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.The chroniclers leaveus no doubt of the general opinion of contemporaries, thatimportant changes had been made, especially in the treatmentof the lands of the Church, and that these changes were all inthe direction of oppressive exactions for the benefit of the king.The charter issued by Henry I at the beginning of his reign,promising the reform of various abuses of his brother sreign, confirms this opinion.But neither the charter northe chroniclers enable us to say with confidence exactly inwhat the innovations consisted.The feudal system as asystem of military tenures and of judicial organization hadcertainly been introduced by William the Conqueror, andapplied to the great ecclesiastical estates of the kingdom veryearly in his reign.That all the logical deductions for thebenefit of the crown which were possible from this system,especially those of a financial nature, had been made so early,is not so certain.In the end, and indeed before very long,the feudal system as it existed in England became more logi-cal in details, more nearly an ideal feudalism, with referenceto the rights of the crown, than anywhere else in It is quite within the bounds of possibility that Ranulf CHAP.Flambard, keen of mind, working under an absolute king,whose reign was followed by the longer reign of anotherabsolute king, not easily forced to keep the promises of hiscoronation charter, may have had some share in the logicalcarrying out of feudal principles, or in their more com-plete application to the Church, which would be likely toescape feudal burdens under a king of the character ofthe first William.Indeed, such a complete application ofthe feudal rights of the crown to the Church, the developmentof the so-called rights, was at this date incompletein Europe as a whole, and according to the evidence whichwe now have, the Norman in England was a pioneer in thatdirection.The loudest complaints of these oppressions have comedown to us in regard to Canterbury and the other ecclesiasti-cal baronies which fell vacant after the death of Lanfranc.This is what we should expect the writers are monks.Itseems from the evidence, also, that in most cases no exactdivision had as yet been made between those lands belongingto a monastic bishop or an abbot, which should be consid-ered particularly to form the barony, and those which shouldbe assigned to the support of the monastic body.Such adivision was made in time, but where it had not been madebefore the occurrence of a vacancy, it was more than likelythat the monks were placed on very short commons, and theright of the king to the revenues interpreted in the mostample sense.The charter of Henry I shows that in thecase of lay fiefs the rights of the king, logically involved inthe feudal system, had been stretched to their utmost limit,and even beyond.It would be very strange if this were notstill more true in the case of ecclesiastical fiefs.The monks,we may be sure, had abundant grounds for their complaints.But we should notice that what they have in justice to com-plain of is the oppressive abuse of real rights.The systemof Ranulf Flambard, so far as we can determine what it was,does not differ in its main features from that which was inoperation without objection in the time of Henry II.Thevacant ecclesiastical, like the vacant lay, fief fell back intothe king s domain.It is difficult to determine just what its Ah?D A STRONGlegal status was then considered to be, but it was perhapsIVCertainly itas a fief reverting on failure of heirs.was sometimes treated as only an escheated or forfeited layfief would be treated.Its revenues might be collected bythe ordinary machinery, as they had been under the bishop,and turned into the king s treasury or it might be farmedout as a whole to the highest bidder.There could be novalid objection to this.If the legal position which Lanfranchad so vigorously defended was correct, that a bishop mightbe tried as a baron by a lay court and a lay process, with noinfringement of his ecclesiastical rights, then there could beno against this further extension of feudal principles.Relief, wardship, and escheat were perfectly legitimate feudalrights, and there was no reason which the state would considervalid why they should not be enforced in all fiefs alike.Thecase of the Bishop of Durham, in 1088, had already estab-lished a precedent for the forfeiture of an ecclesiastical baronyfor the treason of its holder, and in that case the king hadgranted fiefs within that barony to his own vassals.Still moreclearly would such a fief return to the king s hands, if it werevacant.But if the right was clear, it might still be true thatthe enforcement of it was new and accompanied with greatpractical abuses.Of this much probably we must hold RanulfFlambard guilty.The extension and abuse of feudal law, however, do notfill up the measure of his guilt.Another important source ofroyal revenue, the judicial system, was put under his control,and was forced to contribute the utmost possible to the king sincome.That the justiciarship was at this time as welldefined an office, or as regularly recognized a part of thestate machinery, as it came to be later, is hardly likely.Butthat some officer should be clothed with the royal authorityfor a special purpose, or in the absence of the king forgeneral purposes, was not an uncommon practice.In somesuch way as this Ranulf Flambard had been given charge ofthe king s interests in the judicial system, and had much to doby his activities in that position with the development of theof justiciar.Exactly what he did in this field is as un-certain as in that of feudal law, though the one specificinstance which we have on record shows him acting in a 1089 CHARACTER OF ROBERTcapacity much like that of the later itinerant justice [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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