The kingdom of the Franks: the seigneuries 533
resulted from the splitting-up of the former duchy of Gothia or Narbonne.
Its entry into the peerage was explained by the king’s concern to reaffirm his
authority over a great fief threatened by the Plantagenets and also against the
influence of Arag
´
on: through Catalonia which since 1180 showed more marked
secessionist tendencies from the kingdom of France.
After the great secular and ecclesiastical principalities, the Scripta de feodis
placed groupings which stemmed directly from Carolingian counties, such
as Boulogne, Guines, Dreux, Clermont-en-Beauvais, Brienne, Roucy, Joigny,
Chalon-sur-Sa
ˆ
one and Foix, as well as baronies produced by the bringing to-
gether of several castles: Lusignan, Coucy, Bourbon, Beaujeu. Finally, on a
lower level, came simple castellanies like Joinville or Vignory and, a conse-
quence of the rupture of castle households in c. 1150 and the dispersal of the
milites who comprised them, a host of village lordships based on moated resi-
dences, fortified manor houses, which were to grow in number in the thirteenth
century with another still greater disintegration of the judicial system, or ban,
a phenomenon which led to an examination of the exact content of seigneurial
powers.
There was to be no question here of the landed basis of lordship, that
is, the system by which the land was worked, nor of its officers or profits,
but – to express it in contemporary terms – of upper, judicial lordship, the
lordship of the ban,inother words that which derived from an appropriation
of public powers. At the highest level this was exercised over the churches:
twenty-seven bishoprics in the Angevin empire, only one in the county of
Champagne (Troyes). Gregorian reform put an end to the most glaring abuses.
The right of spoliation retreated and even disappeared and, if the prince unduly
prolonged the vacancy of a see in order to collect the revenues, he could
no longer impose his own candidate and had to be content with instigating
the electoral procedure by the grant of licentia eligendi. The same applied to
monasteries, long considered as simple properties, which were released from
the ditio or domination of their holder in order to benefit from his protection
or tuitio.
The right to order, constrain and punish – this was the definition of the ban –
the right of executing high criminal justice, of summons to the feudal host, or of
building fortifications (a monopoly generally little respected), of maintaining
order and keeping the peace in all public places and on the main roads, of
striking and recalling coin, of levying personal taxes (chevage), occasional taxes
(mortmain, levies on marriage or remoal), exceptional taxes (the aide and the
taille)onthe inhabitants of his lands: these were the regalian prerogatives
concentrated in the hands of the great lords and unequally distributed among
the lesser. In addition, there were rights of an economic nature that bore
heavily on markets and fairs, the circulation of goods, the maintenance of
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