancellor simultaneously, Louis VI was
compelled to dismiss them in 1127 and to leave the principal posts of seneschal
and chancellor vacant. Thereafter vacancy became a technique aimed at curb-
ing over-ambitious officials. Despite the formalized charters that obscured the
royal entourage, it becomes none the less apparent that Louis VI and Louis VII
increasingly reliedon the services of lesser men for the routine operations of cen-
tral government. This personnel consisted of chamberlains, knights and clerics
drawn from the castles and towns of the royal domain. Although most are mere
names in the documentation, one, a monk with the eccentric name of Suger,
appeared frequently within this group. Originating most likely from a family of
small knights, he benefited from the patronage of the Garlande clan. Selected
by Louis VI to become abbot of St-Denis in 1122 because of his demonstrated
talents as a domanial administrator for the abbey, he joined the magnates of the
realm as head of this influential monastery. After the Garlandes’ disgrace, he
swiftly assumed the responsibilities of chief counsellor, familiar and functionary
for both Louis VI and Louis VII, as well as historian of the Capetian monarchy.
In the deployment of lands and men to enhance power Louis VI and Louis
VII acted no differently than the contemporary magnates. Unlike the others,
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The kingdom of the Franks: crown and government 513
however (with the exception of the duke of Normandy, also king of England),
the Capetians were likewise kings, a dignity that offered incalculable advan-
tages. From their Robertian origins the Capetians proclaimed their dynastic
rights to the crown. With other lords they realized that patrilineal succession
assured the integrity of their lands. The chief patrimony went customarily to
the eldest son, while cadets were supported by tangential holdings, marriages
to heiresses and positions in churches. Hereditary succession to the crown was
reinforced by the Carolingian precedent of anticipatory association whereby
the eldest son was designated or consecrated king during his father’s lifetime.
Louis VI was already rex designatus by 1100; his son Philip was consecrated
in 1129 at the age of thirteen. When he died in an accident two years later,
the second son Louis (age eleven) was immediately consecrated. At Louis VI’s
death in 1137 Suger remarked how smoothly the royal succession had proceeded
in France in contrast to the disputed successions in the German empire and
England. The Capetian dynastic right to the French throne was serenely re-
called in their naming patterns. Queen Anna (of Kiev) had undoubtedly chosen
Philip’s name from Macedonian traditions in her Russian family. Philip I in
turn adopted a Carolingian name for his firstborn son Louis VI. Thereafter and
into the fourteenth century the Capetians (with only one exception) alternated
the pattern Philip–Louis and Louis–Philip for their first two sons. Whenever
the same name repeated itself in succession, it denoted the death of an older
brother.
A change of dynasty, however, always underscored the need for an ecclesias-
tical consecration at the king’s coronation. Following the Carolingian example
of 751, the Capetians were careful to have themselves anointed by the arch-
bishop of Rheims in 987, and they continued the practice thereafter with few
modifications. Merely designated king at the death of his father in 1108, Louis
VI was quickly consecrated at Orleans by the archbishop of Sens. (The see of
Rheims was disputed at the time by rival candidates.) Philip was consecrated
in 1129, and after his unexpected death Louis VII likewise in 1131,thistime
with full ceremony at Rheims by Pope Innocent II. These consecrations un-
doubtedly adhered to the protocol of Philip I in 1059 (of which a report has
survived) which, in turn, was based on ordines dating from the tenth century.
According to this tradition, after the king promised to defend the church and
to enforce justice and peace throughout the realm, he was anointed with holy
oil and invested with the royal insignia including crown, sword, sceptre and
rod. Thus consecrated as a sacred personage he could thereafter rule as ‘king
by the grace of God’ (rexDei gratia)aswas proclaimed by his title and on his
seal.
During the coronation ceremonies churchmen offered the king consecration
in exchange for the promise of protection from enemies. Suger underscored
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514 john w. baldwin
this bargain both at Louis VI’s coronation in 1108 and throughout his narrative.
