0303B

Their remnants are among the most enduring elements on the modern landscape - above all the Norman kings' New Forest, recently declared a National Park - where other woodland has been lost over the intervening centuries. Hunting was both enjoyed as sport (albeit a dangerous one: two brothers of Henry I had been killed in hunting accidents), and had a considerable economic function: it is no coincidence that Henry I's reign probably saw the introduction into England of the rabbit, the fallow deer, and the pheasant.
Some new lords were clearly keen to exploit the economic potential of their estates. Ernulf de Hesdin was praised by William of Malmesbury both for his charity to the poor and for his hands-on management of his lands, but Domesday Book reveals many other lords who had increased the value of their lands, sometimes by none too scrupulous means. With a firm grasp on the controls of government and with the support of a considerable clientage, local bosses like Robert d'Oilly, castellan of Oxford, or Picot, sheriff of Cambridgeshire, could tyrannise their regions and appropriate land from monasteries and laity alike.
In most instances increases in agricultural production were the result of a more rigorous exploitation of existing resources, for the Norman Conquest itself introduced no agricultural or technological innovations. The manorialisation of rural society that had quickened in the later Anglo-Saxon period continued as large estates were fragmented into smaller, often more regimented, holdings typified by common fields and nucleated villages. It is not anachronistic to see their lords as country gentry cultivating their lands through the labour of a dependent peasantry, and receiving rents from the freer peasants. For these dependent peasants the Conquest may have had little impact: the few surviving late Anglo-Saxon estate documents suggest that their burdens were not dissimilar from those endured by their 13th century descendants, when the plight of the unfree peasantry has traditionally been supposed to be at its worst. Some certainly benefited. Slaves were a familiar feature of pre-Conquest rural society, and were particularly concentrated in some regions such as the West Midlands. In the post-Conquest generations they gradually disappeared, not because the colonisers had a greater respect for human rights, but because it made better economic sense for lords to exploit a labour force which cultivated its own smallholdings and provided services in return, rather than to maintain slaves at their own expense. Nucleation of settlements may well have accelerated in the post-Conquest world. Certainly, in the north new 'planned' villages can be attributed to the new order.
   The north had suffered more than any other region from violent economic and social disruption in the years following 1066. Refugees had swarmed south and the impact of the 'harrying' was still apparent generations after-wards. Whole communities were displaced, and their resettlement in regularly laid-out villages gave both protection and the opportunity for greater control. Yet even in areas less seriously affected by conquest, life was unpredictable and uncertain. Taxation levels were harsh and sometimes punitive: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1097 records that 'this was a very disastrous year because of excessive taxation'. It continues: which did not leave off throughout the whole year: nearly all the cultivated land in low-lying districts was ruined'. Such catastrophes were not unusual. The following year 'the incoming tide rushed up so strongly and did so much damage that no one remembered anything like it before'. 1102 'was a very disastrous year.... by reason of numerous taxes and also as a result of murrain and the ruin of the harvest, both of the corn and of the fruit on all the trees.
   Further (on August 10th) the wind did such great damage here in the land to all the crops that nobody remembered anything like it before'. Such entries remind us that, although overall climatic conditions in Europe had been improving since the 10th century, with the weather becoming warmer and, perhaps, wetter, conditions were always precarious. Even when there were not famines, local shortages could be serious and hard to overcome given the poor communications.
Much of the initiative for the major developments in the landscape and the rural economy, the reclamation of marsh and fen and the clearances of woodland and 'waste', came from the great Benedictine monasteries such as Ely and Glastonbury. Some of this activity was already under way before the Conquest. It was frequently these religious communities, too, that were at the forefront of urban development as small trading centers developed outside their gates. This had already happened at St Albans and Bury St Edmunds, but it was also apparent at new foundations such as Battle, the monastery established by William I on the site of his victory of 1066. Greater and lesser secular lords also saw the advantage of fostering towns on their estates and, as did Robert fitzHaimo at Burford, offered commercial inducements to merchants willing to settle in these new communities. Many lords established towns near their castles which not only provided protection and a market for goods but also served - as in the countryside - to dominate the local population. More than twenty years ago JH le Patourel drew attention to the colonising trilogy of castle, borough, and monastery. Many lords endeavoured to make the capita of their estates focal points of administrative, commercial, and religious activity. Thus, Henry de Ferrers founded a priory beneath his castle at Tutbury, which also overlooked his new town, while in Cornwall, Robert of Mortain built a castle at Launceston and developed a small priory, moving this community from its original site outside Launceston and aggressively transferring its market into his own castle. Older established towns also felt the positive and negative impact of the new order. Many of the castles recorded in Domesday Book were urban structures. The construction of most of these resulted ii substantial disruption as houses were demolished and trade dislocated. But at the same time, castles might provide protection and generate commercial demand. There seems little doubt that Rufus's new castle on the Tyne was a powerful catalyst to the growth of the town that took its name from that fortification. Towns, too, might be exorbitantly taxed as Norwich and Oxford certainly were. Both, moreover, had had castles imposed on them, and yet within one or two generations both flourished as commercial administrative and ecclesiastical centres as never before.
In no way was the coming of a new order more evident in the landscape than in the appearance of castles and churches. According to Domesday Book there were about fifty castles in 1086, but this figure is almost certainly a considerable understatement, and may well refer only to the largest of private fortifications. Few were stone-built. Those that were were either royal and intended to promote an imperial vision, as at the White Tower (London) or Colchester, or belonged to the greatest of the lay magnates like Richard de Lacy at Ludlow, or Count Alan of Brittany at Richmond (Yorkshire). Far more typical were the wooden and earthen fortifications of motte and bailey type, which were intended to dominate and defend their immediate locality. Their densest concentrations were along debated frontiers such as Herefordshire. Often, too, these new castles were in close proximity to new churches. William of Malmesbury famously commented that the Conquest resulted in a dramatic increase in new churches: 'now you may see in every village, town and city, churches and monasteries rising in a new style of architecture'. Though some of this rebuilding, particularly of cathedrals and abbey churches, can certainly be attributed to the colonisers' desire to impress their arrival on the land, such an interpretation is too simple. At a local level the dynamic for building was both economic and institutional. Not only did a rising population require more churches, especially in new regions of cultivation where no settlements had previously existed, but the old ecclesiastical organisational structure was fracturing. The parish system that has survived into the present century was essentially a creation of the century-and-a-half following the Conquest. Late Anglo-Saxon lords had already begun to build estate churches, carving them out from the jurisdiction of the old mother or minster-churches, installing priests and enjoying the proceeds of their tenants' tithes. Reforming bishops such as Wulfstan of Worcester or Lanfranc of Canterbury also encouraged the creation of new parishes. Such activity was not confined to England.         More in Part C....