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Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

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There were two conquerors of England in the 11th century -- not just William of Normandy but, just a generation or two earlier, Canute "the Great," who ruled almost all of Scandinavia. And the great lords who served both kings were nothing like the modern image of an aristocrat. They were "enterprising bully boys," self-interested predators who behaved frequently like the marauding vikings whose descendants they were. In both cases, they served their king but also took every opportunity to grab what they could for themselves. Canute's hold on England didn't last but William's did, and how the Norman lords, who became England's barons, enhanced their wealth -- which meant the scope of their landholdings -- shaped the way the nation developed. Fleming's thesis is that, while the king generally gets the credit for England's growing prosperity and "institutional precocity" during the first century after the Norman Conquest, it was actually the barons who did most of the work, not only through their own avarice but as a result of their complex relationship with the Crown. By the nature of his position, the king was rather an isolated figure, the central player in the chronicles. A study of alliances and the acquisition of property among the great landed families one step below the king, however, leads to a picture of the geographical and economic balance that developed in the kingdom. Those alliances were personal relationships, both by intermarriage (in which the monarch did not participate during this early period) and the resulting conglomeration of estates and by military linkages (often an arrangement by several less powerful lords in opposition to and in balance against a single great lord).

Why go back to Canute? Because the Danish conquest led to the destruction of the royal kindred, the upsetting of the long-established system of family connections by which the Anglo-Saxons had run the country. Canute's introduction of "new men" suited his own goals, but his system was not well enough established to survive his death. West Saxon power waned and the family of Earl Godwin took over. And when the Normans showed up a couple of decades later, their own takeover was made much easier.

In developing his case, Fleming draws a large part of his evidence from Domesday Book, which, even with its limitations -- the omission of London, Winchester, and the counties of Durham and Northumberland, as well as a tendency to under-record the surviving Saxon landowners -- still functions as the greatest collection of illustrious names and their locations in early medieval England, and therefore the best evidence available for its political history. Wills, charters, writs, and similar documents allow the author also to attempt to sort out the complex family relationships among the great landowners. Fleming has done his work well, and has provided an extensive bibliography to assist those who come after him.