Unlike his father Philip, who had abused the church, Louis had fully deserved
anointing because already at the age of twelve he had protected churches by de-
fending St-Denis, Rheims and Orleans against local predators, a service which
his son performed with equal zeal. If the two Louis accepted the responsibil-
ities as guardians of the church, in return they asserted rights over regalian
churches. These churches consisted of cathedrals and monasteries whose tem-
poral properties or regalia were held by the king during the vacancy, that is,
between the death of the last prelate and his successor’s accession. Regalian
rights further implied that the choice of successor belonged to the king. In
1122, for example, when the monks of St-Denis selected Suger as their abbot
without royal approval, they provoked Louis VI’s anger, although their partic-
ular choice indubitably was acceptable to the king. In 1141 Louis VII became
embroiled in a conflict with Bourges when the canons refused to accept the
royal chancellor Cadurc as archbishop. Regalian cathedrals numbered nearly
twenty and monasteries more than thirty. Although concentrated in the Ile-de-
France (in the province of Sens), important regalian churches were also located
in the provinces of Rheims and Bourges. As far distant as Tournai and Arras in
the north, for example, as well as Rheims and Ch
ˆ
alons-sur-Marne in the east,
and Mende and Le Puy in the south, the king’s influence thereby exceeded
the actual royal domain. Regalian collegiate churches like St-Martin of Tours,
St-Aignan of Orleans and St-Frambaud of Senlis also supplied benefices to
clerics who staffed the royal entourage.
In addition to distant bishops and abbots the Capetians, as kings of the
Franks, also claimed suzerainty over the great magnates which further ex-
tended their influence beyond the royal domain. Such claims implied fealty
and homage, but the practical effectiveness depended on the king’s enforce-
ment. Rights of suzerainty, for example, permitted Louis VI to intervene in the
affairs of the lords of the Bourbonnais and the counts of Auvergne to the south,
but both Louis found it difficult to assert authority over the great principalities
since they were likewise consolidating their powers. Even the royal panegyrist
Suger was unable to conceal Capetian weakness when the king confronted
great vassals. During a border dispute Henry, duke of Normandy, but also a
king, refused to do homage to the French king. In the resulting warfare Louis
lost a pitched battle at Br
´
emule in 1119. Throughout these hostilities Henry was
usually supported by his nephew Theobald, count of Blois, who intermittently
interfered with Louis’s pacification of the royal domain. Louis VII intensified
this conflict in 1142 with a full-scale, but ultimately ineffectual, invasion of
Blois and Troyes-Champagne. Throughout the rivalry between the Capetians
and the Norman–Champenois party the counts of Flanders and Anjou
usually supported the king. Louis VI asserted suzerainty over Flanders when he
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The kingdom of the Franks: crown and government 515
sought to regulate the succession after the assassination of Count Charles the
Good in 1127, but again with little success. When Henry I married Matilda,
his only legitimate heir, to Count Geoffrey of Anjou in 1127 and the latter
conquered Normandy for his wife by 1144, this union between Normandy and
Anjou offered new challenges to the Capetian suzerainty. With French over-
lordship resisted from all sides, it came as a surprise that William X, duke of
Aquitaine, offered his only heir, Eleanor, as ward to Louis VI, who promptly
married her to his heir. Louis VII therefore succeeded his father in 1137 not
only as king of the Franks but also as duke of Aquitaine, although the vast
and unruly southern duchy was held separately by marriage and was never
integrated into the royal domain.
Dynastic claims, ecclesiastical consecration, authority over regalian churches
and suzerainty over great vassals were all traditional rights of the Frankish
crown. The charters of Louis VI and Louis VII, however, announced a new
policy towards the commercial groups who converged upon towns in northern
France spurred by the revival of trade at the turn of the eleventh century.
To separate themselves from the peasant servitudes in the countryside the
townspeople sought written definition of the customs or liberties that regulated
their civil, commercial and political affairs. To reinforce these privileges they
occasionally established sworn associations called communes. Not without
ambivalence, the two Louis responded to their demands by issuing charters
that defined customs and recognized communes in bishoprics outside the royal
domain such as Laon, Amiens and Rheims, particularly when they were vacant.
Orleans and Poitiers at the centre of Louis VII’s lands, however, were denied
such privileges in 1137 when Louis became king and duke. At the very heart of
the royal domain Paris was never granted a charter. Charters confirming urban
liberties none the less became a standard Capetian practice that sought both
to reinforce royal authority in the domain and to extend the king’s influence
beyond.
