The Normans

1. What did the Normans find out when they arrived?

-the long halls richly decorated with carvings and paints outside and inside of Saxon thegns and Danish jarls with the “smoke eddying through the hole in the rafters, which diminished the sense of luxury”(G.M.Travelyan). Native craftsmen's work'

- bards chanting their epics every evening to the audience in the language of the sounds of fine words;

--they found England in wood and left it in stone, as did the Romans before;

--the thegn [the armed warrior with helmet and chain shirt falling below the hips, the mounted infantryman in heavy armor on whom the King relies in case of invasion] and his retainer laboring at spearing and netting the wolves and foxes, and keeping down the deer, hares, rabbits, and wild fowl; hunting was a pleasure but also a duty;

--the thegn devotes his life to hunting and war, and to the service of his own overlord—the king, or else some Bishop or Abbot, or some greater thegn than himself; with personal loyalty that inspires his service; later replaced by the Norman knight—more completely armed and trained to fight from the saddle, a specialist in war, a member of feudalist system which reached its climax after the N.Conquest;

--feudalism depended on the superiority of aristocracy in arms; land held by FIEF; the grantor of the fief was overlord and the recipient the VASSAL; the fief formally acquired during the ceremony of homage/tribute -kneeling before the overlord abd declaration of dedication and service to the lord; kissing the vassal; promising fidelity; service in exchange for protection; later on the emergence of the burgess class;

--food: wild game, half-wild herds of swine in the forest;

--virgin woodland wilderness of all England;

--the lumbermen with their axes, log shanty (huts) in the clearing, the draught oxen, the horses to ride to the nearest farm, the good comradeship of the frontiersmen; the primeval realm of nature; the work of colonization and deforestation;

--a man looked to his lord for a military protection, for justice and for economic help; in return the lord restricted his freedom, became a sharer in his profits of his labour and carried much of this labour for himself;

--still tribal and clan organization, before the rise of the State;

2. What did the Normans bring?

--feudalism—the method by which a helpless population could be protected, war efficiently conducted, colonization pushed forward, or agriculture carried on with increased profits;

--cavalrymen and chivalry

--the A-S ploughman a lazy soldier (called out every few months) vs a skilled Norman knight; the A-S wanted to be left alone to till his soil; protected from local troubles by his thegn;

--castles and new façade of architecture: fortresses, hill forts, arrowslits, curtain walls (defensive walls), archers to launch arrows through arrowslits; crenellated walls for battlements; castles with moats around and the drawbridge; mound and fortified enclosure (motte-and-bailey castles); gateway to ride through the building with so-called murder-holes - openings in the ceiling of the gateway passage - were used to “pour boiling oil or molten lead on attackers”;

-----“during the 13th and 14th centuries the barbican was developed.^[39] This consisted of a rampart, ditch and possibly a tower, in front of the gatehouse^[40] which could be used to further protect the entrance. The purpose of a barbican was not just to provide another line of defence but also to dictate the only approach to the gate.

---calculations, assessments, evaluation, Doomsday Book—a record of lands to be made to find out about their possessions, property (meadows, pastures, forests, mills, etc)—from 1086

---new ruling class (Anglo-Norman aristocracy), culture (ep. chivalric culture and courtly love) and language; Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine—patrons of art and literature;

Education---well-educated Englishman---trilingual;

3. The Norman Conquest consequences:

--- proliferation of written records-12/13^th centuries

--- 8 mln charters on which all data was recorded and archived

---royal administration: the chancery, the exchequer (collecting taxes), sealing wax used by chancery;

--development of literacy and society, written documents; 1220 two universities, Cambridge and Oxford;

---succession to the throne of descendants: William, then his son Rufus (killed at hunting in 1100); Henry I—and lay investiture—a ceremony of receiving the ring and staff of office from the hands of the secular prince who appoints a new abbot or bishop; rejected by Henry I who did not recognize the sacred mission of the bishops and wished to hold his office secular;

---Henry I—his daughter Matilda (married to Henry V of Germany; then married Geoffrey of Plantagenet, count of Anjou----DYNASTY;

---building of manor house with land's property, with half-free peasants (villains); the rise of trade (wool, fairs organized as venues and places of exchange of goods); the growth of local governments; cities grow, guilds, etc;

Curia Regis, advisory unit of the King, a predecessor of Engl. government

4. Culture:

---schools

-languages (French, Latin and English)

--chroniclers to register history

---kings spend most time in either England or Normandy careless about their reigning

--conflict of Henry II with archbishop Thomas a Beckett of Canterbury;

--Constitution of Clarendon started by Henry II (customary rights of noblemen listed, also those against the church)—king's rights must be respected; Beckett sentenced to forfeiture (confiscation of his estates); sent to exile in France, his return to Engladn and then murdered by 4 knights sent by the king;

--partition of the kingdom between: Richard, John and Geoffrey;

--the Crusades: Richard (+1199) the Lion-Hearted and his major missions in Europe; his management of the country, hgh taxation but good financial condition

To be Continued

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