English Historical Review Vol. CXXIII No. 504
© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

EHR, cxxiii. 504 (Oct. 2008)

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Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure, 1066 – 1166 , by George

Garnett ( Oxford : Oxford U.P. , 2007 ; pp. xviii + 401. £65 ).

This book begins with a quotation from Hobbes’s Leviathan in which he
maintained that conquerors such as William the Conqueror, who needed not
only submission to their authority for the future but also approbation for their

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EHR, cxxiii. 504 (Oct. 2008)

past actions, were in effect sowing the seed for the dissolution of their states,
for ‘ there is scarce a Common-wealth in the world, whose beginnings can in
conscience be justifi ed ’ . The Normans’ justifi cation for the conquest of
England, Garnett suggests, established a framework of ideas about legitimate
royal succession and land tenure which had far-reaching consequences for
political life and the common law.

Building on his earlier articles, the author demonstrates how the conquerors

elaborated the claim (based, he argues, on Norman succession customs) that
Edward the Confessor had bequeathed the kingdom to his kinsman, Duke
William. William became king on the day that King Edward was alive and
dead, and thus the brief rule of Harold Godwinson came to be regarded as that
of an interloper. Coronation acquired a constitutive role absent prior to 1066,
and thus the role of bishops in king-making gained added resonance. Garnett
suggests that this notion of the previous king’s death as a terminus for legitimate
tenure was rooted in the canon law model of antecessor and successor which also
underpinned the new tenurial system.

King William now assumed a role at the head of a hierarchy of landholding

in a way that he had not exercised as duke in Normandy. Ecclesiastics for the
fi rst time had to perform acts of homage for their lands. On their deaths these
were deemed to have escheated to the king, who thus had a fi nancial interest in
prolonging vacancies. Of the contemporary and near-contemporary witnesses,
Garnett suggests that it was Eadmer who best understood the signifi cance of
these changes. There is less explicit evidence so far as laymen are concerned,
but again it is argued that those who received land in England did so only after
acts of homage.

One consequence was that within this tenurial structure the king was in

effect an anomaly because he alone held land of no one. When he died, there
was literally an interregnum until the next king was crowned. Speedy
coronations, in 1087, 1100, and 1135, were the mechanism by which periods of
disorder could be minimised; the problem was that, despite efforts to
legitimise these disputed successions, there were rival claimants who could
command a good deal of support. Only in the settlement of 1153 was a solution
found to the king as an anomaly, in that Stephen adopted Henry FitzEmpress
as his heir and took homage from him. Careful arrangements were then made
for the transfer of castles, and these were put into operation after Stephen’s
death so that Henry, unlike his Norman predecessors, was able to take his
time in coming back to England from Normandy for his coronation. The
years of civil war had left a legacy of disputes over land, and in a fi nal and
illuminating section of the book the author explains how ideas about royal
succession and tenure fed into the evolving legal procedures dealing with
seisin and right. Henry II regarded his grandfather as his antecessor , thus
patterning his own succession on that of William the Conqueror to Edward
the Confessor.

This is a book which has, its author tells us, been a long time in gestation. It

deals with very well-known and much discussed evidence, about which the
author has decided views, such as the importance of the antecessor principle in
post-Conquest England, or on the sequence of charters of Stephen and Matilda
to Geoffrey II de Mandeville: here he agrees with the line taken by John
Prestwich in ‘ The Treason of Geoffrey de Mandeville ’ ( ante , ciii [1988], 283 –
312, 961 – 6) and ‘ Last Words on Geoffrey de Mandeville ’ (cv [1990], 670 – 1).

EHR, cxxiii. 504 (Oct. 2008)

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From that point of view readers will fi nd much to ponder, and may not always
agree.

A more serious consideration is that by pursuing one discourse there is a

danger of downplaying the signifi cance of others. This is true fi rstly of political
context. King William and his advisers needed to establish legitimacy for the
Conquest, at the expense not only of Harold Godwinson, but also of Edgar
Aetheling. While Edgar himself did not marry or challenge the Norman
dynasty, his sister Margaret passed on their blood-line to her children. William’s
quarrel with his eldest son Robert complicated the succession to England and
Normandy. In the event, Robert succeeded to Normandy, while England
passed, probably as the Conqueror intended, to William Rufus. Yet this
division was clearly not acceptable to senior magnates in the Anglo-Norman
world, and the issue of just what claims each of the Conqueror’s sons had on
their father’s legacy needs teasing out. The settlement between William Rufus
and Duke Robert in 1091 inter alia made territorial concessions in Normandy
to the former, promised that the latter’s disseised supporters would recover
their English estates, and, both being unmarried at the time, recognised the
other’s right of succession. The treaty of 1101 between Henry I and Robert also
demonstrates the interconnectedness of Normandy and England: Henry
surrendered his land in Normandy (save the castle of Domfront), Robert
recognised Henry’s title to the throne, and in return was promised a large
pension from England. In the months that followed the peace, Robert stayed
in England with his brother, and, as David Bates pointed out, both issued
charters for the bishop of Bath ( ‘ A Neglected English Charter of Robert
Curthose, Duke of Normandy

’

,

Historical Research

, lix [1986], 122 – 4), a

recognition of Robert’s role in England at that time as his brother’s potential
heir.

Most of all, Henry was concerned to portray himself as his father’s successor

not only in England but also in Normandy — a claim he asserted triumphantly
after his victory over his brother in battle at Tinchebray. He strained every
sinew to ensure that Normandy and England would pass together to his son
William, rather than the captive Duke Robert or the latter’s son, William
Clito. After his own son’s death and the childlessness of his second marriage,
Henry perforce had to fall back on the potential of his newly widowed daughter,
the Empress, either to succeed in her own right or, more probably, as the
future mother of sons, for Henry’s exact intentions in the last years of his life
are not easy to decipher. In other words, the contests for the succession to the
English throne after 1066 meant that justifi cations for what actually happened
had to take on board other ideas, in which the future of Normandy could not
be divorced from that of England. Similar questions arose in many baronial
families, for the tendency to divide lands at the Channel was by no means
universally followed.

Moreover, by the later years of Henry’s life the likelihood was that he would

be succeeded by his daughter, and the ruling élite had to address the question
of female rule. More detailed consideration of the issue of power and gender at
this point in the book would have strengthened the discussion of the Empress’s
position in both England and Normandy: could she exercise power in her own
right, or simply transmit power to her husband, and then to her sons?

Secondly, focusing, as this book does, on the kings’ perspective makes it

diffi cult to portray baronial behaviour as other than potentially or actually

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EHR, cxxiii. 504 (Oct. 2008)

disruptive to orderly succession and the maintenance of peace. Yet the great
men — laymen as well as ecclesiastics — saw themselves as intrinsic to peace-
keeping. Speedy coronations did not prevent them from bargaining, individually
and collectively, for the recognition of the need for kings to maintain good
laws and abrogate evil ones. The very fact that the king was rex et dominus
meant that if he failed to offer good lordship he faced pressure and even
rebellion. Kingship, succession, and tenure were all matters which the English
kings had to work out with the great men, as well as in rapidly changing
political circumstances. However, this is an important, subtle, and thought-
provoking book. Garnett addresses key questions about legitimacy, succession,
and the foundations of common law, and offers a tightly argued hypothesis
which demonstrates the crucial importance of the period for the formation of
English kingship and law.

JUDITH A. GREEN

doi:10.1093/ehr/cen272

University of Edinburgh