Not long after the accession of Louis VII in 1137 Suger articulated the salient
ideology of the Capetian monarchy in his Life of Louis VI.Truetohis coronation
promise, Louis was pictured repeatedly as defending churches throughout his
kingdom. To this religious responsibility Suger added an analysis of suzerainty
that shaped it in the form of a hierarchy of vassals requiring two components:
the gradation of vassalage and the positioning of the king at the apex. When
Louis intervened in the affairs of Auvergne, for example, he thereby recog-
nized an ascending chain of vassals from the count of Auvergne to the duke
of Aquitaine to the king. When Louis acquired the county of the Vexin from
St-Denis, he further asserted that he could not do homage to the abbey because
he was king, thus suggesting his ultimate suzerainty over all vassals. Despite
the particular features of this case, Suger none the less placed St-Denis at the
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516 john w. baldwin
centre of royal ideology. As the traditional necropolis for the Frankish kings and
the repository for the royal crown and insignia, the abbey and its patron saint
were designated the special patrons and protectors of the entire kingdom. In
1124 when the emperor Henry V, seconded by Henry I of England, threatened
France from the east with a massive army recruited from the German princi-
palities, Louis took the banner of St-Denis from the abbey’s altar and hastened
to Rheims to meet the invasion. Magnates as far distant as Burgundy, Brittany
and Aquitaine, as well as from northern France, rallied to the saint’s standard,
and their spontaneous show of force deterred the attack. Suger concluded that
this triumph over a Roman emperor and an English king was the most glorious
event France had witnessed in ancient and modern times.
Except for new attention to townspeople and Suger’s ideological formu-
lations Louis VI and Louis VII introduced few governmental innovations.
Rather, they inherited from the first Capetians and transmitted to their suc-
cessors the components of landed domain, administrative personnel and tradi-
tional royal rights over churches and lords. These elements remained the basis
of government throughout the Capetian era upon which all further change pro-
ceeded without abolishing the foundations. Such was the nature of medieval
reform.
from the second to the third crusade (1147–1190)
In 1146 Louis VII announced an intention that he had long kept secret. At
the urging of Pope Eugenius III he would take the cross and depart for the
Holy Land, joined by Conrad of Germany and many magnates, all inspired by
the preaching of Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux. Following his father’s gesture,
he received the banner of St-Denis from the abbey’s altar and left the realm
from 1147 to 1149. The regency was committed to the royal cousin Ralph,
count of Vermandois, Samson, archbishop of Rheims, and Suger, the old royal
confidant. Reinforcing his appointment by a papal commission, the abbot of
St-Denis quickly assumed leadership. Although he had to deal with politi-
cal intrigues from the king’s brother Robert, count of Dreux, and to handle
the affairs of the regalian churches, Suger’s great expertise lay in the field of
administration, as he had recently demonstrated in a treatise De administra-
tione relating to St-Denis. What survives of his correspondence allows a brief
glimpse into the two chief concerns of government, justice and finance. One
letter suggests that Suger was holding regular pleas at Paris to hear cases of
justice in the king’s place. Another indicates that local royal agents were ren-
dering their accounts before the regent at a financial bureau. Suger personally
assured the king that the royal income from justice, tallages, relief of fiefs and
domanial income was kept intact. Of particular concern to Louis, the royal
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The kingdom of the Franks: crown and government 517
treasury was moved to the house of the Knights Templars, members of a mil-
itary order, who as bankers transferred money directly overseas. Throughout
his correspondence Suger employed the term corona regni (the crown of the
kingdom) to symbolize the royal administration that transcended the king’s
person during his absence. When Louis returned in 1149 to resume charge,
however, whatever administrative innovations had been created disappeared
from sight.
The documentary sources of the next half-century remain of the same nature
as in the preceding era. Suger began a history of Louis VII which was finished in
an abbreviated fashion by a monk of St-Germain-des-Pr
´
es. At St-Denis Abbot
OdoofDeuil also wrote on Louis VII but restricted his attention to the crusade.
It was not until 1196 that Rigord, a doctor turned monk of St-Denis, resumed
Suger’s tradition and wrote a regnal history of the opening decade of Philip
Augustus. Towards the close of the century, however, Anglo-Norman chroni-
clers such as Roger of Howden were inspired by the governmental innovations
of King Henry II of England and the extent of his continental dominions to
include the political activities of the Capetians in their narratives. Louis VII
and the young Philip Augustus continued to issue charters modelled on those
of Louis VI, but at an accelerating rate. In 1172 the royal chancellor Hugh of
Champfleuri, bishop of Soissons, made a private collection of incoming letters
to the king, but since these were of a more personal nature, they were of less
concern to government.
