m853

service was assessed in rough units of five or ten ‘knights’. The amount of service was fixed by custom and regularly enforced. Private war be-tween the duke’s vassals was strictly limited; castle building was permitted only under ducal licence and on condition that the castles be handed over to the duke on demand; coinage, generally a valued privilege of the greater lords, was controlled exclusively by the duke; local administration was entrusted to vicecom.es or sheritfs, who represented the ducal or public interest as opposed to the feudal or local interest and who commanded the local levy; and even the Church was controlled by the duke. Not for nothing were the energetic Normans known as ‘the men who madę things work’.

By the time of the conąuest of England, there-fore, William had a highly organized feudal State with the nobility, bishops and abbots all owing him ‘knights’. Yet WillianYs resources were still in-adeąuate for such a vast undertaking, for only a limited amount of the military potential of the dukedom was actually at his disposal. For example, the greater part of the knight service owed to a Norman tenant-in-chiefwas for use by that tenant-in-chief alone. Thus the duke could claim the services of only one sixth of the knights owing military service to the bishop of Bayeux. Further-more, the tenants-in-chief did not regard service across the Channel as part of their feudal obli-gation, so that even though many Norman barons and knights followed William to England, they did so not as a feudal levy but as adventurers or hired mercenaries seeking booty and land.

The ‘Norman’ army at Flastings has been estimated at about 7,000 men: of this number probably less than half came from Normandy. To make up the numbers William recruited mercenaries from all over Europę: mailed cavalrymen and infantry, archers and slingers, from Flanders, Brittany, Picardy, the Boulonnais, and even some Noman adventurers from Sicily and Southern Ilaly.

In Italy military service was also rigorously exacted by Guiscard, but his tenants regularly revolted against his demands and on several

Warriors in hauberks, framed and one-piece helmets, and with round shields, as portrayed in an i ith-century bibie from Arras. All those in action are using their spears overarm.