The "Lands of the Normans" in England (1204-44)
A project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council 2006-2007
The "Lands of the Normans" in England (1204-44) is an AHRC-funded project at the Department of History, University of Sheffield. It is housed in the university's Humanities Research Institute and will run from 1 October 2006 to 30 September 2007.
The Project Team
Director (Principal Investigator): Dr. Daniel Power.
Research Associate: Dr. Tony Moore.
Technical Staff: Ed Mackenzie, Jamie McLaughlin, Kathy Rogers (Humanities Research Institute).
The Context for the Project
In 1204 King Philip Augustus of France conquered Normandy, breaking up the 'Anglo-Norman realm' founded by William the Conqueror. The "Lands of the Normans" in England (1204-44) investigates the consequences of this epoch-making event, focussing particularly upon the fracturing of the Anglo-French political community after 1204.
Since cross-Channel lordship had been a prevailing factor in the Anglo-Norman realm, royal seizures of property in 1204 affected most magnates and many humbler landowners. For decades, however, many aristocratic families attempted to retain property on both sides of the Channel. In England, the confiscated terre Normannorum became a crucial element of royal patronage until the reign of Edward I (1272-1307); they have been called 'the single greatest influx of land to the crown between 1066 and the dissolution of the monasteries', and 'the great bank on which the thirteenth-century kings drew for patronage'.1 In France the seizures of the property of landowners who had opted to remain in England greatly bolstered monarchical power. The severing of connections between the two countries was a very drawn-out process, with profound implications for French and English identity and politics.
Whereas the establishment of French landowners in England after the Norman Conquest of 1066 has been examined minutely, little attempt has been made to study the severing of Anglo-French connections after 1204, even though the records rival Domesday Book in detail. Until now, historians have been unable to deduce either the quantitative or the qualitative impact upon the Anglo-French political community of the unravelling of their intricate cross-Channel links. Only systematic investigation into landownership can assess the determining impact of the end of the 'Anglo-Norman realm' upon the development of the kingdoms of France and England. Until now the basis for all research into the fate of Anglo-Norman landholding after 1204 has been the appendix to F.M. Powicke's The Loss of Normandy (1913), which neglected charter collections and many published royal records and largely ignored the lesser aristocracy – despite the prominence of this group in contemporary English royal records. Recent case-studies have exposed a variety of cross-Channel aristocratic networks after 1204, but only a general survey can reveal the determining effect of such confiscations upon the England and French political society. The "Lands of the Normans" in England will bring together evidence for the aristocracy of this period in far greater detail than ever before, as the first major prosopographical study to exploit the burgeoning records of early-thirteenth-century English and French royal government.
The Aims of the Project
The project has been designed as a feasibility study for a comprehensive, systematic investigation into the fortunes of the Anglo-French aristocracy between 1204 and the Treaty of Paris (1259), when Henry III of England renounced his claim to Normandy. As a pilot study for this proposed larger project, The "Lands of the Normans" in England will focus upon the single most important English source for the confiscations of 1204, the Rotulus de valore terrarum Normannorum, which records King John's initial confiscations of English properties of French landowners in 1204-5.2 It comprises 114 records of estates in 18 counties that form a bloc across the West Country, Midlands, and south-east England,3 confiscated from 59 lay landowners and a dozen Continental religious houses. The project will research the history of each of the 102 lay estates and the families which held them up to 1244, when the two monarchies prohibited Anglo-French landowners from holding lands in both kingdoms.
The project team will establish a database recording each estate's fate, and each family's landholdings, status, kinship ties, wealth, heraldic insignia, and citations in royal records, charters, and chronicles. The development of this relational database will uncover connections such as kinship, neighbourhood, and lordship, royal resources, patterns of landownership, and the practice of royal patronage. By revealing the various contexts in which these landowners operated, the database will provide a much deeper understanding of political communities in both countries. The database will offer a useful resource for anyone interested in English or French history between c.1180 and c.1250, especially the history of the English and French monarchies and aristocracy. An important aspect of the project is the development of digitised genealogical tables and maps, drawing upon the wealth of technical expertise available at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield.
Publication and Dissemination
The research will be disseminated through:
- an article by the project director, evaluating the project's findings concerning the Anglo-French aristocracy (1204-44);
- an article co-authored by the project director and the research assistant concerning the project's methods;
- an article by the research associate, assisted by the computer technician, concerning the project's contribution to the application of ICT to humanities research;
- web-based reports concerning the database's compilation and the development of web-based tools such as genealogies and maps, published through the HRI website;
- a web-based, open-access database of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy recorded in the Rotulus de valore terrarum Normannorum that will be of permanent use to historians of medieval England and France.
Further inquiries should be directed to the project director, Dr. Daniel Power (d.j.power@sheffield.ac.uk).
1 N.C. Vincent, Peter des Roches: an alien in English politics, 1205-38 (Cambridge, 1996), 30; D.A. Carpenter, 'Roger Mortimer in the period of baronial reform', Nobles and nobility in Medieval Europe, ed. A.J. Duggan (Woodbridge, 2000), 188.
2 Rotuli Normanniæ in turri Londinensi asservati, ed. T.D. Hardy (Record Commission, London, 1835), 122-43.
3 Berkshire, Devon, Dorset, Essex, Kent, Middlesex, Somerset, and Surrey, and the shires of Bedford, Buckingham, Gloucester, Hertford, Leicester, Northampton, Nottingham, Oxford, Warwick and Worcester.