Throughout the second half of the twelfth century Louis VII and the young
Philip retained the basic framework of inherited governmental power. The
royal domain, administered by local pr
´
ev
ˆ
ots, increased only incrementally but
continued to supply the major income, except in 1180 when Philip exploited his
authority over the Jews in his domain by confiscating their property in a one-
time windfall. As the king’s court peregrinated through the royal lands, it was
composed of the traditional household officers and lesser familiares consisting
of chamberlains (Walter), knights (Adam of Villeron) and clerics (Barbedor
and Master Mainerius). Increasingly these lesser names were identified as coun-
sellors (consiliarii) who constituted a more or less permanent council/counsel
(consilium) for routine business. Upon Philip’s accession many towns hastened
to have their customs and privileges reconfirmed in charters of the new king.
When Louis VII returned from the crusade in 1149,his marital life was in
disarray. Not only had the king and queen become personally estranged, but,
what was more important, Eleanor had failed to deliver the requisite son for
the Capetian dynasty. (In fact, she gave birth to two daughters.) Louis obtained
an annulment of his marriage on the grounds of consanguinity and married
Constance, a Spanish princess, who also produced girls. When she died in
1160, within the month Louis married Adela from the family of the counts
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of Troyes-Champagne. Although Louis VI had had seven legitimate sons, the
vaunted Capetian fertility in males was rapidly approaching a crisis. Five years
later when the queen finally gave birth to a male child, Paris celebrated with
relief and joy, and Philip acquired the sobriquet Dieudonn
´
e (given by God).
In 1179 the king, bedridden from a stroke, continued Capetian tradition by
having the fourteen-year-old boy crowned and anointed at Rheims before his
own death. The next year Philip married Isabella, daughter of the count of
Hainault. Unlike his father, he refused to depart on a crusade until a male heir,
Louis, was born (1187). When he did take leave of the realm, his son was as yet
unconsecrated. Never again was a Capetian to repeat the traditional practice
of anticipatory association, a sure sign that after seven unbroken generations
the Capetians finally felt secure in their dynastic right.
In addition to his marital woes Louis VII returned to France with the failure
of the crusade on his conscience. Despite the efforts of two monarchs and
many lords the expedition had achieved few of its goals. Perhaps this was
evidence of divine displeasure that was provoked by the king’s violation of
ecclesiastical freedom when he took violent measures to enforce candidates on
regalian sees such as Bourges. Thereafter Louis made few overt attempts to
interfere in church elections. His policy was summarized in his son’s ordinance
of 1190 which stated that the clergy of a vacant see were to seek a licence to
choose a new prelate from the king who, in turn, accorded a free election.
Such cooperation was designed to produce prelates ‘who were both pleasing to
God and useful to the kingdom’.
2
In fact, regalian bishoprics and monasteries
rewarded the king’s restraint by electing candidates generally favourable to
the king. Benefiting from this harmony, Louis began to issue royal charters
of protection to monasteries and bishoprics in distant provinces, especially
in the south of France. These documents had little practical effect, but they
embellished the king’s image as defender of the church.
Although deemed necessary for the survival of the dynasty, Louis VII’s sep-
aration from Eleanor in 1152 came at the worst possible moment for upholding
his suzerainty over the great magnates. By this time it had become clear that
Matilda’s Anglo-Norman realm and Count Geoffrey’s Anjou would be united
in their son Henry. When the young Angevin quickly married Eleanor, heiress
of Aquitaine, and ascended the English throne as King Henry II in 1154,he
had become lord of the entire western half of France through inheritance and
marriage. To assist him in the government of this vast conglomeration he di-
vided his titles among his sons, the young Henry, Richard and Geoffrey. In
face of this formidable accumulation of land the Capetians’ only recourse was
to react in indirect and complex ways. As suzerains they were able to require
2
‘qui Deo placeat et utilis sit regno’. Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, i,no.345.
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The kingdom of the Franks: crown and government 519
homage from Henry and his sons for their various continental fiefs, chiefly be-
cause they, too, as great lords also depended on homage from their vassals. In
addition, Louis reinforced these ties of vassalage by marrying his two daughters
from Constance to the young Henry and Richard. Nevertheless, the Capetians
encouraged insubordination among Henry’s sons and vassals whenever op-
portunity presented itself. Louis VII, for example, supported the rebellion of
Henry’s sons in 1172–3, fomented by Eleanor now disaffected with her sec-
ond husband. Philip Augustus sought to fuel the discontent of young Henry,
Geoffrey and Richard against their father, but at no time did the Capetians
seriously threaten Henry’s authority. More effective was Louis’s deployment
of marriages to forge new alliances against the Anglo-Norman-Angevins. The
heir to Flanders was given a daughter from the royal cousins of Vermandois,
but, equally importantly, Louis married his two daughters by Eleanor to the
brothers, counts of Blois and Troyes-Champagne, and he himself, as we have
seen, wedded Adela, their youngest sister. Flanders was thereby neutralized,
and the great complex of Champagne was detached from its traditional ties to
the Anglo-Normans and allied closely to the Capetians.
These manoeuvres and marriages among the great lords reinforced cor-
responding alterations within the composition of the central court. In the
preceding era the magnates were largely absent, except for the solitary figures
of the abbot of St-Denis and the count of Vermandois. As Louis became in-
volved in the summons for the crusade, more great vassals attended his court
and remained after his return. Theobald, count of Blois, became seneschal of
the royal household, Matthew, count of Beaumont, chamberlain, and Hugh,
bishop of Soissons, chancellor. A mixture of lords and prelates along with the
chamberlains, knights and clerics, the Capetian court resembled the large and
heterogeneous entourages of the Anglo-Normans. The infiltration of leading
magnates into the Capetian court can best be seen at the coronation of the
young Philip Augustus at Rheims in 1179. The ceremony was presided over
by William, archbishop of Rheims, who was brother of the counts of Troyes
and Blois and Queen Adela. The count of Flanders carried the king’s sword in
the opening procession and performed the duties of steward at the subsequent
banquet. The Anglo-Norman-Angevin house was represented by the young
King Henry who bore Philip’s crown, prominently accompanied by his broth-
ers. All parties who counted most in the kingdom were present, exhibiting
their rivalries at the centre of the king’s court.
When Rigord, historian and monk of St-Denis, surveyed the first decade
of Philip’s reign, he reverted to the two traditional ideologies of birthright
and sanctity. By his belated birth Philip had demonstrated not only that he
was Dieudonn
´
e but also that the Capetian dynastic right was reconfirmed,
having persisted for seven generations. This success encouraged a search for
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520 john w. baldwin
origins. Rigord was the first to discuss the Capetian dynastic right within royal
circles. While others outside the court had proposed Carolingian connections
by blood descent through female lineage, Rigord ignored these theories for the
more ancient myth of Trojan origins. This was a foundational myth inspired by
Virgil’s Aeneid that accounted for the origins of both Rome and the barbarian
kingdoms as successors of the Trojans who had abandoned Troy in flames.
According to the Frankish version adopted by Rigord, the descendants of the
eponymous Francio, grandson of King Priam, eventually settled in France
thus establishing the Merovingians, who, in turn, produced the Carolingians
and finally the Capetians. By ignoring the genealogical discontinuities Rigord
could assert that Philip was directly descended from ancient Trojan roots.
Equally significant was the sanctity conferred by consecration with sacred oil
at Philip’s coronation in Rheims. As Suger had depicted the king’s grandfather
and father, Rigord envisaged Philip as defending churches from local predators
in fulfilment of his coronation promises. His holy zeal for the church, however,
was most fully expressed when he, too, took the cross to recover the Holy Land
in 1190.For Philip’s faithful defence of the church Rigord revived a traditional
epitaph that the popes had accorded Frankish kings since Carolingian times.
Philip had once again earned the title of christianissimus,‘the most Christian
king’ of the French.
from the third crusade to the conquest of
normandy (1190–1203)
Overshadowed by the might of the Anglo-Norman-Angevins, Philip Augustus
was reluctant to respond to the call for the Third Crusade. When he could
be assured that King Richard (who had succeeded Henry II) would depart
simultaneously, he took the banner from St-Denis and left his kingdom in
1190 for eighteen months, confiding the regency to William, archbishop of
Rheims, and Adela, the queen-mother, both of the house of Champagne. For
their guidance he drew up an ordinance in the guise of a testament that decreed
provisional measures during his absence, confirmed older practices such as re-
galian elections, but, most importantly, announced radical innovations in jus-
tice and finance. New local officials called baillis,who had surfaced shortly
before the ordinance, were instituted throughout the royal domain with wide-
ranging duties. Circulating in teams of two or three, they held monthly assizes
in which they heard the judicial pleas of the inhabitants of the domain and from
which they transmitted appeals to the regents at Paris three times a year. On
these triennial occasions Philip commanded that his revenues also be brought
to Paris to be accounted in writing by a cleric. A record of these periodic ex-
ercises has survived for the fiscal year 1202/3.Inthis document we can see the
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